No More Learning

There was water at Twenty
Mile — the only water for twoscore of miles. Consequently it
was an important station on the road between the southern coun-
try and Old Camp Grant, and the new mines north of the Mes.
cal Range. The stunt, liquor-perfumed adobe cabin lay on the
gray floor of the desert like an isolated slab of chocolate. A
corral, two desolate stable sheds, and the slowly turning windmill,
were all else. Here Ephraim and one or two helpers abode,
armed against Indians and selling whisky. Variety in their
vocation of drinking and killing was brought them by the trav-
elers. These passed and passed through the glaring vacant
months: some days only one ragged fortune-hunter, riding a
pony; again by twos and threes, with high-loaded burros; and
sometimes they came in companies, walking beside their clank-
ing freight wagons. Some were young, and some were old; and
all drank whisky, and wore knives and guns to keep each other
civil. Most of them were bound for the mines, and some of
them sometimes returned. No man trusted the next man; and
their names, when they had any, would be O'Rafferty, Angus,
Schwartzmeyer, José Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one
night; some longer - remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim;
now and then one stayed permanently, and had a fence built
round him. Whoever came, and whatever befell them, Twenty
Mile was chronically hilarious after sundown,-a dot of riot in
the dumb Arizona night.


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an
»
On this particular evening they had a tenderfoot.
The boy,
being new in Arizona, still trusted his neighbor. Such people
turned up occasionally. This one had paid for everybody's drink
several times, because he felt friendly, and never noticed that no-
body ever paid for his. They had played cards with him, stolen
his spurs, and now they were making him dance.
It was
ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand round and
watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the
opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at
the beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows; and
they naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing
you may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being lim-
ber, had good tough black hair; and it was not in fear, but
with a cold blue eye, that he looked at the old gentleman. The
trouble had been that his own revolver had somehow hitched, so
he could not pull it from the holster at the necessary moment.
“Tried to draw on me, did yer ? ” said the old gentleman.
“ Step higher! Step now, or I'll crack open yer kneepans, ye
robin's-egg. "
« Thinks he's having a bad time,” remarked Ephraim. "Won-
(
der how he'd like to have been that man the Injuns had sport
with ? ”
“Weren't his ear funny ? ? said one who had helped bury the
man.
“Ear? ” said Ephraim. "You boys ought to have been along
when I found him, and seen the way they'd fixed up his mouth. ”
Ephraim explained the details simply, and the listeners shivered.
But Ephraim was a humorist. « Wonder how it feels,” he con-
tinued, “to have - »
Here the boy sickened at his comments and the loud laugh-
ter. Yet a few hours earlier these same half-drunken jesters had
laid the man to rest with decent humanity. The boy was taking
his first dose of Arizona. By no means was everybody looking
at his jig. They had seen tenderfeet so often. There was
Mexican game of cards; there was the concertina; and over in
the corner sat Specimen Jones, with his back to the company,
singing to himself. Nothing had been said or done that enter-
tained him in the least. He had seen everything quite often.
"Higher! skip higher, you elegant calf,” remarked the old
gentleman to the tenderfoot. "High-yer! ”
“High-yer! And he placidly fired
a fourth shot that scraped the boy's boot at the ankle and threw
a


