PAINTED ROCK
I
THE KILLING OF "SWEETWATER"
I had come into Painted Rock from Ennis Creek in a Studebaker wagon, pulled by Jones' two mules, Punch and Judy, and, while the men at the store were making up my orders for the extra grub that would see us through shearing, I took a paseo all round the town. It had never seemed more peaceful to me, and I daresay that any tender-foot from the East would have thought it lacked all those elements of romance that he had expected to find. Pillsbury and Gedge, my two gambling friends, said that things were indeed dull.
"There don't seem to be a dollar in the hull City," said Pillsbury, with a yawn, "at least, I've not sot eyes on one for days. And as for excitement, there ain't any. It's so derned dull and quiet and peaceful that my nerve is givin' out, and I expect something horrid to happen; eh, Gedge?"
"It is a mighty remarkable fact," replied the long-haired Georgian, "that such a period of peace in Painted Rock is mostly broke up by someone havin' a sudden funeral. I reckon that solid peace gets on our nerves, and the want of gayness and money is tryin' to us, and those that have a stake in the City feel it. Oh, I'd not be surprised if the calm was broke up any moment."
I took so much pity on their sad estate as to inquire if they would have a liquor with me.
"I should smile," said Pillsbury, and we went into the American House and had something destructive and highly poisonous at twenty-five cents a drink. While we stood up to the bar and discussed the trying peace, a stranger looked into the saloon as if he were seeking someone there, and I saw Gedge's eyes snap.
"Who was that?" I asked, and Gedge stared at me with an odd, far-away look.
"I was just tryin' to recall him," said Gedge. "I don't never forget a face, and yet somehow I can't place him."
"Why should you?" asked the bar-tender. "He's a stranger, sure pop. I saw him get off the cars yesterday, and I've been in Painted Rock nigh on to three years, and I lay ten dollars he hasn't been here durin' that time."
"Well, I've seen him somewhere, I'll take an oath to that on a stack of Bibles," said Gedge. "I've been around this locality mor'n three years, my son, and mebbe I saw him twenty years ago in Georgia. I never forget a face or an injury or a good turn done me, and somehow I hev a solid based opinion that I've done more than passed the time of day with that melancholy individual that poked his head in here just now, and took a look around these deserted halls."
We had some more poison at Pillsbury's expense, and then Gedge smote the bar with his open hand. We looked at him in silence.
"I've located that stranger in my unforgetful mind," said the Georgian;" I knew I should, and I've got him to rights. It's a mighty strange thing that he should turn up after all these years, and I wonder what he's thinking of as he wanders around."
He turned to us with an odd look in his face, and we knew there was a story coming. The bar-keeper filled up our glasses again at my nod, and I slid a dollar over to him while Gedge was getting the hang of his reminiscences. He sighed, took his liquor, and spoke.
"His name is Smith, just Smith and what else I forget," said Gedge, "and he gave me the greatest surprise I ever had, and that, in my varied and not unremarkable career, is a tall order."
"What was the surprise?" asked Pillsbury. "Did he take you on at poker and skin you?"
Gedge shook his head solemnly.
"I've yet to meet the man that can do that, and well you sabe it, Pillsbury. It wasn't gambling by any means, but it was a surprise, and no fatal error. There's two kind of great surprises accordin' to my mind, and one of them is when a man without any sand in his composition, as far as one can judge, suddenly develops sand and lays out someone that is a terror. And the other kind of great and remarkable surprise is when a man, a brave man and a man that the hull camp respects, shows up as a coward and hasn't the guts of a chipmunk. That was the sad case with the very Smith that put his weary-lookin' countenance inside this bar and took a casual look at us. I'm sorry to say that he's an Englishman."
I begged him not to trouble about his being a countryman of mine, and asked for the story.
"It was remarkable, mighty remarkable," said Gedge thoughtfully, "but I'm havin' another struggle with my memory, which, as I said before, is a good one, but, as you may hev observed before, a trifle heavy on the pull-off. For some reason that I don't sabe, I cayn't recall the name of the person selected by Providence to show us that Smith had imposed on the world by an outward show of grit. I wish I could locate him, and then I could pitch you the tale as easy as fall off a log."
