# The Trail Rider/Chapter 14

OLLIE NOGGLE was clever at reducing swellings and easing the pain of abrasions, from his long practice at that subsidiary art in a land where violence was the rule. After he had gone over Texas Hartwell's face with his razor, and his lumps and bumps, cuts and bruises with his lotions and sweet-scented powders, there was little trace of damage to be seen.
That was one advantage of having a bony face, he remarked, ingenuously, as he worked on the hurts. A man like Hartwell could stand up to a lot of pounding and skinning, and get out of Noggle's chair just about the same as ever. But every barber couldn't do that for a man, hard face or soft face, he allowed. No, sir, it took an artist to make a job of it that a man could go to church with and not feel ashamed.
Hartwell owned that it took an artist, indeed, and that Mr. Noggle was the premier of his craft. He left the shop with confidence, and walked the street without shame. He had not ventured to place himself in Mr. Noggle's hands until after dark, for his ​weakness and sickness had hung on him all afternoon, in spite of Mrs. Goodloe's motherly efforts to alleviate his suffering and lift the cloud from his spirits.
He told her, openly and without reservation, exactly what he had gone through, and the sincerity with which she expressed herself of her belief in his honesty was worth more to him than all the physic and balm that a medicine chest would hold.
To add to this comfort Malvina came to his room and put her hand on his forehead, and said she knew the association men were wrong in the matter, and that she would take his part against the whole range, just as he had walked into the room where the infare supper was going on and taken her part against the outrageous claims of Zebedee Smith.
Hartwell thanked her, and the pain and sickness—for a great deal of it was homesickness and loneliness—began to grow lighter at once, and the beauty to come back to the edges of the world. And Mrs. Goodloe brought him chicken broth, and sat by him while he drank it, and put a wet towel over his eyes, and he fell asleep. It was on her recommendation when he woke after sunset that he went to the light-handed Mr. Noggle and besought his ministrations.
Sympathy and food, though both of them were just the plain, common and wholesome kind with​out spice or garnishment to whet the vanity, brought about a quick and brightening change. Texas was almost himself when he started to visit Uncle Boley after supper, clothed in new raiment, his grand black coat coming down on his thighs. As for the suspicion of the association, it troubled him little now. Duncan's adjustment of vision after the fight lent hope that all of them would see him right in time. But there was the challenge from Dee Winch, who felt himself aggrieved because he had hired Texas into the trust that they thought he had betrayed. Winch was not big enough to stand back and look at it like the generous man that Texas had taken him to be. His mind and sympathy were as inelastic as the dried beef upon which he lived, and his heart was atrophied like a chunk of it hanging in the smoke. His threat haunted Hartwell like a whisper in his ears. It would not leave him; he was conscious of it every breath.
He found that the story of his supposed treason had gone to Uncle Boley's shop ahead of him, and all over the town, in fact.
"Yes, they're cussin' you high and low, Texas, wherever they're got interest in cattle, one way or another, for this is a cow town, as I told you before," the old man said.
Uncle Boley sat looking out of his window—he was at work on a special rush job when Texas en​tered—his waxed end hanging down his beard, his attention off the boot in the strap.
Texas thought that he avoided him with his eyes, and felt the hurt of that distrust more than he had suffered from Sawyer's fists. He believed the old man was going to repudiate him, afraid of the cattlemen's censure for having been his sponsor in a way. He could not blame Uncle Boley for that. Above all the others he had a reason—the reason of his butter and bread, his bed, his humble roof. If they should take their patronage away from him, all would fail.
"But let 'em cuss and be damned—I'll stand by you!" said Uncle Boley, with great and sudden vehemence. He whacked the bench with his hammer, a flush of defiance in his face, the light of a fight in his eyes.
Texas was taken around so suddenly by this declaration that he had no wind for a moment. And then when his wind came back, he hadn't any words, he was so chocked up with the big feeling of gratitude and admiration which rose up in him for this brave, honest old man. He went around the end of the little counter and gave Uncle Boley his hand, and looked him in the eye what men do not say to each other in times like that.
"That's all right, gol dern 'em!" said Uncle Boley. "I knew some of them fellers when they ​was stealin' calves, and I can tell more'n one of 'em how they got their start. Let 'em come to me, gol dern 'em, and I'll put a cuckle burr under their tails that'll make them twist forty ways a minute!"
Texas was moved the deeper by this expression of faith and loyalty because it had come from Uncle Boley's tongue before he had heard Hartwell's side of it. Now he sat down near his ancient friend as he plied his thread, and told of his adventures with the invading cattlemen, sparing nothing, not even the visit of Fannie Goodnight to the border, and her part in his capture and disgrace. He believed that it was due to Uncle Boley to know all this, even though the figuring of Fannie Goodnight in it might place him in a more unenviable situation. Uncle Boley worked on in silence a little while, according to his way when pondering a heavy matter. Then:
"Do you reckon that girl was on the square, Texas?"