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16105
(
(
earth over the clock, so that you could not tell the minute from
the hour hand.
« « Drink to me only with thine eyes,” sang Specimen Jones
softly. They did not care much for his songs in Arizona. These
lyrics were all, or nearly all, that he retained of the days when
he was twenty,- although he was but twenty-six now.
The boy was cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played
Matamoras,' Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans
leaped at each other, and the concertina stopped with a quack.
"Quit it! ” said Ephraim from behind the bar, covering the
two
with his weapon.
«I don't want any greasers scrapping
round here to-night. We've just got cleaned up. ”
It had been cards; but the Mexicans made peace, to the regret
of Specimen Jones. He had looked round with some hopes of a
crisis, and now for the first time he noticed the boy.
“Blamed if he ain't neat,” he said. But interest faded from
his eye, and he turned again to the wall.
. «Lieb Vaterland
magst ruhig sein,” he melodiously observed. His repertory was
wide and refined. When he sang he was always grammatical.
"Ye kin stop, kid,” said the old gentleman, not unkindly; and
he shoved his pistol into his belt.
The boy ceased. He had been thinking matters over. Being
lithe and strong, he was not tired nor much out of breath; but
he was trembling with the plan and the prospect he had laid out
for himself. “Set 'em up,” he said to Ephraim.
« Set 'em up
again all round. ”
His voice caused Specimen Jones to turn and look once more;
while the old gentleman, still benevolent, said, “Yer langwidge
means pleasanter than it sounds, kid. ” He glanced at the boy's
holster, and knew he need not keep a very sharp watch as to
that. Its owner had bungled over it once already. All the old
gentleman did was to place himself next the boy on the off side
from the holster; any move the tenderfoot's hand might make
for it would be green and unskillful, and easily anticipated. The
company lined up along the bar, and the bottle slid from glass
to glass. The boy and his tormentor stood together in the mid-
dle of the line; and the tormentor, always with half a thought
for the holster, handled his drink on the wet counter, waiting till
all should be filled and ready to swallow simultaneously, as befits
good manners.
(
(


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(
"Well, my regards,” he said, seeing the boy raise his glass;
and as the old gentleman's arm lifted in unison, exposing his
waist, the boy reached down a lightning hand, caught the old
gentleman's own pistol, and jammed it in his face.
“Now you'll dance,” said he.
“Whoop! ” exclaimed Specimen Jones, delighted. «Blamed if
he ain't neat! ” And Jones's handsome face lighted keenly.
"Hold on! ” the boy sang out, for the amazed old gentleman
was mechanically drinking his whisky out of sheer fright. The
rest had forgotten their drinks. “Not one swallow," the boy
”
continued. No, you'll not put it down either. You'll keep hold
of it, and you'll dance all round this place. Around and around. .
And don't you spill any. And I'll be thinking what you'll do
after that. ”
Specimen Jones eyed the boy with growing esteem. “Why,
he ain't bigger than a pint of cider,” said he.
"Prance away! ” commanded the tenderfoot, and fired a shot
between the old gentleman's not widely straddled legs.
«You hev the floor, Mr. Adams,” Jones observed respectfully,
at the old gentleman's agile leap. I'll let no man here inter-
rupt you. ” So the capering began, and the company stood back
to make room. "I've saw juicy things in this Territory,” con-
tinued Specimen Jones, aloud to himself, but this combination
fills my bill. ”
He shook his head sagely, following the black-haired boy with
That youth was steering Mr. Adams round the room
with the pistol, proud as a ring-master. Yet not altogether. He
was only nineteen; and though his heart beat stoutly, it was
beating alone in a strange country. He had come straight to
this from hunting squirrels along the Susquehanna, with his
mother keeping supper warm for him in the stone farm-house
among the trees. He had read books in which hardy heroes
saw life, and always triumphed with precision on the last page;
but he remembered no receipt for this particular situation. Being
good game American blood, he did not think now about the Sus-
quehanna; but he did long with all his might to know what he
ought to do next to prove himself a His buoyant rage,
being glutted with the old gentleman's fervent skipping, had
cooled; and a stress of reaction was falling hard on his brave
young nerves. He imagined everybody against him. He had no
his eye.
man.


