CHAPTER II—IN THE ODEON
East and west across the flat face of Nebraska runs a river, which needs no naming, looping, like a great watery rope, the Rocky Mountains and its ultimate confluence with the Big Muddy. It was once said of this stream that it resembled the speeches of a well-known politician, inasmuch as it was a thousand miles long, a mile wide, and about four inches deep.
In one particular year of our Lord, when herds of longhorn cattle were spilling out of Texas like milk seeping over a polished table top, from an overflowing bowl, the curses of many a trail boss and cattle owner were heaped upon this wide, shallow, sandy-bottomed river. Northbound herds must cross it. Under its ankle depths of flow lurked miles of quicksand. The first drives to the North suffered. Later, hard bottom crossings were located.
In the height of the great bovine exodus, such crossings were like the junction of two great thoroughfares. They were heavily traffic laden. From May to September the march of the herds never slackened. Every herd had its quota of riders. Wherever there are men there is money, and money is made to be spent. So, at each of these river crossings, enterprising merchants set up with stocks of goods. Equally enterprising individuals set up establishments where a cowpuncher could find something for his throat besides dust and alkali water, where he could take a fling at faro bank and poker. In other words, the saloon and gambling hall arose, side by side, with the general store, to the profit of their owners and the glory of the trail.
Clark’s Ford was such a place. When Ben Clark bogged his first herd in the quicksands, he lay on the bank, and his riders scouted for hard bottom, found it, passed over and passed on, leaving his name to the place and bequeathing future herds on that route the only safe crossing in a hundred miles.
A year later a cluster of frame buildings on the north bank greeted the lead of each herd, as it emerged from the stream. Here outfits could replenish their grub supply, get or send mail by a stage route, before they vanished into the empty land that spread north to the Canada line, a land that was empty even unto the arctic circle.
And into Clark’s Ford one July evening Rock Holloway rode alone, on the same sorrel horse, one of his own private mounts, that had stepped light-footedly in the dust of a Fort Worth street that spring. For weeks he had faced the dip and roll and flatness of plains as bare as the seas Columbus faced when he crossed the Western ocean. Ride, eat, sleep, and ride again, in the dust of eight thousand hoofs, on that pilgrimage from the Rio Grande to the forty-ninth parallel, across silent leagues of grass, from which the bison had but lately vanished, and where the Indian had not yet forgotten how to take a white man’s scalp.
So Rock, who had nothing much on his mind but a Stetson hat, rode into Clark’s Ford. Little sinks of iniquity like this were not new in his experience. He was too sensible to take a moral attitude. They were not, with their gaudy activities, much to his taste, but they supplied a want. He didn’t drink much at any time, preferring poker for pastime, and he had been known to wander about for hours in the midst of cow-town hilarity doing nothing but watch his fellows make merry.
Clark’s Ford numbered scarcely a dozen buildings. One general store, one blacksmith shop, one combined saloon and dance hall. A gaunt boarding house purveyed food and sleeping quarters to clerks, gamblers, bartenders, and transients. Clark’s Ford was little more than a camp, a mushroom growth with neither a past nor a future.
It was not a place that Ben Clark would have been proud to bear his name. If it catered in some measure to the legitimate necessities of these Argonauts of the plains, it likewise battened on their weaknesses. Cattlemen and their riders had few illusions about such places, except in moments of alcoholic exaltation. They were tolerant of them, that was all, because they were centers of human contact, in the midst of an unpeopled wilderness.
It was a dreary place in the glare of day. Sagebrush flowed to the very doors—gray—monotonously gray. A river, with a dozen channels plowed by the spring floods in its yellow sands, slunk at the feet of Clark’s Ford. For a mile about no green thing flourished. Only the tough sagebrush defied obliteration under the trampling hoofs that passed in myriads. That valley had yet to become verdant under irrigation canals. Even the red brother shunned it in bygone days except when the buffalo herds passed that way. The cattleman would have shunned it if he could. But the herds focused at this point, but, once across, they radiated like the spokes of a wheel to pleasanter ranges farther north, where grass waved like fields of ripe wheat; where clear streams flowed in gravelly beds, and now and then a man’s eye would be gladdened by a tree.
