My road to Sunk Creek lay in no straight line. By rail I diverged northwest to Fort Meade, and thence, after some stay with the kind military people, I made my way on a horse. Up here in the Black Hills it sluiced rain most intolerably. The horse and I enjoyed the country and ourselves but little; and when finally I changed from the saddle into a stagecoach, I caught a thankful expression upon the animal’s face, and returned the same.
“Six legs inside this jerky to-night?” said somebody, as I climbed the wheel. “Well, we’ll give thanks for not havin’ eight,” he added cheerfully. “Clamp your mind on to that, Shorty.” And he slapped the shoulder of his neighbor. Naturally I took these two for old companions. But we were all total strangers. They told me of the new gold excitement at Rawhide, and supposed it would bring up the Northern Pacific; and when I explained the millions owed to this road’s German bondholders, they were of opinion that a German would strike it richer at Rawhide. We spoke of all sorts of things, and in our silence I gloated on the autumn holiday promised me by Judge Henry. His last letter had said that an outfit would be starting for his ranch from Billings on the seventh, and he would have a horse for me. This was the fifth. So we six legs in the jerky travelled harmoniously on over the rain-gutted road, getting no deeper knowledge of each other than what our outsides might imply.
Not that we concealed anything. The man who had slapped Shorty introduced himself early. “Scipio le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio,” he said. “The eldest of us always gets called Scipio. It’s French. But us folks have been white for a hundred years.” He was limber and light-muscled, and fell skilfully about, evading bruises when the jerky reeled or rose on end. He had a strange, long, jocular nose, very wary-looking, and a bleached blue eye. Cattle was his business, as a rule, but of late he had been “looking around some,” and Rawhide seemed much on his brain. Shorty struck me as “looking around” also. He was quite short, indeed, and the jerky hurt him almost every time. He was light-haired and mild. Think of a yellow dog that is lost, and fancies each newcomer in sight is going to turn out his master, and you will have Shorty.
It was the Northern Pacific that surprised us into intimacy. We were nearing Medora. We had made a last arrangement of our legs. I lay stretched in silence, placid in the knowledge it was soon to end. So I drowsed. I felt something sudden, and, waking, saw Scipio passing through the air. As Shorty next shot from the jerky, I beheld smoke and the locomotive. The Northern Pacific had changed its schedule. A valise is a poor companion for catching a train with. There was rutted sand and lumpy, knee-high grease wood in our short cut. A piece of stray wire sprang from some hole and hung caracoling about my ankle. Tin cans spun from my stride. But we made a conspicuous race. Two of us waved hats, and there was no moment that some one of us was not screeching. It meant twenty-four hours to us.
Perhaps we failed to catch the train’s attention, though the theory seems monstrous. As it moved off in our faces, smooth and easy and insulting, Scipio dropped instantly to a walk, and we two others outstripped him and came desperately to the empty track. There went the train. Even still its puffs were the separated puffs of starting, that bitten-off, snorty kind, and sweat and our true natures broke freely forth.
I kicked my valise, and then sat on it, dumb.
Shorty yielded himself up aloud. All his humble secrets came out of him. He walked aimlessly round, lamenting. He had lost his job, and he mentioned the ranch. He had played cards, and he mentioned the man. He had sold his horse and saddle to catch a friend on this train, and he mentioned what the friend had been going to do for him. He told a string of griefs and names to the air, as if the air knew.
Meanwhile Scipio arrived with extreme leisure at the rails. He stuck his hands into his pockets and his head out at the very small train. His bleached blue eyes shut to slits as he watched the rear car in its smoke-blur ooze away westward among the mounded bluffs. “Lucky it’s out of range,” I thought. But now Scipio spoke to it.
“Why, you seem to think you’ve left me behind,” he began easily, in fawning tones. “You’re too much of a kid to have such thoughts. Age some.” His next remark grew less wheedling. “I wouldn’t be a bit proud to meet yu’. Why, if I was seen travellin’ with yu’, I’d have to explain it to my friends! Think you’ve got me left, do yu’? Just because yu’ ride through this country on a rail, do yu’ claim yu’ can find your way around? I could take yu’ out ten yards in the brush and lose yu’ in ten seconds, you spangle-roofed hobo! Leave ME behind? you recent blanket-mortgage yearlin’! You plush-lined, nickel-plated, whistlin’ wash room, d’ yu’ figure I can’t go east just as soon as west? Or I’ll stay right here if it suits me, yu’ dude-inhabited hot-box! Why, yu’ coon-bossed face-towel--” But from here he rose in flights of novelty that appalled and held me spellbound, and which are not for me to say to you. Then he came down easily again, and finished with expressions of sympathy for it because it could never have known a mother.
“Do you expaict it could show a male parent offhand?” inquired a slow voice behind us. I jumped round, and there was the Virginian.
