Alcatraz

CONCERNING FIGHTERS

The race-track had come into existence by grace of accident for it happened that a lane ran a ragged course about a big field taking the corners without pretense of making true curves, with almost an elbow-turn into the straightaway; but since the total distance around was over a mile it was called the “track.”  The sprints were run on the straightaway which was more than the necessary quarter of a mile but occasionally there was a longer race and then the field had to take that dangerous circuit, sloppy and slippery with dust.  The land enclosed was used for the bucking contest, for the two crowning events of the Glosterville fiesta, the race and the horse-breaking, had been saved for this last day.  Marianne Jordan gladly would have missed the latter event.  “Because it sickens me to see a man fight with a horse,” she often explained.  But she forced herself to go.

She was in the Rocky Mountains, now, not on the Blue Grass.  Here riding bucking horses was the order of the day.  It might be rough, but this was a rough country.

It was a day of undue humidity—­and the Eagle Mountains were pyramids of blue smoke.  Closer at hand the roofs of Glosterville shone in the fierce sun and between the village and the mountains the open fields shimmered with rising heat waves.  A hardy landscape meant only for a hardy people.

“One can’t adopt a country,” thought Marianne, “it’s the country that does the adopting.  If I’m not pleased by what pleases other people in the West, I’d better leave the ranch to Lew Hervey and go back East.”

This was extraordinarily straight-from-the-shoulder thinking but all the way out to the scene of the festivities she pondered quietly.  The episode of the mares was growing in importance.  So far she had been able to do nothing of importance on the ranch; if this scheme fell through also it would be the proverbial last straw.

In spite of her intentions, she had delayed so long that the riding was very nearly ended before she arrived.  Buckboards and automobiles lined the edges of the field in ragged lines, but these did not supply enough seats and many were standing.  They weaved with a continual life; now and again the rider of one of the pitching horses bobbed above the crowd, and the rattle of voices sharpened, with piercing single calls.  Always the dust of battle rose in shining wisps against the sun and Marianne approached with a sinking heart, for as she crossed the track and climbed through the fence she heard the snort and squeal of an angry, fear-tormented horse.  The crying of a child could not have affected her so deeply.

The circle was too thick to be penetrated, it seemed, but as she drew closer an opening appeared and she easily sifted through to the front line of the circle.  It was not the first time she had found that the way of women is made easy in the West.  Just as she reached her place a horse scudded away from the far end of the field with a rider yelling; the swaying head and shoulders back.  He seemed to be shrinking from such speed, but as a matter of fact he was poised and balanced nicely for any chance whirl.  When it had gained full speed the broncho pitched high in the air, snapped its head and heels close together, and came down stiff-legged.  Marianne sympathetically felt that impact jar home in her brain but the rider kept his seat.  Worse was coming.  For sixty seconds the horse was in an ecstasy of furious and educated bucking, flinging itself into odd positions and hitting the earth.  Each whip-snap of that stinging struggling body jarred the rider shrewdly.  Yet he clung in his place until the fight ended with startling suddenness.  The grey dropped out of the air in a last effort and then stood head-down, quivering, beaten.

The victor jogged placidly back to the high-fenced corrals, with shouts of applause going up about him.

“Hey, lady,” called a voice behind and above Marianne.  “Might be you would like to sit up here with us?”

It was a high-bodied buckboard with two improvised seats behind the driver’s place and Marianne thanked him with a smile.  A fourteen-year-old stripling sprang down to help her but she managed the step-up without his hand.  She was taken at once, and almost literally, into the bosom of the family, three boys, a withered father, a work-faded mother, all with curious, kindly eyes.  They felt she was not their order, perhaps.  The sun had darkened her skin but would never spoil it; into their sweating noonday she carried a morning-freshness, so they propped her in the angle of the driver’s seat beside the mother and made her at home.  Their name was Corson; their family had been in the West “pretty nigh onto always”; they had a place down the Taliaferro River; and they had heard about the Jordan ranch.  All of this was huddled into the first two minutes.  They brushed through the necessaries and got at the excitement of the moment.

“I guess they ain’t any doubt,” said Corson.  “Arizona Charley wins.  He won two years back, too.  Minds me of Pete Langley, the way he rests in a saddle.  Now where’s this Perris gent?  D’you see him?  My, ain’t they shouting for Arizona!  Well, he’s pretty bad busted up, but I guess he’s still good enough to hold this Perris they talk about.  Where’s Perris?”

The same name was being shouted here and there in the crowd.  Corson stood up and peered about him.

“Who is Perris?” asked Marianne.

