CHAPTER XXIIIA SHY YOUNG MAN DINES
Ramona met Arthur Ridley face to face just outside of the post-office.
"You dandy boy!" she cried, and held out both hands to him. Her eyes were shining. The gifts of friendship and admiration were in them.
He could not find a word to say. A lump rose in his throat and choked him.
"It was just fine of you—fine!" she told him. "I was so glad to hear that a friend of mine did it. Youarestill my friend, aren't you?"
"If you'll let me be," he said humbly. "But—I haven't done anything to deserve it."
"Everybody's praising you because you stayed with that Dinsmore man and saved his life at the risk of your own—after he had treated you so mean too. I'm so proud of you."
"You needn't be," he answered bluntly. "I wanted to slip away and leave him. I—I proposed it to Jack Roberts. But he wouldn't have it. He laid the law down. One of us had to go, one stay. I hadn't the nerve to go, so I stayed."
"I don't believe it—not for a minute," came her quick, indignant response. "And if you did—what of it? It isn't what we want to do that counts. It's what we really do!"
He shook his head wistfully. He would have liked to believe her, but he felt there was no credit due him.
"I fought because I had to if I was going to save my own skin. I haven't told any one else this, but I can't have you thinking me game when I know I'm not."
"Was it to save yourself you flung yourself down in front of father and let that awful man Dinsmore shoot at you?" she demanded, eyes flashing.
"A fellow can't stand by and see some one murdered without lifting a hand. I didn't have time to get frightened that time."
"Well, all I've got to say is that you're the biggest goose I ever saw, Art Ridley. Here you've done two fine things and you go around trying to show what a big coward you are."
He smiled gravely. "I'm not advertising it. I told you because—"
"—Because you're afraid I'll think too well of you."
"Because I want you to know me as I am."
"Then if I'm to know you as you are I'll have to get a chance to see what you really are. Dad and Auntie and I will expect you to supper to-morrow night."
"Thank you. I'll be there."
Casually she enlarged her invitation. "I don't suppose you'll see that very shy young man, Mr. Roberts."
"I might."
"Then, will you ask him to come too? I'm going to find out whether you acted as scared as you say you did."
"Jack knows how scared I was, but he won't tell. Sure I'll get word to him."
He did. At precisely six o'clock the two young men appeared at the home of Clint Wadley's sister. The Ranger was a very self-conscious guest. It was the first time he had dined with ladies at their home since he had lost his own mother ten years earlier. He did not know what to do with his hands and feet. The same would have been true of his hat if Ramona had not solved that problem by taking it from him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He felt a good deal warmer than the actual temperature of the room demanded.
But Ramona noticed from the background that as soon as she and her aunt retired from the scene his embarrassment vanished. This slim, brown young man was quite at his ease with Clint Wadley, much more so than young Ridley. He was essentially a man's man, and his young hostess liked him none the less for that.
She made a chance to talk with him alone after supper. They were standing in the parlor near the window. Ramona pressed the end of her little finger against a hole in the pane.
"I wonder if you'd like me to sing 'Swanee River' for you, Mr. Roberts?" she asked.
He did not mind being teased. By this time he had regained his confidence. He had discovered that she would not bite even though she might laugh at him in a friendly way.
"You sing it fine," he said.
"I wasn't singing it for you the other time, but for Mr.—what's-his-name, Gurley?"
"I couldn't very well have you keep shoutin' out, 'I'm a girl,' so I figured—?"
"I know what you figured, sir. You wanted to take all the chances that were taken. Father says it was the quickest-witted thing he ever knew." She shot another dart at him, to his confusion. "Do you like my voice?"
"Well, ma'am, I—"
"You don't have to tell any stories. I see you don't."
Jack took heart. "If you're fishin' for a compliment—"
"What a tactful thing to tell a girl," she said, smiling.
"—I'll tell you that I never heard you sing better."
"Or worse, for that matter," she added; and with one of her swift changes of mood switched the topic of conversation. "How do you like Art Ridley?"
"He'll do to take along."
"That's not the way he talks. He says he—he wanted to run away from the island and leave that man Dinsmore, but you wouldn't let him." Her eyes met his very directly.
"He's a great lad for imaginin' things. I never want to see any one hold up his end better."
"You mean that hedidn'tsay he wanted to leave Dinsmore?"
