Chapter 8

I said nothing until we slid off beneath the first tree. Then I walked up to the three leaders and says, whilst the rest gathered around and listened:

"Has this critter been tried?"

"Why, no!" says one man. "We caught him on the horse."

"Yes, yes, yes," says I, raising my voice. "That's all right. But lend me your ears till I bray a thought or two. I'm that kind of a man that wouldn't string the meanest mistake the devil ever made without givin' him a trial."

"You give me a lot of trial this morning," says Long Jim.

I wasn't bringing up any argument; I was pulling them along with a mother's kind but firm hand, so I says to him: "Ah! I wasn't talking about _gentlemen_; I'd shoot a gentleman if he did or didn't look cross-eyed at me, just as I happened to feel. I'm talking about a man that's suspected of dirty work."

Now, when a man that's held you stiff at the end of a gun calls you a gentleman, you don't get very mad--just please remember my audience, when I tell you what I talked. Boys is boys, at any age; otherwise there wouldn't be no Knights Templars with tin swords nor a good many other things. I spoke grand, but they had it chalked down in their little books I was ready and willing to act grander. Had I struck any one or all of 'em, on the range, thinking of nothing special, and Fourth-o'-July'd to 'em like that, they would have give me the hee-hee. Howsomever, they was at present engaged in tryin' to hang a man; a job one-half of which they didn't like, and would dispose of the balance cheap, for cash. And I'd run over their little attempt to be pompous like a 'Gul engine. Position is everything, you bet your neck.

So up speaks Mr. Long Jim, that I've called a gentleman, loud and clear.

"You're _right_," says he, and bangs his fist into his other hand. "You're dead right, old horse," says he; "and we'll try this son-of-a-gun now and here."

"Sure!" says everybody, which didn't surprise me so much. I told you I was used to handling sheep.

After a little talk with his friend, Long Jim comes up and says: "Will you preside, Colonel?"

"I have a friend here who is a lawyer," I suggested, waving my hand toward Burton.

The speaker rubbed his chin.

"I guess this isn't a case for a lawyer," he says. "The gentleman might give us a point or two, but we'd prefer you took charge. You see," he says to Burton and me earnestly; "there's been a heap of skul-duggery around here lately--horse-stealin', maimin' cattle, and the like--till we're dead sick of it. This bucco made the most bare-faced try you ever heard of--'twas like stealin' the whiskers right off your face--and us fellers in my neighbourhood, old man and all, have saw fit to copper the deal from the soda-card. We ain't for doin' this man; we're for breaking up the play--'tain't a case of law; it's a case of livin'--so if you'll oblige, Colonel?"

"All right, sir; I'll do the best I can. Who accuses this man?"

"I," says a straightforward-looking young man of about twenty odd.

"Step up, please, and tell us."

"Why, it's like this," he says. "I'm ranchin' lone-hand down on Badger. There's the wife and two kiddies, and a job for a circus-man to make both ends meet--piecin' out a few cattle and a dozen hogs with a garden patch. All I got between me and a show-down is my team. Well, this feller comes along, played out, and asks for a drink of water. My wife's laid up--too darn much hard work for any woman--and I've got Jerry saddled by the fence, to ride for the doctor. Other horse is snake bit and weavin' in the stable with a leg like a barrel. I goes in to get the water, and when I comes out there's this sucker dustin' off with the horse. Then I run over to C-bar-nine and routs the boys out. We took out after him, corrallin' him in a draw near the Grindstones. That's about all."

"Make any fight?" I asked.

"Naw!" says the man, disgusted. "I was wanting to put my hands on him, but he comes in like a sick cow--seemed foolish."

"How foolish?"

"Oh, just stared at us. We called to him to halt, and he stopped, kind of grinned at us and says: 'Hello!' I'd a 'hello'd' him if the boys hadn't stopped me."

"Prisoner," I says, "this looks bad. I don't know where you come from, but you must have intelligence enough to see that this man's wife's life might have depended on that horse. You know we're straggled so out here that a horse means something more than so much a head. Why did you do this? Your actions don't seem to hang together."

The poor cuss changed face for the first time. He swallered hard and turned to his accuser. "Hope your lady didn't come to no harm?" says he.

"Why, no thankee; she didn't," says the other lad. "'Bliged to you for inquirin'."

