WHILE BLACKFOOT TERRY and I were moving the table away from the window, Alexander Hamilton was filling a bottle from the keg. Above the keening of the flowing whiskey I could hear his voice raised, even more sadly, in song.
I’ve been an in-law in the East,
I’ve been an outlaw in the West;
And of the two, to say the least,
I likes the second lots the best —
O-o-oh, the awful things that happen to a man.
Leaning our rifles against the wall within easy reach, we stood at the window, watching the dust get thicker and nearer. Outside there was the hush of late afternoon in a warm country. Inside the landlord was still singing as he drew another quart from his supply of named-to-suit-the-customer spirits.
The sheriff likes to shoot a gun
And he is lightning on the draw,
But, Lordy, he don’t scare me none;
He’s mild compared with Lulu’s paw —
O-o-oh, the awful things that happen to a man.
I counted the riders as they rounded into sight, one by one, around a patch of brush. There were five of them, so the Indians must have killed one. Looking at McQuinn, I saw he was picking up his rifle. As I followed his example and levered a cartridge into the chamber, I heard Hamilton’s plaintive voice again.
I kind of likes to live in sin
But Lulu’s paw was bound we’d wed;
And when the parson made us kin,
“Now, son, you gets a job,” he said.
O-o-oh, the awful things that happen to a man.
I never did learn how Lulu’s paw’s son-in-law escaped from his horrible predicament. The horsemen speeded up at sight of the building, but they moved even faster when Terry sent a shot over their heads. By the time the sound of the explosion had died away, they had wheeled and scattered.
“That’s better,” McQuinn shouted, when they were facing us from a safer distance. “What do you want, Ed?”
The only one who showed any signs of rough treatment from the Indians was a fellow with a bandanna tied around his left shoulder. It was he who undertook to answer.
“You’ll find out when we gun you out of there.”
“I asked the sheriff,” my companion called back. “For easier talking, I’ll give you a truce, Ed, but tell your deputies they’ll never see Centipede again if they crowd closer then I want them to.”
The tall rider wearing the star brought his men up to the point which Terry then indicated. Up to that moment he had said nothing to McQuinn, but at the latter’s further urging he spoke his piece.
“As sheriff of Borro County, New Mexico, I’ve rid to arrest the man charged with shootin’ Phil Cooke, which happens to be you. It shouldn’t be breakin’ the law to kill a snipe like what he was, but it is; and I’m paid to uphold the law.”
“I see,” Terry said. “Has the sheriff of Borro County, New Mexico, got a writ of extradition that would authorize him to take a resident of Texas across the state boundary?”
“I can’t say he has.” The sheriff, who had been looking troubled, cheered up a little. “Are we in Texas?”
“No, but I am,” McQuinn retorted. “I can forgive a posse hot on the trail of a fugitive for ignoring the neutrality of No Man’s Land. But if you try to make an arrest in a sovereign state where you have no authority to operate, why that’s kidnapping — a crime with which we Texans have no patience. I’d never think of resisting arrest, mind you; but if a gang of marauders make a lawless assault upon me you can count on me — with the aid of my fellow Texan here — to make a good job of defending my constitutional rights.”
Manifestly the sheriff was pleased. Three of his deputies were dubious, however, and wrath flamed up in the florid face of the man with the wounded shoulder.
“A murderer ain’t got no rights,” he growled. “And where’s the proof that you’re in Texas anyhow?”
It occurred to me that there was one appeal to reason which had not yet been made. “You can tell it by our accent,” I suggested, “and that tree over there, and the kind of whiskey they serve in this saloon.”
That got home to them, particularly the sheriff. “We ain’t got any law business that takes us to Texas,” he asserted, “but we’d like to make a peaceful visit just to see how saloons on your side of the boundary compare with these here in No Man’s Land.”
While relieved at the general outcome, I wasn’t sure that it was wise to dispense with our rifles. McQuinn seemed satisfied that all was well, however, and was relighting his cigar as the posse entered Rustlers Roost.
What immediately became plain was that decorum would be observed. Peace officers might keep truce with the man they wanted, under circumstances which made it improper for them to move against him, but fraternization was banned. The sheriff winked one eye in reply to Terry’s curt gesture of salute, but the rest of his long, bony face remained expressionless. The four deputies joined him at the bar, leaving us in possession of the table.
To emphasize our isolation, McQuinn and I agreed to place that article of furniture beneath the window once more. It was while we were actually engaged in lifting the table that the wounded deputy snatched his gun from its holster.
