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Title: A journey in search of Christmas
Author: Owen Wister
Illustrator: Frederic Remington
Release date: September 2, 2023 [eBook #71547]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1904
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Charlene Taylor, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS ***
[Illustration: Lin McLean]
A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF CHRISTMAS
BY
OWEN WISTER
AUTHOR OF “LIN MCLEAN” “RED MEN AND WHITE” “THE JIMMYJOHN BOSS” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
FREDERIC REMINGTON
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER _&_ BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS MCMV
Copyright, 1904, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Published October, 1904.
CONTENTS
[Illustration: Border]
CHAP. PAGE
I. Lin’s Money Talks Joy 1
II. Lin’s Money is Dumb 13
III. A Transaction in Boot-Blacking 37
IV. Turkey and Responsibility 50
V. Santa Claus Lin 75
ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: Border]
Lin McLean _Frontispiece_
“Lin walked in their charge, they leading the way” _Facing p._ 52
“‘This is Mister Billy Lusk’” „ 90
A JOURNEY IN SEARCH
OF CHRISTMAS
I
Lin’s Money Talks Joy
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
The Governor descended the steps of the Capitol slowly and with pauses,
lifting a list frequently to his eye. He had intermittently pencilled it
between stages of the forenoon’s public business, and his gait grew
absent as he recurred now to his jottings in their accumulation, with a
slight pain at their number, and the definite fear that they would be
more in seasons to come. They were the names of his friends’ children to
whom his excellent heart moved him to give Christmas presents. He had
put off this regenerating evil until the latest day, as was his custom,
and now he was setting forth to do the whole thing at a blow, entirely
planless among the guns and rocking-horses that would presently surround
him. As he reached the highway he heard himself familiarly addressed
from a distance, and, turning, saw four sons of the alkali jogging into
town from the plain. One who had shouted to him galloped out from the
others, rounded the Capitol’s enclosure, and, approaching with radiant
countenance, leaned to reach the hand of the Governor, and once again
greeted him with a hilarious “Hello, Doc!”
[Illustration: Border]
Governor Barker, M.D., seeing Mr. McLean unexpectedly after several
years, hailed the horseman with frank and lively pleasure, and,
inquiring who might be the other riders behind, was told that they were
Shorty, Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill, come for Christmas. “And dandies to
hit town with,” Mr. McLean added. “Redhot.”
“I am acquainted with them,” assented his Excellency.
“We’ve been ridin’ trail for twelve weeks,” the cow-puncher continued,
“and the money in our pants is talkin’ joy to us right out loud.”
Then Mr. McLean overflowed with talk and pungent confidences, for the
holidays already rioted in his spirit, and his tongue was loosed over
their coming rites.
[Illustration: Border]
“We’ve soured on scenery,” he finished, in his drastic idiom. “We’re
heeled for a big time.”
“Call on me,” remarked the Governor, cheerily, “when you’re ready for
bromides and sulphates.”
“I ain’t box-headed no more,” protested Mr. McLean; “I’ve got maturity,
Doc, since I seen yu’ at the rain-making, and I’m a heap older than them
hospital days when I bust my leg on yu’. Three or four glasses and quit.
That’s my rule.”
“That your rule, too?” inquired the Governor of Shorty, Chalkeye, and
Dollar Bill. These gentlemen of the saddle were sitting quite
expressionless upon their horses.
“We ain’t talkin’, we’re waitin’,” observed Chalkeye; and the three
cynics smiled amiably.
[Illustration: Border]
“Well, Doc, see yu’ again,” said Mr. McLean. He turned to accompany his
brother cow-punchers, but in that particular moment Fate descended, or
came up, from whatever place she dwells in, and entered the body of the
unsuspecting Governor.
“What’s your hurry?” said Fate, speaking in the official’s hearty
manner. “Come along with me.”
“Can’t do it. Where’re yu’ goin’?”
“Christmasing,” replied Fate.
“Well, I’ve got to feed my horse. Christmasing, yu’ say?”
“Yes; I’m buying toys.”
“Toys! You? What for?”
“Oh, some kids.”
“Yourn?” screeched Lin, precipitately.
[Illustration: Border]
His Excellency the jovial Governor opened his teeth in pleasure at this,
for he was a bachelor, and there were fifteen upon his list, which he
held up for the edification of the hasty McLean. “Not mine, I’m happy to
say. My friends keep marrying and settling, and their kids call me
uncle, and climb around and bother, and I forget their names, and think
it’s a girl, and the mother gets mad. Why, if I didn’t remember these
little folks at Christmas they’d be wondering—not the kids, they just
break your toys and don’t notice; but the mother would wonder—‘What’s
the matter with Dr. Barker? Has Governor Barker gone back on us?’—that’s
where the strain comes!” he broke off, facing Mr. McLean with another
spacious laugh.
[Illustration: Border]
But the cow-puncher had ceased to smile, and now, while Barker ran on
exuberantly McLean’s wide-open eyes rested upon him, singular and
intent, and in their hazel depths the last gleam of jocularity went out.
“That’s where the strain comes, you see. Two sets of
acquaintances—grateful patients and loyal voters—and I’ve got to keep
solid with both outfits, especially the wives and mothers. They’re the
people. So it’s drums, and dolls, and sheep on wheels, and games, and
monkeys on a stick, and the saleslady shows you a mechanical bear, and
it costs too much, and you forget whether the Judge’s second girl is
Nellie or Susie, and—well, I’m just in for my annual circus this
afternoon! You’re in luck. Christmas don’t trouble a chap fixed like
you.”
Lin McLean prolonged the sentence like a distant echo.
[Illustration: Border]
“A chap fixed like you!” The cow-puncher said it slowly to himself. “No,
sure.” He seemed to be watching Shorty, and Chalkeye, and Dollar Bill
going down the road. “That’s a new idea—Christmas,” he murmured, for it
was one of his oldest, and he was recalling the Christmas when he wore
his first long trousers.
“Comes once a year pretty regular,” remarked the prosperous Governor.
“Seems often when you pay the bill.”
“I haven’t made a Christmas gift,” pursued the cow-puncher, dreamily,
“not for—for—Lord! it’s a hundred years, I guess. I don’t know anybody
that has any right to look for such a thing from me.” This was indeed a
new idea, and it did not stop the chill that was spreading in his heart.
[Illustration: Border]
“Gee whiz!” said Barker, briskly, “there goes twelve o’clock. I’ve got
to make a start. Sorry you can’t come and help me. Good-bye!”
His Excellency left the rider sitting motionless, and forgot him at once
in his own preoccupation. He hastened upon his journey to the shops with
the list, not in his pocket, but held firmly, like a plank in the
imminence of shipwreck. The Nellies and Susies pervaded his mind, and he
struggled with the presentiment that in a day or two he would recall
some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him
look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently
watched him go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his
speed when Lin overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they
took a side street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and
wrote it as he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and
met face to face with Mr. McLean.
[Illustration: Border]
“The boys are seein’ after my horse,” Lin rapidly began, “and I’ve got
to meet ’em sharp at one. We’re twelve weeks shy on a square meal, yu’
see, and this first has been a date from ’way back. I’d like to—” Here
Mr. McLean cleared his throat, and his speech went less smoothly. “Doc,
I’d like just for a while to watch yu’ gettin’—them monkeys, yu’ know.”
