The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ramblin' Kid, by Earl Wayland Bowman
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Title: The Ramblin' Kid
Author: Earl Wayland Bowman
Posting Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #10374] Release Date: December 3, 2003
Language: English
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Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE RAMBLIN' KID
BY EARL WAYLAND BOWMAN
FRONTISPIECE BY W.H.D. KOERNER
1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A NIGHT LETTER
II A BLUFF CALLED
III WHICH ONE'S WHICH
IV THE UNUSED PLATE
V A DUEL OF ENDURANCE
VI YOU'RE A BRUTE
VII THE GREEDY SANDS
VIII QUICK WITH A VENGEANCE
IX OLD HECK'S STRATEGY
X FIXING FIXERS
XI A DANCE AND A RIDE
XII YOU'LL GET YOUR WISH
XIII THE ELITE AMUSEMENT PARLOR
XIV THE GRAND PARADE
XV MOCHA AND JAVA
XVI THE SWEEPSTAKES
XVII OLD HECK GOES TO TOWN
XVIII A SHAME TO WASTE IT
XIX THE GREEK GETS HIS
XX MOSTLY SKINNY
XXI A GIRL LIKE YOU
THE RAMBLIN' KID
CHAPTER I
A NIGHT LETTER
Sand and gravel slithered and slid under the heels of Old Pie Face as Skinny Rawlins whirled the broncho into the open space in front of the low-built, sprawling, adobe ranch house of the Quarter Circle KT and reined the pinto to a sudden stop. Skinny had been to Eagle Butte and with other things brought back the mail. It was hot, late June, the time between cutting the first crop of alfalfa and gathering, from the open range, the beef steers ready for the summer market. Regardless of the heat Skinny had ridden hard and his horse was a lather of sweat. A number of cowboys lounged, indolently, in the shade of the bunk-house, smoking cigarettes and contentedly enjoying the hour of rest after the noon-day dinner. Another, lean-built, slender, boyish in appearance and with strangely black, inscrutable eyes, stepped from around the corner of the house as Skinny jerked Old Pie Face to a standstill.
"Where's Old Heck?" Skinny asked excitedly. "I brought the mail—here, take it to him!"
The other, known on the Kiowa and the range of western Texas and Mexico only as "the Ramblin' Kid," strolled leisurely out through the sagging, weight-swung gate and up to the panting horse from which Skinny had not yet dismounted.
"Asleep, I reckon," he replied in a voice peculiarly low and deliberate, "—what's your spontaneousness about? You act like a special d'livery or somethin'."
"Old Heck's got a letter," Skinny said, jerkily; "maybe's it's bad news an' he ought to have it quick," as the Ramblin' Kid reached for a yellow envelope held in the outstretched hand.
At that instant Old Heck, owner and boss of the Quarter Circle KT cow outfit, stepped from the shadow of the open ranch-house door. He was short and stocky, red-faced, somewhere near the fifties, and a yellowish-gray mustache hung over tobacco blackened lips. Overalls, a checked blue and white shirt, open at the throat, boots into which the trousers legs were loosely jammed comprised his attire. He was bareheaded and the sun glistened on a wrinkly forehead, topped by a thin sprinkling of hair.
"What's the matter?" he asked drowsily, his small, gray-blue eyes blinking in the yellow sun-glare and still sluggish from the nap disturbed by the noise of Skinny's arrival.
"Nothin'. Skinny's just got a letter an' is excited about it," the
Ramblin' Kid said, handing the envelope to him. "It's for you."
"My Gawd!" Old Heck exclaimed, "it's a telegram!"
The cowboys resting in the shade of the bunk-house rose to their feet, sauntered over and surrounded Old Heck and the Ramblin' Kid, commenting meanwhile, frankly and caustically, on the fagged condition of the broncho Skinny was on:
"Must 'a' been scared, the way you run that horse," Parker, range foreman of the Quarter Circle KT, a heavy-built, sandy-complexioned man in the forties, remarked witheringly to Skinny as the cow-puncher climbed from the saddle and slid to the ground.
