“A Cathcart or a Riggs?”

Just who was that Pearl Brown woman, who was so darned snappy and defiant in that hard-boiled Western mining town? “Circumlocutory” Smith and his friend, Fosdike, were curious enough to make a bet on it, but their speculations had to be abandoned for a time in deference to the amazing developments when Horace Ring, fighting editor of the Weekly Star, carried his reforming campaign into the neighboring town of Placer City.

Shortly after that pleasant and profitable day on which Mrs. Pearl Brown knocked out Mr. Patrick Sheedy with a pair of brass knuckles, called Mr. Horace Ring, “The Reformer,” a chump, and satirically expressed her opinion of Mr. “Trigger” Smith’s celerity and prowess with a gun, she, too, caught the mania for reformation that had contagiously divided the mountain town of Murdock into numerous more or less violent factions.

Pearl Brown wasn’t in the habit of preannouncing her intentions. She was distinctly sudden. She never apologized for her acts, nor explained the reasons therefor. As John Fosdike, the blasé proprietor of the Miners’ Emporium once said: “That Pearl person just does something and then turns the talking part over to other folks. All she does is do.”

When Pearl Brown bought the Alamo Amusement Hall from the sheriff, the purchase included a small row of flimsy, one-story buildings that had the distinction of being appreciably removed from any near-by neighbors. Pearl Brown did not buy the tenants, but she sniffed when they were mentioned in the columns of Mr. Ring’s Weekly Star. He considered the tenants undesirable. As long as the Reformer bestowed printing ink on the row of shacks, Pearl Brown appeared unconcerned; but when Mr. Ring turned his reformatory abilities in other directions, Pearl Brown, as usual, did the unexpected.

She sallied forth to the row shortly after dusk on one calm summer’s evening, and notified her alarmed tenants that they had just one hour in which to pack their small belongings and vacate. Enlightened by previous experience, they bandied no words. They merely got industrious, some of them for the first time in their lives, and packed. Promptly with the turn of the hands of a clock, precisely on time, Pearl Brown set a match to a wad of cotton and kerosene in the first house, did the same to the next, and calmly burned out the whole flimsy row.

“They’re mine and they’re not insured,” she said to the chief of the volunteer fire brigade, when he arrived with his trusty men, a chemical cart, a red helmet, and a blunt ax. “There’s no law against my burning my own things, the same as I’d burn a mattress and a wooden bed in my back yard if I thought they were—well—not fit for further use. So that’s that, and—you can go to hell!”

In the face of such argument, it seemed a pity to waste the water. So none was wasted. Pearl Brown went back to the Alamo, which she owned and ran, climbed up to the top of a sort of lookout chair behind the bar, glared at a beer slinger, and said:

“Casey, you’re not tending to business. There’s a gent over there at No. 5 table that has slipped off his chair and thinks the floor is his boarding house. Chuck him out!”

The town marshal, arriving breathless and solicitous, approached her and began to condole her on her loss.

“Is there anything I can do, Misses Brown?” he asked, with due official courtesy.

“Not unless you wish to clear the ashes away to-morrow morning,” replied Pearl Brown, unsmiling and unmoved. “I may want to build something else there. Maybe it’ll be a nonsectarian church, or a Y. M. C. A. Perhaps the latter would be best. This camp needs one.”

Murdock had not tired of discussing the idiosyncrasies of Pearl Brown before she started another reformation. She had all the curtains and red-plush sofas removed from the boxes in the Alamo and a new sign put over the bar:

THIS IS A TEMPERANCE HOUSE. TEMPERANCE CONSISTS IN KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH AND THE WISE MAN MIXES NO DRINKS!

Having succeeded in clearing out her only rivals in business worth consideration, by organizing a tar-feather-and-rail party for their benefit which she led in person, the financial losses of her reform movement didn’t exactly hit her bank account, as John Fosdike remarked when he heard of the changes.

“Now with young Horace Ring and his Weekly Star,” remarked his long-time friend “Circumlocutory” Smith, “it’s different. Most every reform he undertakes costs him something. Sometimes most of his subscribers, and many times a beating; but does he count the cost? Not he. Just rolls up his sleeves and horns in with hoofs, tail, and mane all flying in different directions. The more I see of that boy, since he got grace and took to carrying a gun that he doesn’t know how to use, the better I like him. By the way, what’s he got to say about Pearl Brown’s latest moves?”

