Not by its news; the news was now old, since at every cabin and station dotted along our lonely road the same poster had appeared. They had discussed it, and whether he would be caught, and how much money he had got from his victim. At Lost Soldier they knew he had got ten thousand dollars, at Bull Spring they knew he had got twenty, at Crook’s Gap it was more like twenty-five, while at Sweetwater Bridge he had got nothing at all. What they did agree about was that he would not be caught. Too much start. Body hadn’t been found on Owl Creek for a good many weeks. Funny his friend hadn’t turned up. If they’d killed him, why wasn’t his body on Owl Creek, too? If he’d got away, why didn’t he turn up? Such comments, with many more, were they making at Lost Soldier, Bull Spring, Crook’s Gap, and Sweetwater Bridge, and it was not the news on the poster that drew my eye, but its mere yellow vibrations. These, in some way, caught my brain in a net and held it still, so that thinking stopped, and I was under a spell, torpid as any plant or sponge—passive, perhaps, is the truer word for my state.
When I was abruptly wakened from this open-eyed sleep, I knew that I had been hearing a song for some time:—
If that I was where I would be,
Then should I be where I am not;
Here am I where I must be,
And where I would be I cannot.
It was the neigh of some horse in the stable, loud and sudden, that had burst the shell of my trance, causing thought to start to life again, as if with a leap; there I sat in the wagon, waiting for Scipio Le Moyne to come out of the house; there in my nostrils was the smell of the wet sage-brush and of the wet straw and manure, and there, against the gray sky, was an after-image of the yellow poster, square, huge, and blue. The smaller print was not reproduced, but Reward and Murder stood out clear, floating in the air. It moved with my eyes as I turned them to get rid of the annoying vision, and it at last slowly dissolved away over the head of the figure sitting on the corral with its back to me, the stock-tender of this stage station. It wore out as I listened to his song, and looked at him. He sang his song again, and I found that I now knew it by heart.
If that I was where I would be,
Then should I be where I am not;
Here am I where I must be,
And where I would be I cannot.
“If that was where I would be, then should I be where I am not”
In the mountains, beyond the sage-brush, the thunderstorm was still splitting the dark cañons open with fierce strokes of light; the light seemed close, but it was a long time before its crashes and echoes came to us through the wet air. I could not see the figure’s face, or that he moved. One boot was twisted between the bars of the corral to hold him steady, its trodden heel was worn to a slant; from one seat-pocket a soiled rag protruded, and through a hole below this a piece of his red shirt or drawers stuck out. A coat much too large for him hung from his neck rather than from his shoulders, and the damp, limp hat that he wore, with its spotted, unraveled hatband, somehow completed the suggestion that he was not alive at all, but had been tied together and stuffed and set out in joke. Certainly there were no birds here, or crops to frighten birds from; empty bottles were the only thing that man had sown the desert with at Rongis.[2] These lay everywhere. As the figure sat and repeated its song beneath the still wrecked and stricken sky, its back and its hat and its voice gave an impression of loneliness, poignant and helpless. A windmill turned and turned and creaked near the corral, adding its note of forlornness to the song.
A man put his head out of the house. “Stop it,” he said, and shut the door again.