sensational yarn, but it is only a few months since, just as we are
sitting here, I was sitting with a party of gentlemen at the door of
the fonda at the corner of the plaza in Santa Fé. We were admiring
the gorgeous sunset, and listening to the band playing under the
trees, when the ‘buckboard’ of the Transportation Company arrived from
the South. It was with a start that I rose to salute, in the only
passenger, my poor friend Major G----. He had changed sadly; his hair
had grown white, and his cheeks were sunken. Then he had a habit of
pressing his hand to his forehead, which gave one a vivid impression of
despair.
“He greeted me warmly, as of old, and mentioned that he had come from
Mesilla, and was going on to Fort Garland in the morning, but he said
little more at first, and I dreaded any recurrence to the past. In
the evening I induced him to take a cigar, and to drink a little from
my flask. Soon he seemed restored to a temporary animation, and after
asking me if I proposed accompanying him on his journey, and expressing
gratification at my willingness so to do, he went on as follows:
“‘I have heard something which leads me to think that the road agents
are going to try to rob the stage, which will have some treasure
freight. The only passengers besides us will be a couple of greasers,
who can’t help us if they would. You know the boys say that the agents
always have things their own way. Now, as I feel at present, I’m not
inclined to give up without a try. I don’t want to ring you in unless
you are for it; but, with all the trouble I’ve had, a bullet more or
less is of no account to me; but I have a notion,’ he continued, ‘that
I can block their game. It was done once by an old pard of mine, and,
if you say so, I’ll try it, and you just follow my lead. Will you take
the chances?’ I knew him to be a man of desperate courage and fertile
in resource, and I assented. ‘What kind of shooting-iron have you?’
he asked. ‘Navy Colt? No, that’s good in its way; but I’ll lend you a
self-cocker like mine. Mind and take at least a strong cup of coffee
before we start; and now you’d better turn in.’
“In the morning we took our places in the coach, the major sitting on
the front seat, and left-hand side; I sat opposite, and each had a
silent Mexican next him. We drove without incident to the place where
the horses were first changed; but, before we started again, my friend
said to me,
“‘I allow that we’ll have our trouble, if at all, in the cañon four
miles ahead. Now just put your blanket over your lap and hold your
pistol under it. Keep a bright look-out, and if we strike ’em, just
have your wits about you, and be ready to fire after I do.’ Soon we
rolled off again, and I saw him lean back for awhile and then sit
upright, and keep his eye fixed on the road. The horses were good; we
soon approached the cañon, and the suspense became almost unbearable. I
could not help thinking about our chances in the case of attack. Just
then--I remember that I was looking at a group of cedars--the stage
stopped, and, as if conjured up by the hand of a magician, three men
on horseback appeared on our side, two close to us, one behind. I
seemed to comprehend the whole situation in the twinkling of an eye;
the figures--the levelled barrels--the major sitting before me.
“‘_Throw up your hands, ---- ---- you!_’ They were reckless enough
to wear no masks--the speaker lowered his head to look in. Heavens!
shall I ever forget that scene? On my part there was a startling
recognition--on the major’s there must have been the same, for never
have I seen a human face so transformed, and it added an almost
demoniacal force to the action, which all passed in a flash. The terror
of the sudden start, the throwing out of the left arm, the frightened
glare of the eyes, may have been the product of rare dramatic power;
but there was something far more terribly real in his wild cry,
“‘_Great God! who is that behind you?_’ The robbers instinctively
turned their heads. Crack!--crack! The major’s right arm, rigid as
iron, held the smoking weapon, as two riderless horses galloped off,
and I mechanically fired at the third man. Then my friend laid his
revolver down, and put his hand to his forehead. We drove on a short
distance, and then made one of the frightened Mexicans hold the horses,
and the driver and I hurried back. It was with a sharp shudder, and a
vivid realization that the forebodings of earlier days had come only
too true, that I saw my old school-mate lying dead in the dusty road.
And then I saw one of those strange phenomena of the occurrence of
which there is ample scientific evidence. Gentlemen, I assure you that
there _had_ been mutual recognition, and the terror of it was in those
dead eyes.
“We drove back to Santa Fé almost at a gallop, the major sitting like
a statue in his seat, and never speaking. As we entered the plaza and
stopped before the old palace a crowd gathered, and I whispered to an
army officer to take my poor friend to headquarters, while I attended
to the needful formalities. I can see the scene before my eyes this
moment: the motley gathering of Americans and Mexicans, with some
uniforms among them; the driver eagerly talking--the hostlers taking
the horses’ heads. The United States Marshal and Commissioner came out
of their offices, and I told them the story. The marshal stopped me for
a moment after the first ten words, and sent for his two deputies and
three horses. Then he lighted a cigar and offered me one as I went on
with my brief narrative. The deputies came up, the marshal went to his
office for his arms, and examined the percussion-caps as he asked me
a few questions. Then they all three shook hands with me and galloped
down the narrow street. They were fierce pursuers, and when I saw the
chief deputy that evening, he told me that the third man was in the
jail.