But at night Clark’s Ford shook off its daytime somnolence, shrouded itself in the dusky mantle of night and decked itself with yellow jewels. Night and lamps! There is magic in those two. A pianist and a fiddler strummed in the dance hall. The women glowed in silk and satin and smiled their mechanical smiles. Within, the light softened hard faces, struck glints from glass, and spread over green-topped tables, the racked silver and gold behind the games, and the multicolored poker chips. A man could get action there. Seldom any one paused outside those doors, behind which the piano tinkled, and the fiddle wailed, and the voices of men and women were pitched a little above the normal key.
Rock paused now, after he had swung down from his horse. He stared up at the sky, the inverted bowl of the Persian poet, studded with stars. He looked absently upward, the fingers of one hand tangled in Sangre’s mane. Perhaps he studied the stars in their courses. Perhaps he saw something invisible save to the imaginative eye, off in that calm, obscuring night. And then he shrugged his shoulders, gave his gun belt a hitch, and walked into the Odeon. Why the exploiter of Clark’s Ford bestowed on a tin-pot dance hall a name that derived from ancient Greek through modern French, Heaven only knows. Perhaps that was what made Rock smile, as he noted the name painted in white on a door illuminated by a hung lantern. He had a way of noting such things.
A bar ranged along one side of the Odeon. A low platform lifted against the opposite wall, where the two musicians played, and now and then a woman sang the sentimental ballads of the period. A clear space in the middle was left for dancing. One side was set with pine tables and chairs. The other wall made a backstop for gambling paraphernalia, operated by bored men with impassive faces, who dealt for the house and watched winning or losing with equal indifference.
All this Rock took in rapidly. He had heard about Clark’s Ford and the Odeon a thousand miles south. He reflected that there were other places of the same stripe, which he had seen here, and they were more impressive, if less widely known. Yet it was a fairly big night at the Odeon. Four herds had made the crossing that day. Three more lay within ten miles. There were riders from all in Clark’s Ford this night, seeking diversion. The gabble of voices and laughter filled the big room. The click of chips greeted Rock’s ears, a faint, penetrating sound. A woman was singing, “Drink to me only with thine eyes.” It sounded at once incongruous and highly appropriate in that atmosphere. She had a fairly good voice, too. He stood within the door until the last note sounded, then walked across the room to a poker game, where he recognized a cattleman he knew from Waco.
“Well, well!” Al Kerr reached up to shake hands. “Seems like everybody’s headed North these days. How’s tricks?”
“So, so,” Rock answered. “Laying up much wealth in this noble pastime?”
“Not so you could notice,” Kerr grinned. “Just amusin’ myself. This here table sort of attracted me. First green thing I’ve seen for six weeks. Here, cash these.”
He shoved half a stack of reds to the dealer, got five silver dollars in exchange, and pushed back his chair.
“Let’s inhale a drink,” he suggested. “Maybe you and me could horn into an easier game later on.”
“I’m due on guard at one thirty, and it’s eleven now,” Rock said, “so I won’t play poker to-night. But I will have a glass of beer.”
“Beer’s no good except off ice in hot weather,” Kerr told him. “And ice is as scarce as square men among the regular population of Clark’s Ford. Better drink rye.”
As the choice lay between lukewarm beer and the stronger drink, Rock chose whisky. It didn’t matter what he drank.
He didn’t intend to tarry long in the Odeon.
Nor did he. If he could have foreseen the manner and necessity of his departure, he might not have entered the place. And again he might have braved fate, even with certain knowledge, since he was not by nature inclined to dodge issues either present or potential. A man on the frontier seldom got anywhere if he were always counting costs. If Rock had not got anywhere, he was at least on his way.
