"Call the poor ramblin' lightnin'-rod back," suggested a kindly puncher.
"He'll come back fast enough," asserted the perpetrator of the "joke." "It's thirty dry and dusty miles to the water-hole ranch. When he gets a look at how far it is to-morrow mornin' he'll sure back into the fence and come flyin' for Antelope with reins draggin'. Set 'em up again, Joe."
CHAPTER II
THE JOKE
Owing to his unaccustomed potations Sundown was perhaps a trifle over-zealous in taking the road at night. He began to realize this after he had journeyed along the dim, starlit trail for an hour or so and found no break in the level monotony of the mesa. He peered ahead, hoping to see the blur of a hill against the southern stars. The air was cool and clear and sweet. He plodded along, happy in the prospect of work. Although he was a physical coward, darkness and the solitudes held no enemies for him. He felt that the world belonged to him at night. The moon was his lantern and the stars were his friends. Circumstance and environment had wrought for him a coat of cheerful effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will. Out on the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat. He was at home. Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly height. A wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom. Great distances were but the highways of his heritage, each promising new vistas, new adventuring. His wayside fires were his altars, their smoke the incense to his gods. A true adventurer, albeit timid, he journeyed not knowing why, but rather because he knew no reason for not journeying. Wrapped in his vague imaginings he swung along, peering ahead from time to time until at last he saw upon the far background of the night a darker something shaped like a tiny mound. "That's her!" he exclaimed, joyously, and quickened his pace. "But Gee Gosh! I guess them fellas forgot I was afoot. That hill looks turruble far off. Mebby because it's dark." The distant hill seemed to keep pace ahead of him, sliding away into the southern night as he advanced. Having that stubbornness so frequently associated with timidity, he plodded on, determined to top the hill before morning. "Them fellas as rides don't know how far things are," he commented. "But, anyhow, the folks at that hotel will sure know I want the job, walkin' all night for it."
Gradually the outline of the hill became bolder. Sundown estimated that he had been traveling several hours, when the going stiffened to a slow grade. Presently the grade became steep and rocky. Thus far the road had led straight south. Now it swung to the west and skirted the base of the hill in a gradual ascent. Then it swung back again following a fairly easy slope to the top. His optimism waned as he saw no light ahead. The night grew colder. The stars flickered as the wind of the dawn, whispering over the grasses, touched his face. He paused for a moment on the crest of the hill, turned to look back, and then started down the slope. It was steep and rutted. He had not gone far when he stumbled and fell. His blanket-roll had pitched ahead of him. He fumbled about for it and finally found it. "Them as believes in signs would say it was about time to go to roost," he remarked, nursing his knee that had been cut on a fragment of ragged tufa. A coyote wailed. Sundown started up. "Some lonesome. But she sure is one grand old night! Guess I'll turn in."
He rolled in his blankets. Hardly had he adjusted his length of limb to the unevenness of the ground when he fell asleep. He had come twenty-five miles across the midnight mesas. Five miles below him was his destination, shrouded by the night, but visioned in his dreams as a palatial summer resort, aglow with lights and eagerly awaiting the coming of the new cook.
The dawn, edging its slow way across the mesas, struck palely on the hillside where he slept. A rabbit, huddled beneath a scrub-cedar, hopped to the middle of the road and sat up, staring with moveless eyes at the motionless hump of blanket near the road. In a flash the wide mesas were tinged with gold as the smouldering red sun rose, to march unclouded to the western sea.
Midway between the town of Antelope and the river Concho is the water-hole. The land immediately surrounding the water-hole is enclosed with a barb-wire fence. Within the enclosure is a ranch-house painted white, a scrub-cedar corral, a small stable, and a lean-to shading the water-hole from the desert sun. The place is altogether neat and habitable. It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud bank, it stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert, incapable, without irrigation, of producing anything more edible than lizards and horned toads. Why a homesteader should have chosen to locate there is a mystery. His reason for abandoning the place is glaringly obvious. Though failure be written in every angle and nook of the homestead, it is the failure of large-hearted enterprise, of daring to attempt, of striving to make the desert bloom, and not the failure of indolence or sloth.
