by Lon Williams
They sat in a row against a bare wall and assumed attitudes of waiting.
Murdoc said, “Baytree, these are your judges.” He stepped aside and indicated by a nod that Baytree was expected to perform.
“Would you have me recite, or only play upon my zither?” Baytree asked, his voice rasping and constricted from dryness of tongue.
“Play,” said Michel de’Angelo.
Baytree strummed briefly, then nodded. “My own composition,” he said with modest pride. He strummed again, gained confidence, then sang to his music, rendering what he had called his lyrical couplets.
His judges listened impassively, leaving him to guess whether they were being pleased or displeased. But when he paused for comment, their opinions came with appalling heartlessness.
“Extremely flat,” said Hermes.
“A mere collection of platitudes,” said Michel.
“Insipid beyond endurance,” said Apollo Belvedere.
Baytree was struck dumb momentarily. Then his anger stirred. “So I encounter more stupidity, do I? You reincarnate nothing from any artist that ever lived. If there is anything in you that is artistic, it is your gift of snobbery. I came here expecting warm fraternal brotherhood and manifestations of kindred spirits. What I’ve found is an assembly of plaster-faced personifications of mental sterility.”
Murdoc, unperturbed, said, “Would you like to try further, Baytree?”
Baytree laid his zither on a rustic table and tore off his scarlet cloak. “I would like my hat, coat and vest,” he said curtly.
“As you will,” said Murdoc. He took them and handed them one by one to their owner.
Baytree put them on furiously, picked up his zither and turned away scowling. Only one door presented itself as an exit. He lifted its wooden latch, swung it open, gave Murdoc and his comrades one final look of contempt and hatred and stepped out.
Instantly he screamed in terror, for he had stepped into empty space and plunged downward into an abyss of moon-cast shadows.
* * * *
Lee Winters had finished a midnight supper with his beautiful wife, Myra. Now they sat before a small living room fire, while Myra read poetry. She read aloud, a practice which was bearing belated fruit for Lee, whose childhood education had been extremely meager. Myra was especially fond of history; consequently poetry interested her not merely for its own sake, but also for its additional value as a candle-glow upon past ages.
When she had come to a good resting place, Winters said, “Myra, when you was a chick in school, did you learn any verses?”
“Well, of course, Lee; didn’t you?”
“I reckon so. Do you recollect any of yours?”
“Oh, yes. Want to hear them?”
“Wouldn’t mind. Especially your favorites.” Myra put a finger on her chin and studied. Then her recitations began and continued at length, interspersed by comments from Winters. She said finally, “But there’s one little-girl verse I’ve always been partial to. Right now it’s dearer than ever.”
“Well, let’s have it.”
“Sure you won’t think I’m silly?”
“I could never think that.”
“You’ll think it mighty sentimental,” said Myra, “but I love it.” She moved closer, held his left hand and recited:
As sure as a vine grows ’round a tree,
I will cling to you, and you to me;
Heart to heart will our lives entwine,
My love to your love, and yours to mine.
Winters felt her hands grow firm upon his. Here was something strange and mysterious—a woman’s love and tenderness. In contrast to these peaceful moments with Myra, his life had been stormy and full of peril. She had brought to him his only genuine happiness. She was a finished and perfect gem in a whole wilderness of rough and unsightly stones.
“That was mighty pretty, Myra,” he said at long last.
Myra pressed her head against his shoulder. “It’s nice of you to say so.”
“I reckon I could say more’n that about you,” Lee said with a glad, yet disturbed feeling. “I reckon there never was nobody quite so pretty as you are. Way I figure, you’ve got everything a woman’s supposed to have, but where a woman’s supposed to be good you’re heaps better. Our getting married was for me not just finding something I wanted, but only its beginning. Every day I find new wonders to be proud of. Without my lifting a hand, time weathers concealing things and reveals that my claim is a lode of pure gold.”
“Oh, Lee!”
* * * *
For days thereafter he remembered that evening. On his lonely rides, he dreamed of settling down on a ranch, when he could expect more evenings like that. But he had never come to a good quitting place. Transgressors came on and on, a trickling stream, certainly, but one stained by human blood. How could he find a quitting place, when none was to be found?
