by Owen Wister
"Sooner give 'em nothing," said Dean Drake.
"What's that? What's the matter with them?"
"Guess the boys have had all the brass rings and glass diamonds they want."
"That's all you know, then. I sold that box clean empty through the Palouse country last week, 'cept the bottom drawer, and an outfit on Meacham's hill took that. Shows all you know. I'm going clean through your country after I've quit Silver City. I'll start in by Baker City again, and I'll strike Harney, and maybe I'll go to Linkville. I know what buccaroos want. I'll go to Fort Rinehart, and I'll go to the Island Ranch, and first thing you'll be seeing your boys wearing my stuff all over their fingers and Sunday shirts, and giving their girls my stuff right in Harney City. That's what."
"All right, Uncle. It's a free country."
"Shaw! Guess it is. I was in it before you was, too. You were wet behind the ears when I was jammin' all around here. How many are they up at your place, did you say?"
"I said about twelve. If you're coming our way, stop and eat with us."
"Maybe I will and maybe I won't." Uncle Pasco crossly shoved his box back.
"All right, Uncle. It's a free country," repeated Drake.
Not much was said after this. Uncle Pasco unwrapped his concertina from the red handkerchief and played nimbly for his own benefit. At Silver City he disappeared, and, finding he had stolen nothing from them, they did not regret him. Dean Drake had some affairs to see to here before starting for Harper's ranch, and it was pleasant to Bolles to find how Drake was esteemed through this country. The school-master was to board at the Malheur Agency, and had come this way round because the new superintendent must so travel. They were scarcely birds of a feather, Drake and Bolles, yet since one remote roof was to cover them, the in-door man was glad this boy-host had won so much good-will from high and low. That the shrewd old Vogel should trust so much in a nineteen-year-old was proof enough at least of his character; but when Brock, the foreman from Harper's, came for them at Silver City, Bolles witnessed the affection that the rougher man held for Drake. Brock shook the boy's hand with that serious quietness and absence of words which shows the Western heart is speaking. After a look at Bolles and a silent bestowing of the baggage aboard the team, he cracked his long whip and the three rattled happily away through the dips of an open country where clear streams ran blue beneath the winter air. They followed the Jordan (that Idaho Jordan) west towards Oregon and the Owyhee, Brock often turning in his driver's seat so as to speak with Drake. He had a long, gradual chapter of confidences and events; through miles he unburdened these to his favorite:
The California mare was coring well in harness. The eagle over at Whitehorse ranch had fought the cat most terrible. Gilbert had got a mule-kick in the stomach, but was eating his three meals. They had a new boy who played the guitar. He used maple-syrup an his meat, and claimed he was from Alabama. Brock guessed things were about as usual in most ways. The new well had caved in again. Then, in the midst of his gossip, the thing he had wanted to say all along came out: "We're pleased about your promotion," said he; and, blushing, shook Drake's hand again.
Warmth kindled the boy's face, and next, with a sudden severity, he said: "You're keeping back something."
The honest Brock looked blank, then labored in his memory.
"Has the sorrel girl in Harney married you yet?" said Drake. Brock slapped his leg, and the horses jumped at his mirth. He was mostly grave-mannered, but when his boy superintendent joked, he rejoiced with the same pride that he took in all of Drake's excellences.
"The boys in this country will back you up," said he, next day; and Drake inquired: "What news from the Malheur Agency?"
"Since the new Chinaman has been cooking for them," said Brock, "they have been peaceful as a man could wish."
"They'll approve of me, then," Drake answered. "I'm feeding 'em hyas Christmas muck-a-muck."
"And what may that be?" asked the schoolmaster.
"You no kumtux Chinook?" inquired Drake. "Travel with me and you'll learn all sorts of languages. It means just a big feed. All whiskey is barred," he added to Brock.
"It's the only way," said the foreman. "They've got those Pennsylvania men up there."
Drake had not encountered these.
"The three brothers Drinker," said Brock. "Full, Half-past Full, and Drunk are what they call them. Them's the names; they've brought them from Klamath and Rogue River."
"I should not think a Chinaman would enjoy such comrades," ventured Mr. Bolles.
