club right before the ladies and everybody the other night. The K. O.’s
wife said it gave her the creeps--and she don’t look sensitive.”
“Well,” said the Virginian, “if I weighed three hundred pounds I’d be
turrable sensitive.”
“She had to leave,” pursued Scipio. “Had to take her little girl away
from the show. Them teeth comin’ out of Horacles’es mouth the way they
did sent the child into hysterics. Y’u could hear her screechin’ half
way down the line.”
The Virginian looked at his watch. “I wonder if that Agent is coming
here at all to-day?”
Scipio’s worried face darkened again. “What can I do? What _can_ I?” he
demanded. And he rose and limped up and down where the ponies were tied
in front of the store. The fickle Indians would soon be tying these
ponies in front of the rival store. “I received this business in good
shape,” continued Scipio, “and I’ll hand it back in bad.”
Horacles looked out of the door. He wore his hat tilted to make him look
like the dare-devil that he was not; dare-devils seldom have soft pink
hands, red eyelids, and a fluffy mustache. He smiled at Scipio, and
Scipio smiled at him, sweetly and dangerously.
“Would you mind keeping store while I’m off?” inquired Horacles.
“Sure not!” cried Scipio, with heartiness. “Goin’ to have your grand
opening this afternoon?”
“Well, I _was_,” Horacles replied, enjoying himself every moment. “But
Mr. Forsythe” (this was the Agent) “can’t get over from the Post in time
to be present this afternoon. It’s very kind of him to want to be
present when I start my new enterprise, and I appreciate it, boys, I can
tell you. So I sent him word I wouldn’t think of opening without him,
and it’s to be to-morrow morning.”
While Horacles was speaking thus, the Indians had gathered about to
listen. It was plain that they understood that this was a white man’s
war; their great, grave, watching faces showed it. Young squaws,
half-hooded in their shawls, looked on with bright eyes; a boy who had
been sitting out on the steps playing a pipe, stopped his music, and
came in; the aged Pounded Meat, wrapped in scarlet and shrunk with years
to the appearance of a dried apple, watched with eyes that still had in
them the primal fire of life; tall in a corner stood the silver-haired
High Bear, watching too. Did they understand the white man’s war lying
behind the complacent smile of Horacles and the dangerous smile of the
lounging Scipio? The red man is grave when war is in question; all the
Indians were perfectly still.
“Wish you boys could be there to give me a good send-off,” continued
Horacles.
The pipe-playing Indian boy must have caught some flash of something
beneath Scipio’s smile, for his eye went to Scipio’s pistol--but it
returned to Scipio’s face.
Horacles spoke on. “Fine line of fresh Eastern goods, dry goods,
candies, and--hee-hee!--free lunch. Mr. Le Moyne, I want to thank you
publicly for that idea.”
“Y’u’re welcome to it. Guess I’ll hardly be over to-morrow, though. With
such a competitor as you, I expect I’ll have to stay with my job and
hustle.”
“Ah, well,” simpered Horacles, “I couldn’t have done it by myself. My
Uncle--say, boys!” (Horacles in the elation of victory now melted to
pure good-will) “do come see me to-morrow. It’s all business, this, you
know. There’s no hard feelings?”
The pipe boy couldn’t help looking at the pistol again.
“Not a feeling!” cried Scipio. And he clapped Horacles between his
little round shoulders. With head on one side, he looked down along his
lengthy, jocular nose at Horacles for a moment. Then his eye shone upon
the company like the edge of a knife--and they laughed at him because he
was laughing so contagiously at them; a soft laugh, like the fall of
moccasins. Often the Indian will join, like a child, in mirth which he
does not comprehend. High Bear’s smile shone from his corner at young
Scipio, whom he fancied so much that he had offered him his fourteenth
daughter to wed as soon as his leg should be well. But Scipio had
sorrowfully explained to the father that he was already married--which
was true, but which I fear would in former days have proved no
impediment to him. Perhaps some day I may tell you of the early
marriages of Scipio as Scipio in hospital narrated them to me.
“Hey!” said High Bear now, to Scipio. “New store. Pretty good. Heap
cheap.”
“Yes, High Bear. Heap cheap. You savvy why?”
With a long arm and an outstretched finger, Scipio suddenly pointed to
Horacles. At this the Virginian’s hitherto unchanging face wakened to
curiosity and attention. Scipio was now impressively and mysteriously
nodding at the silver-haired chief in his bright, green blanket, and his
long, fringed, yellow, soft buckskins.
