The Dude Ranger

by Zane Grey

  “I could have laughed in his face when he gave me thet old stall about rustlin’,” Anderson was saying.

  “Nothin’ to laugh at,” came a gruff reply. “Plenty of rustlers heahaboots.”

  “Shore. But you know what I mean,” went on Anderson, “Hepford was try in’ to plant in my mind a loss thet really doesn’t exist, thet is, from rustlin’ causes.”

  “How about this man Siebert?” This query came from a third person, one with deep chest and hoarse voice. That would be from the Mariposa buyer.

  “Lay off him,” retorted Anderson sharply. “I didn’t like the way he looked at me. An’ he shore wasn’t half civil, even before Hepford.”

  “Sharp cattleman, Siebert. I’ve heard of him.”

  “Anderson, you’ve nothin’ to worry about,” said Wilkins. “If there is any crooked work goin’ on we shore ain’t implicated. Our deals are above board. We buy cattle from Hepford. Yes. What if we do get them for less than he could sell in Mariposa, or in Holbrook?”

  “I don’t know aboot thet, John,” returned Anderson. “We might get into court. I never was satisfied aboot Hepford till this last talk with him. He’s shore a slick one. An’ he proposed to make another an’ last drive, in October.”

  “The devil he did!”

  “I shouldn’t have been surprised,” went on the foreman. “When I was in Springer I heard rumors about Red Rock. Hepford has let the ranch run down. He never owned it. An’ I’m of the opinion he shore doesn’t own the stock. He’d been there years before I came to Arizona. Now I reckon there has been, or will be soon, a change of ownership. You can gamble Hepford is goin’ to clear out.”

  “Aha. That sort of deal has been worked before in Arizona. Well, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. My conscience is clear about buyin’ in this stock. I reckon, though, I’ll turn down the October deal.”

  “Why, man? What do you care? Some other cattle dealer will profit by it, if you don’t.”

  “It seems different, now we’re on to Hepford.”

  “I may be entirely wrong. Hepford makes enemies instead of friends. Maybe he has reasons for not sellin’ in Holbrook or shippin’ east. . . . Hello–what the hell?”

  A harsh voice had startled Anderson, as it had paralyzed Ernest where he lay so absorbed in this colloquy that he had not heard the approach of a man.

  “You sneakin’ coyote!” rang out a harsh voice. A powerful hand dragged Ernest to his feet. Then something hard was shoved into the middle of his back. “Put up your paws, cowboy. . . . Now march in there!”

  With that peremptory order the eavesdropper was jerked out of his trance and he lost no time in putting up his hands. He had been caught in the act. And he was passing from astonishment to fear when he was shoved across the threshold into the presence of three men as much astounded as he. Being forced to confront them, however, had the effect of restoring his presence of mind.

  “What’s this mean, Baldy?” bellowed his foreman.

  “Damned if I know, boss,” replied the burly individual behind Ernest. He had a dry drawling voice, somewhat like Hawk Siebert’s. “I was smokin’ down the lane an’ I seen this feller slippin’ along like a shadder. So I follered him. Lost him out heah in the dark, but I moseyed around till I come on him. Layin’ out there under the winder, listenin’ to beat hell!”

  “Well!” ejaculated the rancher, Wilkins, his open countenance darkening.

  The third member of that company, the stout buyer from Mariposa, had turned decidedly pale.

  “Say,” snapped Anderson, suddenly, “it’s one of the punchers from Red Rock. I had two. Helped us drive. They called him Iowa.”

  “Put down your gun, Baldy,” interposed the rancher, with a gesture. And he bent a pair of piercing black eyes upon Ernest. When that cold hard pressure no longer was felt against his back, Selby felt better. “Young man, what’s your name?”

  “Ernest Howard,” he replied, looking his interrogator straight in the eye.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Iowa.”

  “You ride for Hepford?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re certainly not drunk. And you don’t look like a thief. . . . What do you mean–spyin’ that way under my window?”

  “No harm, sir. I guess I was just curious,” returned Ernest with a disarming smile.

  “Curious. What about?”

  “About you Westerners.” Here Ernest had made up his mind that he had better resort to subterfuge. “I haven’t been treated well at Red Rock. I’m sort of looking for a new job.”

