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Curly

<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> <h3>THE WHITE STAR</h3> As soon as Captain McCalmont was clear of the city I meandered in a casual way around the saloons, taking a drink here, a cigar there, passing the word for a meeting of cowboys only. They were to ride out by twos and threes for home in the usual way, but the time for the meeting was sunset, and the place a slope of hillside beyond Balshannon's grave. There we gathered to the number of thirty head, and Mutiny rode into the bunch to cut out any strangers who might have strayed with the herd. There being no strays, I spoke— "Boys, you-all knows who was buried here on the hilltop. He was my friend, and a sure friend of all range men." Some of the boys uncovered, one called— "Spit it out, ole Chalkeye! When you starts up yo' church, rent me a stall!" "I'll hire yo' ruddy scalp," says I, "instead of lamps. Wall, boys, these town toughs has shot out El Señor Don, and they're proposing to play their pure fountain of law on two more of our tribe, the same being young Jim his son, and little Curly McCalmont." "Say, Chalkeye, when do you get yo' dividends from Messrs. Robbers, Roost, and Co.?" "Why, Buck, it's on them days when I trusts you with loans of money." The crowd knew Buck's habit of not paying his debts, and proposed to divide up his shirt and pants if he got too obvious with remarks. "Boys," I went on, "we been letting these town citizens get too much happy and animated, throwing dirt in our face. Why, here's down east newspapers sobbing obituary notices over the poor cowboy species departed. Seems that we-all, and the mammoth, and the dodo, and the bison is numbered with the past, and our bones is used to manure the crops of the industrious farmer. Does that splash you? "Dear departed, I appeals to you most sorrowful—ain't it time to show signs of being alive? Not being a worker of miracles, I don't aim to corrupt yo' morals, I ain't proposing to obliterate the town which provides us with our liquor and groceries, I ain't a party to acts of violence; but I do propose that we just whirl in to-night and rescue them po' kids at La Morita. Of course, in busting the calaboose we may have to shoot up a few Mexicans—but it does them good to be taken serious at times, and they'd sure hate to be ignored while we stole their captives." Mutiny called out, "Say, now you've got yo' tail up, you ain't forgetting to talk." And on that the boys got riotous—"Rair up some more, ole Chalkeye; let's see you paw the moon!" "You tell the lies, we'll stick to 'em!" "Who stole Ryan's cows, eh, Chalkeye?" "Let the old horse-thief turn his wolf loose! Ki-yi-yeou-ou-ou!" "Loo-loo-loo-Yip! Yow!" "Girls," says I, "you're gettin' plenty obstreperous. Come on—let's roll our tails for old Mexico!" The boys came yelping, and we trotted the night through, throwing the miles behind us. At three o'clock, to judge by the stars of Orion, we rested our ponies near the boundary, at the streak of dawn loped on, and just as the day broke hurricaned in a gun-blaze down on La Morita. I regret to state for your information that the Mexican Frontier Guards were too sleepy to play up their side of the game, but surrendered abject before they had time to get hurt. Moreover, our youngsters had vamoosed through a hole in the wall. So there were no captives to liberate, except four measly vaqueros, which gave us a red-hot cussing at being waked too early for coffee time. We had a sickening miserable picnic, a waste of sweat and oratory. Slow and solemn we gaoled up those soldiers in the calaboose, and mounted the sulky vaqueros for a guard to hold them, feeling all the time like a batch of widows. In the stable I found Curly's buckskin mare and my fool horse Jones, the pair of which I took when we started for home. As to Jim and Curly, we held a council smoke, debating on their fate. The crowd agreed that these kids had been my pupils, and would be sure horse-thieves naturally. I felt they had gone afoot, but scouting around, I failed to find their sign. There was a track of a man with cowboy heels, going east, but it seemed to wiggle drunk. I never thought of Jim rolling along as he did with Curly on his back, but searched for the tracks of the pair running side by side. If I had only been a better scout I might have understood the lone track, and followed with horses to mount my youngsters for flight. We could have made an easy escape from the country, ending all our troubles—but I was a fool. So soon as my tribe pulled out for home I knew that the Frontier Guards would be loose at once like burned-out hornets. To linger in their way would be unhealthy, and I had no tracks to follow anyway. So I pulled out with the rest, taking all guns and horses, leaving the Guards disarmed and afoot lest they should try to act warlike. Further north the guns were thrown away, except some retained as mementos, and we used the Mexican herd of ponies to cover our tracks where we scattered. This