Knights of the Range, page 18
“Did you cross the open to see if Stinger had downed one?”
“Not so you’d notice it. Stinger wanted to, but Handsome an’ me voted him down.”
“Whose ootfit was it, Sky?”
“Stinger swears it was Heaver’s. He’s seen them, you know. They were workin’ thet side of the range. Anyway this job of Stinger’s was good. We might have lost thet bunch. Most short horns, cows an’ calves, an’ tame…. Boss, I’d advise, soon as some of the boys come in, to throw thet slow bunch way over here along the creek.”
“Tomorrer, mebbe, or next day.—Wal, what else, Sky?”
“What do you want for a few days’ ridin’, Old Timer?”
“I hope thet’s all.”
“I wish it was. Half way home we saw three riders bob over a rise, an’ stand their hosses, waitin’ for us. Turned out to be Joe Doane, an’ two of his Dad’s riders. Joe gave me the stump of his cigarette, which was all he had. Doane lost twenty head of hosses, his best, includin’ the blue roan wearin’ the Ripple brand. Miss Holly gave thet roan to Ann. Say, wasn’t I sore?—Joe said they’d trailed this bunch for three days, till they darn near starved. Along by Dobe Cabin, down to the Cimarron, which the thieves crossed on to the Old Trail.”
“How many hawse-thieves?” asked Britt, shaking his head.
“Joe didn’t find out. Four shod hosses, he said…. Now, boss, wouldn’t it be funny if thet bunch run into Brazos an’ Frayne comin’ back?”
“Funny? Aboot as funny as death.”
“Cherokee could see thet bunch a long way before they’d see our boys. An’ a string of hosses would excite suspicion these days. It just about will happen thet way.”
“Brazos would see red.”
At this juncture the slim Stinger came in, stripped to the waist, his lean white side marred by an ugly welt.
“Stinger, who’s been creasin’ you?” asked Britt, jocularly.
“Boss, I’ve an idee some cowboy took me fer a wild hoss…. Mebbe you think thet welt ain’t sore? Hurts ——— ——— wuss’n a boil.”
Jose put his smiling swarthy visage inside the back door. “Eet ees ready, vaqueros,” which call elicited a wild howl from the two cowboys, and drew Gaines in, mopping his shiny soapy face with a towel.
Early in the afternoon of the next day Jim, Blue and Flinty arrived from Cedar Flat.
This section of the range was quite remote from Don Carlos’ Rancho, being a succession of tremendous benches running out from the foothills some sixty miles away. It was favored by cattlemen and cattle alike for spring and summer grazing. Snow fell there in the fall. Jim reported a hundred thousand head of mixed stock on and around Cedar Flats, the largest number of which bore Chisum’s famous Long Rail and Jingle-bob brands. There were more Ripple cattle in this herd that Jim was glad to find.
Activity of rustlers had been difficult to uncover and hard to trace. They had encountered half a dozen cowboy outfits, three of which omitted to make clear what connection they had on that range.
Jim’s report, however, included other activities that gave Britt food for reflection. San Marcos had more than a year ago begun to feel the influx of new settlers, cattlemen, and the parasites that lived on them, but this summer had seen the sleepy little Mexican village grow in a way that had both gratifying and dismaying reactions for the Ripple foreman.
Horn Brothers had started a new post there, which Jim said was just an excuse to add another saloon and gambling-hall to the already long list. New stores, a hotel, a mining company, and numerous residents, both Mexican and American, had been added since Britt’s last visit there. McCoy was reported to have an interest in several new San Marcos business developments. He claimed to be going into partnership with Chisum, but Britt knew this was mere brag, and rather stupid of McCoy, because it was well known that the Jingle-bob cattleman was a lone wolf.
Russ Slaughter and his Seven Rivers outfit had apparently dropped out of sight; and this to Britt was the most significant news. Slaughter had quit Chisum to be a free agent, to be in the thick of the fat pickings for cattle-buzzards that would prevail in central and eastern New Mexico.
“I reckon Slaughter has gone up in the foothills to the north of McCoy’s ranch,” calculated Britt. “Some wild nest-holes up there, an’ within a day’s ride of the trail north to the Indian reservations an’ forts.”
“Enough said,” agreed Jim. “But, boss, dog-gone-me if I think thet’s as interestin’ as the talk aboot central New Mexico. The Pecos country from Seven Rivers to Roswell an’ Lincoln, an’ west has poured up the Pecos, an’ by the time the railroad gets to Santa Fe there’ll be a million head of stock west of us.”
