“MAGGOT”
An hour prior to this little episode, Jim Munson had sauntered up to the
ticket window only to find that the train from the East was forty
minutes late. He turned away with a little shrug of relief. It was a
foreign role he was playing,—this assumption of the duties of a knight
in dancing attendance on strange ladies. Secretly, he chafed under it;
outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. He had a reputation to
sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his
proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor
devil. But he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the
Boss or the Scribe or the rest of the boys of the Three Bars ranch, who
were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.
The waiting-room was hot,—unbearably so to a man who practically lived
in the open. He strolled outside and down the tracks. He found himself
wishing the train had been on time. Had it been so, it—the impending
meeting—would now have been a thing of the forgotten past. He must needs
fortify himself all over again. But sauntering down the track toward the
stockyards, he filled his cob pipe, lighted it, and was comforted. He
had a forty-minute reprieve.
The boys had tried most valiantly to persuade him to “fix up” for this
event. He had scorned them indignantly. If he was good enough as he
was—black woollen shirt, red neckerchief and all—for men, just so was he
good enough for any female that ever lived. So he assumed a little
swagger as he stepped over the ties, and tried to make himself believe
that he was glad he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by proffers
of blue shirts and white neckerchiefs.
He was approaching the stockyards. There was movement there. Sounds of
commands, blows, profane epithets, and worried bawlings changed the
placid evening calm into noisy strife. It is always a place interesting
to cowmen. Jim relegated thoughts of the coming meeting to the
background while he leaned on the fence, and, with idle absorption,
watched the loading of cattle into a stock car. A switch engine,
steaming and spluttering, stood ready to make way for another car so
soon as the present one should be laden. He was not the only spectator.
Others were before him. Two men strolled up to the side opposite as he
settled down to musing interest.
“Gee!” he swore gently under his breath, “ef that ain’t Bill Brown! Yep.
It is, for a fac’. Wonder what he’s a shippin’ now for!” He scrambled
lightly over the high fence of the pen.
“Hullo, there, Bill Brown!” he yelled, genially, making his way as one
accustomed through the bunch of reluctant, excited cattle.
“Hullo yourself, Jim! What you doin’ in town?” responded the man
addressed, pausing in his labor to wipe the streaming moisture from his
face. He fanned himself vigorously with his drooping hat while he
talked.
“Gal huntin’,” answered Jim, soberly and despondently.
“Hell!” Brown surveyed him with astonished but sympathetic approbation.
“Hell!” he repeated. “You don’t mean it, do you, Jim, honest? Come, now,
honest? So you’ve come to it, at last, have you? Well, well! What’s
comin’ over the Three Bars? What’ll the boys say?”
He came nearer and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “Say, Jim,
how did it come about? And who’s the lady? Lord, Jim, you of all
people!” He laughed uproariously.
“Aw, come off!” growled Jim, in petulant scorn. “You make me tired!
You’re plumb luney, that’s what you are. I’m after the new gal reporter.
She’s due on that low-down, ornery train. Wish—it—was in Kingdom Come.
Yep, I do, for a fac’.”
“Oh, well, never mind! I didn’t mean anything,” laughed Brown,
good-naturedly. “But it does beat the band, Jim, now doesn’t it, how you
people scare at petticoats. They ain’t pizen—honest.”
Jim looked on idly. Occasionally, he condescended to head a rebellious
steer shute-wards. Out beyond, it was still and sweet and peaceful, and
the late afternoon had put on that thin veil of coolness which is a
God-given refreshment after the heat of the day. But here in the pen all
was confusion. The raucous cattle-calls of the cowboys smote the evening
air startlingly.
“Here, Bill Brown!” he exclaimed suddenly, “where did you run across
that critter?” He slapped the shoulder of a big, raw-boned, long-eared
steer as he spoke. The animal was on the point of being driven up the
shute.
“What you want to know for?” asked Brown in surprise.
“Reason ’nough. That critter belongs to us, that’s why; and I want to
know where you got him, that’s what I want to know.”
“You’re crazy, Jim! Why, I bought that fellow from Jesse Black t’ other
day. I’ve got a bill-of-sale for him. I’m shippin’ a couple of cars to
Sioux City and bought him to send along. That’s on the square.”
“I don’t doubt it—s’ far as you’re concerned, Bill Brown,” said Jim,
“but that’s our critter jest the same, and I’ll jest tote ’im along ’f
you’ve no objections.”
“Well, I guess not!” said Brown, laconically.
