text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/37

 think. I've got a good many left, though—over at the depot in my trunk."

"Where did you start from, child?"

"Hutchinson."

"How long ago?"

"About two months."

"And you've only sold fifty-three, clearin' maybe a dollar on a book?"

The lady agent nodded assent, slowly, her action detached from her thought, it seemed, judging by her eyes, which were fixed on some point beyond Orrin Smith and his gang of jerries; far, far beyond, indeed.

"It takes you a long time to find out you ain't got even one way to make money," Mrs. Cowgill said, but rather more in admiration than pity or reproof.

"I've never been whipped, I never will be!" the lady agent declared, very resolutely, very calmly, with steady voice.

"Some people's that way," Mrs. Cowgill said, nodding her head as if she understood the trait very well. "I wish somebody—where are you headin' for from here?"

"I'm heading in here, as the railroad men say, I guess. If I can't sell any books, I'll have to stay."

"Ever teach school?"

"No, but I could. Is there an opening here?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose they've hired the teachers yet, it's nearly two months before school opens. I just wondered, you look so young for a

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/37


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/38

 travellin' book agent I thought you might be a teacher workin' through vacation. How did you come to take up sellin' books?"

"I guess I was talked into it. I bought the western half of Kansas for a hundred dollars."

"You paid too much, even if you got a deed," said Banjo, feelingly.

"I believe you," the lady agent agreed, leaning over in her attentive way to look at him fairly as she spoke.

"Just for the right to sell them books out here?" Mrs. Cowgill asked.

"That's the scheme. I paid another hundred dollars for a hundred books, put them in my trunk and started out."

"Where from, honey?"

Banjo was pleased to see Mrs. Cowgill softening more and more. How that girl could go tramping around Kansas with books to sell, or anything to sell, and not run out of stock in a week, was a mystery to him.

"I started from Kansas City."

"What was you doin' there before you bought in on that fool book?"

"I suppose I might as well tell you," said the girl, turning frankly to Mrs. Cowgill. "A person can't be a mystery in a little town, especially when she's got to find a job. I wasn't doing anything before dad went broke in the real estate boom. Then I sold some of my rings and ear-bobs and trinkets to raise the

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/38


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/39

 money I blew on the books. And that's all there is to tell, except my name."

Mrs. Cowgill waited, perking up a little with expectancy, to receive it.

"Louise Gardner," the girl introduced herself. "Maybe that's it, and maybe it isn't."

"That ain't nobody's business but your own," Mrs. Cowgill granted, with easy indifference, as if accustomed to such things right along.

"That's right!" Banjo declared with strong emphasis. He seemed ready to stand in defense of her name, true or false, against all aspersion and doubt.

"You never waited table," Mrs. Cowgill said. She spoke with something like regretful disparagement, as if the young woman had neglected a duty, or an opportunity at least, for which there was no remedy now.

"I could do it. Is there a job here? Do you want a girl?"

"I can only afford to pay five dollars a week, room with my daughter—she's about your age. It may not look like much, but it beats trampin' around in the hot sun."

"Not anything like it," said Louise Gardner.

"I'll not say it ain't heavy and hard while it lasts, but the rush don't last long."

"That will be all right," Louise said, cheerfully.

Banjo looked at her queerly. What did she mean? Was she going to take that job?

"There's time for a girl to do her washin' and sew-

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/39


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/40

 in' in the afternoon," Mrs. Cowgill seemed to argue for the place that she had to be filled, just as if the candidate held back instead of sitting keen and hopeful, a new light bright in her eyes.

"That will be fine!" Louise declared. "I'm ready to begin right now."

Banjo Gibson sat looking this way and that, his mouth open, his eyes staring, as if amazed by some extraordinary creature that had appeared on the hotel porch and vanished with the next breath in a puff of smoke. He seemed to be making a mute appeal to somebody to confirm him in this amazing event as the lady agent followed Mrs. Cowgill into the hotel.

What did she mean? Banjo marvelled. Was she going to take that hash-slinger job? A girl like that? with a build like that? and a face like that? What could she know about slinging hash in a railroad boarding house? What would happen if Bill Connor tried to pinch her leg?

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/40


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/41

DESSA COWGILL, commonly called Goosie, was a sentimental young lady who played the parlor organ. When Louise Gardner first met her she was laying out cutlery on the long table where the regulars assembled at so much a week to replenish their fires and keep up a head of steam for the railroading life.

Goosie was singing, as she spread out the implements of severance and conveyance, a song in which the singer bewailed in lugubrious anticipation the day when a lady sung as Ma-ha-goreet not only might, but positively would, forget him. It was a dismal conclusion, sympathetically and tremulously sung by Goosie, who went into the spirit of it with the feeling of one bereft and forsaken. The window shades of the dining-room were drawn to shut out as much of the afternoon heat as possible, giving Goosie a dim and sentimental light. It was a felicitous arrangement for the singer as well as the song, for Goosie was one of those girls who look better in a little light.

There is no doubt that suds, and soup, and steaming

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/41


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/42

 dishes of a boarding house where heavy railroad fare is served, do not contribute an atmosphere for æsthetic development. If beauty thrives in such environment it must of necessity be a rugged beauty, such as that of the hollyhock, the zinnia, or the scentless dahlia flaunting beside the fence. That was the order of Goosie; a big, broad-faced, full-breasted dahlia, boisterous and strong to face the wind.

She was a hearty, happy girl, with a big-spreading mouth, to enjoy so deeply the sad songs of separation, broken faith and blighted homes which were current in that day. Her greatest pleasure was to sing them when her duties threw her alone, as now. It was her melancholy enjoyment at such times to put herself in the heroine's part, with Bill Connor, the fireman to whom she was engaged, standing off in a dim and tearful background, holding out appealing hands, watching her drift hopelessly to ruin and desolation.

She knew that Bill would, in plain and unromantic action, take her by the neck and choke it out of her in such case. That's all the sentiment there was in Bill. Yet it gave her a dear diversion, a serene, sad happiness, to figure Bill off in the background holding out his hands, watching her go to the devil in that pale, drawnfaced way.

Just now she was Ma-ha-goreet, and Bill was the one who wailed of his dreary prospect when she should forget him. She saw herself leaving their home in Argentine—Argentine was the heaven of railroad men, where all of them hoped to go—with the chenille table

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/42


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/43

 cover and the gasoline stove and the golden oak furniture—all prospective, but just like that, she knew very well—and drifting away from Bill, lured on by the "festive dance, the rich, the gay," so different, indeed, from their home.

The picture brought comfortable tears, which crawled down beside her nose with a tickling, itchy feeling, making her sniff like a rabbit, and wipe them along her bare arm.

There was another song, sadder for the picture of consummate wreckage in the lives of herself and Bill. It was called We Never Speak As We Pass By. That was her favored one, reserved for rainy days.

It was terribly sad and sweet. The tempter came to Nell, and Goosie was Nell, in the little home in Argentine. And Earl Gray, the druggist, was the tempter. Earl Gray was not the druggist of McPacken when Goosie imagined him as the evil tempter of the song, but a grander Earl Gray, dressed in a long black coat and stove-pipe hat, like the man in the New York Weekly who was tempting Constance. The Pretty Sewing Girl. She cast Earl for the part on account of his long, wavy hair.

Goosie knew that a tempter in her home would not last as long as it would take to cook an egg, with Bill coming in from his run. Bill would slam him against the wall so hard he'd knock the stove-pipe down, and

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/43


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/44

 that would be the end of that tempter and that temptation.

Yet it was such a sad pleasure to picture that passage where:

Goosie always had it raining in this scene. Bill was coming along a deserted street, close against the wall, a prosperous, opulent-looking Bill, with a diamond stud. She came out of the distance like a misty gray garment blowing on a line, cold, thin as a snake, her hair hanging in wet ropes, ragged, stove-blacking on her hands and nose. She turned imploring eyes on Bill; he passed right on, going to the bank. He didn't give her a look, although she knew he saw her as well as anything. That was where it cut; that was the place where a sweet, deep pain wrung her heart and made her shiver in the ecstacy of refined remorse.

Goosie's mother broke upon her song, bringing the strange girl into the shadowy dining-room.

"Goosie, this is Louise Gardner, the new dining-room girl. Louise, this is Odessa, my daughter. Goosie's her pet name; she's been called by it so long she wouldn't hardly answer to any other by now."

Goosie put down the undistributed cutlery, offering her hand with frank equality.

"Hello," she said. "When did you come in?"

"I came on Nine this morning," Louise returned,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/44


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/45

 speaking of the train by its number with the readiness of a regular railroader.

"Take her to the room and let her fix herself up. You'll have to lend her some of your aprons till she can get some made."

Goosie led the way to the stairs, which came down beside the door connecting dining-room and office, vastly relieved to know she was going to have help that hot evening, eager to get the new girl out into a strong light to see if her complexion was really as good as it looked.

Mrs. Cowgill turned to the kitchen, from which a moaning, long-drawn note of lamentation sounded, as if somebody there labored in a bondage that rent the heart to bear. 'A tall spare negro woman was standing at the stove frying chicken. She turned at Mrs. Cowgill's approach, her prolonged note diminishing, falling away, like the whistle of a fast-running train rounding a woodland curve. The cook grinned, her solemn face glistening with sweat.

"I done got all the chicken on, Mis' Cowgill," she said.

"You'd better go out and cool off a while when you take it up, Rachel," Mrs. Cowgill suggested, with a sort of reticent, grudging kindness.

"I ain't none so hot," Rachel replied cheerfully. "Druther have it hot than them cold winter days when the win' snoops under the doo' and gives me the rheumatis' in my legs and the misery in my back. Ain't

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/45


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/46

 no misery hatchin' in my jints this kind of weather. I just dreens the drugs of that misery off in sweat."

"Ain't Angus come down and started on them putaters yet?" Mrs. Cowgill inquired sharply.

"Yassum, he's out there on the po'ch josselin' 'em around, playin' train like he's always a doin'."

Mrs. Cowgill set her foot against the screen door, which had fringed paper tacked along the top to make a commotion among the flies waiting a chance to wing into that paradise of alluring scents. It was equal to opening the door against a driving rain; some of it was bound to get in. A few fortunate ones of the impertinent loafers winged past her, in defiance of Mrs. Cowgill's savage batting with open hand. There was very little hope of refreshment for a fly, once he had made his way by trick and evasion into the kitchen. Everything there was so hot that a sip of it meant instant death to the most tropical fly that ever buzzed.

Mrs. Cowgill let the door close gently, to stand beside it with displeasure coming over the strained look of worriment and longing in her tired face. Angus Valorous Macdougal was sitting on the edge of the shady porch twenty feet or so beyond her, a large bucket of potatoes beside him, a pan to receive the pared ones standing a little way along. Between bucket and pan Angus had a string of the humble vegetables stretched out like a line of freight cars, headed by an immense potato with a protuberance that served for the engine's smokestack.

Angus Valorous was chuffing and hissing equal to

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/46


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/47

 any switch engine between Argentine and McPacken as he pushed his little train slowly along, leaning as it progressed, stopping between chuffs to straighten the alignment, entirely absorbed in the pastime, so childish and ridiculous for one of his growth and years.

"Is that what I pay you for?" Mrs. Cowgill broke out in wrath, her voice rising sharp and high.

Angus Valorous started guiltily, ashamed of being caught in the indulgence of a pleasure that he should have left behind him with his knee pants, unconscious, no doubt, in his rather thick-headed and totally unimaginative way, that his overwhelming ambition was only illustrating itself in this homely concrete form. Angus Valorous lived for nothing in life but to be a conductor. That ambition was in his round soft head when he was born; it was in his round hard head now that he was nineteen, and big enough to be thirty-nine. He scrambled the potatoes toward him, letting some of them fall, confused and red behind the ears.

"Is that what I pay you for?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded again, coming forward in long strides as if she meant to assault him. "Don't you know we have supper in this hotel at six o'clock? you great big goodfor-nothing lump of mutton!"

"Aw, keep your shirt on!" Angus retorted, twisting his head to scowl at her, growling from the corner of his mouth. "All you're payin' me ain't goin' to break nothing but your heart! If you don't like it you can git another man!"

Angus spoke in explosions, great sarcasm in his tone,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/47


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/48

 great contempt in the slewing of his mouth. He threw down his knife, and stood facing Mrs. Cowgill, jerking at the strings of his coffee-sack apron as if through with the job.

Angus was a short-built young man, heavy in the thighs, his shoulders thick, his arms short and strong. His black hair was brushed to such a polish that a spider would have needed a hand-line to climb it. His face was round and boyish, his little snub nose quite comical in the midst of his present bluster. But for the black whiskers which crowded his fair ruddy skin, so thick and so fast-growing that no amount of shaving could keep them out of sight, Angus would have looked in the face like a hearty, full-blooded boy of twelve. As it was, he looked twelve, with the whiskers of forty-five.

He was the son of Doctor Macdougal, one child of many children. Doctor competition was sharp in McPacken; Angus had been crowded out to shift for himself when he should have been finishing the grade school, yet not before his whiskers had marked him for an early-ripening man. He could not get a job as brakeman—even conductors, in their consequence and grandeur, must begin there—until he became twenty-one. The Cottonwood Hotel was a very good place to fill the intervening years, which Angus had breasted until only two now stood between him and his happy day of matriculation in the college of conductors.

It was the habit of people native to McPacken, as well as those of transplanted stock who remained in its

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/48


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/49

 atmosphere a little while, to be outspoken and independent. A superior might be acknowledged on a job, scorned and contemned for the pull that put him there, but in no other connection, social or civil. Angus Valorous was simply living up to the standards of McPacken when he bristled before Mrs. Cowgill and stood on his rights as a man. If he had acted otherwise he would have been despised, not alone by the men of McPacken, but by the women and children, and Mrs. Cowgill first of all.

"Aw, go ahn!" said Angus, jerking at his apron-strings. "Go ahn! If you want somebody else to do your dirty work for you, go and git him. That's ahl I got to say!"

Mrs. Cowgill stood regarding him in towering scorn, knowing very well that Angus had no more notion of quitting than she had of discharging him.

"Whatever sense you had when you was born leaked out of you before they could bring a teacup to catch it in!" she said. "Go to work, and don't give me any more of your slack!"

To relieve Angus of the necessity of carrying his bluff any farther, and to save her own dignity in the bargain, Mrs. Cowgill left him with that humiliating aspersion. She marched through the kitchen and dining-room, heading for the office, from which she heard the faint tinkle of the little desk bell. She was in no great hurry to attend the caller; as she went along she speculated on whether it might be a cowhand wanting a cigar, or a railroader a plug of tobacco, or an agent

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/49


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/50

 wanting to sell something, or some fool that didn't know what he wanted. She was by natural bent a little uncharitable in her estimation of mankind.

As she passed the wash-room—fitted with modern plumbing, supplied with water by the railroad water works—she stopped at the sound of a snorting ablution, familiar in her ears.

"Is that you, Myron?" she called.

"Yup," a soapy, cheerful voice replied.

"What're you doin' home this time of day?"

"Run out of shingles," the soapy voice replied, after some blowing as if to clear water out of a dripping mustache.

"Wasn't there any more in the lumber yard?"

"Schudy broke a wheel; couldn't get 'em over till morning, honey."

"Well, when you're through wastin' water in there you go on out and saw up some of them ties."

"Yes, pet."

Mrs. Cowgill went on to the office. Myron Cowgill, under the shadow of whose name the hotel lady lived, came from the wash-room damp and uncombed, with towel lint in his long brown mustache, a cheerful, even a glad, light in his mild blue eyes. He was one of those beings cut to the pattern of a nothing at the beginning. Gangling, loose-jointed, slip-slap and go easy; long black hair with a brown sunburn at the ends, long brown mustache that appeared to draw hard on his cheeks, which were so thin that he seemed to have sucked them in and swallowed all but the rind. His

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/50


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/51

 neck was bony and long, slashed across with wrinkles in the tough brown skin, into which more or less dust and grime had collected in his carpentering career in and about McPacken.

Myron produced the bowl of a corncob pipe from a pocket of his bagging overalls, tapped it in his palm to dislodge the shingle nails; brought the stem of it out of the ruler pocket along his leg, connected the parts and fired up. Pipe in mouth, Myron looked a degree less useful than before, yet undoubtedly the little tuckingup of the mustache over the stem added to the humor and good nature of his simple face. He went out through the kitchen to begin operation on the gritty, hard oak ties which the thrift of his wife secured, through a pull with the roadmaster, to supply fuel for her kitchen range.

"You-all hongry, Mist' Cowgill?" the black cook inquired, with a gentle patronage, as she might have spoken to a child.

"I guess I can make out till supper, Rachel." But unwillingly, his tone implied, and with hardship and repression of desire.

Rachel forked the biggest leg she could find, a doublejointed one, the way they cut them in Kansas in those days of generosity and plenty. Myron accepted it with an engaging network of wrinkles growing in his tough brown face around the eyes, and with a little laugh that was soundless, but expressive of the humor that kindled in him with the thought of beating his wife through the bountiful hand of her cook.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/51


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/52

 Myron sat on his saw-horse under the cottonwood tree in the back yard, while he cleaned the chicken bone and licked his fingers. Then he began sawing ties, to continue sawing ties until the last boarder was fed, the last transient guest served, even Angus Valorous satisfied behind his black smear of beard. Then if there was anything left, Myron got it, and ate it in silent appreciation of a humor, his mild eyes seemed to say, that no other being in all the world could see.

Mrs. Cowgill heard the summons of the little bell again as she paused at the foot of the stairs to call Goosie. She resented the insistent ring; there was something imperative about it that seemed to place her in an inferior position. She went along deliberately, turning her eyes on this and that, making out that she came casually. She wanted the bell-ringer to understand that she was a necessity in McPacken, not a convenience.

The insistent ringer jof the little desk bell was no less important person than' Verney Carr, station agent, in his white shirt and pink sleeve-holders. Mrs. Cowgill put off her resentment, edging around the counter with a smile. Verney was an important railroad peg in McPacken. He was not the man to call her out without sufficient reason.

"There's a big stock extra in five sections coming," the agent announced without preliminary greeting. "They're bringin' three thousand head from Texas, over west of the Brazos where they've got a big drouth."

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/52


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/53

 "I've heard the cowmen talkin' about it," she nodded, leaning her bare arms on the open register, adjusting herself in position of comfortable confidence.

"First of a lot of 'em, they say," the agent said. "I thought you might want to make some preparations for takin' care of the bunch that'll be comin' with them five extras."

"I'll have Myron kill some more chickens. Thanks, Verney."

"They're goin' to flood this country with them Texas cattle. They'll eat these cowmen up here holler."

"This range'll take care of just so many, and no more, I've heard the cowmen say. The Texas men have to lease from them, you know, Verney, or pay so much a head by the month for usin' their grass. I guess it's a good thing for our people, all them cowhands comin' in here too. They'll spend their money here in town."

"And raise hell at all hours." The agent spoke like a man with unpleasant recollections.

"It'll liven things up," Mrs. Cowgill said. "McPacken will be more like it was when I came here and opened the hotel. There's no harm in them Texas boys if you take them right."

"I know I've got one sweet time ahead of me!" the agent said with what seemed unwarranted feeling. "They'll be all night unloadin' them five trains—the first one's due to arrive about seven."

"I'll take care of 'em as long as they come. We've got to go out of our way to serve the cattle trade."

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/53


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/54

 "Everybody in this country has to," the agent said, with anything but pride or ease of dignity in his part of the service.

"It's the business that counts; there wouldn't be anything here without it."

"Oh, I don't know about that," the agent said, loftily. "I'm gittin' darn sick of seein' these spider-leggid cowhands under sombrero hats with guns hung around on 'em. Don't ever shoot anything with 'em, not even themselves."

