To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day
its hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants
were rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male
and female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their
bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second
childhood which had set in.
Drybone had known a wholesome adventurous youth, where manly lives and
deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and
foot, and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their
captains upon its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of
it. When the War Department ordered the captains to catch Indians,
the wives bade them Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the
captains to let the Indians go again, still they made the best of it.
You must not waste Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many
people in Washington and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians,
armed with weapons sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was
not entirely harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone
graveyard. The pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it:
“Sacred to the memory of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne,
May 6, 1875.” Or it would be, “Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage
Creek.” But even the financiers at Washington could not wholly preserve
the Indian in Drybone's neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands
came treading with the next step of civilization into this huge domain,
the soldiers were taken away. Some of them went West to fight more
Indians in Idaho, Oregon, or Arizona. The battles of the others being
done, they went East in better coffins to sleep where their mothers or
their comrades wanted them. Though wind and rain wrought changes upon
the hill, the ready-made graves and boxes which these soldiers left
behind proved heirlooms as serviceable in their way as were the
tenements that the living had bequeathed to Drybone. Into these
empty barracks came to dwell and do business every joy that made the
cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted person who was baffling the
sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside the line of Drybone, as
shall presently be made clear. The captain's quarters were a saloon now;
professional cards were going in the adjutant's office night and day;
and the commissary building made a good dance-hall and hotel. Instead
of guard-mounting, you would see a horse-race on the parade-ground, and
there was no provost-sergeant to gather up the broken bottles and old
boots. Heaps of these choked the rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow,
ragged grass that dotted the place plentifully were lodged many aces
and queens and ten-spots, which the Drybone wind had blown wide from the
doors out of which they had been thrown when a new pack was called for
inside. Among the grass tufts would lie visitors who had applied for
beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly sleeping their whiskey off in
the morning air.
Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of
Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course
scalping had disappeared. “Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,
accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885.” Perhaps one is still there unaltered:
“Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months.” This unique
corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.
But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing
tale of the place, and how people died there; one grave would often be
enough. The soldiers, of course, had kept treeless Drybone supplied with
wood. But in these latter days wood was very scarce. None grew nearer
than twenty or thirty miles--none, that is, to make boards of a
sufficient width for epitaphs. And twenty miles was naturally far to go
to hew a board for a man of whom you knew perhaps nothing but what he
said his name was, and to whom you owed nothing, perhaps, but a trifling
poker debt. Hence it came to pass that headboards grew into a sort of
directory. They were light to lift from one place to another. A single
coat of white paint would wipe out the first tenant's name sufficiently
to paint over it the next comer's. By this thrifty habit the original
boards belonging to the soldiers could go round, keeping pace with the
new civilian population; and though at first sight you might be puzzled
by the layers of names still visible beneath the white paint, you could
be sure that the clearest and blackest was the one to which the present
tenant had answered.
So there on the hill lay the graveyard, steadily writing Drybone's
history, and making that history lay the town at the bottom--one thin
line of houses framing three sides of the old parade ground. In these
slowly rotting shells people rioted, believing the golden age was here,
the age when everybody should have money and nobody should be arrested.
For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed
over to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for
government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone!
The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of
Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must
not steal a horse. That was really wicked, and brought you instantly to
the notice of Drybone's one official--the coroner! For they did keep a
coroner--Judge Slaghammer. He was perfectly illegal, and lived next door
in Albany County. But that county paid fees and mileage to keep tally of
Drybone's casualties. His wife owned the dance-hall, and between their
industries they made out a living. And all the citizens made out a
living. The happy cow-punchers on ranches far and near still earned and
instantly spent the high wages still paid them. With their bodies
full of youth and their pockets full of gold, they rode into town by
twenties, by fifties, and out again next morning, penniless always and
happy. And then the Four-ace Johnstons would sit card-playing with each
other till the innocents should come to town again.
To-night the innocents had certainly come to town, and Drybone was
furnishing to them all its joys. Their many horses stood tied at every
post and corner--patient, experienced cow-ponies, well knowing it was
an all-night affair. The talk and laughter of the riders was in the
saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards
at the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for
their easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the
fiddle at Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds
there, the dance was being done regularly. “Regularly” meant that upon
the conclusion of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and
invited her to choose and it was also regular that the lady should
choose. Beer and whiskey were the alternatives.
Lin McLean's horse took him across the square without guiding from the
cow-puncher, who sat absently with his hands folded upon the horn of his
saddle. This horse, too, was patient and experienced, and could not know
what remote thoughts filled his master's mind. He looked around to see
why his master did not get off lightly, as he had done during so
many gallant years, and hasten in to the conviviality. But the lonely
cow-puncher sat mechanically identifying the horses of acquaintances.
