WHETSTONE, THE OUTLAW
When Taterleg roused the camp before the east was light, Lambert noted
that another man had ridden in. This was a wiry young fellow with a
short nose and fiery face, against which his scant eyebrows and lashes
were as white as chalk.
His presence in the camp seemed to put a restraint on the spirits of the
others, some of whom greeted him by the name Jim, others ignoring him
entirely. Among these latter was the black-haired man who had given
Lambert his title and elevated him to the nobility of the Bad Lands. On
the face of it there was a crow to be picked between them.
Jim was belted with a pistol and heeled with a pair of those
long-roweled Mexican spurs, such as had gone out of fashion on the
western range long before his day. He leaned on his elbow near the fire,
his legs stretched out in a way that obliged Taterleg to walk round the
spurred boots as he went between his cooking and the supplies in the
wagon, the tailboard of which was his kitchen table.
If Taterleg resented this lordly obstruction, he did not discover it by
word or feature. He went on humming a tune without words as he worked,
handing out biscuits and ham to the hungry crew. Jim had eaten his
breakfast already, and was smoking a cigarette at his ease. Now and then
he addressed somebody in obscene jocularity.
Lambert saw that Jim turned his eyes on him now and then with sneering
contempt, but said nothing. When the men had made a hasty end of their
breakfast three of them started to the corral. The young man who had
humorously enumerated the virtues of the All-in-One, whom the others
called Spence, was of this number. He turned back, offering Lambert his
hand with a smile.
"I'm glad I met you, Duke, and I hope you'll do well wherever you
travel," he said, with such evident sincerity and good feeling that
Lambert felt like he was parting from a friend.
"Thanks, old feller, and the same to you."
Spence went on to saddle his horse, whistling as he scuffed through the
low sage. Jim sat up.
"I'll make you whistle through your ribs," he snarled after him.
It was Sunday. These men who remained in camp were enjoying the
infrequent luxury of a day off. With the first gleam of morning they got
out their razors and shaved, and Siwash, who seemed to be the handy man
and chief counselor of the outfit, cut everybody's hair, with the
exception of Jim, who had just returned from somewhere on the train, and
still had the scent of the barber-shop on him, and Taterleg, who had
mastered the art of shingling himself, and kept his hand in by constant
practice.
Lambert mended his tire, using an old rubber boot that Taterleg found
kicking around camp to plug the big holes in his outer tube. He was for
going on then, but Siwash and the others pressed him to stay over the
day, to which invitation he yielded without great argument.
There was nothing ahead of him but desolation, said Taterleg, a country
so rough that it tried a horse to travel it. Ranchhouses were farther
apart as a man proceeded, and beyond that, mountains. It looked to
Taterleg as if he'd better give it up.
That was so, according to the opinion of Siwash. To his undoubted
knowledge, covering the history of twenty-four years, no agent ever had
penetrated that far before. Having broken this record on a bicycle,
Lambert ought to be satisfied. If he was bound to travel, said Siwash,
his advice would be to travel back.
It seemed to Lambert that the bottom was all out of his plans, indeed.
It would be far better to chuck the whole scheme overboard and go to
work as a cowboy if they would give him a job. That was nearer the
sphere of his intended future activities; that was getting down to the
root and foundation of a business which had a ladder in it whose rungs
were not made of any general agent's hot air.
After his hot and heady way of quick decisions and planning to
completion before he even had begun, Lambert was galloping the Bad Lands
as superintendent of somebody's ranch, having made the leap over all
the trifling years, with their trifling details of hardship, low wages,
loneliness, and isolation in a wink. From superintendent he galloped
swiftly on his fancy to a white ranchhouse by some calm riverside, his
herds around him, his big hat on his head, market quotations coming to
him by telegraph every day, packers appealing to him to ship five
trainloads at once to save their government contracts.
What is the good of an imagination if a man cannot ride it, and feel the
wind in his face as he flies over the world? Even though it is a liar
and a trickster, and a rifler of time which a drudge of success would be
stamping into gold, it is better for a man than wine. He can return from
his wide excursions with no deeper injury than a sigh.
Lambert came back to the reality, broaching the subject of a job. Here
Jim took notice and cut into the conversation, it being his first word
to the stranger.
"Sure you can git a job, bud," he said, coming over to where Lambert sat
with Siwash and Taterleg, the latter peeling potatoes for a stew,
somebody having killed a calf. "The old man needs a couple of hands; he
told me to keep my eye open for anybody that wanted a job."
"I'm glad to hear of it," said Lambert, warming up at the news, feeling
that he must have been a bit severe in his judgment of Jim, which had
not been altogether favorable.
"He'll be over in the morning; you'd better hang around."
