The Open Boat and Other Stories
blaze of his last passion. The Mexicans came swiftly and in silence.
The lightning action of the next few moments was of the fabric of
dreams to the stranger. The muscular struggle may not be real to the
drowning man. His mind may be fixed on the far, straight shadows back
of the stars, and the terror of them. And so the fight, and his part in
it, had to the stranger only the quality of a picture half drawn. The
rush of feet, the spatter of shots, the cries, the swollen faces seen
like masks on the smoke, resembled a happening of the night.
And yet afterward certain lines, forms, lived out so strongly from the
incoherence that they were always in his memory.
He killed a man, and the thought went swiftly by him, like the feather
on the gale, that it was easy to kill a man.
Moreover, he suddenly felt for Bill, this grimy sheep-herder, some deep
form of idolatry. Bill was dying, and the dignity of last defeat, the
superiority of him who stands in his grave, was in the pose of the lost
sheep-herder.
* * * * *
The stranger sat on the ground idly mopping the sweat and powder-stain
from his brow. He wore the gentle idiot smile of an aged beggar as he
watched three Mexicans limping and staggering in the distance. He noted
at this time that one who still possessed a serape had from it none
of the grandeur of the cloaked Spaniard, but that against the sky the
silhouette resembled a cornucopia of childhood's Christmas.
They turned to look at him, and he lifted his weary arm to menace them
with his revolver. They stood for a moment banded together, and hooted
curses at him.
Finally he arose, and, walking some paces, stooped to loosen Bill's
grey hands from a throat. Swaying as if slightly drunk, he stood
looking down into the still face.
Struck suddenly with a thought, he went about with dulled eyes on the
ground, until he plucked his gaudy blanket from where it lay dirty from
trampling feet. He dusted it carefully, and then returned and laid it
over Bill's form. There he again stood motionless, his mouth just agape
and the same stupid glance in his eyes, when all at once he made a
gesture of fright and looked wildly about him.
He had almost reached the thicket when he stopped, smitten with alarm.
A body contorted, with one arm stiff in the air, lay in his path.
Slowly and warily he moved around it, and in a moment the bushes,
nodding and whispering, their leaf-faces turned toward the scene
behind him, swung and swung again into stillness and the peace of the
wilderness.
THE BRIDE COMES TO YELLOW SKY
I
The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion
that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains
of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued
spaces of mesquit and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of
light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over
the horizon, a precipice.
A newly-married pair had boarded this train at San Antonio. The man's
face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct
result of his new black clothes was that his brick-coloured hands were
constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time
he looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each
knee, like a man waiting in a barber's shop. The glances he devoted to
other passengers were furtive and shy.
The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress
of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there,
and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head
to regard her puff-sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They
embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that
she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless
scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange
to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in
placid, almost emotionless lines.
They were evidently very happy. "Ever been in a parlour-car before?" he
asked, smiling with delight.
"No," she answered; "I never was. It's fine, ain't it?"
"Great. And then, after a while, we'll go forward to the diner, and get
a big lay-out. Finest meal in the world. Charge, a dollar."
"Oh, do they?" cried the bride. "Charge a dollar? Why, that's too
much--for us--ain't it, Jack?"
"Not this trip, anyhow," he answered bravely. "We're going to go the
whole thing."
Later, he explained to her about the train. "You see, it's a thousand
miles from one end of Texas to the other, and this train runs right
across it, and never stops but four times."
He had the pride of an owner. He pointed out to her the dazzling
fittings of the coach, and, in truth, her eyes opened wider as she
contemplated the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver,
and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface
of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze figure sturdily held a support
for a separated chamber, and at convenient places on the ceiling were
frescoes in olive and silver.
To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of
their marriage that morning in San Antonio. This was the environment
of their new estate, and the man's face, in particular, beamed with
an elation that made him appear ridiculous to the negro porter. This
individual at times surveyed them from afar with an amused and superior
grin. On other occasions he bullied them with skill in ways that did
not make it exactly plain to them that they were being bullied. He
subtly used all the manners of the most unconquerable kind of snobbery.
He oppressed them, but of this oppression they had small knowledge, and
they speedily forgot that unfrequently a number of travellers covered
them with stares of derisive enjoyment. Historically there was supposed
to be something infinitely humorous in their situation.
"We are due in Yellow Sky at 3.42," he said, looking tenderly into her
eyes.
"Oh, are we?" she said, as if she had not been aware of it.
To evince surprise at her husband's statement was part of her wifely
amiability. She took from a pocket a little silver watch, and as she
held it before her, and stared at it with a frown of attention, the new
husband's face shone.
