Just at dusk one afternoon we finished cutting the herd which our morning’s drive had collected. The stray-herd, with its new additions from the day’s work, we pushed rapidly into one big stock corral. The cows and unbranded calves we urged into another. Fifty head of beef steers found asylum from dust, heat, and racing to and fro, in the mile square wire enclosure called the pasture. All the remainder, for which we had no further use we drove out of the flat into the brush and toward the distant mountains. Then we let them go as best pleased them.
By now the desert bad turned slate-coloured, and the brush was olive green with evening. The hard, uncompromising ranges, twenty miles to eastward, had softened behind a wonderful veil of purple and pink, vivid as the chiffon of a girl’s gown. To the south and southwest the Chiricahuas and Dragoons were lost in thunderclouds which flashed and rumbled.
We jogged homewards, our cutting ponies, tired with the quick, sharp work, shuffling knee deep in a dusk that seemed to disengage itself and rise upwards from the surface of the desert. Everybody was hungry and tired. At the chuck wagon we threw off our saddles and turned the mounts into the remuda. Some of the wisest of us, remembering the thunderclouds, stacked our gear under the veranda roof of the old ranch house.
Supper was ready. We seized the tin battery, filled the plates with the meat, bread, and canned corn, and squatted on our heels. The food was good, and we ate hugely in silence. When we could hold no more we lit pipes. Then we had leisure to notice that the storm cloud was mounting in a portentous silence to the zenith, quenching the brilliant desert stars.
“Rolls” were scattered everywhere. A roll includes a cowboy’s bed and all of his personal belongings. When the outfit includes a bed-wagon, the roll assumes bulky proportions.
As soon as we had come to a definite conclusion that it was going to rain, we deserted the camp fire and went rustling for our blankets. At the end of ten minutes every bed was safe within the doors of the abandoned adobe ranch house, each owner recumbent on the floor claim he had pre-empted, and every man hoping fervently that he had guessed right as to the location of leaks.
Ordinarily we had depended on the light of camp fires, so now artificial illumination lacked. Each man was indicated by the alternately glowing and waning lozenge of his cigarette fire. Occasionally someone struck a match, revealing for a moment high-lights on bronzed countenances, and the silhouette of a shading hand. Voices spoke disembodied. As the conversation developed, we gradually recognised the membership of our own roomful. I had forgotten to state that the ranch house included four chambers. Outside, the rain roared with Arizona ferocity. Inside, men congratulated themselves, or swore as leaks developed and localised.
Naturally we talked first of stampedes. Cows and bears are the two great cattle-country topics. Then we had a mouth-organ solo or two, which naturally led on to songs. My turn came. I struck up the first verse of a sailor chantey as possessing at least the interest of novelty:
Oh, once we were a-sailing, a-sailing were we,
Blow high, blow low, what care we;
And we were a-sailing to see what we could see,
Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
I had just gone so far when I was brought up short by a tremendous oath behind me. At the same instant a match flared. I turned to face a stranger holding the little light above his head, and peering with fiery intentness over the group sprawled about the floor.
He was evidently just in from the storm. His dripping hat lay at his feet. A shock of straight, close-clipped vigorous hair stood up grey above his seamed forehead. Bushy iron-grey eyebrows drawn close together thatched a pair of burning, unquenchable eyes. A square, deep jaw, lightly stubbled with grey, was clamped so tight that the cheek muscles above it stood out in knots and welts.
Then the match burned his thick, square fingers, and he dropped it into the darkness that ascended to swallow it.
“Who was singing that song?” he cried harshly. Nobody answered.
“Who was that singing?” he demanded again.
By this time I had recovered from my first astonishment.
“I was singing,” said I.
Another match was instantly lit and thrust into my very face. I underwent the fierce scrutiny of an instant, then the taper was thrown away half consumed.
“Where did you learn it?” the stranger asked in an altered voice.
“I don’t remember,” I replied; “it is a common enough deep-sea chantey.”
A heavy pause fell. Finally the stranger sighed.
“Quite like,” he said; “I never heard but one man sing it.”
“Who in hell are you?” someone demanded out of the darkness.
Before replying, the newcomer lit a third match, searching for a place to sit down. As he bent forward, his strong, harsh face once more came clearly into view.
“He’s Colorado Rogers,” the Cattleman answered for him; “I know him.”
“Well,” insisted the first voice, “what in hell does Colorado Rogers mean by bustin’ in on our song fiesta that way?”
“Tell them, Rogers,” advised the Cattleman, “tell them—just as you told it down on the Gila ten years ago next month.”
“What?” inquired Rogers. “Who are you?”
“You don’t know me,” replied the Cattleman, “but I was with Buck Johnson’s outfit then. Give us the yarn.”
“Well,” agreed Rogers, “pass over the ‘makings’ and I will.”
