Scipio looked at them solemnly. He explainedhow much he would like to sell cheap, if only he were a medicine-man like Horacles.
“You medicine-man?” they asked the assistant clerk.
“Yes,” said Horacles, pleased. “I big medicine-man.”
“Ah, nah!” The soft, mocking words ran among them like the flight of a moth.
Soon with their hoods over their heads they began to go home on their ponies, blanketed, feathered, many-colored, moving and dispersing wide across the sage-brush to their far-scattered tepees.
High Bear lingered last. For a long while he had been standing silent and motionless. When the chorus spoke he had not; when the chorus laughed he had not. Now his head moved; he looked about him and saw that for a moment he was alone in a way. He saw the Virginian reading a newspaper, and his friend “Sippo” bending down and attending to his leg. Horacles had gone into an inner room. Left on the counter lay the pack of cards. High Bear went quickly to the cards, touched them, lifted them, set them down, and looked about him again. But the Virginian was
High Bear galloped away into the dusk
High Bear galloped away into the dusk
High Bear galloped away into the dusk
reading still, and Scipio was still bent down, having some trouble with his boot. High Bear looked at the cards, shook his head sceptically, laughed a little, grunted once, and went out where his pony was tied. As he was throwing his soft buckskin leg over the saddle, there was Scipio’s head thrust out of the door and nodding strangely at him.
“Good night, High Bear. He big medicine-man.”
High Bear gave a quick slash to his pony, and galloped away into the dusk.
Then Scipio limped back into the store, sank into the first chair he came to, and doubled over. The Virginian looked up from his paper at this mirth, scowled, and turned back to his reading. If he was to be “left out” of the joke, he would make it plain that he was not in the least interested in it.
Scipio now sat up straight, bursting to share what was in his mind; but he instantly perceived how it was with the Virginian. At this he redoubled his silent symptoms of delight. In a moment Horacles had come back from the inner room with his hair wet with ornamental brushing.
“Well, Horacles,” began Scipio in the voice of a purring cat, “I expect y’u have me beat.”
The flattered clerk could only nod and show his bright, false teeth.
“Y’u have me beat,” repeated Scipio. “Y’u have for a fact.”
“Not you, Mr. Le Moyne. It’s not you I’m making war on. I do hope there’s no hard feelings—”
“Not a feelin’, Horacles! How can y’u entertain such an idea?” Scipio shook him by the hand and smiled like an angel at him—a fallen angel. “What’s the use of me keepin’ this store open to-morrow? Nobody’ll be here to spend a cent. Guess I’ll shut up, Horacles, and come watch the Injuns all shoppin’ like Christmas over to your place.”
The Virginian sustained his indifference, and added to Scipio’s pleasure. But during breakfast the Virginian broke down.
“Reckon you’re ready to start to-day?” he said.
“Start? Where for?”
“Sunk Creek, y’u fool! Where else?”
“I’m beyond y’u! I’m sure beyond y’u for once!” screeched Scipio, beating his crutch on the floor.
“Oh, eat your grub, y’u fool.”
“I’d have told y’u last night,” said Scipio, remorselessly, “only y’u were so awful anxious not tobetold.”
As the Virginian drove him across the sage-brush, not to Sunk Creek, but to the new store, the suspense was once more too much for the Southerner’s curiosity. He pulled up the horses as the inspiration struck him.
“You’re going to tell the Indians you’ll under-sell him!” he declared, over-hastily.
“Oh, drive on, y’u fool,” said Scipio.
The baffled Virginian grinned. “I’ll throw you out,” he said, “and break all your laigs and bones and things fresh.”
“I wish Uncle was going to be there,” said Scipio.
Nearly everybody else was there: the Agent, bearing his ill fortune like a philosopher; some officers from the Post, and the doctor; some enlisted men, blue-legged with yellow stripes; civilians male and female, honorable and shady; and then the Indians. Wagons were drawn up, ponies stood about, the littered plain was populous. Horacles moved behind the counter, busy and happy; his little mustache was combed, hisornamental hair was damp. He smiled and talked, and handled and displayed his abundance: the bright calicoes, the shining knives, the clean six-shooters and rifles, the bridles, the fishing-tackle, the gum-drops and chocolates—all his plenty and its cheapness.
Squaws and bucks young and old thronged his establishment, their soft footfalls and voices made a gentle continuous sound, while their green and yellow blankets bent and stood straight as they inspected and purchased. High Bear held an earthen crock with a luxury in it—a dozen of fresh eggs. “Hey!” he said when he saw his friend “Sippo” enter. “Heap cheap.” And he showed the eggs to Scipio. He cherished the crock with one hand and arm while with the other hand he helped himself to the free lunch.
To Scipio Horacles “extended” a special welcome; he made it ostentatious in order that all the world might know how perfectly absent “hard feelings” were. And Scipio on his side wore openly the radiance of brotherhood and well-wishing. He went about admiring everything, exclaiming now and then over the excellence of the goods, or the cheapness of their price. His presence was soon no longer a cause of curiosity, andthey forgot to watch him—all of them except the Virginian. The hours passed on, the little fires, where various noon meals were cooked, burnt out, satisfied individuals began to depart after an entertaining day, the Agent himself was sauntering toward his horse.
“What’s your hurry?” said Scipio.
“Well, the show is over,” said the Agent.
“Oh, no, it ain’t. Horacles is goin’ to entertain us a whole lot.”
“Better stay,” said the Virginian.
