Jim had disappeared; until when we had made way to another monte table there he was, his hands in his pockets, his cigar half smoked.
More of a crowd was here; the voice of the spieler more insistent, yet low-pitched and businesslike. He was a study—a square-shouldered, well set-up, wiry man of olive complexion, finely chiseled features save for nose somewhat cruelly beaked, of short black moustache, dead black long wavy hair, and, placed boldly wide, contrastive hard gray eyes that lent atmosphere of coldness to his face. His hat was pulled down over his forehead, he held an unlighted cigar between his teeth while he mechanically spoke and shifted the three cards (a diamond flashing from a finger) upon the baize-covered little table.
Money had been wagered. He had just raked in a few notes, adding them to his pile. His monotone droned on.
“Next, ladies and gentlemen. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. That is my business. The play is yours. You may think I have two chances to your 119one; that is not so. You make the choice. Always the queen, always the queen. You have only to watch the queen, one card. I have to watch three cards. You have your two eyes, I have my two hands. You spot the card only when you think you can. I meet all comers. It is an even gamble.”
Jim remarked us as we joined.
“How you comin’ now?” he greeted of me.
“We won a dollar,” My Lady responded.
“Not I. She did the choosing,” I corrected.
“But you would have chosen the same card, you said,” she prompted. “You saw how easy it was.”
“Easy if you know how,” Jim asserted. “Think to stake a leetle here? I’ve been keepin’ cases and luck’s breaking ag’in the bank to-night, by gosh. Made several turns, myself, already.”
“We’ll wait a minute till we get his system,” she answered.
“Are you watching, ladies and gentlemen?” bade the dealer, in that even tone. “You see the eight of clubs, the eight of spades, the queen of hearts. The queen is your card. My hand against your eyes, then. You are set? There you are. Pick the queen, some one of you. Put your money on the queen of hearts. You can turn the card yourself. What? Nobody? Don’t be pikers. Let us have a little sport. Stake a dollar. Why, you’d toss a dollar down your throat—you’d lay a dollar on a cockroach race—you’d bet that much on a yellow dog if you owned him, just to show 120your spirit. And here I’m offering you a straight proposition.”
With a muttered “I’ll go you another turn, Mister,” Jim stepped closer and planked down a dollar. The dealer cast a look up at him as with pleased surprise.
“You, sir? Very good. You have spirit. Money talks. Here is my dollar. Now, to prove to these other people what a good guesser you are, which is the queen?”
“Here,” Jim said confidently; and sure enough he faced up the queen of hearts.
“The money’s yours. You never earned a dollar quicker, I’ll wager, friend,” the dealer acknowledged, imperturbable—for he evidently was one who never evinced the least emotion, whether he won or lost. “Very good. Now——”
From behind him a man—a newcomer to the spot, who looked like any respectable Eastern merchant, being well dressed and grave of face—touched him upon the shoulder. He turned ear; while he inclined farther they whispered together, and I witnessed an arm steal swiftly forward at my side, and a thumb and finger slightly bend up the extreme corner of the queen. The hand and arm vanished; when the dealer fronted us again the queen was apparently just as before. Only we who had seen would have marked the bent corner.
The act had been so clever and so audacious that I fairly held my breath. But the gambler resumed his flow of talk, while he fingered the cards as if totally unaware that they had been tampered with.
“Now, again, ladies and gentlemen. You see how it is done. You back your eyes, and you win. I find that I shall have to close early to-night. Make your hay while the sun shines. Who’ll be in on this turn? Watch the queen of hearts. I place her here. I coax the three cards a little——” he gave a swift flourish. “There they are.”
His audience hesitated, as if fearful of a trick, for the bent corner of the queen, raising this end a little, was plain to us who knew. It was absurdly plain.
“I’ll go you another, Mister,” Jim responded. “I’ll pick out the queen ag’in for a dollar.”
The gambler smiled grimly and shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, pshaw, sir. These are small stakes. You’ll never get rich at that rate and neither shall I.”
“I reckon I can set my own limit,” Jim grumbled.
“Yes, sir. But let’s have action. Who’ll join this gentleman in his guess? Who’ll back his luck? He’s a winner, I admit that.”
The gray eyes dwelt upon face and face of our half circle; and still I, too, hesitated, although my dollar was burning a hole in my pocket.
My Lady whispered to me.
“All’s fair in love and war. Here—put this on, with yours, for me.” She slipped a dollar of her own into my hand.
Another man stepped forward. He was, I judged, a teamster. His clothes, of flannel shirt, belted trousers and six-shooter and dusty boots, so indicated. And his beard was shaggy and unkempt, almost covering his face underneath his drooping slouch hat.
“I’ll stake you a dollar,” he said.
“Two from me,” I heard myself saying, and I saw my hand depositing them.
“You’re all on this gentleman’s card, remember?”
We nodded. The bearded man tipped me a wink.
“You, sir, then, turn the queen if you can,” the gambler challenged of Jim.
With quick movement Jim flopped the bent-corner card, and the queen herself seemed to wink jovially at us.
The gambler exclaimed.
“By God, gentlemen, but you’ve skinned me again. I’m clumsy to-night. I’d better quit.” And he scarcely varied his level tone despite the chuckles of the crowd. “You must let me try once more. But I warn you, I want action. I’m willing to meet any sum you stack up against me, if it’s large enough to spell action. Shall we go another round or two before I close up?” He gathered the three cards. “You see the queen—my unlucky queen of hearts. Here she is.” He stowed the card between thumb and finger. “Here are the other two.” He held them up in his left hand—the eight of clubs, the eight of spades. He transferred them—with his rapid motion he strewed the three. “Choose the queen. I put the game to you fair and square. There are the cards. Maybe you can read their backs. That’s your privilege.” He fixed his eyes upon the teamster. “You, sir; where’s your money, half of which was mine?” He glanced at Jim. “And you, sir? You’ll follow your luck?” Lastly he surveyed me with a flash of steely bravado. “And you, young gentleman. You came in before. I dare you.”
The bent corner was more pronounced than ever, as if aggravated by the manipulations. It could not possibly be mistaken by the knowing. And a sudden shame possessed me—a glut of this crafty advantage to which I was stooping; an advantage gained not through my own wit, either, but through the dishonorable trick of another.
“There’s your half from me, if you want it,” said Jim, slapping down two dollars. “This is my night to howl.”
The teamster backed him.
“I’m on the same card,” said he.
And not to be outdone—urged, I thought, by a pluck at my sleeve—I boldly followed with my own two dollars, reasoning that I was warranted in partially recouping, for Benton owed me much.
The gambler laughed shortly. His gaze, cool and impertinent, enveloped our front. He leaned back, defiant.
“Give me a chance, gentlemen. I shall not proceed with the play for that picayune sum before me. This is my last deal and I’ve been loser. It’s make or break. Who else will back that gentleman’s luck? I’ve placed the cards the best I know how. But six or eight dollars is no money to me. It doesn’t pay for floor space. Is nobody else in? What? Come, come; let’s have some sport. I dare you. This time is my revenge or your good fortune. Play up, gentlemen. Don’t be crabbers.” He smiled sarcastically; his words stung. “This isn’t pussy-in-a-corner. It’s a game of wits. You wouldn’t bet unless you felt cock-sure of winning. I’ll give you one minute, gentlemen, before calling all bets off unless you make the pot worth while.”
The threat had effect. Nobody wished to let the marked card get away. That was not human nature. Bets rained in upon the table—bank notes, silver half dollars, the rarer dollar coins, and the common greenbacks. He met each wager, while he sat negligent and half smiled and chewed his unlighted cigar.
“This is the last round, gentlemen,” he reminded. “Are you all in? Don’t leave with regrets. You,” he said, direct to me. “Are you in such short circumstances that you have no spunk? Why did you come here, sir, if not to win? Why, the stakes you play would not buy refreshment for the lady!”
That was too much. I threw scruples aside. He had badgered me—he was there to win if he could; I now was hot with the same design. I extracted my twenty-dollar note, and deaf to a quickly breathed “Wait the turn” from My Lady I planked it down before him. She should know me for a man of decision.
“There, sir,” said I. “I am betting twenty-two dollars in all, which is my limit to-night, on the same right-end card as I stand.”
I thought that I had him. Forthwith he straightened alertly, spoke tartly.
“The game is closed, gentlemen. Remember, you are wagering on the first turn. There are no splits in monte. Not at this table. Our friend says the right-end card. You, sir,” and he addressed Jim. “They are backing you. Which do you say is the queen? Lay your finger on her.”
Jim so did, with a finger stubby, and dirty under the nail.
“That is the card, is it? You are agreed?” he queried us, sweeping his cold gray eyes from face to face. “We’ll have no crabbing.”
We nodded, intently eying the card, fearful yet, some of us, that it might be denied us.
“You, sir, then.” And he addressed me. “You are the heaviest better. Suppose you turn the card for yourself and those other gentlemen.”
I obediently reached for it. My hand trembled. There were sixty or seventy dollars upon the table, and my own contribution was my last cent. As I fumbled I felt the strain of bodies pressing against mine, and heard the hiss of feverish breaths, and a foolish laugh or two. Nevertheless the silence seemed overpowering.
I turned the card—the card with the bent corner, of which I was as certain as of my own name; I faced it up, confidently, my capital already doubled; and amidst a burst of astonished cries I stared dumbfounded.
It was the eight of clubs! My fingers left it as though it were a snake. It was the eight of clubs! Where I had seen, in fancy, the queen of hearts, there lay like a changeling the eight of clubs, with corner bent as only token of the transformation.
The crowd elbowed about me. With rapid movement the gambler raked in the bets—a slender hand flashed by me—turned the next card. The queen that was, after all.
The gambler darkened, gathering the pasteboards.
“We can’t both win, gentlemen,” he said, tone passionless. “But I am willing to give you one more chance, from a new deck.”
What the response was I did not know, nor care. My ears drummed confusedly, and seeing nothing I pushed through into the open, painfully conscious that I was flat penniless and that instead of having 127played the knave I had played the fool, for the queen of hearts.
The loss of some twenty dollars might have been a trivial matter to me once—I had at times cast that sum away as vainly as Washington had cast a dollar across the Potomac; but here I had lost my all, whether large or small; and not only had I been bilked out of it—I had bilked myself out of it by sinking, in pretended smartness, below the level of a more artful dodger.
I heard My Lady speaking beside me.
“I’m so sorry.” She laid hand upon my sleeve. “You should have been content with small sums, or followed my lead. Next time——”
“There’ll be no next time,” I blurted. “I am cleaned out.”
“You don’t mean——?”
“I was first robbed at the hotel. Now here.”
“No, no!” she opposed. Jim sidled to us. “That was a bungle, Jim.”
He ruefully scratched his head.
“A wrong steer for once, I reckon. I warn’t slick enough. Too much money on the table. But it looked like the card; I never took my eyes off’n it. We’ll try ag’in, and switch to another layout. By thunder, I want revenge on this joint and I mean to get it. So do you, don’t you, pardner?” he appealed to me.
As with mute, sickly denial I turned away it seemed to me that I sensed a shifting of forms at the monte table—caught the words “You watch here a moment”; and close following, a slim white hand fell heavily upon My Lady’s shoulder. It whirled her about, to face the gambler. His smooth olive countenance was dark with a venom of rage incarnate that poisoned the air; his syllables crackled.
“You devil! I heard you, at the table. You meddle with my come-ons, will you?” And he slapped her with open palm, so that the impact smacked. “Now get out o’ here or I’ll kill you.”
She flamed red, all in a single rush of blood.
“Oh!” she breathed. Her hand darted for the pocket in her skirt, but I sprang between the two. Forgetful of my revolver, remembering only what I had witnessed—a woman struck by a man—with a blow I sent him reeling backward.
He recovered; every vestige of color had left his face, except for the spot where I had landed; his hat had sprung aside from the shock—his gray eyes, contrasted with his black hair, fastened upon my eyes almost deliberately and his upper lip lifted over set white teeth. With lightning movement he thrust the fingers of his right hand into his waistcoat pocket.
I heard a rush of feet, a clamor of voices; and all the while, which seemed interminable, I was tugging, awkward with deadly peril, at my revolver. His fingers had whipped free of the pocket, I glimpsed as with second sight (for my eyes were held strongly by his) the twin little black muzzles of a derringer concealed in his palm; a spasm of fear pinched me; they spurted, with ringing report, but just at the instant a flanneled arm knocked his arm up, the ball had sped ceiling-ward and the teamster of the gaming table stood against him, revolver barrel boring into his very stomach.
“Stand pat, Mister. I call you.”
In a trice all entry of any unpleasant emotion vanished from my antagonist’s handsome face, leaving it olive tinted, cameo, inert. He steadied a little, and smiled, surveying the teamster’s visage, close to his.
“You have me covered, sir. My hand is in the discard.” He composedly tucked the derringer into his waistcoat pocket again. “That gentleman struck me; he was about to draw on me, and by rights I might have killed him. My apologies for this little disturbance.”
He bestowed a challenging look upon me, a hard unforgiving look upon the lady; with a bow he turned for his hat, and stepping swiftly went back to his table.
Now in the reaction I fought desperately against a trembling of the knees; there were congratulations, a hubbub of voices assailing me—and the arm of the teamster through mine and his bluff invitation:
“Come and have a drink.”
“But you’ll return. You must. I want to speak with you.”130
It was My Lady, pleading earnestly. I still could scarcely utter a word; my brain was in a smother. My new friend moved me away from her. He answered for me.
“Not until we’ve had a little confab, lady. We’ve got matters of importance jest at present.”
I saw her bite her lips, as she helplessly flushed; her blue eyes implored me, but I had no will of my own and I certainly owed a measure of courtesy to this man who had saved my life.
We found a small table, one of the several devoted to refreshments for the dancers, in a corner and unoccupied. The affair upon the floor was apparently past history—if it merited even that distinction. The place had resumed its program of dancing, playing and drinking as though after all a pistol shot was of no great moment in the Big Tent.
“You had a narrow shave,” my friend remarked as we seated ourselves—I with a sigh of gratitude for the opportunity. “If you can’t draw quicker you’d better keep your hands in your pockets. Let’s have a dose of t’rant’lar juice to set you up.” Whereupon he ordered whiskey from a waiter.
“But I couldn’t stand by and see him strike a woman,” I defended.
“Wall, fists mean guns, in these diggin’s. Where you from?”
“Albany, New York State.”
“I sized you up as a pilgrim. You haven’t been long in camp, either, have you?”
