The smell of smoke reached me, and next the rattle of tin dishes. Breakfast was something I had forgotten, and one of them was cooking it now in the dry shelter of the stable. He was alone, because the talking and the steps were outside the stable, and I could hear the sounds of horses being driven into the corral and saddled. Then I perceived that the coffee was ready, and almost immediately the cook called them. One came in, shutting the door behind him as he reentered, which the rest as they followed imitated; for at each opening of the door I saw the light of day leap into the stable and heard the louder sounds of the rain. Then the sound and the light would again be shut out, until some one at length spoke out bluntly, bidding the door be left open on account of the smoke. What were they hiding from? he asked. The runaways that had escaped? A laugh followed this sally, and the door was left open. Thus I learned that there had been more thieves than the two that were captured. It gave a little more ground for their suspicion about me and my anxiety to pass the night elsewhere. It cost nothing to detain me, and they were taking no chances, however remote.
The fresh air and the light now filled the stable, and I lay listening while their breakfast brought more talk from them. They were more at ease now than was I, who had nothing to do but carry out my role of slumber in the stall; they spoke in a friendly, ordinary way, as if this were like every other morning of the week to them. They addressed the prisoners with a sort of fraternal kindness, not bringing them pointedly into the conversation, nor yet pointedly leaving them out. I made out that they must all be sitting round the breakfast together, those who had to die and those who had to kill them. The Virginian I never heard speak. But I heard the voice of Steve; he discussed with his captors the sundry points of his capture.
"Do you remember a haystack?" he asked. "Away up the south fork of Gros Ventre?"
"That was Thursday afternoon," said one of the captors. "There was a shower."
"Yes. It rained. We had you fooled that time. I was laying on the ledge above to report your movements."
Several of them laughed. "We thought you were over on Spread Creek then."
"I figured you thought so by the trail you left after the stack. Saturday we watched you turn your back on us up Spread Creek. We were snug among the trees the other side of Snake River. That was another time we had you fooled."
They laughed again at their own expense. I have heard men pick to pieces a hand of whist with more antagonism.
Steve continued: "Would we head for Idaho? Would we swing back over the Divide? You didn't know which! And when we generalled you on to that band of horses you thought was the band you were hunting—ah, we were a strong combination!" He broke off with the first touch of bitterness I had felt in his words.
"Nothing is any stronger than its weakest point." It was the Virginian who said this, and it was the first word he had spoken.
"Naturally," said Steve. His tone in addressing the Virginian was so different, so curt, that I supposed he took the weakest point to mean himself. But the others now showed me that I was wrong in this explanation.
"That's so," one said. "Its weakest point is where a rope or a gang of men is going to break when the strain comes. And you was linked with a poor partner, Steve."
"You're right I was," said the prisoner, back in his easy, casual voice.
"You ought to have got yourself separated from him, Steve."
There was a pause. "Yes," said the prisoner, moodily. "I'm sitting here because one of us blundered." He cursed the blunderer. "Lighting his fool fire queered the whole deal," he added. As he again heavily cursed the blunderer, the others murmured to each other various I told you so's.
"You'd never have built that fire, Steve," said one.
"I said that when we spied the smoke," said another. "I said, 'That's none of Steve's work, lighting fires and revealing to us their whereabouts.'"
It struck me that they were plying Steve with compliments.
"Pretty hard to have the fool get away and you get caught," a third suggested. At this they seemed to wait. I felt something curious in all this last talk.
"Oh, did he get away?" said the prisoner, then.
Again they waited; and a new voice spoke huskily:— "I built that fire, boys." It was the prisoner in the gray flannel shirt.
"Too late, Ed," they told him kindly. "You ain't a good liar."
"What makes you laugh, Steve?" said some one.
"Oh, the things I notice."
