MR. RUDABAUGH APPEARS
LEN Hersey, one of the swing men, condescended to converse with Cinquo
Centavos, the fourteen-year-old horse herder. They sat their horses in
the sunshine, watching the distant herd contentedly grazing. The wind
was very soft and the sky very blue. Life would have been a pleasant
thing for them both had they not been so close to town. They planned
metropolitan conquest, both of them.
“I want to take a ride on the railroad kyars afore I go back home,”
resumed Cinquo. “If I didn’t, my folks wouldn’t think I wasn’t much
noways.”
“Them kyars probably don’t go nowheres near where you live at,” replied
Len. “I don’t feel like taking no chances. Ef I am on a horse I’m all
right; but ef a man’s on the kyars, where is he?
“If you was in town what would you advise fer to buy first, Cinquo?” he
continued.
“Some onions and some fried potatoes and pie first, I reckon,” replied
the boy. “Then some ammernition. Then maybe I’d get my hair cut. I had
orter have some new pants. I mean ef I had any money.”
“And then a shave?”
The boy blushed red.
“I reckon I can get shaves if I pay the man,” said he, “and I reckon I
am going to have plenty of money afore long. What’re you going to do?”
“Fust thing I am going to do when I get to town,” replied Len, “I am
going to get a drink.”
“Then what?”
His companion gazed in deep thought.
“Then I think I’ll get another drink. Fur as I can see now, that’s about
how I’m going to perceed. Of course, I may take both drinks at oncet. I
can take other things under advisement, as the justice of the peace
said. Maybe I would buy me a new pair pants; maybe I’d work around to
the barber atter a while. When I got fixed up I might go and see what
kind o’ dancin’ was in this town. Oh, yes! I did fergit about my shirt.
I may buy me a shirt—ef there’s any kind of monte played in Aberlene.”
They both saw approaching across the prairies to the eastward a
low-lying cloud of smoke. It was the first railroad train either of them
had ever seen. They became very much excited.
“Look at her come!” said Cinquo. “Bet I ain’t skeered to ride on that
thing! Now you see!”
“You’re a long ways off when you say it!” scoffed Len Hersey. “She’s
goin’ to look a heap bigger and dangerouser, clost up. I bet we’d have
to blindfold you and put two ropes on you afore we could put you on that
there train, and then you’d be so skeered you’d shake your spurs off.”
“I ain’t got no more shakes than what you have,” said the boy. “You
ain’t saw any more railroad kyars than what I have. But I don’t reckon
I’ll go to town untel we sell our cows.”
“Nor me,” nodded Len. “But did you ever see such a town like this here
one, now? They don’t savvy dobe none, it seems like; they don’t dry no
mud; they just cut slabs of grass roots and build ’em up into a house,
and put on a dirt roof. I looked inside of one as I rid by. It was lined
with red caliker, walls and ceilings; no gypsum to white it up, nor
nothing. Yet humans was livin’ in it. They live in them dugouts,
too—just push a hole back into a bank an’ crawl in atter the hole like
badgers. An’ there ain’t no trees; an’ when they do have trees, hain’t
no moss on ’em. I ain’t saw a cactus nowheres, an’ as fer mesquite, I’m
a notion to ride into one o’ these plum thickets an’ stick some plum
thorns in my laigs, so’s’t a feller kin feel more nache’l.”
Meantime the continuous shriek of the locomotive whistle had brought to
the station practically the entire population of the city of Abilene. It
was a great day—a trail herd and a railroad train all in one day.
From the four coaches which made up the train there now descended an
astonishing number of men, comprising all sorts and conditions of
humanity. Some obviously were Eastern, and as many bore the imprint of
the border. All of them pushed on toward the head of the train. There
was no station building. The Drovers’ Cottage stood then for all of
Abilene, and in that general direction the newcomers made their way. The
ubiquitous McCoyne was first to greet them.
