From this hour’s brief camp, early made, we should have turned southward, to leave the railroad line and cross country for the Overland Stage trail that skirted the southern edge of the worse desert before us. But Captain Hyrum was of different mind. With faith in the Lord and bull confidence in himself he had resolved to keep straight on by the teamster road which through league after league ever extended fed supplies to the advance of the builders.
Under its guidance we should strike the stage road at Bitter , eighty or one hundred miles; thence trundle, southwestward, for the famed City of the Saints, near two hundred miles farther.
Therefore after nooning at a pool of , scummy water we hooked up and ahead, creaking and and dust , constantly by the hurrying construction trains thundering over the newly laid rails, we ourselves the tortoise in the race.
My Lady did not join me again to-day, nor on the morrow. She abandoned me to a sense of dissatisfaction with myself, of foreboding, and of a void in the landscape.
Our sorely train went swaying and pitching across the gaunt face of a high, broad plateau, , hot, and in contour; underfoot the reddish by grinding tire and , over us the pale bluish sky without a cloud, distant in the south the shining tips of a mountain range, and distant below in the west the slowly spreading of a great, bared ocean-bed, simmering bizarre with reds, yellows and whites, and ringed about by battlements jagged and rock hewn.
Into this realm we were bound; by token of the smoke the railroad line led . The teamsters viewed the unfolding expanse . They called it the Red Basin. But to me, fresh for the sight, it with fantastic issues. Even the name breathed magic. Wizard spells there; the railroad had not broken them—the cars and locomotives, entering, did not disturb the brooding vastness. A man might still ride errant into those spaces and discover for himself; might boldly the realm and rule with a princess by his side.
But romance seemed to have no other sponsor in this , whip-cracking, complaining . So I lacked, woefully lacked, kindred companionship.
Free to say, I did miss My Lady, perched upon the 207stoic while like an Arab chief I convoyed her. The steady miles, I admitted, were going to be as disappointing as water, when not aërated by her counsel and , by her readiness and the essential elements of her blue eyes, her facile lips, and that bright hair which no dust could dim.
After all she was distinctly feminine—bravely feminine; and if she wished to as a relief from the cock-sure Daniel and the calm methods of her Mormon , why, let us the way. I should second with eyes open. That was accepted.
Moreover, something about her weighed upon me. A consciousness of failing her, a woman, in emergency, stung my self-respect. She had twitted me with being “afraid”; afraid of her, she probably meant. That I could pass . But she had said that she, too, was afraid: “horribly afraid,” and an honest had attended upon the words as if a real danger hedged. She had an intuition. The settled convictions of my Gentile friends coincided. “With Daniel in the Lion’s den”—that phrase repeated itself . She had uttered it in a fear by a mirthless laugh. Could such a left-handed wooer prove too much for her? Well, if she was afraid of Daniel I was not and she should not think so.
I could see her now and then, on before. She rode upon the seat of her self-appointed executor.And I might see him and his paraded impertinences.
Except for the blowing of the animals and the mechanical noises of the equipment the train into a dogged patience, while by the dust and the thin dry air and mocked by the speeding construction crews upon the iron rails it lurched at two and a half miles an hour, for long hours outfaced by the blinding sun.
Near the western edge of the plateau we made an evening corral. After supper the sound of revolver shots burst flatly from a mess beyond us, and startled. Everything was possible, here in this horizon-land where rough men, by a hard day, were gathered suddenly relaxed and idle. But the shots were accompanied by laughter.
“They’re only tryin’ to spile a can,” Jenks . “By golly, we’ll go over and l’arn ’em a lesson.” He glanced at me. “Time you loosened up that weepon o’ yourn, anyhow. Purty soon it’ll stick fast.”
I arose with him, glad of any diversion. The circle had not yet formed at Hyrum’s fire.
“It strikes me as a useless piece of baggage,” said I. “I bought it in Benton but I haven’t needed it. I can kill a rattlesnake easier with my whip.”
“Wall,” he drawled, “down in yonder you’re liable to meet up with a rattler too smart for your whip, account of his . ’Twon’t do you no harm to 209spend a few ca’tridges, so you’ll be ready for business.”
The men were banging, by turn, at a can set up on the sand about twenty paces out. Their shadows stretched slantwise before them, by the last efforts of the disappearing sun. Some aimed carefully from under pulled-down hat brims; others, their brims back, fired quickly, the instant the gun came to the level. The heavy balls sent the loose soil flying in thick jets made golden by the evening glow. But amidst the the can sat untouched by the missiles.
We were greeted with .
“Hyar’s the champeens!”
“Now they’ll show us.”
“Ain’t never see that pilgrim unlimber his gun yit, but I reckon he’s a bad ’un.”
