The Return of Raggedy Dick

by Hugh Pendexter

A Romance of the Old West

 

The Return of
Ragged Dick

By Hugh Pendexter

Nearly all the red raiders who figured in the mystery of Ragged Dick's return have gone to the Land of Many Teepees. They died convinced they had witnessed something taku wakan, or big medicine. If there be any survivors they will not talk; no more than they would trespass in. a sacred, or mystery place.

Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho were making a last play to save some of their game country. Julesburg, filled with wagon trains, was marooned as thoroughly as if on an island. Mail for Denver was going by way of the Isthmus to 'Frisco, and and then back east over the mountains. I happened up on the end of the story while leading a hundred fighting men from Denver to open communication with Julesburg so that some of the precious supplies might get through. With old Lemar, a squaw man, I kept some distance ahead of my column, anxious for the return of Toby Jones who had scouted far ahead during the night.

The telegraph poles dropped long shadows across our way as Jones came tearing up the road. His horse was in a lather when he halted and reported gunfire to the east, near midnight. He had not learned the cause as it soon ended. After he had left us to get a fresh mount Lemar reined in raised a hand for silence. I caught it. Guns were being fired on our right. As the firing grew louder Lemar said someone was using .45's against rifles. I could not make this distinction, although the bang, bang, banging rapidly grew nearer. I stood in my stirrups and signaled for my men to come on at a gallop. Lemar touched my arm and pointed. Two dots were bobbing towards us over a golden carpet laid down by the first sunshine. Behind them were smaller dots, but, as we watched, the latter diminished to specks instead of growing larger. It was the end of a story; a very simple story, I assumed. Indians, chasing two fugitives, were scared off by my column. Yet they could have bagged their game before we could have interfered.

Lemar muttered, “One squaw. One man.”

For two minutes they remained just dots to me.

The fugitives' horses were making a last effort. This was the wind-up of the mystery which was to be argued and fought over for years. In play-acting they call it the “curtain,” meaning the show is finished. For us in the road it was just beginning. The specks vanished in the north. The man and woman were beating their mounts as if Old Spotted Tail himself were at their heels. As there was no danger we waited for them in the road.

“Someone is shooting,” muttered old Lemar.

I cupped my ear and listened and caught a faint rumble which may have been shots. This fighting off-stage and the miraculous escape of the fugitives was very puzzling unless we believed the men in Julesburg had taken the offensive.

“The man and the woman have a very strong medicine working for them,” whispered Lemar.

I waved my hands and shouted for the fugitives to take it easy, but they continued beating their horses as if the devil was hopping hotfoot at their stirrups. The woman's mount was slumping fast. The man, better mounted, kept behind her. As they drew nearer I saw two arrows sticking into the woman's horse. Old Lemar was the first to recognize them. He cried out:

“It's Denver 'n' a gal!”

Then I recognized him, a camp sport, wild and wayward, but very likeable. I first met him in Colorado City and later in Denver, where I ran a boot store. The girl's nag went down and flung her to the ground. But she was quickly up, unhurt, and running towards us, and screaming, “Ragged Dick saved us! He saved us!” She kept repeating this as she seized my arm with both small hands. Lord, but she was pretty, even with the terror in her eyes!

Denver slid from his saddle and gasped, “The dead can come to life!”

Old Lemar rotated a finger above his head in a wakan sign for one whose wits have been touched by the Great Spirit. I believed both the young people were plumb crazy from fear.

I told them:

“Stop this foolishness. You're as safe as kittens back on a Vermont farm... Howdy, Denver. You two have had a narrow rub, but you're all right. Who's this little lady?”

“She's Jenny Lee. We're to be married when we find a parson. A narrow rub? A miracle, man! The dead come back! Ragged Dick saved us!”

I knew Ragged Dick, so called because of his ragged, tattered garments picked off from camp dumps. He was a bummer, but because of his gift for handling knife and gun he always was treated politely.

“Poor Dick pegged out in standing off the Indians,” I remarked.

“Yes. He was killed at midnight at the dry crossing of Snake Crick, a few miles east of here,” shrilly cried the girl.

“The red devils jumped us right after we'd made camp there,” panted Denver. “First thing we knew they'd set the dead grass afire. We fought 'em as they came yowling through the smoke. Dick was hit most mortal and yelled for us to ride for it before we were surrounded. Jenny and I bolted. We knew he was done for. They'd got us at that if they hadn't stopped to shoot guns into his dead body and to get his scalp. I saw that”

“And you dodged them in the darkness,” I prompted, speaking in a soothing voice. “Near morning they picked you up again.”

