The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 18
DAN GUSTIN objected again, loudly and in picturesque terms, against Fred Grubb carrying his shotgun to Bonita when they saddled up for that excursion on Saturday evening. He employed sarcasm, even ridicule, in his good-natured way, but was unable to shake the poet the width of a hair.
"You can tell 'em I'm a granger, I ain't no fightin' man," Fred said. "If them fellers don't like my tools, let 'em walk wide when they see me in the road."
Dan was a little ashamed of his company, but Fred had his way. They planned to get supper at Cattle Kate's, but there was very little anticipation, very little said among them, each man busy with his own thoughts as they rode away from the squat little cabin in the meadows.
Barrett had not seen Alma since the evening she rode abroad with Findlay. He knew that if she had anything to communicate she would seek him at the hay-ranch. He was better pleased that she had not come. This grim business upon which he was setting forth had wrapped about him as bindweed enfolds and smothers the life of growing grain.
He was eager to be about the work of ridding the world of a man so envenomed with villainy and spite, a treacherous scoundrel who held a coward's advantage and played it to insatiable ends. There was no doubt in the young adventurer's mind of the issue between him and Findlay; he could admit no possibility of disastrous conclusion to himself. This doubtless was only desire, stressed so long and passionately as to assume the deceptive face of truth, a phantom that has led many a brave man to a bitter end.
There was considerable activity at Cattle Kate's hotel when they arrived shortly after dusk, that being the biggest night of the week for the institutions of Bonita. Fred Grubb marched into the dining-room with his shotgun under his arm, easy and unconcerned, but his quick eye explored the face of every man in the room before he had gone a dozen feet. Cattle Kate looked on the strange weapon with unfriendly eye as she waited the coming of the three men at the table she had chosen for them.
Kate seemed to be out of humor. She had only a ghost of a smile for Dan when she shook hands with him. To Barrett her face appeared whiter than before, with a wan worriment about her mouth.
"You been rabbit-huntin', Fred?" she inquired, as the poet disposed the gun carefully beside his chair on the floor.
"Wolves," Fred replied shortly, his eye on the door.
Kate employed an Indian girl from the mission school to help her serve her guests, but she elected to wait on the three friends herself. It was the custom of that country in those times to serve everything at once, the pie coming on with the potatoes. Kate was silent as she spread the dishes of food, shaking her head or nodding in reply to Dan's attempts at conversation. When she placed Fred Grubb's pie over on the corner of the table at his left hand, her foot struck the shotgun. She shot its owner a hot, contemptuous look.
"Wolves!" she said, with acrid scorn.
Fred was unmoved. He was lifting a forkful of boiled ham to his mouth, and would not have checked the maneuver to answer a queen. He rolled his eyes at her and nodded. Presently he said:
"Sure. They're eatin' a terrible bunch of our hay."
"I'm goin' to make a rule that guests I'll have to leave all guns in the office," Kate announced severely.
"Be a good scheme," Fred agreed.
Dan contrived to get through before the other two, and Kate about the same time found her presence in the office necessary. Fred winked at seeing this handy little turn of events.
"Guess Dale Findlay ain't goin' to be in town tonibulletpittedght," he said.
"Maybe not," Barrett replied. He had pushed back from the table, having eaten lightly, and was waiting for Fred to complete his abundant feeding.
"I don't know how it is with a man that's goin' to be hung," said Fred, "but you two fellers must have the same kind of a feelin'. I tell you, boy, it takes something more than the chance of a fight to make my gizzard weak."
"I see it does," Barrett said, grinning with true good feeling and admiration of the poet's appetite in the face of unknown perils. "Go right on; eat down to the bottom of the bin and lick the boards. I like to see you do it."
"Me, if I was goin' to be hung, I don't reckon I'd go very heavy on the ham and eggs that morning. I always thought it was mean and onery of a sheriff to go and set out fried chicken and pie before a man that's got to step out on the gallers in the morning, the way you read about 'em doin'. Seems to me it's bad enough to be hung, without bein' reminded before goin' of all the good eatin' a feller's got to leave behind him in this world."
