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Plain Mary Smith: A Romance of Red Saunders

<h2>VIII</h2> <h3>ARCHIE OUT OF ASPINWALL</h3> The thing I recall clearest, when we dropped anchor at Aspinwall, was a small boat putting off to us, and a curly yellow head suddenly popping up over the rail, followed by the rest of a six-foot whole man. That was Jimmy Holton, my future boss. Him and Jesse swore how glad they was to see each other, and pump-handled and pounded each other on the back, whilst I sized the newcomer up. He was my first specimen of real West-Missouri-country man; I liked the breed from that minute. He was a cuss, that Jimmy. When he looked at you with the twinkle in them blue eyes of his, you couldn't help but laugh. And if there wasn't a twinkle in those eyes, and you laughed, you made a mistake. Thunder! but he was a sight to take your eye—the reckless, handsome, long-legged scamp! With his yellow silk handkerchief around his neck, and his curls of yellow hair—pretty as a woman's—and his sombrero canted back—he looked as if he was made of mountain-top fresh air. "Well, Jesse!" says he; "well, Jess, you durned old porpoise! You look as hearty as usual, and still wearing your legs cut short, I see; but what the devil have you been doing to your boat?" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus7.jpg" alt=""/></div> <h3>"'Still wearing your legs cut short, I see'"</h3> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> So then Jesse told him about the tornado. Jimmy's eyes were taking the whole place in, although he listened with care. "Well, what brings you aboard, Jim!" says Jesse. "I'm looking for a man," says Jimmy. "I want a white man; a good, kind, orderly sort of white man that'll do what he's told without a word, and'll bust my head for me if I dast curse him the way I do the pups working for me now." "H'm!" says Jesse, sliding me a kind of underneath-the-table glance. "What's the line of work?" "Why, the main job is to be around and look and act white. I got too durned much to see to—there's the ranch and the mine and the store—that drunken ex-college professor I hired did me to the tune of fifteen hundred cold yellow disks and skipped. You see, I want somebody to tell, 'Here, you look after this,' and he won't tell me that ain't in the lesson. Ain't you got a young feller that'll grow to my ways? I'll pay him according to his size." "H'm!" says Jesse again, jerking a thumb toward me. "There's a boy you might do business with." Jim's head come around with the quickness that marked him. Looking into that blue eye of his was like looking into a mirror—you guessed all there was to you appeared in it. He had me estimated in three fifths of a second. "Howdy, boy!" says he, coming toward me with his hand out. "My name's Jim Holton. You heard the talk—what do you think?" I looked at him for a minute, embarrassed. "I don't seem to be able to think," says I. "Lay it out again, will you? I reckon the answer is yes." "It sure is," says he. "It's got to be. What's your name?" He showed he liked me—he wasn't afraid to show anybody that he liked 'em—or didn't. "Bill," says I—"Bill Saunders." "Now Heaven is kind!" says he. "I hadn't raised my hopes above a Sam or a Tommy, but to think of a strapping, blue-eyed, brick-topped, bully-boy Bill! Bill!" he says, "can you guess Old Man Noah's feelings when the little bird flew up to him with the tree in his teeth? Well, he'll seem sad alongside of me when I catch sight of that sunrise head of yours above my gang of mud-colored greasers and Chinamen. You owe it to charity to give me that pleasure. By the way, William, if you should see a greaser flatten his ears back and lay a hand on his knife, what would you do—read him a chapter of the Bible, or kick him in the belt?" I thought this over. "I don't know," says I. "I never saw anybody do that." "Bill," says he, "I'm getting more and more contented with you. I thought at first you might be quarrelsome. You don't fight, do you?" "Well," I says, flustered, "not to any great extent—not unless I get mad, or the other feller does something, or I feel I ought to, or—" "'Nough said," says he. "There's reasons enough to keep the peace of Europe. I have observed, Bill, in this and many other countries, that dove-winged peace builds her little nest when I hit first and hardest. I tell you, on the square, I'll use you right as long as you seem to appreciate it. That's my line of action, and I can prove it by Jesse—I can prove anything by Jesse. No; but, honest, boy, if you come with me, there's little chance for us to bunk as long as you do your share. And," he says, sizing me up, "if an accident should happen, when you've got more meat on that frame of yours, be durned if I don't believe it would be worth the trouble." "Explain to him," says