# Lin McLean's Honey-Moon

Extracted from Harper's magazine, vol90, 1894-95, pp. 283–293.
LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON.
BY OWEN WISTER
RAIN had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless fertility of the soil—when irrigated—and of what an Eden it can be made—with irrigation; but the spells annoy the people who are trying to raise the Eden. We always told the transient Eastern visitor, when he arrived at Cheyenne and criticised the desert, that anything would grow here—with irrigation; and sometimes he replied, unsympathetically, that anything could fly—with wings. Then we would lead such a man out and show him six, eight, ten square miles of green crops; and he, if he was thoroughly nasty, would mention that Wyoming contained ninety-five thousand square miles, all waiting for irrigation and Eden. One of these Eastern supercivilized hostiles from New York was breakfasting with the Governor and me at the Cheyenne Club, and we were explaining to him the glorious future, the coming empire, of the Western country. Now the Governor was about thirty-two, and until twenty-five had never gone West far enough to see over the top of the Alleghany Mountains. I was not a pioneer myself; and why both of us should have pitied the New-Yorker's narrowness so hard I cannot see. But we did. We spoke to him of the size of the country. We told him that his State could rattle round inside Wyoming's stomach without any inconvenience to Wyoming, and he told us that this was because Wyoming's stomach was empty. Altogether I began to feel almost sorry that I had asked him to come out for a hunt, and had travelled in haste all the way from Bear Creek to Cheyenne expressly to meet him.
"For purposes of amusement," he said, "I'll admit anything you claim for this place. Ranches, cowboys, elk; it's all splendid. Only, as an investment I prefer Delaware and Hudson. Am I to see any cowboys?"
"You shall," said; and I distinctly hoped some of them might do something to him "for purposes of amusement."
"You fellows come up with me to my office," said the Governor. "I'll look at my mail, and show you round." So we went with him through the heat and sun.
"What's that?" inquired the New-Yorker, whom I shall call James Ogden.
"That is our park," said I. "Of course it's merely in embryo. It's wonderful how quickly any shade tree will grow here wi—" I checked myself.
But Ogden said "with irrigation" for me, and I was entirely sorry he had come.
We reached the Governor's office, and sat down while he looked his letters over. "Here you are, Ogden," said he. "Here's the way we hump ahead out here." And he read us the following:
"Magaw, Kansas, July 5, 188-.
"Hon. Amory W. Barker:
"Sir,—Understanding that your district is suffering from a prolonged drought, I write to say that for necessary expenses paid I will be glad to furnish you with a reasonable shower. I have operated successfully in Australia, Mexico, and several States of the Union, and am anxious to exhibit my system. If your Legislature will appropriate a sum to cover, as I said, merely my necessary expenses—say $350 (three hundred and fifty dollars)—for half an inch, I will guarantee you that quantity of rain or forfeit the money. If I fail to give you the smallest fraction of the amount contracted for, there is to be no pay. Kindly advise me of what date will be most convenient for you to have the shower. I require twenty-four hours' preparation. Hoping a favorable reply,
I am, respectfully, yours, Robert Hilbrun."
"Will the Legislature do it?" inquired Ogden, in good faith.
The Governor laughed boisterously.
"I guess it wouldn't be constitutional," said he.
"Oh, bother!" said Ogden.
"My dear man," the Governor protested, "I know we're new, and our women vote, and we're a good deal of a joke, but we're not so progressively funny as all that. The people wouldn't stand it. Senator Warren would fly right into my back hair."
"Do you have Senators here too?" said Ogden, raising his eyebrows. "What do they look like? Are they females?" And the Governor grew more boisterous than ever, slapping his knee and declaring that these Eastern men were certainly "out of sight." Ogden, however, was thoughtful. "I'd have been willing to chip in for that rain myself," he said.
"That's an idea!" cried the Governor. "Nothing unconstitutional about that. Let's see. Three hundred and fifty dollars—"
"I'll put up a hundred," said Ogden, promptly. "I'm out for a Western vacation, and I'll pay for a good specimen."
The Governor and I subscribed more modestly, and by noon, with the help of some lively-minded gentlemen of Cheyenne, we had the purse raised. "He won't care," said the Governor, "whether it's a private enterprise or a municipal step, so long as he gets his money."
