Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 970
“Say, I’d kinda like you even if you hadn’t saved my neck,” observed Lonesome, thoughtfully. “An’ for me to like a man is sure a compliment.”
They found a thicket with a little grass plot inside where they made beds.
“Reckon we better hunt some more meat,” said Laramie, when their tasks were done.
“I’ll go with you, Laramie. There ain’t a damn bit of use in my huntin’ alone. I can’t hit a flock of barns. An’ if I happened on to one of Price’s calves I’d run it down.”
So they set out together, stepping quietly and watching sharply. Lonesome sighted the first rabbit and as he drew Laramie closer to where it was squatting it hopped away. Laramie killed it on the move. Lonesome gasped his amazement, and thudding across the open space he picked up the kicking quarry.
“Top of his head gone!”
“Wal, shore thet was a lucky shot,” drawled Laramie, looking to his gun.
“I’m reservin’ opinions till I see you shoot again. But I’ve the same hunch Price must have had.”
“An’ what’s thet, Lonesome?”
“It ain’t wise to try to throw a gun on some men,” returned Mulhall, his eyes bright and keen.
“Thet’s so,” admitted Laramie. “I’ve met a few I’d hate to have tried it on.”
“Humph. Who, for instance?” asked Lonesome, as he took out a knife to skin the rabbit.
“Buck Duane, Wess Harkin’, King Fisher — to mention three.”
“All Texans. Ain’t there any other Westerners quick on the draw?”
“Heaps of them, if yu can believe range talk. Wild Bill Hickok shore is one. I seen him kill five men all in a row. Thet was at Hays City.”
“He’s sheriff over at Hays. We won’t go . . . Look! Another rabbit. He’s stoppin’ under thet bushy cottonwood. By the little bush. . . . Laramie, if you hit him from here I’ll — —”
Laramie espied the rabbit and interrupted Mulhall with a quick shot. This one flopped over without a kick.
“Dog-gone! I’m shootin’ lucky today. Reckon it’s because I’m so hungry,” said Laramie, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Ahuh. So I see,” rejoined Lonesome, sagely.
They went back to camp, where Lonesome busied himself in the task of dressing the rabbits for broiling. He declared frankly that he was a first rate camp cook. He built a hot fire and let it burn down to a bed of red coals. Then, having spitted the rabbits on clean whittled willow sticks, he broiled them close to the coals, by turning them over and over.
Laramie watched him covertly. How many boys like Lonesome had he seen enter and exit on the hard stage of the range! Lonesome had the qualities to make him liked around a cow-camp, but scarely those that might insure his survival. He was easy, careless, amiable, probably a drifter and perhaps not above the evils of the outdoor life. Still, he did not show any signs of being addicted to liquor — that bane of riders. Laramie felt a strange pleasure in having saved his neck and in his presence now. Long years had Laramie been a lone wolf. By this experience he was brought face to face with the fact of his loneliness.
“Come an’ get it, Laramie,” called Lonesome. “An’ dig up your bag of salt. We could fare worse.”
“Done to a brown,” declared Laramie as he took the spitted rabbit tendered him. It had a most persuasive scent.
Whereupon the two sat cross-legged on the grass and enjoyed their meal. Lonesome, however, showed his improvident character by eating all of his rabbit while Laramie again saved half of his.
Meanwhile sunset had come and the grove of cottonwoods was a place of color and beauty. A tiny brook tinkled by under a grassy bank; mockingbirds were singing off somewhere in the distance; a raven croaked overhead. The grass shone like black-barred gold and there was a redness in the west. Tranquil, lonely, and sad, the end of day roused feelings in Laramie that had rendered his breast heavy many a time before.
“Nice place for a little ranch,” he said, presently.
“Ain’t it, though? I was just thinkin’ thet. A bunch of cattle, some good hosses, plenty of wood, water, an’ grass — a home. . . . Heigho! . . . It’s a hell of a life if you don’t weaken.”
Laramie had touched on a sensitive chord in his companion’s heart. Somehow this simple fact seemed to draw them closer together, in a community of longing, if no more.
“Wal, when yu said home yu said a heap, boy. . . . Home! Thet means a woman — a wife.”
“Sure. But I never got so far in reckonin’ as thet,” replied Lonesome, thoughtfully.
“Lonesome, why don’t yu marry one of these girls yu swear bob up heah an’ there?”
“My Gawd! What an idear! . . . Thet’s one thing thet never struck me before,” ejaculated Mulhall, profoundly stirred, and his homely young face was good to see on the moment.