“They hunted us out of our hiding place in an old buffalo wallow,” said the girl.

“And you made for the road and they saw my men, and they quit,” I added.

“No, no!” cried Denver. “You folks didn't scare them off.”

“It was poor Dick,” moaned the girl, her hands to her eyes to hide some cruel sight.

“That's it. Dick!” cried Denver. “They all but had us when old Dick came thundering among them, his ragged coat flapping, his ragged hat pulled down tight. He was mounted on his big sorrel. He began shooting, scoring with every shot. He rode right into them. He was dead and he came back!”

“Oh, it was terrible,” sobbed the girl, again clutching my arm. “A dead man fighting!”

The shock had been too much for them. I decided the truth was better than making believe I believed the nonsense. I told the girl:

“It's mighty fine someone happened along to help you, Miss Jenny. But if Dick was killed in the night it wa'n't him.”

“But it was! It was!” she hysterically insisted.

“Don't you suppose I know old Dick?” angrily added Denver.

I saw that truth wouldn't serve yet a while.

“All right. We won't argue,” I said, now anxious to smooth him down.

One of my men chipped in, saying:

“Reds reckoned they'd rubbed him out, but he managed to climb that ugly old sorrel of his and fetch 'em one more fight. That's what I call spunk. It would be like Dick.”

“I tell you I saw him killed,” insisted Denver. “Saw him shot through the head and body. I saw him scalped. The dry reeds and grass were afire and made it very light for a bit. Who else wears such clothes? Who else was near to chip in? Who else would jump 'em singlehanded? Who else would the Injuns be afraid of, except a dead man?”

“Oh, it was Dick, all right,” I agreed, winking to the men to keep shut. Of course I understood the only thing one could believe. Dick was wounded, but not so bad as the youngsters thought. More'n one man has lost his scalp and lived to show a bald spot. The reds believed they'd rubbed him out and were quick to stampede when he blew in among them.

“It's very wakan," muttered old Lemar.

Well, my business was to fetch a train of grub through from Julesburg, as flour was threatening to bring its weight in dust. I ordered six men to take the young folks to Denver. They started off, the lovers riding double, and we resumed our errand. Their talk stuck in my mind, however, and there was Ragged Dick to be buried, if he be dead. With twenty men I swung east from the road to visit the creek.

“Something down there,” said Lemar as he squinted up at the buzzards coming from all quarters.

“Indians, who were potted in rushing the camp,” I said.

Toby Jones, who had galloped ahead, drew his horse back on his haunches and bawled to us:

“Something tarnal queer here, Cap'n.”

Reading a story backwards is not a bit satisfactory; for if even half a page be missing you are left up in the air. Our mystery yarn was beginning to unfold, having started at the finish, and it was enough to make a man doubt his senses.

Ragged Dick was there, just as Denver and his sweetheart had said. I quit the saddle and quickly saw he had been dead twelve or more hours. He had been riddled with lead. He had been scalped. But what was an exasperating addition to the mystery was his scalplock close beside his head, and an Indian medicine bag, or some such thingumbob, decorated with beads and silver coins, resting on his chest.

Old Lemar whispered:

“A chief has come here and left the scalp they took away. The chief left the wakan bag to please the ghost of the dead man. The chief was very brave, or mighty dam' scared, to come back here. He did it to stop the dead man from chasing him.”

“No question but that Dick had pegged out hours before we heard the shootin',” said Toby Jones. “But, Cap'n, his old sorrel has hurts he got a mighty short time ago.”

Such talk was maddening, for Jones spoke the truth. Half an eye could see the sorrel hadn't yet recovered from a long, hard run. There were raw wounds on his neck and withers. I couldn't believe Ragged Dick came back to life to save his young friends. Nor could I explain why his scalp had been returned and a wakan bag added as gift to his ghost. Nor could I believe the youngsters saw him thundering among the Indians in the sunrise fight. For a long time it was to ride me hard.

To make it more impossible I talked with two Arapahos, after the Indians had been roped into making another peace. One of the men, Big Nose, was a fine man. I had known and liked him since our first meeting in 1860. There was no question about his honesty.

