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Marian Keith - "The Black Bearded Barbarian"

A. Light, of Waxhaw - "The Children of the Night, by Edwin Arlington Robinson"

Charles Eastman - "Old Indian Days"

Agatha Christie - "The Secret Adversary"

Lin McLean

O >> Owen Wister >> Lin McLean




"I was thinkin' of all day," said Lin. "I'll not make yu' do anything
yu'd rather not."

"Ah, they can smoke without me," said Billy, with sudden acrimony. "I'll
see 'em to-morro'."

"That's you!" cried Mr. McLean. "Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell them
to keep a table for us. I'll get my clothes on and follow yu'."

The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself,
tying his scarf with great care. "Wished I'd a clean shirt," said he.
"But I don't look very bad. Shavin' yesterday afternoon was a good move."
He picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was particular to
store them in his safest pocket. "I ain't sure whether you're crazy or
not," said he to the man in the looking-glass. "I ain't never been sure."
And he slammed the door and went down-stairs.

He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
tilted against it as warning to strangers. No one sat at any other table
or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite emptied of
breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had gathered behind
Billy's important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough meal, and Billy
pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks, which were not upon
the bill of fare.

"I'd like to see you often," said he. "I'll come and see you if you don't
live too far."

"That's the trouble," said the cow-puncher. "I do. Awful far." He stared
out of the window.

"Well, I might come some time. I wish you'd write me a letter. Can you
write?" "What's that? Can I write? Oh yes."

"I can write, an' I can read too. I've been to school in Sidney,
Nebraska, an' Magaw, Kansas, an' Salt Lake--that's the finest town except
Denver."

Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to, yet
goes on contented and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable
signs of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
interested waiter said respectfully that he desired to close the room,
they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
the bill paid.

The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver's gates
stood the mountains sparkling; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from
their peaks; no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over
the city without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells broke
out against the jocund silence of the morning.

"Don't you like music?" inquired Billy.

"Yes," said Lin.

Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting, orderly
yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of Christmas
came now and again to the cow-puncher's ears; but to-day, possessor of
his own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort of friendly
challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.

"Don't you think we could go in here?" Billy asked. A church door was
open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. "They've good
music here, an' they keep it up without much talking between. I've been
in lots of times."

They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep in
listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent imitation
of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain especially
reached their understandings, and when for the fourth time "Shout the
glad tidings, exultingly sing," pealed forth and ceased, both the
delighted faces fell.

"Don't you wish there was more?" Billy whispered.

"Wish there was a hundred verses," answered Lin.

But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between them
they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel. Lin's eyes
roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their evergreen, the
flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and gold. "'Peace, good-
will towards men,'" he read. "That's so. Peace and good-will. Yes, that's
so. I expect they got that somewheres in the Bible. It's awful good, and
you'd never think of it yourself."

There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. "This is
the hymn we have now," she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the book
together, dutifully reading the words:

"It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold;
Peace on the earth--"

This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it, until
he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the concluding
ones:

"And the whole world sent back the song
Which now the angels sing."

The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned his
face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has reasons
which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but when the
service was over and he came out, he repeated again, "'Peace and
good-will.' When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I'll tell him if he'll
preach on them words I'll be there."

"Couldn't we shoot your pistol now?" asked Billy.

"Sure, boy. Ain't yu' hungry, though?"

"No. I wish we were away off up there. Don't you?"

"The mountains? They look pretty, so white! A heap better 'n houses. Why,
we'll go there! There's trains to Golden. We'll shoot around among the
foothills."

To Golden they immediately went, and after a meal there, wandered in the
open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and Billy
was walked off his young heels--a truth he learned complete in one horrid
moment, and battled to conceal.

"Lame!" he echoed, angrily. "I ain't."

"Shucks!" said Lin, after the next ten steps. "You are, and both feet."

"Tell you, there's stones here, an' I'm just a-skipping them."

Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden. "I'm
played out myself," he said, sitting in the hotel and looking
lugubriously at Billy on a bed. "And I ain't fit to have charge of a
hog." He came and put his hand on the boy's head.