"He won't get it, I'm afraid," said Ogden. "But if he succeeds in tempting Providence to that extent, I consider it cheap. Now what do you call those people there on the horses?"
We were walking along the track of the Cheyenne and Northern, and looking out over the plain towards Fort Russell. "That is a cow-puncher and his bride," I answered, recognizing the couple.
"Real cow-puncher?"
"Quite. The puncher's name is Lin McLean."
"Real bride?"
"I'm afraid so."
"She's riding straddle!" exclaimed the delighted Ogden, adjusting his glasses. "Why do you object to their union being holy?"
I explained that my friend Lin had lately married an eating-house lady precipitately and against my advice.
"I suppose he knew his business," observed Ogden.
"That's what he said to me at the time. But you ought to see her—and know him."
Ogden was going to. Husband and wife were coming our way. Husband nodded to me his familiar offish nod, which concealed his satisfaction at meeting with an old friend. Wife did not look at me at all. But I looked at her, and I instantly knew that Lin, the fool, had confided to her my disapproval of their marriage. The most delicate specialty upon earth is your standing with your old friend's new wife.
"Good-day, Mr. McLean," said the Governor to the cow-puncher on his horse.
"How are yu', doctor?" said Lin. During his early days in Wyoming the Governor, when as yet a private citizen, had set Mr. McLean's broken leg at Drybone. "Let me make yu I known to Mrs. McLean," pursued the husband.
The lady, at a loss how convention prescribes the greeting of a bride to a Governor, gave a waddle on the pony's back, then sat up stiff, gazed haughtily at the air, and did not speak or show any more sign than a cow would under like circumstances. So the Governor marched cheerfully at her, extending his hand, and when she slightly moved out towards him her big dumb red fist, he took it and shook it, and made her a series of compliments, she maintaining always the scrupulous reserve of the cow.
"I say," Ogden whispered to me while Barker was pumping the hand of the flesh image, "I'm glad I came." The appearance of the puncher-bridegroom also interested Ogden, and he looked hard at Lin's leather chaps and cartridge belt and so forth. Lin stared at the New-Yorker, and his high white collar and good scarf. He had seen such things quite often, of course, but they always filled him with the same distrust of the man that wore them.
"Well," said he, "I guess we'll be pulling for a hotel. Any show in town? Circus come yet?"
"No," said I. "Are you going to make a long stay?"
The cow-puncher glanced at the image, his bride of three weeks. "Till we're tired of it, I guess," said he, with hesitation. It was the first time that I had ever seen my gay friend look timidly at any one, and I felt a rising hate for the ruby-cheeked, jet-eyed eating-house lady, the biscuit-shooter whose influence was dimming this jaunty irrepressible spirit. I looked at her. Her bulky bloom had ensnared him, and now she was going to tame and spoil him. The Governor was looking at her too, thoughtfully.
"Say, Lin," I said, "if you stay here long enough you'll see a big show." And his eye livened into something of its native jocularity as I told him of the rain-maker.
"Shucks!" said he, springing from his horse impetuously, and hugely entertained at our venture. "Three hundred and fifty dollars? Let me come in;" and before I could tell him that we had all the money raised, he was hauling out a wadded lump of bills.
"Well, I ain't going to starve here in the road, I guess," spoke the image, with the suddenness of a miracle. I think we all jumped, and I know that Lin did. The image continued: "Some folks and their money are soon parted"—she meant me; her searching tones came straight at me; I was sure from the first that she knew all about me and my unfavorable opinion of her—"but it ain't going to be you this time, Lin McLean. Ged ap!" This last was to the horse, I maintain, though the Governor says the husband immediately started off on a run.
At any rate, they were gone to their hotel, and Ogden was seated on some railroad ties exclaiming: "Oh, I like Wyoming! I am certainly glad I came."
"That's who she is!" said the Governor, remembering Mrs. McLean all at once. "I know her. She used to be at Sidney. She's got another husband somewhere. She's one of the boys. Oh, that's nothing in this country!" he continued, to the amazed Ogden, who had ejaculated "Bigamy!" "Lots of them marry, live together awhile, get tired and quit, travel, catch on to a new man, marry him, get tired and quit, travel, catch on—"
"One moment, I beg," said Ogden, adjusting his glasses. "What does the law—"
"Law?" said the Governor. "Look at that place!" He swept his hand towards the vast plains and the mountains. "Ninety-five thousand square miles of that, and sixty thousand people in it. We haven't got policemen yet on top of the Rocky Mountains."
