“He needs a friend, worst way,” Blister wheezed. “’Course, if you’d rather not—”
“Doggone yore hide, you’re always stickin’ me somehow,” stormed the cowboy. “Trouble with me is I’m so soft I’m always gettin’ imposed on. I done told you I didn’t like this guy a-tall. That don’t make no more impression on you than a cold runnin’-iron would on a cow.”
“M-much obliged, Dud. I knew you’d do it.”
“I ain’t said I’d do it.”
“S-some of the boys are liable to get on the prod with him. He’ll have to play his own hand. Tha’s reasonable. But kinda back him up when you get a chance. That notion of lettin’ him lick you is a humdinger. Glad you thought of it.”
“I didn’t think of it, an’ I ain’t thinkin’ of it now,” Dud retorted. “You blamed old fat skeezicks, you lay around figurin’ out ways to make me trouble. You’re worse than Mrs. Gillespie for gettin’ yore own way. Hmp! Devil him into a fight an’ then let him hand me a lacin’. I reckon not.”
“He’ll figure that since he can lick you, he can make out to look after himself with the other boys.”
“He ain’t licked me yet, an’ that’s only half of it. He ain’t a-goin’ to.”
Fuming at this outrageous proposition put up to him, the puncher jingled away and left his triple-chinned friend.
Blister grinned. The seed he had scattered might have fallen among the rocks and the thorns, but he was willing to make a small bet with himself that some of it had lit on good ground and would bear fruit.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
THE BACK OF A BRONC
The bunkhouse of the Slash Lazy D received Bob Dillon gravely and with chill civility. He sat on his bunk that first evening, close enough to touch a neighbor on either hand, and was left as completely out of the conversation as though he were a thousand miles away. With each other the riders were jocular and familiar. They “rode” one another with familiar jokes. The new puncher they let alone.
Bob had brought some cigars with him. He offered them eagerly to the chap-clad youth on his right. “Take one, won’t you? An’ pass the others round.”
The name of the cowboy was Hawks. He looked at the cigars with disfavor. “I reckon I’ll not be carin’ for a cigar to-night, thank you,” he said slowly.
“Perhaps the others—if you’ll pass them.”
Hawks handed the cigars to a brick-red Hercules patching his overalls. From him they went to his neighbor. Presently the cheroots came back to their owner. They had been offered to every man in the room and not one had been taken.
Bob’s cheeks burned. Notice was being served on him that the pleasant give-and-take of comradeship was not for him. The lights went out early, but long into the night the boy lay awake in torment. If he had been a leper the line could scarcely have been drawn more plainly. These men would eat with him because they must. They would sleep in the same room. They would answer a question if he put it directly. But they would neither give nor accept favors. He was not to be one of them.
Many times in the months that were to follow he was to know the sting of shame that burned him now at memory of the scene between him and Jake Houck at Bear Cat. He tossed on the bunk, burying his face in the blankets in a vain effort to blot out the picture. Why had he not shot the fellow? Why, at least, had he not fought? If he had done anything, but what he did do? If he had even stuck it out and endured the pain without yielding.
In the darkness he lived over every little incident of the evening. When Hawks had met him he had grinned and hoped he would like the Slash Lazy D. There had been friendliness in the crinkled, leathery face. But when he passed Bob ten minutes later the blue eyes had frozen. He had heard who the new rider was.
He would not stand it. He could not. In the morning he would pack up his roll and ride back to Bear Cat. It was all very well for Blister Haines to talk about standing the gaff, but he did not have to put up with such treatment.
But when morning came Bob set his teeth and resolved to go through with it for a while anyhow. He could quit at any time. He wanted to be able to tell the justice that he had given his plan a fair trial.
In silence Bob ate his breakfast. This finished, the riders moved across to the corral.
“Better rope and saddle you a mount,” Harshaw told his new man curtly. “Buck, you show him the ones he can choose from.”
Hawks led the way to a smaller corral. “Any one o’ these except the roan with the white stockings an’ the pinto,” he said.
Dillon walked through the gate of the enclosure and closed it. He adjusted the rope, selected the bronco that looked to him the meekest, and moved toward it. The ponies began to circle close to the fence. The one he wanted was racing behind the white-stockinged roan. For a moment it appeared in front. The rope snaked out and slid down its side. Bob gathered in the lariat, wound it, waited for a chance, and tried again. The meek bronco shook its head as the rope fell and caught on one ear. A second time the loop went down into the dust.
Some one laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day’s work, were sitting at ease in their saddles enjoying the performance.
Bob gave himself to the job in hand, though his ears burned. As a youngster he had practiced roping. It was a pastime of the boys among whom he grew up. But he had never been an expert, and now such skill as he had acquired deserted him. The loop sailed out half a dozen times before it dropped over the head of the sorrel.
The new rider for the Slash Lazy D saddled and cinched a bronco which no longer took an interest in the proceedings. Out of the corner of his eye, without once looking their way, Bob was aware of subdued hilarity among the bronzed wearers of chaps. He attended strictly to business.
