conceive himself more than half insulted merely by the sight of a
stranger appearing at the board and calmly requiring the wherewithal
to satisfy a mountain appetite. Accordingly, when the miners and
teamsters all came filing in, dusty, angular, raw-looking of
countenance, Barney instantly detected the presence of Slivers among
them, and his eyes "lit up shop" without delay.
Slivers, to speak the truth, was easily seen. He was framed like a
sky-scraping building, with the girders all plainly suggested. Not
without a certain insolence of deliberation, he stared about the room
before assuming his seat, and provoked himself to a sneer of
opera-bouffe proportions.
"You're his meat already," whispered one of the men. "Set down."
Comrade Slivers thereupon proceeded to comport himself with a studied
indifference to the cook which was duly galling. In a grim silence
that all who knew him comprehended, Barney went about the table
glowering with ferocity. Edging closer and closer to Slivers, the
little man seemed itching in his ears to catch some careless word that
might, by dint of inventiveness, be construed as a personal affront.
"I can see you ain't got no cook in the camp," said Slivers, loudly,
to his neighbor, when Barney was directly behind his chair. "Has that
pizened little boy I seen a while ago been playin' keep-house with the
grub?"
"What's the matter with the grub, you scion of the wild-ass family?"
demanded Barney, exploding like a fulminate.
Slivers looked around and scowled. "Git out, you yawping brat," said
he. "You must have been losin' hair for years--one hair a day--for
everything you don't know about decent grub. Go look at yer head, and
figure out your ignorance."
Sensitive concerning the trackless Sahara which his pate presented,
Barney clapped his hand upon it instantly. He could scarcely speak,
for rage.
"You--dead lizard!" finally spurted from his safety-valve. "You
mongrel viper! Low-bred ooze, disowned and outcast, I'll spoil a grave
with your carcass for this! You jelly of cowardice, meet me to-morrow
for satisfaction, or I'll swing you about by the tongue, and hurl you
to pulp against the sty of a pig!"
Even Slivers somewhat gasped.
"Meet you?" he retorted, arising, to tower above his foeman like a
mast. "Iron me, Johnny!--if I can crawl in the hole to find you where
you're hidin' I'll make you wish for hair a mile long, to stand on
your head in your pitiful scare!"
"Oh, fie! Oh, bah!" said the cook, scanning the teamster's length with
ill-concealed awe. "Buzzard, you toy with languages. To-morrow I shall
throw tomato-cans in scorn to build your monument."
"All right," answered Slivers. "To-morrow suits me, and we'll fight it
out bareback on buckin' broncos, out in the small corral, each feller
armed with a stockin' full of rocks for a weapon."
Barney stared for a moment in consternation at the man before him. He
had previously grown accustomed to the horrors suggested by pistols,
knives, red-hot branding-irons, and even pitchforks, but rocks in a
stocking--that smacked of barbarism. Moreover, to mount on the back of
a bronco, wild or tame--the very meditation made the walls drop out of
his stomach. However, he smiled.
"Child's play!" he answered, with fine disgust. "You warty infant! No
matter, an odious child would become a more detestable reptile! Till
to-morrow, don't speak to me--don't speak to me! Or I shall cheat
myself of the morning's pastime." And with that he strode haughtily
away.
"Howlin' coyotes!" said Slivers, when he met the gaze of a dozen pair
of gleaming eyes. "Take him dose for dose he's worse than pizen! By
gar! just see if he burned any holes in my shirt."
Nearly all night long, however, little Barney lay awake, wildly
fashioning excuses to avoid that horrid duel in the morning. He had
always escaped by a margin so narrow that no precedent of the past
gave assurance of luck for the future. He was mortally afraid that at
last he had challenged such a monster of brute courage, malignity, and
strength that nothing terrestrial could avert his untimely demise.
Then in the morning the first sight that met his troubled gaze was
that of Slivers rounding up a pair of unbroken ponies, as wild as
meteors, in the field of honor, hard by the camp. Every cell in
Barney's structure was in a panic. How he managed to walk to the
water-bench to wash was more than he knew. After that there was no
retreat. The citizens of Bitter Hole surrounded him, according to
preconcerted arrangement, and began to coach him for his fight.
"Barney, you'd better have a jolt of whiskey in yer vitals," suggested
one. "Slivers is a regular expert with a stockin' of rocks."
"If I was you, Barney," said Tuttle, "I'd leave my bronco throw me
right at him. Then. I'd turn in the air and soak my heels into
Slivers's grub-basket and knock him into pieces small enough to smoke
in a cigarette."
