A Bargain With Peg-leg

: A Deal In Wheat And Other Stories

"Hey, youse!" shouted the car-boy. He brought his trundling, jolting,

loose-jointed car to a halt by the face of the drift. "Hey, youse!" he

shouted again.



Bunt shut off the Burly air-drill and nodded.



"Chaw," he remarked to me.



We clambered into the car, and, as the boy released the brake, rolled

out into the main tunnel of the Big Dipple, and banged and bumped down

> the long incline that led to the mouth.



"Chaw" was dinner. It was one o'clock in the morning, and the men on the

night shift were taking their midnight spell off. Bunt was back at his

old occupation of miner, and I--the one loafer of all that little world

of workers--had brought him a bottle of beer to go with the "chaw"; for

Bunt and I were ancient friends.



As we emerged from the cool, cave-like dampness of the mine and ran out

into the wonderful night air of the Sierra foothills, warm, dry,

redolent of witch-hazel, the carboy began to cough, and, after we had

climbed out of the car and had sat down on the embankment to eat and

drink, Bunt observed:



"D'ye hear that bark? That kid's a one-lunger for fair. Which ain't no

salubrious graft for him--this hiking cars about in the bowels of the

earth, Some day he'll sure up an' quit. Ought to go down to Yuma a

spell."



The engineer in the mill was starting the stamps. They got under way

with broken, hiccoughing dislocations, bumping and stumbling like the

hoofs of a group of horses on the cattle-deck in a gale. Then they

jumped to a trot, then to a canter, and at last settled down to the

prolonged roaring gallop that reverberated far off over the entire

canon.



"I knew a one-lunger once," Bunt continued, as he uncorked the bottle,

"and the acquaintance was some distressful by reason of its bringing me

into strained relations with a cow-rustlin', hair-liftin',

only-one-born-in-captivity, man-eatin' brute of a one-legged Greaser

which he was named Peg-leg Smith. He was shy a leg because of a shotgun

that the other man thought wasn't loaded. And this here happens, lemme

tell you, 'way down in the Panamint country, where they wasn't no doctor

within twenty miles, and Peg-leg outs with his bowie and amputates that

leg hisself, then later makes a wood stump outa a ole halter and a

table-leg. I guess the whole jing-bang of it turned his head, for he

goes bad and loco thereafter, and begins shootin' and r'arin' up an'

down the hull Southwest, a-roarin' and a-bellerin' and a-takin' on

amazin'. We dasn't say boo to a yaller pup while he's round. I never see

such mean blood. Jus' let the boys know that Peg-leg was anyways

adjacent an' you can gamble they walked chalk.



"Y'see, this Peg-leg lay it out as how he couldn't abide no cussin' an'

swearin'. He said if there was any tall talkin' done he wanted to do it.

And he sure could. I've seed him hold on for six minutes by the watch

an' never repeat hisself once. An' shoot! Say, lemme tell you he did for

two Greasers once in a barroom at La Paz, one in front o' him, t'other

straight behind, him standing between with a gun in each hand, and

shootin' both guns at the same time. Well, he was just a terror,"

declared Bunt, solemnly, "and when he was in real good form there wa'n't

a man south o' Leadville dared to call his hand.



"Now, the way I met up with this skunkin' little dewdrop was this-like

It was at Yuma, at a time when I was a kid of about nineteen. It was a

Sunday mornin'; Peg-leg was in town. He was asleep on a lounge in the

back room o' Bud Overick's Grand Transcontinental Hotel. (I used to

guess Bud called it that by reason that it wa'n't grand, nor

transcontinental, nor yet a hotel--it was a bar.) This was twenty year

ago, and in those days I knowed a one-lunger in Yuma named Clarence. (He

couldn't help that--he was a good kid--but his name was Clarence.) We

got along first-rate. Yuma was a great consumptive place at that time.

They used to come in on every train; yes, and go out, too--by freight.



"Well, findin' that they couldn't do much else than jes' sit around an'

bark and keep their shawls tight, these 'ere chaps kinda drew together,

and lay it out to meet every Sunday morning at Bud's to sorta talk it

over and have a quiet game. One game they had that they played steady,

an' when I drifted into Bud's that morning they was about a dozen of 'em

at it--Clarence, too. When I came in, there they be, all sittin' in a

circle round a table with a cigar box on it. They'd each put four bits

into the box. That was the pot.



"A stranger wouldn't 'a' made nothin' very excitin' out of that game,

nor yet would 'a' caught on to what it were. For them pore yaps jes' sat

there, each with his little glass thermometer in his mouth, a-waitin'

and a-waitin' and never sayin' a word. Then bime-by Bud, who's a-holdin'

of the watch on 'em, sings out 'Time!' an' they all takes their

thermometers out an' looks at 'em careful-like to see where they stand.



"'Mine's ninety-nine,' says one.



"An' another says:



"'Mine's a hundred.'



"An' Clarence pipes up--coughin' all the time:



"'Mine's a hundred 'n one 'n 'alf.'