"I think she was, sir."
"But you know how a woman can act up, Texas. She can throw it all over a man when it comes to actin' up. But that feller a cussin' her seems to carry out her word that she tried to tip it off to you and spoke too late."
"I've turned it in my mind from all sides, Uncle ​Boley, and I'm of the belief that she tried to do the square thing after she got to thinkin' it over, but spoke too late, sir, as you say."
He said nothing about Fannie's earnest declaration of the length she would go for him, nor of the liking that she had so openly expressed. No matter what she was, or had been in her day, she was sincere when she told him that, her hand on his arm, her eyes and voice as earnest as a woman's ever were.
No matter what she was, or had been in her day, indeed, there was an untainted spot in the core of her heart, and an upreaching and a yearning to have better than the world had given her, or her own wilful choice had brought. That much would keep between Fannie Goodnight and him. He asked Uncle Boley to hold her name out of it, as a mark of gratitude. The old man readily saw it in that light, and assented.
"We'll set our pegs and see how things turn out," Uncle Boley said. "If Duncan's beginnin' to see through a chink, that's a good sign he's comin' around to your side. Winch—he'll be the hardest snag in the road. You can't argue with that man. If you meet him, Texas, don't wait the bat of your eye—let him have it, right in the gizzard. Yes, and if I have to take a hand I'll take it, by granger! ​I've been a good friend to Dee, and I've stood by him, but I ain't a goin' to set around and see him sling no gun on you."
"I don't want to have any more brawls and disturbances while I'm here, either, but I can't run away from that little man. And I ain't got any particular business right around here any more, Uncle Boley, but I couldn't look at even myself in the glass if I was to let him drive me off thataway."
"You ain't got no business around here, heh?" Uncle Boley spoke almost derisively, he put so much force into his words. He pulled at his threads as if he was out of humor with the boot, and wanted to hurt it. "Well, Sallie McCoy she's stopped in here every blessed day since she come back from Duncan's askin' me if I got any word from you. Nothing to stay around for, heh? Well, if I had half that much to stay around for anywhere, they couldn't drive me out of the country with dogs."
"I'm proud to know she took such a kindly interust in a stranger, sir. Do you suppose she'll think I'm a crook when she hears about this?"
"It takes more than rumors and suspicions to turn Sallie McCoy agin a friend."
"But I'm scarcely so near to her as a friend, sir. An acquaintance, a man passed by in the big road; that is all, sir."
​"Of course, if you don't want to be no more than that!"
"I do want to be more than that, I'm pinin' and pindlin' away to be more than that, Uncle Boley, sir. But I couldn't approach her under any false pretenses, or under present unfortunate conditions. I'm a footless wayfarer, Uncle Boley; I have no place to lay my head. Here to-day, away to-morrow, like a bird on the wing, a pore old ornery crow-bird, sir, that's sailed off by the wind ever' whichway, and no place to light at all, and call it home."
"Then it's time you was makin' a home, and puttin' somebody in it to look after it, by granger! It makes me mad to hear a young feller with the daylight of his life ahead of him growlin' about havin' no place to light. What does a man need but a woman, and what does a woman need but a man?"
Uncle Boley's exposition of the simplicity of life drew that glimmering smile into Hartwell's eyes, and broke the stern corners of his mouth.
"Well sir, a house to live in, and something to eat, I reckon, ahead of most everything else," he ventured to reply.
"He'd be a dam' pore stick of furniture if he couldn't git 'em!"
"And I suppose there'd be a fire needed to keep ​them warm, and coal-oil for the lamp," pursued Texas, his smile broadening until a little glint of his marvelously white teeth could be seen.
"Yes, and if he had a pair of eyes like Sallie McCoy's aside of him he'd have a light to cheer him through the darkest night that ever set, and he'd have a fire in her heart that'd warm him if death was a standin' over agin the wall. Tell me!"
"He would, sir," said Texas, very softly, his eyes fixed as one who saw a vision," he would so, as sure as you're born!"
"Then why in the dickens don't you take her?"
"Why, she wouldn't have me, sir—she wouldn't begin to have me!"
Texas reduced himself, and emphasized his unworthiness so sharply that he seemed nothing but a point.
"How do you know?"
"She's a noblewoman, sir, one of the Almighty's royalty! The ground she walks on—"
"Is like any other ground—muddy or dry, 'cordin' to the weather. All you got to do, Texas, is spraddle out and throw a ham into it, like you're able if you set your jaw to a thing. Take a holt of something in this town that'll make you money—you don't have to wait till you get a gripsack full of it to ask Sallie to have you; she's the kind that'd be a help to any man."
​"I'm most certain she would, sir. But a man couldn't ask her to meet greater hardships than she'd leave at home, maybe. And I'd be as keen as a bee in the early mornin' to start up in something here, Uncle Boley, if I knew what to turn to and had the means."
