Chapter 2

"I et and et, and then wallered up to the hotel, sweatin' a different kind of fruit juice from every pore. Not wishing to play any favourites, I'd picked up a basket of tomatoes, a gunny-sack of pineapples, and a peck of green plums on the way. Them plums done the business. I'd orter let bad enough alone. They was non-union, and I begin having trouble with my inside help. Morrow turned in a hurry-up call for the Red Cross, two medical colleges, and the Society of Psycolic Research. Between 'em they diagnosed me as containing everything from 'housemaid's knee' to homesickness of the vital organs, but I _know_. I swallered a plum pit, and it sprouted.

"Next day, when I come out of it, Justus had heard from Denver. His wife had been gone a year, destination unknown. Somebody thought she went to California, so, two days later, we registered at the Palace, and the 'Frisco police begin dreaming of five thousand dollar rewards.

"It was no use, though. One day I met Struthers on Market Street, and he was scared stiff to hear that Morrow was in town. It seems he was night editor of one of the big dailies.

"'Do you know where the girl is?' says I.

"'Yes, she's in New York,' he answers, looking queer, so I hurried back to the hotel.

"As I was explaining to Morrow, a woman passed us in the hall with a little boy. In the dimness, the lad mistook Justus.

"'Oh, papa, papa!" he yells, and grabs him by the knees, laughing and kicking.

"'Ah-h!' my pardner sighs, hoarse as a raven, and quicker'n light he snatched the little shaver to him, then seeing his mistake, dropped him rough. His face went grey again, and he got wabbly at the hinges, so I helped him into the parlour. He had that hungry, Yukon look, and breathed like he was wounded.

"'You come with me,' says I, 'and get your mind off of things. The eastern limited don't leave till midnight. Us to the theatre!'

"It was a swell tepee, all right. Variety house, with moving pictures, and actorbats, and two-ton soubrettes, with Barrios diamonds and hand-painted socks.

"First good show I'd seen in three years, and naturally humour broke out all over me. When joy spreads its wings in my vitals, I sound like a boy with a stick running past a picket-fence. Not so Morrow. He slopped over the sides of his seat, like he'd been spilled into the house.

"Right after the sea-lions, the orchestra spieled some teetery music, and out floats a woman, slim and graceful as an antelope. She had a big pay-dump of brown hair, piled up on her hurricane deck, with eyes that snapped and crinkled at the corners. She single-footed in like a derby colt, and the somnambulists in the front row begin to show cause. Something about her startled me, so I nudged the kid, but he was chin-deep in the plush, with his eyes closed. I marked how drawed and haggard he looked; and then, of a sudden he raised half on to his feet. The girl had begun to sing. Her voice was rich and low, and full of deep, still places, like a mountain stream. But Morrow! He sunk his fingers into me, and leaned for'rad, starin' as though Paradise had opened for him, while the sweat on his face shone like diamond chips.

"It was the girl of the locket, all right, on the stage again--in vaudeville.

"Her song bubbled along, rippling over sandy, sunlit gravel bars, and slidin' out through shadowy trout pools beneath the cool, alder thickets, and all the time my pardner sat burning his soul in his eyes, his breath achin' out through his throat. Incidental, his digits was knuckle-deep into the muscular tissue of William P., the gent to the right.

"When she quit, I had to jam him back.

"For an encore she sang a reg'lar American song, with music to it. When she reached the chorus she stopped. Then away up in the balcony sounded the tiny treble of a boy's soprano, sweet as the ring of silver. The audience turned, to a man, and we seen, perched among the newsboys, the littlest, golden-haired youngster, 'bout the size of your thumb, his eyes glued to the face of his mother on the stage below, pourin' out his lark song, serious and frightened. Twice he done it, while by main stren'th I held his father to the enjoyments of a two-dollar orchestra chair.

"'Let us in,' we says, three minutes later, to the stranger at the stage door, but he looked upon us with unwelcome, like the seven-headed hydrant of Holy Writ.

"'It's agin' the rules,' says he. 'You kin wait in the alley with the other Johnnies.'

"I ain't acclimated to the cold disfavour of a stage door, never having soubretted along the bird and bottle route. I was for the layin' on of hands. Moreover, I didn't like the company we was in, 'Johnnies,' by designations of the Irish terrier at the wicket. They smoked ready-made cigarettes, and some of 'em must have measured full eight inches acrost the chest.