He was riding home from Brazerville a week later with arrest notices in his pocket, when he recollected that light he had seen, far up on a mountain pinnacle. At first this recollection gave him shivers; then he thought of it soberly, even rebelliously. Up there undoubtedly was some sort of vulture’s nest. On its lofty perch, it was more than a nest of evil; it was a grim symbol of crime’s possible victory over him and that which he represented. It was a threat to his home, to Myra, to his friends, to people who passed their useful days within principles of law and right living. To Lee it was cause for anger and deadly resentment.
Shortly before midnight, Doc Bogannon was polishing glasses when his batwings banged inward.
“Winters!”
Winters strode up and slapped down a coin. “Wine, Doc.”
Bogie looked startled. “Wine it is.” He filled a glass. While Winters drank, he said, “Your mood’s bad, Winters. Something serious?”
Winters surreptitiously drew a paper from his pocket and put it before Bogie. “Read it.”
Bogie read, then sighed. “Well! Imagine Greenleaf Baytree committing mail fraud.”
Winters sniffed. “You surprise me, Doc; murder of three mail-order wives meant nothing, I reckon.” Bogie murmured, “Face my guests while we talk and you’ll catch onto something.”
Winters faced about and sipped wine. Often had he and Bogie smoked out some unsuspecting criminal. Winters asked his key question. “Business been good, Doc?”
Bogie polished a glass. “Fair, I’d say; you had any luck?”
This was Lee’s cue, his place to mention money, a bait that seldom failed. “Yeah, Doc,” he said offhandedly. “While in Brazerville, I collected two hundred dollars on a monkey I turned in last month.”
“Ah!” Bogie exclaimed. “Not bad; but you carry too much, Winters.”
Lee had caught a flicker of interest in a queer-looking face. “Doc,” he asked casually, “what’s become of our poet?”
“Poet?”
“Yeah, that long-haired feller.”
“You mean Greenleaf Baytree? Well, sir, he hasn’t been in for some time; probably moved to greener pastures.”
There was a stir; that queer-looker Winters had spotted rose and came forward. He wore a black cloak, assumed saintly looks, and placed his hand on Lee’s shoulder. “Did you inquire of our great poet Baytree?”
Winters shook off his inquisitor’s hand. “Your hearing’s mighty good, stranger.”
Bogie put down glass and drying cloth. He’d played along with Winters quite gaily, but now he sensed danger. “My apology, Winters,” he said nervously. “Meet my good friend Alexander Murdoc. He, too, is a poet; I overheard him say so. Stranger still, his is a man’s body, but a woman’s soul. He’s divine Sappho reincarnate.”
Winters had heard Myra read about an ancient Greek poetess named Sappho. “Right odd,” he said dryly; “but where’s our poet Baytree?”
Murdoc’s smile was purity itself. “Baytree, sir, is my honored guest.”
Winters set up his glass for a refill. Here was something ominous, one of those double-minded fellows
who understood ordinary men, but moved, also, in mysterious and unfathomable realms. But this loony knew greed, a vice not limited to any class of mortals. He said, “You’d hardly believe it, Murdoc, but Baytree’s wanted. Big reward.” Murdoc stared. “Astounding!”
“But, of course you wouldn’t betray a guest.”
“Guest! No such reprehensible imposter can be a guest. Betray him, indeed! I should strangle him. If you care to come—”
“Sure,” said Winters. He put down his empty glass. “I’m right behind you, Murdoc.”
Now Bogie knew fear. In such fashion had Baytree departed with Murdoc; Baytree had not returned.
Bogie rushed out. “Winters!”
But he was too late. They were riding eastward by moonlight. If they heard his call, they did not so indicate.
He went back uneasily and resumed his work, preliminary to his usual midnight closing.
* * * *
An hour later Winters and Murdoc stood before Time’s Mytilenean Mansion of Divine Sappho.
“Yo-ho,” Murdoc called loudly. He knocked and called again. “Open for your comrade and his guest.”
