CHAPTER IIITHE DESERT
“LET’S go!” cried Hunter Mangan, seated in the saddle, and cupping his lean, strong hands about his mouth.
At the cry a four-mule team moved off with a load of tents and took to the road that wound through Opaco, across the bridge, and through the rocky defile to the desert. A six-up team of horses followed with a load of lumber. Teams pulling strings of six-wheeled scrapers fell in line. Two-mule teams, four-mule teams, six and eight-mule teams swung into the impressive procession and followed. And soon a parade a mile and a half long was trailing in a cloud of dust through open-mouthed Opaco.
Midway in the procession Halfaman Daisy draped himself over a high spring seat and looked indolently down on the slick backs of six young mules. A cigarette hung from his lip at the corner of his sagging good-natured mouth. Halfaman’s load consisted of ranges and commissary stores, and just behind him, on a huge bundle of canvas lay Falcon the Flunky, flat on his back, gazing serenely up into the dusty desert sky.
“‘And the children of Amram; Aaron and Moses and Miriam,’” quoted Halfaman drowsily. “‘The sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phinehas’—that’s me—‘Phinehas begat Abishua.’ Abishua—that’s him! And I’m huntin’ him down—I’m on my way. I’m on the trail o’ the ‘Wing o’ the Crow’——
“Oh, I been a-down on-a the gumbo line,A-skinnin’ mules when the weather’s fine,A-shootin’ craps when the sun don’t shine,An’ now I’m a-ramblin’ to that baby mine!With the pay day—for me ba-bay!With the pay day of that gumbo line!”
“Oh, I been a-down on-a the gumbo line,A-skinnin’ mules when the weather’s fine,A-shootin’ craps when the sun don’t shine,An’ now I’m a-ramblin’ to that baby mine!With the pay day—for me ba-bay!With the pay day of that gumbo line!”
“Oh, I been a-down on-a the gumbo line,
A-skinnin’ mules when the weather’s fine,
A-shootin’ craps when the sun don’t shine,
An’ now I’m a-ramblin’ to that baby mine!
With the pay day—for me ba-bay!
With the pay day of that gumbo line!”
As a vocalist there was room for improvement in Mr. Halfaman Daisy, but he sang the old skinner’s song with a swing and gusto that entertained his lolling passenger.
“A-hikin’ through a camp on the ole S. P.,A gypo queen she a-throwed a kiss at me!The pay was a dollar, and the board cost three,But I stuck till she beat it with the cook, Hop Lee—And me pay day—oh, ba-bay!And me pay day on the ole S. P.!
“A-hikin’ through a camp on the ole S. P.,A gypo queen she a-throwed a kiss at me!The pay was a dollar, and the board cost three,But I stuck till she beat it with the cook, Hop Lee—And me pay day—oh, ba-bay!And me pay day on the ole S. P.!
“A-hikin’ through a camp on the ole S. P.,
A gypo queen she a-throwed a kiss at me!
The pay was a dollar, and the board cost three,
But I stuck till she beat it with the cook, Hop Lee—
And me pay day—oh, ba-bay!
And me pay day on the ole S. P.!
“How d’ye like that song, ol’-timer?” he drawlingly asked his friend.
“It’s interpretive, to say the least,” Falcon the Flunky vouchsafed.
“They’s a hundred and fifteen verses that I remember,” observed Halfaway, “but I’ll only spring ’em on you two or three at a time. Know what a gypo queen is?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of gypo queens, or shanty queens. A gypo man, or shanty man, as I understand it, is one who owns a very small, dilapidated construction outfit, and takes subcontracts in light work from a bigger subcontractor. His daughter—if he has a daughter—is usually in camp with him, and she flirts with the stiffs to keep ’em on the job, despite the poor grub and poor pay and long hours. Am I right?”
“Right as a fox,” Halfaman replied. “Say, you have been about the camps a little, ain’t you? Now, then—did you get an earful o’ my recent begattin’ remarks—pertickelerly the last, where I says: ‘Eleazar begat Phinehas. Phinehas begat Abishua?’”
“Yes, I heard.”
