Part 5

He might well have done nothing. No man could go down the steep slant unsupported. Nothing was to be seen of Holtzer but his hands, lighted by the flames; hands that could not clench even, as to grip would be to force loose, but which could only make stiff angles of themselves. It would all be over in ten heart-beats, for to take it as we are doing is like examining the moving pictures one by one at leisure, instead of as they live upon the screen.

Then Dick moved. He ripped off his coat, soaked the arm of it in the hose stream, pressed it to the roof, where it froze fast on touching, and slid down his improvised cloth ladder, held only by the strength of the ice-film that bound the sleeve to the tin.

Before his frantic fellow-firemen below could scale the fence with the jumping-sheet he had hold of Holtzer’s wrist with one strong hand. The strain was terrible; he felt the coat yield with a soft, tearing sound, his head spun, yet somehow he managed it, and there they stood on the cornice together.

Then, while the crowd that had been as silent as death cracked their throats with applause, Dick spoke to Holtzer on a private matter.

It so happened that a young man who did “space” for a morning paper lived on the top floor of the flat-house opposite, and saw the whole thing through an opera-glass. He hustled into his clothes and got down to the street, working a talk out of Dick by the plea that he needed the money.

The reporter was delighted. The incident had the two elements of daring and mother-wit that can be made into the long story of profit.

“How did you ever come to think of using your coat like that?” he asked.

“Why, a feller I knew when I was a kid in the country saved himself from drownding that way,” replied Carter. “He fell through the ice miles from anybody, and if he hadn’t froze the end of his muffler fast, and so anchored himself, he’d ’a’ been a gone gosling all right. That thing come back to me on the minute.”

That is why the first thing Fireman Carter saw in his morning paper was his own name. He started guiltily at the sight and threw the sheet away. No maiden caught _en déshabillé_ could have been more abashed; and, as the maiden afterward might wonder how she _did_ look--was it so _very_ awful?--so did Dick. He picked the paper up again stealthily and read all about it, lost in wonder at the end. To the applause that came his way he turned an inattentive ear, thus giving further life to the old idea that the bravest are always the most modest, which looks like a double superlative and is no more true than that they are always the fattest, or anything else. The bravest are usually the most courageous, and there ends deduction. Dick was busy with his own thoughts--something troubled him. A strange thing was the fact that though his friend Holtzer scrupulously gave him every credit he did not seek his society.

The frown of hard thinking was on Dick’s brow all day. At night he asked for a few hours off and got them.

Mary Ellen met him at the door. “Oh, Dick!” she cried and gulped. “Ain’t you just grand, though!” she said, and looked at him with beatified gray eyes.

Here was golden opportunity. The proper play for Fireman Carter was to reach out his strong arms and gather Mary Ellen then and there, but he did nothing of the sort. He seemed distrait and worried.

To her anxiety, he seated himself on the sofa and fumbled his hat.

“You ain’t mad at me, are you, Dick?” she asked tremulously.

“Holtzer been here?” bruskly interrupted her visitor with no apparent relevance.

“Yes,” said Mary Ellen.

“What did you tell him?”

“I--I--I told him ‘No.’”

Fireman Carter passed his hand over his forehead, then drew out a newspaper, saying: “You’ve read this, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

“More especially this?” reading aloud the most laudatory paragraph.

Mary Ellen was not feazed by such flagrant egotism.

“Beautiful!” she said dreamily. “Just beautiful!”

“Beautiful!” yelled Fireman Carter, leaping to his feet. The scorn in his voice could not be rendered by a phonograph. Poor man! He was about to knock the light out of those gray eyes, to spoil his own image, and nothing is so trying to a man’s temper.

“Hunh!” he continued. “Shows just about how much intelligence you got--beautiful! It’s a--lie--it’s fuzzy-water gas--there ain’t nothing to it at all--d’ye understand that?”

This last came out so fiercely that Mary Ellen faltered as she said she did.