“So much the better.”
“Shore, ’cept thet it’ll help draw the damndest lot of outfits from all over.”
“Rebel ought to be heah soon,” replied Britt.
“Where’d you send him?”
“No place in particular. I reckon he’ll keep track of Talman an’ Trinidad.”
“Cap, thet’s a big country between Cottonwood Basin an’ Ute Hills. Clements has twenty thousand cattle there, Haywood aboot eight, an’ Doane, who’s on the idge, aboot five thousand. Or he did have thet many. Doane was pretty much het up when he was heah.”
“Wal, countin’ six to ten thousand of ours oot there, these hombres have a big bunch to pick from. A big range an’ easy ootlets. Jim, it jest makes my blood boil.”
“We’re doin’ all we can. A hundred riders wouldn’t be enough. Cattle hev growed too thick an’ fast. An’ to hev the price bust on us is somethin’ onheerd of! … Cap, what we ought to do is like Chisum. Help ourselves.”
“No. Thet’s the cowboy’s point of view, Jim,” returned Britt, seriously. “Mebbe Chisum takes what comes his way. An’ some of the other cattlemen will when this deal comes to a haid. But we cain’t double-cross Miss Holly, an’ she wouldn’t own a steer thet wasn’t hers.”
“Whoopee!” yelled Blue fiercely, from the porch.
Britt ran out with Jim. A cloud of dust down the road only partially hid a troop of horses being driven up from the Pass toward the village. Flinty joined the others on the porch, where Britt expressed his belief that Frayne and Brazos had arrived home with the horses stolen from Doane.
“By all thet’s lucky!” ejaculated Britt. “Gosh, my eyes water! How many, Blue?”
“Aw, two dozen or more. An’ thet’s our top bunch of riders. There’s the chuck-wagon, Britt, comin’ down out of the Pass.”
“Skylark will be plumb tickled…. Wal—wal, I hope Frayne came through safe.”
“Outfit’s all trailin’ home at once,” remarked Jim, with satisfaction. “Now, if Rebel would rustle in.”
Britt caught the rather significant omission of Talman and Trinidad. It gave him a pang. He had grown attached to every member of this greatest band of cowboys that he had seen.
Stinger appeared in the bunk-house door, half dressed, and blinking of eye. “What’s all the hullabaloo, boss?”
“Ootfit’s back, an’ I reckon they got Doane’s hawses.”
“Darn my pictures! Didn’t I have a hunch? … I’m gonna get into my jeans.”
Britt found in the situation another reflection as to his peculiar strain these days. He could hardly conceal either his joy or concern or impatience. How good to have them back—to see Frayne and Brazos—to feel Holly’s relief! Would all the cowboys be with them, safe and well? He managed, however, to contain himself while waiting for them to come up. At last when Britt walked off to meet Frayne it ran in his mind that he had never before in his life been so glad to see a man. Britt wondered with a sting of conscience if he had unconsciously harbored a doubt of Frayne. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, unshaven and hard, Frayne had seemed to have about him that something inimically western and stable.
“Howdy, Cap,” he said, leaning to meet Britt’s eager hand.
“I’m shore glad to see you. Everythin’ all right?”
“Now that I’m here—yes,” replied Frayne, with his cool laugh.
“How aboot the money?”
“All here,” rejoined Frayne, patting the saddle-bags which hung over his pommel, instead of the usual place behind the cantle. “That is, except a few dollars to each of the boys.”
“What’d they bring?”
“I got forty-two dollars a head.”
“Wal, you son-of-a-gun! Thet’s great!—But, heah, don’t waste another minute on me. Ride up to Holly an’ get rid of thet money.”
“Britt, you take it up for me. I’m tired. And ——”
“No sir. Holly would— Wal, never mind. But she wants to see you. Renn, I’d rather like to be in yore boots. She’ll be surprised you’re heah.”
“She saw us coming, Cap,” he rejoined. “Must have been watching with the glass. Cherry saw her wave before we crossed the Cimarron.”
“Holly has been on the job with thet glass for the last ten days. Rustle, now.”
“But, Cap ——”
“There ain’t any buts. Go! The girl has worried herself sick. She can’t eat or sleep,” went on Britt, lying shamelessly.
