Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




"You ought to seen that bunch of tame alligators down to the San
Francisco Fair," observed Squat genially. "The old boy that had 'em says
'Oh, yes, they would make fine pets, and don't I want a couple for ten
dollars to take home to the little ones?' But I don't. You come right
down to household pets--I ruther have me a white rabbit or a canary bird
than an alligator you could step on in the dark some night and get all
bit up, and mebbe blood poison set in."

"I recollect same as if it was yesterday," began Uncle Abner quickly.
"We was coming up through northern Arizona one fall, with a bunch of
longhorns and we make this here water hole about four P.M.--or mebbe a
mite after that or a little before; but, anyway, I says to Jeff Bradley,
'Jeff,' I says to him, 'it looks to me almighty like--'"

Sandy Sawtelle savagely demanded a cup of coffee, gulped it heroically,
rose in a virtuous hurry, and at the door wondered loudly if he was
leaving a bunch of rich millionaires that had nothing to do but loaf in
their club all the afternoon and lie their heads off, or just a passell
of lazy no-good cowhands that laid down on the job the minute the boss
stepped off the place. Whereupon, it being felt that the rabid
anecdotist had been sufficiently rebuked, we all went out to help the
veterinary look at Adolph for twenty minutes more.

Adolph is four years old and weighs one ton. He has a frowning and
fearsome front and the spirit of a friendly puppy. The Arrowhead force
loafed about in the corral and imparted of its own lore to the
veterinary while he took Adolph's temperature. Then Adolph, after nosing
three of the men to have his head rubbed, went to stand in the
rush-grown pool at the far end of the corral, which the gallery took to
mean that he still had a bit of fever, no matter what the glass thing
said.

The veterinary opposed a masterly silence to this majority diagnosis,
and in the absence of argument about it there seemed nothing left for
the Arrowhead retainers but the toil for which they were paid. They went
to it lingeringly, one by one, seeming to feel that perhaps they wronged
the ailing Adolph by not staying there to talk him over.

Uncle Abner, who is the Arrowhead blacksmith, was the last to leave--or
think of leaving--though he had mule shoes to shape and many mules to
shoe. He glanced wistfully again at Adolph, in cool water to his knees,
tugged at his yellowish-white beard, said it was a dog's life, if any
one should ask me, and was about to slump mournfully off to his
shop--when his eye suddenly brightened.

"Will you look once at that poor degraded red heathen, acting like a
whirlwind over in the woodlot?"

I looked once. Pete, our Indian, was apparently the sole being on the
ranch at that moment who was honestly earning his wage. No one knows how
many more than eighty years Pete has lived; but from where we stood he
was the figure of puissant youth, rhythmically flashing his axe into
bits of wood that flew apart at its touch. Uncle Abner, beside me, had
again shrugged off the dread incubus of duty. He let himself go
restfully against the corral bars and chuckled a note of harsh derision.

"Ain't it disgusting! I bet he never saw the boss when she rode off this
A.M. Yes, sir; that poor benighted pagan must think she's still in the
house--prob'ly watching him out of the east winder this very minute."

"What's this about his brother-in-law?" I asked.

"Oh, I dunno; some silly game he tries to come the roots over folks
with. Say, he's a regular old murderer, and not an honest hair in his
head! Look at the old cheat letting on to be a good steady worker
because he thinks the boss is in the house there, keeping an eye on him.
Ain't it downright disgusting!"

Uncle Abner said this as one supremely conscious of his own virtue. He
himself was descending to no foul pretense.

"A murderer, is he?"

I opened my cigarette case to the man of probity. He took two, crumpled
the tobacco from the papers and stuffed it into his calabash pipe.

"Sure is he a murderer! A tough one, too."

The speaker moved round a corner of the barn and relaxed to a sitting
posture on the platform of the pump. It brought him into the sun; but it
also brought him where he could see far down the road upon which his
returning employer would eventually appear. His eyes ever haunted the
far vistas of that road; otherwise he remained blissfully static.

It should perhaps be frankly admitted that Uncle Abner is not the
blacksmith of song and story and lithographed art treasure, suitable for
framing. That I have never beheld this traditional smith--the rugged,
upstanding tower of brawn with muscles like iron bands--is beside the
point. I have not looked upon all the blacksmiths in the world, and he
may exist. But Uncle Abner can't pose for him. He weighs a hundred and
twenty pounds without his hammer, is lean to scrawniness, and his arms
are those of the boys you see at the track meet of Lincoln Grammar
School Number Seven. The mutilated derby hat he now wore, a hat that had
been weathered from plum colour to a poisonous green--a shred of peacock
feather stuck in the band--lent his face no dignity whatever.

