trade we can’t afford it. You and me’s brothers.”
“Don’t you call me brother. I don’t lie. I say ‘hand it over’ and folks
ain’t deceived. I’m an outlaw and, maybe, my life is forfeit. But you
pretend you’re an honest man and that your dirty game is square. Throw
it all down, or I’ll tear it out of you.”
[Illustration: How could he know that Bellyful had only become a
road-agent in the last ten minutes?]
Aaron threw it all down. Then he was allowed to go his ways, seeking
more fools to cheat.
Up in the air the eagle sailed. He was still looking down upon clots of
cactus, thickets of mesquite, and skeletons of cattle. He also saw a
horseman going slowly one way, and a horseman going slowly the other. In
time many miles lay between them, and the forks of the road were as
silent and empty of motion as the rest of Repose Valley.
* * * * *
To me, listening, Scipio Le Moyne narrated the foregoing anecdote while
he lay in hospital, badly crumpled up by a bad horse. Upon the day
following I brought him my written version.
“Yes,” he said musingly, when I had finished reading it to him,
“that--happened--eight--years--ago. You’ve told it about correct--as to
facts.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“Oh--I ain’t competent to pass on your language. The facts are correct.
What are you lookin’ at me about?”
“Well--the ending.”
“Ending?”
“Well--I don’t like the way Bellyful just went off and prospered and--”
“But he did.”
“And never felt sorry or--”
“But he didn’t.”
“Well--”
“D’you claim he’d oughtn’t? Think of him! Will y’u please to think of
him after that shell game? He begging honest work and denied all over,
everywhere, till his hat and his clothes and his boots were in holes,
and his body was pretty near in holes--think of him, just a kind of
hollo’ vessel of hunger lying in that stable while the shell-game cheat
goes off with his pockets full of gold.” Scipio spoke with heat.
“Yes, I know. But, if Bellyful afterward could only feel sorry and
try--”
“Are you figuring to fix that up?”--he was still hotter--“because I
forbid you to monkey with the truth. Because I _never_ was sorry.”
“_What?_”
“I was Bellyful,” said Scipio, becoming quiet. “Yes, that was eight
years ago.” He mused still more, his eyes grew wistful. “I was nineteen
then. God, what good times I have had!”
VII
WHERE IT WAS
When Scipio had brought to an end the edifying anecdote, he lay in his
hospital bed, silent and a little tired after so sustained a recital.
“Why not write,” I inquired, “a book, and call it Tales From My Past?”
He looked at me suspiciously, but suspicion melted into what immediately
sparkled in the tones of his reply. “In spite of my ancestors, I don’t
know French.”
For an instant I was stupid--I have many such instants.
“You’ve often told me,” he had to explain, “that in France y’u can print
anything.”
“Oh, well!” I laughed, “quite a number of yours are harmless
enough--even for our magazines. This one for instance.”
But his thoughts had gone on; he was gazing through the open window with
a craving eye. All out-of-doors was his true home, his hearth and bed,
his natural workshop and playground; indoors had been merely his
occasional resort--a place where a man went for a brief visit when he
felt like spending his money. “I’m goin’ to get well,” he said, still
watching the far-off, golden hills. “I _am_ getting well. And wunst I’m
on my legs I’ll start makin’ a lot more Past.”
“Do!” I exclaimed. “Do. It isn’t everybody who can, even when they try.”
He grunted. “Huh! I ain’t never tried much. Didn’t have to. Things just
kind o’ seem to happen when I’m around.”
“Did you lie just now?” I asked.
“Lie? When?”
“Didn’t you fix up the ending?”
“Fix up nothin’! That’s what them two old junipers actually did.”
“You’ll remember,” I persisted, “you forbade me the other day to ‘monkey
with the facts,’ when I told you I didn’t like the ending of Bellyful’s
adventure in Repose Valley.”
“Sure! Us Western men don’t care about fixed-up things when we know how
things are--when we’ve been the things ourselves. And will you tell
me”--Scipio grew earnest--“what’s the point of a book lyin’ about life
the way more’n half of ’em do? The way I wouldn’t let y’u do about
Bellyful?”
“Oh, our sincere and pious public is determined that virtue shall
triumph in print, anyhow--and that nothing naked is true until draped.”
“Not me. I don’t want any of them bib-and-tucker-and-safety-pin stories
they hand you out. What made y’u think I’d lied?”
“Well, it seemed too good, too virtuous, too right.”
He grinned, and I perceived this to be at my expense--he had caught _me_
taking divergent postures toward life and toward print.
