"Well, to get back to Boise, you never in all your life saw so many men and brothers as was gathered there that day, and old Aggy, he was one of the centres of attraction. That big voice and black beard was always where the crowd was thickest, and the wet goods flowing the freest. 'Gentlemen!' says he, 'Let's lift up our voices in melody!' That was one of Ag's delusions—he thought he could sing. So four of 'em got on top of a billiard table and presented 'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep' to the company, which made me feel glad that I hadn't been brought up that way. After Ag had hip-locked the last low note, another song-bird volunteered.
"This was a little fat Dutchman, with pale blue eyes and a mustache like two streaks of darning cotton. He had come to town to sell a pair of beef-steers, but got drawn into the general hilarity, and now he didn't care a cuss whether he, she, or it ever sold another steer. He got himself on end and sung 'Leeb Fadderlont moxtrue eckstein' in a style that made you wonder that the human nose could stand the strain.
"'Aw, cheese that!' says a feller near the door. 'Come get your steers, one of 'em's just chased the barber up a telegraph pole!'
"So then we all piled out into the street to see the steers. Sure enough, there was the barber, sitting on the cross-piece, and the steer pawing dirt underneath.
"'He done made me come a fast heat from de cohner,' says the barber. 'I kep' hollerin' "next!" but he ain't pay no 'tention—he make it "next" fur me, shuah! Yah, yah, yah! You gents orter seen me start at de bottom, an' slide all de way up disyer telegraft pole!'
"One of the bull-whackers went out to rope the steers, and Ag gave directions from the sidewalk. He wasn't very handy with a riata, and that's a fact, but the way Ag lit into him was scandalous. When he'd missed about six casts of his rope, Ag opened up on him:
"'Put a stamp on it and send it to him by mail,' says Aggy, in his sourcastic way. 'Address it, "Bay Steer, middle of Main St., Boise, Idaho. If not delivered within ten days, return to owner, who can use it to hang himself." Blast my hide if I couldn't stand here and throw a box-car nearer to the critter! Well,well, WELL! How many left hands have you got, anyhow? Do it up in a wad and heave it at him for general results—he might get tangled in it.'
"It rattled the bull-whacker, having so much attention drawn to him, and he stepped on the rope and twisted himself up in it and was flying light generally.
"'Say!' says Ag, appealing to the crowd, 'won't some kind friend who's fond of puzzles go down and help that gentleman do himself?'
"That made the whacker mad. He was as red in the face as a lobster.
"'You come down and show whatyoucan do," says he. 'You've got gas enough for a balloon ascension, but that may be all there is to you.'
"'Oh, I ain't so much,' says Aggy, 'although I'm as good a man to-day as ever I was in my life—but I have a little friend here who can rope, down, and ride that critter from here to the brick-front in five minutes by the watch; and if you've got a twenty-five dollar bill in your pocket, or its equivalent in dust, you can observe the experiment.'
"'I'll go you, by gosh!' says the bull-whacker, slapping his hat on the ground and digging for his pile.
"'Say, if you're referring to me, Ag,' I says, 'it's kind of a sudden spring—I ain't what you might call in training, and that steer is full of triple-extract of giant powder.'
"'G'wan!' says Ag. 'You can do it—and then we're twenty-five ahead.'
"'But suppose we lose?'
"'Well . . . It won't be such an awful loss.'
"'Now you look here, Agamemnon G. Jones,' says I, 'I ain't going to stand for putting up a summer breeze ag'in' that feller's good dough—that's a skin game, to speak it pleasantly.'
"Then Aggy argues the case with me, and when Aggy started to argue, you might just as well 'moo' and chase yourself into the corral, because he'd get you, sure. Why, that man could sit in the cabin and make roses bloom right in the middle of the floor; whilst he was singing his little song you could see 'em and smell 'em; he could talk a snowbank off a high divide in the middle of February. Never see anybody with such a medicine tongue, and in a big man it was all the stranger. 'Now,' he winds up, 'as for cheating that feller,youought to know me better, Red—why, I'll give him my note!'
"So, anyhow, I done it. Up the street we went, steer bawling and buck-jumping, my hair a-flying, and me as busy as the little bee you read about keeping that steer underneath me, 'stead of on top of me, where he'd ruther be, and after us the whole town, whoopin', yellin', crackin' off six-shooters, and carryin' on wild.
"Then we had twenty-five dollars and was as good as anybody. But it didn't last long. The tin-horns come out after pay-day, like hop-toads after a rain. 'Twould puzzle the Government at Washington to know where they hang out in the meantime. There was one lad had a face on him with about as much expression as a hotel punkin pie. He run an arrow game, and he talked right straight along in a voice that had no more bends in it than a billiard cue.
"'Here's where you get your three for one any child may do it no chance to lose make your bets while the arrow of fortune swings all gents accommodated in amounts from two-bits to double-eagles and bets paid on the nail,' says he.
"'Red,' says Aggy, 'I can double our pile right here—let me have the money. I know this game.' You'd hardly believe it, but I dug up. 'Double-or-quits?' says he to the dealer.
"'Let her go,' says the dealer; the arrow swung around. 'Quits,' says the dealer, and raked in my dough. It was all over in one second.
"I grabbed Aggy by the shoulder and took him in the corner for a private talk. 'I thought you knew this game?' says I.
"'I do,' says he. 'That's the way it always happens.' And once more in my life I experienced the peculiar feeling of being altogether at a loss for words.
"'Aggy,' says I at last, 'I've got a good notion to lay two violent hands on you, and wind you up like an eight-day clock, but rather than make hard feelings between friends, I'll refrain. Besides you are a funny cuss, that's sure. One thing, boy, you can mark down. We leave here to-morrow morning.'
"'All right,' says Ag. 'This sporting life is the very devil. I like out doors as well as the next man, when I get there.'
"So the morrow morning, away we went. All we had for kit was the picks, shovels, and pans; the rest of our belongings was staying with the Hotel-man until we made a rise.
"Ag said he'd be cussed if he'd walk. A hundred and fifty miles of a stroll was too many.
"'But we ain't got a cent to pay the stage fare,' says I.
"'Borrow it of Uncle Hotel-keep,' says he.
"'Not by a town site,' says I. 'We owe him all we're going to, at this very minute—you'll have to hoof it, that's all.'
