Sheep Limit/Chapter 13
Signs do not always hold in the sheeplands. It is a country, indeed, where it might be said, as of other climes in time of dry weather, all signs fail. One must even beware of those soft white cumuli such as the so-called old masters used to put into their pictures for gross, fat, pigeon-winged cherubim to loll upon. In other summerlands these white mountain-peaks and shaded vales of clouds are assurance of fair weather; in the sheeplands they cannot be trusted to carry on as they appear.
Almost while one's back is turned these cherubim beds sometimes mass and grow dark over the far-off hills, forming stormlets which appear not much wider than one's dooryard. These little strips of storm come bearing down across the sheeplands, blustering furiously, pouring rain as if the bung at headquarters were out above the small brush-strokes of dark cloud. Half a mile wide, perhaps, or a mile, they drench the grey sheeplands, bright sun shining on either side, frequently sending torrents of brown water rolling down dry canyons, holding up sheepmen in their Fords on their dust-dry banks for an hour or two until the freshet subsides.
Such a rain as this overtook Rawlins on his way back to Dry Wood, driving him to the shelter of the road-ranch which featured in a broad sign its well-appointed bar. Night was drawing in when he rode into the fenced enclosure; the first big splashing drops of the shower were knocking up dust in the corral like spent bullets as he led Graball under the shed. Man and horse were both well content to call it a day and try the comforts of the wayside rest.
A man named Lineberger was running the place, assisted by his wife and daughter. Lineberger appeared to be a cattleman out of place. He was a scragged tall man, taciturn, gloomy of countenance, grudging and ungracious in his speech, for which deficiency his wife made ample amends. This was a stubby, quick woman, red, raucous, full of loud laughter which spilled over every time she tipped. Her eyes were alert, eager, and nothing so friendly as her words. Her husband called her Dell.
The daughter seemed indifferent, of herself as well as of those who came and went. She was a longbacked, flat, moping young woman with a scant wisp of dusty hair, looking rather lachrymose about the nose, keeping her eyes downcast as if she had been warned against the wickedness of horseback-going men. Her mother called her Nadine, with a lingering fondness for the name.
Lineberger's was an old ranch-house transformed into a wayside inn. Whether the present owner had degenerated with the house into that business, Rawlins only speculated; he did not have the courage, before the host's formidable countenance, to inquire. The house was built of hewn logs, long L-shaped, with diminishing additions upon the foot of it which terminated in the kitchen, where an astonishingly tall stovepipe projected from the comb.
On the front ridgepole a broad-spreading pair of elk antlers rode, a sign once as familiar over the doors of refreshment places in the inter-mountain country as the polished steer horns were in mid-western saloons. Dispensers of ardent liquors always have appeared to be peculiarly attached to horns.
Business was dull at the road-ranch that evening; there was not a horse but Graball under the long shed; no guest but his master in the bar. The rain had come with furious outburst, lashing the windows with streams, the young quaking-asp trees set in front of the house bending like bows before the wind. By the time Rawlins' supper had been thrown together by the hostess and his plate and cutlery laid out by Nadine on one end of the long table, the vicious burst off storm had passed.
This table shared the main room of the establishment with the well-appointed bar, the visible appointments of which were seven bottles of varying size and color, one lemon, and a pistol. The bar, being the institution first under requisition by visitors, and last in the thoughts and desires of departing guests, was near the door, a long stretch of floor between it and the dining-table. In this intervening space were chairs and round-topped card tables, a square in the center marking where the stove, lately removed, had stood. The room was lighted lugubriously by a lamp swinging from the ceiling.
Rawlins was just putting his feet under the table when somebody rode into the yard, calling the host out with a halloo before the door. Lineberger went to answer the summons, returning presently with a long streak of a man who was dripping from the corners of his brown duck coat like a leaky keg.
This traveler who came at the tail of the storm had the lines of familiarity to Rawlins' eyes, though his features were obscured by the shadow of his hat, which seemed the very exaggeration of Texas hats, the crown of it twisted into a peculiar peak. The traveler had jammed the hat down to his ears, leaving little of his features visible, and that little insignificant and shadowy in the dim lamplight.
But what little of him there was visible under the remarkable hat was enough to identify the man as the notable Dowell Peck, late of St. Joe. If there had been any doubt in the case Peck's first word dispelled it. He said he was cold to the gizzard and wanted a spike of something fiery, facing to the bar, taking both hands to his hat as he had the day he arrived with Smith Phogenphole from Lost Cabin.
Peck stood slinging water from the brim of this romantic hat, inquiring about a change of clothing. The landlord said he didn't think there was anything around the place long and narrow enough to fit him, unless it might be a woolsack, his sarcasm far in excess of his hospitality, knowing very well that guests must bear with one to enjoy the comforts of the other, there being no competition within eighty miles on either side.
A pair of overalls and a shirt would hold him, Peck said, until he had forked some supper into him, when he intended to go to bed. No, there wasn't anything available, Lineberger replied, sulky and contemptuous of his guest's demands. That was a road-ranch, not a clothing-store. He'd have to keep his duds on till they dried, or go to bed and hang them on a chair.
