A Deal in Wheat
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Frank Norris >> A Deal in Wheat
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Felice threw on such clothes as came to her hand and ran over to the
office, returning with the doctor, half dressed and blinking in the
lantern-light. He went in to the wounded man at once, and Lockwood, at
the end of all strength, dropped into the hammock on the porch,
stretching out his leg to ease the anguish of his broken foot. He leaned
back and closed his eyes wearily, aware only of a hideous swirl of pain,
of intolerable anxiety as to Chino's wound, and, most of all, of a mere
blur of confusion wherein the sights and sounds of the last few hours
tore through his brain with the plunge of a wild galloping such as
seemed to have been in his ears for years and years.
But as he lay thus he heard a step at his side. Then came the touch of
Felice's long brown hand upon his face. He sat up, opening his eyes.
"You aisk me-a," she said, "eef I do onderstaind, eh? Yais, I
onderstaind. You--" her voice was a whisper--"you shoot Chino, eh? I
know. You do those thing' for me-a. I am note angri, no-a. You ver'
sharp man, eh? All for love oaf Felice, eh? Now we be happi, maybe; now
we git married soam day byne-by, eh? Ah, you one brave man, Signor
Lockwude!"
She would have taken his hand, but Lockwood, the pain all forgot, the
confusion all vanishing, was on his feet. It was as though a curtain
that for months had hung between him and the blessed light of clear
understanding had suddenly been rent in twain by her words. The woman
stood revealed. All the baseness of her tribe, all the degraded savagery
of a degenerate race, all the capabilities for wrong, for sordid
treachery, that lay dormant in her, leaped to life at this unguarded
moment, and in that new light, that now at last she had herself let in,
stood pitilessly revealed, a loathsome thing, hateful as malevolence
itself.
"What," shouted Lockwood, "you think--think that I--that I
_could_--oh-h, it's monstrous--_you_----" He could find no words to
voice his loathing. Swiftly he turned away from her, the last spark of
an evil love dying down forever in his breast.
It was a transformation, a thing as sudden as a miracle, as conclusive
as a miracle, and with all a miracle's sense of uplift and power. In a
second of time the scales seemed to fall from the man's eyes, fetters
from his limbs; he saw, and he was free.
At the door Lockwood met the doctor:
"Well?"
"He's all right; only a superficial wound. He'll recover. But you--how
about you? All right? Well, that is a good hearing. You've had a lucky
escape, my boy."
"I _have_ had a lucky escape," shouted Lockwood. "You don't know just
how lucky it was."
A BARGAIN WITH PEG-LEG
"Hey, youse!" shouted the car-boy. He brought his trundling, jolting,
loose-jointed car to a halt by the face of the drift. "Hey, youse!" he
shouted again.
Bunt shut off the Burly air-drill and nodded.
"Chaw," he remarked to me.
We clambered into the car, and, as the boy released the brake, rolled
out into the main tunnel of the Big Dipple, and banged and bumped down
the long incline that led to the mouth.
"Chaw" was dinner. It was one o'clock in the morning, and the men on the
night shift were taking their midnight spell off. Bunt was back at his
old occupation of miner, and I--the one loafer of all that little world
of workers--had brought him a bottle of beer to go with the "chaw"; for
Bunt and I were ancient friends.
As we emerged from the cool, cave-like dampness of the mine and ran out
into the wonderful night air of the Sierra foothills, warm, dry,
redolent of witch-hazel, the carboy began to cough, and, after we had
climbed out of the car and had sat down on the embankment to eat and
drink, Bunt observed:
"D'ye hear that bark? That kid's a one-lunger for fair. Which ain't no
salubrious graft for him--this hiking cars about in the bowels of the
earth, Some day he'll sure up an' quit. Ought to go down to Yuma a
spell."
The engineer in the mill was starting the stamps. They got under way
with broken, hiccoughing dislocations, bumping and stumbling like the
hoofs of a group of horses on the cattle-deck in a gale. Then they
jumped to a trot, then to a canter, and at last settled down to the
prolonged roaring gallop that reverberated far off over the entire
canon.
