CHAPTER II
WHETSTONE, THE OUTLAW
When Taterleg roused the camp before the east was light, Lambert notedthat another man had ridden in. This was a wiry young fellow with ashort nose and fiery face, against which his scant eyebrows and lasheswere as white as chalk.
His presence in the camp seemed to put a restraint on the spirits of theothers, some of whom greeted him by the name Jim, others ignoring himentirely. Among these latter was the black-haired man who had givenLambert his title and elevated him to the nobility of the Bad Lands. Onthe face of it there was a crow to be picked between them.
Jim was belted with a pistol and heeled with a pair of thoselong-roweled Mexican spurs, such as had gone out of fashion on thewestern range long before his day. He leaned on his elbow near the fire,his legs stretched out in a way that obliged Taterleg to walk round thespurred boots as he went between his cooking and the supplies in thewagon, the tailboard of which was his kitchen table.
If Taterleg resented this lordly obstruction, he did not discover it byword or feature. He went on humming a tune without words as he worked,handing out biscuits and ham to the hungry crew. Jim had eaten hisbreakfast already, and was smoking a cigarette at his ease. Now and thenhe addressed somebody in obscene jocularity.
Lambert saw that Jim turned his eyes on him now and then with sneeringcontempt, but said nothing. When the men had made a hasty end of theirbreakfast three of them started to the corral. The young man who hadhumorously enumerated the virtues of the All-in-One, whom the otherscalled Spence, was of this number. He turned back, offering Lambert hishand with a smile.
"I'm glad I met you, Duke, and I hope you'll do well wherever youtravel," he said, with such evident sincerity and good feeling thatLambert felt like he was parting from a friend.
"Thanks, old feller, and the same to you."
Spence went on to saddle his horse, whistling as he scuffed through thelow sage. Jim sat up.
"I'll make you whistle through your ribs," he snarled after him.
It was Sunday. These men who remained in camp were enjoying theinfrequent luxury of a day off. With the first gleam of morning they gotout their razors and shaved, and Siwash, who seemed to be the handy manand chief counselor of the outfit, cut everybody's hair, with theexception of Jim, who had just returned from somewhere on the train, andstill had the scent of the barber-shop on him, and Taterleg, who hadmastered the art of shingling himself, and kept his hand in by constantpractice.
Lambert mended his tire, using an old rubber boot that Taterleg foundkicking around camp to plug the big holes in his outer tube. He was forgoing on then, but Siwash and the others pressed him to stay over theday, to which invitation he yielded without great argument.
There was nothing ahead of him but desolation, said Taterleg, a countryso rough that it tried a horse to travel it. Ranchhouses were fartherapart as a man proceeded, and beyond that, mountains. It looked toTaterleg as if he'd better give it up.
That was so, according to the opinion of Siwash. To his undoubtedknowledge, covering the history of twenty-four years, no agent ever hadpenetrated that far before. Having broken this record on a bicycle,Lambert ought to be satisfied. If he was bound to travel, said Siwash,his advice would be to travel back.
It seemed to Lambert that the bottom was all out of his plans, indeed.It would be far better to chuck the whole scheme overboard and go towork as a cowboy if they would give him a job. That was nearer thesphere of his intended future activities; that was getting down to theroot and foundation of a business which had a ladder in it whose rungswere not made of any general agent's hot air.
After his hot and heady way of quick decisions and planning tocompletion before he even had begun, Lambert was galloping the Bad Landsas superintendent of somebody's ranch, having made the leap over allthe trifling years, with their trifling details of hardship, low wages,loneliness, and isolation in a wink. From superintendent he gallopedswiftly on his fancy to a white ranchhouse by some calm riverside, hisherds around him, his big hat on his head, market quotations coming tohim by telegraph every day, packers appealing to him to ship fivetrainloads at once to save their government contracts.
What is the good of an imagination if a man cannot ride it, and feel thewind in his face as he flies over the world? Even though it is a liarand a trickster, and a rifler of time which a drudge of success would bestamping into gold, it is better for a man than wine. He can return fromhis wide excursions with no deeper injury than a sigh.
Lambert came back to the reality, broaching the subject of a job. HereJim took notice and cut into the conversation, it being his first wordto the stranger.
"Sure you can git a job, bud," he said, coming over to where Lambert satwith Siwash and Taterleg, the latter peeling potatoes for a stew,somebody having killed a calf. "The old man needs a couple of hands; hetold me to keep my eye open for anybody that wanted a job."
"I'm glad to hear of it," said Lambert, warming up at the news, feelingthat he must have been a bit severe in his judgment of Jim, which hadnot been altogether favorable.
