by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XII. "THEM DAMN SNAKE"
Three hundred yards up the river, in the shade of a huge bowlder, roundan end of which the water hurried in a green swirl that it might thesooner lie quiet in the deep, dark pool below, Good Indian, picking hissolitary way over the loose rocks, came unexpectedly upon Baumberger,his heavy pipe sagging a corner of his flabby mouth, while hepainstakingly detached a fly from his leader, hooked it into the propercompartment of his fly-book, and hesitated over his selection of anotherto take its place. Absorption was writ deep on his gross countenance,and he recognized the intruder by the briefest of flickering glances andthe slightest of nods.
"Keep back from that hole, will yuh?" he muttered, jerking his headtoward the still pool. "I ain't tried it yet."
Good Indian was not particularly interested in his own fishing. Thesight of Baumberger, bulking there in the shade with his sagging cheeksand sagging pipe, his flopping old hat and baggy canvas fishing-coat,with his battered basket slung over his slouching shoulder and saggingwith the weight of his catch; the sloppy wrinkles of his high, rubberboots shining blackly from recent immersion in the stream, caught hiserrant attention, and stayed him for a few minutes to watch.
Loosely disreputable looked Lawyer Baumberger, from the snagged holein his hat-crown where a wisp of graying hair fluttered through, to thetoes of his ungainly, rubber-clad feet; loosely disreputable, but notcommonplace and not incompetent. Though his speech might be a slovenlymumble, there was no purposeless fumbling of the fingers that chose afly and knotted it fast upon the leader. There was no bungling movementof hand or foot when he laid his pipe upon the rock, tiptoed around thecorner, sent a mechanical glance upward toward the swaying branches ofan overhanging tree, pulled out his six feet of silk line with a sweepof his arm, and with a delicate fillip, sent the fly skittering over theglassy center of the pool.
Good Indian, looking at him, felt instinctively that a part, at least,of the man's nature was nakedly revealed to him then. It seemed scarcelyfair to read the lust of him and the utter abandonment to the hazard ofthe game. Pitiless he looked, with clenched teeth just showingbetween the loose lips drawn back in a grin that was half-snarl,half-involuntary contraction of muscles sympathetically tense.
That was when a shimmering thing slithered up, snapped at the fly, andflashed away to the tune of singing reel and the dance of the swayingrod. The man grew suddenly cruel and crafty and full of lust; and GoodIndian, watching him, was conscious of an inward shudder of repulsion.He had fished all his life--had Good Indian--and had found joy inthe sport. And here was he inwardly condemning a sportsman who stoodself-revealed, repelling, hateful; a man who gloated over the struggleof something alive and at his mercy; to whom sport meant power indulgedwith impunity. Good Indian did not try to put the thing in words, but hefelt it nevertheless.
"Brute!" he muttered aloud, his face eloquent of cold disgust.
At that moment Baumberger drew the tired fish gently into the shallows,swung him deftly upon the rocks, and laid hold of him greedily.
"Ain't he a beaut?" he cried, in his wheezy chuckle. "Wait a minutewhile I weigh him. He'll go over a pound, I'll bet money on it."Gloatingly he held it in his hands, removed the hook, and inserted underthe gills the larger one of the little scales he carried inside hisbasket.
"Pound and four ounces," he announced, and slid the fish into hisbasket. He was the ordinary, good-natured, gross Baumberger now. Hereached for his pipe, placed it in his mouth, and held out a hand toGood Indian for a match.
"Say, young fella, have you got any stand-in with your noble redbrothers?" he asked, after he had sucked life into the charred tobacco.
"Cousins twice or three times removed, you mean," said Good Indiancoldly, too proud and too lately repelled to meet the man on friendlyground. "Why do you ask?"
Baumberger eyed him speculatively while he smoked, and chuckled tohimself.
"One of 'em--never mind placing him on his own p'ticular limb of thefamily tree--has been doggin' me all morning," he said at last, andwaved a fishy hand toward the bluff which towered high above them. "Sawhim when I was comin' up, about sunrise, pokin' along behind me in thesagebrush. Didn't think anything of that--thought maybe he was huntingor going fishing--but he's been sneakin' around behind me ever since. Idon't reckon he's after my scalp--not enough hair to pay--but I'd liketo know what the dickens he does mean."
"Nothing probably," Good Indian told him shortly, his eyes neverthelesssearching the rocks for a sight of the watcher.
"Well, I don't much like the idea," complained Baumberger, casting aneye aloft in fear of snagging his line when he made another cast. "Hewas right up there a few minutes ago." He pointed his rod toward asun-ridden ridge above them. "I got a flicker of his green blanket whenhe raised up and scowled down at me. He ducked when he saw me turn myhead--looked to me like the surly buck that blew in to the ranch thenight I came; Jim something-or-other. By the great immortal Jehosaphat!"he swore humorously, "I'd like to tie him up in his dirty blanket andheave him into the river--only it would kill all the fish in the Malad."