"He's mine, I reckon," Skinny retorted, "an' I figure it's nobody's darn' business how I ride him—anyhow I brought Old Heck a telegram!" he added triumphantly.
"Blamed if he didn't!" Charley Saunders, with a trifle of awe, pretended or real, in his tone, said. "It sure is!"
"My Gawd!" Old Heck repeated, slowly turning the envelope over in his hand, "it's a telegram! Wonder what it's about?"
"Why don't you open it and see?" Parker suggested.
"Yes, open th' blamed thing and find out," Skinny encouraged.
"I—I've a notion to," Old Heck whispered.
"Go on and do it, it won't take but a minute," Charley Saunders entreated.
"Maybe he's one of these mind-readers and can read it through the envelope," Bert Lilly volunteered.
"Aw, shut up and give him a chance!"
Trembling, Old Heck tore open the envelope and silently read the message.
"My Gawd!" he groaned again. "The worst has come to the worst!"
"That ought to make it middlin' bad," Charley remarked soberly.
"Ought to," Bert added sententiously.
Parker crowded forward on sympathy bent.
"Tell us what's in it," he said; "if it's sorrowful we'll be plumb glad to condole!"
"It's worse than sorrowful—"
"Melancholical?" Skinny inquired.
"My Gawd!" Old Heck said again, his weatherworn features working convulsively, "it's more than a mortal man can endure and stand!"
"Bet somebody's dead!" Bert whispered to the Ramblin' Kid.
"Probably. Most everybody gets to be sooner or later," was the answer without emotion.
Sing Pete, Chinese cook for the outfit, dish-rag over his shoulder, edged out of the kitchen door and shuffled around to the group. Glimpsing the yellow slip of paper held in the shaking hand of Old Heck and the awed interest of the cowboys gathered about the boss, he queried:
"Teleglam?"
No answer.
"Teleglam? Maybe alle samee somebody sickee?" he continued, cheerfully confident that questions enough would ultimately bring a reply. He was rewarded:
"What do you know about 'teleglams'? You slant-eyed burner of beef-steaks!"
"Who's it from?" Charley asked. "Anybody we know—"
"My Gawd," Old Heck mourned once more, "she's comin'!"
"Who's she?" Parker coaxed.
"A female," Old Heck replied, "she's a female!"
"The darned old cuss has had a wife sometime and run off from her and deserted her and she's pursuing him and trailing him down to earth!" Chuck Slithers, doubting Thomas of the outfit and student of Sherlock Holmes, cunningly suggested. "I always imagined he was a varmint with a past—a' ex-heart breaker of innocent women or a train-robber or—"
"Aw, hell," the Ramblin' Kid rebuked, "him have a wife? Don't insult th' female population!"
"Carramba!" exclaimed Pedro Valencia, Mexican line-rider for the Quarter Circle KT, "perhaps she will stick him with the dagger, or shoot him with the gun when she arrive! The ladies with love kill quick when the love is—what you call him?—the jilt?"
"And I'd almost forgot I ever had one!" Old Heck continued talking as if to himself.
"What'd I tell you?" Chuck exulted.
"Shut up! He's confessin'—let him alone an' he'll get it out of his conscience sooner or later!"
"Had a what?" Parker urged sympathetically. "Maybe you didn't have one—maybe you only imagined you did!"
"Had a brother—anyhow a half a one—our mothers was the same but different fathers on account of mine dyin' when I was little and his marrying our mother again; we was playmates together in our innocent childhood and infancy until I run away and went to sea and finally anchored on the Kiowa and got to raisin' cattle—"
"Where does he come in at?" Parker questioned.
"He said it was a female, to start with," Skinny added.
"—and his name is Simeon Dixon on account of his father's being the same thing, and he went in the street railroad business in a place named Hartville in Connecticut, and he got married and had a wife—she was Zithia Forbes, and she's dead, and I knowed that, and he's rich I reckon and—"
"An' Amrak begat Meshak an' Meshak begat Zimri an' Zimri was th' founder of th' House of Old Heck," the Ramblin' Kid chanted. "What in thunder does details amount to, anyhow?"
"But you was mournin' about a she!" Parker insisted.