With her gaze searching him so steadily, it had to be an out-and-out lie to serve. Jack lied competently. "Not a word."
Her little finger tapped the hole in the pane gently while she reflected. "He told me—"
"That boy's still worryin' about losin' that money for Mr. Wadley, don't you reckon? He's got it tucked in his mind that a game man never would have been robbed. So he's decided he must be yellow. Nothin' to it a-tall. No quitter ever would have stood off those Kiowas like he did."
"That's what I think." She turned to the Ranger again, nodding agreement. "You've relieved my mind. I shouldn't like to think that—"
She let her sentence trail out to nothing. Jack Roberts guessed its conclusion. She wouldn't like to think that the man she loved was not game.
CHAPTER XXIVTEX BORROWS A BLACKSNAKE
Dinsmore recovered from his wound and was held prisoner by Captain Ellison for a month after he was well. Then the ranger captain dismissed the man with a warning.
"Skedaddle, you damn jayhawker," was his cavalier farewell. "But listen. If ever I get the deadwood on you an' yore outfit, I'll sure put you through. You know me, Dinsmore. I went through the war. For two years I took the hides off'n 'em.[5]I'm one of the lads that knocked the bark off this country. An' I've got the best bunch of man-hunters you ever did see. I'm not braggin'. I'm tellin' you that my boys will make you look like a plugged nickel if you don't get shet of yore meanness. They're a hell-poppin' bunch of jim-dandies, an' don't you ever forget it."
Homer Dinsmore spat tobacco-juice on the floor by way of expressing his contempt. "Hell!" he sneered. "We were doin' business in this neck of the woods before ever you come, an' we'll be here after you've gone."
The Ranger Captain gave a little shrug to his shoulders. "Some folks ain't got any more sensethan that hog rootin' under the pecan tree, Dinsmore. I've seen this country when you could swap a buffalo-bull hide for a box of cartridges or a plug o' tobacco. You cayn't do it now, can you? I had thirty wagons full of bales of hides at old Fort Griffin two years ago. Now I couldn't fill one with the best of luck. In five years the buffaloes will be gone absolutely—mebbe in less time. The Indians are goin' with the buffaloes-an' the bad-men are a-goin' to travel the same trail. Inside of three years they'll sure be hard to find outside of jails. But you got to go yore own way. You're hard to curry, an' you wear 'em low. Suits me if it does you. We'll plant you with yore boots on, one of these days."
Dinsmore swaggered from the jail and presently rode out of town to join his companions. Three days later an acquaintance stopped Jack Roberts on the street.
"Seen Cap Ellison this mo'nin'? He was down at the shippin'-pen an' wanted to see you. The old man's hot as a ginger-mill about somethin'."
The Ranger strolled down toward the cattle-yards. On the way he met Arthur Ridley. They had come to be pretty good friends in the past month. The standards of the Texan were undergoing revision. He had been brought up in an outdoor school which taught that the rock-bottom factor of a man's character is gameness.Without it nothing else counted. This was as vital for a man as virtue for a woman. But it had begun to reach him that pluck is largely a matter of training. Arthur had lived soft, and his nerve, like his muscles, needed toughening. Were his gayety, his loyalty, his fundamental decency, the affectionate sweetness of his disposition, to count for nothing? He had a dozen advantages that Jack had not, and the cowboy admired him even though he was not hard as a rock.
"Have you spoken to Captain Ellison yet?" asked Ridley eagerly.
"Says he's thinkin' about it, Art. There's goin' to be a vacancy on the force soon. My notion is that you'll get the appointment."
It was a part of Ridley's charm for the Texan that he would not give up to his timidity. The young fellow meant to fight it out to a finish. That was one of the reasons why he wanted to join the Rangers, to be put in places that would force him to go through to a fighting finish. He had one other reason. Arthur wanted to settle a score with the Dinsmores.
Captain Ellison was listening to the complaint of a drover.
"I aim to drive a clean herd, Cap, but you know how it is yore own self. I start to drive in the spring when the hair's long an' the brand's hard to read. By the time I get here, the old hair is fallin' out an' the brand is plain. But what's afellow to do? I cayn't drop those off-brands by the way, can I? The inspector—"
"That's all right, Steel. The inspector knows you're on the level. Hello, Jack! I been lookin' for you."
