"That's just where he belongs. He ought to be setting right up with the
other freaks, because he's a worse freak than the living skeleton or a
lady with a full beard--that's what he is. And yet he's sane on every
subject but that. Sometimes he'll talk along for ten minutes as rational
as you or me; but let him hear the word accident and off he goes. But,
by doggie, he won't bother me again after what I give him back of the
Wallace freight shed." "He solemnly promised he would," I says, "when
I saw him last. He was still some turbulent."
And he did bother Ben again, late that fall. When the circus closed he
travelled back a thousand miles in a check suit and a red necktie, just
to get another good licking. Ben must of been quite aggravated by that
time, for he wound up by throwing Ed into the crick in all his proud
clothes.
Ed was just as honest about it as before. He says Ben licked him fair.
But it hadn't changed his mind. He felt that Ben's report had knocked
his just celebrity and he was still hostile.
"Mebbe you can't lick Ben," I says to him again. "I can keep on doing my
endeavours," he says. "I had to come off in a friend of mine's coat
because my own was practically destroyed; but I'll be back again before
Ben has clumb very high on that ladder of his career."
The adventurer was interned at my house for ten days, till his bruises
lost their purple glow and he looked a little less like a bad case of
erysipelas. Then he started out again, crazy as a loon! I didn't hear
from him for nearly two years. Then I got a letter telling about his
life of adventure down on the Border. It seems he'd got in with a good
capable stockman down there and they was engaged in the cattle business.
The business was to go over into Mexico, attracting as little notice as
possible, cut out a bunch of cattle, and drive 'em across into the land
of the free. Naturally what they sold for was clear profit.
Ed said he was out for adventure and this had a-plenty. He said I
wouldn't believe how exciting it could be at times. He wanted to know
what Ben was promoted to by this time, and was he looking as hearty
as ever? Some day he was coming back and force Ben to set him right
before the world.
About a year later he writes that the cattle business is getting too
tame. He's done it so much that all the excitement has gone. He says I
wouldn't believe how tame it can be, with hardly any risk of getting
shot. He says he wouldn't keep on running off these Mexican cattle if it
wasn't for the money in it; and, furthermore, it sometimes seems to him
when he's riding along in the beautiful still night, with only God's
stars for companions, that there's something about it that ain't right.
But it's another year before he writes that he has disposed of his stock
interests and is coming North to lick Ben proper. He does come North. He
was correct to that extent. He outfitted at the Chicago Store in Tucson,
getting the best all-wool ready-made suit in Arizona, with fine fruit and
flower and vegetable effects, shading from mustard yellow to beet colour;
and patent-leather ties, with plaid socks--and so on. He stopped off at
Red Gap on his way up to do this outrage. His face was baked a rich red
brown; so I saw it wouldn't show up marks as legibly as when he was pale.
He said Ben wasn't a right bad fellow and he had no personal grudge
against him, except he needed to have his head beat off on account of his
inhumanity.
I told him Ben had worked up from yardmaster at Wallace to assistant
division superintendent at Tekoa, where he would probably find him; and I
wished him God-speed.
He said he rejoiced to know of Ben's promotion, because he had probably
softened some, setting round an office. He promised to let me know the
result at once. He did. It was the same old result. The fight had gone a
few more rounds, I gathered, but Ed still gave the decision against
himself in the same conscientious way. He said Ben had licked him fair.
It was uncanny the way he took these defeats. No other human being but
would of made some little excuse. He came back in another suit and a bit
blemished in the face, and said Ben seemed to be getting a fair amount
of exercise in spite of his confining office duties; but--mark his
words--that indoor work would get him in time. He'd never seen a man yet
that could set at a desk all day and keep in shape to resent fighting
talk, even from a lighter man by twenty pounds. He said he might have to
wait till Ben was general manager, or something; but his day was coming,
and it would be nothing for Ben to cheer about when it got here. He now
once more drifted out over the high horizon, only one eye being much help
to him in seeing the way.
