CHAPTER XXIVWATER AT RAGTOWN
JACK MONTGOMERY proved himself to be an affable young man, admittedly wise in the ways of the world, distinctly of the earth, earthy. Joshua inferred from his conversation that the contracting firm of which his father was the head was struggling along bravely without meddlesome advice from him. He spent a great deal of his time out of the mountains, and had much to say about recent plays, repeated many golf-links stories, and claimed that if he hadn’t returned to the mountains when he did he would have danced his head off. When in the mountains he rode about on horseback from camp to camp, “kidding” his friends, and visiting Shanty Madge. He was older than Joshua. He had been graduated from an Eastern college, and considered the achievement sufficient laurels on which to rest.
There were two distinct reasons why Joshua Cole did not like him: He was insincere, and he thought himself in love with Shanty Madge. Montgomery laughed at Joshua’s theory of life on Mars, and though it was plain that he recognized in the young astronomer a man with the capacity for deep thinking, he treated him with a sort of polite tolerance which Joshua found hard to bear.
Montgomery considered himself a modern gentleman. Joshua Cole was the scion of a long and illustrious line of gentlemen. With no social training whatever beyond what his mother had given him before he was sent to the House of Refuge, the instinct with which Joshua had been endowedat birth gave him an air which convinced others that he was a man of culture. Montgomery was patently puzzled at this, especially after he learned that Joshua had been a hammerman for Demarest, Spruce and Tillou until he had stopped the slide.
Madge and Montgomery talked about many things that did not concern or interest Joshua, so he gave his attentions to Mrs. Mundy, and together they planned their future on the homesteads. When Joshua took his leave, an hour after the noonday meal, he was unable to interpret Madge’s attitude toward Jack Montgomery. He realized fully, however, that Jack had many things to offer her, which, if Joshua were to attempt an offer of the same, would call for sacrifices too great for him to make. It would mean his complete abandonment of the study of astronomy and his immediate acceptance of Demarest’s impulsive offer—in short, Montgomery’s offerings spelled money with a capital M.
Now Joshua became a busy man. First, he mailed his check to a Los Angeles bank and opened an account. Next, he sent two thousand dollars to the publishers of a scientific journal, in which he had seen advertised a second-hand eight-inch telescope. It had been the property of an astronomer who had recently died, and his family, having no use for the instrument and finding themselves in need of money, had made an offer to dispose of it at an astonishing sacrifice. If the publishers considered the telescope all that it should be, Joshua’s letter authorized them to turn over the check to the owners and to at once ship the instrument to him. His great fear was that the bargain had been snapped up long ago, for when he first saw the advertisement his longing heart had not dared to hope that in less than a month he would be in a position to avail himself of the opportunity. And his next move was to gather togetherhis pitifully few belongings—including the half-constructed telescope which was now become a mockery—and, with a small tent and camp outfit, which California Bill freighted in for him, go to his claim and establish residence.
Then when his tent was pitched under the sprawling junipers, and his provisions cached, he took stage for Spur and train for Los Angeles, where he notified the land office that he had taken up residence on his claim. But another matter had brought him to the city, for he could have notified the land office in the form of a letter. The next morning after his arrival found him in a saddlery store, where he gave in to a natural inclination to emulate a drunken sailor and bought a saddle, a bridle, and a set of martingales.
For Joshua Cole, despite his seriousness, still cherished the boyish ambition to ride in a picturesque saddle and appear as a picturesque son of the West. Great thinkers invariably have tucked away in their brains a little spring, which, when unexpectedly released, reveals a flaw in their mental equilibrium. The flaw is always some delightfully, laughably human conceit, trait, hobby, or perhaps merely a great longing for something unattainable and amusingly foreign to what they have set out to do in life. And the flaw in the brain of Joshua Cole demanded a prancing horse, a hand-carved saddle with low-swinging tapaderos, a plaited, silver-mounted bridle with martingales to match, and some one to stare at him open-mouthed as he rode by. Can Joshua be forgiven for this, when we remember that Ben Jonson took great delight in counting the pickets of a fence as he walked along, and, if he made a mistake, retraced his course to rectify the error, and that Edgar Allen Poe was inordinately proud of the small size of his feet?
