THE PILGRIM
A group of saddle-horses stood before the Headquarters saloon, and as
the Texan entered he was vociferously greeted by the twenty cowboys who
crowded the bar.
"Come on, Tex, drink up!"
"Hell'll be a-poppin' down to the wool-warehouse."
"An', time we get there we won't be able to see Sam Moore fer dust."
Curly raised his glass and the cowpunchers joined in uproarious song:
"We'll string him up to a cottonwood limb
An' dig his grave in under him,
We'll tromp down the clods, an' we won't give a damn
'Cause he'll never kill another cow-man,
Ah wi yi yippie i oo-o-!"
Without a break the Texan picked up the refrain, improvising words to
fit the occasion:
"The sheriff's name, it's old Sam Moore,
He's standin' down by the jail-house door
With seventeen knives an' a gatlin' gun,
But you bet your boots we'll make him run
Ah wi yi yippie i o-o-o-!"
With whoops of approbation and a deafening chorus of yowls and
catcalls, the cowpunchers crowded through the door. A moment later the
bar-room was deserted and out in the street the night air resounded
with the sound of snorting, trampling horses, the metallic jangle of
spurs and bit chains, the creak of saddle-leather, and the terse,
quick-worded observations of men mounting in the midst of the confusion
of refractory horses.
"The sheriff's name, it's old Sam Moore!" roared a cowboy as he slammed
into the saddle of a skew-ball black.
"Go git him!" howled another in exact imitation of Slim Maloney.
There was a thunder of hoofs as the whole crowd, headed by Tex and
Curly swept down the street and across the flat toward the impromptu
jail.
With a lighted lantern beside him, Sam Moore sat upon the strongly
built unloading platform before the warehouse door, access to which was
gained by means of a flight of six or eight plank steps at either end.
Up these steps rode a couple of cowpunchers while the rest drew up
sharply at the very edge of the platform. Hemmed in upon all sides the
valiant deputy glanced fearfully into the faces of the horsemen.
"Wha--What's up, boys? What's ailin' ye?" he managed to blurt out.
"Drop them guns an' give over the key!" commanded someone.
"Sure--sure, boys! I hain't aimin' to hurt no one. Yer all friends of
mine an' what you say goes with me."
"Friends of yourn!" roared someone menacingly; "you're a liar, Sam!
You ain't never seen nary one of us before! Git that!"
"Sure, sure thing, boys, I don't know who ye be. 'Tain't none of my
business. I couldn't name none of you. You don't need to be scairt of
me."
"You beat it, then, an' lose yerself an' don't yer go stirrin' up no
rookus over to the dance, er we'll dangle you a little, too."
"Sure. I'm a-goin' now. I----"
"Fork over that key first!"
"Sure, Tex! Here it is----"
"Sure _who_!" rasped a voice close to the sheriff's ear.
"I mean--I said---- Here's the doggone key! I was thinkin' of a
feller I know'd down to Wyomin'. Tex--Tex--Smith, er some such of a
name it was. I mistrusted you was him, an' mebbe you be fer all I
know. I don't savvy none of you whatever."
"Get a move on, Sam!"
"Me! I'm gone! An' you boys remember when 'lection time comes, to
vote fer a sheriff that's got disgression an' common sense." And with
ludicrous alacrity, the deputy scrambled from the platform and
disappeared into the deep blackness of the lumber-yard.
The Texan fitted the key into the huge padlock and a moment later the
door swung open and a dozen cowpunchers swarmed in.
"Come on, pilgrim, an' try on yer necktie!"
"We'll prob'ly have to haul down all them wool-sacks an' drag him out
from behind 'em."
"I think not. If I am the man you want I think you will find me
perfectly able to walk." The pilgrim stood leaning against one of the
wooden supporting posts, and as a cowboy thrust the lantern into his
face he noted the eyes never faltered.
"Come along with us!" commanded the puncher, gruffly, as another
stepped up and slipped the noose of a lariat-rope over his head.
"So I am to be lynched, am I?" asked the pilgrim in a matter-of-fact
tone, as with a cowboy on either side he was hurried across the
platform and onto a horse.
"This ain't no time to talk," growled another. "We'll give you a
chanct to empty yer chest 'fore we string you up."
In the moonlight the prisoner's face showed very pale, but the cow-men
saw that his lips were firmly set, and the hands that caught up the
bridle reins did not falter. As the cavalcade started out upon the
trail the Texan turned back, and riding swiftly to the hotel, found Bat
waiting.
"You go in to Number 11 and tell the girl you're ready to start."
"You'm mean de pilgrim's girl?"
