Through the Shadows with O'Henry

CHAPTER III. Chuck-buyer for the Lazy Z; last journey to Las Cruces; shooting up a saloon; in the calaboose; arrival of the father.

In the code of the cowboy, it was right that Pedro should die. I felt that I had done a magnificent thing to kill him. Kidlike I had a notion that Jim Stanton had watched and approved.

But we did not go back to 101. We hid in chaparral patches in the day, traveling nights until we reached the Lazy Z range near the Rio Verde. They made me chuck-buyer here. We had to go thirty-five miles across the desert to the town of Las Cruces for our provisions. It was about three months after the murder of Jim Stanton that I took my last ride through the gulches. In a mean and shameful predicament my father found me.

Old Spit-Nosed Ben, the superannuated relic of the Lazy Z, was with me on that last ride. He was a sort of errand boy on the ranch. We had loaded up the ancient double-decker freight wagon with about 1,600 pounds of chuck. Ben was hitching up the ponies. We were just ready to leave.

And then it occurred to me that I would get a drink. I was the youngest peeler on the Lazy Z. Chuck- buying was a man-size job, and I had a sense of great importance in it. A fellow in the grocery had gibed at me. "Eh, little gringo diablo, little wart, where did they pick you off?"

I wanted to prove myself. At the 101 the men had held me down. Jim had shoved me away from whiskey. I felt it was time to assert myself.

The saloon was a dingy, one-roomed Spanish adobe with an atmosphere of stale frijoles and green flies. There were a few Mexicans gambling rather idly and a couple of cowpunchers playing pool. I sauntered up to the bar and took a drink, ordered another and then a third. It was the first time in my life I had ever had more than one at a throw. It fired me in an instant. Just to let them know I was there I shot three bottles off the back bar. The old looking-glass came down with a crash, and I went plumb wild and started to pump the place full of lead. The Mexicans got scared and made for the back door. One of the cowpunchers caught his billiard cue across the door and the whole crowd were banked up there. I was reeling by this time and went to busting a few 45's at their feet.

Two shots were fired, just grazing the skin of my neck. I turned. The room was hung with the gray smoke cloud, and the whiskey had me reeling, but through the haze I saw the bartender aiming straight for my head. Two more shots went wild. I fired pointblank at the fellow's face. He went down.

It sobered me. I made for the door. A crowd of greasers clamored about me. My six-shooter was empty. As I got to the street some one smashed me across the head with a forty-five. I woke up in the calaboose.

I didn't know why I was there. I remembered nothing but the terrible crashing in my head. Then they told me that I had killed a man and asked me if I had any friends. Chicken was the only fellow on the range of whom I would ask a favor. He was a blind adder fighter and came in to finish up the town for me. I felt sure that he would get me out somehow.

The calaboose was a wooden pen about 8 x 10 feet. For six weeks I was kept there with Mexican Pete for my guard. Pete would sit in the sun outside the grating and describe my execution. He went into all its details. Every morning he strung me up in a different way. But he was a good sort. After the first week we were friends. Pete had all the Mexican treachery to the stranger and all their doglike fidelity to a friend.

They would have hanged me with as little compunction as they would have drowned an excess kitten, but they felt no hatred for me as a murderer. Life was reckoned cheap in the cow country.

One morning Pete stuck his head between the bars of the calaboose. His long yellow teeth gleamed. "Your padre, he come," he said.

It was as if lightning went through me. I thought that Pete was poking more fun at me. He repeated, "Your padre, big fellow, he come."

I would rather have been taken out to the tree and hanged. I did not want to see my father. I had that picture of him lying at Shrieber's store burned into my mind. But I had also the memory of a hundred gentle things he had done, balancing the roughness of that last impression. I did not want him to see me in the pen with a Mexican standing guard over me. For the first time I felt sorry for the whole affair.

It was Chicken who had sent for him. Once in a fit of depression I had confided in him. We were out on night herd together. The thick breath of the hot evening weighed about us. The cattle had been restless, cracking their horns together, crowding and scuffling. We had bedded them down at last on the level prairie and there was that tremendous silence of the night which rests like the hush of death over the plains.

A storm was coming. We feared a stampede. Chicken and I sat on our horses, riding slowly around the cattle, singing to quiet them. We began to hear the rolling boom of thunder. Lightning struck through the darkness, darting its uncanny flash about the horns of the steers.

I felt lonesome and homesick and full of premonitions. Often since the death of Jim Stanton I had thought of going back. I was tired of the isolation, of the ranges. I wondered about my father and my brothers. I wanted them to know if I died. This night I told Chicken to write to my father's people in Charleston, Va., if I should be killed.

Pete stood there grinning at me. Never in my life have I felt so hot with shame and humiliation. I wanted to escape. I came out from my corner to beg Pete to free me. My father, straight, kind, smiling, stood looking at me, his hand stretched through the bars of the calaboose, <...>