talk about anything but that stale old accident of mine, and you got me
so sick of it I could jump on you every time you begin. You got everybody
in the party sick of it. Don't you see how they all try to get away from
you? For the Lord's sake, can't you think up something else to talk about
now and then--at least for five minutes, just to give your silly chatter
a little different flavour? I never been so sick of anything in my life
as I am of this everlasting prattle of yours about something that was
over and forgotten fifteen long years ago! What's got into you to keep
dragging that accident up out of the dead past that way? Anyway, you
better cut it out. I have to listen because you're my cousin; but these
officials don't. Your next pay check is liable to be your last on this
road if you don't think up some other kind of gossip. Darned if it don't
seem like you had been getting weak-minded in your old age!"
Ben had got his bearings by this time. He apologized warmly to Ed; he
said it was true this magnificent catastrophe had lately taken possession
of his mind, but now that he finds Ed is so sensitive about it he'll try
to keep it out of his talk, and he hopes Ed won't cherish hard feelings
against him.
Ed says no, he won't cherish anything if Ben will only quit his loathsome
gushing about the accident; and Ben says he will quit. And so they shook
hands on it.
That's the way the feud ended. The champion grudge hoarder of the
universe had been dosed to a finish with his own medicine. It showed Ben
has a weakness for diplomacy; kind of an iron hand in a velvet glove, or
something.
Ed is still a nut, though. There was a piece in a Sunday paper not long
ago about this new mining millionaire. He spoke some noble words to the
youth of our land. He said young American manhood could still make its
fortune in this glorious country of opportunity by strict attention to
industry and good habits and honest dealing and native pluck--him that
had had these mules forced on him in the first place, and then his
interest in this claim forced on him for the mules, and then hadn't
been able to get shut of the claim. Ain't it lovely how men will dig up
a license to give themselves all credit for hog luck they couldn't help!
Ma Pettengill busied herself with a final cigarette and remarked that she
never knew when to stop talking. Some parties did, but not her; and she
having to be up and on the way to Horsefly Mountain by six-thirty in the
A.M.! Her last apology was for a longing she had not been able to
conquer: She couldn't help a debased wish to know how that last fight
would of come out.
"Of course it ain't nice to want men to act like the brutes," said the
lady. "Still, I can't help wondering; not that I'm inquisitive, but just
out of curiosity."
V
ONE ARROWHEAD DAY
It began with the wonted incitement to murder. A wooden staff projects
some five feet above the topmost roof peak of the Arrowhead ranch house,
and to this staff is affixed a bell of brazen malignity. At five-thirty
each morning the cord controlling this engine of discord is jerked
madly and forever by Lew Wee, our Chinese chef. It is believed by those
compelled to obey the horrid summons that this is Lew Wee's one moment
of gladness in a spoiled life. The sound of the noon bell, the caressing
call of the night bell--these he must know to be welcome. The morning
clangour he must know to be a tragedy of foulest import. It is undeniably
rung with a keener relish. There will be some effort at rhythm with the
other bells, but that morning bell jangles in a broken frenzy of clangs,
ruthlessly prolonged, devilish to the last insulting stroke. Surely one
without malice could manage this waking bell more tactfully.
A reckless Chinaman, then, takes his life in his hands each morning at
five-thirty. Something like a dozen men are alarmed from deep sleep to
half-awakened incredulity, in which they believe the bell to be a dream
bell and try to dream on of something noiseless. Ten seconds later these
startled men have become demons, with their nice warm feet on the icy
floor of the bunk-house, and with prayers of simple fervour that the
so-and-so Chink may be struck dead while his hand is still on the
rope. This prayer is never answered; so something like a dozen men
dress hurriedly and reach the Arrowhead kitchen hurriedly, meaning to
perform instantly there a gracious deed which Providence has thus far
unaccountably left undone.
That the Arrowhead annals are, as yet, unspiced with a crime of violence
is due, I consider, to Lew Wee's superb control of his facial muscles.
His expression when he maniacally yanks the bell cord is believed by
his victims to be one of hellish glee; so they eagerly seek each morning
for one little remaining trace of this. The tiniest hint would suffice.
But they encounter only a rather sad-faced, middle-aged Chinaman, with
immovable eyes and a strained devotion to delicate tasks, of whom it is
impossible to believe that ever a ray of joy gladdened his life.
