by Max Brand
"Where's the folks?" he asked.
"Ma's sick, a little, and didn't get up to-day. Pa's down to the corral, cussing mad. But I can cook you up some chow."
"All right son. I got a dollar here that'll buy you a pretty good store knife."
The boy flushed so red that by contrast his straw coloured hair seemed positively white.
"Maybe you want to pay me?" he suggested fiercely. "Maybe you think we're squatters that run a hotel?"
Recognizing the true Western breed even in this small edition, Nash grinned.
"Speakin' man to man, son, I didn't think that, but I thought I'd sort of feel my way."
"Which I'll say you're lucky you didn't try to feel your way with pa; not the way he's feelin' now."
In the shack of the house he placed the best chair for Nash and set about frying ham and making coffee. This with crackers, formed the meal. He watched Nash eat for a moment of solemn silence and then the foreman looked up to catch a meditative chuckle from the youngster.
"Let me in on the joke, son."
"Nothin'. I was just thinkin' of pa."
"What's he sore about? Come out short at poker lately?"
"No; he lost a hoss. Ha, ha, ha!"
He explained: "He's lost his only standin' joke, and now the laugh's on pa!"
Nash sipped his coffee and waited. On the mountain desert one does not draw out a narrator with questions.
"There was a feller come along early this mornin' on a lame hoss," the story began. "He was a sure enough tenderfoot--leastways he looked it an' he talked it, but he wasn't."
The familiarity of this description made Steve sit up a trifle straighter.
"Was he a ringer?"
"Maybe. I dunno. Pa meets him at the door and asks him in. What d'you think this feller comes back with?"
The boy paused to remember and then with twinkling eyes he mimicked: "'That's very good of you, sir, but I'll only stop to make a trade with you--this horse and some cash to boot for a durable mount out of your corral. The brute has gone lame, you see.'
"Pa waited and scratched his head while these here words sort of sunk in. Then says very smooth: 'I'll let you take the best hoss I've got, an' I won't ask much cash to boot.'
"I begin wonderin' what pa was drivin' at, but I didn't say nothin'--jest held myself together and waited.
"'Look over there to the corral,' says pa, and pointed. 'They's a hoss that ought to take you wherever you want to go. It's the best hoss I've ever had.'
"It was the best horse pa ever had, too. It was a piebald pinto called Jo, after my cousin Josiah, who's jest a plain bad un and raises hell when there's any excuse. The piebald, he didn't even need an excuse. You see, he's one of them hosses that likes company. When he leaves the corral he likes to have another hoss for a runnin' mate and he was jest as tame as anything. I could ride him; anybody could ride him. But if you took him outside the bars of the corral without company, first thing he done was to see if one of the other hosses was comin' out to join him. When he seen that he was all laid out to make a trip by himself he jest nacherally started in to raise hell. Which Jo can raise more hell for his size than any hoss I ever seen.
"He's what you call an eddicated bucker. He don't fool around with no pauses. He jest starts in and figgers out a situation and then he gets busy slidin' the gent that's on him off'n the saddle. An' he always used to win out. In fact, he was known for it all around these parts. He begun nice and easy, but he worked up like a fiddler playin' a favourite piece, and the end was the rider lyin' on the ground.
"Whenever the boys around here wanted any excitement they used to come over and try their hands with Jo. We used to keep a pile of arnica and stuff like that around to rub them up with and tame down the bruises after Jo laid 'em cold on the ground. There wasn't never anybody could ride that hoss when he was started out alone.
"Well, this tenderfoot, he looks over the hoss in the corral and says: 'That's a pretty fine mount, it seems to me. What do you want to boot?'
"'Aw, twenty-five dollars is enough,' says pa.
"'All right,' says the tenderfoot, 'here's the money.'
"And he counts it out in pa's hand.
"He says: 'What a little beauty! It would be a treat to see him work on a polo field.'
"Pa says: 'It'd'be a treat to see this hoss work anywhere.'
"Then he steps on my foot to make me wipe the grin off'n my face.