"'Let us stroll gently but firmly into, over, and past the remains of this party, to the missus,' says I, but Morrow got seized with the shakes, of a sudden.

"'No, no. We'll wait here.'

"At last she come out, steppin' high. When she moved she rustled and rattled like she wore sandpaper at the ankles.

"Say, she was royal! She carried the youngster in her arms, sound asleep, and it wasn't till she stepped under the gaslight that she seen us.

"'Oh!' she cried, and went white as the lace of her cloak. Then she hugged the kiddie clost to her, standing straight and queenly, her eyes ablaze, her lips moist, and red, and scornful.

"God, she was grand--but him? He looked like a barnacle.

"'Olive!' says he, bull-froggy, and that's all. Just quit like a dog and ate her up by long-distance eyesight. Lord! Nobody would have knowed him for the same man that called the crookedest gamblers on the Yukon, and bolted newspaper men raw. He had ingrowing language. It oozed out through his pores till he dreened like a harvest hand. I'd have had her in my arms in two winks, so that all hell and a policeman couldn't have busted my holt till she'd said she loved me.

"She shrivelled him with a look, the likes of which ain't strayed over the Mason-Dixon line since Lee surrendered, and swept by us, invitin' an' horspitable as an iceberg in a cross sea. Her cab door slammed, and I yanked Morrow out of there, more dead than alive.

"'Let me go home,' says he wearily.

"'You bet!' I snorts. 'It's time you was tucked in. The dew is fallin' and some rude person might accost you. You big slob! There's a man's work to do to-night, and as I don't seem to have no competition in holding the title, I s'pose it's my lead.' I throwed him into a carriage. 'You'd best put on your nighty, and have the maid turn down your light. Sweet dreams, Gussie!' I was plumb sore on him. History don't record no divorce suits in the Stone Age, when a domestic inclined man allus toted a white-oak billy, studded with wire nails, according to the pictures, and didn't scruple to use it, both at home and abroad. Women was hairy, them days, and harder to make love, honour and obey; but principles is undyin'.

"I boarded another cab:

"'Drive me to number ----,' giving him the address I'd heard her use.

"'Who is it,' came her voice when I rang the bell.

"'Messenger boy,' I replies, perjuring my vocal cords.

"When she opened the door, I pushed through and closed it behind me.

"'What does this mean?' she cried. 'Help!'

"'Shut up! It means you're killing the best boy in the world, and I want to know why.'

"'Who are you?'

"'I'm Bill Joyce, your husband's pardner. Old Tarantula Bill, that don't fear no man, woman, or child that roams the forest. I'm here to find what ails you--'

"'Leave this house, sir!'

"'Well, not to any extent. You're a good girl; I knowed it when I first seen your picture. Now, I want you to tell me--'

"'Insolent! Shall I call the police?' Her voice was icy, and she stood as solid as stone.

"'Madam, I'm as gentle as a jellyfish, and peaceful to a fault, but if you raise a row before I finish my talk I'll claim no responsibility over what occurs to the first eight or ten people that intrudes,' and I drawed my skinnin' knife, layin' it on the planner. 'Philanthropy is raging through my innards, and two loving hearts need joining!'

"'I don't love him,' she quotes, like a phonograft, ignoring my cutlery.

"'I'll take exception to that ruling,' and I picks up a picture of Justus she'd dropped as I broke in. She never batted an eye.

"'I nursed that lad through brain fever, when all he could utter was your name.'

"'Has he been sick?' The first sign of spring lit up her peaks.

"'Most dead. Notice of the divorce done it. He's in bad shape yet.' Morrow never had a sick day in his life, but I stomped both feet on the soft pedal, and pulled out the tremulo stop.

"'Oh! Oh!' Her voice was soft, though she still stood like a birch.

"'Little girl,' I laid a hand on her shoulder. 'We both love that boy. Come, now, what is the matter?'

"She flashed up like powder.

"'Matter? I thought he was a gentleman, even though he didn't love me; that he had a shred of honour, at least. But no! He went to Alaska and made a fortune. Then he squandered it, drinking, fighting, gambling, and frittering it away on women. Bah! Lewd creatures of the dance-halls, too.'

"'Hold up! Your dope sheet is way to the bad. There's something wrong with your libretto. Who told you all that?'

"'Never mind. I have proof. Look at these, and you dare to ask me why I left him?'

