Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan Outlaw and Other Stories

by Will C. Barnes

  THE MUMMY FROM THE GRAND CANON

  "Bang, bang, bang!" went three shots in the night air. Sounds like somefeller's a huntin' a warm place to sleep," said Little Bob Morris, oneof three men who were sitting in front of the fireplace in the snuglittle dugout at the winter horse camp of the X bar outfit.

  "Open the door, Bob, and show 'em a light," said one of the others. In afew minutes, with a wild "whoo-pee," a mounted figure rode out of thedarkness and the boys were shaking hands with "Hog-eye" Jackson, who hada pair of eyes that, as one man put it, "didn't track," one being blue,the other black, and both so badly crossed that he looked both ways atonce.

  After supper had been cooked and the dishes put away, the boys gatheredabout the fireplace for a smoke.

  "I hain't been out this a-way since the time me and Little Bob here wasa huntin' for a dead Chinee," said Jackson, with a look about the room.

  "Huntin' for a dead Chink?" said Grimes. "What ye mean by that?"

  "Ain't you never heard tell about the Chinee what died over in Williamsand was stoled away from the joss house where the other Chinks had himlaid out?" said Jackson, with a look of surprise.

  "Nary a hear," replied the two boys, "le's have it."

  "'Bout two years ago, along in the fall," Jackson began, "after we hadshipped the last steers from Williams, a Chinese laundryman there diedone night, and was laid out in the little room where the Chinamen of thetown kept their joss. The day following there was a tremendous squallingamong the heathen, for during the night Ah Yen had disappeared from thecoffin, and not a trace of him could be found. The coffin was there allright; it stood just where they left it the night before, surrounded bypaper prayers, burning punk sticks, and all the other things used by theheathens to frighten away the devils which are supposed to be lyin' inwait for the spirit of a diseased celestial. But punk or no punk, devilsor no devils, Ah Yen was gone, of that there was no doubt. The citymarshal and the sheriff both came to investigate and question, the townwas scoured, old stables and lofts searched, but still, 'no catch 'em.'After a couple of days' work the sheriff said: 'I'm danged if I'm notclear stumped. The Chink was plum dead, that's a sure thing, so hedidn't git up and walk away, and if he was hauled off by some one, theydidn't leave any sign that I can find, and, anyhow (which to him was themost convincing thing of all), what'd any one want for to steal a deadChinaman, I'd like to know?'

  "There was a doctor livin' over on Cataract canyon that fall, a sort oflunger chap, and when some one suggested that perhaps he had packed theChink off for dissectin' purposes (Ah Yen bein' six feet tall and thebest specimen of a Chinaman I'd ever seen), the sheriff, just to make asort of showin' to the other Chinks, sent me--I bein' a deputy sheriffat that time--to make a sort of scout round and see what I could pickup.

  "We dropped into his camp, but nothin' doin', and after prowling aroundfor a day or two I went back to town. The next day Scotty Jones got on atear and shot up the burg pretty plenty, and in tryin' to ride his horseinto a Front Street saloon got a load of buckshot into his countenance.This made so much excitement that by the time the coroner's jury gotdone with the inquest the loss of Ah Yen's remains had become a matterof past history.

  "Meantime the Chinks raised a powerful rookus over the loss of the bodyof Ah Yen, he bein' a sort of high muck-a-muck among them, but even theoffer of a $100 reward for the body didn't get any clews to thedisappearance."

  "I remember hearin' something about it," said Grimes, "but I was down inthe Tonto basin that fall a-huntin' some hosses we lost on the springwork, and never before did hear jist what happened."

  "An' didn't they never find out what went with the Chink?" queriedRussel, who was a newcomer in the country.

  "Well," said Jackson rather evasively, "so fur as I know nobody's everyit claimed the reward."

  "Le's change the subject," said Grimes, lighting his pipe with a longpine sliver. "Hog-eye, where you been sence I seen you last fall a yearago over on the Tonto steer round up?" he asked of the newcomer.

  "Me?" said Jackson, with a start, blowing a cloud of smoke skyward. "Oh,I been a driftin' about pretty promiscous like sence then. When we cometo ship the last of the steers that fall, old Mose, the Spur boss, axedme if I wanted to go back to Kansas and help take care of 'em where theoutfit was going to winter 'em. Well, me not being sure of a winter'sjob here, and likely to have to ride the chuck line before spring, Ireckons I'd best nab the job whilst it was open, so I took it."