episode is alluded to by the foolish cowboys as "Chalkeye's victory—all talk and run." A couple of miles to the eastward of La Morita Jim found that his little partner weighed a ton. After working all night, and struggling to the limit of his strength, he could go no further. The day was breaking; to move by daylight meant an extra risk of being seen, and there was nothing to be gained by travelling. So he staggered to the nearest hilltop, found a good look-out point, then smashed up some local rattlesnakes, and laid Curly to rest under a sheltering rock. From there he watched what the Weekly Obituary described as "an infamous outrage, perpetrated at La Morita by a gang of cowardly ruffians." Not that Jim was shocked—indeed, I reckon the lad put up signs of depraved joy. He said to the little partner— "We're sure saved, Curly, from being tracked down by the Guards and murdered." I calculate that one ordinary Arizona day without food and water would have finished Curly, but as it happened this was a desert Sabbath, when the clouds had a round-up for prayer. I ain't religious; it's no use for a poor devil like me to make a bluff at being holy, and if I went to church the Big Spirit would say: "Look at this Chalkeye person playing up at Me in a boiled shirt—ain't this plumb ridiculous?" It's no use, because I'm bad, but yet it humbles me down low to watch the clouds when they herd together for prayers, flirting their angel wings against the sun, lifting their gruff voices in supplication, tearing up the sky with their lightnings, sending down the rain of mercy to us poor desert creatures. The respectable people hire preachers to tell the Big Spirit of their wants, but it's the white clouds of the sky that says prayers for us ignorant range folks, for the coyotes, the deer and panthers, the bears and cows, the ponies and the cowboys. Then the rain comes to save us from dying of thirst, and we cusses around ungrateful because it makes us wet. When the storm broke that morning, the rain roared, the ground splashed, the hills ran cataracts, and Jim and Curly got washed out of their camp, the same becoming a pool all of a sudden, and were much too wet to go to sleep again. Moreover, the fever had left off prancing around in Curly's brain, and the cold had eased her wound like some big medicine. Jim had found a corner under the rock ledge which was perfectly dry. His leather Mexican clothes were shrunk tight with rain, the staining ran in streaks on his face, his teeth played tunes with the cold. "El Señor Don Santiago," says Curly, "yo' face has all gawn pinto, and it don't look Mexican that a-way in stripes. Maybe yo're changing into a sort of half-breed." "I'm beastly cold," says Jim, grave as a funeral. "Same here," she laughed. "Don't you think yo' disguise would pass for something in the way of striped squir'ls? With a rat in yo' paws you'd do for a chipmunk." "Let me be," says Jim. "How's your wound?" "Not aching to hurt, just to remind me it's there. How did we get to this rock?" Jim told her about the escape, and how the Frontier Guards had been left afoot, and how the storm had come convenient to wash out the raiders' tracks as well as his own. The rain had quit, and the plain was shining like a sea of gold which ran in channels between the island groups of purple mountains. So one could sure see range after range melting off into more than a hundred miles of clear distance, to where the sunshine was hot beyond the clouds. That clearness after rain is a great wonder to see, and makes one feel very good. "Talk some more," says Curly, "then I won't be encouraging this wound by taking notice of it." "Shall I lift you here to this dry corner?" "No; it's sure fighting, moving. Leave me be." "Curly, how did you get that scar above your eye?" "Buck handed me that. He's shorely fretful at times. Who's Buck? Why, he's second in command of our gang. No, he's a sure man. I'm plenty fond of Buck." "The brute! I'll wring his beastly neck! You love him?" "Wouldn't you love all yo' brothers, Jim?" "Oh, brothers—that's all right. But why did the rotten coward make that scar?" "You see, Buck's plenty fond of me, and his emotions is r'aring high, specially when—wall, I refused to be Mrs. Buck. It sounded so funny that I had to laugh. Then he got bucking squealing crazy, and when he's feeling that a-way he throws knives, which it's careless of him." "He wounded you with a knife? The cur!" "Oh, but Buck was remorseful a whole lot afterwards, and father shot him too. Father always shoots when the boys get intimate. Poor Buck! I nursed him until he was able to get around again, and he loves me worse than ever. It cayn't be helped." "So these robbers know that you—that you're a girl?" "They found me out last year. Yes, it's at the back of their haids that I'm their lil sister, and they're allowed to be brothers to me, Jim. Now don't you snort like a hawss, 'cause they're all the brothers I've got." "You're not afraid of them?" "You cayn't think what nice boys they are. Of course, being