"A gun's about the same to them as a watch is to a railroad man, Verney."

"A railroad man needs his watch, but no man needs a gun slung on him in this country."

"It's custom, more than anything. The boys wouldn't look the same without their guns. I'd kind of hate to see them go. But some of them are. I saw Cal Withers ride by a little while ago with only one gun onhim. I remember when he used to carry two, anda knife."

"Darned old fool! This bunch of cattle's comin' consigned to him. He's been gettin' messages all afternoon."

"It's a handful for Cal if he's bought 'em. I hope he don't go broke again."

"Lot of his men with their toy pistols swingin' on 'em rode in a while ago to receive the cattle. I'll have to be right there on the spot till the last cgr's empty."

"To bad," Mrs. Cowgill said indifferently. "Much obliged for comin' over to tell me, Verney." She

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/54


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/55

 brought a box of her best brand of cigars from the showcase. The agent picked two with critical deliberation. For such services as this to the Cottonwood Hotel, his smokes cost him nothing.

"Wild bunch," said the agent, turning to go back to the red depot and await the arrival of the vexatious Texans.

"Men, or animals?" she laughed.

"Both," the agent answered over his shoulder from the door.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/55


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/56

HERE was nothing in common between the railroaders of McPacken and the cowhands who rode in to refresh themselves with its shabby entertainment. Even the most prominent drovers, some of whom risked more in one season's speculation with the caprices of nature and the markets than the combined railroaders of McPacken earned in a year, were looked upon with a sort of patronizing tolerance by conductors and brakemen when they loaded for Kansas City and rode in the caboose on stock-shippers' passes.

The railroaders prided themselves on their sophistication, which was only a shallow pertness at the best. But the world came to McPacken every day. If it did not always stop and get out for a look around, it roared through with an upswirling of dust that made its passing all the more important. The latest slang was ready in the mouths of the railroaders; they could make sport of cowmen and cowhands in an unknown tongue.

A superior caste to range men and grangers, according to their own rating, these railroaders of McPacken. Yet every one of them was serving cattle, living and

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/56


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/57

 prospering on cattle. But for cattle they would not have been there at all.

Peace generally prevailed between railroad and range, although an outbreak came now and then. There was no public dance hall in McPacken, that being an institution belonging to the days before the town's beginning, but there was a big saloon with its three beerjerkers on busy nights and Sundays, where the soil was always raked for the seeds of trouble.

It was the custom still to carry guns on the range in those days, a habit that had become a tradition, rather than a necessity. The railroaders, with few exceptions, stuck pistols in their hip pockets when going out for the evening. Railroad taste favored that style of weapon known as bulldog, on account of its short and chunky build being adapted to gentlemanly concealment. It was considered boorish in railroad society to make a show of one's weapon, but there were men enough with guns stuck around them in McPacken every night to line up a considerable battle. That such general engagement between railroad and range never had taken place was the marvel of all peaceable citizens.

There were staid and respectable railroad men who had their families and homes in McPacken, who neither mingled in the swilling nor mixed in the barroom brawls, forerunners of the substantial respectability that railroad men, as a class, came in time to enjoy. In those days, especially out on the edge of things as in McPacken, a railroader was a man with a reputation for roughness, a notoriety that he fully enjoyed and

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/57


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/58

 sustained. In McPacken they were young men, mainly; car repairers, wipers, switchmen, machinists, brakemen and firemen, who had a pride in their calling, a glowing satisfaction in their generally hard name.

On the other hand there were the cowhands, as the men who followed the herds were commonly called in and around the town. Several hundred of them could have been rounded up within a three-days' ride of McPacken, youngsters full of cayenne and vinegar, with a snort and go to them such as free youth has in any calling, anywhere. There was a sprinkling of older men among them, hardy, wiry ones who had ridden the long trail from Texas to Montana, following slow herds over perilous ways.

Things were coming easier to the cowboy gentry in those McPacken days. The railroad was no longer a thousand miles away; lights and liquids were within three or four days' ride, at the farthest. These encroachments of civilization had shown their influence on the cowboy habit, which was growing somewhat gentler, due to frequent breaks, perhaps, in the long periods of drouth, or maybe coming of the fact that something easy to procure is no longer ardently desired. Whatever the cause, the effect was apparent to the older citizens of McPacken, who had recollections of times not very far back when those yelping revellers made night a torture in the town.

Altogether, the effect of business methods, which were supplanting the old-time make-or-lose gamble of cattle raising, were showing amazing results, not alone

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/58


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/59

 in the taming down of cowboys, but in stabilizing an industry left hitherto dependent on chance. This worked out to the advantage of McPacken and all withinit. More cattle, more railroaders; more railroaders, more money turned loose every pay-day to make everybody glad.

Mrs. Cowgill was pleased to hear of the five trains coming into her port with cattle from the burned-up range of Texas. Every carload brought in lean meant something more than a carload to go out again fat in the fall. More trains, more lay-over men for the Cottonwood Hotel. It was all very comfortable and satisfactory as Mrs. Cowgill contemplated the future, near and far, standing there as the station agent had left her, with arms across the pages of the open register.

Yet Mrs. Cowgill might as well have turned to her register after the station agent left her door, and written, in that log-book of her adventurous establishment: "So ends this day." As it was, she stood turning over in her mind the chance of the cattle trains arriving when the agent expected them, knowing the ways of such trains as well as any railroader. She concluded at last to spare Myron the slaughter of more chickens. The trains would not begin to get in before nine or ten o'clock. More than likely, out of a misguided sense of loyalty, the Texas cowhands would peg on up the street and get their supper in the Lone Star Cafe.

While Mrs. Cowgill was revolving these thoughts,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/59


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/60

 and arriving at her wise conclusions, the nearest of the five cattle trains was still a hundred miles distant from McPacken. On top of this train, back a few cars from the engine to give the cinders a chance to cool before they hit him, a young man was sitting, his prodpole between his knees, watching the Kansas landscape as the train jogged by.

Tom Laylander was favorably impressed by the state. They had left the region of elms and maples along the streams, the dark-green fields of corn, and mellow stubble-lands where wheat shocks stood amazingly thick, it seemed to him, accustomed to the thin yields of that sandy postoak land beyond the Brazos. Now they were passing through a paradise of prairies, big enough, it seemed, to pasture all the starving herds between the Panhandle and the Big Bend. It was an empty country, as far as he could see, shaggy with gray-green short grass, heaved in gently-rounded hills that looked like the backs of gigantic buffalo. It looked like a place where a man might turn out his herd with nobody to set bounds to his coming and going.

Tom Laylander knew that it was not so; that men of his calling had all that country under their control, in one way or another; that bounds were set and respected, and that a stranger with five hundred-odd starving cattle, such as the thirty cars in that train of his contained, must go where he was apportioned and pay what he was asked. Better than starving down on the Brazos, he reflected; better than hanging on there,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/60


text:
Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/233

 Rh

into favour, and that pardon of sin is promised unto all that shall continue in that Covenant, and not transgresse against it. ''Arm. respon. ad Art''. 13, 14. so that to consummate happinesse there is need of continuance only in the state, which evermore hath effectuall communication conjoyned. And restitution into the state of grace, and actuall reconciliation, if they be not one thing, they be inseparable. And this doth take away the objection which they raise from the words following, ''And hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now therefore we beseech you, we pray you in Christs stead, be ye reconciled to God''. For not to say, the Apostle speakes to the Corinthians at that time beleevers, and in the state of persons reconciled: hath not God committed the word of reconciliation to the Ministers, who are to beseech mankind actually restored into grace, and admitted into the new Covenant, to be reconciled? The word of reconciliation is of use, both to them that be not restored into grace, that they might be called, and to them that be reconciled, that they might continue and be builded forward.

That passage of the Apostle, 1 Joh. 2. 1, 2. ''If any man sinne, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sinne: and not for ours only, but also for the sinnes of the whole world'', is like to the former, as all men confesse, and hath the same answer. For as Christ is our Advocate by office to plead our cause, and defend us against the accusation of all our enemies, so is he our propitiation: But Christ is not the Advocate of every man simply, but of his people. And as he is the propitiation of the beleeving Jewes, so he is of the whole world: but he is the propitiation of the beleeving Jewes, in that God is propitious unto them in Christ, and not propitiable or reconcileable only. He is their propitiation through faith in his bloud. Rom. 3. 25. by whom their sinnes are covered, not coverable, and expiated and done away, not expiable only. Therefore the Apostle speakes of the application of Christs death, and by the whole world, man-kind in common considered as under the fall cannot be understood, but the whole world of the Gentiles now called to the faith, and admitted into Covenant. Thus Vorstius himself, though in his common places upon this Chapter, he would understand these words, as if Christ sufficiently and efficiently quantum in se was the propitiation for the sinnes of all mankind: yet in


text:
Page:Weird Tales v13n04.djvu/115

Rh ing of it were two separate things. There was no doubt about its having nine lives; perhaps it had ninety. Secretly the duke offered a gold piece as a reward for the killing of the cat; everyone wanted the money and tried to earn it, but when they saw the cat they were weaponless, and when they had their weapons ready the cat was never to be seen.

Then another lamb was killed, and the very next night an attempt was made to take a baby out of the cradle. This time the mother was watching and when her baby cried she sprang forward in its defense. She saw a woman in white picking the baby up. There was a struggle, and finally the intruder fled. The mother was sure that it was another woman who had tried to rob her. She had scratched the thief's neck and, the next morning, while telling the story to the duke and the friar, showed them the blood, still under her fingernails.

The duke tried to comfort her, but all the time he and the friar were looking sidewise at each other, and as soon as they could do so they went to the room of the damsel. She had passed through another hard night, one that was worse than usual, but when they saw her she was sleeping naturally. There was a red spot on the sheet, and when they turned her head they saw several long red scratches on her neck.

The cat sat as usual up on the window-sill, leisurely washing her face.

The duke was not a coward but at the sight of the scratches he turned pale and started to gnaw upon his fingers. The friar thought harder than ever, but all he could say was to repeat the statement that they should kill the cat, at which statement the animal disappeared through the window and was seen no more that day.

