It has happened to you, has it not, to wake in the morning and wonder for a while where on earth you are? Thus I came half to life in the caboose, hearing voices, but not the actual words at first.
But presently, “Hathaway!” said some one more clearly. “Portland 1291!”
This made no special stir in my intelligence, and I drowsed off again to the pleasant rhythm of the wheels. The little shock of stopping next brought me to, somewhat, with the voices still round me; and when we were again in motion, I heard: “Rosebud! Portland 1279!” These figures jarred me awake, and I said, “It was 1291 before,” and sat up in my blankets.
The greeting they vouchsafed and the sight of them clustering expressionless in the caboose brought last evening’s uncomfortable memory back to me. Our next stop revealed how things were going to-day.
“Forsythe,” one of them read on the station. “Portland 1266.”
They were counting the lessening distance westward. This was the undercurrent of war. It broke on me as I procured fresh water at Forsythe and made some toilet in their stolid presence. We were drawing nearer the Rawhide station--the point, I mean, where you left the railway for the new mines. Now Rawhide station lay this side of Billings. The broad path of desertion would open ready for their feet when the narrow path to duty and Sunk Creek was still some fifty miles more to wait. Here was Trampas’s great strength; he need make no move meanwhile, but lie low for the immediate temptation to front and waylay them and win his battle over the deputy foreman. But the Virginian seemed to find nothing save enjoyment in this sunny September morning, and ate his breakfast at Forsythe serenely.
That meal done and that station gone, our caboose took up again its easy trundle by the banks of the Yellowstone. The mutineers sat for a while digesting in idleness.
“What’s your scar?” inquired one at length inspecting casually the neck of his neighbor.
“Foolishness,” the other answered.
“Yourn?”
“Mine.”
“Well, I don’t know but I prefer to have myself to thank for a thing,” said the first.
“I was displaying myself,” continued the second. “One day last summer it was. We come on a big snake by Torrey Creek corral. The boys got betting pretty lively that I dassent make my word good as to dealing with him, so I loped my cayuse full tilt by Mr. Snake, and swung down and catched him up by the tail from the ground, and cracked him same as a whip, and snapped his head off. You’ve saw it done?” he said to the audience.
The audience nodded wearily.
“But the loose head flew agin me, and the fangs caught. I was pretty sick for a while.”
“It don’t pay to be clumsy,” said the first man. “If you’d snapped the snake away from yu’ instead of toward yu’, its head would have whirled off into the brush, same as they do with me.”
“How like a knife-cut your scar looks!” said I.
“Don’t it?” said the snake-snapper. “There’s many that gets fooled by it.”
“An antelope knows a snake is his enemy,” said another to me. “Ever seen a buck circling round and round a rattler?”
“I have always wanted to see that,” said I, heartily. For this I knew to be a respectable piece of truth.
“It’s worth seeing,” the man went on. “After the buck gets close in, he gives an almighty jump up in the air, and down comes his four hoofs in a bunch right on top of Mr. Snake. Cuts him all to hash. Now you tell me how the buck knows that.”
Of course I could not tell him. And again we sat in silence for a while--friendlier silence, I thought.
“A skunk’ll kill yu’ worse than a snake bite,” said another, presently. “No, I don’t mean that way,” he added. For I had smiled. “There is a brown skunk down in Arkansaw. Kind of prairie-dog brown. Littler than our variety, he is. And he is mad the whole year round, same as a dog gets. Only the dog has a spell and dies but this here Arkansaw skunk is mad right along, and it don’t seem to interfere with his business in other respects. Well, suppose you’re camping out, and suppose it’s a hot night, or you’re in a hurry, and you’ve made camp late, or anyway you haven’t got inside any tent, but you have just bedded down in the open. Skunk comes travelling along and walks on your blankets. You’re warm. He likes that, same as a cat does. And he tramps with pleasure and comfort, same as a cat. And you move. You get bit, that’s all. And you die of hydrophobia. Ask anybody.”
“Most extraordinary!” said I. “But did you ever see a person die from this?”
“No, sir. Never happened to. My cousin at Bald Knob did.”
“Died?”
“No, sir. Saw a man.”
“But how do you know they’re not sick skunks?”
“No, sir! They’re well skunks. Well as anything. You’ll not meet skunks in any state of the Union more robust than them in Arkansaw. And thick.”
“That’s awful true,” sighed another. “I have buried hundreds of dollars’ worth of clothes in Arkansaw.”
“Why didn’t yu’ travel in a sponge bag?” inquired Scipio. And this brought a slight silence.
“Speakin’ of bites,” spoke up a new man, “how’s that?” He held up his thumb.
“My!” breathed Scipio. “Must have been a lion.”
The man wore a wounded look. “I was huntin’ owl eggs for a botanist from Boston,” he explained to me.