There is a secondary reason why the spirit of Lew Wee has not long since
been disembodied by able hands: His static Gorgon face stays the first
murderous impulse; then his genial kitchen aroma overpowers their higher
natures and the deed of high justice is weakly postponed. This genial
kitchen aroma is warm, and composed cunningly from steaming coffee and
frying ham or beef, together with eggs and hot cakes almost as large
as the enamelled iron plates from which they are eaten. It is no
contemptible combination on a frosty morning. No wonder strong men
forget the simple act of manslaughter they come there to achieve and
sit sullenly down to be pandered to by him who was erst their torturer.
On a morning in late May, when I had been invited to fare abroad with
my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill--who would breakfast in her
own apartment--I joined this assemblage of thwarted murderers as they
doggedly ate. It is a grim business, that ranch breakfast. Two paling
lamps struggle with the dawn, now edging in, and the half light is held
low in tone by smoke from the cake griddle, so that no man may see
another too plainly. But no man wishes to see another. He stares dully
into his own plate and eats with stern aversion. We might be so many
strangers in a strange place, aloof, suspicious, bitter, not to say
truculent.
No quip or jest will lighten the gloom. Necessary requests for the
sugar or the milk or the stewed apples are phrased with a curtly
formal civility. We shall be other men at noon or at night, vastly
other, sunnier men, with abundance of quip and jest and playful sally
with the acid personal tang. But from warm beds of repose! We avoid
each other's eyes, and one's subdued "please pass that sirup pitcher!"
is but tolerated like some boorish profanation of a church service.
The simple truth, of course, is that this is the one hour of the day
when we are face to face with the evil visage of life unmasked; our
little rosy illusions of yestereve are stale and crumpled. Not until we
are well out in the sun, with the second cigarette going good, shall we
again become credulous about life and safe to address. It is no meal to
linger over. We grimly rise from the wrecked table and clatter out.
Only one of us--that matchless optimist, Sandy Sawtelle--sounds a flat
note in the symphony of disillusion. His humanness rebounds more quickly
than ours, who will not fawn upon life for twenty minutes yet. Sandy
comes back to the table from the hook whence he had lifted his hat. He
holds aloft a solitary hot cake and addresses Lew Wee in his best
Anglo-Chinese, and with humorous intent:
"I think take-um hot cake, nail over big knot hole in bunk-house--last
damn long time better than sheet iron!"
Swiftly departing pessimists accord no praise or attention to this
ill-timed sketch; least of all Lew Wee, who it is meant to insult.
His face retains the sad impassivity of a granite cliff as yet beyond
the dawn.
Now I am out by the saddle rack under the poplars, where two horses
are tied. Ma Pettengill's long-barrelled roan is saddled. My own
flea-bitten gray, Dandy Jim, is clad only in the rope by which he was
led up from the caviata. I approach him with the respectful attention
his reputed character merits and try to ascertain his mood of the
moment. He is a middle-aged horse, apparently of sterling character,
and in my presence has always conducted himself as a horse should. But
the shadow of scandal has been flung athwart him. I have been assured
that he has a hideous genius for cinch binding. Listening at first
without proper alarm, it has been disclosed to me that a cinch binder
ain't any joke, by a darned sight! A cinch binder will stand up straight
and lean over backward on me. If I'm there when he hits the ground I'll
wish I wasn't--if I am able to wish anything at all and don't simply have
to be shipped off to wherever my family wants it to take place.
I am further enlightened: Dandy Jim ain't so likely to start acting if
not saddled when too cold. If I saddle him then he will be expecting to
have more fun out of it than I have any right to. But if the sun is well
up, why, sometimes a baby could handle him. So for three weeks I have
saddled Dandy Jim with the utmost circumspection and with the sun well
up. Now the sun is not well up. Shall I still survive? I pause to wish
that the range of high hills on the east may be instantly levelled. The
land will then be worth something and the sun will be farther up. But
nothing of a topographical nature ensues. The hills remain to obscure the
sun. And the brute has to be saddled. The mood of that grim breakfast,
voiceless, tense, high with portent, is still upon me.
I approach and speak harshly to the potential cinch binder, telling him
to get over there! He does not; so I let it pass. After all, he is only
a horse. Why should I terrorize him? I bridle him with a manner far from
harsh. He doesn't like the taste of the bit--not seasoned right, or
something. But at last he takes it without biting my fingers off; which
shows that the horse has no mind to speak of.