Fosdike laughed through his red beard and his eyes twinkled humorously.

“Haven’t you seen it in his paper? Oh, I forgot that you’d been away for a couple of weeks. Well, he came out with an editorial in which he praised her but wound up with the statement that while this was a step in the right direction, she could earn the higher approval of the better class of citizens by closing the Alamo entirely and taking up some more feminine occupation, like millinery. Pearl got riled when she read it and went to see him. Nobody knows whether she had her brass knuckles in her bag or not, but she met young Ring on the street and told him that when she wanted advice, she’d call on him personally.

“‘I like it,’ says she. ‘It’s so sound and so sweet; because if there’s any town on the Big Divide where a good milliner is needed, it’s Murdock. And while I think of it,’ says she, staring at him, ‘I’m not certain you wouldn’t make a better milliner yourself than you are editor or gunman.’”

Circumlocutory Smith meditated over this for some minutes, and then said: “She’s a Cathcart. That sounds just like Cathcart used to talk.”

“Nope. She’s a Riggs. Don’t you remember what a sarcastic devil he was?”

“So was Cathcart, when drunk. I bet a hundred dollars she’s a Cathcart.”

“It’s a bet. I’ll take it. Shake! You seem to forget that Riggs was sarcastic when he was sober, and this Pearl’s always dead-cold sober.”

“She’s a Cathcart. The bet’s done made. I’ll win your hundred.”

The discussion of the antecedents of the woman known as Pearl Brown was, for these two old frontiersmen, a continuous point of difference. She had let them know that once upon a time in Tucson, in the more reckless days of Trigger Smith, she had known both Smith and Fosdike, and had asserted that in those days there had been but four decent men in the town: Father Wyatt, a priest; Henry Bean, a mail carrier; a saloon keeper named Riggs; and a blacksmith called Cathcart, to one of which she “belonged.” Inasmuch as neither the mail carrier nor the priest had ever married, and in those days she must have been very young, they reasoned that her father had been one of the latter two.

Furthermore, they were annoyed because the knowledge was one-sided, she apparently knowing all their past, while they were ignorant of hers. Also, with characteristic outspokenness she had told them not to ask her any questions.

“A shut mouth catches no flies,” she told Fosdike, “Although, come to consider it, perhaps that’s the reason you are compelled to wear that red fly trap of a beard. Must have been born with your mouth open. Wonder how your mother protected you when you were young?”

That ended all further personal interrogations. The two old friends believed that she was not proud of her ownership of the Alamo, which she ran by sheer fighting strength—most successfully, from a financial viewpoint.

The miner repaired to his favorite loafing place in the saddlery shop with ulterior motives, for the gray-bearded old saddler was a gossip and a philosopher. Smith perched himself on the end of the workbench, dangling his long legs and inhaling the smell of freshly cut leather, and talked of many subjects before broaching the one in his mind—about hand-carved Spanish saddles; silver-mounted Mexican saddles, and cowpuncher “rocking-chairs.” Then he edged closer to home topics until he brought the subject around to the Alamo.

“You know,” he said, “I sort of like that Pearl Brown. Reminds me a lot of a man I used to know down in Tucson named Cathcart, a blacksmith. Dead image of him. And they do say she comes from down in that neck of the woods. Yes, sir, she certainly looks exactly like him, and talks like he used to!”

“Ever ask her if she was any kin?” the old saddler inquired, anything serving to rouse his bump of curiosity.

“No. I’d sort of like it, but you see me and her ain’t very good friends. Just the same, I’d certainly like to know if she wasn’t a Cathcart. Of course without her knowing that I sort of wanted to know.”

And thus having planted a seed that he was confident would bear fruit, Smith diplomatically changed the subject.

On the following day, he entered the saddlery and was greeted with a scowl.

“You got me inter a hell of a mess,” the saddler said, “askin’ me to go and ask that Pearl Brown if her dad’s name wa’n’t Cathcart!”

