"AND SPEAK IN PASSING"
The events of that Sunday introduced Lambert into the Bad Lands and
established his name and fame. Within three months after going to work
for the Syndicate ranch he was known for a hundred miles around as the
man who had broken Jim Wilder's outlaw and won the horse by that
unparalleled feat.
That was the prop to his fame--that he had broken Jim Wilder's outlaw.
Certainly he was admired and commended for the unhesitating action he
had taken in avenging the death of his friend, but in that he had done
only what was expected of any man worthy the name. Breaking the outlaw
was a different matter entirely. In doing that he had accomplished what
was believed to be beyond the power of any living man.
According to his own belief, his own conscience, Lambert had made a bad
start. A career that had its beginning in contentions and violence,
enough of it crowded into one day to make more than the allotment of an
ordinary life, could not terminate with any degree of felicity and
honor. They thought little of killing a man in that country, it seemed;
no more than a perfunctory inquiry, to fulfill the letter of the law,
had been made by the authorities into Jim Wilder's death.
While it relieved him to know that the law held his justification to be
ample, there was a shadow following him which he could not evade in any
of the hilarious diversions common to those wild souls of the range.
It troubled him that he had killed a man, even in a fair fight in the
open field with the justification of society at his back. In his sleep
it harried him with visions; awake, it oppressed him like a sorrow, or
the memory of a shame. He became solemn and silent as a chastened man,
seldom smiling, laughing never.
When he drank with his companions in the little saloon at Misery, the
loading station on the railroad, he took his liquor as gravely as the
sacrament; when he raced them he rode with face grim as an Indian,
never whooping in victory, never swearing in defeat.
He had left even his own lawful and proper name behind him with his
past. Far and near he was known as the Duke of Chimney Butte, shortened
in cases of direct address to "Duke." He didn't resent it, rather took a
sort of grim pride in it, although he felt at times that it was one more
mark of his surrender to circumstances whose current he might have
avoided at the beginning by the exercise of a proper man's sense.
A man was expected to drink a good deal of the overardent spirits which
were sold at Misery. If he could drink without becoming noisy, so much
the more to his credit, so much higher he stood in the estimation of his
fellows as a copper-bottomed sport of the true blood. The Duke could put
more of that notorious whisky under cover, and still contain himself,
than any man they ever had seen in Misery. The more he drank the glummer
he became, but he never had been known either to weep or curse.
Older men spoke to him with respect, younger ones approached him with
admiration, unable to understand what kind of a safety-valve a man had
on his mouth that would keep his steam in when that Misery booze began
to sizzle in his pipes. His horse was a subject of interest almost equal
to himself.
Under his hand old Whetstone--although not more than seven--had
developed unexpected qualities. When the animal's persecution ceased,
his perversity fled. He grew into a well-conditioned creature, sleek of
coat, beautiful of tail as an Arab barb, bright of eye, handsome to
behold. His speed and endurance were matters of as much note as his
outlawry had been but a little while before, and his intelligence was
something almost beyond belief.
Lambert had grown exceedingly fond of him, holding him more in the
estimation of a companion than the valuation of a dumb creature of
burden. When they rode the long watches at night he talked to him, and
Whetstone would put back his sensitive ear and listen, and toss his head
in joyful appreciation of his master's confidence and praise.
Few horses had beaten Whetstone in a race since he became the Duke's
property. It was believed that none on that range could do it if the
Duke wanted to put him to his limit. It was said that the Duke lost only
such races as he felt necessary to the continuance of his prosperity.
Racing was one of the main diversions when the cowboys from the
surrounding ranches met at Misery on a Sunday afternoon, or when loading
cattle there. Few trains stopped at Misery, a circumstance resented by
the cowboys, who believed the place should be as important to all the
world as it was to them. To show their contempt for this aloof behavior
they usually raced the trains, frequently outrunning those westward
bound as they labored up the long grade.
Freight trains especially they took delight in beating, seeing how it
nettled the train crews. There was nothing more delightful in any
program of amusement that a cowboy could conceive than riding abreast of
a laboring freight engine, the sulky engineer crowding every pound of
power into the cylinders, the sooty fireman humping his back throwing in
coal. Only one triumph would have been sweeter--to outrun the big
passenger train from Chicago with the brass-fenced car at the end.
No man ever had done that yet, although many had tried. The engineers
all knew what to expect on a Sunday afternoon when they approached
Misery, where the cowboys came through the fence and raced the trains on
the right-of-way. A long, level stretch of soft gray earth, set with
bunches of grass here and there, began a mile beyond the station,
unmarred by steam-shovel or grader's scraper. A man could ride it with
his eyes shut; a horse could cover it at its best.
That was the racing ground over which they had contended with the
Chicago-Puget Sound flier for many years, and a place which engineers
and firemen prepared to pass quickly while yet a considerable distance
away. It was a sight to see the big engine round the curve below, its
plume of smoke rising straight for twenty feet, streaming back like a
running girl's hair, the cowboys all set in their saddles, waiting to
go.
Engineers on the flier were not so sulky about it, knowing that the race
was theirs before it was run. Usually they leaned out of the window and
urged the riders on with beckoning, derisive hand, while the fireman
stood by grinning, confident of the head of steam he had begun storing
for this emergency far down the road.
Porters told passengers about these wild horsemen in advance, and eager
faces lined the windows on that side of the cars as they approached
Misery, and all who could pack on the end of the observation car
assembled there. In spite of its name, Misery was quite a comfortable
break in the day's monotony for travelers on a Sunday afternoon.
Amid the hardships and scant diversions of this life, Lambert spent his
first winter in the Bad Lands, drinking in the noisy revels at Misery,
riding the long, bitter miles back to the ranch, despising himself for
being so mean and low. It was a life in which a man's soul would either
shrink to nothing or expand until it became too large to find
contentment within the horizon of such an existence.
Some of them expanded up to the size for ranch owners, superintendents,
bosses; stopped there, set in their mold. Lambert never had heard of
one stretching so wide that he was drawn out of himself entirely, his
eyes fixed on the far light of a nobler life. He liked to imagine a man
so inspired out of the lonely watches, the stormy rides, the battle
against blizzard and night.
This train of thought had carried him away that gentle spring day as he
rode to Misery. He resented the thought that he might have to spend his
youth as a hired servant in this rough occupation, unremunerative below
the hope of ever gaining enough to make a start in business for himself.
There was no romance in it, for all that had been written, no beautiful
daughter of the ranch owner to be married, and a fortune gained with
her.
Daughters there must be, indeed, among the many stockholders in that big
business, but they were not available in the Bad Lands. The
superintendent of the ranch had three or four, born to that estate, full
of loud laughter, ordinary as baled hay. A man would be a loser in
marrying such as they, even with a fortune ready made.
What better could that rough country offer? People are no gentler than
their pursuits, no finer than the requirements of their lives. Daughters
of the Bad Lands, such as he had seen of them in the wives to whom he
once had tried to sell the All-in-One, and the superintendent's girls
were not intended for any other life. As for him, if he had to live it
out there, with the shadow of a dead man at his heels, he would live it
alone. So he thought, going on his way to Misery, where there was to be
racing that afternoon, and a grand effort to keep up with the Chicago
flier.
Lambert never had taken part in that longstanding competition. It
appeared to him a senseless expenditure of horseflesh, a childish
pursuit of the wind. Yet, foolish as it was, he liked to watch them.
There was a thrill in the sweeping start of twenty or thirty horsemen
that warmed a man, making him feel as if he must whoop and wave his hat.
There was a belief alive among them that some day a man would come who
would run the train neck and neck to the depot platform.
Not much distinction in it, even so, said he. But it set him musing and
considering as he rode, his face quickening out of its somber cloud. A
little while after his arrival at Misery the news went round that the
Duke was willing at last to enter the race against the flier.
True to his peculiarities, the Duke had made conditions. He was willing
to race, but only if everybody else would keep out of it and give him a
clear and open field. Taterleg Wilson, the bow-legged camp cook of the
Syndicate, circulated himself like a petition to gain consent to this
unusual proposal.
It was asking a great deal of those men to give up their established
diversion, no matter how distinguished the man in whose favor they were
requested to stand aside. That Sunday afternoon race had become as much
a fixed institution in the Bad Lands as the railroad itself. With some
argument, some bucking and snorting, a considerable cost to Taterleg for
liquor and cigars, they agreed to it. Taterleg said he could state,
authoritatively, that this would be the Duke's first, last, and only
ride against the flier. It would be worth money to stand off and watch
it, he said, and worth putting money on the result. When, where, would
a man ever have a chance to see such a race again? Perhaps never in his
life.
On time, to a dot, the station agent told the committee headed by
Taterleg, which had gone to inquire in the grave and important manner of
men conducting a ceremony. The committee went back to the saloon, and
pressed the Duke to have a drink. He refused, as he had refused politely
and consistently all day. A man could fight on booze, he said, but it
was a mighty poor foundation for business.
There was a larger crowd in Misery that day than usual for the time of
year, it being the first general holiday after the winter's hard
exactions. In addition to visitors, all Misery turned out to see the
race, lining up at the right-of-way fence as far as they would go, which
was not a great distance along. The saloon-keeper could see the finish
from his door. On the start of it he was not concerned, but he had money
up on the end.