But the Damsel Susanne was whiter than her usual wont that dinner-time, and against the pallor of her face her red lips blushed. Friar Sinistrari had something on his mind, it seemed, something that he dared not speak to the damsel's father. None the less, he made two suggestions: first, that from then on the damsel be watched constantly, and second, that a lamb be tied as a decoy and a bait in the grass circle of the dark wood in back of the castle. He advised that all the people hide themselves in a great circle around this lamb and watch in the full of the moon for whatever might come to kill the lamb and suck its blood.

His advice and argument were so good that the duke promised him that no matter who came for the lamb, they would kill him in any manner the friar considered best. The friar went to the blacksmith and had a long talk with him, and all that day the smith toiled at his forge.

night the lamb was tied in the middle of the bare circle. No tree or shrub grew there—only a small green grass—and all around the edge were mushrooms. The simple peasants, shivering but at the same time determined to do what they could to rid the place of this horrid pest, hid in the thick wood some distance away. They were told to come to the circle when they heard the screech of the great horned owl.

The Damsel Susanne complained of being tired and went went to bed earlier than usual. In the next room, looking through holes bored in the wooden partition, watched the duke and the friar. The window was open and the night was still; there was no breeze, and the candle by the bed burned without a flicker. Just as they were growing tired, the moon came above the trees and shone into the room. There was now

title: Page:Weird Tales v13n04.djvu/115


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/61

 hoping for the rain that had been nearly three years in coming, except an aggravating shower now and then.

The bones of many a herd whitened that sandy country, set with its tenacious, never-dying postoak trees; hundreds of his father's cattle had gone in that miserable way while the old man had hung on in the belief that his losses would not equal the expense of running away from the drouth, hoping for the rain that never before had played him quite such a disastrous trick.

It had broken the old cowman at last, and put him in his grave. Young Tom had picked up what was left and set out for Kansas, in the hope that he might save enough to return to Texas after the drouth was broken, and start another herd. Kansas was a good place to retreat upon in the day of necessity, but Texas was the only place to live. The only place, because it was the only place he knew.

Calhoun Withers, the biggest cattle speculator in the southwest, had come into that famine-stricken neighborhood and pretty well cleaned it up at his own price. It was a bone and hide price, Withers had said. That was all the cattle of that country were worth. His purchases were coming along behind Tom Laylander, twenty-five hundred head or more.

Withers, as an old friend of Tom Laylander's father, had advised the young man not to sell at these famine prices. There was going to be a shortage in cattle, with good prices as a consequence, that fall, owing to the unfitness of the Texas supply for the butcher's block.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/61


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/62

 Load, he advised, and ship to Kansas, where he had range to rent at a reasonable figure.

Tom had been in the mind for this all along, and here he was on his way to gamble with Kansas for the remnant of his herd. He had arranged to pay Withers by the head for the use of his range, settlement to be deferred until the cattle were sold. It was the young adventurer's hope that his bones and hides would become beeves in the course of three or four months.

Mrs. Cowgill woke in the night to hear them unloading the cattle into the whitewashed pens, the high-pitched tremolo of man and steer sounding lonesome as the plaint of creatures which belong by right to wide and distant places wailing in the dark for home. There always was something in that wild cowboy note more of melancholy than jubilation to Mrs. Cowsgill's ear. Like coyotes, she often thought, shivering and howling in hunger of a winter night in bleak places among the snow. Why this thought always came to her with the sound she did not know; only that it was so.

It was evening before Laylander got his herd across the river and spread in the green and abundant valley. The cattle were being held there for their first feed on Kansas grass, by two cowboys who had accompanied Laylander from Texas. They were mounted on horses borrowed from Withers.

Tom's intention was to pay these boys off as soon as they had worked the herd out to the range he was to occupy, and let them go back home or find employment in Kansas, as they might elect. He planned to do his

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/62


text: Index:A Complete System of Christian Theology (Wakefield, 1869, completesystemof0000wake).pdf


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/63

 own herding, such as might be necessary. Withers had said he could handle the cattle alone on that range, where the feeding was so plentiful they did not travel far.

Laylander wanted to sniff bay rum, and feel the barber's shears around his ears once more. It seemed a long time since he had enjoyed those luxuries; his beard felt long enough to hide a rabbit. He was greatly cheered by his hopeful outlook as he rode one of Withers's horses to McPacken to leave his mane and tail, as he said, in the barber shop.

The regular boarders in the Cottonwood Hotel took their meals at a long table that extended in state down the middle of the dining-room. Casual guests, such as drummers and cowhands, did not share this table d'hote. Goosie Cowgill, who usually combined the duties of reception committee and waiter, piloted them to the small side tables, at which two or four might sit in such comfort as the stale pie-crust atmosphere of the dining-hall offered.

The railroaders and other regulars were pretty well cleared out of the dining-room when Tom Laylander arrived. Goosie, being engaged in an exchange of wit with the roundhouse foreman, did not see the hesitant stranger as he paused with a question that amounted to an apology for his intrusion, near the door. Louise Gardner, who had taken to her new job with confident alacrity, caught the arrival's eye and beckoned him on with hearty signal.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/63


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/64

 "Back up!" said a brakeman, who saw the signal from his place at the long table.

The few others at this common board looked up from their various engagements and laughed. The brakeman, his essay as a humorist thus approved, repeated the sign, looking across at Tom Laylander, who stood in confusion, his big hat in his hand.

"She wants you to make a couplin' with that flat down there on the house track," the brakeman explained.

Laylander grinned, going on to the table where the new biscuit-shooter waited, a chair pulled out to receive him.

"Oh, leave her alone," Goosie laughed. "You was green once yourself."

"Who's green?" The brakeman feigned a large surprise. "That girl learnt biscuit-shootin' in college. They've got a class of 'em down at Lawrence."

"What're you sore about, Windy?" the roundhouse boss inquired with patronizing contempt. "Did she step on your steak?"

"Ya-a, y' clinker-puller!" the brakeman sneered.

"A little shack got his neck broke in Argentine last week, tryin' to stretch himself out to pass for a man," the roundhouse boss returned, his sarcasm sharper than any knife on the table.

While this passing of pleasantries across the table between the railroading caste was going on, Louise was taking stock of the customer bound for her table. It seemed to her that a window had been opened to the

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/64


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/65

 broad prairies, admitting a cool wind with the soft, indefinable scents of lonely places in it, there was such a frank confession of unworldliness in this young man's face.

It was a plump face, boyish, ruddy through the brown of wind and sun, freckled a little in keeping with the sandy hair. The young man came walking on his toes, as if afraid he might disturb somebody, his pistol against his thigh, spurs tinkling on his freshly polished boots. His scarlet neckerchief made a fine effect along with the tawny gray of his cougar-skin vest, both of them carried from Texas in his gripsack on top of a cattle car, reserved for an hour such as this.

He was a tall and slender youth, younger in appearance than in fact, as the new biscuit-shooter could see, yet with something of competence and assurance in his forehead, rather narrow and combative; and in his blue eyes, small, with light lashes peculiarly noticeable, arched by sandy eyebrows as delicate and long as a girl's.

The young Texas man took off his pistol before seating himself, hanging it on the back of his chair, in respect to the hospitality of that house, perhaps, or maybe in observance of the ancient custom among armed men when they sat down together to bread. Whatever the purpose or the prompting, Louise Gardner thought better of him for the act. She seemed to get a little look into his simple ethics, and to find them Strongly enforced by honor, a quality that did not speak

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/65


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/66

 from the faces of many who filled their bunkers at Mrs. Cowgill's board.

As for Tom Laylander, he felt that he had been served a banquet before Louise brought him the bread and butter. Her voice seemed to touch a rib, or something equally remote and mysterious inside of him, making it vibrate with a pleasant feeling that hummed through him. He felt so glad he wanted to whoop. He thought it must be because he was away off up there in a strange country, kind of lonesome and cold around the gills, and she had spoken to him in that friendly, understanding way.

He looked after her when she went to the kitchen, carrying her tray beside her in the way he had come in carrying his hat. He just sat and looked, drawing in his breath. The farther she went the longer he drew that breath, as if its expiration might dissolve her, and sweep away the enchanting bit of romance like a flood.

Tom was not more than half through his supper when one of the men that he had left with the cattle came in looking for him, breathing hard as if he had run across the river, excitement pushing out his eyes. Louise saw Laylander rise at the first hurried words and buckle on his gun. He picked up his hat and started for the door; stopped, seeming to consider the situation, the cowboy arguing earnestly, hand on the young man's shoulder, as if to stop him in some unwise design.

Presently Laylander returned to his supper, the cowboy with him. Louise noted as she served the other

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/66


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/67

 man that Tom's news had filled him; he did not seem to have room for another bite. It was indigestible news; it had brought a cloud to the young man's clear eyes, a lowering, portentous shadow over his good-humored face. Louise hoped it might not be as bad as his face reflected it, whatever it might be. She moved his plate aside and slipped the pie before him. He thanked her with his eyes, but did not touch the pie.

The cowboy finished his hastily gobbled meal and left in as much of a hurry as he had come, plainly on the young drover's order. Laylander buckled on his gun again and stooped to get his hat from under the table, where it had been kicked in the excitement of the conference.

"Don't you like pie?" Louise inquired, coming forward with her tray.

"Yes ma'am, I love it," Laylander replied, red from the stooping for his hat, and something more. "But I just got some news that kind of took away my appetite for pie, if you'll excuse me, ma'am."

"I noticed it. You're one of the Texas boys that came in with the cattle last night, aren't you? I hope it wasn't about your cattle, stampeded or something?"

"It was about my cattle, ma'am," Laylander replied, his eyes on the door, the desire big in him to be gone, she could see. She wanted to hold him, in a woman's unaccountable way, not so much to have her curiosity satisfied as just to hold him when he was itching to be gone.

