We were not fifty yards apart when the passengers on the stranger caught sight of us and shrieked aloud. I saw a man pick up his child from one of the benches and futilely attempt to climb the rigging. Then we closed — her name-plate ten feet above ours, looking down into our forehatch. I heard the grinding as of a hundred querns, the ripping of the tough bow-plates, and the pistol-like report of displaced rivets followed by the rush of the sea.
We were sinking in mid-ocean.
******
“Beg y’ pardon,” said the quartermaster, shaking me by the arm, “but you must have been sleeping in the moonlight for the last two hours, and that’s not good for the eyes. Didn’t seem to make you sleep easy, either.” I opened my eyes heavily. My face was swollen and aching, for on my forehead lay the malignant splendour of the moon. The glare of the Red Lamp had vanished with the brilliantly-lighted ship, but the ghastly shrieks of her drowning crew continued.
“What’s that?” I asked tremulously of the quartermaster. “Was it real?”
“Pork chops in the saloon to-morrow,” said the quartermaster. “The butcher he got up at four bells to put the old squeaker out of the way. Them’s his dying ejaculations.”
I dragged my bedding aft and went to sleep.
THE SHADOW OF HIS HAND
“I COME from San Jose,” he said.
“San Jose, Calaveras County, Cali- A fornia: that’s my place.” I pricked up my ears at the mention of Calaveras County. Bret Harte has made that sacred ground.
“Yes?” said I politely. Always be polite to a gentleman from Calaveras County. For aught you know he may be a lineal descendant of the great Colonel Starbottle.
“Did you ever know Yermilyea of San Luis Obispo?” continued the stranger, chewing the plug of meditation.
“No,” said I. Heaven alone knows where lies San Luis Obispo, but I was not going to expose my ignorance. Besides, there might be a story at the back of it all. “What was the special weakness of Mister Vermilyea?”
“Vermilyea! He weak! Lot Vermilyea never had a weakness that you might call a weakness until subsequent events transpired. Then that weakness developed into White Rye. All Westerners drink White Rye. On the Eastern coast they drink Bourbon. Lot tried both when his heart was broken. Both — by the quart.”
“D’ you happen to remember what broke his heart?” I said.
“This must be your first trip to the States, sir, or you would know that Lot’s heart was broken by his father-in-law. Lot’s congregation — he took to Religion — always said that he had no business fooling with a father-in- law. A good many other people said that too. But I always adhered to Lot. ‘Why don’t you kill the animal, Lot?’ I used to say. ‘I can’t. He’s the father of my wife,’ Lot used to say. ‘Loan him money then and settle him on the other side of the States,’ I used to say. ‘The old clam won’t move,’ Lot used to say.”
“Half a minute. What was the actual trouble between Vermilyea and his father-in- law? Did he borrow money?”
“I’m coming to that,” said the stranger calmly. “It arrived this way. Lot had a notion to get married. Some men get that idea. He went to ‘Frisco and pawned out his heart — Lot had a most feeling heart, and that was his ruin — to a girl who lived at back of Kearney Street. I’ve forgotten her given name, but the old man’s name was Dougherty. Guess he was a naturalised Irishman. The old man did not see the merits of Lot when he went sparking after the girl evenings. He fired Lot out off the stoop three or four times. Lot didn’t hit him because he was fond of the daughter. He just quit like a lamb; the old man welting into him with anything that came handy — sticks and besoms, and such. Lot endured that, being a tough man. Every time Lot was fired out he would wait till the old man was pretty well pumped out. Then he used to turn round and say, ‘When’s the wedding to be?’ Dougherty used to ramp round Lot while the girl hid herself till the breeze abated. He had a peculiar aversion to domiciliary visits from Lot, had Dougherty. I’ve my own theory on the subject. I’ll explain it later on. At last Dougherty got tired of Lot and his peacefulness. The girl stuck to him for all she was worth. Lot never budged. ‘If you want to marry her,’ said the old man, ‘just drop your long-suffering for half an hour. Stand up to me, Lot, and we’ll run this thing through with our hands/ ‘If I must, I must/ said Lot, and with that they began the argument up and down the parlour floor. Lot he was fighting for his wife. He set considerable value on the girl. The old man he was fighting for the fun of the affair. Lot whipped. He handled the old man tenderly out of regard for his connections. All the same he fixed him up pretty thoroughly. When he crawled off the old man he had received his permission to marry the girl. Old man Dougherty ran round ‘Frisco advertising Lot for the tallest fighter in the town. Lot was a respectable sort of man and considerable absorbed in preparing for his wedding. It didn’t please him any to receive invitations from the boss fighting men of ‘Frisco — professional invitations, you must understand. I guess he cussed the father-in-law to be.
