Part 10

“We don’t know what your name is, and we don’t care. As to what you’ve done, that’s as well known to you as it is to us, and you’ve got gall to ask, when we’ve caught you right on the spot, branding-irons and all.”

“Well, I’m beginning to understand. You think you’ve caught a cattle thief.”

“Horse thief,” corrected one.

“Both, probably,” added another.

“I’ll not ask you to believe me any more,” I now said. “Don’t I see the post-trader over there among those horses?”

“No.”

“Very well, take me to him at Washakie. He has known me for years. I demand it.”

“We’ll not take you anywhere. We’re going to leave you here.”

And now the truth, the appalling, incredible truth, which my brain had totally failed to take in, burst like a blast of heat or ice over my whole being, penetrating the innermost recesses of my soul with a blinding glare. They intended to put me to death at once; their minds were as stone vaults closed against all explanation. Here in this hidden crack of the wilderness my body would be left hanging, and far away my family and friends would never know by what hideous outrage I had perished. Slowly they would become anxious at getting no news of me; there would be an inquiry, a mystery, then sorrow, and finally acceptance of my unknown fate. Broken visions of home, incongruous minglings of loved faces and commonplace objects, like my room with its table and chairs, rushed upon me. Had I not been seated, I must have fallen at the first shock of this stroke. They stood watching me.

“But,” I began, feeling that my very appearance was telling against me, while my own voice sounded guilty to my ears, “but it’s not true.”

“What’s the use in him talking any more to us?” said a man to Lem Speed.

Lem Speed addressed me. “You claim this: you’re an Eastern traveller. You come here--out of curiosity. You risk getting lost in the hardest country around here--out of curiosity. But you come all straight because an Indian’s map guides you, only you’ve burnt it. And you’re a stranger, ignorant that this is a _cache_ for rustlers. That’s what you claim. It don’t sound like much against these facts: last year you and another man that’s wanted in several places and that we’re after now--you and him was known to be thick. You offered to pay his doctor’s bill. You come back to the country where he’s been operating right along, and first thing you do you come over to this _cache_ when he’s got stolen horses right in it, and you ride a stolen horse that’s known to have been in his possession, and that’s got on it now the brand of the outfit this gentleman here represents--all out of curiosity.”

“We’ve just found six more of our stock in here,” said the gentleman indicated by Speed.

I repeated my story in a raised voice--I had not yet had time to regain composure. I accounted for each of my movements from the beginning until now, vehemently reasserting my ignorance and innocence. But I saw that they were not even attending to me any longer; they looked at me only now and then, they spoke low to each other, pointing to the other end of the valley, and turned, while I was still talking, to receive the report of another man, who came from among the stolen horses.

Then I fell silent. I sat by my saddle, locking my hands round my knees, and turning my eyes first upon the men, and then upon the whole place. A strange crystal desolation descended upon me, quiet and cold. The early sunlight showed every object in an extraordinary and delicate distinctness; the stones high up the sides of the valley, the separate leaves on the small high branches of the cottonwoods; the interstices on the bark on lower trunks some distance away; the fine sand and grass of the valley’s level bottom, with little wild rose bushes here and there; all these things I noticed, and more, and then my eyes came back to my little dead fire, and the blackened coffee-pot in which I had made the tea. “Your friend McDonough,” they had said to me at Washakie, and I had wondered what was behind their reticence when I inquired about him. They were always ready, I bitterly reflected, to feed lies to a tenderfoot, but a syllable of truth about McDonough’s suspected dishonesty, which would have saved me from this, they were unwilling to speak. It was natural, of course; everything was natural. I saw also why McDonough had been so precise in asking which way I expected to travel. Over on Snake River, and in Idaho, the sorrel was in no danger of identification, and therefore I should be safe. But even with the whole chain of evidence: the doctor’s bill, the corral, my unlucky tale of a map which I could not prove, and the branding-irons with which they believed I was going to alter the legitimate brands--what right had they to deny me the chance I asked?

