"Get your hat. Quick!' I jobbed him, gentle and encouraging.
"Age allus commands respect. Therefore the sight of a six-foot, grizzled Klondiker in a wide hat, benevolently prodding the night editor in the short ribs and apple sauce, with eight bright and chilly inches, engendered a certain respect in the reportorial staff.
"'You're going to tell Mrs. Morrow all about the pretty pictures,' I says, like a father.
"'Let me go, damn you!' he frothed, but I wedged him into a corner of the cab and took off his collar—in strips. It interfered with his breathing, as I couldn't get a holt low enough to regulate his respiration. He kicked out two cab windows, but I bumped his head agin the woodwork, by way of repartee. It was a real pleasure, not to say recreation, experimenting with the noises he made. Seldom I get a neck I give a cuss to squeeze. His was number fifteen at first, by the feel; but I reduced it a quarter size at a time.
"When we got there I helped him out, one hand under his chin, the other back of his ears. I done it as much from regard of the neighbours as animosities to him, for it was the still, medium small hours. I tiptoed in with my treatise on the infamies of photography gurgling under my hand, but at the door I stopped. It was ajar; and there, under the light, I spied Morrow. In his arms I got glimpses of black lace and wavy, brown hair, and a white cheek that he was accomplishing wonders with. They wouldn't have heard a man-hole explosion.
"'He's still fitting to be my pardner,' I thinks, and then I heard Struthers's teeth chatter and grind. I looked at him, and the secret of the whole play came to me.
"Never having known the divine passion, it ain't for me to judge, but
I tightened on his voice-box and whispered:
"'You've outlived your period of usefulness, Struthers, and it's time to go. Let us part friends, however.' So I bade him Godspeed from the top step.
"Looking back on the evening now, that adieu was my only mistake. I limped for a week—he had a bottle in his hip pocket."
THE MULE DRIVER AND THE GARRULOUS MUTE
Bill had finished panning the concentrates from our last clean-up, and now the silver ball of amalgam sizzled and fried on the shovel over the little chip-fire, while we smoked in the sun before the cabin. Removed from the salivating fumes of the quicksilver, we watched the yellow tint grow and brighten in the heat.
"There's two diseases which the doctors ain't got any license to monkey with," began Bill, chewing out blue smoke from his lungs with each word, "and they're both fevers. After they butt into your system they stick crossways, like a swallered toothpick; there ain't any patent medicine that can bust their holt."
I settled against the door-jamb and nodded.
"I've had them both, acute and continuous, since I was old enough to know my own mind and the taste of tobacco; I hold them mainly responsible for my present condition." He mournfully viewed his fever-ridden frame which sprawled a pitiful six-feet-two from the heels of his gum-boots to the grizzled hair beneath his white Stetson.
"The first and most rabid," he continued, "is horse-racing—and t'other is the mining fever, which last is a heap insidiouser in its action and more lingering in its effect.
"It wasn't long after that deal in the Territory that I felt the symptoms coming on agin, and this time they pinted most emphatic toward prospecting, so me and 'Kink' Martin loaded our kit onto the burros and hit West.
"Kink was a terrible good prospector, though all-fired unlucky and peculiar. Most people called him crazy, 'cause he had fits of goin' for days without a peep.
"Hosstyle and ornery to the whole world; sort of bulging out and exploding with silence, as it were.
"We'd been out in the hills for a week on our first trip before he got one of them death-watch faces on him, and boycotted the English langwidge. I stood for it three days, trying to jolly a grin on to him or rattle a word loose, but he just wouldn't jolt.
"One night we packed into camp tired, hungry, and dying for a good feed.
"I hustled around and produced a supper fit for old Mr. Eppycure. Knowing that Kink had a weakness for strong coffee that was simply a hinge in him, I pounded up about a quart of coffee beans in the corner of a blanket and boiled out a South American liquid that was nothing but the real Arbuckle mud.
"This wasn't no chafing-dish party either, because the wood was wet and the smoke chased me round the fire. Then it blazed up in spurts and fired the bacon-grease, so that when I grabbed the skillet the handle sizzled the life all out of my callouses. I kicked the fire down to a nice bed of coals and then the coffee-pot upset and put it out. Ashes got into the bacon, and—Oh! you know how joyful it is to cook on a green fire when you're dead tired and your hoodoo's on vicious.
