Business and Society Ethics Sustainability and

Stakeholder Management 10th Edition Carroll

Solutions Manual download pdf

https://testbankdeal.com/product/business-and-society-ethics-
sustainability-and-stakeholder-management-10th-edition-carroll-
solutions-manual/

Visit testbankdeal.com to explore and download the complete

collection of test banks or solution manuals!
 We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit testbankdeal.com
to discover even more!

Business and Society Ethics Sustainability and Stakeholder

Management 10th Edition Carroll Test Bank

https://testbankdeal.com/product/business-and-society-ethics-
sustainability-and-stakeholder-management-10th-edition-carroll-test-
bank/

Business and Society Ethics Sustainability and Stakeholder

Management 8th Edition Carroll Solutions Manual

https://testbankdeal.com/product/business-and-society-ethics-
sustainability-and-stakeholder-management-8th-edition-carroll-
solutions-manual/

Business and Society Ethics Sustainability and Stakeholder

Management 9th Edition Carroll Solutions Manual

https://testbankdeal.com/product/business-and-society-ethics-
sustainability-and-stakeholder-management-9th-edition-carroll-
solutions-manual/

Cengage Advantage Books Fundamentals of Business Law

Summarized Cases 9th Edition Roger LeRoy Miller Solutions
Manual
https://testbankdeal.com/product/cengage-advantage-books-fundamentals-
of-business-law-summarized-cases-9th-edition-roger-leroy-miller-
solutions-manual/
Advanced Financial Accounting 10th Edition Christensen
Test Bank

https://testbankdeal.com/product/advanced-financial-accounting-10th-
edition-christensen-test-bank-2/

Quantum Mechanics A Paradigms Approach 1st Edition

McIntyre Solutions Manual

https://testbankdeal.com/product/quantum-mechanics-a-paradigms-
approach-1st-edition-mcintyre-solutions-manual/

College Algebra with Intermediate Algebra A Blended Course

1st Edition Beecher Solutions Manual

https://testbankdeal.com/product/college-algebra-with-intermediate-
algebra-a-blended-course-1st-edition-beecher-solutions-manual/

Economics Canada in the Global Environment Canadian 9th

Edition Parkin Test Bank

https://testbankdeal.com/product/economics-canada-in-the-global-
environment-canadian-9th-edition-parkin-test-bank/

Strategic Management Concepts and Cases Arab World 1st

Edition David Test Bank

https://testbankdeal.com/product/strategic-management-concepts-and-
cases-arab-world-1st-edition-david-test-bank/
Business Communication Today 11th Edition Bovee Test Bank

https://testbankdeal.com/product/business-communication-today-11th-
edition-bovee-test-bank/
 Ch 11, Instructor’s Manual, Business & Society, Carroll 10e

Chapter 11
Business, Government, and Regulation

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Articulate a brief history of the changing nature of the government’s role in its relationship
with business.
2. Appreciate the complex roles of government and business.
3. Identify the elements in the complex interactions among business, government, and the
public.
4. Identify and describe the government’s nonregulatory influences, especially the concepts
of industrial policy and privatization.
5. Identify and describe the government’s regulatory influences on business, including the
major reasons for regulation, the types of regulation, and issues arising out of deregulation.

TEACHING SUGGESTIONS

INTRODUCTION – In this chapter the authors examine the relationship between business and
government, along with the general public, which also plays an important role. The central focus
here is the government’s role in influencing business, although, as discussed in the next chapter,
business also influences government.

KEY TALKING POINTS – Many schools provide an entire course titled Business, Government,
and Society, which indicates the centrality of the subject matter in this chapter. Many students
will be quite familiar with the concept that government regulates and influences business (the
focus of this chapter) but will be less cognizant of the reciprocal relationship (Chapter 12).
Because the business/government relationship does flow in both directions, the instructor should
consider covering Chapters 11 and 12 as a single unit, so that students realize the full extent of
the influence each has over the other.

Several books have delved into this subject in some depth. The instructor may want to
incorporate some of their content into the classroom discussion or assign students to read
sections of different books. One of the earlier writings was Taking Care of Business, a 32-page
pamphlet written by Richard Grossman and Frank Adams. This item is currently available
through the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD) at http://www.poclad.org/.
Other relevant books include:

Bakan, J. 2004. The Corporation. New York: Free Press. (A movie of the same name has been
produced and is currently available on DVD.)

Kelly, M. 2003. The Divine Right of Capital. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Nace, T. 2003. Gangs of America. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Ch 11, Instructor’s Manual, Business & Society, Carroll 10e

While many students understand the concept of regulation, they don’t understand the process. At
a basic level, students should understand that Congress creates laws, various regulatory agencies
create rules/regulations within the parameters of those laws and that the public has an
opportunity to comment on the proposed regulations. The first group project in this chapter is
designed to help students understand this concept.

Certain chapter concepts can be illustrated by encouraging students to explore current political
issues: Should the U.S. social security system be privatized? On the other hand, should the U.S.
federalize healthcare? Should the government provide bailout funds to struggling industries?
Should the government further regulate the financial services industry? Students also may want
to explore the concept of deregulation by looking at the impact that this process has had on
certain industries.

PEDAGOGICAL DEVICES – In this chapter, instructors may utilize a combination of:

Cases:
18-Dole’s DBCP Legacy
19-Should Directors Shine Light on Dark Money?
20-DTCA – The Pill Pushing Debate
21-Big Pharma’s Marketing Tactics
22-A Smoke-Free Generation in Tasmania
25-The Hudson River Cleanup and GE
37-Are Criminal Background Checks Discriminatory

Ethics in Practice Cases:

The Marijuana Regulatory Dilemma
Banning the Big Gulp

Spotlight on Sustainability:
Utilities and the Costs of Going Green

Power Point slides:

Visit http://academic.cengage.com/management/carroll for slides related to this and other
chapters.

LECTURE OUTLINE

I. THE PENDULUM OF GOVERNMENT’S ROLE IN BUSINESS

II. THE ROLES OF GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS

A. A Clash of Ethical Belief Systems

III. INTERACTION OF BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT, AND THE PUBLIC

A. Government-Business Relationship
B. Public-Government Relationship
C. Business-Public Relationship

Copyright © 2018 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Ch 11, Instructor’s Manual, Business & Society, Carroll 10e

IV. GOVERNMENT’S NONREGULATORY INFLUENCE ON BUSINESS

A. Industrial Policy
B. Privatization
1. Producing versus Providing a Service
2. The Privatization Debate
C. Other Nonregulatory Governmental Influences on Business

V. GOVERNMENT’S REGULATORY INFLUENCES ON BUSINESS

A. Regulation: What Does It Mean?
B. Reasons for Regulation
1. Controlling Natural Monopolies
2. Controlling Negative Externalities
3. Achieving Social Goals
4. Other Reasons
C. Types of Regulation
1. Economic Regulation
2. Social Regulation
D. Issues Related to Regulation

VI. DEREGULATION
A. Purpose of Deregulation
B. The Changing World of Deregulation

VII. SUMMARY

SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Students should recognize that their answers to these discussion questions should be well
reasoned and supported with evidence. Although some answers will be more correct than others,
students should be aware that simplistic answers to complex questions, problems, or issues such
as these will never be “good” answers.

