Part 2

This book is three years late; the first tale designed for it was published in 1901. Its follower should even now be ready. It is not yet begun; it exists merely in notes and intentions. Give me health and a day, sighs Emerson; and I am sorry for all who have to say that. When you see the new moon over your left shoulder, wish always for health; never mind all the other things. I own to an attachment for the members of this family; I would fain follow their lives a little more, into twentieth century Wyoming, which knows not the cow-boy, and where the cow-boy feels at times more lost than ever he was on the range. Of all the ills that harass writing, plans deferred seem at times the worst; yet great pleasures offset them--the sight of one’s pages in a foreign tongue, meeting horses in the Rocky Mountains named after the members of one’s family, being asked from across the world for further news of some member. Lately a suggestion full of allurement came from one who had read of Sir Francis, the duchess, and the countess, in the _Saturday Evening Post_. (There, by the way, is an intrepid editor!) Why not add, said the reader, a third lady to the group in Jimsy’s pond, and see what they would all do then? Only consider the possibilities! But I dare not. Life, without whose gifts none of us could have a story to tell--not even Scheherezadè--life presented to me Sir Francis and his adoring household. Never could I risk trusting to invention in a matter so delicate. Would the duchess and the countess unite to draw the line at the added sister? Would Sir Francis rise to the emergency? and if so, what line would he take? The added sister might prove a lamb, a minx, or a vixen. You see the possibilities. Dearly should I like to return this summer to the singing waters of Buffalo Horn, and place a third lady in that pond of Jimsy’s; then we might have another story if others are ever to be. My science in the third tale is of course out of date; since Kelvin, energy is immortal no longer, and a _lower_ form of it was transmitted to the Secretary than was originally stored in Captain Stone.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. HAPPY-TEETH 27

II. SPIT-CAT CREEK 67

III. IN THE BACK 89

IV. TIMBERLINE 124

V. THE GIFT HORSE 159

VI. EXTRA DRY 207

VII. WHERE IT WAS 229

VIII. THE DRAKE WHO HAD MEANS OF HIS OWN 276

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“‘Pie like Mother made,’ said Scipio” _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

“High Bear galloped away into the dusk” 56

“Out of the door he flew,--squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry” 66

“‘Is Sistah Stone heah?’ Leonidas inquired” 108

“‘If that I was where I would be, then should I be where I am not’” 126

“_Waiting for nothing_ was stamped plain upon him from head to foot” 140

“The stage rattled up as I sat” 171

“I found nothing new--the plain, the sage-brush, the dry ground--no more” 188

“He shuffled the shells straight at the freighter as if he were making love to him” 216

“How could he know that Bellyful had only become a road-agent in the last ten minutes?” 226

“‘My, but it’s turrable easy to get married’” 284

“‘Well, Jimsy, are you going to get me any wood for this stove--or ain’t you?’” 296

I

HAPPY-TEETH

Scipio Le Moyne lay in bed, held together with bandages. His body had need for many bandages. A Bar-Circle-Zee three-year-old had done him violent mischief at the forks of Stinking Water.[1] But for the fence, Scipio might have swung clear of the wild, rearing animal. When they lifted his wrecked frame from the ground one of them had said:--

“A spade’s all he’ll need now.”

Overhearing this with some still unconquered piece of his mind, Scipio made one last remark: “I ain’t going to die for years and years.”

Upon this his head had rolled over, and no further statements came from him for--I forget how long. Yet somehow, we all believed that last remark of his.

“Since I’ve known him,” said the Virginian, “I have found him a truthful man.”

“Which don’t mean,” Honey Wiggin put in, “that he can’t lie when he ought to.”

Judge Henry always sent his hurt cow-punchers to the nearest surgical aid, which in this case was the hospital on the reservation. Here then, one afternoon, Scipio lay, his body still bound tight at a number of places, but his brain needing no bandages whatever; he was able to see one friend for a little while each day. It was almost time for this day’s visitor to go, and the visitor looked at his watch.

“Oh, don’t do that!” pleaded the man in bed. “I’m not sick any more.”

“You will be sick some more if you keep talking,” replied the Virginian.

