CHAPTER XVIITHE BACK OF A BRONC
The bunkhouse of the Slash Lazy D received Bob Dillon gravely and with chill civility. He sat on his bunk that first evening, close enough to touch a neighbor on either hand, and was left as completely out of the conversation as though he were a thousand miles away. With each other the riders were jocular and familiar. They “rode” one another with familiar jokes. The new puncher they let alone.
Bob had brought some cigars with him. He offered them eagerly to the chap-clad youth on his right. “Take one, won’t you? An’ pass the others round.”
The name of the cowboy was Hawks. He looked at the cigars with disfavor. “I reckon I’ll not be carin’ for a cigar to-night, thank you,” he said slowly.
“Perhaps the others—if you’ll pass them.”
Hawks handed the cigars to a brick-red Hercules patching his overalls. From him they went to his neighbor. Presently the cheroots came back to their owner. They had been offered to every man in the room and not one had been taken.
Bob’s cheeks burned. Notice was being served on him that the pleasant give-and-take of comradeship was not for him. The lights went out early, but long into the night the boy lay awake in torment. If he had been a leper the line could scarcely have been drawn more plainly. These men would eat with him because theymust. They would sleep in the same room. They would answer a question if he put it directly. But they would neither give nor accept favors. He was not to be one of them.
Many times in the months that were to follow he was to know the sting of shame that burned him now at memory of the scene between him and Jake Houck at Bear Cat. He tossed on the bunk, burying his face in the blankets in a vain effort to blot out the picture. Why had he not shot the fellow? Why, at least, had he not fought? If he had done anything, but what he did do? If he had even stuck it out and endured the pain without yielding.
In the darkness he lived over every little incident of the evening. When Hawks had met him he had grinned and hoped he would like the Slash Lazy D. There had been friendliness in the crinkled, leathery face. But when he passed Bob ten minutes later the blue eyes had frozen. He had heard who the new rider was.
He would not stand it. He could not. In the morning he would pack up his roll and ride back to Bear Cat. It was all very well for Blister Haines to talk about standing the gaff, but he did not have to put up with such treatment.
But when morning came Bob set his teeth and resolved to go through with it for a while anyhow. He could quit at any time. He wanted to be able to tell the justice that he had given his plan a fair trial.
In silence Bob ate his breakfast. This finished, the riders moved across to the corral.
“Better rope and saddle you a mount,” Harshaw toldhis new man curtly. “Buck, you show him the ones he can choose from.”
Hawks led the way to a smaller corral. “Any one o’ these except the roan with the white stockings an’ the pinto,” he said.
Dillon walked through the gate of the enclosure and closed it. He adjusted the rope, selected the bronco that looked to him the meekest, and moved toward it. The ponies began to circle close to the fence. The one he wanted was racing behind the white-stockinged roan. For a moment it appeared in front. The rope snaked out and slid down its side. Bob gathered in the lariat, wound it, waited for a chance, and tried again. The meek bronco shook its head as the rope fell and caught on one ear. A second time the loop went down into the dust.
Some one laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day’s work, were sitting at ease in their saddles enjoying the performance.
Bob gave himself to the job in hand, though his ears burned. As a youngster he had practiced roping. It was a pastime of the boys among whom he grew up. But he had never been an expert, and now such skill as he had acquired deserted him. The loop sailed out half a dozen times before it dropped over the head of the sorrel.
The new rider for the Slash Lazy D saddled and cinched a bronco which no longer took an interest in the proceedings. Out of the corner of his eye, without once looking their way, Bob was aware of subdued hilarity among the bronzed wearers of chaps. He attended strictly to business.
Just before he pulled himself to the saddle Bob felt a momentary qualm at the solar plexus. He did not give this time to let it deter him. His feet settled into the stirrups. An instant violent earthquake disturbed his equilibrium. A shock jarred him from the base of the spine to the neck. Urgently he flew through space.
Details of the landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out against them.
Out of the mists of memory he heard a wheezy voice issuing from a great bulk of a man—“... yore red haid’s covered with glory. Snap it up!” The words came so clear that for an instant he was startled. He looked round half expecting to see Blister.
Stiffly he gathered himself out of the snow slush. A pain jumped in the left shoulder. He limped to the rope and coiled it. The first cast captured the sorrel.
His limbs were trembling when he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider shot from the saddle.
