TOM had a second and very narrow escape from death that spring, before the nephew from Colorado rode to the shack with a letter from Nellie Mallory in his pocket.
He had missed the Miller badly, and one early morning he roped a green bronc and started out on his rounds. But something stampeded the horse just outside the corral, and he ran. Things would have been all right, but the animal slipped and almost fell, and when he had recovered Tom was hanging head down across the saddle, with the horn caught in the leather belt of his chaps. After that the horse went crazy, and Tom stared death in the face; he could neither free himself nor right himself. At any moment he knew that the frantic animal might drop into a break or plunge over the steep side of a butte.
If he prayed for anything it was probably for death outright, and not to be left with a broken back in that solitary land. But his mind was working clearly, and just in time he began to work at the cinch buckle. When he had loosened it and the saddle fell, he picked himself up and looked about, but there was no horse in sight.
He found it with a broken neck at the foot of a gulch a few yards ahead, and it is typical that his main grievance about the whole matter was that he had to carry his saddle back!
Although it was the middle of March, the late spring of the Northwest was still far away; the earth was like granite, the trees so brittle that they broke at a touch. In his bunk at night he piled on all his blankets and yet shivered, and the heat from his fire melted the snow on the leaking roof, so that during the night small icicles formed, to drip drearily throughout the day.
The long winter had told on him. Outside of his daily routine he was listless and apathetic. He had no books, even had he cared to read them, but now and then a paper drifted his way. In one of them he read the announcement of his engagement to Clare: "Mr. and Mrs. Gustavus Hamel"—in the language of the society editor—"announce the engagement of their daughter, Miss Clare Hamel, to Mr. Thomas McNair." He read it, grunted and threw the paper in the fire.
And then came the Colorado nephew, and Nellie's letter.
"Dear Tom: I've had a postcard from Ray. He stopped over in Oklahoma at the Ninety Nine Ranch, and he says they can use some riders. Why don't you go, Tom? You sure can ride, and if I were you I'd get away from this town. Did you see what she had the nerve to put in the paper?"
There was more of the letter; Nellie had more or less poured out her heart, but Tom's eyes were glued to that first paragraph. After all, why not? And Bill was with the railroad now, running freight. He'd take care of him for part of the way anyhow.
But what about Clare? He had told her he was in no position to marry. She knew it, anyhow, and into the bargain he had a shrewd idea that whatever had come out, about her part in his escape she had told herself.
"Wasn't taking any chances," he reflected miserably.
She had had time, plenty of time, to get back from that way station before daylight.
"Understand you're thinking of getting married," said the Colorado boy that night, conversationally. He was deeply thrilled at being there with Tom, who had killed a man and had his horse shot under him, and was a famous rider into the bargain.
"So I hear!"
"Take it from me," said the Colorado boy, "once a fellow in our line gets married, he's through. I've seen it tried out, but I've never seen it work yet."
Lying awake in the bunk that night Tom thought over that. It wouldn't work. In a month he and Clare would be at each other's throats. If she would not save herself, he would save her.
He got up and sitting at the table in the cold, wrote her a letter. He'd been thinking matters over. Of course she could hold him to his promise if she wanted to, but
He ended by telling her that he was going away to look for work, but he was careful not to tell her where, and when he crawled into his blankets again, shaking with the cold, it was to sleep more quietly than he had for many nights.
The next day he inducted the Colorado boy into the new job, got him to ride that night with him to the water tank at Prairie Dog—a coal tipple, tank and one house—in order to take his horse back, and with a war bag for his gear, and empty pockets, climbed Bill's train and found himself in the old familiar environment of water butts, lanterns, coal bin, bed-rolls, green order slips and dented coffee pot on a red hot stove. No one asked him any questions. Bill was glad to see him, the rest of the crew accepted him. And by the freemasonry of their order they passed him on; he moved from caboose to caboose, but always South. The weather moderated; he had left winter and was finding spring, and the young life in him, which had apparently been frozen, began to revive.
"Old Man's sure been good to these folks," he said to the last conductor, when they were rolling across the plains of Oklahoma.
"Sure has. Twelve feet of good earth on top and oil underneath."
