Good Men and True; and, Hit the Line Hard/Hit the Line Hard/Chapter 2
Chapter II
It was nearing two p.m. when Mr. Jones, after speeding the parting Kid, made his way uptown. Upstairs was the word in his thought. Saragossa is built that way. Let Saragossa Mountain, close and great and golden, stand for the house; the town will then be the front steps. The first step is Venice, in the lush green of the valley—railroad buildings, coal chute, ferryman, ware houses, two nth-class hotels, and a few farm houses, all on stilts, being a few feet above the Rio Grande at low water and a few feet under it at high water. Whence the name, Venice.
On the first rising ground to the westward is the business quarter, as close to the railroad as safety permits. A step up comes to a sheltered, sunny terrace and to the Old Town—the Mexican village dating back to before the great uprising of 1680. Another, a steep and high step, rose to the residence section, on a strip of yellow mesa; for Saragossa has water piped from the high hills, so please you, and is not confined to the lowlands, like most of her New Mexican sisters. Still above, on the fifth and last step, smelter and mining town clung to a yellow-brown slope reached by a spur of railroad looping in a long bow-knot from the valley below.
Above all, sheer and steep, circling about, sheltering, brooding, hung Saragossa Mountain, rose and gold in mid-day or morning sun; blue and rose-edged when the long shadows thrust eastward stealthily, steadily—like them fell off, down those old, old steps.
Something of all this Neighbor saw and put into thoughts—not into words. Saw, too, all beyond and all about, the vast and sun drenched land of all colors and all shapes—valley and plain and mesa, shelf and slope and curve, and bend and broken ridge and hill; great ranges against the turquoise sky, near or far, or far beyond belief, saw-toothed or wall-straight or rounded—every one precisely unlike any other visible mountain or any other possible mountain. By this cause his step was sprightly and glad, his eye bright, his chin well up—a very sincere way of thanking God.
Now, as he swung along the street, he voiced these thoughts in a little hymn of praise. At least it sounded like a hymn of praise as he sang it to a healthy and manful tune; resonant, ringing, reverberant:
"Plunged in a gulf of dark despair—
- Maryland, my Maryland!"
On three sides of the shaded plaza business was housed in modern comfort. In sharp contrast, all along the north, sprawled an unbroken, staring huddle of haphazard buildings—frame, brick and adobe, tall and squat jumbled together, broad fronted or pinched. At the riverward corner, massive, ill-kept but dominant still, was a great structure of gray-stone once the luckless home of Brown and Almandares.
Squalid, faded and time-stained, like Falstaff's rabble of recruits, this long row struck sinister to the eye. Any stranger, seeing what blight had fallen ominous and threatening all about him, seeing on door after door the same repeated name, might well guess the whole ugly story. For this long, forlorn row housed Bennett's General Stores. Bennett sold everything but tunnels.
Here was Neighbor's nearest errand. After a little delay he was shown into the great man's private office.
Bennett turned slowly in his revolving chair; a tall spare man, with a thin straggle of sandy hair and a sharp, narrow face, close-shaven; which might have been a pleasant face but for a pinched and cruel mouth, a mean, pinched nose, and a shifty eye.
Here arose a curious contradiction. The man had held the whip hand for years, his conscious manner was overbearing and arrogant, but his eyes betrayed him, and all the unconscious lines of his face were slinking and furtive. He now wore an austere frown.
"Mr. Jones, I hear you have been gambling."
"Oh, si!" said Mr. Jones; and he made those simple words convey enthusiasm, brightness and joy. "And—but, also, what do you suppose I hear about you? Give you three guesses."
"What!" Bennett gasped incredulously; he crashed his fist down on the desk. "How about that mortgage?"
Jones beamed triumphant.
"You see? You don't like it yourself—meddlin', pryin' and loose talk."
"I'll fix you! This'll be the worst day's work you ever did—trying to get smart with me!"
"Percival Pulcifer, will you kindly retain your rompers?" said Neighbor with eminent cheerfulness. "Now hark and heed! You did not ask me to sit down. You are not a nice old man. I do not like you much. Don't you touch that bell! … I shall now sit down. Smoke? No? Well, I'll roll one."
Rolling one with tender care, Neighbor cocked a pleasant but rather impish eye on the seething financier and blithely prattled on:
"Allow me to say, Mr. Banker, that you are overlooking one point: You have a mortgage on my cattle, but you haven't got any mortgage on me. Got that—clear?"
The banker gurgled, black faced and choking.
"I'll ruin you! I'll smash you!"
"Percival Pulcifer Peterkin Pool!"
For some reason, not at first easily apparent, these harmless words, which Jones syllabled with great firmness, made the banker writhe. He was wonted to hate—but ridicule was new to him and it hurt.
"You might at least show some respect for my gray hairs," he interrupted indignantly.