“And now another question, ol’-timer: You’re such an old head at the railroadin’ game, did you ever know anybody named Abishua?”
“I think not.”
“Uh-huh—I guess you’re right. It ain’t known generally that the bird I’m thinkin’ about is named Abishua. Only the members of his family and a few close friends—sounds like a newspaper tellin’ about a weddin’ or a funeral—only them know he’s got a Bible name like that. But his rightfront name is Abishua. And don’t forget that Phinehas begat Abishua. Phinehas—that’s me. And if I begat Abishua I’m a bigger Jasper than Abishua, ain’t I? Well, what I say goes. How ’bout it?”
“I am hoping,” remarked The Falcon dryly, “that if you keep on you you may tell me something.”
“Gi’me time, Jack—gi’me time,” retorted Halfaman. “Stick yer neck in th’ collar, there, ole tassel-tail! Gi’me time. So you’ve heard tell of gypo men and gypo queens, but you never heard of an Ike called Abishua. Well, then, did you ever hear of a gypo queen called Wing o’ the Crow?”
The Falcon turned on his side and looked down at Halfaman. “Wing o’ the Crow,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s picturesque. What about her?”
“Her is right. And Abishua begat Wing o’ the Crow. Believe me, ole Falcon, that was some begattin’!”
“Yes—go on.”
“Well, his name’s Jeddo—Abishua Jeddo. He’s a tall, bony shanty man with only one arm. And his eyes and his hair are black as a crow. So the stiffs monikered ’im ‘Jeddo the Crow.’ And what Jeddo the Crow begat is called Joy. She’s twenty-one years old, as dark as her dad; and say—you c’n look at her just as easy!
“Her ma’s dead. The girl was born in herdad’s gypo outfit, and she’s a gypo queen. But not like the rest of ’em. Oh, no! She don’t slip none of ’em a kiss on the side to keep ’em followin’ Jack and Ned for Jeddo the Crow. No, no! Get fresh with her, and she’ll bend a pick handle over your frontispiece. She works in the cook shack, waits table, washes the dishes, and then goes out and hitches up a team and moves dirt till mealtime again. Or she c’n stick pigs”—load scrapers without wheels, commonly called “slips”—“swing a drillin’ hammer, skin four-up or six-up or jerkline—do anything on a railroad grade, by golly! And purty! Say, am I gettin’ talkative?
“Well, anyway, she’s her dad’s right-hand man. Bein’ one-armed, he couldn’t run the outfit without Wing o’ the Crow. And now d’ye savvy where she gets that moniker! Ole Jeddo the Crow is shy a wing, but he’s got the girl. So she’s Wing o’ the Crow to the stiffs. And purty—— But now I know I’m gettin’ talkative!”
“You’re very entertaining,” admitted Falcon the Flunky. “But I’m curious to know what brought Jeddo the Crow and Wing o’ the Crow to your mind just now.”
“Huh! That’s easy! ‘Phinehas begat Abishua,’ and Abishua gotta do what Phinehas says. An’ ole Phinehas he says: ‘Jeddo the Crow he’s so reckless with giant powder and things he’s likely to lose his other wing. And he’d better prepare forit by gettin’ another wing in the family beforehand.’ That’s what Jeddo the Crow’s begatter says.”
“Oh-ho! I think I begin to understand. It may be that out over the desert there Wing o’ the Crow is in camp, waiting for her Phinehas.”
“Well, if she ain’t there now she’s gonta be soon. Say, mule, poke yer neck furder into that, will you? Gonta be soon, ole Falcon. And Phinehas crossed four States like a ramblin’ kid to be there, too.
“Oh, when I’m a-ramblin’ down to rest,Just ramble me out into the Golden West,On a ramblin’ train, on a ramblin’ quest.To die like a rambler on the tramp queen’s breast!On pay day—oh, ba-bay!On a pay day lay me down to rest!”
“Oh, when I’m a-ramblin’ down to rest,Just ramble me out into the Golden West,On a ramblin’ train, on a ramblin’ quest.To die like a rambler on the tramp queen’s breast!On pay day—oh, ba-bay!On a pay day lay me down to rest!”
“Oh, when I’m a-ramblin’ down to rest,
Just ramble me out into the Golden West,
On a ramblin’ train, on a ramblin’ quest.
To die like a rambler on the tramp queen’s breast!
On pay day—oh, ba-bay!
On a pay day lay me down to rest!”
“Is it all settled between you and the young lady of the picturesque moniker, Halfaman?”
“Settled! I’ve chased them crows from coast to coast! Worked for half wages and et two suppers in one night! Beans? I hate the sight o’ beans—unless Wing o’ the Crow boils ’em! Settled! I’ve lost weight and ambition and everything to get things settled. But on this job, boy, I’m gonta make one big effort to nail the Wing o’ the Crow to a convenient tree. I won’t be with Mangan long after Jeddo the Crow gets perched out there,’cause I gotta get that gypo queen this time or lose me reason. I’m what you might call distraught right now.
“Oh, a-Jeddo the Crow he’s a gypo man,Gotta sling-bloke harness and a movin’ van,Gotta three ole mules and a wheeler pan,But I’ll stick around forever if I can-can-can!Without a pay day—oh,ba-bay!Without a pay day from that gypo man!
“Oh, a-Jeddo the Crow he’s a gypo man,Gotta sling-bloke harness and a movin’ van,Gotta three ole mules and a wheeler pan,But I’ll stick around forever if I can-can-can!Without a pay day—oh,ba-bay!Without a pay day from that gypo man!
“Oh, a-Jeddo the Crow he’s a gypo man,
Gotta sling-bloke harness and a movin’ van,
Gotta three ole mules and a wheeler pan,
But I’ll stick around forever if I can-can-can!
Without a pay day—oh,ba-bay!
Without a pay day from that gypo man!
“I didn’t just make that up. Whoever did I don’t savvy. But I guess he was nuts about Wing o’ the Crow like I am. And, say, when a plug tells the truth right out like I do, he sure is nuts, ain’t he? Oh, well, at the worst I’m a ramblin’ kid. Now, I’ll say this is some desert—what, ol’-timer?”
The Falcon looked and gloried in the sight.
Away to the east appeared a hazy line of irregular calico buttes. To the south and west the pine-studded ridges of the mountains rose. Between them, level as a dance floor and covered sparsely with yucca palms, bronze greasewood, sage, and innumerable dry lakes, lay the colorful desert baking in the sun. Now and then a lone coyote stood staring, then slunk away mysteriously through the low growth.Tecolote, the wise-eyed little desert owl, perched himself on the dirt heap beside his hole in the ground and scolded at them, brave as a lion.Lean jack rabbits hopped away indifferently through the avenues of the greasewood. Halfaman pointed ahead with the long whip that he never seemed to need for another purpose.
“I think we’re makin’ for the saddle in that range o’ buttes,” he said. “That’s where the ole road comes through and hits the desert—our old road, boy. I think Squawtooth Ranch is about in there. That’s where we’re gonta camp, I hear. Boy, boy! Pass me that ole water bag. Make haste or I die! ‘And Phinehas begat Abishua!’”
Higher and higher mounted the yellow dust cloud. On and on into the mocking desert forged the wagon train, a long, winding snake whose joints were men and teams and vehicles—a mere worm wriggling slowly over a yellow carpet in the banquet hall of the gods.
Evening on the desert, with the mountains casting their long shadows athwart the rapidly cooling land. Three black specks, far apart, but drawing together slowly at a converging point between them and the squat adobe house at Squawtooth, with its sheltering cottonwoods and its oasis of green alfalfa set like an emerald in a sheet of yellow brass.
The three black specks grow larger and larger—two galloping horses, the one a pinto, the other a bay, and a mouse-colored pack burro—the California chuck wagon. A girl rides the pinto, a boythe bay, the burro trotting ahead of the latter. The boy and girl wave their hands at each other and gallop on. The ponies neigh greetings; the burro adds his mournful “Aw-ee-aw!” Two of the specks now become one. Side by side in the cow pony trot, Manzanita and Martin Canby ride home together from a day on the desert, the burro, with Martin’s camp outfit, trotting ahead.