“Toothpick Kid is here,” said he, “and Limber Jim, and the Doughie.
You'd think he'd stay away after the trouble he--I expect that pinto is
Jerky Bill's.”
“Go home!” said a hearty voice.
McLean eagerly turned. For the moment his face lighted from its
sombreness. “I'd forgot you'd be here,” said he. And he sprang to the
ground. “It's fine to see you.”
“Go home!” repeated the Governor of Wyoming, shaking his ancient
friend's hand. “You in Drybone to-night, and claim you're reformed?
“Yu' seem to be on hand yourself,” said the cow-puncher, bracing to be
jocular, if he could.
“Me! I've gone fishing. Don't you read the papers? If we poor governors
can't lock up the State House and take a whirl now and then--”
“Doc,” interrupted Lin, “it's plumb fine to see yu'!” Again he shook
hands.
“Why, yes! we've met here before, you and I.” His Excellency the Hon.
Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound
white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized
McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a
grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ.
Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer
and different questions. But he knew what he knew. “Well, Drybone's the
same old Drybone,” said he. “Sweet-scented hole of iniquity! Let's see
how you walk nowadays.”
Lin took a few steps.
“Pooh! I said you'd never get over it.” And his Excellency beamed with
professional pride. In his doctor days Barker had set the boy McLean's
leg; and before it was properly knit the boy had escaped from the
hospital to revel loose in Drybone on such another night as this. Soon
he had been carried back, with the fracture split open again.
“It shows, does it?” said Lin. “Well, it don't usually. Not except when
I'm--when I'm--”
“Down?” suggested his Excellency.
“Yes, Doc. Down,” the cow-puncher confessed.
Barker looked into his friend's clear hazel eyes.
Beneath their dauntless sparkle was something that touched the
Governor's good heart. “I've got some whiskey along on the trip--Eastern
whiskey,” said he. “Come over to my room awhile.”
“I used to sleep all night onced,” said McLean, as they went. “Then I
come to know different. But I'd never have believed just mere thoughts
could make yu'--make yu' feel like the steam was only half on. I eat,
yu' know!” he stated, suddenly. “And I expect one or two in camp lately
have not found my muscle lacking. Feel me, Doc.”
Barker dutifully obeyed, and praised the excellent sinews.
Across from the dance-hall the whining of the fiddle came, high and gay;
feet blurred the talk of voices, and voices rose above the trampling of
feet. Here and there some lurking form stumbled through the dark among
the rubbish; and clearest sound of all, the light crack of billiard
balls reached dry and far into the night Barker contemplated the stars
and calm splendid dimness of the plain. “'Though every prospect pleases,
and only man is vile,'” he quoted. “But don't tell the Republican party
I said so.”
“It's awful true, though, Doc. I'm vile myself. Yu' don't know. Why, I
didn't know!”
And then they sat down to confidences and whiskey; for so long as the
world goes round a man must talk to a man sometimes, and both must drink
over it. The cow-puncher unburdened himself to the Governor; and the
Governor filled up his friend's glass with the Eastern whiskey, and
nodded his spectacles, and listened, and advised, and said he should
have done the same, and like the good Governor that he was, never
remembered he was Governor at all with political friends here who
had begged a word or two. He became just Dr. Barker again, the young
hospital surgeon (the hospital that now stood a ruin), and Lin was again
his patient----Lin, the sun-burnt free-lance of nineteen, reckless,
engaging, disobedient, his leg broken and his heart light, with no
Jessamine or conscience to rob his salt of its savor. While he now told
his troubles, the quadrilles fiddled away careless as ever, and the
crack of the billiard balls sounded as of old.
“Nobody has told you about this, I expect,” said the lover. He brought
forth the little pistol, “Neighbor.” He did not hand it across to
Barker, but walked over to Barker's chair, and stood holding it for the
doctor to see. When Barker reached for it to see better, since it was
half hidden in the cow-puncher's big hand, Lin yielded it to him, but
still stood and soon drew it back. “I take it around,” he said, “and
when one of those stories comes along, like there's plenty of, that she
wants to get rid of me, I just kind o' take a look at 'Neighbor' when
I'm off where it's handy, and it busts the story right out of my mind. I
have to tell you what a fool I am.”
“The whiskey's your side,” said Barker. “Go on.”
“But, Doc, my courage has quit me. They see what I'm thinking about just
like I was a tenderfoot trying his first bluff. I can't stick it out no
more, and I'm going to see her, come what will.
“I've got to. I'm going to ride right up to her window and shoot off
'Neighbor,' and if she don't come out I'll know--”
A knocking came at the Governor's room, and Judge Slaghammer entered.
“Not been to our dance, Governor?” said he.
The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this
evening he must forego the pleasure.
“It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable,” said the
coroner. “They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble
in Drybone, but trouble comes to us--as everywhere.”
