Concealed by the freight sheds Carolyn June Dixon and Ophelia Cobb had stepped from the Pullman at the rear of the train, unseen by Old Heck and Skinny. Nor had either noticed, being engrossed with the couple that had left than a moment before, the trio coming across from the station.
As the cook and her daughter by their very homeliness had appalled and overwhelmed them, these two, Ophelia and Carolyn June, by their exactly opposite appearance stunned Old Heck and Skinny and rendered them speechless with embarrassment. Both were silently thankful they had shaved that morning and Skinny wondered if his face, like Old Heck's, was streaked with sweat and dust.
For a moment the group studied one another.
Carolyn June held the eyes of Skinny in mute and helpless admiration. Despite the heat of the blazing sun she looked fresh and dean and pleasant—wholly unsoiled by the marks of travel. A snow-white Panama hat, the brim sensibly wide, drooped over cheeks that were touched with a splash of tan that suggested much time in the open. An abundance of hair, wonderfully soft and brown, showing the slightest glint of coppery red running it in vagrant strands, fluffed from under the hat. The skirt of her traveling suit, some light substantial material, reached the span of a hand above the ankle. White shoes, silk stockings that matched and through which glowed the faint pink of firm, healthy, young flesh, lent charm to the costume she wore. Her lips were red and moist and parted over teeth that were strong and white. A saucy upward tilt to the nose, hinting that Carolyn June was a flirt; brown eyes that were level almost with Skinny's and that held in them a laugh and yet deep below the mirth something thoughtful, honest and unafraid, finished the wreck of the cowboy's susceptible heart. Trim and smooth was Carolyn June, suggesting to Skinny Rawlins a clean-bred filly of saddle strain that has developed true to form.
Old Heck gazed in equal awe at the more mature Ophelia.
Somewhere near forty she may have been, cozily plump and solid. She had gray-blue eyes that were steady and frank yet clearly accustomed to being obeyed. Her hair was a trifle darker in shade than the silky brown on the head of Carolyn June. She was dressed with immaculate neatness and taste and carried that well-preserved assurance no woman in the world save the American of mature development acquires.
There was energy in every line of her body and Ophelia gave Old Heck, the embarrassed owner of the Quarter Circle KT, more thrills in that one moment of silent scrutiny than he ever before had felt in the presence of any woman.
As they looked, Skinny and Old Heck instinctively, a bit awkwardly perhaps, removed the Stetsons they wore on their heads.
"Howdy-do!" Old Heck finally managed to say.
Skinny gulped like an echo, another "Howdy-do!" in the direction of
Carolyn June.
"I reckon you are Carolyn June and Missus Ophelia Cobb," Old Heck stammered "Which one of you is which?" unconsciously paying tribute to the well preserved youthfulness of the widow.
"Oh, Ophelia, beware!" Carolyn June laughed, not in the least offended; "the gay old rascal is at it already!"
"He didn't mean nothing" Skinny interposed, sensing that Old Heck some way had made a blunder. "I guess you must be Carolyn June?" looking questioningly at the girl.
"Excuse me," Old Heck said, "I'm your uncle, I suppose, and this is
Skinny Rawlins—"
"Howdy-do; I'm glad to meet you," Skinny muttered, reaching for the hand
Carolyn June frankly extended.
"I'm glad, too," she replied candidly; "and this is Mrs. Ophelia Cobb—just Ophelia—Uncle Josiah," Carolyn added, turning to Old Heck who clumsily shook hands with the widow while his weather-tanned face flushed a burning, uncomfortably red.
"We was expecting you," he said, retaining life hold on her hand.
"That was very kind," Ophelia murmured. "I am sure we are delighted to be here."
"Now I guess we are all acquainted," Carolyn June said with a little laugh. "It's easy for folks to get acquainted, isn't it?" turning suddenly to Skinny.
"Seems like it after they once get started," Skinny answered.
"We'd better be heading for home I reckon," Old Heck said, releasing at last the widow's hand and lifting the bags in the car. "Sing Pete will have dinner ready by the time we get there."
"We have some trunks," Carolyn June said, "can we take them with us?"
"Yes," Old Heck replied, "get in, and we'll drive over to the depot and get them."