"He'll be over in the morning; you'd better hang around."
Seeing the foundation of a new fortune taking shape, Lambert said hewould "hang around." They all applauded his resolution, for they allappeared to like him in spite of his appearance, which was distinctive,indeed, among the somber colors of that sage-gray land.
Jim inquired if he had a horse, the growing interest of a friend in hismanner. Hearing the facts of the case from Lambert--before dawn he hadheard them from Taterleg--he appeared concerned almost to the point ofbeing troubled.
"You'll have to git you a horse, Duke; you'll have to ride up to theboss when you hit him for a job. He never was known to hire a man offthe ground, and I guess if you was to head at him on that bicycle, he'dblow a hole through you as big as a can of salmon. Any of you fellersgot a horse you want to trade the Duke for his bicycle?"
The inquiry brought out a round of somewhat cloudy witticism, withproposals to Lambert for an exchange on terms rather embarrassing tomeet, seeing that even the least preposterous was not sincere. Taterlegwinked to assure him that it was all banter, without a bit of harm atthe bottom of it, which Lambert understood very well without theservices of a commentator.
Jim brightened up presently, as if he saw a gleam that might leadLambert out of the difficulty. He had an extra horse himself, not muchof a horse to look at, but as good-hearted a horse as a man ever throweda leg over, and that wasn't no lie, if you took him the right side on.But you had to take him the right side on, and humor him, and handle himlike eggs till he got used to you. Then you had as purty a little horseas a man ever throwed a leg over, anywhere.
Jim said he'd offer that horse, only he was a little bashful in thepresence of strangers--meaning the horse--and didn't show up in a styleto make his owner proud of him. The trouble with that horse was he usedto belong to a one-legged man, and got so accustomed to the feel of aone-legged man on him that he was plumb foolish between two legs.
That horse didn't have much style to him, and no gait to speak of; buthe was as good a cow-horse as ever chawed a bit. If the Duke thoughthe'd be able to ride him, he was welcome to him. Taterleg winked whatLambert interpreted as a warning at that point, and in the faces of theothers there were little gleams of humor, which they turned their heads,or bent to study the ground, as Siwash did, to hide.
"Well, I'm not much on a horse," Lambert confessed.
"You look like a man that'd been on a horse a time or two," said Jim,with a knowing inflection, a shrewd flattery.
"I used to ride around a little, but that's been a good while ago."
"A feller never forgits how to ride," Siwash put in; "and if a man wantsto work on the range, he's got to ride 'less'n he goes and gits a jobrunnin' sheep, and that's below any man that is a man."
Jim sat pondering the question, hands hooked in front of his knees, amatch in his mouth beside his unlighted cigarette.
"I been thinkin' I'
d sell that horse," said he reflectively. "Ain't gotno use for him much; but I don't know."
He looked off over the chuck wagon, through the tops of the scrub pinesin which the camp was set, drawing his thin, white eyebrows, consideringthe case.
"Winter comin' on and hay to buy," said Siwash.
"That's what I've been thinkin' and studyin' over. Shucks! I don't needthat horse. I tell you what I'll do, Duke"--turning to Lambert, brisk aswith a gush of sudden generosity--"if you can ride that old pelter, I'llgive him to you for a present. And I bet you'll not git as cheap anoffer of a horse as that ever in your life ag'in."
"I think it's too generous--I wouldn't want to take advantage of it,"Lambert told him, trying to show a modesty in the matter that he didnot feel.
"I ain't a-favorin' you, Duke; not a dollar. If I needed that horse, I'dhang onto him, and you wouldn't git him a cent under thirty-five bucks;but when a man don't need a horse, and it's a expense on him, he canafford to give it away--he can give it away and make money. That's whatI'm a-doin', if you want to take me up."
"I'll take a look at him, Jim."
Jim got up with eagerness, and went to fetch a saddle and bridle fromunder the wagon. The others came into the transaction with livelyinterest. Only Taterleg edged round to Lambert, and whispered with hishead turned away to look like innocence:
"Watch out for him--he's a bal'-faced hyeeny!"
They trooped off to the corral, which was a temporary enclosure made ofwire run among the little pines. Jim brought the horse out. It stoodtamely enough to be saddled, with head drooping indifferently, andshowed no deeper interest and no resentment over the operation ofbridling, Jim talking all the time he worked, like the faker that hewas, to draw off a too-close inspection of his wares.
"Old Whetstone ain't much to look at," he said, "and as I told you,Mister, he ain't got no fancy gait; but he can bust the middle out ofthe breeze when he lays out a straight-ahead run. Ain't a horse on thisrange can touch his tail when old Whetstone throws a ham into it andlets out his stren'th."
