Somewhere in Red Gap

"Yes; and he'd ought to be sent up for life for selling it to white men, too—the kind he sells." This was Sandy Sawtelle, speaking as one who knew and with every sign of conviction. "It sure is enterprising whiskey. Three drinks of it make a decent man want to kill his little golden-haired baby sister with an axe. Say, here's a good one—lemme tell you! I remember the first time, about three, four years ago—"

The speaker was interrupted—it seemed to me with intentional rudeness. One man hurriedly wished to know who did the cutting last night; another, if the wounded would recover; and a third, if Pete, an aged red vassal of our own ranch, had been involved. Each of the three flashed a bored glance at Sandy as he again tried for speech:

"Well, as I was saying, I remember the first time, about three, four years ago—"

"If old Pete was down there I bet his brother-in-law did most of the knifework," put in Buck Devine firmly.

It was to be seen that they all knew what Sandy remembered the first time and wished not to hear it again. Others of them now sought to stifle the memoir, while Sandy waited doggedly for the tide to ebb. I gathered that our Pete had not been one of the restive convives, he being known to have spent a quiet home evening with his mahala and their numerous descendants, in their camp back of the wood lot; I also gathered that Pete's brother-in-law had committed no crime since Pete quit drinking two years before. There was veiled mystery in these allusions to the brother-in-law of Pete. It was almost plain that the brother-in-law was a lawless person for whose offenses Pete had more than once been unjustly blamed. I awaited details; but meantime—

"Well, as I was saying, I remember the first time, about three, four years ago—"

Sandy had again dodged through a breach in the talk, quite as if nothing had happened. Buck Devine groaned as if in unbearable anguish. The others also groaned as if in unbearable anguish. Only the veterinary and I were polite.

"Oh, let him get it offen his chest," urged Buck wearily. "He'll perish if he don't—having two men here that never heard him tell it." He turned upon the raconteur, with a large sweetness of manner: "Excuse me, Mr. Sawtelle! Pray do go on with your thrilling reminiscence. I could just die listening to you. I believe you was wishing to entertain the company with one of them anecdotes or lies of which you have so rich a store in that there peaked dome of yours. Gents, a moment's silence while this rare personality unfolds hisself to us!"

"Say, lemme tell you—here's a good one!" resumed the still placid Sandy. "I remember the first time, about three, four years ago, I ever went into The Swede's. A stranger goes in just ahead of me and gets to the bar before I do, kind of a solemn-looking, sandy-complected little runt in black clothes.

"'A little of your best cooking whiskey,' says he to the Swede, while I'm waiting beside him for my own drink.

"The Swede sets out the bottle and glass and a whisk broom on the bar. That was sure a new combination on me. 'Why the whisk broom?' I says to myself. 'I been in lots of swell dives and never see no whisk broom served with a drink before.' So I watch. Well, this sad-looking sot pours out his liquor, shoots it into him with one tip of the glass; and, like he'd been shot, he falls flat on the floor, all bent up in a convulsion—yes, sir; just like that! And the Swede not even looking over the bar at him!

"In a minute he comes out of this here fit, gets on his feet and up to the bar, grabs the whisk broom, brushes the dust off his clothes where he's rolled on the floor, puts back the whisk broom, says, 'So long, Ed!' to the Swede—and goes out in a very businesslike manner.

"Then the Swede shoves the bottle and a glass and the whisk broom over in front of me, but I says: 'No, thanks! I just come in to pass the time of day. Lovely weather we're having, ain't it?' Yes, sir; down he goes like he's shot, wriggles a minute, jumps up, dusts hisself off, flies out the door; and the Swede passing me the same bottle and the same broom, and me saying: 'Oh, I just come in to pass the time of—'"

The veterinary and I had been gravely attentive. The faces of the others wore not even the tribute of pretended ennui. They had betrayed an elaborate deafness. They now affected to believe that Sandy Sawtelle had not related an anecdote. They spoke casually and with an effect of polished ease while yet here capitulated, as tale-tellers so often will.