They walked over to the bar and stood near the farther end from the main entrance. Rock was not a tall man, perhaps a little over medium height. Even so he towered over his companion. Kerr barely reached his shoulder. He was a little wisp of a man, with a gnomelike face. Small bodied, but big-hearted, full of humorous quips and kindly impulses, Al Kerr was the type of Texas cowman who never figures in song and story. He had never killed any one. He had never found it necessary. Probably he had not exchanged a dozen harsh sentences with another man in his life. Yet he was a successful man. He had cattle scattered over the length of three States. He had fifty riders on his pay roll. And for every rider he had a score of friends. Rock happened to be one of them. And Rock looked down on the little, middle-aged man, whose hair was thin, but whose blue eyes were merry, and he wondered what it was that made some men succeed in whatever they undertook. It wasn’t size, it wasn’t blatant force, and it wasn’t always the power of possessions. What was it, Rock wondered?
A dance had just ended. Several lusty, perspiring young trail hands had led their ladies to the bar to liquidate the Terpsichorean debt, after the custom of such places. They were lined up twenty in a row. As they stood there, glass in hand, some in the act of pouring their drink, the door of the Odeon flew open, and a man swaggered in.
He stood a moment staring with eyes a trifle reddened. He was a mountain of a man, well over six feet, and thick in proportion. He wore a rider’s usual costume. Like most of those who trafficked across the plains, he was armed. He took two quick strides from the door to the bar end and, picking up the nearest glass of whisky, drank it at a gulp. Then he stood, towering above the man whose drink he had taken, grinning, as if at a capital joke.
“Well, well,” Kerr murmured. “The village cut-up is with us again. He was around here this afternoon raisin’ Cain. He aims to be bad, it looks like. Wonder where he escaped from?”
Rock smiled. He knew the man. He watched with a detached sort of interest to see what would happen. For a second nothing happened. A quick-witted bartender hastily set up another glass, thus stifling the protest that was evidently on tap by the man whose drink had been taken. That, to Rock, was an indication of how far Mark Duffy’s size and disposition had carried him in Clark’s Ford. But he was hardly prepared for the big man’s next action. Considering the time and place, it seemed suicidal.
Duffy walked right down the bar, shouldering all and sundry out of his way. His big red face was wreathed in a sardonic grin, and his bellowing voice uttered a warning to all in his path:
“Make room for a man. I’m goin’ to drink, an’ when I drink I need lots of room.”
He seemed in a fair way to get all the room he desired without opposition. Probably any other man would have been smelling powder before he got halfway, Rock reflected. But Duffy looked neither to right nor left nor hesitated in his ponderous stride, nor heeded the curses that were hurled at him. He was asserting himself, he wanted room, and he got it—a clear path, until he came to Al Kerr and Rock Holloway.
Neither moved. Their second drink was before them. Rock had one elbow on the bar, and he kept it there. Kerr stood between him and Duffy.
The big man loomed over Kerr. He looked down.
“Say, runt!” he bellowed. “Did you hear me say I wanted room?”
“Seems to me you got plenty,” Kerr answered. “Nobody’s crowdin’ you.”
For answer Duffy seized him by both shoulders, picked him off his feet, as if he had been a child, and set him on the bar. Kerr stood probably five foot four. He never carried a six-shooter. He was handy with a rifle, but that was not a weapon he carried in town.
Duffy kept that iron grip on his shoulders. The little man was helpless. Faint snickers arose in the room. Kerr’s face flushed. He felt the indignity. But he said nothing, only looked Duffy coldly in the eye. And Duffy began to shake him until his head snapped back and forth, yanking him at last roughly off the bar, so that his boot heels struck the floor with a crack.
“Buy a drink for the crowd, runt,” he commanded.
“You go to hell,” Kerr defied him. “Buy your own drinks. You’re too big for me to fight with my hands. But you lay off’n me long enough for me to get a gun, and I’ll shoot with you for the drinks, you side of raw beef on the hoof!”
