been trusted, and he had a pride in it deeper than any words he was
willing to utter, and a gratitude which he would express by inference
alone. He would do everything that they had given him to do so well that
it could not be done better; that is how he would thank his friend, the
Sunk Creek foreman, for giving him this chance to show his
abilities--and his radical honesty. (Scipio was not in the least honest
on the surface.) He would take no man’s word for an inch of the work
that he had been sent to oversee on both sides of the mountain; he would
visit the various camps when he was not expected; every cow to be bought
should be bought on his own inspection and not on the seller’s
assurances. But these trusts were little compared with the heavy wages
that he was carrying to pay off certain men when certain work should be
finished. He had hoped to be rid of this at once, but late snows and
high water had delayed the work.
Scipio Le Moyne was among the newcomers at the headquarters ranch on
Sunk Creek. His character had not yet been tested by a year’s scrutiny.
He was known to ride and rope well, and to cook indifferently, and to
return from town having behaved himself less ill than the worst; but
Judge Henry had drawn back from putting in his hands a temptation so
potent as the wages. Much ready money is a burning argument for a
disappearance. To these cautious sentiments of the Judge his foreman had
replied scarcely more than “I have studied Scipio mighty thorough.” To
Scipio himself, the friend for whose character he was thus pledging his
good judgment, he merely remarked, “Stay with the money.”
“Stay with it!” exclaimed Scipio, nearly overcome by his feelings. He
wanted to hug the foreman; and lest his eyes should betray something, he
narrowed them to a wicked slit, and put on the disguise of jocularity.
“If y’u say so, I’ll stay with it till I come home with it.”
The usually sharp-witted foreman was at a loss.
“Sure!” Scipio explained. “I’ll pay the boys what they’re owed, and take
’em into Likely and win it back off ’em. Why, it’s the kind of plan y’u
might think of yourself.”
“You’re cert’nly shameless,” murmured the foreman.
“So my enemies all say,” retorted Scipio. Thus had he departed to Sunk
Creek.
And now, having done well most things he was sent to do, his heart was
so grateful to his friend that he would conquer his distaste for the
pen, and write a long letter without a single word of thanks in it--the
thanks would merely be between every line. The truly heavy load of
responsibility was still with him, but safe with him; that money would
go into the hands of the men at the Flat Iron outfit to-morrow, and
surprise them. Had he not been adroit? No one suspected he was the
paymaster. Visiting Likely once for his mail and some supplies, he had
been obliged to spend the night there. His prudence as to whiskey and
general abstemiousness of conduct that night might point, he feared, to
the fact that he carried money he was “staying with.” He even felt a
certain observation to attend his movements. He therefore began to speak
deceitfully to the company he sat among. Had anybody else, he inquired,
been through here from Sunk Creek? Nobody else had, it appeared; and
Scipio smoked for a while.
“Well,” he remarked at length, with a certain gloom, like one who speaks
from an offended heart, “a man don’t enjoy bein’ mistrusted. Not if
there’s never been nothing to justify it.” He said no more, waiting for
some one to draw the desired inference from this utterance.
After a matter of some five minutes the inference was appreciated, and
he received a counter-offer, so to speak, a trifle too obviously aimed.
“Them hands at the Flat Iron,” said the offerer, “has most finished
their job, ain’t they?”
“I don’t know about them,” said Scipio, keeping in the land of
inference. “I’ve finished mine, I know.” Then, after a proper pause and
with proper bitterness, he finished: “If folks can’t trust me they can’t
hire me.”
It was lightly handled, and it did its work in Likely. All Likely
gossiped next day about how Judge Henry would not let Scipio handle the
Flat Iron money, and how Scipio let his feelings be shown too plain for
self-respect--all Likely, save one close observer. The old gentleman
with the black coat and the white beard thought that it was odd in
Scipio to behave so carefully during his night in town, odd and
interesting to drink nothing and go to bed early in the hotel. “That
kind don’t,” he said to himself; “not usually when they’re mad at their
employer and goin’ to quit their job.” The old gentleman did not gossip,
but grew thoughtful. One morning he got on his old pink mare, and took a
quiet trail for Spit-Cat. He thought he knew the way, but lost himself,
and luckily met a man on the stage road who directed him up the old,
established trail. Or rather, it was lucky that he lost himself, else he
would have arrived before Scipio had unbuckled his pistol and forgotten
everything in the world but this letter he was knee-deep in.
