# The Trail Rider/Chapter 7

TEXAS put down the paper and went over to the door to see how the situation was going to untangle. It was a complication such as he never had heard of, and was curious to know what view Zebedee Smith was going to express. Texas did not believe that Mr. Ollie Noggle would rise to any remarkable height in the discussion, basing his judgment entirely on the barber's loud and frequent laughter.
There was no laughter in the groom's face now as Mrs. Goodloe put down the dish of chicken with an exclamation that sounded like somebody taking the lid off a hot kettle. His face was white, and he had hold of the table as if to keep himself from falling under it. Malvina's eyes were big, as if she strained them to convince herself that it was the flesh and bone of Zeb Smith that confronted her, and not his dusty spirit from some dusty realm beyond this world.
"Why, Zeb Smith!" said the minister, rising from his chair. "Where in this world did you come from?"
​Zeb had stopped a few feet from the end of the table, where he stood looking fiercely at Malvina.
"Couldn't even marry a man!" he said.
His voice was as hoarse as the hot winds, something in it so suggestive of scorching vitals and burning passages that one felt impelled to offer him water.
Mrs. Goodloe recovered herself quickly, resentment of this intrusion clearing her mind of surprise. She went around the table and confronted Zeb, her arms bare to the elbows, the recollection of old indignities hot in her face.
"You git out of here, Zeb Smith!" she commanded. "You don't own a stick in this place and you ain't got no right to set your foot in it! You never was no good and you never will be, you sneakin' old devil!"
"I'll show you who's got a right and who ain't!" Zeb threatened. "A man's home's where his wife lives. That's the law. And here I come home and find my wife settin' at the side of a feller she thinks she's married to, eatin' a infare supper with a passel of people that's aigged her on into bigamy. I'll make you smoke—I'll make ever'one of you smoke!"
The barber had slipped down in his chair until he sat on the middle of his spine. He appeared to have shrunk in upon himself to about half his ​original size, and he was clinging desperately to the table to keep his head above the water of complete disgrace.
Malvina looked at the preacher, a pathetic appeal in her eyes, and the preacher turned to Smith.
"Why, Smith, she's divorced from you, regularly divorced," he said. "The requirements of the law have been met with; you have no claim on her whatever."
"Ain't I?" Zeb wanted to know, a darker threat than before in his attitude and word. He advanced to the foot of the table. "I'm a goin' to walk up the middle of that table and kick that crock of clabber between the eyes, then I'm a goin' to smash this joint to kindlin' and take that woman by the hair of the head and whip her through this town with a blacksnake! I'll show her how she can disgrace me and drag my name in the dirt!"
He made a move as if to set foot on the table. The guests at that end rose in panic, and retreated to the wall, where they stood looking at Smith, afraid of him, but their curiosity to know what he was going to do holding them there at the risk of his violence. The preacher went to him and tried to reason it out, making mention of the regularity of the proceedings, bearing down on the divorce.
"Divorce nothin'! I don't believe she ever got any divorce!" Zeb swore.
​Mrs. Goodloe snapped him up on that like a fish taking a fly.
"Show him your divorce paper, Malvina!"
Trembling, but eager to vindicate herself, Malvina left the table. Texas stood in the door watching it all, ashamed for the bridegroom, who sat there and allowed such gross insults to be heaped upon himself, his bride, their guests.
Malvina came back in three jumps, the paper in her trembling hand. The minister passed it on to Smith, and Mrs. Goodloe made a noise of exultation that sounded as if she tried to crow.
Smith ran his red eyes over the document, grunting now and then. When he had made a speedy end of his inspection he looked hard at the bride, who was standing with her hand on her new husband's shoulder as if to assure him that she would die at his feet before harm should come to one hair of that oiled and scented head.
"It ain't worth hell room!" said Smith. He tore the precious paper across, threw the pieces on the floor, set his spurred heel on them with stamp of contempt.
"Sir—" the minister began.
