The Duke Of Chimney Butte Part 3

"Give me that gun--I'm goin' after him!"

"You'll have to go without it, Jim."

Jim blasted him to sulphurous perdition, and split him with forked lightning from his blasphemous tongue.

"He'll come back; he's just runnin' the vinegar out of him," said one.

"Come back--h.e.l.l!" said Jim.

"If he don't come back, that's his business. A man can go wherever he wants to go on his own horse, I guess."

That was the observation of Siwash, standing there rather glum and out of tune over Jim's charge that they had rung the Duke in on him to beat him out of his animal.

"It was a put-up job! I'll split that feller like a hog!"

Jim left them with that declaration of his benevolent intention, hurrying to the corral where his horse was, his saddle on the ground by the gate. They watched him saddle, and saw him mount and ride after the Duke, with no comment on his actions at all.

The Duke was out of sight in the scrub timber at the foot of the hills, but his dust still floated like the wake of a swift boat, showing the way he had gone.

"Yes, you will!" said Taterleg.

Meaningless, irrelevant, as that fragmentary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n seemed, the others understood. They grinned, and twisted wise heads, spat out their tobacco, and went back to dinner.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: Fice--dog.]

CHAPTER III

AN EMPTY SADDLE

The Duke was seen coming back before the meal was over, across the little plain between camp and hills. A quarter of a mile behind him Jim Wilder rode, whether seen or unseen by the man in the lead they did not know.

Jim had fallen behind somewhat by the time the Duke reached camp. The admiration of all hands over this triumph against horseflesh and the devil within it was so great that they got up to welcome the Duke, and shake hands with him as he left the saddle. He was as fresh and nimble, unshaken and serene, as when he mounted old Whetstone more than an hour before.

Whetstone was a conquered beast, beyond any man's doubt. He stood with flaring nostrils, scooping in his breath, not a dry hair on him, not a dash of vinegar in his veins.

"Where's Jim?" the Duke inquired.

"Comin'," Taterleg replied, waving his hand afield.

"What's he doin' out there--where's he been?" the Duke inquired, a puzzled look in his face, searching their sober countenances for his answer.

"He thought you----"

"Let him do his own talkin', kid," said Siwash, cutting off the cowboy's explanation.

Siwash looked at the Duke shrewdly, his head c.o.c.ked to one side like a robin listening for a worm.

"What outfit was you with before you started out sellin' them tooth-puller-can-opener machines, son?" he inquired.

"Outfit? What kind of an outfit?"

"Ranch, innercence; what range was you ridin' on?"

"I never rode any range, I'm sorry to say."

"Well, where in the name of mustard did you learn to ride?"

"I used to break range horses for five dollars a head at the Kansas City Stockyards. That was a good while ago; I'm all out of practice now."

"Yes, and I bet you can throw a rope, too."

"Nothing to speak of."

"Nothing to speak of! Yes, I'll _bet_ you nothing to speak of!"

Jim didn't stop at the corral to turn in his horse, but came clattering into camp, madder for the race that the Duke had led him in ignorance of his pursuit, as every man could see. He flung himself out of the saddle with a flip like a bird taking to the wing, his spurs cutting the ground as he came over to where Lambert stood.

"Maybe you can ride my horse, you d.a.m.n granger, but you can't ride me!"

he said.

He threw off his vest as he spoke, that being his only superfluous garment, and bowed his back for a fight. Lambert looked at him with a flush of indignant contempt spreading in his face.

"You don't need to get sore about it; I only took you up at your own game," he said.

"No circus-ringer's goin' to come in here and beat me out of my horse.

You'll either put him back in that corral or you'll chaw leather with me!"

"I'll put him back in the corral when I'm ready, but I'll put him back as mine. I won him on your own bet, and it'll take a whole lot better man than you to take him away from me."

In the manner of youth and independence, Lambert got hotter with every word, and after that there wasn't much room for anything else to be said on either side. They mixed it, and they mixed it briskly, for Jim's contempt for a man who wore a hat like that supplied the courage that had been drained from him when he was disarmed.

There was nothing epic in that fight, nothing heroic at all. It was a wildcat struggle in the dust, no more science on either side than nature put into their hands at the beginning. But they surely did kick up a lot of dust. It would have been a peaceful enough little fight, with a handshake at the end and all over in an hour, very likely, if Jim hadn't managed to get out his knife when he felt himself in for a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g.

It was a mean-looking knife, with a buck-horn handle and a four-inch blade that leaped open on pressure of a spring. Its type was widely popular all over the West in those days, but one of them would be almost a curiosity now. But Jim had it out, anyhow, lying on his back with the Duke's knee on his ribs, and was whittling away before any man could raise a hand to stop him.

The first slash split the Duke's cheek for two inches just below his eye; the next tore his s.h.i.+rt sleeve from shoulder to elbow, grazing the skin as it pa.s.sed. And there somebody kicked Jim's elbow and knocked the knife out of his hand.

"Let him up, Duke," he said.

Lambert released the strangle hold that he had taken on Jim's throat and looked up. It was Spence, standing there with his horse behind him. He laid his hand on Lambert's shoulder.

"Let him up, Duke," he said again.