“Chiropodist, weren’t he?” said Scipio. “Or maybe a sonnabulator?”
“No, honest,” protested the man with the thumb; so that I was sorry for him, and begged him to go on.
“I’ll listen to you,” I assured him. And I wondered why this politeness of mine should throw one or two of them into stifled mirth. Scipio, on the other hand, gave me a disgusted look and sat back sullenly for a moment, and then took himself out on the platform, where the Virginian was lounging.
“The young feller wore knee-pants and ever so thick spectacles with a half-moon cut in ’em,” resumed the narrator, “and he carried a tin box strung to a strap I took for his lunch till it flew open on him and a horn toad hustled out. Then I was sure he was a botanist--or whatever yu’ say they’re called. Well, he would have owl eggs--them little prairie-owl that some claim can turn their head clean around and keep a-watchin’ yu’, only that’s nonsense. We was ridin’ through that prairie-dog town, used to be on the flat just after yu’ crossed the south fork of Powder River on the Buffalo trail, and I said I’d dig an owl nest out for him if he was willing to camp till I’d dug it. I wanted to know about them owls some myself--if they did live with the dogs and snakes, yu’ know,” he broke off, appealing to me.
“Oh, yes,” I told him eagerly.
“So while the botanist went glarin’ around the town with his glasses to see if he could spot a prairie-dog and an owl usin’ the same hole, I was diggin’ in a hole I’d seen an owl run down. And that’s what I got.” He held up his thumb again.
“The snake!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Rattler was keepin’ house that day. Took me right there. I hauled him out of the hole hangin’ to me. Eight rattles.”
“Eight!” said I. “A big one.”
“Yes, sir. Thought I was dead. But the woman--”
“The woman?” said I.
“Yes, woman. Didn’t I tell yu’ the botanist had his wife along? Well, he did. And she acted better than the man, for he was losin’ his head, and shoutin’ he had no whiskey, and he didn’t guess his knife was sharp enough to amputate my thumb, and none of us chewed, and the doctor was twenty miles away, and if he had only remembered to bring his ammonia--well, he was screeching out ’most everything he knew in the world, and without arranging it any, neither. But she just clawed his pocket and burrowed and kep’ yelling, ‘Give him the stone, Augustus!’ And she whipped out one of them Injun medicine-stones,--first one I ever seen,--and she clapped it on to my thumb, and it started in right away.”
“What did it do?” said I.
“Sucked. Like blotting-paper does. Soft and funny it was, and gray. They get ’em from elks’ stomachs, yu’ know. And when it had sucked the poison out of the wound, off it falls of my thumb by itself! And I thanked the woman for saving my life that capable and keeping her head that cool. I never knowed how excited she had been till afterward. She was awful shocked.”
“I suppose she started to talk when the danger was over,” said I, with deep silence around me.
“No; she didn’t say nothing to me. But when her next child was born, it had eight rattles.”
Din now rose wild in the caboose. They rocked together. The enthusiast beat his knee tumultuously. And I joined them. Who could help it? It had been so well conducted from the imperceptible beginning. Fact and falsehood blended with such perfect art. And this last, an effect so new made with such world-old material! I cared nothing that I was the victim, and I joined them; but ceased, feeling suddenly somehow estranged or chilled. It was in their laughter. The loudness was too loud. And I caught the eyes of Trampas fixed upon the Virginian with exultant malevolence. Scipio’s disgusted glance was upon me from the door.
Dazed by these signs, I went out on the platform to get away from the noise. There the Virginian said to me: “Cheer up! You’ll not be so easy for ’em that-a-way next season.”
He said no more; and with his legs dangled over the railing, appeared to resume his newspaper.
“What’s the matter?” said I to Scipio.
“Oh, I don’t mind if he don’t,” Scipio answered. “Couldn’t yu’ see? I tried to head ’em off from yu’ all I knew, but yu’ just ran in among ’em yourself. Couldn’t yu’ see? Kep’ hinderin’ and spoilin’ me with askin’ those urgent questions of yourn--why, I had to let yu’ go your way! Why, that wasn’t the ordinary play with the ordinary tenderfoot they treated you to! You ain’t a common tenderfoot this trip. You’re the foreman’s friend. They’ve hit him through you. That’s the way they count it. It’s made them encouraged. Can’t yu’ see?”
Scipio stated it plainly. And as we ran by the next station, “Howard!” they harshly yelled. “Portland 1256!”
We had been passing gangs of workmen on the track. And at that last yell the Virginian rose. “I reckon I’ll join the meeting again,” he said. “This filling and repairing looks like the washout might have been true.”
“Washout?” said Scipio.
“Big Horn bridge, they say--four days ago.”
“Then I wish it came this side Rawhide station.”
