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Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters
Oscar's Chance, per Charley
"Bhooooooorrr! Bhooooooooooooooorrrrr!" It was the hollow,
melancholy, wild beast-howl of a fog-horn. We were drifting upon a
tragic coast, where the great waves slipped up the cliffs noiselessly,
to disappear upon the other side. At the time, I was talking to a
person who had just been a sort of composite of several of my friends,
but was now a gaunt bay mule. "Isn't it co-o-ld?" I said to him, and
shivered. He looked me sternly in the eye. "Get up!" said he. The
vessel struck a rock and trembled violently. "Get up!" repeated the
mule, and there was a menace in his voice now. "Bhooooooooooorrrrr!"
moaned the fog-horn. This was dreadful. But worse followed. The
waters gathered themselves and rose into a peak, the mule sliding
swiftly to the apex, still holding me with his uncanny eyes. There
came a shock, and Oscar said, "For the Lord's sake, kid! They've been
braying away on that breakfast horn for the last five minutes.
Hustle!"
I found myself upon my hands and knees; in a cabin, all right, but the
cabin was on the prairie. I looked around, stupid with sleep. The
familiar sights met my eye--Oscar tiptoeing about, bow-legged, arms
spread like wings, drawing his breath through his teeth, after the
fashion of half-frozen people. Old Charley sat humped up in the
corner, sucking his cob pipe. The stove was giving forth a smell of
hot iron, and no heat, as usual. On it rested a wash-basin, wherein
some snow was melting for the morning ablutions. A candle projected a
sort of palpable yellow gloom into the grey icy morning air. I
dressed rapidly. As I slept in overcoat and cap, this was no great
matter. A pair of German socks and arctics completed my attire.
Evidently I had been put upon the floor by the hand of Oscar. For
this, when Oscar stretched his nether garment tight, in the act of
washing his face, I smote him upon the fulness thereof with a long
plug of chewing tobacco. "Aow!" he yelled, recurving like a bow and
putting his hands to his wound. Promptly we clinched and fell upon
old Charley. To the floor the three went, amid a shower of sparks
from the cob pipe. "You dam pesky kids!" said the angry voice of
Charles (the timbre of that voice, after travelling through four
inches of nose, is beyond imitation). "Get off'n me! Quit now! Stop
yer blame foolin'!"
[Illustration: Get off'n me!]
Oscar and I swallowed our giggles and rolled all over Charley.
"_Well_, by Jeeroosha!" came from the bottom of the heap in the tone
of one who has reached the breaking point of astonished fury. "I'm
goin' to do some shootin' when this is over--yes, sir, I won't hold
back no more--ef you boys don't git off'n me this minit, so help me
Bob! I'll bite yer!"
This was a real danger, and we skipped off him briskly. "Why,
Charley," explained Oscar, "you see, we got so excited that we didn't
notice----"
"There's Steve now," interrupted Charley, pointing with a long crooked
forefinger to the doorway. "Well, Steve! I'm glad you come. I just
want you to see the kind of goin's on there is here." Charles cleared
his throat and stuck his thumb in his vest. "F'r instance, this
mornin', I sittin' right there in that corner, not troublin' nobody,
when up gets that splay-footed, sprawlin', lumberin' bull-calf of an
Oscar, an' that mischievious, sawed-off little monkey of a Harry, and
they goes to pullin' and tusslin', and they jes' walks up and down on
me, same's if I was a flight of steps. Now, you know, Steve, I'm a
man of sagassity an' _ex_periunce, an' I ain't goin' to stand fur no
such dograsslin'. I felt like doin' them boys ser'us damage, but
they're young, and life spreads green and promisin' befo' 'em, like a
banana tree; consequently I prefer jus' to tell you my time is handed
in."
Charley was proudly erect. His arms stretched aloft. His one yellow
tooth rested on his lower lip; his face, the thickness and texture of
a much-worn leather pocketbook, showed a tinge of colour as the words
went to his head like wine.
Steve looked at the floor. "Too bad, Charley; too bad," he said in
grave sympathy. "But probably we can fix it up. Now, as we have
company, would you mind hitting the breakfast trail?"
"After I've made a few remarks," returned Charles haughtily.
Steve dropped on a stool. "Sick your pup on," he said. Charley
leaped at the opportunity.
