Lin McLean
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Owen Wister >> Lin McLean
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16 LIN McLEAN
By
OWEN WISTER
DEDICATION
MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public
page.
Always yours,
OWEN WISTER
Philadelphia, 1897
HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed
upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing day.
The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef round-up, not
yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding bachelors of the
saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's credit on the
ranch books.
"What's the matter with some variety?" muttered the boy in his blankets.
The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
forth from them, descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside the
mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so it
wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush and
the yellow, vanishing plains.
"Variety, you bet!" young Lin repeated, aloud.
He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that made
his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and limped
blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was always
more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the fork from
Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged
his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark
water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at
breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
"Bugged up to kill!" exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.
"He sure has not shaved again?" another inquired, with concern.
"I ain't got my opera-glasses on," answered a third.
"He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache," said a fourth.
"My spring crop," remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, "has
juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
which wanders out of your face."
"Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man," said the
other.
But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.
Him Lin McLean at once addressed. "I was wantin' to speak to you," said
he.
The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. "I
understand you're tired of work," he remarked.
"Who told you?" asked the bewildered Lin.
The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. "Well, I have a way of
taking things in at a glance," said he. "That's why I'm foreman, I
expect. So you've had enough work?"
"My system's full of it," replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
thinking, he added, "And I'd like my time."
Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
"It's good we're not busy," said the foreman.
"Meanin' I'd quit all the same?" inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
"No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
post before it gets hot."
The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek, and
the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured
the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.
"So-long!" he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might never be
going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
demonstrative by habit.
"Going to stop long at Washakie?" asked one.
"Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now," another mentioned.
"If there's a new girl," said a third, "kiss her one for me, and tell her
I'm handsomer than you."
"I ain't a deceiver of women," said Lin.
"That's why you'll tell her," replied his friend.
"Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?" asked the cook,
grieved to lose him.
"I'm after some variety," said the boy.
"If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!"
shouted the cook at the departing McLean.
This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.
"So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?" said the
foreman.
"Brought my tooth-brush," said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
his flannel shirt.
"Going to Denver?"
"Why, maybe."
"Take in San Francisco?"
"Sounds slick."
"Made any plans?"
"Gosh, no!"
"Don't want anything on your brain?"
"Nothin' except my hat, I guess," said Lin, and broke into cheerful song:
"'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
And it only died to spite us;
'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
Spinal meningitis!'"
They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses, upward
and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind lay the
deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees like
bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also to the
edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step farther
away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed together
over it like a closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple the great
country which lay sunk beneath.
"A man might think he'd dreamed he'd saw that place," said Lin to the
foreman, and wheeled his horse to the edge again. "She's sure there,
though," he added, gazing down. For a moment his boy face grew
thoughtful. "Shucks!" said he then, abruptly, "where's any joy in money
that's comin' till it arrives? I have most forgot the feel o' spot-cash."
He turned his horse away from the far-winding vision of the river, and
took a sharp jog after the foreman, who had not been waiting for him.
Thus they crossed the eighteen miles of high plain, and came down to Fort
Washakie, in the valley of Little Wind, before the day was hot.
His roll of wages once jammed in his pocket like an old handkerchief,
young Lin precipitated himself out of the post-trader's store and away on
his horse up the stream among the Shoshone tepees to an unexpected
entertainment--a wolf-dance. He had meant to go and see what the new
waiter-girl at the hotel looked like, but put this off promptly to attend
the dance. This hospitality the Shoshone Indians were extending to some
visiting Ute friends, and the neighborhood was assembled to watch the
ring of painted naked savages.
The post-trader looked after the galloping Lin. "What's he quitting his
job for?" he asked the foreman.
"Same as most of 'em quit."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Been satisfactory?"
"Never had a boy more so. Good-hearted, willing, a plumb dare-devil with
a horse."
"And worthless," suggested the post-trader.
"Well--not yet. He's headed that way."
"Been punching cattle long?"
"Came in the country about seventy-eight, I believe, and rode for the
Bordeaux Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Cheyenne till he went
broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most a
year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte
Creek. Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the fracture
was commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the hog-ranch
across the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr. Barker to tell
you about that. McLean drifted to Green River last year and went up over
on to Snake, and up Snake, and was around with a prospecting outfit on
Galena Creek by Pitchstone Canyon. Seems he got interested in some
Dutchwoman up there, but she had trouble--died, I think they said--and he
came down by Meteetsee to Wind River. He's liable to go to Mexico or
Africa next."
"If you need him," said the post-trader, closing his ledger, "you can
offer him five more a month."
"That'll not hold him."
"Well, let him go. Have a cigar. The bishop is expected for Sunday, and
I've got to see his room is fixed up for him."
"The bishop!" said the foreman. "I've heard him highly spoken of."
"You can hear him preach to-morrow. The bishop is a good man."
"He's better than that; he's a man," stated the foreman--"at least so
they tell me."
Now, saving an Indian dance, scarce any possible event at the Shoshone
agency could assemble in one spot so many sorts of inhabitants as a visit
from this bishop. Inhabitants of four colors gathered to view the
wolf-dance this afternoon--red men, white men, black men, yellow men.
Next day, three sorts came to church at the agency. The Chinese laundry
was absent. But because, indeed (as the foreman said), the bishop was not
only a good man but a man, Wyoming held him in respect and went to look
at him. He stood in the agency church and held the Episcopal service this
Sunday morning for some brightly glittering army officers and their
families, some white cavalry, and some black infantry; the agency doctor,
the post-trader, his foreman, the government scout, three gamblers, the
waiter-girl from the hotel, the stage-driver, who was there because she
was; old Chief Washakie, white-haired and royal in blankets, with two
royal Utes splendid beside him; one benchful of squatting Indian
children, silent and marvelling; and, on the back bench, the commanding
officer's new hired-girl, and, beside her, Lin McLean.
Mr. McLean's hours were already various and successful. Even at the
wolf-dance, before he had wearied of its monotonous drumming and pageant,
his roving eye had rested upon a girl whose eyes he caught resting upon
him. A look, an approach, a word, and each was soon content with the
other. Then, when her duties called her to the post from him and the
stream's border, with a promise for next day he sought the hotel and
found the three gamblers anxious to make his acquaintance; for when a
cow-puncher has his pay many people will take an interest in him. The
three gamblers did not know that Mr. McLean could play cards. He left
them late in the evening fat with their money, and sought the tepees of
the Arapahoes. They lived across the road from the Shoshones, and among
their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and
while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
to encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
from round his neck.
The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it
prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain
suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific
Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River, had
despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:
"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
neck and kissed him."
The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.
Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and
the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,
listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern how
that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,
attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,
and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the
hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people
dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings, and the
cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
"What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?" inquired the lady, after a
hundred yards.
"Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?" asked Lin, absently.
"No, indeed. What's them?"
"Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too." Mr. McLean fell silent
again.
"I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye," said
Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered away
with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.
Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
"Only," protested Sabina, "I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out and--
well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River politeness."
But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the afternoon.
Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat levels of
sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They splashed
across the many little running channels which lead water through that
thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no nearer, behind
them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green trees, dwindled
to a toy village.
"My! but it's far to everywheres here," exclaimed Sabina, "and it's
little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do the
talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?"
"That's Little Wind River Canyon," said the young man. "Feel like goin'
there, Miss Stone?"
"Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's."
So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
"When do your folks eat supper?" inquired Lin.
"Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on."
"How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?"
Lin asked.
"What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day," said
the lady.
"Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the
colonel's table," Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. "That
is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I
know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'."
"You're the teasingest man--" said Miss Stone, pouting. "I might have
knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked."
"Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'
out to-night."
"Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!" and Sabina giggled.
A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.
"Something like them partridges used to," said Lin, musingly.
"Partridges?" inquired Sabina.
"Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are gone
by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess."
Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
"We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times," said Lin, his
wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head
and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
advantage.
"I expect you used to dance a lot," remarked Sabina, for a subject.
"Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?"
Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
"Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?" she inquired next.
"Why, sure," said Lin, waking for a moment; "but I like your color best.
A girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's."
"Indeed, I don't think so!" exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant to
perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer
pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.
"Never?" said he. "It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water. It's
different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in July--
around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the islands. I've
swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to board in Boston."
He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm. Suddenly all dreaminess
left him.
"I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?" he
said.
Miss Stone was at a loss.
"I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston."
Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
journey from the post that he intended to make--the farthest from the
post and her.
"I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?" said she.
"I ain't got no folks," replied Lin, "barring a brother. I expect he is
taking good care of himself."
"Don't you correspond?"
"Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been
nothin'."
Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.
It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she
noticed him step to his own.
"Why, I didn't know you were lame!" cried she.
"Shucks!" said Lin. "It don't cramp my style any." He had sprung on his
horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any
measure of his activity.
"That's how," said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. "No,"
Lin continued, "Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have a
look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good enough
for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot of years
now. Whoop ye!" he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter at a
jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when
she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he
took the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and found
the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering dish of
fat pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself that
inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed Duxbury
clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that she found
others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and fifty miles
from the railway, and men there were many and girls were few.
The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with resignation,
knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them. Lin climbed up
beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
"Don't get full, Lin," said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the
store.
"My plans ain't settled that far yet," replied Mr. McLean.
"Leave it out of them," said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside
the stage.
It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade
ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot
springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance
Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.
"When do yu' figure on comin' back?" inquired the driver.
"Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell," said Lin. "About a
month, I guess."
He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you were?
But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the bottom
of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided it was a
suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them to change
their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and unharness. Then
they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace was spliced with
rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground, the bishop
proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles. They crossed
through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines, and, reaching
Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That afternoon the
stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform at Green River;
this was the route in those days before the mid-winter catastrophes of
frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was going west. His
robes had passed him on the up stage during the night. When the reverend
gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short moment, and then
laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
"I can understand how you swear sometimes," he said to Lin McLean; "but I
can't, you see. Not even at this."
The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.
"Good-bye and good luck to you," continued the bishop, giving his hand to
Lin. "And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting full'
out of your plans?"
Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. "I don't guess I can, sir," he said.
"I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see," he added.
"That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
in the same place."
He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He walked
up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright lights of
the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way piano-music
sounded through one of the many open doors.
"Wonder if the professor's there yet?" said Lin, and he went across the
railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into
the back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and
rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin did
not join the stud-poker game. He stood over a table at which sat a dealer
and a player, very silent, opposite each other, and whereon were painted
sundry cards, numerals, and the colors red and black in squares. The
legend "Jacks pay" was also clearly painted. The player placed chips on
whichever insignia of fortune he chose, and the dealer slid cards (quite
fairly) from the top of a pack that lay held within a skeleton case made
with some clamped bands of tin. Sometimes the player's pile of chips rose
high, and sometimes his sumptuous pillar of gold pieces was lessened by
one. It was very interesting and pretty to see; Lin had much better have
joined the game of stud-poker. Presently the eye of the dealer met the
eye of the player. After that slight incident the player's chip pile
began to rise, and rose steadily, till the dealer made admiring comments
on such a run of luck. Then the player stopped, cashed in, and said
good-night, having nearly doubled the number of his gold pieces.
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