  "How long did you last on the cornstalk job?" asked Russel.

  "Oh, I hung and rattled with it till about April, and then I begins togit oneasy and sort of hankering for the range agin. One day I was intown for some grub and other plunder and goes down to the depot to seethe train come through, and me a wishin' to God I was a goin' off inher, no matter which-a-way she was pointed. When number two comes along,who should drop off but old Pickerell, who used to live out here on thecanyon and take tourists out and show 'em the sights. Pick were powerfulglad to see me and he sed, ses he, 'What be ye a doin' here, Jackson?'

  "'I'm a doin' of the prodigal son act,' ses I.

  "'Come again,' ses he, lookin' sort of mystified like.

  "'I'm a-feedin' a bunch of hawgs and steers out here on a farm,' ses I,'where I ain't seen the sun shine but twicet in four months.'

  "Pickerell, he laughed sort of tickled like, an' ses to me, 'Why don'tyou quit and go back to Arizony, where the sun shines all the time?'

  "'I'm a goin' to,' ses I, 'just as shore as next pay day comes.' Ididn't like to tell him that I was flat busted count of goin' into K. C.with a load of hawgs an' meetin' up with a bunch of _amigos_ what workedme for a sure enough sucker. They gits all my _dinero_ an' leaves melocked up in a little old room where we went to git a drink."

  Hog-eye sighed and sucked vigorously at his pipe, while the boys grinnedat each other and waited to hear the rest of the story, which wasevidently hanging on his lips.

  "Well, go on Hog-eye, tell us the rest. Might as well 'fess up and feelbetter," said High-pockets encouragingly.

  "I reckon so," replied Jackson with a chuckle, as if there was somepleasure in the memories of the past. "You see, after talkin' a fewminutes with Pick he up and makes me an offer to go back east, where hewas a runnin' a show what were a part of a street carnival outfit anda-makin' all kinds of money. He wanted me to rig up in a 'MontgomeryWard outfit,' big hat, goatskin chaps, spurs an' gloves, with stars andfringe like them fellers in the movie outfits gits onto 'em, an' sort ofloaf round the door and git people excited an' toll 'em into the show.So I hits the high places back to the farm, and tells the granger fellerto git him a new cornstalk pusher to take my place pretty _pronto_. Whenhe comes I strikes out for the place back in Illinoy where Pick sed he'dbe showin' an' waitin' for my arrival.

  "Pick he pays me forty beans a month, an we sleeps on our round-up bedsin one of the tents. He shore had a mess of plunder inside the big tent.They was a Navajo squaw weavin' blankets, a couple of loafer wolves,some coyotes, wildcats, badgers, a lot of rattlers, centipedes andtarantulas, and a whole box full of them heely monsters. Besides this,he had a lot of glass cases in which he had a bunch of them stone axes,_metates_, _mano_ stones, arrow-heads, and all that sort of plunderwhich they digs up from them prehistoric ruins all over this country outhere.

  "_He had a Navajo Squaw weaving blankets_"]

  "But the main drawin' card he had was the mummy which he sed he dug upsomewheres out here in the Grand Canon. He had all sorts of certificatesand letters to prove its genuineness, as well as photographs taken whenthey dug it up in the cave.

  "One day a odd-lookin' four-eyed feller comes along, and he ses to Pick,'Mought I inspect this mummy of your'n?' and Pick he ses, 'Shore,pardner, jist as much as you like. You come round to-morrow mornin' forethe show begins and I'll be glad to have you look the gent over.'

  "The old boy ses he'll shore be on hand, for he's powerful interested inthem prehistoric things out West. So that evening, after the showclosed, Pick s
es to me, 'Jackson, you git a screwdriver and take themscrews outen the lower lid of that there mummy case.' So I loosens upthe screws, and havin' nothin' particular to do, I takes off the lid toget a better look at his Nibs. I ain't never seen a mummy before, an'was sort of curious to know what a shore enuff mummy did look like. Hewas naked down to his waist, and the skin was as dry and leathery as anold cowhide that's been laying out in the weather for ten years. Hiseyes were shut tight and his teeth showed through his thin lips with agrin that give me a cold chill for a month afterwards. But, say, boys,talk about a surprise. One look was all I wanted to show me that thishere mummy of old Pick's was nothin' else but the remains of old AhYen, the Chink what died in Williams and was stole out of the josshouse. Then I remembered the reward offered for it, but old Pick weretoo square a feller to soak that-a-way. I never said nothin' to nobodyabout what I'd seen, but slipped the lid back on the case and went offto bed in the other tent.

