by B. M. Bower
And in that grave they found Mrs. Jerry, wrapped in her faded patchwork quilt, her hands folded at peace, her wistful brown eyes closed softly—There was no need to speculate long upon the cause of her death. Her shapeless brown dress was stained dark from throat to waist. Dade, shuddering a little, very gently lifted the hands that were folded; beneath was the hole where the bullet had struck.
“Dios!” said Valencia, in a whisper.
They were three white-faced young men who stood there, abashed before the tragedy they had uncovered. After a little, they filled the grave again and stood back, trying to think the thing out and to think it out calmly. They drew away from the spot, Dade leading.
“We don’t need to open the other one,” he said. “That holds Tige, of course. I wonder—”
“Let’s look around out there in the bushes,” Jack suggested. “I can see how the thing must have happened; somebody came and started shooting—and that rifle he called Jemina, and the two pistols—don’t you reckon they did some good for themselves?”
“Probably—if Jerry was here.”
“Man, he must have been here! Who else—” he tilted his head towards the graves. Surely, no one but Jerry would have buried them so, with Tige lying at the feet of his mistress. And, as Jack presently pointed out, if the shooting had taken place in Jerry’s absence, he would certainly have notified them at the ranch. And Jack had a swift mental picture of Jerry galloping furiously up to the patio on one of his mules, brandishing his rifle, while he shouted to all around him the news of this terrible, unbelievable thing that had befallen him.
They did not search long before they found plenty of evidence that Jerry had been there at the time of the trouble. They found Manuel lying on his back, with his beard clotted and stained red, and his black eyes staring dully at the sky. Farther along they came upon Carlos, lying upon his face, with a blood-stained trail behind him in the grass to show how far he had crawled before death overtook him. But they did not find Jerry, look where they would.
In the cabin, where they finally went to search systematically for clews, they found places where the logs had been splintered near the loopholes with bullets from without. A siege it had been, then.
Jack, more familiar with the interior than either of the others because of his frequent visits there with Teresita, missed certain articles; the frying pan, an iron pot, a few dishes, and the bedding, to be exact.
So, finally, they decided that Jerry, having had the worst befall him, had buried his dead, packed a few necessary things upon one of the mules, mounted the other, and had gone—where? There was no telling where, in that big land. Somewhere into the wilderness, they guessed, where he could be alone with the deadly hurt Fate and his enemies had given him.
The oxen, when they went outside, came shambling up the slope to the oak tree where they were wont to spend the night near the prairie schooner that had been their homing place for many a month. But without a doubt the mules were gone; otherwise, Jack insisted, they would be near the oxen, as was their gregarious habit.
“Jerry’s gone—pulled out,” Jack asserted for the third or fourth time. “And the mules, and—the pup. Where’s Chico? I haven’t seen or heard anything of him; have you?”
They had not; and they immediately began calling and looking for Chico, who was at that stage of puppyhood that insists upon getting in front of one and then falling down and lying, paws in the air, waiting to be picked up and petted. But Chico did not come lumbering up like an animated black muff, and they could not find his little, dead body.
It occurred to Dade that he might be buried with Tige; and, once the idea was presented to Jack, he could not content himself to leave the place until he knew to a certainty. He would never have admitted it, but there were certain sweet memories which made that particular pup not at all like other black pups. He got the shovel, and he dug in the little grave until he was certain that Tige lay there, and that he was alone.
“Well, he’s taken the pup along, then; and that proves to me that Jerry wasn’t crazy, or anything like that. He’s just pulled out, because he couldn’t stand it around here any longer—and I don’t blame him. But I wish I knew where; we’d take him up to the mine with us; huh?”
“Yes—but we’re about fourteen hours too late to find out where he went. If I’m any judge, these bodies have been dead that long. And if we found him, the chances are he wouldn’t go. If I’m any good at guessing poor Jerry’s state of mind, right now, he don’t want to see or speak to any human being on earth.”
“I guess you’re right,” Jack assented, after a meditative pause. “He just worshiped that poor little woman.”
Beyond that, neither of them attempted to put into speech the tragedy; it was beyond the poor words we have thus far coined for our needs, like many another thing that happens in these lives we live. They waited a little while longer, wondering what they could or should do.
Mrs. Jerry lay easily where she had been placed by the man who loved her. The killers had been killed by the same hand that laid her deep, in her faded, patchwork quilt. There seemed nothing further to be done.
But Valencia, when he had ridden a thoughtful half-mile, did think of something.
“Me, I shall give ten pesos of the gold I won yesterday upon the duelo,” he said, glancing back at the grim little cabin, “that mass may be said for the repose of the Señora Seem’son’s soul. For thus will sleep come easier to me, Señors. And you?”
“I think, Valencia, if I were going to say any prayers, they’d be said for Jerry,” Dade told him. “He needs ’em worse than she does.”
“Oh, come on, Dade; let’s be getting out of this valley!” Jack urged irritably. “And I hope,” he added, “I’ll never see the place again!”
“But, Señor!” Valencia rode alongside to protest almost tearfully, “The valley, it is not to be blame. Saw you ever a sweeter land than this?” He flung his arm outward to include the whole beautiful expanse of it. “The valley, it is glorious! Am I not right? Blame not the beautiful land, Señor, for the trouble that has come; for trouble will find a man out, though he climb the loneliest mountain peak and hide himself among the rocks there! And the valley—Señors, the valley will hold friends that are true to thee.”
Jack flushed at the reproach; flushed and owned himself wrong. “I’ll remember the friends,” he said. “And I’ll forget the things that hurt; I’m a selfish brute—whee-ee! I should say!” He pulled up as short as Solano would let him, and stared from Dade to Valencia with guilty eyes.
“Diego—I forgot that Injun, Dade; and next to you, I believe he’s the best friend I’ve got on earth! I was so wrapped up in my own bruises that I clean overlooked something that I ought to be mighty grateful for. Dade, do you think he’d like to go along to the mine? You know his wife died a few months ago, and he’s kind of alone; do you think he’d go?”
“I think the chance to go would look like a ticket to glory,” Dade assured him sententiously.
Whereupon Jack dismounted, that he might write a few lines as he had written the note to Bill Wilson, a couple of months before: with a leaf from his memorandum book and a bullet for pencil.
“Give that to Don Andres, will you, Valencia? It’s to ask how much is Diego’s debt, and to say that I’ll pay it if the peon wants to come with me. We’ll wait in town until we hear; perhaps Don Andres will let you come up with Diego—that is, if Diego wants to come. You ask him, Valencia.”
“He will come, Señor; nothing would give him greater joy. And,” he added wishfully, “but for my sweetheart, Señors, I would ask that I might come with you also!”
“You stick to your sweetheart, Valencia—if she’s true,” Jack advised him somberly. “Now, Dade, I guess we’re ready for the long ride to supper. Why don’t you kick me for being such a selfish cuss?”
“Maybe because I’m used to you,” Dade’s lips quirked humorously after the retort. “You’re just Jack—and you couldn’t be any different, I r
eckon, if you tried. Well, come along, then. Adios, Valencia.”
Once more they shook hands solemnly with the vaquero, who had no smile for the parting.
“Adios, adios,” Valencia called lingeringly after them, and held his horse quiet that he might gaze after them until a willow bend hid them finally from his view.
ANANIAS GREEN
Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep, rode alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R. General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.
It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a party of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were quite new to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested in all pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew, besides observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.
Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking R, watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was what he himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his riding gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration the bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was beautiful to behold.
“Lord, but this is a big, wild country,” he was saying enthusiastically, “and the people in it are big and—”
“Wild,” supplied Andy. “Yes, you’ve just about got us sized up correct.” He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it is sometimes a bit wearisome.
“Oh, but I didn’t mean that,” the young man protested. “What I meant was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men don’t run in grooves.”
“No, nor horses,” assented Andy. “Leastways, not in oiled ones.” He was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.
“You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I’ve never seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part of the country absolutely new and raw, and see things—”
“Oh, it ain’t so raw as you might think,” Andy defended jealously, “nor yet new.”
“Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can’t,” he asserted triumphantly, “point to anything man-made that existed a hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in the cradle—a lusty infant, and a—er—vociferous one, but still an infant in swaddling clothes.” Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures before the Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoken of him as “gifted,” and he had come to hear of it, and to believe.
Andy Green squinted at the shank before he made reply. Andy, also, was “gifted,” in his modest Western way.
“A country that can now and then show the papers for a civilization old as the Phenixes of Egypt,” he said, in a drawling tone that was absolutely convincing, “ain’t what I’d call raw.” He decided that a little more hammering right next the rowel was necessary, and bent over the anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood Branciforte could not fail to note his utter indifference to the presence and opinions of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to disputation at times—even to enmity; but not to indifference. He blinked. “My dear fellow, do you realize what it is that statement might seem to imply?” he queried haughtily.
Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a “real,” objected strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at the other disapprovingly. “I don’t as a general thing find myself guilty of talking in my sleep,” he retorted, “and I’m prepared to let anything I say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous, out here twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain’t no infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the Pilgrim Fathers’ rock wasn’t nothing but a pebble to let fly at the birds!”
“Indeed!” fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much intangible insult to one’s intelligence.
Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.
“Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain’t none to blame for what you don’t know, but you’re talking wild and scattering. When you stand up and tell me I can’t point to nothing man-made that’s fifty years old, or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to something—or I’ve seen something—that’s older than swearing; and I reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions.”
“Are you crazy, man?” Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.
“Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my horse went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set afoot. Uh course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you don’t half know all that might signify to imply.” This last in open imitation of Branciforte. “It implies that I was in one hell of a fix, to put it elegant. I was sixty miles from anywhere, and them sixty half the time standing on end and lapping over on themselves. That there is down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid hankering after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it’s about as ungodly a mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can show up; and I’ve ambled around considerable and am in a position to pass judgment.
“So there I was, and I wasn’t in no mood to view the beauties uh nature to speak of; for instance, I didn’t admire the clouds sailing around promiscous in the sky, nor anything like that. I was high and dry and the walking was about as poor as I ever seen; and my boots was high-heel and rubbed blisters before I’d covered a mile of that acrobatic territory. I wanted water, and I wanted it bad. Before I got it I wanted it a heap worse.” He stopped, cupped his slim fingers around a match-blaze, and Branciforte sat closer. He did not know what was coming, but the manner of the indifferent narrator was compelling. He almost forgot the point at issue in the adventure.
“Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a way that wasn’t any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on.” His cigarette needed another match and he searched his pockets for one.
“What about the—whatever it was you started to tell me?” urged Branciforte, grown impatient.
Andy looked him over calmly. “You’ve lived in ignorance for about thirty years or so—giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can stand another five minutes. As I was saying, I wandered around like a dogy when it’s first turned loose on the range and is trying to find the old, familiar barn-yard and the skim-milk bucket. And like the dogy, I didn’t run across anything that looked natural or inviting. All that day I perambulated over them hills, and I will say I wasn’t enjoying the stroll none. You’re right when you say things can happen, out here. There’s some things it’s just as well they don’t happen too frequent, and getting lost and afoot in the Bad-lands is one.
“That afternoon I dragged myself up to the edge of a deep coulee and looked over to see if there was any way of getting down. There was a bright green streak down there that couldn’t mean nothing but water, at that time of year; this was last fall. And over beyond, I could see the river that I’d went and lost. I looked and looked, but the walls looked straight as a Boston’s man’s pedigree. And then the sun come out from behind a cloud and lit up a spot that made me forget for a minute that I was thirsty as a dog and near starved besides.
“I was looking down on the ruins—and yet it was near perfect—of an old castle. Every stone stood out that clear and distinct I
could have counted ’em. There was a tower at one end, partly fell to pieces but yet enough left to easy tell what it was. I could see it had kinda loop-holes in it. There was an open place where I took it the main entrance had used to be; what I’d call the official entrance. But there was other entrances besides, and some of ’em was made by time and hard weather. There was what looked like a what-you-may-call-’em—a ditch thing, yuh mind, running around my side of it, and a bridge business. Uh course, it was all needing repairs bad, and part of it yuh needed to use your imagination on. I laid there for quite a spell looking it over and wondering how the dickens it come to be way down there. It didn’t look to me like it ought to be there at all, but in a school geography or a history where the chapter is on historic and prehistoric hangouts uh the heathen.”
“The deuce! A castle in the Bad-lands!” ejaculated Branciforte.
“That’s what it was, all right. I found a trail it would make a mountain sheep seasick to follow, and I got down into the coulee. It was lonesome as sin, and spooky; but there was a spring close by, and a creek running from it; and what is a treat in that part uh the country, it was good drinking and didn’t have neither alkali nor sulphur nor mineral in it. It was just straight water, and you can gamble I filled up on it a-plenty. Then I shot a rabbit or two that was hanging out around the ruins, and camped there till next day, when I found a pass out, and got my bearings by the river and come on into camp. So when you throw slurs on our plumb newness and shininess, I’ve got the cards to call yuh. That castle wasn’t built last summer, Mister. And whoever did build it was some civilized. So there yuh are.”
Andy took a last, lingering pull at the cigarette stub, flung it into the backened forge, and picked up the spur. He settled his hat on his head at its accustomed don’t-give-a-darn tilt, and started for the door and the sunlight.