“No. But plenty long enough,” I miserably replied.
“Long enough to be plucked, eh?”
We had drunk the whiskey. Under its warming influence my tongue loosened. Moreover there was something strong and kindly in the hearty voice and the rough face of this rudely clad plainsman, black bearded to the piercing black eyes.
“Yes; of my last cent.”
“All at gamblin’, mebbe?”
“No. Only a little, but that strapped me. The hotel had robbed me of practically everything else.”
“Had, had it? Wall, what’s the story?”
I told him of the hotel part; and he nodded.
“Shore. You can’t hold the hotel responsible. You can leave stuff loose in regular camp; nobody enters flaps without permission. But a room is a different proposition. I’d rather take chances among Injuns than among white men. Why, you could throw in with a Sioux village for a year and not be robbed permanent if the chief thought you straight; but in a white man’s town—hell! Now, how’d you get tangled up with this other outfit?”
“Which?” I queried.
“That brace outfit I found you with.”
“The fellow is a stranger to me, sir,” said I. “I simply was foolish enough to stake what little I had on a sure thing—I was bamboozled into following the lead of the rest of you,” I reminded. “Now I see that there was a trick, although I don’t yet understand. After that the fellow assaulted the lady, my 133companion, and you stepped in—for which, sir, I owe you more thanks than I can utter.”
“A trick, you think?” He opened his hairy mouth for a gust of short laughter. “My Gawd, boy! We were nicely took in, and we desarved it. When you buck the tiger, look out for his claws. But I reckoned he’d postpone the turn till next time. He would have, if you fellers hadn’t come down so handsome with the dust. I stood pat, at that. So, you notice, did the capper, your other friend.”
“The capper? Which was he, sir?”
“Why, Lord bless you, son. You’re the greenest thing this side of Omyha. A capper touched him on the shoulder, a capper bent that there card, a capper tolled you all on with a dollar or two, and another capper fed the come-ons to his table. Aye, she’s a purty piece. Where’d you meet up with her?”
“With her?” I gasped.
“Yes, yes. The woman; the main steerer. That purty piece who damn nigh lost you your life as well as losin’ you your money.”
“You mean the lady with the blue eyes, in black?”
“Yes, the golden hair. Lady! Oh, pshaw! Where’d she hook you? At the door?”
“You shall not speak of her in that fashion, sir,” I answered. “We were together on the train from Omaha. She has been kindness itself. The only part she has played to-night, as far as I can see, was to chaperon me here in the Big Tent; and whatever small winnings I had made, for amusement, was due to her and the skill of an acquaintance named Jim.”
“Jim Daily, yep. O’ course. And she befriended you. Why, d’you suppose?”
“Perhaps because I was of some assistance to her on the way out West. I had a little setto with Mr. Daily, when he annoyed her while he was drunk. But sobered up, he seemed to wish to make amends.”
“Oh, Lord!” My friend’s mouth gaped. “Amends? Yep. That’s his nature. Might call it mendin’ his pocket and his lip. And you don’t yet savvy that your ’lady’ ’s Montoyo’s wife—his woman, anyhow?”
“Montoyo? Who’s Montoyo?”
“The monte thrower. That same spieler who trimmed us,” he rapped impatiently.
The light that broke upon me dazed. My heart pounded. I must have looked what I felt: a fool.
“No,” I stammered in my thin small voice of the hotel. “I imagined—I had reason to suspect that she might be married. But I didn’t know to whom.”
“Married? Wall, mebbe. Anyhow, she’s bound to Montoyo. He’s a breed, some Spanish, some white, like as not some Injun. A devil, and as slick as they make ’em. She’s a power too white for him, herself, but he uses her and some day he’ll kill her. You’re not the fust gudgeon she’s hooked, to feed to him. Why, she’s known all back down the line. They two have been followin’ end o’ track from North Platte, along with Hell on Wheels. Had a layout in Omyha, and in Denver. They’re not the only double-harness outfit hyar, either. You can meet a friendly woman any time, but this one got hold you fust.”
I writhed to the words.
“And that fellow Jim?” I asked.
“He’s jest a common roper. He alluz wins, to encourage suckers like you. ’Tisn’t his money he plays with; he’s on commish. Beginnin’ to understand, ain’t you?”
“But the bent card?” I insisted. “That is the mystery. It was the queen. What became of the queen?”
“Ho ho!” And again he laughed. “A cute trick, shore. That’s what we got for bein’ so plumb crooked ourselves. Why, o’ course it was the queen, once. You see ’twas this way. That she-male and the capper in cahoots with her tolled you on straight for Montoyo’s table; teased you a leetle along the trail, no doubt, to keep you interested.” I nodded. “They promised you winnin’s, easy winnin’s. Then at Montoyo’s table the game was a leetle slack; so one capper touched him on the shoulder and another marked the card. O’ course a gambler like him wouldn’t be up to readin’ his own cards. Oh, no! You sports were the smart ones.”
“How about yourself?” I retorted, nettled.
“Me? I know them tricks, but I reckoned I was smart, too. Then that capper Jim led out and we all made a small winnin’, to prove the system. And Montoyo, he gets tired o’ losin’—but still he’s blind to a card that everybody else can see, and he calls for real play so he can go broke or even up. I didn’t look for much of a deal on that throw myself. Usu’ly it comes less promisc’yus, with the gudgeon stakin’ the big roll, and then I pull out. But you-all slapped down the stuff in a stampede, sartin you had him buffaloed. On his last shuffle he’d straightened the queen and turned down the eight, usin’ an extra finger or two. Them card sharps have six fingers on each hand and several in their sleeve, and he was slicker’n I thought. He might have refused all bets and got your mad up for the next pass; but you’d come down as handsome as you would, he figgered. So he let go. ’Twas fair and squar’, robber eat robber, and we none of us have any call to howl. But you mind my word: Don’t aim to put something over on a professional gamblin’ sharp. It can’t be done. As for me, I broke even and I alluz expect to lose. When I look to be skinned I leave most my dust behind me where I can’t get at it.”
Now I saw all, or enough. I had received no more than I deserved. Such a wave of nausea surged into my mouth—but he was continuing.
“Jest why he struck his woman I don’t know. Do you?”
“Yes. She had cautioned me and he must have heard her. And she showed which was the right card. I don’t understand that.”
“To save her face, and egg you on. Shore! Your twenty dollars was nothin’. She didn’t know you were busted. Next time she’d have steered you to the tune of a hundred or two and cleaned you proper. You hadn’t been worked along, yet, to the right pitch o’ smartness. Montoyo must ha’ mistook her. She encouraged you, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did.” I arose unsteadily, clutching the table. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I think I’d better go. I—I—I thank you. I only wish I’d met you before. You are at liberty to regard me as a saphead. Good-night, sir.”
“No! Hold on. Sit down, sit down, man. Have another drink.”
“I have had enough. In fact, since arriving in Benton I’ve had more than enough of everything.” But I sat down.
“Where were you goin’?”
“To the hotel. I am privileged to stay there until to-morrow. Thank Heaven I was obliged to pay in advance.”
“Alluz safer,” said he. “And then what?”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes. To-morrow.”
“I don’t know. I must find employment, and earn enough to get home with.” To write for funds was now impossible through very shame. “Home’s the only place for a person of my greenness.”
“Why did you come out clear to end o’ track?” he inquired.
“I was ordered by my physician to find a locality in the Far West, high and dry.” I gulped at his smile. “I’ve found it and shall go home to report.”
“With your tail between your legs?” He clapped me upon the shoulder. “Stiffen your back. We all have to pay for eddication. You’re not wolf meat yet, by a long shot. You’ve still got your hair, and that’s more than some men I know of. You look purty healthy, too. Don’t turn for home; stick it out.”
“I shall have to stick it out until I raise the transportation,” I reminded. “My revolver should tide me over, for a beginning.”
“Sell it?” said he. “Sell your breeches fust. Either way you’d be only half dressed. No!”
“It would take me a little way. I’ll not stay in Benton—not to be pointed at as a dupe.”
“Oh, pshaw!” he laughed. “Nobody’ll remember you, specially if you’re known to be broke. Busted, you’re of no use to the camp. Let me make you a proposition. I believe you’re straight goods. Can’t believe anything else, after seein’ your play and sizin’ you up. Let me make you a proposition. I’m on my way to Salt Lake with a bull outfit and I’m in need of another man. I’ll give you a dollar and a 139half a day and found, and it will be good honest work, too.”
“You are teaming west, you mean?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. Freightin’ across. Mule-whackin’.”
“But I never drove spans in my life; and I’m not in shape to stand hardships,” I faltered. “I’m here for my health. I have——”
“Stow all that, son,” he interrupted more tolerantly than was my due. “Forget your lungs, lights and liver and stand up a full-size man. In my opinion you’ve had too much doctorin’. A month with a bull train, and a diet of beans and sowbelly will put a linin’ in your in’ards and a heart in your chest. When you’ve slept under a wagon to Salt Lake and l’arned to sling a bull whip and relish your beans burned, you can look anybody in the eye and tell him to go to hell, if you like. This roarin’ town life—it’s no life for you. It’s a bobtail, wide open in the middle. I’ll be only too glad to get away on the long trail myself. So you come with me,” and he smiled winningly. “I hate to see you ruined by women and likker. Mule-skinnin’ ain’t all beer and skittles, as they say; but this job’ll tide you over, anyhow, and you’ll come out at the end with money in your pocket, if you choose, and no doctor’s bill to pay.”
“Sir,” I said gratefully, “may I think it over to-night, and let you know in the morning? Where will I find you?”
“The train’s camped near the wagon trail, back at 140the river. You can’t miss it. It’s mainly a Mormon train, that some of us Gentiles have thrown in with. Ask for Cap’n Hyrum Adams’ train. My name’s Jenks—George Jenks. You’ll find me there. I’ll hold open for you till ten o’clock—yes, till noon. I mean that you shall come. It’ll be the makin’ of you.”
I arose and gave him my hand; shook with him.
“And I hope to come,” I asserted with glow of energy. “You’ve set me upon my feet, Mr. Jenks, for I was desperate. You’re the first honest man I’ve met in Benton.”
“Tut, tut,” he reproved. “There are others. Benton’s not so bad as you think it. But you were dead ripe; the buzzards scented you. Now you go straight to your hotel, unless you’ll spend the night with me. No? Then I’ll see you in the mornin’. I’ll risk your gettin’ through the street alone.”
“You may, sir,” I affirmed. “At present I’m not worth further robbing.”
“Except for your gun and clothes,” he rejoined. “But if you’ll use the one you’ll keep the other.”
Gazing neither right nor left I strode resolutely for the exit. Now I had an anchor to windward. Sometimes just one word will face a man about when for lack of that mere word he was drifting. Of the games and the people I wished only to be rid forever; but at the exit I was halted by a hand laid upon my arm, and a quick utterance.
“Not going? You will at least say good-night.”
I barely paused, replying to her.
“Good-night.”
Still she would have detained me.
“Oh, no, no! Not this way. It was a mistake. I swear to you I am not to be blamed. Please let me help you. I don’t know what you’ve heard—I don’t know what has been said about me—you are angry——”
I twitched free, for she should not work upon me again. With such as she, a vampire and yet a woman, a man’s safety lay not in words but in unequivocal action.
“Good-night,” I bade thickly, half choked by that same nausea, now hot. Bearing with me a satisfying but somehow annoyingly persistent imprint of moist blue eyes under shimmering hair, and startled white face plashed on one cheek with vivid crimson, and small hand left extended empty, I roughly stalked on and out, free of her, free of the Big Tent, her lair.
All the way to the hotel, through the garish street, I nursed my wrath while it gnawed at me like the fox in the Spartan boy’s bosom; and once in my room, which fortuitously had no other tenants at this hour, I had to lean out of the narrow window for sheer relief in the coolness. Surely pride had had a fall this night.
There “roared” Benton—the Benton to which, as to prosperity, I had hopefully purchased my ticket 142ages ago. And here cowered I, holed up—pillaged, dishonored, worthless in even this community: a young fellow in jaunty frontier costume, new and brave, but really reduced to sackcloth and ashes; a young fellow only a husk, as false in appearance as the Big Tent itself and many another of those canvas shells.
The street noises—shouts, shots, music, songs, laughter, rattle of dice, whirr of wheel and clink of glasses—assailed me discordant. The scores of tents and shacks stretching on irregularly had become pocked with dark spots, where lights had been extinguished, but the street remained ablaze and the desert without winked at the stars. There were moving gleams at the railroad yards where switch engines puffed back and forth; up the grade and the new track, pointing westward, there were sparks of camp-fires; and still in other directions beyond the town other tokens redly flickered, where overland freighters were biding till the morning.
Two or three miles in the east (Mr. Jenks had said) was his wagon train, camped at the North Platte River; and peering between the high canopy of stars and the low stratum of spectrally glowing, earthy—yes, very earthy—Benton, I tried to focus upon the haven, for comfort.
I had made up my mind to accept the berth. Anything to get away. Benton I certainly hated with the rage of the defeated. So in a fling I drew back, wrestled 143out of coat and boots and belt and pantaloons, tucked them in hiding against the wall at the head of my bed and my revolver underneath my stained pillow; and tried to forget Benton, all of it, with the blanket to my ears and my face to the wall, for sleep.
When once or twice I wakened from restless dreaming the glow and the noise of the street seemed scarcely abated, as if down there sleep was despised. But when I finally aroused, and turned, gathering wits again, full daylight had paled everything else.
Snores sounded from the other beds; I saw tumbled coverings, disheveled forms and shaggy heads. In my own corner nothing had been molested. The world outside was strangely quiet. The trail was open. So with no attention to my roommates I hastily washed and dressed, buckled on my armament, and stumped freely forth, down the somnolent hall, down the creaking stairs, and into the silent lobby.
Even the bar was vacant. Behind the office counter a clerk sat sunk into a doze. At my approach he unclosed blank, heavy eyes.
“I’m going out,” I said shortly. “Number Three bed in Room Six.”
“For long, sir?” he stammered. “You’ll be back, or are you leaving?”
“I’m leaving. You’ll find I’m paid up.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” He rallied to the problem. “Just a moment. Number Three, Room Six, you say. Pulling your freight, are you?” He scanned the register. “You’re the gentleman from New York who came in yesterday and met with misfortune?”
“I am,” said I.
