The Ramblin' Kid was recognized by the cowboys from the Purgatory.
"Come on and get into the game!" one of them invited, moving over.
"Yes," Henderson added, hitching his own chair to one side to make room for another, "the cards are running like"—he paused—"like the Gold Dust maverick for everybody but the house!" There was a laugh at the subtle reference to the outlaw filly that had cost Sabota so much in losses on the sweepstakes at the Rodeo.
The Greek scowled.
"In that case," the Ramblin' Kid drawled, "I reckon I'll ride 'em a few rounds!" dropping into the chair he had dragged forward and which placed him with his back toward the bar.
"What they costin' a stack?" he questioned, reaching to the left breast pocket of his shirt for a roll of bills.
In the same pocket was the pink satin garter Carolyn June had lost the morning of his first meeting with her at the circular corral.
"Five bones!" Jeff answered languidly.
"Well, give me a couple of piles," the Ramblin' Kid replied, glancing around at the cowboy sitting at his right, who had invited him into the game. "How's the Purgatory?"
As the bills came from the Ramblin' Kid's pocket the silver butterfly clasp of the garter caught in the paper currency and the elastic band was drawn out and dropped, at the side of his chair, on the floor next to Sabota.
The Greek and Skinny saw, at the same time, the dainty satin ribbon.
Sabota stepped quickly forward and with the toe of his shoe kicked the garter toward the bar, where all could see it.
"Look what th' Ramblin' Kid's been carrying!" he exclaimed with a coarse laugh. "Some size garter, that!" And guessing at random that it had belonged to Carolyn June, he added: "Old Heck's niece must be—damned convenient and accommodating!"
A laugh started from the lips of the crowd. It was instantly checked and a dead silence followed as the Ramblin' Kid looked around, saw Sabota leering down at the trinket and heard his vulgar insinuation. He slowly pushed his chair back from the table and with eyes half-closed—the lids tightening until there were but narrow slits through which the black pupils burned like drops of jet—he began slowly to straighten up. Not a sound came from his lips save the deep, regular breathing those sitting near could hear and which was like a bellows fanning embers into a white heat. His mouth was drawn back in a smile, almost caressing in its softness, but a thousand times more menacing than the black scowl on the face of the Greek.
The Ramblin' Kid's gun was at his hip, but he made no move to draw it.
Sabota watched the slender young cowboy. A look of contempt and derision was in his eyes. The Greek was no taller, but full eighty pounds heavier than the other. But he forgot that the other's lithe body moving with the calm, undulating grace of a panther preparing to spring was all clean youth, muscle and courage, unbroken by any debauchery!
"That's a hell of a thing for a man to pack," the giant bully cried nastily, "and it's a hell of a lady that gives it to a man to pack!"
With a sneering laugh he raised his foot and brought it down on the garter, grinding the silver clasp and the satin ribbon under the sole of his shoe.
"You damned black cur!" The Rambling' Kid spoke scarcely louder than a whisper, yet his voice echoed throughout the tense silence of the room. "I'll put my heel in your face for that!"
Sabota threw back his head to laugh.
For a second of time the Ramblin' Kid crouched, then shot through the air like a wire spring drawn far back and suddenly released, and with an his hundred and forty pounds of nerve and sinew behind it his right fist smashed the big Greek squarely on the half-open mouth, splitting the thick lip wide and causing a red stream to spurt from the gash. Sabota staggered back and, would have fallen had he not crashed against the hardwood bar.
As the Greek reeled away from the garter the Ramblin' Kid stooped quickly forward, picked up the elastic and dropped it again into his pocket.
With a roar like a mad bull Sabota rushed his slight antagonist. Lunging forward, blind with rage, he aimed a murderous blow at the head of the Ramblin' Kid. The cowboy ducked, but not in time to escape the wide swing of the massive, hairy fist. The Greek's knuckles raked the side of the Kid's face and the blood rained down his cheek from a cruel cut under the eye. The Ramblin' Kid spun around like a top and for the fraction of a second stood swaying uncertainly.
