by Les Weil
"There was only one."
"Only one. There was three. Three of Drew's men was killed. Another one of 'em just told me so. And they gotta get information." He spit off to the side.
My face was getting hot. I didn't like to just yank my arm away from an old man like that, but people along the street were beginning to look at us instead of the show down at the corner. They weren't having any trouble hearing the old man either.
"There's no great rush," I told him, sharp. "They got four or five hours' start already."
"No hurry," he said, but not so loud, and let go of my shirt.
"Chee-rist," he boiled again, "five hours' start and no hurry. That's sense now, ain't it? I s'pose if they had ten hours' start you'd jest set to home and wait fer 'em.
"You get on down there," he ordered, when I'd started on anyway. He trotted after me two or three steps, cackling, "Get a move on," and gave me a rap across the seat with his stick.
I didn't look around, but could still hear him, "No hurry, Chee-rist, no hurry," and his wife trying to gentle him down.
I was pretty hot, the way you get when old people or sick people or smart kids talk up to you and make you look foolish because they know you won't do anything, or even say much. I rolled myself a cigarette as I went along, and at the corner stopped and lit it and sucked in a couple to get hold of myself. But one thing I did see. If that old cackler who didn't even have the facts straight could heat me up when I knew he was wrong, then a lot of these men must be fixed so that nothing could turn them off unless it could save their faces. The women were as stirred up as the men, and though a lot of them would have been glad if they could keep their own men out of it, that didn't make any difference. When a man's put on his grim business face, and hauled out a gun he maybe hasn't used for years, except for jack rabbits, he doesn't want to go back without a good excuse. And there were people along the walks now, too, a few old men, and a good many women and excited small boys some of the women holding smaller children by the hands to keep them from getting out where the horses were. That meant an audience that had to be played up to from the start.
In the edge of the street opposite Canby's, where things were thickest, I saw a little fellow no bigger than the one who had been crying because her mother and father were arguing. He was barefooted, and had on patched overalls, and had a big head of curls bleached nearly white. He was all eyes for what was going on, and stood there squirming his toes on the hard mud without a notion where he was. I didn't see any other kid as small who wasn't attached, so I figured he must be Tommy.
Young fellow, your mother's looking for you," I told him.
He said for me to look at the horsies, and explained something pretty lengthy, which I couldn't rightly follow, about the guns. It was too bad to spoil his big time, but he was in a bad place. I put on a hard face, and put it right up close to him, and said, "Tommy, you git for home," I switched him around and patted him on the pants, saying, "Git now," again. I guess I overdid it, because he walked as far as the boardwalk, looking at me all the yime, and stopped there, and then his face gathered in a pucker toward his nose and he burst out bawling. I started toward him to ease it off a little, but when he saw me coming he let out a still louder wail and lit out for the corner. He slowed down there, and looked back a couple of times, digging at his eyes, but then went on out of sight up the cross street at a little half-jog that I figured was going to take him all the way. Well, I probably wouldn't ever have to see that woman again, anyway.
When I got across the street to Davies, he was done talking to Joyce, and was standing there staring blankly at the men, his face tired as it had been after the talk in the bar, but the jaw muscles still bulging.
"Bartlett not back yet?" I asked him.
He shook his head, "Wonder what's holding him?" I said.
He shook his head again.
"I'm sorry about Risley," I said, "but I think the Judge will come."
He nodded. Then he brought his eyes back to see me, and smiled a little.
"There wasn't anything else you could do," he said. "Maybe there isn't anything any of us can do. They've made a show out of it now."
I saw I didn't have to tell him anything about that.
"Yeh," I said, looking at the riders in the street too. And there was a change in them. Farnley was still sitting there with no change but a tighter bridle hand, and three or four others, one of them Gil, were still standing at Canby's tie rail. But the rest of them, what with the wait, and the women standing on the walk watching them, looked as grim as ever, but not quite honest. There was a lot of play-acting in it now, passing pretty hard jokes without much point to them, and having more trouble with the horses than they had to.
"They'd be willing to quit if it was dark," I said.
He smiled a little, but shook his head again.
"Well, they'd go orderly pretty easy," I suggested.
"They might do that," he admitted.