Seeing the foundation of a new fortune taking shape, Lambert said he
would "hang around." They all applauded his resolution, for they all
appeared to like him in spite of his appearance, which was distinctive,
indeed, among the somber colors of that sage-gray land.
Jim inquired if he had a horse, the growing interest of a friend in his
manner. Hearing the facts of the case from Lambert--before dawn he had
heard them from Taterleg--he appeared concerned almost to the point of
being troubled.
"You'll have to git you a horse, Duke; you'll have to ride up to the
boss when you hit him for a job. He never was known to hire a man off
the ground, and I guess if you was to head at him on that bicycle, he'd
blow a hole through you as big as a can of salmon. Any of you fellers
got a horse you want to trade the Duke for his bicycle?"
The inquiry brought out a round of somewhat cloudy witticism, with
proposals to Lambert for an exchange on terms rather embarrassing to
meet, seeing that even the least preposterous was not sincere. Taterleg
winked to assure him that it was all banter, without a bit of harm at
the bottom of it, which Lambert understood very well without the
services of a commentator.
Jim brightened up presently, as if he saw a gleam that might lead
Lambert out of the difficulty. He had an extra horse himself, not much
of a horse to look at, but as good-hearted a horse as a man ever throwed
a leg over, and that wasn't no lie, if you took him the right side on.
But you had to take him the right side on, and humor him, and handle him
like eggs till he got used to you. Then you had as purty a little horse
as a man ever throwed a leg over, anywhere.
Jim said he'd offer that horse, only he was a little bashful in the
presence of strangers--meaning the horse--and didn't show up in a style
to make his owner proud of him. The trouble with that horse was he used
to belong to a one-legged man, and got so accustomed to the feel of a
one-legged man on him that he was plumb foolish between two legs.
That horse didn't have much style to him, and no gait to speak of; but
he was as good a cow-horse as ever chawed a bit. If the Duke thought
he'd be able to ride him, he was welcome to him. Taterleg winked what
Lambert interpreted as a warning at that point, and in the faces of the
others there were little gleams of humor, which they turned their heads,
or bent to study the ground, as Siwash did, to hide.
"Well, I'm not much on a horse," Lambert confessed.
"You look like a man that'd been on a horse a time or two," said Jim,
with a knowing inflection, a shrewd flattery.
"I used to ride around a little, but that's been a good while ago."
"A feller never forgits how to ride," Siwash put in; "and if a man wants
to work on the range, he's got to ride 'less'n he goes and gits a job
runnin' sheep, and that's below any man that is a man."
Jim sat pondering the question, hands hooked in front of his knees, a
match in his mouth beside his unlighted cigarette.
"I been thinkin' I'd sell that horse," said he reflectively. "Ain't got
no use for him much; but I don't know."
He looked off over the chuck wagon, through the tops of the scrub pines
in which the camp was set, drawing his thin, white eyebrows, considering
the case.
"Winter comin' on and hay to buy," said Siwash.
"That's what I've been thinkin' and studyin' over. Shucks! I don't need
that horse. I tell you what I'll do, Duke"--turning to Lambert, brisk as
with a gush of sudden generosity--"if you can ride that old pelter, I'll
give him to you for a present. And I bet you'll not git as cheap an
offer of a horse as that ever in your life ag'in."
"I think it's too generous--I wouldn't want to take advantage of it,"
Lambert told him, trying to show a modesty in the matter that he did
not feel.
"I ain't a-favorin' you, Duke; not a dollar. If I needed that horse, I'd
hang onto him, and you wouldn't git him a cent under thirty-five bucks;
but when a man don't need a horse, and it's a expense on him, he can
afford to give it away--he can give it away and make money. That's what
I'm a-doin', if you want to take me up."
"I'll take a look at him, Jim."
Jim got up with eagerness, and went to fetch a saddle and bridle from
under the wagon. The others came into the transaction with lively
interest. Only Taterleg edged round to Lambert, and whispered with his
head turned away to look like innocence:
"Watch out for him--he's a bal'-faced hyeeny!"
They trooped off to the corral, which was a temporary enclosure made of
wire run among the little pines. Jim brought the horse out. It stood
tamely enough to be saddled, with head drooping indifferently, and
showed no deeper interest and no resentment over the operation of
bridling, Jim talking all the time he worked, like the faker that he
was, to draw off a too-close inspection of his wares.
"Old Whetstone ain't much to look at," he said, "and as I told you,
Mister, he ain't got no fancy gait; but he can bust the middle out of
the breeze when he lays out a straight-ahead run. Ain't a horse on this
range can touch his tail when old Whetstone throws a ham into it and
lets out his stren'th."