When the scenery had steadied itself for Dillon he noticed languidly a change in one aspect of it. The faces turned toward him were no longer grinning. They were watching him expectantly. What would he do now?
They need not look at him like that. He was through. If he got on the back of that brute again it would kill him. Already he was bleeding at the nose and ears. Sometimes men died just from the shock of being tossed about so furiously.
The sorrel was standing by itself at the other end of the corral. Its head was drooping languidly. The bronco was a picture of injured innocence.
Bob discovered that he hated it with an impotent lust to destroy. If he had a gun with him—Out of the air a squeaky voice came to him: “C-clamp yore jaw, you worm! You been given dominion.” And after that, a moment later, “... made in the image of God.”
Unsteadily he rose. The eyes of the Slash Lazy D riders watched him relentlessly and yet curiously. Would he quit? Or would he go through?
He had an odd feeling that his body was a thing detached from himself. It was full of aches and pains. Its legs wobbled as he moved. Its head seemed swollen to twice the normal size. He had strangely small control over it. When he walked, it was jerkily, as a drunk man sometimes does. His hand caught at the fence to steady himself. He swayed dizzily. A surge of sickness swept through his organs. After this he felt better. He had not consciously made up his mind to try again, but he found himself moving toward the sorrel. This time he could hardly drag his weight into the saddle.
The mind of a bronco is unfathomable. This one now pitched weakly once or twice, then gave up in unconditional surrender. Bob’s surprise was complete. He had expected, after being shaken violently, to be flung into the mire again. The reaction was instantaneous and exhilarating. He forgot that he was covered with mud and bruises, that every inch of him cried aloud with aches. He had won, had mastered a wild outlaw horse as he had seen busters do. For the moment he saw the world at his feet. A little lower than the angels, he had been given dominion.
He rode to the gate and opened it. Hawks was looking at him, a puzzled look in his eyes. He had evidently seen something he had not expected to see.
Harshaw had ridden up during the bronco-busting. He spoke now to Bob. “You’ll cover Beaver Creek to-day—you and Buck.”
Something in the cattleman’s eye, in the curtness of his speech, brought Dillon back to earth. He had divined that his boss did not like him, had employed him only because Blister Haines had made a personal point of it. Harshaw was a big weather-beaten man of forty, hard, keen-eyed, square as a die. Game himself, he had little patience with those who did not stand the acid test.
Bob felt himself shrinking up. He had not done anything after all, nothing that any one of these men could not do without half trying. There was no way to wipe out his failure when a real ordeal had confronted him. What was written in the book of life was written.
He turned his pony and followed Hawks across the mesa.
CHAPTER XVIIITHE FIRST DAY
In the wake of Hawks Bob rode through the buckbrush. There was small chance for conversation, and in any case neither of them was in the mood for talk. Bob’s sensitive soul did not want to risk the likelihood of a rebuff. He was susceptible to atmospheres, and he knew that Buck was sulky at being saddled with him.
He was right. Buck did not see why Harshaw had put this outcast tenderfoot on him. He did not see why he had hired him at all. One thing was sure. He was not going to let the fellow get round him. No, sir. Not on his tintype he wasn’t.
Since it was the only practical way at present to show his disgust and make the new puncher feel like a fool, Hawks led him through the roughest country he could find at the fastest feasible gait. Buck was a notably wild rider in a country of reckless horsemen. Like all punchers, he had been hurt time and again. He had taken dozens of falls. Two broncos had gone down under him with broken necks. A third had twisted its leg in a beaver burrow and later had to be shot. This day he outdid himself.
As young Dillon raced behind him along side hills after dogies fleet as blacktails, the heart fluttered in his bosom like a frightened bird in a cage. He did not pretend to keep up with Hawks. The best he could do was to come loping up after the excitement was over. Therange-rider made no spoken comment whatever, but his scornful blue eyes said all that was necessary.
The day’s work did not differ except in details from that of yesterday and to-morrow. They headed back two three-year-olds drifting too far north. They came on a Slash Lazy D cow with a young calf and moved it slowly down to better feed near the creek. In the afternoon they found a yearling sunk in a bog. After trying to pull it out by the ears, they roped its body and tugged together. Their efforts did not budge the animal. Hawks tied one end of the rope to the saddle-horn, swung up, and put the pony to the pull. The muscles of the bronco’s legs stood out as it leaned forward and scratched for a foothold. The calf blatted with pain, but presently it was snaked out from the quagmire to the firm earth.