1. Question: Briefly explain how business and government represent a clash of ethical
systems (belief systems). With which do you find yourself identifying most? Explain. With
which would most business students identify? Explain.
Answer: As business historians often point out, corporate charters were first issued
explicitly to serve a public good. In that sense, business has changed from a collectivist
ethic, in which the good of the group is placed above the rights or good of individuals, to
its current individualist ethic. Individualism seeks to place the rights of individuals above
the good of the group, and thus supports the profit motive of current businesses.
Government, especially a representative democracy as practiced in the United States, is
formulated to promote the common good. Students will obviously be split in their
preferences for these two ethics, but the prevailing sentiment will most likely be for the
individualistic approach. This is by far the dominant mode of thinking among business
people.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Ch 11, Instructor’s Manual, Business & Society, Carroll 10e

2. Question: Explain why the public is treated as a separate group in the interactions among
business, government, and the public. Doesn’t government represent the public’s interests?
How should the public’s interests be manifested?
Answer: Ideally, the public is represented by the government. However, this is an
imperfect process. In addition, the public does not speak with a single voice—there are
many minority views that, while important and relevant, may not be sufficiently
widespread so they garner a voice in government. One of the most dangerous realities in
the United States is the influence of money on the governing process. Michael Walzer, in
Spheres of Justice, warns of the danger of goods from one sphere (e.g., money from the
economic sphere) invading and influencing the goods of another sphere (e.g., power in the
political sphere). Because big business has control of such vast amounts of money and
uses a portion of that currency to influence political power, the public’s influence over the
political process is severely diminished. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission increased corporate influence in the political
process when the Court ruled that the First Amendment protects a corporation’s right to
fund independent political broadcasts. How to return significant influence over
government to the public is a topic that is both timely and critical. Students may
appreciate this issue even more if they visit the multitude of websites that disclose the
funding sources for various federal and state candidates.

3. Question: What is regulation? Why does government see a need to regulate? Differentiate
between economic and social regulation. What social regulations do you think are most
important, and why? What social regulations ought to be eliminated? Explain.
Answer: Regulation is the act of controlling the activities of others by means of rules, law,
or constituted authority. Typically, government regulates to correct past wrongs, achieve
social goals, control natural monopolies, or control negative externalities. These
regulations fall into two general categories—economic regulations that control commerce
and social regulations that seek to achieve some type of social objective. The needs for
social regulations are numerous. Because of the complexity of our interactions, our society
has the power to do great harm to people and the environment, to the extreme of ending all
life. The unbridled quest for more, and the individualistic ethic have proven to do great
harm to the common good, which is the purview of social regulations. In 2010, Congress
passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which extends health insurance to
32 million uninsured people in the United States. This Act has been the subject of
considerable debate, and the social and economic impacts of the new law are still the
subject of substantial discussion in the U.S.

4. Question: Outline the major benefits and costs of government regulation. In general, do
you think the benefits of government regulation exceed the costs? In what areas, if any, do
you think the costs exceed the benefits?
Answer: This will be a difficult question for students to answer, simply because the costs
and benefits have not been quantified for them (or anyone else). Without hard data on
which they can base their answer, the students will rely on their general feelings about
government regulations. Because the prevailing notion about government regulation is
negative (especially among business people), the majority of students will likely answer

Copyright © 2018 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Ch 11, Instructor’s Manual, Business & Society, Carroll 10e

that it does more harm than good. However, students also may address the costs of
deregulation. As the text notes, “most observers believe that the rescinding of the Glass
Steagall Act prompted the [global recession that began in 2008]”. If this is true, the global
economy will experience the costs of the failure to regulate for some time.

5. Question: What are the trade-offs between privatization and federalization? When would
one or the other be more appropriate? What problems might you foresee and what future
events would merit a shift in the current mix?
Answer: The privatization/federalization debate centers on the question of efficiency.
Proponents of privatization contend that almost everything can be accomplished more
efficiently in the private sector than through government control. Supporters of
federalization contend that there are some functions that cannot be adequately handled by
the private sector. What the two sides often miss is that efficiency may not be the right
criterion upon which to make this decision. Is efficiency the most important factor in
making decisions about the education of our young people? Students may like to debate
whether social security should be privatized. This is a timely issue and one that garners the
interest of a majority of students due to the applicability to their personal lives. On the
other hand, students may like to debate the role that the government should play in
healthcare. Given the current political climate regarding this issue, this topic should be the
subject of a lively debate.

6. Question: What are deregulation and reregulation? Under what circumstances should
each be considered?
Answer: Deregulation is the counterpart to regulation, that can sometime overlap due to a
mix of economic and political decisions that is in a state of flux. Deregulation is used to
remove certain industries from the old-line economic regulations of the past, to keep the
economy in balance. Reregulation comes out of bad experiences after deregulating
industries. Reregulation is used to help find the optimal mix of regulation and deregulation
of industries. Deregulation should be considered to bring some industries up to date in
response to the changing economy. Reregulation should be considered when the
deregulation of industries caused negative effects rather than positive effects.

GROUP ACTIVITIES

Group Activity 1 – The Regulatory Process

While many students understand the concept of regulation, they do not understand the regulatory
process. At a basic level, students should understand that Congress creates laws, various
regulatory agencies create rules/regulations within the parameters of those laws and that the
public has an opportunity to comment on the proposed regulations.

To help students understand this concept, instructors should divide students into groups of three
to four students. Each group should then be assigned a law (preferably one that is studied in this
textbook). The students should research when the law was passed and the regulatory agency
responsible for implementing regulations under the law. They should summarize any regulations

Copyright © 2018 Cengage. All rights reserved.

 Ch 11, Instructor’s Manual, Business & Society, Carroll 10e

created by the appropriate regulatory agency under the law and note any public opposition or
support that was generated during the comment period.

Group Activity 2 - Deregulation

Divide students into groups of three to four students. Have students research (1) how Enron
lobbied Congress to deregulate the wholesale electricity industry and (2) how the deregulation of
the electricity industry has impacted consumers. Students should note any benefits or problems
that have occurred as a result of the deregulation of this industry. Instructors may want to guide
students to the situation that occurred in California as a result of the deregulation of this industry.

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

Ask students to research the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. As a starting
point, instructors may want to guide students to the following websites, which summarize the
law:

http://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/8061-021.pdf

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000846-503544.html

In connection with their research, students should prepare a typed-written response to the
following questions:

(1) What are health insurance exchanges?

(2) How will the law affect business? Specifically, what requirements does the law place on
employers?

(3) What is a public option? Why is it controversial? What role does the public option
currently play in healthcare reform?

(4) In your opinion, what role should the government play in healthcare? Explain.

Copyright © 2018 Cengage. All rights reserved.