"An', no one havin' a higher tempriture than that, Clarence captures the

pot. It was a queer kind o' game.



"Well, on that particular Sunday morning they's some unpleasantness

along o' one o' the other one-lungers layin' it out as how Clarence had

done some monkey-business to make his tempriture so high. It was said as

how Clarence had took and drunk some hot tea afore comin' into the game

at Bud's. They all began to discuss that same p'int.



"Naturally, they don't go at it polite, and to make their remarks

p'inted they says a cuss-word occasional, and Clarence, bein' a

high-steppin' gent as takes nobody's dust, slings it back some forceful.



"Then all at once they hears Peg-leg beller from where's he layin' on

the lounge (they ain't figured on his bein' so contiguous), and he gives

it to be understood, does Peg-leg, as how the next one-lunger that

indulges in whatsoever profanity will lose his voice abrupt.



"They all drops out at that, bar the chap who had the next highest

tempriture to Clarence. Him having missed the pot by only a degree or so

is considerable sore.



"'Why,' says he, 'I've had a reg'lar fever since yesterday afternoon,

an' only just dodged a hem'rage by a squeak. I'm all legitimate, I am;

an' if you-alls misdoubts as how my tempriture ain't normal you kin jes'

ask the doctor. I don't take it easy that a strappin', healthy gesabe

whose case ain't nowheres near the hopeless p'int yet steps in here with

a scalded mouth and plays it low.'



"Clarence he r'ars right up at that an' forgits about Peg-leg an'

expresses doubts, not to say convictions, about the one-lunger's chances

of salvation. He puts it all into about three words, an' just as quick

as look at it we hears ol' Peg-leg's wooden stump a-comin'. We stampedes

considerable prompt, but Clarence falls over a chair, an' before he kin

get up Peg-leg has him by the windpipe.



"Now I ain't billin' myself as a all-round star hero an' general

grand-stand man. But I was sure took with Clarence, an' I'd 'a' been

real disappointed if Peg-leg 'ud a-killed him that morning--which he

sure was tryin' to do when I came in for a few chips.



"I don' draw on Peg-leg, him being down on his knees over Clarence, an'

his back turned, but without sensin' very much what I'm a-doin' of I

grabs holt o' the first part o' Peg-leg that comes handy, which, so help

me, Bob, is his old wooden leg. I starts to pull him off o' Clarence,

but instead o' that I pulls off the wooden leg an' goes a-staggerin'

back agin the wall with the thing in my fist.



"Y'know how it is now with a fightin' pup if you pull his tail while

he's a-chawin' up the other pup. Ye can bat him over the head till

you're tired, or kick him till you w'ars your boot out, an' he'll go

right on chawin' the harder. But monkey with his tail an' he's that

sensitive an' techy about it that he'll take a interest right off.



"Well, it were just so with Peg-leg--though I never knew it. Just by

accident I'd laid holt of him where he was tender; an' when he felt that

leg go--say, lemme tell you, he was some excited. He forgits all about

Clarence, and he lines out for me, a-clawin' the air. Lucky he'd left

his gun in the other room.



"Well, sir, y'ought to have seen him, a-hoppin' on one foot, and banging

agin the furniture, jes' naturally black in the face with rage, an'

doin' his darnedest to lay his hands on me, roarin' all the whiles like

a steer with a kinked tail.



"Well, I'm skeered, and I remarks that same without shame. I'm skeered.

I don't want to come to no grapples with Peg-leg in his wrath, an' I

knows that so long as he can't git his leg he can't take after me very

fast. Bud's saloon backs right up agin the bluff over the river. So what

do I do but heave that same wooden leg through one o' the back windows,

an' down she goes (as I thought) mebbe seventy feet into the canon o'

the Colorado? And then, mister man, I skins out--fast.



"I takes me headlong flight by way o' the back room and on-root

pitches Peg-leg's gun over into the canon, too, an' then whips around

the corner of the saloon an' fetches out ag'in by the street in front.

With his gun gone an' his leg gone, Peg-leg--so long's y'ain't within

arm's reach--is as harmless as a horned toad. So I kinda hangs 'round

the neighbourhood jes' to see what-all mout turn up.



"Peg-leg, after hoppin' back to find that his gun was gone, to look for

his leg, comes out by the front door, hoppin' from one chair to another,

an' seein' me standin' there across the street makes remarks; an' he

informs me that because of this same little turn-up this mornin' I ain't

never goin' to live to grow hair on my face. His observations are that

vigorous an' p'inted that I sure begin to see it that way, too, and I

says to myself:



"'Now you, Bunt McBride, you've cut it out for yourself good and hard,

an' the rest o' your life ain't goin' to be free from nervousness.

Either y'ought to 'a' let this here hell-roarin' maverick alone or else

you should 'a' put him clean out o' business when you had holt o' his

shootin'-iron. An' I ain't a bit happy.' And then jes' at this stage o'

the proceedings occurs what youse 'ud call a diversion.



