Billy The Buck

________________________________________________
Title:     Billy The Buck
Author: Henry Wallace Phillips [More Titles by Phillips]

I fancy I assume an impregnable position in saying that real poetry is truth, presented in its most vivid and concise form. If the statement stands, I request that every line of English verse containing the words "Timid deer," or referring in any way to a presumed gentle, trusting, philanthropic disposition in the beast, be at once revised or expurgated. I shall not except the works of William Shakespeare. When the melancholy Jaques speaks of one of these ferocious animals, saying, "The big round tears coursed one another down his innocent nose in piteous chase," I believe Jaques lied; or, if he lied not, and the phenomenon occurred as reported, that the tears were tears of rage because the deer could not get at Jaques, and as an extension, if he had gotten at Jaques, he would have given said Jaques some cold facts to be contemplative about. After my experience, if I should see any misguided person making friendly advances to one of these horned demons, I should cry, "Whoa!" as Cassandra did to the wood horse of the Greeks, and probably with the same result. They would not falter until they had gathered bitter experience with their own hands.

Why? This is why. One day, when I was working on a Dakota ranch, the boss, a person by the name of Steve, urged me to take an axe, go forth, and chop a little wood, which I did.

The weather was ideal. A Dakota fall. Air vital with the mingled pleasant touch of frost and sun, like ice-cream in hot coffee, and still as silence itself. I had a good breakfast, was in excellent health and spirits; the boss could by no means approach within a mile unperceived, and everything pointed to a pleasant day. But, alas! as the Copper-lined Killelu-bird of the Rockies sings, "Man's hopes rise with the celerity and vigour of the hind leg of the mule, only to descend with the velocity of a stout gentleman on a banana peel."

On reaching the grove of cottonwoods I sat down for a smoke and a speculative view of things in general, having learned at my then early age that philosophy is never of more value than when one should be doing something else.

I heard a noise behind me, a peculiar noise, between a snort and a violent bleat. Turning, I saw a buck deer, and, from the cord and bell around his neck, recognised him as one Billy, the property of Steve's eldest boy. He was spoken of as a pet.

This was the touch needed to complete my Arcadia; the injection of what, at the time, I considered to be poetry into the excellent prose of open air life. Who could see that graceful, pretty creature, and remain unmoved? Not I, at all events. I fancied myself as a knight of old in the royal forest, which gave a touch of the archaic to my speech. "Come here, thou sweet-eyed forest child!" I cried, and here he came! At an estimate I should say that he was four axe-handles, or about twelve feet high, as he upended himself, brandished his antlers, and jumped me. My axe was at a distance. I moved. I played knight to king's bishop's eighth, in this case represented by a fork of the nearest tree. A wise and subtle piece of strategy, as it resulted in a drawn game.

[Illustration: "A wise and subtle piece of strategy"]

My friend stood erect for a while, making warlike passes with his front feet (which, by the way, are as formidable weapons as a man would care to have opposed to him); then, seeing that there was no sporting blood in me, he devoured my lunch and went away--a course I promptly imitated as far as I could; I departed.

Hitherto, I had both liked and admired Steve. His enormous strength, coupled with an unexpected agility and an agreeable way he had of treating you as if you were quite his own age, endeared him to me. When I poured out my troubles to him, however, rebuking him for allowing such a savage beast to be at large, he caused my feelings to undergo a change. For, instead of sympathising, he fell to uproarious laughter, slapped his leg, and swore that it was the best thing he'd ever heard of, and wished he'd been there to see it.

I concluded, judicially, that Steve had virtues, but that he was at the last merely a very big man of coarse fibre. Perhaps I had been a little boastful previously concerning my behaviour under trying circumstances. If so, I was well paid out for it. That night I had the pleasure of listening to an account of my adventures, spiced with facetious novelties of Steve's invention, such as that my cries for help were audible to the house, and only the fact that he couldn't tell from which direction they came prevented Steve from rushing to my rescue, and that all the deer wanted was my lunch, anyhow. I wished I had kept the lunch episode to myself.

[Illustration: "An account of my adventures"]

There are probably no worse teases on earth than the big boys who chase the cow on the Western prairies. They had "a horse on the kid," and the poor kid felt nightmare ridden indeed. If I were out with them, someone would assume an anxious look and carefully scout around a bunch of grass in the distance, explaining to the rest that there might be a deer concealed there, and one could not be too careful when there were wild beasts like that around. Then the giggling rascals would pass the suspected spot with infinite caution, perhaps breaking into a gallop, with frightened shrieks of "The deer! The deer!" while I tried to look as if I liked it, and strove manfully to keep the brine of mortification from rolling down my cheeks.

