31. CHAPTER XXXI.
THERE were two men in the company who caused me
particular discomfort. One was a little Swede, about twenty-five
years old, who knew only one song, and he was forever singing it.
By day we were all crowded into one small, stifling bar-room, and
so there was no escaping this person's music. Through all the
profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and quarreling, his
monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its tiresome
sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content to
die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart
ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt
and a bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always
drunk and always suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that
nobody would accommodate him. He would try all manner of
little wary ruses to entrap somebody into an offensive remark, and
his face would light up now and then when he fancied he was
fairly on the scent of a fight, but invariably his victim would elude
his toils and then he would show a disappointment that was almost
pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a meek, well-meaning
fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a promising
subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the
fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait
for an opportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably
sociable with whisky, and said:
"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection—"
Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped.
Arkansas rose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he:
"Wha-what do you know a-about Pennsylvania? Answer me
that. Wha-what do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?"
"I was only goin' to say—"
"You was only goin'
to say.
You was!
You was only goin' to
say—what was
you goin' to say? That's it! That's
what I want
to know. I want
to know wha-what you
('ic) what you
know about Pennsylvania, since you're makin' yourself
so d—d free. Answer me that!"
"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me—"
"Who's a henderin' you? Don't you insinuate nothing agin
me!—don't you do it. Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and
cussin' and goin' on like a lunatic—don't you do it.
'Coz I won't
stand it. If fight's what you
want, out with it! I'm your man! Out with
it!"
Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following,
menacingly:
"Why, I never
said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don't give a man no
chance. I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have
an election next week—that was all—that was everything I was goin'
to say—I wish I may never stir if it wasn't."
"Well then why d'n't you say it? What did you come swellin'
around that way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?"
"Why I didn't
come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas—I just—"
"I'm a liar am I! Ger-reat Cæsar's ghost—"
"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I
wish I may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I've always
spoke well of you, and respected you more'n any man in the house.
Ask Smith. Ain't it so, Smith? Didn't I say, no longer ago than last
night, that for a man that was a
gentleman all the
time and every way you took him, give me Arkansas? I'll
leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the very words I used.
Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink—le's shake hands and
take a drink. Come up—everybody! It's my treat. Come up, Bill,
Tom, Bob, Scotty—come up. I want you all to take a drink with me
and Arkansas—old Arkansas,
I call him—bully old Arkansas. Gimme your hand agin.
Look at him, boys—just take a
look at him.
Thar stands the whitest man in America!—and the man
that denies it has got to fight
me,
that's all. Gimme that old flipper agin!"
They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part
and unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed
by a drink, was disappointed of his prey once more. But the
foolish landlord was so happy to have escaped butchery, that he
went on talking when he ought to have marched himself out of
danger. The consequence was that Arkansas shortly began to
glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:
"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you
please?"
"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty
year old when he died."
"Was that all that you said?"
"Yes, that was all."
"Didn't say nothing but that?"
"No—nothing."
Then an uncomfortable silence.
Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his
elbows on the counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left
shin with his right boot, while the awkward silence continued. But
presently he loafed away toward the stove,
looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three men out of a
comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping dog a
kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs
and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back.
In a little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he
slouched back to the bar and said:
"Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and
blowin' about your father? Ain't this company agreeable to you?
Ain't it? If this company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better
leave. Is that your idea? Is that what you're coming at?"
"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a
thing. My father and my mother—"
"Lan'lord, don't crowd a
man! Don't do it. If nothing'll do you but a disturbance,
out with it like a man ('ic)—but
don't rake up old bygones
and fling'em in the teeth of a passel of people
that wants to be peaceable if they could git a chance. What's the
matter with you this mornin', anyway? I never see a man carry on
so."
"Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with
it if it's onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker's got into my head,
and what with the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out
for—"
"So that's what's a-ranklin'
in your heart, is it? You want us to leave do you?
There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. Is that
it? Come!"
"Please be reasonable, Arkansas.
Now you know that I ain't the man to—"
"Are you a threatenin' me? Are you? By George, the man
don't live that can skeer me! Don't you try to come that game, my
chicken—'cuz I can stand a good deal, but I won't stand that. Come
out from behind that bar till I clean you! You want to drive us out,
do you, you sneakin' underhanded hound! Come out from behind
that bar! I'll learn you to bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman
that's forever trying to befriend you and keep you out of trouble!"
"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot! If there's got to be
bloodshed—"
"Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about
bloodshed? So it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado!
You'd made up your mind to murder somebody this mornin'—I
knowed it perfectly well. I'm the man, am I? It's me you're goin' to
murder, is it? But you can't do it 'thout I get one chance first, you
thievin' black-hearted, white-livered son of a nigger! Draw your
weepon!"