“The big man was killed and scalped at the creek,” he said. “It was night. We set the grass on fire. After the sun came up he rode among us, shooting just as we were closing in on the white woman and man. We were afraid. He left us and rode back toward the place where he was killed. His scalp was taken back to him and a medicine bag left with him. We did not have time to make a feast for his ghost as there were many white men in the big wagon road. He has not come to us since. It is bad to talk about a dead man who rides and kills.”

I opened a store in Helena the year of the Custer Massacre and told the story to a Chicago newspaper man. It was copied by Western papers, and the first thing I knew I was being complimented by the boys on being a monumental liar. They'd keep coming into the store just to nag me. They'd fetch newspapers along as if I hadn't seen any of them. Only one man took a serious interest in the yarn, as printed in the papers—Dude Parsons, gambler, claim speculator and gold buyer. He got in the habit of dropping in when trade was dull. He was good company, the kind one can visit without saying scarcely a word. Not that he wasn't sometimes filled with language, but often we'd sit and smoke and scarcely swap a dozen sentences. One night he took a notion to ask questions, many of them about my early experiences in the West. I asked him if he was getting stuff to put in a book. I was gun shy of the printed word.

He laughed silently, but his eyes never laughed. At times I believed he had the soberest face I'd ever seen.

“I'll write no book,” he said, “but you could write a good one. Just put in about the dead man who went riding. It would make a hit as fiction.”

“I don't expect anyone to believe that, except old Lemar, who's dead, and the Indians who gave back the scalp, and are now dead.”

“You're leaving out the young couple,” he cynically reminded.

“They, too, have passed on. Denver died within a year after the marriage. His wife followed him the year I came up here.”

He stepped to the window and gently tapped his fingers on the glass and stared out at the faces revealed for a moment as they drifted by through the light of our window lamp.

I continued, saying, “But I wouldn't leave out what I found in the camp.”

“No one would believe that,” he murmured.

“Of course not. For then they feel obliged to explain it. And it can's be explained.”

He faced about and pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“I'd gambled I caught a glimpse of Red Martin passing... No; they never would believe that. For we are a superior race. The minute we face something we can't understand we put it aside as never having happened. Reckon you won't write that book. If the man and woman, especially the young woman, were alive to testify... No, not even if angels came to earth and told it... 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'”

“Horatio who?” I asked.

“Oh, a friend of a Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Shakespeare used to know him.”

I had known from our first talk that he was a book reader.

“It happened as I have said,” I doggedly insisted. “I don't know how it happened. But who rode among the Indians, shooting, and scaring them off just as they were about to muckle onto the young couple? I don't know. Yet someone, something, did do that. What the newspaper man said about the wounds on Dick's old sorrel was true. Some were a dozen hours' old. Some weren't more'n sixty minutes. There was but one fight there at the creek, about midnight and by the light of burning grass. Two Arapaho chiefs told me the big sorrel carried Ragged Dick among them when they were about to capture Denver and the girl. Some one, something, rode the sorrel and returned him to his dead master. His flanks were still quivering from a long, hard run when I entered the camp... But what's the use of hashing it over. Just play this as an unbeatable combination: someone, or some thing, saved Denver and pretty Jenny Lee from a horrible death that morning west of Julesburg.”

He started absent-mindedly at the low ceiling and nodded his head.

“I believe it,” he said. “Have to believe. For the two escaped when they were almost caught. But did you ever think of a mirage? Now a mirage——”

“Mirage, hell!” I exploded. “Could a mirage of a man ride the big sorrel? The mirage of a dead man? The sorrel wasn't a mirage. He had fresh wounds. Could a mirage ride among the reds and shoot them off their ponies with the mirages of two .45's? Yet something surely did pot some reds at sunrise and scared them into quitting.”

He surrendered, then.

“It's very puzzling. Yet, if we could eliminate every hypothesis, except one, the exception must contain the truth, no matter how insane and absurd it might impress one. The whole affair lacks a beginning. Has just an ending.”

I got his meaning even if it was hidden among some tall words.

“The woman as pretty as the newspapers said?” He irrelevantly asked.

“With the sadness and fear out of her face she would be the prettiest thing I ever saw.”

“If they had been old people it wouldn't be so tantalizing,” he mused.

I couldn't see any rhyme or reason in this. The mystery was there, regardless of the age of Denver and the girl.

“The whole business still bothers me. I don't want to run across any more story endings,” I told him.

He rose and paced restlessly to the window and back.

