I am the popularest man in all the show.
There were one or two or three
More popular than me
Till I received my portofolee--O.
George Washington, they say, was popular long ago.
His name to-day is sometimes mentioned still, I know.
But where d’you think he’ll be
If he’s compared with me,
When I resign my portofolee--O?
The very day that I into the White House go
My friends shall see my gratitude is never slow;
And chief of all their clan
Shall be the enlisted man,
For he shall have my portofolee--O!
Even Joshua smiled, and Joshua was a solemn man, not to speak of his
delicate position regarding Leonidas. He sat up late, drank to the
health of Jimmy St. Michael, and remarked that he doubted if Jimmy felt
any younger than he did.
But the hour for poor Leonidas to smile had not yet come. There was
silence most unaccountable from the Secretary of War, and the
encouragement given by having an inspector come several hundred miles
received presently a rude shock.
Jimmy St. Michael returned to Whipple Barracks and made a carefully
solemn report to the Commanding General; but at the end of it, seeing
that the Commanding General’s solemnity was less careful, he ceased to
be an inspector, and said with his engaging Kings Port accent:
“General, did you ever put sugar on a raw oyster and try to swallow it?”
“It can’t be done!” declared the General. “I’ve known that since I was
at the Military Academy.”
“It can be done, sir, if you will pardon my contradicting you. I did it
myself on a bet at the Military Academy.”
“Good Lord!” said the General. “What was it like?”
“I realized, sir, that the combination does not belong in Nature’s plan,
any more than mixing politics with the United States Army.”
“Ha, ha!” went the General. “Ha, ha! Not in Nature’s plan!” And he
proceeded to drop the necessary lemon-juice upon the Secretary’s
luckless raw oyster.
To poor Leonidas’s original letter was now added a third duly dated
indorsement: “Respectfully returned to the commanding officer, Fort
Chiricahua, A. T. The Commanding General approves of your action in this
case. The provoking speech of Priv’t Leonidas Bateau, Troop I, 4th
Cav’y, on the occasion of his visiting the quarters of his troop
commander being considered sufficient grounds for the harsh treatment
administered.” This, with the signature of the Assistant
Adjutant-General, arrived at Fort Chiricahua, and was followed by a
fourth indorsement dated there and signed by the Post Adjutant:
“Respectfully returned to the commanding officer, Troop I, 4th Cav’y,
inviting attention to the 2d and 3d indorsements hereon, the contents of
which will be communicated to Pvt. Leonidas Bateau, Troop I, 4th Cav. By
order of,” etc.
The wheels of redress had turned, all the wheels, and ground out
nothing. His troop commander sent for Leonidas and read him the
indorsements. Leonidas, being instructed by a “guard-house lawyer,”
demanded his papers, which were delivered to him, as was his right.
These now went with his appeal to Washington. For Leonidas had written
home to Sistah Smith, who had written to a Congressman, who had replied
that he was ever for justice. Thus, with a long new letter from Leonidas
to the Secretary of War (whose silence still remained unaccountable),
did official tidings of the outrage to American manhood at length,
through the Adjutant General’s Department, come to the man of the
“portofolee--O.”
Buttons were pressed and clerks despatched with messages; and there
ensued a conference between the Congressman, the Adjutant-General, the
Secretary of War, and the Lieutenant-General himself. The Congressman
stated the case; the Secretary was quite uneasy, and talked a great
deal, taking care not to express a single idea; but the
Lieutenant-General was quite easy and talked only thus much:
“Called her his sister? Got kicked? I should think so!”
“General, this is good in you to help us,” said the Secretary, with
symptoms of relief. “I did not wish to reach this conclusion without
your corroboration.”
Thus ended the conference. The original letter of Leonidas with its four
indorsements pasted on it, and making quite a budget, now started its
return course bearing a fifth indorsement containing the Secretary of
War’s opinion signed by one of the Assistant Adjutants-General. It
travelled through the back channels that you know, passing Whipple
Barracks and reaching the hungry, unsated Leonidas many weeks after all
traces had vanished from his trousers. During these weeks his life had
been made a sorry thing by that song about the blister. Not even the
sympathy of Cousin Xerxes could sweeten his embittered days. They were
wholesome for him, to be sure; they began to cure him of being a
watermelon; they even gave him gradually a just estimate of the
Secretary’s speech at McPherson, and he grew into a strapping young
trooper with many of the trooper’s habits in moderation. The only
profane language that he used was in connection with the Secretary of
War, whose tricky official language in his indorsement had utterly
dodged his promise to stand behind him. But Leonidas could not
comfortably live in a place where everybody remembered how he had (as
Jones put it) “run around showing his pants.” He took his discharge at
the first opportunity, and became an eminent cow-boy in the
neighborhood, with a man’s full strength in his sinews, and a man’s
anger silent in his heart. The hour for him to smile had not yet come.