“_Dear friend_ I got no dictionery but if any of my spelling raises your
suspicions you can borrow a dictionery at your end and theirby correct
my statements which are otherwise garranteed to be strictly accurite.
Hope you are well I am same. Have a good notion not to sine this for you
will know my tracks without more information. Well buisniss first and I
will try run in a little pleasure for you if my nerve holds out but that
blot will tell you I am not myself just now. You said I was shameless
but you are dead wrong about me. To think of the way you lied to those
poor boys about the frogs has made me blush in bed after many a day when
my own concience was at piece. I have looked after the new ditches I
had to attend to them a whole lot they are all right now but they were
not the young yellowleg who calls himself a civil engineer I guess
because he looks at a grade through a machine on three sticks instead of
with his naked eye was making trouble. He was arranging for the water
from Crow Canyon to run up hill. We got it started the right way
yesterday but that civil engineer does too much fingering with his
pencil to suit me he has a whole box full of sums in arrithmetic. The
fences are satisfactory. I was oblidged to turn half the cattle back the
man thought I was one of those who do not know a cow when they see one
but he has gone home realizing his poor judgment. And now that is all
except I am paying off the extra hands at the Flat Iron outfit to-morrow
or next day sure and now for pleasure as my hand has got limbered up
wonderful and no longer oblidged to blast out every word with giant
powder like I had to all around the start where you see those blots. I
guess the words are going to get to chasing each other off this pen
before I am through telling you something.
“I have noticed a thing. Be the first to tell a joke on yourself it
deadens the blow. Well Honey Wiggin has found out about this so I am
going to hurry up and get ahead of his news. Likely is the town here as
you know and twenty hours is still the record for driving to it from the
railroad but there is a new trail from here to Likely by Spit-Kitten it
saves an hour so I am living an hour nearer the fashion than you told me
I would be when you gave me this job. But it was by no means to be
fashionable that I had to go over to Likely though it is a good place
for a man who wants to and this cabin is not fashionable a little bit
but my flour gave out. The last of it was eat up by Honey Wiggin who
stopped here one night and told me about the trail by Spit-Kitten witch
he claimed was easy except in one place by what they call the Little
Pasture. You come on the fence on the side hill up among the trees where
they have been cut down some and Honey said follow the fence a good ways
maybe three miles he thought but not more and you would see the place
where the trail took off down the hill through the same kind of trees
pretty thin growing and pines mostly till you would come to the edge and
see the town down below about half an hour more riding. Honey went over
the mountain to Flat Iron and I caught up my horse and started for
Likely. The trail was all right unless for a horse packed heavy and I
did not hurry any for I knew I had the night to put in in town and I was
in no haste to get there because I could have no enjoyment when I did on
account of the money. I was invited a lot when I got there but though I
have been going to bed the same day I got up for many weeks I was taking
no risk. But that is not my point it is the Little Pasture I want to
speak of. It got shady while I was following the fence which I struck
all right but I did not mind and I was studying up something to tell any
folks that might inquire about the money for Flat Iron for I have to
practiss lying I am not quick at it like you. Well sir I went along
getting up some remarks and then picking out them I considered to be the
most promissing but after a while I says to myself it must be most three
miles I have come along this fence. But Honey Wiggin is not special
close about distances, and so I went along rejecting some of the remarks
I had picked out and putting stronger ones in their place and pretty
soon I knew I must have come five miles anyway for Japan can walk three
miles an hour and I had looked at my watch. I made Japan lope and then
I made him gallup and then something struck me like a flash and I got
off him and I tied my hankerchef to the fence and me and Japan gallupped
like we was both crazy and it was not twenty minnits till we came round
to my hankerchef again. I expect the pasture is three miles round but
cannot say how many times I circled her. I struck out for myself then
and come to another fence and that was the one Honey meant, only he says
now he told me to look out and not take the first fence.
“In Likely I went to bed the same day I got up and I slept in my pants
with the money and can say I will be glad when--”
Here Scipio Le Moyne looked up from his letter, for the old gentleman
stood in the door and wished him good morning. It was not morning, but
let that go. The old gentleman had taken his observations through the
window behind Scipio and had been much pleased to notice the six-shooter
among the blankets. He had observed everything: the pie, the letter, all
things inside the cabin, and also that outside the cabin Scipio’s horse
was grazing in the little field, and therefore not instantly
serviceable. His own animal he had tied to a tree a little distance
within the timber.