“Thinkin’ is a heap more dangerous, if y’u can’t let it out,” Scipio urged. “I’m not half through tellin’ y’u about Horacles.”

“Did his mother name him that?” inquired the Virginian.

“Naw! but his mother brought it on him. Didn’t y’u know? Of course you don’t often get so far north in the Basin as the Agency. His name is Horace Pericles Byram. Well, the Agent wasn’t going to call his assistant store-clerk all that, y’u know, not even if he _has_ got an uncle in the Senate of the United States. Couldn’t spare the time. Days not long enough. Not even in June. So everybody calls him Horacles now. He’s reconciled to it. But I ain’t. It’s too good for him. A heap too good. I’ve knowed him all my life, and I can’t think of a name that’s not less foolish than he is. Well, where was I? I was tellin’ y’u how back in Gallipol_eece_ he couldn’t understand anything. Not dogs. Not horses. Not girls.”

“Do you understand girls?” the Virginian interrupted.

“Better’n Horacles. Well, now it seems he can’t understand Indians. Here he is sellin’ goods to ’em across the counter at the Agency store. I could sell twiced what he does, from what they tell me. I guess the Agent has begun to discover what a trick the Uncle played him when he unloaded Horacles on him. Now why did the Uncle do that?”

Scipio stopped in his rambling discourse, and his brows knitted as he began to think about the Uncle. The Virginian once again looked at his watch, but Scipio, deep in his thoughts, did not notice him. “Uncle,” he resumed to himself, half aloud, “Uncle was the damnedest scoundrel in Gallipol_eece_.--Say!” he exclaimed suddenly, and made an eager movement to sit up. “Oh Lord!” he groaned, sinking back. “I forgot.--What’s your hurry?”

But the Virginian had seen the pain transfix his friend’s face, and though that face had instantly smiled, it was white. He stood up. “I’d ought to get kicked from here to the ranch,” he said, remorsefully. “I’ll get the doctor.”

Vainly the man in bed protested; his visitor was already at the door.

“I’ve not told y’u about his false teeth!” shrieked Scipio, hoping this would detain him. “And he does tricks with a rabbit and a bowl of fish.”

But the guest was gone. In his place presently the Post surgeon came, and was not pleased. Indeed, this excellent army doctor swore. Still, it was not the first time that he had done so, nor did it prove the last; and Scipio, it soon appeared, had given himself no hurt. But in answer to a severe threat, he whined:--

“Oh, ain’t y’u goin’ to let me see him to-morro’?”

“You’ll see nobody to-morrow except me.”

“Well, that’ll be seein’ nobody,” whined Scipio, more grievously.

The doctor grinned. “In some ways you’re incurable. Better go to sleep now.” And he left him.

Scipio did not go to sleep then, though by morning he had slept ten healthful hours, waking with the Uncle still at the centre of his thoughts. It made him again knit his brows.

“No, you can’t see him to-day,” said the doctor, in reply to a request.

“But I hadn’t finished sayin’ something to him,” Scipio protested. “And I’m well enough to see my dead grandmother.”

“That I’ll not forbid,” answered the doctor. And he added that the Virginian had gone back to Sunk Creek with some horses.

“Oh, yes,” said Scipio. “I’d forgot. Well, he’ll be coming through on his way to Billings next week. You been up to the Agency lately? Yesterday? Well, there’s going to be something new happen. Agent seem worried or anything?”

“Not that I noticed. Are the Indians going on the war-path?”

“Nothing like that. But why does a senator of the United States put his nephew in that store? Y’u needn’t to tell me it’s to provide for him, for it don’t provide. I thought I had it figured out last night, but Horacles don’t fit. I can’t make him fit. He don’t understand Injuns. That’s my trouble. Now the Uncle must know Horacles don’t understand. But if he didn’t know?” pursued Scipio, and fell to thinking.

“Well,” said the doctor indulgently, as he rose, “it’s good you can invent these romances. Keeps you from fretting, shut up here alone.”

“There’d be no romances here,” retorted Scipio. “Uncle is exclusively hard cash.” The doctor departed.

At his visit next morning, he was pleased with his patient’s condition. “Keep on,” said he, “and I’ll let you sit up Monday for ten minutes. Any more romances?”

“Been thinkin’ of my past life,” said Scipio.

The doctor laughed long. “Why, how old are you, anyhow?” he asked at length.

“Oh, there’s some lovely years still to come before I’m thirty. But I’ve got a whole lot of past life, all the same.” Then he pointed a solemn, oracular finger at the doctor. “What white man savvys the Injun? Not you. Not me. And I’ve drifted around some, too. The map of the United States has been my home. Been in Arizona and New Mexico and among the Siwashes--seen all kinds of Injun--but I don’t savvy ’em. I know most any Injun’s better’n most any white man till he meets the white man. Not smarter, y’u know, but better. And I do know this: You take an Injun and let him be a warrior and a chief and a grandfather who has killed heaps of white men in his day--but all that don’t make him grown up. Not like we’re grown up. He stays a child in some respects till he’s dead. He’ll believe things and be scared at things that ain’t nothin’ to you and me. You take Old High Bear right on this reservation. He’s got hair like snow and eyes like an eagle’s and he can sing a war-song about fights that happened when our fathers were kids. But if you want to deal with him, you got to remember he’s a child of five.”

“I do know all this,” said the doctor, interested. “I’ve not been twenty years on the frontier for nothing.”

“Horacles don’t know it,” said Scipio. “I’ve saw him in the store all season.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “see you to-morrow. I’ve some new patients in the ward.”

“Soldiers?”

“Soldiers.”

“Guess I know why they’re here.”

“Oh, yes,” sighed the doctor. “You know. Few come here for any other reason.” The doctor held views about how a military post should be regulated, which popular sentiment will never share. “Can I do anything for you?” he inquired.

“If I could have some newspapers?” said Scipio.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” said the doctor. After that he saw to it that Scipio had them liberally.

With newspapers the patient sat surrounded deep, when the Virginian, passing north on his way to Billings, looked in for a moment to give his friend the good word. That is what he came for, but what he said was:--

“So he has got false teeth?”

Scipio, hearing the voice at the door, looked over the top of his paper at the visitor.

“Yes,” he replied, precisely as if the visitor had never been out of the room.

“What d’ y’u know?” inquired the Virginian.

“Nothing; what do you?”

“Nothing.”

After all, such brief greetings cover the ground.

“Better sit down,” suggested Scipio.

The Virginian sat, and took up a paper. Thus for a little while they both read in silence.

“Did y’u stop at the Agency as y’u came along?” asked Scipio, not looking up from his paper.

“No.”

There was silence again as they continued reading. The Virginian, just come from Sunk Creek, had seen no newspapers as recent as these. When two friends on meeting after absence can sit together for half an hour without a word passing between them, it is proof that they really enjoy each other’s company. The gentle air came in the window, bringing the tonic odor of the sage-brush. Outside the window stretched a yellow world to distant golden hills. The talkative voice of a magpie somewhere near at hand was the only sound.

“Nothing in the newspapers in particular,” said Scipio, finally.

“You expaictin’ something particular?” the Virginian asked.

“Yes.”

“Mind sayin’ what it is?”

“Wish I knew what it is.”

“Always Horacles?”

“Always him--and Uncle. I’d like to spot Uncle.”

Mess call sounded from the parade ground. It recalled the flight of time to the Virginian.

“When you get back from Billings,” said Scipio, “you’re liable to find me up and around.”

“Hope so. Maybe you’ll be well enough to go with me to the ranch.”

But when the Virginian returned, a great deal had happened all at once, as is the custom of events.

Scipio’s vigorous convalescence brought him in the next few days to sitting about in the open air, and then enlarged his freedom to a crutch. He hobbled hither and yon, paying visits, many of them to the doctor. The doctor it was, and no newspaper, who gave to Scipio the first grain of that “something particular” which he had been daily seeking and never found. He mentioned a new building that was being put up rather far away down in the corner of the reservation. The rumor in the air was that it had something to do with the Quartermaster’s department. The odd thing was that the Quartermaster himself had heard nothing about it. The Agent up at the Agency store considered this extremely odd. But a profound absence of further explanations seemed to prevail. What possible need for a building was there at that inconvenient, isolated spot?