"All right," said Peck, with a sneer for the accommodations of that joint which matched pretty well Lineberger's best. He put his hat on his peaked head to show his indifference, if not his scorn, for the crudities of the place and the people in it, turning toward the table.
"Why, hello, Rawlins," he hailed, with a sort of hearty surprise. He came striding over, offering his hand with more affability than condescension. "I thought you'd left this daddled country; I thought you was where you was hearin' street-car bells by now."
"I'm just coming back," Rawlins told him. "Won't you sit in?"
Peck would, and did. Nadine came, her discreet gaze on the floor, carrying them biscuits, ham, eggs; turgid coffee, milk in a tin to go with it; portions of cottage pudding dampened down in a sad grey sauce. She laid it out indifferently all at one operation, as if to say there it was; they could take it or leave it, either course being equally acceptable to her.
"Just comin' back, heh?" said Peck. He turned the ham critically with his fork, looking out the largest and most likely piece. "I don't see what anybody wants to come back to this country for when he can go the other way."
Rawlins was not inclined to allay the curiosity in Peck's bulging eyes. While he never had felt a shadow of animosity for the man, he wondered how Peck had put aside and forgotten so entirely his own rancor. Perhaps that little splurge at the exercise of his new authority when he had discharged Rawlins had mollified him. Whatever the reason, he seemed now to accept Rawlins as an equal and a friend.
"How are things on the ranch?" Rawlins inquired, just a bit curious to know what business had brought Peck so far from the bosom of his wife.
"You can have it; you can put that sheep business in your hat and take it away with you," Peck replied, somewhat too intense and heated, Rawlins thought, for a man newly-married to a fortune.
"No?" said Rawlins, with amused depreciation. "What's up?"
"I am—up and a-goin'," Peck replied.
"Going? Going where?"
"Let me tell you," Peck proposed, his knife upended in his big fist, dribbling egg down the blade. "I thought I was marryin' a woman, but I wasn't. I wasn't marryin' nothing but a crowd of sheep. Take it from me, Rawlins: don't marry no woman that's got sheep on the brain. They ain't got no room in their hearts, no, nor even their houses, for no man. Let 'em alone. Walk away from 'em and let 'em alone."
"What's happened? Won't she come across with the money?"
"You said it," Peck nodded fervently. "Tight ain't no name for that woman. One of them iron barrels they ship gasoline in's wide open compared to her. She married me to save a hired man; that was her game, but she figgered on the wrong side of the door. She don't seem to know I ain't the kind of a man a woman can put a fence around and show him off like a giraft. I can make my little old thirty a week, any day. I ain't no woman's married hired-hand."
"Well, I should hope not," Rawlins encouraged him.
He wondered how far Peck's rebellion had gone, or how far it would go, with little faith in its force or ultimate success.
"She put me out there with that old Mexican feller to learn the game, goin' to make a sheepwoman's man out of me, she said. I've been out there with that old squint-eyed Indian ever since you left, and I ain't heard eight words out of him all that time. That man talks with his eyebrows; he sics his dog on them dan sheep with his hands."
"You don't take to the sheep business, then?"
"Take to it? I should say I don't! That ain't no life for a man, settin' around on a hill watchin' a gang of sheep. I'd ruther pump air in the hot place at two cents a jerk."
"She'll be cashin' in on her sheep one of these days; then you'll come into your own, Peck. She'll have a roll of money as big as a barrel. You can take her back to St. Joe, build a house with a cupola on it like a courthouse and sit on the front porch in your slippers, with nothing to do the rest of your life but figure the interest."
"It listens fine!" said Peck, making a sniffing of disdain. "Any time you see that woman leavin' this country you'll see her goin' to buy some dan fool buck for a thousand dollars, or a bunch of ewes—I call 'em stews, makes her hoppin'—guaranteed to shear nine pounds of wool a year. It ain't for me, this here life. I'd ruther have my little old thirty a week and be back where I can hear the girls' heels knock the sidewalk. I'm done; my experimentin' with these here sheep-ranch women's over. You can tell her you saw me, and I was on my way."
"But you don't mean you're quitting her, Peck?"
"Cold. I'm quittin' her cold."
"What do you suppose she'll say?"
"Plenty," said Peck, with deep conviction. "Let her rair, it'll do her good. She'll think double next time before she deceives any stranger into marryin' her. Say, Rawlins; you remember that bundle of money Tippie brought her the day I hit the ranch?"
"Sure I remember it."
"So do I," said Peck, sadly. "And that's all I've got of it—a remembrance. I ain't never seen the color of that long-green since; I never would if I hung around there the rest of my life. What's the use of bein' a husband to a woman and a stranger to her money? That's what I say. I'd ruther punch transfers on the end of a street-car in St. Joe."
"So you're on your way. Well, I thought you had more nerve than that, Peck. I never took you for a quitter. In fact, Tippie and I thought you'd be about as hard to lose as a tick."
"You see me," said Peck, significantly. "I didn't tell that old Chinaman anything about my scheme, I just throwed a saddle on my horse—her horse, I don't even own its snort—and headed south, trustin' to luck to hit the railroad."
"When was that?"