"It seemed that that wood stump didn't go clean to the river as I first

figured, but stuck three-fourths the way down. An' a-course there's a

fool half-breed kid who's got to chase after it, thinkin' to do Peg-leg

a good turn.



"I don't know nothin' about this, but jes' stand there talkin' back to

Peg-leg, an' pre-tendin' I ain't got no misgivings, when I sees this kid

comin' a-cavoortin' an' a-cayoodlin' down the street with the leg in his

hands, hollerin' out:



"'Here's your leg, Mister Peg-leg! I went an' got it for you, Mister

Peg-leg!'



"It ain't so likely that Peg-leg could 'a' caught me even if he'd had

his leg, but I wa'n't takin' no chances. An' as Peg-leg starts for the

kid I start, too--with my heart knockin' agin my front teeth, you can

bet.



"I never knew how fast a man could hop till that mornin', an', lookin'

at Peg-leg with the tail o' my eye as I ran, it seemed to me as how he

was a-goin' over the ground like a ole he-kangaroo. But somehow he gets

off his balance and comes down all of a smash like a rickety table, an'

I reaches the kid first an' takes the leg away from him.



"I guess Peg-leg must 'a' begun to lay it out by then that I held a

straight flush to his ace high, for he sits down on the edge of the

sidewalk an', being some winded, too, he just glares. Then byme-by he

says:



"'You think you are some smart now, sonny, but I'm a-studyin' of your

face so's I'll know who to look for when I git a new leg; an' believe

me, I'll know it, m'son--yours and your friend's too' (he meant

Clarence)--'an' I guess you'll both be kind o' sick afore I'm done with

you. You!' he goes on, tremendous disgustful. 'You! an' them

one-lungers a-swearin' an' a-cussin' an' bedamnin' an' bedevilin' one

a-other. Ain't ye just ashamed o' yourselves ?' (he thought I was a

one-lunger, too); 'ain't ye ashamed--befoulin' your mouths, and

disturbin' the peace along of a quiet Sunday mornin', an' you-alls waist

over in your graves? I'm fair sick o' my job,' he remarks, goin' kind o'

thoughtful. 'Ten years now I've been range-ridin' all this yere ranch,

a-doin' o' my little feeble, or'nary best to clean out the mouths o' you

men an' purify the atmosphere o' God's own country, but I ain't made

one convert. I've pounded 'em an' booted 'em, an' busted 'em an' shot

'em up, an' they go on cussin' each other out harder'n ever. I don't

know w'at all to do an' I sometimes gets plumb discouraged-like.'



"Now, hearin' of him talk that-a-way, an' a-knowin' of his weakness, I

gits a idea. It's a chanst and mebbee it don't pan out, but I puts it up

as a bluff. I don't want, you see, to spend the rest o' my appointed

time in this yere vale o' tears a-dodgin' o' Peg-leg Smith, an' in the

end, after all, to git between the wind and a forty-eight caliber

do-good, sure not. So I puts up a deal. Says I: 'Peg-leg, I'll make a

bargint along o' you. You lays it out as how you ain't never converted

nobody out o' his swearin' habits. Now if you wants, 'ere's a chanst.

You gimmee your word as a gent and a good-man-an'-true, as how you won't

never make no play to shoot me up, in nowise whatsoever, so long as we

both do live, an' promise never to bust me, or otherwise, and promise

never to rustle me or interfere with my life, liberty and pursuit o'

happiness, an' thereunto you set your seal an' may Lord 'a' mercy on

your soul--you promise that, an' I will agree an' covenant with the

party o' the first part to abstain an' abjure, early or late, dry or

drinkin', in liquor or out, out o' luck or in, rangin' or roundin', from

all part an' parcel o' profanity, cuss-words, little or big, several and

separate, bar none; this yere agreement to be considered as bindin' an'

obligatory till the day o' your demise, decease or death. There!' says

I, 'there's a fair bargint put up between man an' man, an' I puts it to

you fair. You comes in with a strong ante an' you gets a genuine,

guaranteed an' high-grade convert--the real article. You stays out, an'

not only you loses a good chanst to cut off and dam up as vigorous a

stream o' profanity as is found between here and Laredo, but you loses a

handmade, copper-bound, steel-riveted, artificial limb--which in five

minutes o' time,' says I, windin' up, 'will sure feed the fire. There's

the bargint.'



"Well, the ol' man takes out time for about as long as a thirsty

horse-rustler could put away half a dozen drinks an' he studies the

proposition sideways and endways an' down side up. Then at last he ups

and speaks out decided-like:



"'Son,' he says, 'son, it's a bargint. Gimmee my leg.'



"Somehow neither o' us misdoubts as how the other man won't keep his

word; an' I gives him his stump, an' he straps her on joyful-like, just

as if he'd got back a ole friend. Then later on he hikes out for Mojave

and I don' see him no more for mebbee three years."



"And then?" I prompted.