"I'm sorry," she said, her hands busy among the

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/67


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/68

 dishes, her eyes lifted for one sympathetic glance. "I used to hear so much about the foolish things cattle do on the range—"

"They wasn't to blame, ma'am," he corrected her with grave courtesy. "I've been turned a trick—"

Louise saw him stiffen as for a jump, his words broken off there and left hanging. Mrs. Cowgill was bringing a man into the dining-room with considerable importance; a tall, heavy-shouldered gray man, with broad red suspenders over his gray woolen shirt, a colored cotton handkerchief awry about his neck. He was dusty and saddle-soiled, but full of loud words and boisterous animation, his big voice ringing in the dining-room audible to its remote corners. He was belted with a pistol; a shaggy gray mustache dropped over his mouth.

"Excuse me, ma'am," said Laylander, going forward to meet the man under Mrs. Cowgill's solicitous convoy.

Louise could feel trouble in the air, trouble in the way the young Texan stepped out to meet this man. The new guest stopped when he saw Laylander, squaring off as if to stand on the defense.

"Colonel Withers, is it true you've sent the sheriff out and attached my cattle?" Laylander demanded.

"You seem to be posted about right," Withers replied.

They stood set, each waiting for the other to make a move, each knowing the man before him well enough to understand what a false start would bring.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/68


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/69

 "I don't owe you, or any other man in Kansas, a cent, Colonel Withers. What kind of a trumped-up trick is this you're tryin' to throw over on me?"

"I don't trump up tricks, bud. You'll learn to pick your words better if you hang around where I'm at for a while. Maybe you don't owe me anything, personally, but your old daddy owed me ten thousand dollars long enough to make it an heirloom. I've been waitin' four years for him to send a herd into this state, but I never could git a twist on the old wolf's tail, so I trapped the cub."

"I never heard of any debt owin' to you," the young man said. He spoke more in challenge than denial, the ruddiness fading out of his face.

"Likely not, kid. But the longer you live the more you're due to pick up. I've got old Tom Laylander's note for ten thousand dollars, and it's a good and legal paper. I'm out to collect on it."

"You tolled me on to ship up here so you could levy on my herd!" Tom charged indignantly.

"You guessed it," Withers replied, exulting in the success of his deception.

"Debt or no debt, Colonel Withers, it was a low-handed, sneakin' trick! It was a trick that no man outside of a thief and a liar—"

Withers spun half around, hand on his gun, presenting himself side-on, like a fencer. He seemed to contract and expand, to bunch and spread, concentrating his strength for an outburst of destruction.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/69


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/70

 "Any man that spits them words in my face has got to eat 'em! got to eat 'em!" he said.

"You know the way to the door," Tom Laylander replied.

Calhoun Withers, called colonel from his auctioneering days, turned and marched toward the door, followed by young Laylander, whose courage was as high as his honor. Mrs. Cowgill was thrown into a frenzy of consternation by this sudden shaping of tragedy among her peaceful tables. She lifted her arms in impotent signal of distress, running to the long table where the few railroaders lingered over their late supper.

"Stop 'em, stop em, some of you men!" she appealed. "Cal Withers is goin' to kill him, and his supper ain't paid for!"

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/70


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/71

RS. COWGILL's fear that Tom Laylander might walk out of her door, and out of the world at the same time, leaving his supper bill unpaid, was premature and unfounded. While she stood making her appeal for interference to the railroad men, who had no concern whatever in what might happen to either of the combatants beyond the entertainment their engagement might afford, the little desk bell began to clamor in insistent and imperative call.

Mrs. Cowgill ran from the room, followed by the railroaders, who came crowding and jesting, working their jaws on the last hurriedly snatched bite, Goosie in the midst of them as gay as if going to a fair. Louise stood a few moments beside the table, hands on the dish-laden tray as if to lift it and go about her duty, let tragedy run out of the door as it might.

She felt a cold numbness settle over her, a shocking realization of the sacrifice that youth was marching out so passionately white and erect to make to honor. She had no doubt that Laylander had been cheated out of his property, or was in the way of being cheated, by

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/71


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/72

 a groundless claim, but she could not see how he was to help matters any by killing or being killed in the dusty road before the hotel door. She ran after the others, hoping to see somebody come between the angry men and send them away without a fight.

Laylander was before the desk, waiting for Mrs. Cowgill, who was just edging around behind it as Louise reached the office. The railroaders were bunched where they had stopped just inside the office door, not rash enough to allow curiosity to draw them into danger. Angus Valorous, in his white shirt without a collar, the neckband open on his whiskered throat, was pushing after Mrs. Cowgill as if to lend his assistance in the crisis which seemed to confront the establishment. Withers had gone out to the sidewalk. Louise saw him stand there a moment, then turn to the right and saunter nonchalantly past the window out of sight.

"I wish to pay for myself and the other gentleman that et with me," Laylander said, his voice calm and steady.

"It'll be a dollar," Mrs. Cowgill told him, a flutter in her tone, a greater flutter in her heart, which, as she said when recalling the experience, felt like it would wear itself out against her ribs.

Laylander put the money down. At the sight of it all of Mrs. Cowgill's concern for herself was dissipated, the humane and gentle part of her nature, pretty well hardened and driven back out of sight by frontier boarding house life for twenty years and more, impelled her to grasp the young man's hand.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/72


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/73

 "Don't go out there, don't you go!" she begged. "Cal Withers has killed three or four men in his time—they say he's a man that never takes chances—he'll not take any chances with you. He'll drop you the minute you step out of that door!'

"Thank you, ma'am," said Laylander, too haughtily proud in his anger and outraged feelings to be embarrassed by her restraining hand. "That was a very nice supper, ma'am. I'm much obliged."

He drew his hand away, gently, thoughtful of her, a kind stranger who wished him well, and started for the door.

"Don't go out there!" Mrs. Cowgill leaned over the counter and stretched her arms out in womanly appeal, the desperation of his situation growing on her as she pleaded. "Go to law and fight him, but don't try to do it with your gun!"

Laylander was at the door, his hand on the screen to push it open. He paused long enough to face around to her in grateful acknowledgment of her concern. He lifted his hand to her in a gallant little salute, and smiled.

"Can't some of you men stop him?" Mrs. Cowgill demanded of them savagely, turning to Windy Moore,'the brakeman, the roundhouse foreman and three others who made up the little crowd. "It's murder—it's murder!"

Angus Valorous reached under the counter and drew out a club, a stick such as brakemen used in those days for coupling cars and setting brakes. He made a dash

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/73


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/74

 for the end of the counter with it in his capable fist. Mrs. Cowgill threw herself in front of him, denying him passage.

"Not you—I don't mean you. One boy's enough to be killed!"

She cornered him behind the counter, pushing along close to the window, where Angus stood glaring and white, holding his club in both hands, like a ball bat, leaning over as if calculating his chances of jumping the counter and making for the door. Mrs. Cowgill caught him by the suspenders and held him prisoner.

Laylander was in plain view through the screen door, standing where he had stepped to the sidewalk, hand close to his gun. He was looking down the street in the direction Withers had gone.

"Somebody make him come in here!" Mrs. Cowgill begged.

The railroaders did not respond. They spread out a little, moving toward the door for a better view, indifferent to anybody's safety but their own. Louise went to the front of the office, where she stood leaning against the counter, feeling as weak and breathless as if her own life depended on some quick action of which she was not capable. She was only dimly conscious of other people in the room, the dread that chilled her was so benumbing and intense. She saw Laylander walk slowly across the broad sidewalk under the hotel awning, hand hovering over his pistol, fingers spread stiffly, awkwardly for such a tremendous emergency, it seemed. He stepped carefully, like a man wading a

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/74


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/75

 shallow, rapid, rocky stream, head turned to watch down the street.

Through the window at the end of the counter Louise saw Withers and three other men, all armed, starting across the street at a point about opposite the farther corner of the hotel. They were walking in the same cautious way, feet raised high at every step, heads twisted to watch the lone man who was wading out into that invisible stream of death, as it seemed to Louise, to face them and fall.

The railroaders craned their necks; nobody spoke. Angus Valorous, held by Mrs. Cowgill's determined hand, was beating the counter in quick, savage blows of his club, like a caged gorilla venting its impotent rage. Myron Cowgill came, pipe in his mouth, moved by a slow curiosity, to stand behind the railroaders and stretch his spine and tiptoe, in the deferential way of a man who had been subordinated to boarders for many years. A thin stream of smoke issued from the bowl of his pipe, to be drawn slowly out through the screen door.

Laylander was about a quarter of the way across the broad, dust-smothered street, his left hand a little before him, his feet lifted slowly and put down carefully, wading, wading into that invisible swift stream. He was watching Cal Withers and the three men along with him, as he went. Withers had come to the middle of the street, and stopped.

Louise Gardner moved a little nearer the door. She was taut as a wet rope, choked with the indignant,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/75


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/76

 voiceless protest against one man's foolish courage and four men's shameless threat. The others who stood watching the oncoming tragedy were silent. Angus Valorous ceased his clatter to lean and look, breath held for the first shot. Mrs. Cowgill stood clinging to his suspenders, her eyes big with the terror that paralyzed her ready tongue.

Laylander reached the middle of the street. There he squared around to face the little bunch of men twenty yards or less along the dusty way, backing from them a little, as if the distance did not agree with his method, or to give himself more time to calculate his chance against this unexpected number. As if in derision of this maneuver, but in fact to provoke Laylander into firing the first shot, Withers jerked off his hat and flung it sailing into the space that lay between them.

Laylander fell into the trap that would give Withers an excuse in law for shooting him down. He slung out his gun and put a bullet through the hat before it struck the ground.

Louise saw Laylander skip and leap, as a boy prances to dodge rocks and confuse the aim of his assailants, when the others began to shoot; she saw the little spurts of dust around his feet, and the jerking motion of his arm as he threw a quick shot in reply.

"Stop her! stop that girl!" Mrs. Cowgill screamed.

Angus Valorous beat a frenzied tattoo on the counter with his club as Louise dashed open the screen door and ran into the street between the fighting men,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/76


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/77

 before Laylander could steady himself for a second, and more effective, shot.

