The Red Book Magazine/Volume 4/Number 5/Old Bill Cupid

by Roy Norton

 

Old Bill Cupid

BY ROY E. NORTON

“There they go,” said my friend Slocum—Old Bill Slocum—grumpily, as he kicked with heavily-booted foot at the bed of coals surrounding a much battered and time-worn Dutch oven, which, from its fiery resting place in front of the cabin, exuded the unmistakable odor of beans.

I turned and looked at the mountain trail, which he thumbwise indicated, in time to catch a parting hand-wave from a happily smiling girl who was teeteringly seated in a mountain buckboard. An instant later it vanished clatteringly around a turn, skillfully driven by a broad-shouldered young man who was clad in clean flannel shirt, new sombrero and general gala attire.

“There they go,” repeated Bill, as he seated himself on a section of log, “happy as a pair of twin calves or a Piute with a red bandanner. And all because this old fellow Cupid has lariated and double-cinched 'em together.” Then, his weather-tanned, gray-bristled face relaxed into a broad grin, he told me, with many subdued chucklings, a fresh story of his varied Oriental experiences.

“I'm chuck full of sympathies for Old Mister Cupid, because I'm some on that lay myself. One-time while I was in Japan, before white men were so common there, I played the game—played it, too, with a full house, nine hundred in the pot and no limit.

“There was an idiot by the name of Bellairs came down into the Yavapai country, a canary-bird mining sharp, corrugated corduroys, fore-and-aft cap and yellow chaps—the regular type—from Heaven knows where. I bossed one of his mines until one day he seduces me by saying, 'Bill, I'm going to Korea to operate some property. I want a man like you to go with me to Japan, where you'll stop, and check and properly forward a lot of machinery.'

“'Nope,' says I, 'Arizony's good enough for me.'

“'But you don't need to stay more than six months or a year,' he answers, 'and it's a new country, worth seeing.'

“'I always did have an eye for the card that was lowest in the deck, and rumination made me restless until my mind got to milling like a bunch of long-horns on a rainy night, and I finally stampeded for fair and took his bet.

“Sea-sick? Say, before I landed in Nagasaki my hankerings for a change were about satisfied, but I calculated to die game. Got over it all right, though, when I got my stomach to working regular shifts and clamoring for food, and before long I felt as Japanese as anybody on the island. But lonesome—by the graven whiskers of the great Buddha, I was so lonesome over there I could have cried for the sight of a coyote. No excitement unless you paid for it, and in ten days they thought I was an American millionaire, which same kind weren't any too common then. They gold-bricked me and shell-gamed me, until I got so suspicious I wouldn't listen to any conversational curves unless the man ran me down and roped me.

“My chief puncher was a skinny old cuss who used to wrinkle his hide handling machinery by days and smooth it out gambling by nights. My evening passiar, being a kind of natural gravitation to a gambling layout, would usually find him over some game, his eyes sticking out like a tarantula's and his lips dry and cracked from excitement. If he won, I'd have to round him up the next day, as he was the only one of the outfit that could chew English. If he lost, he'd show up looking like I used to feel after a night in Phœnix. His little white language saved my aggravations from cutting my brand off his hide and sacking him a dozen times.

“Well, one night, having nothing else to do, I stands by a game where this despisable little mummy is contributing his roll to the general donations, and observes that he's up against it rougher than usual. Kind of a 'can't-I-never-win' way with him, his hands twitchin' like a freshly-roped pony's flanks, and his teeth trying to make friends with each other through his nervous lips.

“Smash—and he's broke. Then he piles up to another old pelter there and talks fast and hard. 'Wants another stack,' says I to myself, watching his maneuvers. Finally, after dickerin' a while with the old feller, he turns to me, and says, 'I sellum you.'

“'Sell what?' I remarks outside, and inside says, 'Here comes that brick again.'

“'Lill girl,' he splutters, 'my lill girl.'

“'What's that?' I says, not quite comprehending.

