Bat Wing Bowles Part 12

"Got any more divin' stories?" he asked, with gentle insistence. "They bite on them fine. Or a hawse story! A cowboy thinks he knows all about hawses. Go ahead and give me one now, so I can spring it on 'em in the mornin'--I got to have somethin' to come back at 'em with. They're always throwin' it into me about being a Mormon--I jest wanter show 'em that I've got the goods. Go ahead now--tell me somethin'!"

"All right," said Bowles, coming out from under his blankets; "but, really, I'm awfully sleepy!"

"Yeah; you'll git over that after you've been punchin' cows a while,"

observed Brigham sagely. "I'm on the wrangle again, but it don't worry me none. Cowboy's got no right to sleep, nohow. Let 'im trade his bed for a lantern--that's what they all say--but don't fergit that divin'

story, pardner. Didn't you never see no more divin' stunts--in New York or somewhere?"

"Why, yes," answered Bowles, brightening up; "that reminds me--there's the Hippodrome!"

"Aha!" breathed Brigham. "What's it like?"

"Why, the Hippodrome," continued Bowles, "is an immense playhouse right in the heart of New York that's given over entirely to spectacles. It has a stage large enough to accommodate a thousand people, and a great lake out in front that is big enough to float a fleet of boats; and every year they put on some new spectacle. One year it will be the battle of Manila Bay, for instance, with s.h.i.+ps and men and cannons, and a great s.h.i.+pwreck scene right there in the lake, with people falling overboard and getting drowned--and the peculiar thing is that when a boatload of people fall into that lake they never come up again. It's just the same as if they were drowned."

"Aw, say," broke in Brigham, "you're givin' me a fill, ain't you?"

"No," protested Bowles warmly; "I'm telling you the truth. Why, I saw the most glorious spectacle there one night. It represented the tempting of some young prince by Cleopatra, the beautiful Egyptian queen. There were six hundred women in the play, and as they marched and countermarched across the stage the lights would throw soft colors about them, and then as they danced the colors would change, until the whole place looked like fairyland. Then they would swing up into the air on invisible wires and hover about like b.u.t.terflies--there would be a flash and all would have wings--and then they would disappear again and come out dressed in armor like Amazons. And in the last act, when the prince had sent them away, they marched down the broad stone steps that lead into the lake, four abreast, and without taking a deep breath, or showing any concern whatever, they just walked right into that deep water and disappeared. Never came up again. Gone, the whole six hundred of them!"

"Gone!" echoed Brigham in amazement. "Where to? Where'd they go to?"

"Under the water--that's all I know."

"Gee, what a lie!" exclaimed Brigham, rising up in bed. "By jicks, pardner, I sh.o.r.e have to take off my hat to you--you got a wonderful imagination!"

"No, indeed!" protested Bowles. "It's every word of it true. This Hippodrome was designed by the same man who built Luna Park, and invented the loop the loop, and shoot the chutes, and all those other wonderful things. I was reading an article about that Hippodrome lake and it seems he built some kind of a great metal hood down under the water and filled it with compressed air of just the right pressure to displace the water. All the details are held secret, and the very people who use it are kept in ignorance, but as near as can be found out the performers dive right down under that hood and from there they are taken off through underground pa.s.sages and carried back to their dressing-rooms. Several people were drowned while they were experimenting with it, but now it's perfectly safe; I don't suppose those women mind it at all."

"No!" cried Brigham, still struggling with his emotions. "Is it as easy as that? But say," he whispered, as the magnitude of the story came over him, "jest wait till I get this off on the cowboys--I'll have me a reputation like old Tom Pepper, or Windy Bill up on the J.F.! You don't want to pull it yoreself, do you? Well, jest give me the details, then, and I'll depend on you to make my hand good when they come back for the explanation. But, by grab, if it's anythin' like what you say, I'm sh.o.r.e goin' to save my money and drag it fer old New York!"

"Yes, indeed," murmured Bowles, cuddling down into his bed; "I'm sure you'd enjoy it."

He fell to breathing deeply immediately, feigning a dreamless slumber, and when Brigham asked his next question Bowles was lost to the world.

The cowboy's night was all too short for him, ending as it did at four-thirty in the morning, and not even a consideration for Brigham's future career could fight off the demands of sleep. Yet hardly had he closed his eyes--or so it seemed--when Gloomy Gus flashed his lantern in his face and then turned to the ambitious Brigham.

