The Baron of Diamond Tail

Front matter

Made in the United States of America

Copyright George Washington Ogden 1922-1923Published September, 1923Copyrighted in Great BritainPrinted in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Advice on Homicide

THERE was a good deal of loose skin on Charley Thomson's neck, dry wrinkled skin, which caused one to wonder how he stretched it to shave. That he managed it someway, day by day, was as evident as the hills around Saunders, for never a hair had grown long enough to interfere with his mouth in all his years in the town.

A great avid mouth, like a cannibal fish, elongated by wrinkles at the corners, which bent it downwards with a sneering cast; a clubbed, fleshy nose, purple, immense; small eyes, squinting from a life-long habit of drawing them to points to increase his look of shrewdness and inscrutability. Not a handsome man in one line of his rascally old face, not a nice man in one habit of his daily life, yet a man with something about him that caught upon the perception like a burr, and argued convincingly for some strength which lay beneath the smoky rind.

As long as he had practiced law in Saunders, and that ran back to the territorial days of Wyoming, and far back into them, at that, Charley Thomson had garbed himself with unvarying sameness, A blue woolen shirt, loose about his lean neck as the folded skin for which he had no use, nearly always lumpy in the corners of the collar, as a woolen shirt becomes after much washing; a black necktie, pulled almost as tight as the hangman's noose which he had helped so many who deserved it to escape, the ends of it tucked into his bosom; a long black professional coat, glossy on the back from long rubbing against various articles of, furniture, even church pews; an old black hat, weathered and rain-beaten, sweated and greasy, deplorable and disgraceful altogether.

Charley Thomson was the only man in Saunders, or perhaps in Wyoming from one end to the other, who could catch fish like an Indian. That is to say, with a hook bound to a long pole, which the artist introduces into the water and slips under the fish as he dozes in depths of pellucid stream or lake, in that country commonly glass-clear. How craftily a man must go about this to land the fish by raking the hook into its keel, requires no very active imagination to understand. Charley Thomson could do it; he could land the fish down to the very last one in the school worth carrying home.

Similarly, he had some undefined adroitness in his practice of the law by which he reached his hook into the very shadow of the gallows and jerked men back to the safety of liberty and life. He had been doing it a long time in that mountain-bound county seat, but, though his fame had grown, his fortunes seemed to run backwards, Thomson drank a quart of whisky a day. Perhaps that had something to do with it.

On the afternoon of this summer day, Thomson was closeted in his office in consultation with a client. The lawyer's window was open on the street, the acrid smoke of his greasy cob pipe trailed out to assail the nostrils and eyes of those who passed. The client, who sat between the lawyer and the window, turned his head uneasily as the footsteps of passengers in the street sounded in the room. Thomson, hand at the bowl of his pipe, eyes fixed in keen, probing directness on his client's troubled face, nodded toward the open sash he client rose with alacrity and pulled it down.

This client was a young man, tall, lithe, sinewy; with the pliant grace of a horseman in his sinewy back. He was coatless, his shirt was open at the neck, showing his brown bosom; a pistol was belted about him, leather cuffs protected his wrists. His bearing and trappings proclaimed him cowboy, common among his kind in that country in his day, which was the day of the cattle barons, as they were called both East and West.

There was a shadow of trouble in the young cowboy's face, which was an ingenuous face, and mild, with a cast of unawakened humor about the mouth, an eager alertness in the clear blue eyes. He held his hat respectfully in his hand, although Charley Thomson kept his own on his head, after his manner in the presence of all men, great and small. The young man resumed his chair uneasily after closing the window, the shadow of troubled earnestness deepening on his face.

"Huh!" said Thomson, grunting meditatively around the stem of his pipe.

The client lifted his eyes expectantly. The lawyer said no more, but sat with frowning eyes fixed in abstract gaze on whatever hypothetical situation he may have conjured up in his crafty mind. Presently he put his pipe on the cluttered table, where the handle of a notarial seal lifted out of the drift of old papers and tattered books like a smothered word of truth appealing its own sad case.

"I don't like for a man to come to me and tell me he's goin' to kill somebody," Thomson said, severely. "It ain't my business to give advice on how a man can be killed with the minimum of risk and the maximum of justification. My business is to get him off after he's done it."

He looked sharply at the young man, who moved his feet uneasily, colored hotly, dropped his eyes.

"Yes sir, Mr. Thomson," said he.

"So the only thing I've got to say to you, Mr. 2"

"Dan Gustin is my name." The young man gave it to him straight in the eyes, with head lifted quickly, as a man delivers something of which he is not ashamed.

"Mr. Dan Gustin, of2"

"I'm with the Elk Mountain Cattle Company, over on the Big Wind—the Diamond Tail brand."

"Of the Diamond Tail brand, is to go out and kill your man, then come to me. That is—" turning again from the table, as with an afterthought—"if you've got to kill him. I'm not advisin' you to go and do it, but if you've got to work it out of your system, my part in the transaction is after, not before, the fact."

"Yes sir," said Dan Gustin, in the same respectfully perfunctory way as before. He stood a little while turning his hat in his hands. Then: "Thank you, Mr. Thomson, for puttin' me right. I thought if it wouldn't be too much bother to you to git me off—if I wouldn't have to lose too much time2"

"It would be a lot of bother to get you off, it's gettin' harder every day to get 'em off," Thomson replied crabbedly.

"Yes sir," Dan Gustin said, respectfully confused.

"They might keep you in jail six months before trial, that's a scheme this new prosecutor's got to break a man and make him so weak he'll convict himself. My advice to you is keep out of it. A cowpuncher's got no business to set up as a killer in these degenerate times, Gustin; that's a luxurious distinction only a man with money can afford. Let that feller go. If he deserves killin', somebody'll come along in time and do it, and save you the trouble and expense."

"He sure deserves it, all right!" Gustin declared, twisting his head in great earnestness.

"Who is he?"

"Feller up in our country," the cowboy replied, evasively.

"All right," said Thomson, after boring him with a gimlet look; "you let him live on. How much money have you got?"

"About sixty dollars."

"That wouldn't patch a bullet—that wouldn't patch a bullet! Killin' isn't as cheap in this country as it was five years ago, young man. What do you reckon it costs to get a man off these times?"

"I don't know, sir, but I thought maybe a hundred dollars or so."

"A hundred dollars or so wouldn't grease one hinge of the jail door! If I can get a man off before the trial jury it lets him out for about a thousand; if we have to appeal, it'll run up to five. It's not a game for cowpunchers, kid. You keep out of it."

The young man stood fingering the leather band of his big hat, his weight thrown first on this foot, then on that. He looked up after a spell of cogitation, a sheepish grin clearing the trouble out of his eyes.

"I guess I'll let him live on," he said.

Thomson bent that frowning, sharp, half resentful gaze on him again.

"Girl back of it?"

"Well sir, we did have words over a lady."

"Who? Who's over there in that God-blasted country you inhabit worth pullin' a gun for?"

"She's a lady they call Cattle Kate."

"What other name?" the lawyer asked, showing a frowning, dark interest.

"Medford's her old man's name."

"Huh! married, is she?"

"I mean her paw."

"Is he the man you want to kill?" Thomson inquired, looking up in sudden severity.

"No sir!" the cowboy denied frigidly. "I wouldn't hurt a hair of his head."

"No, of course you wouldn't, you young gourd!" said Thomson, turning his grim old eyes to shoot his contemptuous ridicule into the cowboy's face. "Well, you let Cattle Kate and her daddy do their own killin'."

"Yes sir," Dan Gustin agreed, with a very foolish look about him. "Much obliged, Mr. Thomson."

"Twenty-five dollars," said Thomson, severely, holding out his hand. "I haven't got any advice to give away."

Dan Gustin got out his money, very red in the face, looking more foolish and chastened than ever, and left twenty-five dollars in the lawyer's not over-clean fingers.

"I'll let him live a good while!" said the cowboy, with a wry grin, stuffing his wallet into his inner vest-pocket.