“Look here, Bill Brown,” Jim was getting hot-headedly angry, “didn’t you
know Jesse Black stands trial to-morrow for rustlin’ that there very
critter from the Three Bars ranch?”
“No, I didn’t,” Brown answered, shortly. “Any case?”
“I guess yes! Williston o’ the Lazy S saw this very critter on that
island where Jesse Black holds out.” He proceeded to relate minutely the
story to which Williston was going to swear on the morrow. “But,” he
concluded, “Jesse’s goin’ to fight like hell against bein’ bound over.”
“Well, well,” said Brown, perplexedly. “But the brand, Jim, it’s not
yours or Jesse’s either.”
“’Quainted with any J R ranch in these parts?” queried Jim, shrewdly. “I
ain’t.”
“Well, neither am I,” confessed Brown, “but that’s not sayin’ there
ain’t one somewhere. Maybe we can trace it back.”
“Shucks!” exploded Jim.
“Maybe you’re right, Jim, but I don’t propose to lose the price o’ that
animal less’n I have to. You can’t blame me for that. I paid good money
for it. If it’s your’n, why, of course, it’s your’n. But I want to be
sure first. Sure you’d know him, Jim? How could you be so blamed sure?
Your boss must range five thousand head.”
“Know him? Know Mag? I’d know Mag ef my eyes were full o’ soundin’
cataracts. He’s an old and tried friend o’ mine. The meanest critter the
Lord ever let live and that’s a fac’. But the Boss calls ’im his maggot.
Seems to actually cherish a kind o’ ’fection for the ornery critter, and
says the luck o’ the Three Bar would sort o’ peak and pine ef he should
ever git rid o’ the pesky brute. Maybe he’s right. Leastwise, the
critter’s his, and when a thing’s yours, why, it’s yours and that’s all
there is about it. By cracky, the Boss is some mad! You’d think him and
that walleyed, cross-grained son-of-a-gun had been kind and lovin’ mates
these many years. Well, I ain’t met up with this ornery critter for some
time. Hullo there, Mag! Look kind o’ sneakin’, now, don’t you, wearin’
that outlandish and unbeknownst J R?”
Bill Brown thoughtfully surveyed the steer whose ownership was thus so
unexpectedly disputed.
“You hold him,” insisted Jim. “Ef he ain’t ours, you can send him along
with your next shipment, can’t you? What you wobblin’ about? Ain’t
afraid the Boss’ll claim what ain’t his, are you, Bill Brown?”
“Well, I can’t he’p myself, I guess,” said Brown, in a tone of voice
which told plainly of his laudable effort to keep his annoyance in
subjection to his good fellowship. “You send Langford down here first
thing in the morning. If he says the critter’s his’n, that ends it.”
Now that he had convinced his quondam acquaintance, the present shipper,
to his entire satisfaction, Jim glanced at his watch with ostentatious
ease. His time had come. If all the minutes of all the time to come
should be as short as those forty had been, how soon he, Jim Munson,
cow-puncher, would have ridden them all into the past. But his “get
away” must be clean and dignified.
“Likely bunch you have there,” he said, casually, turning away with
unassumed reluctance.
“Fair to middlin’,” said Brown with pride.
“Shippin’ to Sioux City, you said?”
“Yep.”
“Well, so long.”
“So long. Shippin’ any these days, Jim?”
“Nope. Boss never dribbles ’em out. When he ships he ships. Ain’t none
gone over the rails since last Fall.”
He stepped off briskly and vaulted the fence with as lightsome an air as
though he were bent on the one errand his heart would choose, and swung
up the track carelessly humming a tune. But he had a vise-like grip on
his cob pipe. His teeth bit through the frail stem. It split. He tossed
the remains away with a gesture of nervous contempt. A whistle sounded.
He quickened his pace. If he missed her,—well, the Boss was a good
fellow, took a lot of nonsense from the boys, but there were things he
would not stand for. Jim did not need to be told that this would be one
of them.
The platform was crowded. The yellow sunlight fell slantingly on the gay
groups.
“Aw, Munson, you’re bluffin’,” jested the mail carrier. “You ain’t
lookin’ fer nobody; you know you ain’t. You ain’t got no folks. Don’t
believe you never had none. Never heard of ’em.”
“Lookin’ for my uncle,” explained Jim, serenely. “Rich old codger from
the State o’ Pennsylvaney some’ers. Ain’t got nobody but me left.”
“Aw, come off! What you givin’ us?”
But Jim only winked and slouched off, prime for more adventures. He was
enjoying himself hugely,—when he was not thinking of petticoats.