  "Long about midnight I was woke up by somebody a hollerin' fire, andwhen I busted out of the tent the whole row of shacks was a blazin'. Ourbig tent was too far gone to save anything, but we drug out our beds andwhat little baggage we had in the small tent and did well to git thatmuch out. Inside an hour there wasn't nothin' left but a pile of ashesto show where the whole outfit stood.

  "Old man Pick, he took on considerable, but 'twan't no use cryin' overspilt milk, an' so we hit the trail for Arizony an' a little sunshine."

  "But how did Pickerell git holt of that there Chink's body?" askedMorris, who had listened with amazement at the story.

  Jackson grinned as he slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe. "It sortof hacked the old man when he found I was wise to his little game withthe Chink," he said. "Over in Albuquerque he met up with a feller whowas a-goin' down into Central America on a sort of bug huntin'expedition and he talked Pick into goin' with him. The night before wesplit at Albuquerque he gits fuller than a goat, an' seein' as how hewasn't comin' back to these parts agin, he give me a great oldconfidential an' tole me how he turned the trick.

  "I disremember all that Pickerell done tole me of the way the job wasworked," continued Jackson, "but, howsomever, the day the Chink died theone-lunged doctor was in town. Pickerell he's been a tellin' him aboutthe mummies they occasionally found out in them cliff dwellers' ruins inthe canyon, and when the Doc meets Pick hangin' about town that afternoonhe suggests carryin' off the Chink's body and makin' a mummy out of it.That hits Pick all right and he didn't let no grass grow under his feetgittin' ready to do it.

  "The night of the body snatchin', he gits up about midnight, slipsuptown, finds the door of the joss house open and no one watchin' it.Hurryin' back to his cabin, he saddles up one mule and slaps apacksaddle on the other, an' an hour later drifted out of town with apack on his mule lookin' for all the world like a long roll of bedding.By noon the next day he reached his den in the canyon, where he and thedoctor went to work, and between 'em did a mighty good job of embalmin',endin' it all up with a three months' smokin' of the body with greencedar wood.

  "Pick ses that then come the tickledest part of the hull job, fer whilsthe's got a mummy all right, he's got to git it sort of discovered liketo make it of any scientific value, an' he studies the matter aplenty.He knows a bunch of fellers what was a-coming out to the Grand Canonfrom the East to poke about an' try an' discover prehistoric things, andhe knows them's the very chaps to help him out. So when they shows up hetells 'em sort of accidental like that he knows where they's a bunch ofthem there clift dwellings what nobody'd ever yit seen, and they grabsat his bait like hungry trout. They just can't skeercely wait to git outthere, and Pick ses the rest were plumb easy, for the whole place lookedlike it had never been disturbed before, and when they digs out themummy all buried in the dirt and rubbish in one of the cliff dwellings,the thing was done.

  "Them fellers jist nachelly never suspicioned a thing and was perfectlywillin' to sign a statement testifyin' to the genuineness of the mummy.Then they took photographs of the cliff dwellings and the mummy as itlay in the room, and all the surroundin's, with all these herescientific chaps a-standin' around, which clinched the thing. Pick seshe'll take the mummy fer his share, and he gits the fellers to take iton east with their plunder when they goes, so no one won't neversuspicion him and connect him up with the deal."

  "I reckon you and him would have been chasin' 'bout the country backthar to this very yit, if the fire hadn't cleaned up the outfit,wouldn't you?" inquired Russel.

  "Sure," replied the ex-showman; "we was makin' all kinds of money at itand makin' of it easier than I ever did in all my life before. But, say,when it comes to makin' mummies, old Pickerell and that there one-lungdoctor had 'em old Pharaoh fellers beaten a whole mile."

  "_He knows where there's a bunch of them there Cliffdwellings_"]