"Well, I reckon it ain't a wife—at least not the one I was thinking about," Chuck murmured disappointedly, "but I bet he's had one somewhere in his vari'gated career and is hiding out from her in fear an' tremblin'—"
"And there will not be the grand, the beautiful murder?" Pedro sighed, questioningly.
"Wait a minute," Skinny pleaded, "—give him air!"
"—and he's got a female daughter—and I didn't know that—and he's—oh, Gawd!—he's sending her out to the Quarter Circle KT!"
"How big is she?" Parker whispered.
"She's—she's twenty-two—"
"Inches around or what?" Charley gasped.
"—and Ophelia is coming with her—Ophelia Cobb—C-o-double-b it is—is coming with her for a chaperon—"
"Great guns!" Skinny breathed,"—two females!"
"Hold still and I'll read it—no, you do it, Parker—I'm too full of emotion—my voice'd quiver—"
Parker read:
"Josiah Heck, Eagle Butte, Texas:
"Am sending my daughter, Carolyn June, out to your ranch for a while. She needs a change. She has broke all the he-human hearts in Hartville—that is all of them old enough or young enough to be broke—and is what's called a love-stimulator and won't settle. She is twenty-two and it's time she was calmed. Hoping six months on the Kiowa range will gentle her quite a lot, I am sympathetically your 1/2 brother, Simeon.
"P.S.—Mrs. Ophelia Cobb, a lady widow, is coming with her for a chaperon. Beware of both of them. They will arrive at Eagle Butte the 21st.—S."
"Gee, it's a long one!" Chuck said admiringly.
"It's one of these 'Night Letters,'" Parker explained.
"I knowed it was bad news," Skinny exclaimed, "—poor old Heck!"
"Better say, 'Poor we all!'" Bert declared. "Farewell peace and joy on the Quarter Circle KT!"
"The Lord have mercy on Old Heck!" Charley cried with dramatic fervor.
"Holy smoke," Parker murmured desperately, "two of them on the twenty-first—and that's to-morrow!"
CHAPTER II
A BLUFF CALLED
The Quarter Circle KT was a womanless ranch. Came now, like a bolt from the clear sky or the sudden clang of a fire-alarm bell, the threat of violation of this Eveless Eden by the intrusion of a pair of strange and unknown females. The arrival of the telegram telling of the coming of Carolyn June Dixon, Old Heck's niece, and Ophelia Cobb, her chaperon, filled with varying emotions the hearts of Old Heck, Parker and the cowboys.
To Old Heck their presence meant nothing less than calamity. Long years of he-man association had made him dread the petty restraints he imagined would be imposed by intimate contact with womankind. Good lord, a man wouldn't be able even to cuss freely, and without embarrassment, with a couple of women in the house and prowling around the ranch!
Skinny, Bert, Chuck, Pedro, Charley, the Ramblin' Kid, even the Chink cook and Parker, quivered with excitement and curiosity behind thinly veiled pretense of fear and horror. Secretly they rejoiced. It was marvelous news borne by the telegram Skinny brought. Here would be diversion ample, unusual, wholly worth while and filled with possibilities of romance as luring as the first glimpse of a strange new land shadowed with mystery and promise of thrilling adventure.
Sing Pete paddled back to the unfinished business of the kitchen, chattering excitedly. The cowboys stood mutely and stared at Old Heck and the fatal slip of yellow paper.
"What'll I do?" Old Heck asked the group despairingly. "They'll ruin everything."
"Can't you head 'em off, somehow?" Parker suggested.
"Can't be done. They're already on their way and probably somewhere this side of Kansas City by now."
"Find out which train they're on and let the Ramblin' Kid and me cut across to the Purgatory River bridge and wreck it," Skinny Rawlins, always tragic, darkly advised.
"I ain't particular about killin' females," the Ramblin' Kid objected, "besides, we ain't got no dynamite."
"Send them a telegram and say Old Heck's dead and not to come," Bert
Lilly volunteered.
