The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
“Hello, Shorty!” he called out, for the boy was departing. “Don’t you
like dinner any more? It’s ready about now.”
Shorty forded the creek and slung his saddle off, and on invitation
turned Pedro, his buckskin pony, into Balaam’s pasture. This was green,
the rest of the wide world being yellow, except only where Butte Creek,
with its bordering cottonwoods, coiled away into the desert distance
like a green snake without end. The Virginian also turned his horse into
the pasture. He must stay at the ranch till the Judge’s horses should be
found.
“Mrs. Balaam’s East yet,” said her lord, leading the way to his dining
room.
He wanted Shorty to dine with him, and could not exclude the Virginian,
much as he should have enjoyed this.
“See any Indians?” he enquired.
“Na-a!” said Shorty, in disdain of recent rumors.
“They’re headin’ the other way,” observed the Virginian. “Bow Laig Range
is where they was repawted.”
“What business have they got off the reservation, I’d like to know,”
said the ranchman, “Bow Leg, or anywhere?”
“Oh, it’s just a hunt, and a kind of visitin’ their friends on the South
Reservation,” Shorty explained. “Squaws along and all.”
“Well, if the folks at Washington don’t keep squaws and all where they
belong,” said Balaam, in a rage, “the folks in Wyoming Territory ’ill do
a little job that way themselves.”
“There’s a petition out,” said Shorty. “Paper’s goin’ East with a lot of
names to it. But they ain’t no harm, them Indians ain’t.”
“No harm?” rasped out Balaam. “Was it white men druv off the O. C.
yearlings?”
Balaam’s Eastern grammar was sometimes at the mercy of his Western
feelings. The thought of the perennial stultification of Indian affairs
at Washington, whether by politician or philanthropist, was always sure
to arouse him. He walked impatiently about while he spoke, and halted
impatiently at the window. Out in the world the unclouded day was
shining, and Balaam’s eye travelled across the plains to where a blue
line, faint and pale, lay along the end of the vast yellow distance.
That was the beginning of the Bow Leg Mountains. Somewhere over there
were the red men, ranging in unfrequented depths of rock and pine--their
forbidden ground.
Dinner was ready, and they sat down.
“And I suppose,” Balaam continued, still hot on the subject, “you’d
claim Indians object to killing a white man when they run on to him good
and far from human help? These peaceable Indians are just the worst in
the business.”
“That’s so,” assented the easy-opinioned Shorty, exactly as if he had
always maintained this view. “Chap started for Sunk Creek three weeks
ago. Trapper he was; old like, with a red shirt. One of his horses come
into the round-up Toosday. Man ain’t been heard from.” He ate in silence
for a while, evidently brooding in his childlike mind. Then he said,
querulously, “I’d sooner trust one of them Indians than I would
Trampas.”
Balaam slanted his fat bullet head far to one side, and laying his spoon
down (he had opened some canned grapes) laughed steadily at his guest
with a harsh relish of irony.
The guest ate a grape, and perceiving he was seen through, smiled back
rather miserably.
“Say, Shorty,” said Balaam, his head still slanted over, “what’s the
figures of your bank balance just now?”
“I ain’t usin’ banks,” murmured the youth.
Balaam put some more grapes on Shorty’s plate, and drawing a cigar from
his waistcoat, sent it rolling to his guest.
“Matches are behind you,” he added. He gave a cigar to the Virginian as
an afterthought, but to his disgust, the Southerner put it in his pocket
and lighted a pipe.
Balaam accompanied his guest, Shorty, when he went to the pasture to
saddle up and depart. “Got a rope?” he asked the guest, as they lifted
down the bars.
“Don’t need to rope him. I can walk right up to Pedro. You stay back.”
Hiding his bridle behind him, Shorty walked to the river-bank, where the
pony was switching his long tail in the shade; and speaking persuasively
to him, he came nearer, till he laid his hand on Pedro’s dusky mane,
which was many shades darker than his hide. He turned expectantly, and
his master came up to his expectations with a piece of bread.
“Eats that, does he?” said Balaam, over the bars.
“Likes the salt,” said Shorty. “Now, n-n-ow, here! Yu’ don’t guess
yu’ll be bridled, don’t you? Open your teeth! Yu’d like to play yu’ was
nobody’s horse and live private? Or maybe yu’d prefer ownin’ a saloon?”
Pedro evidently enjoyed this talk, and the dodging he made about the
bit. Once fairly in his mouth, he accepted the inevitable, and followed
Shorty to the bars. Then Shorty turned and extended his hand.
“Shake!” he said to his pony, who lifted his forefoot quietly and put it
in his master’s hand. Then the master tickled his nose, and he wrinkled
it and flattened his ears, pretending to bite. His face wore an
expression of knowing relish over this performance. “Now the other
hoof,” said Shorty; and the horse and master shook hands with their
left. “I learned him that,” said the cow-boy, with pride and affection.
“Say, Pede,” he continued, in Pedro’s ear, “ain’t yu’ the best little
horse in the country? What? Here, now! Keep out of that, you dead-beat!
There ain’t no more bread.” He pinched the pony’s nose, one quarter of
which was wedged into his pocket.
“Quite a lady’s little pet!” said Balaam, with the rasp in his voice.
“Pity this isn’t New York, now, where there’s a big market for harmless
horses. Gee-gees, the children call them.”
“He ain’t no gee-gee,” said Shorty, offended. “He’ll beat any cow-pony
workin’ you’ve got. Yu’ can turn him on a half-dollar. Don’t need to
touch the reins. Hang ’em on one finger and swing your body, and he’ll
turn.”
Balaam knew this, and he knew that the pony was only a four-year-old.
“Well,” he said, “Drybone’s had no circus this season. Maybe they’d buy
tickets to see Pedro. He’s good for that, anyway.”
