Short Grass/Chapter 13
It was well past noon when Dunham arrived at the cattlemen's camp on the Cimarron. Zora had been as good as her word about giving him a start. She had accompanied him ten miles or more, posting him on the landmarks which would assure him he was following the trail, although there was little chance of straying from it.
Texas cattlemen had opened that trail a good many years ago on their drives to Fort Hays, and later to Dodge City. Cattle by hundreds of thousands had walked that unhappy road leading to the stockyards and slaughter; it was worn in the tough sod like a brand. The tracks of Shad Brassfield's wagon were in the dust; Dunham knew he only had to follow them to come to the place he sought.
The cattlemen had gathered under the cottonwoods on bank of the river, which had water enough in it to give it a fair right to that designation, although Dunham thought it would pass more respectably as a creek. There were several horses standing around, and a dozen or more men in sight, three of them sitting on the tongue of the chuck-wagon, which was propped up to a comfortable level by the neckyoke. It looked more like a casual meeting of travelers, who were passing a pleasant pause in friendly chat, than a gathering of men on a grim and serious business.
Dunham approached at the hand-gallop his horse had held for miles, casting around for sight of Moore, thinking of the telegram he carried in the buttoned pocket of his shirt. Zora had enclosed it in a thick envelope, along with what written information he did not know. He spotted Moore as one of the trio roosting on the wagon tongue, although Moore did not recognize him in his new outfit until he pulled up in front of him.
Moore jumped up after giving the supposed cowboy a surprised squint, opened his mouth in uncouth expression of astonishment, which was as much real as pretended, lifting his big bunchy gray eyebrows until they moved his hat.
"Well, who in the hell said I was dead!" said Moore, with the feigned seriousness which, to be master of, was held one of the highest cowboy accomplishments. "This is him, gentlemen—this is the kid that killed Ira Ingram. Git down off your high horse, kid; let 'em take a squint at you in your new togs."
Bill grinned, trying to make the best of it, swung down a little stiffly, for that was the longest ride by many miles he ever had made in his life, and stood before his critics in all the rawness of unsullied hat and unbroken boots. It had jolted him to have Moore open up on him that way, with that derisive, belittling whang in his voice. It was, as he had thought before, as if he had said that fool thing himself, and must stand—to account for it all the rest of his life.
He felt a sick disappointment, a heavy dread of what was to come. He was thrown into such discord by this unexpected greeting, although why he had not expected it he could not tell, that all thought of the telegram and its accompanying note, which might have made things look a little different to Moore and put a bit on his loud tongue, went completely out of his head.
The gentlemen addressed by Moore turned from their talking and card-playing to gather around Bill, whom Moore drew away from his horse a little distance and turned with grave and silent demeanor, presenting him from all sides to the company. Bill couldn't hide the red of embarrassment, and something more, that he felt burning in his face, but he covered any other outward indication of what was going on inside. He hoped they'd let the thing drop if he took his initiation like a sport.
"This is the little gun he done it with, gentlemen," said Moore, lifting Bill's holster, out of which he had cut the end to give his extra-long barrel room.
The others exclaimed, and looked at each other with feigned surprise and incredulity, a thing which men of the range could do as well as actors on stages not so expansive as their own.
"Where did you think you was wanderin' off to, kid?" one inquired with gentle solicitation.
"Is Mr. Garland here?" Bill asked Moore, hoping to put an end to the uncomfortable experience before it grew any harder to bear, the telegram as completely forgotten in the roiling of his emotions as if it never had been.
"No, Garland ain't arrived yet, son. What was you wantin' Garland for?"
"He sent me down here. I met him in Pawnee Bend yesterday and he gave me a job ridin' the quarantine line."
Moore looked at Bill with comical expression of melting pity. He did it so well the effect was all he could have asked. Some of the crowd writhed and shrilled in high-keyed mirth, although each struggled manfully to hold back something for the real big laugh which everybody knew this was leading up to. The thought of being unmannerly or inhumane never entered their onedoor minds. It was lawful entertainment to them to badger a greenhorn, as it was delightful diversion to the savage Indians to burn strange specimens of the genus who fell into their hands.
"Hired you for the quarantine, huh? Kid, them Texas fellers they'd twist you up and fry you in grease. I told you yesterday morning we didn't have any use for boys down here, and I thought you had a litele bit of sense when you went back to town." Moore looked at him with glowering face, his humorous vein diverted in contemplation of this raw piece of effrontery. "I thought you was goin' to take a train out of this country?"
"So did I," Bill admitted, looking down in his abashed, nonplussed appearing habit, which didn't do him a bit of good before such a crowd as that.