“Do yu’?” drawled the Virginian. And smiling at Scipio, he lounged in through the open door.
“He beats me,” said Scipio, shaking his head. “His trail is turruble hard to anticipate.”
We listened.
“Work bein’ done on the road, I see,” the Virginian was saying, very friendly and conversational.
“We see it too,” said the voice of Trampas.
“Seem to be easin’ their grades some.”
“Roads do.”
“Cheaper to build ’em the way they want ’em at the start, a man would think,” suggested the Virginian, most friendly. “There go some more I-talians.”
“They’re Chinese,” said Trampas.
“That’s so,” acknowledged the Virginian, with a laugh.
“What’s he monkeyin’ at now?” muttered Scipio.
“Without cheap foreigners they couldn’t afford all this hyeh new gradin’,” the Southerner continued.
“Grading! Can’t you tell when a flood’s been eating the banks?”
“Why, yes,” said the Virginian, sweet as honey. “But ’ain’t yu’ heard of the improvements west of Big Timber, all the way to Missoula, this season? I’m talkin’ about them.”
“Oh! Talking about them. Yes, I’ve heard.”
“Good money-savin’ scheme, ain’t it?” said the Virginian. “Lettin’ a freight run down one hill an’ up the next as far as she’ll go without steam, an’ shavin’ the hill down to that point.” Now this was an honest engineering fact. “Better’n settin’ dudes squintin’ through telescopes and cypherin’ over one per cent reductions,” the Southerner commented.
“It’s common sense,” assented Trampas. “Have you heard the new scheme about the water-tanks?”
“I ain’t right certain,” said the Southerner.
“I must watch this,” said Scipio, “or I shall bust.” He went in, and so did I.
They were all sitting over this discussion of the Northern Pacific’s recent policy as to betterments, as though they were the board of directors. Pins could have dropped. Only nobody would have cared to hear a pin.
“They used to put all their tanks at the bottom of their grades,” said Trampas.
“Why, yu’ get the water easier at the bottom.”
“You can pump it to the top, though,” said Trampas, growing superior. “And it’s cheaper.”
“That gets me,” said the Virginian, interested.
“Trains after watering can start down hill now and get the benefit of the gravity. It’ll cut down operating expenses a heap.”
“That’s cert’nly common sense!” exclaimed the Virginian, absorbed. “But ain’t it kind o’ tardy?”
“Live and learn. So they gained speed, too. High speed on half the coal this season, until the accident.”
“Accident!” said the Virginian, instantly.
“Yellowstone Limited. Man fired at engine driver. Train was flying past that quick the bullet broke every window and killed a passenger on the back platform. You’ve been running too much with aristocrats,” finished Trampas, and turned on his heel.
“Haw, hew!” began the enthusiast, but his neighbor gripped him to silence. This was a triumph too serious for noise. Not a mutineer moved; and I felt cold.
“Trampas,” said the Virginian, “I thought yu’d be afeared to try it on me.”
Trampas whirled round. His hand was at his belt. “Afraid!” he sneered.
“Shorty!” said Scipio, sternly, and leaping upon that youth, took his half-drawn pistol from him.
“I’m obliged to yu’,” said the Virginian to Scipio. Trampas’s hand left his belt. He threw a slight, easy look at his men, and keeping his back to the Virginian, walked out on the platform and sat on the chair where the Virginian had sat so much.
“Don’t you comprehend,” said the Virginian to Shorty, amiably, “that this hyeh question has been discussed peaceable by civilized citizens? Now you sit down and be good, and Mr. Le Moyne will return your gun when we’re across that broken bridge, if they have got it fixed for heavy trains yet.”
“This train will be lighter when it gets to that bridge,” spoke Trampas, out on his chair.
“Why, that’s true, too!” said the Virginian. “Maybe none of us are crossin’ that Big Horn bridge now, except me. Funny if yu’ should end by persuadin’ me to quit and go to Rawhide myself! But I reckon I’ll not. I reckon I’ll worry along to Sunk Creek, somehow.”
“Don’t forget I’m cookin’ for yu’,” said Scipio, gruffy.
“I’m obliged to yu’,” said the Southerner.
“You were speaking of a job for me,” said Shorty.
“I’m right obliged. But yu’ see--I ain’t exackly foreman the way this comes out, and my promises might not bind Judge Henry to pay salaries.”
A push came through the train from forward. We were slowing for the Rawhide station, and all began to be busy and to talk. “Going up to the mines to-day?” “Oh, let’s grub first.” “Guess it’s too late, anyway.” And so forth; while they rolled and roped their bedding, and put on their coats with a good deal of elbow motion, and otherwise showed off. It was wasted. The Virginian did not know what was going on in the caboose. He was leaning and looking out ahead, and Scipio’s puzzled eye never left him. And as we halted for the water-tank, the Southerner exclaimed, “They ’ain’t got away yet!” as if it were good news to him.