The Agent looked from one to the other. Then he spoke anxiously. “I don’t want anything done to Horacles.”
“Nothing will be done,” stated Scipio.
The Agent stayed. The magnetic current of expectancy passed, none could say how, through the assembled people. No one departed after this, and the mere loitering of spectators turned to waiting. Particularly expectant was the Virginian, and this he betrayed by mechanically droning in his strongest accent a little song that bore no reference to the present occasion:—
“Of all my fatheh’s famileeI love myself the baist,And if Gawd will just look afteh meThe devil may take the raist.”
“Of all my fatheh’s famileeI love myself the baist,And if Gawd will just look afteh meThe devil may take the raist.”
“Of all my fatheh’s famileeI love myself the baist,And if Gawd will just look afteh meThe devil may take the raist.”
The sun grew lower. The world outside was still full of light, but dimness had begun its subtle pervasion of the store. Horacles thanked the Indians and every one for their generous patronage on this his opening day, and intimated that it was time to close. Scipio rushed up and whispered to him:—
“My goodness, Horacles! You ain’t going to send your friends home like that?”
Horacles was taken aback. “Why,” he stammered, “what’s wrong?”
“Where’s your vanishing handkerchief, Horacles? Get it out and entertain ’em some. Show you’re grateful. Where’s that trick dollar? Get ’em quick.—I tell you,” he declaimed aloud to the Indians, “he big medicine-man. Make come. Make go. You no see. Nobody see. Make jack-rabbit in hat—”
“I couldn’t to-night,” simpered Horacles. “Needs preparation, you know.” And he winked at Scipio.
Scipio struggled upon the counter, and stood up above their heads to finish his speech. “No jack-rabbit this time,” he said.
“Ah, nah!” laughed the Indians. “No catch um.”
“Yes, catch um any time. Catch anything. Make anything. Make all this store”—Scipio moved his arms about—“that’s how make heap cheap. See that!” He stopped dramatically, and clasped his hands together. Horacles tossed a handkerchief in the air, caught it, shut his hand upon it with a kneading motion, and opened the hand empty. “His fingers swallow it, all same mouth!” shouted Scipio. “He big medicine-man. You see. Now other hand spit out.” But Horacles varied the trick. Success and the staring crowd elated him; he was going to do his best. He opened both hands empty, felt about him in the air, clutched space suddenly, and drew two silver dollars from it. Then he threw them back into space, again felt about for them in the air, made a dive at High Bear’s eggs, and brought handkerchief and dollars out of them.
“Ho!” went High Bear, catching his breath. He backed away from the reach of Horacles. He peered down into the crock among his eggs. Horacles whispered to Scipio:—
“Keep talking till I’m ready.”
“Oh, I’ll talk. Go get ready quick,—High Bear, what I tell you?” But High Bear’s eye was now fixedly watching the door throughwhich Horacles had withdrawn; he did not listen as Scipio proceeded. “What I tell everybody? He do handkerchief. He do dollar. He do heap more. See me. I no can do like him. I not medicine-man. I throw handkerchief and dollar in the air, look! See! they tumble on floor no good,—thank you, my kind noble friend from Virginia, you pick my fool dollar and my fool handkerchief up for me,muy pronto. Oh, thank you, black-haired, green-eyed son of Dixie, you have the manners of a queen, but I no medicine-man, I shall never turn a skunk into a watermelon, I innocent, I young, I helpless babe, I suck bottle when I can get it. Fire and water will not obey me. Old man Makes-the-Thunder does not know my name and address. He spit on me Wednesday night last, and there are no dollars in this man’s hair.” (The Virginian winced beneath Scipio’s vicious snatch at his scalp, and the Agent and the doctor retired to a dark corner and laid their heads in each other’s waistcoats.) “Ha! he comes! Big medicine-man comes. See him, High Bear! His father, his mother, his aunts all twins, he ninth dog-pup in three sets of triplets, and the great white Ram-of-the-Mountains fed him on punkin-seed.—Sick ’em, Horacles.”
The burning eye of High Bear now blazed with distended fascination, riveted upon Horacles, whom it never left. Darkness was gathering in the store.
“Hand all same foot,” shouted Scipio, with gestures, “mouth all same hand. Can eat fire. Can throw ear mile off and listen you talk.” Here Horacles removed a dollar from the hair of High Bear’s fourteenth daughter, threw it into one boot, and brought it out of the other. The daughter screamed and burrowed behind her sire. All the Indians had drawn close together, away from the counter, while Scipio on top of the counter talked high and low, and made gestures without ceasing. “Hand all same mouth. Foot all same head. Take off head, throw it out window, it jump in door. See him, see big medicine-man!” And Scipio gave a great shriek.
A gasp went among the Indians; red fire was blowing from the jaws of Horacles. It ceased, and after it came slowly, horribly, a long red tongue, and riding on the tongue’s end glittered a row of teeth. There was a crash upon the floor. It was High Bear’s crock. The old chief was gone. Out of the door he flew, his blanket over his face, and up on his horse he sprang,wildly beating the animal. Squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry, rushing over the ground, leaping on their ponies, melting away into the dusk. In a moment no sign of them was left but the broken eggs, oozing about on the deserted floor.
The white men there stood tearful, dazed, and weak with laughter.
“‘Happy-Teeth’ should be his name,” said the Virginian. “It sounds Injun.” And Happy-Teeth it was. But Horacles did not remain long in the neighborhood after he realized what he had done; for never again did an Indian enter, or even come near, that den of flames and magic. They would not even ride past it; they circled it widely. The idle merchandise that filled it was at last bought by the Agent at a reduction.