“I surrender!” I laughed. “I’m a liar too!”
His grin now faded. “Now and then, y’u know, people do act decent. I’ve
met several besides them two old men. Even along the Rio Grande. Why,
I’ve acted decent myself at times.” He seemed to review his recent
anecdote. “The point was,” he said next, “_they_ always thought they
were madder than they _were_. Now _I’m_ just the other way. I’m that
good-natured that I’m frequently madder than I feel--and it’s the other
man finds that out!”
“Get out of here!” said the post doctor, entering. “Look at your
victim’s eyes!”
So I went out, ashamed of myself at having led poor Scipio to talk so
much. I needn’t change a syllable of as many as I recollect in his
anecdote. His impression of the Thowmet Valley as it had been in those
earlier days--before apples, before the Great Northern, before
anything--shall not be “fixed up” by me.
* * * * *
I’d been seein’ a lot of country, clear up from Mazatlan to the Big
Bend--driftin’ through Old Mexico and California and Awregon, and over
for a little while to Boisé, and up through the Palouse where the dust
puffed up from the ploughs and trailed like a freight-train’s smoke does
on the Southern Pacific for a half-hour after she’s went by; and I’d
crossed the God-awful Big Bend--but I’ll skip that--and I’d crossed the
stinkin’, vicious Columbia on a chain ferry--but I’ll skip that--and I
was kind o’ tired. Didn’t want no mines either. There was mines up there
and folks crowdin’ to ’em, thick from everywheres. But I was tired.
Figured I’d put in the balance of the fall--and the winter, too,
maybe--in some pleasant place, if they could direct me to such a thing.
So they told me there was women--wives, I mean--and children and homes
and neighbors over on the Thowmet. So I headed for there. Went in with
a Siwash over the Chillowisp trail. Him and me couldn’t talk much, but
we could nod and point and grunt when his English and my Chinook gave
out. He carried the mail in wunst a week, except when the snow wouldn’t
let him. That proved to be often. Oh, but I liked the Thowmet Valley’s
looks that first sight! And it stayed pleasant to me. Why did I leave
it? Don’t know. Just got curious to see some more country.
There wasn’t any homes to see as the Injun and me rode down the hill.
But trees that could shade you, and grass a horse could eat, and water
not runnin’ like it wanted to kill you, but friendly water. And the
mountains all around was pleasant too--timber on ’em. Snow not on ’em
yet, except a dozen or so high-up, far-back patches, lyin’ around white
like wash-day. So we rode along up the valley and camped, and next day
struck a cabin, and corral and haystacks. Sure enough! Married man with
wife and kids. Kids had regular Texas-colored hair. But the most homes
was farther up the river, they said, near the Forks and store; and so I
went along with the Siwash, who was bound for the store with his
mail-sack. The store was the post-office, of course--Beekman was its
name. We passed by a tent ‘side of the road, and voices was screechin’
inside the tent, and the Siwash he started to laugh. So I asked him what
he knowed about it. Let me see. What did he say? I don’t have use any
more for the Chinook I learned up there. Oh, yes! He said:--
“_Klaska tenas man, klaska hyas pilton._”
So I didn’t know what that meant, and there wasn’t much good mentioning
this to him; but I didn’t have to, for they came a-rushin’ out of the
tent, no hats on.
“How does a coyote walk?” screeched out the littlest one, aimin’ his
finger at me.
Well, I felt huffy--never’d saw him before or his partner
neither--didn’t catch the joke--but he wasn’t jokin’. The big one
arrives and he yells:--
“Don’t he walk separate?”
“He walks together, don’t he?” yells the little one.
Little one had scrambled hair, white, and it hadn’t been cut lately. Big
partner had left his hair behind him somewheres along life’s journey.
They was glarin’ up at me for an answer.
So I said: “Tell me what you mean.”
So they did. They was trappers. One claimed you could always tell a
coyote’s tracks by the way he put his right foot and his left foot down
in different places, so you could tell he was a four-footed animal; and
the other he said that was the way the bobcat and the link and the
mountain-lion walked. And then the first one he yelled out that they
struck one foot right in the other foot’s track, so it looked like a
two-footed animal had been walkin’ there.
“That’s all easy,” I said; for I’ve trapped some myself.
So I set ’em straight as to the facts. Thing was, they quieted down
right off and took my say-so. But that was their way, I found--get up a
regular state-of-things that would mean trouble, you’d suppose, and drop
it as if nobody’d said a word.
“Come and finish dinner,” says the little one to the big one.