[Illustration: Border]
The Governor expressed his agreeable surprise at this change of mind,
and was glad of McLean’s company and judgment during the impending
selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a couple
of dolls rose nimbly in Barker’s mental eye, and it was with an
imperfect honesty that he said, “You’ll help me a heap.”
And Lin, quite sincere, replied, “Thank yu’.”
[Illustration: Border]
So together these two went Christmasing in the throng. Wyoming’s Chief
Executive knocked elbows with the spurred and jingling waif, one man as
good as another in that raw, hopeful, full-blooded cattle era which now
the sobered West remembers as the days of its fond youth. For one man
has been as good as another in three places—Paradise before the Fall;
the Rocky Mountains before the wire fence; and the Declaration of
Independence. And then this Governor, besides being young, almost as
young as Lin McLean or the Chief-Justice (who lately had celebrated his
thirty-second birthday), had in his doctoring days at Drybone known the
cow-puncher with that familiarity which lasts a lifetime without
breeding contempt; accordingly, he now laid a hand on Lin’s tall
shoulder and drew him among the petticoats and toys.
II
Lin’s Money is Dumb
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
Christmas filled the windows and Christmas stirred in mankind. Cheyenne,
not over-zealous in doctrine or litanies, and with the opinion that a
world in the hand is worth two in the bush, nevertheless was flocking
together, neighbor to think of neighbor, and every one to remember the
children; a sacred assembly, after all, gathered to rehearse unwittingly
the articles of its belief, the Creed and Doctrine of the Child. Lin saw
them hurry and smile among the paper fairies; they questioned and
hesitated, crowded and made decisions, failed utterly to find the right
thing, forgot and hastened back, suffered all the various desperations
of the eleventh hour, and turned homeward, dropping their parcels with
that undimmed good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal
human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher’s
brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children
escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch
and meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with
rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the
sound of musical boxes.
[Illustration: Border]
Through this tinkle and bleating of little machinery the murmur of the
human heart drifted in and out of McLean’s hearing; fragments of home
talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours;
and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed
knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses
must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after
much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both
ends meeting, and the woman with him laid a hand on his arm, saying that
his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step
towards them. There were hours and spots where he could readily have
descended upon them at that, played the rôle of clinking affluence,
waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and, tossing off some
infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full, self-conscious strut of the
frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could
make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and
forth, busy upon their errands, and aware of him scarcely more than if
he had been a spirit looking on from the helpless dead; and so, while
these weaving needs and kindnesses of man were within arm’s touch of
him, he was locked outside with his impulses. Barker had, in the natural
press of customers, long parted from him, to become immersed in choosing
and rejecting; and now, with a fair part of his mission accomplished, he
was ready to go on to the next place, and turned to beckon McLean. He
found him obliterated in a corner beside a life-sized image of Santa
Claus, standing as still as the frosty saint.
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
“He looks livelier than you do,” said the hearty Governor. “’Fraid it’s
been slow waiting.”
“No,” replied the cow-puncher, thoughtfully. “No, I guess not.”
This uncertainty was expressed with such gentleness that Barker roared.
“You never did lie to me,” he said, “long as I’ve known you. Well, never
mind. I’ve got some real advice to ask you now.”
At this Mr. McLean’s face grew more alert. “Say, Doc,” said he, “what do
yu’ want for Christmas that nobody’s likely to give yu’?”
“A big practice—big enough to interfere with my politics.”
[Illustration: Border]
“What else? Things and truck, I mean.”
“Oh—nothing I’ll get. People don’t give things much to fellows like me.”
“Don’t they? Don’t they?”
“Why, you and Santa Claus weren’t putting up any scheme on my stocking?”
“Well—”
“I believe you’re in earnest!” cried his Excellency. “That’s simply
rich!” Here was a thing to relish! The Frontier comes to town “heeled
for a big time,” finds that presents are all the rage, and must
immediately give somebody something. Oh, childlike, miscellaneous
Frontier! So thought the good-hearted Governor; and it seems a venial
misconception. “My dear fellow,” he added, meaning as well as possible,
“I don’t want you to spend your money on me.”
[Illustration: Border]
“I’ve got plenty all right,” said Lin, shortly.
“Plenty’s not the point. I’ll take as many drinks as you please with
you. You didn’t expect anything from me?”
“That ain’t—that don’t—”
“There! Of course you didn’t. Then, what are you getting proud about?
Here’s our shop.” They stepped in from the street to new crowds and
counters. “Now,” pursued the Governor, “this is for a very particular
friend of mine. Here they are. Now, which of those do you like best?”
[Illustration: Border]
They were sets of Tennyson in cases holding little volumes equal in
number, but the binding various, and Mr. McLean reached his decision
after one look. “That,” said he, and laid a large, muscular hand upon
the Laureate. The young lady behind the counter spoke out acidly, and
Lin pulled the abject hand away. His taste, however, happened to be
sound, or, at least, it was at one with the Governor’s; but now they
learned that there was a distressing variance in the matter of price.
The Governor stared at the delicate article of his choice. “I know that
Tennyson is what she—is what’s wanted,” he muttered; and, feeling
himself nudged, looked around and saw Lin’s extended fist. This gesture
he took for a facetious sympathy, and, dolorously grasping the hand,
found himself holding a lump of bills. Sheer amazement relaxed him, and
the cow-puncher’s matted wealth tumbled on the floor in sight of all
people. Barker picked it up and gave it back. “No, no, no!” he said,
mirthful over his own inclination to be annoyed; “you can’t do that. I’m
just as much obliged, Lin,” he added.
[Illustration: Border]
“Just as a loan. Doc—some of it. I’m grass-bellied with spot-cash.”
A giggle behind the counter disturbed them both, but the sharp young
lady was only dusting. The Governor at once paid haughtily for
Tennyson’s expensive works, and the cow-puncher pushed his
discountenanced savings back into his clothes. Making haste to leave the
book department of this shop, they regained a mutual ease, and the
Governor became waggish over Lin’s concern at being too rich. He
suggested to him the list of delinquent taxpayers and the latest census
from which to select indigent persons. He had patients, too, whose
inveterate pennilessness he could swear cheerfully to—“since you want to
bolt from your own money,” he remarked.
[Illustration: Border]
“Yes, I’m a green horse,” assented Mr. McLean, gallantly; “ain’t used to
the looks of a twenty-dollar bill, and I shy at ’em.”
From his face—that jocular mask—one might have counted him the most
serene and careless of vagrants, and in his words only the ordinary
voice of banter spoke to the Governor. A good woman, it may well be,
would have guessed before this the sensitive soul in the blundering
body; but Barker saw just the familiar, whimsical, happy-go-lucky McLean
of old days, and so he went gayly and innocently on, treading upon holy
ground. “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed; “give your wife something.”
[Illustration: Border]
The ruddy cow-puncher grinned. He had passed through the world of woman
with but few delays, rejoicing in informal and transient entanglements,
and he welcomed the turn which the conversation seemed now to be taking.
“If you’ll give me her name and address,” said he, with the future
entirely in his mind.
“Why, Laramie!” and the Governor feigned surprise.
“Say, Doc,” said Lin, uneasily, “none of ’em ’ain’t married me since I
saw you last.”