The Captain drew his man to one side. "Steve Gurley's in town. He came as a spokesman for the Dinsmores an' went to see Clint Wadley. The damn scoundrel served notice on Clint that the gang had written evidence which tied Ford up with their deviltry. He said if Clint didn't call me off so's I'd let 'em alone, they would disgrace his son's memory. Of course Wadley is all broke up about it. But he's no quitter. He knows I'm goin' through, an' he wouldn't expect me not to do the work I'm paid for."
"Do you want me to arrest Gurley?"
"Wouldn't do any good. No; just keep tabs on the coyote till he leaves town. He ought to be black-snaked, but that's not our business, I reckon."
Ridley walked back with the Ranger toward the main street of the town. From round a corner there came to them a strident voice.
"You stay right here, missy, till I'm through. I'm tellin' you about yore high-heeled brother. See? He was a rustler. That's what he was—a low-down thief and brand-blotter."
"Let me pass. I won't listen to you." The clear young voice was expressive of both indignation and fear.
"Not a step till I'm through tellin' you. Me, I'm Steve Gurley, the curly-haired terror of the Panhandle. When I talk, you listen. Un'erstand?"
The speech of the man was thick with drink. He had spent the night at the Bird Cage and was now on his way to the corral for his horse.
"You take Miss Ramona home. I'll tend to Gurley," said Roberts curtly to his friend. Into his eyes had come a cold rage Arthur had never before seen there.
At sight of them the bully's brutal insolence vanished. He tried to pass on his way, but the Ranger stopped him.
"Just a moment, Gurley. You're goin' with me," said Jack, ominously quiet.
White and shaken, 'Mona bit her lip to keep from weeping. She flashed one look of gratitude at her father's former line-rider, and with a little sob of relief took Ridley's offered arm.
"You got a warrant for me?" bluffed the outlaw.
At short range there is no weapon more deadly than the human eye. Jack Roberts looked at the bully and said: "Give me yore gun."
Steve Gurley shot his slant look at the Ranger, considered possibilities—and did as he was told.
"Now right about face and back-track uptown," ordered the officer.
At McGuffey's store Jack stopped his prisoner. A dozen punchers and cattlemen were hangingabout. Among them was Jumbo Wilkins. He had a blacksnake whip in his hand and was teasing a pup with it. The Ranger handed over to Jumbo his guns and borrowed the whip.
Gurley backed off in a sudden alarm. "Don't you touch me! Don't you dass touch me! I'll cut yore heart out if you do."
The lash whistled through the air and wound itself cruelly round the legs of the bully. The man gave a yell of rage and pain. He lunged forward to close with Roberts, and met a driving left that caught him between the eyes and flung him back. Before he could recover the Ranger had him by the collar at arm's length and the torture of the whip was maddening him. He cursed, struggled, raved, threatened, begged for mercy. He tried to fling himself to the ground. He wept tears of agony. But there was no escape from the deadly blacksnake that was cutting his flesh to ribbons.
Roberts, sick at the thing he had been doing, flung the shrieking man aside and leaned up against the wall of the store.
Jumbo came across to him and offered his friend a drink.
"You'll feel better if you take a swallow of old forty-rod," he promised.
The younger man shook his head. "Much obliged, old-timer. I'm all right now. It was a kind of sickenin' job, but I had to do it or kill him."
"What was it all about?" asked Jumbo eagerly. The fat line-rider was a good deal of a gossip and loved to know the inside of every story.
Jack cast about for a reason. "He—he said I had red hair."
"Well, you old son of a mule-skinner, what's the matter with that? You have, ain't you?" demanded the amazed Wilkins.
"Mebbe I have, but he can't tell me so."
That was all the satisfaction the public ever got. It did a good deal of guessing, however, and none of it came near the truth.
To "take the hides off'n 'em" was the expressive phraseology in which the buffalo-hunter described his business.[5]
To "take the hides off'n 'em" was the expressive phraseology in which the buffalo-hunter described his business.[5]
CHAPTER XXV"THEY'RE RUNNIN' ME OUTA TOWN"
Jumbo Wilkins came wheezing into the Sunset Trail corral, where Jack Roberts was mending a broken bridle. "'Lo, Tex. Looks like you're gittin' popular, son. Folks a-comin' in fifty miles for to have a little talk with you."
The eyes of the Ranger grew intelligent. He knew Jumbo's habit of mind. The big line-rider always made the most of any news he might have.