With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to
clamber over benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic
desire to escape. In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord
crashed through a glass door, and as Arkansas charged after him
the landlord's wife suddenly appeared in the
doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of scissors! Her
fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye she stood
a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The
astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She
followed. She backed him step by step into the middle of the
bar-room, and then, while the wondering crowd closed up and
gazed, she gave him such another tongue-lashing as never a cowed
and shamefaced braggart got before, perhaps! As she finished and
retired victorious, a roar of applause shook the house, and every
man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and the same
breath.
The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was
over, and the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the
rest of the season of island captivity, there was one man who sat
apart in a state of permanent humiliation, never mixing in any
quarrel or uttering a boast, and never resenting the insults the once
cringing crew now constantly leveled at him, and that man was
"Arkansas."
By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the
land, but the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift
and there was no possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was
still too high for an entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had
become next to insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness,
fighting, etc., and so we made an effort to get away. In the midst
of a heavy snow-storm we embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles
aboard and towing our horses after us by their halters. The
Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow, with a paddle, Ballou
paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern holding the halters.
When the horses lost their footing and began to swim, Ollendorff
got frightened, for there was great danger that the horses would
make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed to land at
a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost surely cast
us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now. Such a
catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be
swept to sea in the "Sink" or overturned and drowned. We warned
Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself
carefully, but it was useless; the moment the bow touched the
bank, he made a spring and the canoe whirled upside down in
ten-foot water.
Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but
Ballou and I had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats.
But we held on to the canoe, and although we were washed down
nearly to the Carson, we managed to push the boat ashore and
make a safe landing. We were cold and water-soaked, but safe.
The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles were gone, of
course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there they had
to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and ferried
over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night
in the inn before making another venture on our journey.
The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we
got away with our new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We
mounted and started. The snow lay so deep on the ground that
there was no sign of a road perceptible, and the snow-fall was so
thick that we could not see more than a hundred yards ahead, else
we could have guided our course by the mountain ranges. The
case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his instinct was as
sensitive as any compass, and that he could "strike a bee-line" for
Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he were to
straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would assail
him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into
his wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along
warily enough, but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh
trail, and Ollendorff shouted proudly:
"I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we
are, right in somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us
without any trouble. Let's hurry up and join company with the
party."
So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow
would allow, and before long it was evident that we were gaining
on our predecessors, for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried
along, and at the end of an hour the tracks looked still newer and
fresher—but what surprised us was, that
the number of travelers
in advance of us seemed to steadily increase. We
wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such a time
and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be a
company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that
solution and jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be
far off now. But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think
the platoon of soldiers was miraculously expanding into a
regiment—Ballou said they had already increased to five hundred!
Presently he stopped his horse and said:
"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been
circussing round and round in a circle for more than two hours, out
here in this blind desert! By George this is perfectly
hydraulic.!"
Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called
Ollendorff all manner of hard names—said he never saw such a
lurid fool as he was, and ended with the peculiarly venomous
opinion that he "did not know as much as a logarythm!"
We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff
and his "mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment.
After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream
again, with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving
snow-fall. While we were considering what to do, the young
Swede landed from the canoe and took his pedestrian way
Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song about his "sister and
his brother" and "the child in the grave with its mother," and in a
short minute faded and disappeared in the white oblivion. He was
never heard of
again. He no doubt got bewildered and lost, and Fatigue delivered
him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to Death. Possibly he
followed our treacherous tracks till he became exhausted and
dropped.
Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding
stream and started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood
came. We hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its
wake, and trotted merrily along, for we had good confidence in the
driver's bump of locality. But our horses were no match for the
fresh stage team. We were soon left out of sight; but it was no
matter, for we had the deep ruts the wheels made for a guide. By
this time it was three in the afternoon, and consequently it was not
very long before night came—and not with a lingering twilight, but
with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door, as is its habit in
that country. The snowfall was still as thick as ever, and of course
we could not see fifteen steps before us; but all about us the white
glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the smooth sugar-loaf
mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in front of us
the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling and
slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.
Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height—three
or four feet; they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast
desert; each of them was a mere snow-mound, now;
in any direction that you
proceeded (the same as in a well laid out
orchard) you would find yourself moving down a distinctly defined
avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either side of it—an
avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in its breadth,
and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of the
mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the chilly
thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the
night,
that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago been
buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere
sage-brush avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further
and further away from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped
down one's back is placid comfort compared to it. There was a
sudden leap and stir of blood that had been asleep for an hour, and
as sudden a rousing of all the drowsing activities in our minds and
bodies. We were alive and awake at once—and shaking and
quaking with consternation, too. There was an instant halting and
dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of the
road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be
discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly
could not with one's nose nearly against it.