"I'm not sick," said the cripple. "I tell you I'm bully. You wait an' see
me eat dinner."

But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner!

There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription and
most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of vigil,
while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed, better
and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.

"I couldn't work quick to-day," he said. "But I guess one day won't lose
me my trade."

"How d' yu' mean?" asked Lin.

"Why, I've got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an' Pete Goode has
theirs, an' we don't cut each other. I've got Mr. Daniels an' Mr. Fisher
an' lots, an' if you lived in Denver I'd shine your boots every day for
nothing. I wished you lived in Denver."

"Shine my boots? Yu'll never! And yu' don't black Daniels or Fisher, or
any of the outfit."

"Why, I'm doing first-rate," said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
which Mr. McLean now burst. "An' I ain't big enough to get to make money
at any other job."

"I want to see that engine-man," muttered Lin. "I don't like your smokin'
friend."

"Pete Goode? Why, he's awful smart. Don't you think he's smart?"

"Smart's nothin'," observed Mr. McLean.

"Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot," pursued Billy, engagingly.

"I'll bet he has!" growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
aback at his language.

It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched and
shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through a scene
in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and forgiveness,
and intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. "Shucks!" said he. "The
kid would be off again inside a week. And I don't want him there,
anyway."

Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular man,
with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that week
noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little boy
walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed as
happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a word,
and his face was serious.

Upon New-year's Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.

"Hello!" said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. "Have a
good drunk?"

"Changed my mind," said Lin, grinning. "Proves I've got one. Struck
Christmas all right, though."

"Who's your friend?" inquired his Excellency.

"This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain't nice
to live in. If Judge Henry's foreman and his wife won't board him at Sunk
Creek--why, I'll fix it somehow."

The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together toward the open
plain.

"Sufferin Moses!" remarked his Excellency.





SEPAR'S VIGILANTE

We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and jogging
through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were a pale-blue
coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal lay shining, a
little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of sage-brush. For two
hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising into sight across
the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our undulating,
imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly, except for
its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against Wyoming's
stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and other
buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's blocks
arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized by the
sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the distant
rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.

"They've caved!" he shouted.

"Who?" I cried, thus awakened.

"Ah, the fool company," said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.
"They've shed their haughtiness," he added, confidingly, as if I must
know all about it.

"Where did they learn that wisdom?" I asked, not knowing in the least.

"Experience," he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and
passed); "nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."

He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known
more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous. But now I
waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its
haughtiness. I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for
so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the emotion
of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed
employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind. Probably he meant the
railroad company; certainly something large had happened. Even as I
dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of the
station, and, at once remarking, "They're going to leave us alone,"
sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where some
cattle were being loaded into a train. I went inside for my mail, and
here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent. They had got a
letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to appreciate
the jests of these rollicking people. "Read it!" they said to me; and I
did read the private document, and learned that the railroad was going to
waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would trust to Separ's
good feeling. "Nothing more," the letter ran, "will be done about the
initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms. We shall pass over our
wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will prove our
genuine desire to benefit that section.

"'Initial outrage,'" quoted one of the agent' large playmates. "Ain't
they furgivin'?"

"Well," said I, "you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a
deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the
cow-catcher!"

The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.

"We didn't hurt him none. Just returned him to his home. Hear about the
label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him? 'Send us along one dozen as per
sample.' Honey's quaint! Yes," he drawled judicially, "I'd be mad at
that. But if you're making peace with a man because it's convenient why,
your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant." He took
the paper from me, and read, sardonically: "'Subsequent vandalisms ...
wasted outlay.' I suppose they run this station from charity to the
cattle. Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad
'Policy of friendship ... genuine desire'--oh mouth-wash!" And, shaking
his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of
the agent. "Tubercle," said he (this was their name for the agent, who
had told all of us about his lungs), "it ain't your fault we saw their
fine letter. They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn't
bother us any more, and then we'd act square. The boys'll sit up late
over this joke."

Then they tramped to their horses and rode away. The spokesman had hit
the vital point unerringly; for cow-punchers are shrewdly alive to
frankness, and it often draws out the best that is in them; but its
opposite affects them unfavorably; and I, needing sleep, sighed to think
of their late sitting up over that joke. I walked to the board box
painted "Hotel Brunswick"--"hotel" in small italics and "Brunswick"
in enormous capitals, the N and the S wrong side up.

Here sat a girl outside the door, alone. Her face was broad, wholesome,
and strong, and her eyes alert and sweet. As I came she met me with a
challenging glance of good-will. Those women who journeyed along the line
in the wake of payday to traffic with the men employed a stare well
known; but this straight look seemed like the greeting of some pleasant
young cowboy. In surprise I forgot to be civil, and stepped foolishly by
her to see about supper and lodging.

At the threshold I perceived all lodging bespoken. On each of the four
beds lay a coat or pistol or other article of dress, and I must lodge
myself. There were my saddle-blankets--rather wet; or Lin McLean might
ride in to-night on his way to Riverside; or perhaps down at the corrals
I could find some other acquaintance whose habit of washing I trusted and
whose bed I might share. Failing these expedients, several empties stood
idle upon a siding, and the box-like darkness of these freight-cars was
timely. Nights were short now. Camping out, the dawn by three o'clock
would flow like silver through the universe, and, sinking through my
blankets, remorselessly pervade my buried hair and brain. But with clean
straw in the bottom of an empty, I could sleep my fill until five or six.
I decided for the empty, and opened the supper-room door, where the table
was set for more than enough to include me; but the smell of the butter
that awaited us drove me out of the Hotel Brunswick to spend the
remaining minutes in the air.

"I was expecting you," said the girl. "Well, if I haven't frightened
him!" She laughed so delightfully that I recovered and laughed too.
"Why," she explained, "I just knew you'd not stay in there. Which side
are you going to butter your bread this evening?"

"You had smelt it?" said I, still cloudy with surprise. "Yes.
Unquestionably. Very rancid." She glanced oddly at me, and, with less
fellowship in her tone, said, "I was going to warn you--" when suddenly,
down at the corrals, the boys began to shoot at large. "Oh, dear!" she
cried, starting up. "There's trouble."

"Not trouble," I assured her. "Too many are firing at once to be in
earnest. And you would be safe here."

"Me? A lady without escort? Well, I should reckon so! Leastways, we are
respected where I was raised. I was anxious for the gentlemen ovah
yondah. Shawhan, K. C. branch of the Louavull an' Nashvull, is my home."
The words "Louisville and Nashville" spoke creamily of Blue-grass.

"Unescorted all that way!" I exclaimed.

"Isn't it awful?" said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing
the pistol she carried. "But we've always been awful in Kentucky. Now I
suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?" And she
eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.

"Why New York?" I demanded. "Guess again."

"Well," she debated, "well, cowboy clothes and city language--he's
English!" she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered
to herself, reprovingly, "If I'm not acting rude!"

"Oh!" said I, rather familiarly.

"It was, sir; and please to excuse me. If you had started joking so free
with me, I'd have been insulted. When I saw you--the hat and everything--
I took you--You see I've always been that used to talking to--to folks
around!" Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose before her,
and her eyes grew distant.

I wished to say, "Treat me as 'folks around,'" but this tall country girl
had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not "folks around," she
had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground
there, she drew a firm, clear woman's line between us. Plainly she was a
comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the
dark as to them.

"Yes, unescorted two thousand miles," she resumed, "and never as far as
twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you'll have to be
scandalized, for I'd do it right over again to-morrow."

"You've got me all wrong," said I. "I'm not English; I'm not New York. I
am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional
line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when you
say United States, you mean United Kentucky!"

"Did you ever!" said she, staring at what was Greek to her--as it is to
most Americans. "And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you
were all there was of you any more, and she hadn't seen you since--not
since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you,
you'd not tell her 'Fie for shame'?"

"I'd travel my money's length to meet her!" said I.

A wave of pain crossed her face. "Nate didn't know," she said then,
lightly. "You see, Nate's only a boy, and regular thoughtless about
writing."

Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!
Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and
forgiven.

"I'm starting for him in the Buffalo stage," continued the girl.

