WHERE PRIMITIVE JUSTICE REIGNS
Roger had thought he had seen a few varieties of cacti in the Amargosa
Desert, but as he stepped off the train at Aragon, he realized that all
his previous ideas had fallen far short. To the eye unfamiliar with
cacti, their cumbrous ungainliness looked unnatural and forced, and
standing by the little shanty which was dignified with the name of
station, the boy looked over a dusty plain wherein fantastic and thorny
shapes ran riot. If the Grand Canyon was a bizarre dream of rocks, then
the cacti of the Arizona plains looked to Roger the nightmare of the
vegetable world.
But the boy, arrived at the point where he must strike off for the
party, realized that the time for delay was over, and turning to the
station agent, who had been eyeing him curiously, he asked for
information about the government surveyors. There was no difficulty in
finding out roughly the direction in which the party had traveled, but
the description of the route over the apparently interminable cactus
plains somewhat perturbed Roger, accustomed though he now felt himself
to be to find his way over the faintest trails. But he was a boy, just
the same, and the cacti looked forbidding and menacing, and the lad
wished profoundly that the old frontiersman, who had been his companion
on the first ride to Death Valley, were with him now. But there was no
help for it, he had to join his party no matter what the trail was like
or whither it led.
His next question, implying the desire to buy a good mule and the
ability to pay for it, aroused considerably more interest, and the
station agent so bestirred himself in the matter that Roger felt sure he
had a commission in view. It was but a short time before three mules
were brought for his inspection, all sound beasts so far as the boy
could judge, and he counted himself fortunate to strike an agreement
with the owner of the mule, whereby, for a little extra payment, one of
the herders should accompany him on the trail to the Survey camp.
The ride was long and dry, and the boy was amazed to learn from his
companion that a few years before these arid plains had been a grazing
country.
"Where has all the grass gone?" he queried.
"Senor," replied the Mexican, "it was thisa way. Alla the grass has been
eaten. There wasa too moocha the cattle on the land, they eata the grass
moocha too short, and the grass cannot maka the seed."
"But," objected Roger, "aren't the roots still there?"
The herder shook his head.
"No, Senor," he answered, with a sweeping gesture; "if the grass get
moocha short, the rain not soaka in but runa right away, the ground all
same as dust, and wind blowa the earth away from the roots and alla dry
up."
"I see," said Roger thoughtfully. "Then putting too much cattle on land
is like cutting the forests on the mountains too heavily. Deforest the
mountains and the water floods the streams and is wasted, crop the
plains and they become a desert. I see."
The distance to the Survey camp was not great, being but little over
twenty miles, but the country was not conducive to rapid traveling, and
as the boy allowed his companion to set the pace it was almost evening
when they arrived. The party had just come in from the day's work, and
Roger immediately presented his letter to Mr. Barrs, by whom he was
warmly welcomed.
Roger's new chief was a quiet man, as indeed most of his leaders had
been, but Mr. Barrs bubbled over continually with a certain sedate
humor. He promptly put the lad through a catechism with reference to his
work and experience since he joined the Survey, and little by little,
drew out from Roger almost the entire story of his adventures up to and
including the incident of the rattlesnake-bitten girl on the train the
previous day.
"That, my son," said Barrs, "is a fitting prelude to your stay here.
This is the first and only original headquarters of the snake, spider,
and insect tribe, and anything with the usual number of legs is out of
place."
"And are they all poisonous, Mr. Barrs?" asked the boy.
"Not especially," was the cheerful reply. "At least I've managed to keep
alive a whole lot. No, half these stories you hear about venomous
reptiles are imaginary and superstitious."
"But if you geta the trantler bite," put in the Mexican herder, who had
been listening, "you willa the dance until you drop down dead."
"Nonsense, Jose," answered the chief of the party, "that's just an old
story. The tarantula's bite may be bad, as far as that goes, but I've
never heard of any one having been bitten. Have you?"
"No, Senor, not myself have I seen it. But I have hearda of moocha the
plenty, and they all die in the dance. There was Juarez Alvinero on the
festa Sant' Antonio two years ago, Senor; he dance and dance in the
Plaza until he droppa down dead, and when they runa to picka him up, a
trantler let go his hand and run away, and there was two moocha large
bites. Si, Senor."
"Probably frightened himself to death. Lots of these low vitality races
do that."
"Yet you have seen plenty of tarantulas, Mr. Barrs?" queried Roger,
"although you know of no one suffering from their bites."