“All right,” said Fireman Carter. “Now, I want to tell you just one thing: I ain’t the man to back-cap no man, when I come to get cooled down--not with a girl nor nothing else.” He tapped his knee with a perpendicular forefinger. “Not with a girl nor nothing!” he repeated. “Understand that?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Now I’m going to tell you the God’s truth. Holtzer’d been making his cracks about how he only had to speak and you’d fall on his neck, until he had me so sore I ached wherever m’ clothes touched me. So, when I see him coasting down the roof, the one thing in my mind was that he’d go feeling sure that he was the star with you. I couldn’t stand that. No, sir! I couldn’t; so down I goes after him. When I snaked him up on the roof I tells him, ‘Cuss your thanks! I want this much out of you, you flappy-footed slob--you go to Mary Ellen to-day and see whether she’ll take you or not--I’ll bet you three months’ pay agin a cigaroot you get turned down.’ Now, I was within my rights there--but”--Fireman Carter stopped, wiped his hands on his handkerchief, wiped his forehead, blew his nose and swallowed hard. “But,” he continued bravely, “if all the yawp that pup of a newspaper kid got rid of has had anything to do with changing results, I don’t care for any of the pie. There wasn’t no ‘laying down his life for another’ nor anything of the kind in the whole play. It was just like I’m telling you. Well, that’s all. I--I thought you might like to hear about it.”

There was a lamentable change in the strong voice at the last words. The speaker stared at the door and drummed on his cap until the silence became unendurable, then he raised his eyes slowly, as a condemned man might to the gallows.

There sat Mary Ellen, drinking him in, still beatified. The meekest man who ever esteemed himself poor relation to the worm that squirmeth could not have mistaken the meaning of that glance. It was simply adoration.

He straightened up and stared at her open-mouthed.

“I’ll be durned if I believe she’s heard one word I said!” thought Fireman Carter.

VI

TEN MINUTES OF ETERNITY

A REVOLVER, A RATTLER AND THE BOWL OF A PIPE

The warm June sunshine flooded the prairie with light. A little frisky breeze made silky noises in the grasses. From the other end of the plowed ground came the clank of harness and the thud of hoof-beats, as the four-horse team drew the sulky-plow, squeaking and complaining.

The monotonous work and soft air acted on the driver like a sleeping potion, and he nodded and drowsed on the seat, with the stem of a pipe clenched between his teeth.

This man, Tommy, was for ever losing the bowl of his pipe, and it was a great treat for me, a boy of fourteen, to tell him of the loss and hear him inveigh against the offending member with all the wealth of his Irish-Western vocabulary. Tommy was full of strange oaths and more bearded than any of his pards.

I giggled in anticipation as the plow drew near--sure enough! The bowl was gone.

“Tommy!” I hailed.

“Hay-oh! lad!” said he, snapping his eyes open. “Whoa, there!--have yer come out with ther grub call?”

“No, Tommy--but the bowl of your pipe is gone.”

“What, again?” and he removed the stem, regarding it sideways. “Now, ther curses of the Mormon gods be on that bowl!” and from that beginning followed an oration, lurid and marvelous.

When he had eased his mind he said: “We went down a hole over thayre, an’ I’ll bet it was thin it jounced out. Let’s go and take a bit of a look.”

We were both busily turning over the sod and searching, with our faces bent toward the ground, when a voice said:

“Well, Murphy?”

No sound had heralded any one’s approach. The question came so entirely unexpected we both started and looked up.

There, seated in graceful ease upon a mound of grass, was a lean, dark man, with a revolver in his hand.

At this sight Tommy stopped rigid, still half stooped. His broad, good-natured face went gray in an instant. His eyes glittered with fear. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, and twice no sound came; but the next time the words poured out in a torrent of frantic haste.

“Stephens! I didn’t mane it! Lord God, man! I take it back! Sure yer wouldn’t hold it aginst me! I was wild drunk at th’ time--Fur the love of Heaven, don’t shoot me! I’ve got a wife an’ two childer.”

The stranger’s mouth went sideways in an evil smile.

“You should have thought of that before, Murphy,” he said slowly.

“Yer wouldn’t kill me before the lad, would yer?” the other went on, his lips so dry now that the words were no more than a whisper.

Stephens bent toward him with savage quietness, and with the same set, twisted smile.

“I told you that I would kill you on sight,” he said, “wherever and whenever that might be, and I am here to do it.”

He raised the revolver as he spoke. A great sob stuck in my throat. Through my head went a roaring noise.

I looked from the one man to the other in such a sickening ague of fear, that I could not have uttered a sound to save my life. I waited in this suspense for the report that would shut out the cheerful quiet of the day, like a black blot. In that second of deathly silence between the men, the whispering of the breeze and the clanking of the harness of the distant horses seemed loud sounds.

