In due time the foodstuffs and other goods were unloaded, and the _Moon_
began to take on her return cargo of buffalo hides and sundry bundles of
furs, the harvest of the past winter's hunting and the spring trade. Had
it been left to our loud-mouthed captain there would have been no
cessation of labor until the last pelt was stowed; he would have worked
us twenty-four hours to the day. But Benton was not St. Louis, and the
men who loaded ship were of a different calibre from the stevedores at
the River City. A certain number of hours would they work, and no
longer, though the _Moon_ rotted at her slip. So we of the regular crew
had a breathing spell as sundown approached. And the first spare time at
my command I used to write a letter to Bolton, detailing my
misadventures. This I posted, so that in case anything kept me from
returning on the _Moon_, he would at least know whither I had gone and
how I had fared.
It took two days to unload. The evening of the third day Bilk and I
stole away from the boat and went uptown. There was not much of it, to
be sure, but what little there was lacked nothing in the way of life and
color. One could see any sort of costume, from sober broadcloth and fine
linen to the rainbow garb of a blanket Indian. Even the long-haired
frontiersman sacred to fiction was represented by a specimen or two.
Altogether it was a motley, high-spirited crowd that we mixed with that
night. Of the quieter residential portion of Benton I saw nothing, that
time. My way, guided thereto by Bilk, was down the main street, where
lights shone and glasses clinked merrily; into divers places where
ancient pianos tinkled dance music. Drink and dance and gamble, that was
the night life of the town. Wherever we went, wherever any man went, up
and down the length of that one garish street, he could get a run for
his money, if he had money to spend. In every saloon and dance hall the
knights of farobank and draw poker held tourney on the field of green
cloth. It was all very new and strange and fascinating to me.
Bilk stood treat in one of the saloons, and after we had emptied our
glasses we stepped across the room to where a knot of men were watching
an unkempt individual buck a roulette wheel with twenty-dollar gold
pieces in lieu of chips. He had a dirty felt hat on the table before
him, the crown of it half full of gold and silver, and he was scattering
the double eagles two and three on a number. It was heavy play, I
thought, but the dealer spun the little white ball and called the number
and color in a bored sort of manner. The buffalo-runner lost half a
dozen bets, and then all at once he caught the double O with three
twenty-dollar coins resting on it. I gasped. Twenty-one hundred dollars
in fifteen seconds! When the dealer passed over the stacks of gold, the
unkempt one opened his mouth for the first time.
"How much'll yuh turn for?" he asked.
The dealer jerked his thumb upward. "We'll take the roof off," he
answered carelessly, "if yuh want to play 'em that high."
The buffalo-runner grinned and deliberately set about placing handfuls
of coin here and there on the board. And while I stood there wholly
engrossed, eagerly watching the ivory ball in its circular race, some
one grabbed me by the shoulders and hurled me unceremoniously out the
door. Once outside and free of that powerful grip, I turned and beheld
Tupper the red-whiskered, very drunk and very angry, flourishing a
pistol and shouting vile epithets at me.
"Git back t' the _Moon_, yuh ---- son of a sea-cook! I'll jerk an arm
off yuh an' beat yuh t' death with the bloody end of it, if yuh show up
here again. Scoot!"
Naturally, I "scooted," Mr. Tupper meanwhile emphasizing his threats by
sending a bullet or two skyward. I wondered, at the time, why no peace
officer appeared to put a quietus on this manifestation of exuberance,
but later in the game I learned that in frontier towns the popping of a
pistol was regarded as one of the accessories of a properly joyful mood,
men handled their guns to make a noise, a la the small boy with a bunch
of holiday firecrackers. One could burn powder with impunity, so long as
he had due care for innocent bystanders.
Of Bilk I saw no more, for a while. Thinking that since Tupper's
hostility had been directed at me, Bilk might have concluded to keep out
of it, and see Benton by himself, I went on to the boat and curled up on
a bale of buffalo hides, to sit a while in the moonlight and the
pleasant night air before bedding down in the vile hole where we of the
roustabout fraternity were permitted to rest o' nights. An hour or so I
sat there, and about the time I began to think of turning in, a figure
came slouching up the wharf and aboard. The glare of a deck light showed
me that it was Bilk. I called to him, and when he came a little nearer I
saw further that he, too, had met with rough usage; for his face was
bruised and his lips cut and swollen.
"Aw, that dam' mate!" he said, in answer to my questioning. "He gits on
a razoo like this every once in a while. Yuh was lucky he just throwed
yuh out. The son of a gun nailed me after that an' like t' beat m' head
off. He's tearin' drunk an' plumb on the fight. Chances is he'll come
down here before mornin' an' want t' lick the captain, the cook, an' the
whole blame crew."
"Somebody ought to take an axe to him," I suggested bitterly.
"Yuh betche. That's what he needs," Bilk agreed. "I've heard tell about
him gettin' on these fightin' drunks, but this here's the first time he
ever got t' me. Yuh wait. I'll git him some uh these times for this."
And Bilk went below, muttering dark threats.
I followed shortly, and rolled in. There was no disturbance during the
night, and when we stood by for the loading after breakfast Tupper was
on hand, a trifle surlier than usual, more or less red about the eyes,
but otherwise showing no signs of his carouse. All that day we labored.
Again at eventide part of the crew sallied uptown. Before ten o'clock
all of them were back, one or two badly damaged about the face, and one
and all filled with tales of the mate's pugnacious mood.