There was a stir in the rest of the crowd. The prisoner had done good work for himself without knowing it. That question of his proved what I thought--he was no bad man. Something peculiar in the case. Swinging an eye on the crowd, I saw I could act. I went forward and laid my hand on his shoulder, speaking kind and easy.

"Here," says I, "you've done a fool trick, and riled the boys considerable. You'd been mad, too, if somebody'd made you ride all day. But now you tell us just what happened. If it was intended to be comical, we'll kick your pants into one long ache, and let it go at that; if it was anything else, spit it out."

He stood there, fumblin' with his hands, runnin' the back of one over his forehead once in a while, tryin' to talk, but unable. You could see it stick in his throat.

"Take time," says I; "there's lots of it both sides of us."

Then he braced.

"Boys," says he, "I got a wife an' two little roosters too. I feel sorry for the trouble I made that gentleman. I got split like this. Come to this town with seven hundred dollars, to make a start. Five hundred of that's my money, and two hundred m' wife saved up--and she was that proud and trustin' in me!" He stopped for a full minute, workin' his teeth together. "Well, I ain't much. I took to boozin' and tryin' to put the faro games out of business. Well, I went shy--quick. The five hundred was all right," he says, kind of defiant. "Man's got a right to do what he pleases with his own money; but . . . but . . . well, the girl worked hard for that little old two hundred. God Almighty! I was drunk! You don't s'pose I'd do such a thing sober?" turning to us, savage. "That ain't no excuse, howsomever," he goes on, droppin' his crop. "Comes to the point when there's nothin' left, and then I get a letter." He begun taking things out of his pockets, dropping 'em from his big tremblin' hands. "It's somewheres here--ain't that it? My eyes is no good."

He hands me a letter, addressed to Martin Hazel, in a woman's writing. "Well, that druv me crazy. So help me God, sir, I ain't pleadin' for no mercy--I'll take my medicine--but I didn't know no more what I was doin' when I jumped your horse than nothin'. I only wanted to get away from everybody. I was crazy. You read 'em that letter," says he, taking hold of me. "See if it wouldn't drive any man crazy."

Now, there's no good repeatin' the letter. It wasn't written for an audience, and the spellin' was accordin' to the lady's own views, but it was all about how happy they was going to be when Martin had things fixed up, and how funny the little boy was, and just like his pa, and, oh, couldn't he fix it so's they'd be with him soon, for her heart was near broke with waiting.

There was sand in my eyes before I'd read long, and that crowd of fierce lynchers was lookin' industriously upon the ground. One man chawed away on his baccy, like there'd be an earthquake if he stopped, and another lad, with a match in his mouth, scratched a cigarette on his leg, shieldin' it careful with his hands, and your Uncle Willy tried to fill a straight face on a four-card draw, and to talk in a tone of voice I wasn't ashamed of hearing.

During the last part of the letter the prisoner stood thoughtful, with the back of his hand to his mouth; you'd never known he was settin' his teeth into it, if it wasn't for the blood dropping from his thumb.

"The prisoner will retire," says I, with the remnants of my self-respect, "while the court passes sentence. Go sit down under the tree yonder." He shambled off. Soon's he was out of hearin' the feller that lost the horse jumps up into the air with an oath like a streak of lightning. "Here's a fine play we come near makin' by bein' so sudden," says he. "I wouldn't have that man's death on my soul for the whole territory--think of that poor woman! And he's paid the freight. Colonel, I want to thank you for drawin' things down."

So he come up and shook me by the hand, and up files the rest and does the same thing.

"Now, friends," says I, "hold on. Court hasn't passed sentence yet. I pass that this crowd put up to the tune of what it can spare to buy"--consulting the letter--"to buy Peggy a ticket West, kids included, exceptin' only the gentleman that lost the horse."

"Why, we ain't broke altogether on Badger!" says he. "You ain't goin' to bar me, boys?"

"Not on your life, if that's the way you feel," says I. I don't know what amount that crowd could spare, but I'll bet high on one thing. If you'd strong-armed the gang, you wouldn't start a bank with the proceeds after the collection was taken. There wasn't a nickel in the outfit. "I'm glad I didn't bring any more with me," says Burton, strapping himself.