“Well, better luck next time. We’ll see you again?” He quickened. “Here! One moment. Think I have a message for you.” And reaching behind him into a pigeonhole he extracted an envelope, which he passed to me. “Yours, sir?” I stared at the fine slanting script of the address:
Please deliver to
Frank R. Beeson, Esqr.,
At the Queen Hotel.
Arrived from Albany, N. Y.
I nodded; rebuffing his attentive eyes I stuffed the envelope into my pantaloons pocket.
“Good-bye, sir.”
“Good luck. When you come back remember the Queen.”
“I’ll remember the Queen,” said I; and with the envelope smirching my flesh I stepped out, holding my head as high as though my pockets contained something of more value.
The events of yesterday had hardened, thank Heaven; and so had I, into an obstinacy that defied this mocking Western country. I was down to the ground and was going to scratch. To make for home like a whipped dog, there to hang about, probably become an invalid and die resistless, was unthinkable. Already the Far West air and vigor had worked a change in me. In the fresh morning I felt like a fighting cock, or a runner recruited by a diet of unbolted flour and strong red meat.
The falsity of the life here I looked upon as only an incident. The gay tawdry had faded; I realized how much more enduring were the rough, uncouth 146but genuine products like my friend Mr. Jenks and those of that ilk, who spoke me well instead of merely fair. Health of mind and body should be for me. Hurrah!
But the note! It could have been sent by only one person—the superscription, dainty and feminine, betrayed it. That woman was still pursuing me. How she had found out my name I did not know; perhaps from the label on my bag, perhaps through the hotel register. I did not recall having exchanged names with her—she never had proffered her own name. At all events she appeared determined to keep a hold upon me, and that was disgusting.
Couldn’t she understand that I was no longer a fool—that I had wrenched absolutely loose from her and that she could do nothing with me? So in wrath renewed by her poor estimate of my common sense I was minded to tear the note to fragments, unread, and contemptuously scatter them. Had she been present I should have done so, to show her.
Being denied the satisfaction I saw no profit in wasting that modicum of spleen, when I might double it by deliberately reading her effusion and knowingly casting it into the dust. One always can make excuses to oneself, for curiosity. Consequently I halted, around a corner in this exhausted Benton; tore the envelope open with gingerly touch. The folded paper within contained a five-dollar bank note.
That was enough to pump the blood to my face with a rush. It was an insult—a shame, first hand. A shoddy plaster, applied to me—to me, Frank Beeson, a gentleman, whether to be viewed as a plucked greenhorn or not. With cheeks twitching I managed to read the lines accompanying the dole:
Sir:
You would not permit me to explain to you to-night, therefore I must write. The recent affair was a mistake. I had no intention that you should lose, and I supposed you were in more funds. I insist upon speaking with you. You shall not go away in this fashion. You will find me at the Elite Café, at a table, at ten o’clock in the morning. And in case you are a little short I beg of you to make use of the enclosed, with my best wishes and apologies. You may take it as a loan; I do not care as to that. I am utterly miserable.
E.
To Frank Beeson, Esquire.
Faugh! Had there been a sewer near I believe that I should have thrown the whole enclosure in, and spat. But half unconsciously wadding both money and paper in my hand as if to squeeze the last drop of rancor from them I swung on, seeing blindly, ready to trample under foot any last obstacle to my passage out.
Then, in the deserted way, from a lane among the straggling shacks, a figure issued. I disregarded it, only to hear it pattering behind me and its voice:
“Mr. Beeson! Wait! Please wait.”
I had to turn about to avoid the further degradation of acting the churl to her, an inferior. And as I had suspected, she it was, arriving breathless and cloak inwrapped, only her white face showing.
“You have my note?” she panted.
There were dark half circles under her eyes, pinch lines about her mouth, all her face was wildly strained. She simulated distress very well indeed.
“Here it is, and your money. Take them.” And I thrust my unclosed fist at her.
“No! And you were going? You didn’t intend to reply?”
“Certainly not. I am done with you, and with Benton, madam. Good-morning. I have business.”
She caught at my sleeve.
“You are angry. I don’t blame you, but you have time to talk with me and you shall talk.” She spoke almost fiercely. “I demand it, sir. If not at the café, then here and now. Will you stand aside, please, where the whole town shan’t see us; or do you wish me to follow you on? I’m risking already, but I’ll risk more.”
I sullenly stepped aside, around the corner of a sheet-iron groggery (plentifully punctured, I noted, with bullet holes) not yet open for business and faced by the blank wall of a warehouse.
“I’ve been waiting since daylight,” she panted, “and watching the hotel. I knew you were still there; I found out. I was afraid you wouldn’t answer 149my note, so I slipped around and cut in on you. Where are you going, sir?”
“That, madam, is my private affair,” I replied. “And all your efforts to influence me in the slightest won’t amount to a row of pins. And as I am in a hurry, I again bid you good-morning. I advise you to get back to your husband and your beauty sleep, in order to be fresh for your Big Tent to-night.”
“My husband? You know? Oh, of course you know.” She gazed affrightedly upon me. “To Montoyo, you say? Him? No, no! I can’t! Oh, I can’t, I can’t.” She wrung her hands, she held me fast. “And I know where you’re going. To that wagon train. Mr. Jenks has engaged you. You will bull-whack to Salt Lake? You? Don’t! Please don’t. There’s no need of it.”
“I am done with Benton, and with Benton’s society, madam,” I insisted. “I have learned my lesson, believe me, and I’m no longer a ‘gudgeon.’”
“You never were,” said she. “Not that. And you don’t have to turn bull-whacker or mule-skinner either. It’s a hard life; you’re not fitted for it—never, never. Leave Benton if you will. I hate it myself. And let us go together.”
“Madam!” I rapped; and drew back, but she clung to me.
“Listen, listen! Don’t mistake me again. Last night was enough. I want to go. I must go. We 150can travel separately, then; I will meet you anywhere—Denver, Omaha, Chicago, New York, anywhere you say—anywhere——”
“Your husband, madam,” I prompted. “He might have objections to parting with you.”
“Montoyo? That snake—you fear that snake? He is no husband to me. I could kill him—I will do it yet, to be free from him.”
“My good name, then,” I taunted. “I might fear for my good name more than I’d fear a man.”
“I have a name of my own,” she flashed, “although you may not know it.”
“I have been made acquainted with it,” I answered roundly.
“No, you haven’t. Not the true. You know only another.” Her tone became humbler. “But I’m not asking you to marry me,” she said. “I’m not asking you to love me as a paramour, sir. Please understand. Treat me as you will; as a sister, a friend, but anything human. Only let me have your decent regard until I can get ’stablished in new quarters. I can help you,” she pursued eagerly. “Indeed I can help you if you stay in the West. Yes, anywhere, for I know life. Oh, I’m so tired of myself; I can’t run true, I’m under false colors. You saw how the trainmen curried favor all along the line, how familiar they were, how I submitted—I even dropped that coin a-purpose in the Omaha station, for you, just to test you. Those things are expected of me and I’ve felt 151obliged to play my part. Men look upon me as a tool to their hands, to make them or break them. All they want is my patronage and the secrets of the gaming table. And there is Montoyo—bullying me, cajoling me, watching me. But you were different, after I had met you. I foolishly wished to help you, and last night the play went wrong. Why did I take you to his table? Because I think myself entitled, sir,” she said on, bridling a little, defiant of my gaze, “to promote my friends when I have any. I did not mean that you should wager heavily for you. Montoyo is out for large stakes. There is safety in small and I know his system. You remember I warned you? I did warn you. I saw too late. You shall have all your money back again. And Montoyo struck me—me, in public! That is the end. Oh, why couldn’t I have killed him? But if you stayed here, so should I. Not with him, though. Never with him. Maybe I’m talking wildly. You’ll say I’m in love with you. Perhaps I am—quién sabe? No matter as to that. I shall be no hanger-on, sir. I only ask a kind of partnership—the encouragement of some decent man near me. I have money; plenty, till we both get a footing. But you wouldn’t live on me; no! I don’t fancy that of you for a moment. I would be glad merely to tide you over, if you’d let me. And I—I’d be willing to wash floors in a restaurant if I might be free of insult. You, I’m sure, would at least protect me. Wouldn’t you? You would, wouldn’t you? Say something, sir.” She paused, out of breath and aquiver. “Shall we go? Will you help me?”
For an instant her appeal, of swimming blue eyes, upturned face, tensed grasp, breaking voice, swayed me. But what if she were an actress, an adventuress? And then, my parents, my father’s name! I had already been cozened once, I had resolved not to be snared again. The spell cleared and I drew exultant breath.
“Impossible, madam,” I uttered. “This is final. Good-morning.”
She staggered and with magnificent but futile last flourish clapped both hands to her face. Gazing back, as I hastened, I saw her still there, leaning against the sheet-iron of the groggery and ostensibly weeping.
Having shaken her off and resisted contrary temptation I looked not again but paced rapidly for the clean atmosphere of the rough-and-honest bull train. As a companion, better for me Mr. Jenks. When my wrath cooled I felt that I might have acted the cad but I had not acted the simpleton.
The advance of the day’s life was stirring all along the road, where under clouds of dust the four and six horse-and-mule wagons hauled water for the town, pack outfits of donkeys and plodding miners wended one way or the other, soldiers trotted in from the military post, and Overlanders slowly toiled for the last supply depot before creaking onward into the desert.
Along the railway grade likewise there was activity, 153of construction trains laden high with rails, ties, boxes and bales, puffing out, their locomotives belching pitchy black smoke that extended clear to the ridiculous little cabooses; of wagon trains ploughing on, bearing supplies for the grading camps; and a great herd of loose animals, raising a prodigious spume as they were driven at a trot—they also heading westward, ever westward, under escort of a protecting detachment of cavalry, riding two by two, accoutrements flashing.
The sights were inspiring. Man’s work at empire building beckoned me, for surely the wagoning of munitions to remote outposts of civilization was very necessary. Consequently I trudged best foot forward, although on empty stomach and with empty pockets; but glad to be at large, and exchanging good-natured greetings with the travelers encountered.
Nevertheless my new boots were burning, my thigh was chafed raw from the swaying Colt’s, and my face and throat were parched with the dust, when in about an hour, the flag of the military post having been my landmark, I had arrived almost at the willow-bordered river and now scanned about for the encampment of my train.
Some dozen white-topped wagons were standing grouped in a circle upon the trampled dry sod to the south of the road. Figures were busily moving among them, and the thin blue smoke of their fires was a welcoming signal. I marked women, and children. 154The whole prospect—they, the breakfast smoke, the grazing animals, the stout vehicles, a line of washed clothing—was homy. So I veered aside and made for the spot, to inquire my way if nothing more.
First I addressed a little girl, tow-headed and barelegged, in a single cotton garment.
“I am looking for the Captain Adams wagon train. Do you know where it is?”
She only pointed, finger of other hand in her mouth; but as she indicated this same camp I pressed on. Mr. Jenks himself came out to meet me.
“Hooray! Here you are. I knew you’d do it. That’s the ticket. Broke loose, have you?”
“Yes, sir. I accept your offer if it’s still open,” I said.
We shook hands.
“Wide open. Could have filled it a dozen times. Come in, come on in and sit. You fetched all your outfit?”
“What you see,” I confessed. “I told you my condition. They stripped me clean.”
He rubbed his beard.
“Wall, all you need is a blanket. Reckon I can rustle you that. You can pay for it out of your wages or turn it in at the end of the trip. Fust I’d better make you acquainted to the wagon boss. There he is, yonder.”
He conducted me on, along the groups and fires and 155bedding outside the wagon circle, and halted where a heavy man, of face smooth-shaven except chin, sat upon a wagon-tongue whittling a stick.
“Mornin’, Cap’n. Wall, I’m filled out. I’ve hired this lad and can move whenever you say the word. You——” he looked at me. “What’s your name, you say?”
“Frank Beeson,” I replied.
“Didn’t ketch it last night,” he apologized. “Shake hands with Cap’n Hyrum Adams, Frank. He’s the boss of the train.”
Captain Adams lazily arose—a large figure in his dusty boots, coarse trousers and flannel shirt, and weather-beaten black slouch hat. The inevitable revolver hung at his thigh. His pursed lips spurted a jet of tobacco juice as he keenly surveyed me with small, shrewd, china-blue eyes squinting from a broad flaccid countenance. But the countenance was unemotional while he offered a thick hand which proved singularly soft and flatulent under the callouses.
“Glad to meet you, stranger,” he acknowledged in slow bass. “Set down, set down.”
He waved me to the wagon-tongue, and I thankfully seated myself. All of a sudden I seemed utterly gone; possibly through lack of food. My sigh must have been remarked.
“Breakfasted, stranger?” he queried passively.
“Not yet, sir. I was anxious to reach the train.”
“Pshaw! I was about to ask you that,” Mr. Jenks 156put in. “Come along and I’ll throw together a mess for you.”
“Nobody goes hungry from the Adams wagon, stranger,” Captain Adams observed. He slightly raised his voice, peremptory. “Rachael! Fetch our guest some breakfast.”
“But as Mr. Jenks has invited me, Captain, and I am in his employ——” I protested. He cut me short.
“I have said that nobody, man, woman or child, or dog, goes hungry from the Adams wagon. The flesh must be fed as well as the soul.”
There were two women in view, busied with domestic cares. I had sensed their eyes cast now and then in my direction. One was elderly, as far as might be judged by her somewhat slatternly figure draped in a draggled snuff-colored, straight-flowing gown, and by the merest glimpse of her features within her faded sunbonnet. The other promptly moved aside from where she was bending over a wash-board, ladled food from a kettle to a platter, poured a tin cupful of coffee from the pot simmering by the fire, and bore them to me; her eyes down, shyly handed them.
I thanked her but was not presented. To the Captain’s “That will do, Rachael,” she turned dutifully away; not so soon, however, but that I had seen a fresh young face within the bonnet confines—a round rosy face according well with the buxom curves of her as she again bent over her wash-board.
“Our fare is that of the tents of Abraham, stranger,” spoke the Captain, who had resumed his whittling. “Such as it is, you are welcome to. We are a plain people who walk in the way of the Lord, for that is commanded.”
His sonorous tones were delivered rather through the nose, but did not fail of hospitality.
“I ask nothing better, sir,” I answered. “And if I did, my appetite would make up for all deficiencies.”
“A healthy appetite is a good token,” he affirmed. “Show me a well man who picks at his victuals and I will show you a candidate for the devil. His thoughts will like to be as idle as his knife.”