For a moment they faced each other, crouching, watching for an opening. Sabota's great hands worked convulsively, eager to grasp and crush his wiry opponent; the Ramblin' Kid, with lips curled back from white teeth, like a pure-bred terrier circling a mastiff, bent forward, every muscle tense as drawn copper, his eyes cold as a rattler's as he searched for a place to strike!
The crowd in the pool-room instinctively kept far back and gave the unequal combatants ample room.
From Sabota's lips poured a steady torrent of blasphemy. The Ramblin' Kid made no sound as, with body swaying slowly from side to side, his shoulders heaved with the full, heavy breaths that reached to the bottom of his lungs.
Suddenly, like some wild beast, Sabota sprang forward. The Ramblin' Kid met him—in mid-air—right and left jolting, almost at the same instant, into the beefy jaws of the Greek. At the impact a claw-like hand shot out and the gorilla fingers of the left hand of the brute-man the Ramblin' Kid fought, closed over the throat of the cowboy. Sabota threw his right arm around the back of his antagonist, gripping the shoulder on the far side of his body and drew the slender form toward him—pinning the Ramblin' Kid's left arm and hand to his side.
Skinny's hand dropped to the butt of his gun and rested there.
The Ramblin' Kid struggled desperately in the strangling grasp of the crazed Greek. The two reeled back and forth, crashing chairs and tables to the floor, and lunged against the bar. The Ramblin' Kid's gun fell from its scabbard at the side of the brass foot-rail. Sabota's eyes glared down into the face of the man he was choking to death—gleaming with the ferocity of an animal gone mad—Awhile bloody foam spewed from his bleeding lips. The cowboy's face was beginning to flush a terrible purple as the breath was gradually crushed from his body.
As the Greek forced him back, bending him down and over, the Ramblin' Kid, his eyes burning like fire while a million flashes of light seemed to stab the darkness before them and needles darted through every fiber of his flesh, wrenched his right arm free and gripping the back of Sabota's shirt with his left hand to give purchase to the blow, with all the strength left in his body, drove the knuckles of his right fist into the left temple of the Greek.
The blow went home.
A film, like a veil drawn across the fiendish glare in them, spread over the eyes of Sabota, his grip on the throat of the cowboy relaxed and as a bull, struck by the hammer of the butcher, he dropped to the floor.
The Ramblin' Kid crouched, panting, over the massive bulk.
Sabota slowly opened his eyes and started to raise his battered head.
With a laugh the cowboy swung terrible right and left blows into the
Greek's face. The head dropped back.
Again the Ramblin' Kid stooped low, waiting for another sign of life from the prostrate form.
Red Jackson slipped from behind the bar, half bent forward, moved stealthily up behind the Ramblin' Kid; one hand drawn partly back held, by the neck, a heavy beer bottle. Skinny saw his intention. Instantly the Quarter Circle KT cowboy's forty-four was jerked from its holster and the blue-steel barrel swung against the side of the bartender's head. He pitched over in a limp heap and the bottle crushed against the brass foot-rail, breaking into a thousand fragments. A half-dozen of Sabota's crowd started forward. Skinny's gun whipped around in front of him.
"Keep back, y' sons-of-hell!" he snarled, "Sabota's gettin' what's coming to him!"
The Greek's eyes opened. His fingers touched the butt of the Ramblin'
Kid's revolver and began to close slowly over the handle of the weapon.
"Make him quit," one of the pool-room loafers
whined; "he's killed him!"
The Ramblin' Kid saw Sabota reach for the gun. He answered the speaker and the Greek's effort to get the forty-four at the same time:
"Not yet—but now!" he cried with a low laugh and leaped with both heels squarely on the bloody face of Sabota! There was a horrible crunching sound as of bones and flesh being ground into pulp. The fingers about to close on the handle of the revolver grew limp, the Greek's head, a hideous, scarcely recognizable mass, slumped to one side and lay perfectly still.
An instant longer the Ramblin' Kid looked at him, then reached over, picked up his gun and slipped it into the holster at his hip.
As he straightened up, Tom Poole, the marshal, rushed into the pool-room. He covered the Ramblin' Kid with his revolver and placed him under arrest.
