by B. M. Bower
Ten rods from the corral, which they could distinguish as a black blotch in the sparse willow growth, Pink turned and stopped them. “I know the layout here,” he whispered. “I’ll just sneak ahead and rubber around. You Rubes sound like the beginning of a stampede, in this brush.”
The sheriff had never before been called a Rube—to his face, at least. The audacity took his breath; and when he opened his mouth for scathing speech, Pink was not there. He had slipped away, like a slim, elusive shadow, and the sheriff did not even know the exact direction of his going. There was nothing for it but to wait.
In five minutes Pink appeared with a silent suddenness that startled them more than they would like to own.
“He’s somewheres around,” he announced, in a murmur that would not carry ten feet. “He’s got a horse in the corral, and, from the sound, he’s got him all saddled; and the gate’s tied shut with a rope.”
“How d’yuh know?” grunted the sheriff crossly.
“Felt of it, yuh chump. He’s turned the bunch loose and kept up a fresh one, like I said he would. It’s blame dark, but I could see the horse—a big white devil. It’s him yuh hear makin’ all that racket. If he gits away now—”
“Well, we didn’t come for a chin-whackin’ bee,” snapped the sheriff. “I come out here t’ git him.”
Pink gritted his teeth again, and wished the sheriff was just a man, so he could lick him. He led them forward without a word, thinking that Rowdy wanted Harry Conroy captured.
The sheriff circled warily the corral, peered through the rails at the great white horse that ran here and there, whinnying occasionally for the band, and heard the creak of leather and the rattle of the bit. Pink was right; the horse was saddled, ready for immediate flight.
“Maybe he’s in the cabin,” he whispered, coming up where Pink stood listening tensely at all the little night sounds. Pink turned and crept silently to the right, keeping in the deepest shade, while the others followed willingly. They were beginning to see the great advantage of having Pink along, even if he had called them Rubes.
The cabin door yawned wide open, and creaked weirdly as the light wind moved it; the interior was black and silent—suspiciously silent, in the opinion of the sheriff. He waited for some time before venturing in, fearing an ambush. Then he caught the flicker of a shielded match, called out to Conroy to surrender, and leveled his gun at the place.
There was no answer but the faint shuffle of stealthy feet on the board floor. The sheriff called another warning, cocked his gun—and came near shooting Pink, who walked composedly out of the door into the sheriff’s astonished face. The sheriff had been sure that Pink was just behind him.
“What the hell,” began the sheriff explosively.
“He ain’t here,” said Pink simply. “I crawled in the window and hunted the place over.”
The sheriff glared at him dumbly; he could not reconcile Pink’s daredevil behavior with Pink’s innocent, girlish appearance.
“I tell yuh the corral’s what we want t’ keep cases on,” Pink added insistently. “He’s sure somewheres around—I’d gamble on it. He saddled that horse t’ git away on. That horse is sure the key t’ this situation, old-timer. If you fellows’ll keep cases on the gate, I’ll cover the rear.”
He made his way quietly to the back of the corral, inwardly much amused at the tractability of the sheriff, who took his deputy obediently to watch the gate.
Pink squatted comfortably in the shade of a willow and wished he dared indulge in a cigarette, and wondered what scheme Harry was trying to play.
Fifty feet away the big white horse still circled round and round, rattling his bridle impatiently and shaking the saddle in an occasional access of rage, and whinnying lonesomely out into the gloom.
So they waited and waited, and peered into the shadows, and listened to the trampling horse fretting for freedom and his mates.
The cook had just called breakfast when Pink dashed up to the tent, flung himself from his horse, and confronted Rowdy—a hollow-eyed, haggard Rowdy who had not slept all night, and whose eyes questioned anxiously.
“Well,” Rowdy said, with what passed for composure, “did you get him?”
Pink leaned against his horse, with one hand reaching up and gripping tightly the horn of the saddle. His cheeks held not a trace of color, and his eyes were full of a great horror.