“Dinner!” says the big one. “Quit your dining. You’ve eet enough to wake
the dead.”
So they starts back to their tent like twins. I expect they were sixty,
or seventy, or eighty--I don’t know how long they’d lasted in this
world--and one had boots, and the other had his feet tied in gunnysack,
and both looked like two-bits’ worth of God-help-us.
But they didn’t get to their tent that time. Down the road comes a
nice-lookin’ girl on a calico horse with one blue eye--the horse
had--and the little one he sees her and he whirls around and aims his
finger at her, same as he done to me.
“No, you don’t!” says he, loud up in the air. “I’ve told you I won’t.”
“I had no intention of speaking about it again,” says she, rather quiet,
but smilin’. “But when you find that there’s no coal really there--”
Well, what d’y’u think? It set ’em wild. Both of ’em went plumb wild. I
couldn’t hear for a while what the trouble was, because they scrambled
their words just like the little one’s hair, talkin’ to the girl and me
and the Siwash and each other. But the Siwash he gave another laugh and
rode away--he had his mail. I stayed. I hadn’t got used to ’em yet.
Thought maybe she’d better have a man around. But they was absolutely
harmless. And then I began to understand.
The girl she sat there indulgin’ ’em. Told ’em she wasn’t goin’ to
worry ’em about it any more. They told her there was coal there and they
was goin’ to supply the whole valley, and it was better than a
gold-mine. She might just as well have worried ’em instead of sittin’ so
peaceful on the calico horse, because they would never have noticed any
worryin’ she could do--they was that busy with the worry they were
keepin’ up all by themselves. She was a school-teacher and up to now
she’d kept school in a tent. But the valley was going to build a
school-house and the best location for it happened to be on some land
they’d filed on. Any other place would be too far for somebody’s kids,
or for everybody’s, or else hadn’t water convenient. But it seemed they
wouldn’t hear of it. I suppose whoever put it to ’em first had put it
wrong, and now all y’u had to do was say “school-house” in their
hearing, and have a circus prompt.
“Mr. Edmund,” says she to me, “says that if their idea of other minerals
is like their idea of coal, it’s no wonder they have found trapping more
profitable. But no one can persuade them, and it’s truly a pity about
the school-house.” Mr. Edmund kept the store at Beekman.
“If it’s not coal,” says I, “what is it?”
“Oh, slate, or graphite, or something--and just a tiny ledge, and too
far from transportation.”
“Well, then, it don’t burn.”
“You can’t reason with them,” says she. And she smiles down at them two
quarrelin’, fussin’ old men. It would have brought me to reason, her
smile would, but she never gave it to me.
Yes, she indulged ’em. The valley indulged ’em right along. They was so
old and so harmless. Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy was their names--all
the names I ever heard for ’em--and they’d been most everywheres before
other people had. Been acrost the Isthmus and round the Horn, they
claimed--not together, y’u know, but they had met when they was young.
Their trails had crossed somewheres in Sonora. Then they’d met again on
the Santa Fé trail, when they was still young. And so now and then
they’d kep’ a-meetin’ and a-growin’ less young. Been through the gold
excitement of ’49. Drifted up to Portland. Got separated at Klamath
about the time of the Modoc War. Didn’t see each other again till both
come face to face over in the Okanogan country--and then they was old.
They remembered former days, and it tied ’em together. They was goin’ to
Africa next time they felt like they needed a change of air. Kultus
Jake’s hair was all the moss he’d ever gathered, and Frisco Baldy he
seemed to have gathered nothin’ whatever. But they packed around a big
harvest of years--no one ever knowed the sum of it. Wunst in a while
they would speak of something they had done together long ago. Then y’u
knew the silent tie between ’em. I don’t wish to live that long and have
to look backward when I want to see anything of promise. It’s awful when
everybody has to indulge y’u--time to quit then. But y’u needn’t to pity
Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy, for they was just as set and cheerful
about goin’ to Africa as young rich folks talkin’ over what waterin’
place they’ll visit next summer. Liveliest old junipers that ever I see!
_Kultus_, y’u know, is Chinook, and it’s used for most anything that
don’t amount to nothin’. And while we’re on Chinook, here’s something
funny. _Potlatch_ means a gift. Now you’d suppose _kultus potlatch_
would be a poor gift--counterfeit dollar or a dozen rotten eggs, for
instance. Well, you’re wrong. You give a man a bridle, or a hindquarter
of venison, or anything y’u choose, and say nothin’ when y’u give
it--that’s just a plain common _potlatch_, and it means he’s expected
by all the rules to give you something pretty soon, something as good as
your bridle or your deer. But you say “_Kultus potlatch_” to him, and
then he’ll be genuinely grateful, for that means you’re just makin’ him
a real present out of the warmness of your heart, and don’t expect him
to come back at y’u with a huckleberry for your persimmon. Why, when a
Siwash--the custom came from them--gave me somethin’ in silence, it used
to worry me ’most to death.
What the mail-carrier said to me the first day, when the two old men was
screechin’ inside their tent, was that they were children and fools. But
he was an Injun and did not have indulgent feelings. I saw more of ’em
and didn’t mind ’em. I fell into a job at the Forks. Mr. Edmund wanted
somebody else in the store, and I could write a plain hand and add
figures fairly correct. He was kind of mad about the school-house,
havin’ the interests of the valley at heart, and he used to watch the
days gettin’ shorter. Mr. Edmund had everything at heart--too much at
heart--other folks’ troubles as well as his own. He would lecture me
about them in his deep-down voice. School wouldn’t do in a tent after
snow came, and he saw that this would come down to havin’ school in his
own cabin if the children was to get any teachin’ at all. He was the
only one that didn’t leave ’em alone about their coal-mine. Offered to
buy it off ’em wunst, and they screeched for ten minutes. Threatened to
write to Washington and have him removed for takin’ advantage of his
office.
“Why, you don’t know where Washington is,” says he, with his voice down
in the cellar.
“Washington, D.C.?” screeches Kultus Jake. “I don’t know? I been there!”
“Washington, D.C.,” repeats Edmund slow, like Fate a-comin’. “You don’t
know where it is.” That was Edmund all over. His way o’ jokin’.
“It’s in Maryland,” says Frisco Baldy.
“Virginia, y’u singed porcupine!” yells Kultus Jake. “Don’t I tell y’u I
been there?”
And I seen they both meant it. And I seen this really grieved Edmund
instead of pleasin’ him. He took it to heart. Well, sir, I just went
acrost the store and lay down on the flour-sacks. Kicked up my heels.
Guess I made more noise than the old men did. After a minute I lifted up
to see what Edmund was doin’, and he’d pushed his spectacles up high on
his forehead and was lookin’ at the two scrappin’ about Washington,
D.C., out of his awful solemn eyes; so I laid down again flat. If Edmund
had talked I couldn’t have heard him, but as a matter of fact he just
let ’em go it alone; and they, like they pretty much always done, got
switched off on to somethin’ else--this time it was the traps. There was
some number fours hanging there, and they both happened to agree it was
number fours they would take when they started into the mountains to
trap for the winter. So traps made ’em forget about Washington, D.C.,
and _it_ had made ’em forget about exposin’ Edmund, which had made ’em
forget the coal-mine and the school-house, and so they departed entirely
peaceful out of the store and over the Thowmet to their tent, which they
had moved up to the Forks. Then I looks up from the sacks again. There
stands Edmund behind his desk, same as ever, spectacles away up on his
forehead, only now his solemn eyes was fixed on me. And I looks at him,
not knowin’ what on earth he’s goin’ to say or whether he’s mad or ain’t
mad--for y’u couldn’t often tell from his face. For a young man--and he
was young--he was a lot growed up. I expect he knew sorrow early. Both
of us was quite silent.
“I didn’t know they didn’t know,” says Edmund, like he was breaking the
news of a death to y’u.
And I lays right down again on the sacks.
“Good Lord!” says Edmund, “what ignorance. The capital of their
country!”
But I could only fight for my breath, and cry and cry.
Next time I could see anything, there was Edmund sittin’ on the counter
clost alongside of me, legs danglin’ against the sacks. But that time
when I looked at him he laughed--laughed all through fit to kill
himself, same as I’d been doin’. And it was at himself, y’u know, as
well as at the whole thing; he included himself in the show.
“You’re quite right,” says he.
That was what made y’u love Edmund. When a thing like Washington, D.C.,
came up, he’d most always get it wrong first--see the bad side of it too
big and the good side too small--he had a heap of misplaced seriousness
in his system to conquer. But he’d sure conquer it every time if y’u
gave him time. It took me the whole first week I worked for him in the
store to find this out. Edmund was the squarest man I have ever known.
Too square. And about the finest. He was from an Eastern college and
entirely wasted on the Thowmet Valley, where nobody but him had any
education or understood honesty as he understood it.
“But they’re obstacles to the public good here, all the same,” said he
next; and I had to think back before I saw he meant the old men was
obstructin’ the school-house and thereby withholdin’ light from the
young hope of the great empire of the Northwest.
