Part 10 (1/2)
”I remember the first time I ever saw him. Even then everybody called him 'old Jim.'
”I remember him tellin' me the same tales he's told you-how he was at the battle of San Jacinto when he was a youngster, and how he'd rode with Ewen Cameron and Jack Hayes. Only I believe him, and you don't.”
”That was so long ago-” I protested.
”The last Indian raid through this country was in 1874,” said my grandfather, engrossed in his own reminiscences. ”I was in on that fight, and so was old Jim. I saw him knock old Yellow Tail off his mustang at seven hundred yards with a buffalo rifle.
”But before that I was with him in a fight up near the head of Locust Creek. A band of Comanches came down Mesquital, lootin' and burnin', rode through the hills and started back up Locust Creek, and a scout of us were hot on their heels. We ran onto them just at sundown in a mesquite flat. We killed seven of them, and the rest skinned out through the brush on foot. But three of our boys were killed, and Jim Garfield got a thrust in the breast with a lance.
”It was an awful wound. He lay like a dead man, and it seemed sure n.o.body could live after a wound like that. But an old Indian came out of the brush, and when we aimed our guns at him, he made the peace sign and spoke to us in Spanish. I don't know why the boys didn't shoot him in his tracks, because our blood was heated with the fightin' and killin', but somethin' about him made us hold our fire. He said he wasn't a Comanche, but was an old friend of Garfield's, and wanted to help him. He asked us to carry Jim into a clump of mesquite, and leave him alone with him, and to this day I don't know why we did, but we did. It was an awful time-the wounded moanin' and callin' for water, the starin' corpses strewn about the camp, night comin' on, and no way of knowin' that the Indians wouldn't return when dark fell.
”We made camp right there, because the horses were f.a.gged out, and we watched all night, but the Comanches didn't come back. I don't know what went on out in the mesquite where Jim Garfield's body lay, because I never saw that strange Indian again; but durin' the night I kept hearin' a weird moanin' that wasn't made by the dyin' men, and an owl hooted from midnight till dawn.
”And at sunrise Jim Garfield came walkin' out of the mesquite, pale and haggard, but alive, and already the wound in his breast had closed and begun to heal. And since then he's never mentioned that wound, nor that fight, nor the strange Indian who came and went so mysteriously. And he hasn't aged a bit; he looks now just like he did then-a man of about fifty.”
In the silence that followed, a car began to purr down the road, and twin shafts of light cut through the dusk.
”That's Doc Blaine,” I said. ”When I come back I'll tell you how Garfield is.”
Doc Blaine was prompt with his predictions as we drove the three miles of post-oak covered hills that lay between Lost k.n.o.b and the Garfield farm.
”I'll be surprized to find him alive,” he said, ”smashed up like he is. A man his age ought to have more sense than to try to break a young horse.”
”He doesn't look so old,” I remarked.
”I'll be fifty, my next birthday,” answered Doc Blaine. ”I've known him all my life, and he must have been at least fifty the first time I ever saw him. His looks are deceiving.”
Old Garfield's dwelling-place was reminiscent of the past. The boards of the low squat house had never known paint. Orchard fence and corrals were built of rails.
Old Jim lay on his rude bed, tended crudely but efficiently by the man Doc Blaine had hired over the old man's protests. As I looked at him, I was impressed anew by his evident vitality. His frame was stooped but unwithered, his limbs rounded out with springy muscles. In his corded neck and in his face, drawn though it was with suffering, was apparent an innate virility. His eyes, though partly glazed with pain, burned with the same unquenchable element.
”He's been ravin',” said Joe Braxton stolidly.
”First white man in this country,” muttered old Jim, becoming intelligible. ”Hills no white man ever set foot in before. Gettin' too old. Have to settle down. Can't move on like I used to. Settle down here. Good country before it filled up with cow-men and squatters. Wish Ewen Cameron could see this country. The Mexicans shot him. d.a.m.n 'em!”
Doc Blaine shook his head. ”He's all smashed up inside. He won't live till daylight.”
Garfield unexpectedly lifted his head and looked at us with clear eyes.
”Wrong, Doc,” he wheezed, his breath whistling with pain. ”I'll live. What's broken bones and twisted guts? Nothin'! It's the heart that counts. Long as the heart keeps pumpin', a man can't die. My heart's sound. Listen to it! Feel of it!”
He groped painfully for Doc Blaine's wrist, dragged his hand to his bosom and held it there, staring up into the doctor's face with avid intensity.
”Regular dynamo, ain't it?” he gasped. ”Stronger'n a gasoline engine!”
Blaine beckoned me. ”Lay your hand here,” he said, placing my hand on the old man's bare breast. ”He does have a remarkable heart action.”
I noted, in the light of the coal-oil lamp, a great livid scar in the gaunt arching breast-such a scar as might be made by a flint-headed spear. I laid my hand directly on this scar, and an exclamation escaped my lips.
Under my hand old Jim Garfield's heart pulsed, but its throb was like no other heart action I have ever observed. Its power was astounding; his ribs vibrated to its steady throb. It felt more like the vibrating of a dynamo than the action of a human organ. I could feel its amazing vitality radiating from his breast, stealing up into my hand and up my arm, until my own heart seemed to speed up in response.
”I can't die,” old Jim gasped. ”Not so long as my heart's in my breast. Only a bullet through the brain can kill me. And even then I wouldn't be rightly dead, as long as my heart beats in my breast. Yet it ain't rightly mine, either. It belongs to Ghost Man, the Lipan chief. It was the heart of a G.o.d the Lipans wors.h.i.+pped before the Comanches drove 'em out of their native hills.
”I knew Ghost Man down on the Rio Grande, when I was with Ewen Cameron. I saved his life from the Mexicans once. He tied the string of ghost wampum between him and me-the wampum no man but me and him can see or feel. He came when he knowed I needed him, in that fight up on the headwaters of Locust Creek, when I got this scar.
”I was dead as a man can be. My heart was sliced in two, like the heart of a butchered beef steer.
”All night Ghost Man did magic, callin' my ghost back from spirit-land. I remember that flight, a little. It was dark, and gray-like, and I drifted through gray mists and heard the dead wailin' past me in the mist. But Ghost Man brought me back.
”He took out what was left of my mortal heart, and put the heart of the G.o.d in my bosom. But it's his, and when I'm through with it, he'll come for it. It's kept me alive and strong for the lifetime of a man. Age can't touch me. What do I care if these fools around here call me an old liar? What I know, I know. But hark'ee!”
His fingers became claws, clamping fiercely on Doc Blaine's wrist. His old eyes, old yet strangely young, burned fierce as those of an eagle under his bushy brows.
”If by some mischance I should should die, now or later, promise me this! Cut into my bosom and take out the heart Ghost Man lent me so long ago! It's his. And as long as it beats in my body, my spirit'll be tied to that body, though my head be crushed like an egg underfoot! A livin' thing in a rottin' body! Promise!” die, now or later, promise me this! Cut into my bosom and take out the heart Ghost Man lent me so long ago! It's his. And as long as it beats in my body, my spirit'll be tied to that body, though my head be crushed like an egg underfoot! A livin' thing in a rottin' body! Promise!”
”All right, I promise,” replied Doc Blaine, to humor him, and old Jim Garfield sank back with a whistling sigh of relief.
He did not die that night, nor the next, nor the next. I well remember the next day, because it was that day that I had the fight with Jack Kirby.
People will take a good deal from a bully, rather than to spill blood. Because n.o.body had gone to the trouble of killing him, Kirby thought the whole countryside was afraid of him.
He had bought a steer from my father, and when my father went to collect for it, Kirby told him that he had paid the money to me-which was a lie. I went looking for Kirby, and came upon him in a bootleg joint, boasting of his toughness, and telling the crowd that he was going to beat me up and make me say that he had paid me the money, and that I had stuck it into my own pocket. When I heard him say that, I saw red, and ran in on him with a stockman's knife, and cut him across the face, and in the neck, side, breast and belly, and the only thing that saved his life was the fact that the crowd pulled me off.
There was a preliminary hearing, and I was indicted on a charge of a.s.sault, and my trial was set for the following term of court. Kirby was as tough-fibered as a post-oak country bully ought to be, and he recovered, swearing vengeance, for he was vain of his looks, though G.o.d knows why, and I had permanently impaired them.
And while Jack Kirby was recovering, old man Garfield recovered too, to the amazement of everybody, especially Doc Blaine.
I well remember the night Doc Blaine took me again out to old Jim Garfield's farm. I was in s.h.i.+fty Corlan's joint, trying to drink enough of the slop he called beer to get a kick out of it, when Doc Blaine came in and persuaded me to go with him.
As we drove along the winding old road in Doc's car, I asked: ”Why are you insistent that I go with you this particular night? This isn't a professional call, is it?”
”No,” he said. ”You couldn't kill old Jim with a post-oak maul. He's completely recovered from injuries that ought to have killed an ox. To tell the truth, Jack Kirby is in Lost k.n.o.b, swearing he'll shoot you on sight.”
”Well, for G.o.d's sake!” I exclaimed angrily. ”Now everybody'll think I left town because I was afraid of him. Turn around and take me back, d.a.m.n it!”
”Be reasonable,” said Doc. ”Everybody knows you're not afraid of Kirby. n.o.body's afraid of him now. His bluff's broken, and that's why he's so wild against you. But you can't afford to have any more trouble with him now, and your trial only a short time off.”
I laughed and said: ”Well, if he's looking for me hard enough, he can find me as easily at old Garfield's as in town, because s.h.i.+fty Corlan heard you say where we were going. And s.h.i.+fty's hated me ever since I skinned him in that horse-swap last fall. He'll tell Kirby where I went.”
”I never thought of that,” said Doc Blaine, worried.