I look him calmly in the eye for a moment; then pull his head about, so
that I can look him calmly in the other eye for a moment. This is to show
the animal that he has met his master and had better not try any of that
cinch-binding stuff if he knows when he's well off. Still, I treat him
fairly. I smooth his back of little vegetable bits that cling there,
shake out the saddle blanket and tenderly adjust it. Whistling carelessly
I swing up the saddle. Dandy Jim flinches pitifully when it rests upon
him and reaches swiftly round to bite my arm off. I think this is quite
perfunctory on his part. He must have learned long since that he will
never really bite any one's arm off. His neck is not enough like a
swan's.
I adjust saddle and blanket carefully from both sides, pulling the
blanket well up under the horn of the saddle and making sure that
it sets comfortably. One should be considerate of the feelings of a
dumb beast placed at one's mercy. Then I reach for the cinch, pass it
twice through the rings, and delicately draw it up the merest trifle.
Dandy Jim shudders and moans pathetically. He wishes to convey the
impression that his ribs have been sprung. This, of course, is
nonsense. I measureably increase the pressure. Dandy Jim again
registers consternation, coughs feebly, and rolls his eyes round
appealingly, as if wondering whether the world is to sit, without
heart, and watch a poor defenseless horse being slain. He is about
to expire.
I now lead him gently about by the bridle. It occurs to me that a horse
with this curious mania for binding cinches or cinching binders--or,
in other words, a cinch binder--will be as willing to indulge in his
favourite sport with the saddle unoccupied as otherwise. He may like
it even better with no one up there; and I know I will. Nothing happens,
except that Dandy Jim stumbles stiffly and pretends to be lame. The
sun is not yet well up; still, it is a lot better. Perhaps danger for
the day is over. I again lead the dangerous beast--
"What you humouring that old skate for?"
Ma Pettengill, arrayed in olive-drab shirt and breeches, leather puttees,
and the wide-brimmed hat of her calling with the four careful dents in
the top, observed me with friendly curiosity as she ties a corduroy coat
to the back of her saddle.
Hereupon I explained my tactful handling of the reputed cinch binder. It
evoked the first cheerful sound I had heard that day:
Ma Pettengill laughed heartily.
"That old hair trunk never had the jazz to be any cinch binder. Who told
you he was?"
I named names--all I could remember. Almost everyone on the ranch had
passed me the friendly warning, and never had I saddled the brute without
a thrill.
"Sure! Them chuckleheads always got to tell everybody something. It's
a wonder they ain't sent you in to the Chink to borrow his meat auger,
or out to the blacksmith shop for a left-handed monkey wrench, or
something. Come on!"
So that was it! Just another bit of stale ranch humour--alleged
humour--as if it could be at all funny to have me saddle this wreck
with the tenderest solicitude morning after morning!
"Just one moment!" I said briskly.
I think Dandy Jim realized that everything of a tender nature between
us was over. Some curious and quite charming respect I had been wont
to show him was now gone out of my manner. He began to do deep breathing
exercises before I touched the cinch. I pulled with the strength of a
fearless man. Dandy Jim forthwith inflated his chest like a gentleman
having his photograph taken in a bathing suit. I waited, apparently
foiled. I stepped back, spoke to Ma Pettengill of the day's promise,
and seemed carelessly to forget what I was there for. Slowly Dandy Jim
deflated himself; and then, on the fair and just instant, I pulled.
I pulled hard and long. The game was won. Dandy Jim had now the waist
of that matron wearing the Sveltina corset, over in the part of the
magazine where the stories die away. I fearlessly bestrode him and
the day was on.
I opened something less than a hundred gates, so that we could take our
way through the lower fields. Ma Pettengill said she must see this here
Tilton and this here Snell, and have that two hundred yards of fence
built like they had agreed to, as man to man; and no more of this here
nonsense of putting it off from day to day.
She was going to talk straight to them because, come Thursday, she had
to turn a herd of beef cattle into that field.
Then I opened a few dozen more gates and we were down on the flats.
Here the lady spied a coyote, furtively skirting some willows on our
left. So, for a few merry miles, we played the game of coyote. It is
a simple game to learn, but requires a trained eye. When one player
sees a coyote the other becomes indebted to him in the sum of one dollar.