"I remember a kid, name of Henry Lippincott, used to set in front of me at school," began Buck Devine, with the air of delicately breaking a long silence; "he'd wiggle his ears and get me to laughing out loud, and then I'd be called up for it by teacher and like as not kept in at recess."

"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.

Tea consisted of bottled beer from the spring house, half a ham, and a loaf of bread. It should be said that her behaviour toward these dainties, when they had been assembled, made her seem much less the worn social leader. There was practically no talk for ten active minutes. A high-geared camera would have caught everything of value in the scene. It was only as I decanted a second bottle of beer for the woman that she seemed to regain consciousness of her surroundings. The spirit of her first attack upon the food had waned. She did fashion another sandwich of a rugged pattern, but there was a hint of the dilettante in her work.

And now she spoke. Her gaze upon the magazines of yesteryear massed at the lower end of the table, she declared they must all be scrapped, because they too painfully reminded her of a dentist's waiting-room. She wondered if there mustn't be a law against a dentist having in his possession a magazine less than ten years old. She suspected as much.

"There I'll be sitting in Doc Martingale's office waiting for him to kill me by inches, and I pick up a magazine to get my mind off my fate and find I'm reading a timely article, with illustrations, about Cervera's fleet being bottled up in the Harbour of Santiago. I bet he's got Godey's Lady's Book for 1862 round there, if you looked for it."

Now a brief interlude for the ingestion of malt liquor, followed by a pained recital of certain complications of the morning.

"That darned one-horse post-office down to Kulanche! What do you think? I wanted to send a postal card to the North American Cleaning and Dye Works, at Red Gap, for some stuff they been holding out on me a month, and that office didn't have a single card in stock—nothing but some of these fancy ones in a rack over on the grocery counter; horrible things with pictures of brides and grooms on 'em in coloured costumes, with sickening smiles on their faces, and others with wedding bells ringing out or two doves swinging in a wreath of flowers—all of 'em having mushy messages underneath; and me having to send this card to the North American Cleaning and Dye Works, which is run by Otto Birdsall, a smirking old widower, that uses hair oil and perfumery, and imagines every woman in town is mad about him.

"The mildest card I could find was covered with red and purple cauliflowers or something, and it said in silver print: 'With fondest remembrance!' Think of that going through the Red Gap post-office to be read by old Mis' Terwilliger, that some say will even open letters that look interesting—to say nothing of its going to this fresh old Otto Birdsall, that tried to hold my hand once not so many years ago.

"You bet I made the written part strong enough not to give him or any other party a wrong notion of my sentiments toward him. At that, I guess Otto wouldn't make any mistake since the time I give him hell last summer for putting my evening gowns in his show window every time he'd clean one, just to show off his work. It looked so kind of indelicate seeing an empty dress hung up there that every soul in town knew belonged to me.

"What's that? Oh, I wrote on the card that if this stuff of mine don't come up on the next stage I'll be right down there, and when I'm through handling him he'll be able to say truthfully that he ain't got a gray hair in his head. I guess Otto will know my intentions are honest, in spite of that 'fondest remembrance.'

"Then, on top of that, I had a run-in with the Swede for selling his rotten whiskey to them poor Injin boys that had a fight last night after they got tight on it. The Swede laughs and says nobody can prove he sold 'em a drop, and I says that's probably true. I says it's always hard to prove things. 'For instance,' I says, 'if they's another drop of liquor sold to an Injin during this haying time, and a couple or three nights after that your nasty dump here is set fire to in six places, and some cowardly assassin out in the brush picks you off with a rifle when you rush out—it will be mighty hard to prove that anybody did that, too; and you not caring whether it's proved or not, for that matter.

"'In fact,' I says, 'I don't suppose anybody would take the trouble to prove it, even if it could be easy proved. You'd note a singular lack of public interest in it—if you was spared to us. I guess about as far as an investigation would ever get—the coroner's jury would say it was the work of Pete's brother-in-law; and you know what that would mean.' The Swede bristles up and says: 'That sounds like fighting talk!' I says: 'Your hearing is perfect.' I left him thinking hard."

"Pete's brother-in-law? That reminds me," I said. "Pete was telling me about him just—I mean during his lunch hour; but he had to go to work again just at the beginning of something that sounded good—about the time he was going to kill a bright lawyer. What was that?"

