of the man's voice reached his brain, and he looked at Specimen Jones.
He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that were considering him, and
he began to fear he had been a fool. There was his dwarf Eastern
revolver, slack in his inefficient fist, and the singular person still
holding its barrel and tapping one derisive finger over the end,
careless of the risk to his first joint.
"Why, you little ---- ----," said Specimen Jones, caressingly, to the
hypnotized youth, "if you was to pop that squirt off at me, I'd turn you
up and spank y'u. Set 'em up, Ephraim."
But the commercial Ephraim hesitated, and Jones remembered. His last
cent was gone. It was his third day at Ephraim's. He had stopped, having
a little money, on his way to Tucson, where a friend had a job for him,
and was waiting. He was far too experienced a character ever to sell his
horse or his saddle on these occasions, and go on drinking. He looked as
if he might, but he never did; and this was what disappointed business
men like Ephraim in Specimen Jones.
But now, here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see through, and
Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the wherewithal. "Why, so I
haven't," he said, with a short laugh, and his face flushed. "I guess,"
he continued, hastily, "this is worth a dollar or two." He drew a chain
up from below his flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a
little slowly. It had not been taken off for a number of years--not,
indeed, since it had been placed there originally. "It ain't brass," he
added, lightly, and strewed it along the counter without looking at it.
Ephraim did look at it, and, being satisfied, began to uncork a new
bottle, while the punctual audience came up for its drink.
"Won't you please let me treat?" said the boy, unsteadily. "I ain't
likely to meet you again, sir." Reaction was giving him trouble inside.
"Where are you bound, kid?"
"Oh, just a ways up the country," answered the boy, keeping a grip on
his voice.
"Well, you _may_ get there. Where did you pick up that--that thing? Your
pistol, I mean."
"It's a present from a friend," replied the tenderfoot, with dignity.
"Farewell gift, wasn't it, kid? Yes; I thought so. Now I'd hate to get
an affair like that from a friend. It would start me wondering if he
liked me as well as I'd always thought he did. Put up that money, kid.
You're drinking with me. Say, what's yer name?"
"Cumnor--J. Cumnor."
"Well, J. Cumnor, I'm glad to know y'u. Ephraim, let me make you
acquainted with Mr. Cumnor. Mr. Adams, if you're rested from your
quadrille, you can shake hands with my friend. Step around, you Miguels
and Serapios and Cristobals, whatever y'u claim your names are. This is
Mr. J. Cumnor."
The Mexicans did not understand either the letter or the spirit of these
American words, but they drank their drink, and the concertina resumed
its acrid melody. The boy had taken himself off without being noticed.
"Say, Spec," said Ephraim to Jones, "I'm no hog. Here's yer chain.
You'll be along again."
"Keep it till I'm along again," said the owner.
"Just as you say, Spec," answered Ephraim, smoothly, and he hung the
pledge over an advertisement chromo of a nude cream-colored lady with
bright straw hair holding out a bottle of somebody's champagne. Specimen
Jones sang no more songs, but smoked, and leaned in silence on the bar.
The company were talking of bed, and Ephraim plunged his glasses into a
bucket to clean them for the morrow.
"Know anything about that kid?" inquired Jones, abruptly.
Ephraim shook his head as he washed.
"Travelling alone, ain't he?"
Ephraim nodded.
"Where did y'u say y'u found that fellow layin' the Injuns got?"
"Mile this side the canon. 'Mong them sand-humps."
"How long had he been there, do y'u figure?"
"Three days, anyway."
Jones watched Ephraim finish his cleansing. "Your clock needs wiping,"
he remarked. "A man might suppose it was nine, to see that thing the way
the dirt hides the hands. Look again in half an hour and it'll say
three. That's the kind of clock gives a man the jams. Sends him crazy."
"Well, that ain't a bad thing to be in this country," said Ephraim,
rubbing the glass case and restoring identity to the hands. "If that man
had been crazy he'd been livin' right now. Injuns'll never touch
lunatics."
"That band have passed here and gone north," Jones said. "I saw a smoke
among the foot-hills as I come along day before yesterday. I guess
they're aiming to cross the Santa Catalina. Most likely they're that
band from round the San Carlos that were reported as raiding down in
Sonora."
"I seen well enough," said Ephraim, "when I found him that they wasn't
going to trouble us any, or they'd have been around by then."
He was quite right, but Specimen Jones was thinking of something else.