They crossed the creek and returned on the other side. Late in the afternoon they met half a dozen Utes riding their inferior ponies. They had evidently been hunting, for most of them carried deer. Old Colorow was at their head.
He grunted “How!” sulkily. The other braves passed without speaking. Something in their manner sent a shiver up Dillon’s spine. He and Hawks were armed only with revolvers. It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Indians to kill them if they wished.
Hawks called a cheerful greeting. It suggested the friendliest of feeling. The instructions given to the punchers were to do nothing to irritate the Utes just now.
The mental attitude of the Indians toward the cattlemenand cowboys was a curious one. They were suspicious of them. They resented their presence in the country. But they felt a very wholesome respect for them. These leather-chapped youths could outride and outshoot them. With or without reason, the Utes felt only contempt for soldiers. They were so easily led into traps. They bunched together when under fire instead of scattering for cover. They did not know how to read sign on the warmest trail. These range-riders were different. If they were not as wary as the Utes, they made up for it by the dash and aplomb with which they broke through difficulties.
In Bear Cat the day before Bob had heard settlers discuss the unrest of the Indians. The rumor was that soon they meant to go on the warpath again. Colorow himself, with a specious air of good will, had warned a cattleman to leave the country while there was time.
“You mebbe go—mebbe not come back,” he had suggested meaningly. “Mebbe better so. Colorow friend. He speak wise words.”
Until the Utes were out of gunshot Bob felt very uneasy. It was not many years since the Meeker massacre and the ambushing of Major Thornburg’s troops on Milk Creek.
Reeves and Hollister were in the bunkhouse when Bob entered it just before supper. He heard Dud’s voice.
“... don’t like a hair of his red haid, but that’s how it’ll be far as I’m concerned.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence. Dillon knew they had been talking about him. Beneath the deepgold of his blond skin Hollister flushed. Boy though he was, Dud usually had the self-possession of the Sphinx. But momentarily he was embarrassed.
“Hello, fellow!” he shouted across the room. “How’d she go?”
“All right, I reckon,” Bob answered. “I wasn’t much use.”
He wanted to ask Dud a question, but he dared not ask it before anybody else. It hung in his mind all through supper. Afterward he found his chance. He did not look at Hollister while he spoke.
“Did—did you hear how—Miss Tolliver is?” he asked.
“Doc says he can’t tell a thing yet. She’s still mighty sick. But Blister he sent word to you that he’d let you know soon as there is a change.”
“Much obliged.”
Bob moved away. He did not want to annoy anybody by pressing his undesirable society upon him.
That night he slept like a hibernating bear. The dread of the morrow was no longer so heavy upon him. Drowsily, while his eyes were closing, he recalled the prediction of the fat justice that no experience is as bad as one’s fears imagine it will be. That had been true to-day at least. Even his fight with the sorrel, the name of which he had later discovered to be Powder River, was now only a memory which warmed and cheered.
Cowpunchers usually rode in couples. Bob learned next morning that he was paired with Dud. They were to comb the Crooked Wash country.
CHAPTER XIXDUD QUALIFIES AS COURT JESTER
It was still dark when Dud Hollister and Bob Dillon waded through the snow to the corral and saddled their horses.
They jogged across the mesa through the white drifts.
Bob’s pony stumbled into a burrow, but pulled out again without damage.
In the years when cattle first came to the Rio Blanco the danger from falls was greater than it is now, even if the riding had not been harder. A long thick grass often covered the badger holes.
“How does a fellow look out for badger and prairie-dog holes?” Bob asked his companion as they jogged along at a road gait. “I mean when he’s chasin’ dogies across a hill on the jump.”
“He don’t,” Dud answered ungrammatically but promptly. “His bronc ’tends to that. If you try to guide you’re sure enough liable to take a fall.”
“But when the hole’s covered with grass?”
“You gotta take a chance,” Dud said. “They’re sure-footed, these cowponies are. A fellow gets to thinkin’ they can’t fall. Then down he goes. He jumps clear if he can an’ lights loose.”
“And if he can’t?”
“He’s liable to get stove up. I seen five waddies yesterday in Bear Cat with busted legs or arms. Doc’sfixin’ ’em up good as new. In a week or two they’ll be ridin’ again.”
Bob had seen those same crippled cowboys and he could not quite get them out of his mind. He knew of two punchers killed within the year from falls.