The mess of pork and beans and the black unsweetened coffee evidently were what I needed, for I began to mend wonderfully ere I was half through the course. He had not invited me to further conversation—only, when I had drained the cup he called again: “Rachael! More coffee,” whereupon the same young woman advanced, without glancing at me, received my cup, and returned it steaming.
“You are from the East, stranger?” he now inquired.
“Yes, sir. I arrived in Benton only yesterday.”
“A Sodom,” he growled harshly. “A tented sepulcher. And it will perish. I tell you, you do well to leave it, you do well to yoke yourself with the appointed of this earth, rather than stay in that sink-pit of the eternally damned.”158
“I agree with you, sir,” said I. “I did not find Benton to be a pleasant place. But I had not known, when I started from Omaha.”
“Possibly not,” he moodily assented. “The devil is attentive; he is present in the stations, and on the trains; he will ride in those gilded palaces even to the Jordan, but he shall not cross. In the name of the Lord we shall face him. What good there shall come, shall abide; but the evil shall wither. Not,” he added, “that we stand against the railroad. It is needed, and we have petitioned without being heard. We are strong but isolated, we have goods to sell, and the word of Brigham Young has gone forth that a railroad we must have. Against the harpies, the gamblers, the loose women and the lustful men and all the Gentile vanities we will stand upon our own feet by the help of Almighty God.”
At this juncture, when I had finished my platter of pork and beans and my second cup of coffee, a tall, double-jointed youth of about my age, carrying an ox goad in his hand, strolled to us as if attracted by the harangue. He was clad in the prevalent cowhide boots, linsey-woolsey pantaloons tucked in, red flannel shirt, and battered hat from which untrimmed flaxen hair fell down unevenly to his shoulder line. He wore at his belt butcher-knife and gun.
By his hulk, his light blue eyes, albeit a trifle crossed, and the general lineaments of his stolid, square, high-cheeked countenance I conceived him to be a second but not improved edition of the Captain.
A true raw-bone he was; and to me, as I casually met his gaze, looked to be obstinate, secretive and small minded. But who can explain those sudden antagonisms that spring up on first sight?
“My son Daniel,” the Captain introduced. “This stranger travels to Zion with us, Daniel, in the employ of Mr. Jenks.”
The youth had the grip of a vise, and seemed to enjoy emphasizing it while cunningly watching my face.
“Haowdy?” he drawled. With that he twanged a sentence or two to his father. “I faound the caow, Dad. Do yu reckon to pull aout to-day?”
“I have not decided. Go tend to your duties, Daniel.”
Daniel bestowed upon me a parting stare, and lurched away, snapping the lash of his goad.
“And with your permission I will tend to mine, sir,” I said. “Mr. Jenks doubtless has work for me. I thank you for your hospitality.”
“We are commanded by the prophet to feed the stranger, whether friend or enemy,” he reproved. “We are also commanded by the Lord to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. As long as you are no trifler you will be welcome at my wagon. Good-day to you.”
As I passed, the young woman, Rachael—whom I judged to be his daughter, although she was evidently 160far removed from parent stock—glanced quickly up. I caught her gaze full, so that she lowered her eyes with a blush. She was indeed wholesome if not absolutely pretty. When later I saw her with her sunbonnet doffed and her brown hair smoothly brushed back I thought her more wholesome still.
Mr. Jenks received me jovially.
“Got your belly full, have you?”
“I’m a new man,” I assured.
“Wall, those Mormons are good providers. They’ll share with you whatever they have, for no pay, but if you rub ’em the wrong way or go to dickerin’ with ’em they’re closer’n the hide on a cold mule. You didn’t make sheep’s eyes at ary of the women?”
“No, sir. I am done with women.”
“And right you are.”
“However, I could not help but see that the Captain’s daughter is pleasing to look upon. I should be glad to know her, were there no objections.”
“How? His daughter?”
“Miss Rachael, I believe. That is the name he used.”
“The young one, you mean?”
“Yes, sir. The one who served me with breakfast. Rosy-cheeked and plump.”
“Whoa, man! She’s his wife, and not for Gentiles. They’re both his wives; whether he has more in Utah I don’t know. But you’d best let her alone. She’s been j’ined to him.”
This took me all aback, for I had no other idea than that she was his daughter, or niece—stood in that kind of relation to him. He was twice her age, apparently. Now I could only stammer:
“I’ve no wish to intrude, you may be sure. And Daniel, his son—is he married?”
“That whelp? Met him, did you? No, he ain’t married, yet. But he will be, soon as he takes his pick ’cordin’ to law and gospel among them people. You bet you: he’ll be married plenty.”
What with assorting and stowing the bales of cloth and the other goods in the Jenks two wagons, watering the animals and staking them out anew, tinkering with the equipment and making various essays with the bull whip, I found occupation enough; nevertheless there were moments of interim, or while passing to and fro, when I was vividly aware of the scenes and events transpiring in this Western world around about.
The bugles sounded calls for the routine at Fort Steele—a mere cantonment, yet, of tents and rough board buildings squatting upon the bare brown soil near the river bank, north of us, and less than a month old. The wagon road was a line of white dust from the river clear to Benton, and through the murk plodded the water haulers and emigrants and freighters, animals and men alike befloured and choked. The dust cloud rested over Benton. It fumed in another line westward, kept in suspense by on-traveling stage and wagon—by wheel, hoof and boot, bound for Utah and Idaho. From the town there extended northward a third dust line, marking the stage and freighting 163road through the Indian country to the mining settlements of the famous South Pass of the old Oregon Trail; yes, and with branches for the gold regions of Montana.
The railroad trains kept thundering by us—long freights, dusty and indomitable, bringing their loads from the Missouri River almost seven hundred miles in the east. And rolling out of Benton the never-ceasing construction trains sped into the desert as if upon urgent errands in response to some sudden demand of More, More, More.
Upon all sides beyond this business and energy the country stretched lone and uninhabited; a great waste of naked, hot, resplendent land blotched with white and red, showing not a green spot except the course of the Platte; with scorched, rusty hills rising above its fantastic surface, and, in the distance, bluish mountain ranges that appeared to float and waver in the sun-drenched air.
The sounds from Benton—the hammering, the shouting, the babbling, the puffing of the locomotives—drifted faintly to us, merged into the cracking of whips and the oaths and songs by the wagon drivers along the road. Of our own little camp I took gradual stock.
It, like the desert reaches, evinced little of feverishness, for while booted men busied themselves at tasks similar to mine, others lolled, spinning yarns and whittling; the several women, at wash-boards and at 164pots and pans and needles, worked contentedly in sun and shade; children played at makeshift games, dogs drowsed underneath the wagons, and outside our circle the mules and oxen grazed as best they might, their only vexation the blood-sucking flies. The flies were kin of Benton.
Captain Adams loped away, as if to town. Others went in. While I was idle at last and rather enjoying the hot sun as I sat resting upon a convenient wagon-tongue Daniel hulked to me, still snapping his ox goad.
“Haowdy?” he addressed again; and surveyed, eying every detail of my clothing.
“Howdy?” said I.
“Yu know me?”
“Your name is Daniel, isn’t it?”
“No, ’tain’t. It’s Bonnie Bravo on the trail.”
“All right, sir,” said I. “Whichever you prefer.”
“I ’laow we pull out this arternoon,” he volunteered farther.
“I’m agreeable,” I responded. “The sooner the better, where I’m concerned.”
“I ’laow yu (and he pronounced it, nasally, yee-ou) been seein’ the elephant in Benton an’ it skinned yu.”
“I saw all of Benton I wish to see,” I granted. “You’ve been there?”
“I won four bits, an’ then yu bet I quit,” he greedily proclaimed. “I was too smart for ’em. I ’laow yu’re a greenie, ain’t yu?”
“In some ways I am, in some ways I’m not.”
“I ’laow yu aim to go through with this train to Salt Lake, do yu?”
“That’s the engagement I’ve made with Mr. Jenks.”
“Don’t feel too smart, yoreself, in them new clothes?”
“No. They’re all I have. They won’t be new long.”
“Yu bet they won’t. Ain’t afeared of peterin’ aout on the way, be yu? I ’laow yu’re sickly.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I smiled, although he was irritating in the extreme.
“It’s four hunderd mile, an’ twenty mile at a stretch withaout water. Most the water’s pizen, too, from hyar to the mountings.”
“I’ll have to drink what the rest drink, I suppose.”
“I ’laow the Injuns are like to get us. They’re powerful bad in that thar desert. Ain’t afeared o’ Injuns, be yu?”
“I’ll have to take my chances on that, too, won’t I?”
“They sculped a whole passel o’ surveyors, month ago,” he persisted. “Yu’ll sing a different tyune arter yu’ve been corralled with nothin’ to drink.” He viciously snapped his whip, the while inspecting me as if seeking for other joints in my armor. “Yu aim to stay long in Zion?”
“I haven’t planned anything about that.”
“Reckon yu’re wise, Mister. We don’t think much o’ Gentiles, yonder. We don’t want ’em, nohaow. They’d all better git aout. The Saints settled that country an’ it’s ourn.”
“If you’re a sample, you’re welcome to live there,” I retorted. “I think I’d prefer some place else.”
“Haow?” he bleated. “Thar ain’t no place as good. All the rest the world has sold itself to the devil.”
“How much of the world have you seen?” I asked.
“I’ve seen a heap. I’ve been as fur east as Cheyenne—I’ve teamed acrost twice, so I know. An’ I know what the elders say; they come from the East an’ some of ’em have been as fur as England. Yu can’t fool me none with yore Gentile lies.”
As I did not attempt, we remained in silence for a moment while he waited, provocative.
“Say, Mister,” he blurted suddenly. “Kin yu shoot?”
“I presume I could if I had to. Why?”
“Becuz I’m the dangest best shot with a Colt’s in this hyar train, an’ I’ll shoot ye for—I’ll shoot ye for (he lowered his voice and glanced about furtively)—I’ll shoot ye for two bits when my paw ain’t ’raound.”
“I’ve no cartridges to waste at present,” I informed. “And I don’t claim to be a crack shot.”
“Damn ye, I bet yu think yu are,” he accused. “Yu set thar like it. All right, Mister; any time yu want to try a little poppin’ yu let me know.” And 167with this, which struck me as a veiled threat, he lurched on, snapping that infernal whip.
He left me with the uneasy impression that he and I were due to measure strength in one way or another.
Wagon Boss Adams returned at noon. The word was given out that the train should start during the afternoon, for a short march in order to break in the new animals before tackling the real westward trail.
After a deal of bustle, of lashing loads and tautening covers and geeing, hawing and whoaing, about three o’clock we formed line in obedience to the commands “Stretch out, stretch out!”; and with every cask and barrel dripping, whips cracking, voices urging, children racing, the Captain Adams wagon in the lead (two pink sunbonnets upon the seat), the valorous Daniel’s next, and Mormons and Gentiles ranging on down, we toiled creaking and swaying up the Benton road, amidst the eddies of hot, scalding dust.
It was a mixed train, of Gentile mules and the more numerous Mormon oxen; therefore not strictly a “bull” train, but by pace designated as such. And in the vernacular I was a “mule-whacker” or even “mule-skinner” rather than a “bull-whacker,” if there is any appreciable difference in rôle. There is none, I think, to the animals.
Trudging manfully at the left fore wheel behind Mr. Jenks’ four span of mules, trailing my eighteen-foot tapering lash and occasionally well-nigh cutting off my own ear when I tried to throw it, I played the 168teamster—although sooth to say there was little of play in the job, on that road, at that time of the day.
The sun was more vexatious, being an hour lower, when we bravely entered Benton’s boiling main street. We made brief halt for the finishing up of business; and cleaving a lane through the pedestrians and vehicles and animals there congregated, the challenges of the street gamblers having assailed us in vain, we proceeded—our Mormons gazing straight ahead, scornful of the devil’s enticements, our few Gentiles responding in kind to the quips and waves and salutations.
Thus we eventually left Benton; in about an hour’s march or some three miles out we formed corral for camp on the farther side of the road from the railroad tracks which we had been skirting.
Travel, except upon the tracks (for they were rarely vacant) ceased at sundown; and we all, having eaten our suppers, were sitting by our fires, smoking and talking, with the sky crimson in the west and the desert getting mysterious with purple shadows, when as another construction train of box cars and platform cars clanked by I chanced to note a figure spring out asprawl, alight with a whiffle of sand, and staggering up hasten for us.
First it accosted the hulk Daniel, who was temporarily out on herd, keeping the animals from the tracks. I saw him lean from his saddle; then he rode spurring in, bawling like a calf:169
“Paw! Paw! Hey, yu-all! Thar’s a woman yonder in britches an’ she ’laows to come on. She’s lookin’ for Mister Jenks.”
Save for his excited stuttering silence reigned, a minute. Then in a storm of rude raillery—“That’s a hoss on you, George!” “Didn’t know you owned one o’ them critters, George,” “Does she wear the britches, George?” and so forth—my friend Jenks arose, peering, his whiskered mouth so agape that he almost dropped his pipe. And we all peered, with the women of the caravan smitten mute but intensely curious, while the solitary figure, braving our stares, came on to the fires.
“Gawd almighty!” Mr. Jenks delivered.
Likewise straightening I mentally repeated the ejaculation, for now I knew her as well as he. Yes, by the muttered babble others in our party knew her. It was My Lady—formerly My Lady—clad in embroidered short Spanish jacket, tightish velvet pantaloons, booted to the knees, pulled down upon her yellow hair a black soft hat, and hanging from the just-revealed belt around her slender waist, a revolver trifle.
She paused, small and alone, viewing us, her eyes very blue, her face very white.
“Is Mr. Jenks there?” she hailed clearly.
“Damn’ if I ain’t,” he mumbled. He glowered at me. “Yes, ma’am, right hyar. You want to speak with me?”170
“By gosh, it’s Montoyo’s woman, ain’t it?” were the comments.
“I do, sir.”
“You can come on closer then, ma’am,” he growled. “There ain’t no secrets between us.”
Come on she did, with only an instant’s hesitation and a little compression of the lips. She swept our group fearlessly—her gaze crossed mine, but she betrayed no sign.
“I wish to engage passage to Salt Lake.”
“With this hyar train?” gasped Jenks.
“Yes. You are bound for Salt Lake, aren’t you?”
“For your health, ma’am?” he stammered.
She faintly smiled, but her eyes were steady and wide.
“For my health. I’d like to throw in with your outfit. I will cook, keep camp, and pay you well besides.”
“We haven’t no place for a woman, ma’am. You’d best take the stage.”