Manzanita was colored almost as brown as the stumpy trunk of the beautiful shrub after which her mother had named her. Her hair was chestnut. She usually wore it in two girlish braids that reached to the bottom of her saddle skirts. Her eyes were hazel. With the possible exception of the waxen plume of the Spanish bayonet, there was nothing prettier nor more graceful on the desert; and the hill-billies and desert rats of the male persuasion would not have admitted the exception. One thing certain, the plume of the Spanish bayonet was far more dignified than its animate beauty rival. She rode with the ease of an amazon in her silver-mounted man’s saddle—a prize won at a rodeo for horsewomanship—and carried a holstered Colt .38 on a .45 frame for company. She wore a man’s hat with a rattlesnake band, an olive drab shirt, fringed leather chaps, and riding boots.
Martin Canby was just a freckle-faced, chapped, spurred, sombreroed kid of the desert—live as aneel, all grins, good nature, and backwardness. He was three years younger than Manzanita.
“Well, kid, did you find those strays?” asked the girl.
“Yes—a dozen of ’em. That old breechy bunch with them calves. They’d wandered down the mountainside and was makin’ it for Caldron Cañon. Ask me why? I dunno. No grass down there like’s up on top. Cows don’t know nothin’.”
“Your speech is artistic,mi hermano. Say ‘Cows don’t know anything.’”
“‘Cows don’t know anything,’” repeated Mart dutifully. “Has pa got back from Opaco?”
“Quién sabe!Hadn’t when I left home. I don’t expect him before to-night.”
“What’d he go for, anyway? Said he wanted to see ‘Flip’ Globe. What’d he wanta see Flip for?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea, Martie.”
“I have,” Mart declared. “Not what he wanted to see Flip about, but what took ’im to Opaco. I met ‘Splicer’ Kurtz this afternoon. He was comin’ down from the mountains for somethin’—I forget what. Said he heard yer friend Mangan had got into Opaco with his outfit. If that’s so, pa went to see Mangan. What’ll ye bet?”
“Nothing. I’m positive he rode in for the sole purpose of seeing Mr. Mangan and that the Flip Globe story was—well, just a story.”
“Pa Squawtooth sure took to that Mangan, didn’t he, Nita?”
“Si, señor. Yo penso.”
“And I know why! I know why!” Mart sang boyishly, wrinkling his snubbed and peeling nose at his sister.
“Oh, you do! Well, let me tell you something, old kid—he’s on a wild-goose chase. This Hunter Mangan seems to be a pretty square sort of a fellow. But that ends it so far as I’m concerned. Between you and me, podhead, I don’t dislike Mr. Mangan nearly so much as I pretended I do to Pa Squawtooth. That is, personally, you understand. But I do detest what he represents—the railroad through Squawtooth. I don’t want it there; and if I had my way it would never be there. Pa Squawtooth, old money snob that he is, thinks it the finest thing on earth, of course. It’s a wonder he didn’t try to have it through the front yard, with a depot before the door! It’ll ruin my desert—that’s what it’ll do! Soon folks will be moving in and taking up land, and—oh, dear!—it makes me sick to think of it!”
“Aw, what d’you care? We’ll have lots fun when the camps get here.”
“You will, maybe, but I won’t. And furthermore, Mr. Wiseman Pod, you don’t know whether even you will have fun, as you so youthfully express it. What do you know about camps like that? Youknow nothing of the world that you haven’t seen between a cow’s horns,muchacho. Maybe you’ll have fun, and maybe you won’t.”
Mart grasped his saddle horn and leaned toward the ground, hooking the counter of one of his high-heeled cowboy boots about the cantle. Mart had been still entirely too long. With ease he grasped a bunch of the plant called squawtooth, which gave the district its name, and five spears of which, shaped like the ribs of a fan, was the Squawtooth brand. Mart held on for dear life while his pony polled. The slender, fluted, rushlike spears were tough and held tenaciously; and next instant Mart was unhorsed and standing on his head in the sand.
His sister shouted with derisive laughter. “You’re a goose!” she cried. “Watch me!”