“Then she hasn’t written from Laramie?” said the hilarious Governor; and
Mr. McLean understood and winced in his spirit deep down. “Gee whiz!”
went on Barker. “I’ll never forget you and Lusk that day!”
[Illustration: Border]
But the mask fell now. “You’re talking of his wife, not mine,” said the
cow-puncher, very quietly, and smiling no more; “and, Doc, I’m going to
say a word to yu’, for I know yu’ve always been my good friend. I’ll
never forget that day myself—but I don’t want to be reminded of it.”
“I’m a fool, Lin,” said the Governor, generous instantly. “I never
supposed—”
“I know yu’ didn’t. Doc. It ain’t you that’s the fool. And in a way—in a
way—” Lin’s speech ended among his crowding memories, and Barker, seeing
how wistful his face had turned, waited. “But I ain’t quite the same
fool I was before that happened to me,” the cow-puncher resumed, “though
maybe my actions don’t show to be wiser. I know that there was better
luck than a man like me had any call to look for.”
[Illustration: Border]
The sobered Barker said, simply, “Yes, Lin.” He was set to thinking by
these words from the unsuspected inner man.
[Illustration: Border]
Out in the Bow-Leg country Lin McLean had met a woman with thick, red
cheeks, calling herself by a maiden name; and this was his whole
knowledge of her when he put her one morning astride a Mexican saddle
and took her fifty miles to a magistrate and made her his lawful wife to
the best of his ability and belief. His sage-brush intimates were
confident he would never have done it but for a rival. Racing the rival
and beating him had swept Mr. McLean past his own intentions, and the
marriage was an inadvertence. “He jest bumped into it before he could
pull up,” they explained; and this casualty, resulting from Mr. McLean’s
sporting blood, had entertained several hundred square miles of alkali.
For the new-made husband the joke soon died. In the immediate weeks that
came upon him he tasted a bitterness worse than in all his life before,
and learned also how deep the woman, when once she begins, can sink
beneath the man in baseness. That was a knowledge of which he had lived
innocent until this time. But he carried his outward self serenely, so
that citizens in Cheyenne who saw the cow-puncher with his bride argued
shrewdly that men of that sort liked women of that sort; and before the
strain had broken his endurance an unexpected first husband, named Lusk,
had appeared one Sunday in the street, prosperous, forgiving, and
exceedingly drunk. To the arms of Lusk she went back in the public
street, deserting McLean in the presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne
saw this, and learned how she had been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if
intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too,
and went about his business, ready to swagger at the necessary moment,
and with the necessary kind of joke always ready to shield his hurt
spirit. And soon, of course, the matter grew stale, seldom raked up in
the Bow-Leg country where Lin had been at work; so lately he had begun
to remember other things besides the smouldering humiliation.
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
“Is she with him?” he asked Barker, and musingly listened while Barker
told him. The Governor had thought to make it a racy story, with the
moral that the joke was now on Lusk; but that inner man had spoken and
revealed the cow-puncher to him in a new and complicated light; hence he
quieted the proposed lively cadence and vocabulary of his anecdote about
the house of Lusk, and instead of narrating how Mrs. beat Mr. on
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mr. took his turn the odd days,
thus getting one ahead of his lady, while the kid Lusk had outlined his
opinion of the family by recently skipping to parts unknown. Barker
detailed these incidents more gravely, adding that Laramie believed Mrs.
Lusk addicted to opium.
[Illustration: Border]
“I don’t guess I’ll leave my card on ’em,” said McLean, grimly, “if I
strike Laramie.”
“You don’t mind my saying I think you’re well out of that scrape?”
Barker ventured.
“Shucks, no! That’s all right, Doc. Only—yu’ see now. A man gets tired
pretending—onced in a while.”
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
Time had gone while they were in talk, and it was now half after one and
Mr. McLean late for that long-plotted first square meal. So the friends
shook hands, wishing each other Merry Christmas, and the cow-puncher
hastened towards his chosen companions through the stirring cheerfulness
of the season. His play-hour had made a dull beginning among the toys.
He had come upon people engaged in a pleasant game, and waited, shy and
well-disposed, for some bidding to join, but they had gone on playing
with one another and left him out. And now he went along in a sort of
hurry to escape from that loneliness where his human promptings had been
lodged with him useless. Here was Cheyenne, full of holiday for sale,
and he with his pockets full of money to buy; and when he thought of
Shorty and Chalkeye and Dollar Bill, those dandies to hit town with, he
stepped out with a brisk, false hope. It was with a mental hurrah and a
foretaste of a good time coming that he put on his town clothes, after
shaving and admiring himself, and sat down to the square meal. He ate
away and drank with a robust imitation of enjoyment that took in even
himself at first. But the sorrowful process of his spirit went on, for
all he could do. As he groped for the contentment which he saw around
him he began to receive the jokes with counterfeit mirth. Memories took
the place of anticipation, and through their moody shiftings he began to
feel a distaste for the company of his friends and a shrinking from
their lively voices. He blamed them for this at once. He was surprised
to think he had never recognized before how light a weight was Shorty,
and here was Chalkeye, who knew better, talking religion after two
glasses. Presently this attack of noticing his friends’ shortcomings
mastered him, and his mind, according to its wont, changed at a stroke.
“I’m celebrating no Christmas with this crowd,” said the inner man; and
when they had next remembered Lin McLean in their hilarity he was gone.
[Illustration: Border]
Governor Barker, finishing his purchases at half-past three, went to
meet a friend come from Evanston. Mr. McLean was at the railway station
buying a ticket for Denver.
“Denver!” exclaimed the amazed Governor.
“That’s what I said,” stated Mr. McLean, doggedly.
“Suffering Moses!” said his Excellency. “What are you going to do
there?”
“Get good and drunk.”
“Can’t you find enough whiskey in Cheyenne?”
“I’m drinking champagne this trip.”
[Illustration: Border]
The cow-puncher went out on the platform and got aboard, and the train
moved off. Barker had walked out, too, in his surprise, and as he stared
after the last car Mr. McLean waved his wide hat defiantly and went
inside the door.
[Illustration: Border]
“And he says he’s got maturity,” Barker muttered. “I’ve known him since
seventy-nine, and he’s kept about eight years old right along.” The
Governor was cross and sorry, and presently crosser. His jokes about
Lin’s marriage came back to him and put him in a rage with the departed
fool. “Yes, about eight. Or six,” said his Excellency, justifying
himself by the past. For he had first known Lin, the boy of nineteen,
supreme in length of limb and recklessness, breaking horses and feeling
for an early mustache. Next, when the mustache was nearly accomplished,
he had mended the boy’s badly broken thigh at Drybone. His skill (and
Lin’s spotless health) had wrought so swift a healing that the surgeon
overflowed with the pride of science, and over the bandages would
explain the human body technically to his wild-eyed and flattered
patient. Thus young Lin heard all about tibia, and comminuted, and other
glorious new words, and when sleepless would rehearse them. Then, with
the bone so nearly knit that the patient might leave the ward on
crutches to sit each morning in Barker’s room as a privilege, the
disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out of the hospital and
hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and variety waited for a
languishing convalescent. Here he grew gay, and was soon carried back
with the leg refractured. Yet Barker’s surgical rage was disarmed, the
patient was so forlorn over his doctor’s professional chagrin.
