The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 2
GRIMMITT'S hotel stood a hundred yards or thereabout from the lawyer's office which Dan Gustin had just quitted. Between the two places there stretched a plank sidewalk of varying height and width, according to the caprice, liberality or business convenience of the property-holders fronting the street. Here it ran at street level, the débris of crushed tin cans, blowing papers, scattered oats from nose-bags, littered hay, lodged against its plank-ends, even overflowing upon it; along a little way it rose a foot to accord with the foundation of a saloon; again it became a platform in front of the principal store, upon which women could step directly from their wagons when they drove in to trade.
Along this unequal way, where loafers sat on whittled benches, lounged in doorways, leaned against porch props, Dan Gustin went pegging in his high-heeled boots like a mule in a Mexican chain hobble, holding a straight course for the hotel, past the doors of temptation. The marks of his spur straps were polished on his insteps, the chafing of their metal was plain upon his heels, but he had laid those galling instruments aside for this excursion by wagon and, as he walked in review of those of his own calling who idled by the way, he felt like a plucked drake set loose before the flock.
Inwardly he cursed the luck that had singled him out for the business of meeting this stranger from far places who was coming into that country to cut his eye-teeth on the bones of the range. It was beneath the dignity of a proper man to run an ambulance for the transportation of undeveloped or deficient human beings who could not ride a horse.
In the window of the bar at Grimmitt's hotel there stood the mounted skin of a great white wolf, bottles of red and yellow liquor around its feet. It had been there a long time, so long, indeed, that it had become a landmark to the thirsty who came riding from the far-away ranges, mines and military post. Dust had gathered on its back, and blackened the once fiery red of the snarling tongue curved inside the barrier of long, threatening teeth.
All the old-timers knew that Grimmitt had slain the wolf back in the days when he rode like one of its kind on the trail of thief or murderer, never dropping the scent for hardship, boundary of his jurisdiction as sheriff, or any of the common obstacles of nature or the cunning of desperate men. Now Grimmitt's hair was whiter than the wolf's, and he was prouder of that trophy of the chase than the most notable deed of his truly notable past as peace officer in that rough-handed land.
But there was one peculiarity about this wolf that probably marked it apart from all other wolves of whatever hue, living or dead; it was blessed and comforted by a pair of such mild, wide-open, wondering, innocent blue eyes as never graced a vulpine countemance anywhere among that ravening tribe in this world. Grimmitt contended that this wolf had blue eyes when he shot it, and a blue-eyed wolf he would have it, dead and snarling among the whisky bottles in his window.
On this point of fidelity to nature the community was divided, some holding with Grimmitt that a white wolf had blue eyes, although none could be fastened down to the declaration that he ever had met one; others scorning the contention and ridiculing the effigy as a slander against nature, wolf nature in particular. As for Grimmitt, he was ready to fight for the blue eyes of his wolf, and their fidelity to the original. It had blue eyes when alive, and blue eyes he had ordered for it dead. The taxidermist had done the best he could to meet this extraordinary specification, but had succeeded only in supplying blue eyes, not blue eyes of a wolf. Far from it, indeed. Not even human eyes. Doll's eyes, they appeared to be, large and expressionless of all wolfish ferocity, calm and untroubled and wide-staring; blue as asters by the roadside, placid as water in a porridge bowl.
Dan Gustin never had been a resident of Saunders, therefore never had been aligned in the controversy of the white wolf, although he had his own opinion in the matter, as a free rider might have, indeed. Now he went his way to the hotel to meet his charge, a bit uncomfortable, and ashamed of his mission.
Dan brisked up a bit at the sight of two men before the window displaying the white wolf, evidently engaged in a wrangle over the merits of that historic beast. His hope of seeing a mixup over the question was only secondary, however, to his sudden and keen interest in one of the contestants, which interest and curiosity increased with every step that he took drawing him nearer.
This man was garbed in what appeared to Dan Gustin, cowboy of the inter-mountain plains, the most astonishing garments that ever concealed the nakedness of a fellow-creature. To one of wider range of experience, the stranger would have appeared as nothing more extraordinary than a sailor of the United States navy, dressed as he had stepped from the deck of his ship, wide-flapping trouser legs, tight little blouse with its laced front and open collar, and that little cap which js neither useful nor ornamental, above all.
It was the headgear, especially, that held Dan's amazed attention, striking him with such immeasurable astonishment that his mouth fell open for want of a properly strong word to fill it. To Dan the man seemed some curious freak of overgrown child, for that sort of cap he had seen on the heads of very little boys in the officers' quarters at the post, even that very pattern of a suit, if suit it might properly be called. That any full-grown, man-shouldered male human being could be so poor in dignity as to appear in public and the light of day so trigged up, passed all bounds of credulity. But there he was, his little old fool cap pushed back like a three-year-old boy, his blunderbuss trousers flapping in the wind about his ankles, holding an argument with as much assurance as if he stood equal with any man that ever split the breeze.
Dan Gustin did not know that nations attired their defenders of the seas in that manner; to him the sight of this sailor, a thousand miles and more from the nearest salt sea, brought no association of romance or adventure, or of white cruisers lifting to the placid lap of swelling waters in far-off San Francisco bay. The stranger was an amazing freak, parading with an affrontery that Dan resented. Dan remembered having seen a girl in a show down at Cheyenne one time, dressed in that fashion. Maybe this was the explanation. There must be a show in town.
Quickened by this thought and hope, Dan approached the window where the white wolf stood, its grizzly muzzle wrinkled in a fearful snarl which the serene blue eyes turned into nothing more than a bluff and a false pretense.
"I ketch 'em alive with my bare hands," the man who argued with the one Dan took for a walking advertisement declared, putting it rather roughly, in loud and quarrelsome words. "I'm here to tell you, little feller, I know wolf. I'm kin to 'em."
"I'm not sayin' you don't, mister," the other returned, mild and unruffled, but with a firmness that surprised Dan. "You asked me for my opinion on that beast's eyes, and I gave it to you."
"It ain't worth hell room!" the contentious man declared, glaring in bristling ferocity on the sailor.
This man who claimed kinship with the outlawed tribe was a thin-shouldered, narrow-chested person, standing gangling and tall, but with a roughness about him like a cactus, promising unpleasantness in handling. His face was long and morose, its mournful cast heightened by the length of his nose, which hung club-ended over a wild red mustache. His upstanding eyebrows were huge and coarse as the bristles of an old boar, the small eyes under them combative and red, like the eyes of a man who had watched at campfires through long and windy nights.
He stood with thumbs hooked in his belt, a chafed and worn scabbard carrying a long pistol dangling against his thigh. His coat was tight across his narrow back, the sleeves of it far up his hairy wrists. He was not a friendly-looking man to meet on the trail, not the kind of a man one would stop in the road and ask for a match. He was that type of frontiersman to whom whisky was as necessary as fire to a stove. Without it he was a dead lump of encumbering material; with it one must touch him carefully. He was such a familiar type to Dan Gustin as to call for no consideration. Dan's eyes were centered on the sailor, whose strange garb and easy carriage began to move in the cowboy a certain admiration.
This sailor, who had wandered like a storm-blown gull so far from his sea, stood a little taller than Dan Gustin, who was no puny specimen himself. He was straight-backed and well-balanced; a compact man about the chest, which was uncommonly broad and deep. His brown face was clear and frank, rather boyish in its glad freshness, inviting confidence by its easy smile. There was a look of high courage in his blue eyes, a promise of good sense in the rather small head that carried so confidently on the short, muscular neck. His brown hair was cut close; his cap was fixed with a little tilt toward his ear.
"No call to get your bristles up, that I can see," he said to the man who scorned his opinion on the eyes of Grimmitt's wolf. "I'm not an authority on wolves, but it strikes me that a white one ought to have blue eyes, even if it hasn't."
"You ain't got as many brains in your head as a fishin' worm!"
"Maybe you're right," the sailor admitted, placid and undisturbed by the other's scorn. "I never argue about that."
"A feller that'd wear a rig like you've got on don't know enough to scratch a hog!"
"That's all right now, pardner," said the sailor, turning to the brother of the wolf, a quick flush mounting to his face; "you go light on what you've got to say about this uniform!"
The kinsman of the wolf made a scoffing noise in his big nose.
"You look like a bottle in a sock," he said.
"It don't make any difference how I look, stranger. If this uniform's good enough for Uncle Sam, it's good enough for you, and you've got to respect it!"
Dan Gustin moved a little nearer. What was that about a uniform and Uncle Sam? Well, if Uncle Sam and that kid were partners, Dan was on their side from the jump.
The wolf's kin was looking the sailor up and down, contempt in his long nose, wrinkled in a snarl that was fiercer than the beast's behind the glass.
"Down in the Indian Nation, where I used to run wild," he said, "we slice up little fellers like you and fry 'em in grease. Give me that little purty you've got on your head—I want to take it home for my equaw to set a hen in."