Lambert hadn't as much flesh, by a good many pounds, as he had carried
into the Bad Lands on his bicycle. One who had known him previously
would have thought that seven years had passed him, making him over
completely, indeed, since then. His face was thin, browned and
weathered, his body sinewy, its leanness aggravated by its length. He
was as light in the saddle as a leaf on the wind.
He was quite a barbaric figure as he waited to mount and ride against
the train, which could be heard whistling far down the road. Coatless,
in flannel shirt, a bright silk handkerchief round his neck; calfskin
vest, tanned with the hair on, its color red and white; dressed leather
chaps, a pair of boots that had cost him two-thirds of a month's pay.
His hat was like forty others in the crowd, doe-colored, worn with the
high crown full-standing, a leather thong at the back of the head, the
brim drooping a bit from the weather, so broad that his face looked
narrower and sharper in its shadow.
Nothing like the full-blooded young aggie who had come into the Bad
Lands to found his fortune a little less than a year before, and about
as different from him in thought and outlook upon life as in physical
appearance. The psychology of environment is a powerful force.
A score or more of horsemen were strung out along the course, where they
had stationed themselves to watch the race at its successive stages, and
cheer their champion on his way. At the starting-point the Duke waited
alone; at the station a crowd of cowboys lolled in their saddles, not
caring to make a run to see the finish.
It was customary for the horsemen who raced the flier to wait on the
ground until the engine rounded the curve, then mount and settle to the
race. It was counted fair, also, owing to the headway the train already
had, to start a hundred yards or so before the engine came abreast, in
order to limber up to the horses' best speed.
For two miles or more the track ran straight after that curve, Misery
about the middle of the stretch. In that long, straight reach the
builders of the road had begun the easement of the stiff grade through
the hills beyond. It was the beginning of a hard climb, a stretch in
which west-bound trains gathered headway to carry them over the top.
Engines came panting round that curve, laboring with the strain of
their load, speed reduced half, and dropping a bit lower as they
proceeded up the grade.
This Sunday, as usual, train crew and passengers were on the lookout for
the game sportsmen of Misery. Already the engineer was leaning out of
his window, arm extended, ready to give the derisive challenge to come
on as he swept by.
The Duke was in the saddle, holding in Whetstone with stiff rein, for
the animal was trembling with eagerness to spring away, knowing very
well from the preparations which had been going forward that some big
event in the lives of his master and himself was pending. The Duke held
him, looking back over his shoulder, measuring the distance as the train
came sweeping grandly round the curve. He waited until the engine was
within a hundred feet of him before he loosed rein and let old Whetstone
go.
A yell ran up the line of spectators as the pale yellow horse reached
out his long neck, chin level against the wind like a swimmer, and ran
as no horse ever had run on that race-course before. Every horseman
there knew that the Duke was still holding him in, allowing the train
to creep up on him as if he scorned to take advantage of the handicap.
The engineer saw that this was going to be a different kind of race from
the yelling, chattering troop of wild riders which he had been
outrunning with unbroken regularity. In that yellow streak of horse,
that low-bending, bony rider, he saw a possibility of defeat and
disgrace. His head disappeared out of the window, his derisive hand
vanished. He was turning valves and pulling levers, trying to coax a
little more power into his piston strokes.
The Duke held Whetstone back until his wind had set to the labor, his
muscles flexed, his sinews stretched to the race. A third of the race
was covered when the engine came neck and neck with the horse, and the
engineer, confident now, leaned far out, swinging his hand like the oar
of a boat, and shouted:
"Come on! Come on!"
Just a moment too soon this confidence, a moment too soon this defiance.
It was the Duke's program to run this thing neck and neck, force to
force, with no advantage asked or taken. Then if he could gather speed
and beat the engine on the home stretch no man, on the train or off,
could say that he had done it with the advantage of a handicap.
There was a great whooping, a great thumping of hoofs, a monstrous swirl
of dust, as the riders at the side of the race-course saw the Duke's
maneuver and read his intention. Away they swept, a noisy troop, like a
flight of blackbirds, hats off, guns popping, in a scramble to get up as
close to the finishing line as possible.
Never before in the long history of that unique contest had there been
so much excitement. Porters opened the vestibule doors, allowing
passengers to crowd the steps; windows were opened, heads thrust out,
every tongue urging the horseman on with cheers.
The Duke was riding beside the engineer, not ten feet between them. More
than half the course was run, and there the Duke hung, the engine not
gaining an inch. The engineer was on his feet now, hand on the throttle
lever, although it was open as wide as it could be pulled. The fireman
was throwing coal into the furnace, looking round over his shoulder now
and then at the persistent horseman who would not be outrun, his eyes
white in his grimy face.
On the observation car women hung over the rail at the side, waving
handkerchiefs at the rider's back; along the fence the inhabitants of
Misery broke away like leaves before a wind and went running toward the
depot; ahead of the racing horse and engine the mounted men who had
taken a big start rode on toward the station in a wild, delirious
charge.