Then Ben come down and had a wholehearted session with me. He said I
ought to have a talk with Ed and reason him out of his folly. I said Ed
would listen to a number of things, but not to reason. He said he knew
it; that the poor coot should be in some good institution right now,
where the state could look after him. He said he couldn't answer for the
consequences if Ed kept on in this mad way. He said here he was, climbing
up in his profession, and yet with this scandal in his private life that
might crop out any time and blast his career; and, by doggie, it was a
shame! He said it was hanging over him like a doom and sometimes he even
woke up in the night and wished he had made a different report about the
accident--one with a little hysterics or description in it, like this
maniac had seemed to crave.
"It ain't that I can't lick him," says Ben--"I've proved that three
times; but having to do it every so often, which is beneath the dignity
of a high railroad official. I might as well be a common rowdy and be
done with it, by doggie! And no telling what will happen if he don't get
his mind back. The little devil is an awful scrapper. I noticed it more
than ever this last time. One of these times he might get me. He might
get me good."
"You better let him, then," I says, "and have it over. That's the only
thing which will ever stop him. You take a man that says he was licked
fair, but still keeps at it, and he's deadly. Next time he comes along
you lay down after making a decent resistance. Then he'll probably be
your friend for life, especially if you tell him you been thinking about
his accident and it now seems like the most horrible accident that ever
happened to man."
It was the most encouragement I could give and he went off gloomy. Ben
was certainly one conscientious objector.
Nothing come from Ed for over a year. Then he writes that he has give up
the cattle business for good, because Mexico is in a state of downright
anarchy and he has been shot through the shoulder. He put it well. He
said he had been shot from ambush by a cowardly Mexican and I wouldn't
believe how lawless that country was. So now he was going to take up
mining in God's own country, where a man could get a square deal if he
kept out of railroading. And was Ben keeping up his exercise?
He stayed under the surface for about three years. Neither Ben nor I
heard a word from him. I told Ben it was many chances to one that he had
gone under at the hands of someone that wanted to keep his cattle or his
mine or something. Ben looked solemn and relieved at this suggestion. He
said if the Grim Reaper had done its work, well and good! Life was full
of danger for the best of us, with people dropping off every day or so;
and why should Ed have hoped to be above the common lot?
But the very next week comes a letter from the deceased wanting to know
whether Ben has been promoted some more and how he is looking by this
time. Is he vigorous and hearty, or does office work seem to be sapping
his vitality? It was the same old Ed. He goes on to say that the reason
he writes is that the other night in Globe, Arizona, he licked a man in
the Miners' Rest saloon that looked enough like Ben to be his twin; not
only looked the image of him but had his style of infighting. And he
had licked him right and made him quit. He said the gent finally fled,
going through the little swinging doors with such force that they kept
swinging for three minutes afterward. So now is the time for him to come
up and have another go at Ben.
Of course he ain't superstitious, but it does seem like Providence has
taken this means of pointing out the time to him. But he is in reduced
circumstances at this moment, owing to complications it would take too
long to explain; so will I lend him about two hundred and fifty dollars
to make the trip on? And he will have Ben off his mind forever and be
able to settle down to some life work. Just as sane as ever--Ed was.
I sent the letter to Ben, not wishing him to rest in false security.
But I wrote Ed firmly that I couldn't see my money's worth in his
proposition. I told him Ben was keeping in splendid condition, having
the glow of health in his cheeks and a grip like an osteopath, and I'd
be darned if I was going to back a three-time loser in the same old
fight. I said he wasn't the only sensitive person in the world. I was
a little fussy myself about what people might think of my judgment. And
I gave him some good advice which was to forget his nonsense and settle
down to something permanent before he died of penury.
He wrote a kind, forgiving answer. He said he couldn't blame me for
turning against him after his repeated failures to lick Ben, but his
nature was one I should never understand. He said he would amass the
money by slow grinding toil, and when he next come North and got through
handling Ben I would be the very first to grasp him by the hand and
confess that I had wronged him. It was as nutty a letter as Ed ever
wrote; which is some tribute. I sent it on to Ben and I believe it was
right after that he ordered one of these exercising machines put up in
his bedroom, with a book showing how to become a Greek god by pulling
the weights five minutes, morning and evening.