Of course, I was appointed to break the news to the prisoner. He busted then; put his head on his arm and cried like a baby. But he braced quick and stepped up to the lads. "There ain't nothing I can say except thank you," says he. "I want to get each man's name so's I can pay him back. Now, if anybody here knows of a job of work I can get--well, you know what it would mean to me. Sporty life is done for me, friends; I'll work hard for any man that'll take me."

"I got you," I says. "Come along with me and I'll explain."

Then we said by-by to the boys. I played the grand with 'em still, and I'll just tell you why, me and you bein' such old friends. Although it may sound queer, coming from my mouth, yet it was because I thought I might give them boys the proper steer, sometime. You can't talk Sunday-school to young fellers like that! They don't pay no attention to what a gent in black clothes and a choker tells 'em; but suppose Chantay Seeche Red--rippin', roarin' Red Saunders, that fears the face of no man, nor the hoof of no jackass--lays his hand on a boy's shoulder, and says, "Son, I wouldn't twist it just like that." Is he goin' to get listened to? I reckon yes. So I played straight for their young imaginations, and I had 'em cinched to the last hole. And after the last one had pulled my flipper, and hoped he'd meet me soon again, me and Burton and the new hired man took out after sheep. "But," says Burton, still sort of dazed, "God only knows what we'll meet before we find them. Even sheep aren't so peaceful in this country."

He was right, too. However, when I start for sheep, I get 'em. You can see by the deep-laid plan I set to catch help for the ranch, how there's nothing for fortune to do but lay down and holler when I make up my mind.

Agamemnon and the Fall of Troy

Me and Aggy were snuggled up against the sandpaper edge as cute as anything, said Hy Smith. Even our consciences had gone back on us--they didn't have nothing to work on. The town looked like it had been deserted and then found by a party of citizens worse off than the first.

The only respectable thing in the hull darn shack-heap was Aggy's black long-tailed coat and black-brimmed hat. And they made the rest of the place look so miserable that Ag wouldn't have wore 'em if he'd had another hat and a shirt. We was a pair of twin twisters that had busted our proud and graceful forms on a scrap-iron heap.

I s'pose it was the turible depression of bein' stuck in such a hole, or some sudden weakenin' of the brain; but anyhow, in that same town of Lost Dog, Agamemnon G. Jones and Hy Smith ran hollerin' into a faint away game.

We paid ten dollars for a map showin' the location of the Lost Injun mine, from a paralytic partially roomin' at the Inter-Cosmopolitan Hotel. The Inter-Cosmopolitan had got pretty near finished, when the boom exploded with a loud sigh.

One-half the roof was missin', and the clapboardin' didn't come quite to the top, but that paralytic took it good-natured, sayin' that as he wasn't more'n half a man, half a hotel was plenty good enough for him. But ah! he allus wound up, if he could get the proper motion in his hind legs, he'd be up and find his Lost Injun mine, and after that no dull care for him.

I ain't goin' to describe that gentleman any more. When I say he unloaded a map of that Lost Injun mine, with the very spot marked with a red cross, anybody'll understand that the paralysis hadn't affected his head none.

You see, he was so quiet and patient under his afflictions, and he talked it off so smooth, that the flyest gent that ever lived could be excused for slippin' up and gettin' stuck in the discourse before he knew that gravitation was workin' at the same old stand.

Now, for a straight-away dream-builder give me Aggy. He could talk the horns off a steer, and that steer would beller with happiness to think he was rid of a nuisance.

Ag stood six-foot-two by two-foot-six, and when he had the long-tailed coat, the plug hat, and his general-in-the-army whiskers working right, he only had to stick one hand in his vest and begin, "Fellow-Citizens and Gentlemen," and he could start anything from a general war to a barber-shop expedition to gather North Poles.

Give him a good, honest, upright gang of men that would weigh two hundred a head, and Aggy could romp with their money or them, so the worst used monkey in the cage would go home pleased.

Ag was built to play with huskies, not paralytics; so one day when he stooped and turned sideways to get into the paralytic's room, treadin' soft on the boards so's not to land the outfit in the cellar, the sight of the poor sick man lyin' there--everlastingly lyin'--his helpless hands turned palm up on the covers, why, old Ag's heart was touched. He was that kind of grass-hopper, Ag, to whipsaw you out of a hundred and then lend you five hundred, even if he had to rip the pelt off somebody else to get it. I asked him about that trait onct.

