Cow-Country

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER EIGHT: THE MULESHOE

  The riders of the Muleshoe outfit were eating breakfast when Bud rodepast the long, low-roofed log cabin to the corral which stood nearestthe clutter of stables and sheds. He stopped there and waited to see ifhis new boss was anywhere in sight and would come to tell him where tounpack his belongings. A sandy complexioned young man with red eyelidsand no lashes presently emerged from the stable and came toward him,his mouth sagging loosely open, his eye; vacuous. He was clad in fadedoveralls turned up a foot at the bottom and showing frayed, shoddytrousers beneath and rusty, run-down shoes that proved he was not arider. His hat was peppered with little holes, as if someone had fired acharge of birdshot at him and had all but bagged him.

  The youth's eyes became fixed upon the guitar and mandolin cases ropedon top of Sunfish's pack, and he pointed and gobbled something which hadthe sound speech without being intelligible. Bud cocked an ear towardhim inquiringly, made nothing of the jumble and rode off to the cabin,leading Sunfish after him. The fellow might or might not be the idiot helooked, and he might or might not keep his hands off the pack. Bud wasnot going to take any chance.

  He heard sounds within the cabin, but no one appeared until he shouted,"Hello!" twice. The door opened then and Bart Nelson put out his head,his jaws working over a mouthful of food that seemed tough.

  "Oh, it's you. C'm awn in an' eat," he invited, and Bud dismounted,never guessing that his slightest motion had been carefully observedfrom the time he had forded the creek at the foot of the slope beyondthe cabin.

  Bart introduced him to the men by the simple method of waving his handat the group around the table and saying, "Guess you know the boys.What'd yuh say we could call yuh?"

  "Bud--ah--Birnie," Bud answered, swiftly weighing the romantic idea ofusing some makeshift name until he had made his fortune, and decidingagainst it. A false name might mean future embarrassment, and he was sofar from home that his father would never hear of him anyway. But hishesitation served to convince every man there that Birnie was not hisname, and that he probably had good cause for concealing his own. Addingthat to Dirk Tracy's guess that he was from Jackson's Hole, the sumspelled outlaw.

  The Muleshoe boys were careful not to seem curious about Bud's past.They even refrained from manifesting too much interest in the musicalinstruments until Bud himself took them out of their cases that eveningand began tuning them. Then the half-baked, tongue-tied fellow came overand gobbled at him eagerly.

  "Hen wants yuh to play something," a man they called Day interpreted."Hen's loco on music. If you can sing and play both, Hen'll set andlisten till plumb daylight and never move an eyewinker."

  Bud looked up, smiled a little because Hen had no eyewinkers to move,and suddenly felt pity because a man could be so altogether unlikeableas Hen. Also because his mother's face stood vividly before him foran instant, leaving him with a queer tightening of the throat andthe feeling that he had been rebuked. He nodded to Hen, laid down themandolin and picked up the guitar, turned up the a string a bit, laida booted and spurred foot across the other knee, plucked a minor chordsonorously and began abruptly:

  "Yo' kin talk about you coons a-havin' trouble--Well, Ah think Ah haveenough-a of mah oh-own--"

  Hen's high-pointed Adam's apple slipped up and down in one great gulp ofecstasy. He eased slowly down upon the edge of the bunk beside Bud andgazed at him fascinatedly, his lashless eyes never winking, his jawdropped so that his mouth hung half open. Day nudged Dirk Tracy, whoparted his droopy mustache and smiled his unlovely smile, lowering hisleft eyelid unnecessarily at Bud. The dimple in Bud's chin wrinkled ashe bent his head and plunked the interlude with a swing that set spurredboots tapping the floor rhythmically.

  "Bart, he's went and hired a show-actor, looks like." Dirk confidedbehind his hand to Shorty McGuire. "That's real singin', if yuh ask me!"

  "Shut up!" grunted Shorty, and prodded Dirk into silence so that hewould miss none of the song.