“'I sellum you my lill baby girl,' he says louder, and then I understands.

“'You dirty old scrub,' I snaps out, feeling like catching him by the slack skin of his face and working it like putty, 'you'll sell me nothing. I'm abolitionist clean through, and want no slaves, white, black or tan colored.'

“'All light,' he answers, 'me sellum other man,' and turns back to this old mud scow he's been palavering with. There's where I gets sentimental like.

“'Bill,' says I, 'you aren't going to let that card-crazy old walloper sell his own child to a unwashed, warty gila monster like that, are you?' feeling sorrowful for the poor little devil that's about to be sold like a second-hand saddle, just because her father's up against the game.

“'Hold on, there,' says I, interrupting proceedings just as the warty old party was about to take a quit-claim deed. He looked as pleasant as a rattler pinned down by the tail. I ended his volubilities by turning him around and sending a number-nine boot into him till his teeth clattered like castanets, industriously hanging onto my gambling man meanwhile. And he too looks as happy as if his was about due.

“'How much you want?' I says, not taking the trouble to pry my teeth apart for conversation.

“Then he smiles, hyena-like, and figures twenty-seven dollars, American.

“'Done,' I remarks, 'C. O. D., which spells cod, and means you don't put your greasy fingers on the coin till you bring the girl to my shanty. But if you sell to some other feller—' and here I affectionately and suggestively pats my Colts, which I always carries for company, 'I'll unlimber a ton of lead into your livin' quarters.'

“Sore to the core, I climbed the hill to the shack I had rented, waded through the tea patch to the door, and lighted the lamp. I stepped to the window, and stood there, not even noticing the plum blossom smell, when up through the moonlight comes a shadow and into the doorway comes that mean old sheepherder, dragging a girl of about sixteen.

“'What the devil—' yells I, as she turns her face to the wall, pulls the loose end of her obi over her head and sobs as if her heart was clean gone from her.

“'See here, old leather face,' I continues, 'I thought 'twas a baby. What do you think I'm to do with this?'

“'You keep um,' says this loving old parent. 'Plentee cook, work, bimeby raise children. Spik lill Inglis. Nice lill girl. You get um cheap.'

“I knows it was custom, and that many a foreigner had bought 'em similarly, but even a bargain sale wouldn't have made me take her if I hadn't thought some one worse than me might get her if I turned the deal down.

“'Here's the coin,' I snarls, and then bubbled over like a soda fountain, and was happy for a minute as I started in to shorten his backbone by kicking the south end of it. Land? I reckon I landed twenty times as he sprinted for the gate in my little wall.

“'If ever I see you again, my bucko, I'll send you to the happy tea grounds to get acquainted with your dishonorable ancestors,' I yells after him, and then my freshet of language makes the plum blossoms on the whole hillside wither as if hit by a Cajon breeze.

“I was so sore at the old buck jumper that I spit up chunks of cowboy talk all the way back into the shack, to where my little lady was heaped on the floor, scared stiff, and shivering as if she thought I had come back to tear her to shreds and throw the chunks at her departing daddy. Big and awkward I felt, as I looked at that little runt cowering on the mat.

“'Pore little girl,' I says, trying to lift her on her feet, but she bawls harder than ever and grovels to my boots.

“'Get up,' I orders, 'that don't go with old Bill,' and then by main strength jerks her into her shoes and holds her against the wall.

“'Stop it!' I bellows, aggravatedly. 'I ain't going to eat you, leastwise if you keep quiet, but if you don't——' and here I gritted my teeth until she was afraid to whimper.

“'You sabe my talk?' I says, trying her English out, and she nods 'yes.'

“'Then listen,' I goes on, 'I ain't going to be mean to you. You're mine, I reckon, because I bought you. I don't want you any more than you want me, and I'd just as soon buy a circus elephant as you. You're going to be as big a nuisance as a locoed cayuse. I've got no place to eat you, or sleep you, my wardrobe wasn't built to fit you, and I'd a heap rather cook my own grub than ruin my insides with this Japanese style of culinaries. As for laundry work, I don't have much done. You sleep there,' I ends, pointing to my bunk, and grabbing up a blanket off the window ledge.

