by B. M. Bower
Spikes hesitated but the fraction of a second before he growled a reluctant yes.
“Are yuh a low-down, lying sneak of a woman-fighter, that ain’t got nerve enough to stand up square to a ten-year-old boy?”
Spikes acknowledged that he was. Before the impromptu catechism was ended, Spikes had acknowledged other and more humiliating things—to the delectation of the bartender, the stage driver and two or three men of leisure who were listening.
When Spikes had owned to being every mean, unknowable thing that Weary could call to mind—and his imagination was never of the barren sort—Weary generously permitted him to get upon his feet and skulk out to where his horse was tied. After that, Weary gave his unruffled attention to the stage driver and discovered the unwelcome fact that there was no letter and no telegram for one William Davidson, who looked a bit glum when he heard it.
So he, too, went out and mounted Glory and rode away to the ranch where waited the horses; and as he went he thought, for perhaps the first time in his life, some hard and unflattering things of Chip Bennett. He had never dreamed Chip would calmly overlook his needs and leave him in the lurch like this.
At the ranch, when he had unsaddled Glory and gone to the bunk-house, he discovered Irish, Pink and Happy Jack wrangling amicably over whom a certain cross-eyed girl on the train had been looking at most of the time. Since each one claimed all the glances for himself, and since there seemed no possible way of settling the dispute, they gave over the attempt gladly when Weary appeared, and wanted to know, first thing, who or what had been gouging the hide off his face.
Weary, not aware until the moment that he was wounded, answered that he had done it shaving; at which the three hooted derision and wanted to know since when he had taken to shaving his nose. Weary smiled inscrutably and began talking of something else until he had weaned them from the subject, and learned that they had bribed the stage driver to let them off at this particular ranch; for the stage driver knew Irish, and knew also that a man he had taken to be Irish was making this place his headquarters. The stage driver was one of those male gossips who know everything.
When he could conveniently do so, Weary took Irish out of hearing of the others and told him about Spikes Weber. Irish merely swore. After that, Weary told him about Spikes Weber’s wife, in secret fear and with much tact, but in grim detail. Irish listened with never a word to say.
“I done what looked to me the best thing, under the circumstances,” Weary apologized at the last, “and I hope I haven’t mixed yuh up a bunch uh trouble. Mamma mine! she’s sure on the fight, though, and she’s got a large, black opinion of yuh as a constant lover. If yuh want to square yourself with her, Irish, you’ve got a big contract.”
“I don’t want to square myself,” Irish retorted, grinning a bit. “I did have it bad, I admit; but when she went and got tied up to Spikes, that cured me right off. She’s kinda pretty, and girls were scarce, and—oh, hell! you know how it goes with a man. I’d a married her and found out afterwards that her mind was like a little paper windmill stuck up on the gatepost with a shingle nail—only she saved me the trouble. Uh course, I was some sore over the deal for awhile; but I made up my mind long ago that Spikes was the only one in the bunch that had any sympathy coming. If he’s been acting up like you say, I change the verdict: there ain’t anything coming to him but a big bunch uh trouble. I’m much obliged to yuh, Weary; you done me a good turn and earnt a lot uh gratitude, which is yours for keeps. Wonder if supper ain’t about due; I’ve the appetite of a Billy goat, if anybody should ask yuh.”
At supper Irish was uncommonly silent, and did some things without thinking; such as pouring a generous stream of condensed cream into his coffee. Weary, knowing well that Irish drank his coffee without cream, watched him a bit closer than he would otherwise have done; Irish was the sort of man who does not always act by rule.
After supper Weary missed him quite suddenly, and went to the door of the bunk-house to see where he had gone. He did not see Irish, but on a hilltop, in the trail that led to Sleepy Trail, he saw a flurry of dust. Two minutes of watching saw it drift out of sight over the hill, which proved that the maker was traveling rapidly away from the ranch. Weary settled his hat down to his eyebrows and went out to find the foreman.