“When he was married, he concluded to locate in ‘Frisco, and started business there. A married man don’t keep his muscle up any. Old man Dougherty he must have counted on that. By the time Lot’s first child was born he came around suffering for a fight. He painted Lot’s house crimson. Lot endured that. He got a hold of the baby and began yanking it around by the legs to see if it could squeal worth listening to. Lot stretched him. Old man howled with delight. Lot couldn’t well hand his father-in-law over to the police, so they had it, knuckle and tooth, all round the front floor, and the old man he quit by the window, considerably mashed up. Lot was fair spent, not having kept up his muscle. My notion is that old man Dougherty being a boss fighter couldn’t get his fighting regularly till Lot married into the family. Then he reckoned on a running discussion to warm up his bones. Lot was too fond of his wife to disoblige him. Any man in his senses would have brought the old man before the courts, or clubbed him, or laid him out stiff. But Lot was always tender-hearted.
“Soon as old man Dougherty got his senses together off the pavement, he argued that Lot was considerable less of a fighter than he had been. That pleased the old man. He was plastered and caulked up by the doctors, and as soon as he could move he interviewed Lot and made remarks. Lot didn’t much care what he said, but when he came to casting reflections on the parentage of the baby, Lot shut the office door and played round for half an hour till theiwalls glittered like the evening sun. Old man Dougherty crawled out, but he crowed as he crawled. ‘Praise the blessed saints,’ he said, ‘I kin get my fighting along o’ my meals. Lot, ye have prolonged my life a century.’
“Guess Lot would like to see him dead now. He is an old man, but most amazing tough. He has been fighting Lot for a matter of three years. If Lot made a lucky bit of trade, the old man would come along and fight him for luck. If Lot lost a little, the old man would fight him to teach him safe speculation. It took all Lot’s time to keep even with him. No man in business can ‘tend his business and fight in streaks. Lot’s trade fell off every time he laid himself out to stretch the old man. Worst of it was that when Lot was made a Deacon of his church, the old man fought him most terrible for the honour of the Roman Catholic Church. Lot whipped, of course. He always whipped. Old man Dougherty went round among the other Deacons and lauded Lot for a boss pugilist, not meaning to hurt Lot’s prospects. Lot had to explain the situation to the church in general. They accepted it.
“Old man Dougherty he fought on. Age had no effect on him. Lot always whipped, but nothing would satisfy the old man. Lot shook all his teeth out till his gums were as bare as a sand-bar. Old man Dougherty came along lisping his invitation to the dance. They fought.
“When Lot shifted to San Luis Obispo, old man Dougherty he came along too — craving for his fight. It was cocktails and plug to him. It grew on him. Lot handled him too gently because of the wife. The old man could come to the scratch once a month, and always at the most inconvenient time. They fought.
“Last I heard of Lot he was sinking into the tomb. ‘It’s not the fighting,’ he said to me. ‘It’s the darned monotony of the circus. He knows I can whip him, but he won’t rest satisfied. ‘Lay him out, Lot,’ said I; ‘fracture his cranium or gouge him. This show is foolish all round.’ ‘I can’t lay him out,’ said Lot. ‘He’s my father-in-law. But don’t it strike you I’ve a deal to be thankful for? If he had been a Jew he’d have fought on Sundays when I was doing Deacon. I’ve been too gentle with him; the old man knows my spot place, but I’ve a deal to be thankful for.’
