The Sunset Trail

“What may I call you?” Cimarron had demanded. Then, as though explaining a rudeness: “The reason I inquire is that, if you-all continues to grow on me, I might want to ask you to take a seegyar.”

“Bennington Du Pont,” faltered the Ground Owl. “My name is Bennington Du Pont.”

“Which you’ll pardon me,” returned Cimarron Bill, severely, “if yereafter I prefers to alloode to you as the Ground Owl.”

“The Ground Owl!” exclaimed the renamed one, his horror giving him a desperate courage. “Why the Ground Owl?”

“Why the Ground Owl?” repeated Cimarron. Then solemnly: “Because the rattlesnakes don’t kill ’em, an’ no one knows wherefore.”

Thus it befell that within twenty-four hours after his advent every ear in Dodge had heard of the Ground Owl, and not one of Bennington Du Pont.

The Ground Owl’s address was the Wright House. It was at this hostelry he received his earliest glimpse of Mr. Allison, and organised those insult-born differences.

Mr. Allison’s country was Las Animas and the region round about. He had been over in the Panhandle, and was spurring homeward by way of Dodge. Having put his weary pony in the corral, he sought his own refreshment at the Wright House.

Mr. Allison was celebrated for force of character, and the democratic frankness of his six-shooters. His entrance into Las Animas’ social circles had been managed with effect. That was seven years before, and Mr. Hixenbaugh told this of Mr. Allison’s début.

“Which I was in the Sound Asleep Saloon,” explained Mr. Hixenbaugh, “tryin’ to fill a club flush, when the music of firearms floats over from across the street. I goes to the door on the lope, bein’ curious as to who’s hit, an thar on t’other side I observes a sport who’s sufferin’ from one of them deeformities called a clubfoot, and who’s got a gun in each hand. He’s jest caught Bill Gatling in the knee, an’ is bein’ harassed at with six-shooters by Gene Watkins an’ Len Woodruff, who’s whangin’ away at him from Crosby’s door. I lands on the sidewalk in time to see him hive Gene with a bullet in the calf of his laig. Then Gene an’ Bill an’ Len, the first two bein’ redooced to crawl on hands an’ knees by virchoo of them bullets, takes refooge in Crosby’s, an’ surveys this club-foot party a heap respectful from a winder. As I crosses over to extend congratyoolations, he w’irls on me.

“‘Be you too a hostile?’ he asks, domineerin’ at me with his guns.

“‘Hostile nothin’!’ I replies; ‘I’m simply comin’ over in a sperit of admiration. What’s the trouble?’

“‘Stranger,’ he says, ‘that question is beyond me. I’ve only been in your town four minutes, an’ yet thar seems to be a kind o’ prejewdyce ag’inst me in the minds of the ignorant few. But never mind,’ he concloods; ‘we’re all cap’ble of mistakes. My name’s Clay Allison, an’ these folks’ll know me better by an’ by. When they do know me, an’ have arrived at a complete onderstandin’ of my pecooliarities, they’ll walk ’round me like I was a swamp.’”

Following this introduction, it would appear that Mr. Allison was taken into fellowship by Las Animas. The crippled foot and the consequent limp were lost sight of when he was in the saddle. When he was afoot they went verbally unnoticed, since it was his habit to use a Winchester for a crutch.

After eight weeks in Las Animas, Mr. Allison felt as much at home as though he had founded the town. Also, he became nervously sensitive over the public well-being, and, mounted on a milk-white pony, which he called his “wah hoss,” rode into open court, and urged that convention of justice, then sitting, to adjourn. Mr. Allison made the point that a too persistent holding of court militated against a popular repose. Inasmuch as he accompanied his opinions with the crutch-Winchester aforesaid, their soundness was conceded by the presiding judge. The judge, as he ordered an adjournment, said that in the face of what practical arguments were presented by Mr. Allison he was driven to regard the whole theory of courts as at best but academic.

Later, by two months, Mr. Allison was driven to slay the Las Animas marshal. In this adventure he again demonstrated the accurate workings of his mind. The marshal, just before he drifted into the infinite, had emptied the right barrel of a Greener 10-gauge into Mr. Allison’s brother, John. A shotgun has two barrels, and the jury convoked in the premises, basing decision on that second barrel and arguing from all the circumstances that the late officer was gunning for the entire Allison family, gave a verdict of self-defence.