"You can't divorce a man without servin' notice on him," Smith declared, and with such an amount of judicial severity, judicial certainty, in his tone ​that many of them feared for the reputation of Malvina on the spot.
"It won't stick before no court in the land, and I'm goin' to bust it wide open!" Smith declared, looking about defiantly.
Texas saw at a glance how the matter stood in Smith's intention. He had come back to discover more prosperity than he ever had been on speaking terms with before in his life; he saw ahead of him a season of ease and consequence in Cottonwood as the husband of its foremost business woman, and he believed the wedding was only a form, as far as matters had gone, that could be brushed aside.
"Ye-e-es, you'll bust a hamestring gittin' out of here, you onery, low-lived, suck-aig whelp!"
Mrs. Goodloe drew a little nearer to him as she delivered this, shaking her fist close to his sullen nose. The groom drew himself up in his chaii a little at this hopeful demonstration.
"Git out o' here, you bum!" he said.
But not very forcibly. It was too plainly weak, in fact, as if he had no confidence in it himself, to act as anything more than an enraging barb under the tough skin of Zebedee Smith.
Then followed a spry little game of hop and dodge between Smith and Mrs. Goodloe, that fair lady's teeth bared in front of him like a rampant ​lion's as he made little starts and snarls toward the groom.
Mrs. Goodloe was the only person in the room who was not afraid of Smith to the roots of the hair, for it was not a gathering of fighting people. Texas judged that they were of the professional class mainly, such as saddle-makers, horseshoers, and grocers.
"Let me to him!" said Smith, his hand on his gun.
"You clear out of here before I scald the hide off o' you!" Mrs. Goodloe warned.
She laid hold of the large coffee-pot that stood like a portly guest at the right hand of her plate, and attempted, earnestly and valiantly, to pour its steaming liquor down Zeb Smith's boots. He jumped back as a stream of the aromatic fluid spouted toward him, and saved his legs, but caught it on the toes.
Mrs. Goodloe pushed her advantage, crowding Smith back toward the door where Texas stood. The groom lifted in his place as Smith retreated, like a turtle putting his head up behind a log. Mrs. Goodloe made a long swing with the pot and caught Smith with a good hot stream across the legs above his boots.
Smith let a roar out of him that made the lemon pies on the table quake, and sent the rising courage ​of the groom down again with his long body half under the table. Smith drove at the coffee-pot and kicked it high out of Mrs. Goodloe's hand. It fell near the minister, who at once made a jump for the door.
Smith was standing in the steaming confusion, his big gun in his hand, as the minister reached Texas.
"For Heaven's sake, do something—do something!" he appealed.
"Sir, if you wish it," Texas replied.
Texas walked gravely into the room. But under his dignified coat, under the solemn mask of his face, he was not one-tenth as serious as he seemed.
Inwardly, he regretted having to spoil the fun, for it was the best show he had seen in many a day, and he would have liked, above everything, to see how far Smith would go. He laid his hand on Smith's shoulder as he stood there swinging his gun, as if limbering his arm for destruction.
"Sir, you're the man that went off to the Nation one time to look around, I reckon, ain't you?"
Smith glared at him, fixing his mouth in the expression of a man who was in the habit of eating them raw, bending his brows in a most ferocious frown.
"What if I was? Who in the hell're you?"
Texas did not approve of that kind of language ​before ladies. Something came into his eyes and changed over his face that caused Smith to alter the set of his jaw.
"I don't reckon you got through lookin' around down there, pardner."
Texas said it with a conclusiveness that made it indisputable. Smith backed away from him, watching him as a coward watches one from whom he expects a well-deserved kick. He fumbled for his holster as he put his big gun away. The barber was rising again, stretching his long neck to see, and Smith backed on toward the door.
"I guess you better go on back there and get through with it," Texas suggested.
"Well, I reckon I will," Smith returned.