"Well, I'll tell you," continued Bunt, between mouthfuls of pie, "I'll

tell you. This yere prejudice agin profanity is the only thing about

this yere Peg-leg that ain't pizen bad, an' that prejudice, you got to

know, was just along o' his being loco on that one subjeck. 'Twa'n't as

if he had any real principles or convictions about the thing. It was

just a loco prejudice. Just as some gesabes has feelin's agin cats an'

snakes, or agin seein' a speckled nigger. It was just on-reasonable. So

what I'm aimin' to have you understand is the fact that it was extremely

appropriate that Peg-leg should die, that it was a blame good thing, and

somethin' to be celebrated by free drinks all round.



"You can say he treated me white, an' took my unsupported word. Well, so

he did; but that was in spite o' what he really was hisself, 'way on the

inside o' him. Inside o' him he was black-bad, an' it wa'n't a week

after we had made our bargint that he did for a little Mojave kid in a

way I don't like to think of.



"So when he took an' died like as how I'm a-going to tell you of, I was

plumb joyful, not only because I could feel at liberty to relieve my

mind when necessary in a manner as is approved of and rightful among

gents--not only because o' that, but because they was one less bad egg

in the cow-country.



"Now the manner o' Peg-leg's dying was sure hilarious-like. I didn't git

over laughin' about it for a month o' Sundays--an' I ain't done yet. It

was sure a joke on Peg-leg. The cutest joke that ever was played off on

him.



"It was in Sonora--Sonora, Arizona, I mean. They'd a-been a kind o' gold

excitement there, and all the boys had rounded up. The town was

full--chock-a-block. Peg-leg he was there too, drunk all the time an'

bullyin' everybody, an' slambangin' around in his same old way. That

very day he'd used a friend o' his--his best friend--cruel hard: just

mean and nasty, you know.



"Well, I'm sitting into a little game o' faro about twelve o'clock at

night, me an' about a dozen o' the boys. We're good an' interested, and

pretty much to the good o' the game, an' somebody's passin' drinks when

all at once there's a sure big rumpus out in the street, an' a gent

sticks his head thro' the door an' yells out:



"'Hi, there, they's a fire! The Golden West Hotel is on fire!'



"We draws the game as soon as convenient and hikes out, an', my word,

you'd 'a' thought from the looks o' things as how the whole town was

going. But it was only the hotel--the Golden West, where Peg-leg was

stayin'; an' when we got up we could hear the ol' murderer bellerin' an'

ragin', an' him drunk--of course.



"Well, I'm some excited. Lord love you, I'd as soon 'a' seen Peg-leg

shot as I would eat, an' when I remembers the little Mojave kid I'm glad

as how his time is at hand. Saved us the trouble o' lynchin' that sooner

or later had to come.



"Peg-leg's room was in the front o' the house on the fourth floor, but

the fire was all below, and what with the smoke comin' out the

third-story winders he couldn't see down into the street, no more'n the

boys could see him--only they just heard him bellerin'.



"Then some one of 'em sings out:



"'Hey, Peg-leg, jump! We got a blanket here.'



"An' sure enough he does jump!"



Here Bunt chuckled grimly, muttering, "Yes, sir, sure enough he did

jump."



"I don't quite see," I observed, "where the laugh comes in. What was the

joke of it?"



"The joke of it was," finished Bunt, "that they hadn't any blanket."









THE PASSING OF COCK-EYE BLACKLOCK





"Well, m'son," observed Bunt about half an hour after supper, "if your

provender has shook down comfortable by now, we might as well jar loose

and be moving along out yonder."



We left the fire and moved toward the hobbled ponies, Bunt complaining

of the quality of the outfit's meals. "Down in the Panamint country," he

growled, "we had a Chink that was a sure frying-pan expert; but this

Dago--my word! That ain't victuals, that supper. That's just a'

ingenious device for removing superfluous appetite. Next time I

assimilate nutriment in this camp I'm sure going to take chloroform

beforehand. Careful to draw your cinch tight on that pinto bronc' of

yours. She always swells up same as a horned toad soon as you begin to

saddle up."



We rode from the circle of the camp-fire's light and out upon the

desert. It was Bunt's turn to ride the herd that night, and I had

volunteered to bear him company.



Bunt was one of a fast-disappearing type. He knew his West as the

cockney knows his Piccadilly. He had mined with and for Ralston, had

soldiered with Crook, had turned cards in a faro game at Laredo, and had

known the Apache Kid. He had fifteen separate and different times driven

the herds from Texas to Dodge City, in the good old, rare old, wild old

days when Dodge was the headquarters for the cattle trade, and as near

to heaven as the cowboy cared to get. He had seen the end of gold and

the end of the buffalo, the beginning of cattle, the beginning of wheat,

and the spreading of the barbed-wire fence, that, in the end, will take

from him his occupation and his revolver, his chaparejos and his

usefulness, his lariat and his reason for being. He had seen the rise of

a new period, the successive stages of which, singularly enough, tally

exactly with the progress of our own world-civilization: first the nomad

and hunter, then the herder, next and last the husband-man. He had

passed the mid-mark of his life. His mustache was gray. He had four

friends--his horse, his pistol, a teamster in the Indian Territory

Panhandle named Skinny, and me.



