The soldiers on the platform swung their hats and cheered, and I joined in the cheer. One of the good fellows wiped his eyes. The big farmer stood partly inside the door, effectually blocking it, and quite out of the girl's sight, looking on, as impassive as a cliff. The pretty young woman picked up a parcel--the offering--which one of the soldiers tossed to her feet, looked after us smiling and waving her handkerchief, and ran back toward the house. The train picked up speed and whisked us out of sight just as the khaki man sank back into the chair, eased down by the woman with the white hair. I seemed to have seen a death.
"That was mother," said the man of the broad farms, as we resumed our seats--"mother and Jack ... jest as it always hes been.... Al'ays mother's boy.... The soldiers comin' from the war al'ays stand on the platform as they go by--if they's room enough--with their fingers to their hats in that fool way.... All seem to know where Jack is someway, no matter what rig'ment they belong to.... Humph!
"It's something he done in the Philippines ... in the islands.... I don't know where they are.... Off Spain way, I guess.... They's a kind of yellow nigger there, an' Jack seemed to do well fightin' 'em....
They're little fellers something like his size, you know.... Some high officer ordered him to take a nigger king on an island once; an' as I understand it, the niggers was too many f'r his gang o' soldiers. So Jack went alone an' took him right out of his own camp.... I reckon any one could 'a' done the same thing with Uncle Sam backin' him; but the president, 'r congress, 'r the secretary of war thought it was quite a trick.... I s'pose Jack's shootin' a nigger officer right under the king's nose made it a better grand-stand play.... Anyhow, Jack went out a private, an' come back a captain; an' every soldier that rides these cars salutes as he passes the house, whuther Jack's in sight 'r not....
Funny!... All kinds o' folks to make a world!"
"Then," said I, for I knew the story, of course, when he mentioned the circumstances, "your son Jack is Captain John Hawes?"
He nodded slowly, without looking at me.
"And that beautiful, strong girl?" I inquired.
"Jack's wife," said he. "All right to look at, ain't she? Lived in New York ... 'r Boston, I f'rgit which.... Folks well fixed.... Met Jack in Sanfrisco and married him when he couldn't lift his hand to his head....
She'd make a good farm woman.... Good stuff in her.... What ails him?
Some kind o' poison that was in the knife the nigger soaked him with when he took that there king ... stabbed Jack jest before Jack shot....
Foolish to let him git in so clost; but Jack never hed no decision....
Al'ays whifflin' around.... If he pulls through, though, that girl'll make a man of him if anything kin.... She thinks he's all right now ...
proud of him as Chloe of a yaller dress.... Went to Sanfrisco when he was broke an' dyin', they thought, an' all that, an' begged him as an honor to let her bear his name an' nuss him.... And she knew how wuthless he was before the war, an' throwed him over.... Sensible girl ... then ... I--"
He was gazing at nothing again, and I thought the story ended, when he began on an entirely new subject, as it seemed to me, until the relation appeared.
"Religion," said he, "is something I don't take no stock in, an' never did.... Religious folks don't seem any better than the rest.... But mother al'ays set a heap by religion.... I al'ays paid my dues in the church and called it square.... May be something in it f'r some, but not f'r me. I got to hev something I can git a-holt of.... Al'ays looked a good deal like graft to me ... but I pay as much as any one in the congregation, an' maybe a leetle more--it pleases mother.... An' so does Jack's gittin' religion.... Got it, all right.... Pleases mother, too.... Immense!... But I don't take no stock in it.
"The doc says he's bad off."
I had not asked the question; but he seemed to feel a necessary inquiry in the tableau I had seen.
"He used to come down to the track when he first got back an' perform that fool trick with his hand to his hat when the soldiers went by an'
they let him know.... Too weak, now; ... failin'.... Girl's al'ays there, though, when she knows.... Kind o' hope he'll--he'll--he'll ...
You know, neighbor, from what she's done f'r him, how mother must love him!"
