CHAPTER XXVITHE MORON
HAD they not considered themselves so entirely alone in a vast wilderness, the ears of Shanty Madge and Cole of Spyglass Mountain long since would have been acute to the low rumble of California Bill’s heavy six-mule wagon. But the past few minutes had been tense ones with these two, and they had heard no sound until the little hoofs of Bill’s mules left a sandy stretch in the road and clicked upon the rocks.
Madge and Joshua stood still and listened, and now all of the sounds that are a part of a heavily laden mountain wagon on the move were distinguishable—the click of hoofs, the grumble of the shifting load, the crunch of the six-inch-tired wheels, the creak of leather, the jingle of harness hardware. And soon a great bulk hove in sight, growing mysteriously out of the night like a huge shadowy leviathan climbing up out of the sea.
There came a hail. California Bill had glimpsed the twinkle of the campers’ fire.
“By golly, it’s California Bill!” Joshua exclaimed. “I didn’t know he was behind me. I’ll poke up the fire and get him something to eat while he’s ’tending to his skates.”
Then he lifted his voice in welcome.
California Bill dexterously swung his straining team out of the ruts in the road, and, with the cargo swaying perilously from side to side like a top-heavy tug in a pyramidal sea, he drew up beside Joshua’s load of lumber, where the six mules stopped without command and fluttered their pink nostrils in a “blow.”
“Hello, there, Cole of Spyglass Mountain!” came the cheery greeting from the top of the load. “An’ I’m an ornery beef critter if Shanty Madge ain’t here, too! Say, Tony, I learned a new word at Spur to-day. What’s one o’ these here morons they’re talkin’ about these days? Fella at Spur called me one, an’ I didn’t know whether to slap ’im on the wrist or not—an’ that’s what ye might call an embarrassin’ situation.”
Joshua laughed. “You’re anything but a moron, Bill, so you should have slapped him. But get off and feed and water your stock while I throw some ham and eggs in the pan for you. We’ll talk about morons later.”
“Is it awful bad to be one, Tony?” Bill chuckled as he clambered down. “I thought this bird thought I was some kind of a Filipino. I didn’t want to be that, either, but I didn’t want to show my ignorance. Say, why didn’t ye wait for me, Tony?”
“I didn’t know you were in, or I would.”
“Yes—but I load from cars at the far end o’ town. I guess that’s why you missed me. They told me you was in and gone ag’in, and I lit out after ye, two hours behind, thinkin’ sure my six could overtake those two old chuckawallas o’ yours.”
“Be careful, Bill!” warned Madge. “These are my mules, remember.”
“Yes’m, I guess they are. But if ye’ll cast yer yellow eyes over these here marvels I’m drivin’ ye’ll admit that ‘chuckawallas’ is right.”
“My eyes are not yellow!” retorted Madge.
“They’re tagger eyes, that’s what they are—dangerous eyes. But quit pickin’ on me, Madge. I was tellin’ Tony that I hadn’t meant to ramble out till th’ followin’ mornin’, but when I heard he was on th’ road I says I’ll ketch ’im, an’ we’ll make the merry pilgrimage together. But I hada confoun’ breakdown th’ other side o’ Bobcat Point an’ it set me back. But I knew ye’d camp here, Tony, so I kep’ th’ shavetails ramblin’. An’ here we are, allhi-yu skookum!
“But about them moron fellas, Tony?” Bill was busily engaged in unharnessing his mules while he rattled on, and Shanty Madge had gone to help him. “Wasn’t it morons that th’ U. S. soldiers fought in th’ Philippines?—those boys that swung th’ mean bolos an’ was plumbcultusin a scrap?”
“Not quite,” Joshua laughed. “The morons are worse than that, Bill.”
Bill stopped stock-still in the midst of leading his swing team to the watering trough, and the mules pressed past him, one on either side, until they were straining toward the trough at the ends of their lead-ropes.
“I know what they are,” Bill declared with conviction. “They’re them birds in Utah that have a dozenmujeresapiece! I never thought o’ that till this confoun’ minute—seems. And here I ain’t got even one woman to love me. I sure oughta slapped that Ike! Guess I’ll hook ’im up an’ go back to Spur an’ ’tend to it.”
“Bill, if you don’t hurry up with those mules and close that crack in your face I’ll throw this grub in the fire and go to bed,” warned Joshua.
“Mules,” said Bill, “hear that? Nomuck-a-muckfor us if we don’t quit our foolin’.” And he loosed the lead straps, whereupon the mules dispensed with his services entirely and rushed to the trough, to bury their velvet muzzles deep in the water and wash out the desert dust.
When Shanty Madge had finished helping California Bill with his teams she bade the men good-night, and refused to allow Joshua to carry her bedding to the little nook she had chosen on the hillside. She tripped away carryingon her head a roll of blankets and a single mattress, which she had packed down on the unridden mule. Joshua sat down with Bill to keep him company while he ate.
