CHAPTER VI
"THE VOICE OF REASON"
THE fierce heat of summer fell suddenly upon Lost Dog Cañon and all the Verde country – the prolonged heat which hatches flies by the million and puts an end to ear-marking and branding. Until the cool weather of October laid them and made it possible to heal a wound there was nothing for Pecos to do but doctor a few sore ears and read the Voice of Reason. Although he had spent most of his life in the saddle the school-teacher back on the Pecos had managed to corral him long enough to beat the three R's into him and, being still young, he had not yet had time to forget them. Only twenty summers had passed over his head, so far, and he was a man only in stature and the hard experience of his craft. He was a good Texan – born a Democrat and taught to love whiskey and hate Mexicans – but so far his mind was guiltless of social theory. That there was something in the world that kept a poor man down he knew, vaguely; but never, until the Voice of Reason brought it to his attention, had he heard of the conspiracy of wealth or the crime of government. Not until, sprawling at the door of his cave, he mumbled over the full-mouthed invective of that periodical had he realized what a poor, puny creature a wage-slave really was, and when he read of the legalized robbery which went on under the name of law his young blood boiled in revolt. The suppression of strikes by Pinkertons, the calling out of the State Militia to shoot down citizens, the blacklisting of miners, and the general oppression of workingmen was all far away and academic to him – the thing that gripped and held him was an article on the fee system, under which officers of the law arrest all transient citizens who are unfortunate enough to be poor, and judges condemn them in order to gain a fee.
"Think, Slave, Think!" it began. "You may be the next innocent man to be thrown into some vile and vermin-infested county-jail to swell the income of the bloated minions who fatten upon the misery of the poor!"
Pecos had no difficulty in thinking. Like many another man of wandering habits he had already tasted the bitterness of "ten dollars or ten days." The hyenas of the law had gathered him in while he was innocently walking down the railroad track and a low-browed justice of the peace without asking any useless questions had sentenced him to jail for vagrancy. Ten days of brooding and hard fare had not sweetened his disposition any and he had stepped free with the firm determination to wreak a notable revenge, but as the sheriff thoughtfully kept his six-shooter Pecos had been compelled to postpone that exposition of popular justice. Nevertheless the details of his wrongs were still fresh in his mind, and when he learned from the Voice of Reason that the constable and judge had made him all that trouble for an aggregate fee of six dollars Pecos was ready to oppose all law, in whatsoever form it might appear, with summary violence. And as for the capitalistic classes – well, Pecos determined to collect his last month's pay from Old Crit if he had to take it out of his hide.
When next he rode into Verde Crossing the hang-dog look which had possessed Pecos Dalhart since he turned rustler was displaced by a purposeful frown. He rolled truculently in the saddle as he came down the middle of the road, and wasted no time with preliminaries.
"Where's that blankety-blank Old Crit?" he demanded, racking into the store with his hand on his hip.
"Gone down to Geronimo to git the mail," replied Babe, promptly.
"Well, you tell him I want my pay!" thundered Pecos, pacing up and down.
"He'll be back to-night, better stay and tell him yourself," suggested Babe, mildly.
"I'll do that," responded Pecos, nodding ominously. "And more'n that – I'll collect it. What's doin'?"
"Oh, nothin'," replied Babe. "There was a deputy assessor up here the other day and he left this blank for you to fill out. It gives the number of your cattle."
"Well, you tell that deputy to go to hell, will you?"
"Nope," said Babe, "he might take me with him. It happens he's a deputy sheriff, too!"
"Deputy, —huh!" grumbled Pecos, morosely. "They all look the same to me. Did Crit fill out his blank?"
"Sure did. Reported a hundred head of Wine-glasses. Now what d'ye think of that?"
Pecos paused and meditated on the matter for an instant. It was doubtful if Crittenden could gather more than a hundred head of Wine-glasses, all told. Some of them had drifted back to their old range and the rest were scattered in a rough country. "Looks like that deputy threw a scare into him," he observed, dubiously. "What did he say about my cattle?"
"Well, he said you'd registered a new brand and now it was up to you to show that you had some cattle. If you've got 'em you ought to pay taxes on 'em and if you haven't got any you got no business with an iron that will burn over Upton's U."
