The Texan Part 27

"And some people never do learn?" Alice wanted to hear more from this man's lips concerning the pilgrim. But the Texan mustn't know that she wanted to hear.

"Yes, some don't learn, some only half learn, an' some learn in a way that carries 'em along 'til it comes to a pinch--they're the worst.

But, speakin' of Win, after I caught that look, the only surprise I got when I heard he'd killed Purdy was that he _could_ do it--not that he _would_. Then later, under certain circ.u.mstances that come to pa.s.s in a coulee where there was cottonwoods, him an' I got better acquainted yet. An' then in the matter of the reservoir--but you know more about that than I do. You see what I'm gettin' at is this: Win can saddle his own horse, now, an' he climbs onto him from the left side. The next time he tackles it he'll shave, an' the next time he muds up a catch-basin he'll mud it right. Day before yesterday he was about as useless a lookin' piece of bric-a-brac as ever draw'd breath--an' look at him now! There ain't been any real change. The man was there all the time, only he was so well disguised that no one ever know'd it--himself least of all. Yesterday I saw him take a chew off Bat's plug--an' Bat don't offer his plug promiscuous. He'll go back East, an' the refinement will cover him up again--an' that's a d.a.m.ned shame.

But he won't be just the same. It won't crust over no more, because the prejudice is gone. He's chewed the meat of the cow country--an'

he's found it good."

Later, long after the others had gone to sleep, Alice lay between her blankets in the little shelter tent, thinking.

CHAPTER XV

THE TEXAN HEARS SOME NEWS

Bat had pitched the tent upon a little knoll, screened by a jutting shoulder of rock from the sleeping place of the others. When Alice awoke it was broad daylight. She lay for a few moments enjoying the delicious luxury of her blankets which the half-breed had spread upon a foot-thick layer of boughs. The sun beat down upon the white canvas and she realized that it was hot in the tent. The others must have been up for hours and she resented their not having awakened her. She listened for sounds, but outside all was silence and she dressed hurriedly. Stepping from the tent, she saw the dead ashes of the little fire and the contents of the packs apparently undisturbed, covered with the tarp. She glanced at her watch. It was half past nine. Suddenly she remembered that dawn had already began to grey the east when they retired. She was the first one up! She would let the others sleep. They needed it. She remembered the Texan had not slept the day before, but had ridden away to return later with the clothing for Endicott--and the whiskey.

"I don't see why he has to drink!" she muttered, and making her way to the spring, dipped some water from the catch-basin and splashed it over her face and arms. The cold water dispelled the last vestige of sleepiness and she stood erect and breathed deeply of the crystal air.

At the farther side of the bowl-like plateau the horses grazed contentedly, and a tiny black and white woodp.e.c.k.e.r flew from tree to tree pecking busily at the bark. Above the edge of the rim-rocks the high-flung peaks of the Bear Paws belied the half-night's ride that separated them from the isolated Antelope b.u.t.te.

"What a view one should get from the edge!" she exclaimed, and turning from the spring, made her way through the scraggly timber to the rock wall beyond. It was not a long climb and five minutes later she stood panting with exertion and leaned against an upstanding pinnacle of jagged rock. For a long time she stood wonder-bound by the mighty grandeur of the panorama that swept before her to lose itself somewhere upon the dim horizon. Her brain grasped for details. It was all too big--too unreal--too unlike the world she had known. In sheer desperation, for sight of some familiar thing, her eyes turned toward the camp. There was the little white tent, and the horses grazing beyond. Her elevation carried her range of vision over the jutting shoulder of rock, and she saw the Texan sitting beside his blankets drawing on his boots. The blankets were mounded over the forms of the others, and without disturbing them, the cowboy put on his hat and started toward the spring. At the sight of the little tent he paused and Alice saw him stand staring at the little patch of white canvas.

For a long time he stood unmoving, and then, impulsively, his two arms stretched toward it. The arms were as quickly withdrawn. The Stetson was lifted from his head and once more it seemed a long time that he stood looking at the little tent with the soft brim of his Stetson crushed tightly in his hand.

Evidently, for fear of waking her, the man did not go to the spring, but retraced his steps and Alice saw him stoop and withdraw something from his war-bag. Thrusting the object beneath his s.h.i.+rt, he rose slowly and made his way toward the rim-rock, choosing for his ascent a steep incline which, with the aid of some rock ledges, would bring him to the top at a point not ten yards from where she stood.