"He looks like he might go some," Lambert commented in the vacuous way
of a man who felt that he must say something, even though he didn't know
anything about it.
Whetstone was rather above the stature of the general run of range
horses, with clean legs and a good chest. But he was a hammer-headed,
white-eyed, short-maned beast, of a pale water-color yellow, like an old
dish. He had a beaten-down, bedraggled, and dispirited look about him,
as if he had carried men's burdens beyond his strength for a good while,
and had no heart in him to take the road again. He had a scoundrelly way
of rolling his eyes to watch all that went on about him without turning
his head.
Jim girthed him and cinched him, soundly and securely, for no matter who
was pitched off and smashed up in that ride, he didn't want the saddle
to turn and be ruined.
"Well, there he stands, Duke, and saddle and bridle goes with him if
you're able to ride him. I'll be generous; I won't go half-way with you;
I'll be whole hog or none. Saddle and bridle goes with Whetstone, all a
free gift, if you can ride him, Duke. I want to start you up right."
It was a safe offer, taking all precedent into account, for no man ever
had ridden Whetstone, not even his owner. The beast was an outlaw of the
most pronounced type, with a repertory of tricks, calculated to get a
man off his back, so extensive that he never seemed to repeat. He stood
always as docilely as a camel to be saddled and bridled, with what
method in this apparent docility no man versed in horse philosophy ever
had been able to reason out. Perhaps it was that he had been born with a
spite against man, and this was his scheme for luring him on to his
discomfiture and disgrace.
It was an expectant little group that stood by to witness this
greenhorn's rise and fall. According to his established methods,
Whetstone would allow him to mount, still standing with that indifferent
droop to his head. But one who was sharp would observe that he was
rolling his old white eyes back to see, tipping his sharp ear like a
wildcat to hear every scrape and creak of the leather. Then, with the
man in the saddle, nobody knew what he would do.
That uncertainty was what made Whetstone valuable and interesting beyond
any outlaw in the world. Men grew accustomed to the tricks of ordinary
pitching broncos, in time, and the novelty and charm were gone. Besides,
there nearly always was somebody who could ride the worst of them. Not
so Whetstone. He had won a good deal of money for Jim, and everybody in
camp knew that thirty-five dollars wasn't more than a third of the value
that his owner put upon him.
There was boundless wonder among them, then, and no little admiration,
when this stranger who had come into that unlikely place on a bicycle
leaped into the saddle so quickly that old Whetstone was taken
completely by surprise, and held him with such a strong hand and stiff
rein that his initiative was taken from him.
The greenhorn's next maneuver was to swing the animal round till he lost
his head, then clap heels to him and send him off as if he had business
for the day laid out ahead of him.
It was the most amazing start that anybody ever had been known to make
on Whetstone, and the most startling and enjoyable thing about it was
that this strange, overgrown boy, with his open face and guileless
speech, had played them all for a bunch of suckers, and knew more about
riding in a minute than they ever had learned in their lives.
Jim Wilder stood by, swearing by all his obscene deities that if that
man hurt Whetstone, he'd kill him for his hide. But he began to feel
better in a little while. Hope, even certainty, picked up again.
Whetstone was coming to himself. Perhaps the old rascal had only been
elaborating his scheme a little at the start, and was now about to show
them that their faith in him was not misplaced.
The horse had come to a sudden stop, legs stretched so wide that it
seemed as if he surely must break in the middle. But he gathered his
feet together so quickly that the next view presented him with his back
arched like a fighting cat's. And there on top of him rode the Duke, his
small brown hat in place, his gay shirt ruffling in the wind.
After that there came, so quickly that it made the mind and eye hasten
to follow, all the tricks that Whetstone ever had tried in his past
triumphs over men; and through all of them, sharp, shrewd, unexpected,
startling as some of them were, that little brown hat rode untroubled on
top. Old Whetstone was as wet at the end of ten minutes as if he had
swum a river. He grunted with anger as he heaved and lashed, he squealed
in his resentful passion as he swerved, lunged, pitched, and clawed the
air.
The little band of spectators cheered the Duke, calling loudly to inform
him that he was the only man who ever had stuck that long. The Duke
waved his hat in acknowledgement, and put it back on with deliberation
and exactness, while old Whetstone, as mad as a wet hen, tried to roll
down suddenly and crush his legs.
Nothing to be accomplished by that old trick. The Duke pulled him up
with a wrench that made him squeal, and Whetstone, lifted off his
forelegs, attempted to complete the backward turn and catch his
tormentor under the saddle. But that was another trick so old that the
simplest horseman knew how to meet it. The next thing he knew, Whetstone
was galloping along like a gentleman, just wind enough in him to carry
him, not an ounce to spare.
