“It’s still in his back!” Luby said. “And,” he added grimly, “we have only your story for it. You say he fired a shot. Why, his gun’s still in its holster!”
“He wasn’t killed here!” Horn said angrily. “This hombre grabbed Vaho Rainey when we were riding back of the Rim. I rushed up to help and he drew and fired. He missed and I shot and killed him!”
Sheriff Wells knelt beside the body. Drawing the gun, he checked it, then looked up, his face grave.
“This gun is fully loaded,” he said, “and hasn’t been fired!”
“What?” Rowdy was dumbfounded. “Why, that couldn’t be. He—” He shrugged. “Well, I reckon the man or men who brought him here changed guns with him.”
Wells gnawed at his gray mustache. Secretly, he had always liked Rowdy Horn as much as he disliked Bart Luby, but this story was out of all reason.
“You mean to say,” he demanded, “that you killed this man back of the Rim? And that somebody packed his carcass down here and dumped him on you?”
“That’s exactly what happened!” Rowdy Horn said flatly. “It’s the only way it could have happened.”
Luby laughed. “Give him credit for being original, Ben. But he certainly hasn’t much respect for your intelligence, to try a story like that.”
“You’ll have to come into town, son,” Wells said, his voice hardening. “This will have to be explained.”
“But you can’t put me in jail!” Rowdy pleaded. “Think, man! The rodeo’s tomorrow.”
“You should have thought of that,” Luby suggested, “before you killed this man. Anyway, that’s no excuse. Your ropin’ horse is laid up, so you can’t compete!”
On the verge of bursting out with an explanation about Silverside, he caught himself just in time. If he had to go to jail, and there was nobody to watch the horse, it might easily be stolen.
“I knew this hombre,” McNulty said suddenly. “He was Jake Leener, one of the Rollick outfit.”
“No matter,” Wells said positively. “He was shot in the back. We had nothing against him, even if he did ride with Rollick. The law can’t call a man a crook until he’s known to be one. This here hombre hadn’t no record I know of, and he sure ain’t wanted now.”
“But listen!” Rowdy protested. “I’ve a witness! Vaho Rainey saw all this! She knows what happened!”
“Vaho Rainey?” Wells stared at him. “Rowdy, what you giving us? If that girl was with you, where is she now? You know as well as I do that if there is any such girl nobody has seen her around. You’re just pullin’ rabbits out of your hat. Tell us what happened, and I’ll see you get a break if you’ve got one comin’.”
“I told you what happened!” Horn said stubbornly. “Take it or leave it!”
“We’ll take you,” Wells said. “Mike, rustle this gent’s horse, and be quick!”
Bart Luby glanced thoughtfully across the room toward the door of the bedroom. He was thinking of that old cabinet. Now that he was arrested, Horn would be away from the house. In the dozen or so times he had tried to enter, he had failed to find him away even once. But with a killer charge hanging over him he would not return, and he was out of the rodeo.…
* * *
IT WAS A solemn and silent group that rode over the trail to Aragon. Grimly, Rowdy thought that this was the last straw. He was through now. The rodeo had been his last hope. With that money, even though he had lost Jenny, he could pay off the mortgage on his ranch.
His thought of Jenny brought it home to him that he had scarcely thought of her for days. Ever since he had first seen her, several years before, he had dreamed of her. She had been an ideal girl, the prettiest one around, and all his attentions had been centered upon her. When they had become engaged, it was almost more than he could believe.
Yet after he had begun to see more of her and know her better, his first doubts of her had arisen. After all, there were other things than beauty, and although he told himself he was being unjust, Jenny seemed to be lacking in too many of them. Despite this, his loyalty made him refuse to accept the evidence of his senses until the day she had broken their engagement. For in spite of the shock and pain of that moment, he had felt a queer sense of escape and relief.
In town Rowdy was safely lodged in jail, and the morning sun was making a latticework of bars on the wall opposite the cell window when he awakened with a start. For an instant he lay still, then it hit him, and his heart went sick. After all his planning, he was stuck in jail on the day of the rodeo!
