The Mammoth Book of Westerns

by Jon E. Lewis

  The others, save one or two that were clean-shaven, also wore the mustaches or the beards of a day that was done.

  I had begun to see those beards long before they were gray; when no wire fence mutilated the freedom of the range; when fourteen mess-wagons would be at the spring round-up; when cattle wandered and pastured, dotting the endless wilderness; when roping them brought the college graduate and the boy who had never learned to read into a lusty equality of youth and skill; when songs rose by the camp-fire; and the dim form of the night herder leaned on his saddle horn as under the stars he circled slowly around the recumbent thousands; when two hundred miles stretched between all this and the whistle of the nearest locomotive.

  And all this was over. It had begun to end a long while ago. It had ebbed away slowly from these now playing their nightly game as they had once played it at flood-tide. The turn of the tide had come even when the beards were still brown, or red, or golden.

  The decline of their day began possibly with the first wire fence; the great ranch life was hastened to its death by the winter snows of 1886; received its mortal stroke in the rustler war of 1892; breathed its last – no, it was still breathing, it had not wholly given up the ghost. Cattlemen and sheepmen, the newcomers, were at deeds of violence with each other. And here in this place, at the poker table, the ghost still clung to the world of the sagebrush, where it had lived its headlong joys.

  I watched the graybeards going on with this game that had outlived many a player, had often paused during bloodshed, and resumed as often, no matter who had been carried out. They played without zest, winning or losing little, with now and then a friendly word to me.

  They had learned to tolerate me when I had come among them first; not because I ever grew skilled in what they did, either in the saddle or with a gun, but because they knew that I liked them and the life they led, and always had come back to lead it with them, in my tenderfoot way.

  Did they often think of their vanished prosperity? Or did they try to forget that, and had they succeeded? Something in them seemed quenched – but they were all in their fifties now; they had been in their twenties when I knew them first.

  My first sight of James Work was on a night at the Cheyenne Club. He sat at the head of a dinner-table with some twenty men as his guests. They drank champagne and they sang. Work’s cattle in those days earned him twenty per cent. Had he not overstayed his market in the fatal years, he could be giving dinners still. As with him, so with the others in that mild poker game.

  Fortune, after romping with them, had romped off somewhere else. What filled their hours, what filled their minds, in these days of emptiness?

  So I sat and watched them. How many times had I arrived for the night and done so? They drank very little. They spoke very little. They had been so used to each other for so long! I had seen that pile of newspapers and magazines where the man was reading grow and spread and litter the back of the room since I was twenty.

  It was a joke that Henry never could bring himself to throw anything away.

  “I suppose,” I said to him now, as I pointed to the dusty accumulation, “that would be up to the ceiling if you didn’t light your stove every winter with some of it.”

  Henry nodded and chuckled as he picked up his hand.

  The man reading at the back of the room lifted his magazine. “This is October, 1885,” he said, holding the shabby cover toward us.

  “Find any startling news, Gilbert?”

  “Why, there’s a pretty good thing,” said the man. “Did you know sign-boards have been used hundreds and hundreds of years? Way back of Columbus.”

  “I don’t think I have ever thought about them,” said Henry.

  “Come to think about it,” said James Work, “sign-boards must have started whenever hotels and saloons started, or whatever they called such places at first.”

  “It goes away back,” said the reader. “ It’s a good piece.”

  “Come to think about it,” said James Work, “men must have traveled before they had houses; and after they had houses travel must have started public houses, and that would start sign-boards.”

  “That’s so,” said Henry.

  A third player spoke to the reader. “Travel must have started red-light houses. Does he mention them, Gilbert?”

  “He wouldn’t do that, Marshal, not in a magazine he wouldn’t,” said James Work.

  “He oughtn’t,” said Henry. “Such things should not be printed.”

  “Well, I guess it was cities started them, not travel,” surmised Marshal. “I wonder whose idea the red light was.”

  “They had sign-boards in Ancient Rome,” answered the man at the back of the room.

  “Think of that!” said Henry.

