Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 969
“Heah, let me see, yu uncomplainin’ deceivin’ hawse,” said the rider. “How was I to know about it?”
Wingfoot might have traveled miles farther without serious result, but Laramie chose not to take the risk. He liked the pleasant prospect at hand — a widening valley bright with the spring green of cottonwoods and willows, and a gleam of water. He would camp there until the following day. It was nothing for Laramie to go hungry.
“Wal, Wingfoot, heah we stop,” he drawled as he removed the saddle. “Plenty grass an’ water for yu. If I see a cottontail I’ll shore make up for thet pore shootin’. . . . I’ve a pinch of salt left. . . . Now yu be around heah in the mawnin’.”
Wingfoot was not so lame that he could not roll. After thus indulging himself he made for the running stream and the patch of green on the bank. Laramie packed the burdened saddle beyond the edge of the grove to a willow thicket. Another of his range habits was that of caution. He needed sleep about as much as Wingfoot needed rest, but he decided to exhaust the meat possibilities of this valley before lying down. To that end he spread his saddle blankets to dry in the sun, and cut an armload of willows for a bed, after which he went hunting.
This particular section of southern central Kansas was unknown to him. It was a cattle country, a vast sweeping prairie-land, rolling and grassy, where a steer appeared to be as hard to find as a needle in a haystack. Few indeed had been the hoof tracks he had crossed that day. A long tramp down this winding lonesome swale earned Laramie no more than an appreciation of the ranch possibilities of the place. How many beautiful, fertile, lonely bits of rangeland had inspired the same desire for a farm, a few horses and cattle, a home! That hope never died, though Laramie was well on, as years counted at that time. Still, as many riders of twenty-five died with their boots on as lived to herd cattle.
Somewhere to the northwest lay the railroad and Dodge, for which Laramie was headed. Cattlemen and riders were as thick there as flies on a freshly skinned cowhide. He would get another job and try again, knowing that sooner or later he would straddle Wingfoot again for a grub-line ride. Thinking of meat made him more than usually keen-eyed, with the result that soon he espied a rabbit. It ran off a few rods, and then made the mistake to stop and squat down, after the manner of cottontails. Laramie shot the top of its head off.
“Wal, dog-gone!” he ejaculated, very pleased. “I reckoned I couldn’t hit nothin’ no more. Now if thet had happened to be Luke Arlidge . . .”
Laramie did not end his speculation. He skinned and dressed the cottontail, and returning to camp built a little fire over which he broiled the rabbit to a nice brown. The addition of some salt made it so toothsome that Laramie wanted to devour it all. But he saved half for the morrow.
The heat of the day was passing. Wingfoot grazed contentedly down the valley. Laramie left his fire to look around. There was not even a bird to see. He had come from the north and had a curiosity to see what it looked like to the west, up over the low slope. But with the thought that there was no sense looking for trouble he went back to the willows and was soon asleep.
Upon being rudely awakened by some noise, Laramie thought he had scarcely closed his eyes. He heard a thud of hoofbeats on soft ground and then a harsh voice:
“We’re goin’ to string yu up to this heah cottonwood, thet’s what.”
“Fer no more’n yu’ve done yourself, Price,” came the reply in a young, bitter voice.
“If I done so, nobody ever ketched me. Haw! Haw!”
Laramie considered himself a judge of men through their voices. He sat up silently, a cold little thrill stiffening his spine, and peeped out between the willow leaves.
Four horsemen had ridden under the great spreading cottonwood, three of whom were in the act of halting. The foremost, a boy of about twenty, was short and sturdy, his figure bearing the hallmarks of a rider. His homely face might have been red ordinarily, but now it was tense and pale. He had singularly fine eyes, neither dark nor light, and on the moment an expression of scorn appeared stronger than a somber horror. He was too young to face hanging with a spirit which no doubt would have been his in later years. Price was a typical cattleman of the period, no longer young, and characterized by a lean hard face of bluish cast under his short beard, and slits of fire for eyes. He looked more at home in the saddle than on the ground, and packed a blue Colt gun in the hip pocket of his jeans. The position of that gun told Laramie much. The other two riders were mere boys, even more youthful than the one they were about to hang. They did not look formidable, wherefore Laramie wasted no second glance on them.
“Price, yu ain’t goin’ through with it?” asked the doomed rider, hoarsely.
“Didn’t I ketch yu dead to rights?”