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
In the end stall the bronco was still squealing and whimpering in an
almost human key. He struck it on the flank with his open palm and
spoke, "Get over there." It had been made so much of a pet, and
had been so constantly with him, that it was more intelligent than
the average of its kind. It got over and stood quiet and still,
trembling. He cut the halter close to the knot, turned it out of the
stall, and flinging himself across its back dug his heels into its belly.
Just for a moment it hesitated, then started with the bronco spring,
jumping the dead mules, shying from right to left and back again,
and going out through the gates at a run. Cairness held on with his
knees as he had learned to do when he had played at stock-rider
around Katâwa and Glen Lomond in the days of his boyhood, as he
had done since with the recruits at hurdle drill, or when he had
chased a fleet heifer across the prairie and had had no time to
saddle. He could keep his seat, no fear concerning that, but it was
all he could do. The pony was not to be stopped. He had only what
was left of the halter shank by way of a bridle, and it was none at
all. A Mexican knife bit would hardly have availed.
They tore on, away from the noise of the flames, of the falling
timber and the shouted commands, around the haystacks so close to
the barbed-wire fence that the barbs cut his boot, off by the back of
the quarters, and then upon the road that led from the reservation.
If the pony could be kept on that road, there was small danger from
dog holes. He would run himself out in time. The length of time was
what was uncertain, however. A cow-pony can go a good many
hours at a stretch.
Cairness sat more erect, and settled down to wait. The motion was
so swift that he hardly felt it. He turned his head and looked back at
the flaming corrals, and, remembering the dead animals, wondered
who had hamstrung them. Then he peered forward again the little
way he could see along the road, and began to make out that there
was some one ahead of him. Whoever it was scurrying ahead there,
bent almost double in his speed, was the one who had hamstrung
the mules and horses, and who had set fire to the corrals. The pony
was rather more under control now. It could be guided by the halter
shank.
The man, still running, dodged from the road and started across
country. Cairness wheeled and followed him. It was open ground,
with not so much as a scrub oak or a rock in sight. The thick
darkness offered the only chance of escape. But Cairness had
chased yearlings in nights as black, and had brought them back to
the herd. Down by the creek where the trees were thick, there
would have been a good chance for escape, almost a certainty
indeed, but there was little here. The man dodged again. It was just
to that very thing that the pony had been trained. Habit got the
better of stampede with it. It, too, dodged sharply.
Cairness leaned far over and made a grab, but the first time he
missed. The second he caught the neckerchief and held it, dragging
the man, who resisted with all his giant strength, digging his toes
into the ground as they tore along. And he was heavy. Cairness had
no stirrup or pommel to trust to. He saw that it was a case of falling
or of leaving go, and he decided to fall. The man would go
underneath anyway.
The man did go underneath and bravely offered resistance. Cairness
had the twofold strength of his wiry build and of his bull-dog race.
But Lawton—he knew it was Lawton now—would have been
stronger yet, save that the three weeks' spree had told, and he was
breathless.
Cairness sat across him and held a revolver to his mouth. The life of
the plains teaches agility of various sorts, but chiefly in the matter of
drawing a six-shooter. "You fired the corrals," Cairness gasped.
The fall had knocked the breath from his body. The under dog did
not answer.
"And you hamstrung those horses."
No answer still.
"Why did you do it?"
No answer.
"I'll break your jaws if you don't open them." The jaws opened
forthwith, but no sound came, and Lawton struggled feebly.
It occurred to Cairness then that with no breath in your lungs and
with twelve stone on your chest, speech is difficult. He slid off and
knelt beside the rancher, still with the revolver levelled. "Now, why
did you do it, eh?" He enforced the "eh" with a shake.
"I dunno. I didn't."
"Didn't you, then? You did, though, and you can go back with me till
we find out why. Give me your firearms. Lively!"
Lawton produced a brace of revolvers.
"And your knife."
He handed it over also.
"Now you get up and walk in front of me, and don't you try to bolt. I
can run faster than you can, and, anyway, I'll shoot you if you try it."
Lawton moved ahead a few steps; then he began to cry, loudly,
blubbering, his nerves gone all to shreds. He implored and pleaded
and wailed. He hadn't known what he was doing. He had been
drunk. They had treated him badly about the beef contract. Stone
had gone back on him. The oaths that he sobbed forth were not
new to Cairness, but they were very ugly.
"Cheese that cussing, do you hear?" he ordered.
Lawton stopped. To forbid him swearing was to forbid him speech.
He shuffled ahead in silence.
When Cairness got him to the post and turned him over to the
officer-of-the-day, the fire had burned itself out and quiet was
settling down again. Big warm drops were beginning to splash from
the clouds.
The officer-of-the-day put Lawton into the care of the guard and
asked Cairness in to have a drink, calling him "my good man."
Cairness was properly aware of the condescension involved in being
asked into an officer's dining room, but he objected to being
condescended to by a man who doubled his negatives, and he
refused.
"Is there anything, then, that I can do for you? the officer asked. His
intentions were good; Cairness was bound to realize that, too.
"Yes, sir," he answered; "you can see that I get a mounted man and
a horse at reveille to-morrow. I want to hunt for my pony. I lost it
when I caught that man."
The officer-of-the-day agreed. And Cairness, not having a hat to
raise, forgot himself and saluted. Then he went back to the sutler's
through the already pelting rain. He was glad he had caught Lawton,
mainly because of what he hoped to get out of him yet, about the
Kirby affair. But he was sorry for the big clumsy fool, too. He had
been an easy-going, well-intentioned boss in the days when Cairness
had been his hand. And, too, he was sorry, very sorry, about the
pony. If it were to fall into the hands of Mexicans or even of some of
the Mescalero Indians, his chances of seeing it again would be
slight. And he was fond of it, mainly because it had helped him to
save Mrs. Landor's life.
 XVIII
Cairness had made a tune for himself and was putting to it the
words of the ill-fated poet of his own Land of the Dawning.
 "Oh! wind that whistles, o'er thorns and thistles
Of the fruitful earth, like a goblin elf,
Why should he labor to help his neighbor,
Who feels too reckless to help himself?"

He felt altogether reckless. In just such a mood, he reflected, his

grandmother had probably poisoned her first husband. He could
almost have poisoned Landor, the big duty-narrowed, conventional,
military machine. Why could he not have married some one of his
own mental circumspection?—Mrs. Campbell, for instance. He had
watched that affair during his enlistment. More the pity it had come
to nothing. Landor could have understood Mrs. Campbell. Then he
thought of Felipa, as he had seen her first, looking full into the glare
of the sunset, and afterward at him, with magnificent impersonality.
"He has caught a lioness and tricked her out in fashionable rags and
taught her some capers, and now he thinks he has improved the
animal," he said to himself, and raged inwardly, asking the intangible
Fate, which was always opposing him, if there was not enough little
doll women in the world that such an one as Felipa must be whittled
down to the size.
The probable outcome of things at the rate they were going was
perfectly apparent. Landor would advance in age, respectability, and
rank, and would be retired and settle down on three-fourths pay. He
himself would end up in some cow-boy row, degraded and
worthless, a tough character very probably, a fine example of
nothing save atavism. And Felipa would grow old. That splendid
triumphant youth of hers would pass, and she would be a
commonplace, subdued, middle-aged woman, in whom a relapse to
her nature would be a mere vulgarity.
He recalled the dark, unbecoming flush that had deepened the color
of her skin just enough to show the squaw, beyond mistaking, at
least to one who knew. It was all very well now. But later, later she
would look like that frequently, if not all the time. With youth she
would lose her excuse for being. He knew that very well. But it was
the youth, the majestic, powerful youth, that he loved. He had seen
too many old hags of squaws, disfigurers of the dead and wounded,
drudges of the rancheria, squatting on hides before their tepees, not
to know what Felipa's decline would be in spite of the Anglo-Saxon
strain that seemed to show only in her white skin.
Her only salvation, he knew that too, was to keep that strain always
uppermost, to force it to the surface, exactly as Landor was doing
now. Conventional, stately, reserved, in the garb of civilization, she
would have a certain dignity. But youth was too good to sell for that.