With Carolyn June and Ophelia in the rear seat and Skinny and himself in the front Old Heck drove the car across to the station and the trunks were fastened with ropes on the hood of the engine and running-boards of the car.
As they started away Carolyn June asked:
"Which way now, Uncle Josiah?"
"Out to the ranch."
"Hadn't we better stop at the drug store," she asked soberly, "and get some medicine?"
"Medicine? Who for?" Old Heck inquired innocently.
"Why, the patients, of course," Carolyn June answered with a mischievous chuckle.
"What patients?"
"Out at the Quarter Circle KT where that epidemic of smallpox is raging!" she answered sweetly.
"That's all a mistake," Old Heck said hastily; "we thought is was smallpox but it wasn't—"
"No, everybody's got over it," Skinny added nervously; "they're all cured!"
"Yes, they was just broke out with the heat and didn't have the smallpox at all—" Old Heck explained.
"Liars, both of them," Carolyn June said laughingly to Ophelia; "they just didn't want us to come!"
"Very likely," Ophelia answered.
"No, honest, we thought we had it," Old Heck stammered.
"We were plumb uneasy for fear you wouldn't arrive," Skinny declared. "After we found out it wasn't smallpox we were going to send a special delivery message and tell you it was all a misunderstanding and to come anyhow!"
"Shall we forgive them?" Carolyn June asked the widow.
"Perhaps, this time—their first offense!"
"I'll tell you," Carolyn June said, "well suspend sentence pending good behavior!"
Skinny leaned close to Old Heck.
"Stop a minute at the Golden Rule," he whispered; "I want to do some personal trading."
"If it ain't important," Old Heck answered, "we oughtn't to take the time. What do you want to buy?"
"I want to get me a white shirt—"
"Gosh," Old Heck exclaimed, "that bad already! What'll he be in week?"
"Did you speak, Uncle Josiah?" Carolyn asked.
"Huh—no, I—Skinny just thought I was going to hit a rock!" he answered, and giving the engine more gas, he headed the car, at a thirty-mile clip, toward the east and the Quarter Circle KT.
The party rode in silence. The speed of the car and the fan of the warm wind against their faces made conversation difficult. A mile from Eagle Butte they crossed the long, low, iron-railed bridge over the Cimarron River and climbed out on to the bench away from the bottom lands. From that point on to the Quarter Circle KT the road followed the brow of the bench on the south side of the river. It was smooth and good.
Carolyn June thrilled at the bigness of it all as they swept quickly past the irrigated district close to the town and sped out on the open unfenced range. For miles the country was level with here and there arroyos cross-sectioning into the river valley. Long stretches with the barest undulations made driving a joy and the winding road was a natural speedway. Scattered over the plain were dusters of mesquit and in the low sags where moisture was near the surface patches of thorns. Carolyn June loved the width and breadth of the great range, strange and new to her. Here was freedom sweeping as the winds of heaven. Dimly, on the southern horizon she could see the blue outline of Sentinel Mountain standing alone out on the plain. To the left green pasture-lands lay along the river. A narrow strip of cottonwood trees marked the curving path of the Cimarron. Beds of white quicksand, treacherous and fatal and dreaded by every rider of the open country could be seen, occasional
ly, through openings in the trees showing the bed of the river itself. In the distance behind them was Eagle Butte, towering above the town they had left a few brief moments before, and beyond that the Costejo Mountains, rugged and massive and covered in part on their lower slopes with blue-green thickets of pine. Across the river was a choppy sea of sand-dunes stretching away to the north as far as sight could reach. Here and there a high-flung mound, smooth and oval or capped with ledges of black, glistening rode broke the monotony of the view.
Engrossed in the study of the almost primitive picture Carolyn June forgot the flight of time and the speed at which they were traveling.
"Yonder's the ranch!" Skinny announced suddenly, turning half around in his seat and pointing ahead and to the left toward the river.
The valley widened till it was a mile or more across. The Cimarron swung sharply to the north and hugged the foot of the bench as if unwilling to spoil the meadowlands past which it flowed. In a great half-crescent—"Quarter Circle," Old Heck called it—the green basin-like area lay spread out before them. It was a half dozen miles in length, reaching from the canyon gate at the upper end of the valley where the river turned abruptly northward, to the narrow gorge at the south through which it disappeared.
