CHAPTER I
AN ANNIVERSARY
The Texan drew up in the centre of a tiny glade that formed an openingin the bull pine woods. Haze purpled the distant mountains of cow-land,and the cowpuncher's gaze strayed slowly from the serried peaks of theBear Paws to rest upon the broad expanse of the barren, mica-studded badlands with their dazzling white alkali beds, and their brilliant red andblack mosaic of lava rock that trembled and danced and shimmered in thecrinkly waves of heat. For a long time he stared at the Missouri whoseyellow-brown waters rolled wide and deep from recent rains. From thesilver and gold of the flashing waters his eyes strayed to thesmoke-grey sage flats that intervened, and then to the cool dark greenof the pines.
Very deliberately he slipped from the saddle, letting the reins fall tothe ground. He took off his Stetson and removed its thin powdering ofwhite alkali dust by slapping it noisily against his leather chaps. Alight breeze fanned his face and involuntarily his eyes sought the baseof a huge rock fragment that jutted boldly into the glade, and as helooked, he was conscious that the air was heavy with the scent of thelittle blue and white prairie flowers that carpeted the ground at hisfeet. His thin lips twisted into a cynical smile--a smile that added anunpleasant touch to the clean-cut weather-tanned features. In the spaceof a second he seemed to have aged ten years--not physically, but--hehad aged.
He spoke half aloud, with his grey eyes upon the rock: "It--hurts--likehell. I knew it would hurt, an' I came--rode sixty miles to get to thisspot at this hour of this day. It was here she said 'good-bye,' an' thenshe walked slowly around the rock with her flowers held tight, an' thewind ripplin' that lock of hair, just above her right temple, itwas--an' then--she was gone." The man's eyes dropped to the ground. Abrilliantly striped beetle climbed laboriously to the top of a weedstem, spread his wings in a clumsy effort, and fell to the ground. Thecowboy laughed: "A hell of a lot of us that would like to fly has tocrawl," he said, and stooping picked a tiny flower, stared at it for amoment, breathed deeply of its fragrance, and thrust it into the band ofhis hat. Reaching for his reins, he swung into the saddle and once morehis eyes sought the painted bad lands with their background of purplemountains. "Prettiest place in the world, I reckon--to look at. Micaflashin' like diamonds, red rocks an' pink ones, white alkali patches,an' black cool-lookin' mud-cracks--an' when you get there--poison water,rattlesnakes, chokin' hot dust, horse-thieves, an' the white bones ofdead things! Everything's like that. Come on, old top horse, you an'I'll shove on to Timber City. 'Tain't over a mile, an' when we getthere--! Say boy, little old unsuspectin' Timber City is goin' to stagean orgy. We don't aim to pull off no common sordid drunk--not us. Whatwe'll precipitate is goin' to be a classic--a jamboree of sorts, abacchanalian cataclysm, aided an' abetted by what local talent an'trimmin's the scenery affords. Shake a leg, there! An' we'll forget thebones, an' the poison, an' the dust, an' with the discriminatin'perception of a beltful of rollickin' ferments, we'll enjoy the pink,an' the purple, an' the red. Tomorrow, it'll be different but as Old Batsays 'Wat de hell?'"
Thus adjured, the horse picked his way down the little creek and a fewminutes later swung into the trail that stretched dusty white toward theugly little town whose wooden buildings huddled together a mile to thesouthward.
Before the door of Red Front saloon the Texan drew up in a swirl ofdust, slid from the saddle, and entered. The bartender flashed anappraising glance, and greeted him with professional cordiality, theritual of which, included the setting out of a bottle and two glassesupon the bar. "Dry?" he invited as he slid the bottle toward thenewcomer.
"Middlin'," assented the Texan, as he poured a liberal potion. The otherhelped himself sparingly and raised his glass.
"Here's how."
"How," responded the Texan, and returning the empty glass to the barproduced papers and tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Then verydeliberately, he produced a roll of bills, peeled a yellow one from theoutside, and returned the roll to his pocket. Without so much as theflicker of an eyelash, the bartender noted that the next one also wasyellow. The cowpuncher laid the bill on the bar, and with a jerk of thethumb, indicated the four engrossed in a game of solo at a table in therear of the room.
"Don't yer friends imbibe nothin'?" he asked, casually.
The bartender grinned as he glanced toward the table. "Might try 'em,now. I didn't see no call to bust into a solo-tout with no trivialpolitics like a couple of drinks.
"Gents, what's yourn?"
From across the room came a scraping of chairs, and the four men linedup beside the Texan and measured their drinks.
"Stranger in these parts?" inquired a tall man with a huge sunburnedmoustache.
"Sort of," replied the Texan, "but let's licker before this sinfuldecoction evaporates."
"Seems like I've saw you before, somewheres," opined a thick man withround china blue eyes.
"Maybe you have, because astoundin' as it may seem, this ain't my firstappearance in public--but you might be nature fakin', at that. Where wasit this here episode took place?"
The man shook his head: "I dunno, only it seems like you look sort ofnat'chel, somehow."
