The Night Riders

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  “Law?” replied the carpenter. “Law? Say, we don’t rec’nize no law around these parts—not yet. Mebbe it’s comin’, but—I ’lows ther’s jest one law at present, an’ that we mostly carries on us. Oh, Jake Harnach’s met his match ’fore now. But ’tain’t frekent. Yes, Jake’s a big swine, wi’ the muscle o’ two men; but I’ve seen him git downed, and not a hund’ed mile from wher’ we’re settin’. Say, Ike,” he turned to the man behind the bar, “you ain’t like to fergit the night Black Anton called his ‘hand.’ Ther’ ain’t no bluff to Anton. When he gits to the bizness end of a gun it’s best to get your thumbs up sudden.”

  The saloon-keeper nodded. “Guess there’s one man who’s got Jake’s measure, an’ that’s Black Anton.”

  The butcher added a punctuating laugh, while Slum nodded.

  “And who’s Black Anton?” asked Tresler of the saloon-keeper.

  “Anton? Wal, I guess he’s Marbolt’s private hoss keeper. He’s a half-breed. French-Canadian; an’ tough. Say, he’s jest as quiet an’ easy you wouldn’t know he was around. Soft spoken as a woman, an’ jest about as vicious as a rattler. Guess you’ll meet him. An’ I ’lows he’s meetable—till he’s riled.”

  “Pleasant sort of man if he can cow this wonderful Jake,” observed Tresler, quietly.

  “Oh, yes, pleasant ’nough,” said Ike, mistaking his guest’s meaning.

  “The only thing I can’t understand ’bout Anton,” said Slum, suddenly becoming interested, “is that he’s earnin’ his livin’ honest. He’s too quiet, an’—an’ iley. He sort o’ slid into this territory wi’out a blamed cit’zen of us knowin’. We’ve heerd tell of him sence from ’crost the border, an’ the yarns ain’t nice. I don’t figger to argue wi’ strangers at no time, an’ when Anton’s around I don’t never git givin’ no opinion till he’s done talkin’, when I mostly find mine’s the same as his.”

  “Some folks ain’t got no grit,” growled Shaky, contemptuously.

  “An’ some folk ’a’ got so much grit they ain’t got no room fer savee,” rapped in Slum sharply.

  “Meanin’ me,” said Shaky, sitting up angrily.

  “I ’lows you’ve got grit,” replied the little man quietly, looking squarely into the big man’s eyes.

  “Go to h——”

  “Guess I’d as lief be in Forks; it’s warmer,” replied Slum, imperturbably.

  “Stow yer gas! You nag like a widder as can’t git a second man.”

  “Which wouldn’t happen wi’ folk o’ your kidney around.”

  Shaky was on his feet in an instant, and his anger was blazing in his fierce eyes.

  “Say, you gorl——”

  “Set right ther’, Shaky,” broke in Slum, as the big man sprang toward him. “Set right ther’; ther’ ain’t goin’ to be no hoss-play.”

  Slum Ranks had not shifted his position, but his right hand had dived into his jacket pocket and his eyes flashed ominously. And the carpenter dropped back into his seat without a word.

  And Tresler looked on in amazement. It was all so quick, so sudden. There had hardly been a breathing space between the passing of their good-nature and their swift-rising anger. The strangeness of it all, the lawlessness, fascinated him. He knew he was on the fringe of civilization, but he had had no idea of how sparse and short that fringe was. He thought that civilization depended on the presence of white folk. That, of necessity, white folk must themselves have the instincts of civilization.

  Here he saw men, apparently good comrades all, who were ready, on the smallest provocation, to turn and rend each other. It was certainly a new life to him, something that perhaps he had vaguely dreamt of, but the possibility of the existence of which he had never seriously considered.

  But, curiously enough, as he beheld these things for himself for the first time, they produced no shock, they disturbed him in nowise. It all seemed so natural. More, it roused in him a feeling that such things should be. Possibly this feeling was due to his own upbringing, which had been that of an essentially athletic university. He even felt the warm blood surge through his veins at the prospect of a forcible termination to the two men’s swift passage of arms.