"I see," said the New-Yorker. "But—but—well, let A and B represent first and second husbands, and X represent the woman. Now, does A know about B? or does B know about A? And what do they do about it?"
"Can't say," the Governor answered, jovially. "Can't generalize. Depends on heaps of things—love—money—Did you go to college? Well, let A minus X equal B plus X, then if A and B get squared—"
"Oh, come to lunch," I said. "Barker, do you really know the first husband is alive?"
"Wasn't dead last winter." And Barker gave us the particulars. Miss Katie Peck had not served long in the restaurant before she was wooed and won by a man who had been a ranch cook, a sheep-herder, a bar-tender, a freight hand, and was then hauling poles for the government. During his necessary absences from home she too went out of doors. This he often discovered, and would beat her, and she would then also beat him. After the beatings one of them would always leave the other forever. Thus was Sidney kept in small-talk, until Mrs. Lusk one day really did not come back. "Lusk,"said the Governor, finishing his story, "cried around the saloons for a couple of days, and then went on hauling poles for the government, till one day he said he'd heard of a better job south, and next we knew of him he was round Leavenworth. Lusk was a pretty poor bird. Owes me ten dollars."
"Well," I said, "none of us ever knew about him when she came to stay with Mrs. Taylor on Bear Creek. She was Miss Peck when Lin made her Mrs. McLean."
"You'll notice," said the Governor, "how she has got him under in three weeks. Old hand, you see."
"Poor Lin!" I said.
"Lucky, I call him," said the Governor. "He can quit her."
"Supposing McLean does not want to quit her?"
"She's educating him to want to right now, and I think he'll learn pretty quick. I guess Mr. Lin's romance wasn't very ideal this trip. Hello! here comes Jode. Jode, won't you lunch with us? Mr. Ogden of New York, Mr. Jode. Mr. Jode is our signal-service officer, Mr. Ogden." The Governor's eyes were sparkling hilariously, and he winked at me.
"Gentlemen, good-morning. Mr. Ogden, I am honored to make your acquaintance," said the signal-service officer.
"Jode, when is it going to rain?" said the Governor, anxiously.
Now Jode is the most extraordinarily solemn man I have ever known. He has the solemnity of all science, added to the unspeakable weight of representing five of the oldest families in South Carolina. The Jodes themselves were not old in South Carolina, but immensely so in—I think he told me it was Long Island. His name is Poinsett Middleton Manigault Jode. He used to weigh a hundred and twenty-eight pounds then, but his health has strengthened in that climate. His clothes were black; his face was white, with black eyes sharp as a pin; he had the shape of a spout—the same narrow size all the way down—and his voice was as dry and light as an egg-shell. In his first days at Cheyenne he had constantly challenged large cowboys for taking familiarities with his dignity, and they, after one moment's bewilderment, had concocted apologies that entirely met his exactions, and gave them much satisfaction also. Nobody would have hurt Jode for the world. In time he came to see that Wyoming was a game invented after his book of rules was published, and he looked on, but could not play the game. He had fallen, along with other incongruities, into the roaring Western hotch-pot, and he passed his careful precise days with barometers and weather-charts.
He answered the Governor with official and South Carolina impressiveness. "There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing pressure," he said.
"Well, that's what I thought,"said the Governor, "so I'm going to whoop her up."
"What do you expect to whoop up, sir?"
"Atmosphere, and all that," said the Governor. "Whole business has got to get a move on. I've sent for a rain-maker."
"Governor, you are certainly a wag, sir," said Jode, who enjoyed Barker as some people enjoy classical music, without understanding it. But after we had reached the club and were lunching, and Jode realized that a letter had actually been written telling Hilbrun to come and bring his showers with him, the punctilious signal-service officer stated his position. "Have your joke, sir," he said, waving a thin clean hand, "but I decline to meet him."
"Hilbrun?" said the Governor, staring.
"If that's his name—yes, sir. As a member of the Weather Bureau and the Meteorological Society I can have nothing to do with the fellow."
"Glory!" said the Governor. "Well, I suppose not. I see your point, Jode. I'll be careful to keep you apart. As a member of the College of Physicians I've felt that way about homœopathy and the faith-cure. All very well if patients will call 'em in, but can't meet 'em in consultation. But three months' drought annually, Jode! It's slow—too slow. The Western people feel that this conservative method the Zodiac does its business by is out of date."
