“Well,” says he, “there’s something queer about it, if you asks me.”
And then he rides off down the trail.
“That’s the worst of it,” says I. “When a person gets killed, you’ll
always find some nosey person what wants proof. Grizzly bears don’t
leave nothing to prove it by.”
“How do you know a bear killed him?” asks Miss Angeline.
“Well,” says I, sparring for time, “that’s easy. A grizzly always—do you
know anything about grizzly bears, ma’am? You don’t? Well, that makes it
easier. When a grizzly makes a kill he always brays four times in a row.
Sabe? Sort of a final Keno. I heard one bray the required number of
times just after Magpie left.”
“How utterly appalling,” wails Miss Angeline, “and didn’t you go to his
rescue?”
“No, ma’am! It’s too late to even go to his funeral. Everything is over
or inside by that time. All I could do would be to swell the list of
dead or injured, so I keeps away.”
“Heavens above!” wails the old lady. “And this is what is coming to my
poor darling Wallie and dear Doctor Doolittle. Oh, why do men do things
like this?”
“Search me,” says I, and just then the old lady cuts loose a real howl,
and grabs herself by the earrings.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!” she yelps, running the scale with her voice. “Oh,
I forgot the wild man! He’s over there with father and the doctor!”
“He may be over there, ma’am,” says I, consoling-like, “but not with
them. He ain’t that wild.”
That night they barricaded that cabin door until it would take a ton of
dynamite to open it from the outside. They holds open prayer-meeting in
favor of the professor and doctor, saying a few words for the mangled
soul of Magpie Simpkins—they called him Simpson, and winds up with a few
words in regards to softening the natural proclivities of local grizzly
bears.
I’d almost slip into sin and deception to be prayed for by Miss
Angeline. It’s along about ten o’clock. I’m laying there in my blankets,
smoking a cigaret, when I hears footsteps approaching, and I sees the
outline of Tellurium Woods. I whistles to him, and he comes over and
sets down with me.
“Ike,” says he, “I just come over to tell you that Magpie has busted his
agreement to the extent that he ain’t depending on nature for all his
nourishment.”
“If that’s all he’s busted he’s lucky,” says I. “Mighty Jones’ pack of
dogs has chased him all day.”
Tellurium lets this information percolate for a while, and then he says:
“Pshaw! I don’t reckon them hounds are much good. I made a pie today,
Ike. Honest to gosh, apple pie! Left her outside to cool, while I goes
out to try and catch some fish for supper, and when I gets back she’s
gone. A blanket is also gone from where I leaves her on a stump.
“I just come down to explain about that pie, Ike. It ain’t exactly a
digestible piece of food. That ornery Piegan, Runs-With-a-Wolf, has been
pilfering from me lately. He picks up everything he can lay his hands
on, so I bakes this pie to teach him a lesson. There’s a few apples in
it, Ike, but there’s a danged lot of quinine, ipecac and cayenne pepper.
She’s guaranteed to cure colds, empty a stubborn stummick and warm you
to the bone. I know that Injun didn’t get her, ’cause he’s visiting down
at the reservation.”
* * * * *
Just then a burro starts singing his little song, and before he gets
through the first verse another one gives him his audible support. Me
and Tellurium don’t pay no attention, being used to the song of the
Rocky Mountain canary, but from the cabin comes a long, loud wail, and
here comes two white-robed figures. They’ve got their arms around each
other, and the old lady yells:
“Mr. Harper! Oh-h-h-h! Mr. Harper! They’re gone! They’re gone!”
“Yes’m,” says I. “They’ve got nerve to stay this long. Better go back to
bed before you catch cold.”
“Heartless creature!” wails the old lady. “Why don’t you do something?
Isn’t there anything you can do? Oh, my poor Wallie!”
“Who’s Wallie?” asks Tellurium, in a whisper.
“He’s a nut,” says I truthfully, and then I turns to the ladies: “Just
what do you want me to do? Also I’d love to know what in thunder is the
matter with you two. What you got—toothache, earache or stummickache?”
“They’re gone, I tell you!” howls the old lady, while Angeline sets down
on the ground and hangs on to the old lady’s knees, like a picture I saw
once of an angel hanging on to a rock.
“The grizzly brayed eight times!” sobs Miss Angeline, and I begins to
see a light.
“Good night!” snorts Tellurium. “I feels that I’m _hors de compact_ in a
community where grizzly bears pick up the habits of a jackass,” and he
pikes off in the dark.
I manages to get them females back into the cabin, after promising to go
and see what the grizzly left. I went back after a while and told them
to rest easy, ’cause all the grizzly killed was a couple of elk.
“The—the doctor is an Elk,” says Miss Angeline.
“Not this kind,” says I. “This kind wears the teeth in their mouth.” The
next morning I leaves the females cleaning out the cabin while I takes
my bronc and goes scouting. I swings around the head of Sillman Gulch on
to Injun Creek. I ties my bronc and moseys down to the creek to see what
I can discover.