He reached out with a swiping movement of his long arm as he spoke, to knock the offending little cap from its easy, but rather challenging, perch. The sailor ducked. The next moment Dan Gustin saw a blue flash like a kingfisher shooting down at a minnow's glint. The sailor's fist sounded as if somebody had struck a stump with an ax. Dan stepped back to let the stranger from the Indian Nation have all the ground that was coming to him when he fell.
The sailor stood where he had delivered his knockdown, crouching a little, alert, hands up for offense or defense as developments might demand, Dan wondered why he didn't follow up the advantage he had won in that first swift blow, according to the code of the range.
"Pile on to him, kid!" he urged, while the troublehunter lay stretched full length for a moment in the dust.
Before the sailor could act on Dan's charitable urging, if he had any mind for doing so, indeed, the man whom he had knocked down gathered himself and sprang nimbly to his feet. The sailor rushed him, only to run against the long pistol which the fellow jerked from the leather as he came to his feet in a cloud of dust.
"Put it up, pardner!" Dan commanded. "That kid ain't got no gun."
Dan had stepped into the engagement quite easily and naturally, and well within the rights of a gentlemah, according to the custom of the country. He stood holding his own weapon with arm shortened against his side, after the manner of a quick and sure shooting man. There was blood on the quarrelsome stranger's mouth, murder in his sullen eyes. He turned his head to glare on Dan, reading at a glance something in the young man's eyes that would admit no argument. Then he slowly and sulkily returned the pistol to his holster, saying nothing, only opening his mouth to empty it of the blood that was already overflowing down the dusty stubble of his chin.
"If you want to stand up and fight him like a man, I'm willin'," Dan offered cheerfully.
"I'll hang your hide over the fence," the ruffian promised, turning to go.
The sailor, who had stepped back as nimbly as from a redhot iron when he saw the pistol at his breast, offered Dan his hand with a sort of shame-faced grin.
"Thanks, old feller," said he. "He took the wind out of me for a minute—I don't fight that way."
"Sure you don't, kid," said Dan, heartily.
The fight had drawn a good many people from along the street; the noise of their coming and gathering in front of the hotel attracted the customers from Grimmitt's bar. It drew Grimmitt with them; he appeared in the door drying his hands on his apron, just as the wolf hunter turned, his gun reluctantly restored to the scabbard, and went off to mount his horse.
"What's all this gun-slingin' goin' on over?" Grimmitt wanted to know, looking darkly and disfavoringly at Dan, who still kept his iron in his hand, not trusting the stranger's shifty eyes. Dan explained in few words, not mentioning the original controversy between the sailor and the stranger over the wolf.
Grimmitt, a short, tight man, with white hair cut as close to his scalp as scissors could clip it, stepped into the street.
"That feller's been loafin' around here all day tryin' to pick a fight out of somebody he thought he could lick," he said, watching the stranger swing into the saddle and ride away. "Anybody know who he is?"
"He goes by the name of Wells over on Horse Crick," said one. "He's ranchin' over there."
"I thought he looked like he come from that neck of the woods," Grimmitt said. "You know what kind of ranchin' them fellers does up there."
It seemed very well understood what manner of industry men were following on Horse Creek in those days, which was, indeed, a long time ago as time is measured by events in that quick-changing land. They grinned, some of them, but more of them followed the retreating stranger with dark and unfriendly eyes. Out of all this the sailor stood aside, an actor whose small part was played, an incidental factor in a momentary disturbance. Grimmitt turned again within his door; the customers who had put down their drinks hastily at his bar followed to repair their haste at leisure. Dan looked in quizzical comicality at the sailor, who seemed considerably embarrassed.
"What did you say about a uniform and Uncle Sam, kid?" Dan inquired. "I ain't never seen no soldiers dressed like you over at the post."
The sailor explained, his bright face lighting up with a smile. Again Dan must shake hands with him, making a regular ceremony of it this time.
"Will you come in and have a drink?" he whispered, delicately covering the invitation from the ears of others, in case regulations of which he never had heard might deny the sailor the freedom of other men, as Indians belonging to Uncle Sam were denied. Dan's cautious reserve received a pleasant shock in the hearty and ready acceptance of his invitation. The sailor came up to the situation like a man of experience, Dan thought.
"You're a man clear down to the heels!" said Dan, with ingenuous sincerity, as they started for the door.
Dan was so well pleased with his guest that his generosity, never difficult to move, was at once extended to include all at Grimmitt's bar, in spite of the heavy drain his savings had suffered at the lawyer's hands but a few minutes before. As they lounged at the bar waiting for the bottle to come down the class, the sailor flashed a sidelong glance now and then at his companion's face, and smiled to himself in the way of a man who has heard tidings which bring cheer to his heart.
