The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  Miss Allen stepped back and the twinkle came into her eyes and the whimsical twist to her lips. She knew children. Not for the world would she offend this manchild.

  “Well, I should say you are a real old cowpuncher!” she exclaimed admiringly. “Now I’m afraid of skinks. I never would dare knock his block off! And last night when I was lost and hungry and it got dark, I—cried!”

  “Hunh!” The Kid studied her with a condescending pity. “Oh, well—you’re just a woman. Us fellers have to take care of women. Daddy Chip takes care of Doctor Dell—I guess she’d cry if she couldn’t find the bunch and had to make dry-camp and skinks come around—but I never.”

  “Of course you never!” Miss Allen agreed emphatically, trying not to look conscious of any tear-marks on the Kid’s sunburned cheeks. “Women are regular cry babies, aren’t they? I suppose,” she added guilefully: “I’d cry again if you rode off to find the bunch an left me down here all alone. I’ve lost my horse, an I’ve lost my lunch, and I’ve lost myself, and I’m awful afraid of skunks—skinks.”

  “Oh, I’ll take care of you,” the Kid comforted. “I’ll give you a doughnut if you’re hungry. I’ve got some left, but you’ll have to pick out the glass where the jelly broke on it.” He reined closer to the bank and slid off and began untying the sadly depleted bag from behind the cantle. Miss Allen offered to do it for him, and was beautifully snubbed. The Kid may have been just a frightened, lost little boy before he met her—but that was a secret hidden in the silences of the deep canyons. Now he was a real old cowpuncher, and he was going to take care of Miss Allen because men always had to take care of women.

  Miss Allen offended him deeply when she called him Claude. She was told bluntly that he was Buck, and that he belonged to the Flying U outfit, and was riding down here to help the bunch gather some cattle. “But I can’t find the brakes,” he admitted grudgingly. “That’s where the bunch is—down in the brakes; I can’t seem to locate them brakes.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to go home to your mother?” Miss Allen asked him while he was struggling with the knot he had tied in the bag.

  “I’ve got to find the bunch. The bunch needs me,” said the Kid. “I—I guess Doctor Dell is s’prised—”

  “Who’s Doctor Dell? Your mother? Your mother has just about cried herself sick, she’s so lonesome without you.”

  The Kid looked at her wide-eyed. “Aw, gwan!” he retorted after a minute, imitating Happy Jack’s disbelief of any unpleasant news. “I guess you’re jest loadin’ me. Daddy Chip is takin’ care of her. He wouldn’t let her be lonesome.”

  The Kid got the sack open and reached an arm in to the shoulder. He groped there for a minute and drew out a battered doughnut smeared liberally with wild currant jelly, and gave it to Miss Allen with an air of princely generosity and all the chivalry of all the Happy Family rolled into one baby gesture. Miss Allen took the doughnut meekly and did not spoil the Kid’s pleasure by hugging him as she would have liked to do. Instead she said: “Thank you, Buck of the Flying U,” quite humbly. Then something choked Miss Allen and she turned her back upon him abruptly.

  “I’ve got one, two, free, fourteen left,” said the Kid, counting them gravely. “If I had ’membered to bring matches,” he added regretfully, “I could have a fire and toast rabbit legs. I guess you got some glass, didn’t you? I got some and it cutted my tongue so the bleed came—but I never cried,” he made haste to deny stoutly. “I’m a rell ole cowpuncher now. I just cussed.” He looked at her gravely. “You can’t cuss where women can hear,” he told Miss Allen reassuringly. “Bud says—”

  “Let me see the doughnuts,” said miss Allen abruptly. “I think you ought to let me keep the lunch. That’s the woman’s part. Men can’t bother with lunch—”

  “It ain’t lunch, it’s grub,” corrected the Kid. But he let her have the bag, and Miss Allen looked inside. There were some dried prunes that looked like lumps of dirty dough, and six dilapidated doughnuts in a mess of jelly, and a small glass jar of honey.