“Wal, since it has struck yu now, how about it?” went on Laramie.
Lonesome threw his rabbit bones away in a violence of contention, with alluring but impossible ideas.
“Marry some girl? On this range — this lone prairee where the wind howls down the wolves? Where there ain’t any girls or any cabins for the takin’. When a poor rider can’t hold a steady job. . . . When — Aw, hell, Laramie, what’s the use talkin’.”
“Wal, I wasn’t puttin’ the difficulties before yu, but just the idee.”
“Ahuh. I wisht you hadn’t. I’ve got a weak place in me. Never knowed what it was. But thet’s it.”
“Like to have a corner to work on — a homestead where every turn of a spade was for yoreself — where every calf an’ colt added to yore ranch? Thet how it strikes yu?”
“Sure. I’ve got pioneer blood. Most of us riders have. But only a few of us beat red liquor, gamblin’-hells, loose wimmin, ropes an’ guns.”
“Yu said somethin’ to think about,” mused Laramie.
“Laramie, have you beat them things?”
“I reckon, except mebbe guns — an’ I’ve done tolerable well about them.”
“I take it you’re ridin’ a grub-line, same as I have to now?”
“Shore. But more, Lonesome. I’m ridin’ out of this country. Colorado for me, or New Mexico — mebbe even Arizona.”
“Laramie, if I ain’t too personal — air you on the dodge?”
“Nope. I’ve a clean slate,” retorted Laramie, with the curtness of the Southerner.
“I’m thunderin’ glad to hear thet,” burst out Lonesome, as if relieved. “I wisht to Gawd I had the nerve to ask you — Aw! never mind. My feelin’s run away with me at times.”
“Ask me what, Lonesome?” queried Laramie. “I’ll lend yu some money, if yu want it.”
“Money, hell! You’re good to offer, knowin’ it’d never be paid back. . . . I meant to let me ride with you out of this flat Kansas prairie — away off some place where you can get on a hill.”
“Wal, why not? If yu’ll take a chance on me I will on yu.”
Lonesome strangled a wild eagerness. The light in his eyes then decided Laramie upon the real deeper possibility of this lad.
“But I’m no good, Laramie, no good atall,” he burst out. “I can ride, I like cattle, I ain’t lazy, an’ I’m a good camp cook. But thet lets me out.”
“How about whisky?”
“Haven’t had a drink for six months an’ don’t care a damn if I never have another. I’m a pore gambler, too, an’ a wuss shot. Reckon I’m some punkins with the girls. But where’d thet ever get a fellow?”
“Lonesome, all yu say ‘pears a pretty good reference, if I needed any.”
“But you heard Price accuse me of rustlin’. . . . It’s true. . . . An’ thet wasn’t the first time by a darn sight.” Lonesome evidently found this confession a shameful thing to make. No doubt Laramie had roused a respect which drove him to be loyal to the best in himself.
“Boy, it’s only the last couple of years thet cattlemen have counted haids. An’ it’s no crime to kill a beef to eat,” rejoined Laramie.
“But, Laramie, it ain’t only cattle,” rushed on Lonesome, hoarsely. “I — I got an itch to — to approperate any damn thing thet ain’t tied down.”
Laramie laughed at the boy’s distress, not at the content of his confession.
“Wal, then, all the more reason for somebody to look after yu,” he replied.
“By thunder! I told you, an’ thet’s more’n I ever did before,” declared Mulhall, in the righteousness of sacrifice. “But I ain’t guaranteein’ no more. . . . I’m afraid I’m just no good atall.”
“Yu make me sick,” replied Laramie, with severity. “Hidin’ facts about yore people — talkin’ about wantin’ a girl, a ranch, a home, an’ all thet. Then in yore next breath tryin’ to make yoreself out a low-down thief! I cain’t believe both, an’ I choose to believe the first.”
“Gawd only knows what a pard like you might do for me! . . . But I’ve told you, Laramie, I’ve told you.”
“Shore. An’ as likeable a boy as yu must turn out a straight shooter. Yu’ll have to if yu trail with me. Let’s go to bed, Lonesome.”
Long after dark, and after his companion had fallen asleep Laramie lay awake, vaguely pleased with himself and more than usually given to hopeful speculations as to the future.
CHAPTER II
LATE IN THE afternoon of the second day Laramie and Lonesome rode into Dodge, the wide-open cattle town of the frontier.