[Illustration: Border]
“I suppose it ain’t no better this morning, Doc?” he had said, humbly,
after a new week of bed and weights.
“Your right leg’s going to be shorter. That’s all.”
“Oh, gosh! I’ve been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur! Ain’t I a
son-of-a-gun?”
You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time’s due course he had
walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length, after all,
and in his stride the slightest halt possible. And Doctor Barker had
missed the child’s conversation. To-day his mustache was a perfected
thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.
[Illustration: Border]
“He’ll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,” said
Barker. “Then he’ll come back on a freight and begin over again.”
III
A Transaction in Boot-Blacking
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and
omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the
first saloon. A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked
the smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin
took Hot Scotch. Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw
a saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous. That
should have been his choice; lemon-peel would undoubtedly be fresher
over there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly.
In such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to
enjoy without haste its mellow fitness. Once again on the pavement, he
looked along the street towards up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric
lights, and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood, and cried,
“Shine? Shine?” at him. Remembering that you took the third turn to the
right to get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of
stopping at all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a few
yards, and it was across the street. This one being attained and
appreciated, he found that he must cross back again or skip number four.
At this rate he would not be dining in time to see much of the theatre,
and he stopped to consider. It was a German place he had just quitted,
and a huge light poured out on him from its window, which the
proprietor’s fatherland sentiment had made into a show. Lights shone
among a well-set pine forest, where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots
and reached upward to Santa Claus; he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held
in his right hand forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a
string of sausages that dangled down among the gnomes. With his American
back to this, the cow-puncher, wearing the same serious, absent face he
had not changed since he ran away from himself at Cheyenne, considered
carefully the Hot Scotch question and which side of the road to take and
stick to, while the little bootblacks found him once more, and cried,
“Shine? Shine?” monotonous as snowbirds. He settled to stay over here
with the southside Scotches, and, the little, one-note song reaching his
attention, he suddenly shoved his foot at the nearest boy, who lightly
sprang away.
[Illustration: Border]
“Dare you to touch him!” piped a snowbird, dangerously. They were in
short trousers, and the eldest enemy, it may be, was ten.
“Don’t hit me,” said Mr. McLean. “I’m innocent.”
“Well, you leave him be,” said one.
“What’s he layin’ to kick you for, Billy? ’Tain’t yer pop, is it?”
“Naw!” said Billy, in scorn. “Father never kicked me. Don’t know who he
is.”
[Illustration: Border]
“He’s a special!” shrilled the leading bird, sensationally. “He’s got a
badge, and he’s going to arrest yer.”
Two of them hopped instantly to the safe middle of the street, and
scattered with practised strategy; but Billy stood his ground. “Dare you
to arrest me!” said he.
“What’ll you give me not to?” inquired Lin, and he put his hands in his
pockets, arms akimbo.
“Nothing; I’ve done nothing,” announced Billy, firmly. But even in the
last syllable his voice suddenly failed, a terror filled his eyes, and
he, too, sped into the middle of the street.
“What’s he claim you lifted?” inquired the leader, with eagerness. “Tell
him you haven’t been inside a store to-day. We can prove it!” they
screamed to the special officer.
[Illustration: Border]
“Say,” said the slow-spoken Lin from the pavement, “you’re poor judges
of a badge, you fellows.”
His tone pleased them where they stood, wide apart from each other.
Mr. McLean also remained stationary in the bluish illumination of the
window. “Why, if any policeman was caught wearin’ this here,” said he,
following his sprightly invention, “he’d get arrested himself.”
This struck them extremely. They began to draw together, Billy lingering
the last.
“If it’s your idea,” pursued Mr. McLean, alluringly, as the three took
cautious steps nearer the curb, “that blue, clasped hands in a circle of
red stars gives the bearer the right to put folks in the jug—why, I’ll
get somebody else to black my boots for a dollar.”
[Illustration: Border]
The three made a swift rush, fell on simultaneous knees, and, clattering
their boxes down, began to spit in an industrious circle.
“Easy!” wheedled Mr. McLean, and they looked up at him, staring and
fascinated. “Not having three feet,” said the cow-puncher, always grave
and slow, “I can only give two this here job.”
“He’s got a big pistol and a belt!” exulted the leader, who had
precociously felt beneath Lin’s coat.
“You’re a smart boy,” said Lin, considering him, “and yu’ find a man out
right away. Now you stand off and tell me all about myself while they
fix the boots—and a dollar goes to the quickest through.”
[Illustration: Border]
Young Billy and his tow-headed competitor flattened down, each to a
boot, with all their might, while the leader ruefully contemplated Mr.
McLean.
“That’s a Colt forty-five you’ve got,” ventured he.
“Right again. Some day, maybe, you’ll be wearing one of your own, if the
angels don’t pull yu’ before you’re ripe.”
“I’m through!” sang out Towhead, rising in haste.
Small Billy was struggling still, but leaped at that, the two heads
bobbing to a level together; and Mr. McLean, looking down, saw that the
arrangement had not been a good one for the boots.
[Illustration: Border]
“Will you kindly referee,” said he, forgivingly, to the leader, “and
decide which of them smears is the awfulest?”
But the leader looked the other way and played upon a mouth-organ.
“Well, that saves me money,” said Mr. McLean, jingling his pocket. “I
guess you’ve both won.” He handed each of them a dollar. “Now,” he
continued, “I just dassent show these boots up-town; so this time it’s a
dollar for the best shine.”
The two went palpitating at their brushes again, and the leader played
his mouth-organ with brilliant unconcern. Lin, tall and brooding, leaned
against the jutting sill of the window, a figure somehow plainly strange
in town, while through the bright plate-glass Santa Claus, holding out
his beer and sausages, perpetually beamed.
[Illustration: Border]
Billy was laboring gallantly, but it was labor, the cow-puncher
perceived, and Billy no seasoned expert. “See here,” said Lin, stooping,
“I’ll show yu’ how it’s done. He’s playin’ that toon cross-eyed enough
to steer anybody crooked. There. Keep your blacking soft and work with a
dry brush.”
“Lemme,” said Billy. “I’ve got to learn.” So he finished the boot his
own way with wiry determination, breathing and repolishing; and this
event was also adjudged a dead heat, with results gratifying to both
parties. So here was their work done, and more money in their pockets
than from all the other boots and shoes of this day; and Towhead and
Billy did not wish for further trade, but to spend this handsome fortune
as soon as might be. Yet they delayed in the brightness of the window,
drawn by curiosity near this new kind of man whose voice held them and
whose remarks dropped them into constant uncertainty. Even the omitted
leader had been unable to go away and nurse his pride alone.
[Illustration: Border]
“Is that a secret society?” inquired Towhead, lifting a finger at the
badge.
Mr. McLean nodded. “Turruble,” said he.
“You’re a Wells Fargo detective,” asserted the leader.
“Play your harp,” said Lin.
“Are you a—a desperaydo?” whispered Towhead.
“Oh, my!” observed Mr. McLean, sadly; “what has our Jack been readin’?”
“He’s a cattle-man!” cried Billy. “I seen his heels.”
[Illustration: Border]
“That’s you!” said the discovered puncher, with approval. “You’ll do.
But I bet you can’t tell me what we wearers of this badge have sworn to
do this night.”
At this they craned their necks and glared at him.