Mr. Allison was honourably acquitted, and the acquittal much encouraged his belief in justice. It showed him too the tolerant spirit of Las Animas, and he displayed his appreciation thereof by engaging in that rugged Western pastime known as “Standing the Town on Its Head.” Indeed, Mr. Allison made the bodily reversal of Las Animas a sacred duty to be performed twice a year; but since he invariably pitched upon Christmas and the Fourth of July for these pageantries, the public, so far from finding invidious fault, was inclined to join with him. In short, so much were Mr. Allison and Las Animas one in soul and sentiment, that the moment they had conquered the complete acquaintance of each other they – to employ a metaphor of the farms – “fell together like a shock of oats.” Mr. Allison was proud of Las Animas, while Las Animas looked upon Mr. Allison as the chief jewel in its crown.

On the breath of admiration some waif-word of the hardy deeds of Mr. Allison would now and again be wafted down the river to Dodge. Envious ones, who hated Dodge and resented its high repute as “a camp that was never treed,” had been even heard to prophesy that Mr. Allison would one day devote a leisure hour to subjecting Dodge to those processes of inversion which Las Animas had enjoyed, and leave its hitherto unconquered heels where its head should be. These insolent anticipations would wring the heart of Cimarron Bill.

“You can hock your spurs an’ pony,” he was wont to respond, “that if Clay ever shakes up Dodge, he’ll shake it in the smoke.”

Mr. Masterson, when the threats of an Allison invasion were brought to his notice, would say nothing. He held it unbecoming his official character to resent a hypothesis, and base declarations of war on an assumption of what might be.

“It’s bad policy,” quoth Mr. Masterson, “to ford a river before you reach it. It’ll be time to settle what Dodge’ll do with Clay, when Clay begins to do things to Dodge. He’ll have to open a game, however, that no one’s ever heard of, if Dodge don’t get better than an even break.”

“Shore!” coincided Cimarron Bill, confidently. “The idee, because Clay can bluff ’round among them Las Animas tarrapins without gettin’ called, that he can go dictatin’ terms to Dodge, is eediotic. He’d be too dead to skin in about a minute! That’s straight; he wouldn’t last as long as a drink of whiskey!”

The Ground Owl was alone in the breakfast room of the Wright House when Mr. Allison limped in. All men have their delicate side, and it was Mr. Allison’s to regard the open wearing of one’s iron-mongery as bad form. Wherefore, he was accustomed to hide the Colt’s pistols wherewith his hips were decked, beneath the tails of a clerical black coat. Inasmuch as he had left the crutch-Winchester with his sombrero at the hat-rack, even an alarmist like the Ground Owl could discover nothing appalling in his exterior. The halting gait and the black coat made for a harmless impression that went far to unlock the derision of the Ground Owl. He treated himself to an evil grin as Mr. Allison limped to a seat opposite; but since Mr. Allison didn’t catch the malicious gleam of it, the grin got by unchallenged.

It was a breakfast custom of the Wright House to provide doughnuts as a fashion of a side-dish whereat a boarder might nibble while awaiting the baking-powder biscuit, “salt hoss,” canned tomatoes, tinned potatoes, coffee and condensed milk that made up the lawful breakfast of the caravansary. Las Animas being devoid of doughnuts, Mr. Allison had never met one. Moved by the doughnut example of the Ground Owl, he tasted that delicacy. The doughnut as an edible proved kindly to the palate of Mr. Allison, and upon experiment he desired more. The dish had been drawn over to the elbow of the Ground Owl, and was out of his reach. Perceiving this, Mr. Allison pointed with appealing finger. “Pard,” said Mr. Allison, politely, “please pass them fried holes.”

“Fried holes!” cried the Ground Owl, going off into derisive laughter. “Fried holes! Say! you limp in your talk like you do in your walk! Fried holes!” and the Ground Owl again burst into uninstructed mirth.

The Ground Owl’s glee was frost-bitten in the bud. The frost that nipped it was induced by a Colt’s pistol in the hand of Mr. Allison, the chilling muzzle not a foot from his scared face. The Ground Owl’s veins ran ice; he choked and fell back in his helpless chair. Not less formidable than the Colt’s pistol was the fury-twisted visage of Mr. Allison.

Even in his terror the Ground Owl recalled the word of Mr. Masterson.

“Don’t shoot,” he squeaked. “I’m unarmed!”

For one hideous moment Mr. Allison hesitated; it was in his mind to violate a precedent, and slaughter the gunless Ground Owl where he sat. But his instincts and his education made against it; he jammed his weapon back into its scabbard with the terse command:

“Go heel yourse’f, you bull-snake! Dodge’ll have you or me to plant!”

The Ground Owl groped his frightened way to the door. A moment later he was burrowing deep beneath a stack of alfalfa hay in Mr. Trask’s corral, and it would have been necessary to set fire to the hay to find him. Mr. Allison sat glaring, awaiting the Ground Owl’s return – which he never doubted. He no longer wanted breakfast, he wanted blood.