## p. 16107 (#453) ##########################################

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16107
notion that there was another American wanderer there, whose
reserved and whimsical nature he had touched to the heart.
The fickle audience was with him, of course, for the moment,
— since he was upper dog and it was a good show; but one in
that room was distinctly against him. The old gentleman was
dancing with an ugly eye; he had glanced down to see just
where his knife hung at his side, and he had made some calcu-
lations. He had fired four shots; the boy had fired one. « Four
and one hez always made five,” the old gentleman told himself
with much secret pleasure, and pretended that he was going to
stop his double-shuffle. It was an excellent trap, and the boy
fell straight into it. He squandered his last precious bullet on
the spittoon near which Mr. Adams happened to be at the mo-
ment, and the next moment Mr. Adams had him by the throat.
They swayed and gulped for breath, rutting the earth with sharp
heels; they rolled to the floor and floundered with legs tight
tangled, the boy blindly striking at Mr. Adams with the pistol-
butt, and the audience drawing closer to lose nothing, when the
bright knife flashed suddenly. It poised — and flew across the
room, harmless; for a foot had driven into Mr. Adams's arm, and
he felt a cold ring grooving his temple. It was the smooth,
chilly muzzle of Specimen Jones's six-shooter.
“That's enough,” said Jones. “More than enough. ”
Mr. Adams, being mature in judgment, rose instantly, like a
good old sheep, and put his knife back obedient to orders. But
in the brain of the overstrained, bewildered boy, universal de.
struction was whirling. With a face stricken lean with ferocity,
he staggered to his feet, plucking at his obstinate holster, and
glaring for a foe. His eye fell first on his deliverer, leaning
easily against the bar watching him, while the more and more
curious audience scattered, and held themselves ready to murder
the boy if he should point his pistol their way. He was drag-
ging at it clumsily, and at last it came. Specimen. Jones sprang
like a cat, and held the barrel vertical, and gripped the boy's
wrist.
"Go easy, son,” said he. "I know how you're feelin? ”
The boy had been wrenching to get a shot at Jones; and now
the quietness of the man's voice reached his brain, and he looked
at Specimen Jones. He felt a potent brotherhood in the eyes that
were considering him, and he began to fear he had been a fool.
There was his dwarf Eastern revolver, slack in his inefficient
>


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(
fist, and the singular person still holding its barrel and tapping
one derisive finger over the end, careless of the risk to his first
joint.
"Why, you little
,” said Specimen Jones, caressingly,
to the hypnotized youth, if you was to pop that squirt off at
me, I'd turn you up and spank you. Set 'em up, Ephraim. ”
But the commercial Ephraim hesitated, and Jones remembered.
His last cent was gone. It was his third day at Ephraim's. He
had stopped, having a little money, on his way to Tucson, where
a friend had a job for him, and was waiting. He was far too
experienced a character ever to sell his horse or his saddle on
these occasions, and go on drinking. He looked as if he might,
but he never did; and this was what disappointed business men
like Ephraim in Specimen Jones.
But now, here was this tenderfoot he had undertaken to see
through, and Ephraim reminding him that he had no more of the
wherewithal. "Why, so I haven't,” he said with a short laugh,
”
and his face flushed. "I guess,” he continued hastily, this is
worth a dollar or two. " He drew a chain up from below his
flannel shirt-collar and over his head. He drew it a little slowly.
It had not been taken off for a number of years,— not, indeed,
since it had been placed there originally. “It ain't brass,” he
added lightly, and strewed it along the counter without looking
at it. Ephraim did look at it; and being satisfied, began to uncork
a new bottle while the punctual audience came up for its drink.
"Won't you please let me treat? ” said the boy unsteadily.
"I ain't likely to meet you again, sir. ” Reaction was giving him
trouble inside.
“Where are you bound, kid ? ”
"Oh, just a ways up the country," answered the boy, keeping
a grip on his voice.
"Well, you may get there. Where did you pick up that
that thing? Your pistol, I mean. ”
"It's a present from a friend,” replied the tenderfoot with
dignity.
“Farewell gift, wasn't it, kid ? Yes; I thought so. Now I'd
hate to get an affair like that from a friend. It would start me
wondering if he liked me as well as I'd always thought he did.
Put up that money, kid. You're drinking with me. Say, what's
yer name? ”
“Cumnor - J. Cumnor. ”
»
)
c