“Shooting,” suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
“Well, Governor, you know how it is. Our boys are as big-hearted as any
in this big-hearted Western country. You know, Governor. Those generous,
warm-blooded spirits are ever ready for anything.”
“Especially after Mrs. Slaghammer's whiskey,” remarked the Governor.
The coroner shot a shrewd eye at Wyoming's chief executive. It was not
politically harmonious to be reminded that but for his wife's liquor a
number of fine young men, with nothing save youth untrained and health
the matter with them, would to-day be riding their horses instead
of sleeping on the hill. But the coroner wanted support in the next
campaign. “Boys will be boys,” said he. “They ain't pulled any guns
to-night. But I come away, though. Some of 'em's making up pretty free
to Mrs. Lusk. It ain't suitable for me to see too much. Lusk says he's
after you,” he mentioned incidentally to Lin. “He's fillin' up, and says
he's after you.” McLean nodded placidly, and with scant politeness.
He wished this visitor would go. But Judge Slaghammer had noticed the
whiskey. He filled himself a glass. “Governor, it has my compliments,”
said he. “Ambrosier. Honey-doo.”
“Mrs. Slaghammer seems to have a large gathering,” said Barker.
“Good boys, good boys!” The judge blew importantly, and waved his arm.
“Bull-whackers, cow-punchers, mule-skinners, tin-horns. All spending
generous. Governor, once more! Ambrosier. Honey-doo.” He settled himself
deep in a chair, and closed his eyes.
McLean rose abruptly. “Good-night,” said he. “I'm going to Separ.”
“Separ!” exclaimed Slaghammer, rousing slightly. “Oh, stay with us, stay
with us.” He closed his eyes again, but sustained his smile of office.
“You know how well I wish you,” said Barker to Lin. “I'll just see you
start.”
Forthwith the friends left the coroner quiet beside his glass, and
walked toward the horses through Drybone's gaping quadrangle. The dead
ruins loomed among the lights of the card-halls, and always the keen
jockey cadences of the fiddle sang across the night. But a calling and
confusion were set up, and the tune broke off.
“Just like old times!” said his Excellency. “Where's the dump-pile!” It
was where it should be, close by, and the two stepped behind it to
be screened from wandering bullets. “A man don't forget his habits,”
declared the Governor. “Makes me feel young again.”
“Makes me feel old,” said McLean. “Hark!”
“Sounds like my name,” said Barker. They listened. “Oh yes. Of course.
That's it. They're shouting for the doctor. But we'll just spare them a
minute or so to finish their excitement.”
“I didn't hear any shooting,” said McLean. “It's something, though.”
As they waited, no shots came; but still the fiddle was silent, and
the murmur of many voices grew in the dance-hall, while single voices
wandered outside, calling the doctor's name.
“I'm the Governor on a fishing-trip,” said he. “But it's to be done, I
suppose.”
They left their dump-hill and proceeded over to the dance. The musician
sat high and solitary upon two starch-boxes, fiddle on knee, staring and
waiting. Half the floor was bare; on the other half the revellers were
densely clotted. At the crowd's outer rim the young horsemen, flushed
and swaying, retained their gaudy dance partners strongly by the waist,
to be ready when the music should resume. “What is it?” they asked. “Who
is it?” And they looked in across heads and shoulders, inattentive to
the caresses which the partners gave them.
Mrs. Lusk was who it was, and she had taken poison here in their midst,
after many dances and drinks.
“Here's Doc!” cried an older one.
“Here's Doc!” chorused the young blood that had come into this country
since his day. And the throng caught up the words: “Here's Doc! here's
Doc!”
In a moment McLean and Barker were sundered from each other in this
flood. Barker, sucked in toward the centre but often eddied back by
those who meant to help him, heard the mixed explanations pass his ear
unfinished--versions, contradictions, a score of facts. It had been
wolf-poison. It had been “Rough on Rats.” It had been something in a
bottle. There was little steering in this clamorous sea; but Barker
reached his patient, where she sat in her new dress, hailing him with
wild inebriate gayety.
“I must get her to her room, friends,” said he.
“He must get her to her room,” went the word. “Leave Doc get her to her
room.” And they tangled in their eagerness around him and his patient.
“Give us 'Buffalo Girls!'” shouted Mrs. Lusk.... “'Buffalo Girls,' you
fiddler!”
“We'll come back,” said Barker to her.
“'Buffalo Girls,' I tell yus. Ho! There's no sense looking at that
bottle, Doc. Take yer dance while there's time!” She was holding the
chair.
“Help him!” said the crowd. “Help Doc.”
They took her from her chair, and she fought, a big pink mass of
ribbons, fluttering and wrenching itself among them.
