THE WILD ROSE OF THE CANADIAN
The town’s name was Mobeetie and, for the expansive suddenness of its
springing up, might better have been Mushroom. A Cheyenne killed a
buffalo in the flats that stretch from the Canadian, and as he peeled
the husk from that buffalo the nearest paleface was thirty miles away.
The next day came engineers, and ran lines and mapped out town lots on
the ground where that buffalo was slain; within a week thereafter
Mobeetie buzzed and bustled.
Mr. Masterson, ever full of the spirit of progress, gave up buffalo
hunting for the nonce, and carried “chain” and pegged corners, and did
what other deeds an amateur might do towards aiding the surveyors in
laying out Mobeetie. Later, he aided the public in laying out certain
predatory characters who from time to time rode into Mobeetie with a
purpose of spoil. These latter intermittent lifts to law and order
endeared Mr. Masterson to Mobeetie; the more since he was not, speaking
strictly, a resident of that hamlet, having his roofless habitat on the
buffalo range, with a home-camp at the ’Dobe Walls.
All folk, whether they be white or black or red or wheat-hued, are
idolators in their hearts, and those of Mobeetie worshipped Mollie
Brennan. The women worshipped her because her little feet took hold on
innocence, the men for the beauty of her face—for brown of cheek, and
red of lip, and with eyes as softly, gently deep as are those of an
antelope, Mollie Brennan was beautiful. To her worshippers Mollie
Brennan was known as The Wild Rose, and the name had been given her
after this fashion:
Misled by drink, a chance-blown poet once upon a time invaded the
Panhandle. Beholding Mollie Brennan, he fell in love, as poets will, and
sighed on her obdurate trail for a wasted twelve-month. Because she
would not listen, the poet poured forth his soul in sonnets, in which
vehicle of verse he identified Mollie Brennan as “The Wild Rose of the
Canadian.” There were no wild roses along the Canadian, at least in any
near vicinity of Mobeetie, but the love-wrung bard, more moved of the
whiskey than the flora of the region, refused to be bound by that
barrenness. “The Wild Rose” he made it; and, since his stanzas were
granted local hearing, the Wild Rose it became, and Mollie Brennan
accepted and wore the title pleasantly enough.
But the Wild Rose resolutely declined the hand of that poet; and because
she would not hear him and he must tell some one, he was wont, after the
fifth cup, to sob forth his soul and its defeat to the frequenters of
the Lady Gay saloon. The defeat gave general satisfaction, for Mobeetie
distrusted if it did not disapprove of poets, and in that harsh hour the
Panhandle thought better of a Sharp’s rifle than of a sonnet. The poet,
in a lucid moment, perceived as much, and, every hope of conquering the
callous fancy of the Wild Rose having died, he got aboard the
stage-coach for Dodge, bearing with him a bottle and a broken heart. His
going was regretted at the Lady Gay, but the Wild Rose felt relieved.
Sergeant King was so early in his coming to Mobeetie as to be almost
entitled to fame as one of its founders. Nor did the fact go without a
value, since nothing but that residential antiquity had saved him from
being warned to quit the town a dozen times.
Mobeetie confessed to no love for Sergeant King. He was dark of brow,
with cruel mouth and furtive secret eye. He had been run out of Abilene,
as the upshot of an enterprise wherein he combined a six-shooter with a
deck of cards—the latter most improperly marked—and which resulted in
the demise of a gentleman then and there playing draw-poker against him.
Also, he was that creature—most detested and soonest to die in the
West—a blusterer and a bully; and when a bit unbuckled of rum he would
boast of the blood he had spilled.
This latter relaxation is exceeding bad form. Mobeetie could have
overlooked the marked cards, since it is understood in the West that
every gentleman, in what games of chance engage his interest, must be
equal to his own protection or suffer those forfeits which nature
everywhere imposes upon ignorance gone astray; it might have condoned
the homicide, because, technically, it was a killing rather than a
murder, and the departed wore his hardware at the time; even those
hang-dog facial marks of an innate treachery would have passed
unchallenged, for who may help his looks? but that braggart trick of,
orally, reviewing what scalps he had taken, and exulting thereat, set
public sentiment flowing against Sergeant King to such a height of
disfavour that no one wanted his company and but few his gold. This
last should be the measure of an utter public disregard for, however
blackly hated your outlaw villain may be, his gold, as a rule,
partakes in no wise of his unpopularity. For what says Vespasian? “The
smell of all money is sweet.”