The barber was out from under the table, quite life-size and natural to behold, when Smith passed out of the door. As the sound of his feet ceased across the office floor, telling that he had gone on his way to resume his unfinished business of looking around down in the Nation, Mr. Noggle laughed. It was a high-keyed, quavering sort of a hen laugh that did not add a thing to the figure he had made of himself throughout the affair.
Mrs. Goodloe was the first to reach Texas. She caught him as he was retreating modestly after Smith, and patted him on the back, and drew him into the room again, and called him "honey." The ​minister was next, and then the whole crowd came spilling over him, with chicken on their hands, slapping him on his new coat, and confusing him so that his face was as red as if he had been taken sneaking the barber's ring from the finger of the bride.
They wouldn't allow him to go; he had to sit right down there at the table and have some supper, which was going to go so merrily now for his timely interference with the murderous intentions of Zebedee Smith. There was another pot of coffee in the kitchen, Mrs. Goodloe said, and she went off to fetch it, and the preacher's wife took the broom from Malvina when she would have swept up the grounds from the floor, and swept them up herself, and everybody laughed, and the color came back to Malvina's face.
The solemn declaration of Texas that he had dined, and that he could not make room for another bite, was laughed down. The minister's wife made a place for him beside herself, and he was obliged to take it, for he was too timid and gentle, too lacking in the subtleties of polished society to hurt the feelings of anybody, even anybody as unworthy as the groom.
And when Malvina cut the cake, the first piece of it went to Texas, and when he took it she gave him a look that the minister, sitting at her right ​hand around the corner of the table, read as plainly as he ever read a book in his life. It was a look that said she would give her new husband, and the green hotel, and all that she possessed in this world and once held dear, for a man like the tall, lank stranger, with the straight dark locks of hair on his sun-brown temples.
Mrs. Majors, the preacher's wife, was an athletic young woman who wore no stays. She moved about with a swinging motion to her body above the hips very suggestive of combativeness, and Texas wondered whether the Rev. Mr. Majors might not have a pretty warm time of it now and then. She had scanty light hair, which she twisted up into the Psyche knot, just at that time becoming again popular with the ladies who followed the styles. Her forehead was lofty, and clear of the bangs such as Malvina and the other young ladies wore. Bangs were becoming passe as far west as Topeka. Mrs. Majors had anticipated the arrival of the edict in Cottonwood.
The minister had not recognized Texas in his black coat as the man who had won first prize in the men's roping contest at the fair that afternoon, and nobody at the table connected him with the spectacular bit of gunnery in the street that had set the whole town talking about the new gun-slinger who had come to join Cottonwood's notables ​in that line. Only Mrs. Goodloe had a possible clue to it, and it had slipped her mind in the excitement of getting rid of Smith. It did not occur to her again that this was Uncle Boley Drumgoole's friend until the minister's wife asked him where he was from, when he arrived, and how long he expected to remain.
Mrs. Goodloe pulled the puckering string to her short upper lip and prepared her face for speech, but Texas had informed the minister's wife that he came from Texas, and that he expected to stay around in that part of the country a right smart spell before she was ready to put in a word.
"Why, you must be the gentleman that won the ropin'?" she said.
Texas admitted that he was, and the minister put down his napkin and leaned over to look round his wife and stare at Texas with his mouth open, amazement in his eyes.
"Why, you're the man that horsewhipped the mayor and shot Budd Dalton through the arm!"
The minister pushed back his chair, came round and shook hands with Texas, very energetically, very warmly. The groom rose in the length of his legs, red to the eyes in the pleasure of such a distinguished guest and champion. The others pressed round to shake hands and look Texas over with new interest and respect, for the bride's cake ​was eaten down to crumbs, and it was time for the party to leave the table.
So the very reluctant Texas found himself the center of a soirée, with husky professional men—the foreman of the railroad roundhouse was one of them—slamming his shoulder-blades, and smiling young ladies coming up and giving him timid hands, and Mrs. Goodloe showing teeth like a walrus. It was a whirl and a babble, with the dark mark of the coffee on the floor, innocent stain of the conflict with the forces of Smith, routed and dispersed forever from the threshold of the green hotel.
