Arizona Nights
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Stewart Edward White >> Arizona Nights
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"That's about all there was to it," concluded Colorado Rogers,
after a pause, "--except that I've been looking for him ever
since, and when I heard you singing that song I naturally thought
I'd landed."
"And you never saw him again?" asked Windy Bill.
"Well," chuckled Rogers, "I did about ten year later. It was in
Tucson. I was in the back of a store, when the door in front
opened and this man came in. He stopped at the little cigar-case
by the door. In about one jump I was on his neck. I jerked him
over backwards before he knew what had struck him, threw him on
his face, got my hands in his back-hair, and began to jump his
features against the floor. Then all at once I noted that this
man had two arms; so of course he was the wrong fellow. "Oh,
excuse me," said I, and ran out the back door."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE HONK-HONK BREED
It was Sunday at the ranch. For a wonder the weather bad been
favourable; the windmills were all working, the bogs had dried
up, the beef had lasted over, the remuda had not strayed--in
short, there was nothing to do. Sang had given us a baked
bread-pudding with raisins in it. We filled it--in a wash basin
full of it--on top of a few incidental pounds of chile con, baked
beans, soda biscuits, "air tights," and other delicacies. Then
we adjourned with our pipes to the shady side of the blacksmith's
shop where we could watch the ravens on top the adobe wall of the
corral. Somebody told a story about ravens. This led to
road-runners. This suggested rattlesnakes. They started Windy
Bill.
"Speakin' of snakes," said Windy, "I mind when they catched the
great-granddaddy of all the bullsnakes up at Lead in the Black
Hills. I was only a kid then. This wasn't no such tur'ble long
a snake, but he was more'n a foot thick. Looked just like a
sahuaro stalk. Man name of Terwilliger Smith catched it. He
named this yere bullsnake Clarence, and got it so plumb gentle it
followed him everywhere. One day old P. T. Barnum come along and
wanted to buy this Clarence snake--offered Terwilliger a thousand
cold--but Smith wouldn't part with the snake nohow. So finally
they fixed up a deal so Smith could go along with the show. They
shoved Clarence in a box in the baggage car, but after a while
Mr. Snake gets so lonesome he gnaws out and starts to crawl back
to find his master. Just as he is half-way between the baggage
car and the smoker, the couplin' give way--right on that heavy
grade between Custer and Rocky Point. Well, sir, Clarence wound
his head 'round one brake wheel and his tail around the other,
and held that train together to the bottom of the grade. But it
stretched him twenty-eight feet and they had to advertise him as
a boa-constrictor."
Windy Bill's story of the faithful bullsnake aroused to
reminiscence the grizzled stranger, who thereupon held forth as
follows:
Wall, I've see things and I've heerd things, some of them ornery,
and some you'd love to believe, they was that gorgeous and
improbable. Nat'ral history was always my hobby and sportin'
events my special pleasure and this yarn of Windy's reminds me of
the only chanst I ever had to ring in business and pleasure and
hobby all in one grand merry-go-round of joy. It come about like
this:
One day, a few year back, I was sittin' on the beach at Santa
Barbara watchin' the sky stay up, and wonderin' what to do with
my year's wages, when a little squinch-eye round-face with big
bow spectacles came and plumped down beside me.
"Did you ever stop to think," says he, shovin' back his hat,
"that if the horsepower delivered by them waves on this beach in
one single hour could be concentrated behind washin' machines, it
would be enough to wash all the shirts for a city of four hundred
and fifty-one thousand one hundred and thirty-six people?"
"Can't say I ever did," says I, squintin' at him sideways.
"Fact," says he, "and did it ever occur to you that if all the
food a man eats in the course of a natural life could be gathered
together at one time, it would fill a wagon-train twelve miles
long?"
"You make me hungry," says I.
"And ain't it interestin' to reflect," he goes on, "that if all
the finger-nail parin's of the human race for one year was to be
collected and subjected to hydraulic pressure it would equal in
size the pyramid of Cheops?"