Following her inadvertent conquest of the poet, and his broken-hearted
dismissal to Dodge, Sergeant King was that one who gave to the Wild Rose
what he would have called his heart. The gift bred an alarm in her bosom
beyond any induced by the rhyming passion of the sonneteer. Whereas the
poet had only annoyed her, she drew back frightened in the base instance
of Sergeant King. He saw and understood, and the bitterness which lay
like poison at the bottom of his evil heart was stirred.
Every resident of Mobeetie, in an hour devoid of convention, was the
acquaintance, if not the friend, of every other resident of that
metropolis by dint of a citizenship common to both, and Sergeant King
was therefore an acquaintance of the Wild Rose. However, what few words
he addressed to her never went beyond the commonplace; warned as by
intuition of her aversion, he offered no syllable of love. But his eyes,
black, and burning with a hungry fire—half-hidden, half-bursting into
flame—made no secret of those sentiments that had swept down Sergeant
King; the Wild Rose could feel their glances play about her like a
tongue of fire. There it stopped; if he possessed a hope of winning her,
he never made it manifest—coming near her only with his eyes!
You are not to suppose that the Wild Rose went untouched of love. When a
maiden refuses one man, it is a reason for believing she has given
herself to some one else. Mobeetie had grown up a brisk three hours’
canter from the ’Dobe Walls, and Mr. Masterson was frequently about its
causeways. Buffalo hunting would wax monotonous betimes, and in what
moments it palled upon him Mr. Masterson unbent in visits to Mobeetie.
Thus the Wild Rose caught frequent glimpses of him, and the heart which
had refused the poet, and was closed fast and fear-locked against
Sergeant King, went following Mr. Masterson with its love. The Wild Rose
learned to know the very jingle of his spurs, and their melody about the
board sidewalks of Mobeetie would bring her face to the pane.
Once, the Wild Rose met Mr. Masterson as he emerged from the Santa Ana
restaurant, to which place of refection he had been drawn in favour of
flapjacks, and the blush that spread redly over her cheek would have
told tales to one more gifted of self-conceit. The tender truth missed
fire; Mr. Masterson, if he nursed opinions on the point at all, held by
a theory that love ought to be confined to the East as a region endowed
of what leisure was demanded by its pursuit. When the Wild Rose swept
him softly, and then let fall those lids in fear lest the modest hazel
depths give up their blissful secret, his mind was on Cheyennes, and how
far his raid on Bear Shield’s ponies one Christmas Eve might have been a
source of the recent uprising of that peevish people. He escaped news of
the sweet story told by those deep fringed eyes, and the Wild Rose had
the romance to herself.
And yet, while her soul’s cry went unheard by Mr. Masterson, it was not
to die unnoted. Jealousy is more alert than love, and Sergeant King,
lounging in the doorway of the Lady Gay, surprised the look of the Wild
Rose, and read its truth. The knowledge shone in upon him with a red
hatefulness that was as a ray from the pit. The love which had fled from
him would follow another—unsought and uninvited!
Like an icicle the thought pierced through and through the soul of
Sergeant King. Wanting the touch of a jealous spur, he might have loved
on for unresentful years, passively enduring the coldness which was his
reward. But that Mr. Masterson should have the Wild Rose aroused in him
a mindless fury that was like unto the blind anger of an animal. Even
his vanity arose to edge the sense of loss and sharpen him for
retaliation.
At the rough seminary wherein Sergeant King had been reared blood was
taught as that one reprisal worth the while of a man, and death and
vengeance were set side by side as synonyms. To determine on the taking
off of Mr. Masterson was the one thing natural. It called for no motion
of the intelligence; the resolution leaped instantly into being as the
fruit of what he saw and what he felt. His enemy must die, and the sole
question that invited pause was: How might that enemy be blotted out
with least risk to himself? He retired into an uttermost corner of the
Lady Gay to consider and lay out his dark campaign.
Such as Sergeant King are unequal to sure bloodshed unless their nerves
are stiffened by alcohol, and he caused a bottle to be brought to his
elbow to assist his cogitations. He put away glass after glass, for—as
those mule-skinners freighting between Mobeetie and Dodge would have
phrased it—he “wasn’t able to start such a load as Bat Masterson on a
cold collar.”