The foreman, down at the stable, said that Irish had borrowed a horse from him, unsacked his saddle as if he were in a hurry about something, and had pulled out on a high lope. No, he had not told the foreman where he was headed for, and the foreman knew Irish too well to ask. Yes, now Weary spoke of it, Irish did have his gun buckled on him, and he headed for Sleepy Trail.
Weary waited for no further information. He threw his saddle on a horse that he knew could get out and drift, if need came: presently he, too, was chasing a brown dust cloud over the hill toward Sleepy Trail.
That Irish had gone to find Spikes Weber, Weary was positive; that Spikes was not a man who could be trusted to fight fair, he was even more positive. Weary, however, was not afraid for Irish—he was merely a bit uneasy and a bit anxious to be on hand when came the meeting. He spurred along the trail darkening with the afterglow of a sun departed and night creeping down upon the land, and wondered whether he would be able to come up with Irish before he reached town.
At the place where the trail forked—the place where he had met the wife of Spikes, he saw from a distance another rider gallop out of the dusk and follow in the way that Irish had gone. Without other evidence than mere instinct, he knew the horseman for Spikes. When, further along, the horseman left the trail and angled away down a narrow coulee, Weary rode a bit faster. He did not know the country very well, and was not sure of where that coulee led; but he knew the nature of a man like Spikes Weber, and his uneasiness was not lulled at the sight. He meant to overtake Irish, if he could; after that he had no plan whatever.
When, however, he came to the place where Spikes had turned off. Weary turned off also and followed down the coulee; and he did not explain why, even to himself. He only hurried to overtake the other, or at least to keep him in sight.
The darkness lightened to bright starlight, with a moon not yet in its prime to throw shadows black and mysterious against the coulee sides. The coulee itself, Weary observed, was erratic in the matter of height, width and general direction. Places there were where the width dwindled until there was scant room for the cow trail his horse conscientiously followed; places there were where the walls were easy slopes to climb, and others where the rocks hung, a sheer hundred feet, above him.
One of the easy slopes came near throwing him off the trail of Spikes. He climbed the slope, and Weary would have ridden by, only that he caught a brief glimpse of something on the hilltop; something that moved, and that looked like a horseman. Puzzled but persistent, Weary turned back where the slope was easiest, and climbed also. He did not know the country well enough to tell, in that come-and-go light made uncertain by drifting clouds, just where he was or where he would bring up; he only knew instinctively that where Spikes rode, trouble rode also.
Quite suddenly at the last came further knowledge. It was when, still following, he rode along a steeply sloping ridge that narrowed perceptibly, that he looked down, down, and saw, winding brownly in the starlight, a trail that must be the trail he had left at the coulee head.
“Mamma!” he ejaculated softly, and strained eyes under his hatbrim to glimpse the figure he knew rode before. Then, looking down again, he saw a horseman galloping rapidly towards the ridge, and pulled up short when he should have done the opposite—for it was then that seconds counted.
When the second glance showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, he understood thoroughly the situation.
He came clattering out of the gloom to the very,
point of the bluff, just where it was highest and where it crowded closest the trail a long hundred feet below. A man stood there on the very edge, with a rifle in his hands. He may have been crouching, just before, but now he was standing erect, looking fixedly down at the dark heap in the trail below, and his figure, alert yet unwatchful, was silhouetted sharply against the sky.
When Weary, gun at aim, charged furiously down upon him, he whirled, ready to give battle for his life; saw the man he supposed was lying down there dead in the trail, and started backward with a yell of pure terror. “Irish!” He toppled, threw the rifle from him in a single convulsive movement and went backward, down and down.—
Weary got off his horse and, gun still gripped firmly, walked to the edge and looked down. In his face, dimly revealed in the fitful moonlight, there was no pity but a look of baffled vengeance. Down at the foot of the bluff the shadows lay deep and hid all they held, but out in the trail something moved, rose up and stood still a moment, his face turned upward to where stood Weary.
“Are yuh hurt, Irish?” Weary called anxiously down to him.
“Never touched me,” came the answer from below. “He got my horse, damn him! and I just laid still and kept cases on what he’d do next. Come on down!”