But this time come silence so long that I guess even Ben forgot he had
a doom hanging above his head by a single hair. I know I did. Let's
see. It must of been a good five years before I hear from Ed again. It
was another hard-luck letter. He had just worked a whole season for a
contractor that blew up and left him with one span of mules in place of
his summer's wages; which was a great disappointment, because he had been
looking forward to an active reunion with Ben. How was Ben, anyway? And
did he show the ravages of time?
And no one had wanted these mules, because they was inferior mules; but
when he was on the point of shooting them to stop their feed bill along
come two men that had a prospect over in the Bradshaw Mountains and
offered him a one third interest in it for his span. So he had sawed the
mules off onto these poor dubs and told 'em all right about the third
interest in their claim, and forget it; but they insisted on his taking
it. So he did, and was now working in the B.&.B. store at Prescott,
selling saddles and jewellery and molasses and canned fruit and lumber,
and such things. He didn't care much for the life, but it was neck-meat
or nothing with him now.
No wonder these men that cheated him out of his mules had made him take a
third interest in their claim. It was now taking all his salary to pay
assessments and other expenses on it. But he was trying to trade this
third interest off for something that wouldn't be a burden to him; then
he should have a chance to put his money by and come up to give Ben what
he was sooner or later bound to get if there was a just God in Heaven.
He spoke as freshly about Ben as if his trouble had begun the day before.
You wouldn't think twelve years had gone by. He was now saying Ben had
put a stigma on him. It had got to be a stigma by this time, though he
probably hadn't any idea what a stigma really is. He'd read it somewhere.
Then the waves closed over the injured man for about three years more.
This time it looked as if he'd gone down for good, stigma and all. Ben
thought the same. He said it was a great relief not to be looking forward
any more to these brutal affrays that Ed insisted on perpetrating. And
high time, too, because he was now in line for general manager, and how
would it look for him to be mixed up in brawls?
And everything was serene till the papers broke out into headlines about
a big strike made in the Bradshaw Mountains of Arizona by three partners,
of whom one was named Steptoe. They seemed to have found all the valuable
minerals in that claim of theirs except platinum. Ben tried first to
believe it was someone else named Steptoe; but no such luck. We read that
a half interest in the property had been sold to an Eastern syndicate for
three million dollars and a company organized of which Edward J. Steptoe
was president.
"It may be all for the best, anyway," Ben says to me. "Now that he's a
big mining man he'll probably have other aims in life than being a thug."
You could see he was hoping to make a separate peace with the new
millionaire, who would forget the grudge of his old days when he had
to work for what he got, or at least run the risk of getting shot for
it. But I wasn't so sure. I reminded Ben that Ed had never yet done
anything you'd think a human being would do, so why expect him to begin
now, when he had abundant leisure? I advised him to give deep thought to
the matter of his defense, and if the battle went against him to withdraw
to a position previously prepared, like the war reports say. Ben said a
few warm things about Ed, by doggie, that no cousin ought to say of
another cousin, and went off, hoping against hope.
And, sure enough, Ed came promptly to the front. It seems he waited
only long enough to get a new suit and an assorted lot of the snappiest
diamond jewellery he could find. Then he wired me he was coming to right
the wrongs of a lifetime. Reaching San Francisco, it occurred to him
that he could put it all over Ben in another way that would cut him
to the heart; so he there chartered the largest, goldest, and most
expensive private car on the market, having boudoirs and shower baths
and conservatories and ballrooms, and so on; something that would make
Ben's dinky little private car look like a nester's shack or a place for
a construction gang to bunk in. And in this rolling palace Ed invaded
our peaceful country, getting lots of notice. The papers said this new
mining millionaire was looking us over with an eye to investment in our
rich lands. Little they knew he merely meant to pull off a brutal fist
altercation with a prominent railroad official that was somewhat out of
condition.
Ben was one worried man, especially after he heard of Ed's private car.
It was one thing to lick an exbrakeman, but entirely different to have
an affray with a prominent capitalist that come after you regardless of
expense. Furthermore, this was the time for the annual tour of inspection
by the officers of the road, and they was now on the way to Ben's
division, with him hoping to create a fine impression by showing his
miracles of management. And here was Ed, meaning to start something
scandalous at sight! No wonder Ben lost his nerve and tried to run out
on his antagonist. He was trying to put it off at least till after his
officials had come and gone.
