A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 6

"You have completed that latest--production on which you were engaged, I suppose?"

The writer scratched a match.

"This afternoon."

"And sent it on?"

A nod. "Yes, on to the furnace room."

A smile which approached a grin formed over Bob's big face.

"You have hope of its acceptance, I trust?"

Calmar Bye blew a cloud of smoke far toward the ceiling, and the smile, a shade grim, was reflected.

"More than hope," laconically. "I have certainty at last."

Another pause followed and slowly the smile vanished from the faces of both.

"Bob," and the long Calmar straightened in his chair, "I've been an a.s.s. It's all apparent, too apparent, now. I've tried to compete with the entire world, and I'm too small. It's enough for me to work against local compet.i.tion." He meditatively flicked the ash from his cigar with his little finger.

"I realize that a lot of my friends--women friends particularly--will say they always knew I had no determination, wouldn't stay in the game until I won. They're all alike in this one particular, Bob; all sticklers for the big lower jaw.

"But I don't care. I've been shooting into a covey of publishers for twelve years and never have touched a feather. Perseverance is a good quality, but there is such a thing as insanity." He stared unconsciously at the portieres of the booth.

"Once and for all, I tell you I'm through," he repeated.

"What are you going at?" queried Bob, sympathetically, a shade quizzically.

The long Calmar reached into his pocket with deliberation.

"Read that." He tossed a letter across the tiny table.

Bob poised the epistle in his hand gingerly.

"South Dakota," he commented, as he observed the postmark. "Humph, I can't make out the town."

"It's not a town at all, only a postoffice. Immaterial anyway,"

explained Calmar, irritably.

The round-faced man unfolded the letter slowly and read aloud:--

"MY DEAR SIR:--

"Your request, coming from a stranger, is rather unusual; but if you really mean business, I will say this: Provided you're willing to take hold and stay right with me, I'll take you in and at the end of a half-year pay $75.00 per month. You can then put into the common fund whatever part of your savings you wish and have a proportionate interest in the herd. Permit me to observe, however, that you will find your surroundings somewhat different from those amid which you are living at present, and I should advise you to consider carefully before you make the change.

"Very truly yours, "E. J. DOUGLa.s.s."

Bob slowly folded the sheet, and tossed it back.

"In what particular portion of that desert, if I may ask, does your new employer reside?" There was uncertainty in the speaker's voice, as of one who spoke of India or the islands of the Pacific.

"Likewise--pardon my ignorance--is that herd he mentions--buffalo?"

Calmar imperturbably returned the letter to his pocket.

"I'm serious, Robert. Dougla.s.s is a cattle man west of the river."

"The river!" apostrophized Bob. "The man juggles with mysteries. What river, pray?"

"The Missouri, of course. Didn't you ever study geography?"

"I beg your pardon," in humble apology. "Is that," vaguely, "what they call the Bad Lands?"

Bye looked across at his friend, of a mind to be indignant; then his good-nature triumphed.

"No, it's not so bad as that," with a feeble attempt at a pun. He paused to light a cigar, and absent-minded as usual, continued in digression.

"I've dangled long enough, old man; too long. I'm going to do something now. I start to-morrow."

Bob Wilson the skeptic, looked at his friend again critically.

Resolutions of reconstruction he had heard before--and later watched their downfall; but this time somehow there was a new element introduced. Perhaps, after all--

"Waiter," he called, "we'll trifle with another quart of extra-dry, if you please."

"To your success," he added to his companion across the table, when the waiter had returned from his mission.

II

A year pa.s.sed around, as years have a way of doing, and found Calmar Bye, the city man, metamorphosed indeed. Bronzed, bearded, corduroy-clothed, cigarette-smoking,--for cigars fifty miles from a railroad are a curiosity,--as the seasons are dissimilar, so was he unlike his former inconsequent self. In his every action now was a directness and a purpose of which he had not even a conception in his former existence.

Very, very thin upon us all is the veneer of civilization; very, very swift is the reversion to the primitive when opportunity presents.

Only twelve short months and this man, end product of civilization, doer of nothing practical, dreamer of dreams and recorder of fancies, had become a positive force, a contributor to the world's food supply, a producer of meat. What a satire, in a period of time of which the s.h.i.+fting seasons could be counted upon one hand, to have vibrated from ma.n.u.script to beef, and for the change to be seemingly unalterable!

To be sure there had been a struggle; a period of travail while readjustment was being established; a desperate sense of homesickness at first view of the undulating, gra.s.s-covered, horizon-bounded prairies; an insatiable need of the shops, the theatres, the telephones, the _cafes_, the newspapers, all of which previously had const.i.tuted everything that made life worth living. But these emotions had pa.s.sed away. What evolvement of civilization could equal the beauty of a dew-scented, sun-sparkling prairie morning, or the grandeur of a soundless, star-dotted prairie night, wherein the very limitlessness of things, their immensity, was a never ending source of wonder? Verily, all changes and conditions of life have their compensations.

Calmar Bye, the one time listless, had learned many things in this unheard-of world.

First of all, most insistent of all, he was impressed with the overwhelming predominance of the physical over the mental. Later, in practical knowledge, he grew inured to the "feel" of a native bucking broncho and the sound of mocking, human laughter after a stunning fall; in direct evolution, the method of throwing a steer and the odor of burnt hair and hide which followed the puff of smoke where the branding iron touched ceased to be cruel.

Last of all, highest evolvement of all, came the absorption of revolver-lore under the instruction of experts who made but pastime of picking a jack-rabbit in its flight, or bringing a kite, soaring high in air, tumbling precipitate to earth. A wild life it was and a rough, but fascinating nevertheless in its demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of man, the animal, in nerve and endurance over every other live thing on earth.

At the end of the year, with the hand of winter again pressed firmly upon the land, it seemed time could do no more; that the adaptation of the exotic to his new surroundings was complete. Already the past life seemed a thing interesting but aloof from reality, like the fantastic exploits of a hero of fiction, and the present, the insistently active, vital present, the sole consideration of importance.

In the appreciation of the stoic indifference of the then West it was a slight incident which overthrew. One cowboy, "Slim" Rawley, had a particularly vicious broncho, which none but he had ever been able to control, and which in consequence, he prized as the apple of his eye.

During his temporary absence from the ranch one day a _confrere_, "Stiff" Warwick, had, in a spirit of bravado, roped the "devil" and inst.i.tuted a contest of wills. The pony was stubborn, the man likewise, and a battle royal followed. As a buzzard scents carrion, other cowboys antic.i.p.ated sport, and a group soon gathered. Ere minutes had pa.s.sed the blood of the belligerents was up, and they were battling as for life, with a dogged determination which would have lasted upon the part of either, the man or the beast, until death.

Rough scenes and inhuman, Bye had witnessed until _blase_; but nothing before like this. The man used quirt, rowel, and profanity like a fiend. The pony, panting, quivering, bucking, struggling, covered with foam and streaming with blood, shrilled with the impotent anger of a demon. Even the impa.s.sive cowboy spectators from chaffing lapsed into silence.