_ BOOK III. THE DAY OF THE CATTLE
CHAPTER XXVI. IKE ANDERSON
Ike Anderson was drunk--calmly, magnificently, satisfactorily drunk. It had taken time, but it was a fact accomplished. The actual state of affairs was best known to Ike Anderson himself, and not obvious to the passer-by. Ike Andersen's gaze might have been hard, but it was direct. His walk was perfectly decorous and straight, his brain perfectly clear, his hand perfectly steady. Only, somewhere deep down in his mind there burned some little, still, blue flame of devilishness, which left Ike Anderson not a human being, but a skilful, logical, and murderous animal.
"This," said Ike Anderson to himself all the time, "this is little Ike Anderson, a little boy, playing. I can see the green fields, the pleasant meadows, the little brook that crossed them. I remember my mother gave me bread and milk for my supper, always. My sister washed my bare feet, when I was a little, little boy." He paused and leaned one hand against a porch post, thinking. "A little, little boy," he repeated to himself.
"No, it isn't," he thought. "It's Ike Anderson, growing up. He's playing tag. The boy tripped him and laughed at him, and Ike Anderson got out his knife." He cast a red eye about him.
"No, it isn't," he thought. "It's Ike Anderson, with the people chasing him. And the shotgun. Ike's growing up faster, growing right along. They all want him, but they don't get him. One, two, three, five, nine, eight, seven--I could count them all once. Ike Anderson. No mother. No sweetheart. No home. Moving, moving. But they never scared him yet--Ike Anderson. . . . I never took any cattle!"
An impulse to walk seized him, and he did so, quietly, steadily, until he met a stranger, a man whose clothing bespoke his residence in another region.
"Good morning, gentle sir," said Ike.
"Good morning, friend," said the other, smiling.
"Gentle sir," said Ike, "just lemme look at your watch a minute, won't you, please?"
Laughingly the stranger complied, suspecting only that his odd accoster might have tarried too long over his cups. Ike took the watch in his hand, looked at it gravely for a moment, then gave it a jerk that broke the chain, and dropped it into his own pocket.
"I like it," said he simply, and passed on. The stranger followed, about to use violence, but caught sight of a white-faced man, who through a window vehemently beckoned him to pause.
Ike Anderson stepped into a saloon and took a straw from a glass standing on the bar, exercising an exact and critical taste in its selection. "I'm very thirsty," he remarked plaintively. Saying which, he shot a hole in a barrel of whisky, inserted the straw, and drank lingeringly.
"Thank you," he said softly, and shot the glass of straws off the counter. "Thank you. Not after me." The whisky ran out over the floor, out of the door, over the path and into the road, but no one raised a voice in rebuke.
The blue flame burned a trifle higher in Ike Anderson's brain. He was growing very much intoxicated, and therefore very quiet and very sober-looking. He did not yell and flourish his revolvers, but walked along decently, engaged in thought. He was a sandy-complexioned man, not over five feet six inches in height. His long front teeth projected very much, giving him a strange look. His chin was not heavy and square, but pointed, and his jaws were narrow. His eye was said by some to have been hazel when he was sober, though others said it was blue, or gray. No one had ever looked into it carefully enough to tell its colour when Ike Anderson was drunk, as he was to-day.
Ike Anderson passed by the front of the Cottage Hotel. A negro boy, who worked about the place, was sweeping idly at the porch door, shuffling lazily about at his employment. Ike paused and looked amiably at him for some moments.
"Good morning, coloured scion," he said pleasantly.
"Mawnin', boss," said the negro, grinning widely.
"Coloured scion," said Ike, "hereafter--to oblige me--would you mind whoopin' it up with yore broom a leetle faster?"
The negro scowled and muttered, and the next moment sprang sprawling forward with a scream. Ike had shot off the heel of his shoe, in the process not sparing all of the foot. The negro went ashy pale, and believed himself mortally hurt, but was restored by the icy tones of his visitor, who said, evenly and calmly:
"Coloured scion, please go over into that far corner and begin to sweep there, and then come on over the rest of the flo'. Now, sweep!"
The negro swept as he had never swept before. Twice a bullet cut the floor at his feet; and at last the stick of the broom was shattered in his hand. "Coloured scion," said Ike Anderson, as though in surprise, "yore broom is damaged. Kneel down and pray for another." The negro knelt and surely prayed.
On all sides swept the wide and empty streets. It was Ike Anderson's town. A red film seemed to his gaze to come over the face of things. He slipped his revolver back into the scabbard and paused again to think. A quiet footstep sounded on the walk behind him, and he wheeled, still puzzled with the red film and the mental problem.
The sheriff stood quietly facing him, with his thumbs resting lightly in his belt. He had not drawn his own revolver. He was chewing a splinter. "Ike," said he, "throw up your hands!"
The nerves of some men act more quickly than those of others, and such men make the most dangerous pistol shots, when they have good digestion and long practice at the rapid drawing of the revolver, an art at that time much cultivated. Ike Anderson's mind and nerves and muscles were always lightning-like in the instantaneous rapidity of their action. The eye could scarce have followed the movement by which the revolver leaped to a level from his right-hand scabbard. He had forgotten, in his moment of study, that with this six-shooter he had fired once at the whisky barrel, once at the glass of straws, once at the negro's heel, twice at the floor, and once at the broomstick. The click on the empty shell was heard clearly at the hotel bar, distinctly ahead of the double report that followed. For, such was the sharpness of this man's mental and muscular action, he had dropped the empty revolver from his right hand and drawn the other with his left hand in time to meet the fire of the sheriff.
The left arm of the sheriff dropped. The whole body of Ike Anderson, shot low through the trunk, as was the sheriff's invariable custom, melted down and sank into a sitting posture, leaning against the edge of the stoop. The sheriff with a leap sprang behind the fallen man, not firing again. Ike Anderson, with a black film now come upon his eyes, raised his revolver and fired once, twice, three times, four times, five times, tapping the space in front of him regularly and carefully with his fire. Then he sank back wearily into the sheriff's arms.
"All right, mammy!" remarked Ike Anderson, somewhat irrelevantly. _