“‘I know ’em all well,’ he added, ‘and two more ungodly ruffians
than the dead men never cheated the gallows. I’ve been after that
black-haired one a long time for a matter in Wyoming’; and a wolfish
look came for a moment over his pleasant face. ‘I knew where to find
the third man. He’s a mean cur, and gave in without the show of a
fight. To be sure, you plugged him pretty bad in the arm.’
“When the marshal had gone to his office the commissioner and I walked
to headquarters and found the major (whom the surgeon had induced to
drink a composing draught) sitting in a chair, leaning his head upon
his hand. He rose as we approached. ‘Sam,’ said he to the commissioner,
‘the Lord delivered him into my hands! It was his will.’
“He started again the next morning, and as the stage turned the corner
he waved his hand to me, and then put it to his head once again in that
sad, weary way of his. Urged by the spirit of unrest which had seized
upon him, he joined the prospectors at Leadville, exposed himself
recklessly, and died of pneumonia in three weeks.
“Strangely enough, the news recently came that old Mr. W---- was never
seen after taking a steamer at Vienna to go down the Danube. That is
the reason that I have felt at liberty to tell the story. They say the
way of the transgressor is hard; but in this case it seems to me that
there is a good deal to be said about the ways of those against whom he
transgressed. Perhaps many of you have come across curious things in
your lives, but nothing much stranger than what you have just heard.”
And to this statement no one took exception.
SPECIMEN JONES
OWEN WISTER
From “Red Men and White.” Reprinted by permission of the author and
of Harper and Brothers, New York.[28]
Ephraim, the proprietor of Twenty Mile, had wasted his day in burying a
man. He did not know the man. He had found him, or what the Apaches had
left of him, sprawled among some charred sticks just outside the Cañon
del Oro. It was a useful discovery in its way, for otherwise Ephraim
might have gone on hunting his strayed horses near the cañon, and ended
among charred sticks himself. Very likely the Indians were far away
by this time, but he returned to Twenty Mile with the man tied to his
saddle, and his pony nervously snorting. And now the day was done, and
the man lay in the earth, and they had even built a fence round him;
for the hole was pretty shallow, and coyotes have a way of smelling
this sort of thing a long way off when they are hungry, and the man was
not in a coffin. They were always short of coffins in Arizona.
Day was done at Twenty Mile, and the customary activity prevailed
inside that flat-roofed cube of mud. Sounds of singing, shooting,
dancing, and Mexican tunes on the concertina came out of the windows
hand in hand, to widen and die among the hills. A limber, pretty boy,
who might be nineteen, was dancing energetically, while a grave old
gentleman, with tobacco running down his beard, pointed a pistol at
the boy’s heels, and shot a hole in the earth now and then to show
that the weapon was really loaded. Everybody was quite used to all of
this--excepting the boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first
evening at a place of entertainment.
Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and
full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his
funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile--the only water for twoscore
of miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between
the southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the
Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray
floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two
desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else.
Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and
selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing
was brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through
the glaring vacant months--some days only one ragged fortune-hunter,
riding a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros;
and sometimes they came in companies, walking beside their clanking
freight-wagons. Some were young, and some were old, and all drank
whiskey, and wore knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of
them were bound for the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No
man trusted the next man, and their names, when they had any, would be
O’Rafferty, Angus, Schwartzmeyer, José Maria, and Smith. All stopped
for one night; some longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim;
now and then one stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him.
Whoever came, and whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically
hilarious after sundown--a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.
On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being
new in Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up
occasionally. This one had paid for everybody’s drink several times,
because he felt friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for
his. They had played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they
were making him dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three
were glad to stand round and watch it, because it was some time since
they had been to the opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these
friends at the beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows,
and they therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while
dancing you may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being
limber, had good tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a
cold blue eye, that he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had
been that his own revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it
from the holster at the necessary moment.
“Tried to draw on me, did yer?” said the old gentleman. “Step higher!
Step, now, or I’ll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin’s egg.”
“Thinks he’s having a bad time,” remarked Ephraim. “Wonder how he’d
like to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?”
“Weren’t his ear funny?” said one who had helped bury the man.
“Ear?” said Ephraim. “You boys ought to been along when I found him,
and seen the way they’d fixed up his mouth.” Ephraim explained the
details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a humorist.
