Short Grass/Chapter 11
That was not a chance shot nor a lucky one, as the qualified judges of such encounters in Pawnee Bend very well knew. Bill Dunham was no longer a man to be laughed at, but one to be given the road if he wanted it, and spoken to with respect. Marsh Puckett, lately so free with his derisive pleasantries, was not among those who came to stand around the fallen city marshal in astonished silence, waiting for Schubert to come with the broad board that had served as stretcher for better men and worse before that day.
Bill Dunham turned back to the hotel door, where MacKinnon waited him with friendly hand.
"That was beautiful, Will-ium—beautiful!" MacKinnon said.
He drew Bill inside, kicking the discarded cigar out of the way, hurrying behind the counter in an unprecedented rush of generosity, offering to replace the lost smoke out of the highest-priced brand in his case. Dunham shook his head glumly in refusal, for he was feeling far more depressed than jubilant over the outcome of the fight. He turned his back to the door, where curious people were beginning to string by for a look at him. He wanted to go off somewhere to himself and think over the new turn this tragedy had given his affairs.
There was one thing certain now: he had broken into that country, or at least he had one foot inside the door. Should he go ahead on that ground, take the nine-twenty westward as he had intended, or leave it all and return to less romantic and more peaceful fields?
As for this romance that beckoned with such seductive smile from afar, there wasn't so much to it when a man got up so close he had to use his gun. Maybe there was a gentler brand of romance in the short-grass country—his heart quickened at the thought of Zora Moore—that would compensate a man for the brutal things he had to do to hold his own.
But there was no use standing around on one leg thinking about Zora Moore. Because of one wild shot, for which Dunham now was doubly glad, she had turned on him with the rest of them. He knew as well as he knew rain on a roof without seeing it that she was in the kitchen that morning when he left the ranch, pointing him out to that beaver-toothed cowboy as the granger who had illusions about a gun.
She had been taking a large wreath of credit for saving his life about that time, he was sure. Let her have it; maybe it was coming to her. If he had met Kellogg in the night it might have had a different ending. Let her have credit, with gratitude added to it, for what she had done. She was a smart girl to think of working him that way, and she had a lovely chin. But she was out of it as far as he was concerned.
Schubert arrived with his board under his arm—it was said in Pawnee Bend that he grabbed it every time he heard a shot—and the unimpressive remains of Ford Kellogg were carried away. Some followed, more stopping in front of the hotel to edge up a little nearer the door for a look at Dunham, and hang around there in the hope of hearing him say something.
It would have been counted a great distinction to have such a notable hand with a gun to speak to a man. There were plenty of sycophants waiting around who would have broken a leg to do this suddenly made hero a favor.
Dunham was uncomfortable under this sudden notoriety. MacKinnon did the best he could to put him at ease by inquiring into his future plans, whether he still intended to go on west or stay there and pick up a job. Dunham confessed that this latest development had confused his plans. He wanted a little time to get them straight again.
Anyway, there was no need for leaving Pawnee Bend now unless he felt that he could better himself elsewhere, MacKinnon said.
How about being arrested and tried for that unfortunate affair with Kellogg? Dunham wanted to know. Not that anybody ever heard of, MacKinnon said. There must have been a hundred witnesses to the fact that Kellogg had forced him to defend his life, and that without the faintest color of legal excuse. Trust him, old foxy MacKinnon, to lay the groundwork for proper defense if anybody raised the question. Hadn't Dunham heard his protest against law-abiding guests being driven from his house? That was all there ever would be to that case. It had opened and it had closed. MacKinnon confessed that he hadn't entertained a ghost of a hope that Bill would survive that meeting, but he had laid the groundwork in case it might flip around the other way.
Men would walk easy when they went by him now; he would be considered by not a few, MacKinnon himself among the number, a public benefactor, for, to tell the truth about it, Kellogg had been more feared than respected in that town. They were becoming weary of his killings, his growing disposition to take the whole works into his own hands.
It always was that way with one of those killing city marshals, MacKinnon said. They got so vicious and snarly the men who hired them were often afraid to fire them. He had seen it happen before: in MacPherson, and Dodge City, and other places where he had conducted family hotels.
And so on, to a great length, MacKinnon doing all the talking, for which he was very well qualified, without a doubt. Bill didn't want to go to the expense of hiring a room for his meditations, and there was no place in MacKinnon's little lobby that was out of the eyes of men. So he stood there and took it, when his soul ached for silence, with that curious crowd outside the door, not one of them with the courage to come in and speak to him man to man.
Into this phase of Bill Dunham's perplexity, not half an hour after his bullet had cut the thread of Ford Kellogg's altogether vile and worthless life, there walked Mayor Ruddy, the hardware merchant, and Henry Bergen, townsite promoter, with his long coat, red vest, big lodge emblem and all the outward embellishments upon which his consequence depended. Those outside felt they might slip in safely under the shadow of these important men, and in a moment the little office was full.
