by Owen Wister
"Mr. Smith," said she, "you are not going to do anything like that. You are going to behave yourself like the gentleman you are, and not like the wild beast that's inside you." Never in his life before, probably, had Shot-gun been addressed in such a manner, and he too became hypnotized, fixing his blue eyes upon the strange lady. "I do not believe in patent foods for children," said Mrs. Brewton. "We agree on that, Mr. Smith, and I am a grandmother, and I attend to what my grandchildren eat. But this highly adroit young man has done you no harm. If he has the prizes, whose doing is that, please? And who paid for them? Will you tell me, please? Ah, you are all silent!" And she croaked melodiously. "Now let him and his manna go along. But I have enjoyed meeting you all, and I shall not forget you soon. And, Mr. Smith, I want you to remember me. Will you, please?" She walked to Mrs. Smith and the twins, and Shot-gun followed her, entirely hypnotized. She beckoned to me. "Your judge and I," she said, "consider not only your beautiful twins worthy of a prize, but also the mother and father that can so proudly claim them." She put her hand in my pocket. "These cat's-eyes," she said, "you will wear, and think of me and the judge who presents them." She placed a bracelet on each twin, and the necklace upon Mrs. Smith's neck. "Give him Gadsden's stuff," she whispered to me. "Do you shave yourself, sir?" said I, taking out the Stropine. "Vaseline and ground shells, and will last your life. Rub the size of a pea on your strop and spread it to an inch." I placed the box in Shot-gun's motionless hand. "And now, Gadsden, we'll take the train," said Mrs. Brewton. "Here's your lunch! Here's your wine!" said the orator, forcing a basket upon me. "I don't know what we'd have done without you and your mother." A flash of indignation crossed Mrs. Brewton's face, but changed to a smile. "You've forgot to name my girls!" exclaimed Shot-gun, suddenly finding his voice. "Suppose you try that," said Mrs. Brewton to me, a trifle viciously. "Thank you," I said to Smith. "Thank you. I—" "Something handsome," he urged. "How would Cynthia do for one?" I suggested. "Shucks, no! I've known two Cynthias. You don't want that?" he asked Mrs. Smith; and she did not at all. "Something extra, something fine, something not stale," said he. I looked about the room. There was no time for thought, but my eye fell once more upon Cuba. This reminded me of Spain, and the Spanish; and my brain leaped. "I have them!" I cried. "'Armada' and 'Loyola.'" "That's what they're named!" said Shot-gun; "write it for us." And I did. Once more the band played, and we left them, all calling, "Good-bye, ma'am. Good-bye, judge," happy as possible. The train was soon going sixty miles an hour through the desert. We had passed Lordsburg, San Simon, and were nearly at Benson before Mrs. Brewton and Gadsden (whom she made sit down with us) and I finished the lunch and champagne. "I wonder how long he'll remember me?" mused Mrs. Brewton at Tucson, where we were on time. "That woman is not worth one of his boots."
Saturday afternoon, May 6.—Near Los Angeles. I have been writing all day, to be sure and get everything in, and now Sharon is twenty-four hours ago, and here there are roses, gardens, and many nice houses at the way-stations. Oh, George Washington, father of your country, what a brindled litter have you sired!
But here the moral reflections begin again, and I copy no more diary. Mrs. Brewton liked my names for the twins. "They'll pronounce it Loyo'la," she said, "and that sounds right lovely." Later she sent me her paper for the Golden Daughters. It is full of poetry and sentiment and all the things I have missed. She wrote that if she had been sure the agent had helped Aqua Marine to swallow the ring, she would have let them smash his boxes. And I think she was a little in love with Shot-gun Smith. But what a pity we shall soon have no more Mrs. Brewtons! The causes that produced her—slavery, isolation, literary tendencies, adversity, game blood—that combination is broken forever. I shall speak to Mr. Howells about her. She ought to be recorded.