“Good morning,” he said.
Scipio’s entire inward arrangements gave a monstrous leap, but his
outward start was very slight. “Hello, Uncle Pasco!” said he cheerfully.
“Are y’u lost?” And he sat in his chair quite still.
Uncle Pasco stood blinking in his usual way. “No,” he returned. “Not
lost. Just off trappin’. That’s what.” His voice was an old man’s, dry
and chirping, and his sentences proceeded in short hops. He had seen
Scipio’s one-quarter inch of movement, and he read that movement with
admirable insight: it had been a quickly arrested and choked impulse to
get to those blankets. And Scipio had done some reading, too. He saw
Uncle Pasco’s eye measuring distances, and he could discern no sign
whatever of pistol upon the old gentleman. This rendered him extremely
cautious, and his thoughts worked at a remarkable speed. Uncle Pasco did
not have to think so quickly, for he had begun his meditations in Likely
several days ago, and they were all finished as far as they could be up
to the present juncture. Even the most ripened strategist must leave
some moves to be determined by the fluctuations of the battle.
“Been off trapping’,” repeated Uncle Pasco.
“What luck?” Scipio inquired.
“Poor. Poor. Beaver gettin’ cleaned out of this country. That’s what.”
“Better sit down and eat,” said Scipio. “Take your coat off and stay a
while.”
Uncle Pasco’s glance rested on the pie a moment, and then upon Scipio’s
ink-covered sheets. “M--well,” he said doubtfully, for Scipio’s ease had
now put him in doubt, “I got to get back to Likely. Pie looks good. Pie
like mother made. That’s what. M--well, you’re busy. Guess you want to
write your letter.”
Scipio now looked at his letter, and drew inspiration from it, a forlorn
hope of inspiration. “Why, you don’t need to start for Likely so soon,”
he remarked with a persuasive whine. “What was the use in stoppin’ at
all? Eat the balance of the pie and take the new trail--if your packs
are not loaded heavy.”
“Spit-Kitten?” said Uncle Pasco.
“Yep,” said Scipio. “Saves an hour.”
“Ain’t been over it,” said Uncle Pasco.
“Can’t miss it,” said Scipio. “Your pack’s light?”
“M--well,” answered Uncle Pasco, doubtfully, “fairly light.”
“Sit down,” said Scipio. “I’ll tell y’u about the trail while you’re
eatin’ the pie.” He made as if to rise and offer the only chair in the
room to Uncle Pasco. This brought Uncle Pasco immediately to his side.
“Keep a-sittin’,” the old gentleman urged. “Keep a-sittin’, and draw me
a map. That’s what. Map of Spit-Kitten.”
“Here,” began Scipio, wriggling his pen across a blank sheet, “runs
Spit-Cat. This here cross is this cabin. Stream’s runnin’ this way.
Understand?”
“That’s plain,” said Uncle Pasco.
“Here,” and Scipio wriggled his pen at right angles to the first
wriggle, “comes Spit-Kitten into the main creek--right above this cabin.
See? Well. Now.” Scipio began dotting lines. “You follow the little
creek up, _so_. Then you cross over to the left bank, _so_. And you go
right up out of a little canyon (you can’t if your packs is heavy
loaded, for it’s awful steep and slippery for pretty near a hundred
yards) and you come out on top clear going--gosh! I’ve got to take
another sheet of paper--well, now y’u go down easy a mile or two and
keep swinging to your right, and about here”--Scipio now sprinkled some
points on the paper--“the trees begin gettin’ scattery and you look out
for a fence on your left. You follow that fence for--well, I’d not say
whether it’s three miles or four--it’s that noo pasture the Seventy-six
outfit calls their Little Pasture, and before y’u come to the corner
where there’s a gate by a gushin’ creek I don’t know the name of, you’ll
notice the hill goin’ down to your right all over good grass and mighty
few trees, and if it’s dark you’ll see the lights of the town below and
the trail takes off right about where you’ll be standing this way”
(Scipio scratched an arrow), “and don’t y’u mind if it looks like a
little-worn trail, for that’s the way it is, and y’u can’t miss it on
that hillside. See?”
“That’s plain as day,” said Uncle Pasco, accepting the two sheets of the
map and sliding them into his own pocket. He still stood beside Scipio,
irresolutely, considering the lumpy appearance of Scipio’s pocket. A
handkerchief with a bag of tobacco might produce such a bulge.