Leaning low in the saddle, she set her mare at a gallop toward a bunch of squawtooth that upreared itself from a bed of fine desert sand. As the pinto neared it Manzanita swung toward the earth, hooked a heel about her cantle, and grasped the plant as the mare sped by.
This was an old game of the two. The squawtooth was tenacious; sometimes they were able to snap it off, sometimes otherwise. If not, and they refused to loose their hold——
Well, in this instance, too, there was a flutterof leather chaps, a girl spinning head down in air, and a smothered plup in the sand bed.
A hundred yards apart brother and sister sat on the ground and watched their horses and the burro, the latter with his shaggy head down and playfully kicking to right and left, racing off toward home without them.
“Le’s walk!” shouted Mart. “Darn that burro! There goes my fryin’ pan!”
The girl brushed the sand from her hair and ears and eyebrows.
“All right!” she sputtered. “And there goes your bacon, too! And that last looked like a loaf of bread. As I was saying,” she continued serenely when he came up to her, “you know nothing whatever about railroad-construction camps. Neither do I, and I’m content in my ignorance. I know just what pa means to do. He’ll invite Mr. Mangan and any of the rest of the bosses that he thinks are big bugs to the house; and he’ll do everything in his power to make me interested in one of them—Mangan, of course, since he’s supposed to be the wealthiest of all of them. Oh, he makes me sick! Say—wait a minute; my boot’s full of sand.”
She sat down, removed her elaborately stitched tampico-top riding boot, shook the sand from it, and dusted her stocking. Mart waited, chewing absently on a spear of squawtooth. Mart had been told by the Indians that to chew squawtooth wasgood for kidney trouble. Mart did not know that he had kidney trouble, and he did not like the bitter taste of squawtooth. But considering that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, he chewed it all day long when riding the desert and mountains after cows.
“There! That feels better.”
Manzanita had slipped her boot on again and removed her silver spurs. Side by side they plodded on through the clinging sand.
“Darn themcaballos!” muttered Mart.
“You should say, ‘Darn thosecaballos,’ brother mine.”
“‘Darn thosecaballos,’” seriously repeated Mart, chewing his squawtooth and stooping to recover his frying pan.
“But I’ll fix Pa Squawtooth,” Manzanita went on. “I’ve got it all planned out. He can’t sell me like one of his beef stock to any moneyed man. I’m going to revolt.”
“What d’ye mean revolt?”
“Can you keep your young face closed?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, then, I’m going to make monkeys out of Pa Squawtooth and any one who contemplates aiding and abetting him in the crime of making a lady out of me. I’m going to pretend to fall right in with the big scheme of getting friendly with themen in the camps. I’m going to pick me a railroader and make up to him. Listen, kid brother—I’m going to pick out the least prominent person in the whole shooting match—the man who gets the lowest pay of all of them, the scum of the camps. And I’ll at least give him the time of his young life. Say, won’t they be sick, podhead! Try to make a monkey out of me! We’ll see who’s a monkey by the time I’m through. Mart, I’m going to be a regular little devil! You watch!”
“That’ll be fun,” Mart observed sagely. “Who you gonta make out like you’re stuck on, Nita? Say, that was my side o’ bacon! Here she is half covered with sand. That ole skate o’ yours stepped on her!”
“It’s all right. Dust it off, and it’ll be good as ever. Sand’s good for your craw. It’s a wonder you wouldn’t learn how to throw a diamond hitch on a pack, Mart. But listen: Mr. Mangan told me all about the camps, and the different kinds of work the men do. I’m going to make friends with the man who wallops the pots in the Mangan-Hatton cook tent. I don’t care who he is or what he’s like. Pa says I’m a roughneck, and I’ll at least show him he’s right about that. I’m going to get stuck—as you so vulgarly put it—on the helper of Mangan’s cook. They call him a flunky, Mr. Mangan said. Now you keep that under your hat, will you?”
“Sure,” Mart promised, still taking his kidney treatment.
Then suddenly he stopped in his tracks and pointed across the darkening desert toward Opaco. “What’s that big dust cloud?” he wondered. “Can’t be a whirlwind—she’s too big. Say, Nita! That’s Mangan’s outfit a-comin’. What’ll ye bet?”