The Trail Rider/Chapter 13
HARTWELL was spattered with mud from foot to eyebrow. Some of it had dried and fallen off, some had set only the firmer for being dry, leaving him speckled and mottled as by some peculiar disease that infected not only the man, but his raiment as well. His beard was just long enough to hold the gobs of mud flung into his face from the hoofs of the cattle as he made that wild ride among them, and if appearances were to be taken at face value, Texas Hartwell was a desperate man indeed as he rode down to Malcolm Duncan's gate.
He did not see Winch among the men assembled to receive him. Duncan stood to the fore, the sun in his iron-gray hair, his sleeves turned up from his long, muscular arms, just as he had put down his knife and fork. Texas flung himself from the saddle at the corral gate and began to undo his cinch. Duncan came over to him, the others stopping off a little way, plainly in accord with some prearranged plan.
"Well, you stampeded 'em," said Duncan, an air of constraint about him, as of a man uncertain of his way.
"It looks that way, sir," Texas replied, still busy with his girths.
Duncan stood silent, watching him as closely as if unsaddling a horse was some rare feat, and Hartwell, an expert, come to demonstrate it. Hartwell stripped off the saddle and threw it on the fence.
"You'd better have spread a sack of poison over the grass," Duncan said. "Well, you stood by your friends, you got their cattle into this country, anyhow. We've got to give you credit for that, Hartwell—if that's your name."
Texas unbridled the horse, patted its neck affectionately, turned it into the corral, where it threw itself down in the mud and rolled, grunting its satisfaction over its relaxation after its hard night.
"Gentlemen, Hartwell is my name," said he, "and it's a name that's never been disgraced by any man that answered to it. I went out last night to do the job you laid out for me, not hopin' to be able to put it through, but aimin' to do my best."
The humor that he had seen in the muddle of the stampede had all gone out of the situation now. These men were earnest in their belief that he was one of the southern drovers' gang, and it was going to be something far from a laughing matter to change their belief.
"I guess you did your best—and your worst," Duncan retorted.
"I don't know what argument I can make, sirs, to convince you that I'm square with you, and always have been since the minute I went to work. I don't aim to excuse myself for lettin' them rope me down, yonder, and I'm not goin' to try. I don't know a man in that outfit by sight, and only one of them by his voice. I'm goin' to look for that man and bring him before you. Maybe you'll take his word for it where you hate to take mine."
"There wouldn't be any proof in a thief speaking for a thief, Hartwell."
Hartwell's face gorged with blood at the word "thief" as if apoplexy had taken him. He drew himself up in all the austerity of his lean frame and severe face and looked Duncan in the eye with a directness that made the big cow-man draw back a step.
"I'd go kind of easy on that word, sir," Hartwell warned him.
"Yes, I guess I shouldn't say that," Duncan reflected, with the bearing of a man who wanted to be fair. "It's a man's business to stand by his friends, and I can't blame you for that. But I do blame you, Hartwell, for taking a spy's advantage of us, crawlin' in the way you did and takin' that job of trail-rider."
"It came to me before I even started to find it, sir."
"Well, there's no use to stand here and chaw words over it, Hartwell. It's done, them Texas cattle are in here, and it may take two or three weeks to round up our herds and pick them out. Maybe they're clean cattle, maybe they're not—time alone can show that. But crooked or square, you're a bold man, Hartwell, to ride back here and face a bunch of men that believe you've done them damage beyond calculation."
Texas turned from him in his high dignity, out of patience with a man of Duncan's breadth for being so blind. Even when Hartwell's strongest plea of innocence was on his tongue he was too narrow to understand it. A guilty man would not have come back; he would have been under no such necessity.
"There's your horse, and here's your saddle, Mr. Duncan, sir. I've got three weeks' pay comin' to me, if you can see it that way, sir."
"Well, I don't see it that way!"
Duncan spoke harshly, bristling with indignation. Hartwell heard others remarking on the wonder of his gall, and what ought to be handed out to him as pay.
"I reckon I can live without it, sir," said Texas, loftily.
"You're a lucky man that we're allowin' you to get out of here with your life. They say you walked into this country; well, walk out of it, and walk fast!"
"Hold on, Duncan! I've got a spoon to put into this pot."
The speaker came forward, rolling in his gait like a bear. He was a man as big as Duncan, but with none of his handsomeness, little of his intelligence. His shirt-collar was open on his bristling neck, his hat was on his eyebrows, and he was a red, raw-mouthed savage out of whom curses came pouring like foul water from a drain. He drew up before Hartwell, where he stood with his legs straddled, looking at him with malevolent contempt.