"Yes, lots of them. Why, the boys often use them for entertainment, sort
of a prize-fight business. It is a good betting proposition, for they
are inveterate fighters."
"You mean, fight each other?"
"Yes, of course. If you get hold of two tarantulas and put them down on
a large sheet of paper, they will try to run away until they catch sight
of each other, and then you couldn't make them run. Neither will attempt
to escape, but they will crawl close till just about six inches from
each other, and will then circle slowly, looking for an opening."
"Sort of sparring for wind," commented the boy.
"That's it. Then, suddenly, one or the other will spring, and either
will sink his mandibles in the body of the other, or will meet with a
like fate himself. Whichever gets the hold, it is fatal, but I couldn't
tell you whether it is due to poison, or just to the strength of the
bite."
"It's just like a regular duel," exclaimed Roger in surprise. "I never
heard of anything like that."
"And what's more," continued the chief, "I have heard of a man who had a
pet tarantula, with which he used to visit places and organize fights,
just as people do at a cocking main, but I can't say that I ever saw it
done. It may be true, just as the dancing story may be true, but if it
were I should have heard of some cases of it."
"But how did the creatures get the reputation?" asked Roger. "Surely
there must have been some cause for it."
"There is, I believe," answered the chief. "So far as I can learn a
convulsive twitching follows a tarantula bite, and as the best thing to
do in all poison cases is to walk the sufferer up and down until he is
ready to drop, the twitching at such a time might resemble St. Vitus's
dance. This was exaggerated, as most travelers' tales were in the early
days, but I don't think at worst, that it is much more dangerous than
the sting of a black hornet."
"Then you have scorpions down here too, haven't you? Are they as bad as
they are supposed to be?"
"The main trouble with a scorpion is his vicious make-up," was the
reply. "He's about the wickedest-looking proposition that ever came down
the pike, but his bite is not fatal. One of the fellows with me one year
had a little experience with a scorpion that made me think they are not
as bad as they look.
"You know the way they love to creep into the folds of cloth? Well, my
assistant had just taken up his flannel shirt from the ground where he
had been drying it in the sun, and after shaking it well and examining
it thoroughly to see that nothing had crept into it, he laid it on the
table a minute before putting it on. Then he slipped it over his
shoulders and suddenly gave a yell, ripping the shirt off as he did so,
and there across his chest ran a full-grown scorpion, which, as it
passed above the region of the heart brought his devilish sting over his
head and struck three times.
"Of course, I felt sure that the poor fellow was gone, because I knew
nothing of scorpions then, except by reputation, and the place of the
stings was so near the heart that I didn't care to try to cut them out
or cauterize or anything of that sort. Well, the three places puffed up
the size of pigeon eggs, and for a few hours the pain was very
considerable, but they went down by night, and there were no
after-effects."
"Why, Mr. Barrs," said Roger, "you are making out all these dangerous
and venomous creatures to be comparatively harmless. I thought you said
there were such a lot of them down here."
"Well," replied the older man, "there are enough. Leaving the snakes out
of the question, there are several varieties of ants that it is wise to
give a wide berth, and the centipede is a creature to leave strictly
alone."
"Is their bite fatal?" asked the boy.
"They don't bite."
"Their sting, then."
"They haven't any sting," responded Barrs, smiling at the boy's
bewilderment.
"Then what have they got?"
"They've got feet!"
"I know that," said the boy, a little scornfully. "That's what the name
centipede means, isn't it, a hundred feet?"
"Yes, and some of them can beat out their name."
"But they can't sting with their feet."
"They do, just the same," replied the older man. "You see the feet of a
centipede are like the paws of a cat, all furnished with claws, which
are drawn in while the creature is walking about, but which can be
extended and fixed firmly if disturbed. For example, if a centipede is
walking over your hand and you go to brush him off, no matter how fast
you strike, the moment your other hand has touched the little hairs all
over his body that very instant all those little claws in each of his
hundred feet sink deep into your skin, and Mr. Centipede can't be pried
off with anything short of a crowbar.
"As a matter of fact, if you try to tear him off, the chances are that
you will pull until you break the claws off, leaving them in the
skin--for he will never let go--and then you will have an awful time. I
don't know for sure if there are little poison sacs at the base of the
claws or whether it is just blood poisoning that sets in, due to the
fact that the centipede lives on decaying flesh, and his claws are
covered with germs, but I do know that if the claws are broken in, it
means trouble. If you leave the thing alone, however, and can keep from
trying to annoy him, if there is no need for him to stick his claws into
you, it is no worse than having a caterpillar crawl over your hand."