Jim Wilder was swearing himself blue. It was a trick, an imposition, he
declared. No circus-rider could come there and abuse old Whetstone that
way and live to eat his dinner. Nobody appeared to share his view of it.
They were a unit in declaring that the Duke beat any man handling a
horse they ever saw. If Whetstone didn't get him off pretty soon, he
would be whipped and conquered, his belly on the ground.
"If he hurts that horse I'll blow a hole in him as big as a can of
salmon!" Jim declared.
"Take your medicine like a man, Jim," Siwash advised. "You might know
somebody'd come along that'd ride him, in time."
"Yes, _come_ along!" said Jim with a sneer.
Whetstone had begun to collect himself out on the flat among the
sagebrush a quarter of a mile away. The frenzy of desperation was in
him. He was resorting to the raw, low, common tricks of the ordinary
outlaw, even to biting at his rider's legs. That ungentlemanly behavior
was costly, as he quickly learned, at the expense of a badly cut mouth.
He never had met a rider before who had energy to spare from his efforts
to stick in the saddle to slam him a big kick in the mouth when he
doubled himself to make that vicious snap. The sound of that kick
carried to the corral.
"I'll fix you for that!" Jim swore.
He was breathing as hard as his horse, sweat of anxiety running down his
face. The Duke was bringing the horse back, his spirit pretty well
broken, it appeared.
"What do you care what he does to him? It ain't your horse no more."
It was Taterleg who said that, standing near Jim, a little way behind
him, as gorgeous as a bridegroom in the bright sun.
"You fellers can't ring me in on no game like that and beat me out of my
horse!" said Jim, redder than ever in his passion.
"Who do you mean, rung you in, you little, flannel-faced fiste?"[1]
Siwash demanded, whirling round on him with blood in his eye.
Jim was standing with his legs apart, bent a little at the knees, as if
he intended to make a jump. His right hand was near the butt of his gun,
his fingers were clasping and unclasping, as if he limbered them for
action. Taterleg slipped up behind him on his toes, and jerked the gun
from Jim's scabbard with quick and sure hand. He backed away with it,
presenting it with determined mien as Jim turned on him and cursed him
by all his lurid gods.
"If you fight anybody in this camp today, Jim, you'll fight like a man,"
said Taterleg, "or you'll hobble out of it on three legs, like a wolf."
The Duke was riding old Whetstone like a feather, letting him have his
spurts of kicking and stiff-legged bouncing without any effort to
restrain him at all. There wasn't much steam in the outlaw's antics now;
any common man could have ridden him without losing his hat.
Jim had drawn apart from the others, resentful of the distrust that
Taterleg had shown, but more than half of his courage and bluster taken
away from him with his gun. He was swearing more volubly than ever to
cover his other deficiencies; but he was a man to be feared only when he
had his weapon under his hand.
The Duke had brought the horse almost back to camp when the animal was
taken with an extraordinarily vicious spasm of pitching, broken by
sudden efforts to fling himself down and roll over on his persistent
rider. The Duke let him have it his way, all but the rolling, for a
while; then he appeared to lose patience with the stubborn beast. He
headed him into the open, laid the quirt to him, and galloped toward the
hills.
"That's the move--run the devil out of him," said one.
The Duke kept him going, and going for all there was in him. Horse and
rider were dim in the dust of the heated race against the evil passion,
the untamed demon, in the savage creature's heart. It began to look as
if Lambert never intended to come back. Jim saw it that way. He came
over to Taterleg as hot as a hornet.
"Give me that gun--I'm goin' after him!"
"You'll have to go without it, Jim."
Jim blasted him to sulphurous perdition, and split him with forked
lightning from his blasphemous tongue.
"He'll come back; he's just runnin' the vinegar out of him," said one.
"Come back--hell!" said Jim.
"If he don't come back, that's his business. A man can go wherever he
wants to go on his own horse, I guess."
That was the observation of Siwash, standing there rather glum and out
of tune over Jim's charge that they had rung the Duke in on him to beat
him out of his animal.
"It was a put-up job! I'll split that feller like a hog!"
Jim left them with that declaration of his benevolent intention,
hurrying to the corral where his horse was, his saddle on the ground by
the gate. They watched him saddle, and saw him mount and ride after the
Duke, with no comment on his actions at all.
The Duke was out of sight in the scrub timber at the foot of the hills,
but his dust still floated like the wake of a swift boat, showing the
way he had gone.
"Yes, you will!" said Taterleg.
Meaningless, irrelevant, as that fragmentary ejaculation seemed, the
others understood. They grinned, and twisted wise heads, spat out their
tobacco, and went back to dinner.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 1: Fice--dog.]