I told him what I'd told the Judge about their having to go by Drew's anyway.
"You could get them to promise to pick Risley up, and he'd take care of it."
He considered that and nodded more vigorously. He thought it was a clincher too.
"It's queer what simple things you don't think of when you're excited," he said. "There's a simple little thing, ind it's the whole answer."
Then he added, "We'll have to let the Judge tell them, though. They wouldn't dare listen to me."
I looked at him. He shook his head. "Don't worry," he said, "I don't care who does it."
He went on as if he was thinking it farther to himself. "Yes, that will do it."
Then, "Thank you. I know it was a hard place for you."
I didn't see why he felt as sure as all that about it, but I was glad he thought it cleared me.
"That's all right," I said. "Glad to do it. But the way things are, that'll have to be my stake to you."
He looked at me with those eyes full of questions too. I thought maybe he'd get rid of them, that being more his way than Canby's. But he didn't get the chance if he was going to. Smith, being tight and bored, and having a crowd, picked this time to play the clown again. He got everybody's attention, which wasn't on much, by picking in Gabe Hart's one meanness. He called out from the steps to the bar.
"Coming along, Sparks?" he called, so the men grinned, minding that old joke funny about a nigger always being easy to scare. I hadn't noticed Sparks, but I saw him now, standing on the other side of the street with that constant look of his of pleasant but not very happy astonishment.
Sparks was a queer, slow, careful nigger, who got his living as a sort of general handy man to the village, splitting wood, shoveling snow, raking leaves, things like that; even baby tending, and slept around wherever was handiest to the jobs, in sheds or attics, though he had a sort of little shack he called his own out in the tall weeds behind the boarded-up church. He was a tall, stooped, thin, chocolate-colored man, with kinky hair, gray as if powdered, and big, limp hands and feet. When he talked his deep, easy voice always sounded anxious to please, slow but cheerful, but when he sang, which he did about most any work which had a regular rhythm, like sweeping or raking, he sang only slow, unhappy hymn tunes. He was anything but a fast worker, but he did things up thorough and neat, and he was honest to the bone, and the cleaneest nigger I ever knew. He wore dungarees and a blue shirt, always like they'd just been washed, and his palms were clean tan, and clean steelblue where they met the skin from the backs of his hands. He had a dry, clean, powdered look all over all the time. It was said that he'd been a minister back in Ohio before he came west, but he didn't talk about himself, outside of what he was doing right at the time, so nobody really knew anything about him, but they all liked him all right, and there wasn't anything they wouldn't trust him with. They made jokes about him and to him, but friendly ones, the sort they might make to any town character who was gentle and could take joking right.
When the men grinned they all look
ed across at Sparks. He was embarrassed.
"No, suh, Mistah Smith, ah don't guess so," he said, shaking his head but smiling to show he wasn't offended.
"You better come, Sparks," Smith yelled again. "It ain't every day we get a hanging in a town as dead as this one."
The men stopped grinning. They didn't mind Smith joking Sparks, but that offended their present sense of indecision and secrecy. It seemed wrong to yell about a lynching, I felt it too, that someone might be listening who shouldn't hear; and that in spite of the fact that everybody in town knew. Smith saw he'd made a mistake. When Sparks continued to look down and smile and shake his head, he yelled, "You ain't afraid, is yoh, Sparks," badly imitating Spark's drawl. "Not of a little thing like this," he cried in his own voice again. "You don't have to do anything, you know. The real work is all signed up. But I thought maybe we ought to have a reverend along. There'll be some praying to do, and maybe we ought to have a hymn or two afterward, to kind of cheer us up. You do know the cheerfullest hymns, Sparks."
The men laughed again, and Smith was emboldened.
"That is," he said loudly, "unless Mr. Osgood here is going along. He has first call, of course, being in practice."
"I'm not going, if it interests you," Osgood said, with surprising sharpness for him. "If you men choose to act in violence, and with no more recognition of what you're doing than this levity implies, I wash my hands. Willful murderers are not company for a Christian."
That stung, but not usefully. A bawling out from a man like Osgood doesn't sit well. Some of the men still grinned a littlle, but the sour way.