Winters observed a heavy door and at its left a small, high window, aglow with lamplight. He heard noises, then squeak of hinges. Murdoc put a hand on Winters’ arm to urge him forward, but Winters brushed it off and stepped behind Murdoc.
His voice was hard. “You first, Murdoc.”
Suddenly Sappho’s mansion door swung wide and three men in cloaks rushed out. They grabbed Murdoc.
“Come in and welcome,” they shouted enthusiastically. But when they had dragged Murdoc in, they discovered their mistake.
“Ah!” one exclaimed sadly.
“Do not be discouraged,” said Murdoc. “Our guest is modest, but he enters.”
Winters stepped inside.
There followed renewed excitement and welcome, but when Murdoc’s friends set upon him to strip him of hat, coat and valuables, Winters shoved them aside.
“Keep your hands off,” he commanded angrily. “I’m no visiting grandma to be made over.”
“You misunderstood,” Murdoc told his companions. “But I’m sure Officer Winters will forgive you.” Murdoc introduced them.
They bowed in mock humility. That one called Michel de’Angelo said, “We assumed he was a poet.”
“Maybe I am a poet,” said Winters.
“Winters certainly appreciates good poetry,” said Murdoc. “I’ve heard him render excellent verse.”
“Ah,” said Michel. Apollo and Hermes likewise said, “Ah.”
Winters stepped right and faced them. “Want to hear a poem?”
Their sallow faces sweetened.
“We’d feel honored,” replied Apollo. “If you prove artistic, we might even admit you to our order.”
Murdoc nodded to his companions. “Assume your seats as judges; you have a surprise coming.”
Michel, Hermes and Apollo backed away, sat down and assumed expectant attitudes. “Let our candidate proceed,” said Michel.
Winters cast about warily. His breath caught, though he betrayed no alarm. Where he had entered, there appeared no door, nor any window. Certainly door and window were there, but cleverly designed to look like wall, with pegs upon which hung coats and hats.
At his back, however, there was a door of rough planks, plainly visible, at its right a small window. Winters chilled, yet sweat beaded and ran down his face.
“Our guest has stage fright,” Murdoc observed suspiciously.
Winters sleeved his face. “Yeah, speeching always did scare me stiff.”
Murdoc smiled craftily. “We quite understand; nevertheless, please proceed.”
Winters squared his shoulders, maintained tense alertness. He recited his coon-dog verse, then waited uneasily.
His judges looked at one another, nodded and rubbed their chins in open-mouthed delight.
“Amazing!” exclaimed Hermes.
“Divine!” declared Apollo.
“Out of this world,” said Michel de’Angelo.
* * * *
Winters concealed rising anger with difficulty; his recent scare roused smoldering ferocity. Respecting these monkeys, he had said nothing to Bogannon. But Marshal Hugo Landers at Brazerville had given him their story; they were insane scoundrels who would have murdered for a horseshoe nail.
Winters said with feigned conceit, “Want to hear another?”
“Oh, yes,” his judges answered.
Winters recited Myra’s favorite verse. Their enthusiasm wilted then.
“Inexpressibly trite,” said Michel.
“Sickening sentimentalism,” said Apollo.
“Sloppy,” said Hermes.
Michel said, “Had you been content with your first offering, we might have accepted you into our society, but that second piece spoiled your chance; we would bid you goodnight, sir.”
Winters’ face hardened. “You don’t disappoint me none. But you’ll have questions to answer, unless you tell me mighty quick where Greenleaf Baytree is.”
Murdoc resumed his role as host. “It’s most disappointing, Winters, but Baytree obviously has disappeared.” He glanced at his comrades.
Michel nodded. “Yes, he left today.”
“Just after noon,” said Apollo.
“Being angry at us, he will not return,” said Hermes.
Winters backed up. His hand reached behind, unlatched and opened their only visible door. He said coldly, “Baytree won’t come back, if he’s smart; in my opinion, this is a buzzard’s nest.”
Murdoc stood only a few feet away, set to give him a push. His expression was anxious, crafty. “Winters, to me it seemed we had one common interest, that of ridding ourselves of a criminal, but I regret having extended hospitality. Therefore, goodnight.”
