Cherokee Trails/Chapter 20
Simpson was delayed more than a week in his design of becoming the leading bone freighter of that country. His wounded hand was making him pay for holding it so lightly at the start. That neglect had set up infection which required all Mrs. Ellison's experience to overcome. Then it began to heal as rapidly as it had grown alarmingly sore, and Tom found himself able to hold the lines again, ready for the great enterprise.
Mrs. Ellison was against the plan he and Waco had worked out for coupling two wagons in train to each team. It wouldn't work as well as one wagon with extra sideboards, she said. That would be all four horses could manage in the event of rain overtaking him on the road, something always likely at that season. He could pile two tons of bones on one of those old freight wagons, more if he could pull them, but two tons would be about all four horses could wiggle along with over those meandering prairie roads.
Tom deferred to her judgment, wisely. She was experienced in the transportation methods of that country, and could have given the homesteaders and greenhorns generally plenty of valuable advice if they had been wise enough to come to her. Accordingly, Tom built up the sides of the gallant old prairie argosy which he and Waco had used in their experimental hauling, until it looked as if it would hold half a carload.
Of course it would require many such loads to fill a car. It would be an unprofitable business for one man, but he already had enlisted the neighbors, who jumped eagerly at his offer of a premium above the current price for bones in Drumwell. He was going on ahead with his load, to order a car set for a certain date, when he expected to have bones enough delivered at the track to make up his carload.
Waco mourned his misfortune in getting himself in a fix that had made the services of a doctor necessary. Two trips from the county seat by the doctor had taken twenty dollars of Waco's last month's wages, paid him by Coburn when he was fired. But in place of his own services to the bone company Waco tendered the remaining twenty-five dollars. Let his capital work for him, he proposed; use it to pay the homesteaders for their bones as far as it would go.
This was sternly refused by all concerned. Sell a couple of his horses then, said Waco. They were good for nothing but chasing cows, and, since a business man was not likely to lower himself to such menial employment, he would have no use for the colts.
The other members of the company put a damper on Waco's enthusiastic offer to sacrifice his nags. When theyneeded money badly enough to take a man's horses from under him, they informed him haughtily, they would let him know. And so Tom Simpson loaded the old freight wagon—which was no stranger to the governor's palace on the plaza at Santa Fé—that evening. Early next morning saw him on the road, driving two pairs of fairly willing and tractable horses as if he had been brought up to the trade.
Adventure does not always dog a man, although he may be especially painted to attract its notice, as Tom Simpson sometimes believed he was. He drove into Drumwell on the morning of his second day on the road, having made the trip without incident, and in remarkably good time. The horses had buckled down to the job as if they had a proprietory interest in the great bone enterprise.
Not so bad, Tom thought. With the freight out, that cargo of bones represented not less than twelve or fifteen dollars. He could make two trips a week, counting every day as a working day, and Waco was already hobbling around with a crutch, against Mrs. Ellison's grave advice. Waco said he healed up from that kind of punctures like a fishin' worm. He had been shot up so much that he rather resented being shot merely in the thigh. It was almost too trifling to lay a man up at all. So Waco would be able to take the road in a week or two more, when the revenues would double, to leave out of the computation entirely the profit arising from the bones they would buy.
Tom was in pretty high spirits, therefore, when he pulled up near the railroad station and asked the agent where it would be agreeable to him and his company to have the bones unloaded, to repose there until the heap grew big enough to fill a car. The agent appeared to be somewhat distant and cold. He seemed to recall only with a great effort their previous talk on that subject, and then to doubt whether he had gone so far as to say Simpson might use the company's right-of-way as a repository for his bones. But if he had said so, he guessed it would be all right, although neither the company nor he would assume any responsibility.
Simpson largely absolved him and the railroad of all liability, but his spirits had dropped several degrees when he turned from the brief interview. It seemed as if he had climbed down from the wagon in a sweating, eager glow to see the agent, and was returning to it now after having stepped into a cold wind. He drove to the spot indicated by the agent, which was at the end of some cars of lumber, directly behind the depot.
The lumberyard was in front of him, on the left side of the switch where the freight cars stood; the station and town on his right. From town he could not be seen as he pitched the bones from his high-sided wagon, quickly making a hole down to the bottom, starting at the forward end. He had put the spring seat on the ground and hung his gun on the upright, rudely ornamented board called a standard, in the center of the dashboard.
This standard was designed for wrapping the lines when one stopped for some such job as unloading bones. The gun was in the way when he worked. Any exigency calling for the need of it seemed to be so far away from the quietude of the morning that Tom did not give its absence from the handy place where it usually hung a second thought.