“Life's queer,” he muttered. “The new-born ought to inherit the lessons taught by experience. No sense in compelling every generation to start out and learn it all over again. What's the good of experience if you can't profit by it? It's like telling a drunken man, after he's fallen and broken his neck, that it'll be a good lesson to him. Apparently God doesn't keep track of human experiences. Yet there's something almost as strange as finding a dead man back in the saddle to help his friends.”

“You're talking bosh, and you know it.”

“Not from my point of view. It's just as strange that some men will deliberately keep on living.”

He turned briskly to go to his eternal poker game. I wanted to detain him. His queer way of looking at things, a twisted way and touched with bitterness, worried me. But he would not linger. Red Martin, from Butte, and others were waiting for him. The next morning the whole town seemed to be buzzing about how Martin and his pals had been cleaned out.

That evening Parsons came in after the rush and talked poetry. I tried to get the details of the poker game, but be would tell nothing. Instead he told me:

“You make a mistake in not reading some good poetry every week. Sort of softens your heart. My friend, your dead rider isn't half as mysterious as the way live people behave. You've been in love?”

“Once. We were both nine. She was a hard-hearted hussy and jilted me. I take it you've been in love.”

“Oh, many times.”

“Been given the mitten, of course?”

He nodded; then amplified.

“Once. That is, once that counted.”

“Cut you to the raw, eh?”

“The average man takes it seriously,” he answered. “Hurts his pride even if it doesn't damage his heart. Often makes him sour. The most important man the world has ever known, in your estimation, is yourself.”

I scoffed at his philosophy, and derided.

“Me, angry with a woman having sense enough to turn me down? And mad at t'other feller for winning where I couldn't? Bosh!”

“Yet I'll gamble you were seriously cut up over the baby's refusal to be your girl. As a rule the pride is hurt more than the heart. Read some books. I have a trunkful of them. Good poetry to read when you fall in love. Sound philosophy when you are trying to work out of a love spell.”

“I have no time for books. But I do read the Bible.”

“Keno. So have I. 'The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea....'”

But I knew my Book. I completed the verse.

“'And the way of a man with a maid.'”

He stared at the floor as if not hearing me; then jerked up his head and said:

“... With a maid... Of course. And, 'An horse is a vain thing for safety.' So it proved for Ragged Dick.”

“Dick's sorrel wasn't a vain nag for strength. He had fighting guts. I kept him until he died of old age.”

He was at the window, watching the faces drift by through the shaft of light, and I did not believe be had heard my last remark. I began figuring up the day's sales when, without turning, he broke in:

“What a queer rôle Dick played in life... Poe could have much of that ride. In prose, not poetry. A derelict. In the East they'd call him a tramp. Not the type at all to return from the hollow vale and ride daringly under the flag of Mercy. We'd never expect that exertion and daring from a common bummer... Gives me a shivery feeling to think of a loyalty so stout that even death can't stop it from rushing out of the eternal shadows to aid a friend. The horse is dead. I wonder if Dick and his phantom steed would materialize and ride again to help a friend, had he a friend still living.”

“The average man would return to help a friend if he could,” I said, but without much assurance in my voice.

“Not unless the return trip be a pleasant one,” he murmured. Wheeling to face me and daintily dusting his hands he added, “Only occasion I ever heard of was in your story. If our ragged ghost could do it, why not others? But others haven't.”

This kind of talk got us nowhere, and he always was vastly too clever for me. In his polite way, I felt, he was good-naturedly making game of me. Yet I liked it. It was a relief from the monotony of trade. He ran on:

“Ragged Dick could come back but once, it seems, or the young folks would be immortal.”

A queer stick. The queerest for a big game man I ever met.

I had written a friend to And me a good clerk, one who could handle my dressgoods, for I was branching out. I was planning a hurry trip to Virginia City so as to be back when the clerk arrived. Parsons came in back just as I was about to leave. He looked pale and tired.

“Parsons, you look all fagged out,” I bluntly told him. “Night life is killing you. Run down to Virginia City with me.”

He refused my invitation by a shake of the head; then explained:

“Promised Red Martin I'd visit him in Butte and give him his revenge. I'm tired of myself. Nothing else ails me.”

Before I realized it I was putting a new suspicion into words.

“Are you in love?” I asked him.

Instead of smiling cynically, as I had expected, he slowly bowed his head. He disappointed me by saying:

“She is dead. When she passed out of my life I lost all interest in living, except gambling. Well, life's sort of empty, isn't it, when you have absolutely nothing to look ahead to, or to hope for? When you come back from your trip call at my room for some books. Your life, in one way, is as narrow as mine.”

