The Sunset Trail

“Because, d’ye see,” said Rattlesnake, “take it every way from the jack, I wouldn’t miss marryin’ Calamity if it meant breakin’ a dozen laigs. I think we’d better let her have her way, Cimarron. You don’t know girls like I do; but the fact is, you allers want to humour ’em in little things so’s to have your own way in big ones. You call her in, Cimarron, an’ tell her she’s plumb right about this fool laig.”

In the teeth of this specious argument, Cimarron still persisted with his objections. He said that the attitude of Miss Barndollar was born of vanity. He pointed out that the much debated leg was as straight as a gun barrel. He re-told the insult put upon himself in the epithet of empiric. Constantly, he hinted that untold good lay behind his present obstinacy, and that Rattlesnake would admit his gratitude therefore in days to come. He closed by suggesting that they send for Mr. Masterson.

With a talent for compromise, and prone to middle paths, Mr. Masterson believed that, inasmuch as a fortnight had already elapsed, Miss Barndollar ought not to object to the leg continuing as it then was. Rattlesnake Sanders would give his promise to have the leg instantly refractured in event of any final queerness.

Upon this proposal being carried to Miss Barndollar by Jack, who was delegated to the trust by Rattlesnake and Mr. Masterson, she called that youth a “cub prairie dog” and demanded his authority for meddling with two throbbing hearts. Jack, deeply chagrined, pled the commission of Rattlesnake and Mr. Masterson. Miss Barndollar wept, and Jack, being mercurial and a child of active sympathies, wept with her. In the end Miss Barndollar dried her eyes, kissed Jack and bid him return to the callous Rattlesnake and say that she had cast him out of her heart forever.

“Tell him,” said Miss Barndollar, “that he has shown himse’f keerless of my feelin’s an’ I’m mighty lucky to be saved in time.”

Cimarron Bill wore a brow of cloudy victory when Jack made his report, while Rattlesnake Sanders swore in a discouraged way. As for Mr. Masterson, he counseled Rattlesnake to be of cheer, and gave it as his belief that Miss Barndollar would come back to his arms in time. Mr. Masterson was on the brink of basing this conclusion on the fact that Miss Barndollar would not be able to find another who would have her, but caught himself on the verge. He said instead that she was only testing Rattlesnake’s love.

“Just let everything go as it lays,” concluded Mr. Masterson, consolingly, “and when you are out and around again, it’s two for one that you and Calamity’ll be like turtledoves.”

Rattlesnake said he hoped so, while Cimarron shook his head.

“That’s the luckiest laig you ever broke, Rattlesnake,” was the mysterious remark of Cimarron as the conference adjourned.

Rattlesnake Sanders, being recovered, invited the judgment of Mr. Masterson concerning his legs.

“What I wants,” explained Rattlesnake, “is an opinion at once onprejewdyced an’ offishul, an’ nacherally I asts Bat.”

Mr. Masterson, after a most critical survey of Rattlesnake from, as he himself expressed it, “foretop of fetlock,” gave his honour for it that nothing showed amiss.

“Your leg,” said Mr. Masterson, “is as straight as it ever was.”

“Straighter,” chimed in the confident Cimarron, who stood at his elbow. “Rattlesnake’s laigs, on account of bein’ frequent storm-soaked about the herds an’ then dried preematoorly by camp fires, was a heap warped. Now they’re as par’llel as two fiddle strings. I ain’t the gent to say it, seein’ I set that fracture myse’f, but it’s my view Rattlesnake’s laigs quits winner on the deal.”

These assurances gave mighty satisfaction to Rattlesnake Sanders. So much set up by them was he, that he sought a meeting with Miss Barndollar, meditating in her shell-like ear a loving word. The lady was in the Wright House kitchen, and observing her lover’s approach made haste to slam and bolt the door in his adoring face. Sinking under this rebuff, Rattlesnake withdrew to the Alhambra, and became grievously drunk.

The next day, Rattlesnake Sanders again attempted converse with his obdurate sweetheart as she was coming from Mr. Wright’s store. She repelled him with double scorn.