"Can you run a drug store?"
"I don't even know what it is they keep in 'em that makes that purty smell, sir."
"H-m; that's too bad. I knowed a feller run a drug store down in Kansas City, and he cleared more than he took in. It's the finest business a man ever opened, if he knows how to run it. I don't reckon you was brought up to doctorin' or lawyerin', was you Texas?"
"No sir, I wasn't, it grieves me to say, Uncle Boley."
Uncle Boley sewed on until he had used up his thread, then he took the boot out of the strap and stood it on the floor with reflective preoccupation. He was silent a good while, Texas watching him with the candle of humor in his eyes, his face softened in its homely austerity by the affection that he held for this simple, garrulous old soul.
"Well, I'll think out something for you, son," Uncle Boley said at last. "You go on ahead and fix that part of it up with Sallie, and by the time you're ready I'll have some plan figgered out if you ​don't hit on one you like better yourself. Maybe we'll make it a double weddin'."
Uncle Boley winked, in his quick and devilish way, and jerked his head triumphantly in the manner of a man who knows that he is uncovering an astonishing surprise.
"You don't tell me! I congratulate you, sir, and I doubly congratulate the lady, whoever she may be."
Uncle Boley's face wore a cast of high importance as he went to his little counter and opened the drawer. He took from it a photograph, which he passed to Texas.
"She's comin' down from Topeky in a week or two. She wants to see how fur I can jump."
The picture was of a woman past her prime, a long-necked woman, thin of features, ringlets of heavy hair on her shoulders. She was gaily dressed, in a vogue long past, with tight sleeves and little upstanding pokes on the shoulders. There were a good many flowers about her, and much jewelry. Her eyes were hollow, her cheeks sad, as if she had wept the passing of many men.
The photograph was old, and Texas knew it at once for one of those curios which came from the tents of traveling photographers when the art was in the infancy of the dry plate.
​"This is the lady you mentioned to me one time, sir?"
Texas wanted to show interest, a polite, if not a deep interest, although the humor of Uncle Boley's romance was one of the hardest things to bear that he ever had met.
"That's Gertie Moorehead," Uncle Boley said, very proud of her, and very proud of himself for getting on the road of winning her to his hoary bosom.
"I wish you much joy," said Texas, in the quaint words of congratulation with which they still greet bridal people in certain remote corners of this wide land.
"She'll be down," Uncle Boley took the picture, held if off at arm's length, studied it with romantic softness in his eyes, "to look me over and talk it up between us. If she's suited, we'll hitch. It never was good for a man to be alone, and it never will be. The longer he's alone the worse it gits."
"Yes, sir, I guess it must, sir."
"I can take care of a woman, I ain't none of your old used-up stiffs. I'm a better man than many a one of forty-seven I could step out of that door and lay my hands on!"
"Yes, and a sight better than some of them at thirty-seven, I'll bet you a purty, sir."
​"Well, I ain't crowin' over nobody in petic'lar, but I've took care of myself. You'll be stayin' down at Malvina's, will you?"
"I've sent word to Mr. Winch that I'm to be found there."
Uncle Boley's manner of assurance and sprightliness fell from him at the mention of Winch. He became at once serious and silent, as if the overhanging threat pressed upon his heart.
"Yes, and if he gits you, Texas, I'll stoop down and I'll pick up your gun, and I'll foiler him to the rim of daylight but what I put a bullet in his heart!"
Texas lifted his head with a new feeling of pride, and looked the old man straight in the bright, blue eyes.
"It means a great deal to a man to have a friend who will go that far for him, Uncle Boley, sir!"
Texas went away from Uncle Boley's shop feeling unaccountably lonely in spite of the evidence of confidence and affection that the old man had shown. He could not put the shadow of Dee Winch's threat against his life out of his mind. More than once in the passage between shop and hotel he caught himself unconsciously watching from side to side, unconsciously straining for the sound of a footstep behind him.
It was a disquieting thing to live with a sentence ​of death hanging over one's head that way. He was free to walk in the light or the dark with other men, and to pursue the business of his life in the accustomed trend, but he could not be free from the heavy dread of the sudden meeting, the flash of arms, somebody reeling in the road, his gun dropped at his feet. That was a demand note which Dee Winch had taken from him; it must be paid upon presentation.
Even in his room he could not find the relaxation that is due a man without an uncommon care. This thing hung over him, placed him in a vacuum, it seemed, through which the sound of other men's activities came but dimly, and as of things secondary to his own important strait.
It had come between him and all his planning, it stood in the foreground cutting off all view an arm's length beyond. Over his spirits it was as heavy as a debasing drug; in his thoughts it obtruded constantly, like the nagging tone of a hateful voice. The alertness of the hunted was in every nerve; caution had become exaggerated into a pain. There could be no rest, there could be no moment of relaxation for his strained faculties until this thing had been met and finished.
Hartwell had become a listening man.