The horse he bought upon his return to the desert, one ofwhich California Bill had told him, a dapple gray five years old, half broncho, quarter Kentucky thoroughbred, and quarter just horse. And Joshua was five hundred dollars poorer, but gloriously content, as he rode into Ragtown, bought a sack of tobacco—though he had a full sack in his pocket and a carton of them in camp—and then galloped on around the lake toward home. The erstwhile owner of the gray had called him Prince, but Joshua had changed his name to Argo. He could sail over the desert, his fine white mane and tail a-stream in the wind, like the mythical ship that sailed with the Argonauts questing for the golden fleece. But there was another reason why Joshua called him Argo!
Joshua did not at once buy lumber with which to build his shacks, for he was waiting until the Mundys had settled their affairs with Demarest, Spruce and Tillou, when they would order together, and perhaps he would haul the loads with such equipment as the Mundys could manage to save. So for the present he occupied his time by sinking a shallow well and beginning his trail up Spyglass Mountain.
Unfortunately there was no spring on Joshua’s land, but the piece taken by Mrs. Mundy boasted one. However, Joshua struck good water twelve feet from the surface. He lined his well with stones and covered it with brush until such time as he could build a wellcurb over it.
Argo was content on a picket rope down by the lake, where the saltgrass grew. The wandering cattle did not disturb him, but their constant cropping of the grass made it necessary to move the horse quite frequently. When the well was lined Joshua began mapping out his trail to the top of the mountain, and while he was engaged in this Madge rode up one day and shouted to him to come down.
Joshua discarded his pick and shovel and retraced that part of the trail already made. Madge had dismountedbefore his tent, and was sitting on her heels, cowpuncher fashion, holding the black’s reins in her hand.
“Well, Joshua, here you are,” she said. “We’ve been wondering why you have deserted us, but I suppose you’ve been busy.”
“I intended to ride around to-morrow,” he explained, and proudly pointed to his new equestrian outfit and the dapple gray at graze beside the lake.
“My! My!” she cried. “What a spendthrift! But I haven’t time to stop long. I just rode over to tell you that we’ve paid our pound of flesh and are almost ready to move onto the homestead. We’ll have about two thousand dollars in the bank, and I saved two span of my best mules, with harness, a couple of good wagons, a few slips and a scraper, all of the blacksmith tools, lots of hand tools, and—oh, a lot of junk! We feel quite prosperous. And now we’re through. Ma and I have nobody to depend on now but you. So whenever you’re ready, we’ll appreciate it if you will come over and help us move.”
“I’ll be over to-morrow morning,” he told her. “Are you glad it’s over with, Madge? Will you be content?”
“I’m glad it’s all over—yes. And as to my being content, you’ll have to take a shrug for an answer. Couldn’t you ride over to-night with me, so we can get to work early in the morning?”
“You bet!” cried Joshua, and grasped his saddle by the horn to shoulder it. “Let’s go!”
At ten o’clock the following morning Joshua drove a team of mules hitched to a laden wagon from the camp that the Mundys were deserting forever. Argo and Madge’s black gelding followed the wagon on lead-ropes. Shanty Madge, with her mother on the seat beside her, drove the other wagon and followed Joshua, and behind her trailed a wheeler. The white-aproned cook came out as they passedand waved his cap. A flunky at the woodpile lowered his ax and called good-by. Up at the works some of the men spied them, and a long shout of good will came down to them. The new manager, a Demarest, Spruce and Tillou man, hurried from his office tent, and, finding himself too late to offer his hand, stood spread-legged and waved his wide-brimmed hat.
There were tears in the reddish-brown eyes of Shanty Madge as she waved back right and left, but she straightened her sturdy shoulders and shouted ahead, a little tremblingly, to Joshua:
“Push ’em in the collar, old-timer! It’s a long trip, and we’ve got a load!”
“You poor dear brave child!” said her mother. “This is breaking your heart, yet you’re taking defeat like your father always did—with a shrug of the shoulders, and up and at ’em again!”