"It would pay you," Thomson nodded, raising his eyebrows with his eyes to look into the tall young man's face, but not moving his head at all.

"It'd be cheaper for me to throw my stuff into a and hit the breeze out of this country," the cowboy figured, making for the door.

"And wiser," the lawyer shot after him, moved somewhat out of his habitual attitude of contempt for the weaknesses of men by the honest simplicity of the one at present before him. "So you're ridin' the range for old Dale Findlay?"

"I'm makin' a stagger at it."

"Give him my regards," said Thomson, a mocking sarcasm in his tone that won for him another deepfathoming glance from the cowboy's baffled eyes.

"I'll mention you sent 'em," Gustin agreed, one foot outside the door.

"There's a feller down at Grimmitt's inquirin' the way out to your God-forsaken ranch."

"I guess he's the man I come down here to meet—I've got a wagon to haul him out there in," Gustin confessed, with no small indignation.

"Expectin' him, huh?"

"The big boss, Hal Nearing, sent me. This feller belongs to some high-up lady back East, a pardner in the ranch, or something. He's her only dear child, brung up back of the kitchen stove. She's sent him out here to grow hair on his shins and learn to be a man."

"Well, he's goin' to a heavenly atmosphere!" Thomson said.

"There's worse outfits than the Diamond Tail, mister," Dan said, turning with a bristling attitude of defense that was as good as a threat.

"Yes," the lawyer granted, thoughtfully, "and you wouldn't have to go far to find them, from what you've been tellin' me. So you came down to meet that boy, huh?"

"That was my aim and object, pardner."

"I thought it was for legal advice. Or is the matter of shootin' a man off just incidental with a fresh young blood like you?"

"I thought I'd kill two skunks at the same shot," Dan returned, quite innocent of either intent or expression of offense.

Thomson accepted it as delivered, knowing the breed too well to raise a question.

"I see," said he, his wide mouth clamped for a moment upon its ugly secrets, his eyebrows lifted as he slewed his eyes to look at what now plainly had become an object of contempt. "And if you hadn't been drivin' down to haul out this greenhorn you'd 'a' gone gunnin' for that feller up there without countin' the cost."

"I sure would, mister!"

"Well, you've paid for my advice; what're you goin' to do with it?"

"I'll let him live on," Dan declared, twisting his head in expression of deep seriousness.

"Stop in and see me when you come to town," Thomson invited, offering his hand with his words.

This unaccountable unbending from what had appeared to Dan a scornful coldness, winded him for a moment, paralyzing all effort of response. He appeared to stand doubting, as if charges were expected to go with this approach to friendliness and well-wishing.

"I sure will, Mr. Thomson," he responded heartily, grasping the lawyer's hand as warmly as if it had dragged him from the gibbet and restored him to the joyous ways of life.

As Dan Gustin went his way down the street, Lawyer Thomson stood in his door looking after him, no line of disdain, amusement, satisfaction, or any emotion that the eye could interpret in his inscrutable face. Presently he turned into his office, where he began to pry dustily into his records contained in a little set of drawers that once had held spool cotton thread. With chair drawn close against this homely little cabinet, which was nailed to the wall and braced by two rough boards on long slant to the floor, Thomson thumbed his untidy papers until he came at last to that which he sought. This he drew from its sheaf of like frayed and yellowed documents, glanced over it to verify its contents, and then put it in his great flat, gaunt wallet along with Dan Gustin's fee, struck match to his outrageous pipe, and sat glooming in a reverie.

The Blue-eyed Wolf

GRIMMITT'S hotel stood a hundred yards or thereabout from the lawyer's office which Dan Gustin had just quitted. Between the two places there stretched a plank sidewalk of varying height and width, according to the caprice, liberality or business convenience of the property-holders fronting the street. Here it ran at street level, the débris of crushed tin cans, blowing papers, scattered oats from nose-bags, littered hay, lodged against its plank-ends, even overflowing upon it; along a little way it rose a foot to accord with the foundation of a saloon; again it became a platform in front of the principal store, upon which women could step directly from their wagons when they drove in to trade.