The initiation of Texas into the polite and respectable society of Cottonwood was at this point when a man appeared in the door through which Zebedee Smith had so lately passed to resume his reconnoiter in the Nation. He stood there with his hat in his hand, a strong perfume of violets coming from him, a fluff of white handkerchief showing most elegantly from the breast-pocket of his almost sky-blue coat.
In spite of his elegance, Texas recognized him as Dee Winch, the bow-legged man who had taken such an effective hand in his behalf when the crowd rushed him at the fair. Mrs. Goodloe went beaming over to him, her hand out in welcome.
"Well, you're a purty-lookin' feller, ain't you—​comin' in after it's all over and everything's gone!"
"I'm very sorry, mom, but I had some business on hand that come up unexpected."
"I know you'd 'a' come, Dee, if you could," she said seriously, as if she knew very well that Dee Winch was a man of his word and was tender on the point of it. And so the others went to shake hands with him, the groom high among them, like a camel, and Malvina came bearing a piece of cake on a plate, smiling like an open fire.
"I saved a piece for you, Dee; I knew you'd come," she said.
Dee Winch took the cake and tasted it, and vowed it was the best he ever had put into his mouth, and said there wasn't a bit of use asking who made it, for it was sweet with a delicacy that only one hand in the world could give it. And the men laughed and whacked Dee on the shoulder-blades, and the ladies said, "Oh, hursh!" and poked Malvina in the side, causing her to turn red and giggle outrageously, for she was a ticklish lady, and couldn't a-bear to be touched under the arms.
Dee Winch shook hands with the bride and groom again, ceremoniously, with gravity, and wished them joy. He told the groom that he was the luckiest man in Cottonwood, and that he'd rather be in his place than the President's. Then the minister brought Texas Hartwell forward and ​presented him to the late-coming guest formally, and the two of them stood a moment with clasped hands, looking into each other's eyes.
Hartwell saw that Dee Winch's eyes were gray, and that there was a shadow in them as of a sorrow, or the pain of an affliction that he had kept hidden from the knowledge of men. The young man's own dark eyes kindled to express the appreciation of one with so much apparent worth in him as little bow-legged Dee Winch.
"I met you this afternoon, sir, and I'm under great obligation to you," Texas said.
"It's the other way," Winch assured him. "We're all under obligation to you, a stranger, for doing what none of us here ever took in hand to do."
"It wasn't because of a lack of men to do it, sir, but for want of an opportunity," Texas returned.
Mrs. Goodloe cut off further compliments at this point by announcing that the guests would retire to the parlor, where Viney Kelly was going to sing, and Viney Kelly herself took possession of Dee Winch, with the request that he turn her music for her.
Miss Kelly was a lady of sentimental appearance, thin, as the general run of people in that country appeared to be. Her face was long, her cheeks meager, her mouth large and flexible. She took ​her seat at the organ with much disposing of the skirt and flattening of the music-sheets, making much of her opportunity, flouncing herself into the notice of everybody before she struck a note. Miss Kelly was not of the school that wastes its talents on barren air.
Dee Winch took up his stand at the end of the organ on Miss Kelly's right hand, as vigilant as if he waited to draw his deadly gun on some expected foe. His hand was over the little music-rack—made in representation of the classic lyre—ready to flip the page the second that Viney came to the last word.
It was not a very enlivening melody for a wedding that Viney began to draw from the little brown instrument. When she came to the words it seemed to Texas to be almost tragically inappropriate. It concerned a lady who loved a gentleman, and was present at his nuptials with another, and the chorus of it, which came with depressing frequency, was:
Viney sang it with great feeling, weaving gently from side to side in rhythm with the tune. Texas ​wondered if her heart had been set on the barber, and if this could be her lament and renunciation. But whatever sentiment might have inspired the selection, she followed it unwaveringly to the end, where:
and her heart—the composer's, not Miss Viney's—broke right on the spot, without being able to put it off until dawn.