I didn't let my emotions take the form of words, because I had wit enough to know that I could not put a better barrier between myself and a real danger than those husky lads of the leather breeches and white hats. For all that, I had a yearning to see one of them encounter the deer at his worst. I did not wish anyone hurt, and was so confident of their physical ability that I did not think anyone would be; but I felt that such an incident would strengthen their understanding.

This thing came to pass, and, of all people, on my arch-enemy, Steve. If I had had the arrangement of details, I could not have planned it better. Because of my tender years, the light chores of the ranch fell to my share. One day everyone was off, leaving me to chink up the "bull-pen," or men's quarters, with mud, against the cold of approaching winter. Steve had taken his eldest boy on a trip to pick out some good wood.

Presently arrived the boy, hatless, running as fast as he could tear, the breath whistling in his lungs. "Come _quick_!" was the message. It seems the deer had followed the couple, and when the boy fooled with his old playmate, the deer knocked him down and would have hurt him badly, but that his father instantly jumped into the fray and grabbed the animal by the horns, with the intention of twisting his head off. The head was fastened on more firmly than Steve supposed. What he did not take at all into account was that the buck was both larger and stronger than he. Though raised on a bottle, Billy was by long odds the largest deer I ever saw.

Steve got the surprise of his life. The battle was all against him. The best he could hope to do was to hold his own until help arrived; so he sent the boy off hotfoot. Although his power for a short exertion was great, Steve was in no kind of training, having allowed himself to fatten up, and being an inordinate user of tobacco. Per contra, the deer felt freshened and invigorated by exertion. That's the deuce of it with an animal--_he_ doesn't tire.

I knew that Steve was in plenty trouble, or he wouldn't have sent for help. The boy's distress denied the joke I suspected; I grabbed a rope and made for the grove, the boy trailing me. I should have gotten a gun, but I didn't think of it.

Those were the days when I could run; when it was exhilaration to sail over the prairie. The importance of my position as rescuer--which anyone who has been a boy will understand--lent springs to my feet.

It was well for Steve that mine were speedy legs. When I got there his face was grey and mottled, like an old man's, and his mouth had a weak droop, very unlike devil-may-care Steve. The two had pawed up the ground for rods around in the fight; the deer's horns, beneath where the man gripped them, were wet with the blood of his torn palms. Steve's knees, arms, and head were trembling as if in an ague fit. He was all in--physically; but the inner man arose strong above defeat. "Here's--your--deer--Kid!" he gasped. "I--kept--him--for you!"

[Illustration: "'Here's--your--deer--Kid,' he gasped"]

I yelled to him to hold hard for one second, took a running jump, and landed on Mr. Buck's flank with both feet. It was something of a shock. Over went deer, man, and boy. I was on my pins in a jiffy, snapped the noose over the deer's hind legs, tangled him up anyhow in the rest of the riata, and snubbed him to the nearest tree. Then Steve got up and walked away to where he could be ill with comfort. And he was good and sick.

When he felt better, he arose and opened his knife, swearing that he would slit that critter's throat from ear to ear; but Steve, junior, plead so hard for the life of his pet that Big Steve relented, and Mr. Billy Buck was saved for further mischief.

That afternoon two of us rode out and roped him, "spreading" him between us as we dragged him home. He fought every step of the way. My companion, a hot-headed Montana boy, was for killing him a half-dozen times. However, feeling that the deer had vindicated me, I had a pride in him, and kept him from a timely end. We turned him loose in a corral with a blooded bull-calf, some milch cows, work-steers, and other tame animals. "And I bet you he has 'em all chewing the rag inside of twenty-four hours," said my companion.

That night Steve made ample amend for his former mirth. Indeed, he praised my fleetness and promptness of action so highly that I was seized by an access of modesty as unexpected as it was disorganising.

The next day Steve stood on the roof of the shed at the end of Billy Buck's corral. Suddenly he straightened up and waved his hat. "Deer and bull fight!" he called. "Come a-running everybody!" We dropped our labours and sprinted for the corral, there to sit upon the shed and watch the combat. Steve didn't know what began the trouble, but when I got there the young bull was facing the deer, his head down, blowing the dust in twin clouds before him, hooking the dirt over his back in regular righting bull fashion, and anon saying, "Bh-ur-ur-ooor!" in an adolescent basso-profundo, most ridiculously broken by streaks of soprano. When these shrill notes occurred the little bull rolled his eyes around, as much as to say "Who did that?" and we, swinging our legs on the shed roof, laughed gleefully and encouraged him to sail in.