“A gent that come out of the north, up Montana way, I hear.  He’s been betting on himself to win this bucking contest, covering everybody’s money.  A crazy man, he sure is!”

The voice drifted dimly to Marianne for she was falling into a pleasant haze, comfortably aware of eyes of admiration lifted to her more and more frequently from the crowd.  She envied the blue coolness of the mountains, or breathed gingerly because the sting of alkali-dust was in the air, or noted with impersonal attention the flash of sun on a horse struggling in the far off corrals.  The growing excitement of the crowd, as though a crisis were approaching, merely lulled her more.  So the voice of Corson was half heard; the words were unconnotative sounds.

“Let the winner pick the worst outlaw in the lot.  Then Perris will ride that hoss first.  If he gets throwed he loses.  If he sticks, then the other gent has just got to sit the same hoss—­one that’s already had the edge took off his bucking.  Well, ain’t that a fool bet?”

“It sounds fair enough,” said Marianne.  “Perris, I suppose, hasn’t ridden yet.  And Arizona Charley is tired from his work.”

“Arizona tired?  He ain’t warmed up.  Besides, he’s got a hoss here that Perris will break his heart trying to ride.  You know what hoss they got here today?  They got Rickety!  Yep, they sure enough got old Rickety!”

He pointed.

“There he comes out!”

Marianne looked lazily in the indicated direction and then sat up, wide awake.  She had never seen such cunning savagery as was in the head of this horse, its ears going back and forth as it tested the strength of the restraining ropes.  Now and then it crouched and shuddered under the detested burden of the saddle.  It was a stout-legged piebald with the tell-tale Roman nose obviously designed for hard and enduring battle.  He was a fighting horse as plainly as a terrier is a fighting dog.

Arizona Charley, a tall man off a horse and walking with a limp, moved slowly about the captive, grinning at his companions.  It was plain that he did not expect the stranger to survive the test.

A brief, deep-throated shout from the crowd.

“There’s Perris!” cried Corson.  “There’s Red Perris, I guess!”

Marianne gasped.

It was the devil-may-care cavalier who had laughed and fought and whistled under the window of her room.  He stepped from the thick of the circle near Rickety and responded to the voice of the crowd by waving his hat.  It would have been a trifle too grandiloquent had he not been laughing.

“He’s going through with it,” said Corson, shivering and chuckling at the same time.  “He’s going to try Rickety.  They look like one and the same kind to me—­two reckless devils, that hoss and Red Jim Perris!”

“Is there real danger?” asked Marianne.

Corson regarded her with pity.

“Rickety can be rode, they say,” he answered, “but I disremember anybody that’s done it.  Look!  He’s a man-killer that hoss!”

Perris had stepped a little too close and the piebald thrust out at him with reaching teeth and striking forefoot.  The man leaped back, still laughing.

“Cool, all right,” said Corson judicially.  “And maybe he ain’t just a blow-hard, after all.  There they go!”

It happened very quickly.  Perris had shaken hands with Arizona, then turned and leaped into the saddle.  The ropes were loosed.  Rickety crouched a moment to feel out the reality of his freedom, then burst away with head close to the ground and ragged mane fluttering.  There was no leaning back in this rider.  He sat arrowy-straight save that his left shoulder worked back in convulsive jerks as he strove to get the head of Rickety up.  But the piebald had the bit.  Once his chin was tucked back against his breast his bucking chances were gone and he kept his nose as low as possible, like the trained fighter that he was.  There were no yells now.  They received Rickety as the appreciative receive a great artist—­in silence.

The straight line of his flight broke into a crazy tangle of criss-cross pitching.  Out of this maze he appeared again in a flash of straight galloping, used the impetus for a dozen jarring bucks, then reared and toppled backward to crush the cowpuncher against the earth.

Marianne covered her eyes, but an invisible power dragged her hand down and made her watch.  She was in time to see Perris whisk out of the saddle before Rickety struck the dirt.  His hat had been snapped from his head.  The sun and the wind were in his flaming hair.  Blue eyes and white teeth flashed as he laughed again.

“I like ’em mean,” he had said, “and I keep ’em mean.  A tame horse is like a tame man, and I don’t give a damn for a fellow who won’t fight!”

Once that had irritated her but now, remembering, it rang in her ear to a different tune.  As Rickety spun to his feet, Perris vaulted to the saddle and found both stirrups in mid-leap, so to speak.  The gelding instantly tested the firmness of his rider’s seat by vaulting high and landing on one stiffened foreleg.  The resultant shock broke two ways, like a curved ball, snapping down and jerking to one side.  But he survived the blow, giving gracefully to it.

It was fine riding, very fine; and the crowd hummed with appreciation.

