Santa Fe's Partner Part 9

At last he roused up and reached for his grip and got his flask out and had a good one; and when he'd had it he says to Carver, as savage as if Carver--who hadn't had no hand in the doings--was the whole business: "Sir, this America of yours is a continent of chaos--and you Americans are no better than so many wild beasts!" Then he had another; and after that he went on, like he was talking to himself: "All I ask is to get out of this nightmare of a country in a hurry--and safe back to my own home in the Avenue Road!" And from then on, Carver said, till it was bedtime--except now and then he took another--he just set still and glared.

Carver said it wasn't any funeral of his, and so he didn't see no need to argue with him. And he allowed, he said, maybe he had some call to feel the way he did about America, and to want to get quick out of it, after being up against Palomitas for what he guessed you might say was a full day.

VII

THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS

In the long run, same as I said to start with, all tough towns gets to where it's needed to have a clean-up. Shooting-sc.r.a.pes is a habit that grows; and after a while decent folks begins to be sort of sick of such doings--and of having things all upside-downey generally--and then something a little extry happens, bringing matters to a head, and the white men take hold and the toughs is fired. Just to draw a card anywheres from the pack--there was Durango. What made a clean town of Durango was that woman getting killed in bed in her tent--the boys being rump.u.s.s.ing around, same as usual, and a shot just happening her way and taking her. It was felt that outsiders--and 'specially ladies--oughtn't to get no such treatment; and so they had a spring house-cleaning--after what I reckon was the worst winter a town ever went through--and Durango was sobered right down.

Palomitas went along the same trail, and took the same pa.s.s over the divide. All through that year, while the end of the track hung there, things kept getting more and more uncomfortabler. When construction started up again--the little Englishman, in spite of the dose we give him, reported favorable on construction and the English stockholders put up the stake they was asked to--things got to be worse still.

Right away, as soon as work begun, the place was jammed full of Greasers getting paid off every Sat.u.r.day night, and all day Sunday being crazy drunk and knifing each other, and in between sc.r.a.ppings having their pay sucked out of 'em at the banks and dance-halls--and most of the boys going along about the same rate, except they used guns instead of knives to settle matters--so the town really was just about what you might call a quarter-section of h.e.l.l's front yard.

Being that way, it come to be seen there'd got to be a clean-up; and what was wanted for a starter was give by Santa Fe Charley shooting Bill Hart. There was no real use for the shooting. The two of 'em just got to jawing in Hart's store about which was the best of two brands of plug tobacco--Hart being behind the counter, and Charley, who had a bad jag on, setting out in the middle of the store on a nail-kag--and the first thing anybody knowed, Charley'd let go with his derringer through his pants-pocket and Hart was done for.

If Santa Fe hadn't been on one of his tears at the time, the thing wouldn't a-happened--him and Hart always having been friendly, and 'specially so after the trouble they'd had together over Hart's aunt. But when it did happen--being so sort of needless, and Hart popular--most of us made our minds up something had got to be done.

Joe Cherry headed the reform movement. He had a bunch of sheep up in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, Cherry had, but was in town frequent and always bunked at Hart's store--him and Hart having knowed each other back East and being great friends. That made him take a 'special interest in the matter; and when he come a-riding in about an hour after things was over--likely he'd a-fixed Santa Fe himself if he'd been there when it happened--he got right up on his ear. He said he meant to square accounts for Bill's shooting, and he reckoned telegraph-poling Charley was about what was needed to square 'em; and he said it was a good time, with that for a starter, for rounding-up and firing all the toughs there was in town. The rest of us allowed Cherry's notions was reasonable, and it was seen there'd better be no fooling over 'em; and so we went straight on and had a meeting, with Cherry chairman, and fixed up a Committee--and the Committee begun business by corralling Santa Fe, and then set to work and made out a list of them that was to be fired.

There was about a dozen of 'em in the list; and they was told--the notice being posted at the deepo--they had twenty-four hours to get out in; and it was added that them that wasn't out in twenty-four hours would find 'emselves landed on the dumps for keeps. A few of 'em kicked a little--saying it was a free country, and they guessed they'd a right to be where they'd a mind to. But when the Committee said back it just was a free country, and one of the freest things in it was telegraph-poles--as Santa Fe Charley was going to find out for certain, and as them that was ordered to get up and get and didn't would find out along with him--even the kickingest of 'em seen they'd better just shut their heads and andy along.