“I didn’t ask you to ask her. I just said⸺”

“Yes, I know; but you oughter heard what she said to me! She said that if people who stuck their bills inter other folks’ business had long noses, I’d have a nose like a pelican. An’ then all the fellers that heard her laughed their fool heads off, when the Lord knows there ain’t anybody that minds his own affairs more’n I do.”

The miner soothed the saddler and left with a sense of bafflement. Smith was still endeavoring to think of other sources of information when he went to the Miners’ Emporium and was hailed by its proprietor.

“I’ve thought of a way to settle that bet,” said Fosdike. “My kid brother is a lawyer down in Phoenix, and she let out one day that she knew him. So I wrote him a description. You’ll see. She’s no Cathcart.”

“We’ll see!” The miner grinned, and made a jest of it when he departed for a two-week stay in the hills.

The next time he appeared in the Emporium, Fosdike met him with a grunt and tossed him a letter. The miner read:

If this woman is about thirty years old or younger, as you say, I’m afraid I can’t help to identify her, although she would be near my own age. Cathcart and Riggs each had two daughters, all good looking, and all with what you call “snappy black eyes.” Also, all were self-reliant. But none of them was named “Pearl,” and I never knew a girl named “Pearl.”

“Humph!” said Smith. “Only way I can think of to find out who she was is to get Ring after her. They’re such good friends!”

Both laughed at this ironic jest, for the feud between The Reformer and the owner of the Alamo had become a classic throughout the entire district; and yet, in the end, it was the editor who first got the information.

For some tranquil weeks, The Reformer blithely went his way without giving any one sufficient cause to try to kill him. Perhaps the widely advertised fact that he had at last yielded to the protective use of firearms deterred the less courageous spirits from taking a chance, while others hoped that this was evidence that he was becoming tolerant to the exigencies of his environment.

Ring had come to Murdock from the highly moral and quiet surroundings of a mid-Western town and mid-Western university, imbued with the idea that his mission in life rested in making a mining camp model itself on the same lines, and—the mining camp couldn’t see it. His indomitable courage had saved him from ridicule, his increasing love for the town had gained him respect, and almost imperceptibly he had begun to wield considerable influence in all ordinary matters not too intimately associated with his ideas of reform.

Even Placer City, Murdock’s rival, admitted this, and Placer City was farther away than it looked. The camps were visible to each other, and on a clear day the residents of one could be observed by those of the other with a pair of field glasses. Because of an enormous cañon, however, that separated them to make way for the river bed, necessitating a day’s journey for one to visit the other, intercourse was of the most meager for all save the most energetic and determined, who could shorten the time to five or six hours by taking a perilous trail down one steep side and up the other.

Ring found the way to Placer City, and Mr. Ring was energetic. He also discovered that there was no adequate job-printing plant in Placer City, and that it offered a rich field for his efforts. Mr. Ring was not one to spare effort.

“That’s one thing that maybe accounts for his sort of taming himself down lately,” observed Fosdike to his friend Circumlocutory Smith. “He sort of works off a lot of surplus steam by making a trip once or twice a week to Placer, and every time he does twelve hours grueling work climbing down one side and up the other, to say nothing of a few miles extra walking drumming up printing jobs after he gets there, it makes him less combative and reformative here at home. Now if business would get good enough over there so he’d move his whole blamed outfit across the gulch and stay there, it’d be mighty big relief to Murdock.”

“I ain’t so sure about that,” the miner objected. “I think he’s doing a heap of good for this camp and⸺”

“Oh, I forgot you was chock-full of admiration for him,” Fosdike interrupted. “Also that he’d been such an all-fired good friend and backer, and so on, of yours.”

“Just because he’s panned me a dozen times ain’t got much to do with it,” Smith insisted. “He’s explained it all to me, and I see his side of it. It’s not me personally he objects to, so much as what I represent. He can’t get it out of his head that I’m a gunman and a danger to the community, instead of being the last man on earth to go looking for trouble.”

Fosdike chuckled, threw up his hands, wagged his head and retired. If the man who had been the terror of some thousand miles of territory before he turned peaceful couldn’t be made to view his past reputation as others viewed it, it wasn’t a friend’s duty to enlighten him. Even Pearl Brown couldn’t be convinced that Smith wasn’t dangerous and had once practically requested him to keep away from the Alamo, after the cold announcement that he was welcome only without his battery.