The Texan frowned and swore under his breath: "She ain't the pilgrim's
girl, yet--by a damn sight! You take her an' the pack horse an' hit
down the river an' cut up through old man Lee's horse ranch onto the
bench. Then hit for Snake Creek crossin' an' wait for me."
The half-breed nodded, and the Texan's frown deepened as he leaned
closer. "An' you see that you get her through safe an' sound or I'll
cut off them ears of yours an' stake you out in a rattlesnake den to
think it over." The man grinned and the frown faded from the Texan's
face. "You got to do me a good turn, Bat. Remember them four bits in
Las Vegas!"
"A'm tak' de girl to Snake Creek crossin' a'right; you'm don' need for
be 'fraid for dat."
The cowpuncher whirled and spurred his horse to overtake the cowboys
who, with the prisoner in charge, were already well out upon the trail.
In front of the hotel the half-breed watched the flying horseman until
he disappeared from sight.
"A'm wonder if dat girl be safe wit' him, lak' she is wit' me--_bien_.
A'm t'ink mebbe-so dat damn good t'ing ol' Bat goin' long. If she damn
fine girl mebbe-so Tex, he goin' mar' her. Dat be good t'ing. But, by
Gar! if he don' mar' her, he gon' leave her 'lone. Me--A'm lak' dat
Tex fine, lak' me own brudder. He got de good heart. But w'en he
drink de hooch, den A'm got for look after him. He don' care wan damn
'bout nuttin'. Dat four bit in Las Vegas, dats a'right. A'm fink
'bout dat, too. But, by Gar, it tak' more'n four bit in Las Vegas for
mak' of Bat let dat girl git harm."
An atmosphere of depression pervaded the group of riders as they wound
in and out of the cottonwood clumps and threaded the deep coulee that
led to the bench. For the most part they preserved an owlish silence,
but now and then someone would break into a low, weird refrain and the
others would join in with the mournful strain of "The Dying Cowboy."
"Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie-e-e,
Where the coyote howls and the wind blows free."
Or the dirge-like wail of the "Cowboy's Lament":
"Then swing your rope slowly and rattle your spurs lowly,
And give a wild whoop as you carry me along:
And in the grave throw me and roll the sod o'er me,
For I'm only a cowboy that knows he's done wrong."
"Shall we take him to Lone Tree Coulee?" asked one. Another answered
disdainfully.
"Don't you know the lone tree's dead? Jest shrivelled up an' died
after Bill Atwood was hung onto it. Some augers he worn't guilty. But
it's better to play safe, an' string up all the doubtful ones, then yer
bound to git the right one onct in a while."
"Swing over into Buffalo Coulee," commanded Tex. "There's a bunch of
cottonwoods just above Hansen's old sheep ranch."
"We'll string him up to a cottonwood limb
An' dig his grave in under him----"
"Shut up!" ordered Curly, favouring the singer with a scowl. "Any one
would think you was joyous-minded, which this here hangin' a man is
plumb serious business, even if it hain't only a pilgrim!"
He edged his horse in beside the Texan's. "He don't seem tore up with
terror, none. D'you think he's onto the racket?"
Tex shook his head, and with his eyes on the face of the prisoner which
showed very white in the moonlight, rode on in silence.
"You mean you think he's jest nach'ly got guts--an' him a pilgrim?"
"How the hell do I know what he's got?" snapped the other. "Can't you
wait till we get to Buffalo?"
Curly allowed his horse to fall back a few paces. "First time I ever
know'd Tex to pack a grouch," he mused, as his lips drew into a grin.
"He's sore 'cause the pilgrim hain't a-snifflin' an' a-carryin'-on an'
tryin' to beg off. Gosh! If he turns out to be a reg'lar hand, an'
steps up an' takes his medicine like a man, the joke'll be on Tex. The
boys never will quit joshin' him--an' he knows it. No wonder he's
sore."
The cowboys rode straight across the bench. Song and conversation had
ceased and the only sounds were the low clink of bit chains and the
soft rustle of horses' feet in the buffalo grass. At the end of an
hour the leaders swung into an old grass-grown trail that led by
devious windings into a deep, steep-sided coulee along the bottom of
which ran the bed of a dried-up creek. Water from recent rains stood
in brackish pools. Remnants of fence with rotted posts sagging from
rusty wire paralleled their course. A dilapidated cross-fence barred
their way, and without dismounting, a cowboy loosened the wire gate and
threw it aside.
A deserted log-house, windowless, with one corner rotted away, and the
sod roof long since tumbled in, stood upon a treeless bend of the dry
creek. Abandoned implements littered the dooryard; a rusted hay rake
with one wheel gone, a broken mower with cutter-bar drunkenly erect,
and the front trucks of a dilapidated wagon.