I was afraid the shepherd would feel his flock was a bit too far astray for him to risk herding them this time," Smith lamented. Osgood was hit, and looked it. He knew the men tolerated him at best, and the knowledge, even when he could delude himself into believing it private, made it doubly difficult for him to keep trying to win them. Sometimes, as now, he was even pitiable. But he had an incurable gift of robbing himself even of pity. After a moment he answered, "I am sorry for you, all of you."
Don't cry, parson," Smith warned him. "We'll do the best we can without you. I guess it's up to you, Sparks," he yelled.
Sparks surprised us. "Maybe it is, Mistah Smith," he said seriously. "Somebody ought to go along that feels the way Mistah Osgood and ah do; beggin' yoh pahdon, Mistah Osgood. If he don' feel it's raght foh him to go, it looks lahk ah'm the onlay one laift."
This unassuming conviction of duty, and its implication of distinct right and wrong, was not funny.
Quickly Smith struggled. "Maybe Mr. Osgood will lend you his Bible, Sparks, so's we can have the right kind of reading at the burial."
This was partially successful. Osgood was obviously lso offended to be so freely talked of by Smith, and perhaps even to have his name coupled with Sparks'. And everyone knew Sparks couldn't read.
You will lend him your Book, won't you, Reverend," Smith asked Osgood. He had no sense for the end of a joke. Osgood had the thick, pale kind of skin that can't get red, so he got whiter, and was trembling a little. Sparks came across the street in his slow, dragging gait. He didn't swing his arms when he walked, but let them hang down as if he had a pail of water in each hand. When he was close enough to talk more quietly, he said,
"No, thank you, Mistah Osgood," and turning to Smith told him, "Ah knows mah text to pray without the book, Mistah Smith."
"But ah'm a slow walkah," he said, smiling especially Winder, "you wouldn't have anothah mule ah could borrow, would you, Mistah Winder?"
Winder didn't know what to say, knowing it was still a joke except to Sparks.
Smith said, "Sure he would, Sparks. Gabe, you just trot back and get the Reverend a good saddle mule, will you? An easy one, mind; he ain't much padded."
The men were quiet.
Finally, Winder said, "Your mouth's too damn loose, Smith."
"I'm talking to Gabe," Smith said, but avoided Winder's stare.
Gabe stared back at Smith, but sat solid and appeared unmoved. He muttered something that nobody could hear. "What's that you said, Gabe?" Smith prodded him. Gabe got it out. "I said I ain't waitin' on no nigger," he said.
"Shut up, Smith," Winder said, before Smith could make anything of this.
Smith got red, which was remarkable for him, since he could swallow almost any insult, but with Winder staring at him he couldn't think of a retort.
"It's all right, Mistah Windah," Sparks said, "but if they is a mule at yon place ah could borrow, ah'd be obliged. Ah can get him mahself, if thayas tahm."
"They're kidding you, Sparks," Canby said from the door. He liked the nigger.
"Ah know that, Mistah Canby," Sparks said, grinning again. "But ah think maybe Mistah Smith was accidentally right when he said ah should go."
"You really want to go?" Winder asked him.
"Yessuh, Mistah Windah, ah do."
Winder studied him, then shrugged and said, "There's a horse in the shed you can use. There's no saddle, but he's got a head-stall on, and there's a rope in the back stall you can use for a bridle.
"You'll have to get him yourself, though. You know how Gabe is," he apologized.
Gabe continued to stare heavily at Smith, but he didn't seem to hold anything against Sparks.
"Yassuh, ah undahstand," Sparks said, and turned to go, Winder felt he'd been too soft.
"Move along, or you'll get left," he said. "We're only waiting for Mr. Bartlett and his boys."
Sparks turned his head back, and grinned and nodded, and then went on down the street toward the stage depot, walking quickly for him. You could tell by his carriage that he was pleased in the way of a man doing what he ought to do.
Smith had missed being funny, and Sparks had given a kind of body, which the men could recognize, to an ideal which Davies' argument hadn't made clear and Osgood's self-doubt had even clouded. I thought it would be a good time for Davies to tackle them again, and looked him. He saw the chance too, but found it hard to get stated in the open, with all those men, and waited too long. A rider called out, "Here comes Ma," and there was as much of a cheering sound as they felt presently fitting, to greet her. Here was a person could head them up.