Good Indian laughed.
"Oh, I know it's funny, young fella," Baumberger growled. "About asfunny as being pestered by a mosquito buzzing under your nose whenyou're playing a fish that keeps cuttin' figure eights in a hole thesize uh that one there."
"I'll go up and take a look," Good Indian offered carelessly.
"Well, I wish you would. I can't keep my mind on m' fishing--justwondering what the deuce he's after. And say! You tell him I'll standhim on his off ear if I catch him doggie' me ag'in. Folks come withyuh?" he remembered to ask as he prepared for another cast into thepool.
"They're down there getting a campfire built, ready to fry what fishthey catch," Good Indian informed him, as he turned to climb the bluff."They're going to eat dinner under that big ledge by the rapids. Youbetter go on down."
He stood for a minute, and watched Baumberger make a dexterous cast,which proved fruitless, before he began climbing up the steep slope ofjumbled bowlders upon which the bluff itself seemed to rest. He wasnot particularly interested in his quest, but he was in the mood forpurposeless action; he still did not want to think.
He climbed negligently, scattering loose rocks down the hill behindhim. He had no expectation of coming upon Peppajee--unless Peppajeedeliberately put himself in his way--and so there was no need ofcaution. He stopped once, and stood long minutes with his head turned tocatch the faint sound of high-keyed laughter and talk which driftedup to him. If he went higher, he thought, he might get a glimpse ofthem--of her, to tell his thought honestly. Whereupon he forgot allabout finding and expostulating with Peppajee, and thought only a pointof the ridge which would give him a clear view downstream.
To be sure, he might as easily have retraced his steps and joined thegroup, and seen every changing look in her face. But he did not wantto be near her when others were by; he wanted her to himself, or not atall. So he went on, while the sun beat hotly down upon him and the rockssent up dry waves of heat like an oven.
A rattlesnake buzzed its strident warning between two rocks, but beforehe turned his attention to the business of killing it, the snake hadcrawled leisurely away into a cleft, where he could not reach it withthe stones he threw. His thoughts, however, were brought back to hissurroundings so that he remembered Peppajee. He stood still, and scannedcarefully the jumble of rocks and bowlders which sloped steeply down tothe river, looking for a betraying bit of color or dirty gray hat-crown.
"But I could look my eyes out and welcome, if he didn't want to beseen," he concluded, and sat down while he rolled a cigarette. "AndI don't know as I want to see him, anyway." Still, he did not moveimmediately. He was in the shade, which was a matter for congratulationon such a day. He had a cigarette between his lips, which madefor comfort; and he still felt the exhilarating effects of hisunpremeditated boldness, without having come to the point of soberthinking. He sat there, and blew occasional mouthfuls of smoke intothe quivering heat wa
ves, and stared down at the river rushing over theimpeding rocks as if its very existence depended upon reaching as soonas possible the broader sweep of the Snake.
He finished the first cigarette, and rolled another from sheer force ofhabit rather than because he really wanted one. He lifted one foot, andlaid it across his knee, and was drawing a match along the sole of hisboot when his eyes chanced to rest for a moment upon a flutter of green,which showed briefly around the corner of a great square rock poisedinsecurely upon one corner, as if it were about to hurl its great bulkdown upon the river it had watched so long. He held the blazing matchpoised midway to its destination while he looked; then he put it to theuse he had meant it for, pulled his hat-brim down over his right eye andear to shield them from the burn of the sun, and went picking his wayidly over to the place.
"HUL-lo!" he greeted, in the manner of one who refuses to acknowledgethe seriousness of a situation which confronts him suddenly. "What's theexcitement?"
There was no excitement whatever. There was Peppajee, hunched up againstthe rock in that uncomfortable attitude which permits a man to comeat the most intimate relations with the outside of his own ankle, uponwhich he was scowling in seeming malignity. There was his hunting-knifelying upon a flat stone near to his hand, with a fresh red blotch uponthe blade, and there was his little stone pipe clenched between histeeth and glowing red within the bowl. Also there was the ankle, purpleand swollen from the ligature above it--for his legging was off and torninto strips which formed a bandage, and a splinter of rock was twistedingeniously in the wrappings for added tightness. From a crisscross ofgashes a sluggish, red stream trickled down to the ankle-bone, and fromthere drip-dropped into a tiny, red pool in the barren, yellow soil.
"Catchum rattlesnake bite?" queried Good Indian inanely, as is the habitof the onlooker when the scene shouts forth eloquently its explanation,and questions are almost insultingly superfluous.
"Huh!" grunted Peppajee, disdaining further speech upon the subject, andregarded sourly the red drip.
"Want me to suck it?" ventured Good Indian unenthusiastically, eying thewound.