  But the ebullition died out as quickly as it had risen. Slum slid from the bar to the ground, and his deep-set eyes were smiling again.

  “Pshaw,” he said, with a careless shrug, “ther’ ain’t nothin’ to grit wi’out savee.”

  Shaky rose and stretched himself as though nothing had happened to disturb the harmony of the meeting. The butcher relinquished his hold on the bar and moved across to the window.

  “Guess the missis’ll be shoutin’ around fer you fellers to git your suppers,” Slum observed cheerfully. Then he turned to Tresler. “Ike, here, don’t run no boarders. Mebbe you’d best git around to my shack. Sally’ll fix you up with a blanket or two, an’ the grub ain’t bad. You see, I run a boardin’-house fer the boys—leastways, Sally does.”

  And Tresler adopted the suggestion. He had no choice but to do so. Anyway, he was quite satisfied with the arrangement. He had entered the life of the prairie and was more than willing to adopt its ways and its people.

  And the recollection of that first night in Forks remained with him when the memory of many subsequent nights had passed from him. It stuck to him as only the first strong impressions of a new life can.

  He met Sally Ranks—she was two sizes too large for the dining-room of the boarding-house—who talked in a shrieking nasal manner that cut the air like a knife, and who heaped the plates with coarse food that it was well to have a good appetite to face. He dined for the first time in his life at a table that had no cloth, and devoured his food with the aid of a knife and fork that had never seen a burnish since they had first entered the establishment, and drank boiled tea out of a tin cup that had once been enameled. He was no longer John Tresler, fresh from the New England States, but one of fourteen boarders, the majority of whom doubled the necessary length of their sentences when they conversed by reason of an extensive vocabulary of blasphemy, and picked their teeth with their forks.

  But it was pleasant to him. He was surrounded by something approaching the natural man. Maybe they were drawn from the dregs of society, but nevertheless they had forcibly established their right to live—a feature that had lifted them from the ruck of thousands of law-abiding citizens. He experienced a friendly feeling for these ruffians. More, he had a certain respect for them.

  After supper many of them drifted back to their recreation-ground, the saloon. Tresler, although he had no inclination for drink, would have done the same. He wished to see more of the people, to study them as a man who wishes to prepare himself for a new part. But the quiet Slum drew him back and talked gently to him; and he listened.

  “Say, Tresler,” the little man remarked offhandedly, “ther’s three fellers lookin’ fer a gamble. Two of ’em ain’t a deal at ‘draw,’ the other’s pretty neat. I tho’t, mebbe, you’d notion a hand up here wi’ us. It’s better’n loafin’ down ’t the saloon. We most gener’ly play a dollar limit.”

  And so it was arranged. Tresler stayed. He was initiated. He learned the result of a game of “draw” in Forks, where the players made the whole game of life a gamble, and attained a marked proficiency in the art.

  The result was inevitable. By midnight there were four richer citizens in Forks, and a newcomer who was poorer by his change out of a hundred-dollar bill. But Tresler lost quite cheerfully. He never really knew how it was he lost, whether it was his bad play or bad luck. He was too tired and sleepy long before the game ended. He realized next morning, when he came to reflect, that in some mysterious manner he had been done. However, he took his initiation philosophically, making only a mental reservation for future guidance.

  That night he slept on a palliasse of straw, with a pillow consisting of a thin bolster propped on his outer clothes. Three very yellow blankets made up the tally of comfort. And the whole was spread out on the floor of a room in which four other men w
ere sleeping noisily.

  After breakfast he paid his bill, and, procuring his horse, prepared for departure. His first acquaintance in Forks stood his friend to the last. Slum it was who looked round his horse to see that the girths of the saddle were all right; Slum it was who praised the beast in quiet, critical tones; Slum it was who shook him by the hand and wished him luck; Slum it was who gave him a parting word of advice; just as it was Slum who had first met him with ridicule, cared for him—at a price—during his sojourn, and quietly robbed him at a game he knew little about. And Tresler, with the philosophy of a man who has that within him which must make for achievement, smiled, shook hands heartily and with good will, and quietly stored up the wisdom he had acquired in his first night in Forks Settlement.