Ma was up the street quite a ways when they hailed her, but she waved at them, a big, cheerful, unworried gesture. It made me feel good, too, just to see Ma and the way she waved. She was riding, and was dressed like a man, in jeans and a shirt and vest, with a blue bandanna around her neck and an old sombrero on her head. She had a Winchester across her saddle, and after she waved she held it up, and then held part way up, as far as the tie would let it, a coil of rope she had hitched to the flap of the saddle. There was another cheer, stronger than the first, and jokes about Ma and her power that showed how much better the men were feeling. She changed the whole attitude in two moves, and from a quarter mile off.
Jenny Grier was the name of the woman we called Ma. She was middle-aged and massive, with huge, cushiony breasts and rump, great thighs and shoulders, and long, always unkempt, gray hair. Her wide face had fine big grey eyes in it, but was fat and folded, and she always appeared soiled and greasy. She was strong as a wrestler, probably stronger than any man in the valley except Gabe, and with that and her appearance, if it hadn't been for the loud good nature she showed most of the time, people would have been afraid of her. All the women were, anyway, and hated her too, which was all right with her. There were lively, and some pretty terrible, stories about her past, but now she kept a kind of boarding house on the cross street, and it was always in surprisingly good order,
considering how dirty she was about herself. She was a peculiar mixture of hard-set ideas too. Though mostly by jokes, she'd been dead set against Osgood from the first day he came. She had no use for churches and preaching, and she'd made it hard for him by starting all kinds of little tales, like her favorite one about being surprised at how hungry she was when she woke up after the only sermon of his she ever heard, only to find that was because h
e'd gone right on through and it was the second Sunday, and he hadn't wound up his argument then, but his voice gave out. And she could imitate him too, his way of talking, his nervous habits with his hands, his Gladstone pose. She always pretended to be friendly, in a hearty way, when she saw him, and the man was afraid of her. But on the other hand she was a lot more than ordinarily set against what she thought was wrong-doing. I missed my guess if she hadn't had a part in driving Gil's Rose out of town. She didn't Like women, wouldn't have one in her house, not even for one night's sleep. In ways, I think she was crazy, and that all her hates and loves came out of thinking too much about her own past. Sometimes I even wondered if the way she mistreated her own body, with dirt and more work than she needed to do and long hunts and rides she didn't want to make and not much rest or sleep, when about everything else she was a great joker and clean and orderly, wasn't all part of getting even with herself, a self-imposed penance. The other side of that, I thought, was another little trait. She was fond to foolishness of mountains and snow, just of looking at them, but of going up in them too, though snow-shoeing nearly killed her with her weight. She said she'd settled in Bridger's just to look at mountains; that they brought out what little was good in her. Most of the time, though, she was big and easy, and she had the authority of a person who knew her own mind and was past caring what anybody else thought about anything, and a way of talking to us in our own language so we'd laugh and still listen, the style Judge Tyler would like to have had.
I knew that, at least until she had seen the victims in the flesh, she'd be as much for lynching a rustler as Winder or Bartlett. The only thing that made me wonder how she'd turn was that she liked Davies quite as much she didn't like Osgood. She wasn't given to thinking very far, but she did a lot of intelligent feeling.
She was greeted right and left when she joined us, and she spoke to Gil and me with the others, calling me "boy" as she had when 1'd stayed at her place, and we stood a lot better with the rest just on that. Then she started asking questions, and they told her what they knew, which she saw right off, from the different versions, wasn't straight. She set out to straighten it. It wasn't that she was trying to be boss. She simply wanted things in order in her mind when she had anything to do, and in putting them in order she just naturally took over. When some of them were all for starting without Bartlett she checked that. When they told her about Davies she just looked down at him standing on the walk and grinned and asked him if he wasn't going. Davies said he was if they went right, if anybody really needed to go. Ma looked at him, not grinning now, and he explained that Risley was already down at Drew's, and that Drew had a dozen men down there, and that he thought it would be just good sense not to go unless we were sent for, sent for by Risley, who would really know what was going an. There was muttering around him at that. I was surprised myself. So that was why he'd thought that little fact could do a lot; he believed he could use it to stop them from going at all.