"He sez, by the great horn spoon, he'll bust the head of ary
hide-slingin' wharf-rat that sticks his nose up the main street. He
wants the whole town t' himself, the blamed hog!" one indignantly
declared; and from what I'd seen of Tupper I could very well believe
that he would have it to himself so far as the crew of the _Moon_ was
concerned.
The next morning found Mr. Tupper still on deck. Evidently a steady diet
of strong whisky and rough-and-tumble fighting agreed with his peculiar
constitution. That night we were all but done; two hours' work in the
morning would put the _Moon_ in shape for the down-river journey. And
when evening fell I took a notion to walk up and down the streets of
Benton once more. It may have been that the prospect of getting to St.
Louis in the near future made me desire to flaunt my independence in the
face of the mate. Anyway, without stopping to make a critical analysis
of motives, I slipped away from the _Moon_ when dark closed in. The
engineer came aboard a minute before I left, and I heard him call to his
assistant that Tupper was a sheet and a half in the wind, and still
wearing his fighting-clothes. But I took no thought of turning back.
Right up the main street I marched, venturing into one saloon after
another without mishap. I felt quite elated, like a small boy playing
"hookey" from school. And when, in the course of my prowling about, I
ran into a half dozen hilarious cowpunchers I clean forgot Mr. Tupper
and the unkind things he had promised to do to me.
The camp of these cattlemen, I gathered from their talk, was on the
divide that loomed to the north of Benton, and after the manner of their
kind they were "taking in the town" for the first time in many weeks.
Wherefore, they were thirsty and noisy, and insistent that everybody
should drink and be joyful. To one of them, a youngster near my own age,
slim, sinewy, picturesque in his hair-faced chaps and high-heeled boots,
I talked a little, but it was a hit-and-miss conversation, by reason of
the general uproar, and the rapidity with which drinks came. I was all
for information, and in his free-and-easy way he shed beams of light
upon my black ignorance of range affairs. But alas! a discordant element
burst rudely in upon our talk-_fiesta_. Tupper stalked in from the
street, and chance decreed that his roving, belligerent eye should
single me out of the crowd. I was leaning against a disreputable
billiard table, at the time, and straight for me he came, not saying a
word, but squinting up his little, pig eyes in a manner that boded ill.
I didn't move. Though my heart flopped like a new-landed trout, I
couldn't quite bring myself to slink away. Beaten and bluffed and cowed
as I had been for the past two weeks, I hadn't quite lost the power to
resent, and though I shrank from the weight of Tupper's ungodly fists I
shrank more from absolute flight. Something of the atmosphere of the
ranges had crept into me that evening. I did not know what I was about
to do, except that I was not going to run away from any red-whiskered
brute from St. Louis or any other section of the globe.
He came up close to me, stopped, and regarded me a moment, as if amazed
to see me standing there and making no move to go. And then with a quick
hunch of his shoulders he swung a dirty fist for my jaw. But that time I
fooled Mr. Tupper by sidestepping; I was watching him, and he was a bit
oversure. Again he struck out, first with one hand and then the other.
This time one of the blows landed, glancingly. His red, ugly countenance
lurching toward me, his whisky-sodden breath in my face was more than I
could stand; and when that vicious swing grazed my chin as I backed
away, I ducked under his arm and smashed him on his reviling mouth.
It almost paid me for all the abuse I'd taken off him, that one good
blow. The backward roll of his head, the quick spurt of blood where my
knuckles split his lip, sent a quiver of joy over me. Had he been of the
bigness of a house and equipped with two pair of fists I would gladly
have fought him after that one punch. It showed me that I could hurt
him. It gave me a hungry craving for more. I wanted to beat his ugly
little eyes, his squat, round-nostriled nose, and his whisky-guzzling
mouth into indistinguishable pulp.
But it was new business to me, and so instead of keeping at him hammer
and tongs till he was down and out, I waited for him to rush me again.
Wherein I made a sad mistake. If I had battered him down then and
there--if--if! At any rate, he did come with a rush, and he came
fortified with a wide knowledge of fist tactics to protect him from
another such blow as I had dealt him. He fought me halfway across the
room, and had me bleeding like a stuck pig before I connected with him
again. But eventually one of my wild swings slipped through his guard,
and jolted his head backward; the little bloodshot eyes of him blinked
with the jar of it. And again I made a mistake. Instead of standing off
and hammering him with clean straight punches, I rushed to close
quarters. Half crazed with pain and anger I stepped in, swinging short
right and left blows for his wabbling head, and so came within the sweep
of his great arms.
He clinched, and in his grip I was next thing to helpless. One thing
only could I do, and that was to butt him in the face with my
head--which kindly office I performed to the best of my ability, until
he jammed me hard against the billiard table and bent me backward till I
felt my bones crack. And then with his thumb he deliberately set about
gouging out one of my eyes.
I can feel it yet, the fierce pain and the horrible fear that overtook
me when he jabbed at my eye-ball. I don't know how I broke his hold. I
only recollect that, half-blinded, hot searing pangs shooting along my
optic nerve, I found myself free of him. And as I backed away from his
outstretched paws my hand, sweeping along the billiard table, met and
closed upon a hard, round object. With all the strength that was in me I
flung it straight at his head. He went to the floor with a neat,
circular depression in his forehead, just over the left eye.
There was a hush in the saloon. One of the cattlemen stooped over him.
"_Sangre de Cristo!_" he laughed. "A billiard ball sure beats a
six-shooter for quick action. I'll bet he was dead when he hit the
floor."