“Ridin’ for a dogie outfit ain’t no sin-cure, as Blister told you while he was splicin’ you ’n’ Miss Tolliver,” Dud went on. “It’s a man-size job. There’s ol’ Charley Mason now. He’s had his ribs stove in, busted an arm, shot hisself by accident, got rheumatism, had his nose bit off by a railroad guy while he was b’iled, an’ finally married a female battle-axe, all inside o’ two years. He’s the hard luck champeen, though, Charley is.”
It had snowed heavily during the night. The day was “soft,” in the phrase of the pioneer. In places the ground was almost clear. In others the drifts were deep. From a hillside they looked down into a grove of cottonwoods that filled a small draw. Here the snow had blown in and was heavy. Three elk were floundering in the white banks.
Dud waded in and shot two with his revolver. The third was a doe. The cowponies snaked them out to the open.
“We’ll take ’em with us to ’Leven Mile camp,” Dud said. “Then we’ll carry ’em back to the ranch to-morrow. The Slash Lazy D is needin’ meat.”
Harshaw had given orders that they were to spend the night at Eleven Mile camp. The place was a deserted log cabin built by a trapper. Supplies were kept there for the use of Slash Lazy D riders. Usually some of themwere there at least two or three nights a week. Often punchers from other outfits put up at the shack. Range favors of this sort were taken as a matter of course. If the cabin was empty the visiting cowboy helped himself to food, fire, and shelter. It was expected of him that he would cut a fresh supply of fuel to take the place of that he had used.
It was getting on toward dusk when they reached Eleven Mile. Bob made a fire in the tin stove while Dud took care of the horses. He found flour and lard[2]hanging in pails from the rafters. Coffee was in a tin under the bunk.
Soon Dud joined him. They made their supper of venison, biscuits, and coffee. Hollister had just lit a pipe and stretched himself on the bed when the door opened and sixteen Ute bucks filed gravely in.
Colorow was the spokesman. “Hungry! Heap hungry!” he announced.
Hollister rolled out of the bunk promptly. “Here’s where we go into the barbecue business an’ the Slash ranch loses them elk,” he told Bob under cover of replenishing the fire in the stove. “An’ I can name two lads who’ll be lucky if they don’t lose their scalps. These birds have been drinkin’.”
It took no wiseacre to divine the condition of the Indians. Their whiskey breaths polluted the air of the cabin. Some of them swayed as they stood or clutched at one another for support. Fortunately they were for the moment in a cheerful rather than a murderousframe of mind. They chanted what was gibberish to the two whites while the latter made their preparations swiftly. Dud took charge of affairs. He noticed that his companion was white to the lips.
“I’ll knock together a batch of biscuits while you fry the steaks. Brace up, kid. Throw out yore chest. We better play we’re drunk too,” he said in a murmur that reached only Bob.
While Bob sliced the steaks from the elk hanging from pegs fastened in the mud mortar between the logs of the wall, Dud was busy whipping up a batch of biscuits. The Indians, packed tight as sardines in the room, crowded close to see how it was done. Hollister had two big frying-pans on the stove with lard heating in them. He slapped the dough in, spattering boiling grease right and left. One pockmarked brave gave an anguished howl of pain. A stream of sizzling lard had spurted into his face.
The other Utes roared with glee. The aboriginal sense of humor may not be highly developed, but it is easily aroused. The friends of the outraged brave stamped up and down the dirt floor in spasms of mirth. They clapped him on the back and jabbered ironic inquiries as to his well-being. For the moment, at least, Dud was as popular as a funny clown in a sawdust ring.
Colorow and his companions were fed. The stove roared. The frying-pans were kept full of meat and biscuits. The two white men discarded coats, vests, and almost their shirts. Sweat poured down their faces. They stood over the red-hot cook stove, hour after hour, while the Utes gorged. The steaks of the elk, the hindquarters, the fore quarters, all vanished into the sixteen distended stomachs. Still the Indians ate, voraciously, wolfishly, as though they could never get enough. It was not a meal but an endurance contest.
Occasionally some wag would push forward the pockmarked brave and demand of Dud that he baptize him again, and always the puncher made motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased to be a scream.
Dud grinned at Dillon. “These wooden heads are so fond of chestnuts I’m figurin’ on springin’ on them the old one about why a hen crosses the road. Bet it would go big. If they got the point. But I don’t reckon they would unless I had a hen here to show ’em.”
