THE HOMELIEST MAN
That brilliant beam falling through
the barber’s open door and uncurtained window
came from a new lighting device, procured from a Chicago
mail-order house. It was a gasoline lamp that
burned with a gas mantle, swinging from the ceiling,
flooding the little shop with a greenish light.
It gave a ghastly hue of death to
the human face, but it would light up the creases
and wrinkles of the most weathered neck that came under
the barber’s blade. That was the main consideration,
for most of the barber’s work was done by night,
that trade or profession, as those who
pursue it unfailingly hold it to be being
a side line in connection with his duties as station
agent. He was a progressive citizen, and no grass
grew under his feet, no hair under his hand.
At the moment that the Duke and Taterleg
entered the barber’s far-reaching beam, some
buck of the range was stretched in the chair.
The customer was a man of considerable length and many
angles, a shorn appearance about his face, especially
his big, bony nose, that seemed to tell of a mustache
sacrificed in the operation just then drawing to a
close.
Taterleg stopped short at sight of
the long legs drawn up like a sharp gable to get all
of them into the chair, the immense nose raking the
ceiling like a double-barreled cannon, the morgue-tinted
light giving him the complexion of a man ready for
his shroud. He touched Lambert’s arm to
check him and call his attention.
“Look in there look
at that feller, Duke! There he is; there’s
the man I’ve been lookin’ for ever since
I was old enough to vote. I didn’t believe
there was any such a feller; but there he is!”
“What feller? Who is he?”
“The feller that’s uglier
than me. Dang his melts, there he is! I’m
going to ask him for his picture, so I’ll have
the proof to show.”
Taterleg was at an unaccountable pitch
of spirits. Adventure had taken hold of him like
liquor. He made a start for the door as if to
carry out his expressed intention in all earnestness.
Lambert stopped him.
“He might not see the joke, Taterleg.”
“He couldn’t refuse a
man a friendly turn like that, Duke. Look at him!
What’s that feller rubbin’ on him, do you
reckon?”
“Ointment of some kind, I guess.”
Taterleg stood with his bow legs so
wide apart that a barrel could have been pitched between
them, watching the operation within the shop with
the greatest enjoyment.
“Goose grease, with pre-fume
in it that cuts your breath. Look at that feller
shut his eyes and stretch his derned old neck!
Just like a calf when you rub him under the chin.
Look at him did you ever see anything to
match it?”
“Come on let the man alone.”
“Wrinkle remover, beauty restorer,”
said Taterleg, not moving forward an inch upon his
way. While he seemed to be struck with admiration
for the process of renovation, there was an unmistakable
jeer in his tone which the barber resented by a fierce
look.
“You’re goin’ to
get into trouble if you don’t shut up,”
Lambert cautioned.
“Look at him shut his old eyes
and stretch his neck! Ain’t it the sweetest ”
The man in the chair lifted himself
in sudden grimness, sat up from between the barber’s
massaging hands, which still held their pose like
some sort of brace, turned a threatening look into
the road. If half his face was sufficient to
raise the declaration from Taterleg that the man was
uglier than he, all of it surely proclaimed him the
homeliest man in the nation. His eyes were red,
as from some long carousal, their lids heavy and slow,
his neck was long, and inflamed like an old gobbler’s
when he inflates himself with his impotent rage.
He looked hard at the two men, so
sour in his wrath, so comical in his unmatched ugliness,
that Lambert could not restrain a most unusual and
generous grin. Taterleg bared his head, bowing
low, not a smile, not a ripple of a smile, on his
face.
“Mister, I take off my hat to you,” he
said.
“Yes, and I’ll take your
fool head off the first time I meet you!” the
man returned. He let himself back into the barber’s
waiting hands, a growl deep in him, surly as an old
dog that has been roused out of his place in the middle
of the road.
“General, I wouldn’t hurt
you for a purty, I wouldn’t change your looks
for a dollar bill,” said Taterleg.
“Wait till I git out of this
chair!” the customer threatened, voice smothered
in the barber’s hands.
“I guess he’s not a dangerous
man lucky for you,” said Lambert.
He drew Taterleg away; they went on.
The allurements of Glendora were no
more dazzling by night than by day. There was
not much business in the saloon, there being few visitors
in town, no roistering, no sounds of uncurbed gaiety.
Formerly there had been a dance-hall in connection
with the saloon, but that branch of the business had
failed through lack of patronage long ago. The
bar stood in the front of the long, cheerless room,
a patch of light over and around it, the melancholy
furniture of its prosperous days dim in the gloom
beyond.
Lambert and Taterleg had a few drinks
to show their respect for the institutions of the
country, and went back to the hotel. Somebody
had taken Taterleg’s place beside Alta on the
green bench. It was a man who spoke with rumbling
voice like the sound of an empty wagon on a rocky
road. Lambert recognized the intonation at once.
“It looks to me like there’s
trouble ahead for you, Mr. Wilson,” he said.
“I’ll take that feller
by the handle on his face and bust him ag’in’
a tree like a gourd,” Taterleg said, not in
boasting manner, but in the even and untroubled way
of a man stating a fact.
“If there was any tree.”
“I’ll slam him ag’in’ a rock;
I’ll bust him like a oyster.”
“I think we’d better go to bed without
a fight, if we can.”
“I’m willin’; but
I’m not goin’ around by the back door to
miss that feller.”
They came up the porch into the light
that fell weakly from the office down the steps.
There was a movement of feet beside the green bench,
an exclamation, a swift advance on the part of the
big-nosed man who had afforded amusement for Taterleg
in the barber’s chair.
“You little bench-leggid fiste,
if you’ve got gall enough to say one word to
a man’s face, say it!” he challenged.