  “Might have been one of them emperors started the red light,” said Marshal, “same as gladiators.”

  The game went on, always listless. Habit was strong, and what else was there to do?

  “October, 1885,” said Marshal. “That was when Toothpick Kid pulled his gun on Doc Barker and persuaded him to be a dentist.”

  “Not 1885,” said James Work. “That was 1886.”

  “October, 1885,” insisted Marshal. “That railroad came to Douglas the next year.”

  “He’s got it correct, Jim,” said Henry.

  “Where is Toothpick Kid nowadays?” I inquired.

  “Pulled his freight for Alaska. Not heard from since 1905. She’s taken up with Duke Gardiner’s brother, the Kid’s woman has,” said Henry.

  “The Kid wanted Barker to fix his teeth same as Duke Gardiner had his,” said Work.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen Duke Gardiner since ’91,” said I.

  “When last heard from,” said Henry, “Duke was running a joint in El Paso.”

  “There’s a name for you!” exclaimed the man at the back of the room. “ ‘Goat and Compasses’! They had that on a signboard in England. Well, and would you ever guess what it started from! ‘ God encompasseth us’!”

  “Think of that!” said Henry.

  “Does it say,” asked Work, “if they had any double signs like Henry’s here?”

  “Not so far, it doesn’t. If I strike any, I’ll tell you.”

  That double sign of Henry’s, hanging outside now in the dark of the silent town, told its own tale of the old life in its brief way. From Montana to Texas, I had seen them. Does anybody know when the first one was imagined and painted?

  A great deal of frontier life it told by the four laconic words. They were to be found at the edges of those towns which rose overnight in the midst of nowhere, sang and danced and shot for a while, and then sank into silence. As the rider from his round-up or his mine rode into town with full pockets, he read “First Chance”; in the morning as he rode out with pockets empty, he read “Last Chance”. More of the frontier life could hardly be told in four words. They were quite as revealing of the spirit of an age and people as Goat and Compasses.

  That is what I thought as I sat there looking on at my old acquaintances over their listless game. It was still too early to go to bed, and what else was there to do? What a lot of old tunes Jed Goodland remembered!

  “Why, where’s your clock, Henry?” I asked.

  Henry scratched his head. “Why,” he meditated – “why, I guess it was last January.”

  “Did she get shot up again?”

  Henry slowly shook his head. “This town is not what it was. I guess you saw the last shootin-up she got. She just quit on me one day. Yes; January. Winding of her up didn’t do nothing to her. It was Lee noticed she had quit. So I didn’t get a new one. Any more than I have fresh onions. Too much trouble to mend the ditch.”

  “Where’s your Chink tonight?” I inquired. Lee was another old acquaintance; he had cooked many meals and made my bed often, season after season, when I had lodged here for the night.

  “I let Lee go – let’s see – I guess that must have been last April. Business is not what it used to be.”

>   “Then you do everything yourself, now?”

  “Why, yes; when there’s anything to do.”

  “Boys don’t seem as lively as they used to be,” said Work.

  “There are no boys,” said Henry. “Just people.”

  This is what Henry had to say. It was said by the bullet holes in the wall, landmarks patterning the shape of the clock which had hung there till it stopped going last January. It was said by the empty shelves beneath the clock and behind the bar. It was said by the empty bottles which Henry had not yet thrown out. These occupied half one shelf. Two or three full bottles stood in the middle of the lowest shelf, looking lonely. In one of them the cork had been drawn, and could be pulled out by the fingers again, should anyone call for a drink.

  “It was Buck Seabrook shot up your clock last time, wasn’t it, Henry?” asked Marshal. “You knew Buck?” he said to me; and I nodded.

  “Same night as that young puncher got the letter he’d been asking for every mail day,” said Work.

  “Opened it in the stage office,” continued Marshal, “drew his gun and blew out his brains right there. I guess you heard about him?” he said to me again, and I nodded.

  “No,” Henry corrected. “Not there.” He pointed at the ceiling. “Upstairs. He was sleeping in number four. He left no directions.”