“Not bein’ desirous,” observed Miss Barndollar on this withering occasion, “of the attentions of no sech tarripin as you, I forbids you speakin’ to me now or yereafter.”

It is to be supposed that a deal of Miss Barndollar’s hardness was the growth of pique. Now that the unreasonable character of her surgical demands had been demonstrated, her resentment was multiplied. Also, because of this second effort at an interview, she complained to Mr. Masterson.

“Be you Sheriff of Ford I’d like for to ast?” she demanded.

“Why?” asked Mr. Masterson, humble but defensive. Mr. Masterson owned a hare’s heart where a woman was concerned, and his instinct was for the fugitive and the non-committal. Wherefore he put the query, being heedful to throw into his tone a propitiating quaver of apology: “Why? What’s fetched loose?”

“Nothin’,” returned Miss Barndollar, in her most icy manner, “only I dee-mands protection from that profligate.” Here she pointed a chilling finger at the forlorn Rattlesnake who, with head bowed and in an attitude of deepest dejection, stood leaning in the Long Branch door.

“Who, Rattlesnake?” returned Mr. Masterson, with a gentle purpose of reconciliation. “Why, he dotes on you! He loves you like a prairie fire.”

“Which the love,” said Miss Barndollar, with a sudden vehemence that sent shafts of terror to the soul of Mr. Masterson, “of sech miscreants is the worst outrage they can commit. I’m a weak female, an’ I dee-mands protection. Likewise, you’d better give it to me, Bat Masterson, or I’ll lay up trouble for your gray ha’rs.”

“Taking her up one side and down the other, Rattlesnake,” observed Mr. Masterson, in the confab which in deference to the threats of Miss Barndollar he deemed it wise to hold with that young man, “my notion is that you’d better hit the trail for the White Woman, an’ give Calamity a chance to cool. She’s a whole lot heated just now, but most likely in a month, or may be in two, it’ll be safe to say ‘Howdy!’ to her, and bid her the time of day.”

“Then you’d give her up?” asked the mournful Rattlesnake.

“Only for a spell,” replied Mr. Masterson, cheerfully. “But you see yourself there’s nothing to be gained by hankering ’round her at this time. The way she feels you couldn’t get near enough to her to hand her a ripe peach. Later, it’ll be different, and I shall hope to shake a moccasin at your wedding.”

Rattlesnake mused a moment, and then broke forth with unexpected spirit.

“Which I’ll take your steer, Bat. Also, it’s the last I’ll have to do with that Calamity. I shore should not regret surrenderin’ a lady so narrow as to hold that the only evidence a gent can give of his affection is to go about cripplin’ himse’f promiscus.”

“Now don’t come to any rash decisions,” urged the prudent Mr. Masterson. “Dodge wants those nuptials to come off, and if you’ll give Calamity time to round on herself, they will. She’s only a bit peevish with you for getting well, but that’ll fade away. You go back to your cattle, Rattlesnake, and leave me to ride herd on Calamity. The moment she begins to melt I’ll send you word.”

It has been the puzzle of every age that woman, with her infinite superiority over man in all that is morally, mentally and physically beautiful, should be seldom or never satisfied. Within three days after Rattlesnake Sanders rode away, Miss Barndollar met Mr. Masterson in the thoroughfares of Dodge and, with tears guttering her freckled cheeks, openly charged upon him the crime of their cruel separation.

“Rattlesnake’s the only gent I ever loved!” she sobbed, “an’ yere you onfeelin’ly cuts in an’ stampedes him out o’ my very arms.”

Mr. Masterson was somewhat discouraged, and extricated himself from the interview with what polite speed he might. None the less, about the roots of his soul he felt a self-gratulatory flutter. His remedy had worked; his advice was justified. He had recommended for the haughty coldness of Miss Barndollar a course of what Christian Scientists would describe as “absent treatment” and here was the lady yielding to it like a willow to the wind. Mr. Masterson had cause for exultation, and unbent moderately to that sentiment. Withal he was practical, and lost no time in moving to reunite the lovers. In this, however, Mr. Masterson was guilty of an error. He dispatched Cimarron to bring in Rattlesnake, when he should have sent the sympathetic Jack.