"Barney," counselled another, "you take my advice and fight standin'
up on your hoss, so you can jump over onto Slivers's bronco and cram
your stockin' of rocks down that there mule-driver's neck and choke
him clean to death."
They were "herding" the speechless Barney toward the corral, in which
the two vicious ponies had now been confined. Slivers himself came
forward.
"Leave me see how much the little scarecrow has shrunk in the night,"
said he.
Barney's wrath was kindled by this. He opened his mouth to deliver a
broadside of verbal grape and canister, when he was suddenly
interrupted.
A shot and a yell, from down the road, startled every man in camp.
Two, three, five more shots barked in swift succession. Miss Sally
Wooster herself was drawn from the house by the fusillade.
With Comanche-like whoops, a horseman came dashing madly toward the
men, brandishing two huge revolvers as he rode.
"Skete, and drunk in the morning," said Tuttle.
A moment later the rider scattered the population as he rode his
weltering pony through the group.
"You lubbers, celebrate!" he yelled, discharging a weapon three times
in a second. "There's been a baby born at Red Shirt Canyon! We git in
the census! We git on the map! Big Matt Sullivan's wife has got a
little boy!"
"A boy!" said Sally Wooster. "Oh my!"
"Is that all?" inquired John Tuttle, on behalf of his somewhat
indignant townsmen. "Red Shirt's thirty-seven miles away. We've got
something more exciting than that right here in camp."
"Red Shirt's in this same county," protested the horseman, a trifle
crestfallen. "I thought you fellers was patriotic."
Barney Doon threw out his chest and swaggered forward.
"Patriotic?" he echoed. "Doggone us, we're the biggest patriots on the
coast! No man is a gentleman who wouldn't be a gentleman on such an
occasion as this. Skete, you've saved the life of yonder braggart,"
and he pointed to Slivers. "I couldn't be a gentleman and slay him
when a child's been born in this here county. Slivers, you can go your
way, without alarm."
"What!" demanded Tuttle. "No fight? All on account of a baby?"
"If I ever!" added Sally Wooster.
A third disgusted person queried, "What's a baby got to do with a
duel, and the kid near forty miles away?"
To this one Barney turned with pitying scorn. "You don't know how easy
it is to disturb a new-born baby," said he. "There ain't a man but me
in camp knows how to behave himself in a holy moment like this here,
and I ain't a-goin' to kill no man when a sacred thing like that has
went and happened."
"Well, durn his slippery hide!" grumbled Tuttle. "He's gittin' too
smart!"
The men were all grinning, including Slivers.
"I reckon Barney knows as much about a baby as a hop-toad knows about
arithmetic," said Wooster, winking prodigiously. "He's got us all
square beat on kids."
"I don't know about that," replied a lanky individual who had sobered
amazingly at the news from Red Shirt Canyon. "I've saw a kid or two
myself."
"That so, Moody?" said Slivers. "Well, say, maybe we could work up a
bet between you and Barney, to see which knows the most about a
youngster."
Barney broke in abruptly. "I'll bet a million dollars I know more
about children than all you cusses put together! There ain't a one of
you knows how many teeth a baby's got when he's born."
The challenge produced a solemn stillness.
"W-e-l-l, I know they don't git their eyes open for a week," asserted
Moody.
"You're clear off, first crack," retorted Barney. "It's nine days,
instead of a week."
Again the men were awed to silence.
"Yes, that's right--Barney's correct," presently admitted citizen
Wooster.
"You old ninnies!" said his daughter Sally, and she turned away to go
to the house.
"Well, anyway," said Slivers, after a brisk bit of widespread
conversation with Tuttle, "we've got a scheme. Barney wants to match
himself against the whole shebang in knowin' about a kid, and we're
goin' to fetch a young un to the Hole and leave him prove his claim."
"Not Sullivan's?" gasped Barney, suddenly overwhelmed at the prospect
of proving his erudition on an infant so tender, with a father so
brawny.
"Never mind whose," replied the teamster. "You sit quiet and look
pretty, and we'll provide the kid."
This they did. The following morning, at daylight, Tuttle and Slivers
reappeared at camp, from a pilgrimage, and the mule-driver held in his
arms a little red Indian papoose, as fat, dimpled, and pretty as a
cherub, and as frightened as a captive baby rabbit.
