A moment necessarily had to be allowed Cassidy to fathom this
catastrophe. When the agony had come and passed, he was heard to sigh
heavily and remark: "Well, I reckon it'll be the old job again. I got
the outfit yet."
"Have you, indeed?" mocked Mike, well up to his lay. "I'm glad to have
you mention it. See here, pardner." He slapped the sheet of paper flat
on the bar, under Cassidy's astonished eyes. "Do you figure this is
your name at the bottom, or don't you?" he demanded in peremptory
tones.
Cassidy frowned and regarded the paper. Then, as the words swam and
blurred together in one long, discouraging line, he weakly gave it up.
"Wot's it say, Mike?" he asked feebly.
"This here paper says," responded the other, with the cold, forceful
air of one well within his rights, "that last night you sold me your
teams and your outfit--fer a consideration. Of course, now, I ain't
sayin' just what you done with the consideration I give you. Mebbe you
spent it like a gent fer booze, mebbe you was foolish and went to some
strong-arm shack and got rolled. I dunno; I can't say. All I know is
that you got your money and I got the outfit. Savvy?"
Cassidy's face took on a queer, pasty white. His hands clawed
ineffectively at the bar.
"Sold you my _outfit_?" he quavered, with an awful break in his voice.
"_Sold it_, Mike? Why, how do you figure that?"
"Is that your name?" barked Mike in answer. He thrust the paper out at
arm's length and shook it under Cassidy's nose with astonishing
ferocity. "Just you say one little short word, friend. Is that your
name, or isn't it?"
Cassidy wavered. It was unquestionably his name; whether _he_ had
written it there or not was yet to be decided.
If psychological moments come to the Cassidys, this one felt such a
thing near him. _Now_ was the time for him to leap in the air and
pound wrathfully upon the bar. _Now_ was the instant for him to rush
into the open and call vociferously on his friends. _Now_ was the
fraction of a second left for him to reach out his hard knuckles and
pin Mike to the wall and tear the paper from his hands. But instead,
and with a queer feeling of aloofness from it all, much as if he were
the helpless spectator of activities proceeding in some fantastic
dream, he felt the moment thrilling up to him; felt it stand
obediently waiting; felt himself slowly gathering in response to its
mute query; then felt himself drop helplessly back into a stupid coma
of whisky fumes and sodden inertia.
When he came to, Mike had put the paper back in his till and was
assiduously cleaning up his bar. It was all over.
Cassidy shifted irresolutely from one foot to the other. A sickening
feeling of hollowness within him was crying aloud to be appeased by
either food or drink, and his shaking body begged for a place to rest
itself into tranquillity; but still for a while he stood there,
fighting off these yearnings while he gathered his far-strayed wits.
Now and then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike
studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and
fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning
it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed
shambling to ask one last question.
"How's that?" Mike responded vaguely over his shoulder. "Still harping
on that, are you?"
"Did I really sell you them blacks?" ventured Cassidy quaveringly,
controlling his voice only with a tremendous effort. "Reelly,
truly--did I sell 'em?"
Mike rolled a cigar over in his mouth, with a complacent lick of his
tongue. "That's what," he replied laconically.
Cassidy gulped down something in his throat. He leaned for a moment
against the door-jamb; his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face quivered with
misery.
"I mean them black wheelers, Mike. Just them two--them wheelers," he
pleaded. Hesitating a little, as the other deigned no response, he
ventured weakly on:
"I was figurin', now--of course, I don't mean nothin' by it, Mike,
only yuh see how a feller _c'u'd_ figger it--that mebbe--mebbe you
made some mistake in readin' that paper. Yuh see how it could happen.
A feller _c'u'd_ make a mistake in readin', now, c'u'dn't he?" With
this flimsy appeal Cassidy played his last and poorest card.
In answer the other snapped some ashes from his sleeve, turned his
back, slapped the cash-register shut, and strode masterfully down the
room. "Not this time, pardner."
Cassidy stumbled out.