They put away a few charges of Grimmitt's worst, the sailor getting it down as if he had been drinking that kind of pain-killer a long time. Dan, a little flushed around the gills, spoke across to Grimmitt.
"I come down here with a wagon to meet a feller that's goin' out to the ranch," he said, something like an apology in his manner of speaking. "Charley Thomson told me he was here."
"There's your man," said Grimmitt, tilting his head toward the sailor.
Dan gulped his amazement, thanking his lucky day that he hadn't made some kind of a crack. A broad feeling of satisfaction brought a sparkle into his eyes and a grin to his face, Once more he had to shake hands.
"I thought you'd met him," said Grimmitt, not intending the least humor.
"Gustin is the name I go by in this man's country. When they want me to come to dinner they call me Dan."
"Barrett's what they write on the tag when they ship me," said the sailor; "the handle's Ed."
They shook hands on it all once more, the sailor standing another dose of Grimmitt's great household remedy all around again.
Since there was nothing to be ashamed of in the company of such a man, even in a wagon, Dan's spirits rose with sudden rebound. He went to fetch the wagon around to get Barrett's trunk, which was still at the depot, making a display of his craft as teamster, for Dan had served his apprenticeship, as all good cowboys before him, as horse wrangler and driver of the chuck wagon in his boyhood days on the range.
It was about eighty miles to the ranch, Dan said. If it didn't rain before they struck the alkali flats they'd make it in two days.
"If it rains before we git acrost there we may be hung up a day or two. A wagon'll sink to the hubs in them flats right after a rain."
Barrett was fervent in his hope that they would get across the flats before any water fell, although he had no more notion of what an alkali flat was like than he had of a Mussulman's paradise. He said he was eager to get to the ranch and take up the life of cowboy before the romance was gone out of it.
"I don't know much about any romance business, Ed," said Dan, "but I'm here to tell you it's a mighty good game for a man to git out of while he's young and limber. I can't see no deeper into the ground than the next man, but I can see fur enough to know changes are comin' on the range out here that'll push the cattle business off of the map."
"What changes, Dan?"
Barrett looked at his new friend curiously as he asked the question, with the faltering concern of one who begins to see a dream dissolve.
"Grangers," said Dan with gloomy finality.
"I've heard of them," Barrett nodded knowingly, his face clearing.
"Looks to me like a man could see more high life workin' for Uncle Sam on them navy ships," Dan ventured. "I think if I was startin' out to find romantical times and doin's I'd head for the nearest office and put my name down for a job."
"It isn't so bad, but a man wants a change sometimes," Barrett said.
"You want to be a cowpuncher and I'd like to be a sailor. That's the way it goes, I guess, every man thinkin' the other one's got a better job than him. But I always did want to see the ocean, and wade out in her to my arm-pits and whoop."
When they had Barrett's trunk aboard, the sailor enlisted Dan's help in buying a proper outfit for the range.
"When we get out in the country," Barrett said, "I'd like for you to stop somewhere long enough for me to go back of a bush and change clothes. They'd kid the life out of me if I went to the ranch in this uniform, wouldn't they?"
"You might have a purty lively time handin' it out to all of 'em the way you did that feller down in front of Grimmitt's," Dan allowed. "It's funny you'd come to this country wearin' them clothes," he speculated, in a way that was nothing less than a polite inquiry into the reason why.
"I had just thirteen minutes to make the jump from the ship to the train," Barrett explained. "My trunk followed a day behind me, it didn't get here till this afternoon."
"You must 'a' been in a hurry to git here!" Dan whistled, still bidding for more.
"I'll tell you how it was one of these days," Barrett laughed, as if pushing the scent too hotly embarrassed him, or as if there might be something to his discredit in making that swift passage from deck to train.
They let it rest at that, for Dan was a true-born gentleman who had secrets of his own. The town was soon behind them, their way plunging into country at once so bleak, rugged and uninhabited that the wonder rose in the traveler whence Saunders drew the sustenance for its sickly life. Toward sunset Dan took an observation from the top of a hill where he drew up a little while to let the horses catch their wind, announcing thereafter that he didn't think it would rain.
"If it don't, we'll camp on the Diamond Tail tomorrow night," he said.
"I hope there'll be a little romance left lying around for me," Barrett laughed, for the matter of romancehunting had grown to be a joke between them already.
"No man can tell what's waitin' by the trail," Dan returned, and seriously, much to the surprise of his companion, who began to have little glimpses such as this of more beneath the rind of this young man thanhis simple bearing might betray.