"I am quite serious, sir," said Jode. "And let me express my gratification that you do see my point." So we changed the subject.
Our weather scheme did not at first greatly move the public. Beyond those who made up the purse, few of our acquaintances expressed curiosity about Hilbrun, and next afternoon Lin McLean told me in the street that he was disgusted with Cheyenne's coldness towards the enterprise. "But the boys would fly right at it and stay with it if the round-up was near town, you bet," said he.
He was walking alone. "How's Mrs. McLean to-day?" I inquired.
"She's well," said Lin, turning his eye from mine. "Who's yer friend all bugged up in English clothes?"
"About as good a man as you," said I, "and more cautious."
"Him and his eye-glasses!" said the sceptical puncher, still looking away from me and surveying Ogden, who was approaching with the Governor. That excellent man, still at long range, broke out smiling till his teeth shone, and he waved a yellow paper at us.
"Telegram from Hilbrun," he shouted; "be here to-morrow;" and he hastened up.
"Says he wants a cart at the depot, and a small building where he can be private," added Ogden. "Great, isn't it?"
"You bet!" said Lin, brightening. The New-Yorker's urbane but obvious excitement mollified Mr. McLean. "Ever seen rain made, Mr. Ogden?" said he.
"Never. Have you?"
Lin had not. Ogden offered him a cigar, which the puncher pronounced excellent, and we all agreed to see Hilbrun arrive.
"We're going to show the telegram to Jode," said the Governor; and he and Ogden departed on this mission to the signal service.
"Well, I must be getting along myself," said Lin; but he continued walking slowly with me. "Where 're yu' bound?" he said.
"Nowhere in particular," said I. And we paced the board sidewalks a little more.
"You're going to meet the train to-morrow?" said he.
"The train? Oh, yes. Hilbrun's. To-morrow. You'll be there?"
"Yes, I'll be there. It's sure been a dry spell, 'ain't it?"
"Yes. Just like last year. In fact, like all the years."
"Yes. I've never saw it rain any to speak of in summer. I expect it's the rule. Don't you?"
"I shouldn't wonder."
"I don't guess any man knows enough to break such a rule. Do you?"
"No. But it 'll be fun to see him try."
"Sure fun! Well, I must be getting along. See yu' to morrow."
"See you to-morrow, Lin."
He left me at a corner, and I stood watching his tall depressed figure. A hundred yards down the street he turned, and seeing me looking after him, pretended he had not turned; and then I took my steps toward the club, telling myself that I had been something of a skunk; for I had inquired for Mrs. McLean in a certain tone, and I had hinted to Lin that he had lacked caution; and this was nothing but a way of saying "I told you so" to the man that is down. Down Lin certainly was, although it had not come so home to me until our little walk together just now along the boards.
At the club I found the Governor teaching Ogden a Cheyenne specialty—a particular drink, the Allston cocktail. "It's the bitters that does the trick," he was saying, but saw me and called out: "You ought to have been with us and seen Jode. I showed him the telegram, you know. He read it through, and just handed it back to me, and went on monkeying with his anemometer. Ever seen his instruments? Every fresh jigger they get out he sends for. Well, he monkeyed away, and wouldn't say a word, so I said, 'You understand, Jode, this telegram comes from Hilbrun.' And Jode, he quit his anemometer and said, 'I make no doubt, sir, that your despatch is genu-wine.' Oh, South Carolina's indignant at me!" And the Governor slapped his knee. "Why, he's so.set against Hilbrun," he continued, "I guess if he knew of something he could explode to stop rain he'd let her fly."
"No, he wouldn't," said I. "He'd not consider that honorable."
"That's so," the Governor assented. "Jode 'll play fair."