He took another drink to grease his memory, which was one with a heavy pull-off, and stood thinking. He lifted his head at last, and then shook it.
"I'm a perfect sucker, I am," said Gedge; "of course it was Hale."
"What Hale?" asked Piilsbury, who began to show more interest in the story. "Not Bill Hale of Sweetwater?"
"That very same Hale," said Gedge; "and when I say that same Bill Hale, I mean a man that I hev no respect for, and a man that no one thinks of lovin' to the extent of doin' as much as go to his funeral when he final kicks."
"Agreed," said Piilsbury; "I never had no use for Hale."
"Nevertheless, though we hev no respectful opinion of Hale, it was him that made that same Smith take water and sit down and cry."
"Did he weep, actually weep?" asked his brother gambler.
"Real tears and sobs, most horrid and painful to see and hear, my son," replied the older sport. "The whole thing made me feel sick, and I was some sorry that I could not see my way to interfere and blow the roof off of Hale's head. I'll tell you how it was."
But before he began he desired the bar-tender to do his duty in the matter of poison. He swallowed his dose of nose-paint and took a breath.
"It warn't in the neighbourhood of the Rock, but over to San Antone," said Gedge, "for at that time the Rock was no more than a rock, and those damn fools, of which we are an important part, who reckoned that this City was goin' to be somethin', had not yet developed any such fatal deelusion. To be strickly ackerate, which is my aim, I jedge that Painted Rock had been heard of by six cowboys, five wanderin' lunatics, four ordinary fools, three surveyors, two brayin' burros, and one wise man who saw it and died. That is to say, it warn't known to any extent beyond the Indians and greasers, and the Texas Pacific Railroad was reposin' as an unborn idea in the brain of the scoundrel that was at last ass enough to give birth to the unfounded notion that all parts of this holy terror of a State was equal worth the blood and bones of a white man. However, that's only my sore talk, because I've grown up here, and the Panhandle of Texas isn't what it was cracked up to be. This yer Smith was a pioneer in his way, and hed a hell of a reputation for bein' sandy with the Apaches or any other breed of Indjuns, and there's men about to this day that will tell you that same and stand to it. He had a store in San Antone and one over to Dallas likewise, and was a man with the repute of havin' made money. At times the quiet of San Antone got on his nerves, although it wasn't hell-fired quiet by any means, and killin's was frequent, and he would get up and mosey off somewhere in this direction, and maybe as far as the Staked Plain, where buffalo was plenty then, as you may judge. Then he would come back and sell stuff, and, as I said, make money. But about a year before his humiliation by the said Hale, he told me that a notion was growin' in him fast to go back to the old country for a spell. For it appears that Englishmen are the same as us in that way, and they pine for the land where they were born jest as if it was as fine a land as Georgia, and not a downtrodden place with kings and queens in it. If any Englishman in the present company ain't pleased with my deescription of Britain, I hereby apologise and state that I'm not wholly serious. Well, Smith took this sad idea into his cabeza, and, after rakin' up an honest man (he came from Georgia, and I won't give his name away), he lit out for the old country and was gone nigh on to nine months. Durin' that period thishyer honest Georgian had a time collectin' debts at the end of a gun, but I'll say this for the galoot, that the debts that wasn't collected on time was few. And when Smith come back he was that pleased with me that he endowed me there and then with two hundred and fifty dollars over and above what the contract called for. Oh, he was an honest man and one that I liked, and he was tol'rable popular; oh, he was tol'rable popular. And I soon perceived that a change had come over him through this trip of his to the old country, and he let out what it was the very night he went over the accounts of the business with me. I noted that he was considerable gentler and softer in his ways, and there was a dreamy look about him, like as if some lady had taken hold of his little heart and given it a tender squeeze, and he soon let on that he had run plump agin the greatest daisy of a girl that he had ever seen while he was over in your monarch-ridden country, and he said that her and him had fixed up to jine teams and pull across the flowery prairie of life while they two did live. For an Englishman and a store-keeper he was some poetical about this