"Now, then," said the man, placing his charge on the floor, in the
midst of a circle of wondering citizens, "there's your kid. Never mind
where we got him--there he is. Barney takes charge of him every other
day, and the rest of us by turns in between--all that cares to enter
the race."
The news having spread, Miss Sally Wooster was among the astonished
spectators who beheld the tiny, half-naked, frightened little
chieftain-to-be, gazing timidly about him as he sat on the planks,
gripping his own little shirt as his one and only acquaintance.
"Lauk!" she said, and laughing immoderately, sped for the door.
"Sally, you ain't to help neither Barney nor us!" called Tuttle.
"Don't you worry," she answered. "It ain't no pie of mine."
The men continued to look at their "young un" in no small quandary of
helplessness.
"He's a pretty little cuss," said one of the miners, after a moment.
"I wouldn't guess him for more than a yearlin'."
Moody coughed nervously. "One of the first things to do for a child,"
he ventured, "is to git a thimble to rub on his teeth."
"That's right," said a friend. "My mother used to do that regular."
"What's the matter with putting pants on him fairly early in the
fight?" inquired the next man of wisdom.
"First thing my mother always done for us was to make us a bib,"
drawled one fidgety fellow, tentatively.
"He'd orter be told never to drink, ner chew, ner smoke, ner swear,
ner gamble, 'fore it gits too late," added a miner who carefully
eschewed all and sundry of these virtues.
"Stub-tailed idiots!" said Barney, in huge disgust.
All eyes focussed on the fiery little cook.
"Well, then," demanded Tuttle, "what is the first thing to do for a
little kid like him?"
"The first thing?" answered Barney. "The first thing is--Do you think
I'm going to tell you lop-eared galoots all I know about a baby? What
I want to know is if he's had a bite to eat?"
"What did you think we'd feed him?" asked Slivers. "Do we look like
his mother?"
"Git away, you venomous scum, and let me have him!" demanded Barney.
"Hold on," interrupted Tuttle. "The first day he goes to the feller he
picks out himself, only you come last, bein' the challenger. We'll
arrange things alphabetical. Adams, you git first shot, to find out if
you're popular with the little skeesicks."
Adams turned redder than usual, which is saying much.
"Ah--I don't know nuthin' about kids," he confessed. "Catherwood--see
what he can do."
Catherwood also proved to be modest. After him Farnham and Lane waived
their alphabetical privilege.
Moody, as nervous as a girl, approached the dumb little man on the
floor, and twisting the corner of his coat, inquired in a trembling
voice, "Does Bunny love old Goo-goo?"
The child looked up with a frightened little query in his eyes.
"I'd hate to scare him," Moody added. "I don't mind seein' how he
takes to Barney."
"Yes, give Barney a show," said Wooster.
Something had been happening to the cook. The tenseness had gone from
his usually wiry little body; his eyes were milder; a curve was
softening his mouth. Kneeling before the child, he held forth his
arms.
"Baby want to go by-by?" he said, and tenderly lifting the little man,
he bore him away, while the men looked on in silence.
Half an hour later the man who peeked through the keyhole reported
that Barney was singing the youngster to sleep. The words of the song
are not readily conveyed, but they sounded like--
"Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,
Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,
Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,"
repeated times without number. Barney called it an Indian lullaby. As
sung it was equally good Cherokee, Chinese, or Russian, being Barney's
clearest recollection and interpretation of a song which his mother
once had droned.
On the third day following, Slivers, Tuttle, and others held a council
of war.
"Barney's goin' to clean up the whole works of us," said the
mule-driver, "unless we can manage to work some better combination."
"What can we do?" inquired Tuttle. "The kid sure likes him best."
"That wasn't the point. It's a game of how much we all know about a
young un as against little Barney. Now, Moody, on the square, do you
think you know as much as him?"
"He knows more than you'd think," confessed Moody. "The--the only
little kid I ever had--she died--ten months old."
"Oh."
"Well--that was hell, sure."
Some of the men puckered their lips as if to whistle, but made no
sound.
"If only we could paint Barney's face an Irish green, or do something
so's the kid would be scared to see him, we might win out yet,
perhaps," resumed Slivers, presently. "Got any ideas?"
"I don't think Barney could scare him if he tried," answered Wooster.
"Anyhow the pore little scamp ain't cried since he come."
"He ain't laughed any, either," added Moody.
There was neither a cry nor a smile that day, though Barney yearned to
hear either one of these baby sounds. The little brown captive clung
as always to his tiny shirt, and watched Barney's face with big,
brown, questioning eyes. The cook had forgotten his boast. To hold the
wee bit of babyhood against his heart, to coax him to eat, to yearn
over him, love him, fondle him--these were his passions. A fierce
parental jealousy grew in Barney's nature.