"Chinamen don't have comrades in this country," said Brock, briefly. "They like his cooking. It's a lonesome section up there, and a Chinaman could hardly quit it, not if he was expected to stay. Suppose they kick about the whiskey rule?" he suggested to Drake.
"Can't help what they do. Oh, I'll give each boy his turn in Harney City when he gets anxious. It's the whole united lot I don't propose to have cut up on me."
A look of concern for the boy came over the face of foreman Brock. Several times again before their parting did he thus look at his favorite. They paused at Harper's for a day to attend to some matters, and when Drake was leaving this place one of the men said to him: "We'll stand by you." But from his blithe appearance and talk as the slim boy journeyed to the Malheur River and Headquarter ranch, nothing seemed to be on his mind. Oregon twinkled with sun and fine white snow. They crossed through a world of pines and creviced streams and exhilarating silence. The little waters fell tinkling through icicles in the loneliness of the woods, and snowshoe rabbits dived into the brush. East Oregon, the Owyhee and the Malheur country, the old trails of General Crook, the willows by the streams, the open swales, the high woods where once Buffalo Horn and Chief E-egante and O-its the medicine-man prospered, through this domain of war and memories went Bolles the school-master with Dean Drake and Brock. The third noon from Harper's they came leisurely down to the old Malheur Agency, where once the hostile Indians had drawn pictures on the door, and where Castle Rock frowned down unchanged.
"I wish I was going to stay here with you," said Brock to Drake. "By Indian Creek you can send word to me quicker than we've come."
"Why, you're an old bat!" said the boy to his foreman, and clapped him farewell on the shoulder.
Brock drove away, thoughtful. He was not a large man. His face was clean-cut, almost delicate. He had a well-trimmed, yellow mustache, and it was chiefly in his blue eye and lean cheek-bone that the frontiersman showed. He loved Dean Drake more than he would ever tell, even to himself.
The young superintendent set at work to ranch-work this afternoon of Brock's leaving, and the buccaroos made his acquaintance one by one and stared at him. Villany did not sit outwardly upon their faces; they were not villains; but they stared at the boy sent to control them, and they spoke together, laughing. Drake took the head of the table at supper, with Bolles on his right. Down the table some silence, some staring, much laughing went on—the rich brute laugh of the belly untroubled by the brain. Sam, the Chinaman, rapid and noiseless, served the dishes.
"What is it?" said a buccaroo.
"Can it bite?" said another.
"If you guess what it is, you can have it," said a third.
"It's meat," remarked Drake, incisively, helping himself; "and tougher than it looks."
The brute laugh rose from the crowd and fell into surprised silence; but no rejoinder came, and they ate their supper somewhat thoughtfully. The Chinaman's quick, soft eye had glanced at Dean Drake when they laughed. He served his dinner solicitously. In his kitchen that evening he and Bolles unpacked the good things—the olives, the dried fruits, the cigars—brought by the new superintendent for Christmas; and finding Bolles harmless, like his gentle Asiatic self, Sam looked cautiously about and spoke:
"You not know why they laugh," said he. "They not talk about my meat then. They mean new boss, Misser Dlake. He velly young boss."
"I think," said Bolles, "Mr. Drake understood their meaning, Sam. I have noticed that at times he ex
presses himself peculiarly. I also think they understood his meaning."
The Oriental pondered. "Me like Misser Dlake," said he. And drawing quite close, he observed, "They not nice man velly much."
Next day and every day "Misser Dlake" went gayly about his business, at his desk or on his horse, vigilant, near and far, with no sign save a steadier keenness in his eye. For the Christmas dinner he provided still further sending to the Grande Ronde country for turkeys and other things. He won the heart of Bolles by lending him a good horse; but the buccaroos, though they were boisterous over the coming Christmas joy, did not seem especially grateful. Drake, however, kept his worries to himself.
"This thing happens anywhere," he said one night in the office to Bolles, puffing a cigar. "I've seen a troop of cavalry demoralize itself by a sort of contagion from two or three men."
"I think it was wicked to send you here by yourself," blurted Bolles.
"Poppycock! It's the chance of my life, and I'll jam her through or bust."
"I think they have decided you are getting turkeys because you are afraid of them," said Bolles.
