The Hash Knife Outfit

by Zane Grey

  “Bud, you surprise me,” rejoined Jim, mildly. Then he advised the outfit to turn in and be up at daylight.

  Jim rode through the colorful rock-wall gateway of Yellow Jacket, imagining himself Vercingetorix riding his black stallion at the head of his army into one of the captured cities.

  On his hurried visit to Jed Stone he had scarcely noted details of this wild and beautiful retreat. But now he had eyes for everything.

  “Wal, we’ll shore have hell cuttin’ a road in heah,” Curly was observing. “Reckon it’ll have to be at the up end of the canyon.”

  The trail wound among big sycamores and spruces, a remarkable combination for contrast, of green and white and silver, and of gold. The brook brawled between mossy banks of amber moss, and at the ford it was deep enough and swift enough to make the horses labor.

  “Cain’t cross heah in a spring an’ fall freshet, that’s shore,” went on Curly. “By golly! this place gets under my skin.”

  Blocks of red and yellow rock lay scattered beyond the gateway, with tall pines and spruces shading them, except in occasional grassy open sunlit nooks. The gray walls converged from the gate, sculptured by nature into irregular and creviced ramparts, festooned with bright-red vines and bronze lichens, and with ledges supporting little spruces, and with crags of every shape lifting weathered tops to the fringe of pines on the rim.

  There was a long slow ascent thinning from forest to parklike ground, up to the old cabin. Indeed, Jim meant to preserve this relic of rustler and outlaw days.

  “What’s thet white thing stuck on the door? Looks like paper to me,” said the sharp-eyed Bud.

  Curiously they rode up to the cabin, dismounting one by one. Jim saw a dirty page of a lined notebook pegged into the rotten woodwork of the door. Upon it was scrawled in a crude but legible handwriting the word “Mañana.” And under it had been drawn the rude sketch of a hash knife, somehow compelling and suggestive.

  “Dog-gone! What’d they mean?” exclaimed Jim, in perplexity.

  “Clear as print,” replied Curly, tersely.

  “Wal, heah’s four bits thet Croak Malloy left thet,” added Slinger.

  “Well?” demanded Jim, impatiently.

  “Boss, yore mind’s so full of ranch an’ house an’—wal, an’ so forth, thet it ain’t workin’,” explained Bud. “Mañana means tomorrer. An’ the knife says they’ll come back pronto to make hash out of us.”

  “Oh, is that all?” returned Jim, with a laugh. “Bud, life does not seem very bright and hopeful for you just now.”

  “Hellno! I got brains an’ six-sense eyesight,” replied the gloomy cowboy.

  “We’ll throw the packs under the pine trees there. No sleeping in that buggy cabin for me,” said Jim. “Jeff, I’d rather you didn’t cook here unless it storms. You can build a fireplace under the extension roof there. … Say, there’s an open-roofed extension at the back, too. Used for horses. Well, here we are. Let’s rustle. Slinger, your job is to use your eyes.”

  “Boss, there’s two holes to this burrow,” spoke up Bud.

  “Where’s the other?”

  “Reckon it’s aboot three miles west, where the canyon boxes,” replied Curly, pointing. “Higher an’ not so rough. If I recollect, the trail grades down easy. We’ll cut the road through there. It’ll take some blastin’.”

  “We’ll take a chance on that end,” said Jim. “Bud, I tell you what you can do. While we pitch camp you ride up and find the best place to cut our poles. But remember, it must be back in the woods, out of sight. No defacing the beauty of this property!”

  “Funny how some fellars are,” observed Bud, philosophizing. “Beooty first an’ last, an’ always in wimmen.”

  Then he rode away. Jim gazed after him in perplexity. “What’s wrong with Bud?” he asked.

  “His nose an’ his feelin’s are hurt,” replied Cherry Winters.

  “You forget, Boss. You swore you’d give him away,” drawled Curly. “An’ the poor kid is in love. I’ve seen him like this sixty-nine times.”

  “Rustle, you gazabos,” ordered Jim, rather sharply, as he dismounted. It scarcely pleased him—the implication that Bud was in love with his sister. How true it might be and probably was! Everybody fell in love with Gloriana, who certainly was not worth such wholesale homage. Right there Jim eradicated the last remnant of foolish pride or vanity of family or whatever it was, and acknowledged to himself that Gloriana could do far worse than marry a fine, clean, fire-spirited cowboy like Curly Prentiss. Suppose Curly had looked at a good deal of red liquor—had shot a number of men, some fatally—and had been generally a wild harum-scarum cowboy? That was the way of the West—the making of a pioneer rancher. Jim was beginning to appreciate the place cowboys held in the settling of the rangeland. It could not be overestimated by any intelligent man. Thus he leaned a little, perhaps almost unconsciously, toward Curly in the vague and grave problem of his sister’s future.