"I've sold them wheelers!" he sobbed under his breath. "Why, it seems
like I was just this minute thinkin' I'd get tuh go and water 'em, and
rub 'em down a bit. _Now_ it ain't no use thinkin' about it--not any
more. It ain't me that's goin' tuh do that. I cain't water 'em. I
ain't got rights to even lay my hands on 'em! O-h-h!" he shuddered,
and agonizedly pulled taut on every tired, aching muscle. "Yuh oughter
be beat up with a club. Yuh oughter get pounded with a rawk. You're a
rotten, whisky-soaked bum, that's all yuh are now, and yuh oughter be
killed and kicked out in the street!"
Half whining, half crying miserably, he drove himself out of the town,
for a mile or more, on the desert, then plodded painfully back again,
mauling and beating himself with the bludgeon of his awful self-pity.
At the foot of a fast-rising "grade" he halted wearily and watched the
work. It was well on toward noon by this time, and the sun was blazing
down through a choking pall of dust that hung in the lifeless air. Men
were driving horses to and fro. They were men with weak, deeply lined
faces and shambling gaits. They broke into querulous curses and beat
their animals savagely on ridiculously small pretexts. They handled
their reins with a uniformly betraying awkwardness.
Cassidy sized them up and sniffed contemptuously to himself. _He_
knew. "That's wot _you_'ll be doing to-morrow," he muttered. "Durn
your hide, that's all you're good for. That's yuh to-morrow, yuh and
the rest of the 'boes."
Not knowing what to do with himself now, he drifted back to the town
and sat in the scanty shade of a joshua, prepared to commune further
with himself. Looking up after a time, his eyes descried in the
distance the figures of two men who were walking toward him.
"I bet that's Con Maguire," he murmured. "Yep--him and that old
'Arkinsaw.' They've got their time-checks, tuh; I kin tell the way
they walk. I bet I know wot they're sayin'. Con, he's got a little
ranch up tuh Provo, and he's fer makin' right up the line and gettin'
that old no-good Arkinsaw to go along and pass up the booze.
"Poor old Arkinsaw!" mused Cassidy shrewdly. "He's worked three months
steady for Donovans', drivin' scraper, the poor old slob, and their
chuck is rotten. I'll bet he's terrible glad to get back tuh Number
One. He's got forty dollars now. I bet he's near crazy. He allers
looks that way when he's got forty dollars," said Cassidy.
"Sure I'll go with you, Con," Arkinsaw was saying. "I always meant to
go, reelly, truly I did. You ask any of the fellers back to Donovans'.
I was allers savin', 'I'm goin' out home when Con Maguire goes'--and,
sure enough, here I am. I'll be to the train the same time as you.
We'll go home on the same train, Con; sure we will." The old man
laughed nervously. His eyes were bright with some strange
excitement--but half of it was fear.
"Say, Con," he whispered hoarsely, "I'll be all right. You jest ketch
holt of my arm when we go by; I'll be all right then. Say, Con," he
guttered, in an agony of fear and desperation, "you hear me? Only git
me by that first saloon."
But the approaching twain had been seen by other eyes than Cassidy's.
By some odd fortuity, a phonograph broke into wheezy song as the
wayfarers swung down the street. Dice began to roll invitingly across
the bars, and from a distant spot came the hollow sound of the
roulette-ball. Quite by chance, a man appeared in a doorway, holding a
glass of beer. He was seen to drain it, just as they passed. Then he
noticed them for the first time.
"Come in and cool off, boys," he suggested cordially. "It's all on
ice. Good, cold lager, boys!"
Under its mask of dust, Arkinsaw's face worked horribly. He stumbled,
loitered along the way to fix his shoe, zigzagged from one side to the
other, fumbled at his pack, and finally stopped.
"Say, Con," he rasped feebly. "Oh, Con! Say, I gotter see a feller
here. Say!" as his friend looked back at him with disconcerting doubt
written on every feature. "Say, Con!--reelly, truly I have!"
"Well, hurry up, then," replied the other, and went on his dogged way.
The instant his back was turned, the old man obliqued crabwise to the
side of the road. Fumbling nervously at his roll of bedding, he threw
it off and darted for the saloon, running and stumbling in his haste.
But at this point a large, gaunt, red-faced man, bearing a club in one
hand, appeared from nowhere in particular and fronted him.