Jesse; "the boy's just away from his ma—he don't know nothing about working out." Jim turned to me, perfectly serious—he was like Sax—joke as long as it was joking-time, then drop it and talk as straight as a rifle-barrel. "I want a right-hand man of my own country," he says. "You'll have to watch gangs of men to see they work up; keep an eye on what goes out from the stores; beat the head off the first beggar you see abusing a horse; and do what I tell you, generally. For that, I'll put one hundred United States dollars in your jeans each and every month we're together, unless you prove to be worth more—or nothing. I won't pay less, for the man in the job that ain't worth a hundred ain't worth a cent—how's it hit you!" A hundred dollars a month! It hit me so hard my teeth rattled. "Well," I stammers, "a hundred dollars is an awful lot of money—you ain't going to find the worth of it in my hide—I don't know about bossing men and things like that—why, I don't know anything—" He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. He had a smile as sweet as a woman's. He was as nice as a woman, on his good side—and you'd better keep that side toward you. Him and Sax was of a breed there, too. I understood him better from knowing Sax. "Billy boy," he says, "that's my funeral. I've dealt with men some years. I don't ask you for experience: I ask you for intentions. I get sick, living with a lot of men that don't care any more about me than I do about them—that ain't living. You can clear your mind. I like your looks. If I've made a mistake, why, it's a mistake, and we'll part still good friends. If I haven't made a mistake, it won't take you long to learn what I want you to know, and I'll get the worth of my time training a good pup—is it a go, son?" I was so delighted I took right hold of his hand. "I begin to hope you and me will never come to words," said he as he straightened his fingers out. I blundered out an apology. He reached up and rubbed my hair around. "There was heart in that grip, son," he said. "You needn't excuse that." Just then Mary came on deck and he saw her. He whistled under his breath. "That the kind of cargo you carry now, Jess?" he asked. "I'll take all you got off your hands at your own price." "Like to know her?" says Jesse. "She's going to teach in one of them mission schools at Panama. You'll see her again, likely." "I suppose she ought to be consulted," says Jim; "but I'll waive ceremony with you, Jesse." So they went aft to where Mary stood, a little look of expectancy on her face. She'd been about to join Sax, but seeing the two come, didn't like to move, as it was evident they had something to say to her. Jesse and Jim made a curious team. Jesse flew along on his little trotters, whilst Jim swung in a long, easy cat-stride, three foot and a half to the pace. Jesse always looked kind of tied together loose. Jim was trim as a race-horse—yet not finicky. His spurs rattled on the deck. Take him from boots to scalp-lock, he was a pretty picture of a man. "Miss Smith," says Jesse, with a bob, "this feller's Jim Holton." "And very glad that he is, for once in his life," says Jim, sweeping the deck with his hat, and looking compliments. Mary smiled just enough to make the dimples count. They were best of the dimple family—not fat dimples, but little spots you'd like to own. She wasn't the girl to take gaiety from a stranger; but, somehow, Jim showed for what he was—a clean heart, if frolicsome. Mary was a match for him, all right. She made him as deep a bow, gave him a look, and in a mock-earnest way, with her hand on her heart, said: "Am I to suppose myself the cause of so much joy?" "You're not to suppose—you're to know," says Jim. "Well," says Mary, with another flying look at him, "it doesn't seem possible; but the evidence of such very truthful and very blue, blue eyes"—she stopped and looked at the eyes—"is, of course, beyond questioning." That knocked Jimmy. Underneath his dash, he was a modest fellow, and to have his personal appearance remarked openly rattled him. Mary'd got the war on his territory in two seconds. He looked at her, dumb; until, seeing her holding back her laughter by means of a row of the whitest of teeth set into the most interesting of under lips, he laughed right out and offered his hand. "I'll simply state in plain English," he says, not wanting to quit whipped, "that you are the best use those eyes have ever been put to." "That's entirely satisfactory," says Mary. "I'd have a bad disposition not to be contented with that—and, Mr. Holton, here's a friend of mine—Mr. Saxton." Saxton was the only one who hadn't drawn entertainment out of the previous performance. He and Holton shook hands without smiles. It was more like the hand-shake before "time" is called. But they looked each other square in the eye—honest enemies, at least—not like the durned brute—well, he comes later. There they stood; fine, graceful, upstanding huskies, both; each as handsome as the other, in his own way; each as able as the other, in his own way; one black and poetic-looking; the other fair and romantic-looking. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Sax knew more of books; Jim knew more of men. Sax knew the wild lands of music and such; Jim had slept with an Injun or two watching out to be sure he wasn't late for the office the next morning. Either one was plenty durn good enough to make a girl fix her hair straight. And there stood Mary, the cause of the look each man put upon the other. She'd brought down Jim in one stroke—he was a sudden sort of jigger. Well, there she stood; and if there's anything in having a subject worth fighting for, those two fellers ought to have been the happiest of men. I'm glad I can add this: Mary didn't want any man to fight about her—not much! She was the real, true woman; the kind that brings hope in her hand. Of course she had some vanity, and if two fellows got a little cross when she was around, that wouldn't break her heart; but to arouse any deep feeling of anger between two men—why, I honestly believe she'd rather they'd strike her than each other. Oh, no! She stood for nothing of that kind. She stood heart and soul for light and fun and kindness. If she made mistakes, it was from a natural underrating of how the other party felt, or, like her worst mistake, through some twisted idea of duty. There's a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that's particularly true of women. When a good woman gets hold of half a fact, she can raise the very devil with it. That two felt disposed to glare put restraint on conversation, and after some talk, in which Jim fished for an invitation to call on Mary in Panama, and got what you might call a limited order—"I shall be very glad to see you, sometime, Mr. Holton"—he turned and treated me to a view of Western methods. "Pack your turkey and come with me, Bill," he says. "What—now?" says I. "Well, I'll wait, if you want me to," he says. "But what's your reason?" "Not any," says I, and skipped for my truck. Isn't it surprising how people, even boys, that ain't much troubled about fixed rules, will keep on going the same old way; not because there's sense, comfort, nor profit in it, but simply because it is the same old way? I've known folks to live in places and keep at jobs, hating both, could quit easily, yet staying on and on, simply because they were there yesterday. I've got so that if people start talking over an act, I feel like saying, "For Heaven's sake! Let's try it and then we'll know," while at the same time it happens that their talk is so good, I feel bashful about cutting in. Give me the Western idea. People that get an action on, instead of an oration. That is, if they're the right kind of people. Yet I dearly love to talk. It's a strange world! Jimmy was the Western idea on two legs. The moment he thought of a thing, he grew busy. And when work was over, I'd talk him against any man I ever met. Perhaps the chief difference between the Western man's way and the Eastern man's way is that the Westerner says it's fun and believes it, whilst the Easterner says it's a great and holy undertaking he's employed in, and wastes lots of time trying to believe it. We all do the things we like to do, and we might as well admit it, cheerful. I hadn't much more than time to say good-by all around, and find out where Sax and Mary were going to stay, before I was off on the new deal. "Have you ever ridden a horse?" Jim asks me, when we hit shore. "Never," says I. "Well," says he, rubbing his head, "we can go across on the railroad, but I'd like to stop here and there. It wouldn't be so bad if the good critters hadn't been all hired out or bought this last rush. As it is, you stand to get on to something that don't want you. My Pedro'd eat you alive if you laid a hand on him, or I'd trade with you—you got to learn sometime, Bill, but you'll get a tough first lesson here—suppose we take the train, eh?" Now, I hadn't come to the Isthmus of Panama to exhibit all the things I was afraid of. I didn't like the thought of playing puss-in-the-corner with a horse I'd never met before, a little bit, and I liked the idea of backing out still less. "Trot your animal out," I says. "I guess, if I get a hold on him, we won't separate for a while." Jim rubbed his head again. "I don't want to lose you right in the start," he says. "These mustangs are the most reliable hunks of wickedness on earth—" "All I need to try and ride is a horse," I says. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I won't quarrel with that spirit," he says. He spoke to a native in Spanish. The feller looked at me and spread both hands. I scarcely knew there was such a thing as a Spanish language, but I knew that those hands said, "This is the impossible you have shoved down my chimney." Jim translated. "He says he can't think of but one brute, and he can't imagine you and that one making any kind of combination." "If you're keeping me here to see my sand run out, you'll make it, all right," I says—"otherwise, get that horse." Jim spoke to the native and the native looked at me again, shaking his head sorrowful. At last he discarded all responsibility and ambled off. Here come my gallant steed. His neck had a haughty in-curve; he was bow-legged forrud, and knock-kneed aft. His hips stuck out so far the hair couldn't get the nourishment it needed, and fell out. He had a nose like Julius Cæsar, an under lip that hung down three inches, and the eye of a dying codfish. I lost all fear of him at once. Ignorance is the papa of courage. According to instructions, I put my left foot in the stirrup and made ready to board. At that instant my trusty steed whipped his head around like a rattlesnake, gathered a strip of flesh about six inches long, shut his eyes, and made his teeth to approach each other. I've been hurt several times in my life, but for straight agony give me a horse-bite. With a yell that brought out every revolutionist in Aspinwall,—which means the town was there,—I grabbed that cussed brute by the windpipe and stopped his draft. Jim and the native made some motions. "Keep out of this!" I hollered. "This is my fight!" So then me and my faithful horse began to see who could stand it the longest. There was nothing soul-stirring and uplifting about the contest. He pinched my leg, and I pinched his throat. He kicked me, and I kicked him. We wrastled all over the place, playing plain stick-to-him-Pete. The worst of having a hand-to-hand with an animal is that he don't tire. You get weaker and weaker; they get stronger and stronger. Besides, the pain in my leg almost seemed to stop my heart. Murder! how it hurt! At the same time, a horse doesn't do as well without an occasional breath of fresh air, and I had this feller's supply cut off short. Pretty soon he got frantic, and the way he tore and r'ared around there was a treat. It didn't occur to either one of us to let go. Finally, when I'd ceased to think entirely, there came a staggering sort of fall; hands took hold of me and dragged me away. Jim lifted my head and gave me a drink of water. He swore at himself ferocious, and by all that was great and powerful, lie was going to shoot that horse. By this time I was interested in the art of riding. I told him he wasn't going to kill my horse; that I intended to ride that same mustang out of the town of Aspinwall if it took some time and all of my left leg. "What's the good of being a fool?" says he. "Now, Bill, you be sensible." "Where's the horse?" says I. He had to laugh. "United you fell," says he. "I honest think he hadn't a cent the best of it." I got on my feet and made for Mr. Mustang. As the critter stood there, with his sad lower lip hanging slack, thinking what a wicked world it was, I recalled who he looked like. He was the dead ringer for Archibald Blavelt, back home. Archie was such a mean old cuss that the neighborhood was proud of him—he carried it 'way beyond the point where it was a disgrace. I should have known better than to tackle anything that resembled Archie, but I didn't. Instead, I walked up, club in hand, waiting for the mustang to make a crooked move. He paid no attention, let me put my foot in the stirrup, swing aboard and settle down. Not till then did he toss his head gaily in the air and holler for joy. You see, he'd made out that we were likely to break even, both on the ground, so he tried getting under me. I refuse to say what happened next. I thought I was aboard the Matilda with the tornado on. I saw, in jerks, pale-faced men scrambling right up the sides of houses; women shrieking and dusting away from there, and between thirty and forty thousand dogs, barking and snapping and tumbling out of the way. I laid two strong hands on Archie's (I called him Archie) mane and wrapped my legs around his barrel and gave myself up for lost. We spent years tearing that section of Aspinwall to pieces, till, all of a sudden, Archie give a jump that landed me on his rump and pulled out for more room. And didn't he go! It was scandalous, the way he flapped them bony legs of his. Once in a while he kicked up behind, and I made a fine bow. Every time that happened some polite Spaniard took off his hat to me, thinking I was a friend he hadn't time to recognize. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus8.jpg" alt=""/></div> <h3>"I laid two strong hands on Archie's mane"</h3> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> I stayed with that mustang, somehow, until we come to a narrow alley. At the end of it a fearful fat Spaniard, with a Panama hat and a green umbrella, was crossing. I hollered to him to get out of the way, but the sight of me and Archie streaming in the breeze surprised him so he stood paralyzed. He made a fat man's hop for safety, too late. When we were fifteen feet from him, Archie threw a hand-spring, and I put my head, like a red buttonhole bouquet, plumb in the gentleman's vest. "Assassin!" he cries, and fetches me a wipe with the green umbrella before he expires temporarily on the street. Of course, there's lots of things will damage you worse than butting a stout gentleman; at the same time I went at him quick, and stopped quicker. This world was all a dizzy show, till the crowd came up, Jim, on his Pedro, leading. They were all there: all the revolutionists, all the women with babies, and all the dogs, down to the last pup. I couldn't have had a bigger audience if I'd done something to be proud of. Some of 'em held on to the fat gentleman, who was yearning to draw my heart's blood with the green umbrella. Some of 'em stood and admired Archie, who was smacking his lips over some grass that grew on the side, and looked about as vicious as Mary and her little lamb; some of 'em come to help me—all conversed freely. "Now, darn your buttons!" says Jim, "you might have been killed! Hadn't been for Señor Martinez there, you would 'a' been. Didn't I tell you not to try it again—didn't I?" It was quite true he had told me that very thing. At the same time, one of the least consoling things in this world, when a man's made a fool of himself, is to have somebody come up and tell him he prophesied it. You'd like to think it just happened that way. It breaks your heart to feel it's like twice two. I sat up and looked at Jim. "You told me all that," says I, "but what's the matter with letting virtue be its own reward?" Jim laughed and said he guessed I was not quite done yet. Then he introduced me to Mr. Martinez as the grateful result of a well-lined stomach applied at the proper time. Martinez sheathed the green umbrella and extended the hand of friendship, like the Spanish gentleman he was. "Ah me!" says he, "but you ride with furiosity! And," he adds thoughtfully, "your head is of a firmness." He waved his hand so the diamonds glittered like a shower. "A treefle—a leetle, leetle treeful," by which he meant trifle. "Now," says he, as if we'd finished some important business, "shall we resuscitate?" Jim said we would, so the whole crowd moved to where Santiago Christobal Colon O'Sullivan gave you things that lightened the shadows for the time being, and proceeded to resuscitate. Inside, Mr. Martinez the Stout told the whole story between drinks. He was the horse, or me, or himself, or the consequences, as occasion required. I'd have gone through more than that to see Mr. Martinez gallop the length of the saloon, making it clear to us how Archie acted. And when he was me, darned if he didn't manage to look like me, and when he was Archie he seemed to thin out and grow bony hip-joints immediately; Archie'd nickered at sight of him. How in blazes a three-hundred-pound Spanish gentleman contrived to resemble a thin, red-headed six-foot-two New England kid and a bow-necked, cat-hammed mustang is an art beyond me. He did it; let it go at that. Outside, the men went over it all. The women dropped their babies in the street, so they could have their hands free to talk. I think even the dogs took a shy at the story. Never were folks so interested. And, strange to Yankee eyes, not a soul laughed. I learned then the reason why the Spanish-American incorporated the revolution in his constitution. It's because of the scarcity of theaters. If there was a theater for every ten inhabitants, and plays written where everybody was a king, peace would settle on Spanish America like a green scum on a frog-pond. Howsomever, I ain't going to jeer at those people. I got to like 'em, and, as far as that goes, we have little fool ways of our own that we notice when we get far enough away from home to see straight. I didn't ride Archie out of Aspinwall. I went to a hotel, slept strictly on one side, and scrapped it out with the little natives of the Isthmus until morning. Curious, how things go. After this first experience I shouldn't have said that riding a horse would grow on me until being without one made me feel as if I'd lost the use of my legs. Water is all right. I like boats—I like about everything—but still, I think the Almighty never did better by man than when he put him on a horse. A good horse, open country—miles of it, without a stick or hole—a warm sun and a cool wind—can you beat it? I can't. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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