"I knew a one-lunger once," Bunt continued, as he uncorked the bottle,
"and the acquaintance was some distressful by reason of its bringing me
into strained relations with a cow-rustlin', hair-liftin',
only-one-born-in-captivity, man-eatin' brute of a one-legged Greaser
which he was named Peg-leg Smith. He was shy a leg because of a shotgun
that the other man thought wasn't loaded. And this here happens, lemme
tell you, 'way down in the Panamint country, where they wasn't no doctor
within twenty miles, and Peg-leg outs with his bowie and amputates that
leg hisself, then later makes a wood stump outa a ole halter and a
table-leg. I guess the whole jing-bang of it turned his head, for he
goes bad and loco thereafter, and begins shootin' and r'arin' up an'
down the hull Southwest, a-roarin' and a-bellerin' and a-takin' on
amazin'. We dasn't say boo to a yaller pup while he's round. I never see
such mean blood. Jus' let the boys know that Peg-leg was anyways
adjacent an' you can gamble they walked chalk.
"Y'see, this Peg-leg lay it out as how he couldn't abide no cussin' an'
swearin'. He said if there was any tall talkin' done he wanted to do it.
And he sure could. I've seed him hold on for six minutes by the watch
an' never repeat hisself once. An' shoot! Say, lemme tell you he did for
two Greasers once in a barroom at La Paz, one in front o' him, t'other
straight behind, _him_ standing between with a gun in each hand, and
shootin' both guns _at the same time_. Well, he was just a terror,"
declared Bunt, solemnly, "and when he was in real good form there wa'n't
a man south o' Leadville dared to call his hand.
"Now, the way I met up with this skunkin' little dewdrop was this-like
It was at Yuma, at a time when I was a kid of about nineteen. It was a
Sunday mornin'; Peg-leg was in town. He was asleep on a lounge in the
back room o' Bud Overick's Grand Transcontinental Hotel. (I used to
guess Bud called it that by reason that it wa'n't grand, nor
transcontinental, nor yet a hotel--it was a bar.) This was twenty year
ago, and in those days I knowed a one-lunger in Yuma named Clarence. (He
couldn't help that--he was a good kid--but his name _was_ Clarence.) We
got along first-rate. Yuma was a great consumptive place at that time.
They used to come in on every train; yes, and go out, too--by freight.
"Well, findin' that they couldn't do much else than jes' sit around an'
bark and keep their shawls tight, these 'ere chaps kinda drew together,
and lay it out to meet every Sunday morning at Bud's to sorta talk it
over and have a quiet game. One game they had that they played steady,
an' when I drifted into Bud's that morning they was about a dozen of 'em
at it--Clarence, too. When I came in, there they be, all sittin' in a
circle round a table with a cigar box on it. They'd each put four bits
into the box. That was the pot.
"A stranger wouldn't 'a' made nothin' very excitin' out of that game,
nor yet would 'a' caught on to what it were. For them pore yaps jes' sat
there, each with his little glass thermometer in his mouth, a-waitin'
and a-waitin' and never sayin' a word. Then bime-by Bud, who's a-holdin'
of the watch on 'em, sings out 'Time!' an' they all takes their
thermometers out an' looks at 'em careful-like to see where they stand.
"'Mine's ninety-nine,' says one.
"An' another says:
"'Mine's a hundred.'
"An' Clarence pipes up--coughin' all the time:
"'Mine's a hundred 'n one 'n 'alf.'
"An', no one havin' a higher tempriture than that, Clarence captures the
pot. It was a queer kind o' game.
"Well, on that particular Sunday morning they's some unpleasantness
along o' one o' the other one-lungers layin' it out as how Clarence had
done some monkey-business to make his tempriture so high. It was said as
how Clarence had took and drunk some hot tea afore comin' into the game
at Bud's. They all began to discuss that same p'int.
"Naturally, they don't go at it polite, and to make their remarks
p'inted they says a cuss-word occasional, and Clarence, bein' a
high-steppin' gent as takes nobody's dust, slings it back some forceful.
