In one brief destroying instant he knew he was looking down at his own lifeless body. And with the knowledge came true oblivion.
Old Garfield-- Heart
I was sitting on the porch when my grandfather hobbled out and sank down on his favorite chair with the cushioned seat, and began to stuff tobacco in his old corncob-pipe.
-- thought you-- be goin'tto the dance,--he said.
---- waiting for Doc Blaine,--I answered.---- going over to old man Garfield-- with him.-- My grandfather sucked at his pipe awhile before he spoke again.
--ld Jim purty bad off?----oc says he hasn't a chance.----ho-- takin'tcare of him?----oe Braxton--against Garfield-- wishes. But somebody had to stay with him.-- My grandfather sucked his pipe noisily, and watched the heat lightning playing away off up in the hills; then he said:--ou think old Jim-- the biggest liar in this county, don't you?----e tells some pretty tall tales,--I admitted.--ome of the things he claimed he took part in, must have happened before he was born.----came from Tennesee to Texas in 1870,--my grandfather said abruptly.--saw this town of Lost Knob grow up from nothin't There wasn't even a log-hut store here when I came. But old Jim Garfield was here, livin'tin the same place he lives now, only then it was a log cabin. He don't look a day older now than he did the first time I saw him.----ou never mentioned that before,--I said in some surprize.
-- knew you-- put it down to an old man't maunderin't,--he answered.--ld Jim was the first white man to settle in this country. He built his cabin a good fifty miles west of the frontier. God knows how he done it, for these hills swarmed with Comanches then.
-- remember the first time I ever saw him. Even then everybody called him--ld Jim.----remember him tellin'tme the same tales he's told you--how he was at the battle of San Jacinto when he was a youngster, and how he's rode with Ewen Cameron and Jack Hayes. Only I believe him, and you don't.----hat was so long ago--I protested.
--he last Indian raid through this country was in 1874,--said my grandfather, engrossed in his own reminiscences.--was in on that fight, and so was old Jim. I saw him knock old Yellow Tail off his mustang at seven hundred yards with a buffalo rifle.
--ut before that I was with him in a fight up near the head of Locust Creek. A band of Comanches came down Mesquital, lootin'tand burnin't rode through the hills and started back up Locust Creek, and a scout of us were hot on their heels. We ran on to them just at sundown in a mesquite flat. We killed seven of them, and the rest skinned out through the brush on foot. But three of our boys were killed, and Jim Garfield got a thrust in the breast with a lance.
--t was an awful wound. He lay like a dead man, and it seemed sure nobody could live after a wound like that. But an old Indian came out of the brush, and when we aimed our guns at him, he made the peace sign and spoke to us in Spanish. I don't know why the boys didn't shoot him in his tracks, because our blood was heated with the fightin'tand killin't but somethin'tabout him made us hold our fire. He said he wasn't a Comanche, but was an old friend of Garfield--, and wanted to help him. He asked us to carry Jim into a clump of mesquite, and leave him alone with him, and to this day I don't know why we did, but we did. It was an awful time--the wounded moanin'tand callin'tfor water, the starin'tcorpses strewn about the camp, night comin'ton, and no way of knowin'tthat the Indians wouldn't return when dark fell.
--e made camp right there, because the horses were fagged out, and we watched all night, but the Comanches didn't come back. I don't know what went on out in the mesquite where Jim Garfield-- body lay, because I never saw that strange Indian again; but durin'tthe night I kept hearin'ta weird moanin'tthat wasn't made by the dyin'tmen, and an owl hooted from midnight till dawn.
--nd at sunrise Jim Garfield came walkin'tout of the mesquite, pale and haggard, but alive, and already the wound in his breast had closed and begun to heal. And since then he's never mentioned that wound, nor that fight, nor the strange Indian who came and went so mysteriously. And he hasn't aged a bit; he looks now just like he did then--a man of about fifty.-- In the silence that followed, a car began to purr down the road, and twin shafts of light cut through the dusk.
--hat-- Doc Blaine,--I said.--hen I come back I--l tell you how Garfield is.-- Doc Blaine was prompt with his predictions as we drove the three miles of post-oak covered hills that lay between Lost Knob and the Garfield farm.
----l be surprized to find him alive,--he said,--mashed up like he is. A man his age ought to have more sense than to try to break a young horse.----e doesn't look so old,--I remarked.
----l be fifty, my next birthday,--answered Doc Blaine.----e known him all my life, and he must have been at least fifty the first time I ever saw him. His looks are deceiving.--
Old Garfield-- dwelling-place was reminiscent of the past. The boards of the low squat house had never known paint. Orchard fence and corrals were built of rails.
Old Jim lay on his rude bed, tended crudely but efficiently by the man Doc Blaine had hired over the old man't protests. As I looked at him, I was impressed anew by his evident vitality. His frame was stooped but unwithered, his limbs rounded out with springy muscles. In his corded neck and in his face, drawn though it was with suffering, was apparent an innate virility. His eyes, though partly glazed with pain, burned with the same unquenchable element.
--e-- been ravin't--said Joe Braxton stolidly.
--irst white man in this country,--muttered old Jim, becoming intelligible.--ills no white man ever set foot in before. Gettin'ttoo old. Have to settle down. Can't move on like I used to. Settle down here. Good country before it filled up with cow-men and squatters. Wish Ewen Cameron could see this country. The Mexicans shot him. Damn--m!-- Doc Blaine shook his head.--e-- all smashed up inside. He won't live till daylight.-- Garfield unexpectedly lifted his head and looked at us with clear eyes.
--rong, Doc,--he wheezed, his breath whistling with pain.----l live. What-- broken bones and twisted guts? Nothin't It-- the heart that counts. Long as the heart keeps pumpin't a man can't die. My heart-- sound. Listen to it! Feel of it!-- He groped painfully for Doc Blaine-- wrist, dragged his hand to his bosom and held it there, staring up into the doctor-- face with avid intensity.
--egular dynamo, ain't it?--he gasped.--tronger-- a gasoline engine!-- Blaine beckoned me.--ay your hand here,--he said, placing my hand on the old man't bare breast.--e does have a remarkable heart action.-- I noted, in the light of the coal-oil lamp, a great livid scar in the gaunt arching breast--such a scar as might be made by a flint-headed spear. I laid my hand directly on this scar, and an exclamation escaped my lips.
Under my hand old Jim Garfield-- heart pulsed, but its throb was like no other heart action I have ever observed. Its power was astounding; his ribs vibrated to its steady throb. It felt more like the vibrating of a dynamo than the action of a human organ. I could feel its amazing vitality radiating from his breast, stealing up into my hand and up my arm, until my own heart seemed to speed up in response.
-- can't die,--old Jim gasped.--ot so long as my heart-- in my breast. Only a bullet through the brain can kill me. And even then I wouldn't be rightly dead, as long as my heart beats in my breast. Yet it ain't rightly mine, either. It belongs to Ghost Man, the Lipan chief. It was the heart of a god the Lipans worshipped before the Comanches drove--m out of their native hills.
-- knew Ghost Man down on the Rio Grande, when I was with Ewen Cameron. I saved his life from the Mexicans once. He tied the string of ghost wampum between him and me--the wampum no man but me and him can see or feel. He came when he knowed I needed him, in that fight up on the headwaters of Locust Creek, when I got this scar.
-- was dead as a man can be. My heart was sliced in two, like the heart of a butchered beef steer.