He understood that later on when he got off at the town near the ranch and saw the great oil refinery and the miles of storage tanks. To and from the refinery engines were moving long lines of tank cars. They crept along endlessly, and as a result ships ploughed their way under forced draft to strange parts of the world, locomotives moved, houses were heated, automobiles sped along.
For the first time in all his hard-driven young life Tom saw the spectacle of easy money. Up to that time he had seen the earth as something from which one wrung a difficult livelihood, and Nature as a stepmother, alternating between moods of tolerance and cruelty. This then was how the Dowlings and their kind were made. They found where Nature was generous, and exploited her. It was not that they were smarter than other people; they just knew more. They borrowed money and built railroads, or they drilled holes and found silver or gold, or oil, and suddenly they were rich. When they had money they could travel and learn more; learn how to make more money and how to spend it. And by this erect barriers between themselves and the rest of the world.
He brooded. The rain penetrated his clothing and dripped off the wide brim of his hat. Cars passed him, but no one stopped and picked him up. They were all on their way somewhere. It was like Chicago.
But a mile or so from the ranch he suddenly stopped. Buffalo! Surely those were buffalo! He leaned on the fence and gazed across at them. They were in a field of young alfalfa, and they looked fat and contented. Once they had ranged the plains, following the grass; the bulls had fought in the spring, and the cows had been the prize of the victor. Now they were fed and cared for, inside the wire.
Wasn't that life all over? If you were footloose you were poor, but if you were rich you were always behind wire.
He thought of Kay. The wire was around her, and she couldn't get out. And when he had tried to get through it to her it had thrown and torn him. Well, he was through with that. He was free. He trudged along.
Later on he found the chief cowboy in an office. He was bedraggled and weary, and Arizona, who was the chief, was busy. But when he told him his name he looked up.
"McNair? You the fellow Ray Masterson was speaking about?"
"Depends on what Ray said!"
"He said you were a rider."
"Well," Tom drawled, "I reckon to sit on as long as most, and then some."
Arizona grinned.
"We'll try you out and see," he said. "You'll have some competition."
"That's my middle name," Tom told him.
The Ninety Nine Ranch was the home of the Ninety Nine Traveling Rodeo and Wild West Show. During the season, from the first of May until bad weather in the autumn, its long train of yellow cars moved from city to city, preceded by advance men and bill posters. Its flaming twenty-four sheets had, at one time or another, adorned the boardings, empty barns and fences of most of the country. It was a complete unit in itself, from the cowboy band in their checked flannel shirts to the candy butchers; it had its sideshows like any circus, its "spectacular," popularly known as the Spec; it had its freaks, its Arabs, its ballet. It even carried with it a few camels and a half dozen elephants, in addition to its buffaloes, steers and its innumerable horses.
But it was, first, last and always, an attempt to show the Old West. It had its stage-coach holdup, its prairie schooner attacked by Indians, and mostly it had its cowboys.
They came in the spring from all over the cattle country, the southern ones sitting their bucking horses tight and using their long spurs only moderately, the northern ones looser in the saddle but apt to scratch "wider and higher." They wandered in, after the long lonely winter on the range somewhere, found good food and good housing, and between trials in the arena were content to sit on their heels in the Oklahoma sun and talk, or to buy pop and feed it to the bear in his cage beside the ranch store.
Tom was contented; his gregarious instinct was satisfied, the interest of the new life bid fair to put Kay out of his mind. He drew some money in advance and bought clothing at the store, a green silk shirt and yellow handkerchief, and a new enormous cream-colored Stetson. The girls—cowgirls and high-school riders—began to look at him and talk about him; when he was riding in the arena there would be a small gallery, ardent and applauding. He never looked their way, but he was intensely conscious of them. And one day he took a rope into the field and standing on his head neatly threw his loop over a running horse. He had to wash the dirt out of his hair later on, but the girls were thrilled.
He had misadventures, naturally. One day, carelessly standing too close to the pen of Tony, the bear, he felt a sudden clutch from the rear and left the seat of a new pair of trousers in the cage. Even the Indians standing about laughed at that.
"If you wanted these pants why didn't you ask for them like a gentleman?" he reproached the bear as he tied his coat around his waist.
He painted a sign that day and hung it on the cage: "T. Bear, gent's tailor. Apply at rear." His boyishness had come back.