"When the 'scoffings' were finally ready, I wasn't in what you might exactly call a mollyfying and tactful mood nor exuding genialness and enthusiasms anyways noticeable."
"I herded the best in camp towards him, watching for a benevolent symptom, but he just dogged it in silence and never changed a hair. That was the limit, so I inquired sort of ominous and gentle, 'Is that coffee strong enough for ye, Mr. Martin?'
"He give a little impecunious grunt, implying, 'Oh! it'll do,' and with that I seen little green specks begin to buck and wing in front of my eyes; reaching back of me, I grabbed the Winchester and throwed it down on him.
"'Now, you laugh, darn you,' I says, 'in a hurry. Just turn it out gleeful and infractious.'
"He stared into the nozzle of that Krupp for a minute, then swallered twice to tune up his reeds, and says, friendly and perlite, but serious and wheezy:
"'Why, what in hell ails you, William?'
"'Laugh, you old dong-beater,' I yells, rising gradually to the occasion, 'or I'll bust your cupola like a blue-rock.'
"'I've got to have merriment,' I says. 'I pine for warmth and genial smiles, and you're due to furnish the sunshine. You emit a few shreds of mirth with expedition or the upper end of your spinal-cord is going to catch cold.'
"Say! his jaws squeaked like a screen door when he loosened, but he belched up a beauty, sort of stagy and artificial it was, but a great help. After that we got to know each other a heap better. Yes, sir; soon after that we got real intimate. He knocked the gun out of my hands, and we began to arbitrate. We plumb ruined that spot for a camping place; rooted it up in furrows, and tramped each other's stummicks out of shape. We finally reached an amicable settlement by me getting him agin a log where I could brand him with the coffee-pot.
"Right there we drawed up a protoplasm, by the terms of which he was to laugh anyways twice at meal-times.
"He told me that he reckoned he was locoed, and always had been since a youngster, when the Injuns run in on them down at Frisbee, the time of the big 'killing.' Kink saw his mother and father both murdered, and other things, too, which was impressive, but not agreeable for a growing child. He had formed a sort of antipathy for Injuns at that time, which he confessed he hadn't rightly been able to overcome.
"Now, he allus found himself planning how to hand Mr. Lo the double cross and avoid complications.
"We worked down into South Western Arizony to a spot about thirty-five miles back of Fort Walker and struck a prospect. Sort of a teaser it was, but worth working on. We'd just got nicely started when Kink comes into camp one day after taking a passiar around the butte for game, and says:
"'The queerest thing happened to me just now, Kid.'
"'Well, scream it at me,' I says, sort of smelling trouble in the air.
"'Oh! It wasn't much,' says he. 'I was just working down the big canyon over there after a deer when I seen two feather-dusters coming up the trail. I hid behind a rock, watching 'em go past, and I'm durned if my gun didn't go off accidental and plumb ruin one of 'em. Then I looks carefuller and seen it wasn't no feather-duster at all—nothing but an Injun.'
"'What about the other one?'
"'That's the strangest part,' says Kink. 'Pretty soon the other one turns and hits the back-trail like he'd forgot something; then
I seen him drop off his horse, too, sudden and all togetherish. I'm awful careless with this here gun,' he says. I hate to see a man laugh from his tonsils forrard, the way he did. It ain't humorous.
"'See here,' I says, 'I ain't the kind that finds fault with my pardner, nor saying this to be captious and critical of your play; but don't you know them Cochises ain't on the warpath? Them Injuns has been on their reservation for five years, peaceable, domesticated, and eating from the hand. This means trouble."
"'My old man didn't have no war paint on him one day back at Frisbee,' whispers Kink, and his voice sounded puckered up and dried, 'and my mother wasn't so darned quarrelsome, either.'
"Then I says, 'Well! them bodies has got to be hid, or we'll have the tribe and the bluebellies from the fort a scouring these hills till a red-bug couldn't hide.'
"'To hell with 'em,' says Kink. 'I've done all I'm going to for 'em.
Let the coyotes finish the job.'