"Down goes the tenderfoot and takes his saddle and flops it on the piebald pinto, and the piebald was jest as nice as milk. Then he leads him out'n the corral and gets on.
"First the pinto takes a look over his shoulder like he was waiting for one of his pals among the hosses to come along, but he didn't see none. Then the circus started. An' b'lieve me, it was some circus. Jo hadn't had much action for some time, an' he must have used the wait thinkin' up new ways of raisin' hell.
"There ain't enough words in the Bible to describe what he done. Which maybe you sort of gather that he had to keep on performin', because the tenderfoot was still in the saddle. He was. An' he never pulled leather. No, sir, he never touched the buckin' strap, but jest sat there with his teeth set and his lips twistin' back--the same smile he had when he got into the saddle. But pretty soon I s'pose Jo had a chance to figure out that it didn't do him no particular harm to be alone.
"The minute he seen that he stopped fightin' and started off at a gallop the way the tenderfoot wanted him to go, which was over there.
"'Damn my eyes!' says pa, an' couldn't do nuthin' but just stand there repeatin' that with variations because with Jo gone there wouldn't be no drawin' card to get the boys around the house no more. But you're lookin' sort of sleepy, stranger?"
"I am," answered Nash.
"Well, if you'd seen that show you wouldn't be thinkin' of sleep. Not for some time."
"Maybe not, but the point is I didn't see it. D'you mind if I turn in on that bunk over there?"
"Help yourself," said the boy. "What time d'you want me to wake you up?"
"Never mind; I wake up automatic. S'long, Bud."
He stretched out on the blankets and was instantly asleep.
Chapter XIII
A TOUCH OF CRIMSON
At the end of three hours he awoke as sharply as though an alarm were clamouring at his ear. There was no elaborate preparation for renewed activities. A single yawn and stretch and he was again on his feet. Since the boy was not in sight he cooked himself an enormous meal, devoured it, and went out to the mustang.
The roan greeted him with a volley from both heels that narrowly missed the head of Nash, but the cowpuncher merely smiled tolerantly.
"Feelin' fit agin, eh, damn your soul?" he said genially, and picking up a bit of board, fallen from the side of the shed, he smote the mustang mightily along the ribs. The mustang, as if it recognized the touch of the master, pricked up one ear and side-stepped. The brief rest had filled it with all the old, vicious energy.
For once more, as soon as they rode clear of the door, there ensued a furious struggle between man and beast. The man won, as always, and the roan, dropping both ears flat against its neck, trotted sullenly out across the hills.
In that monotony of landscape, one mile exactly like the other, no landmarks to guide him, no trail to follow, however faintly worn, it was strange to see the cowpuncher strike out through the vast distances of the mountain-desert with as much confidence as if he were travelling on a paved street in a city. He had not even a compass to direct him but he seemed to know his way as surely as the birds know the untracked paths of the air in the seasons of migration.
Straight on through the afternoon and during the long evening he kept his course at the same unvarying dog-trot until the flush of the sunset faded to a stern grey and the purple hills in the distance turned blue with shadows. Then, catching the glimmer of a light on a hillside, he turned toward it to put up for the night.
In answer to his call a big man with a lantern came to the door and ra
ised his light until it shone on a red, bald head and a portly figure. His welcome was neither hearty nor cold; hospitality is expected in the mountain-desert. So Nash put up his horse in the shed and came back to the house.
The meal was half over, but two girls immediately set a plate heaped with fried potatoes and bacon and flanked by a mighty cup of jetblack coffee on one side and a pile of yellow biscuits on the other. He nodded to them, grunted by way of expressing thanks, and sat down to eat.
Beside the tall father and the rosy-faced mother, the family consisted of the two girls, one of them with her hair twisted severely close to her head, wearing a man's blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to a pair of brown elbows. Evidently she was the boy of the family and to her fell the duty of performing the innumerable chores of the ranch, for her hands were thick with work and the tips of the fingers blunted. Also she had that calm, self-satisfied eye which belongs to the workingman who knows that he has earned his meal.