“A handsome rascal, eh?” said Mr. Corson.

But she caught at his arm.

“Oh!” gasped Marianne.  “Oh!  Oh!”

Three flurries of wild pitching drew forth those horrified whispers.  But still the flaming red head of the rider was as erect, as jaunty as ever.  Then the quirt flashed above him and cut Rickety’s flank; the crowd winced and gasped.  He was not only riding straight up but he was putting the quirt to Rickety—­to Rickety!

The piebald seemed to feel the sting of the insult more than the lash.  He bolted across the field to gain impetus for some new and more terrible feat but as he ran a yell from Perris thrilled across the crowd.

“They do that, some men.  Get plumb drunk with a fight!”

But Marianne did not hear Corson’s remark.  She watched Rickety slacken his run as that longdrawn yell began, so wild and high that it put a tingle in her nose.  Now he was trotting, now he was walking, now he stood perfectly still, become of a sudden, an abject, cowering figure.  The shout of the spectators was almost a groan, for Rickety had been beaten fairly and squarely at last and it was like the passing of some old master of the prize ring, the scarred veteran of a hundred battles.

“What happened?” breathed Marianne.

“Rickety’s lost his spirit,” said Corson.  “That’s all.  I’ve seen it come to the bravest men in the world.  A two-year-old boy could ride Rickety now.  Even the whip doesn’t get a single buck out of the poor rascal.”

The quirt slashed the flank of the piebald but it drew forth only a meek trot.  The terrible Rickety went back to the corrals like a lamb!

“Arizona’s got a good man to beat,” admitted Corson, “but he’s got a chance yet.  They won’t get any more out of Rickety.  He’s not only been rode—­he’s been broke.  I could ride him myself.”

“Mr. Corson,” said Marianne, full of an idea of her own, “I’ll wager that Rickety is not broken in the least—­except for Red Perris.”

“Meaning Perris just sort of put a charm on him?” suggested Corson, smiling.

“Exactly that.  You see?”

In fact, the moment Perris slipped from the saddle, Rickety rocked forward on his forelegs and drove both heels at one of the reckless who came too near.  A second later he was fighting with the activity and venom of a cat to get away from the ropes.  The crowd chattered its surprise.  Plainly the fierce old outlaw had not fought his last.

“What did Perris do to the horse?” murmured Marianne.

“I don’t know,” said Corson.  “But you seem to have guessed something.  See the way he stands there with his chin on his fist and studies Rickety!  Maybe Perris is one of these here geniuses and us ordinary folks can only understand a genius by using a book on him.”

She nodded, very serious.

“There is a use for fighting men, isn’t there?” she brooded.

“Use for ’em?” laughed Corson.  “Why, lady, how come we to be sitting here?  Because gents have fought to put us here!  How come this is part of God’s country?  Because a lot of folks buckled on guns to make it that!  Use for a fighter?  Well, Miss Jordan, I’ve done a little fighting of one kind and another in my day and I don’t blush to think about it.  Look at my kid there.  What do you think I’m proudest of:  because he was head of his class at school last winter or because he could lick every other boy his own size?  First time he come home with a black eye I gave him a dollar to go back and try to give the other fellow two black eyes.  And he done it!  All good fighters ain’t good men; I sure know that.  But they never was a man that was good to begin with and was turned bad by fighting.  They’s a pile of bad men around these parts that fight like lions; but that part of ’em is good.  Yes sirree, they’s plenty of use for a fighting man!  Don’t you never doubt that!”

She smiled at this vehemence, but it reinforced a growing respect for
Perris.

Then, rather absurdly, it irritated her to find that she was taking him so seriously.  She remembered the ridiculous song: 

  “Oh, father, father William, I’ve seen your daughter dear. 
  Will you trade her for the brindled cow and the yellow steer?”

Marianne frowned.

The shout of the crowd called her away from herself.  Far from broken by the last ride, the outlaw horse now seemed all the stronger for the exercise.  Discarding fanciful tricks, he at once set about sun-fishing, that most terrible of all forms of bucking.

The name in itself is a description.  Literally Rickety hurled himself at the sun and landed alternately on one stiffened foreleg and then the other.  At each shock the chin of Arizona Charley was flung down against his chest and at the same time his head snapped sideways with the uneven lurch of the horse.  An ordinary pony would have broken his leg at the first or second of these jumps; but Rickety was untiring.  He jarred to the earth; he vaulted up again as from springs—­over and over the same thing.