In truth, his was not an easy face to lend dignity to. It would still
look foolish, no matter what was lent it. He has a smug fringe of white
curls about the back and sides of his head, the beard of a prophet, and
the ready speech of a town bore. The blacksmith we read of can look the
whole world in the face, fears not any man, and would far rather do
honest smithing any day in the week--except Sunday--than live the life
of sinful ease that Uncle Abner was leading for the moment.

Uncle Abner may have feared no man; but he feared a woman. It was easy
to see this as he chatted the golden hours away to me. His pale eyes
seldom left the road where it came over a distant hill. When the woman
did arrive--Oh, surely the merry clang of the hammer on the anvil would
be heard in Abner's shop, where he led a dog's life. But, for a time at
least--

"So he's one of these tough murderers, is he?"

"You said it! Always a-creating of disturbances up on the reservation,
where he rightly belongs. Mebbe that's why they let him go off. Anyway,
he never stays there. Even in his young days they tell me he wouldn't
stay put. He'd disappear for a month and always come back with a new
wife. Talk about your Mormons! One time they sent out a new agent to the
reservation, and he hears talk back and forth of Pete philandering
thisaway; and he had his orders from the Gov'ment at Washington, D.C.,
to stamp out this here poly-gamy--or whatever you call it; so he orders
Pete up on the carpet and says to him: 'Look here now, Pete! You got a
regular wife, ain't you?' Pete says sure he has; and how could he say
anything else--the old liar! 'Well,' says Mr. Agent, 'I want you to get
this one regular wife of yours and lead a decent, orderly home life with
her; and don't let me hear no more scandalous reports about your goings
on.'

"Pete says all right; but he allows he'll have to have help in getting
her back home, because she's got kind of antagonistic and left him. The
agent says he'll put a stop to that if Pete'll just point her out. So
they ride down about a mile from the agency to a shack where they's a
young squaw out in front graining a deerhide and minding her own
business. She looked up when they come and started to jaw Pete something
fierce; but the agent tells her the Gov'ment frowns on wives running
off, and Pete grabbed her; and the agent he helps, with her screeching
and biting and clawing like a female demon. The agent is going to see
that Pete has his rights, even if it don't seem like a joyous household;
and finally they get her scrambled onto Pete's horse in front of him and
off they go up the trail. The agent yells after 'em that Pete is to
remember that this is his regular wife and he'd better behave himself
from now on.

"And then about sunup next morning this agent is woke up by a pounding
on his door. He goes down and here's Pete clawed to a frazzle and
whimpering for the law's protection because his squaw has chased him
over the reservation all night trying to kill him. She'd near done it,
too. They say old Pete was so scared the agent had to soothe him like a
mother."

Uncle Abner paused to relight his pipe, meantime negotiating a doubly
vigilant survey of the distant road. But I considered that he had told
me nothing to the discredit of Pete, and now said as much.

"You couldn't blame the man for wanting his wife back, could you?" I
demanded. "Of course he might have been more tactful."

"Tactful's the word," agreed Uncle Abner cordially. "You see, this
wasn't Pete's wife at all. She was just a young squaw he'd took a fancy
to."

"Oh!" Nothing else seemed quite so fitting to say.

"'Nother time," resumed the honest blacksmith, "the Gov'ment at
Washington, D.C., sent out orders for all the Injun kids to be sent off
to school. Lots of the fathers made trouble about this, but Pete was the
worst of all--the old scoundrel! The agent said to him would Pete send
his kids peaceful; and Pete said not by no means. So the agent says in
that case they'll have to take 'em by force. Pete says he'll be right
there a-plenty when they're took by force. So next day the agent and his
helper go down to Pete's tepee. It's pitched up on a bank just off the
road and they's a low barrier of brush acrost the front of it. They look
close at this and see the muzzle of a rifle peeking down at 'em; also,
they can hear little scramblings and squealings of about a dozen or
fourteen kids in the tepee that was likely nestled up round the old
murderer like a bunch of young quail.

"Well, they was something kind of cold and cheerless about the muzzle of
this rifle poked through the brush at 'em; so the agent starts in and
makes a regular agent speech to Pete. He says the Great White Father at
Washington, D.C., has wished his children to be give an English
education and learnt to write a good business hand, and all like that;
and read books, and so on; and the Great White Father will be peeved if
Pete takes it in this rough way. And the agent is disappointed in him,
too, and will never again think the same of his old friend, and why
can't he be nice and submit to the decencies of civilization--and so
on--a lot of guff like that; but all the time he talks this here rifle
is pointing right into his chest, so you can bet he don't make no false
motions.

"At last, when he's told Pete all the reasons he can think up and
guesses mebbe he's got the old boy going, he winds up by saying: 'And
now what shall I tell the Great White Father at Washington you say to
his kind words?' Old Pete, still not moving the rifle a hair's breadth,
he calls out: 'You tell the Great White Father at Washington to go to
hell!' Yes, sir; just like that he says it; and I guess that shows you
what kind of a murderer he is. And what I allus say is, 'what's the use
of spending us taxpayers' good money trying to educate trash like that,
when they ain't got no sense of decency in the first place, and the
minute they learn to talk English they begin to curse and swear as bad
as a white man? They got no wish to improve their condition, which is
what I allus have said and what I allus will say.

"Anyway, this agent didn't waste no more time on Pete's brats. He come
right away from there, though telling his helper it was a great pity
they couldn't have got a good look into the tepee, because then they'd
have known for the first time just what kids round there Pete really
considered his. Of course he hadn't felt he should lay down his life in
the interests of this trifling information, and I don't blame him one
bit. I wouldn't have done it myself. You can't tell me a reservation
with Pete on it would be any nice place. Look at the old crook now,
still lamming that axe round to beat the cars because he thinks he's
being watched! I bet he'll be mad down to his moccasins when he finds
out the Old Lady's been off all day."

Uncle Abner yawned and stretched his sun-baked form with weary
rectitude. Then he looked with pleased dismay into the face of his
silver watch.

"Now, I snum! Here she's two-thirty! Don't it beat all how time flits
by, as it were, when you meet a good conversationalist and get started
on various topics! Well, I guess like as not I better amble along over
toward the little shop and see if they ain't some little thing to be
puttered at round there. Yes, sir; all play and no work makes Jack a
dull boy, as the saying is."

The honest fellow achieved a few faltering paces in the general
direction of his shop. Then he turned brightly.

"A joke's a joke, all right; but, after all, I hate to see old Pete
working hisself into the grave that way, even if he ain't a regular
human being. Suppose you loaf over there and put him wise that the
Madam's been off the place since sunup. The laugh's on him enough
already."

Which showed that Uncle Abner had not really a bad heart. And I did even
as he had said.

* * * * *

Pete was instantly stilled by my brief but informing speech. He leaned
upon his axe and gazed at me with shocked wonder. The face of the
American Indian is said to be unrevealing--to be a stoic mask under
which his emotions are ever hidden. For a second time this day I found
tradition at fault. Pete's face was lively and eloquent under his shock
of dead-black hair--dead black but for half a dozen gray or grayish
strands, for Pete's eighty years have told upon him, even if he is not
yet sufficiently gray at the temples to be a hero in a magazine costing
over fifteen cents. His face is a richly burnished mahogany and tells
little of his years until he smiles; then from brow to pointed chin it
cracks into a million tiny wrinkles, an intricate network of them
framing his little black eyes, which are lashless, and radiating from
the small mouth to the high cheek bones of his race.

His look as he eyed me became utter consternation; then humour slowly
lightened the little eyes. He lifted the eyes straight into the glare of
the undimmed sun; nor did they blink as they noted the hour. "My good
gosh!" he muttered; then stalked slowly round the pile of stove wood
that had been spreading since morning. He seemed aggrieved--yet
humorously aggrieved--as he noted its noble dimensions. He cast away the
axe and retrieved some outflung sticks, which he cunningly adjusted to
the main pile to make it appear still larger to the casual eye.

"My good gosh!" he muttered again. "My old mahala she tell me Old Lady
Pettengill go off early this morning; but I think she make one big
mistake. Now what you know about that?" He smiled winningly now and
became a very old man indeed, the smile lighting the myriad minute
wrinkles that instantly came to life. Again he ruefully surveyed the
morning's work. "I think that caps the climax," said he, and grimanced
humorous dismay for the entertainment of us both.

I opened my cigarette case to him. Like his late critic, Pete availed
himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One
he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat
gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost
recesses, a shrunken little figure of a man in a calico shirt of gay
stripes, faded blue overalls, and shoes that were remarkable as ruins.
With a pointed chip in the slender fingers of one lean brown hand--a
narrow hand of quite feminine delicacy--he cleared the ground of other
chips and drew small figures in the earth.

"Some of your people cut up in a fight down at Kulanche last night," I
remarked after a moment of courteous waiting.

"Mebbe," said Pete, noncommittal.

"Were you down there?"

"I never kill a man with a knife," said Pete; "that ain't my belief."

He left an opening that tempted, but I thought it wise to ignore that
for the moment.

"You an old man, Pete?"

"Mebbe."

"How old?"

"Oh, so-so."

"You remember a long time ago--how long?"

He drew a square in his cleared patch of earth, subdivided it into
little squares, and dotted each of these in the centre before he spoke.

"When Modocs have big soldier fight."

"You a Modoc?"

"B'lieve me!"

"When Captain Jack fought the soldiers over in the Lava Beds?"

"Some fight--b'lieve me!" said Pete, erasing his square and starting a
circle.

"You fight, too?"

"Too small; I do little odd jobs--when big Injin kill soldier I skin um
head."

I begged for further items, but Pete seemed to feel that he had been
already verbose. He dismissed the historic action with a wise saying:

"Killing soldiers all right; but it don't settle nothing." He drew a
triangle.

Indelicately then I pried into his spiritual life.

"You a Christian, Pete?"

"Injin-Christian," he amended--as one would say
"Progressive-Republican."

"Believe in God?"

"Two." This was a guarded admission; I caught his side glance.

"Which ones?" I asked it cordially; and Pete smiled as one who detects a
brother liberal in theology.

"Injin God; Christian God. Injin God go like this--" He brushed out his
latest figure and drew a straight line a foot long. And Christian God go
so--he drew a second straight line perpendicular to the first. I was
made to see the line of his own God extending over the earth some fifty
feet above its surface, while the line of the Christian God went
straight and endlessly into the heavens. "Injin God stay
close--Christian God go straight up. Whoosh!" He looked toward the
zenith to indicate the vanishing line. "I think mebbe both O.K. You
think both O.K.?"

"Mebbe," I said.

Pete retraced the horizontal line of his own God and the perpendicular
line of the other.

"Funny business," said he tolerantly.

"Funny business," I echoed. And then--the moment seeming ripe for
intimate personal research: "Pete, how about that brother-in-law of
yours? Is he a one-God Christian or a two-God, like you?"

He hurriedly brushed out his lines, flashed me one of his uneasy side
glances, and seemed not to have heard my question. He sprang lightly
from his heels, affected to scan a murky cloud-bank to the south,
ignited his second cigarette from the first, and seemed relieved by the
actual diversion of Laura, his present lawful consort, now plodding
along the road just outside the fence.

Laura is ponderous and billowy, and her moonlike face of rusty bronze is
lined to show that she, too, has gone down a little into the vale of
years. She was swathed in many skirts, her shoulders enveloped by a
neutral-tinted shawl, and upon her head was a modist toque of light
straw, garlanded with pink roses. This may have been her hunt constume,
for the carcasses of two slain rabbits swung jauntily from her girdle.
She undulated by us with no sign. Pete's glistening little eyes lingered
in appraisal upon her noble rotundities and her dangling quarry. Then,
with a graceful flourish of the new cigarette, he paid tribute to the
ancient fair.

"That old mahala of mine, she not able to chew much now; but she's some
swell chicken--b'lieve me!"

I persisted in the impertinence he had sought to turn.

"How about this brother-in-law of yours, Pete?"

Again he was deaf. He picked up his axe, appearing to weigh the
resumption of his task against a reply to this straight question. He
must have found the alternative too dreadful; he leaned upon the axe,
thus winning something of the dignity of labour, with none of its pains,
and grudgingly asked:

"Mebbe some liars tell you in conversation about that old
b'other-in-law?"

"Of course! Many nice people tell me every day. They tell me all about
him. I rather hear you tell me. Is he a Christian?"

"He's one son-of-gun, pure and simple--that old feller. He caps the
climax."

"Yes; I know all about that. He's a bad man. I hear everything about
him. Now you tell me again. You can tell better than liars."

"One genuine son-of-gun!" persisted Pete, shrewdly keeping to general
terms.

"Oh, very well!" I rose from the log I was sitting on, yawning my
indifference. "I know everything he ever did. Other people tell me all
the time."

I moved off a few steps under the watchful side glance. It worked. One
of Pete's slim, womanish hands fluttered up in a movement of arrest.

"Those liars tell you about one time he shoot white man off horse going
by?"

"Certainly!"

"That white man still have smallpox to give all Injins he travel to; so
they go 'n' vote who kill him off quick, and my b'other-in-law he win
it."

I tried to look as if this were a bit of stale gossip.