It wasn't till the Committee come to tackle the Sage-Brush Hen there was any trouble--and then they found their drills was against quartz!

Two or three of Charley's worst shootings was charged to the Hen, she being 'special friends with him; and just because she was such a good-natured obliging sort of a woman, always wanting to please everybody, she was at the roots of half the fights that started in--so there'd come to be what was called the Hen's Lot out in the cemetery on the mesa, as I've mentioned before. The Committee put her in their list because they knowed for a fact there was bound to be ructions in Palomitas as long as she stayed there; and so they found 'emselves in a deepish hole when she said plump Palomitas suited her, and she didn't mean to be fired. The Hen knowed as well as they did she had a cinch on 'em. If they didn't like her staying, she said, they could yank her up to the next telegraph-pole to Charley's--and then she asked 'em, kind of cool and cutting, if they didn't think hanging a lady would give a nice name to the town!

The Committee was in session in the waiting-room at the deepo while the Hen was doing her talking, and Santa Fe--with handcuffs on, and tied to the express messenger's safe--was in the express office, with the door open between. Everybody seen the Hen was right, and hanging her would be ungentlemanly, and n.o.body seemed to know what they'd better do. While they was all setting still and thinking, Santa Fe spoke up from the express office--saying he had the reputation of the town at heart as much as anybody, and to make a real clean-up the Hen ought to quit along with the others, and if they'd let him have five minutes private talk with her he'd fix things so she'd go.

The Committee didn't much believe Santa Fe could deliver the goods; but they seen it would be a way out for 'em if he did--and so they agreed him and the Hen should have their talk. To make it private, he was took out and hitched fast to a freight-car laying on the siding back of the deepo--the Committee standing around in easy shooting distance, but far enough off not to hear nothing, with their Winchesters handy in case the Hen took it into her head to cut the rope and give him a chance to get away. She didn't--and she and Santa Fe talked to each other mighty serious for a while; and then they begun to snicker a little; and they ended up in a rousing laugh.

Charley sung out they'd finished, and the Committee closed in and unhitched him, and took him back to the express office and hitched him to the safe again--where he was to stay till hanging-time, with members of the Committee taking turns keeping him quiet with their guns. He said he was much obliged to 'em, and the Hen had agreed to quit--and everybody was pleased all round.

"I don't like not being here when Charley gets his medicine," the Hen said, "him and me being such good friends; but he says it would only worry him having me in the audience, and so I've promised him I'll light out"--and she kept her word, and got away for Denver by that night's train. Her going took a real load off the Committee's mind.

Some of the other fired ones went off on the same train. The rest took Hill's coach across to Santa Fe--and made no trouble, Hill said, except they held the coach for two hours at Pojuaque while all hands got drunk at old man Bouquet's. Hill said all the rest of the way they was yelling, and firing off their guns, and raising h.e.l.l generally--that was the way Hill put it--but they didn't do no real harm.

It was Joe Cherry's notion that Santa Fe should be took along to Hart's funeral, and not hung till everybody got back to town again.

Joe was a serious-minded man, and he said the moral effect of running things that way would pan out a lot richer than if they just had a plain hanging before the funeral got under way.

Santa Fe kicked at that, at first; and a good many of the boys felt he had a right to. Santa Fe said it was all in the game to run him up to the telegraph-pole in front of the deepo, the same as other folks; but no committee had no right, he said, to make a circus of him by packing him all round the place after poor old Bill--who always had been plain in his tastes, and would have been the last man in Palomitas to want that kind of a fuss made over him--and he didn't mean to take a hand in no such fool carryings-on.

He didn't want anybody to think he was squirming, he said, for he wasn't. Some men got up against telegraph-poles, and others got up against guns or pneumonia or whatever happened to come along--and it was all in the day's work. But when they did get up against it--whatever it turned out to be--that was the one time in their lives when it wasn't fair to worry 'em more'n was needed. n.o.body but chumps, he said, would want to hurt his feelings by making him do trick-mule acts at poor old Bill's funeral--'specially as him and Bill always had been friendly, and n.o.body was sorrier than he was about the accident that had occurred.