He went out to the corral, feeling disturbed and doubtful. He saw the
tall white freight-wagon of the Mexicans, looming and silent, and a
little way off the new fence where the man lay. An odd sound startled
him, though he knew it was no Indians at this hour, and he looked down
into a little dry ditch. It was the boy, hidden away flat on his stomach
among the stones, sobbing.
"Oh, snakes!" whispered Specimen Jones, and stepped back. The Latin
races embrace and weep, and all goes well; but among Saxons tears are a
horrid event. Jones never knew what to do when it was a woman, but this
was truly disgusting. He was well seasoned by the frontier, had tried a
little of everything: town and country, ranches, saloons, stage-driving,
marriage occasionally, and latterly mines. He had sundry claims staked
out, and always carried pieces of stone in his pockets, discoursing upon
their mineral-bearing capacity, which was apt to be very slight. That is
why he was called Specimen Jones. He had exhausted all the important
sensations, and did not care much for anything any more. Perfect health
and strength kept him from discovering that he was a saddened, drifting
man. He wished to kick the boy for his baby performance, and yet he
stepped carefully away from the ditch so the boy should not suspect his
presence. He found himself standing still, looking at the dim, broken
desert.
"Why, hell," complained Specimen Jones, "he played the little man to
start with. He did so. He scared that old horse-thief, Adams, just about
dead. Then he went to kill me, that kep' him from bein' buried early
to-morrow. I've been wild that way myself, and wantin' to shoot up the
whole outfit." Jones looked at the place where his middle finger used to
be, before a certain evening in Tombstone. "But I never--" He glanced
towards the ditch, perplexed. "What's that mean? Why in the world does
he git to cryin' for _now_, do you suppose?" Jones took to singing
without knowing it. "'Ye shepherds, tell me, ha-ve you seen my Flora
pass this way?'" he murmured. Then a thought struck him. "Hello, kid!"
he called out. There was no answer. "Of course," said Jones. "Now he's
ashamed to hev me see him come out of there." He walked with elaborate
slowness round the corral and behind a shed. "Hello, you kid!" he called
again.
"I was thinking of going to sleep," said the boy, appearing quite
suddenly. "I--I'm not used to riding all day. I'll get used to it, you
know," he hastened to add.
"'Ha-ve you seen my Flo'--Say, kid, where y'u bound, anyway?"
"San Carlos."
"San Carlos? Oh. Ah. 'Flora pass this way?'"
"Is it far, sir?"
"Awful far, sometimes. It's always liable to be far through the Arivaypa
Canon."
"I didn't expect to make it between meals," remarked Cumnor.
"No. Sure. What made you come this route?"
"A man told me."
"A man? Oh. Well, it _is_ kind o' difficult, I admit, for an Arizonan
not to lie to a stranger. But I think I'd have told you to go by Tres
Alamos and Point of Mountain. It's the road the man that told you would
choose himself every time. Do you like Injuns, kid?"
Cumnor snapped eagerly.
"Of course y'u do. And you've never saw one in the whole
minute-and-a-half you've been alive. I know all about it."
"I'm not afraid," said the boy.
"Not afraid? Of course y'u ain't. What's your idea in going to Carlos?
Got town lots there?"
"No," said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of Jones.
"There's a man there I used to know back home. He's in the cavalry.
What sort of a town is it for sport?" asked Cumnor, in a gay Lothario
tone.
"_Town_?" Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the corral.
"_Sport?_ Now I'll tell y'u what sort of a town it is. There ain't no
streets. There ain't no houses. There ain't any land and water in the
usual meaning of them words. There's Mount Turnbull. It's pretty near a
usual mountain, but y'u don't want to go there. The Creator didn't make
San Carlos. It's a heap older than Him. When He got around to it after
slickin' up Paradise and them fruit-trees, He just left it to be as He
found it, as a sample of the way they done business before He come
along. He 'ain't done any work around that spot at all, He 'ain't. Mix
up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and
rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat yer
stones red-hot, and set the United States army loose over the place
chasin' Apaches, and you've got San Carlos."
Cumnor was silent for a moment. "I don't care," he said. "I want to
chase Apaches."
"Did you see that man Ephraim found by the canon?" Jones inquired.
"Didn't get here in time."
"Well, there was a hole in his chest made by an arrow. But there's no
harm in that if you die at wunst. That chap didn't, y'u see. You heard
Ephraim tell about it. They'd done a number of things to the man before
he could die. Roastin' was only one of 'em. Now your road takes you
through the mountains where these Injuns hev gone. Kid, come along to
Tucson with me," urged Jones, suddenly.