"Look yere," says I, sittin' up, "did YOU ever pause to
excogitate that if all the hot air you is dispensin' was to be
collected together it would fill a balloon big enough to waft you
and me over that Bullyvard of Palms to yonder gin mill on the
corner?"
He didn't say nothin' to that--just yanked me to my feet, faced
me towards the gin mill above mentioned, and exerted considerable
pressure on my arm in urgin' of me forward.
"You ain't so much of a dreamer, after all," thinks I. "In
important matters you are plumb decisive."
We sat down at little tables, and my friend ordered a beer and a
chicken sandwich.
"Chickens," says he, gazin' at the sandwich, "is a dollar apiece
in this country, and plumb scarce. Did you ever pause to ponder
over the returns chickens would give on a small investment? Say
you start with ten hens. Each hatches out thirteen aigs, of
which allow a loss of say six for childish accidents. At the end
of the year you has eighty chickens. At the end of two years
that flock has increased to six hundred and twenty. At the end
of the third year--"
He had the medicine tongue! Ten days later him and me was
occupyin' of an old ranch fifty mile from anywhere. When they
run stage-coaches this joint used to be a roadhouse. The outlook
was on about a thousand little brown foothills. A road two miles
four rods two foot eleven inches in sight run by in front of us.
It come over one foothill and disappeared over another. I know
just how long it was, for later in the game I measured it.
Out back was about a hundred little wire chicken corrals filled
with chickens. We had two kinds. That was the doin's of
Tuscarora. My pardner called himself Tuscarora Maxillary. I
asked him once if that was his real name.
"It's the realest little old name you ever heerd tell of," says
he. "I know, for I made it myself--liked the sound of her.
Parents ain't got no rights to name their children. Parents
don't have to be called them names."
Well, these chickens, as I said, was of two kinds. The first was
these low-set, heavyweight propositions with feathers on their
laigs, and not much laigs at that, called Cochin Chinys. The
other was a tall ridiculous outfit made up entire of bulgin'
breast and gangle laigs. They stood about two foot and a half
tall, and when they went to peck the ground their tail feathers
stuck straight up to the sky. Tusky called 'em Japanese Games.
"Which the chief advantage of them chickens is," says he, "that
in weight about ninety per cent of 'em is breast meat. Now my
idee is, that if we can cross 'em with these Cochin Chiny fowls
we'll have a low-hung, heavyweight chicken runnin' strong on
breast meat. These Jap Games is too small, but if we can bring
'em up in size and shorten their laigs, we'll shore have a
winner."
That looked good to me, so we started in on that idee. The
theery was bully, but she didn't work out. The first broods we
hatched growed up with big husky Cochin Chiny bodies and little
short necks, perched up on laigs three foot long. Them chickens
couldn't reach ground nohow. We had to build a table for 'em to
eat off, and when they went out rustlin' for themselves they had
to confine themselves to sidehills or flyin' insects. Their
breasts was all right, though--"And think of them drumsticks for
the boardinghouse trade!" says Tusky.
So far things wasn't so bad. We had a good grubstake. Tusky and
me used to feed them chickens twict a day, and then used to set
around watchin' the playful critters chase grasshoppers up an'
down the wire corrals, while Tusky figgered out what'd happen if
somebody was dumfool enough to gather up somethin' and fix it in
baskets or wagons or such. That was where we showed our
ignorance of chickens.
One day in the spring I hitched up, rustled a dozen of the
youngsters into coops, and druv over to the railroad to make our
first sale. I couldn't fold them chickens up into them coops at
first, but then I stuck the coops up on aidge and they worked all
right, though I will admit they was a comical sight. At the
railroad one of them towerist trains had just slowed down to a
halt as I come up, and the towerist was paradin' up and down
allowin' they was particular enjoyin' of the warm Californy
sunshine. One old terrapin, with grey chin whiskers, projected
over, with his wife, and took a peek through the slats of my
coop. He straightened up like someone had touched him off with a
red-hot poker.