"There _are_ some things I sh'd like to mention," said he. We noted
with pleasure that he wore his sarcastic manner. "F'r instance, you
doubtless behold them small piles of snow on the floo', which has come
in through certain an' sundry holes in the wall that orter been
chinked last fall. Is it _my_ place to chink them holes? The oldes'
an' mose _ex_periunced man in the hull cat-hop? I reckon otherwise.
Then why didn't they git chinked? Why is it that the snows and winds
of an outraged and jus'ly indignant Providence is allowed to
introdoose theirselves into this company unrebuked?
"I have heard a' great deal, su', about the deadenin' effeck produced
upon man's vigger by a steady, reliable, so'thern climate. As a
citizen of the State of Texas fo' twenty years I repel the expersion
with scorn and hoomiliation. Nevertheless and notwithstanding,
'lowing' that to be the truth, did you encounter anything in this here
country to produce such an effeck? For Gawd's sake, su', if there's
anything in variety, a man livin' here orter lay holt of the grass
roots, fur fear he'd git so durn strong he couldn't stay on the face
of the yearth. Ef it ain't so sinful cold that yer ears'll drap off
at a touch, it's so hell-fire hot that a man's features melt all over
his face, and ef it ain't so solemn still that you're scart to death,
the wind'll blow the buttonholes outer yer clo's'. I have seen it do
a hull yearful of stunts in twenty-four hours, encludin' hot an' cold
weather, thunderstorms, drought, high water, and a blizzard. That
settles the climate question. Then what is it that has let them holes
go unchinked? I'll tell you, su'; it's nothin' more nor less than the
tinkerin', triflin', pettifoggin' dispersition of them two boys.
That's what makes it that there's mo' out-doors inside this bull-pen
than there is on the top of Chunkey Smith's butte; that's what makes
it I can't get up in the mornin' without having myself turned inter a
three-ringed circus. But I ain't the man to complain. Ef there's
anything that gums up the cards of life, it's a kicker; so jes' as one
man to another, I tells you what's wrong here and leaves you to figger
it out fer yerself."
He glanced around on three grave faces with obvious satisfaction. His
wrath had dissipated in the vapour of words. "Nor they ain't such bad
boys, _as_ boys, nuther," he concluded.
"I will examine this matter carefully, Charles," said Steve.
"I thank you, su'," responded Charley, with a courtly sweep of his
hand.
"Not at all," insisted Steve, with a duplicate wave. "I beg that you
won't mention it. And now, if you would travel toward the house----"
"_Cer_tainly!"
And out we went into North Dakota's congealed envelope, with the smoke
from the main-house chimney rising three hundred feet into the air, a
snow-white column straight as a mast, Charley stalking majestically
ahead, while we three floundered weakly behind him.
"Ain't he the corker?" gasped Oscar. "When he gets to jumping
sideways among those four-legged words he separates me from my good
intentions."
"'With scorn and hoomiliation,'" quoted Steve, and stopped, overcome.
"'I tells you what's the matter and leaves you to figger it out for
yourself,'" I added. Then Charley heard us. He turned and
approached, an awful frown upon his brow.
"May I inquire what is the reason of this yere merriment?" he asked.
The manner was that of a man who proposed to find out. It sat on
Charley with so ludicrous a parody that we were further undone. Steve
raised his hands in deprecation, and spoke in a muffled voice that
broke at intervals.
"Can't I laugh in my own backyard, Charley?" he said. "By the Lord
Harry, I _will_ laugh inside my stakes! No man shall prevent me. The
Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence,
and the Continental Congress give me the right. Now what have you got
to say?"
"I dunno but what you have me whipsawed there, Steve," replied
Charley, scratching his head. "Ef it's your right by the
Constitootion, o' course I ain't goin' to object."
"Do either of you object?" demanded Steve of Oscar and me in his
deepest bass. No, we didn't object; we fell down in the snow and
crowed like chanticleer.
"Hunh!" snorted Charley. "Hunh! Them boys hain't got brains in their
heads at all--nothin' but doodle-bugs!"
"Well, Charley," continued Steve, "as you don't object, and they don't
object, and I don't object, for God's sake let's have breakfast!"
"I'll go you, Steve," replied Charles seriously, and we entered the
house uproarious.