Santa Fe was a first-rate talker, and everybody but Cherry allowed what he was letting out had a good deal of sense in it. He ended up by saying that if they did make any such fool show of him he'd like 'em to put it through quick and get him back to the deepo and telegraph him off to Kingdom Come in a hurry--as he'd be glad at any price to be shut of a crowd that would play it on anybody that low down!

Cherry stuck it out, though, to have things his way. Palomitas was going in for purification, Cherry said, and the moral effect of having Santa Fe along at Bill's funeral was part of the purifying. The very fact that Santa Fe was kicking so hard against it, he said, showed it was a good thing. There was sense in that, too; and so the upshot of it was the boys come round to Cherry's plan. The only serious thing against it was it meant waiting over another day, till the funeral outfit got down from Denver--all hands having chipped in to give Hart a good send-off, and telegraphed his size to a first-cla.s.s Denver undertaker, with orders to do him up in style. Making him wait around so long, sort of idle, was what Santa Fe kicked hardest against at first. But after his talk with the Hen, as was remembered afterwards, he didn't do any more kicking; and some of the boys noticed he was a little nervous, and kept asking, off and on, if they still meant to run the show that way.

The boys did what they could to make the time go for him--setting around sociable in the express office telling stories about other hangings they'd happened to get up against, and trying all they knowed how to amuse him, and giving him more seegars and drinks than he really cared to have. But as he was kept hitched to both handles of the safe right enough, and handcuffed, and as the two members of the Committee watching him--while they was as pleasant with him as anybody--never had their hands far off their guns, it's likely there'd been other times when he'd enjoyed himself more.

Things was spirited at the deepo when the Denver train got in. All there was of Palomitas was on deck, and Becker'd come over from Santa Cruz de la Canada, and old man Bouquet from Pojuaque, and Sam and Marcus Elbogen had driven across on their buck-board from San Juan--and Mexicans had come in from all around in droves.

The Elbogen brothers had been asked over for the funeral 'special--because they both had good voices, and the Committee thought like enough, being Germans, they'd know some hymns. It turned out they didn't--but they blew off "The Watch on the Rhine" in good shape, when singing time come out at the cemetery; and as it was a serious-sounding tune it done just as well. Singing it made trouble, though: because Hart's nephew--who knowed German and was a pill--hadn't no more sense'n to tell old man Bouquet, coming back to town, what the words meant; and that started old man Bouquet off so--the war not being long over, and his side downed--that it took two of us, holding him by his arms and legs, to keep him from trying to fight both the Elbogens at once. Being good-natured young fellows, the Elbogens didn't take offence, but behaved like perfect gentlemen--telling old man Bouquet they didn't mean to hurt his feelings, and was sorry if they had--and it ended up well by their having drinks together at the Forest Queen. All that, though, has no real bearing on the story. It happened along later in the day.

Before the train got in, to save time, a rope had been rigged for Santa Fe over the cross-bar of the usual telegraph-pole--and Cherry, who knowed how to manage better'n most, had seen to it the rope was well soaped so as to run smooth. Cherry said he'd knowed things go real annoying, sometimes, when the soap had been forgot. Santa Fe looked well. He'd had a good brush up--and he needed it, after being tied fast to the safe for three days and sleeping in a blanket on the express-office floor--and he'd put on a clean s.h.i.+rt, and blacked his boots, and had a shave. He always was a tidy sort of a man.

When the train pulled in, being on time for a wonder, some fellows from Chamita and the Embudo--come to see the doings--got out from the day-coach and shook hands; and the Denver undertaker got out from the express-car and helped the messenger unload the fixings he'd brought for poor old Bill. Everybody stood around quiet like, and as serious as you please. You might have thought it was a Sunday morning back in the States.

Except now and then a drummer--bound for Santa Fe on Hill's coach--n.o.body much ever come to Palomitas on the Pullman; and so there was something of a stir-up when the Pullman conductor helped a lady out of the car--landing her close to where Charley in his clean s.h.i.+rt and handcuffs on was standing between two members of the Committee holding guns. She was a fine-shaped woman, but looked oldish--as well as you could see for the veil she had on--having a sad pale face a good deal wrinkled and a bunch of gray hair. She was dressed in measly old black clothes, and had an old black shawl on, and looked poor.

Getting out into that crowd of men seemed to rattle her, and she didn't for a minute look at n.o.body. It wasn't till she a'most b.u.t.ted into Charley she seen him--and when she did see him she let off a yell loud enough to give points to a locomotive! And then she sort of sobbed out: "My husband!"--and got her arms around Santa Fe's neck and begun to cry.

