by B. M. Bower
Pink came out with heaped plate and brimming cup, and retired diffidently to the farthest bit of shade he could find, which brought him close to Cal Emmett. He sat down gingerly so as not to spill anything.
“Going to work for the outfit?” asked Cal politely.
“Yes, sir; the overseer gave me a position,” answered Pink sweetly, in his soft treble. “I just came to town this morning. Is it very hard work?”
“Yeah, it sure is,” said Cal plaintively, between bites. “What with taming wild broncos and trying to keep the cattle from stampeding, our shining hours are sure improved a lot. It’s a hard, hard life.” He sighed deeply and emptied his cup of coffee.
“I—I thought I’d like it,” ventured Pink wistfully.
“It’s dead safe to prognosticate yuh won’t a little bit. None of us like it. I never saw a man with soul so vile that he did.”
“Why don’t you give it up, then, and get a position at something else?” Pink’s eyes looked wide and wistful over the rim of his cup.
“Can’t. We’re most of us escaped desperadoes with a price on our heads.” Cal shook his own lugubriously. “We’re safer here than we would be anywhere else. If a posse showed up, or we got wind of one coming, there’s plenty uh horses and saddles to make a getaway. We’d just pick out a drifter and split the breeze. We can keep on the dodge a long time, working on round-up, and earn a little money at the same time, so when we do have to fly we won’t be dead broke.”
“Oh!” Pink looked properly impressed. “If it isn’t too personal—er—is there a—that is, are you——”
“An outlaw?” Cal assisted. “I sure am—and then some. I’m wanted for perjury in South Dakota, manslaughter in Texas, and bigamy in Utah. I’m all bad.”
“Oh, I hope not!” Pink looked distressed. “I’m very sorry,” he added simply, “and I hope the posses won’t chase you.”
Cal shook his head very, very gravely. “You can’t most always tell,” he declared gloomily. “I expect I’ll have an invite to a necktie-party some day.”
“I’ve been to necktie-parties myself.” Pink brightened visibly. “I don’t like them; you always get the wrong girl.”
“I don’t like ’em, either,” agreed Cal. “I’m always afraid the wrong necktie will be mine. Were you ever lynched?”
Pink moved uneasily. “I—I don’t remember that I ever was,” he answered guardedly.
“I was. My gang come along and cut me down just as I was about all in. I was leading a gang——”
“Excuse me a minute,” Pink interrupted hurriedly. “I think the overseer is motioning for me.”
He hastened over to where Chip was standing alone, and asked if he should change his clothes and get ready to go to work.
Chip told him it wouldn’t be a bad idea, and Pink, carrying his haughty suit-case and another bulky bundle, disappeared precipitately into the bed-tent.
“By golly!” spoke up Slim, “it looks good enough to eat.”
“Where did yuh pluck that modest flower, Chip?” Jack Bates wanted to know.
Chip calmly sifted some tobacco in a paper. “I picked it in town,” he told them. “I hired it to punch cows, and its name is—wait a minute.” He put away the tobacco sack, got out his book, and turned the leaves. “Its name is Percival Cadwallader Perkins.”
“Oh, mamma! Percival Cadwolloper—what?” Weary looked utterly at sea.
“Perkins,” supplied Chip.
“Percival—Cad-wolloper—Perkins,” Weary mused aloud. “Yuh want to double the guard tonight, Chip; that name’ll sure stampede the bunch.”
“He’s sure a sweet young thing—mamma’s precious lamb broke out uh the home corral!” said Jack Bates. “I’ll bet yuh a tall, yellow-haired mamma with flowing widow’s weeds’ll be out here hunting him up inside a week. We got to be gentle with him, and not rub none uh the bloom uh innocence off his rosy cheek. Mamma had a little lamb, his cheeks were red and rosy. And everywhere that mamma went—er—everywhere—that mamma—went——”
“The lamb was sure to mosey,” supplied Weary.
“By golly! yuh got that backward,” Slim objected. “It ought uh be: Everywhere the lambie went; his mamma was sure to mosey.”