IV. THE ENERGY IS ONCE AGAIN TRANSMITTED
You will doubtless have perceived the flaw in the Secretary’s conduct
before I can point it out to you. He should have written a letter to
poor Leonidas with his own hand. It might not have been the easiest kind
of letter for you or for me to compose; but for a statesman of the
Secretary’s ripeness it ought to have been the affair of five minutes. A
few words of deep sympathy, a few words of hot indignation, a few words
of sincere regret that he had not yet had time to remove all the
obstructions which a despotic tradition set between him and the enlisted
man--and, best of all, a few words of promise to see Leonidas on his
coming tour through the Southwest--such a letter as this would have made
Leonidas proud and happy, and comforted forever the tingling sensations
that pierced him whenever he thought of his final choir practice. But as
Leonidas seemed no longer of any possible use to the Secretary, the
Secretary forgot all about him!
It was not understood at the ranch where Leonidas was now employed, why
he so eagerly followed the printed chronicle of the Secretary’s
approach. Indeed, had you asked him to explain it himself, I doubt if he
could have done so: the needle seeks the pole--but why? He would pore
over the Tucson paper and learn how the Secretary had visited San
Antonio and spoken to the soldiers there; how he had paused at El Paso,
and spoken to the soldiers there; how he had visited Bayard, Bowie, and
Grant, and spoken at all three; and how he was expected on the train
from Benson on the very next day, and would get off at Chiricahua
station and drive to the post; how he would return thence and proceed to
Lowell Barracks on his way to Yuma and Los Angeles.
All this programme was of natural interest to the officers and men at
Fort Chiricahua, but it seemed of unnatural interest to Leonidas.
Concerning his absorption the other cow-boys passed comments among
themselves, but made none to him, because he had altogether ceased to be
a watermelon.
The smoke of a train in that country is to be sighted from a great
distance and for some time before you can see the train, because the
smoke is very black and the train goes very slowly. Also, the dust of a
horseman or a vehicle can be descried from afar. As the smoke of the
Secretary’s train approached the Chiricahua station, the dust of a
seemly military escort drew near from the direction of the post, and the
dust of a galloping cow-boy came along the road from the ranch where
Leonidas was employed. By the platform of the station was assembled a
little group of citizens hoping for a speech; and by the time the train
made its deliberate arrival complete, the escort was arrayed with due
military precision, the ambulance was at hand near by, for the Secretary
to step into when he should feel ready, and a captain with two
lieutenants was preparing to salute the eminent statesman as he alighted
from the car. He returned their greeting, and as he stepped forward to
the end of the platform from which elevation he desired to say a few
cordial and timely words to those waiting in the surrounding dust, the
cow-boy entered the ticket office, but came out again on the platform,
which was natural, since the ticket window was at the moment closed. The
sight of the Secretary produced an immediate effect upon the appearance
of the cow-boy. He seemed to grow larger.
“Friends and soldiers,” said the Secretary, “I am always moved when I
see an enlisted man--” and even with the words, he was moved
conspicuously through the air and came down in the dust in a seated
position. The leg of Leonidas had grown exceedingly muscular. Before
anybody had regained his senses, the cow-boy was seen to dash away
shouting on his horse across the railroad track, and pursuit did not
overtake him. I am not sure if this was the fault of Captain Stone or
Sergeant Jones, both of whom were in the chase.
It gravely damaged the Secretary’s visit for him, but rendered it for
many others a memorable success, especially for Captain Stone and
Sergeant Jones. And Jones made so bold as to remark to Stone: “I think,
if the captain pleases, that the Secretary won’t never stand behind
Leonidas like Leonidas has stood behind him.”
“It is a great thing for a man to feel young,” replied Captain Stone.
His mustache was flat, smiling and serene.
Nobody knows whether or not the Secretary considered this mixing of
politics and the army to be in Nature’s plan.