"'I tell you I won't. I don't like to have anybody walk on my feet, not even myself. I can stand off that stage driver so easy, that you'll wonder I don't take it up as a profession. Now, don't raise any more objections—please don't,' says he. 'I can't tell you how nervous you make me, always finding some fault with everything I try to do. That's no way for a hired man to act, let alone a pardner.'
"So, of course, he got the best of me as usual, and we climbed into the stage when she come along. Now, our bad luck seemed to hold, because you wouldn't find many men in that country who wouldn't stake two fellers to a waggon ride wherever they wanted to go, and be pleasant about it, I'd have sure seen that the man got paid, even if Aggy forgot it, but the man that drove us was the surliest brute that ever growled. When you'd speak to him, he'd say, 'Unh'—a style of thing that didn't go well in that part of the country. I kept my mouth shut, as knowing that I didn't have the come-up-with weighed on my spirits; but Aggy gave him the jolly. He only meant it in fun, and there was plenty of reason for it, too, for you never seen such a game of driving as that feller put up in all your life. The Lord save us! He cut around one corner of a mountain, so that for the longest second I've lived through, my left foot hung over about a thousand feet of fresh air. I'd have had time to write my will before I touched bottom if we'd gone over. I don't know as I turned pale, but my hair ain't been of the same rosy complexion since.
"'Well!' says Aggy in a surprised tone of voice when we got all four wheels on the ground again. 'Here we are!' says he. 'Who'd have suspected it? I thought he was going to take the short cut down to the creek.'
"The driver turned round with one corner of his lip h'isted—a dead ringer of a mean man—Says he to Aggy, 'Yer a funny bloke, ain't yer?'
"'Why!' says Ag, 'that's for you to say—wouldn't look well coming from me—but if you press me, I'll admit I give birth to a little gem now and then.'
"Our bold buck puts on a great swagger. 'Well yer needn't be funny in this waggon,' says he. 'The pair of yer spongin' a ride! Yer needn't be gay—yer hear me, don't cher?'
"'Why, I hear you as plain as though you set right next me,' says Ag. 'Now, you listen and see if I'm audible at the same range—You're a blasted chump!' he roars, in a tone of voice that would have carried forty mile. Didyouhear that, Red?' he asks very innocent. I was so hot at the driver's sass—the cussed low-downness of doing a feller a favour and then heaving it at him—that you could have lit a match on me anywheres, but to save me I couldn't help laughing—Ag had the comicallest way!
"At that the driver begins to larrup the horses. I ain't the kind to feel faint when a cayuse gets what's coming to him for raising the devil, but to see that lad whale his team because there wasn't nothing else he dared hit, got me on my hind legs. I nestled one hand in his hair and twisted his ugly mug back.
"'Quit that!' says I.
"'You let me be—I ain't hurtingyou,' he hollers.
"'That ain't to say I won't be hurting you soon,' says I. 'You put the bud on them horses again, and I'll boot the spine of your back up through the top of your head till it stands out like a flag-staff. Just one more touch, and you get it!' says I.
"He didn't open his mouth again till we come to the river. Then he pulled up. 'This is about as far as I care to carry you two gents for nothin',' he says. 'Of course you're two to one, and I can't do nothing if you see fit to bull the thing through. But I'll say this: if either one or both of you roosters has got the least smell of a gentleman about him, he won't have to be told his company ain't wanted twice.'
"Now, mind you, Ag and me didn't have the first cussed thing—not grub, nor blankets, nor gun, nor nothing; and this the feller well knew.
"'Red,' says Aggy, 'what do you say to pulling this thing apart and seeing what makes it act so?'
"'No,' says I, 'don't touch it—it might be catching. Now, you whelp!' says I to the driver, 'you tell us if there's a place where we can get anything to eat around here?' We'd expected to go hungry until we hit the camp some forty mile further on, where we knew there'd be plenty for anybody that wanted it.
"'Yes,' says he; 'there's a man running a shack two mile up the river.'
"'All right,' says I. 'Drive on. You've played us as dirty a trick as one man can play another. If we ever get a cinch on you, you can expect we'll pull her till the latigoes snap.'
"He kept shut till he got across the river, where he felt safe.
"'It's all right about that cinch!' he hollers back, grinning.'Only wait till you get it, yer suckers! Sponges! Beats!Dead-heads! Yah!'
"Well, a man can't catch a team of horses, and that's all there is about it, but I want to tell you he was on the anxious seat for a quarter of a mile. We tried hard.
"When we got back to where we started and could breathe again, we held a council of war.
"'Now Aggy,' says I, 'we're dumped—what shall we do?'
He sat there awhile looking around him, snapping pebbles with his thumb.
"'Tell you what it is, Red,' he says at last, 'we might as well go mining right here. This is likely gravel, and there's a river. If that bar in front of you had been further in the mountains, it would have been punched full of holes. It's only because it's on the road that nobody's taken the trouble to see what was in it. This road was made by cattle ranchers, that didn't know nothing about mining, and every miner that's gone over the trail had his mouth set to get further along as quick as possible—just like us. Do you see that little hollow running down to the river? Well you try your luck there. I give you that place as it's the most probable, and you as a tenderfoot in the business will have all the luck. I'll make a stab where I am.'
"Well, sir, it sounds queer to tell it, and it seems queerer still to think of the doing of it, but I hadn't dug two feet before I come to bed rock, and there was some heavy black chunks.
"'Aggy,' says I, 'what's these things?' throwing one over to him.He caught it and Stared at it.
"'Where did you get that?' says he, in almost a whisper.
"'Why, out of the hole, of course!' says I, laughing. 'Come take a look!'
"Aggy wasn't the kind of man to go off the handle over trifles, but when he looked into that hole he turned perfectly green. His knees give out from under him and he sat on the ground like a man in a trance, wiping the sweat off his face with a motion like a machine.
"'What the devil ails you?' says I astonished. I thought maybe I'd done something I hadn't ought to do, through ignorance of the rules and regulations of mining.
"'Red,' says he dead solemn, 'I've mined for twenty year, and from Old Mexico to Alaska, but I never saw anything that was ace-high to that before. Gold laying loose in chunks on top of the bed-rock is too much for me—I wish Hy could see this.'
"'Gold!' says I. 'What you talking about? What have those black hunks to do with gold?'
