The Sagebrusher
E >> Emerson Hough >> The Sagebrusher[Frontispiece: "You're a good sport," said Major Barnes]
THE SAGEBRUSHER
A STORY OF THE WEST
BY
EMERSON HOUGH
AUTHOR OF THE COVERED WAGON, THE BROKEN GATE, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
J. HENRY
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
EMERSON HOUGH
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. SIM GAGE AT HOME
II. WANTED: A WIFE
III. FIFTY-FIFTY
IV. HEARTS AFLAME
V. BEGGAR MAN--THIEF
VI. RICH MAN--POOR MAN
VII. CHIVALROUS; AND OF ABUNDANT MEANS
VIII. RIVAL CONSCIENCES
IX. THE HALT AND THE BLIND
X. NEIGHBORS
XI. THE COMPANY DOCTOR
XII. LEFT ALONE
XIII. THE SABCAT CAMP
XIV. THE MAN TRAIL
XV. THE SPECIES
XVI. THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE
XVII. SAGEBRUSHERS
XVIII. DONNA QUIXOTE
XIX. THE PLEDGE
XX. MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D.--AND SIM GAGE
XXI. WITH THIS RING
XXII. MRS. GAGE
XXIII. THE OUTLOOK
XXIV. ANNIE MOVES IN
XXV. ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE
XXVI. THE WAYS OF MR. GARDNER
XXVII. DORENWALD, CHIEF
XXVIII. A CHANGE OF BASE
XXIX. MARTIAL LAW
XXX. BEFORE DAWN
XXXI. THE BLIND SEE
XXXII. THE ENEMY
XXXIII. THE DAM
XXXIV. AFTER THE DELUGE
XXXV. ANNIE ANSWERS
XXXVI. MRS. DAVIDSON'S CONSCIENCE
ILLUSTRATIONS
"You're a good sport," said Major Barnes . . . _Frontispiece_
"You ought to hang!" said she
"You say I shall be able to see him--my husband?"
"Get a board, or something, boys"
THE SAGEBRUSHER
CHAPTER I
SIM GAGE AT HOME
"Sim," said Wid Gardner, as he cast a frowning glance around him, "take
it one way with another, and I expect this is a leetle the dirtiest
place in the Two-Forks Valley."
The man accosted did no more than turn a mild blue eye toward the
speaker and resume his whittling. He smiled faintly, with a sort of
apology, as the other went on.
"I'll say more'n that, Sim. It's the blamedest, dirtiest hole in the
whole state of Montany--yes, or in the whole wide world. Lookit!"
He swept a hand around, indicating the interior of the single-room log
cabin in which they sat.
"Well," commented Sim Gage after a time, taking a meditative but wholly
unagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is and I
ain't saying she ain't. But I never did say I was a perfessional
housekeeper, did I now?"
"Well, some folks has more sense of what's right, anyways," grumbled
Wid Gardner, shifting his position on one of the two insecure cracker
boxes which made the only chairs, and resting an elbow on the oil cloth
table cover, where stood a few broken dishes, showing no signs of any
ablution in all their hopeless lives. "My own self, I'm a bachelor
man, too--been batching for twenty years, one place and another--but by
God! Sim, this here is the human limit. Look at that bed."
He kicked a foot toward a heap of dirty fabrics which lay upon the
floor, a bed which might once have been devised for a man, but long
since had fallen below that rank. It had a breadth of dirty canvas
thrown across it, from under which the occupant had crawled out.
Beneath might be seen the edges of two or three worn and dirty cotton
quilts and a pair of blankets of like dinginess. Below this lay a worn
elk hide, and under all a lower-breadth of the over-lapping canvas. It
was such a bed as primarily a cow-puncher might have had, but fallen
into such condition that no cow camp would have tolerated it.
Sim Gage looked at the heap of bedding for a time gravely and
carefully, as though trying to find some reason for his friend's
dissatisfaction. His mouth began to work as it always did when he was
engaged in some severe mental problem, but he frowned apologetically
once more as he spoke.
"Well, Wid, I know, I know. It ain't maybe just the thing to sleep on
the floor all the time, noways. You see, I got a bunk frame made for
her over there, and it's all tight and strong--it was there when I took
this cabin over from the Swede. But I ain't never just got around to
moving my bed offen the floor onto the bedstead. I may do it some day.
Fact is, I was just a-going to do it anyways."
"Just a-going to--like hell you was! You been a-going to move that bed
for four years, to my certain knowledge, and I know that in that time
you ain't shuk it out or aired it onct, or made it up."