IV
TIMBERLINE
It was a yellow poster, still wet with the rain. Against the wet, dark
boards of the shed on which it was pasted, its color glared like a patch
of flame.
A monstrous thunderstorm had left all space dumb and bruised, as it
were, with the heavy blows of its noise. Outside the station in the
washed, fresh air I sat waiting, staring idly at the poster. The damp
seemed to make the yellow paper yellower, the black letters blacker. A
dollar-sign, figures and zeros, exclamation points, and the two blackest
words of all, _reward_ and _murder_, were what stood out of the yellow.
Reward and Murder had been printed big and could be seen far. Two feet
away, on the same shed, was another poster, white, concerning some
stallion, his place of residence, and the fee for his service. This also
I had read, with equal inattention and idleness, but my eyes had been
drawn to the yellow spot and held by it.
Not by its news; the news was now old, since at every cabin and station
dotted along our lonely road the same poster had appeared. They had
discussed it, and whether he would be caught, and how much money he had
got from his victim. At Lost Soldier they knew he had got ten thousand
dollars, at Bull Spring they knew he had got twenty, at Crook’s Gap it
was more like twenty-five, while at Sweetwater Bridge he had got nothing
at all. What they did agree about was that he would not be caught. Too
much start. Body hadn’t been found on Owl Creek for a good many weeks.
Funny his friend hadn’t turned up. If they’d killed him, why wasn’t his
body on Owl Creek, too? If he’d got away, why didn’t he turn up? Such
comments, with many more, were they making at Lost Soldier, Bull Spring,
Crook’s Gap, and Sweetwater Bridge, and it was not the news on the
poster that drew my eye, but its mere yellow vibrations. These, in some
way, caught my brain in a net and held it still, so that thinking
stopped, and I was under a spell, torpid as any plant or
sponge--passive, perhaps, is the truer word for my state.
When I was abruptly wakened from this open-eyed sleep, I knew that I had
been hearing a song for some time:--
If that I was where I would be,
Then should I be where I am not;
Here am I where I must be,
And where I would be I cannot.
It was the neigh of some horse in the stable, loud and sudden, that had
burst the shell of my trance, causing thought to start to life again, as
if with a leap; there I sat in the wagon, waiting for Scipio Le Moyne to
come out of the house; there in my nostrils was the smell of the wet
sage-brush and of the wet straw and manure, and there, against the gray
sky, was an after-image of the yellow poster, square, huge, and blue.
The smaller print was not reproduced, but Reward and Murder stood out
clear, floating in the air. It moved with my eyes as I turned them to
get rid of the annoying vision, and it at last slowly dissolved away
over the head of the figure sitting on the corral with its back to me,
the stock-tender of this stage station. It wore out as I listened to his
song, and looked at him. He sang his song again, and I found that I now
knew it by heart.
If that I was where I would be,
Then should I be where I am not;
Here am I where I must be,
And where I would be I cannot.
[Illustration: “If that was where I would be, then should I be where I
am not”]
In the mountains, beyond the sage-brush, the thunderstorm was still
splitting the dark cañons open with fierce strokes of light; the light
seemed close, but it was a long time before its crashes and echoes came
to us through the wet air. I could not see the figure’s face, or that he
moved. One boot was twisted between the bars of the corral to hold him
steady, its trodden heel was worn to a slant; from one seat-pocket a
soiled rag protruded, and through a hole below this a piece of his red
shirt or drawers stuck out. A coat much too large for him hung from his
neck rather than from his shoulders, and the damp, limp hat that he
wore, with its spotted, unraveled hatband, somehow completed the
suggestion that he was not alive at all, but had been tied together and
stuffed and set out in joke. Certainly there were no birds here, or
crops to frighten birds from; empty bottles were the only thing that man
had sown the desert with at Rongis.[2] These lay everywhere. As the
figure sat and repeated its song beneath the still wrecked and stricken
sky, its back and its hat and its voice gave an impression of
loneliness, poignant and helpless. A windmill turned and turned and
creaked near the corral, adding its note of forlornness to the song.
A man put his head out of the house. “Stop it,” he said, and shut the
door again.
The figure obediently climbed down and went over to the windmill, took
hold of the rope hanging from its rudder, and turned the contrivance
slowly out of the wind, until the wheel ceased revolving. I saw then
that he was a boy.