"They'll murder her!" Mrs. Cowgill cried out, her voice broken by alarm.

She hurried to the door, Angus close after her, club in his hand.

Louise stood facing Withers, her arms stretched out in commanding gesture, as if she barred the way to both his bullets and himself.

"She's flagged him!" said Windy Moore.

The shooting stopped with the appearance of Louise in the road. Mrs. Cowgill and Angus rushed in to enforce her demand for peace; everybody thought it was a good time to go out and hear what was said. Windy Moore, the brakeman, led the way from the hotel; Banjo Gibson came at the head of those who started over from the saloon. There was such a crowd between the lines in a few seconds that any more shooting for that occasion was out of all safety bounds.

Withers put up his pistol; somebody handed him his hat. He jerked it ungraciously from the man who had picked it up, beat the dust out of it against his leg, put it on, and stood glaring at Angus Valorous as if the blame for the whole disturbance lay on his head. Nobody appeared to be hurt on either side, although Laylander was lost sight of for the moment in the crowding forward and the up-trampling of dust.

"If I ever saw a low-down houn' on two legs," said Mrs. Cowgill, "I'm lookin' at one right now. Four of

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/77


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/78

 you to pile onto that innocent boy, no more shame in you, Cal Withers, than a dog!"

"When your opinion's needed, ma'am, it'll be called for," Withers said, the sting of her reproach bringing a surge of blood into his face.

"Put up that gun!" Angus Valorous commanded, lifting his club against one of Withers' men who stood with his weapon drawn as if he wanted to go on with the fight. The fellow looked with a sort of startled surprise at the bristling young man with the unsullied new club. "Put it up, I said!" Angus repeated, in the deep harsh voice of a terrible man.

The cowboy seemed to be charmed by the peculiar weapon that menaced his head. He fixed his eyes on Angus with startled, staring attention as his hand moved slowly to restore the pistol to its place.

"If you ever pull a gun on me I'll bust you wide open!" Angus threatened.

The people who had crowded up to see and hear pressed around Withers and his men in that questioning silence peculiar to a crowd that has arrived when the thing is over. There is an expression in such silence of feeling cheated out of something, and a question of whether it is going to begin again. Laylander approached, pushing his way apologetically among those who stood near Mrs. Cowgill.

"It's a handy thing to have a lady friend around to do your fightin' for you!" Withers said.

"The lady is a stranger to me, but no man can speak a slight against her where I'm at," Laylander replied.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/78


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/79

 Mrs. Cowgill put herself between them as the others fell back to make room for the show they had hoped all along would open again.

"She's the same to me as my daughter," Mrs. Cowgill declared. "You keep a still tongue in your mouth when you speak of that girl, Cal Withers!"

"Ma'am, I don't need any he-woman to tell me my business." Withers scored her with a look as he spoke. "You got through this time, but," turning to Laylander, "but you're not apt to be so lucky the next time I catch you away from the women folks. I just want to say this to you, kid: you're standin' where the roads branch; one of 'em runs off to nowhere, the other one to Texas. I'll leave it to you to pick the one you take."

"I'll be found right around here till I get my property back, Colonel Withers."

"He's no more colonel than my old black Rachel!" Mrs. Cowgill declared.

"You'll stay some time," Withers said, passing over Mrs. Cowgill's challenge to his honorable auctioneering title.

"I'll law you ten years, but I'll get them cattle of mine," Laylander said.

"You'll never live ten seconds if I meet you in the road!"

"There never will be a better time than right now, Colonel Withers."

"That's right!" said Windy Moore. "You might as well have it out right here."

"Four to one, the way Cal Withers always fights,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/79


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/80

 I've heard it said, and I'll bet money he could clean you up, too," Mrs. Cowgill said. "I'm not goin' to have any fightin' and scrappin' in front of my hotel, now or any other time, if I can put a stop to it."

The city marshal appeared at that moment. He had a word or two with Cal Withers, who started off in the direction of the saloon, his men shouldering up close around him, their heads together in close talk.

"They look as mean as misery," Banjo Gibson said.

Laylander looked around for the girl who had imperiled her life to save his own. She was not there. Windy Moore, who had an eye for every direction, saw what was passing in the young man's mind.

"I saw her skim across to the hotel," he said.

The crowd scattered, the sun went down, red as a clinker from a, with clouds banked darkly in the northwest threatening rain. Mrs. Cowgill looked strangely at Angus Valorous as he returned to the hotel beside her, his good sound club in hand. It was as if she had seen the man rise up in him, and was puzzled to account for it by any reasoning at her command.

Tom Laylander, under tow of Banjo Gibson, returned to the hotel and sat on a bench beside the door. From that haven they saw Withers and his men get on their horses presently and ride away, lifting, for a time at least, the constraint of watching from Laylander's troubled mind.

"She run right up to the room," Goosie whispered as she stood with her mother looking into the deserted dining-room.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/80


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/81

 "Well," said Mrs. Cowgill, in meaningless, empty way. "I'll send Angus to clear away the dishes."

"Didn't she make a sight of herself!" Goosie said, shocked beyond all bounds.

"I spoke my mind to Cal Withers," her mother returned, with wide irrelevance. "It'll cost me money, but I can live without his business. And I spoke my mind."

When she sent Angus Valorous to help Goosie with the dishes, Mrs. Cowgill gave him that queer, baffled, questioning look again. She went outside to take the cool of the evening on the bench along with Banjo Gibson and the young man from Texas, whose fresh, honest, homely face made her think of a pink cosmos flower, it was so plain, and yet so good to see. She did her best to assure him that he was among friends at the Cottonwood Hotel, no matter what might wait for him out in the road.

Business was slack at that hour; cowhands did not begin to come in until much later in the night, after they had made the round of the town. Angus Valorous—commonly called by her Angus I'lor's, after his own pronunciation of the sonorous word—would take care of them, as always. She puzzled again over that unexpected showing of the man in him, thinking in her own strange way that he must have grown up in the night without her noticing it.

She looked in at the window to see if Angus Valorous had returned to his duty behind the desk. Angus was there. He had taken three cigar boxes from the

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/81


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/82

 showcase, put the ink-bottle on one of them, making an engine of it. He was pushing this little train forward and back the length of the short counter, between showcase and wall, fat little mouth puckered, black-whiskered cheeks rising and falling in the rapid exhaust of his chuffing engine, the world and its business, its comedies and tragedies, shut out of his thoughts as by an iron door.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/82


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/83

HE parlor of the Cottonwood Hotel was in the front of the house, opposite the office. It was a room that was a sort of left-over, suitable for nothing else but a parlor, small and pinched, with two lean windows looking out on a cottonwood tree, the sidewalk and the end of the watering trough. Drummers sometimes used it for a sample room, making it gay with red underwear, silk petticoats, and neckties of assertive hues.

There was a little round table in the middle of the room, with a knitted cord cover; on the table a copy of Gems For. The Fireside, a thick brown book with tinsel lettering, representing Mrs. Cowsgill's sole literary investment during the course of her life; a folding panorama of Niagra Falls; a lamp with a china bowl and festive, pleated shade. There was a sofa which presented disconcerting inequalities, like the carcass of a dead horse; and a chair with spiral springs, upholstered in ingrain carpeting, standing over against the window which gave the best view upon the street. This chair sighed and creaked when sat on, very much like

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/83


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/84

 the sound of air brakes under freight cars, well in harmony with the railroad atmosphere of the house.

There was a picture of a plate of fish on the wall, and another one of Pharaoh's Horses, alarmed and wild-eyed, seeming always about to bolt away from the scent of the fish and never making a start. There were rocking chairs with spindles in the backs, like the balusters of stairs, and narrow arms which crowded a railroader or stockman to force himself into their embrace; and a carpet with big flowers such as never grew in any field but that of the loom; and in a corner an organ, with work on the top of it similar to the headboard of an old-time walnut bed. It was a very grand organ, having many stops and starts, all of which were known to Goosie like the toes on her feet. When Goosie played it and sang Ma-ha-goreet, her tears fell down upon the keys.

Mrs. Cowgill liked to sit in the carpet chair on rainy days, such as this, and watch the cowhands come and go on their drenched horses, mud to the fetlocks in the street that was dust but yesterday, water slithering from their slickers, not much gaiety in them, and no regard for anybody who wanted to cross on foot. Banjo Gibson was sitting at the other window, facing Mrs. Cowgill in amiable propinquity. Banjo was living at the Cottonwood Hotel on his means; he would continue on that arrangement until his wad of sixty dollars was gone, which would be a good while at five dollars a week for room and board, the current rate for regulars at that house. Which was a high rate for that

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/84


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/85

 town and that day, sufficient to keep the vulgar in their proper place.

It was that slack hour in the afternoon between dinner and supper—there was no such meal as luncheon in the heavy economy of the Cottonwood Hotel—when cook and dining-room girls, as well as Mrs. Cowgill, had a little while to catch their breath. Mrs. Cowgill encouraged the girls to make use of the parlor during this lull, their presence there giving the house an air of liveliness and continual business. Goosie frequently pumped the organ in the afternoon, and sang her sentimental songs, although she could not merge herself so completely and comfortably with the lost ladies of the ballads when there was anybody around as she could when alone, and in a darkened place.

Mrs. Cowgill had a son, a knock-kneed, shambling, long-armed stuttering chap of twenty-four or five, who had a regular run firing a through freight. She called him Herby, but everybody else called him Pap. He was laying over today, and he also was in the parlor, spread out on the sofa in the elegant repose of a man who could afford it. He had blue sleeve-holders with tassels. Pap had a naturally leering and goggling look about him which seemed to mock and discredit everybody, and everything they said. He talked slowly and thickly, his words catching frequently, like a knot at the end of a rope.

So these three lights of civilization were in the parlor of the Cottonwood Hotel, engaged in a three-cornered

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/85


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/86

 talk, the subject of which was Tom Laylander, and his adventures in McPacken.

