She dealt the mockery right back at him.
“That’s right, Mr. Brannon,” she said. “I think you should call me Miss Doyle.” Then she suddenly burst into laughter. “And if you do, I’ll have Dad run you right off the range.”
And they laughed together; until a curious silence fell between them. But it wasn’t like their old comradely silences. It was alive and charged. It was something they both felt, and both avoided mentioning.
“How long will the run take you, Huck?” she asked finally.
“Why, not more than three or four days.”
“I’ll miss you—you and the boys I mean, Huck.”
“May be a little peaceful at that,” he said. “But we’ll be back before you know it.”
The bawling cattle had finally been stowed in the cattle cars and Huck was passing the time of day with Sue. He remembered how cool her hand had been in his, and the soft look on her face.
“Take care of yourself, Sue,” he said, “and don’t forget which side to get on your hoss.” It had sounded dull, wool-witted; not light and easy as he’d meant it to be. It had always gotten a rise out of her. But not this time.
“All right, Huck,” she said slowly. “I won’t forget. Don’t stay too long, Huck.”
Suddenly she had thrown her arms around his neck, pressed her lips to his, hard. Then she’d turned, vaulted into her saddle and was galloping away down the trail.
He had stood stock still for a moment, staring after her. Then as the train jerked into motion, he turned and vaulted into the slowly moving car.
Even now he could taste her lips on his. They—But what was he thinking about? He was only a waddy in her father’s crew and a waddy with itching feet besides. What did he have to offer Sue Doyle? Of course, Old Man Doyle did like him—No, it was crazy.
A horsefly buzzed around his head. He slapped at it absently and the movement brought him back to the dingy room with its ugly painted walls, its scarred and raddled furniture.
The dancing demon returned, but less malevolently than before.
The question now was, what to do? His room was paid for up to and including today, but half of today was already gone, and there was no provision for meals in his deal with the sour landlady, who had a baleful eye for six-foot cowpunchers with grin-wrinkles at the corners of their eyes and slight upward quirks at the corners of their wide, good-humored mouths.
He slapped cold water on his face, combed his hair and brushed off his clothes.
Outside, the white-golden sunshine and the autumn air, keen and crisp as old wine, was restorative. Suicide began to seem a project of unnecessary harshness. The dancing demon tired a little and Huck’s head began feeling a trifle less like an overstuffed melon.
A new complaint began to make itself felt, however. This time it was his stomach. Not, as in the case of his head, from what was in it; rather from what was not.
On the faint hope that the freight which was to carry the boys back to the Bar X might have been delayed, Huck headed for the railroad yards.
The train was gone, of course. The caboose had rolled out right on schedule, he learned from an unsympathetic yardmaster who had had more than one man’s helping of trouble with cow-trains and cowpunchers and had scant use for either.
With a sigh, bitterly conscious of his empty pockets and emptier stomach, Huck sought a pile of railroad ties and perched disconsolately on them, running bronzed fingers through his short thick black hair, wondering among other things what had become of his broad-brimmed Stetson. Maybe it had gone with the watch in the poker game. And that sombrero had cost him forty good dollars new. He sighed again. The sigh brought results from an unexpected quarter:
“Feelin’sorta low, son?”
Huck glanced quickly around and saw nothing but what seemed to be more cross-ties. Then a somewhat thicker tie than the rest sort of heaved up at one end and showed a face—a face abandoned without signs of struggle to an untidy chaparralthicket of hair and whiskers, out of which shone two twinkly eyes and a mess of wrinkles topped by a battered slouch hat.
The grin was contagious and, little as he felt like grinning right then, Huck could feel a response to it tugging at his own lips. “If I had the hat I ain’t got, I could walk under a snake’s belly and not touch a scale,” he replied.
The little old man, sitting up, clucked sympathetically. “I know how you feel,” he said, “I been there too. Sorta had a night of it last night, eh? Train go off and leave you?”
Huck nodded gloomily. The old man gave him a shrewd glance, cast a speculative eye toward a rickety little restaurant perched cheerfully on the embankment overlooking the railroad yards, and returned to Huck.