“She has six ounces of laudanum in her,” Barker told them at the top of
his voice. “It won't wait all night.”
“I'm a whirlwind!” said Mrs. Lusk. “That's my game! And you done your
share,” she cried to the fiddler. “Here's my regards, old man! 'Buffalo
Girls' once more!”
She flung out her hand, and from it fell notes and coins, rolling
and ringing around the starch boxes. Some dragged her on, while some
fiercely forbade the musician to touch the money, because it was hers,
and she would want it when she came to. Thus they gathered it up for
her. But now she had sunk down, asking in a new voice where was Lin
McLean. And when one grinning intimate reminded her that Lusk had gone
to shoot him, she laughed out richly, and the crowd joined her mirth.
But even in the midst of the joke she asked again in the same voice
where was Lin McLean. He came beside her among more jokes. He had kept
himself near, and now at sight of him she reached out and held him.
“Tell them to leave me go to sleep, Lin,” said she.
Barker saw a chance. “Persuade her to come along,” said he to McLean.
“Minutes are counting now.”
“Oh, I'll come,” she said, with a laugh, overhearing him, and holding
still to Lin.
The rest of the old friends nudged each other. “Back seats for us,” they
said. “But we've had our turn in front ones.” Then, thinking they would
be useful in encouraging her to walk, they clustered again, rendering
Barker and McLean once more well-nigh helpless. Clumsily the escort made
its slow way across the quadrangle, cautioning itself about stones and
holes. Thus, presently, she was brought into the room. The escort set
her down, crowding the little place as thick as it would hold; the rest
gathered thick at the door, and all of them had no thought of departing.
The notion to stay was plain on their faces.
Barker surveyed them. “Give the doctor a show now, boys,” said he.
“You've done it all so far. Don't crowd my elbows. I'll want you,” he
whispered to McLean.
At the argument of fair-play, obedience swept over them like a veering
of wind. “Don't crowd his elbows,” they began to say at once, and told
each other to come away. “We'll sure give the Doc room. You don't want
to be shovin' your auger in, Chalkeye. You want to get yourself pretty
near absent.” The room thinned of them forthwith. “Fix her up good,
Doc,” they said, over their shoulders. They shuffled across the
threshold and porch with roundabout schemes to tread quietly. When one
or other stumbled on the steps and fell, he was jerked to his feet.
“You want to tame yourself,” was the word. Then, suddenly, Chalkeye
and Toothpick Kid came precipitately back. “Her cash,” they said. And
leaving the notes and coins, they hastened to catch their comrades on
the way back to the dance.
“I want you,” repeated Barker to McLean.
“Him!” cried Mrs. Lusk, flashing alert again. “Jessamine wants him about
now, I guess. Don't keep him from his girl!” And she laughed her hard,
rich laugh, looking from one to the other. “Not the two of yus can't
save me,” she stated, defiantly. But even in these last words a sort of
thickness sounded.
“Walk her up and down,” said Barker. “Keep her moving. I'll look what
I can find. Keep her moving brisk.” At once he was out of the door; and
before his running steps had died away, the fiddle had taken up its tune
across the quadrangle.
“'Buffalo Girls!'” exclaimed the woman. “Old times! Old times!”
“Come,” said McLean. “Walk.” And he took her.
Her head was full of the music. Forgetting all but that, she went with
him easily, and the two made their first turns around the room. Whenever
he brought her near the entrance, she leaned away from him toward the
open door, where the old fiddle tune was coming in from the dark.
But presently she noticed that she was being led, and her face turned
sullen.
“Walk,” said McLean.
“Do you think so?” said she, laughing. But she found that she must go
with him. Thus they took a few more turns.
“You're hurting me,” she said next. Then a look of drowsy cunning filled
her eyes, and she fixed them upon McLean's dogged face. “He's gone,
Lin,” she murmured, raising her hand where Barker had disappeared.
She knew McLean had heard her, and she held back on the quickened pace
that he had set.
“Leave me down. You hurt,” she pleaded, hanging on him.
The cow-puncher put forth more strength.
“Just the floor,” she pleaded again. “Just one minute on the floor.
He'll think you could not keep me lifted.”
Still McLean made no answer, but steadily led her round and round, as he
had undertaken.
“He's playing out!” she exclaimed. “You'll be played out soon.” She
laughed herself half-awake. The man drew a breath, and she laughed more
to feel his hand and arm strain to surmount her increasing resistance.
“Jessamine!” she whispered to him. “Jessamine! Doc'll never suspicion
you, Lin.”
“Talk sense,” said he.
“It's sense I'm talking. Leave me go to sleep. Ah, ah, I'm going! I'll
go; you can't--”
“Walk, walk!” he repeated. He looked at the door. An ache was numbing
his arms.