“As I rolled up, cowboy fashion, on the porch, I couldn't help thinking what a mess I'd got into. Not that I minded giving up my sleeping place, for I'd bunked worse all my life, but pestered to death to know what to do with her.

“'See here, Bill,' I argues to myself, 'you're up against new work. You don't know nothing about innocent girls like this, even if her hide is yellow. The kind you've grazed with are a different brand.'

“And then, if you'll believe me, I felt kind of ashamed of some things I'd done in my life, and of most of the women folks I'd known and associated with back on the range, and still hating myself for all that I wasn't, I went to sleep.

“When daylight comes, shoving the darkness out of the plum trees and tea bushes, I gets up easy and tiptoes inside. There she was, sweet as a little angel, her face, hardly more than a girl's and just beginning to look sorrowful like a woman's, stained with tears that I reckoned had rivuleted down 'most all night. Her baby hands didn't look like they could do much work, and I could see she tried to keep 'em clean. Wrapped up as she was, I could see her shuddering and hear her moan with grief.

“That got to me worser than ever. If I hadn't been afraid of stampeding her entirely out of her head, I'd have taken her in my arms and petted her, and said, 'Little pal, don't you worry, because old Bill Slocum ain't such a tough proposition as he looks. He won't allow no old wart-faced goat to drag you off and make one of them fool dancin' bears outen you, for the eddyfication of a bunch of tar-handed, booze-loaded sailors.'

“But I didn't. I just pulls the blinds down so she could sleep, gets some grub out of the cache and tiptoes out, making so much noise I felt like a ten-stamp mill and abusing of myself for being such an unhandy old maverick.

“That night I finds the shack slicked up, a bunch of posies on the table and supper waiting.

“'Fed yet?' I says, wanting to be sociable, but she shakes her head.

“'Sit down,' I remarks, shoving a chair at her; but she just crosses her hands over her breast, makes one of them ducking courtesies you read about, I reckon, and stands behind.

“All right. T'ell with you,' says I, ruffled, and eats my grub with her watching and rattling me until I didn't know what I had, whether my mouth was my ear or my hands my feet. Almost cut my mouth off with my knife, trying to be polite. Then I meanders to the village.

“That keeps up three or four days, till she got kind of used to seeing me around and didn't seem to mind it so much. Getting kind of halter-broke. One night I comes home early and hears her sobbing where she was stretched out on my cot, clean overloaded with sorrow. I sits down by her—easy—and smooths down her hair, not knowing what else to do.

“'Tell old Bill all about it, little girl,' I says, feeling 'most as troubled as she did. 'I ain't going to harm you, and I want to make you happy.'

“And then, not knowing whether she understood or not, but talking mainly to hear myself gab and spar for time, I tells her the whole story, including a few choice reflections in real range style on the filialities of that dirty old dad of hers, who had disappeared for other pastures after that time I handed him a few persuading arguments as he went over the front wall.

“She savied, because as I talked she quieted. Pretty soon she proved it by telling me, in a funny mixture of Jap and English, all about it. How she had studied English, and tried to be a real lady, even though her ancestor was a bad old pill; how she had expected to be paid for and married by a very nice young feller, Nankipo, who was slaving away at ivory carving to get the coin, and how now it was all off.

“Then she flops to her knees with her hands crossed, and indicates that she is wearing my 'Bar S' brand, and she'll stand the gaff, whether I beat her, keep her, or fatten her and ship her to the stock yards for sale.

“Things just floated along, stature quo, as the lawyer men say, for about ten days after that, me feeling sorrowful as ever, sleeping rolled up in my blankets, and sneakingly watching that wistful little face in the mornings when she was still asleep. But we didn't talk no more, as she was shy as one of them little blue flowers you see on the tops of the Sierra Leones.