While Sergeant King was thus employed in bringing about that needed
temperature, as though Fate were delivering his victim into his clutch,
Mr. Masterson with Mr. Dixon came into the Lady Gay. The two sat at a
table just across from Sergeant King.
It was a big day for the Lady Gay; the tides of custom had risen to
unusual heights. There were a busy dozen about the faro table, which
stood at the end of the bar; an equal number bent noisily over monte,
the latter diversion being dealt by a careworn Mexican, who looked as
though luck were against him. In the far end a sedate poker game
prevailed.
To every man his interest; with two-score folk in the Lady Gay, no one
observed the sombre Sergeant King, brooding schemes of blood. A Mexican
lost his last _peso_ at monte, and drew out of the eager fringe about
the table. Sergeant King called him with a motion of his hand. The
Mexican approached, received the whispered directions, took the gold
piece tendered, and disappeared. By the time Sergeant King had taken
another drink the Mexican led up his pony, saddled and bridled, to the
door of the Lady Gay and stood holding it by the bits, awaiting the
murderous convenience of its owner. Plainly Sergeant King was opening a
gate for final flight.
There be many species of courage; there are day courage and night
courage, water courage and land courage, gun courage and knife courage,
with forty further courages beside. And, when you have settled its sort,
there remains the matter of comparison. There is a courage born of
caution; it is fed and led by caution, and runs by its side like a calf
by the side of the mother-cow. There is another courage, whitely
desperate, which owns no element of prudence, and against which no odds
prevail.
Once in the Panhandle—he may be there to-day—there lived a personage of
cows whose name was Old Tom Harris. I have referred to this worthy man
before. He numbered but thirty years, and the epithet of “Old” was a
title of endearment which his mates of rope and running-iron had
conferred upon him to mark their admiration of his arctic dauntlessness
of heart. Mr. Willingham, sheriff, having official reason so to do,
aimed his six-shooter at Old Tom Harris when the latter’s back was
turned. Then he called upon him to hold up his hands. Old Tom Harris
came ’round on his heel, but he did not throw up his hands. Looking into
the point-blank mouth of the Willingham pistol, he pulled his own. Then
he laid it, muzzle for muzzle, with the opposing piece of ordnance, and
defied Mr. Willingham to begin his blazing work.
“You haven’t the sand to shoot!” said Old Tom Harris.
And Mr. Willingham hadn’t.
It might bear suggestion that the courage of Sergeant King was
caution-born. With seven chances in his favour where his enemy possessed
but three he would offer battle. With chances even he would be more
discreet. Mr. Masterson’s courage was of the Old Tom Harris stamp.
The Mexican stood at the door of the Lady Gay, holding the pony of
Sergeant King. Suddenly, above the hubbub of the games, arose the voice
of that unworthy.
“Thar’s a hoss thief here I’d like to kill!”
In the hush that followed every eye went nervously seeking the speaker.
He stood erect, his six-shooter in his right hand and hanging by his
side.
It would have been wiser, from the standpoint of his enterprise, you
will say, had Sergeant King gone instantly and wordlessly to work; you
will condemn the oratory as marking a lack of military intelligence.
There was a reason for the rhetoric of Sergeant King. The rules to
govern Western gun-play do not permit the shooting of one’s enemy in the
back. It is one’s notifying duty to arouse him. Once he be on his guard,
and reaching for his artillery, one is licensed to begin his downfall. A
violation of these laws leads to a vigilance committee, a rope, and a
nearest tree.
Sergeant King was aware of these courtesies of the gun and what public
resentment would attend their violation. Wherefore, and that the
proprieties related might be appeased, he shouted:
“Thar’s a hoss thief here I’d like to kill.”
Mr. Masterson was in no wise a friend of Sergeant King, and yet he would
not have called himself that person’s enemy. He quietly distasted, and
as quietly failed, to be on nearer than nodding terms with him. Also, he
distrusted the fortitude of Sergeant King as neither granite-bedded nor
iron-bound.
“I once,” observed Mr. Masterson, in later exposition of that courage of
Sergeant King, and his estimate thereof; “I once saw him jump over a
counter to get at a party, when he might as well have gone ’round, and
the episode struck me as too dramatic. From that moment I knew the
Sergeant wasn’t clean strain game.”
