The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories Read online

  PART FIVE

  Weary did not go back. When the hurry of shipping was over he went toShorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman's astonishment anddisgust. The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity andargument trying to make him give up the crazy notion of quitting.

  It seemed to Weary that he warded off their curiosity and answeredtheir arguments very adroitly. He was sick of punching cows, he said,and he wasn't hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to anungrateful bunch of bawling calves. He was going to drift, for achange--but he didn't know where. It didn't much matter, so long as hegot a change uh scenery. He just merely wanted to knock around and getthe alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides calvesand cactus. His eyes plumb ached for sight of an apple tree with real,live apples on it--that weren't wrapped up in a paper napkin.

  When was he coming back? Well, now, that was a question; he hadn't gotstarted yet, man. What he was figuring on wasn't the coming back part,but the getting started.

  The schoolma'am? Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, allright. Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her hellofor him--and so long?

  This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to seehim off. Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and theHappy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when itpulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled partingwords till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces,eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.

  Then Weary went into the smoker, sought a place where he could stretchthe long legs of him over two seats, made him a cigarette and forgot tosmoke it while he watched the gray plains slide away behind him; tillsomething went wrong with his eyes. It was just four o'clock, andschool was out. The schoolma'am was looking down the trail, maybe--At any rate she was a good many miles away from him now--so many thateven if he got off and had Glory right there and ran him every foot ofthe way, he could not possibly get to her--and the way the train wasgalloping over the rails, she was every minute getting farther off,and-- What a damn fool a man can make of himself, rushing off likethat when, maybe--

  After that, a fellow who traveled for a San Francisco wine house spoketo him pleasantly and Weary thrust vain longings from him and washimself again.

  For two months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the pointof going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out,one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work. He was inPortland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off anorth-bound train the night before.

  People hurried past without a glance in his direction, and even aftertwo months this made him lonesome, coming as he did from a place whereevery man hailed him jovially by his adopted name.

  There was little that he could do--or would do. He tried diggingditches for the city, along with a motley collection of the sons of allnations but his, seemingly.

  The first day be blistered both hands and got a "crick" in his back.

  The second day, he quit.

  On the third day, he brought up at the door of a livery stable. A manwith a slate-colored, silk waistcoat was standing aggressively in thedoorway, one hand deep in his pocket and the other energeticallypunctuating the remarks he was making to a droop-shouldered hostler.Some of the remarks were interesting in the extreme and Weary,listening, drew a deep sigh of thankfulness that they were not directedat himself, because his back was still lame and his hands sore, and inPortland law-abiding citizens are not supposed to "pack" a gun.

  The droop-shouldered man waited humbly for the climax--which reached sohigh a tension that the speaker rose upon his toes to deliver it, anddrew his right hand from his pocket to aid in the punctuation--when hepulled his hat down on his head and slunk away.

  It was while the orator was gazing contemptuously after him that heheard Weary cheerfully asking for work. For Weary was a straightguesser; he knew when he stood in the presence of the Great and Only.The man wheeled and measured Weary slowly with his eyes--and therebeing a good deal of Weary if you measured lengthwise, he consumedseveral seconds doing it.

  "Humph!" when the survey was over. "What do _you_ know about horses?"His tone was colored still by the oration he had just delivered, and itwas not encouraging.

  Weary looked down upon him and smiled indulgence of the tone. "If youaren't busy right now, I'll start in and tell yuh. Yuh better sit downon that bucket whilst I'm doing it--if I'm thorough it'll take time."

  "Humph!" said the man again and carefully pared the end of a fat, blackcigar. "You seem to think you know it all. What's your trade?"

  "Punching cows--in Northern Montana," answered Weary, mildly.

  The man took the trouble to look at him again, this time morecritically--and more favorably, perhaps. "Bronco-buster?" he demanded,briefly.

  "Some," grinned Weary, his thoughts whirling back to the dust anduproar in the Flying U corrals--and to Glory.

  The man seemed to read what was in his eyes. "You ought to know betterthan to founder a three-hundred-dollar trotter, then," he remarked,with some of the growl smoothed out of his voice.