* * *
HE GOT UP slowly, dressed, and splashed his face in the bucket of cold water that had been left for him. Gloomily he stared out of the barred window at the crowded streets. Already the hitching rails were lined with horses, and there were many buckboards and spring wagons in town. In another hour the streets would be jammed. It began to look as if the boosters of Aragon and the annual Stockman’s Show and Rodeo would be right: that between two and three thousand spectators would be on hand for the show.
Yet as he paced the floor, cursing his luck and alternately staring out the window and going to the barred door, hours passed. He heard the band playing, and the confusion that heralded the big parade that opened the rodeo. And then suddenly Sheriff Ben Wells was at the bars.
“Rowdy, if I turn you loose to compete in this show, will you promise not to leave town?” Wells gnawed at his mustache. “I know you, son, and I never figured you’d shoot a man in the back, but that story of yours is plumb farfetched. But just now I got a lead that may help. Maybe we jumped to conclusions, so I’m goin’ to turn you loose for the duration of the rodeo.”
With a whoop of joy, Horn jumped to the opening door. Grabbing the sheriff’s hand, he tried to thank him, but Wells shook his head.
“Don’t thank me. Thank this young lady here.”
Rowdy turned quickly to face Vaho Rainey.
“You? You got here?”
“You invited me for the dance. Have you forgotten?” She laughed. “When I heard you were in jail, naturally I had to get you out! A girl can’t go to a dance with a man who’s in jail, can she, Sheriff?”
Ben Wells shook his head, his eyes twinkling. “Son,” he said seriously, “I don’t know where you found her or how you rate it, but you’ve got a wonderful girl there, and I’d sure latch on to her if I was you.”
Vaho reddened, but her eyes were bright. She was still wearing her denims and blue shirt, but she was sparkling this morning. Rowdy took her arm and squeezed it.
“How in the world did you do it?” he exclaimed.
“I’ll tell you later. Only it wasn’t just what I did. Now we have to get down to the rodeo grounds. Silverside is down there, waiting for you. We’ve covered him with a blanket so nobody will know who he is.”
Vaho had thought of everything, Rowdy found. Mike McNulty had rousted out the outfit Rowdy had purchased to wear in the rodeo, and in a short time Rowdy had bathed and changed. He came out, immaculate in dove-gray shirt and trousers, with a white hat and a black neckerchief. Black braid outlined his pockets. He wore his guns, but in new holsters, black and shining. His boots, which he had been breaking in around the ranch, felt good.
Vaho’s eyes widened. “Why, Rowdy!” she exclaimed. “You’re handsome!”
He blushed. “Me?” he choked. And as Mike McNulty and Pete Chamberlain went into roars of laughter, he flushed even deeper.
Hurriedly, he rushed over to Silverside and stripped the blanket from the horse. After a brief workout with the animal, he brought him back to the stall they had procured for him.
“Don’t let anybody near him,” he warned. “All I’ll have to do on that horse is throw the rope! He’s so smart he scares me!”
CHAPTER 6
Devil May Care
WITH VAHO AT his side, Rowdy turned toward the arena. The stands were jammed. Going through the gate toward the chutes, almost the first person Rowdy saw was Bart Luby. And with him was Jenny Welman!
Bart started and
scowled. “What are you doin’ out?” he demanded.
Jenny’s eyes had gone immediately to the girl, taking in Vaho’s shabby outdoor clothes with a quick contemptuous smile.
“I’m ridin’ in the show, Bart,” Rowdy drawled. “Reckon you’ll have me to beat, ropin’ and everything.”
“Where’d you get a horse?” Luby demanded suspiciously.
“I’ve got one.” Rowdy’s eyes shifted to Jenny. Suddenly he was no longer angry or even irritated with her. “Jenny,” he said pleasantly, “I want you to know Vaho Rainey. Miss Rainey, Miss Welman and Bart Luby.”
“Oh!” Jenny exclaimed. “You’re that Indian girl, aren’t you? Or a white girl who lives down in the wickiups? I’ve forgotten which.”
“Yes, that’s who I am,” Vaho said easily, and Rowdy grinned at the quick smile on her lips. It wouldn’t be necessary to protect Vaho, he could see. The contempt in Jenny’s voice had been evident, as was the malice, but Vaho was equal to it. “And it’s nice to be here today,” Vaho added.