“Go over,” said Mr. Masterson to Cimarron, “and break the news to Rattlesnake. Tell him he wins, and that there’s nothing now to do but consider Calamity’s feelings.”

Cimarron Bill sullenly threw a saddle on a pony, and pointed away into the desolate north. His heart was not for this journey; it was to him as though he were summoning Rattlesnake not for his marriage but for his execution.

“Bat’s takin’ a heap on himse’f!” he muttered. “As for me; I washes my hands of the whole play.”

Mr. Masterson said afterward that Cimarron Bill, in that matter of the love-coil between Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake, betrayed a side of his character hitherto unknown. Mr. Masterson should have reflected. Never before had he been called upon to consider Cimarron while under what peculiar pressures were here exerted. Deep within the inner recesses of Cimarron’s nature, abode objections to matrimony as rooted as the hills.

“An’ in partic’lar,” Cimarron had observed, when once he mooted the subject with Mr. Short as part of a review they were then and there making of the conjugal experiences of Mr. McBride and Bridget, “an’ in partic’lar I contends that if the world must have sech things as matrimony, then no gent should be pinned down to jest one wife. An’ for this reason,” he continued, waving an impressive paw: “It ain’t good sense. Is it good farobank sense to put your whole bundle on one kyard? No. Then it ain’t good weddin’ sense for to resk your whole heart on one lady. She may fall to lose, an’ then where be you at? It’s my idee that if a party must go ag’inst this weddin’ game, he’ll be safer if he spreads his bets.”

Holding fast to these beliefs, Cimarron Bill rode forth full of an unconscious willingness to play the marplot. He would deliver the message of Mr. Masterson; but he would deliver it in such fashion that, when the worst occurred, as it hereafter – according to his thinking – must most certainly occur, he, Cimarron, could felicitate himself with the reflection that he had in no sort contributed towards bringing that worst about. He would bear the message of Mr. Masterson; he would also proffer warnings all his own. Should the locoed Rattlesnake then persist in riding open-eyed to Dodge and to destruction – why, his blood be on his head!

It was in this frame that Cimarron Bill sat down to flap-jacks with Rattlesnake Sanders that night at the latter’s camp on the White Woman. And this was the conversation that passed between the pair:

“I’ve been sent over to rope you up, Rattlesnake,” quoth Cimarron. “Calamity says you’re to wash off your warpaint an’ report at the agency.”

“Does she still adhere to them demands about bustin’ my laig?” asked Rattlesnake. “Not that it much matters,” he added hastily, for the doughty resolve to see no more of Miss Barndollar, expressed to Mr. Masterson, had long since oozed away, “not that it matters. The round-ups are eight weeks away, an’ I’d easy be able to ride by then.”

After this exchange the two munched wordless flapjacks, diversified by mouthfuls of salt pork. Rattlesnake Sanders broke the silence.

“Then I takes it we starts back by sun-up.”

“Rattlesnake,” observed Cimarron Bill, with a pompous solemnity that was not wanting in effect upon his auditor, “you’ve come to a bad, boggy, quicksand crossin’. My advice is not to jump your pony off the bank, but ride in slow.”

“As how?” asked Rattlesnake Sanders, somewhat mystified.

“You think I’m honest, don’t you?” demanded Cimarron.

“Shore, I think you’re honest,” returned Rattlesnake Sanders. Then, cautiously: “But still I allers sort o’ allowed you had you’re honesty onder control.”

“Well, this is the straight goods at any rate,” said Cimarron. “Thar’s two kinds of folks you must never surrender to: ladies an’ Injuns. Surrender to either is the shore preloode to torture. For you, now, to go surgin’ rapturously into Dodge, like a drunkard to a barbecue, would be the crownin’ disaster of your c’reer.”