It was with a sense of guilt that she realized she had spied upon this man, and her cheeks flushed as she cast about desperately for a means to escape unseen. But no such avenue presented itself, and she drew back into a deep crevice of her rock pinnacle lest he see her.

A grubby, stunted pine somehow managed to gain sustenance from the stray earth among the rock cracks and screened her hiding-place. The man was very close, now. She could hear his heavy breathing and the click of his boot heels upon the bare rocks. Then he crossed to the very verge of the precipice and seated himself with his feet hanging over the edge. For some moments he sat gazing out over the bad lands, and then his hand slipped into the front of his s.h.i.+rt and withdrew a bottle of whiskey.

The girl's lips tightened as she watched him from behind her screen of naked roots and branches. He looked a long time at the bottle, shook it, and held it to the sun as he contemplated the little beads that sparkled at the edge of the liquor line. He read its label, and seemed deeply interested in the lines of fine print contained upon an oval sticker that adorned its back. Still holding the bottle, he once more stared out over the bad lands. Then he drew the cork and smelled of the liquor, breathing deeply of its fragrance, and turning, gazed intently toward the little white tent beside the stunted pines.

Alice saw that his eyes were serious as he set the bottle upon the rock beside him. And then, hardly discernible at first, but gradually a.s.suming distinct form, a whimsical smile curved his lips as he looked at the bottle.

"Gos.h.!.+" he breathed, softly, "ain't you an' I had some nonsensical times? I ain't a d.a.m.ned bit sorry, neither. But our trails fork here.

Maybe for a while--maybe for ever. But if it is for ever, my average will be right honourable if I live to be a hundred." Alice noticed how boyish the clean-cut features looked when he smiled that way. The other smile--the masking, cynical smile--made him ten years older. The face was once more grave, and he raised the bottle from the rock. "So long," he said, and there was just that touch of honest regret in his voice with which he would have parted from a friend. "So long. I've got a choice to make--an' I don't choose you."

The hand that held the bottle was empty. There was a moment of silence and then from far below came the tinkle of smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.s. The Texan got up, adjusted the silk scarf at his neck, rolled a cigarette, and clambering down the sharp descent, made his way toward the grazing horses. Alice watched for a moment as he walked up to his own horse, stroked his neck, and lightly cuffed at the ears which the horse laid back as he playfully snapped at his master's hand. Then she scrambled from her hiding-place and hurried un.o.bserved to her tent, where she threw herself upon the blankets with a sound that was somehow very like a sob.

When the breakfast of cold coffee and biscuits was finished the Texan watched Endicott's clumsy efforts to roll a cigarette.

"Better get you a piece of twine to do it with, Win," he grinned; "you sure are a long ways from home when it comes to braidin' a smoke. Saw a cow-hand do it once with one hand. In a show, it was in Cheyenne, an' he sure was some cowboy--in the show. Come out onto the flats one day where the boys was breakin' a bunch of Big O Little O horses--'after local colour,' he said." The Texan paused and grinned broadly. "Got it too. He clum up into the middle of a wall-eyed buckskin an' the doc picked local colour out of his face for two hours where he'd slid along on it--but he could roll a cigarette with one hand. There, you got one at last, didn't you? Kind of humped up in the middle like a snake that's swallowed a frog, but she draws all right, an' maybe it'll last longer than a regular one." He turned to Alice who had watched the operation with interest.

"If you-all don't mind a little rough climbin', I reckon, you'd count the view from the rim-rocks yonder worth seein'."

"Oh, I'd love it!" cried the girl, as she scrambled to her feet.

"Come on, Win," called the Texan, "I'll show you where G.o.d dumped the tailin's when He finished buildin' the world."

Together the three scaled the steep rock-wall. Alice, scorning a.s.sistance, was the first to reach the top, and once more the splendour of the magnificent waste held her speechless.

For some moments they gazed in silence. Before them, bathed in a pale amethyst haze that thickened to purple at the far-off edge of the world, lay the bad lands resplendent under the hot glare of the sun in vivid red and black and pink colouring of the lava rock. Everywhere the eye met the flash and s.h.i.+mmer of mica fragments that sparkled like the facets of a million diamonds, while to the northward the Bear Paws reared cool and green, with the gra.s.s of the higher levels reaching almost to the timber line.

