CHAPTER VI
"An' now," quoth Timberline Todd, "we 'll top off this feed of victuals with a flock of can peaches. I always did favor can peaches since once over to No Wood in the winter of Ninety—no, I reckon it must 'a' been in the late fall—that was the winter I froze my left laig ridin'"
"If you said can peaches," interrupted Andy Dorson, across the table, "that 's enough; I don't need no introduction to 'em personal."
The friend of can peaches scowled. His gaunt, leathery cheeks were sucked inward, and the drooping tips of his frizzled mustache twitched petulantly.
"The same I was declarin'," he took up his tale with measured emphasis, "it bein' the late fall of Ninety, an' Mis' Bonnie Blackburn specifyin' to hold a sociable to raise the dust for a Methody church, which there never was a livelier cricket in shoe leather than this Bonnie girl, purty as a Christmas card an' always on the prod to start somethin' for the good of he-men's souls"
Andy Dorson's impatient eye had signaled distress to Phenie Logan, the trim little person who "dealt 'em off the arm" at the Rhinoceros Eating House, Two Moons' justly popular restaurant. Phenie, crisply fresh and refreshing to the eye in blue print dress and starched apron, sleeves rolled up from round arms, hair of sunburned gold piled high in a Psyche knot, had moved down to the table where the two cronies from the Hashknife outfit were dining. She laid one competent hand, knuckles down, on the tablecloth to indicate to the absorbed Timberline her immediate readiness to serve. Timberline, again interrupted, looked up dazedly.
"He says two cans of can peaches, Mis' Phenie," Andy interpreted.
"An' make 'em Minervy brand, Mis' Phenie," Timberline hastily interposed. "That was the brand Bonnie Blackburn chose for her Methody church raffle because the name 's religious."
"Religious?" Andy echoed with heavy surprise. "Draw me a picture, Timberline, of this religious brand of can peaches."
Phenie Logan tossed her head with a rippling laugh and lingered to enjoy to the full the reactions already charting their course across Timberline's weathered features. The elderly cow-punch had slammed his knife and fork down on his plate; a single tug whipped the sleazy napkin from where it was tucked under his bulging Adam's apple; the legs of his chair slithered in a backward push across the sanded floor. Timberline Todd's blue eyes, usually mild as the cups of a wind-flower, had hardened to sizzling carbon points. His cheeks were sucked in until the knobs of his jaw sockets stood out like twin headlands on the bleak contour of his features.
"I takes into count, Andy Dorson," old Todd began with studied politeness, "you was born somewheres under a barn, an' your early trainin'—most particular religious uprairin'—was 'bout as lackin' as a hermit kiote's; but allowin' for them drawbacks—the same you bein' not accountable for—anybody but a Crow squaw knows Minervy at the Well, which she is in the same class with Ole Man Noah an' his ark for gen'ral publicity.
"Miss Phenie, if you 'll be so kind, just rope two cans of Minervy-at-the-Well can peaches."
Now it was Andy Dorson's turn to lose his temper. His friend's aspersions on his immediate forbears and the deficiencies of his early education, loosed against him as they were in the presence of Phenie Logan—admittedly Two Moons' reigning belle—were deliberate and unprovoked insults. No long span of friendship could brook such incharity. Moreover, Andy hated to see a man old as Timberline Todd display so publicly his appalling ignorance.
"Of course," he began in a languid drawl, "anybody whose early youth was spent herdin' sheep, when he wasn't languishin' in jail for bustin' the statues made an' appointed, couldn't accumulate much in the gen'ral line of ancient history. If this child of misfortune I 'm specifyin' had had even a Chinaman's chance at a education he 'd 'a' known this here Minervy never knew about wells an' water holes, she bein' rated high in the queen stuff. Which she packed up her war bag, come Christmas holidays, an' went to propose marriage to Ole Man Solomon, knowin' him to be a right smart marryin' man."
Timberline gazed long into the eyes of his erstwhile friend. Scorn and pity sought for possession of his own steely eyes. He suddenly turned in his seat and hailed Phenie, who was standing on a chair before a shelf of canned goods up near the street door.
"If you 'll be so kind, Mis' Phenie, just trot them can peaches along in the cans." Then to Andy: "Dorson, I don't aim at makin' any issue of this Minervy business, howbe you 're sure makin' a triple X roach-haired dam' fool of yourself. But facts is facts even in the hands of pore ignorant orphans. To mark this trail broad: Minervy was a right handsome Jew girl who lived back in them days before the Mexican War. Her pappy used to send her to the well to tote water for the family. An' once she was just fillin' up the old pitcher when an outfit of strangers come along the trail with camels, which they used to break to saddle them days for some reason I ain't prepared to state.
"So this Minervy girl not only watered all the strangers but she watered all the camels. Which it wore her plumb thin to do, a camel takin' enough water in his system at one settin' to do a small herd of steers. So she got herself a big reputation in them parts as a camel waterer, an' some artist painted her picture. Parson Hollingshed over to No Wood had it hung up in his setting room; which it has underneath the picture, Minervy at the Well."
Phenie arrived at the table just then with two cans of peaches, their tops opened and turned back. Behind the pretty biscuit shooter followed another figure whom the disputants in the heat of their argument failed to observe. An arresting shape she was. Of enormous girth, which was more solid muscle than fat; big masculine hands ungloved; a ridiculously inadequate bonnet with some nightmare feather sprouting out from its crown resting on her great head like half an eggshell on a globe of the world; the woman appeared a demobilized Amazon translated from legendary Pontus to the Big Country. When she took a seat at the table across the room from the two cowmen her feet, shod with men's boots, stuck out beyond the table line. Over each boot the turned-up leg of a pair of overalls showed under the hem of her calico skirt. She ordered ham and eggs, "fry 'em easy"; her smile, wholly feminine and all motherly, accompanied the order she gave to Phenie.