"Then all at once they hears Peg-leg beller from where's he layin' on
the lounge (they ain't figured on his bein' so contiguous), and he gives
it to be understood, does Peg-leg, as how the next one-lunger that
indulges in whatsoever profanity will lose his voice abrupt.
"They all drops out at that, bar the chap who had the next highest
tempriture to Clarence. Him having missed the pot by only a degree or so
is considerable sore.
"'Why,' says he, 'I've had a reg'lar _fever_ since yesterday afternoon,
an' only just dodged a hem'rage by a squeak. I'm all legitimate, I am;
an' if you-alls misdoubts as how my tempriture ain't normal you kin jes'
ask the doctor. I don't take it easy that a strappin', healthy gesabe
whose case ain't nowheres near the hopeless p'int yet steps in here with
a scalded mouth and plays it low.'
"Clarence he r'ars right up at that an' forgits about Peg-leg an'
expresses doubts, not to say convictions, about the one-lunger's chances
of salvation. He puts it all into about three words, an' just as quick
as look at it we hears ol' Peg-leg's wooden stump a-comin'. We stampedes
considerable prompt, but Clarence falls over a chair, an' before he kin
get up Peg-leg has him by the windpipe.
"Now I ain't billin' myself as a all-round star hero an' general
grand-stand man. But I was sure took with Clarence, an' I'd 'a' been
real disappointed if Peg-leg 'ud a-killed him that morning--which he
sure was tryin' to do when I came in for a few chips.
"I don' draw on Peg-leg, him being down on his knees over Clarence, an'
his back turned, but without sensin' very much _what_ I'm a-doin' of I
grabs holt o' the first part o' Peg-leg that comes handy, which, so help
me, Bob, is his old wooden leg. I starts to pull him off o' Clarence,
but instead o' that I pulls off the wooden leg an' goes a-staggerin'
back agin the wall with the thing in my fist.
"Y'know how it is now with a fightin' pup if you pull his tail while
he's a-chawin' up the other pup. Ye can bat him over the head till
you're tired, or kick him till you w'ars your boot out, an' he'll go
right on chawin' the harder. But monkey with his tail an' he's that
sensitive an' techy about it that he'll take a interest right off.
"Well, it were just so with Peg-leg--though I never knew it. Just by
accident I'd laid holt of him where he was tender; an' when he felt that
leg go--say, lemme tell you, he was some excited. He forgits all about
Clarence, and he lines out for me, a-clawin' the air. Lucky he'd left
his gun in the other room.
"Well, sir, y'ought to have seen him, a-hoppin' on one foot, and banging
agin the furniture, jes' naturally black in the face with rage, an'
doin' his darnedest to lay his hands on me, roarin' all the whiles like
a steer with a kinked tail.
"Well, I'm skeered, and I remarks that same without shame. I'm skeered.
I don't want to come to no grapples with Peg-leg in his wrath, an' I
knows that so long as he can't git his leg he can't take after me very
fast. Bud's saloon backs right up agin the bluff over the river. So what
do I do but heave that same wooden leg through one o' the back windows,
an' down she goes (as I _thought_) mebbe seventy feet into the canon o'
the Colorado? And then, mister man, _I skins out--fast_.
"I takes me headlong flight by way o' the back room and _on-root_
pitches Peg-leg's gun over into the canon, too, an' then whips around
the corner of the saloon an' fetches out ag'in by the street in front.
With his gun gone an' his leg gone, Peg-leg--so long's y'ain't within
arm's reach--is as harmless as a horned toad. So I kinda hangs 'round
the neighbourhood jes' to see what-all mout turn up.
"Peg-leg, after hoppin' back to find that his gun was gone, to look for
his leg, comes out by the front door, hoppin' from one chair to another,
an' seein' me standin' there across the street makes remarks; an' he
informs me that because of this same little turn-up this mornin' I ain't
never goin' to live to grow hair on my face. His observations are that
vigorous an' p'inted that I sure begin to see it that way, too, and I
says to myself:
"'Now you, Bunt McBride, you've cut it out for yourself good and hard,
an' the rest o' your life ain't goin' to be free from nervousness.