“No savvy,” said High Bear, after a pause, with a tinge of caution. He
had followed Scipio’s pointing finger to where Horacles was happily
practising a trick with a glass and a silver dollar behind the counter.
“Heap cheap,” repeated Scipio, “because” (here he leaned close to High
Bear and whispered) “because his uncle medicine-man. He big
medicine-man, too.”
High Bear’s eyes rested for a moment on Horacles. Then he shook his
head. “Ah, nah,” he grunted. “He not medicine-man. He fall off horse. He
no catch horse. My little girl catch him. Ah, nah!” High Bear laughed
profusely at “Sippo’s” joke. “Sippo” was the Indians’ English name for
their vivacious friend. In their own language they called him something
complimentary in several syllables, but it was altogether too intimate
and too plain-spoken for me to repeat aloud. Into his whisper Scipio now
put more electricity. “He’s big medicine-man,” he hissed again, and he
drilled his bleached blue eye into the brown one of the savage. “See him
now!” He stretched out a vibrating finger.
It was a pack of cards that Horacles was lightly manipulating. He
fluttered it open in the air and fluttered it shut again, drawing it out
like a concertina and pushing it flat like an opera hat--nor did a card
fall to the ground.
High Bear watched it hard; but soon High Bear laughed. “He pretty good,”
he declared. “All same tin-horn monte-man. I see one Miles City.”
“Maybe monte-man medicine-man too,” suggested Scipio.
“Ah, nah!” said High Bear. Yet nevertheless Scipio saw him shoot one or
two more doubtful glances at Horacles as that happy clerk continued his
activities.
Horacles had an audience (which he liked), and he held his audience--and
who could help liking that? The bucks and squaws watched him, sometimes
nudging one another, and they smiled and grunted their satisfaction at
his news. Cheaper prices was something which their primitive minds could
take in as well as any of us.
“Why you not sell cheap like him?” they asked their friend “Sippo.” “We
stay then. Not go his store.” This was the burden of their chorus, soft,
laughing, a little mocking, floating among them like a breeze, voice
after voice:--
“We like buy everything you, we like buy everything cheap.”
“You make cheap, we buy heap shirts.”
“Buy heap tobacco.”
“Heap cartridge.”
“You not sell cheap, we go.”
“Ah!”
The chorus laughed like pleased children.
Scipio looked at them solemnly. He explained how much he would like to
sell cheap, if only he were a medicine-man like Horacles.
“You medicine-man?” they asked the assistant clerk.
“Yes,” said Horacles, pleased. “I big medicine-man.”
“Ah, nah!” The soft, mocking words ran among them like the flight of a
moth.
Soon with their hoods over their heads they began to go home on their
ponies, blanketed, feathered, many-colored, moving and dispersing wide
across the sage-brush to their far-scattered tepees.
High Bear lingered last. For a long while he had been standing silent
and motionless. When the chorus spoke he had not; when the chorus
laughed he had not. Now his head moved; he looked about him and saw that
for a moment he was alone in a way. He saw the Virginian reading a
newspaper, and his friend “Sippo” bending down and attending to his leg.
Horacles had gone into an inner room. Left on the counter lay the pack
of cards. High Bear went quickly to the cards, touched them, lifted
them, set them down, and looked about him again. But the Virginian was
[Illustration: High Bear galloped away into the dusk]
reading still, and Scipio was still bent down, having some trouble with
his boot. High Bear looked at the cards, shook his head sceptically,
laughed a little, grunted once, and went out where his pony was tied. As
he was throwing his soft buckskin leg over the saddle, there was
Scipio’s head thrust out of the door and nodding strangely at him.
“Good night, High Bear. He big medicine-man.”
High Bear gave a quick slash to his pony, and galloped away into the
dusk.
Then Scipio limped back into the store, sank into the first chair he
came to, and doubled over. The Virginian looked up from his paper at
this mirth, scowled, and turned back to his reading. If he was to be
“left out” of the joke, he would make it plain that he was not in the
least interested in it.
Scipio now sat up straight, bursting to share what was in his mind; but
he instantly perceived how it was with the Virginian. At this he
redoubled his silent symptoms of delight. In a moment Horacles had come
back from the inner room with his hair wet with ornamental brushing.
“Well, Horacles,” began Scipio in the voice of a purring cat, “I expect
y’u have me beat.”
The flattered clerk could only nod and show his bright, false teeth.