“No. There’ll be no stage out till morning. I want to make arrangements at once—with you. There are other women in this train.” She flashed a glance around. “And I can take care of myself.”
“If you aim to go to Salt Lake your main holt is Benton and the stage. The stage makes through in four days and we’ll use thirty,” somebody counseled.
“An’ this bull train ain’t no place for yore kind, anyhow,” grumbled another. “We’ve quit roarin’—we’ve cut loose from that hell-hole yonder.”
“So have I.” But she did not turn on him. “I’m never going back. I—I can’t, now; not even for the stage. Will you permit me to travel with you, sir?”
“No, ma’am, I won’t,” rasped Mr. Jenks. “I can’t do it. It’s not in my line, ma’am.”
“I’ll be no trouble. You have only Mr. Beeson. I don’t ask to ride. I’ll walk. I merely ask protection.”
“So do we,” somebody sniggered; and I hated him, for I saw her sway upon her feet as if the words had been a blow.
“No, ma’am, I’m full up. I wouldn’t take on even a yaller dog, ’specially a she one,” Jenks announced. “What your game is now I can’t tell, and I don’t propose to be eddicated to it. But you can’t travel along with me, and that’s straight talk. If you can put anything over on these other fellers, try your luck.”
“Oh!” she cried, wincing. Her hands clenched nervously, a red spot dyed either cheek as she appealed to us all. “Gentlemen! Won’t one of you help me? What are you afraid of? I can pay my way—I ask no favors—I swear to you that I’ll give no trouble. I only wish protection across.”
“Where’s Pedro? Where’s Montoyo?”
She turned quickly, facing the jeer; her two eyes blazed, the red spots deepened angrily.
“He? That snake? I shot him.”
“What! You? Killed him?” Exclamations broke from all quarters.
She stamped her foot.
“No. I didn’t have to. But when he tried to abuse me I defended myself. Wasn’t that right, gentlemen?”
“Right or wrong, he’ll be after you, won’t he?”
The question held a note of alarm. Her lip curled.
“You needn’t fear. I’ll meet him, myself.”
“By gosh, I don’t mix up in no quarrel ’twixt a man and his woman.” And—“’Tain’t our affair. When he comes he’ll come a-poppin’.” Such were the hasty comments. I felt a peculiar heat, a revulsion of shame and indignation, which made the present seem much more important than the past. And there was the recollection of her, crying, and still the accents of her last appeals in the early morning.
“I thought that I might find men among you,” she disdainfully said—a break in her voice. “So I came. But you’re afraid of him—of that breed, that vest-pocket killer. And you’re afraid of me, a woman whose cards are all on the table. There isn’t a one of you—even you, Mr. Beeson, sir, whom I tried to befriend although you may not know it.” And she turned upon me. “You have not a word to say. I am never going back, I tell you all. You won’t take me, any of you? Very well.” She smiled wanly. “I’ll drift along, gentlemen. I’ll play the lone hand. Montoyo shall never seize me. I’d rather trust to the 173wolves and the Indians. There’ll be another wagon train.”
“I am only an employee, madam,” I faltered. “If I had an outfit of my own I certainly would help you.”
She flushed painfully; she did not glance at me direct again, but her unspoken thanks enfolded me.
“Here’s the wagon boss,” Jenks grunted, and spat. “Mebbe you can throw in with him. When it comes to supers, that’s his say-so. I’ve all I can tend to, myself, and I don’t look for trouble. I’ve got no love for Montoyo, neither,” he added. “Damned if I ain’t glad you give him a dose.”
Murmurs of approval echoed him, as if the tide were turning a little. All this time—not long, however—Daniel had been sitting his mule, transfixed and gaping, his oddly wry eyes upon her. Now the large form of Captain Adams came striding in contentious, through the gathering dusk.
“What’s this?” he demanded harshly. “An ungodly woman? I’ll have no trafficking in my train. Get you gone, Delilah. Would you pursue us even here?”
“I am going, sir,” she replied. “I ask nothing from you or these—gentlemen.”
“Them’s the two she’s after, paw: Jenks an’ that greenie,” Daniel bawled. “They know her. She’s follered ’em. She aims to travel with ’em. Oh, gosh! She’s shot her man in Benton. Gosh!” His voice trailed off. “Ain’t she purty, though! She’s dressed in britches.”
“Get you gone,” Captain Adams thundered. “And these your paramours with you. For thus saith the Lord: There shall be no lusting of adultery among his chosen. And thus say I, that no brazen hussy in men’s garments shall travel with this train to Zion—no, not a mile of the way.”
Jenks stiffened, bristling.
“Mind your words, Adams. I’m under no Mormon thumb, and I’ll thank you not to connect me and this—lady in ary such fashion. As for your brat on horseback, he’d better hold his yawp. She came of her own hook, and damned if I ain’t beginnin’ to think——”
I sprang forward. Defend her I must. She should not stand there, slight, lovely, brave but drooping, aflame with the helplessness of a woman alone and insulted.
“Wait!” I implored. “Give her a chance. You haven’t heard her story. All she wants is protection on the road. Yes, I know her, and I know the cur she’s getting away from. I saw him strike her; so did Mr. Jenks. What were you intending to do? Turn her out into the night? Shame on you, sir. She says she can’t go back to Benton, and if you’ll be humane enough to understand why, you’ll at least let her stay in your camp till morning. You’ve got women there who’ll care for her, I hope.”
I felt her instant look. She spoke palpitant.
“You have one man among you all. But I am going. Good-night, gentlemen.”
“No! Wait!” I begged. “You shall not go by yourself. I’ll see you into safety.”
Daniel cackled.
“Haw haw! What’d I tell yu, paw? Hear him?”
“By gum, the boy’s right,” Jenks declared. “Will you go back to Benton if we take you?” he queried of her. “Are you ’feared of Montoyo? Can he shoot still, or is he laid out?”
“I’ll not go back to Benton, and I’m not afraid of that bully,” said she. “Yes, he can shoot, still; but next time I should kill him. I hope never to see him again, or Benton either.”
The men murmured.
“You’ve got spunk, anyhow,” said they. And by further impulse: “Let her stay the night, Cap’n. It’ll be plumb dark soon. She won’t harm ye. Some o’ the woman folks can take care of her.”
Captain Adams had been frowning sternly, his heavy face unsoftened.
“Who are you, woman?”
“I am the wife of a gambler named Montoyo.”
“Why come you here, then?”
“He has been abusing me, and I shot him.”
“There is blood on your hands? Are you a murderess as well as a harlot?”
“Shame!” cried voices, mine among them. “That’s tall language.”
Strangely, and yet not strangely, sentiment had veered. We were Americans—and had we been English that would have made no difference. It was the Anglo-Saxon which gave utterance.
She crimsoned, defiant; laughed scornfully.
“You would not dare bait a man that way, sir. Blood on my hands? Not blood; oh, no! He couldn’t pan out blood.”
“You killed him, woman?”
“Not yet. He’s likely fleecing the public in the Big Tent at this very moment.”
“And what did you expect here, in my train?”
“A little manhood and a little chivalry, sir. I am going to Salt Lake and I knew of no safer way.”
“She jumped off a railway train, paw,” bawled Daniel. “I seen her. An’ she axed for Mister Jenks, fust thing.”
“I’ll give you something to stop that yawp. Come mornin’, we’ll settle, young feller,” my friend Jenks growled.
“I did,” she admitted. “I have seen Mr. Jenks; I have also seen Mr. Beeson; I have seen others of you in Benton. I was glad to know of somebody here. I rode on the construction train because it was the quickest and easiest way.”
“And those garments!” Captain Adams accused. 177“You wish to show your shape, woman, to tempt men’s eyes with the flesh?”
She smiled.
“Would you have me jump from a train in skirts, sir? Or travel far afoot in crinoline? But to soothe your mind I will say that I wore these clothes under my proper attire and cloak until the last moment. And if you turn me away I shall cut my hair and continue as a boy.”
“If you are for Salt Lake—where we are of the Lord’s choosing and wish none of you—there is the stage,” he prompted shrewdly. “Go to the stage. You cannot make this wagon train your instrument.”
“The stage?” She slowly shook her head. “Why, I am too well known, sir, take that as you will. And the stage does not leave until morning. Much might happen between now and morning. I have nobody in Benton that I can depend upon—nobody that I dare depend upon. And by railway, for the East? No. That is too open a trail. I am running free of Benton and Pedro Montoyo, and stage and train won’t do the trick. I’ve thought that out.” She tossed back her head, deliberately turned. “Good-night, ladies and gentlemen.”
Involuntarily I started forward to intercept. The notion of her heading into the vastness and the gloom was appalling; the inertness of that increasing group, formed now of both men and women collected from all the camp, maddened. So I would have besought her, pleaded with her, faced Montoyo for her—but a new voice mediated.
“She shall stay, Hyrum? For the night, at least? I will look after her.”
The Captain’s younger wife, Rachael, had stepped to him; laid one hand upon his arm—her smooth hair touched ashine by the firelight as she gazed up into his face. Pending reply I hastened directly to My Lady herself and detained her by her jacket sleeve.
“Wait,” I bade.
Whereupon we both turned. Side by side we fronted the group as if we might have been partners—which, in a measure, we were, but not wholy according to the lout Daniel’s cackle and the suddenly interrogating countenances here and there.
“You would take her in, Rachael?” the Captain rumbled. “Have you not heard what I said?”
“We are commanded to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, Hyrum.”
“Verily that is so. Take her. I trust you with her till the morning. The Lord will direct us further. But in God’s name clothe her for the daylight in decency. She shall not advertise her flesh to men’s eyes.”
“Quick!” I whispered, with a push. Rachael, however, had crossed for us, and with eyes brimming extended her hand.
“Will you come with me, please?” she invited.
“You are not afraid of me?”
“I? No. You are a woman, are you not?” The intonation was gentle, and sweet to hear—as sweet as her rosy face to see.
“Yes,” sighed My Lady, wearily. “Good-night, sir.” She fleetingly smiled upon me. “I thank you; and Mr. Jenks.”
They went, Rachael’s arm about her; other women closed in; we heard exclamations, and next they were supporting her in their midst, for she had crumpled in a faint.
Captain Adams walked out a piece as if musing. Daniel pressed beside him, talking eagerly. His voice reached me.
“She’s powerful purty, ain’t she, paw! Gosh, I never seen a woman in britches before. Did yu? Paw! She kin ride in my wagon, paw. Be yu goin’ to take her on, paw? If yu be, I got room.”
“Go. Tend to your stock and think of other things,” boomed his father. “Remember that the Scriptures say, beware of the scarlet woman.”
Daniel galloped away, whooping like an idiot.
“Wall, there she is,” my friend Jenks remarked non-committally. “What next’ll happen, we’ll see in the mornin’. Either she goes on or she goes back. I don’t claim to read Mormon sign, myself. But she had me jumpin’ sideways, for a spell. So did that young whelp.”
There was some talk, idle yet not offensive. The men appeared rather in a judicial frame of mind: 180laid a few bets upon whether her husband would turn up, in sober fashion nodded their heads over the hope that he had been “properly pinked,” all in all sided with her, while admiring her pluck roundly denied responsibility for women in general, and genially but cautiously twitted Mr. Jenks and me upon our alleged implication in the affair.
Darkness, still and chill, had settled over the desert—the only discernible horizon the glow of Benton, down the railroad track. The ashes of final pipes were rapped out upon our boot soles. Our group dispersed, each man to his blanket under the wagons or in the open.
“Wall,” friend Jenks again broadly uttered, in last words as he turned over with a grunt, for easier posture, near me, “hooray! If it simmers down to you and Dan’l, I’ll be there.”
With that enigmatical comment he was silent save for stertorous breathing. Vaguely cogitating over his promise I lay, toes and face up, staring at the bright stars; perplexed more and more over the immediate events of the future, warmly conscious of her astonishing proximity in this very train, prickled by the hope that she would continue with us, irritated by the various assumptions of Daniel, and somehow not at all adverse to the memory of her in “britches.”
That phase of the matter seemed to have affected Daniel and me similarly. Under his hide he was human.
I was more than ever convinced of her wisdom in choice of garb when in early morning I glimpsed her with the two other women at the Adams fire; for, bright-haired and small, she had been sorrily dulled by the plain ill-fitting waist and long shapeless skirt in one garment, as adopted by the feminine contingent of the train. In her particular case these were worse fitting and longer than common—an artifice that certainly snuffed a portion of her charms for Gentile and Mormon eyes alike.
What further disposition of her was to be made we might not yet know. We all kept to our own tasks and our own fires, with the exception that Daniel gawked and strutted in the manner of a silly gander, and made frequent errands to his father’s household.
It was after the red sun-up and the initial signaling by dust cloud to dust cloud announcing the commencement of another day’s desert traffic, and in response to the orders “Ketch up!” we were putting animals to wagons (My Lady still in evidence forward), when a horseman bored in at a gallop, over the road from the east.
“Montoyo, by Gawd!” Jenks pronounced, in a grumble of disgust rather than with any note of alarm. “Look alive.” And—“He don’t hang up my pelt; no, nor yourn if I can help it.”
I saw him give a twitch to his holster and slightly loosen the Colt’s. But I was unburthened by guilt in past events, and I conceived no reason for fearing the future—other than that now I was likely to lose her. Heaven pity her! Probably she would have to go, even if she managed later to kill him. The delay in our start had been unfortunate.
It was dollars to doughnuts that every man in the company had had his eye out for Montoyo, since daylight; and the odds were that every man had sighted him as quickly as we. Notwithstanding, save by an occasional quick glance none appeared to pay attention to his rapid approach. We ourselves went right along hooking up, like the others.
As chanced, our outfit was the first upon his way in. I heard him rein sharply beside us and his horse fidget, panting. Not until he spoke did we lift eyes.
“Howdy, gentlemen?”
“Howdy yourself, sir,” answered Mr. Jenks, straightening up and meeting his gaze. I paused, to gaze also. Montoyo was pale as death, his lips hard set, his peculiar gray eyes and his black moustache the only vivifying features in his coldly menacing countenance.183
He was in white linen shirt, his left arm slung; fine riding boots encasing his legs above the knees and Spanish spurs at their heels—his horse’s flanks reddened by their jabs. The pearl butt of a six-shooter jutted from his belt holster. He sat jaunty, excepting for his lips and eyes.
He looked upon me, with a trace of recognition less to be seen than felt. His glance leaped to the wagon—traveled swiftly and surely and returned to Mr. Jenks.
“You’re pulling out, I believe.”