  “Say, Tresler,” exclaimed Slum, kindly, as he wrung his departing guest’s hand, “I’m real glad I’ve met you. I ’lows, comin’ as you did, you might ’a’ run dead into some durned skunk as hadn’t the manners for dealin’ with a hog. There’s a hatful of ’em in Forks. S’long. Say, ther’s a gal at Skitter Bend. She’s the ol’ blind boss’s daughter, an’ she’s a dandy. But don’t git sparkin’ her wi’ the ol’ man around.”

  Tresler laughed. Slum amused him.

  “Good-bye,” he said. “Your kindness has taken a load—off my mind. I know more than I did yesterday morning. No, I won’t get sparking the girl with the old man around. See you again some time.”

  And he passed out of Forks.

  “That feller’s a decent—no, he’s a gentleman,” muttered Slum, staring after the receding horseman. “Guess Skitter Bend’s jest about the place fer him. He’ll bob out on top like a cork in a water bar’l. Say, Jake Harnach’ll git his feathers trimmed or I don’t know a ‘deuce-spot’ from a ‘straight flush.’”

  Which sentiment spoke volumes for his opinion of the man who had just left him.

  * * *

  CHAPTER II

  MOSQUITO BEND

  Forks died away in a shimmering haze of heat as Tresler rode out over the hard prairie trail. Ten miles they had told him it was to Mosquito Bend; a ten-mile continuation of the undulating plains he had now grown accustomed to. He allowed his horse to take it leisurely. There was no great hurry for an early arrival.

  John Tresler had done what many an enterprising youngster from the New England States has done since. At the age of twenty-five, finding himself, after his university career at Harvard, with an excellent training in all athletics, particularly boxing and wrestling and all those games pertaining to the noble art of self-defense, but with only a limited proficiency in matters relating to the earning of an adequate living, he had decided to break new ground for himself on the prairie-lands of the West. Stock-raising was his object, and, to this end, he had sought out a ranch where he could thoroughly master the craft before embarking on his own enterprise.

  It was through official channels that he had heard of Mosquito Bend as one of the largest ranches in the country at the time, and he had at once entered into negotiations with the owner, Julian Marbolt, for a period of instruction. His present journey was the result.

  He thought a good deal as his horse ambled over that ten miles. He weighed the stories he had heard from Shaky, and picked them threadbare. He reduced his efforts to a few pointed conclusions. Things were decidedly rough at Mosquito Bend. Probably the brutality was a case of brute force pitted against brute force—he had taken into consideration the well-known disposition of the Western cowpuncher—and, as such, a matter of regretable necessity for the governing of the place. Shaky had in some way fallen foul of the master and foreman and had allowed personal feelings to warp his judgment. And, lastly, taking his “greenness” into account, he had piled up the agony simply from the native love of the “old hand” for scaring a newcomer.

  Tresler was no weakling or he would never have set out to shape his own course as he was now doing. He was a man of considerable purpose, self-reliant and reasonable, with sufficient easy good-nature to be compatible with strength. He liked his own experiences too, though he never scorned the experiences of another. Slum had sized him up pretty shrewdly when he said “he’ll bob out on top like a cork in a water bar’l,” but he had not altogether done him full justice.

  The southwestern trail headed slantwise for the mountains, which snowy barrier bounded his vision to the west the whole of his journey. He had watched the distant white-capped ramparts until their novelty had worn off, and now he took their presence as a matter of course. His eyes came back to the wide, almost limitless plains about him, and he longed for the sight of a tree, a river, even a cultivated patch of nodding wheat. But there was just nothing but the lank, tawny grass for miles and miles, and the blazing sunlight that scorched him and baked gray streaks of dusty sweat on his horse’s shoulders and flanks.

  He rode along dreaming, as no doubt hundreds of others have dreamt before and since. There was nothing new or original about his dreams, for he was not a man given to romance. He was too direct and practical for that. No, his were just the thoughts of a young man who has left his home, which thereby gains in beauty as distance lends enchantment to it, and kindly recollection crowns it with a glory that it could never in reality possess.