"Oh, dye your gray hairs!" said Neighbor simply. "Damn your old gray hairs! Shoot, if you must, that old gray head! You're an old gray-headed scoundrel—that's what you are!"
"Of course," observed the gray-haired one, gathering himself together, "you will be ready with the money on the nail?"
Now you're talking sense!" cried Neighbor warmly. "Now you're getting down to facts." He threw back his head and sang with great heartiness and zest:
"That day of wrath, that dreadful day;
Maryland, my Maryland!
When heaven and earth shall pass away;
Maryland, my Maryland!"
Clerks beyond the glass partition turned startled faces that way. In that gloomy, haunted counting room, used only to the tones of meekness or despair, the echoes rolled thunderous:
"When, shriveling like a parchèd scroll,
The flaming heavens together roll"
"Will I have the money? Quien sabe? If I don't the brand is yours—party of the first part, his heirs, executors and assigns forever—nary a whimper from this corner. If I knew for certain I'd tell you, for you have a plain right to know that; but that first line of talk was just sickening drivel. If you held a mortgage on a man's stuff, would that give you any right to go snoopin' round and compel him to get in a poker game—hey? Would that look nice? Whaddy you mean, then—how dast you, then—try to tell me not to play poker—meddling in my private affairs? How dare you? Shame-y! Shame-y! S-s-h!"
"Jones," said the other thickly, "I think the devil himself is in you to-day. You poor, headstrong fool! I sent for you to do you a kindness."
Jones rose anxiously.
"Shall I call a doctor?"
"Well, I did; but you make it hard for me."
"Yes, yes! And you not used to doing kind things, either!" said Jones sympathetically. "Go on. We're all with you. Give it a name."
Bennett paced up and down, clasping his hands behind his back.
"You know I have a cattle ranch out Luna way ? Ever been there?"
"Not any. I stick to the east side. Saragossa is my furthest west; and, as you know, I've never been here before. But don't let me interrupt. You were working yourself up to a kindness."
Bennett flinched at his careless contempt, but he forced himself to go on.
"I was intending to offer you a job as my foreman."
Neighbor sat down with an air of relief.
"You don't need no doctor. It's yourself you're trying to be kind to. Go on with your talk. For a starter—what would I do with my own cattle?"
"Sell, get a friend to run them; let them out on shares. You wouldn't need to worry about the mortgage. It could stand over—you'll be getting good money. And," said the financier diffidently, spacing the words and dropping his voice to tones singularly flat and even, "if—everything—went—all—right, the—mortgage—might—be—canceled."
"Yes? How jolly! But what's the matter with the west-side cowmen? Can't you get some of the V T waddies? Should think you'd rather use home talent."
Bennett resumed his measured pacing. At the end of each beat he turned, always away from Neighbor's eyes, so that he marked out a distinct figure eight. Other men, unhappy debtors, had walked that narrow space, many of them; perhaps none so fiend-ridden as he who now tracked back and forth. The jeers of this uncringing debtor galled him to the quick, yet his purpose drove him on.
"We have been having a little trouble on the ranch. For many reasons I do not think it wise to get a local man." He coughed gently, and went on in the same low and listless manner of speech he had used in his hint about the mortgage. "Trouble was between my boys and the Quinliven outfit—the Double Dee—about one of my watering places. I have no legal title, but the spring is mine by all the customs of the country. There was some shooting, I believe. No one was hurt, fortunately, but there is hard feeling. I must put a stop to it. For his part in the deplorable affair I let my foreman go—Tom Garst. Know him?"
"Sure!"
"So I thought I would get you for the place."
"Me being a notorious peacemaker and cheekturner, suffering long, and kind, not easily provoked—yes, yes!"
"Quinliven himself would be willing to let the matter drop, I think; but young Roger Drake—why, you know young Drake—he was one of your poker party!"
"The college lad—yes."
"Nephew of Old Drake, Quinliven's partner, who died a month or two ago," continued Bennett, sedulously avoiding Neighbor's eye. "Young Drake is hot-headed; says he's going to hold that spring anyhow. He—will—require—careful—handling." Again that slow, significant spacing of the words.
As lifelessly Neighbor answered:
"And—if—I—handle—him—carefully; if—everything—turns—out—all—right, the—mortgage—will—be—canceled?"
"Yes," said Bennett. He busied himself at his desk.
In a startled silence Neighbor rose, fold after fold, interminable and slow. He fumbled for matches, pipe and tobacco; thoughtfully, thoroughly, he constructed a smoke. Then he raised his eyes. Many a hard Ulysses-year had passed over him, this old Neighbor; but his eyes were clear and unstained yet. They now observed Mr. Bennett attentively.
"Sorry," said Neighbor Jones. "I haven't got a thing fit to wear."
At the door he turned. "Now, I'll tell you what you do," he said kindly. He spread out his left hand and drew a diagram down the palm: "You go to hell and take the first turn to the left!"