We had come to the end of his journey, now--a little country station--and he left the train without a word to me or a backward look, his huge hat drawn down over his eyes. I felt that I had seen a curious, dark, dramatic, badly-drawn, wildly-conceived and Dantesque painting. He climbed into a carriage which stood by the platform, and to which was harnessed a pair of magnificent coach-bred horses which plunged and reared fearfully as the train swept into the station, and were held, easily and by main strength, like dogs or sheep, by a giant in the conveyance who must have been Tom or Wallace. From time to time, the steeds gathered their feet together, trampled the earth in terror, and then surged on the bits. The giant never deigned even to look at them.
He held the lines, stiff as iron straps, in one hand, took his father's bag in the other, threw the big horses to the right by a cruel wrench of the lines to make room for his father to climb in, which he did without a word. As the springs went down under the weight the horses dashed away like the wind, the young man guiding them by that iron right hand with facile horsemanship, and looking, not at the road, but at his father. As they passed out of sight the father of Captain Hawes turned, looked at me, and waved his hand. I thought I had seen him for the last time, and went back to get the story from the soldiers.
"It wasn't so much the way he brought the datto into camp," said one of them, "or the way he always worked his way to the last bally front peak of the fighting line. It takes a guy with guts to do them things; but that goes with the game--understand? But he knew more'n anybody in the regiment about keepin' well. He made the boys take care of themselves.
When a man is layin' awake scheming to keep the men busy and healthy, there's always a job for him.... And he had a way of making the boys keep their promises.... And he's come home to die, and leave that girl of his--and all the chances he's had in a business way if he wants to leave the army. It don't seem right! The boys say the president has invited him to lunch; and he's got sugar-plantation and minin' jobs open to him till you can't rest.... And to be done by a cussed poison Moro kris! But he got Mr. Moro--played even; an' that's as good as a man can ask, I guess. Hell, how slow this train goes!"
As I have said, I never expected to see my big farmer again; but I did.
I completed my business; returned the way I came, passed the great farm after dusk, and the next morning was in the city where I first saw him.
Looking ahead as I passed along the street I noticed, towering above every form, and moving in the press like a three-horse van among baby carriages, the vast bulk of the captain's father. He turned aside into a marble-cutter's yard, and stood, looking at the memorial monuments which quite filled it until it looked like a cemetery vastly overplanted. I felt disposed to renew our acquaintance, and spoke to him. He offered me his hand, and when I accepted it he stood clinging to mine, standing a little stooped, the eyes bloodshot, the iron mouth pitifully drooped at the corners, the whole man reminding me of a towering cliff shaken by an earthquake, but mighty and imposing still. He held a paper in his free hand, which he examined closely while retaining the handclasp, and in a way I had come to expect of him, he commenced in the midst of his thought and without verbal salutation.
"We've buried Jack!" said he.
"I'm deeply sorry!" said I.
"Well," said he, "maybe it's just as well.... He was ... you know!...
But mother takes it hard--hard!... I'm contractin' f'r a tombstun.... He wanted to see me ... at the last.... 'Dad,' says he, jest as he used to when he was ... was a little feller, ... 'I want you to forgive me before I die.... It's a big country where I'm going, ... an' ... you and I may never run into each other--so forgive me! Mother'll find me--wherever I go ... but you, Dad, ... for fear it's our last chance, let's square up now!' ... I ... I ..."
He went out among the stones and seemed to be looking the stock over.
Presently, he returned and showed me the paper. It was what a printer would call "copy" for an inscription--the name, the dates, the age of Captain John Hawes--severe, laconic. At the bottom were two or three lines scrawled in a heavy, ponderous hand, with the half-inch lead of a lumber pencil. Only one fist could produce that Polyphemus chirography.
"_He went out a private_," it read, "_and came back a captain._" And then, as if by afterthought, and in huge capitals, came the line: "_And died a Christian._"
"Is that all right?" he asked. "Is the spellin' all right?... I don't care much about this soldier business ... an' the Christian game ... don't interest me ... a little bit, ... but, neighbor, you don't know how that'll please mother! 'Died a Christian!' ... Someway ... mother ... always loved Jack!"
At the turning of the street I looked and saw the last scene of the drama--one that will play itself before me from time to time in retrospect for ever. The great, unhewn, mountainous block was still there, standing among his more shapely and polished brother stones, a human monolith, the poor, pitiful paper in his trembling hand.