Along this unequal way, where loafers sat on whittled benches, lounged in doorways, leaned against porch props, Dan Gustin went pegging in his high-heeled boots like a mule in a Mexican chain hobble, holding a straight course for the hotel, past the doors of temptation. The marks of his spur straps were polished on his insteps, the chafing of their metal was plain upon his heels, but he had laid those galling instruments aside for this excursion by wagon and, as he walked in review of those of his own calling who idled by the way, he felt like a plucked drake set loose before the flock.

Inwardly he cursed the luck that had singled him out for the business of meeting this stranger from far places who was coming into that country to cut his eye-teeth on the bones of the range. It was beneath the dignity of a proper man to run an ambulance for the transportation of undeveloped or deficient human beings who could not ride a horse.

In the window of the bar at Grimmitt's hotel there stood the mounted skin of a great white wolf, bottles of red and yellow liquor around its feet. It had been there a long time, so long, indeed, that it had become a landmark to the thirsty who came riding from the far-away ranges, mines and military post. Dust had gathered on its back, and blackened the once fiery red of the snarling tongue curved inside the barrier of long, threatening teeth.

All the old-timers knew that Grimmitt had slain the wolf back in the days when he rode like one of its kind on the trail of thief or murderer, never dropping the scent for hardship, boundary of his jurisdiction as sheriff, or any of the common obstacles of nature or the cunning of desperate men. Now Grimmitt's hair was whiter than the wolf's, and he was prouder of that trophy of the chase than the most notable deed of his truly notable past as peace officer in that rough-handed land.

But there was one peculiarity about this wolf that probably marked it apart from all other wolves of whatever hue, living or dead; it was blessed and comforted by a pair of such mild, wide-open, wondering, innocent blue eyes as never graced a vulpine counte- mance anywhere among that ravening tribe in this world. Grimmitt contended that this wolf had blue eyes when he shot it, and a blue-eyed wolf he would have it, dead and snarling among the whisky bottles in his window.

On this point of fidelity to nature the community was divided, some holding with Grimmitt that a white wolf had blue eyes, although none could be fastened down to the declaration that he ever had met one; others scorning the contention and ridiculing the effigy as a slander against nature, wolf nature in particular. As for Grimmitt, he was ready to fight for the blue eyes of his wolf, and their fidelity to the original. It had blue eyes when alive, and blue eyes he had ordered for it dead. The taxidermist had done the best he could to meet this extraordinary specification, but had succeeded only in supplying blue eyes, not blue eyes of a wolf. Far from it, indeed. Not even human eyes. Doll's eyes, they appeared to be, large and expressionless of all wolfish ferocity, calm and untroubled and wide-staring; blue as asters by the roadside, placid as water in a porridge bowl.

Dan Gustin never had been a resident of Saunders, therefore never had been aligned in the controversy of the white wolf, although he had his own opinion in the matter, as a free rider might have, indeed. Now he went his way to the hotel to meet his charge, a bit uncomfortable, and ashamed of his mission.

Dan brisked up a bit at the sight of two men before the window displaying the white wolf, evidently engaged in a wrangle over the merits of that historic beast. His hope of seeing a mixup over the question was only secondary, however, to his sudden and keen interest in one of the contestants, which interest and curiosity increased with every step that he took drawing him nearer.

This man was garbed in what appeared to Dan Gustin, cowboy of the inter-mountain plains, the most astonishing garments that ever concealed the nakedness of a fellow-creature. To one of wider range of experience, the stranger would have appeared as nothing more extraordinary than a sailor of the United States navy, dressed as he had stepped from the deck of his ship, wide-flapping trouser legs, tight little blouse with its laced front and open collar, and that little cap which js neither useful nor ornamental, above all.

