Sheep Limit/Chapter 25
Rawlins began to cool down in a little while, seeing the ridiculousness of the situation. Peck was only a comedian, take him at his worst; he could not enact tragedy without a clowning grotesqueness that made it a joke. There was a laugh for the sheriff even in his method of killing a man.
"Peck, I'm going to let you live—just now," Rawlins told him, after holding him against the wall, hands up between the low joists, until he was stiff with fright. "But if I ever catch you with a gun on you again, anywhere, any time, I'll kill you on sight. Take off that belt!"
Peck fumbled at it, weak in the knees, trembling in every joint. Rawlins motioned him to throw it under the cot, which he did, staggering as he tried to stand straight again, terror had made such a drain on his strength. This business of killing men was not all he had thought. It seemed to have its drawbacks and humiliations, as well as its flashes of glory.
Rawlins kicked Peck's gun under the cot along with the belt that had sustained it in its brief days of swelling triumph and growing insolence. Peck's eye was on the greasy wallet and pile of greasy, sheepland money on the table.
"Rawlins," he appealed, turning in the supplication of abject cowardice, "let me take that money and hit it to hell out o' here before the old woman comes!"
"Not on your life!" said Rawlins. "Get the dishpan."
Peck moved limply about the order, rolling his unquiet eyes on Rawlins' gun, which followed him in every movement, not more than two feet from a vital part.
"Fill it up with onions," Rawlins commanded, as Peck stood with the pan, a dumb appeal in his glassy eyes.
"For God's sake, Rawlins!" Peck pleaded, "I never could stand 'em—they'll kill me!"
"You'd just as well die one way as another," Rawlins told him, the gun inexorably approaching his ribs.
Peck filled the pan, fishing the last onion out of the sack, and sat on the floor under Rawlins' directions, the utensil between his long legs, where he went to work on his bitter penance. Rawlins sat in the chair that Peck had occupied lately, his gun close to the back of Peck's long neck, sending chills that raised his hair through that valiant man-slayer now and then by putting the cold muzzle of it to his skin.
"I've got myself in a hell of a fix follerin' that old woman's lead," said Peck, his fright beginning to turn from cold to hot. He sweated as he worked and wept, his burning eyes on the door.
"You have," Rawlins agreed coldly.
Peck shook his head like a dog that has been dosed with cayenne, shivering in the agony of his torture. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, making a little squealing groan.
"Let me go without the money, Rawlins," he begged. "Let me git out of that door and I'll travel so fast it od take two men to count me."
"When you're through with that job we'll talk about what's next," Rawlins replied. He touched Peck's sweating neck with the gun, sending his temperature down ten degrees.
"I'll give you them sheep—you can take 'em—if you'll let me git out of here," Peck proposed.
"If I took all your interest in them I wouldn't even own a bleat," Rawlins said. "You've done a lot of talkin' about showin' people where they get off, Peck. You're pretty close to the edge right now yourself. Get busy!"
Peck peeled along in the lachrymal vapor that even his long back and neck could not hoist his eyes above, sniffing, snorting, tears dropping on his degraded moustache, which seemed so dejected and limp that it never could stiffen in its old-time pride again. Presently he began to talk, trying to make a case against his wife.
"She was behind that dang fool move of mine, Rawlins," Peck said, information which Rawlins scarcely needed, after seeing the wallet and greasy bills.
"She said if I'd take my old gun and bluff you out of here she'd give me that check book she promised and I could go the limit. She was stuck on this place for sheep; she wanted it worse than she ever wanted to marry a man in her life. You was a cripple, she said; you couldn't do nothing with it, and some sheepman'd come along here some day before long and boot you off. But I wasn't goin' to hurt you, Rawlins. That gun-play of mine was all a bluff."
"I told you once that was a dangerous thing to try inside of this fence, Peck."
"I believe you, Rawlins: But I wouldn't 'a' hurt you. If you'd 'a' said you wasn't goin' to take that money and stood up for your rights, I'd 'a' backed down. That's what I had it lined up to do. I figgered you'd let me have that money if you didn't want it."
Rawlins was not moved to abate the penance in any degree by this plea. He said nothing; only put the creepy gun-barrel to Peck's sunburnt neck.
Peck worked on in desperate expedition for a while, keeping his mouth shut except when he released a groan of agony or sigh of hopelessness for his prostrate greatness.