“They’re bringin’ him t’ camp,” he answered huskily. “We found a horse—a big white horse they call the Fern Outlaw”—the Silent One started and came closer, listening intently; evidently he knew the horse—“saddled in the corral, and the gate tied shut. We dubbed around a while, but we didn’t find—Harry. So we camped down by the corral and waited. We set there all night—and the horse faunching around inside something fierce. When—it come daybreak—I seen something—by the fence, inside. It was—Harry.” Pink shivered and moistened his dry lips. “That Fern Outlaw—some uh the boys know—is a devil t’ mount. He’d got Harry down—hell, Rowdy! it—it was sure—awful. He’d been there all night—and that horse stomping.”
“Shut up!” Rowdy turned all at once deathly sick. He had once seen a man who had been trampled by a maddened, man-killing horse. It had not been a pretty sight. He sat down weakly and covered his face with his shaking hands.
The others stood around horrified, muttering disjointed, shocked sentences.
Pink lifted his head from where it had fallen upon his arm. “One thing, Rowdy—I done. You can tell Jessie. I shot that horse.”
Rowdy dropped his hands and stood up. Yes, he must tell Jessie.
“You’ll have to take the herd on,” he told Pink in his masterful way. “I’ll catch you tomorrow some time. I’ve got to go back and tell Jessie. You know the trail I was going to take—straight across to Wild Horse Lake. From there you strike across to North Fork—and if I don’t overtake you on the way, I’ll hit camp some time in the night. It’s all plain sailing.”
CHAPTER 13
Rowdy Finds Happiness
Miss Conroy was rather listlessly endeavoring to persuade the First Reader class that “catch” should not be pronounced “ketch,” when she saw Rowdy ride past the window. Intuition of something amiss sent her to the door before he reached it.
“Can’t you give the kids a day off?” he began, without preface. “I’ve got such a lot to talk about—and I don’t come very often.” He thought that his tone was perfectly natural; but all the same she turned white. He rode on to a little tree and tied his horse—not that it was necessary to tie him, but to avoid questions.
Miss Conroy went in and dismissed the children, although it was only fifteen minutes after nine. They gathered up their lunch-pails and straggled out reluctantly, round-eyed, and curious. Rowdy waited until the last one had gone before he went in. Miss Conroy sat in her chair on the platform, and she was still white; otherwise she seemed to have herself well in hand.
“It’s about Harry,” she asserted, rather sharply.
“Have they—caught him?”
Rowdy stopped half-way down the aisle and stared. “How did you know they were—after him?”
“He came to me night before last, and—told me.” She bit her lip, took firm hold on her honesty and her courage, and went on steadily. “He came because he—wanted money. I’ve wanted to see you since, to tell you that—I misjudged you. I know all about your—trouble, and I want you to know that I think you are—that you did quite right. You are to understand that I cannot honestly uphold—Harry. He is—not the kind of brother—I thought.”
Rowdy went clanking forward till only the table stood between. “Did he tell you?” he demanded, in a curious, breathless fashion.
“No, he did not. He denied everything. It was Pink. He told me long ago—that evening, just after you—the last time I saw you. I told him he—lied. I tried not to believe it, but I did. Pink knew I would; he said so. The other night I asked Harry about—those things he did to you. He lied to me. I’d have forgiv
en him—but he lied. I—can’t forgive that. I—”
“Hush!” Rowdy threw out a gloved hand quickly. He could not bear to let her go on like that.
She looked up at him, and all at once she was shaking. “There’s something—tell me!”
“They didn’t take him,” he said slowly, weighing each word and looking down at her pityingly “They never will. He—had an accident. A horse—fell with him—and—he was dead when they picked him up.” It was as merciful a version as he could make it, but the words choked him, even then. “Girlie!” He went around and knelt, with his arms holding her close.
After a long while he spoke again, smoothing her hair absently, and never noticing that he had not taken off his gloves. His gray hat was pushed aslant as his head rested against hers.
“Perhaps, girlie, it’s for the best. We couldn’t have saved him from—the other; and that would have been worse, don’t you think? We’ll forget all but the good in him”—he could not help thinking that there would not be much to remember—“and I’ll get a little home ready, and come back and get you before snow flies—and—you’ll be kind of happy, won’t you?
“Maybe you haven’t heard—but Eagle Creek has made me foreman of his outfit that’s going to Canada. It’s a good position. I can make you comfortable, girlie—and happy. Anyway, I’ll try, mighty hard. You’ll be ready for me when I come—won’t you, girlie?”
Miss Conroy raised her face, all tear-stained, but, with the light of happiness fighting the sorrow in her eyes, nodded just enough to make the movement perceptible, and settled her head to a more comfortable nestling-place on his shoulder.
THE THUNDER BIRD (Part 1)
CHAPTER ONE
JOHNNY ASSUMES A DEBT OF HONOR
Since Life is no more than a series of achievements and failures, this story is going to begin exactly where the teller of tales usually stops. It is going to begin with Johnny Jewel an accepted lover and with one of his dearest ambitions realized. It is going to begin there because Johnny himself was just beginning to climb, and the top of his desires was still a long way off, and the higher you go the harder is the climbing. Even love does not rest at peace with the slipping on of the engagement ring. I leave it to Life, the supreme judge, to bear me out in the statement that Love must straightway gird himself for a life struggle when he has passed the flowered gateway of a woman’s tremulous yes.
To Johnny Jewel the achievement of possessing himself of so coveted a piece of mechanism as an airplane, and of flying it with rapidly increasing skill, began to lose a little of its power to thrill. The getting had filled his thoughts waking and sleeping, had brought him some danger, many thrills, a good deal of reproach and much self-condemnation. Now he had it—that episode was diminishing rapidly in importance as it slid into the past, and Johnny was facing a problem quite as great, was harboring ambitions quite as dazzling, as when he rode a sweaty horse across the barren stretches of the Rolling R Ranch and dreamed the while of soaring far above the barrenness.
Well, he had soared high above many miles of barrenness. That dream could be dreamed no more, since its magic vapors had been dissipated in the bright sun of reality. He could no longer dream of flying, any more than he could build air castles over riding a horse. Neither could he rack his soul with thoughts of Mary V Selmer, wondering whether she would ever get to caring much for a fellow. Mary V had demonstrated with much frankness that she cared. He knew the feel of her arms around his neck, the look of her face close to his own, the sweet thrill of her warm young lips against his. He had bought her a modest little ring, and had watched the shine of it on the third finger of her tanned left hand when she left him—going gloveless that the ring might shine up at her.
The first episode of her life thus happily finished, Johnny was looking with round, boyish, troubled eyes upon the second.
“Long-distance call for you, Mr. Jewel,” the clerk announced, when Johnny strolled into the Argonaut hotel in Tucson for his mail. “Just came in. The girl at the switchboard will connect you with the party.”
Johnny glanced into his empty key box and went on to the telephone desk. It was Mary V, he guessed. He had promised to call her up, but there hadn’t been any news to tell, nothing but the flat monotony of inaction, which meant failure, and Johnny Jewel never liked talking of his failures, even to Mary V.
“Oh, Johnny, is that you? I’ve been waiting and waiting, and I just wondered if you had enlisted and gone off to war without even calling up to say good-by. I’ve been perfectly frantic. There’s something—”
“You needn’t worry about me enlisting,” Johnny broke in, his voice the essence of gloom. “They won’t have me.”
“Won’t have—why, Johnny Jewel! How can the United States Army be so stupid? Why, I should think they would be glad to get—”
“They don’t look at me from your point of view, Mary V.” Johnny’s lips softened into a smile. She was a great little girl, all right. If it were left to her, the world would get down on its marrow bones and worship Johnny Jewel. “Why? Well, they won’t take me and my airplane as a gift. Won’t have us around. They’ll take me on as a common buck trooper, and that’s all. And I can’t afford—”
“Well, but Johnny! Don’t they know what a perfectly wonderful flyer you are? Why, I should think—”
“They won’t have me in aviation at all, even without the plane,” said Johnny. “The papers came back today. I was turned down—flat on my face! Gol darn ’em, they can do without me now!”