“Y’u have me beat,” repeated Scipio. “Y’u have for a fact.”
“Not you, Mr. Le Moyne. It’s not you I’m making war on. I do hope
there’s no hard feelings--”
“Not a feelin’, Horacles! How can y’u entertain such an idea?” Scipio
shook him by the hand and smiled like an angel at him--a fallen angel.
“What’s the use of me keepin’ this store open to-morrow? Nobody’ll be
here to spend a cent. Guess I’ll shut up, Horacles, and come watch the
Injuns all shoppin’ like Christmas over to your place.”
The Virginian sustained his indifference, and added to Scipio’s
pleasure. But during breakfast the Virginian broke down.
“Reckon you’re ready to start to-day?” he said.
“Start? Where for?”
“Sunk Creek, y’u fool! Where else?”
“I’m beyond y’u! I’m sure beyond y’u for once!” screeched Scipio,
beating his crutch on the floor.
“Oh, eat your grub, y’u fool.”
“I’d have told y’u last night,” said Scipio, remorselessly, “only y’u
were so awful anxious not to _be_ told.”
As the Virginian drove him across the sage-brush, not to Sunk Creek, but
to the new store, the suspense was once more too much for the
Southerner’s curiosity. He pulled up the horses as the inspiration
struck him.
“You’re going to tell the Indians you’ll under-sell him!” he declared,
over-hastily.
“Oh, drive on, y’u fool,” said Scipio.
The baffled Virginian grinned. “I’ll throw you out,” he said, “and break
all your laigs and bones and things fresh.”
“I wish Uncle was going to be there,” said Scipio.
Nearly everybody else was there: the Agent, bearing his ill fortune like
a philosopher; some officers from the Post, and the doctor; some
enlisted men, blue-legged with yellow stripes; civilians male and
female, honorable and shady; and then the Indians. Wagons were drawn up,
ponies stood about, the littered plain was populous. Horacles moved
behind the counter, busy and happy; his little mustache was combed, his
ornamental hair was damp. He smiled and talked, and handled and
displayed his abundance: the bright calicoes, the shining knives, the
clean six-shooters and rifles, the bridles, the fishing-tackle, the
gum-drops and chocolates--all his plenty and its cheapness.
Squaws and bucks young and old thronged his establishment, their soft
footfalls and voices made a gentle continuous sound, while their green
and yellow blankets bent and stood straight as they inspected and
purchased. High Bear held an earthen crock with a luxury in it--a dozen
of fresh eggs. “Hey!” he said when he saw his friend “Sippo” enter.
“Heap cheap.” And he showed the eggs to Scipio. He cherished the crock
with one hand and arm while with the other hand he helped himself to the
free lunch.
To Scipio Horacles “extended” a special welcome; he made it ostentatious
in order that all the world might know how perfectly absent “hard
feelings” were. And Scipio on his side wore openly the radiance of
brotherhood and well-wishing. He went about admiring everything,
exclaiming now and then over the excellence of the goods, or the
cheapness of their price. His presence was soon no longer a cause of
curiosity, and they forgot to watch him--all of them except the
Virginian. The hours passed on, the little fires, where various noon
meals were cooked, burnt out, satisfied individuals began to depart
after an entertaining day, the Agent himself was sauntering toward his
horse.
“What’s your hurry?” said Scipio.
“Well, the show is over,” said the Agent.
“Oh, no, it ain’t. Horacles is goin’ to entertain us a whole lot.”
“Better stay,” said the Virginian.
The Agent looked from one to the other. Then he spoke anxiously. “I
don’t want anything done to Horacles.”
“Nothing will be done,” stated Scipio.
The Agent stayed. The magnetic current of expectancy passed, none could
say how, through the assembled people. No one departed after this, and
the mere loitering of spectators turned to waiting. Particularly
expectant was the Virginian, and this he betrayed by mechanically
droning in his strongest accent a little song that bore no reference to
the present occasion:--
“Of all my fatheh’s familee
I love myself the baist,
And if Gawd will just look afteh me
The devil may take the raist.”
The sun grew lower. The world outside was still full of light, but
dimness had begun its subtle pervasion of the store. Horacles thanked
the Indians and every one for their generous patronage on this his
opening day, and intimated that it was time to close. Scipio rushed up
and whispered to him:--
“My goodness, Horacles! You ain’t going to send your friends home like
that?”
Horacles was taken aback. “Why,” he stammered, “what’s wrong?”