The feast ended only when the supplies gave out. Two and a half sacks of flour disappeared. About fifteen pounds of potatoes went into the pot and from it into the openings of copper-colored faces. Nothing was left of the elk but the bones.
“The party’s mighty nigh over,” Dud murmured. “Wonder what our guests aim to do now.”
“Can’t we feed ’em anything more?” asked Bob anxiously.
“Not unless we finish cookin’ the pockmarked gent for ’em. I’m kinda hopin’ old Colorow will have sabe enough not to wear his welcome out. It’d make a ten-strike with me if he’d say ‘Much obliged’ an’ hit the trail.”
Bob had not the heart to jest about the subject, and his attempt to back up his companion’s drunken playacting was a sad travesty. He did not know much about Indians anyhow, and he was sick through and through with apprehension. Would they finish by scalping their hosts, as Dud had suggested early in the evening?
It was close to midnight when the clown of Colorow’s party invented a new and rib-tickling joke. Bob was stooping over the stove dishing up the last remnants of the potatoes when this buck slipped up behind with the carving-knife and gathered into his fist the boy’s flaming topknot. He let out a horrifying yell and brandished the knife.
In a panic of terror Bob collapsed to the floor. There was a moment when the slapstick comedy grazed red tragedy. The pitiable condition of the boy startled the Ute, who still clutched his hair. An embryonic idea was finding birth in the drunken brain. In another moment it would have developed into a well-defined lust to kill.
With one sweeping gesture Dud lifted a frying-pan from the red-hot stove and clapped it against the rump of the jester. The redskin’s head hit the roof. His shriek of agony could have been heard half a mile. He clapped hands to the afflicted part and did a humped-up dance of woe. The carving-knife lay forgotten on the floor. It was quite certain that he would take no pleasure in sitting down for some few days.
Again a series of spasms of turbulent mirth seized upon his friends. They doubled up with glee. They wept tears of joy. They howled down his anguish with approving acclaim while they did a double hop aroundhim as a vent to their enthusiasm. The biter had been bit. The joke had been turned against the joker, and in the most primitive and direct way. This was the most humorous event in the history of the Rio Blanco Utes. It was destined to become the stock tribal joke.
Dud, now tremendously popular, joined in the dance. As he shuffled past Bob he growled an order at him.
“Get up on yore hind laigs an’ dance. I got these guys going my way. Hop to it!”
Bob danced, at first feebly and with a heart of water. He need not have worried. If Dud had asked to be made a blood member of the tribe he would have been elected by fourteen out of the sixteen votes present.
The first faint streaks of day were in the sky when the Utes mounted their ponies and vanished over the hill. From the door Dud watched them go. It had been a strenuous night, and he was glad it was over. But he wouldn’t have missed it for a thousand dollars. He would not have admitted it. Nevertheless he was immensely proud of himself in the rôle of court jester.
Bob sat down on the bunk. He was a limp rag of humanity. In the reaction from fear he was inclined to be hysterical.
“You saved my life—when—when that fellow—” He stopped, gulping down a lump in the throat.
The man leaning against the door-jamb stretched his arms and his mouth in a relaxing yawn. “Say, fellow, I wasn’t worryin’ none about yore life. I was plumb anxious for a moment about Dud Hollister’s. If old Colorow’s gang had begun on you they certainly wouldn’t ’a’ quit without takin’ my topknot for a souvenirof an evenin’ when a pleasant time was had by all.” He yawned a second time. “What say? Let’s hit the hay. I don’t aim for to do no ridin’ this mornin’.”
A faint sniffling sound came from the bunk.
Dud turned. “What’s ailin’ you now?” he wanted to know.
Bob’s face was buried in his hands. The slender body of the boy was shaken with sobs.
“I—I—”
“Cut out the weeps, Miss Roberta,” snapped Hollister. “What in Mexico ’s eatin’ you anyhow?”
“I—I’ve had a horrible night.”
“Don’t I know it? Do you reckon it was a picnic for me?”
“You—laughed an’ cut up.”
“Some one had to throw a bluff. If they’d guessed we were scared stiff them b’iled Utes sure enough would have massacreed us. You got to learn to keep yore grin workin’, fellow.”
“I know, but—” Bob stopped. Dry sobs were still shaking him.
