Andy grinned, but his grin faded to a boyish seriousness as he took off his own Stetson and handed it to Pete, who turned it round and tentatively poked his fingers through the two holes in the crown. "You got my ole hat yet, eh? Doggone if it ain't my ole hat. And she's ventilated some, too. Well, I'm listenin'."
"And you sure are lookin' fine, Pete. Say, is it you? Or did my hoss pitch me—and I'm dreamin'—back there on the flat? No. I reckon it's you all right. I ain't done shakin' yet from the way you come at me when I rode in. Say, did you git Jim's letter? Why didn't you write to a guy, and say you was comin'? Reg'lar ole Injun, same as ever. Quicker 'n a singed bob-cat gittin' off a stove-lid. That Blue Smoke 'way over there? Thought I knowed him. When did they turn you loose down to El Paso? Ma Bailey was worryin' that they wasn't feedin' you good. When did you get here? Was you in the gun-fight when The Spider got bumped off?"
Pete was still gazing at the little round holes in Andy's hat. "Andy, did you ever try to ride a hoss down the ole mesa trail backwards?"
"Why, no, you sufferin' coyote! What you drivin' at?"
"Here's your hat. Now if you got anything under it, go ahead and talk up. Which way did you ride when we split, over by the timber there?"
Andy reached over and put a stick of wood on the fire. "Well, seein' it's your hat, I reckon you got a right to know how them holes come in it." And he told Pete of his ride, and how he had misled the posse, and he spoke jestingly, as though it had been a little thing to do; hardly worth repeating. Then he told of a ride he had made to Showdown to let Pete know that Gary would live, and how The Spider had said that he knew nothing of Pete—had never seen him. And of how Ma Bailey upheld Pete, despite all local gossip and the lurid newspaper screeds. And that the boys would be mighty glad to see him again; concluding with an explanation of his own presence there—that he had been over to the T-Bar-T to see Houck about some of his stock that had strayed through some "down-fence"—"She's all fenced now," he explained—and had run into a bunch of wild turkeys, chased them to a rim-rock and had managed to shoot one, but had had to climb down a cañon to recover the bird, which had set him back considerably on his home journey. "And that there bird is hangin' right on my saddle now!" he concluded. "And I ain't et since mornin'."
"Then we eat," asserted Pete. "You go git that turkey, and I'll do the rest."
Wild turkey, spitted on a cedar limb and broiled over a wood fire, a bannock or two with hot coffee in an empty bean-can (Pete insisted on Andy using the one cup), tastes just a little better than anything else in the world, especially if one has ridden far in the high country—and most folk do, before they get the wild turkey.
It was three o'clock when they turned in, to share Pete's one blanket, and then Andy was too full of Pete's adventures to sleep, asking an occasional question which Pete answered, until Andy, suddenly recalling that Pete had told him The Spider had left him his money, asked Pete if he had packed all that dough with him, or banked it in El Paso. To which Pete had replied drowsily, "Sure thing, Miss Gray." Whereupon Andy straightway decided that he would wait till morning before asking any further questions of an intimate nature.
Pete was strangely quiet the next morning, in fact almost taciturn, and Andy noticed that he went into the saddle a bit stiffly. "That—where you got hurt botherin' you, Pete?" he asked with real solicitude.
"Some." And realizing that he had scarcely spoken to his old chum since they awakened, he asked him many questions about the ranch, and the boys, as they drifted across the mesa and down the trail that led to the Concho.
But it was not the twinge of his old wound that made Pete so silent. He was suffering a disappointment. He had believed sincerely that what he had been through, in the past six months especially, had changed him—that he would have to have a mighty stern cause to pull a gun on a man again; and at the first hint of danger he had been ready to kill. He wondered if he would ever lose that hunted feeling that had brought him to his feet and all but crooked his trigger-finger before he had actually realized what had startled him. But one thing was certain—Andy would never know just how close he had come to being killed; Andy, who had joked lightly about his own ride into the desert with an angry posse trailing him, as he wore Pete's black Stetson, "that he might give them a good run for their money," he had laughingly said.
"You're jest the same ornery, yella-headed, blue-eyed singin'-bird you always was," declared Pete as they slithered along down the trail.