"Aw, you blamed idiot, they'd come anyhow then, just to attend the funeral—"
"I got an idea," Chuck Slithers exclaimed; it's a telegram too. Send them one C.O.D. in care of the train that will get to Eagle Butte the twenty-first and tell them we've all got the smallpox and we're sorry but everybody's dangerously sick and to please answer!"
"That might work," Parker said; "they'd be mighty near sure not to want to catch it."
"We'll try it," Old Heck agreed. "Chuck wants to ride over to Eagle Butte anyway and he can have the depot agent send it and wait for a reply."
"Go get your horse ready, Chuck," Parker said, "we'll write it while you're saddlin' up!"
Chuck hurried to the corral while Old Heck went into the house for pencil and writing-paper. Parker and the cowboys moved in a group to the shade of the porch in front of the house.
"What'll we tell them?" Old Heck asked, reappearing with writing materials. "Here, Parker, you write it."
"Dear niece Carolyn June Dixon and Chaperon: Sorry, but there's an epidemic of smallpox at the Quarter Circle KT and you can't come. Chuck is dying with it. Old Heck's plumb prostrated, Bert is already broke out, Pedro is starting to and Skinny Rawlins and the Ramblin' Kid are just barely able to be up. I love you too much to want you to catch it. Please go back to Hartville and give my regards to your pa and don't expose yourself. Answer by return telegram so I'll know your intentions. Affectionately and absolutely your Uncle Josiah Heck," Parker read after writing a few moments. "How's that?"
"Sounds all right."
"Got it ready?" Chuck called from the fence, while Silver Tip, the trim-built half-blood Hambletonian colt he was riding, reared and pranced, eager for the road and a run.
"For lord's sake hurry up, Chuck," Old Heck yelled as the Ramblin' Kid handed the paper to Chuck and the cowboy whirled his horse into a gallop toward Eagle Butte. "Have the agent send it in care of whatever train they might be on and get an answer, then come back as quick as possible —waiting is agony!"
It was a long afternoon for Old Heck and the cowboys of the Quarter Circle KT. A band of colts were in the circular corral to be gentled to rope, saddle and hackamore. Old Heck sat on the top pole of the corral and moodily watched the struggle of the men and horses in the dry, dusty enclosure as one by one each young broncho was roped, saddled and ridden. Frequently he turned longing eyes toward Eagle Butte, anxious for sight of the cloud of dust from which Chuck would emerge bringing, he hoped, word that Carolyn June and Ophelia Cobb had heeded the misleading message.
The sun crept across the western sky and dropped lower and lower until it hung at last, a blazing disk of fire, close above the highest peaks of the Costejo mountain range. The poplars in front of the house flung slim black shadows acro
ss the low adobe buildings and splashed the tip of their shade in the dust-cloud that filled with haze the corral a hundred yards away. Sing Pete stepped from the door and beat a tattoo on the iron triangle suspended by a piece of wire from the lowest branch of a mesquit tree at the corner of the house, announcing by the metallic clamor that the work of the day was finished and supper was ready and waiting. Parker swung back the heavy gate at the corral entrance and the dozen colts, sweat streaks on heads and backs and bellies where hackamore, saddle and cinches told of the lessons of the afternoon, pushing and jamming and with a clatter of hoofs, whirled out to freedom, around the stable and down a lane into an open meadow.
Kicking off their chaps the cowboys tossed them on the riding gear, piled already against the fence of the corral, and straggled stiffly toward the house. On the wire enclosing the back yard Sing Pete had hung a couple of heavy towels, coarse and long. Some basins and several chunks of yellow laundry soap were on a bench beside an irrigation ditch that ran along the fence just inside the gate. Old Heck, Parker and the cowboys stopped at the ditch, pitched their hats on the grass and dipping water from the ditch scoured the dust and sweat from their faces and hands.
All were silent as if each was troubled with thoughts too solemn to be spoken aloud.
At last, Skinny, handing a towel to Bert after drying his own sun-tanned face and hands, remarked inanely:
"Chuck ain't come, has he?"
"Slupper!" Sing Pete called.
They filed into the kitchen and each took his regular place at the long, oilcloth covered table. The food, wholesome, plain and abundant, was already served.
Silently each heaped his plate with the viands before him while Sing
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