The Prospector Part 27

"Yes," agreed Ike, "when he's got to. But I have a lingerin' suspicion that you'd be better inside to-night. It aint goin' to be pleasant."

"Oh, I'll be all right," replied Shock cheerfully.

"I have a small tent, a couple of coats, a pair of blankets, and my pony has got his oats."

"Yes," drawled Ike, regarding the cayuse with contemptuous eyes, "he's all right. You can't kill them fellers. But, as I remarked, you'd be better inside."

He walked around the buckboard and his eyes fell upon the doctor.

"What the--" Ike checked himself, either out of deference to Shock's profession or more likely from sheer amazement.

He turned down the buffalo, gazed at the sleeping figure with long and grave interest, then lifting his head he remarked with impressive solemnity, "Well, I be chawed and swallered! You HAVE got him, eh? Now, how did you do it?"

"Well," said Shock, "it was not difficult. I found him asleep in the International. I carried him out, and there he is."

"Say," said Ike, looking at Shock with dawning admiration in his eyes, "you're a bird! Is there anythin' else you want in that town? Guess not, else it would be here. The General said you'd kidnap him, and he was right. Now, what you goin' to do when he comes to? There aint much shelter in this bluff, and when he wakes he'll need someone to set up with him, sure. He's a terror, a dog-goned terror!"

"Oh, we'll manage," said Shock lightly. "I mean to start early in the morning."

"Before he gets up, eh? As I remarked before, you're a bird!"

For some moments Ike hung about the camp, poking the fire, evidently somewhat disturbed in his mind. Finally he said in a hesitating tone, "It aint much to offer any man, but my shack kin hold two men as well as one, and I guess three could squeeze in, specially if the third is in the condition he's in," nodding toward the doctor. "We kin lay him on the floor. Of course, it aint done up with no picters and hangin's, but it keeps out the breeze, and there aint no bugs, you bet."

Shock's experience of Western shacks had not been sufficiently varied and extensive to enable him to appreciate to the full this last commendation of Ike's.

Ike's hesitation in making the offer determined Shock.

"Thank you very much," he said cordially. "I shall be delighted to go with you."

"All right, let's git," said Ike, proceeding to hitch up the pony, while Shock gathered his stuff together. In a few minutes they were ready to start.

"Guess he'll ride comfortable where he is," said Ike. "You can't kill a drunk man. Strange, aint it?"

It was growing dusk as they drove through the town, but the streets, the hotel stoops, and bars were filled with men in various stages of intoxication. As they caught sight of Ike and recognised his companion, they indulged themselves in various facetious remarks.

"h.e.l.lo, Ike. Goin' to meetin'?"

"No," retorted Ike shortly. "Goin' to school fer manners. Want to come?"

"Ikey's got religion. Caught on to the fire-escape you bet."

"No, he's goin' to learn that ra.s.slin' trick."

"Ikey's showin' the stranger the town. He's on for a bust, you bet."

"Blank lot of jay birds," said Ike grimly, in a low tone. "I'll see'em later. You'd think they'd never seen a stranger before."

"That is all for me, I suppose, Ike," said Shock apologetically.

"Don't you worry. It won't give me any grey hair." Ike emphasised his indifference by tilting his hat till it struck on the extreme back of his head, and lounging back in his seat with his feet on the dashboard.

"They all seen you givin' me that h'ist this afternoon," he continued, "and they can't get over that we aint fightin'. And," he added, hitting the hub of the wheel with a stream of tobacco juice, "it is a rather remarkable reminiscence."

Ike had a fondness for words not usually current among the cowboys, and in consequence his English was more or less reminiscent, and often phonetic rather than etymological.

Ike's shack stood at the further side of the town. Upon entering Shock discovered that it needed no apology for its appearance. The board walls were adorned with ill.u.s.trations from magazines and papers, miscellaneous and without taint of prejudice, the Sunday Magazine and the Police Gazette having places of equal honour. On the wall, too, were nailed heads of mountain sheep and goats, of wapiti and other deer, proclaiming Ike a hunter.

