"Steve!" I called, "Steve!" And then Oscar and I charged at the wicked brute with our pitchforks. All that followed is a tangled, bad dream of hurry, fear, yells, oaths, and myself stabbing, stabbing, stabbing with the pitchfork. Then a gun cracked somewhere, a black ma.s.s toppled toward me that knocked me sprawling--and all was still. I sat for a moment, smiling foolishly and fumbling for my hat. Steve raised me by the arm. He still had his revolver in his hand, and his glance on the dead stallion. He asked me if I was hurt, and I said yes. He asked me where, and I said that made no difference. Then, as I came to a little more, I said I guessed I wasn't hurt, and looked around. Oscar had Sally in his arms. The tears were running down his cheeks, and he moved his head from side to side, like a man in agony. Her head was buried in his breast, her hands locked around his neck. It was well with them, evidently. But limp upon the ground, his forehead varnished red, lay old Charley.

We turned him over tenderly, wiping the blood away. Steve's lips quivered as he put his hand on the old man's heart. He kept it there a long time. Then he said huskily, "He's gone!" At the words the sound eye of the victim popped open with a suddenness that made my heart throw a somersault. It was as sane, calm, and undisturbed an optic as ever regarded the world.

"G-a-w-n H--l!" said Charley.

We laughed and wiped our eyes with our coat sleeves, and got the old boy to his feet.

"Same old Texas," said he, feeling of his head (the hoof had sc.r.a.ped, instead of smashing), "slightly disfiggered, but still in the ring."

He caught sight of the lovers. "h.e.l.lo!" he said. "Oscar's made his ante good at last--bad hawse works as well as Injuns." We started to lead him by the pair.

"Naw, boys," he commanded. "Take me 'round 't'uther way. That gal don't want to see me now, all b.l.o.o.d.y and mussed up like this."

It was useless to attempt making a hero of Charley.

Billy the Buck

I fancy I a.s.sume an impregnable position in saying that real poetry is truth, presented in its most vivid and concise form. If the statement stands, I request that every line of English verse containing the words "Timid deer," or referring in any way to a presumed gentle, trusting, philanthropic disposition in the beast, be at once revised or expurgated. I shall not except the works of William Shakespeare. When the melancholy Jaques speaks of one of these ferocious animals, saying, "The big round tears coursed one another down his innocent nose in piteous chase," I believe Jaques lied; or, if he lied not, and the phenomenon occurred as reported, that the tears were tears of rage because the deer could not get at Jaques, and as an extension, if he had gotten at Jaques, he would have given said Jaques some cold facts to be contemplative about. After my experience, if I should see any misguided person making friendly advances to one of these horned demons, I should cry, "Whoa!" as Ca.s.sandra did to the wood horse of the Greeks, and probably with the same result. They would not falter until they had gathered bitter experience with their own hands.

Why? This is why. One day, when I was working on a Dakota ranch, the boss, a person by the name of Steve, urged me to take an axe, go forth, and chop a little wood, which I did.

The weather was ideal. A Dakota fall. Air vital with the mingled pleasant touch of frost and sun, like ice-cream in hot coffee, and still as silence itself. I had a good breakfast, was in excellent health and spirits; the boss could by no means approach within a mile unperceived, and everything pointed to a pleasant day. But, alas! as the Copper-lined Killelu-bird of the Rockies sings, "Man's hopes rise with the celerity and vigour of the hind leg of the mule, only to descend with the velocity of a stout gentleman on a banana peel."

On reaching the grove of cottonwoods I sat down for a smoke and a speculative view of things in general, having learned at my then early age that philosophy is never of more value than when one should be doing something else.

I heard a noise behind me, a peculiar noise, between a snort and a violent bleat. Turning, I saw a buck deer, and, from the cord and bell around his neck, recognised him as one Billy, the property of Steve's eldest boy. He was spoken of as a pet.

This was the touch needed to complete my Arcadia; the injection of what, at the time, I considered to be poetry into the excellent prose of open air life. Who could see that graceful, pretty creature, and remain unmoved? Not I, at all events. I fancied myself as a knight of old in the royal forest, which gave a touch of the archaic to my speech. "Come here, thou sweet-eyed forest child!" I cried, and here he came! At an estimate I should say that he was four axe-handles, or about twelve feet high, as he upended himself, brandished his antlers, and jumped me. My axe was at a distance. I moved. I played knight to king's bishop's eighth, in this case represented by a fork of the nearest tree. A wise and subtle piece of strategy, as it resulted in a drawn game.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A wise and subtle piece of strategy"]

My friend stood erect for a while, making warlike pa.s.ses with his front feet (which, by the way, are as formidable weapons as a man would care to have opposed to him); then, seeing that there was no sporting blood in me, he devoured my lunch and went away--a course I promptly imitated as far as I could; I departed.