Already I saw poor, honest, drunken Tommy lying still upon the ground, looking with dead eyes at the blue above.

But I saw a change come over his face, and before I had time to wonder at it he spoke:

“Stephens!” he said, “don’t move fur yer life! There’s a rattler widin’ a foot of yer lift elbow!”

A contemptuous smile parted Stephens’ lips at what he considered a silly ruse, and then it stopped frozen, leaving him with a face like a mask, and sitting as rigidly motionless as Tommy had stood but a moment ago, for at that instant the devil of the prairie sounded his whirring warning of sudden death at hand.

For a while all three of us were paralyzed--then,

“Oh, thayre he comes! He’s comin’ in front of yer! Oh Lordy! Lordy! what’ll I do!” shrieked Tommy.

“Keep perfectly still,” said Stephens, scarcely moving a muscle of his face. “Where is he now?”

“Howly Mary! His head’s a’most touchin’ yer hand!”

Stephens’ face turned to a green pallor as the blood forsook the tan, but his expression of calm self-possession never changed a jot. There was a certain similarity that struck me even at that instant between the finely modeled evil head of the serpent and the man’s clean-cut features.

They might have been a group in bronze, those two, for the rattlesnake had stopped, motionless, with his head raised in poise; and not the tremor of a muscle showed the man was living.

“Oh damn! damn this country!” whispered Tommy in an agony, “with never a stick nor stone in it! What’ll I do, Stephens? What’ll I do?”

“There’s a whip on your plow; send the boy for it,” breathed he.

I backed carefully away from the horrible spot, fearful the least sudden movement would bring the man’s fate upon him.

Then I flew for the whip.

Returning, I placed it in Tommy’s hands.

“Now, kid,” whispered Stephens, “step back and wave your coat. Hit, Murphy, at your first chance.”

I did as directed, and the little fiery eyes turned toward me. Tommy brought down the whip-stock with such fury it shivered into splinters. At the same moment Stephens made a cat-like jump to the side.

The rattler lay coiling and writhing in his death agony.

We three humans stood staring at each other without speaking. A great deal had happened within ten minutes, and speech is for commonplaces--not for crises.

At last Stephens broke the silence. He stretched his long arms, and yawned.

“I feel stiff--sitting still so long,” he said.

Without warning, my nerves gave way; I burst into a strangled sobbing.

Immediately the two men began to pat and comfort me.

“Why, kid,” said Stephens, “you stood the rest of it like a thoroughbred; you mustn’t cry now--there--there, brace up, old man!”

Between them they managed to quiet me, and then Tommy turned timidly to Stephens.

“How about the trouble between us?” he asked.

“Don’t mention it,” said the other, with a wave of his hand. “I don’t feel just as I did a few minutes ago.” He glanced down at the still squirming snake. “If there is a God,” he began, then stopped and shrugged his shoulders.--“Well, so long. I must be going. See you later.”

Tommy and I watched the slim, athletic figure until it had swung down on to the coulée out of sight.

“He’s a turrible man,” said Tommy, “but not a bad one after all. Well, look! will ye? I’ll be damned if thayre ain’t the bowl of that pipe!”

And picking it up we returned to the plow team.

VII

THE PUNISHMENT AND THE CRIME

THE TOO HUMOROUS PROPENSITIES OF BURT MOSSMAN AND OTHERS

When he gets a tenderfoot he ain’t afraid to rig, Stand him on a chuck-box and make him dance a jig; With his re-a-loading cutter he’ll make ’em sing and shout. He’s a regular Ben Thompson--when the boss ain’t about!

--The Expert Cow-man (expurgated).

Ten thousand head of steers were waiting for cars at Dundee. There was the Bar Cross, the VV, the California outfit, the Double Ess Bar, the 7 T X, the Bar A Bar, the Sacramento Pool outfit and the Tinnin-Slaughter wagon, all the way from Toyah. This last named had bought six hundred steers on Crow Flat, road branded with two big Y’s, and drove. When they got to Dundee they were just a few shy of nine hundred head. This is by the way, and inserted only as a tribute to New Mexico’s unequaled climate.

The herds were camped in a circle around the lake, keeping an interval of about two miles from each other. Each herd had three watches of three to five men each for night-guard. But four or five men were ample for day herding; so the men took turns at that, day about, the unoccupied riding to Dundee in search of diversions. Forty or more saddle-ponies stood patiently unhitched, with dangling reins, in the plaza.