Again Cumnor was silent. "Is my road different from other people's?" he
said, finally.
"Not to Grant, it ain't. These Mexicans are hauling freight to Grant.
But what's the matter with your coming to Tucson with me?"
"I started to go to San Carlos, and I'm going," said Cumnor.
"You're a poor chuckle-headed fool!" burst out Jones, in a rage. "And
y'u can go, for all I care--you and your Christmas-tree pistol. Like as
not you won't find your cavalry friend at San Carlos. They've killed a
lot of them soldiers huntin' Injuns this season. Good-night."
Specimen Jones was gone. Cumnor walked to his blanket-roll, where his
saddle was slung under the shed. The various doings of the evening had
bruised his nerves. He spread his blankets among the dry cattle-dung,
and sat down, taking off a few clothes slowly. He lumped his coat and
overalls under his head for a pillow, and, putting the despised pistol
alongside, lay between the blankets. No object showed in the night but
the tall freight-wagon. The tenderfoot thought he had made altogether a
fool of himself upon the first trial trip of his manhood, alone on the
open sea of Arizona. No man, not even Jones now, was his friend. A
stranger, who could have had nothing against him but his inexperience,
had taken the trouble to direct him on the wrong road. He did not mind
definite enemies. He had punched the heads of those in Pennsylvania, and
would not object to shooting them here; but this impersonal, surrounding
hostility of the unknown was new and bitter: the cruel, assassinating,
cowardly Southwest, where prospered those jail-birds whom the vigilantes
had driven from California. He thought of the nameless human carcass
that lay near, buried that day, and of the jokes about its mutilations.
Cumnor was not an innocent boy, either in principles or in practice, but
this laughter about a dead body had burned into his young, unhardened
soul. He lay watching with hot, dogged eyes the brilliant stars. A
passing wind turned the windmill, which creaked a forlorn minute, and
ceased. He must have gone to sleep and slept soundly, for the next he
knew it was the cold air of dawn that made him open his eyes. A numb
silence lay over all things, and the tenderfoot had that moment of
curiosity as to where he was now which comes to those who have journeyed
for many days. The Mexicans had already departed with their
freight-wagon. It was not entirely light, and the embers where these
early starters had cooked their breakfast lay glowing in the sand across
the road. The boy remembered seeing a wagon where now he saw only chill,
distant peaks, and while he lay quiet and warm, shunning full
consciousness, there was a stir in the cabin, and at Ephraim's voice
reality broke upon his drowsiness, and he recollected Arizona and the
keen stress of shifting for himself. He noted the gray paling round the
grave. Indians? He would catch up with the Mexicans, and travel in their
company to Grant. Freighters made but fifteen miles in the day, and he
could start after breakfast and be with them before they stopped to
noon. Six men need not worry about Apaches, Cumnor thought. The voice of
Specimen Jones came from the cabin, and sounds of lighting the stove,
and the growling conversation of men getting up. Cumnor, lying in his
blankets, tried to overhear what Jones was saying, for no better reason
than that this was the only man he had met lately who had seemed to care
whether he were alive or dead. There was the clink of Ephraim's
whiskey-bottles, and the cheerful tones of old Mr. Adams, saying, "It's
better 'n brushin' yer teeth"; and then further clinking, and an inquiry
from Specimen Jones.
"Whose spurs?" said he.
"Mine." This from Mr. Adams.
"How long have they been yourn?"
"Since I got 'em, I guess."
"Well, you've enjoyed them spurs long enough." The voice of Specimen
Jones now altered in quality. "And you'll give 'em back to that kid."
Muttering followed that the boy could not catch. "You'll give 'em back,"
repeated Jones. "I seen y'u lift 'em from under that chair when I was in
the corner."
"That's straight, Mr. Adams," said Ephraim. "I noticed it myself, though
I had no objections, of course. But Mr. Jones has pointed out--"
"Since when have you growed so honest, Jones?" cackled Mr. Adams, seeing
that he must lose his little booty. "And why didn't you raise yer
objections when you seen me do it?"
"I didn't know the kid," Jones explained. "And if it don't strike you
that game blood deserves respect, why it does strike me."