“Yes, an’ it wasn’t the first time I done the same. But yu hadn’t paid me a dollar fer six months. . . . An’ the boss was away. . . . An’ I had to have some money.”
“Say, Mulhall, air yu tryin’ to make excuses for rustlin’?” queried Price, loosening out a small deadly-looking noose in his lasso.
“Show me a rider who never stole a head of stock — if yu split hairs on it!” ejaculated Mulhall, passionately.
“I ain’t splittin’ hairs. Yu’re a rustler.”
“Yu’re a liar. If yu wasn’t every damn rider on this range would be a rustler. Yu would an’ yu know it.”
Price gave the noose a little careless toss and it fell perfectly over Mulhall’s head. He flinched in his saddle. And Laramie, watching with intent eyes, felt that shock communicated to him. Such brutal justice had become the law of the range. In this case it might have been deserved and on the other hand it might not. Laramie thought it no business of his. But could he sit there and see them go through with it?
“Thet’s my answer, Mulhall,” replied Price, curtly. “I’ll tell somebody yu took yore medicine yellow.”
“ —— !” burst out the bound rider, furiously. “I knowed it. Yu’re hangin’ me ‘cause she has no use fer yu. . . . Go ahead an’ string me up yu —— ! . . . She’ll be onto yu. Hank or Bill will give yu away some day. An’ she’ll hate yu — —”
“Shet up,” snapped Price, jerking the lasso so tight round Mulhall’s neck as to cut short his speech and sway him in the saddle.
“Aw — Price!” interposed the older of the other two riders. He was pale and it was plain he wanted to intercede. “Let Mulhall off — this time.”
Whereupon Price cursed him roundly, and then flinging his end of the rope over the branch just above Mulhall’s head he leisurely dismounted to pick it up.
“I’ve seen more’n one of yore brand dangle from this cottonwood,” he said, with a coarse grim humor that failed to hide passion.
This inflection of tone decided Laramie, who had been wavering. Silently he arose, and strode out from behind his covert. Price appeared about to haul the lasso taut and tie it to a sapling. The ashen-faced Mulhall saw Laramie first and gave expression to a more violent start.
“Bill, get set to kick his hoss out from under him,” ordered Price.
When Bill failed to move and, moreover, betrayed his alarm, Price wheeled. Laramie had advanced half of the distance from the willows. He halted, standing slightly sidewise. His posture, as well as his appearance, would have given any Westerner pause. Laramie had counted on this many a time, though in this instance it was more habit than design.
“Hullo!” cut out Price, suddenly springing erect. He was genuinely astounded.
“Howdy yoreself,” returned Laramie, in slow, cool speech. “See yu’re aimin’ at a necktie party.”
“Yu ain’t blind, stranger,” replied Price, sharply, as his gaze roved over Laramie, to grasp the significance of his stand. “Where’d yu come from?”
“Down the draw heah with my outfit. Been huntin’ rabbits an’ happened to see hawses.”
“Rabbits, huh?” rejoined Price, slowly. “Wal, go on with yore huntin’.”
“Shore, when it suits me.”
“This ain’t no bizness of yourn.”
“I’m makin’ it mine.”
“Hell yu say! . . . Who might yu be, stranger?”
“No matter. I’m just ridin’ through.”
“Wal, go back to yore outfit an’ ride on. Mixin’ in heah might not be healthy.”
“Wal, somehow I’ve thrived on unhealthy soil.”
Price threw down the end of the lasso and reddened in angry amaze: “What yu up to?”
“I cain’t fool about heah an’ see yu hang thet boy,” drawled Laramie.
“He’s a rustler. We ketched him brandin’ calves fer an outfit who’s been payin’ him.”
“Shore. I heahed yu talkin’.”
“Hell then, man! Don’t yu know this country?” fumed the cattleman.
“Wal, yes, if yu reckon Texas, Abilene, Dodge, an’ the Pan Handle.”
“Ahuh. Texas rider. One of them Chisholm Trail drivers?”
“Shore. If thet means anythin’ to yu, Mister Price.”
It meant considerable, as was plain by the man’s visible vacillation in the face of a doubtful issue. Laramie had gauged him shrewdly.
“But what fur, damn yu? Mulhall ain’t nothin’ to yu. He’s admitted his guilt.”
“Yes, an’ the way he did it is why I’m callin’ yore bluff.”
“Bluff! . . . There ain’t no bluff in a rope.”
