Owen Wister - Red Men and White

“Won’t you please let me treat?” said the boy, unsteadily. “I ain’t likely to meet you again, sir.” Reaction was giving him trouble inside.

“Where are you bound, kid?”

“Oh, just a ways up the country,” answered the boy, keeping a grip on his voice.

“Well, you may get there. Where did you pick up that – that thing? Your pistol, I mean.”

“It’s a present from a friend,” replied the tenderfoot, with dignity.

“Farewell gift, wasn’t it, kid? Yes; I thought so. Now I’d hate to get an affair like that from a friend. It would start me wondering if he liked me as well as I’d always thought he did. Put up that money, kid. You’re drinking with me. Say, what’s yer name?”

“Cumnor – J. Cumnor.”

“Well, J. Cumnor, I’m glad to know y’u. Ephraim, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Cumnor. Mr. Adams, if you’re rested from your quadrille, you can shake hands with my friend. Step around, you Miguels and Serapios and Cristobals, whatever y’u claim your names are. This is Mr. J. Cumnor.”

The Mexicans did not understand either the letter or the spirit of these American words, but they drank their drink, and the concertina resumed its acrid melody. The boy had taken himself off without being noticed.

“Say, Spec,” said Ephraim to Jones, “I’m no hog. Here’s yer chain. You’ll be along again.”

“Keep it till I’m along again,” said the owner.

“Just as you say, Spec,” answered Ephraim, smoothly, and he hung the pledge over an advertisement chromo of a nude cream-colored lady with bright straw hair holding out a bottle of somebody’s champagne. Specimen Jones sang no more songs, but smoked, and leaned in silence on the bar. The company were talking of bed, and Ephraim plunged his glasses into a bucket to clean them for the morrow.

“Know anything about that kid?” inquired Jones, abruptly.

Ephraim shook his head as he washed.

“Travelling alone, ain’t he?”

Ephraim nodded.

“Where did y’u say y’u found that fellow layin’ the Injuns got?”

“Mile this side the cañon. ’Mong them sand-humps.”

“How long had he been there, do y’u figure?”

“Three days, anyway.”

Jones watched Ephraim finish his cleansing. “Your clock needs wiping,” he remarked. “A man might suppose it was nine, to see that thing the way the dirt hides the hands. Look again in half an hour and it’ll say three. That’s the kind of clock gives a man the jams. Sends him crazy.”

“Well, that ain’t a bad thing to be in this country,” said Ephraim, rubbing the glass case and restoring identity to the hands. “If that man had been crazy he’d been livin’ right now. Injuns’ll never touch lunatics.”

“That band have passed here and gone north,” Jones said. “I saw a smoke among the foot-hills as I come along day before yesterday. I guess they’re aiming to cross the Santa Catalina. Most likely they’re that band from round the San Carlos that were reported as raiding down in Sonora.”

“I seen well enough,” said Ephraim, “when I found him that they wasn’t going to trouble us any, or they’d have been around by then.”

He was quite right, but Specimen Jones was thinking of something else. He went out to the corral, feeling disturbed and doubtful. He saw the tall white freight-wagon of the Mexicans, looming and silent, and a little way off the new fence where the man lay. An odd sound startled him, though he knew it was no Indians at this hour, and he looked down into a little dry ditch. It was the boy, hidden away flat on his stomach among the stones, sobbing.

“Oh, snakes!” whispered Specimen Jones, and stepped back. The Latin races embrace and weep, and all goes well; but among Saxons tears are a horrid event. Jones never knew what to do when it was a woman, but this was truly disgusting. He was well seasoned by the frontier, had tried a little of everything: town and country, ranches, saloons, stage-driving, marriage occasionally, and latterly mines. He had sundry claims staked out, and always carried pieces of stone in his pockets, discoursing upon their mineral-bearing capacity, which was apt to be very slight. That is why he was called Specimen Jones. He had exhausted all the important sensations, and did not care much for anything any more. Perfect health and strength kept him from discovering that he was a saddened, drifting man. He wished to kick the boy for his baby performance, and yet he stepped carefully away from the ditch so the boy should not suspect his presence. He found himself standing still, looking at the dim, broken desert.

“Why, hell,” complained Specimen Jones, “he played the little man to start with. He did so. He scared that old horse-thief, Adams, just about dead. Then he went to kill me, that kep’ him from bein’ buried early to-morrow. I’ve been wild that way myself, and wantin’ to shoot up the whole outfit.” Jones looked at the place where his middle finger used to be, before a certain evening in Tombstone. “But I never – ” He glanced towards the ditch, perplexed. “What’s that mean? Why in the world does he git to cryin’ for now , do you suppose?” Jones took to singing without knowing it. “‘Ye shepherds, tell me, ha-ve you seen my Flora pass this way?’” he murmured. Then a thought struck him. “Hello, kid!” he called out. There was no answer. “Of course,” said Jones. “Now he’s ashamed to hev me see him come out of there.” He walked with elaborate slowness round the corral and behind a shed. “Hello, you kid!” he called again.

“I was thinking of going to sleep,” said the boy, appearing quite suddenly. “I – I’m not used to riding all day. I’ll get used to it, you know,” he hastened to add.

“‘Ha-ve you seen my Flo’ – Say, kid, where y’u bound, anyway?”

“San Carlos.”

“San Carlos? Oh. Ah. ‘Flora pass this way?’”

“Is it far, sir?”

“Awful far, sometimes. It’s always liable to be far through the Arivaypa Cañon.”

“I didn’t expect to make it between meals,” remarked Cumnor.

“No. Sure. What made you come this route?”

“A man told me.”

“A man? Oh. Well, it is kind o’ difficult, I admit, for an Arizonan not to lie to a stranger. But I think I’d have told you to go by Tres Alamos and Point of Mountain. It’s the road the man that told you would choose himself every time. Do you like Injuns, kid?”

Cumnor snapped eagerly.

“Of course y’u do. And you’ve never saw one in the whole minute-and-a-half you’ve been alive. I know all about it.”

“I’m not afraid,” said the boy.

“Not afraid? Of course y’u ain’t. What’s your idea in going to Carlos? Got town lots there?”

“No,” said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of Jones. “There’s a man there I used to know back home. He’s in the cavalry. What sort of a town is it for sport?” asked Cumnor, in a gay Lothario tone.

“ Town ?” Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the corral. “ Sport? Now I’ll tell y’u what sort of a town it is. There ain’t no streets. There ain’t no houses. There ain’t any land and water in the usual meaning of them words. There’s Mount Turnbull. It’s pretty near a usual mountain, but y’u don’t want to go there. The Creator didn’t make San Carlos. It’s a heap older than Him. When He got around to it after slickin’ up Paradise and them fruit-trees, He just left it to be as He found it, as a sample of the way they done business before He come along. He ’ain’t done any work around that spot at all, He ’ain’t. Mix up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat yer stones red-hot, and set the United States army loose over the place chasin’ Apaches, and you’ve got San Carlos.”