"I sent him to Judge Dockum," Mrs. Cowgill said. "I knew if his case was to be won, Judge Dockum could win it."

"It'll be five or six weeks before court meets," said Banjo, "and them cattle they're out there with nine or ten deputy sheriffs herdin' and watchin' over them. It don't matter much, it looks to me, who wins, with all them costs to pay. Won't be nothing left."

"Poor feller! He paid them two men that helped him bring the cattle up from Texas, and he had to put down a hundred dollars before Judge Dockum he'd touch the case. It left him strapped."

"I hu-hu-hope you ain't carryin' him on," said Pap.

"He paid a week in advance, but his time's up today. Well, I wouldn't shut down on him, even if he didn't have a job."

"Got a job, has he?" Banjo inquired, a laugh in his words as if he saw humor in the necessity that drove a man to that pass.

"Funny the way that boy hunted high and low over this town for work and couldn't find it anywhere," Mrs. Cowgill soliloquized. "Yes; oh yes. He got a job this morning; starts in tomorrow, he told me."

"Cow job?" Banjo inquired.

"No; too bad it ain't. But he didn't want to leave town," he said. I think the poor boy wants to be here in hopes he'll meet that old rascal Withers and shoot it out between them."

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/86


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/87

 "From what I hear of Withers he ain't so long on the fight as you might take him to be," Banjo said.

"He'll fight, all right," Mrs. Cowgill corrected him, seriously and glumly enough. "The trouble with him is he wants to have a sure thing. That boy never wilt meet him alone; Cal's always goin' to be careful to have two or three limber-jims with him when he comes to town. I saw him in yesterday morning with that same gang he had the other day, but Tom was out hustlin' around for a job and didn't even know he was in town."

"Maybe he wasn't lookin' for him very hu-hu-hard," said Pap.

"Don't fool yourself!" Banjo advised, seriously. "That boy he'd wade through a river of wildcats for a crack at that old crook."

"He won't make the mistake of shootin' first next time, though," Mrs. Cowgill said confidently. "I posted him on that. Well, when he goes to work maybe he'll be kep' out of the way. Cal don't come to town except to do his business with the bank and buy his supplies. He's only around here in business hours. I hope to mercy we can put off that shootin' match till Tom beats the case in court."

"What kind of a job's he got?" Pap asked.

"It was funny the way he went around town huntin' work," Mrs. Cowgill said, ignoring the importunities of Banjo and her son, bound to begin at the beginning and move all the trifles out of her way clear down to the end. "He was wearin' that old white Stetson—well it was white once—with the crown pushed up as high as

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/87


text: Page:กม ร ๗ - ๒๔๗๖.pdf/33

title: Page:กม ร ๗ - ๒๔๗๖.pdf/33


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/88

 it would go, his gun hangin' on him like he was out to kill. He went to the roundhouse first, and struck Ford Langley to take him on. Ford said he looked like a toothpick under a toadstool with that big hat on, his face kind of peakid the way it's got since this trouble struck him. Ford sent him on to the shops, and the boys there got onto the joke and passed him along from one fool thing to another. They kep' him trottin' two or three days before he caught on they were kiddin' him."

Banjo Gibson laughed; a care-free, head-back, mouth-open laugh that rang with an appreciation of life. Pap seemed indifferent to the further adventures of the Texas cowman, ignoble creature at the best.

"He tried the livery stable and the stores, and I believe he even tried the bank," Mrs. Cowgill continued.

"Where'd he pick up a job?" Banjo asked, trying politely to bring the evasive narration to an end.

"Jerryin'. Orrin Smith took him on the section."

"The hu-hu-hell you say!" said Pap.

Banjo said nothing. He looked sort of foolish, his face coloring a little, as if he had heard something obscene.

"He asked me for board when he come in at noon, and I told him I'd let him stay."

"The hu-hu-hell you did!" said Pap.

"I've been kind of thick with that feller, I kind of took up with him," Banjo confessed, regret, humiliation, in his tone.

"Well, he didn't know any better than to go to jerry-

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/88


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/89

 in'. He's as green as grass," Mrs. Cowgill excused him.

"Jerryin'!" Banjo derided. "I'd ruther git me a tin bill and shovel mud with the ducks."

"It was funny," Mrs. Cowgill reflected, the humor of the case bright in her eyes. "When he come back today he said he was goin' railroadin'."

"The hu-hu-hell he did! Damn jerry!" Pap was so moved by the fellow's presumption that he sat up, his greasy countenance inflamed, his pop eyes leering.

"What're they payin' the jerries now?" Banjo asked, indifferently.

"Two-and-a-half on this division; east of here only two," Mrs. Cowgill replied.

"You'll be losin' a lot of railroad men if you make this hu-hu-house a dump for jerries," Pap warned her.

"There'll only be him and Orrin. Nobody's got any kick comin' on Orrin, him boss, even if it ain't such a very high-up job. I'll put him and Tom off together at a corner table, and Louise can wait on 'em. Nobody'll notice. Well, I don't care if they do. He's a good, decent boy; he didn't know what he was doin' when he took a section-hand job."

"Let him go over to Ryan's with the rest of the jerries," Pap suggested indignantly.

"He'll stay right here in this house till he gets good and ready to leave," said Mrs. Cowgill.

She closed her mouth very tightly on the declaration, her thin lips fitting like some excellent piece of joinery.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/89


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/90

 Pap knew what it meant when she spoke and looked that way. <A switch engine couldn't move her.

Pap went to the office and helped himself to one of the best cigars in the case, which was no great drain on the finances of the establishment. He sat on the porch smoking. Mrs. Cowgill could see him, sitting there gloomy and disgruntled, as much out of sorts over her harboring a common jerry in that house as if he had been called on to share his bed with a stranger.

Louise came to the parlor door, looked in, and started away.

"Was you lookin' for something, Louise?" Mrs. Cowgill called.

"The rest of the Kansas City paper." Louise displayed part of it, with a nod and friendly smile to Banjo, who waved his hand airily.

"I ain't seen it," Mrs. Cowgill returned indifferently, "but I expect Myron's got it off in a corner somewhere. That man he'll read anything; he'll let business go any day to set down with a book or a paper and read."

Mrs. Cowgill was censorious and severe. She had no pride in her husband's facility with an accomplishment that was only a business adjunct to her, and loosely grasped at the best. She had heard Myron boast that he could read his carpenter's square, once in an argument with a timber carpenter on a bridge gang. Myron had meant to prove by that assertion that he was an aristocrat among carpenters, one who had learned his trade by a long apprenticeship and could "lay out" a house. It had become a prodpole in his

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/90


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/91

 wife's hands, much to Myron's discomfort in subsequent years.

"Oh well, let him read it then," said Louise, unwilling to snatch one of Myron's few pleasures out of his hand. She entered the parlor, and sat on the end of the sofa.

"If he'd do more of his readin' on his square, as I tell him, maybe I wouldn't have to slave my head off runnin' a hotel," Mrs. Cowgill said bitterly, at war on every point with all manner of printed matter that was not pressed into steel. "Now, there goes Herby over to the saloon! Banjo, I wish you'd go after him and tell him to let that slop alone. Tell him I said he'd better remember he's got to go out on his run tonight, and to let that slop alone!"

Banjo was not reluctant to go. He felt that he could carry a shot or two very cheerfully that gloomy day himself.

"I guess he's just goin' over to play a game of seven-up," said he, rising, making preparation to follow. "Well, Louise, how're you stackin' up?"

"I'm as gay as possible, Mr. Banjo."

"Mr. Banjo!" Mrs. Cowgill repeated in comical astonishment, as she might have exclaimed over finding a ribbon on the handle of her frying pan. Then she laughed, shrilly, in sudden outbreak, according to her habit, very little change in her facial expression indicative of mirth except her wide-stretched mouth.

"I thought you might be in love," said Banjo, face-

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/91


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/92

 tiously. "You kind o' look like you'd been losin' sleep. If you need any advice, come to me."

"Thank you, Mr. Banjo." Louise made him a little bow, a merry light in her agate-clear brown eyes.

"I never heard you was a love doctor, Banjo," Mrs. Cowgill said. Her fit of merriment had brought a flush to her cheeks, as brandy starts its fires under the eyes of one not accustomed to its use. Perhaps laughter intoxicated Mrs. Cowgill in like manner, so unaccustomed to her lips.

Banjo laughed in his own loud way, the machinery being well oiled and easy to swing in his case. It was a pleasant sound, tuneful, contagious. One scarcely could help laughing with Banjo Gibson, let the matter that moved it be as trivial as a gnat. He waved his hand, jaunty and care-free as a troubadour should be. At next sight of him he was picking his way across the muddy street.

"Well, he ought to be posted in love matters, if he ain't," Mrs. Cowgill reflected, watching him with a sort of aloof and impersonal interest, as she might have watched a rooster engaged on a similar expedition. "He's been married to three women; he ought to know something about love."

"Young as he is?" Louise marvelled, taking the chair lately vacated by the notable under discussion. "What became of them all?"

"Two of them run off with other men and one divorced him," Mrs. Cowgill replied, Banjo Gibson's simple history succinct and ready on her tongue.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/92


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/93

 "He's had a lot of experience for a little man," said Louise, looking after him with new interest. "But his losses don't seem to trouble him very much."

"No, nor make him any wiser. He's as light in the head as smoke. Well, if there ain't Maud Kelly! Look at her—just look at her—liftin' up them skirts!"

Louise leaned to see. A tall young woman, wearing a man's sombrero, a rubber cape around her shoulders, was crossing the street a little below the point where Banjo Gibson had forded it. She was displaying considerably more shank than was countenanced in those long-skirted days, stopping now and then to sling the viscous mud from her feet with a vigorous forward kick, which did not add to the decorum of her march.

It was plain that public opinion had very little weight with Maud Kelly. She was careless of the curious eyes fixed on her up and down the street. She crossed over to the hotel, where she stamped the rough of the mud off and continued on her way.

"Well, as I live! If that girl was a daughter of mine I'd sew her up in a sack," Mrs. Cowgill declared.