“Well,” said Scipio bashfully to the Agent, “I’d have sure hated to hand y’u back a ruined business. But he’ll never understand Injuns.”
Out of the door he flew,—squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry
Out of the door he flew,—squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry
Out of the door he flew,—squaws and bucks flapped after him like poultry
Thecabin on Spit-Cat Creek lies lonely among the high pastures, and looks down to further loneliness across many slanting levels of pine-tops. These descend successively in smooth, odorous, evergreen miles until they reach the open valley. Here runs the stage road, if you can discern it, from the railway to the continuously jubilant cow-town of Likely, Wyoming; and here, when viewed from the cabin through a field-glass, you can readily distinguish an antelope from a stone in the clear atmosphere which commonly prevails. The windows of the cabin are three, and looking in through any of them you can see the stove, the table, and the ingenuous structure which does duty as a bed. During the season of snow, from November until May, the cabin (in the days of which I speak) was dwelt in by no one; while through the open weather some person of honesty and resource would be sent thither from the headquarters ranch on Sunk Creek two or three times, to stay no longer thanhis duties required, and to come back with his report as soon as they should be performed. Such a man would live here with canned food and the small stove, seldom having other company than his own, and, if he had ears for the music of nature, the singing pines would often companion him, he could hear now and again some unseen bird crying as it passed among them, and always the voice of Spit-Cat. This stream foamed by the cabin to fall and wander deviously away into the great, distant silence of the mountains. Likely was eighteen miles distant, and to this place the man could ride in four hours by a recently discovered trail, which was the shorter one, and followed the smaller tributary stream of Spit-Kitten; and sometimes the man did so ride for his mail, or for more canned food, or for a game of chance and female company, in the continuously jubilant cow-town of Likely, Wyoming.
Upon a midday in June, had you secretly peered through any of the windows in the cabin, you could have seen a seated man, tightly curved over the table and apparently dying in convulsions brought on by poison; for the signs of a newly finished meal were near him. There wasa coffee-pot, and a dish of bacon, and three quarters of a pie. But it was merely Scipio Le Moyne endeavoring to write a letter; and no task more excruciating was known to this young man.
“Dear friend,” he had begun, “i got no dictionery, but—”
At this point a heavy blot had intervened as he was changing the personal pronoun into a capital I.
“Oh, gosh!” he sighed, and for a while could spell no more. He sat back, staring at the paper. “It’s not to a girl,” he presently muttered. “I guess I’ll not start a fresh sheet.” And while the perspiring Scipio laid his nose to his pen and dragged himself onward from word to word, a bad old gentleman with a black coat and a white beard was coming stealthily up from the valley through the thick pines. He was still some miles away, and he meant to look in at one of the windows, and regulate his conduct according to what he should then see. He was by no means sure that Scipio had what he wanted, which was as much money as he could get, or any fraction thereof; but he had a shrewd suspicion that he could ascertain this without any extreme use of deadly weapons.
Scipio Le Moyne was making his first stay in the Spit-Cat cabin, and in his mind there welled a complacency not to be justified; for when a thick roll of money is in a man’s trousers, and the man’s trousers are upon the man, and the man is writing a letter at a table, you see at once how unsafe the money is if the man’s six-shooter is lying out of reach on the bed behind him. It should be hanging at his hip, or in the armhole of his waistcoat, or stuck elsewhere handily about his immediate person. And so it would have been on any ordinary day of Scipio’s life; but alas! on this day he was writing a letter, and was therefore not quite accountable. There were many things that he did not enjoy—cooking, for example, or a bucking pony, or gun trouble in a saloon; but these worries he could usually meet. The only crisis which invariably disturbed him (except, of course, having to talk to Eastern ladies when they visited the Judge’s ranch) was to be face to face with ink and a pen. After his midday meal this noon he had reclined upon his bed, putting off the hateful moment. Thus recumbent he had unbuckled his belt for comfort and got none, for the letter made him restless. At length, with a mind absent from everythingsave the coming ink and pen, he had gone to them, forgetting his revolver among the rumpled blankets.
Complacency welled in his mind because of errands accomplished. He had been trusted, and he had a pride in it deeper than any words he was willing to utter, and a gratitude which he would express by inference alone. He would do everything that they had given him to do so well that it could not be done better; that is how he would thank his friend, the Sunk Creek foreman, for giving him this chance to show his abilities—and his radical honesty. (Scipio was not in the least honest on the surface.) He would take no man’s word for an inch of the work that he had been sent to oversee on both sides of the mountain; he would visit the various camps when he was not expected; every cow to be bought should be bought on his own inspection and not on the seller’s assurances. But these trusts were little compared with the heavy wages that he was carrying to pay off certain men when certain work should be finished. He had hoped to be rid of this at once, but late snows and high water had delayed the work.
Scipio Le Moyne was among the newcomersat the headquarters ranch on Sunk Creek. His character had not yet been tested by a year’s scrutiny. He was known to ride and rope well, and to cook indifferently, and to return from town having behaved himself less ill than the worst; but Judge Henry had drawn back from putting in his hands a temptation so potent as the wages. Much ready money is a burning argument for a disappearance. To these cautious sentiments of the Judge his foreman had replied scarcely more than “I have studied Scipio mighty thorough.” To Scipio himself, the friend for whose character he was thus pledging his good judgment, he merely remarked, “Stay with the money.”