The hotel did a rushing business, Mrs. Stanley’s output making a pleasant contrast to camp-cooking. Norah, the bright-eyed, was besieged in form by relays of admirers, the more favored ones being allowed to help cook or wash dishes. Perhaps it should be stated in this connection that Norah was the only girl in a section fifty miles square. All the same, she was a jolly, pretty girl.

Now, when steer-shipping time comes the season’s hard work is over, and all except the “old hands” get their time. And while most men of the cow countries drink colored fluids on occasion, the superfluent ones, who consider the putting down of liquor the first duty of man, are not the stuff of which old hands are made, the law of survival obtaining on the free range as elsewhere.

So, after the first few days, drinking at Jim Gale’s place became perfunctory, though, as Dundee consisted of one hotel, one saloon, one depot, one store, the section house and two other buildings, the saloon was necessarily the prime center. The boys would not be paid until the cattle were sold, so gambling was barred by etiquette, “jaw-bone” games being viewed with disfavor as tending to unseemly contention. Similarly the code forbade more than two or three persecuting Miss Norah at once, and time ticked slowly.

Sun in the east at morning-- Sun in the west at night,

a cloudless sky, and a daily statement by a badgered agent that the cars would be in at once.

Given seventy-five full-blooded, vigorous, healthy cow-boys, twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and no work, and the Purveyor of Mischief may be depended upon to uphold their idle hands.

Inhospitality is mortal sin in all thinly-settled countries, but all things have their limit. For ten days a plague of tramps had overrun the chuck-wagons, feasting on steaks, hot biscuits and the like, getting a meal at one wagon and on to the next. And when one left he spread the glad tidings up and down, sending back seven others worse than the first, making hospitality act like a camel.

It was Johnny Patton, cook for the Pool wagon, that spoke unto Cornelius Brown and Tinnin, of the Toyah crowd, suggesting the advisability of slaying a tramp or so.

“Too harsh,” remarked Burt Mossman. “I speak for a Kangaroo Court.”

“A word to the Y’s is sufficient,” said Tinnin. Thus the pit was digged and thus the net contrived, the three collaborators appropriating the leading parts unto themselves. A particularly “gall-y” and tenacious tramp, who had adopted the V V wagon, was cast for the star. He was to be “It.” Minor places were filled and drilled; the rest of us were Roman populace. The curtain rose promptly after dinner. Brown and Tinnin began to bicker.

Tinnin alleged that Brown had ridden to the wagon for water and stayed for the whole forenoon. Furthermore, he sang a few stanzas from his favorite ditty, _The Expert Cow-man_, as bearing on the subject in hand:

“Put him on day herd, he’s sleepin’ all day, First thing that starts out is sure to get away; Comes home in the evenin’, he’ll blame it on the screws, And swear the lazy devils were trying to take a snooze.”

Brown, highly indignant, demanded his time. To this Tinnin demurred, saying that Brown knew very well that he, Tinnin, would have no money till the steers were sold. They squabbled, L. C., until the others pacified them and proposed town and a drink to drown unkindness, which they did, inviting the tramp to go with them. To this he acceded joyously, not having learned to dread the gifts of the Greeks.

They took several sniffs at the peace-pipeline. Then Brown launched into an interminable yarn of hairbreadth ’scapes and ventures dire. Every time he named a new man he gave that man’s ancestry, biography, acts and connections, with any collateral information at hand. And the more he talked the further he got from the latter end of his tale.

Tinnin got unsteadily to his feet. “Hol’ on!” he said. “Hol’ on! That ’minds me of a song--

“He’ll tell you of a certain trip he made up the trail; Taking half of Kansas to finish up his tale; He’s handled lots of cattle, and this is what he says: He’s getting sixty dollars the balance of his days.”

At this insult Brown stood on his tiptoes. “What!” says he, and jumped forward. Ward and John Henry Boucher caught him. There was a terrific scuffle, yells, howls: “Leggo, there!” “Look out! He’s goin’ to shoot!” etc. Same business for Tinnin, worked up most spiritedly. Those who had to giggle left the room.

We got Brown out and hustled him to camp, calling on the tramp (his name was Harris) to assist.