The Promised Land
Perhaps there were ten of them—these galloping dots were hard to count—down in the distant bottom across the river. Their swiftly moving dust hung with them close, thinning to a yellow veil when they halted short. They clustered a moment, then parted like beads, and went wide asunder on the plain. They veered singly over the level, merged in twos and threes, apparently racing, shrank together like elastic, and broke ranks again to swerve over the stretching waste. From this visioned pantomime presently came a sound, a tiny shot. The figures were too far for discerning which fired it. It evidently did no harm, and was repeated at once. A babel of diminutive explosions followed, while the horsemen galloped on in unexpected circles. Soon, for no visible reason, the dots ran together, bunching compactly. The shooting stopped, the dust rose thick again from the crowded hoofs, cloaking the group, and so passed back and was lost among the silent barren hills.
Four emigrants had watched this from the high bleak rim of the Big Bend. They stood where the flat of the desert broke and tilted down in grooves and bulges deep to the lurking Columbia. Empty levels lay opposite, narrowing up into the high country.
"That's the Colville Reservation across the river from us," said the man.
"Another!" sighed his wife.
"The last Indians we'll strike. Our trail to the Okanagon goes over a corner of it."
"We're going to those hills?" The mother looked at her little girl and back where the cloud had gone.
"Only a corner, Liza. The ferry puts us over on it, and we've got to go by the ferry or stay this side of the Columbia. You wouldn't want to start a home here?"
They had driven twenty-one hundred miles at a walk. Standing by them were the six horses with the wagon, and its tunneled roof of canvas shone duskily on the empty verge of the wilderness. A dry windless air hung over the table-land of the Big Bend, but a sound rose from somewhere, floating voluminous upon the silence, and sank again.
"Rapids!" The man pointed far up the giant rut of the stream to where a streak of white water twinkled at the foot of the hills. "We've struck the river too high," he added.
"Then we don't cross here?" said the woman, quickly.
"No. By what they told me the cabin and the ferry ought to be five miles down."
Her face fell. "Only five miles! I was wondering, John—Wouldn't there be a way round for the children to—"
"Now, mother," interrupted the husband, "that ain't like you. We've crossed plenty Indian reservations this trip already."
"I don't want to go round," the little girl said. "Father, don't make me go round."
Mart, the boy, with a loose hook of hair hanging down to his eyes from his hat, did not trouble to speak. He had been disappointed in the westward journey to find all the Indians peaceful. He knew which way he should go now, and he went to the wagon to look once again down the clean barrel of his rifle.
"Why, Nancy, you don't like Indians?" said her mother.
"Yes, I do. I like chiefs."
Mrs. Clallam looked across the river. "It was so strange, John, the way they acted. It seems to get stranger, thinking about it."
"They didn't see us. They didn't have a notion—"
"But if we're going right over?"
"We're not going over there, Liza. That quick water's the Mahkin Rapids, and our ferry's clear down below from this place."
"What could they have been after, do you think?"
"Those chaps? Oh, nothing, I guess. They weren't killing anybody."
"Playing cross-tag," said Mart.
"I'd like to know, John, how you know they weren't killing anybody. They might have been trying to."
"Then we're perfectly safe, Liza. We can set and let 'em kill us all day."
"Well, I don't think it's any kind of way to behave, running around shooting right off your horse."
"And Fourth of July over too," said Mart from the wagon. He was putting cartridges into the magazine of his Winchester. His common-sense told him that those horsemen would not cross the river, but the notion of a night attack pleased the imagination of young sixteen.
"It was the children," said Mrs. Clallam. "And nobody's getting me any wood. How am I going to cook supper? Stir yourselves!
"
They had carried water in the wagon, and father and son went for wood. Some way down the hill they came upon a gully with some dead brush, and climbed back with this. Supper was eaten on the ground, the horses were watered, given grain, and turned loose to find what pickings they might in the lean growth; and dusk had not turned to dark when the emigrants were in their beds on the soft dust. The noise of the rapids dominated the air with distant sonority, and the children slept at once, the boy with his rifle along his blanket's edge. John Clallam lay till the moon rose hard and brilliant, and then quietly, lest his wife should hear from her bed by the wagon, went to look across the river. Where the downward slope began he came upon her. She had been watching for some time. They were the only objects in that bald moonlight. No shrub grew anywhere that reached to the waist, and the two figures drew together on the lonely hill. They stood hand in hand and motionless, except that the man bent over the woman and kissed her. When she spoke of Iowa they had left, he talked of the new region of their hopes, the country that lay behind the void hills opposite, where it would not be a struggle to live. He dwelt on the home they would make, and her mood followed his at last, till husband and wife were building distant plans together. The Dipper had swung low when he remarked that they were a couple of fools, and they went back to their beds. Cold came over the ground, and their musings turned to dreams. Next morning both were ashamed of their fears.