"You don't need to get excited, Tom!" the Ramblin' Kid laughed. "I didn't do nothin' but kill that damned black cur layin' there! Come on—I want to get out in th' air—I never like to stay around where dead skunks are!"
They moved toward the door.
Poole dropped his gun back in its scabbard and walked at the side of the now apparently peaceful young cowboy.
At the door the marshal looked around:
"Some of you fellers get the doctor or undertaker—whichever he needs—and take care of Sabota!" he called to the group around the body of the Greek.
Like a flash the muzzle of the Ramblin' Kid's gun was pressed against the side of Poole.
"Put 'em up, Tom!" he snapped, "I don't want to kill you, but I will if I have to—I ain't goin' to rot in no jail just for stampin' a dirty snake-to death!"
The marshal's hands shot into the air as if operated by springs.
The Ramblin' Kid, with his left hand, jerked Poole's revolver from its holster. He backed into the street toward where Captain Jack and Old Pie Face were standing, still with his own gun covering the officer.
"Jack!" he cried sharply, "meet me!"
The little stallion moved toward him.
With the thumb of the hand in which he held the marshal's gun the
Ramblin' Kid threw open the breech and flipped the shells on the ground.
He tossed the empty forty-four to one side, threw the reins over
Captain Jack's head and the next instant was in the saddle. The broncho
wheeled and was gone, in a dead run, toward the west.
The marshal rushed into the street and picked up his gun, jerked some cartridges from his belt, slipped them into the cylinder and fired quickly at the fleeing horse and rider.
The bullets whistled past the ear of the Ramblin' Kid.
He raised his own weapon, half-turned in the saddle, dropped the muzzle of the gun forward until it pointed at the flashes spitting from the officer's revolver. His finger started to tighten on the trigger.
"Hell," he muttered, "what's the use? Tom's just doin' what he thinks he has to do!" and the Ramblin' Kid slipped the gun, unfired, back into its holster.
A moment later Captain Jack whirled to the right across the Santa Fe tracks and bearing a little to the east, in the direction of Capaline, the dead volcano that rises out of the lavas northwest of the Quarter Circle KT, between the Purgatory and the Cimarron, disappeared in the black starlit night.
CHAPTER XX
MOSTLY SKINNY
It is a week to the day since the fight in the Elite Amusement Parlor in Eagle Butte. Since the Ramblin' Kid, followed by the wicked sing of the bullets from the marshal's gun, disappeared in the darkness no word has come from the fugitive cowboy, who beat to a pulp the burly Greek.
The Gold Dust maverick paces uneasily about in the circular corral and the Quarter Circle KT has settled into the hum-drum routine of ranch life.
Parker, Charley, Chuck and Bert are gone to Chicago with the train-load of beef cattle. Skinny bosses a gang of "picked-up" hay hands Old Heck brought out from Eagle Butte to harvest the second cutting of alfalfa. Pedro rides line daily on the upland pasture and Sing Pete hammers the iron triangle morning, noon and night, announcing the regular arrival of meal-time. The Chinaman is careful when he throws out empty tomato-cans—turning back the tin to make it impossible for the yellow cat again to fasten his head in one of the inviting traps, and the cook would imperil the hope of the return of his soul to the flowery Orient before he would put butter in the bottom of a can to entice the animal into trouble.
Old Heck and Ophelia are like a pair of nesting doves and there is a new vigor to the step of the owner of the Quarter Circle KT, a revived interest in affairs generally; years seem to have fallen from his shoulders.
Carolyn June smiles sweetly as ever at Skinny, spends much time riding alone over the valley and hills; in her eyes there has come a more thoughtful—often a wistful—expression.
Sabota did not die.
After the escape of the Ramblin' Kid the marshal reentered the pool-room and had the big Greek removed to the hotel. A doctor was called and set as well as possible the broken jaws, the crushed nose, picked out the fragments of bone and the loosened teeth, sewed up the terrible gashes on Sabota's face and left the bully groaning and profaning in half-conscious agony.
The night of the fight Skinny took Old Pie Face back to the barn.
