The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West

  Produced by Al Haines

  [Frontispiece: "You're a good sport," said Major Barnes]

  THE SAGEBRUSHER

  A STORY OF THE WEST

  BY

  EMERSON HOUGH

  AUTHOR OF THE COVERED WAGON, THE BROKEN GATE, ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED BY

  J. HENRY

  NEW YORK

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  PUBLISHERS

  COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY

  EMERSON HOUGH

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. SIM GAGE AT HOME II. WANTED: A WIFE III. FIFTY-FIFTY IV. HEARTS AFLAME V. BEGGAR MAN--THIEF VI. RICH MAN--POOR MAN VII. CHIVALROUS; AND OF ABUNDANT MEANS VIII. RIVAL CONSCIENCES IX. THE HALT AND THE BLIND X. NEIGHBORS XI. THE COMPANY DOCTOR XII. LEFT ALONE XIII. THE SABCAT CAMP XIV. THE MAN TRAIL XV. THE SPECIES XVI. THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE XVII. SAGEBRUSHERS XVIII. DONNA QUIXOTE XIX. THE PLEDGE XX. MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D.--AND SIM GAGE XXI. WITH THIS RING XXII. MRS. GAGE XXIII. THE OUTLOOK XXIV. ANNIE MOVES IN XXV. ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE XXVI. THE WAYS OF MR. GARDNER XXVII. DORENWALD, CHIEF XXVIII. A CHANGE OF BASE XXIX. MARTIAL LAW XXX. BEFORE DAWN XXXI. THE BLIND SEE XXXII. THE ENEMY XXXIII. THE DAM XXXIV. AFTER THE DELUGE XXXV. ANNIE ANSWERS XXXVI. MRS. DAVIDSON'S CONSCIENCE

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "You're a good sport," said Major Barnes . . . _Frontispiece_

  "You ought to hang!" said she

  "You say I shall be able to see him--my husband?"

  "Get a board, or something, boys"

  THE SAGEBRUSHER

  CHAPTER I

  SIM GAGE AT HOME

  "Sim," said Wid Gardner, as he cast a frowning glance around him, "takeit one way with another, and I expect this is a leetle the dirtiestplace in the Two-Forks Valley."

  The man accosted did no more than turn a mild blue eye toward thespeaker and resume his whittling. He smiled faintly, with a sort ofapology, as the other went on.

  "I'll say more'n that, Sim. It's the blamedest, dirtiest hole in thewhole state of Montany--yes, or in the whole wide world. Lookit!"

  He swept a hand around, indicating the interior of the single-room logcabin in which they sat.

  "Well," commented Sim Gage after a time, taking a meditative but whollyunagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is and Iain't saying she ain't. But I never did say I was a perfessionalhousekeeper, did I now?"

  "Well, some folks has more sense of what's right, anyways," grumbledWid Gardner, shifting his position on one of the two insecure crackerboxes which made the only chairs, and resting an elbow on the oil clothtable cover, where stood a few broken dishes, showing no signs of anyablution in all their hopeless lives. "My own self, I'm a bachelorman, too--been batching for twenty years, one place and another--but byGod! Sim, this here is the human limit. Look at that bed."

  He kicked a foot toward a heap of dirty fabrics which lay upon thefloor, a bed which might once have been devised for a man, but longsince had fallen below that rank. It had a breadth of dirty canvasthrown across it, from under which the occupant had crawled out.Beneath might be seen the edges of two or three worn and dirty cottonquilts and a pair of blankets of like dinginess. Below this lay a wornelk hide, and under all a lower-breadth of the over-lapping canvas. Itwas such a bed as primarily a cow-puncher might have had, but falleninto such condition that no cow camp would have tolerated it.

  Sim Gage looked at the heap of bedding for a time gravely andcarefully, as though trying to find some reason for his friend'sdissatisfaction. His mouth began to work as it always did when he wasengaged in some severe mental problem, but he frowned apologeticallyonce more as he spoke.

  "Well, Wid, I know, I know. It ain't maybe just the thing to sleep onthe floor all the time, noways. You see, I got a bunk frame made forher over there, and it's all tight and strong--it was there when I tookthis cabin over from the Swede. But I ain't never just got around tomoving my bed offen the floor onto the bedstead. I may do it some day.Fact is, I was just a-going to do it anyways."

  "Just a-going to--like hell you was! You been a-going to move that bedfor four years, to my certain knowledge, and I know that in that timeyou ain't shuk it out or aired it onct, or made it up."