The herd--I suppose all told there were some two thousand head--we found

not far from the water-hole. We relieved the other watch and took up our

night's vigil. It was about nine o'clock. The night was fine, calm.



There was no cloud. Toward the middle watches one could expect a moon.

But the stars, the stars! In Idaho, on those lonely reaches of desert

and range, where the shadow of the sun by day and the courses of the

constellations by night are the only things that move, these stars are a

different matter from those bleared pin-points of the city after dark,

seen through dust and smoke and the glare of electrics and the hot haze

of fire-signs. On such a night as that when I rode the herd with Bunt

anything might have happened; one could have believed in fairies then,

and in the buffalo-ghost, and in all the weirds of the craziest Apache

"Messiah" that ever made medicine.



One remembered astronomy and the "measureless distances" and the showy

problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long

years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously.

Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the

flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung

in a tree; Mars a red lantern in a clock-tower.



One listened instinctively for the tramp of the constellations. Orion,

Cassiopeia and Ursa Major marched to and fro on the vault like cohorts

of legionaries, seemingly within call of our voices, and all without a

sound.



But beneath these quiet heavens the earth disengaged multitudinous

sounds--small sounds, minimized as it were by the muffling of the night.

Now it was the yap of a coyote leagues away; now the snapping of a twig

in the sage-brush; now the mysterious, indefinable stir of the

heat-ridden land cooling under the night. But more often it was the

confused murmur of the herd itself--the click of a horn, the friction of

heavy bodies, the stamp of a hoof, with now and then the low,

complaining note of a cow with a calf, or the subdued noise of a steer

as it lay down, first lurching to the knees, then rolling clumsily upon

the haunch, with a long, stertorous breath of satisfaction.



Slowly at Indian trot we encircle the herd. Earlier in the evening a

prairie-wolf had pulled down a calf, and the beasts were still restless.



Little eddies of nervousness at long intervals developed here and there

in the mass--eddies that not impossibly might widen at any time with

perilous quickness to the maelstrom of a stampede. So as he rode Bunt

sang to these great brutes, literally to put them to sleep--sang an old

grandmother's song, with all the quaint modulations of sixty, seventy, a

hundred years ago:



"With her ogling winks

And bobbling blinks,

Her quizzing glass,

Her one eye idle,

Oh, she loved a bold dragoon,

With his broadsword, saddle, bridle.

Whack, fol-de-rol!"



I remember that song. My grandmother--so they tell me--used to sing it

in Carolina, in the thirties, accompanying herself on a harp, if you

please:



"Oh, she loved a bold dragoon,

With his broadsword, saddle, bridle."



It was in Charleston, I remembered, and the slave-ships used to

discharge there in those days. My grandmother had sung it then to her

beaux; officers they were; no wonder she chose it--"Oh, she loved a bold

dragoon"--and now I heard it sung on an Idaho cattle-range to quiet two

thousand restless steers.



Our talk at first, after the cattle had quieted down, ran upon all

manner of subjects. It is astonishing to note what strange things men

will talk about at night and in a solitude. That night we covered

religion, of course, astronomy, love affairs, horses, travel, history,

poker, photography, basket-making, and the Darwinian theory. But at last

inevitably we came back to cattle and the pleasures and dangers of

riding the herd.



"I rode herd once in Nevada," remarked Bunt, "and I was caught into a

blizzard, and I was sure freezing to death. Got to where I couldn't keep

my eyes open, I was that sleepy. Tell you what I did. Had some

eating-tobacco along, and I'd chew it a spell, then rub the juice into

my eyes. Kept it up all night. Blame near blinded me, but I come

through. Me and another man named Blacklock--Cock-eye Blacklock we

called him, by reason of his having one eye that was some out of line.

Cock-eye sure ought to have got it that night, for he went bad

afterward, and did a heap of killing before he did get it. He was a

bad man for sure, and the way he died is a story in itself."



There was a long pause. The ponies jogged on. Rounding on the herd, we

turned southward.



"He did 'get it' finally, you say," I prompted.



"He certainly did," said Bunt, "and the story of it is what a man with

a' imaginary mind like you ought to make into one of your friction

tales."



"Is it about a treasure?" I asked with apprehension. For ever since I

once made a tale (of friction) out of one of Bunt's stories of real

life, he has been ambitious for me to write another, and is forever

suggesting motifs which invariably--I say invariably--imply the

discovery of great treasures. With him, fictitious literature must

always turn upon the discovery of hidden wealth.



"No," said he, "it ain't about no treasure, but just about the origin,

hist'ry and development--and subsequent decease--of as mean a Greaser as

ever stole stock, which his name was Cock-eye Blacklock.