He meant the delayed trains. Four stalled expresses were in front of us, besides several freights. And two hours more at least before the bridge would be ready.
Travellers stood and sat about forlorn, near the cars, out in the sage-brush, anywhere. People in hats and spurs watched them, and Indian chiefs offered them painted bows and arrows and shiny horns.
“I reckon them passengers would prefer a laig o’ mutton,” said the Virginian to a man loafing near the caboose.
“Bet your life!” said the man. “First lot has been stuck here four days.”
“Plumb starved, ain’t they?” inquired the Virginian.
“Bet your life! They’ve eat up their dining cars and they’ve eat up this town.”
“Well,” said the Virginian, looking at the town, “I expaict the dining-cyars contained more nourishment.”
“Say, you’re about right there!” said the man. He walked beside the caboose as we puffed slowly forward from the water-tank to our siding. “Fine business here if we’d only been ready,” he continued. “And the Crow agent has let his Indians come over from the reservation. There has been a little beef brought in, and game, and fish. And big money in it, bet your life! Them Eastern passengers has just been robbed. I wisht I had somethin’ to sell!”
“Anything starting for Rawhide this afternoon?” said Trampas, out of the caboose door.
“Not until morning,” said the man. “You going to the mines?” he resumed to the Virginian.
“Why,” answered the Southerner, slowly and casually, and addressing himself strictly to the man, while Trampas, on his side, paid obvious inattention, “this hyeh delay, yu’ see, may unsettle our plans some. But it’ll be one of two ways,--we’re all goin’ to Rawhide, or we’re all goin’ to Billings. We’re all one party, yu’ see.”
Trampas laughed audibly inside the door as he rejoined his men. “Let him keep up appearances,” I heard him tell them. “It don’t hurt us what he says to strangers.”
“But I’m goin’ to eat hearty either way,” continued the Virginian. “And I ain’ goin’ to be robbed. I’ve been kind o’ promisin’ myself a treat if we stopped hyeh.”
“Town’s eat clean out,” said the man.
“So yu’ tell me. But all you folks has forgot one source of revenue that yu’ have right close by, mighty handy. If you have got a gunny sack, I’ll show you how to make some money.”
“Bet your life!” said the man.
“Mr. Le Moyne,” said the Virginian, “the outfit’s cookin’ stuff is aboard, and if you’ll get the fire ready, we’ll try how frawgs’ laigs go fried.” He walked off at once, the man following like a dog. Inside the caboose rose a gust of laughter.
“Frogs!” muttered Scipio. And then turning a blank face to me, “Frogs?”
“Colonel Cyrus Jones had them on his bill of fare,” I said. “‘FROGS’ LEGS A LA DELMONICO.’”
“Shoo! I didn’t get up that thing. They had it when I came. Never looked at it. Frogs?” He went down the steps very slowly, with a long frown. Reaching the ground, he shook his head. “That man’s trail is surely hard to anticipate,” he said. “But I must hurry up that fire. For his appearance has given me encouragement,” Scipio concluded, and became brisk. Shorty helped him, and I brought wood. Trampas and the other people strolled off to the station, a compact band.
Our little fire was built beside the caboose, so the cooking things might be easily reached and put back. You would scarcely think such operations held any interest, even for the hungry, when there seemed to be nothing to cook. A few sticks blazing tamely in the dust, a frying-pan, half a tin bucket of lard, some water, and barren plates and knives and forks, and three silent men attending to them--that was all. But the travellers came to see. These waifs drew near us, and stood, a sad, lone, shifting fringe of audience; four to begin with; and then two wandered away; and presently one of these came back, finding it worse elsewhere. “Supper, boys?” said he. “Breakfast,” said Scipio, crossly. And no more of them addressed us. I heard them joylessly mention Wall Street to each other, and Saratoga; I even heard the name Bryn Mawr, which is near Philadelphia. But these fragments of home dropped in the wilderness here in Montana beside a freight caboose were of no interest to me now.
“Looks like frogs down there, too,” said Scipio. “See them marshy sloos full of weeds?” We took a little turn and had a sight of the Virginian quite active among the ponds. “Hush! I’m getting some thoughts,” continued Scipio. “He wasn’t sorry enough. Don’t interrupt me.”
“I’m not,” said I.
“No. But I’d ’most caught a-hold.” And Scipio muttered to himself again, “He wasn’t sorry enough.” Presently he swore loud and brilliantly. “Tell yu’!” he cried. “What did he say to Trampas after that play they exchanged over railroad improvements and Trampas put the josh on him? Didn’t he say, ‘Trampas, I thought you’d be afraid to do it?’ Well, sir, Trampas had better have been afraid. And that’s what he meant. There’s where he was bringin’ it to. Trampas made an awful bad play then. You wait. Glory, but he’s a knowin’ man! Course he wasn’t sorry. I guess he had the hardest kind of work to look as sorry as he did. You wait.”