  "How do you know I ain't made her up?" demanded Sim Gage, his knifearrested in its labors.

  "Well, I know you ain't. It's just the way you've throwed it ever'morning since I've knowed you here. Move it up on the bedstead?--Firstthing you know you can't."

  "Well," said Sim, sighing, "some folks is always making other folksfeel bad. I ain't never found fault with the way you keep house when Icome over to your place, have I?"

  "You ain't got the same reason for to," replied Wid Gardner. "I ain'tno angel, but I sure try to make some sort of bluff like I was human.This place ain't human."

  "Now you said something!" remarked Sim suddenly, after a time spent insolemn thought. "She ain't human! That's right."

  He made no explanation for some time, and both men sat looking vaguelyout of the open door across the wide and pleasant valley above which ablue and white-flecked sky bent amiably. A wide ridge of good grasslands lay held in the river's bent arm. The wind blew steadily,throwing up into a sheet of silver the leaves of the willows whichfollowed the water courses. A few quaking asps standing near the cabindoor likewise gave motion and brightness to the scene. The air wasbrilliantly cool and keen. It was a pleasant spot, and at that seasonof the year not an uncomfortable one. Sim Gage had lived here for someyears now, and his homestead, originally selected with the unconscioussense for beauty so often exercised by rude men in rude lands, wasconsidered one of the best in the Two-Forks Valley.

  "Feller, he loses hope after a while," began the owner of the placeafter a considerable silence. "Look at me, for instance. I come outhere from Ioway more'n twenty-five years ago, when I was only a boy.When my pa died my ma, she moved back to Ioway. I stuck around here,like you and lots of other fellers, and done like you all, just thebest I could. Some way the country sort of took a holt on me. Itdoes, ain't it the truth?"

  His friend nodded silently.

  "Well, so I stuck around and done about what I could, same as you,ain't that so, Wid? I prospected some, but you know how hard it is toget any money into a mine, no matter what you've found fer a prospect.I got along somehow--seems like folks didn't use to pester so much, theway they do to-day. And you know onct I was just on the point ofstarting out fer Arizony with that old miner, Pop Haynes--do yousuppose I'd struck anything if I'd of went down there?"

  "Nobody can say if you would or you wouldn't," replied Wid. "Fact is,you never got more'n half started."

  "Well, you see, this old feller, Pop Haynes, he'd been down in Arizonytwenty years before, and he said there was lots of gold out there inthe desert. Well, we got a team hooked up, and a little flour andbacon, and we did start--now, I'll leave it to you, Wid, if we didn't.We got as far as Big Springs, on the railroad. What did we hear then?Why, news comes up from down in Arizony that a railroad has went outinto the desert, and that them mines has been discovered. What's theuse then fer us to start fer Arizony with a wagon and team? Likeenough all the good stakes would be took up before we could get there.Old Pop and me, we just turned back, allowing it was the sensiblestthing to do."

  "And you been in around here ever since."

  "Yes, sir; yes, sir, that's what I been. Been around here ever since.I told you the country kind of takes a holt on a feller. Ain't it thetruth? Well, I trapped a little since then in the winters, and killedelk for the market some, like you
know, and fished through the ice overon the lakes, like you know. Some days I'd make three or four dollarsa day fishing. So at last when that Swede, Big Aleck, got run out ofthe county, I fell into his ranch. There ain't a better in the wholevalley. Look at that hay land, Wid. You got to admit that this hereis one of the best places in Montany."

  "Well, maybe it is," said his friend and neighbor. "Leastways, it'sgood enough to run like you mean to run it."

  "I'm a-going to run her all right. She's all under wire--the Swededone that before I bought his quit claim. Can't no sheep get in on mehere. I'll bet you all my clothes that I'll cut six hundred ton of haythis season--leastways I would if my horse hadn't hurt hisself in thewire the other day. Now, you figure up what six hundred ton of haycomes to in the stack, at prices hay is bringing now."

  "Trouble is, your hay ain't in the stack, Sim. You'll just about cuthay enough to buy yourself flour and bacon for next winter, and that'llbe about all. If you worked the place right you'd make plenty ferto----"

  "Fer to be human?"

  "Well, yes, that's about it, Sim."

  "That's right hard--doing all your own work outside and doing all yourown cooking and everything all the time in your own house. Just livingalong twenty years one day after another, all by your own self, andnever--never----"

  His voice trailed off faintly, and he left the sentence unfinished.Wid Gardner completed it for him.

