The Cow Jerry/Chapter 22
BANJO GIBSON said he had seen too much fighting and shooting in his time to go out hunting for any more. He remained at the hotel, comfortable in his wide shirt-sleeves, a little beeswax rubbed on his mustache to hold the points up and give him that touch of debonnaire romanticism which the small routine of his daily life did not entirely justify. Mrs. Cowgill and Goosie were taking the cool of the evening with him on the green benches beside the door.
Angus Valorous was on duty with his usual prominence, his black whiskers shaved as close as razor could press the skin, but springing again like a pest of the fields. Angus was pretty well keyed up by the prospect of a fight in town. He came out every few minutes, with a quick start and a sharp slam of the screen door behind him, as if he had heard a shot, to stand on the edge of the sidewalk and listen. Presently he would turn back to his desk again, laughing his little grunting horse-laugh in the very pleasure of his excited state.
Angus came out as Banjo Gibson was making his speech about the troubles he had passed through and the bullets he had escaped. Burning as Angus was to tear off into the dark and find out what had happened or was going to happen to the cow jerry, nothing short of a raging battle could have drawn him away from his duty at the hotel.
Not so much that Angus was exceedingly loyal, as that he was inordinately egotistical. He believed the establishment depended on his clerkly services, which were mainly looking at the Police Gazette and waiting, behind the little counter at night. It was a poor, lame, tottering establishment which must be shored up by his dignity. The withdrawal of his effulgent presence for an hour during the night watches would throw it into chaos and hopeless ruin.
Banjo Gibson was not a favored person in the sight of Angus Valorous. Indeed, he despised the little musician for many reasons, most of them good enough reasons, too, for many a true bill would have lain against the care-free, laughing drone. Now, hearing him say he would not move a foot to learn what was going on around the depot, when he was free to go any minute without disaster smashing down behind him like a falling wall, Angus could not restrain a contemptuous snort. The sound nettled Banjo. He resented it as sharply as he would a clumsy foot on one of his brightly polished shoes.
"What're you gruntin' about? you big-headed chessie cat!" Banjo asked, with a sound like a fighting edge on his voice, which Angus Valorous knew was nothing but the noise of a swelling bluff.
"All the fightin' you ever was in! You wouldn't fight a cracker!"
Goosie cackled suddenly, shrilly, over this witty taunt. Mrs. Cowgill's sense of humor was not as keen as her daughter's; she rebuked Angus for his impertinence.
"I'll not have you around here insultin' the guests," she declared.
Angus turned to her, his jaw slewed, his naturally contemptuous and lofty expression obscured by a snarl.
"Aw, what's it to you!" he said. "Let him stop insultin' me if he don't want to git his head knocked off!"
"If that kid gits any fresher," said Banjo discursively, as if he spoke in an aside for the public in general, "they'll have to split him and salt him down."
Goosie had another laugh, for she was an impartial young lady, to whom the refinements of wit from any source were irresistible.
"I don't want to hear any more of you insultin' the guests," Mrs. Cowgill corrected Angus again, in her sharp, hard manner of warning and threat. It was a sound so familiar in the ears of Angus that it did not cause the slightest fear for his important job.
Angus snorted, expressive of his disdain for both employer and guest, made one of his quick dashes indoors as if he had heard some kind of alarm. Presently Pap Cowgill came sauntering in his rolling, indolent: gait out of the dark from the direction of the depot.
"What're they doin' down there, Windy Moore and the rest of them?" Goosie inquired.
"Shootin' off wind," said Pap, with the lofty derogation of a consciously superior man.
"That's about all'll be shot off, too," said Banjo.
Pap slouched down beside Goosie, who pressed him for particulars. Mrs. Cowgill added her solicitations, but Pap was not to be moved out of his own time and pace. He grunted, a sound expressive of disparagement and slight, indicative of something that could be said by him to the unmasking of much human folly, took a cigar from his vest pocket and began to smoke.
"Herby, I wish you'd go easy on that Tulip Rose brand," his mother said fretfully. "That stock costs me twenty dollars a thousand."
"Guess all I smoke of 'em won't break you," said Pap.
"You can mighty soon smoke off the profit," she reproved him.
"Ain't I payin' my board?" Pap demanded of her with manly insolence.
"It don't include cigars. I'll have to add fifty cents a week extry if you keep on smokin' the way you do. Between you and your daddy I'll be smoked and eat out of house and home one of these days."
As if the mention of him had called him up like a beneficent genius, Myron set foot on the porch that moment. He would have gone in, according to his habit of withdrawing from the family presence, only that his wife hailed him in her sharp, up-catching way. He sat on the bench near her, out of the light from the door.
"What did Cal Withers and the sheriff do about them cattle?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded.
