The Mammoth Book of Westerns Page 11

  When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair, where she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes. He filled the stove with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcohol and put the bottle in his pocket. He paused a moment, staring heavily at the weeping girl, then he went off and locked the door and disappeared in the gathering gloom of the night.

  Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegian preacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a thundering knock at his door, and Canute entered, covered with snow and with his beard frozen fast to his coat.

  “Come in, Canute, you must be frozen,” said the little man, shoving a chair towards his visitor.

  Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, “I want you to come over to my house tonight to marry me to Lena Yensen.”

  “Have you got a license, Canute?”

  “No, I don’t want a license. I want to be married.”

  “But I can’t marry you without a license, man. It would not be legal.”

  A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian’s eye. “I want you to come over to my house to marry me to Lena Yensen.”

  “No, I can’t, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this, and my rheumatism is bad tonight.”

  “Then if you will not go I must take you,” said Canute with a sigh.

  He took down the preacher’s bearskin coat and bade him put it on while he hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the door softly after him. Presently he returned and found the frightened minister crouching before the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: “Your horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. I will lead him.”

  The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily beside him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He had no idea where they were or what direction they were going. He felt as though he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he said all the prayers he knew. But at last the long four miles were over, and Canute set him down in the snow while he unlocked the door. He saw the bride sitting by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as though she had been weeping. Canute placed a huge chair for him, and said roughly,

  “Warm yourself.”

  Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister to take her home. He looked helplessly at Canute. Canute said simply,

  “If you are warm now, you can marry us.”

  “My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?” asked the minister in a trembling voice.

  “No sir, I don’t, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it! I won’t marry him.”

  “Then, Canute, I cannot marry you,” said the minister, standing as straight as his rheumatic limbs would let him.

  “Are you ready to marry us now, sir?” said Canute, laying one iron hand on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physical suffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms of conscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening with his head bent reverently and his hands folded on his breast. When the little man had prayed and said amen, Canute began bundling him up again.

  “I will take you home, now,” he said as he carried him out and placed him in his buggy, and started off with him through the fury of the storm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought even the giant himself to his knees.

  After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of a particularly sensitive temperament, and had little pride beyond that of vanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she felt nothing more than a healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She had no inclination to run away, for she was married now, and in her eyes that was final and all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing about a license, but she knew that a preacher married folks. She consoled herself by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canute someday, anyway.

  She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got up and began to look about her. She had heard queer tales about the inside of Canute’s shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better of her rage. One of the first things she noticed was the new black suit of clothes hanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take a vain woman long to interpret anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased in spite of herself. As she looked through the cupboard, the general air of neglect and discomfort made her pity the man who lived there.

  “Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get somebody to wash up his dishes. Batchin’s pretty hard on a man.”

  It is easy to pity when once one’s vanity has been tickled. She looked at the window sill and gave a little shudder and wondered if the man were crazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long time wondering what her Dick and Ole would do.

  “It is queer Dick didn’t come right over after me. He surely came, for he would have left town before the storm began and he might just as well come right on as go back. If he’d hurried he would have gotten here before the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for he knew Canuteson could pound him to jelly, the coward!” Her eyes flashed angrily.

  The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It was an uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the window sills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou’s white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake skins whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred the door.

  “Canute, Canute!” she screamed in terror.

  Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog getting up and shaking himself. The door opened and Canute stood before her, white as a snow drift.

  “What is it?” he asked kindly.

  “I am cold,” she faltered.

  He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of cobs and filled the stove. Then he went out and lay in the snow before the door. Presently he heard her calling again.

  “What is it?” he said, sitting up.

  “I’m so lonesome, I’m afraid to stay in here all alone.”

  “I will go over and get your mother.” And he got up.

  “She won’t come.”

  “I’ll bring her,” said Canute grimly.

  “No, no. I don’t want her, she will scold all the time.”

  “Well, I will bring your father.”

  She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to the key hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak before, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear her.

  “I don’t want him either, Canute – I’d rather have you.”

  For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute stretched in the snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the door step.

  B. M. BOWER

  Bad Penny

  B. M. BOWER (1871–1940) was a leading writer of Westerns during the early part of the century. The initials hid the identity of a woman: Bertha Muzzy Bower. She was born in Minnesota, but later experienced the West firsthand when she moved to Montana. Over the course of her career – she was the first woman to make a living from writing popular Westerns – B
ower wrote 72 Western novels, the most famous of which is Chip, Of the Flying U (1906). As well as Western stories, Bower wrote the screenplay for several silent Western films, including King of the Rodeo (1929). Her own stories were widely adapted by Hollywood in the 1910s and 1920s.

  The story “Bad Penny” (1933) is from Argosy and features Chip and the cowboys of the Flying U on a cattle drive. As with much of Bower’s Western fiction the picture it presents of the West is a romantic one. The character of Chip is reputedly based on the famous Western painter, Charles Russell, who illustrated several of Bower’s books.

  THE FLYING U beef herd toiled up the last heart-breaking hill and crawled slowly out upon the bench. Under the low-hanging dust cloud which trailed far out behind, nothing much could be seen of the herd save the big, swaying bodies and the rhythmically swinging heads of the leaders. Stolid as they looked, steadily as they plodded forward under the eagle eye of the point man, the steers were tired. Dust clogged blinking eyelashes, dust was in their nostrils, dust lay deep along their backs. The boys on left flank rode with neckerchiefs pulled up over their noses, yet they were not the most unfortunate riders on the drive, for the fitful gusts of wind lifted the gray cloud occasionally and gave them a few clean breaths.

  Back on the drag where the dust was thickest, the man they called Penny choked, gasped, and spat viciously at the hindmost steer. He pulled off a glove and rubbed his aching, bloodshot eyes with bare fingertips, swearing a monotonous litany meanwhile, praying to be delivered from his present miseries and from any and all forms of cowpunching. Let him once live through this damnable day and he promised – nay, swore by all the gods he could name – that he’d chase himself into town and buy himself a barrel of whiskey and a barrel of beer and camp between the two of them until he had washed the dust out of his system.

  Shorty, who was wagon boss during beef roundup for Jim Whitmore and had stopped half a mile back to gossip with a rancher out hunting his horses, galloped up in time to hear this last picturesque conception of a heaven on earth.

  “Make it two barrels while you’re about it,” he advised unsympathetically. “You’ll get ’em just as easy as you will a bottle.” He laughed at his own humor – a thing Penny hated in any man – and rode on up to the point where he could help swing the herd down off the bench to the level creek bottom that was their present objective.

  Penny renewed his cussing and his coughing and looked across at Chip Bennett, who was helping to push the tired drag along.

  “You hear what that damn son-of-a-gun told me?” he called out. And when Chip nodded with the brief grin that he frequently gave a man instead of words, Penny swung closer. “You know what he done to me, don’t yuh? Put me on day herd outa my turn – and don’t ever think I don’t see why he done it. So’s I wouldn’t get a chance to ride into town tonight. Gone temperance on me, the damn double-crosser. You heard him make that crack about me not gettin’ a bottle uh beer, even? Runnin’ a wagon has sure went to Shorty’s head!”

  “I don’t think it’s that altogether.” Chip tried to soothe him. “You want to remember—”

  Penny cut in on the sentence. “Remember what happened last time we shipped, I s’pose. Well, that ain’t got nothin’ to do with this time. I ain’t planning to get owl-eyed this time and raise hell like I done before. I swore off three weeks ago, and Shorty knows it. I ain’t had a drop fer three weeks.”

  Chip wheeled his horse to haze a laggard steer into line, and so hid his grin. Penny’s swearing off liquor three weeks ago was a joke with the Flying U outfit. The pledge had followed a spree which no one would soon forget. For Penny had not only shot up the new little cow town of Dry Lake and stood guard in the street afterward watching for someone to show his nose outside – to be scared out of his senses by Penny’s reckless shooting and his bloodcurdling war whoops – but he had been hauled to camp in the bed wagon next day, hog-tied to prevent his throwing himself out and maybe breaking his neck.

  It was after he had recovered that he swore he never would touch another drop of anything stronger than Patsy’s coffee. Those who had known him the longest laughed the loudest at that vow, and Shorty was one of them; though he, being lord of the roundup, had to preserve discipline and do his laughing in secret.

  “It sure is tough back here,” Chip conceded when the cattle were once more strung out and the two rode alongside again. “Cheer up, Penny. It’ll be all the same a hundred years from now.” And he added, when he saw signs of another outbreak in the grimed face of Penny, “Anyway, we’ll all be in town tomorrow.”