Andy turned in the saddle and grinned at Pete. "Now that you've give the blessing parson, will you please and go plumb to hell?"
Pete felt a lot better.
A loose rock slipped from the edge of the trail, and went bounding down the steep hillside, crashing through a thicket of aspens and landing with a dull clunk amid a pile of rock that slid a little, and grumbled sullenly. Blue Smoke had also slipped as his footing gave way unexpectedly. Pete felt still better. This was something like it!
CHAPTER XLV
HOME FOLKS
Noon found them within sight of the ranch-house. In an hour they were unsaddling at the corral, having ridden in the back way, at Andy's suggestion, that they might surprise the folks. But it did not take them long to discover that there were no folks to surprise. The bunk-house was open, but the house across from it was locked, and Andy knew immediately that the Baileys had driven to town, because the pup was gone, and he always followed the buckboard.
Pete was not displeased, for he wanted to shave and "slick up a bit" after his long journey. "They'll see my hoss and know that I'm back," said Andy, as he filled the kettle on the box-stove in the bunk-house. "But we can put Blue Smoke in a stall and keep him out of sight till you walk in right from nowhere. I can see Ma Bailey and Jim and the boys! 'Course Ma's like to be back in time to get supper, so mebby you'll have to hide out in the barn till you hear the bell."
"I ain't awful strong on that conquerin' hero stuff, Andy. I jest as soon set right here—"
"And spoil the whole darn show! Look here, Pete,—you leave it to me and if we don't surprise Ma Bailey clean out of her—specs, why, I'll quit and go to herdin' sheep."
"A11 right. I'm willin'. Only you might see if you kin git in the back way and lift a piece of pie, or somethin'." Which Andy managed to do while Pete shaved himself and put on a clean shirt.
They sat in the bunk-house doorway chatting about the various happenings during Pete's absence until they saw the buckboard top the distant edge of the mesa. Pete immediately secluded himself in the barn, while Andy hazed Blue Smoke into a box stall and hid Pete's saddle.
Ma Bailey, alighting from the buckboard, heard Andy's brief explanation of his absence with indifference most unusual in her, and glanced sharply at him when he mentioned having shot a wild turkey.
"I suppose you picked it and cleaned it and got it all ready to roast," she inquired. "Or have you just been loafing around waiting for me to do it?"
"I et it," asserted Andy.
Ma Bailey glared at him, shook her head, and marched into the house while Andy helped Bailey put up the horses.
"Ma's upset about somethin'," explained Bailey. "Seems a letter came for Pete—"
"Letter from Pete! Why, he ain't comin' back, is he?"
"A letter for Pete. Ma says it looks like a lady's writin' on the envelope. She says she'd like to know what female is writin' to Pete, and him goodness knows where, and not a word to say whether he's sick or broke, or anything."
"I sure would like to see him," said Andy fervently.
"Well, if somebody's writin' to him here at the Concho, looks like he might drift in one of these days. I'd sure like to know how the kid's makin' it."
And Bailey strode to the house, while Andy led the team to the corral.
Later Andy appeared in the kitchen and asked Mrs. Bailey if he couldn't help her set the table, or peel potatoes, or something. Ma Bailey gazed at him suspiciously over her glasses. "I don't know what's ailin' you, Andy, but you ain't actin' right. Firs
t you tell me that you had to camp at the Blue last night account o' killin' a turkey. Then you tell me that you et the whole of it. Was you scared you wouldn't get your share if you fetched it home? Then you want to help me get supper. You been up to something! You just keep me plumb wore out worrying about you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"For why, Ma? What have I done?"
"I don't know, but it'll come to the top. There's the boys now—and me a-standing here— Run along and set the table if you ain't so full of whatever is got into you that you can't count straight. Bill won't be in to-night. Leastwise, Jim don't expect him." And Ma Bailey flapped her apron at him and shooed him out as though he were a chicken that had dared to poke its inquisitive neck into the kitchen.
"Count straight!" chuckled Andy. "Mebby I know more about how many's here than Ma does."