It was thus we had come to look at our enterprise—a game between a well-established, respectable weather bureau and an upstart charlatan. And it was the charlatan had our sympathy—as all charlatans, whether religious, military, medical, political, or what not, have with the average American. We met him at the station. That is, Ogden, McLean, and I; and the Governor, being engaged, sent (unofficially) his secretary and the requested cart. Lin was anxious to see what would be put in the cart, and I was curious about how a rain-maker would look. But he turned out an unassuming, quiet man in blue serge, with a face you could not remember afterwards, and a few civil, ordinary remarks. He even said it was a hot day, as if he had nothing to do with those things; and what he put into the cart were only two packing-boxes of no special significance to the eye. He desired no lodging at the hotel, but to sleep with his apparatus in the building provided for him; and we set out for it at once. It was an untenanted barn, and he asked that he and his assistant might cut a hole in the roof, upon which we noticed the assistant for the first time—a tallish, good-looking young man, but with a weak mouth. "This is Mr. Lusk," said the rain-maker; and we shook hands, Ogden and I exchanging a glance. Ourselves and the cart marched up Hill Street—or Capitol Avenue, as it has become named since Cheyenne has grown fuller of pomp and emptier of prosperity—and I thought we made an unusual procession: the Governor's secretary, unofficially leading the way to the barn; the cart, and the rain-maker beside it, guarding his packed-up mysteries; McLean and Lusk, walking together in unconscious bigamy; and in the rear, Ogden nudging me in the ribs. That it was the correct Lusk we had with us I felt sure from his incompetent, healthy, vacant appearance, strong-bodied and shiftless—the sort of man to weary of one trade and another, and make a failure of wife-beating between whiles. In Twenty-fourth Street—the town's uttermost rim—the Governor met us, and stared at Lusk. "Christopher!" was his single observation; but he never forgets a face—cannot afford to, now that he is in politics; and besides, Lusk remembered him. You seldom really forget a man to whom you owe ten dollars.
"So you've quit hauling poles?" said the Governor.
"Nothing in it, sir," said Lusk.
"Is there any objection to my having a hole in the roof?" asked the rain-maker; for this the secretary had been unable to tell him.
"What! going to throw your bombs through it?" said the Governor, smiling heartily.
But the rain-maker explained at once that his was not the bomb system, but a method attended by more rain and less disturbance. "Not that the bomb don't produce first-class results at times and under circumstances," he said, "but it's uncertain and costly."
The Governor hesitated about the hole in the roof, which Hilbrun told us was for a metal pipe to conduct his generated gases into the air. The owner of the barn had gone to Laramie. However, we found a stove-pipe hole, which saved delay. "And what day would you prefer the shower?" said Hilbrun, after we had gone over our contract with him.
"Any day would do," the Governor said.
This was Thursday; and Sunday was chosen, as a day when no one had business to detain him from witnessing the shower—though it seemed to me that on week-days too business in Cheyenne was not so inexorable as this. We gave the strangers some information about the town and left them. The sun went away in a cloudless sky, and came so again when the stars had finished their untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry and hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
I saw a sorry spectacle in the street—the bridegroom and the bride shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a scarlet parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of purchase on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with splendor, like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as well have been behind, and his bearing was so different from his wonted happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say, "Good morning, Mrs. Lusk." But it was "Mrs. McLean," I said, of course. She gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, "Come on, Lin," something like a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a good-humored, jocular answer, and said to me, "It takes a woman to know what to buy fer housekeepin'"; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared him to me more than ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in keeping appearances, but he deserved success, which the angels consider to be enough. I wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were only the preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but one test could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs. Lusk, perhaps not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant rain-maker kept himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the north corner of Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at all, haunted the shops clear across town diagonally.
On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course, sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing. The Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelt for chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but, having been bred a doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the barn, snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be chlorine, the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part responsible; and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The world was as still and the hard sharp hills as clear and near as ever; and the sky over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours. This tenacity in the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official pleasure. We could tell it by his talk at lunch: and when the Governor reminded him that no rain was contracted for until the next day, he mentioned that the approach of a storm is something that modern science is able to ascertain long in advance; and he bade us come to his office whenever we pleased, and see for ourselves what science said. This was, at any rate, something to fill the afternoon with, and we went to him about five. Lin McLean joined us on the way. I came upon him lingering alone in the street, and he told me that Mrs. McLean was calling on friends. I saw that he did not know how to spend the short recess or holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the society of others, and with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He had become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector.
"A hair hygrometer," he said to me, waving his waxlike hand over it. "The indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of a prepared human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the divided arc of—"
"What oil do you put on the human hair, Jode?" called out the Governor, who had left our group, and was gambolling about by himself among the tubes and dials. "What will this one do?" he asked, and poked at a wet paper disk. But before the courteous Jode could explain it had to do with evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention wandered, and he was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly revolved and set a number of dial hands going different ways. "Hi!" said the Governor, delighted. "Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air velocity in feet. Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What you'll need, Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge."