  Jim set the outfit to work, and had no small hand in the cutting and trimming of pine poles. Bud had located a fine stand of long straight trees, growing so close together that there was scarcely any foliage except at the top. This particular grove would benefit by a good thinning out. The peeling of the green bark was no slight task. Some of the boys proved adept at that. And Bud and Lonestar were good at snaking the logs down to the cabin site. Jim had tried this “snaking” job more than once, and he simply could not do it. All it consisted of appeared to be a lasso around the pommel of the saddle, with the other end tied to the small end of a pole, and then a dragging through the woods. The trick was, of course, to keep the small sharp end of the pole off the ground, and from catching under roots and rocks. By sunset that first day there were a dozen or more skinned pines, yellow and sticky and odorous, lying in a row in the grass where Jim intended to build his wonderful house. It was an actual start. He thrilled, and thought of the dusky-eyed girl for whom he was going to make a home there.

  Ten days of uninterrupted labor followed. Slinger Dunn had trailed the Hash Knife outfit to Black Brakes, the very retreat to which he had surmised they would go; and according to him they had stayed there, or at least had not ridden north on the trail toward Yellow Jacket. When Jim allowed himself to think of it he was vastly concerned. The prospect of a ranch and a home within twenty miles of the hardest and most notorious gang in Arizona was almost unthinkable. They would have to be dealt with. Nevertheless, Jim nursed a conviction that Jed Stone would turn out to be the kind of man Uncle Jim had vowed he was. To be sure, all Jim had to substantiate such faith was the fact of Stone’s leaving Yellow Jacket, and an undefinable something Jim felt.

  One night Jim overheard Curly and Bud talking. It was late, the fire had died down so that it cast only ruddy flickering shadows, and no doubt the boys thought Jim was sound asleep. Bud had seemed more like his true self lately, and had forgiven the blow on his nose and the affront to his vanity. He worshiped Curly like a brother.

  “It’s a fool job, I tell you, Curly,” Bud was saying, almost in a whisper. “Like as not Malloy will burn this pile of logs while we’re in Flag.”

  “Shore he will, or more like wait till the house is half up,” agreed Curly. “But, dog-gone-it, Bud, I cain’t go against the boss. He has a way of makin’ me soft. Shore as hell he’ll stop my drinkin’. I’m jest a-rarin’ fer a bust. It’s due in Flag this heah trip, an’ honest to God, Bud, I’ll be afraid to take a drink.”

  “I feel the same, but I’m gonna get orful drunk onct more or die tryin’. … Curly, if you don’t watch out Jim will argue you or coax you to stop gun-throwin’. An’ then you’ll be slated for a quiet rest under a pine tree!”

  “Uh-ugh. I practice just the same as ever, Bud, only on the sly.”

  “Wal, I’m glad. If I don’t miss my bet we’re gonna need some gun-throwin’. Slinger don’t like this ’possum-playin’ of the Hash Knife. He knows. Curly, what do you think? Slinger was tellin’ me he reckoned he oughta dog them rustlers, an’ pick them
off one at a time, with a rifle.”

  “Slinger cain’t do thet, no more than I could. Shore I’m not Injun enough. But you know what I mean.—What’d you say, Bud?”

  “I ast him why he oughta. An’ he said for Molly’s sake.”

  “Shore. Thet same thing worries me a lot. I never seen a girl love a fellar like she loves Jim. Dog-gone! It’d shore be … Wal, Croak Malloy will shoot Jim the first time he lays eyes on him, no matter where.”

  “Curly, I agree with you. Croak would. But I bet you Slinger gets to him first. Because, Curly, old pard, our backwoods cowboy is turrible in love with Gloriana May. Did you get thet?”

  Curly swore surprisingly for him, and not under his breath by any means.

  “Not so loud. You’ll wake up somebody,” admonished Bud, in a fierce whisper.

  “Shore he is, Bud,” admitted Curly. “But thet’s nothin’. I’ve lost my haid. So’ve you, an’ all the boys. The hell of it is Glory is in love with Slinger.”