Neck and neck with the engine old Whetstone ran, throwing his long legs
like a wolf-hound, his long neck stretched, his ears flat, not leaving a
hair that he could control outstanding to catch the wind. The engineer
was peering ahead with fixed eyes now, as if he feared to look again on
this puny combination of horse and man that was holding its own in this
unequal trial of strength.
Within three hundred yards of the station platform, which sloped down at
the end like a continuation of the course, the Duke touched old
Whetstone's neck with the tips of his fingers. As if he had given a
signal upon which they had agreed, the horse gathered power, grunting as
he used to grunt in the days of his outlawry, and bounded away from the
cab window, where the greasy engineer stood with white face and set jaw.
Yard by yard the horse gained, his long mane flying, his long tail
astream, foam on his lips, forging past the great driving wheels which
ground against the rails; past the swinging piston; past the powerful
black cylinders; past the stubby pilot, advancing like a shadow over the
track. When Whetstone's hoofs struck the planks of the platform, marking
the end of the course, he was more than the length of the engine in the
lead.
The Duke sat there waving his hand solemnly to those who cheered him as
the train swept past, the punchers around him lifting up a joyful chorus
of shots and shouts, showing off on their own account to a considerable
extent, but sincere over all because of the victory that the Duke had
won.
Old Whetstone was standing where he had stopped, within a few feet of
the track, front hoofs on the boards of the platform, not more than
nicely warmed up for another race, it appeared. As the observation car
passed, a young woman leaned over the rail, handkerchief reached out to
the Duke as if trying to give it to him.
He saw her only a second before she passed, too late to make even a
futile attempt to possess the favor of her appreciation. She laughed,
waving it to him, holding it out as if in challenge for him to come and
take it. Without wasting a precious fragment of a second in hesitation
the Duke sent Whetstone thundering along the platform in pursuit of the
train.
It seemed a foolish thing to do, and a risky venture, for the platform
was old, its planks were weak in places. It was not above a hundred feet
long, and beyond it only a short stretch of right-of-way until the
public road crossed the track, the fence running down to the cattle
guard, blocking his hope of overtaking the train.
More than that, the train was picking up speed, as if the engineer
wanted to get out of sight and hearing of that demonstrative crowd, and
put his humiliation behind him as quickly as possible. No man's horse
could make a start with planks under his feet, run two hundred yards
and overtake that train, no matter what the inducement. That was the
thought of every man who sat a saddle there and stretched his neck to
witness this unparalleled streak of folly.
If Whetstone had run swiftly in the first race, he fairly whistled
through the air like a wild duck in the second. Before he had run the
length of the platform he had gained on the train, his nose almost even
with the brass railing over which the girl leaned, the handkerchief in
her hand. Midway between the platform and the cattle guard they saw the
Duke lean in his saddle and snatch the white favor from her hand.
The people on the train end cheered this feat of quick resolution,
quicker action. But the girl whose handkerchief the Duke had won only
leaned on the railing, holding fast with both hands, as if she offered
her lips to be kissed, and looked at him with a pleasure in her face
that he could read as the train bore her onward into the West.
The Duke sat there with his hat in his hand, gazing after her, only her
straining face in his vision, centered out of the dust and widening
distance like a star that a man gazes on to fix his course before it is
overwhelmed by clouds.
The Duke sat watching after her, the train reducing the distance like a
vision that melts out of the heart with a sigh. She raised her hand as
the dust closed in the wake of the train. He thought she beckoned him.
So she came, and went, crossing his way in the Bad Lands in that hour of
his small triumph, and left her perfumed token of appreciation in his
hand. The Duke put it away in the pocket of his shirt beneath the
calfskin vest, the faint delicacy of its perfume rising to his nostrils
like the elusive scent of a violet for which one searches the woodland
and cannot find.
The dusty hills had gulped the train that carried her before the Duke
rode round the station and joined his noisy comrades. Everybody shook
hands with him, everybody invited him to have a drink. He put them
off--friend, acquaintance, stranger, on their pressing invitation to
drink--with the declaration that his horse came first in his
consideration. After he had put Whetstone in the livery barn and fed
him, he would join them for a round, he said.
They trooped into the saloon to square their bets, the Duke going his
way to the barn. There they drank and grew noisier than before, to come
out from time to time, mount their horses, gallop up and down the road
that answered Misery for a street, and shoot good ammunition into the
harmless air.
Somebody remarked after a while that the Duke was a long time feeding
that horse. Taterleg and others went to investigate. He had not been
there, the keeper of the livery barn said. A further look around
exhausted all the possible hiding-places of Misery. The Duke was not
there.
"Well," said Taterleg, puzzled, "I guess he's went."