“Stay with it!” exclaimed Scipio, nearly overcome by his feelings. He wanted to hug the foreman; and lest his eyes should betray something, he narrowed them to a wicked slit, and put on the disguise of jocularity. “If y’u say so, I’ll stay with it till I come home with it.”
The usually sharp-witted foreman was at a loss.
“Sure!” Scipio explained. “I’ll pay the boys what they’re owed, and take ’em into Likely and win it back off ’em. Why, it’s the kind of plan y’u might think of yourself.”
“You’re cert’nly shameless,” murmured the foreman.
“So my enemies all say,” retorted Scipio. Thus had he departed to Sunk Creek.
And now, having done well most things he was sent to do, his heart was so grateful to his friend that he would conquer his distaste for the pen, and write a long letter without a single word of thanks in it—the thanks would merely be between every line. The truly heavy load of responsibility was still with him, but safe with him; that money would go into the hands of the men at the Flat Iron outfit to-morrow, and surprise them. Had he not been adroit? No one suspected he was the paymaster. Visiting Likely once for his mail and some supplies, he had been obliged to spend the night there. His prudence as to whiskey and general abstemiousness of conduct that night might point, he feared, to the fact that he carried money he was “staying with.” He even felt a certain observation to attend his movements. He therefore began to speak deceitfully to the company he sat among. Had anybody else, he inquired, been through here from Sunk Creek? Nobody else had, it appeared; and Scipio smoked for a while.
“Well,” he remarked at length, with a certain gloom, like one who speaks from an offended heart, “a man don’t enjoy bein’ mistrusted. Not if there’s never been nothing to justify it.” He said no more, waiting for some one to draw the desired inference from this utterance.
After a matter of some five minutes the inference was appreciated, and he received a counter-offer, so to speak, a trifle too obviously aimed. “Them hands at the Flat Iron,” said the offerer, “has most finished their job, ain’t they?”
“I don’t know about them,” said Scipio, keeping in the land of inference. “I’ve finished mine, I know.” Then, after a proper pause and with proper bitterness, he finished: “If folks can’t trust me they can’t hire me.”
It was lightly handled, and it did its work in Likely. All Likely gossiped next day about how Judge Henry would not let Scipio handle the Flat Iron money, and how Scipio let his feelings be shown too plain for self-respect—all Likely, save one close observer. The old gentleman with the black coat and the white beard thought that it was odd in Scipio to behave so carefully during his night in town, odd and interesting to drink nothing and go to bed early in the hotel. “Thatkind don’t,” he said to himself; “not usually when they’re mad at their employer and goin’ to quit their job.” The old gentleman did not gossip, but grew thoughtful. One morning he got on his old pink mare, and took a quiet trail for Spit-Cat. He thought he knew the way, but lost himself, and luckily met a man on the stage road who directed him up the old, established trail. Or rather, it was lucky that he lost himself, else he would have arrived before Scipio had unbuckled his pistol and forgotten everything in the world but this letter he was knee-deep in.
“Dear friendI got no dictionery but if any of my spelling raises your suspicions you can borrow a dictionery at your end and theirby correct my statements which are otherwise garranteed to be strictly accurite. Hope you are well I am same. Have a good notion not to sine this for you will know my tracks without more information. Well buisniss first and I will try run in a little pleasure for you if my nerve holds out but that blot will tell you I am not myself just now. You said I was shameless but you are dead wrong about me. To think of the way you lied to those poor boys about the frogs has made me blush in bed after many a day when my own concience was at piece.I have looked after the new ditches I had to attend to them a whole lot they are all right now but they were not the young yellowleg who calls himself a civil engineer I guess because he looks at a grade through a machine on three sticks instead of with his naked eye was making trouble. He was arranging for the water from Crow Canyon to run up hill. We got it started the right way yesterday but that civil engineer does too much fingering with his pencil to suit me he has a whole box full of sums in arrithmetic. The fences are satisfactory. I was oblidged to turn half the cattle back the man thought I was one of those who do not know a cow when they see one but he has gone home realizing his poor judgment. And now that is all except I am paying off the extra hands at the Flat Iron outfit to-morrow or next day sure and now for pleasure as my hand has got limbered up wonderful and no longer oblidged to blast out every word with giant powder like I had to all around the start where you see those blots. I guess the words are going to get to chasing each other off this pen before I am through telling you something.