Her sister monopolized all the beauty and the grace, not that she was either very pretty or extremely graceful, but she was instinct with the challenge of femininity like a rare scent. It lingered about her, it enveloped her ways; it gave a light to her eyes and made her smile exquisite. Her clothes were not of much finer material than her sister's, but they were cut to fit, and a bow of crimson ribbon at her throat was as effective in that environment as the most costly orchids on an evening gown.
She was armed in pride this night, talking only to her mother, and then in monosyllables alone. At first it occurred to Steve that his coming had made her self-conscious, but he soon discovered that her pride was directed at the third man at the table. She at least maintained a pretence of eating, but he made not even a sham, sitting miserably, his mouth hard set, his eyes shadowed by a tremendous frown. At length he shoved back his chair with such violence that the table trembled.
"Well," he rumbled, "I guess this lets me out. S'long."
And he strode heavily from the room; a moment later his cursing came back to them as he rode into the night.
"Takes it kind of hard, don't he?" said the father.
And the mother murmured: "Poor Ralph!"
"So you went an' done it?" said the mannish girl to her sister.
"What of it?" snapped the other.
"He's too good for you, that's what of it."
"Girls!" exclaimed the mother anxiously. "Remember we got a guest!"
"Oh," said she of the strong brown arms, "I guess we can't tell him nothin'; I guess he had eyes to be seein' what's happened." She turned calmly to Steve.
"Lizzie turned down Ralph Boardman--poor feller!"
"Sue!" cried the other girl.
"Well, after you done it, are you ashamed to have it talked about? You make me sore, I'll tell a man!"
"That's enough, Sue," growled the father.
"What's enough?"
"We ain't goin' to have no more show about this. I've had my supper spoiled by it already."
"I say it's a rotten shame," broke out Sue, and she repeated, "Ralph's too good for her. All because of a city dude--a tenderfoot!"
In the extremity of her scorn her voice drawled in a harsh murmur.
"Then take him yourself, if you can get him!" cried Lizzie. "I'm sure I don't want him!"
Their eyes blazed at each other across the table, and Lizzie, having scored an unexpected point, struck again.
"I think you've always had a sort of hankerin' after Ralph--oh, I've seen your eyes rollin' at him."
The other girl coloured hotly through her tan.
"If I was fond of him I wouldn't be ashamed to let him know, you can tell the world that. And I wouldn't keep him trottin' about like a little pet dog till I got tired of him and give him up for the sake of a greenhorn who"--her voice lowered to a spiteful hiss--"kissed you the first time he even seen you!"
In vain Lizzie fought for her control; her lip trembled and her voice shook.
"I hate you, Sue!"
"Sue, ain't you ashamed of yourself?" pleaded the mother.
"No, I ain't! Think of it; here's Ralph been sweet on Liz for two years an' now she gives him the go-by for a skinny, affected dude like that feller that was here. And he's forgot you already, Liz, the minute he stopped laughing at you for bein' so easy."
"Ma, are you goin' to let Sue talk like this--right before a stranger?"
"Sue, you shut up!" commanded the father.
"I don't see nobody that can make me," she said, surly as a grown boy. "I can't make any more of a fool out of Liz than that tenderfoot made her!"
"Did he," asked Steve, "ride a piebald mustang?"
"D'you know him?" breathed Lizzie, forgetting the tears of shame which had been gathering in her eyes.
"Nope. Jest heard a little about him along the road."
"What's his name?"
Then she coloured, even before Sue could say spitefully: "Didn't he even have to tell you his name before he kissed you?"
"He did! His name is--Tony!"
"Tony!"--in deep disgust. "Well, he's dark enough to be a dago! Maybe he's a foreign count, or something, Liz, and he'll take you back to live in some castle or other."
But the girl queried, in spite of this badinage: "Do you know his name?"
"His name," said Nash, thinking that it could do no harm to betray as much as this, "is Anthony Bard, I think."
"And you don't know him?"