“It must be,” Jenny fired back. “I hear it’s very dirty down there, and it would be a relief to get away for a while.”
“Any change is a relief,” Vaho replied gently. “You should try it sometime, or”—her voice was suddenly level—“would you rather continue to be a girl of the town?”
Before Jenny, whose face went white with fury, could reply, Vaho took Rowdy’s arm.
“Shall we go, dear?” she said sweetly.
As they strolled away, Jenny got her voice back. “Girl of the town!” she cried furiously. “Why, that no-account Indian! I could—”
“Forget it!” Bart said, shrugging. “She just meant you were a city girl.”
“I know what she meant!” Jenny flared.
But Luby was not listening. He was staring at his toes, thinking, and his thoughts were not pleasant. In spite of all his plans, Rowdy Horn would ride in the rodeo today, and if Wells had released him, it could only be on sufficient evidence to clear him.
Could it have been the testimony of this girl, Vaho, alone? He weighed that thoughtfully. Doubt arose, for there had been triumph in Rowdy Horn’s eyes. Well, no matter. Rowdy had no roping horse, and that was one event he could not hope to win. Nor would he win the bronc riding. For all that, however, Luby’s mind was not at ease. There was something wrong, something very wrong, where he was concerned.
As soon as Vaho Rainey and Rowdy reached the chutes, she had excused herself and disappeared. The parade was lining up for the ride around the arena, and McNulty led Silverside, saddled, but still under a blanket, up to where Rowdy Horn was waiting. Beside him was the palomino for Vaho.
The band began to play, and there were excited shouts from the crowd. Silverside’s head lifted, and the splendid-appearing horse tossed his head, eyes bright and nostrils distended, as old memories of parades and triumph flooded back. Rowdy stepped to his side.
“Yes, this is it, boy! Show them for me, just like you did for Buck!” The big horse bobbed his head, as if in assent.
Suddenly, Mike let out an awed exclamation. “Boss!” he whispered hoarsely. “Look!”
Startled by McNulty’s voice, Rowdy turned, and his mouth dropped open. Before him, resplendent in formfitting forest green and silver, was Vaho Rainey!
Never more beautiful in her life, the tall, dark girl looked proudly into his eyes—proudly, yet hesitantly—looking for the evidence that he found her lovely. And it was there. It was in the eyes of every man who had turned at Mike’s astonished exclamation.
Never in all her days had Jenny Welman been as lovely as this. Her pale blond beauty was a poor shadow beside this vivid loveliness, dark, flashing, proud.
“Am I all right?” Vaho asked, her eyes bright with fun. “I had the suit made, and saved it. I knew, somehow, you’d ride. And I wanted you to be proud of me!”
“Proud of you?” he shouted. “Honey, I feel like some fairy princess had waved a wand over a little woods girl and turned her into something better than the Queen of Sheba and Helen of Troy rolled into one! Wait till the crowd sees you!”
“Don’t you want, just a little,” she said gently, “to have Jenny Welman see me?” Her eyes sparkled as she asked the question primly.
He grinned. “I sure do!” he said.
Mike McNulty jerked the blanket from Silverside, and after helping Vaho into the saddle on the palomino, Rowdy Horn swung up himself.
Sheriff Ben Wells walked up with Dick Weaver, the rodeo boss. Weaver froze in midstride.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Ain’t that Silverside?”
At the magical name of the greatest rodeo horse of the southwest, men wheeled about. There were shouts, and others came running. They gathered around, staring.
“He’s Silverside, all right,” Horn said quietly.
Then the band struck up once more, and the parade began to move.
As if by magic that name had flown across the arena, so that by the time the contestants rode into the arena all eyes were turned to find the great horse, so miraculously back from the dead. And the eyes of the crowd went from the great horse to the rider, tall in the saddle, and to the girl in green and silver who rode beside him. Jenny Welman, hearing all the excited talk, turned in her saddle—she was riding beside Luby—and the smile on her face froze. The laughter went out of her. Beside that girl with Rowdy she herself looked shabby and small, and she knew it.
