by Frank Norris
THE PASSING OF COCK-EYE BLACKLOCK
"Well, m'son," observed Bunt about half an hour after supper, "if yourprovender has shook down comfortable by now, we might as well jar looseand be moving along out yonder."
We left the fire and moved toward the hobbled ponies, Bunt complainingof the quality of the outfit's meals. "Down in the Panamint country," hegrowled, "we had a Chink that was a sure frying-pan expert; but _this_Dago--my word! That ain't victuals, that supper. That's just a'ingenious device for removing superfluous appetite. Next time Iassimilate nutriment in this camp I'm sure going to take chloroformbeforehand. Careful to draw your cinch tight on that pinto bronc' ofyours. She always swells up same as a horned toad soon as you begin tosaddle up."
We rode from the circle of the camp-fire's light and out upon thedesert. It was Bunt's turn to ride the herd that night, and I hadvolunteered to bear him company.
Bunt was one of a fast-disappearing type. He knew his West as thecockney knows his Piccadilly. He had mined with and for Ralston, hadsoldiered with Crook, had turned cards in a faro game at Laredo, and hadknown the Apache Kid. He had fifteen separate and different times driventhe herds from Texas to Dodge City, in the good old, rare old, wild olddays when Dodge was the headquarters for the cattle trade, and as nearto heaven as the cowboy cared to get. He had seen the end of gold andthe end of the buffalo, the beginning of cattle, the beginning of wheat,and the spreading of the barbed-wire fence, that, in the end, will takefrom him his occupation and his revolver, his chaparejos and hisusefulness, his lariat and his reason for being. He had seen the rise ofa new period, the successive stages of which, singularly enough, tallyexactly with the progress of our own world-civilization: first the nomadand hunter, then the herder, next and last the husband-man. He hadpassed the mid-mark of his life. His mustache was gray. He had fourfriends--his horse, his pistol, a teamster in the Indian TerritoryPanhandle named Skinny, and me.
The herd--I suppose all told there were some two thousand head--we foundnot far from the water-hole. We relieved the other watch and took up ournight's vigil. It was about nine o'clock. The night was fine, calm.
There was no cloud. Toward the middle watches one could expect a moon.But the stars, the stars! In Idaho, on those lonely reaches of desertand range, where the shadow of the sun by day and the courses of theconstellations by night are the only things that move, these stars are adifferent matter from those bleared pin-points of the city after dark,seen through dust and smoke and the glare of electrics and the hot hazeof fire-signs. On such a night as that when I rode the herd with Bunt_anything_ might have happened; one could have believed in fairies then,and in the buffalo-ghost, and in all the weirds of the craziest Apache"Messiah" that ever made medicine.
One remembered astronomy and the "measureless distances" and the showyproblems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the longyears of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously.Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than theflat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hungin a tree; Mars a red lantern in a clock-tower.
One listened instinctively for the tramp of the constellations. Orion,Cassiopeia and Ursa Major marched to and fro on the vault like cohortsof legionaries, seemingly within call of our voices, and all without asound.
But beneath these quiet heavens the earth disengaged multitudinoussounds--small sounds, minimized as it were by the muffling of the night.Now it was the yap of a coyote leagues away; now the snapping of a twigin the sage-brush; now the mysterious, indefinable stir of theheat-ridden land cooling under the night. But more often it was theconfused murmur of the herd itself--the click of a horn, the friction ofheavy bodies, the stamp of a hoof, with now and then the low,complaining note of a cow with a calf, or the subdued noise of a steeras it lay down, first lurching to the knees, then rolling clumsily uponthe haunch, with a long, stertorous breath of satisfaction.
Slowly at Indian trot we encircle the herd. Earlier in the evening aprairie-wolf had pulled down a calf, and the beasts were still restless.
Little eddies of nervousness at long intervals developed here and therein the mass--eddies that not impossibly might widen at any time withperilous quickness to the maelstrom of a stampede. So as he rode Buntsang to these great brutes, literally to put them to sleep--sang an oldgrandmother's song, with all the quaint modulations of sixty, seventy, ahundred years ago:
"With her ogling winks And bobbling blinks, Her quizzing glass, Her one eye idle, Oh, she loved a bold dragoon, With his broadsword, saddle, bridle. _Whack_, fol-de-rol!"
