Part 3

It was the doctor who now furnished information that would have relieved any reasonable man from a sense of failure. The doctor was excited because his view of our faith in Indian matters was again justified by a further instance.

“Oh, yes!” he said. “Just give those people at Washington time, and every step they’ve taken from the start will be in the mud puddle of a lie. Uncle’s in the game all right. He’s been meditating how to serve his country and increase his income. There’s a railroad at the big end of his notion, but the entering wedge seems only to be a new store down in the corner of this reservation. You see, it has been long settled by the sacredest compacts that two stores shall be enough here--the Post-trader’s and the Agent’s--but the dear Indians need a third, Uncle says. He has told the Senate and the Interior Department and the White House that a lot of them have to travel too far for supplies. So now Washington is sure the Indians need a third store. The Post-trader and the Agent are stopping at the Post to-night. They got East too late to hold up the job. If Horacles opens that new store, the Agent might just as well shut up his own.”

“Ain’t y’u going to look at my leg?” was all the reply that Scipio made.

The doctor laughed. It was to examine the leg that he had come, and he had forgotten all about it. “You can forget all about it, too,” he told Scipio when he had finished. “Go back to Sunk Creek when you like. Go back to full work next week, say. Your wicked body is sound again. A better man would unquestionably have died.”

But the cheery doctor could not cheer the unreasonable Scipio. In the morning the complacent little Horacles made known to all the world his perfected arrangements. Directly the Agent had safely turned his back and gone to Washington, his disloyal clerk had become doubly busy. He had at once perceived that this was a comfortable time for him to hurry his new rival store into readiness and be securely established behind its counter before his betrayed employer should return. In this last he might not quite succeed; the Agent had come back a day or two sooner than Horacles had calculated, but it was a trifle; after all, he had carried through the small part of his uncle’s scheme which he had been sent here to do. Inside that building in the far corner of the reservation, once rumored to be connected with the Quartermaster’s department, he would now sell luxuries and necessities to the Indians at a price cheaper than his employer’s, and his employer’s store would henceforth be empty of customers. Perhaps the sweetest moment that Horacles had known for many weeks was when he said to Scipio:--

“I’m writing Uncle about it to-day.”

That this should have gone on under his nose while he sat searching the papers was to Scipio utterly unbearable. His mind was in a turmoil, feeling about helplessly but furiously for vengeance; and the Virginian’s sane question--What could he have done to stop it if he had discovered it?--comforted him not at all. They were outside the store, sitting under a tree, waiting for the returning Agent to appear. But he did not come, and the suspense added to Scipio’s wretchedness.

“He put me in charge,” he kept repeating.

“The driver ain’t responsible when a stage is held up,” reasoned the Virginian.

Scipio hardly heard him. “He put me in charge,” he said. Then he worked round to Horacles again. “He ain’t got strength. He ain’t got beauty. He ain’t got riches. He ain’t got brains. He’s just got sense enough for parlor conjuring tricks--not good ones, either. And yet he has me beat.”

“He’s got an uncle in the Senate,” said the Virginian.

The disconsolate Scipio took a pull at his cigar,--he had taken one between every sentence. “Damn his false teeth.”

The Virginian looked grave. “Don’t be hasty. Maybe the day will come when you and me’ll need ’em to chew our tenderloin.”

“We’ll be old. Horacles is twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five is certainly young to commence eatin’ by machinery,” admitted the Virginian.

“And he’s proud of ’em,” whined Scipio. “Proud! Opens his bone box and sticks ’em out at y’u on the end of his tongue.”

“I hate an immodest man,” said the Virginian.

“Why, he hadn’t any better sense than to do it over to the officers’ club right before the ladies and everybody the other night. The K. O.’s wife said it gave her the creeps--and she don’t look sensitive.”

“Well,” said the Virginian, “if I weighed three hundred pounds I’d be turrable sensitive.”

“She had to leave,” pursued Scipio. “Had to take her little girl away from the show. Them teeth comin’ out of Horacles’es mouth the way they did sent the child into hysterics. Y’u could hear her screechin’ half way down the line.”

The Virginian looked at his watch. “I wonder if that Agent is coming here at all to-day?”