Weary was already climbing recklessly down to where the shadows reached long arms up to him. It was not safe, in that uncertain light, but Weary was used to taking chances. Irish, standing still beside the dead horse, watched and listened to the rattle of small stones slithering down, and the clink of spur chains upon the rocks.
Together the two went into the shadows and stood over a heap of something that had been a man.
“I never did kill a man,” Weary remarked, touching the heap lightly with his foot. “But I sure would have, that time, if he hadn’t dropped just before I cut loose on him.”
Irish turned and looked at him. Standing so, one would have puzzled long to know them apart. “You’ve done a lot for me, Weary, this trip,” he said gravely. “I’m sure obliged.”
WHEN THE COOK FELL ILL
It was four o’clock, and there was consternation in the round-up camp of the Flying U; when one eats breakfast before dawn—July dawn at that—covers thirty miles of rough country before eleven o’clock dinner and as many more after, supper seems, for the time being, the most important thing in the life of a cowboy.
Men stood about in various dejected attitudes, their thumbs tucked inside their chap-belts, blank helplessness writ large upon their perturbed countenances—they were the aliens, hired but to make a full crew during round-up. Long-legged fellows with spurs a-jingle hurried in and out of the cook-tent, colliding often, shouting futile questions, commands and maledictions—they were the Happy Family: loyal, first and last to the Flying U, feeling a certain degree of proprietorship and a good deal of responsibility.
Happy Jack was fanning an incipient blaze in the sheet-iron stove with his hat, his face red and gloomy at the prospect of having to satisfy fifteen outdoor appetites with his amateur attempts at cooking. Behind the stove, writhing bulkily upon a hastily unrolled bed, lay Patsy, groaning most pitiably.
“What the devil’s the matter with that hot water?” Cal Emmett yelled at Happy Jack from the bedside, where he was kneeling sympathetically.
Happy Jack removed his somber gaze from the licking tongue of flame which showed in the stove-front. “Fire ain’t going good, yet,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone which contrasted sharply with Cal’s excitement. “Teakettle’s dry, too. I sent a man to the crick for a bucket uh water; he’ll be back in a minute.”
“Well, move! If it was you tied in a knot with cramp, yuh wouldn’t take it so serene.”
“Aw, gwan. I got troubles enough, cooking chuck for this here layout. I got to have some help—and lots of it. Patsy ain’t got enough stuff cooked up to feed a jack-rabbit. Somebody’s got to mosey in here and peel the spuds.”
“That’s your funeral,” said Cal, unfeelingly.
Chip stuck his head under the lifted tent-flap. “Say, I can’t find that cussed Three-H bottle,” he complained. “What went with it, Cal?”
“Ask Slim; he had it last. Ain’t Shorty here, yet?” Cal turned again to Patsy, whose outcries were not nice to listen to, “Stay with it, old-timer; we’ll have something hot to pour down yuh in a minute.”
Patsy replied, but pain made him incoherent. Cal caught the word “poison”, and then “corn”; the rest of the sentence was merely a succession of groans.
The face of Cal lengthened perceptibly. He got up and went out to where the others were wrangling with Slim over the missing bottle of liniment.
“I guess the old boy’s up against it good and plenty,” he announced gravely. “He says he’s poisoned; he says it was the corn.”
“Well he had it coming to him,” declared Jack Pates. “He’s stuck that darned canned corn under our noses every meal since round-up started. He—”
“Oh, shut up,” snarled Cal. “I guess it won’t be so funny if he cashes in on the strength of it. I’ve known two or three fellows that was laid out cold with tin-can poison. It’s sure fierce.”
The Happy Family shifted uneasily before the impending tragedy, and their faces paled a little; for nearly every man of the range dreads ptomaine poisoning more than the bite of a rattler. One can kill a rattler, and one is always warned of its presence; but one never can tell what dire suffering may lurk beneath the gay labels of canned goods. But since one must eat, and since canned vegetables are far and away better than no vegetables at all, the Happy Family ate and took their chance—only they did not eat canned corn, and they had discussed the matter profanely and often with Patsy.
Patsy was a slave of precedent. Many seasons had he cooked beneath a round-up tent, and never had he stocked the mess-wagon for a long trip and left canned corn off the list. It was good to his palate and it was easy to prepare, and no argument could wean him from imperturbably opening can after can, eating plentifully of it himself and throwing the rest to feed the gophers.
“Ain’t there anything to give him?” asked Jack, relenting. “That Three-H would fix him up all right—”
“Dig it up, then,” snapped Cal. “There’s sure something got to be done, or we’ll have a dead cook on our hands.”
“Not even a drop uh whisky in camp!” mourned Weary. “Slim, you ought to be killed for getting away with that liniment.”
Slim was too downhearted to resent the tone. “By golly, I can’t think what I done with it after I used it on Banjo. Seems like I stood it on that rock—”
“Oh, hell!” snorted Cal. “That’s forty miles back.”
“Say, it’s sure a fright!” sympathized Jack Bates as a muffled shriek came through the cloth wall of the tent. “What’s good for tincaneetis, I wonder?”
“A rattling good doctor,” retorted Chip, throwing things recklessly about, still searching. “There goes the damn butter—pick it up, Cal.”
“If old Dock was sober, he could do something,” suggested Weary. “I guess I’d better go after him; what do yuh think?”
“He could send out some stuff—if he was sober enough; he’s sure wise on medicine.”
Weary made him a cigarette. “Well, it’s me for Dry Lake,” he said, crisply. “I reckon Patsy can hang on till I get back; can poison doesn’t do the business inside several hours, and he hasn’t been sick long. He was all right when Happy Jack hit camp about two o’clock. I’ll be back by dark—I’ll ride Glory.” He swung up on the nearest horse, which happened to be Chip’s and raced out to the saddle bunch a quarter of a mile away. The Happy Family watched him go and called after him, urging him unnecessarily to speed.
Weary did not waste time having the bunch corralled but rode in among the horses, his rope down and ready for business. Glory stared curiously, tossed his crimpled, silver mane, dodged a second too late and found himself caught.
It was unusual, this interruption just when he was busy cropping sweet grasses and taking
his ease, but he supposed there was some good reason for it; at any rate he submitted quietly to being saddled and merely nipped Weary’s shoulder once and struck out twice with an ivory-white, daintily rounded hoof—and Weary was grateful for the docile mood he showed.
He mounted hurriedly without a word of praise or condemnation, and his silence was to Glory more unusual than being roped and saddled on the range. He seemed to understand that the stress was great, and fairly bolted up the long, western slope of the creek bottom straight toward the slant of the sun.
For two miles he kept the pace unbroken, though the way was not of the smoothest and there was no trail to follow. Straight away to the west, with fifteen miles of hills and coulees between, lay Dry Lake; and in Dry Lake lived the one man in the country who might save Patsy.
“Old Dock” was a land-mark among old-timers. The oldest pioneer found Dock before him among the Indians and buffalo that ran riot over the wind-brushed prairie where now the nation’s beef feeds quietly. Why he was there no man could tell; he was a fresh-faced young Frenchman with much knowledge of medicine and many theories, and a reticence un-French. From the Indians he learned to use strange herbs that healed almost magically the ills of man; from the rough out-croppings of civilization he learned to swallow vile whiskey in great gulps, and to thirst always for more.
So he grew old while the West was yet young, until Dry Lake, which grew up around him, could not remember him as any but a white-bearded, stooped, shuffling old man who spoke a queer jargon and was always just getting drunk or sober. When he was sober his medicines never failed to cure; when he was drunk he could not be induced to prescribe, so that men trusted his wisdom at all times and tolerated his infirmities, and looked upon him with amused proprietorship.
When Weary galloped up the trail which, because a few habitations are strewn with fine contempt of regularity upon either side, is called by courtesy a street, his eyes sought impatiently for the familiar, patriarchal figure of Old Dock. He felt that minutes were worth much and that if he would save Patsy he must cut out all superfluities, so he resolutely declined to remember that cold, foamy beer refreshes one amazingly after a long, hot ride in the dust and the wind.