He began to improve in physical condition, also. The food was excellent, and he put on a little weight. His waist remained as slim as ever, but his face was fuller and his good looks had come back. He even struck a friendship with a little Cossack, member of a troupe just brought from Europe. He made fun of his long coat, with the row of cartridge pockets across the chest, of his soft-soled boots and cocky high astrakhan hat. And the Cossack in turn would point to Tom's absurd Stetson, his high-heeled boots and leather chaps, and grin. They talked to each other with signs and smiles, and in their leisure time wandered about together. At first the Cossack could not believe that Tom spoke only his mother tongue; he tried him in German, in exquisite French, even in Italian.
"No savvy," Tom would say, cheerfully. "Now see here, Murphy—" he had christened him Murphy, "that's a cow. Say 'cow'!"
And Murphy would obediently say "cow."
Tom never knew that the little Cossack had been a great aristocrat in old Russia; that he had lived in a palace, and that serfs had bowed down to him as he passed along the road. In the evenings they would sit companionably in the door of one of the wooden huts where the show people were housed and smoke their cigarettes together.
"Friends, Murphy, you and me," Tom would point to the Cossack and then to himself. "Say 'friends.'"
Sometimes arm in arm they wandered about together, and because one was tall and the other short they were called Mutt and Jeff. They would climb amiably to where the dancing master worked in a great loft above the paint shop, and stand watching him. He was having a hard time. The dancing girls wore boots, short bloomers of blue checked calico, and anything above them. "One-two-three-four," chanted the teacher. Then he would hum a tune and himself dance the strenuous steps. The girls would watch Tom, pull their short hair over their cheeks, chew gum and idly follow the commands.
As soon as the little German saw the two of them he would order them out.
It was a new world, a world of strange sights and sounds.
One morning Tom saw one of a Zouave troupe come out of his shack, face to the East, and bow his head three times to the ground. He was stupefied with amazement.
"You can't beat that. What's he doing anyhow?"
"He's praying."
"Say, it's the hell of a big world, isn't it?" . . .
It was almost time to go. Schedules were posted for the use of the arena; the Colonel was reviewing the acts; Indians began to arrive in numbers, in flivvers or in wagons piled high with tepees and other gear, leading the pinto ponies they affected. They brought their women along, the local ones tattooed with blue ink on the forehead. Tiny papooses, strapped to boards and set upright, surveyed this strange new world out of wide black shoe-button eyes. The Navajos set up crude frames and began their rug weaving for the side show, or laid out the turquoises which were later to be made into silver jewelry.
One day the ranch peacock was found ashamed and humiliated hiding under a hedge, his insignia of masculinity gone, his great tail removed. The Navajos were suspected but it could not be proved.
In the sunny mornings the great red and gold wagons, the six-horse hitches, the eight-ups and ten-ups, were driven slowly up and down the road for exercise. Enormous beautiful animals, their coats glistening, they moved proudly and with dignity. Later on the elephants would lumber out of their barn and cross to their enclosure.
"Get on there, Babe! What's the matter with you, Louie?"
Their wise little eyes were filled with mischief. Standing demurely, they would back slowly against the fence, and try to throw it down, and Tom, fascinated like a small boy by them, would watch and say nothing.
Discipline was excellent. The company allowed no drinking. Otherwise it was extremely indulgent. It fed its people well, gave them certain hours of work and then let them alone. Order began to assert itself; the horses, fed oats daily and worked regularly, began to sweat off their winter coats. The Cossacks, riding them like demons for two or three hours, cared for them carefully afterwards, rubbed them down, watched them for saddle and cinch sores.
Emulation too began to put them on their toes. When the Cossacks rode standing on their saddles, their toes in their soft-soled boots caught in the tops of their saddle pockets, there was a raid on rubber-soled tennis shoes in town, and the cowboys tried it without pockets.
And then one day a switch engine backed onto the siding nearby, with forty yellow circus cars in its wake. Tom sat that evening as usual in the doorway with the little Cossack who had been a prince, but he taught him no English that night. He was oddly depressed and quiet.
"You are sad tonight, my friend," said the Cossack, in Russian.
Tom did not understand, of course, but perhaps the tone meant something to him. He stirred and pointed to the cars, on the siding in the moonlight.
"Tea party's about over, Murphy! I wonder how you'll like it when it rains, and we're working in mud to our knees."