incident, which had happened to him for the first time, so that all his eemotions were young and virgin, and some surprised me. He reckoned to sell out in six months, and go home permanent and put his pile into a business that the girl's brother was boss of, and that was how him and Hale came into the arena and locked horns and made the dust fly. Hale was always a bad man to deal with, and not what I should call honest, onless I went out of my way to tell a lie. But Smith was straight about money; as straight as a straight game. And I've noticed, by the way, that some of the galoots in business that are down on the gamblers are ready to run in a cold deck on a confidin' stranger with the best and worst of the gamblin' fraternity, of which me and Pillsbury are honourable members. And to go on, I don't sabe exactly the point that Smith and Hale fell out about, but fall out they did, and there was the possibility of a difficulty right there. Thishyer Hale has a gift, I don't deny it, and if it's a rare gift it is a mighty useful one. He could always smell out by instinct the man that was going to fight, and he smelt out that Smith warn't for some reason. Oh, it was a wonder to us boys, and we marvelled about it, for we hed reespected Smith considerable, and I was among them that did, and it sickened me to see the way that Hale walked over Smith. Being then like a young burro, and as full of conceit as a greaser with new bell spurs on, I never tumbled to the reason, and I grew cold to Smith and looked south when he was comin' west. And then one night the boys came and told me that Hale had slapped the face of Smith, and that Smith was sayin' nothin' about it. Well, you can believe me, I was clean clear flummoxed, and still I didn't tumble. You see, I wasn't married as yet, and Mrs. Gedge was at that time no more than one of the gals for whom I had a tender feelin' and as much respect as they forced me to hev. Though I hed bin some cold with Smith, seein' the way he put up with Hale's want of manners before this, I went down to Smith's store and walked in to see what I could see. And what I saw was poor Smith, cryin like a lost kid, with his head on a parcel of store pants. He sobbed fit to tear the works out of himself, and it made me that bashful and ashamed that I retired to the rear and saw him no more until this very day that he put his head into this saloon and never knew me. And that night (I'm tellin' you the truth, though you may stare and shake your cabezas till they fall off) he signed over all his business to this same Hale, and took the cash and departed for the down-trodden realm of England. He said good-bye to none, for the boys were some cold, naturally, ez they hed reckoned on him layin' Hale out, and were surprised to a painful degree that he hadn't. For Smith hed always bin a self-respectin' citizen, and they had hoped to attend Hale's funeral in their thousands to signify that they were not sorry. Hale wasn't popular. He wasn't 'a bad man,' but he was inclined to be bad with those that he could pick out, and a bad man in a quiet crowd is the most contemptible creation of heaven, accordin' to my gospel. And there you are. That's all the yarn and all there is to it. Only I'm some perplexed to know what has fetched him here and what he wants. I wish some that I spotted him when he put his head in here, and asked him to explain this sad mystery."
Then Gedge stopped and cooled his throat with something less harmful than Western brandy, and we also drank and were silent till Pillsbury said something.
"But, Keno, you threw out a dark hint that if you hadn't been a young fool, you might hev come to a sound conclusion as to what made this Smith so poor a thing when it came to gun-play with a man like Hale."
"I did throw out a hint on that point, I own," said Gedge, "and you are not as young as I was then, and ought to hev the sabe to spot the ace right off. It was the girl."
"The English girl he was to get wedded to?" asked Pillsbury.
"What other, my son?" asked the Georgian. "She made a coward of him."
"Do you reckon she said he warn't to kill no more people, or else she wouldn't come into the firm?"
"Nothin' of the sort," said Keno. "My notion is a simple one, and it is as clear to me as daylight. Smith was plump crazy about thishyer girl, and wouldn't run no risks of not marryin' her."
"I see, to bee sure," said Pillsbury, who was a bachelor and notoriously indifferent to the charms of women. "I see. It's as clear as mud. I'd like to see the female beauty that would hold back my gun if someone smote me over the cabeza. I'd rather be an honoured if shot-up corpse than be kissed and canoodled by the entire female sect with any pretensions to beauty."
