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Lin McLean-Part28_Owen Wister(1860-1938)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over the

table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's chief



historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and

wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They passed



by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings and high

music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the sparse



lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road. The

many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from



their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be

known."



"There's a dance to-night," said the wife to the husband. "Hurry."

He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.



"I'm telling you to hurry," she repeated. "My new dress is in that wagon.

There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than you."



She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and

the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat and



spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen voice

carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,



following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If

he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher was



still less to his mind.

"It ain't only her he's stopped caring for," mused Lin, as he rode slowly



along. "He don't care for himself any more."

PART III



To-day, Drybone has altogether returned to the dust. Even in that day its

hour could have been heard beginning to sound, but its inhabitants were



rather deaf. Gamblers, saloon-keepers, murderers, outlaws male and

female, all were so busy with their cards, their lovers, and their



bottles as to make the place seem young and vigorous; but it was second

childhood which had set in.



Drybone had known a wholesomeadventurous youth, where manly lives and

deaths were plenty. It had been an army post. It had seen horse and foot,



and heard the trumpet. Brave wives had kept house for their captains upon

its bluffs. Winter and summer they had made the best of it. When the War



Department ordered the captains to catch Indians, the wives bade them

Godspeed. When the Interior Department ordered the captains to let the



Indians go again, still they made the best of it. You must not waste

Indians. Indians were a source of revenue to so many people in Washington



and elsewhere. But the process of catching Indians, armed with weapons

sold them by friends of the Interior Department, was not entirely



harmless. Therefore there came to be graves in the Drybone graveyard. The

pale weather-washed head-boards told all about it: "Sacred to the memory



of Private So-and-So, killed on the Dry Cheyenne, May 6, 1875." Or it

would be, "Mrs. So-and-So, found scalped on Sage Creek." But even the



financiers at Washington could not whollypreserve the Indian in

Drybone's neighborhood. As the cattle by ten thousands came treading with



the next step of civilization into this huge domain, the soldiers were

taken away. Some of them went West to fight more Indians in Idaho,



Oregon, or Arizona. The battles of the others being done, they went East

in better coffins to sleep where their mothers or their comrades wanted



them. Though wind and rain wrought changes upon the hill, the ready-made

graves and boxes which these soldiers left behind proved heirlooms as



serviceable in their way as were the tenements that the living had

bequeathed to Drybone. Into these empty barracks came to dwell and do



business every joy that made the cow-puncher's holiday, and every hunted

person who was baffling the sheriff. For the sheriff must stop outside



the line of Drybone, as shall presently be made clear. The captain's

quarters were a saloon now; professional cards were going in the



adjutant's office night and day; and the commissary building made a good

dance-hall and hotel. Instead of guard-mounting, you would see a



horse-race on the parade-ground, and there was no provost-sergeant to

gather up the broken bottles and old boots. Heaps of these choked the



rusty fountain. In the tufts of yellow, ragged grass that dotted the

place plentifully were lodged many aces and queens and ten-spots, which



the Drybone wind had blown wide from the doors out of which they had been

thrown when a new pack was called for inside. Among the grass tufts would



lie visitors who had applied for beds too late at the dance-hall, frankly

sleeping their whiskey off in the morning air.



Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of

Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course



scalping had disappeared. "Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston,

accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885." Perhaps one is still there unaltered:



"Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months." This unique

corpse had succeeded in dying with its boots off.



But a succession of graves was not always needed to read the changing




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