  “I couldn’t get the cover off,” the Kid explained, “‘theut I busted it, and then it would all spill like the jelly. Gee I-I wish I had a beefsteak under my belt!”

  Miss Allen leaned over with her elbows on the bank and laughed and laughed. Miss Allen was closer to hysterics than she had ever been in her life. The Kid looked at her in astonishment and turned to Silver, standing with drooping head beside the bank. Miss Allen pulled herself together and asked him what he was going to do.

  “I’m going to locate your horse,” he said, “and then I’m going to take you home.” He looked at her disapprovingly. “I don’t like you so very much,” he added. “It ain’t p’lite to laugh at a feller all the time.”

  “I won’t laugh any more. I think we had better go home right away,” said Miss Allen contritely. “You see, Buck, the bunch came home. They—they aren’t hunting cattle now. They want to find you and tell you. And your father and mother need you awfully bad, Buck. They’ve been looking all over for you, everywhere, and wishing you’d come home.”

  Buck looked wistfully up and down the canyon. His face at that moment was not the face of a real old cowpuncher, but the sweet, dirty, mother-hungry face of a child. “It’s a far ways,” he said plaintively. “It’s a million miles, I guess I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t des’ ’zactly ’member—and I thought I could find the bunch, and they’d know the trail better. Do you know the trail?”

  Miss Allen evaded that question and the Kid’s wide, wistful eyes. “I think if we start out, Buck, we can find it. We must go toward the sun, now. That will be towards home. Shall I put you on your horse?”

  The Kid gave her a withering glance and squirmed up into the saddle with the help of both horn and cantle and by the grace of good luck. Miss Allen gasped while she watched him.

  The Kid looked down at her triumphantly. He frowned a little and flushed guiltily when he remembered something. “’Scuse me,” he said. “I guess you better ride my horse. I guess I better walk. It ain’t p’lite for ladies to walk and men ride.”

  “No, no!” Miss Allen reached up with both hands and held the Kid from dismounting. “I’ll walk, Buck. I’d rather. I—why, I wouldn’t dare ride that horse of yours. I’d be afraid he might buck me off.” She pinched her eyebrows together and pursed up her lips in a most convincing manner.

  “Hunh!” Scorn of her cowardice was in his tone. “Well, a course I ain’t scared to ride him.”

  So with Miss Allen walking close to the Kid’s stirrup and trying her best to keep up and to be cheerful and to remember that she must not treat him like a little, lost boy but like a real old cowpuncher, they started up the canyon toward the sun which hung low above a dark, pine-covered hill.

  CHAPTER 19

  HER NAME WAS ROSEMARY

  Andy Green came in from a twenty-hour ride through the Wolf Butte country and learned that another disaster had followed on the heels of the first; that miss Allen had been missing for thirty-six hours. While he bolted what food was handiest in the camp where old Patsy cooked for the searchers, and the horse wrangler brought up the saddle-bunch just as though it was a roundup that held here its headquarters, he heard all that Slim and Cal Emmett could tell him about the disappearance of Miss Allen.

  One fact stood significantly in the foreground, and that was that Pink and the Native Son had been the last to speak with her, so far as anyone knew. That was it—so far as anyone knew. Andy’s lips tightened. There were many strangers riding through the country, and where there are many strangers there is also a certain element of danger. That Miss Allen was lost was not the greatest fear that drove Andy Green forth without sleep and with food enough to last him a day or two.

  First he meant to hunt up Pink and Miguel—which was easy enough, since they rode into camp exhausted and disheartened while he was saddling a fresh horse. From them he learned the direction which Miss Allen had taken when she left them, and he rode that way and never stopped
until he had gone down off the benchland and had left the fringe of coulees and canyons behind. Pink and the Native Son had just come from down in here, and they had seen no sign of either her or the Kid. Andy intended to begin where they had left off, and comb the breaks as carefully as it is possible for one man to do. He was beginning to think that the Badlands held the secret of the Kid disappearance, even though they had seen nothing of him when they came out four days ago. Had he seen Chip he would have urged him to send all the searchers—and there were two or three hundred by now—into the Badlands and keep them there until the Kid was found. But he did not see Chip and had no time to hunt him up. And having managed to evade the supervision of any captain, and to keep clear of all parties, he meant to go alone and see if he could find a clue, at least.