"Stranger," said he, in a scared kind of whisper, "what's them?"
"Them's chickens," says I.
He took another long look.
"Marthy," says he to the old woman, "this will be about all! We
come out from Ioway to see the Wonders of Californy, but I can't
go nothin' stronger than this. If these is chickens, I don't
want to see no Big Trees."
Well, I sold them chickens all right for a dollar and two bits,
which was better than I expected, and got an order for more.
About ten days later I got a letter from the commission house.
"We are returnin' a sample of your Arts and Crafts chickens with
the lovin' marks of the teeth still onto him," says they. "Don't
send any more till they stops pursuin' of the nimble grasshopper.
Dentist bill will foller."
With the letter came the remains of one of the chickens. Tusky
and I, very indignant, cooked her for supper. She was tough, all
right. We thought she might do better biled, so we put her in
the pot over night. Nary bit. Well, then we got interested.
Tusky kep' the fire goin' and I rustled greasewood. We cooked
her three days and three nights. At the end of that time she was
sort of pale and frazzled, but still givin' points to
three-year-old jerky on cohesion and other uncompromisin' forces
of Nature. We buried her then, and went out back to recuperate.
There we could gaze on the smilin' landscape, dotted by about
four hundred long-laigged chickens swoopin' here and there after
grasshoppers.
"We got to stop that," says I.
"We can't," murmured Tusky, inspired. "We can't. It's born in
'em; it's a primal instinct, like the love of a mother for her
young, and it can't be eradicated! Them chickens is constructed
by a divine providence for the express purpose of chasin'
grasshoppers, jest as the beaver is made for buildin' dams, and
the cow-puncher is made for whisky and faro-games. We can't
keep 'em from it. If we was to shut 'em in a dark cellar, they'd
flop after imaginary grasshoppers in their dreams, and die
emaciated in the midst of plenty. Jimmy, we're up agin the
Cosmos, the oversoul--" Oh, he had the medicine tongue, Tusky
had, and risin' on the wings of eloquence that way, he had me
faded in ten minutes. In fifteen I was wedded solid to the
notion that the bottom had dropped out of the chicken business.
I think now that if we'd shut them hens up, we might have--still,
I don't know; they was a good deal in what Tusky said.
"Tuscarora Maxillary," says I, "did you ever stop to entertain
that beautiful thought that if all the dumfoolishness possessed
now by the human race could be gathered together, and lined up
alongside of us, the first feller to come along would say to it
'Why, hello, Solomon!'"
We quit the notion of chickens for profit right then and there,
but we couldn't quit the place. We hadn't much money, for one
thing, and then we, kind of liked loafin' around and raisin' a
little garden truck, and--oh, well, I might as well say so, we
had a notion about placers in the dry wash back of the house you
know how it is. So we stayed on, and kept a-raisin' these
long-laigs for the fun of it. I used to like to watch 'em
projectin' around, and I fed 'em twict a day about as usual.
So Tusky and I lived alone there together, happy as ducks in
Arizona. About onc't in a month somebody'd pike along the road.
She wasn't much of a road, generally more chuckholes than bumps,
though sometimes it was the other way around. Unless it happened
to be a man horseback or maybe a freighter without the fear of
God in his soul, we didn't have no words with them; they was too
busy cussin' the highways and generally too mad for social
discourses.
One day early in the year, when the 'dobe mud made ruts to add to
the bumps, one of these automobeels went past. It was the first
Tusky and me had seen in them parts, so we run out to view her.
Owin' to the high spots on the road, she looked like one of these
movin' picters, as to blur and wobble; sounded like a cyclone
mingled with cuss-words, and smelt like hell on housecleanin'
day.
