 | CHAPTER VII.
ENTER, THE BRUTES! John Brent |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
ENTER, THE BRUTES!
The sun had just gone down. There was a
red wrangle of angry vapors over the mounds
of mountain westward. A brace of travellers
from Salt Lake way rode up and lighted their
camp-fire near ours. More society in that lonely
world. Two families, with two sets of Lares and
Penates.
Not attractive society. They were a sinister-looking
couple of hounds. A lean wolfish and
a fat bony dog.
One was a rawboned, stringy chap, — as gaunt,
unkempt, and cruel a Pike as ever pillaged the
cabin, insulted the wife, and squirted tobacco over
the dead body of a Free State settler in Kansas.
The other was worse, because craftier. A little
man, stockish, oily, and red in the face. A
jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of
coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire.
They were well mounted, both. The long ruffian
rode a sorrel, big and bony as himself, and
equally above such accidents as food or no food.
horse, rather naggy, but perfectly hardy and
wiry, — an animal that one would choose to do a
thousand miles in twenty days, or a hundred between
sunrise and sunset. They had also two
capital mules, packed very light. One was branded,
“A. & A.”
Distrust and disgust are infallible instincts.
Men's hearts and lives are written on their faces,
to warn or charm. Never reject that divine or
devilish record!
Brent read the strangers, shivered at me, and
said, sotto voce, “What a precious pair of cutthroats!
We must look sharp for our horses
while they are about.”
“Yes,” returned I, in the same tone; “they
look to me like Sacramento gamblers, who have
murdered somebody, and had to make tracks for
their lives.”
“The Cassius of the pair is bad enough,” said
Brent; “but that oily little wretch sickens me.
I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis,
blossomed into a purple coat with velvet lappels,
a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or a
flamboyant scarf pinned with a pichbeck dog, and
red-legged patent-leather boots, picking his teeth
on the steps of the Planters' House. Faugh! I
feel as if a snake were crawling over me, when I
look at him.”
“They are not very welcome neighbors to our
friends here.”
“No. Roughs abhor brutes as much as you
or I do. Roughs are only nature; brutes are
sin. I do not like this brutal element coming in.
It portends misfortune. You and I will inevitably
come into collision with those fellows.”
“You take your hostile attitude at once, and
without much reluctance.”
“You know something of my experience. I
have had a struggle all my life with sin in one
form or other, with brutality in one form or
other. I have been lacerated so often from
unwillingness to strike the first blow, that I have
at last been forced into the offensive.”
“You believe in flooring Apollyon before he
floors you.”
“There must be somebody to do the merciless.
It 's not my business — the melting mood — in
my present era.”
“We are going off into generalities, apropos
of those two brutes. What, O volunteer champion
of virtue, dost thou propose in regard to
them? When will you challenge them to the
ordeal, to prove themselves honest men and good
fellows?”
“Aggression always comes from evil. They
are losels; we are true knights. They will do
some sneaking villany. You and I will thereupon
up and at 'em.”
“Odd fellow are you, with your premonitions!”
“They are very vague, of course, but based on
a magnetism which I have learnt to trust, after
much discipline, because I refused to obey it.
Look at that big brute, how he kicks and curses
his mule!”
“Perhaps he has stolen it, and is revenging
his theft on its object. That brand `A. & A.'
may remind him what a thief he is.”
“Here comes the fat brother. He 'll propose
to camp with us.”
“It is quite natural he should, saint or sinner,
— all the more if he is sinner. It must be terrible
for a man who has ugly secrets to wake up at
night, alone in bivouac, with a grisly dream, no
human being near, and find the stars watching
him keenly, or the great white, solemn moon pitying
him, yet saying, with her inflexible look, that,
moan and curse as he may, no remorse will save
him from despair.”
“Yes,” said Brent, knocking the ashes out of
his pipe; “night always seems to judge and sentence
the day. A foul man, or a guilty man, so
long as he intends to remain foul and guilty,
dreads pure, quiet, orderly Nature.”
The objectionable stranger came up to our
camp-fire.
“Hello, men!” said he, with a familiar air,
“it 's a fine night”; and meeting with no response,
allow nothin' else but fine nights in this section.”
“Bad company makes all nights bad,” says
Jake Shamberlain, gruffly enough.