Hitherto, I had both liked and admired Steve. His enormous strength, coupled with an unexpected agility and an agreeable way he had of treating you as if you were quite his own age, endeared him to me.

When I poured out my troubles to him, however, rebuking him for allowing such a savage beast to be at large, he caused my feelings to undergo a change. For, instead of sympathising, he fell to uproarious laughter, slapped his leg, and swore that it was the best thing he'd ever heard of, and wished he'd been there to see it.

I concluded, judicially, that Steve had virtues, but that he was at the last merely a very big man of coa.r.s.e fibre. Perhaps I had been a little boastful previously concerning my behaviour under trying circ.u.mstances. If so, I was well paid out for it. That night I had the pleasure of listening to an account of my adventures, spiced with facetious novelties of Steve's invention, such as that my cries for help were audible to the house, and only the fact that he couldn't tell from which direction they came prevented Steve from rushing to my rescue, and that all the deer wanted was my lunch, anyhow. I wished I had kept the lunch episode to myself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "An account of my adventures"]

There are probably no worse teases on earth than the big boys who chase the cow on the Western prairies. They had "a horse on the kid," and the poor kid felt nightmare ridden indeed. If I were out with them, someone would a.s.sume an anxious look and carefully scout around a bunch of gra.s.s in the distance, explaining to the rest that there might be a deer concealed there, and one could not be too careful when there were wild beasts like that around. Then the giggling rascals would pa.s.s the suspected spot with infinite caution, perhaps breaking into a gallop, with frightened shrieks of "The deer! The deer!" while I tried to look as if I liked it, and strove manfully to keep the brine of mortification from rolling down my cheeks.

I didn't let my emotions take the form of words, because I had wit enough to know that I could not put a better barrier between myself and a real danger than those husky lads of the leather breeches and white hats. For all that, I had a yearning to see one of them encounter the deer at his worst. I did not wish anyone hurt, and was so confident of their physical ability that I did not think anyone would be; but I felt that such an incident would strengthen their understanding.

This thing came to pa.s.s, and, of all people, on my arch-enemy, Steve.

If I had had the arrangement of details, I could not have planned it better. Because of my tender years, the light ch.o.r.es of the ranch fell to my share. One day everyone was off, leaving me to c.h.i.n.k up the "bull-pen," or men's quarters, with mud, against the cold of approaching winter. Steve had taken his eldest boy on a trip to pick out some good wood.

Presently arrived the boy, hatless, running as fast as he could tear, the breath whistling in his lungs. "Come _quick_!" was the message.

It seems the deer had followed the couple, and when the boy fooled with his old playmate, the deer knocked him down and would have hurt him badly, but that his father instantly jumped into the fray and grabbed the animal by the horns, with the intention of twisting his head off.

The head was fastened on more firmly than Steve supposed. What he did not take at all into account was that the buck was both larger and stronger than he. Though raised on a bottle, Billy was by long odds the largest deer I ever saw.

Steve got the surprise of his life. The battle was all against him.

The best he could hope to do was to hold his own until help arrived; so he sent the boy off hotfoot. Although his power for a short exertion was great, Steve was in no kind of training, having allowed himself to fatten up, and being an inordinate user of tobacco. Per contra, the deer felt freshened and invigorated by exertion. That's the deuce of it with an animal--_he_ doesn't tire.

I knew that Steve was in plenty trouble, or he wouldn't have sent for help. The boy's distress denied the joke I suspected; I grabbed a rope and made for the grove, the boy trailing me. I should have gotten a gun, but I didn't think of it.

Those were the days when I could run; when it was exhilaration to sail over the prairie. The importance of my position as rescuer--which anyone who has been a boy will understand--lent springs to my feet.

It was well for Steve that mine were speedy legs. When I got there his face was grey and mottled, like an old man's, and his mouth had a weak droop, very unlike devil-may-care Steve. The two had pawed up the ground for rods around in the fight; the deer's horns, beneath where the man gripped them, were wet with the blood of his torn palms.

Steve's knees, arms, and head were trembling as if in an ague fit. He was all in--physically; but the inner man arose strong above defeat.