His opponent watched this performance with a carriage of the head which, for superciliousness, I never have seen equaled in man, woman, or beast. His war-cry was a tinny bleat: the cry of a soul bursting with sardonic merriment. It was like the Falstaffian laughter of the duck, without its ring of honesty.

The bull, having gone through the preliminaries of his code, cocked his tail straight in the air and charged. The buck waited until he was within three feet; then he shot sideways, and shot back again, his antlers beating with a drum-stick sound on the bull's ribs. "Baw-aw!" said the bull. Probably that hurt. Again bull faced buck. This time the bovine eye wore a look of troubled wonderment, while one could mark an evil grin beneath the twitching nose of his antagonist; and his bleat had changed to a tone which recalled the pointing finger and unwritable "H'nh-ha!" that greets misfortune in childhood. "I told you so!" it said. The bull, however, is an animal not easily discouraged. Once more he lowered his foolish head and braved forth like a locomotive.

But it would take too long to tell all the things Billy Buck did to that bull. He simply walked all over him and jabbed and raked and poked. Away went the bull, his erstwhile proudly erect tail slewed sideways, in token of struck colours--a sign of surrender disregarded by his enemy, who thought the giving of signals to cease fighting a prerogative of his office. Away went the old cows and the work-steers and the horses, in a thundering circuit of the corral, the horned stock bawling in terror, and Billy Buck "boosting" every one of them impartially. We cheered him.

"Gad! I'm glad I didn't slit his windpipe!" said Steve. "He's a corker!"

Billy drove his circus parade around about six times before his proud soul was satisfied. Then he took the centre of the ring, and bellowed a chant of victory in a fuller voice than he had given before, while the other brutes, gathered by the fence, looked at him in stupefaction.

Only once more did Billy Buck figure in history before he left us for a larger field in town, and on this occasion, for the first and last time in his career, he got the worst of it.

A lone Injun came to the ranch--a very tall, grave man, clad in comic-picture clothes. A battered high hat surmounted his block of midnight hair, and a cutaway coat, built for a man much smaller around the chest, held his torso in bondage. As it was warm on the day he arrived, he had discarded his trousers--a breech-clout was plenty leg-gear, he thought. He bore a letter of recommendation from a white friend.

"Plenty good letter--_leela ouashtay ota_," said he, as he handed the missive over. I read it aloud for the benefit of the assembled ranch. It ran:

"This is Jimmy-hit-the-bottle, the worst specimen of a bad tribe. He will steal anything he can lift. If he knew there was such a thing as a cemetery, he'd walk fifty miles to rob it. Any citizen wishing to do his country a service will kindly hit him on the head with an axe.

"JACK FORSYTHE."

"Plenty good letter--_ota_!" cried the Injun, his face beaming with pride.

I coughed, and said it was indeed vigorous; Steve and the boys fled the scene. Now, we knew that Jimmy was a good Injun, or he wouldn't have had any letter at all; that great, grave face, coupling the seriousness of childhood and of philosophy, simply offered an irresistible temptation to the writer of the letter. There was something pathetic in the way the gigantic savage folded up his treasure and replaced it in his coat. I think Forsythe would have weakened had he seen it. Still, after we laughed, we felt all the better disposed toward Jimmy, so I don't know but it was a good form of introduction after all. Jimmy was looking for work, a subject of research not general to the Injun, but by no means so rare as his detractors would make out. He got it. The job was to clean out Billy Buck's corral. Steve found employment for the hands close to home for the day, that no one should miss the result. It is always business first on the ranch, and a practical joke takes precedence over other labours. Steve hung around the corral, where he could peek through the chinks. Hoarse whispers inquiring "Anything up yet?" were for so long answered in the negative, that it seemed the day had been in vain. At last the welcome shout rang out, "Injun and deer fight! Everybody run!" We flew, breathless with anticipatory chuckles. We landed on top of the shed, to witness an inspiring scene--one long-legged, six-foot-and-a-half Injun, suitably attired in a plug hat, cutaway coat, breech-clout, and mocassins, grappling in mortal combat a large and very angry deer. The arena and the surrounding prairie were dreaming in a flood of mellow autumn light. It was a day on which the sun scarce cast a shadow, yet everything sent back his rays clearly, softened and sweetened, like the answer of an echo. It was a day for great deeds, such as were enacted before us; steel-strung frame pitted against steel-strung frame; bottomless endurance against its equal. And never were such jumpings, such prancings, such wild wavings of legs beheld by human eyes before. You cannot beat it into people's heads that the horned critters are the lords of brute creation; yet it is the fact. A bull chased a lion all around the ring in the arena in Mexico, finally killing him with one blow. In Italy they shut a buck deer and a tiger in a cage. There was a brief skirmish, and the tiger slunk to the corner of the cage, howling.