"Meaning Ed was pretty slow in backing up your play? The joke is really on you, Steve. You'd ought never to have cursed the fire-builder if you wanted us to believe he was present. But we'd not have done much to Shorty, even if we had caught him. All he wants is to be scared good and hard, and he'll go back into virtuousness, which is his nature when not travelling with Trampas."
Steve's voice sounded hard now. "You have caught Ed and me. That should satisfy you for one gather."
"Well, we think different, Steve. Trampas escaping leaves this thing unfinished."
"So Trampas escaped too, did he?" said the prisoner.
"Yes, Steve, Trampas escaped—this time; and Shorty with him—this time. We know it most as well as if we'd seen them go. And we're glad Shorty is loose, for he'll build another fire or do some other foolishness next time, and that's the time we'll get Trampas."
Their talk drifted to other points, and I lay thinking of the skirmish that had played beneath the surface of their banter. Yes, the joke, as they put it, was on Steve. He had lost one point in the game to them. They were playing for names. He, being a chivalrous thief, was playing to hide names. They could only, among several likely confederates, guess Trampas and Shorty. So it had been a slip for him to curse the man who built the fire. At least, they so held it. For, they with subtlety reasoned, one curses the absent. And I agreed with them that Ed did not know how to lie well; he should have at once claimed the disgrace of having spoiled the expedition. If Shorty was the blunderer, then certainly Trampas was the other man; for the two were as inseparable as don and master. Trampas had enticed Shorty away from good, and trained him in evil. It now struck me that after his single remark the Virginian had been silent throughout their shrewd discussion.
It was the other prisoner that I heard them next address. "You don't eat any breakfast, Ed."
"Brace up, Ed. Look at Steve, how hardy he eats!"
But Ed, it seemed, wanted no breakfast. And the tin dishes rattled as they were gathered and taken to be packed.
"Drink this coffee, anyway," another urged; "you'll feel warmer."
These words almost made it seem like my own execution. My whole body turned cold in company with the prisoner's, and as if with a clank the situation tightened throughout my senses.
"I reckon if every one's ready we'll start." It was the Virginian's voice once more, and different from the rest. I heard them rise at his bidding, and I put the blanket over my head. I felt their tread as they walked out, passing my stall. The straw that was half under me and half out in the stable was stirred as by something heavy dragged or half lifted along over it. "Look out, you're hurting Ed's arm," one said to another, as the steps with tangled sounds passed slowly out. I heard another among those who followed say, "Poor Ed couldn't swallow his coffee." Outside they began getting on their horses; and next their hoofs grew distant, until all was silence round the stable except the dull, even falling of the rain.
XXXI - The Cottonwoods
*
I do not know how long I stayed there alone. It was the Virginian who came back, and as he stood at the foot of my blankets his eye, after meeting mine full for a moment, turned aside. I had never seen him look as he did now, not even in Pitchstone Canyon when we came upon the bodies of Hank and his wife. Until this moment we had found no chance of speaking together, except in the presence of others.
"Seems to be raining still," I began after a little.
"Yes. It's a wet spell."
He stared out of the door, smoothing his mustache.
It wa
s again I that spoke. "What time is it?"
He brooded over his watch. "Twelve minutes to seven."
I rose and stood drawing on my clothes.
"The fire's out," said he; and he assembled some new sticks over the ashes. Presently he looked round with a cup.
"Never mind that for me," I said
"We've a long ride," he suggested.
"I know. I've crackers in my pocket."
My boots being pulled on, I walked to the door and watched the clouds. "They seem as if they might lift," I said. And I took out my watch.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"A quarter of—it's run down."
While I wound it he seemed to be consulting his own.
"Well?" I inquired.
"Ten minutes past seven."
As I was setting my watch he slowly said:
"Steve wound his all regular. I had to night-guard him till two." His speech was like that of one in a trance: so, at least, it sounds in my memory to-day.
Again I looked at the weather and the rainy immensity of the plain. The foot-hills eastward where we were going were a soft yellow. Over the gray-green sage-brush moved shapeless places of light—not yet the uncovered sunlight, but spots where the storm was wearing thin; and wandering streams of warmth passed by slowly in the surrounding air. As I watched the clouds and the earth, my eyes chanced to fall on the distant clump of cottonwoods. Vapors from the enfeebled storm floated round them, and they were indeed far away; but I came inside and began rolling up my blankets.
"You will not change your mind?" said the Virginian by the fire. "It is thirty-five miles."
I shook my head, feeling a certain shame that he should see how unnerved I was.
He swallowed a hot cupful, and after it sat thinking; and presently he passed his hand across his brow, shutting his eyes. Again he poured out a cup, and emptying this, rose abruptly to his feet as if shaking himself free from something.
"Let's pack and quit here," he said.
Our horses were in the corral and our belongings in the shelter of what had been once the cabin at this forlorn place. He collected them in silence while I saddled my own animal, and in silence we packed the two packhorses, and threw the diamond hitch, and hauled tight the slack, damp ropes. Soon we had mounted, and as we turned into the trail I gave a look back at my last night's lodging.
The Virginian noticed me. "Good-by forever!" he interpreted.
"By God, I hope so!"
"Same here," he confessed. And these were our first natural words this morning.
"This will go well," said I, holding my flask out to him; and both of us took some, and felt easier for it and the natural words.
For an hour we had been shirking real talk, holding fast to the weather, or anything, and all the while that silent thing we were keeping off spoke plainly in the air around us and in every syllable that we uttered. But now we were going to get away from it; leave it behind in the stable, and set ourselves free from it by talking it out. Already relief had begun to stir in my spirits.
"You never did this before," I said.
"No. I never had it to do." He was riding beside me, looking down at his saddle-horn.
"I do not think I should ever be able," I pursued.
Defiance sounded in his answer. "I would do it again this morning."
"Oh, I don't mean that. It's all right here. There's no other way."
"I would do it all over again the same this morning. Just the same."
"Why, so should I—if I could do it at all." I still thought he was justifying their justice to me.
He made no answer as he rode along, looking all the while at his saddle. But again he passed his hand over his forehead with that frown and shutting of the eyes.
"I should like to be sure I should behave myself if I were condemned," I said next. For it now came to me—which should I resemble? Could I read the newspaper, and be interested in county elections, and discuss coming death as if I had lost a game of cards? Or would they have to drag me out? That poor wretch in the gray flannel shirt—"It was bad in the stable," I said aloud. For an after-shiver of it went through me.
A third time his hand brushed his forehead, and I ventured some sympathy.
"I'm afraid your head aches."
"I don't want to keep seeing Steve," he muttered.
"Steve!" I was astounded. "Why he—why all I saw of him was splendid. Since it had to be. It was—"
"Oh, yes; Ed. You're thinking about him. I'd forgot him. So you didn't enjoy Ed?"
At this I looked at him blankly. "It isn't possible that—"
Again he cut me short with a laugh almost savage. "You needn't to worry about Steve. He stayed game."
What then had been the matter that he should keep seeing Steve—that his vision should so obliterate from him what I still shivered at, and so shake him now? For he seemed to be growing more stirred as I grew less. I asked him no further questions, however, and we went on for several minutes, he brooding always in the same fashion, until he resumed with the hard indifference that had before surprised me:— "So Ed gave you feelings! Dumb ague and so forth."
"No doubt we're not made the same way," I retorted.
He took no notice of this. "And you'd have been more comfortable if he'd acted same as Steve did. It cert'nly was bad seeing Ed take it that way, I reckon. And you didn't see him when the time came for business. Well, here's what it is: a man maybe such a confirmed miscreant that killing's the only cure for him; but still he's your own species, and you don't want to have him fall around and grab your laigs and show you his fear naked. It makes you feel ashamed. So Ed gave you feelings, and Steve made everything right easy for you!" There was irony in his voice as he surveyed me, but it fell away at once into sadness. "Both was miscreants. But if Steve had played the coward, too, it would have been a whole heap easier for me." He paused before adding, "And Steve was not a miscreant once."