  “I liked that kid,” said Stirling, who had been silent. “ Nice, quiet, well-behaved kid. A good roper.”

  “Anybody know what was in the letter?” asked Work.

  “It was from a girl,” said Henry. “I thought maybe there would be something in it demanding action. There was nothing beyond the action he had taken. I put it inside his shirt with him. Nobody saw it but me.”

  “What would you call that for a name?” said the reader at the back of the room. “ ‘ Goose and Gridiron’.”

  “I’d call that good,” said Work.

  “It would sound good to a hungry traveler,” said Stirling.

  “Any more of them?” asked Henry.

  “Rafts of them. I’ll tell you the next good one.”

  “Yes, tell us. And tell us when and where they all started, if it says.” In the silence of the cards, a door shut somewhere along the dark street.

  “That’s Old Man Clarke,” said Henry.

  “First time I ever heard of him in town,” said I.

  “We made him come in. Old Man Clarke is getting turrible shaky. He wouldn’t accept a room. So he sleeps in the old stage office and cooks for himself. If you put him in New York he’d stay a hermit all the same.”

  “How old is he?”

  “ Nobody knows. He looked about as old as he does now when I took this hotel. That was 1887. But we don’t want him to live alone up that canyon any more. He rides up to his mine now and then. Won’t let anybody go along. Says the secret will die with him. Hello, Jed. Let’s have the whole of ‘ Buffalo Girls’.” And Jed Goodland played the old quadrille music through.

  “You used to hear that pretty often, I guess,” said Henry to me; and I nodded.

  Scraping steps shambled slowly by in the sand. We listened.

  “He doesn’t seem to be coming in,” I said.

  “He may. He will if he feels like it, and he won’t if he feels like not.”

  “He had to let me help him onto his horse the other day,” said Marshal. “But he’s more limber some days than others.”

  Presently the scraping steps came again, passed the door and grew distant.

  “Yes,” said Work. “Old Man Clarke is sure getting feeble.”

  “Did you say it was Buck Seabrook shot your clock the last time?”

  “Yes. Buck.”

  “If I remember correct,” pursued Stirling, “it wasn’t Buck did it, it was that joker his horse bucked off that same afternoon down by the corral.”

  “That Hat Six wrangler?”

  “Yes. Horse bucked him off. He went up so high the fashions had changed when he came down.”

  “So it was, George.” And he chuckled over the memory.

  “Where does Old Man Clarke walk to?” I asked; for the steps came scraping along again.

  “Just around and around,” said Henry. “He always would do things his own way. You can’t change him. He has taken to talking to himself this year.”

  The door opened, and he looked in. “Hello, boys,” said he.

  “Hello yourself, Uncle Jerry,” said Work. “Have a chair. Have a drink.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll think it over.” He shut the door, and the steps went shambling away.

  “His voice sounds awful old,” said Marshal. “Does he know the way his hair and beard look?”

  “Buck Seabrook,” mused Stirling. “I’ve not seen him for quite a while. Is he in the country now?”

  Henry shook his head. “Buck is in no country any more.”

  “Well, now, I hadn’t heard of it. Well, well.”

  “Any of you remember Chet Sharston?” asked Marshal.

  “Sure,” said Stirling. “ Did him and Buck have any trouble?”

  “No, they never had any trouble,” said Henry. “ Not they.”

  “What was that Hat Six wrangler’s name?” asked Work.

  “He said it was Johnson,” replied Henry.

  Again the shambling steps approached. This time Old Man Clarke came in, and Henry invited him to join the game.

  “No, boys,” he said. “Thank you just the same. I’ll sit over here for a while.” He took a chair. “You boys just go on. Don’t mind me.” His pale, ancient eyes seemed to notice us less than they did the shifting pictures in his brain.

  “Why don’t you see the barber, Uncle Jerry?” asked Marshal.

  “Nearest barber is in Casper. Maybe I’ll think it over.”

  “ ‘ Swan and Harp’,” said the man at the back of the room. “That’s another.”

  “Not equal to Goat and Compasses,” said Work.

