AN EMPTY SADDLE
The Duke was seen coming back before
the meal was over, across the little plain between
camp and hills. A quarter of a mile behind him
Jim Wilder rode, whether seen or unseen by the man
in the lead they did not know.
Jim had fallen behind somewhat by
the time the Duke reached camp. The admiration
of all hands over this triumph against horseflesh and
the devil within it was so great that they got up
to welcome the Duke, and shake hands with him as he
left the saddle. He was as fresh and nimble,
unshaken and serene, as when he mounted old Whetstone
more than an hour before.
Whetstone was a conquered beast, beyond
any man’s doubt. He stood with flaring
nostrils, scooping in his breath, not a dry hair on
him, not a dash of vinegar in his veins.
“Where’s Jim?” the Duke inquired.
“Comin’,” Taterleg replied, waving
his hand afield.
“What’s he doin’
out there where’s he been?”
the Duke inquired, a puzzled look in his face, searching
their sober countenances for his answer.
“He thought you ”
“Let him do his own talkin’,
kid,” said Siwash, cutting off the cowboy’s
explanation.
Siwash looked at the Duke shrewdly,
his head cocked to one side like a robin listening
for a worm.
“What outfit was you with before
you started out sellin’ them tooth-puller-can-opener
machines, son?” he inquired.
“Outfit? What kind of an outfit?”
“Ranch, innercence; what range was you ridin’
on?”
“I never rode any range, I’m sorry to
say.”
“Well, where in the name of mustard did you
learn to ride?”
“I used to break range horses
for five dollars a head at the Kansas City Stockyards.
That was a good while ago; I’m all out of practice
now.”
“Yes, and I bet you can throw a rope, too.”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“Nothing to speak of! Yes, I’ll bet
you nothing to speak of!”
Jim didn’t stop at the corral
to turn in his horse, but came clattering into camp,
madder for the race that the Duke had led him in ignorance
of his pursuit, as every man could see. He flung
himself out of the saddle with a flip like a bird
taking to the wing, his spurs cutting the ground as
he came over to where Lambert stood.
“Maybe you can ride my horse,
you damn granger, but you can’t ride me!”
he said.
He threw off his vest as he spoke,
that being his only superfluous garment, and bowed
his back for a fight. Lambert looked at him with
a flush of indignant contempt spreading in his face.
“You don’t need to get
sore about it; I only took you up at your own game,”
he said.
“No circus-ringer’s goin’
to come in here and beat me out of my horse.
You’ll either put him back in that corral or
you’ll chaw leather with me!”
“I’ll put him back in
the corral when I’m ready, but I’ll put
him back as mine. I won him on your own bet,
and it’ll take a whole lot better man than you
to take him away from me.”
In the manner of youth and independence,
Lambert got hotter with every word, and after that
there wasn’t much room for anything else to be
said on either side. They mixed it, and they
mixed it briskly, for Jim’s contempt for a man
who wore a hat like that supplied the courage that
had been drained from him when he was disarmed.
There was nothing epic in that fight,
nothing heroic at all. It was a wildcat struggle
in the dust, no more science on either side than nature
put into their hands at the beginning. But they
surely did kick up a lot of dust. It would have
been a peaceful enough little fight, with a handshake
at the end and all over in an hour, very likely, if
Jim hadn’t managed to get out his knife when
he felt himself in for a trimming.
It was a mean-looking knife, with
a buck-horn handle and a four-inch blade that leaped
open on pressure of a spring. Its type was widely
popular all over the West in those days, but one of
them would be almost a curiosity now. But Jim
had it out, anyhow, lying on his back with the Duke’s
knee on his ribs, and was whittling away before any
man could raise a hand to stop him.
The first slash split the Duke’s
cheek for two inches just below his eye; the next
tore his shirt sleeve from shoulder to elbow, grazing
the skin as it passed. And there somebody kicked
Jim’s elbow and knocked the knife out of his
hand.
“Let him up, Duke,” he said.
Lambert released the strangle hold
that he had taken on Jim’s throat and looked
up. It was Spence, standing there with his horse
behind him. He laid his hand on Lambert’s
shoulder.
“Let him up, Duke,” he said again.
Lambert got up, bleeding a cataract.
Jim bounced to his feet like a spring, his hand to
his empty holster, a look of dismay in his blanching
face.
“That’s your size, you
nigger!” Spence said, kicking the knife beyond
Jim’s reach. “That’s the kind
of a low-down cuss you always was. This man’s
our guest, and when you pull a knife on him you pull
it on me!”
“You know I ain’t got a gun on me, you ”
“Git it, you sneakin’ houn’!”
Jim looked round for Taterleg.
“Where’s my gun? you greasy potslinger!”
“Give it to him, whoever’s got it.”
Taterleg produced it. Jim began
backing off as soon as he had it in his hand, watching
Spence alertly. Lambert leaped between them.
“Gentlemen, don’t go to
shootin’ over a little thing like this!”
he begged.
Taterleg came between them, also,
and Siwash, quite blocking up the fairway.
“Now, boys, put up your guns;
this is Sunday, you know,” Siwash said.
“Give me room, men!” Spence
commanded, in voice that trembled with passion, with
the memory of old quarrels, old wrongs, which this
last insult to the camp’s guest gave the excuse
for wiping out. There was something in his tone
not to be denied; they fell out of his path as if
the wind had blown them. Jim fired, his elbow
against his ribs.
Too confident of his own speed, or
forgetting that Wilder already had his weapon out,
Spence crumpled at the knees, toppled backward, fell.
His pistol, half-drawn, dropped from the holster and
lay at his side. Wilder came a step nearer and
fired another shot into the fallen man’s body,
dead as he must have known him to be. He ran on
to his horse, mounted, and rode away.
Some of the others hurried to the
wagon after their guns. Lambert, for a moment
shocked to the heart by the sudden horror of the tragedy,
bent over the body of the man who had taken up his
quarrel without even knowing the merits of it, or
whose fault lay at the beginning. A look into
his face was enough to tell that there was nothing
within the compass of this earth that could bring
back life to that strong, young body, struck down
in a breath like a broken vase. He looked up.
Jim Wilder was bending in the saddle as he rode swiftly
away, as if he expected them to shoot. A great
fire of resentment for this man’s destructive
deed swept over him, hotter than the hot blood wasting
from his wounded cheek. The passion of vengeance
wrenched his joints, his hand shook and grew cold,
as he stooped again to unfasten the belt about his
friend’s dead body.
Armed with the weapon that had been
drawn a fraction of a second too late, drawn in the
chivalrous defense of hospitality, the high courtesy
of an obligation to a stranger, Lambert mounted the
horse that had come to be his at the price of this
tragedy, and galloped in pursuit of the fleeing man.
Some of the young men were hurrying
to the corral, belting on their guns as they ran to
fetch their horses and join the pursuit. Siwash
called them back.
“Leave it to him, boys; it’s his by rights,”
he said.
Taterleg stood looking after the two
riders, the hindmost drawing steadily upon the leader,
and stood looking so until they disappeared in the
timber at the base of the hills.
“My God!” said he.
And again, after a little while: “My God!”
It was dusk when Lambert came back,
leading Jim Wilder’s horse. There was blood
on the empty saddle.