The last two of them now came from the horses to make their report: “Five brands. Thirty-two head. N lazy Y, Bar Circle Zee, Goose Egg, Pitch Fork, Seventy-Six, and V R.”

“Not one of you,” I broke out, “knows a word against me, except some appearances which the post-trader will set right in one minute. I demand to be taken to him.”

“Ain’t we better be getting along, Lem?” said one.

“Most eight o’clock,” said another, looking at his watch.

“Stand up,” said Lem Speed.

Upon being thus ordered, like a felon, my utterance was suddenly choked, and it was with difficulty that I mastered the tears which welled hotly to my eyes.

“Any message you want to write--”

“No!” I shouted.

“Then let’s be getting along,” said the first man.

“Any message I wrote you would not deliver; it would put a rope round your neck, too. And, Mr. Lem Speed, with your store, and bank, and house, and wife, and son, I hope you will live to see them come to ruin and disgrace.”

I wish that I had never spoken these weak, discreditable words; but he who has not been tested cannot know the bitterness of such a test as this.

A horse was led to me, and I got on without aid, a man on each side of me. Memory after this records nothing. We must have been some time--I think we walked--in reaching the other end of the valley, yet I cannot recall what was spoken around me, or whether or not anything was spoken; I can recall only the sides of the valley passing, and the warmer sense of the sun on my shoulders, and the vivid scent of the sage-brush. What firmness or lack of firmness I might have displayed at the very end I can never know. Before we halted at the fatal tree of execution, and while my rage was still sustaining me, a noise of rattling stones caused us all to look upward, and there, galloping down the steep trail, wildly waving and shouting to us, was Scipio Le Moyne. It reeled through me! I was saved!

He plunged into the midst of us at breakneck speed, drew up so short that his horse slid, and burst out furiously--not to my captors, but to me. “You need a nurse!” he cried hoarsely. “Any travelling you do should be in a baby coach.”

Breath failed him, he sat in his saddle, bowed over and panting, hands shaking, face dripping with sweat, shirt drenched, as was his trembling horse. After a minute he looked at Speed. “So I’m in time, my God! I’ve ridden all night. I’d have been here an hour sooner only I forgot about the turn at the corral. Here. That’s the way I knowed it.”

He handed over my letter, left for him at the E-A ranch. This, with a few words from him, cleared me. All that I had declared was verified; they saw what they had been about to do.

“Well, now, well!” exclaimed one, grinning.

“To think of us getting fooled that way!” another remarked, grinning.

“But it’s all right now,” said a third, grinning.

“That’s so!” a fourth agreed. “No harm done. But we had a close shave, didn’t we?” And he grinned too.

Lem Speed approached me. “No hard feelings,” he said jocularly, and he held out his hand.

But is it a true joke--this American attempt at shirking responsibility under a bluff of facetiousness? It masquerades as humor every day--a pretty mongrel humor, more like true cowardice.

I turned to Scipio. “Tell this man that anything he wishes to say to me he will say through you.”

Speed flushed darkly. Had he kept his temper, he could easily have turned my speech to ridicule. But such a manner of meeting him was novel to a man used to having his own brutal way wherever he went, and he was disconcerted. He spoke loudly and with bluster:--

“You said some things about my wife and son that don’t go now.”

This delivered him into my hands. Again I addressed Scipio. “Say that I wish his family no further misfortune; they have enough in having him for husband and father.”

I think he would have shot me, but the others were now laughing. “He’s called the turn on you, Lem. Leave him be. He’s been annoyed some this morning.”

They now made ready to depart with their recovered property.

“You and your friend will come along with us?” one said to Scipio.

“Thank you,” I answered. “I have seen all that I ever wish to see of any of you.”

And then suddenly I folded over and slid like a sack of flour from my horse. It had lasted longer than my nerves were good for; darkness engulfed me on the ground.