"How do you know I ain't made her up?" demanded Sim Gage, his knife
arrested in its labors.
"Well, I know you ain't. It's just the way you've throwed it ever'
morning since I've knowed you here. Move it up on the bedstead?--First
thing you know you can't."
"Well," said Sim, sighing, "some folks is always making other folks
feel bad. I ain't never found fault with the way you keep house when I
come over to your place, have I?"
"You ain't got the same reason for to," replied Wid Gardner. "I ain't
no angel, but I sure try to make some sort of bluff like I was human.
This place ain't human."
"Now you said something!" remarked Sim suddenly, after a time spent in
solemn thought. "She ain't human! That's right."
He made no explanation for some time, and both men sat looking vaguely
out of the open door across the wide and pleasant valley above which a
blue and white-flecked sky bent amiably. A wide ridge of good grass
lands lay held in the river's bent arm. The wind blew steadily,
throwing up into a sheet of silver the leaves of the willows which
followed the water courses. A few quaking asps standing near the cabin
door likewise gave motion and brightness to the scene. The air was
brilliantly cool and keen. It was a pleasant spot, and at that season
of the year not an uncomfortable one. Sim Gage had lived here for some
years now, and his homestead, originally selected with the unconscious
sense for beauty so often exercised by rude men in rude lands, was
considered one of the best in the Two-Forks Valley.
"Feller, he loses hope after a while," began the owner of the place
after a considerable silence. "Look at me, for instance. I come out
here from Ioway more'n twenty-five years ago, when I was only a boy.
When my pa died my ma, she moved back to Ioway. I stuck around here,
like you and lots of other fellers, and done like you all, just the
best I could. Some way the country sort of took a holt on me. It
does, ain't it the truth?"
His friend nodded silently.
"Well, so I stuck around and done about what I could, same as you,
ain't that so, Wid? I prospected some, but you know how hard it is to
get any money into a mine, no matter what you've found fer a prospect.
I got along somehow--seems like folks didn't use to pester so much, the
way they do to-day. And you know onct I was just on the point of
starting out fer Arizony with that old miner, Pop Haynes--do you
suppose I'd struck anything if I'd of went down there?"
"Nobody can say if you would or you wouldn't," replied Wid. "Fact is,
you never got more'n half started."
"Well, you see, this old feller, Pop Haynes, he'd been down in Arizony
twenty years before, and he said there was lots of gold out there in
the desert. Well, we got a team hooked up, and a little flour and
bacon, and we did start--now, I'll leave it to you, Wid, if we didn't.
We got as far as Big Springs, on the railroad. What did we hear then?
Why, news comes up from down in Arizony that a railroad has went out
into the desert, and that them mines has been discovered. What's the
use then fer us to start fer Arizony with a wagon and team? Like
enough all the good stakes would be took up before we could get there.
Old Pop and me, we just turned back, allowing it was the sensiblest
thing to do."
"And you been in around here ever since."
"Yes, sir; yes, sir, that's what I been. Been around here ever since.
I told you the country kind of takes a holt on a feller. Ain't it the
truth? Well, I trapped a little since then in the winters, and killed
elk for the market some, like you know, and fished through the ice over
on the lakes, like you know. Some days I'd make three or four dollars
a day fishing. So at last when that Swede, Big Aleck, got run out of
the county, I fell into his ranch. There ain't a better in the whole
valley. Look at that hay land, Wid. You got to admit that this here
is one of the best places in Montany."
"Well, maybe it is," said his friend and neighbor. "Leastways, it's
good enough to run like you mean to run it."
"I'm a-going to run her all right. She's all under wire--the Swede
done that before I bought his quit claim. Can't no sheep get in on me
here. I'll bet you all my clothes that I'll cut six hundred ton of hay
this season--leastways I would if my horse hadn't hurt hisself in the
wire the other day. Now, you figure up what six hundred ton of hay
comes to in the stack, at prices hay is bringing now."
"Trouble is, your hay ain't in the stack, Sim. You'll just about cut
hay enough to buy yourself flour and bacon for next winter, and that'll
be about all. If you worked the place right you'd make plenty fer
to----"
"Fer to be human?"
"Well, yes, that's about it, Sim."
"That's right hard--doing all your own work outside and doing all your
own cooking and everything all the time in your own house. Just living
along twenty years one day after another, all by your own self, and
never--never----"
His voice trailed off faintly, and he left the sentence unfinished.
Wid Gardner completed it for him.
"And never having a woman around?" said he.