"Which them folks don't seem to be enjoyin' of the scenery," says
I to Tusky. "Do you reckon that there blue trail is smoke from
the machine or remarks from the inhabitants thereof?"
Tusky raised his head and sniffed long and inquirin'.
"It's langwidge," says he. "Did you ever stop to think that all
the words in the dictionary stretched end to end would reach--"
But at that minute I catched sight of somethin' brass lyin' in
the road. It proved to be a curled-up sort of horn with a rubber
bulb on the end. I squoze the bulb and jumped twenty foot over
the remark she made.
"Jarred off the machine," says Tusky.
"Oh, did it?" says I, my nerves still wrong. "I thought maybe it
had growed up from the soil like a toadstool."
About this time we abolished the wire chicken corrals, because we
needed some of the wire. Them long-laigs thereupon scattered all
over the flat searchin' out their prey. When feed time come I
had to screech my lungs out gettin' of 'em in, and then sometimes
they didn't all hear. It was plumb discouragin', and I mighty
nigh made up my mind to quit 'em, but they had come to be sort of
pets, and I hated to turn 'em down. It used to tickle Tusky
almost to death to see me out there hollerin' away like an old
bull-frog. He used to come out reg'lar, with his pipe lit, just
to enjoy me. Finally I got mad and opened up on him.
"Oh," he explains, "it just plumb amuses me to see the dumfool
at his childish work. Why don't you teach 'em to come to that
brass horn, and save your voice?"
"Tusky," says I, with feelin', "sometimes you do seem to get a
glimmer of real sense."
Well, first off them chickens used to throw back-sommersets over
that horn. You have no idee how slow chickens is to learn
things. I could tell you things about chickens--say, this yere
bluff about roosters bein' gallant is all wrong. I've watched
'em. When one finds a nice feed he gobbles it so fast that the
pieces foller down his throat like yearlin's through a hole in
the fence. It's only when he scratches up a measly one-grain
quick-lunch that he calls up the hens and stands noble and
self-sacrificin' to one side. That ain't the point, which is,
that after two months I had them long-laigs so they'd drop
everythin' and come kitin' at the HONK-HONK of that horn. It was
a purty sight to see 'em, sailin' in from all directions twenty
foot at a stride. I was proud of 'em, and named 'em the
Honk-honk Breed. We didn't have no others, for by now the
coyotes and bob-cats had nailed the straight-breds. There wasn't
no wild cat or coyote could catch one of my Honk-honks, no, sir!
We made a little on our placer--just enough to keep interested.
Then the supervisors decided to fix our road, and what's more,
THEY DONE IT! That's the only part in this yarn that's hard to
believe, but, boys, you'll have to take it on faith. They
ploughed her, and crowned her, and scraped her, and rolled her,
and when they moved on we had the fanciest highway in the State
of Californy.
That noon--the day they called her a job--Tusky and I sat smokin'
our pipes as per usual, when way over the foothills we seen a
cloud of dust and faint to our cars was bore a whizzin' sound.
The chickens was gathered under the cottonwood for the heat of
the day, but they didn't pay no attention. Then faint, but
clear, we heard another of them brass horns:
"Honk! honk!" says it, and every one of them chickens woke up,
and stood at attention.
"Honk! honk!" it hollered clearer and nearer.
Then over the hill come an automobeel, blowin' vigorous at every
jump.
"My God!" I yells to Tusky, kickin' over my chair, as I springs
to my feet. "Stop 'em! Stop 'em!"
But it was too late. Out the gate sprinted them poor devoted
chickens, and up the road they trailed in vain pursuit. The last
we seen of 'em was a mingling of dust and dim figgers goin'
thirty mile an hour after a disappearin' automobeel.
That was all we seen for the moment. About three o'clock the
first straggler came limpin' in, his wings hangin', his mouth
open, his eyes glazed with the heat. By sundown fourteen had
returned. All the rest had disappeared utter; we never seen 'em
again. I reckon they just naturally run themselves into a
sunstroke and died on the road.