He rolled and lit a cigarette, while I revelled in the memory of his rich, great voice. It was of the sort made to declaim against the sea or the rush of rivers or, as here, the fall of waters and the thunder—full, from the chest, with the caressing throat vibration that gives colour to the most ordinary statements. After ten words we sank back oblivious of the storm, forgetful of the leaky roof and the dirty floor, lost in the story told us by the Old Timer.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TEXAS RANGERS
I came from Texas, like the bulk of you punchers, but a good while before the most of you were born. That was forty-odd years ago—and I’ve been on the Colorado River ever since. That’s why they call me Colorado Rogers. About a dozen of us came out together. We had all been Texas Rangers, but when the war broke out we were out of a job. We none of us cared much for the Johnny Rebs, and still less for the Yanks, so we struck overland for the West, with the idea of hitting the California diggings.
Well, we got switched off one way and another. When we got down to about where Douglas is now, we found that the Mexican Government was offering a bounty for Apache scalps. That looked pretty good to us, for Injin chasing was our job, so we started in to collect. Did pretty well, too, for about three months, and then the Injins began to get too scarce, or too plenty in streaks. Looked like our job was over with, but some of the boys discovered that Mexicans, having straight black hair, you couldn’t tell one of their scalps from an Apache’s. After that the bounty business picked up for a while. It was too much for me, though, and I quit the outfit and pushed on alone until I struck the Colorado about where Yuma is now.
At that time the California immigrants by the southern route used to cross just there, and these Yuma Injins had a monopoly on the ferry business. They were a peaceful, fine-looking lot, without a thing on but a gee-string. The women had belts with rawhide strings hanging to the knees. They put them on one over the other until they didn’t feel too decollotey. It wasn’t until the soldiers came that the officers’ wives got them to wear handkerchiefs over their breasts. The system was all right, though. They wallowed around in the hot, clean sand, like chickens, and kept healthy. Since they took to wearing clothes they’ve been petering out, and dying of dirt and assorted diseases.
They ran this ferry monopoly by means of boats made of tules, charged a scand’lous low price, and everything was happy and lovely. I ran on a little bar and panned out some dust, so I camped a while, washing gold, getting friendly with the Yumas, and talking horse and other things with th
e immigrants.
About a month of this, and the Texas boys drifted in. Seems they sort of overdid the scalp matter, and got found out. When they saw me, they stopped and went into camp. They’d travelled a heap of desert, and were getting sick of it. For a while they tried gold washing, but I had the only pocket—and that was about skinned. One evening a fellow named Walleye announced that he had been doing some figuring, and wanted to make a speech. We told him to fire ahead.
“Now look here,” said he, “what’s the use of going to California? Why not stay here?”
“What in hell would we do here?” someone asked. “Collect Gila monsters for their good looks?”
“Don’t get gay,” said Walleye. “What’s the matter with going into business? Here’s a heap of people going through, and more coming every day. This ferry business could be made to pay big. Them Injins charges two bits a head. That’s a crime for the only way across. And how much do you suppose whisky’d be worth to drink after that desert? And a man’s so sick of himself by the time he gets this far that he’d play chuck-a-luck, let alone faro or monte.”
That kind of talk hit them where they lived, and Yuma was founded right then and there. They hadn’t any whisky yet, but cards were plenty, and the ferry monopoly was too easy. Walleye served notice on the Injins that a dollar a head went; and we all set to building a tule raft like the others. Then the wild bunch got uneasy, so they walked upstream one morning and stole the Injins’ boats. The Injins came after them innocent as babies, thinking the raft had gone adrift. When they got into camp our men opened up and killed four of them as a kind of hint. After that the ferry company didn’t have any trouble. The Yumas moved up river a ways, where they’ve lived ever since. They got the corpses and buried them. That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles. Then they put the body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off and threw it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and, when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into the trench of its own accord. It was the neatest, automatic, self-cocking, double-action sort of a funeral I ever saw. There wasn’t any ceremony—only crying.
The ferry business flourished at prices which were sometimes hard to collect. But it was a case of pay or go back, and it was a tur’ble long ways back. We got us timbers and made a scow; built a baile and saloon and houses out of adobe; and called her Yuma, after the Injins that had really started her. We got our supplies through the Gulf of California, where sailing boats worked up the river. People began to come in for one reason or another, and first thing we knew we had a store and all sorts of trimmings. In fact we was a real live town.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND
At this moment the heavy beat of the storm on the roof ceased with miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of sound save for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves. Nobody ventured to fill in the pause that followed the stranger’s last words, so in a moment he continued his narrative.
We had every sort of people with us off and on, and, as I was lookout at a popular game, I saw them all. One evening I was on my way home about two o’clock of a moonlit night, when on the edge of the shadow I stumbled over a body lying part across the footway. At the same instant I heard the rip of steel through cloth and felt a sharp stab in my left leg. For a minute I thought some drunk had used his knife on me, and I mighty near derringered him as he lay. But somehow I didn’t, and looking closer, I saw the man was unconscious. Then I scouted to see what had cut me, and found that the fellow had lost a hand. In place of it he wore a sharp steel hook. This I had tangled up with and gotten well pricked.
I dragged him out into the light. He was a slim-built young fellow, with straight black hair, long and lank and oily, a lean face, and big hooked nose. He had on only a thin shirt, a pair of rough wool pants, and the rawhide home-made zapatos the Mexicans wore then instead of boots. Across his forehead ran a long gash, cutting his left eyebrow square in two.