I remember that song. My grandmother--so they tell me--used to sing itin Carolina, in the thirties, accompanying herself on a harp, if youplease:
"Oh, she loved a bold dragoon, With his broadsword, saddle, bridle."
It was in Charleston, I remembered, and the slave-ships used todischarge there in those days. My grandmother had sung it then to herbeaux; officers they were; no wonder she chose it--"Oh, she loved a bolddragoon"--and now I heard it sung on an Idaho cattle-range to quiet twothousand restless steers.
Our talk at first, after the cattle had quieted down, ran upon allmanner of subjects. It is astonishing to note what strange things menwill talk about at night and in a solitude. That night we coveredreligion, of course, astronomy, love affairs, horses, travel, history,poker, photography, basket-making, and the Darwinian theory. But at lastinevitably we came back to cattle and the pleasures and dangers ofriding the herd.
"I rode herd once in Nevada," remarked Bunt, "and I was caught into ablizzard, and I was sure freezing to death. Got to where I couldn't keepmy eyes open, I was that sleepy. Tell you what I did. Had someeating-tobacco along, and I'd chew it a spell, then rub the juice intomy eyes. Kept it up all night. Blame near blinded me, but I comethrough. Me and another man named Blacklock--Cock-eye Blacklock wecalled him, by reason of his having one eye that was some out of line.Cock-eye sure ought to have got it that night, for he went badafterward, and did a heap of killing before he _did_ get it. He was abad man for sure, and the way he died is a story in itself."
There was a long pause. The ponies jogged on. Rounding on the herd, weturned southward.
"He did 'get it' finally, you say," I prompted.
"He certainly did," said Bunt, "and the story of it is what a man witha' imaginary mind like you ought to make into one of your frictiontales."
"Is it about a treasure?" I asked with apprehension. For ever since Ionce made a tale (of friction) out of one of Bunt's stories of reallife, he has been ambitious for me to write another, and is foreversuggesting motifs which invariably--I say invariably--imply thediscovery of great treasures. With him, fictitious literature mustalways turn upon the discovery of hidden wealth.
"No," said he, "it ain't about no treasure, but just about the origin,hist'ry and development--and subsequent decease--of as mean a Greaser asever stole stock, which his name was Cock-eye Blacklock.
"You see, this same Blacklock went bad about two summers after ourmeet-up with the blizzard. He worked down Yuma way and over into NewMexico, where he picks up with a sure-thing gambler, and the two beginto devastate the population. They do say when he and his running mategot good and through with that part of the Land of the Brave, men usedto go round trading guns for commissary, and clothes for ponies, andcigars for whisky and such. There just wasn't any money left _anywhere_.Those sharps had drawed the landscape clean. Some one found a dollar ina floor-crack in a saloon, and the barkeep' gave him a gallon offorty-rod for it, and used to keep it in a box for exhibition, and thecrowd would get around it and paw it over and say: 'My! my! Whatever inthe world is this extremely cu-roos coin?'
"Then Blacklock cuts loose from his running mate, and plays a lone handthrough Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacksup against a kid--a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked thegreen paint off him--and _skins_ him. And the kid, being foolish andimpulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It w
as a _twenty-two_," saidBunt, solemnly. "Yes, the kid was just that pore, pathetic kind to carrya dinky twenty-two, and with the tears runnin' down his cheeks begins totalk tall. Now what does that Cockeye do? Why, that pore kid that he hadskinned couldn't 'a' hurt him with his pore little bric-a-brac. DoesCock-eye take his little parlour ornament away from him, and spank him,and tell him to go home? No, he never. The kid's little tin pop-shooterexplodes right in his hand before he can crook his forefinger twice, andwhile he's a-wondering what-all has happened Cock-eye gets his two gunson him, slow and deliberate like, mind you, and throws forty-eights intohim till he ain't worth shooting at no more. Murders him like themud-eating, horse-thieving snake of a Greaser that he is; but beingwithin the law, the kid drawing on him first, he don't stretch hemp theway he should.