“Yes, you bet yuh.”
“This is the Adams train?”
“It is.”
“I’m looking for my wife, gentlemen. May I ask whether you’ve seen her?”
“You can.”
“You have seen her?”
“Yes, sir. We’ll not beat around any bush over that.”
He meditated, frowning a bit, eying us narrowly.
“I had the notion,” he said. “If you have staked her to shelter I thank you; but now I aim to play the hand myself. This is a strictly private game. Where is she?”
“I call yuh, Pedro,” my friend answered. “We ain’t keepin’ cases on her, or on you. You don’t find her in my outfit, that’s flat. She spent the night with the Adams women. You’ll find her waitin’ for you, 184on ahead.” He grinned. “She’ll be powerful glad to see you.” He sobered. “And I’ll say this: I’m kinder sorry I ain’t got her, for she’d be interestin’ company on the road.”
“The road to hell, yes,” Montoyo coolly remarked. “I’d guarantee you quick passage. Good-day.”
With sudden steely glare that embraced us both he jumped his mount into a gallop and tore past the team, for the front. He must have inquired, once or twice, as to the whereabouts of the Captain’s party; I saw fingers pointing.
“Here! You’ve swapped collars on your lead span, boy,” Mr. Jenks reproved—but he likewise fumbling while he gazed.
I could hold back no longer.
“Just a minute, if you please,” I pleaded; and hastened on up, half running in my anxiety to face the worst; to help, if I might, for the best.
A little knot of people had formed, constantly increasing by oncomers like myself and friend Jenks who had lumbered behind me. Montoyo’s horse stood heaving, on the outskirts; and ruthlessly pushing through I found him inside, with My Lady at bay before him—her eyes brilliant, her cheeks hot, her two hands clenched tightly, her slim figure dangerously tense within her absurd garment, and the arm of the brightly flushed but calm Rachael resting restraintfully around her. The circling faces peered.
Captain Adams, at one side apart, was replying to the gambler. His small china-blue eyes had begun to glint; otherwise he maintained an air of stolidity as if immune to the outcome.
“You see her,” he said. “She has had the care of my own household, for I turn nobody away. She came against my will, and she shall go of her will. I am not her keeper.”
“You Mormons have the advantage of us white men, sir,” Montoyo sneered. “No one of the sex seems to be denied bed and board in your establishments.”
“By the help of the Lord we of the elect can manage our establishments much better than you do yours,” big Hyrum responded; and his face sombered. “Who are you? A panderer to the devil, a thief with painted card-boards, a despoiler of the ignorant, and a feeder to hell—yea, a striker of women and a trafficker in flesh! Who are you, to think the name of the Lord’s anointed? There she is, your chattel. Take her, or leave her. This train starts on in ten minutes.”
“I’ll take her or kill her,” Montoyo snarled. “You call me a feeder, but she shall not be fed to your mill, Adams. You’ll get on that horse pronto, madam,” he added, stepping forward (no one could question his nerve), “and we’ll discuss our affairs in private.”
She cast about with swift beseeching look, as if for 186a friendly face or sign of rescue. And that agonized quest was enough. Whether she saw me or not, here I was. With a spring I had burst in.
But somebody already had drawn fresh attention. Daniel Adams was standing between her and her husband.
“Say, Mister, will yu fight?” he drawled, breathing hard, his broad nostrils quivering.
A silence fell. Singularly, the circle parted right and left in a jostle and a scramble.
Montoyo surveyed him.
“Why?”
“For her, o’ course.”
The gambler smiled—a slow, contemptuous smile while his gray eyes focused watchfully.
“It’s a case where I have nothing to gain,” said he. “And you’ve nothing to lose. I never bet in the teeth of a pat hand. Sabe? Besides, my young Mormon cub, when did you enter this game? Where’s your ante? For the sport of it, now, what do you think of putting up, to make it interesting? One of your mammies? Tut, tut!”
Daniel’s freckled bovine face flushed muddy red; in the midst of it his faulty eyes were more pronounced than ever—beady, twinkling, and so at cross purposes that they apparently did not center upon the gambler at all. But his right hand had stiffened at his side—extended there flat and tremulous like the vibrant tail of a rattlesnake. He blurted harshly:187
“I ’laow to kill yu for that. Draw, yu——!”
We caught breath. Montoyo’s hand had darted down, and up, with motion too smooth and elusive for the eye, particularly when our eyes had to be upon both. His revolver poised half-way out of the scabbard, held there rigidly, frozen in mid course; for Daniel had laughed loudly over leveled barrel.
How he had achieved so quickly no man of us knew. Yet there it was—his Colt’s, out, cocked, wicked and yearning and ready.
He whirled it with tempting carelessness, butt first, muzzle first, his discolored teeth set in a yellow grin. The breath of the spectators vented in a sigh.
“Haow’ll yu take it, Mister?” he gibed. “I could l’arn an old caow to beat yu on the draw. Aw, shucks! I ’laow yu’d better go back to yore pasteboards. Naow git!”
Montoyo, his eyes steady, scarcely changed expression. He let his revolver slip down into its scabbard. Then he smiled.
“You have a pretty trick,” he commented, relaxing. “Some day I’d like to test it out again. Just now I pass. Madam, are you coming?”
“You know I’m not,” she uttered clearly.
“Your choice of company is hardly to your credit,” he sneered. “Or, I should say, to your education. Saintliness does not set well upon you, madam. Your clothes are ill-fitting already. Of your two champions——”
And here I realized that I was standing out, one foot advanced, my fists foolishly doubled, my presence a useless factor.
“—I recommend the gentleman from New York as more to your tastes. But you are going of your own free will. You will always be my wife. You can’t get away from that, you devil. I shall expect you in Benton, for I have the hunch that your little flight will fetch you back pretty well tamed, to the place where damaged goods are not so heavily discounted.” He ignored Daniel and turned upon me. “As for you,” he said, “I warn you you are playing against a marked deck. You will find fists a poor hand. Ladies and gentlemen, good-morning.” With that he strode straight for his horse, climbed aboard (a trifle awkwardly by reason of his one arm disabled) and galloped, granting us not another glance.
Card shark and desperado that he was, his consummate aplomb nobody could deny, except Daniel, now capering and swaggering and twirling his revolver.
“I showed him. I made him take water. I ’laow I’m ’bout the best man with a six-shooter in these hyar parts.”
“Ketch up and stretch out,” Captain Adams ordered, disregarding. “We’ve no more time for foolery.”
My eyes met My Lady’s. She smiled a little ruefully, and I responded, shamed by the poor rôle I had 189borne. With that still jubilating lout to the fore, certainly I cut small figure.
This night we made camp at Rawlins’ Springs, some twelve miles on. The day’s march had been, so to speak, rather pensive; for while there were the rough jokes and the talking back and forth, it seemed as though the scene of early morning lingered in our vista. The words of Montoyo had scored deeply, and the presence of our supernumerary laid a kind of incubus, like an omen of ill luck, upon us. Indeed the prophecies darkly uttered showed the current of thought.
“It’s a she Jonah we got. Sure a woman the likes o’ her hain’t no place in a freightin’ outfit. We’re off on the wrong fut,” an Irishman declared to wagging of heads. “Faith, she’s enough to set the saints above an’ the saints below both by the ears.” He paused to light his dudeen. “There’ll be a Donnybrook Fair in Utah, if belike we don’t have it along the way.”
“No Mormon’ll need another wife if he takes her,” laughed somebody else.
“She’ll be promised to Dan’l ’fore ever we cross the Wasatch.” And they all in the group looked slyly at me. “Acts as if she’d been sealed to him already, he does.”
This had occurred at our nooning hour, amidst the dust and the heat, while the animals drooped and dozed and panted and in the scant shade of the hooded wagons we drank our coffee and crunched our hardtack. Throughout the morning My Lady had ridden upon the seat of Daniel’s wagon, with him sometimes trudging beside, in pride of new ownership, cracking his whip, and again planted sidewise upon one of the wheel animals, facing backward to leer at her.
Why I should now have especially detested him I would not admit to myself. At any rate the dislike dated before her arrival. That was one sop to conscience when I remembered that she was a wife.
Friend Jenks must have read my thoughts, inasmuch as during the course of the afternoon he had uttered abruptly:
“These Mormons don’t exactly recognize Gentile marriages. Did you know that?” He flung me a look from beneath shaggy brows.
“What?” I exclaimed. “How so?”
“Meanin’ to say that layin’ on of hands by the Lord’s an’inted is necessary to reel j’inin’ in marriage.”
“But that’s monstrous!” I stammered.
“Dare say,” said he. “It’s the way white gospelers look at Injuns, ain’t it? Anyhow, to convert her out of sin, as they’d call it, and put her over into the company of the saints wouldn’t be no bad deal, by their kind o’ thinkin’. It’s been done before, I reckon. Jest thought I’d warn you. She’s made her own bed 191and if it’s a Mormon bed she’s well quit of Montoyo, that’s sartin. Did you ever see the beat of that young feller on the draw?”
“No,” I admitted. “I never did.”
“And you never will.”
“He says his name’s Bonnie Bravo. Where did he find that?”
“Haw haw.” Friend Jenks spat. “Must ha’ heard it in a play-house or got it read to him out a book. Sounds to him like he was some punkins. Anyhow, if you’ve any feelin’s in the matter keep ’em under your hat. I don’t know what there’s been between you and her, but the Mormon church is between you now and it’s got the dead-wood on you. It’s either that for her, or Montoyo. He knows; he’s no fool and he’ll take his time. So you’d better stick to mule-whacking and sowbelly.”
Still it was only decent that I should inquire after her. No Daniel and no “Bonnie Bravo” was going to shut me from my duty. Therefore this evening after we had formed corral, watered our animals at the one good-water spring, staked them out in the bottoms of the ravine here, and eaten our supper, I went with clean hands and face and, I resolved, a clean heart, to pay my respects at the Hyrum Adams fire.
A cheery sight it was, too, for one bred as I had been to the company of women. Whereas during the day and somewhat in the evenings we Gentiles and 192the Mormon men fraternized without conflict of sect save by long-winded arguments, at nightfall the main Mormon gathering centered about the Adams quarters, where the men and women sang hymns in praise of their pretensions, and listened to homilies by Hyrum himself.
They were singing now, as I approached—every woman busy also with her hands. The words were destined to be familiar to me, being from their favorite lines:
Cheer, saints, cheer! We’re bound for peaceful Zion!
Cheer, saints, cheer! For that free and happy land!
Cheer, saints, cheer! We’ll Israel’s God rely on;
We will be led by the power of His hand.
Away, far away to the everlasting mountains,
Away, far away to the valley in the West;
Away, far away to yonder gushing fountains,
Where all the faithful in the latter days are blest.
Into this domestic circle I civilly entered just as they had finished their hymn. She was seated beside the sleek-haired Rachael, with Daniel upon her other hand. I sensed her quickly ready smile; and with the same a surly stare from him, disclosing that by one person at least I was not welcomed.
“Anything special wanted, stranger?” Hyrum demanded.
“No, sir. I was attracted by your singing,” I replied. “Do I intrude?”
“Not at all, not at all.” He was more hospitable. “Set if you like, in the circle of the Saints. You’ll get no harm by it, that’s certain.”
So I seated myself just behind Rachael. A moment of constraint seemed to fall upon the group. I broke it by my inquiry, addressed to a clean profile.
“I came also to inquire after Mrs. Montoyo,” I carefully said. “You have stood the journey well, this far, madam?”
Daniel turned instantly.
“Thar’s no ’Mrs. Montoyo’ in this camp, Mister. And I’ll thank yu it’s a name yu’d best leave alone.”
“How so, sir?”
“Cause that’s the right of it. I ’laow I’ve told yu.”
“I’m called Edna now, by my friends,” she vouchsafed, coloring. “Yes, thank you, I’ve enjoyed the day.”
Rachael spoke softly, in her gentle English accents. I learned later that she was an English girl, convert to Mormonism.
“We Latter Day Saints know that the marriage rites of Gentiles are not countenanced by the Lord. If you would see the light you would understand. Sister Edna is being well cared for. Whatever we have is hers.”
“You will take her on with you to Salt Lake?”
“That is as Hyrum says. He has spoken of putting her on the stage at the next crossing. He will decide.”
“I think I’d rather stay with the train,” My Lady murmured.
“Yu will, too, by gum,” Daniel pronounced. “I’ll talk with paw. Yu’re goin’ to travel on to Zion ’long with me. I ’laow I’m man enough to look out for ye an’ I got plenty room. The hull wagon’s yourn. Guess thar won’t nobody have anything to say ag’in that.” His tone was pointed, unmistakable, and I sat fuming with it.
My Lady drily acknowledged.
“You are very kind, Daniel.”
“Wall, yu see I’m the best man on the draw in this hyar train. I’m a bad one, I am. My name’s Bonnie Bravo. That gambler—he ’laowed to pop me but I could ha’ killed him ’fore his gun was loose. I kin ride, wrastle, drive a bull team ag’in ary man from the States, an’ I got the gift o’ tongues. Ain’t afeared o’ Injuns, neither. I’m elected. I foller the Lord an’ some day I’ll be a bishop. I hain’t been more’n middlin’ interested in wimmen, but I’m gittin’ old enough, an’ yu an’ me’ll be purty well acquainted by the time we reach Zion. Thar’s a long spell ahead of us, but I aim to look out for yu, yu bet.”
His blatancy was arrested by the intonation of another hymn. They all chimed in, except My Lady and me.
There is a people in the West, the world calls Mormonites
in jest,
The only people who can say, we have the truth, and
own its sway.
Away in Utah’s valleys, away in Utah’s valleys,
Away in Utah’s valleys, the chambers of the Lord.
And all ye saints, where’er you be, from bondage try to
be set free,
Escape unto fair Zion’s land, and thus fulfil the Lord’s
command,
And help to build up Zion, and help to build up Zion,
And help to build up Zion, before the Lord appear.
They concluded; sat with heads bowed while Hyrum, standing, delivered himself of a long-winded blessing, through his nose. It was the signal for breaking up. They stood. My Lady arose lithely; encumbered by her trailing skirt she pitched forward and I caught her. Daniel sprang in a moment, with a growl.
“None o’ that, Mister. I’m takin’ keer of her. Hands off.”
“Don’t bully me, sir,” I retorted, furious. “I’m only acting the gentleman, and you’re acting the boor.”
I would willingly have fought him then and there, probably to my disaster, but Hyrum’s heavy voice cut in.