“Wonder how it feels,” he continued, “to have--”
Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few
hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest
with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By
no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so
often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and
over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him
in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
“Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf,” remarked the old gentleman to
the tenderfoot. “High-yer!” And he placidly fired a fourth shot that
scraped the boy’s boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so
that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.
“‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” sang Specimen Jones, softly. They
did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or
nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although
he was but twenty-six now.
The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played “Matamoras,”
Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and
the concertina stopped with a quack.
“Quit it!” said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his
weapon. “I don’t want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We’ve
just got cleaned up.”
It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of
Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and
now for the first time he noticed the boy.
“Blamed if he ain’t neat,” he said. But interest faded from his eyes,
and he turned again to the wall. “‘Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,’”
he melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he
sang he was always grammatical.
“Ye kin stop, kid,” said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved
his pistol into his belt.
The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and
strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling
with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. “Set ’em
up,” he said to Ephraim. “Set ’em up again all round.”
His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the
old gentleman, still benevolent, said, “Yer langwidge means pleasanter
than it sounds, kid.” He glanced at the boy’s holster, and knew he need
not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it
once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the
boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot’s hand
might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated.
The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to
glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the
line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster,
handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled
and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.
“Well, my regards,” he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as
the old gentleman’s arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy
reached down a lightning hand, caught the old gentleman’s own pistol,
and jammed it in his face.
“Now you’ll dance,” said he.
“Whoop!” exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. “_Blamed_ if he ain’t
neat!” And Jones’s handsome face lighted keenly.
“Hold on!” the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was
mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had
forgotten their drinks. “Not one swallow,” the boy continued. “No,
you’ll not put it down either. You’ll keep hold of it, and you’ll dance
all round this place. Around and around. And don’t you spill any. And
I’ll be thinking what you’ll do after that.”
Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. “Why, he ain’t bigger
than a pint of cider,” said he.
“Prance away!” commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot between the
old gentleman’s not widely straddled legs.
“You hev the floor, Mr. Adams,” Jones observed, respectfully, at the
old gentleman’s agile leap. “I’ll let no man here interrupt you.” So
the capering began, and the company stood back to make room. “I’ve saw
juicy things in this Territory,” continued Specimen Jones, aloud, to
himself, “but this combination fills my bill.”
He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with his eye.
That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room with the pistol, proud
as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He was only nineteen, and though
his heart beat stoutly, it was beating alone in a strange country. He
had come straight to this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna,
with his mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house
among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes saw life, and
always triumphed with precision on the last page, but he remembered no
receipt for this particular situation. Being good game American blood,
he did not think now about the Susquehanna, but he did long with all
his might to know what he ought to do next to prove himself a man. His
buoyant rage, being glutted with the old gentleman’s fervent skipping,
had cooled, a stress of reaction was falling hard on his brave young
nerves. He imagined everybody against him. He had no notion that there
was another American wanderer there, whose reserved and whimsical
nature he had touched to the heart.
The fickle audience was with him, of course, for the moment, since
he was upper dog and it was a good show; but one in that room was
distinctly against him. The old gentleman was dancing with an ugly
eye; he had glanced down to see just where his knife hung at his side,
and he had made some calculations. He had fired four shots; the boy
had fired once. “Four and one hez always made five,” the old gentleman
told himself with much secret pleasure, and pretended that he was
going to stop his double-shuffle. It was an excellent trap, and the boy
fell straight into it. He squandered his last precious bullet on the
spittoon near which Mr. Adams happened to be at the moment, and the
next moment Mr. Adams had him by the throat. They swayed and gulped for
breath, rutting the earth with sharp heels; they rolled to the floor
and floundered with legs tight tangled, the boy blindly striking at Mr.
Adams with the pistol-butt, and the audience drawing closer to lose
nothing, when the bright knife flashed suddenly. It poised, and flew
across the room, harmless, for a foot had driven into Mr. Adams’s arm,
and he felt a cold ring grooving his temple. It was the smooth, chilly
muzzle of Specimen Jones’s six-shooter.
“That’s enough,” said Jones. “More than enough.”
Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a good old
sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But in the brain of
the overstrained, bewildered boy universal destruction was whirling.
With a face stricken lean with ferocity, he staggered to his feet,
plucking at his obstinate holster, and glaring for a foe. His eye fell
first on his deliverer, leaning easily against the bar watching him,
while the more and more curious audience scattered, and held themselves
ready to murder the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was
dragging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen Jones sprang
like a cat, and held the barrel vertical and gripped the boy’s wrist.
“Go easy, son,” said he. “I know how you’re feelin’.”
The boy had been wrenching to get a shot at Jones, and now the
quietness 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 cañon. ’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 foothills 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.