THRESHING-TIME
Injun was a being who ran more to feelings, or instincts, than to reasons, and like many persons of that kind his instincts often ran truer to form than the reasons of others. While Dorgan was not a likable man, he was not one whom everybody would distrust; he did not have the word "villain" printed on his face. Yet Injun thought he was one, and if asked for his reasons probably could not have told them.
You know that Injun suspected Dorgan of taking Whitey's pony, and now Whitey learned for the first time that Injun had seen Dorgan stealing away from the sheep ranch on the night of the war. Whitey wondered why Injun had not told him this before, but it was not Injun's way to tell everything he knew, even to Whitey. That was one of Injun's charms.
No one ever had suspected Dorgan of being a sheepman. He might have been at that ranch as a mere visitor. Injun thought he went there on foot, after Monty had been taken away from him. It is well known that in the Old West horse-stealing was considered about the worst crime a man could commit, not only because of the value of the horse, and a man's being so dependent on it, but because the horse helped to steal itself, as all one had to do was to get on it and ride away. It never would do to accuse Dorgan of the crime without pretty good proof.
Of course, it made Whitey wild to think of any one's stealing Monty, and as he and Injun stood in a corner of the barn, and talked the matter over, they decided on the following course: they would stay at the Hanley Ranch for a while; Dorgan had not seen them. If he ran away when he did see them, that would be an indication of guilt, but no proof. But if Dorgan stayed on, the boys might be able to get some proof of his guilt. He was a dangerous man to deal with; that made it all the more interesting. If they had known how dangerous Dorgan really was, they might have considered the matter more seriously.
The next morning the Mildini Troupe went on its way across the lonely prairie, and Whitey watched the departure with regret. He would have liked to travel farther with that troupe.
The owner of the Hanley Ranch seldom came there. He lived in the East, leaving the affairs of the place entirely in the hands of a manager named Gilbert Steele. It was a common saying in that part of the country that "Gil Steele was as hard as his name." He was an ambitious and an active man, and regarded every dollar wrung out of the ranch for its owner as a sort of triumph for himself.
There are men who are successful only when working for others; whose every independent effort is a failure. Steele was such a man, and that made him bitter, but none the less energetic. He acted not only as manager, but as foreman of the ranch, which included two sections, twelve hundred and eighty acres. And he had many enemies.
Perhaps you have wondered at that queer audience in the barn, and why threshing-time should bring it together. In those days in the West threshing-time was an era of prosperity, and twenty-five or thirty men would band together and buy a threshing-machine. They owned plenty of horses, and they would go from ranch to ranch with this machine, and thresh the grain. Now, this threshing-time being of short duration, it drew into it men whose occupations were entirely different at other times of the year. Hence, the bartenders, hold-up men, cowpunchers—whom it would be fatal to ask where they came from—the blacksmiths, and the store-keepers.
Gil Steele had been at the Bar O, so Whitey was known to him, and he supposed that the boy had come merely to see the show. So Gil was rather surprised, the next morning, when Whitey asked for a job for himself and for Injun.
"What do you want to work for?" Steele demanded. "Your father's got plenty o' money."
Whitey's real reason was that he wanted to be among the men to watch Dorgan, but he equivocated—which is a pretty way of saying that he told a white lie.
"Bill Jordan thinks I'm a softy," Whitey replied. "He's trying to make it so hard for me that I'll be glad to go back to school. And I want to show Bill that I'm not afraid of work." You see, there was enough truth in this to keep Whitey's conscience from aching.
"All right," said Steele. "More hands mean quicker work and more money. But I never heard of an Injun wanting to work before."
"Tame Injun," Injun said solemnly, which was as near a joke as he ever came in the years Whitey knew him.
This work came under the head of what a fellow doesn't really have to do, and everybody knows the difference between that and labor that a fellow does have to do—about the same difference that there is between work and fun. The threshing-machine was run by horse power. You remember Felix, the jack that Whitey rode across the prairie, and Felix's job of turning the little grinding-mill? The horses had the same sort of job, except that there were teams of them, revolving around a central pivot, that furnished the power that worked the great machine in whose maw sheaves of wheat were fed, to come out as grain.
Injun and Whitey's jobs were to hold the sacks into which the grain fell. And there they worked, from sunup to sundown, in the heat, and the dust from the chaff, with never a murmur. They were happy because it wasn't work, it was an adventure, with expectancy and danger in it. And Gil Steele was happy, because he was practically getting the work of two men for the pay of two boys.
The sleeping quarters in the Hanley Ranch were altogether taken up by the extra help required to feed the threshers. So the threshers themselves occupied tents, and it was in one of these that Whitey and Injun were bedded, much to their joy. It fitted in with their plans to watch Dorgan, and see if they could learn something that would confirm their suspicions of him.
So far Dorgan had been an utter disappointment. Not only had he refrained from beating it, but he had greeted the boys pleasantly when they met. As far as outward appearances went, Dorgan might have been a Sunday school superintendent. Had he been one at heart, there would be no more story for me to tell.