It takes a long time to learn a chicken a thing, but a heap
longer to unlearn him. After that two or three of these yere
automobeels went by every day, all a-blowin' of their horns, all
kickin' up a hell of a dust. And every time them fourteen
Honk-honks of mine took along after 'em, just as I'd taught 'em
to do, layin' to get to their corn when they caught up. No more
of 'em died, but that fourteen did get into elegant trainin'.
After a while they got plumb to enjoyin' it. When you come right
down to it, a chicken don't have many amusements and relaxations
in this life. Searchin' for worms, chasin' grasshoppers, and
wallerin' in the dust is about the limits of joys for chickens.
It was sure a fine sight to see 'em after they got well into the
game. About nine o'clock every mornin' they would saunter down
to the rise of the road where they would wait patient until a
machine came along. Then it would warm your heart to see the
enthusiasm of them. With, exultant cackles of joy they'd trail
in, reachin' out like quarter-horses, their wings half spread
out, their eyes beamin' with delight. At the lower turn they'd
quit. Then, after talkin' it over excited-like for a few
minutes, they'd calm down and wait for another.
After a few months of this sort of trainin' they got purty good
at it. I had one two-year-old rooster that made fifty-four mile
an hour behind one of those sixty-horsepower Panhandles. When
cars didn't come along often enough, they'd all turn out and
chase jack-rabbits. They wasn't much fun at that. After a
short, brief sprint the rabbit would crouch down plumb terrified,
while the Honk-honks pulled off triumphal dances around his
shrinkin' form.
Our ranch got to be purty well known them days among
automobeelists. The strength of their cars was horse-power, of
course, but the speed of them they got to ratin' by
chicken-power. Some of them used to come way up from Los Angeles
just to try out a new car along our road with the Honk-honks for
pace-makers. We charged them a little somethin', and then, too,
we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we did purty well.
It wasn't necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer.
Evenin's we sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged
on my chickens. The chickens would gather round close to listen.
They liked to hear their praises sung, all right. You bet they
sabe! The only reason a chicken, or any other critter, isn't
intelligent is because he hasn't no chance to expand.
Why, we used to run races with 'em. Some of us would hold two or
more chickens back of a chalk line, and the starter'd blow the
horn from a hundred yards to a mile away, dependin' on whether it
was a sprint or for distance. We had pools on the results, gave
odds, made books, and kept records. After the thing got knowed
we made money hand over fist.
The stranger broke off abruptly and began to roll a cigarette.
"What did you quit it for, then?" ventured Charley, out of the
hushed silence.
"Pride," replied the stranger solemnly. "Haughtiness of spirit."
"How so?" urged Charley, after a pause.
"Them chickens," continued the stranger, after a moment, "stood
around listenin' to me a-braggin' of what superior fowls they was
until they got all puffed up. They wouldn't have nothin'
whatever to do with the ordinary chickens we brought in for
eatin' purposes, but stood around lookin' bored when there wasn't
no sport doin'. They got to be just like that Four Hundred you
read about in the papers. It was one continual round of
grasshopper balls, race meets, and afternoon hen-parties. They
got idle and haughty, just like folks. Then come race suicide.
They got to feelin' so aristocratic the hens wouldn't have no
eggs."
Nobody dared say a word.
"Windy Bill's snake--" began the narrator genially.
"Stranger," broke in Windy Bill, with great emphasis, "as to
that snake, I want you to understand this: yereafter in my
estimation that snake is nothin' but an ornery angleworm!"
PART II
THE TWO GUN MAN
CHAPTER ONE
THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
Buck Johnson was American born, but with a black beard and a
dignity of manner that had earned him the title of Senor. He had
drifted into southeastern Arizona in the days of Cochise and
Victorio and Geronimo. He had persisted, and so in time had come
to control the water--and hence the grazing--of nearly all the
Soda Springs Valley. His troubles were many, and his
difficulties great. There were the ordinary problems of lean and
dry years. There were also the extraordinary problems of
devastating Apaches; rivals for early and ill-defined range
rights--and cattle rustlers.