"Ain't it the truth?" said Sim Gage suddenly. His eyes ran furtively
around the room in which they sat, taking in, without noting or
feeling, the unutterable squalor of the place.
"Well," said his friend after a time, rising, "it'd be a fine place to
fetch a woman to, wouldn't it? But now I got to be going--I got my
chores to do."
"What's your hurry, Wid?" complained the occupant of the cabin.
"Cow'll wait."
"Yours might," said the other sententiously. As he spoke he was making
his way to the door.
The sun was sinking now behind the range, and as he stood for a moment
looking toward the west, he might himself have been seen to be a man of
some stature, rugged and bronzed, with scores of wrinkles on his
leathery cheeks. His garb was the rude one of the West, or rather of
that remnant of the Old West which has been consigned to the dry
farmers and hay ranchers in these modern polyglot days.
Sim Gage, the man who followed him out and stood for a time in the
unsparing brilliance of the evening sunlight, did not compare too well
with his friend. He was a man of absolutely no presence, utterly
lacking attractiveness. Not so much pudgy as shapeless; he had been
shapeless originally. His squat figure showed, to be sure, a certain
hardiness and vigor gained in his outdoor life, but he had not even the
rude grace of a stalwart manhood about him. He sank apologetically
into a lax posture, even as he stood. His pale blue eyes lacked fire.
His hair, uneven, ragged and hay-colored, seemed dry, as though
hopeless, discouraged, done with life, fringing out as it did in gray
locks under the edge of the battered hat he wore. He had been unshaven
for days, perhaps weeks, and his beard, unreaped, showed divers colors,
as of a field partially ripening here and there. In general he was
undecided, unfinished--yes, surely nature must have been undecided as
he himself was about himself.
His clothing was such as might have been predicted for the owner of the
nondescript bed resting on the cabin floor. His neck, grimed, red and
wrinkled as that of an ancient turtle, rose above his bare brown
shoulders and his upper chest, likewise exposed. His only body
covering was an undershirt, or two undershirts. Their flannel
over-covering had left them apparently some time since, and as for the
remnant, it had known such wear that his arms, brown as those of an
Indian, were bare to the elbows. He was always thus, so far as any
neighbor could have remembered him, save that in the winter time he
cast a sheepskin coat over all. His short legs were clad in blue
overalls, so far as their outside cover was concerned, or at least the
overalls once had been blue, though now much faded. Under these, as
might be seen by a glance at their bottoms, were two, three, or
possibly even more, pairs of trousers, all borne up and suspended at
the top by an intricate series of ropes and strings which crossed his
half-bare shoulders. One might have searched all of Sim Gage's cabin
and have found on the wall not one article of clothing--he wore all he
had, summer and winter. And as he was now, so he had been ever since
his nearest neighbor could remember. A picture of indifference, apathy
and hopelessness, he stood, every rag and wrinkle of him sharply
outlined in the clear air.
He stood uncertainly now, his foot turned over, as he always stood,
there seeming never at any time any determination or even animation
about him. And yet he longed, apparently, for some sort of human
companionship, but still he argued with his friend and asked him not to
hurry away.
None the less after a few moments Wid Gardner did turn away. He passed
out at the rail bars which fenced off the front yard from the
willow-covered banks of a creek which ran nearby. A half-dozen head of
mixed cattle followed him up to the gate, seeking a wider world. A
mule thrust out his long head from a window of the log stable where it
was imprisoned, and brayed at him anxiously, also seeking outlet.
But Sim Gage, apathetic, one foot lopped over, showed no agitation and
no ambition. The wisp of grass which hung now from the corner of his
mouth seemed to suit him for the time. He stood chewing and looking at
his departing visitor.
"Some folks is _too_ damn dirty," said Wid Gardner to himself as he
passed now along the edge of the willow bank toward the front gate of
his own ranch, a half-mile up the stream. "And him talking about a
woman!" He flung out his hand in disgust at the mere thought.
That is to say, he did at first. Then he began to walk more slowly. A
touch of reflectiveness came upon his own face.
"Still," said he to himself after a time--speaking aloud as men of the
wilderness sometimes learn to do--"I don't know!"
He turned into his own gate, approached his own cabin, its exterior
much like that of the one which but now he had left. He paused for a
moment at the door as he looked in, regarding its somewhat neater
appearance.
"Well, and even so," said he. "I don't know. Still and after all,
now, a woman----"
CHAPTER II
WANTED: A WIFE
"I couldn't have ate at Sim's place if he would of asked me to,"
grumbled Wid Gardner aloud to himself as he busied himself about his
own household duties in his bachelor cabin. "He's too damn dirty, like
I said, and that's a fact."
Wid's cabin itself was in general appearance no better, if no worse,
than the average in the Two Forks Valley. There was a bed on a rude
pole frame--little more than a heap of blankets as they had been thrown
aside that morning. The table still held the dishes which had been
used, but at least these had been washed, and there was thrown across
them what had served as a dish-towel, a washed and dried, fairly clean
flour sack which had been ripped out and turned into a towel. There
was a box nailed up behind the stove which served as a sort of store
room for the scant supplies, and this had a flap at the top, so that it
was partly curtained off. Another box nailed against the wall behind
the table served as book case and paper rack, holding, among a scant
array of ancient standard volumes, a few dog-eared paper-backed books
of cheap and dreadful sort, some illustrated journals showing pictures
of actresses and film celebrities--precisely the sort of literature
which may be found in most wilderness bachelor homes.
At one end of the up-turned box which served as a sort of reading table
lay a pile of similar magazines, not of abundant folios, but apparently
valued, for they showed more care than any other of the owner's
treasures. It was, curiously enough, to this little heap of literature
that Wid Gardner presently turned.
Forgetful of the hour and of his waiting cows, he sat down, a copy in
his hands, his face taking on a new sort of light as he read. At
times, as lone men will, he broke out into audible soliloquy. Now and
again his hand slapped his knee, his eye kindled, he grinned. The
pages were ill-printed, showing many paragraphs, apparently of
advertising nature, in fine type, sometimes marked with display lines.
Wid turned page after page, grunting as he did so, until at last he
tossed the magazine upon the top of the box and so went about his
evening chores. Thus the title of the publication was left showing to
any observer. The headline was done in large black letters, advising
all who might have read that this was a copy of the magazine known as
_Hearts Aflame_.
Curiously enough, on the front page the headline of a certain
advertisement showed plainly. It read, "Wanted: A Wife."
From this it may be divined that here was one of those periodicals
printed no one knows where, circulated no one knows how, which none the
less after some fashion of their own do find their way out in all the
womanless regions of the world--Alaska, South Africa, the dry plains of
Canada and our Western States, mining camps far out in the outlying
districts beyond the edge of the homekeeping lands--it is in regions
such as these that periodicals such as the foregoing may be found.
Their circulation is among those who seek "acquaintance with a view to
matrimony." They are the official organs of Cupid himself--_or_ Cupid
commercialized, or Cupid much misnamed and sailing his craft upon a
wide and uncharted sea. In lands of the first pick or the first plow,
these half-illicit pages find their way for their own reasons; and men
and women both sometimes have read them.
Wid Gardner finished his own brief work about the corral, came in,
washed his hands, and began to cook for himself his simple supper.
Then he washed his dishes, threw the towel above them as before, and
went to bed, since he had little else to do.
Early the next morning Wid had finished his breakfast, and was at the
edge of the main valley road, which passed near to his own front gate.
He lighted a pipe and sat down to smoke, now and again glancing down
the road at a slowly approaching figure.
It was the schoolma'am, Mrs. Davidson, who daily presided at the little
log schoolhouse a mile further on up the road, where some twenty
children found their way over varying distances from the surrounding
ranches. This lady was of much dignity and of much avoirdupois as
well. Her ruddy face was wrinkled up somewhat like an apple in the
late fall. She walked slowly and ponderously, and her gait being
somewhat restricted, it was needful that she make an early start each
day to her place of labor, since the only possible boarding place lay
almost a mile below Sim Gage's ranch. She had been the only applicant
for this school, and perhaps was the only living being who could have
contented herself in that capacity in this valley. Wid Gardner pulled
at the edge of his broken hat as he stepped down the narrow road to
meet her.
"'Morning, Mis' Davidson," said he.
"Good morning, Mr. Gar-r-r-dner," boomed out the great voice of Mrs.
Davidson. "It is apparently promising us fair weather, sir-r-r."
Mrs. Davidson spoke with a certain singular rotund exactness, and hence
was held much in awe in all these parts.
"Yes, ma'am," said Wid, "it looks like it would rain, but it won't."
"Your hay in that case would not flourish so well, Mr. Gar-r-r-dner?"
said she.
"Without rain, not worth a damn, ma'am, so to speak. But I'll get by
if any one can. This is one of the best locations in the valley. Me
and Sim Gage; and Sim, he says----"
"Sim Gage!" The lady snorted her contempt of the very name. "That man!
Altogether impossible!"
"He shore is. He certainly is," assented Wid Gardner. "He seems to be
getting impossible-er almost every year, now, don't he?"