"She dragged out some pictures and throwed 'em at me.

"'Ah! Why didn't I let the kid kill him?' says I, through my teeth.

"The first was the gambling-room of the Reception. There stood Morrow with the men under foot; there was the bottles and glasses; the chips and cards, and also the distressful spectacle of Tarantula Bill Joyce, a number twelve man, all gleaming teeth, and rolling eyeballs, inserting hisself into a number nine opening, and doing surprising well at it.

"'Look at them. Look at them well,' she gibed.

"The second was the Gold-Belt dance-hall, with the kid cavorting through a drunken orgy of painted ladies, like a bull in a pansy patch. But the other--it took my breath away till I felt I was on smooth ice, with cracks showing. It was the inside of a cabin, after a big 'pot-latch,' displaying a table littered up with fizz bottles and dishes galore. Diamond Tooth Lou stood on a chair, waving kisses and spilling booze from a mug. In the centre stood Morrow with another girl, nestling agin his boosum most horrible lovin'. Gee! It was a home splitter and it left me sparring for wind. The whole thing exhaled an air of debauchery that would make a wooden Indian blush. No one thing in particular; just the general local colour of a thousand-dollar bender.

"'Charming, isn't it?' she sneered.

"'I don't savvy the burro. There's something phony about it. I can explain the other two, but this one--.' Then it come to me in a flash. The man's face was perfect, but he wore knickerbockers! Now, to my personal knowledge, the only being that ever invaded Rampart City in them things was R. Alonzo Struthers.

"'There's secrets of the dark-room that I ain't wise to,' says I, 'but I feel that this is going to be a bad night for the newspaper enterprise of 'Frisco if it don't explain. I'll fetch the man that busted your Larrys and Peanuts.'

"'Our what?' says she.

"'Larrys and Peanuts--that's Roman. The kid told me all about 'em. They're sort of little cheap gods!'

"'Will you ever go?' she snapped. 'I don't need your help. Tell him I hate him!' She stamped her foot, and the iron come into her again till the pride of all Kentucky blazed in her eyes.

"She couldn't understand my explanations no more than I could, so I ducked. As I backed out the door, though, I seen her crumple up and settle all of a heap on the floor. She certainly did hate that man scandalous.

"I'm glad some editors work nights. Struthers wasn't overjoyed at my call, particular, as I strayed in with two janitors dangling from me. They said he was busy and couldn't be interrupted, and they seemed to insist on it.'

"'It's a bully night,' says I, by way of epigram, unhooking the pair of bouncers. "'You wouldn't like me to take you ridin' perhaps?'

"'Are you drunk, or crazy?' says he. 'What do you mean by breaking into my office? I can't talk to you; we're just going to press.'

"'I'd like to stay and watch it,' says I, 'but I've got a news item for you.' At the same time I draws my skinner and lays it on the back of his neck, tempting. Steel, in the lamp-light, is discouraging to some temperaments. One of the body-guards was took with urgent business, and left a streamer of funny noises behind him, while the other gave autumn-leaf imitations in the corner. Struthers looked like a dose of seasickness on a sour stomach.

"Get your hat. Quick!' I jobbed him, gentle and encouraging.

"Age allus commands respect. Therefore the sight of a six-foot, grizzled Klondiker in a wide hat, benevolently prodding the night editor in the short ribs and apple sauce, with eight bright and chilly inches, engendered a certain respect in the reportorial staff.

"'You're going to tell Mrs. Morrow all about the pretty pictures,' I says, like a father.

"'Let me go, damn you!' he frothed, but I wedged him into a corner of the cab and took off his collar--in strips. It interfered with his breathing, as I couldn't get a holt low enough to regulate his respiration. He kicked out two cab windows, but I bumped his head agin the woodwork, by way of repartee. It was a real pleasure, not to say recreation, experimenting with the noises he made. Seldom I get a neck I give a cuss to squeeze. His was number fifteen at first, by the feel; but I reduced it a quarter size at a time.

"When we got there I helped him out, one hand under his chin, the other back of his ears. I done it as much from regard of the neighbours as animosities to him, for it was the still, medium small hours. I tiptoed in with my treatise on the infamies of photography gurgling under my hand, but at the door I stopped. It was ajar; and there, under the light, I spied Morrow. In his arms I got glimpses of black lace and wavy, brown hair, and a white cheek that he was accomplishing wonders with. They wouldn't have heard a man-hole explosion.

