Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  * * * * *

  Some time later the strange rider, having patrolled a beat in front of the corrals for a reasonable time, approached the mess-house, where on the wide comfortable porch a dozen or more cowboys lounged. They quickened as he stalked up, nonchalant, with that pensive little smile. He made a singularly striking figure.

  “Do you-all reckon I’ll get thrown out askin’ for a meal heah?” he queried, drawling the words.

  The cowboys stared. That question might be taken for insolence.

  “See hyar, Texan, air you insultin’ Wyomin’?” asked a stalwart rider.

  “No offense. But course I cain’t tell. I was just hopin’ you’re not all like Slim Blue.”

  “Haw! Haw! An’ why’re you hopin’ thet?”

  “Well, I never met no riders like him. Asked me if I could see to shoot with one eye swelled shut. . . . He scared me terrible.”

  “Huh, you look it, stranger,” replied the big cowboy, shortly.

  The stranger approached the open door and called:

  “Hey, cook, can a poor rider who’s starved an’ broke get a feed heah?”

  “You bet. When I yell just knock over some of them hawgs an’ come a-runnin’,” replied the cook.

  “Hyar comes Slim now,” remarked one of the loungers. “Gee! ain’t he sassy-lookin’?”

  The stranger went forward to the front of the porch, stepped off, and as he sat down his gun bumped heavily upon the wood. Far down the road behind Blue limped another cowboy, coming slowly.

  Slim Blue, espying the stranger, swerved out and came round the porch to confront him. Then the loungers on the porch sat up with interest.

  “Stranger, I reckoned you’d be gone,” announced Blue.

  “Nope. I’m powerful hungry, an’ the cook told me I could get a feed heah if I’d knock over a couple of the hawgs.”

  “Wal, I’m orful sorry, ‘cause you won’t be able to eat very good — with two eyes swelled shet,” said Blue.

  “You won’t take any advice?” drawled the stranger as he stood up.

  “Not from any tidy, clean, pretty strangers. Jest goes ag’in’ the grain.”

  “Too bad. But I reckon a fellow ridin’ into Wyomin’ ought to expect worse. I’m shore appreciatin’ that you left off your gun,” replied the stranger as he unbuckled his belt, heavy with gun and shells. He laid this on the porch, and the gun-sheath, old and black, bore a letter A in silver.

  “Slim,” said one of the cowboys, “your personal dislikes ain’t nobody’s bizness, but it riles us to have you give Wyomin’ a black eye.”

  The stranger stepped out from the porch and throwing aside his sombrero, thus disclosing a handsome head of light shiny hair, he said: “Blue, I’ve heard of you.”

  “Is thet so? Wal, you’re actin’ damn queer, then,” growled Slim.

  “Shore is one of the happiest moments of my life,” drawled the rider.

  Blue, swinging his fists, rushed in. The rider suddenly moved with incredible swiftness to one side. His left arm shot out and his fist took Blue over the eye in a solid thump that all but upset him. Then the rider, swinging round with his right, took the cowboy squarely in the abdomen with a blow that sounded like a loud bamm.

  Blue, his face swiftly changed into one of awful contortion, began to sink down, his hands pressed to his body, his wide-open mouth issuing his expelled breath in one loud explosion.

  The cowboys yelled in glee. Blue sank to his knees. Lany Price, standing on the edge of the porch, called low: “Look out! Here comes MacKinney. He’s Slim’s pard.”

  Just then the last cowboy arrived on the scene. His Irish name suited the forceful step, the honest ugly face, the gray eyes wide and sharp upon his friend Blue. Manifestly he had hardly taken a look at the stranger.

  “Slim, air yez laffin’ or croyin’?” he demanded, plainly perplexed. Blue evidently heard, but could not get breath enough to reply.

  “Blab, he’s prayin’,” spoke up the big cowboy from the porch. “Prayin’ the Lord to forgive his oncivil tongue.”

  “Wot’s happened?” flashed MacKinney, plainly nettled by the remark and the laugh following.

  “Nuthin’. The strange gent jest slugged Slim in the gizzard.”

  Then MacKinney fastened those flaring gray eyes upon the stranger. They opened wider. They stared. They popped. His whole expression suddenly changed to one of incredulous joyous recognition.

  “Howdy, Mac!” drawled the stranger.

