Red Men and White. Wister Owen
was quite used to all of this – excepting the boy. He was an Eastern new-comer, passing his first evening at a place of entertainment.
Night in and night out every guest at Twenty Mile was either happy and full of whiskey, or else his friends were making arrangements for his funeral. There was water at Twenty Mile – the only water for twoscore of miles. Consequently it was an important station on the road between the southern country and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the Mescal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the gray floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A corral, two desolate stable-sheds, and the slowly turning windmill were all else. Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode, armed against Indians, and selling whiskey. Variety in their vocation of drinking and killing was brought them by the travellers. These passed and passed through the glaring vacant months – some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding a pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and sometimes they came in companies, walking beside their clanking freight-wagons. Some were young, and some were old, and all drank whiskey, and wore knives and guns to keep each other civil. Most of them were bound for the mines, and some of them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next man, and their names, when they had any, would be O’Rafferty, Angus, Schwartzmeyer, José Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. Whoever came, and whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after sundown – a dot of riot in the dumb Arizona night.
On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot. The boy, being new in Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people turned up occasionally. This one had paid for everybody’s drink several times, because he felt friendly, and never noticed that nobody ever paid for his. They had played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good tough black hair, and it was not in fear, but with a cold blue eye, that he looked at the old gentleman. The trouble had been that his own revolver had somehow hitched, so he could not pull it from the holster at the necessary moment.
“Tried to draw on me, did yer?” said the old gentleman. “Step higher! Step, now, or I’ll crack open yer kneepans, ye robin’s egg.”
“Thinks he’s having a bad time,” remarked Ephraim. “Wonder how he’d like to have been that man the Injuns had sport with?”
“Weren’t his ear funny?” said one who had helped bury the man.
“Ear?” said Ephraim. “You boys ought to been along when I found him, and seen the way they’d fixed up his mouth.” Ephraim explained the details simply, and the listeners shivered. But Ephraim was a humorist. “Wonder how it feels,” he continued, “to have – ”
Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laughter. Yet a few hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had laid the man to rest with decent humanity. The boy was taking his first dose of Arizona. By no means was everybody looking at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so often. There was a Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and over in the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company, singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that entertained him in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
“Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf,” remarked the old gentleman to the tenderfoot. “High-yer!” And he placidly fired a fourth shot that scraped the boy’s boot at the ankle and threw earth over the clock, so that you could not tell the minute from the hour hand.
“‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” sang Specimen Jones, softly. They did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These lyrics were all, or nearly all, that he retained of the days when he was twenty, although he was but twenty-six now.
The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played “Matamoras,” Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and the concertina stopped with a quack.
“Quit it!” said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the two with his weapon. “I don’t want any greasers scrapping round here to-night. We’ve just got cleaned up.”
It had been cards, but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret of Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a crisis, and now for the first time he noticed the boy.
“Blamed if he ain’t neat,” he said. But interest faded from his eye, and he turned again to the wall. “‘Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein,’” he melodiously observed. His repertory was wide and refined. When he sang he was always grammatical.
“Ye kin stop, kid,” said the old gentleman, not unkindly, and he shoved his pistol into his belt.
The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being lithe and strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath, but he was trembling with the plan and the prospect he had laid out for himself. “Set ’em up,” he said to Ephraim. “Set ’em up again all round.”
His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more, while the old gentleman, still benevolent, said, “Yer langwidge means pleasanter than it sounds, kid.” He glanced at the boy’s holster, and knew he need not keep a very sharp watch as to that. Its owner had bungled over it once already. All the old gentleman did was to place himself next the boy on the off side from the holster; any move the tenderfoot’s hand might make for it would be green and unskilful, and easily anticipated. The company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass to glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the middle of the line, and the tormentor, always with half a thought for the holster, handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till all should be filled and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits good manners.
“Well, my regards,” he said, seeing the boy raise his glass; and as the old gentleman’s arm lifted in unison, exposing his waist, the boy reached down a lightning hand, caught the old gentleman’s own pistol, and jammed it in his face.
“Now you’ll dance,” said he.
“Whoop!” exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. “Blamed if he ain’t neat!” And Jones’s handsome face lighted keenly.
“Hold on!” the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman was mechanically drinking his whiskey out of sheer fright. The rest had forgotten their drinks. “Not one swallow,” the boy continued. “No, you’ll not put it down either. You’ll keep hold of it, and you’ll dance all round this place. Around and around. And don’t you spill any. And I’ll be thinking what you’ll do after that.”
Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. “Why, he ain’t bigger than a pint of cider,” said he.
“Prance away!” commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot between the old gentleman’s not widely straddled legs.
“You hev the floor, Mr. Adams,” Jones observed, respectfully, at the old gentleman’s agile leap. “I’ll let no man here interrupt you.” So the capering began, and the company stood back to make room. “I’ve saw juicy things in this Territory,” continued Specimen Jones, aloud, to himself, “but this combination fills my bill.”
He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with his eye. That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room with the pistol, proud as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He was only nineteen, and though his heart beat stoutly, it was beating alone in a strange country. He had come straight to this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna, with his mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes saw life, and always triumphed with precision on the last page, but he remembered no receipt for this particular situation. Being good game American blood, he did not think now about the Susquehanna, but he did long with all his might to know what he ought to do next to prove himself a man. His buoyant rage, being glutted with the old gentleman’s fervent skipping, had cooled, and a stress of reaction was falling hard