This sport dispelled the early morning gloom that had beset me. I won
a dollar almost immediately. It may have been the same coyote, as my
opponent painfully suggested; but it showed at a different breach in
the willows, and I was firm.
Then the game went fiercely against me. Ma Pettengill detected coyotes
at the far edges of fields--so far that I would have ignored them for
jack rabbits had I observed them at all. I claimed an occasional
close one; but these were few. The outlook was again not cheering. It was
an excellent morning for distant coyotes, and presently I owed Mrs.
Lysander John Pettengill seven dollars, she having won two doubleheaders
in succession. This ride was costing me too much a mile. Being so utterly
outclassed I was resolving to demand a handicap, but was saved from this
ignominy by our imminent arrival at the abode of this here Tilton, who
presently sauntered out of a feeding corral and chewed a straw at us
idly.
We soon took all that out of him. The air went something like this:
* * * * *
MRS. L. J. P.--brightly: Morning, Chester! Say, look here! About that gap
in the fence across Stony Creek field--I got to turn a beef herd in there
Thursday.
TILTON--crouching luxuriously on one knee still chewing the straw: Well,
now, about that little job--I tell you, Mis' Pett'ngill; I been kind o'
holdin' off account o' Snell bein' rushed with his final plowin'. He
claims--
MRS. L. J. P.--still brightly: Oh, that's all right! Snell will be over
there, with his men, to-morrow morning at seven o'clock. He said you'd
have to be there, too.
TILTON--alarmed, he rises, takes straw from his mouth, examines the
chewed end with dismay and casts it from him; removes his hat, looks at
this dubiously, burnishes it with a sleeve, and sighs: To-morrow
morning! You don't mean to-morrow--
MRS. L. J. P.--carefully yet rapidly: To-morrow morning at seven o'clock.
You don't want to throw Snell down on this; and he's going to be there.
How many men can you take?
TILTON--dazed: Now--now lemme see!
MRS. L. J. P.--quickly: You can take Chris and Shorty and Jake and
yourself. Any one else?
TILTON--swept over the falls: Why, no'm; I don't guess there's any other
I could spare, account of--
MRS. L. J. P.--almost sweetly: All right, then. To-morrow; seven sharp.
TILTON--from the whirlpool, helplessly: Yes'm! Yes'm!
MRS. L. J. P.: Morning!
* * * * *
We ride on. Tilton fades back toward the corral; he has forgotten to
replace his hat.
I now decided to make a little conversation rather than have the stupid
and ruinous game of coyote for a pastime.
"I thought you hadn't seen Snell yet."
"I haven't; not since he promised his half of the job two weeks ago."
"But you just told Tilton--"
"Well, Snell is going to be there, ain't he?"
"How do you know?"
"I'm going to tell him now."
And the woman did even so. If you wish the scene with Snell go back and
read the scene with Tilton, changing the names. Nothing else need you
change. Snell was hitching two mules to a wood wagon; but he heard the
same speeches and made approximately the same replies. And the deed was
done.
"There now!" boomed Mrs. Talleyrand as we rode beyond earshot of the
dazed and lingering Snell. "Them two men been trying for two weeks to
agree on a day to do this trifling job. They wasn't able; so I agreed on
a day myself. Anything wrong with it?"
"You said you were going to talk straight to them."
"Ain't I just talked straight to Snell? Tilton will be there, won't he?"
"How about the way you talked to Tilton before you saw Snell?"
"Well, my lands! How you talk! You got to have a foundation to build on,
haven't you?"
I saw it as a feat beyond my prowess to convict this woman in her own
eyes of a dubious and considering veracity. So I merely wondered, in
tones that would easily reach her, how the gentlemen might relish her
diplomacy when they discovered it on the morrow. I preceded the word
diplomacy with a slight and very affected cough.
The lady replied that they would never discover her diplomacy, not
coughing in the least before the word. She said each of them would be
so mad at the other for setting a day that they would talk little. They
would simply build fence. She added that a woman in this business had
to be looking for the worst of it all the time. She was bound to get
the elbow if she didn't use her common sense.
I ignored her casuistry, for she was now rolling a cigarette with an air
of insufferable probity. I gave her up and played a new game of smashing
horseflies as they settled on my mount. Dandy Jim plays the game ably.
When a big fly settles on his nose he holds his head round so I can reach
it. He does not flinch at the terrific smash of my hat across his face.