"'No, siree,' I replies. 'I don't blame you for having a prejudice agin savages, but my parents is still robust and husky, and I have an idea that they'd rather see me back on the ranch than glaring through the bars for life. I'm going over to bury the meat.'
"Off I went, but when I slid down the gulch, I only found one body. T'other had disappeared. You can guess how much time I lost getting back to camp.
"'Kink,' I says, 'we're a straddle of the raggedest proposition in this country. One of your dusters at this moment is jamming his cayuse through the horizon between here and the post. Pretty soon things is going to bust loose. 'Bout to-morrer evening we'll be eating hog-bosom on Uncle Sam.'
"'Well! Well!' says Kink, 'ain't that a pity. Next time I'll conquer my natural shyness and hold a post-mortem with a rock.'
"'There won't be no next time, I reckon,' I says, ''cause we can't make it over into Mexico without being caught up. They'll nail us sure, seeing as we're the only white men for twenty-five miles around.'
"'I'd rather put up a good run than a bad stand, anyhow,' says he, 'and I allows, furthermore, there's going to be some hard trails to foller and a tolable disagreeable fight before I pleads 'not guilty' to the Colonel. We'll both duck over into the Santa—'
"'Now, don't tell me what route you're going,' I interrupts,' 'cause I believe I'll stay and bluff it through, rather than sneak for it, though neither proposition don't appeal to me. I may get raised out before the draw, but the percentage is just as strong agin your game as mine.'
"'Boy, if I was backing your system,' says Kink, 'I'd shore copper this move and play her to lose. You come on with me, and we'll make it through—mebbe.'
"'No,' I says; 'here I sticks.'
"I made up a pack-strap out of my extry overhalls while he got grub together, to start south through one hundred miles of the ruggedest and barrenest country that was ever left unfinished.
"Next noon I was parching some coffee-beans in the frying-pan, when I heard hoofs down the gully back of me. I never looked up when they come into the open nor when I heard a feller say 'Halt!'
"'Hello there!' somebody yells. 'You there at the fire.' I kept on shaking the skillet over the camp-fire.
"'What's the matter with him?' somebody said. A man got off and walked up behind me.
"'See here, brother,' he says, tapping me on the shoulder; 'this don't go.'
"I jumped clean over the fire, dropped the pan, and let out a deaf and dumb holler, 'Ee! Ah!'
"The men began to laugh; it seemed to rile the little leftenant.
"'Cut this out,' says he. 'You can talk as well as I can, and you're a going to tell us about this Injun killin'. Don't try any fake business, or I'll roast your little heels over that fire like yams.'
"I just acted the dummy, wiggled my fingers, and handed him the joyful gaze, heliographing with my teeth as though I was glad to see visitors. However, I wondered if that runt would really give my chilblains a treat. He looked like a West Pointer, and I didn't know but he'd try to haze me.
"Well! they 'klow-towed' around there for an hour looking for clues, but I'd hid all the signs of Kink, so finally they strapped me onto a horse and we hit back for the fort.
"The little man tried all kinds of tricks to make me loosen on the way down, but I just acted wounded innocence and 'Ee'd' and 'Ah'd' at him till he let me alone.
"When we rode up to the post he says to the Colonel:
"'We've got the only man there is in the mountains back there, sir, but he's playing dumb. I don't know what his game is.'
"'Dumb, eh?' says the old man, looking me over pretty keen. 'Well! I guess we'll find his voice if he's got one.'
"He took me inside, and speaking of examinations, probably I didn't get one. He kept looking at me like he wanted to place me, but I give him the 'Ee! Ah!' till everybody began to laugh. They tried me with a pencil and paper, but I balked, laid my ears back, and buck-jumped. That made the old man sore, and he says: 'Lock him up! Lock him up; I'll make him talk if I have to skin him.' So I was dragged to the 'skookum-house,' where I spent the night figuring out my finish.
"I could feel it coming just as plain, and I begun to see that when I did open up and prattle after Kink was safe, nobody wouldn't believe my little story. I had sized the Colonel up as a dead stringy old proposition, too. He was one of these big-chopped fellers with a mouth set more'n half way up from his chin and little thin lips like the edge of a knife blade, and just as full of blood—face, big and rustic-finished.