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,

The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm?"—

He laughed crossly. Evidently he was dropping back into the poetical

tendencies of his most callow youth. He would be doing her a sonnet
next, forsooth. He had done two or three of them in his school days
for Sydney damsels. That was when he had aspired to be ranked in
his own country with Gordon. Good Lord! how many aspirations of
various sorts he had had. And he was a cow-boy.
Somewhere in that same poem, he remembered, there had been
advice relative to a man's contending to the uttermost for his life's
set prize, though the end in sight were a vice. He shrugged his
shoulders. It might be well enough to hold to that in Florence and
the Middle Ages. It was highly impracticable for New Mexico and the
nineteenth century. So many things left undone can be conveniently
laid to the prosaic and materialistic tendencies of the age. Things
were bad enough now—for Landor, for himself, and most especially
for Felipa. But if one were to be guided by the romantic poets, they
could conceivably be much worse.
He struck his pony with the fringed end of the horse-hair lariat that
hung around his pommel, and cantered on in the direction of the
post. The pony had been found among the foot-hills, without any
trouble. That, at any rate, had been a stroke of luck. He had led it
into the fort just at the end of guard-mounting, and had met a party
of riders going out.
Mrs. Landor was with them. She had a little battered, brass trumpet
hanging from her horn, and he knew that they were going to play at
hare and hounds. She and the three with her were evidently the
hares. They would take a ten minutes' start; then, at the sound of
the trumpet, the hounds would follow. The riding was sometimes
reckless. A day or two before he had seen Felipa leap an arroyo, the
edges of which were crumbling in, and take a fallen tree on very
dangerous ground.
He looked about now for a sign of either party. Across the creek was
some one riding slowly along the crest of a hill, seeming so small
and creeping that only a very trained eye could have made it out. It
was probably a hound. The hares lay low, in cañons and gullies and
brush, as a rule. As he scanned the rest of the valley, his horse
stopped short, with its fore legs planted stiffly. He looked down and
saw that he was at the brink of a sheer fall of twenty feet or more,
like a hole scooped in the side of the little rise he was riding over. He
remembered, then, that there was a cave somewhere about. He had
often heard of it, and probably it was this. He dismounted, and,
tying the pony in a clump of bushes, walked down and around to
investigate.
It was plainly the cave. He went and stood in the mouth and looked
into the dark, narrowing throat. A weird silence poured up with the
damp, earthy smell. He went farther in, half sliding down the steep
bank of soft, powdery, white earth. There was only the uncanny light
which comes from reflection from the ground upward. But by it he
could see innumerable tiny footprints, coyote, squirrel, prairie-dog,
polecat tracks and the like. It took very little imagination to see
yellow teeth and eyes gleaming from black shadows also, although
he knew there were no dangerous animals in those parts.
When he was well within, he began to investigate, and he recalled
now that he had heard a great deal of this cave. It was very large,
supposedly, but almost unexplored. Tradition ran that the Spaniards,
in the long-past days of their occupation, had had a big silver mine
in there, worked by padres who had taught the timid Indians to
believe that it was haunted, that they might not take it for
themselves, nor yet guide others to it. And, too, it had been the
refuge and hiding-place of Billy the Kid for years. It was said that
since then a corporal and three men had gone in once, and that a
search party had found their gnawed skeletons by the edge of the
river that flowed there underground. Oddly enough, and thanks to
the missionary fathers, it had never served as an Indian stronghold,
though its advantages for such a use were manifest.
Cairness sat himself down and tried to listen for the flow of the great
black river yonder in the great black hollow. By dint of straining his
ears he almost fancied that he did catch a sound. But at the same
instant, there came a real and unmistakable one. He started a little,
not quite sure, just at first, what manner of wild beast, or man, or
genius of the cave might pounce out upon him.
It was only some one standing at the mouth of the hole, however, a
shadow against the shimmering sunlight. And it was a woman—it
was Felipa.
He sat quite still, clinching his teeth and clawing his fingers tensely.
In the great crises of life, training and upbringing and education fall
away, and a man is governed by two forces, his instincts and his
surroundings. And Cairness's instincts were in entire accord with his
surroundings; they were of the Stone Age, when men fought with
the beasts of the wilderness in their cave homes, and had only the
law of sheer strength. He leaned forward, holding his breath, and
watched her. Had she seen his horse tied up above, and come here
to find him—because he was here?
She might have seen two dots of light fixed on her from the shadow,
if she had looked that way. But she did not, and came unconcernedly
down. She was sure-footed and agile, and she was daring, too. He
himself had felt a qualm at coming here. But she did not appear to
hesitate once. She came on, close by where he sat, and going to the
dark passage peered in. Then she turned away and caught sight of
him.
He was accustomed to the gloom by now, but she was not. She
could only see that there was some one in the shadow. It flashed
through his mind that she would scream, but the next moment he
knew that she would not.
She drew herself up and grasped her loaded quirt more firmly. There
are some natures to which flight from a thing feared is physically
impossible. They must not only face danger, they must go up to it. It
is a trait, like any other. Felipa took two steps toward him.
He came out of the rock nook into the half light and spoke her own
name.
She was frightened now. The quirt fell from her hand with a thud.
She loosed her hold upon her long riding skirt and tripped over it.
If he had not sprung forward, with his arms outstretched to catch
her, she would have fallen, face downward in the dust. It was three
times now he had so saved her.
He knew even then while her hand grasped at his arm, that he
should have set her upon her feet, as he had done before. He knew
that she had merited at least that. But he held her tight and close,
and bending back her head, his own very close above it, looked into
her eyes.
Then he stopped, with every muscle drawn, for he had seen in her
answering, unflinching gaze that he was losing her, surely,
irrevocably losing her. He let her go, almost throwing her away, and
she caught hold of a ledge of rock to steady herself. He picked up
the heavy quirt and held it out to her, with a shaking hand, shame-
faced, and defiant, too.
She took it, and they both stood for a time without speaking. Then
she turned her head and looked up at the sunshine. "I think I must
go," she whispered. But she did not move.
He asked her angrily why she had ever come at all, and she
explained, with a piteous whimper, like a penitent child's, that she
had left her horse tied in a little hollow and had come to explore.
She had often meant to explore before this.
He was still more exasperated, with himself and with her, that he
had allowed himself to think for one moment that she had come on
purpose to find him. Where were the others? How did she happen to
be here alone? he asked.
She told him that they had all scattered some time before, with the
hounds in full cry. "I must go," she repeated more firmly now, "they
will be looking—" She stopped short.
There was the crunching of heavy feet up above, on the gravel. It
came to them both, even to her, that for them to be seen there
together would be final. There would be no explaining it away.
Cairness thought of her. She thought of her husband. It would ruin
him and his life.
It was done before either of them was conscious of doing it. The
black throat of the cave was open behind him. Cairness jumped back
into it, and she turned away and stood waiting, stiff with fear, not of
the man whoever it might prove to be up there, but for the one who
had stepped into the unknown dangers of the darkness behind her.
The man up above showed himself, and putting his hands to his
mouth shouted, "Felipa!"
She gave a cry of relief. "Mr. Cairness, Mr. Cairness," she called, "it is
only my husband." She went herself a little way into the passage.
"Jack, Mr. Cairness has gone in there, call to him." And she called
again herself.
Landor came sliding and running down. His face was misshapen with
the anger that means killing. She saw it, and her powers came back
to her all at once. She put both hands against his breast and pushed
him back, with all the force of her sinewy arms. His foot slipped on a
stone and he fell.
She dropped beside him and tried to hold him down. "He did not
know I was coming here," she pleaded. "It was a mistake, Jack! Will
you wait until I tell you? Will you wait?" She was clinging around his
neck and would not be shaken off. He dragged her in the dust,
trying to get free himself.
Cairness had groped his way back. He stood watching them. And he,
too, was ready to kill. If Landor had raised his hand against her, he
would have shot him down.