"This morning while that old Dago feller was wakin' up the sheep. He won't miss me before a couple of days; he didn't even know I was around. Tell her I'll put her pony in a livery at Jasper. She can send somebody down after it."
"If I see her I'll tell her, Peck."
"You might tell her, if you want to do me a favor, to send me my grip-sacks and clothes. If she don't want to let go of 'em, case she picks up another man and wants to save dressin' him, tell her I'd request, special extra, that mauve silk shirt with red polka-dots, and that pair of pants with the pencil stripe. She can keep the rest if she's got another man in sight she thinks they'll fit. I'll charge it up to experience and let it go."
"Why, I'll tell her, Peck—I'll be glad to tell her—if I see her. But I don't know when I'll be around her way."
"Any time'll do. She may not be there, anyhow. Last I heard of her she was goin' along with a swarm of sheep to the mountains. I don't wish the old lady any bad luck, but I wouldn't grieve if one of them mountain lions was to jump on her neck."
"Who's been running your business while you've been experimenting out here in the sheep country?"
"Well, that's one of the things the old lady got sore at," Peck confessed. "I ain't got no shop of my own, you see, Rawlins. I work for the man I learnt the trade under, but I'm just the same as one of the firm, been there so long, you know. If I'd 'a' been wise, I'd 'a' married one of his girls—I could 'a' had the pick of three—and made my nest right there in St. Joe. But I didn't, Rawlins."
"No, you didn't, Peck. And now you can't."
"Not till that dan old sheepwoman gits a divorce off of me."
"She'll never do it, Peck. She thinks too much of you, she adores you, I could see that in the dovy look she gave you when you came in from feeding the horses oats that evening—remember?"
"Don't I!" said Peck, with a bale of regret compressed into the words.
"She likes the name of Peck, too, much better than she does Duke. It suggests something—pecks of money, maybe."
"If I could 'a' got my hands on some of it wouldn't I 'a' made a streak!" said Peck.
"Wouldn't you!" said Rawlins, knowing very well that Peck was right for once.
"Well, don't forgit about them pants, will you, Rawlins?"
"No. I'll remember them—pencil stripe, polka-dots."
"That's the shirt," Peck corrected him severely. "I'd better write it down."
"No need. I can make her understand the ones I mean."
"If you happen around there before the old lady gits back Edith she'll hand 'em over to you, everything I left behind me. She's a good little kid; I made a fool of myself when I turned that girl down to marry the old lady. Little old Edith likes me, too. She tries to hide it, but she likes me. I can see it in her eyes."
Peck tinkled on the saucer that held his pudding, drew a heavy breath of regret, sighed.
"Tell her I said I was sorry I done her any wrong, Rawlins. Tell her if she wants that mauve shirt with the polka-dots to make a waist out of, she can have it. Just send me the pants, tell her. I'll let it go with the pants."
"I'm sure she'll appreciate it," Rawlins said, wondering how much of this was pure simplicity, how much rank egotism.
"She'd have a right to. It cost me seven dollars. I used to be a classy boy among 'em back in St. Joe, I'm a-tellin' you, Rawlins."
"You'll make a hit in St. Joe with that outfit," Rawlins said, viewing the sheep-herder rig, which was far from new, with a grin.
"I'll buy me a hand-me-down suit when I hit Jasper. I can pass that off all right. They think I've been knockin' around out here for my pleasure and so on. They don't know anything about this dan marriage."
"What will you do if she picks up and follows you one of these days, Peck? Which she's likely to do, or I don't know the signs of a strong-minded woman."
"She won't," Peck declared confidently. "She'll never spend that much money chasin' a husband when she can bait 'em right up to her back porch and marry 'em. A new one'd be cheaper than trackin' the old one. That's the way she'll look at it."
"But if she did take a notion to go after you with her gun you'd have to do some lively steppin', Peck."
"Maybe I won't be where she thinks I'll be," Peck said, easy in both mind and conscience. "A firm in Omaha wants me to come up there. I could dodge her easy enough; I'd change my name. Anyhow, if she follers me I'll have her on my ground, she'll be where I know the ropes. If she thinks she can come to St. Joe and run any of this big boss stuff on me, let her try it. I'd stitch her ears to the back of her neck. You can tell her I said so, too."
"I'll leave it to you," said Rawlins. He got up, reaching into his pocket for his pipe.
"Well, I'm goin' to fly up," Peck announced. "I'm goin' to hit the road early in the morning, then I'll have to lay out one night before I git to Jasper, I guess, won't I? Well, that won't be anything new; I've been sleepin' out like a wolf for three weeks. I tell you, Rawlins, little old St. Joe never looked as good to me as it does right now."
"I never was there," said Rawlins, indifferent to the charms of that town, which pulled so hard on Peck from afar.
"And if I ever marry any more, it won't be a woman that's got sheep on the brain," Peck said, so solemnly that he seemed to be taking an oath. "If I find out she even likes mutton chops before I marry her, it's all off. Well, so long, Rawlins. About four days more and I'll be in the old town once more."
"I wish you luck," said Rawlins, perfunctorily, not caring very much how or where Peck's adventure ended.