"I says to myself, 'Bud, it looks like you wouldn't be forced to prospect for a living any more this season. If that old sport turns himself loose you're going to get 'life' three times and a holdover.'
"Next morning they tried every way to make me talk. Once in a while the old man looked at me puzzled and searching, but I didn't know him from a sweat-pad, and just paid strict attention to being dumb.
"It was mighty hard, too. I got so nervous my mouth simply ached to let out a cayoodle. The words kept trying to crawl through my sesophagus, and when I backed 'em up, they slid down and stood around in groups, hanging onto the straps, gradually filling me with witful gems of thought.
"The Colonel talked to me serious and quiet, like I had good ears, and says, 'My man, you can understand every word I say, I'm sure, and what your object is in maintaining this ridiculous silence, I don't know. You're accused of a crime, and it looks serious for you."
"Then he gazes at me queer and intent, and says, 'If you only knew how bad you are making your case you'd make a clean breast of it. Come now, let's get at the truth.'
"Them thought jewels and wads of repartee was piling up in me fast, like tailings from a ground-sluice, till I could feel myself getting bloated and pussy with langwidge, but I thought, 'No! to-morrow Kink 'll be safe, and then I'll throw a jolt into this man's camp that'll go down in history. They'll think some Chinaman's been thawing out a box of giant powder when I let out my roar.'
"I goes to the guard-house again, with a soldier at my back. Everything would have been all right if we hadn't run into a mule team.
"They had been freighting from the railroad, and as we left the barracks we ran afoul of four outfits, three span to the wagon, with the loads piled on till the teams was all lather and the wheels complainin' to the gods, trying to pass the corner of the barracks where there was a narrow opening between the buildings.
"Now a good mule-driver is the littlest, orneriest speck in the human line that's known to the microscope, but when you get a poor one, he'd spoil one of them cholera germs you read about just by contact. The leader of this bunch was worse than the worst; strong on whip-arm, but surprising weak on judgment. He tried to make the turn, run plump into the corner of the building, stopped, backed, swung, and proceeded to get into grief.
"The mules being hot and nervous, he sent them all to the loco patch instanter. They began to plunge and turn and back and snarl. Before you could say 'Craps! you lose,' them shave-tails was giving the grandest exhibition of animal idiocy in the Territory, barring the
teamster. He follered their trail to the madhouse, yanking the mouths out of them, cruel and vicious.
"Now, one mule can cause a heap of tribulation, and six mules can break a man's heart, but there wasn't no excuse for that driver to stand up on his hind legs, close his eyes, and throw thirty foot of lash into that plunging buckin', white-eyed mess. When he did it, all the little words inside of me began to foam and fizzle like sedlitz; out they came, biting, in mouthfuls, and streams, and squirts, backwards, sideways, and through my nose.
"'Here! you infernal half-spiled, dog-robbing walloper,' I says; 'you don't know enough to drive puddle ducks to a pond. You quit heaving that quirt or I'll harm you past healing.'
"He turned his head and grit out something through his teeth that stimulated my circulation. I skipped over the wheels and put my left onto his neck, fingering the keys on his blow-pipe like a flute. Then I give him a toss and gathered up the lines. Say! it was like the smell of grease-paint to an actor man for me to feel the ribbons again, and them mules knew they had a chairman who savvied 'em too, and had mule talk pat, from soda to hock.
"I just intimated things over them with that whip, and talked to them like they was my own flesh and blood. I starts at the worst words the English langwidge and the range had produced, to date, and got steadily and rapidly worse as long as I talked.
"Arizony may be slow in the matter of standing collars and rag-time, but she leads the world in profanity. Without being swelled on myself, I'll say, too, that I once had more'n a local reputation in that line, having originated some quaint and feeling conceits which has won modest attention, and this day I was certainly trained to the minute.
"I addressed them brutes fast and earnest for five minutes steady, and never crossed my trail or repeated a thought.
"It must have been sacred and beautiful. Anyhow, it was strong enough to soak into their pores so that they strung out straight as a chalk-line. Then I lifted them into the collars, and we rumbled past the building, swung in front of the commissary door, cramped and stopped. With the wheelers on their haunches, I backed up to the door square as a die.
Pardners Page 3