"Why, Hy, my boy," says he, with his thumb in his vest, and his twenty-five cent cigar in his teeth--we was livin' at the risk of a high-roller hotel at the time--"in the first place, I'm a gentleman in disguise, and carelessness allows me to drop the disguise now and then; besides that," says he, "I hate these here conventions. Because I touch Mr. Jones for his wad, must I therefor scramble Mr. Ferguson? And if I stake Ferguson, must I open a free lunch for the country? Now, God forbid!" says Ag. "I started out being pleased by doing the things that pleased me, regardless of the vulgar habits of the mob. The mob can select its destination at any or all times it pleases, but I'm going to be Agamemnon G. Jones," says he. "The unexpected always happens, and I'm the unexpected," he says.

You wouldn't ask for a man to keep his statements clearer than that. I was the only person had a line on him. I'd figger out every possibility for him and then sleep peaceful, knowing that it had come off different.

So while nobody'd figger on Ag's gettin' stuck by a paralytic, darned if he didn't come away with a map in his hands. "Here is our fortune, Henry," says he.

Well, now, I jumped sideways. "Look here, Aggy Jones, do you mean to say that legless wonder has stuck you?"

"Mr. Troy conveyed all rights in the property to me for $10, paid in hand, including this method of findin' out where it is," says he.

"Where'd you get the $10, and me not know it?" says I.

"Trivial, trivial," says Ag.

"And do you expect to follow that dotted line until you stub your toe over a half-ton nuggets?"

"Frivolous, frivolous," says Ag.

"Yes," I says, "yes. Trivial--frivolous--all right--but what's that red cross?"

"Shows the location plainly," says he, shiftin' his cigar. "Where the arms of that cross intersect, we double it, or turn nurses in the army."

Well, I stared at him. Too much thinkin' goes to a man's head sometimes.

"You feel anything strange about you anywheres?" says I.

"Yes," says he, tapping it. "This map-- Accordin' to the scale of miles these here arms on the cross are somethin' like fifty miles long. Ah, what a merry, merry time we shall have, Hy, chasin' up and down glass mountains, eatin' prickly pear, drinking rarely, and cullin' a rattlesnake here and there to twine in our locks. It will seem like old times, dropping a rock in your boots in the mornin' to quell the quivering centipede and the upstanding and high-jumping tarantula."

"Say," says I, "do you think there's a mine here at all?"

"Mine!" says he, like I'd asked a most unexpected question. "Mine? Have we lived out of eyeshot of the most remarkable mine in the United States and Canada at any time we smoked the trail?"

"No," says I, "that's so; but, Ag, you ain't goin' to push for that red cross out in the middle of hell's ash-heap, are you?"

"Only a little ways," says he; "it's time we left this anti-money trust behind us, and I always like to leave dramatically, if it's only to give the sheriff a run."

"More fast-footin' in this?"

"'Nary, but we shall meet some of our fellow-townsmen on the river to-morrow--all men who haven't done us a bit of good--and then we'll flap our gliders to a gladder land."

"But that ten dollars----"

"Look here. Let's _again_ settle this money question once for all. Am I the financial expert for this party?"

"You be."

"Selah," says Ag. "And unlike the corporations in the effete East, where a high collar marks the gentleman, we mix amusement with our lives?"

"Sure," says I.

"Well, then," says Aggy, speaking with the frankness and affection of one or more friends to another, "I ask you to swallow your tongue and watch events."

"Keno," says I. "Produce your events."

So the next day we hooted it out toward the southeast, packin' grub only, and I never says a word.

Bimeby we see a lot of people comin' a horseback, on board waggons, and runnin' afoot.

"Each man with a map," says Ag. "Look at 'em dodge, Hy. They go out of sight for seconds at the time--'Shall we gather by the river, the beautiful, the beautiful Squaw River?'--I reckon."

We did. Everybody seemed surprised at seein' everybody else.

"Just come out for a picnic, friends?" says Ag.

"Oh, yes," says everybody. "Great old day and nice spot here--tired of town--thought we'd make a holiday."

"Good, good," says Aggy, his honest face gleamin' with joy. "Let's all eat now and swop maps afterward."

Things kind of stopped for a minute. If a man was unhitchin' a mule, he waited till you could count 1, 2, 3, and then continnered.

"What d'ye mean by 'map'?" says one lad, bent under a horse to hide his face.