  Without indication or warning, he came upon one of those strangely hidden valleys in which the prairie near the Rockies abounds. He found himself at the edge of it, gazing down upon a wide woodland-bound river, which wound away to the east and west like the trail of some prehistoric monster. The murmur of the flowing waters came to him with such a suggestion of coolness and shade that, for the first time on his long journey from Whitewater, he was made to forget the park-like beauties of his own native land.

  There was a delightful variation of color in the foliage down there. Such a density of shadow, such a brilliancy. And a refreshing breeze was rustling over the tree-tops, a breath he had longed for on the plains but had never felt. The opposite side was lower. He stood on a sort of giant step. A wall that divided the country beyond from the country he was leaving. A wall that seemed to isolate those who might live down there and shut them out as though theirs was another world.

  He touched his horse’s flanks, and, with careful, stilted steps, the animal began the descent. And now he speculated as to the whereabouts of the ranch, for he knew that this was the Mosquito River, and somewhere upon its banks stood his future home. As he thought of this he laughed. His future home; well, judging by what he had been told, it would certainly possess the charm of novelty.

  He was forced to give up further speculation for a while. The trail descended so sharply that his horse had to sidle down it, and the loose shingle under its feet set it sliding and slipping dangerously.

  In a quarter of an hour he drew up on the river bank and looked about him. Whither? That was the question. He was at four crossroads. East and west, along the river bank; and north and south, the way he had come and across the water.

  Along the bank the woods were thick and dark, and the trail split them like the aisle of an aged Gothic church. The surface of red sand was hard, but there were marks of traffic upon it. Then he looked across the river at the distant rolling plains.

  “Of course,” he said aloud. “Who’s going to build a ranch on this side? Where could the cattle run?”

  And he put his horse at the water and waded across without further hesitation. Beyond the river the road bent away sharply to the right, and cut through a wide avenue of enormous pine trees, and along this he bustled his horse. Half a mile further on the avenue widened. The solemn depths about him lightened, and patches of sunlight shone down into them and lit up the matted underlay of rotting cones and pine-needles which covered the earth.

  The road bent sharply away from the river, revealing a scrub of low bush decorated with a collection of white garments, evidently set out to dry. His horse shied at the unusual sight, and furthermore took exception to the raucous sound of a man’s voice chanting a dismal melody, somewhere away down by the river on h
is right.

  In this direction he observed a cattle-path. And the sight of it suggested ascertaining the identity of the doleful minstrel. No doubt this man could give him the information he needed. He turned off the road and plunged into scrub. And at the river bank he came upon a curious scene. There was a sandy break in the bush, and the bank sloped gradually to the water’s edge. Three or four wash-tubs, grouped together in a semicircle, stood on wooden trestles, and a quaint-looking little man was bending over one of them washing clothes, rubbing and beating a handful of garments on a board like any washerwoman. His back was turned to the path, and he faced the river. On his right stood an iron furnace and boiler, with steam escaping from under the lid. And all around him the bushes were hung with drying clothes.

  “Hello!” cried Tresler, as he slipped to the ground.

  “Holy smoke!”

  The scrubbing and banging had ceased, and the most curiously twisted face Tresler had ever seen glanced back over the man’s bowed shoulder. A red, perspiring face, tufted at the point of the chin with a knot of gray whisker, a pair of keen gray eyes, and a mouth—yes, it was the mouth that held Tresler’s attention. It went up on one side, and had somehow got mixed up with his cheek, while a suggestion of it was continued by means of a dark red scar right up to the left eye.

  For a second or two Tresler could not speak, he was so astonished, so inclined to laugh. And all the while the gray eyes took him in from head to foot; then another exclamation, even more awestruck, broke from the stranger.

  “Gee-whizz!”

  And Tresler sobered at once.

  “Where’s Mosquito Bend Ranch?” he asked.

  The little man dropped his washing and turned round, propping himself against the edge of the tub.

  “Skitter Bend Ranch?” he echoed slowly, as though the meaning of the question had not penetrated to his intellect. Then a subdued whisper followed. “Gee, but I——” And he looked down at his own clothes as though to reassure himself.