Again I urged him to go along with me.

“A much longer journey might do me good,” he replied. “I'd find Ragged Dick and have him explain this story which has only an ending.”

I suddenly feared he was contemplating the last step during my absence.

“Damnation!” I cried. “You're too sensible to think of that.”

“Oh, I've thought of it—quite a bit. But, unfortunately, I am not a quitter. Matter of pride, rather than scruples. I'm sticking to the game till it's ended; but it's mighty tedious at times.”

All through the journey to Virginia City he was in my thoughts. At times I could see his pale, handsome face, could hear his cynical words. He had no use for life, but believed it a weakness to throw his hand into the discard. I felt strong sympathy for him. Perhaps because I, too, was much alone in the world. A man must keep busy with work to find life liveable. Playing poker isn't work; just a disease.

I was away three days, the best I could do. Yet, when I reached Helena I made direct for Parsons' room. He was not in. The landlady said he had not returned from Butte. On making for the store I took an alley, which led to the back door. Between me and the lighted window, where I had my table, I made out the figure of a man. As I sneaked upon him I discovered the head of a woman, profile to me, bowed over my table, her fingers deftly sorting papers. I almost forgot the loiterer in my chagrin. I hadn't specified sex and my fool friend had sent me a woman. As an outlet for my ire I clamped a heavy hand on the man's shoulder and sharply demanded:

“What you doing out here?”

“My God! They come back!” he groaned. “I'm looking at the heaven I lost.”

“Parsons!” I exclaimed. “What means this mad talk? Are you crazy?”

“I think so,” he gasped. “What do you see in that window? Is it real?”

“I see my new clerk, sent by a fool friend whom I asked to send a clerk to me. I wanted a man.”

He wheeled and literally picked me up and ran with me down the alley. Dropping me on my feet, he panted, “You are the fool! Can't you see she is Jenny Lee? The one Ragged Dick came back to save?”

“Jenny Lee!” I gasped. “They told me she was dead. But how comes it you know her?”

“Know her? God in heaven! I worshipped her. We were to be married. Then came Denver... Stole her love. I followed to kill them... I was a madman. The Indians got between us during the night. I didn't understand until I heard the fighting and saw the burning grass. I killed my horse, trying to be in at the finish. To make sure she wasn't taken alive. I reached the camp, afoot, just before sunrise. It was very quiet. The storm had passed on. There was the big sorrel, wounded. There was Dick, a tatterdemalion of a man, dead... I had staked him many times. He had thrown in with them against me. But a man would have thrown in with Jenny Lee against all the world.”

He paused and panted heavily. I was confused to discover he, too, was in near the end of the story. I heard myself babbling, “You know all about it then? You knew how the Indians and the young folks believed Ragged Dick came back——”

“I was Ragged Dick,” he harshly broke in. “Dick was dead and scalped. The reds had taken his hair away. Then I heard shots south of the camp. I feared it concerned Jenny Lee. That was when the reds flushed them from the old buffalo wallow. I put on the long ragged coat, and pulled down the old battered hat and jumped on the sorrel. I had followed to kill them... I was riding to help them. You know how I was among the Indians almost before they discovered me. They thought me a ghost. Dick's ghost. After it was over I rode to the camp and dressed Dick and left the horse. Two Indians came down and would have found me if they hadn't been so frightened. I saw them return the poor scalp and leave the decorated bag and then gallop away as if Satan was chasing them. I got away before you came.

“Now you've read the story back to the beginning. But it must always remain a mystery. Do you understand?” And he fairly shook me.

The miracle was cleared up. There is always one hypothesis, pointing to truth, if we could but find it.

“What are you going to do now? What's in your mind?” I shouted at him.

“I'm going to my room and pack my belongings.”

“Will you promise to keep that damned hollow vale stuff out of your head and wait for me to come?” I begged him.

“Will you promise never to repeat anything which I have told you tonight? If so. I'll wait for you a bit. But I must pull out before daylight.”

“I solemnly promise,” I told him.

He hurried off and within ten minutes I had renewed my acquaintance with Denver's young widow and had told her all. She went with me to his lodgings.

Only sensible thing I could do, of course. Now when their children come in and hornswoggle me out of candy I laugh at those who maintain a lie is never excusable. A thoroughly honest person is the most uncomfortable critter on earth to get along with for more than a few days.

Another fine story of the Old West, by
Hugh Pendexter, will appear in the
August issue.

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Copyright, 1928 by Hugh Pendexter.