The Cowpuncher

by Bradford Scott

  The rope was there, neatly coiled. Huck hauled it out, shouldered it and staggered down the steps. It was a heavy weight and it was rough going through the dark; but he made almost as good time back to the burning wreckage as he had coming from it. He could see the conductor’s lantern bobbing about the dark mass of the avalanche; but Lank Mason still crouched beside Gaylord, coughing and choking in the smoke.

  “Gettin’ hotter’n hell,” he panted as Huck came sliding down the embankment.

  “That powder car’s blazin’ fine, too,” the cowboy grunted. “She’ll go any minute now.”

  With swift, sure hands he looped one end of the rope about the steel sill.

  “Get two strong beams, ten or twelve feet long,” he shouted back at Mason as he clambered up the slope again, trailing the rope.

  To reach the track and secure the free end of the rope to the outside rail took only minutes. The rope sagged down the slope with plenty of slack.

  Huck found a spot halfway down the slope where a large flat stone provided secure footing.

  “Bring those beams up here,” he called to Lank.

  The miner panted up with them, mumbling questions which Huck didn’t have time to answer. He handed one to the cowboy, who stood the unsplintered end on the flat rock, thrusting the splintered end through a loop twisted in the slack of the rope.

  “Hold it,” he grunted, took the other timber and thrust one end through the widened loop.

  With Lank holding the upright beam steady, Huck gripped the far end of the horizontal beam and walked around the upright, winding the slack of the rope about the vertical beam. And now he had a crude Spanish windlass capable of exerting a tremendous pull on the sill that penned Old Tom.

  “If the rope’ll hold, we’ll do it,” he told Mason. “You come and take the end of this—the upright will stand by itself now the rope’s taut. Wind her up slow and steady and pull the sill up the slope. I’m going to jerk Tom out soon as the weight’s off him.”

  “If that powder let’s go, you won’t have a chance!” warned Mason. “Let me go down, son.”

  “I’m faster on my feet and stronger,” Huck replied. “You’re better here. All right, steady, now.”

  Swiftly he lunged back into the inferno of smoke and fire. The rope hummed with tension and as Huck crouched beside Old Tom, the heavy steel sill began to slowly move up the sloping timber. As it moved, the lower end of the timber and the wreckage to which it was bolted raised slightly, easing the pressure on Gaylord’s chest.

  The old man opened his eyes, coughed, shuddered, stared dazedly about him. His glance centered on the cowboy crouched beside him, shielding him with his own body from the withering heat of the fire which crept nearer and nearer. Understanding brightened his pain-glazed eyes.

  “Get out, son,” he croaked. “Get out and leave me—it ain’t no use—that powder’s due to let go—get out and save yoreself while you can.”

  Huck Brannon, his hair crisping and the clothes on his back smoking from the heat, grinned painfully.

  “Go to hell, you old loafer,” he gasped. “Who’s doin’ this, anyhow?”

  With a moan, Old Tom fainted again. Huck crouched lower, hands ready to grip the beam the instant the sill lifted.

  He could hear Lank Mason grunting and cursing above the roar of the flames. A distant shout sounded as the conductor came stumbling back up the track. With a crash a whole side of the powder car fell away. Huck could see the squat containers and the tongues of fire reaching toward them. Stinging sparks showered his uncovered head. The smoke rolled about him in hot, choking clouds.

  He blinked his streaming eyes and strained ears that were now beginning to ring queerly. He could no longer see the moving sill and pitched his hearing to the crunching that would denote its passage from the beam to the rubble of the embankment.

  Through a haze of pain he heard it, felt the sudden upward spring of the beam. He gripped the rough wood with blistered hands, felt the seared skin sluff off in a mist of white agony. With every atom of his sinewy strength he heaved at the beam, lifting till his sinews cracked and his swelling muscles threatened to crush his bones.

  The beam creaked, groaned, resisted stubbornly, then gave with a rush. Huck hurled it aside, stooped over Old Tom Gaylord and lifted his limp body. He could hear Lank shouting anxiously. From the tracks above came the conductor’s warning bellow. Huck reeled about and staggered painfully up the embankment.

  “Hightail, you fellers!” he shouted hoarsely, “she’s gonna let go! Hightail, you can’t help me—you’ll jest get in my way!”

