Читать книгу David Lannarck, Midget - George S. Harney - Страница 9

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An hour in advance of the arrival of the Pacific Limited, Sam Welborn paced the platform of the Union Pacific passenger station at Cheyenne, awaiting the arrival of his little partner from Omaha. He was a different man in appearance from the one who, the week before, had come down from the mountains in charge of two obstreperous bear cubs. On that occasion, he had worn overalls, a sheepskin jacket, heavy, clumsy shoes, and an eared cap of ancient vintage. On the day of his appointment, he was dressed as the ordinary business man about to take the train for Ogden or points west. His fairly well-worn, black, pin-striped suit, neatly pressed, fitted his six-foot-two frame as if built by a professional clothier; a rolled-collar shirt, a blue polka dot tie, freshly shined shoes, and a soft crush hat completed the outfit. Over his arm he carried an overcoat. Other prospective travelers wore their topcoats, but Sam Welborn was of the outdoors.

He had parked the Ford with its trailer attachment at the west end of the platform. If his partner's impedimentia was not too bulky, the ancient model was ready for another trek to the hills. Back and forth along the long brick platform he strode in the bright autumn sun. It was no sloven's gait. An observer would have said that somewhere, sometime, in his career of maybe thirty years, he had faced a hardboiled old topper who insisted with piratical invectives that "heads up, shoulders back, stomachs in" was the proper posture for humans who were eating government grub and drawing government pay.

Very true, Welborn was not in immediate need of exercise. In the last week he had worked, and worked hard, during every daylight hour. He had not slept in the last thirty hours. But these were figments, incidents, to be disregarded now that success was just back of the curtain. Now he was to meet the little man who had made this prospect of success possible. Now his greetings must be cordial and appreciative. Nothing should be left undone to overcome the disappointments the midget must endure. In his first meeting with Davy, Welborn had tried to discourage the plan of "holing up" in a remote section, far removed from the things to which he was accustomed. He pictured himself as an old grouch, soured on the world, and surely uncompanionable. He dwelt on the lonely hours, the big snows, and other bad features but it was of no avail. Davy was on his way. In other days, in vastly different surroundings, Sam Welborn had known the tactful duties of a genial host; now he would revert to that role.

David Lannarck was the first passenger to alight as number twenty-one came thundering in from the east. The porter helped with his grips. Davy searched the platform for his friend.

"Why, why, I didn't know you! You look like another fellow!" he exclaimed, as Welborn reached for his grips. "You are younger, better looking, different."

"I am younger, but not different," chuckled Welborn. "I've been taking a tonic—the tonic of hard work. I've nearly completed my big job, and I've located your horse for you."

"Hurray!" yelled Davy, "And can I get him right away?"

"There you go, jumping the gun again. Why that little horse is a hundred miles from here. He's not broken to ride. He might not suit your fancy, and it might take a lot of diplomacy to get him. He belongs to a girl."

The baggage—two trunks, a showman's keyster, two suitcases, a big duffle bag and handbags—was loaded on trailer and backseat. "Well, I don't see much room for groceries," said Davy, as he climbed in. "We've got to have pickles and beans, and plenty of vitamins and calories to balance the ration. Really, before starting, I should have consulted Admiral Byrd on outfitting a polar expedition. Aren't we to stock up on food—here—or somewhere?" He questioned, as he noted that Welborn drove across the tracks and away from the city.

"The eating question is practically solved," said Welborn. "Solved through the providence and frugality of good neighbors. They are overstocked and it's up to us to reduce the surplus. I took out rice, sugar, salt, and a lot of extras on my last trip, and with their surplus of meat, fish, fowl, flour, fruits—canned and preserved, vegetables—canned and raw, we should live like pigs at a full trough. However, if you need tobacco, chewing gum, toothpaste, any special kind of medicine, we can get that at the Last Chance, further down the road."

"No, I'll not need any such sidelines for many a week, but I thought you said we did not have any neighbors? Who runs this fine market and canning factory out in the wide open spaces?"

Welborn laughed. "Wait till we get out of this traffic and on a straightaway; there's much to tell and we've got a lot of time. I have arranged for dinner about twenty miles down this road, and we will push things pretty hard this afternoon so that we can eat a late supper right at this Market and then you will understand.

"You see, this old car, loaded like she is, and pulling a trailer, can do about twenty-five miles per, on this federal road, but it's not all federal road, and the last fifteen miles will take a lot of good luck and fully two hours to make the grade. I would like to get home in daylight."

The general direction of the national roadway, was west. The traffic to and from Cheyenne at this noon hour was not heavy. Tourists were still touring, notwithstanding the fact that this section of the country might be snowed under at any time; truckloads of livestock, were encountered, and far down the highway, where the traffic thinned down, the partners met a big band of sheep that required care and diplomacy in passing. Presently, Welborn turned the car into a driveway at a neat farm home.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Yes, I am always hungry, although I had breakfast somewhere this side of Julesburg."