[Illustration: CUMNOR'S AWAKENING]
Hearing this, the tenderfoot, outside in his shed, thought better of
mankind and life in general, arose from his nest, and began preening
himself. He had all the correct trappings for the frontier, and his
toilet in the shed gave him pleasure. The sun came up, and with a
stroke struck the world to crystal. The near sand-hills went into
rose, the crabbed yucca and the mesquite turned transparent, with
lances and pale films of green, like drapery graciously veiling the
desert's face, and distant violet peaks and edges framed the vast
enchantment beneath the liquid exhalations of the sky. The smell of
bacon and coffee from open windows filled the heart with bravery and
yearning, and Ephraim, putting his head round the corner, called to
Cumnor that he had better come in and eat. Jones, already at table,
gave him the briefest nod; but the spurs were there, replaced as
Cumnor had left them under a chair in the corner. In Arizona they do
not say much at any meal, and at breakfast nothing at all; and as
Cumnor swallowed and meditated, he noticed the cream-colored lady and
the chain, and he made up his mind he should assert his identity with
regard to that business, though how and when was not clear to him. He
was in no great haste to take up his journey. The society of the
Mexicans whom he must sooner or later overtake did not tempt him. When
breakfast was done he idled in the cabin, like the other guests, while
Ephraim and his assistant busied about the premises. But the morning
grew on, and the guests, after a season of smoking and tilted silence
against the wall, shook themselves and their effects together,
saddled, and were lost among the waste thorny hills. Twenty Mile
became hot and torpid. Jones lay on three consecutive chairs,
occasionally singing, and old Mr. Adams had not gone away either,
but watched him, with more tobacco running down his beard.
"Well," said Cumnor, "I'll be going."
"Nobody's stopping y'u," remarked Jones.
"You're going to Tucson?" the boy said, with the chain problem still
unsolved in his mind. "Good-bye, Mr. Jones. I hope I'll--we'll--"
"That'll do," said Jones; and the tenderfoot, thrown back by this
severity, went to get his saddle-horse and his burro.
Presently Jones remarked to Mr. Adams that he wondered what Ephraim was
doing, and went out. The old gentleman was left alone in the room, and
he swiftly noticed that the belt and pistol of Specimen Jones were left
alone with him. The accoutrement lay by the chair its owner had been
lounging in. It is an easy thing to remove cartridges from the chambers
of a revolver, and replace the weapon in its holster so that everything
looks quite natural. The old gentleman was entertained with the notion
that somewhere in Tucson Specimen Jones might have a surprise, and he
did not take a minute to prepare this, drop the belt as it lay before,
and saunter innocently out of the saloon. Ephraim and Jones were
criticising the tenderfoot's property as he packed his burro.
"Do y'u make it a rule to travel with ice-cream?" Jones was inquiring.
"They're for water," Cumnor said. "They told me at Tucson I'd need to
carry water for three days on some trails."
It was two good-sized milk-cans that he had, and they bounced about on
the little burro's pack, giving him as much amazement as a jackass can
feel. Jones and Ephraim were hilarious.
"Don't go without your spurs, Mr. Cumnor," said the voice of old Mr.
Adams, as he approached the group. His tone was particularly civil.
The tenderfoot had, indeed, forgotten his spurs, and he ran back to get
them. The cream-colored lady still had the chain hanging upon her, and
Cumnor's problem was suddenly solved. He put the chain in his pocket,
and laid the price of one round of drinks for last night's company on
the shelf below the chromo. He returned with his spurs on, and went to
his saddle that lay beside that of Specimen Jones under the shed. After
a moment he came with his saddle to where the men stood talking by his
pony, slung it on, and tightened the cinches; but the chain was now in
the saddle-bag of Specimen Jones, mixed up with some tobacco, stale
bread, a box of matches, and a hunk of fat bacon. The men at Twenty Mile
said good-day to the tenderfoot, with monosyllables and indifference,
and watched him depart into the heated desert. Wishing for a last look
at Jones, he turned once, and saw the three standing, and the chocolate
brick of the cabin, and the windmill white and idle in the sun.
"He'll be gutted by night," remarked Mr. Adams.
"I ain't buryin' him, then," said Ephraim.
"Nor I," said Specimen Jones. "Well, it's time I was getting to Tucson."
He went to the saloon, strapped on his pistol, saddled, and rode away.
Ephraim and Mr. Adams returned to the cabin; and here is the final
conclusion they came to after three hours of discussion as to who took
the chain and who had it just then:
_Ephraim._ Jones, he hadn't no cash.
_Mr. Adams._ The kid, he hadn't no sense.
_Ephraim._ The kid, he lent the cash to Jones.
_Mr. Adams._ Jones, he goes off with his chain.
_Both._ What damn fools everybody is, anyway!