“Pooh!” sniffled Madge. “One has to experience a setback now and then, Ma, to get new adventures out of life and keep from growing stale. This is gonta be good! Hey, Joshua!” she shouted ahead. “I feel like an old-time pioneer! Thus was the wilderness subdued! Hey, old-timer?”
“Thus was she subdued!” Joshua shouted back.
Philip Demarest had been considerate in settling up with Shanty Madge, and to cover her indebtedness had selected such articles as would be of no use to her as a homesteader. So Madge had been permitted to help herself to commissary supplies and baled hay, and there were three more loads to be hauled after they were settled. Demarest’s thoughtfulness had made it possible for the homesteaders to fill their larder for many months to come, but there were a few things still needed, and to buy them Joshua stopped his little wagon train at Ragtown about one o’clock.
While he was watering the stock Madge made the few purchases that were necessary. It was Ragtown’s quietest hour, for the revelers were still sleeping off the drunkenness of the night before and the gambling games had not yet opened up. From the doors of saloons here and there came an occasional loud voice or a burst of throaty laughter, breaking in harshly on the mountain stillness.
As Joshua was leading his team from the trough to make room for Madge’s he saw, leaning against the corrugated-iron front of The Silver Dollar, his kid enemy of the House of Refuge, Felix Wolfgang. He was the picture of lassitude. A brown-paper cigarette hung from his lower lip. He wore a fancy striped-silk shirt and a vest made of green billiard-table topping, with six five-dollar gold pieces for buttons. The vest was open, showing the flowing ends of a black-satin tie, its knot held firm by a diamond stickpin. A broad-brimmed Stetson hat, carefully creased to a Mexican peak, looked enormous above his cadaverous face and seemed to cause his many freckles to stand out more plainly. His eyes were insolent, as always, as he gazed with half-interest at Joshua, which interest was quickened as Shanty Madge’s lithe figure came from the store and post office and crossed toward the wagons.
She was scarce ten feet from The Silver Dollar when several men appeared behind her in the door. They watched her as she crossed the street and mounted to the elevated seat beside her mother. Then a man slightly behind the rest pushed his way through and came staggering after her.
“Lee, c’mere! C’mon back here, Sweet! Get onto yerself!” called several voices in semi-guarded tones, but the man paid no heed and kept on across the road.
He was such a man as one seldom sees in cities. He was a tall, burly giant, well proportioned and with a stride that was confident for all its present wobbliness. His face waslarge and red, and a half-moon of leonine whiskers, coarse and curly as a frayed-out hempen rope, encompassed his jaw. He wore a Columbia-shape black Stetson, a purple-and-green-plaid flannel shirt, a black-silk neckerchief with a silver clasp, fringed leather chaps, and high-heeled cowboy boots with fancy quilted tops of morocco leather, on the counters of which hung large-roweled silver-mounted spurs. Petulant, domineering brown eyes were set deep in his unsymmetrical skull, and the corners of them displayed “sleepy men,” caused by a night of drinking and a morning of fortification against repentant hours to come.
Once more some man called to him to come back and “’tend to his own business,” but his chap-clad legs whistled on until he swayed before the astonished Joshua.
“So you’re the Ike they’re callin’ Cole of Spyglass Mountain, are ye?” he wanted to know, and he made no effort to drive sarcasm from his tones.
“I believe I’m to be called that,” Joshua replied good-naturedly. “But I didn’t know it had got around as yet.”
“Huh! Fancy bird, ain’t ye?”
Joshua smiled tolerantly. “You’d better go back to The Silver Dollar, hadn’t you?” he asked. “Your friends want you, I think.”
“Ye do, eh? Well, ye ain’t supposed to think. D’ye know who I am?”
“I haven’t the pleasure of your acquaintance,” said Joshua in an amused drawl.
“Haven’t th’ pleasure, eh? Well, then, I’ll interdooce myself. I’m Lee Sweet, owner o’ Box-R Ranch, halfway from here to Spur. Now d’ye know me?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of you,” Joshua told him. “If you’ll please stand to one side, Mr. Sweet, I’d like to lead that other team to the water trough.”
