by B. M. Bower
Jerry took the glass and stood looking at her steadily. “That sure was one way to do it,” he observed, with a quirk of the lips. “It’s none of my business, and I ain’t asking any questions, but—”
“Very sensible, I’m sure,” Marian interrupted him. “I wish he’d leave the country. Can’t you—?”
“No. I told him to pull out, and he just laughed at me. I knowed they was figuring on ganging together tonight—”
Marian closed her hands together with a gesture of impatience. “Jerry, I wish I knew just how bad you are!” she exclaimed. “Do you dare stand by him? Because this thing is only beginning. I couldn’t bear to see him go up there tonight, absolutely unsuspecting—and so I made him sick. Tell that to anyone, and you can make me—”
“Say, I ain’t a damned skunk!” Jerry muttered. “I’m bad enough, maybe. At any rate you think so.” Then, as usually happened, Jerry decided to hold his tongue. He turned and lifted the latch of the screen door. “You sure made a good job of it,” he grinned. “I’ll go an’ pour this into Bud ’fore he loses his boots!”
He did so, and saved Bud’s boots and half a night’s sleep besides. Moreover, when Bud, fully recovered, searched his memory of that supper and decided that it was the sliced cucumbers that had disagreed with him, Jerry gravely assured him that it undoubtedly was the combination of cucumber and custard pie, and that Bud was lucky to be alive after such reckless eating.
Having missed the dance altogether, Bud looked forward with impatience to Sunday. It is quite possible that others shared with him that impatience, though we are going to adhere for a while to Bud’s point of view and do no more than guess at the thoughts hidden behind the fair words of certain men in the Valley.
Pop’s state of mind we are privileged to know, for Pop was seen making daily pilgrimage to the pasture where he could watch Smoky limping desultorily here and there with Stopper and Sunfish. On Saturday afternoon Bud saw Pop trying to get his hands on Smoky, presumably to examine the lame ankle. But three legs were all Smoky needed to keep him out of Pop’s reach. Pop forgot his rheumatism and ran pretty fast for a man his age, and when Bud arrived Pop’s vocabulary had limbered up to a more surprising activity than his legs.
“Want to bet on yourself, Pop?” Bud called out when Pop was running back and forth, hopefully trying to corner Smoky in a rocky draw. “I’m willing to risk a dollar on you, anyway.”
Pop whirled upon him and hurled sentences not written in the book of Parlor Entertainment. The gist of it was that he had been trying all the week to have a talk with Bud, and Bud had plainly avoided him after promising to act upon Pop’s advice and run so as to make some money.
“Well, I made some,” Bud defended. “If you didn’t, it’s just because you didn’t bet strong enough.”
“I want to look at that horse’s hind foot,” Pop insisted.
“No use. He’s too lame to run against Boise. You can see that yourself.”
Pop eyed Bud suspiciously, pulling his beard. “Are you fixin’ to double-cross me, young feller?” he wanted to know. “I went and made some purty big bets on this race. If you think yo’re goin’ to fool ole Pop, you’ll wish you hadn’t. You got enemies already in this valley, lemme tell yuh. The Muleshoe ain’t any bunch to fool with, and I’m willing to say ’t they’re laying fer yuh. They think,” he added shrewdly, “’t you’re a spotter, or something. Air yuh?”
“Of course I am, Pop! I’ve spotted a way to make money and have fun while I do it.” Bud looked at the old man, remembered Marian’s declaration that Pop was not very reliable, and groped mentally for a way to hearten the old man without revealing anything better kept to himself, such as the immediate effect of a horse hair tied just above a horse’s hoof, also the immediate result of removing that hair. Wherefore, he could not think of much to say, except that he would not attempt to run a lame horse against Boise.
“All I can say is, tomorrow morning you keep your eyes open, Pop, and your tongue between your teeth. And no matter what comes up, you use your own judgment.”
Tomorrow morning Pop showed that he was taking Bud’s advice. When the crowd began to gather—much earlier than usual, by the way, and much larger than any crowd Bud had seen in the valley—Pop was trotting here and there, listening and pulling his whiskers and eyeing Bud sharply whenever that young man appeared in his vicinity.
