AGAINST HIS RECORD
On the level stretch between the ranch-house and the creek the cowboys
staged, after dinner, a Frontier Day show and a Fourth of July
celebration combined. The fun began mildly with the three-legged races
and the business of the greased pig. From these diversions it
proceeded to foot races, in which Indians shone, and to keenly
contested pony races between cowboys, Reservation bucks and sports from
Sleepy Cat. Money was stacked with freedom and differences of opinion
were intensified by victory and defeat.
While the spirit ran high, rodeo riding began with the master artists
of the range and the pink of American horsemanship in the saddle. In
each succeeding contest the Sleepy Cat visitors headed by Sawdy and
Lefever with big loose bunches of currency backed their favorites
freely, and men that counted nothing of caution in their make-up took
the other end of every exciting event. Flushed faces and loud voices
added to the rapidly shifting excitement as one event followed another,
and the betting fever keenly roused called, after every possible wager
had been laid, for fresh material to work on.
It was at this juncture that the shooting matches began. In a line and
in a country in which many excelled in perhaps the most important
regard, rivalry ran high and critics were naturally fastidious. The
temptation to belittle even excellent work with rifle and revolver was,
in Sawdy and especially in Carpy, partly due to temperament. Both men
were bad gamesters because they bet on feeling rather than judgment.
They would back a man, or the horse of a man they liked, against a man
they did not like and sometimes thereby knew what it was to close the
day with empty pockets.
On this Fourth of July at Doubleday's, both men, as well as Lefever,
had been hit by hard luck. Their free criticism of the horse-racing
and the shooting did not pass unresented and the fact that Tom Stone
and his following had most of the Sleepy Cat money while the sun was
still high did not tend to temper the acerbity of their remarks.
Nothing that the crack shots of the range could do would satisfy either
Sawdy or Carpy. Van Horn, himself an expert with rifle and gun, was
master of these ceremonies and the belittling by the Sleepy Cat sports
of the best the cowboys could show, nettled him: "Before you knock this
any more," he said, "put up some better shooting."
The taunt went far enough home to stir the fault-finders. Sawdy and
Carpy took grumpy counsel together. Presently they hunted up Laramie,
who in front of the ranch-house was talking horses with Kitchen and
Doubleday. They told him the situation and asked for help: "Come over
to the creek and show the bunch up, Jim," was Sawdy's appeal.
The response was cold. Laramie refused to take any part in the
shooting. Sawdy could not move him. In revenge he borrowed what money
Laramie had--not much in all--and went back in bad humor. With the
peeve of defeated men, the Sleepy Cat sports called for more horse
racing to retrieve their fortunes--only to lose what money they had
left and suffer fresh jeering from Van Horn and his following.
But abating in defeat and with empty pockets, nothing of their
confident swagger, Carpy and Sawdy reinforced this time by
Lefever--McAlpin trailing along as a mourner--headed again for the
ranch-house after Laramie.
They found him on a bench where he could command the front door,
whittling and talking idly with Bill Bradley. Laramie was there intent
on waylaying Kate, within. His friends descended on him for the second
time in a body. They laid their discomfiture before him. They begged
him to pull them out of the hole. It was too much in the circumstances
to refuse men he counted on when he, himself, needed friends, but he
yielded with an ill grace: "What do you want me to do?" he demanded
finally.
They told him. He would not stand up before a target, nor would he
shoot in competition with anybody else.
"I've only got a few cartridges, anyway," he objected. "Suppose when
they're shot away these fellows get a fight going on me?"
It was argued that there were enough gunmen in the Sleepy Cat crowd for
defensive purposes and that there was no end of available ammunition.
A way was found to meet Laramie's objection on every point and it only
remained to hatch up a scheme for lightening the cattlemen's pockets.
With Carpy, Lefever and Sawdy, Laramie sat down apart. An exchange of
views took place. Sawdy had in mind something he had once seen Laramie
achieve and on this--and the possibility of its success--the talk
centered. The feat, it was conceded, would be a stiff one. It was put
up to Laramie; he consented, after some wrangling and with misgivings,
to try to save the day for his misguided Sleepy Cat friends. The
moment consent was assured, his backers hurried away in a body--McAlpin
as crier, Lefever and Sawdy to raise money, and Carpy to bully Van Horn
and Stone and their following.
The news that Laramie would shoot caused a stir. Not everyone present
had seen him shoot. His reputed mastery of rifle and gun was often in
question; and no more grueling test before friends and enemies could
ever be given than what he was to attempt now.
Not everyone got clearly as the talk went on just what the trial was to
be. Sawdy having reinforced his resources, announced the event as
Laramie against his record--to tie or to beat.
Laramie, himself, unmindful of the controversy, held to the bench. He
was still sitting, head down, and still whittling, when Bradley came to
say the crowd was waiting. He asked Bradley to bring up his horse.
Kate coming out of the house drew his attention. He threw away the
stick in his hand and rose.
"I hear you are going to shoot," she said.
"Can't get out of it very well, I guess."
"You wouldn't shoot, the time I asked you to."
"I didn't actually refuse, did I?"
"Pretty near it."
"It's a harder case today. Your men have got all the money. My
friends are broke. And they've asked me to help them out somehow.
That's the only reason. If you really want to see me shoot, all you've
got to do is to tell me the next time you see me."
"Oh, I'm going to see you shoot now." She looked at the gun holster
slung at his left hip. "I hear you are left-handed."
"They've got work enough lined up today for two hands."
Bradley returned with the horse and climbed awkwardly down from the
saddle. Laramie tried the cinches and turned to Kate.
"Are you all ready?" she asked.
"Just about."
"You try the cinches; I should think you'd want to try your gun."
"I tried that this morning before I left home. All I've got to do
before I begin is to slip an extra cartridge into the cylinder."