The reappearance of Pink cut short the discussion. Pink as he had looked before was pretty as a poster. Pink as he reappeared would have driven a matinee crowd wild with enthusiasm. On the stage he would be in danger of being Hobsonized; in the Flying U camp the Happy Family looked at him and drew a long breath. When his back was turned, they shaded their eyes ostentatiously from the blaze of his splendor.
He still wore his panama, and the dainty pink-and-white striped silk shirt, the gray trousers, and russet-leather belt with silver buckle. But around his neck, nestling under his rounded chin, was a gorgeous rose-pink silk handkerchief, of the hue that he always wore, and that had given him the nickname of “Pink.”
His white hands were hidden in a pair of wonderful silk-embroidered buckskin gauntlets. His gray trousers were tucked into number four tan riding-boots, high as to heel—so high that they looked two sizes smaller—and gorgeous as to silk-stitched tops. A shiny, new pair of silver-mounted spurs jingled from his heels.
He smiled trustfully at Chip, and leaned, with the studiously graceful pose of the stage, against a hind wheel of the mess-wagon. Then he got papers and tobacco from a pocket of the silk shirt and began to roll a cigarette. Inwardly he hoped that the act would not give him away to the Happy Family, whom he felt in honor bound to deceive, and bewailed the smoke-hunger that drove him to take the risk.
The Happy Family, however, was unsuspicious. His pink-and-white prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the tenderest sort of tenderfoot.
“Get onto the way he rolls ’em—backward!” murmured Weary into Cal’s ear.
“If there’s anything I hate,” Cal remarked irrelevantly to the crowd, “it’s to see a girl chewing a tutti-frutti cud—or smoking a cigarette!”
Pink looked up from under his thick lashes and opened his lips to speak, then thought better of it. The jingling of the cavvy coming in cut short the incipient banter, and Pink turned and watched intently the corralling process. To him the jangling bells were sweetest music, for which ears and heart had hungered long, and which had come to him often in dreams. His blood tingled as might a lover’s when his sweetheart approaches.
“Weary, you and Cal better relieve the boys on herd,” Chip called. “I’ll get you a horse, P—Perkins”—he had almost said “Pink”—“and you can go along. Then tonight you’ll go on guard with Cal.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pink, with a docility that would have amazed any who knew him well, and followed Chip out to the corral, where Cal and Weary were already inside with their ropes, among the circling mass.
Chip led out a gentle little cow-pony that could almost day-herd without a rider of any sort, and Pink bridled him before the covertly watching crew. He did not do it as quickly as he might have done, for he “played to the gallery” and deliberately fumbled the buckle and pinned one ear of the pony down flat with the head-stall.
A new saddle, stiff and unbroken, is ever a vexation unto its proud owner, and its proper adjustment requires time and much language. Pink omitted the language, so that the process took longer than it would naturally have done; but Cal and Weary, upon their mounts, made cigarettes and waited, with an air of endurance, and gave Pink much advice. Then he got somehow into the saddle and flapped elbows beside them, looking like a gorgeous-hued canary with wings a-flutter.
Happy Jack, who had been standing herd disconsolately with two aliens, stared open-mouthed at Pink’s approach and rode hastily to camp, fair bursting with questions and comments.
The herd, twelve hundred range-fattened steers, grazed quietly on a side hill half a mile or more from camp. Pink ran a quick, appraising eye over the bunch estimating correctly the number, and noting thei
r splendid condition.
“Never saw so many cattle in one bunch before, did yuh?” queried Cal, misinterpreting the glance.
Pink shook his head vaguely. “Does one man own all those cows?” he wanted to know, with just the proper amount of incredulous wonder.
“Yeah—and then some. This ain’t any herd at all; just a few that we’re shipping to get ’em out uh the way uh the real herds.”
“About how many do you think there are here?” asked Pink.
Cal turned his back upon his conscience and winked at Weary. “Oh, there’s only nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one,” he lied boldly. “Last bunch we gathered was fifty-one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine and a half. Er—the half,” he explained hastily in answer to Pink’s look of unbelief, “was a calf that we let in by mistake. I caught it, after we counted, and took it back to its mother.”
“I should think,” Pink ventured hesitatingly, “it would be hard to find its mother. I don’t see how you could tell.”