The cowboy's heart was heavy with remorse. He blamed himself for all the trouble. Had he not wanted to make a fool of himself and get drunk the Ramblin' Kid would not have come to Eagle Butte, the fight would not have occurred, the friend he had ridden with through storm and sunshine—whom he had stood "night guard" and fought mad stampedes into "the mill"—would not now be an outcast sought by the hand of the law.
News of the beating the Ramblin' Kid gave Sabota traveled fast.
It was flashed over Eagle Butte that the Greek was dead.
"So th' Ramblin' Kid killed old Sabota, did he?" the hostler at the livery barn asked Skinny as he stepped out to care for the cowboy's horse. "What was it over? Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid 'doped' the day of the sweepstakes?"
Skinny looked keenly, searchingly, at the stableman.
"What do you mean—'Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid doped?'" he asked sharply.
"Why, didn't you know?" the hostler replied. "I thought everybody knowed. Gyp Streetor told me about it the day of the race—I used to know Gyp when he was a kid back east. I saw him as he was beating it to get out of town. He borrowed five dollars from me. Said Sabota hired him to put 'knock-out' in some coffee for th' Ramblin' Kid and he reckoned the dose wasn't big enough or something. Anyhow, it didn't hold him under long as they thought it would and when he saw the Gold Dust maverick show up on the track he got scared—was afraid it would leak out or th' Ramblin' Kid would suspect him and try to 'get' him after the race, so he ducked out of town—"
"You ain't lying about that?" Skinny asked.
"What would I want to lie about it for?" the other replied. "Wasn't that what made th' Ramblin' Kid kill the Greek?"
"No, it was something else," Skinny answered; "but Sabota ain't dead.
He's just crunched up pretty bad—th' Ramblin' Kid jumped on him, like
Captain Jack did on that feller from the Chickasaw that tried to steal
him!"
Skinny's mind was in a whirl.
So the Ramblin' Kid was not drunk the day of the race! He was drugged— sick—yet, in spite of everything, rode the Gold Dust maverick and beat the black wonder-horse from the Vermejo! Lord! and they had all thought he was on a tear!
The bottle of whisky was still in the bosom of Skinny's shirt.
He had not touched it. He felt a sudden revulsion for the vile stuff.
"Here," he said, jerking the flask from its hiding-place and handing it to the hostler, "maybe you'd like that bottle of 'rot-gut'—I've swore off!"
"I ain't," the stableman laughed and took it eagerly.
Skinny remained in town that night and the next day, waiting for Parker and the Quarter Circle KT cowboys to come in with the beef cattle. They arrived about noon. Old Heck drove in with the Cla
gstone "Six." Ophelia and Carolyn June came with him. Skinny met them when Old Heck stopped the in front of the Occidental Hotel. He told them, while they still sat in the automobile, of the fight and the escape of the Ramblin' Kid.
"A drunken brawl!" Carolyn June thought, a wave of disgust sweeping over her.
"Th' Ramblin' Kid hadn't touched a drop," Skinny said, explaining the fight and almost as if he were answering her unspoken thought. "If he'd been drinking, I reckon Sabota would have killed him instead of his beating the Greek blamed near to death. I know now what he used to mean when he'd say, 'A man's a fool to put whisky in him when he's facin' a tight squeeze!' The little devil sure needed everything he had—nerve and head and muscle and all—for the job he tackled last night!"
Skinny didn't tell them that his hand had rested on the handle of his own gun—determined that he, himself, would kill Sabota if the brute succeeded in choking the Ramblin' Kid to death.
"What was the fight about?" Old Heck asked.
"A pink ribbon or something with a little silver do-funny on it—it looked like a sleeve-holder or a garter—dropped out of th' Ramblin' Kid's pocket and Sabota made a nasty remark about it," Skinny said.
Carolyn June caught her breath and her face flushed.
"The Greek said something about Carolyn June, I didn't just hear what," Skinny continued, "and then he smashed the ribbon under his foot. The next instant th' Ramblin' Kid was trying to kill him!
"It's a pity he didn't succeed!" Old Heck exclaimed. "The damned filthy whelp—excuse me, Ophelia, for cussing, but I just had to say It!"
The Ramblin Kid Page 21