“Worried herself!—Good God, man!—for fear I’d turn yellow?”
“Hellno!—you’re as testy as Brazos…. She didn’t care a hang aboot the money. She missed you.”
Without another word Frayne turned his horse toward the winding road up the green hill. He could not have been a more pondering and dazed man if he had been forced to report loss of the large sum of money.
Britt’s conscience did not even smart, and he chuckled to himself as he directed his attention to the approaching cowboys. They had driven the band of horses into a corral. Skylark, Blue, Flinty and Gaines all on foot, were escorting the mounted boys to the bunk-house. Stinger was on his way to meet them. Britt’s fond eye soon missed a familiar figure.
“Where’s Brazos?” he yelled, while they were still some distance off.
“He’s drivin’ the wagon. Be hyar pronto,” shouted Laigs Mason.
Britt returned to his chair on the porch. All was well. The outfit had come home. That sombre purple shadow which hung over the foothills could be forgotten for the time being. He watched the cowboys dismount and throw their saddles. Tex Southard appeared to be the only one incapacitated. Skylark took his horse while Blue helped him to the bunk-house. Tex had a decided limp.
“Wal, I reckon a hawse fell on you,” said Britt, dryly.
“Boss, eet es lead bullit, in my laig. Yu mus dig oot,” replied the vaquero.
“Anybody else hurt?”
“Mason got barked. You’d think he was all shot up, to hear him holler,” said Blue.
Britt refrained from more questions at that time. He took out his impatience in listening and watching. They all piled past him with greetings, the vociferous ones of which he noted were made by the cowboys who had remained home. They were merry. Mason glared at Britt as he hobbled up on the porch, and shoved out a dirty hand with a bloody furrow across the back of it.
“Thet’s what I get fer not throwin’ my gun,” he growled, as if Britt had been somehow to blame.
“Wal, it’s yore left hand.”
“Yass? An’ how’m I gonna play cards?”
“Cap, Laigs means he can’t stack the deck,” said Blue.
“Laigs, when did you an’ Tex stop these bullets?” queried the foreman.
“Yestiddy mornin’.”
“I reckon it was accident.”
“Sorta—fer the hombre who done it.”
During the ensuing half hour while Britt went inside to wait for Frayne and Brazos he heard much interesting news, but nothing at all about the rescue of Doane’s horses, and the fight which had evidently taken place with the thieves.
Railroad construction had been slow during the spring and summer owing to lack of funds. But now the rails were moving west again and Las Animas was roaring. The construction engineers expected to get to Trinidad before winter set in. Trains were running regularly between Las Animas and Kansas City. One train had been held up for a whole day near Dodge by a herd of buffalo. Another had been stopped recently by bandits. Frank and Jesse James had been blamed for this, but according to railroad men they could not have been implicated because they had been recognized in western Kansas at the time of the hold-up near Newton. This strengthened the rumor of other strong bands of outlaws working westward. Cattle shipments had been large and the price of cattle on the hoof, delivered at the railroad, was expected to increase. The cowboys had passed a large caravan between the Cimarron and the Purgatory Rivers. Laigs Mason had won a hundred dollars in a game of poker, which bit of news appeared to be the most impressive the returning cowboys felt that they had.
Presently the doorway framed the striking figure and face of Brazos Keene. Unlike his comrades, Brazos had that morning taken the trouble to shave and don a clean shirt and scarf. He looked like a handsome imp of Satan.
“Howdy, Old Timer! Yu shore look lonesome. Proves yu don’t ’preciate us when we’re heah,” was his greeting to Britt. “Pards, I had a drink as big as thet. An’ who yu think was layin’ fer me? Connie!—Did she—was she glad to see me? Wal, yu’d all been green.”
“Aw, I was onto you,” bawled out Laigs. “You let me drive thet ole wagon all day long, till we get near home. Then you offer to relieve me—all so you could hang behind an’ meet the gurls an’ have a drink. Dog-gone-you, Brazos! I don’t know how’n the hell you make sich a sucker out of me.”
Brazos did a jig in the middle of the bunk-house floor, his fine embroidered boots flying, his spurs jingling, his clustering yellow locks dancing with the rest of him.
“Back home!” babbled Brazos, as he completed his jig. “Lucky trip!—Sweet rest an’ good grub an’ thet black-eyed slave of mine! Aw, a cowboy’s life is hard.”
