Short Grass/Chapter 25
They were making preparations for a big celebration at Pawnee Bend to rejoice over the completion of the county's organization. This had been delayed somewhat on account of a question of the petition's validity when it was filed with the secretary of state. Several shady deals had been put through by dishonest promoters in the organization of counties in southern and southwestern Kansas, in which innocent people were left holding a large and entirely empty sack. It was time to begin a close scrutiny of petitions, and this one was put under the glass.
It stood the test at length, and the organization was sanctioned. The day was set for the new county officers to take over the local government; the judge of that circuit was coming to Pawnee Bend to swear them in. At the same time the site of the court house was to be dedicated in judicial oratory and baptized in congressional speech. The congressman of the district—it was bigger than three New England states—was going to be there with his fireworks, and there would be barbecued meat, roasted on the spot. Everything would be freer than salvation, for there would be no collection.
Dunham had been hearing a great deal about this big day. They were all worked up at Moore's place over it, Mrs. Moore and Zora baking pies and cakes for two days before the event. They had put Bill off on the matter of his departure about his indefinite business until that day of days. It would be a double celebration for him then, they said, marking the restoration of his health and a new order of things in Pawnee Bend.
There was no question about his complete restoration. Dunham knew he had been well for at least two weeks, but he allowed himself to prance in the restraint of Zora and her mother, which was enforced now and then by Moore's heavy advice to take it easy and be careful he didn't bust something by striking out too soon.
He had known many a man, Moore said, who had undone himself by starting out too soon after being laid low with a bullet through his lights. That kind of a wound was treacherous; it left a tender spot that was liable to bust on the least exertion, especially under the stress of excitement. Keep still, and keep cool. They were all going to Pawnee Bend for the blowout; that would be time enough for Bill to make his-reappearance there.
It was while the ladies were engaged with the pies and cakes that Bill had his first opportunity to talk with Shad Brassfield. Shad had been here and there around the range, at home only for a brief look-in now and then, shy of Dunham on account of his questionable standing, but assured in some degree when he saw Bill going around without a gun.
Shad was mending harness that afternoon, it being the day before the doings. He was surrounded by tugs and collars, sitting in the midst of the confusion on a low bench in the center of the kitchen floor. Mollie sat off to one side, smoking her pipe with the placid enjoyment of a hen in a dust bath beside the road. There was radiant kindness in her hollow, homely face; she nodded as Dunham darkened the door.
"Lord love you, Mr. Dunham, you ain't been around to see a body in a coon's age," she chided him. "Come in out of the hot sun and set down and rest your hands and face."
"Pickin' up, ain't you?" Shad remarked, putting out a feeler, not certain how he was going to square himself for his humorous break at the border camp that day.
"If I pick up any more I'll be so fat I'll waddle like a goose," Bill replied.
This eased the situation for Shad. He saw he wasn't going to be hauled over the coals for that mistaken piece of pleasantry. The cramped feeling went out of his legs; he breathed freely, and took a chew. He mumbled around the plug with a nosey sound, so full of gab he couldn't waste a second, trying to talk as he twisted off the big hunk of tobacco and worked it back against his jaw.
"Um-m-m-m, plenty goin' on while you've been laid up, Bill."
"Yes, I've got over the notion things'd stop if I was to die."
"Some folks thinks the grease'll burn offen the griddle if they turn their backs," Mrs. Brassfield said.
She didn't look at Shad, but she aimed the observation at him as directly as if she drew a bead on a squirrel. Shad was preparing to rivet a broken tug, which he had stretched on the bench between his bony legs. Her irony passed over him without making him blink.
"I was over in Pawnee yisterday, first time in a month, I guess. Lot of changes goin' on over there. Munroe, he's gone."
"Munroe? Who in the dickens is Munroe?"
"The feller that had the livery."
"Munroe, was it? I didn't know his name."
"One of his names; he changed it every time he stole ahorse. Yes, Munroe he's gone. He sold out when he heard you was goin' to git well. He's the feller that shot you in the back—I reckon you know."
"No, I didn't know," Bill admitted. He looked at the floor in his deep-thinking way, as if the news had started a train of somber reflection.
"He made his blow around town he done it. He thought then you'd peg out. And Vic Gilroy, he's dusted it, too."
"I didn't know him," Dunham said, shaking his gloomy head.
"He's the feller that put up the brag he got you in the leg when you made that break out of the boxcar—the feller Zora pulled out and took a shot at. Yes, and she'd 'a' got him, too, if Randall hadn't 'a' jiggered her arm."
"Zora?" Bill looked up, such startled surprise in his eyes that it was almost fright. "I didn't know she took a shot at anybody. She never said a word to me about it. Are you sure you've got it right?"
"Right? Hell! everybody knows it."
"Some folks that gabs without lief or license is apt to git their foot in it," Mrs. Brassfield said. "I reckon Zora she'd 'a' told Mr. Dunham herself if she'd wanted him to know."
"I ain't a carin' a damn," Shad said, recklessly. "Everybody knows she took a shot at him. I ain't a carin' a cuss what she wants to keep still."
"I didn't know," Bill said helplessly, sweat standing on his forehead at the thought of the danger Zora must have faced for him that day.