"The only answer he made was to lay the one I had thrown to him on top of a rock and hit her a crack with a pick. Then he handed it to me. Sure enough! There under the black was the yeller. Of course, it I'd known more about the business I could have told it by the weight, but I'd never seen a piece of gold fresh off the farm before in my life. I hadn't the slightest idea what it looked like, and I learned afterward it all looks different. Some of it shines up yaller in the start; some of it's red, and some is like ours, coated black with iron-crust.
"So I looked at Ag, and Ag looked at me, neither one of us believing anything at all for awhile. I simply couldn't get hold of the thing—I ain't yet, for that matter. I expect to wake up and find it a pipe dream, and in some ways I wouldn't mind if it was. I never was so completely two men as I was on that occasion. One of 'em was hopping around and hollering with Ag, yelling 'hooray!' and the other didn't take much interest in the proceedings at all. And it wasn't until I thought, 'Now I can pay that cussed cayote of a stage driver what I owe him!' that I got any good out of it. That brought it home to me. When I spoke to Ag about paying the driver, he says, 'That's so,' then he takes a quick look around. 'We can pay him in full, too, old horse!' he hollers, and there was a most joyful smile on his face.
"'Red,' say he, 'do you know this is the only ford on the river for—I don't know how many miles—perhaps the whole length of her?'
"'Well?' says I.
"'Our little placer claim,' says Aggy slowly, rubbing his hands together, 'covers that ford; and by a judicious taking up of claims for various uncles and brothers and friends of ours along the creek on the lowlands, we can fix it so they can't even bridge it.'
"'Do you mean they can't cross our claim if we say they can't?'
"'Sure thing!' says Aggy. 'There's you and me and the law to say "no" to that—I wish I had a gun.'
"'You don't need any gun for that skunk of a driver.'
"'Of course not, but there'll be passengers, and there's no telling how excited them passengers will be when they find they've got to go over the hills ford-hunting.'
"'Are you going to send 'em all around, Ag?'
"'The whole bunch. Anybody coming back from the diggings has gold in his clothes, so it won't hurt 'em none, and I propose to give that stage line an advertising that won't do it a bit of good. Come along, Red; let's see that lad that has the shack up the river. We need something to eat, and maybe he's got a gun. If he's a decent feller, we'll let him in on a claim. Never mind about the hole!—it won't run away, and there's nobody to touch anything—come on.'
"So we went up the river. The man's name was White, and he was a white man by nature, too. He fed us well, and was just as hot as us when we told him about the stage driver's trick. Then we told him about the find and let him in.
"'Now,' says Aggy, 'have you got a gun?'
"'I havethat,' says the man. 'My dad used to be a duck-hunter on Chesapeake bay. When you say "gun,"I'llshow you a gun.' He dove in under his bunk and fetched out what I should say was a number one bore shot gun, with barrels six foot long.
"'Gentlemen,' says he, holding the gun up and patting it lovingly, 'if you ram a quarter-pound of powder in each one of them barrels, and a handful of buck-shot on top of that, you've got an argument that couldn't be upset by the Supreme Court. I'll guarantee that when you point her anywheres within ten feet of a man not over a hundred yards away, and let her do her duty, all the talent that that man's fambly could employ couldn't gather enough of him to recognise him by, and you won't be in bed more'n long enough to heal a busted shoulder.'
"'I hope it ain't going to be my painful line of performance to pull the trigger,' says Aggy. 'I think the sight of her would have weight with most people. When's the stage due back?'
"'Day after to-morrow, about noon.'
"'That gives us lots of time to stake, and to salt claims that can't show cause their own selves,' says Aggy. 'I think we're all right.'
"The next day we worked like the Old Harry. We had everything fixed up right by nightfall, and there was nothing to do but dig and wait.
"Curious folks we all are, ain't we? I should have said my own self that if I'd found gold by the bucketful, I'd be more interested in that, than I would be in getting even with a mut that had done me dirt, but it wasn't so. Perhaps it was because I hadn't paid much attention to money all my life, and I had paid the strictest attention to the way other people used me. Living where there's so few folks accounts for that, I suppose.
"Getting even on our esteemed friend the stage driver was right in your Uncle Reddy's line, and Aggy and our new pard White seemed to take kindly to it, also.
"If ever you saw three faces filled with innocent glee, it was when we heard the wheels of that stage coming—why, the night before I was woke up by somebody laughing. There was Aggy sound asleep, sitting up hugging himself in the moonlight.
"'Oh, my! Oh, MY!' says he. 'It's the only ford for four thousand miles!'
"We planted a sign in the middle of the road with this wording on it in big letters, made with the black end of a stick.
"There was a stretch of about a mile on the level before us. When the stage come in plain sight Aggy proceeds to load up 'Old Moral Suasion,' as he called her, so that the folks could see there was no attempt at deception. They come pretty fairly slow after that. At fifty yards, Ag hollers 'Halt!' The team sat right down on their tails.
"'Now, Mr. Snick'umfritz,' says Aggy, 'you that drives, I mean, come here and read this little sign.'
"'Suppose I don't?' says the feller, trying to be smart before the passengers.
"'It's a horrible supposition,' says Aggy, and the innocent will have to suffer with the guilty.' Then he cocks the gun.
"'God sakes! Don't shoot!' yells one of the passengers. 'Man, you ought to have more sense than to try and pick him out of a crowd with a shot-gun! Get down there, you fool, and make it quick!'
"So the driver walked our way, and read. He never said a word. I reckon he realized it was the only ford for four thousand miles, more or less, just as Aggy had remarked. There he stood, with his mouth and eyes wide open.
"'I'd like to have you other gentlemen come up and see our first clean up, so you won't think we're running in a windy,' says Aggy. They wanted to see bad, as you can imagine, and when they did see about fifteen pound of gold in the bottom of my old hat, they talked like people that hadn't had a Christian bringing up.
"'Oh Lord!' groans one man. 'Brigham Young and all the prophets of the Mormon religion! This is my tenth trip over this line, and me and Pete Hendricks played a game of seven-up right on the spot where that gent hit her, not over a month ago, when the stage broke down! Somebody just make a guess at the way I feel and give me one small drink.' And he put his hand to his head. 'Say, boys!' he goes on, 'you don't want the whole blamed creek, do you? Letusin!'
"'How's that, fellers?' says Ag to me and White. We said we was agreeable.