  “Fer the luv of Heaven!” burst out MacKinney. “It ain’t you?”

  “Shore is, Mac. An’ plumb glad to see you.”

  “Arizona Ames!” ejaculated MacKinney, verifying a recognition that did not seem credible. And he rushed to embrace the stranger in a manner that harmonized with his speech. “Of all the surprises, this shure is the best. Why, mon, I thot you was dead.”

  “No, Mac. I’m still tolerable alive.”

  MacKinney, with his arm round Ames’ shoulder, addressed the amazed group on the porch. “Fellars, meet my old pard, Arizona Ames. Shure you all rimimber me tellin’ about him? When I rode fer Rankin — with the toughest outfit that ever stretched leather.”

  “Arizona Ames!” ejaculated a cowboy.

  “Wal, Blab, we sure do.”

  “Howdy, Ames! I reckon you ain’t sich a stranger as Slim took you fer.”

  That latter remark caused MacKinney to wheel. There knelt Blue, still ludicrous, but recovering.

  “Wot the hell, Slim? I forgot you.”

  Slim shook his fist at Ames. “Y-you k-kicked me — in — the belly,” he gasped.

  “No, Slim,” replied Ames. “Shore I only gave you a little tap on the knob. An’ then a punch where you’re weak. Didn’t I say you needed some nourishment?”

  Lany Price called out, “Here comes the boss.”

  Little attention did any one else give the approaching buckboard.

  “Y’u — did,” replied Blue. “But lickin’ me — ain’t no satisfaction. — Blab, I’m requirin’ yore gun.”

  “My Gawd! Slim, you’re crazy,” broke out MacKinney, suddenly recovering. “You don’t want to try to throw a gun on this fellar!”

  “The hell you say. I reckon I do.”

  “But, mon, this is an old pard of mine,” protested MacKinney.

  “Orful sorry,” returned Blue, stubbornly, though he seemed impressed. And he got up. “You’ve double-crossed me, fer you swore I was yore only pard.”

  “Shure I did. But, Slim, this was years ago. I thought he was dead.”

  “Wal, it’s orful sad, when two old pards gits reunited like thet. But you jest won’t only think it about him this time. You’ll know.”

  “But, Slim, did you hear who this fellar is?”

  “No. An’ I don’t care a damn. He said my mind was weak — —”

  “It shore is.”

  “Wal, if it’ll gall you so to lose this ole pard, make him apologize,” rejoined Blue, blusteringly.

  Ames, with a winning smile, held out his hand. “Shore I apologize. I was only foolin’. I had to say somethin’, didn’t I?”

  “You must hev felt thet way,” said Blue, reluctantly shaking hands. “But I’ll overlook it. . . . So you’re an old pard of Mac’s?”

  “Glad to say I am.”

  “Wal, Mac never had but one pard, besides me, thet was wuth a damn, an’ he got shot. So I reckon I ain’t jealous. What’s yore name?”

  “Ames,” drawled the rider.

  “Ames? . . . Not thet Arizonie pard?”

  “Shore am, Slim.”

  Whereupon Slim Blue turned to MacKinney and roundly cursed him. “ —— , you’d let me commit suicide!”

  The buckboard with its two occupants halted opposite the cowboys, and a man of fine physique jumped out. He was under forty, dark-skinned, with hair and eyes as black as the wing of a crow. His face showed the blotches of recent dissipation. He had a bold, virile presence.

  “What’s goin’ on here?” he d
emanded, in a loud, authoritative voice.

  Only then did the three cowboys become aware of his advent on the scene.

  “Howdy, boss!” said Blue, in a tone that Ames did not miss.

  “You been fightin’?”

  “Nope, not me, boss. I only got hit.”

  “A blind man could see that. Your eye’s all swelled up. — Who hit you?”

  “Wal, boss, as I was in the wrong an’ got my just deserts, I reckon thet doesn’t make any difference, does it?”

  Ames took a forward step. “You’re the rancher, Grieve?” he asked.

  “Yes. I don’t recollect seein’ you before.”

  “Hardly. I’m a stranger in Wyomin’,” returned Ames, quietly. “I rode in today, an’ was waitin’ around when your outfit came. Blue, heah, wanted a couple of punches at me — cowboy-like — you know. I accommodated him. That’s all, sir. No hard feelin’s.”