Shorty became gloomy. The Virginian was grimly smoking. Here was
something else going on not to his taste, but none of his business.
“Try a circus,” persisted Balaam. “Alter your plans for spending cash in
town, and make a little money instead.”
Shorty having no plans to alter and no cash to spend, grew still more
gloomy.
“What’ll you take for that pony?” said Balaam.
Shorty spoke up instantly. “A hundred dollars couldn’t buy that piece
of stale mud off his back,” he asserted, looking off into the sky
grandiosely.
But Balaam looked at Shorty, “You keep the mud,” he said, “and I’ll give
you thirty dollars for the horse.”
Shorty did a little professional laughing, and began to walk toward his
saddle.
“Give you thirty dollars,” repeated Balaam, picking a stone up and
slinging it into the river.
“How far do yu’ call it to Drybone?” Shorty remarked, stooping to
investigate the bucking-strap on his saddle--a superfluous performance,
for Pedro never bucked.
“You won’t have to walk,” said Balaam. “Stay all night, and I’ll send
you over comfortably in the morning, when the wagon goes for the mail.”
“Walk?” Shorty retorted. “Drybone’s twenty-five miles. Pedro’ll put me
there in three hours and not know he done it.” He lifted the saddle on
the horse’s back. “Come, Pedro,” said he.
“Come, Pedro!” mocked Balaam.
There followed a little silence.
“No, sir,” mumbled Shorty, with his head under Pedro’s belly, busily
cinching. “A hundred dollars is bottom figures.”
Balaam, in his turn, now duly performed some professional laughing,
which was noted by Shorty under the horse’s belly. He stood up and
squared round on Balaam. “Well, then,” he said, “what’ll yu give for
him?”
“Thirty dollars,” said Balaam, looking far off into the sky, as Shorty
had looked.
“Oh, come, now,” expostulated Shorty.
It was he who now did the feeling for an offer and this was what Balaam
liked to see. “Why yes,” he said, “thirty,” and looked surprised that he
should have to mention the sum so often.
“I thought yu’d quit them first figures,” said the cow-puncher, “for yu’
can see I ain’t goin’ to look at em.”
Balaam climbed on the fence and sat there “I’m not crying for your
Pedro,” he observed dispassionately. “Only it struck me you were dead
broke, and wanted to raise cash and keep yourself going till you hunted
up a job and could buy him back.” He hooked his right thumb inside his
waistcoat pocket. “But I’m not cryin’ for him,” he repeated. “He’d stay
right here, of course. I wouldn’t part with him. Why does he stand that
way? Hello!” Balaam suddenly straightened himself, like a man who has
made a discovery.
“Hello, what?” said Shorty, on the defensive.
Balaam was staring at Pedro with a judicial frown. Then he stuck out a
finger at the horse, keeping the thumb hooked in his pocket. So meagre
a gesture was felt by the ruffled Shorty to be no just way to point at
Pedro. “What’s the matter with that foreleg there?” said Balaam.
“Which? Nothin’s the matter with it!” snapped Shorty.
Balaam climbed down from his fence and came over with elaborate
deliberation. He passed his hand up and down the off foreleg. Then he
spit slenderly. “Mm!” he said thoughtfully; and added, with a shade of
sadness, “that’s always to be expected when they’re worked too young.”
Shorty slid his hand slowly over the disputed leg. “What’s to be
expected?” he inquired--“that they’ll eat hearty? Well, he does.”
At this retort the Virginian permitted himself to laugh in audible
sympathy.
“Sprung,” continued Balaam, with a sigh. “Whirling round short when his
bones were soft did that. Yes.”
“Sprung!” Shorty said, with a bark of indignation. “Come on, Pede; you
and me’ll spring for town.”
He caught the horn of the saddle, and as he swung into place the horse
rushed away with him. “O-ee! yoi-yup, yup, yup!” sang Shorty, in the
shrill cow dialect. He made Pedro play an exhibition game of speed,
bringing him round close to Balaam in a wide circle, and then he
vanished in dust down the left-bank trail.
Balaam looked after him and laughed harshly. He had seen trout dash
about like that when the hook in their jaw first surprised them. He knew
Shorty would show the pony off, and he knew Shorty’s love for Pedro
was not equal to his need of money. He called to one of his men, asked
something about the dam at the mouth of the canyon, where the main
irrigation ditch began, made a remark about the prolonged drought, and
then walked to his dining-room door, where, as he expected, Shorty met
him.
“Say,” said the youth, “do you consider that’s any way to talk about a
good horse?”
“Any dude could see the leg’s sprung,” said Balaam. But he looked at
Pedro’s shoulder, which was well laid back; and he admired his points,
dark in contrast with the buckskin, and also the width between the eyes.
“Now you know,” whined Shorty, “that it ain’t sprung any more than your
leg’s cork. If you mean the right leg ain’t plumb straight, I can tell
you he was born so. That don’t make no difference, for it ain’t weak.
Try him onced. Just as sound and strong as iron. Never stumbles. And he
don’t never go to jumpin’ with yu’. He’s kind and he’s smart.” And the
master petted his pony, who lifted a hoof for another handshake.
Of course Balaam had never thought the leg was sprung, and he now took
on an unprejudiced air of wanting to believe Shorty’s statements if he
only could.
“Maybe there’s two years’ work left in that leg,” he now observed.
“Better give your hawss away, Shorty,” said the Virginian.
“Is this your deal, my friend?” inquired Balaam. And he slanted his
bullet head at the Virginian.
“Give him away, Shorty,” drawled the Southerner. “His laig is busted.
Mr. Balaam says so.”
Balaam’s face grew evil with baffled fury. But the Virginian was gravely