"Garland's hirin' ain't final, it's only a beginnin'," Moore said hotly, taking it out on Bill. "I've got to put my OK on every man that goes out to ride that line, and if I ever put my OK on such a green-gourd specimen as you it'd be with a redhot wagon-rod! You'd better git to hell out o' here before I lose my temper and knock what little sense you've got in you so damn fur you'll never be able to find it!"
Here a young man came swaggering forward, thumb hooked in his belt, scowling in apparently great displeasure. He posted himself squarely in front of Dunham, looking at him savagely, legs spread, mouth slewed in ugly expression, his whole carriage one of insolent challenge. He was two or three years younger: than himself, Dunham thought, not a bad-looking chap in spite of his malicious expression, real or assumed. He was evidently a cowboy, not one of the important men of the gathering, of the type born to the trade.
"No, he's not goin' to leave this camp till he settles with me!" this young man declared. "No man can't go around shootin' up my old pardner Arry Ingram just when he's throwin' a fit without comin' to grunts with me."
Moore waved his hand in gesture of delivery, while winks, grins and nudges ran round the expectant crowd.
"It's between you and him," Moore said, resigning all claim and authority over Dunham's future movements. "Step it off and shoot it out, for all I give a damn."
"Back off there, feller, and claw for your little gun!" the cowboy ordered, stepping back, hand thrown to his gun as if he meant it.
"I'm in on this!" another one said, coming in like a late creditor, all in a sweat. "I ain't around 'lowin' no man to kill off a feller that owes me money before he's got a chance to pay me."
The older men moved aside a little to give them a clear field for their operations, well pleased with the show these young humorists were getting up to enliven the day. Bill Dunham felt like he was in a hot whirlpool. There was trouble spinning him around and nothing on the bank to grab. It was their notion of a joke, he knew, at the same time realizing how little it would take to make it serious. This time he must keep his temper, let them go as far as they would. He would stand almost anything short of trying to make him give up his gun.
His disappointment over losing that job again was very great, and he was sore and vindictive against Moore, whose arrogance he would willingly have brought low, but he didn't want to have trouble with the rest of them. He stood his ground, wondering how far they'd go with it, telling himself over and over again with feverish repetition of anxiety, that he must not pull his gun. No matter how far they crowded him, he must not pull his gun.
The two cowboys were glaring at each other as if this clash over avenging Ira Ingram's most diverting death had set them at odds.
"Don't crosshackle me, boy!" the second, and older, of them warned. "He's mine. He'll either hand me that ten dollars old Arry owed me or I'll spang 'im in the abdomen."
"You pusillanimous old ape!" the first one said, with fine scorn, "I've already promised them boots to Arry's little brother. Don't you snake out any gun on my meat, feller!"
"New boots!" said the first comedian, very much like the boys at school used to say the same thing when one of their number appeared so arrayed, all crowding up to trample and spit on the unsullied leather and humble the pride of the wearer.
"New boots!" the other one squeaked, in voice of delight that was meant to asperse the feminine character of the owner.
With these words he flipped out his gun and threw a shot close enough to Bill's left foot to splash sand over the offending boot. The other fellow came in with a whoop, pitching lead considerably nearer Bill's other foot than he would have chosen for the tranquillity of his nerves.
Bill stood still, thinking he ought to be getting used to that sort of thing, and it wouldn't do to lose his temper over it this time and go after his gun. Whatever happened, so long as they didn't plug him through the foot, he must not go after his gun.
It was pretty hard to stand there, blinking at each chuck of lead in the sand, some of the bullets so near he could feel the dirt creep under him, and keep his hand away from his gun. It was the old imposition increased and aggravated. They had picked him again for the under dog.
Bill knew he could turn their festival into mourning by one swift pass for his gun, and the temptation was so strong it made him quiver; he could make them throw dirt as high as the trees hunting cover, but it wouldn't do to take the risk of having it turn out something else. He must keep his hand away from that gun—keep his hand away from that gun!
Shad Brassfield, who had been asleep in the wagon making up what he had lost in the night drive, popped his head out of the front end, boozy with sleep. When he saw the camp had not been assailed by the Texans he hustled over the dashboard and hopped to the ground. He hit it as the last chamber was emptied at Dunham's feet, recognizing the victim of the torment as he struck.
"Well, who—in—the—hell said I was dead!" Shad drawled, with such obfuscated drollery that Dunham himself would have laughed if the joke had been on somebody else.