Scipio’s worried face darkened again. “What can I do? What _can_ I?” he demanded. And he rose and limped up and down where the ponies were tied in front of the store. The fickle Indians would soon be tying these ponies in front of the rival store. “I received this business in good shape,” continued Scipio, “and I’ll hand it back in bad.”

Horacles looked out of the door. He wore his hat tilted to make him look like the dare-devil that he was not; dare-devils seldom have soft pink hands, red eyelids, and a fluffy mustache. He smiled at Scipio, and Scipio smiled at him, sweetly and dangerously.

“Would you mind keeping store while I’m off?” inquired Horacles.

“Sure not!” cried Scipio, with heartiness. “Goin’ to have your grand opening this afternoon?”

“Well, I _was_,” Horacles replied, enjoying himself every moment. “But Mr. Forsythe” (this was the Agent) “can’t get over from the Post in time to be present this afternoon. It’s very kind of him to want to be present when I start my new enterprise, and I appreciate it, boys, I can tell you. So I sent him word I wouldn’t think of opening without him, and it’s to be to-morrow morning.”

While Horacles was speaking thus, the Indians had gathered about to listen. It was plain that they understood that this was a white man’s war; their great, grave, watching faces showed it. Young squaws, half-hooded in their shawls, looked on with bright eyes; a boy who had been sitting out on the steps playing a pipe, stopped his music, and came in; the aged Pounded Meat, wrapped in scarlet and shrunk with years to the appearance of a dried apple, watched with eyes that still had in them the primal fire of life; tall in a corner stood the silver-haired High Bear, watching too. Did they understand the white man’s war lying behind the complacent smile of Horacles and the dangerous smile of the lounging Scipio? The red man is grave when war is in question; all the Indians were perfectly still.

“Wish you boys could be there to give me a good send-off,” continued Horacles.

The pipe-playing Indian boy must have caught some flash of something beneath Scipio’s smile, for his eye went to Scipio’s pistol--but it returned to Scipio’s face.

Horacles spoke on. “Fine line of fresh Eastern goods, dry goods, candies, and--hee-hee!--free lunch. Mr. Le Moyne, I want to thank you publicly for that idea.”

“Y’u’re welcome to it. Guess I’ll hardly be over to-morrow, though. With such a competitor as you, I expect I’ll have to stay with my job and hustle.”

“Ah, well,” simpered Horacles, “I couldn’t have done it by myself. My Uncle--say, boys!” (Horacles in the elation of victory now melted to pure good-will) “do come see me to-morrow. It’s all business, this, you know. There’s no hard feelings?”

The pipe boy couldn’t help looking at the pistol again.

“Not a feeling!” cried Scipio. And he clapped Horacles between his little round shoulders. With head on one side, he looked down along his lengthy, jocular nose at Horacles for a moment. Then his eye shone upon the company like the edge of a knife--and they laughed at him because he was laughing so contagiously at them; a soft laugh, like the fall of moccasins. Often the Indian will join, like a child, in mirth which he does not comprehend. High Bear’s smile shone from his corner at young Scipio, whom he fancied so much that he had offered him his fourteenth daughter to wed as soon as his leg should be well. But Scipio had sorrowfully explained to the father that he was already married--which was true, but which I fear would in former days have proved no impediment to him. Perhaps some day I may tell you of the early marriages of Scipio as Scipio in hospital narrated them to me.

“Hey!” said High Bear now, to Scipio. “New store. Pretty good. Heap cheap.”

“Yes, High Bear. Heap cheap. You savvy why?”

With a long arm and an outstretched finger, Scipio suddenly pointed to Horacles. At this the Virginian’s hitherto unchanging face wakened to curiosity and attention. Scipio was now impressively and mysteriously nodding at the silver-haired chief in his bright, green blanket, and his long, fringed, yellow, soft buckskins.

“No savvy,” said High Bear, after a pause, with a tinge of caution. He had followed Scipio’s pointing finger to where Horacles was happily practising a trick with a glass and a silver dollar behind the counter.

“Heap cheap,” repeated Scipio, “because” (here he leaned close to High Bear and whispered) “because his uncle medicine-man. He big medicine-man, too.”

High Bear’s eyes rested for a moment on Horacles. Then he shook his head. “Ah, nah,” he grunted. “He not medicine-man. He fall off horse. He no catch horse. My little girl catch him. Ah, nah!” High Bear laughed profusely at “Sippo’s” joke. “Sippo” was the Indians’ English name for their vivacious friend. In their own language they called him something complimentary in several syllables, but it was altogether too intimate and too plain-spoken for me to repeat aloud. Into his whisper Scipio now put more electricity. “He’s big medicine-man,” he hissed again, and he drilled his bleached blue eye into the brown one of the savage. “See him now!” He stretched out a vibrating finger.

It was a pack of cards that Horacles was lightly manipulating. He fluttered it open in the air and fluttered it shut again, drawing it out like a concertina and pushing it flat like an opera hat--nor did a card fall to the ground.

High Bear watched it hard; but soon High Bear laughed. “He pretty good,” he declared. “All same tin-horn monte-man. I see one Miles City.”

“Maybe monte-man medicine-man too,” suggested Scipio.

“Ah, nah!” said High Bear. Yet nevertheless Scipio saw him shoot one or two more doubtful glances at Horacles as that happy clerk continued his activities.

Horacles had an audience (which he liked), and he held his audience--and who could help liking that? The bucks and squaws watched him, sometimes nudging one another, and they smiled and grunted their satisfaction at his news. Cheaper prices was something which their primitive minds could take in as well as any of us.

“Why you not sell cheap like him?” they asked their friend “Sippo.” “We stay then. Not go his store.” This was the burden of their chorus, soft, laughing, a little mocking, floating among them like a breeze, voice after voice:--

“We like buy everything you, we like buy everything cheap.”

“You make cheap, we buy heap shirts.”

“Buy heap tobacco.”

“Heap cartridge.”

“You not sell cheap, we go.”

“Ah!”

The chorus laughed like pleased children.

Scipio looked at them solemnly. He explained how much he would like to sell cheap, if only he were a medicine-man like Horacles.

“You medicine-man?” they asked the assistant clerk.

“Yes,” said Horacles, pleased. “I big medicine-man.”

“Ah, nah!” The soft, mocking words ran among them like the flight of a moth.

Soon with their hoods over their heads they began to go home on their ponies, blanketed, feathered, many-colored, moving and dispersing wide across the sage-brush to their far-scattered tepees.

High Bear lingered last. For a long while he had been standing silent and motionless. When the chorus spoke he had not; when the chorus laughed he had not. Now his head moved; he looked about him and saw that for a moment he was alone in a way. He saw the Virginian reading a newspaper, and his friend “Sippo” bending down and attending to his leg. Horacles had gone into an inner room. Left on the counter lay the pack of cards. High Bear went quickly to the cards, touched them, lifted them, set them down, and looked about him again. But the Virginian was

reading still, and Scipio was still bent down, having some trouble with his boot. High Bear looked at the cards, shook his head sceptically, laughed a little, grunted once, and went out where his pony was tied. As he was throwing his soft buckskin leg over the saddle, there was Scipio’s head thrust out of the door and nodding strangely at him.

“Good night, High Bear. He big medicine-man.”

High Bear gave a quick slash to his pony, and galloped away into the dusk.

Then Scipio limped back into the store, sank into the first chair he came to, and doubled over. The Virginian looked up from his paper at this mirth, scowled, and turned back to his reading. If he was to be “left out” of the joke, he would make it plain that he was not in the least interested in it.

Scipio now sat up straight, bursting to share what was in his mind; but he instantly perceived how it was with the Virginian. At this he redoubled his silent symptoms of delight. In a moment Horacles had come back from the inner room with his hair wet with ornamental brushing.

“Well, Horacles,” began Scipio in the voice of a purring cat, “I expect y’u have me beat.”

The flattered clerk could only nod and show his bright, false teeth.

“Y’u have me beat,” repeated Scipio. “Y’u have for a fact.”

“Not you, Mr. Le Moyne. It’s not you I’m making war on. I do hope there’s no hard feelings--”

“Not a feelin’, Horacles! How can y’u entertain such an idea?” Scipio shook him by the hand and smiled like an angel at him--a fallen angel. “What’s the use of me keepin’ this store open to-morrow? Nobody’ll be here to spend a cent. Guess I’ll shut up, Horacles, and come watch the Injuns all shoppin’ like Christmas over to your place.”