"Then I'll have your company on a weary road," said I; for my journey was
now to that part of the cattle country.

"To Buffalo?" she said, quickly. "Then maybe you--maybe--My brother is
Nate Buckner." She paused. "Then you're not acquainted with him?"

"I may have seen him," I answered, slowly. "But faces and names out here
come and go."

I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week,
waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild
border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been
sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity of
the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and
daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart;
but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely
years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to tell
the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if the
stage went soon after supper.

"Now isn't that a bother?" said she, when I answered that it did not
start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. "Never
mind," she continued, briskly; "I'm used to things. I'll just sit up
somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You're sure
all that shooting's only jollification?"

"Certain," I said. "But I'll go and see."

"They always will have their fun," said she. "But I hate to have a poor
boy get hurt--even him deserving it!"

"They use pistols instead of fire-crackers," said I. "But you must never
sleep in that office. I'll see what we can do."

"Why, you're real kind!" she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed,
wondering what I ought to do.

Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once--a sort
of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of its
name.

Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail
after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth's face visibly
during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point
these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp
Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American railway
man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt, but needless;
and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief, businesslike
result--Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on a board large
almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the fat water-tank
and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees before it composed
the north side. South of the track were no trees. There was one long
siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were a hovel where plug
tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where you might get your
horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed
hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the little station--some seven
shanties all told. Between them were spaces of dust, the immediate plains
engulfed them, and through their midst ran the far-vanishing railroad, to
which they hung like beads on a great string from horizon to horizon. A
great east-and-west string, one end in the rosy sun at morning, and one
in the crimson sun at night. Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports
where the world went on out of sight and hearing. This lone steel thread
had been stretched across the continent because it was the day of haste
and hope, when dollars seemed many and hard times were few; and from the
Yellowstone to the Rio Grande similar threads were stretching, and little
Separs by dispersed hundreds hung on them, as it were in space eternal.
Can you wonder that vigorous young men with pistols should, when they
came to such a place, shoot them off to let loose their unbounded joy of
living?

And yet it was not this merely that began the custom, but an error of the
agent's. The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey Wiggin
with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up to
telegraph for some additional cars.

"I'm dead on to you!" squealed the official, dropping flat at the sight
of them; and bang went his gun at them. They, most naturally, thought it
was a maniac, and ran for their lives among the supports of the
water-tank, while he remained anchored with his weapon, crouched behind
the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity; and some
fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth to
an understanding, and the message was written and paid for and
comfortably despatched. The agent was an honest creature, but of tame
habits, sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise
inappropriate air. He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns, a serious
reader of our comic weeklies; hence the apparition of Wiggin and the
Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits. He had express money
in the safe, he explained to them, and this was a hard old country,
wasn't it? and did they like good whiskey?

They drank his whiskey, but it was not well to have mentioned that about
the bandits. Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their
round-up grime they could look very engaging. The two cow-punchers rode
out, not angry, but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them
should be so tactless.

"If we don't get him used to us," observed the Virginian, "he and his
pop-gun will be guttin' some blameless man."

Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it. The
news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater, and
playful, howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting with pistols
round the ticket office, educating the agent. His lungs improved, and he
came dimly to smile at this life which he did not understand. But the
company discerned no humor whatever in having its water-tank perforated,
which happened twice; and sheriffs and deputies and other symptoms of
authority began to invest Separ. Now what should authority do upon these
free plains, this wilderness of do-as-you-please, where mere breathing
the air was like inebriation? The large, headlong children who swept in
from the sage-brush and out again meant nothing that they called harm
until they found themselves resisted. Then presently happened that affair
of the cow-catcher; and later a too-zealous marshal, come about a
mail-car they had side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and
petticoats, met his death accidentally, at which they were sincerely
sorry for about five minutes. They valued their own lives as little, and
that lifts them forever from baseness at least. So the company,
concluding such things must be endured for a while yet, wrote their
letter, and you have seen how wrong the letter went. All it would do
would be from now on to fasten upon Separ its code of recklessness; to
make shooting the water-tank (for example) part of a gentleman's
deportment when he showed himself in town.

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