"Why, of course! But d' you figure I'm the man to abandon my Christmas turkey because my motives for eating it are misconstrued?"
Dean Drake smoked for a while; then a knock came at the door. Five buccaroos entered and stood close, as is the way with the guilty who feel uncertain.
"We were thinking as maybe you'd let us go over to town," said Half-past Full, the spokesman.
"When?"
"Oh, any day along this week."
"Can't spare you till after Christmas."
"Maybe you'll not object to one of us goin'?"
"You'll each have your turn after this week."
A slight pause followed. Then Half-past Full said: "What would you do if I went, anyway?"
"Can't imagine," Drake answered, easily. "Go, and I'll be in a position to inform you."
The buccaroo dropped his stolid bull eyes, but raised them again and grinned. "Well, I'm not particular about goin' this week, boss."
"That's not my name," said Drake, "but it's what I am."
They stood a moment. Then they shuffled out. It was an orderly retreat—almost.
Drake winked over to Bolles. "That was a graze," said he, and smoked for a while. "They'll not go this time. Question is, will they go next?"
III
Drake took a fresh cigar, and threw his legs over the chair arm.
"I think you smoke too much," said Bolles, whom three days had made familiar and friendly.
"Yep. Have to just now. That's what! as Uncle Pasco would say. They are a half-breed lot, though," the boy continued, returning to the buccaroos and their recent visit. "Weaken in the face of a straight bluff, you see, unless they get whiskey-courageous. And I've called 'em down on that."
"Oh!" said Bolles, comprehending.
"Didn't you see that was their game? But he will not go after it."
"The flesh is all they seem to understand," murmured Bolles.
Half-past Full did not go to Harney City for the tabooed whiskey, nor did any one. Drake read his buccaroos like the children that they were. After the late encounter of grit, the atmosphere was relieved of storm. The children, the primitive, pagan, dangerous children, forgot all about whiskey, and lusted joyously for Christmas. Christmas was coming! No work! A shooting-match! A big feed! Cheerfulness bubbled at the Malheur Agency. The weather itself was in tune. Castle Rock seemed no longer to frown, but rose into the shining air, a mass of friendly strength. Except when a rare sledge or horseman passed, Mr. Bolles's journeys to the school were all to show it was not some pioneer colony in a new, white, silent world that heard only the playful shouts and songs of the buccaroos. The sun overhead and the hard-crushing snow underfoot filled every one with a crisp, tingling hilarity.
Before the sun first touched Castle Rock on the morning of the feast they were up and in high feather over at the bunk-house. They raced across to see what Sam was cooking; they begged and joyfully swallowed lumps of his raw plum-pudding. "Merry Christmas!" they wished him, and "Melly Clismas!" said he to them. They played leap-frog over by the stable, they put snow down each other's backs. Their shouts rang round corners; it was like boys let out of school. When Drake gathered them for the shooting-match, they cheered him; when he told them there were no prizes, what did they care for prizes? When he beat them all the first round, they cheered him again. Pity he hadn't offered prizes! He wasn't a good business man, after all!
The rounds at the target proceeded through the forenoon, Drake the acclaimed leader; and the Christmas sun drew to mid-sky. But as its splendor in the heavens increased, the happy shoutings on earth began to wane. The body was all that the buccaroos knew; well, the flesh comes pretty natural to all of us—and who had ever taught these men about the spirit? The further they were from breakfast the nearer they were to dinner; yet the happy shootings waned! The spirit is a strange thing. Often it dwells dumb in human clay, then unexpectedly speaks out of the clay's darkness.
It was no longer a crowd Drake had at the target. He became aware that quietness had been gradually coming over the buccaroos. He looked, and saw a man wandering by himself in the lane. Another leaned by the stable corner, with a vacant face. Through the windows of the bunk-house he could see two or three on their beds. The children were tired of shouting. Drake went in-doors and threw a great log on the fire. It blazed up high with sparks, and he watched it, although the sun shown bright on the window-sill. Presently he noticed that a man had come in and taken a chair. It was Half-past Full, and with his boots stretched to the warmth, he sat gazing into the fire. The door opened and another buckaroo entered and sat off in a corner. He had a bundle of old letters, smeared sheets tied trite a twisted old ribbon. While his large, top-toughened fingers softly loosened the ribbon, he sat with his back to the room and presently began to read the letters over, one by one. Most of the men came in before long, and silently joined the watchers round the treat fireplace. Drake threw another log on, and in a short time this, too, broke into ample flame. The silence was long; a slice of shadow had fallen across the window-sill, when a young man spoke, addressing the logs:
"I skinned a coon in San Saba, Texas, this day a year."