But, instead, Landor stopped abruptly, rigid with the force of will. "I
will wait. Go on," he said. His voice was low and rasping.
It dawned upon Cairness that this was rather more than a military
machine after all, that he had underestimated it.
Felipa stood up and told the truth shortly. "It was my fault, if it was
any one's," she ended. "You may kill me, if you like. But if you hurt
him, I will kill myself." It was she who was threatening now, and she
never said more than she meant. She turned almost disdainfully
from them, and went up and out of the cave.
Landor stopped behind, looking at Cairness undecidedly for a
moment longer. "It is well for you that I can believe her implicitly,"
he said. It had been a relapse to the Stone Age, but the rebound to
the nineteenth century was as quick.
Cairness bowed, with no realization of the humor of it. "You are
equally fortunate," he said easily, and motioned with his hand to the
opening above, where Felipa was going. He might have been under
his own roof, and that the door.
Landor went. Felipa waited for him, already mounted. He mounted
his own horse and rode beside her back to the post. They did not
speak, and he was conscious above his anger that his fondness for
her had been gradually turning to dislike, and was now loathing. He
had seen her dragging in the dust before him, pleading abjectly. She
had humiliated him and herself in the presence of Cairness, of all
men, and he would never forget it. A woman who once grovels at a
man's feet has lost thenceforth her power over him.
 XIX
If you take even a good-humored puppy of a savage breed and tie
him to a kennel so that all his natural energy strikes in; if you feed
him upon raw meat, when you feed him at all, but half starve him
for the most part; and if you tantalize and goad him whenever you
are in search of a pastime, he is more than likely to become a
dangerous beast when he grows up. He is then a menace to the
public, so you have but one course left—to take him out and shoot
him.
That is the proper way to bring up dogs. It makes them useful
members of society. And it applies equally well to Indians. It has
worked beautifully with them for several hundred years. In Canada
they have run it on another principle. But they have missed much of
the fun we have had out of it. In the territories there was plenty of
such fun. And it had pretty well reached its height in the spring of
'83.
The Indians, being wicked, ungrateful, suspicious characters,
doubted the promises of the White-eyes. But it is only just to be
charitable toward their ignorance. They were children of the
wilderness and of the desert places, walking in darkness. Had the
lights of the benefits of civilization ever shone in upon them, they
would have realized that the government of these United States,
down to its very least official representative, never lies, never even
evades.
"Have I ever lied to you?" Crook asked them.
And the deaf old chief Pedro answered for them: "No," he said,
"when you were here before, whenever you said a thing, we knew
that it was true, and we kept it in our minds. When you were here,
we were content; but we cannot understand why you went away.
Why did you leave us? Everything was all right when you were
here."
He was but an unlearned and simple savage, and the workings of a
War Department were, of course, a mystery to him. He and his
people should have believed Crook. The thoughtful government
which that much-harassed general represented had done everything
possible to instill sweet trustfulness into their minds. But the Apache,
as all reports have set forth, is an uncertain quantity.
The quiet, observant, capable man, whose fate it was to be always
called in for the thankless task of undoing the evil work of others,
made every effort to pacify this time, but he failed.
"Yes, we believe you," said the Apache; "but you may go away
again." So he refused to be cajoled, and going upon the war-path,
after much bloodshed, fled into Mexico.
The general took a couple of hundred Indian scouts, enlisted for six
months' service, a troop of cavalry, and a half-dozen guides and
interpreters, and followed across the border.
There was a new treaty, just made to that end. It was the fiercest of
all the Apache tribes, the Chiricahuas, that had hidden itself in the
fastnesses of the Sierra Madre, two hundred miles south of the
boundary line. Geronimo and Juh and Chato, and other chiefs of
quite as bloody fame, were with him. To capture them would be very
creditable success. To fail to do so would entail dire consequences,
international complications perhaps, and of a certainty the scorn and
abuse of all the wise men who sat in judgment afar off.
The general kept his own counsel then, but afterward, when it was
all over, he confessed,—not to the rejoicing reporter who was
making columns out of him for the papers of this, and even of many
another, land,—but to the friends who had in some measure
understood and believed in him, that the strain and responsibility
had all but worn him out. And he was no frail man, this mighty
hunter of the plains.
The general of romance is a dashing creature, who wears gold lace
and has stars upon his shoulder straps, and rides a fiery charger at
the head of his troops. He always sits upon the charger, a field-glass
in his hand and waiting aides upon every side, or flourishes a sword
as he plunges into the thick of the battle smoke.
But Crook was not dashing, only quiet and steady, and sure as
death. Upon parade and occasions of ceremony he wore the gold
lace and the stars. To do his life's work he put on an old flannel
shirt, tied a kerchief around his neck, and set a pith helmet over
those farseeing, keen little eyes. He might have been a prospector,
or a cow-boy, for all the outward seeming of it. His charger was
oftenest a little government mule, and he walked, leading it over
many and many a trail that even its sure feet could not trust.
There were plenty such trails in the Sierra Madre, through which the
Apache scouts were guiding him to their hostile brothers. Cairness
had come along with his own band of scouts. He had seen rough
work in his time, but none equal to this. Eight mules stepped a
hand's breadth from the path, and lay hundreds of feet below at the
base of the precipice, their backs broken under their aparejos. The
boots were torn from the men's feet, their hands were cut with
sharp rocks. They marched by night sometimes, sometimes by day,
always to the limit of their strength. And upon the fourteenth
morning they came upon the Chiricahua stronghold. Without the
scouts they could never have found it. The Indian has betrayed the
Indian from first to last.
It was a little pocket, a natural fortress, high up on a commanding
peak. Cairness crept forward flat along the rocks, raised his head
cautiously and looked down. There in the sunrise light,—the
gorgeous sunrise of the southern mountain peaks where the wind is
fresh out of the universe and glitters and quivers with sparks of new
life,—there was the encampment of the hostiles. It was a small Eden
of green grass and water and trees high up in the Sierra—that
strange mountain chain that seems as though it might have been
the giant model of the Aztec builders, and that holds the mystery of
a mysterious people locked in its stone and metal breasts, as
securely as it does that of the rich, lost mines whose fabled wonders
no man can prove to-day.
There is a majesty about the mountains of the desolate regions
which is not in those of more green and fertile lands. Loneliness and
endurance are written deep in their clefts and cañons and precipices.
In the long season of the sun, they look unshrinking back to the
glaring sky, with a stern defiance. It is as the very wrath of God, but
they will not melt before it. In the season of the rains, black clouds
hang low upon them, guarding their sullen gloom. But just as in the
sternest heart is here and there a spot of gentleness, so in these
forbidding fastnesses there are bits of verdure and soft beauty too.
And the Indian may be trusted to know of these. Here where the
jacales clustered, there was grass and wood and water that might
last indefinitely. The fortifications of Nature had been added to those
of Nature's man. It was a stronghold.
But the Apaches held it for only a day, for all that. They were
unprepared and overconfident. Their bucks were for the most part
away plundering the hapless Mexican settlements in the desert
below. They had thought that no white troops nor Mexicans could
follow here, and they had neglected to count with the scouts, who
had been hostiles themselves in their day, and who had the thief's
advantage in catching a thief. And so while the bucks and children
wandered round among the trees or bathed in the creek, while the
hobbled ponies grazed leisurely on the rank grass, and the squaws
carried fuel and built fires and began their day of drudgery, they
were surprised.
The fight began with a shot fired prematurely by one of the scouts,
and lasted until nightfall—after the desultory manner of Indian
mountain fights, where you fire at a tree-trunk or lichened rock, or
at some black, red-bound head that shoots up quick as a prairie
dog's and is gone again, and where you follow the tactics of the
wary Apache in so far as you may. The curious part of it is that you
beat him at his own game every time. It is always the troops that
lose the least heavily!
The Indian wars of the southwest have been made a very small side
issue in our history. The men who have carried them on have gained
little glory and little fame. And yet they have accomplished a big
