by Zane Grey
“And suppose I won’t go,” muttered High-Lo.
“I’d have to fire you,” retorted John, feeling despite his words an overwhelming affection for the boy.
“Would you?”
“Yes,” replied John.
“Well, if you would, then you can!” At that High-Lo strode off. He ignored John’s shouted order to come back.
Dozens of times in the past High-Lo had threatened to quit. Each time he had succeeded in rousing in John the fear that he might carry out his threat. Usually High-Lo’s outbursts were followed by a two or three days’ disappearance, then a return to his job with no reference to his absence, and a zeal for work never equaled by any other man at Black Mesa.
Today’s bluster seemed less serious, though High-Lo did little save lounge around the post and avoid John every time he came into view. When he appeared for his meal at noon, he took Stuffy’s vacant place instead of his own opposite Curry. Nevertheless John felt relieved.
All went well until late in the afternoon when John saw High-Lo riding out again with the younger Blakely girl. That was a significant climax to High-Lo’s new mode of conduct. High-Lo knew he did not have to accompany Miss Blakely. There were half a dozen boys around who would have traded their horses to go in his place. It might be the girl or it might be the liquor, and one was as objectionable as the other from Curry’s point of view. If it was High-Lo’s way of punishing John, by giving him some anxious hours, he was certainly succeeding.
High-Lo was gone until sunset. John had ridden up to the ridge several times, unnecessarily, to scan the open country. His last trip had satisfied him that High-Lo would be in soon.
When Curry caught sight of the pair loping their horses down the ridge, he loitered behind the saddle shed to watch High-Lo unobserved. The boy appeared soon, a saddle on each arm and singing lustily:
The old sow woke up in the morning, And one of her pigs was dead.
His knowledge of the doggerel was limited to the two lines which he repeated over and over again. They, with the accompanying melody, were infallible signs of High-Lo’s happiest moods, and these moods generally followed upon or led to mischief. His present levity, however, might have had its origin in Miss Blakely’s canteen. John walked away. He did not want to encounter High-Lo right now.
In the hogan at the back of the post, a place used by John and several of the cowboys as a general dressing room, word was astir that an Indian had seen Hanley, who had left a few days before professedly on his way to Flaggerston, making camp twelve miles from Black Mesa in Cedar Pass. Hanley had lived a capricious existence ever since he had grown prosperous enough to hire someone to look after his sheep business; therefore a sudden change in his itinerary meant nothing. But the boys were wont to discuss Hanley on any provocation because they disliked him. John placed no credence in the suggestion that Hanley was laying for the couple of mules that had strayed from Mr. Weston’s last camp in the pass.
The boys were loud in their deprecation of Topsy, one of the missing mules that nobody wanted to see again, when High-Lo arrived, looming tall in the doorway. His body seemed bronzed to the color of his curly hair. His eyes, blue and fiery, showed a dangerous twinkle. He looked about the hogan with grand contempt.
“How are yo’-all this evenin’?” he drawled. “I’ve been asked to announce as how Mr. Wilbur Newton has come to favor us at table, and tonight borrow some of our beddin’ and our desert. I shore think yo’-all ought to be honored.”
A born imitator, he cleverly caricatured Newton’s voice and actions as he strode majestically into the hogan and seated himself, after haughty consideration, on a duffle bag that someone had flung in the center of the room.
“Now, yo’-all have been razzin’ me aboot my new boots and hat, and someone was intimatin’ around that they had a new pair of spurs for me. The time is come when I need them spurs, so take ’em right off, Beany, or I’ll lay you low. I’m competin’ for first prize as Arizona’s dandy, and I’ve been stockin’ up agin the day. Reckon I’m aboot to meet my sole competitor, and I’ve sure got to outshine him like the sun outshines the moon.”
High-Lo turned to tow-headed Stub, whose short body was doubled up in laughter. “Here yo’, Stub! Black my boots.” Then he turned to long, slim Waffles of the pock-marked face. “Here yo’, Waffles! Brush my hat.” He flung these articles of apparel airward.