“Right this way, gentlemen!” said he. “Let me lead you to our hotel, the
finest in the West. Welcome to Abilene, my friends! Yonder is the
stockyards. I suppose some of you are looking after cattle. There is
some in there now, and there is three thousand more right north of town.
If you’re looking for cattle, we’ve got them and don’t you never doubt
it! Gentlemen, you certainly have come to the right place. Boys, where’s
the band?”
With some sort of instinct of his own McCoyne more especially addressed
a quiet-looking sandy-bearded man in dark clothing, who seemed to be a
man of distinct purposes and direct methods in life.
“How’d you like to ride out this evening and see our herd? They’ve just
got in from Texas this morning.”
The stranger made a noncommittal reply to the effect that he was hungry.
The crowd of newcomers began to disintegrate. Men looked after their
hand bags, their rifles. Picturesque, certainly, was the personnel of
every westbound train in Kansas at that time, when the head of steel was
but little beyond the boom town of Abilene, first cow camp of Kansas.
Hickok and McMasters stood near the door of the Drovers’ Cottage,
looking at the stirring and curious scene before them. The man of the
Northern border was quiet after his fashion, moody. He turned suddenly
to Dan McMasters.
“Look at them come!” he said. “Next year they’ll be here in thousands;
and there’ll be cattle here in thousands too.”
McMasters nodded. The older man went on:
“Let me give you some advice. There is going to be big money in raising
and selling cattle right up in this country; more money than there will
be in trailing them north and selling at the road. If you’ll listen to
me, you’ll get some land of your own up here. I’ll tell you where you
can get a ranch, and a good one, over on the Smoky Hill, with all
outdoors for your pasture. Put some cows on there. They’ll get fatter
here than they ever will in Texas, though you don’t believe it. I’ve
seen cattle up here, around the Army posts—and fat too. There’s no
money in selling thin cattle. You’ll find that out if you keep at it.
I’ve lived up here, north of the tick line, longer than you have.”
McMasters nodded.
“I’ve been studying this country now for quite a while,” said he. “I’ve
seen some wintered cattle up in here, and as you say they were heavier.
There’s a lot to be learned by Texas men. They don’t know that there is
any world north of thirty-six. They’re still fighting the war, down in
my state.”
“Huh! Well, this trial outlet for your cattle’ll end the war quicker
than all your speech makers ever will.
“Of course,” he continued, “if you settle down to ranching you’ve got to
get married some time. It’s a hard life for a woman here on the front,
with the Indians not so far away. They tell me you have brought a young
woman up here with this herd. I haven’t seen her. Lou Gore took her in
charge and I’ll bet she’ll keep her close. She’s young? She can ride?
Why don’t you marry her and settle down up here?”
He laughed at his conceit.
“You can bring up cattle from below as fast as you need more stock.
Marry and settle down, son, and go into the sheriff business up here.
I’ll give you my recommendation that you’re the best pistol shot I ever
saw, unless it’s myself, and I’m not any too damn sure of that last.
“I’d bring Agnes out here if I was in a little different line of work
myself,” he added. “That’s my wife.”
No man ever heard him speak in other but terms of gentleness of the
woman who had married him, knowing what he was.
“I have got to finish my work first before I can settle down,” said Dan
McMasters, almost as sad and moody as his companion here—indeed,
singularly like to him.
Suddenly he touched the arm of Wild Bill, spoke in a low voice.
“Look!” said he, “Don’t move! There’s our man! That’s Rudabaugh down
there by the last car! So that’s the way he took to get here!”
“Yes,” smiled Hickok, only amusement on his face. “He’s got here too
late to stop that herd from making Abilene.”
“Yes; but he got here at just the right time, for all that!”
McMasters’ face was cold. The mask of expressionlessness again was
covering it. His eyes, narrow, the skin of the upper eyelids drawn
triangularly down, never left the man for whom so long and patiently he
had been waiting.