WESTERN CLASSICS - Ultimate Collection: Historical Novels, Wild West Adventures & Action Romance Novels. Owen Wister
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untarnished shining. Friday was clear and dry and hot, like the dynasty of blazing days that had gone before.
I saw a sorry spectacle in the street—the bridegroom and the bride shopping together; or, rather, he with his wad of bills was obediently paying for what she bought; and when I met them he was carrying a scarlet parasol and a bonnet-box. His biscuit-shooter, with the lust of purchase on her, was brilliantly dressed, and pervaded the street with splendor, like an escaped parrot. Lin walked beside her, but it might as well have been behind, and his bearing was so different from his wonted happy-go-luckiness that I had a mind to take off my hat and say, "Good-morning, Mrs. Lusk." But it was "Mrs. McLean" I said, of course. She gave me a remote, imperious nod, and said, "Come on, Lin," something like a cross nurse, while he, out of sheer decency, made her a good-humored, jocular answer, and said to me, "It takes a woman to know what to buy for house-keepin,"; which poor piece of hypocrisy endeared him to me more than ever. The puncher was not of the fibre to succeed in keeping appearances, but he deserved success, which the angels consider to be enough. I wondered if disenchantment had set in, or if this were only the preliminary stage of surprise and wounding, and I felt that but one test could show, namely, a coming face to face of Mr. and Mrs. Lusk, perhaps not to be desired. Neither was it likely. The assistant rain-maker kept himself steadfastly inside or near the barn, at the north corner of Cheyenne, while the bride, when she was in the street at all, haunted the shops clear across town diagonally.
On this Friday noon the appearance of the metal tube above the blind building spread some excitement. It moved several of the citizens to pay the place a visit and ask to see the machine. These callers, of course, sustained a polite refusal, and returned among their friends with a contempt for such quackery, and a greatly heightened curiosity; so that pretty soon you could hear discussions at the street corners, and by Saturday morning Cheyenne was talking of little else. The town prowled about the barn and its oracular metal tube, and heard and saw nothing. The Governor and I (let it be confessed) went there ourselves, since the twenty-four hours of required preparation were now begun. We smelled for chemicals, and he thought there was a something, but having been bred a doctor, distrusted his imagination. I could not be sure myself whether there was anything or not, although I walked three times round the barn, snuffing as dispassionately as I knew how. It might possibly be chlorine, the Governor said, or some gas for which ammonia was in part responsible; and this was all he could say, and we left the place. The world was as still and the hard, sharp hills as clear and near as ever; and the sky over Sahara is not more dry and enduring than was ours. This tenacity in the elements plainly gave Jode a malicious official pleasure. We could tell it by his talk at lunch; and when the Governor reminded him that no rain was contracted for until the next day, he mentioned that the approach of a storm is something that modern science is able to ascertain long in advance; and he bade us come to his office whenever we pleased, and see for ourselves what science said. This was, at any rate, something to fill the afternoon with, and we went to him about five. Lin McLean joined us on the way. I came upon him lingering alone in the street, and he told me that Mrs. McLean was calling on friends. I saw that he did not know how to spend the short recess or holiday he was having. He seemed to cling to the society of others, and with them for the time regain his gayer mind. He had become converted to Ogden, and the New-Yorker, on his side, found pleasant and refreshing this democracy of Governors and cow-punchers. Jode received us at the signal-service office, and began to show us his instruments with the careful pride of an orchid-collector.
"A hair hygrometer," he said to me, waving his wax-like hand over it. "The indications are obtained from the expansion and contraction of a prepared human hair, transferred to an index needle traversing the divided arc of—"
"What oil do you put on the human hair Jode?" called out the Governor, who had left our group, and was gamboling about by himself among the tubes and dials. "What will this one do?" he asked, and poked at a wet paper disc. But before the courteous Jode could explain that it had to do with evaporation and the dew-point, the Governor's attention wandered, and he was blowing at a little fan-wheel. This instantly revolved and set a number of dial hands going different ways. "Hi!" said the Governor, delighted. "Seen 'em like that down mines. Register air velocity in feet. Put it away, Jode. You don't want that to-morrow. What you'll need, Hilbrun says, is a big old rain-gauge and rubber shoes."
"I shall require nothing of the sort, Governor," Jode retorted at once. "And you can go to church without your umbrella in safety, sir. See there." He pointed to a storm-glass, which was certainly as clear as crystal. "An old-fashioned test, you will doubtless say, gentlemen," Jode continued—though none of us would have said anything like that—"but unjustly discredited; and, furthermore, its testimony is well corroborated, as you will find you must admit." Jode's voice was almost threatening, and he fetched one corroborator after another. I looked passively at wet and dry bulbs, at self-recording, dotted registers; I caught the fleeting sound of words like "meniscus" and "terrestrial minimum thermometer," and I nodded punctually when Jode went through some calculation. At last I heard something that I could understand—a series of telegraphic replies to Jode from brother signal-service officers all over the United States. He read each one through from date of signature, and they all made any rain to-morrow entirely impossible. "And I tell you," Jode concluded, in his high, egg-shell voice, "there's no chance of precipitation now, sir. I tell you, sir,"—he was shrieking jubilantly—"there's not a damn' thing to precipitate!"
We left him in his triumph among his glass and mercury. "Gee whiz!" said the Governor. "I guess we'd better go and tell Hilbrun it's no use."
We went, and Hilbrun smiled with a certain compassion for the antiquated scientist. "That's what they all say," he said. "I'll do my talking to-morrow."
"If any of you gentlemen, or your friends," said Assistant Lusk, stepping up, "feel like doing a little business on this, I am ready to accommodate you."
"What do yu' want this evenin'?" said Lin McLean, promptly.
"Five to one," said Lusk.
"Go yu' in twenties," said the impetuous puncher; and I now perceived this was to be a sporting event. Lin had his wad of bills out—or what of it still survived his bride's shopping. "Will you hold stakes, doctor?" he said to the Governor.
But that official looked at the clear sky, and thought he would do five to one in twenties himself. Lusk accommodated him, and then Ogden, and then me. None of us could very well be stake-holder, but we registered our bets, and promised to procure an uninterested man by eight next morning. I have seldom had so much trouble, and I never saw such a universal search for ready money. Every man we asked to hold stakes instantly whipped out his own pocketbook, went in search of Lusk, and disqualified himself. It was Jode helped us out. He would not bet, but was anxious to serve, and thus punish the bragging Lusk.
Sunday was, as usual, chronically fine, with no cloud or breeze anywhere, and by the time the church-bells were ringing, ten to one was freely offered. The biscuit-shooter went to church with her friends, so she might wear her fine clothes in a worthy place, while her furloughed husband rushed about Cheyenne, entirely his own old self again, his wad of money staked and in Jode's keeping. Many citizens bitterly lamented their lack of ready money. But it was a good thing for these people that it was Sunday, and the banks closed.
The church-bells ceased; the congregations sat inside, but outside the hot town showed no Sunday emptiness or quiet. The metal tube, the possible smell, Jode's sustained and haughty indignation, the extraordinary assurance of Lusk, all this had ended by turning every one restless and eccentric. A citizen came down the street with an umbrella. In a moment the by-standers had reduced it to a sordid tangle of ribs. Old Judge Burrage attempted to address us at the corner about the vast progress of science. The postmaster pinned a card on his back with the well-known legend, "I am somewhat of a liar myself." And all the while the sun shone high and hot, while Jode grew quieter and colder under the certainty of victory. It was after twelve o'clock when the people came from church, and no change or sign was to be seen. Jode told us, with a chill smile, that he had visited his instruments and found no new indications. Fifteen minutes after that the sky was brown. Sudden, padded, dropsical clouds were born in the blue above our heads. They blackened, and a smart shower, the first in two months, wet us all, and ceased. The sun blazed out, and the sky came blue again, like those rapid, unconvincing weather