Going Some

Going Some

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Title: Going Some
Author: Rex Beach
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6488] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 22,
2002]
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Language: English
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GOING SOME
A ROMANCE OF STRENUOUS AFFECTION
BY
REX BEACH
SUGGESTED BY THE PLAY BY REX BEACH AND PAUL
ARMSTRONG
ILLUSTRATED BY MARK FENDERSON

CHAPTER I
Four cowboys inclined their bodies over the barbed-wire fence which
marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch and their own,
staring mournfully into a summer night such as only the far
southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thick and low-so
low that it seemed they might almost be plucked by an upstretched
hand-and a silent air blew across thousands of open miles of land lying
crisp and fragrant under the velvet dark.
And as the four inclined their bodies, they inclined also their ears, after
the strained manner of listeners who feel anguish at what they hear. A
voice, shrill and human, pierced the night like a needle, then, with a
wail of a tortured soul, died away amid discordant raspings: the voice
of a phonograph. It was their own, or had been until one overconfident
day, when the Flying Heart Ranch had risked it as a wager in a
foot-race with the neighboring Centipede, and their own man had been
too slow. As it had been their pride, it remained their disgrace. Dearly

had they loved, and dearly lost it. It meant something that looked like
honor, and though there were ten thousand thousand phonographs, in
all the world there was not one that could take its place.
The sound ceased, there was an approving distant murmur of men's
voices, and then the song began:
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Lift up your voice and sing--"
Higher and higher the voice mounted until it reached again its first thin,
ear-splitting pitch.
"Still Bill" Stover stirred uneasily in the darkness. "Why 'n 'ell don't
they keep her wound up?" he complained. "Gallagher's got the soul of a
wart-hog. It's criminal the way he massacres that hymn."
From a rod farther down the wire fence Willie answered him, in a boy's
falsetto:
"I wonder if he does it to spite me?"
"He don't know you're here," said Stover.
The other came out of the gloom, a little stoop-shouldered man with
spectacles.
"I ain't noways sure," he piped, peering up at his lanky foreman. "Why
do you reckon he allus lets Mrs. Melby peter out on my favorite record?
He done the same thing last night. It looks like an insult."
"It's nothing but ignorance," Stover replied. "He don't want no trouble
with you. None of 'em do."
"I'd like to know for certain." The small man seemed torn by doubt. "If
I only knew he done it a-purpose, I'd git him. I bet I could do it from
here."
Stover's voice was gruff as he commanded: "Forget it! Ain't it bad
enough for us fellers to hang around like this every night without

advertising our idiocy by a gun-play?"
"They ain't got no right to that phonograph," Willie averred, darkly.
"Oh yes, they have; they won it fair and square."
"Fair and square! Do you mean to say Humpy Joe run that foot-race on
the square?"
"I never said nothin' like that whatever. I mean we bet it, and we lost it.
Listen! There goes Carara's piece!"
Out past the corral floated the announcement in a man's metallic
syllables:
"_The Baggage Coach Ahead,_ as sung by Helena Mora for the Echo
Phonograph, of New York and Pa-a-aris!"
From the dusk to the right of the two listeners now issued soft Spanish
phrases.
"_Madre