I never cared
especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our
country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be
allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was
press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact.
I was on a visit to
Sam Durkee's ranch, where I had a great time falling off unmanicured ponies and
waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a
hardened person of about twenty- five, with a reputation for going home in the
dark with perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance.
Over in the Creek
Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum. I was told that the Durkees and
Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of each family had bitten the grass,
and it was expected that more Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger
generation of each family was growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with
them. But I gathered that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in
cornfields and aimed at the division of their enemies' suspenders in the back
-- partly, perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than
one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been harmed. In
those days -- and you will find it so yet -- their women were safe.
Sam Durkee had a girl.
(If it were an all-fiction magazine that I expect to sell this story to, I
should say, "Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a fiance.") Her name was Ella
Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to each other, and to have perfect
confidence in each other, as all couples do who are and have or aren't and
haven't. She was tolerably pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped
her along. He introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference
for him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates.
Miss Baynes lived in
Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived on a gallop between the two
places.
One day there came to
Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small, with smooth face and regular
features. He made many inquiries about the business of the town, and especially
of the inhabitants cognominally. He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked
it, with his yellow shoes and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I
rode in for the mail. He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed rather
improbable.
There were active
times on the ranch, just then, and Sam was too busy to go to town often. As an
incompetent and generally worthless guest, it devolved upon me to ride in for
little things such as post cards, barrels of flour, baking-powder,
smoking-tobacco, and -- letters from Ella.
One day, when I was
messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and a couple of wagon tires, I
saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes,
driving about town as ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit. I
knew that this information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam's soul, so I
refrained from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my
return. But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of
Simmons, an oldtime pal of Sam's, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher, rode out
to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he would talk. When
he did make oration, his words were these:
"Say, Sam,
there's been a description of a galoot miscallin' himself Bevel-edged Travels
impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the past two weeks. You know
who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of
old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle Newt shot last February. You know what he done
this morning? He killed your brother Lester -- shot him in the co't-house
yard."
I wondered if Sam had
heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said:
"He did, did he?
He killed Lester?"
"The same,"
said Simmons. "And he did more. He run away with your girl, the same as to
say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know, so I rode out to impart
the information."
"I am much
obliged, Jim," said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his mouth. "Yes,
I'm glad you rode Out. Yes, I'm right glad."
"Well, I'll be
ridin' back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store don't know hay from
oats. He shot Lester in the back."
"Shot him in the
back?"
"Yes, while he
was hitchin' his hoss."
"I'm much
obliged, Jim."
"I kind of
thought you'd like to know as soon as you could."
"Come in and have
some coffee before you ride back, Jim?"
"Why, no, I
reckon not; I must get back to the store."
"And you say --
"
"Yes, Sam.
Everybody seen 'em drive away together in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like
clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin' the team he brought over
with him from Muscogee. They'll be hard to overtake right away."
"And which --
"
"I was goin' on
to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there's no tellin' which forks
they'll take -- you know that."
"All right, Jim;
much obliged."
"You're welcome,
Sam."
Simmons rolled a
cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty yards away he reined up
and called back:
"You don't want
no -- assistance, as you might say?"
"Not any,
thanks."
"I didn't think
you would. Well, so long!"
Sam took out and
opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his
left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of
it, or recite "The Gipsy's Curse." The few feuds I had ever seen or
read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new
treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of
Belasco's thrilling melodramas demanded instead.
"I wonder,"
said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, "if the cook has any
cold beans left over!"
He called Wash, the
Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and
make some strong coffee. Then we went into Sam's private room, where he slept,
and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts. He took
three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over,
whistling "The Cowboy's Lament" abstractedly. Afterward he ordered
the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.
Now, in the feud
business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one
particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging. You must not
mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would
be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich
aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that
belongs solely to the West.
It yet lacked two
hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into
the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.
Nothing like a good
meal before a long ride," said Sam. "Eat hearty."
I had a sudden
suspicion.
"Why did you have
two horses saddled?" I asked.
"One, two -- one,
two," said Sam. "You can count, can't you?"
His mathematics
carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The thought had not occurred to
him that the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at his side on that
red road to revenge and justice. It was the higher calculus. I was booked for
the trail. I began to eat more beans.
In an hour we set
forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened
by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben Tatum's steeds may have been swifter,
and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of
those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that
retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.
I knew that Ben
Tatum's card to play was flight -- flight until he came within the safer
territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew that the man pursuing him
would follow the trail to any end where it might lead.
During the ride Sam
talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical
glasses. You would have thought he had never had a brother or a sweetheart or
an enemy on earth. There are some subjects too big even for the words in the
"Unabridged." Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having
practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny
anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the right place -- laughed with his mouth.
When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense
of humour to have suppressed those anecdotes.
Our first sight of
them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we stumbled, unwashed, into a little
yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table. In the opposite corner we saw the
fugitives. They were bent upon their meal, but looked around at times uneasily.
The girl was dressed
in brown - one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace
collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She
wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with
some kind of feathers adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his
hair was trimmed very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere.
There they were -- the
murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we were -- the rightful avenger,
according to the code, and the supernumerary who writes these words.
For one time, at
least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose the killing instinct. For
one moment he joined the force of combatants -- orally.
"What are you
waiting for, Sam?" I said in a whisper. "Let him have it now!"
Sam gave a melancholy
sigh.
"You don't
understand; but he does," he said. "He knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's
a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when
he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You can't do it. You've got
to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That's why. He knows it, too. We all
know. So, that's Mr. Ben Tatum! One of the 'pretty men'! I'll cut him out of
the herd before they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!"
After supper the
flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam haunted lobby and stairway and
halls half the night, in some mysterious way the fugitives eluded him; and in
the morning the veiled lady in the brown dress with the accordion-plaited skirt
and the dapper young man with the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with
the prancing nags, were gone.
It is a monotonous
story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed. Once again we overtook them
on a road. We were about fifty yards behind. They turned in the buckboard and
looked at us; then drove on without whipping up their horses. Their safety no
longer lay in speed. Ben Tatum knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left
to him was the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter
would have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had
something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It seemed
likely that he was no coward.
So, you may perceive
that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead of precipitating conflict
between man and man. But not willingly or consciously. She is oblivious of
codes.
Five miles farther, we
came upon the future great Western city of Chandler. The horses of pursuers and
pursued were starved and weary. There was one hotel that offered danger to man
and entertainment to beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at
the ringing of a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long
ago. The dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie.
Just as we were eating
apple pie -- how Ben Davises and tragedy impinge upon each other! -- I noticed
Sam looking with keen intentness at our quarry where they were seated at a
table across the room. The girl still wore the brown dress with lace collar and
cuffs, and the veil drawn down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with
his close cropped head held low.
"There's a
code," I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, "that won't let
you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder, there ain't one to
keep you from killing a woman in the company of a man!"
And, quicker than my
mind could follow his argument, he whipped a Colt's automatic from under his
left arm and pumped six bullets into the body that the brown dress covered --
the brown dress with the lace collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt.
The young person in
the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose life a woman's glory had
been clipped, laid her head on her arms stretched upon the table; while people
came running to raise Ben Tatum from the floor in his feminine masquerade that
had given Sam the opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the
code.
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