This rider was a messenger from the border, bringing disturbing news. He reported a big herd of Texas cattle not more than three days' drive from the line, the owner pushing along on forced marches, evidently with the design of getting across before the quarantine guard could be reënforced sufficiently to stop him. He had a big gang of men, and was driving the largest herd that had come over the Texas trails in many a day.
Moore was up on edge at this news, for the first cattle over the Texas trails were not expected quite so soon. He prepared to set off at once to collect his forces and hold up the herd at the line. His two boys, the elder about twelve, the other a year or two younger, came out of the house with molasses around their gills, clamoring to go with their father on the expedition against the Texas drover.
The cattleman was very proud of their desire to begin mixing in the affairs of that rough life at an early age, but told them it was strictly men's business, and to run along and hunt coyotes of another kind. Moore was a rough specimen, and the boys were a true pattern. A tall man, broad in the shoulders and flat, one of those enduring kind that defies wind and weather, let the elements pelt as they may. He was a bigboned fellow, uncouth in his movements, set with that questionable adornment so greatly favored by cattlemen and sheriffs of that period, a heavy, long mustache, which he had a habit of roaching up from his mouth with a backward rubbing of the hand, until it stood away from his lips, giving his mouth the appearance of being cleared for action with either words or teeth, as the occasion might require.
Dunham approached him after he had turned the messenger over to the boys to be regaled at his own table, and asked him about the job. Moore looked him over with humorous eye, and grinned.
"You heard what I told the kids," he said. This is men's business; we don't want any boys along. Kid, it's all over the range by this morning the way you shot that feller up at Pawnee Bend last night. You'd hear 'em yellin', "Who in the hell said I was dead!' from here to Nation if you was to take a little sashay around to-day."
Dunham felt that sense of insufficiency, that impression of being a speck in the vastness, that had made his resolution falter when he first looked at that country from the station platform at Pawnee Bend. He had no argument to make for his case; he realized he'd only make it worse by saying he was glad the poor cuss wasn't dead, or that it was not an unprecedented thing for a good shot to miss a man at eight feet, sometimes when he needed to hit his mark above all things in the world.
An old Texas ranger had told him once how he had missed a man five times, starting at not more than a rod away, closing up to six feet, finally picking up a rock and knocking him foolish and taking him along to jail with a whole rind. It wouldn't do a bit of good to argue like that with a man in the cynical, patronizing manner Moore had assumed toward him. Dunham was as green to the range as they ever came, but he was wise enough to see that.
"No-o-o, they'd laugh you off of the range, kid," Moore told him, that intolerable gleam of laughter in his eyes, "they'd make it so hot for you you'd swivel up in your hide. I'll tell Brassfield to drive you over to town this morning, and you can take a train back home. I'll tell him to have Ruddy speak to Kellogg and keep him off of you—if he still feels like he wants to pick a fuss with a innocent misguided stray like you. 'Who in the hell said I was dead!'"
Moore quoted with simulation of indignant repudiation that was evidence of considerable rehearsal. Dunham knew no fertile places would he left unsown in Moore's travels for many a day. The thought made him feel so much like fighting that his face must have betrayed his desire, for Moore looked at him quite soberly, shaking his head.
"You couldn't fight it down, kid. Hell! you'd have to fight the whole country. The best thing a feller in your fix can do is to travel on till he gits to where they either know him well and pass over his cracks, or never heard of him. Brassfield'll take you to town after a while."
Brassfield was engaged just then in saddling a horse for his employer, listening with all his ears, although no great effort was required to hear Moore when he talked in the open. Dunham knew the teamster hadn't lost a word. Moore went into the house and Brassfield went dawdling off about some business of his own, both of them quitting Dunham as a trivial person worthy of no further notice.
Dunham returned to the bunk house where he had slept, turbulent with resentment of this treatment. He scorned the hospitality of a man who was so blatant and coarse. Maybe he knew his business, but he didn't know anything else. It was humiliating, degrading, to be under obligation to such a boor. Bill buckled on his gun, picked up his suitcase and started away.
He was hot to the backbone over the treatment he had received there, mocked and derided by this loud-mouthed ruffian because good fortune had made his aim poor and saved the life of a man. If he had killed the afflicted simpleton Moore would have been talking softly out of the other side of his mouth.
"Lord love you, Mr. Dunham! you're not goin' to walk, are you?"
It was Mollie Brassfield shouting after him. She was standing in the door with her little pipe, which was stronger for its size than any pipe Dunham ever had met. She came hurrying after him when he lifted his hat and waved his hand in farewell without a word. There was one little piece of sincerity and courtesy around that place, he thought, with a sympathetic feeling for the poor soul whose long wanderings were marked with her children's graves.
"You wait till after dinner and Shad he'll haul you over," she begged, rather than invited, her manner was so pleading and earnest. She appeared shocked to see him starting out on foot, as if her hospitality were being shamed.
"I like to walk, thank you," Dunham said, wonder—ing whether he ought to offer her something for his breakfast. He felt that he might, since she was plainly very poor.
"I didn't intend to run away without payin' for my breakfast," he said, "but I guess I'd 'a' done it if you hadn't come out."
She drew back at his offer of half a dollar, looking more sad than insulted.
"I'd break my last hunk of cornbread with you and be happy of the company," she said. "But this grub ain't mine: I'm only cookin' for the men when any of them come in off of the range. It's Mr. Moore's grub, and he'd be so mortified he couldn't speak if he knew you offered to pay."
"Then do me the favor to give it to him, ma'am," Dunham requested earnestly. "If I can mortify that man for fifty cents I'll consider it the biggest bargain for the money a man ever got."
She looked at the vehement young man shrewdly, her head a little to one side, a sharp light of understanding in her wise black eyes.
"I'll give it to him, Mr. Dunham, if I and my old man gits chased off of the place for it," she declared. "And I wish you well wherever you may go."
Dunham struck off up the road, eager to get around the first bend and out of sight before Moore came out with any more of his humorous cracks or derisive allusions. He hoped Zora would not see him, feeling a bit sneaking at leaving without a word of gratitude to her, for he knew she had acted with a kind and generous impulse to get him out of his perilous situation last night. There had been nothing behind that deed but a generous desire to save the life of a foolish young man who had an old-fashioned notion about rights and dignities that seemed to be out of place in and around Pawnee Bend.
No doubt Moore was in the house that minute telling the cowboy messenger about the dead man rising up from Schubert's board and demanding to be told who had slandered him. The whole family would be there, laughing over this joke that would not lose its savor for many a day and year.
Yes, he believed even Zora would be there, passing biscuits to that turnip-faced cowboy who was go bow-legged he interfered. She would be as loud as any of them in her enjoyment of this rare piece of humor in which the granger who wore a gun was the chief comedian. All the respect he had won in her eyes by his quick draw and apparently effective shot had been lost in the ridiculous anticlimax. A man must kill when he pulled out and took a crack at another to be respected in that country, it appeared.
As he trudged along the road Dunham considered what his next move should be. He disliked to give up his romance, begun so far back, all built around the short-grass country; it was against his principles to retreat from anything begun because it turned out a bigger and harder job than he had estimated. But it was going to be a difficult matter to live down that joke. Moore was right; he couldn't fight the whole country.
It might be the wiser thing to travel on to the next town and start over, but it was a long way between towns in the short-grass country, and his suitcase weighed around forty pounds. Tramping it was not to be considered. On the other hand, his appearance in Pawnee Bend would be equal to the arrival of a circus. Everybody would cut loose at him with their humorous jibes. He'd hear that fool cowboy's indignant question fired at him from every door as he passed.
Kellogg's attitude was to be considered, also. Kellogg would take it that he had left town once on his command. Going back would appear to be an open defiance and a bid for trouble. There wouldn't be a shadow of lawful defense on his side in such case, Dunham feared. It was a hard country to break into; it looked as if they had the door locked against him, for a fact.
Dunham left the road after two or three miles, shy of meeting anybody coming from town, oppressed by the dread that is at least as painful to sensitive innocence as any recriminations of conscious guilt. He wanted to sit down in a hollow, somewhere out of sight, and think out the answer to his problem.
There was plenty of room for solitary meditation in that country, even close as it was to the railroad and town, neither of which was in sight. He drew away from the road a safe distance, shaping his course with a sort of subconscious intention toward the railroad track. Here the country was unpastured; the gray-green short grass, growing in little bunches, the unkind gray soil showing bare between, was uncropped and plentiful. Dunham put down his heavy suitcase in a little swale where a different grass grew thick and promising, nurtured by the down-wash of the richest soil. Here were some rose-brambles, matted in impenetrable clumps, and stunted bushes, of which the higher ground was uniformly bare.
As Dunham sat there in a mood of dejection, the feeling of being an outcast heavy upon him, the sun growing warm on his shoulders, it occurred to him that Appearances Are Everything. It illuminated his gloomy mind, it lifted his spirit with new hope. Foolish of him to have lost sight of that business-college maxim, which was not nearly so platitudinous to him as it doubtless seems to you. There was where he had bungled it, thought Bill. Appearances Are Everything, and he had put in the wrong kind of appearance at Pawnee Bend.
A gun, for example, didn't go along with that kind of clothes, at least a gun dangling in leather undisguised to the eyes of men. It was a combination so incongruous as to amount to a flaunting of custom; it had made him conspicuous and rushed him into the very thing he had hoped to avoid. Now, if he should go back to Pawnee Bend in overalls and boots, a woolen shirt and wide-brimmed hat, as most of the cowboys were dressed, he'd seem out of place without a gun.
The best thing to do, Bill concluded at last, was to go on west to the next town, get the proper outfit and make the proper appearance. To avoid making it look as if he had come back hunting trouble, he would wait until dark to enter Pawnee Bend, get the necessary information from the agent, and take the nine-twenty to a new and, he hoped, happier field of adventure.
It was a hard country to break into, but he was bound to get in if he had to take the hinges off the door.