“Where’s your vanishing handkerchief, Horacles? Get it out and entertain
’em some. Show you’re grateful. Where’s that trick dollar? Get ’em
quick.--I tell you,” he declaimed aloud to the Indians, “he big
medicine-man. Make come. Make go. You no see. Nobody see. Make
jack-rabbit in hat--”
“I couldn’t to-night,” simpered Horacles. “Needs preparation, you know.”
And he winked at Scipio.
Scipio struggled upon the counter, and stood up above their heads to
finish his speech. “No jack-rabbit this time,” he said.
“Ah, nah!” laughed the Indians. “No catch um.”
“Yes, catch um any time. Catch anything. Make anything. Make all this
store”--Scipio moved his arms about--“that’s how make heap cheap. See
that!” He stopped dramatically, and clasped his hands together. Horacles
tossed a handkerchief in the air, caught it, shut his hand upon it with
a kneading motion, and opened the hand empty. “His fingers swallow it,
all same mouth!” shouted Scipio. “He big medicine-man. You see. Now
other hand spit out.” But Horacles varied the trick. Success and the
staring crowd elated him; he was going to do his best. He opened both
hands empty, felt about him in the air, clutched space suddenly, and
drew two silver dollars from it. Then he threw them back into space,
again felt about for them in the air, made a dive at High Bear’s eggs,
and brought handkerchief and dollars out of them.
“Ho!” went High Bear, catching his breath. He backed away from the reach
of Horacles. He peered down into the crock among his eggs. Horacles
whispered to Scipio:--
“Keep talking till I’m ready.”
“Oh, I’ll talk. Go get ready quick,--High Bear, what I tell you?” But
High Bear’s eye was now fixedly watching the door through which
Horacles had withdrawn; he did not listen as Scipio proceeded. “What I
tell everybody? He do handkerchief. He do dollar. He do heap more. See
me. I no can do like him. I not medicine-man. I throw handkerchief and
dollar in the air, look! See! they tumble on floor no good,--thank you,
my kind noble friend from Virginia, you pick my fool dollar and my fool
handkerchief up for me, _muy pronto_. Oh, thank you, black-haired,
green-eyed son of Dixie, you have the manners of a queen, but I no
medicine-man, I shall never turn a skunk into a watermelon, I innocent,
I young, I helpless babe, I suck bottle when I can get it. Fire and
water will not obey me. Old man Makes-the-Thunder does not know my name
and address. He spit on me Wednesday night last, and there are no
dollars in this man’s hair.” (The Virginian winced beneath Scipio’s
vicious snatch at his scalp, and the Agent and the doctor retired to a
dark corner and laid their heads in each other’s waistcoats.) “Ha! he
comes! Big medicine-man comes. See him, High Bear! His father, his
mother, his aunts all twins, he ninth dog-pup in three sets of triplets,
and the great white Ram-of-the-Mountains fed him on punkin-seed.--Sick
’em, Horacles.”
The burning eye of High Bear now blazed with distended fascination,
riveted upon Horacles, whom it never left. Darkness was gathering in the
store.
“Hand all same foot,” shouted Scipio, with gestures, “mouth all same
hand. Can eat fire. Can throw ear mile off and listen you talk.” Here
Horacles removed a dollar from the hair of High Bear’s fourteenth
daughter, threw it into one boot, and brought it out of the other. The
daughter screamed and burrowed behind her sire. All the Indians had
drawn close together, away from the counter, while Scipio on top of the
counter talked high and low, and made gestures without ceasing. “Hand
all same mouth. Foot all same head. Take off head, throw it out window,
it jump in door. See him, see big medicine-man!” And Scipio gave a great
shriek.
A gasp went among the Indians; red fire was blowing from the jaws of
Horacles. It ceased, and after it came slowly, horribly, a long red
tongue, and riding on the tongue’s end glittered a row of teeth. There
was a crash upon the floor. It was High Bear’s crock. The old chief was
gone. Out of the door he flew, his blanket over his face, and up on his
horse he sprang, wildly beating the animal. Squaws and bucks flapped
after him like poultry, rushing over the ground, leaping on their
ponies, melting away into the dusk. In a moment no sign of them was left
but the broken eggs, oozing about on the deserted floor.
The white men there stood tearful, dazed, and weak with laughter.