"Yes, and Randall he's gone, too. Well, xe lit out as soon as he got over the maulin' Moore give him—and he give him plenty, I'm here to say, men!"
"I never heard of Randall," Dunham said, his confusion growing at this repetition of an old story that was news to him.
"He was a blacksmith, he had a bunch of whiskers growin' on him up to his years. I never did see how in the hell a man with that many whiskers on him kep' 'em out of the fire when he was stirrin' it up around a horseshoe, no, nor kep' the sparks from touchin' 'em off when he hammered a redhot aarn. He was the feller that was draggin' Zora away from you when Moore and that Texas feller come a bustin' up. You heard about them two fellers comin' in the nick of time to save your neck, didn't you, Bill?"
"Yes, I heard about that, but that big stiff draggin' Zora—you say he's gone?"
"Yeah, Bill; he's gone. No need of gittin' your bris'les up over that feller. Moore give him all any one man wants to pack, I'm here to tell you, men!"
"I'm sure glad he piled it on!" said Bill, wiping sweat from his eyes.
"Funny the way Moore went after that feller," Shad chuckled. He was fitting copper rivets—he called them ribets—in the holes he had punched through the tug, taking his time about it, calculating to make it last a good while, that being the kind of a job he liked. "You know Randall he ducked, along with most of the gang, when Moore and Hughes come tearin' up the platform, but Moore he tore out after him as soon as they carried you over to the hotel and got the doctor."
"I'll bet you!" said Bill, all excitement, throwing it in as applause of that long-past reckoning.
"He went after him hot-heels and hell-bent. Randall he was in his shop, tinkerin' around actin' innercent as hell, and Moore he bust in on him and says, 'What in the hell do you mean layin' your thievin' claws on my gal?' he says. Randall backed off and said what in the hell did he mean, and begun clawin' for his gun. Moore he ain't no specially speedy hand at gittin' at his gun, but he beat Randall to it and throwed down on him."
"Sa-a-y!" said Bill.
"They said Moore stood there a little while borin' that feller in the guts with his gun, dressin' him down to a fare-you-well. But Moore, you know, he ain't no gun man like me and you, Bill; that ain't his way of fightin'. The longer he cussed that feller the madder he got, till he got so damn mad he jammed that old gun in the scabber and lit into Randall with his fists."
Bill was on his feet, his own fists doubled hard, the two little white spots showing on the bridge of his long nose, breathing like a horse.
"Good boy!" he cheered. "Good boy!"
"Moore took that feller a clip under the chin that nearly lifted him through the roof, and he laid him out so cold he never got no more chance to use that gun 'n a angel. And he was holdin' it in his fist all the time! Well, sir, gentlemen, when Moore got done with that man they had to borrow Schubert's plank to carry him home on, and when he got able to sneak, he snunk. I guess you won't find nobody much to shoot up when you go back to Pawnee Bend tomorrow, Bill."
"Maybe it's just as well," Bill reflected, sitting down again soberly.
"It's better," Mrs. Brassfield said, decisively.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Shad argued. "A man's got a right to clean up on a gang that tries to murder him off. I know if it was me I'd foller 'em to the aidge of nowheres but I'd git 'em."
Mollie made no comment on this vengeful and relentless declaration, which appeared about as far from the nature of her lean old caterpillar husband as opposites could be extended. She tilted her chin and pulled down the corners of her flexible thin mouth, expressing disdain far more effectively by her silence than any words she could have commanded.
"I reckon you'll be pullin' out and leavin' this country, Mr. Dunham, "she said. They ain't treated you very nice, always pesterin' and pickin' on you and drivin' you to shootin'."
"He ain't got no kick comin' as I can see," Shad interposed before Dunham had time to reply. "He's give 'em as good as they passed out to him, and some over, the way it looks to me."
"I hate a fuss," Bill said, disparaging the past, in which he could not see the faintest gleam of glory.
"Roastin' years'll be ready back where they grow," Mollie said longingly. "I don't have hopes I'll ever wedge one between my jaws any more, let alone settin' down with my apurn full of shell beans to make a pot of suckertash."
"Some people wouldn't be sadisfied if they had a rope on the moon," Shad complained. "When we move you say you're tired of movin', and when we set still you beef around about goin' on. I've wore out six wagons tryin' to find a country that'd suit you."
"You was always mighty careful you didn't let me do the drivin'," she reminded him, looking so sad and road-weary that Dunham pitied her as never before.
"You got chickens and eggs," Shad reminded her, with upbraiding for her ingratitude.
"And canned beets, and canned corn, and canned termaters," she added to his list of luxuries. "I've et so much canned truck in the last five years, Mr. Dunham, I'm lined with tin. They never could open me without a ax. They call this the short-grass country, but I call it tin can land."
"You wouldn't be sadisfied in heaven," said Shad.
"Maybe not," she sighed.
Mollie got up and began stirring the supper pots, for the sun was low. As she moved about her work she pitched her thin high voice in the song she favored most, and sung with a peculiar note of lamentation as unfitting to its frivolous theme as a glove to a foot:
Till you fetch me the feathers from a skeeter's nest.
Shad looked at Dunham, nodding with an air of finality, like a lawyer submitting his incontrovertible evidence.
"Yes, and if a feller was to fetch 'em to her," he complained, "she'd say she wanted a hummin' bird's wishbone."