"Then whites raise hell to say Pete he do same. What you know about
that? My old b'other-in-law send word he do same--twenty, fifty Injin
witness tell he said so--and now he gon' hide far off. Dep'ty sheriff
can't find him. That son-of-gun come back next year, raise big fight
over one span mules with Injin named Walter that steal my mules out of
pasture; and Walter not get well from it--so whites say yes, old Pete
done that same killing scrape to have his mules again; plain as the nose
on the face old Pete do same. But I catch plenty Injin witness see my
b'other-in-law do same, and I think they can't catch him another time
once more, because they look in all places he ain't. I think plenty too
much trouble he make all time for me--perform something not nice and get
found out about it; and all people say, Oh, yes--that old Pete he's at
tricks again; he better get sent to Walla Walla, learn some good trade
in prison for eighteen years. That b'other-in-law cap the climax! He
know all good place to hide from dep'ty sheriff, so not be found when
badly wanted--the son-of-gun!"

Pete's face now told that, despite the proper loathing inspired by his
misdeeds, this brother-in-law compelled a certain horrid admiration for
his gift of elusiveness.

"What's your brother-in-law's name?"

Pete deliberated gravely.

"In my opinion his name Edward; mebbe Sam, mebbe Charlie; I think more
it's Albert."

"Well, what about that next time he broke out?"

"Whoosh! Damn no-good squaw man get all Injins drunk on whiskey; then
play poker with four aces. 'What you got? No good--four aces--hard
luck--deal 'em up!'" Pete's flexible wrists here flashed in pantomime.
"Pretty soon Injin got no mules, no blanket, no spring wagon, no gun, no
new boots, no nine dollars my old mahala gets paid for three bushel wild
plums from Old Lady Pettengill to make canned goods of--only got one big
sick head from all night; see four aces, four kings, four jacks. 'What
you got, Pete? No good. Full house here. Hard luck--my deal. Have
another drink, old top!'"

"Well, what did your brother-in-law do when he heard about this?"

"Something!"

"Shoot?"

"Naw; got no gun left. Choke him on the neck--I think this way."

The supple hands of Pete here clutched his corded throat, fingertips
meeting at the back, and two potent thumbs uniting in a sinister
pressure upon his Adam's apple. To further enlarge my understanding he
contorted his face unprettily. From rolling eyes and outthrust tongue it
was apparent that the squaw man had survived long enough to regret the
inveteracy of his good luck at cards.

"Then what?"

"Man tell you before?" He eyed me with frank suspicion.

"Certainly; you tell, too!"

"That b'other-in-law he win everything back this poor squaw man don't
need no more, and son-of-gun beat it quick; so all liars say Old Pete
turn that trick, but can't prove same, because my b'other-in-law do same
in solitude. And old judge say: 'Oh, well, can't prove same in
courthouse, and only good squaw man is dead squaw man; so
what-the-bad-place!' I think mebbe."

"Go on; what about that next time?"

"You know already," said Pete firmly.

"You tell, too."

He pondered this, his keen little eyes searching my face as he pensively
fondled the axe.

"You know about this time that son-of-gun go 'n' kill a bright lawyer in
Red Gap? I think that cap the climax!"

"Certainly, I know!" This with bored impatience.

"I think, then, you tell me." His seamed face was radiant with cunning.

"What's the use? You know it already."

He countered swiftly:

"What's use I tell you--you know already."

I yawned again flagrantly.

"Now you tell in your own way how this trouble first begin," persisted
Pete rather astonishingly. He seemed to quote from memory.

Once more I yawned, turning coldly away.

"You tell in your own words," he was again gently urging; but on the
instant his axe began to rain blows upon the log at his feet.

Sounds of honest toil were once more to be heard in the wood lot; and,
though I could not hear the other, I surmised that the sledge of Uncle
Abner now rang merrily upon his anvil. Both he and Pete had doubtless
noted at the same moment the approach of Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill,
who was spurring her jaded roan up the long rise from the creek bottom.

* * * * *

My stalwart hostess, entirely masculine to the eye from a little
distance, strode up from the corral, waved a quirt at me in greeting,
indicated by another gesture that she was dusty and tired, and vanished
briskly within the ranch house. Half an hour later she joined me in the
living-room, where I had trifled with ancient magazines and stock
journals on the big table. Laced boots, riding breeches, and army shirt
had gone for a polychrome and trailing tea gown, black satin slippers,
flashing rhinestone rosettes, and silk stockings of a sinful scarlet.
She wore a lace boudoir cap, plenteously beribboned, and her sunburned
nose had been lavishly powdered. She looked now merely like an indulged
matron whose most poignant worry would be a sick Pomeranian or
overnight losses at bridge. She wished to know whether I would have tea
with her. I would.

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