This was Woolly Annie, the sheep queen, in from her sheep range on the headwaters of Poison Spider for a spree of buying in Two Moons. Once comfortably seated, she observed the two cowmen leisurely. Her great moon face, red and wind-wrinkled as a frosted apple, gathered into a quizzical mask of tolerant disgust—as if from a safe distance she were watching two skunks at play. Timberline Todd, leaning forward elbows on table and a can of peaches between his hands, was holding up for the other's inspection the gaudy gold and red label.
"See that woman in the picture?" he was adjuring in a high nasal whine; "that there 's Minervy at the Well like I told you."
"Minervy's grandma's pet aunt!" Andy Dorson snorted. "Show me a camel standin' round anywhere in the picture waitin' to be watered by a Jew girl. Show me a pitcher! Show me a well! An' what 's Minervy doin' with that ox-goad she 's got in her hand? Why she wearin' that helmet on her head? Answer me pronto, Mister Todd."
A distinct snort from the direction of the table where sat Woolly Annie—a snort from Gargantuan nostrils. Neither of the cowmen heeded. They were leaning across opposite sides of the table, face to face, flaming eye to flaming eye. The can of peaches between them quivered and slopped sticky liquor over its rim.
"Anybody but a sheep-stealin' son of a Blackfoot mother beater could tell that there 's Queen Minervy all rigged out in her war paint to go make marriage medicine with Ole Man Solomon, king of the Jews!" Andy Dorson was tapping the label on the can with a graphic forefinger while speech tumbled smoking hot from the furnace of his mouth.
Again the whiffling snort from Woolly Annie. Both men turned their faces toward the source of the interruption. They saw a big hand cram a napkin into a cavernous mouth while a huge torso, showing above the table top, quivered and rippled with suppressed laughter. They recognized the sheep queen of Poison Spider despite the paroxysms that racked her. Timberline Todd allowed the can of peaches he held to sink slowly to the table. There was silence for a minute. Then, in the most casual tone in the world, from Timberline:
"Yes, sir, as I was sayin' before interrupted, that 's a mighty sad thing I heard tell about this here Elk Waters from down Panhandle way."
Gone in an instant was the flush from the cheeks of both men; sped was the light of battle from their eyes. Their whole attitude was one of slightly bored lassitude; to Timberline's new lead Andy made languid answer as he speared a half peach from his can with a fork and pouched it.
"You were sayin' he was infortunate" quoth Andy.
"Infortunate 's a mild word for poor Elk's case," drawled Timberline, as he tilted his fruit can and poured out a spoonful of sirup. "First year they moved up from the Panhandle into this Big Country Elk's old man got bit by a hydrophoby skunk. It did n't take on him for nigh a week, then he went just a-rarin'; peared like he figured he was a skunk with a bushy tail, an' finally Elk had to kill him with an ax."
"Sho!" chuckled Andy in sympathy.
"Then Elk's brother, little Elk, sorta fell into bad company up on the Musselshell an' the Vigilance Committee had to run him down an' hang him to a cottonwood limb one cold day in January."
"Hum-hum!" Andy's head wagged dolorously. Woolly Annie's ham and eggs had arrived, but there was no knife-and-fork clatter from her table. The air of the two cowmen was absolutely detached and isolated. They might have been miles from the nearest listener. Timberline sighed gustily.
"Yes, sir, I never heard of a man who got rid by hard luck so hard as this here Elk Waters. Seemed like the devil just marked him for his child. Le 's see what else. Oh, yes, after his wife got burned up in Elk's little old soddy when the baby pulled the lamp over on hisself , Elk he got plumb meloncholy an' he finally took to herdin' sheep."
Bang! went a coffee cup into its saucer at the adjacent table.
"He was low in his mind," Andy volunteered. Timberline droned on:
"His sheep et up most of the range over in the Basin and then they took to browsin' down people's woodpiles and eatin' the geraniums the womenfolks nussed tenderly in their window boxes, an' Elk begins to be afraid he 's gettin' the blats besides fallin' hair and stone in the kidneys. Poor ole Elk don't mind the fallin' hair an' stone in the kidneys nigh so much as he 's afraid of the blats. So last winter he goes to Arkansaw Hot Springs to get the blats boiled out of him, he bein' strong as a red onion of the sheep. But pore ole Elk gets his last an' worse blow down to the Springs.
"'No use your coming here,' says the doc in charge of the Springs. 'We can boil out rheumatics like we 'd boil shirts, an' we can cure lepresy an' send cripples home good as new, but there ain't no springs invented which can boil the sheep blats out of a sheep herder.'"
There was a sound of a chair pushed back, a few heavy treads which made the eating-house floor tremble, and Woolly Annie stood by Andy and Timberline's table. She turned her great moon face to one, then to the other; it was bland and unruffled as the shell of a pumpkin in harvest frost.
"Gentlemen, both," said Woolly Annie, and with lightninglike movement her hands had shot out and wrapped themselves about the two half-consumed cans of peaches. Before either man could recover from the shock of her attack, the cans were inverted over their respective heads. Heavy globes of fruit and streams of sticky sirup cascaded down on each.
"Minervy at the Well—that 's me," came the throaty rumble. She deftly caromed each emptied can off a drenched head, then marched to where Phenie Logan was rolling in agony of silent mirth behind the cigar counter.
"Get on your bonnet, Phenie girl," she commanded, "and come down to the Boston Store to help me pick out some crêpe-desheeny nightgowns for myself an' my girl Tweenie."