"Friends of mine?" asked Jack casually.
"Well, mebbe friends ain't just the word. Say acquaintances. You know 'em well enough to shoot at and to blacksnake 'em, but not well enough to drink with."
"Did theysaythey wanted to see me?"
"A nod is as good as a wink to a blind bronc. They said they'd come to make you hard to find."
The Ranger hammered down a rivet carefully. "Many of 'em?"
"Two this trip. One of 'em used to think yore topknot was red. I dunno what he thinks now."
"And the other?"
"Carries the brand of Overstreet."
"Where are these anxious citizens, Jumbo?"
"Last I saw of 'em they were at the Bird Cagelappin' up another of the same. They've got business with Clint Wadley, too, they said."
Jack guessed that business was blackmail. It occurred to him that since these visitors had come to town to see him, he had better gratify their desire promptly. Perhaps after they had talked with him they might not have time to do their business with Wadley.
As Jumbo waddled uptown beside him, Roberts arranged the details of his little plan. They separated at the corner of the street a block from the Bird Cage. Wilkins had offered to lend a hand, but his friend defined the limit of the help he might give.
"You come in, shake hands with me, an' ask that question. Then you're through. Understand, Jumbo?"
"Sure. But I want to tell you again Overstreet is no false-alarm bad-man. He'll fight at the drop of the hat. That's his reputation, anyhow—wears 'em low an' comes a-shootin'."
"I'll watch out for him. An' I'll look for you in about three minutes."
"Me, I'll be there, son, and I wish you the best of luck."
Gurley was at the bar facing the door when the Ranger walked into the Bird Cage. He had been just ready to gulp down another drink, but as his eyes fell on this youth who came forward with an elastic step the heart died within him. Ithad been easy while the liquor was in his brain to brag of what he meant to do. It was quite another thing to face in battle this brown, competent youth who could hit silver dollars in the air with a revolver.
His companion read in Gurley's sallow face the dismay that had attacked him. Overstreet turned and faced the newcomer. The outlaw was a short, heavy-set man with remarkably long arms. He had come from Trinidad, Colorado, and brought with him the reputation of a killer. His eyes looked hard at the red-haired youngster, but he made no comment.
Jack spoke to the bartender. He looked at neither of the bad-men, but he was very coolly and alertly on guard.
"Joe, I left my blacksnake at home," he said. "Have you got one handy?"
"Some guys are lucky, Steve," jeered Overstreet, taking his cue from the Ranger. "Because you fell over a box and this fellow beat you up while you was down, he thinks he's a regular go-getter. He looks to me like a counterfeit four-bit piece, if anybody asks you."
Jumbo Wilkins puffed into the place and accepted the Ranger's invitation to take a drink.
"What makes you so gaunted, Jack? You look right peaked," he commented as they waited for their drinks.
"Scared stiff, Jumbo. I hear two wild an'woolly bad-men are after me. One is a tall, lopsided, cock-eyed rooster, an' the other is a hammered-down sawed-off runt. They sure have got me good an' scared. I've been runnin' ever since I heard they were in town."
Gurley gulped down his drink and turned toward the door hastily. "Come, let's go, Overstreet. I got to see a man."
The Texan and the Coloradoan looked at each other with steel-cold eyes. They measured each other in deadly silence, and while one might have counted twenty the shadow of death hovered over the room. Then Overstreet made his choice. The bragging had all been done by Gurley. He could save his face without putting up a fight.
"Funny how some folks are all blown up by a little luck," he sneered, and he followed his friend to the street.
"You got 'em buffaloed sure, Jack. Tell me how you do it," demanded Jumbo with a fat grin.
"I'm the law, Jumbo."
"Go tell that to the Mexicans, son. What do you reckon a killer like Overstreet cares for the law? He figured you might down him before he could gun you—didn't want to risk an even break with you."
The Ranger poured his untasted liquor into the spittoon and settled the bill. "Think I'll drop around to the Silver Dollar an' see if my birds have lit again."
At the Silver Dollar Jack found his friend the ex-Confederate doing business with another cattleman.
"I'd call that a sorry-lookin' lot, Winters," he was saying. "I know a jackpot bunch of cows when I see 'em. They look to me like they been fed on short grass an' shin-oak." His face lighted at sight of the Ranger. "Hello, brindle-haid! Didn't know you was in town."