Mayor Ruddy advanced, looking so glum and severe Dunham thought they had come to arrest him. His mission was pacific, as his extended hand proved, greatly to Dunham's relief. The mayor said nothing at once, just stood there shaking hands with Bill, pumping slowly and solemnly, Bergen standing by, his large grabber out, ready to take over the now notable six-hundredth citizen when the mayor was through.
"It's a pleasure to meet you again under these circumstances, Dunham," the mayor said.
"Thanks," said Bill.
"Congratulations," said Bergen, looking at Bill knowingly as he worked his arm in the come-on handshake of which he was master. He seemed to say in that shrewdly confidential look that they were two of a kind; they understood each other from backbone to buttons. He got hold of Bill's elbow with his left hand while he gripped him with the right. "Congratulations," he repeated, his eye as knowing as if he had just discovered Bill to be a brother in the lodge whose emblem clanked against his vest buttons as he shook.
"Thanks," said Bill again, but not very heartily. He was not up to their game; he viewed them with suspicion.
"Dunham," said the mayor, as stern as if he was about to lay an accusation of homicide, "I don't know how you'll take it, but we'd like to put you in as city marshal. We want an officer of the law, not an oppressor. The salary is sixty dollars a month."
He came to it the way Bill would have expected a business proposal from him. No wasting of words or making rabbit trails by that man. Bill was as grateful for the offer as he was surprised by it and relieved of all doubt on his standing.
"I'm afraid I'm not cut out for that kind of a job, Mr. Ruddy," Bill replied, without even taking time to meditate over it and turn it around in his mind.
"The city council has held an informal meeting to consider filling the vacated office," the mayor continued. "The salary is sixty dollars a month."
"I'm complimented—"
"Not at all, not at all," Bergen interposed, lifting his hand to check the conventional words on Bill's tongue, as well as the refusal that they seemed determined not to entertain. "Consider the opportunities of this city, situated as it is in this empire of cattle, with its rapid development, its untouched resources, its tremendous future!"
Bergen waved his arms, he declaimed, not so much to convince Dunham that he would throw away the main chance of his young career by refusing that job, as to impress his true importance on the rest of them in the room. It was his opportunity of calling their attention to what they had missed in passing him on the street that way.
"Yes, I think it'll be a good country when they start farmin' it," Dunham agreed.
"The salary," Mayor Ruddy repeated, looking sharply at Dunham as if to fix his attention on a point not duly considered, "is sixty dollars a month."
"It's purty good for these times," Bill admitted, but he was not moved.
"The va-a-a-st resources of this fer-tile plain," said Bergen, making a grand sweep with his arms, "the ad-van-tages of our climate, which I'll not call italian, for there's nothing in Europe to compare to it—"
"Haw, haw!" laughed a grizzled old cowpuncher who had ridden that fertile plain under temperatures ranging from one hundred and five in the shade to twenty below zero.
"Well, I never was in Italy," said MacKinnon, "but if they've got anything that beats this country along the middle of January they can keep it. I don't want any of it in mine."
This derogatory comment did not turn Bergen from the trend of his argument, irrelevant to the case as it seemed to be. He spread his hands as if to put his benediction on the country he invested with such purely imaginary qualities.
"When we see the temple of justice rising in our square," he said, fixing Dunham with stern and lowering eye, as if he had caught an infidel and was determined to save his soul before the matter went any farther, "and the spires of our churches pointing—"
"You can't sell any lots to this crowd, Henry," the mayor cut him off calmly. And to Dunham: "You can be sworn in at once and go on duty right now. Sixty dollars a month."
"It's a big compliment to a stranger like me to have you gentlemen come with this offer and express your confidence this way," Dunham said, surprising Bergen so greatly by his easy use of words not suspected of him that he gave up and let him have the floor. "I don't think I'd do either this town or myself justice if I took this job. I need work, but I'm not lookin' for a lazy man's job. I'm not cut out for that kind."
"Sorry you won't take it, Dunham, but no harm done, I guess?" Mayor Ruddy offered his hand with the hopeful expression, which was as near an apology as they ever came to it in Pawnee Bend.
"None in the world," Bill assured him heartily. "You've favored me by the offer. If it was my kind of a job I'd jump at it, but I'm a feller that's always been used to work."
Bergen got hold of Bill's hand for a parting pump, and held it like one of those lodge pests who belong to everything. He gave it a pump and a pause, a jerk and a stop; slid his free hand along to Bill's elbow and nailed him as if determined he should take the full dose this time. He went on with his shake and pause; knowing look, pause and shake; until Bill was as red and uncomfortable as if he had been caught sneaking cigars out of MacKinnon's case.
"Whatever line engages your talents, young man—and you are a young man blessed with uncommon talents—plant your dollars in Pawnee Bend soil and watch them grow. Watch 'em grow. That's the best tip I can give you, or any young man, and I give it to you straight. Plant your dollars in Pawnee Bend dirt and watch 'em grow!"
"Yes, sir," said Bill, feeling almost as culpable as if he had been holding out dollars a long time on the deserving soil of Pawnee Bend. And he thought he was in for a hell of a time now, for there were others sidling up waiting for Bergen to finish with him, ready to grab him and multiply the misery of one of the most miserable days he ever had lived.