"Well, fin'ly this Blacklock blows into a mining-camp in Placer County,California, where I'm chuck-tending on the night-shift. This here campis maybe four miles across the divide from Iowa Hill, and it sure isnamed a cu-roos name, which it is Why-not. They is a barn contiguous,where the mine horses are kep', and, blame me! if there ain't aweathercock on top of that same--a golden trotting-horse--_upside down_.When the stranger an' pilgrim comes in, says he first off: 'Why'n snakesthey got that weathercock horse upside down--why?' says he. 'Why-not,'says you, and the drinks is on the pilgrim.
"That all went very lovely till some gesabe opens up a placer drift onthe far side the divide, starts a rival camp, an' names her Because. TheBoss gets mad at that, and rights up the weathercock, and renames thecamp Ophir, and you don't work no more pilgrims.
"Well, as I was saying, Cock-eye drifts into Why-not and beginsdiffusing trouble. He skins some of the boys in the hotel over in town,and a big row comes of it, and one of the bed-rock cleaners cuts loosewith both guns. Nobody hurt but a quarter-breed, who loses a' eye. Butthe marshal don't stand for no short-card men, an' closes Cock-eye upsome prompt. Him being forced to give the boys back their money isbusted an' can't get away from camp. To raise some wind he beginsdepredating.
"He robs a pore half-breed of a cayuse, and shoots up a Chink who'spanning tailings, and generally and variously becomes too pronounced,till he's run outen camp. He's sure stony-broke, not being able to turna card because of the marshal. So he goes to live in a ole cabin up bythe mine ditch, and sits there doing a heap o' thinking, and hatchingtrouble like a' ole he-hen.
"Well, now, with that deporting of Cock-eye comes his turn of bad luck,and it sure winds his clock up with a loud report. I've narrated specialof the scope and range of this 'ere Blacklock, so as you'll understandwhy it was expedient and desirable that he should up an' die. You see,he always managed, with all his killings and robbings and general andsundry flimflamming, to be just within the law. And if anybody took anotion to shoot him up, why, his luck saw him through, and the otherman's shooting-iron missed fire, or exploded, or threw wild, or suchlike, till it seemed as if he sure did bear a charmed life; and so hedid till a pore yeller tamale of a fool dog did for him what the law ofthe land couldn't do. Yes, sir, a fool dog, a pup, a blame yeller pupnamed Sloppy Weather, did for Cock-eye Blacklock, sporting character,three-card-monte man, sure-thing sharp, killer, and general bedeviler.
"You see, it was this way. Over in American Canyon, some five miles maybeback of the mine, they was a creek called the American River, and it wassure chock-a-block full of trouts. The Boss used for to go over therewith a dinky fish-pole like a buggy-whip about once a week, and scoutthat stream for fish and bring back a basketful. He was sure keen on it,and had bought some kind of privilege or other, so as he could keepother people off.
"Well, I used to go along with him to pack the truck, and one Saturday,about a month after Cock-eye had been run outen camp, we hiked up overthe divide, and went for to round up a bunch o' trouts. When we got tothe river there was a mess for your life. Say, that river was full ofdead trouts, floating atop the water; and they was some even on thebank. Not a scratch on 'em; just dead. The Boss had the papsy-lals. Inever _did_ see a man so rip-r'aring, snorting mad. _I_ hadn't a guessabout what we were up against, but he knew, and he showed down. He saidsomebody had been shooting the river for fish to sell down Sacramentoway to the market. A mean trick; kill more fish in one shoot than youcan possibly pack.
"Well, we didn't do much fishing that day--couldn't get a bite, for thatmatter--and took on home about noon to talk it over. You see, the Boss,in buying the privileges or such for that creek, had made himselfresponsible to the Fish Commissioners of the State, and 'twasn't a weekbefore they were after him, camping on his trail incessant, and wantingto know how about it. The Boss was some worried, because the fish werebeing killed right along, and the Commission was making him weary ofliving. Twicet afterward we prospected along that river and found thesame lot of dead fish. We even put a guard there, but it didn't do nomanner of good.
"It's the Boss who first suspicions Cock-eye. But it don't take noseventh daughter of no seventh daughter to trace trouble whereBlack-lock's about. He sudden shows up in town with a bunch ofsimoleons, buying bacon and tin cows [Footnote: Condensed milk.] andsuch provender, and generally giving it away that he's come into money.The Boss, who's watching his movements sharp, says to me one day:
"'Bunt, the storm-centre of this here low area is a man with a cock-eye,an' I'll back that play with a paint horse against a paper dime.'