The glass was drained and Ma Pettengill eyed the inconsiderable remains of the ham with something like repugnance. She averted her face from it, lay back in the armchair she had chosen, and rolled a cigarette, while I brought a hassock for the jewelled slippers and the scarlet silken ankles, so ill-befitting one of her age. The cigarette was presently burning.

"I guess Pete's b'other-in-law, as he calls him, won't come into these parts again. He had a kind of narrow squeak this last time. Pete done something pretty raw, even for this liberal-minded community. He got scared about it himself and left the country for a couple of months—looking for his brother-in-law, he said. He beat it up North and got in with a bunch of other Injins that was being took down to New York City to advertise a railroad, Pete looking like what folks think an Injin ought to look when he's dressed for the part. But he got homesick; and, anyway, he didn't like the job.

"This passenger agent that took 'em East put 'em up at one of the big hotels all right, but he subjects 'em to hardships they ain't used to. He wouldn't let 'em talk much English, except to say, 'Ugh! Ugh!'—like Injins are supposed to—with a few remarks about the Great Spirit; and not only that, but he makes 'em wear blankets and paint their faces—an Injin without paint and blanket and some beadwork seeming to a general passenger agent like a state capitol without a dome. And on top of these outrages he puts it up with the press agent of this big hotel to have the poor things sleep up on the roof, right in the open air, so them jay New York newspapers would fall for it and print articles about these hardy sons of the forest, the last of a vanishing race, being stifled by walls—with the names of the railroad and the hotel coming out good and strong all through the piece.

"Three of the poor things got pneumonia, not being used to such exposure; and Pete himself took a bad cold, and got mad and quit the job. They find him a couple of days later, in a check suit and white shoes and a golf cap, playing pool in a saloon over on Eighth Avenue, and ship him back as a disgrace to the Far West and a great common carrier.

"He got in here one night, me being his best friend, and we talked it over. I advised him to go down and give himself up and have it over; and he agreed, and went down to Red Gap the next day in his new clothes and knocked at the jail door. He made a long talk about how his brother-in-law was the man that really done it, and he's been searching for him clear over to the rising sun, but can't find him; so he's come to give himself up, even if they ain't got the least grounds to suspect him—and can he have his trial for murder over that afternoon, so he can come back up here the next day and go to work?

"They locked him up and Judge Ballard appointed J. Waldo Snyder to defend him. He was a new young lawyer from the East that had just come to Red Gap, highly ambitious and full of devices for showing that parties couldn't have been in their right mind when they committed the deed—see the State against Jamstucker, New York Reports Number 23, pages 19 to 78 inclusive.

"Oh, he told me all about it up in his office one day —how he was going to get Pete off. Ain't lawyers the goods, though! And doctors? This J.W. Snyder had a doctor ready to swear that Pete was nutty when he fired the shot, even if not before nor after. When I was a kid at school, back in Fredonia, New York State, we used to have debates about which does the most harm—fire or water? Nowadays I bet they'd have: Which does the most harm—doctors or lawyers? Well, anyway, there Pete was in jail—"

"Please tell in your own simple words just how this trouble began," I broke in. "What did Pete fire the shot for and who stopped it? Now then!"

"What! Don't you know about that? Well, well! So you never heard about Pete sending this medicine man over the one-way trail? I'll have to tell you, then. It was three years ago. Pete was camped about nine miles the other side of Kulanche, on the Corporation Ranch, and his little year-old boy was took badly sick. I never did know with what. Diphtheria, I guess. And I got to tell you Pete is crazy about babies. Always has been. Thirty years ago, when my own baby hadn't been but a few weeks born, Lysander John had to be in Red Gap with a smashed leg and arm, and I was here alone with Pete for two months of one winter. Say, he was better than any trained nurse with both of us, even if my papoose was only a girl one! Folks used to wonder afterward if I hadn't been afraid with just Pete round. Good lands! If they'd ever seen him cuddle that mite and sing songs to it in Injin about the rain and the grass! Anyway, I got to know Pete so well that winter I never blamed him much for what come off.

"Well, this yearling of his got bad and Pete was in two minds. He believed in white doctors with his good sense, but he believed in Injin doctors with his superstition, which was older. So he tried to have one of each. There was an old rogue of a medicine man round here then from the reservation up north. He'd been doing a little work at haying on the Corporation, but he was getting his main graft selling the Injins charms and making spells over their sick; a crafty old crook playing on their ignorance —understand? And Pete, having got the white doctor from Kulanche, thought he'd cinch matters by getting the medicine man, too. At that, I guess one would of been about as useful as the other, the Kulanche doctor knowing more about anthrax and blackleg than he did about sick Injin babies.

"The medicine man sees right off how scared Pete is for his kid and thinks here's a chance to make some big money. He looks at the little patient and says yes, he can cure him, sure; but it'll be a hard job and he can't undertake it unless Pete comes through with forty dollars and his span of mules. But Pete ain't got forty dollars or forty cents, and the Kulanche doctor has got to the mules already, having a lien on 'em for twenty-five.

"Pete hurried over and put the proposition up to me. He says his little chief is badly sick and he's got a fine white doctor, but will I stake him to enough to get this fine Injin doctor?—thus making a cure certain. Well, I tore into the old fool for wanting to let this depraved old medicine man tamper with his baby, and I warned him the Kulanche doctor probably wasn't much better. Then I tell him he's to send down for the best doctor in Red Gap at my expense and keep him with the child till it's well. I tell him he can have the whole ranch if it would cure his child, but not one cent for the Injin.

"Well, the poor boy is about half convinced I'm right, but he's been an Injin too long to believe it all through. He went off and sent for the Red Gap doctor, but he can't resist making another try for the Injin one; and that old scoundrel holds out for his price. Pete wants him to wait for his pay till haying is over; but he won't because he thinks Pete can get the money from me now if he really has to have it. Pete must of been crazy for fair about that time.

"'All right,' says he; 'you can cure my little chief?'

"The crook says he can if the money is in his hand.

"'All right,' says Pete again; 'but if my little chief dies something bad is going to happen to you.'

"That's about all they ever found out concerning this threat of Pete's, though another Injin who heard it said that Pete said his brother-in-law would make the trouble—not Pete himself. Which was likely true enough.

"Pete's little chief died the night the Red Gap doctor got up here. Ten minutes later this medicine man had hitched up his team, loaded his plunder into a wagon, and was pouring leather into his horses to get back home quick. He knew Pete never talks just to hear himself talk. They found him about thirty miles on his way—slumped down in the wagon bed, his team hitched by the roadside. There had been just one careful shot. As he hadn't been robbed—he had over" a hundred dollars in gold on him—it pointed a mite too strong at Pete after his threat.

"A deputy sheriff come up. Pete said his brother-in-law had been hanging round lately and had talked very dangerous about the medicine man. He said the brother-in-law had probably done the job. But Pete had pulled this too often before when in difficulties. The deputy said he'd better come along down to Red Gap and tell the district attorney about it. Pete said all right and crawled into his tepee for his coat and hat—crawled right on out the back and into the brush while the deputy rolled a cigarette.

"That was when he joined this bunch of noble redmen to advertise the vanishing romance of the Great West—being helped out of the country, I shouldn't wonder, by some lawless old hound that had feelings for him and showed it when he come along in the night to the ranch where he'd nursed her and her baby. They looked for him a little while, then dropped it; in fact, everybody was kind of glad he'd got off and kind of satisfied that he'd put this bad Injin, with his skull-duggery, over the big jump.

"Then he got homesick, like I told you, and showed up here at the door; and I saw it was better for him to give himself up and get out of it by fair and legal means. Now! You got it straight that far?"

I nodded.

"So Pete took my advice, and a couple days later I hurried down to Red Gap and had a talk with Judge Ballard and the district attorney. The judge said it had been embarrassing to justice to have my old Injin walk in on 'em, because every one knew he was guilty. Why couldn't he of stayed up here where the keen-eyed officers of the law could of pretended not to know he was? And the old fool was only making things worse with his everlasting chatter about his brother-in-law, every one knowing there wasn't such a person in existence—old Pete having had dozens of every kind of relation in the world but a brother-in-law. But they're going to have this bright young lawyer defend him, and they have hopes.

