The Sunset Trail

by Alfred Henry Lewis

As stated, this was the plan; but after receiving the contralto’s message, Mr. Kelly decided upon amendments. It would be safer, when all was said, to let Mr. Pepin hear of the contralto and her coming. Mr. Pepin was a frail man; a sudden joy might strike him dead. Mr. Kelly had heard of such cases. Not to invite any similar catastrophe in the fragile instance of Mr. Pepin, Mr. Kelly took him aside and told him of the happiness ahead. He was ten minutes in the telling, rolling the blessed secret beneath his tongue, until the last possible moment, like a sweet morsel.

Mr. Pepin, rendered mute by his peril, said never a word. He read the contralto’s message and then fell into a chair—glazed of eye and pale of cheek. Mr. Kelly poured whiskey down Mr. Pepin, laying his faintness to bliss. Mr. Pepin was at last so far recovered that he could walk. But his eyes roved wildly, like the eyes of a trapped animal, and how he fiddled through the night he never knew.

Nature preserves herself by equilibriums. He who will stop and think must see that this is so. Wherever there is danger there is defence, a poison means an antidote and the distillery and the rattlesnake go hand in hand. The day of Mr. Kelly’s headlong breaking into the domestic affairs of Mr. Pepin, was the day upon which the Lone Wolf came into Dodge. The Lone Wolf lost no time, but sought out Mr. Masterson. His ragged blanket and blackened face must be explained, and the Lone Wolf told Mr. Masterson of his lost “medicine.” Moreover, he set forth his design of presently potting that Pawnee or Sioux, and sequestering, de bene esse, the dead person’s “medicine.”

Mr. Masterson spoke against this latter scheme; to carry it out would betray the Lone Wolf into all sorts and fashions of trouble. The Lone Wolf’s Great Father in Washington objected to these unauthorized homicides, and would send the walkaheaps or the pony-soldiers from the Fort upon the trail of the Lone Wolf.

As against this, the Lone Wolf showed that he was even then in all sorts and fashions of trouble by reason of his lost “medicine,” and nothing the Great Father did could add to it. What was he, the Lone Wolf, to do? He must have a “medicine.” He could not make a new one, for the Great Spirit had passed commands against it. He could not buy one, for every Indian urgently needed his “medicine” in his own affairs, and when he died it must be buried with him since he would then need it more than ever. There was no other solution. He must knock out the brains of that Pawnee or Sioux of whom he was in pursuit. There would then be an extra “medicine” on earth, and he might claim it.

Mr. Masterson owned a fertile intelligence; a bright thought came to him. He told the Lone Wolf that he knew one who was the chief of all medicine men, and master of the mightiest “medicines.” This personage, by a most marvellous chance, had an extra “medicine.” Mr. Masterson was sure that if the need were properly presented, his friend the Lone Wolf could buy this “medicine.” The Lone Wolf would then, in that matter of a “medicine,” to quote from Mr. Masterson, “have every other Cheyenne too dead to skin.”

Mr. Masterson conveyed the Lone Wolf to Mr. Peacock’s Dance Hall, and called his attention to Mr. Pepin, who, made desperate by the peep into a contralto-filled future which the kindness of Mr. Kelly had afforded him, was fiddling as he n’er fiddled before. The Lone Wolf gazed planet-smitten. Even without the spotless word of Mr. Masterson, he would have known by the hump on his shoulders—that especial mark of the Great Spirit’s favour!—how Mr. Pepin was a most tremendous medicine man. Neither was it needed that Mr. Masterson instruct him as to the prodigious qualities of the resounding “medicine” which Mr. Pepin fondled. The Lone Wolf could hear the wailing and sobbing and singing of the scores of ghosts—as many as four screaming at once!—that dwelt therein, and whose sensibilities Mr. Pepin worked upon with the wand in his right hand.

Between dances, that gentleman being at leisure, Mr. Masterson made Mr. Pepin acquainted with the Lone Wolf, and set forth—winking instructively the while—the sore dilemma of his Cheyenne friend. Mr. Masterson explained that he had told the Lone Wolf about an extra “medicine” whereof he, Mr. Pepin, was endowed. Would Mr. Pepin, from his charity and goodness, sell this priceless “medicine” to the Lone Wolf, and lift him out of that abyss into which he had fallen?

Mr. Pepin owned an extra violin, that was not a good violin and therefore out of commission. It abode in a black, oblong box, like a little coffin. Being the kindest of souls, he declined the thought of sale, and said that he would give it to Mr. Masterson’s friend, the Lone Wolf. He took it from its case, which on being opened displayed an advantageous lining of red. The Lone Wolf received it reverently, smelled to it, peered through the slashes in its bosom, placed it to his ear, and then with a kind of awe turned to Mr. Pepin. Was this “medicine” also full of ghosts? Mr. Pepin took it and bowfully showed him that it was a very hive of ghosts.

The Lone Wolf declared that he would receive this inestimable “medicine” from Mr. Pepin. To simply handle it had given him a good heart. Its mere touch, to say nothing of the voices of those ghosts imprisoned in its cherry coloured belly, cheered him and thrilled him as had no other “medicine.” He would return to his people, and scowl in every man’s face. His squaws should again hold up their heads, his pappooses cease their crying. His dogs’ tails should proudly curl aloft, and his ponies snort contempt for the broncos of feebler folk. Altogether the Lone Wolf pictured for himself a balmy future. In conclusion, the grateful Lone Wolf set forth that, while he was proud to take this wondrous “medicine” as a gift, he must still bestow those pack ponies, with their cargoes of robes and furs, upon Mr. Pepin, who was his heart’s brother.