“Oh yes, walk! What can you and all your muscle--Ah, walk me to glory,
then, craziness! I'm going; I'll go. I'm quitting this outfit for keeps.
Lin, you're awful handsome to-night! I'll bet--I'll bet she has never
seen you look so. Let me--let me watch yus. Anyway, she knows I came
first!”
He grasped her savagely. “First! You and twenty of yu' don't--God!! what
do I talk to her for?”
“Because--because--I'm going; I'll go. He slung me off--but he had to
sling--you can't--stop--”
Her head was rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through
deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a
continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move
with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his
shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged
body folded and sank with him, pulling him to his knees. While he took
breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging
fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. “Buffalo Girls!” he
shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her
as though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to
wake, he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load
in his grip, strove feebly to dance the laudanum away.
Feet stumbled across the porch, and Lusk was in the room. “So I've got
you!” he said. He had no weapon, but made a dive under the bed and came
up with a carbine. The two men locked, wrenching impotently, and fell
together. The carbine's loud shot rang in the room, but did no harm; and
McLean lay sick and panting upon Lusk as Barker rushed in.
“Thank God!” said he, and flung Lusk's pistol down. The man, deranged
and encouraged by drink, had come across the doctor, delayed him,
threatened him with his pistol, and when he had torn it away, had left
him suddenly and vanished. But Barker had feared, and come after him
here. He glanced at the woman slumbering motionless beside the two men.
The husband's brief courage had gone, and he lay beneath McLean, who
himself could not rise. Barker pulled them apart.
“Lin, boy, you're not hurt?” he asked, affectionately, and lifted the
cow-puncher.
McLean sat passive, with dazed eyes, letting himself be supported.
“You're not hurt?” repeated Barker.
“No,” answered the cow-puncher, slowly. “I guess not.” He looked about
the room and at the door. “I got interrupted,” he said.
“You'll be all right soon,” said Barker.
“Nobody cares for me!” cried Lusk, suddenly, and took to querulous
weeping.
“Get up,” ordered Barker, sternly.
“Don't accuse me, Governor,” screamed Lusk. “I'm innocent.” And he rose.
Barker looked at the woman and then at the husband. “I'll not say there
was much chance for her,” he said. “But any she had is gone through you.
She'll die.”
“Nobody cares for me!” repeated the man. “He has learned my boy to scorn
me.” He ran out aimlessly, and away into the night, leaving peace in the
room.
“Stay sitting,” said Barker to McLean, and went to Mrs. Lusk.
But the cow-puncher, seeing him begin to lift her toward the bed without
help, tried to rise. His strength was not sufficiently come back, and he
sank as he had been. “I guess I don't amount to much,” said he. “I feel
like I was nothing.”
“Well, I'm something,” said Barker, coming back to his friend, out of
breath. “And I know what she weighs.” He stared admiringly through his
spectacles at the seated man.
The cow-puncher's eyes slowly travelled over his body, and then sought
Barker's face. “Doc,” said he, “ain't I young to have my nerve quit me
this way?”
His Excellency broke into his broad smile.
“I know I've racketed some, but ain't it ruther early?” pursued McLean,
wistfully.
“You six-foot infant!” said Barker. “Look at your hand.”
Lin stared at it--the fingers quivering and bloody, and the skin grooved
raw between them. That was the buckle of her belt, which in the struggle
had worked round and been held by him unknowingly. Both his wrists and
his shirt were ribbed with the pink of her sashes. He looked over at the
bed where lay the woman heavily breathing. It was a something, a sound,
not like the breath of life; and Barker saw the cow-puncher shudder.
“She is strong,” he said. “Her system will fight to the end. Two hours
yet, maybe. Queer world!” he moralized. “People half killing themselves
to keep one in it who wanted to go--and one that nobody wanted to stay!”
McLean did not hear. He was musing, his eyes fixed absently in front of
him. “I would not want,” he said, with hesitating utterance--“I'd
not wish for even my enemy to have a thing like what I've had to do
to-night.”
Barker touched him on the arm. “If there had been another man I could
trust--”
“Trust!” broke in the cow-puncher. “Why, Doc, it is the best turn yu'
ever done me. I know I am a man now--if my nerve ain't gone.”
“I've known you were a man since I knew you!” said the hearty Governor.
And he helped the still unsteady six-foot to a chair. “As for your
nerve, I'll bring you some whiskey now. And after”--he glanced at
the bed--“and tomorrow you'll go try if Miss Jessamine won't put the
nerve--”
“Yes, Doc, I'll go there, I know. But don't yu'--don't let's while
she's--I'm going to be glad about this, Doc, after awhile, but--”
At the sight of a new-comer in the door, he stopped in what his soul was
stammering to say. “What do you want, Judge?” he inquired, coldly.