“Who quarrels at my fire? Mark you, I’ll have no more of it. Stranger, get you where you belong. Daniel, get you to bed. And you, woman, take yourself 196off properly and thank God that you are among his chosen and not adrift in sin.”
“Good-night, sir,” I answered. And I walked easily away, a triumphant warmth buoying me, for ere releasing her strong young body I had felt a note tucked into my hand.
A note from a pretty woman always is a potential thing, no matter in what humor it may have been received. The mere possession titillates; and although the contents may be most exemplary to the eye, the mind is apt to go hay-making between the lines and no offense intended.
All the fatuousness that had led me astray to the lure of her blue eyes, upon the train and in hollow Benton, surged anew now—perhaps seasoned to present taste by my peppery defiance of Daniel. A man could do no less than bristle a little, under the circumstances; could do no less than challenge the torpedoes, like Farragut in Mobile Bay. Whether the game was worth the candle, I was not to be bullied out of my privileges by a clown swash-buckler who aped the characteristics of a pouter pigeon.
Mr. Jenks was just going to bed under the wagon. With pretext of warming up the coffee I kicked the fire together; while squatting and sipping I managed to unfold the note and read it by the flicker, my back to the camp.
All that it said, was:198
If you are not disgusted with me I will walk a stretch with you on the trail, during the morning.
The engagement sent me to my blanket cogitating. When a woman proposes, one never knows precisely the reason. Anyway, I was young enough so to fancy. For a long time I lay outside the wagons, apart in the desert camp, gazing up at the twinkling stars, while the wolves whimpered around, and somewhere she slept beside the gentle Rachael, and somewhere Daniel snored, and here I conned her face and her words, elatedly finding them very pleasing.
Salt Lake was far, the Big Tent farther by perspective if not by miles. I recognized the legal rights of her husband, but no ruffling Daniel should quash the undeniable rights of Yours Truly. I indeed felt virtuous and passing valorous, with that commonplace note in my pocket.
We all broke camp at sunrise. She rode for a distance upon the seat of Daniel’s wagon—he lustily trudging alongside. Then I marked her walking, herself; she had shortened her skirt; and presently lingering by the trail she dropped behind, leaving the wagon to lumber on, with Daniel helplessly turning head over shoulder, bereft.
“Bet you the lady up yonder is aimin’ to pay you a visit,” quoth friend Jenks the astute. “And Dan’l, he don’t cotton to it. You ain’t great shakes with a gun, I reckon?”
“I’ve never had use for one,” said I. “But her whereabouts in the train is not a matter of shooting, is it?”
“A feller quick on the draw, like him, is alluz wantin’ to practice, to keep his hand in. Anyhow I’d advise you to stay clear of her, else watch him mighty sharp. He’s thinkin’ of takin’ a squaw.”
We rolled on, in the dust, while the animals coughed and the teamsters chewed and swore. And next, here she was, idling until our outfit drew abreast.
“Mornin’,” Jenks grunted, with a shortness that bespoke his disapproval; whereupon he fell back and left us.
She smiled at me.
“Will you offer me a ride, sir?”
My response was instant: a long “Whoa-oa!” in best mule-whacker. The eight-team hauled negligent, their mulish senses steeped in the drudgery of the trail; only the wheel pair flopped inquiring ears. When I hailed again, Jenks came puffing.
“What’s the matter hyar?” He ran rapid eye over wagon and animals and saw nothing amiss.
“Mrs. Montoyo wishes to ride.”
“The hell, man!” He snatched whip and launched it, up the faltering team. The cracker popped an inch above the off lead mule’s cringing haunch twenty feet before. “You can’t stop hyar! Can’t hold the rest of the train. Joe! Baldy! Hep 200with you!” The team straightened out; he restored me the whip. His wrath subsided, for in less dudgeon he addressed her.
“Want to ride, do ye?”
“I did, sir.”
“Wall, in Gawd’s name ride, then. But we don’t stop for passengers.”
With that, in another white heat he had picked her up bodily, swung her upon the nearest mule; so that before she knew (she scarce had time to utter an astonished little ejaculation as she yielded to his arms) there she was, perched, breathless, upon the sweaty hide. I awaited results.
Jenks chuckled.
“What you need is an old feller, lady. These young bucks ain’t broke to the feed canvas. Now when you want to get off you call me. You don’t weigh more’n a peck of beans.”
With a bantering wink at me he again fell back. Once more I had been forestalled. There should be no third time.
My Lady sat clinging, at first angry-eyed, but in a moment softened by my discomfiture.
“Your partner is rather sudden,” she averred. “He asked permission of neither me nor the mule.”
“He meant well. He isn’t used to women,” I apologized.
“More used to mules, I judge.”
“Yes. If he had asked the mule it would have objected, whereas it’s delighted.”
“Perhaps he knows there’s not much difference between a woman and a mule, in that respect,” she proffered. “You need not apologize for him.”
“I apologize for myself,” I blurted. “I see I’m a little slow for this country.”
“You?” She soberly surveyed me as I ploughed through the dust, at her knees. “I think you’ll catch up. If you don’t object to my company, yourself, occasionally, maybe I can help you.”
“I certainly cannot object to your company whenever it is available, madam,” I assured.
“You do not hold your experience in Benton against me?”
“I got no more than I deserved, in the Big Tent,” said I. “I went in as a fool and I came out as a fool, but considerably wiser.”
“You reproached me for it,” she accused. “You hated me. Do you hate me still, I wonder? I tell you I was not to blame for the loss of your money.”
“The money has mattered little, madam,” I informed. “It was only a few dollars, and it turned me to a job more to my liking and good health than fiddling my time away, back there. I have you to thank for that.”
“No, no! You are cruel, sir. You thank me for the good and you saddle me with the bad. I accept neither. Both, as happened, were misplays. You 202should not have lost money, you should not have changed vocation. You should have won a little money and you should have pursued health in Benton.” She sighed. “And we all would have been reasonably content. Now here you and I are—and what are we going to do about it?”
“We?” I echoed, annoyingly haphazard. “Why so? You’re being well cared for, I take it; and I’m under engagement for Salt Lake myself.”
The answer did sound rude. I was still a cad. She eyed me, with a certain whiteness, a certain puzzled intentness, a certain fugitive wistfulness—a mute estimation that made me too conscious of her clear appraising gaze and rack my brain for some disarming remark.
“You’re not responsible for me, you would say?”
“I’m at your service,” I corrected. The platitude was the best that I could muster to my tongue.
“That is something,” she mused. “Once you were not that—when I proposed a partnership. You are afraid of me?” she asked.
“Why should I be?” I parried. But I was beginning; or continuing. I had that curious inward quiver, not unpleasant, anticipatory of possible events.
“You are a cautious Yankee. You answer one question with another.” She laughed lightly. “Yes, why should you be? I cannot run away with you; not when Daniel and your Mr. Jenks are watching us so closely. And you have no desire to be run away with. And Pedro must be considered. Altogether, you are well protected, even if your conscience slips. But tell me: Do you blame me for running away from Montoyo?”
“Not in the least,” I heartily assured.
“You would have helped me, at the last?”
“I think I should have felt fully warranted.” Again I floundered.
“Even to stowing me with a bull train?”
“Anywhere, madam, for your betterment, to free you from that brute.”
“Oh!” She clapped her hands. “But you didn’t have to. I only embarrassed you by appearing on my own account. You have some spirit, though. You came to the Adams circle, last night. You did your duty. I expected you. But you must not do it again.”
“Why not?”
“There are objections, there.”
“From you?”
“No.”
“From Hyrum?”
“Not yet.”
“From that Daniel, then. Well, I will come to Captain Adams’ camp as often as I like, if with the Captain’s permission. And I shall come to see you, whether with his permission or not.”
“I don’t know,” she faltered. “I—you would 204have helped me once, you say? And once you refused me. Would you help me next time?”
“As far as I could,” said I—another of those damned hedging responses that for the life of me I could not manipulate properly.
“Oh!” she cried. “Of course! The queen deceived you; now you are wise. You are afraid. But so am I. Horribly afraid. I have misplayed again.” She laughed bitterly. “I am with Daniel—it is to be Daniel and I in the Lion’s den. You know they call Brigham Young the Lion of the Lord. I doubt if even Rachael is angel enough.” She paused. “They’re going to make nooning, aren’t they? I mustn’t stay. Good-bye.”
I sprang to lift her, but with gay shake of head she slipped off of herself and landed securely.
“I can stand alone. I have to. Men are always ready to do what I don’t ask them to do, as long as I can serve as a tool or a toy. You will be very, very careful. Good-day, sir.”
She flashed just the trace of a smile; gathering her skirt she ran on, undeterred by the teamsters applauding her spryness.
“Swing out!” shouted Jenks, from rear. “We’re noonin’.” The lead wagons had halted beside the trail and all the wagons following began to imitate.
From this hour’s brief camp, early made, we should have turned southward, to leave the railroad line and cross country for the Overland Stage trail that skirted the southern edge of the worse desert before us. But Captain Hyrum was of different mind. With faith in the Lord and bull confidence in himself he had resolved to keep straight on by the teamster road which through league after league ever extended fed supplies to the advance of the builders.
Under its adventitious guidance we should strike the stage road at Bitter Creek, eighty or one hundred miles; thence trundle, veering southwestward, for the famed City of the Saints, near two hundred miles farther.
Therefore after nooning at a pool of stagnant, scummy water we hooked up and plunged ahead, creaking and groaning and dust enveloped, constantly outstripped by the hurrying construction trains thundering over the newly laid rails, we ourselves the tortoise in the race.
My Lady did not join me again to-day, nor on the morrow. She abandoned me to a sense of dissatisfaction with myself, of foreboding, and of a void in the landscape.
Our sorely laden train went swaying and pitching across the gaunt face of a high, broad plateau, bleak, hot, and monotonous in contour; underfoot the reddish granite pulverized by grinding tire and hoof, over us the pale bluish fiery sky without a cloud, distant in the south the shining tips of a mountain range, and distant below in the west the slowly spreading vista of a great, bared ocean-bed, simmering bizarre with reds, yellows and deceptive whites, and ringed about by battlements jagged and rock hewn.
Into this enchanted realm we were bound; by token of the smoke blotches the railroad line led thither. The teamsters viewed the unfolding expanse phlegmatically. They called it the Red Basin. But to me, fresh for the sight, it beckoned with fantastic issues. Even the name breathed magic. Wizard spells hovered there; the railroad had not broken them—the cars and locomotives, entering, did not disturb the brooding vastness. A man might still ride errant into those slumberous spaces and discover for himself; might boldly awaken the realm and rule with a princess by his side.
But romance seemed to have no other sponsor in this plodding, whip-cracking, complaining caravan. So I lacked, woefully lacked, kindred companionship.
Free to say, I did miss My Lady, perched upon the 207stoic mule while like an Arab chief I convoyed her. The steady miles, I admitted, were going to be as disappointing as tepid water, when not aërated by her counsel and piquant allusions, by her sprightly readiness and the essential elements of her blue eyes, her facile lips, and that bright hair which no dust could dim.
After all she was distinctly feminine—bravely feminine; and if she wished to flirt as a relief from the cock-sure Daniel and the calm methods of her Mormon guardians, why, let us beguile the way. I should second with eyes open. That was accepted.
Moreover, something about her weighed upon me. A consciousness of failing her, a woman, in emergency, stung my self-respect. She had twitted me with being “afraid”; afraid of her, she probably meant. That I could pass warily. But she had said that she, too, was afraid: “horribly afraid,” and an honest shudder had attended upon the words as if a real danger hedged. She had an intuition. The settled convictions of my Gentile friends coincided. “With Daniel in the Lion’s den”—that phrase repeated itself persistent. She had uttered it in a fear accentuated by a mirthless laugh. Could such a left-handed wooer prove too much for her? Well, if she was afraid of Daniel I was not and she should not think so.
I could see her now and then, on before. She rode upon the wagon seat of her self-appointed executor.And I might see him and his paraded impertinences.
Except for the blowing of the animals and the mechanical noises of the equipment the train subsided into a dogged patience, while parched by the dust and the thin dry air and mocked by the speeding construction crews upon the iron rails it lurched westward at two and a half miles an hour, for long hours outfaced by the blinding sun.
Near the western edge of the plateau we made an evening corral. After supper the sound of revolver shots burst flatly from a mess beyond us, and startled. Everything was possible, here in this lone horizon-land where rough men, chafed by a hard day, were gathered suddenly relaxed and idle. But the shots were accompanied by laughter.
“They’re only tryin’ to spile a can,” Jenks reassured. “By golly, we’ll go over and l’arn ’em a lesson.” He glanced at me. “Time you loosened up that weepon o’ yourn, anyhow. Purty soon it’ll stick fast.”
I arose with him, glad of any diversion. The circle had not yet formed at Hyrum’s fire.
“It strikes me as a useless piece of baggage,” said I. “I bought it in Benton but I haven’t needed it. I can kill a rattlesnake easier with my whip.”
“Wall,” he drawled, “down in yonder you’re liable to meet up with a rattler too smart for your whip, account of his freckles. ’Twon’t do you no harm to 209spend a few ca’tridges, so you’ll be ready for business.”
The men were banging, by turn, at a sardine can set up on the sand about twenty paces out. Their shadows stretched slantwise before them, grotesquely lengthened by the last efforts of the disappearing sun. Some aimed carefully from under pulled-down hat brims; others, their brims flared back, fired quickly, the instant the gun came to the level. The heavy balls sent the loose soil flying in thick jets made golden by the evening glow. But amidst the furrows the can sat untouched by the plunging missiles.
We were greeted with hearty banter.
“Hyar’s the champeens!”
“Now they’ll show us.”
“Ain’t never see that pilgrim unlimber his gun yit, but I reckon he’s a bad ’un.”
“Jenks, old hoss, cain’t you l’an that durned can manners?”
“I’ll try to oblige you, boys,” friend Jenks smiled. “What you thinkin’ to do: hit that can or plant a lead mine?”
“Give him room. He’s made his brag,” they cried. “And if he don’t plug it that pilgrim sure will.”
Mr. Jenks drew and took his stand; banged with small preparation and missed by six inches—a fact that brought him up wide awake, so to speak, badgered by derision renewed. A person needs must have a bull hide, to travel with a bull train, I saw.
“Gimme another, boys, and I’ll hit it in the nose,” he growled sheepishly; but they shoved him aside.
“No, no. Pilgrim’s turn. Fetch on yore shootin’-iron, young feller. Thar’s yore turkey. Show us why you’re packin’ all that hardware.”