Brown raged: “I’ve had good and plenty of that song the last month! I’ve got a plumb full of his slurs! If that (past-participled) old blowhard throws any more of that (modified) song my way, he’ll get it, and get it hard! He’s been picking at me long enough.”

After the cattle were bedded down and the first guard put on, there were four at the Toyah wagon besides the tramp. Brown had finished supper and was standing with his back to the fire, smoking, when Tinnin rode up. He dismounted and came staggering out of the dark into the firelight. Pausing a moment, he began hilariously:

“To show you that he’s blooded and doesn’t mind expense, He stands around a-scorchin’ of his eight-dollar pants!”

Brown whirled. “Have ye got a gun?” he snarled savagely.

“Betcher. Always!” said Tinnin; “and I know how to use it.”

Crack! Bang! Bang! Bang!

They emptied their guns over the fire. Harris was sitting directly between them. They were using blank cartridges, but of course Harris didn’t know that, so he went right away.

When he came back Tinnin was stretched out, all bloody (beef’s blood) over his breast and face; the conspirators were huddled, whispering.

Harris came up scared, white and shaking. Ward and Brown grabbed him. Says Ward, gritting his teeth:

“My bucko, you’ll swing for this!”

It flashed on the tramp that they meant to lay the “murder” on him. He begged awful as they took him in, leaving the corpse and the cook to watch the wagon. It was great sport from our point of view--and in that light.

In town Brown told the boys the tramp had killed poor Jeff; and turned him over to Mossman, the “appointed” sheriff.

“Judge” Charlie Slaughter called court in Gale’s saloon. All the boys were there, and most of the tramps--(they were _not_ in on the joke). The station-agent was made counsel for the defense, and the trial began, with all the formalities that anybody could remember or invent.

A weird vision blew over from the hotel--a frock-coated, high-hatted, gold-eye-glassed, bold-faced man with an elbow crooked in latest fashion. He would have been a spectacle, ordinarily, but now we accepted him as a man and brother. We explained the situation to him, and that all the boys had blank cartridges.

McClusky and Jones testified to the killing. They made it wanton and deliberate murder. Ominous growls arose from Roman populace. Prisoner’s counsel cross-examined unmercifully, but they stuck.

The prisoner told his side--told it straight, too. He broke down, cried, and begged for mercy, said his life was sworn away, that Brown was the guilty man. Some of the fun departed.

The judge said witnesses for the prosecution were trustworthy men of high standing, and committed the prisoner to jail at Hillsboro to await action of the grand jury.

“Lynch him! Lynch him!” shouted Boucher, jumping up. The judge promptly fined him fifty dollars for contempt of court, which was as promptly paid, Boucher borrowing the money of Gale. Every one was as solemn as an owl.

“Any further advocacy of lynchin’ in this court,” said Slaughter sternly, “will get the offending man or men three months in jail. There is no doubt in my mind as to the prisoner’s guilt, but if he’s executed it will be by due process of law. Mr. Sheriff, swear in deputies to guard this prisoner. Take him to Hillsboro on the midnight train.”

So Mossman appointed his brother Dana, Kim Ki Rogers, Pink Murray, Frank Calhoun and Henry Street. Then Slaughter adjourned.

Mossman and his posse were about half-way to the depot when the whole crowd overtook him.

“Now, Burt,” said Boucher, “we don’t want any trouble with you--but we want that man, and we’re going to have him.”

“Hang him! Hang him!” howled the mob, the guns click-clicking through the little stillnesses. If there’s a worse sound than a mob’s howl, Hell’s kept it for a surprise. I don’t wonder the hobo turned into a bag of skin, even at the imitation.

“You can’t have him!” Burt’s voice sounded dead earnest. He was a good actor. He handed the prisoner a gun. “Here--defend yourself. Get out of the way, you bums, or take what’s coming!”

That was our cue. A fusillade of blank cartridges covered our rush. The officers made a game fight.

Curses and screams showed where their unerring aim mowed down the Romans, but they were outnumbered. One by one they bit the dust. Mossman, the last one down, gallantly raised himself on elbow, fired a last defiant shot, groaned and died. Then all was still; a ghastly silence which Boucher broke. “This is bad business--but they would have it. Is the killer hurt?”

He had miraculously escaped. So we took him to a telegraph pole and put a rope around his neck.

“Let me say a word,” he gasped.

I like to remember that even a tramp can stand up and look at the Big Dark. He didn’t cry now; he’d lost sight of himself.