  “I’m glad somebody rode in with the nerve to punch him. . . . Were you waitin’ round to see the range boss?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that’s me. I don’t run a foreman. What you want — a job ridin’?”

  “Shore do, if you have one.”

  “You’re hired. Report to me for orders,” rejoined Grieve, brusquely, turning on his heel.

  “Hould on, boss,” broke in MacKinney. “Shure you’ll loike to hear this is an ould pard of mine?”

  “Mac, I suppose that’d be a reference, if I needed one. But I never care what a cowpuncher has done or been, or whose friend he is. All that counts with me is how he works for me.”

  “All the same, boss, you shure ought to know this pard of mine is Arizona Ames,” continued MacKinney, stubbornly.

  “What?” exclaimed Grieve, his single query coming like a bullet. His crow-black eyes set upon Ames as if back of them a singular and inexplicable instinct was working.

  “My pard is Arizona Ames.”

  Crow Grieve took a step back toward them, with that black penetrating gaze fastened upon Ames.

  “Cowboys give each other handles that fit,” he said. “I’ve had Montanas ride for me an’ Nebraskies an’ once a gun-slinger who called himself Nevada. But no Arizonas. An’ I happen to have heard of one. Do you call yourself Arizona?”

  “No, I don’t,” returned Ames, almost coldly. “But I cain’t help what others call me. An’ I’m bound to admit that name is hard to shake.”

  “Why’d you want to shake it?” queried Grieve, suspiciously.

  “Well, it’s not because I’ve anythin’ against Arizona or Arizona has anythin’ against me. I don’t like bein’ reminded of Arizona — that’s all.”

  “You rode for Rankin once?” asked Grieve.

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Reckon all of two years.”

  “Up till his death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him shot?” inquired Grieve, coming closer, his eyes like black coals.

  “I reckon I did.”

  “Then you know who did it?”

  “Well, Mr. Grieve,” drawled Ames, with a sort of cool, disdainful ring in his voice, “naturally if I saw him shot I saw who drew on him.”

  “It doesn’t always follow. Men on that range got shot from cover. If I remember correct, no one was ever supposed to have seen Rankin shot.”

  “You may remember correct, but you have it wrong. One man shore saw the job done.”

  Grieve drew back with sudden slight violence and his black eyes rolled.

  “Excuse me,” he said hastily. “I’m gettin’ personal. But Rankin was a rustler an’ once he cleaned me out of every hoof I owned. Whoever shot him did me a good turn.”

  Whereupon he whirled as on a pivot, and jumping into the buckboard, called to the driver to go on, leaving a variety of expressions on the faces of the cowboys.

  MacKinney bent piercing gray eyes upon Ames, as if the recent exchange of words had opened up thought-provoking vistas.

  “My Gawd!” blurted out Slim Blue. “Did I hear Crow Grieve apologizin’?”

  “Blab,” called a comrade from the porch, “I reckon we all figgered you the damndest liar on the range. But — —”

  “Hey, stranger, are you ready?” yelled the cook from the door.

  “Shore am,” shouted Ames.

  “Knock ’em over now. Ready. One! two! three! — Come an’ get it before I throw it out!”

  Arizona Ames led the stampede into the cabin, where the whoops and yells and laughs, the pound of boots and jangle of spurs, suddenly ceased.

  CHAPTER VI

  ARIZONA AMES WAS a typical character of his period. Every range from the Pan Handle to the Black Hills, and as far west as the Pecos, had its Ames.

  The cowboy was a product of Texas and an evolution from the Mexican vaquero. When cattle in great herds began to be driven north over the Chisholm Trail, to Abilene, to Dodge, and thence north, west, east the cowboy was introduced to the world. He multiplied with the rapid growth of the cattle industry. He came from the four corners of the United States, and beyond. At most he was a boy not yet out of his teens; but the life of the range, the toil and endurance demanded by cattle-raising, the border saloon, the gambling-hell, the rustler, developed him at once into a man, and one that eventually made the West habitable.

  Wild and free, untamable, a jolly and reckless individual was the average cowboy. Naturally the times developed the vicious, hard-drinking, gun-throwing cowboy, but he was in the minority. All of them, however, shared a singular quality which must have been a result of their picturesque, strenuous, and perilous lives, and this was an unquenchable spirit. Cowboys, as a rule, were fire-eaters. They were simple, natural, elemental, and therefore heroic. They performed the most tremendous tasks as a matter of the day’s work, without ever dreaming that they had essentials of greatness.