“I have noticed a thing. Be the first to tell a joke on yourself it deadens the blow. WellHoney Wiggin has found out about this so I am going to hurry up and get ahead of his news. Likely is the town here as you know and twenty hours is still the record for driving to it from the railroad but there is a new trail from here to Likely by Spit-Kitten it saves an hour so I am living an hour nearer the fashion than you told me I would be when you gave me this job. But it was by no means to be fashionable that I had to go over to Likely though it is a good place for a man who wants to and this cabin is not fashionable a little bit but my flour gave out. The last of it was eat up by Honey Wiggin who stopped here one night and told me about the trail by Spit-Kitten witch he claimed was easy except in one place by what they call the Little Pasture. You come on the fence on the side hill up among the trees where they have been cut down some and Honey said follow the fence a good ways maybe three miles he thought but not more and you would see the place where the trail took off down the hill through the same kind of trees pretty thin growing and pines mostly till you would come to the edge and see the town down below about half an hour more riding. Honey went over the mountain to Flat Iron and I caughtup my horse and started for Likely. The trail was all right unless for a horse packed heavy and I did not hurry any for I knew I had the night to put in in town and I was in no haste to get there because I could have no enjoyment when I did on account of the money. I was invited a lot when I got there but though I have been going to bed the same day I got up for many weeks I was taking no risk. But that is not my point it is the Little Pasture I want to speak of. It got shady while I was following the fence which I struck all right but I did not mind and I was studying up something to tell any folks that might inquire about the money for Flat Iron for I have to practiss lying I am not quick at it like you. Well sir I went along getting up some remarks and then picking out them I considered to be the most promissing but after a while I says to myself it must be most three miles I have come along this fence. But Honey Wiggin is not special close about distances, and so I went along rejecting some of the remarks I had picked out and putting stronger ones in their place and pretty soon I knew I must have come five miles anyway for Japan can walk three miles an hour and I had looked at my watch. I made Japan lope and thenI made him gallup and then something struck me like a flash and I got off him and I tied my hankerchef to the fence and me and Japan gallupped like we was both crazy and it was not twenty minnits till we came round to my hankerchef again. I expect the pasture is three miles round but cannot say how many times I circled her. I struck out for myself then and come to another fence and that was the one Honey meant, only he says now he told me to look out and not take the first fence.
“In Likely I went to bed the same day I got up and I slept in my pants with the money and can say I will be glad when—”
Here Scipio Le Moyne looked up from his letter, for the old gentleman stood in the door and wished him good morning. It was not morning, but let that go. The old gentleman had taken his observations through the window behind Scipio and had been much pleased to notice the six-shooter among the blankets. He had observed everything: the pie, the letter, all things inside the cabin, and also that outside the cabin Scipio’s horse was grazing in the little field, and therefore not instantly serviceable. His own animal he had tied to a tree a little distance within the timber.
“Good morning,” he said.
Scipio’s entire inward arrangements gave a monstrous leap, but his outward start was very slight. “Hello, Uncle Pasco!” said he cheerfully. “Are y’u lost?” And he sat in his chair quite still.
Uncle Pasco stood blinking in his usual way. “No,” he returned. “Not lost. Just off trappin’. That’s what.” His voice was an old man’s, dry and chirping, and his sentences proceeded in short hops. He had seen Scipio’s one-quarter inch of movement, and he read that movement with admirable insight: it had been a quickly arrested and choked impulse to get to those blankets. And Scipio had done some reading, too. He saw Uncle Pasco’s eye measuring distances, and he could discern no sign whatever of pistol upon the old gentleman. This rendered him extremely cautious, and his thoughts worked at a remarkable speed. Uncle Pasco did not have to think so quickly, for he had begun his meditations in Likely several days ago, and they were all finished as far as they could be up to the present juncture. Even the most ripened strategist must leave some moves to be determined by the fluctuations of the battle.
“Been off trapping’,” repeated Uncle Pasco.
“What luck?” Scipio inquired.
“Poor. Poor. Beaver gettin’ cleaned out of this country. That’s what.”
“Better sit down and eat,” said Scipio. “Take your coat off and stay a while.”
Uncle Pasco’s glance rested on the pie a moment, and then upon Scipio’s ink-covered sheets. “M—well,” he said doubtfully, for Scipio’s ease had now put him in doubt, “I got to get back to Likely. Pie looks good. Pie like mother made. That’s what. M—well, you’re busy. Guess you want to write your letter.”
Scipio now looked at his letter, and drew inspiration from it, a forlorn hope of inspiration. “Why, you don’t need to start for Likely so soon,” he remarked with a persuasive whine. “What was the use in stoppin’ at all? Eat the balance of the pie and take the new trail—if your packs are not loaded heavy.”
“Spit-Kitten?” said Uncle Pasco.
“Yep,” said Scipio. “Saves an hour.”
“Ain’t been over it,” said Uncle Pasco.
“Can’t miss it,” said Scipio. “Your pack’s light?”
“M—well,” answered Uncle Pasco, doubtfully, “fairly light.”
“Sit down,” said Scipio. “I’ll tell y’u about the trail while you’re eatin’ the pie.” He made as if to rise and offer the only chair in the room to Uncle Pasco. This brought Uncle Pasco immediately to his side.
“Keep a-sittin’,” the old gentleman urged. “Keep a-sittin’, and draw me a map. That’s what. Map of Spit-Kitten.”
“Here,” began Scipio, wriggling his pen across a blank sheet, “runs Spit-Cat. This here cross is this cabin. Stream’s runnin’ this way. Understand?”
“That’s plain,” said Uncle Pasco.
“Here,” and Scipio wriggled his pen at right angles to the first wriggle, “comes Spit-Kitten into the main creek—right above this cabin. See? Well. Now.” Scipio began dotting lines. “You follow the little creek up,so. Then you cross over to the left bank,so. And you go right up out of a little canyon (you can’t if your packs is heavy loaded, for it’s awful steep and slippery for pretty near a hundred yards) and you come out on top clear going—gosh! I’ve got to take another sheet of paper—well, now y’u go down easya mile or two and keep swinging to your right, and about here”—Scipio now sprinkled some points on the paper—“the trees begin gettin’ scattery and you look out for a fence on your left. You follow that fence for—well, I’d not say whether it’s three miles or four—it’s that noo pasture the Seventy-six outfit calls their Little Pasture, and before y’u come to the corner where there’s a gate by a gushin’ creek I don’t know the name of, you’ll notice the hill goin’ down to your right all over good grass and mighty few trees, and if it’s dark you’ll see the lights of the town below and the trail takes off right about where you’ll be standing this way” (Scipio scratched an arrow), “and don’t y’u mind if it looks like a little-worn trail, for that’s the way it is, and y’u can’t miss it on that hillside. See?”
“That’s plain as day,” said Uncle Pasco, accepting the two sheets of the map and sliding them into his own pocket. He still stood beside Scipio, irresolutely, considering the lumpy appearance of Scipio’s pocket. A handkerchief with a bag of tobacco might produce such a bulge.
“Fine day,” said Scipio. “Better stay a while.”
“Good weather right along now,” said Uncle Pasco.
“Time it was,” said Scipio, “after the wettin’ the month of May gave us. Boys doin’ anything in town lately?”
“Oh, gay, gay,” returned Uncle Pasco. And he ran a pistol against Scipio’s head. “Out with it,” he commanded. “Cough up.”
It is possible, under these circumstances, to refuse to cough, and to perform instead some rapid athletics which result in a bullet-hole in the wall or ceiling, to be forever after pointed to. But the odds are so heavy that the hole will be in neither the wall nor the ceiling that many people of undoubted valor have found coughing more discreet. Scipio coughed.
“Uncle Pasco,” said he gracefully, “I didn’t know you were that artistic.”
Uncle Pasco now marched to the bed, and appropriated Scipio’s pistol. “Just for the present,” he explained.
“Uncle Pasco,” resumed Scipio, mild as a dove, and never stirring from his chair, “you have learned me something to-day. It’s expensive education. I’ll not say it ain’t. But I’m goin’ to tell y’u where I went wrong. I’d ought to haveacted more careless in Likely that night. I’d ought to have taken a whirl somewheres. Bein’ so quiet exposed my hand to y’u. But, see here, I had everybody fooled but you.”
“You’re a kid,” responded Uncle Pasco, but with indulgence. “You be good. Keep a-sittin’ right there. Pie like mother made.” And with the pie in one hand and his pistol in the other he made a comfortable lunch.
“Itwasmy over-carefulness, warn’t it?” persisted Scipio. “I have sure paid y’u good to know!”
“You’re a kid,” Uncle Pasco, with unchanged indulgence, repeated. “You’ll do in time. Keep studying seasoned men. That’s what.” And he finished his meal. “You’ll find your six-shooter in the place where I’ll put it.”
The old gentleman opened the door, and, leaving Scipio in the chair, walked briskly by the corral into the trees and mounted his old pink mare. From the door of the cabin Scipio watched him amble away along the banks of Spit-Cat.
“Pie like mother made!” he muttered. “You patch-sewed bread-basket! Why, you fringy-panted walking delegate, I’ll agitate your systemtill your back teeth are chewin’ your own sweetbreads” He seized up a rope and began walking to where his horse was pasturing. “I could forgive him takin’ the money,” he continued. “He outplayed me. But—” Scipio was silent for a few yards, and then, “Pie like mother made!” he burst out again.
And now, reader, please rise with me in the air and look down like a bird at the trail of Spit-Kitten. The afternoon has grown late, and shadow is ascending among the thin pines by the Little Pasture. There goes Uncle Pasco, ambling easily along. He counts his money, and slaps his bad old leg with joy. With all those dollars he can render the next several months more than comfortable. Now he consults Scipio’s map, and here, sure enough, he comes to the fence, just as Scipio said he would come; that fence he was to follow for three miles, perhaps, or four. Uncle Pasco slaps his leg again, and gives a horrid, unconscientious cackle. And now he hangs Scipio’s pistol on a post of the fence and proceeds. While pleasing thoughts of San Francisco and champagne fill his mind as he rides, there comes Scipio along the trail after him at a nicely set interval. All is working with the agreeable precision of a clock. Scipio recovers his pistol, and after tying his horse out of sight a little way down the hill, he runs back and sits snug behind a tree close to the fence, waiting. He looks at his watch. “It took Japan and me twenty minutes to go around at a gallop,” he observes. “Uncle Pasco ain’t goin’ half that fast.” Scipio continues to wait with his six-shooter ready. In due time he pricks up his ears and rises upon his feet behind the tree. Next, he steps forth with his smile of an angel—but a fallen angel.
“Pie like mother made,” he remarks musically.
Why tell of Uncle Pasco’s cruel surprise? It is not known if he had gone round the fence more than once; but the town of Likely saw the dreadful condition of his clothes as he rode in that night. It was almost no clothes.
At that hour Scipio was finishing his letter to the foreman:—
“—this risponsibillity is shed,” had been the unwritten fragment of his sentence when it was cut short, and he now completed it, and went on:—
“Quite a little thing has took place just now about that money. Don’t jump for I am staying with it as you said to and I am liable to be staying with it as long as necessary but an old hobo held me up and got it off me and kept it for most three hours when I got it back off the old fool. I would not have throwed him around like I did if he had been content to lift the cash but he had to insult me too said I was pie and next time he’ll know a man should be civil no matter what his employment is.
“I have noticed another thing. To shoot strait always go to bed the same day you get up and to think strait use same pollicy.
“Your friend,
“Scipio Le Moyne.
“P.S. I am awful oblidged to you.”