They applauded Miss Viney with hearty hands. If anybody besides Texas was struck by the humorous inaptitude of the selection it was not the bridegroom, indeed. He was loudest of the loud in his clamor for more, and he turned to Texas as Miss Viney swung round on the stool and began the prelude to another tune.
"That's what I call music," said he.
Texas nodded. Mr. Noggle leaned over, coming so close to Texas that the perfume on his hair was almost overwhelming.
"Whan she throws that mouth of hern wide open you can see her appetite," he said, "but she can sing to a fare-you-well!"
Texas was tired, for he had taken the road before dawn of that eventful and long-drawn day. ​Now he saw Mrs. Majors casting eyes at him again, and he feared that she was about to assail him with more questions on his origin and future intentions. While he had nothing to conceal, he did not feel that a man should tell all that he knew at once, so he withdrew to the office while Miss Viney was sighing through the last stanza of "'Tis a Flower from My Angel Mother's Grave."
Dee Winch escaped during the applause, also, and came out on his toes, sweating like he'd undergone an examination for a civil-service job.
"I like music," he said softly, with a cautious look back over his shoulder, "but I like it off a little piece."
"Yes, sir, there's kinds of music that a man ought to pay for, and—other kinds," Texas allowed.
"Yes," said Winch, looking carefully around the office, "it's like the sign of a Mexican dentist I saw in San Antone one time. 'Teeth pulled without pain, one dollar; with pain, fifty cents.' The pleasanter it is, the more a man ought to be willing to pay. I met Uncle Boley Drumgoole as I was comin' over here. He was tellin' me you thought some of trail-ridin'?"
"I've got to find a job of some kind. I thought I'd try for trail-ridin'."
"Well, I've been hirin' myself out to the associa​tion for that same kind of a job—that's what made me late to this blowout. I've just come from a session with old man Duncan."
"I aimed to see him in the morning. Do you reckon it would be any use?"
"I was goin' to say that they've put me in as a sort of a boss rider, and I'll be more than glad to give you a job if you'll take it."
"I sure am obliged to you, sir, and I'd snap it up in a minute if I had a horse."
"I've got that all fixed. Be ready to start in the morning—I'll ride around here after you. Headquarters is at Duncan's ranch, about twenty miles south. I think maybe you'll have to wait around there a day or two till I can line them other fellers out and drop them I don't want."
Winch went back to the parlor and excused himself, and gave the bride and groom a little jocular advice to leave things merry after him.
"Well, so-long till morning, Texas," he said as he came out through the office. He shook hands with a quick and sincere clasp and passed out into the street.
Texas stood in the door looking after him, pondering over the many sides that he had glimpsed in this remarkable little man. One peculiar thing he had noted of Winch, and that was his ceaseless watchfulness. No matter where he stctod, or ​whether he was serious or gay, he never appeared to be entirely relaxed. Always there was the tension of the man who waits, listens, feels with all his faculties, for something unexpected and unannounced. It was as if he listened for a step behind him, or expected a touch on the shoulder, or a whisper in his ear.
That shadow in his eyes was growing out of his constant strain, Texas knew. It must be a heavy thing to go carrying the responsibility for sending so many men out of this life's activities as Winch had dismissed, he thought. There must be a good many ghosts behind a man who was accountable for the lives of nineteen men, ghosts of accusation, doubt; of speculation, of unrest, and perhaps remorse.
He was glad that matters had turned out so fortunately for him in his encounter before Uncle Boley's door. If that old pistol of Ed McCoy's had been the breadth of a hair less true there might have been human life against his peace that night. The thought of it started a sweat on his forehead. He prayed deep from his soul that he might never become a listening man like Dee Winch, straining and restless, with the unheard step of a feared retribution behind him, the memory of dead men's faces clouding his eyes with shadows.