Bill took an enormous mouthful of ham, and nodded at Joshua’s load of lumber, dimly outlined by the firelight.
“Quite a jag you got,” he said, which is the Western way of describing a heavily laden wagon and is not designed to cast reflections on one’s state of insobriety.
But before Joshua could agree with him Bill’s intensely black eyebrows lifted themselves and a blank look crossed his face.
“By golly, that reminds me!” he cried. “I’d forgot all about my passenger till I said th’ word ‘jag.’ He’s on top o’ my load playin’ with th’ angels—or he was when night come over th’ desert. Mighta fell off, f’r all I know—he’s lit from th’ toenails to th’ eyeballs an’ way ports. Ole pal o’ yours, Tony—this bird they call Th’ Whimperer. He was at Spur, all het up like an enjine, an’ I gentled ’im down an’ offered ’im a ride back to Ragtown. Shall I prod ’im off an’ throw a feed into ’im? Guess he must be one o’ these here morons, but he’s got two legs an’ don’t pick up hismuck-a-muckwith his toes.”
“You’ve got The Whimperer on that wagon?”
“If th’ desert wind didn’t blow ’im off.”
“And he’s drunk?”
“Drunk an’ rarin’ to make speech. Talked th’ arm off me till th’ breakdown th’ other side o’ Bobcat Point, then he went exhausted an’ pressed hay f’r th’ rest o’ th’ trip. An’, say, Tony, he was tryin’ to talk about you. Said you an’ me was friends, an’ he wanted me to make an appointment—seems—f’r him to meet ye an’ smoke th’ pipe o’ peace. Says he’s got somethin’ to slip ye in th’ way of information. But I take it he won’t eat. He’s got a bottle on his hip, an’ he’s hittin’ it to drive th’ sidewinders awaywhenever he’s awake. Le’s let ’im pound his ear till mornin’.”
“I don’t think I care to see him at all,” mused Joshua. “He’s heard of the money I got from Demarest, Spruce and Tillou, and probably wants to slip me a ream or two of whimpermeter for a touch.”
“Say, you don’t always talk English either, do you?” chuckled California Bill. “Seems like in this country every jasper’s got a language of his own. But I’d see this pelican, Tony. I think he knows somethin’. Ye might find out who threw that thirty-thirty bullet into ye that time.”
“Did he tell you anything about that?”
“No; but, as the fella says, he hinted darkly. But wait’ll mornin’. Le’s spend the rest of our interestin’ conversation on the subject of morons before we hit th’ hay.”
Joshua laughed as he lighted his pipe at the glowing end of a twig from the outskirts of the hot ashes.
“Well,” he said, “do you know what a bromide is?”
“That ain’t what a fella takes when he’s tryin’ to sober up, is it?” asked Bill, with a devilish twinkle in his slate-blue eyes.
“You know I don’t mean that,” Joshua accused.
“Well, I guess I read about th’ kind o’ bromides you mean somewheres,” Bill admitted. “They say a lot that somebody’s already said, don’t they?”
“I never heard a more concise definition,” Joshua applauded. “Well, in an effort to be as concise myself—a moron is a bromide, only worse.”
Bill pondered deeply, his coal-black eyebrows drawn down, one stubby digit fingering the iron-gray hair at his temple.
“A moron,” Joshua amplified, “believes that prohibition prohibits. He believes what the advertisers of breakfastfoods have to say about their products, and he makes his stomach believe it, too.”
Bill nodded understandingly.
“He believes that, if the politician he votes for is elected, he will get what he longed for when he cast his vote.”
Bill nodded again.
“And,” continued Joshua, “when he doesn’t get it, he believes heisgetting it.”
California Bill allowed himself a chuckle.
“He believes that this country has free speech. He knows it has because he read an editorial to that effect in his morning paper. And on the front page of that paper he read of twenty men being sent to the penitentiary because they made remarks which, in effect, merely voiced their dissatisfaction with the accepted order of things and called for a change.”
“Whoa!” cried Bill. “That’s radicalism! I took some o’ those birds to th’ pen’ myself.”
“It is not necessarily radicalism,” Joshua denied. “It’s merely commonsense. We’re not talking politics, remember, Bill. We’re simply trying to dismember the patient moron for our own enlightenment.”
“Pump another cartridge into th’ bar’l,” offered Bill.
“A moron believes that the man who doesn’t own an automobile can’t afford one.
“If he owns a Remington typewriter, there is no other typewriter on the market worth twenty cents.
“And if his Remington becomes useless because of a fire, and his grandfather sends him an Underwood to soothe his soul, no typewriter on the market except the Underwood is worth twenty cents.”