"I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor," Jode started off at once. "And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See there." He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly clear as crystal. "An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen," Jode continued—though none of us would have said anything like that—"but unjustly discredited; and furthermore, its testimony is well corroborated, as you will find you must admit." Jode's voice was almost threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording dotted registers; I caught the fleeting sound of words like "meniscus" and "terrestrial minimum thermometer," and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand—a series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service officers all over the United States. He read each one through from date to signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. "And I tell you," Jode concluded, in his high egg-shell voice, "there's no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir"—he was shrieking jubilantly—"there's not anything to precipitate!"
We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. "Gee whiz!" said the Governor. "I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use."
We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated scientist. "That's what they all say," he said. "I'll do my talking to-morrow."
"If any of you gentlemen, or your friends," said Assistant Lusk, stepping up, "feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to accommodate you."
"What do yu' want this evenin'?" said Lin McLean, promptly.
"Five to one," said Lusk.
"Go yu' in twenties," said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived this was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out—or what of it still survived his bride's shopping. "Will you hold stakes, doctor?" he said to the Governor.
But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five to one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and then me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered our bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next morning. I have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a universal search for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes instantly whipped out his own pocket-book, went in search of Lusk, and disqualified himself. It was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but was anxious to serve, and thus punish the bragging Lusk.
Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze anywhere, and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was freely offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so she might wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed husband rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad of money staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented their lack of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that it was Sunday, and the banks closed.
The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside the hot town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube, the possible smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the extraordinary assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one restless and eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella. In a moment the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs. Old Judge Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast progress of science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the well-known legend, "I am somewhat of a liar myself." And all the while the sun shone high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the certainty of victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came from church, and no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with a chill smile, that he had visited his instruments and found no new indications. Fifteen minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden padded dropsical clouds were born in the blue above our heads. They blackened, and a smart shower, the first in two months, wet us all, and ceased. The sun blazed out, and the sky came blue again, like those rapid, unconvincing weather changes of the drama.
Amazement at what I saw happening in the heavens took me from things on earth, and I was unaware of the universal fit that now seized upon Cheyenne until I heard the high cry of Jode at my ear. His usual punctilious bearing had forsaken him, and he shouted alike to stranger and acquaintance: "It is no half-inch, sir! Don't you tell me!" And the crowd would swallow him, but you could mark his vociferous course as he went proclaiming to the world: "A failure, sir! The fellow's an impostor, as I well knew. It's no half-inch!" Which was true.
"What have you got to say to that?" we asked Hilbrun, swarming around him.
"If you'll just keep cool," said he—"it's only the first instalment. In about two hours and a half I'll give you the rest."
Soon after four the dropsical clouds materialized once again above open-mouthed Cheyenne. No school let out for an unexpected holiday, no herd of stampeded range cattle, conducts itself more miscellaneously. Gray respectable men, with daughters married, leaped over fences and sprang back, prominent legislators hopped howling up and down door-steps, women waved handkerchiefs from windows and porches, the chattering Jode flew from anemometer to rain-gauge, and old Judge Burrage apostrophized Providence in his front yard, with the post-master's label still pinned to his back. Nobody minded the sluicing downpour—this second instalment was much more of a thing than the first—and Hilbrun alone kept a calm exterior—the face of the man who lifts a heavy dumbbell and throws an impressive glance at the audience. Assistant Lusk was by no means thus proof against success. I saw him put a bottle back in his pocket, his face already disintegrated with a tipsy leer. Judge Burrage, perceiving the rain-maker, came out of his gate and proceeded towards him, extending the hand of congratulation. "Mr. Hilbrun," said he, "I am Judge Burrage—the Honorable T. Coleman Burrage—and I will say that I am most favorably impressed with your shower."
"His shower!" yelped Jode, flourishing measurements.
"Why, yu' don't claim it's yourn, do yu?" said Lin McLean, grinning.
"I tell you it's no half-inch yet, gentlemen," said Jode, ignoring the facetious puncher.
"You're mistaken," said Hilbrun, sharply.
"It's a plumb big show, half-inch or no half-inch," said Lin.
"If he's short, he don't get his money," said some ignoble subscriber.