“Could you do with a cup of coffee ‘bout now, son?”
In spite of his pride, Huck swallowed automatically and ran his tongue over his lips. The old man understood his moment of hesitation.
“I got the price,” he chuckled. He raised a gnarled hand to cut off Huck’s protest.
“Now don’t go gettin’ uppity, and figgerin’ you don’t wanta eat with a hobo. I done told you I been in yore boots ‘fore now.”
“It isn’t that,” Huck said. “It’s just that I haven’t a cent on me. And I can’t stand my turn buyin’.”
The old man chuckled again. “Want to know how you could return the favor?” he asked.
Huck nodded. “Sure.”
“All right—do it this way. The next time you find some feller who’s sorta up ‘gainst it, you spend on him jest the same amount I spend on you t’day. Okay?”
Huck gave the little old man a long look from his level gray eyes. The look was returned, unflinchingly, from the blue eyes that had so much humor and savvy in their depths.
“Yes,” said the cowboy quietly, “I’ll do that; and thank you kindly.”
Half an hour later, Huck Brannon heaved a deep sigh and reached for the makings. Tobacco and papers had in some way escaped last night’s all-but-clean sweep, and he deftly rolled a cigarette with the slim fingers of his left hand, held it out to his table companion and manufactured one for himself.
“And now,” said the old man, “I reckon the sensible thing to do will be to head you back toward Texas. I figger you haven’t rode the rods or the blinds much, have you, son?”
Huck admitted he hadn’t.
“If you had,” continued the other, “I’d shove you onto the Limited which pulls out jest ‘bout dark t’ night; but that ain’t no chore for a feller what ain’t onto the ropes. A sidedoor Pullman is yore best bet, I callate. There’ll be a manifest freight headin’ in the gen’ral direction you’d oughta take in an hour or so. We’ll mosey over to the yard and I’ll point her out.”
“You’re not going in my direction?” Huck said regretfully.
“Nope, I got a little chore to do—somewheres else.”
Huck noticed the slight hesitation on the old man’s part. He let the question ride.
They talked on over several cigarettes, since they had until dusk before Huck could board the freight. The old-timer entertained with an unending stream of his adventures on the road, and Huck told a yarn or two about range-life. The remarks and questions the oldster asked showed he knew at least something about herding.
“You don’t talk jest like the av’rage cowhand, son,” he remarked as he rose from the table.
“I had a year in college,” Huck told him. “Coupla bad years—blizzards, droughts—sorta set my dad back, and then his cayuse set his foot in a badgerhole one stormy night. The storm had started a stampede just before that, and—well, Dad and the bronc were in front of that stampede.”
The old man clucked sympathetically and tactfully changed the subject.
“What’d you take in college?”
“Mining engineering,” Huck replied. “Didn’t do more than get started, though.”
“Foller it up any since you left school?”
“Some—not as much as I wish I had. But you know how it is—range work sorta
gets into a feller’s blood, particular if you happen to be brought up to it—and you let other things slide. It’s sorta contenting to have a good horse between your legs and a white moon up in the sky and the range rolling away toward the end of the world…”
The old man nodded. “Uh-huh, jest ‘nother form o’ the ‘open road.’ Takes you ‘way from the things sober-minded folks consider to be all what’s wuth-while.”
II
By Way of Colorado
They reached the railroad yards as the blue dusk was rolling over the prairie city like the windblown smoke from a thousand campfires. The old man quickened the pace as he sighted a long freight train standing up on a make-up track. Its headlight was gleaming, the blower was thundering and black smoke was pouring from the engine’s stubby stack. The switchlight to the main lead glowed green.
“All ready to pull out,” the old man muttered. “That’s my train, son, we gotta hustle. C’mon, and I’ll show you where yore rattler is corralled. She won’t leave until after this westbound is outa the yards.”
As they loped along beside the train, a big, hardfaced man suddenly stepped from between the cars. He had a rat-trap mouth and beady sullen eyes. His square, bulky body blocked their progress.
“Where you ‘bo’s think you’re goin’?” he demanded in a voice that sounded like a sick bull’s bellow.
