Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out of
him. He walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and he
mentioned the ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. He
had sold his horse and saddle to catch a friend on this train, and he
mentioned what the friend had been going to do for him. He told a string
of griefs and names to the air, as if the air knew.
Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuck
his hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train.
His bleached blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in its
smoke-blur ooze away westward among the mounded bluffs. “Lucky it’s out
of range,” I thought. But now Scipio spoke to it.
“Why, you seem to think you’ve left me behind,” he began easily, in
fawning tones. “You’re too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Age
some.” His next remark grew less wheedling. “I wouldn’t be a bit proud
to meet yu’. Why, if I was seen travellin’ with yu’, I’d have to explain
it to my friends! Think you’ve got me left, do yu’? Just because yu’
ride through this country on a rail, do yu’ claim yu’ can find your way
around? I could take yu’ out ten yards in the brush and lose yu’ in
ten seconds, you spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you recent
blanket-mortgage yearlin’! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin’
wash room, d’ yu’ figure I can’t go east just as soon as west? Or I’ll
stay right here if it suits me, yu’ dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu’
coon-bossed face-towel--” But from here he rose in flights of novelty
that appalled and held me spellbound, and which are not for me to say
to you. Then he came down easily again, and finished with expressions of
sympathy for it because it could never have known a mother.
“Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?” inquired a slow
voice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.
“Male parent!” scoffed the prompt Scipio. “Ain’t you heard about THEM
yet?”
“Them? Was there two?”
“Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate.”
“Why, the piebald son of a gun!” responded the Virginian, sweetly. “I
got them steers through all right,” he added to me. “Sorry to see yu’
get so out o’ breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin’ any?”
“Who’s he?” inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.
The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose.
The caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and
the train was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers
delivered in Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose,
his paper in his lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. He
wore the look of a man for whom things are going smooth. And for me the
way to Billings was smooth now, also.
“Who’s he?” Scipio repeated.
But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some
one was reciting “And it’s my night to howl.”
“We’ll all howl when we get to Rawhide,” said some other one; and they
howled now.
“These hyeh steam cyars,” said the Virginian to Scipio, “make a man’s
language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel.” Of Shorty he took no
notice whatever--no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.
“So yu’ heard me speakin’ to the express,” said Scipio. “Well, I guess,
sometimes I--See here,” he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely
considering him, “I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You
didn’t catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as--”
“I noticed,” said the Virginian, “thinkin’ came quicker to yu’ than
runnin’.”
I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my
way of missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my
valise.
“Oh, I could tell yu’d been enjoyin’ us!” said Scipio. “Observin’
somebody else’s scrape always kind o’ rests me too. Maybe you’re a
philosopher, but maybe there’s a pair of us drawd in this deal.”
Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. “By your laigs,”
said he, “you are used to the saddle.”
“I’d be called used to it, I expect.”
“By your hands,” said the Southerner, again, “you ain’t roped many
steers lately. Been cookin’ or something?”
“Say,” retorted Scipio, “tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion from
my mouth.”
“I’m right distressed,” answered the gentle Southerner, “we’ve not a
drop in the outfit.”
“Oh, drink with me uptown!” cried Scipio. “I’m pleased to death with
yu’.”
The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station,
and shook his head.
“Why, it ain’t a bit far to whiskey from here!” urged the other,
plaintively. “Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne’s my name. Yes, you’re
lookin’ for my brass ear-rings. But there ain’t no ear-rings on me. I’ve
been white for a hundred years. Step down. I’ve a forty-dollar thirst.”
“You’re certainly white,” began the Virginian. “But--”
Here the caboose resumed:
“I’m wild, and woolly, and full of peas;
I’m hard to curry above the knees;
I’m a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and
It’s my night to ho-o-wl--”
And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turn
gently and to murmur.
The Virginian rose suddenly. “Will yu’ save that thirst and take a
forty-dollar job?”
“Missin’ trains, profanity, or what?” said Scipio.
“I’ll tell yu’ soon as I’m sure.”
At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. “Why, you’re talkin’
business!” said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. “I
WAS thinkin’ of Rawhide,” he added, “but I ain’t any more.”
“Well, good luck!” said Shorty, on the track behind us.
“Oh, say!” said Scipio, “he wanted to go on that train, just like me.”
“Get on,” called the Virginian. “But as to getting a job, he ain’t just
like you.” So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.
Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shut
after us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside the
caboose they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.
“Friends of yourn?” said Scipio.
“My outfit,” drawled the Virginian.
“Do yu’ always travel outside?” inquired Scipio.
“It’s lonesome in there,” returned the deputy foreman. And here one of
them came out, slamming the door.
“Hell!” he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to the
Virginian, “I told you I was going to get a bottle here.”
“Have your bottle, then,” said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off
into Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.)
The Virginian had aimed his pistol at about the same time with his
boot. Therefore the man sat in Dakota quietly, watching us go away into
Montana, and offering no objections. Just before he became too small to
make out, we saw him rise and remove himself back toward the saloons.