task, and accomplished it well. They have subdued an enemy many
times their own number. And the enemy has had such enormous
advantages, too. He has been armed, since the 70's, even better
than the troops. He has been upon his own ground—a ground that
was alone enough to dismay the soldier, and one that gave him
food, where it gave the white man death by starvation and thirst. He
knew every foot of the country, fastnesses, water holes, creeks, and
strongholds over thousands of miles. The best cavalry can travel
continuously but twenty-five or thirty miles a day, carrying its own
rations. The Apache, stealing his stock and food as he runs, covers
his fifty or seventy-five. The troops must find and follow trails that
are disguised with impish craft. The Apache goes where he lists, and
that, as a general thing, over country where devils would fear to
tread.
Then throw into the scale the harassing and conflicting orders of a
War Department, niggardly with its troops, several thousand miles
away, wrapped in a dark veil of ignorance, and add the ever ready
blame of the territorial citizen and press, and the wonder is, not that
it took a score of years to settle the Apache question, but that it was
ever settled at all.
The all-day fight in the Sierra Madre stronghold was a very uneven
one. There were two hundred and fifty of the government forces
against some thirty-five bucks. But, after all, the number comes to
nothing. You may as well shoot at one enemy as at a thousand, if he
is not to be seen anyway, and you cannot hit him.
Cairness reflected upon this as he fired for exactly the seventh time
at a pair of beady eyes that flashed at him over a bush-topped rock
by the creek, not five and twenty yards away, and then vanished
utterly. There was something uncanny about it, and he was losing
patience as well as ammunition. Three bullets from a repeating rifle
had about finished him. One had gone through his hat. The eyes
popped up again. Cairness fired again and missed. Then he did a
thoroughly silly thing. He jumped out from behind his shelter and
ran and leapt, straight down, and over to the rock by the stream.
The beady eyes saw him coming and sparkled, with an evil sort of
laughter.
If Cairness had not slipped and gone sprawling down at that
moment, the fourth bullet would have brought him up short. It sung
over him, instead, and splashed against a stone, and when he got to
his feet again the eyes had come out from their hiding-place. They
were in the head of a very young buck. He had sprung to the top of
his rock and was dancing about with defiant hilarity, waving his
hands and the Winchester, and grimacing tantalizingly. "Yaw! ya!" he
screeched. Cairness discharged his revolver, but the boy whooped
once more and was down, dodging around the stone. Cairness
dodged after him, wrath in his heart and also a vow to switch the
little devil when he should get him. But he did not seem to be
getting him.
The fighting stopped to watch the Ojo-blanco playing tag with the
little Apache, right in the heart of the stronghold. The general stood
still, with a chuckle, and looked on. "Naughty little boy," he
remarked to the captain of the scouts; "but your man Cairness won't
catch him, though."
With the sublime indifference to the mockery of the world,
characteristic of his race, Cairness kept at it. It was ridiculous. He
had time to be dimly aware of that. And it certainly was not war. He
did not know that they were affording the opposing forces much
enjoyment. He had not even observed that the firing had stopped.
But he meant to catch that much qualifiedly impudent little beast, or
to know the reason why. And he would probably have known the
reason why, if one of the Apache scouts, embarrassed by no notions
of fair play, had not taken good aim and brought his youthful
kinsman down, with a bullet through his knee.
The black eyes snapped with pain as he fell, but when Cairness, with
a breathless oath at the spoiler of sport, whoever he might be,
pounced down upon him, the snap turned to a twinkle. The little
buck raised himself on his elbow. "How! Cairness," he grinned. "How
Mees Landor?" Cairness stopped short, speechless, with his mouth
open. He did not even dodge after a bullet had hummed past his
head. "Who the devil—!" he began. Then it dawned upon him. It
was Felipa's protégé of the old Camp Thomas days.
He was standing, and the boy was lying, and the shots of the
Apaches flew about them. He stooped, and catching up his defeated
foe, whose defeat was not half so entire as his own, scrambled out
of the pocket and back among the troops. He carried his prisoner,
who kicked vigorously with his good leg, and struck with both fists in
protest against the ignominy of being held under anybody's arm like
a sack of grain, back to the tied horses.
"Look out for the little customer, will you?" he said to the medical
officer. "He's a great chum of mine. Many's the can of condensed
milk and bag of peanuts the ungrateful young one has had out of
me." "What are you doing here?" he asked in the White Mountain
idiom; "you aren't a Chiricahua."
The boy grinned again. "How Mees Landor?" he repeated. His
savage perception had noted that those words had some "medicine"
or other that paralyzed the Ojo-blanco temporarily. Cairness swore at
him in good English, and went off abruptly.
At sunset the camp surrendered. There were seven dead bucks
found, but no one ever knew, of course, how many had fallen into
ravines, or dragged themselves off to die in nooks. The Apache does
not dread death, but he dreads having the White-man know that he
has died.
The spoils of the rancheria were varied, and some of them
interesting as well. There were quite a hundred mules and horses,
and there was money, to the sum of five thousand dollars or more.
Also there were gold and silver watches and clothes and saddles and
bridles—all the loot of the unhappy haciendas and pueblas down on
the flat. But the most treasured of all their possessions was a little
photograph album which had begun its varied career in the
particular home of the misguided Indian philanthropist, Boston.
There was human plunder, too—women from the villages, all
Mexicans but one, and that one was American. Cairness, having
gone off with some scouts to reconnoitre, did not see them that
night. When he came back it was already dark, and he took his
supper; and rolling himself in his blanket slept, as he had always for
the past fortnight, with only the faintly radiant night sky above him.
In the morning, while the cooks were getting breakfast and the
steam of ration-Rio mounted as a grateful incense to the pink and
yellow daybreak heavens, having bathed in the creek and elaborated
his toilet with a clean neckerchief in celebration of victory, he walked
over to the bunch of tepees to see the women captives.
He knew while he was yet afar off which was the American. She
stood, big and gaunt, with her feet planted wide and her fists on her
hips, looking over toward the general's tent. And when Cairness
came nearer, strolling along with his hands in his pockets, observing
the beauties of Nature and the entire vileness of man, she turned
her head and gave him a defiant stare. He took his hands from his
pockets and went forward, raising his disreputable campaign hat.
"Good morning, Mrs. Lawton," he said, not that he quite lived up to
the excellent standard of Miss Winstanley, but that he understood
the compelling force of civility, not to say the bewilderment. If you
turn its bright light full in the face of one whose eyes are
accustomed to the obscurity wherein walk the underbred, your
chances for dazzling him until he shall fall into any pit you may have
dug in his pathway are excellent.
Nor was he disconcerted that she met him with a stony front and a
glare of wrath. She glanced down at his outstretched hand, and kept
her own great bony one on her hip still. Then she looked at him
squarely again. She did not say "Well?" but she meant it. So he
answered it blandly, and suggested that she had probably forgotten
him, but that he had had the pleasure of meeting her once in the
States. She continued to stare. He held that a husband is a husband
still until the law or death says otherwise, and that it was no part of
a man's business to inquire into the domestic relations of his friends;
so he said that he had had the pleasure of meeting her husband
recently. "He was at Fort Stanton," he added, "upon some little
matter of business, I believe. You will be glad to hear that he was
well." He did not see fit to add that he was also in the county jail,
awaiting trial on charge of destruction of government property.
"What's your name, young feller?" she demanded. Cairness was
hurt. "Surely, Mrs. Lawton, you have not so entirely forgotten me. I
am Charles Cairness, very much at your service." But she had
forgotten, and she said so.
He hesitated with a momentary compunction. She must have
suffered pretty well for her sins already; her work-cut, knotty hands
and her haggard face and the bend of her erstwhile too straight
shoulders—all showed that plainly enough. It were not gallant; it
might even be said to be cruel to worry her. But he remembered the
dead Englishwoman, with her babies, stiff and dead, too, beside her
on the floor of the charred cabin up among the mountains, and his
heart was hardened.
"I spent a few days with the Kirbys once," he said, and looked
straight into her eyes. They shifted, and there was no mistaking her
uneasiness. He followed it up instantly on a bold hazard. It had to be
done now, before she had time to retreat to the cover of her blank