"Yes, he will," said the Governor, "or I'm a shote. He's earned it."
"You bet!" said Lin. "Fair and square. If they're goin' back on yu', doctor, I'll chip— Shucks!" Lin's hand fell from the empty pocket; he remembered his wad in the stake-holder's hands, and that he now possessed possibly two dollars in silver, all told. "I can't chip in, doctor," he said. "That hobo over there has won my cash, an' he's filling up on the prospect right now. I don't care! It's the biggest show I've ever saw. You're a dandy, Mr. Hilbrun! Whoop!" And Lin clapped the rain-maker on the shoulder, exulting. He had been too well entertained to care what he had in his pocket, and his wife had not yet occurred to him.
They were disputing about the rainfall, which had been slightly under half an inch in a few spots, but over it in many others; and while we stood talking in the renewed sunlight, more telegrams were brought to Jode, saying that there was no moisture anywhere, and simultaneously with these, riders dashed into town with the news that twelve miles out the rain had flattened the grain crop. We had more of such reports from as far as thirty miles, and beyond that there had not been a drop or a cloud. It staggered one's reason; the brain was numb with surprise.
"Well, gentlemen," said the rain-maker, "I'm packed up, and my train 'll be along soon—would have been along by this, only it's late. What's the word as to my three hundred and fifty dollars?"
Even still there were objections expressed. He had not entirely performed his side of the contract.
"I think different, gentlemen," said he. "But I'll unpack and let that train go. I can't have the law on you, I suppose. But if you don't pay me" (the rain-maker put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the fence), "I'll flood your town."
In earthquakes and eruptions people end by expecting anything; and in the total eclipse that was now over all Cheyenne's ordinary standards and precedents the bewildered community saw in this threat nothing more unusual than if he had said twice two made-four. The purse was handed over.
"I'm obliged," said Hilbrun, simply.
"If I had foreseen, gentlemen," said Jode, too deeply grieved now to feel anger, "that I would even be indirectly associated with your losing your money through this—this absurd occurrence, I would have declined to help you. It becomes my duty," he continued, turning coldly to the inebriated Lusk, "to hand this to you, sir." And the assistant lurchingly stuffed his stakes away.
"It's worth it," said Lin. "He's welcome to my cash."
"What's that you say, Lin McLean?" It was the biscuit-shooter, and she surged to the front.
"I'm broke. He's got it. That's all," said Lin, briefly.
"Broke! You!" She glared at her athletic young lord, and she uttered a preliminary howl.
At that long-lost cry Lusk turned his silly face. "It's my darling Kate," he said. "Why, Kate!"
The next thing that I knew Ogden and I were grappling with Lin McLean; for everything had happened at once. The bride had swooped upon her first wedded love and burst into tears on the man's neck, which Lin was trying to break in consequence. We do not always recognize our benefactors at sight. They all came to the ground, and we hauled the second husband off. The lady and Lusk remained in a heap, he foolish, tearful, and affectionate, she turned furiously at bay, his guardian angel, indifferent to the on-looking crowd, and hurling righteous defiance at Lin. "Don't yus dare lay yer finger on my husband, you sage-brush bigamist!" is what the marvellous female said.
"Bigamist?" repeated Lin, dazed at this charge. "I ain't," he said to Ogden and me. "I never did. I've never married any of 'em before her."
"Little good that 'll do yus, Lin McLean! Me and him was man and wife before ever I come acrosst yus."
"You and him?" murmured the puncher.
"Her and me," whimpered Lusk. "Sidney." He sat up with a limp, confiding stare at everybody.
"Sidney who?" said Lin.
"No, no," corrected Lusk, crossly—"Sidney, Nebraska."
The stakes at this point fell from his pocket, which he did not notice. But the bride had them in safe-keeping at once.
"Who are yu', anyway—when yu' ain't drunk?" demanded Lin.
"He's as good a man as you, and better," snorted the guardian angel. "Give him a pistol, and he'll make you hard to find."
"Well, you listen to me, Sidney Nebraska—" Lin began.
"No, no," corrected Lusk once more, as a distant whistle blew—"Jim."
"Good-by, gentlemen," said the rain-maker. "That's the west-bound. I'm perfectly satisfied with my experiment here, and I'm off to repeat it at Salt Lake City."
"You are?" shouted Lin McLean. "Him and Jim's going to work it again! For goodness' sake, somebody lend me twenty-five dollars!"