In the roar that resulted from Shad's ludicrous appearance and rusty, amazed exclamation, which could not have been funnier from the original source, Bill turned to his horse. He stopped a moment before mounting, to turn a look on the two young men who had picked him for easy money. His face was as white as if he had risen from the amputation of a leg without ether, and there was a cold fury in his eyes that made the younger of them catch his breath and start back, his empty gun in his hand.
The older one scowled, sore that their show had fallen so flat. He was cramming cartridges into his gun; he mumbled some malediction under his breath, but there was no blood in his lips, and there was a tremor in his hand.
Moore was braying like a mule in the turmoil of laughter which the combination of gunnery and Brassfield had thrown him into. He stood with hands on his sides, bending and straightening, bending and straightening, as if he had a colic, all the time letting out a bray that would have done credit to any hybrid on the range.
Dunham's arm rustled the letter in his shirt pocket as he took up his reins. He paused, reaching to unbutton the pocket and deliver his charge. Moore looked up at that moment, strangled and purple, reared back and let out a louder howl than any before it.
"Who in the—yaw-haw-haw—hell—aw-aw-haw-haw—" he said, and gave it up, to double upon himself and let out a stream of laughter that was as truly obscene in Bill Dunham's ears as any sound ever issuing from the mouth of man. Bill left the letter where it was and rode away, slowly, heading down the river, which ran along there for a little way in a general direction toward the east.
A little way on he stopped, thinking he ought to go back and give Moore the letter with its enclosure, which might be of the first importance to him. There was where Moore caught his breath. He shot the hateful taunt after Dunham, who heard the crowd go off again in another roar. To clinch his determination to let Moore whistle for his telegram, somebody sent a bullet over Bill's head. It was high, but Bill heard it go over him with a noise similar to that he often had heard running ahead of him through solid ice—a sharp, diminishing sigh—when skating on a cold still day.
Garland rode into camp at sundown. His first word to Moore was:
"I picked up a good man in Pawnee Bend yesterday. Did he get here?"
"If you mean a kid by the name of Dunham, he got here, all right. But went on ag'in, like the Irish section boss's train."
Moore had to have a laugh at his own wit and the recollection of Dunham's reception in that camp.
"Why? What happened to him?" Garland inquired, looking around queerly.
"Oh, some of the boys took exceptions to his new boots and splashed dirt on 'em," Moore explained, in the casual, careless way of a man who discusses a trifle.
Garland asked for particulars, that queer puzzled look in his face that made the situation all the funnier to Moore. It was as if Garland had trusted a stranger with his pocketbook and couldn't quite get it through him when he came back and found the fellow had hopped. Moore supplied details with zest; he related with loud mirth the comical incident in Bill Dunham's history that had set the range laughing.
"Yes, I heard about that," Garland said, unmoved.
"The damn fool was layin' for Ford Kellogg that night, just before my train got in. My girl Zora got him out of that and saved his fool hide by tellin' him I'd give him a job ridin' trail. She had to do something; she hated to see the fool boy killed. But I told him—hell—I told him he wouldn't no more do for a quarantine-line guard than he would for president of the Santa Fé railroad. Him layin' for Ford Kellogg with that blame little toy gun he's packin' around!"
"Well, he got him yesterday afternoon," Garland told them, quietly.
"Got him what? A drink, or a new necktie?" Moore scoffed, certain of himself and his wisdom in keeping clear of a sell.
"Got him through the heart at sixty feet, with that same little old toy gun," Garland replied in his quiet way, but with a stress of exultation over Moore.
"He got him from behind if he done it!" Moore declared, resenting the news. "He never got Ford Kellogg in a fair and open fight!"
The others were crowding around to listen, for the name of Ford Kellogg was a familiar one from the Arkansas to the Rio Grande.
"No, it wasn't a fair fight," Garland admitted. "The kid gave him every advantage a man could ask for in a sure thing. He let Kellogg get to his gun before he ever made a start for his own. I was across the street, and saw it all. Dunham's the quickest man with a gun, and the surest, I ever saw in my life, and I've seen some purty damn speedy ones, I'm here to tell you."
"I told you!" an old cowman said, nodding sagely around at his comrades. "I could see that boy was holdin' himself in like his arm was in a bear trap. I told you!"
"Where did he go?" Garland inquired.
"Off down the river," somebody replied.
Moore was standing by the wagon, gripping the tire with one big hand, looking like a man who had heard bad news from home. The ready words were frostbitten on his forward tongue; his gizzard felt cold.
"If that boy ever gets mean and takes a notion to clean up on some of you fellers that thought you was havin' a hell of a time with a granger, I'd hate to be in your boots," Garland said.