"I do not care to discuss Mr. Gage," replied the apostle of learning.
"I was in his abode once. I should never care to go there again."
Already she was leaning partially forward, ponderously, as about to
resume her journey toward the school house.
"Well, now, Sim Gage," began Wid, raising a restraining hand, "he ain't
so bad as you might think, ma'am. He's just kind of fell into this way
of living."
"Mr. Gar-r-r-dner," said the lady positively, "I doubt if he has made a
bed or washed a dish in twenty years. His place is worse than an
Indian camp. I have taught schools among the savages myself, in
Government service, and therefore I may speak with authority."
"Well, now, ma'am, I reckon that's all true. But you see, if more
women come out in here, now, things'd be different. I been thinking of
Sim Gage, ma'am. I wanted you to do something fer me, or him, ma'am."
"Indeed?" demanded she. "And what may that be?"
"I don't mean nothing in the world that ain't perfectly all right,"
began Wid, hesitatingly. "I only wanted you to write something fer me.
I'm this kind of a man, that when he wants anything to be fixed up, he
wants it to be fixed up right. I kind of got out of practice writing.
I want you to write a ad fer me."
"A what?" she demanded. "Oh, I see--you have something to sell?"
"No, ma'am, I ain't got nothing to sell--not unlessen--well, I'll tell
you. I want to advertise fer a woman--fer a wife--that is to say,
really fer him, Sim Gage--a feller's got to have something to sort of
occupy his mind, hain't he?"
Mrs. Davidson was too much astonished to speak, and he blundered on.
"Folks has done such things," said he.
"You offer me a somewhat difficult problem," rejoined the other, "since
I do not in the least understand what you desire to do."
"Well, it's this away, ma'am. There's papers that prints these
ads--sometimes big dailies does, they tell me--where folks advertises
for acquaintances just fer to get acquainted, you know--'acquaintance
with a view to matrimony' is the way they usually say it--and that may
be a tip fer you--I mean about this here ad I want you to write. Why,
folks has got married that way, plenty of 'em--I'll bet there ain't
more'n half the homesteaders in this state out here, leastways in the
sagebrush country, that didn't get married just that way--it's the
onliest way they _can_ get married, ma'am, half the time.
"Once, up in Helleny, years ago, right after the old Alder Gulch placer
mining days, there was eleven millionaires, each of 'em married to a
Injun woman, and not one of them women could set on a chair without
falling off. Now, there wasn't no papers then like this one here, or
them millionaires might of done better."
She gasped, unable to speak, her lips rotund and pursed, and he went on
with more assertiveness.
"They turn out just as good as any marriages there is," said he. "I've
knowed plenty of 'em. There's three in this valley--although they
don't say much about it now. _I_ know how they got acquainted, all
right."
"And you desire me to aid you in your endeavor to entr-r-r-ap some
foolish woman?"
"They don't have to answer. They don't have to get married if they
don't want to. You can't tell how things'll turn out."
"Indeed! _Indeed_!"
"Well, now, I was just hoping you would write the ad, that's all. Just
you write me a ad like you was a sagebrusher out here in this country,
and you was awful lonesome, and had a good ranch, and was
kind-hearted--and not too good-looking--and that you'd be kind to a
woman. Well, that's about as far as I can go. I was going to leave
the rest to you."
Mrs. Davidson's lips still remained round, her forehead puckered. She
leaned ponderously, fell forward into her weighty walk.
"I make no promise, sir-r-r!" said she, as she veered in passing.
But still, human psychology being what it is, and woman's curiosity
what it also is, and Mrs. Davidson being after all woman, that evening
when Wid Gardner passed out to his gate, he found pinned to the
fastening stick an envelope which he opened curiously. He spelled out
the words:
"Wanted: A Wife. A well-to-do and chivalrous rancher of abundant means
and large holdings in a Western State wishes to correspond with a
respectable young woman who will be willing to appreciate a good home
and loving care. Object--matrimony."
Wid Gardner read this once, and he read it twice. "Good God A'mighty!"
said he to himself. "Sim Gage!"
He turned back to his cabin, and managed to find a corroded pen and the
part of a bottle of thickened ink. With much labor he signed to the
text of his enclosure two initials, and added his own post office route
box for forwarding of any possible replies. Then he addressed a dirty
envelope to the street number of the eastern city which appeared on the
page of his matrimonial journal. Even he managed to fish out a curled
stamp from somewhere in the wall pocket. Then he sat down and looked
out the door over the willow bushes shivering in the evening air.