“Quit that,” Dud commanded. “I’ll be darned if I’ll stand for it. You shut off the waterworks or I’ll whale you proper.”
He walked out to look at the horses. It had suddenly occurred to him that perhaps their guests might have found and taken them. The broncos were still grazing in the draw where he had left them the previous night.
When Dud returned to the cabin young Dillon had recovered his composure. He lay on the bunk, face to the wall, and pretended to be asleep.
[2]The lard in the White River country was all made in those days of bear grease and deer tallow mixed.
The lard in the White River country was all made in those days of bear grease and deer tallow mixed.
CHAPTER XX“THE BIGGER THE HAT THE SMALLER THE HERD”
Combing Crooked Wash that afternoon Bob rode with a heavy and despondent heart. It was with him while he and Dud jogged back to the ranch in the darkness. He had failed again. Another man had trodden down the fears to which he had afterward lightly confessed and had carried off the situation with a high hand. His admiration put Hollister on a pedestal. How had the blond puncher contrived to summon that reserve of audacity which had so captivated the Utes? Why was it that of two men one had stamina to go through regardless of the strain while another went to pieces and made a spectacle of himself?
Bob noticed that both in his report to Harshaw and later in the story he told at the Slash Lazy D bunkhouse, Dud shielded him completely. He gave not even a hint that Dillon had weakened under pressure. The boy was grateful beyond words, even while he was ashamed that he needed protection.
At the bunkhouse Dud’s story was a great success. He had a knack of drawling out his climaxes with humorous effect.
“An’ when I laid that red-hot skillet on the nearest area of Rumpty-Tumpty’s geography he ce’tainly went up into the roof like he’d been fired out of a rocket. When he lit—gentlemen, when he lit he was the mostrestless Ute in western Colorado. He milled around the corral considerable. I got a kinda notion he’d sorta soured on the funny-boy business. Anyhow, he didn’t cotton to my style o’ humor. Different with old Colorow an’ the others. They liked to ’a’ hollered their fool haids off at the gent I’d put the new Slash Lazy D brand on. Then they did one o’ them ‘Wow-wow-wow’ dances round Rumpty-Tumpty, who was still smokin’ like he’d set fire to the cabin.”
Cowpunchers are a paradox. They have the wisdom of the ages, yet they are only grown-up children. Now they filled the night with mirth. Hawks lay down on his bunk and kicked his feet into the air joyfully. Reeves fell upon Dud and beat him with profane gayety. Big Bill waltzed him over the floor, regardless of his good-humored protest.
“Tell us some more, Dud,” demanded the cook. “Did yore friend Rumpty put hisse’f out by sittin’ in a snowbank?”
“I don’t rightly recollect. Me ’n’ Bob here was elected to lead the grand march an’ we had to leave Rumpty-Tumpty be his own fire department. But I did notice how tender he lowered himself to the back of his hawse when they lit out in the mawnin’.”
Bob saw that Hollister made the whole affair one huge joke. He did not mention that there had been any chance of a tragic termination to the adventure. Nor did the other punchers refer to that, though they knew the strained relations between the whites and the Utes. Riding for a dogie outfit was a hard life, but one could always get a laugh out of it somehow. The philosophy of the range is to grin and bear it.
A few days later Bob rode into town with a pack-horse at heel. He was to bring back some supplies for the ranch. Harshaw had chosen him to go because he wanted to buy some things for himself. These would be charged against the Slash Lazy D account at Platt & Fortner’s store. Bob would settle for them with the boss when his pay-check came due.
It was a warm sunny day with a touch of summer still in the air. The blue stem and the bunch grass were dry. Sage and greasewood had taken on the bare look of winter. But the pines were still green and the birds singing.
It was an ordeal for Bob to face Bear Cat. June was better, he had heard. But it was not his fault she had not died of the experience endured. He could expect no friendliness in the town. The best he could hope for was that it would let him alone.
He went straight to the office of Blister Haines. The justice took his fat legs down from the desk and waved him to a chair.
“How’re cases?” he asked.
Bob told his story without sparing himself.
Blister listened and made no comment to the end.
“You’re takin’ that Ute business too s-serious,” he said. “Gettin’ s-scalped ’s no picnic. You’re entitled to feel some weak at the knees. I’ve heard from Dud. He says you stood up fine.”
“He told you—?”