  “Wow! You are out of your haid. He amuses Glory—fascinates her, mebbe, ’cause she’s crazy aboot desperadoes, but thet’s all, pard,” returned Bud, with all the heartwarming loyalty of his nature.

  “Shore sounds queer—for me to say that aboot Glory,” went on Curly. “Lord knows I mean no disrespect. She’s a thoroughbred. But, Bud, jest consider. She’s an Easterner. She’s young. She’s full of sentiment an’ romance. An’ she’s had some kind of trouble. Deep. An’ it’s hurt her. Wal, this damn Slinger Dunn is far better-lookin’ than any of us—than any cowpuncher I ever seen. He’s a wonderful chap, Bud. If I wasn’t so jealous of him that I want to shoot him in the back—I—I’d love him myself. It wouldn’t be so strange for a gurl like Glory to fall haid over heels in love with him. An’, honest, I’m scared so I’m afraid to go to Flag.”

  “Nonsense! Any damn fool could hev seen you had the inside track with Glory. Sure, if you back out an’ show yellow, Slinger, or somebody else, will beat you. Don’t you think I’m backin’ out. I reckon Glory couldn’t see me with a spy-glass, but I’m in the race an’ I got a flyin’ start. When I raved aboot Slinger havin’ her picture she gave me one, an’ a darn sight newer an’ prettier than his.”

  Curly swore again. “Wal, can you beat thet? Shore she wouldn’t give one to me. … Women are no good, Bud.”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s thet bad, Curly,” replied Bud. “They’re damn hard to figger. I reckon Glory jest likes me. Why, she laughs an’ cuts up with me. She’s sorta shy with you.”

  “Shy nothin’. Shore I haven’t seen her a lot of times—that is, to talk to. Twice at the corral—three times in the livin’-room, when I went in to see Jim—once at Babbitt’s store—an’ at the dance. That was the best. My Gawd! I cain’t get back my breath. … Bud, she was only curious aboot my gun-play. It makes me sick as a dog to remember the fights I’ve been in, let alone talk aboot them. But she kept at me till I got mad. Then she froze an’ said she guessed I wasn’t much of a desperado, after all.”

  “Haw! Haw!” laughed Bud, low and mellow. “Curly, what thet little lady needs is a dose of Croak Malloy.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  JIM blazed a road out of Yellow Jacket. His authority was not questioned by any one of the cowboys, but his ability as an engineer certainly was.

  “You gotta drive wagons up this grade,” asserted Bud, repeatedly. “You wasn’t so pore runnin’ a straight-line drift fence, but this hyar’s a different matter. You don’t savvy grades.”

  “All right, Bud. Maybe I’m not so darn smart as I think I am,” replied Jim, laying a trap for Bud. “Suppose we go back and run it all over. You can be the engineer. That’ll cut two days off our Christmas vacation in Flag. Too bad, but that road must be right.”

  The howl that went up from the Diamond was vociferous and derisive, and it effectually disposed of Bud.

  “Aw, Boss, mebbe it ain’t. I reckon it’ll work out—an’ any little grade can be eased up after,” he rejoined, meekly.

  Twenty miles on through the slowly ascending forest they struck a cattle trail which afforded good travel, and in due course led them to the Payson road, and eventually the ranch where they had left the chuck-wagon. They stayed there all night, and the following night camped at the edge of the snow, only one more day’s ride to Flag.

  Next afternoon late a tired, cold, dirty, unshaven, but happy group of cowboys rode into town, and there they separated. Jim had reasons to shake Curly and Bud, and they manifested no great desire to continue on with him.

  Flagerstown was windy and bleak. The snow had been shoveled or had blown off the streets, down which piercing dusty gusts whipped in Jim’s face. But it would have taken an unfaceable blizzard or an impassable prairie fire to have daunted Jim’s soaring spirits. He had two important errands before rushing out to the ranch, and he did not want them to take long, for his horse was pretty warm. Dismounting in front of the jeweler’s, Jim hurried in. The proprietor, with whom Jim had left an order, was not in, but his son was, a young Westerner whom Jim did not like.

  “Mr. Miller in?” he asked.

  “No. Father’s out of town. But I can wait on you. … The diamond ring is here—if you still want it,” returned the young man.

  Jim stared. What in the devil did this nincompoop mean?

  “Certainly I want it. I paid in advance. Let me have it, quick, please,” retorted Jim.