Force, as you may know, is like the King, and never dies. It endlessly transmits itself through the same or some other shape. Drop a stone in a pond, and the wave-rings may seem to expire as they widen, but they do not; through friction or impact or something, they merely become invisible. You can stop a cannon-ball, but you cannot kill its speed; its speed is immortal and undergoes instant resurrection, taking the new shape of heat. The cannon-ball becomes red hot and sends heat waves off into infinity. Scientific men have told you all this as they have told me, and judging from the delightful events which I shall proceed to narrate, I should not wonder if the scientific men were right.
Onceupon a time the army had a wet-nurse instead of a secretary of war. The nurse fed our soldiers upon speeches, milk-and-sugar speeches, all over the country. He told them he was goingto right their wrongs. Now, as they didn’t know that they had any wrongs, this both surprised and pleased them. They liked to hear him inform them that it was they who from the first had won our battles upon land and sea. “Who” (he would ask rhetorically), “who endured the bitter cold, the frozen snow, at Valley Forge?” And as they hadn’t the slightest idea, what more agreeable than to learn it was themselves? “Let us honor George Washington” (he would exclaim), “let us not forget that great and good man! but let us remember also the honest soldier without whose aid George Washington could never have durriven the Burritish tyrant from our beloved shores of furreedom!”
He always spoke of the “honest” soldier, and therefore the average enlisted man very naturally felt that somehow George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant were all well enough in their way, but that you must keep your eye on them, and that the Secretary was the man to put them in their proper place. The Secretary quite rightly omitted to state that generals are apt to carry a responsibility which would iron the average enlisted man flatter than a pair of pressed trousers; he omitted this statement because itwould have been the whole truth, and the whole truth is often very tiresome, particularly for a politician. Do not, as you read this, think evil of the Secretary; he had a large family of daughters and sons with whom he was frequently photographed, seated on the vine-clad porch of the old white homestead, and these photographs were at once widely given to the public press. Moreover, his private life was known to be chaste by every lady in the land, though how they ascertained this I am at a loss to explain. He was also a highly gifted man; gifted with the voice that matches a political frock-coat. At will he could make this so impressive, that if he remarked it was a fine day, for the time of year, it convinced the audience that something of the utmost importance had been announced. He was gifted, too, with a face impervious to vulgar scrutiny, and he had the most deeply religious chinbeard in Apple-Jack county. I have already mentioned that he possessed the gift of tears, when such phenomenon was timely, and besides all these things, he owned some extensive salt-marshes on a bay. These were too wet for private persons to buy, but he was going to be happy to sell them to the government for a naval station when he should be Senator, after his present office had expired. Meanwhile he went about busily with his basket, collecting popularity from the humblest dumping lot.
If there was one kind of audience that the Secretary liked above all others, it was an audience of fresh, bright, brave, young recruits. He missed no chance to tell them so. Their earnest faces, he was apt to say if there was a flag anywhere in sight, stirred his heart more, much more than the stars upon Old Glory waving yonder. Then he would point to Old Glory, and get results from the gallery as satisfactory as any actor could wish. Indeed, the Secretary could have made the drama as lucrative as he made politics. He could tell a story and make you laugh, tell another and make you cry, and a really excellent second-rate actor was lost in him. In the good old days of which I write, many of our political patriots resembled the Secretary.
Recruits after his own heart sat close before him one afternoon at McPherson, gathered from various Southern States.
“Let those young men come up front!” he had commanded from the platform in his deepest frock-coat basso. “Let them see me and let me seethem. We understand each other, for we are comrades.”
Accordingly, the recruits occupied the front benches, while the mustache of Captain Stone, who sat in the rear of the hall, began to look like the back of a dog’s neck when the dog is not pleased. The captain took down one leg that had been crossed over the other, and began sliding one hand up and down the yellow stripe of his trousers. To his brother officers and to his favorite sergeant, Jones, this hand sliding was another sign, like the singular behavior of the mustache. Nobody knew whether it was the hair itself that rose, or whether he did it with his upper lip; but when the whole thing stood straight out beyond his nose, everybody knew at a hundred yards’ range what it meant, no matter how it was done. It was the hurricane signal and you steered your course accordingly.
“You never’ll get a better captain, Jock,” Sergeant Jones would often remark to Corporal Cumnor. “But you want to catch his profile at morning stables. If the muss-tash is merely standing attention, clear weather’s to be looked for. But if she’s deployed in extended order of skirmish-line, don’t you go nowheres without your slicker.”
On the present occasion the sergeant was also in the hall listening to the Secretary. To him had fallen the responsibility of conducting some of the recruits to Fort Chiricahua in Arizona, to which post they had been assigned. Captain Stone was on leave, and had no responsibilities whatever until in a few weeks he should return to that same post after a honeymoon which he and his bride were completing by a visit to the lady’s parents. She was a pastor’s daughter and played the melodeon.
“We are comrades,” repeated the Secretary of War to the recruits, “and that means you and I are going to stand by each other through thick and thin.” It sounded so well that the recruits all cheered.