There is a telepathy of the guns. This was once shown when Clay
Allison—but that comes later; let us return to the Lady Gay. With the
first war-shout, the experienced intuition of what portion of the
Mobeetie public was then gathered in the Lady Gay, went wholly aware
that the feud of Sergeant King was addressed solely to Mr. Masterson.
Not a whit behind the public in the feather-edged character of his
apprehension, Mr. Masterson was likewise made aware of it. In logical
retort and with the promptness of light, he kicked his chair from
beneath him and arose to his feet.
“I reckon I’m the horse thief you refer to,” said Mr. Masterson, and
when he said it his six-shooter was pointing squarely at the plotting
head of Sergeant King.
You have read of such a commodity as fascination, and that a sure
nearness of death induces trance. It is the bird with the serpent, the
mouse with the cat. It is also the palsied truth of divers men when
brought within touch of cold eternity.
Of those who congeal at sight of death was Sergeant King. He had
performed with reckless valour, as he would have held it, on twenty
smoke-swept fields, and more than once had killed his man. What was it
now that froze him motionless? As he looked into the mouth of that
Colt’s-45, and beheld the gray fire in the eye beyond, for the earliest
time he felt the clutch of the grave upon him. It left him still as
stone; his heart became water, his cheek clay.
There was a chill pause—a silence as of the tomb! You might have heard
the heart-beats of the Mobeetie public as, strung like a bow, it waited
on the fatal crash.
Four seconds went ticking into the past; their passing was as the
passing of four ages. Mr. Masterson, with unwavering muzzle and
unblinking eye, began slowly closing in on Sergeant King, who remained
as though planet-struck.
The slow advance continued until the pistol of Mr. Masterson was within
an inch of the transfixed face. Then, with the abruptness of a shot, Mr.
Masterson let down the hammer of his weapon, and with it smote the other
on the head. It was a downright, crushing blow, and only the good
thickness of the skull of Sergeant King saved him from annihilation. He
dropped like some log of wood—his pistol falling from his fingers and
rattling on the board floor of the Lady Gay. As Mr. Masterson replaced
his own weapon in his belt, he kicked that of Sergeant King into a nook
of safety. “It’s the notion of Mobeetie,” explained Mr. Dixon to
Sergeant King, when thirty minutes later the latter was mentally fit to
grasp a warning, “it’s the notion of Mobeetie that you’d better pull
your freight. Here’s your gun, thar’s your hoss; an’ if you’ve got a
lick of savey, by noon to-morry you’ll be either in Tascosa, Fort Elliot
or Fort Sill. Any one of ’em’s a heap healthier than Mobeetie, which for
you at least might be deescribed as a mighty sickly camp.”
It has been explained that although from Boston Mr. Dixon had fallen
from those heights of strictest English to which he had been lifted by
education into the slipshod accent of the Brazos.
The long speech of Mr. Dixon’s, however, was not thrown away; without a
word, and reeling a bit in the saddle with the blur that still hung like
a cloud across his faculties, Sergeant King rode off to the west. As he
disappeared where the trail led over a low hill Mr. Dixon nodded a
foreboding head.
“Bat ought to have downed him,” observed Mr. Dixon to those several
members of the body politic assembled to witness the exodus of Sergeant
King; “Bat ought to have downed him. However, he’s makin’ for Tascosa,
an’ if he’ll only open his system on that outfit, you can bet Bob Pierce
or Jim East’ll bump him off.”
“That’s whatever!” assented one of Mr. Dixon’s hearers.
The incident was over, and with frank accord, one and all, they returned
to the Lady Gay, and by second drink-time in the evening—to employ a
Panhandle method of marking the flight of time—the affair, as being dull
and commonplace in its finale, was quite forgot. Had Mr. Masterson
emptied his Colt’s-45 into the head or the heart of Sergeant King the
public would have talked of it for a day.
It was nine of the moonless night and Mobeetie’s citizens for the
greater part were gathered in store or bar or what other emporium best
attracted their favour. There were no street lamps and the streets were
almost deserted, since no one cared at risk of shin to blunder and
stumble in the dark.