  Since Buddy had left the pink-apron stage of his adventurous life behindhim, singing songs to please other people had been as much a part of hislife as riding and roping and eating and sleeping. He had always sung orplayed or danced when he was asked to do so--accepting without questionhis mother's doctrine that it was unkind and ill-bred to refuse when hereally could do those things well, because on the cattle ranges indooramusements were few, and those who could furnish real entertainment werefewer. Even at the University, coon songs and Irish songs and love songshad been his portion; wherefore his repertoire seemed endless, and iffolks insisted upon it he could sing from dark to dawn, providing hisvoice held out.

  Hen sat with his big-jointed hands hanging loosely over his knees andlistened, stared at Bud and grinned vacuously when one song was done,gulped his Adam's apple and listened again as raptly to the next one.The others forgot all about having fun watching Hen, and named oldfavorites and new ones, heard them sung inimitably and called for more.At midnight Bud blew on his blistered fingertips and shook the guitargently, bottom-side up.

  "I guess that's all the music there is in the darned thing to-night," helamented. "She's made to keep time, and she always strikes, along aboutmidnight."

  "Huh-huh!" chortled Hen convulsively, as if he understood the joke. Heclosed his mouth and sighed deeply, as one who has just wakened from atrance.

  After that, Hen followed Bud around like a pet dog, and found timebetween stable chores to groom those astonished horses, Stopper andSmoky and Sunfish, as if they were stall-kept thoroughbreds. He had themcoming up to the pasture gate every day for the few handfuls of grain hepurloined for them, and their sleekness was a joy to behold.

  "Hen, he's adopted yuh, horses and all, looks like," Dirk observed oneday to Bud when they were riding together. And he tempered the statementby adding that Hen was trusty enough, even if he didn't have as muchsense as the law allows. "He sure is takin' care of them cayuses ofyour'n. D'you tell him to?"

  Bud came out of a homesick revery and looked at him inquiringly. "No, Ididn't tell him anything."

  "I believe that, all right," Dirk retorted. "You don't go around tellin'all yuh know. I like that in a feller. A man never got into troubleyet by keepin' his mouth shut; but there's plenty that have talkedthemselves into the pen. Me, I've got no use for a talker."

  Bud sent him a sidelong glance of inquiry, and Dirk caught him at it andgrinned.

  "Yuh been here a month, and you ain't said a damn word about where youcome from or anything further back than throwin' and tyin' that critter.You said cow-country, and that has had to do some folks that might becurious. Well, she's a tearin' big place--cow-country. She runs fromCanady to Mexico, and from the corn belt to the Pacific Ocean, mightynear takes in Jackson's Hole, and a lot uh country I know." He partedhis mustache and spat carefully into the sand. "I'm willin' to tie to aman, specially a young feller, that can play the game the way you beenplayin' it, Bud. Most always," he complained vaguely, "they carrytheir brand too damn main. They either pull their hats down past theireyebrows and give everybody the bad eye, or else they're too damn readyto lie about themselves. You throw in with the boys just fine--but youain't told a one of 'em where you come from, ner why, ner nothin'."

  "I'm here because I'm here," Bud chanted softly, his eyes stubborn evenwhile he smiled at Dirk.

  "I know--yuh sung that the first night yuh come, and yuh looked straightat the boss all the while you was singin' it," Dirk interrupted, andlaughed slyly. "The boys, they took that all in, too. And Bart, hewasn't asleep, neither. You sure are smooth as they make 'em, Bud. Iguess," he leaned closer to predict confidentially, "you've just aboutpassed the probation time, young feller. If I know the signs, the bossis gittin' ready to raise yuh."

  He looked at Bud rather sharply. Instantly the training of Buddy rosewithin Bud. His memory flashed back unerringly to the day when he hadwatched that Indian gallop toward the river, and had sneered because theIndian evidently expected him to follow into the undergrowth.

  Dirk Tracy
did not in the least resemble an Indian, nor did his ramblingflattery bear any likeness to a fleeing enemy; yet it was plain enoughthat he was trying in a bungling way to force Bud's confidence, and forthat reason Bud stared straight ahead and said nothing.

  He did not remember having sung that particular ditty during his firstevening at the Muleshoe, nor of staring at the boss while he sung. Hemight have done both, he reflected; he had sung one song after anotherfor about four hours that night, and unless he sang with his eyes shuthe would have to look somewhere. That it should be taken by thewhole outfit as a broad hint to ask no questions seemed to him ratherfarfetched.