Western humor like Western topography is apt to be more or less rugged. Between the high gateposts of the yard enclosure there is a great, twelve-foot sign lettered in black. It reads: "American Hotel." A band of happy cowboys appropriated the sign when on a visit to Antelope, pressed a Mexican freighter to pack it thirty miles across the desert, and nailed it above the gateway of the water-hole ranch. It is a standing joke among the cattle- and sheep-men of the Concho Valley.
Sundown sat up and gazed about. The rabbit, startled out of its ordinary resourcefulness, stiffened. The delicate nostrils ceased twitching. "Good mornin', little fella! You been travelin' all night too?" And Sundown yawned and stretched. Down the road sped a brown exclamation mark with a white dot at its visible end. "Guess he don't have to travel nights to get 'most anywhere," laughed Sundown. He kicked back his blankets and rose stiffly. The luxury of his yawn was stifled as he saw below him the ranchhouse with some strange kind of a sign above its gate. "If that's the hotel," he said as he corded his blankets, "she don't look much bigger than me own. But distances is mighty deceivin' in this here open-face country." For a moment he stood on the hillside, a gaunt, lonely figure, gazing out across the limitless mesas. Then he jogged down the grade, whistling.
As he drew near the ranch his whistling ceased and his expression changed to one of quizzical uncertainty. "That's the sign, all right,—'American Hotel,'—but the hotel part ain't livin' up to the sign. But some hotels is like that; mostly front."
He opened the ranch-house gate and strode to the door. He knocked timidly. Then he dropped his blanket-roll and stepped to a window. Through the grimy glass he saw an empty, board-walled room, a slant of sunlight across the floor, and in the sunlight a rusted stove. He walked back to the gateway and stood gazing at the sign. He peered round helplessly. Then a slow grin illumined his face. "Why," he exclaimed, "it's—it's a joke. Reckon the proprietor must be out huntin' up trade. And accordin' to that he won't be back direct."
He wandered about the place like a stray cat in a strange attic, timorous and curious. Ordinarily he would have considered himself fortunate. The house offered shelter and seclusion. There was clear cold water to drink and a stove on which to cook. As he thought of the stove the latitude and longitude of the "joke" dawned upon him with full significance. He drank at the water-hole and, gathering a few sticks, built a fire. From his blankets he took a tin can, drew a wad of newspaper from it, and made coffee. Then he cast about for something to eat. "Now, if I was a cow—" he began, when he suddenly remembered the rabbit. "Reckon he's got relations hoppin' around in them bushes." He picked up a stick and started for the gate.
Not far from the ranch he saw a rabbit crouched beneath a clump of brush. He flung his stick and missed. The rabbit ran to another bush and stopped. Encouraged by the little animal's nonchalance, he dashed after it with a wild and startling whoop. The rabbit circled the brush and set off at right angles to his pursuer's course. Sundown made the turn, but it was "on one wheel" so to speak. His foot caught in a prairie-dog hole and he dove headlong with an exclamation that sounded as much like "Whump!" as anything else. He uttered another and less forced exclamation when he discovered in the
tangle of brush that had broken his fall, another rabbit that had not survived his sudden visitation. He picked up the limp, furry shape. "Asleep at the switch," he said. "He ain't much bigger than a whisper, but he's breakfast."
Rabbit, fried on a stove-lid, makes a pretty satisfying meal when eating ceases to be a pleasure and becomes a necessity. Sundown wisely reserved a portion of his kill for future consumption.
As the morning grew warmer, he fell asleep in the shade of the ranch-house. Late in the afternoon he wakened, went into the house and made coffee. After the coffee he came out, rolled a cigarette, and sat smoking and gazing out across the afternoon mesas. "I feel it comin'," he said to himself. "And it's a good one, so I guess I'll put her in me book."