Beany had paid no attention to the command issued to him, so High-Lo proceeded to fulfill his threat, and there would have been an even match in strength and brawn if John had not intercepted the onslaught, whereupon High-Lo drew himself up full height and said, “Reckon we’ve met before, stranger, so yo’ bettah pack yore gun.”
The boys howled.
“Quit your nonsense!” commanded John of High-Lo. “Has Newton really come?”
“Shore has. An’ in full fancy regalie. He’s buyin’ up stuff from the Indians for the Taho post, but Pop Weston treats him like he’s the best friend he ever had.”
“You needn’t worry that the Indians will sell their best things to Newton,” spoke up Stub. “Pop Weston ain’t worryin’ none either.”
At dinner High-Lo resumed his place opposite John, and Newton fell heir to Stuffy’s vacancy. Guests, host and hostess, and the cowboys, thirty-two people in all, ate at one long table, so it was simple for Mrs. Weston to separate Newton far from the boys, and thus maintain peace.
John gave himself over to speculation during the meal. He did not like it that Hanley was camped at the pass when Newton arrived at Black Mesa. If Newton came through this afternoon he could not have missed Hanley. Somehow it looked prearranged. Hanley purposely had left Black Mesa before Newton arrived. He met him at the pass where no one but a chance Indian might see them. And Hanley would linger there until his friend’s return. John felt sure of these conjectures. There was a reason why, at present, these men did not want to be seen in each other’s company. Hanley had more important interests in mind than rustling a couple of outlaw mules. He found it less dangerous and more honest to cheat Indians in buying and selling sheep. His crooked deals with Hopis in the Taho country were well known. Newton, to all appearances a friend to the Indians, could win for Hanley the Navahos’ confidence, and prepare the way for him to operate in new territory. That this was their game it was easy to believe. Let one Navaho complain of being cheated, then see what would happen to Hanley! The boys at Black Mesa loved the Navahos and meant to protect them.
Under John’s distaste for Newton in his relations to men, boiled the resentment he bore him for his unworthiness of Mary. John had come to think of Newton’s wife as Mary. That was his mother’s name. He associated the mutual goodness of the two women with the simplicity and beauty and holiness of the name. He figured to himself how Newton would react were he aware of this, and pitied the man because he was incompetent to grasp the purity of such a regard. For Newton to force Mary to associate with a man like Hanley was a sacrilege; for him to become involved with the man in any deal that might illegitimately repair his fortunes was the rankest infidelity.
After dinner John took care to avoid Newton. He knew that Mr. Weston would not stand for any violence at the trading post, and that the only way to insure peace was to disappear. He went at once to the hogan in the hope that High-Lo might be there. But High-Lo was nowhere around. Nor had he shown up when John’s watch registered ten o’clock. All the boys were hogan-shy tonight.
Long after ten Beany came in. “Oh, Lordy! You missed it!” he said. “That kid of yours is runnin’ wild out there. He insulted Newton to his face and I was scared to death there would be nothin’ short of gunplay, but that Texan’s hide is so thick it didn’t penetrate.”
“What happened?” John’s voice betrayed anxiety.
“We were all hanging around outside the post swappin’ yarns, the Blakely girls and Mrs. Weston listenin’ in, when High-Lo, casual-like, says, ‘By the way, Newton, I got a story you’ll appreciate. It’s about a feller who was tryin’ for t
he governorship of one of the Western states. He come by train to a town where he expected to tell the folks how good an’ grand he was, an’ he got a jar when he found there wasn’t no delegation there to meet him. He went paradin’ up an’ down the platform, his cutaway coattails swingin’ madlike and his stovepipe hat jest set up straight like his hair was standin’ up straight under it, when along comes a cowboy who’d been drinkin’ more’n his ma said he could. He got kind of taken with the feller who was measurin’ the platform and starts follerin’ him up an’ down, and sayin’, “It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” He kept sayin’ it so much that he got on the nerves of the high-an’-mighty can’idate, an’ he swings around an’ says, “What’s a lie?” The cowboy hiccups a minute an’ then says, “Mister, it’s a lie! There ain’t no one on God’s earth as important as you look!”’ Would you believe it, Newton laughs first, everybody else holdin’ back, and then lettin’ loose like mad when they see it didn’t hit him the way High-Lo intended!”