After a while I pokes out on to a nice bare spot above the creek, and
sets down to take a smoke. At first I don’t see a thing, but after a
while I sees something move across the creek, and when I gets my eyes
set right I sees Magpie Simpkins. He’s laying flat behind a log and
seems to be interested in something below him. I sneaks up to where I
can get a better view, and right below me is the doctor and professor.
It sure is a scene from nature. Down there, humped up on a rock, with a
blanket draped over his shoulders is the professor, busy picking thorns
out of his legs. On a lodge-pole, which is bridging the creek, crouches
the doctor, both legs wrapped around the pole, and hanging on with one
hand, while he angles with the other.
Sudden-like he yanks up with the string, and out flips a small trout,
but before the doctor can swing it to shore it falls off his bent pin.
I’m only a short distance above them, so I can see fine, and hear ’most
everything they say.
Sudden-like I sees Magpie again. He’s sneaking up behind the professor’s
rock, and he’s some snaky individual. Pretty soon he wiggles up close,
takes something, and then backs up until he’s into the brush again.
“The plot begins to congeal,” says I to myself.
The doctor snags another fish, with the same result. The professor
shakes his head, sad-like, and yells—
“Never mind, they won’t stay hooked.”
“This is Friday!” yells the doctor. “We’ve got to have fish with our
pie,” and keeps right on angling.
I looks around for Magpie, and I sees him sneak across the creek below
me, and Injun up my side. I reckon he’s pining to get a look at the
features of them naturals, and has got to circle to do it. I rolls
behind a bush and waits for him. He sneaks out, all humped over, with
that pie under his arm, and his skin area bears proof that he’s been
going through brush regardless. He looks like a smallpox patient that
had been curry-combed. He squats down and peers at them two below, and
scratches his head.
“Well, I’ll be ——!” he snorts. “Dog-gone, it can’t be!” and then he
looks at the pie beside him, and nods.
He breaks that pie in two, and seems a heap interested in something he
finds. I reckon he ain’t been eating none too good off nature, ’cause he
goes into that pie like a steam shovel into mud.
He masticates slower and slower, and an expression of pain comes across
his face. He looks at the piece of pie in his hand, and then lays it
tenderly into the tin. He spat out that mouthful of pie, along with a
cuss word that would gladden the heart of a professional mule-skinner,
and then gathers up tin and all and peers over the bank.
Swish! He sails that pan far out over the creek, and to the left of the
professor. It cuts a beautiful circle to the left, turns over and dips
to the right, and completes a shot that Magpie or no other man could do
again in a lifetime. It hit the professor slap in the chest and knocked
him off the rock. The pie must have been soggy to make it hold to the
tin thataway, and when it hit it busted like shrapnel.
_Yar-o-o-o-o! Yar-o-o-o-o-o!_ comes a howling up the creek, and down
through the timber comes Mighty Jones’ pack of hounds.
Magpie just simply fades away from there. I leans over the edge and
watches the scene below me. They’ve heard it, too. The professor is
standing on the rock, like a statue of “Science at Bay,” while the
doctor gives an action picture of “Lard Leaving the Log,” and he left it
backwards. He almost dried up the creek when he hit, and then the waters
closed over him.
I heard Phinney squeak like a rusty wheel, when the doctor went out of
sight, and then he lights running. D. F. are two of the initials the old
boy wears after his name, and right now I argues that they stands for
“Danged Fast.” The way he ambled out of there would keep an antelope
busy to imitate, and he hung on to his blanket, too. I sees the doctor
roll out on a sandbar below there, and head off into the brush after the
professor, and I says to myself—
“You keep that up for a while, old-timer, and that adipose tissue won’t
hamper you none to speak of.”
Then came the dogs. They comes down the creek, howling their heads off,
and behind them is Mighty Jones and two other men. Them dogs starts
milling around one spot down there, which is where the professor has
been setting. All to once a dog breaks out of the pack and beats it for
the creek, and some more follow him. Them dogs acts like they hadn’t had
a drink for a week.
Mighty gets off his bronc and examines the place where the dogs got so
excited, and pretty soon he holds up something in his hand.
“Pie!” he yells, and the rest of them comes up to examine it.
They tried to get the dogs to take up the trail, but all they will do is
lap water and howl their fool heads off.
Finally they decides to dispense with the dogs, and when I sees them
motion like they were coming my way, I pilgrims back to my bronc and
takes a roundabout way home.
The three riders and the dogs are there when I arrives, and the old lady
is right in her glory. She sure is peddling information to that bunch,
and they looks hostile to me when I shows up. I walks up on the porch,
after kicking a few dogs out of the way and faces them. One is Bill
McFee, our sheriff, and the other is “Scenery” Sims, his deputy, and of
course the third one is Mighty.
“Howdy, Bill,” says I. “How’s tricks?”
“Hunting for a little information, Ike,” says he. “Where’s Magpie?”
* * * * *
I looks them over, and feels foolish. It don’t pay to lie to the law,
and it don’t pay to lose fifty-three dollars either. I clears my throat,
and kicks another dog off the porch.
“Well,” says I, “Magpie he—he——”
“Don’t lie!” squeaks Scenery. “Don’t lie to us.”
“Anything you say may be used against you, Ike,” warns Bill.