"Git up, Brig!" he rasped. "It's almost day! Wranglers!"

"Oh, my Lord!" moaned Brigham, turning to hide his face, but the round-up cook was inexorable and at last he had his way. Then as the wranglers clumped away to saddle their night-horses the dishpan clanged out its brazen summons and one by one the cowboys stirred and rose. Last of all rose Bat Wing Bowles, for his head was heavy with sleep; but a pint of the cook's hot coffee brought him back to life again, and he was ready for another day.

Shrill yells rose from the far corner of the horse pasture; there was a rumble of feet, a din of hoofbeats growing nearer, and then with a noise like thunder the remuda poured into the corral. A scamper of ponies and the high-pitched curses of the riders told where the outlaws were being turned back from a break; and then the bars went up and the wranglers ran s.h.i.+vering to the fire.

"Pore old Brig!" observed Bar Seven with exaggerated concern. "He was up all night!"

"What's the matter?" inquired another. "Feet hurt 'im?"

"No," said Bar Seven sadly; "it was his haid!"

Brigham looked up from his cup of coffee and said nothing. Then, seeing many furtive eyes upon him, he laughed shortly, and filled his cup again.

"Yore _eyes_ look kinder bad, Seven," he said. "Must've kinder strained 'em last night."

"Nope," answered Bar Seven, upon whom the allusion was not lost; and with this delicate pa.s.sage at arms the subject of big stories was dropped. Henry Lee came down, there was a call for horses, and in the turmoil of roping and mounting the matter was forgotten. Brigham had scored a victory and he was satisfied, while the stray men were biding their time. So the marvels of the Hippodrome were held in reserve, and the round-up supplied the excitement.

As the riding of bronks progressed, the accidents that go with such work increased. Almost every morning saw its loose horse racing across the flats, and the number of receptive candidates for the job of day-herding was swelled by the battle-scarred victims. Then fate stepped in, the scene was changed, and Bowles found himself a man again.

"Bowles," said Henry Lee, as he lingered by the fire, "can you drive a team?"

Visions of a flunky's job driving the bed-wagon rose instantly in his mind; but Bowles had been trained to truth-telling and he admitted that he could.

"Ever drive a wild team?" continued Lee, with a touch of severity.

"Well--no," answered Bowles. "I've driven spirited horses, such as we have in the East, but----"

"Think you could drive the grays to Chula Vista and back?"

"Oh, the grays!" cried Bowles, a sudden smile wreathing his countenance as he thought of that spirited pair. "Why, yes; I'm sure I could!"

"Oh," commented Henry Lee, as if he had his doubts; but after a quick glance at the self-sufficient youth he seemed to make up his mind.

"Well," he said, "I'll get Hardy to hook 'em up--Mrs. Lee wants you to take her to town."

"Certainly," responded Bowles, turning suddenly sober. "I'll be very careful indeed."

"Yes," said the cattleman; "and if you can't drive, I want you to say so now."

"I've driven in the horse shows, Mr. Lee," answered Bowles. "You can judge for yourself."

"Oh, you have, have you?" And the keen gray eyes of Henry Lee seemed to add: "Then what are you doing out here?" But all he said was: "Very well."

Half an hour later, with his gloved hands well out to the front, and the whip in his right for emergencies, Bowles went racing southward behind the grays; while Mrs. Lee, her face m.u.f.fled against the wind, was wondering at his skill. As a cowboy, Mr. Bowles had been a laughing-stock, but now he displayed all the courage and control of a Western stage-driver, with some of the style of a coachman thrown in.

"How well you drive, Mr. Bowles!" she ventured, after the grays had had their first dash. "I was afraid I shouldn't be able to go to town until after the round-up--Mr. Atkins is so busy, you know."

Bowles bowed and smiled grimly. It had been Hardy Atkins' boast that he alone was capable of handling the grays, and as he was harnessing them up that gentleman had seen fit to criticize the arrangements, only to be rebuked by Henry Lee.

"You know Mr. Lee depends so much on Hardy," continued Mrs. Lee, "and he needs him so on the circle that I disliked very much to ask for him--but something you said the other night about stage-coaching made me think that perhaps you could drive. Of course, any of the boys _could_ drive, but--well, for some reason or other, I can never get them to talk to me; and to ride forty miles with a man who is too embarra.s.sed to talk, and who hates you because he can't chew tobacco--that isn't so pleasant--now, is it?"