"You see, this same Blacklock went bad about two summers after our

meet-up with the blizzard. He worked down Yuma way and over into New

Mexico, where he picks up with a sure-thing gambler, and the two begin

to devastate the population. They do say when he and his running mate

got good and through with that part of the Land of the Brave, men used

to go round trading guns for commissary, and clothes for ponies, and

cigars for whisky and such. There just wasn't any money left anywhere.

Those sharps had drawed the landscape clean. Some one found a dollar in

a floor-crack in a saloon, and the barkeep' gave him a gallon of

forty-rod for it, and used to keep it in a box for exhibition, and the

crowd would get around it and paw it over and say: 'My! my! Whatever in

the world is this extremely cu-roos coin?'



"Then Blacklock cuts loose from his running mate, and plays a lone hand

through Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacks

up against a kid--a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked the

green paint off him--and skins him. And the kid, being foolish and

impulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It was a twenty-two," said

Bunt, solemnly. "Yes, the kid was just that pore, pathetic kind to carry

a dinky twenty-two, and with the tears runnin' down his cheeks begins to

talk tall. Now what does that Cockeye do? Why, that pore kid that he had

skinned couldn't 'a' hurt him with his pore little bric-a-brac. Does

Cock-eye take his little parlour ornament away from him, and spank him,

and tell him to go home? No, he never. The kid's little tin pop-shooter

explodes right in his hand before he can crook his forefinger twice, and

while he's a-wondering what-all has happened Cock-eye gets his two guns

on him, slow and deliberate like, mind you, and throws forty-eights into

him till he ain't worth shooting at no more. Murders him like the

mud-eating, horse-thieving snake of a Greaser that he is; but being

within the law, the kid drawing on him first, he don't stretch hemp the

way he should.



"Well, fin'ly this Blacklock blows into a mining-camp in Placer County,

California, where I'm chuck-tending on the night-shift. This here camp

is maybe four miles across the divide from Iowa Hill, and it sure is

named a cu-roos name, which it is Why-not. They is a barn contiguous,

where the mine horses are kep', and, blame me! if there ain't a

weathercock on top of that same--a golden trotting-horse--upside down.

When the stranger an' pilgrim comes in, says he first off: 'Why'n snakes

they got that weathercock horse upside down--why?' says he. 'Why-not,'

says you, and the drinks is on the pilgrim.



"That all went very lovely till some gesabe opens up a placer drift on

the far side the divide, starts a rival camp, an' names her Because. The

Boss gets mad at that, and rights up the weathercock, and renames the

camp Ophir, and you don't work no more pilgrims.



"Well, as I was saying, Cock-eye drifts into Why-not and begins

diffusing trouble. He skins some of the boys in the hotel over in town,

and a big row comes of it, and one of the bed-rock cleaners cuts loose

with both guns. Nobody hurt but a quarter-breed, who loses a' eye. But

the marshal don't stand for no short-card men, an' closes Cock-eye up

some prompt. Him being forced to give the boys back their money is

busted an' can't get away from camp. To raise some wind he begins

depredating.



"He robs a pore half-breed of a cayuse, and shoots up a Chink who's

panning tailings, and generally and variously becomes too pronounced,

till he's run outen camp. He's sure stony-broke, not being able to turn

a card because of the marshal. So he goes to live in a ole cabin up by

the mine ditch, and sits there doing a heap o' thinking, and hatching

trouble like a' ole he-hen.



"Well, now, with that deporting of Cock-eye comes his turn of bad luck,

and it sure winds his clock up with a loud report. I've narrated special

of the scope and range of this 'ere Blacklock, so as you'll understand

why it was expedient and desirable that he should up an' die. You see,

he always managed, with all his killings and robbings and general and

sundry flimflamming, to be just within the law. And if anybody took a

notion to shoot him up, why, his luck saw him through, and the other

man's shooting-iron missed fire, or exploded, or threw wild, or such

like, till it seemed as if he sure did bear a charmed life; and so he

did till a pore yeller tamale of a fool dog did for him what the law of

the land couldn't do. Yes, sir, a fool dog, a pup, a blame yeller pup

named Sloppy Weather, did for Cock-eye Blacklock, sporting character,

three-card-monte man, sure-thing sharp, killer, and general bedeviler.



"You see, it was this way. Over in American Canon, some five miles maybe

back of the mine, they was a creek called the American River, and it was

sure chock-a-block full of trouts. The Boss used for to go over there

with a dinky fish-pole like a buggy-whip about once a week, and scout

that stream for fish and bring back a basketful. He was sure keen on it,

and had bought some kind of privilege or other, so as he could keep

other people off.



"Well, I used to go along with him to pack the truck, and one Saturday,

about a month after Cock-eye had been run outen camp, we hiked up over

the divide, and went for to round up a bunch o' trouts. When we got to

the river there was a mess for your life. Say, that river was full of

dead trouts, floating atop the water; and they was some even on the

bank. Not a scratch on 'em; just dead. The Boss had the papsy-lals. I

never did see a man so rip-r'aring, snorting mad. I hadn't a guess

about what we were up against, but he knew, and he showed down. He said

somebody had been shooting the river for fish to sell down Sacramento

way to the market. A mean trick; kill more fish in one shoot than you

can possibly pack.



"Well, we didn't do much fishing that day--couldn't get a bite, for that

matter--and took on home about noon to talk it over. You see, the Boss,

in buying the privileges or such for that creek, had made himself

responsible to the Fish Commissioners of the State, and 'twasn't a week

before they were after him, camping on his trail incessant, and wanting

to know how about it. The Boss was some worried, because the fish were

being killed right along, and the Commission was making him weary of

living. Twicet afterward we prospected along that river and found the

same lot of dead fish. We even put a guard there, but it didn't do no

manner of good.



"It's the Boss who first suspicions Cock-eye. But it don't take no

seventh daughter of no seventh daughter to trace trouble where

Black-lock's about. He sudden shows up in town with a bunch of

simoleons, buying bacon and tin cows [Footnote: Condensed milk.] and

such provender, and generally giving it away that he's come into money.

The Boss, who's watching his movements sharp, says to me one day:



"'Bunt, the storm-centre of this here low area is a man with a cock-eye,

an' I'll back that play with a paint horse against a paper dime.'



"'No takers,' says I. 'Dirty work and a cock-eyed man are two heels of

the same mule.'



"'Which it's a-kicking of me in the stummick frequent and painful,' he

remarks, plenty wrathful.



"'On general principles,' I said, 'it's a royal flush to a pair of

deuces as how this Blacklock bird ought to stop a heap of lead, and I

know the man to throw it. He's the only brother of my sister, and tends

chuck in a placer mine. How about if I take a day off and drop round to

his cabin and interview him on the fleetin' and unstable nature of human

life?'



"But the Boss wouldn't hear of that.



"'No,' says he; 'that's not the bluff to back in this game. You an' me

an' 'Mary-go-round'--that was what we called the marshal, him being so

much all over the country--'you an' me an' Mary-go-round will have to

stock a sure-thing deck against that maverick.'



"So the three of us gets together an' has a talky-talk, an' we lays it

out as how Cock-eye must be watched and caught red-handed.



"Well, let me tell you, keeping case on that Greaser sure did lack a

certain indefinable charm. We tried him at sun-up, an' again at sundown,

an' nights, too, laying in the chaparral an' tarweed, an' scouting up

an' down that blame river, till we were sore. We built surreptitious a

lot of shooting-boxes up in trees on the far side of the canon,

overlooking certain an' sundry pools in the river where Cock-eye would

be likely to pursue operations, an' we took turns watching. I'll be a

Chink if that bad egg didn't put it on us same as previous, an' we'd

find new-killed fish all the time. I tell you we were fitchered; and

it got on the Boss's nerves. The Commission began to talk of withdrawing

the privilege, an' it was up to him to make good or pass the deal. We

knew Blacklock was shooting the river, y' see, but we didn't have no

evidence. Y' see, being shut off from card-sharping, he was up against

it, and so took to pot-hunting to get along. It was as plain as red

paint.



"Well, things went along sort of catch-as-catch-can like this for maybe

three weeks, the Greaser shooting fish regular, an' the Boss b'iling

with rage, and laying plans to call his hand, and getting bluffed out

every deal.



"And right here I got to interrupt, to talk some about the pup dog,

Sloppy Weather. If he hadn't got caught up into this Blacklock game, no

one'd ever thought enough about him to so much as kick him. But after it

was all over, we began to remember this same Sloppy an' to recall what

he was; no big job. He was just a worthless fool pup, yeller at that,

everybody's dog, that just hung round camp, grinning and giggling and

playing the goat, as half-grown dogs will. He used to go along with the

car-boys when they went swimmin' in the resevoy, an' dash along in an'

yell an' splash round just to show off. He thought it was a keen stunt

to get some gesabe to throw a stick in the resevoy so's he could paddle

out after it. They'd trained him always to bring it back an' fetch it to

whichever party throwed it. He'd give it up when he'd retrieved it, an'

yell to have it throwed again. That was his idea of fun--just like a

fool pup.



"Well, one day this Sloppy Weather is off chasing jack-rabbits an' don't

come home. Nobody thinks anything about that, nor even notices it. But

we afterward finds out that he'd met up with Blacklock that day, an'

stopped to visit with him--sorry day for Cockeye. Now it was the very

next day after this that Mary-go-round an' the Boss plans another scout.

I'm to go, too. It was a Wednesday, an' we lay it out that the Cockeye

would prob'ly shoot that day so's to get his fish down to the railroad

Thursday, so they'd reach Sacramento Friday--fish day, see. It wasn't

much to go by, but it was the high card in our hand, an' we allowed to

draw to it.



"We left Why-not afore daybreak, an' worked over into the canon about

sun-up. They was one big pool we hadn't covered for some time, an' we

made out we'd watch that. So we worked down to it, an' clumb up into our

trees, an' set out to keep guard.