"She's comin' up here this afternoon," Peck said after a long silence. "By thunder! I believe that's her now!"
"Keep your seat," Rawlins said.
Peck thought better of his attempt to scramble up out of his disgraceful posture, the pan of onions between his thighs. But he looked round at Rawlins with one last plea in his red eyes.
"Let me tell her I'm just a-peelin' onions for supper," he begged. "Put your gun up, Rawlins, and let me tell her that. If she knows you made me do it she'll set on me the rest of my life."
"You were my guest," Rawlins reproached him, "and you pulled your gun on me and tried to rob me, you skunk! I believe you'd 'a' killed me if you'd got a chance at my back. Go on with that job."
Peck's imagination was at work through his ears. It wasn't his wife; it wasn't anybody at all. He went on with his melancholy task, working silently except for his sniffing and snorting and peculiar little squeaks of torture when he dropped the knife now and then to drag the sleeve of his jumper across his eyes. He came to the last onion in time, his eyes so swollen and red that he seemed to leer malevolently on his tormentor when he looked round to announce the completion of his penance.
"Rawlins," he begged contritely, "let me have one bill of money off of that pile and turn me loose. I'll leave this country so fast it'll singe my hair. You can see how it'll be with me, Rawlins, if that woman comes here and ketches me. I'll be sentenced to jail all the rest of my life."
Rawlins knew Peck was right about that, for Mrs. Peck's respect would vanish like the plating on base jewelry the minute she saw her husband's failure in the underhanded thing she had inspired him to undertake, and his degradation to the level of a worm before a one-handed man. He was not moved by any pity at the prospect for Peck. Whatever he might get out of that marital adventure in future would be no more than he deserved. But there was another side of it to consider, which Peck's proposal suggested.
That was the punishment and humiliation of Mrs. Peck by aiding her disaffected spouse to quit her in that cold and summary style. That would hit her about as hard as a divorce, for the story would go over the sheep country, from the railroad on the north to the railroad on the south, and sheepmen and their red ladies would laugh over it in greasy delight, for Mrs. Peck was not a universal favorite, Rawlins had learned lately. Her reputation was bad in and around Lost Cabin, where she had the name of hard and tricky dealing, of hogging water and range to which she had no right under the apportionment such as other sheepmen respected.
There would be no sympathy for her on the range; the story of her comical mail-order husband's desertion would overshadow the diverting news of her marriage which had spread around with chuckles and grins lately. About the surest way for him to play even with Mrs. Peck was to speed her anxious husband in his unfaithful design. Peck went on with his argument, as if he had read Rawlins' thoughts and hoped to bring him around.
"If you'll let me take a bill of that money—just one bill, I don't care how little it is—I'll hit it up so fast away from here I'll set the grass afire. She'll never ketch me this time if you'll let me go, Rawlins. You can't prove nothing on her, you've only got my word for it she was at the bottom of this steal, but if you'll let me hit it up for St. Joe right now you'll put a crimp in her that'll double her up like she had cholera morbus. You can take the rest of that dan money and stick it in your jeans for damages and trouble and hurt feelin's and let me hop out of here before she shows up. She'll think I took it all."
"And you'll hop off somewhere and get a gun and come back and shoot me in the neck," Rawlins said with recriminatory bitterness. "You're so crooked I wouldn't trust you around the corner of the house."
"If I ever pick up a gun again," said Peck, lifting his hand as if taking his oath on it, "you can shoot me with a bootjack on sight. I've had enough of that dan gun, I wish to criminy I never saw it. I tell you, Rawlins, I'm done with guns; I'm through."
"If I thought you were tellin' the truth, Peck, I'd let you go. But how am I to know?"
"Well, I tell you, Rawlins: you come with me to Lost Cabin and hold that gun of yours agin my ribs till you see me on the stage hittin' it up for the railroad, if you doubt my word. I tell you I'm cured. I wouldn't no more touch another gun than I'd pick up a red-hot horseshoe. Give me a bill off that pile to pay my way to the railroad and I'll ride the bumpers to St. Joe. You can keep the rest; you can tell her I took it all."
"I don't want any of it, Peck. Leave me the wallet and this paper you had drawn up for me to sign. I can use them. Take the rest and go."
Peck jumped at the word as if he had heard thunder. He stiffened eagerly, his red eyes shining.