“Whatever then should be my little game?”

“It’s this a-way: I said you can’t afford to surrender to Injuns an’ ladies. But you can make treaties with ’em. That gives you a chance to preeserve yourse’f for yourse’f. What you ought to do is plant yourse’f as solid as a gob of mud, an’ send back word that you’re thinkin’ it over.”

“But s’pose Calamity goes in the air, an’ says it’s all off?”

“That’s a resk no brave man should refoose to take. You want to remember that she slammed a door in your face; that she set Bat to run you out o’ camp.” These reminders clearly stiffened Rattlesnake Sanders. “For you to surrender, onconditional, would incite her to new crooelties that would lay over them former inhoomanities like a king-full lays over a pa’r of treys. Once,” went on Cimarron, who began to be intoxicated with his own eloquence, “once a party back in St. Looey shows me a picture of a man chained to a rock, an’ a turkey buzzard t’arin’ into him, beak an’ claw. He said it was a sport named Prometheus bein’ fed upon by vultures. In my pore opinion that party was barkin’ at a knot. The picture wasn’t meant for Prometheus an’ the vultures. The painter who daubs it had nothin’ on his mind but jest to show, pictor’ally, exactly what marriage is like. It was nothin’ more nor less than that gifted genius’ notion of a married man done in colours.”

This outburst so moulded the hopes and fears, especially the fears, of Rattlesnake that he gave himself completely to the guidance of Cimarron Bill.

“I’m to stand a pat hand,” said Rattlesnake tentatively, “an’ you’ll go cavortin’ back an’ tell Calamity I’ll let her know.”

“An’ yet,” interposed Cimarron Bill, “I think on that p’int I’d better be the bearer of a note in writin’. Ladies is plenty imaginative, an’ if I takes to packin’ in sech messages, verbal, Calamity may allow I’m lyin’ an’ lay for me.”

There was no material for letter-making about the camp. The ingenious Cimarron suggested an “Injun letter.” Acting on his own happy proposal he tore a small board from the top of a box that had held a dozen cans of corn, and set to work with charcoal. Cimarron Bill drew in one corner what might have passed for the sketch of a woman, while the center was adorned with an excited antelope in full flight, escaping over a ridge.

“I’ll mark the antelope, ‘Bar D’,” said Cimarron, “so’s she’ll know it’s you, Bar D bein’ your brand.”

“But whatever is Calamity to onderstand by them totems?”

“Nothin’ only that you’re goin’ to be a heap hard to ketch,” replied Cimarron. “It’ll teach her your valyoo.”

The antelope looked vastly like a disfigured goat, and the resemblance disturbed Rattlesnake.

“That’ll be all right,” returned Cimarron, confidently; “I’ll explain that it’s an antelope. All pictures has to be explained.”

When Cimarron Bill laid before Miss Barndollar the message embodied in that “Injun letter,” she was so swept away by woe that even the hardened messenger was shocked. More and worse: Miss Barndollar, with a lack of logic for which her sex has celebration, laid these new troubles, as she had the old, at the door of Mr. Masterson.

“You druv him from me!” cried Miss Barndollar, as she reproached Mr. Masterson with her loss. “In your heartlessness you druv him from me! An’ now, although Sheriff of this yere county, you fails to restore him to my heart.” Throughout that day and the next Miss Barndollar made it a practice to burst into tears at sight of Mr. Masterson. “Which I wants my Rattlesnake,” she wailed.

Mr. Masterson was turning desperate. This mood found display in an exclamation that was wrung from him while refreshing his weary soul in the Long Branch.

“There’s no use talking, Luke,” observed Mr. Masterson, turning in his despair to Mr. Short, “Dodge can’t stand this! Calamity must and shall be married! If Rattlesnake won’t have her, some other man must.”

In making this last remark Mr. Masterson let his glance fall by chance on Cimarron Bill. That determined person was startled to the core.

“You needn’t look at me!” he roared. “Which I gives notice I’ll never be married alive!”