"G'wan down the road!" said the red-faced man harshly.
"Why--why, _Cass_!" Arkinsaw bleated surprisedly. "How you did startle
me! Why, where did you come from? Yessir!" and he deftly manoeuvered
so as to catch a glimpse of the bar over Cassidy's shoulder. "You
surely startled me bad. Excuse _me_," he murmured absently; "I gotter
see a feller----"
"G'wan down the road!"
"No, no, Cass!" the old man begged, hopping frantically on one foot.
"Just a minute. It'll only take me a minute, I tell you. I gotter see
a feller."
"G'wan down the road!"
"Say, Cass! _don't_ treat a feller that way----"
Arkinsaw retreated. Cassidy and the club advanced. Arkinsaw craftily
side-stepped. So did Cassidy. They paused.
Cassidy leaned on his stick and centered the old man's wavering gaze.
"Don't lie," he said softly. "If yuh lie tuh me, yuh feather-brained
old cockroach, I'll just natch'lly beat your face off! I want yuh tuh
go home; just clamp your mind on that, Sam Meeker! If yuh think you're
goin' tuh throw your money away over that bar, yuh want tuh separate
yourself from the idea mighty quick. I won't stand fer foolishness. Go
over there and git your bed!"
By this time the old man had calmed down. He looked the other over
with a benevolently crafty eye.
"Why, what you been doing lately, Cass?" he inquired, with an adroit
turn of the conversation. "You don't look as if you were real happy."
Cassidy winced. Then he hefted the club suggestively. "I've been doin'
things _yuh_ won't do!" he said savagely. "There's your bed over
there. Pick it up! Hit the breeze! _Hike!_"
"This yere's a friend of mine, Con," chortled Arkinsaw delightedly, as
he scrambled up the steps of the swing train a little later. "He
knowed my folks, back home. He's a real kind feller."
Con nodded and surveyed Cassidy's club with vast appreciation. The
train underwent a preliminary convulsion and began to pull out.
"Good-by!" yelled Cassidy. "Keep sober, yuh brindle-whiskered old
billy-goat!"
Arkinsaw's straggly beard waved in the air as he stuck his head out of
a window. His worn, furtive old face was riotous with joy. He was
going home--_home_! Safe and sober, with forty dollars and a clean
conscience, more than had been his in many a day.
"You bet I kin!" he bellowed back. "You're all right, Cass!"
Cassidy sniffed and turned again toward the town. "I don't reckon I
c'u'd stand these yere chuck-ranches off fer a meal," he soliloquized,
"not lookin' the way I am. To-morrow's all right; I'll be workin'
then. To-day--" He paused and ran his hand over his forehead. "Well,
to-day I reckon it'll be Mike's again--if he'll stand fer it."
And Mike fed him. Cassidy was harmless now. The fact that he asked for
food proved it. Mike knew it; Cassidy knew it.
The rear of the saloon was partitioned off into a "Ladies' Room,"
whose door opened on the alkali flat behind. From thence came the
monotonous drone of a murmured conversation. Cassidy tried
ineffectually to follow it, but the droning of the voices and the
steady hum of the flies around the beer lees on the bar made him
sleepy. Outside it was stiflingly hot. Over on the grade the horses
were choking and snorting in the dust, while the shambling-gaited men
cursed steadily and heaved at the heavy scrapers. The little patch of
blue in the doorway was twinkling with heat. Far out on the yellow
plain, a grotesque-armed joshua lurched from side to side.
Cassidy felt a hand on his shoulder. "Do you want a drink?" asked
Mike. "If you do, go in there and earn it. Talk to her. She's in hard
luck."
Cassidy arose obediently, and with not a little timidity ventured to
open the door and peer within.
"Come in," said a woman's voice, and Cassidy, not knowing why or why
not, went in.
"Put your hat on the coffin and have a chair," said the woman. "I've
looked and looked, and I can't see any table in this room."
Cassidy shuffled to a seat in a moment of surprise, and looked
guardedly about him. There was, in fact, no table. Indubitably there
was a coffin.
"That's my husband," said the woman. "Want to see him?"
"N-n-no, ma'am," Cassidy stammered hastily.