“You’re under arrest!” he roared at Terry. “Stick ’em up, or I’ll — ”
He didn’t finish, because the sheriff had rammed a revolver into his ribs. “Put it up, Sid, and don’t do that again,” he said.
Although complying with the order, Sid glared at his chief. “You’re a hell of a sheriff,” he stormed. “We follow an outlaw a hundred miles, and when we finally catch up with him you take his side and throw down on one of your own deputies.”
“Well, I won’t be aimin’ a gun at no such critter if I have trouble with you again,” the sheriff informed him. “I swore you in, and I reckon I can swear you out. God damn you, you ain’t no deputy!”
I was not the only one who blinked at this method of handling the situation. “You can’t do that, Ed,” one of the others declared. “A man’s always deputized for a whole manhunt, and you ain’t got the right to fire any of us till we get back home. What’s more, I don’t know as Sid didn’t do the right thing, and maybe we ought to back him up.”
Alexander Hamilton slipped outside. Terry removed his right arm from the table. I was wishing I had practiced drawing a revolver when Ed finally spoke.
“I’m resigning’,” he said. Unpinning the star from his shirt with his left hand, he shoved the badge of office into his pocket. Next he looked at his four associates, one after the other. “Do you get that, all of you? I’ve quit; I ain’t goin’ back. Now does any one of you boys want to tell me which sheriff you all are deputies of?”
It was a victory for logic, if not necessarily for law and order. “I guess we can’t be deputies if that’s the way you’re going to act,” one of the former peace officers muttered, “but I think we ought to get full mileage from the county.”
“Sure you ought, and I’ll say so in my letter of resignation.” The sheriff then waved cheerfully to us. “A new citizen’s buyin’, so you Texas old-timers ought to get in on it. That was a nice piece of ridin’, Terry.”
Pointing out that if they hadn’t been following McQuinn they would never have been surrounded by Indians in the first place, Sid continued to sulk. Unscathed themselves, the remaining ex-posse members could afford to be more philosophical. A second drink sufficed to establish an era of good feeling. Terry was just spilling money on the bar for another round when I heard the voice of the landlord.
“Say, Pat.”
It took a minute for me to remember that I was Patrick Henry. “What’s on your mind, Alex?”
“Well, now that it don’t matter to you where my saloon is, I was wonderin’ if you’d mind movin’ it back out of Texas again. Not all of my customers get along with the law as well as you and Ben Franklin, and I’ll lose their trade if I’m on the wrong side of the border.”
Ed Whittlesey, to give the quondam sheriff his full name, rolled his eyes and rested them sadly on McQuinn. “I wish I’d been raised by the Blackfeet, but shucks, I never had no early advantages. How do you make saloons jump like checkers anyways?”
My horses had been grazing beyond the cottonwoods around Hamilton’s water hole. As Ed, Terry and myself went to get them, the former caught sight of the coach, which had been left in the shade of the trees in order to keep the driver’s seat cool.
“It looked from the tracks as if you must’ve hitched a ride on a stage, but I couldn’t believe it,” he remarked. “What’re you goin’ to do for a bronc, Terry?”
“I think Alex can supply me with one, or can scrape up a customer with a horse to spare.” McQuinn gave a peculiar whistle, and one of the wheel horses stood fast, instead of shying away, as it usually did when I tried to catch it. “At least I don’t think that fat squaw of his makes lariats just to skip rope with.”
The landlord did indeed prove equal to the occasion. It wasn’t quite dark when a man showed up leading a saddled mustang. By then I had a pleasant cargo of liquor aboard and was in the mood to go on indefinitely, but Terry insisted on pulling out.
“We’ve done fine here so far,” he replied to my remonstrance, “but the best way to end up with a slit throat is to try to make a night of it in a place like this.”
So it was a few miles down the trace that we had our nightcap. It was also our stirrup cup, as they planned to ride south and east to Fort Griffin at dawn, while I intended to push south toward Tascosa.
Whittlesey was readying his blanket roll for travel the next day when Terry took me aside. “We’ll be meeting again in some camp or other,” he told me.
“Sure,” I said, not believing it probable. Still I had a good, warm feeling for the man, and I grinned at him. “Good luck to you.”
“I think I’ll have it now.” His face showed his earnestness. “Things haven’t been going too well lately. It’s bad when you have a couple of killings as close together as those of Brown and Cooke, you know. But it was good luck meeting you, and things have been going fine ever since.”
Having said that much, he lowered his voice. “Do you remember what we were talking about back at Rustlers Roost, just before the posse showed up?”
My head somewhat abuzz from the potations of the day before, I had to think a moment. “Let’s see; Miss Tandy, wasn’t it?”