Duffy’s face wreathed in a grin. He reached his gorilla-like arms and took a step forward. Kerr dodged sidewise. And for the first time Duffy seemed to see and recognize Rock. He stared briefly. Rock looked back at him, expressionless. Duffy turned on Kerr again. His hand crept toward the gun in his belt.
“You’ll buy a drink, or you’ll dance,” he said meaningly. “Look spry, little feller! Buy drinks or dance.”
He punctuated the last sentence with a shot into the floor at Kerr’s feet. Whereat Rock stepped between the little man and his tormentor. His Colt was in his hand. Like Duffy’s, it pointed at the floor. There was a swift surge of men away from the bar.
“You’ve gone far enough with this, Duffy,” Rock said quietly. “Don’t be a damn fool.”
For five tense seconds Duffy glared at Rock; then his gun jerked. At the movement, Rock fired. He was pitching himself sidewise, as he pulled trigger. He knew when he interfered that there would only be one end to such interference, and he had discounted that. Duffy’s bullet sped somewhere past his face. And Rock held his second shot, for the big man was sagging slowly forward, until suddenly he collapsed on the floor.
Rock slid the fallen six-shooter with his toe toward Kerr, his eyes on the crowd.
“Take that till we get out of here,” he said. “Maybe he’s got friends.”
But other friends were at hand. Half a dozen of Kerr’s men came shouldering their way toward him.
“That was neat,” one grinned at Rock. “We couldn’t very well bust our way through that crowd, but if anybody wants to go farther with it, we’re here to take ’em on.”
Evidently no one did. They walked, Kerr and Rock and five trail hands, the length of the room to the entrance door, while the hush that sudden death always brings held the crowd in the Odeon.
Once in the street beside their mounts, Kerr said:
“Well, I think I better amble off to camp before some other ambitious drunk picks on me. You fellers comin’ along?”
“I expect we better,” they agreed. “That joint is no great shakes for amusement, nohow.”
“Where’s your outfit camped?” Rock asked.
“About nine miles north,” Kerr answered. “Where’s your camp, Rock?”
“Same direction. Not quite so far,” Rock answered. “I’ll ride with you a ways.”
They went jingling away from Clark’s Ford, Kerr’s riders laughing and joking. Rock and the little cowman silent. The Dipper wheeling on its ancient circle of the pole star gave them bearings. The night hush enfolded them, as the lights and sounds were swallowed in the dark hollow by the river. Three miles out Rock pulled up his horse.
“Here’s where I turn aside,” he said. “So long, boys.”
“Look, Rock,” Kerr said slowly. “You done me a good turn back there. If you’re ever in a jack pot, you let me know. I’m locatin’ in Montana for good this season. You’ll find me in the Judith Basin, on Arrow Creek. Capital K they call my outfit up there. Post office is Lewistown. My house is yours any time you show up.”
“Maybe, I’ll call your bluff some time, Al,” Rock laughed. “You never can tell. I’m bound for Montana, myself, so I may see you-all again this summer. So long. Be good, and if you can’t be good be careful.”
Rock sat his horse, listening to the patter of departing hoofs. So Kerr was bound for the Judith Basin. Rock had said that the outfit he was with was also bound for Montana. But he had omitted to mention that he would not be with it when it arrived.
In fact, Rock was not wholly certain that he would ever arrive. He had another private horse beside Sangre with the Seventy Seven. His bed was in the wagon. He had two months’ wages due. Before he could get anywhere, he had to collect his belongings and his pay.
And that might very well lead to a continuation of the unpleasantness this night had already spanned. The man whom he had killed in the Odeon was the brother of the trail boss of the Seventy Seven, and the Duffys were a clannish lot, with more nerve than good judgment.
He mighn’t be lucky twice in one night. The pitcher that goes often enough to the well—— Rock shrugged his shoulders and shook his horse into a lope. In twenty minutes he drew up to where the Seventy Seven herd lay bedded, a huge dark blot on the bleached grass, with the chuck tent looming a ghost-white outline, half a mile past the sleeping herd.