SAM YERBY SINGS
LATER in the day the sheriff tried out another of his prisoners. He had
told McCoy the truth. One of the six was weakening. Matson had his own
favourites and wanted to give them a chance before the State’s attorney
was pledged. By sunset a confession would be in the hands of Haight, and
it would be too late to save his friends.
He found Yerby whittling out a boat for his baby. The Texan looked up
with a faint, apologetic smile in his faded blue eyes.
“I was making a pretty for my little trick at home, Sheriff. He’s the
dad-blamedest kid you ever saw—keeps his old dad humping to make toys
for him to bust. Don’t you blame Steve for loaning me this two-bit
Barlow. He takes it back every night. Steve’s a good jailer all right.”
The Southerner was a shabby little man, tobacco-stained, with a week’s
growth of red stubble on his face. But it was impossible to deny him a
certain pathetic dignity.
“I’ve come to talk to you for that little kid, Sam. You don’t want him
to be an orphan, do you?”
“I reckon that don’t rest with me.”
Matson cut straight to business. “That’s just who it rests with. Sam,
it’s a show-down. Will you come through with the evidence I want, or
won’t you?”
“I won’t-you. We done talked that all out, Aleck. I wisht you-all
wouldn’t bother me if it’s not unconvenient for you to let me alone.”
He offered the officer a chew of tobacco to show that he was not peevish
about the matter.
The sheriff waved the plug aside impatiently.
“One of the boys can’t stand the gaff. He’s breaking, Sam. But you’ve
got a wife and a kid. He hasn’t. I want you to have first chance. Come
clean and I’ll look out for you. After the trial I’ll see you get out of
the country quietly. You can take your folks back to Texas.”
Sam looked out of the window. The little boat and the jackknife hung
limp in his hands. In a cracked, falsetto voice he took up a song of the
range that he had hummed a hundred times in the saddle:
“I woke one mo’ning on the old Chisum Trail,
Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail.”
He thought of the rough and turbulent life that had come at last to the
peaceful shoals of happy matrimony. A vision rose before him of his
smiling young wife and crowing baby. They needed him. Must he give them
up for a point of honour? If someone was to go clear, why not he?
“We have evidence enough. It isn’t that. I’m giving you a chance, Sam.
That’s all.”
The lips of the Texan murmured another stanza, but his thoughts were far
afield:
“Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar saddle—
And I’m goin’ to punchin’ Texas cattle.”
“Never again, Sam. Not unless you take your chance now.” The sheriff put
a hand on his shoulder. “For the sake of the wife and the little man.
You’re not going to throw them down, are you?”
“We hit Caldwell and we hit her on the fly,
We bedded down the cattle on the hill close by.”
The faded eyes were wistful. It was his chance for freedom, perhaps his
chance for life, too. What would Missie and the baby do without him? Who
would look after them?
“No chaps, no slicker, and it’s pourin’ down rain,
And damn my skin if I night-herd again!”
Matson said nothing. The Texan was building up for himself a vision of
the life he loved in the wind and the sunshine of the open range. The
old Chisum Trail song he sung must bring to his memory a hundred
pictures of the past. These would be arguments more potent than any the
sheriff could use.
“Stray in the herd and the boss said kill it,
So I shot him in the rump with the handle of the skillet.”
The cracked voice became clearer:
“I’ll sell my outfit soon as ever I can,
I won’t punch cattle for no damned man!”
“You don’t want your kid to grow up and learn that his dad was hanged,”
insinuated Matson. “That would be a fine thing to leave him.”
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn—
Best damned cowboy that ever was born!”
The voice of the singer rang like a bell at last. He turned serene eyes
on the tempter.
“What do you think I am, Aleck? If I hang I hang, but I’m damned if I’ll
be a traitor.”
The sheriff gave him up. “All right, Sam. It’s your say-so, not mine.
Got everything you want here so you’re fixed comfortable?”
“You’re treating me fine. I ain’t used to being corralled so close, but
I reckon it would be onreasonable to ask for a hawss and a saddle and an
open range in your calaboose.”
As the sheriff passed down the corridor he heard Sam’s tin-pan voice
chirruping bravely:
“There’s hard times on old Bitter Creek
That never can be beat;
It was root, hog, or die,
Under every wagon sheet.
We cleared up all the Indians,
Drank all the alkali,
And its whack the cattle on, boys—
Root, hog, or die!”