"'He's still fitting to be my pardner,' I thinks, and then I heard Struthers's teeth chatter and grind. I looked at him, and the secret of the whole play came to me.

"Never having known the divine passion, it ain't for me to judge, but I tightened on his voice-box and whispered:

"'You've outlived your period of usefulness, Struthers, and it's time to go. Let us part friends, however.' So I bade him Godspeed from the top step.

"Looking back on the evening now, that adieu was my only mistake. I limped for a week--he had a bottle in his hip pocket."

THE MULE DRIVER AND THE GARRULOUS MUTE

Bill had finished panning the concentrates from our last clean-up, and now the silver ball of amalgam sizzled and fried on the shovel over the little chip-fire, while we smoked in the sun before the cabin. Removed from the salivating fumes of the quicksilver, we watched the yellow tint grow and brighten in the heat.

"There's two diseases which the doctors ain't got any license to monkey with," began Bill, chewing out blue smoke from his lungs with each word, "and they're both fevers. After they butt into your system they stick crossways, like a swallered toothpick; there ain't any patent medicine that can bust their holt."

I settled against the door-jamb and nodded.

"I've had them both, acute and continuous, since I was old enough to know my own mind and the taste of tobacco; I hold them mainly responsible for my present condition." He mournfully viewed his fever-ridden frame which sprawled a pitiful six-feet-two from the heels of his gum-boots to the grizzled hair beneath his white Stetson.

"The first and most rabid," he continued, "is horse-racing--and t'other is the mining fever, which last is a heap insidiouser in its action and more lingering in its effect.

"It wasn't long after that deal in the Territory that I felt the symptoms coming on agin, and this time they pinted most emphatic toward prospecting, so me and 'Kink' Martin loaded our kit onto the burros and hit West.

"Kink was a terrible good prospector, though all-fired unlucky and peculiar. Most people called him crazy, 'cause he had fits of goin' for days without a peep.

"Hosstyle and ornery to the whole world; sort of bulging out and exploding with silence, as it were.

"We'd been out in the hills for a week on our first trip before he got one of them death-watch faces on him, and boycotted the English langwidge. I stood for it three days, trying to jolly a grin on to him or rattle a word loose, but he just wouldn't jolt.

"One night we packed into camp tired, hungry, and dying for a good feed.

"I hustled around and produced a supper fit for old Mr. Eppycure. Knowing that Kink had a weakness for strong coffee that was simply a hinge in him, I pounded up about a quart of coffee beans in the corner of a blanket and boiled out a South American liquid that was nothing but the real Arbuckle mud.

"This wasn't no chafing-dish party either, because the wood was wet and the smoke chased me round the fire. Then it blazed up in spurts and fired the bacon-grease, so that when I grabbed the skillet the handle sizzled the life all out of my callouses. I kicked the fire down to a nice bed of coals and then the coffee-pot upset and put it out. Ashes got into the bacon, and--Oh! you know how joyful it is to cook on a green fire when you're dead tired and your hoodoo's on vicious.

"When the 'scoffings' were finally ready, I wasn't in what you might exactly call a mollyfying and tactful mood nor exuding genialness and enthusiasms anyways noticeable."

"I herded the best in camp towards him, watching for a benevolent symptom, but he just dogged it in silence and never changed a hair. That was the limit, so I inquired sort of ominous and gentle, 'Is that coffee strong enough for ye, Mr. Martin?'

"He give a little impecunious grunt, implying, 'Oh! it'll do,' and with that I seen little green specks begin to buck and wing in front of my eyes; reaching back of me, I grabbed the Winchester and throwed it down on him.

"'Now, you laugh, darn you,' I says, 'in a hurry. Just turn it out gleeful and infractious.'

"He stared into the nozzle of that Krupp for a minute, then swallered twice to tune up his reeds, and says, friendly and perlite, but serious and wheezy:

"'Why, what in hell ails you, William?'

"'Laugh, you old dong-beater,' I yells, rising gradually to the occasion, 'or I'll bust your cupola like a blue-rock.'

"'I've got to have merriment,' I says. 'I pine for warmth and genial smiles, and you're due to furnish the sunshine. You emit a few shreds of mirth with expedition or the upper end of your spinal-cord is going to catch cold.'