"I bought it in San Anton' from a friend of mine," he told her
gleefully.
"It's seventeen minutes past twelve," she said, looking up at him with
a kind of shy and clumsy coquetry.
A passenger, noting this play, grew excessively sardonic, and winked at
himself in one of the numerous mirrors.
At last they went to the dining-car. Two rows of negro waiters in
dazzling white suits surveyed their entrance with the interest, and
also the equanimity, of men who had been forewarned. The pair fell to
the lot of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them
through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly pilot,
his countenance radiant with benevolence. The patronage entwined with
the ordinary deference was not palpable to them. And yet as they
returned to their coach they showed in their faces a sense of escape.
To the left, miles down a long purple slope, was a little ribbon of
mist, where moved the keening Rio Grande. The train was approaching it
at an angle, and the apex was Yellow Sky. Presently it was apparent
that as the distance from Yellow Sky grew shorter, the husband became
commensurately restless. His brick-red hands were more insistent in
their prominence. Occasionally he was even rather absent-minded and far
away when the bride leaned forward and addressed him.
As a matter of truth, Jack Potter was beginning to find the shadow of a
deed weigh upon him like a leaden slab. He, the town-marshal of Yellow
Sky, a man known, liked, and feared in his corner, a prominent person,
had gone to San Antonio to meet a girl he believed he loved, and there,
after the usual prayers, had actually induced her to marry him without
consulting Yellow Sky for any part of the transaction. He was now
bringing his bride before an innocent and unsuspecting community.
Of course, people in Yellow Sky married as it pleased them in
accordance with a general custom, but such was Potter's thought of his
duty to his friends, or of their idea of his duty, or of an unspoken
form which does not control men in these matters, that he felt he was
heinous. He had committed an extraordinary crime. Face to face with
this girl in San Antonio, and spurred by his sharp impulse, he had gone
headlong over all the social hedges. At San Antonio he was like a man
hidden in the dark. A knife to sever any friendly duty, any form, was
easy to his hand in that remote city. But the hour of Yellow Sky, the
hour of daylight, was approaching.
He knew full well that his marriage was an important thing to his
town. It could only be exceeded by the burning of the new hotel. His
friends would not forgive him. Frequently he had reflected upon the
advisability of telling them by telegraph, but a new cowardice had been
upon him. He feared to do it. And now the train was hurrying him toward
a scene of amazement, glee, reproach. He glanced out of the window at
the line of haze swinging slowly in toward the train.
Yellow Sky had a kind of brass band which played painfully to the
delight of the populace. He laughed without heart as he thought of it.
If the citizens could dream of his prospective arrival with his bride,
they would parade the band at the station, and escort them, amid
cheers and laughing congratulations, to his adobe home.
He resolved that he would use all the devices of speed and plainscraft
in making the journey from the station to his house. Once within that
safe citadel, he could issue some sort of a vocal bulletin, and then
not go among the citizens until they had time to wear off a little of
their enthusiasm.
The bride looked anxiously at him. "What's worrying you, Jack?"
He laughed again. "I'm not worrying, girl. I'm only thinking of Yellow
Sky."
She flushed in comprehension.
A sense of mutual guilt invaded their minds, and developed a finer
tenderness. They looked at each other with eyes softly aglow. But
Potter often laughed the same nervous laugh. The flush upon the bride's
face seemed quite permanent.
The traitor to the feelings of Yellow Sky narrowly watched the speeding
landscape.
"We're nearly there," he said.
Presently the porter came and announced the proximity of Potter's home.
He held a brush in his hand, and, with all his airy superiority gone,
he brushed Potter's new clothes, as the latter slowly turned this way
and that way. Potter fumbled out a coin, and gave it to the porter as
he had seen others do. It was a heavy and muscle-bound business, as
that of a man shoeing his first horse.
The porter took their bag, and, as the train began to slow, they moved
forward to the hooded platform of the car. Presently the two engines
and their long string of coaches rushed into the station of Yellow Sky.
"They have to take water here," said Potter, from a constricted throat,
and in mournful cadence as one announcing death. Before the train
stopped his eye had swept the length of the platform, and he was glad
and astonished to see there was no one upon it but the station-agent,
who, with a slightly hurried and anxious air, was walking toward the
water-tanks. When the train had halted, the porter alighted first and
placed in position a little temporary step.
"Come on, girl," said Potter, hoarsely.
As he helped her down, they each laughed on a false note. He took the
bag from the negro, and bade his wife cling to his arm. As they slunk
rapidly away, his hang-dog glance perceived that they were unloading