## p. 16109 (#455) ##########################################

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16109
"Well, J. Cumnor, I'm glad to know you. Ephraim, let me
'
make you acquainted with Mr. Cumnor. Mr. Adams, if you're
rested from your quadrille, you can shake hands with my friend.
Step around, you Miguels and Serapios and Cristobals, whatever
you claim your names are. This is Mr. J. Cuminor. ”
The Mexicans did not understand either the letter or the
spirit of these American words; but they drank their drink, and
the concertina resumed its acrid melody. The boy had taken
himself off without being noticed.
“Say, Speç,” said Ephraim to Jones: "I'm no hog. Here's
yer chain. You'll be along again. ”
"Keep it till I'm along again,” said the owner.
"Just as you say, Speç,” answered Ephraim smoothly, and he
hung the pledge over an advertisement chromo of a nude cream-
colored lady with bright straw hair, holding out a bottle of
somebody's champagne. Specimen Jones sang no more songs,
but smoked and leaned in silence on the bar.
The company
were talking of bed, and Ephraim plunged his glasses into a
bucket to clean them for the morrow.
“Know anything about that kid ? " inquired Jones abruptly.
Ephraim shook his head as he washed.
« Traveling alone, ain't he ? ”
Ephraim nodded.
“Where did you say you found that fellow layin', the Injuns
got? ”
«Mile this side the cañon. 'Mong them sand-humps. ”
“How long had he been there, do you figure ? »
« Three days, anyway. ”
Jones watched Ephraim finish his cleansing. « Your clock
needs wiping,” he remarked. "A man might suppose it was nine,
to see that thing, the way the dirt hides the hands. Look again
in half an hour and it'll say three. That's the kind of clock
gives a man the jams. Sends him crazy. ”
“Well, that ain't a bad thing to be in this country,” said
Ephraim, rubbing the glass case and restoring identity to the
hands. "If that man had been crazy he'd been livin' right now.
Injuns 'll never touch lunatics. ”
« That band have passed here and gone north,” Jones said.
"I saw a smoke among the foot-hills as I come along day before
yesterday. I guess they're aiming to cross the Santa Catalina.
(


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Most likely they're that band from round the San Carlos that
were reported as raiding down in Sonora. ”
"I seen well enough,” said Ephraim, “when I found him, that
they wasn't going to trouble us any, or they'd have been around
by then. ”
He was quite right; but Specimen Jones was thinking of some-
thing else. He went out to the corral, feeling disturbed and
doubtful. He saw the tall white freight-wagon of the Mexicans,
looming and silent; and a little way off, the new fence where the
man lay. An odd sound startled him, though he knew it was no
Indians at this hour; and he looked down into a little dry ditch.
It was the boy, hidden away flat on his stomach among the
stones, sobbing
“Oh, snakes! ” whispered Specimen Jones, and stepped back.
The Latin races embrace and weep, and all goes well; but among
Saxons, tears are a horrid event. Jones never knew what to do
when it was a woman; but this was truly disgusting. He was
well seasoned by the frontier,— had tried a little of anything:
town and country, ranches, saloons, stage-driving, marriage occas-
ionally, and latterly mines. He had sundry claims staked out,
and always carried pieces of stone in his pockets, discoursing
upon their mineral-bearing capacity, which was apt to be very
slight. That is why he was called Specimen Jones. He had
exhausted all the important sensations, and did not care much
for anything more. Perfect health and strength kept him from
discovering that he was a saddened, drifting man. He wished to
kick the boy for his baby performance; and yet he stepped care-
fully away from the ditch so the boy should not suspect his pres-
He found himself standing still, looking at the dim, broken
desert.
“Why, hell,” complained Specimen Jones, he played the lit-
tle man to start with. He did so. He scared that old horse.
thief Adams just about dead. Then he went to kill me, that
kep' him from bein' buried early to-morrow. I've been wild that
way myself, and wantin' to shoot up the whole outfit. ” Jones
looked at the place where his middle finger used to be, before a
certain evening in Tombstone. « But I never – He glanced
towards the ditch, perplexed. "What's that mean? Why in the
world does he git to cryin' for now, do you suppose ? ” Jones
took to singing without knowing it.
««Ye shepherds, tell me,
ence.
((
»