The woman nodded appreciatively. "Few does," she said, "and I guess it
wouldn't do yuh much good. What's the matter with yuh? Yuh don't seem
right well."
"No, ma'am," Cassidy confessed; "I ain't very well to-day."
The woman smiled a little. There was a pause. "How long have yuh been
drinkin'?" she asked in a gentle voice.
"'Bout five days now," said Cassidy, reddening to the tips of his ears
and bashfully looking up for the first time.
She was a short, well-made woman, dressed in black from the hem of her
shiny skirt to the long plush bonnet-strings dangling loosely in her
lap. Her face was a firm, pleasant oval, quite unlined except near the
eyes, where there was a multitude of fine wrinkles such as come from
squinting across a desert under a desert sun. There was nothing
particularly worth noting about her face, except that it had an
exceptionally healthy appearance. But her eyes fascinated Cassidy.
They were an uncompromising, snapping black. They seemed brimming over
with vitality. They were eyes that showed a strength of will behind
them only woefully expressible in her woman's voice. They had a
compelling quality in their straightforward honesty that forced
Cassidy at once to forego the rest of her features. If he ventured to
admire the firm white chin and well-kept teeth, the eyes flashed a
stern rebuke. If his gaze slipped down to the sleazy, badly fashioned
dress, the eyes brought him up with a round turn, slapped him, and
reduced him to obedience. If his own flitted curiously to the smooth
brown hair, drawn simply, plainly away from her forehead, hers towed
him mercilessly back.
"We never drank much down tuh the ranch," she remarked, with the easy
deviance of one who understands another's failings and does not wish
to pain him by intruding their own immunity; "and now I s'pose there
won't be hardly any. I'm Sarah Gentry. Yuh know me? We live down tuh
Willow Springs."
Cassidy nodded. _He_ knew Willow Springs and its well-kept ranch. It
was the only fertile neck of land that ran down to Ochre Desert, an
oasis, a veritable paradise of cottonwoods, willows, dark fields of
alfalfa, a capably fenced corral, long lines of beehives, and
apple-and olive-trees.
Cassidy grinned feebly. "I know. I stoled a mushmelon there last
week."
"I saw yuh," said Sarah Gentry quickly, but without a shadow of
malice. "Your head is tuh red. Yuh better stick tuh grapes at night."
Cassidy collapsed.
"My husband died yesterday, from consumption," she went on, with an
even, steady flow of talk. "And I came in here tuh get a preacher tuh
bury him. I heard the railroad was comin' this way, and I figured
Christianity would come clippin' right along behind. But I guess it
won't pull in for quite a spell. It just beats me how the devil
_always_ gets the head start. _He_ kin always get in somehow, ridin'
the rods, or comin' blind baggage; religion sorter tags behind and
waits for the chair-car. I don't think much of this town, either. It
seems like it was full of nothin' but sand, saloons, beer-bottles, and
bums. Are yuh one of 'em?" she inquired, with a sudden thrust that
startled Cassidy beyond bounds.
"A _bum_, ma'am?" gasped Cassidy.
"No; a preacher."
"I reckon not," said Cassidy definitely.
"I didn't know," said the woman vaguely. "I never saw one. Edgard an'
me was married by the county clerk down tuh Hackberry, and he tried
tuh kiss me, and Edgard shot him. Those would be mighty unfortunate
manners for a preacher, I reckon. And now I'm all tired out and don't
know what tuh do. That man outside let me sit down in here, and made
me bring the coffin right inside,--he carried it in himself,--but he
didn't seem tuh know much about preachers, either. If I was a Mormon I
s'pose I could divide up the buryin' some, but I'm all alone now."
In a moment of unreflecting insanity Cassidy opened his mouth. "I'll
help yuh, ma'am!" he said gallantly.
"All right," responded the widowed woman instantly. "Yuh kin lead."
Cassidy paled perceptibly under his tan.
"Now don't back out," she said, "even if yuh do feel sick. Mebbe some
whisky would hearten yuh up." And she went quickly to the door.
Cassidy sat still in his chair, making up his mind--about the whisky.
"There!" said Sarah Gentry, suddenly appearing with a glass which she
set on the coffin. "Looks real good, don't it?"
Cassidy's forehead was damp with perspiration. Inside of him something
was clamoring frightfully for the stuff in the glass. Something seemed
gnawing at his very heart and soul, threatening and pleading, begging
and insisting, fashioning devilish excuses, promising great things.
Cassidy's hand stretched slowly out for the drink--and came back.
There was a silence. The woman fixed her large, strong eyes on his.
Again he reached out his hand, and his face was strained and
unpleasant to look upon. But again he stopped before he took the
glass. A horse had whinnied outside. Cassidy shook his head grimly.
Putting his toe against the glass, he deftly kicked it into the
corner. "I reckon not," he said.
The woman jumped to her feet.
"Git up!" she said impulsively. "Git up and shake hands. You're a
_man_! And now we'll go out and git tuh buryin'."
A little party of six was assembled in a gulch in the sand-hills. The
coffin, marked only with a card, lay in a slight depression scooped
out by the wind.
Nearest to the rough pine box stood the widow, with lowered eyes, but
without the trace of an expression on her face. Heavy-handed,
red-faced, gaunt and grim, Cassidy loomed up beside her. Behind them,
in attitudes of more or less perfunctory interest, stood a
white-capped cook from the commissary-tent, who had come out to get
away from the flies, two vague-visaged unknowns from the vast
under-world of hobodom, and a greasy, loose-lipped fireman with a
dirty red sweater and a contemptuous eye.
"Go on!" whispered the woman. She threw one of her swift, compelling
glances at Cassidy. "Say something!" And Cassidy obeyed; he could not
have refused if he had tried.
It became at once apparent that he must make no rambling talk. The
history of the past five days, while illuminating and diverting, could
not be calculated to inspire the casual onlooker with religious awe.
If aught was to be said, it must, perforce, be meaty and direct.
Cassidy grasped the irritating fireman firmly by the arm. Fixing him
with a baleful eye, he spoke:
"This yere lady has wanted me to say something tuh yuh about her
husband dyin'. As far as I kin understand, that part is all right.
That's what he done. He's dead, all right; there ain't no mistake
about _that_. Wot I'm askin' _yuh_ is: Was he a _man_? Was he good for
anything? Wot did he do when he wasn't workin'? Was he a low, mean
cuss, always goin' round with bums?"
"How do I know?" asked the fireman, in an aggrieved tone. "Ouch! Say,
leggo my arm!"
Cassidy's grip tightened. The fireman groaned dismally and subsided.
"Judgin' from wot I kin see, I should say he was! I mean he _was_ good
fer something. I should say he was surely a terrible weaver if he
couldn't keep straight, hitched up alongside of the--the lamented
widow. I don't think any feller could be much if he wasn't. Yuh see,
pardner, he had _all the chance in the world_. _He_ didn't need to be
jay-hawkin' round, makin' eyes at every red-cheeked biscuit-shooter
that fed him hot cakes. _He_ had a nice ranch and a good wife. A
feller that couldn't be grateful tuh a woman that's treated him as
good as she has to-day, and hauled him clear from Willow Springs tuh
git a Christian burial, and stood around fer him in a hot sun--well,
he couldn't be no account _at all_!"
Cassidy paused and spat. "That's the way _I_ look at it. And,"
thwarting the restive fireman by a startlingly painful grip on the
fleshy part of his arm, "any feller that ain't got as good a wife--any
feller that ain't got _any_, and lays round drinkin', and foolin' his
money away on the 'double O,' and sittin' in tuh stud games with
permiskus strangers, and gettin' ready tuh be a hobo--all I kin say
is, he'd better brace up and try tuh deserve one. A feller that ain't
got a wife is a no-account loafer and bum, and he ought tuh git
kicked! _This_ man had one, but he went and left her. Even then he
done better than _yuh_ done! That's all."
"Kin I go now?" queried the fireman smartly.
"Yuh kin!" responded Cassidy, malevolently, "but I'll see yuh later,
young feller. I ain't overfond of yuh." And he turned away to cover
the coffin with sand, digging it up laboriously and scattering it here
and there with a piece of board.