It was the headgear, especially, that held Dan's amazed attention, striking him with such immeasurable astonishment that his mouth fell open for want of a properly strong word to fill it. To Dan the man seemed some curious freak of overgrown child, for that sort of cap he had seen on the heads of very little boys in the officers' quarters at the post, even that very pattern of a suit, if suit it might properly be called. That any full-grown, man-shouldered male human being could be so poor in dignity as to appear in public and the light of day so trigged up, passed all bounds of credulity. But there he was, his little old fool cap pushed back like a three-year-old boy, his blunderbuss trousers flapping in the wind about his ankles, holding an argument with as much assurance as if he stood equal with any man that ever split the breeze.

Dan Gustin did not know that nations attired their defenders of the seas in that manner; to him the sight of this sailor, a thousand miles and more from the nearest salt sea, brought no association of romance or adventure, or of white cruisers lifting to the placid lap of swelling waters in far-off San Francisco bay. The stranger was an amazing freak, parading with an affrontery that Dan resented. Dan remembered having seen a girl in a show down at Cheyenne one time, dressed in that fashion. Maybe this was the explanation. There must be a show in town.

Quickened by this thought and hope, Dan approached the window where the white wolf stood, its grizzly muzzle wrinkled in a fearful snarl which the serene blue eyes turned into nothing more than a bluff and a false pretense.

"I ketch 'em alive with my bare hands," the man who argued with the one Dan took for a walking advertisement declared, putting it rather roughly, in loud and quarrelsome words. "I'm here to tell you, little feller, I know wolf. I'm kin to 'em."

"I'm not sayin' you don't, mister," the other returned, mild and unruffled, but with a firmness that surprised Dan. "You asked me for my opinion on that beast's eyes, and I gave it to you."

"It ain't worth hell room!" the contentious man declared, glaring in bristling ferocity on the sailor.

This man who claimed kinship with the outlawed tribe was a thin-shouldered, narrow-chested person, standing gangling and tall, but with a roughness about him like a cactus, promising unpleasantness in handling. His face was long and morose, its mournful cast heightened by the length of his nose, which hung club-ended over a wild red mustache. His upstanding eyebrows were huge and coarse as the bristles of an old boar, the small eyes under them combative and red, like the eyes of a man who had watched at campfires through long and windy nights.

He stood with thumbs hooked in his belt, a chafed and worn scabbard carrying a long pistol dangling against his thigh. His coat was tight across his narrow back, the sleeves of it far up his hairy wrists. He was not a friendly-looking man to meet on the trail, not the kind of a man one would stop in the road and ask for a match. He was that type of frontiersman to whom whisky was as necessary as fire to a stove. Without it he was a dead lump of encumbering material; with it one must touch him carefully. He was such a familiar type to Dan Gustin as to call for no consideration. Dan's eyes were centered on the sailor, whose strange garb and easy carriage began to move in the cowboy a certain admiration.

This sailor, who had wandered like a storm-blown gull so far from his sea, stood a little taller than Dan Gustin, who was no puny specimen himself. He was straight-backed and well-balanced; a compact man about the chest, which was uncommonly broad and deep. His brown face was clear and frank, rather boyish in its glad freshness, inviting confidence by its easy smile. There was a look of high courage in his blue eyes, a promise of good sense in the rather small head that carried so confidently on the short, muscular neck. His brown hair was cut close; his cap was fixed with a little tilt toward his ear.

"No call to get your bristles up, that I can see," he said to the man who scorned his opinion on the eyes of Grimmitt's wolf. "I'm not an authority on wolves, but it strikes me that a white one ought to have blue eyes, even if it hasn't."

"You ain't got as many brains in your head as a fishin' worm!"

"Maybe you're right," the sailor admitted, placid and undisturbed by the other's scorn. "I never argue about that."

"A feller that'd wear a rig like you've got on don't know enough to scratch a hog!"

"That's all right now, pardner," said the sailor, turning to the brother of the wolf, a quick flush mounting to his face; "you go light on what you've got to say about this uniform!"

The kinsman of the wolf made a scoffing noise in his big nose.

"You look like a bottle in a sock," he said.

"It don't make any difference how I look, stranger. If this uniform's good enough for Uncle Sam, it's good enough for you, and you've got to respect it!"

Dan Gustin moved a little nearer. What was that about a uniform and Uncle Sam? Well, if Uncle Sam and that kid were partners, Dan was on their side from the jump.