“Ay; and good company betters the orneriest
sort er weather. The more the merrier, eh?”
“Supposin' its more perarer wolves, or more
rattlesnakes, or more horse-thieving, scalpin'
Utes!” says Jake, unpropitiated.
“O,” said the new-comer a little uneasily,
“I don't mean sech. I mean jolly dogs, like me
and my pardener. We allowed you 'd choose
company in camp. We 'd like to stick our pegs
in alongside of yourn, ef no gent haint got
nothin' to say agin it.”
“It 's a free country,” Jake said, “and looks
pooty roomy round here. You ken camp whar
you blame please, — off or on.”
“Well,” says the fellow, laying hold of this
very slight encouragement, “since you 're agreeable,
we 'll fry our pork over your fire, and hev
a smoke to better acquaintance.”
“He ain't squimmidge,” said Jake to us, as
the fellow walked off to call his comrade. “He 's
bound to ring himself into this here party, whoever
says stickleback. He 's one er them Algerines
what don't know a dark hint, till it begins
to make motions, and kicks 'em out. Well, two
more men, with two regiments' allowance of
country.”
“Well, boys!” said the unpleasant fatling, approaching
again. “Here is my pardener, Sam
Smith, from Sacramenter; what he don't know
about a horse ain't worth knowin'. My name is
Jim Robinson. I ken sing a song, tell a story,
or fling a card with any man, in town or out er
town.”
While the strangers cooked their supper, my
friend and I lounged off apart upon the prairie.
A few steps gave us a capital picture. The white
wagon; the horses feeding in the distance, a
dusky group; the men picturesquely disposed
about the fire, now glowing ruddy against the
thickening night. A Gypsy scene. Literal “Vie
de Bohême.”
“I am never bored,” said Brent to me, “with
the company or the talk of men like those, good
or bad. Homo sum; nil humani, and so forth,
— a sentiment of the late Plautus, now first
quoted.”
“You do not yet feel a reaction toward scholarly
society.”
“No; this Homeric life, with its struggle
against elements, which I can deify if I please,
and against crude forces in man or nature, suits
the youth of my manhood, my Achilles time. The
world went through an epoch of just such life as
and not conventional.”
“A man who wants to know his country and
his age must clash with all the people and all
the kinds of life in it. You and I have had the
college, the salon, the club, the street, Europe,
the Old World, and Yankeedom through and
through; when do you expect to outgrow Ishmael,
my Jonathan?”
“Whenever Destiny gives me the final accolade
of merit, and names me Lover.”
“What! have you never been that happy
wretch?”
“Never. I have had transitory ideals. I have
been enchanted by women willowy and women
dumpy; by the slight and colorless mind and
body, by the tender and couleur de rose, and
by the buxom and ruddy. I have adored Zobeide
and Hildegarde, Dolores and Dorothy Ann,
imp and angel, sprite and fiend. I have had my
little irritation of a foolish fancy, my sharp scourge
of an unworthy passion. I am heart-whole still,
and growing a little expectant of late.”
“You are not cruising the plains for a lady-love!
It is not, `I will wed a savage woman'?
It is not for a Pawnee squaw that you go clad in
skins and disdain the barber?”
“No. My business in Cosmos is not to be the
father of half-breeds. But soberly, old fellow, I
foemanship. I need tranquillity to let my character
use my facts. I want the bitter drawn out
of me, and the sweet fostered. I yearn to be a
lover.”
As he said this, we had approached the camp-fire.
Jim Robinson, by this time quite at home,
was making his accomplishments of use. He was
debasing his audience with a vulgar song. The
words and air jarred upon both of us.
“Nil humani a me alienum puto, I repeat,”
said Brent, “but that foul stuff is not the voice
of humanity. Let 's go look at the horses. They
do not belie their nobler nature, and are not in
the line of degradation. I cannot harden myself
not to shrink from the brutal element wherever
I find it; whether in two horse-thieves on the
plains, or in a well-dressed reprobate of society
at the club in New York.”
“Brutes in civilization are just as base, but
not so blatant.”
“Old Pumps and the Don, here, are a gentler
and more honorable pair than these strangers.”
“They are the gentlemen of their race.”