“I was working mighty hard days, as the job was about cleaned up and I was homesick for the range. Wanted to feel the air of Arizony on my face again, and hit the high hills with a pick, or get a cayuse between my legs and ride like a Chinook across the country where there ain't no fences and nothin' but wide space, free air and God.

“Then this fellow Bellairs, my boss, shows up and wants me to go over to Korea with him; but when I says 'Nope, me for Arizony,' he laughs and pays my wages in full.

“After that I had a few drinks of saki, and began contemplating buying a barrel, drinking it all, turning myself loose and shooting the town up some, just to show 'em that a true American citizen could kick up some excitement even in Japan. Thought I'd buy a ticket on the next steamer to make sure of getting home, and then hit 'em up for a few whoops.

“Funny how little things will make a man throw off on a good resolution, and make a slobbering idiot of himself. Here I was, with the intention of having a real good old Yavapai drunk, a howlingly boisterous time, when I happens to remember my little woman in the tea house up on the hill.

“'What in the great horn spoon are you going to do with her, Bill?' I asked myself. But being a heap better at questions than answers, gets no reply. Then I buys a quart of saki and goes down to the wharf to figure it out between drinks

“'You can't leave her here for her disreputable old dad to boss again, if ever he shows up, and you don't want the old wart to steal her, claiming he bought her, or that she's a maverick due for his branding iron. She ain't got no coin, and no ranch on which to roll her blankets.'

“And about that time I began to get them queer lumps in my throat at the thought of leaving her.

“'Why not?' says I, after cogitating. 'She's yours, she's the only good girl you've ever known, and a heap too pretty to wear your brand; but you can't take her with you.' And then it came swamping over me how lonesome I was.

“'No, Bill,' I thought, 'she'd be as lonesome for Japan and its queer tribe as you are for the range and yellow hills, but she's helpless, so here you've got to stick. But it's got to be done on the level!'

“That settles it. I shoves the remnants of the saki in my pocket, with the neck of the bottle sticking out suggestive-like, and hits the trail for my landlord's.

“'What'll you take for your dump?' says I when I found him, and when he named the price, with his mouth open and his eyes sticking out like question marks, I pulls my poke and pays him. Takes him by the ear and leads him to the American consul to be sure I wasn't getting gold-bricked again, and gets the papers good and ship-shape.

“'Make that there deed out to—to—to,' I stammers, because I didn't know the girl's name, and thought some of homesteading.

“'Yum Chee,' butts in the landlord, 'your alle same——' and then he uses a word that don't go with good women, and the last I saw of him he was running up the street wiping the marks of my wrath off his nose. I guess he got hurt some, but the consul laughed when he finished witnessing the papers. I liked that consul better when he shook hands and said, 'Slocum, you may have fallen into evil ways, but you are a man at heart, just the same.'

“As I meandered cheerily off up the lane I takes a few more for the good of my stomach, and then I gets so bright my intellect must have nearly set my hair on fire.

“'Oh, I am young Lochinvar,
Just come out of the west
In search of a preacher,
"And you know the rest,'

I sings in my melliferous voice, as loud as I could sing, composing a little love ditty for my own first appearance. Funny how that saki works on you!

“They gave me a clean berth, and all of a sudden, off up the row, standing kind of terrified, I sees the man I'm looking for, a long-necked, scrawny, psalm-singing missionary chap, that had come to the diggings a few weeks before to try to switch the Japs off on the right road to glory.

“He takes one good look, and reckons he's due to get off the plate; but the handicap was too small, and I outfooted him.

“'Whoa,' yells I, wrapping my hand into his coat collar. 'I'm the whole circus and needs a camel in the parade. You're due to fill that lovely animal's part.'

“'Unhand me, you intoxicated pest,' he gasps, as I lifted him up in the air and shook him until he grew as meek as Moses—or was it Saul?—was.

“'I shall protest to the authorities when I am liberated,' he gurgled, when he got his wind.