“Right. Well, I was expecting to see her when I got farther down in New Mexico; but I ran afoul of Cooke, and now the territory won’t be healthy for some time, as far as I’m concerned.”
Fishing in his shirt pocket, he brought out a folded, sweat-soaked envelope. It didn’t appear a likely repository for a thousand-dollar bill. Actually it contained ten of that denomination.
“This is money that Colonel Peters — you’ve probably heard him called Droop-eye mostly — asked me to give Dolly a couple of weeks ago, after he’d broken the bank of a house in Dodge City. I was leaving for New Mexico, and we both thought I’d see her.”
From casual talk I had gathered that there was some sort of bond between the Tandy girl and Peters, who was reputedly an older man. It was none of my business, but try as I would, I couldn’t keep the question out of my eyes.
“They are — in partnership,” McQuinn answered the look. “A reserve fund is always useful to a gambler, but if she doesn’t happen to need it to bank with, the message is that she can spend it at her discretion.”
While I could see that a young woman, even one that wasn’t a gambler, might be pleased to receive that much money, I jibbed at the thought of being responsible for it.
“You’re going on the assumption that I’ll wind up in New Mexico, and I may do nothing of the sort,” I objected. “Why don’t you send it to her by mail?”
“She’s on the move, looking for high stakes in new camps, and I don’t know just where she is. Look, Baltimore,” he continued, when I still hesitated, “as things stand, she has a far better chance of getting this cash from you than from me. If you don’t happen to run across her in the next couple of months, send it to Colonel C. E. Peters, care of Wells Fargo Express, San Francisco.”
When he and Whittlesey had ridden off, I nervously tried my boot top and half a dozen pockets without finding a place where I felt the envelope would be safe. In the end I stowed it in one of my bags and hoped no stage robber would think of going through luggage in search of buried treasure.
I kept a careful watch for Indians that first day of rolling along the flatlands of the Panhandle. None appeared, nor did my eyes find anything else but space, a few buffalo and dust. The second day began as usual with the business of rounding up my horses. Five I caught easily, but one had managed to slip its hobble. Intent on grazing as long as possible, the animal led me a good half mile through the bosky bordering the stream by which I was camped. I had barely succeeded in putting a halter on him when I heard a hail.
“Hello, there!”
The speaker was leading an animal, just as I was, but I had no idea of waiting for him. Not realizing that I would have to stray so far, I had made the mistake of going off without a weapon. Jerking on the halter, I set out for camp.
“Be you flesh, fiend or Flying Dutchman of the prairie,” the stranger then called, “wait up and be spoken to. You can’t just walk off with the only human ears I’ve found in days. Stand fast in the name of God and my curiosity.”
In the face of such an appeal, further flight seemed absurd. He came toward me as fast as the big mule which followed him would consent to be led. It was loaded with a prospector’s equipment, and the man himself had the appearance of a patient seeker after gold, except for one thing. Above the scrawny black beard which covered most of his face twinkled eyes lively with a look of intellectual awareness.
“Sorry to have seemed unfriendly,” I apologized, “but I ran into Indians not long ago.”
“Did you?” He seemed to marvel at my good luck. “I haven’t found anybody to talk to except this mule, which has already heard my views on every — ”
He was interrupted by the animal in question, which thrust its head over the man’s shoulder, as though it were indeed accustomed to taking part in human conversation. Its master gave it a pained look, then faced me with a helpless shrug.
“I see you are afflicted with the burden of a beast, too. What do you call him?”
Not minded to stand there unarmed any longer, I took a step back toward camp. “Oh, just Jim.”
“Is that his only name?” the fellow asked. “Yours, sir, must be an animal with an even disposition and regular habits. I call mine Darwin’s Waterloo, because he’s a denial of the theories of evolution and natural selection. I call him Inspiration, because he never comes when I desire it but crowds me when I have no time for him. I call him Lot’s Wife, because he would rather look back than see where he’s going. I call him James Fitz-James, because when he takes his stand it is easier to move boulders than him. I call him Ajax, because he defies the lightning of my wrath. I call him Whitman, because he has a barbaric yawp out of which I can make no sense. I call him Socrates, because he goes his own way, regardless of any man’s reproaches. I call him, in short, but that doesn’t in the least mean that he pays any attention, so he sometimes leaves me speechless.”
“That must be his most remarkable faculty,” I said. “Do you care to say how you call yourself?”
“Orestes Hatfield, doctor of enough philosophy to have left the jaded civilization of the Atlantic coastal plain in order to join fortunes with the people of boundless intellectual horizons who live here in the West.”