“Well,” said Cal gravely, sliding sidewise in the saddle, “it’s this way. A calf is always just like its mother, hair for hair. This calf had white hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh diamonds on its left side. All I had to do was ride the range till I found the cow that matched.”
“Oh!” Pink looked thoughtful and convinced.
Weary, smiling to himself, rode off to take his station at the other side of the herd. Even the Happy Family must place duty a pace before pleasure, and Cal, much as he would liked to have continued the conversation, resisted temptation and started down along the nearest edge of the bunch. Pink showed inclination to follow.
“You stay where you’re at, sonny,” Cal told him, over his shoulder.
“What must I do?” Pink straightened his tie and set his panama more firmly on his yellow curls, for a brisk wind was blowing.
Cal’s voice came back to him faintly: “Just dub around here and don’t do a darn thing; and don’t bother the cattle.”
“Good advice, that,” Pink commented amusedly. “Hits day-herding off to a T.” He prepared for a lazy afternoon, and enjoyed every minute.
On his way back to camp at suppertime, Pink rode close to Cal and looked as if he had something on his mind. Cal and Weary exchanged glances.
“I’d like to ask,” Pink began timidly, “how you fed that calf—before you found his mother. Didn’t he get pretty hungry?”
“Why, I carried a bottle uh milk along,” Cal lied fluently. “When the bottle went empty I’d catch a cow and milk it.”
“Would it stand without being tied?”
“Sure. All range cows’ll gentle right down, if yuh know the right way to approach ’em, and the words to say. That’s a secret that we don’t tell anybody that hasn’t been a cowboy for a year, and rode fourteen broncos straight up. Sorry I can’t tell yuh.”
Pink went diplomatically back to the calf. “Did you carry it in your arms, or—”
“The calf? Sure. How else would I carry it?” Cal’s big, baby-blue eyes matched Pink’s for innocence. “I carried that bossy in my arms for three days,” he declared solemnly, “before I found a cow with white hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh—er—clubs——”
“Diamonds” corrected Pink, drinking in each word greedily.
“That’s it: diamonds, on its right hind—er—shoulders——”
“The calf’s was on its left side,” reminded Pink reproachfully. “I don’t believe you found the right mother, after all!”
“Yeah, I sure did, all right,” contended Cal earnestly. “I know, ’cause she was that grateful, when she seen me heave in sight over a hill a mile away, she come up on the gallop, a-bawling, and—er—licked my hand!”
That settled it, of course. Pink dismounted stiffly and walked painfully to the cook-tent. Ten months out of saddle—with a new, unbroken one to begin on again—told, even upon Pink, and made for extreme discomfort.
When he had eaten, hungrily and in silence, responding to the mildly ironical sociability of his fellows with a brevity which only his soft voice saved from bruskness, he unrolled his new bed and lay down with not a thought for the part he was playing. He heard with absolute indifference Weary’s remark outside, that “Cadwolloper’s about all in; day-herding’s too strenuous for him.” The last that came to him, some one was chanting relishfully:
Mamma had a precious lamby his cheeks were red and rosy; And when he rode the festive bronk, he tumbled on his nosey.
There was more; but Pink had gone to sleep, and so missed it.
At sundown he awoke and went out to saddle the night horse Chip had caught for him, and then went to bed again. When shaken gently for middle guard, he dressed sleepily, added a pair of white Angora chaps to his afternoon attire, and stumbled out into the murky moonlight.
Guided and coached by Cal, he took his station and began that monotonous round which had been a part of the life he loved best. Though stiff and sore from unaccustomed riding, Pink felt quite content to be where he was; to watch the quiet land and the peaceful, slumbering herd; with the drifting gray clouds above, and the moon swimming, head under, in their midst. Twice in a complete round he met Cal, going in opposite direction. At the second round Cal stopped him.
“How yuh coming?” he queried cheerfully.
“All right, thank you,” said Pink.
“Yuh want to watch out for a lop-horned critter over on the other side,” Cal went on, in confidential tone. “He keeps trying to sneak out uh the bunch. Don’t let him get away; if he goes, take after him and fog him back.”