"Say! his jaws squeaked like a screen door when he loosened, but he belched up a beauty, sort of stagy and artificial it was, but a great help. After that we got to know each other a heap better. Yes, sir; soon after that we got real intimate. He knocked the gun out of my hands, and we began to arbitrate. We plumb ruined that spot for a camping place; rooted it up in furrows, and tramped each other's stummicks out of shape. We finally reached an amicable settlement by me getting him agin a log where I could brand him with the coffee-pot.

"Right there we drawed up a protoplasm, by the terms of which he was to laugh anyways twice at meal-times.

"He told me that he reckoned he was locoed, and always had been since a youngster, when the Injuns run in on them down at Frisbee, the time of the big 'killing.' Kink saw his mother and father both murdered, and other things, too, which was impressive, but not agreeable for a growing child. He had formed a sort of antipathy for Injuns at that time, which he confessed he hadn't rightly been able to overcome.

"Now, he allus found himself planning how to hand Mr. Lo the double cross and avoid complications.

"We worked down into South Western Arizony to a spot about thirty-five miles back of Fort Walker and struck a prospect. Sort of a teaser it was, but worth working on. We'd just got nicely started when Kink comes into camp one day after taking a passiar around the butte for game, and says:

"'The queerest thing happened to me just now, Kid.'

"'Well, scream it at me,' I says, sort of smelling trouble in the air.

"'Oh! It wasn't much,' says he. 'I was just working down the big canyon over there after a deer when I seen two feather-dusters coming up the trail. I hid behind a rock, watching 'em go past, and I'm durned if my gun didn't go off accidental and plumb ruin one of 'em. Then I looks carefuller and seen it wasn't no feather-duster at all--nothing but an Injun.'

"'What about the other one?'

"'That's the strangest part,' says Kink. 'Pretty soon the other one turns and hits the back-trail like he'd forgot something; then I seen him drop off his horse, too, sudden and all togetherish. I'm awful careless with this here gun,' he says. I hate to see a man laugh from his tonsils forrard, the way he did. It ain't humorous.

"'See here,' I says, 'I ain't the kind that finds fault with my pardner, nor saying this to be captious and critical of your play; but don't you know them Cochises ain't on the warpath? Them Injuns has been on their reservation for five years, peaceable, domesticated, and eating from the hand. This means trouble."

"'My old man didn't have no war paint on him one day back at Frisbee,' whispers Kink, and his voice sounded puckered up and dried, 'and my mother wasn't so darned quarrelsome, either.'

"Then I says, 'Well! them bodies has got to be hid, or we'll have the tribe and the bluebellies from the fort a scouring these hills till a red-bug couldn't hide.'

"'To hell with 'em,' says Kink. 'I've done all I'm going to for 'em. Let the coyotes finish the job.'

"'No, siree,' I replies. 'I don't blame you for having a prejudice agin savages, but _my_ parents is still robust and husky, and I have an idea that they'd rather see me back on the ranch than glaring through the bars for life. I'm going over to bury the meat.'

"Off I went, but when I slid down the gulch, I only found one body. T'other had disappeared. You can guess how much time I lost getting back to camp.

"'Kink,' I says, 'we're a straddle of the raggedest proposition in this country. One of your dusters at this moment is jamming his cayuse through the horizon between here and the post. Pretty soon things is going to bust loose. 'Bout to-morrer evening we'll be eating hog-bosom on Uncle Sam.'

"'Well! Well!' says Kink, 'ain't that a pity. Next time I'll conquer my natural shyness and hold a post-mortem with a rock.'

"'There won't be no next time, I reckon,' I says, ''cause we can't make it over into Mexico without being caught up. They'll nail us sure, seeing as we're the only white men for twenty-five miles around.'

"'I'd rather put up a good run than a bad stand, anyhow,' says he, 'and I allows, furthermore, there's going to be some hard trails to foller and a tolable disagreeable fight before I pleads 'not guilty' to the Colonel. We'll both duck over into the Santa--'

"'Now, don't tell me what route you're going,' I interrupts,' 'cause I believe I'll stay and bluff it through, rather than sneak for it, though neither proposition don't appeal to me. I may get raised out before the draw, but the percentage is just as strong agin your game as mine.'

"'Boy, if I was backing your system,' says Kink, 'I'd shore copper this move and play her to lose. You come on with me, and we'll make it through--mebbe.'

"'No,' I says; 'here I sticks.'