“When you can find any of them,” I reminded him. Determined to force the issue, I started walking again, and he fell into step beside me. “You’re a university professor, I take it?”
“If you’re speaking in terms of the present, you take it wrong,” he declared. “Seven months ago next Wednesday I broke off in the middle of a lecture whose theme was ‘The Triumph of Modern Culture’ and looked my students over. I saw eyes, sir, some nineteen pairs of them. I saw hard, suspicious crow’s eyes, I saw foolish, trusting spaniel eyes; I saw shallow, wondering calf eyes; I saw cloud-filmed frog eyes; I saw opaque, crumb-hunting mouse eyes; I saw sleep-defying owl eyes; I saw the utterly indifferent eyes of a just-fed snake and at least one set of maliciously criminal eyes, like those of Jonathan Wild, my mule; but I saw no eyes at all which indicated any grasp of what I had been talking about.”
I could see the wisp of smoke rising from my campfire. “What did you do?” I asked my companion.
“I pondered,” Dr. Hatfield said, “and reached the inescapable conclusion that if producing such minds was a triumph for modern culture, it was a hollow one. The East, it was then clear to me, had become sterile and decadent, so the thing to do was to strike for a region where the way of life tempted the mind to independent exploration.”
“There are new ways of thinking here,” I admitted, my mind going back to McQuinn and Ed Whittlesey, “but I don’t know how much eagerness for scholarship you’re going to find.”
“Oh, it will have to be stimulated by a university,” the professor said. “But what they have in the West is the vigor, the feeling for life, the mental flexibility which comes with the necessity for building everything from scratch.”
I couldn’t imagine how he was going to start the university needed to spark this rebirth of civilization. He was not without a plan of action, however.
“All I have to do,” he explained, as we came within sight of the stagecoach, “is either to find a suitable bonanza myself or to encounter a successful prospector looking for a way to make his wealth of service to society. One of the two should fall to my lot sooner or later.”
After hitching up Jim, I put the coffeepot on the coals again. “There’s lots more advice where this came from, so I won’t mind if you throw it away,” I told Hatfield, while we were sipping and smoking a few minutes later, “but you’re going through dangerous country for a man afoot; and I believe you’ll find it useless to prospect here, too.”
“But I don’t like to ride, and a true scholar finds out for himself instead of taking hearsay for granted,” he answered my objections. “California wasn’t considered a probable source of gold prior to James Marshall’s discovery, remember.” Gulping the last of his coffee, he nodded to where the mule was browsing on willow leaves. “Are you going to leave me to the dubious mercies of that hybrid?”
“In a couple of minutes,” I said. “It’s possible that gold does lurk in the grass hereabouts, but there’s no chance of finding what I am looking for, which is a stage line franchise.”
“I can’t contest that point.” He used a knife to ream out the bowl of his pipe before he spoke again. “You might try Midas Touch, if you’re thinking of going over into New Mexico Territory. The surrounding ore field had been parceled out into claims previous to my arrival, so I didn’t stay; but the denizens seemed to be strongly of the opinion that the land had remarkable possibilities.”
The Panhandle was good cattle country, and the longhorns I found lower down in it seemed to appreciate the fact. For my own tastes it was too flat, and Tascosa looked to be a town where only cowmen would be at home. Accordingly I there turned west.
New Mexico itself was a tableland which only gradually gave way to hills of any consequence, and the novelty of stage driving had worn off. Feeling safe from the tribes of the Indian Territory, and not yet so far west that I was in danger of being attacked by Apaches, I developed the habit of breaking the monotony of the trip by reading as I rolled along.
Absorbed in Vanity Fair, I didn’t at first look up when the team came to a halt during the afternoon of my third day out of Tascosa. I hoped they would undertake to proceed without interrupting me, but when it became plain that they would not I impatiently raised my head.
What had stopped the horses was a split of the road together with my failure to indicate a choice of route. There was a tree at the fork which stretched a branch over the road slicing off south and west. A scarecrow dressed like a faro dealer was suspended from this branch by a rope around its neck. Nailed to the trunk of the tree was a handbill bearing an explanatory legend.
TINHORN GAMBLERS HAD BETTER
KEEP RIGHT ON TOWARD SOCORRO.
HONEST ONES WILL BE WELCOME
IN MIDAS TOUCH, IF THEY CHECK
IN AT THE ELDORADO SALOON.
I had seen more inviting pieces of civic promotion. It seemed to be aimed at professional gamblers only, however, and Midas Touch had been on my mind, in the capacity of a possible destination, ever since Dr. Hatfield had made me aware of its existence. After some hesitation I clucked to the team and turned off down the left-hand fork.