“I understand,” began Slaghammer to Barker--“I am informed--”
“Speak quieter, Judge,” said the cow-puncher.
“I understand,” repeated Slaghammer, more official than ever, “that
there was a case for the coroner.”
“You'll be notified,” put in McLean again. “Meanwhile you'll talk quiet
in this room.”
Slaghammer turned, and saw the breathing mass on the bed.
“You are a little early, Judge,” said Barker, “but--”
“But your ten dollars are safe,” said McLean.
The coroner shot one of his shrewd glances at the cow-puncher, and sat
down with an amiable countenance. His fee was, indeed, ten dollars; and
he was desirous of a second term.
“Under the apprehension that it had already occurred--the
misapprehension--I took steps to impanel a jury,” said he, addressing
both Barker and McLean. “They are--ah--waiting outside. Responsible men,
Governor, and have sat before. Drybone has few responsible men to-night,
but I procured these at a little game where they were--ah--losing. You
may go back, gentlemen,” said he, going to the door. “I will summon
you in proper time.” He looked in the room again. “Is the husband not
intending--”
“That's enough, Judge,” said McLean. “There's too many here without
adding him.”
“Judge,” spoke a voice at the door, “ain't she ready yet?”
“She is still passing away,” observed Slaghammer, piously.
“Because I was thinking,” said the man--“I was just--You see, us jury is
dry and dead broke. Doggonedest cards I've held this year, and--Judge,
would there be anything out of the way in me touching my fee in advance,
if it's a sure thing?”
“I see none, my friend,” said Slaghammer, benevolently, “since it must
be.” He shook his head and nodded it by turns. Then, with full-blown
importance, he sat again, and wrote a paper, his coroner's certificate.
Next door, in Albany County, these vouchers brought their face value of
five dollars to the holder; but on Drybone's neutral soil the saloons
would always pay four for them, and it was rare that any jury-man could
withstand the temptation of four immediate dollars. This one gratefully
received his paper, and, cherishing it like a bird in the hand, he with
his colleagues bore it where they might wait for duty and slake their
thirst.
In the silent room sat Lin McLean, his body coming to life more readily
than his shaken spirit. Barker, seeing that the cow-puncher meant
to watch until the end, brought the whiskey to him. Slaghammer drew
documents from his pocket to fill the time, but was soon in slumber over
them. In all precincts of the quadrangle Drybone was keeping it up late.
The fiddle, the occasional shouts, and the crack of the billiard-balls
travelled clear and far through the vast darkness outside. Presently
steps unsteadily drew near, and round the corner of the door a voice,
plaintive and diffident, said, “Judge, ain't she most pretty near
ready?”
“Wake up, Judge!” said Barker. “Your jury has gone dry again.”
The man appeared round the door--a handsome, dishevelled fellow--with
hat in hand, balancing himself with respectful anxiety. Thus was a
second voucher made out, and the messenger strayed back happy to his
friends. Barker and McLean sat wakeful, and Slaghammer fell at once
to napping. From time to time he was roused by new messengers, each
arriving more unsteady than the last, until every juryman had got his
fee and no more messengers came. The coroner slept undisturbed in
his chair. McLean and Barker sat. On the bed the mass, with its pink
ribbons, breathed and breathed, while moths flew round the lamp, tapping
and falling with light sounds. So did the heart of the darkness wear
itself away, and through the stone-cold air the dawn began to filter and
expand.
Barker rose, bent over the bed, and then stood. Seeing him, McLean stood
also.
“Judge,” said Barker, quietly, “you may call them now.” And with careful
steps the judge got himself out of the room to summon his jury.
For a short while the cow-puncher stood looking down upon the woman. She
lay lumped in her gaudiness, the ribbons darkly stained by the laudanum;
but into the stolid, bold features death had called up the faint-colored
ghost of youth, and McLean remembered all his Bear Creek days. “Hind
sight is a turruble clear way o' seein' things,” said he. “I think I'll
take a walk.”
“Go,” said Barker. “The jury only need me, and I'll join you.”
But the jury needed no witness. Their long waiting and the advance pay
had been too much for these responsible men. Like brothers they had
shared each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their
brains and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and
growing weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant
beds. Each had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and
thus, unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right. Across the
wide sagebrush and up and down the river they were now asleep or riding,
dispersed irrevocably. But the coroner was here. He duly received
Barker's testimony, brought his verdict in, and signed it, and even
while he was issuing to himself his own proper voucher for ten dollars
came Chalkeye and Toothpick Kid on their ponies, galloping, eager in
their hopes and good wishes for Mrs. Lusk. Life ran strong in them both.
The night had gone well with them. Here was the new day going to be
fine. It must be well with everybody.
“You don't say!” they exclaimed, taken aback. “Too bad.”