"'All right, in you come!' says Aggy. 'There ain't no hog about our firm—but as for you,' says he, walking on his tip-toes up to the driver, 'as for you, you cock-eyed whelp, around you go! Around you go!' he hollers, jamming the end of Moral Suasion into the driver's trap. 'Oh, and WON'T you go 'round, though!' says he. 'Listen to me, now: if any one of your ancestors for twenty-four generations back had ever done anything as decent as robbing a hen-coop, it would have conferred a kind of degree of nobility upon him. It wouldn't be possible to find an ornerier cuss than you, if a man raked all hell with a fine-toothed comb. Now, you stare-coated, mangey, bandy-legged, misbegotten, out-law coyote, fly!—fly!' whoops Aggy, jumping four foot in the air, 'before I squirt enough lead into your system to make it a paying job to melt you down!'
"The stage driver acted according to orders. Three wide steps and he was in the waggon, and with one screech like a p'izened bob-cat, he fairly lifted the cayuses over the first ridge. Nobody never saw him any more, and nobody wanted to.
"So that's the way I hit my stake, son, just as I'd always expected—by not knowing what I was doing any part of the time—and now, there comes my iron-horse coughing up the track! I'll write you sure, boy, and you let old Reddy know what's going on—and on your life, don't forget to give it to the lads straight why I sneaked off on the quiet! I've got ten years older in the last six months. Well, here we go quite fresh, and damned if I altogether want to, neither—too late to argue though—by-bye, son!"
When the Chinook Struck Fairfield
Miss Mattie sat on her little front porch, facing the setting sun. Across the road, now ankle deep in June dust, was the wreck of the Peters place: back-broken roof, crumbling chimneys, shutters hanging down like broken wings, the old house had the pathetic appeal of ship-wrecked gentility. A house without people in it, even when it is in repair, is as forlorn as a dog who has lost his master.
Up the road were more houses of the nondescript village pattern, made neither for comfort nor looks. God knows why they built such houses—perhaps it was in accordance with the old Puritan idea that any kind of physical perfection is blasphemy. Some of these were kept in paint and window glass, but there were enough poor relations to spoil the effect.
Down the road, between the arches of the weeping willows, came first the brook, with the stone bridge—this broken as to coping and threadbare in general—then on the hither side of the way some three or four neighbour's houses, and opposite, the blacksmith's shop and post-office, the latter, of course, in a store, where you could buy anything from stale groceries to shingles.
In short, Fairfield was an Eastern village whose cause had departed. A community drained of the male principle, leaving only a few queer men, the blacksmith, and some halfling boys, to give tone to the background of dozens of old maids.
An unsympathetic stranger would have felt that nothing was left to the Fairfieldians but memory, and the sooner they lost that, the better.
Take a wineglassful of raspberry vinegar, two tablespoonsful of sugar, half a cup each of boneset and rhubarb, a good full cup of the milk of human kindness, dilute in a gallon of water, and you have the flavor of Fairfield. There was just enough of each ingredient to spoil the taste of all the rest.
Miss Mattie rested her elbow on the railing, her chin in her hand, and gazed thoughtfully about her. As a matter of fact, she was the most inspiring thing in view. At a distance of fifty yards she was still a tall, slender girl. Her body retained the habit, as well as the lines of youth; a trick of gliding into unexpected, pleasing attitudes, which would have been awkward but for the suppleness of limb to which they testified, and the unconsciousness and ease of their irregularity.
Her face was a child's face in the ennobling sense of the word. The record of the years written upon it seemed a masquerade—the face of a clear-eyed girl of fourteen made up to represent her own aunt at a fancy dress party. A face drawn a trifle fine, a little ascetic, but balanced by the humour of the large, shapely mouth, and really beautiful in bone and contour. The beauty of mignonette, and doves, and gentle things.
You could see that she was thirty-five, in the blatant candor of noon, but now, blushed with the pink of the setting sun, she was still in the days of the fairy prince.
Miss Mattie's revery idled over the year upon year of respectable stupidity that represented life in Fairfield, while her eyes and soul were in the boiling gold of the sky-glory. She sighed.
A panorama of life minced before Miss Mattie's mind about as vivid and full of red corpuscles as a Greek frieze. Her affectionate nature was starved. They visited each other, the ladies of Fairfield—these women who had rolled on the floor together as babies—in their best black, or green or whatever it might be, and gloves! This, though the summer sun might be hammering down with all his might. And then they sat in a closed room and talked in a reserved fashion which was entirely the property of the call. Of course, one could have a moment's real talk by chance meeting, and there were the natural griefs of life to break the corsets of this etiquette, although in general, the griefs seemed to be long drawn out and conventional affairs, as if nature herself at last yielded to the system, conquered by the invincible conventionality and stubbornness of the ladies of Fairfield. It was the unspoken but firm belief of each of these women, that a person of their circle who had no more idea of respectability than to drop dead on the public road would never go to Heaven.
Poor Miss Mattie! Small wonder she dropped her hands, sat back and wondered, with another sigh, if it were for this she was born? She did not rebel—there was no violence in her—but she regretted exceedingly. In spite of her slenderness, it was a wide, mother-lap in which her hands rested, an obvious cradle for little children. And instinctively it would come to you as you looked at her, that there could be no more comfortable place for a tired man to come home to, than a household presided over by this slow-moving, gentle woman. There was nothing old-maidish about Miss Mattie but the tale of her years. She had had offers, such as Fairfield and vicinity could boast, and declined them with tact, and the utmost gratitude to the suitor for the compliment; but her "no" though mild was firm, for there lay within her a certain quiet valiant spirit, which would rather endure the fatigue and loneliness of old age in her little house, than to take a larger life from any but the man who was all. A commonplace in fiction; in real life sometimes quite a strain.
The sun distorted himself into a Rugby football, and hurried down as though to be through with Fairfield as soon as possible. It was a most magnificent sun-set; flaming, gorgeous, wild—beyond the management of the women of Fairfield—and Miss Mattie stared into the heart of it with a longing for something to happen. Then the thought came, "What could happen?" she sighed again, and, with eyes blinded by Heaven-shine, glanced down the village street.