  Nor did he see why Dirk should compliment him on keeping his mouthshut, or call him smooth. He did not know that he had been on probation,except perhaps as that applied to his ability as a cow-hand. And hecould see no valid reason why the boss should contemplate "raising" him.So far, he had been doing no more than the rest of the boys, exceptwhen there was roping to be done and he and Stopper were called uponto distinguish themselves by fast rope-work, with never a miss. Sixtydollars a month was as good pay as he had any right to expect.

  Dirk, he decided, had given him one good tip which he would follow atonce. Dirk had said that no man ever got into trouble by keeping hismouth shut. Bud closed his for a good half hour, and when he opened itagain he undid all the good he had accomplished by his silence.

  "Where does that trail go, that climbs up over the mountains back ofthat peak?" he asked. "Seems to be a stock trail. Have you got grazingland beyond the mountains?"

  Dirk took time to pry off a fresh chew of tobacco before he replied."You mean Thunder Pass? That there crosses over into the Black Rimcountry. Yeah--There's a big wide range country over there, but we don'trun any stock on it. Burroback Valley's big enough for the Muleshoe."

  Bud rolled a cigarette. "I didn't mean that main trail; that's a wagonroad, and Thunder Pass cuts through between Sheepeater peak and this oneahead of us--Gospel, you call it. What I referred to is that blind trailthat takes off up the canyon behind the corrals, and crosses into themountains the other side of Gospel."

  Dirk eyed him. "I dunno 's I could say, right offhand, what trail yuhmean," he parried. "Every canyon 's got a trail that runs up a ways, andthere's canyons all through the mountains; they all lead up to water, orfeed, or something like that, and then quit, most gen'rally; jest peterout, like." And he added with heavy sarcasm, "A feller that's livedon the range oughta know what trails is for, and how they're made.Cowcritters are curious-same as humans."

  To this Bud did not reply. He was smoking and staring at the brushylower slopes of the mountain ridge before them. He had explained quitefully which trail he meant. It was, as he had said, a "blind" trail;that is, the trail lost itself in the creek which watered a string ofcorrals. Moreover, Bud had very keen eyes, and he had seen how a panelof the corral directly across the shale-rock bed of a small stream wasreally a set of bars. The round pole corral lent itself easily to hiddengateways, without any deliberate attempt at disguising their presence.

  The string of four corrals running from this upper one--which,he remembered, was not seen from nearer the stables-was perhaps aconvenient arrangement in the handling of stock, although it wasunusual. The upper corral had been built to fit snugly into a rockyrecess in the base of the peak called Gospel. It was larger than someof the others, since it followed the contour of the basin-like recess.Access to it was had from the fourth corral (which from the ranchappeared to be the last) and from the creekbed that filled the narrowmouth of the canyon behind.

  Dirk might not have understood him, Bud thought. He certainly shouldhave recognized at once the trail Bud meant, for there was no othercanyon back of the corrals, and even that one was not apparent to onelooking at the face of the steep slope. Stock had been over that canyontrail within the last month or so, however; and Bud's inference that theMuleshoe must have grazing ground across the mountains was natural; theobvious explanation of its existence.

  "How 'd you come to be explorin' around Gospel, anyway?" Dirk quizzedfinally. "A person'd think, short-handed as the Muleshoe is this spring,'t you'd git all the ridin' yuh want without prognosticatin' aroundaimless."

  Now Bud was not a suspicious young man, and he had been no more thanmildly inquisitive about that trail. But neither was he a fool; hecaught the emphasis which Dirk had placed on the word aimless, and histhoughts paused and took another look at Dirk's whole conversation.There was something queer about it, something which made Bud sheer offfrom his usual unthinking assurance that things were just what theyseemed.

  Immediately, however, he laughed--at himself as well as at Dirk.

  "We've been feeding on sour bread and warmed-over coffee ever since thecook disappeared and Bart put Hen in the kitchen," he said. "If I wereyou, Dirk, I wouldn't blister my hands shovelling that grub into myselffor a while. You're bilious, old-timer. No man on earth would talk theway you've been talking to-day unless his whole digestive apparatus wereout of order."