“Jenks, old hoss, cain’t you l’an that durned can manners?”
“I’ll try to oblige you, boys,” friend Jenks smiled. “What you thinkin’ to do: hit that can or plant a lead mine?”
“Give him room. He’s made his brag,” they cried. “And if he don’t plug it that pilgrim sure will.”
Mr. Jenks drew and took his stand; banged with small preparation and missed by six inches—a fact that brought him up wide awake, so to speak, badgered by derision renewed. A person needs must have a bull hide, to travel with a bull train, I saw.
“Gimme another, boys, and I’ll hit it in the nose,” he sheepishly; but they shoved him aside.
“No, no. Pilgrim’s turn. Fetch on yore shootin’-iron, young feller. Thar’s yore turkey. Show us why you’re packin’ all that hardware.”
Willy-nilly I had to demonstrate my greenness; so in all good nature I drew, and stood, and cocked, and aimed. The Colt’s exploded with blast and wrench—jerking, in fact, almost above head; and where the bullet went I did not see, nor, I judged, did anybody else.
“He missed the ’arth!” they clamored.
“No; I reckon he hit Montany ’bout the middle. That’s whar he scored center!”
“Shoot! Shoot!” they begged. “Go ahead. Mebbe you’ll kill an Injun unbeknownst. They’s a pack o’ Sioux jest out o’ sight behind them hills.”
And I did shoot, ; and I struck the ground, this time, some fifty yards beyond the can. Jenks stepped from amidst the laughter.
“Hold down on it, hold down, lad,” he urged. “To hit him in the heart aim at his feet. Here! Like this——” and taking my revolver he threw it forward, fired, the can plinked and somersaulted, into action too late.
“By Gawd,” he proclaimed, “when I move like it had a gun in its fist I can snap it. But when I think on it as a can I lack .”
The remark was pat. I had seen several of the men 211snip the head from a rattlesnake with a single shot—yes, they all carried their weapons easily and wontedly. But the target of an immobile can lacked in to of nerve and eye.
Now I shot again, holding lower and more firmly, out of guesswork, and landed closer although still within the zone of . And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the balls of a mitrailleuse, and the can rocked and gyrated, spurring us to haste as it constantly changed the range. Presently it was merely a twist of tin. Then in the little silence, as we paused, a voice irritatingly.
“I ’laow yu fellers ain’t no great shucks at throwin’ lead.”
Daniel stood by, with arms akimbo, his booted legs braggartly straddled and his face primed with an intolerant grin at our recent efforts. My Lady had come over with him. Raw-boned, angular, cloddish but as strong as a mule, he towered over her in a maddening atmosphere of .
She smiled at me—at all of us: at me, swiftly; at them, . And I knew that she was still afraid.
“Reckon we don’t ask no advice, friend,” they answered. Again a enfolded, fastened upon us by an unbidden guest. “Like as not you can do better.”
Daniel laughed , his mouth widely open.212
“I couldn’t do wuss. I seen yu poppin’ at that can. Hadn’t but one hole in it till yu all turned loose an’ didn’t give it no chance. Haw haw! I ’laow for a short bit I’d stand out in front o’ that greenie from the States an’ let him empty two guns at me.”
“S’pose you do it,” friend Jenks challenged. “By thunder, I’ll hire ye with the ten cents, and give him four bits if he hits you.”
“He wouldn’t draw on me, nohaow,” Daniel. “I daren’t shoot for money, but I’ll shoot for fun. Anybody want to shoot ag’in me?”
“Wasted powder enough,” they .
“Ever see me shoot?” He was eager. “I’ll show ye somethin’. I don’t take back seat for ary man. Yu set me up a can. That thar one wouldn’t jump to a bullet.”
In a can was produced.
“How fur?”
“Fur as yu like.”
It was tossed contemptuously out; and watching it, to catch its last roll, I heard Daniel gleefully “Out o’ my way, yu-all!”—half saw his hand down and up again, felt the jar of a shot, witnessed the can jump like a live thing; and away it went, with after spasm, to explosion after explosion, tortured by him into fruitless until with the final ball peace came to it, and it lay dead, afar across the sand.
Verily, by his cries and the utter and 213malevolence of his bombardment, one would have thought that he took actual in fancied cruelty.
“I ’laow thar’s not another man hyar do that,” he vaunted.
There was not, judging by the silence again ensuing. Only—
“A can’s a different proposition from a man, as I said afore,” Jenks coolly remarked. “A can don’t shoot back.”
“I don’t ’laow any man’s goin’ to, neither.” Daniel reloaded his smoking revolver, it with a ; faced me in turning away. “That’s somethin’ for yu to l’arn on, ag’in next time, young feller,” he .
If he would have eyed me down he did not ............