## p. 16111 (#457) ##########################################

OWEN WISTER
16III
>>
>>
I'll get
>
have you seen my Flora pass this way ? ) ► he murmured. Then
a thought struck him. “Hello, kid! ” he called out.
There was
no answer.
“Of course,” said Jones. «Now he's ashamed to hev me see
him come out of there. He walked with elaborate slowness
round the corral and behind a shed. “Hello, you kid! ” he called
again.
"I was thinking of going to sleep,” said the boy, appearing
quite suddenly. I—I'm not used to riding all day.
used to it, you know,” he hastened to add.
« (Ha-ve you seen my Flo- Say, kid, where you bound,
anyway? ”
« San Carlos. ”
« San Carlos! Oh. Ah. - Flo-ra pass this way ? ) »
“Is it far, sir ? ”
"Awful far, sometimes. It's always liable to be far through
“
the Arivaypa Cañon. ”
“I didn't expect to make it between meals,” remarked Cum-
nor.
“No. Sure. What made you come this route ? ”
"A man told me. ”
“A man ? Oh. Well, it is kind o' difficult, I admit, for an
Arizonan not to lie to a stranger. But I think I'd have told
you to go by Tres Alamos and Point of Mountain. It's the road
the man that told you would choose himself every time. Do
you like Injuns, kid ? ”
Cumnor snapped eagerly.
“Of course you do. And you've never saw one in the whole
minute and a half you've been alive. I know all about it. ”
"I'm not afraid,” said the boy.
« Not afraid ? Of course you ain't. What's your idea in going
to Carlos ? Got town lots there ? »
"No," said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of
Jones. « There's a man there I used to know back home. He's
in the cavalry. What sort of a town is it for sport ? ” asked
Cumnor, in a gay-Lothario tone.
“Town ? » Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the
corral. "Sport? Now I'll tell you what sort of a town it is.
There ain't no streets. There ain't no houses. There ain't any
land and water in the usual meaning of them words. There's
>


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OWEN WISTER
(
>
Mount Turnbull. It's pretty near
It's pretty near a usual mountain, but you
don't want to go there. The Creator didn't make San Carlos.
It's a heap older than him. When he got around to it after
slickin' up Paradise and them fruit-trees, he just left it to be as
he found it, as a sample of the way they done business before
he come along. He 'a'n't done any work around that spot at all,
he 'a'n't. Mix up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and
jam scorpions and rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on
stones, and heat yer stones red-hot, and set the United States
army loose over the place chasin' Apaches, and you've got San
Carlos. ”
Cumnor was silent for a moment. "I don't care,” he said.
“I want to chase Apaches. ”
“Did you see that man Ephraim found by the cañon ? Jones
inquired.
“Didn't get here in time. ”
Well, there was a hole in his chest made by an arrow. But
there's no harm in that if you die at wunst. That chap didn't,
you see.
You heard Ephraim tell about it. They'd done a num-
ber of things to the man before he could die. Roastin' was only
one of 'em. Now your road takes you through the mountains
where these Injuns hev gone. Kid, come along to Tucson with
me," urged Jones suddenly.
Again Cumnor was silent. "Is my road different from other
people's ? ” he said, finally.
“Not to Grant, it ain't. These Mexicans are hauling freight
to Grant. But what's the matter with your coming to Tucson
with me? ”
“I started to go to San Carlos, and I'm going,” said Cumnor.
“You're a poor chuckle-headed fool! ” burst out Jones in a
rage. “And you can go for all I care -you and your Christmas-
tree pistol. Like as not you won't find your cavalry friend at
San Carlos. They've killed a lot of them soldiers huntin' Injuns
this season.
Good-night. ”
Specimen Jones was gone. Cumnor walked to his blanket-
roll, where his saddle was slung under the shed. The various
doings of the evening had bruised his nerves. He spread his
blankets among the dry cattle-dung, and sat down, taking off a
few clothes slowly. He lumped his coat and overalls under his
head for a pillow, and putting the despised pistol alongside,


