Red Men and White

by Wister, Owen

  “We seen you walking around,” said one.

  “Lookin’ the country over,” said the other.

  “Fine weather for travelling,” said the first.

  “Dusty though,” said the second.

  Perceiving them to need my help in coming to their point, I said, “And now about your silver mine.”

  “You’ve called the turn on us!” exclaimed yellow, and black curly slapped his knee. Both of them sat looking at me, laughing enthusiastically, and I gathered they had been having whiskey this Sunday night. I confess that I offered them some more, and when they realized my mildness they told me with length and confidence about the claims they had staked out on Mount Turnbull. “And there’s lots of lead, too,” said yellow.

  “I do not smelt,” said I, “or deal in any way with ore. I have come here without the intention of buying anything.”

  “You ain’t the paymaster?” burst out black curly, wrinkling his forehead like a pleasant dog.

  Yellow touched his foot.

  “Course he ain’t!” said curly, with a swerve of his eye. “He ain’t due. What a while it always is waitin’!”

  Now the paymaster was nothing to me, nor whom he paid. For all I knew, my visitors were on his roll; and why yellow should shy at the mention of him and closely watch his tipsy mate I did not try to guess. Like every one I had met so far in Arizona, these two evidently doubted I was here for my pleasure merely; but it was with entire good-humor that they remarked a man had the right to mind his own business; and so, with a little more whiskey, we made a friendly parting. They recommended me to travel with a pistol in this country, and I explained that I should do myself more harm than good with a weapon that any one handled more rapidly than I, with my inexperience.

  “Good-night, Mr. Meakum,” I said.

  “Follet,” corrected black curly.

  “Cunningham,” said yellow, and they picked up their hats in the hall and withdrew.

  I think now those were their names—the time was coming when I should hear them take oath on it—yet I do not know. I heard many curious oaths taken.

  I was glad to see black curly in the stage next day, not alone for his company, but to give him a right notion of what ready money I had about me. Thinking him over, and his absence of visible means of support, and his interest in me, I took opportunity to mention, quite by the way, that five or six dollars was all that I ever carried on my person, the rest being in New York drafts, worthless in any hands but mine. And I looked at the time once or twice for him to perceive the cheapness of my nickel watch. That the Bishop was not his father I had indirect evidence when we stopped at Thacher to change horses and drop a mail-sack, and the Mormon divine suddenly lifted the flap and inspected us. He nodded to me and gave Follet a message.

  “Tell your brother” (wouldn’t a father have said Tom or Dick?) “that I’ve given him chances enough and he don’t take ’em. He don’t feed my horses, and my passengers complain he don’t feed them—though that’s not so serious!” said he to me, with a jovial wink. “But I won’t have my stock starved. You’ll skip the station and go through to Thomas with this pair,” he added to the driver in his voice of lusty command. “You’ll get supper at Thomas. Everything’s moved on there from to-day. That’s the rule now.” Then he returned to black curly, who, like the driver, had remained cowed and respectful throughout the short harangue. “Your brother could have treated me square and made money by that station. Tell him that, and to see me by Thursday. If he’s thinking of peddling vegetables this season I’ll let him sell to Fort Bowie. Safford takes Carlos, and I won’t have two compete in the same market, or we’ll be sinking low as Eastern prices,” said he to me, with another wink. “Drive on now. You’re late.”

  He shut the flap, and we were off quickly—too quickly. In the next few moments I could feel that something all wrong went on; there was a jingle and snapping of harness, and such a voice from the Bishop behind us that I looked out to see him. We had stopped, and he was running after us at a wonderful pace for a man of sixty-four.

  “If you don’t drive better than that,” said the grizzled athlete, arriving cool and competent, “you’ll saw wood for another year. Look how you’ve got them trembling.”

  It was a young pair, and they stood and steamed while the broken gear was mended.

  “What did California hold the record in before the Boy Orator broke it?” said I, getting out.

  He shot at me the same sinister look I had seen in the Capitol, the look he must always wear, I suppose, when taken aback. Then he laughed broadly and heartily, a strong pleasant laugh that nearly made me like him. “So you’re that fellow! Ho, ho! Away down here now. Oh, ho, ho! What’s your business?”

  “You wouldn’t believe if I told you,” said I, to his sudden sharp question.

  “Me? Why, I believe everything I’m told. What’s your name?”

  “Will you believe I haven’t come to buy anybody’s silver mine?”

  “Silver! I don’t keep it. Unloaded ten years ago before the rabbit died.”

  “Then you’re the first anti-silver man I’ve met.”

  “I’m anti anything I can’t sell, young man. Here’s all there is to silver: Once upon a time it was hard to get, and we had to have it. Now it’s easy. When it gets as common as dirt it’ll be as cheap as dirt. Same as watermelons when it’s a big crop. D’you follow me? That’s silver for you, and I don’t want it. So you’ve come away down here. Well, well! What did you say your name was?”

  I told him.

  “Politician?”

  “God forbid!”