"He looks like he might go some," Lambert commented in the vacuous wayof a man who felt that he must say something, even though he didn't knowanything about it.
Whetstone was rather above the stature of the general run of rangehorses, with clean legs and a good chest. But he was a hammer-headed,white-eyed, short-maned beast, of a pale water-color yellow, like an olddish. He had a beaten-down, bedraggled, and dispirited look about him,as if he had carried men's burdens beyond his strength for a good while,and had no heart in him to take the road again. He had a scoundrelly wayof rolling his eyes to watch all that went on about him without turninghis head.
Jim girthed him and cinched him, soundly and securely, for no matter whowas pitched off and smashed up in that ride, he didn't want the saddleto turn and be ruined.
"Well, there he stands, Duke, and saddle and bridle goes with him ifyou're able to ride him. I'll be generous; I won't go half-way with you;I'll be whole hog or none. Saddle and bridle goes with Whetstone, all afree gift, if you can ride him, Duke. I want to start you up right."
It was a safe offer, taking all precedent into account, for no man everhad ridden Whetstone, not even his owner. The beast was an outlaw of themost pronounced type, with a repertory of tricks, calculated to get aman off his back, so extensive that he never seemed to repeat. He stoodalways as docilely as a camel to be saddled and bridled, with whatmethod in this apparent docility no man versed in horse philosophy everhad been able to reason out. Perhaps it was that he had been born with aspite against man, and this was his scheme for luring him on to hisdiscomfiture and disgrace.
It was an expectant little group that stood by to witness thisgreenhorn's rise and fall. According to his established methods,Whetstone would allow him to mount, still standing with that indifferentdroop to his head. But one who was sharp would observe that he wasrolling his old white eyes back to see, tipping his sharp ear like awildcat to hear every scrape and creak of the leather. Then, with theman in the saddle, nobody knew what he would do.
That uncertainty was what made Whetstone valuable and interesting beyondany outlaw in the world. Men grew accustomed to the tricks of ordinarypitching broncos, in time, and the novelty and charm were gone. Besides,there nearly always was somebody who could ride the worst of them. Notso Whetstone. He had won a good deal of money for Jim, and everybody incamp knew that thirty-five dollars wasn't more than a third of the valuethat his owner put upon him.
There was boundless wonder among them, then, and no little admiration,when this stranger who had come into that unlikely place on a bicycleleaped into the saddle so quickly that old Whetstone was takencompletely by surprise, and held him with such a strong hand and stiffrein that his initiative was taken from him.
The greenhorn's next maneuver was to swing the animal round till he losthis head, then clap heels to him and send him off as if he had businessfor the day laid out ahead of him.
It was the most amazing start that anybody ever had been known to makeon Whetstone, and the most startling and enjoyable thing about it wasthat this strange, overgrown boy, with his open face and guilelessspeech, had played them all for a bunch of suckers, and knew more aboutriding in a minute than they ever had learned in their lives.
Jim Wilder stood by, swearing by all his obscene deities that if thatman hurt Whetstone, he'd kill him for his hide. But he began to feelbetter in a little while. Hope, even certainty, picked up again.Whetstone was coming to himself. Perhaps the old rascal had only beenelaborating his scheme a little at the start, and was now about to showthem that their faith in him was not misplaced.
The horse had come to a sudden stop, legs stretched so wide that itseemed as if he surely must break in the middle. But he gathered hisfeet together so quickly that the next view presented him with his backarched like a fighting cat's. And there on top of him rode the Duke, hissmall brown hat in place, his gay shirt ruffling in the wind.
After that there came, so quickly that it made the mind and eye hastento follow, all the tricks that Whetstone ever had tried in his pasttriumphs over men; and through all of them, sharp, shrewd, unexpected,startling as some of them were, that little brown hat rode untroubled ontop. Old Whetstone was as wet at the end of ten minutes as if he hadswum a river. He grunted with anger as he heaved and lashed, he squealedin his resentful passion as he swerved, lunged, pitched, and clawed theair.
The little band of spectators cheered the Duke, calling loudly to informhim that he was the only man who ever had stuck that long. The Dukewaved his hat in acknowledgement, and put it back on with deliberationand exactness, while old Whetstone, as mad as a wet hen, tried to rolldown suddenly and crush his legs.
Nothing to be accomplished by that old trick. The Duke pulled him upwith a wrench that made him squeal, and Whetstone, lifted off hisforelegs, attempted to complete the backward turn and catch histormentor under the saddle. But that was another trick so old that thesimplest horseman knew how to meet it. The next thing he knew, Whetstonewas galloping along like a gentleman, just wind enough in him to carryhim, not an ounce to spare.