At the sound of a voice, some of their eyes turned on the speaker, but turned back to the fire again. The spirit had spoken from the clay, aloud; and the clay was uncomfortable at hearing it.
After some more minutes a neighbor whispered to a neighbor, "Play you a game of crib."
The man nodded, stole over to where the board was, and brought it across the floor on creaking tip-toe. They set it between them, and now and then the cards made a light sound in the room.
"I treed that coon on Honey," said the young man, after a while—"Honey Creek, San Saba. Kind o' dry creek. Used to flow into Big Brady when it rained."
The flames crackled on, the neighbors still played their cribbage. Still was the day bright, but the shrinking wedge of sun had gone entirely from the window-sill. Half-past Full had drawn from his pocket a mouthorgan, breathing half-tunes upon it; in the middle of "Suwanee River" the man who sat in the corner laid the letter he was beginning upon the heap on his knees and read no more. The great genial logs lay glowing, burning; from the fresher one the flames flowed and forked; along the embered surface of the others ran red and blue shivers of iridescence. With legs and arms crooked and sprawled, the buccaroos brooded, staring into the glow with seldom-winking eyes, while deep inside the clay the spirit spoke quietly. Christmas Day was passing, but the sun shone still two good hours high. Outside, over the snow and pines, it was only in the deeper folds of the hills that the blue shadows had come; the rest of the world was gold and silver; and from far across that silence into this silence by the fire came a tinkling stir of sound. Sleighbells it was, steadily coming, too early for Bolles to be back from his school festival.
The toy-thrill of the jingling grew clear and sweet, a spirit of enchantment that did
not wake the stillness, but cast it into a deeper dream. The bells came near the door and stopped, and then Drake opened it.
"Hello, Uncle Pasco!" said he. "Thought you were Santa Claus."
"Santa Claus! H'm. Yes. That's what. Told you maybe I'd come."
"So you did. Turkey is due in—let's see—ninety minutes. Here, boys! some of you take Uncle Pasco's horse."
"No, no, I won't. You leave me alone. I ain't stoppin' here. I ain't hungry. I just grubbed at the school. Sleepin' at Missouri Pete's to-night. Got to make the railroad tomorrow." The old man stopped his precipitate statements. He sat in his sledge deeply muffled, blinking at Drake and the buccaroos, who had strolled out to look at him, "Done a big business this trip," said he. "Told you I would. Now if you was only givin' your children a Christmas-tree like that I seen that feller yer schoolmarm doin' just now—hee-hee!" From his blankets he revealed the well-known case. "Them things would shine on a tree," concluded Uncle Pasco.
"Hang 'em in the woods, then," said Drake.
"Jewelry, is it?" inquired the young Texas man.
Uncle Pasco whipped open his case. "There you are," said he. "All what's left. That ring'll cost you a dollar."
"I've a dollar somewheres," said the young man, fumbling.
Half-past Full, on the other side of the sleigh, stood visibly fascinated by the wares he was given a skilful glimpse of down among the blankets. He peered and he pondered while Uncle Pasco glibly spoke to him.
"Scatter your truck out plain!" the buccaroo exclaimed, suddenly. "I'm not buying in the dark. Come over to the bunk-house and scatter."
"Brass will look just the same anywhere," said Drake.
"Brass!" screamed Uncle. "Brass your eye!"
But the buccaroos, plainly glad for distraction, took the woolly old scolding man with them. Drake shouted that if getting cheated cheered them, by all means to invest heavily, and he returned alone to his fire, where Bolles soon joined him. They waited, accordingly, and by-and-by the sleigh-bells jingled again. As they had come out of the silence, so did they go into it, their little silvery tinkle dancing away in the distance, faint and fainter, then, like a breath, gone.