  “Oh, ho, ho! Well, yes. I took a look at those buzzards there in Washington. Our Senate and Representatives. They were screeching a heap. All about ratios. You’ll be sawing wood yet!” he shouted to the driver, and strode up to help him back a horse. “Now ratio is a good-sounding word too, and I guess that’s why they chew on it so constant. Better line of language that they get at home. I’ll tell you about Congress. Here’s all there is to it: You can divide them birds in two lots. Those who know better and those who don’t. D’you follow me?”

  “And which kind is the Boy Orator?”

  “Limber Jim? Oh, he knows better. I know Jim. You see, we used to have a saying in Salt Lake that California had the smallest stoves and the biggest liars in the world. Now Jim—well, there’s an old saying busted. But you’ll see Arizona’ll go back on the Democrats. If they put wool on the free list she’ll stay Republican, and they won’t want her admitted, which suits me first-rate. My people here are better off as they stand.”

  “But your friend Mr. Jenks favors admission!” I exclaimed.

  “Luke? He’s been talking to you, has he? Well now, Luke. Here’s all there is to him: Natural gas. That’s why I support him, you see. If we sent a real smart man to Washington he might get us made a State. Ho, ho! But Luke stays here most of the time, and he’s no good anyway. Oh, ho, ho! So you’re buying no mines this season?”

  Once more I found myself narrating the insignificance of my visit to Arizona—the Bishop must have been a hard inquisitor for even the deeply skilful to elude—and for the first time my word was believed. He quickly took my measure, saw that I had nothing to hide, and after telling me I could find good hunting and scenery in the mountains north, paid me no further attention, but masterfully laid some final commands on the intimidated driver. Then I bade good-bye to the Bishop, and watched that old locomotive moving vigorously back along the road to his manifold business.

  The driver was ill pleased to go hungry for his supper until Thomas, but he did not dare complain much over the new rule, even to black curly and me. This and one other thing impressed me. Some miles farther on we had passed out of the dust for a while, and rolled up the flaps.

  “She’s waiting for you,” said the driver to black curly, and that many-sided youth instantly dived to the bottom of the stage, his boots and pistol among my legs.

  “Throw your coat over me,” he u
rged.

  I concealed him with that and a mail-sack, and stretched my head out to see what lioness stood in his path. But it was only a homelike little cabin, and at the door a woman, comely and mature, eying the stage expectantly. Possibly wife, I thought, more likely mother, and I asked, “Is Mrs. Follet strict?” choosing a name to fit either.

  The driver choked and chirruped, but no sound came from under the mail-sack until we had passed the good-day to the momentous female, whose response was harsh with displeasure as she wheeled into her door. A sulky voice then said, “Tell me when she’s gone, Bill.” But we were a safe two hundred yards on the road before he would lift his head, and his spirits were darkened during the remainder of the journey.

  “Come and live East,” said I, inviting him to some whiskey at the same time. “Back there they don’t begin sitting up for you so early in the evening.”

  This did not enliven him, although upon our driver it seemed to bring another fit as much beyond the proportion of my joke as his first had been. “She tires a man’s spirit,” said black curly, and with this rueful utterance he abandoned the subject; so that when we reached Thomas in the dim night my curiosity was strong, and I paid little heed to this new place where I had come or to my supper. Black curly had taken himself off, and the driver sat at the table with me, still occasionally snickering in his plate. He would explain nothing that I asked him until the gaunt woman who waited on us left us for the kitchen, when he said, with a nervous, hasty relish, “The Widow Sproud is slick,” and departed.

  Consoled by no better clew than this I went to bed in a down-stairs room, and in my strange rising next day I did not see the driver again. Callings in the air awaked me, and a wandering sound of wheels. The gaunt woman stood with a lamp in my room saying the stage was ready, and disappeared. I sprang up blindly, and again the callings passed in the blackness outside—long cries, inarticulate to me. Wheels heavily rolled to my door, and a whip was struck against it, and there loomed the stage, and I made out the calling. It was the three drivers, about to separate before the dawn on their three diverging ways, and they were wailing their departure through the town that travellers might hear, in whatever place they lay sleeping. “Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!” came from somewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floating antiphonal, “Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!” and in the chill black air my driver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, “Car-los! Car-los!” One last time he circled in the nearer darkness with his stage to let me dress. Mostly unbuttoned, and with not even a half minute to splash cold water in my eyes, I clambered solitary into the vehicle and sat among the leather mail-bags, some boxes, and a sack of grain, having four hours yet till breakfast for my contemplation. I heard the faint reveille at Camp Thomas, but to me it was a call for more bed, and I pushed and pulled the grain-sack until I was able to distribute myself and in a manner doze, shivering in my overcoat. Not the rising of the sun upon this blight of sand, nor the appearance of a cattle herd, and both black curly and yellow driving it among its dust clouds, warmed my frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear, running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he had yesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas. With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain, and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the driver and the breakfast man were both genuine Meakums, as Jenks had told me they would be.