“Going will suit me better than you,” said Winters.
He turned as if to take abrupt leave, but stopped and shrank back in pretended fright. From an eye corner he saw a shadow move; he heard quick sounds behind him. Swiftly he stepped aside, and as he did so Murdoc’s body lunged past him. A terrifying scream tore from Murdoc’s throat as he missed his objective and momentum carried him into empty space. That scream grew fainter each moment as he went down into cold and final darkness.
Winters had backed against a wall, six-gun in hand. “You monkeys are under arrest,” he declared with restrained fury. “You are a pack of murderers, and you’ll hang until your eyes pop out. Line up.”
Whether they were bound by an hypnotic spell, or saw their doom in any event, they lined themselves in single file. Winters witnessed something then that gave him shivers. Those three cloaked and slender loonies marched straight ahead without pause. First Michel, then Apollo and Hermes stepped into emptiness and fell to their deaths without a whimper.
Winters bolstered his gun and sleeved his face.
Slowly he closed their treacherous door. Now that this latest crisis had passed, he felt weak. His hands trembled. He was so unnerved that he had to sit for a while. At their rustic table stood a crude chair. He sat there, and after many hazy seconds discovered a paper lying before him, beside it ink and quill.
On this paper, somebody had written a verse, possibly part of an unfinished poem:
Now we hang our lantern high,
That wandering souls may see its light
And come home. When death is nigh,
Give us, too, a twinkle in our night.
This, thought Winters gloomily, was something to remember. Poets were far beyond his ken, but of one thing he was sure: they could make a man think.
THE SALT WAGONS
Real Western Stories, August 1955
Deputy Marshal Lee Winters, overtaken by night in wild canyon country southwest of Forlorn Gap, stopped his horse to let him drink from a small, clear stream. It was time to turn homeward; Sanson Tigert—latest wanted monkey whose trail Winters had been following—had gotten away.
Winters was not sorry. Since his marriage
to beautiful Myra Winters, he had thought much of giving up his dangerous trade and preempting some land. Fast gunslingers like Sanson Tigert were hostile to that dream; now when one eluded him, he regarded it possibly as an escape for pursuer, as well as for pursued.
While Cannon Ball drank leisurely, Winters surveyed his surroundings. Eastern faces of high mountains were already awash in full moonlight. An hour’s wait, and he could ride home by illuminated trails—an advantage not to be considered lightly when a lone wayfarer faced such perils as grizzlies, cougars, badmen, and ghosts.
Especially ghosts. Here, Winters was confronted by an unattractive choice. He could ride on eastward in a canyon that opened upon spook-infested Alkali Flat, or he could turn northward in a second canyon which rose to that wide, misty valley called by early French trappers Terre des Revenantes, or land of ghosts.
Indecision ended in discovery of a patch of light some fifty yards eastward. Somebody had built a campfire; wind-drift brought odors of smoke, hot grease and steaming coffee.
Alert to possibility of danger, Winters pulled onto sandy ground and advanced with but little noise. Cannon Ball lifted his feet skittishly, his body aquiver from instinctive fear of some presence, invisible and mysterious.
But what they came upon was only one of those inexplicable creatures who spent whole lives in solitude. He was a small, bewhiskered prospector hunkered before a skillet in which sizzled slices of lean meat. He glanced up pleasurably. Cannon Ball had stopped and cast fearful glances hither and yon—as if he saw nothing, yet knew something extraordinary was near.
“Howdy,” said Winters.
“Howdy yourself, Winters.”
“Huh?” Winters eyed him for a moment. “Can’t place you, neighbor, though you do seem to know me.”
“My name is Tatum, Winters. Harrison Tatum, but better knowed as Unaka Tatum. Light and eat, Winters.”
Winters swung down. “It’s considerable miles to Forlorn Gap; so, if you’re willin’, I’ll have coffee with you.”
“Most willing,” said Tatum. “Meat, too. This is bear meat, but not old, tough bear. When you take one of these grizzlies just big enough to bring down a baby elk, he makes right good steaks.”