Willy-nilly I had to demonstrate my greenness; so in all good nature I drew, and stood, and cocked, and aimed. The Colt’s exploded with prodigious blast and wrench—jerking, in fact, almost above head; and where the bullet went I did not see, nor, I judged, did anybody else.
“He missed the ’arth!” they clamored.
“No; I reckon he hit Montany ’bout the middle. That’s whar he scored center!”
“Shoot! Shoot!” they begged. “Go ahead. Mebbe you’ll kill an Injun unbeknownst. They’s a pack o’ Sioux jest out o’ sight behind them hills.”
And I did shoot, vexed; and I struck the ground, this time, some fifty yards beyond the can. Jenks stepped from amidst the riotous laughter.
“Hold down on it, hold down, lad,” he urged. “To hit him in the heart aim at his feet. Here! Like this——” and taking my revolver he threw it forward, fired, the can plinked and somersaulted, lashed into action too late.
“By Gawd,” he proclaimed, “when I move like it had a gun in its fist I can snap it. But when I think on it as a can I lack guts.”
The remark was pat. I had seen several of the men 211snip the head from a rattlesnake with a single offhand shot—yes, they all carried their weapons easily and wontedly. But the target of an immobile can lacked in stimulation to concord of nerve and eye.
Now I shot again, holding lower and more firmly, out of mere guesswork, and landed appreciably closer although still within the zone of ridicule. And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were whooping and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the balls of a mitrailleuse, and the can rocked and gyrated, spurring us to haste as it constantly changed the range. Presently it was merely a twist of ragged tin. Then in the little silence, as we paused, a voice spoke irritatingly.
“I ’laow yu fellers ain’t no great shucks at throwin’ lead.”
Daniel stood by, with arms akimbo, his booted legs braggartly straddled and his freckled face primed with an intolerant grin at our recent efforts. My Lady had come over with him. Raw-boned, angular, cloddish but as strong as a mule, he towered over her in a maddening atmosphere of proprietorship.
She smiled at me—at all of us: at me, swiftly; at them, frankly. And I knew that she was still afraid.
“Reckon we don’t ask no advice, friend,” they answered. Again a constraint enfolded, fastened upon us by an unbidden guest. “Like as not you can do better.”
Daniel laughed boisterously, his mouth widely open.212
“I couldn’t do wuss. I seen yu poppin’ at that can. Hadn’t but one hole in it till yu all turned loose an’ didn’t give it no chance. Haw haw! I ’laow for a short bit I’d stand out in front o’ that greenie from the States an’ let him empty two guns at me.”
“S’pose you do it,” friend Jenks promptly challenged. “By thunder, I’ll hire ye with the ten cents, and give him four bits if he hits you.”
“He wouldn’t draw on me, nohaow,” scoffed Daniel. “I daren’t shoot for money, but I’ll shoot for fun. Anybody want to shoot ag’in me?”
“Wasted powder enough,” they grumbled.
“Ever see me shoot?” He was eager. “I’ll show ye somethin’. I don’t take back seat for ary man. Yu set me up a can. That thar one wouldn’t jump to a bullet.”
In sullen obedience a can was produced.
“How fur?”
“Fur as yu like.”
It was tossed contemptuously out; and watching it, to catch its last roll, I heard Daniel gleefully yelp “Out o’ my way, yu-all!”—half saw his hand dart down and up again, felt the jar of a shot, witnessed the can jump like a live thing; and away it went, with spasm after spasm, to explosion after explosion, tortured by him into fruitless capers until with the final ball peace came to it, and it lay dead, afar across the twilight sand.
Verily, by his cries and the utter savagery and 213malevolence of his bombardment, one would have thought that he took actual lust in fancied cruelty.
“I ’laow thar’s not another man hyar kin do that,” he vaunted.
There was not, judging by the silence again ensuing. Only—
“A can’s a different proposition from a man, as I said afore,” Jenks coolly remarked. “A can don’t shoot back.”
“I don’t ’laow any man’s goin’ to, neither.” Daniel reloaded his smoking revolver, bolstered it with a flip; faced me in turning away. “That’s somethin’ for yu to l’arn on, ag’in next time, young feller,” he vouchsafed.
If he would have eyed me down he did not succeed. His gaze shifted and he passed on, swaggering.
“Come along, Edna,” he bade. “We’ll be goin’ back.”
A devil—or was it he himself?—twitted me, incited me, and in a moment, with a gush of assertion, there I was, saying to her, my hat doffed:
“I’ll walk over with you.”
“Do,” she responded readily. “We’re to have more singing.”
The men stared, they nudged one another, grinned. Daniel whirled.
“I ’laow yu ain’t been invited, Mister.”
“If Mrs. Montoyo consents, that’s enough,” I informed, striving to keep steady. “I’m not walking with you, sir; I am walking with her. The only ground you control is just in front of your own wagon.”
“Yu’ve been told once thar ain’t no ‘Mrs. Montoyo,’” he snarled. “And whilst yu’re l’arnin’ to shoot yu’d better be l’arnin’ manners. Yu comin’ with me, Edna?”
“As fast as I can, and with Mr. Beeson also, if he chooses,” said she. “I have my manners in mind, too.”
“By gosh, I don’t walk with ye,” he jawed. And in a huff, like the big boy that he was, he flounced about, vengefully striding on as though punishing her for a misdemeanor.
She dropped the grinning group a little curtsy. A demure sparkle was in her eyes.
“The entertainment is concluded, gentlemen. I wish you good-night.”
Yet underneath her raillery and self-possession there lay an appeal, the stronger because subtle and unvoiced. It seemed to me every man must appreciate that as a woman she invoked protection by him against an impending something, of which she had given him a glimpse.
So we left them somewhat subdued, gazing after us, their rugged faces sobered reflectively.
“Shall we stroll?” she asked.
“With pleasure,” I agreed.
Daniel was angrily shouldering for the Mormon 215wagons, his indignant figure black against the western glow. She laughed lightly.
“You’re not afraid, after all, I see.”
“Not of him, madam.”
“And of me?”
“I think I’m more afraid for you,” I confessed. “That clown is getting insufferable. He sets out to bully you. Damn him,” I flashed, with pardonable flame, “and he ruffles at me on every occasion. In fact, he seems to seek occasion. Witness this evening.”
“Witness this evening,” she murmured. “I’m afraid, too. Yes,” she breathed, confronted by a portent, “I’m afraid. I never have been afraid before. I didn’t fear Montoyo. I’ve always been able to take care of myself. But now, here——”
“You have your revolver?” I suggested.
“No, I haven’t. It’s gone. Mormon women don’t carry revolvers.”
“They took it from you?”
“It’s disappeared.”
“But you’re not a Mormon woman.”
“Not yet.” She caught quick breath. “God forbid. And sometimes I fear God willing. For I do fear. You can’t understand. Those other men do, though, I think. Do you know,” she queried, with sudden glance, “that Daniel means to marry me?”
“He?” I gasped. “How so? With your—consent, of course. But you’re not free; you have a husband.” 216My gorge rose, regardless of fact. “You scarcely expect me to congratulate you, madam. Still he may have points.”
“Daniel?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I cannot say. Pedro did. Most men have. Oh!” she cried, impulsively stopping short. “Why don’t you learn to shoot? Won’t you?”
“I’ve about decided to,” I admitted. “That appears to be the saving accomplishment of everybody out here.”
“Of everybody who stays. You must learn to draw and to shoot, both. The drawing you will have to practice by yourself, but I can teach you to shoot. So can those men. Let me have your pistol, please.”
I passed it to her. She was all in a flutter.
“You must grasp the handle firmly; cover it with your whole palm, but don’t squeeze it to death; just grip it evenly—tuck it away. And keep your elbow down; and crook your wrist, in a drop, until your trigger knuckle is pointing very low—at a man’s feet if you’re aiming for his heart.”
“At his feet, for his heart?” I stammered. The words had an ugly sound.
“Certainly. We are speaking of shooting now, and not at a tin can. You have to allow for the jump of the muzzle. Unless you hold it down with your wrist, you over shoot; and it’s the first shot that counts. Of course, there’s a feel, a knack. But don’t aim with your eyes. You won’t have time. Men file off the front sight—it sometimes catches, in the draw. And it’s useless, anyway. They fire as they point with the finger, by the feel. You see, they know.”
“Evidently you do, too, madam,” I faltered, amazed.
“Not all,” she panted. “But I’ve heard the talk; I’ve watched—I’ve seen many things, sir, from Omaha to Benton. Oh, I wish I could tell you more; I wish I could help you right away. I meant, a dead-shot with the revolver knows beforehand, in the draw, where his bullet shall go. Some men are born to shoot straight; some have to practice a long, long while. I wonder which you are.”
“If there is pressing need in my case,” said I, “I shall have to rely upon my friends to keep me from being done for.”
“You?” she uttered, with a touch of asperity. “Oh, yes. Pish, sir! Friends, I am learning, have their own hides to consider. And those gentlemen of yours are Gentiles with goods for Salt Lake Mormons. Are they going to throw all business to the winds?”
“You yourself may appeal to his father, and to the women, for protection if that lout annoys you,” I ventured.
“To them?” she scoffed. “To Hyrum Adams’ outfit? Why, they’re Mormons and good Mormons, 218and why should I not be made over? I’m under their teachings; I am Edna, already; it’s time Daniel had a wife—or two, for replenishing Utah. Rachael calls me ’sister,’ and I can’t resent it. Good at heart as she is, even she is convinced. Why,” and she laughed mirthlessly, “I may be sealed to Hyrum himself, if nothing worse is in store. Then I’ll be assured of a seat with the saints.”
“You can depend upon me, then. I’ll protect you, I’ll fight for you, and I’ll kill for you,” I was on the point of roundly declaring; but didn’t. Her kind, I remembered, had spelled ruin upon the pages of men more experienced than I. Therefore out of that super-caution born of Benton, I stupidly said nothing.
She had paused, expectant. She resumed.
“But no matter. Here I am, and here you are. We were speaking of shooting. This is a lesson in shooting, not in marrying, isn’t it? As to the pressing need, you must decide. You’ve seen and heard enough for that. I like you, sir; I respect your spirit and I’m sorry I led you into misadventure. Now if I may lend you a little something to keep you from being shot like a dog, I’ll feel as though I had wiped out your score against me. Take your gun.” I took it, the butt warm from her clasp. “There he is. Cover him!”
“Where?” I asked. “Who?”
“There, before you. Oh, anybody! Think of his heart and cover him. I want to see you hold.”
I aimed, squinting.
“No, no! You’ll not have time to close an eye; both eyes are none too many. And you are awkward; you are stiff.” She readjusted my arm and fingers. “That’s better. You see that little rock? Hit it. Cock your weapon, first. Hold firmly, not too long. There; I think you’re going to hit it, but hold low, low, with the wrist. Now!”
I fired. The sand obscured the rock. She clapped her hands, delighted.
“You would have killed him. No—he would have killed you. Quick! Give it to me!”
And snatching the revolver she cocked, leveled and fired instantly. The rock split into fragments.
“I would have killed him,” she murmured, gazing tense, seeing I knew not what. Wrenching from the vision she handed back the revolver to me. “I think you’re going to do, sir. Only, you must learn to draw. I can tell you but I can’t show you. The men will. You must draw swiftly, decisively, without a halt, and finger on trigger and thumb on hammer and be ready to shoot when the muzzle clears the scabbard. It’s a trick.”
“Like this?” I queried, trying.
“Partly. But it’s not a sword you’re drawing; it’s a gun. You may draw laughing, if you wish to dissemble for a sudden drop; they do, when they have iron in their heart and the bullet already on its way, in their mind. I mustn’t stay longer. Shall we go to 220the fire now? I am cold.” She shivered. “Daniel is waiting. And when you’ve delivered me safe you’d better leave me, please.”
“Why so?”
She smiled, looking me straight in the eyes.
“Quién sabe? To avoid a scene, perhaps; perhaps, to postpone. I have an idea that it is better so. You’ve baited Daniel far enough for to-night.”
We walked almost without speaking, to the Hyrum Adams fire. Daniel lifted upper lip at me as we entered; his eyes never wandered from my face. I marked his right hand quivering stiffly; and I disregarded him. For if I had challenged him by so much as an overt glance he would have burst bonds.
Rachael’s eyes, the older woman’s eyes, the eyes of all, men and women, curious, admonitory, hostile and apprehensive, hot and cold together—these I felt also amidst the dusk. I was distinctly unwelcome. Accordingly I said a civil “Good-evening” to Hyrum (whose response out of compressed lips was scarce more than a grunt) and raising my hat to My Lady turned my back upon them, for my own bailiwick.
The other men were waiting en route.
“Didn’t kill ye, did he?”
“No.”
“Wall,” said one, “if you can swing a rattler by the tail, all right. But watch his haid.”
Friend Jenks paced on with me to our fire.
“We were keepin’ cases on you, and so was he. He saw that practice—damn, how he did crane! She was givin’ you pointers, eh?”
“Yes; she wanted amusement.”
“It’ll set Bonnie Bravo to thinkin’—it’ll shorely set him to thinkin’,” Jenks chuckled, mouthing his pipe. “She’s a smart one.” He comfortably rocked to and fro as we sat by the fire. “Hell! Wall, if you got to kill him you got to kill him and do it proper. For if you don’t kill him he’ll kill you; snuff you out like a—wall, you saw that can travel.”
“I don’t want to kill him,” I pleaded. “Why should I?”
Jenks sat silent; and sitting silent I foresaw that kill Daniel I must. I was being sucked into it, irrevocably willed by him, by her, by them all. If I did not kill him in defense of myself I should kill him in defense of her. Yet why I had to, I wondered; but when I had bought my ticket for Benton I had started the sequence, to this result. Here I was. As she had said, here I was, and here she was. I might not kill for love—no, not that; I was going to kill for hate. And while I never had killed a man, and in my heart of hearts did not wish to kill a man, since I had to kill one, named Daniel, even though he was a bully, a braggart and an infernal over-stepper it was pleasanter to think that I should kill him in hot blood rather than in cold.
Jenks spat, and yawned.
“I can l’arn you a few things; all the boys’ll help you out,” he proffered, “When you git him you’ll have to git him quick; for if you don’t—adios. But we’ll groom ye.”
Could this really be I? Frank Beeson, not a fortnight ago still living at jog-trot in dear Albany, New York State? It was puzzling how detached and how strong I felt.