“'Not till I am married,' I answers, 'and then I won't be caring.'

“'Whoop-ee-ough-ow-ow,' I remarks, entering into the due festive spirit that should permeate a man's system when he's conducting his own wedding in a foreign land. Then I lets off my Colts a couple or three times, while people began to bar the doors and put up the window shutters.

“'All but one little man, and as I wandered down the street in this joyous fashion, shoving the wild-eyed missionary before me, I spotted that brave.

“'You'd better get your temerities out and put 'em on,' I percolates, stopping where he stood tranquilly leaning against a doorway.

“'I'm old Bill Slocum,' I remarked, flipping my gun handy-like, 'and I own Arizony and most of Mexico.' And then I shoves my cannon under his nose and asks, 'What's your name, pardner?' not by way of wanting information, but just for convenience in starting hostilities.

“'Nankipo,' he answers, without a sign of fight or white feather. I lowered my gun and stood open-mouthed and sizing him up. Nankipo—the sound sobered me in spots. So this clean-faced, genteel little feller with the sorrerful eyes, was the thing that little girl up on the hill loved.

“'You're my meat,' I roars, 'come with me. I'll have you as chief mourner to watch my show, just to let you know you're not in the race any more.' I didn't exactly hate him, but just felt riled all over because he didn't give more respect to my hilarities.

“He put up a good fight, did that little man, but as I'm six foot one and he was five two, it didn't bother me much. I persuaded him to walk in front in the middle of the street by prodding him occasionally with the muzzle of my arbitrator, while all the inhabitants who hadn't previously disappeared, jumped into their holes like prairie dogs, waving their tails and barking in terror. The preacher man was really the most bother, as he would occasionally dig his heels in and try to take root, but his collar band held out.

“Up, up, up, we went, straight to my tea house on the hill, where the sun was shinin' down through the leaves and everything looked so homelike I forgot yearnin's for the range and everything except that this was my wedding. I was bubbling undiluted joy, and if I hadn't feared scaring Yum Chee, would have yelled for the full fun of it.

“'Yum Chee,' I opened, as she stood trembling before us, 'explain, elucidate, interpret, comprehendeez to this Nankipo that you're about to be married.'

Before I could head her off, she throws herself, crying aloud in broken gasps, not at my feet, but Nankipo's. Regularly wraps both arms around his knees and turns her face up to where he stands, cool as ever, but with that murderous look in his steady face that I've seen on an Apache's when run down and rounded up by a band of rangers.

“There is things in this world sobers a fellow mighty quick, even if he's loaded to the lips with saki. All in a minute it comes to me.

“'Bill,' I says to myself, while it was so still only a robin out in the plum tree chirped away in sympathy with the sobbing little girl, 'Bill, you're a dirty dog. There ain't a decent breath in your body, nor a clean wrinkle in your skull. Don't break the heart of this pore little girl that's young enough to be your own. Arizony's where you belong. Be on the square, Bill.'

“I motions with the gun, to Nankipo, to lift her up, and tells the astonished sky-pilot to marry 'em good and strong in lasting American fashion. Then, while he goes through his rigmarole, I fishes the deed out of my pocket, and across the back writes: 'Know all people in this here Japan, that in consideration of labor done I give this whole blooming teahouse and everything in it to Mrs. Nankipo, her that was Yum Chee. Bill Slocum.'

“I reckon I had most of old Mister Cupid's game skinned from the way them three acted. Nankipo kissed my hand on one side, the missionary tried to shake it off on the other, and Yum Chee's eyes was as full of tenderness, as if she had found Heaven.

“But the worst of all was when I started out of the door. Yum Chee came up, and, before I could draw my gun, reached up on tiptoes, and—well, she did anyway,” Bill lamely and somewhat bashfully concluded.

“But what did you do then, Bill?” I asked, still unsatisfied.

“Me,” said Bill, as he carefully wadded some freshly-cut plug into an ancient pipe, “more saki.”