One figure there was, however, which, avoiding the glare from front
windows, stood watching in the shadows of the Lady Gay. The Lady Gay
occupied the corner of two streets, and the lurking one was leaning
against the side of that temple of chance. Within stretch of his hand
was a small door, meant to supplement the front doors in event of a
crowd.
Now the situation had its peculiar, not to say suspicious, side. Had you
entered the Lady Gay you might have seen that Mr. Masterson, with two or
three about him, was sitting within touch of that small door. Had you
returned to the lurking one without, and struck a match, you would have
identified him as Sergeant King. From where he stood, with ear pressed
close to the thin board wall of the Lady Gay, he could hear the voice of
Mr. Masterson. It was by ear he had located him.
Sergeant King had returned for that revenge now twice his due. He lacked
the chilled-steel courage to invade the Lady Gay; to shoot through the
pasteboard side of the structure, and try to kill by ear, was nothing
sure; the best that Sergeant King might do was wait and watch. Mayhap in
the chapter of accidents it had been written that Mr. Masterson would
open the little door and furnish him the opportunity for which his black
soul panted.
Mr. Kimball, the blacksmith, had discounted his social position by
marrying a Mexican woman; that was years before. Now Mr. Kimball’s
Mexican wife was ill, and the Wild Rose, who cared nothing for caste
under circumstances of sympathy, was nursing her. Something was wanted
from the drug store, not two blocks away, and the Wild Rose went in
quest of it. She took a lantern to guide her little feet.
Sergeant King, ambushed in the shadows of the Lady Gay, saw the Wild
Rose coming down the walk and knew her as the lantern-flare shone once
upon her pretty face. There was enough of cynic humour in the sinister
depths of Sergeant King to half curl his lips with a smile. Here was a
two-edged vengeance! He would have the Wild Rose call forth Mr.
Masterson and then slay him before her eyes that loved him.
Sergeant King went sauntering to meet the Wild Rose. When she beheld him
she started; he, on his part, made a motion as of gratified surprise.
“Oh, Miss Brennan,” said he, “I was in the Lady Gay. Mr. Masterson said
he wished to see you. He’s just inside the door. If you’ll rap and call
to him, he’ll open it.”
The doubtful strangeness of the suggestion and its source would have
occurred even to the innocence of the Wild Rose had the name involved
been any other than that of Mr. Masterson. The mention of him swallowed
up her wits, and, in a fashion of love-flutter, the Wild Rose hesitated
before the little door.
“Are you sure he wanted me?” she faltered.
“That’s what he said,” returned Sergeant King, as, standing a little to
the left and rear, he drew his six-shooter from its scabbard. There
would be no oratory this time; he was not to talk away another chance.
The Wild Rose tapped timidly at the door.
“Well?” cried a voice inside.
“Mr. Masterson, it’s I. You said you wanted me.” The blushes of the Wild
Rose were visible in the dark.
The door was locked. There was a turning of the key; the bolt was shot,
and the door swung open.
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Masterson, to whom the voice and words of
the Wild Rose had come but faintly.
At the opening of the door Sergeant King thrust aside the Wild Rose.
Next came a flash and a roar! There could be no talk of missing; the
pistol was pressed against the side of Mr. Masterson. He staggered with
the awful shock of it as the lead tore through his body; but he kept his
feet, holding by the door.
There came a second roar, a kind of double roar, and this time there
were two flashes instead of one. The trained senses inside the Lady Gay
averred later that the space to elapse between the roar and the double
roar was less than the tenth part of a second.
However brief that measure of time, it was crimson with multiplied
tragedy. With the thought of defending her love, the Wild Rose, uttering
a cry of horror, and clutching at the murderous pistol, threw herself
between Sergeant King and Mr. Masterson. She was a breath too late for
the first; the second, meant also for her idol, drove its way into her
young breast. The Wild Rose fell; at her side fell Sergeant King,
snuffed out by the unfailing six-shooter of Mr. Masterson.
Hard hit as he was, Mr. Masterson raised the Wild Rose in his arms. She
opened her brown eyes, swimming with love.
“He said you wanted me,” whispered the Wild Rose.
Mr. Masterson, looking into the soft depths, saw that love and knew it
for his own. Even as he gazed, the warm lights failed and faded; the
rose flush deserted the cheek. In the arms of Mr. Masterson the Wild
Rose lay dead.