“Fine day,” said Scipio. “Better stay a while.”
“Good weather right along now,” said Uncle Pasco.
“Time it was,” said Scipio, “after the wettin’ the month of May gave us.
Boys doin’ anything in town lately?”
“Oh, gay, gay,” returned Uncle Pasco. And he ran a pistol against
Scipio’s head. “Out with it,” he commanded. “Cough up.”
It is possible, under these circumstances, to refuse to cough, and to
perform instead some rapid athletics which result in a bullet-hole in
the wall or ceiling, to be forever after pointed to. But the odds are so
heavy that the hole will be in neither the wall nor the ceiling that
many people of undoubted valor have found coughing more discreet. Scipio
coughed.
“Uncle Pasco,” said he gracefully, “I didn’t know you were that
artistic.”
Uncle Pasco now marched to the bed, and appropriated Scipio’s pistol.
“Just for the present,” he explained.
“Uncle Pasco,” resumed Scipio, mild as a dove, and never stirring from
his chair, “you have learned me something to-day. It’s expensive
education. I’ll not say it ain’t. But I’m goin’ to tell y’u where I went
wrong. I’d ought to have acted more careless in Likely that night. I’d
ought to have taken a whirl somewheres. Bein’ so quiet exposed my hand
to y’u. But, see here, I had everybody fooled but you.”
“You’re a kid,” responded Uncle Pasco, but with indulgence. “You be
good. Keep a-sittin’ right there. Pie like mother made.” And with the
pie in one hand and his pistol in the other he made a comfortable lunch.
“It _was_ my over-carefulness, warn’t it?” persisted Scipio. “I have
sure paid y’u good to know!”
“You’re a kid,” Uncle Pasco, with unchanged indulgence, repeated.
“You’ll do in time. Keep studying seasoned men. That’s what.” And he
finished his meal. “You’ll find your six-shooter in the place where I’ll
put it.”
The old gentleman opened the door, and, leaving Scipio in the chair,
walked briskly by the corral into the trees and mounted his old pink
mare. From the door of the cabin Scipio watched him amble away along the
banks of Spit-Cat.
“Pie like mother made!” he muttered. “You patch-sewed bread-basket! Why,
you fringy-panted walking delegate, I’ll agitate your system till your
back teeth are chewin’ your own sweetbreads” He seized up a rope and
began walking to where his horse was pasturing. “I could forgive him
takin’ the money,” he continued. “He outplayed me. But--” Scipio was
silent for a few yards, and then, “Pie like mother made!” he burst out
again.
And now, reader, please rise with me in the air and look down like a
bird at the trail of Spit-Kitten. The afternoon has grown late, and
shadow is ascending among the thin pines by the Little Pasture. There
goes Uncle Pasco, ambling easily along. He counts his money, and slaps
his bad old leg with joy. With all those dollars he can render the next
several months more than comfortable. Now he consults Scipio’s map, and
here, sure enough, he comes to the fence, just as Scipio said he would
come; that fence he was to follow for three miles, perhaps, or four.
Uncle Pasco slaps his leg again, and gives a horrid, unconscientious
cackle. And now he hangs Scipio’s pistol on a post of the fence and
proceeds. While pleasing thoughts of San Francisco and champagne fill
his mind as he rides, there comes Scipio along the trail after him at a
nicely set interval. All is working with the agreeable precision of a
clock. Scipio recovers his pistol, and after tying his horse out of
sight a little way down the hill, he runs back and sits snug behind a
tree close to the fence, waiting. He looks at his watch. “It took Japan
and me twenty minutes to go around at a gallop,” he observes. “Uncle
Pasco ain’t goin’ half that fast.” Scipio continues to wait with his
six-shooter ready. In due time he pricks up his ears and rises upon his
feet behind the tree. Next, he steps forth with his smile of an
angel--but a fallen angel.
“Pie like mother made,” he remarks musically.
Why tell of Uncle Pasco’s cruel surprise? It is not known if he had gone
round the fence more than once; but the town of Likely saw the dreadful
condition of his clothes as he rode in that night. It was almost no
clothes.