"Then I talked some. I said it was true that everybody knew Pete bumped off this old crook that had it coming to him, but they could never prove it, because Pete had come to my place and set up with me all night, when I had lumbago or something, the very night this crime was done thirty-odd miles distant by some person or persons unknown—except it could be known they had good taste about who needed killing.

"At this Judge Ballard jumps up and calls me an old liar and shook hands warmly with me; and Cale Jordan, that was district attorney then, says if Mrs. Pettengill will give him her word of honour to go on the witness stand and perjure herself to this effect then he don't see no use of even putting Kulanche County, State of Washington, to the expense of a trial, the said county already being deep in the hole for its new courthouse—but for mercy's sake to stop the old idiot babbling about his brother-in-law, that every one knows he never had one, because such a joke is too great an affront to the dignity of the law in such cases made and provided—to wit: tell the old fool to say nothing except 'No, he never done it.' And he shakes hands with me, too, and says he'll have an important talk with Myron Bughalter, the sheriff.

"I says that's the best way out of it, being myself a heavy taxpayer; and I go see this Snyder lawyer, and then over to the jail and get into Pete's cell, where he's having a high old time with a sack of peppermint candy and a copy of the Scientific American. I tell him to cut out the brother-in-law stuff and just say 'No' to any question whatever. He said he would, and I went off home to rest up after my hard ride.

"Judge Ballard calls that night and says everything is fixed. No use putting the county to the expense of a trial when Pete has such a classy perjured alibi as I would give him. Myron Bughalter is to go out of the jail in a careless manner at nine-thirty that night, leaving all cells unlocked and the door wide open so Pete can make his escape without doing any damage to the new building. It seems the only other prisoner is old Sing Wah, that they're willing to save money on, too. He'd got full of perfumed port and raw gin a few nights before, announced himself as a prize-hatchet man, and started a tong war in the laundry of one of his cousins. But Sing was sober now and would stay so until the next New Year's; so they was going to let him walk out with Pete. The judge said Pete would probably be at the Arrowhead by sunup, and if he'd behave himself from now on the law would let bygones be bygones. I thanked the judge and went to bed feeling easy about old Pete.

"But at seven the next morning I'm waked up by the telephone—wanted down to the jail in a hurry. I go there soon as I can get a drink of hot coffee and find that poor Myron Bughalter is having his troubles. He'd got there at seven, thinking, of course, to find both his prisoners gone; and here in the corridor is Pete setting on the chest of Sing Wah, where he'd been all night, I guess! He tells Myron he's a fool sheriff to leave his door wide open that way, because this bad Chinaman tried to walk out as soon as he'd gone, and would of done so it Pete hadn't jumped him.

"It leaves Myron plenty embarrassed, but he finally says to Pete he can go free, anyway, now, for being such an honest jailbird; and old Sing Wah can go, too, having been punished enough by Pete's handling. Sing Wah slides out quickly enough at this, promising to send Myron a dozen silk handkerchiefs and a pound of tea. But not Pete. No, sir! He tells Myron he's give himself up to be tried, and he wants that trial and won't budge till he gets it.

"Then Myron telephoned for the judge and the district attorney, and for me. We get there and tell Pete to beat it quick. But the old mule isn't going to move one step without that trial. He's fled back to his cell and stands there as dignified as if he was going to lay a cornerstone. He's a grave rebuke to the whole situation, as you might say. Then the Judge and Cale go through some kind of a hocus-pocus talk, winding up with both of them saying 'Not guilty!' in a loud voice; and Myron says to Pete: 'There! You had your trial; now get out of my jail this minute.'

"But canny old Pete is still balking. He says you can't have a trial except in the courthouse, which is upstairs, and they're trying to cheat a poor old Injin. He's talking loud by this time, and Judge Ballard says, all right, they must humour the poor child of Nature. So Myron takes Pete by the wrist in a firm manner—though Pete's insisting he ought to have the silver handcuffs on him—and marches him out the jail door, round to the front marble steps of the new courthouse, up the steps, down the marble hall and into the courtroom, with the judge and Cale Jordan and me marching behind.