The Virginian sustained his indifference, and added to Scipio’s pleasure. But during breakfast the Virginian broke down.

“Reckon you’re ready to start to-day?” he said.

“Start? Where for?”

“Sunk Creek, y’u fool! Where else?”

“I’m beyond y’u! I’m sure beyond y’u for once!” screeched Scipio, beating his crutch on the floor.

“Oh, eat your grub, y’u fool.”

“I’d have told y’u last night,” said Scipio, remorselessly, “only y’u were so awful anxious not to _be_ told.”

As the Virginian drove him across the sage-brush, not to Sunk Creek, but to the new store, the suspense was once more too much for the Southerner’s curiosity. He pulled up the horses as the inspiration struck him.

“You’re going to tell the Indians you’ll under-sell him!” he declared, over-hastily.

“Oh, drive on, y’u fool,” said Scipio.

The baffled Virginian grinned. “I’ll throw you out,” he said, “and break all your laigs and bones and things fresh.”

“I wish Uncle was going to be there,” said Scipio.

Nearly everybody else was there: the Agent, bearing his ill fortune like a philosopher; some officers from the Post, and the doctor; some enlisted men, blue-legged with yellow stripes; civilians male and female, honorable and shady; and then the Indians. Wagons were drawn up, ponies stood about, the littered plain was populous. Horacles moved behind the counter, busy and happy; his little mustache was combed, his ornamental hair was damp. He smiled and talked, and handled and displayed his abundance: the bright calicoes, the shining knives, the clean six-shooters and rifles, the bridles, the fishing-tackle, the gum-drops and chocolates--all his plenty and its cheapness.

Squaws and bucks young and old thronged his establishment, their soft footfalls and voices made a gentle continuous sound, while their green and yellow blankets bent and stood straight as they inspected and purchased. High Bear held an earthen crock with a luxury in it--a dozen of fresh eggs. “Hey!” he said when he saw his friend “Sippo” enter. “Heap cheap.” And he showed the eggs to Scipio. He cherished the crock with one hand and arm while with the other hand he helped himself to the free lunch.

To Scipio Horacles “extended” a special welcome; he made it ostentatious in order that all the world might know how perfectly absent “hard feelings” were. And Scipio on his side wore openly the radiance of brotherhood and well-wishing. He went about admiring everything, exclaiming now and then over the excellence of the goods, or the cheapness of their price. His presence was soon no longer a cause of curiosity, and they forgot to watch him--all of them except the Virginian. The hours passed on, the little fires, where various noon meals were cooked, burnt out, satisfied individuals began to depart after an entertaining day, the Agent himself was sauntering toward his horse.

“What’s your hurry?” said Scipio.

“Well, the show is over,” said the Agent.

“Oh, no, it ain’t. Horacles is goin’ to entertain us a whole lot.”

“Better stay,” said the Virginian.

The Agent looked from one to the other. Then he spoke anxiously. “I don’t want anything done to Horacles.”

“Nothing will be done,” stated Scipio.

The Agent stayed. The magnetic current of expectancy passed, none could say how, through the assembled people. No one departed after this, and the mere loitering of spectators turned to waiting. Particularly expectant was the Virginian, and this he betrayed by mechanically droning in his strongest accent a little song that bore no reference to the present occasion:--

“Of all my fatheh’s familee I love myself the baist, And if Gawd will just look afteh me The devil may take the raist.”

The sun grew lower. The world outside was still full of light, but dimness had begun its subtle pervasion of the store. Horacles thanked the Indians and every one for their generous patronage on this his opening day, and intimated that it was time to close. Scipio rushed up and whispered to him:--

“My goodness, Horacles! You ain’t going to send your friends home like that?”

Horacles was taken aback. “Why,” he stammered, “what’s wrong?”

“Where’s your vanishing handkerchief, Horacles? Get it out and entertain ’em some. Show you’re grateful. Where’s that trick dollar? Get ’em quick.--I tell you,” he declaimed aloud to the Indians, “he big medicine-man. Make come. Make go. You no see. Nobody see. Make jack-rabbit in hat--”

“I couldn’t to-night,” simpered Horacles. “Needs preparation, you know.” And he winked at Scipio.