  Cursing insanely, they obeyed him. Lank topped the rise and pounded after the conductor. Flaming timbers fell full upon the powder containers as the end of the car gave way. The fire roared its triumph. Miles above him, dancing in a welter of smoke and agony, Huck could make out the lip of the embankment and the shining rails.

  He strained toward it, reeling drunkenly, the slight body of Old Tom Gaylord an increasing weight with every wavering step. He slipped, fell to one knee and flung out a hand that touched the cold steel of the outer rail. He gripped the iron, drew himself over the lip, reeled erect and lurched down the track. A dozen frenzied strides, a score, twice a score—

  Behind him there was a mighty fluff of bluish smoke, a red blaze that paled the shrinking stars, a roar like the rending of creations. The mighty concussion flung the cowboy and the man he carried as by the thrust of a giant hand. He reeled, scrambled, tried to keep his balance, and plunged headlong. Dazzling white light blazed before his eyes as he struck the rough ties, then wave on wave of pain-streaked blackness hurled him into bottomless depths of chilling cold.

  Huck Brannon awoke with his aching head on a pillow and his pain-racked body in a comfortable bunk. To his ears came a clanging and crashing and hissing interspersed by a metallic chattering and the shouts of men.

  For a moment he lay staring up at a low, boarded ceiling. He sniffed the smell of boiling coffee and food cooking and realized that in spite of the pain that racked him, he was terrifically hungry. With a vast effort he turned his head—and looked straight into the face of an impressive-looking man he couldn’t remember ever having seen, who gazed down at him from a pair of frosty blue eyes of amazing keenness.

  Their owner was well above middle height and massively and robustly built. His shoulders were of great breadth, his arms long and powerful. He had a craggy eagle’s beak of a nose above a wide, tightly clamped mouth whose sternness was relieved by the numerous quirkings of the corners. A snowy bush of crinkly white hair frizzed back from a dome-shaped forehead. He nodded to Huck and spoke to him in a deep and resonant voice.

  “Hmm! Decided to come out of it at last, eh? How you feel?”

  “About as if I’d been dragged through a knothole and then hung on a barbed wire fence to dry,” Huck admitted. “Otherwise not so bad. Everything seems to be in working order.” He gingerly flexed his arms and legs and swiveled his head from side to side.

  The big oldster grunted. “You’re lucky,” he said. “There were rocks and chunks of iron and big timbers piled all over the place where we found you. When you were knocked down, you sort rolled under the bulge of the cliff. Reckon that saved you.”

  Huck sat up abruptly, despite the protests of a brand-new set of pains that his sudden movement stabbed through him.

  “Old Tom—Old Tom Gaylord”—he panted, fighting the nausea that crawled around the pit of his stomach—“did he—”

  “You can’t kill a hobo,” the old man growled. “He’s in the bunk up ahead of you with a couple of broken ribs and a badly bruised chest and back. Keep him laid up for a month or two, I guess. He owes you his life. I heard the whole story from the freight conductor and that miner-fellow.”

  Huck sank back onto his pillow, much relieved. The old man gazed at him with those canny eyes.

  “Where you heading, son?” he asked.

  “The mines over to Esmeralda,” Huck replied, remembering Lank Ma
son’s destination. “Expect to find work there,” he added, recalling abruptly that the lantern used by himself and his companions was responsible for the fire and subsequent explosion.

  The old man might be a member of the railroad police and as such would doubtless act harshly toward wandering knights of the road with no legitimate destination in view. Honest workmen in search of employment he might regard in a less gloomy light.

  The old man’s gaze fixed upon Huck’s sinewy right hand, the burns grease-smeared, which lay palm upward upon the rough blanket.

  “Those callouses don’t look like the kind that come from a pick and shovel,” he remarked dryly, adding with meaning, “particularly those on the thumb and first finger.”

  Huck’s gray eyes met the cold blue ones steadily.

  “I haven’t anything to hide,” he said quietly. “Yeah, those across the palm were made by a grass rope, and that one on the thumb—well, because a man practices the draw doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a cow-thief or a dry-gulcher.”