Bud led Smoky up at noon—and Smoky was still lame. Dave looked at him and at Bud, and grinned. “I guess that forfeit money’s mine,” he said in his laconic way. “No use running that horse. I could beat him afoot.”
This was but the beginning. Others began to banter and jeer Bud, Jeff’s crowd taunting him with malicious glee. The singin’ kid was going to have some of the swelling taken out of his head, they chortled. He had been crazy enough to put up a forfeit on today’s race, and now his horse had just three legs to run on.
“Git out afoot, kid!” Jeff Hall yelled. “If you kin run half as fast as you kin talk, you’ll beat Boise four lengths in the first quarter!”
Bud retorted in kind, and led Smoky around the corral as if he hoped that the horse would recover miraculously just to save his master’s pride. The crowd hooted to see how Smoky hobbled along, barely touching the toe of his lame foot to the ground. Bud led him back to the manger piled with new hay, and faced the jeering crowd belligerently. Bud noticed several of the Muleshoe men in the crowd, no doubt drawn to Little Lost by the talk of Bud’s spectacular winnings for two Sundays. Hen was there, and Day Masters and Cub. Also there were strangers who had ridden a long way, judging by their sweaty horses. In the midst of the talk and laughter Dave led out Boise freshly curried and brushed and arching his neck proudly.
“No use, Bud,” he said tolerantly. “I guess you’re set back that forfeit money—unless you want to go through the motions of running a lame horse.”
“No, sir, I’m not going to hand over any forfeit money without making a fight for it!” Bud told him, anger showing in his voice. “I’m no such piker as that. I won’t run Smoky, lame as he is “—Bud probably nudged his own ribs when he said that!—“but if you’ll make it a mile, I’ll catch up my old buckskin packhorse and run the race with him, by thunder! He’s not the quickest horse in the world, but he sure can run a long while!”
They yelled and slapped one another on the back, and otherwise comported themselves as though a great joke had been told them; never dreaming, poor fools, that a costly joke was being perpetrated.
“Go it, kid. You run your packhorse, and I’ll rive yuh five to one on him!” a friend of Jeff Hall’s yelled derisively.
“I’ll just take you up on that, and I’ll make it one hundred dollars,” Bud shouted back. “I’d run a turtle for a quarter, at those odds!”
The crowd was having hysterics when Bud straddled a Little Lost horse and, loudly declaring that he would bring back Sunfish, led Smoky limping back to the pasture. He returned soon, leading the buckskin. The crowd surged closer, gave Sunfish a glance and whooped again. Bud’s face was red with apparent anger, his eyes snapped. He faced them defiantly, his hand on Sunfish’s thin, straggling mane.
“You’re such good sports, you’ll surely appreciate my feelings when I say that this horse is mine, and I’m going to run him and back him to win!” he cried. “I may be a darn fool, but I’m no piker. I know what this horse can do when I try to catch him up on a frosty morning—and I’m going to see if he can’t go just as fast and just as long when I’m on him as he can when I’m after him.”
“We’ll go yuh, kid! I’ll bet yuh five to one,” a man shouted. “You name the amount yourself.”
“Fifty,” said Bud, and the man nodded and jotted down the amount.
“Bud, you’re a damn fool. I’ll bet you a hundred and make it ten to one,” drawled Dave, stroking Boise’s face affectionately while he looked superciliously at Sunfish standing half asleep in the clamor, with his head sagging at the end of his long, ewe neck. “But if you’ll take my ad
vice, go turn that fool horse back in the pasture and run the bay if you must run something.”
“The bay’s a rope horse. I don’t want to spoil him by running him. That little horse saved my life, down in the Sinks. No, Sunfish has run times enough from me—now he’s got to run for me, by thunder. I’ll bet on him, too!”
Jeff pushed his way through to Bud. He was smiling with that crafty look in his eyes which should have warned a child that the smile went no deeper than his lips.
“Bud, doggone it, I like yore nerve. Besides, you owe me something for the way you trimmed me last Sunday. I’ll just give you fifteen to one, and you put up Skeeter at seventy-five, and as much money as yo’re a mind to. A pile of it come out of my pocket, so-”
“Well, don’t holler your head off, Jeff. How’s two hundred?”