  Dirk spat angrily at a dead sage bush. "They shore as hell wouldn't talkthe kinda talk you've been talkie' unless they was a born fool or elsehuntin' trouble," he retorted venomously.

  "The doctor said I'd be that way if I lived," Bud grinned, amiably,although his face had flushed at Dirk's tone. "He said it wouldn't hurtme for work."

  "Yeah--and what kinda work?" Dirk rode so close that his horseshouldered Bud's leg discomfortingly. "I been edgin' yuh along to seewhat-f'r brand yuh carried. And I've got ye now, you damned snoopin'kioty. Bart, he hired yuh to work-and not to go prowling around lookin'up trails that ain't there--"

  "You're a dim-brand reader, I don't think! Why you--!"

  Oh, well--remember that Bud was only Buddy grown bigger, and he hadnever lacked the spirit to look out for himself. Remember, too, thathe must have acquired something of a vocabulary, in the courseof twenty-one years of absorbing everything that came within hisexperience.

  Dirk reached for his gun, but Bud was expecting that. Dirk was not quitequick enough, and his hand therefore came forward with a jerk when hesaw that he was "covered." Bud leaned, pulled Dirk's six-shooter fromits holster and sent it spinning into a clump of bushes. He snatched awicked-looking knife from Dirk's boot where he had once seen Dirk slipit sheathed when he dressed in the bunk-house, and sent that after thegun.

  "Now, you long-eared walrus, you're in a position to play fair. What areyou going to do about it?" He reined away, out of Dirk's reach, took hishandkerchief and wrapped his own gun tightly to protect it from sand,and threw it after Dirk's gun and the knife. "Am I a snooping coyote?"he demanded watching Dirk.

  "You air. More 'n all that, you're a damned spy! And I kin lick yuh an'lass' yuh an' lead yuh to Bart like a sheep!"

  They dismounted, left their horses to stand with reins dropped, threwoff their coats and fought until they were too tired to land anotherblow. There were no fatalities. Bud did not come out of the frayunscathed and proudly conscious of his strength and his skill and theunquestionable righteousness of his cause. Instead he had three bruisedknuckles and a rapidly swelling ear, and when his anger had cooled alittle he felt rather foolish and wondered what had started them offthat way. They had ridden away from the ranch in a very good humor, andhe had harbored no conscious dislike of Dirk Tracy, who had been oneindividual of a type of rangemen which he had known all his life and hadaccepted as a matter of course.

  Dirk, on his part, had some trouble in stopping the bleeding of hisnose, and by the time he reached the ranch his left eye was closedcompletely. He was taller and heavier than Bud, and he had not expectedsuch a slugging strength behind Bud's blows.

  He was badly shaken, and when Bud recovered the two guns and the knifeand returned his weapons to him, Dirk was half tempted to shoot. But hedid not--perhaps because Bud had unwrapped his own six-shooter andwas looking it over with the muzzle slanting a wicked eye in Dirk'sdirection.

  Late that afternoon, when the boys were loafing around the cabin waitingfor thei
r early supper, Bud packed his worldly goods on Sunfish anddeparted from the Muleshoe--"by special request", he admitted tohimself ruefully--with his wages in gold and silver in his pocket and nodefinite idea of what he would do next.

  He wished he knew exactly why Bart had fired him. He did not believethat it was for fighting, as Bart had declared. He thought that perhapsDirk Tracy had some hold on the Muleshoe not apparent to the outsider,and that he had lied about him to Bart as a sneaking kind of revengefor being whipped. But that explanation did not altogether satisfy him,either.

  In his month at the Muleshoe he had gained a very fair general idea ofthe extent and resources of Burroback Valley, but he had not made anyacquaintances and he did not know just where to go for his next job. Sofor want of something better, he rode down to the little stream which henow knew was called One Creek, and prepared to spend the night there.In the morning he would make a fresh start--and because of the streak ofstubbornness he had, he meant to make it in Burroback Valley, under thevery nose of the Muleshoe outfit.