By four the wagon was on the move. Inside, Nancy's voice was heard discussing with her mother whether the school-teacher where they were going to live now would have a black dog with a white tail, that could swim with a basket in his mouth. They crawled along the edge of the vast descent, making slow progress, for at times the valley widened and they receded far from the river, and then circuitously drew close again where the slant sank abruptly. When the ferryman's cabin came in sight, the canvas interior of the wagon was hot in the long-risen sun. The lay of the land had brought them close above the stream, but no one seemed to be at the cabin on the other side, nor was there any sign of a ferry. Groves of trees lay in the narrow folds of the valley, and the water swept black between untenanted shores. Nothing living could be seen along the scant levels of the bottom-land. Yet there stood the cabin as they had been told, the only one between the rapids and the Okanagon; and bright in the sun the Colville Reservation confronted them. They came upon tracks going down over the hill, marks of wagons and horses, plain in the soil, and charred sticks, with empty cans, lying where camps had been. Heartened by this proof that they were on the right road, John Clallam turned his horses over the brink. The slant steepened suddenly in a hundred yards, tilting the wagon so no brake or shoe would hold it if it moved farther.
"All out!" said Clallam. "Either folks travel light in this country or they unpack." He went down a little way. "That's the trail too," he said. "Wheel marks down there, and the little bushes are snapped off."
Nancy slipped out. "I'm unpacked," said she. "Oh, what a splendid hill to go down! We'll go like anything."
"Yes, that surely is the trail," Clallam pursued. "I can see away down where somebody's left a wheel among them big stones. But where does he keep his ferry-boat? And where does he keep himself?"
"Now, John, if it's here we're to go down, don't you get to studying over something else. It'll be time enough after we're at the bottom. Nancy, here's your chair." Mrs. Clallam began lifting the lighter things from the wagon.
"Mart," said the father, "we'll have to chain lock the wheels after we're empty. I guess we'll start with the worst. You and me'll take the stove apart and get her down somehow. We're in luck to have open country and no timber to work through. Drop that bedding mother! Yourself is all you're going to carry. We'll pack that truck on the horses."
"Then pack it now and let me start first. I'll make two trips while you're at the stove."
"There's the man!" said Nancy.
A man—a white man—was riding up the other side of the river. Near the cabin he leaned to see something on the ground. Ten yards more and he was off the horse and picked up something and threw it away. He loitered along, picking up and throwing till he was at the door. He pushed it open and took a survey of the interior. Then he went to his horse, and when they saw him going away on the road he had come, they set up a shouting, and Mart fired a signal. The rider dived from his saddle and made headlong into the cabin, where the door clapped to like a trap. Nothing happened further, and the horse stood on the bank.
"That's the funniest man I ever saw," said Nancy.
"They're all funny over there," said Mart. "I'll signal him again." But the cabin remained shut, and the deserted horse turned, took a few first steels of freedom, then trotted briskly down the river.
"Why, then, he don't belong there at all," said Nancy.
"Wait, child, till we know something about it."
"She's liable to be right, Liza. The horse, anyway, don't belong, or he'd not run off. That's good judgment, Nancy. Right good for a little girl."
"I am six years old," said Nancy, "and I know lots more than that."
"Well, let's get mother and the bedding started down. It'll be noon before we know it."
There were two pack-saddles in the wagon, ready against such straits as this. The rolls were made, balanced as side packs, and circled with the swing-ropes, loose cloths, clothes, frying-pans, the lantern, and the axe tossed in to fill the gap in the middle, canvas flung over the whole, and the diamond-hitch hauled taut on the first pack, when a second rider appeared across the river. He came out of a space between the opposite hills, into which the trail seemed to turn, and he was leading the first man's horse. The heavy work before them was forgotten, and the Clallams sat down in a row to watch.