“Suits me, kid.” He winked at the others, who knew how sure a thing he had to back his wager. “It’ll be a lot of money if I should lose—” He turned suddenly to Dave. “How much was that you put up agin the kid, Dave?”
“One hundred dollars, and a ten-to-one shot I win,” Dave drawled. “That ought to satisfy yuh it ain’t a frame-up. The kid’s crazy, that’s all.”
“Oh! Am I?” Bud turned hotly. “Well, I’ve bet half of all the money I have in the world. And I’m game for the other half—” He stopped abruptly, cast one look at Sunfish and another at Boise, stepping about uneasily, his shiny coat rippling, beautiful. He turned and combed Sunfish’s scanty mane with his gloved fingers. Those nearest saw that his lips were trembling a little and mistook his hidden emotion for anger.
“You got him going,” a man whispered in Jeff’s ear. “The kid’s crazy mad. He’ll bet the shirt off his back if yuh egg him on a little more.”
Jeff must have decided to “egg” Bud on. By the time the crowd had reached the course, and the first, more commonplace races were over, the other half of his money was in the hands of the stake-holder, who happened on this day to be Jerry. And the odds varied from four to one up to Jeff Hall’s scornful fifteen.
“Bet yuh five hundred dollars against your bay horse,” Lew offered when Bud confessed that he had not another dollar to bet.—
“All right, it’s a go with me,” Bud answered recklessly. “Get his hundred, Jerry, and put down Stopper.”
“What’s that saddle worth?” another asked meaningly.
“One hundred dollars,” snapped Bud. “And if you want to go further, there are my chaps and spurs and this silver-mounted bridle-and my boots and hat-and I’ll throw in Sunfish for whatever you say his hide’s worth. Who wants the outfit?”
“I’ll take ’em,” said Jeff, and permitted Jerry and Dave to appraise the outfit, which Bud piled contemptuously in a heap.
He mounted Sunfish bareback with a rope halter. Bud was bareheaded and in his sock feet. His eyes were terribly blue and bright, and his face was flushed as a drunken man’s. He glanced over to the bank where the women and children were watching. It seemed to him that one woman fluttered her handkerchief, and his heart beat unevenly for a minute.
Then he was riding at a walk down the course to the farthest post, and the crowd was laughing at the contrast between the two horses. Boise stepped springily, tossing his head, his eyes ablaze with ardor for the race. Beside him Sunfish walked steadily as if he were carrying a pack. He was not a pretty horse to look at. His neck was long and thin, his mane and tail scanty and uneven, a nondescript sorrel. His head looked large, set on the end of that neck, his nose was dished in and his eyes had a certain veiled look, as if he were hiding a bad disposition under those droopy lids. Without a saddle he betrayed his high, thin withers, the sway in his back, his high hip bones. His front legs were flat, with long, stringy-looking muscles under his unkempt buckskin hide. Even the women laughed at Sunfish.
Beside them two men rode, the starter and another to see that the start was fair. So they receded down the flat, yellow course and dwindled to mere miniature figures against the sand, so that one could not tell one horse from another.
The crowd bunched, still laughing at how the singin’ kid was going to feel when he rode again to meet them. It would cure him of racing, they said. It would be a good lesson; serve him right for coming in there and thinking, because he had cleaned up once or twice, that he could not be beaten.
“Here they come,” Jeff Hall announced satisfiedly, and spat into the sand as a tiny blue puff of smoke showed beside one of the dots, and two other dots began to grow perceptibly larger within a yellow cloud which rolled along the earth.
Men reined this way and that, or stood on their toes if they were afoot, the better to see the two rolling dots. In a moment one dot seemed larger than the other. One could glimpse the upflinging of knees as two horses leaped closer and closer.
“Well-l—he’s keepin’ Dave in sight—that’s more than what I expected he’d do,” Jeff observed.
It was Pop who suddenly gave a whoop that cracked and shrilled into falsetto.
“Shucks a’mighty! Dave, he’s a-whippin’ up to keep the kid in sight!” he quavered. “Shucks—a’mighty, he’s a-comin’!”