“N-no particulars. T-trouble with you is you’ve got too much imagination. From yore story I judge you weakened when the danger was over. You gotta learn tokeep up that red haid like I said. When you’re scared or all in, stretch yore grin another inch. You don’t need to w-worry. You’re doin’ all right.”
Bob shook his head. Blister’s view encouraged him, though he could not agree with it.
“Keep yore eye on that Dud Hollister hombre,” the justice went on. “He’s one sure enough go-getter.”
“Yes,” agreed Bob. “He’s there every jump of the road. An’ he didn’t tell on me either.”
“You can tie to Dud,” agreed Blister. “Here’s the point, son. When you g-get that sinkin’ feelin’ in yore tummy it’s notice for you to get up on yore hind laigs an’ howl. Be a wolf for a change.”
“But I can’t. I seem to—to wilt all up.”
“Son, you know the answer already. T-throw back yore haid an’ remember you got dominion.”
Dillon shifted the conversation, embarrassed eyes on the floor. “How’s—Miss Tolliver?”
“G-gettin’ well fast. On the porch yesterday. Everybody in town stopped to say how g-glad they was to see her out. Been havin’ the time of her life, June has. Mollie’s always right good to sick folks, but she c-ce’tainly makes a pet of June.”
“I’m glad. She’s through with me, o’ course, but I hope her friends look out for that Jake Houck.”
“You don’t need to worry about him. He’s learnt to keep hands off.”
Bob was not quite satisfied to let the matter rest there. In spite of the fact that he had made an outcast of himself he wanted to reinstate himself with June.
Hesitantly Bob approached the subject. “MaybeI’d better send her word I’m glad she come through all right.”
Blister’s eyes were stony. “Maybe you’d better not. What claim you got to be remembered by that li’l’ girl? You’re outa her life, boy.”
Bob winced. The harsh truth wounded his sensitive nature. She had been his friend once. It hurt him to lose her wholly and completely.
He rose. “Well, I gotta go an’ get some goods for the ranch, Mr. Haines,” he said.
“I reckon you’d like to s-slide back easy an’ have folks forget,” Blister said. “Natural enough. But it won’t be thataway. You’ll have to f-fight like a bulldog to travel back along that trail to a good name. You ain’t really begun yet.”
“See you again next time I get to town,” Bob said.
He was sorry he had raised the point with Haines of a message to June. That the justice should reject the idea so promptly and vigorously hurt his pride and self-esteem.
At Platt & Fortner’s he invested in a pair of spurs, a cheap saddle, and a bridle. The cowboy is vain of his equipment. He would spend in those days forty dollars for a saddle, ten for boots, twenty-five for a bridle and silver plated bit, fifteen for spurs, and ten or twelve for a hat. He owned his own horse and blankets, sometimes also a pack-animal. These were used to carry him from one job to another. He usually rode the ranch broncos on the range.
But even if he had been able to afford it Bob would not have bought expensive articles. He did not makeany claim about his ability to punch cattle, and he knew instinctively that real riders would resent any attempt on his part to swagger as they did. A remark dropped by Blister came to mind.
“The b-bigger the hat the smaller the herd, son. Do all yore b-braggin’ with yore actions.”
It is often a characteristic of weakness that it clings to strength. Bob would have given much for the respect and friendship of these clear-eyed, weather-beaten men. To know that he had forfeited these cut deep into his soul. The clerk that waited on him at the store joked gayly with two cowboys lounging on the counter, but he was very distantly polite to Dillon. The citizens he met on the street looked at him with chill eyes. A group of schoolboys whispered and pointed toward him.
Bob had walked out from Haines’s office in a huff, but as he rode back to the ranch he recognized the justice of his fat friend’s decision. He had forfeited the right to take any interest in June Tolliver. His nature was to look always for the easiest way. He never wanted trouble with anybody. Essentially he was peace-loving even to the point of being spiritless. To try to slip back into people’s good will by means of the less robust virtues would be just like him.
Probably Blister was right when he had told him to be a wolf. For him, anything was better than to be a sheep.
He clamped his teeth. He would show the Rio Blanco country whether he had a chicken heart. He would beat back somehow so that they would have to respect him whether they wanted to or not. If he made up his mind to it he could be just as game as Dud Hollister.
He would go through or he would die trying.