Just before he pulled himself to the saddle Bob felt a momentary qualm at the solar plexus. He did not give this time to let it deter him. His feet settled into the stirrups. An instant violent earthquake disturbed his equilibrium. A shock jarred him from the base of the spine to the neck. Urgently he flew through space.
Details of the landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out against them.
Out of the mists of memory he heard a wheezy voice issuing from a great bulk of a man—“... yore red haid’s covered with glory. Snap it up!” The words came so clear that for an instant he was startled. He looked round half expecting to see Blister.
Stiffly he gathered himself out of the snow slush. A pain jumped in the left shoulder. He limped to the rope and coiled it. The first cast captured the sorrel.
His limbs were trembling when he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider shot from the saddle.
When the scenery had steadied itself for Dillon he noticed languidly a change in one aspect of it. The faces turned toward him were no longer grinning. They were watching him expectantly. What would he do now?
They need not look at him like that. He was through. If he got on the back of that brute again it would kill him. Already he was bleeding at the nose and ears. Sometimes men died just from the shock of being tossed about so furiously.
The sorrel was standing by itself at the other end of the corral. Its head was drooping languidly. The bronco was a picture of injured innocence.
Bob discovered that he hated it with an impotent lust to destroy. If he had
a gun with him—Out of the air a squeaky voice came to him: “C-clamp yore jaw, you worm! You been given dominion.” And after that, a moment later, “... made in the image of God.”
Unsteadily he rose. The eyes of the Slash Lazy D riders watched him relentlessly and yet curiously. Would he quit? Or would he go through?
He had an odd feeling that his body was a thing detached from himself. It was full of aches and pains. Its legs wobbled as he moved. Its head seemed swollen to twice the normal size. He had strangely small control over it. When he walked, it was jerkily, as a drunk man sometimes does. His hand caught at the fence to steady himself. He swayed dizzily. A surge of sickness swept through his organs. After this he felt better. He had not consciously made up his mind to try again, but he found himself moving toward the sorrel. This time he could hardly drag his weight into the saddle.
The mind of a bronco is unfathomable. This one now pitched weakly once or twice, then gave up in unconditional surrender. Bob’s surprise was complete. He had expected, after being shaken violently, to be flung into the mire again. The reaction was instantaneous and exhilarating. He forgot that he was covered with mud and bruises, that every inch of him cried aloud with aches. He had won, had mastered a wild outlaw horse as he had seen busters do. For the moment he saw the world at his feet. A little lower than the angels, he had been given dominion.
He rode to the gate and opened it. Hawks was looking at him, a puzzled look in his eyes. He had evidently seen something he had not expected to see.
Harshaw had ridden up during the bronco-busting. He spoke now to Bob. “You’ll cover Beaver Creek to-day—you and Buck.”
Something in the cattleman’s eye, in the curtness of his speech, brought Dillon back to earth. He had divined that his boss did not like him, had employed him only because Blister Haines had made a personal point of it. Harshaw was a big weather-beaten man of forty, hard, keen-eyed, square as a die. Game himself, he had little patience with those who did not stand the acid test.
Bob felt himself shrinking up. He had not done anything after all, nothing that any one of these men could not do without half trying. There was no way to wipe out his failure when a real ordeal had confronted him. What was written in the book of life was written.
He turned his pony and followed Hawks across the mesa.
* * *
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST DAY
In the wake of Hawks Bob rode through the buckbrush. There was small chance for conversation, and in any case neither of them was in the mood for talk. Bob’s sensitive soul did not want to risk the likelihood of a rebuff. He was susceptible to atmospheres, and he knew that Buck was sulky at being saddled with him.
He was right. Buck did not see why Harshaw had put this outcast tenderfoot on him. He did not see why he had hired him at all. One thing was sure. He was not going to let the fellow get round him. No, sir. Not on his tintype he wasn’t.
Since it was the only practical way at present to show his disgust and make the new puncher feel like a fool, Hawks led him through the roughest country he could find at the fastest feasible gait. Buck was a notably wild rider in a country of reckless horsemen. Like all punchers, he had been hurt time and again. He had taken dozens of falls. Two broncos had gone down under him with broken necks. A third had twisted its leg in a beaver burrow and later had to be shot. This day he outdid himself.
As young Dillon raced behind him along side hills after dogies fleet as blacktails, the heart fluttered in his bosom like a frightened bird in a cage. He did not pretend to keep up with Hawks. The best he could do was to come loping up after the excitement was over. The range-rider made no spoken comment whatever, but his scornful blue eyes said all that was necessary.
The day’s work did not differ except in details from that of yesterday and to-morrow. They headed back two three-year-olds drifting too far north. They came on a Slash Lazy D cow with a young calf and moved it slowly down to better feed near the creek. In the afternoon they found a yearling sunk in a bog. After trying to pull it out by the ears, they roped its body and tugged together. Their efforts did not budge the animal. Hawks tied one end of the rope to the saddle-horn, swung up, and put the pony to the pull. The muscles of the bronco’s legs stood out as it leaned forward and scratched for a foothold. The calf blatted with pain, but presently it was snaked out from the quagmire to the firm earth.