  “Well, we don’t want any cowboys of your curious stripe round here,” returned the rancher coldly.

  The Mariposa buyer pointed with fingers in which a cigar shook. “Have you gentlemen observed that this visitor is in his stocking feet?”

  “No, I hadn’t.”

  “Wal, by gum!”

  “Pussyfootin’ it, huh?”

  A moment’s silence ensued. The expressive glances of the three observers before him were not lost upon Ernest. But though the situation was embarrassing it did not alarm him. In the last analysis he had the best of them. None of these men could have any intimation that he was personally interested in the sale of the Red Rock cattle.

  “Boss, I reckon I’d better lock him up an’ let him explain to the sheriff,” said Anderson.

  “Probably you had.”

  Here Ernest dropped his hands and vigorously protested that they would do nothing of the kind. He had made up his mind to bolt through the door, if anyone made a further move to detain him.

  “Wal, my curious tenderfoot, I shore will lock you up, an’ hawgtie you in the bargain,” drawled the rider who had captured Ernest.

  “Hey in thar! Dont move–nobody!” came an angry but businesslike voice through the window. Ernest recognized it with a start. It was Nebraskie. The others stiffened and their eyes seemed hung on compass needles.

  “Drop your gun on the floor, Baldy. . . . Quick, you cattl rustlin’ skunk, or I’ll blow your arm off!”

  The voice was all-convincing. Baldy promptly dropped his gun.

  “Now, Ioway, you come on out heah.”

  Ernest lost no time recrossing that threshold. From the steps he espied Nebraskie’s face gleaming in the light from the window.

  “Baldy,” he continued in a biting tone, “pullin’ a gun on a tenderfoot ain’t to yore credit. This heah boy ain’t no thief an’ he ain’t no sneak. He’s jest a nosey boy from Ioway. Reckon if anythin’ made him curious it was yore onhospitality. You shore was behavin’ pretty mean and miserly to two hands who helped you make your drive.”

  “Mean, hell!” exploded Baldy hotly. “You cain’t lay thet to me without a kick.”

  “Wal, lay it to Anderson then. . . . An see heah, Mr. Wilkins, I reckon this little play of Baldy’s will just about ruin relations between your outfit an’ ours.”

  “I’ll see that Hepford fires you both,” retorted Wilkins, angrily.

  “Wal, go ahaid. But you gotta rustle or we’ll beat you to it.”

  Selby ran off into the darkness, halting some rods distant to wait for Nebraskie. He heard the laugh of hoarse derision, then heavy thud of boots.

  “You snoopin’ punchers!” yelled Anderson from the door. “Don’t ever show up round heah again.”

  “Go to blazes, you crooked foreman,” bawled Nebraskie.

  Ernest saw sudden red spurts of fire. A gun banged. Then another bang! Bang-bang! Bullets struck the ground, to whine past where he was standing. His heart stopped–then gave a great throb of relief as Nebraskie’s dark figure loomed up, moving fast. The cowboy’s language was incoherent, though evidently profane.

  “This way, Nebraskie,” called Ernest.

  More shots rang out from the ranch house as Nebraskie joined him. Two assuredly came from a double-barreled shotgun. And a rain of lead pellets all around him lent wings to Ernest’s bootless feet. He reached the lane ahead of Nebraskie and sped down
it to the open gate, where he halted to find and pull on his boots. He heard the horses whinny. Then Nebraskie came lumbering up, panting like a blacksmith’s bellows.

  “I’m–full–of shot!” panted Nebraskie wheezingly.

  “Aw no, pard. You didn’t get hit!” protested Ernest hopefully, as he leaped up to peer at his comrade.

  “Thet–shotgun–peppered me–shore enough–anyhow, Ioway!–I follered you–cause I was–afeared you’d–do somethin’ loco.–You damn near–landed in jail.”

  “Don’t let that worry you, pard,” rejoined Ernest quickly. “I’m obliged to you for coming, though. But if you’re shot–”

  “It ain’t nuthin’. I’ve been shot before. Only never from behind. Haw! Haw! Thet’s what I get–fer runnin’. By thunder–I’m liable–to do some real shootin’–over this heah deal.–You shore played hell, though, with your eavesdroppin’ notion, Ernie Howard.–Hop your hoss.”