The wolf's kin was looking the sailor up and down, contempt in his long nose, wrinkled in a snarl that was fiercer than the beast's behind the glass.

"Down in the Indian Nation, where I used to run wild," he said, "we slice up little fellers like you and fry 'em in grease. Give me that little purty you've got on your head—I want to take it home for my equaw to set a hen in."

He reached out with a swiping movement of his long arm as he spoke, to knock the offending little cap from its easy, but rather challenging, perch. The sailor ducked. The next moment Dan Gustin saw a blue flash like a kingfisher shooting down at a minnow's glint. The sailor's fist sounded as if somebody had struck a stump with an ax. Dan stepped back to let the stranger from the Indian Nation have all the ground that was coming to him when he fell.

The sailor stood where he had delivered his knockdown, crouching a little, alert, hands up for offense or defense as developments might demand, Dan wondered why he didn't follow up the advantage he had won in that first swift blow, according to the code of the range.

"Pile on to him, kid!" he urged, while the troublehunter lay stretched full length for a moment in the dust.

Before the sailor could act on Dan's charitable urging, if he had any mind for doing so, indeed, the man whom he had knocked down gathered himself and sprang nimbly to his feet. The sailor rushed him, only to run against the long pistol which the fellow jerked from the leather as he came to his feet in a cloud of dust.

"Put it up, pardner!" Dan commanded. "That kid ain't got no gun."

Dan had stepped into the engagement quite easily and naturally, and well within the rights of a gentlemah, according to the custom of the country. He stood holding his own weapon with arm shortened against his side, after the manner of a quick and sure shooting man. There was blood on the quarrelsome stranger's mouth, murder in his sullen eyes. He turned his head to glare on Dan, reading at a glance something in the young man's eyes that would admit no argument. Then he slowly and sulkily returned the pistol to his holster, saying nothing, only opening his mouth to empty it of the blood that was already overflowing down the dusty stubble of his chin.

"If you want to stand up and fight him like a man, I'm willin'," Dan offered cheerfully.

"I'll hang your hide over the fence," the ruffian promised, turning to go.

The sailor, who had stepped back as nimbly as from a redhot iron when he saw the pistol at his breast, offered Dan his hand with a sort of shame-faced grin.

"Thanks, old feller," said he. "He took the wind out of me for a minute—I don't fight that way."

"Sure you don't, kid," said Dan, heartily.

The fight had drawn a good many people from along the street; the noise of their coming and gathering in front of the hotel attracted the customers from Grimmitt's bar. It drew Grimmitt with them; he appeared in the door drying his hands on his apron, just as the wolf hunter turned, his gun reluctantly restored to the scabbard, and went off to mount his horse.

"What's all this gun-slingin' goin' on over?" Grimmitt wanted to know, looking darkly and disfavoringly at Dan, who still kept his iron in his hand, not trusting the stranger's shifty eyes. Dan explained in few words, not mentioning the original controversy between the sailor and the stranger over the wolf.

Grimmitt, a short, tight man, with white hair cut as close to his scalp as scissors could clip it, stepped into the street.

"That feller's been loafin' around here all day tryin' to pick a fight out of somebody he thought he could lick," he said, watching the stranger swing into the saddle and ride away. "Anybody know who he is?"

"He goes by the name of Wells over on Horse Crick," said one. "He's ranchin' over there."

"I thought he looked like he come from that neck of the woods," Grimmitt said. "You know what kind of ranchin' them fellers does up there."

It seemed very well understood what manner of industry men were following on Horse Creek in those days, which was, indeed, a long time ago as time is measured by events in that quick-changing land. They grinned, some of them, but more of them followed the retreating stranger with dark and unfriendly eyes. Out of all this the sailor stood aside, an actor whose small part was played, an incidental factor in a momentary disturbance. Grimmitt turned again within his door; the customers who had put down their drinks hastily at his bar followed to repair their haste at leisure. Dan looked in quizzical comicality at the sailor, who seemed considerably embarrassed.