Scipio slapped his leg. “I guess what y’u call my romance is about to start.”

“Well,” the doctor admitted, “it may be. Curious things are done upon Indian reservations. Our management of them may be likened to putting the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments into a bag and crushing them to powder. Let our statesmen at Washington get their hands on an Indian reservation, and not even honor among thieves remains.”

“Say, doc,” said Scipio, “when d’ y’u guess I can get off?”

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” the doctor cautioned him. “If you go to Sunk Creek--”

“Sunk Creek! I only want to go to the Agency.”

“Oh, well, you could do that to-day--but don’t you want to see the entertainment? Conjuring tricks are promised.”

“I want to see Horacles.”

“But he is the entertainment. Supper comes after he’s through.”

Scipio stayed. He was not repaid, he thought. “A poor show,” was his comment as he went to bed. He came later to be very glad indeed that he had gone to that entertainment.

The next day found him seated in the Agency store, being warmly greeted by his friends the Indians. They knew him well; perhaps he understood them better than he had said. By Horacles he was not warmly greeted; perhaps Horacles did not wish to be understood--and then, Scipio, in his comings and goings through the reservation, had played with Horacles for the benefit of bystanders. There is no doubt whatever that Horacles did not understand Scipio. He was sorry to notice how the Agent, his employer, shook Scipio’s hand and invited him to come and stop with him till he was fit to return to his work. And Scipio accepted this invitation. He sat him down in the store, and made himself at home. Legs stretched out on one chair, crutch within reach, hands comfortably clasped round the arms of the chair he sat in, head tilted back, eyes apparently studying the goods which hung from the beams overhead, he visibly sniffed the air.

“Smell anything you don’t like?” inquired the clerk, tartly--and unwisely.

“Nothin’ except you, Horacles,” was the perfectly amiable rejoinder.--“It’s good,” Scipio then confessed, “to be smellin’ buckskin and leather and groceries instead of ether and iodoform.”

“Guess you were pretty sick,” observed the clerk, with relish.

“Yes. Oh, yes. I was pretty sick. That’s right. Yes.” Scipio had continued through these slowly drawled remarks to look at the ceiling. Then his glance dropped to the level of Horacles, and keenly fixed that unconscious youth’s plump little form, pink little face, and mean little mustache. Behind one ear stuck a pen, behind the other a pencil, as the assistant clerk was arranging some tins of Arbuckle’s Arioso coffee. Then Scipio took aim and fired: “So you’re going to quit your job?”

Horacles whirled round. “Who says so?”

The chance shot--if there ever is such a thing, if such shots are not always the result of visions and perceptions which lie beyond our present knowledge--this chance shot had hit.

“First I’ve heard of it,” then said Horacles sulkily. “Guess you’re delirious still.” He returned to his coffee, and life grew more interesting than ever to Scipio.

Instead of trickling back, health began to rush back into his long imprisoned body, and though he could not fully use it yet, and though if he hobbled a hundred yards he was compelled to rest it, his wiry mind knew no fatigue. How athletic his brains were was easily perceived by the Indian Agent. The convalescent would hobble over to the store after breakfast and hail the assistant clerk at once. “Morning, Horacles,” he would begin; “how’s Uncle?”--“Oh, when are you going to give us a new joke?” the worried Horacles would retort.--“Just as soon as you give us a new Uncle, Horacles. Or any other relation to make us feel proud we know you. What did his letter last night say?” The second or third time this had been asked still found Horacles with no better repartee than angry silence. “Didn’t he send me his love?” Scipio then said; and still the hapless Horacles said nothing. “Well, y’u give him mine when you write him this afternoon.”--“I ain’t writing this afternoon,” snapped the clerk.--“You’re not! Why, I thought you wrote each other every day!” This was so near the truth that Horacles flared out: “I’d be ashamed if I’d nothing better to do than spy on other people’s mails.”

Thus by dinner-time generally an audience would be gathered round Scipio where he sat with his legs on the chair, and Horacles over his ledger would be furiously muttering that “Some day they would all see.”

Horacles asked for a couple of days’ holiday, and got it. He wished to hunt, he said. But the Agent happened to find that he had been to the railroad about some freight. This he mentioned to Scipio. “I don’t know what he’s up to,” he said. He had found that worrying Horacles was merely one of the things that Scipio’s brains were good for; Scipio had advised him prudently about a sale of beeves, and had introduced a simple contrivance for luring to the store the customers whom Horacles failed to attract. It was merely a free lunch counter,--cheese and crackers every day, and deviled ham on pay-day,--but it put up the daily receipts.

And next, one evening after the mail was in, Scipio, sitting alone in the front of the store, saw the Agent, sitting alone in the back of the store, spring suddenly from his chair, crush a newspaper into his pocket, and stride out to his house. At breakfast the Agent spoke thus to Scipio:--

“I must go to Washington. I shall be back before they let you and your leg run loose. Will you do something for me?”

“Name it. Just name it.”

“Run the store while I’m gone.”

“D’ y’u think I can?”

“I know you can. There’ll be no trouble under you. You understand Indians.”

“But suppose something turns up?”

“I don’t think anything will before I’m back. I’d sooner leave you than Horacles in charge here. Will you do it and take two dollars a day?”

“Do it for nothing. Horacles’ll be compensation enough.”

“No, he won’t.--And see here, he can’t help being himself.”

“Enough said. I’ll strive to pity him. None of us was consulted about being born. And I’ll keep remembering that we was both raised at Gallipol_eece_, Ohio, and that he inherited a bigger outrage of a name than I did. That’s what comes of havin’ a French ancestor.--Only, he used to steal my lunch at school.” And Scipio’s bleached blue eye grew cold. Later injuries one may forgive, but school ones never.

“Didn’t you whale him?” asked the Agent.

“Every time,” said Scipio, “till he told Uncle. Uncle was mayor of Gallipol_eece_ then. So I wasn’t ready to get expelled,--I got ready later; nothin’ is easier than gettin’ expelled,--but I locked up my lunch after that.”

“Uncle’s pretty good to him,” muttered the Agent. “Got him this position.--Well, nobody will expel you here. Look after things. I’ll feel easy to think you’re on hand.”

For that newspaper which the Agent had crushed into his pocket, Scipio searched cracks and corners, but searched in vain. A fear quite unreasoning possessed him for a while: could he but learn what was in the paper that had so stirred his patron, perhaps he could avert whatever the thing was that he felt in the air, threatening some sort of injury. He knew himself resourceful. Dislike of Horacles and Uncle had been enough to start his wish to thwart them--if there was anything to thwart; but now pride and gratitude fired him; he had been trusted; he cared more to be trusted than for anything on earth; he must rise equal to it now! The Agent had evidently taken the paper away with him--and so Scipio absurdly read all the papers. He collected old ones, and laid his hands upon the new the moment they were out of the mail-bag. It may be said that he lived daily in a wrapping of newspapers.

“Why, you have got Horacles laughing at you.”

This the observant Virginian pointed out to Scipio immediately on his arrival from Billings. Scipio turned a sickened look upon his friend. The look was accompanied by a cold wave in his stomach.

“Y’u cert’nly have,” the remorseless friend pursued. “I reckon he must have had a plumb happy time watchin’ y’u still-hunt them newspapers. Now who’d ever have foretold you would afford Horacles enjoyment?”

In a weak voice Scipio essayed to fight it off. “Don’t you try to hoodwink me with any of your frog lies.”

“No need,” said the Virginian. “From the door as I came in I saw him at his desk lookin’ at y’u easy-like. ’Twas a right quaint pictyeh--him smilin’ at the desk, and your nose tight agaynst the Omaha _Bee_. I thought first y’u didn’t have a handkerchief.”

“I wonder if he has me beat?” muttered poor Scipio.

The Virginian now had a word of consolation. “Don’t y’u see,” he again pointed out, “that no newspaper could have helped you? If it could why did he go away to Washington without tellin’ you? He don’t look for you to deal with troubles he don’t mention to you.”

“I wonder if Horacles has me beat?” said Scipio once more.

The Virginian standing by the seated, brooding man clapped him twice on the shoulders, gently. It was enough. They were very fast friends.

“I know,” said Scipio in response. “Thank y’u. But I’d hate for him to have me beat.”