  Ernest had to cinch up his saddle, which caused him to fall behind Nebraskie, who rode off at a brisk trot, leading the pack-mule, but he soon caught up with him. They made good time for several miles, until they struck the grade.

  “Hosses tired,” said Nebraskie. “We’ll go on to the brook up heah aways, then camp. . . . Doggone, Ernie, it’ll be all over the range thet we got shoved an’ shot out of Blue Valley.”

  “What if it does?”

  “You’re a cool cuss. Sometimes I wonder if you’re all there above your eyes.”

  “We’ll get fired–that’s sure,” agreed Ernest regretfully.

  “Now I’m just wonderin’. Mebbe Wilkins would blow on us. But Anderson will hold him up. . . . What’d you heah?”

  After a moment’s consideration Ernest concluded that Nebraskie’s opinion would be valuable, so he carefully repeated the conversation of the cattlemen, as it had occurred, word for word.

  “Wal, I guess little ole Nebraskie wasn’t figgerin’ close,” ejaculated the cowboy with satisfaction. “Ioway, our boss is as crooked as a rail fence.”

  “Looks that way. But how can we prove it?”

  “Lord, puncher, whadda you want to prove it fer? No mix of ourn. Onless you want to use thet to fetch your redhaided lass to her knees. Haw! Haw!”

  “Nebraskie! Do you think I’m as low-down as that?” flashed Ernest indignantly.

  “All’s fair in love. Pard, it ain’t a bad idee, come to look it over. You might save Anne from disgrace, instead of fetchin’ it down on her haid.”

  “How so?”

  “Wal, I ain’t figgered thet out. It jest popped into my mind. Lemme see now. . . . Fust, get the showdown on Hepford’s dealin’. Then tell the gurl. Then both of you scare him into gettin’ away from Red Rock before somebody from the East comes down heah an’ ruins him. If you love Anne as bad as you seem to think, go ahaid. It’s pretty, if I say so myself.”

  “Nebraskie, you’re a regular Machiavelli,” declared Ernest admiringly.

  “Who’n hell is he?” asked the cowboy suspiciously.

  “Pard, I wouldn’t care to win Anne that way,” replied Ernest firmly.

  “See heah, young feller, what difference does it make how you win a woman, so long as you get her?”

  Whatever Nebraskie’s philosophy, at times it was unanswerable. As they rode on into the night Ernest fell to revolving the situation in his mind. Whatever the angle from which he viewed it, he could see that things would soon come to a head. But the actual winning of Anne Hepford’s hand had no place in his calculation. In the first place it seemed preposterous: in the second, he did not feel sure that he wanted her now. He had bitter misgivings about the girl. He could overlook her father’s undoubted perfidy; he could forgive her vanity, her coquetry; but if she had gone too far with other boys, as rumor had it, then she was not the girl he wanted to love permanently. Love, however, he had discovered, did not seem to come to one’s beck and call. One loved because he could not help it.

  “I better stay away from her,” he soliloquized aloud.

  “What’s thet?” inquired Nebraskie.

  “Gosh, I was talking to myself.”

  “Wal, reckon you was tellin’ the truth then. . . . Heah’s the brook, Ioway. I smelled the water before I heerd it. We’ll turn off into them cedars, hobble the hosses, an’ snooze till daylight.”

  10

  SEVERAL times during the night Ernest awoke, each time with a vague sense of pleasure over the events of the previous evening. He had been held up by a cowman with a gun; he had been shot at; he knew what the whistle of lead sounded like. And there was the prospect that a posse of trackers might take the trail in the morning.

  Certain it was that Ernest arose before break of day, and he had the horses in shortly. While he was building a fire Nebraskie awoke. He sat up. When with a wry face he tenderly felt the hindermost parts of his anatomy, and exclaimed, “Doggone if I don’t reckon some of them shots went in. You gotta pick’em out when we get home.”

  “Rustle, you lazy hombre,” sang out his campmate cheerfully. “The day’s busted and we may find we’re tracked.”

  “Lordy, but you’re a roomantic gazabo,” drawled Nebraskie. “Strange Anne doesn’t fall haid over heels in love with you. At that I’ll gamble she will.”

