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Updated: May 22, 2025
"Hyar!" he shouted, shaking his fist angrily, "don't you shoot my dog, you or I'll be the death of ye!" "Oh, I don't know," responded Creede, bristling back at him. "Keep the blame pup away, then and keep that other dog away, too, or my cat'll eat 'im up! Well, I notice you took the occasion to come down and sheep me out," he observed, as Swope pulled up before the door.
Before I went to Wickenburg from Tucson I became partners with a man named Robert Swope in a bar and gambling lay-out in a little place named Adamsville, a few miles below where Florence now is on the Gila River. Swope was tending bar one night when an American shot him dead and got away.
Rufe," he whispered, "I bet you money we're jumped!" The possibility of having their ranch preëmpted during their absence had been spoken of in a general way, since Jim Swope had gone on the warpath, but in his secret soul Rufus Hardy had a presentiment which made claim-jumping look tame.
Oddly enough, as I had this thought, it also occurred to me that there was a man in the ship who might with justice claim to be Newman's peer, another man of heroic stature poor meek little Holy Joe. "If Swope does not interfere with the decent burial of that poor boy, there will be no outbreak," added Newman. "He will not interfere," I was able to assure him.
No hypocritical contrition showed in the face the lantern lighted; rather, a cool, pitiless inhumanity that squeezed my bowels, even while rage surged within me. We had understood that Swope was drunk for the past three days, but the smiling features showed no mark of his dissipation. Neither did he exhibit any of the fear he had shown at Newman's sudden appearance the other afternoon.
"No," retorted Hardy dryly, "and you never said you wasn't, either." "Yes, I did, too," spat back Swope, seizing at a straw. "Didn't I introduce you to my boss herder and tell him to keep off your range?" "Oh, I don't know," said Hardy coldly. "Did you?" For a moment the sheepman sat rigid in the darkness. Then he rose to his feet, cursing.
Thomas, and of course you're working for him; but I ask you, as a man, don't you think, after what I've done for him, that Jim Swope ought to come along himself if he wants to sheep me out?
It was a money saver, and lasted till the ascendency of steam, and the passage of tardy laws, ended it. Why, some skippers like Yankee Swope -boasted they never paid off a crew. Talk about efficiency, and reducing overhead costs! Some of those old windjammer skippers could swap yarns with these factory experts of to-day, I tell you!
Swope on the edge of my range and shoot 'im full of holes! Nothin' else will do, somebody has got to be killed before this monkey business will stop! I've been makin' faces and skinnin' my teeth at that dastard long enough now, and I'm goin' to make him fight if I have to put high-life on 'im!"
It looked wicked to me, this secretive conversation. My excited mind saw evil in it. I smelled evil, tasted evil, the very skin of my body was prickled with the air or evil that lay upon the ship. A case of nerves? Aye, I had nerves. Most sailormen had nerves when they were within sight of Captain Swope.
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