  “Not necessarily,” the old man agreed. “even if it is mighty unusual to find a cowboy riding a manifest freight and heading for a mining camp. Well, that’s your business, and what you did to save that old fellow was commendable—and smart.”

  “Where am I—and where’s Lank?” Huck asked.

  “You are in a wreck-train bunk-car,” the old man replied. “And the big miner—that’s Lank, I guess—is helping the crew clean up the mess.

  “We’ll be rolling in about half an hour, now,” he added, “and this outfit is headed for Esmeralda, the mining town. If you decide to stay there for a spell and—work, you might drop in and see me when I come back this way next month.”

  Before Huck could form a question, the old man turned and passed through the end door of the car.

  A moment later a capped and aproned Negro stuck a shining black face through the doorway and flashed a dazzling set of ivories at the cowboy.

  “Howdy, boss, and how you feelin’?” he said. “Figurate you could do with a right smart helpin’ of po’k chops and fried ‘taters ‘bout now. Like to hab me bring the vittles in here to you?”

  “I can make it to the table, thanks just the same,” Huck told him, swinging his feet stiffly to the floor and reaching for his clothes, which lay neatly folded on a nearby bench.

  The darky grinned and bobbed his head.

  “By the way,” Huck called as he turned back to the cook car, “who was the big feller who was talking to me just now?”

  “Dat was de big feller, for sho’,” grinned the darky. “Dat gen’man was nobody else but Mistuh Jaggers Dunn, de gen’ral manager of dis whole railroad.”

  “Jaggers Dunn?”

  “Yassuh, dat’s what de boys call him when he ain’t ‘round—Jaggers—Mistuh James G. Dunn is de sorta uppity proper way of his namin’, I perspaculate. He jest headed back to his private car, de Winona, what’s hooked onter de rear end of de Western Flyer standin’ in back of us. Ol’ Flyer’s ‘bout ready to pull out, now de track is cleaned up again. Yeah, dere she comes now, whackety-whack-in’ past de sidin’. We all will be headin’ for Esmeralda soon as she clears.”

  However, two long coal drags rumbled past before the wreck train was given a clear block.

  “They’re switchin’ them strings of black diamonds in front of the second section of the Western Flyer,” the wreck train foreman remarked to Huck. “That will delay the second section still more, but it can’t be helped. Coal is mighty important on this division—can’t take a chance on the supply gettin’ too low. Have to haul it a long ways to Esmeralda—that’s a division point for the C. & P., you know—and the big yards and shops are there.”

  “Must be mighty expensive, making a long haul like that,” the cowboy observed.

  “It is,” said the foreman, “but they ain’t nothin’ to do ‘bout it. No mines in this district, and you gotta have fuel to keep a railroad goin’. Coal bill for the Mountain Division is jest ‘bout double, mebbe more, what it costs on any other division. There she clears, and old Sam’s tootin’ two shorts. All ‘board for Esmeralda, gents!”

  VI

  Sue Doyle

  The Bar X Ranch stood strategically in the center of a wide, sweeping valley. To the north and south as far as the eye could see, rolled rich and luxurious grassland, with heavy gramma grass reaching belly-high to a good-sized horse. Cotton-woods, cool and inviting in the warm autumn sun, dotted the range.

  To the east and west, hills rose gently to mark the outer boundaries of this pleasant, sun-warmed valley. A broad leisurely stream stemmed out of the upper reaches of the northern slopes, feeding the soil with its watery richness.

  Large herds of cattle watched by lazy-riding cowboys grazed and wandered along the banks of the meandering stream. The cattle were fat and sleek and content.

  Sue Doyle, in the midst of all this rich contentment and serenity, felt its gnawing contrast to her own state of mind. For a long time she had been lying on her back in the shade of a large elm tree that stood directly in front of the low, rambling ranchhouse. She stared moodily and sightlessly up through the leaves to the opaque blue of the Texas sky; her mouth was drawn in a fretful line and her slender fingers drummed nervously on the turf.

  Suddenly a shadow fell across her line of vision. For an instant it was only a patch of darkness. Then it took shape.

  “Dad!” she cried, suddenly agitated, and rose to her feet with inexplicable speed. In fact, she behaved just as she had, as a child, when she’d been caught trying to roll a cigarette behind the barn. “I didn’t see you.”

  “I reckon you didn’t,” said her father.