  “Nebraskie, for heaven’s sake, give me a chance to forget that girl,” Selby burst out in righteous wrath.

  “Misery loves company, pard. . . . Where the devil air we?– Aw, I savvy. Wal, it’s a tough old world.”

  All Nebraskie had to do to be fully dressed was to don his sombrero. He rolled his bed, tied it and gave it a toss. Then without washing face or hands he set to peeling potatoes in their only basin. Ernest noted the omission.

  “Wash your hands, anyway,” he advised. “You’re trailing with me now.”

  “Wal, I’ll be durned!” ejaculated Nebraskie, staring. “You’re getting mighty particular.” Then he emptied the potatoes out of the basin and made for the brook, whistling a cowboy tune.

  For breakfast they had fried potatoes, hot coffee, and hard biscuits, which they soaked in their tin cups. Then Nebraskie strapped the pack-saddle on the mule, while Ernest washed and dried the utensils. A few minutes later they were mounted and riding out of the cedars to meet the red glow of sunrise. Having surmounted the grade they traveled at a brisk trot. Nebraskie never thought to look back over his shoulder, but Ernest did, more than once. No dust puffs appeared back down the long pass. Before the sun got hot they had entered the forest, taking a trail far to the left of the cattle road.

  “Ioway, we can ride in tonight late if we want,” said Nebraskie, breaking a long silence.

  “What’s the hurry?” objected Ernest. “We have two days. And then Siebert is sending me to Holbrook for a load of grain.”

  “Haulin’ grain is apple pie,” returned Nebraskie. “All day an’ night in town. Stores to loaf in an’ gurls to see. . . . Say, I tell you what. You can take a letter over to Dais fer me. Will you, pard?”

  “Sure. And make her kiss me to get it,” replied Selby, teasingly.

  “Ernie, please don’t fool with my gurl. She’s only a kid. An’ you’re a handsome, fascinatin’ devil, you know. Why, you’d have it all over Dude if you wanted to be thet kind.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll try to resist temptation. But I’m sorry I didn’t see Daisy first.”

  “So’m I. Then I wouldn’t be in so helluva much trouble.”

  “Trouble? Say, Nebraskie, you’ve no trouble compared to mine.”

  “Didn’t you heah Dais confess what hold thet pretty-faced skunk had on her?”

  “I heard, and to be honest it worries me. I’ll talk to Daisy. We’ve just got to keep her out of Hyslip’s clutches. He’s a smooth brute.”

  “Funny, but most wimmen seem to like brutes.”

  “No, they don’t,” denied Ernest with considerable emphasis.

  “I can be somethin’ of a brute myself,” vouchsafed Nebraskie. “An’ try in’ thet with Anne wouldn’t hurt your cause
none neither.”

  Selby also denied that sentiment vigorously, until he suddenly remembered how his one and only act of violence toward Anne had brought such surprising and unforgettable results. Maybe Nebraskie was right. But that one commission of rudeness of his had left him ashamed, if it had not Anne. Somehow Nebraskie’s simple uncouth words had the power to stir him mightily. And when he admitted that, he realized he was acknowledging that he would repeat his violent conduct toward Anne Hepford, if he ever got the chance.

  They rode on, up the shady trail, under gray beetling crags, and down through canyons where water splashed melodiously, and all was cool, fresh, sweet, and fragrant. Then they rode over a dry pass where the yellow pines grew wide apart and deer flashed like red ghosts through the aisles. From the pass the trail led up over the red cliffs, from which their glance swept down over the red rocks below to the wide green ranch sleeping in the sun.

  Ernest reined in his horse and stared out over the park floor. Yes, he loved Red Rock Ranch. His feeling for it had stolen upon him gradually. He wanted to work there all his life. But what of Anne? Could he be happy there without her? His answer was a dogged one, fruit of his pain, and it had to do with a hope and surety that there must be another lovely girl somewhere, perhaps with red hair and lively green eyes, one who was as true as Anne Hepford was shallow. In his heart he knew very well that there was only one redheaded girl for him.

  At sunset they camped at Agua d’Oro Spring, which up to the present, was the wildest and most beautiful spot Ernest had ever seen.