“Yu’d swung him shore if I hadn’t come along. But I did — an’ now yu won’t.”
That was the gauntlet flung in this matured rider’s face. It flamed. He was the kind whom rage gave rein to impulses, but obviously there was something about Laramie’s front that restrained him.
“Yu’d fight fer this calf-stealin’ boy?” burst out Price, incredulously.
“Shore. Reckon I’ve fought fer less. But if yu want to know, Price, I just don’t like yore face an’ yore talk.”
“No? I ain’t takin’ a hell of a fancy to yourn,” retorted Price, sarcastically.
“Wal, I’m a better judge of men than yu are,” retorted Laramie, with even more sarcasm.
“Like hell yu air! Willin’ to take chances an’ fight fer a cow-puncher who admits he stole! Yu must be hard up fer a fight, stranger. As fer me — I pass. Mulhall ain’t even wuth gettin’ scratched fer.”
Price’s spurs jangled a discord as he stamped to his horse and flung himself in the saddle.
“Hold up a minute,” replied Laramie, dryly, as he walked around Price to see if he had a rifle on his saddle. The saddles of the other two riders were likewise minus a long-range gun. “Price, I size yu up to be some punkin on talkin’, an’ thet’s aboot all. Mozy along.”
The chagrined rider complied, while his two companions reined their horses in beside his.
“Take him an’ be damned!” shouted Price, over his shoulder. “He’ll thank yu by stealin’ yore shirt.”
“Hey, Price, all I ever stole from yu was yore gurl,” Mulhall shouted after him, in fiendish glee.
The rider called Bill looked back and his young face gleamed.
“Good-bye, Mull. I’m glad we — —”
Price swung a vicious hand on Bill’s lips, nearly unseating him. Then the riders rode on, breaking from trot to canter, and disappeared under the cottonwoods.
Laramie drew a knife with which he carefully cut the cord around Mulhall’s wrists. The boy swiftly lifted his hands to tear the noose off his neck so violently as to dislodge his sombrero. It went flying with the rope.
“My God, stranger!” he burst out, in terrible relief. “Price’d hung me — but fer yu!”
“I reckon. There’s many a slip, though,” responded Laramie as he bent to recover both lasso and sombrero. The latter he handed up to Mulhall, then began to coil the lasso. “It’d be bad luck, boy, not to keep this. . . . Any chance of Price fetchin’ back an outfit?”
“Aw, hell! He wouldn’t have the nerve if he had any more outfit,” replied the rider, contemptuously, as he rubbed his red wrists.
“Wal, in thet case we needn’t be in such a hurry,” replied Laramie. “I’m alone. Was ridin’ through, an’ my hawse went lame. An’ while restin’ him I was takin’ a nap heah in the willows. Yu waked me up.”
“It was sure a good wakin’ fer me, stranger,” rejoined Mulhall, fervently, and swinging a leg over the pommel he began to roll a cigarette. His fingers trembled slightly. Then he met Laramie’s upward glance. Their eyes locked — the one shamed, grateful, curious, the other grave, searching, kindly. Naturally such an exchange of looks could not have been ordinary, but this developed into something unusually strong and potent.
“What’s yore name?” queried Mulhall.
“Yu can call me Laramie.”
“Mine’s Mulhall. Yu can call me Lonesome.”
“Funny handle for yu. Bet yu’re not the lone-prairie kind . . . Mulhall. . . . Any kin to thet big stockman, Silas Mulhall?”
“No kin to nobody,” replied Lonesome, hurriedly, with evident distaste or a habit of evasiveness. “I’m alone in the wurr-ld.”
“Wal, yu came dog-gone near takin’ a trip alone,” concluded Laramie, dryly. “Let’s move out of this heah neck of the woods.”
Laramie dragged his saddle and things out of the willows, and dividing these with the rider made his way down the valley, keeping to the thick plots of grass.
“Reckon it’d take a good tracker some time workin’ our trail out,” remarked Laramie, thoughtfully, as he picked his way.
“Sure. But say, Laramie, I had a pard once thet could track a bird,” returned Mulhall, enthusiastically. “Honest to Gawd, he was the grandest boy on a trail! His name was Ted Williams, an’ I called him Tracks. Stuck to him, too. . . . Heigho! — dear old Ted! Wonder where’n hell he is now. . . . We was pards two years.”
“What became of him? Stop some lead?”