"My G.o.d! It's my wife!" said Charley. And if the members of the Committee hadn't caught the two of 'em quick they'd likely tumbled down.

Santa Fe was the first to get his wind back. "My poor darling!" he said. "To think that you should have come to me at last--and in this awful hour!"

"What does it mean, Charley? Tell me, what does it mean?" she moaned.

Santa Fe snuggled her up to him--as well as he could with his hands handcuffed--and said back to her: "It means, Mary, that in less than two hours' time I am to be hung! In the heat of pa.s.sion I have killed a man. It was more than half an accident, as everybody here knows"--and he looked over her head at the boys as they all jammed in to listen--"but that don't matter, so far as the dreadful result is concerned. I loved the man I shot like my own brother, and shooting him in that chance way has about broken my heart. But that don't count either. Justice must be done, my darling. Stern justice must be done.

You have come just in time to see your husband die!" He was quiet for a minute, with the woman all in a shake against him--and a kind of a snuffling went through the crowd. Then he said, sort of choky: "Tell me, Mary, how are our dear little girls?"

She was too broke up to answer him. She just kept on hugging him, and crying as hard as she could cry.

"Gentlemen," said Santa Fe, "it is better that this painful scene should end. Take my poor wife from me, and let me pay the just penalty of my accidental crime. Take her away, please--and hang me as quick as you can!"

"They sha'n't hang you, Charley! They sha'n't! They sha'n't!" she sung out--and she jerked away from him and got in front of Cherry and pitched down on the deepo platform on her knees. "Don't hang him, sir!" she groaned out. "Spare him to me, and to our dear little girls who love him with all their little hearts! Oh, sir, say that he shall be saved!"

"Get up, ma'am, please," Cherry said, looking as worried as he could look. "That's no sort of a way for a lady to do! Please get up right away."

"Never! Never!" she said. "Never till you promise me that the life of my dear husband shall be spared!"--and she grabbed Cherry round the knees and groaned dreadful. He really was the most awkward-looking man, with her holding onto his legs that way, you ever seen!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT"]

"Oh, Lord, ma'am, _do_ get up!" he said. "Having you like that for another minute'll make me sick. I'm not used to such goings-on"--and Cherry did what he could to work loose his legs.

But she hung on so tight he couldn't shake her, and kept saying, "Save him! Save him!" and uttering groans.

Cherry wriggled his legs as much as he could and looked around at the boys. They all was badly broke up, and anybody could see they was weakening. "Shall we let up on Santa Fe this time?" he asked. "I guess it's true he didn't more'n half mean, being drunk the way he was, to shoot Bill--and it makes things different, anyway, knowing he's got kids and a wife. Bill himself would be the first to allow that. Bill was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Do please, ma'am, let go."

n.o.body spoke for a minute--but it was plain how the tide was setting--and then Santa Fe himself chipped in. "Gentlemen," he said, "you all know I've faced this music from the first without any squirming, and even come into Joe Cherry's plan for making me do circus stunts at the funeral for the good of the town. I'm ready to go through the whole fool business right now, and come back here when it's all over and be hung according to contract--"

"Save him! Save him!" the woman sung out; and she give such a jerk to Cherry's legs it come close to spilling him.

"But I will say this much, gentlemen," Santa Fe went on: "I am willing to ask for the sake of my dear wife and helpless innocent infants what I wouldn't be low down enough to ask for myself--and that is that you call this game off. This dreadful experience has changed me, gentlemen. It has changed me right down to my toes. Being as close to a telegraph-pole as I am now makes a man want to turn over a new leaf and behave--as some of you like enough'll find out for yourselves if you don't draw cards from my awful example and brace up all you know how. Give me another show, gentlemen. That's what I ask for--give me another show. Let me go home with my angel wife to the dear old farm in Ohio, where my aged mother and my sweet babes are waiting for me.

Like enough they're standing out by the old well in the front yard looking down the road for me now!" Santa Fe gagged so he couldn't go on for a minute. But he pulled himself together and finished with his chest out and his chin up and speaking firm. "Let me go home, I say, to the old farm and my dear ones--and take a fresh start at leading bravely the honest life of an honest man!"