7. CHAPTER VII.
IT did seem strange enough to see a town again after what
appeared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost
lifeless and houseless solitude! We tumbled out into the busy
street feeling like meteoric people crumbled off the corner of some
other world, and wakened up suddenly in this. For an hour we
took as much interest in Overland City as if we had never seen a
town before. The reason we had an hour to spare was because we
had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous affair, called a
"mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails.
Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow,
yellow, muddy South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering
flat sand-bars and pigmy islands—a melancholy stream straggling
through the centre of the enormous flat plain, and only saved from
being impossible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel rank of
scattering trees standing on either bank. The Platte was "up," they
said—which made me wish I could see it when it was down, if it
could look any sicker and sorrier. They said it was a dangerous
stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were liable to
swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made
to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt.
Once or twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding
sands so threateningly that we half believed we had dreaded and
avoided the sea all our lives to be shipwrecked in a "mud-wagon"
in the middle of a desert at last. But we dragged through and sped
away toward the setting sun.
Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and
fifty miles from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were
to be delayed five or six hours, and therefore we took horses, by
invitation, and joined a party who were just starting on a buffalo
hunt. It was noble sport galloping over the plain in the dewy
freshness of the morning, but our part of the hunt ended in disaster
and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased the passenger
Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horse and took to
a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for some
twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, and
finally he said:
"Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks
making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in
earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they
called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six or seven
other people—but of course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so
confounded comprehensive. I wish those loafers had been up in
the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a
horse
worth a cent—but no, the minute he saw that buffalo bull wheel on
him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the air and stood on
his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him round the neck
and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came down and
stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped
pawing sand and bellowing to comtemplate the inhuman spectacle.
Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow
that sounded perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that
seemed to literally prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving
distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on
his head for a quarter of a minute and shed tears. He was
absolutely out of his mind—he was, as sure as truth itself, and he
really didn't know what he was doing. Then the bull came
charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and took a
fresh start—and then for the next
ten minutes he would actually throw one hand-spring after another
so fast that the bull began to get unsettled, too, and didn't know
where to start in—and so he stood there sneezing, and shovelling
dust over his back, and bellowing every now and then, and
thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for
breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck—the horse's,
not the bull's—and then underneath, and next on his rump, and
sometimes head up, and sometimes heels—but I tell you it seemed
solemn and awful to be ripping and tearing and carrying on so in
the presence of death, as you might say. Pretty soon the bull made
a snatch for us and brought away some of my horse's tail (I
suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the time),
but
something
made him hungry for solitude and suggested to him to get up and
hunt for it.
And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton
go! and you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him,
too—head down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and
actually mowing down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and
boosting up the sand like a whirlwind! By George, it was a hot
race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle
in my teeth and
holding on to the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs
behind; then we passed a jackass rabbit; then we overtook a
cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when the rotten girth let
go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as the saddle
went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with his heels
that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish I may
die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only solitary
tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could see
with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark
with four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that
I was astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a
way that made my breath smell of brimstone. I
had the bull, now, if he did not think of
one thing. But that one thing I dreaded.
I dreaded it very seriously.
There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there
were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I
would do in case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the
ground from where I sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the
pommel of my saddle—"
"Your saddle?
Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?"
"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of
course I didn't. No man could do that.
It fell
in the tree when it came down."
"Oh—exactly."
"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to
the limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of
sustaining tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then
hung it down to see the length. It reached down twenty-two
feet—half way to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the
Allen with a double charge. I felt satisfied. I said to myself, if he
never thinks of that one thing that I dread, all right—but if he does,
all right anyhow—I am fixed for him. But don't you know that the
very thing a man dreads is the thing that always happens? Indeed
it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety—anxiety
which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a situation
and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a thought
came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I—if my nerve fails now, I
am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in to
climb the tree—"
"What, the bull?"
"Of course—who else?"
"But a bull can't climb a tree."
"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you
ever see a bull try?"
"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."
"Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then?
Because you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't
be done?"
"Well, all right—go on. What did you do?"
"The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then
slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again—got
up a little higher—slipped again. But he came at it once more, and
this time he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and
my spirits went down more and more. Up he came—an inch at a
time—with his eyes hot, and his tongue hanging out. Higher and
higher—hitched his foot over the stump of a limb, and looked up,
as much as to say, `You are my meat, friend.' Up again—higher
and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got. He was
within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,—and then said I, `It is
now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it out
slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of
the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker
than lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face.
It was an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his
senses. When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in
the air, twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one
convulsion into another faster than you could count! I didn't stop
to count, anyhow—I shinned down the tree and shot for home."
"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"
"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it
isn't."
"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there
were some proofs—"
"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?"
"No."
"Did I bring back my horse?"
"No."
"Did you ever see the bull again?"
"No."
"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as
particular as you are about a little thing like that."
I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only
missed it by the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an
incident of my brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The
European citizens of a town in the neighborhood of
Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of Eckert, an
Englishman—a person famous for the number, ingenuity and
imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his
most celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to "draw him out"
before strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was
invited to the house where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce
him into a specimen lie. One day a planter named Bascom, an
influential man, and a proud and sometimes irascible one, invited
me to ride over with him and call on Eckert. As we jogged along,
said he:
"Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting
Eckert on his guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert
he knows perfectly well what they are after, and of course he shuts
up his shell. Anybody might know he would. But when we get
there, we must play him finer than that. Let him shape the
conversation to suit himself—let him drop it or change it whenever
he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to draw him out.
Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget himself and
begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don't get impatient—just keep
quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem to
me that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and
simple trick as that."
Eckert received us heartily—a pleasant-spoken,
gentle-mannered creature. We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping
English ale, and talking about the king, and the sacred white
elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all manner of things; and I noticed
that my comrade never led the conversation himself or shaped it,
but simply followed Eckert's lead, and betrayed no solicitude and
no anxiety about anything. The effect was shortly perceptible.
Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more and more at
his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hour
passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:
"Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing
here to astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other
man ever heard of—I've got a cat that will eat
cocoanut! Common green cocoanut—and not only eat the meat,
but drink the milk. It is so—I'll swear to it."
A quick glance from Bascom—a glance that I
understood—then:
"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
impossible."
"I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat."
He went in the house. Bascom said:
"There—what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle
Eckert. You see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his
suspicions to sleep. I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it
when you go back. Cat eat a cocoanut—oh, my! Now, that is just
his way, exactly—he will tell the absurdest lie, and trust to luck to
get out of it again.
Cat eat a cocoanut—the innocent fool!"
Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.
Bascom smiled. Said he:
"I'll hold the cat—you bring a cocoanut."
Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom
smuggled a wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss.
She snatched it, swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!
We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I
was silent, though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good
deal, notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When
I branched off homeward, Bascom said:
"Keep the horse till morning. And—you need not speak of
this—foolishness to the boys."