Dodge knew nothing of these ferocious doings – the insult, the flight of the Ground Owl, and the vicious waiting of Mr. Allison. The first news of it that reached Dodge was when Mr. Allison – rifle in its saddle-scabbard, six-shooters at his belt – came whooping and spurring, the sublimation of warlike defiance, into the town’s main thoroughfare. He had saddled that bronco within twenty feet of the Ground Owl, shivering beneath the hay. The explosive monologue with which he had accompanied the saddling, and wherein he promised a host of bloody experiences to the Ground Owl, rendered that recreant as cold as a key and as limp as a rag.

After a mad dash up and down the street, enlivened by divers war shouts, Mr. Allison pulled up in front of Mr. Webster’s Alamo Saloon. Sitting in the saddle, he fiercely demanded the Ground Owl at the hands of the public, and threatened Dodge with extinction in case he was denied.

Affairs stood thus when Jack turned Mr. Masterson out of his blankets. The soul of Jack was in arms. It would have broken his boy’s heart had Mr. Allison flung forth his challenge in the open causeways of Dodge and departed, unaccommodated, unrebuked, to cheer Las Animas with a recount of his prowess.

“That’s business!” exulted Jack, as the double “cluck!” of Mr. Masterson’s buffalo gun broke charmingly upon his ear. “Send daylight plumb through him! Don’t let him go back to Las Animas with a yarn about how Dodge laid down to him!”

It was the first impression of Mr. Masterson that Mr. Allison’s purpose was to merely feed his self-love by a general defiance of Dodge. He would ride and shout and shoot and disport himself unlawfully. In this he would demonstrate the prostrate sort of the Dodgeian nerve.

Mr. Masterson was clear that this contumely must be checked. It would never do to let word drift into Texas that Dodge had wilted. Were that to occur, when the boys with the Autumn herds came in, never a mirror in town would survive; the very air would sing and buzz with contemptuous bullets. Mr. Masterson, from his window, came carefully down on Mr. Allison with the buffalo gun; he would reprove that fatuous egotist, whose conceit it was to fancy that he could stand up Dodge.

Mr. Masterson would have instantly shot Mr. Allison from the saddle, but was withstood by a detail. Mr. Allison’s six-shooters were still in his belt; his Winchester was still in its scabbard beneath his leg. These innocuous conditions constrained Mr. Masterson to pause; he must, according to the rule in such case made and provided, wait until a weapon was in the overt hand of Mr. Allison.

Mr. Masterson could make neither head nor tail of what Mr. Allison was saying. For the most it was curse, and threat, coupled with pictures of what terrific punishments – to cure it of its pride – Mr. Allison would presently inflict upon Dodge. This being all, however, Mr. Masterson could do no more than wait – being at pains, meanwhile, to see the oratorical Mr. Allison through both sights of the buffalo gun. When Mr. Allison snatched a pistol from his belt, that would be Mr. Masterson’s cue; he would then drill him for the good of Dodge and the instruction of Las Animas.

Having the business wholly in hand, it was next the thought of Mr. Masterson to obviate interference. He turned to Jack:

“Skip out, and tell Kell and Short and Cimarron not to run in on Clay. Tell ’em I’ve got him covered and to keep away. If they closed in on him, they might blank my fire.”

When Jack was gone, Mr. Masterson again settled to his aim, picking out a spot under the right shoulder of Mr. Allison wherein to plant the bullet. “It’s where I’d plug a buffalo bull,” ruminated Mr. Masterson, “and it ought to do for Clay.”

Mr. Allison maintained his verbal flow unchecked. He had elocutionary gifts, had Mr. Allison, and flaunted them. Mingling scorn with reproach, and casting defiance over all, he spake in unmeasured terms of Dodge and its inhabitants. But never once did he lay hand to gun; it was solely an exhibition of rhetoric.

Mr. Masterson waxed weary. There were spaces when the mills of Mr. Allison’s vituperation ran low; at such intervals Mr. Masterson would take the buffalo gun from his shoulder. Anon, Mr. Allison’s choler would mount, his threats and maledictions against all things Dodgeian would soar. Thereupon, hope would relight its taper in the eye of Mr. Masterson; he would again cover Mr. Allison with his buffalo gun. Mr. Allison’s energy would again dwindle, and the light of hope again sink low in the Masterson eye. The buffalo gun would be given another recess. First and last, by the later word of Mr. Masterson, Mr. Allison was covered and uncovered twenty times. It was exceedingly fatiguing to Mr. Masterson, who was losing respect for Mr. Allison, as one all talk and no shoot.