  “If not before,” Penny said darkly. “T’morra don’t help me none right now.” He whacked a dusty red steer into line with his quirt. “What grinds me is to have Shorty take the stand he does; slappin’ me on herd outa my turn, like as if he was scared I might break out agin – Why, blast his lousy hide, I ain’t got any idee of goin’ in to town before t’morra when we load out. Er, I didn’t have,” he amended querulously. “Not till he went to work and shoved me on herd, just to keep me outa sight of the damn burg as long as he could.” He stood in the saddle to ease the cramp in his legs. “Why, hell! If I wanted to go get me a snootful, it’d take more’n that to stop me!”

  Still standing in the stirrups, he gazed longingly ahead over the rippling sea of dusty, marching cattle and swore again because the dust shut out the town from his straining sight. Miles away though it was, from this high benchland it would be clearly visible under normal conditions. The men on point could see the little huddle of black dots alongside the pencil line of railroad, he knew that.

  “You know damn well, Chip,” he complained, settling down off-center in the saddle so that one foot swung free, “that ain’t no way to treat a man that’s reformed and swore off drinkin’.”

  “Well, you don’t have to stay back here on the drag eating dust,” Chip pointed out. “Why don’t you get up front awhile? You can probably see town if you ride point awhile, Penny. And another thing; you don’t want to take this day-herding too personal. With Jack sick, somebody had to go on outa turn.”

  “Sick nothin’!” Penny snorted. “I know when a man’s playin’ off. Jack shore ain’t foolin’ me a damn bit. And, anyway, Shorty didn’t have to go and pick on me.”

  Chip gave up the argument and swung back to bring up a straggler. Today they were not grazing the herd along as was their custom. The midsummer dry spell had made many a water hole no more than a wallow of caked mud, and most of the little creeks were bone dry. This was in a sense a forced drive, the day herders pushing the herd twice the usual distance ahead so that they would camp that night on the only creek for miles that had water running in it. That it lay within easy riding distance of town was what worried Penny.

  Privately Chip thought Shorty had shown darned good sense in putting Penny on day herd. He’d have to stand guard that night – probably the middle guard, if he were taking Jack Bates’s place – and that would keep him out of temptation, at least until after the cattle were loaded, when a little backsliding wouldn’t matter so much. Whereas, had he been left to his regular routine, Penny would be lying around camp right now wishing he dared sneak off to town. He would have the short guard at the tail end of the afternoon, and at dusk he would have been relieved from duty until morning. With town so close it was easy to guess what Penny would have done with those night hours.

  As it was, Penny would have no idle time save the two or three hours of lying around camp after the herd had been thrown on water. Then he’d have to sleep until he was called for middle guard. In the morning the whole outfit would be called out, and they’d be hard at it till the last steer was prodded into the last car and the door slid shut and locked. Then there would be more than Penny racing down to where they could wash the dust from their throats. No, Jack did get sick right at the exact time when it would keep Penny from getting drunk when he was most needed. A put-up job, most likely. Shorty wasn’t so slow after all.

  “We’ll be down off the
bench and on water in another hour,” Chip yelled cheeringly when he came within shouting distance of Penny again.

  Penny had turned sullen and he made no reply to that. He rode with both hands clasped upon the saddle horn, one foot swinging free of its stirrup, and a cigarette waggling in the corner of his mouth. His hat was pulled low over his smarting eyes, squinted half shut against the smothering dust that made his face as gray as his hat.

  Not once during the remainder of the drive did he open his lips except when he coughed and spat out dust or when he swore briefly at a laggard steer. And Chip, being the tactful young man he was, let him alone to nurse his grudge. He did not sympathize with it, however, for Chip was still filled with a boyish enthusiasm for the picturesque quality of the drive. Even the discomfort of riding on the drag, with twelve hundred beef cattle kicking dust into his face, could not make him feel himself the martyr that Penny did.

  For that reason and the fact that he never had felt the drunkard’s torment of thirst, Chip certainly failed to grasp the full extent of Penny’s resentment. He thought it was pretty cute of Shorty to fix it so that Penny couldn’t get to town ahead of the herd. He had simply saved Penny from making seventeen kinds of a fool of himself and maybe kept him from losing his job as well. Let him sulk if he wanted to. He’d see the point when it was all over with and they were headed back onto the range again after another herd.