Everything in the shack was conspicuously clean, from the pots, pans, and cooking utensils, which hung on a row of nails behind the stove, to the dish-cloth, which was spread carefully to dry over the dishpan. Had Shock's experience of bachelors' shacks and bachelors' dishes been larger, he would have been more profoundly impressed with that cooking outfit, and especially with the dish-cloth. As it was, the dishcloth gave Shock a sense of security and comfort.

Depositing the doctor upon a buffalo skin on the floor in the corner, with a pillow under his head, they proceeded to their duties, Ike to prepare the evening meal, and Shock to unpack his stuff, wondering all the while how this cowboy had come to hunt him up and treat him with such generous hospitality.

This mystery was explained as they sat about the fire after the tea-dishes had been most carefully washed and set away, Ike smoking and Shock musing.

"That old skunk rather turned you down, I guess," remarked Ike, after a long silence; "that old Macfarren, I mean," in answer to Shock's look of enquiry.

"I was surprised, I confess," replied Shock. "You see, I was led to believe that he was waiting for me, and I was depending upon him. Now, I really do not know what to think."

"Movin' out, perhaps?" said Ike, casting a sharp look at him from out of his half-closed eyes.

"What? Leave this post, do you mean?" said Shock, his indignant surprise showing in his tone. "No, sir. At least, not till my chief says so."

A gleam shot out from under Ike's lowered eyelids.

"The old fellow'll make it hot for you, if you don't move. Guess he expects you to move," said Ike quietly.

"Move!" cried Shock again, stirred at the remembrance of Macfarren's treatment that afternoon. "Would you?"

"See him blanked first," said Ike quietly.

"So will I," said Shock emphatically. "I mean," correcting himself hastily, "see him saved first."

"Eh? Oh--well, guess he needs some. He needs manners, anyhow. He'll worry you, I guess. You see, he surmises he's the entire bunch, but a man's opinion of himself don't really affect the size of his hat band."

Shock felt the opportunity to be golden for the gathering of information about men and things in the country where his work was to be done. He felt that to see life through the eyes of a man like Ike, who represented a large and potent element in the community, would be valuable indeed.

It was difficult to make Ike talk, but by careful suggestions, rather than by questioning, Ike was finally led to talk, and Shock began to catch glimpses of a world quite new to him, and altogether wonderful.

He made the astounding discovery that things that had all his life formed the basis of his thinking were to Ike and his fellows not so much unimportant as irrelevant; and as for the great spiritual verities which lay at the root of all Shock's mental and, indeed, physical activities, furnishing motive and determining direction, these to Ike were quite remote from all practical living. What had G.o.d to do with rounding up cattle, or broncho-busting, or horse-trading? True, the elemental virtues of justice, truth, charity, and loyalty were as potent over Ike as over Shock, but their moral standards were so widely different that these very virtues could hardly be cla.s.sified in the same categories. Truth was sacred, but lying was one thing and horse-swapping another, and if a man was "white to the back" what more would you ask, even though at poker he could clean you out of your whole outfit? Hitherto, a man who paid no respect to the decencies of religion Shock had regarded as "a heathen man and a publican," but with Ike religion, with all its great credos, with all its customs, had simply no bearing. Shock had not talked long with Ike until he began to feel that he must readjust not only his whole system of theology, but even his moral standards, and he began to wonder how the few sermons and addresses he had garnered from his ministry in the city wards would do for Ike and his people. He was making the discovery that climate changes the complexion, not only of men, but of habits of thought and action.

As Shock was finding his way to new adjustments and new standards he was incidentally finding his way into a new feeling of brotherhood as well. The lines of cleavage which had hitherto determined his interests and affinities were being obliterated. The fict.i.tious and accidental were fading out under this new atmosphere, and the great lines of sheer humanity were coming to stand out with startling clearness. Up to this time creed and cla.s.s had largely determined both his interest and his responsibility, but now, apart from cla.s.s and creed, men became interesting, and for men he began to feel responsibility. He realised as never before that a man was the great a.s.set of the universe--not his clothes, material, social or religious.

It was this new feeling of interest and responsibility that made him ask, "Who was that lad that rode the winning horse to-day?"

"That chap?" replied Ike. "He's my boss. The Kid, they call him."

Men of laconic speech say much by tone and gesture, and often by silence. In Ike's tone Shock read contempt, admiration, pity.

"A rancher?" he enquired.