Either y'ought to 'a' let this here hell-roarin' maverick alone or else
you should 'a' put him clean out o' business when you had holt o' his
shootin'-iron. An' I ain't a bit happy.' And then jes' at this stage o'
the proceedings occurs what youse 'ud call a diversion.
"It seemed that that wood stump didn't go clean to the river as I first
figured, but stuck three-fourths the way down. An' a-course there's a
fool half-breed kid who's got to chase after it, thinkin' to do Peg-leg
a good turn.
"I don't know nothin' about this, but jes' stand there talkin' back to
Peg-leg, an' pre-tendin' I ain't got no misgivings, when I sees this kid
comin' a-cavoortin' an' a-cayoodlin' down the street with the leg in his
hands, hollerin' out:
"'Here's your leg, Mister Peg-leg! I went an' got it for you, Mister
Peg-leg!'
"It ain't so likely that Peg-leg could 'a' caught me even if he'd had
his leg, but I wa'n't takin' no chances. An' as Peg-leg starts for the
kid I start, too--with my heart knockin' agin my front teeth, you can
bet.
"I never knew how fast a man could hop till that mornin', an', lookin'
at Peg-leg with the tail o' my eye as I ran, it seemed to me as how he
was a-goin' over the ground like a ole he-kangaroo. But somehow he gets
off his balance and comes down all of a smash like a rickety table, an'
I reaches the kid first an' takes the leg away from him.
"I guess Peg-leg must 'a' begun to lay it out by then that I held a
straight flush to his ace high, for he sits down on the edge of the
sidewalk an', being some winded, too, he just glares. Then byme-by he
says:
"'You think you are some smart now, sonny, but I'm a-studyin' of your
face so's I'll know who to look for when I git a new leg; an' believe
me, I'll know it, m'son--yours and your friend's too' (he meant
Clarence)--'an' I guess you'll both be kind o' sick afore I'm done with
you. _You!_' he goes on, tremendous disgustful. 'You! an' them
one-lungers a-swearin' an' a-cussin' an' bedamnin' an' bedevilin' one
a-other. Ain't ye just ashamed o' yourselves ?' (he thought I was a
one-lunger, too); 'ain't ye ashamed--befoulin' your mouths, and
disturbin' the peace along of a quiet Sunday mornin', an' you-alls waist
over in your graves? I'm fair sick o' my job,' he remarks, goin' kind o'
thoughtful. 'Ten years now I've been range-ridin' all this yere ranch,
a-doin' o' my little feeble, or'nary best to clean out the mouths o' you
men an' purify the atmosphere o' God's own country, but I ain't made
_one_ convert. I've pounded 'em an' booted 'em, an' busted 'em an' shot
'em up, an' they go on cussin' each other out harder'n ever. I don't
know w'at all to do an' I sometimes gets plumb discouraged-like.'
"Now, hearin' of him talk that-a-way, an' a-knowin' of his weakness, I
gits a idea. It's a chanst and mebbee it don't pan out, but I puts it up
as a bluff. I don't want, you see, to spend the rest o' my appointed
time in this yere vale o' tears a-dodgin' o' Peg-leg Smith, an' in the
end, after all, to git between the wind and a forty-eight caliber
do-good, sure not. So I puts up a deal. Says I: 'Peg-leg, I'll make a
bargint along o' you. You lays it out as how you ain't never converted
nobody out o' his swearin' habits. Now if you wants, 'ere's a chanst.
You gimmee your word as a gent and a good-man-an'-true, as how you won't
never make no play to shoot me up, in nowise whatsoever, so long as we
both do live, an' promise never to bust me, or otherwise, and promise
never to rustle me or interfere with my life, liberty and pursuit o'
happiness, an' thereunto you set your seal an' may Lord 'a' mercy on
your soul--you promise that, an' I will agree an' covenant with the
party o' the first part to abstain an' abjure, early or late, dry or
drinkin', in liquor or out, out o' luck or in, rangin' or roundin', from
all part an' parcel o' profanity, cuss-words, little or big, several and
separate, bar none; this yere agreement to be considered as bindin' an'
obligatory till the day o' your demise, decease or death. _There!_' says
I, 'there's a fair bargint put up between man an' man, an' I puts it to
you fair. You comes in with a strong ante an' you gets a genuine,
guaranteed an' high-grade convert--the real article. You stays out, an'
not only you loses a good chanst to cut off and dam up as vigorous a
stream o' profanity as is found between here and Laredo, but you loses a
handmade, copper-bound, steel-riveted, artificial limb--which in five
minutes o' time,' says I, windin' up, 'will sure feed the fire. There's
the bargint.'
