Redskin and Cow-Boy: A Tale of the Western Plains

"He don't seem to me to try to get well," he said to Hugh. "It looks to me like as if he thought he had done about enough, and was ready to go. If one could rouse him up a bit I believe he would pull round. He has gone through a lot has the doctor, and I expect he thinks there ain't much worth living for. He just smiles when I speak to him, but he don't take no interest in things. Do you get talking with me when you go in, Lightning, and asking about what we have been doing, and I will tell you some of the things he and I have gone through together. Maybe that may stir him up a bit."

"How long have you known him, Sim?"

"I came across him in '49. I came round by Panama, being one of the first lot to leave New York when the news of gold came. I had been away logging for some months, and had come down at the end of the season with six months' money in my pocket. I had been saving up for a year or two, and was going to put it all in partnership with a cousin of mine, who undertook the building of piers and wharves and such like on the Hudson. Well, the first news that met me when I came down to New York was that Jim had busted up, and had gone out west some said, others that he had drowned hisself. I was sorry for Jim, but I was mighty glad that I hadn't put my pile in.

"Waal, I was wondering what to start on next when the talk about gold began, and as soon as I larned there were no mistake about it I went down to the wharf and took my passage down to the isthmus. I had been working about three months on the Yuba when I came across the doctor. I had seen him often afore we came to speak. If you wur to see the doctor now for the first time when he is just sitting quiet and talking in that woman sort of voice of his and with those big blue eyes, you would think maybe that he was a kind of softy, wouldn't you?"

"I dare say I might, Sim. I saw him for the first time when he came up with you to take my part against that crowd of Mexicans. There didn't look anything soft about him then, and though I was struck with his gentle way of talking when I met him afterwards I knew so well there was lots of fight in him that it didn't strike me he was anything of a softy, as you say."

"No? Waal, the doctor has changed since I met him, but at that time he did look a softy, and most people put him down as being short of wits. He used just to go about the camp as if he paid no attention to what wur going on. Sometimes he would go down to a bit of a claim he had taken up and wash out the gravel, just singing to himself, not as though it wur to amuse him, but as though he did not know as he wur singing, in a sort of curious far-off sort of voice; but mostly he went about doing odd sorts of jobs. If there wur a man down with the fever the doctor would just walk into his tent and take him in hand and look after him, and when he got better would just drift away, and like enough not seem to know the man the next time he met him.

"Waal, he got to be called Softy, but men allowed as he wur a good fellow, and was just as choke-full of kindness as his brain would hold, and, as he walked about, any chap who was taking his grub would ask him to share it, for it was sartin that what gold he got wouldn't buy enough to keep a cat alive, much less a man. Waal, it was this way. I got down with fever from working in the water under a hot sun. I hadn't any particular mates that time, and wur living in a bit of a tent made of a couple of blankets, and though the boys looked in and did any job that wur wanted I wur mighty bad and went off my head for a bit, and the first thing I seen when I came round was Softy in the tent tending me. Ef he had been a woman and I had been his son he couldn't have looked after me tenderer.

"I found when I began to get round he had been getting meat for me from the boys and making soups, but as soon as I got round enough to know what was going on I pointed out to him the place where I had hid my dust, and he took charge of it and got me what was wanted, till I picked up and got middling strong again. As soon as I did Softy went off to look after someone else who was bad, but I think he took to me more than he had to anyone else, for he would come in and sit with me sometimes in the evening, and I found that he wurn't really short of wits as people thought, but would talk on most things just as straight as anyone. He didn't seem to have much interest in the digging, which wur about the only thing we thought of; but when I asked him what he had come to the mining camps for, if it wasn't to get gold, he just smiled gently and said he had a mission.