  Old Man Doyle, as he was called by all who knew him, including his hired hands, was short, thin and wiry; his hair was scraggly, with patches of red, sun-frazzled scalp showing through where the hair was thinning. The patches were hidden now, by an old, battered Stetson that crowned his top.

  From under its misshapen brim stared two mildly inquisitive brown eyes, between which ran a short, decisive nose whose end exploded into a bright red bulb. The mouth was long and wide, and was shaped for loud and raucous laughter.

  For a small man, his voice was deep and resonant. His talk seemed to rumble up out of his belly rather than from his vocal chords.

  “I didn’t see you,” Sue repeated, stupidly. She was a head taller than her father and looked down upon him with a curiously disturbed glance.

  He looked at her shrewdly for a moment and cocked his head on a side. “Yuh ain’t been seein’ anythin’ lately,” he said good-naturedly. Then his tone grew more earnest. “What’s troublin’ yuh, lass? Yuh ain’t been yourself for a couple weeks now—ever since the boys come back from K.C. What’s eatin’ yuh?”

  “Nothing,” she replied quickly. Almost too quickly. “I’m restless, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” said Old Man Doyle, eyeing her steadily. Her gaze dropped under his. “I reckon I ain’t much of a ma to yuh, Sue. Been a mite easier if she’d of been here for yuh to talk to. Ma’s are a sight better’n easier to talk to than pa’s, I reckon.”

  Sue’s white teeth showed in a smile. Impulsively she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. For a moment they grinned at each other self-consciously.

  “You’ve been both to me, Dad,” she said. Then her tone deepened as her eye fell on a big bluehorse, cropping grass in the courtyard. “Do you think anything’s happened to Huck?”

  Doyle’s eye followed her gaze. She was staring at Huck Brannon’s Smoke. His brow corrugated in a wrinkle, then smoothed out. When he spoke, his tone was casual, hearty and innocent.

  “To Huck Brannon?” he cried. “Nothin’ could happen to that young hellion.”

  “Then why hasn’t he come back? Why didn’t he return with the rest of the boys?”

  “Why, they told yuh, Sue,” replied her father, his eyes peering keenly at her from beneath his battered hat. “He had a coupla drinks too many an’ jest forgot to get up the next mornin�
�; an’ the boys said he was plumb busted. I reckon he kinda got stranded in K.C.”

  “But why didn’t he wire for money to come back?”

  “I figger he wouldn’t want to do that, daughter. You know Huck.”

  “Then where is he now?”

  “I cal’late he’s hoofin’ it back, Sue—that is—if he aims to come back atall.”

  The blood ebbed slowly from the girl’s face. Her eyes widened to deep, amber pools. “What do you mean, Dad?”

  “I mean, mebbe he’s left the Bar X for good. He always said he’d wander on, some fine day.”

  For a moment the only sound in the afternoon was the far-off tinkle of a horse’s bell. “Yes, I know,” Sue said. “Only—no, it just isn’t possible!”

  “How do yuh know, daughter,”

  “I do know it,” she replied quickly. She couldn’t tell her father about kissing Huck. Not when it might look as if Huck was staying away because of it. She pointed to Smoke instead.

  “Huck’s horse is here. He’d never leave his horse. Besides, his clothes are here too—and his guns.”

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied hesitantly.

  “Wal, I reckon a hombre can get other clothes an’ buy another hoss.”

  “No, no,” she insisted. “Huck wouldn’t go away without—I’m sure something must have happened to him! I’m sure of it! We’d have heard something by now.”

  Doyle surveyed his daughter, from the tips of her small booted feet to the crest of her thick, wavy black hair. She colored under his penetrating gaze, but her eyes held firm.

  “Wal,” he drawled, “ ‘pears to me that yuh been mighty concerned over that cowboy since he ain’t come back.” He hesitated a moment, then, “Don’t tell me yuh’ve gone soft on Huck, Sue?”

  It was a question that demanded an answer. For a moment, her glance held steady, then it faltered. “I don’t know, Dad. I honestly don’t know.” She looked up into his face again. “I guess I sort of got used to riding with him and being with him—I don’t know, Dad. All I know is that I’m lonely when Huck’s not around. And so I miss him.”