“No! He made the other fellow do thet. Ted was slick with a gun — leanin’ toward bein’ a gunman, they said.”
“I see. But yu’re not tellin’ me about him.”
“It happened over in Nebraskie. We was ridin’ for a cattleman — what was his name? . . . Spencer or somethin’. Anyway, he ran an X-Bar outfit, an’ he had a daughter. I was only sixteen an’ she was twenty. Red-headed girl! — Gosh, she was peaches an’ cream. About to marry a stock-buyer, a mean cuss, with lots of money. I didn’t want to get sweet on her — dog-gone it! She was to blame. Stockman’s name was Cheesbrough. Never will forget thet, because it was my callin’ him a big cheese thet led to the fight. He beat me somethin’ awful. Ted rode in, found me all bunged up. An’ he called Cheesbrough out an’ shot him. . . . I’ve never seen Ted since then. Thet’s what made me a roamin’, lonesome, grub-line rider.”
“Wal, yu must be hell on girls,” drawled Laramie, as he walked on, looking under the trees for his horse.
“I can’t help it if they like me,” declared Lonesome, stoutly. “An’ I couldn’t help lovin’ any girl to save my life. . . . This deal of Price’s yu mussed up — thet was all on account of a girl. Annie Lakin. She couldn’t read or write, but she was sure there on looks. Rancher up the draw three or four miles. Bruce Allson, a fine man to ride for when he was flush. But he’s been broke ever since thet big raid some rustlers worked awhile back. Annie is the daughter of Allson’s sister, who’d come to be housekeeper for him. Natural she upset the Triangle outfit. Price is foreman, an’ was loony over Annie. He had a chance, the boys said, till I rode along a few weeks ago. Thet fellow sure hated me. He’d done for me, too! Hung me! . . .”
“But how aboot Annie?” interposed Laramie.
“Thet girl! . . . I was sure sweet on her. Cross-eyed little skunk! Laramie, I don’t know if yu’ve had experience with girls, but I’m tellin’ yu they’re no good, as a rule. But I had one onct thet. . . . This Annie was crookeder than any rail fence yu ever seen in yore life, an’ just as sweet. She had all the boys on Allson’s ranch an’ everywhere daft about her. When I come — well, I was new an’ somethin’ to egg the other fellows along with. An’ all the time she was lettin’ Price make up to her! On the sly, thet was. But I queered his game if I didn’t do nothin’ else. . . . My Gawd! how thet kid could hug an’ kiss. An’ dance — say, I’ve seen her dance the whole outfit so done they couldn’t get their boots off.”
“Wal, then it’s not breakin’ yore heart much to leave heah?” went on Laramie.
“Not so terrible much, now I think of it. But I’d liked to have had a little money from Allson. I’m clean busted.”
“Yu’re welcome to some of mine. . . . Heah’s my hawse. I’d begun to worry thet he’d strayed up the draw.”
Laramie secured Wingfoot, and throwing blankets and saddle loosely over him, and the bridle round his neck, led off down the widening valley, with Mulhall beside him. Cottonwoods grew thickly here, and the stream was lined with green willows.
“Yore hoss is a little lame, Laramie,” observed Mulhall.
“Yes, thet’s what kept yu from havin’ a new hemp necktie. But he’s not so lame as he was. A night’s rest will make him fit again.”
“Travelin’ light, I see,” went on Lonesome.
“Light an’ hungry.”
“No grub atall?”
“Half a rabbit an’ some salt.”
Mulhall appeared frankly curious, and not without misgivings concerning this new-found friend; nevertheless he restrained his feelings.
“Let’s camp here,” he said, halting. “We’d have to come back up this draw, an’ it’s travel for nothin’. We can kill a couple of rabbits anywheres. Where yu headin’ for?”
“Just haidin’ away, Lonesome,” drawled Laramie.
“Ahuh! — I sure had a curl up my spine when I seen yu step out of them willows. . . . It’s a funny world. . . . By ridin’ forty miles tomorrow we can strike a cattle-camp. Next day Dodge.”
“Suits me. Haven’t hit Dodge for a couple of years,” rejoined Laramie, reminiscently.
“She’s a hummer these days.”
“If Dodge is any livelier than Abilene or Hays City, excuse me. . . . Pile off, Lonesome. We’ll camp heah an’ have some hot biscuits, applesauce, a lamb chop, an’ some coffee with cream.”