Alta came after him, quickly, with
pacific intent. She was a tall girl, not very
well filled out, like an immature bean pod. Her
heavy black hair was cut in a waterfall of bangs which
came down to her eyebrows, the rest of it done up
behind in loops like sausages, and fastened with a
large, red ribbon. She had put off her apron,
and stood forth in white, her sleeves much shorter
than the arms which reached out of them, rings on
her fingers which looked as if they would leave their
shadows behind.
“Now, Mr. Jedlick, I don’t
want you to go raisin’ no fuss around here with
the guests,” she said.
“Jedlick!” repeated Taterleg,
turning to Lambert with a pained, depressed look on
his face. “It sounds like something you
blow in to make a noise.”
The barber’s customer was a
taller man standing than he was long lying. There
wasn’t much clearance between his head and the
ceiling of the porch. He stood before Taterleg
glowing, his hat off, his short-cut hair glistening
with pomatum, showing his teeth like a vicious horse.
“You look like you was cut out
with a can-opener,” he sneered.
“Maybe I was, and I’ve
got rough edges on me,” Taterleg returned, looking
up at him with calculative eye.
“Now, Mr. Jedlick” a
hand on his arm, but confident of the force of it,
like a lady animal trainer in a cage of lions “you
come on over here and set down and leave that gentleman
alone.”
“If anybody but you’d
‘a’ said it, Alta, I’d ‘a’
told him he was a liar,” Jedlick growled.
He moved his foot to go with her, stopped, snarled
at Taterleg again. “I used to roll ’em
in flour and swaller ’em with the feathers on,”
said he.
“You’re a terrible rough
feller, ain’t you?” Taterleg inquired with
cutting sarcasm.
Alta led Jedlick off to his corner;
Taterleg and Lambert entered the hotel office.
“Gee, but this is a windy night!”
said the Duke, holding his hat on with both hands.
“I’ll let some of the
wind out of him if he monkeys with me!”
“Looks to me like I know another
feller that an operation wouldn’t hurt,”
the Duke remarked, turning a sly eye on his friend.
The landlord appeared with a lamp
to light them to their beds, putting an end to these
exchanges of threat and banter. As he was leaving
them to their double-barreled apartment, Lambert remarked:
“That man Jedlick’s an interesting-lookin’
feller.”
“Ben Jedlick? Yes, Ben’s a case;
he’s quite a case.”
“What business does he foller?”
“Ben? Ben’s cook
on Pat Sullivan’s ranch up the river; one of
the best camp cooks in the Bad Lands, and I guess
the best known, without any doubt.”
Taterleg sat down on the side of his
bed as if he had been punctured, indeed, lopping forward
in mock attitude of utter collapse as the landlord
closed the door.
“Cook! That settles it
for me; I’ve turned the last flapjack I’ll
ever turn for any man but myself.”
“How will you manage the oyster parlor?”
“Well, I’ve just about
give up that notion, Duke. I’ve been thinkin’
I’ll stick to the range and go in the sheep business.”
“I expect it would be a good move, old feller.”
“They’re goin’ into it around here,
they tell me.”
“Alta tells you.”
“Oh, you git out! But I’m
a cowman right now, and I’m goin’ to stay
one for some little time to come. It don’t
take much intelligence in a man to ride fence.”
“No; I guess we could both pass on that.”
The Duke blew the lamp out with his
hat. There was silence, all but the scuffing
sound of disrobing. Taterleg spoke out of bed.
“That girl’s got purty eyes, ain’t
she?”
“Lovely eyes, Taterleg.”
“And purty hair, too. Makes
a feller want to lean over and pat that little row
of bangs.”
“I expect there’s a feller down there
doin’ it now.”
The spring complained under Taterleg’s
sudden movement; there was a sound of swishing legs
under the sheet. Lambert saw him dimly against
the window, sitting with his feet on the floor.
“You mean Jedlick?”
“Why not Jedlick? He’s got the field
to himself.”
Taterleg sat a little while thinking
about it. Presently he resumed his repose, chuckling
a choppy little laugh.
“Jedlick! Jedlick ain’t
got no more show than a cow. When a lady steps
in and takes a man’s part there’s only
one answer, Duke. And she called me a gentleman,
too. Didn’t you hear her call me a gentleman,
Duke?”
“I seem to remember that somebody
else called you that one time.”
Taterleg hadn’t any reply at
once. Lambert lay there grinning in the dark.
No matter how sincere Taterleg might have been in this
or any other affair, to the Duke it was only a joke.
That is the attitude of most men toward the tender
vagaries of others. No romance ever is serious
but one’s own.
“Well, that happened a good
while ago,” said Taterleg defensively.
But memories didn’t trouble
him much that night. Very soon he was sleeping,
snoring on the G string with unsparing pressure.
For Lambert there was no sleep. He lay in a fever
of anticipation. Tomorrow he should see her,
his quest ended almost as soon as begun.
There was not one stick of fuel for
the flame of this conjecture, not one reasonable justification
for his more than hope. Only something had flashed
to him that the girl in the house on the mesa was she
whom his soul sought, whose handkerchief was folded
in his pocketbook and carried with his money.
He would take no counsel from reason, no denial from
fate.
He lay awake seeing visions when he
should have been asleep in the midst of legitimate
dreams. A score of plans for serving her came
up for examination, a hundred hopes for a happy culmination
of this green romance budded, bloomed, and fell.
But above the race of his hot thoughts the certainty
persisted that this girl was the lady of the beckoning
hand.
He had no desire to escape from these
fevered fancies in sleep, as his companion had put
down his homely ambitions. Long he lay awake turning
them to view from every hopeful, alluring angle, hearing
the small noises of the town’s small activities
die away to silence and peace.
In the morning he should ride to see
her, his quest happily ended, indeed, even on the
threshold of its beginning.