The old man answered soothingly:
“Jest takin’ a shortcut through the yards, officer. We—”
“Shortcut, hell!” the railroad detective snorted. He spat brown juice at their feet.
The old man started to speak again, but the bull lashed out with a vicious blow that caught him full in the mouth. The old man reeled back, clutching at the side of the boxcar for support.
“Get outa my yard, and stay out!” the bull roared. He drew back his fist a second time, and took a lumbering step forward.
With the smooth swiftness of a released spring, Huck Brannon went into action. He glided in front of the old man and blocked the railroad detective’s swinging blow before it had travelled six inches. His left hand, balled into knuckles like iron knobs, came clear up from his knee. They smacked against the angle of the bull’s jaw like a butcher’s cleaver on a side of beef.
To the old ‘bo, still dazed by the blow he had taken, it seemed as if the bull had suddenly sprouted wings. His feet left the ground and his blocky body rocketed through the air with all the grace of a cow gamboling with its calf. He hit the ground with a wallowing thud and his head snapped back against the projecting end of a crosstie. After a single twitching shudder he lay still, blood gushing from his lacerated scalp.
“G—good God, son, you’ve killed him!” the old man gasped.
“Reckon not,” Huck said quietly. “Not with him bleeding like that.”
He bent over the bull, thrust a sinewy hand under his coat and felt the solid thumping of a normally functioning heart.
“Can’t kill his kind with anything short of a shovel or a pick handle,” he growled, his gray eyes narrowing slightly as his groping hand contacted cold metal. “We’d better be moving before he gets his senses back enough to go for that hogleg he’s wearing under his arm.”
The old man’s teeth chattered with apprehension. “They’ll be another one close,” he panted. “They allus work in pairs. We gotta get outa here ‘fore they ketch us. It’ll mean six months on the rock pile, if nothin’ wuss.”
His voice was suddenly drowned by the staccato notes of a whistle blowing two short ones, and the clangor of a locomotive’s bell. The string of cars beside them creaked and groaned, there was a clang-jangle of couplings, a rattle of brake rigging. Then, from the far side of the slowly moving train, somebody shouted questioningly.
“That’ll be his pardner,” the old man whispered hoarsely. “He’ll be comin’ over here lookin’ for him in a minute. C’mon, son, you gotta ketch this rattler with me. It ain’t goin’ the way you wanta head, but you’ll get to Texas a damn sight faster by way of Colorado than by way of the K.C. jailhouse!”
Up at the head end of the long train the locomotive’s stack belched black smoke and staccato thunder. The creaking of the wheels changed to a steady diapason of monotonous rumble. The boxcars swayed and rocked on their springs.
For a brief moment more Huck hesitated. All the things he would put behind him if he followed the oldtimer came crowding into his brain. The Bar X ranch, the laughing Chinaman, Ah Sing, his horse Smoke, Sue’s last good-bye. His memory stuck on the last like a burr. He might be saying goodbye to all of them for a long, long time—perhaps forever. Why, maybe he’d never get back there—maybe he’d never see the old sights, the familiar faces—never see Sue again. That thought hurt like an old pain.
“Come on!” the old man croaked, shambling in unsteady steps beside the moving train. Huck was at his heels.
An instant later he gripped a grabiron with his bony hands and swung his foot onto the stirrup. He vanished between the cars and Huck followed him, his sinewy body taking the leap with dynamic agility.
And at that instant a bulky figure floundered over a drawbar a couple of cars further back and thudded solidly to the ground. There was an instant of tingling suspense as Huck scrambled to reach the end-sill of the forward boxcar. Then—
Bang! bang! bang!
Huck ducked as the bullets whined past, smacking against the side boards, showering him with splinters. His right hand instinctively dropped to his thigh with effortless ease. He stifled a curse of dismay as his fingers encountered no gun. He peered quickly back along the train, and saw the bulky figure swing onto a grabiron with deceptive agility and come storming up the side of the car. A second later it vanished over the upper edge.
“He’ll be on top of us in a minute,” the cowboy muttered, “and that’ll be the finish!”
Instantly Huck went into action, his brain working swiftly. “Outa here!” he barked, shuffling along the sill. “Outa here and up the embankment!”
“We won’t have a chanct!” wailed the oldster. “That hellion up there’ll see us go and if he don’t plug us fust, he’ll run us down.”
“He’ll get us for sure if we stay!” Huck shouted back. “C’mon, I tell you!”
He dropped from the slowly-moving train and the old man, still shrilling protests, followed him. Across the web of tracks Huck darted, reached the embankment and started clambering up it.
From the moving train sounded a yell of command. Spurts of flame lanced the darkness with orange streaks. The crackling of the gunshots sounded above the rumble of the train. Bullets fell like hail around them, churning through the cinders.
Huck heard the old man grunt, thought he might have been hit, and called out anxiously.
“Jest slipped on a rock,” panted the oldtimer.
In another instant they were over the lip of the embankment. They dived into scrub which fringed the crest, burrowing deep behind the protecting brush. In one last backward glance, Huck had seen the railroad detective clambering down the carside. Lights were bobbing about in the yard; questioning shouts came faintly to their ears.
“We can’t get away, son,” panted the old man. “They’ll get dogs and run us down in the morning, even if they don’t grab us t’night.”
The cowboy was intent on watching the converging lights. He heard the bull shout instructions, caught a glimpse of his bulky form lumbering across the tracks.
“All right,” he told the old man quietly, “straight ahead—keep back outa sight. Straight ahead until we’re ‘round the bulge of the curve.”
The old man, dominated by Huck’s vigor and self-assurance, stifled his pessimistic plaints and followed Huck as he cut lithely through the growth. Before the detective had reached the lip of the embankment, the fugitives were around the bend. Below, they could see the boxcars filing heavily past as the long train gathered speed. For the moment they were out of sight of the pursuit.
Without a second’s hesitation, Huck went sliding down the embankm
ent toward the tracks. The old man, understanding his purpose at last, grunted approval. He followed close behind Huck and they reached the moving train together.
“Look!” he exclaimed. “Here comes a empty—door half open! Think we can make it?”
“Easy,” replied Huck coolly, running along beside the rocking boxcars.
Along came the empty, its wheels drumming hollowly. With one hand Huck caught the door jamb, and rested his other lightly on the sill. With a leap and a scramble, he was inside the car. Turning swiftly he reached down a hand to his companion. The old man gripped it and the big cowboy lifted him into the car with no apparent effort.
Together they crouched on the rough boards, peering through the opening, listening for sounds of pursuit. On the embankment they could see lanterns winking about like angry fireflies, vanishing one by one as the pursuers beat their way deeper into the brush.
“Godfrey, feller, but you’re smart!” exclaimed the old man, “making them hellions think we was cuttin’ ‘crost country and then doublin’ back onto the train again. All we got to do now is watch the big yards over to Washoe on the chanct that they telegraph ahead to search the train for us there, which I don’t figger they’ll do. Yeah, we’re settin’ purty now.”
He leaped to his feet and ducked as a voice suddenly spoke over his shoulder.
“Yeah, that’s the idea, brother Come back where it’s comf’t’ble, and set!”
III
Al Fresco Breakfast
Huck took a long step, hugging the inner wall of the car. The voice sounded friendly enough, but he was taking no chances.
“Just who are you, feller?” he asked, and instantly shifted his position again.
A single chuckle sounded in the dark, followed by a pair of others.
“Jest three titled gents,” replied the voice, “lords of leisure—knights of the road. We heard the shindig and cal’lated somebody’s got in bad with the yard dicks. Glad to see you outsmarted the lousy loafers. Wait a minute—till we’re clear of the yards—and I’ll make a light. We got a lantern here and there’s plenty of straw in this end of the car. Keep outa t’other end—there’s firebrick loaded there. Reckon that’s how this door didn’t happen to be sealed—nobody’s gonna carry off firebrick. Figger it’s bound for the Colorado smelters or stamp mills, mebbe.”
The Cowpuncher Page 2