stolidity. "Why did you leave them to be massacred? What did you
have against her and those little children?"
"I didn't. None of your business," she defied him.
"I beg your pardon, madam," he said. "It happens to be my
business, though."
Breakfast call sounded. At the first shrill note she started violently.
She was very thoroughly unnerved, and he decided that an hour of
thinking would make her worse so. He told her that he would see
her after breakfast, and raising his hat again left her to the
anticipation, and to helping the Mexican captives cook their meal of
mescal root and rations.
Later in the day, when the general and the interpreters were
engaged in making clear to the bucks, who came straggling in to
surrender, the wishes and intentions of the Great Father in
Washington as regarded his refractory children in Arizona, he went
back to the captives' tepee. The Texan was nowhere to be seen. He
called to her and got no answer, then he looked in. She was not
there. One of the Mexican women was standing by, and he went up
to her and asked for the Gringa.
The woman shrugged her round brown shoulders from which the
rebozo had fallen quite away, and dropped her long lashes. "No se,"
she murmured.
"Ay que si! You do know," he laughed; "you tell me chula, or I will
take you back to the United States with me."
She laughed too, musically, with a bewitching gurgle, and gave him
a swift glance, at once soft and sad. "Ella es muy fea, no es
simpatica, la Gringa."
Undoubtedly, as she said, the American was ugly and unattractive;
but the Mexican was pretty and decidedly engaging. Cairness had
been too nearly trapped once before to be lured now. He met the
piece of brown femininity upon her own ground. "You are quite right,
querida mia. She is ugly and old, and you are beautiful and young,
and I will take you with me to the States and buy a pink dress with
lovely green ribbons, if you will tell me where the old woman is."
"'Stá bajo," she stuck out her cleft chin in the direction of the trail
that led out of the pocket down to the flat, far below.
"De veras?" asked Cairness, sharply. He was of no mind to lose her
like this, when he was so near his end.
"Truly," said the little thing, and nodded vehemently.
He left her ignominiously, at a run. She stood laughing after him
until he jumped over a rock and disappeared. "She is his sweetheart,
the vieja," she chattered to her companions.
Cairness called to four of his scouts as he ran. They joined him, and
he told them to help him search. In half an hour they found her,
cowering in a cranny of rocks and manzanita. He dismissed the
Indians, and then spoke to her. "Now you sit on that stone there and
listen to me," he said, and taking her by the shoulder put her down
and stood over her.
She kept her sullen glance on the ground, but she was shaking
violently.
"Your husband is in jail," he said without preface. He had done with
the mask of civility. It had served its purpose.
"No he ain't."
"Yes he is. And I put him there." He left her to what he saw was her
belief that it was because of the Kirby affair. "You'll see when you
get back. And I'll put you there, too, if I care to. The best chance
you have is to do as I tell you."
She was silent, but the stubbornness was going fast. She broke off a
bunch of little pink blossoms and rolled it in her hands.
"Your best chance for keeping out of jail, too," he insisted, "is to
keep on the right side of me. Sabe? Now what I want to know is,
what part Stone has in all this." He did not know what part any one
had had in it, as a matter of fact, for he had failed in all attempts to
make Lawton talk, in the two days he had had before leaving the
post.
"Why don't you ask him?" said Mrs. Lawton, astutely.
"Because I prefer to ask you, that's why—and to make you answer,
too."
He sat down cross-legged on the ground, facing her. "I've got plenty
of time, my dear woman. I can stop here all day if you can, you
know," he assured her. Afterward he made a painting of her as she
had sat there, in among the rocks and the scrub growth, aged, bent,
malevolent, and in garments that were picturesque because they
were rags. He called it the Sibyl of the Sierra Madre. And, like the
Trojan, he plied her with questions—not of the future, but of the
past. "Well," he said, "are you going to answer me?"
"Didn't you find out from him?" she asked.
He changed his position leisurely, stretching out at full length and
resting his head on his hand by way of gaining time. Then he told
her that it was not until after he had caught and landed her husband
that he had discovered that Stone was in it.
"Who told you he was?" she asked.
"Never mind all that. I'm here to question, not to be questioned.
Now listen to me." And he went on to point out how she could not
possibly get away from him and the troops until they were across
the border, and that once there, it lay with him to turn her over to
the authorities or to set her free. "You can take your choice, of
course. I give you my word—and I think you are quite clever enough
to believe me—that if you do not tell me what I want to know about
Stone, I will land you where I've landed your husband; and that if
you do, you shall go free after I've done with you. Now I can wait
until you decide to answer," and he rolled over on his back, put his
arms under his head, and gazed up at the jewel-blue patch of sky.
There was a long pause. A hawk lighted on a point of rock and
twinkled its little eyes at them. Two or three squirrels whisked in and
out. Once a scout came by and stood looking at them, then went on,
noiselessly, up the mountain side.
"What do you want to know for?" asked the woman, at length.
He repeated that he was not there to be questioned, and showed
her that he meant it by silence.
Presently she began again, "Well, he wasn't in it at all. Stone
wasn't."
This was not what Cairness wanted either. He persisted in the
silence. A prolonged silence will sometimes have much the same
effect as solitary confinement. It will force speech against the
speaker's own will.
Mrs. Lawton gritted her teeth at him as though she would have
rejoiced greatly to have had his neck between them. By and by she
started once more. "Bill jest told him about it—like a goldarned fool."
"That," said Cairness, cheerfully, "is more like it. Go on."
"That's all."
"Begging your pardon, it's not all."
"What the devil do you want to know, then?"
He considered. "Let me see. For instance, when did Lawton tell him,
and why, and exactly what?"
"You don't say!" she mocked. "You want the earth and some sun and
moon and stars, don't you, though? Well, then, Bill told him about a
week afterward. And he told him because Stone had another hold on
him (it ain't any of your business what that was, I reckon), and
bullied it out of him (Bill ain't got any more backbone than a rattler),
and promised to lend him money to set up for hisself on the Circle K
Ranch. Want to know anything else?" she sneered.
"Several things, thanks. You haven't told me yet what version of it
your husband gave to Stone." Cairness was a little anxious. It was
succeed or fail right here.
"Told him the truth, more idjit he."
"I didn't ask you that," he reminded her calmly. "I asked what he
told."
"Say!" she apostrophized.
"Yes?"
"You're English, I reckon, ain't you?"
"Yes, and you don't like the English, I know that perfectly."
"You're right, I don't. You're as thick-headed as all the rest of them."
"Thanks. But you started out to tell me what Lawton told Stone."
"He told him the truth, I tell you: that when we heard the Apaches
were coming, we lit out and drove out the stock from the corrals. I
don't recollect his words."
So that was it! It took all the self-command that thirty-five varied
years had taught him not to rise up and knock her head against the
sharp rocks. But he lay quite still, and presently he said: "That is
near enough for my purposes, thank you. But I would be interested
to know, if you don't mind, what you had against a helpless woman
and those two poor little babies. I wouldn't have supposed that a
woman lived who could have been such a fiend as all that."
The woman launched off into a torrent of vituperation and vile
language that surprised even Cairness, whose ears were well
seasoned.
"Shut up!" he commanded, jumping to his feet. "You killed her and
you ought to be burned at the stake for it, but you shall not talk
about her like that, you devilish old crone."
She glared at him, but she stopped short nevertheless, and, flinging
down the stone she had been holding, stood up also. "All right, then.
You've done with me, I reckon. Now suppose you let me go back to
the camp."
He turned and walked beside her. "Don't you believe I know all that I
want to. I've only just begun. So that scoundrel knew the whole
murderous story, and went on writing lies in his papers and covering
you, when you ought to have been hung to the nearest tree, did he?
—and for the excellent reason that he wanted to make use of your
husband! I worked on the Circle K Ranch and on that other one over
in New Mexico, which is supposed to be Lawton's, and it didn't take
me long to find out that Stone was the real boss."
"He's got Bill right under his thumb," she sneered at her weak
spouse.
They clambered up the mountain side, back to the camp, and
Cairness escorted her to the tepee in silence. Then he left her. "Don't
try to run away again," he advised. "You can't get far." He started off
and turned back. "Speaking of running away, where's the Greaser
you lit out with?"
She replied, with still more violent relapse into foul-tongued abuse,