They sat still in their saddles, and upon their reckless, kindly faces
thought paused for a moment. “Her gone!” they murmured. “Hard to get
used to the idea. What's anybody doing about the coffin?”
“Mr. Lusk,” answered Slaghammer, “doubtless--”
“Lusk! He'll not know anything this forenoon. He's out there in the
grass. She didn't think nothing of him. Tell Bill--not Dollar Bill,
Jerky Bill, yu' know; he's over the bridge--to fix up a hearse, and
we'll be back.” The two drove their spurs in with vigorous heels, and
instantly were gone rushing up the road to the graveyard.
The fiddle had lately ceased, and no dancers stayed any longer in the
hall. Eastward the rose and gold began to flow down upon the plain over
the tops of the distant hills. Of the revellers, many had never gone to
bed, and many now were already risen from their excesses to revive in
the cool glory of the morning. Some were drinking to stay their hunger
until breakfast; some splashed and sported in the river, calling and
joking; and across the river some were holding horse-races upon the
level beyond the hog-ranch. Drybone air rang with them. Their lusty,
wandering shouts broke out in gusts of hilarity. Their pistols, aimed
at cans or prairie dogs or anything, cracked as they galloped at large.
Their speeding, clear-cut forms would shine upon the bluffs, and,
descending, merge in the dust their horses had raised. Yet all this was
nothing in the vastness of the growing day.
Beyond their voices the rim of the sun moved above the violet hills, and
Drybone, amid the quiet, long, new fields of radiance, stood august and
strange.
Down along the tall, bare slant from the graveyard the two horsemen were
riding back. They could be seen across the river, and the horse-racers
grew curious. As more and more watched, the crowd began to speak. It was
a calf the two were bringing. It was too small for a calf. It was dead.
It was a coyote they had roped. See it swing! See it fall on the road!
“It's a coffin, boys!” said one, shrewd at guessing.
At that the event of last night drifted across their memories, and they
wheeled and spurred their ponies. Their crowding hoofs on the bridge
brought the swimmers from the waters below and, dressing, they climbed
quickly to the plain and followed the gathering. By the door already
were Jerky Bill and Limber Jim and the Doughie and always more, dashing
up with their ponies; halting with a sharp scatter of gravel to hear and
comment. Barker was gone, but the important coroner told his news. And
it amazed each comer, and set him speaking and remembering past things
with the others. “Dead!” each one began. “Her, does he say?”
“Why, pshaw!”
“Why, Frenchy said Doc had her cured!”
Jack Saunders claimed she had rode to Box Elder with Lin McLean. “Dead?
Why, pshaw!”
“Seems Doc couldn't swim her out.”
“Couldn't swim her out?”
“That's it. Doc couldn't swim her out.”
“Well--there's one less of us.”
“Sure! She was one of the boys.”
“She grub-staked me when I went broke in '84.”
“She gave me fifty dollars onced at Lander, to buy a saddle.”
“I run agin her when she was a biscuit-shooter.”
“Sidney, Nebraska. I run again her there, too.”
“I knowed her at Laramie.”
“Where's Lin? He knowed her all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne.”
They laughed loudly at this.
“That's a lonesome coffin,” said the Doughie. “That the best you could
do?”
“You'd say so!” said Toothpick Kid.
“Choices are getting scarce up there,” said Chalkeye. “We looked the lot
over.”
They were arriving from their search among the old dug-up graves on
the hill. Now they descended from their ponies, with the box roped and
rattling between them. “Where's your hearse, Jerky?” asked Chalkeye.
“Have her round in a minute,” said the cowboy, and galloped away with
three or four others.
“Turruble lonesome coffin, all the same,” repeated the Doughie. And they
surveyed the box that had once held some soldier.
“She did like fixin's,” said Limber Jim.
“Fixin's!” said Toothpick Kid. “That's easy.”
