CHAPTER XXIV
USE FOR AN OLD PAPER
Lambert was a busy man for several weeks after his last race with thewill-o'-the-wisp, traveling between Glendora and Chicago, disposing ofthe Philbrook herd. On this day he was jolting along with the last ofthe cattle that were of marketable condition and age, twenty cars ofthem, glad that the wind-up of it was in sight.
Taterleg had not come this time on account of the Iowa boy having quithis job. There remained several hundred calves and thin cows in thePhilbrook pasture, too much of a temptation to old Nick Hargus and hisprecious brother Sim to be left unguarded.
Sitting there on top of a car, his prod-pole between his knees, in hishigh-heeled boots and old dusty hat, the Duke was a typical figure ofthe old-time cow-puncher such as one never meets in these times aroundthe stockyards of the Middle West. There are still cow-punchers, butthey are mainly mail-order ones who would shy from a gun such as pulleddown on Lambert's belt that day.
He sat there with the wind slamming the brim of his old hat up againstthe side of his head, a sober, serious man, such as one would choose fora business like this intrusted to him by Vesta Philbrook and never makea mistake. Already he had sold more than eighty thousand dollars' worthof cattle for her, and carried home to her the drafts. This time he wasto take back the money, so they would have the cash to buy out Walleye,the sheepman, who was making a failure of the business and was anxiousto quit.
The Duke wondered, with a lonesome sort of pleasure, how things weregoing on the ranch that afternoon, and whether Taterleg was riding thesouth fence now and then, as he had suggested, or sticking with thecattle. That was a pleasant country which he was traveling through,green fields and rich pastures as far as the eye could reach, a landsuch as he had spent the greater part of his life in, such as somepeople who are provincial and untraveled call "God's country," and arefully satisfied with in their way.
But there seemed something lacking out of it to Lambert as he lookedacross the verdant flatness with pensive eyes, that great, graysomething that took hold of a man and drew him into its larger life,smoothed the wrinkles out of him, and stood him upright on his feet withthe breath deeper in him than it ever had gone before. He felt that henever would be content to remain amongst the visible plentitude of thatfat, complacent, finished land again.
Give him some place that called for a fight, a place where the wind blewwith a different flavor than these domestic scents of hay andfresh-turned furrows in the wheatlands by the road. In his vision hepictured the place that he liked best--a rough, untrammeled countryleading back to the purple hills, a long line of fence diminishing inits distance to a thread. He sighed, thinking of it. Dog-gone his melts,he was lonesome--lonesome for a fence!
He rolled a cigarette and felt about himself abstractedly for a match,in this pocket, where Grace Kerr's little handkerchief still lay, withno explanation or defense for its presence contrived or attempted; inthat pocket, where his thumb encountered a folded paper.
Still abstracted, his head turned to save his cigarette from the wind,he drew out this paper, wondering curiously when he had put it there andforgotten it. It was the warrant for the arrest of Berry Kerr. Heremembered now having folded the paper and put it there the day thesheriff gave it to him, never having read a word of it from that day tothis. Now he repaired that omission. It gave him quite a feeling ofimportance to have a paper about him with that severe legal phraseologyin it. He folded it and put it back in his pocket, wondering what hadbecome of Berry Kerr, and from him transferring his thoughts to Grace.
She was still there on the ranch, he knew, although Kerr's creditors hadcleaned out the cattle, and doubtless were at law among themselves overthe proceeds by now. How she would live, what she would do, he wondered.Perhaps Kerr had left some of the money he had made out of hismultimortgage transactions, or perhaps he would send for Grace and hiswife when he had struck a gait in some other place.
It didn't matter one way or another. His interest in her was finished,his last gentle thought of her was dead. Only he hoped that she mightlive to be as hungry for a friendly word as his heart had been hungry oflonging after her in its day; that she might moan in contrition and burnin shame for the cruelty in which she broke the vessel of his friendshipand threw the fragments in his face. Poor old Whetstone! his bones allscattered by the wolves by now over in that lonely gorge.
Vesta Philbrook would not have been capable of a vengeance so mean.Strange how she had grown so gentle and so good under the constantpersecution of this thieving gang! Her conscience was as clear as awindowpane; a man could look through her soul and see the worldundisturbed by a flaw beyond it. A good girl; she sure was a good girl.And as pretty a figure on a horse as man's eye ever followed.
She had said once that she felt it lonesome out there by the fence. Nothalf as lonesome, he'd gamble, as he was that minute to be back thereriding her miles and miles of wire. Not lonesome on account of Vesta;sure not. Just lonesome for that dang old fence.
Simple he was, sitting there on top of that hammering old cattle carthat sunny afternoon, the dust of the road in his three-day-old beard,his barked willow prod-pole between his knees; simple as a ballad thatchildren sing, simple as a homely tune.
Well, of course he had kept Grace Kerr's little handkerchief, forreasons that he could not quite define. Maybe because it seemed torepresent her as he would have had her; maybe because it was the poorlittle trophy of his first tenderness, his first yearning for a woman'slove. But he had kept it with the dim intention of giving it back toher, opportunity presenting.
"Yes, I'll give it back to her," he nodded; "when the time comes I'llhand it to her. She can wipe her eyes on it when she opens them andrepents."