“Well, I should say so!” cried Mary V’s thin, indignant voice in his ear. “How perfectly idiotic! I didn’t want you to go, anyway. Now you’ll come back to the ranch, won’t you, Johnny?” The voice had turned wheedling. “We can have the duckiest times, flying around! Dad’ll give you a tremendously good—”
“You seem to forget I owe your dad three or four thousand dollars,” Johnny cut in. “I’ll come back to the ranch when that’s paid, and not before.”
“Well, but listen, Johnny! Dad doesn’t look at it that way at all. He knows you didn’t mean to let those horses be stolen. He doesn’t feel you owe him anything at all, Johnny. Now we’re engaged, he’ll give you a good—”
“You don’t get me, Mary V. I don’t care what your father thinks. It’s what I think that counts. This airplane of mine cost your dad a lot of good horses, and I’ve got to make that good to him. If I can’t sell the darned thing and pay him up, I’ll have to—”
“I suppose what I think doesn’t count anything at all! I say you don’t owe dad a cent. Now that you are going to marry me—”
“You talk as if you was an encumbrance your dad had to pay me to take off his hands,” blurted Johnny distractedly. “Our being engaged doesn’t make any difference—”
“Oh, doesn’t it? I’m tremendously glad to know you feel that way about it. Since it doesn’t make any difference whatever—”
“Aw, cut it out, Mary V! You know darn well what I meant.”
“Why, certainly. You mean that our being engaged doesn’t make a particle—”
“Say, listen a minute, will you! I’m going to pay your dad for those horses that were run off right under my nose while I was tinkering with this airplane. I don’t care what you think, or what old Sudden thinks, or what anybody on earth thinks! I know what I think, and that’s a plenty. I’m going to make good before I marry you, or come back to the ranch.
“Why, good golly! Do you think I’m going to be pointed out as a joke on the Rolling R? Do you think I’m going to walk around as a living curiosity, the only thing Sudden Selmer ever got stung on? Oh—h, no! Not little Johnny! They can’t say I got into the old man for a bunch of horses and the girl, and that old Sudden had to stand for it! I told your dad I’d pay him back, and I’m going to do it if it takes a lifetime.
“I’m calling that debt three thousand dollars—and I consider at that I’m giving him the worst of it. He’s out more than that, I guess—but I’m calling it three thousand
. So,” he added with an extreme cheerfulness that proved how heavy was his load, “I guess I won’t be out to supper, Mary V. It’s going to take me a day or two to raise three thousand—unless I can sell the plane. I’m sticking here trying, but there ain’t much hope. About three or four a day kid me into giving ’em a trial flight—and tomorrow I’m going to start charging ’em five dollars a throw. I can’t burn gas giving away joy rides to fellows that haven’t any intention of buying me out. They’ll have to dig up the coin, after this—I can let it go on the purchase price if they do buy, you see. That’s fair enough—”
“Then you won’t even listen to dad’s proposition?” Mary V’s tone proved how she was clinging to the real issue. “It’s a perfectly wonderful one, Johnny, and really, for your own good—and not because we are engaged in the least—you should at least consider it. If you insist on owing him money, why, I suppose you could pay him back a little at a time out of the salary he’ll pay you. He will pay you a good enough salary so you can do it nicely—”
Johnny laughed impatiently. “Let your dad jump up my wages to a point where he can pay himself back, you mean,” he retorted. “Oh—h, no, Mary V. You can’t kid me out of this, so why keep on arguing? You don’t seem to take me seriously. You seem to think this is just a whim of mine. Why, good golly! I should think it would be plain enough to you that I’ve got to do it if I want to hold up my head and look men in the face. It’s—why, it’s an insult to my self-respect and my honesty to even hint that I could do anything but what I’m going to do. The very fact that your dad ain’t going to force the debt makes it all the more necessary that I should pay it.
“Why, good golly, Mary V! I’d feel better toward your father if he had me arrested for being an accomplice with those horse thieves, or slapped an attachment on the plane or something, than wave the whole thing off the way he’s doing. It’d show he looked on me as a man, anyway.