"That's the hard part of being hung, Fred," Barrett said.
He felt every day his feeling of friendship bind closer about this homely, hard-shelled little man. Here was a philosopher who could see so much in life that many other people with supposedly broader visions missed, and got so much more out of it than nine wiser men in every ten wise ones that could be chosen in the world's traveled ways.
"Dan's pourin' honey in her ear," said Fred, looking through the door into the office, where their partner and Cattle Kate hung over the cigar case, one on either side. "Give that boy rope and he'll wind it around Dale Findlay's legs so tight he'll lose the race. Women can't back away from a boy like Dan. He's got a clean feelin' about him, like a pine tree."
"You've said it like a true poet, Fred. If Cattle Kate's half as wise as she looks to me, she'll know which way to jump."
"Yes, but you never can tell about them women. Sometimes it looks like a man's got one of 'em tamed so she won't stray, and then when he leaves the hobble off some night he wakes up in the morning and finds she's gone off with some other feller. Well, it never happened to me, and it ain't never goin' to happen."
"I should hope not, Fred. Done?"
"All set."
Fred picked up his gun and walked ahead of Barrett as they left the room. After they had adjusted the damage, as Fred called it, Cattle Kate rushed back to the dining-room in her quick come and go way, skirmishing around from table to table to see that the. Indian girl was doing all possible to maintain the reputation of the house. She brought up at a table where two cowpunchers sat who had the look of greenhorns on the range, and remained talking with them.
"Kate's red-headed, hoppin' mad!" said Dan, full of glee that he could not hide.
"You don't seem to be much worried over it," Barrett remarked.
"Me? I'm shoutin', I'm settin' on a log pattin' juber. Dale and Alma rode clean over here the other evenin'—to buy two spools of thread!"
"The—hell—you—say!" said Fred, drawing a longer interval between words as they left his astonished mouth.
"Twenty-four miles for two spools of thread!" Dan chuckled. "Say, do you fellers know they're goin' to have a dance at Four Corners next Tuesday night?"
Neither of them had heard of it. But Fred said he thought it was about time for the fall festivities to begin on the range.
"Alma told Cattle Kate Dale's goin' to take her to the dance," Dan announced, so full of excitement and good feeling that he fairly panted.
It was Barrett's turn to explode now. He came out with it like a veteran.
"The hell she did!" he said.
"Cattle Kate said to tell you, Ed; she thought you might be interested to hear about it."
Dan winked with crafty humor, as much as te say he knew it wasn't through any desire of Kate's to stir a feeling of jealousy in other quarters and maybe head off the excursion.
Barrett was upset by a turmoil in which he floundered with a feeling of panic. When he had suggested the programme to Alma, which she was pursuing with such speed, he had very little notion that she would attempt it, or that she ever would have the opportunity of doing so if inclined to take the hazard. His thought at the time had been that Findlay would be well out of the world before Alma could begin plotting his confusion through the jealousy of Cattle Kate.
He didn't want her going about in Findlay's company, no matter if she might possess herself of all the secrets he had concealed in his black heart. The man breathed villainy; there was pestilence in his presence.
Fred was the only one of the three not so absorbed in this news as to forget that he had come there on a hostile mission. He kept watch on the front door, one eager ear open for the gossip in the room.
"A girl that can stay good in Bonita like Cattle Kate's done is too good a girl for Dale Findlay," said Fred.
He went to the door and locked up and down the one-sided street. Some soldiers were hitching their horses in front of the hotel, talking noisily. Fred went out to survey the land beyond.
Cattle Kate's front entrance was built with regard to a horseback-riding country. A platform, or porch, not roofed, projected in front of the door, steps leading to it on either end. This platform was the height of one's foot in the stirrup, and was handy for officers from the post in muddy weather, as well as for inebriate cowpunchers who found difficulty in getting into the saddle from the ground. Once in, no amount of liquor could reel them out.