So for six days he kept about thirty miles of standard-gauge track
between his car and Ed's. Ed would get word that he was at such a
station and have his car dropped there, only to find that Ben had gone
on. Ed would follow on the next train, or mebbe hire a special engine;
and Ben would hide off on some blind spur track. They covered the whole
division about three times without clashing, thanks to Ben's superior
information bureau; it being no trick at all to keep track of this
wheeled apartment house of Ed's.
Ed couldn't understand it at first. Here he'd come up to lick Ben, and
Ben was acting queer about it. Ed would send messages every day wanting
to know when and where he could have a nice quiet chat with Ben that
would not be interfered with by bystanders; and Ben would wire back that
his time wasn't his own and company business was keeping him on the jump,
but as soon as this rush was over he would arrange an interview; and kind
regards, and so on. Or he might say he would be at some station all the
following day; which would be a clumsy falsehood, because he was at that
moment pulling out, as Ed would find when he got there. The operating
department must of thought them a couple of very busy men, wanting so
much to meet, yet never seeming able to get together.
Ed got peeved at last by the way Ben was putting him off. It wasn't
square and it wasn't businesslike. He had large mining interests in
charge and here was Ben acting like he had all summer to devote just to
this one little matter. He called Ben's attention to this by telegraph,
but Ben continued to be somewhere else from where he said he was going
to be.
After a week of this pussy-wants-a-corner stuff Ed got wise that the
thing had come to be a mere vulgar chase, and that his private car was
hampering him by being so easy to keep track of. So he disguised himself
by taking off his diamond ornaments and leaving his private car at
Colfax, and started out to stalk Ben as a common private citizen in a
day coach. He got results that way, Ben supposing he was still with his
car. After a couple of scouting trips up and down the line he gets
reliable word that Ben, with his bunch of high officials, is over at
Wallace.
So much the better, thinks Ed. It will be fine to have this next
disturbance right on the spot where a great wrong was done him fifteen
years before. So he starts for Wallace, wiring for his car to follow him
there. He'd found this car poor for the bloodhound stuff, but he wanted
Ben to have a good look at it and eat his heart out with envy, either
before or after what was going to happen to him.
He gets to Wallace on the noon train and finds that Ben with his
officials has gone up the canon, past Burke, on the president's private
car, to return in about an hour. After Ed's inquiries the agent kindly
wires up to Ben that his cousin from Arizona is waiting for him. Ed
spends the time walking round Ben's shabby little private car and
sneering at it. He has his plans all made, now that he has run his man
to earth. He won't pull anything rough before the officials, but about
twenty miles out on the line is a siding with a shipping corral beside
it and nothing else in sight but vistas. They'll get an engine to run
the two cars out there that night and leave 'em, and everything can be
done decently and in order. No hurry and no worry and no scandal.
Ed is just playing the coming fight over in his mind for the fifth time,
correcting some of his blows here and there, when he hears a whistle up
the canon and in comes the special. The officials pile off and Ben comes
rushing up to Ed with a glad smile and effusive greetings and hearty
slaps on the back; and how is everything, old man?--and so on--with a
highly worried look lurking just back of it all; and says what rare
good luck to find Ed here, because he's the very man they been talking
about all the way down from Burke.
Ed says if they come down as fast as he did one time they didn't get a
chance to say much about him; but Ben is introducing him to the president
of the road and the general manager and the chief engineer and three or
four directors, and they all shake hands with him till it seems like
quite a reception. The president says is this really the gentleman who
has made that last big strike in Arizona! And if it is he knows something
still more interesting about him, because he has just listened to a most
remarkable tale of his early days as a brakeman on this very line. Their
division superintendent has been telling of his terrific drop down the
canon and his incredible flight through the air of three hundred and
thirty-five feet.
"How far did he say I was hurled?" says Ed, and the president again says
three hundred and thirty-five feet, which was a hundred more than Ed had
ever claimed; so he looks over at Ben pretty sharp.