  The jeweler produced a little white box, from which glistened a beautiful diamond. Jim took it, trying to be cool, but he was burning and thrilling all over. Molly’s engagement ring! It was a beauty—pretty big and valuable, he thought, now he actually saw what he had ordered. Molly would be surprised. She did not even know Jim had ordered it. And sight of her eyes, when they fell upon it, would be worth ten times the price.

  “Thanks. I reckon it’s all right. I was careful about size,” said Jim, and pocketing the ring he strode out to his horse, which he led down the street. “Funny look that gazabo gave me,” he soliloquized, thoughtfully, and he dismissed the incident by admitting to himself he must have been rather amusing to the clerk. Then he went into Babbitt’s, where he had left another order, for a Christmas present for his uncle, and one for Molly. Securing the packages, which were rather large and heavy, and which he did not trouble to open, he hurried out through the store. In the men’s-furnishing department a bright red silk scarf caught his eye, and he swerved to the counter.

  “I’d like that red scarf,” he said to the girl clerk, “and a pair of buckskin gloves.”

  The girl neither spoke nor moved. Then Jim looked at her—and there stood Molly Dunn, with white and agitated face. Jim was perfectly thunderstruck. Could he be dreaming? But Molly’s gasp, “Oh—Jim!” proved this was reality.

  “What—what does this mean?” he stammered.

  “I’m workin’ heah, Jim,” she whispered. “Mawnin’s I go to school an’ afternoons I’m heah.”

  “For Heaven’s sake!—A clerk in Babbitt’s?” he exclaimed.

  “Di-didn’t you—get my letter?” she faltered, her eyes unnaturally large and frightened.

  “Letter? No, I didn’t. How could I get a letter when I’ve been three weeks in the woods?”

  “I—I left it—with your uncle.”

  “Molly, I just rode in. Haven’t been home. What’s wrong? Why are you here?” Jim leaned against the counter, fighting to check the whirl of his thoughts. Molly’s eyes suddenly expressed a poignant dismay.

  “Oh, Jim—I’m so sorry—you had to come in heah—not knowin’,” she cried, piteously. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. … But I—I’ve left your home. … I’ve broke our engagement.”

  “Molly!” he ejaculated, in hoarse incredulity.

  “It’s true, Jim. … But you mustn’t stand there—”

  “Why, for God’s sake?” he burst out.

  “Please go, Jim. I—I’ll see you later—an’ tell you-”

  “No. You can tell me here why you jilted me,” he i
nterrupted, harshly.

  “Missouri—I—I didn’t,” she said, huskily, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Was Gloriana mean to you?” Jim suddenly demanded.

  “She was lovely to me. Kind an’ sweet. An’ she—she tried to meet me on my own level—so I wouldn’t see the difference be—between us … but I did. I—I wasn’t fit to be her sister. I shore wasn’t goin’ to disgrace you. So I—I left an’ come heah to work. Mother went back home to the Cibeque.”

  “You swear Glory didn’t hurt you?”

  “No, Jim, I cain’t swear thet. But she never hurt me on purpose. There’s nothin’ mean aboot your sister. … I just loved her—an’ thet made it worse.”

  “Molly Dunn, you’re a damn little fool,” exploded Jim, overcome by a frenzy of pain and fury. “You were good enough for any man, let alone me. … But if you’re as fickle—as that——”

  Jim choked, and gathering up his packages he gave Molly a terrible look and rushed out of the store.

  In an ordinary moment he could not have mounted his horse, burdened as he was, but he leaped astride, scarcely feeling the weight of the packages. And he spurred Baldy into a run, right down the main street of Flagerstown. The violence of action suited the violent tumult in his breast. But by the time he reached the ranch-house the furious anger had given away somewhat to consternation and a stunned surprise. That simple, honest, innocent child! But even so she might be protecting Gloriana. Jim left his horse at the barn, and taking his bundles he ran into the house and into the living-room, bursting in upon the old cattleman like a hurricane.

  “Jim! Good Lord! I thought it was Injuns,” exclaimed Traft. “Wal, I expected you along soon. How are you, son?”

  “Howdy, Uncle?” replied Jim, throwing aside his bundles and meeting the glad hand extended. “I was fine, till I struck town. … Glad to report the Hash Knife got off Yellow Jacket without a fight.”

  “Jim Traft!—You’re not foolin’ the old man?”