The Sunset Trail

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Commonly the face of Dodge was as open and frank and care-free as the face of a Waterbury watch. On the occasion in hand it wore a look of occupation and serious business. This business expression was fairly founded; a sheriff for Ford County must be selected, the gentleman who had filled that post of trust being undeniably dead.

The passing of that sheriff was curious. One morning he rode forth, and fording the Arkansas at the Cimarron Crossing, made south and west for Sand Creek. And thereafter he never rode back. It was understood that he bore official papers to serve upon a certain miscreant who dwelt on Sand Creek. The Sand Creek miscreant having bought goods of Mr. Wright, later jeered at the suggestion that he pay, and Mr. Wright had been driven to ask aid of the law.

Three days after the sheriff splashed through the Cimarron Crossing his pony was picked up by cow people, saddled, bridled, and in the best of spirits, close by the river where the lush grass grows most to a pony’s taste. It did not escape experienced eyes that, when the pony was thus recovered, the bridle reins were properly upon its neck and had not been lifted over its head, to hang by the bits and drag about its hoofs. Later, the missing one’s six-shooter and belt, the latter tooth-marked, together with shreds of clothing, scraps of leather leggings, and sundry bones gnawed white, were found an hour’s ride out on the trail. The pistol possessed a full furnishment of six unexploded cartridges. Also, the tooth-marked belt and those fragmentary reminders, scattered here and there and all about for the round area of a mile, offered much to support a belief that the late officer, in his final expression, had become of gustatory moment to coyotes, which grey beggarmen of the plains were many and hungry in those parts.

When the evidence recounted was all in, the wisdom of Dodge made divers deductions. These found setting forth in the remarks of Mr. Wright, the same being delivered to Mr. Short and others in the Long Branch saloon.

“Those bridle reins on the pony’s neck,” observed Mr. Wright, inspired to the explanation by Old Jordan and a local curiosity which appealed to him as among the best intelligences in camp, “those bridle reins on the pony’s neck shows that Dave went out o’ the saddle a heap sudden. If Dave had swung to the grass of his own will he’d have lifted the reins over the pony’s head, so’s to keep that equine standin’ patient to his call.”

“Don’t you reckon, Bob,” broke in Mr. Short, “your Sand Creek bankrupt bushwhacks Dave?”

“No; Dave wasn’t shot out o’ the saddle, the six loads in his gun bein’ plenty on that point. It’s preposterous that an old hand like Dave, in an open country, too, could have been rubbed out, an’ never get a shot. Dave wasn’t that easy. Besides, if the Sand Creek hold-up had bumped Dave off, he’d have cinched the pony. Gents, the idea I entertain is that Dave, in a fit of abstraction, permits himself to be bucked off. Landin’ on his head that a-way, his neck naturally gets broke.”

The Wright theory having been adopted, Dodge, in addition to the serious business look, took on an atmosphere of disappointment which trenched upon the mournful. Not that the late sheriff’s death preyed upon Dodge. Dodge was aware of sheriffs in their evanescence. They were as grass; they came up like the flowers to be cut down. What discouraged Dodge was the commonplace character of that officer’s exit, as so convincingly explained by Mr. Wright. Nothing had been left wherewith to gild a story and tantalize the envious ears of rivalry. To be chucked from a careless saddle to the dislocation of an equally careless neck was not a proud demise.

By Western tenets the only honourable departure would have been the one usual and official. The sheriff who would quit his constituents under noblest conditions must perish in the smoke of conflict, defending communal order and the threatened peace of men. Obviously he must not be pitched from his own pony to fatten coyotes.

“For,” as Cimarron Bill was moved to observe, “to be bucked into a better life, inadvertent, is as onromatic as bein’ kicked to glory by an ambulance mule.”