That was the domestic hour in Drumwell; the time when women came out to make their purchases, when children were abroad, when homesteaders drove in to transact their business. The dominant forces in that social organization were quiescent, at that hour, lying off, as it were, with a sort of amiable deference, to give the town over to peaceful traffic and honest trading.
The sounds which reached Simpson as he labored with his load were assuring: the gabble of children at play, the hail of women from dooryard to dooryard, or across the street as they went about the business of the hour. His plan was to unload and drive away before the ruder life began to stir, after putting in the order for his car.
Tom quickly worked down to the last bone, which was a shinbone, and a noble one, of some ox that would have dressed eight hundred pounds. He stood holding it in his fist a while, looking down at the heap on the ground, thinking it was very small in comparison with the bulk of the freight car standing at his team's head. It would take many loads like that one to put enough in a car to justify freight, to say nothing of loading to capacity. But it was a beginning; there were plenty more where those came from, and a man out of a job, like one who had gambled away his money, had nothing to spend but his time.
He jumped at a sharp word behind him, turned, and looked into the bore of a large and efficient gun in the hands of an insignificant pale man whom he recognized as the city marshal.
"Put 'em up, pardner, and be damn sudden about it!" the marshal ordered, his voice grinding like a katydid's. His manner was determined, and his hand was steady, although his appearance was not entirely formidable.
Tom considered for a moment taking a chance with that good shinbone, reckoned the probability of missing, as a man most always does when he tries hardest to hit, and passed it up.
"Oh, very well," he said lightly, not the slightest annoyance nor concern apparent in his voice, or his manner of lifting his chin, or the calm dignity of his face.
"Pile out!" the marshal directed.
He backed off a little as he spoke, to give himself unobstructed view of the prisoner's movements.
"Put your foot over on that breakbeam and hop down—and keep 'em up, keep 'em up!"
The marshal had come up on the left side of the wagon. He stood there with a lot of empty territory at his back, the wagon in front of him, the end of the freight car just a few jumps away. There wasn't anybody else in sight, not even the station agent. Tom put his foot over the side, which was a high straddle, feeling for the brakebeam, doing considerable thinking as he made the deliberate, cautious move. He managed to get to the ground without a fall, where the marshal closed up on him and ordered him to march.
"Now, hold on a minute, Mr. Marshal," Tom demurred, standing with hands lifted about on a level with his ears. "These horses are very-very skittish of trains. Better let me drive them over to the fence and hitch them, then I'll be at your service entirely."
"Hitch 'em to the ladder of that car," the marshal ordered, his meanness rising with his courage when he saw Simpson separated by ten feet or so from his gun. "I'll tend to them after I tend to you."
"Oh, very well. What's the game?"
"You're arrested," the marshal replied.
With the word Simpson swung his rather sizable foot and kicked the gun out of the marshal's hand. It would have required a quick eye to tell whether the gun hit the ground before the marshal, Simpson following up the kick with such a wallop as the officer never had stood in front of in his life.
"Wrong again, my man," said Tom.
He grabbed the marshal's gun, yanked the little chap to his groggy legs and ordered him to put the seat into the wagon. This the marshal accomplished with considerable effort, for his jawbone had been all but driven through his spinal cord and he was a dazed, dim-seeing, giddy little man.
Tom went up by the front hub as the marshal got aboard the old freight wagon amidships by means of the brake block. After the marshal, under the cold order of Simpson's eye and no word out of his tightly closed mouth, had arranged the spring seat in its proper place, Tom indicated that he was to lie down in the front of the wagon, like a dog, face to the dashboard. With a foot on the prostrate officer, Tom buckled on his gun, then took the lines and headed for home, nobody the wiser for the marshal's attempted bit of heroism to redeem himself in the eyes of his constituents.
Simpson did not say another word to the man cringing on the floor of the wagon bed; just kept him there under foot for a good five miles of about the hardest driving and the roughest riding that city marshal had experienced in many a day. At last Tom pulled up and told the officer they were out of town.
"And that being the case, you look just like any other slinkin' damned whelp to me," he said. "Get out!"
The marshal climbed down on uncertain legs, Simpson following with the two guns.
"You're beyond your contemptible jurisdiction now, and you look to me like a damned louse," Simpson told him. "Here's your gun. If you're not wearin' a dog's tail, step it off and we'll settle it, right here!"
The marshal stuck his gun in the leather, turned, and walked away, putting his feet down jerkily as if he jolted down off something at every step. There was nothing noble in his going, no high courage, no spirit of defiance. It was the exit of a coward, with a tail, Tom Simpson thought, as long as a man's arm.
