The Ramblin' Kid Part 42

"Put 'em up, Tom!" he snapped, "_I_ don't want to kill you, but I will if I have to--I ain't goin' to rot in no jail just for stampin' a dirty snake-to death!"

The marshal's hands shot into the air as if operated by springs.

The Ramblin' Kid, with his left hand, jerked Poole's revolver from its holster. He backed into the street toward where Captain Jack and Old Pie Face were standing, still with his own gun covering the officer.

"Jack!" he cried sharply, "meet me!"

The little stallion moved toward him.

With the thumb of the hand in which he held the marshal's gun the Ramblin' Kid threw open the breech and flipped the sh.e.l.ls on the ground.

He tossed the empty forty-four to one side, threw the reins over Captain Jack's head and the next instant was in the saddle. The broncho wheeled and was gone, in a dead run, toward the west.

The marshal rushed into the street and picked up his gun, jerked some cartridges from his belt, slipped them into the cylinder and fired quickly at the fleeing horse and rider.

The bullets whistled past the ear of the Ramblin' Kid.

He raised his own weapon, half-turned in the saddle, dropped the muzzle of the gun forward until it pointed at the flashes spitting from the officer's revolver. His finger started to tighten on the trigger.

"h.e.l.l," he muttered, "what's the use? Tom's just doin' what he thinks he has to do!" and the Ramblin' Kid slipped the gun, unfired, back into its holster.

A moment later Captain Jack whirled to the right across the Santa Fe tracks and bearing a little to the east, in the direction of Capaline, the dead volcano that rises out of the lavas northwest of the Quarter Circle KT, between the Purgatory and the Cimarron, disappeared in the black starlit night.

CHAPTER XX

MOSTLY SKINNY

It is a week to the day since the fight in the Elite Amus.e.m.e.nt Parlor in Eagle b.u.t.te. Since the Ramblin' Kid, followed by the wicked sing of the bullets from the marshal's gun, disappeared in the darkness no word has come from the fugitive cowboy, who beat to a pulp the burly Greek.

The Gold Dust maverick paces uneasily about in the circular corral and the Quarter Circle KT has settled into the hum-drum routine of ranch life.

Parker, Charley, Chuck and Bert are gone to Chicago with the train-load of beef cattle. Skinny bosses a gang of "picked-up" hay hands Old Heck brought out from Eagle b.u.t.te to harvest the second cutting of alfalfa.

Pedro rides line daily on the upland pasture and Sing Pete hammers the iron triangle morning, noon and night, announcing the regular arrival of meal-time. The Chinaman is careful when he throws out empty tomato-cans--turning back the tin to make it impossible for the yellow cat again to fasten his head in one of the inviting traps, and the cook would imperil the hope of the return of his soul to the flowery Orient before he would put b.u.t.ter in the bottom of a can to entice the animal into trouble.

Old Heck and Ophelia are like a pair of nesting doves and there is a new vigor to the step of the owner of the Quarter Circle KT, a revived interest in affairs generally; years seem to have fallen from his shoulders.

Carolyn June smiles sweetly as ever at Skinny, spends much time riding alone over the valley and hills; in her eyes there has come a more thoughtful--often a wistful--expression.

Sabota did not die.

After the escape of the Ramblin' Kid the marshal reentered the pool-room and had the big Greek removed to the hotel. A doctor was called and set as well as possible the broken jaws, the crushed nose, picked out the fragments of bone and the loosened teeth, sewed up the terrible gashes on Sabota's face and left the bully groaning and profaning in half-conscious agony.

The night of the fight Skinny took Old Pie Face back to the barn.

The cowboy's heart was heavy with remorse. He blamed himself for all the trouble. Had he not wanted to make a fool of himself and get drunk the Ramblin' Kid would not have come to Eagle b.u.t.te, the fight would not have occurred, the friend he had ridden with through storm and suns.h.i.+ne--whom he had stood "night guard" and fought mad stampedes into "the mill"--would not now be an outcast sought by the hand of the law.

News of the beating the Ramblin' Kid gave Sabota traveled fast.

It was flashed over Eagle b.u.t.te that the Greek was dead.

"So th' Ramblin' Kid killed old Sabota, did he?" the hostler at the livery barn asked Skinny as he stepped out to care for the cowboy's horse. "What was it over? Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid 'doped' the day of the sweepstakes?"

Skinny looked keenly, searchingly, at the stableman.

"What do you mean--'Sabota having th' Ramblin' Kid doped?'" he asked sharply.

"Why, didn't you know?" the hostler replied. "I thought everybody knowed. Gyp Streetor told me about it the day of the race--I used to know Gyp when he was a kid back east. I saw him as he was beating it to get out of town. He borrowed five dollars from me. Said Sabota hired him to put 'knock-out' in some coffee for th' Ramblin' Kid and he reckoned the dose wasn't big enough or something. Anyhow, it didn't hold him under long as they thought it would and when he saw the Gold Dust maverick show up on the track he got scared--was afraid it would leak out or th' Ramblin' Kid would suspect him and try to 'get' him after the race, so he ducked out of town--"

"You ain't lying about that?" Skinny asked.

"What would I want to lie about it for?" the other replied. "Wasn't that what made th' Ramblin' Kid kill the Greek?"

"No, it was something else," Skinny answered; "but Sabota ain't dead.

He's just crunched up pretty bad--th' Ramblin' Kid jumped on him, like Captain Jack did on that feller from the Chickasaw that tried to steal him!"

Skinny's mind was in a whirl.

So the Ramblin' Kid was not drunk the day of the race! He was drugged-- sick--yet, in spite of everything, rode the Gold Dust maverick and beat the black wonder-horse from the Vermejo! Lord! and they had all thought he was on a tear!

The bottle of whisky was still in the bosom of Skinny's s.h.i.+rt.

He had not touched it. He felt a sudden revulsion for the vile stuff.

"Here," he said, jerking the flask from its hiding-place and handing it to the hostler, "maybe you'd like that bottle of 'rot-gut'--I've swore off!"

"I ain't," the stableman laughed and took it eagerly.

Skinny remained in town that night and the next day, waiting for Parker and the Quarter Circle KT cowboys to come in with the beef cattle. They arrived about noon. Old Heck drove in with the Clagstone "Six." Ophelia and Carolyn June came with him. Skinny met them when Old Heck stopped the in front of the Occidental Hotel. He told them, while they still sat in the automobile, of the fight and the escape of the Ramblin' Kid.

"A drunken brawl!" Carolyn June thought, a wave of disgust sweeping over her.

"Th' Ramblin' Kid hadn't touched a drop," Skinny said, explaining the fight and almost as if he were answering her unspoken thought. "If he'd been drinking, I reckon Sabota would have killed him instead of his beating the Greek blamed near to death. I know now what he used to mean when he'd say, 'A man's a fool to put whisky in him when he's facin' a tight squeeze!' The little devil sure needed everything he had--nerve and head and muscle and all--for the job he tackled last night!"

Skinny didn't tell them that his hand had rested on the handle of his own gun--determined that he, himself, would kill Sabota if the brute succeeded in choking the Ramblin' Kid to death.

"What was the fight about?" Old Heck asked.

"A pink ribbon or something with a little silver do-funny on it--it looked like a sleeve-holder or a garter--dropped out of th' Ramblin'

Kid's pocket and Sabota made a nasty remark about it," Skinny said.

Carolyn June caught her breath and her face flushed.

"The Greek said something about Carolyn June, I didn't just hear what,"

Skinny continued, "and then he smashed the ribbon under his foot. The next instant th' Ramblin' Kid was trying to kill him!