“Strikes me that thankfulness of Lot’s sort is nothing more nor less than cussed affectation. Say!”
I said nothing.
A LITTLE MORE BEEF
“A LITTLE more beef, please,” said the fat man with the grey whiskers and the spattered waistcoat.
“You can’t eat too much o’ good beef — not even when the prices are going up hoof over hock.” And he settled himself down to load in a fresh cargo.
Now, this is how the fat man had come by his meal. One thousand miles away, a red Texan steer was preparing to go to bed for the night in the company of his fellows — myriads of his fellows. From dawn till late dusk he had loafed across the leagues of grass and grunted savagely as each mouthful proved to his mind that grass was not what he had known it in his youth. But the steer was wrong. That summer had brought great drought to Montana and Northern Dakota. The cattle feed was withering day by day, and the more prudent stock owners had written to the East for manufactured provender. Only the little cactus that grows with the grasses appeared to enjoy itself. The cattle certainly did not; and the cowboys from the very beginning of spring had used language considered profane even for the cowboy. What their ponies said has never been recorded. The ponies had the worst time of all, and at each nightly camp whispered to each other their longings for the winter, when they would be turned out on the freezing ranges — galled from wither to croup, but riderless — thank Heaven, riderless. On these various miseries the sun looked down impartial. His business was to cake the ground and ruin the grasses.
The cattle — the acres of huddled cattle — were restless. In the first place, they were forced to scatter for graze; and in the second, the heat told on their tempers and made them prod each other with their long horns. In the heart of the herd you would have thought men were fighting with single-sticks. On the outskirts, posted at quarter-mile intervals, sat the cowboys on their ponies, the brims of their hats tilted over their sun-skinned noses, their feet out of the big brown-leather hooded stirrups, and their hands gripping the horn of the heavy saddle to keep themselves from falling on to the ground — asleep. A cowboy can sleep at full gallop; on the other hand, he can keep awake also at full gallop for eight and forty hours and wear down six unamiable bronchos in the process.
Lafe Parmalee; Shwink, the German who could not ride but had a blind affection for cattle from the branding-yard to the butcher’s block; Michigan, so called because he said he came from California but spoke not the Cali- fornian tongue; Jim from San Diego, to distinguish him from other Jims, and The Corpse, were the outposts of the herd. The Corpse had won his name from a statement, made in the fulness of much McBrayer whisky, that he had once been a graduate of Corpus Christi. He spoke truth, but to the wrong audience. The inhabitants of the Elite Saloon, after several attempts to get the hang of the name, dubbed the speaker The Corpse, and as long as he cinched a broncho or jingled a spur within four hundred miles of Livingston — yea, far in the south, even to the unexplored borders of the sheep-eater Indians — he was known by that unlovely name. How he had passed from college to cattle no man knew, and, according to the etiquette of the West, no man asked. He was not by any means a tenderfoot — had no unmanly weakness for washing, did not in the least object to appearing at the wild and wonderful reunions held nightly in “Miss Minnie’s parlour,” whose flaring advertisement did not in the least disturb the proprieties of Wachoma Junction, and, in common with his associates, was, when drunk, ready to shoot at anything or anybody. He was not proud. He had condescended to take in hand and educate a young and promising Chicago drummer, who by evil fate had wandered into that wilderness, where all his cunning was of no account; and from that youth’s quivering hand — outstretched by command — had shot away the top of a wineglass. The Corpse was recognised in the freemasonry of the craft as “one of the C.M.R.’s boys, and tough at that.”