They crossed the creek and returned on the other side. Late in the afternoon they met half a dozen Utes riding their inferior ponies. They had evidently been hunting, for most of them carried deer. Old Colorow was at their head.
He grunted “How!” sulkily. The other braves passed without speaking. Something in their manner sent a shiver up Dillon’s spine. He and Hawks were armed only with revolvers. It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Indians to kill them if they wished.
Hawks called a cheerful greeting. It suggested the friendliest of feeling. The instructions given to the punchers were to do nothing to irritate the Utes just now.
The mental attitude of the Indians toward the cattlemen and cowboys was a curious one. They were suspicious of them. They resented their presence in the country. But they felt a very wholesome respect for them. These leather-chapped youths could outride and outshoot them. With or without reason, the Utes felt only contempt for soldiers. They were so easily led into traps. They bunched together when under fire instead of scattering for cover. They did not know how to read sign on the warmest trail. These range-riders were different. If they were not as wary as the Utes, they made up for it by the dash and aplomb with which they broke through difficulties.
In Bear Cat the day before Bob had heard settlers discuss the unrest of the Indians. The rumor was that soon they meant to go on the warpath again. Colorow himself, with a specious air of good will, had warned a cattleman to leave the country while there was time.
“You mebbe go—mebbe not come back,” he had suggested meaningly. “Mebbe better so. Colorow friend. He speak wise words.”
Until the Utes were out of gunshot Bob felt very uneasy. It was not many years since the Meeker massacre and the ambushing of Major Thornburg’s troops on Milk Creek.
Reeves and Hollister were in the bunkhouse when Bob entered it just before supper. He heard Dud’s voice.
“... don’t like a hair of his red haid, but that’s how it’ll be far as I’m concerned.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence. Dillon knew they had been talking about him. Beneath the deep gold of his blond skin Hollister flushed. Boy though he was, Dud usually had the self-possession of the Sphinx. But momentarily he was embarrassed.
“Hello, fellow!” he shouted across the room. “How’d she go?”
“All right, I reckon,” Bob answered. “I wasn’t much use.”
He wanted to ask Dud a question, but he dared not ask it before anybody else. It hung in his mind all through supper. Afterward he found his chance. He did not look at Hollister while he spoke.
“Did—did you hear how—Miss Tolliver is?” he asked.
“Doc says he can’t tell a thing yet. She’s still mighty sick. But Blister he sent word to you that he’d let you know soon as there is a change.”
“Much obliged.”
Bob moved away. He did not want to annoy anybody by pressing his undesirable society upon him.
That night he slept like a hibernating bear. The dread of the morrow was no longer so heavy upon him. Drowsily, while his eyes were closing, he recalled the prediction of the fat justice that no experience is as bad as one’s fears imagine it will be. That had been true to-day at least. Even his fight with the sorrel, the name of which he had later discovered to be Powder River, was now only a memory which warmed and cheered.
Cowpunchers usually rode in couples. Bob learned next morning that he was paired with Dud. They were to comb the Crooked Wash country.
* * *
CHAPTER XIX
DUD QUALIFIES AS COURT JESTER
It was still
dark when Dud Hollister and Bob Dillon waded through the snow to the corral and saddled their horses.
They jogged across the mesa through the white drifts.
Bob’s pony stumbled into a burrow, but pulled out again without damage.
In the years when cattle first came to the Rio Blanco the danger from falls was greater than it is now, even if the riding had not been harder. A long thick grass often covered the badger holes.
“How does a fellow look out for badger and prairie-dog holes?” Bob asked his companion as they jogged along at a road gait. “I mean when he’s chasin’ dogies across a hill on the jump.”
“He don’t,” Dud answered ungrammatically but promptly. “His bronc ’tends to that. If you try to guide you’re sure enough liable to take a fall.”
“But when the hole’s covered with grass?”
“You gotta take a chance,” Dud said. “They’re sure-footed, these cowponies are. A fellow gets to thinkin’ they can’t fall. Then down he goes. He jumps clear if he can an’ lights loose.”
“And if he can’t?”
“He’s liable to get stove up. I seen five waddies yesterday in Bear Cat with busted legs or arms. Doc’s fixin’ ’em up good as new. In a week or two they’ll be ridin’ again.”
Bob had seen those same crippled cowboys and he could not quite get them out of his mind. He knew of two punchers killed within the year from falls.
“Ridin’ for a dogie outfit ain’t no sin-cure, as Blister told you while he was splicin’ you ’n’ Miss Tolliver,” Dud went on. “It’s a man-size job. There’s ol’ Charley Mason now. He’s had his ribs stove in, busted an arm, shot hisself by accident, got rheumatism, had his nose bit off by a railroad guy while he was b’iled, an’ finally married a female battle-axe, all inside o’ two years. He’s the hard luck champeen, though, Charley is.”
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