There in the kitchen was Mrs. Steve and the "company," a pretty little
bright-eyed thing, whose colour went and came at a word--more
particularly if Oscar said the word. The affair was at present in the
formal state--the dawn of realisation that two such wonderful and
magnificent creatures as Oscar and Sally existed. But they were not
Oscar and Sally except in the dear privacy of their souls. Yet how
much that is not obvious to the careless ear can be put into "Will you
have a buckwheat cake, Mr. Kendall?" or "May I give you a helping of
the syrup, Miss Brown?" It took some preparation for each to get out
so simple a remark, and invariably the one addressed started guiltily,
and got crimson. It was the most uncomfortable rapture I ever saw,
However, they received very little plaguing. I can remember but one
hard hit. Oscar was pouring syrup upon Sally's cakes, his eyes fixed
upon a dainty hand, that shook under his gaze like a leaf. He forgot
his business. Steve looked at the inverted, empty syrup-cup for some
moments in silence. Then he said to his wife, "Emma, go and get Sally
a nice cupful of fresh air to put on her cakes; that that Oscar has in
the pitcher is stale by this time."
[Illustration: The affair was at present in the formal state]
Oh, those cakes! And the ham! And the fried eggs and potatoes. We
lived like fighting cocks at Steve's, as happens on most of the small
ranches. The extreme glory of the prairie was not ours. We were
wood-choppers, hay-cutters, and farmers, as well as punchers; but what
we lost in romance, we made up in sustenance. No one ever saw a
biscuit suffering from soda-jaundice on Steve's table. And how, after
a night's sleep in a temperature of forty below zero, I would champ my
teeth on the path to breakfast! Eating was not an appetite in those
days--it was a passion.
Charley and I went forth after breakfast, Oscar lingering a moment,
according to his use, to pass a painful five minutes in making excuses
for staying that time, where no one needed any explanation.
"I wish to gracious Sally and Oscar would just act like people," said
Mrs. Steve once in exasperation. "They get me so nervous stammering
at each other that I drop everything I lay my hands on, and I feel as
if I'd robbed somebody for the rest of the day."
The interview over, Oscar came out, burning with his own
embarrassment, and made a sore mess of everything he did for the next
hour. A man must have his mind about him on a ranch.
Once upon a time Steve came to Charley and me, literally prancing. We
had heard oaths and yells and sounds of a battle royal previously, and
wondered what was going on. When he neared us he moved slowly, his
hands working like machinery. "I would like to know," he began, and
stopped to glare at us and grind his teeth. "I should like to know,"
he continued, in a voice so weak with rage we could hardly hear it,
"who turned the red bull into number three corral."
Charley and I went right on cleaning out the shed. We weren't going
to tell on Oscar.
"So it's him again, heh?" shrieked Steve. "Well, now I propose to
show him something. I'll show him everything!" He was entirely
beyond the influence of reason and grammar. Charley had an
ill-advised notion to play the paternal.
"Now, I'd cool down if I was you, Steve," he admonished.
"You would, would you!" foamed Steve. "Well, who the devil cares what
you'd do, anyhow? And if you tell me to cool down just once more,
I'll drive you into the ground like a tent-pin."
I jumped through the window, and then laughed, while Charley
administered his reproof with appropriate gestures. His long arms
flew in the air as he delivered the inspired address, Steve looking at
him, a bit of shamefacedness and fun showing through his heat.
"An' mo' I tell you, Steven P. Hendricks!" rolled out Charley in
conclusion. "That this citizen of Texas, jus'ly and rightjus'ly
called the Lone Star State, has never yet experienced the feeling of
bein' daunted by face of man. No, su'! By God, su'!" He held the
shovel aloft like a sword. "Let 'em come as they will, male and
female after their kind, from a ninety poun' Jew peddler to Sittin'
Bull himself, and from a pigeon-toed Digger-Injun squaw to a
fo'-hundred-weight Dutch lady, I turn my back on none!"
"You win, Charley," said Steve, and walked off. All Oscar caught out
of it was the request that when he felt like reducing the stock on the
ranch he'd take a rifle.