It would eventually have become tiresome to watch had not both horse and rider soon showed effects of the work.  Every leap of Rickety’s was shorter.  Sweat shone on his thick body.  He was killing Arizona but he was also breaking his own heart.  Arizona weakened fast under that continual battering at the base of his brain.  His eyes rolled.  He no longer pretended to ride straight up, but clung to pommel and cantle.  A trickle of blood ran from his mouth.  Marianne turned away only to find that mild old Corson was crying:  “Watch his head!  When it begins to roll then you know that he’s stunned and the next jump or so will knock him out of the saddle as limp as a half filled sack.”

“It’s too horrible!” breathed the girl.  “I can’t watch!”

“Why not?  You liked it when a man beat a hoss.  Now the tables are turned and the hoss is beating the man.  Ah, I thought so.  There goes his head!  Rolls as if his neck was broken.  Now!  Now!”

Arizona Charley toppled loose-limbed from the saddle and lay twisted where he fell, but it had taken the last of Rickety’s power.  His legs were now braced, his head untriumphantly low, and the sweat dripped steadily from him.  He had not enough energy to flee from those who approached to lift Arizona from the ground.  Corson was pounding his knee with a fat fist.

“Ever see a fight like that in your life?  Nope, you never did!  Me neither!  But Lord, Lord, won’t Red Jim Perris take a mule-load of coin out of Glosterville!  They been giving five to one agin him.  I was touched a bit myself.”

For the moment, Marianne was more keenly interested in the welfare of Arizona Charley.  Perris, with others following, reached him first and strong hands carried the unconscious champion towards that corner of the field where the Corson buckboard stood; for there were the water-buckets.  They were close to the goal when Arizona recovered sufficiently to kick himself loose feebly from his supporters.

“What the hell’s all this?” Marianne heard him say in a voice which he tried to make an angered roar but which was only a shrill quaver from his weakness.  “Maybe I’m a lady?  Maybe I’ve fainted or something?  Not by a damned sight!  Maybe I been licked by that boiled-down bit of hell, Rickety, but I ain’t licked so bad I can’t walk home.  Hey, Perris, shake on it!  You trimmed me, all right, and you collect off’n me and a pile more besides me.  Here’s my boodle.”

At the mention of the betting a little circle cleared around Perris and from every side hands full of greenbacks were thrust forward.  The latter pushed back his sombrero and scratched his head, apparently deep in thought.

“It’s a speech, boys,” cried Arizona Charley, supporting himself on the shoulder of a friend.  “Give Red air; give him room; he’s going to make a speech!  And then we’ll pay him for what he’s got to say.”

There was much laughter, much slapping of backs.

“That’s Arizona,” remarked Corson.  “Ain’t he a game loser?”

“He’s a fine fellow,” said the girl, with emotion.  “My heart goes out to him!”

“Does it, now?” wondered Corson.  “Well, I’d of figured more on Perris being the man for the ladies to look at.  He’s sure set up pretty!  Now he makes his little talk.”

“Ladies and gents,” said Red Perris, turning the color of his sobriquet.  “I ain’t any electioneer when it comes to speech making.”

“That’s all right, boy,” shouted encouraging partisans.  “You’ll get my vote if you don’t say a word.”

“But I’ll make it short,” said Perris.  “It’s about these bets.  They’re all off.  It just come to my mind that two winters back me and this same Rickety had a run in up Montana-way and he come out second-best.  Well, he must of remembered me the way I just now remembered him.  That’s why he plumb quit when I let out a whoop.  If he’d turned loose all his tricks like he done with Arizona, why most like Charley would never of had to take his turn.  I’d be where he is now and he’d be doing the laughing.  Anyway, boys, the bets are off.  I don’t take money on a sure thing.”

It brought a shout of protest which was immediately drowned in a hearty yell of applause.

“Now, don’t that warm your heart, for you?” said Corson as the noise fell away a little.  “I tell you what—­” he broke off with a chuckle, seeing that she had taken a pencil and a piece of paper from her purse and was scribbling hastily:  “Taking notes on the Wild West, Miss Jordan?”

“Mental notes,” she said quietly, but smiling at him as she folded the slip.  She turned to the stripling, who all this time had hardly taken his eyes from her even to watch the bucking and to hear the speech of Perris.

“Will you take this to Jim Perris for me?”

A gulp, a grin, a nod, he was down from the wagon in a flash and using his leanness to wriggle snakelike through the crowd.

“Well!” chuckled Corson, not unkindly, “I thought it would be more Perris than Arizona in the wind-up!”

She reddened, but not because of his words.  She was thinking of the impulsive note in which she asked Red Perris to call at the hotel after the race and ask for Marianne Jordan.  Remembering his song from the street, she wondered if he, also, would have the grace to blush when they met.