"That was a mighty nice talk yuh gave the fireman," remarked the
woman, during an interval in their labors. "I feel a lot better now.
Mebbe the fireman will get married now and brace up. Was he really
doing all those things yuh said?"
"Some feller was," answered Cassidy. "I heard about it."
"And now," announced the widow, "we'll just make him a good head-board
and stop there. Edgard _might_ have been a good husband, but he didn't
try overhard. Have yuh got anything written?"
"I ain't got anything but this yere old location notice," ventured
Cassidy doubtfully. "I guess, though, I'll just stake out Edgard, the
same as a claim. Then it'll be regular, and there won't nobody touch
him. Of course we won't put up any side centers or corner posts; jest
a sort of discovery monument. He'll be safe for three months, all
right."
And so Cassidy, with the nub of a pencil, and using his knee as a
writing-desk, duly, and in the manner set forth in the laws of the
United States, discovered and located Edgard Gentry, age thirty-five,
died of consumption, extending fifteen hundred feet in a northerly and
southerly direction and three hundred feet on either side, together
with all his dips, spurs, and angles.
"Yuh write a nice hand," murmured the widow pensively, sitting down in
the sand beside him and unwittingly breathing on his neck as he wrote.
"Did yuh go tuh school, Mister Cassidy?"
"Yessum," was the confused answer. "Leastways, part of the time."
The widow surveyed him with a dreamy look in her fine eyes and pulled
thoughtfully at her full lower lip.
"You're a big man," she remarked. "How much do you weigh?"
"Over two hundred," answered Cassidy consciously.
"And yuh haven't got any home?"--innocently.
"No, ma'am."
"What were yuh doing tuh that poor old man to-day?"
The sudden irrelevance of the question startled Cassidy immeasurably.
"Wot? That little old Arkinsaw man? Oh--nothin'. Did yuh see me
talkin' tuh him?"
"I did," said the woman; "and I also saw yuh poking him up the street
with a big stick. Do yuh think that was a nice thing for a strong
young man like yuh?"
"I was--I was just advisin' him," explained Cassidy thickly. "I----"
"What were yuh hurtin' that old man for?" was the forceful
interruption. "Did he ever hurt _yuh_ any?"
"Hurt _me_? Old Arkinsaw? No, ma'am; not tuh my knowledge. But----"
"_Never mind that_," said the woman stonily though the big, strong
eyes had a favorable light in their depths. "Yuh tell me why yuh were
sticking him in the back."
"Well--he wanted a drink--that's why," Cassidy mumbled.
"Oh!" remarked the woman, with withering comprehension. "And so,
because he was tired and thirsty and wanted a drink, yuh poked him. I
see."
Cassidy grew desperate. "I'm afraid, ma'am, yuh don't rightly
understand," he undertook to explain.
"Yes, I do," replied the woman hotly, and burned him with her eyes.
Then she turned her back on him, which hurt him a great deal more.
Cassidy groaned aloud.
"I believe you're a bully," goaded the little woman, and showed an
attractive, mutinous profile over her shoulder. "Do yuh bully women,
too?"
Cassidy did not answer at once. When he did, it was in a low, rather
lifeless voice: "No'm; I don't bother the women-folks much."
"There, there, now," soothed the woman, quickly turning to him and
putting her hand on his shoulder with a motherly gesture. "Don't go
tuh feelin' bad. Don't yuh s'pose I knew all the time why yuh did it?
I was glad, too. Just yuh lay down there in the sand and get rested,
and tell me all about it."
And so Cassidy, stretched full length, with his face half hidden in
his arm, mumbled fragmentarily--and told. After it was finished, after
all his misdeeds had been related, and counted over, one by one, he
ventured to look up.
The woman's face was grave, but she was smiling. She laid her hand
gently on his cheek and turned his eyes to hers.
"But you've quit now?" she stated.
"I've quit," answered Cassidy honestly.
"Well, then, it'll be all right. I reckon it's time for me to be going
now. Yuh better drive me home."
* * * * *
The road to Willow Springs lay straight across the mesa. Here and
there, in the yellow expanse of sand, were patches of green mesquit,
where some underground flow came near enough to the surface to slake
their thirsty roots. Elsewhere the sand shifted noiselessly across the
plain, under the touch of the wind, which fashioned innumerable oddly
shaped hummocks, and then gently purred them away again, to heap on
others.