The quick eye of the officer had swept over the place and found the two men he wanted sitting inconspicuously at a small table.
"I'm not here for long, Sam. Two genuwine blown-in-the-bottle bad-men are after my scalp. They're runnin' me outa town. Seen anything of 'em? They belong to the Dinsmore outfit."
The old soldier looked at him with a sudden startled expression. He knew well what men were sitting against the wall a few steps from him. This was talk that might have to be backed by a six-shooter. Bullets were likely to be flying soon.
"You don't look to me like you're hittin' yore heels very fast to make a get-away, Jack," he said dryly.
"I'm sure on the jump. They're no bully-puss kind of men, but sure enough terrors from the chaparral. If I never get out o' town, ship my saddle in a gunny-sack to my brother at Dallas."
"Makin' yore will, are you?" inquired Joe Johnston's former trooper.
The red-haired man grinned. "I got to make arrangements. They came here to get me. Two of 'em—bad-men with blood in their eyes." He hummed, with jaunty insolence:
"He's a killer and a hater!He's the great annihilator!He's a terror of the boundless prai-ree.
"That goes double. I'm certainly one anxious citizen. Don't you let 'em hurt me, Sam."
There was a movement at the table where the two men were sitting. One of them had slid from his chair and was moving toward the back door.
The Ranger pretended to catch sight of him for the first time. "Hello, Gurley! What's yore hurry? Got to see another man, have you?"
The rustler did not wait to answer. He vanished through the door and fled down the alley in the direction of the corral. Overstreet could do as he pleased, but he intended to slap a saddle on his horse and make tracks for the cap-rock country.
Overstreet himself was not precisely comfortable in his mind, but he did not intend to let a smooth-faced boy run him out of the gambling-house before a dozen witnesses. If he had to fight, he would fight. But in his heart he cursed Gurley for a yellow-backed braggart. The fellow had got him into this and then turned tail. The man from Colorado wished devoutly that Pete Dinsmore were beside him.
"You're talkin' at me, young fellow. Listen: I ain't lookin' for any trouble with you—none a-tall. But I'm not Steve Gurley. Where I come from, folks grow man-size. Don't lean on me too hard. I'm liable to decrease the census of red-haired guys."
Overstreet rose and glared at him, but at the same time one hand was reaching for his hat.
"You leavin' town too, Mr. Overstreet?" inquired the Ranger.
"What's it to you? I'll go when I'm ready."
"'We shall meet, but we shall miss you—there will be one vacant chair,'" murmured the young officer, misquoting a song of the day. "Seems like there's nothin' to this life but meetin' an' partin'. Here you are one minute, an' in a quarter of an hour you're hittin' the high spots tryin' to catch up with friend Steve."
"Who said so? I'll go when I'm good an' ready," reiterated the bad-man.
"Well, yore bronc needs a gallop to take the kinks out of his legs. Give my regards to the Dinsmores an' tell 'em that Tascosa is no sort of place for shorthorns or tinhorns."
"Better come an' give them regards yore own self."
"Mebbe I will, one of these glad mo'nin's. So long, Mr. Overstreet. Much obliged to you an' Steve for not massacreein' me."
The ironic thanks of the Ranger were lost, forthe killer from Colorado was already swaggering out of the front door.
The old Confederate gave a whoop of delight. "I never did see yore match, you doggoned old scalawag. You'd better go up into Mexico and make Billy the Kid[6]eat out of yore hand. This tame country is no place for you, Jack."
Roberts made his usual patient explanation. "It's the law. They can't buck the whole Lone Star State. If he shot me, a whole passel of Rangers would be on his back pretty soon. So he hits the trail instead." He turned to Ridley, who had just come into the Silver Dollar. "Art, will you keep cases on Overstreet an' see whether he leaves town right away?"
A quarter of an hour later Ridley was back with information.
"Overstreet's left town—lit out after Gurley."
The old Rebel grinned. "He won't catch him this side of the cap-rock."
Billy The Kid was the most notorious outlaw of the day. He is said to have killed twenty-one men before Sheriff Pat Garrett killed him at the age of twenty-one years.[6]
Billy The Kid was the most notorious outlaw of the day. He is said to have killed twenty-one men before Sheriff Pat Garrett killed him at the age of twenty-one years.[6]
CHAPTER XXVIFOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Mr. Peter Dinsmore was of both an impulsive and obstinate disposition. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. Somewhere he had heard that if a man desired his business well done, he must do it himself. Gurley had proved a poor messenger. Peter would call upon Clint Wadley in person and arrange an armistice.
He had another and a more urgent reason for getting to town promptly. A jumping toothache had kept him awake all night. After he reached Tascosa, Dinsmore was annoyed to find that Dr. Bridgman had ridden down the river to look after the fractured leg of a mule-skinner.
"Isn't there any one else in this condemned burg can pull teeth?" he demanded irritably of the bartender at the Bird Cage.
"There certainly is. Buttermilk Brown is a sure-enough dentist. He had to take to bull-whackin' for to make a livin', but I reckon he's not forgot how. You'll probably find him sleepin' off a hang-over at the Four-Bit Corral."
This prophecy proved true, but Dinsmore was not one to let trifles turn him aside. He led the reluctant ex-dentist to a water-trough and soused his head under the pump.
"Is that a-plenty?" he asked presently, desisting from his exercise with the pump-handle.
Buttermilk sputtered a half-drowned assent. His nerves were still jumpy, and his head was not clear, but he had had enough cold water. Heroic treatment of this sort was not necessary to fit him for pulling a tooth.
They adjourned to the room where Buttermilk had stored his professional tools. Dinsmore indicated the back tooth that had to come out. The dentist peered at it, inserted his forceps and set to work. The tooth came out hard, but at last he exhibited its long prongs to the tortured victim.
"We get results," said Buttermilk proudly.
"How much?" asked Pete.
It happened that the dentist did not know his patient. He put a price of five dollars on the job. Dinsmore paid it and walked with Buttermilk to the nearest saloon for a drink.
Pete needed a little bracer. The jumping pain still pounded like a piledriver at his jaw. While the bartender was handing him a glass and a bottle, Dinsmore caressed tenderly the aching emptiness and made a horrible discovery. Buttermilk Brown had pulled the wrong tooth.
Considering his temperament, Pete showed remarkable self-restraint. He did not slay Buttermilk violently and instantly. Instead he led him back to the room of torture.
"You pulled the wrong tooth, you drunken wreck," he said in effect, but in much more emphatic words. "Now yank out the right one, and if you make another mistake—"
He did not finish the threat, but it is possible that Buttermilk understood. The dentist removed with difficulty the diseased molar.
"Well, we're through now," he said cheerfully. "I don't know as I ought to charge you for that last one. I'll leave that to you to say."
"We're not quite through," corrected the patient. "I'm goin' to teach you to play monkey-shines with Pete Dinsmore's teeth." He laid a large revolver on the table and picked up the forceps. "Take that chair, you bowlegged, knock-kneed, run-down runt."
Buttermilk protested in vain. He begged the bad-man for mercy with tears in his eyes.
"I'm goin' to do Scripture to you, and then some," explained Dinsmore. "It says in the Bible a tooth for a tooth, but I aim to pay good measure."
The amateur dentist pulled four teeth and played no favorites. A molar, a bicuspid, a canine, and an incisor were laid in succession on the table.
Buttermilk Brown wept with rage and pain.
"Four times five is twenty. Dig up twenty dollars for professional services," said Pete.
His tearful patient paid the fee. This was themost painful, violent, and high-handed episode of Buttermilk's young life. Never in Shelbyville, Indiana, from which town he had migrated hopefully westward with his diploma, had such outrages been heard of.
The instruments of Providence are sometimes strange ones. Nobody would have picked Pete Dinsmore for a reformer, but he changed the course of one young dentist's life. Buttermilk fled from the Southwest in horror, took the pledge eagerly, returned to Shelbyville and married the belle of the town. He became a specialist in bridge-work, of which he carried a golden example in his own mouth. His wife has always understood that Dr. Brown—nobody ever called him Buttermilk in his portly, prosperous Indiana days—lost his teeth trying to save a child from a runaway. Be that as it may, there is no record that he ever again pulled the wrong tooth for a patient.
Having completed his deed of justice, Dinsmore in high good humor with himself set out to call on Clint Wadley. He had made an inoffensive human being suffer, and that is always something to a man's credit. If he could not do any better, Pete would bully a horse, but he naturally preferred humans. They were more sensitive to pain.
CHAPTER XXVIICLINT FREES HIS MIND
Wadley was sitting on the porch with Ramona. He was still a semi-invalid, and when he exercised too much his daughter scolded him like the little mother she was.
"Keep me here much longer, an' I'll turn into a regular old gossip in breeches," he complained. "I'll be Jumbo Wilkins Number Two, like as not."
"Is Jumbo a specialist in gossip?" asked Ramona. She liked to get her father at reminiscences. It helped to pass time that hung heavy on his hands.
"Is he? Girl, he could talk a hind leg off'n a buckskin mule, Jumbo could." He stopped to chuckle. "Oncet, when we were drivin' a bunch of yearlin's on the Brazos, one of the boys picked up an old skull. Prob'ly some poor fellow killed by the Indians. Anyhow, that night when Jumbo was wound up good, one of the lads pretended to discover that skull an' brought it into the camp-fire light. Some one had wrote on it: 'Talked to death by Jumbo Wilkins.'"
'Mona rather missed the point. She was watching a man slouching down the road toward them. He was heavy-set and unwieldy, and he wore a wrinkled suit of butternut jeans.
The eyes of the cattleman chilled. "You go into the house, 'Mona. That fellow's Pete Dinsmore. I don't want you to meet him."
"Don't you, Dad?" The heart of the girl fluttered at sight of this man who had nearly killed her father, but it was not fear but anger that burned in her eyes. "I'm going to sit right here. What does he want? He's not coming—to make trouble, is he?"
"No. We've got business to settle. You run along in."
"I know what your business is. It's—about Ford."
He looked at her in surprised dismay. "Who told you that, honey?"
"I'll tell you about that after he's gone. I want to stay, Dad, to show him that I know all about it, and that we're not going to let him carry out any blackmailing scheme against us."
Dinsmore nodded grouchily as he came up the walk to the house. Wadley did not ask him to sit down, and since there were no unoccupied chairs the rustler remained standing.
"I got to have a talk with you, Clint," the outlaw said. "Send yore girl into the house."
"She'll listen to anything you have to say, Dinsmore. Get through with it soon as you can, an' hit the trail," said the cattleman curtly.
The other man flushed darkly. "You talkmighty biggity these days. I remember when you wasn't nothin' but a busted line-rider."
"Mebbeso. And before that I was a soldier in the army while you was doin' guerrilla jayhawkin'."
"Go ahead. Say anything you've a mind to, Clint. I'll make you pay before I'm through with you," answered the bad-man venomously.
"You will if you can; I know that. You're a bad lot, Dinsmore, you an' yore whole outfit. I'm glad Ellison an' his Rangers are goin' to clear you out of the country. A sure-enough good riddance, if any one asks me."
The cattleman looked hard at him. He too had been a fighting man, but it was not his reputation for gameness that restrained the ruffian. Wadley was a notch too high for him. He could kill another bad-man or some drunken loafer and get away with it. But he had seen the sentiment of the country when his brother had wounded the cattleman. It would not do to go too far. Times were changing in the Panhandle. Henceforth lawlessness would have to travel by night and work under cover. With the coming of the Rangers, men who favored law were more outspoken. Dinsmore noticed that they deferred less to him, partly, no doubt, because of what that fool boy Roberts had done without having yet had to pay for it.
"That's what I've come to see you about,Wadley. I'm not lookin' for trouble, but I never ran away from it in my life. No livin' man can lay on me without hell poppin'. You know it."
"Is that what you came to tell me, Dinsmore?" asked the owner of the A T O, his mouth set grim and hard.
There was an ugly look on the face of the outlaw, a cold glitter of anger in his deep-set eyes. "I hear you set the world an' all by that girl of yours there. Better send her in, Wadley. I'm loaded with straight talk."
The girl leaned forward in the chair. She looked at him with a flash of disdainful eyes in which was a touch of feminine ferocity. But she let her father answer the man.
"Go on," said the old Texan. "Onload what you've got to say, an' then pull yore freight."
"Suits me, Clint. I'm here to make a bargain with you. Call Ellison off. Make him let me an' my friends alone. If you don't, we're goin' to talk—about yore boy Ford." The man's upper lip lifted in a grin. He looked first at the father, then at the daughter.
There was a tightening of the soft, round throat, but she met his look without wincing. The pallor of her face lent accent to the contemptuous loathing of the slender girl.