The C.M.R. controlled much cattle, and their slaughter-houses in Chicago bubbled the blood of beeves all day long. Their salt-beef fed the sailor on the sea, and their iced, best firsts, the housekeeper in the London suburbs. Not even the firm knew how many cowboys they employed, but all the firm knew that on the fourteenth day of July their stockyards at Wachoma Junction were to be filled with two thousand head of cattle, ready for immediate shipment to Chicago while prices yet ruled high, and before the grass had withered utterly. Lafe, Michigan, Jim, The Corpse and the others knew this too, and were heartily glad of it, because they would be paid up in Chicago for their half-year’s work, and would then do their best towards painting that town in purest vermilion. They would get drunk; they would gamble, and would otherwise enjoy themselves till they were broke; and then they would hire out again.
The sun dropped behind the rolling hills; and the cattle halted for the night, cheered and cooled by a little wandering breeze. The red steer’s mother had been caught in a hailstorm five years ago. Till she went the way of all cow-flesh she missed no opportunity of telling her son to beware of the hot day and the cold wind that does not know its own mind. “When it blows five ways at once,” said she, “and makes your horns feel creepy, get away, my son. Follow the time-honoured instinct of our tribe, and run. I ran” — she looked ruefully at the scars on her side — ”but that was in a barb- wire country, and it hurt me. None the less, run.” The red steer chewed his cud, and the little wind out of the darkness played round his horns — all five ways at once. The cowboys lifted up their voices in unmelodious song, that the cattle might know where they were, and began slowly walking round the recumbent herd. “Do anybody’s horns feel creepy?” queried the red steer of his neighbours. “My mother told me” — and he repeated the tale, to the edification of the yearlings and the three- year-olds breathing heavily at his side.
The song of the cowboys rose higher. The cattle bowed their heads. Their men were at hand. They were safe. Something had happened to the quiet stars. They were dying out one by one, and the wind was freshening. “Bless my hoofs!” muttered a yearling, “my horns are beginning to feel creepy.” Softly the red steer lifted himself from the ground. “Come away,” quoth he to the yearling. “Come away to the outskirts, and we’ll move. My mother said . . .” The innocent fool followed, and a white heifer saw them move. Being a woman she naturally bellowed “Timber wolves!” and ran forward blindly into a dun steer dreaming over clover. Followed the thunder of cattle rising to their feet, and the triple crack of a whip. The little wind had dropped for a moment, only to fall on the herd with a shriek and a few stinging drops of hail, that stung as keenly as the whips. The herd broke into a trot, a canter, and then a mad gallop. Black fear was behind them, black night in front. They headed into the night, bellowing with terror; and at their side rode the men with the whips. The ponies grunted as they felt the raking spurs. They knew that.an all-night gallop lay before them, and woe betide the luckless cayuse that stumbled in that ride. Then fell the hail — blinding and choking and flogging in one and the same stroke. The herd opened like a fan. The red steer headed a contingent he knew not whither. A man with a whip rode at his right flank. Behind him the lightning showed a field of glimmering horns, and of muzzles flecked with foam; a field of red terror-strained eyes and shaggy frontlets. The man looked back also, and his terror was greater than that of the beasts. The herd had surrounded him in the darkness. His salvation lay in the legs of Whisky Peat — and Whisky Peat knew it — knew it until an unseen gopher hole received his near forefoot as h
e strained every nerve — in the heart of the flying herd, with the red steer at his flanks. Then, being only?n overworked eayuse, Whisky Peat fell, and the red steer fancied that there was something soft on the ground.
******
It was Michigan, Jim and Lafe who at last brought the herd to a standstill as the dawn was breaking, “What’s come to The Corpse?” quoth Lafe. Jim loosened the girths of his quivering pony and made answer slowly: “On- less I’m a blamed fool, the gentleman is now livin’ up to his durned appellation ‘bout fifteen miles back — what there is of him and the cay- use.” “Let’s go and look,” said Lafe, shuddering slightly, for the morning air, you must understand, was raw. “Let’s go to — a much hotter place than Texas,” responded Jim. “Get the steers to the Junction first. Guess what’s left of The Corpse will keep.”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 435