Poor Oscar! All noble and heroic sentiments struggling within him,
with no outlet but a hesitating advancing of the theory that "if we
didn't get rain before long, the country'd be awful dry." Small
wonder that he burst out in the bull-pen one night with "I wish the
Injuns would jump this ranch!"
"You do?" said Charley. "Well, durn your hide for that wish! What's
got into you to make you wish that?"
"Aw!" said Oscar, twitching around on his stool, "I'm sick and tired
of not being able to say anything. If the Sioux got up, I could do
something."
"Oh, that's it," retorted Charles. "Well, Oscar, far's I can see, if
it's necessary to have a war-party of Injuns whoopin' an' yellin' an'
crow-hoppin' an' makin' fancywork out of people to give you the proper
start afore your gal, it'd be jes' as well for you to stay single the
res' of your days. The results wouldn't justify the trouble."
Afterward Oscar told me in private that Charley was an old stiff, and
he didn't believe he'd make a chest at a grasshopper if the latter
spunked up any. That wronged old Charley. But Oscar must be
excused--he was a singularly unhappy man.
To come back to what happened. Oscar that morning had the care of
Geronimo, a coal-black, man-eating stallion, a brute as utterly devoid
of fear as of docility. A tiger kills to eat, and occasionally for
the fun of it; that horse killed out of ferocity, and hate of every
living thing.
A fearful beast is a bad horse. One really has more chance against a
tiger. Geronimo stood seventeen hands high, and weighed over sixteen
hundred pounds. When he reared on his hind legs and came for you,
screaming, his teeth snapping like bear-traps, his black mane flying,
a man seemed a pigmy. One blow from those front hoofs and your
troubles were over. Once down, he'd trample, bite, and kick until
your own mother would hesitate to claim the pile of rags and jelly
left. He had served two men so; nothing but his matchless beauty
saved his life.
Nowhere could one find a better example of hell-beautiful than when he
tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black
panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a
colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of
his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most
horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of
the corral--and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie
Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ranch right after
that. The loss of his dog broke him all up.
We fed and watered Geronimo with a pitchfork, and in terror then, for
his slyness and cunning were on a par with his other pleasant
peculiarities. One of the poor devils he killed entered the stable
all unsuspecting. Geronimo had broken his chains, and stood close
against the wall of his stall in the darkness, waiting. The man came
within reach. Suddenly a black mass of flesh flashed in the air above
him, coming down with all four hoofs--and that's enough of that story.
A nice pet was Geronimo. An excellent decoration for a gentleman's
stable--stuffed.
Well, Oscar turned him out this morning, and then he, Steve, and I
went for hay. As it was toward the last of winter, all the near
stacks had been used up, and we had to haul from Kennedy's bottom,
eight miles away. When we started, the air was still and frozen, with
a deep, biting cold unusual to Dakota; the sort that searches you and
steals all the heat you own. We were numb by the time we reached the
stack, and glad enough to have warm work to do. We fell to it with a
rush for that reason, and because a dull grey blink upon the western
skyline seemed to promise a blizzard. We were tying down the last
load, when I heard the hum of wind coming, and looked up, expecting to
see a wall of flying snow, and continued looking, seeing nothing of
the kind. There I stood, in the air of an ice-house, when a gust of
that wind struck me. A miracle! In a snap of your fingers I was
bathed in genial warmth. All about me rode the scent of spring and
flowers! It was as if the doors of a giant conservatory were thrown
open.
"Chinook, boys! Chinook!" I called, casting down my fork. They ran
from the lee of the stack, throwing their coats open, drinking it in
and laughing, for, man! we were weary of winter! First it came in
puffs, at length settling down to a steady breeze, as of the sea. The
sun, that in the early morning was no more than a pale effigy, poured
on us a heart-warming fire. We hustled for home, knowing that the
Chinook would make short work of the snow. In fact, we had not
covered more than half the distance before the prairie began to show
brown here and there, where it lay thin between mountainous drifts.
We sang and howled all the way to the sheds, feeling fine.
Here Steve left us, to go to the house, while Oscar and I unloaded the
sleighs.
Suddenly I felt uncomfortable, for no reason in this world. The land
about us was rejoicing with the booming of that kind, warm wind, yet a
sharp uneasiness stopped me and forced me to raise my head. For
three-quarters of a circle nothing met my eyes but the vanishing
snow-drifts. I reached the house; nothing wrong there. Steve was
walking briskly out toward us, smoking his pipe. Then the
corrals--all right, number one, two, three, four--Lord have mercy!