"She seems to be unconscious of any unusual display," said Louise. "Who is she? I mean, does she belong to anybody in particular?"

"Her father's one of our retired men; lives here in town. He used to be a cattleman, and a big one in his day, but he lost most of his money in mines. Maud's got a job in the court house; deputy county treasurer. Fine one to be trustin' with all that money!"

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/93


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/94

 "She seems to be rather strong-minded," Louise ventured. She was looking at Maud Kelly's back as she went swinging up the street, skirts held high above her shoetops with careless grasp, swishing about her legs as she strode along swinging her arm.

"I don't think she's got much of any kind of a mind. She's just dare-devilish and don't care. Last winter she was ont on a hayride with some of the young folks here in town and the boys bantered her to strike a match like a man. Well, she done it!"

"She looks like she would," said Louise. "Was it day or night?"

"Night, thank goodness! But it wouldn't 'a' made no difference to her. Anyhow, we'll soon be rid of her in the treasurer's office. She's goin' to resign her job in a month or so to be married. She's marryin' a man named Cook, baggage-smasher here on the road. He's a big, fine-lookin' man with a brown mustache. He's got a good job, too, better than brakeman; he makes good money, but I don't think it's the kind of a job the man that marries that girl ought to have—home one day and away two. The man that marries Maud Kelly wants to be at home every day."

"I wish I was a citizen of this town; I'd go and apply for her job."

"Yes, it'd be more suitable to you than dining-room work. If Goosie had the education you've got I wouldn't keep her around this place a minute. Why don't you try for the job, anyhow? Mr. Montgomery,

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/94


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/95

 the treasurer, he stops in every morning on his way to the office for a cigar—he says I keep the best in town. I'll speak to him about it in the morning. I wouldn't doubt he'd hire you in a minute."

"I never did that kind of work; I don't know a thing about it, but I believe I could handle the job, all right."

"Of course you could. Nothing to do but make out tax receipts and take in money. I could nearly do that myself—I could if I could write and spell a little better."

"There are mighty few things you couldn't do," said Louise, with more sincerity than flattery. She had seen enough of Julia Cowgill to know that she was a highly competent woman, indeed.

"I'll speak to him about it in the morning for you. It's a good place to get married from, better than a dining-room, respectable and nice as that is if a girl wants to make it that 'way. Of course Goosie she's doin' well with Bill Connor. He'll get his engine next year and they can live in style down in Argentine. But every girl in dining-room work can't do that well. Goosie ain't a hired girl. It's like marryin' a member of the firm."

"Yes, there's a big difference," said Louise.

She had felt this difference from the first in the attitude of the regular boarders who were familiar with her standing there. They attempted familiarities with her which they would not dare with the landlady's

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/95


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/96

 daughter, subjected her to coarse jokes and boisterous humor from which Goosie was supremely exempt.

Ford Langley, roundhouse foreman, was one of the leading humorists of the dining-room. He was as persistent as one of those gnats which dance and dart before the face when one walks at evening along a woodland path, innocuous but irritating. Ford Langley was no more to be brushed aside nor frightened away from his provoking witticisms than one of those inconsequential creatures, which fill no purpose in nature save to provoke and irritate, that any man ever has found out.

Langley was playing up to Goosie, plainly in the hope of supplanting Bill Connor, employing all the small flatteries of a sycophant. The most favored trick Langley had among his crude devices was showing Goosie in light superior to the green girl.

Langley would wink and smirk, and pass remarks about educated biscuit-shooters. He had many witty things to say about the thousand ways to make money that such a superior person knew, of which biscuit-shooting was the surest and best. Langley was an under-sized, dark-visaged man, with a nose sharp enough to work embroidery, as Mrs. Cowgill said. He had been reduced from engineer, and hoped to mount to that exalted station again in his day. Louise took Langley's banter with outward indifference, only now and then giving him a cut with some clever retort that turned the laugh to her side. These little flashes of

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/96


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/97

 tepartee, her ready efforts to please everybody with her service, no matter how gay or how glum, raised up certain champions for her, who were not silent in her defense. Louise would much rather have had them keep their peace.

Goosie was friendly, but cynical and impatient, after the way of people who know much about some common thing, and hold all the rest of the world ignorant and in contempt. Try as she might, Louise could not march up to the swinging door between kitchen and dining-room with a loaded tray on her palm, held at shoulder's level, back up to it and give it a kick with anything approaching the art of Goosie.

Louise had to take the door slowly, pushing it with her free shoulder and edging through; Goosie marched out while it was on the swing from her competent and practiced foot. Louise was afraid to risk more than half as high a stack of empties on the tray as Goosie bore in triumph to the kitchen sink, where Angus Valorous washed them in the midst of a clatter from which he drew no knowing what simulation of jangling freight trains and puffing engines.

There was no romance, and mighty little dignity, in the labor of carrying on food at the Cottonwood Hotel; perhaps there is not much romance nor dignity in such a job anywhere. Louise did not doubt that Goosie's complaint of the unequal distribution of work, due to her assistant's want of bone and muscle, and inability to master the art of kicking open a swinging door, had led to Mrs. Cowgill's suggestion about the court house

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/97


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/98

 job. There was hope in the outlook, Louise knew, for Mrs. Cowgill was a woman with a pull. If her pull with the county treasurer was only half as strong as it was with the division superintendent of the railroad, Louise believed Mrs. Cowgill could land her in Maud Kelly's place without putting her influence to much of a strain.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/98


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/99

NE day of sun turned the mud of Santa Fe street into dust again, not so deep and comfortable under a horse's hoof as before, yet plenti ful enough to give the two cottonwood trees in front of the hotel a gray and familiar look. Angus Valorous came to the door at four o'clock, neckband open, sleeves rolled above his elbows and held there by pink elastic bands with crinkled edges, which looked as if they had been designed for feminine purposes not quite so public.

This was beefsteak and onions day at the Cottonwood Hotel; Angus Valorous was still inflamed and lacrimose from paring and slicing half a peck of Irish figs. His attitude toward the public was resentfully 'indignant, as a man who had been put under a slight. He looked up and down the sidewalk, turned his head like a chicken and took a one-eyed quick calculation of the sun, sniffing inaudibly, but visibly, as he glanced at Banjo Gibson, who was sitting on one of the green benches beside the door.

Angus went for his watering pot after making these

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/99


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/100

 observations, and dampened down the sidewalk planks. There was no question, after that proceeding, that dry weather had come back to McPacken again. Angus sprinkled very close to Banjo Gibson's feet, suspended his stream suddenly, looked up with an expression of forbearing injury, as if he had met with another public affront.

"Can't you move?" he demanded, his voice rumbling in manly threat.

"I guess I can," Banjo replied, equally injured and insulted.

"I got to sprinkle here," Angus insisted.

Banjo kept his place on the end of the bench. The watering pot was dribbling a little stream near the toe of his polished shoe.

"If your head swells any bigger," said Banjo, unimpressed by the imperative necessity of water on that particular spot, "it'll bust like a fall cabbage after a rain, When that happens to you, young feller, all that'll be left of you will be a little mist."

Banjo moved along the bench a few feet after handing out this, leaving the dry spot open to the operations of Angus.

"Ya-a-a! what's it to you!" snarled Angus, sprinkling away.

"If you ever do get to be a brakey you'll be one of the kind that thinks the train's a runnin' for your sport and pleasure, and you're doin' the passengers a favor to let 'em ride."

"Ya-a-a! what's it to you!"

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/100


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/101

 "You'll never see the day you'll climb a boxcar with a badge on your hat. Even a brakey's got to have brains enough to turn around."

"Aw-w-w! go ahn an' bite yourself!"

Angus emptied his can and stood swinging it to drain out the last drops, belligerent, bristling. He was not taken down by Banjo's sarcasm; he was not to be taken down by any reproof that human tongue could frame. Banjo ignored him. He crossed his legs comfortably, and went on in pursuit of his own thoughts and ambitions, which perhaps were neither very deep nor high.

Angus went in to let his sleeves down and put on his collar, signal that his menial tasks were over for that day, and that he was not going to help the girls bear off and on in the dining-room that evening. When Angus put his collar on he felt that he had put up the flags of an extra. He was then official in the front office; he had the right of way over everything. Mrs. Cowgill respected that signal. She would have turned in and helped the girls herself before she would have asked Angus to carry on beefsteak and onions with his standup collar on.

Banjo Gibson remained on the green bench beside the door, building the sort of castles a shallow little inconsequential grig of a man may lift in the romantic distances of his vision. Tinsel castles, doubtless, with painted ladies in them, and no board to pay. He remained there until the whistle at the shops announced the close of the railroad day, and the men began to arrive for supper. As they passed him, Banjo had a

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/101


text:
Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/102

 hearty word for everyone, and they were no less cordial, although somewhat patronizing and indulgent, as toward an inferior who had the special license of a peculiar gift or genius which lifted him almost up to their plane.

Bill Connor came in from his run, the first time Banjo had seen him since his return. Banjo had left him a wiper in the roundhouse when he went away from McPacken two years before to follow the fortunes of the medicine man. Now Bill had grown in bulk and consequence, but Banjo knew him the moment his foot struck the sidewalk under the awning.

It was a delightful reunion, at least for Banjo. He exclaimed in the wondering pleasure that an accomplished flatterer can make so pleasing to the object of it, as he looked Bill over from his little black cap with green visor to the soles of his oily big shoes. They were talking that way, Banjo all laughter, Bill grinning tolerantly, his broad face sooted and black, when Tom Laylander came in from his first day's work as a section hand, or jerry, as the men who made the road safe for the wheels were called in derision.

"Hello, Mr. Gibson," Tom hailed, warmly and ingenuously, pausing a moment, a smile lighting up his face.

Banjo cut short his animated talk, turning slowly, as if an unwelcome, impertinent hand had been laid on his shoulder. He looked blankly, coldly, into Tom Laylander's face, seeming to say: "Now, who is this rascally vagabond?" Only he did not say anything.

title: Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/102