"What are you goin' to say—that you murdered him, shot him down from behind?" demanded Wadley.
"That's a lie, Clint. You know who killed him—an' why he did it. Ford couldn't let the girls alone. I warned him as a friend, but he was hell-bent on havin' his own way."
The voice of the cattleman trembled. "Some day—I'm goin' to hunt you down like a wolf for what you did to my boy."
A lump jumped to Ramona's throat. She slipped her little hand into the big one of her father, and with it went all her sympathy and all her love.
"You're 'way off, Wadley. The boy was our friend. Why should we shoot him?" asked the man from the chaparral.
"Because he interfered with you when you robbed my messenger."
The startled eyes of the outlaw jumped to meet those of the cattleman. For a fraction of a second he was caught off his guard. Then the film of wary craftiness covered them again.
"That's plumb foolishness, Clint. The Mexican—what's his name?—killed Ford because he was jealous, an' if it hadn't been for you, he'd 'a' paid for it long ago. But that ain't what I came to talk about. I'm here to tell you that I've got evidence to prove that Ford was a rustler an' a hold-up. If it comes to a showdown, we're goin' to tell what we know. Mebbe you want folks to know what kind of a brother yore girl had. That's up to you."
Wadley exploded in a sudden fury of passion. "I'll make no bargain with the murderer of my boy. Get out of here, you damned yellow wolf. I don't want any truck with you at all till I get a chance to stomp you down like I would a rattler."
The bad-man bared his fangs. For one moment of horror Ramona thought he was going to strike like the reptile to which her father had compared him. He glared at the cattleman, the impulse strong in him to kill and be done with it. But the other side of him—the caution that had made it possible for him to survive so long in a world of violent men—held his hand until the blood-lust passed from his brain.
"You've said a-plenty," he snarled thickly. "Me, I've made my last offer to you. It's war between me 'n' you from now on."
He turned away and went slouching down the path to the road.
The two on the porch watched him out of sight. The girl had slipped inside her father's arm and was sobbing softly on his shoulder.
"There, honeybug, now don't you—don't you," Clint comforted. "He cayn't do us any harm. Ellison's hot on his trail. I'll give him six months, an' then he's through. Don't you fret, sweetheart. Daddy will look out for you all right."
"I—I wasn't thinking about me," she whispered.
Both of them were thinking of the dead boyand the threat to blacken his memory, but neither of them confessed it to the other. Wadley cast about for something to divert her mind and found it in an unanswered question of his own.
"You was goin' to tell me how come you to know what he wanted to talk with me about," the father reminded her.
"You remember that day when Arthur Ridley brought me home?"
He nodded assent.
"One of the Dinsmore gang—the one they call Steve Gurley—met me on the street. He was drunk, an' he stopped me to tell me about—Ford. I tried to pass, an' he wouldn't let me. He frightened me. Then Arthur an' Mr. Roberts came round the corner. Arthur came home with me, an'—you know what happened in front of McGuffey's store."
The face of the girl had flushed a sudden scarlet. Her father stared at her in an amazement that gave way to understanding. Through his veins there crashed a wave of emotion. If he had held any secret grudge against Tex Roberts, it vanished forever that moment. This was the kind of son he would have liked to have himself.
"By ginger, that was what he beat Gurley up for! Nobody knows why, an' Roberts kept the real reason under his hat. He's a prince, Jack Roberts is. I did that boy a wrong, 'Mona, an' guessed it all the time, just because he had amixup with Ford. He wasn't to blame for that, anyhow, I've been told."
Ramona felt herself unaccountably trembling. There was a queer little lump in her throat, but she knew it was born of gladness.
"He's been good to me," she said, and told of the experience with the traveling salesman on the stage.
Clint Wadley laughed. "I never saw that boy's beat. He's got everything a fellow needs to win. I can tell you one thing; he's goin' to get a chance to run the A T O for me before he's forty-eight hours older. He'll be a good buy, no matter what salary he sticks me for."
'Mona became aware that she was going to break down—and "make a little fool of herself," as she would have put it.
"I forgot to water my canary," she announced abruptly.
The girl jumped up, ran into the house and to her room. But if the canary was suffering from thirst, it remained neglected. Ramona's telltale face was buried in a pillow. She was not quite ready yet to look into her own eyes and read the message they told.