"I always did--it's got so's it's almost what you might call a fixedhabit--like swallowin' when I drink. But, speakin' of towns, TimberCity's sure had a boom since I was here last. You've got a new horsetrough in front of the livery barn." The tall man ordered another roundof drinks, and the Texan paused to fill his glass. They drank, and withan audible suck at his overhanging moustache, the tall man leaned anelbow on the bar: "It ain't noways safe or advisable," he said slowly,looking straight at the Texan, "fer no lone cow-hand to ride in here an'make light of Timber City to our face."
A man with a green vest and white, sleek hands insinuated himselfbetween the two and smiled affably: "Come on, now, boys, they ain'tnawthin' in quarrelin'. The gent, here, was only kiddin' us a little an'we ain't got no call to raise the hair on our back for that. What do yousay we start a little game of stud? Solo ain't no summer game,nohow--too much thinkin'. How about it stranger, d'you play?"
"Only now an' then, by way of recreation. I don't want your money, I gotplenty of my own, an' I never let cards interfere with business. Down inTexas we----"
"But, you ain't workin' today," interrupted the other.
"Well, not what you might call work, maybe. I aimed to get drunk, an' Idon't want to get switched off into a card game. Come on, now, an' we'llhave another drink, an' then Jo-Jo an' I'll renew our conversation. An'while we're at it, Percy, if I was you I'd stand a little to one sideso's I wouldn't get my clothes mussed. Now, Jo-Jo, what was the gist ofthat there remark of yours?"
"My name's Stork--Ike Stork, an'----"
"You're a bird all right."
"Yes, I'm a bird--an' Timber City's a bird, too. They can't no othertown in Montany touch us."
"Wolf River's got a bank----"
"Yes," interrupted the bartender, "an' we could of had a bank, too, butwe don't want none. If you want a town to go plumb to hell just youstart up a bank. Then everyone runs an' sticks their money in an' don'tspend none, an' business stops an' the town's gone plumb to hell!"
"I'd hev you to know," Stork cut in importantly, "that Timber City's acowtown, an' a sheep town, an' a minin' town, an' a timber town--both ofwhich Wolf River ain't neither, except cattle. We don't depend on no onething like them railroad towns, an' what's more, it tuck a act ofCongress fer to name Timber City----"
"Yes an' it takes an act of God to keep her goin', but He does itoffhand an' casual, same as He makes three-year-old steers out oftwo-year-olds."
The bartender grinned affably, his thoughts on the roll of yellow billsthat reposed in the pocket of the Texan. "Don't regard Ike noneserious, pardner, he's settin' a little oneasy on account he got hisclaim all surveyed off into buildin' lots, an' they ain't goin' like,what you might say, hot cakes."
"Oh, I don't know," Stork interrupted, but the bartender ignored him.
"Now, about this here proclamation of yourn
to git drunk," continued thebartender. "Not that it ain't any man's privilege to git drunk wheneverhe feels like, an' not that it's any of my business, 'cause it ain't,an' not that I give a damn one way or the other, 'cause I don't, butjust by way of conversation, as you might say; what's the big idee? Itain't neither the Thirteenth of June, nor the Fourth of July, norThanksgivin' nor Christmas, nor New Year's, on which dates a man'ssupposed to git drunk, the revels that comes in between bein' mostlyaccidental, as you might say. But here comes you, without neither rhymenor reason, as the feller says in the Bible, just a-honin' to git drunkout of a clear sky as the sayin' goes. Of course they's one otheroccasion which it's every man's duty to git drunk, an' that's hisbirthday, so if this is yourn, have another on the house, an' here'shopin' you live till the last sheep dies."
They drank, and the Texan rolled another cigarette: "As long as we'vedecided to git drunk together, it's no more'n right you-all should knowthe reason. It ain't my birthday, it's my--my anniversary."
"Married?" asked the man with the china blue eyes.
"Nope."
"Well, no wonder you're celebratin'!"
"Shorty, there, he's married a-plenty," explained the man with the greenvest, during the general guffaw that greeted the sally.
Again Shorty asked a question, and the Texan noted a hopeful look in thechina blue eyes: "Be'n married an'--quit?"
"Nope."
The hopeful look faded, and removing his hat, the man scratched hishead: "Well, if you ain't married, an' ain't be'n married, what's thishere anniversary business? An' how in hell do you figger the date?"
The Texan laughed: "A-many a good man's gone bugs foolin' with highermathmatics, Shorty. Just you slip another jolt of this tornado juice inunder your belt, an' by the time you get a couple dozen more with it,you won't care a damn about anniversaries. What'll be botherin' you'llbe what kind of meat they feed the sun dogs----"
"Yes, an' I'll catch hell when I git home," whimpered Shorty.
"Every man's got his own brand of troubles," philosophized the Texan,"an' yours sure set light on my shoulders. Come on, barkeep, an' slip usanother round of this here inebriatin' fluid. One whole year on crickwater an' alkali dust has added, roughly speakin', 365 days an' 5 hours,an' 48 minutes, an' 45-1/2 seconds to my life, an' has whetted myappetite to razor edge--an' that reminds me--" he paused abruptly andpicking up the yellow-backed bill that still lay before him upon thebar, crammed it into his pocket.