While some six of them, with Chalkeye, bore the light, half-rotted
coffin into the room, many followed Toothpick Kid to the post-trader's
store. Breaking in here, they found men sleeping on the counters. These
had been able to find no other beds in Drybone, and lay as they had
stretched themselves on entering. They sprawled in heavy slumber, some
with not even their hats taken off and some with their boots against
the rough hair of the next one. They were quickly pushed together, few
waking, and so there was space for spreading cloth and chintz. Stuffs
were unrolled and flung aside till many folds and colors draped the
motionless sleepers, and at length a choice was made. Unmeasured yards
of this drab chintz were ripped off, money treble its worth was thumped
upon the counter, and they returned, bearing it like a streamer to the
coffin. While the noise of their hammers filled the room, the hearse
came tottering to the door, pulled and pushed by twenty men. It was an
ambulance left behind by the soldiers, and of the old-fashioned shape,
concave in body, its top blown away in winds of long ago; and as they
revolved, its wheels dished in and out like hoops about to fall. While
some made a harness from ropes, and throwing the saddles off two ponies
backed them to the vehicle, the body was put in the coffin, now covered
by the chintz. But the laudanum upon the front of her dress revolted
those who remembered their holidays with her, and turning the woman upon
her face, they looked their last upon her flashing, colored ribbons, and
nailed the lid down. So they carried her out, but the concave body of
the hearse was too short for the coffin; the end reached out, and it
might have fallen. But Limber Jim, taking the reins, sat upon the other
end, waiting and smoking. For all Drybone was making ready to follow in
some way. They had sought the husband, the chief mourner. He, however,
still lay in the grass of the quadrangle, and despising him as she had
done, they left him to wake when he should choose. Those men who could
sit in their saddles rode escort, the old friends nearest, and four held
the heads of the frightened cow-ponies who were to draw the hearse. They
had never known harness before, and they plunged with the men who held
them. Behind the hearse the women followed in a large ranch-wagon, this
moment arrived in town. Two mares drew this, and their foals gambolled
around them. The great flat-topped dray for hauling poles came last,
with its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and
captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping
men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone
outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them,
and the dray was piled.
Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his
teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip. The ponies, terrified, sprang
away, scattering the men that held them, and the swaying hearse leaped
past the husband, over the stones and the many playing-cards in the
grass. Masterfully steered, it came safe to an open level, while the
throng cheered the unmoved driver on his coffin, his cigar between his
teeth.
“Stay with it, Jim!” they shouted. “You're a king!”
A steep ditch lay across the flat where he was veering, abrupt and
nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from
it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air,
he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The
horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, a sultry blast of youth.
Wheeling at the brink, they turned, whirling their long ropes. The
skilful nooses flew, and the ponies, caught by the neck and foot, were
dragged back to the quadrangle and held in line. So the pageant started
the wild ponies quivering but subdued by the tightened ropes, and the
coffin steady in the ambulance beneath the driver. The escort, in their
fringed leather and broad hats, moved slowly beside and behind it, many
of them swaying, their faces full of health, and the sun and the strong
drink. The women followed, whispering a little; and behind them the
slow dray jolted, with its heaps of men waking from the depths of their
whiskey and asking what this was. So they went up the hill. When the
riders reached the tilted gate of the graveyard, they sprang off and
scattered among the hillocks, stumbling and eager. They nodded to Barker
and McLean, quietly waiting there, and began choosing among the open,
weather-drifted graves from which the soldiers had been taken. Their
figures went up and down the uneven ridges, calling and comparing.
“Here,” said the Doughie, “here's a good hole.”
“Here's a deep one,” said another.
“We've struck a well here,” said some more. “Put her in here.”
The sand-hills became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a
choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed
opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were
about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one
end of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they
pulled the ropes helplessly above.
McLean spoke to Barker. “I'd like to stop this,” said he, “but a man
might as well--”
“Might as well stop a cloud-burst,” said Barker.
“Yes, Doc. But it feels--it feels like I was looking at ten dozen Lin
McLeans.” And seeing them still helpless with Chalkeye, he joined them
and lifted the cow-boy out.
“I think,” said Slaghammer, stepping forward, “this should proceed no
further without some--perhaps some friend would recite 'Now I lay me?”'
“They don't use that on funerals,” said the Doughie.
“Will some gentleman give the Lord's Prayer?” inquired the coroner.
Foreheads were knotted; triad mutterings ran among them; but some one
remembered a prayer book in one of the rooms in Drybone, and the notion
was hailed. Four mounted, and raced to bring it. They went down the
hill in a flowing knot, shirts ballooning and elbows flapping, and so
returned. But the book was beyond them. “Take it, you; you take it,”
each one said. False beginnings were made, big thumbs pushed the pages
back and forth, until impatience conquered them. They left the book
and lowered the coffin, helped again by McLean. The weight sank slowly,
decently, steadily, down between the banks. The sound that it struck the
bottom with was a slight sound, the grating of the load upon the solid
sand; and a little sand strewed from the edge and fell on the box at the
same moment. The rattle came up from below, compact and brief, a single
jar, quietly smiting through the crowd, smiting it to silence. One
removed his hat, and then another, and then all. They stood eying each
his neighbor, and shifting their eyes, looked away at the great valley.
Then they filled in the grave, brought a head-board from a grave near
by, and wrote the name and date upon it by scratching with a stone.
“She was sure one of us,” said Chalkeye. “Let's give her the Lament.”
And they followed his lead:
“Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.
“Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me--
I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong.”
When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down
the hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across
many sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves
had emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were
gone--ready with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or
heroes, as the hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted
quadrangle the sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind
shook the aces and kings in the grass.