"Well, I reckon Smith thought otherwise," said Gedge; "and as he didn't acquaint us with his reasons, and as I know he was a man beefore this unfort'nit incident, I hev a kind of notion that if we knew all we might say he did almost right, hard as it is to imagine it."
But Pillsbury shook his head sadly.
"I'm surprised to hear you talk so," said Pillsbury. Gedge did not answer, and a few minutes later he and I went away together, leaving the other gambler to think over the story. When we had gone a hundred yards, Gedge stopped and laid hold of my arm. He stared at me with his bright black eyes, and a queer smile stole over his face.
"Say," said he, "ain't Pillsbury a man that is blind to things outside of kyards? He has a mighty respect for me, and I'll not say it isn't justified, but I'll own to you that, years ago, a drunk cowboy over at El Paso kicked me, and then pulled a gun and ordered me out of the place, and I went as meek as a lamb. D'ye know why I done so?"
He looked as fierce as a trapped grizzly as he thought of this little incident.
"I'll tell you," said Keno. "Mrs. Gedge was lying sick with the worst sort of inflammatory rheumatism, and the doctor was there three times a day, shakin' his head over her as if she'd die. Was I to get into a difficulty in them circumstances? I ask anyone. I took my kickin' like a man, and, when the old lady was through the narrow part of Death Canon, I told her about it, and she said that I was a man, and so I was. And I went out and found Mr. Johnny Cowboy on the plaza, and I pulled my gun and threw it down on the ground before him, and as he started to pull his I jumped him and took it away, and I sat a-straddle on his back and made him ride me round the business block of the town. There was a crowd to see the show, you bet, and on each street I stopped and explained to the crowd that why I hadn't killed him before was all on account of Mrs. Gedge; and, when we done the block, I took my fiery, untamed steed into the nearest saloon and stood him a skinful, because he was the only man who ever had the sand to do as he done. I'm of opinion that Smith had something of the same sort of feelin' that I hed when he let Hale smite him. And I dew wonder some why he's out here agin and lookin', as you maybe noticed, some sad and miserbul."
"Perhaps his wife's dead," I suggested, and Gedge stopped suddenly. He looked at me with visible admiration, and I was much pleased.
"For an Englishman you hev uncommon bright ideas," he said. "I believe you hev scored a plumb centre, and if you hev I'd not give one single solitary continental cuss for Hale's chances of survivin' the summer."
He shook his head.
"I wouldn't, that's a fact," he repeated. "I wonder if Hale is in town now. He mostly comes over once a week, as he has an interest in Beal's store. I'll find out."
We parted at the corner, and I saw him walk into Beal's. I had my own business to attend to, and I saw no more of him till some hours later, when I was at Hamilton's, where I went for dinner.
Old bald-headed Hamilton introduced the subject of Smith the moment he saw me. He was obviously not a little excited, for he was one of the few who knew the rights of the story, and he hated Hale with all the fervour of a debtor who had no chance of clearing himself. He was deep in Hale's clutches, and Hale was a man of small consideration for the weak.
"I don't reckon to understand it, my son," said the old boarding-house keeper, "but I'm of opinion that Smith ain't come back to Texas for nothin' but the purpose of gettin' level with Hale."
"After all these years?" I asked.
"Why not?" replied Hamilton. "I've known a killin' to be postponed twenty years and come off after all. Oh, I'd rather be myself than Hale! For Smith's wife is dead, he tells me, and a daughter too, and there is a look about him that bodes no good to Hale. That's my notion, and I'll back it. Here he comes."
Smith came out on the verandah, and took a long chair and sat smoking.
"Hale's comin' to Painted Rock this night," said Hamilton in a whisper. "He's been over to Big Springs, and will lay over here for a day. D'ye think a man should send him word that Smith is here?"
Whatever I thought would make no difference, and I declined to state what I thought or what my advice was. It is best to stand clear of things like this in all countries, and especially in the West. Smith sat on the verandah and smoked savagely, and as he smoked he chewed the butt of his cigar and thought. He did not speak, and never even looked at me, so far as I could see, till Gedge came over to Hamilton's in the evening. When Smith heard Keno's voice he looked at us with a start, and evidently recognised the gambler. Yet he made no sign that he knew him till Gedge walked over to where he sat and held out his hand.