She thought she saw—she rubbed her eyes and looked again—she did see, and surely never a stranger sight was beheld on Fairfield's street! Had a Royal Bengal tiger come slouching through the dust it could not have been more unusual. The spectacle was a man; a very large and mighty shouldered man, who looked about him with a bold, imperious, keep-the-change regard. There was something in the swing of him that suggested the Bengal tiger. He wore high-heeled boots outside of his trousers, a flannel shirt with a yellow silk kerchief around his neck, and on his head sat a white hat which seemed to Miss Mattie to be at least a yard in diameter. Under the hat was a remarkable head of hair. It hung below the man's shoulders in a silky mass of dark scarlet, flecked with brown gold. Miss Mattie had seen red hair, but she remembered no such color as this, nor could she recall ever having seen hair a foot-and-a-half long on a man. That hair would have made a fortune on the head of an actress, but Miss Mattie was ignorant of the possibilities of the profession.
The face of the man was a fine tan, against which eyes, teeth, and moustache came out in brisk relief. The moustache avoided the tropical tint of the upper hair and was content with a modest brown. The owner came right along, walking with a stiff, strong, straddling gait, like a man not used to that way of travelling.
Miss Mattie eyed him in some fear. He would be by her house directly, and it was hardly modest to sit aggressively on one's front porch, while a strange man went by—particularly, such a very strange man as this! Yet a thrill of curiosity held her for the moment, and then it was too late, for the man stopped and asked little Eddie Newell, who was playing placidly in the dust—all the children played placidly in Fairfield—asked Eddie, in a voice which reached Miss Mattie plainly, although the owner evidently made no attempt to raise it, if he knew where Miss Mattie Saunders lived?
Eddie had not noticed the large man's approach, and nearly fell over in a fright; but seeing, with a child's intuition, that there was no danger in this fierce-looking person, he piped up instantly.
"Y-y-yessir!—I kin tell yer where she lives—Yessir! She lives right down there in that little house—I kin go down with you jes' swell 's not! Why, there she is now, on the stoop!"
"Thankee sonny," said the big voice. "Here's for miggles," and Miss Mattie caught the sparkle of a coin as it flew into the grimy fists of Eddie.
"Much obliged!" yelled Eddie and vanished up the street.
Miss Mattie sat transfixed. Her breath came in swallows and her heart beat irregularly. Here was novelty with a vengeance! The big man turned and fastened his eyes upon her. There was no retreat. She noticed with some reassurance that his eyes were grave and kindly.
As he advanced Miss Mattie rose in agitation, unconsciously putting her hand on her throat—what could it mean?
The gate was opened and the stranger strode up the cinder walk to the porch. He stopped a whole minute and looked at her. At last.
"Well, Mattie!" he said, "don't you know me?"
A flood of the wildest hypotheses flashed through Miss Mattie's mind without enlightening her. Who was this picturesque giant who stepped out of the past with so familiar a salutation? Although the porch was a foot high, and Miss Mattie a fairly tall woman, their eyes were almost on a level, as she looked at him in wonder.
Then he laughed and showed his white teeth. "No use to bother and worry you, Mattie," said he, "you couldn't call it in ten years. Well, I'm your half-uncle Fred's boy Bill—and I hope you're a quarter as glad to see me as I am to see you."
"What!" she cried. "Not little Willy who ran away!"
"The same little Willy," he replied in a tone that made Miss Mattie laugh a little, nervously, "and what I want to know is, are you glad to see me?"
"Why, of course! But, Will—I suppose I should call you Will? I am so flustered—not expecting you—and it's been so warm to-day. Won't you come in and take a chair?" wound up Miss Mattie in desperation, and fury at herself for saying things so different from what she meant to say.
There was a twinkle in the man's eye as he replied in an injured tone:
"Why, good Lord, Mattie! I've come two thousand miles or more to see you, and you ask me to take a chair. Just as if I'd stepped in from across the way! Can't you give a man a little warmer welcome than that?"
"What shall I do?" asked poor Miss Mattie.
"Well, you might kiss me, for a start," said he.
Miss Mattie was all abroad—still one's half-cousin, who has come such a distance, and been received so very oddly, is entitled to consideration. She raised her agitated face, and for the first time in her life realised the pleasure of wearing a moustache.
Then Red Saunders, late of the Chanta Seeche Ranch, North Dakota, sat him down.
"I'm obliged to you, Mattie," he said in all seriousness. "To tell you the truth, I felt in need of a little comforting—here I've come all this distance—and, of course, Iheardabout father and mother—but I couldn't believe it was true. Seemed as if theymustbe waiting at the old place for me to come back, and when I saw it all gone to ruin—Well, then I set out to find somebody, and do you know, of all the family, there's only you and me left? That's all, Mattie, just us two!—whilst I was growing up out West, I kind of expected things to be standing still back here, and be just the same as I left them—hum—Well, how are you anyhow?"
"I'm well, Will, and"—laying her hand upon his, "don'tthink I'm not glad to see you—pleasedon't. I'm so glad, Will, I can't tell you—but I'm all confused—so little happens here."
"I shouldn't guess it was the liveliest place in the world, by the look of it," said Red. "And as far as that's concerned, I kinder don't know what to say myself. There's such a heap to talk about it's hard to tell where to begin—but we've got to be friends though, Mattie—we've justgotto be friends. Good Lord! We're all there's left! Funny, I never thought of such a thing! Well, blast it! That's enough of such talk! I've brought you a present, Mattie." He stretched out a leg that reached beyond the limits of the front porch, and dove into his trousers pocket, bringing out a buck-skin sack. He fumbled at the knot a minute and then passed it over saying, "You untie it—your fingers are soopler than mine," Miss Mattie's fingers were shaking, but the knots finally came undone, and from the sack she brought forth a chain of rich, dull yellow lumps, fashioned into a necklace. It weighed a pound. She spread it out and looked at it astounded. "Gracious, Will! Is thatgold?" she asked.
"That's what," he replied. "The real article, just as it came out of the ground: I dug it myself. That's the reason I'm here. I'd never got money enough to go anywheres further than a horse could carry me if I hadn't taken a fly at placer mining and hit her to beat h—er—the very mischief."
Miss Mattie looked first at the barbaric, splendid necklace and then at the barbaric, splendid man. Things grew confused before her in trying to realise that it was real. What two planets so separated in their orbits as her world and his? She had the imagination that is usually lacking in small communities, and the feeling of a fairy story come true, possessed her.
"And now, Mattie," said he, "I don't know what's manners in this part of the country, but I'll make free enough on the cousin part of it to tell you that I could look at some supper without flinching. I've walked a heap to-day, and I ain't used to walking."
Miss Mattie sprang up, herself again at the chance to offer hospitality.
"Why, you poor man!" said she. "Of course you're starved! It must be nearly eight o'clock! I almost forget about eating, living here alone. You shall have supper directly. Will you come in or sit a spell outside?"