The man put his head out of the house, this second time speaking louder:
“I didn’t say stop _that_, I said stop _it_; stop your damned singing.”
He withdrew his head immediately.
The boy--the mild, new yellow hair on his face was the unshaven growth
of adolescence--stood a long while looking at the door in silence, with
eyes and mouth expressing futile injury. Finally he thrust his hands
into bunchy pockets, and said:--
“I ain’t no two-bit man.”
He watched the door, as if daring it to deny this; then, as nothing
happened, he slowly drew his hands from the bunchy pockets, climbed the
corral at the spot nearest him, twisted the boot between the bars, and
sat as before, only without singing.
The cloud and the thunder were farther away, but around us still, from
unseen places, roofs and corners, dropped the leavings of the downpour.
We faced each other, saying nothing; we had nothing to say. In the East
we would have talked, but here in the Rocky Mountains an admirable habit
of silence was generally observed under such conditions.
Thus we sat waiting, I for Scipio to come out of the house with the
information he had gone in for, while the boy waited for nothing.
_Waiting for nothing_ was stamped plain upon him from head to foot, as
it is stamped upon certain figures all the world over--figures seated in
clubs, standing at corners, leaning against railroad stations and boxes
of freight, staring out of windows. Those in the clubs die at last, and
it is mentioned; the others of course die, too, only it is not
mentioned. This boy’s eyebrows were insufficient, and his front was as
ragged as his back.
Presently the same man put his head out of the door. “You after sheep?”
I nodded.
“I could a-showed you sheep. Rams. Horns as big as your thigh--bigger’n
_your_ thigh. That was before tenderfeet came in and spoiled this
country. Counted seven thousand on that there butte one morning before
breakfast. Seven thousand and twenty-three, if you want exact figgers.
Set on this porch and killed sheep whenever I wanted to. Some of ’em
used to come on the roof. Counted eight rams on the roof one morning
before breakfast. Quit your staring!” This was addressed to the boy on
the corral. “Why, you’re not a-going without another?” This convivial
question was to Scipio, who now came out of the house and across to me
with news of failure.
“I could a-showed you sheep--” resumed the man, but I was attending to
Scipio.
“He don’t know anything,” said Scipio, “nor any of ’em in there. But we
haven’t got this country rounded up yet. He’s just come out of a week of
snake fits, and, by the way it looks, he’ll enter on another about
to-morrow morning. But whiskey can’t stop _him_ lying.”
“Bad weather,” said the man, watching us make ready to continue our long
drive. “Lots o’ lightning loose in the air right now. Kind o’ weather
you’re liable to see fire on the horns of the stock some night.”
This sounded like such a promising invention that I encouraged him. “We
have nothing like that in the East.”
“H’m. Guess you’ve not. Guess you never seen sixteen thousand steers
with a light at the end of every horn in the herd.”
“Are they going to catch that man?” inquired Scipio, pointing to the
yellow poster.
“Catch him? Them? No! But I could tell ’em where he’s went. He’s went to
Idaho.”
“Thought the ’76 outfit had sold Auctioneer,” Scipio continued
conversationally.
“That stallion? No! But I could tell ’em they’d ought to.” This was his
good-by to us; he removed himself and his alcoholic omniscience into the
house.
“Wait,” I said to Scipio, as he got in and took the reins from me. “I’m
going to deal some magic to you. Look at that poster. No, not the
stallion, the yellow one. Keep looking at it hard.” While he obeyed me I
made solemn passes with my hands over his head. I kept it up, and the
boy sat on the corral bars, watching stupidly. “Now look anywhere you
please.”
Scipio looked across the corral at the gray sky. A slight stiffening of
his figure ensued, and he knit his brows. Then he rubbed a hand over his
eyes and looked again.
“You after sheep?” It was the boy sitting on the corral. We paid him no
attention.
“It’s about gone,” said Scipio, rubbing his eyes again. “Did you do that
to me? Of course y’u didn’t! What did?”
I adopted the manner of the professor who lectured on light to me when I
was nineteen. “The eye being normal in structure and focus, the color of
an after-image of the negative variety is complementary to that of the
object causing it. If, for instance, a yellow disk (or lozenge in this
case) be attentively observed, the yellow-perceiving elements of the
retina become fatigued. Hence, when the mixed rays which constitute
white light fall upon that portion of the retina which has thus been
fatigued, the rays which produce the sensation of yellow will cause less
effect than the other rays for which the eye has not been fatigued.