"Well, I arranged for dinner here, and we will also stock up on gas and oil for the long trek. Of course I carry an extra five gallons in the can on the running board, but this is about our last place to stock up on eats."

A woman came to the door. "You are right on time," she said. "I hope you have brought your appetites, as the lunch is just ready."

Somebody was thoughtful; there was a high chair at the dining table. After a very satisfying meal, Welborn shoved back his chair. He found a piece of wrapping paper that he spread in front of Davy and drew a rough map.

"We are near the line of two states," he said. "The Medicine Bow Mountains are here. Geologists point out that this range so interrupted the route of the Continental Divide that it turned it back to the north in a big curve and made it hard to find. We go through a pass in the range. On this side, we run into the little streams that form the Laramie River. On yon side is the North Platte. Both run north and both find sources in the North Park. Those who know, say that for beauty and grandeur no section of the world beats the North Park country. Personally I do not know, as my contacts have been limited. It is said, too, that this is the northern limits of gold. At this point, the mountains seemed to have changed their content, or else those to the north were made at a different era. All these things are speculative and have their exceptions, as I well know.

"North Park, however, is a great grazing country. Its grass wealth may be greater than its mineral. The government owns the land, except tracts here and there suitable for farming. Our destination is the Silver Falls Project, a fine body of rolling land, suitable for either grazing or farming. It was laid out in convenient tracts for homesteads. Each parcel was a half section. If there was rough land adjoining a tract, that was included for good measure. It was opened for settlers and many came, but none stayed. There was no central organization to hold them—no church to rally around—no one established a central trading post—no outstanding personage to collect and hold, as is always the case in community building in America. Then, too, there were no roads; therefore no market outlet. The road over which we are going, is the only inlet and there's no outlet. A half mile of blasting and building would have made an entrance to the Tranquil Meadows district and to trails and highways that led to market towns in two states, but the blasting and building was never done. The Silver Falls Project never grew big enough to make its decline noticeable.

"Of those who came to try it out, only four stuck to a final deed. Two of these are at this end of the project. Carter runs a filling station at the forks of the road and Withrow, next to him, hunts, traps, and plays a fiddle. I acquired the two tracts at the far end of the project and Gillis, our enterprising neighbor, owns two parcels next to me and operates the abandoned tracts under grazing allotments. This is a real ranch; small, as compared to others, but modeled as a farm in the East, for Gillis is a real farmer. I make the guess that when you grow homesick and tired of the loneliness at my place you will headquarter at the Gillis place, in fact I have made that kind of arrangement with them. They have a telephone, a radio, a phonograph, and take plenty of newspapers and magazines, and, best of all, there is a kindly, enterprising woman there to manage, to cook and can the fruits and vegetables, and do the homey things that makes life fit to live.

"They have cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and raise plenty of feed. But they are an oasis in a desert. Except for our place, they have no neighbors within fifteen miles. Mrs. Gillis is a worker and a planner. She sells pigs, turkeys and calves, in Laramie and Cheyenne, more than one hundred miles away; she has a working arrangement with the filling station down at the roadside, whereby they sell quite a lot of her canned stuff and preserves. She's always got something to sell and sells it, market or no market.

"I depend on them for almost everything. Even the car and trailer out there belongs to them. I bought a stock of chickens off of them, and I rent a cow and calf from them. Really, while you have come out here to my place, you will subsist for the most part off the Gillis family."

"Well the outlook gets better and better each time you add a chapter," said Davy as they walked out to the car. "How many in the Gillis family?"

"Just two, Jim and his wife. But staying with them is Landy—Landy Spencer, Mrs. Gillis' brother. He's older, is an oldtime cow hand that has retired, when Mrs. Gillis will let him. He's been in the West since boyhood and knows the game, but doesn't play it. He just putters around, when Mrs. Gillis isn't after him to do something, and that's the reason he stays up at our place most of the time. You will like Landy. He is the one that located your horse over at Lough's B-line Ranch. I had told him of your wanting a little horse, and this week, while Gillis and I were blasting out the rock and setting the pump, Landy strayed over to Lough's and located the nag. Landy says as soon as he sees you, he can tell instantly if the horse will fit."

"I've got a saddle in that keyster, and he can measure by that," said Davy, "and anyhow I don't want a little, low-headed, round-bellied hoss that can't go places. If he is a cowboy, he will know the kind."

For five or more miles, the route led over a national highway. Then Welborn turned to the right, drove a few hundred feet and stopped. "Look out here to the left" he said. "See that big mound with its head in the clouds? That's Longs Peak, the highest in the country. On a clear day, it can be seen from Cheyenne. From here on, you are to see mountains and more mountains, but Longs Peak is the daddy of them all."