robbers, they claims to have been hatched savage, and brung up dangerous, pore things. Father tells 'em that they has no occasion for vain-glorious pride, 'cause their vocation is mean." "He's dead right, and I'm glad he shoots them!" "Generally in the laigs. He says he reckons that a tender inducement to being good is better than a bullet through the eye. Of co'se thar has to be some discipline to chasten they'r hearts, or they'd get acting bumptious." "Humph!" "But you don't savvy. Father has to press his views on the boys, but they'd be much worse if it wasn't for him. He says he's a heaps indulgent parent to 'em, and I reckon he shorely is. Father's the best man in the whole world. Do you know he only kills when he has to, and not for his own honour and glory? Why, he won't rob a man unless he's got lots of wealth. Once he was a bad man, but that's a long while ago, before I remember." "Were you always raised as a boy?" "Allus. He made me learn to ride, and rope, and shoot, from—ever since I was weaned. When I got old enough he learned me scouting, cooking, packing a hawss, tending wounds, hunting—all sorts of things. I been well educated shore enough, more than most boys." "It's all beastly rot calling him good—McCalmont good!" "A hawss or a dawg, or a lil' child will run from a bad man, but they love my father. Oh, but you don't know how good he is!" "Well, let it go at that. You wanted to be a robber?" "Shorely, yes, but he never would let me. It ain't true what that sign-paper says up in the city yonder, that I robbed a train. I wasn't there at all. You see, father picked up on the home trail with a starving man, and helped him. That mean, or'nary cuss went and told Joe Beef, the sheriff, that I was in the gang which held up the train. That's why I'm due to be hunted and roped, or shot at by any citizen who wants two thousand dollars. Of co'se, it's nacheral there should be a bounty offered on wolf haids, but I'd like to have a nice wolf-time before I'm killed. I never had a chance to get my teeth in, 'cept only once. Yes, we stole six hundred head of cattle from the Navajos, and you should just have seen the eager way they put out after us. They was plenty enthoosiastic, and they came mighty near collecting our wigs." "It makes me sick to think of you with a gang of thieves." "Father says that the worst crimes is cowardice, meanness, and cheating. The next worse things is banks, railroad companies, lawyers; and that young Ryan—'specially Ryan—he says that us robbers is angels compared with trash like that." "That's no excuse." "Father says that robbery is a sign that the law is rotten, and a proof that the Government's too pore and weak to cast a proper shadow. He allows we're a curse to the country, and it serves the people right." "It's bad—you know it's bad!" "Shore thing it's bad. Do you know what made us bad? All of our tribe was cowboys and stockmen once; not saints, but trying to act honest, and only stealing cows quite moderate, like ole Chalkeye. Then rich men came stealing our water-holes, fencing in our grass, driving our cattle away." "Why didn't you get a lawyer—wasn't there any law?" "There shorely was. My father's farm was way back in Kansas. His neighbour was a big cattle company, which hadn't any use for farms or settlers. They turned their cattle into his crops, they shot my brother Bill, they wounded father. Then father went to law, and the lawyers skinned him alive, and the judge was a shareholder in the Thomas Cattle Company—he done gave judgment that we-all was in the wrong. Then father appealed to the big Court at Washington, which says he had the right to his land and home. So the cattle company set the grass on fire and burned our home. Mother was burned to death, and father he went bad. I was the only thing he saved from the fire." "Poor beggar! No wonder he turned robber. I'd have done the same, by Jove!" "He shot Judge Thomson first, then he killed Mose Thomson, and the sheriff put out to get him. He got the sheriff. Then he went all through Kansas and Colorado, gathering pore stockmen what had been robbed and ruined by the rich men's law. They held up pay-escorts, stage coaches, banks, the trains on the railroad. That was the beginning of the Robbers' Roost." Jim sat heaps thoughtful looking away across the desert. "Our breeding cattle," says he, tallying on his fingers, "then Holy Cross, then mother, then father, and now I'm being hunted for a murder I didn't commit." "Now you know," says Curly, "why we robbers played a hand in yo' game." "I understand. Say, Curly, I take back all I said about it being bad—this robbery-under-arms. It's the only thing to do." "Don't you get dreaming," says Curly, "we-all ain't blind; our eyes is open a whole lot wide to truth, and we make no bluff that robbery and murder is forms of holiness." "It's all right for me. I'm a man, and I'm not a coward, either. But, Curly, you're not fit for a game like this. I'm going to take you away—where you'll be safe." "And whar to?" Jim looked at the desert