"Well, the ol' man takes out time for about as long as a thirsty
horse-rustler could put away half a dozen drinks an' he studies the
proposition sideways and endways an' down side up. Then at last he ups
and speaks out decided-like:
"'Son,' he says, 'son, it's a bargint. Gimmee my leg.'
"Somehow neither o' us misdoubts as how the other man won't keep his
word; an' I gives him his stump, an' he straps her on joyful-like, just
as if he'd got back a ole friend. Then later on he hikes out for Mojave
and I don' see him no more for mebbee three years."
"And then?" I prompted.
"Well, I'll tell you," continued Bunt, between mouthfuls of pie, "I'll
tell you. This yere prejudice agin profanity is the only thing about
this yere Peg-leg that ain't pizen bad, an' _that_ prejudice, you got to
know, was just along o' his being loco on that one subjeck. 'Twa'n't as
if he had any real principles or convictions about the thing. It was
just a loco prejudice. Just as some gesabes has feelin's agin cats an'
snakes, or agin seein' a speckled nigger. It was just on-reasonable. So
what I'm aimin' to have you understand is the fact that it was extremely
appropriate that Peg-leg should die, that it was a blame good thing, and
somethin' to be celebrated by free drinks all round.
"You can say he treated me white, an' took my unsupported word. Well, so
he did; but that was in spite o' what he really was hisself, 'way on the
inside o' him. Inside o' him he was black-bad, an' it wa'n't a week
after we had made our bargint that he did for a little Mojave kid in a
way I don't like to think of.
"So when he took an' died like as how I'm a-going to tell you of, I was
plumb joyful, not only because I could feel at liberty to relieve my
mind when necessary in a manner as is approved of and rightful among
gents--not only because o' that, but because they was one less bad egg
in the cow-country.
"Now the manner o' Peg-leg's dying was sure hilarious-like. I didn't git
over laughin' about it for a month o' Sundays--an' I ain't done yet. It
was sure a joke on Peg-leg. The cutest joke that ever was played off on
him.
"It was in Sonora--Sonora, Arizona, I mean. They'd a-been a kind o' gold
excitement there, and all the boys had rounded up. The town was
full--chock-a-block. Peg-leg he was there too, drunk all the time an'
bullyin' everybody, an' slambangin' around in his same old way. That
very day he'd used a friend o' his--his best friend--cruel hard: just
mean and nasty, you know.
"Well, I'm sitting into a little game o' faro about twelve o'clock at
night, me an' about a dozen o' the boys. We're good an' interested, and
pretty much to the good o' the game, an' somebody's passin' drinks when
all at once there's a sure big rumpus out in the street, an' a gent
sticks his head thro' the door an' yells out:
"'Hi, there, they's a fire! The Golden West Hotel is on fire!'
"We draws the game as soon as convenient and hikes out, an', my word,
you'd 'a' thought from the looks o' things as how the whole town was
going. But it was only the hotel--the Golden West, where Peg-leg was
stayin'; an' when we got up we could hear the ol' murderer bellerin' an'
ragin', an' him drunk--of course.
"Well, I'm some excited. Lord love you, I'd as soon 'a' seen Peg-leg
shot as I would eat, an' when I remembers the little Mojave kid I'm glad
as how his time is at hand. Saved us the trouble o' lynchin' that sooner
or later had to come.
"Peg-leg's room was in the front o' the house on the fourth floor, but
the fire was all below, and what with the smoke comin' out the
third-story winders he couldn't see down into the street, no more'n the
boys could see him--only they just heard him bellerin'.