A blue crane lazily flapped across the valley.
"Seven thousand acres in the bottoms," Skinny volunteered.
"Beautiful!" Carolyn breathed.
"Splendid!" Ophelia exclaimed.
Half-way down the valley, a quarter of a mile from the bench, the buildings of the Quarter Circle KT clustered together in a group—the low adobe house, bunk shack, stables, graineries. Out in the fields were hay yards with half-built stacks of alfalfa—over the tops of the stacks white tarpaulins. In a pasture beyond the house were horses and cattle, perhaps a hundred head in all. Climbing the hills north of the river were a number of moving figures, dimly seen through the haze.
"Are those cattle," Carolyn June asked, "those things across the river?"
"Where?" Skinny inquired.
"Over there, on the hills," pointing toward the objects.
Old Heck glancing in the direction she indicated answered for Skinny:
"That's Parker and the boys, going over to the North Springs—they're checking up on some yearlings we just turned across from this side of the range." Then, speaking to Skinny: "They've already had their dinner and won't be in till supper-time—"
"Are they cowboys?" Carolyn June asked.
"I reckon," Old Heck responded.
"Is Skinny one?" she inquired naively.
"Sort of, I suppose," Old Heck chuckled while Skinny felt his face coloring up with embarrassment, "but not a wild one."
"Oh, who is that?" Carolyn June cried suddenly as a lone rider whirled out of the corral, around the stables, and his horse sprang into a gallop straight down the valley toward the harrows at its lower end.
"That," Skinny said after a quick glance, "oh, that's th' Ramblin' Kid—Where in thunder do you reckon the darned fool's going now?" he added to Old Heck.
"Can't tell nothing about where he's going," Old Heck said. "He's liable to be heading for anywhere. What's he riding?" he asked without looking up.
"Captain Jack," Skinny replied. "Wonder if he ain't going over to Battle
Ridge to find out if it's so about them sheep coming in over there?"
"Maybe," Old Heck grunted, "either that or else he's took a notion to hunt that Gold Dust maverick again"—referring to a strange, wonderfully beautiful, outlaw filly that had appeared on the Kiowa range a year before and tormented the riders by her almost fiendish cunning in dodging corral or rope—"if he's riding Captain Jack that's probably what he's after."
"Who is he, what's his real name?" Carolyn June asked with interest.
"Just th' Ramblin' Kid, as far as I know," Old Heck answered.
"Does he live at the Quarter Circle KT?" Carolyn June continued curiously as she studied the slender form rising and falling with the graceful rhythm of his horse's motion—as if man and animal were a single living, pulsing creature.
"Off and on," Old Heck replied, "when he wants to he does and when he don't he don't. He's a witch with horses and knows he's always got a job if he wants it, and I reckon that makes him kind of undependable about staying in any one place long at a time. That's why they call him th' Ramblin' Kid—he's liable to ramble any minute."
The car curled down the narrow dugway off of the bench and a moment later stopped at the gate in front of the ranch house of the Quarter Circle KT.
"We're here," Skinny said, as Sing Pete, the Chinese cook, appeared at the open door.
"They've come, Sing Pete," Old Heck called, climbing out of the car; "this is them! Is dinner ready?"
"All leady—waitee!" the Oriental answered, shuffling out to the car to help with the luggage and twisting and squirming as he kept bowing in greeting.
"This is great!" Carolyn June said, as she stepped on the long cool porch in front of the house and paused a moment before entering the open door, "—it's cool and pleasant, I'm going to like it," she added, as she went into the big low-ceilinged room.
The floor was bare of carpet but spotlessly clean; shades, but no curtains, were over the windows; in the center stood a large flat-topped reading table; at one end of the table was a Morris chair upholstered in brown Spanish leather; a wolf-skin rug was thrown on the floor before an old-fashioned Mexican fire-place built into one corner of the room; in another corner was a smaller table on which was a graphophone; a rocker and several chairs were set about the room and against the north wall; between two doors, evidently opening into twin bedrooms, was an upright grand piano—.
"Oh, a piano!" Carolyn June exclaimed delightedly noticing the instrument. "Who plays?"
"Nobody," Old Heck answered foolishly, "I—I—well, what's the use of lying?—I bought it one day, before prohibition come, when I was drunk and just had it brought out because I didn't know what else to do with it—"
"You funny old uncle!" Carolyn June laughed, "I love you already.—Ophelia plays," she added.
"Not so well or so much as Carolyn June," Ophelia said.
"Maybe we'll have some music then some day; that ain't canned," Skinny suggested eagerly.
"You women can use them rooms," Old Heck said, referring to the doors on each side of the piano. "Parker and me did have them but we've arranged to sleep in the bunk-house while you are here."
"Carolyn June and I need but one," Ophelia said, "it isn't fair to run you out—"
"You ain't running us," Old Heck answered, "we've talked it over and would rather."
After dinner Ophelia and Carolyn June spent their time in settling themselves in their rooms. A small bath closet connected the two—crude a bit and somewhat unfinished; but a hot tub, the water supplied from a tank at the kitchen range, was enjoyed by both.
Old Heck and Skinny helped with the trunks and then withdrew to the bunk-house.
Old Heck shaved and Skinny put on a clean shirt.
Skinny was not sure but this official love-making job was going to be interesting work and Old Heck himself was uncertain whether to cuss or rejoice—sometimes he was almost sorry to-morrow would be Parker's day to love and entertain Ophelia.
CHAPTER IV
THE UNUSED PLATE
At sundown, when Parker and the cowboys rode in from the northern hills, the Quarter Circle KT lay under a mantle of sullen, torturing heat. Not a breath of air fanned the poplars, straight and motionless, in front of the house. The sun buried itself in a solid wall of black that rose above the Costejo peaks, hidden now in the shadow of the coming storm. The horses were dripping with sweat—their coats as glossy and wet as if they had swum the river. At the corral the animals wearily tossed their heads, low hung with exhaustion, seeking to shift the sticky clutch of head-stall or hackamore, while their riders dismounted and quickly removed saddle and riding gear. Freed from their burdens the bronchos dragged tired heels through the dust as they whirled
and trotted unsteadily away to the pasture, eager to roll and relax their aching muscles.
"Holy cats, but it's hot!" Bert Lilly exclaimed as he slipped off his chaps and started toward the house, leaving saddle and outfit lying beside the gate of the corral.
"Better put them things in the shed," Parker advised, "looks like a whale of a storm is coming."
"Reckon that's right," Bert answered, turning back and carrying his riding gear into the shelter where the other cowboys already had taken theirs.
"Wonder if them women come?" Chuck Slithers queried as they moved toward the gate.
"More than likely—Bet Skinny and Old Heck have had a hell of a time making love to 'em," Charley Saunders remarked.
"You want to be careful about cussin'," Parker warned. "It ain't polite when women are around!"
"Listen at him!" Bert said with a laugh, "practising already—Parker is getting polite—to-morrow is his day to be affectionate to the widow, Ophelia—"
"Which is she, Parker," Charley asked soberly, "a grass or natural?"
"Shut up, you blamed fools, they're liable to hear you," Parker growled angrily. "Anyhow, it ain't my fault they come!"
"Parker oughtn't to kick," Chuck chimed in, "look at poor old
Skinny—he's got a steady job lovin' the other one!"
"Darned if I wouldn't rather love both of them at once," Charley observed, "than to take another ride like that was to-day. I'm kind of anxious to see what they look like," he continued.
"Well, don't go and get excited at the supper table and eat your pie with a spoon!" Chuck laughed.
"Aw, hell," Charley retorted, "I guess I know how to act—"
"Old Heck's going to buy some finger-bowls for you to wash your hands in," Bert said scornfully, "him and Parker—"
"Shut up, I told you, you darned idiots," Parker snapped. "They're out on the front porch and can hear you!"
"Be careful about your cussin'—" Bert mimicked with a snicker.
Notwithstanding their raillery every man in the group, including Pedro, gave unusual care to scrubbing his face and smoothing his hair preparatory to entering the kitchen for supper and where they would meet, for the first time, Ophelia and Carolyn June.
The Ramblin Kid Page 3