  And here and there, on every range, there rode a cowboy like Arizona Ames, in whom there united all these qualities except viciousness and drunkenness, and to which was added the individual trait that made him stand out from his fellows. Seen truly, they were all remarkable. But that one added trait seemed to exaggerate the others; and in Arizona Ames it was a magnification of the spirit, that made the lives of all cowboys significant.

  He was quiet, but he could be gay. He would take a drink with his fellows, but he had never been known to get drunk. He would lend his last dollar and then borrow from a comrade to help the one who sought him. He always took the hardest, darkest, coldest watch; and most of the jobs hated by cowboys fell to him. His horsemanship and skill with a lasso, and other tricks of the trade, left no room for the ridicule and banter so common to cowboys. Then his swift and unerring use of a Colt added the last notch to the admiration of whatever outfit he rode with. Gunmen on the frontier usually were avoided to a greater or less extent, especially those who bore the name of killers. But seldom did these remain cowboys. Nevertheless, there were many bad cowboys who would shoot at the drop of a hat, and these did not long survive.

  The reputation of Arizona Ames either preceded him wherever he roamed or arrived with him. And it was such that any honest cowboy liked him; and any dishonest cowboy, or, for that matter, any man known to the range as shady or notorious or mean, felt instant antagonism to him. MacKinney told the vague range rumors about the fights attributed to Arizona Ames. Rankin had been shot and presumably by Ames, but nobody had seen the deed, except Ames himself, and he never admitted that he had killed the rustler. Tales had drifted from all over the West, one particularly bloody one from Arizona, which had given him his name, but none of them could be verified by any of these Wyoming riders. The more mystery about Ames, however, the more these cowboys gave him credit for.

  Ames had not ridden out the month of May before almost every cowboy of Grieve’s outfit had bullet holes in his sombrero, physical proofs of Ames’ prowess with a gun. One by one they pestered him in every way to induce him to shoot at a hat tossed into the air. He was good-natur
ed and he liked to bet.

  “Dog-gone yu, Arizonie,” complained Slim Blue, one day. “I jest don’t believe yu’re so good with a gun.”

  “Say, you blue-shirted Jasper!” Ames had retorted, “shore I don’t care what you believe.”

  “Wal, I reckon not. But s’pose for instance some purty gurl rides into our outfit — say as purty as Grieve’s wife. An’ you an’ me lock horns over her! I’m darned if I’m a-goin’ to throw a gun on you if you can shoot like Mac says you can.”

  “Slim, if the pretty girl comes you can shore have her,” replied Ames, patiently.

  “Hell, cowboy! Air you a woman-hater?”

  “Not altogether exactly.”

  “Dog-gone! — One of these heartbroken cowpunchers, huh? — Wal, I might want to fight you fer some other reason. So I’ll bet you ten dollars to five that you can’t hit my hat in the air.”

  “Slim, I hate to take your money.”

  “Wal, you needn’t.”

  “All right, then, Slim. I’ll take your bet,” Ames had replied, tossing aside his cigarette and rising. “How many shots will you give me?”

  “Reckon as many as you kin shoot while my hat is in the air.”

  “Sail it up. Straight now,” said Ames, backing away.

  Blue had tossed it straight and high, enabling the marksman to get three shots. Upon examination three bullet holes were found in it, two in the crown and one in the rim.

  “Hell, cowboy!” ejaculated Slim, in disgust. “One would have been enough. An’ hyar you spoil my hat. You put only one in some of the other fellars.”

  “Slim, shore you need a lot of convincin’,” laughed Ames.

  “Wal, you shootin’ hombre from Arizonie,” replied Blue, reluctant with his admiration. “I jest ain’t a-goin’ to pick no fight with you.”

  * * * * *

  Ames had taken up his quarters in the bunk-house occupied by Lany Price. This occasioned the first friendly row. Blab MacKinney insisted that Sam Perkins get out of his bunk-house and let his own partner, Ames, come in. Sam told him that with all due deference to the genteel and beautiful Ames, they could go where it was hot. Then Slim Blue tried to oust Lany out of his own house and install himself there. Ames decided each argument as fast as he came to it. And he remained with Lany.