“We—are—sworn (don’t yu’ jump, now, and give me away)—sworn—to—blow off
three bootblacks to a dinner.”
“Ah, pshaw!” They backed away, bristling with distrust.
“That’s the oath, fellows. Yu’ may as well make your minds up—_for I
have it to do_!”
“Dare you to! Ah!”
“And after dinner it’s the Opera-house, to see ‘The Children of Captain
Grant’!”
They screamed shrilly at him, keeping off beyond the curb.
[Illustration: Border]
“I can’t waste my time on such, smart boys,” said Mr. McLean, rising to
his full height from the window-sill. “I am going somewhere to find boys
that ain’t so turruble quick stampeded by a roast turkey.”
He began to lounge slowly away, serious as he had been throughout, and
they, stopping their noise short, swiftly picked up their boxes and
followed him. Some change in the current of electricity that fed the
window disturbed its sparkling light, so that Santa Claus, with his arms
stretched out behind the departing cow-puncher, seemed to be smiling
more broadly from the midst of his flickering brilliance.
IV
Turkey and Responsibility
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
On their way to turkey, the host and his guests exchanged but few
remarks. He was full of good-will, and threw off a comment or two that
would have led to conversation under almost any circumstances save
these; but the minds of the guests were too distracted by this whole
state of things for them to be capable of more than keeping after Mr.
McLean in silence, at a wary interval, and with their mouths, during
most of the journey, open. The badge, the pistol, their patron’s talk,
and the unusual dollars wakened wide their bent for the unexpected,
their street affinity for the spur of the moment; they believed slimly
in the turkey part of it, but what this man might do next, to be there
when he did it, and not to be trapped, kept their wits jumping
deliciously; so when they saw him stop they stopped instantly, too, ten
feet out of reach. This was Denver’s most civilized restaurant—that one
which Mr. McLean had remembered, with foreign dishes and private rooms,
where he had promised himself, among other things, champagne. Mr. McLean
had never been inside it, but heard a tale from a friend; and now he
caught a sudden sight of people among geraniums, with plumes and white
shirtfronts, very elegant. It must have been several minutes that he
stood contemplating the entrance and the luxurious couples who went in.
[Illustration: Border]
“Plumb French!” he observed, at length; and then, “Shucks!” in a key
less confident, while his guests ten feet away watched him narrowly.
“They’re eatin’ patty de parley-voo in there,” he muttered, and the
three bootblacks came beside him. “Say, fellows,” said Lin, confidingly,
“I wasn’t raised good enough for them dude dishes. What do yu’ say! I’m
after a place where yu’ can mention oyster stoo without givin’ anybody a
fit. What do yu’ say, boys?”
That lighted the divine spark of brotherhood!
[Illustration: “Lin walked in their charge, they leading the way”]
[Illustration: Border]
“Ah, you come along with us—we’ll take yer! You don’t want to go in
there. We’ll show yer the boss place in Market Street. We won’t lose
yer.” So, shouting together in their shrill little city trebles, they
clustered about him, and one pulled at his coat to start him. He started
obediently, and walked in their charge, they leading the way.
“Christmas is comin’ now, sure,” said Lin, grinning to himself. “It
ain’t exactly what I figured on.” It was the first time he had laughed
since Cheyenne, and he brushed a hand over his eyes, that were dim with
the new warmth in his heart.
Believing at length in him and his turkey, the alert street faces, so
suspicious of the unknown, looked at him with ready intimacy as they
went along; and soon, in the friendly desire to make him acquainted with
Denver, the three were patronizing him. Only Billy, perhaps, now and
then stole at him a doubtful look.
[Illustration: Border]
The large Country Mouse listened solemnly to his three Town Mice, who
presently introduced him to the place in Market Street. It was not boss,
precisely, and Denver knows better neighborhoods; but the turkey and the
oyster-stew were there, with catsup and vegetables in season, and
several choices of pie. Here the Country Mouse became again efficient;
and to witness his liberal mastery of ordering and imagine his pocket
and its wealth, which they had heard and partly seen, renewed in the
guests a transient awe. As they dined, however, and found the host as
frankly ravenous as themselves, this reticence evaporated, and they all
grew fluent with oaths and opinions. At one or two words, indeed, Mr.
McLean stared and had a slight sense of blushing.
[Illustration: Border]
“Have a cigarette?” said the leader, over his pie.
“Thank yu’,” said Lin. “I won’t smoke, if you’ll excuse me.” He had
devised a wholesome meal with water to drink.
“Chewin’s no good at meals,” continued the boy. “Don’t you use
tobacker?”
“Onced in a while.”
The leader spat brightly. “He ’ain’t learned yet,” said he, slanting his
elbows at Billy and sliding a match over his rump. “But beer, now—I
never seen anything in it.” He and Towhead soon left Billy and his
callow profanities behind, and engaged in a town conversation that
silenced him, and set him listening with all his admiring young might.
Nor did Mr. McLean join in the talk, but sat embarrassed by this
knowledge, which seemed about as much as he knew himself.
[Illustration: Border]
“I’ll be goshed,” he thought, “if I’d caught on to half that when I was
streakin’ around in short pants! Maybe they grow up quicker now.” But
now the Country Mouse perceived Billy’s eager and attentive
apprenticeship. “Hello, boys!” he said, “that theatre’s got a big start
on us.”
They had all forgotten he had said anything about theatre; and other
topics left their impatient minds while the Country Mouse paid the bill
and asked to be guided to the Opera-house. “This man here will look out
for your blackin’ and truck, and let yu’ have it in the morning.”
[Illustration: Border]
They were very late. The spectacle had advanced far into passages of the
highest thrill, and Denver’s eyes were riveted upon a ship and some
icebergs. The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light
effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced
so helpful in times of peril and sentiment. The children of Captain
Grant had been tracking their father all over the equator and other
scenic spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them. The
Captain’s youngest child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a
sudden motion, loudly shouted, “Sister, the ice is closing in!” and
Sister replied, chastely, “Then let us pray.” It was a superb tableau:
the ice split, and the sun rose and joggled at once to the zenith. The
act-drop fell, and male Denver, wrung to its religious deeps, went out
to the rum-shop.
[Illustration: Border]
Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this. The party had
applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with
Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship’s getting farther
south in the next act. Until lately Billy’s doubt of the cow-puncher had
lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out in
him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his
unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.
“Don’t you think this is splendid?” said he.
“Splendid,” Lin replied, a trifle remotely.
“Don’t you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?”
[Illustration: Border]
“Humming,” said Lin.
“Don’t you guess it’s just girls, though, that do that?”
“What, young fellow?”
“Why, all that prayer-saying an’ stuff.”
“I guess it must be.”
“She said to do it when the ice scared her, an’ of course a man had to
do what she wanted him.”
“Sure.”
“Well, do you believe they’d ’a’ done it if she hadn’t been on that
boat, an’ clung around an’ cried an’ everything, an’ made her friends
feel bad?”
“I hardly expect they would,” replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly
mindful of Billy, “except there wasn’t nothin’ else they could think
of,” he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.
[Illustration: Border]
“Why, that chunk of ice weren’t so awful big, anyhow. I’d ’a’ shoved her
off with a pole. Wouldn’t you?”
“Butted her like a ram,” exclaimed Mr. McLean.