"Why, no, I presume not," agreed Bowles. "You know, I'm recently from the East, and perhaps that's why I notice it, but these Western men seem very difficult to get acquainted with. Of course I'm a greenhorn and all that, and I suppose they haven't much respect for me as a cowboy, but it's such a peculiar thing--no one will speak to me directly. Even when they make fun of me, they keep it among themselves. Brigham Clark is the only one who gives me any degree of friends.h.i.+p--and, that reminds me, I must get him some tobacco in town."

"Yes, I know what you mean," said Mrs. Lee. "I guess I do! Think of living out here for thirty years, Mr. Bowles, and having them still hold aloof. With Dixie, now, it is different. She was born here, and in a way she speaks their language. I have done my best, to be sure, to keep her diction pure--and Henry even has given up all his old, careless ways of speaking in order to do his part; but, somehow, she has learned the vernacular from these cowboys, and in spite of all I can say she will persist in using it. It was only yesterday that I overheard her say to Hardy: 'Yes, I can ride ary hawse in the pen!' And she says 'You-all'

like a regular Texan. Of course, that is Southern too--and I have known some very cultivated Texans--but, oh, it makes me feel so bad that my daughter should fall into these careless ways! I have been in Arizona nearly thirty years now, and it has meant the loss of a great deal to me in many ways; but there was one thing I would not give up, Mr. Bowles--I would not give up my educated speech!"

She ended with some emotion, and Bowles glanced at her curiously, but he made no carping comments. When a lady has sacrificed so much to preserve the language of her fathers, it would be a poor return indeed to give her aught but praise--and yet he could sense it dimly that she had paid a fearful price. Personally, he was beginning to admire the direct speech of Dixie May, even to the extent of dropping some of his more obvious Eastern variants; but to the mother he hid the leanings of his heart.

"Your accent is certainly very pure," he said. "Really, I have never heard more perfect English--except, perhaps, from some highly educated foreigner. Our tendency to lapse into the vernacular lays us all open to criticism, of course. But don't you find, Mrs. Lee, that your Eastern speech is a bar, in a way, to the closest relations with your neighbors?

I know with me it has been that way, and I am already trying to adopt the Western idiom as far as possible. Why, really, when I first came, they ridiculed me so for saying 'Beg pardon' that I doubt if I shall ever use the expression again. And I am having such a struggle to say 'calves'--not 'cahves,' you know, but 'calves'! It is all right to say 'brahnding cahves' back in New York, but out here it is so frightfully conspicuous! And besides----"

"Oh, now, Mr. Bowles," protested Mrs. Lee, laying a restraining hand on his arm, "I hope you will not shatter all my hopes by falling into this dreadful vernacular. If you only knew how much I enjoy your manner of speaking, if you knew what memories of New York and the old life your words bring up, you would hesitate, I am sure, to cast aside your heritage. Really, if Henry would have let me, I should have invited you up to the house the very evening you came; but you--well, you had some disagreement with him at the start, and it's rather prejudiced him against you. And, besides, he has his ideas of discipline, you know, and against making exceptions of one man over another; and so--well, I did hope you would be able to drive, because now I want to have a good long talk.

"I'm not proud, or 'stuck up,' as they say out here, Mr. Bowles," she went on, as if eager to begin her holiday; "and really I do everything in my power to be friendly, but the cla.s.s of people who come here--these poor, ignorant nesters, and rough, hard-swearing cowboys--they seem actually to resent my manner of speaking. Of course, I was a school-teacher for a few years--before I married Henry--and I suppose that has made a difference; but I do get so lonely sometimes, with Dixie out riding around somewhere and Henry off on the round-up--and yet I just can't bring myself to speak this awful, vulgar Texas-talk. Now Dixie, she rides around anywhere, speaks to all the women, says 'Howdy'

to all the men, and, I declare, when I hear her talking with these cowboys I wonder if she's my own daughter! They have such common ways of expressing themselves, although I must say they are always polite enough--but what I really object to is their familiar att.i.tude toward Dixie. No matter what their cla.s.s or station, they always seem to take it for granted that they are perfectly eligible, and that she is sure to marry one of them, and that even the commonest has a kind of gambler's chance to win her hand."

She paused, overcome apparently by memories of past courts.h.i.+ps, and Bowles shuffled his feet uneasily.