But the hour arrived when jealousy changed to a deeper emotion--to
worry. All Barney actually knew of a child came through the intuitions
of a natural father's heart, but little as this amounted to, Barney
was aware that a tiny scamp like this should eat and sleep and creep
about and crow. And the little brown "Bunny" had done not one of the
pretty baby tricks.
The fiery little cook's new concern was at first concealed. With
growing reluctance every time, he resigned the little man to Moody's
care as the "contest" required. One night, however, when the dumb, sad
bit of an Indian was with Moody, the man was aroused from his dreams
by some one's presence. It was Barney, too worried to sleep,
surreptitiously come to the tiny captive's fruit-box cradle, and
gently urging the wee bronze man to eat of some gruel prepared at that
silent hour of the darkness. He was willing that Moody should have the
credit of taking good care of the motherless baby, if only the child
could be made a little more happy. Thereafter, by night and day, the
cook was hovering about the uncomplaining little chieftain; and Moody
understood.
By some of the mystic workings of nature, Barney's love and worry
extended to Sally. Hiding her feelings from all the men, even from
Barney himself, she could not quell the upgush of emotion in her
bosom, as she snatched the little Indian once, in secret, to her
heart. Without the courage, as yet, to hear the men ridicule her
weakness, she nevertheless contrived to place a hundred little
comforting things in Barney's path, as he went his rounds of mothering
his sad little wild thing from the hills. Her heart began to ache, as
it swelled to take in the child and Barney Doon.
The men had lost all spirit of fun in the contest, even to Slivers,
who strove, however, to see it through in a bluff, rough-hearted way.
Unexpectedly all of it came to a crisis. It was early in the morning.
After a sleepless night Barney had gone in desperate parent-care to
receive his foundling back from Moody. In one keen glance he had
finally perceived what all their folly was leading to, at last.
With the dumb little chap on his arm he hastened to the dining-shed,
where all the men, save Tuttle, were awaiting breakfast.
"You brutes had no right to steal this child!" he cried out,
passionately. "He's starving! He's pining away! Look at his thin
little legs! Look at his poor little eyes--getting hollow!" Tears were
streaming from his own tired eyes as he spoke. "Slivers, you did
this!" he charged, angrily. "You tell me where you got him, or I'll
shoot you down like a dog!" He had hastened up to the teamster,
against whose very breast he thrust a pistol a foot in length.
"By God! he'd do it!" said Slivers, unmoved by the push of the loaded
weapon. "Uncock it, Barney. You'd ought to know I wouldn't harm the
kid, any quicker than you. I'd do as much as any man if we had to save
his life."
"He may not live through the day!" cried Barney. "I'm going to take
him home--back to his mother! And if you don't tell me where she is--"
"Hold on, now; I call," interrupted Slivers. "We'll see if you've got
any sand. The Injun camp is over across the desert, in Thimbleberry
Cove.... Do you reckon you've got the nerve to pack him across?"
A peculiar silence followed this announcement. Barney stood like an
animal at bay. His face became deathly white. He fully comprehended
the awfulness of that great white dead-land just outside.
Wooster broke the silence. "It looks as if the wind is going to blow
harder to-day," he said. "It's stirring up the desert some already. A
man could never get two miles out from here, unless the breeze goes
down."
Barney, with a crazed, wild look on his face, hastened away to the
kitchen.
"I'm glad he didn't take you up on that," said Moody, gazing forth
from a window. "Get on to the way the whirlwinds are kickin' up the
smoke already."
"I reckon it won't blow no worse than yesterday," replied Slivers.
"But I knowed he wouldn't tackle it anyhow. He'll be back here in a
minute, to squirm out of the game."
They drummed on the table for fifteen minutes, as they waited. A brisk
wind was blowing; the desert began to deliver up its cohorts of
dust-clouds, where powdered alkali billowed and eddied and swept
across the valley in ever-increasing volumes.
"Peek in the kitchen and see what Barney's up to now," prompted
Slivers, nudging Adams as he spoke.
"Oh, he'll be back directly," said Adams.
"Here's somebody comin' now," added Catherwood, presently. "Maybe
it's--"
"Sally," muttered Slivers, who meditated proposing for the hand of the
buxom Miss Wooster.
She came toward them almost fiercely. Her face was white. She too had
detected the change come upon the tiny Indian captive. All night she
had accused herself of neglect and heartlessness.
