The Land of Frozen Suns Part 3

"Git t' h.e.l.l out o' here, you," he grunted, under his breath. And I made haste to "git."

Looking back, I saw Tupper and Speer striding aft. Above, the girl stood by the rail, tucking in the flying locks with graceful movements of her hands. Barreau was staring after the retreating pair, smiling sardonically over a cigarette.

Later, I learned from Bilk that Miss Montell was the fur-merchant's daughter, and straightway I forgave the portly one any grievance I held against him. But from none of the crew could I learn aught of Barreau.

Nor did I see him again, except at s.h.i.+p-length. Like the girl, he kept close to his cabin and the pa.s.sengers' saloon-terra incognita to such lowly ones as I. I was grateful, even at a distance, for between them they had saved me a thumping-a thumping which I had reason to believe was merely postponed.

The _Moon_ was now well into Dakota. Steadily she forged up the turbid river, thrumming past Pierre, and, farther on, Standing Rock reservation. At Bismark we made a brief stop. Then we turned The Great Bend and plunged into the Bad Lands. Through this gashed and distorted country the _Moon_ plowed along an ever-narrowing channel. From her deck I had my first glimpse of the buffalo, already doomed to extinction.

Wild cattle and deer scuttled back up the fearful slopes at our approach, or vanished into the yawning canyons. Unaccustomed to that alt.i.tude, I marveled at the clarity of the atmosphere, the wonderful stillness of the land. The high banks that shut us in slanted away like paint-daubed walls, what of the vari-colored strata. The ridges back of them were twisted and notched by ancient geologic contortions, washed by countless rains and bleached by unnumbered centuries of sun-a strange jumble of earth and rocks and stunted trees; a place to breed superst.i.tious fears, and warp the soul of a man with loneliness.

In time the _Moon_ left this monstrosity of landscape behind, emerging upon a more wholesome land. Gra.s.sy bottoms spread on either side the river, and the upper levels ran back in a vast unbroken sweep, the true prairie. And presently we swept around a bend into view of a cl.u.s.ter of houses lining the north sh.o.r.e, and the _Moon's_ whistle outdid all previous efforts in the way of unG.o.dly sound. Twenty minutes later she was rubbing softly against a low wharf, her pa.s.sengers were disembarked, and the back-breaking task of unloading cargo began.

CHAPTER IV-A FORTHRIGHT FIGHTING-MAN

In due time the foodstuffs and other goods were unloaded, and the _Moon_ began to take on her return cargo of buffalo hides and sundry bundles of furs, the harvest of the past winter's hunting and the spring trade. Had it been left to our loud-mouthed captain there would have been no cessation of labor until the last pelt was stowed; he would have worked us twenty-four hours to the day. But Benton was not St. Louis, and the men who loaded s.h.i.+p were of a different calibre from the stevedores at the River City. A certain number of hours would they work, and no longer, though the _Moon_ rotted at her slip. So we of the regular crew had a breathing spell as sundown approached. And the first spare time at my command I used to write a letter to Bolton, detailing my misadventures. This I posted, so that in case anything kept me from returning on the _Moon_, he would at least know whither I had gone and how I had fared.

It took two days to unload. The evening of the third day Bilk and I stole away from the boat and went uptown. There was not much of it, to be sure, but what little there was lacked nothing in the way of life and color. One could see any sort of costume, from sober broadcloth and fine linen to the rainbow garb of a blanket Indian. Even the long-haired frontiersman sacred to fiction was represented by a specimen or two.

Altogether it was a motley, high-spirited crowd that we mixed with that night. Of the quieter residential portion of Benton I saw nothing, that time. My way, guided thereto by Bilk, was down the main street, where lights shone and gla.s.ses clinked merrily; into divers places where ancient pianos tinkled dance music. Drink and dance and gamble, that was the night life of the town. Wherever we went, wherever any man went, up and down the length of that one garish street, he could get a run for his money, if he had money to spend. In every saloon and dance hall the knights of farobank and draw poker held tourney on the field of green cloth. It was all very new and strange and fascinating to me.

Bilk stood treat in one of the saloons, and after we had emptied our gla.s.ses we stepped across the room to where a knot of men were watching an unkempt individual buck a roulette wheel with twenty-dollar gold pieces in lieu of chips. He had a dirty felt hat on the table before him, the crown of it half full of gold and silver, and he was scattering the double eagles two and three on a number. It was heavy play, I thought, but the dealer spun the little white ball and called the number and color in a bored sort of manner. The buffalo-runner lost half a dozen bets, and then all at once he caught the double O with three twenty-dollar coins resting on it. I gasped. Twenty-one hundred dollars in fifteen seconds! When the dealer pa.s.sed over the stacks of gold, the unkempt one opened his mouth for the first time.

"How much'll yuh turn for?" he asked.

The dealer jerked his thumb upward. "We'll take the roof off," he answered carelessly, "if yuh want to play 'em that high."

The buffalo-runner grinned and deliberately set about placing handfuls of coin here and there on the board. And while I stood there wholly engrossed, eagerly watching the ivory ball in its circular race, some one grabbed me by the shoulders and hurled me unceremoniously out the door. Once outside and free of that powerful grip, I turned and beheld Tupper the red-whiskered, very drunk and very angry, flouris.h.i.+ng a pistol and shouting vile epithets at me.

"Git back t' the _Moon_, yuh -- son of a sea-cook! I'll jerk an arm off yuh an' beat yuh t' death with the b.l.o.o.d.y end of it, if yuh show up here again. Scoot!"

Naturally, I "scooted," Mr. Tupper meanwhile emphasizing his threats by sending a bullet or two skyward. I wondered, at the time, why no peace officer appeared to put a quietus on this manifestation of exuberance, but later in the game I learned that in frontier towns the popping of a pistol was regarded as one of the accessories of a properly joyful mood, men handled their guns to make a noise, a la the small boy with a bunch of holiday firecrackers. One could burn powder with impunity, so long as he had due care for innocent bystanders.

Of Bilk I saw no more, for a while. Thinking that since Tupper's hostility had been directed at me, Bilk might have concluded to keep out of it, and see Benton by himself, I went on to the boat and curled up on a bale of buffalo hides, to sit a while in the moonlight and the pleasant night air before bedding down in the vile hole where we of the roustabout fraternity were permitted to rest o' nights. An hour or so I sat there, and about the time I began to think of turning in, a figure came slouching up the wharf and aboard. The glare of a deck light showed me that it was Bilk. I called to him, and when he came a little nearer I saw further that he, too, had met with rough usage; for his face was bruised and his lips cut and swollen.

"Aw, that dam' mate!" he said, in answer to my questioning. "He gits on a razoo like this every once in a while. Yuh was lucky he just throwed yuh out. The son of a gun nailed me after that an' like t' beat m' head off. He's tearin' drunk an' plumb on the fight. Chances is he'll come down here before mornin' an' want t' lick the captain, the cook, an' the whole blame crew."

"Somebody ought to take an axe to him," I suggested bitterly.

"Yuh betche. That's what he needs," Bilk agreed. "I've heard tell about him gettin' on these fightin' drunks, but this here's the first time he ever got t' me. Yuh wait. I'll git him some uh these times for this."

And Bilk went below, muttering dark threats.

I followed shortly, and rolled in. There was no disturbance during the night, and when we stood by for the loading after breakfast Tupper was on hand, a trifle surlier than usual, more or less red about the eyes, but otherwise showing no signs of his carouse. All that day we labored.

Again at eventide part of the crew sallied uptown. Before ten o'clock all of them were back, one or two badly damaged about the face, and one and all filled with tales of the mate's pugnacious mood.

"He sez, by the great horn spoon, he'll bust the head of ary hide-slingin' wharf-rat that sticks his nose up the main street. He wants the whole town t' himself, the blamed hog!" one indignantly declared; and from what I'd seen of Tupper I could very well believe that he would have it to himself so far as the crew of the _Moon_ was concerned.

The next morning found Mr. Tupper still on deck. Evidently a steady diet of strong whisky and rough-and-tumble fighting agreed with his peculiar const.i.tution. That night we were all but done; two hours' work in the morning would put the _Moon_ in shape for the down-river journey. And when evening fell I took a notion to walk up and down the streets of Benton once more. It may have been that the prospect of getting to St.

Louis in the near future made me desire to flaunt my independence in the face of the mate. Anyway, without stopping to make a critical a.n.a.lysis of motives, I slipped away from the _Moon_ when dark closed in. The engineer came aboard a minute before I left, and I heard him call to his a.s.sistant that Tupper was a sheet and a half in the wind, and still wearing his fighting-clothes. But I took no thought of turning back.

Right up the main street I marched, venturing into one saloon after another without mishap. I felt quite elated, like a small boy playing "hookey" from school. And when, in the course of my prowling about, I ran into a half dozen hilarious cowpunchers I clean forgot Mr. Tupper and the unkind things he had promised to do to me.

The camp of these cattlemen, I gathered from their talk, was on the divide that loomed to the north of Benton, and after the manner of their kind they were "taking in the town" for the first time in many weeks.

Wherefore, they were thirsty and noisy, and insistent that everybody should drink and be joyful. To one of them, a youngster near my own age, slim, sinewy, picturesque in his hair-faced chaps and high-heeled boots, I talked a little, but it was a hit-and-miss conversation, by reason of the general uproar, and the rapidity with which drinks came. I was all for information, and in his free-and-easy way he shed beams of light upon my black ignorance of range affairs. But alas! a discordant element burst rudely in upon our talk-_fiesta_. Tupper stalked in from the street, and chance decreed that his roving, belligerent eye should single me out of the crowd. I was leaning against a disreputable billiard table, at the time, and straight for me he came, not saying a word, but squinting up his little, pig eyes in a manner that boded ill.

I didn't move. Though my heart flopped like a new-landed trout, I couldn't quite bring myself to slink away. Beaten and bluffed and cowed as I had been for the past two weeks, I hadn't quite lost the power to resent, and though I shrank from the weight of Tupper's unG.o.dly fists I shrank more from absolute flight. Something of the atmosphere of the ranges had crept into me that evening. I did not know what I was about to do, except that I was not going to run away from any red-whiskered brute from St. Louis or any other section of the globe.