"Oh, that's the racket, is it? Well, you tell that deputy that I've got cattle in that brand and I've got a bill of sale for 'em, all regular, but I've yet to see the deputy sheriff that can collect taxes off of me. D'ye think I'm goin' to chip in to help pay the salary of a man that makes a business of rollin' drunks and throwin' honest workingmen into the hoosegatho when he's in town? Ump-um – guess again!"
He motioned for a drink and Babe regarded him curiously as he set out the bottle.
"You been readin' the Voice, I reckon," he said, absent-mindedly pouring out a drink for himself. "Well, say, did you read that article on the fee system? It's all true, Pardner, every word of it, and more! I'm a man of good family and education – I was brought up right and my folks are respectable people – and yet every time I go to Geronimo they throw me into jail. Two-twenty-five, that's what they do it for – and there I have to lay, half the time with some yegg or lousy gang of hobos, until they git ready to turn me loose. And they call that justice! Pecos, I'm going back to Geronimo – I'm going to stand on the corner, just the way I used to when I was drunk, and tell the people it's all wrong! You're a good man, Pecos – Cumrad – will you go with me?"
Pecos stood and looked at him, wondering. "Comrade" sounded good to him; it was the word they used in the Voice of Reason– "Comrade Jones has just sent us in four more subscriptions. That's what throws a crook into the tail of monopoly. Bully for you, Comrade!" But with all his fervor he did not fail to notice the droop to Angy's eyes, the flush on his cheeks, and the slack tremulousness of his lips – in spite of his solemn resolutions Angy had undoubtedly given way to the Demon Drink.
"Nope," he said, "I like you, Angy, but they'd throw us both in. You'd better stay up here and watch me put it on Crit. 'Don't rope a bigger bull than you can throw,' is my motto, and Old Crit is jest my size. I'm goin' to comb his hair with a six-shooter or I'll have my money – and then if that dog-robber of a deputy sheriff shows up I'll – well, he'd better not crowd me, that's all. Here's to the revolution – will you drink it, old Red-eye?"
Angy drank it, and another to keep it company.
"Pecos," he said, his voice tremulous with emotion, "when I think how my life has been ruined by these hirelings of the law, when I think of the precious days I have wasted in the confinement of the Geronimo jail, I could rise up and destroy them, these fiends in human form and their accursed jails; I could wreck every prison in the land and proclaim liberty from the street-corners – whoop!" He waved one hand above his head, laughed, and leapt to a seat upon the bar. "But don't you imagine f'r a moment, my friend," he continued, with the impressive gravity of an orator, "that they have escaped unscathed. It was not until I had read that wonderful champion of the common people, the Voice of Reason, that I realized the enormity of this conspiracy which has reduced me to my present condition, but from my first incarceration in the Geronimo jail I have been a Thorne in their side, as the Geronimo Blade well said. I remember as if it were yesterday the time when they erected their first prison, over twenty years ago, on account of losing some hoss-thieves. It was a new structure, strongly built of adobe bricks, and in a spirit of jest the town marshal arrested me and locked me up to see if it was tight. That night when all was still I wrenched one of the iron bars loose and dug my way to freedom! But what is freedom to revenge? After I had escaped I packed wood in through the same hole, piled it up against the door, and set the dam' hell-hole afire!"
He paused and gazed upon Pecos with drunken triumph. "That's the kind of an hombre I am," he said. "But what is one determined man against a thousand? When the citizens of Geronimo beheld their new calaboose ruined and in flames they went over the country with a fine-tooth comb and never let up until they had brought me back and shackled me to the old Cottonwood log down by the canal – the one they had always used before they lost the hoss-thieves. That was the only jail they had left, now that the calaboose was burned. In vain I pleaded with them for just one drink – they were inexorable, the cowardly curs, and there they left me, chained like a beast, while they went up town and swilled whiskey until far into the night. As the first faint light of morning shot across the desert I awoke with a terrible thirst. My suffering was awful. I filled my mouth with the vile ditch-water and spat it out again, unsatisfied – I shook my chains and howled for mercy. But what mercy could one expect from such a pack of curs? I tested every link in my chain, and the bolt that passed through the log – then, with the strength of desperation I laid hold upon that enormous tree-trunk and rolled it into the water! Yes, sir, I rolled the old jail-log into the canal and jumped straddle of it like a conqueror, and whatever happened after that I knew I had the laugh on old Hickey, the Town Marshal, unless some one saw me sailing by. But luck was with me, boy; I floated that big log clean through town and down to Old Manuel's road-house – a Mexican deadfall out on the edge of the desert – and swapped it for two drinks of mescal that would simply make you scream! By Joe, that liquor tasted good – have one with me now!"