Therefore, white light to an eye fatigued for yellow will appear
blue--blue being yellow’s complementary color. Shall I go on?”
“Don’t y’u!” Scipio begged. “I’d sooner believe y’u done it to me.”
“I can show you sheep.” It was the boy again. We had not noticed him
come from the corral to our wagon, by which he now stood. His eyes were
now eagerly fixed upon me; as they looked into mine they seemed almost
burning with some sort of appeal.
“Hello, Timberline!” said Scipio, not at all unkindly. “Still holding
your job here? Well, you better stick to it. You’re inclined to drift
some.”
He touched the horses, and we left the boy standing and looking after
us, lonely and baffled. But when a joke was born in Scipio it must out:
“Say, Timberline,” he called back, “better insure your clothes. Y’u
couldn’t replace ’em.”
“I’m no two-bit man,” retorted the boy with anger--that pitiful anger
which feels a blow but cannot give one.
We drove away along the empty stage-road, with the mountains and the
dying storm, in which a piece of setting sun would redly glow and
vanish, making our leftward horizon, and to our right the great
undulations of a world so large as to seem the universe itself. The air
was wet still, and full of the wet sage-brush smell, and the ground was
wet, but it could not be so long in this sandy region. Three hours would
see us to the next house, unless we camped short of this upon Broke Axle
Creek.
“Why Timberline?” I asked after several miles.
“Well, he came into this country the long, lanky, innocent kid like you
saw him, and he’d always get too tall in the legs for his latest pair of
pants. They’d be half up to his knees. So we called him that. Guess he’s
most forgot his real name.”
“What is his real name?”
“I’ve quite forgot.”
This much talk did for us for two or three miles more.
“Must it be yellow?” Scipio asked then.
“Red’ll do it, too,” I answered. “Only you see green then, I think. And
there are others.”
“H’m,” observed Scipio. “Most as queer as chemistry. D’ y’u know
chemistry?”
“Why, what do you know?”
“Just the embalmin’ side. Didn’t y’u know I assisted an undertaker wunst
in Kansas City?”
“What’s that?” I interrupted sharply, for something out in the darkness
had jumped.
“Does a stray steer scare you like that to-night? Now, that embalmin’
trick give me a notion I’ll work out some time. What do you miss worst
in camp grub?”
“Eggs,” said I, immediately.
“That’s you. Well, I’m going to invent embalmed eggs--somehow.”
“Hope you do,” said I. “Do you believe I’m going to get sheep this time?
It’s all I came for.”
“You’ll get sheep,” Scipio declared, “or I’ll lose my job at Sunk Creek
ranch.” Judge Henry had lent him to me for my hunting trip. “Of course
I’d not _call_ ’em embalmed eggs,” he finished.
“Condensed,” I suggested. “Like the milk. Do you suppose the man really
did go to Idaho?”
“They do go there--and they go everywheres else that’s
convenient--Canada, San Francisco, some Indian reservation. He’ll never
get found. I expect like as not he killed the confederate along with the
victims--it’s claimed there was a cook along, too. He’s never showed up.
It’s a bad proposition to get tangled up with a murderer.”
I sat thinking of this and that and the other.
“That was a superior lie about the lights on the steers’ horns,” I
remarked next.
Scipio shoved one hand under his hat and scratched his head. “They say
that’s _so_,” he said. “I’ve heard it. Never seen it. But--tell y’u--he
ain’t got brains enough to invent a thing like that. And he’s too
conceited to tell another man’s lie.”
“Well,” I pondered, “there’s Saint Elmo’s fire. That’s genuine.”
Scipio desired to know about this, and I told him of the lights that are
seen at the ends of the yards and spars of ships at sea in atmospheric
conditions of a certain kind. He let me also tell him of the old Breton
sailor belief that these lights are the souls of dead sailor-men come
back to pray for the living in peril; but he stopped me soon when I
attempted to speak of charged thunder clouds, and the positive, and the
negative, and conductors, and Leyden jars. “That’s a heap worse than the
other stuff about yellow and blue,” he objected. “Here’s Broke Axle. D’
y’u say camp here, or make it in to the station?”
“Well, if that filthy woman still keeps the station--”
“She does. She’s a buck-skinned son-of-a-gun. We’ll camp here,
Professor.”