Scipio struggled upon the counter, and stood up above their heads to finish his speech. “No jack-rabbit this time,” he said.

“Ah, nah!” laughed the Indians. “No catch um.”

“Yes, catch um any time. Catch anything. Make anything. Make all this store”--Scipio moved his arms about--“that’s how make heap cheap. See that!” He stopped dramatically, and clasped his hands together. Horacles tossed a handkerchief in the air, caught it, shut his hand upon it with a kneading motion, and opened the hand empty. “His fingers swallow it, all same mouth!” shouted Scipio. “He big medicine-man. You see. Now other hand spit out.” But Horacles varied the trick. Success and the staring crowd elated him; he was going to do his best. He opened both hands empty, felt about him in the air, clutched space suddenly, and drew two silver dollars from it. Then he threw them back into space, again felt about for them in the air, made a dive at High Bear’s eggs, and brought handkerchief and dollars out of them.

“Ho!” went High Bear, catching his breath. He backed away from the reach of Horacles. He peered down into the crock among his eggs. Horacles whispered to Scipio:--

“Keep talking till I’m ready.”

“Oh, I’ll talk. Go get ready quick,--High Bear, what I tell you?” But High Bear’s eye was now fixedly watching the door through which Horacles had withdrawn; he did not listen as Scipio proceeded. “What I tell everybody? He do handkerchief. He do dollar. He do heap more. See me. I no can do like him. I not medicine-man. I throw handkerchief and dollar in the air, look! See! they tumble on floor no good,--thank you, my kind noble friend from Virginia, you pick my fool dollar and my fool handkerchief up for me, _muy pronto_. Oh, thank you, black-haired, green-eyed son of Dixie, you have the manners of a queen, but I no medicine-man, I shall never turn a skunk into a watermelon, I innocent, I young, I helpless babe, I suck bottle when I can get it. Fire and water will not obey me. Old man Makes-the-Thunder does not know my name and address. He spit on me Wednesday night last, and there are no dollars in this man’s hair.” (The Virginian winced beneath Scipio’s vicious snatch at his scalp, and the Agent and the doctor retired to a dark corner and laid their heads in each other’s waistcoats.) “Ha! he comes! Big medicine-man comes. See him, High Bear! His father, his mother, his aunts all twins, he ninth dog-pup in three sets of triplets, and the great white Ram-of-the-Mountains fed him on punkin-seed.--Sick ’em, Horacles.”

The burning eye of High Bear now blazed with distended fascination, riveted upon Horacles, whom it never left. Darkness was gathering in the store.

“Hand all same foot,” shouted Scipio, with gestures, “mouth all same hand. Can eat fire. Can throw ear mile off and listen you talk.” Here Horacles removed a dollar from the hair of High Bear’s fourteenth daughter, threw it into one boot, and brought it out of the other. The daughter screamed and burrowed behind her sire. All the Indians had drawn close together, away from the counter, while Scipio on top of the counter talked high and low, and made gestures without ceasing. “Hand all same mouth. Foot all same head. Take off head, throw it out window, it jump in door. See him, see big medicine-man!” And Scipio gave a great shriek.

A gasp went among the Indians; red fire was blowing from the jaws of Horacles. It ceased, and after it came slowly, horribly, a long red tongue, and riding on the tongue’s end glittered a row of teeth. There was a crash upon the floor. It was High Bear’s crock. The old chief was gone. Out of the door he flew, his blanket over his face, and up on his horse he sprang, wildly beating the animal. Squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry, rushing over the ground, leaping on their ponies, melting away into the dusk. In a moment no sign of them was left but the broken eggs, oozing about on the deserted floor.

The white men there stood tearful, dazed, and weak with laughter.

“‘Happy-Teeth’ should be his name,” said the Virginian. “It sounds Injun.” And Happy-Teeth it was. But Horacles did not remain long in the neighborhood after he realized what he had done; for never again did an Indian enter, or even come near, that den of flames and magic. They would not even ride past it; they circled it widely. The idle merchandise that filled it was at last bought by the Agent at a reduction.

“Well,” said Scipio bashfully to the Agent, “I’d have sure hated to hand y’u back a ruined business. But he’ll never understand Injuns.”

II

SPIT-CAT CREEK