Ben is still talking hurriedly about the historic accident, saying that
in all his years of railroad experience he never heard of anything
approaching it, and if they will step up the track a piece he will show
them just where the cars left the rails. Ben must of done a lot of quick
thinking that day. He had the bunch over to see the exact spot, and they
all stood and looked over to the ice house and said it was incredible;
and a director from Boston said it was perfectly preposterous; really
now! And Ben kept on reciting rapidly about the details. He said Ed had
come down the seven miles in less than three minutes, which was lopping
a minute and a half off the official time; and that when picked up he
hadn't a whole bone left in his body, which was also a lie; and that
his cousin never could of survived if he hadn't probably had the most
marvellous constitution a man was ever endowed with. He then made the
bunch go over to the ice house to see the other exact spot, and they
looked back to where he started from, and again said it was incredible
and preposterous.
I don't know. Mebbe they wouldn't of thought it preposterous that a mere
brakeman was hurled that far, but Ed was a capitalist now. Anyway, the
president had him into his car for lunch with the party, and they might
possibly of got to talking about other things of less importance, but Ben
wouldn't have any thing else. He made 'em insist that Ed should tell his
version of the whole thing; how he felt when the cars started, and how
the scenery was blurred, and how his whole past life flashed before him,
and the last thing he remembered before he hit the sawdust. And Ben set
there looking so proud of Ed, like a mother having her little tot recite
something. And when Ed had finally lit, Ben made him tell about his slow
recovery. And after Ed got himself well again Ben would go back to the
start and ask for more details, such as whether he hadn't wanted to jump
off on the way down, or whether he had been conscious while going through
the air for nearly four hundred feet.
Ed got little food; but much he cared! He'd come into his own at last.
And suddenly he was surprised by finding a warm glow in his heart for
Ben, especially after Ben had said for about the third time: "I was
certainly a green hand in those days; so green that I didn't begin to
realize what a whale of an occurrence this was." Ed was getting a new
light on Ben.
After lunch Ed's own car got in from Colfax and he had the party over
there for cigars and more talk about himself, which was skillfully led
by Ben. Then the president invited Ed to hitch his car on and come along
with them for a little trip, and talk over mining and investments, and
so on, and what the outlook was in the Southwest. So Ed went with 'em
and continued to hear talk of his accident. Ben would bring it up and
harp back to it, and bring it forward and sandwich it in whenever the
conversation had an open moment. It was either the wild thoughts Ed must
of had sliding down the canon, or the preposterous constitution he had
been endowed with, or the greenness of himself for not recognizing it as
the prize accident of the ages. And I don't wonder Ben went on that way
for the next two days. He knew what a tenacious idiot Ed was, and that he
had come miles out of his way to try something he had often tried before.
The most he could hope for was to stave off the collision till his
officials got away.
And it looked, the second night, like he wasn't going to be able to do
even this much. He'd been detecting cold looks from Ed all day, in spite
of his putting on another record about the accident every ten minutes or
so. They was laid out at some little station, and just before dinner Ed
give Ben the office that he wanted a word private with him. Ben thinks to
himself it's coming now in spite of all his efforts to smooth it over.
But he leaves the car with Ed and they walk a piece up the track, Ben
hoping they can make the lee of a freight car before Ed starts his crime
of violence. He makes up his mind quick. If Ed jumps him there in the
open he will certainly do his best to win the contest. But if he waits
till they get this freight car between them and the public, then he will
let Ed win the fight and get the scandal out of his life forever.
Ben walks quite briskly, but Ed begins to slow up when they ain't more
than a hundred yards from the president's car. Finally Ed stops short.
"The little foci is going to pull the fight here in the open!" thinks
Ben; so he gets ready to do his best.
Then Ed says:
"Say, Ben, what's the matter with you, anyway? Are you losing your mind?
It ain't so much on my account; I could make allowance for you. But
here's these officials of yours, and you want to make a good impression
on 'em; instead of which you are making yourself the grandest bore that
ever needed strangling for continuous talk on one subject."
Ben didn't get him yet. He says come on up the other side of them freight
cars, where they can be more private for their consultation.
Ed says no; this is far enough to tell him for his own good not to be
such a bore; an' Ben says how is he a bore?