It was the whiskered man with the table manners, whom Bill had seen in the San Angelo café, who saved him from the uncomfortable situation of a public hero receiving the curious admiration of the crowd. This man had come in unnoticed by Dunham. He stepped into the opening the moment Bergen stopped pumping and dropped the handle.
"I heard you say you wanted a job," the stranger said, direct as Bill had put him down as being. "If you care to tackle the job I've got to offer, I guess I can take you on."
"We might step outside and talk it over," Dunham suggested, feeling that Pawnee Bend knew enough about his business as it was.
Outside, the stranger introduced himself as Garland. They shook hands on the exchange of names, very solemnly, as men of serious character usually do, as if about to begin a truce without daggers in their cuffs, according to the ancient assurance.
Garland looked at Dunham queerly as they faced each other, a puzzled expression in his eyes.
"I was standin' over there when you shot it out with Kellogg a little while ago," he said. "I felt for you, kid, but I couldn't reach you. Hell! I guess I sweat a quart in ten seconds. They told me in that chuckjoint you was a green granger boy, but I guess they got you wrong."
"They got me dead right," Bill confessed in humility that amounted almost to self-contempt. "I'm so green the cows'd bite me if they caught me outside of the fence."
"But you can handle a gun—great smoke, kid! how you can handle a gun! Where did you get that trick?"
"I guess I come by it natural."
"Yes, like hell!" Garland chuckled. "That old stripper in the hash house told me about you missin' Ira Ingram last night. Thought you'd killed him when he'd only trowed one of his fits. Hell, yes; I know him. I asked her what that feller meant yellin' in after you. She told me about it."
"They sure had the laugh on me," Dunham said. "But I'm glad I missed him. I wouldn't want to hurt any afflicted man like him."
"He's mean," Garland said; "he's got a streak of Cherokee in him. But a man that can throw a gun like you don't have to worry about his kind. You didn't know anything about Kellogg's name with a gun when you went out there to shoot it out with him, I guess?"
"Yes," said Bill reflectively, "Mr. MacKinnon and—others, told me."
"Well, I've fooled myself into thinkin' I was kind of handy with a gun sometimes, but I wouldn't 'a' walked out there to face Ford Kellogg any sooner than I'd stand in front of the fastest train on this railroad. I'm scoutin' around lookin' for your kind of men, but I'm here to tell you they're plenty scarce. I don't suppose you've heard anything about the quarantine guard we're puttin' on to keep Texas cattle out of this state?"
Dunham admitted he had heard about it, but kept to himself his late experience and ignominious rejection by Moore. He had a secret exultation in the thought of getting on that exclusive force, although he wasn't going to jump at anything again in that country. He wasn't sure yet whether it was his kind of a job.
Garland went on to tell him what Dunham had known since early that morning: that the Texas cattle were coming through earlier than expected, due, he supposed, to the uncommonly forward spring they'd had down in that country and the plentiful forage along the way.
The Texas cattlemen were in a rush to throw their beef on the market, there being a scarcity of animals fit for the butcher's block at that time, Kansas cattle not yet finished off sufficiently. They ought to have three or four weeks longer on the grass, Garland said, talking so much on that phase of it that Dunham began to suspect the fear of Texas fever was not the only motive behind this concentrated movement to stop the southern herds at the border.
Garland disclosed the fact that he was a cattleman himself, no great news to Dunham. His ranch was in the valley of the Arkansas River, but he ranged his herds to the Cherokee Nation line. He said Dunham could get a lot of experience riding the quarantine line that summer which would be useful to him if he wanted to take a job with some outfit on the range later on.
Dunham admitted ambitions in that direction, Garland proposing at once that he take a job of quarantine guard, or trail-rider, with the assurance that he, himself, would give him a place when frost came and the guards would be needed no longer. The pay was fifty dollars a month, ten dollars more than cow hands were being paid on the range that summer, provisions, arms and ammunition supplied.
Garland said Bill would have to talk fast, for he was due to leave for the border in a few minutes. He had spent the day scouting for men, but had not found any he was willing to invest with the responsibility until he met Dunham.
A man need not be experienced with cattle for that job, Garland said. Cow hands in plenty could be hired, for they were anxious to jump their jobs on account of the adventure trail-riding promised, as well as for the better pay, but cow hands were needed on the range that time of the year, where they could do their country a whole lot more good, benefits to themselves out of consideration.
All right, said Dunham; he was willing to try it on. If they didn't like him they could fire him, and if it didn't suit him he'd feel free to quit. That was fair, Garland said, and a bargain was made.
So it came that Bill Dunham, late of Schoonover's nursery, with a fast-growing fame as a gunman without peer, took horse for the southern border of Kansas before the sun went down on his eventful day. He was riding the forty-five-dollar horse recommended to him the night before by the mayor, heading away into far greater possibilities for trouble than he ever had dreamed of in all his romantic imaginings.