"But is it fatal if he gets his claws in?" asked the boy.
"I wouldn't say that it was. It often means the amputation of a limb
though, and I suppose if it was on the body it might end in a case of
blood poisoning that might prove fatal. But at best it makes a deep
sloughing sore, which gets bigger and bigger all the time, the skin
seeming to die about the edges. Of course, injury from a centipede is
comparatively rare, as he is generally found about carrion, and in this
kind of climate no one keeps carrion any nearer to the camp than he has
to."
"Then there's the Gila monster," suggested the boy, "they were telling
stories about them on the train coming down."
"He looks ugly, and I have been told some very bad things about him,"
said the chief gravely, "but so far as I am concerned, I have seen no
warrant for them. I can hardly see how so lazy and sluggish a creature
as a Gila monster can be called dangerous. I have tried to provoke them
by shoving sticks down their throats in order to find out how they
behaved when angry, but I have never been able to make them show fight."
"Only just the some times," put in the Mexican, who had followed the
conversation with intense interest, "there is justa the five, six days
in eacha year, the Gila is moocha bad, other times, nothing at all."
"That's possible," said Barrs, "but I guess I never struck those days.
But I mustn't keep blatherskiting here all night, come along to the rest
of the fellows. You want to get acquainted, I reckon, and you'll find
them a mighty lively set of boys."
Most of the men had put in their time in the Southwest, and Roger heard
more stories of the old days before wire fences were instituted and when
the whole prairie was open to their herds than he had ever dreamed could
be found out of books. It seemed good to the boy to be back in the
harness again, after the lapse of a couple of months since he saw
Masseth and the party ride away along the edge of the Canyon, and he was
glad to find that he could take his place as a man and do a man's work,
even in a new environment.
The agent's warning about the dangers of the Pecos country and the
stories told in the evening of times past, however, never seemed real to
Roger, any more real than the tales of history, until suddenly they were
made grimly lifelike. One evening, sitting in Barrs' tent, talking with
him, Roger suddenly heard a sharp report and a bullet came tearing
through the cloth of the tent not eighteen inches above his head. Almost
simultaneously, it seemed to the boy, Barrs had thrown down the lamp and
put it out, grasped his revolver and leaped from the tent. The other man
who had been sitting near by was lying prone, working his way along the
ground to the other tent.
Roger had not seen him drop to cover, the whole had happened so quickly,
but as soon as he realized, he lost no time in following suit. As he did
so, and his ear came close to the ground, the boy could hear the sound
of hoofs galloping at topmost speed and receding into the distance.
Suddenly, from far off, came the sound of voices, like to a challenge
and response, and then a fusillade of shots broken by a shriek.
"Jones!" called Barrs.
The man called stepped forward promptly.
"Follow the trail in the direction that man went, and see if you can
find out who fired those shots we heard. I'll overtake you in a moment.
Wilkins, take Doughty with you and follow the trail to the north, to see
if you can find out from any one who passed there a few minutes before.
The rest can look after the camp."
Within three minutes all were scattered, and Roger found himself riding
beside Wilkins with his gun ready in the event of further trouble. They
had not far to ride. The very first house they came to was lighted up
for a festivity, and there were sounds of merry-making within.
"Doughty," said Wilkins, "I'm going in here. You take the horses and
turn them so that my beast is close to the door, with his nigh side
handy. I may need to mount in a hurry. If I do, you wheel sharp as I
touch stirrup and I'll cover the retreat."
He leaped from his horse, and seeing that his gun was handy, Wilkins
gave a cheery shout and walked in. Roger waited excitedly, his heart
beating like a trip-hammer. But there was no trouble, and a few moments
later Wilkins came out, chatting with the host.
"It was Crooked Antonio who left here," he said to Doughty, as they
cantered back on the homeward trail, "it appears he had been nearing
trouble there and got a hint that his room was a whole lot more
desirable than his company. We had trouble with him before. I'm sorry
for Antonio, for he's gone so far now that Barrs will see he gets all
that's coming to him."
Taking the road quietly, Wilkins and the boy reached camp just at the
same time as Barrs and his assistant, save that the assistant was
walking beside his horse, holding on the saddle a stranger who evidently
had been wounded.