After they had driven silently for some time, the woman spoke:
"There's a man standing in that clump of cat's-claw ahead. Did yuh see
him?"
Cassidy thoughtfully eased up the perspiring team. "I know him," he
answered, although apparently he had not raised his eyes above the
dash-board for a long time. "Name is Tommy."
"Well, what's Tommy hidin' in those bushes for?" demanded the woman.
"A feller broke into Number One Commissary last night."
"Did Tommy do it?"
"No, ma'am--not this time. His partner done it and skipped out."
"Does Jake think Tommy did it?"
"Yes, ma'am. I see Jake hitchin' up tuh go after him when we started
out."
There was little said after that until they came abreast of the
cat's-claw near the road. Cassidy pulled up.
"Say, Tommy! Oh, yuh Tommy!" he called persuasively at the silent
bushes. "Come, git in here. This lady wants yuh."
"I guess Jake's a-comin'," replied Tommy, poking his head into view
from his thorny retreat.
"I guess he is," said Cassidy, and looked over his shoulder at a
rapidly approaching pillar of dust. "It's a good thing the county pays
for his horse-flesh." There was a pause. "I reckon you'd better hurry
some, Tommy," drawled Cassidy.
"Don't stand there imperiling your life, tryin' tuh guess who I am,"
said the widow abruptly. "Get right in here and cover up with alfalfa
and them horse-blankets, and lie quiet. I want yuh."
"What for?" queried Tommy, as he clambered in, being a young man of
devious thought.
"For a witness!" said Sarah Gentry unfathomably--for Tommy.
Cassidy looked puzzled for a moment. Then a slow wave of red crept
over his face and crimsoned his ears. He started his horses again to
cover his confusion.
The woman let him think for a moment; then her eyes drew his own
startled orbs around and enveloped them in a soft light.
"Yuh know what I mean, Mister Cassidy?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well--shall we?" shyly.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Cassidy, and blushed incontinently.
Behind them a light buggy was being driven over the desert at a
furious pace. As it came nearer, the two in the ranch-wagon, with its
confused huddle of horse-blankets and hay, beneath which lay the
trustful Tommy, could hear the shock of the springs as it bumped from
one chuck-hole to another; but they did not turn their heads.
"Hello, there, Cass!" shouted the sheriff genially, as he pulled down
alongside of them. "How'do, Mis' Gentry! Pretty hot travelin', ain't
it?"
"I s'pose it is--being July," the little woman replied, with the first
trace of confusion that Cassidy had seen. "I--I hadn't been noticing
lately."
"I'm in a terrible hurry," the sheriff continued rapidly. "Some are
sayin' young Tommy Ivison come this way, and I want him. I hate tuh
give yuh my dust. Whoa, Dick! Whoa, Pet!" He pulled in his fretting
team with a heavy hand. "I've got tuh get him before he crosses the
California line, so I got tuh fan right along. Gid-ap, there!"
"Wait a minute, Jake."
"Can't do it, Mis' Gentry. If he's more than a couple of miles ahead,
I can't ketch him. What is it I can do for you?"
"Yuh kin marry us two!" said the little woman, with a gulp.
"_Marry yuh?_" roared the sheriff. "Can't do it, ma'am--not even for a
friend. Awful sorry, Mis' Gentry, but I've just _got_ tuh go." He
jerked the whip from its socket for a merciless slash.
"_Jake!_" said the little woman commandingly.
"Ma'am?" said the sheriff in an uncertain tone.
"Yuh heard what I said?"
"Yes, ma'am; but it ain't regular at _all_. I ain't no justice of the
peace; I ain't got power enough; I ain't got anything--Bible, nor
statutes, nor nothing. I couldn't take no fee, either; it wouldn't be
right. By Golly!" he exclaimed excitedly, "I bet that's him, up ahead,
right now!" and he struck his horses.
"Whip up!" said the woman to Cassidy, and she stood up in the wagon
and held on by the rocking top.