They drank once more, still pledging the revolution, and then Angy went ahead on his talking jag. "Maybe you've heard of this Baron Mun-chawson, the German character that was such a dam' liar and jail-breaker the king made a prison to order and walled him in? Well, sir, Mun-chawson worked seven years with a single nail on that prison and dug out in spite of hell. But human nature's the same, wherever you go – always stern and pitiless. When those Geronimo citizens found out that old Angy had stole their cottonwood log and traded it to a wood-chopper for the drinks, they went ahead and built a double-decked, steel-celled county jail and sentenced me to it for life! Conspicuous drunkenness was the charge – and grand larceny of a jail – but answer me, my friend, is this a free country or is the spirit that animated our forefathers dead? Is the spirit of Patrick Henry when he cried, 'Give me liberty or give me death,' buried in the oblivion of the past? Tell me that, now!"
"Don't know," responded Pecos, lightly, "too deep a question for me – but say, gimme one more drink and then I'm goin' down the road to collect my pay from Crit. I'm a man of action – that's where I shine – I refer all such matters to Judge Colt." He slapped his gun affectionately and clanked resolutely out of the door. Half a mile down the river he sighted his quarry and rode in on him warily. Old Crit was alone, driving a discouraged team of Mexican horses, and as the bouquet of Pecos's breath drifted in to him over the front wheel the Boss of Verde Crossing regretted for once the fiery quality of his whiskey.
"I come down to collect my pay," observed Pecos, plucking nervously at his gun.
"Well, you don't collect a cent off of me," replied Crit, defiantly, "a man that will steal the way you did! Whenever you git ready to leave this country I might give you a hundred or so for your brand, but you better hurry up. There was a deputy sheriff up here the other day, lookin' for you!"
"Yes, I heard about it," sneered Pecos. "I reckon he was lookin' for evidence about this here Wine-glass iron."
A smothered curse escaped the lips of Isaac Crittenden, but, being old at the game, he understood. There was nothing for it but to pay up – and wait.
"Well, what guarantee do I git that you don't give the whole snap away anyhow?" he demanded, fiercely. "What's the use of me payin' you anything – I might as well keep it to hire a lawyer."
"As long as you pay me what you owe me," said Pecos, slowly, "and treat me square," he added, "I keep my mouth shut. But the minute you git foxy or try some ranikaboo play like sayin' the deputy was after me – look out! Now they was a matter of a hundred and twenty dollars between us – do I git it or don't I?"
"You git it," grumbled Crittenden, reluctantly. "But say, I want you to keep away from Verde Crossing. Some of them Wine-glass cows have drifted back onto the upper range and John Upton has made a roar. More than that, Boone Morgan has undertook to collect our taxes up here and if that deputy of his ever gits hold of you he's goin' to ask some mighty p'inted questions. So you better stay away, see?"
He counted out the money and held it in his hand, waiting for consent, but Pecos only laughed.
"Life's too short to be hidin' out from a deputy," he answered, shortly. "So gimme that money and I'll be on my way." He leaned over and plucked the bills from Crit's hand; then, spurring back toward the Crossing he left Old Crit, speechless with rage, to follow in his dust.
A loud war-whoop from the store and the high-voiced ranting of Babe made it plain to Crit that there was no use going there – Angy was launched on one of his periodicals and Pecos was keeping him company – which being the case there was nothing for it but to let them take the town. The grizzled Boss of Verde stood by the corral for a minute, listening to the riot and studying on where to put in his time; then a slow smile crept over his hardened visage and he fixed his sinister eye on the adobe of Joe Garcia. All was fair, with him, in love or war, and Marcelina was growing up to be a woman.
"Joe," he said, turning upon his corral boss, "you tell your wife I'll be over there in a minute for supper – and say, I want you to stay in the store to-night; them crazy fools will set the house afire."