"'No takers,' says I. 'Dirty work and a cock-eyed man are two heels ofthe same mule.'
"'Which it's a-kicking of me in the stummick frequent and painful,' heremarks, plenty wrathful.
"'On general principles,' I said, 'it's a royal flush to a pair ofdeuces as how this Blacklock bird ought to stop a heap of lead, and Iknow the man to throw it. He's the only brother of my sister, and tendschuck in a placer mine. How about if I take a day off and drop round tohis cabin and interview him on the fleetin' and unstable nature of humanlife?'
"But the Boss wouldn't hear of that.
"'No,' says he; 'that's not the bluff to back in this game. You an' mean' 'Mary-go-round'--that was what we called the marshal, him being somuch all over the country--'you an' me an' Mary-go-round will have tostock a sure-thing deck against that maverick.'
"So the three of us gets together an' has a talky-talk, an' we lays itout as how Cock-eye must be watched and caught red-handed.
"Well, let me tell you, keeping case on that Greaser sure did lack acertain indefinable charm. We tried him at sun-up, an' again at sundown,an' nights, too, laying in the chaparral an' tarweed, an' scouting upan' down that blame river, till we were sore. We built surreptitious alot of shooting-boxes up in trees on the far side of the canyon,overlooking certain an' sundry pools in the river where Cock-eye wouldbe likely to pursue operations, an' we took turns watching. I'll be aChink if that bad egg didn't put it on us same as previous, an' we'dfind new-killed fish all the time. I tell you we were _fitchered_; andit got on the Boss's nerves. The Commission began to talk of withdrawingthe privilege, an' it was up to him to make good or pass the deal. We_knew_ Blacklock was shooting the river, y' see, but we didn't have noevidence. Y' see, being shut off from card-sharping, he was up againstit, and so took to pot-hunting to get along. It was as plain as redpaint.
"Well, things went along sort of catch-as-catch-can like this for maybethree weeks, the Greaser shooting fish regular, an' the Boss b'ilingwith rage, and laying plans to call his hand, and getting bluffed outevery deal.
"And right here I got to interrupt, to talk some about the pup dog,Sloppy Weather. If he hadn't got caught up into this Blacklock game, noone'd ever thought enough about him to so much as kick him. But after itwas all over, we began to remember this same Sloppy an' to recall whathe was; no big job. He was just a worthless fool pup, yeller at that,everybody's dog, that just hung round camp, grinning and giggling andplaying the goat, as half-grown dogs will. He used to go along with thecar-boys when they went swimmin' in the resevoy, an' dash along in an'yell an' splash round just to show off. He thought it was a keen stuntto get some gesa
be to throw a stick in the resevoy so's he could paddleout after it. They'd trained him always to bring it back an' fetch it towhichever party throwed it. He'd give it up when he'd retrieved it, an'yell to have it throwed again. That was his idea of fun--just like afool pup.
"Well, one day this Sloppy Weather is off chasing jack-rabbits an' don'tcome home. Nobody thinks anything about that, nor even notices it. Butwe afterward finds out that he'd met up with Blacklock that day, an'stopped to visit with him--sorry day for Cockeye. Now it was the verynext day after this that Mary-go-round an' the Boss plans another scout.I'm to go, too. It was a Wednesday, an' we lay it out that the Cockeyewould prob'ly shoot that day so's to get his fish down to the railroadThursday, so they'd reach Sacramento Friday--fish day, see. It wasn'tmuch to go by, but it was the high card in our hand, an' we allowed todraw to it.
"We left Why-not afore daybreak, an' worked over into the canyon aboutsun-up. They was one big pool we hadn't covered for some time, an' wemade out we'd watch that. So we worked down to it, an' clumb up into ourtrees, an' set out to keep guard.
"In about an hour we heard a shoot some mile or so up the creek. They'sno mistaking dynamite, leastways not to miners, an' we knew that shootwas dynamite an' nothing else. The Cock-eye was at work, an' we shookhands all round. Then pretty soon a fish or so began to go by--bigfellows, some of 'em, dead an' floatin', with their eyes popped 'way outsame as knobs--sure sign they'd been shot.
"The Boss took and grit his teeth when he see a three-pounder go by, an'made remarks about Blacklock.