Then he fell to thinking of business, and what was best for Vesta'sinterests, and of how he probably would take up Pat Sullivan's offer forthe calves, thus cleaning up her troubles and making an end of herexpenses. Pat Sullivan, the rancher for whom Ben Jedlick was cook; hewas the man. The Duke smiled through his grime and dust when heremembered Jedlick lying back in the barber's chair.
And old Taterleg, as good as gold and honest as a horse, was itching tobe hitting the breeze for Wyoming. Selling the calves would give him theexcuse that he had been casting about after for a month. He was writingletters to Nettie; she had sent her picture. A large-breasted,calf-faced girl with a crooked mouth. Taterleg might wait a year, oreven four years more, with perfect safety. Nettie would not move veryfast on the market, even in Wyoming, where ladies were said to bescarce.
And so, pounding along, mile after mile through the vast green landwhere the bread of a nation grew, arriving at midnight among squeals andmoans, trembling bleat of sheep, pitiful, hungry crying of calves, high,lonesome tenor notes of bewildered steers. That was the end of thejourney for him, the beginning of the great adventure for the creaturesunder his care.
By eleven o'clock next morning, Lambert had a check for the cattle inhis pocket, and bay rum on his face where the dust, the cinders and thebeard had been but a little while before. He bought a little handsatchel in a second-hand store to carry the money home in, cashed hischeck and took a turn looking around, his big gun on his leg, hishigh-heeled boots making him toddle along in a rather ridiculous gaitfor an able-bodied cow-puncher from the Bad Lands.
There was a train for home at six, that same flier he once had raced.There would be time enough for a man to look into the progress of thefine arts as represented in the pawn-shop windows of the stockyardsneighborhood, before striking a line for the Union Station to nail downa seat in the flier. It was while engaged in this elevating pursuit thatLambert glimpsed for an instant in the passing stream of people a figurethat made him start with the prickling alertness of recognition.
He had caught but a flash of the hurrying figure but, with that eye forsingling a certain object from a moving mass that experience with cattlesharpens, he recognized the carriage of the head, the set of theshoulders. He hurried after, overtaking the man as he was ente
ring ahotel.
"Mr. Kerr, I've got a warrant for you," he said, detaining the fugitivewith a hand laid on his shoulder.
Kerr was taken so unexpectedly that he had no chance to sling a gun,even if he carried one. He was completely changed in appearance, even tothe sacrifice of his prized beard, so long his aristocratic distinctionin the Bad Lands. He was dressed in the city fashion, with a littlestraw hat in place of the eighteen-inch sombrero that he had worn foryears. Confident of this disguise, he affected astonished indignation.
"I guess you've made a mistake in your man," said he.
Lambert told him with polite firmness that there was no mistake.
"I'd know your voice in the dark--I've got reason to remember it," hesaid.
He got the warrant out with one hand, keeping the other comfortably nearhis gun, the little hand bag with its riches between his feet. Kerr wasso vehemently indignant that attention was drawn to them, whichprobably was the fugitive cattleman's design, seeing in numbers a chanceto make a dash.
Lambert had not forgotten the experience of his years at the Kansas CityStockyards, where he had seen confidence men and card sharpers play thesame scheme on policemen, clamoring their innocence until a crowd hadbeen attracted in which the officer would not dare risk a shot. He keptKerr within reaching distance, flashed the warrant before his eyes,passed it up and down in front of his nose, and put it away again.
"There's no mistake, not by a thousand miles. You'll come along back toGlendora with me."
A policeman appeared by this time, and Kerr appealed to him, protestingmistaken identity. The officer was a heavy-headed man of theslaughter-house school, and Lambert thought for a while that Kerr'sargument was going to prevail with him. To forestall the policeman'sdecision, which he could see forming behind his clouded countenance,Lambert said:
"There's a reward of nine hundred dollars standing for this man. Ifyou've got any doubt of who he is, or my right to arrest him, take usboth to headquarters."
That seemed to be a worthy suggestion to the officer. He acted on itwithout more drain on his intellectual reserve. There, after a littlecourse of sprouts by the chief of detectives, Kerr admitted hisidentity, but refused to leave the state without requisition. Theylocked him up, and Lambert telegraphed the sheriff for the necessarypapers.
Going home was off for perhaps several days. Lambert gave his littlesatchel to the police to lock in the safe. The sheriff's reply came backlike a pitched ball. Hold Kerr, he requested the police; requisitionwould be made for him. He instructed Lambert to wait till the paperscame, and bring the fugitive home.
Kerr got in telegraphic touch with a lawyer in the home county. Morningshowed a considerable change of temperature in the frontier financier.He announced that, acting on legal advice, he would waive extradition.Lambert telegraphed the sheriff the news, requesting that he meet him atGlendora and relieve him of his charge.
Lambert prepared for the home-going by buying another revolver, and apair of handcuffs for attaching his prisoner comfortably and securely tothe arm of the seat. The little black bag gave him no worry. It wasn'thalf the trouble to watch money, when you didn't look as if you had any,as a man who had swindled people out of it and wanted to hide his face.
The police joked Lambert about the size of his bag when they gave itback to him as he was starting with his prisoner for the train.
"What have you got in that alligator, Sheriff, that you're so carefulnot to set it down and forget it?" the chief asked him.
"Sixteen thousand dollars," said Lambert, modestly, opening it andflashing its contents before their eyes.
The Duke Of Chimney Butte Page 24