"Where's Barney? Where's the baby?" she demanded.
"Barney's maybe striking off for Thimbleberry Cove," answered Slivers,
smilingly. "He was running a bluff on taking the kid to its mother."
"But Tuttle told me the mother's up at Red Shirt Canyon," said the
girl.
"Of course," agreed Slivers, uneasily. "We--told him about the Cove to
test his sand."
Sally gazed at him wildly. "Then--it must have been a man--Barney!--I
saw--on the desert!" she cried, disjointedly. "They'll die! Oh no, he
wouldn't--" She ran outside to scan the fearful expanse of alkali,
with its gathering blizzard of dust.
The men, suddenly grown nervous, followed her out of the house.
Apparently there was nothing, far or wide, on the desert, save the
sweeping clouds of white, like drifting snow.
"My God! he wouldn't tackle that!" said Slivers.
"I hear some one out in the kitchen now," said Tate. "It must be him."
Sally ran to see. It was only the dog. She darted forth once more.
"Not there!" she said. "But surely Barney wouldn't--There! There!"
Her cry rang out so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was
pointing stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one
brief second the swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out
eastward, in the dead-land of white, a small dark object--the form of
a man.
One poignant sob was the only sound that Sally made, as she ran toward
the stable.
"Good Lord! it's him!" said Adams. "Was he heading back this way?"
"I think he was," answered Catherwood.
"He couldn't--do anything--else," stammered Slivers.
For a moment no one spoke.
"I reckon I'll just mosey over to the desert," drawled the fidgety
man. "I'd hate to have anything go wrong with Barney."
"Guess I'll go along myself," said Adams.
"Boys!" said Slivers, hoarsely, "I'm going to saddle up and git him
back! I didn't mean no harm when I told him wrong. I didn't think he'd
go. I'd ride through hell for Barney--or the little Injun, either. You
fellers know I didn't mean no harm."
He started at once to get his horse. Before he had covered half the
distance to the stable, Sally suddenly rode forth, bareback, on a
buckskin pony, and heading for the desert, spurred her bronco to a
gallop, crying to him wildly as she went.
"Sally!--Sally--I'll go!" yelled Slivers.
She seemed not to hear, but ran her pony out upon the white expanse,
where the wreathing dust seemed to swallow both herself and the animal
immediately.
Her horse, fleeing swiftly before the wind, carried Sally a mile or
two out from the camp before she reined him in. Believing Barney could
have come no farther than this, she began to search and to call.
At every turn of her head her eyes were blinded by the acrid dust. The
stuff choked her breathing; already her throat was dry. Dust and
powder and snow-of-alkali came from everywhere. It was blowing up her
sleeves. It filtered into and through her clothing. Her ears were
quickly coated; her hair was heavy.
She turned her head from side to side for a breath. The air was
thicker than smoke with dust as heavy as flour.
"Barney!" she called, from time to time, but the alkali coated her
tongue. On either side she could see for a distance of twenty feet, or
less. It seemed far less, in all that terrible drift of white.
She rode across the wind, doggedly, crying Barney's name. A nameless
hopelessness began to grow upon her. Now this way, now that, she urged
her horse. How far could Barney hear her calling? How far could he
wander? How far would she ride? There were forty miles in length and
fifteen in width of this reek of wind-driven alkali. God keep them if
ever they got more than two miles away from the Hole!
It was aimless riding, presently, but she still persisted. A sickening
conviction that Barney and the little captive would both be dead
before she could find them made her desperation unendurable. With eyes
starting hotly, with every breath seeming like a struggle for
existence, in the dust, she galloped, calling, calling, till at last
she could call no more.
Dazed, she halted her horse at last, and sat staring blindly at
nothing. The pony turned about, unheeded, and began to fight his way
against the storm, his head down between his legs.
Sally's head also came down, by instinct more than by design. She felt
past thinking. For a time she rode thus, heedlessly. Then abruptly she
clutched at the reins and drew the horse to a halt. The animal pricked
up his ears peculiarly.
Weirdly out of the wind and dust came a sound--not a moan, not a
croon, but like them both, yet a song, uncertain, apparently coming
from no definitive point. She even caught the words:
"All on some lonesome bill-din
The swallow makes her nest;
All on some--lonesome bill-din
The--swallow makes--her nest."
Sally tried to call out. She made but a croaking noise. Slipping from
her horse's back, she groped her way forward, leading the pony, and
trying to shout.