And they went to dinner. But Mr. Adams did not mention his relations
with Jones's pistol. Let it be said, in extenuation of that
performance, that Mr. Adams supposed Jones was going to Tucson, where he
said he was going, and where a job and a salary were awaiting him. In
Tucson an unloaded pistol in the holster of so handy a man on the drop
as was Specimen would keep people civil, because they would not know,
any more than the owner, that it was unloaded; and the mere possession
of it would be sufficient in nine chances out of ten--though it was
undoubtedly for the tenth that Mr. Adams had a sneaking hope. But
Specimen Jones was not going to Tucson. A contention in his mind as to
whether he would do what was good for himself, or what was good for
another, had kept him sullen ever since he got up. Now it was settled,
and Jones in serene humor again. Of course he had started on the Tucson
road, for the benefit of Ephraim and Mr. Adams.
The tenderfoot rode along. The Arizona sun beat down upon the deadly
silence, and the world was no longer of crystal, but a mesa, dull and
gray and hot. The pony's hoofs grated in the gravel, and after a time
the road dived down and up among lumpy hills of stone and cactus, always
nearer the fierce glaring Sierra Santa Catalina. It dipped so abruptly
in and out of the shallow sudden ravines that, on coming up from one of
these into sight of the country again, the tenderfoot's heart jumped at
the close apparition of another rider quickly bearing in upon him from
gullies where he had been moving unseen. But it was only Specimen Jones.
"Hello!" said he, joining Cumnor. "Hot, ain't it?"
"Where are you going?" inquired Cumnor.
"Up here a ways." And Jones jerked his finger generally towards the
Sierra, where they were heading.
"Thought you had a job in Tucson."
"That's what I have."
Specimen Jones had no more to say, and they rode for a while, their
ponies' hoofs always grating in the gravel, and the milk-cans lightly
clanking on the burro's pack. The bunched blades of the yuccas bristled
steel-stiff, and as far as you could see it was a gray waste of mounds
and ridges sharp and blunt, up to the forbidding boundary walls of the
Tortilita one way and the Santa Catalina the other. Cumnor wondered if
Jones had found the chain. Jones was capable of not finding it for
several weeks, or of finding it at once and saying nothing.
"You'll excuse my meddling with your business?" the boy hazarded.
Jones looked inquiring.
"Something's wrong with your saddle-pocket."
Specimen saw nothing apparently wrong with it, but perceiving Cumnor was
grinning, unbuckled the pouch. He looked at the boy rapidly, and looked
away again, and as he rode, still in silence, he put the chain back
round his neck below the flannel shirt-collar.
"Say, kid," he remarked, after some time, "what does J stand for?"
"J? Oh, my name! Jock."
"Well, Jock, will y'u explain to me as a friend how y'u ever come to be
such a fool as to leave yer home--wherever and whatever it was--in
exchange for this here God-forsaken and iniquitous hole?"
"If you'll explain to me," said the boy, greatly heartened, "how you
come to be ridin' in the company of a fool, instead of goin' to your job
at Tucson."
The explanation was furnished before Specimen Jones had framed his
reply. A burning freight-wagon and five dismembered human stumps lay in
the road. This was what had happened to the Miguels and Serapios and the
concertina. Jones and Cumnor, in their dodging and struggles to exclude
all expressions of growing mutual esteem from their speech, had
forgotten their journey, and a sudden bend among the rocks where the
road had now brought them revealed the blood and fire staring them in
the face. The plundered wagon was three parts empty; its splintered,
blazing boards slid down as they burned into the fiery heap on the
ground; packages of soda and groceries and medicines slid with them,
bursting into chemical spots of green and crimson flame; a wheel crushed
in and sank, spilling more packages that flickered and hissed; the
garbage of combat and murder littered the earth, and in the air hung an
odor that Cumnor knew, though he had never smelled it before. Morsels of
dropped booty up among the rocks showed where the Indians had gone, and
one horse remained, groaning, with an accidental arrow in his belly.
"We'll just kill him," said Jones; and his pistol snapped idly, and
snapped again, as his eye caught a motion--a something--two hundred
yards up among the bowlders on the hill. He whirled round. The enemy was
behind them also. There was no retreat. "Yourn's no good!" yelled Jones,
fiercely, for Cumnor was getting out his little, foolish revolver. "Oh,
what a trick to play on a man! Drop off yer horse, kid; drop, and do
like me. Shootin's no good here, even if I was loaded. _They_ shot, and
look at them now. God bless them ice-cream freezers of yourn, kid! Did
y'u ever see a crazy man? If you 'ain't, _make it up as y'u go along_!"