  "And never having a woman around?" said he.

  "Ain't it the truth?" said Sim Gage suddenly. His eyes ran furtivelyaround the room in which they sat, taking in, without noting orfeeling, the unutterable squalor of the place.

  "Well," said his friend after a time, rising, "it'd be a fine place tofetch a woman to, wouldn't it? But now I got to be going--I got mychores to do."

  "What's your hurry, Wid?" complained the occupant of the cabin."Cow'll wait."

  "Yours might," said the other sententiously. As he spoke he was makinghis way to the door.

  The sun was sinking now behind the range, and as he stood for a momentlooking toward the west, he might himself have been seen to be a man ofsome stature, rugged and bronzed, with scores of wrinkles on hisleathery cheeks. His garb was the rude one of the West, or rather ofthat remnant of the Old West which has been consigned to the dryfarmers and hay ranchers in these modern polyglot days.

  Sim Gage, the man who followed him out and stood for a time in theunsparing brilliance of the evening sunlight, did not compare too wellwith his friend. He was a man of absolutely no presence, utterlylacking attractiveness. Not so much pudgy as shapeless; he had beenshapeless originally. His squat figure showed, to be sure, a certainhardiness and vigor gained in his outdoor life, but he had not even therude grace of a stalwart manhood about him. He sank apologeticallyinto a lax posture, even as he stood. His pale blue eyes lacked fire.His hair, uneven, ragged and hay-colored, seemed dry, as thoughhopeless, discouraged, done with life, fringing out as it did in graylocks under the edge of the battered hat he wore. He had been unshavenfor days, perhaps weeks, and his beard, unreaped, showed divers colors,as of a field partially ripening here and there. In general he wasundecided, unfinished--yes, surely nature must have been undecided ashe himself was about himself.

  His clothing was such as might have been predicted for the owner of thenondescript bed resting on the cabin floor. His neck, grimed, red andwrinkled as that of an ancient turtle, rose above his bare brownshoulders and his upper chest, likewise exposed. His only bodycovering was an undershirt, or two undershirts. Their flannelover-covering had left them apparently some time since, and as for theremnant, it had known such wear that his arms, brown as those of anIndian, were bare to the elbows. He was always thus, so far as anyneighbor could have remembered him, save that in the winter time hecast a sheepskin coat over all. His short legs were clad in blueoveralls, so far as their outside cover was concerned, or at least theoveralls once had been blue, though now much faded. Under these, asmight be seen by a glance at their bottoms, were two, three, orpossibly even more, pairs of trousers, all borne up and suspended atthe top by an intricate series of ropes and strings which crossed hishalf-bare shoulders. One might have searched all of Sim Gage's cabinand have found on the wall not one article of clothing--he wore all hehad, summer and winter. And as he was now, so he had been ever sincehis nearest neighbor could remember. A picture of indifference, apathyand hopelessness, he stood, every rag and wrinkle of him sharplyoutlined in the clear air.

  He stood uncertainly now, his foot turned over, as he always stood,there seeming never at any time any determination or even animationabout him. And yet he longed, apparently, for some sort of humancompanionship, but still he argued with his friend and asked him not tohurry away.

  None the less after a few moments Wid Gardner did turn away. He passedout at the rail bars which fenced off the front yard from thewillow-covered banks of a creek which ran nearby. A half-dozen head ofmixed cattle followed him up to the gate, seeking a wider world. Amule thrust out his long head from a window of the log stable where itwas imprisoned, and brayed at him anxiously, also seeking outlet.

  But Sim Gage, apathetic, one foot lopped over, showed no agitation andno ambition. The wisp of grass which hung now from the corner of hismouth seemed to suit him for the time. He stood chewing and looking athis departing visitor.

  "Some folks is _too_ damn dirty," said Wid Gardner to himself as hepassed now along the edge of the willow bank toward the front gate ofhis own ranch, a half-mile up the stream. "And him talking about awoman!" He flung out his hand in disgust at the mere thought.

  That is to say, he did at first. Then he began to walk more slowly. Atouch of reflectiveness came upon his own face.

  "Still," said he to himself after a time--speaking aloud as men of thewilderness sometimes learn to do--"I don't know!"

  He turned into his own gate, approached his own cabin, its exteriormuch like that of the one which but now he had left. He paused for amoment at the door as he looked in, regarding its somewhat neaterappearance.

  "Well, and even so," said he. "I don't know. Still and after all,now, a woman----"