Jim Wilder was swearing himself blue. It was a trick, an imposition, hedeclared. No circus-rider could come there and abuse old Whetstone thatway and live to eat his dinner. Nobody appeared to share his view of it.They were a unit in declaring that the Duke beat any man handling ahorse they ever saw. If Whetstone didn't get him off pretty soon, hewould be whipped and conquered, his belly on the ground.
"If he hurts that horse I'll blow a hole in him as big as a can ofsalmon!" Jim declared.
"Take your medicine like a man, Jim," Siwash advised. "You might knowsomebody'd come along that'd ride him, in time."
"Yes, _come_ along!" said Jim with a sneer.
Whetstone had begun to collect himself out on the flat among thesagebrush a quarter of a mile away. The frenzy of desperation was inhim. He was resorting to the raw, low, common tricks of the ordinaryoutlaw, even to biting at his rider's legs. That ungentle
manly behaviorwas costly, as he quickly learned, at the expense of a badly cut mouth.He never had met a rider before who had energy to spare from his effortsto stick in the saddle to slam him a big kick in the mouth when hedoubled himself to make that vicious snap. The sound of that kickcarried to the corral.
"I'll fix you for that!" Jim swore.
He was breathing as hard as his horse, sweat of anxiety running down hisface. The Duke was bringing the horse back, his spirit pretty wellbroken, it appeared.
"What do you care what he does to him? It ain't your horse no more."
It was Taterleg who said that, standing near Jim, a little way behindhim, as gorgeous as a bridegroom in the bright sun.
"You fellers can't ring me in on no game like that and beat me out of myhorse!" said Jim, redder than ever in his passion.
"Who do you mean, rung you in, you little, flannel-faced fiste?"[1]Siwash demanded, whirling round on him with blood in his eye.
Jim was standing with his legs apart, bent a little at the knees, as ifhe intended to make a jump. His right hand was near the butt of his gun,his fingers were clasping and unclasping, as if he limbered them foraction. Taterleg slipped up behind him on his toes, and jerked the gunfrom Jim's scabbard with quick and sure hand. He backed away with it,presenting it with determined mien as Jim turned on him and cursed himby all his lurid gods.
"If you fight anybody in this camp today, Jim, you'll fight like a man,"said Taterleg, "or you'll hobble out of it on three legs, like a wolf."
The Duke was riding old Whetstone like a feather, letting him have hisspurts of kicking and stiff-legged bouncing without any effort torestrain him at all. There wasn't much steam in the outlaw's antics now;any common man could have ridden him without losing his hat.
Jim had drawn apart from the others, resentful of the distrust thatTaterleg had shown, but more than half of his courage and bluster takenaway from him with his gun. He was swearing more volubly than ever tocover his other deficiencies; but he was a man to be feared only when hehad his weapon under his hand.
The Duke had brought the horse almost back to camp when the animal wastaken with an extraordinarily vicious spasm of pitching, broken bysudden efforts to fling himself down and roll over on his persistentrider. The Duke let him have it his way, all but the rolling, for awhile; then he appeared to lose patience with the stubborn beast. Heheaded him into the open, laid the quirt to him, and galloped toward thehills.
"That's the move--run the devil out of him," said one.
The Duke kept him going, and going for all there was in him. Horse andrider were dim in the dust of the heated race against the evil passion,the untamed demon, in the savage creature's heart. It began to look asif Lambert never intended to come back. Jim saw it that way. He cameover to Taterleg as hot as a hornet.
"Give me that gun--I'm goin' after him!"
"You'll have to go without it, Jim."
Jim blasted him to sulphurous perdition, and split him with forkedlightning from his blasphemous tongue.
"He'll come back; he's just runnin' the vinegar out of him," said one.
"Come back--hell!" said Jim.
"If he don't come back, that's his business. A man can go wherever hewants to go on his own horse, I guess."
That was the observation of Siwash, standing there rather glum and outof tune over Jim's charge that they had rung the Duke in on him to beathim out of his animal.
"It was a put-up job! I'll split that feller like a hog!"
Jim left them with that declaration of his benevolent intention,hurrying to the corral where his horse was, his saddle on the ground bythe gate. They watched him saddle, and saw him mount and ride after theDuke, with no comment on his actions at all.
The Duke was out of sight in the scrub timber at the foot of the hills,but his dust still floated like the wake of a swift boat, showing theway he had gone.
"Yes, you will!" said Taterleg.
Meaningless, irrelevant, as that fragmentary ejaculation seemed, theothers understood. They grinned, and twisted wise heads, spat out theirtobacco, and went back to dinner.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 1: Fice--dog.]