But there were times when Dorgan could be forgotten. With a crowd like that gathered on the Hanley Ranch, you can imagine the yarns there were to spin in the long evenings, with nothing to do but spin them. Perhaps some of the tales those men didn't dare to tell—the secrets hidden behind their hardened faces, the faults, the crimes, the horrors that could have been revealed—these might have proved more thrilling than the stories that came forth; but that is something that neither you, nor Whitey, nor I will ever know.
The tales that were told there had the proper setting, and if you have thought much about stories you know what that means. You tell a ghost story late at night, seated before a fireplace in an old country house. The only light comes from the flames of the dying fire logs that flicker as the wind howls down the chimney; the only sounds, the beating of the rain on the walls and roof, and—during the creepy pauses in the yarn—the creakings that a lonely house gives out in the night hours. Tell that same story on a sun-lighted June morning, in the orchard, when the trees are all in blossom. Oh, boy! you know the difference.
One night when Whitey had been to the ranch house on an errand, he returned to the tent to find a disturbance going on. Dorgan, who slept in another tent, was a visitor. Somewhere he had obtained liquor; under its influence his pleasant manner had fled, and he was picking on Injun. The dislike that Dorgan concealed during his sober moments had reached the point at which he demanded that Injun be put out of the tent. It was a place for white men, not for Injuns. Injun was not afraid of Dorgan, and had no idea of leaving, so Dorgan was going to put him out. Injun wasn't going to let Dorgan put him out.
At this moment Whitey arrived. What would have happened to an unarmed boy against a drunken, armed man or to two unarmed boys, for Whitey started to interfere, is something else we never shall know, for a cowboy put in his oar.
You know that a cowboy remains a "boy" until he is old enough to die. This one was sixty, he wasn't a typical puncher at all. He had a thin, hawk-like face, steady gray eyes, rather long hair which also was gray like his moustache and goatee. He had been a soldier and an Indian fighter, and he looked it. As Dorgan lurched toward the boys, who stood tense, with flashing eyes, and prepared for resistance, this cowboy stepped between, and spoke to Dorgan.
"I wouldn't do that if I was you," he said, and he spoke in a sort of drawl, but there didn't seem to be any drawl in his cool, gray eyes. In spite of his condition Dorgan appeared to realize this, for he paused uncertainly. "I don't hold myself up as no defender o' Injuns," the old puncher went on calmly, "but I've had a bit o' truck with 'em, fer an' ag'inst, I'm some judge of 'em, an' I reck'n this one c'n stay right here."
Dorgan began to stiffen a little and his fingers clutched, as one's will when one thinks of reaching for a gun. The other man had a gun, too, but he made not the slightest movement toward it, and he spoke even more quietly than before.
"If I was you," he repeated, "bein' in th' c'ndition you're in, I'd beat it. You may have objections for t' state, thinkin' this ain't none o' my business, an' you c'n state 'em now—or f'rever hold your peace."
Dorgan looked around the tent, as if for moral support, but didn't find any. A singular quiet had fallen on the place; a sort of disconcerting quiet. A warning ray of sense must have come into Dorgan's fuddled brain as he looked again at the old puncher, for without a word he stumbled out into the darkness.
"That was mighty fine of you," Whitey said warmly, but the old man didn't seem to hear him.
He sat down and built a cigarette, and when it was lighted began to drawl between puffs. "There's a lot o' folks that don't know nothin' 'bout Injuns, that has a lot o' 'pinions concernin' 'em," he said. "They say you've got t' live with a feller t' know him, but that ain't so. You c'n find out a lot by fightin' him. That's how I got my feelin' for Injuns, an' it's th' kind you have for a good fighter."
The incident with Dorgan seemed to have passed from his mind, though Whitey had lived long enough in the West to know that tragedy had lurked near. The old puncher leaned back, his hands behind his head, and puffed clouds of smoke into the air. He looked at the smoke as though he saw pictures in it. Then he carefully threw the cigarette down and ground his heel into it. As the other men had remained silent while he was talking to Dorgan, they remained silent now.
He was a product of an epic time in the West, a time when the others had been boys. Naturally a quiet man, he had had little to say. He also was known as a dangerous man, and when a quiet and dangerous man seems inclined to talk, it is sometimes worth while to wait. Instead of speaking, he rolled another cigarette, and again looked into the smoke.
But presently the old puncher awoke from his dream and looked at the surrounding faces, some coarse, some wicked, but all attentive, all plainly inviting him to talk.
"Yes, sir, a feller that was in th' Seventh Cavalry, in th' old days, got a good many lessons 'bout Injuns," he began. "An' if you like, I c'n tell you some things 'bout th' biggest Injun fight that ever happened in these parts, 'cause I was there."
So he told the story, and I shall leave out the questions with which it was interrupted.