While Mr. Allison vituperated, his glance roved up and down the street.

“What’s the matter with him!” considered Mr. Masterson disgustedly. “Why doesn’t he throw himself loose!”

Mr. Masterson’s disgust became amazement when Mr. Allison turned in his saddle, and asked in tones wherein was more of complaint than challenge:

“Where’s Bat Masterson? He’s on the squar’! He won’t let no cheap store clerk put it all over me, an’ get away! Where’s Bat?”

As though seeking reply, Mr. Allison in a most pacific manner got down from the saddle, and limped away out of range into Mr. Webster’s Alamo.

Mr. Masterson pitched the buffalo gun into a corner, put on his more personal artillery, and repaired to the Alamo with the thought of investigating the phenomenon. In the Alamo he found Mr. Allison asking Mr. Webster – who looked a bit pale – to send for Mr. Masterson.

“Have somebody round Bat up,” said Mr. Allison, peevishly. “Which I want a talk with him about my injuries.”

“What’s wrong, Clay?” asked Mr. Masterson – outwardly careless, inwardly as alert as a bobcat. “What’s gone wrong?”

“Is that you, Bat?” demanded Mr. Allison, facing around on his lame foot. “Wherever have you been for the last half hour? I’ve hunted you all over camp.”

“Where have I been for a half hour? I’ve been seesawing on you with a Sharp’s for the better part of it.”

“Is that so!” exclaimed Mr. Allison, while his face lighted up with a kind of pleased conviction. “Thar, d’ye see now! While I was in that saddle I could feel I was covered every moment. It was the sperits tellin’ me! They kept warnin’ me that if I batted an eye or wagged a year I was a goner. It was shore one of them prov’dential hunches which is told of by gospel sharps in pra’r-meetin’s.”

Mr. Masterson’s indignation was extreme when he had heard the story of Mr. Allison’s ill usage. And at that, his anger rested upon the wrongs of Dodge rather than upon those of Mr. Allison.

“One may now see,” said Mr. Masterson, “the hole into which good people can be put by a cowardly outcast of the Ground Owl type. That disgusting Ground Owl might have been the means of killing a dozen men. Here he turns in an’ stirs Clay up; and then, when he’s got him keyed to concert pitch, he sneaks away and hides, and leaves us with Clay on our hands!”

Cimarron Bill came into the Alamo; his brow turned dark with the scandal of those friendly relations between Mr. Masterson and Mr. Allison, which he saw and did not understand. Drawing aside, he stood moodily at the end of the bar, keeping a midnight eye the while on Mr. Allison, thirsting for an outbreak.

Mr. Masterson approached him craftily – being diplomatic and having a mind to preserve the peace.

“There’s something I want you to do, Cimarron,” said Mr. Masterson, easily. The other brightened. “No, not that!” continued Mr. Masterson, intercepting a savage look which Cimarron bestowed upon Mr. Allison, “not Clay.”

“Who then?” demanded Cimarron, greatly disappointed.

“The other one,” responded Mr. Masterson. “Still I don’t want you to overplay. You must use judgment, and while careful not to do too little, be equally careful not to do too much. This is the proposition: You are to go romancing ’round until you locate that miscreant Ground Owl. Once located, you are to softly, yet sufficiently, bend a gun over his head.”

“Leave the Ground Owl to me,” said Cimarron Bill, his buoyant nature beginning to collect itself. As he went forth upon his mission, he tossed this assurance over his shoulder: “You gents’ll hear a dog howl poco tempo, an’ when you do you can gamble me an’ that Ground Owl clerk has crossed up with one another.”

“That,” observed Mr. Short, who arrived in time to hear the commission given Cimarron Bill, “that’s what I call gettin’ action both ways from the jack. You split out Cimarron from Clay here; an’ at the same time arrange to stampede that malignant Ground Owl out o’ camp. Which I always allowed you had a head for business, Bat.”

Cimarron Bill was wrong. He did not cut the trail of the vermin Ground Owl – lying close beneath the alfalfa of Mr. Trask! Neither did any dog howl that day. But Dodge was victorious without. It was rid of the offensive Ground Owl; when the sun went down that craven one crept forth, and fled by cloak of night.

“Which it goes to show,” explained Cimarron Bill, judgmatically, when a week later he was recovered from the gloom into which Mr. Allison’s escape had plunged him, “which it goes to show that every cloud has a silver linin’. Clay saves himse’f; but that Ground Owl has to go. It’s a stand-off. We lose on Clay; but we shore win on that Ground Owl man.”