Now the roadway was not so good, but the ancient car labored on in full vigor. Fences had disappeared; the roadway no longer held to section lines but took the course of least resistance, generally following the stream bed which it crossed and re-crossed many times. The direction was generally west and up. Twice on the trip, Welborn took a bucket out of the car, dipped water from the stream, and cooled the heated engine. On one of these occasions, he washed his face in the cooling waters, explaining that he did this to overcome drowsiness.

Davy saw everything. This was his country. Except for meeting a lone herder in charge of a band of sheep, they had not met a human being in the last fifty miles. Yet there was plenty of life. They were never out of sight of cattle—not the big herds as Davy thought it would be—just a few here and there. There were some horses around the little pole barns off the roadway. High up on distant hills, bands of sheep were grazing.

Overhead, but not too high, hawks skimmed the levels or tilted over knolls and hills in search of a quarry; larks gathered in flights for a final powwow before beginning the long trip southward. Magpies flitted through the shrubbery of the creek banks. In crossing a little wooden bridge near a waterfall, Davy saw an object in the water, then in the air, and then in the water where the spray fell and where foam formed. Later, he was to know this little slate-colored bird as the water ouzel, a bird that was neither wader nor swimmer, yet took his subsistence from the foam and spray.

"That road leads to Laramie," said Welborn pointing out a trail to the right. "Laramie is closer to our place, and one less mountain range to cross."

"Why didn't we come that way?" asked Davy.

"Well, the big circus didn't show in Laramie, and I had to get to Cheyenne for contact. There I met a fellow who freighted me down with pump tools and I had to take back some of the wrenches I borrowed. Then this fellow made an appointment for Cheyenne, and I would not have missed the appointment for anything."

"Oh yeah," said Davy, "I suppose out here, the matter of a few mountain ranges is all in a day's work. Anyhow, we are seeing some country, and the lizzie is going fine."

For several miles it was downhill and around many hairpin turns. Then many small streams were crossed and followed. Several times the sun seemed to set, only to reappear again through a cleft in the hills. Where the terrain was level enough, hundreds of jack rabbits were seen. They were not the nervous, string-halt jacks of the prairies, but the smaller black-tailed variety.

And then they came to a store and filling station. "Well of all the places for a filling station," exclaimed Davy. "Many times I've seen 'em located at places where there was little business, but I never before saw one located where there was absolutely no business. What's the big idea?"

"He is probably like another fellow I know," answered Welborn. "He wanted to get somewhere, where he wouldn't see anyone. But at that, he does some business, seemingly as much as he wants."

More gas was taken on, and the reserve tank filled.

"Adot is on ahead about eight miles, but we turn here for the final dash."

The final dash was but a creep. Except for the bridge over Ripple Creek, the roadway was just a trail. The sun had gone down for good. The lights, none too good, revealed little of the hazards. It was a long, steady grind, mostly uphill. At last a light appeared ahead. A dog barked. A lantern shone. Welborn turned the car through a gate. "Gillis Station," he called out to the midget who had remained very quiet.

"Have them drive up next to the house," a woman's voice called from within. "We will throw a canvas over the trailer. They will stay here tonight. It's too cold to stay in a house that has had no fire."

"There's your orders, Welborn. Drive right over here next to the chimney. Howdy, Mr. Lannarck, you and Welborn get out and limber up for there's prospect for a fine supper." It was Gillis speaking as he aided Davy out of the cab.

"I am Davy to you folks," said the little man as he stamped around to limber up from the long confinement. "You are Mrs. Gillis, I know, and you are Landy, aren't you? Will I fit that hoss that the girl owns?"

"You are about a half-hand short right now," the old man chuckled, "but after a few hikes up to Pinnacle Point, you should fit that little hoss jist like a clothespin fits the line."

It was a fine supper. There was also a home-made high chair that just fit Davy's needs.

"Before I go to bed," said Davy earnestly and firmly, "I am going to write down that supper menu and send it to poor old Lew and Jess, who are wearing out shoe leather trying to find a restaurant where the steaks aren't made out of saddle skirts and the potatoes and the candle grease have parted company. Lemme see, there was fried chicken and the best cream gravy I ever tasted, mashed potatoes, creamed peas, fluffier biscuits than those birds ever saw, two kinds of jelly, strawberry preserves, some other preserves, and apple pie with whipped cream on it.

"A long time ago—it was my first year in vaudeville—Mr. Singer gave his midget performers a dinner at one of the celebrated New York restaurants, I think they called the place Shanley's, a swell place with a private dining-room, lots of waiters, food in courses. Well, that big feed would be a tramp's handout compared with this dinner tonight." Davy was either talking to himself or was trying to interest Welborn in the conversation as the two were undressing by the light of the kerosene lamp in Mrs. Gillis' spare room. Welborn seemed not interested. He was soon in bed and snoring.

"Feathers, by golly," muttered Davy as he snuggled down deep in the bed.