At this there was an instantaneous rush. Ten minutes later, in front of the ticket-windows, there was a line of citizens buying tickets for Salt Lake as if it had been Madame Bernhardt. Some rock had been smitten, and ready money had flowed forth. The Governor saw us off, sad that his duties should detain him. But Jode went!
"Betting is the fool's argument, gentlemen," said he to Ogden, McLean, and me, "and it's a weary time since I have had the pleasure."
"Which way are yu' bettin'?" Lin asked.
"With my principles, sir," answered the little signal-service officer.
"I expect I 'ain't got any," said the puncher. "It's Jim I'm backin' this time."
"See here," said I; "I want to talk to you." We went into another car; and I did.
"And so yu' knowed about Lusk when we was on them board walks?" the puncher said.
"Do you mean I ought to have—"
"Shucks! no. Yu' couldn't. Nobody couldn't. It's a queer world, all the same. Yu' have good friends, and all that." He looked out of the window. "Laramie already!" he commented, and got out and walked by himself on the platform until we had started again. "Yu' have good friends," he pursued, settling himself so his long legs were stretched and comfortable, "and they tell yu' things, and you tell them things. And when it don't make no particular matter one way or the other, yu' give 'em yer honest opinion and talk straight to 'em, and they'll come to you the same way. So that when yu're ridin' the range alone sometimes, and thinkin' a lot o' things over on top maybe of some dog-goned hill, you'll say to yerself about some feller yu' know mighty well, 'There's a man is a good friend of mine.' And yu' mean it. And it's so. Yet when matters is serious, as onced in a while they're bound to get, and yu're in a plumb hole, where is the man then—yer good friend? Why, he's where yu' want him to be. Standin' off, keepin' his mouth shut, and lettin' yu' find yer own trail out. If he tried to show it to yu'—yu'd likely hit him. But shucks! Circumstances have showed me the trail this time, you bet!" And the puncher's face, which had been sombre, grew lively, and he laid a friendly hand on my knee.
"The trail's pretty simple," said I.
"You bet! But it's sure a queer world. Tell yu'," said Lin, with the air of having made a discovery, "when a man gets down to bed-rock affairs in this life he's got to do his travellin' alone, same as he does his dyin'. I expect even married men has thoughts and hopes they don't tell their wives."
"Never was married," said I.
"Well—no more was I. Let's go to bed." And Lin shook my hand, and gave me a singular, rather melancholy smile.
At Salt Lake City, which Ogden was glad to include in his Western holiday, we found both Mormon and Gentile ready to give us odds against rain—only I noticed that those of the true faith were less free. Indeed, the Mormon, the Quaker, and most sects of an isolated doctrine have a nice prudence in money. During our brief stay we visited the sights, floating in the lake, listening to pins drop in the gallery of the Tabernacle, seeing frescoes of saints in robes speaking from heaven to Joseph Smith in the Sunday clothes of a modern farm hand, and in the street we heard at a distance a strenuous domestic talk between the new—or perhaps I should say the original—husband and wife.
"She's corralled Sidney's cash!" said the delighted Lin. "He can't bet nuthin' on this shower."
And then, after all, this time—it didn't rain!
Stripped of money both ways, Cheyenne, having most fortunately purchased a return ticket, sought its home. The perplexed rain-maker went somewhere else, without his assistant. Lusk's exulting wife, having the money, retained him with her.
"Good luck to yu', Sidney!" said Lin, speaking to him for the first time since Cheyenne. "I feel a heap better since I've saw yu' married." He paid no attention to the biscuit-shooter, or the horrible language that she threw after him.
Jode also felt "a heap better." Legitimate science had triumphed. South Carolina had bet on her principles, and won from Lin the few dollars that I had lent the puncher.
"And what will you do now?" I said to Lin.
"Join the beef round-up. Balaam's payin' forty dollars. I guess that 'll keep a single man."
It may pacify the reader to learn that the experiment herein narrated is a fact. I shall not expect him to believe, any more than I do, that Hilbrun brought about such a state of things by his own arts; but it is what all Cheyenne saw on a certain September 1st, well remembered by the townsfolk. A writer must see to it that his fiction is less strange than truth, else nobody would tolerate him. The above portents, then, are not fiction; I should not dare invent anything so divinely improbable.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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