"All I know is that the feller who used to own that piebald mustang is pretty mad and cusses every time he thinks of him."
"He didn't steal the hoss?"
This with more bated breath than if the question had been: "He didn't kill a man?" for indeed horse-stealing was the greater crime.
Even Nash would not make such an accusation directly, and therefore he fell back on an innuendo almost as deadly.
"I dunno," he said non-committally, and shrugged his shoulders.
With all his soul he was concentrating on the picture of the man who conquered a fighting horse and flirted successfully with a pretty girl the same day; each time riding on swiftly from his conquest. The clues on this trail were surely thick enough, but they were of such a nature that the pleasant mind of Steve grew more and more thoughtful.
Chapter XIV
LEMONADE
In fact, so thoughtful had Nash become, that he slept with extraordinary lightness that night and was up at the first hint of day. Sue appeared on the scene just in time to witness the last act of the usual drama of bucking on the part of the roan, before it settled down to the mechanical dog-trot with which it would wear out the ceaseless miles of the mountain-desert all day and far into the night, if need be.
Nash now swung more to the right, cutting across the hills, for he presumed that by this time the tenderfoot must have gotten his bearings and would head straight for Eldara. It was a stiff two day journey, now, the whole first day's riding having been a worse than useless detour; so the bulldog jaw set harder and harder, and the keen eyes squinted as if to look into the dim future.
Once each day, about noon, when the heat made even the desert and the men of the desert drowsy, he allowed his imagination to roam freely, counting the thousand dollars over and over again, and tasting again the joys of a double salary. Yet even his hardy imagination rarely rose to the height of Sally Fortune. That hour of dreaming, however, made the day of labour almost pleasant.
This time, in the very middle of his dream, he reached the cross-roads saloon and general merchandise store of Flanders; so he banished his visions with a compelling shrug of the shoulders and rode for it at a gallop, a hot dryness growing in his throat at every stride. Quick service he was sure to get, for there were not more than half a dozen cattle-ponies standing in front of the little building with its rickety walls guiltless of paint save for the one great sign inscribed with uncertain letters.
He swung from the saddle, tossed the reins over the head of the mustang, made a stride forward--and then checked himself with a soft curse and re
ached for his gun.
For the door of the bar dashed open and down the steps rushed a tall man with light yellow moustache, so long that it literally blew on either side over his shoulders as he ran; in either hand he carried a revolver---a two-gun man, fleeing, perhaps, from another murder.
For Nash recognized in him a character notorious through a thousand miles of the range, Sandy Ferguson, nicknamed by the colour of that famous moustache, which was envied and dreaded so far and so wide. It was not fear that made Nash halt, for otherwise he would have finished the motion and whipped out his gun; but at least it was something closely akin to fear.
For that matter, there were unmistakable signs in Sandy himself of what would have been called arrant terror in any other man. His face was so bloodless that the pallor showed even through the leathery tan; one eye stared wildly, the other being sheltered under a clumsy patch which could not quite conceal the ugly bruise beneath. Under his great moustache his lips were as puffed and swollen as the lips of a negro.
Staggering in his haste, he whirled a few paces from the house and turned, his guns levelled. At the same moment the door opened and the perspiring figure of little fat Flanders appeared. Scorn and anger rather than hate or any bloodlust appeared in his face. His right arm, hanging loosely at his side, held a revolver, and he seemed to have the greatest unconcern for the levelled weapons of the gunman.
He made a gesture with that armed hand, and Sandy winced as though a whiplash had flicked him.
"Steady up, damn your eyes!" bellowed Flanders, "and put them guns away. Put 'em up; hear me?"
To the mortal astonishment of Nash, Sandy obeyed, keeping the while a fascinated eye upon the little Dutchman.
"Now climb your hoss and beat it, and if I ever find you in reach again, I'll send my kid out to rope you and give you a hoss-whippin'."
The gun fighter lost no time. A single leap carried him into his saddle and he was off over the sand with a sharp rattle of the beating hoofs.
"Well," breathed Nash, "I'll be hanged."