Meanwhile Ma Bailey busied herself preparing supper, and it was evident to the boys in the bunkhouse that Ma had something on her mind from the sounds which came from the kitchen. Ma scolded the potatoes as she fried them, rebuked the biscuits because they had browned a little too soon, censured the stove for its misbehavior in having scorched the biscuits, accused the wood of being a factor in the conspiracy, reprimanded the mammoth coffee-pot that threatened to deluge the steak, and finally chased Andy from the premises when she discovered that he had laid the table with her best set of dishes.
"Ma's steamin' about somethin'," remarked Andy as he entered the bunk-house.
This information was received with characteristic silence as each and every cowboy mentally straightened up, vowing silently that he wasn't goin' to take any chances of Ma b'ilin' over on him.
The clatter of the pack-horse bell brought the men to their feet and they filed across to the house, a preternaturally silent aggregation that confirmed Ma Bailey's suspicion that there was something afoot.
Andy, loitering behind them, saw Pete coming from the stables, tried to compose himself, but could not get rid of the boyish grin, which provoked Ma Bailey to mutter something which sounded like "idiot," to which the cowboys nodded in cheerful concurrence, without other comment.
Hank Barley, the silent, was gazing surreptitiously at Ma's face when he saw her eyes widen, saw her rise, and stand staring at the doorway as Andy clumped in, followed by Pete.
Ma Bailey sat down suddenly.
"It's all right, Ma," laughed Andy, alarmed at the expression on her face. "It's just Pete."
"Just Pete!" echoed Ma Bailey faintly. And then, "Goodness alive, child, where you been?"
Pete's reply was lost in the shuffle of feet as the men rose and shook hands with him, asking him a dozen questions in as many seconds, asserting that he was looking fine, and generally behaving like a crowd of schoolboys, as they welcomed him to their midst again.
Pete sat in the absent Bill Haskins's place. And "You must 'a' knowed he was coming" asserted Avery. "Bill is over to the line shack."
"I got a letter," asserted Ma Bailey mysteriously.
"And you jest said nothin' and sprung him on us! Well, Ma, you sure fooled me," said Andy, grinning.
"You go 'long." Mrs. Bailey smiled at Andy, who had earned her forgiveness by crediting her—rather wisely—with having originated the surprise.
They were chatting and joking when Bill Haskins appeared in the door-way, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief.
Ma Bailey glared at him over her spectacles. "Got any stickin'-plaster?" he asked plaintively, as though he had committed some misdemeanor. She rose and placed a plate and chair for him as he shook hands with Pete, led him to the kitchen and inspected and bandaged his hand, which he had jagged on a wire gate, and finally reinstated him at the table, where he proved himself quite as efficient as most men are with two hands. "Give Bill all the coffee he wants and plenty stickin'-plaster, and I reckon he never would do no work," suggested Hank Barley.
Bill Haskins grinned good-naturedly. "I see Pete's got back," he ventured, as a sort of mild intimation that there were other subjects worth discussing. He accompanied this brilliant observation by a modest request for another cup of coffee, his fourth. The men rose, leaving Bill engaged in his favorite indoor pastime, and intimated that Pete should go with them. But Ma Bailey would not bear of it. Pete was going to help her with the dishes. Andy could go, however, and Bill Haskins, as soon as he was convinced that the coffee-pot was empty. Ma Bailey's chief interest in life at the moment was to get the dishes put away, the men out of the way, and Pete in the most comfortable rocking-chair in the room, that she might hear his account of how it all happened.
And Pete told her—omitting no circumstance, albeit he did not accentuate that part of his recital having to do with Doris Gray, merely mentioning her as "that little gray-eyed nurse in El Paso"—and in such an offhand manner that Ma Bailey began to suspect that Pete was keeping something to himself. Finally, by a series of cross-questioning, comment, and sympathetic concurrence, she arrived at the feminine conclusion that the gray-eyed nurse in El Paso had set her cap for Pete—of course Pete was innocent of any such adjustment of headgear—to substantiate which she rose, and, stepping to the bedroom, returned with the letter which had caused her so much speculation as to who was writing to Pete, and why the letter had been directed to the Concho.
Pete glanced at the letter, and thanked Ma Bailey as he tucked it in his pocket.
"I don't mind if you open it, Pete," she told him. "Goodness knows how long it's been laying in the post-office! And it, mebby, is important—from that doctor, or that lawyer, mebby. Oh, mebby it's from the bank. Sakes alive! To think of that man leaving you all that money! Mebby that bank has failed!"