“Wait? What for? Go on, man! What for?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! Whatever hand he’s been holdin’ up, this is the show-down. He’s played for a show-down here before the caboose gets off the bridge. Come back to the fire, or Shorty’ll be leavin’ it go out. Grow happy some, Shorty!” he cried on arriving, and his hand cracked on Shorty’s shoulder. “Supper’s in sight, Shorty. Food for reflection.”
“None for the stomach?” asked the passenger who had spoken once before.
“We’re figuring on that too,” said Scipio. His crossness had melted entirely away.
“Why, they’re cow-boys!” exclaimed another passenger; and he moved nearer.
From the station Trampas now came back, his herd following him less compactly. They had found famine, and no hope of supplies until the next train from the East. This was no fault of Trampas’s; but they were following him less compactly. They carried one piece of cheese, the size of a fist, the weight of a brick, the hue of a corpse. And the passengers, seeing it, exclaimed, “There’s Old Faithful again!” and took off their hats.
“You gentlemen met that cheese before, then?” said Scipio, delighted.
“It’s been offered me three times a day for four days,” said the passenger. “Did he want a dollar or a dollar and a half?”
“Two dollars!” blurted out the enthusiast. And all of us save Trampas fell into fits of imbecile laughter.
“Here comes our grub, anyway,” said Scipio, looking off toward the marshes. And his hilarity sobered away in a moment.
“Well, the train will be in soon,” stated Trampas. “I guess we’ll get a decent supper without frogs.”
All interest settled now upon the Virginian. He was coming with his man and his gunny sack, and the gunny sack hung from his shoulder heavily, as a full sack should. He took no notice of the gathering, but sat down and partly emptied the sack. “There,” said he, very businesslike, to his assistant, “that’s all we’ll want. I think you’ll find a ready market for the balance.”
“Well, my gracious!” said the enthusiast. “What fool eats a frog?”
“Oh, I’m fool enough for a tadpole!” cried the passenger. And they began to take out their pocket-books.
“You can cook yours right hyeh, gentlemen,” said the Virginian, with his slow Southern courtesy. “The dining-cyars don’t look like they were fired up.”
“How much will you sell a couple for?” inquired the enthusiast.
The Virginian looked at him with friendly surprise. “Why, help yourself! We’re all together yet awhile. Help yourselves,” he repeated, to Trampas and his followers. These hung back a moment, then, with a slinking motion, set the cheese upon the earth and came forward nearer the fire to receive some supper.
“It won’t scarcely be Delmonico style,” said the Virginian to the passengers, “nor yet Saynt Augustine.” He meant the great Augustin, the traditional chef of Philadelphia, whose history I had sketched for him at Colonel Cyrus Jones’s eating palace.
Scipio now officiated. His frying-pan was busy, and prosperous odors rose from it.
“Run for a bucket of fresh water, Shorty,” the Virginian continued, beginning his meal. “Colonel, yu’ cook pretty near good. If yu’ had sold ’em as advertised, yu’d have cert’nly made a name.”
Several were now eating with satisfaction, but not Scipio. It was all that he could do to cook straight. The whole man seemed to glisten. His eye was shut to a slit once more, while the innocent passengers thankfully swallowed.
“Now, you see, you have made some money,” began the Virginian to the native who had helped him get the frogs.
“Bet your life!” exclaimed the man. “Divvy, won’t you?” And he held out half his gains.
“Keep ’em,” returned the Southerner. “I reckon we’re square. But I expaict they’ll not equal Delmonico’s, seh?” he said to a passenger.
“Don’t trust the judgment of a man as hungry as I am!” exclaimed the traveller, with a laugh. And he turned to his fellow-travellers. “Did you ever enjoy supper at Delmonico’s more than this?”
“Never!” they sighed.
“Why, look here,” said the traveller, “what fools the people of this town are! Here we’ve been all these starving days, and you come and get ahead of them!”
“That’s right easy explained,” said the Virginian. “I’ve been where there was big money in frawgs, and they ’ain’t been. They’re all cattle hyeh. Talk cattle, think cattle, and they’re bankrupt in consequence. Fallen through. Ain’t that so?” he inquired of the native.
“That’s about the way,” said the man.
“It’s mighty hard to do what your neighbors ain’t doin’,” pursued the Virginian. “Montana is all cattle, an’ these folks must be cattle, an’ never notice the country right hyeh is too small for a range, an’ swampy, anyway, an’ just waitin’ to be a frawg ranch.”
At this, all wore a face of careful reserve.