"Huh!" Peppajee removed the pipe, his eyes still upon his ankle. "Plentyblood come, mebbyso." To make sure, however, he kneaded the swollenflesh about the wound, thus accelerating slightly the red drip.
Then deliberately he took another turn with the rock, sending thebuckskin thongs deeper into the flesh, and held the burning pipe againstthe skin above the wound until Good Indian sickened and turned away hishead. When he looked again, Peppajee was sucking hard at the pipe, andgazing impersonally at the place. He bent again, and hid the glow of hispipe against his ankle. His thin lips tightened while he held it there,but the lean, brown fingers were firm as splinters of the rock behindhim. When the fire cooled, he fanned it to life again with his breath,and when it winked redly at him he laid it grimly against his flesh.
So, while Good Indian stood and looked on with lips as tightly drawnas the other's, he seared a circle around the wound--a circle which bitdeep and drew apart the gashes like lips opened for protest. He regardedcritically his handiwork, muttered a "Bueno" under his breath, knockedthe ashes from his pipe, and returned it to some mysterious hiding-placebeneath his blanket. Then he picked up his moccasin.
"Them damn' snake, him no speakum," he observed disgustedly. "Heap foolme; him biteum"--he made a stabbing gesture with thumb and finger inthe air by way of illustration--"then him go quick." He began gingerlytrying to force the moccasin upon his foot, his mouth drawn down withthe look of one who considers that he has been hardly used.
"How you get home?" Good Indian's thoughts swung round to practicalthings. "You got horse?"
Peppajee shook his head, reached for his knife, and slit the moccasintill it was no more than a wrapping. "Mebbyso heap walk," he statedsimply.
"Mebbyso you won't do anything of the kind," Good Indian retorted. "Youcome down and take a horse. What for you all time watchum Baumberger?"he added, remembering then what had brought them both upon the bluff."Baumberger all time fish--no more." He waved his hand toward the Malad."Baumberger bueno--catchum fish--no more."
Peppajee got slowly and painfully upon his feet--rather, upon one foot.When Good Indian held out a steadying arm, he accepted it, and leanedrather heavily.
"Yo' eyes sick," said Peppajee, and grinned sardonically. "Yo' eyessee all time Squaw-with-sun-hair. Fillum yo' eyes, yo' see notting. Yo'catchum squaw, bimeby mebbyso see plenty mo'. Me no catchum sick eye.Mebbyso me see heap plenty."
"What you see, you all time watchum Baumberger?"
But Peppajee, hobbling where he must walk, crawling where he might,sliding carefully where a slanting bowlder offered a few feet of smoothdescent, and taking hold of Good Indian's offered arm when necessityimpelled him, pressed his thin lips together, and refused to answer. Sothey came at last to the ledge beside the rapids, where a thin wisp ofsmoke waved lazily in the vagrant breeze which played with the ripplesand swayed languidly the smaller branches of the nearby trees.
Only Donny was there, sitting disgruntled upon the most comfortablerock he could find, sulking because the others had taken all thefishing-tackle that was of any account, and had left him to make shiftwith one bent, dulled hook, a lump of fat pork, and a dozen feet ofline.
"And I can catch more fish than anybody in the bunch!" he begancomplainingly and without preface, waving a dirty hand contemptuously atthe despised tackle when the two came slowly up. "That's the way it goeswhen you take a lot of girls along! They've got to have the best rodsand tackle, and all they'll do will be to snag lines and lose leadersand hooks, and giggle alla squeal. Aw--DARN girls!"
"And I'm going to pile it on still thicker, Donny!" Good Indian grinneddown at him. "I'm going to swipe your Pirate Chief for a while, till Itake Peppajee into camp. He's gentle, and Peppajee's got a snake-bite.I'll be back before you get ready to go home."
"I'm ready to go home right now," growled Donny, sinking his chinbetween his two palms. "But I guess the walkin' ain't all taken up."
Good Indian regarded him frowningly, gave a little snort, and turnedaway. Donny in that mood was not to be easily placated, and certainlynot to be ignored. He went over to the little flat, and selected Jack'shorse, saddled him, and discovered that it had certain well-defined raceprejudices, and would not let Peppajee put foot to the stirrup. Kenohe knew would be no more tractable, so that he finally slapped Jack'ssaddle on Huckleberry, and so got Peppajee mounted and headed towardcamp.
"You tell Jack I borrowed his saddle and Huckleberry," he called out tothe drooping little figure on the rock. "But I'll get back before theywant to go home."
But Donny was glooming over his wrongs, and neither heard nor wantedto hear. Having for his legacy a temper cumulative in its heat, he wascoming rapidly to the point where he, too, started home, and left noword or message behind; a trivial enough incident in itself, but onewhich opened the way for some misunderstanding and fruitless speculationupon the part of Evadna.