"Say, you ain't stringin' me, are you, Rawlins?" he asked doubtfully.
"Take it and go—before I change my mind."
Peck grabbed the money and put it in the side pocket of his notable bullet-proof jumper, snatched his big hat off the side of bacon and broke for the door. He stuck his head out for a look around, tooling it in his peculiar way as if testing the wind before hoisting his sail. Then he set out one foot, cautiously, with a long, striding movement, just as if his wife stood sentinel out there a little way, and he had to go with great cunning to slip past her rough and ready hand.
The heel of the other foot was the last sight Rawlins had of anything belonging to the corporeal entity of Dowell Peck. Which way he went, or how fast, Rawlins never knew. When he went out in a little while to see, Peck had disappeared as completely as if he had taken one hop that was to land him in St. Joe.
Rawlins was not troubled about the possibility of Peck's vengeful return. Heeled with that much money, urged on by the desire to be free of his matrimonial entanglements and back among the sartorial charms of St. Joe, Peck would go right on. If he should miss the stage at Lost Cabin he very likely would beat it to the railroad. Rawlins believed, and correctly, as time proved, that the sheeplands would know Peck no more.
Rawlins picked up the unsigned bill of sale and read it, not having seen the contents before. It carried out what Peck had said, for, while the writing doubtless was Peck's, with many capitals for common words, many flourishes and some short cuts in spelling, there was a cunning about the composition beyond the capacity of that romantic cavalier. It was the hand of Peck, but the mind of his wife.
Together with the greasy wallet, now empty to the leather, Rawlins put the bill of sale in the drawer of the kitchen table that served him for all purposes, left the pan of onions where it was, but got Peck's gun and belt from under the cot and hung them behind the door. Then he went outside to watch around for the next act in that day's eventful doings.
It was at least two hours after Peck's going, the sun standing at mid afternoon, when he saw Mrs. Peck approaching from the direction of the sheep, which Peck had ranged out that morning some distance farther up the creek than ever before. She stopped at the top of every slight rise as she came along, to search the valley in the vicinity of the sheep, which were spread wide. She was looking for Peck, Rawlins knew. Very likely she had appointed to meet him there to get the news of his success, being too crafty to compromise herself by appearing at the house before the thing was settled.
Watching her wary, doubtful progress toward the house, Rawlins concluded to conceal himself in the buffalo wallow and see how she would take it when she arrived. He left the door standing open, the butcher knife on the floor where he had dropped it, the pan of onions beside the table as Peck had released it from the embrace of his romantic legs. But Peck's pistol he belted around himself, and his own rifle he took down from the wall and hid.
Mrs. Peck rode up from the creek in the same perplexed, hesitant, cautious way. Every little while she stopped, looking around anxiously. When she reached the house she hesitated a distance off, as if debating whether to dismount or ride to the door. Finally she rode on, slowly, drew up in front of the door some twenty or thirty feet away from it, leaned and looked into the house. Then she dismounted, leaving her horse standing, and went in.
She came out almost at once, so quickly that Rawlins, who had left his concealment to go to the house and have it out with her, had to dodge behind a bush, for he was not ready to be seen as long as she was piling up evidence of her guilt by her baffled and anxious search of the premises for signs of something that would account for the apparent desertion of the place. When she had disappeared around the house, Rawlins went forward. He met her as she reappeared, bursting around the corner fairly panting with the impatience of her suspense.
"Oh, there you are, Ned," she said, startled, turning as white as her tough harsh skin could become without a long bleaching. "I've been lookin' all over for you."
"Without expecting to find me," he said, with such a cold, hard manner as to cause her to glance at him quickly, feigning she did not understand.
"I thought I'd either find you or Mr. Peck around the place," she said.
"Sure. Especially Mr. Peck. Well, Mr. Peck isn't here."
She was looking at the two guns swinging on Rawlins, one of which she recognized with a start that seemed to make her eyes jump. She read the suggestion of what had happened to Peck in the display of his gun, as Rawlins had intended her to get it right between the eyes that way.
She stood looking at Rawlins, the blood gone out of her face, her mouth open without a word to fill it. She was a squat, broad, coarse figure in her man's coat and upturned overalls, with greasy sombrero pulled down on the back of her head to the ears. Her sex did not assert itself in one gentle, comely line.
"He did the best he could to put through what you started him out to do, madam," Rawlins said with stern arraignment, "but you went too heavy on a chance shot that made a weak bad man out of a fool. Peck was a crow down in his gizzard. He isn't here any longer."
She stood there swallowing dry lumps, gulping, staring, wetting her lips with her tongue.
"You didn't—you didn't—kill him, did you, Ned?"
"He was too damned onery to kill!" said Rawlins vehemently. "But he's dead to you from this day on."
Mrs. Peck appeared entirely overwhelmed, whether by guilt, remorse, a sense of her treachery, Rawlins could not tell. Only that she was crushed, smashed flat, her boisterous assurance gone, her loud authority silenced in her vulgar mouth. She did not attempt any denial, nor utter one weak word of defence. She was caught and convicted, and she realized it. Whatever her accomplishments in a business way, effrontery she had not learned.
"Come in; I've got something of yours I want to give you," Rawlins ordered, rather than invited.
Perhaps Mrs. Peck thought it was the money. At any rate she did not hesitate, but entered as Rawlins stepped aside at the door to let her pass. She stopped short a little way within the door, looking around with renewed fear on sight of the disorder that had urged her out a few minutes before in search of the answer. She was about to get the answer now, and she was afraid.
Rawlins took the empty wallet from the drawer, handed it to her, silently. She took it, opened it, turned it with hopeless blankness, a stricken, sick look in her eyes. Rawlins unfolded the paper with Peck's writing on it, which, if he had signed under the threat of Peck's gun, would have made him homeless, displaying it at arm's length before her eyes.
"You see it isn't signed," he said, and folded it again, and put it in his pocket. "Here," he offered, pushing the pan of onions toward her with his foot, "take these away with you if you want them—they're seasoned with Peck's tears. You'll never see him again. He took the money you gave him to force on me at the point of his gun, and left. He was glad to go. I let him leave because he said, and I believed him, it would hurt you more to have him desert you than to have him killed."
Mrs. Peck turned to the door, went out, stood a little while looking around as if she expected to see Peck's vanishing figure at the top of the hills somewhere. Rawlins went out after her, wondering what the reaction would be. Violent, he believed, judging from the smothered fire which was so entirely buried under this load of guilt and inescapable scandalous disgrace that not a spark of it was to be seen in her eyes.
"You're to blame," she said, sorrowfully rather than vindictively; "you drove him away."
"No, you're the one that did it," he corrected her. "He's been waiting for his chance ever since you started to make a sheepman out of him, and you know it."
Somebody was coming in a wagon from the direction of Lost Cabin, along the old trail that used to run across the creek at that place in the days before Galloway's fence was built. The mark of the old road was to be seen yet between Rawlins' stackyard and house, and this wagon, the sudden sound of its clucking as it lurched over the long-disused road startling their 'attention, was heading down that way. It was not more than a quarter of a mile off when they saw it first, two people on the seat, a led horse following behind.
Mrs. Peck turned to Rawlins with a little color in her face, a little glinting of unfriendly vindictive fire in her eyes.
"That's Edith and Tippie," she said. "He follered her to Jasper the day she left. They run off there and got married."
She said this with hateful, cruel malevolence, glad in this moment of her great humiliation to put her tongue to something that would give him pain.
"Give me an invellup and some paper—I want to leave her a note."
Whatever the writing, it was soon done. Mrs. Peck handed the message to Rawlins, requesting him to deliver it to Edith when she arrived. She was mounting to ride off about her business when Rawlins hurried to her, the unsigned bill of sale in his hand.
"You may have this—it's no use to me," he said, putting the paper in her hand. "Nobody knows anything about it but you and I and Peck. If you keep it under your hat nobody will ever know."
Mrs. Peck crumpled the paper and stuck it in her pocket, and swung to the saddle with an agility surprising for her weight and years. She looked down at Rawlins with something unsaid in her open mouth, and looked at the wagon which was drawing near, some indication of emotion in her hard features which Rawlins interpreted as sorrowful contrition. She thrust her hand toward him suddenly, without a word, as if asking him to forget and forgive while making it farewell.
Rawlins let her hand hang there unmet for a little while, the hardness of his wrong, the resentment of her cunning treachery, holding back all friendly concession. Then his redundant generosity rose and leveled everything. He took her rough hand for a quick clasp, and waved her away, secretly wishing her better fortune with her next man, although he knew she deserved no less than she was suffering that minute.