By the noise that rascal of a captain had made and his effort to kill me or get his wallet back, I had naturally thought that I had a treasure. But when I opened the wallet, I found there was only nine dollars and twenty-two cents in the purse. First I wanted to go back and throw the wallet and the money in his face, but I reflected that this was more money than I had ever been able to call my own before.
So I dried myself out in the sun and then went back to the wharves. I did not meet the captain again, and two days later I managed to get a place on a passenger steamer that was bound for the mouth of the Missouri. I worked as cabin boy - that is to say, I had to do the work of a man and a boy for three weeks while the old tub of a boat butted its way up the current. But we made the big muddy wash of the Missouri at last. I was now West, but not for enough West to have found a land that would be to the taste of Will Dorset. All was too tame and too easy for him.
I had to beat about the town for a whole week before I found another steamer bound up the Missouri for Boonville, and in that boat I made the passage as a junior waiter. What with tips and wages, which were not very large, I reached Boonville with just thirty-two dollars in my pocket, and I felt myself to be a rich man. So I started out like any prosperous youngster to see the sights of the town - and in ten minutes I was seated at a poker game.
One expects, of course, to hear that I lost my money at once. I was playing with two others, both big men with widebrimmed black hats, and long, drooping mustaches, and little bright black eyes that glittered at me and at one another. They offered me whiskey, but I could not stand the taste of this Western alcohol and filth which went by the name of whiskey, so I refused it. I remember that they praised me for having so much sense, and so the first hand was dealt. I hardly knew how to play, but I did know that four of a kind was rare good luck. So I bid high and finally won twenty dollars. Of course, that was a stacked pack the hand was dealt from, and those two rascals intended to trim me thoroughly in another ten minutes and then turn me adrift. But as I was raking in my profits, a tall, lean fellow came up to the table and stood there with his hands dropped on his hips, smiling down at the three of us.
I shall never forget what a picture he made. He had his hat in his hand, which allowed his long, sun-faded hair to tumble down about his shoulders. He had on deerskins, almost the first I had ever seen, and one of the finest suits of them that I have ever come across. The coat was very long, reaching almost to the knee, and at the shoulder, the wrist, and at the bottom, there were deep fringes cut very fine. His trousers, which fitted tight, were beaded and fringed to the heel, and he had moccasins on his feet. Around his waist there was a broad, thick belt of the finest goatskin, new and white, and in a big holster at his right hip he had a Colt revolver - a weapon I had heard about but had never seen in backward Virginia.
It was not his clothes that took my eye half so much as his brown, thin, ugly face. I could tell that this was an honest man at a glance. My two new friends seemed to be able to tell that, too, and they grew a little uncomfortable.
“Son,” said this man in the deerskins, “does your pa know that you’re here?”
“He doesn’t,” I said. “And I don’t know where he is. I’ve come about four thousand miles, hoping to hit his trail. Maybe you could help me out.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “But I can tell you the first best step to get to him. That’s to get up from this here table and get out of this dirty hole.”
It seemed natural for me to obey him. I pocketed my money and stood up, but the two began to shout and swear at the stranger. He watched them for a moment, and then he said: “You sneakin’ wolves… can’t you find no man-sized meat? Have you got to eat veal? Now lemme hear no more yappin’ out of you. Young man, you start for the door.”
HANDY WITH A COLT
I did what he ordered me to do as though he had a right to command me. When I came to the street, he backed out after me, keeping his face toward the others. Once he was beyond the door, he stopped sidewise and walked me around the corner into an alleyway.
“What’s your name?” he inquired.
“My name is Lew Dorset.”
“Lew Dorset, my name is Chris Hudson. Those buzzards in there was about to pick you till your bones was white and dry. If you’re hunting for your father like you say you are, the nearest way is to keep outside of curs like them.”
I began to see what he meant. I thanked him and promised to follow his advice. He put on his hat and brushed his hair back over his shoulders. I smiled at that, because it was like the gesture of a little girl - and yet I had seen few more manly-looking men than Chris Hudson. All this while he was looking at me with his eyes squinted a little, very much as though I were a long distance away from him. Then he asked me if I were a stranger here and without friends. I told him that I was, and a moment later I had popped out the whole story - not about Will Dorset having escaped from jail, but about how he had quarreled with my uncle and left, and how I started west after him.
Chris Hudson listened very patiently to me. When I had finished, he said: “How much of that is true, and how much a lie?”
It took me so much aback I couldn’t find an easy answer. Finally I blurted out: “All that I’ve told you is true.”
“Have you told me half the truth?” He looked at me another moment, and then he grinned. “Well,” he said, “you’re pretty cool. How old are you? Eighteen?”
“Sixteen.”
He reached out for my hand, turned it up, and ran his thumb over the calluses.
“You’ll live through it,” he said.
What he meant I had no idea, then.
“What’s made you think that your father will be in Boonville?” he asked me.
“He’ll be farther west, I guess. He’s the sort of man that will need space.”
“And not too much law?” He winked at me, and I winked back.
“Not too much law,” I agreed.
“Son, might he be your style of a man?”
“You could put two like me inside him. He’s a man!”
He grinned again. Then he slapped me on the shoulder. “Would you like to go out where there’s plenty of space… and not too much law?” he asked me. “Would you like to go out with me?”
If he had asked me if I wanted to accept a chunk of the purest gold, my answer would have been given no more quickly.
“The kind of law that goes for you,” I said, “is the kind of law that goes for me.”
He grew a little more serious, after that. “No, I ain’t settin’ up for no sort of a model that a kid might grow up by. But yonder on the prairies where the angels wear red skins and where the nighest thing to a house dog that licks your hand is a buffalo wolf that tears your throat out…out yonder where most folks forget all about heaven and can feel hell knocking right up ag’in’ the heels of their boots… out yonder, old son, you got to cany your own law locked up inside of your head. And they’s damned few that ain’t spoiled by the chance. But, good man or bad man, nobody but a fool goes onto them prairies without a rifle and the knowledge of how to shoot straight, to say nothin’ of a pistol or a brace of revolvers for the little handy inside work. Can you shoot straight, kid?”