He was careful not to give his feelings away though-he never inquired about the herds, and if the subject of Call and McCrae came up he made it plain that he harbored a grudge against them and would not be sorry to see them come to grief.
When they got up into Kansas they began to see the occasional settler, sod-house nesters, mostly. Jake hardly thought any of them could have enough money to be worth the trouble of robbing, but the younger Suggs brothers were all for trying them.
'I thought we was gonna regulate the settlers,' Roy said one night. 'What are we waiting for?'
'A nester that's got something besides a milk cow and a pile of buffalo chips,' Dan Suggs said. 'I'm looking for a rich one.'
'If one was rich, he wouldn't be living in a hole dug out of a hill up here in Kansas,' Jake said. 'I slept in one of those soddies once-so much dirt leaked out of the roof during the night that I woke up dern near buried.'
'That don't mean some of them couldn't have some gold,' little Eddie said. 'I'd like to practice regulating a little so I'd have the hang of it when we do strike the rich ones.'
'All we aim to let you do is watch, anyway,' Dan said. 'It don't take no practice to watch.'
'I've shot a nester,' little Eddie reminded him. 'Shot two. If they don't pay up, I might make it three.'
'The object is to scare them out of their money, not shoot them,' Dan said. 'You shoot too many and pretty soon you've got the law after you. We want to get rich, not get hung.'
'He's too young to know what he's talking about,' Roy said.
'Well, I won't shoot them then, I'll just scare them,' little Eddie said.
'No, that's Frog Lip's job, scaring them punkin'-eaters,' Dan said. 'He'll scare them a sight worse than you will.'
The next day Frog Lip got his chance. They saw a man plowing beside a team of big horses. A woman and a small boy were carrying buffalo chips in a wheelbarrow and piling them beside a low sod house that was dug into a slope. Two milk cows grazed nearby.
'He can afford them big horses,' Roy pointed out. 'Maybe he's got money.'
Dan had been about to ride past, and Jake hoped he would. He still hoped they'd hit Dodge before the Suggs boys did any regulating. He might get free of them in Dodge. Two accidents wouldn't necessarily brand him for life, but if he traveled much farther with a gun outfit like the Suggses, he couldn't expect a peaceful old age-or any old age, probably.
But Dan decided, on a whim, to go rob the farmer, if he had anything worth being robbed of.
'They usually hide their money in the chimney,' he said. 'Either that or they bury it in the orchard, though I don't see no orchard.'
Frog Lip kept an extra pistol in his saddlebags. As they approached the farmer he got it out and stuck it in his belt.
The farmer was plowing a shallow furrow through the tough prairie grass. Seeing the riders approach, he stopped. He was a middle-aged man with a curly black beard, thoroughly sweated from his work. His wife and son watched the Suggses approach. Their wheelbarrow was nearly full of buffalo chips.
'Well, I guess you can expect a fine crop along about July, if the damn Texas cattle don't come along and eat it all up,' Dan said.
The man nodded in a friendly way, as if he agreed with the sentiment.
'We're here to see you reap what you sow,' Dan went on. 'It'll cost you forty dollars gold, but we'll deal with the herds when they show up and your crops won't be disturbed.'
'No speaken English,' the man said, still smiling and nodding in a friendly way.
'Oh, hell, a damn German,' Dan said. 'I figured this was a waste of time. Round up the woman and the sprout, Frog. Maybe this old Dutchman married an American gal.'
Frog Lip loped over and drove the woman and the boy near the farmer; he rode so close to them that if they had fallen his horse would have stepped on them. He had taken the pistol out of his belt, but he didn't need it. The woman and the boy were terrified, and the farmer too. He put his arms around his wife and child, and they all stood there, crying.
'Look at them blubber,' little Eddie said. 'I never seen such cowards.'
'Will you shut your damn mouth?' Dan said. 'Why wouldn't they be scared? I would be, in their place. But I'd like to get the woman hushed crying long enough to see if she can talk English.'
The woman either couldn't or wouldn't. She didn't utter a word in any language. She was tall and skinny, and she just stood there by her husband, crying. It was plain all three of them expected to be killed.
Dan repeated his request for money, and only the boy looked as if he understood it. He stopped crying for a minute.
'That's it, sonny, it's only cash we want,' Dan said. 'Tell your pa to pay us and we'll help him guard his crops.'
Jake hardly expected a scared boy to believe that, but the boy did stop crying. He spoke to his father in the old tongue, and the man, whose face ran with tears, composed himself a little and jabbered at the boy.
The boy turned and ran lickety-split for the sod house.
'Go with him and see what you can find, boys,' Dan said. 'Me and Jake can ride herd on the family, I guess. They don't look too violent.'
Ten minutes later the boy came racing back, crying again, and Frog Lip and the two younger Suggses followed. They had an old leather wallet with them, which Roy Suggs threw to Dan. It had two small gold pieces in it.
'Why, this ain't but four dollars,' Dan said. 'Did you look good?'
'Yeah, we tore up the chimney and opened all the trunks,' Roy said. 'That purse was under the pallet they sleep on. They don't have a dern thing worth taking besides that.'
'Four dollars to see 'em through,' Dan said. 'That won't help 'em much, we might as well take it.' He took the two gold pieces and tossed the worn leather purse back at the man's feet.
'Let's go,' he said.
Jake was glad to see it come to no worse than that, but as they were riding away Frog Lip turned and loped over to the milk cows.
'What's he aim to do, shoot the milk cows?' little Eddie asked; for Frog Lip had his pistol in his hand.
'I didn't ask him and he didn't say,' Dan replied.
Frog Lip rode up beside the cows and fired a couple of shots into the air. When the cows started a lumbering run, he skillfully turned them up the slope and chased them right onto the roof of the sod house. The sod on the roof had grass still on it and looked not unlike the prairie. The cows took a few steps onto the roof and then their forequarters disappeared, as if they had fallen into a hole. Then their hindquarters disappeared too. Frog Lip reined in his horse and watched as both cows fell through the roof of the sod house. A minute later one came squeezing out the small door, and the other followed. Both cows trotted back to where they had been grazing.
'That Frog,' Dan Suggs said. 'I guess he just wanted to ventilate the house a little.'
'All we got was four dollars,' little Eddie said.
'Well, it was your idea,' Dan said. 'You wanted the practice, and you got it.'
'He's mad because he didn't get to shoot nobody,' Roy said. 'He thinks he's a shooter.'
'Well, this is a gun outfit, ain't it?' little Eddie said. 'We ain't cowboys, so what are we then?'
'Travelers,' Dan said. 'Right now we're traveling to Kansas, looking for what we can find.'
Frog Lip rejoined them as silently as he had left. Despite himself Jake could not conquer his fear of the man. Frog Lip had never said anything hostile to him, or even looked his way on the whole trip, and yet Jake felt a sort of apprehension whenever he even rode close to the man. In all his travels in the west he had met few men who gave off such a sense of danger. Even Indians didn't-although of course there had been few occasions when he had ridden close to an Indian.
'I wonder if them soddies will get that roof fixed before the next rain?' Dan Suggs said. 'If they had had a little more cash, Frog might have left them alone.'
Frog Lip didn't comment.
69.