But the man was full of venom for the failure of his coup, by which he had intended to lift himself to importance in town and turn the laugh they had been giving him since the prisoners locked him in his own calaboose that rainy night. Simpson knew he had no justification for lifting his hand against the officer, and he knew likewise that a lot of future trouble was walking back to town with the little beast.
There would not be any peace for him in Drumwell from that time forward, Simpson knew. He would either have to fight or quit. Technically, perhaps, he was on the wrong side of the question, but at the most they could not prefer a graver charge against him than assault and battery for that affair with Kane. But there was no knowing how they might railroad a man if Kane had the influence he was reported to hold over the county attorney. Simpson certainly had a lively nest of fledgling troubles under his hat as he drove homeward through the languorous October day.
It was well past noon when he unloaded the marshal, but he continued on fully an hour longer, desiring to put as many miles as possible between himself and town before the marshal could get back. Somebody was certain to give the fellow a lift on his way; he might rally a gang and return for the solace of his dignity. One never could tell what to expect, except the bottom worst, of a palegilled rogue like that.
Tom stopped to feed the horses and put a cold dinner under his belt where he had hoped to fold away a large hot steak. Although the horses did not show any great weariness, he realized their incapacity for keeping up the gait he had put them to so far this trip. To keep them fit on a long haul like that they'd have to take it leisurely, even slowly. He was starting in on it like a man who blows his money on one short, lavish spree.
Considering all this, Tom unharnessed and picketed the horses out to graze. The late rains had quickened the grass, which grew thick and tall in that section of the country, as around and on the Ellison ranch. For miles the unmown hayfield spread around him, a sprinkling of cattle here and there, succulent grazing for the hard-blowing months of winter if there was not too much rain to leach it of its virtues. Even then it would sustain animal life and bring the herds through thin in flesh, but happy and lively, in shape to pick up quickly with the first enverduring of spring.
He had not driven more than ten or twelve miles from Drumwell, Simpson estimated, and was not at ease in mind over his situation, but as the sunny afternoon wore away his immediate concern dissolved. Nobody came charging up the road on vengeful foray. Occasionally a rider swung in sight, sometimes two or three together, giving Simpson a start, but they always turned out cowboys or farmers returning home. These passed friendly greetings as they came along, some of them halting to chat, with the main view of satisfying their curiosity. As Tom had nothing to hide about his business, he always put their itching at ease.
Nobody had a word to say about any disturbance in town; no news of the city marshal returning from his enforced excursion with blood in his eye. It grew apparent to Simpson after a while that the marshal had kept his day's adventures to himself. He naturally would do so, considering the rude disposition of such men as inhabited Drumwell to laugh loud and long at any such official belittling as that.
Simpson was vastly relieved as this reasonable consideration of the case became established in his mind. The marshal had made a quiet sneak back to town. He was not likely to ask for help to go out and humble the man who had turned that trick on him, when the appeal would involve confession of his upset dignity.
But that little marshal would go home and make a broad chalk mark on the calaboose door, scoring an account that he, Tom Simpson, lately of Manchester, England, would be called on to settle at no distant day. Oh, very well, said he, feeling pretty easy again, tossing his head as if he threw all the trifles of the world away. He hoped he'd be solvent when the little man came around to collect his bill.
It was such a purely personal account he could not ask anybody to ease him of his obligation, not even the sheriff, who would be quick enough, he believed, to grab a good excuse for scrubbing up that rats' nest. Yes, the sheriff would take great pleasure in making the way clear for the bone merchants' operations in Drumwell, he believed.
The city marshal was expanding over into the sheriff's jurisdiction when he interfered with the free coming and going among citizens of the county. The sheriff was jealous of his jurisdiction, although he could pin his badge inside his vest, as Mrs. Ellison had hoped to see him do, on occasion and ride out of it to good and efficient ends when necessary.
No, he could not call on the sheriff at this time. Try one more trip, go prepared for the worst, and then enlist the sheriff's assistance if it grew bigger than a one-man job. This resolution cleared all troubles and doubts away; he seemed to come out from under a weight that pressed him flat and made his breath come short. He could stand up again and haul his breath deep, and tingle with the iridescence of that bright October day.
He had hoped for peace; he desired it above money. It was a bad business to have to go around fighting one's way; it carried gloom with it, and memories which rose up in the night to confront a man and draw sweat from his pores. Nothing nice in weighting down with lead until they sunk even such wolves as those horsethieves of the Cherokee trails; nothing comforting in the recollection of violence, however just. A hangman must have his hard hours when he wrestles with remorse.
So Tom Simpson thought, sunning himself in the bone wagon that afternoon beside the Drumwell road.