At that hour Scipio was finishing his letter to the foreman:--
“--this risponsibillity is shed,” had been the unwritten fragment of his
sentence when it was cut short, and he now completed it, and went on:--
“Quite a little thing has took place just now about that money. Don’t
jump for I am staying with it as you said to and I am liable to be
staying with it as long as necessary but an old hobo held me up and got
it off me and kept it for most three hours when I got it back off the
old fool. I would not have throwed him around like I did if he had been
content to lift the cash but he had to insult me too said I was pie and
next time he’ll know a man should be civil no matter what his employment
is.
“I have noticed another thing. To shoot strait always go to bed the same
day you get up and to think strait use same pollicy.
“Your friend,
“SCIPIO LE MOYNE.
“P.S. I am awful oblidged to you.”
III
IN THE BACK
Force, as you may know, is like the King, and never dies. It endlessly
transmits itself through the same or some other shape. Drop a stone in a
pond, and the wave-rings may seem to expire as they widen, but they do
not; through friction or impact or something, they merely become
invisible. You can stop a cannon-ball, but you cannot kill its speed;
its speed is immortal and undergoes instant resurrection, taking the new
shape of heat. The cannon-ball becomes red hot and sends heat waves off
into infinity. Scientific men have told you all this as they have told
me, and judging from the delightful events which I shall proceed to
narrate, I should not wonder if the scientific men were right.
I. THE STORING OF THE ENERGY
Once upon a time the army had a wet-nurse instead of a secretary of war.
The nurse fed our soldiers upon speeches, milk-and-sugar speeches, all
over the country. He told them he was going to right their wrongs. Now,
as they didn’t know that they had any wrongs, this both surprised and
pleased them. They liked to hear him inform them that it was they who
from the first had won our battles upon land and sea. “Who” (he would
ask rhetorically), “who endured the bitter cold, the frozen snow, at
Valley Forge?” And as they hadn’t the slightest idea, what more
agreeable than to learn it was themselves? “Let us honor George
Washington” (he would exclaim), “let us not forget that great and good
man! but let us remember also the honest soldier without whose aid
George Washington could never have durriven the Burritish tyrant from
our beloved shores of furreedom!”
He always spoke of the “honest” soldier, and therefore the average
enlisted man very naturally felt that somehow George Washington, Andrew
Jackson and Ulysses Grant were all well enough in their way, but that
you must keep your eye on them, and that the Secretary was the man to
put them in their proper place. The Secretary quite rightly omitted to
state that generals are apt to carry a responsibility which would iron
the average enlisted man flatter than a pair of pressed trousers; he
omitted this statement because it would have been the whole truth, and
the whole truth is often very tiresome, particularly for a politician.
Do not, as you read this, think evil of the Secretary; he had a large
family of daughters and sons with whom he was frequently photographed,
seated on the vine-clad porch of the old white homestead, and these
photographs were at once widely given to the public press. Moreover, his
private life was known to be chaste by every lady in the land, though
how they ascertained this I am at a loss to explain. He was also a
highly gifted man; gifted with the voice that matches a political
frock-coat. At will he could make this so impressive, that if he
remarked it was a fine day, for the time of year, it convinced the
audience that something of the utmost importance had been announced. He
was gifted, too, with a face impervious to vulgar scrutiny, and he had
the most deeply religious chinbeard in Apple-Jack county. I have already
mentioned that he possessed the gift of tears, when such phenomenon was
timely, and besides all these things, he owned some extensive
salt-marshes on a bay. These were too wet for private persons to buy,
but he was going to be happy to sell them to the government for a naval
station when he should be Senator, after his present office had
expired. Meanwhile he went about busily with his basket, collecting
popularity from the humblest dumping lot.
If there was one kind of audience that the Secretary liked above all
others, it was an audience of fresh, bright, brave, young recruits. He
missed no chance to tell them so. Their earnest faces, he was apt to say
if there was a flag anywhere in sight, stirred his heart more, much more
than the stars upon Old Glory waving yonder. Then he would point to Old
Glory, and get results from the gallery as satisfactory as any actor
could wish. Indeed, the Secretary could have made the drama as lucrative
as he made politics. He could tell a story and make you laugh, tell
another and make you cry, and a really excellent second-rate actor was
lost in him. In the good old days of which I write, many of our
political patriots resembled the Secretary.
Recruits after his own heart sat close before him one afternoon at
McPherson, gathered from various Southern States.
“Let those young men come up front!” he had commanded from the platform
in his deepest frock-coat basso. “Let them see me and let me see them.
We understand each other, for we are comrades.”