“Ne’mind th’ other team, young fella. I got somethin’to tell ye. An’ it’s this here: You’re th’ bird that started this here homesteadin’ around th’ lake, and now a lotta folks are comin’ in an’ takin’ up good grazin’ land. Ye can’t raise nothin’ on that soil—it’s plumb full o’ alkali. Ye’ll all starve to death. An’ ye might’s well make up yer mind to beat it. That land ain’t good for anythin’ but grazin’ cows in summer, an’ at that the pickins is poor enough. But all that’s neither here ner there. My point is that ye gotta get outa there before I drive ye out. Do I make myself pretty plain, pardner?”
“But you wouldn’t stop me from watering those mules, would you?” laughed Joshua in an attempt to humor him. “Won’t you please stand aside a little? Then when you’re feeling better, come over and see me and we’ll talk about this matter.”
“I’m feelin’ fine right now,” Sweet declared. “An’ right now’s the time for me to tell ye I won’t stand fer ye buttin’ in on my summer pasture.”
“Well,” said Joshua, “the government has allowed our homestead claims and we’ve made some rather extensive arrangements to go ahead and develop them. I think you’d better see the land office, Mr. Sweet, if you have any complaint to make. Really, now, I must be watering this team so that we can be getting on. We’ve a pile of work to do before nighttime comes.”
“Ne’mind waterin’ the team now”—and the cattleman placed himself between Joshua and Madge’s mules. “What’re ye gonta do?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Joshua: “If you don’t get out of my way right now, so that I can lead that team to the water, I’m going to shove you out of the way. I’ve stood about all of the browbeating that I usually contract to stand from anybody. Will you let me water this team, now?”
“T’ hell with yer team! You get yer things an’ pack up, and beat it outa—”
But at this point Mr. Lee Sweet was pushed violently backward by Joshua Cole, and he lost his balance and sat down in a very undignified manner.
Unconcernedly Joshua started toward the heads of Madge’s span of mules, and then the girl shouted a warning from her seat:
“Look out, Joshua! He’s up and—”
Joshua swung about just in time to ward off a blow from one of the stockman’s heavy fists, but before he could retaliate a stubby-fingered hand fell on Sweet’s shoulder, and from then on he had to deal with California Bill.
“Tut-tut-tut!” came Bill’s soothing drawl. “Lee, I’m ashamed of ye, all lickered up before these here ladies, an’ carryin’ on plumbcultus, like ye’re doin’! An’ you with a wife an’ a couple o’ th’ nicest kids this side th’ Tehachapi! Lee, ye don’t carry yer licker like ye usta—seems. Come on back to Th’ Silver Dollar an’ try to get a little sleep.”
The big bewhiskered cattleman stood stock-still and made no move to show his resentment over the interference of California Bill. Over in front of The Silver Dollar a crowd had gathered, watching the altercation in silence. Slim Wolfgang continued to lean listlessly against the building, his hat drawn down low over his eyes of faded blue, the cigarette still drooping from his thin and sallow lips.
“You mind yer own business, Californy!” Lee Sweet said to the freighter, but he said it in a way that convinced nobody that he meant to follow the implied threat with physical action.
“You darned ole fool!” chuckled California Bill, slappingthe cowman on the back. “C’mon over to Th’ Dollar now, an’ try an’ get on yer feet. These here folks ain’t botherin’ ye, Lee. Why,—why, I’m jest naturally surprised at ye, ol’-timer! Here’s you, th’ king o’ the mountains, ye might say, tryin’ to start a quarrel with these here people on th’ public highway. Le’s you’n’me go h’ist a couple f’r ole-times’ sake, Lee!”
The big fellow looked into Bill’s genial face for a moment or two, and then an expression came over his own that twisted his features as if he had tasted alum water. His bearded lips trembled, and began working spasmodically, like the lips of a burro sorting bunchgrass from a nest of spiny cactus. And behold, two great tears streamed down into his beard, and his voice broke into a tremulous boo-hooing that brought a fit of laughter from Shanty Madge.