“High-Lo shouldn’t have done that. He deserves a call!” It was not sympathy for Newton that brought the angry words from John. He was thinking of Mary, of how crushed she would be to know that everyone at Black Mesa was ready to ridicule the man she once loved enough to marry. He wanted to protect her from the people out there who had laughed. There was no question of the justice of their ridicule, it was a matter of injustice to her. He was furious with High-Lo.
“Hold on now, John, you know it was comin’ to Newton,” Beany expostulated. “Maybe he’s jest slow to ketch on. Maybe he’ll wake up to what High-Lo meant when he gets out on the trail, and take to shootin’ rabbits for spite.”
“Where’s High-Lo now?” asked John.
“Sparkin’ maybe.”
“Sparkin’!” exclaimed John, falling into the vernacular.
“With that youngest Blakely girl he’s so sweet on. She fell for his baby-blue eyes. I never had any real chance, but even if I did I’m sure a gone goose now.” Beany sounded disconsolate. His round shoulders stooped beneath the burden of his despair and he bowed his black head in his hands.
John swore.
“You, too, heh?” commiserated the first sufferer. “No one would of thought it. You ain’t much on the women. Still I was figurin’ on what she’d do to you on that Snake Dance trip.”
Beany’s commiseration was too much for John. He went outdoors to walk and think; and he climbed the hill away from the corral. The night was dark. Few stars shone in the remote dome of the heavens. Clouds, blacker than the night, were massing over Black Mesa. A storm had slipped by them. A silence, cool and heavy like that of a sepulcher, hung over the valley. John was conscious of a deep pity working in his heart for boys like High-Lo and Beany whose values were so warped because of lack of education and experience. They could not recognize subtlety, they could not discriminate readily between girls like the Blakelys and a girl like Mary. They could classify the Blakely sisters with Mary because beauty of clothes and a polish greater than they knew baffled them. An experience like High-Lo’s should serve as an awakening. High-Lo admitted that it did, but among desert men women were not so plentiful that their actions were judged too critically. These boys were bound by their simplicity and the ways of the desert.
The next day John’s concern about High-Lo became a thing of the past. Before breakfast the boy begged a conference with his boss and apologized for yesterday’s outbreak.
“I’ll take Stuffy’s place on the trail,” he agreed. “I ain’t got the right to tell you I won’t. And you needn’t to worry about the Blakely girls. They’re drivin’ their car to Taho today, an’ Mrs. Weston says they’re leavin’ the reservation for good. And I’m shootin’ straight, John, when I tell you that if they’d stayed a year, I’d never be seen with them again.”
John felt a rush of pride in his cowboy. “Well, I’m glad to hear that, son,” he said. “You won’t have to take Stuffy’s place. He’s able to go himself. He’s putting through a little bluff right now. If I got you to take his place, by Thursday Stuffy would be as lively as a frisky mule.”
“But you’re wrong,” protested High-Lo. “Stuffy’s awful sick. He had to take his bed inside last night. Said he had the chills. You better send me. Go ask Mrs. Weston, if you think I’m kiddin’!”
John smiled. “Mrs. Weston is overindulgent about you fellows. The fact is I know Stuffy. Stub found a plate in his tent last night from which a hearty meal had been polished — and he’s supposed to be giving his stomach a rest! He hasn’t a tenth of a degree of temperature. His chills come from the prospect of work. I ordered him up this morning.”
“Send me out with him,” ventured High-Lo. “He’d be no good if he took sick again. The boys would be short of help and things would move slow and this new party strikes me like a bunch of cranks.”
“No need of that,” John returned emphatically.
“Well, all I know is that you better think it over about sendin’ me out,” High-Lo persisted. “Let me know later.”
For a moment John had misgivings about High-Lo. The boy’s intimation of yesterday that he was supplied with liquor which he could consume on the trail flashed to mind. But the idea passed in John’s shame for his doubting the young cowboy. High-Lo was just overzealous in his desire to make amends, an impulse that was typical of him.
Newton made ready to leave the post immediately after breakfast. High-Lo, observing his preparations from the toolshed, vouchsafed to John that Newton’s departure would be good riddance. “Magdaline will be lonesome now,” said the cowboy with a wink.