"Well, I'd be right where I started when I first come here—broke—lookin' for a job."
"And the boys'll worry you most to death if you try to read any letters in the bunk-house to-night. They're waitin' to hear you talk."
"Guess the letter can wait. I ain't such a fast reader, anyhow."
"And you're like to lose it, carryin' it round."
"I—I—reckon I better read it," stammered Pete helplessly.
He felt somehow that Ma would feel slighted if he didn't. Ma Bailey watched his face as he read the rather brief note from Doris, thanking him for his letter to her and congratulating him on the outcome of his trial, and assuring him of her confidence in his ultimate success in life. "Little Ruth," wrote Doris, "cried bitterly when I told her that you had gone and would not come back. She said that when you said 'good-bye' to her you promised to come back—and of course I had to tell her that you would, just to make her happy. She has lost all interest in the puzzle game since you left, but that queer watch that you gave her, that has to be shaken before taken—and then not taken seriously—amuses her quite a bit. She gets me to wind it up—her fingers are not strong enough—and then she laughs as the hands race around. When they stop she puts her finger on the hour and says, 'Pitty soon Pete come back.' Little Ruth misses you very much."
Pete folded the letter and put it in his pocket. "From a friend of mine," he said, flushing slightly.
Ma Bailey sighed, smiled, and sighed again. "You're just itching to go see the boys. Well, run along, and tell Jim not to set up all night." Ma Bailey rose, and stepping to the bedroom returned with some blankets. "You'll have your old bunk. It's yours just as long as you want to stay, Pete. And—and I hope that girl in El Paso—is a—a nice—sensible—"
"Why, Ma! What's the matter?—" as Mrs. Bailey blinked and showed unmistakable signs of emotion.
"Nothing, Pete. I reckon your coming back so sudden and all you been through, and that letter, kind of upset me. D-does she powder her face, Pete?"
"Who? You mean Miss Gray? Why, what would she do that for?"
"Does she wear clothes that—that cost lots of money?"
"Great snakes, Ma! I dunno. I never seen her except in the hospital, dressed jest like all the nurses."
"Is—is she handsome?"
"Say, Ma, you let me hold them blankets. They're g
ittin' you all sagged down. Why, she ain't what I'd say was handsome, but she sure got pretty eyes and hair—and complexion—and the smoothest little hands—and she's built right neat. She steps easy—like a thoroughbred filly—and she's plumb sensible, jest like you folks."
This latter assurance did not seem to comfort Ma Bailey as much as the implied compliment might intimate.
"And there's only one other woman I ever saw that made me feel right to home and kind o' glad to have her round, like her. And she's got gray eyes and the same kind of hair, and—"
"Sakes alive, Pete Annersley! Another?"
"Uh-huh. And I'm kissin' her good-night—right now." And Pete grabbed the blankets and as much of Ma Bailey as could be included in that large armful, and kissed her heartily.
"He's changed," Ma Bailey confided to herself, after Pete had disappeared. "Actin' like a boy—to cheer me up. But it weren't no boy that set there readin' that letter. It was a growed man, and no wonder. Yes, Pete's changed, bless his heart!"
Ma Bailey did not bless Pete's heart because he had changed, however, nor because he had suffered, nor yet because he was unconsciously in love with a little nurse in El Paso, nor yet because he kissed her, but because she liked him: and because no amount of money or misfortune, blame or praise, could really change him toward his friends. What Ma Bailey meant was that he had grown a little more serious, a little more gentle in his manner of addressing her—aside from saying good-night—and a little more intense in a quiet way. To sum it all up, Pete had just begun to think—something that few people do on the verdant side of forty, and rather dread having to do on the other side of that mile-post.
A week later, as they sat at table asking one another whether Ma Bailey had took to makin' pies ag'in jest for practice or for Pete, and plaguing that good woman considerably with their good-natured banter, it occurred to Bill Haskins to ask Pete if he were going to become a permanent member of the family or if he were simply visiting; only Bill said, "Are you aimin' to throw in with us—or are you goin' to curl your tail and drift, when the snow flies?"
The Ridin Kid from Powder River Page 34