"What do I mean?" says Ag, offended. "Why, I mean just what Noah Webster meant when the dove came back bringin' the definition to his ark. I mean map--m-a-p, map--a drawin' that shows you the way to get to a red cross that doesn't exist on the face of nature. I like green crosses as a matter of taste, but all our paralysed friend had left was a red one, so I took that, not to be unsociable."

I've been at pleasanter lookin' picnics.

Finally the feller under the horse did some deep thinkin' and come out. "Have you honest got a map?" says he.

"To the Lost Injun mine? 'Heigh-o, the Lost Injun!'" sings Aggy. "Here she is, my friend, with all dips, angles, and variations; one million feet on the main lode; his heirs, assigns, orphans. _E pluribus unum_, forever and forever!"

"Yours ain't just the same as mine," says the feller, grimly spittin'.

"No," says Ag, "I reckon he spread it around. He didn't know this was the nearest ford on Squaw Creek, and we might likely come together."

And then arose a cussin', not loud, but with a full head of steam--it would make ordinary loud seem like the insides of a whisper--and a rush for horses.

"Peace, friends, peace!" says Aggy, standin' up his hull height and with his noble chest fillin' his black coat; his black whiskers expandin' in pride--a hootin', tootin' son-of-a-gun to look at. And when he said "peace," the earth shook.

The crowd stopped. "Think!" says Aggy. "Attempt the impossible! Think! Remember that paralytic is on a parlour car, flying swiftly toward the setting sun. I see the picture of that lonely railroad train whooping ties across the prairie. What is the use of throwing yourselves into a violent perspiration in a mad chase of a thing that no longer exists? The paralytic is no more; thy Faith Hath Made Him Whole." Aggy sank his voice to a beautiful whisper.

"Well, you got stuck yourself," pipes up old Grandpa Hope. "He, he, he, he shelled you too!"

"I admit it," says Ag, "and yet it is not quite what it seems. I borrowed Slit-Eyed Jenkins's two gilded nickels to get in this game. I further admit that the Government never should have left the word 'cents' off these nickels, to tempt poor but not bigoted men; further, I'll say that if Jenkins had brightened them up he might have passed them for $3.89. But Jenkins puts a thief within his stomach that steals away his business ability, so that when I asked for them nickels he merely replied: 'Take the damned Yankee skin-tricks away, with my thanks.'

"I have noted in my travels that the person to pass immoral money on us is the agent whose mind is absorbed in selling you a diamond ring, that nothing but his desire to get rid of would drive him to sell; so in this case I dropped them nickels into the grateful and quiverin' hand of that paralytic, drew my man and--here we are," says Ag.

It was the first time I ever saw a gang of full-grown men blush at the same time.

Nobody had nothin' to say except Ag, who threw the lapel of his coat back and addressed the meeting.

"Gentlemen," says he, "as I have mentioned before, our paralysed friend has fled, departed, skinned out, screwed his nut far, far from here. Don't blaspheme in the very face of the Almighty by trying to be more ridiculous than you already are. If you arrive warm and distracted, the few remaining inhabitants of Lost Dog will hold the dead moral on you the rest of your days. Cool off and wipe the word 'map' from your minds; turn from the villainies of man to the stark forces of nature; see where Squaw Creek has forced her remorseless and semi-fluid way through the mighty rampart of these Gumbo hills."

"I wish you would hush," said a puncher. "Leggo, Ag!"

"Here's where you get the worth of your money," says Ag. "You wouldn't play poker with _me_, would you? Of course not. I might get your money. In fact, I think I should, myself. But you would turn over ten fine large bones to a paralytic who made pencil sketches of a scene in the Alps and put the sign of the price on 'em--one sawbuck, or ten plunks? There is the sawbuck," says Aggy, tappin' his map. "But where are the plunks? Go to! There are no plunks. We kick the dust of Dog-town from our hind legs. Flee cheerily, one-time neighbours, to where a red cross fifty miles in length lies exposed to the sunlight, and then dig; dig for wealth beyond the dreams of avarice; dream of scow-loads of gold floating on a canal of champagne. Don't forget to dig, because that will give you a muscle like a Government mule. And here's where we dig--out. Ta-ta, fellow-citizens, I never expected to get you so foul!"

"I think you was working with that feller," says one man, excited.