"''Sh!' says Mary-go-round, sudden-like. 'Listen!'
"We turned ear down the wind, an' sure there was the sound of some onescrabbling along the boulders by the riverside. Then we heard a pup yap.
"'That's our man,' whispers the Boss.
"For a long time we thought Cock-eye had quit for the day an' hadcoppered us again, but byne-by we heard the manzanita crack on the farside the canyon, an' there at last we see Blacklock working down towardthe pool, Sloppy Weather following an' yapping and cayoodling just as afool dog will.
"Blacklock comes down to the edge of the water quiet-like. He lays hisbig scoop-net an' his sack--we can see it half full already--down behinda boulder, and takes a good squinting look all round, and listens maybetwenty minutes, he's that cute, same's a coyote stealing sheep. We lieslow an' says nothing, fear he might see the leaves move.
"Then byne-by he takes his stick of dynamite out his hip pocket--he wasjust that reckless kind to carry it that way--an' ties it careful to acouple of stones he finds handy. Then he lights the fuse an' heaves herinto the drink, an' just there's where Cock-eye makes the mistake of hislife. He ain't tied the rocks tight enough, an' the loop slips off justas he swings back his arm, the stones drop straight down by his feet,and the stick of dynamite whirls out right enough into the pool.
"Then the funny business begins.
"Blacklock ain't made no note of Sloppy Weather, who's been sizing upthe whole game an' watchin' for the stick. Soon as Cock-eye heaves thedynamite into the water, off goes the pup after it, just as he'd beentaught to do by the car-boys.
"'Hey, you fool dog!' yells Blacklock.
"A lot that pup cares. He heads out for that stick of dynamite same asif for a veal cutlet, reaches it, grabs hold of it, an' starts back forshore, with the fuse sputterin' like hot grease. Blacklock heaves rocksat him like one possessed, capering an' dancing; but the pup comes righton. The Cock-eye can't stand it no longer, but lines out. But the pup'sgot to shore an' takes after him. Sure; why not? He think's it's allpart of the game. Takes after Cock-eye, running to beat a' express,while we-all whoops and yells an' nearly falls out the trees forlaffing. Hi! Cock-eye did scratch gravel for sure. But 'tain't no mannerof use. He can't run through that rough ground like Sloppy Weather, an'that fool pup comes a-cavartin' along, jumpin' up against him, an' hima-kickin' him away, an' r'arin', an' dancin', an' shakin' his fists, an'the more he r'ars the more fun the pup thinks it is. But all at oncesomething big happens, an' the whole bank of the canyon opens out like abig wave, and slops over into the pool, an' the air is full of trees an'rocks and cart-loads of dirt an' dogs and Blacklocks and rivers an'smoke an' fire generally. The Boss got a clod o' river-mud spang in theeye, an' went off his limb like's he was trying to bust a bucking bronc'an' couldn't; and ol' Mary-go-round was shooting off his gun on generalprinciples, glarin' round wild-eyed an' like as if he saw a' Injundevil.
"When the smoke had cleared away an' the trees and rocks quit falling,we clumb down from our places an' started in to look for Black-lock. Wefound a good deal of him, but they wasn't hide nor hair left of SloppyWeather. We didn't have to dig no grave, either. They was a big enoughhole in the ground to bury a horse an' wagon, let alone Cock-eye. So weplanted him there, an' put up a board, an' wrote on it:
Here lies most of C. BLACKLOCK, who died of a' entangling alliance with a stick of dynamite.
Moral: A hook and line is good enough fish-tackle for any honest man.
"That there board lasted for two years, till the freshet of '82, whenthe American River--Hello, there's the sun!"
All in a minute the night seemed to have closed up like a great book.The East flamed roseate. The air was cold, nimble. Some of thesage-brush bore a thin rim of frost. The herd, aroused, the dewglistening on flank and horn, were chewing the first cud of the day, andin twos and threes moving toward the water-hole for the morning's drink.Far off toward the camp the breakfast fire sent a shaft of blue smokestraight into the moveless air. A jack-rabbit, with erect ears, limpedfrom the sage-brush just out of pistol-shot and regarded us a moment,his nose wrinkling and trembling. By the time that Bunt and I, puttingour ponies to a canter, had pulled up by the camp of the Bar-circle-Zoutfit, another day had begun in Idaho.