"Oscar!" I shrieked, and snatched him to his feet. He rose,
bewildered and half angry, then looked to where I pointed.
Through the centre of number four corral tripped Sally, dear little
timid Sally, glad to be out in this lovely air, her eyes and mind on
Oscar doubtless, and in the same corral, shut off from her sight by a
projection of the sheds, stood Geronimo. And he saw her, too, for as
she waved a hand to us, he bared his great teeth and clashed them
together. The earth seemed to rock and sink from me. Every soul on
the ranch was told to keep away from the corral with the two buffalo
skulls over the gates, a warning sufficiently big and gruesome to stop
anyone. What fatal lapse of memory had struck the girl?
She was beyond help. We were all of two hundred yards away, and Steve
still farther; she was not a quarter of that from the brute. If we
shouted, if we moved, we might bring her end upon her--and such an
end! When I thought of that dainty, pretty little woman beneath those
hoofs, I felt a hideous sickness. The man beside me said, "My God!
My mistake!" A corral opened on each side of the box stall in which
Geronimo was confined. One of these was usually empty, a reserve. It
was into this that Oscar had turned the horse. The other was the
corral of the skulls.
Geronimo leaped out. The girl halted, stark, open-mouthed, every sign
of life stricken from her at a blow. Geronimo sprang high and snapped
at nothing, in evil play before the earnest. It was horrible. We
could do neither harm nor good now, so we ran for the spot. It was
down hill from us to them. I doubt that anything on two legs ever
covered distance as we did, for all the despair. Geronimo reared and
stood upon his hind feet, as straight as a man. He advanced,
striking, looming above his victim. "All over," I thought, and tried
to take my eyes away. I could not.
At that instant a white-hatted, gaunt, tall figure rushed from the
stable door, a shovel in its hand, straight between the girl and her
destruction. There he stood, with his partly weapon raised,
unflinching. An oath came to my lips and a hot spot to my throat at
the sight. No eye ever saw a braver thing.
At this, a dip in the ground and the eight-foot fence of the corral
shut out all within. God knows how we got over that fence. I swear I
think we leaped it. I have no memory of climbing, but I do recall
landing on the other side in a swoop.
Geronimo had old Charley in his teeth, shaking him like a rat.
"Steve!" I called, "Steve!" And then Oscar and I charged at the
wicked brute with our pitchforks. All that followed is a tangled, bad
dream of hurry, fear, yells, oaths, and myself stabbing, stabbing,
stabbing with the pitchfork. Then a gun cracked somewhere, a black
mass toppled toward me that knocked me sprawling--and all was still.
I sat for a moment, smiling foolishly and fumbling for my hat. Steve
raised me by the arm. He still had his revolver in his hand, and his
glance on the dead stallion. He asked me if I was hurt, and I said
yes. He asked me where, and I said that made no difference. Then, as
I came to a little more, I said I guessed I wasn't hurt, and looked
around. Oscar had Sally in his arms. The tears were running down his
cheeks, and he moved his head from side to side, like a man in agony.
Her head was buried in his breast, her hands locked around his neck.
It was well with them, evidently. But limp upon the ground, his
forehead varnished red, lay old Charley.
We turned him over tenderly, wiping the blood away. Steve's lips
quivered as he put his hand on the old man's heart. He kept it there
a long time. Then he said huskily, "He's gone!" At the words the
sound eye of the victim popped open with a suddenness that made my
heart throw a somersault. It was as sane, calm, and undisturbed an
optic as ever regarded the world.
"G-a-w-n H--l!" said Charley.
We laughed and wiped our eyes with our coat sleeves, and got the old
boy to his feet.
"Same old Texas," said he, feeling of his head (the hoof had scraped,
instead of smashing), "slightly disfiggered, but still in the ring."
He caught sight of the lovers. "Hello!" he said. "Oscar's made his
ante good at last--bad hawse works as well as Injuns." We started to
lead him by the pair.
"Naw, boys," he commanded. "Take me 'round 't'uther way. That gal
don't want to see me now, all bloody and mussed up like this."
It was useless to attempt making a hero of Charley.