“Magdaline!” repeated John above the clink of the horseshoes he was tossing from a box.
“Yep, our little Indian friend, Magdaline, the pepper pot of the Navaho Reservation. Newton was walkin’ an’ talkin’ with her last night. Can’t testify to nothin’ else.”
John accepted High-Lo’s news angrily. “I thought Magdaline was visiting her relatives at Sage Brush Springs.”
“She was, but she come in last night. Where were you that you didn’t see her?”
“How could Newton have ever met her?” asked John, ignoring High-Lo’s question. “She was at school in California for three years, and she’s only been home since June, and it was Mrs. Weston who brought her. This is Newton’s first appearance at Black Mesa this summer.”
“Newton didn’t get quite that confidential with me,” High-Lo replied sarcastically. “But I’ve got a hunch he ain’t never seen her before. The oldest Blakely girl gave him the go-by for Beany, and he took what was left. Guess Magdaline was pretty willin’. An’ you know, John, she does kind of get a feller somehow — for an Indian.”
John was thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. “I’m afraid for her. She’s too pretty for an Indian and too well versed in the ways of a white girl, and to add to the pathos of her situation, she has a mighty keen intellect. Her education is bound to make her suffer.”
“What you’re sayin’ don’t mean much to me,” concluded High-Lo, obviously perplexed. “An Indian’s an Indian. They’re square shooters, an’ I like ’em.”
Boss and cowboy repaired to the corral, collecting other hands on the way to join them. There was always much to do on the eve of a party’s leave-taking. John’s attention was divided all through the day. He lost track of High-Lo. Indeed, he was grateful for his absence when it came time for the Blakely sisters to leave. They dallied at departure till John feared at the last moment that they might decide to stay. But at about three o’clock, much too late for them to make the rough road through to Taho by night, they called their good-bys and drove off.
“I’m not worried about them,” said Mrs. Weston. “Let them camp alone if they must. I’m sure the devil takes care of his own.”
John laughed to hear prudent Mrs. Weston talk that way. High-Lo was not on time for supper, a fact John accounted for as the boy’s wish to make amends through work. “Still,” he argued to himself, as the meal progressed, “High-Lo owes it to Mrs. Weston to
appear on time.”
“Anybody here seen High-Lo?” he asked of no one in particular.
Stub spoke up at once. “Last I saw of him was about mid-afternoon when he jumped the corral fence and went racin’ down the hill yellin’ that damn song about the sow whose pig was dead.” A red flush covered Stub’s face and mounted to the crown of his shaven head. “Excuse me,” he added, glancing furtively at the nearest guests, “I mean darn song.”
“He must be cleaning up,” said John. “Run up to the hogan, Stub, and tell him to shake a leg.”
Stub was quick to comply and reappeared shortly. “He ain’t there,” he announced.
John tried to hide his annoyance. “Beany, you’re through with your dessert,” he said to the lanky youth next to him. “See if High-Lo is up at the corral.”
To John’s consternation, Beany’s mission was as unfruitful as Stub’s. He tried to assure himself that everything was well, but he had an uncomfortable feeling of alarm. He instituted a search for High-Lo in which the boys resentfully joined. Hicks, the oldest and most reliable cowboy, ended the quest in short order by offering certain deductions he had made.
“High-Lo’s horse is missin’,” he reported to John, “an’ his saddle is nowhere around. Guess he’s rarin’ off somewheres.”
“Thank you, Hicks,” said John.
He strode off, prey to conflicting sensations. There was deviltry astir. High-Lo had left. What bothered him most was that the young cowboy had bluffed him to cover his intentions.
CHAPTER VI
NEXT MORNING THE cowboys rose early to round up the horses and mules that were going on the trail. No one mentioned High-Lo, at least not to John nor in his hearing; whereas John, with High-Lo filling his thoughts, was conscious of everyone’s consideration.
As soon as the stock was brought down from the ridge, John assigned the boys tasks according to their efficiency. Unfortunately the best packer had left. Striving to forget this, John threw himself heartily into the work on hand.