"Stawano," mumbled José, but as he turned away there was an angry glint in his downcast eye and he cursed with every breath. It is not always pleasant, even to a Mexican, to be in debt to the Boss.
CHAPTER VII
THE REVOLUTION
THE coyotes who from their seven hills along the Verde were accustomed to make Rome howl found themselves outclassed and left to a thinking part on the night that Pecos Dalhart and Angevine Thorne celebrated the dawn of Reason. The French Revolution being on a larger scale, and, above all, successful, has come down in history as a great social movement; all that can be said of the revolution at Verde Crossing is packed away in those sad words: it failed. It started, like most revolutions, with a careless word, hot from the vitriolic pen of some space-writer gone mad, and ended in that amiable disorder which, for lack of a better word, we call anarchy. Whiskey was at the bottom of it, of course, and it meant no more than a tale told by an idiot, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." At the same time, it managed by degrees to engross the entire attention of Verde Crossing and after the fall of the Bastile, as symbolized by the cracking of a bottle, it left Pecos and Babe more convinced than ever that the world was arrayed against them.
In the early part of the evening, according to orders, José Garcia watched them furtively through the open door, returning at intervals, however, to peer through the window of his own home. At each visit it seemed to him that Angy was getting drunker and the Boss more shameless in his attentions to Marcelina. At last, when he could stand the strain no longer, he threw in with the merry roisterers, leaving it to the Señora to protect the dignity of their home. A drink or two mellowed him to their propaganda – at the mention of Crit he burst into a torrent of curses and as the night wore on he declared for the revolution, looking for his immediate revenge in drinking up all the Boss's whiskey. In the end their revelry rose to such a height that Crittenden was drawn away from his rough wooing and finally, under the pretence of delivering the United States mail, he walked boldly in upon them, determined to protect his property at any risk. The penalty for interfering with the United States mail, as everybody who has ever read the card on a drop-box knows, is a fine of $1,000, or imprisonment, or both. In defence of that precious packet Crittenden could have killed all three of them and stood justified before the law, but although he had a reputation as a bad man to crowd into a corner, Old Crit was not of a sanguinary disposition. No man could hold down a bunch of gun-men of the kind that he employed in his predatory round-ups and not have a little iron in his blood, but the Boss of Verde Crossing had seen all too well in his variegated career the evils which cluster like flies about an act of violence, and he was always for peace – peace and his price.
"Here; here, here," he expostulated, as he found Angy in the act of drinking half a pint of whiskey by measure, "you boys are hittin' it pretty high, ain't ye?"
"The roof's the limit," replied Babe, facetiously. "As the Champeen Booze-fighter of Arizona I am engaged in demonstratin' to all beholders my claim to that illustrious title. Half a pint of whiskey – enough to kill an Injun or pickle a Gila-monster – and all tossed off at a single bout, like the nectar of the gods. Here's to the revolution, and to hell with the oppressors of the poor!"
"That's right," chimed in Pecos, elevating his glass and peering savagely over its rim at the Boss, "we done declared a feud against the capitulistic classes and the monneypullistic tendencies of the times. Your game's played out, Old Man; the common people have riz in their might and took the town! Now you go away back in the corner, d'ye understand, and sit down – and don't let me hear a word out of you or I'll beat the fear o' God into you with this!" He hauled out his heavy six-shooter and made the sinister motions of striking a man over the head with it, but Crit chose to ignore the threat.
"All right," he said, feigning an indulgent smile, "you boys seem to be enjoyin' yourselves, so I'll jest deliver this United States mail as the law requires and leave you to yourselves." He stepped in behind the bar, chucked a couple of demijohns of whiskey into the corner where they might be overlooked, and threw the mail pouch on the counter.
"Better come up and git your mail, boys," he observed, dumping the contents out for a lure. "Hey, here's a package for you, Mr. Dalhart – something pretty choice, I 'spect. Nothin' for you, Joe," he scowled, as his faithless retainer lurched up to claim his share. "Here's your paper, Babe. Letter for you, Mr. Dalhart," he continued, flipping a large, official envelope across the bar, "you're developin' quite a correspondence!" He ducked down behind the counter, grinning at his stratagem, and while Pecos and Babe were examining their mail he managed to jerk the money drawer open and slip the loose change into his pockets.