Britt thought that all the marvelous traits of the Texas cowboy, and for that matter of all the range-riders in the West, were epitomized in this slender, fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of nineteen. But Britt knew that to look at him and to listen was to court deception. Brazos was never what he seemed. On the surface he was frivolous, care-free, a heedless wild youth, hard as flint, living for the moment, conscienceless and irresponsible. This was true of Brazos, but it had to do with externals. Either Brazos was a youth with many sides or an incomparable actor, or both.
“Wal, how aboot it?” queried Britt, into the first lull.
“How aboot what, boss?” drawled Brazos.
“I want a report, don’t I?”
“Dawg-gone if I ever know what yu want,” complained Brazos, plaintively. “Anyway, Frayne was haid of this drive.”
“You got back Doane’s hawses.”
“Shore. We didn’t know whose they were till I seen thet blue roan with a ripple on his flank. I’d seen Miss Holly on him, an’ I recollected thet she gave him to Ann Doane…. So things kinda connected up in my dumb haid.”
“Ah-huh, I reckon. Wal, tell me aboot what happened?”
“Boss, I ain’t feelin’ like talkin’,” replied Brazos, in cool evasion.
“Laigs, do you want to tell me?” went on Britt, dryly.
“Boss, I’m a cowman what’s shy of words. Besides I’m tired an’ hurt an’ I couldn’t talk fer a million.”
“Million what?” asked Britt, convinced that he could make Laigs retract this extravagant speech.
“Pesos,” said Laigs, shortly.
Then Britt called loudly: “Jackson.”
“Yas suh. Heah I is.”
“Come over heah.”
The little bow-legged negro approached Britt with some uncertainty and trepidation, but his eyes rolled till the whites showed, to match with his teeth.
“Air you dumb, too, Jack?”
“I reckon—yas suh, I’se as dumb as Laigs.”
“Wal, heah’s ten pesos.”
“Boss! Fer me?” asked Jackson, with a huge grin.
“Yes, if you’ll take thet back aboot bein’ dumb.”
“Sho, suh. I’se not dumb atall…. Yo see, Boss, I wuz jes sidin’ wif Laigs ——”
“Hyar!” yelled Laigs, suddenly coming out of his stupefaction. “You darn, hoss-chewin’ nigger! Lay off’n me…. Boss, I’ll take it back. I’ll tell you anythin’ fer ten ——”
“Shet up, Laigs,” interrupted Britt. “All of you keep shet up while I get this report from Jackson. Things hev come to a sad pass in an ootfit when the boss has to pay fer a report…. Come on, Jack.”
“What yu want, suh?”
“Tell me all aboot how you come to get Doane’s hawses back.”
“Wal, suh, it wuz dis way,” began Jackson, eagerly. “Jes befo noon yestiddy mawnin’ we wuz ridin’ along when Cherry oot ahaid seen dust, an’ he held us up. When we all seen it we got to bettin’ on what made it. Boss, on dis drive we sho seen things before dey seen us. Cherry bet der wuz a string of hosses comin’. Wal, Cherry won de bet an’ Mars Frayne held us dere to wait. It wasn’t long den till we seen fo hossmen behind dat string. Wal, den Mars Frayne had us hide round a brushy bend in de road till them riders done come up. Befo all de hosses got by Brazos seen dat blue roan wif our brand, an’ den we all knowed sho dey’d been some hoss-stealin’. But, suh, when Frayne rode oot in front of us dem fo men was sho susprised. Dey didn’t ’pear sociable an’ de leader yelled an’ was pullin’ his gun when Frayne laid him offen his hoss. De odder riders bolted, shootin’ back, an’ we rustled after ’em sho burnin’ powder…. Wal, suh, it wuz soon ober. Laigs an’ Tex wuz hit. Dem fo hoss-thieves wuz pore white trash, boss. Dey didn’t hev nuthin’ much. We trowed dere guns an’ saddles in the wagon, den round up de stole hosses, an’ rustled along…. Dat’s all, suh.”
“Ten cart-wheels fer thet story,” stormed Laigs Mason. “I coulda told it better fer two-bits.”
At this junction Britt heard a horse outside, and soon found Frayne there unsaddling. The outlaw had a preoccupied manner. He left saddle and bridle on the ground, and when he turned Britt met a frowning face and bewildered eyes from which the piercing quality had gone into eclipse.