## p. 16113 (#459) ##########################################

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16113
lay between the blankets. No object showed in the night but
the tall freight-wagon. The tenderfoot thought he had made
altogether a fool of himself upon the first trial trip of his man-
hood, alone on the open sea of Arizona. No man, not even Jones
now, was his friend. A stranger, who could have had nothing
against him but his inexperience, had taken the trouble to direct
him on the wrong road. He did not mind definite enemies,- he
had punched the heads of those in Pennsylvania, and would not
object to shooting them here: but this impersonal, surrounding
hostility of the unknown was new and bitter; the cruel, assassin-
ating, cowardly Southwest, where prospered those jail-birds whom
the vigilantes had driven from California. He thought of the
nameless human carcass that lay near, buried that day, and of
the jokes about its mutilations. Cuinnor was not an innocent
boy, either in principles or in practice; but this laughter about a
dead body had burned into his young, unhardened soul.
He lay
watching with hot, dogged eyes the brilliant stars, A passing
wind turned the windmill, which creaked a forlorn minute, and
ceased. He must have gone to sleep and slept soundly; for the
next he knew, it was the cold air of dawn that made him open
A numb silence lay over all things, and the tenderfoot
had that moment of curiosity as to where he was now which
comes to those who have journeyed for many days. The Mexi-
cans had already departed with their freight-wagon. It was not
entirely light, and the embers, where these early starters had
cooked their breakfast, lay glowing in the sand across the road.
The boy remembered seeing a wagon where now he saw only
chill, distant peaks; and while he lay quiet and warm, shunning
full consciousness, there was a stir in the cabin, and at Ephraim's
voice reality broke upon his drowsiness, and he recollected Ari-
zona and the keen stress of shifting for himself. He noted the
gray paling round the grave. Indians ? He would catch up with
the Mexicans, and travel in their company to Grant. Freight-
ers made but fifteen miles in the day, and he could start after
breakfast and be with them before they stopped to noon. Six
men need not worry about Apaches, Cumnor thought. The voice
of Specimen Jones came from the cabin, and sounds of lighting
the stove, and the growling conversation of men getting up.
Cumnor, lying in his blankets, tried to overhear what Jones was
saying, for no better reason than that this was the only man he
had met lately who had seemed to care whether he were alive
his eyes.
XXVII-1008


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16114
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»
»
>
or dead.
There was the clink of Ephraim's whisky-bottles,
and the cheerful tones of old Mr. Adams saying, "It's better'n
brushin' yer teeth ;” and then further clinking, and an inquiry
from Specimen Jones.
Whose spurs ? ” said he.
«Mine. ” This from Mr. Adams.
« How long have they been yourn? ”
«Since I got 'em, I guess. ”
“Well, you've enjoyed them spurs long enough. ” The voice
of Specimen Jones now altered in quality. "And you'll give 'em
back to that kid. ”
Muttering followed that the boy could not catch. “ You'll
give 'em back," repeated Jones. “I seen you lift 'em from under
that chair when I was in the corner. ”
That's straight, Mr. Adams,” said Ephraim. “I noticed it
myself, though I had no objections, of course. But Mr. Jones
has pointed out — »
"Since when have you growed so honest, Jones? ” cackled
Mr. Adams, seeing that he must lose his little booty. “And why
didn't you raise yer objections when you seen me do it? ”
I didn't know the kid,” Jones explained. “And if it don't
strike you that game blood deserves respect, why it does strike
me. ”
Hearing this, the tenderfoot, outside in his shed, thought
better of mankind and life in general, arose from his nest, and
began preening himself. He had all the correct trappings for
the frontier, and his toilet in the shed gave him pleasure. The
sun came up, and with a stroke struck the world to crystal.
The near sand-hills went into rose; the crabbed yucca and the
mesquite turned transparent, with lances and pale films of green,
like drapery graciously veiling the desert's face; and distant violet
peaks and edges framed the vast enchantment beneath the liquid
exhalations of the sky.