"They seem to think at Volaccio's that it must have been Crooked
Antonio," said Wilkins as soon as he caught sight of the chief.
"Yes," answered Barrs, "that's who it was. Well, he's put this fellow
into pretty bad shape, and it's lucky he didn't pot some of us."
"But what was it all about?" asked Roger of his companion.
"I don't know, son," was the ready reply. "Guess he was feeling a little
good, any way, and then he thinks he has a grudge against the Survey
over some cattle mix-up with a party that was here a couple of years
ago."
"And what did this fellow have to do with it, Mr. Barrs," the boy
continued, seeing that the chief was listening to Wilkins.
"Nothing at all, Doughty, so far as I can find out, except that he would
make an awkward witness. You see, when Antonio shot at us, he probably
thought that he had potted some one sure. Then, as he galloped away,
this chap happened to be beside the trail and hearing the shot reined
up, and seeing who was coming, said to him, 'What's up, Antonio?' Then
the hunchback, seeing that he was recognized, gave his broncho a cut
with the whip and fired. This fellow replied, but in the end Antonio
got him in the knee, making a mighty painful wound."
"But will they catch him?"
"They will, unless he takes to the mountains and becomes outlawed. There
are lots of those fellows around the border."
"But don't they get after them?"
"Not often. They don't do much, you know, and then if they get in
trouble on the American side they skip across the line and _vice versa_,
so that, as it would be pretty difficult to get both countries to take
action at the same time, they are kept down by the simple method of
shooting any of them at sight. You see, every one is known about here,
and one of those chaps has no chance of getting away unobserved."
The wounded man having been sent to the nearest town, and the incident
being closed, Roger settled down quietly to the routine work of the
camp. He found Barrs very willing to help him, and as the country they
were surveying presented no great difficulties for the rodman, the boy
was not too tired to take up with interest the theoretical and
mathematical side of the work, and in a few weeks his help was a factor.
The daily round of the camp life was comparatively simple, but it made
a long day. The men were called at half-past five and usually work was
begun by seven o'clock. Sometimes the party took lunch along, sometimes
the men returned to the camp, but little time was wasted until the
evening, when a number of miles had been traversed and a host of
calculations made and recorded on the plane-table by the topographer.
It was near the close of the boy's stay with the party when the camp was
startled during the noon spell by a stranger, who rode in excitedly,
crying:
"Is there a justice of the peace here?"
All the men looked at Barrs, who replied quietly:
"I am in charge of this government party, not a justice of the peace.
What is the trouble?"
"There was a gang came down from the mountains and shot up a ranch about
three miles north. But the boys fought 'em off, and though one of the
ranch hands is dead and another dying, they caught one of the gang.
They'll probably shoot him anyhow, but the old boss of the ranch wants
it done legally. It don't matter much if you ain't a justice of the
peace, it's just as good."
Barrs thought for a moment.
"You haven't any right to shoot that man without a trial," he said. "Of
course if he was downed during the fight, that's all right and couldn't
be helped. But now that it's all over, why you can't just go to work and
shoot him. I'm no justice of the peace. You'll have to send him to El
Paso, or somewhere."
"And who's goin' to tote him eighty miles to a railroad? I'd like to
know. Not on your life. Either you come and give him a fair trial, or
he'll take a short cut to the next world."
The chief of the party shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," he said, "if you put it that way, I suppose I'll have to go,
that is, if it's to prevent murder being done."
So picking out three members of the party to accompany him, of whom
Roger was one, Barrs rode over to the ranch. They found the man who had
been caught tied to a fence-post in the blazing sun, while every one
else was in the house. Barrs had the man brought in, and after the story
had been told over three or four times, each in a different way, it was
seen that a possible defense could have been put up. The man admitted
that he was aware that the gang came to shoot up the ranch, but no one
could swear that he had seen the captured man fire until shots had been
exchanged, by which time, any gun-play could have been called in
self-defense. The captive admitted, however, that he had shot the man
who was fatally wounded, but denied the slaying of the rancher who lay
dead.
A long and somewhat heated discussion followed, Barrs standing out
against the application of lynch law, mainly because he felt as a
representative of the government he could take no other attitude, but he
refused positively to take up the question of moving the prisoner to the
railroad or of getting entangled in the matter in any official way. The
matter was debated pro and con for a long time, and then the brother of
the man who had been fatally wounded, finding that it would be difficult
for him to get legal vengeance, suggested that they go back to the old
rule of the plainsmen, and cut off the first and second fingers of each
of the man's hands, so that he would not be able to handle trigger
again. This, after considerable wrangling, was done, and the man, with
blood dripping from both his mutilated hands, was set on a horse and
started along the trail to pursue his fate, wherever that might lead
him.