The Texan's eyes rested sombrely upon the remnant of a rocking-horse,
still hitched by bits of weather-hardened leather to a child's
wheelbarrow whose broken wheel had once been the bottom of a wooden
pail--and he swore, softly.
Up the creek he could see the cottonwood grove just bursting into leaf
and as they rounded the corner of a long sheep-shed, whose soggy straw
roof sagged to the ground, a coyote, disturbed in his prowling among
the whitening bones of dead sheep, slunk out of sight in a weed-patch.
Entering the grove, the men halted at a point where the branches of
three large trees interlaced. It was darker, here. The moonlight
filtered through in tiny patches which brought out the faces of the men
with grotesque distinctness and plunged them again into blackness.
Gravely the Texan edged his horse to the side of the pilgrim.
"Get off!" he ordered tersely, and Endicott dismounted.
"Tie his hands!" A cowboy caught the man's hands behind him and
secured them with a lariat-rope.
The Texan unknotted the silk muffler from about his neck and folded it.
"If it is just the same to you," the pilgrim asked, in a voice that
held firm, "will you leave that off?"
Without a word the muffler was returned to its place.
"Throw the rope over that limb--the big one that sticks out this way,"
ordered the Texan, and a cowpuncher complied.
"The knot had ort to come in under his left ear," suggested one, and
proceeded to twist the noose into place.
"All ready!"
A dozen hands grasped the end of the rope.
The Texan surveyed the details critically:
"This here is a disagreeable job," he said. "Have you got anything to
say?"
Endicott took a step forward, and as he faced the Texan, his eyes
flashed. "Have I got anything to say!" he sneered. "Would you have
anything to say if a bunch of half-drunken fools decided to take the
law into their own hands and hang you for defending a woman against the
brutal attack of a fiend?" He paused and wrenched to free his hands
but the rope held firm. "It was a wise precaution you took when you
ordered my hands tied--a precaution that fits in well with this whole
damned cowardly proceeding. And now you ask me if I have anything to
say!" He glanced into the faces of the cowboys who seemed to be
enjoying the situation hugely.
"I've got this to say--to you, and to your whole bunch of grinning
hyenas: If you expect me to do any begging or whimpering, you are in
for a big disappointment. There is one request I am going to make--and
that you won't grant. Just untie my hands for ten minutes and stand up
to me bare-fisted. I want one chance before I go, to fight you, or any
of you, or all of you! Or, if you are afraid to fight that way, give
me a pistol--I never fired one until tonight--and let me shoot it out
with you. Surely men who swagger around with pistols in their belts,
and pride themselves on the use of them, ought not to be afraid to take
a chance against a man who has never but once fired one!" There was an
awkward pause and the pilgrim laughed harshly: "There isn't an ounce of
sporting blood among you! You hunt in packs like the wolves you
are--twenty to one--and that one with a rope around his neck and his
hands tied!"
"The odds is a little against you," drawled the Texan. "Where might
you hail from?"
"From a place where they breed men--not curs."
"Ain't you afraid to die?"
"Just order your hounds to jerk on that rope and I'll show you whether
or not I am afraid to die. But let me tell you this, you damned
murderer! If any harm comes to that girl--to Miss Marcum--may the
curse of God follow every last one of you till you are damned in a
fiery hell! You will kill me now, but you won't be rid of me. I'll
haunt you every one to your graves. I will follow you night and day
till your brains snap and you go howling to hell like maniacs."
Several of the cowboys shuddered and turned away. Very deliberately
the Texan rolled a cigarette.
"There is a box in my coat pocket, will you hand me one? Or is it
against the rules to smoke?" Without a word the Texan complied, and as
he held a match to the cigarette he stared straight into the man's
eyes: "You've started out good," he remarked gravely. "I'm just
wonderin' if you can play your string out." With which enigmatical
remark he turned to the cowboys: "The drinks are on me, boys. Jerk off
that rope, an' go back to town! An' remember, this lynchin' come off
as per schedule."
Alone in the cottonwood grove, with little patches of moonlight
filtering through onto the new-sprung grass, the two men faced each
other. Without a word the cowboy freed the prisoner's hands.
"Viewin' it through a lariat-loop, that way, the country looks better
to a man than what it really is," he observed, as the other stretched
his arms above his head.
"What is the meaning of all this? The lynching would have been an
atrocious injustice, but if you did not intend to hang me why should
you have taken the trouble to bring me out here?"
"'Twasn't no trouble at all. The main thing was to get you out of Wolf
River. The lynchin' part was only a joke, an' that's on us. You bein'
a pilgrim, that way, we kind of thought----"
"A what?"
"A pilgrim, or tenderfoot, or greener or chechako, or counter-jumper,
owin' to what part of the country you misfit into. We thought you
wouldn't have no guts, an' we'd----"
"Any what?"
The Texan regarded the other hopelessly. "Oh hell!" he muttered
disgustedly. "Can't you talk no English? Where was you raised?"
The other laughed. "Go on, I will try to follow you."
"I can't chop 'em up no finer than one syllable. But I'll shorten up
the dose sufficient for your understandin' to grasp. It's this way:
D'you know what a frame-up is?"
Endicott nodded.
"Well, Choteau County politics is in such a condition of onwee that a
hangin' would be a reg'lar tonic for the party that's in; which it's
kind of bogged down into an old maid's tea party. Felonious
takin's-off has be'n common enough, but there hasn't no hangin's
resulted, for the reason that in every case the hangee has got friends
or relations of votin' influence. Now, along comes you without no
votin' connections an' picks off Purdy, which he's classed amongst
human bein's, an' is therefore felonious to kill. There ain't nothin'
to it. They'd be poundin' away on the scaffold an' testin' the rope
while the trial was goin' on. Besides which you'd have to linger in a
crummy jail for a couple of months waitin' for the grand jury to set on
you. A few of us boys seen how things was framed an' we took the
liberty to turn you loose, not because we cared a damn about you, but
we'd hate to see even a snake hung fer killin' Purdy which his folks
done a wrong to humanity by raisin' him.
"The way the thing is now, if the boys plays the game accordin' to
Hoyle, there won't be no posses out huntin' you 'cause folks will all
think you was lynched. But even if they is a posse or two, which the
chances is there will be, owin' to the loosenin' effect of spiritorious
licker on the tongue, which it will be indulged in liberal when that
bunch hits town, we can slip down into the bad lands an' lay low for a
while, an' then on to the N. P. an' you can get out of the country."
Endicott extended his hand: "I thank you," he said. "It is certainly
white of you boys to go out of your way to help a perfect stranger. I
have no desire to thrust my neck into a noose to further the ends of
politics. One experience of the kind is quite sufficient."
"Never mind oratin' no card of thanks. Just you climb up into the
middle of that bronc an' we'll be hittin' the trail. We got quite some
ridin' to do before we get to the bad lands--an' quite some after."
Endicott reached for the bridle reins of his horse which was cropping
grass a few feet distant.
"But Alice--Miss Marcum!" With the reins in his hand he faced the
Texan. "I must let her know I am safe. She will think I have been
lynched and----"
"She's goin' along," interrupted the Texan, gruffly.
"Going along!"
"Yes, she was bound to see you through because what you done was on her
account. Bat an' her'll be waitin' for us at Snake Creek crossin'."
"Who is Bat?"
"He's a breed."
"A what?"
"Wait an' see!" growled Tex. "Come on; we can't set here 'til you get
educated. You'd ought to went to school when you was young."
Endicott reached for a stirrup and the horse leaped sidewise with a
snort of fear. Again and again the man tried to insert a foot into the
broad wooden stirrup, but always the horse jerked away. Round and
round in a circle they went, while the Texan sat in his saddle and
rolled a cigarette.
"Might try the other one," he drawled, as he struck a match. "Don't
you know no better than to try to climb onto a horse on the right-hand
side? You must of be'n brought up on G-Dots."
"What's a G-Dot?"
"There you go again. Do I look like a school-marm? A G-Dot is an
Injun horse an' you can get on 'em from both sides or endways. Come
on; Snake Creek crossin' is a good fifteen miles from here, an' we
better pull out of this coulee while the moon holds."
Endicott managed to mount, and gathering up the reins urged his horse
forward. But the animal refused to go and despite the man's utmost
efforts, backed farther and farther into the brush.
"Just shove on them bridle reins a little," observed the Texan dryly.
"I think he's swallerin' the bit. What you got him all yanked in for?
D'you think the head-stall won't hold the bit in? Or ain't his mouth
cut back far enough to suit you? These horses is broke to be rode with
a loose rein. Give him his head an' he'll foller along."
A half-mile farther up the coulee, the Texan headed up a ravine that
led to the level of the bench, and urging his horse into a long
swinging trot, started for the mountains. Mile after mile they rode,
the cowboy's lips now and then drawing into their peculiar smile as,
out of the corner of his eye he watched the vain efforts of his
companion to maintain a firm seat in the saddle. "He's game, though,"
he muttered, grudgingly. "He rides like a busted wind-mill an' it must
be just tearin' hell out of him but he never squawks. An' the way he
took that hangin'---- If he'd be'n raised right he'd sure made some
tough hand. An' pilgrim or no pilgrim, the guts is there."