ROUGHING IT: CHAPTER 7

It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us
such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless
solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric
people crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up
suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City
as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to
spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous
affair, called a "mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails.

Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy
South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars and
pigmy islands--a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of the
enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with
the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either
bank. The Platte was "up," they said--which made me wish I could see it
when it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They said it
was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were liable
to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made to ford
it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or twice in
midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so threateningly that
we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to be
shipwrecked in a "mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert at last. But we
dragged through and sped away toward the setting sun.

Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles
from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or
six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a
party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport
galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our
part of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo
bull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his
horse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for
some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little,
and finally he said:

"Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making
themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for
awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if
I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people--but of
course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish
those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh
so. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw that
buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the
air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him
round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came
down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped
pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle.

"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded
perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally
prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him,
and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a
minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, as
sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then
the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and
took a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actually
throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get
unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood there
sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and
then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for
breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck--the horse's, not
the bull's--and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head
up, and sometimes heels--but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be
ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you
might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away
some of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at
the time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to
him to get up and hunt for it.

"And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! and
you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too--head down, tongue
out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down the
weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a
whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on
the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel
with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass
rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when
the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left,
and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with
his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish
I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only
solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could
see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with
four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was
astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my
breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of
one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously.
There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there
were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in
case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I
sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle----"

"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?"

"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't.
No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down."

"Oh--exactly."

"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the
limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining
tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see
the length. It reached down twenty-two feet--half way to the ground.
I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt
satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing that I
dread, all right--but if he does, all right anyhow--I am fixed for him.
But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that
always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety
--anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a
situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a
thought came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I--if my nerve fails
now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in
to climb the tree----"

"What, the bull?"

"Of course--who else?"

"But a bull can't climb a tree."

"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a
bull try?"

"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."

"Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you
never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?"

"Well, all right--go on. What did you do?"

"The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slipped
and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again--got up a little
higher--slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he was
careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went down
more and more. Up he came--an inch at a time--with his eyes hot, and his
tongue hanging out. Higher and higher--hitched his foot over the stump
of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You are my meat, friend.'
Up again--higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got.
He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,--and then said I,
'It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it
out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of
the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than
lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was
an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the
smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from
the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you
could count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree and
shot for home."

"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"

"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't."

"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there were
some proofs----"

"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?"

"No."

"Did I bring back my horse?"

"No."

"Did you ever see the bull again?"

"No."

"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as
you are about a little thing like that."

I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by
the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my
brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town
in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of
Eckert, an Englishman--a person famous for the number, ingenuity and
imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most
celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to "draw him out" before
strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house
where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie.
One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and
sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on
Eckert. As we jogged along, said he:

"Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on his
guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly
well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody
might know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer than
that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself--let him drop it or
change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to
draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget
himself and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don't get impatient--
just keep quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem
to me that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple
trick as that."

Eckert received us heartily--a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered creature.
We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about the
king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all manner of
things; and I noticed that my comrade never led the conversation himself
or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert's lead, and betrayed no
solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was shortly
perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more and more
at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hour
passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:

"Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to
astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard
of--I've got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut--and
not only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so--I'll swear to it."

A quick glance from Bascom--a glance that I understood--then:

"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
impossible."

"I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat."

He went in the house. Bascom said:

"There--what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. You
see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions to sleep.
I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eat
a cocoanut--oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly--he will tell the
absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again.

"Cat eat a cocoanut--the innocent fool!"

Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.

Bascom smiled. Said he:

"I'll hold the cat--you bring a cocoanut."

Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a
wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it,
swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!

We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent,
though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal,
notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off
homeward, Bascom said:

"Keep the horse till morning. And--you need not speak of this--
foolishness to the boys."