There was a gritting sound coming from Myron's vicinity, together with a disquieting smell of concentrated nicotine. He was reaming the carbon out of his cob pipe, according to the custom of people whose tastes confine them to that humble vessel. Tardiness of reaction to any force was the outstanding peculiarity of Myron Cowgill, slowness of response being his most vexing weakness. He ground away on the cavity of his pipe, making no reply.
Whatever Myron's failures, fear of his wife was not among them. He was a calm man; no amount of tongue-lashing could whip him to a trot, no sharpbarbed burr of ridicule or censure under his saddle could make him rear and buck. He was not the kind of a man to be hung on his own testimony, if deliberation could save a man in that extremity.
"Did the sheriff make Tom give them cattle up to Withers, I asked you?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded.
Myron made a blowing in his pipe, a gurgling and distressing sound.
"Not that I heard of," he replied.
Louise Gardner was standing just inside the door, her hand put out to push it open, her attitude one of hesitant timidity, as if she might turn and fly at a word. She was dressed in white lawn with pink flowers sprayed through it, the skirt long and voluminous after the fashion of that modest day. Angus Valorous thought she was pretty fair, although he liked them bulging a little more in places, his preference having been shaped by an intimate study of the Police Gazette.
Pap Cowgill must have felt the radiation of his adored through the screen door. He twisted on the bench and looked around, waved her a greeting with his Tulip Rose, and pushed Goosie along the bench to make room for her.
"Hello, Louise!" he hailed, a deferential eagerness in his slow voice. "Come on out and rest your hu-huhands and face."
Louise went out, laughing a little over Pap's pleasantry, as polite railroad society required in such case.
"Well, Louise, did you get rested up from your trip?" Mrs. Cowgill inquired, with the kindly note that softened her voice when she spoke to some people, notably Tom Laylander and Louise.
"I was so used up I took a sleep after supper," Louise replied.
"Folks always have to rest up and recover after a vacation," Myron said. "I knew a man back in Illinois—"
"You must 'a' took a vacation the same time he did, you've been restin' up ever since," Mrs. Cowgill interrupted him, quick to grasp this opportunity to slam Myron before the boarders.
There was a laugh, in which Banjo Gibson's gay and care-free voice rose loud, for nobody in the world appreciates a joke against a loafer like one of the craft. Myron smoked on placidly, the reminiscence involving the man in Illinois unfinished, nobody enough interested in him to inquire of his adventure.
"We was just talkin' about Tom Laylander and them cattle," Mrs. Cowgill told Louise. "Did you hear Cal Withers was down there at the stock yards with the sheriff, tryin' to make him give 'em up?"
"No; I just came down-stairs a minute ago," Louise said. "What did the sheriff do about it?"
"I've been tryin' to make these muck-heads tell me," Mrs. Cowgill said impatiently.
"He didn't do nothin'," said Pap, willing and eager to talk to Louise. "The cow jerry pulled out a bill of sale he said Withers give him for the cattle. Withers said he made him write it with a gun throwed down on him. The cow jerry tied him to a wagon wheel, Withers said, but somebody come along and turned him loose in time for him to throw the switch and head that feller in. It's a hu-hu-hell of a note if a feller can take a man's property away from him that way and never be touched."
"You say the sheriff wouldn't do anything?" Louise asked, glad for the shadow that concealed, in part at least, her trembling eagerness.
"Said it wasn't his kind of a case; said Withers he'd have to bring a lawsuit and take it into court."
"I wonder why he brought the cattle here to town?" said Louise, feeling very small and foolish for the part she had taken in assisting Withers to come there and head Laylander in, as Pap had put it, in railroad parlance.
"He was goin' to ship," Pap explained. "He'd 'a' been half loaded by now if somebody hadn't chanced along and let Withers go."
Banjo Gibson laughed. He was a little windmill that turned with every shifting breeze. He believed now that Pap's unfriendly feeling for Laylander indicated the current of railroad sentiment.
"Somebody sure put emery in his cylinders," he chuckled. "What's old man Withers goin' to do?"
"They say he's gone to pick up a gang and take the cattle away from the cow jerry," Pap replied indifferently. He stretched his arms, gaping prodigiously, to show how insignificant the thing was to him, and how greatly he was bored.
"I wonder where all the men are tonight?" Mrs. Cowgill speculated. "It's as quiet around here as the grave."
The row of chairs that stood in the street, that jury box from which the public and private affairs of McPacken were viewed and discussed, was empty. Those whose business or pleasure carried them past the Cottonwood Hotel walked in security.
"They're waitin' round to see if Withers comes back with his men," Myron said.
"Well, I wouldn't throw a hand to my gun in no squabble like that," Banjo declared.
"Me neither," said Pap.
"That cow jerry's got the name and fame of a fightin' man," said Banjo, "but it don't look to me like it takes much nerve to stand off a mile and do your fightin'."
"Huh!" Angus Valorous snorted, turning from the door where he had been listening.