They had disappeared when I waked; Scipio and I were the only human tenants of the valley. He sat watching me, and I nodded to him; then silently shook my head at his question if I wanted anything. I lay gazing at the rocks and trees, the tall trees with their leaves gently stirring. It was a beautiful, serene spot and I regarded it with the languid pleasure of a man recovering from a serious illness. We began to talk presently, and I learned that they had taken away their stolen horses, except the sorrel, which had been left at my complete disposal. But from that party I would accept no amends; I would ride the sorrel back to Wind River, and then I would send a check to the proper person, as if I had hired the horse. This intention I may say at once that I duly carried out. Scipio upbraided me with the spirit I was showing; they had meant no harm to _me_, he argued; they were doing their best now--but I turned upon him.

“Oh, their best! Do you think they’ll not break out in a new place, condemn some other man who looks guilty to their almighty minds? I asked to see the post-trader. Don’t forget that. There’s got to be lynching where there’s no law, but--”

To these unfinished words Scipio could find no answer, but he remained unconvinced, muttering that “tenderfeet shouldn’t monkey with this country by themselves;” and in this sentiment I heartily concurred.

We spent the day and night at Still Hunt Spring. There was nothing to call us away, and I found my physical powers more inclined to rest than to a long ride. Scipio dried out his clothes beside the spring, and refreshed his lank body from the perspiration and dust which had covered it. He narrated how it had been whispered that the cattlemen were on the eve of “demonstrating”; how McDonough’s practices and associates had been gradually ascertained; how it was known that Still Hunt Spring had become a hiding-place for stolen stock. Therefore my bragging letter, written in a spirit so light, had given him what he described as “considerable of a jolt.” He had not found it until evening, and had instantly galloped forth into the dark, not knowing what he might find at Still Hunt Spring.

“Then McDonough is a thief,” I sighed.

“Oh, he’s a thief all right,” said Scipio, easily.

But it made me very sad. I closed my eyes and could see McDonough as he stood by my horse, embarrassed, reaching out his hand for that envelope with my verses on it.

I slept more soundly and longer even than on the preceding night. Scipio, after his hard ride, slept like me; we did not wake until the sun was high and warm. After breakfast--it was the last morsel we had between us--I took a final drink at the gentle and lovely pool where I had undergone such terrible emotions, and we rode slowly and silently down the long line of trees toward the exit of the valley. Suddenly the sorrel jerked his head up, stopped stiff with a snort, and began to tremble. Ahead of us there, from the branch destined for me, hung a dead man, McDonough. This they had done while we over-slept by the spring at the upper end of the valley. They had surprised him coming to his _cache_.

Scipio and I sat still for a while. A wind in the branches now set the body slightly swaying; it seemed worse when it moved; it turned halfway round, and I saw its eyes. “I think--couldn’t we bury it?” I said.

Scipio shook his head. “It’s left there for some of his partners to see.”

“Well--I think we might close the eyes.”

“That’s no harm,” said Scipio, “if you want.”

“Yes; I do want.”

So we dismounted. Yes; cards were all McDonough knew how to read; no one had ever taught him anything; this was his first lesson.

“There,” said Scipio, “that does look better.” Then we rode away from Still Hunt Spring.

VI

EXTRA DRY

Mile-high in space circled a dark speck, a Mexican eagle, alone in the empty sky. He was looking down upon four hundred square miles of Arizona sand, called Repose Valley. He saw clots of cactus, thickets of mesquite, stunt oak bush, and white skeletons of cattle, but not a thing to eat. He also saw Aaron Tace, the shell-game man, in a Mexican hat. He saw also a man who, drifting lately to Tucson, had said his name was Belleville; but somebody in Tucson had pronounced this “Bellyful”; it was then vain to insist upon any other pronunciation.

Up in the sky sailed the eagle; along the desert road Aaron Tace was slowly riding; and on the ground lay Bellyful, near where the road forked to the mines. Aaron was going to Push Root. In that town a _fiesta_ was being held; horses raced, liquors drunk, ladies courted, cards dealt, silver and gold lost by many and won by few, all to music. Bellyful was bound presently for Push Root, too. Now he lay off the road under some mesquite, thinking, while Aaron approached. Made of thorns, slender rods, and gauze foliage, Bellyful’s bushes cast little more shade than mosquito nets, but they cast all the shade there was. He was resting his starved, weak horse, whose legs must somehow walk the five more miles to Push Root. He, himself, with scant breakfast inside, had led the horse to the thin shade. The poor beast stood over him; now and then Bellyful reached up and stroked its nose. At sunrise the softened mountains had glowed like jewels, or ripe nectarines, or wine; cooling shadows had flowed from them upon the valley. Later morning had changed these peaks to gray, hot teeth, and the sand to a gray, hot floor. The horse rested, Aaron Tace was half a mile nearer, the eagle sailed, and Bellyful lay thinking of his luck.

He had known none in fifteen months. Misfortune bulged from the seams of his shirt and trousers and boots. Of his gold watch, his two pins, his ring, his sundry small possessions, only his gun remained: he could not pawn the seat of life. He had been earning and spending easily, when the first illness that he had ever known put him to bed, and almost in his grave. Coming back to strength, he found hard times. No one, no railroad, ranch, restaurant, saloon, stage company--nothing--had employment for him. He had sought it from San Marcial, over in New Mexico, westward to Yuma, hundreds of miles. He had parted early with his real name. On a freight train at Bowie the conductor found him stealing a ride, and kicked him off, calling him a hobo. The epithet hurt worse than the kick. In fact, hiding on the brake-beam under another car (for in spite of the conductor he carried out his plan of riding free to Willcox) he shed tears, the bitter tears of pride departing; he _was_ a hobo. By the time he reached Willcox, Belleville was his name. No tramp should be called what his mother had named him.

Such his life had been; dust, thirst, hunger, repulse--and onward to more. Existence shook her head at him with a changeless “No.” Latterly, in Tucson, a pretty woman had shown him kindness which she should not, since he was not her husband and she had one. She fell in love with the April bloom of his years and with his hard luck--and this was the single instance of human interest in him which had touched his life in fifteen months. It lay light upon his roving conscience, was nothing but joy and pride to him; but his code forbade continued acceptance of her money that there seemed no chance to repay. Quitting Tucson, he took from her, as a final loan, enough to buy a wretched horse, with a trifle over. If none in Push Root would employ him, the mines were left; if these should fail, then he would have knocked at the door of every trade in Arizona, except robbery, which was undoubtedly the territory’s chief industry.

Bellyful slid down a hand to his pocket’s bottom. One by one he fingered seven coins therein, his whole fortune, in fractional currency--it summed up to a dollar and four bits. He drew out the coins and attentively read their dates. These he already knew. He was not thinking of the coins, but of the Universe, and how successfully it resisted explanation. A voice stopped him; Aaron Tace was nearly opposite his clump of mesquite. The shell-game man was talking to himself.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye.” This he said over and over, while his hands were ceaselessly moving. Bellyful rose with astonishment, and stared. Aaron Tace could easily have seen him, but was too busy. He was making quick turns and passes, and talking the while.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye.” Nothing but that, while his hands paused, shuffled, and paused again.

“Remember, gentlemen--” It was like a player polishing his lines. Aaron rehearsed all the tones that express complete candor and friendly warning, with a touch of “dare you to try it!” thrown in. The reins hung on the horse’s neck. Fitted to the saddle-horn (a very neat piece of work) was a smooth, wooden tray, and upon this three walnut shells in a line. These Aaron Tace would shift from right to left and back, or half back, exchanging their positions, sliding them among each other, lifting them up and setting them down--a pretty thing to see. Only one slip he made, due to a stumble of his horse. The little pebble, or pea, which the shifted shells concealed by turns to allure the bets of onlookers, rolled to the ground. Aaron sprang off limberly, found it, and was on again, busily rehearsing while his horse walked onward. He had now passed by, and a rock hid him from view; but for a long time still Bellyful could hear the rising and falling cadence of his “Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye,” even after the syllables ceased to be distinguishable. Thus Aaron proceeded toward the Push Root _fiesta_, happy and busy, until his distant cadences died away.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Bellyful.