He came back to it too, several days after that, while the
school-teacher was orderin’ slate-pencils.
“Oh, leave them alone,” says she. “Mr. Edmund, you’ll just make ’em
worse.”
But he was in for an argument. He settled those eyes of his on her with
his regular May-God-have-mercy-on-your-soul expression, and he told her
she’d ought to know better. But she didn’t mind him any more’n I did.
She liked him.
“You know as well as I do,” says he, “that children should be an
improvement on their parents, especially when those parents come from
Texas. Texas is a large place,” he goes on, “and I am willin’ to believe
that it contains thousands of enlightened and refined persons--but they
don’t come here. If your scholars don’t learn to read and write, where’s
any progress to come from?”
“Well, Mr. Edmund,” says she, “all I know is that you will never help
me, or the school-house, or progress, by calling Kultus Jake and Frisco
Baldy a pair of inspected and condemned mules to their faces.”
I didn’t know he’d called ’em that. Must have been outside the store
somewheres. Edmund could turn his tongue wrong-side-out when he felt
like it. “That’s what they are,” says he, laughin’ at his own words,
which he had forgotten. “But as for this valley, it was inhabited by
better citizens when the wild animals lived here. I prefer a
black-tailed deer to a Texan. Don’t waste your money on those
chocolates, Miss Carey.”
“Why, what’s wrong with them?” says she, with the box in her hand.
“There’s no chocolate in ’em,” says Edmund. “The wholesale house cheated
me. I’d send ’em back, but I’d sold too much before I found out. This
candy here,” says he, showin’ her some more, “seems to be what it claims
to be.”
And then, while she seemed to hesitate over the chocolates, what do y’u
suppose he does? Takes the box sudden out of her hand, walks out to the
river bank and throws the whole outfit plop into the water!
“Isn’t that just like him!” says she to me, very quiet, while he was out
on the bank. And it was. Yes, Edmund is the only fool I ever loved.
She kept starin’ out at him, and in a minute we heard the noise of a
boat bein’ rowed acrost the Thowmet. Edmund he stands watchin’ whoever
it was below. Next minute up the bank comes Kultus Jake.
“No use your divin’ for that candy,” says Edmund; “it’s all melted by
now.”
But Jake didn’t know about the candy and he had somethin’ on his mind.
His old innocent blue eyes was troubled.
“Decided where Washington, D.C., is?” says Edmund, walkin’ ahead of him
into the store.
But that didn’t faze Jake; he’d come to say somethin’. I thought
Washington, D.C., was a thing of the past. As a matter of fact it
hadn’t scarcely begun; it was bidin’ its time for all of us, though none
of us could ever suspect that.
“Well, where’s your partner this afternoon?” says Edmund.
Kultus Jake he walks around the store blinkin’ at the various goods, and
he touches a trap here and a blanket there and after a while he
answers:--
“Oh, he’s over to Pipestone Cañon.” And he walks around and touches some
more goods.
“Figure you’ll get into the mountains this season?” says Edmund.
“Yes,” says Jake. “Next week.” Then he walks up close to Edmund.
“Baldy’s over to Pipestone Cañon,” says he. “We’re goin’ to start next
week. Don’t want the snow to get ahead of us. Mink and marten reported
plentiful up Robinson Creek. One man seen a silver-gray fox. Guess we’ll
do pretty well this winter. Live in Robinson Cabin--it ain’t fallen down
like they claimed.” And he took another turn around by the door. Well,
all this wasn’t much to tell people. We knowed all that ourselves--but
Jake just then made up his mind quick to say what he’d come to say.
“Don’t you josh Baldy,” says he, comin’ back close up to Edmund. “Don’t
you do it any more. I don’t mind joshin’, but Baldy--he’s old.”
And out he goes. He went down the bank, and next y’u could hear the
knockin’ of his oars, as he rowed himself back over the Thowmet to their
tent. Miss Carey she looked at the door where he’d gone out, smilin’
very pretty. It takes a woman to understand them feelin’s men has, but
conceals.
“Well, I must be getting home for supper,” says she. She boarded a
little ways up the North Fork with some folks that had quite a family.
But when she’s outside, just startin’ to untie her horse, “Why, here
comes Frisco Baldy!” says she, and waits for him.
Frisco Baldy was comin’, sure enough, ridin’ up the river quite slow,
and lookin’ acrost at where their tent was in the flat land this side o’
the blacksmith’s cabin. Then we knowed Jake had spied him and that was
what made him speak out so quick.