"I'm glad to see you after all these years," said Gedge, and Smith looked at him hard.
"Truth?" he asked.
"Solid frozen fact," said Gedge.
They shook hands, and Gedge sat down by him.
"You've had trouble since you left?" said Gedge.
"I've had ten years' happiness, and now it's done," said the pioneer. "She's dead, old man."
"I'm sorry," said Gedge. They did not speak for some minutes, and then Keno said that his wife would be sorry to hear it. But old Smith did not know that Gedge had been married too,
"Oh, yep," said Gedge, "and since bein' married I've understood what was a puzzle to me when you left the country, Smith."
They did not speak of Hale, but Smith knew what was in the other's mind. Keno told him the same story that he had told me in the afternoon.
"You understand!" said Smith. "She was very delicate, you see, Gedge, and she loved me dear, and if I'd been killed it would have killed her. That's why I turned coward and stood what I did."
I shifted my chair farther away, and the scraping of the chair on the rough flooring attracted the old man's attention. He looked at me, and Gedge, who was very uncomfortable in his mind, introduced me as some diversion. We talked of the old days, of which I knew nothing, and the old pioneer told us some strange tales as we sat and smoked. But all the time Hale was in his mind. At last Smith spoke of him.
"What do you know of Hale now?" he asked.
"Nothin' to speak of," said Gedge; "but I reckon he has done well with his business."
"Is he any altered?" asked Smith, with an averted face. "Do folks speak well of him?"
"Not to any outrageous extent. A mean man is a mean man, and don't give up his meanness, accordin' to my observation of the human race," said Gedge.
"I'd half like to hear well of him," replied Smith, in a curious hollow voice. "If I could hear well of him I think"
"What d'ye think, Smith?"
But Smith did not finish his broken sentence. But he went on with another that was partner to the thought that inspired it.
"Is there anyone that loves him, Gedge? Has he ever married?"
Gedge shook his head.
"Has he got a friend, any man who sticks up for him?" insisted Smith, as if he was anxious to be told that this was the case. I saw that Gedge followed the workings of the man's strange and overwrought mind, and he hesitated before he replied.
"I don't know everything about Hale," he said reluctantly, "and I don't want to do him no injustice. He may hev a friend somewhere."
"But you've never heard of one?" said the pioneer, with a sudden savage snap in his voice that made me wince. "I'm glad to hear that, Gedge, for if I'd heard that he had one solitary friend in the State of Texas, or in the whole United States, I'd have started for England by the next East-bound express."
He looked at me once more, and then turned to Gedge.
"This young man knows my story, Gedge?"
Keno nodded, and Smith nodded too, and was silent for quite a while. When he did speak it was in a low, concentrated voice, which was hard to follow. He spoke as if he was speaking to himself.
"I ain't forgotten it. It has bin a red-hot sore on my mind all these long years, even when I was happiest with my dear, dead wife. She got to know of it, for I told her the truth once, when she thought I was wearied after the old life of the prairie. God knows that, for all her love, I did hanker some to see the sun rise up in these clean places of the earth, but it warn't that that made me restless and uneasy. Hale had a notion how it was with me when I was goin' back to marry her, and he played on it and let his native beastliness out on me, knowin' that I would do aught rather than die before I had lived. For then the love I bore her that is dead was all my life, and I never knowed that the time would come once more when the open earth and the big prairies of Texas and Arizona would call to me like a deserted child. I took the blow that he gave me, for, with things as they was just then, if I had killed him, I'd hev had to pay for it to the law; for I had enemies, and at that time his father was a power in San Antone, and I was no more than an Englishman and the keeper of a store. And if he had killed me I was dead, and the blow would have killed her I loved better than my whole soul, and I took his blow and it broke my heart; and though I was happy I was miserable too, and it was in my mind always that I had been struck and had done nothin', I that had been on the frontier when Hale was a boy, and had earned a just name as a man who was no cur. And a year back my wife died, and I stayed because I had a little girl, and two months ago death took her too; and I went back home after buryin' her and packed up my things, and that very day I started for Texas. I said that I would seek out Hale, and, if he was now a good man, or one that folks loved, or if he had a wife or child that loved him, or if there was a man who stood up for him, I would let him go. I sought out all that I could find about him in Dallas, and in San Antone and in Sweetwater, and here in Painted Rock, and I find no man has a good word for him, no, not one."
His voice died away into a mutter, and we knew that the hours of one man were numbered, unless he were favoured of fate or unless someone warned him.
And Hale came into town that night, and not a soul of all who knew told him that Smith was in Painted Rock, and that he was mad. I did not, for I did not know him and could not interfere, and Gedge did not because he preferred a mad Smith to a sane Hale, and the others did not for many reasons. And no one told the City Marshal, Ginger Gillett, because it would have been Gillett's duty to interfere and lock up Smith there and then. For those are the ways of the West, without any doubt. And the end of the story of Smith and Hale came that very night, not two hours after sundown, when the gambling saloons were filling up and the streets of Painted Rock were alive with talk and laughter. I did not see the end, but I heard it; and Gedge saw it, and I came in time to see the dead man before he was dead. For Smith and Hale met face to face outside the American Saloon, in which Gedge and Pillsbury had their gambling lay-outs. And Hale did not know Smith, because the man had altered so much through his happiness and his grief. Those who saw them meet say that there was but little talk, and that the actual shooting was so swift that no one saw guns drawn till the shots were fired. But Gedge, who had heard that Hale was in town and had the ears of a creature of the forest, caught the first words from the inside of the saloon, and recognised the speakers. He dropped his cards quietly and came out. At that time I was fifty yards away, in the Occidental House.
Hale was now a big and burly man, and very powerful. His forehead was low and his mouth a close line, and there were signs of drink in his face to those who know the lesser signs. He came along the street as if he owned it, and it must be said he owned more than most people knew, for a man who lends money and does it in quiet ways at a high percentage when times are bad, creeps behind the outward names of firms and fattens in the dark. That is why some did not tell him that Smith, who had sold out to him in the old days, was standing outside the American Saloon with his eyes blazing and his tongue still. They saw him and watched him, and though they stood clear they hoped for his death. And he came to where Smith was, and, as I say, did not know him. But Smith spoke in the tone of a challenge, and his voice brought out Gedge as he cried—
"Hale!"
And Hale stopped dead and turned and saw no one that he knew, so that he could not say who it was of the people about that had spoken to him.
"It was I who called you," said Smith, and then a dim perception of danger came to Hale.
And Smith spoke again in a high-pitched voice.
"Don't you remember Smith of San Antone?" he asked. And Hale did remember, and perhaps he grew a little pale. Gedge said he did, but then Gedge did not like him.
"The last time you saw me," said Smith, "you struck me in the face, and I did nothin'. Do you remember that, Hale?"
Hale remembered. Oh yes, he remembered now, and he knew that there was but little time to take his choice of action. He stood irresolute, and Gedge says his hands showed that he had no nerve, for they opened and shut, and the bulk of the man trembled. He stood and stared, and then he spoke, not like a man, but like a beaten thing that plucks up courage to pretend to courage as a last effort for life. And yet there is no saying that he might not have carried it off if he had followed his one chance of salvation to its end.
"Oh, to be sure, my old friend Smith."
His voice shook. More than Gedge say that, and yet he took a half-step towards his enemy. If he had laughed and gone right up to Smith, the old man might have broken down in his intent. So strange a thing the mind is! But at the first half-step the little pretence of courage failed in the man who had none. It was horrible to be confronted with this ghost of the past, and to see that this was a man who cared not for life. Hale stopped and his lip fell, and he turned—and ran!
I heard the sound of two quick shots, and, when I came to the American Saloon, Hale was within a quarter of an hour of death, and Smith was sitting at a table in the saloon, with Gedge beside him.
"My wife's dead," said Smith, "and my child is dead too."
He is in the State Asylum now.