that he had gone off with a woman of his own people. "Got me
down into this hell of a country and took every quartillo I had and
then skedaddled."
Cairness smiled. There was, it appeared, a small supply of poetic
justice still left in the scheme of things to be meted out. "And then
the Apache came down and bore you off like a helpless lamb," he
said. "If I'd been the Apache I'd have made it several sorts of Hades
for you, but I'd have scalped you afterward. You'd corrupt even a
Chiricahua squaw. However, I'm glad you lived until I got you." And
he left her.
But he kept a close watch upon her then and during all the hard,
tedious march back to the States, when the troops and the scouts
had to drag their steps to meet the strength of the women and
children; when the rations gave out because there were some four
hundred Indians to be provided for, when the command ate mescal
root, digging it up from the ground and baking it; and when the
presence of a horde of filthy savages made the White-man suffer
many things not to be put in print.
But they were returning victorious. The Chiricahuas were subdued.
The hazard had turned well. There would be peace; the San Carlos
Agency, breeding-grounds of all ills, would be turned over to military
supervision. The general who had succeeded—if he had failed it
would have been such a very different story—would have power to
give his promise to the Apaches and to see that it was kept. The
experiment of honesty and of giving the devil his due would have a
fair trial. The voices that had cried loudest abuse after the quiet
soldier who, undisturbed, went so calmly on his way, doing the thing
which seemed to him right, were silenced; and the soldier himself
came back into his own land, crossing the border with his herds and
his tribes behind him. There was no flourish of trumpets; no couriers
were sent in advance to herald that the all but impossible had been
accomplished.
On a fine Sunday morning in June the triumphant general rode into
a supply camp twelve miles north of the line, and spoke to the
officer in command. "Nice morning, Colonel," he said. And then his
quick eyes spied the most desirable thing in all the camp. It was a
tin wash basin set on a potato box. The triumphant general
dismounted, and washed his face.
 XX
There was peace and harmony in the home of the Reverend Taylor.
An air of neatness and prosperity was about his four-room adobe
house. The mocking-bird that hung in a willow cage against the
white wall, by the door, whistled sweet mimicry of the cheep of the
little chickens in the back yard, and hopped to and fro and up and
down on his perches, pecking at the red chili between the bars.
From the corner of his eyes he could peek into the window, and it
was bright with potted geraniums, white as the wall, or red as the
chili, or pink as the little crumpled palm that patted against the glass
to him.
He whistled more cheerily yet when he saw that small hand. He was
a tame mocking-bird, and he had learned to eat dead flies from it.
That was one of the greatest treats of his highly satisfactory life. The
hand left the window and presently waved from the doorway.
The Reverend Taylor stood there with his son in his arms. The
mocking-bird trilled out a laugh to the evening air. It was irresistible,
so droll that even a bird must know it,—the likeness between the
little father and the little son. There was the same big head and the
big ears and the big eyes and the body that was too small for them
all, a little, thin body, active and quivering with energy. There were
the very same wrinkles about the baby's lids, crinkles of good humor
and kindly tolerance, and the very same tufts of hair running the
wrong way and sticking out at the temples.
The tufts were fuzzy yellow instead of gray, and the miniature face
had not yet grown tanned and hard with the wind and the sun, but
those were mere details. The general effect was perfect. There was
no mistaking that the lively fraction of humanity in the Reverend
Taylor's arms was the little Reverend. That was the only name he
went by, though he had been christened properly on the day he was
six months old, Joshua for his father and Randolph for his mother, in
memory of Virginia, and her own long maidenhood. She was herself
a Randolph, and she wanted the fact perpetuated. But in
Tombstone, Joshua Randolph Taylor was simply the little Reverend.
The little Reverend was the first thing on earth to his father. For the
wife had made that step in advance, which is yet a step in descent in
a woman's life, when she becomes to her husband less herself than
the mother of his child.
The Reverend Taylor grabbed at a fly and caught it in his palm. He
had become very expert at this, to his wife's admiration and his
son's keen delight. It was because the little Reverend liked to see
him do it, and derived so much elfish enjoyment from the trick, that
he had perfected himself in it. He gave the crushed fly to the baby,
and held him up to feed the bird. The bird put its head through the
bars and pecked with its whiskered bill, and the little Reverend
gurgled joyfully, his small face wrinkling up in a way which was really
not pretty, but which his father thought the most engaging
expression in the world.
The puppy which had been born the same day as the little Reverend,
a beast half coyote, half shepherd, and wholly hideous, came and
sat itself down beside them on the sill, looked up with its tongue
hanging out to one side, and smiled widely. The beaming good
nature of the two Reverends was infectious. The baby squealed
gleefully, and kicked until it was set down on the doorstep to pat the
dog.
Presently the nurse came, a big, fat Mexican woman, with all her
people's love of children showing on her moon face as she put out
her arms. She had been with the Taylors since before the baby's
birth, and she had more of its affection than the mother.
The little Reverend understood only Spanish, and his few words,
pronounced with a precision altogether in keeping with his
appearance, were Spanish ones. The old nurse murmured softly, as
she took him up, "Quieres leche hombrecito, quieres cenar? El
chuchu tiene hambre tambien. Vamos á ver mamá."
The little Reverend was not to be blandished. He was willing to go
because it was his supper time and he knew it, but the big-eyed look
of understanding he turned up to the gentle, fat face said plainly
enough that he was too wise a creature to be wheedled. He
submitted to be carried in, but he cast a regretful glance at the
"chuchu," which sat still in the doorway, and at his father, who was
watching the line of flying ants making their way, a stream of red
bodies and sizzing white wings, out of the window and across the
street.
They had been doing that for three days. They came down the
chimney, made across the floor in a line that never changed
direction, nor straggled, nor lessened, up the wall and out a crack in
the window. They did no harm, but followed blindly on in the path
the first one had taken. And the minister had said they should not be
smoked back or thwarted.
The little Reverend had been much interested in them also. He had
sat for several hours sucking an empty spool, and observing them
narrowly, in perfect silence. His father had great hopes of him as a
naturalist.
Finally the minister raised his eyes and looked down the street. It
was almost empty, save for two men in high-heeled top boots and
sombreros who sat in chairs tilted back against the post-office wall,
meditating in mutual silence. The only sounds were the rattling of
dishes over in his mother-in-law's restaurant across the street, and
the sleepy cheeping of the little chickens in his own back yard, as
they cuddled under their mother's wing.
The Reverend Taylor was about to go to the coops and close them
for the night, when he saw a man and a woman on horseback
coming up the street. The woman was bending forward and swaying
in her saddle. He stood still and watched. The red sunset blaze was
in his face so that he could not see plainly until they were quite near.
Then he knew that it was Cairness and—yes, beyond a doubt—Bill
Lawton's runaway wife.
They halted in front of him, and the woman swayed again, so much
that he ran to her side. But she righted herself fiercely. Cairness was
dismounted and was beside her, too, in an instant. He lifted her from
the horse, pulled her down, more or less; she was much too
ungainly to handle with any grace.
"May I take her in?" he said, nodding toward the open door.
"Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who
would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman,
even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own
wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But
he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate.
Cairness put his arm around the big angular shoulders and helped
her into the sitting room. She dropped down upon the sofa, and sat
there, her head hanging, but in sullenness, not humility.
Mrs. Taylor came to the dining-room door and looked in. "Can I do
anything?" she asked.
"Come in," said her husband. He was pouring out a drink of whiskey.
She came and stood watching, asking no questions, while the
woman on the sofa gulped down the raw whiskey and gave back the
glass.
Cairness had gone out to hitch the horses. When he came in he
spoke to Mrs. Lawton, as one possessed of authority. He told her to
lie down if she wanted to. "With your leave, Mrs. Taylor?" he added.
Mrs. Taylor was already beside her, fussing kindly and being met
with scant courtesy.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

testbankdeal.com