Senor Buck Johnson was a man of capacity, courage, directness of
method, and perseverance. Especially the latter. Therefore he
had survived to see the Apaches subdued, the range rights
adjusted, his cattle increased to thousands, grazing the area of
a principality. Now, all the energy and fire of his
frontiersman's nature he had turned to wiping out the third
uncertainty of an uncertain business. He found it a task of some
magnitude.
For Senor Buck Johnson lived just north of that terra incognita
filled with the mystery of a double chance of death from man or
the flaming desert known as the Mexican border. There, by
natural gravitation, gathered all the desperate characters of
three States and two republics. He who rode into it took good
care that no one should ride behind him, lived warily, slept
light, and breathed deep when once he had again sighted the
familiar peaks of Cochise's Stronghold. No one professed
knowledge of those who dwelt therein. They moved, mysterious as
the desert illusions that compassed them about. As you rode, the
ranges of mountains visibly changed form, the monstrous, snaky,
sea-like growths of the cactus clutched at your stirrup, mock
lakes sparkled and dissolved in the middle distance, the sun beat
hot and merciless, the powdered dry alkali beat hotly and
mercilessly back--and strange, grim men, swarthy, bearded,
heavily armed, with red-rimmed unshifting eyes, rode silently out
of the mists of illusion to look on you steadily, and then to
ride silently back into the desert haze. They might be only the
herders of the gaunt cattle, or again they might belong to the
Lost Legion that peopled the country. All you could know was
that of the men who entered in, but few returned.
Directly north of this unknown land you encountered parallel
fences running across the country. They enclosed nothing, but
offered a check to the cattle drifting toward the clutch of the
renegades, and an obstacle to swift, dashing forays.
Of cattle-rustling there are various forms. The boldest consists
quite simply of running off a bunch of stock, hustling it over
the Mexican line, and there selling it to some of the big Sonora
ranch owners. Generally this sort means war. Also are there
subtler means, grading in skill from the re-branding through a
wet blanket, through the crafty refashioning of a brand to the
various methods of separating the cow from her unbranded calf.
In the course of his task Senor Buck Johnson would have to do
with them all, but at present he existed in a state of warfare,
fighting an enemy who stole as the Indians used to steal.
Already be had fought two pitched battles and had won them both.
His cattle increased, and he became rich. Nevertheless he knew
that constantly his resources were being drained. Time and again
he and his new Texas foreman, Jed Parker, had followed the trail
of a stampeded bunch of twenty or thirty, followed them on down
through the Soda Springs Valley to the cut drift fences, there to
abandon them. For, as yet, an armed force would be needed to
penetrate the borderland. Once he and his men bad experienced
the glory of a night pursuit. Then, at the drift fences, he had
fought one of his battles. But it was impossible adequately to
patrol all parts of a range bigger than some Eastern States.
Buck Johnson did his best, but it was like stepping with sand the
innumerable little leaks of a dam. Did his riders watch toward
the Chiricahuas, then a score of beef steers disappeared from
Grant's Pass forty miles away. Pursuit here meant leaving cattle
unguarded there. It was useless, and the Senor soon perceived
that sooner or later he must strike in offence.
For this purpose he began slowly to strengthen the forces of his
riders. Men were coming in from Texas. They were good men,
addicted to the grass-rope, the double cinch, and the ox-bow
stirrup. Senor Johnson wanted men who could shoot, and he got
them.
"Jed," said Senor Johnson to his foreman, "the next son of a gun
that rustles any of our cows is sure loading himself full of
trouble. We'll hit his trail and will stay with it, and we'll
reach his cattle-rustling conscience with a rope."
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