In the meantime, though events of that fairly rough and ready character
were happening about them constantly down in that wild Pecos country,
the party itself was singularly free from mishaps. Roger, however, had a
narrow escape from what might have been a serious accident, the peril
occurring in a very simple manner. He was galloping along at a fair
speed when he saw immediately in front of him a couple of bad patches of
low bisnaga cactus. The boy turned his mule sharply, when the animal put
his foot in a hole and Roger went flying over his head, shooting not
more than a couple of feet above those barbed spines, and striking the
ground just beyond them. Barrs was seriously alarmed, and showed great
relief on finding that the boy was unhurt.
"One of my men," he said, "once fell from his horse in just some such
way as you did, and put out one hand--on which he chanced to have no
glove--as though to save himself, and he went down with his whole weight
on one hand into a bisnaga cactus. I took one hundred and thirty spines
out of his hand."
"And was he permanently injured?" said Roger, realizing that he himself
might have been very seriously hurt.
"Not a bit of it," was the reply. "He was back at work in about four
days, and within two weeks after his hand had bothered him very little.
But he certainly had scars enough afterward."
About a week after this narrow escape, Barrs told Roger that in a day or
two the work on the quadrangle they were engaged on would be completed
and that they would upstake two days later and strike for the next
section to the westward, where the first mapping of the contour had yet
to be made. Then Barrs turned to Roger.
"I don't quite know," he said, "whether that letter you brought me means
that you are to stay as long as you like, or as long as I want you, or
what. You have not received a recall, of course, but as for the next few
weeks, we will simply be getting a general view of the country, I shall
not need an extra man, and I think you ought to report in Washington. If
you are really going to Alaska next year, I don't know what time they
intend to start, and you ought to have a rest first. Don't think I'm
driving you away, but it is better so, that is, if Rivers is really
going to take you as you seem to think."
"As I hope," the boy corrected.
"Well, as you hope, then. You ought to be in pretty good trim for it,
Doughty; you've had a fairly wide experience, and you don't seem to
have grown thin under it. What's more, I've taught you a few of the
things you will need to know in the theoretical side of the work, so
that you can be some help to a topographic assistant, and Masseth has
given you a start in geology. So, I think the best thing I can do is to
give you a letter to Mr. Herold, and wish you good luck on your
journey."
This farewell message, the boy thought, would be his last word in the
Pecos country, but riding in to Marfa, the town on the railroad nearest
to the point where the camp had broken up, he found great excitement. So
far as he could gather, it was the winding up of a feud which had begun
some two or three months before.
The prisoner, it seemed, some months ago had been shot in the knee by a
man who was almost a stranger to him, and as a result of the shot had
become paralyzed from the waist down. The man who had shot him had got
away. Whereupon the wounded man, certain that the would-be murderer must
return to his home some time, had rigged up a little tent in a cactus
grove near the man's house, and although semi-paralyzed, had lain there
for seven weeks, waiting for the time when his foe should pass along
the trail. At last, late one evening, he heard horse's hoofs, and
looking out, saw his enemy approaching. As he passed, the half-paralyzed
man emptied his revolver almost at point-blank distance, and the other
dropped from his horse, dead.
The story was so like scores of others that Roger had heard that he paid
no special attention until the words "Crooked Antonio" struck his ears,
and on inquiry, learned that this was the man who had been killed.
Immediately the boy forced himself into the little adobe building, and
found that the case was going hard against the prisoner because he could
not give any reason why "Crooked Antonio" had become his enemy and shot
at him in the first place. It made a sensation when Roger spoke from the
spectators.
"Please your honor," he said, "I know something about this case," and
the crowd gave way for him. Then, showing his credentials, he told the
story of the manner in which Crooked Antonio had fired into the Survey
tent, and later had shot at the prisoner to remove a possible witness.
It was the only point needed, and as it was obvious that Crooked Antonio
had been killed, the prisoner could not be acquitted. He was found
guilty and fined one cent, that justice might be done, and five minutes
later Roger was receiving the effusive thanks of the erstwhile prisoner.
"Well," said Roger to himself, as they parted, "helping a chap to his
liberty isn't such a bad record to leave as your last act in the Pecos
country."