"Reckon I'll come in," said Red. "Don't want to lose sight of you now that I've found you."
It was some time since Miss Mattie had felt that anyone had cared enough for her not to want to lose sight of her, and a delicate warm bloom went over her cheeks. She hurried into the little kitchen.
"Mattie!" called Red.
"What is it, Will?" she answered, coming to the door.
"Can I smoke in this little house?"
"Cer—tainly! Sit right down and make yourself comfortable. Don't you remember what a smoker father was?"
Red tried the different chairs with his hand. They were not a stalwart lot. Finally he spied the home-made rocker in the corner. "There's the lad for me," he said, drawing it out. "Got to be kinder careful how you throw two-hundred-fifty pounds around."
"Mercy!" cried Miss Mattie, pan in hand. "Do you weigh as much as that, Will?"
"I do," returned Red, with much satisfaction. "And there isn't over two pounds of it fat at that."
"What a great man you have grown up to be, Will!"
Red took in a deep draught of tobacco and sent the vapor clear across the little room.
"On the hay-scales, yes," he answered, with a sort of joking earnestness—"but otherwise, I don't know."
The return to the old home had touched the big man deeply, and as he leaned back in his chair there was a shade of melancholy on his face that became it well.
Miss Mattie took in the mass of him stretched out at his ease, his legs crossed, and the patrician cut of his face, to which the upturned moustache gave a cavalier touch. They were good stock, the Saunders, and the breed had not declined in the only two extant.
"He's my own cousin!" she whispered to herself, in the safety of the kitchen. "And such a splendid looking man!" She felt a pride of possession she had never known before. Nobody in Fairfield or vicinity had such a cousin as that. And Miss Mattie went on joyfully fulfilling an inherited instinct to minister to the wants of some man. She said to herself there was some satisfaction in cooking for somebody else. But alack-a-day, Miss Mattie's ideas of the wants of somebody else had suffered a Fairfield change. Nothing was done on a large scale in Fairfield. But she sat the little cakes—lucky that she had made them yesterday—and the fried mush, and the small pitcher of milk, and the cold ham, and the cold biscuit on the table with a pride in the appearance of the feast.
"Supper's ready, Will," said she.
Red responded instanter. Took a look at the board and understood. He ate the little cakes and biscuit, and said they were the durned best he ever tasted. He also took some pot-cheese under a misapprehension; swallowed it, and said to himself that he had been through worse things than that. Then, when his appetite had just begun to develop, the inroads on the provisions warned him that it was time to stop. Meanwhile they had ranged the fields of old times at random, and as Red took in Miss Mattie, pink with excitement and sparkling as to eyes, he thought, "Blast the supper! It's a square meal just to look at her. If she ain't pretty good people, I miss my guess."
It was a merry meal. He had such a way of telling things! Miss Mattie hadn't laughed so much for years, and she felt that there was no one that she had known so long and so well as Cousin Will. There was only one jarring note. Red spoke of the vigorous celebration that had been followed by the finding of gold. It was certainly well told, but Miss Mattie asked in soft horror when he had finished, "You didn't get—intoxicated—Will?"
"DID I?" said he, lost in memory, and not noticing the tone. "Well, I put my hand down the throat of that man's town, and turned her inside out! It was like as if Christmas and Fourth of July had happened on the same day."
"Oh, Will!" cried Miss Mattie, "I can't think of you like that—rolling in the gutter." Her voice shook and broke off. Her knowledge of the effect of stimulants was limited to Fairfield's one drunkard—old Tommy McKee, a disreputable old Irishman—but drunkenness was the worst vice in her world.
"Rolling in the gutter!" cried Red, in astonishment. "Why girl! What for would I roll in the gutter? What's the fun in that? Jiminy Christmas! I wanted to walk on the telegraph wires—there wasn't anything in that town high enough for me—what put gutters into your head?"
"I—I supposed people did that when they were—like that."
"I wouldn't waste my money on whisky, if that's all the inspirationI got out of it," replied Red.
"Well, of course I don't know about those things, but I wish you'd promise me one thing."
"Done!" cried Red. "What is it?"
"I wish you'd promise me not to touch whisky again!"
"Phew! That's a pretty big order!" He stopped and thought a minute. "If you'll make that 'never touch it when it ain't needed,' leaving when it's needed to what's my idea of the square thing on a promise, I'll go you, Mattie—there's my hand."
"Oh, I shouldn't have said anything at all, Will! I have no right.But it seemed such a pity such a splendid man—I mean—I think—.You mustn't promise me anything, Will," stammered Miss Mattie,shocked at her own daring.
"Here!" he cried, "I'm no little kid! When I promise I mean it! As for your not having any right, ain't we all there is? You've got to be mother and sister and aunt and everything to me. I ain't as young as I have been, Mattie, and I miss she-ways terrible at times. Now put out your fin like a good pardner, and here goes for no more rhinecaboos for Chantay Seeche Red—time I quit drinking, anyhow," he slipped a ring off his little finger. "Here, hold out your hand," said he, "I'll put this on for luck, and the sake of the promise—by the same token, I've got a noose on you now, and you're my property."
This, of course, was only Cousin Will's joking, but Miss Mattie noticed with a sudden hot flush, that he had chosen the engagement finger—in all ignorance, she felt sure. The last thing she could do would be to call his attention to the fact, or run the risk of hurting his feelings by transferring the ring; besides, it was a pretty ring—a rough ruby in a plain gold band—and looked very well where it was.
Then they settled down for what Red called a good medicine talk. Miss Mattie found herself boldly speaking of little fancies and notions that had remained in the inner shrine of her soul for years, shrinking from the matter-of-fact eye of Fairfield; yet this big, ferocious looking Cousin Will seemed to find them both sane and interesting, and as her self-respect went up in the arithmetical, her admiration for Cousin Will went up in the geometrical ratio. He frankly admitted weaknesses and fears that the males of Fairfield would have rejected scornfully.
Miss Mattie spoke of sleeping upstairs, because she could not rid herself of the fear of somebody coming in.
"I know just how you feel about that," said Red. "My hair used to be on its feet most of the time when we were in the hay camp at the lake beds. Gee whizz! The rattlers! We put hair ropes around—but them rattlers liked to squirm over hair ropes for exercise. One morning I woke up and there was a crawler on my chest. 'For God's sake, Pete!' says I to Antelope Pete, who was rolled up next me, 'come take my friend away!' and I didn't holler very loud, neither. Pete was chain lightning in pants, and he grabs Mr. Rattler by the tail and snaps his neck, but I felt lonesome in my inside till dinner time. You bet! I know just how you feel, exactly. I didn't have a man's sized night's rest whilst we was in that part of the country."
It struck Miss Mattie that the cases were hardly parallel. "A rattlesnake on your chest, Will!" she cried, with her hands clasped in terror.
"Oh! it wasn't as bad as it sounds—he was asleep—coiled up there to get warm—sharpish nights on the prairie in August—but darn it! Mattie!" wrinkling up his nose in disgust, "I hate the sight of the brutes!"
"But you wouldn't be afraid of a man, Will!"
"Well, no," admitted he. "I've never been troubled much that way. You see, everybody has a different fear to throw a crimp in them. Mine's rattlesnakes and these little bugs with forty million pairs of legs. I pass right out when I see one of them things. They give me a feeling as if my stummick had melted."
"Weren't the Indians terrible out there, too?" asked Miss Mattie."I'm sure they must have been."
"Oh, they ain't bad people if you use 'em right," said Red. "Not that I like 'em any better on the ground, than in it," he added hastily, fearful of betraying the sentiment of his country, "but I never had but one real argument, man to man. Black Wolf and I come together over a matter of who owned my cayuse, and from words we backed off and got to shooting. He raked me from knee to hip, as I was kneeling down, doing the best I could by him, and wasting ammunition because I was in a hurry. Still, I did bust his ankle. In the middle of the fuss a stray shot hit the cayuse in the head and he croaked without a remark, so there we were, a pair of fools miles from home with nothing left to quarrel about! You could have fried an egg on a rock that day, and it always makes you thirsty to get shot anyways serious, thinking of which I hollered peace to old Black Wolf and told him I'd pull straws with him to see who took my canteen down to the creek and got some fresh water. He was agreeable and we hunched up to each other. It ain't to my credit to say it, but I was worse hurt than that Injun, so I worked him. He got the short straw, and had to crawl a mile through cactus, while I sat comfortable on the cause of the disagreement and yelled to him that he looked like a badger, and other things that an Injun wouldn't feel was a compliment." Red leaned back and roared. "I can see him now putting his hands down so careful, and turning back every once in awhile to cuss me. Turned out that it was his cayuse, too. Feller that sold it to me had stole it from him. I oughtn't to laugh over it, but I can't help but snicker when I think how I did that Injun."
Generally speaking, Miss Mattie had a lively sense of humour, but the joke of this was lost on her. Her education had been that getting shot was far from funny.
"Why, I should have thought you would have died, Will!"
"What! For a little crack in the leg!" cried Red, with some impatience. "You people must quit easy in this country. Die nothin'. One of our boys came along and took us to camp, and we was up and doing again in no time. 'Course, Black Wolf has a game leg for good, but the worst that's stuck to me is a yank or two of rheumatism in the rainy season. I paid Wolf for his cayuse," he finished shamefacedly. "I had the laugh on him anyhow."
Miss Mattie told him she thought that was noble of him, which tribute Red took as medicine, and shifted the subject with speed, to practical affairs. He asked Miss Mattie how much money she had and how she managed to make out. Now, it was one of the canons of good manners in Fairfield not to speak of material matters—perhaps because there was so little material matter in the community, but Miss Mattie, doomed to a thousand irksome petty economies, had often longed for a sympathetic ear, to pour into it a good honest complaint of hating to do this and that. She could not exactly go this far with Cousin Will, but she could say that it was pretty hard to get along, and give some details. She felt that she knew him so very well, in those few hours! Red heard with nods of assent. He had scented the conditions at once.
"It ain't any fun, skidding on the thin ice," said he, when they had concluded the talk. "I've had to count the beans I put in the pot, and it made me hate arithmetic worse than when I went over yonder to school. Well, them days have gone by for you, Mattie." He reached down and pulling out a green roll, slapped it on the centre table. "Blow that in, and limber up, and remember that there's more behind it."
Miss Mattie's pride rose at a leap.
"Will!" she said, "I hope you don't think I've told you this to get money from you?"
He leaned forward, put his hand on her shoulder and held her eyes with a sudden access of sternness and authority.
"And I hope, Mattie," said he, "that you don't think that I think anything of the kind?"
The cousins stared into each other's eyes for a full minute. ThenMiss Mattie spoke. "No, Will," said she, "I don't believe you do."
"I shouldn't think I did," retorted Red. "What in thunder would I do with all that money? Why, good Lord, girl, I could paper your house with ten-dollar bills—now you try to fly them green kites, like I tell you."
Miss Mattie broke down, the not fully realised strain of fifteen years had made itself felt when the cord snapped. "I don't know how to thank you. I don't know what to say. Oh, William! it seems too good to be true."
"What you crying about, Mattie?" said he in sore distress. "Now hold on! Listen to me a minute! There's something I want you to do for me."
"What is it?" she asked, drying her eyes. "For dinner to-morrow," he replied, "let's have a roast of beef about that size," indicating a wash-tub.
The diversion was complete.
"Why, Will! What would we ever do with it?" said she.
"Do with it? Why, eat it!"
"But we couldn't eat all that!"
"Then throw what's left to the cats. You ain't going to fall down on me the first favour I ask?" with mock seriousness.
"You shall have the roast of beef. 'Pears to me that you're fond of your stomach, Will," said Miss Mattie, with a recovering smile.
"I have a good stomach, that's always done the right thing by me, when I've done the right thing byit," said Red. "And moreover, just look at the constitution I have to support. But say, old lady, look at that!" pointing to the clock. "Eleven-thirty; time decent people were putting up for the night."
The words brought to an acute stage a wandering fear which had passed through Miss Mattie's mind at intervals during the evening. Where was she to look for sleeping accommodations for a man? She revolted against the convention, that, in her own mind, as well as the rest of Fairfield, forbade the use of her house for the purpose. Long habit of thought had made these niceties constitutional. It was almost as difficult for Miss Mattie to say "I'll fix up your bed right there on the sofa" as it would have been for Red to pick a man's pocket, yet, when she thought of his instant and open generosity and what a dismal return therefor it would be to thrust him out for reasons which she divined would have no meaning for him, she heroically resolved to throw custom to the winds, and speak.
But the difficulty was cut in another fashion.
"There's a little barn in the back-yard that caught my eye," saidRed, "and if you'll lend me a blanket I'll roll it out there."
"Sleep in the barn! You'll not do any such thing!" cried Miss Mattie. "You'll sleep right here on the sofa, or upstairs in my bed, just as you choose."
"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not. So help me Bob! I'd smother in here. Had the darnedest time coming on that ever was—hotels. Little white rooms with the walls coming in on you. Worse than rattlesnakes for keeping a man awake. Reminds me of the hospital. Horse fell on me once and smashed me up so that I had to be sent to get puttied up again, and I never struck such a month as that since I was born. The doc. told me I mustn't move, but I told him I'd chuck him out of the window if he tried to stop me, and up I got. I'd have gone dead sure if they'd held me a week more. I speak for the barn, Mattie, and I speak real loud; that is, I mean to say I'm going to sleep in the barn, unless there's somebody a heap larger than you on the premises. Now, there's no use for you to talk—I'm going to do just as I say."
"Well, I think that's just dreadful!" said Miss Mattie. "I'd like to know what folks will think of me to hear I turned my own cousin out in the barn." Her voice trailed off a little at the end as the gist of what they might say if he stayed in the house, occurred to her. "Well," she continued, "if you're set, I suppose I can't object." Miss Mattie was not a good hand at playing a part.
"I'm set," said Red. "Get me a blanket." As she came in with this, he added, "Say, Mattie, could you let me have a loaf of bread? I've got a habit of wanting something to eat in the middle of the night."
"Certainly! Don't you want some butter with it? Here, I'll fix it for you on a plate."
"No, don't waste dish-washing—I'll show you how to fix it." He cut the loaf of bread in half, pulled out a portion of the soft part and filled the hole with butter. "There we are, and nothing to bother with afterwards."
"That's a right smart notion, Will—but you'll want a knife."
In answer he drew out a leather case from his breast pocket and opened it. Within was knife, fork, spoon and two flat boxes for salt and pepper. "You see I'm fixed," said he.
"Isn't that a cute trick!" she cried admiringly. "You're ready for most anything."
"Sure," said Red. "Now, good night, old lady!" He bent down in so natural a fashion that Miss Mattie had kissed him before she knew what she was going to do.
Down to the barn, through the soft June evening, went Red, whistling a Mexican love song most melodiously.
Miss Mattie stood in the half-opened door and listened. Without was balm and starlight and the spirit of flowers, breathed out in odours. The quaint and pretty tune rose and fell, quavered, lilted along as it listed without regard for law and order. It struck Miss Mattie to the heart. Her girlhood, with its misty dreams of happiness, came back to her on the wings of music.
"Isn't that a sweet tune," she said, with a lump in her throat.
She went up into her room and sat down a moment in confusion, trying to grasp the reality of all that had happened. In the middle of the belief that these things were not so, came the regret of a sensitive mind for errors committed. She remembered with a sudden sinking, that she had not thanked him for the necklace—and the money lay even now on the parlor table, where he had cast it! This added the physical fear of thieves. Down she went and got the money, counted out, to her unmitigated astonishment, five hundred dollars and thrust it beneath her pillow with a shiver. She wished she had thought to tell him to take care of it—but suppose the thieves were to fall on him as he slept? Red's friends would have spent their sympathy on the thieves. She rejoiced that the money was where it was. Then she tried to remember what she had said throughout the evening.
"Well, I suppose I must have acted like a ninny," she concluded. "But isn't he just splendid!" and as Cousin Will's handsome face, with its daring, kind eyes, came to her vision she felt comforted. "I don't believe but what he'll make every allowance for how excited I was," said she. "He seems to understand those things, for all he's such a large man. Well, it doesn't seem as if it could be true." With a half sigh Miss Mattie knelt and sent up her modest petition to her Maker and got into her little white bed.
In the meantime Red's actions would have awakened suspicion. He hunted around until he found a tin can, then lit a match and rummaged the barn, amid terror-stricken squawks from the inhabitants, the hens.
"One, two, three, four," he counted. "Reckon I can last out till morning on that. Mattie, she's white people—just the nicest I ever saw, but she ain't used to providing for a full-grown man."
He stepped to the back of the barn and looked about him. "Nobody can see me from here," he said, in satisfaction. Then he scraped together a pile of chips and sticks and built a fire, filled the tin can at the brook, sat it on two stones over the fire, rolled himself a cigarette and waited. A large, yellow tom-cat came out of the brush and threw his green headlights on him, meaowing tentatively.
"Hello, pussy!" said Red. "You hungry too? Well, just wait a minute, and we'll help that feeling—like bread, pussy?" The cat gobbled the morsel greedily, came closer and begged for more. The tin can boiled over. Red popped the eggs in, puffed his cigarette to a bright coal, and looked at his watch by the light. "Gee! Ten minutes more, now!" said he. "Hardly seems to me as if I could wait." He pulled the watch out several times. "What's the matter with the damn thing? I believe it's stopped," he growled. But at last "Time!" he shouted gleefully, kicked the can over and gathered up its treasures in his handkerchief.
"Now, Mr. Cat, we're going to do some real eating," said he. "Just sit right down and make yourself at home—this is kind of fun, by Jinks!" Down went the eggs and down went the loaf of bread in generous slices, never forgetting a fair share for the cat.
"Woosh! I feel better!" cried Red, "and now for some sleep." He swung up into the hay-loft, spread the blanket on the still fragrant old hay, and rolled himself up in a trice.
"I did a good turn when I came on here," he mused. "If I have got only one relation, she's a dandy—so pretty and quiet and nice. She's a marker for all I've got, is Mattie."
The cat came up, purring and "making bread." He sniffed feline fashion at Red's face.
"Foo! Shoo! Go 'way, pussy! Settle yourself down and we'll pound our ear for another forty miles. I like you first rate when you don't walk on my face." He stretched and yawned enormously. "Yes sir! Mattie's all right," said he. "A-a-a-ll ri-" and Chantay Seeche Red was in the land of dreams. Here, back in God's country, within twenty miles of the place where he was born, the wanderer laid him down again, and in spite of raid and foray, whisky and poker-cards, wear-and-tear, hard times, and hardest test of all, sudden fortune, he was much the same impulsive, honest, generous, devil-may-care boy who had left there twenty-four years ago.