Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Western stories
fire, watered his own horse, and letting him drag a rope where the feed
was green, ate his breakfast in ease. Toussaint would get a fresh mount,
and proceed to the railroad. With the comfort of certainty and tobacco,
the scout lolled by the river under the cottonwood, and even slept. In
the cool of the afternoon he reached the cabin of an acquaintance twenty
miles south, and changed his horse. A man had passed by, he was told.
Looked as if bound for Cheyenne. “No,” Cutler said, “he's known there”;
and he went on, watching Toussaint's tracks. Within ten miles they
veered away from Cheyenne to the southeast, and Cutler struck out on a
trail of his own more freely. By midnight he was on Lodge-Pole Creek,
sleeping sound among the last trees that he would pass. He slept
twelve hours, having gone to bed knowing he must not come into town
by daylight. About nine o'clock he arrived, and went to the railroad
station; there the operator knew him. The lowest haunt in the town had
a tent south of the Union Pacific tracks; and Cutler, getting his irons,
and a man from the saloon, went there, and stepped in, covering the room
with his pistol. The fiddle stopped, the shrieking women scattered, and
Toussaint, who had a glass in his hand, let it fly at Cutler's head, for
he was drunk. There were two customers besides himself.
“Nobody shall get hurt here,” said Cutler, above the bedlam that was
now set up. “Only that man's wanted. The quieter I get him, the quieter
it'll be for others.”
Toussaint had dived for his pistol, but the proprietor of the
dance-hall, scenting law, struck the half-breed with the butt of
another, and he rolled over, and was harmless for some minutes. Then
he got on his legs, and was led out of the entertainment, which resumed
more gayly than ever. Feet shuffled, the fiddle whined, and truculent
treble laughter sounded through the canvas walls as Toussaint walked
between Cutler and the saloon-man to jail. He was duly indicted, and
upon the scout's deposition committed to trial for the murder of Loomis
and Kelley. Cutler, hoping still to be wagon-master, wrote to Lieutenant
Balwin, hearing in reply that the reinforcements would not arrive for
two months. The session of the court came in one, and Cutler was the
Territory's only witness. He gave his name and age, and hesitated over
his occupation.
“Call it poker-dealer,” sneered Toussaint's attorney.
“I would, but I'm such a fool one,” observed the witness. “Put me down
as wagon-master to the military outfit that's going to White River.”
“What is your residence?”
“Well, I reside in the section that lies between the Missouri River and
the Pacific Ocean.”
“A pleasant neighborhood,” said the judge, who knew Cutler perfectly,
and precisely how well he could deal poker hands.
“It's not a pleasant neighborhood for some.” And Cutler looked at
Toussaint.
“You think you done with me?” Toussaint inquired, upon which silence was
ordered in the court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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