“It 's not their cue to talk; but if the gift of
tongues should come to them, they would disdain
all unchivalric and discourteous words. They
do now, with those brave eyes and scornful nostrils,
rebuke whatever is unmanly in men.”
“Yes; they certainly look ready to co-operate
in all knightly duties.”
“One of those, as I hinted before, is riding
down caitiffs.”
We left our horses, busy at their suppers, beside
the brawling river, and walked back to camp.
It was a Caravaggio scene by the firelight. Jim
Robinson had produced cards. The men of the
mail party were intent over the game. Even Jake
Shamberlain had easily forgotten his distrust of
the strangers. The two suspects, whether with
an eye to future games, or because they could
not offend their comrades and protectors for this
dangerous journey, were evidently playing fair.
Robinson would sometimes exhibit a winning
hand, and say, with an air of large liberality,
“Ye see, boys, I ked rake down yer dimes, ef I
chose; but this here is a game among friends.
I 'm playin' for pastime. I 've made my pile
olreddy, and so 's my pardener.”
The gambler's face and the gambler's manner
are the same all over the world. Always the
same impassible watchfulness. Always the same
bullying cruelty or feline cruelty. Always the
same lurking triumph, and the same lurking
sneer at the victim. The same quiet satisfaction
that gamesters will be geese, and gamblers are
deputed to pluck them; the same suppressed
chuckle over the efforts of the luckless to retrieve
the lucky player will by and by back the wrong
card, the wrong color, or the wrong number, and
the bank will take back its losses. What hard
faces they wear! Wear, — for their faces seem
masks merely, dropped only at stealthy moments.
Always the same look and the same manner.
Young and beautiful faces curdle into it. Women's
even. I have seen women, the slaves of
the hells their devils kept, whose faces would
have been fair and young, if this ugly mask
could but be torn away. All men and all women
who make prey of their fellows, who lie in
wait to seize and dismember brothers and sisters,
get this same relentless expression. It fixes itself
deepest on a gambler; he must hold the same
countenance from the first lamp-lighting until indignant
dawn pales the sickly light of lamps, and
the first morning air creeps in to stir the heavyhearted
atmosphere, and show that it is poison.”
“I 've seen villains just like those two,” said
Brent, “in every hell in Europe and America.
They always go in pairs; a tiger and a snake; a
bully and a wheedler.
“Mind and matter. The old partnership, like
yours and mine.”
Next morning the two strangers were free and
accepted members of the party. They travelled
on with us without question. Smith the gaunt
was low comedy. His head was packed with
scurvy jokes and stories. He had a foul leer
on his face whenever he was thinking his own
thoughts. But either, if suddenly startled,
showed the unmistakable look that announces
worse crime than mere knavery.
They tangled their names so that we perceived
each was an alias hastily assumed. Smith compared
six-shooters with me. I detected on his the
name Murker, half erased. Once, too, Brent
heard Murker, alias Smith, call his partner Larrap.
“Larrap is appropriate,” said I, when Brent
told me this; “just the name for him, as that
unlucky mule branded `A. & A.' could testify.”
“The long ruffian studied my face, when he
made that slip, to see if I had heard. He might
as well have inspected the air for the mark of
his traitorous syllables.”
“You claim that your phiz is so covered with
hieroglyphs, inscriptions of fine feeling, that there
is no room to write suspicions of other men's
villany?”
“A clean heart keeps a clean face. A guilty
heart will announce itself at eyes and lips and
cheeks, and by a thousand tremors of the nerves.
I have no prejudices against the family Larrap.
But when Larrap's mate spoke the name, he
and had by an irresistible impulse proclaimed
the fact. Look at him now! how he starts and
half turns whenever one of our horses makes a
clatter. He dares not quite look back. He
knows there is something after him.”
“The dread of a vengeance, you think. That 's
a blacker follower than `Atra cura post equitem.'”
I tire of these unwholesome characters I am
describing. But I did not put them into the
story. They took their places themselves. I
find that brutality interferes in most dramas and
most lives. Brutality the male sin, disloyalty the
female sin, — these two are always doing their
best to baffle and blight heroism and purity.
Often they succeed. Oftener they fail. And so
the world exists, and is not annulled; its history
is the history of the struggle and the victory.
This episode of my life is a brief of the world's
complete experience.
| CHAPTER VII.
ENTER, THE BRUTES! John Brent | |