"He's stealing it," said Mrs. Clallam.
"Then the other man will come out and catch him," said Nancy.
Mart corrected them. "A man never steals horses that way. He drives them up in the mountains, where the owner don't travel much."
The new rider had arrived at the bank and came steadily along till opposite the door, where he paused and looked up and down the river.
"See him stoop," said Clallam the father. "He's seen the tracks don't go further."
"I guess he's after the other one," added Clallam the son.
"Which of them is the ferry-man?" said Mrs. Clallam.
The man had got off and gone straight inside the cabin. In the black of the doorway appeared immediately the first man, dangling in the grip of the other, who kicked him along to the horse. There the victim mounted his own animal and rode back down the river. The chastiser was returning to the cabin, when Mart fired his rifle. The man stopped short, saw the emigrants, and waved his hand. He dismounted and came to the edge of the water. They could hear he was shouting to them, but it was too far for the words to carry. From a certain reiterated cadence, he seemed to be saying one thing. John and Mart tried to show they did not understand, and indicated their wagon, walking to it and getting aboard. On that the stranger redoubled his signs and shootings, ran to the cabin, where he opened and shut the door several times, came back, and pointed to the hills.
"He's going away, and can't ferry us over," said Mrs. Clallam.
"And the other man thought he'd gone," said Nancy, "and he came and caught him in his house."
"This don't suit me," Clallam remarked. "Mart, we'll go to the shore and talk to him."
When the man saw them descending the hill, he got on his horse and swam the stream. It carried him below, but he was waiting for them when they reached the level. He was tall, shambling, and bony, and roved over them with a pleasant, restless eye.
"Good-morning," said he. "Fine weather. I was baptized Edward Wilson, but you inquire for Wild-Goose Jake. Them other names are retired and pensioned. I expect you seen me kick him?"
"Couldn't help seeing."
"Oh, I ain't blamin' you, son, not a bit, I ain't. He can't bile water without burnin' it, and his toes turns in, and he's blurry round the fing
er-nails. He's jest kultus, he is. Hev some?" With a furtive smile that often ran across his lips, he pulled out a flat bottle, and all took an acquaintanceship swallow, while the Clallams explained their journey. "How many air there of yu' slidin' down the hill?" he inquired, shifting his eye to the wagon.
"I've got my wife and little girl up there. That's all of us."
"Ladies along! Then I'll step behind this bush." He was dragging his feet from his waterlogged boots. "Hear them suck now?" he commented. "Didn't hev to think about a wetting onced. But I ain't young any more. There, I guess I ain't caught a chill." He had whipped his breeches off and spread them on the sand. "Now you arrive down this here hill from Ioway, and says you: 'Where's that ferry? 'Ain't we hit the right spot?' Well, that's what you hev hit. You're all right, and the spot is hunky-dory, and it's the durned old boat hez made the mistake, begosh! A cloud busted in this country, and she tore out fer the coast, and the joke's on her! You'd ought to hev heerd her cable snap! Whoosh, if that wire didn't screech! Jest last week it was, and the river come round the corner on us in a wave four feet high, same as a wall. I was up here on business, and seen the whole thing. So the ferry she up and bid us good-bye, and lit out for Astoria with her cargo. Beggin' pardon, hev you tobacco, for mine's in my wet pants? Twenty-four hogs and the driver, and two Sheeny drummers bound to the mines with brass jew'lry, all gone to hell, for they didn't near git to Astoria. They sank in the sight of all, as we run along the bank. I seen their arms wave, and them hogs rolling over like 'taters bilin' round in the kettle." Wild-Goose Jake's words came slow and went more slowly as he looked at the river and spoke, but rather to himself. "It warn't long, though. I expect it warn't three minutes till the water was all there was left there. My stars, what a lot of it! And I might hev been part of that cargo, easy as not. Freight behind time was all that come between me and them that went. So, we'd hev gone bobbin' down that flood, me and my piah-chuck."