"Then some one of 'em sings out:
"'Hey, Peg-leg, jump! We got a blanket here.'
"An' sure enough he does jump!"
Here Bunt chuckled grimly, muttering, "Yes, sir, sure enough he did
jump."
"I don't quite see," I observed, "where the laugh comes in. What was the
joke of it?"
"The joke of it was," finished Bunt, "that they hadn't any blanket."
THE PASSING OF COCK-EYE BLACKLOCK
"Well, m'son," observed Bunt about half an hour after supper, "if your
provender has shook down comfortable by now, we might as well jar loose
and be moving along out yonder."
We left the fire and moved toward the hobbled ponies, Bunt complaining
of the quality of the outfit's meals. "Down in the Panamint country," he
growled, "we had a Chink that was a sure frying-pan expert; but _this_
Dago--my word! That ain't victuals, that supper. That's just a'
ingenious device for removing superfluous appetite. Next time I
assimilate nutriment in this camp I'm sure going to take chloroform
beforehand. Careful to draw your cinch tight on that pinto bronc' of
yours. She always swells up same as a horned toad soon as you begin to
saddle up."
We rode from the circle of the camp-fire's light and out upon the
desert. It was Bunt's turn to ride the herd that night, and I had
volunteered to bear him company.
Bunt was one of a fast-disappearing type. He knew his West as the
cockney knows his Piccadilly. He had mined with and for Ralston, had
soldiered with Crook, had turned cards in a faro game at Laredo, and had
known the Apache Kid. He had fifteen separate and different times driven
the herds from Texas to Dodge City, in the good old, rare old, wild old
days when Dodge was the headquarters for the cattle trade, and as near
to heaven as the cowboy cared to get. He had seen the end of gold and
the end of the buffalo, the beginning of cattle, the beginning of wheat,
and the spreading of the barbed-wire fence, that, in the end, will take
from him his occupation and his revolver, his chaparejos and his
usefulness, his lariat and his reason for being. He had seen the rise of
a new period, the successive stages of which, singularly enough, tally
exactly with the progress of our own world-civilization: first the nomad
and hunter, then the herder, next and last the husband-man. He had
passed the mid-mark of his life. His mustache was gray. He had four
friends--his horse, his pistol, a teamster in the Indian Territory
Panhandle named Skinny, and me.
The herd--I suppose all told there were some two thousand head--we found
not far from the water-hole. We relieved the other watch and took up our
night's vigil. It was about nine o'clock. The night was fine, calm.
There was no cloud. Toward the middle watches one could expect a moon.
But the stars, the stars! In Idaho, on those lonely reaches of desert
and range, where the shadow of the sun by day and the courses of the
constellations by night are the only things that move, these stars are a
different matter from those bleared pin-points of the city after dark,
seen through dust and smoke and the glare of electrics and the hot haze
of fire-signs. On such a night as that when I rode the herd with Bunt
_anything_ might have happened; one could have believed in fairies then,
and in the buffalo-ghost, and in all the weirds of the craziest Apache
"Messiah" that ever made medicine.
One remembered astronomy and the "measureless distances" and the showy
problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long
years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously.
Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the
flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung
in a tree; Mars a red lantern in a clock-tower.
One listened instinctively for the tramp of the constellations. Orion,
Cassiopeia and Ursa Major marched to and fro on the vault like cohorts
of legionaries, seemingly within call of our voices, and all without a
sound.
But beneath these quiet heavens the earth disengaged multitudinous
sounds--small sounds, minimized as it were by the muffling of the night.
Now it was the yap of a coyote leagues away; now the snapping of a twig
in the sage-brush; now the mysterious, indefinable stir of the
heat-ridden land cooling under the night. But more often it was the
confused murmur of the herd itself--the click of a horn, the friction of
heavy bodies, the stamp of a hoof, with now and then the low,
complaining note of a cow with a calf, or the subdued noise of a steer
as it lay down, first lurching to the knees, then rolling clumsily upon
the haunch, with a long, stertorous breath of satisfaction.
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