CHAPTER XXIJUNE DISCOVERS A NEW WORLD
Blister had not overstated the case to Bob when he told him that June had been having the time of her life getting well. She had been a lonely little thing, of small importance in a country very busy on its own affairs. The sense of inferiority had oppressed her, due both to the secret of her father’s past and the isolation in which she dwelt. This had stimulated a sullen resentment and a shy pride which held even friendly souls at arm’s length.
Now she was being petted by everybody with whom she came into contact. She was pathetically grateful, and the big-hearted men and women of the frontier were worthy of the feeling. They gave her eager good will and generous sympathy. Into her room came soups and custards made by the best cooks on the river. When she was well enough to see visitors the mothers of Bear Cat came in person.
Through Melancthon Browning the landlady of the hotel shrewdly enlisted the aid of the most influential women in the community. June needed clothes. She had not a garment that was not worn out and ragged. But Mollie recognized the fact that more than these she was in need of the moral support of the settlers’ wives. Mrs. Larson could give her work and a home, but she could not give her that bulwark of her sex, respectability. Mollie was an exception to an established rule. She was liked and respected by other women in spite of herpeculiarities. But this would not be true of her protégée unless the girl was above criticism. June must never step inside the bar or the gambling-room. She must find friends among the other girls of the town and take part in their social activities.
Wherefore Mollie, by timely suggestion, put it into the mind of the preacher to propose a sewing-bee to his congregation. Tolliver, under supervision, bought the goods and the women sewed. They made underclothes, petticoats, nightgowns, and dresses. They selected from the stock of Platt & Fortner shoes, stockings, and a hat, charging them to the account of Pete.
It was on her sixteenth birthday that June was taken into an adjoining room and saw all these treasures laid upon the bed. She did not at first understand that the two pretty dresses and all the comfortable, well-made clothes were for her. When this was made clear to her the tears brimmed to the long-lashed eyes. The starved little Cinderella was greatly touched. She turned to Mollie and buried her twitching face in a friendly bosom.
“Now—now—now,” Mollie reproved gently, stroking the dark crisp hair. “This is no way to act, dearie, an’ all the ladies so kind to you. You want to thank ’em, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—but—I—I—”
The smothered voice was tearful.
Mollie smiled at the committee. “I reckon she wants me to tell you for her that she’s plumb outa words to let you know how good she thinks you-all are.”
The black head nodded vigorously. “You’re thebestfolks—”
Mrs. Platt, a large and comfortable mother of seven, answered placidly. “I expect you’ll find, dearie, that most folks are good when you get on the right side of them. Now you try on them clothes an’ see if they fit. We tried ’em on my Mary. She’s about your size. You’re comin’ down to our house to supper to-night. I want you should get acquainted with the girls.”
June looked at Mollie, who nodded smilingly.
“I’ll be terrible glad to come, ma’am,” June said.
“Then that’s settled. They’re nice girls, if I do say it myself that am their mother.”
So June took her first timid steps into the social life of the frontier town. Shyly she made friends, and with them went to church, to Sunday School, and to picnics.
It had been definitely decided that she was to wait on table at the hotel restaurant and not return with her father to Piceance Creek. The plan had originated with Mollie, but Tolliver had acquiesced in it eagerly. If June went home with him Houck might reappear on the horizon, but if she stayed at Bear Cat, buttressed by the support of the town, the man from Brown’s Park would not dare to urge his claim again.
June waited on table at the hotel, but this did not keep her from the dances that were held in the old army hospital building. There were no class distinctions in Bear Cat then. There are not many now. No paupers lived in the county. This still holds good. Except the owners of the big cattle companies there were no men of wealth. A man was not judged by what he had or by the kind of work he was doing. His neighbors looked through externals to see what he was, stripped of all adventitiouscircumstance. On that basis solely he was taken into fellowship or cast out from it.
The girl from Piceance Creek worked hard and was content, even if not quite happy. If she ever thought of the boy she had married, no reference to him ever crossed her lips. She was known simply as June by the town. Strangers called her Miss Tolliver.
There was about her a quiet self-possession that discouraged familiarity on the part of ambitious and amorous cowboys. Her history, with its thread of tragedy running through the warp and woof of it, set her apart from other girls of her age. Still almost a child in years, she had been caught in the cross-currents of life and beaten by its cold waves. Part of the heritage of youth—its gay and adventurous longing for experience—had been filched from her before she was old enough to know its value. In time she would perhaps recover her self-esteem, but she would never know in its fullness that divine right of American maidenhood to rule its environment and make demands of it.