"You say you're on the square with us, and you think we're fools enough to swaller it, don't you?"
"I don't expect anything reasonable or just from you at all, sir!"
"Yes, and if you was on the square them Texas fellers'd 'a' shot you so full of holes your hide wouldn't 'a' made shoe-strings! Yes, an' Winch and these fellers knew it when they sent you over there on that fool errant. I wasn't there, I didn't have no hand in it, and I'd 'a' stood out ag'in' it till hell froze over if I'd 'a' been!"
"Sir, I think I'll be on my way," said Texas, speaking to Duncan, ignoring the blustering cattleman entirely.
"Not till I git through with you, young feller, you won't! An' maybe you won't then."
"Let him go, Sawyer; we haven't got proof enough against him to hold him," Duncan said.
"I got proof enough to satisfy me, Duncan. More than any man in this valley I stand to lose by them fever ticks you and your damn gang's sowed over my ranch, young feller. Them cattle's over there mixed up with mine, and they'll all have the fever before ten days, and I'll be cleaned out. Do you reckon I'm goin' to stand by and see the varmint that done it sneak off to his hole and me not move a hand?"
"Oh, well, Sawyer, if it'll do you any good."
Duncan indulged him, like a headstrong child. The others drew round in a half circle, knowing fully what was coming.
"You stampeded 'em in here, you and them other Texas fellers combined—it wasn't no oneman job, and I ain't fool enough to believe it was. I didn't ketch you doin' it, and I ain't got no call, 'cordin' to law, to pull out and shoot you in your tracks, but if you'll take off that there gun and stand up to me I'll give you the damndest thumpin' a man ever packed!"
Texas had noticed from the beginning of Sawyer's arraignment that he was not armed. It came to him at once that this badgering was an attempt to separate him from his own gun and throw him into their hands defenseless. He stood considering it, Sawyer mistaking his silence for a shortage on courage. He renewed his insults and defiance.
"You got a name over in Cottonwood for bein' a fightin' man, ain't you? Yes, and you're a one hell of a fightin' man, ain't you? Maybe you can handle a bunch of them dudes up there, but when it comes to men with hair on their backs you're a baby. Yes, an' if I done right by you I'd take a feather piller and bat your brains out and give 'em to the cat!"
Sawyer's friends laughed. The great savage waddled a little nearer Texas, shoving his mean face forward.
"I never seen a man from Texas in my life that I couldn't run out of the country with a ellum switch. They ain't got no fight in 'em lessen they's a bunch of them together. Them's the kind of fellers that lets the dog lick the clabber off of their faces and calls it a shave—they ain't got the stren'th in 'em to raise hair on their faces like a man. Yes, and if you don't take off that dam' gun I'll pick you up with it on you and hold you out till you wiggle yourself to death, you dam' leather-bellied horny rattler!"
Texas unbelted his gun and handed it to Duncan. Then he stepped forward before anybody guessed his next move, and slapped Sawyer in the leering, red, hairy face.
Hartwell's hand was big and hard, and there was vigor in the blow, for he gave it for the honor of Texas and her men, and the traditions of their noble sacrifices and splendid courage. It made the cow-man's teeth pop, and sent him winding up against the wall of his comrades.
Sawyer came at Hartwell with his head down, like a bull, his arms reaching to grapple. There was no science on either side of that combat, but there was a great deal of main strength and awkwardness, and a grunting and snorting from Sawyer like a grizzly bear. Hartwell avoided his first rush and struck him in the face, drawing blood.
Texas was unloading from his mind and conscience all the hard things which had grown up in him during those days of suspicion and accusation. He was fighting not only Sawyer, but the Cattle Raisers' Association, and every blow that he struck was for his honor and the lightening of his heart. It was better to die fighting than to live disgraced. That thought was uppermost in the whirl of his blinding emotions of vindication and vengeance, hot anger and desperation.
He was overmatched by fifty pounds, and Sawyer was fighting with the tools which he knew best how to use. The one advantage that Hartwell had was his shiftiness of foot, which kept him out of Sawyer's rib-crushing arms. Up and down the ring of men they surged and slashed, blows falling on both sides, blood streaming from faces, from gashed knuckles, the rim of onlookers widening and contracting to accommodate the fury of the clash.
As the combat lengthened and the punishment that each received increased, their fury grew. Caution was no longer a part of either man's policy. They met hand to hand, bent, panted, gasped, dripping blood. Hartwell had got a blow that nearly closed his right eye. His face was cut, his nose and lips were swollen, his mouth was full of blood.
He did not know what damage Sawyer had suffered, but it seemed that his fists fell on the cowman's hard body with little effect. Sawyer cursed him and insulted him with every vile name that was a challenge on the range, and surged at him in his roaring charges, at last planting a blow that sent Hartwell spinning and stretched him on his back. The cowman would have followed up this advantage by throwing himself upon his fallen opponent's body and beating him unconscious as he stretched, for that was all included in the grappleand-bite tactics of range encounters. But Duncan stretched out his arms and held him back.
"Have you got enough of it?" Duncan asked, as Texas immediately scrambled to his feet.
Hartwell's head was whirling, there was a sickness in the pit of his stomach, such a sickness that it seemed to reach every nerve of his body and make him weak. He shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, and bent his will to overcome this sickness which was making his senses dim.
"No," he said.
Duncan stepped from between them. Sawyer, reserving his filthiest and most slanderous epithet for the last, hurled it at Texas like a handful of effluvium. If anything had been needed in excess of his unbroken will to brace Texas, this name would have served. Instead of waiting for Sawyer to charge, Texas sprang and grappled him.
A new strength was in him, a fresh clearness had come over his senses which was as steadying as a cool hand on his head. As he had seized the horse on the fair grounds at Cottonwood he laid hold of Sawyer, unfeeling of his blows and kicks. The cowman's neck cracked as Hartwell closed with him, bent him backward, lifted him, flung him a clean back somersault and left him sprawled senseless, his face to the ground.
A gasp of astonishment, not unblended with admiration, greeted this feat of strength. The onlookers stood back from Sawyer as men avoid a dead body, no man offering a hand to lift him.
Hartwell had lost his hat. He looked around for it, his head swimming, his forehead throbbing as if he had been hammered with a maul. One eye was so swollen that he could see through only a slit, the other misty from blood that ran into it from some injury in his bruised forehead.
Somebody came forward with the hat and gave it to him, silently. Duncan held out the belt with the big dangling gun. Hartwell girded himself with it again, put on his hat, although it seemed to stand ridiculously small on top of the great enlargement that he imagined his head had undergone, faced about, and walked away. He said no word to anybody; not one of them said a word to him. His way led him past the spot where Sawyer had fallen, his face in the mud of the trampled road.
Hartwell's after-recollection of the short walk from the battle-ground to the creek was as if he had risen in delirium from a bed of pain and gone wandering. It seemed a long distance to him, and that terrible deep sickness was over him again, as if from an internal hemorrhage that gorged his vitals with blood.
Instinctively he must have concealed himself in the thick willows, for he had no recollection of it afterward. But on waking when the day was almost spent he found himself there, bruised, cut, bloody, and weak. His first thought was that his nickname had been the cause of all this misadventure and misery. If he had come into the Kansas range as Jim Hartwell, things never would have clouded up so suspiciously in men's minds. The pride that he had in that name "Texas" was like all vanities, he reflected; a thing to bring its possessor soon or late to humiliation and pain. Better to have been common Jim, with a whole hide and a good report, than picturesque Texas, beaten refugee, outcast of his kind, distrusted of men.
With these bitter reflections he turned his face toward Cottonwood, twenty miles away. And it was hard walking on Uncle Boley Drumgoole's high heels, a sore road and a long, weary one. It was almost noon of the next day when he arrived at the Woodbine Hotel, a grim, bruised figure, weak and sick.
A man was sitting on the bench beside the door, a cowboy in goatskin chaparejos with the long white hair on them. He rose and blocked the door with a long arm, an envelope in his hand.
"Duncan sent you this," he said.
Texas was ashamed of his battered face and bloody garments. He turned his back to the cowboy as he opened the letter. It contained seventy dollars in bills, but no word of writing, nothing at all but the money. Seventy dollars was the sum due him for his little more than three weeks' work at eighty dollars a month. Duncan had figured it liberally, and Texas knew that the big cattleman had relented a bit toward him, even to the extent of again allowing him the benefit of the doubt. There was a little cheer in this reflection. But very little.
"And Dee Winch sent you this," said the cowboy, reaching out his long arm again.
In the palm of his hand lay a loaded cartridge of large caliber. Texas looked from it to the messenger's face for further information.
"Winch told me to say to you if you ain't gone out of this country by the time they finish roundin' up them Texas cattle, he'll make you swaller six of these the first time he sets eyes on you."
Texas took the cartridge, turned it a moment in his fingers, his head bent in his peculiar pose of deep concentration. Then he flipped it into the street as he had flipped the worthless match.
"Tell him I'll be right here."
Hartwell's tone was gently courteous, as if he accepted some pleasant engagement. The cowboy heard him in wonder, and looked after him with strange respect as he entered the office of the green hotel.