"We ain't the whole procession, either. Out in front of the jail was about fifteen of Pete's friends and relatives, male and female, that had been hanging round for two days waiting to attend his coming-out party. Mebbe that's why Pete had been so strong for the real courthouse, wanting to give these friends something swell for their trouble. Anyway, these Injins fall in behind us when we come out and march up into the courtroom, where they set down in great ecstasy. Every last one of 'em has a sack of peppermint candy and a bag of popcorn or peanuts, and they all begin to eat busily. The steam heat had been turned on and that hall of justice in three minutes smelt like a cheap orphan asylum on Christmas-morning.

"Then, before they can put up another bluff at giving Pete his trial, with Judge Ballard setting up in his chair with his specs on and looking fierce, who rushes in but this J. Waldo person that is Pete's lawyer. He's seen the procession from across the street and fears some low-down trick is being played on his defenseless client.

"He comes storming down the aisle exclaiming; 'Your Honour, I protest against this grossly irregular proceeding!' The judge pounds on his desk with his little croquet mallet and Myron Bughalter tells Snyder, out of the corner of his mouth, to shut up. But he won't shut up for some minutes. This is the first case he'd had and he's probably looked forward to a grand speech to the jury that would make 'em all blubber and acquit Pete without leaving the box, on the grounds of emotional or erratic insanity—or whatever it is that murderers get let off on when their folks are well fixed. He sputters quite a lot about this monstrous travesty on justice before they can drill the real facts into his head; and even then he keeps coming back to Pete's being crazy.

"Then Pete, who hears this view of his case for the first time, begins to glare at his lawyer in a very nasty way and starts to interrupt; so the judge has to knock wood some more to get 'em all quiet. When they do get still—with Pete looking blacker than ever at his lawyer—Cale Jordan says: 'Pete, did you do this killing?' Pete started to say mebbe his brother-in-law did, but caught himself in time and said 'No!' at the same time starting for J. Waldo, that had called him crazy. Myron Bughalter shoves him back in his chair, and Cale Jordan says: 'Your Honour, you have heard the evidence, which is conclusive. I now ask that the prisoner at the bar be released.' Judge Ballard frowns at Pete very stern and says: 'The motion is granted. Turn him loose, quick, and get the rest of that smelly bunch out of here and give the place a good airing. I have to hold court here at ten o'clock.'

"Pete was kind of convinced now that he'd had a sure-enough trial, and his friends had seen the marble walls and red carpet and varnished furniture, and everything; so he consented to be set free—not in any rush, but like he was willing to do 'em a favour.

"And all the time he's keeping a bad little eye on J. Waldo. The minute he gets down from the stand he makes for him and says what does he mean by saying he was crazy when he done this killing? J. Waldo tries to explain that this was his only defense and was going on to tell what an elegant defense it was; but Pete gets madder and madder. I guess he'd been called everything in the world before, but never crazy; that's the very worst thing you can tell an Injin.

"They work out toward the front door; and then I hear Pete say: 'You know what? You said I'm crazy. My b'other-in-law's going to make something happen to you in the night.' Pete was seeing red by that time. The judge tells Myron to hurry and get the room cleared and open some windows. Myron didn't have to clear it of J.W. Snyder. That bright young lawyer dashed out and was fifty feet ahead of the bunch when they got to the front door.

"So Pete was a free man once more, without a stain on his character except to them that knew him well. But the old fool had lost me a tenant. Yes, sir; this J.W. Snyder young man, with the sign hardly dry on the glass door of his office in the Pettengill Block, had a nervous temperament to start with, and on top of that he'd gone fully into Pete's life history and found out that parties his brother-in-law was displeased with didn't thrive long. He packed up his law library that afternoon and left for another town that night.

"Yes, Pete's a wonder! Watch him slaving away out there. And he must of been working hard all day, even with me not here to keep tabs on him. Just look at the size of that pile of wood he's done up, when he might easy of been loafing on the job!"

IX