"In about an hour we heard a shoot some mile or so up the creek. They's

no mistaking dynamite, leastways not to miners, an' we knew that shoot

was dynamite an' nothing else. The Cock-eye was at work, an' we shook

hands all round. Then pretty soon a fish or so began to go by--big

fellows, some of 'em, dead an' floatin', with their eyes popped 'way out

same as knobs--sure sign they'd been shot.



"The Boss took and grit his teeth when he see a three-pounder go by, an'

made remarks about Blacklock.



"''Sh!' says Mary-go-round, sudden-like. 'Listen!'



"We turned ear down the wind, an' sure there was the sound of some one

scrabbling along the boulders by the riverside. Then we heard a pup yap.



"'That's our man,' whispers the Boss.



"For a long time we thought Cock-eye had quit for the day an' had

coppered us again, but byne-by we heard the manzanita crack on the far

side the canon, an' there at last we see Blacklock working down toward

the pool, Sloppy Weather following an' yapping and cayoodling just as a

fool dog will.



"Blacklock comes down to the edge of the water quiet-like. He lays his

big scoop-net an' his sack--we can see it half full already--down behind

a boulder, and takes a good squinting look all round, and listens maybe

twenty minutes, he's that cute, same's a coyote stealing sheep. We lies

low an' says nothing, fear he might see the leaves move.



"Then byne-by he takes his stick of dynamite out his hip pocket--he was

just that reckless kind to carry it that way--an' ties it careful to a

couple of stones he finds handy. Then he lights the fuse an' heaves her

into the drink, an' just there's where Cock-eye makes the mistake of his

life. He ain't tied the rocks tight enough, an' the loop slips off just

as he swings back his arm, the stones drop straight down by his feet,

and the stick of dynamite whirls out right enough into the pool.



"Then the funny business begins.



"Blacklock ain't made no note of Sloppy Weather, who's been sizing up

the whole game an' watchin' for the stick. Soon as Cock-eye heaves the

dynamite into the water, off goes the pup after it, just as he'd been

taught to do by the car-boys.



"'Hey, you fool dog!' yells Blacklock.



"A lot that pup cares. He heads out for that stick of dynamite same as

if for a veal cutlet, reaches it, grabs hold of it, an' starts back for

shore, with the fuse sputterin' like hot grease. Blacklock heaves rocks

at him like one possessed, capering an' dancing; but the pup comes right

on. The Cock-eye can't stand it no longer, but lines out. But the pup's

got to shore an' takes after him. Sure; why not? He think's it's all

part of the game. Takes after Cock-eye, running to beat a' express,

while we-all whoops and yells an' nearly falls out the trees for

laffing. Hi! Cock-eye did scratch gravel for sure. But 'tain't no manner

of use. He can't run through that rough ground like Sloppy Weather, an'

that fool pup comes a-cavartin' along, jumpin' up against him, an' him

a-kickin' him away, an' r'arin', an' dancin', an' shakin' his fists, an'

the more he r'ars the more fun the pup thinks it is. But all at once

something big happens, an' the whole bank of the canon opens out like a

big wave, and slops over into the pool, an' the air is full of trees an'

rocks and cart-loads of dirt an' dogs and Blacklocks and rivers an'

smoke an' fire generally. The Boss got a clod o' river-mud spang in the

eye, an' went off his limb like's he was trying to bust a bucking bronc'

an' couldn't; and ol' Mary-go-round was shooting off his gun on general

principles, glarin' round wild-eyed an' like as if he saw a' Injun

devil.



"When the smoke had cleared away an' the trees and rocks quit falling,

we clumb down from our places an' started in to look for Black-lock. We

found a good deal of him, but they wasn't hide nor hair left of Sloppy

Weather. We didn't have to dig no grave, either. They was a big enough

hole in the ground to bury a horse an' wagon, let alone Cock-eye. So we

planted him there, an' put up a board, an' wrote on it:



Here lies most

of

C. BLACKLOCK,

who died of a'

entangling alliance with

a

stick of dynamite.



Moral: A hook and line is good enough

fish-tackle for any honest man.



"That there board lasted for two years, till the freshet of '82, when

the American River--Hello, there's the sun!"



All in a minute the night seemed to have closed up like a great book.

The East flamed roseate. The air was cold, nimble. Some of the

sage-brush bore a thin rim of frost. The herd, aroused, the dew

glistening on flank and horn, were chewing the first cud of the day, and

in twos and threes moving toward the water-hole for the morning's drink.

Far off toward the camp the breakfast fire sent a shaft of blue smoke

straight into the moveless air. A jack-rabbit, with erect ears, limped

from the sage-brush just out of pistol-shot and regarded us a moment,

his nose wrinkling and trembling. By the time that Bunt and I, putting

our ponies to a canter, had pulled up by the camp of the Bar-circle-Z

outfit, another day had begun in Idaho.



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