"What the mission wur he never said, and I concluded that though he was all there in other things his brain had somehow got mixed on that point, onless it wur that his mission was to look after the sick. Waal, we were a rough lot in '49, you bet. Lynch-law hadn't begun, and there wuz rows and fights of the wust kind. Our camp had been pretty quiet ontil someone set up a saloon and gambling shop, and some pretty tough characters came. That was just as I wur getting about agin, though not able to work regular. It wurn't long before two fellows became the terror of the camp, and they went on so bad that the boys began to talk among themselves that they must be put down; but no one cared about taking the lead. They had shot four fellows in the first week after they came.

"I hadn't seen Softy for ten days. He had been away nussing a woodman as had his leg broke by the fall of a tree. I was sitting outside my tent with a chap they called Red Sam. We had a bottle of brandy between us, when them two fellows came along, and one of them just stooped and took up the bottle and put it to his lips and drank half of it off, and then passed it to the other without saying by your leave or anything. Red Sam said, 'Well, I'm blowed!' when the fellow who had drunk whipped out his bowie – six-shooters had hardly come in then – and afore Red Sam could get fairly to his feet he struck him under the ribs. Waal, I jumped up and drew my bowie, for it wur my quarrel, you see. He made at me. I caught his wrist as the knife was coming down, and he caught mine; but I wur like a child in his arms. I thought it wur all over with me, when I heard a shout, and Softy sprang on the man like a wild cat and drove his knife right into him, and he went down like a log.

"The other shouted out an oath and drew. Softy faced him. It wur the strangest sight I ever seen. His hat had fallen off, and his hair, which wur just as white then as it is now, fell back from his face, and his eyes, that looked so soft and gentle, wur just blazing. It came across me then, as it have come across me many a time since, that he looked like a lion going to spring; and I think Buckskin, as the man called himself, who had often boasted as he didn't fear a living thing, was frighted. They stood facing each other for a moment, and then Softy sprang at him. He was so quick that instead of Buckskin's knife catching him, as he intended, just in front of the shoulder and going straight down to the heart, it caught him behind the shoulder, and laid open his back pretty near down to the waist.

"But there wur no mistake about Softy's stroke. It went fair between the ribs, and Buckskin fell back dead, with Softy on the top of him. Waal, after that it wur my turn to nuss the doctor, for no one called him Softy after that. He wur laid up for over a month, and I think that letting out of blood did him good and cleared his brain like. When he got well he wur just as you see him now, just as clear and as sensible a chap as you would see. Why, he has got as much sense as you would find in any man west of Missouri, and he's the truest mate and the kindest heart. I have never seen the doctor out of temper, for you can't call it being out of temper when he rises up and goes for a man; that is his mission. He has never got that out of his head, and never will ontil he dies.

"He can put up with a deal, the doctor can; but when a man gits just too bad for anything, then it seems to him as he has got a call to wipe him out, and he wipes him out, you bet. You don't want lynch-law where the doctor is: he is a judge and a posse all to himself, and for years he was the terror of hard characters down in California. They was just skeered of him, and if a downright bad man came to a camp and heard the doctor wur there, he would in general clear straight out agin. He has been shot and cut all over, has the doctor, and half a dozen times it seemed to me I should never bring him round agin.

"It ain't no use talking to him and asking him why he should take on hisself to be a jedge and jury. When it's all over he always says in his gentle way that he is sorry about it, and I do think he is, and he says he will attend to his own business in future; but the next time it is just the same thing again. There ain't no holding him. You might just as well try to stop a mountain lion when he smells blood. At such times he ain't hisself. If you had once seen him you would never forget it. There wur a British painting fellow who wur travelling about taking pictures for a book. He wur in camp once when the doctor's dander rose, and he went for a man; and the Britisher said arterwards to me as it were like the bersek rage. I never heard tell of the berseks; but from what the chap said I guessed they lived in the old time. Waal, if they wur like the doctor I tell you that I shouldn't like to get into a muss with them. No, sir."

"Do you know what the doctor's history is, Sim?"

"Yes, I do know," he said, "but I don't suppose anyone else does. Maybe he will tell you some day if he gets over this."

"Oh! I don't want to know if it is a secret, Sim."

"Waal, there ain't no secret in it, Lightning; but he don't talk about it, and in course I don't. It is a sort of thing that has happened to other men, and maybe after a bit they have got over it; but the doctor ain't. You see he ain't a common man: he has got the heart of a woman, and for a time it pretty nigh crazed him."

CHAPTER XX.

THE AVENGER

HUGH told the coachman to go back to the hacienda, and to return for him late in the afternoon, and then went in with Sim. The doctor smiled faintly as Hugh sat down beside him and asked how he was getting on.

"I am getting on, lad," he said. "I reckon I shall be there before long."

Hugh affected to misunderstand him.

"You must pick up strength," he said, "or we shall never carry out that expedition among the Apaches, you know."

"If you wait for that you will wait a long time," the doctor said quietly.

"I hope not," Hugh said cheerily. "By the way, Sim, you told me you would tell me some of your adventures in the early days of California. I am interested in that, because I had an uncle there. He was ten years or so out there."

"What was his name, Lightning?" Sim asked.

"His name was Will Tunstall."

An exclamation burst from both his hearers.

"Your uncle!" Sim exclaimed. "Waal, that beats all, and to think that we should have been all this time together and never known that. Is your name Tunstall too?"

"Yes, Hugh Tunstall."

"To think now, doctor!" Sim said; "and we never knowed him except as Hugh or Lightning, and he is Will Tunstall's nephew. Why, lad, Bill – English Bill we called him – was a mate of ours, and a better mate men never worked with."

"You are like him, lad," the doctor said in a voice so different from that in which he had before spoken that Hugh quite started. "I thought you reminded me of someone, and now I know. It was English Bill. He was just as tall and as straight as you are, and laughed and talked just as you do. I wonder, Sim, we didn't notice it at once. Well, well, that is strange!"

Hugh was greatly surprised. It was indeed strange that he should have met these two mates of his uncle. Stranger still that they should have entertained such evident affection for a man who seemed to him to differ in character so widely from them. He was surprised, too, at the doctor's remarks about his resemblance to his uncle, for he could see no likeness whatever.

"Well," he said, "I should have had no idea that I was like my uncle. I think you must have forgotten his figure. He is tall and muscular certainly, but he is much darker than I am, and, I think, altogether different."

The doctor and Sim looked at each other with astonishment.

"There must be some mistake," Sim said. "Do you say your uncle is alive now?"

"Certainly I do," Hugh replied, in turn surprised.

"Ah! then, it isn't the same man," Sim said. "Our Bill Tunstall was killed ten years ago. It is odd, too; Tunstall ain't a common name, at least not in these parts. If you had ever said your own name before I should have noticed it, and asked you about it; but Royce always called you Lightning, or Hugh, and one may know men here for years by the name they have got without ever thinking what name they might be born with."

"Is Tunstall a common name in England, Lightning?" the doctor asked.

"No, I don't think so, doctor. I never met any others. We came from the north of England, from Cumberland."

"So did English Bill," Sim said. "Never heard tell of a chap that came out from there of that name, a tall, straight, strong fellow like you? He must have come out before you wur born, though, of course, we didn't know him for years afterwards."

"My uncle came out here before I was born," Hugh said; "but I never heard of anyone else of the same name doing so; still, if your friend is dead, of course it isn't the same, for my uncle is alive. At least he was two years ago. He is strong, and active, and well knit; but he is not as tall as I am by two inches, I should say."

"Lift me up in bed, Sim," the doctor said excitedly. "How long ago did your uncle return?"

"Over six years ago," Hugh replied, surprised at this strange excitement upon the part of a man who, ten minutes before, had seemed to have no further interest in anything.

"Six years ago, Sim? You hear that; six years ago!"

"Gently, doctor, gently; what are you driving at?" Sim asked, really alarmed at his mate's excitement.

The doctor paid no attention to him. "And he had been a great many years away? Went away as a boy, and when he came back was so changed they wouldn't have known him?"

"Yes, that was so," Hugh said, more and more surprised.

"You hear that, Sim? you hear that?" the doctor exclaimed sharply.