MOTHER AND SON.
Buffalo Bill was not captured by Snaky Pete’s road agents.
The escape of the dreaded scout annoyed them. They feared him, and
knowledge that he was in that region disconcerted and troubled them
greatly.
They returned to the pursuit after daylight, but had no better
success, and at length gave over the attempt to capture the elusive
scout.
When Snaky Pete and his band, with their woman prisoner, reached the
camp at Poplar Bluffs, Tom Molloy and Pool Clayton, with their strife
and bickering, had disrupted the band left there, and were on the
point of settling the trouble by a free-for-all fight.
“You’ll be int’rested in some one there,” Snaky Pete had said to
Pizen Jane.
That she was interested was proved by the outcry she made as her eyes
fell on Pool Clayton.
“So you’re here, Bruce, jes’ as I expected to find ye?” she
sputtered. “Right here with these pizen skunks, after you writ to me
that you had fell into the hands of a fake Buffler Bill, who was a
road agent, and that he was holdin’ you a pris’ner, and was likely to
murder ye! What did you mean by writin’ that pack o’ lies to yer own
mother?”
Pool Clayton’s face grew as red as a beet. He looked at Snaky Pete
and the road agents, and then back at the woman who had so suddenly
announced that he was her son.
On the ground lay the prisoner, Nick Nomad, who had a twinkle in his
eyes now.
“What did ye mean?” she screamed at Pool Clayton. “Here I find this
pizen scamp that used to call hisself my husband, and with him I find
you! Both o’ ye road agents--the man that was my husband and the boy
that was my son!”
Pizen Jane’s voice broke in a sort of pitiful wail, and Nomad saw the
tears come into her eyes.
Pool Clayton looked confused and sheepish; Snaky Pete looked angry
and humiliated.
“Here, shut up yer yawp!” Snaky Pete shouted to her. “You’re a
nuisance; do ye know it?”
“A nuisance is a good sight more of a credit to ther community than a
murderous wretch like you!” she retorted. “Shut up yer own yawp! The
Lord gimme my tongue, and I’ve a right to use it, and I’m goin’ to.”
She turned again to Pool Clayton.
“I’m ashamed of ye!” she said. “Why did you write me sich a pack o’
lies?”
“Just to make you think I--I was killed, or would be,” he admitted.
“You didn’t want me to know that you had turned road agent. You
didn’t want me to know that you’d j’ined forces with that measly runt
there that I heard one of these men call Snaky Pete. Well, he _is_
snaky, and he’s worse’n snaky.”
Then her voice and manner changed.
“Pool,” she said, with something of motherly tenderness in her voice,
“it hurt me to believe that you’d gone wrong; and to find you here
hurts me more than that did. Git out of it, son; leave this crowd of
villains, and try to be an honest man. I’m a pore old woman, but I’ll
work my finger nails off to git ye a start in some honest way, if
you’ll jes’ make a try to be honest.”
“Take her away,” commanded Snaky Pete, irritated and wrathful.
She suffered herself to be led away, broken in spirit now, and
sobbing. For the moment, at least, she was no longer Pizen Jane, but
a heartbroken old woman.
The stir caused by the return of the main body of desperadoes caused
the feud between Pool Clayton and Tom Molloy to be forgotten, or
overlooked, for a time.
The astonishing claim of Pizen Jane, that Pool Clayton was her son
and that Snaky Pete was her recreant husband, was enough of itself to
make the outlaws forget that Clayton and Molloy had fought, and were
threatening bloody things against each other.
Snaky Pete walked nervously about, giving orders in a tone of
irritation which masked somewhat the real feelings of his heart.
He observed the prisoner, old Nick Nomad, then he looked at Pool
Clayton, who had withdrawn to a distance, both from his mother and
from Snaky Pete, his stepfather.
Molloy had slunk away, and was busily engaged in making himself
inconspicuous.
Snaky Pete grew wrathful and murderously vindictive.
“Here!” he snarled, speaking to Pool Clayton. “You ain’t done yit
what I told ye to!” He swung his hand toward Nick Nomad, as he thus
spoke to the young would-be outlaw. “I told you to shoot that old
skunk, and git him out of the way, and you ain’t done it!”
Pool Clayton came forward when Snaky Pete shouted to him a second
time.
“You needn’t think that you and yer mother kin come here and run this
camp! If she makes trouble, I’ll lay a stingin’ quirt across her
back, and you’ve got to mind me, er I’ll put a bullet through your
head instanter, and git rid of ye!”
Pool Clayton stood before him, trembling.
“Do ye hear?”
“Yes,” said Clayton.
“Then finish up the job that you wouldn’t do when I first tole ye to;
put a bullet through that ole fool instanter. He’s a pard of Buffalo
Bill, and out he goes. We can’t keep him, and we can’t afford to let
him go.”
Old Nick Nomad never changed countenance as he heard these brutal
orders.
“Buffler,” he had said once, talking with his old border pard, “I
allus tries ter live, so that when ther eend comes I can face it
square and honest. My hand has been ag’inst wrong, and I has tried to
keep it frum doin’ wrong.”
In that confident assurance old Nick Nomad lived, and in it he could
now die, if he had to.
Yet the warm currents of life ran through his veins still, almost
as freely as when he was a youth, and he did not desire death. He
desired to live, that he might further strike at the wrongdoers of
the border; and even as he listened to Snaky Pete he was wondering
how he could escape the doom which those words seemingly foreshadowed.
Another heard Snaky Pete’s brutal and murderous commands. The other
was Pizen Jane. She stepped courageously in front of the old trapper,
brushing away the hands of the outlaws who would have restrained her.
“Aire you a friend of Buffler Bill--the ginuine Buffler Bill?” she
demanded.
“Lady,” said Nomad, “I is happy ter say thet I’m one of thet man’s
closest friends. I’ll never deny thet, even afore ther Judgment.”
She faced around toward Snaky Pete.
“Pete Sanborn,” she said, her words sharp as knives, “when you kill
this man you shoot me down, too; and as fur as lettin’ any son of
mine do a thing like that, I’ll slay him with my own hands fust!”
Snaky Pete’s eyes glittered and his face almost grew black with rage.
“Git out of my way!” he yelled, drawing a long knife. He lifted it,
and jumped with it at the fearless woman.
A rifle cracked, seeming far off on the slope of the near-by
mountain. Snaky Pete stopped in mid-air, and, throwing up his hands,
he fell to the earth, blood spurting from between his lips.
The men of the camp stood still, shocked and confused; then a yell
of wrath broke forth. Some of them threw themselves on their horses,
while others rushed to Snaky Pete, lifting him.
“Glory be!” screamed Pizen Jane, waving her gaunt arms. “If the devil
is dead, I know who killed him! ’Twas Buffler Bill!”