  It surprised me to discover now that I was looked for along the Gila, and my name approximately known, and when I asked if my friend Captain Stirling had spoken of my coming, it was evidently not he, but the news was in the air. This was a prominence I had never attained in any previous part of the world, and I said to the driver that I supposed my having no business made me a curiosity. That might have something to do with it, he answered (he seemed to have a literal mind), but some had thought I was the paymaster.

  “Folks up here,” he explained, “are liable to know who’s coming.”

  “If I lived here,” said I, “I should be anxious for the paymaster to come early and often.”

  “Well, it does the country good. The soldiers spend it all right here, and us civilians profit some by it.”

  “EACH BLACK-HAIRED DESERT FIGURE”

  Having got him into conversation, I began to introduce the subject of black curly, hoping to lead up to the Widow Sproud; but before I had compassed this we reached San Carlos, where a blow awaited me. Stirling, my host, had been detailed on a scout this morning! I was stranded here, a stranger, where I had come thousands of miles to see an old friend. His regret and messages to make myself at home, and the quartermaster’s hearty will to help me to do so could not cure my blankness. He might be absent two weeks or more. I looked round at Carlos and its staring sand. Then I resolved to go at once to my other friends now stationed at Fort Grant. For I had begun to feel myself at an immense distance from any who would care what happened to me for good or ill, and I longed to see some face I had known before. So in gloom I retraced some unattractive steps. This same afternoon I staged back along the sordid, incompetent Gila River, and to kill time pushed my Sproud inquiry, at length with success. To check the inevitably slipshod morals of a frontier commonwealth, Arizona has a statute that in reality only sets in writing a presumption of the common law, the ancient presumption of marriage, which is that when a man and woman go to house-keeping for a certain length of time, they shall be deemed legally married. In Arizona this period is set at twelve months, and ten had run against Mrs. Sproud and young Follet. He was showing signs of leaving her. The driver did not think her much entitled to sympathy, and certainly she showed later that she could devise revenge. As I thought over these things we came again to the cattle herd, where my reappearance astonished yellow and black curly. Nor did the variance between my movements and my reported plans seem wholly explained to them by Stirling’s absence, and at the station where I had breakfasted I saw them question the driver about me. This interest in my affairs heightened my desire to reach Fort Grant; and when next day I came to it after another waking to the chanted antiphonals and another faint reveille from Camp Thomas in the waning dark, extreme comfort spread through me. I sat in the club with the officers, and they taught me a new game of cards called Solo, and filled my glass. Here were lieutenants, captains, a major, and a colonel, American citizens with a love of their country and a standard of honor; here floated our bright flag serene against the lofty blue, and the mellow horns sounded at guard-mounting, bringing moisture to the eyes. The day was punctuated with the bright trumpet, people went and came in the simple dignity of duty, and once again I talked with good men and women. God bless our soldier people! I said it often.

  They somewhat derided my uneasiness in the Gila Valley, and found my surmisings sensational. Yet still they agreed much ready money was an unwise thing on a stage journey, although their profession (I suppose) led them to take being “held up” less seriously than I with my peaceful traditions of elevators and the down-town lunch. In the wide Sulphur Springs valley where I rode at large, but never so long or so far that Fort Grant lay not in sight across that miracle of air, it displeased me to come one morning upon yellow and black curly jogging along beneath the government telegraph line.

  “You cover a wide range,” said I.

  “Cowboys have to,” they answered. “So you’ve not quit us yet?”

  “I�
��m thinking of taking a hunt and fish towards Fort Apache.”

  “We’re your men, then. You’ll find us at Thomas any time. We’re gathering stock up these draws, but that’ll be through this week.”

  They spurred their horses and vanished among the steep little hills that run up to Mount Graham. But indeed they should be no men of mine! Stirling had written me his scout was ended, and San Carlos worth a longer visit than I had made there, promising me an escort should I desire to camp in the mountains. An escort it should be, and no yellow or black curly, over-curious about my private matters! This fell in excellently with the coming paymaster’s movements. Major Pidcock was even now on his way to Fort Grant from Fort Bowie; and when he went to Thomas and Carlos I would go, too, in his ambulance; and I sighed with pleasure at escaping that stage again.

  Major Pidcock arrived in a yellow duster, but in other respects differed from the Bishop, though in his body a bulky man. We were introduced to each other at the club.

  “I am glad, sir, to meet you at last,” I said to him. “The whole Gila Valley has been taking me for you.”

  “Oh—ah!” said Pidcock, vaguely, and pulling at some fat papers in his coat; “indeed. I understand that is a very ignorant population. Colonel Vincent, a word with you. The Department Commander requests me—” And here he went off into some official talk with the Colonel.

  I turned among the other officers, who were standing by an open locker having whiskey, and Major Evlie put his hand on my shoulder. “He doesn’t mean anything,” he whispered, while the rest looked knowingly at me. Presently the Colonel explained to Pidcock that he would have me to keep him company to Carlos.

  “Oh—ah, Colonel. Of course we don’t take civilians not employed by the government, as a rule. But exceptions—ah—can be made,” he said to me. “I will ask you to be ready immediately after breakfast to-morrow.” And with that he bowed to us all and sailed forth across the parade-ground.