“I’m not claimin’ to be smarter than you folks hyeh,” said the Virginian, deprecatingly, to his assistant. “But travellin’ learns a man many customs. You wouldn’t do the business they done at Tulare, California, north side o’ the lake. They cert’nly utilized them hopeless swamps splendid. Of course they put up big capital and went into it scientific, gettin’ advice from the government Fish Commission, an’ such like knowledge. Yu’ see, they had big markets for their frawgs,--San Francisco, Los Angeles, and clear to New York afteh the Southern Pacific was through. But up hyeh yu’ could sell to passengers every day like yu’ done this one day. They would get to know yu’ along the line. Competing swamps are scarce. The dining-cyars would take your frawgs, and yu’ would have the Yellowstone Park for four months in the year. Them hotels are anxious to please, an’ they would buy off yu’ what their Eastern patrons esteem as fine-eatin’. And you folks would be sellin’ something instead o’ nothin’.”
“That’s a practical idea,” said a traveller. “And little cost.”
“And little cost,” said the Virginian.
“Would Eastern people eat frogs?” inquired the man.
“Look at us!” said the traveller.
“Delmonico doesn’t give yu’ such a treat!” said the Virginian.
“Not exactly!” the traveller exclaimed.
“How much would be paid for frogs?” said Trampas to him. And I saw Scipio bend closer to his cooking.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the traveller. “We’ve paid pretty well, you see.”
“You’re late for Tulare, Trampas,” said the Virginian.
“I was not thinking of Tulare,” Trampas retorted. Scipio’s nose was in the frying-pan.
“Mos’ comical spot you ever struck!” said the Virginian, looking round upon the whole company. He allowed himself a broad smile of retrospect. “To hear ’em talk frawgs at Tulare! Same as other folks talks hawsses or steers or whatever they’re raising to sell. Yu’d fall into it yourselves if yu’ started the business. Anything a man’s bread and butter depends on, he’s going to be earnest about. Don’t care if it is a frawg.”
“That’s so,” said the native. “And it paid good?”
“The only money in the county was right there,” answered the Virginian. “It was a dead county, and only frawgs was movin’. But that business was a-fannin’ to beat four of a kind. It made yu’ feel strange at first, as I said. For all the men had been cattle-men at one time or another. Till yu’ got accustomed, it would give ’most anybody a shock to hear ’em speak about herdin’ the bulls in a pasture by themselves.” The Virginian allowed himself another smile, but became serious again. “That was their policy,” he explained. “Except at certain times o’ year they kept the bulls separate. The Fish Commission told ’em they’d better, and it cert’nly worked mighty well. It or something did--for, gentlemen, hush! but there was millions. You’d have said all the frawgs in the world had taken charge at Tulare. And the money rolled in! Gentlemen, hush! ’twas a gold mine for the owners. Forty per cent they netted some years. And they paid generous wages. For they could sell to all them French restaurants in San Francisco, yu’ see. And there was the Cliff House. And the Palace Hotel made it a specialty. And the officers took frawgs at the Presidio, an’ Angel Island, an’ Alcatraz, an’ Benicia. Los Angeles was beginnin’ its boom. The corner-lot sharps wanted something by way of varnish. An’ so they dazzled Eastern investors with advertisin’ Tulare frawgs clear to New Orleans an’ New York. ’Twas only in Sacramento frawgs was dull. I expaict the California legislature was too or’n’ry for them fine-raised luxuries. They tell of one of them senators that he raked a million out of Los Angeles real estate, and started in for a bang-up meal with champagne. Wanted to scatter his new gold thick an’ quick. But he got astray among all the fancy dishes, an’ just yelled right out before the ladies, ‘Damn it! bring me forty dollars’ worth of ham and aiggs.’ He was a funny senator, now.”
The Virginian paused, and finished eating a leg. And then with diabolic art he made a feint at wandering to new fields of anecdote. “Talkin’ of senators,” he resumed, “Senator Wise--”
“How much did you say wages were at Tulare?” inquired one of the Trampas faction.
“How much? Why, I never knew what the foreman got. The regular hands got a hundred. Senator Wise--”
“A hundred a MONTH?”
“Why, it was wet an’ muddy work, yu’ see. A man risked rheumatism some. He risked it a good deal. Well, I was going to tell about Senator Wise. When Senator Wise was speaking of his visit to Alaska--”
“Forty per cent, was it?” said Trampas.
“Oh, I must call my wife,” said the traveller behind me. “This is what I came West for.” And he hurried away.
“Not forty per cent the bad years,” replied the Virginian. “The frawgs had enemies, same as cattle. I remember when a pelican got in the spring pasture, and the herd broke through the fence--”
“Fence?” said a passenger.