“No one’s thinking of you, Cimarron.” retorted Mr. Masterson, and the suspicious one breathed more evenly.

Mr. Masterson and Mr. Short consulted in low tones across the counter. At last Mr. Short straightened up as one who is clear, and said:

“Calamity in effect offers herse’f to this Rattlesnake person, an’ he equiv’cates. Thar’s two things in this republic which no white man has a license to decline; one’s the presidency, an’ t’other’s a lady. This Rattlesnake has no rights left.”

“But,” said Mr. Masterson, hesitating over the point, “I don’t quite see my way clear – as Sheriff.”

“Speakin’ technicle, you’re c’rrect,” observed Mr. Short. “An’ it’s thar where you makes the shift. Nail him for shootin’ up Kell that time. You-all knows me, Bat,” continued Mr. Short. “I’m a mighty conserv’tive man, speshully about other folks’ love affairs. An’ yet I gives it as my jedgment that steps should be took.”

Mr. Masterson, bidding Cimarron Bill follow with a buckboard, started for the White Woman.

It was in the afternoon of the next day, and Rattlesnake Sanders was seated by his fire, wrapped in gloomy thought.

“Hands up!” was his earliest notice of the threatening nearness of Mr. Masterson who, dismounting two hundred yards away and beyond a swell, had crept cat-foot upon the camp. “Hands up! You’re wanted for creasing Kelly!”

Quick as thought, Rattlesnake was on his feet. In a moment his hand as though by instinct slipped to the butt of his Colt’s. Sharp as was his work, Mr. Masterson’s was even brisker. With the first shadow of resistance, he sent a bullet into Rattlesnake’s leg – the other leg. The shock sent the unlucky Rattlesnake spinning like a top. He fell at full length, and before he might pull himself together Mr. Masterson had him disarmed.

“What for a racket is this?” demanded Rattlesnake fiercely, when he had collected his wits and his breath. “What’s the meanin’ of this yere bluff?”

“Speaking unofficially,” returned Mr. Masterson, “it means that you’re about to become a married man. If you think Dodge will sit idly by while you break the heart of that child Calamity, you’re off.”

“Calamity!” exclaimed Rattlesnake, in a maze of astonishment. “Which I was jest tryin’ to figger out a way to squar’ myse’f with that angel when you plugged me! If you’d said ‘Calamity!’ instead of ‘Kelly’ it wouldn’t have called for a gun play. I’d have followed you back to town on all fours, like a collie dog.”

“Why didn’t you report, then, when I sent for you? What did you mean by sending in that infernal hieroglyphic?”

“Me an’ Cimarron was simply holdin’ out for guarantees,” groaned Rattlesnake.

“You and Cimarron!” cried Mr. Masterson indignantly.

From over a knoll a clatter was heard, and Cimarron Bill came rattling into camp with the buckboard. This may or may not have had to do with Mr. Masterson’s failure to finish his last remark. Possibly that adage, which tells of how soon things mend when least is said, occurred to him as a reason for holding his peace.

The perforated Rattlesnake was comfortably mowed away in a Wright House bed, his beloved Calamity bending over him. When the first joy of their meeting had been given time to wear itself away, the lady was called into the hall by Mr. Masterson. Mr. Short was with him.

“I don’t want to be understood, Calamity,” said Mr. Masterson, “as trying to crowd your hand, but the preacher will be here at 7 P. M., at which hour you and Rattlesnake are to become man and wife. That bullet is, I confess, an unusual feature in a honeymoon; but for all that the wedding must take place, per schedule, as I’ve got to get this thing off my mind.”

“As for that bullet in Rattlesnake,” added Mr. Short, “it’s a distinct advantage. It’ll make him softer an’ more sentimental. Which a gent gets sentimental in direct proportion as you shoot him up. I’ve known two bullets, properly planted, to set a party to writin’ poetry.”

“Do I onderstand, Bat,” asked Mr. Kelly, as following the wedding they were wending to the Alhambra with a plan to drink good fortune to the happy pair; “do I onderstand that you used my name in gunnin’ for this bridegroom?”