  “It don’t make you expect a good meal like Goose and Gridiron,” said Henry. “I’ll trim your hair tomorrow, Uncle Jerry, if you say so.”

  “Boys, none that tasted her flapjacks every wanted another cook,” said Old Man Clarke.

  “Well, what do you think of ‘ Hoop and Grapes’?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Henry. “Hoop and Grapes makes no appeal to me.”

  “You boys never knowed my wife,” said Old Man Clarke in his corner. “ Flapjacks. Biscuits. She was a buck-skinned son-of-a-bitch.” His vague eyes swam, but the next moment his inconsequent cheerfulness returned. “Dance night, and all the girls late,” he said.

  “A sign-board outside a hotel or saloon,” said Marshal, “should have something to do with what’s done inside.”

  “That’s so,” said Henry.

  “Take Last Chance and First Chance,” Marshal continued. “Has England anything to beat that, I’d like to know? Did you see any to beat it?” he asked me.

  “No, I never did.”

  “You come for fishing?” asked Old Man Clarke.

  “I’ve brought my rod,” I answered.

  “No trout in this country any more,” said he.

  “My creek is fished out. And the elk are gone. I’ve not jumped a blacktail deer these three years. Where are the antelope?” He frowned; his eyes seemed to be asking questions. “But I’ll get ye some meat tomorro’, boys,” he declared in his threadbare, cheerful voice; and then it trailed off. “All at the bottom of Lake Champlain,” he said.

  “Have a drink, Uncle Jerry?” said Henry.

  “Not now, and thank you just the same. Maybe I’ll think it over.”

  “Buck Seabrook was fine to travel with,” said Stirling.

  “A fine upstanding cow-puncher,” added Work. “Honest clean through. Never knew him to go back on his word or do a crooked action.”

  “Him and Chet Sharston traveled together pretty much,” said Henry.

  Stirling chuckled over a memory. “Chet he used to try and beat Buck’s flow of conversation. Wanted to converse some hi
mself.”

  “Well, Chet could.”

  “Oh, he could some. But never equal to Buck.”

  “Here’s a good one,” said the man at the back of the room. “ ‘Bolt-in-Tun’.”

  “How do they spell a thing like that?” demanded Marshal.

  It was spelled for him.

  “Well, that may make sense to an Englishman,” said Henry.

  “Doesn’t it say where sign-boards started?” asked Work.

  “Not yet.” And the reader continued to pore over the syllables, which he followed slowly with moving lips.

  “Buck was telling Chet,” said Stirling, “of a mistake he made one night at the Southern Hotel in San Antone. Buck was going to his room fair late at night, when a man came around the corner on his floor, and quick as he seen Buck, he put his hand back to his hip pocket. Well, Buck never lost any time. So when the man took a whirl and fell in a heap Buck waited to see what he would do next. But the man didn’t do anything more.

  “So Buck goes to him and turns him over; and it isn’t any stranger, it is a prospector Buck had met up with in Nevada; and the prospector had nothing worse than a flask in his pocket. He’d been aiming to offer Buck a drink. Buck sure felt sorry about making such a mistake, he said. And Chet, he waited, for he knowed very well that Buck hoped he would ask him what he did when he discovered the truth.

  “After a while Buck couldn’t wait; and so in disappointment he says to Chet very solemn. ‘ I carried out the wishes of the deceased’.”

  “ ‘I was lookin’ over the transom when you drank his whisky,’ says Chet.”

  “ ‘Where’s your memory? You were the man,’ says Buck. Well, well, weren’t they a nonsensical pair!”

  “I remember,” said Henry. “They were sitting right there.” And he pointed to a table.

  “They were playing cooncan,” said Marshall. “I remember that night well. Buck was always Buck. Well, well! Why, didn’t Buck learn you cooncan?”

  “Yes, he did,” said I. “It was that same night.”

  “Boys,” said Old Man Clarke over in the corner, “I’ll get ye some fresh meat tomorro’.”

  “That’s you, Uncle Jerry!” said Henry heartily. “You get us a nice elk, or a blacktail, and I’ll grubstake you for the winter.”