“Well, I don’t say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn’t
a-going to, an’ he—I think he’s a flubdub, anyway.”
“I’ll bet he is!” said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent
guardian.
“I told him straight, an’ he looked at me, an’ down he flops on his
knees. An’ he made ’em all flop, but I told him I didn’t care for them
putting up any camp-meeting over me; an’ he says, ‘I’ll lick you,’ an’ I
says, ‘Dare you to!’ I told him mother kep’ a-licking me for nothing,
an’ I’d not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you
pray much?”
[Illustration: Border]
“No,” replied Lin, uneasily.
“There! I told him a man didn’t, an’ he said then a man went to hell.
‘You lie; father ain’t going to hell,’ I says, and you’d ought to heard
the first class laugh right out loud, girls an’ boys. An’ he was that
mad! But I didn’t care. I came here with fifty cents.”
“Yu’ must have felt like a millionaire.”
“Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an’ sold ’em, an’ got more an’
saved, an’ got my box an’ blacking outfit. I weren’t going to be licked
by her just because she felt like it, an’ she feeling like it most any
time. Lemme see your pistol.”
“You wait,” said Lin. “After this show is through I’ll put it on you.”
“Will you, honest? Belt an’ everything? Did you ever shoot a bear?”
[Illustration: Border]
“Lord! lots.”
“Honest? Silver-tips?”
“Silver-tips, cinnamon, black; and I roped a cab onced.”
“O-h! I never shot a bear.”
“You’d ought to try it.”
“I’m a-going to. I’m a-going to camp out in the mountains. I’d like to
see you when you camp. I’d like to camp with you. Mightn’t I some time?”
Billy had drawn nearer to Lin, and was looking up at him adoringly.
“You bet!” said Lin; and though he did not, perhaps, entirely mean this,
it was with a curiously softened face that he began to look at Billy. As
with dogs and his horse, so always he played with what children he
met—the few in his sage-brush world; but this was ceasing to be quite
play for him, and his hand went to the boy’s shoulder.
[Illustration: Border]
“Father took me camping with him once, the time mother was off. Father
gets awful drunk, too. I’ve quit Laramie for good.”
Lin sat up, and his hand gripped the boy. “Laramie!” said he, almost
shouting it. “Yu’—yu’—is your name Lusk?”
But the boy had shrunk from him instantly. “You’re not going to take me
home?” he piteously wailed.
“Heavens and heavens!” murmured Lin McLean. “So yu’re her kid!”
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
He relaxed again, down in his chair, his legs stretched their straight
length below the chair in front. He was waked from his bewilderment by a
brushing under him, and there was young Billy diving for escape to the
aisle, like the cornered City Mouse that he was. Lin nipped that poor
little attempt and had the limp Billy seated inside again before the two
in discussion beyond had seen anything. He had said not a word to the
boy, and now watched his unhappy eyes seizing upon the various exits and
dispositions of the theatre; nor could he imagine anything to tell him
that should restore the perished confidence. “Why did yu’ head him off?”
he asked himself, unexpectedly, and found that he did not seem to know;
but as he watched the restless and estranged runaway he grew more and
more sorrowful. “I just hate him to think that of me,” he reflected. The
curtain rose, and he saw Billy make up his mind to wait until they
should all be going out in the crowd. While the children of Captain
Grant grew hotter and hotter upon their father’s geographic trail, Lin
sat saying to himself a number of contradictions. “He’s nothin’ to me.
What’s any of them to me?” Driven to bay by his bewilderment, he
restated the facts of the past. “Why, she’d deserted him and Lusk before
she’d ever laid eyes on me. I needn’t to bother myself. He wasn’t never
even my step-kid.” The past, however, brought no guidance. “Lord, what’s
the thing to do about this? If I had any home— This is a stinkin’ world
in some respects,” said Mr. McLean, aloud, unknowingly. The lady in the
chair beneath which the cow-puncher had his legs nudged her husband.
They took it for emotion over the sad fortunes of Captain Grant, and
their backs shook. Presently each turned, and saw the singular man with
untamed, wide-open eyes glowing at the stage, and both backs shook
again.
[Illustration: Border]
Once more his hand was laid on Billy. “Say!”
The boy glanced at him, and quickly away.
“Look at me, and listen.”
Billy swervingly obeyed.
“I ain’t after yu’, and never was. This here’s your business, not mine.
Are yu’ listenin’ good?”
[Illustration: Border]
The boy made a nod, and Lin proceeded, whispering: “You’ve got no call
to believe what I say to yu’—yu’ve been lied to, I guess, pretty often.
So I’ll not stop yu’ runnin’ and hidin’, and I’ll never give it away I
saw yu’, but yu’ keep doin’ what yu’ please. I’ll just go now. I’ve saw
all I want, but you and your friends stay with it till it quits. If yu’
happen to wish to speak to me about that pistol or bears, yu’ come
around to Smith’s Palace—that’s the boss hotel here, ain’t it?—and if
yu’ don’t come too late I’ll not be gone to bed. By this time of night
I’m liable to get sleepy. Tell your friends good-bye for me, and be good
to yourself. I’ve appreciated your company.”
Mr. McLean entered Smith’s Palace, and, engaging a room with two beds in
it, did a little delicate lying by means of the truth. “It’s a lost
boy—a runaway,” he told the clerk. “He’ll not be extra clean, I expect,
if he does come. Maybe he’ll give me the slip, and I’ll have a job cut
out to-morrow. I’ll thank yu’ to put my money in your safe.”
[Illustration: Border]
The clerk placed himself at the disposal of the secret service, and Lin
walked up and down, looking at the railroad photographs for some ten
minutes, when Master Billy peered in from the street.
“Hello!” said Mr. McLean, casually, and returned to a fine picture of
Pike’s Peak.
Billy observed him for a space, and, receiving no further attention,
came stepping along. “I’m not a-going back to Laramie,” he stated,
warningly.
“I wouldn’t,” said Lin. “It ain’t half the town Denver is. Well,
good-night. Sorry yu’ couldn’t call sooner—I’m dead sleepy.”
“O-h!” Billy stood blank. “I wish I’d shook the darned old show. Say,
lemme black your boots in the morning?”
[Illustration: Border]
“Not sure my train don’t go too early.”
“I’m up! I’m up! I get around to all of ’em.”
“Where do yu’ sleep?”
“Sleeping with the engine-man now. Why can’t you put that on me
to-night?”
“Goin’ up-stairs. This gentleman wouldn’t let yu’ go up-stairs.”
But the earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first to
hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the belt
round his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders
outside the accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth.
“Did it ever kill a man?” asked Billy, touching the six-shooter.
[Illustration: Border]
“No. It ’ain’t never had to do that, but I expect maybe it’s stopped
some killin’ me.”
“Oh, leave me wear it just a minute! Do you collect arrow-heads? I think
they’re bully. There’s the finest one you ever seen.” He brought out the
relic, tightly wrapped in paper, several pieces. “I foun’ it myself,
camping with father. It was sticking in a crack right on top of a rock,
but nobody’d seen it till I came along. Ain’t it fine?”
Mr. McLean pronounced it a gem.
“Father an’ me found a lot, an’ they made mother mad lying around, an’
she throwed ’em out. She takes stuff from Kelley’s.”