He rummaged in his blankets and unearthed a grimy, tattered notebook. Lubricating the blunt point of a stubby pencil he set to work. When he had finished, the sun was close to the horizon. He sat back and gazed sideways at his effort. "I'll try her on meself," he said, drawing up his leg and resting the notebook against his lean knee. "Wish I could stand off and listen to meself," he muttered. "Kind o' get the defect better." Then he read laboriously:—
"Bo, it's goin' to be hot all right;
Sun's a floodin' the eastern range.
Mebby it was kind o' cold last night,
But there's nothin' like havin' a little change.
Money? No. Only jest room for me;
Mountings and valleys and plains and such.
Ain't I got eyes that was made to see?
Ain't I got ears? But they don't hear much:
Only a kind of a inside song,
Like when the grasshopper quits his sad,
And says: 'Rickety-chick! Why, there is nothin' wrong!'
And after the coffee, things ain't so bad."
"Huh! Sounds all right for a starter. Ladies and them as came with you, I will now spiel the next section."
"The wind is makin' my bed for me,
Smoothin' the grass where I'm goin' to flop,
When the quails roost up in the live-oak tree,
And my legs feel like as they want to stop.
Pal or no pal, it's about the same,
For nobody knows how you feel inside.
Hittin' the grit is a lonesome game,—
But quit it? No matter how hard I tried.
But mebby I will when that inside song
Stops a-buzzin' like bees that's mad,
Grumblin' together: 'There's nothin' wrong!'
And—after the coffee things ain't so bad."
"Bees ain't so darned happy, either. They're too busy. Guess it's a good thing I went back to me grasshopper in the last verse. And now, ladies and gents, this is posituvely the last appearance of the noted electrocutionist, Sundown Slim; so, listen."
"Ladies, I've beat it from Los to Maine.
And, gents, not knowin' jest what to do,
I turned and slippered it back again,
Wantin' to see, jest the same as you.
Ridin' rods and a-dodgin' flies;
Eatin' at times when me luck was good.
Spielin' the con to the easy guys,
But never jest makin' it understood,
Even to me, why that inside song
Kep' a-handin' me out the glad,
Like the grasshopper singin': 'There's nothin' wrong!'
And—after the coffee things ain't so bad."
Sundown grinned with unalloyed pleasure. His mythical audience seemed to await a few words, so he rose stiffly, and struck an attitude somewhat akin to that of Henry Irving standing beside a milk-can and contemplating the village pump. "It gives me great pleasure to inform you"—he hesitated and cleared his throat—"that them there words of mine was expired by half a rabbit—small—and two cans of coffee. Had I been fed up like youse"—and he bowed grandly—"there's no tellin' what I might 'a' writ. Thankin' you for the box-office receipts, I am yours to demand, Sundown Slim, of Outdoors, Anywhere, till further notice."
Then he marched histrionically to the ranchhouse and made a fire in the rusted stove.
CHAPTER III
THIRTY MILES TO THE CONCHO
John Corliss rode up to the water-hole, dismounted, and pushed through the gate. His horse "Chinook" watched him with gently inquisitive eyes. Chinook was not accustomed to inattention when he was thirsty. He had covered the thirty miles from the Concho Ranch in five long, dry, and dusty hours. He nickered. "In a minute," said Corliss. Then he knocked at the ranch-house door. Riders of the Concho usually strode jingling into the ranch-house without formality. Corliss, however, had been gazing at the lean stovepipe for hours before he finally decided that there was smoke rising from it. He knocked a second time.
"She ain't locked," came in a rusty, smothered voice.
Corliss shoved the door open with his knee. The interior was heavy with smoke. Near the stove knelt Sundown trying to encourage the smoke to more perpendicular behavior. He coughed. "She ain't good in her intentions, this here stove. One time she goes and the next time she stays and takes a smoke. Her innards is out of gear. Whew!"
"The damper has slipped down," said Corliss.
"Her little ole chest-pertector is kind o' worked down toward her stummick. There, now she feels better a'ready."
"Cooking chuck?" queried Corliss, glancing round the bare room.