"Once, at home," said the little Cossack thoughtfully, still in Russian, "I fell in love with a lady of the circus. She was very beautiful. But my people—Ah!"
They smoked in silence. Each was thinking of a lost lady, but the little Cossack's eyes were tender, and Tom's were hard.
It was the next day that Little Dog joined the show. Tom, wandering into the store to buy a bottle of pop for Tony the bear, saw him and standing still, watched him warily. The store was crowded. At the rear squaws in black shawls over bright calico dresses were buying meat, stabbing at it with dirty forefingers and haggling over the price. Dignified old bucks in store clothes, with red or yellow flannel worked into their braided hair, leaned against the counters. The store was their club house, but since it provided no chairs they stood, stoical and observant. Mixing among them, intent on tobacco or soda-water or tentatively inspecting a new shipment of hats from Texas, were the cowboys. A pretty half-breed girl with plucked eyebrows and bobbed hair was buying bread.
Little Dog was standing alone, surveying the crowd. He was a full-blood, heavy and muscular of figure and broad and swarthy of face. He had cut his braids, and save that he wore no necktie he was dressed in town clothing. The half-breed girl seemed impressed by him, and he gazed back at her with close-set, rather arrogant eyes.
It was only when she moved on that he saw Tom.
For a few seconds they stared each at the other, the Indian defiant, with a challenge, Tom merely watchful. It was the Indian who looked away first, but as he did so he smiled, a jeering smile that sent Tom's blood surging to his head. He knew then, as well as if it had been put into words, that Little Dog had killed the Miller, and that the shot had been meant for him. He even surmised that the tribe had sent him here after him.
He knew the Indians. Behind Little Dog, now buying cigarettes at the counter, he could see that conclave around the medicine man's fire.
"Ail Ai! Weasel Tail, our brother, has been done to death, and the white man's law has let the killer go free, and now our old men are too old to fight, and our young men have no blood in their veins, but only their mother's milk."
The small black pipe with its long stem passing from hand to hand, the lodge dimly lighted by its center fire, and perhaps the medicine man blowing smoke to the four directions of the world and seeking a sign. All the young bloods waiting and nervous, even Little Dog, for all his cut hair and store clothes; the air thick, the medicine pipe wrapped in skins hanging overhead, and perhaps a young coyote crying outside at the end of a tether.
But although he watched Little Dog after that carefully, he began to think he had been mistaken. Even Arizona, when he knew the situation and was also on the alert, relaxed after a few days. Little Dog did his work, and in the leisure time swaggered about the Indian village flirting with the girls. Now and then after dark at their encampment the tom-toms would be held to a fire to tighten the skins, and then the sound of their monotonous beating would announce a dance.
Tom, sauntering there one night, saw Little Dog dancing for the benefit of the southern Indians. He was nude save for a breech clout, and he had painted his body red with stripes of white. He had borrowed a coup stick from one of the old men; the ancient scalps hung to it shook and trembled, and as he danced the Indians squatting about swayed their bodies and chanted some ancient apparently wordless air. . . .
On the night the show loaded Tom had his first real attack of nostalgia.
The wagons, carefully covered with canvas, were placed on the open cars. Up sturdy gangways went the horses, the camels and the elephants, the buffaloes and steers. The old stage coach was carefully loaded, and the covered Conestoga wagon. Cowboys, Indians, girl riders, Arabs, Zouaves, Cossacks and freaks stood by the track, suitcases about them, and waited to be assigned to their traveling quarters for the next eight months. At the "privilege" counter at the end of a car coffee and sandwiches were being served.
He put his suitcase into his berth and then went outside. The lights from the train shone out on the motley gathering, the babel of strange tongues. In their car the elephants were trumpeting uneasily. He moved away from the track and into a field of young wheat.
Suddenly he was homesick; for the faint aromatic odor of the sage brush at dawn, for the mountains in the sunset, for the long trail once more, and the Miller between his knees. Just to go back, a year, two years! To ride in on the Miller once more, and see the lights in the bunk house beckoning him home. To see the fellows again intent on their eternal poker game.
"You calling me? Watch your step, boy, watch your step. I got a pat hand."
"Lemme see them two pairs you're holdin'. I know you."
Just to go back.