There was no doubt of his being alive, for he was breathing hard, like a man does when he gets hit over the head. It didn’t sound good. When a man breathes that way he’s mostly all gone.
Well, it was really none of my business, as you might say. Men got batted over the head often enough in those days. But for some reason I picked him up and carried him to my ‘dobe shack, and laid him out, and washed his cut with sour wine. That brought him to. Sour wine is fine to put a wound in shape to heal, but it’s no soothing syrup. He sat up as though he’d been touched with a hot poker, stared around wild-eyed, and cut loose with that song you were singing. Only it wasn’t that verse. It was another one further along, that went like this:
Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea,
Blow high, blow low, what care we;
And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,
Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.
It fair made my hair rise to hear him, with the big, still, solemn desert outside, and the quiet moonlight, and the shadows, and him sitting up straight and gaunt, his eyes blazing each side his big eagle nose, and his snaky hair hanging over the raw cut across his head. However, I made out to get him bandaged up and in shape; and pretty soon he sort of went to sleep.
Well, he was clean out of his head for nigh two weeks. Most of the time he lay flat on his back staring at the pole roof, his eyes burning and looking like they saw each one something a different distance off, the way crazy eyes do. That was when he was best. Then again he’d sing that Barbaree song until I’d go out and look at the old Colorado flowing by just to be sure I hadn’t died and gone below. Or else he’d just talk. That was the worst performance of all. It was like listening to one end of a telephone, though we didn’t know what telephones were in those days. He began when he was a kid, and he gave his side of conversations, pausing for replies. I could mighty near furnish the replies sometimes. It was queer lingo—about ships and ships’ officers and gales and calms and fights and pearls and whales and islands and birds and skies. But it was all little stuff. I used to listen by the hour, but I never made out anything really important as to who the man was, or where he’d come from, or what he’d done.
At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to fix him up with grub. I didn’t pay any attention to him, for he was quiet. As I was bending over the fire he spoke. Usually I didn’t bother with his talk, for it didn’t mean anything, but something in his voice made me turn. He was lying on his side, those black eyes of his blazing at me, but now both of them saw the same distance.
“Where are my clothes?” he asked, very intense.
“You ain’t in any shape to want clothes,” said I. “Lie still.”
I hadn’t any more than got the words out of my mouth before he was atop me. His method was a winner. He had me by the throat with his hand, and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back of my neck. One little squeeze—Talk about your deadly weapons!
But he’d been too sick and too long abed. He turned dizzy and keeled over, and I dumped him back on the bunk. Then I put my six-shooter on.
In a minute or so he came to.
“Now you’re a nice, sweet proposition,” said I, as soon as I was sure he could understand me. “Here I pick you up on the street and save your worthless carcass, and the first chance you get you try to crawl my hump. Explain.”
“Where’s my clothes?” he demanded again, very fierce.
“For heaven’s sake,” I yelled at him, “what’s the matter with you and your old clothes? There ain’t enough of them to dust a fiddle with anyway. What do you think I’d want with them? They’re safe enough.”’
“Let me have them,” he begged.
“Now, look here,” said I, “you can’t get up to-day. You ain’t fit.”
“I know,” he pleaded, “but let me see them.”
Just to satisfy him I passed over his old duds.
“I’ve
been robbed,” he cried.
“Well,” said I, “what did you expect would happen to you lying around Yuma after midnight with a hole in your head?”
“Where’s my coat?” he asked.
“You had no coat when I picked you up,” I replied.
He looked at me mighty suspicious, but didn’t say anything more—he wouldn’t even answer when I spoke to him. After he’d eaten a fair meal he fell asleep. When I came back that evening the bunk was empty and he was gone.
I didn’t see him again for two days. Then I caught sight of him quite a ways off. He nodded at me very sour, and dodged around the corner of the store.
“Guess he suspicions I stole that old coat of his,” thinks I; and afterwards I found that my surmise had been correct.
However, he didn’t stay long in that frame of mind. It was along towards evening, and I was walking on the banks looking down over the muddy old Colorado, as I always liked to do. The sun had just set, and the mountains had turned hard and stiff, as they do after the glow, and the sky above them was a thousand million miles deep of pale green-gold light. A pair of Greasers were ahead of me, but I could see only their outlines, and they didn’t seem to interfere any with the scenery. Suddenly a black figure seemed to rise up out of the ground; the Mexican man went down as though he’d been jerked with a string, and the woman screeched.
I ran up, pulling my gun. The Mex was flat on his face, his arms stretched out. On the middle of his back knelt my one-armed friend. And that sharp hook was caught neatly under the point of the Mexican’s jaw. You bet he lay still.
I really think I was just in time to save the man’s life. According to my belief another minute would have buried the hook in the Mexican’s neck. Anyway, I thrust the muzzle of my Colt’s into the sailor’s face.
“What’s this?” I asked.
The sailor looked up at me without changing his position. He was not the least bit afraid.
Arizona Nights Page 10