"Rabbit," replied Sundown. "When I hit this here hotel I was hungry. I seen a rabbit—not this here one, but the other one. This one was settin' in a bunch of-brush on me right-of-way. I was behind and runnin' to make up time. I kind o' seen the leetle prairie-dog give me the red to slow down, but it was too late. Hit his cyclone cellar with me right driver, and got wrecked. This here leetle wad o' cotton was under me steam-chest. No other passengers hurt, except the engineer."
Corliss laughed. "You're a railroad man, I take it. Belong in this country?"
Sundown rose from his knees and backed away from the stove. "Nope. Don't belong anywhere, I guess. My address when I'm to home is Sundown Slim, Outdoors, Anywhere, speakin' general."
"Come in afoot?"
"Uhuh. Kind o' thought I'd get a job. Fellas at Antelope told me they wanted a cook at this hotel. I reckon they do—and some boarders and somethin' to cook."
"That's one of their jokes. Pretty stiff joke, sending you in here afoot."
"Oh, I ain't sore, mister. They stole me nanny, all right, but I feel jest as good here as anywhere."
Corliss led Chinook to the water-hole. Sundown followed.
"Ever think how many kinds of water they was?" queried Sundown. "Some is jest water; then they's some got a taste; then some's jest wet, but this here is fine! Felt like jumpin' in and drinkin' from the bottom up when I lit here. Where do you live?"
"On the Concho, thirty miles south."
"Any towns in between?"
Corliss smiled. "No, there isn't a fence or a house from here to the ranch."
"Gee Gosh! Any cows in this country?"
"Yes. The Concho runs ten thousand head on the range."
"Had your supper?"
"No. I was late getting away from the ranch. Expected to make Antelope, but I guess I'll bush here to-night."
"Well, seein' you're the first boarder at me hotel, I'll pass the hash." And Sundown stepped into the house and returned with the half rabbit. "I got some coffee, too. I can cook to beat the band when I got somethin' to cook. Help yourself, pardner. What's mine is anybody's that's hungry. I et the other half."
"Don't mind if I do. Thanks. Say, you can cook?"
"Next to writin' po'try it's me long suit."
"Well, I'm no judge of poetry," said Corliss. "This rabbit tastes pretty good."
"You ain't a cop, be you?" queried Sundown.
"No. Why?"
"Nothin'. I was jest wonderin'."
"You have traveled some, I take it."
"Me? Say! I'm the ramblin' son with the nervous feet. Been round the world and back again on them same feet, and some freights. Had a pal onct.
He was a college guy. Run on to him on a cattle-boat. He writ po'try that was the real thing! It's ketchin' and I guess I caught it from him. He was a good little pal."
"What became of him?"
"I dunno, pardner. They was a wreck—but guess I'll get that coffee."
"How did you cross the Beaver Dam?" inquired Corliss as Sundown reappeared with his can of coffee.
"So that's what you call that creek back there? Well, it don't need no Beaver hitched on to it to say what I'd call it. I come through last night, but I'm dry now."
The cattle-man proffered Sundown tobacco and papers. They smoked and gazed at the stars. "Said your friend was a college man. What was his name?" queried Corliss, turning to glance at Sundown.
"Well, his real name was Billy Corliss, but I called him jest Bill."
"Corliss! When did you lose track of him?"
"In that wreck, 'bout a year ago. We was ridin' a fast freight goin' west. He said he was goin' home, but he never said where it was. Hit a open switch—so they said after—and when they pulled the stitches, and took that plaster dingus off me leg, I starts out huntin' for Billy. Nobody knowed anything about him. Wasn't no signs in the wreck,—so they said. You see I was in that fadeaway joint six weeks."
"What did he look like?"
"Billy? More like a girl than a man. Slim-like, with blue eyes and kind o' bright, wavy-like hair. He never said nothin' about his folks. He was a awful quiet kid."
John Corliss studied Sundown's face. "You say he was killed in a wreck?"
"I ain't sure. But I reckon he was. It was a bad one. He was ridin' a empty, just ahead of me. Then the whole train buckled up and somethin' hit me on the lid. That's all I remember, till after."
"What are you going to do now? Go back to Antelope?"
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