OWEN WISTER Ultimate Collection: Western Classics, Adventure & Historical Novels (Including Non-Fiction Historical Works). Owen Wister
people end by expecting anything; and in the total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards and precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more unusual than if he had said twice two made four. The purse was handed over.
"I'm obliged," said Hilbrun, simply.
"If I had foreseen, gentlemen," said Jode, too deeply grieved now to feel anger, "that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing your money through this—this absurd occurrence, I would have declined to help you. It becomes my duty," he continued, turning coldly to the inebriated Lusk, "to hand this to you, sir." And the assistant lurchingly stuffed his stakes away.
"It's worth it," said Lin. "He's welcome to my cash."
"What's that you say, Lin McLean?" It was the biscuit-shooter, and she surged to the front.
"I'm broke. He's got it. That's all," said Lin, briefly.
"Broke! You!" She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a preliminary howl.
At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. "It's my darling Kate," he said. "Why, Kate!"
The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean; for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her first wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin was trying to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our benefactors at sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the second husband off. The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish, tearful, and affectionate; she turned furiously at bay, his guardian angel, indifferent to the onlooking crowd, and hurling righteous defiance at Lin. "Don't yus dare lay yer finger on my husband, you sage-brush bigamist!" is what the marvelous female said.
"Bigamist?" repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. "I ain't," he said to Ogden and me. "I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her."
"Little good that'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife before ever I come acrosst yus."
"You and him?" murmured the puncher.
"Her and me," whimpered Lusk. "Sidney." He sat up with a limp, confiding stare at everybody.
"Sidney who?" said Lin.
"No, no," corrected Lusk, crossly—"Sidney, Nebraska."
The stakes at this point fell from his pocket which he did not notice. But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
"Who are yu', anyway—when yu' ain't drunk?" demanded Lin.
"He's as good a man as you, and better," snorted the guardian angel. "Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find."
"Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska—" Lin began.
"No, no," corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew—"Jim."
"Good-bye, gentlemen," said the rain-maker. "That's the west-bound. I'm perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at Salt Lake City."
"You are?" shouted Lin McLean. "Him and Jim's going to work it again! For goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!"
At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of the ticket-windows there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten, and ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his duties should detain him. But Jode went!
"Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen," said he to Ogden, McLean, and me, "and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure."
"Which way are yu' bettin'?" Lin asked.
"With my principles, sir," answered the little signal-service officer.
"I expect I ain't got any," said the puncher. "It's Jim I'm backin' this time."
"See here," said I; "I want to talk to you." We went into another car, and I did.
"And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?" the puncher said.
"Do you mean I ought to have—"
"Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all the same. Yu' have good friends, and all that." He looked out of the window. "Laramie already!" he commented, and got out and walked by himself on the platform until we had started again. "Yu' have good friends," he pursued, settling himself so his long legs were stretched and comfortable, "and they tell yu' things, and you tell them things. And when it don't make no particular matter one way or the other, yu' give 'em your honest opinion and talk straight to 'em, and they'll come to you the same way. So that when yu're ridin' the range alone sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things over on top maybe of some dog-goned hill, you'll say to yourself about some fellow yu' know mighty well, 'There's a man is a good friend of mine.' And yu' mean it. And it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced in a while they're bound to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the man then—your good friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be. Standin' off, keepin' his mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find your own trail out. If he tried to show it to yu', yu'd likely hit him. But shucks! Circumstances have showed me the trail this time, you bet!" And the puncher's face, which had been sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly hand on my knee.
"The trail's pretty simple," said I.
"You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu'," said Lin, with the air of having made a discovery, "when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs in this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his dyin'. I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell their wives."
"Never was married," said I.
"Well—no more was I. Let's go to bed." And Lin shook my hand, and gave me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western holiday, we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against rain—only I noticed that those of the true faith were less free. Indeed; the Mormon, the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine have a nice prudence in money. During our brief stay we visited the sights: floating in the lake, listening to pins drop in the gallery of the Tabernacle, seeing frescos of saints in robes speaking from heaven to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes of a modern farm-hand, and in the street we heard at a distance a strenuous domestic talk between the new—or perhaps I should say the original—husband and wife.
"She's corralled Sidney's cash!" said the delighted Lin. "He can't bet nothing on this shower."
And then, after all, this time—it didn't rain!
Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased a return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went somewhere else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the money, retained him with her.
"Good luck to yu', Sidney!" said Lin, speaking to him for the first time since Cheyenne. "I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married." He paid no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that she threw after him.
Jode also felt "a heap better." Legitimate science had triumphed. To-day, most of Cheyenne believes with Jode that it was all a coincidence. South Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin the few dollars that I had lent the puncher.
"And what will you do now?" I said to Lin.
"Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that'll keep a single man."
A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses, lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled it between stages of the forenoon's public business, and his gait grew absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with a slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends' children to whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had put off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom, and now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow,