I. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN
The Circle G herd, twenty-five hundred long- horned cattle out of Menard County, Texas, had passed the Arkansas and were bedded down off the trail two miles from Dodge City. The chuck-wagon fire traced an orange spiral in the night, at occasions fitfully illumining a puncher's face. There were eighteen in the outfit, counting the colored cook whose giant figure slid to and from the circle of light with the supper dishes. From the near distance floated the night rider's lament:
"Sam Bass was borned in Injianna, it wus his native home, And at the age uh seventeen, young Sam began to roam—"
Cigarette tips gleamed; a dry voice broke the spell of silence.
"Had music wings that song would fall an' bust its neck."
The remark stirred the fluid of speech; a lazy rejoinder passed over the flame tips. "Yo' ain't no Jenny Lind yo'se'f, Quagmire. Fella can't tell they is a tune when yo' soothe the bulls."
Quagmire rose on an elbow and brought himself into the light; a skinny man, the colour of butternut, with drawn features and a spray of crowfoot wrinkles around each eye; a sadly sober man whose words seemed to escape from some deep pit of despair. "Who, me? I sing bass."
"It's God's mercy then they ain't more bass singers in this outfit."
Quagmire elevated his thin shoulders and turned his palms upward, Indian fashion. "I was borned durin' the War o' Secession when corn pone got all-fired skase. Not havin' any provender to support my voice it fell into the pit o' my stummick and it ain't come back sence. Go 'way 'long, yo' East Texas oat munchers. It takes starvation to make a genius."
"Well, by—"
Horse and rider moved into the light. Astride the horse, a stocking-legged bay with a shad belly, was Major Bob Gillette, owner of the herd. The firelight played on his face, strongly outlining the granitic ruggedness of chin and brow. He wore no beard, nor so much as a goatee—itself a sign of unconformity in a land where nearly every adult male went whiskered. In his fifties, this stormy petrel was indelibly stamped with the effects of a rough border career. Beneath the brim of his felt hat his hair showed an iron-gray in keeping with the uneven transverse lines of his face and the bold modeling of his cheek bones. His eyes were set far apart and considerably back in the sockets; thus hidden they deprived his features of the ordinary light and mobility and made them appear both harsh and uncompromising. It was a legend back in Menard County that a Gillette rider was the best in he state, not only excelling with horse and rope, but also with the gun. He worked his men hard, kept almost military discipline, and played no favourites. It was quite significant that talk ceased when he rode among the group.
"San Saba."
A brittle, slow answer came from the rear of the circle, "Yes, suh."
"I'm going to town. Keep about while I'm away."
"Yes, suh."
Major Gillette rode off. For some time the silence held, then Quagmire's rumbling, drear tones broke it "Well, I'm perishin' for a little fluid. They say Dodge is a wicked, sinful city. Who am I to deprive it o' lawful trade? If they's anybody else wants to liquefy, le's go swell the population."
San Saba was still immersed in the shadows—a place he always liked to be. But he challenged Quagmire with just two words, these seeming to crack over the fire like a lash. "Stay put."
Quagmire stared at the fire a long while, features coming to a point. Replying, he threw his words over one shoulder. "Now, who said so?"
"Orders," droned San Saba. "Trouble on the trail. They's others drivin' north asides us."
"Man—few o' years and full o' trouble," murmured Quagmire. "A wise hombre issued that remark."
Conversation lagged. The early to bed rolled in their blankets and slept Quagmire edged nearer the fire and began poking at it with a stem of sage. Once, when his eyes met those of another across the blaze, there was a point of flame in them. Just for a moment it was so; his chin dropped, and he traced an endless pattern in the glowing ashes.
The moon, full and bright, swung down from the sky as a silver pendulum. Major Bob Gillette trotted across the swelling prairie with the carriage of a cavalryman on patrol. To his right hand the river lay against the shadows like a shining ribbon. Ahead winked the lights of Dodge; ahead was the stench of Dodge and its buffalo hides. Major Bob passed a scattering of corrals, followed a trail into the dim clutter of buildings on the south side of town, and crossed the tracks. Turning, he rode down a dusty street a-swirl with life, a street across which fell yellow patterns of light from the building windows. These buildings marched beside the street sagging and rising with it as it took its ungraded course through the town; they were, for the most part, bolstered up with a peaked or square false front as if conscious that their rickety substance needed some prop of dignity. A board sidewalk, treacherous to the high boot heel, undulated between street and buildings. Hitching racks were crowded with drooping ponies. A freighter lumbered by the Major, bull whip snapping; saloon lights were bright and alluring, pianos jingled. A woman screamed, a gun cracked, yet the men passing and repassing on the walk paid no attention. Life flowed here in a narrow and boisterous stream.
Major Bob Gillette wheeled, nosed the pony to a hitching rack, and for a moment studied his surroundings with a kind of grim- lipped pleasure. Then, dropping to the ground, he threw over the reins and marched into the Dodge House, confronting the clerk there with a short and clipped question.
"Is my son, Tom Gillette, here?"
The clerk's thumb pointed upward. "Room two. Been here a week."
Major Bob climbed the stairs and walked down the bleak hall to where he saw a crack of light seeping through a keyhole. And here he stopped, for the moment seeming to hesitate. It was quite a queer proceeding for one who was so forward and abrupt of manner, yet he actually appeared to dislike his mission, and he stood in the darkness and scowled, breath coming a little hard. In the end he turned the knob without warning, walked into the room and faced his son.
Tom Gillette had been reading, feet hooked on the table top. The unannounced entry of his father caused him to look up swiftly—and thus they met each other after five years of separation, two men of the same flesh and blood who over so long a time had been nearly a continent apart. Obviously, they were cut in the same pattern, for upon Tom Gillette there was the tribal stamp—the same big-boned frame, the same wide, deeply set eyes, the same cast of gravity. Still, there was a difference: the difference of thirty years' rough and tumble against the difference of five years' Eastern training. To Major Bob there was a certain softness in his son. His sharp eyes saw it immediately, before a word had been passed, and the fear that had been in him through the day grew more oppressive.
He was a man short of speech, he had no way of expressing what rose in him. So he spoke crisply and casually, as if his son had been away but a week. "Got in ahead of me, I see."
Tom laid away the book, marking the page. And the old man's heart lightened a little when he recognized that methodical Gillette trait. "Yes," said Tom, "I've been here since last Sunday. Didn't want to hold up the herd."