Pearl Brown again did the unexpected when she met Smith on the street that afternoon, halted him and put out her hand.

“See here,” she said abruptly, when he stared down at her in astonishment, “I try to play a fair game. When I first came here and saw you, I thought—well—I thought you were probably the same as you were when I first knew you by sight, and of you by—by what I heard. I was mistaken. It seems you aren’t the kind of a man you used to be, or that I took you to be.”

His keen eyes, whimsical, curious, appraised her.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I like people who’ve got the stuff to come around and say so when they find out they’ve made a mistake; but⸺ Wonder if you’d mind my asking you what made you change your mind about me?”

To his considerable surprise, she avoided his gaze, fixed her regard on the tip of a neat little shoe she thrust out, and seemed embarrassed by his question.

“You needn’t tell unless you want to,” he said.

As if spurred by this she retorted: “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell anything I want to. The last time I met that man Ring I took a little dig at him, and suggested that perhaps he’d better favor you in the Weekly Star for a while, because I was getting more than my share of his attention. Sort of turn about is fair play. And he told me that if I were half as good a woman as you are a man, I’d not need to be ashamed of myself. Said the difference between us was that you at least knew what decency was and are now trying to be decent and—well—the inference was obvious. So I smacked his face for him and went on about my business; but it started me to thinking, got me curious, caused me to ask questions about you, and that’s the whole of it. I’ve said some mean things to your face, and it’s to your face that I make my apology.”

“That’s the way to do it, I reckon,” the miner agreed, with an unusual note of jubilance in his voice, as if at last he was really winning his way to public acceptance of his reformation. “And—you offered to shake hands a moment ago. I didn’t, because I never shake hands with an enemy; but now⸺ Do you mind? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

She took the hand that he suddenly held out to her, and something in its warmth of grasp seemed to soften the habitual defensive hardness of her eyes. It was quite like a reconciliation between two first-class fighters after a feud.

“Needless to say you are welcome in the Alamo whenever you care to come,” she said, moving away.

“I don’t drink,” he answered.

As if this was a reflection on her business, she turned suddenly and left with him a parting shot. “Probably it’s a good thing for the camp that you don’t!”

He believed he caught the faint notes of mocking laughter as she walked away, and wondered what she meant by that. He stood watching her for a moment and thought:

“She walks like Cathcart used to, but she does talk like Riggs. I wish I knew which she is. Humph!”

Almost absently, and pondering over many things, he made his way past the saddler’s and down the somnolent street to the Miners’ Emporium.

“Can’t tell whether Pearl Brown’s a Riggs or a Cathcart,” he said, and, the hour being idle and the storekeeper lounging, retailed his recent encounter.

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Fosdike. “That young woman and you become friends, and young Ring is out sticking up for you! That young man⸺ What do you think of this? He ambled in here a while ago, calm as you please, just as if him and me hadn’t been at cross ends ever since he came to this camp and says:

“‘Fosdike, I’m not a man to bear a grudge. Also you sell good stuff, straight and clean. I’m going to buy anything I need here after this. Here’s an order.’

“Then he throws down a little list and walks out. Can you beat it?”

“Does seem as if folks in this camp were sufferin’ a change of heart,” the miner agreed. “About time one of those revivalist chaps came along, I reckon. Seems too good to last. Ought to be clinched while the going is good, before anybody can backslide. Afraid something mighty bad’s about to happen.”

But nothing did. Save for its occasional brawls and squabbles, all in the natural course of events, Murdock went its peaceful way. From the Placer City side, it looked clean and calm, sprawled in the sunshine, on the afternoon when Circumlocutory Smith and his partner Jim Clarke visited Placer City to inspect some secondhand mining material that they felt they could, in their increasing prosperity, afford.

Their examination had been made and, from the seclusion of a tavern porch where they had dined, they were considering their homeward journey when they saw a group forming in the middle of the road but a short distance away. In the center of it, a tall man held a newspaper in his clenched fist and waved it aloft as if it were a banner of hate. Voices were becoming louder and some one shouted: “Get a rope!” To this, came another shout: “No, no! Tar, feathers and a rail!”

“Looks interesting,” Smith said, with a grin, as he stood by the veranda rail.