Splendid was the exhibition of strength and agility we looked upon, but, alas! its poetry was ripped up the back by the cutaway coat, the plug hat, and the unrelated effect of those long, bare red legs twinkling beneath.

Indirectly it was the plug hat that ended the battle. At first, if Jimmy-hit-the-bottle felt any emotion, whether joy, resentment, terror, or anything man can feel, his face did not show it. One of the strangest features of the show was that immaculately calm face suddenly appearing through the dust-clouds, unconscious of storm and stress. At last, however, a yank of the deer's head--Jimmy had him by the horns--caused the plug hat to snap off, and the next second the deer's sharp foot went through it. You will remember Achilles did not get excited until his helmet touched the dust. Well, from what the cold, pale light of fact shows of the size and prowess of those ancient swaggerers, Jimmy-hit-the-bottle could have picked Achilles up by his vulnerable heel and bumped his brains out against a tree, and this without strain; so when the pride of his life, his precious plug hat, was thus maltreated, his rage was vast in proportion. His eyes shot streaks of black lightning; he twisted the deer's head sideways, and with a leap landed on his back. Once there, he seized an ear between his strong teeth and shut down. We rose to our feet and yelled. It was wonderful, but chaotic. I would defy a moving-picture camera to resolve that tornado into its elements of deer and Injun. We were conscious of curious illusions, such as a deer with a dozen heads growing out of all parts of a body as spherical as this, our earth, and an Injun with legs that vetoed all laws of gravitation and anatomy.

Poor Billy Buck! He outdid the wildest of our pitching horses for a half minute; but the two hundred and odd pounds he had on his back told--he couldn't hold the gait. Jimmy wrapped those long legs around him--the deer's tail in one hand, the horn in the other, and the ear between his teeth--and waited in grim determination. "Me-ah-a-aaaa!" said the deer, dropping to his knees.

Jimmy got off him. Billy picked himself up and scampered to the other end of the corral, shaking his head.

The Injun straightened himself up, making an effort to draw a veil of modesty over the pride that shone in his eyes.

"H-nh!" he said. "Fool deer tackle Tatonka Sutah!" ("Tatonka-Sutah," or Strong Bull, was the more poetic title of Jimmy-hit-the-bottle among his own kind.)

He then gravely punched his plug hat into some kind of shape and resumed his work.

We pitched in and bought Jimmy a shiny new plug hat which--which will lead me far afield if I don't drop the subject.

Well, he was master of Mr. Billy Buck. When he entered the corral, the deer stepped rapidly up to the farther corner and stayed there.

Now came the broadening of Billy's career. A certain man in our nearest town kept a hotel near the railroad depot. For the benefit of the passengers who had to stop there a half-hour for meals and recreation, this man had a sort of menagerie of the animals natural to the country. There was a bear, a mountain lion, several coyotes, swifts, antelope, deer, and a big timber wolf, all in a wire net-enclosed park.

It so happened that Steve met Mr. D----, the hotel proprietor, on one of his trips to town, and told him what a splendid deer he had out at the ranch. Mr. D---- became instantly possessed of a desire to own the marvel, and a bargain was concluded on the spot. Billy by this time had shed his horns, and was all that could be wished for in the way of amiability. We tied his legs together, and shipped him to town in a waggon.