  "I sure had," agreed Weary, sympathetically.

  "That's why I fired that four-or-five-kinds-of idiot just now,"confided the other, rising to the sympathy in Weary's tone. "I needmen that know a little something about horses--the foreman can't alwaysbe at a man's elbow. You can start right in--pay's good. Go tell theforeman I've hired you; that's him back there in the office."

  Then came the rain. Week after week of drab clouds and drizzle, and nosun to hearten a man for his work. Week after week of bobbingumbrellas, muddy crossings, sloppy pavements and dripping eaves--and acold that chilled the marrow in his bones.

  Weary, after a week of poking along in the rain of an evening when hiswork was done, threw up his hands, figuratively, and bought him anumbrella, hoping devoutly they would never get to hear of it in DryLake. He stood for two minutes in the deep doorway of the store beforehe found nerve to open the awkward thing, and when he did so he glancedsheepishly around him as if it were a weak thing to do and adisgraceful.

  Fog and rain and mud and mist, day after day through long months.Feeding hungry horses their breakfast at five o'clock in the morning;brushing, currying, combing till they shone satin-smooth. Harnessing,unharnessing; washing mud from rigs that would be splashed andplastered again before night. Driving to houses that were known by thenumber over the door, giving the reins over to somebody and walkingback in the rain. Piling mangers with hay, strewing the stalls deepwith straw. Patting this horse as he passed, commanding the next tomove over, stopping to whisper caressing words into the ear of afavorite. Sitting listlessly in the balcony of some theatre in theevening while a mimic world lived its joys and sorrows below and anorchestra played soft accompaniment to his vagrant thoughts. All thiswas Weary's life in Portland.

  Not exactly hilarious, that life. Not a homelike one to a man freshfrom eating, sleeping, working, reveling with fellows who wouldcheerfully give him the coat upon their straight backs if he needed it;fight for him, laugh at him, or laugh with him, tease him, bully him,love him like a brother--in short, fresh from Jim Whitmore's HappyFamily.

  No one hailed him as Weary; his fellow hostlers called him simply Bill.No one knew the life he knew or loved the things he loved. His storiesof wild rides and hard drives must be explained as he went along andfell even then upon barren soil; so he gave up telling them. Even hisspeech, colored as it was with the West which lies East of theCascades, sounded strange in their ears and set him apart. Theyreferred to him as "the cowboy".

  Sometimes, when the skies were leaden and the dead atmosphere pressedhis very soul to the dank earth, Weary would hoist his umbrella andwalk and walk and walk, till the streets grew empty around him and hisfootsteps sounded hollow on the pavements. One Sunday when it was notactually raining he hired a horse and rode into the country--and hecame b
ack draggled and unhappy from plodding through the mud, and henever repeated the experiment.

  Sometimes he would sit all the evening in his damp-walled room andsmoke cigarettes and wonder what the boys were doing, down in thebunk-house at home. He wondered if they kept Glory up--or if he wasrustling on the range, his sorrel back humped to the storms and thedeviltry gone out of him with the grim battle for mere life.

  Perhaps there was a dance somewhere; it was a cinch they would all bethere--and Happy Jack would wear the same red necktie and the samepainful smile of embarrassment, and there would be a squabble over thepiece of bar mirror to shave by. And the schoolma'am-- But hereWeary's thoughts would shy and stop abruptly, and if it were not toolate he would put on his hat and go to a show; one of those ten-centcontinuous-performance places, where the Swede and the Dutchmanflourish and the Boneless Man ties himself in knots.

  A man will grow accustomed to anything, give him time enough. Whenfour months had passed in this fashion, Weary began insensibly to turnmore to the present and less often, to the past. His work was nothard, the pay was good and he learned the ways of the town and got morein touch with his acquaintances. They came to fill his life, so thathe thought less often of Chip and Cal and Happy Jack and Slim. Otherswere gradually taking their places.

  No one had as yet come to lift Miss Satterly's brown eyes from the deepplaces of his heart, because he again shied at women; but he was ableto draw a veil before them so that they did not haunt him so much. Hebegan to whistle once more, as he went about his work; but he neverwhistled "Good Old Summertime." There were other foolish songs becomepopular; he rather fancied "Navajo" these days.

  It was past April Fool's day, and Weary was singing "Nava, Nava, myNavajo," melodiously while he spread the straw bedding with his fork.It was a beastly day, even for that climate, but he was glad of it. Hehad only to fill a dozen mangers and his morning's work was done, withthe prospect of an idle forenoon; for no one would want to drive,today, unless it was absolutely necessary.

  "I have a love for-r you that will grow-ow; If you'll have a coon for a beau--"

  trilled Weary, and snapped the wires off a bale of hay and tore itopen, in a hurry to finish.

  A familiar, pungent odor smote his nostrils and he straightened. For aminute he stood perfectly still; then his fingers groped tremblingly inthe hay, closed upon something, and every nerve in him quivered. Heheld it fast in his shaking hands and sat down weakly upon the tornbale.

  It was a branch off a sage bush--dry, shapeless, bruised in the press,but it carried its message bravely. Holding it close to his face,drinking in the smell of it greedily, he closed his eyes involuntarily.

  Great, gray plains closed in upon him--dear, familial plains, scarredand broken with sharp-nosed hills and deep, water-worn coulees gleamingbarren and yellow in the sun. The blue, blue sky was bending down tomeet the hills, with feathery, white clouds trailing lazily across.His cheeks felt the cool winds which flapped his hat-brim and tingledhis blood. His knees pressed the throb and life, the splendid, workingmuscles of a galloping horse.

  Weary's head went down upon his hands, with the bit of sage pressedhard against his cheek.

  Now he was racing over the springy sod which sent a sweet, grassy smellup to meet him. Wild range cattle lumbered out of his way, ran a fewpaces and stopped to gaze after him with big, curious eyes. Before himstood the white-tented camp of the round-up, and the rope corral wasfilled with circling horses half hidden by the veil of dust thrownupward by their restless, trampling hoofs. Now he was in the midst ofthem, a coil of rope in his left hand; his right swung the loopcircling over his head. And the choking dust was in his eyes andthroat, and in his nostrils the rank odor of many horses. Men wereshouting to one another above the confusion. Oaths were hurled after ahorse which warily dodged the rope. Saddles strewed the ground, bitsclanked, spurs jingled, care-free laughs brightened the clamor.

  The scene shifted. He was sitting, helpless, in the saddle while Glorycarried him wantonly over the hills, shaking his head to make thebroken bridle rattle. Now he was stopping in front of a vine-coveredporch, where a girl lay sleeping in a hammock--a girl with soft, darkhair falling down to the floor in a heavy braid. Again, he was sittingon the school-house steps, holding a smoking gun in his hand, and theschoolma'am was standing, flushed and reproving, before him. The windcame and fluttered her skirts--

  "What's the matter, Bill? Yuh sick?"

  Weary raised a white, haggard face. The plains, the blue sky, thesunshine, the wind, the girl--were gone. He was sitting upon a tornbale of hay in a livery stable in Portland. Through the wide, opendoor he could see the muddy street. Gray water-needles dartedincessantly up from the pavement where the straight lines of rainstruck. On the roof the rain was drumming a monotone. In his fingerswas a crumpled bit of gray sage-brush.

  "Sick, Bill?" repeated the foreman, sympathetically.

  "Oh, go to hell!" said Weary, ungratefully. He felt tired, and weakand old. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted--God, how he wantedthe dream to come back to him, and to come back to him true! To closeabout him and wrap him in its sunny folds; to steep his senses in thelight and the life, the sound and the smell of the plains; to hear thewind rushing over the treeless hills; to see the wild range cattlenosing the crisp, prairie grass.

  He got unsteadily upon his legs and went slowly to his room; droppedwearily upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow like a hurtchild. In his fingers he clutched a pungent, gray weed.