He was. Lying forward flattened along Sunfish’s hard-muscled shoulders, Bud was gaining and gaining—one length, then two lengths as he shot under the wire, slowed and rode back to find a silent crowd watching him.
He was clothed safely again in chaps, boots, spurs, hat—except that I have named the articles backward; cowpuncher that he was, Bud put on his hat before he even reached for his boots—and was collecting his wagers relentlessly as Shylock ever took his toll, before he paid any attention to the atmosphere around him. Then, because someone shouted a question three inches from his ear, Bud turned and laughed as he faced them.
“Why, sure he’s from running stock! I never said he wasn’t—because none of you make-believe horsemen had sense enough to see the speed in him and get curious. You bush-racers never saw a real race-horse before, I guess. They aren’t always pretty to look at, you know. Sunfish has all the earmarks of speed if you know how to look for them. He’s thoroughbred; sired by Trump, out of Kansas Chippy—if that means anything to you fellows.” He looked them over, eyes meeting eyes until his glance rested on Jeff Hall. “I’ve got his registration papers in my grip, if you aren’t convinced. And,” he added by way of rubbing it in, “I guess I’ve got about all the money there is in this valley.”
“No, you ain’t!” Pop Truman cackled, teetering backward and forward while he counted his winnings. “I bet on ye, young feller. Brought me in something, too. It did so!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHILE THE GOING’S GOOD
At supper Bud noticed that Marian, standing at his right side, set down his cup of coffee with her right hand, and at the same instant he felt her left hand fumble in his pocket and then touch his elbow. She went on, and Bud in his haste to get outside drank his coffee so hot that it scalded his mouth. Jerry rose up and stepped backward over the bench as Bud passed him, and went out at his heels.
“Go play the piano for half an hour and then meet me where you got them mushrooms. And when you quit playing, duck quick. Tell Honey you’ll be back in a minute. Have her hunt for music for yuh while you’re out—or something like that. Don’t let on.”
Bud might have questioned Jerry, but that cautious young man was already turning back to call something—to Dave, so Bud went around the corner, glancing into the pantry window as he passed. Marian was not in sight, nor was Honey at the moment when he stood beside the step of the post-office.
Boldness carries its own talisman against danger. Bud went in—without slamming the door behind him, you may be sure—and drew his small notebook from his inside pocket. With that to consult frequently, he sat down by the window where the failing light was strongest, and proceeded to jot down imaginary figures on the paper he pulled from his coat pocket and unfolded as if it were of no value whatever to him. The piano playing ordered by Jerry could wait.
What Marian had to say on
this occasion could not be written upon a cigarette paper. In effect her note was a preface to Jerry’s commands. Bud saw where she had written words and erased them so thoroughly that the cheap paper was almost worn through. She had been afraid, poor lady, but her fear could not prevent the writing.
“You must leave tonight for Crater and cash the checks given you to pay the bets. Go to Crater. If you don’t know the way, keep due north after you have crossed Gold Gap. There’s the stage road, but they’ll watch that, I’m afraid. They mean to stop payment on the checks. But first they will kill you if they can. They say you cheated with that thoroughbred horse. They took their losses so calmly—I knew that they meant to rob you. To show you how I know, it was Lew you shot on the ridge that night. His rheumatism was caused by your bullet that nicked his shoulder. So you see what sort we are—go. Don’t wait—go now.”
Bud looked up, and there was Honey leaning over the counter, smiling at him.
“Well, how much is it?” she teased when she saw he had discovered her.
Bud drew a line across the note and added imaginary columns of figures, his hat-brim hiding his face.
“Over eleven thousand dollars,” he announced, and twisted the paper in his fingers while he went over to her. “Almost enough to start housekeeping!”
Honey blushed and leaned to look for something which she pretended to have dropped and Bud seized the opportunity to tuck the paper out of sight. “I feel pretty much intoxicated tonight, Honey,” he said. “I think I need soothing, or something—and you know what music does to the savage breast. Let’s play.”
“All right. You’ve been staying away lately till I thought you were mad,” Honey assented rather eagerly, and opened the little gate in the half partition just as Bud was vaulting the counter, which gave her a great laugh and a chance for playful scuffling. Bud kissed her and immediately regretted the caress.