Steve did not trick Mr. D----. He told him plainly that the deer was a dangerous customer, and that to be careful was to retain a whole skin; but the hotel proprietor, a little, fat, pompous man with a big bass voice--the kind of a man who could have made the world in three days and rested from the fourth to the seventh, inclusive, had it been necessary--thought he knew something of the deer character. "That beautiful creature, with its mild eyes and humble mien, hurt anyone? Nonsense!" So he had a fine collar made for Billy, with his name on a silver plate, and then led him around town at the end of a chain, being a vain little man, who liked to attract attention by any available means. All worked well until the next fall. Mr. D---- was lulled into false security by the docility of his pet, and allowed him the freedom of the city, regardless of protest. Then came the spectacular end of Billy's easy life. It occurred on another warm autumn day. The passengers of the noon train from the East were assembled in the hotel dining-room, putting away supplies as fast as possible, the train being late. The room was crowded; the darkey waiters rushing; Mr. D---- swelling with importance. Billy entered the room unnoticed in the general hurry. A negro waiter passed him, holding two loaded trays. Perhaps he brushed against Billy; perhaps Billy didn't even need a provocation; at any rate, as the waiter started down the room, Billy smote him from behind, and dinner was served!

When the two tray-loads of hot coffee, potatoes, soup, chicken, and the rest of the bill of fare landed all over the nearest table of guests, there was a commotion. Men leaped to their feet with words that showed they were no gentlemen, making frantic efforts to wipe away the scalding liquids trickling over them. The ladies shrieked and were tearful over the ruin of their pretty gowns. Mr. D----, on the spot instantly, quieted his guests as best he could on the one hand, and berated the waiter for a clumsy, club-footed baboon on the other. Explanation was difficult, if not impossible. Arms flew, hard words flew; the male guests were not backward in adding their say. Then, even as I had been before, the coloured man was vindicated. Suddenly two women and a man sprang on top of the table and yelled for help. Mr. D---- looked upon them open-mouthed. The three on top of the table clutched one another, and howled in unison. Mr. D----'s eye fell on Billy, crest up, war-like in demeanour, and also on a well-dressed man backing rapidly under the table.

A flash of understanding illumined Mr. D----. The deer, evidently, felt a little playful; but it would never do, under the circumstances. "Come here, sir!" he commanded. Billy only lived to obey such a command, as I have shown. But this time Mr. D---- recognised a difference, and went about like a crack yacht. He had intentions of reaching the door. Billy cut off retreat. Mr. D---- thought of the well-dressed man, and dived under the table. Those who had stood uncertain, seeing this line of action taken by one who knew the customs of the country, promptly imitated him. The passengers of the Eastern express were ensconced under the tables, with the exception of a handful who had preferred getting on top of them.

Outside, three cow punchers, who chanced to be riding by, were perfectly astonished by the noises that came from that hotel. They dismounted and investigated. When they saw the feet projecting from beneath the cloths, and the groups in statuesque poses above, they concluded not to interfere, although strongly urged by the victims. "You are cowards!" cried the man with the two women. The punchers joyfully acquiesced, and said, "Sick 'em, boy!" to the deer.

Meanwhile, the express and the United States mail were waiting. The conductor, watch in hand, strode up and down the platform.

"What do you suppose they're doing over there?" he asked his brakeman.

The brakeman shrugged his shoulders. "Ask them punchers," he replied.

The conductor lifted his voice. "What's the matter?" he called.

"Oh, come and see! Come and see!" said the punchers. "It's too good to tell.'"

The conductor shut his watch with a snap.

"Five minutes late," he said. "Pete, go and hustle them people over here. I start in three minutes by the watch."

"Sure," said Pete, and slouched across. Pete was surprised at the sight that met his gaze, but orders were orders. He walked up and kicked Billy, at the same time shouting "All aboard for the West! Git a wiggle on yer!"

The man owed his life to the fact that the deer could get no foothold on the slippery hardwood floor. As it was, Billy tried to push, and his feet shot out; man and deer came to the floor together, the brakeman holding hard. The passengers boiled out of the hotel like a mountain torrent. The punchers, thinking the brakeman in danger, sprang through the window and tied the deer. Pete gasped his thanks and hustled out. No one was left but Billy, the punchers, the darkey waiters, and Mr. D----.

[Illustration: The punchers to the rescue]

"This your deer?" inquired the punchers of the latter.

"It is," said Mr. D----. "Take him out and hang him--don't shoot him--hang him!"

"All right," replied the punchers. They took Billy out and turned him loose in the deer-pen.

"Reckon the old man'll feel better about it to-morrow," they said.

And it came to pass that the old man did feel better; so Billy was spared. Perhaps if you have travelled to the West you have seen him--a noble representative of his kind. Well, this is his private history which his looks belie.

[The end]
Henry Wallace Phillips's short story: Billy The Buck

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN