by Owen Wister
XIV. BETWEEN THE ACTS
My road to Sunk Creek lay in no straight line. By rail I divergednorthwest to Fort Meade, and thence, after some stay with the kindmilitary people, I made my way on a horse. Up here in the Black Hills itsluiced rain most intolerably. The horse and I enjoyed the country andourselves but little; and when finally I changed from the saddle into astagecoach, I caught a thankful expression upon the animal's face, andreturned the same.
"Six legs inside this jerky to-night?" said somebody, as I climbedthe wheel. "Well, we'll give thanks for not havin' eight," he addedcheerfully. "Clamp your mind on to that, Shorty." And he slapped theshoulder of his neighbor. Naturally I took these two for old companions.But we were all total strangers. They told me of the new gold excitementat Rawhide, and supposed it would bring up the Northern Pacific; andwhen I explained the millions owed to this road's German bondholders,they were of opinion that a German would strike it richer at Rawhide. Wespoke of all sorts of things, and in our silence I gloated on the autumnholiday promised me by Judge Henry. His last letter had said that anoutfit would be starting for his ranch from Billings on the seventh, andhe would have a horse for me. This was the fifth. So we six legs in thejerky travelled harmoniously on over the rain-gutted road, getting nodeeper knowledge of each other than what our outsides might imply.
Not that we concealed anything. The man who had slapped Shortyintroduced himself early. "Scipio le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio," hesaid. "The eldest of us always gets called Scipio. It's French. Butus folks have been white for a hundred years." He was limber andlight-muscled, and fell skilfully about, evading bruises when thejerky reeled or rose on end. He had a strange, long, jocular nose, verywary-looking, and a bleached blue eye. Cattle was his business, as arule, but of late he had been "looking around some," and Rawhide seemedmuch on his brain. Shorty struck me as "looking around" also. He wasquite short, indeed, and the jerky hurt him almost every time. He waslight-haired and mild. Think of a yellow dog that is lost, and fancieseach newcomer in sight is going to turn out his master, and you willhave Shorty.
It was the Northern Pacific that surprised us into intimacy. We werenearing Medora. We had made a last arrangement of our legs. I laystretched in silence, placid in the knowledge it was soon to end. SoI drowsed. I felt something sudden, and, waking, saw Scipio passingthrough the air. As Shorty next shot from the jerky, I beheld smoke andthe locomotive. The Northern Pacific had changed its schedule. A valiseis a poor companion for catching a train with. There was rutted sandand lumpy, knee-high grease wood in our short cut. A piece of stray wiresprang from some hole and hung caracoling about my ankle. Tin cans spunfrom my stride. But we made a conspicuous race. Two of us waved hats,and there was no moment that some one of us was not screeching. It meanttwenty-four hours to us.
Perhaps we failed to catch the train's attention, though the theoryseems monstrous. As it moved off in our faces, smooth and easy andinsulting, Scipio dropped instantly to a walk, and we two othersoutstripped him and came desperately to the empty track. There went thetrain. Even still its puffs were the separated puffs of starting, thatbitten-off, snorty kind, and sweat and our true natures broke freelyforth.
I kicked my valise, and then sat on it, dumb.
Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out ofhim. He walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and hementioned the ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. Hehad sold his horse and saddle to catch a friend on this train, and hementioned what the friend had been going to do for him. He told a stringof griefs and names to the air, as if the air knew.
Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuckhis hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train.His bleached blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in itssmoke-blur ooze away westward among the mounded bluffs. "Lucky it's outof range," I thought. But now Scipio spoke to it.
"Why, you seem to think you've left me behind," he began easily, infawning tones. "You're too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Agesome." His next remark grew less wheedling. "I wouldn't be a bit proudto meet yu'. Why, if I was seen travellin' with yu', I'd have to explainit to my friends! Think you've got me left, do yu'? Just because yu'ride through this country on a rail, do yu' claim yu' can find your wayaround? I could take yu' out ten yards in the brush and lose yu' inten seconds, you spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you recentblanket-mortgage yearlin'! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin'wash room, d' yu' figure I can't go east just as soon as west? Or I'llstay right here if it suits me, yu' dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu'coon-bossed face-towel--" But from here he rose in flights of noveltythat appalled and held me spellbound, and which are not for me to sayto you. Then he came down easily again, and finished with expressions ofsympathy for it because it could never have known a mother.
"Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?" inquired a slowvoice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.
"Male parent!" scoffed the prompt Scipio. "Ain't you heard about THEMyet?"
"Them? Was there two?"
"Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate."
"Why, the piebald son of a gun!" responded the Virginian, sweetly. "Igot them steers through all right," he added to me. "Sorry to see yu'get so out o' breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin' any?"
"Who's he?" inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.
The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose.The caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, andthe train was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steersdelivered in Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose,his paper in his lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. Hewore the look of a man for whom things are going smooth. And for me theway to Billings was smooth now, also.
"Who's he?" Scipio repeated.
But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Someone was reciting "And it's my night to howl."
"We'll all howl when we get to Rawhide," said some other one; and theyhowled now.
"These hyeh steam cyars," said the Virginian to Scipio, "make a man'slanguage mighty nigh as speedy as his travel." Of Shorty he took nonotice whatever--no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.
"So yu' heard me speakin' to the express," said Scipio. "Well, I guess,sometimes I--See here," he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravelyconsidering him, "I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. Youdidn't catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as--"
"I noticed," said the Virginian, "thinkin' came quicker to yu' thanrunnin'."
I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by myway of missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked myvalise.
"Oh, I could tell yu'd been enjoyin' us!" said Scipio. "Observin'somebody else's scrape always kind o' rests me too. Maybe you're aphilosopher, but maybe there's a pair of us drawd in this deal."
Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. "By your laigs,"said he, "you are used to the saddle."
"I'd be called used to it, I expect."
"By your hands," said the Southerner, again, "you ain't roped manysteers lately. Been cookin' or something?"
"Say," retorted Scipio, "tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion frommy mouth."
"I'm right distressed," answered the gentle Southerner, "we've not adrop in the outfit."
"Oh, drink with me uptown!" cried Scipio. "I'm pleased to death withyu'."
The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station,and shook his head.
"Why, it ain't a bit far to whiskey from here!" urged the other,plaintively. "Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne's my name. Yes, you'relookin' for my brass ear-rings. But there ain't no ear-rings on me. I'vebeen white for a hundred years. Step down. I've a forty-dollar thirst."
"You're certainly white," began the Virginian. "But--"
Here the caboose resumed:
/> "I'm wild, and woolly, and full of peas; I'm hard to curry above the knees; I'm a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and It's my night to ho-o-wl--"
And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turngently and to murmur.
The Virginian rose suddenly. "Will yu' save that thirst and take aforty-dollar job?"
"Missin' trains, profanity, or what?" said Scipio.
"I'll tell yu' soon as I'm sure."
At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. "Why, you're talkin'business!" said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. "IWAS thinkin' of Rawhide," he added, "but I ain't any more."
"Well, good luck!" said Shorty, on the track behind us.
"Oh, say!" said Scipio, "he wanted to go on that train, just like me."
"Get on," called the Virginian. "But as to getting a job, he ain't justlike you." So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.
Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shutafter us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside thecaboose they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.
"Friends of yourn?" said Scipio.
"My outfit," drawled the Virginian.
"Do yu' always travel outside?" inquired Scipio.
"It's lonesome in there," returned the deputy foreman. And here one ofthem came out, slamming the door.
"Hell!" he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to theVirginian, "I told you I was going to get a bottle here."
"Have your bottle, then," said the deputy foreman, and kicked him offinto Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.)The Virginian had aimed his pistol at about the same time with hisboot. Therefore the man sat in Dakota quietly, watching us go away intoMontana, and offering no objections. Just before he became too small tomake out, we saw him rise and remove himself back toward the saloons.