A woman might dismount upon this platform with ease, and tie her horse to one of the ringbolts set along its outer edge, as the ranch wives and daughters commonly did when business brought them to Cattle Kate's store. These hitching places were dedicated solely to feminine use; this was understood far and near. Let any cowpuncher, cattle baron, or officer from the post transgress at peril of a dressing-down from Cattle Kate that he would not soon forget.
Fred stood on this little vantage point, running his eyes around the town. All of it lay on the side of the road where the hotel stood, as has been explained, due to governmental regulations. The center of the road was the deadline; there the sacred boundary of government property stretched. The moon was well up over this scene, every hous¢ in the town plainly revealed to Fred's eyes. He did not discover anything of hostile appearance, nor any familiar horses along the nearby racks.
Near him on the porch there was the usual Saturday night pile of saddles; he looked over as many as were exposed to examination, finding none that he knew. The poet concluded that they had picked on a poor night for collecting their debt from Findlay and Glass. He turned to rejoin his partners in the office, to find Glass facing him at the other end of the porch, not more than twenty feet between them.
Glass was alone. Whether he had been creeping up from some back way to spy out their numbers, or whether he had been sitting on the steps all the time and had got to his feet only that moment, Grubb did not know. But there he stood, and as Fred waited a moment to gather his intentions, he started to pull his gun.
Grubb's shot brought Barrett and Dan to the door on the jump. Fred had cut loose with both barrels, not a second's interval between. The roar of his big-bore gun startled the dozing horses; they were trampling and snorting in great confusion and dust when Barrett and Dan made their spectacular entry upon what was truly the stage of action.
"What the devil?" Dan asked, bringing up suddenly, gun in his hand, puzzled for an answer.
"I got him, damn him!" Fred cut in, the breech of his gun open, fresh cartridges in his fingers.
"Who? Where's he at?"
Dan peered around as he asked, unmindful of the fact that they stood in the light of the door.
"Down there," Fred pointed.
They moved forward cautiously, guns ready. Behind them there was the noise of a stampede from the dining-room forward, to see what was going on, for curiosity always is greater than the sense of danger in those who are not principals in a fight. The three friends stood at the head of the steps and looked at the unoccupied ground at the bottom.
"He was right there!" Fred declared. "He was pullin' his gun on me—right there!"
"Well, he ain't there now," said Dan, a bit sarcastically.
"I must 'a'"
"Get away from here to do your shootin'!"
Cattle Kate spoke from the door. She held her bill-collector in her hand to enforce the order. Up the street there sounded a loud, mocking laugh, followed by a shot.
The three friends, feeling rather foolish, but not so foolish as to abandon caution altogether, rushed out into the cover of darkness in the road.
"That was him! I must 'a'"
Two quick shots from the corner of the saloon, which stood a lean-to against the hotel, left no doubt that Fred had fired at something more than the ghost of a man. Barrett saw Cattle Kate fanning out the lights in the hotel office with a hat; heard the front door shut with a sound of substantiality that promised security for those behind it.
"Scatter out!" Dan called, a note of warning in his voice.
"I must 'a'—" Fred began his explanation that seemed destined to lie on his tongue uncompleted. Dan and Barrett began firing; others came running from the dance hall to the assistance of Glass, summoned by his whooping, shooting as they ran.
The three friends had taken the open side of the road at Cattle Kate's command to get away from the hotel. There was no shelter on that side bigger than a bunch of grass, and the moon, already above the housetops, revealed them sharply against the gray broken ground beyond.
Up the road a hundred yards or more somebody had left a wagon. It looked to Barrett from that distance like a government freight wagon, canvas-topped, heavy. There were no horses near it, apparently it was deserted by whoever owned or drove it. Calling to his comrades, Barrett cut out for this shelter, pegging away at the flashes from the shadows and corners of buildings across the road.
Fred Grubb was first to reach the wagon, passing Barrett on the way almost as if he stood still. Not by fright were these wings lent to the poet's heels, for he no sooner passed behind the wagon than he jumped out into the moonlight again to deliver both barrels of his shotgun toward a bunch of four or five men in front of the dance hall, who were firing on Barrett and Dan.
Fred's unexpected broadside drove them to shelter. The door of the dance hall closed after them, the lights went out.
But from other buildings activities began. It seemed to be the attitude of Bonita to mix whether it was its fight or not; the desire to shoot seemed to be irresistible. Windows were raised, streaks of fire blazed forth. Most of these snipers fired across the road, going on the theory that whoever stood outside of the town and fired at anybody or anything in it must be enemies, therefore to be repulsed and overwhelmed.
In this way Bonita was pretty generally involved in the affray inside of two minutes after its beginning. Bullets slapped the dust in the road, plugged through the canvas cover of the wagon, rattled in the woodwork of the wheels.
Men were seen coming out of the darkened dance hall. Barrett gathered from this that the lights had been put out for no other reason than to allow them to slip out in comparative safety. He turned his attention to these reenforcements, which began to cut loose at the wagon from the corner of the house they had left.
"They're comin'!" Dan announced from his station at the rear of the wagon.
Barrett turned, to see a band of men come charging up the road, yelling as they broke from the shadow of the saloon into the moonlight. They were shooting wildly, as most of the old school cowpunchers shot when out of the saddle hobbling along on high-heeled boots. The unseen auxiliaries brisked up their assault from windows and side doors, and Barrett, calling Dan and Grubb to his side, suggested that they hold fire until the rush came within good shotgun range.
Fred either misunderstood the suggestion or was unable to contain himself in face of this defiant charge. He jumped from behind the wagon, ran a rod or two down the road to meet the oncoming whooping, shooting gang, and gave them both barrels. Barrett and Dan went out to cover Fred's retreat, only to see the poet, standing calmly in his tracks, break his gun and start reloading.
Fred's charge of buckshot stopped the rush, Barrett and Dan turned it into immediate and precipitate flight. One man in the fleeing bunch stumbled, fell; the others ran on. Under the urge of lead behind them they made for their horses, mounted and rode out of town.
Fred Grubb stood in the road putting buckshot into windows and doors from which the townspeople were having their safe little part in the noisy fray. Barrett and Gustin left him engaged in this manner while they went to see who had fallen in the road, and whether he was in need of, or beyond, help. At their approach the fellow sprang to his feet like a fish breaking water, and ran as if a bullet never had been within a mile of him. He was so eager to make a good beginning in this race, doubtless mistaking the intention of the two men advancing, that he ran face to face with a five-wire fence surrounding the hotel corral. He saw it in time to gather himself for a jump, and cleared it like a deer. As he went over, his hat flew off. Dan went on and picked it up.
The shooting from windows and dark places of safety stopped suddenly when Grubb began to pour his argument against this method of dealing. The poet stood in the road, a fair mark for anybody that had hand steady enough, and gun with carrying capacity to reach him, loading and shooting with calm regularity. The sound of his gun was the only one that rose out of the sudden quiet of the town.
Dan hurried to him, took him by the arm as he was lifting his piece to fire again.
"It's all over, Fred," he said.
The poet's two friends had a laugh at his bloodthirsty eagerness to clean up the town, and a laugh at themselves when it came to take stock of the results of the battle. None of them had a scratch; so far as they knew, none of the other side was hit. Judging from the way that man got up out of the road and jumped the fence, Dan said he must have dropped down there to take a rock out of his boot.
"Whose hat is it, do you know?" Barrett inquired.
Fred Grubb went behind the wagon, out of caution, to strike a match and look over the one trophy of the noisy battle.
"Yes, it's his'n," he said.
"Findlay's?"
"No," disgustedly, "that darn rattlesnake of a Glass!"
There was little said between the three as they mounted and started home. They must have gone three miles when Dan spoke.
"Great shootin'!" he said.
"Finest a bunch of men ever pulled off," Barrett agreed.
On again, a mile or two more, nothing said. Then Fred:
"Well, I must 'a'? missed him," he sighed.