"Jake Bowerman!" she called across the erratic width that separated
the rapidly moving vehicles, "if you've got power enough tuh 'rest
people and keep 'em in jail for the rest of their lives, marryin'
ain't much worse, and yuh kin do it if yuh try!"
"Yuh ain't got any witness, Mis' Gentry!" bellowed the confused Jake,
as a last resort, and touched his horses again. Cassidy let out
another notch, and kept even. The wagons were swaying jerkily from
side to side.
"Yes, I have!" snapped the woman. "Now, yuh hurry up!"
"Better stand up, Mister Cassidy," she whispered; "we've got tuh be
real quick!"
"It don't seem hardly regular!" yelled the discomfited sheriff,
skilfully avoiding a dangerous hummock and crashing through a
mesquit-bush which whipped away his hat. "I'll--I'll do it for yuh,
Mis' Gentry. I'll marry yuh as tight as I kin; but I can't stop
drivin' for that, and I've forgot a whole lot how it goes. Are yuh all
ready?"
The desert had changed from its soft, yielding sand to a brown, flat
floor of small stones and volcanic dust, fairly hard and unrutted.
Pulling in dangerously close, the sheriff shifted his reins to one
hand and faced them. The two wagons were racing neck and neck in a
cloud of dust, Cassidy handling his lines with skill and growing
satisfaction. From the body of the wagon under him, and quite
distinguishable from the clatter of the horses' feet, came a series of
sharp bumps as the unfortunate Tommy ricochetted from side to side.
"Do yuh believe in the Constitution of the United States?" bellowed
Jake.
"_We do!_" pealed the woman.
"Do yuh--whoa, there, Pet! Goll darn your hide!--do yuh solemnly swear
never tuh fight no _duels_?"
"What's that?" screamed the woman.
"He said a 'duel'!" shouted Cassidy in her ear, above the uproar of
the wheels. "Tell him _no_! We won't fight many duels!"
"No! _No_ duels!" sang the woman.
"And no aidin' or abettin'?"
"No! No bettin' at all!"
"Nor have any connection with any _duels_ whatsoever?"
The widow looked puzzled. She didn't understand. What had _duels_ to
do with solemn marriage?
"It's all in the statutes, all right!" roared the sheriff angrily, as
vast portions of the laws of Nevada fled from his agitated mind.
"Mebbe you're both grand jurors now; I dunno. I think that's the oath.
I reckon it's good and bindin', anyhow." He stood up in his buggy and
shook the reins furiously over his horses' backs to escape from
further legal entanglements. Leaning back over the folded top, he
pointed at them magisterially with his whip.
"And now, by the grace of God and me, Jake Bowerman, I hereby
pronounce yuh man and wife!"
With a roar of wheels, bad language, and a cloud of dust, the sheriff
vanished in pursuit of the California line and the fleet-footed Tommy.
Cassidy pulled his horses into a much-needed walk. The little woman
sat down and felt for her bonnet.
"_My!_" gasped Mrs. Cassidy, "_that_ was going some! Do yuh reckon
we're really married?"
The team, unheeded, had swung off from the desert into a road made in
damper, richer soil. Not far ahead, now, the dark foliage of the
Willow Spring ranch rose in cool relief against the grim, sun-reddened
buttes beyond. Their passenger had some time since dropped quietly off
and was walking ahead of the plodding horses.
As Cassidy looked forward at the quiet fields, and the ranch, and the
spring, in the half-circle of willows where the cattle drank, now
gradually dimming in the soft twilight, and then, with an involuntary
turn, at the God-forgotten waste behind him, something melted in his
breast; something cleared up his mind, and wiped it free of his
thoughtless appetites and sins, and made him a strong, clean-hearted
man again. He turned to the now quiet, pensive little woman at his
side. He found her looking up at him with trustful, softly shining,
all-enveloping eyes.
"I hope we're married!" said Cassidy gravely. "I reckon we are. Jake
was always a mighty brave man, and what he does, he does so it sticks.
But even if we ain't married good enough fer some folks, it's good
enough fer me, for all time. I won't run away, ma'am. No, ma'am--not
ever!"
"I know!" said the little woman happily. "_I_ know!"