For perhaps an hour he lay, looking upward through the filmy mesquite, himself a piece of the vast silence. But this new light on the shell game helped little to render the Universe more susceptible of explanation. By and by he took his slow way along the road, and nothing living was left at the Forks. Far in the huge, blue, hot sky the eagle sailed, hunting his prey.

* * * * *

Bellyful found the town of Push Root full of good nature. Indeed, there was more good nature than town; it spilled over the edges in strains of music, strains of language, and gentlemen overcome in the brush. But it was beyond the livery stable’s good nature to trust any such looking owner of any such looking horse; Bellyful paid in advance. He inquired for employment at the stage office, the hardware store, the other store, the Palace Hotel, the other hotel, the Can-Can Restaurant, the Fashion Saloon, the four other saloons, and the three private houses. These were locked because their owners were out, practising good nature. That finished it; there was no employment here. The horse could never make the mines without two meals and a night’s rest--paid for already. No duty now hindered Bellyful from being good-natured himself. He still had three coins of slight importance to do it with, and his absent-minded fingers rubbed them over in his pocket.

Push Root teemed with strangers from ranch and mine, wandering joyously between drinks in search of new games. Through the many sounds Aaron’s voice held its own, and, reaching Bellyful, waked his brooding mind, which had long forgotten Aaron. Some games he knew about, but this one had hitherto not been closely studied by him. Was the eye always slower than the hand? Practice makes perfect, but--? With this dawn of scientific doubt Bellyful stood looking at the cluster of patrons which screened Aaron where he shuffled his three walnut shells and chanted his “Remember, gentlemen.” A disordered-looking patron now emerged from the group, perceived Bellyful, lurched toward him, leaned against him confidingly, and remarked with tears:--

“Say, are you married? I am. Some people are fools all the time. I am. All people are fools some of the time. I am. And when I get home I’ll get hell.” He untied an old horse and rode desolately out of town.

Through the air, like a call, came Aaron’s jaunty voice. Bellyful joined the patrons at once. Aaron shot over him a travelled, measuring eye, of which the not untravelled Bellyful took prompt note. He stood in the front row, staring with as simple an expression as he could command, slowly fumbling the poor little coins in his pocket. Soon the man next him won three dollars on a dime. Bellyful came near whistling, but repressed it in order to maintain his simple expression. Thirty to one! This game paid thirty to one! And the dawn of scientific doubt grew lighter.

“Try yourn.” This suggestion somebody made to a youth of prosperous appearance, with an English neatness, and a cap and waistcoat of the horse-stable variety.

“Thanks, no, ye know. Seen it with thimbles at home, ye know.”

None present was aware that this accent had been heard in no part of the British Isles at any time. Yet, after a look at him, Bellyful’s scientific doubt dawned a trifle clearer.

“Win three dollars?” cried an astonished freighter.

“Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye,” said Aaron, instantly.

He shuffled his shells. The freighter’s hairy fist made a “jeans dive.” This well-known reach for money in the “pants” is composed of two gestures: the hand shoots down into the pocket, while the head tilts skyward. It is common where hay grows, and often foretells that the owner and his money will soon be parted. Bellyful now forgot all about his empty stomach. The freighter touched a shell, put down five cents, and won a dollar and a half.

“Megod!” exclaimed British Isles. He risked a quarter, and lost.

“Aw, now!” he lamented. “Good-by, all.”

They rallied him, chaffed him, told him to come back and be a man; so, not to shame old England in a foreign country (as he explained), he doubled his quarter, and lost again.

“Remember, gentlemen,” chanted Aaron, “the hand is quicker than the eye.”

He shuffled the shells straight at the freighter, as if he were making love to him. The freighter’s eyes bulged; he dredged from his pocket a sort of bun of bills, greasy old rags pressed to a lump, gazed at them, touched them, smoothed them, and at last, amid general laughter, shoved them lingeringly back into his jeans. But his eyes seemed unrestful, and he mopped his brow.

“She’s there!” bet British Isles, touching a shell.

“Take you,” said Aaron.

British Isles put a dollar down. The pea was under the shell. Everybody saw the thirty dollars paid to British Isles. Aaron shuffled his shells anew.