Bart Luby heard the name of Silverside, but would not turn. His heart pounded, and his lips tightened. This rodeo meant more to him than anything in the world, and he was going to win! He was going to win, no matter how!
There was scarcely a person in the crowd but understood what drama and excitement lay before them. Gossip in a small town flies quickly, and the fact that Jenny Welman had returned Rowdy Horn’s ring was known to them all, as was the trouble and rivalry between Bart Luby and the young rancher who would ride against him today.
The mysterious girl from the mountains, whom all had heard of but never seen, was before them now, riding proudly beside Rowdy. And to top it all, Rowdy Horn—out of the running when his horse, Cub, had gone lame—had come in at the last minute, freed from jail, to ride. And he was mounted on the greatest horse of the generation—Silverside!
Rowdy Horn watched carefully as he waited beside the chute. There were some good hands riding in this show. Still, he knew, the man he had to beat was Bart Luby.
Never before had he appeared before a crowd of this size. He had been riding all his life, and had appeared in various small-town rodeos, and had spent two summers breaking wild broncs for the rough string. For the sheer sport of it and a little mount money, he had ridden in tryouts when big showmen were testing contest stock for the big shows. But he was in no sense the professional that Luby was.
Roping was his specialty; it was part of his day’s work and had been for a long time, but he had never competed in such a show as this, even if it did not rank anywhere near tops in size.
Bart Luby, on the other hand, had been appearing in all the big shows and winning consistently, and he had been competing against the greatest performers in the business. Today, in the first event, the preliminaries in the calf roping, Rowdy would be riding a horse which for all its greatness was unfamiliar to him. Bitterly, he stared out at the dusty arena, soon to be the scene of battle and danger, and for the first time realized what this attempt really meant.
He was no stranger to the flying hoofs and tigerish bucking of outlaw horses or Brahma bulls. He had seen men die in the arena, had seen others crippled or broken under the lashing hoofs of some maddened bronc. But for Rowdy more than life was at stake out there today, and remembering Luby from the old days on the Bar O, he knew the man was fast and skillful. Undoubtedly, he had grown more so.
“I’m a fool,” Horn told himself. “I’m bucking a stacked deck. I’m not good enough for these hombres.”
After the parade was over, gloomily, Rowdy watched the first leppy dart from the chute
and leg it across the arena, with a cowboy on a flying paint horse behind it. That was Gus Petro, a Greek rider from Cheyenne. Doubts lost in sudden interest, Rowdy watched the dust clear, and heard the time called. He smiled. He could beat that. He knew he could beat it.
Yet when the official announcer announced his own name, and he heard that voice rolling out over the arena, something leaped inside him.
“Folks, here comes Rowdy Horn, of the Slash Bar, ridin’ that greatest ropin’ horse of all time—Silverside!”
The calf darted like a creamy streak, and Silverside took off with a bound. Instantly, Rowdy knew that all he had heard of the horse he bestrode was only half the truth. With flashing speed, the black horse with the splash of white on his side was after the fleeing calf. Horn’s rope shot out like an arrow, and in almost the same breath, Rowdy was off the horse, grounding the bawling, struggling calf and making a quick tie. He sprang away from the calf.
“There it is, folks!” Weaver’s voice boomed out over the arena. “Eleven seconds even, for Rowdy Horn on Silverside!”
Bart Luby’s eyes narrowed. It was a tough mark, yet he had tied it twice. He was off like a streak when his calf darted away from the chute. He roped, flopped the calf, and made his tie.
“Eleven and one-fifth seconds!” Weaver bawled.
Luby swore softly, his eyes bitter. With a jerk he whipped his horse’s head around and rode off to the stands. These were only preliminaries, and the final test was yet to be made. But he had never believed that Rowdy Horn would beat him, even by a fifth of a second in a tryout, and he didn’t like being beaten.
While the band played and the clowns ripped and tore around the tanbark, mimicking the performances of the preceding event, the contestants headed for the shack to draw horses for the saddle bronc riding contest.
Vaho was waiting for Rowdy near chute 5, from which he would ride. He found that he had drawn Devil May Care, a wicked bucker that had been ridden only twice the preceding year in twenty-two attempts, and not at all in the current season. Bart Luby had drawn an equally bad horse, Firefly.
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