"Isn't it wonderful?" breathed the girl. "Why do people stay cooped up in the cities, when out here there is--this?" Endicott's eyes met hers, and in their depths she perceived a newly awakened fire. She was conscious of a strange glow at her heart--a mighty gladness welled up within her, permeating her whole being. "He has awakened," her brain repeated over and over again, "he has----"

The voice of the Texan fell upon her ears softly as from a distance, and she turned her eyes to the boyish faced cow-puncher who viewed life lightly and who, she had learned, was the thorough master of his wilderness, and very much a man.

"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I suppose G.o.d foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated, "an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an'

there--the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies, an' them big black b.u.t.tes to the south are the Judith, an' you can see--way beyond the Judith--if you look close--the Big Snowy Mountains.

They're more than a hundred miles away."

The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze, made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair of gla.s.ses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.

"What is it?" asked the girl.

"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either.

Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side. You two stay up here, but you got to be awful careful not to show yourselves. Folks down below look awful little from here, but if they've got gla.s.ses you'd loom up plenty big, an' posse men's apt to pack gla.s.ses." The two followed him to camp and a few moments later watched him ride off at a gallop and disappear in the scrub that concealed the mouth of the precipitous trail.

Hardly had he pa.s.sed from sight than Bat rose and, walking to his saddle, uncoiled his rope.

"Where are you going?" asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward the horses.

"Me, oh, A'm trail long behine. Mebbe-so two kin see better'n wan."

A few minutes later he too was swallowed up in the timber at the head of the trail, and Alice and Endicott returned to the rim-rocks and from a place of concealment watched with breathless interest the course of the lone horseman.

After satisfying himself he was un.o.bserved, the Texan pushed from the shelter of the rocks at the foot of the trail and, circling the b.u.t.te, struck into a coulee that led south-eastward into the bad lands. A mile away he crossed a ridge and gained another coulee which he followed northward.

"If he's headin' into the bad lands I'll meet up with him, an' if he's just skirtin' 'em, our trails'll cross up here a piece," he reasoned as his horse carried him up the dry ravine at a steady walk. Presently he slanted into a steep side coulee that led upward to the crest of a long flat ridge. For a moment he paused as his eyes swept the landscape and then suddenly a quarter of a mile away a horseman appeared out of another coulee. He, too, paused and, catching sight of the Texan, dug in his spurs and came toward him at a run.

The cowboy's brows drew into a puzzled frown as he studied the rapidly approaching horseman. "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" he grinned, "ain't he the friendly young spirit! His ma had ought to look after him better'n that an' teach him some manners. The idea of any one chargin' up to a stranger that way in the bad lands! One of these days he's a-goin' to run up again' an abrupt foreshortin' of his reckless young career."

The rider was close now and the Texan recognized a self-important young jacka.s.s who had found work with one of the smaller outfits.

"It's that mouthy young short-horn from the K 2," he muttered, disgustedly. "Well, he'll sure cut loose an' earful of small talk. He hates himself, like a peac.o.c.k." The cowboy pulled up his horse with a vicious jerk that pinked the foam at the animal's mouth and caused a little cloud of dust to rise into the air. Then, for a moment, he sat and stared.

"If you was in such a h.e.l.l of a hurry," drawled the Texan, "you could of rode around me. There's room on either side."

The cowboy found his voice. "Well, by gosh, if it ain't Tex! How they stackin', old hand?"

"Howdy," replied the Texan, dryly.

"You take my advice an' lay low here in the bad lands an' they won't ketch you. I said it right in the Long Horn yeste'day mornin'--they was a bunch of us lappin' 'em up. Old Pete was there--an' I says to Pete, I says, 'Take it from me they might ketch all the rest of 'em but they won't never ketch Tex!' An' Pete, he says, 'You're just right there, Joe,' an' then he takes me off to one side, old Pete does, an'

he says, 'Joe,' he says, 'I've got a ticklish job to be done, an' I ain't got another man I kin bank on puttin' it through.'"

The Texan happened to know that Mr. Peter G. Kester, owner of the K 2, was a very dignified old gentleman who left the details of his ranch entirely in the hands of his foreman, and the idea of his drinking in the Long Horn with his cowboys was as unique as was hearing him referred to as "Old Pete."

"What's ailin' him?" asked the Texan. "Did he lose a hen, or is he fixin' to steal someone's mewl?"

"It's them Bar A saddle horses," continued the cowboy, without noticing the interruption. "He buys a string of twenty three-year-olds offen the Bar A an' they broke out of the pasture. They range over here on the south slope, an' if them horse-thieves down in the bad lands has got 'em they're a-goin' to think twict before they run off any more K 2 horses, as long as I'm workin' fer the outfit."