Leading his pony, Laramie, clinging to the talk as long as he could,
walked with Kate toward the creek. Leaving her on a slight rise, where
he told her he thought she could see, he got into the saddle and rode
down to where the crowd had assembled.
On a stretch of the trail extending along the creek, John Frying Pan,
under the direction of Sawdy and Van Horn, was placing at intervals of
from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards a series of targets. These
were ordinary potatoes, left over from the barbecue, but selected with
great care as to size and shape by the man whose money was up--Sawdy;
Frying Pan's work was to impale them on low-growing scrub along the
trail to serve as targets. Against these targets--six in
number--Laramie was to undertake to ride and to split five out of the
six as he galloped past them with six and no more bullets. The
potatoes were up when Laramie joined Sawdy, and Lefever with leather
lungs announced the terms of the test. Accompanied by Sawdy, Van Horn
and Frying Pan, Laramie rode slowly down the course--a quarter of a
mile long--examining the roadway and the targets. Here and there a
loose stone was removed from the trail; one potato was moved from a dip
in the course to a safer point; one was raised and one placed more
clearly in sight.
Having ridden to the end, Laramie expressed himself as satisfied with
the conditions. Alone, he went back over the course and starting down
the creek made a trial heat at full speed past the targets. One of
these at his request was shifted again. While he watched this change,
Sawdy and Lefever, surrounded by their followers, were crowding him as
race touts crowd a favorite jockey with final words of admonition and
advice. When the one target was satisfactorily adjusted, Laramie
breaking away from everybody returned alone to the starting point.
Dismounting, and taking his time to everything, he again tested his
cinches, drew his gun from its holster and breaking it slipped a sixth
cartridge into the cylinder. Dropping the gun back into place, he
pulled his hat a little lower, glanced down the course and up toward
the little hill on which he had parted from Kate. She was standing
where he left her but Van Horn had ridden up and, joining Kate, was
talking to her. While she listened to him she watched the preparations
below.
Laramie spoke to his pony, patted him on the neck and mounted.
Wheeling, he swung out into a wide circle across the level bench and
with gradually increasing speed into a measured gallop. Molded into
one flesh with his mount, Laramie, impassive in the saddle as a statue,
watched and nursed to his liking the pony's gait. When the rhythm
suited, he urged the horse to a longer stride and circling back into
the course, drew his gun, held it high in the air and, swinging it
slowly as if like a lariat, bore down at full speed on the first target.
Markers for both sides in the betting stood to watch each potato. No
signal would mean the potato had been missed; for each hit, a hat was
to be thrown into the air. In a complete silence among the spectators
every eye was fixed on Laramie. Those close at hand saw him, with his
left arm still high in the air, sway slightly backward and slowly
forward, while with the circling gun poised at arm's length he shrank
closer and lower into the saddle. When he neared the first target,
throwing his left arm toward it like a bolt, he fired, sped on and was
again swinging his gun. He had hardly covered six more paces before a
hat was tossed into the air behind him.
A yell went up from his friends. Horsemen wheeled into the course
behind the flying marksman. With five potatoes still to negotiate they
were afraid to cheer. But as one hat after another along the shooting
line--the second, the third and the fourth--were tossed up from the
target behind the speeding horseman, the Sleepy Cat men bellowed with
joyful confidence. The fifth target was of unusual distance--a hundred
and fifty yards--from the fourth. Leaving the fourth, Laramie's horse
broke and the onlookers saw that his rider was in trouble. He kept the
swing of his gun without breaking the rhythm, but his efforts were in
his bridle arm to steady his horse.
The hopes of his backers fell as they saw how stubborn the pony had
become. The hundred and fifty yards were barely enough to bring him
under control. Laramie still circling his raised gun did bring him
under. But he was already nearing the fifth target. And to the horror
of his friends passed it without attempting to fire.
Of the two chances left him to tie--which meant to win--he had passed
up one; the sixth and last meant life or death to the shaken hopes of
his backers.
They saw him settled once more into the long, even stride he needed for
the shot and their breaths hung on each flying leap that brought the
rider nearer his last chance. The sixth target was separated by barely
fifty yards from the fifth. Laramie had covered half the distance when
he completely reversed his form. He stretched gradually up in the
saddle and riding close in on the target itself, rose to his full
height in the stirrups and smashed his fifth shot almost straight down
on it; the potato split into a dozen fragments. Bill Bradley at the
sixth was watching for Sawdy; his hat sailed twenty feet in the air.
The yelling crowd rode Laramie down as he galloped in a long circle
back, his lines swung on his forearm, while he slipped four fresh
cartridges into the warm cylinder of his revolver.
He dismounted to ease his cinches. "I guess I over-did it," he
explained to the friends that crowded closest. "I got the cinches a
little tight. The pony didn't like it. I couldn't get the gait in
time for the Number Five. But I knew I could make Number Six."
Remounting, he made his way through the crowd back over the course.
Kate was still on the hill. "You won, didn't you?" she cried as he
rode toward her.
"If I hadn't, I guess I'd have had to head straight across the creek
for home. Could you see?"
"I watched you the whole way. What a long arm you have."
"While these tin horns are counting their money, would you like to show
me the ponies?"
"You have a long memory, too."
"I was brought up a good deal with Indians. Shall I hunt up Van Horn
to go with us?"
She darted a quick glance at him: "Why, yes, surely," she retorted, "if
you want him."
Laramie was tearing out a cigarette paper: "I could look at them
without him," he returned calmly.
"I don't see him, anyway," murmured Kate, professing to sweep the
crowded course with her eyes.
"Don't look too hard," cautioned Laramie.
"I suppose we might save time," she suggested, ignoring his last
remark, "by going without him."