He came up close to me, stopped, and regarded me a moment, as if amazed to see me standing there and making no move to go. And then with a quick hunch of his shoulders he swung a dirty fist for my jaw. But that time I fooled Mr. Tupper by sidestepping; I was watching him, and he was a bit oversure. Again he struck out, first with one hand and then the other.

This time one of the blows landed, glancingly. His red, ugly countenance lurching toward me, his whisky-sodden breath in my face was more than I could stand; and when that vicious swing grazed my chin as I backed away, I ducked under his arm and smashed him on his reviling mouth.

It almost paid me for all the abuse I'd taken off him, that one good blow. The backward roll of his head, the quick spurt of blood where my knuckles split his lip, sent a quiver of joy over me. Had he been of the bigness of a house and equipped with two pair of fists I would gladly have fought him after that one punch. It showed me that I could hurt him. It gave me a hungry craving for more. I wanted to beat his ugly little eyes, his squat, round-nostriled nose, and his whisky-guzzling mouth into indistinguishable pulp.

But it was new business to me, and so instead of keeping at him hammer and tongs till he was down and out, I waited for him to rush me again.

Wherein I made a sad mistake. If I had battered him down then and there-if-if! At any rate, he did come with a rush, and he came fortified with a wide knowledge of fist tactics to protect him from another such blow as I had dealt him. He fought me halfway across the room, and had me bleeding like a stuck pig before I connected with him again. But eventually one of my wild swings slipped through his guard, and jolted his head backward; the little bloodshot eyes of him blinked with the jar of it. And again I made a mistake. Instead of standing off and hammering him with clean straight punches, I rushed to close quarters. Half crazed with pain and anger I stepped in, swinging short right and left blows for his wabbling head, and so came within the sweep of his great arms.

He clinched, and in his grip I was next thing to helpless. One thing only could I do, and that was to b.u.t.t him in the face with my head-which kindly office I performed to the best of my ability, until he jammed me hard against the billiard table and bent me backward till I felt my bones crack. And then with his thumb he deliberately set about gouging out one of my eyes.

I can feel it yet, the fierce pain and the horrible fear that overtook me when he jabbed at my eye-ball. I don't know how I broke his hold. I only recollect that, half-blinded, hot searing pangs shooting along my optic nerve, I found myself free of him. And as I backed away from his outstretched paws my hand, sweeping along the billiard table, met and closed upon a hard, round object. With all the strength that was in me I flung it straight at his head. He went to the floor with a neat, circular depression in his forehead, just over the left eye.

There was a hush in the saloon. One of the cattlemen stooped over him.

"_Sangre de Cristo!_" he laughed. "A billiard ball sure beats a six-shooter for quick action. I'll bet he was dead when he hit the floor."

CHAPTER V-THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE FRYING-PAN AND THE FIRE

They crowded close, a little ring of curious faces, about me and the dead man on the floor, and as a babel of talk uprose a tall, lean man pushed his way into the circle, Captain Speer of the _Moon_ at his heels.

"I guess I'll have to take you in just for luck," the stranger said to me. "I'm town marshal. This killin' business has got t' stop."

He took me by the arm, and as he did so the cowpuncher who had looked down at Tupper stepped in between us, breaking the marshal's hold.

"Not this time, Bax," he said softly. "Play fair or keep out uh the game. Yuh stay mighty close in your hole when a gun-fighter hits the town, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if you build up your reputation by arrestin' a kid. This red-muzzler came in huntin' trouble, and he found it. It was on the square, and yuh ain't goin' to put n.o.body in your stinkin'

calaboose-not to-night. You and me don't hitch on _that_ proposition."

For a second or two it seemed as if there might be another clash. Behind the two a s.p.a.ce cleared at the first words, and I noticed more than one cowpuncher hitch his gun-belt forward. For myself, I was too dazed to realize the exact turn of affairs, and I cared less. Tupper, at least, would trouble me no more, and for that I was truly glad. But there was no mix-up, nor even a harsh word. The marshal weakened. If he had intended to take me he changed his mind after a brief glance at the faces of the men who were watching him with silent intentness.

"If that's the way yuh feel about it, all right," he said-with an indifference that his flushed face belied. He turned on his heel and walked out, Captain Speer following.

"Yuh bet it's all right," the cowpuncher flung after him derisively.

Then to me: "Throw a jolt uh Bourbon into yuh, kid, and you'll feel better. Yuh made a good fight. But let me tell yuh somethin'. Go heeled.

And when one uh these rough-necked fist-fighters jumps yuh, ventilate him. Show your claws a time or two, and these would-be bad actors'll leave yuh strictly alone. Say, Mr. Bar-slave let's have one _p.r.o.nto_."

Three or four of them picked up the carca.s.s of the _Moon's_ mate and lugged it unceremoniously out to a rear room, and then the crowd lined up at the bar, the play at the wheel went on, the men at the faro-table who had turned on their stools to watch the fight again began to place their bets. Life ran too full and strong there to be long disturbed by the pa.s.sing of any man.