“Male parent!” scoffed the prompt Scipio. “Ain’t you heard about THEM yet?”
“Them? Was there two?”
“Two? The blamed thing was sired by a whole doggone Dutch syndicate.”
“Why, the piebald son of a gun!” responded the Virginian, sweetly. “I got them steers through all right,” he added to me. “Sorry to see yu’ get so out o’ breath afteh the train. Is your valise sufferin’ any?”
“Who’s he?” inquired Scipio, curiously, turning to me.
The Southerner sat with a newspaper on the rear platform of a caboose. The caboose stood hitched behind a mile or so of freight train, and the train was headed west. So here was the deputy foreman, his steers delivered in Chicago, his men (I could hear them) safe in the caboose, his paper in his lap, and his legs dangling at ease over the railing. He wore the look of a man for whom things are going smooth. And for me the way to Billings was smooth now, also.
“Who’s he?” Scipio repeated.
But from inside the caboose loud laughter and noise broke on us. Some one was reciting “And it’s my night to howl.”
“We’ll all howl when we get to Rawhide,” said some other one; and they howled now.
“These hyeh steam cyars,” said the Virginian to Scipio, “make a man’s language mighty nigh as speedy as his travel.” Of Shorty he took no notice whatever--no more than of the manifestations in the caboose.
“So yu’ heard me speakin’ to the express,” said Scipio. “Well, I guess, sometimes I--See here,” he exclaimed, for the Virginian was gravely considering him, “I may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You didn’t catch ME squandering no speed. Soon as--”
“I noticed,” said the Virginian, “thinkin’ came quicker to yu’ than runnin’.”
I was glad I was not Shorty, to have my measure taken merely by my way of missing a train. And of course I was sorry that I had kicked my valise.
“Oh, I could tell yu’d been enjoyin’ us!” said Scipio. “Observin’ somebody else’s scrape always kind o’ rests me too. Maybe you’re a philosopher, but maybe there’s a pair of us drawd in this deal.”
Approval now grew plain upon the face of the Virginian. “By your laigs,” said he, “you are used to the saddle.”
“I’d be called used to it, I expect.”
“By your hands,” said the Southerner, again, “you ain’t roped many steers lately. Been cookin’ or something?”
“Say,” retorted Scipio, “tell my future some now. Draw a conclusion from my mouth.”
“I’m right distressed,” answered the gentle Southerner, “we’ve not a drop in the outfit.”
“Oh, drink with me uptown!” cried Scipio. “I’m pleased to death with yu’.”
The Virginian glanced where the saloons stood just behind the station, and shook his head.
“Why, it ain’t a bit far to whiskey from here!” urged the other, plaintively. “Step down, now. Scipio le Moyne’s my name. Yes, you’re lookin’ for my brass ear-rings. But there ain’t no ear-rings on me. I’ve been white for a hundred years. Step down. I’ve a forty-dollar thirst.”
“You’re certainly white,” began the Virginian. “But--”
Here the caboose resumed:
“I’m wild, and woolly, and full of peas;
I’m hard to curry above the knees;
I’m a she-wolf from Bitter Creek, and
It’s my night to ho-o-wl--”
And as they howled and stamped, the wheels of the caboose began to turn gently and to murmur.
The Virginian rose suddenly. “Will yu’ save that thirst and take a forty-dollar job?”
“Missin’ trains, profanity, or what?” said Scipio.
“I’ll tell yu’ soon as I’m sure.”
At this Scipio looked hard at the Virginian. “Why, you’re talkin’ business!” said he, and leaped on the caboose, where I was already. “I WAS thinkin’ of Rawhide,” he added, “but I ain’t any more.”
“Well, good luck!” said Shorty, on the track behind us.
“Oh, say!” said Scipio, “he wanted to go on that train, just like me.”
“Get on,” called the Virginian. “But as to getting a job, he ain’t just like you.” So Shorty came, like a lost dog when you whistle to him.
Our wheels clucked over the main-line switch. A train-hand threw it shut after us, jumped aboard, and returned forward over the roofs. Inside the caboose they had reached the third howling of the she-wolf.
“Friends of yourn?” said Scipio.
“My outfit,” drawled the Virginian.
“Do yu’ always travel outside?” inquired Scipio.
“It’s lonesome in there,” returned the deputy foreman. And here one of them came out, slamming the door.
“Hell!” he said, at sight of the distant town. Then, truculently, to the Virginian, “I told you I was going to get a bottle here.”
“Have your bottle, then,” said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off into Dakota. (It was not North Dakota yet; they had not divided it.) The Virginian had aimed his pistol at about the same time with his boot. Therefore the man sat in Dakota quietly, watching us go away into Montana, and offering no objections. Just before he became too small to make out, we saw him rise and remove himself back toward the saloons.