If a fly alights on his neck or shoulder, and I do not remark it, he
turns his head slightly toward me and winks, so I can stalk and pot it.
He is very crafty here. If the fly is on his right side he turns and
winks his left eye at me so the insect will not observe him. And yet
there are people who say horses don't reason.
I now opened fifty more gates and we left the cool green of the fields
for a dusty side road that skirts the base of the mesa. We jogged along
in silence, which I presently heard stir with the faint, sweet strain of
a violin; an air that rose and wailed and fell again, on a violin played
with a certain back-country expertness. The road bent to show us its
source. We were abreast of the forlorn little shack of a dry-farmer,
weathered and patched, set a dozen yards from the road and surrounded
by hard-packed earth. Before the open door basked children and pigs and
a few spiritless chickens.
All the children ran to the door when we halted and called to someone
within. The fiddle played on with no faltering, but a woman came
out--a gaunt and tattered woman who was yet curiously cheerful. The
children lurked in her wake as she came to us and peered from beyond
her while we did our business.
Our business was that the redskin, Laura, official laundress of the
Arrowhead, had lately attended an evening affair in the valley at which
the hitherto smart tipple of Jamaica ginger had been supplanted by a
novel and potent beverage, Nature's own remedy for chills, dyspepsia,
deafness, rheumatism, despair, carbuncles, jaundice, and ennui. Laura had
partaken freely and yet again of this delectable brew, and now suffered
not only from a sprained wrist but from detention, having suffered arrest
on complaint of the tribal sister who had been nearest to her when she
sprained her wrist. Therefore, if Mrs. Dave Pickens wanted to come over
to-morrow and wash for us, all right; she could bring her oldest girl to
help.
Mrs. Dave thereupon turned her head languidly toward the ignoble dwelling
and called: "Dave!" Then again, for the fiddle stayed not: "Dave! Oh,
Dave!"
The fiddle ceased to moan--complainingly it seemed to me--and Dave framed
his graceful figure in the doorway. He was one appealing droop, from his
moustache to his moccasin-clad feet. He wore an air of elegant leisure,
but was otherwise not fussily arrayed.
"Dave, Mis' Pett'ngill says there's now a day's washin' to do over to her
place to-morrow. What think?"
Dave deliberated, then pondered, then thought, then spoke:
"Well, I d'no', Addie; I d'no' as I got any objections if you ain't.
I d'no' but it's all the same to me."
Hereupon we meanly put something in Dave's unsuspecting way, too.
"You must want a day's work yourself," called out Ma Pettengill. "You go
up to Snell's about six in the morning and he'll need you to help do some
fencing on that gap in Stony Creek field. If he don't need you Tilton
will. One of 'em is bound to be short a man."
"Fencin'?" said Dave with noticeable disrelish.
"You reckon we better both leave the place at once?" suggested Mrs. Dave.
"That's so," said Dave brightly. "Mebbe I--"
"Nonsense!" boomed Ma Pettengill, dispelling his brightness. "Addie
can drop you at Snell's when she comes over to Arrowhead. Now that's
settled!"
And we rode off as unvoiced expostulations were gathering. I began to
wonder whether it must, throughout a beautiful day, be the stern mission
of this woman to put tribulation upon her neighbours. She was becoming a
fell destroyer. The sun was well up. I thirsted. Also, breakfast seemed
to have been a thing in the remote past.
We now rode three torrid miles up a narrow green slit in the hills
for a scant ten minutes of talk with a most uninteresting person, whose
sole claim to notice seemed to be that he had gone and fenced the wrong
water hole over back of Horsefly Mountain, where we have a summer range.
The talk was quick and pointed and buttressed with a blue-print map,
and the too-hasty fencer was left helpless after a pitiful essay at
quibbling. We rode off saying that he could do just as he liked about
sending someone over right away to take that fence down, because we
had already took it down the minute we set eyes on it. We was just
letting him know so he needn't waste any more wire and posts and time
in committing felonious depredations that would get him nothing but
high trouble if he was so minded. Another scalp to our belt!
I now briefly recalled to the woman that we had stopped at no peaceful
home that morning save to wreck its peace. I said I was getting into
the spirit of the ride myself. I suggested that at the next ranch we
passed we should stop and set fire to the haystacks, just to crown the
day's brutalities with something really splendid. I also said I was
starving to death in a land of plenty.