"Here's--your--deer--Kid!" he gasped. "I--kept--him--for you!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Here's--your--deer--Kid,' he gasped"]

I yelled to him to hold hard for one second, took a running jump, and landed on Mr. Buck's flank with both feet. It was something of a shock. Over went deer, man, and boy. I was on my pins in a jiffy, snapped the noose over the deer's hind legs, tangled him up anyhow in the rest of the riata, and snubbed him to the nearest tree. Then Steve got up and walked away to where he could be ill with comfort. And he was good and sick.

When he felt better, he arose and opened his knife, swearing that he would slit that critter's throat from ear to ear; but Steve, junior, plead so hard for the life of his pet that Big Steve relented, and Mr.

Billy Buck was saved for further mischief.

That afternoon two of us rode out and roped him, "spreading" him between us as we dragged him home. He fought every step of the way.

My companion, a hot-headed Montana boy, was for killing him a half-dozen times. However, feeling that the deer had vindicated me, I had a pride in him, and kept him from a timely end. We turned him loose in a corral with a blooded bull-calf, some milch cows, work-steers, and other tame animals. "And I bet you he has 'em all chewing the rag inside of twenty-four hours," said my companion.

That night Steve made ample amend for his former mirth. Indeed, he praised my fleetness and promptness of action so highly that I was seized by an access of modesty as unexpected as it was disorganising.

The next day Steve stood on the roof of the shed at the end of Billy Buck's corral. Suddenly he straightened up and waved his hat. "Deer and bull fight!" he called. "Come a-running everybody!" We dropped our labours and sprinted for the corral, there to sit upon the shed and watch the combat. Steve didn't know what began the trouble, but when I got there the young bull was facing the deer, his head down, blowing the dust in twin clouds before him, hooking the dirt over his back in regular righting bull fashion, and anon saying, "Bh-ur-ur-ooor!" in an adolescent ba.s.so-profundo, most ridiculously broken by streaks of soprano. When these shrill notes occurred the little bull rolled his eyes around, as much as to say "Who did that?" and we, swinging our legs on the shed roof, laughed gleefully and encouraged him to sail in.

His opponent watched this performance with a carriage of the head which, for superciliousness, I never have seen equaled in man, woman, or beast. His war-cry was a tinny bleat: the cry of a soul bursting with sardonic merriment. It was like the Falstaffian laughter of the duck, without its ring of honesty.

The bull, having gone through the preliminaries of his code, c.o.c.ked his tail straight in the air and charged. The buck waited until he was within three feet; then he shot sideways, and shot back again, his antlers beating with a drum-stick sound on the bull's ribs. "Baw-aw!"

said the bull. Probably that hurt. Again bull faced buck. This time the bovine eye wore a look of troubled wonderment, while one could mark an evil grin beneath the twitching nose of his antagonist; and his bleat had changed to a tone which recalled the pointing finger and unwritable "H'nh-ha!" that greets misfortune in childhood. "I told you so!" it said. The bull, however, is an animal not easily discouraged.

Once more he lowered his foolish head and braved forth like a locomotive.

But it would take too long to tell all the things Billy Buck did to that bull. He simply walked all over him and jabbed and raked and poked. Away went the bull, his erstwhile proudly erect tail slewed sideways, in token of struck colours--a sign of surrender disregarded by his enemy, who thought the giving of signals to cease fighting a prerogative of his office. Away went the old cows and the work-steers and the horses, in a thundering circuit of the corral, the horned stock bawling in terror, and Billy Buck "boosting" every one of them impartially. We cheered him.

"Gad! I'm glad I didn't slit his windpipe!" said Steve. "He's a corker!"

Billy drove his circus parade around about six times before his proud soul was satisfied. Then he took the centre of the ring, and bellowed a chant of victory in a fuller voice than he had given before, while the other brutes, gathered by the fence, looked at him in stupefaction.

Only once more did Billy Buck figure in history before he left us for a larger field in town, and on this occasion, for the first and last time in his career, he got the worst of it.

A lone Injun came to the ranch--a very tall, grave man, clad in comic-picture clothes. A battered high hat surmounted his block of midnight hair, and a cutaway coat, built for a man much smaller around the chest, held his torso in bondage. As it was warm on the day he arrived, he had discarded his trousers--a breech-clout was plenty leg-gear, he thought. He bore a letter of recommendation from a white friend.

"Plenty good letter--_leela ouashtay ota_," said he, as he handed the missive over. I read it aloud for the benefit of the a.s.sembled ranch.

It ran: