Leaning low on the neck of the maverick, the Ramblin' Kid began talking, for the first time, to the horse he rode.
"Baby—Baby! Girl!" he whispered incoherently almost. "Go—go—damn 'em! 'Ophelia'"—he laughed thickly, reeling in the saddle. "Hell—_no—'Little—Little—Pink Garter!—that's—that's—what y' are! Little—Pink—Garter—" he repeated irrationally. "That's it—show 'em—damn 'em—show 'em what—what runnin'—what real runnin' is!" fumbling caressingly at the mare's neck with hands numb and stiff and chuckling pitifully, insanely, while his face was drawn with agony nearly unendurable.
Then the Gold Dust maverick ran!
Never had ground flowed with such swiftness under the belly of a horse on a Texas track.
"Good God!" Skinny yelled, "looky yonder! He's passin' them! Th'
Ramblin' Kid is passin' 'em!"
No one answered him.
His voice was drowned in the mighty roar that surged from five thousand throats and rolled in waves of echoing and re-echoing sound across the field.
"He's ridin' round 'em!"
"Th' Ramblin' Kid is goin' around them!"
"Great heavens! Look at that horse go!"
"She's a-flyin'! She's a-flyin'!"
The Gold Dust maverick closed the gap—she caught Dash-Away—she evened up with Prince John—she left the big sorrel behind—she passed Say-So—nose to nose for a few rods she ran opposite the black wonder—the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo.
Flip Williams, spurs raking the flanks of Dorsey's stallion, looked around.
The Ramblin' Kid leaned toward him:
"Hell—why—don't you—make that—thing run!" he sneered at the Y-Bar rider.
The next instant the Gold Dust maverick's neck and shoulders showed in the lead of the Y-Bar stallion.
At the turn for the home stretch the outlaw filly shot ahead of the wonderful black horse from the Vermejo, swung close to the inside rail, and like a flash of gold-brown darted down the track toward the wire.
The grandstand was turned into a madhouse of seething humanity. The immense crowd came to its feet roaring and shrieking with frenzy. Men smashed their neighbors with clenched fists—not knowing or caring how hard or whom they struck—or that they themselves were being hit. Women screamed frantically, hysterically, tears streaming from thousands of eyes because of sheer joy at the wonderful thing the Gold Dust maverick was doing. Even the stolid Sing Pete was jumping up and down, shouting:
"Come on—come on—Lamblin' Kid! Beat 'em—beatee hell out of 'em!"
Full three lengths in the lead of the "unbeatable" Thunderbolt the Gold
Dust maverick flashed under the wire in front of the judges!
Dorsey, shaken in every nerve, lips blue as though he were stricken with a chill, reeled out of the box from which he had watched his whole fortune swept away by the speed of the Cimarron mare. At his side, profaning horrible, obscene oaths staggered Mike Sabota.
Old Heck, white-faced, but his lips drawn in a smile of satisfaction, stood up in the Clagstone "Six" and watched the Ramblin' Kid—his eyes set and staring, his body twitching convulsively, check the filly, swing her around, ride back to the judges' stand, weakly fling up a hand in salute and then, barely able to sit in the saddle, rein the Gold Dust maverick off the track and ride toward the box stall.
Skinny drew a hand across his eyes and looked at Carolyn June.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
CHAPTER XVII
OLD HECK GOES TO TOWN
It was Monday morning, clear and cloudless, with a whiff of a breeze kissing the poplars along the front-yard fence at the Quarter Circle KT. On the sand-hills north of the Cimarron, Pedro was pushing the saddle cavallard toward Rock Creek, where the last half of the beef round-up was to begin. Parker and the cowboys were just splashing their bronchos into the water at the lower ford. Sing Pete, on the high seat of the grub-wagon, was once more clucking and cawing at Old Tom and Baldy as they drew the outfit along the lane and followed the others to the open range.
Old Heck, Skinny, Ophelia and Carolyn June again were alone at the
Quarter Circle KT.
The Eagle Butte Rodeo had closed, with one last riotous carnival of wildness at midnight Saturday night.
Once more the straggling town, its pulse gradually beating back to normal, lay half-asleep at the foot of the sun-baked butte that stood silent and drowsy beyond the Sante Fe tracks.
Tom Poole, the lank marshal, loafed as usual about the Elite Amusement Parlor, over which hung a sullen quiet reflecting the morbid emotions of Mike Sabota, its brutish-built proprietor, resulting from his heavy losses on Thunderbolt in the two-mile sweepstakes when the Gold Dust maverick, ridden by the drug-crazed Ramblin' Kid, darted under the wire lengths ahead of the black Vermejo stallion.
Friday evening Old Heck had met Dorsey in the pool-room.
Judge Ivory handed over to the owner of the Quarter Circle KT the Y-Bar cattleman's check for ten thousand dollars and the bill of sale he had recklessly given and which transferred to Old Heck all the cattle the Vermejo rancher owned.
Dorsey was game.
"You put it on me," he said to Old Heck "but the Ramblin' Kid won square and I'm not squealing!"
Old Heck turned the check slowly over in his hand and looked at it with a quizzical frown on his face:
"I reckon this is good?"
"It's my exact balance," Dorsey replied; "I saw to that this morning."
For a long minute Old Heck studied the bill of sale that made him owner of every cow-brute burnt with the Y-Bar brand.
"My men will gather the cattle within fifteen days," Dorsey said dully, noting the half-questioning look on Old Heck's face, "or you can send your own crew, just as you please. I suppose you'll meet me half-way and receive the stock in Eagle Butte?"
"Can Thunderbolt run?" Old Heck asked irrelevantly.
"Not as fast as that imp of hell of the Ramblin' Kid's!" Dorsey answered instantly and with a short laugh.
Old Heck chuckled.
"You say you'll turn the Y-Bar cattle over to me within fifteen days?" he asked again, reverting to a study of the paper he held in his hand.
"Yes," Dorsey replied; "is that satisfactory?"
"You're a pretty good sport, after all, Dorsey," Old Heck said quietly. "I'll cash this check"—glancing at the yellow slip of paper—"and this thing, here—we'll just tear it up!" as he reduced the bill of sale to fragments. "Keep your cattle, Dorsey," he added, "ten thousand dollars is enough for you to pay for your lesson!"
Dorsey flushed a dull red.
"I ain't asking—"
"I know you're not," Old Heck interrupted, "and that's the reason I tore up that bill of sale!"
"Old Heck," Dorsey said, his voice trembling, "you're white! I'd like to shake—"
The rival cattlemen gripped hands and the racing feud between the
Quarter Circle KT and the Y-Bar was ended.
A week later Dorsey sent Flip Williams to the Quarter Circle KT. The
Vermejo cowboy led the beautiful black stallion that had mastered
Quicksilver and had in turn been whipped by the Gold Dust maverick.
"Dorsey said, Tell Old Heck Thunderbolt's a pretty good saddle horse,'" Flip explained, "'and he'd do to change off with Quicksilver once in a while! So he sent him over as a sort of keepsake!'"
The Ramblin' Kid did not return to the Quarter Circle KT until late
Sunday night. After the two-mile sweepstakes he was horribly ill. All
Friday night he laid, in a semi-conscious condition, in the stall with
Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick.
Parker and some of the cowboys visited the stall after the race, but they thought the Ramblin' Kid was drunk and the best thing was to allow him to sleep it off.
"I can't figure it out," Chuck said as they turned away, "he never did get drunk before that I knew of—"
"You can't tell what he's liable to do," Charley inte
rrupted, "he sure took an awful chance getting on a tear at the time he did!"
"Well, he won the race," Parker said admiringly, "drunk or sober, you've got to give him credit for that!"
Saturday the Ramblin' Kid got Pedro to stay with the horses while he went over to the Elite Amusement Parlor. He had nothing to say to Sabota or any of the loafers in the place.
He was looking for Gyp Streetor.
Until Sunday afternoon he searched Eagle Butte, trying to find the tout. All he wanted was to locate the man who had sold him that cup of coffee—he could remember drinking the coffee; after that until the following morning all was hazy.
But Gyp was gone.
When the Gold Dust maverick, with the Ramblin' Kid swaying uncertainly on her back, had appeared on the track for the two-mile run, the tout, his eyes like those of a harried rat, sneaked out of the crowd in front of the book-makers' booths and hurried toward the Santa Fe railroad yards. An hour later he slipped into an empty freight car—part of a train headed for the West—and Eagle Butte saw him no more.
It was midnight Sunday when the Ramblin' Kid reached the Quarter Circle KT, turned Captain Jack and the outlaw filly into the circular corral, and without disturbing Old Heck, Parker, or the cowboys, already asleep in the bunk-house, sought his bed.
Monday morning he was at breakfast with the others.
Throughout the meal the Ramblin' Kid was silent. Carolyn June, still shocked by what she thought was his intoxication the day of the race, and believing he had remained in Eagle Butte over Saturday night and Sunday to continue the debauch, ignored him.
None of the others cared to question him and the Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered no information.
Once only, Old Heck mentioned the race.
"That was a pretty good ride you made in the two-mile event," he said, addressing the Ramblin' Kid; "it looked at first like the filly—"
"You won your money, didn't you?" the Ramblin' Kid interrupted in a tone that plainly meant there was nothing further to be said.
That was the only reference to the incidents of Friday afternoon.
After breakfast the Ramblin' Kid saddled the Gold Dust maverick, turned
Captain Jack with the cavallard, and with Parker and the other Quarter
Circle KT cowboys rode away to help gather the beef cattle from the west
half of the Cimarron range.
The week that followed passed quickly.
During the entire period the Kiowa lay under a mantle of sunshine by day and starlit skies by night.
Carolyn June once more provided the evening dessert of coffee-jelly and Skinny finished teaching her the art of dipping bread in milk and egg batter, frying it in hot butter, and calling the result "French toast"
Skinny again put on the white shirt and the shamrock tinted tie. He had not dared to wear what Chuck called his "love-making rigging" during the week of the Rodeo. It would have made him entirely too conspicuous among the hundreds of other cowboys gathered at Eagle Butte for the big celebration. Situations filled with embarrassment would have been almost certain to develop.
"It's getting so it needs a washing a little," Skinny remarked to
Carolyn June the first time he reappeared in the once snowy garment.
He was quite right.
Carolyn June herself had noticed that the shirt had lost some of its immaculateness.
"It doesn't look hardly as white as it did at first!"
"No, it don't," Skinny answered seriously. "I guess I'll wash it to-morrow. I never did wash one but I reckon it ain't so awful hard to do—"
"I'll help you," Carolyn June volunteered. "I've never washed one either, but it will be fun to learn how!"
The next day they washed the shirt.
The ceremony was performed in the kitchen after they had finished doing the breakfast dishes. Ophelia, after water for a vase of roses, came into the room while Skinny was rinsing the shirt in the large tin dishpan.
The garment was a sickly yellow.
"Darned if I know what's wrong with it," Skinny said, a trifle discouraged, while Carolyn June, her sleeves rolled above dimpled elbows, stood by and watched the slushy operation. "Carolyn June and me both have blamed near rubbed our fingers off trying to get it to look right again but somehow or other it don't seem to work."
"Did you put bluing in your rinse water?" Ophelia asked with a laugh.
"Bluing?" Carolyn June and Skinny questioned together. "What does that do to it?"
"Bleaches it—makes it white," the widow replied with another laugh as she returned to the front room.
"By golly, maybe that's what it needs!" Skinny exclaimed hopefully.
"Of course," Carolyn June cried gaily. "How silly we were not to think of it! Any one ought to know you put bluing in the water when you wash things. Wonder if Sing Pete has any around anywhere?"
They searched the kitchen shelves and found a pint bottle, nearly full, of the liquid indigo compound.
"How much do you suppose we ought to put in?" Carolyn June asked, pulling the cork from the bottle and holding it poised over the pan of water in which the shirt, a slimy, dingy mass, floated drunkenly.
"Darned if I know," Skinny said, scratching his head. "She said it would make it white—I reckon the more you put in the whiter the blamed thing'll be. Try about half of it at first and see how 'it works!"
"Gee, isn't it pretty?" Carolyn June gurgled as she tipped the bottle and the waves of indigo spread through the water, covering the shirt with a deep crystalline blue.
"You bet!" Skinny exclaimed. "That ought to fix it!"
It did.
The shirt, when finally dried, was a wonderful thing—done in a sort of mottled, streaky, marbled sky and cloud effect.
But Skinny wore it, declaring he liked it better—that it more nearly matched the shamrock tie—than when it was "too darned white and everything!"
To Parker and the boys on the beef hunt everything was business.
The days were filled with hard riding as they gathered the cattle, bunched the fat animals, cut out and turned back those unfit for the market, stood guard at night over the herd, steadily and rapidly cleaned the west half of the Kiowa range of the stuff that was ready to sell.
It was supper-time on one of the last days of the round-up.
The outfit was camped at Dry Buck. Bed rolls, wrapped in dingy gray tarpaulins or black rubber ponchos, were scattered about marking the places where each cowboy that night would sleep. The herd was bunched a quarter of a mile away in a little cove backed by the rim of sand-hills. Captain Jack and Silver Tip, riderless but with their saddles still on, were nipping the grass near the camp—the Ramblin' Kid and Chuck were to take the first watch, until midnight, at "guard mount." Parker and the cowboys were squatted, legs doubled under them, their knees forming a table on which to hold the white porcelain plate of "mulligan," in a circle at the back of the grub-wagon. Sing Pete trotted around the group and poured black, blistering-hot coffee into the unbreakable cups on the ground at the side of the hungry, dusty riders.
The sun had just dipped into the ragged peaks of the Costejo range and a reddish-purple crown lay on the crest of Sentinel Mountain forty miles to the southeast.
"It looks to me like Parker's sort of losing out," Chuck suddenly remarked, as he wiped his lips on the back of his hand after washing down a mouthful of the savory stew with gulps of steaming coffee. "Ophelia stuck closer than thunder to Old Heck all through the Rodeo."
Parker reddened and growled: "Aw, hell—don't start that up again!"
"By criminy, she didn't stick any closer to Old Heck than Skinny stuck to Carolyn June," Bert complained. "Nobody else had a look-in!"
"Skinny's sure earning his money," Charley muttered half enviously.
"Bet he's got on that white shirt and having a high old time right now! They're probably in the front room and she's playing La Paloma on the piano while Old Skinny's setting back rolling his eyes up like a bloated yearling!" Chuck la
ughed.
"And Old Heck and Ophelia are out on the porch holding hands and looking affectionate while the mosquitos are chewing their necks and ankles!" Bert added with a snicker.
"Her and Old Heck'll probably be married before we get back," Chuck said solemnly, with a wink at the Ramblin' Kid and a sly glance in the direction of Parker.
"Do you reckon there's any danger of it?" Parker asked in a voice that showed anxiety, but not of the sort the cowboys thought.
"They're darned near sure to," Chuck replied seriously, heaving what he tried to make resemble a sigh of sympathy.
"What makes you think so?" Parker questioned, seeking confirmation from the lips of other, of a hope that had been rising in his heart since the first moment he had begun to regret his rash proposal of marriage to the widow.
"Well, for one thing"—Chuck began soberly—"the way they'd look at each other—"
"I saw her squeeze Old Heck's arm once!" Bert interrupted.
"Aw, she's done that lots of times," Chuck said airily; "that ain't nothing special! But the worst indication was them flowers she wore on her bosom every day—Old Heck bought 'em!" he finished dramatically, leaning over and speaking tensely as though it pained him immeasurably to break the news to Parker while he fixed on Old Heck's rival a look he imagined was one of supreme pity.
"Yeah, he had them sent up from Las Vegas," Bert added, picking up the cue and lying glibly. "I saw the express agent deliver a box of them to him one day. There was four dollars and eighty cents charges on 'em!"
A gleam, which the cowboys misunderstood, came into Parker's eyes.
"Why don't you and Old Heck fight a duel about Ophelia?" Bert suggested tragically and in a voice that was aimed to convey sympathy to the Quarter Circle KT foreman. "You could probably kill him!"
"Sure, that's the way they do in books," Chuck urged.
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