“He won’t get away from me, if I can help it,” Pink promised, and Cal rode on, with Pink smiling maliciously after him.
As he neared the opposite side, a dim shape angled slowly out before him, moving aimlessly away from the sleeping herd. Pink followed. Farther they went, and faster. Into a little hollow went the “critter”, and circled. Pink took down his rope, let loose a good ten feet of it, and spurred unexpectedly close to it.
Whack! The rope landed with precision on the bowed shoulders of Cal. “Yuh will try to fool your betters, will yuh?” Whack! “I guess I can point out a critter that won’t stray out uh the bunch again fer a spell!” Whack!
Cal straightened, gasping astonishment, in the saddle, pulled up with a jerk, and got off, in unlovely mood.
“And I can point to a little mamma’s lamb that won’t take down his rope to his betters again, either!” he cried angrily. “Climb down and get your ears cuffed proper, yuh darned, pink little smart Aleck; or them shiny heels’ll break your pretty neck. Thump me with a rope, will yuh?”
Pink got down. Immediately after, to use a slang term, they “mixed.” Presently Cal, stretched the long length of him in the grass, with Pink sitting comfortably upon his middle, looked up at the dizzying swim of the moon, saw new and uncharted stars, and nearer, dimly revealed in the half-light, the self-satisfied, cherubic face of Pink.
He essayed to rise and continue the discussion, and discovered a quite surprising state of affairs. He could scarcely move: and the more he tried the more painful became Pink’s diabolical hold of him. He blinked and puzzled over the mystery.
“Of all the bone-headed, feeble-minded sons-uh-guns it’s ever been my duty and pleasure to reconstruct,” announced Pink melodiously, “you sure take the sour-dough biscuit. You’re a song that’s been tried on the cattle and failed t’ connect. You’re the last wail of a coyote dying in the dim distance. For a man that’s been lynched and cut down and waiting for another yank, you certainly—are—mild! You’re the tamest thing that ever happened. A lady could handle yuh with safety and ease. You’re a children’s playmate. For a deep-dyed desperado that’s wanted for manslaughter in Texas, perjury in South Dakota, and bigamy in Utah, you’re the last feeble whisper of a summer breeze. You cuff my ears proper? Oh, my! and oh, fudge! It is to laugh!”
Cat, battered as to features and bewildered as to mind, blinked again and grinned feebly.
“Say”—Pink’s fists kneaded energetically Cal’s suffering diaphragm.—“are yuh—all—ba-a-d?”
“Oh, Lord! No. I’m dead gentle. Lemme up.”
“D’yuh think that critter will quit the bunch ag’in tonight?”
“He ain’t liable to,” Cal assured him meekly. “Say, who the devil are yuh anyhow?”
“I’m Percival Cadwallader Perkins. Do yuh like that name? Do yuh think it drips sweetness and poetry, like a card uh honey?”
“Ouch! It—it’s swell!”
“You’re a dam’ liar,” declared Pink, getting up. “Furthermore, yuh old chuckle-head, yuh ought t’ know better than try t’ run any ranikaboos on me. I’ve got your pedigree, right back to the Flood; and it’s safe betting yuh got mine, and don’t know it. Your best girl happens to be my cousin.”
Cal scrambled slowly and painfully to his feet. “Then you’re Milk River Pink. I might uh guessed it,” he sighed.
“I cannot tell a lie,” Pink averred. “Only, plain Pink’ll do for me. Where d’yuh suppose the bunch is by this time?”
They mounted and rode back together. Cal was deeply thoughtful.
“Say,” he said suddenly, just as they parted to ride their rounds, “the boys’ll be tickled plumb to death. We’ve been wishing you’d blow in here ever since the Cross L quit the country.”
Pink drew rein and looked back, resting one hand on the cantle. “My gentle friend,” he warned, “yuh needn’t break your neck spreading the glad tidings. Yuh better let them frivolous youths wise-up in their own playful way, same as you done.”
“Sure,” agreed Cal, passing his fingers gingerly over certain portions of his face. “I ain’t a hog. I’m willing they should have some sport with yuh, too.”