“‘Happy-Teeth’ should be his name,” said the Virginian. “It sounds
Injun.” And Happy-Teeth it was. But Horacles did not remain long in the
neighborhood after he realized what he had done; for never again did an
Indian enter, or even come near, that den of flames and magic. They
would not even ride past it; they circled it widely. The idle
merchandise that filled it was at last bought by the Agent at a
reduction.
“Well,” said Scipio bashfully to the Agent, “I’d have sure hated to hand
y’u back a ruined business. But he’ll never understand Injuns.”
[Illustration: Out of the door he flew,--squaws and bucks flapped after
him like poultry]
II
SPIT-CAT CREEK
The cabin on Spit-Cat Creek lies lonely among the high pastures, and
looks down to further loneliness across many slanting levels of
pine-tops. These descend successively in smooth, odorous, evergreen
miles until they reach the open valley. Here runs the stage road, if you
can discern it, from the railway to the continuously jubilant cow-town
of Likely, Wyoming; and here, when viewed from the cabin through a
field-glass, you can readily distinguish an antelope from a stone in the
clear atmosphere which commonly prevails. The windows of the cabin are
three, and looking in through any of them you can see the stove, the
table, and the ingenuous structure which does duty as a bed. During the
season of snow, from November until May, the cabin (in the days of which
I speak) was dwelt in by no one; while through the open weather some
person of honesty and resource would be sent thither from the
headquarters ranch on Sunk Creek two or three times, to stay no longer
than his duties required, and to come back with his report as soon as
they should be performed. Such a man would live here with canned food
and the small stove, seldom having other company than his own, and, if
he had ears for the music of nature, the singing pines would often
companion him, he could hear now and again some unseen bird crying as it
passed among them, and always the voice of Spit-Cat. This stream foamed
by the cabin to fall and wander deviously away into the great, distant
silence of the mountains. Likely was eighteen miles distant, and to this
place the man could ride in four hours by a recently discovered trail,
which was the shorter one, and followed the smaller tributary stream of
Spit-Kitten; and sometimes the man did so ride for his mail, or for more
canned food, or for a game of chance and female company, in the
continuously jubilant cow-town of Likely, Wyoming.
Upon a midday in June, had you secretly peered through any of the
windows in the cabin, you could have seen a seated man, tightly curved
over the table and apparently dying in convulsions brought on by poison;
for the signs of a newly finished meal were near him. There was a
coffee-pot, and a dish of bacon, and three quarters of a pie. But it was
merely Scipio Le Moyne endeavoring to write a letter; and no task more
excruciating was known to this young man.
“Dear friend,” he had begun, “i got no dictionery, but--”
At this point a heavy blot had intervened as he was changing the
personal pronoun into a capital I.
“Oh, gosh!” he sighed, and for a while could spell no more. He sat back,
staring at the paper. “It’s not to a girl,” he presently muttered. “I
guess I’ll not start a fresh sheet.” And while the perspiring Scipio
laid his nose to his pen and dragged himself onward from word to word, a
bad old gentleman with a black coat and a white beard was coming
stealthily up from the valley through the thick pines. He was still some
miles away, and he meant to look in at one of the windows, and regulate
his conduct according to what he should then see. He was by no means
sure that Scipio had what he wanted, which was as much money as he could
get, or any fraction thereof; but he had a shrewd suspicion that he
could ascertain this without any extreme use of deadly weapons.
Scipio Le Moyne was making his first stay in the Spit-Cat cabin, and in
his mind there welled a complacency not to be justified; for when a
thick roll of money is in a man’s trousers, and the man’s trousers are
upon the man, and the man is writing a letter at a table, you see at
once how unsafe the money is if the man’s six-shooter is lying out of
reach on the bed behind him. It should be hanging at his hip, or in the
armhole of his waistcoat, or stuck elsewhere handily about his immediate
person. And so it would have been on any ordinary day of Scipio’s life;
but alas! on this day he was writing a letter, and was therefore not
quite accountable. There were many things that he did not
enjoy--cooking, for example, or a bucking pony, or gun trouble in a
saloon; but these worries he could usually meet. The only crisis which
invariably disturbed him (except, of course, having to talk to Eastern
ladies when they visited the Judge’s ranch) was to be face to face with
ink and a pen. After his midday meal this noon he had reclined upon his
bed, putting off the hateful moment. Thus recumbent he had unbuckled his
belt for comfort and got none, for the letter made him restless. At
length, with a mind absent from everything save the coming ink and pen,
he had gone to them, forgetting his revolver among the rumpled blankets.