The captain’s mustache lifted a couple of hairs more, Sergeant Jones in another part of the hall whispered to himself two words which I cannot repeat, and the Secretary looked about to see if there was a flag anywhere convenient for his popular climax about earnest faces and the stars in Old Glory. But there was no flag, and he therefore selected another of the many strings to his oratorical bow. He gave them his great “What I am for” speech, the speech which hadbrought the gallery down at Albany on Decoration Day, had caught the crowd at Terre Haute on the Fourth of July, swept Minneapolis on Labor Day and turned Dallas, Texas, hoarse on Washington’s Birthday. In it the Secretary asked, “What am I for?” and then answered the question. He was to watch over the enlisted man, he was to be his father and protect him from military tyranny. Superior officers were to cease their despotic methods. Was this not a republic where one man was as good as another? The very term “superior officer” was repugnant to the American idea, and no offender of any grade should hide behind it as long as he was Secretary of War. To hear him you would have supposed that until he stepped into the Cabinet the slave under the lash knew a better lot than the American soldier. To be sure, he did not always say these remarkable things in the same way. At Boston, for instance, he would draw it milder than at Billings, Montana. At Boston he mentioned other duties of the Secretary of War besides that of tucking the enlisted man in his bed every night; but he seldom spoke in Boston, because he preferred a warm, heart-to-heart audience.
He knew at sight that he had one here. Hispractised eye ran the recruits over and read their wholesome vacant up-country faces, noted their big rosy wrists, appraised their untrained juicy agricultural shapelessness as they sat beneath him like rows of cantaloupes and watermelons. With such innocence as this, he knew that he could spread it thick; and very soon after the preliminary details about his always having cherished a peculiar affection for this part of the country, and how General Lee had had no warmer admirer than himself, he was spreading it unmistakably thick. By the time he had informed them that it was not colonels and generals to whom he bowed the knee, but the enlisted man, the so-called common soldier, whose bleeding feet had blazed the trail for liberty with fearless shouts of triumph, Sergeant Jones was muttering to his neighbor, “How long more d’yu figure he’ll slobber?” and the captain’s mustache was standing out from his face like a shelf.
“That is what I am for!” perorated the wet-nurse. “I am for the enlisted man. The country looks to our beloved Purresident, but you look to me. Go forth, young men, for I am behind every one of you. No so-called military regulations shall insult your American manhood or grindyou down while I stand sentinel at my post. If you are troubled, come to me and you shall have your rights. Go forth then, you who outshine their vaunted Cæsars, their licentious Alexanders, their pagan Plutos and Aspasias! Go forth to be the bulwarks and imperishable heroes of our gullorious country!”
The watermelons cheered, the wet-nurse stepped down to let them shake his hand, and Captain Stone went home with his bride, in a speechless rage. He was able to speak presently.
“Still, Joshua,” she mildly insisted, “young soldiers have so many sad temptations, I am glad he has their welfare at heart.”
“Nonsense, Gwendolen,” said the captain. “You’ll soon know the army, and you’ll see then that such talk as his merely turns contented men into discontented babies.”
“Nobody could ever be discontented with you, Joshua, I am sure,” the bride, with sweet emotion, murmured.
She was nineteen, the captain was forty-five, and upon gazing at the rosy cheeks of his Gwendolen he would frequently assert that a man was always as young as he felt.
The Secretary, after inspecting the militarypost, dined with the mayor of the neighboring town. At this meal, when a cold bottle had been finished, the mayor went so far as to inquire: “Say, who was Aspasia?”
But the Secretary answered: “What a wonderful land is ours and what a beautiful city is yours.”
Theexpectations of Sergeant Jones were entirely unfulfilled. Much experience in taking charge of recruits upon long railway journeys had taught him that their earnest faces were not always more stirring than the stars upon Old Glory; he knew that you do not invariably find that sort of face for thirteen dollars a month. He had generally been obliged to watch their purchases at way stations, he had not seldom been forced to remove bottles of strong spirits from their possession, and he had almost always found it necessary to teach some of them a lesson in obedience. Judge therefore of the sergeant’s amazement when, after the first half day of journey, a long overgrown ruddy boy approached him and asked in unsoiled Southern accents: “Please, sah, can we sing?”
“Sing?” said Jones. “Sing what?”
“‘Pull foah the shoah, sailah.’ We have learned to do it in parts back in our home.”
“Yes,” said Jones, “I guess you can sing that—in parts or as a whole.”
“We sing it as a whole in parts, sah,” explained the recruit with simplicity.
“Your name Anniston?” Jones inquired, abruptly suspicious.
“Bateau, sah. Leonidas Bateau. My cousin, Xerxes Anniston, sits over yonder by the watahcoolah.”
“Oh,” said Jones.
“Yes, sah. Xerx he sings bass in our choir back in our home. Sistah Smith—”
“Who?” said the sergeant.
“Sistah Smith, sah, the wife of our ministah, Tullius C. Smith.”
“Oh,” said the sergeant.
“She is leadah of our choir back in our home. She is our best soprano, Sistah Mingory is our best alto, and Brother Macon Lafayette Young gets two notes lowah than any of our basses. He keeps the choicest grocery in town and is president of our Y. M. C. A. You’d ought to heard our quartet in the prayer from ‘Moses inEgypt,’ arranged by Sistah Mingory last Eastah Sunday.”
The thoroughly good heart of Jones now warmed to this recruit. (I cannot hope that you will remember Jones. He was Specimen Jones long ago, before he joined the Army. Some of his doings are chronicled elsewhere. He is an old member of the family.) “Made Moses hum, did y’u?” said he. “I’ll bet the girls would sooner have a solo from you than from Brother what’s-his-name Lafayette.”
“Sistah Smith,” replied Leonidas, blushing like the innocent watermelon that he was, “did say that she couldn’t see how they were going to get along without my uppah registah.”
Jones settled back in his seat. “Sing away,” said he.
Many songs were sung through Alabama and Louisiana and Texas; virtuous songs with no offending or even convivial word, and none so frequently demanded by the passengers as a solo from Leonidas,