“I know saddle tramps that are morons,” interjected Bill. “But, say, Tony, I was jest kiddin’ Shanty Madge to-night when I said what I did about her mules.”
Joshua’s gray eyes twinkled at this.
“The moron,” he continued, “reads his newspaper from the first page to the last, but he’ll usually tell you that he doesn’t care very much for fiction.
“He believes that Christians follow the teachings of Christ.
“He doesn’t realize that, if Christ came on earth again, you, maybe, would be called back to Chaparral County to take him to the penitentiary.
“When he writes a business letter he always begins: Yours of the ’steenth received and contents noted. In regard to same will say—
“Bill, I could continue all night dissecting the common, or garden, variety of moron. Then there’s the highbrow moron to be dealt with, too. But I haven’t time, and I think you know what a moron is, anyway. But I’ll add just one more trait by which you may always know one when you meet one. A moron is convinced that he is the only person on earth who isn’t a moron.”
“What’s the population of the United States?” asked Bill, after a period of thought.
“Something over a hundred million, I believe.”
“Huh!” snorted Bill. “So many as that? But you and me, Tony, we’re—”
“Look out, Bill! Be careful!”
Bill’s pudgy hand darted to his mouth and covered it in that boyish gesture which so greatly amused his friend.
“Maybe I am one, after all,” he said, when he dared remove his hand. “But how’d that bird down there to Spur get onto it?”
“What happened, Bill?” Joshua questioned him.
“Well, he’s the boss o’ th’ supply deepo down at Spur, an’s got th’ job o’ buyin’ an’ receivin’ all th’ stuff for Demarest, Spruce and Tillou, an’ gettin’ it started on itsway to the camps. He’s one o’ these dapper little fellas, with a nice white collar on, an’ a gold pencil to figger with, an’ one o’ these here slim cigarette holders about a foot long always between his teeth.
“‘What!’ he says to me. ‘D’ye mean to tell me that ye won’t take two more sacks o’ hams on that load?’
“‘Brother,’ I says kindly, ‘two sacks o’ hams weighs four hundred pounds, and four hundred pounds is four hundred pounds too much. I won’t takeonemore sack.’
“‘An’ I thought you called yourself a mule skinner,’ he says, with one o’ these here movin’ picture sneers.
“‘In a way,’ I says, ‘I am. These here mules,’ I says, ‘are willin’, pullin’ fools, an’ it’s been whispered that California Bill c’n handle ’em. I know a load when I see it. I got it now.’
“‘You’re nothin’ but a joke,’ he says. ‘Why, I myself know more about mules than you ever dreamed of. You’ll take two more sacks o’ hams or I’ll fire you.’
“Then I’m up an’ at ’im—seems—all spread out linguistically. ‘Neighbor,’ I says, ‘you didn’t hire me, an’ ye can’t fire me. Why, you couldn’t fire a cigarette. This here’s th’ mosthi-yu skookumteam bustin’ collar-stitchin’ between here an’ Ragtown, an’ I’m th’ mosthi-yu skookumnursemaid to a mule that ever lost a currycomb. I was skinnin’ mules when yer maw was scoldin’ yer paw f’r not keepin’ his hand in th’ middle o’ yer back when he walked th’ floor with ye at night. You don’t know a mule from a mulley cow. If all th’ mules I’ve wrangled was to stand a mile away an’ kick in your direction, th’ wind from their heels would scare you into a cyclone cellar. Why, ye puny little dude, if ye was to get one whiff of a mule’s collar after a hard day’s pull ye’d get cholera morbus. If real mule skinners like me was only gettin’ ten cents a day,’ I says, ‘you couldn’t get ten cents a month for skinnin’peaches in a cannery. Go put on an apron an’ swat flies! You think a mule’s born with his tail shaved, don’t ye? If ye had a mule an’ lost ’im on th’ desert, ye’d go out an’ try to run down th’ first jackrabbit ye saw, thinkin’ he was him. If I was to cut a mule’s ears off,’ I says, ‘an’ tie a couple o’ them cigarette holders like you got on top his head, ye’d think he was a ji-raffe who’s maw had forgot to teach him how to squat behind. There,’ I says, ‘now you be good, or I’ll crawl up there an’ drag ye down an’ make ye kiss my off lead mule, then kill th’ mule before he kills me.’
“An’ as I drives loftily away he begins on me, with his pink little jowls shakin’ like a pup dyin’ of strychnine poisonin’, ‘You—you—you—!’
“An’ then I turns an’ looks ’im square in th’ eye an’ kinda pulls in on all six lines. And he finishes:
“‘You—youmoron!’
“And, confound ’im, I hadn’t a word to say, ’cause I didn’t know what he’d called me. Le’s hit th’ hay, Tony—it’s gettin’ late.”