“There, there!” soothed California Bill, winking at his friends and boyishly holding back his laughter with a broad hand placed across his mouth. “There, there, ol’-timer! Ye didn’t mean what ye was sayin’ a-tall, Lee—jes’ th’ ole licker talkin’, eh? And ye’re sorry an’ all, and these here folks forgive ye ’cause they understand. Now le’s you’n’me go over to Th’ Silver Dollar and study our blame’ old nerves. C’mon, Lee—that’s th’hi-yu skookumthing for us to do.”
And sobbing and sniffling, the brawny cowman allowed himself to be led across the street by the stocky freighter, whose head came below the giant’s shoulders. Bill looked back as he guided his charge along and winked mischievously, and once more placed his unoccupied hand across his lips like a boy who laughs at his elders behind their backs.
“Can you beat that?” came slangily from Shanty Madge. “I wonder if that’s the way California Bill tookmen to the penitentiary when he was deputy sheriff up in Chaparral?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Joshua, at last able to lead the thirsting shavetails to the trough. “But I didn’t know we’d created any enmity. I’m sorry this occurred, but it’s just as well that we know how matters stand.”
California Bill came rolling across the street before Joshua had mounted to his wagon seat.
“Hello, there, folks!” he cried, shaking hands all around, the crow’s-feet dancing under the thick patches of coal-black hair above his eyes. “Seems like for once I was Johnny-on-th’-spot. He’d ’a’ fought ye, Tony, all right, but they ain’t any harm in ’im when he’s sober. Jes’ a big blusterer, an’ ye don’t wanta pay any attention to ’im a-tall. He’ll rave an’ faunch about ye’re bein’ th’ one to start th’ raid on his grazin’, but he’s harmless. He’s weepin’ over th’ bar now, an’ don’t know I’ve left ’im—seems. An’ so ye’re on yer way to Spyglass Mountain at last, eh? I gets in last night, an’ was wonderin’ about ye. An’, Tony, ye sure taught yer grandmother to suck eggs when ye sat down on that slide, didn’t ye? Ye’re th’ most talked-ofhombresouth o’ th’ Tehachapi right now. Five thousan’ bucks, eh? C’n ye believe it? I can’t. I never saw that much money in my life.”
“Here’s that forty that you saw not long ago and then lost track of, anyway,” laughed Joshua, tendering bills to the amount that his friend had loaned him.
“Well, I’ll take ’er—seein’s it’s you, Tony. An’ look at our new saddle an’ bridle, will ye? Say, Tony—them arehi-yu skookuman’ nomis-take. That’ll make ye a character—that an’ yer doin’s on Spyglass Mountain. I been spreadin’ that name broadcast from here to Spur, an’ ag’in th’ trains begin tootin’ on th’ new railroad, they’ll be runnin’ excursions up here to see Cole o’ Spyglass Mountain.Ye got a heap o’ taste, my son—a rarin’hi-yu skookumtaste, I’ll say! Now, them’ll make ye unique, Tony—an’ that’s what ye want. An’ ye jes’ wanta ride into Ragtown on that rarin’ gray I picked fer ye, with this here lovely outfit on ’im, get off seriouslike an’ walk into th’ post office, with yer head down an’ lookin’ neither to th’ right ner left, get yer mail, tell th’ storekeep to give ye a big two-bit Havana seegar in a low, quiet tone, light up, take a couple puffs, an’ then go out an’ fork th’ gray ag’in an’ ride off slowlike, with yer head still down an’ yer thoughts on Mars, never sayin’ a word to nobody.”
“Bill, you’re an old hypocrite,” Madge accused.
“Yes’m, I guess ye’re right, Madge. But I know what a fella’s gotta do to become a character. I’m one—I oughta know. Well, so-long, folks! Ye gotta be goin’, I know. Drift ’round an’ see ye next time I ramble in. So-long, now—be good!”
As the wagons drove out of town Felix Wolfgang continued to lean against the front of The Silver Dollar and watch them from under his pulled-down peaked hat.