  It was down in the long canyon which Miss Allen had followed, that Andy found hoof-prints which he recognized. The horse Miss Allen had ridden whenever he saw her—one which she had bought somewhere north of town—had one front foot which turned in toward the other. “Pigeon-toed,” he would have called it. The track it left in soft soil was unmistakable. Andy’s face brightened when he saw it and knew that he was on her trail. The rest of the way down the canyon he rode alertly, for though he knew she might be miles from there by now, to find the route she had taken into the Badlands was something gained.

  The flat, which Andy knew very well—having driven the bunch of cattle whose footprints had so elated Miss Allen—he crossed uneasily. There were so many outlets to this rich little valley. He tried several of them, which took time; and always when he came to soft earth and saw no track of the hoof that turned in toward the other, he would go back and ride into another gulch. And when you are told that these were many, and that much of the ground was rocky, and some was covered with a thick mat of grass, you will not be surprised that when Andy finally took up her trail in the canyon farthest to the right, it was well towards noon. He followed her easily enough until he came to the next valley, which he examined over and over before he found where she had left it to push deeper into the Badlands. And it was the same experience repeated when he came out of that gulch into another open space.

  He came into a network of gorges that would puzzle almost anyone, and stopped to water his horse and let him feed for an hour or so. A man’s horse meant a good deal to him, down here on such a mission, and even his anxiety could not betray him into letting his mount become too fagged.

  After a while he mounted and rode on without having any clue to follow; one must trust to chance, to a certain extent, in a place like this. He had not seen any sign of the Kid, either, and the gorges were filling with shadows that told How low the sun was sliding down the sky. At that time he was not more than a mile or so from the canyon up which Miss Allen was toiling afoot toward the sun; but Andy had no means of knowing that. He went on with drooping head and eyes that stared achingly here and there. That was the worst of his discomfort—his eyes. Lack of sleep and the strain of looking, looking, against wind and sun, had made them red-rimmed and bloodshot. Miss Allen’s eyes were like that, and so were the eyes of all the searchers.

  In spite of himself Andy’s eyes closed now. He had not slept for two nights, and he had been riding all that time. Before he realized it he was asleep in the saddle, and his horse was carrying him into a gulch that had no outlet—there were so many such!—but came up against a hill and stopped there. The shadows deepened, and the sky above was red and gold.

  Andy woke with a jerk, his horse having stopped because he could go no farther. But it was not that which woke him. He listened. He would have sworn that he had heard the shrill, anxious whinney of a horse not far away. He turned and examined the gulch, but it was narrow and grassy and had no possible place of concealment, and save himself and his own horse it was empty. And it was not his own horse that whinnied—he was sure of that. Also, he was sure that he had-not dreamed it. A horse had called insistently. Andy knew horses too well not to know that there was anxiety and rebellion in that call.

  He waited a minute, his heart beating heavily. He turned and started back down the gulch, and then stopped suddenly. He heard it again—shrill, prolonged, a call from somewhere; where, he could not determine because of the piled masses of earth and rock that flung the sound riotously here and there and confused him as to direction.

  Then his own horse turned his head and looked toward the left, and answered the call. From far off the strange horse made shrill reply. Andy got down and began climbing the left-hand ridge on the run, tired as he was. Not many horses ranged down in here—and he did not believe, anyway, that this was any range horse. It did not sound like Silver, but it might be the pigeon-toed horse of Miss Allen. And if it was, then Miss Allen would be there. He took a deep breath and went up the last steep pitch in a spurt of speed that surprised himself.

  At the top he stood panting and searched the canyon below him. Just across the canyon was the high peak which Miss Allen had climbed afoot. But down below him he saw her horse circling about in a trampled place under a young cottonwood.

  You would never accuse Andy Green of being weak, or of having unsteady nerves, I hope.

  But it is the truth that he felt his knees give way while he looked; and it was a minute or two before he had any voice with which to call to her. Then he shouted, and the great hill opposite flung back the echoes maddeningly.

  He started running down the ridge, and brought up in the canyon’s bottom near the horse. It was growing shadowy now to the top of the lower ridges, although the sun shone faintly on the crest of the peak. The horse whinnied and circled restively when Andy came near. Andy needed no more than a glance to tell him that the horse had stood tied there for twenty-four hours, at the very least. That meant.…

  Andy turned pale. He shouted, and the canyon mocked him with echoes. He looked for her tracks. At the base of the peak he saw the print of her riding boots; farther along, up the slope he saw the track again. Miss Allen, then, must have climbed the peak, and he knew why she had done so. But why had she not come down again?

  There was only one way to find out, and he took the method in the face of his weariness. He climbed the peak also, with now and then a footprint to guide him. He was not one of these geniuses at trailing who could tell, by a mere footprint, what had been in Miss Allen’s mind when she had passed that way; but for all that it seemed logical that she had gone up there to see if she could not glimpse the kid—or possibly the way home.

  At the top he did not loiter. He saw, before he reached the height, where Miss Allen had come down again—and he saw where she had, to avoid a clump of boulders and a broken ledge, gone too far to one side. He followed that way. She had descended at an angle, after that, which took her away from the canyon.

  In Montana there is more of daylight after the sun has gone than there is in some other places. Andy, by hurrying, managed to trail Miss Allen to the bottom of the peak before it grew really dusky. He knew that she had been completely lost when she reached the bottom, and had probably wandered about at random since then. At any rate, there were no tracks anywhere save her own, so that he felt less anxiety over her safety than, when he had started out looking for her.

  Andy knew these breaks pretty well. He went over a rocky ridge, which Miss Allen had not tried to cross because to her it seemed exactly in the opposite direction from where she had started, and so he came to her horse again. He untied the poor beast and searched for a possible trail over the ridge to where his own horse waited; and by the time he had found one and had forced the horse to climb to the top and then descend into the gulch, the darkness lay heavy upon the hills.

  He picketed Miss Allen’s horse with his rope’, and fashioned a hobble for his own mount. Then he ate a little of the food he carried and sat down to rest and smoke and consider how best he could find Miss Allen or the Kid—or both. He believed Miss Allen to be somewhere not far away—since she was afoot, and had left her lunch tied to the saddle. She could not travel far
without food.

  After a little he climbed back up the ridge to where he had noticed a patch of brush, and there he started a fire. Not a very large one, but large enough to be seen for a long distance where the vision was not blocked by intervening hills. Then he sat down beside it and waited and listened and tended the fire. It was all that he could do for the present, and it seemed pitifully little. If she saw the fire, he believed that she would come; if she did not see it, there was no hope of his finding her in the dark. Had there been fuel on the high peak, he might have gone up there to start his fire; but that was out of the question, since the peak was barren.

  Heavy-eyed, tired in every fibre of his being, Andy dragged up a dead buck-bush and laid the butt of it across his blaze. Then he lay down near it—and went to sleep as quickly as if he had been chloroformed.

  It may have been an hour after that—it may have been more. He sat up suddenly and listened. Through the stupor of his sleep he had heard Miss Allen call. At least, he believed he had heard her call, though he knew he might easily have dreamed it. He knew he had been asleep, because the fire had eaten part of the way to the branches of the bush and had died down to smoking embers. He kicked the branch upon the coals and a blaze shot up into the night. He stood up and walked a little distance away from the fire so that he could see better, and stood staring down into the canyon.

  From below he heard a faint call—he was sure of it. The wonder to him was that he had heard it at all in his sleep. His anxiety must have been strong enough even then to send the signal to his brain and rouse him.