“Who’s Kelley?”
[Illustration: Border]
“He keeps the drug-store at Laramie. Mother gets awful funny. That’s how
she was when I came home. For I told Mr. Perkins he lied, an’ I ran
then. An’ I knowed well enough she’d lick me when she got through her
spell—an’ father can’t stop her, an’ I—ah, I was sick of it! She’s lamed
me up twice beating me—an’ Perkins wanting me to say ‘God bless my
mother!’ a-getting up and a-going to bed—he’s a flubdub! An’ so I
cleared out. But I’d just as leaves said for God to bless father—an’
you. I’ll do it now if you say it’s any sense.”
Mr. McLean sat down in a chair. “Don’t yu’ do it now,” said he.
[Illustration: Border]
“You wouldn’t like mother,” Billy continued. “You can keep that.” He
came to Lin and placed the arrow-head in his hands, standing beside him.
“Do you like birds’ eggs? I collect them. I got twenty-five
kinds—sage-hen, an’ blue grouse, an’ willow-grouse, an’ lots more kinds
harder—but I couldn’t bring all them from Laramie. I brought the
magpie’s, though. D’you care to see a magpie egg? Well, you stay
to-morrow an’ I’ll show you that an’ some other things I got the
engine-man lets me keep there, for there’s boys that would steal an egg.
An’ I could take you where we could fire that pistol. Bet you don’t know
what that is!”
He brought out a small tin box shaped like a thimble, in which were
things that rattled.
Mr. McLean gave it up.
“That’s kinni-kinnic seed. You can have that, for I got some more with
the engine-man.”
[Illustration: Border]
[Illustration: Border]
Lin received this second token also, and thanked the giver for it. His
first feeling had been to prevent the boy’s parting with his treasures,
but something that came not from the polish of manners and experience
made him know that he should take them. Billy talked away, laying bare
his little soul; the street boy that was not quite come made place for
the child that was not quite gone, and unimportant words and confidences
dropped from him disjointed as he climbed to the knee of Mr. McLean, and
inadvertently took that cow-puncher for some sort of parent he had not
hitherto met. It lasted but a short while, however, for he went to sleep
in the middle of a sentence, with his head upon Lin’s breast. The man
held him perfectly still, because he had not the faintest notion that
Billy would be impossible to disturb. At length he spoke to him,
suggesting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The
arms and legs seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred
conveniently; and directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small
frame burrowed down, without the opening of an eye or a change in the
breathing. Lin stood some time by the bedside, with his eyes on the
long, curling lashes and the curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the
door of the room, and at himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and
kissed Billy on the forehead, and, rising from that, gave himself a
hangdog stare in the mirror, and soon in his own bed was sleeping the
sound sleep of health.
V
Santa Claus Lin
[Illustration: Border]
He was faintly roused by the churchbells, and lay still, lingering with
his sleep, his eyes closed and his thoughts unshaped. As he became
slowly aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and
he waked wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room
filled with the bells and the sun of the winter’s day. “Where have I
struck now?” he inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his
mind, he raised himself on his arm.
There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
him.
[Illustration: Border]
“You’re awful late,” said Responsibility. “But I weren’t a-going without
telling you good-bye.”
“Go?” exclaimed Lin. “Go where? Yu’ surely ain’t leavin’ me to eat
breakfast alone?” The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more
than he could do!
“I’ve got to go. If I’d thought you’d want for me to stay—why, you said
you was a-going by the early train.”
“But the durned thing’s got away on me,” said Lin, smiling sweetly from
the bed.
“If I hadn’t a-promised them—”
“Who?”
“Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with
them.”
[Illustration: Border]
“Shucks!”
“We’re a-going to have fun to-day.”
“Oh!”
“For it’s Christmas, an’ we’ve bought some good cigars, an’ Pete says
he’ll learn me sure. O’ course I’ve smoked some, you know. But I’d just
as leaves stayed with you if I’d only knowed sooner. I wish you lived
here. Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?”
“Do yu’ like flapjacks and maple syrup?” inquired the artful McLean.
“That’s what I’m figuring on inside twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes! If they’d wait—”
“See here, Bill. They’ve quit expectin’ yu’, don’t yu’ think? I’d ought
to waked, yu’ see, but I slep’ and slep’, and kep’ yu’ from meetin’ your
engagements, yu’ see—for you couldn’t go, of course. A man couldn’t
treat a man that way now, could he?”
[Illustration: Border]
“Course he couldn’t,” said Billy, brightening.
“And they wouldn’t wait, yu’ see. They wouldn’t fool away Christmas,
that only comes onced a year, kickin’ their heels, and sayin’ ‘Where’s
Billy?’ They’d say, ‘Bill has sure made other arrangements, which he’ll
explain to us at his leesyure.’ And they’d skip with the cigars.”
The advocate paused, effectively, and from his bolster regarded Billy
with a convincing eye.
“That’s so,” said Billy.
“And where would yu’ be then, Bill? In the street, out of friends, out
of Christmas, and left both ways, no tobacker and no flapjacks. Now,
Bill, what do yu’ say to us puttin’ up a Christmas deal together? Just
you and me?”
[Illustration: Border]
“I’d like that,” said Billy. “Is it all day?”
“I was thinkin’ of all day,’ said Lin. “I’ll not make yu’ do anything
yu’d rather not.”
“Ah, they can smoke without me,” said Billy, with sudden acrimony. “I’ll
see ’em to-morro’.”
“That’s yu’!” cried Mr. McLean. “Now, Bill, you hustle down and tell
them to keep a table for us. I’ll get my clothes on and follow yu’.”
[Illustration: Border]
The boy went, and Mr. McLean procured hot water and dressed himself,
tying his scarf with great care. “Wished I’d a clean shirt,” said he.
“But I don’t look very bad. Shavin’ yesterday afternoon was a good
move.” He picked up the arrow-head and the kinni-kinnic, and was
particular to store them in his safest pocket. “I ain’t sure whether
you’re crazy or not,” said he to the man in the looking-glass. “I ’ain’t
never been sure.” And he slammed the door and went down-stairs.
He found young Bill on guard over a table for four, with all the chairs
tilted against it as a warning to strangers. No one sat at any other
table or came into the room, for it was late, and the place quite
emptied of breakfasters, and the several entertained waiters had
gathered behind Billy’s important-looking back. Lin provided a thorough
meal, and Billy pronounced the flannel cakes superior to flapjacks,
which were not upon the bill of fare.
[Illustration: Border]
“I’d like to see you often,” said he. “I’ll come and see you if you
don’t live too far.”
“That’s the trouble,” said the cow-puncher. “I do. Awful far.” He stared
out of the window.
“Well, I might come some time. I wish you’d write me a letter. Can you
write?”
“What’s that? Can I write? Oh yes.”
“I can write, an’ I can read, too. I’ve been to school in Sidney,
Nebraska, an’ Magaw, Kansas, an’ Salt Lake—that’s the finest town except
Denver.”
Billy fell into that cheerful strain of comment which, unreplied to, yet
goes on content and self-sustaining, while Mr. McLean gave amiable signs
of assent, but chiefly looked out of the window; and when the now
interested waiter said, respectfully, that he desired to close the room,
they went out to the office, where the money was got out of the safe and
the bill paid.