“That Calamity girl had me locoed,” explained Mr. Masterson apologetically. “I’d been harassed to a degree, Kell, that left me knockin’ ’round in the situation like a blind dog in a meat shop, hardly knowing right from wrong. All I wanted was to marry him to Calamity, and I seized on your name to land the trick.”

“Still,” objected Mr. Kelly, mildly, “you ought not to have founded the play on his wingin’ me. While I won’t say that his shootin’ me was in the best of taste that time, after all it wasn’t more’n a breach of manners, an’ not in any of its aspects, as I onderstand, a voylation of the law. It wasn’t fair to me to make him marry that Calamity lady for that.”

“Besides,” urged Cimarron Bill, who had come up, “them nuptials is onconstitootional, bein’ in deefiance of the clause which declar’s that no onusual or crooel punishments shall be meted out. Which I knows it’s thar, because Bob Wright showed it to me at the time I urged stoppin’ old Bobby Gill’s licker for a week to punish him for pesterin’ ’round among us mourners the day of Bridget’s fooneral.”

CHAPTER XII – DIPLOMACY IN DODGE

It was a subject of common regret when Mr. Masterson, as Sheriff of Ford, decided to resign. He had shown himself equipped for the position, being by nature cool and just and honest, and disposed to accuracy in all things, especially in his shooting. It was those laws prohibitive of the sale of strong drink throughout the State of Kansas that prompted the resignation of Mr. Masterson.

“The rounding up of horse thieves and hold-ups, Bob,” observed Mr. Masterson to Mr. Wright, “is legitimate work. And I don’t mind burning a little powder with them if such should be their notion. But I draw the line at pulling on a gentleman, and dictating water as a beverage.”

Whereupon Mr. Masterson laid down his office, and Mr. Wright and Mr. Short and Mr. Kelly and Mr. Trask and Mr. Tighlman and Cimarron Bill sorrowfully gathered at the Wright House and gave a dinner in his honor. Following the dinner, Mr. Masterson translated himself to Arizona, while Dodge relieved its feelings with the circulation of a document which read:

“We, the undersigned, agree to pay the sums set opposite ournames to the widow and orphans of the gent who first informs ona saloonkeeper.”

The white American is a mammal of unusual sort. He doesn’t mind when his officers of government merely rob him, or do no more than just saddle and ride him in favour of some pillaging monopoly. But the moment those officers undertake to tell him what he shall drink and when he shall drink it, he goes on the warpath. Thus was it with the ebullient folk of Dodge on the dry occasion of Prohibition. The paper adverted to gained many signatures, and promised a fortune to those mourning ones it so feelingly described.

When Mr. Masterson laid down his regalia as Sheriff and the public realised that he had pulled his six-shooters, officially, for the last time, a sense of loss filled the bosoms of those who liked a peaceful life. There was another brood which felt the better pleased. Certain dissolute ones, who arrive at ruddiest blossom in a half-baked Western camp, made no secret of their satisfaction. Withal, they despised Mr. Masterson for the certainty of his pistol practise, and that tacit brevity wherewith he set his guns to work.

Perhaps of those who rejoiced over the going of Mr. Masterson, a leading name was that of Bear Creek Johnson. Certainly, Bear Creek jubilated with a greater degree of noise than did the others. Having money at the time, Bear Creek came forth upon what he meant should be a record spree.

The joyful Bear Creek was fated to meet with check. He had attained to the first stages of that picnic which he planned, “jest beginnin’ to onbuckle,” as he himself expressed it, when he was addressed upon the subject by Mr. Wright. The latter was standing in the doorway of his store, and halted Bear Creek, whooping up the street. Mr. Wright owned a past wherein rifle smoke and courage were equally commingled to make an honoured whole. Aware of these credits to the fame of Mr. Wright, Bear Creek ceased whooping to hear what he might say. As Bear Creek paused, Mr. Wright from the doorway bent upon him a somber glance.