"Well, we'll be goin' home now, Joe," he said, taking the corral boss briskly by the arm. "Come on, hombre, you ain't got no mail!" Under ordinary circumstances José would have followed peaceably, thus reducing the revolutionary forces to a minimum, but the covert insult to his daughter, magnified by drink, had fired his Latin blood.
"No, Señor," he replied, fixing his glittering eyes upon the hateful boss. "Yo no go! Carramba, que malo hombre! You dam' coward, Creet – you scare my wife – you scare – "
"Shut up!" hissed Crit, hastily cuffing him over the head. "Shut your mouth or I'll – "
"Diablo!" shrieked the Mexican, striking back blindly. "I keel you! You have to leave mi niña alone!"
"What's that?" yelled Angevine Thorne, leaping with drunken impetuosity into the fray, "hev you been – "
"Leave him to me!" shouted Pecos, wading recklessly into the scrimmage. "I'll fix the blankety-blank, whatever he's gone and done! Throw him loose, boys; I'll take the one-eyed—hump-backed—dog-robbin'—dastard" – he accompanied each epithet with a blow – "and tie 'im into a bow knot!" He grabbed Old Crit out of the mêlée and held him against the wall with a hand of iron. "What do you mean by slappin' my friend and cumrad?" he thundered, making as if to annihilate him with a blow. "I want you to understand, Old Cock Eye, that Mr. Garcia is my friend – he comes from a fine old Spanish family, away down in Sonory, and his rights must be respected! Ain't that so, Angy?"
"From the pure, Castilian blood," declaimed Angy, waving his hand largely, "a gentleman to whom I take off my hat – his estimable wife and family – "
"Now here, boys," broke in Crittenden, taking his cue instantly, "this joke has gone far enough. Mr. Garcia's wife asked me to bring him home – you see what his condition is – and I was tryin' to do my best. Now jest take your hand off of me, Mr. Dalhart – yes, thanks – and Angy, you see if you can't git 'im to go home. A man of family, you know," he went on, craftily enlisting their sympathies, "ought to – "
"Sure thing!" responded Angevine Thorne, lovingly twining his arm around his Spanish-American comrade. "Grab a root there, Pecos, and we'll take 'im home in style!"
"Wait till I git my package!" cried Pecos, suddenly breaking his hold, and he turned around just in time to see Crit skipping out the back door.
"Well, run then, you dastard!" he apostrophized, waving one hand as he tenderly gathered up his mail-order dry goods. "I can't stop to take after ye now. This here package is f'r my little Señorita, Marcelina, and I'm goin' to present it like a gentleman and ast her for a kiss. Hey, Angy," he called, as he re-engaged himself with José, "how do you say 'kiss' in Spanish? Aw, shut up, I don't believe ye! Stan' up here, Joe – well, it don't sound good, that's all – I'm goin' to ast her in U. S., and take a chance!"
The procession lurched drunkenly up the road and like most such was not received with the cordiality which had been anticipated. The Señora Garcia was already furious at Old Crit and when Pecos Dalhart, after delivering her recreant husband, undertook to present the dainty aprons and the blue handkerchiefs, marked M, which he had ordered specially for her daughter, she burst into a torrent of Spanish and hurled them at his head. "Muy malo," "borracho," and "vaya se," were a few of the evil words which followed them and by the gestures alone Pecos knew that he had been called a bad man and a drunkard and told in two words to go. He went, and with him Angy, ever ready to initiate new orgies and help drown his sorrows in the flowing cup. The noise of their bacchanalia rose higher and higher; pistol-shots rang out as Pecos shot off the necks of bottles which personified for the moment his hated rival; and to Crit, lingering outside the back door, it seemed as if their howling and ranting would never cease. It was no new experience for him to break in on one of Angy's jags, but things were coming too high and fast with Pecos Dalhart present, and he decided to wait for his revenge until they were both thoroughly paralyzed.
"But what is this 'cumrad' talk and them yells for the revolution?" he soliloquized, as Angy and Pecos returned to their religion. "Is it a G. A. R. reunion or has Joe worked in a Mexican revolution on us? Yes, holler, you crazy fools; it'll be Old Crit's turn, when you come to pay the bills."