His voice had trembled, and I felt the deep emotion that seemed to gain upon him now that action was over and he had nothing to do but think. And his view was simple enough: you must die brave. Failure is a sort of treason to the brotherhood, and forfeits pity. It was Steve's perfect bearing that had caught his heart so that he forgot even his scorn of the other man.
But this was by no means all that was to come. He harked back to that notion of a prisoner helping to make it easy for his executioner. "Easy plumb to the end," he pursued, his mind reviewing the acts of the morning. "Why, he tried to give me your newspaper. I didn't—"
"Oh, no," I said hastily. "I had finished with it."
"Well, he took dying as naturally as he took living. Like a man should. Like I hope to." Again he looked at the pictures in his mind. "No play-acting nor last words. He just told good-by to the boys as we led his horse under the limb—you needn't to look so dainty," he broke off. "You ain't going to get any more shocking particulars."
"I know I'm white-livered," I said with a species of laugh. "I never crowd and stare when somebody is hurt in the street. I get away."
He thought this over. "You don't mean all of that. You'd not have spoke just that way about crowding and staring if you thought well of them that stare. Staring ain't courage; it's trashy curiosity. Now you did not have this thing—"
He had stretched out his hand to point, but it fell, and his utterance stopped, and he jerked his horse to a stand. My nerves sprang like a wire at his suddenness, and I looked where he was looking. There were the cottonwoods, close in front of us. As we had travelled and talked we had forgotten them. Now they were looming within a hundred yards; and our trail lay straight through them.
"Let's go around them," said the Virginian.
When we had come back from our circuit into the trail he continued: "You did not have that thing to do. But a man goes through with his responsibilities—and I reckon you could."
"I hope so," I answered. "How about Ed?"
"He was not a man, though we thought he was till this. Steve and
I started punching cattle together at the Bordeaux outfit, north of Cheyenne. We did everything together in those days—work and play. Six years ago. Steve had many good points onced."
We must have gone two miles before he spoke again. "You prob'ly didn't notice Steve? I mean the way he acted to me?" It was a question, but he did not wait for my answer. "Steve never said a word to me all through. He shunned it. And you saw how neighborly he talked to the other boys."
"Where have they all gone?" I asked.
He smiled at me. "It cert'nly is lonesome now, for a fact."
"I didn't know you felt it," said I.
"Feel it!—they've went to the railroad. Three of them are witnesses in a case at Evanston, and the Judge wants our outfit at Medicine Bow. Steve shunned me. Did he think I was going back on him?"
"What if he did? You were not. And so nobody's going to Wind River but you?"
"No. Did you notice Steve would not give us any information about Shorty? That was right. I would have acted that way, too." Thus, each time, he brought me back to the subject.
The sun was now shining warm during two or three minutes together, and gulfs of blue opened in the great white clouds. These moved and met among each other, and parted, like hands spread out, slowly weaving a spell of sleep over the day after the wakeful night storm. The huge contours of the earth lay basking and drying, and not one living creature, bird or beast, was in sight. Quiet was returning to my revived spirits, but there was none for the Virginian. And as he reasoned matters out aloud, his mood grew more overcast.
"You have a friend, and his ways are your ways. You travel together, you spree together confidentially, and you suit each other down to the ground. Then one day you find him putting his iron on another man's calf. You tell him fair and square those ways have never been your ways and ain't going to be your ways. Well, that does not change him any, for it seems he's disturbed over getting rich quick and being a big man in the Territory. And the years go on, until you are foreman of Judge Henry's ranch and he—is dangling back in the cottonwoods. What can he claim? Who made the choice? He cannot say, 'Here is my old friend that I would have stood by.' Can he say that?"