CHAPTER V
"I find myself," said the Driver, at the next session of the Scheherazade Society, as Colonel Baggs called their camp-fires, "in a whale of a dilemmer. I have never had nothin' happen to me worth tellin'. I have punched cows till this dry farmin' made it necessary to take to some more humble callin', and there's nothin' to cow-punchin'
that is interestin'.
"I have showed you here in the Upper Geyser Basin fifteen geysers of the first magnitude, an' a hundred smaller ones; I have showed you Old Faithful, the Giant, the Giantess, the Fan and the Riverside. I have showed you the Grotto Geyser, which is a cross between a geyser and a cave. I have showed you the quiescent spring at its best--the Morning Glory pool with more colors than any rainbow ever had. I've showed you jewels and giants and ogres and sprites, and--"
"Here!" shouted the Groom. "Saw off on that professional patter! You're not the driver now, but Aconite Driscoll, the Cow-boy, and telling us the story of your life. We have seen more things here than Munchhausen, Gulliver, Mandeville, Old Jim Bridger and the whole brood of romancers ever could imagine. Give us some North American facts, now."
"Well, if I must, I must," said poor Aconite. "But there's nothin' to it. I reckon I'd better narrate to you some of the humble doin's of the J-Up-And-Down Ranch over on Wolf Nose Crick, in the foot-hills of the Black Hills--in the dear, dead past beyond recall--thanks to the Campbell method of dry farmin'."
THE TALE OF TEN THOUSAND DOGIES
THE TALE TOLD BY THE DRIVER
The way I gets into this story is a shame an' disgrace, an' is incompetent, irreverent, an' immaterial, an' not of record in this case.
Eh? Adds color to the--which? Narrative! Well, I d'n' know about that. I reely couldn't say as it does.
But mentionin' color, the thought of that little affair do make my face as red as a cow-town on pay-day. When I turn that tale loose we'll make a one-night stand of it by the grub-wagon. It comprises a shipper's pass to Sioux City, a sure-thing game in that moral town, which I win out by backin' my judgment with my Colt, an' a police court wherein the bank roll and my pile was rake-off for the court. Charge, gamblin'. All hands plead guilty. All correct says you, an' quite accordin' to the statues made an' pervided; an' so says I, ontil I casually picks up a paper in Belle Fourche, an' sees that it was a phoney police court, not only owned and controlled by the shell men, which wouldn't be surprisin', but privately installed as a sort of accident insurance on their other game.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Mr. Elkins remarks to me one day, but all that is goin' to be changed when I ketch up with that police judge.
Ridin' the range makes a man talkative with the scenery, an' when I sees that Sioux City paper, I turns loose some remarks in the presence of a gentleman who subsequently turns out to be Mr. Elkins.
"Thanks," says he.
"When did you acquire any chips in this little solitaire blasphemy game?" says I, mad, as a man allus is if he's ketched solloloquisin' to himself.
"A man," says he, "with all the sidetracks filled with cars o' cattle an' more comin', an' no gang, is in, _ex proprio vigore_," says he, whatever that means, "anywhere where cuss-words is trumps."
He never smiled except back in his eyes, an' I, likin' his style, hires out to him, an' was third man on the J-Up-And-Down Ranch from the day the dogies begun to be unloaded, till James R. Elkins went to New York, with a roll that would choke a blood-sweatin' hippopotamus.
Third man, says I, an' if you think the first was the Old Man, J. R. E., you know, you've got another conjecture comin'. Number One was Mrs.
Elkins, an' I reckon some of her New York friends'll enter into conniptions to know that, in lessn' a year, half the boys called her Josie--in their dreams, at least--an' some on 'em to her face; but none to her back, by a damsite! The Old Man--a lot of us called him Jim habitual--was a one-lunger when this dogie enterprise started, all mashed in body in the collapse of the boom at Lattimore; an' them as thinks I refer to any loggin' accident is informed that I mean the town-lot boom in the city of Lattimore, as is more fully set forth elsewhere, the same bein' made by reference a part hereof, marked "Exhibit A," which explains the broken bones aforesaid--