“Ditch, seh, and wire net. Every pasture was a square swamp with a ditch around, and a wire net. Yu’ve heard the mournful, mixed-up sound a big bunch of cattle will make? Well, seh, as yu’ druv from the railroad to the Tulare frawg ranch yu’ could hear ’em a mile. Springtime they’d sing like girls in the organ loft, and by August they were about ready to hire out for bass. And all was fit to be soloists, if I’m a judge. But in a bad year it might only be twenty per cent. The pelican rushed ’em from the pasture right into the San Joaquin River, which was close by the property. The big balance of the herd stampeded, and though of course they came out on the banks again, the news had went around, and folks below at Hemlen eat most of ’em just to spite the company. Yu’ see, a frawg in a river is more hopeless than any maverick loose on the range. And they never struck any plan to brand their stock and prove ownership.”
“Well, twenty per cent is good enough for me,” said Trampas, “if Rawhide don’t suit me.”
“A hundred a month!” said the enthusiast. And busy calculations began to arise among them.
“It went to fifty per cent,” pursued the Virginian, “when New York and Philadelphia got to biddin’ agaynst each other. Both cities had signs all over ’em claiming to furnish the Tulare frawg. And both had ’em all right. And same as cattle trains, yu’d see frawg trains tearing acrosst Arizona--big glass tanks with wire over ’em--through to New York, an’ the frawgs starin’ out.”
“Why, George,” whispered a woman’s voice behind me, “he’s merely deceiving them! He’s merely making that stuff up out of his head.”
“Yes, my dear, that’s merely what he’s doing.”
“Well, I don’t see why you imagined I should care for this. I think I’ll go back.”
“Better see it out, Daisy. This beats the geysers or anything we’re likely to find in the Yellowstone.”
“Then I wish we had gone to Bar Harbor as usual,” said the lady, and she returned to her Pullman.
But her husband stayed. Indeed, the male crowd now was a goodly sight to see, how the men edged close, drawn by a common tie. Their different kinds of feet told the strength of the bond--yellow sleeping-car slippers planted miscellaneous and motionless near a pair of Mexican spurs. All eyes watched the Virginian and gave him their entire sympathy. Though they could not know his motive for it, what he was doing had fallen as light upon them--all except the excited calculators. These were loudly making their fortunes at both Rawhide and Tulare, drugged by their satanically aroused hopes of gold, heedless of the slippers and the spurs. Had a man given any sign to warn them, I think he would have been lynched. Even the Indian chiefs had come to see in their show war bonnets and blankets. They naturally understood nothing of it, yet magnetically knew that the Virginian was the great man. And they watched him with approval. He sat by the fire with the frying-pan, looking his daily self--engaging and saturnine. And now as Trampas declared tickets to California would be dear and Rawhide had better come first, the Southerner let loose his heaven-born imagination.
“There’s a better reason for Rawhide than tickets, Trampas,” said he. “I said it was too late for Tulare.”
“I heard you,” said Trampas. “Opinions may differ. You and I don’t think alike on several points.”
“Gawd, Trampas!” said the Virginian, “d’ yu’ reckon I’d be rotting hyeh on forty dollars if Tulare was like it used to be? Tulare is broke.”
“What broke it? Your leaving?”
“Revenge broke it, and disease,” said the Virginian, striking the frying-pan on his knee, for the frogs were all gone. At those lurid words their untamed child minds took fire, and they drew round him again to hear a tale of blood. The crowd seemed to lean nearer.
But for a short moment it threatened to be spoiled. A passenger came along, demanding in an important voice, “Where are these frogs?” He was a prominent New York after-dinner speaker, they whispered me, and out for a holiday in his private car. Reaching us and walking to the Virginian, he said cheerily, “How much do you want for your frogs, my friend?”
“You got a friend hyeh?” said the Virginian. “That’s good, for yu’ need care taken of yu’.” And the prominent after-dinner speaker did not further discommode us.
“That’s worth my trip,” whispered a New York passenger to me.
“Yes, it was a case of revenge,” resumed the Virginian, “and disease. There was a man named Saynt Augustine got run out of Domingo, which is a Dago island. He come to Philadelphia, an’ he was dead broke. But Saynt Augustine was a live man, an’ he saw Philadelphia was full o’ Quakers that dressed plain an’ eat humdrum. So he started cookin’ Domingo way for ’em, an’ they caught right ahold. Terrapin, he gave ’em, an’ croakeets, an’ he’d use forty chickens to make a broth he called consommay. An’ he got rich, and Philadelphia got well known, an’ Delmonico in New York he got jealous. He was the cook that had the say-so in New York.”
“Was Delmonico one of them I-talians?” inquired a fascinated mutineer.
“I don’t know. But he acted like one. Lorenzo was his front name. He aimed to cut--”
“Domingo’s throat?” breathed the enthusiast.
“Aimed to cut away the trade from Saynt Augustine an’ put Philadelphia back where he thought she belonged. Frawgs was the fashionable rage then. These foreign cooks set the fashion in eatin’, same as foreign dressmakers do women’s clothes. Both cities was catchin’ and swallowin’ all the frawgs Tulare could throw at ’em. So he--”
“Lorenzo?” said the enthusiast.
“Yes, Lorenzo Delmonico. He bid a dollar a tank higher. An’ Saynt Augustine raised him fifty cents. An’ Lorenzo raised him a dollar. An’ Saynt Augustine shoved her up three. Lorenzo he didn’t expect Philadelphia would go that high, and he got hot in the collar, an’ flew round his kitchen in New York, an’ claimed he’d twist Saynt Augustine’s Domingo tail for him and crack his ossified system. Lorenzo raised his language to a high temperature, they say. An’ then quite sudden off he starts for Tulare. He buys tickets over the Santa Fe, and he goes a-fannin’ and a-foggin’. But, gentlemen, hush! The very same day Saynt Augustine he tears out of Philadelphia. He travelled by the way o’ Washington, an’ out he comes a-fannin’ an’ a-foggin’ over the Southern Pacific. Of course Tulare didn’t know nothin’ of this. All it knowed was how the frawg market was on soarin’ wings, and it was feelin’ like a flight o’ rawckets. If only there’d been some preparation,--a telegram or something,--the disaster would never have occurred. But Lorenzo and Saynt Augustine was that absorbed watchin’ each other--for, yu’ see, the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific come together at Mojave, an’ the two cooks travelled a matter of two hundred an’ ten miles in the same cyar--they never thought about a telegram. And when they arruv, breathless, an’ started in to screechin’ what they’d give for the monopoly, why, them unsuspectin’ Tulare boys got amused at ’em. I never heard just all they done, but they had Lorenzo singin’ and dancin’, while Saynt Augustine played the fiddle for him. And one of Lorenzo’s heels did get a trifle grazed. Well, them two cooks quit that ranch without disclosin’ their identity, and soon as they got to a safe distance they swore eternal friendship, in their excitable foreign way. And they went home over the Union Pacific, sharing the same stateroom. Their revenge killed frawgs. The disease--”
“How killed frogs?” demanded Trampas.
“Just killed ’em. Delmonico and Saynt Augustine wiped frawgs off the slate of fashion. Not a banker in Fifth Avenue’ll touch one now if another banker’s around watchin’ him. And if ever yu’ see a man that hides his feet an’ won’t take off his socks in company, he has worked in them Tulare swamps an’ got the disease. Catch him wadin’, and yu’ll find he’s web-footed. Frawgs are dead, Trampas, and so are you.”
“Rise up, liars, and salute your king!” yelled Scipio. “Oh, I’m in love with you!” And he threw his arms round the Virginian.
“Let me shake hands with you,” said the traveller, who had failed to interest his wife in these things. “I wish I was going to have more of your company.”
“Thank ye’, seh,” said the Virginian.
Other passengers greeted him, and the Indian chiefs came, saying, “How!” because they followed their feelings without understanding.
“Don’t show so humbled, boys,” said the deputy foreman to his most sheepish crew. “These gentlemen from the East have been enjoying yu’ some, I know. But think what a weary wait they have had hyeh. And you insisted on playing the game with me this way, yu’ see. What outlet did yu’ give me? Didn’t I have it to do? And I’ll tell yu’ one thing for your consolation: when I got to the middle of the frawgs I ’most believed it myself.” And he laughed out the first laugh I had heard him give.
The enthusiast came up and shook hands. That led off, and the rest followed, with Trampas at the end. The tide was too strong for him. He was not a graceful loser; but he got through this, and the Virginian eased him down by treating him precisely like the others--apparently. Possibly the supreme--the most American--moment of all was when word came that the bridge was open, and the Pullman trains, with noise and triumph, began to move westward at last. Every one waved farewell to every one, craning from steps and windows, so that the cars twinkled with hilarity; and in twenty minutes the whole procession in front had moved, and our turn came.
“Last chance for Rawhide,” said the Virginian.
“Last chance for Sunk Creek,” said a reconstructed mutineer, and all sprang aboard. There was no question who had won his spurs now.
Our caboose trundled on to Billings along the shingly cotton-wooded Yellowstone; and as the plains and bluffs and the distant snow began to grow well known, even to me, we turned to our baggage that was to come off, since camp would begin in the morning. Thus I saw the Virginian carefully rewrapping Kenilworth, that he might bring it to its owner unharmed; and I said, “Don’t you think you could have played poker with Queen Elizabeth?”
“No; I expaict she’d have beat me,” he replied. “She was a lady.”
It was at Billings, on this day, that I made those reflections about equality. For the Virginian had been equal to the occasion: that is the only kind of equality which I recognize.