[Illustration: Border]
The streets were full of the bright sun, and seemingly at Denver’s gates
stood the mountains; an air crisp and pleasant wafted from their peaks;
no smoke hung among the roofs, and the sky spread wide over the city
without a stain; it was holiday up among the chimneys and tall
buildings, and down among the quiet ground-stories below as well; and
presently from their scattered pinnacles through the town the bells
broke out against the jocund silence of the morning.
“Don’t you like music?” inquired Billy.
“Yes,” said Lin.
[Illustration: Border]
Ladies with their husbands and children were passing and meeting,
orderly yet gayer than if it were only Sunday, and the salutations of
Christmas came now and again to the cow-puncher’s ears; but to-day,
possessor of his own share in this, Lin looked at every one with a sort
of friendly challenge, and young Billy talked along beside him.
“Don’t you think we could go in here?” Billy asked. A church door was
open, and the rich organ sounded through to the pavement. “They’ve good
music here, an’ they keep it up without much talking between. I’ve been
in lots of times.”
[Illustration: Border]
They went in and sat to hear the music. Better than the organ, it seemed
to them, were the harmonious voices raised from somewhere outside, like
unexpected visitants; and the pair sat in their back seat, too deep in
listening to the processional hymn to think of rising in decent
imitation of those around them. The crystal melody of the refrain
especially reached their understandings, and when for the fourth time
“Shout the glad tidings, exultingly sing,” pealed forth and ceased, both
the delighted faces fell.
“Don’t you wish there was more?” Billy whispered.
“Wish there was a hundred verses,” answered Lin.
But canticles and responses followed, with so little talking between
them they were held spellbound, seldom thinking to rise or kneel. Lin’s
eyes roved over the church, dwelling upon the pillars in their
evergreen, the flowers and leafy wreaths, the texts of white and gold.
“‘Peace, good-will towards men,’” he read. “That’s so. Peace and
good-will. Yes, that’s so. I expect they got that somewheres in the
Bible. It’s awful good, and you’d never think of it yourself.”
[Illustration: Border]
There was a touch on his arm, and a woman handed a book to him. “This is
the hymn we have now,” she whispered, gently; and Lin, blushing scarlet,
took it passively without a word. He and Billy stood up and held the
book together, dutifully reading the words:
“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold;
Peace on the earth—”
This tune was more beautiful than all, and Lin lost himself in it, until
he found Billy recalling him with a finger upon the words, the
concluding ones:
[Illustration: Border]
“And the whole world sent back the song
Which now the angels sing.”
The music rose and descended to its lovely and simple end; and, for a
second time in Denver, Lin brushed a hand across his eyes. He turned his
face from his neighbor, frowning crossly; and since the heart has
reasons which Reason does not know, he seemed to himself a fool; but
when the service was over and he came out, he repeated again, “‘Peace
and good-will.’ When I run on to the Bishop of Wyoming I’ll tell him if
he’ll preach on them words I’ll be there.”
“Couldn’t we shoot your pistol now?” asked Billy.
[Illustration: Border]
“Sure, boy. Ain’t yu’ hungry, though?”
“No. I wish we were away off up there. Don’t you?”
“The mountains? They look pretty—so white! A heap better ’n houses. Why,
we’ll go there! There’s trains to Golden. We’ll shoot around among the
foot-hills.”
To Golden they immediately went, and, after a meal there, wandered in
the open country until the cartridges were gone, the sun was low, and
Billy was walked off his young heels—a truth he learned complete in one
horrid moment and battled to conceal.
“Lame!” he echoed, angrily. “I ain’t.”
“Shucks!” said Lin, after the next ten steps. “You are, and both feet.”
“Tell you, there’s stones here, an’ I’m just a-skipping them.”
[Illustration: Border]
Lin, briefly, took the boy in his arms and carried him to Golden. “I’m
played out myself,” he said, sitting in the hotel and looking
lugubriously at Billy on a bed. “And I ain’t fit to have charge of a
hog.” He came and put his hand on the boy’s head.
“I’m not sick,” said the cripple. “I tell you I’m bully. You wait an’
see me eat dinner.”
But Lin had hot water and cold water and salt, and was an hour upon his
knees bathing the hot feet. And then Billy could not eat dinner.
There was a doctor in Golden; but in spite of his light prescription and
most reasonable observations, Mr. McLean passed a foolish night of
vigil, while Billy slept, quite well at first, and, as the hours passed,
better and better. In the morning he was entirely brisk, though stiff.
[Illustration: Border]
“I couldn’t work quick to-day,” he said. “But I guess one day won’t lose
me my trade.”
“How d’ yu’ mean?” asked Lin.
“Why, I’ve got regulars, you know. Sidney Ellis an’ Pete Goode has
theirs, an’ we don’t cut each other. I’ve got Mr. Daniels an’ Mr. Fisher
an’ lots, an’ if you lived in Denver I’d shine your boots every day for
nothing. I wished you lived in Denver.”
“Shine my boots? Yu’ll never! And yu’ don’t black Daniels or Fisher, or
any of the outfit.”
“Why, I’m doing first-rate,” said Billy, surprised at the swearing into
which Mr. McLean now burst. “An’ I ain’t big enough to get to make money
at any other job.
[Illustration: Border]
“I want to see that engine-man,” muttered Lin. “I don’t like your
smokin’ friend.”
“Pete Goode? Why, he’s awful smart. Don’t you think he’s smart?”
“Smart’s nothin’,” observed Mr. McLean.
“Pete has learned me and Sidney a lot,” pursued Billy, engagingly.
“I’ll bet he has!” growled the cow-puncher; and again Billy was taken
aback at his language.
[Illustration: “‘This is Mister Billy Lusk’”]
[Illustration: Border]
It was not so simple, this case. To the perturbed mind of Mr. McLean it
grew less simple during that day at Golden, while Billy recovered, and
talked, and ate his innocent meals. The cow-puncher was far too wise to
think for a single moment of restoring the runaway to his debauched and
shiftless parents. Possessed of some imagination, he went through a
scene in which he appeared at the Lusk threshold with Billy and
forgiveness, and intruded upon a conjugal assault and battery. “Shucks!”
said he. “The kid would be off again inside a week. And I don’t want him
there, anyway.”
Denver, upon the following day, saw the little bootblack again at his
corner, with his trade not lost; but near him stood a tall, singular
man, with hazel eyes and a sulky expression. And citizens during that
week noticed, as a new sight in the streets, the tall man and the little
boy walking together. Sometimes they would be in shops. The boy seemed
as happy as possible, talking constantly, while the man seldom said a
word, and his face was serious.
[Illustration: Border]
Upon New Year’s Eve Governor Barker was overtaken by Mr. McLean riding a
horse up Hill Street, Cheyenne.
“Hello!” said Barker, staring humorously through his glasses. “Have a
good drunk?”
“Changed my mind,” said Lin, grinning. “Proves I’ve got one. Struck
Christmas all right, though.”
“Who’s your friend?” inquired his Excellency.
“This is Mister Billy Lusk. Him and me have agreed that towns ain’t nice
to live in. If Judge Henry’s foreman and his wife won’t board him at
Sunk Creek—why, I’ll fix it somehow.”
[Illustration: Border]
The cow-puncher and his Responsibility rode on together towards the open
plain.
“Suffering Moses!” remarked his Excellency.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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