The first gray light of dawn was striking through the door when Crittenden tip-toed cautiously into the store and gazed about at the wreckage and the sprawling hulks of the revellers. Pecos lay on his face with his huge silver mounted spurs tangled in the potato sack that had thrown him; and Babe, his round moon-face and bald crown still red from his unrestrained potations, was draped along the bar like a shop kitten. Old Crit shook him roughly and, receiving no response, turned his attention to Pecos Dalhart. His first care was to snap the cartridges out of his six-shooter and jamb the action with a generous handful of dirt; then he felt his pockets over carefully, looking for his roll, for Pecos had undoubtedly consumed a great deal of liquor and ought not to be deprived of the cowboy's privilege of waking up broke. But as luck would have it he was lying upon his treasure and could not pay his reckoning. The only article of interest which the search produced was a grimy section of a newspaper, stored away in his vest pocket, and Crit seized upon it eagerly. It was a not uncommon failing of Texas bad men, as he knew them, to carry newspaper accounts of their past misdeeds upon their persons and he unfolded the sheet with the full expectation of finding a sheriff's offer of reward.
"It's a crime to be Poor!!!" was the heading, "And the penalty is hard labor for life!" it added, briefly. There is something in that, too; but philosophy did not appeal to Crittenden at the moment – he was looking for Pecos Dalhart's name and the record of his crime. "The grinding tyranny of the capitalistic classes – " he read, and then his eye ran down the page until he encountered the words: "Yours for the Revolution!" and "Subscribe for the Voice of Reason!" Then a great light came over him and he gnashed his teeth in a fury.
"Well, the dam', yaller, two-bit-a-year sheet!" he raved, snatching a fresh copy of the Voice of Reason from the sacred United States mail and hastily scanning its headlines, "and if these crazy fools hain't gone and took it serious!" He tore it in two and jumped on it. "Two-bits a year!" he raged, "and for four-bits I could've got the Fireside Companion!" He rummaged around in the box and gathered up every copy, determined to hurl them into the fireplace, but on the way the yellow wrapper with the United States stamp arrested his eye, and he paused. After all, they were United States mail – penalty for destroying $1,000 – and would have to go back into the box.
"Well," he grumbled, dumping them sullenly back, "mebby it was that new bar'l of whiskey – I s'pose they've got to holler about something when they're drunk, the dam' eejits!" He strode up and down the floor, scowling at the unconscious forms of the roisterers who had beaten him the night before – then he turned back and laid violent hands upon Angy.
"Git off'n there, you low-down, lazy hound!" he yelled, dragging him roughly to the floor. "You will start a revolution and try to kill your boss, will you? You're fired!" he shouted when, after a liberal drenching, he had brought Babe back to the world.
"Well, gimme my pay, then," returned Angy, holding out his hand and blinking.
"You don't git no pay!" declared Crit, with decision. "Who's goin' to pay for all that liquor that was drunk last night? Look at them empty bottles, will you? You go and bring in all your friends and open up the town and the next mornin' I look in the till and they ain't a dam' cent!"
"Well, I want my pay," reiterated Babe, drunkenly. "I been workin' a long time, now – I'm goin' to draw my money an' go home! 'My mother's heart is breakin', breakin' f'r me, an' that's all– '" he crooned, and, rocking to and fro on the floor, he sang himself back to sleep.
Old Crit watched him a moment, sneering; then with vindictive exultation he turned his attention to Pecos. "Git up," he snarled, kicking the upturned soles of his feet, "this ain't no bunk-house! Git out'r here, now; you been pesterin' around these parts too long!" He seized the prostrate cowboy by his broad shoulders and snaked him summarily out the door, where he lay sprawling in the dirt, like a turtle on its back, a mock of his strong, young manhood. To the case-hardened Babe the venom of Old Crit's whiskey was no worse than a death-potion of morphine to an opium fiend, but Pecos was completely paralyzed by the poison. He responded neither to kicks and man-handling nor to frequent dashes of water and at last Crittenden dragged him out behind the corral and left him there, a sight for gods and men. The Garcia dogs crept up furtively and sniffed at him and the Señora pointed him out to her children as an awful example of Texano depravity, and also as the bad man who had corrupted their papa. Even Marcelina wavered in her secret devotion, but after he had finally clambered up on his horse and ridden blindly off toward Lost Dog Cañon the thought of those blue silk handkerchiefs, branded M, rose up in her mind and comforted her.