"There'll be bloodshed if he does come back," Myron said, pursuing his thought as calmly and evenly as if there had been no interruption. "The boys here in town they'll stand behind Laylander for all that's in 'em. They'll never see them cattle taken away from him, by law or personal individuals."
"Do you think so, Mr. Cowgill?" Louise inquired, leaning in her appealing way to look at him, just as she had leaned, on that same bench, to look into Banjo Gibson's face when she came trying to sell the Thousand Ways.
"There'll be bloodshed," Myron repeated, rolling the word out as if he enjoyed the strange feeling of it on his tongue.
"I'm cert'nly glad Bill's out on his run," said Goosie.
"Nobody'd hurt the big stiff," said Pap.
"Hurt him!" Goosie scorned the thought. "He'd clean up the whole gang in about two minutes."
"Which gang? What side'd he be on?" Banjo asked, a laugh in his words, a teasing sort of flattery about him that made his way with the girls an easy one.
"It'd be the right one, whichever one it was," Goosie retorted, rather haughtily.
Goosie left them, carrying the thought of Bill, his valor and his might, into the parlor, where she played on the ornamented organ and sang her ballads. It was easy, alone in the dark room, to imagine herself on a bleak and rainy street, deserted by the Tempter, spurned by Bill. Her greatest pleasure always was in imagining herself sundered hopelessly from Bill's home, where the chenille curtains hung behind the ornamental lamp on the center table with its corded mat. It was a far happier arrangement to contemplate than domestic felicity and a roomful of kids. It was romantic; it was sweetened melancholy by the cup.
She sang Ma-ha-goreet, and We Never Speak As We Pass By, with a moving vision of Bill coming along in his diamond and prosperous checked suit, drifting by her where she stood in the drizzle with a shawl over her head, looking at him with sorrowful, penitent appeal. Bill would not pass by without speaking under such circumstances, she knew right well. He would say something, and say it hard.
Goosie had an enjoyable hour alone in the parlor, tears on her nose, inside her nose, creating a general dampness all around that stubby member, falling at times from the end of it down to the organ keys.
Louise slipped away to her room presently, where she sat in the dark by the open window, considering her culpability with bitterness and shame. She had shown humanity and tenderness where it was least deserved. At that very minute Withers would be gathering his men to come riding to McPacken, open the gates and drive the cattle away again to the range. Any man who stood between him and his design would be overwhelmed by numbers and slain. If Tom Laylander should fall in defense of his property, as he would surely fall, his death would be on her own hands.
She had little faith in any help coming from the railroaders. She knew them by this time for a heady, impulsive class of men, easily moved to hot resentment, as quickly cooled by a little lapse of time. Only Windy Moore was down at the stock yards watching with Laylander, she knew; poor old Windy, who very likely would break and run at the first shot. It was a great scheme they had for blowing the whistle, but it would need more than a whistle sounded at an unseasonable hour to rouse a crowd of sleepy railroaders from their beds to take up their guns in defense of a man whom they so lately had contemned and mocked.
Louise was quartered on the side of the hotel that overlooked the road leading into town, the depot and the stock yards, as the loading pens were generally called. The pens were too far away to be seen through the dark; she could only imagine Tom Laylander sitting on the fence as she had seen him at dusk, voluble, vain Windy Moore beside him, doubtless more of a bore than a comfort in this hour of uncertainty.
There was nothing she could do to help him; there was no certainty that he would accept her help, if she could summon forty gun-clever men. Tom believed her a sort of minor crook, a person whose standard of rectitude was very ignoble and low. Her impatience with him rose again, hot and indignant, with the thought. There was a queer moral bias in the man when he could refuse to take his cattle after they had been removed from the Kansas jurisdiction by a clever trick, but would pull his gun out and take them from Withers in a manner of open violence. Where the moral justification was stronger in one case than the other, she could not see.
Louise understood that Laylander believed, sincerely and honestly, that he had done the honorable thing in refusing to touch the cattle while the law's hand was upon them, and that he had moved only in accordance with his peculiar code in taking them from Withers. It was an audaciously admirable thing for one man to do, she admitted, not without pride in his partly successful stroke. Partly successful only on account of her meddling. She hoped Laylander did not know, and never would find out, who turned Cal Withers loose.
There was nothing she could do now to repair her misapplied kindness, nothing she could do to help Laylander out of the confusion she had made in his plan. She was as helpless as the night wind in holding back the force of destruction that was forming out there somewhere in the dark, vast, appalling, shudderful prairie.
She sat at the window while the night activities of McPacken subsided, until the cowboys quit their greedy swilling, took horse and rode away in noisy little bunches to their distant camps. She sat there until the chill of the dewy hours before dawn made her shiver, and her face grow wan as a watcher beside a deathbed for whom there is no sleep.
Every hour that passed was a respite toward the hope of final escape for Tom Laylander, standing guard over his resting herd. For there is hope in the day; there is always hope in the day.