steaming after the rain, hot as flame, reaching away all round for ever and ever. He looked at Curly's wound all swollen up, her face which had gone gaunt with pain and weakness. They were afoot, they were hunted, they had no place to hide. "Whar do you propose to take me?" says Curly. "I don't know," says Jim; "perhaps your people aren't so bad after all—anyway, they tried to keep you clean." "And what's the use of that? D'ye think I want to be alone in the hull world—clean with no folks, no home? Why should I want to be different from my father, and all my tribe? Would I want to be safe while they're in danger? Would I want to play coward while they fight? Shucks! Father turned me out to grass onced at the Catholic Mission, and them priests was shorely booked right through to heaven. What's the use of my being thar, while the rest of my tribe is in hell? I dreamt last night I was in hell, carrying water to feed it to my wolves; I couldn't get a drop for myself—never a drop." "Curly, I've got to save you—I must—I shall!" She laughed at him. "You! Do you remember me at Holy Crawss when I punched cows for Chalkeye? I might ha' been thar still but for you." "What on earth do you mean?" "Jim, I met up with yo' mother, and I didn't want to be bad any more when I seen her." "She thought the world of you." The poor child broke out laughing, "Oh, shucks!" Then her face went bitter. "She said she loved me, eh?" "She said I was a beastly little cad compared with you. When I got home from college she held you up for a holy example, and rubbed my nose in it. She was right—but how I cursed you!" Curly laughed faint and lay back moaning, for the sun had come hot from the clouds, and she was burning with pain. "So yo' mother claimed she loved me. Well, I know better!" "Why didn't you stay with her, Curly?" "I seen her face when she waited for you to come home—you, Jim, and she looked sure hungry. What was I to her, when she seen her own son a-coming? I waited to see you, Jim; I jest had to see you 'cause you was pizen to me. Then I went away 'cause I'd have killed you if I'd seen you any mo'." "Where did you go?" "Whar I belong, back to the wolf pack. What had I to do with a home, and a mother, with shelter, and livin' safe, and bein' loved? I'm only a wolf with a bounty on my hide, to be hunted down and shot." "And you—a girl!" "No, a mistake!" Jim pawed out, and grabbed her small brown hand. "You came back," he whispered. "I came back to see if that Ryan was goin' to wipe you out, you and yo' people. I came to see you die." "And saved my life!" "I reckon," says Curly, "I ain't quite responsible anyways for my life—'cause I'm only a mistake—jest a mistake. I feels one way, and acts the contrary; I whirl in to kill, and has to rescue; I aims to hate—and instead of that I——" "What?" "I dunno," she laughed. "Up home at Robbers' Roost we got a lil' book on etiquette what tells you how ladies and gentlemen had ought to act in heaps big difficulties. It shorely worries me to know whether I'm a lady or a gentleman, but it's mighty comfortin' the way that book is wrote. I done broke all my wolves outer that book to set up on their tails and act pretty. Now, if I had the book I'd know how I'd ought to act in regard to you-all." Jim looked mighty solemn, being naturally about as humorous as a funeral. "Am I nothing to you?" he asked, feeling hurt; but she just opened one eye at him, smiling, and said nothing. Presently the pain got so bad that she began to roll from side to side, scratching with her free hand at the face of the rock overhead. "Can't I do something?" says Jim. "It's awful to sit and watch that pain. I must do something." "If you climb to the top of this rock," she said between her teeth, "you'd see La Soledad. My father's thar." "I'll run." "Why run?" She snatched a small round looking-glass out of the breast of her shirt. "You've only to get the sun on this glass and flash the light three times upon La Soledad. The man on look-out will see the flash." "Give me the glass, then." "No." "Why not?" "Do you know what it means, Jim, if you flash that signal?" "Rescue for you." "And for you, Jim? It means that you quit bein' an honest man, it means shame, it means death. Us outlaws don't die in our beds, Jim." "Give me the glass." "No, Jim. Some time soon, when you and me is riding with the outfit, or camped at our stronghold, the army is goin' to come up agin' us—pony soldiers, and walk-a-heaps, and twice guns, to take our water-holes, to drive away our remuda, to block our escape trails, to close in on us. Our fires are goin' to be put out, our corpses left to the coyotes and the eagles." "Give me that glass!" "And my father says that beyond that is the Everlastin' Death." "Do you think you can frighten me? Give me that glass!" He snatched the glass from her hand, scrambled to the top of the rocks, and flashed the light three times upon La Soledad. A white star answered. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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