They had gotten only far enough down the wide main street to see through the clouds of dust the vehicles, horses, and throng of men that showed Dodge was having one of its big days — the arrival of trail drivers with their herds from Texas.
A voice called: “Lonesome! Lonesome Mulhall!”
The owner of that name stiffened in his saddle while he reined his horse. “Laramie, did you hear some one call my name?” queried Lonesome, incredulously.
“I shore did,” replied Laramie, halting beside Lonesome to gaze up and down and across the street.
“Gosh! I reckoned I had the willies. . . . Somebody knows me, Laramie, sure as I’m the onluckiest — —”
“Lonesome! For Gawd’s sake — is it you?” called the voice, husky of accent.
Laramie located whence it came. “Come, Lonesome, an’ don’t make a yell. . . . Looks like a jail to me. Shore wasn’t heah on my last visit to Dodge. The town’s growin’.”
On the nearer side of the street a solid-looking squat structure had a small window with iron bars across it. Between those bars peered out a pale face from which piercing black eyes fastened upon Lonesome. It required no more than that to acquaint Laramie with the likelihood of their having found the much-talked-of Tracks Williams, Lonesome’s one-time partner.
They rode up to the window, which was about on a level with their heads as they sat mounted. Lonesome had not let out the yelp Laramie had anticipated, a fact that attested to deeper emotion than Laramie had given him credit for. But his face had paled, and his chin wabbled.
“Don’t you know me, pard?” came from the window.
“You, Tracks! . . . Alive? . . . Aw, I’m thankin’ the good Lord! I reckoned you was dead.”
“I’m damn near dead and I will be soon if you don’t get me out of here,” replied the other, bitterly. Laramie saw a handsome thin white face, lighted by eyes black as night and sharp as daggers. Black locks hung dishevelled over a fine brow and a thin downy beard bespoke youthful years.
“You locked in?” queried Lonesome, swiftly.
“Yes, with a lot of lousy greasers and drunken cow-punchers.”
“It’s a jail, huh?”
“Do you think it’s a ballroom? . . . Who’s your riding pardner?”
“He hails from the Handle, Tracks,” answered Lonesome, as he turned to his friend. “Laramie, stick your hand in there an’ shake with my old pard, Tracks Williams.”
Laramie did as bidden. “Hod do. I cain’t say I’m glad to meet yu in heah, but I would be if yu was out.”
“Are you Mulhall’s friend?” came the eager query.
Laramie was about to admit this when Lonesome burst out, vehemently: “Tracks, he saved my neck. I was about to be swung up. We’re ridin’ away from Kansas.”
“Don’t ride away without me,” implored Williams.
“Huh! Did you have any idee we would?” grunted Lonesome, fiercely. “Not if we have to wipe this here Dodge off the map.”
“Lonesome, don’t waste time. Let me talk,” replied Laramie, who could see through the window that other inmates were listening. “What’re yu in for?”
“Not a damn thing,” declared Williams, with passion. “Wasn’t in any shooting fray, nor drunk, nor anything. It’s an outrage. Sheriff and his deputies made a raid to lock up a lot of newcomers. And I happened to be one.”
“Wal, we’ll get yu out one way or another,” declared Laramie.
“Come back after dark with a pick or crowbar. You can dig a hole through this wall in ten minutes.”
“What’d be the best time?”
“Any time after night. The guard leaves us here and goes into the saloon. We’d broke out long ago if we had anything.”
“Look for us about middle of supper time,” whispered Laramie, his sharp ears and eyes vigilant. A moment later a heavily armed man appeared around the corner.
“What you doin’ at thet winder?” he demanded.
“Howdy, officer. We was ridin’ by an’ some one begged for a cigarette. I was about to pass some makin’s in,” replied Laramie, his hand on his breast pocket, where the little bag of tobacco lay.
“So long’s you let me see you do it,” returned the guard.
Whereupon Laramie passed his tobacco-pouch in with the words: “There yu are, cow-puncher. Hope yu get out soon. Good luck an’ so long.”
He and Lonesome rode on up the street, and when they had reached a safe distance Lonesome breathed low: “Say, Laramie, but you are a quick-witted cuss. I was about to throw a gun on thet guard.”
“Think twice before yu do anythin’, now yu’re with me,” replied Laramie, sharply. “Let’s get our haids together. We’ll need another hawse, saddle, bridle, an’ such. Some grub an’ water, for we’ll have to rustle out of heah pronto. Also somethin’ to break a hole in thet wall.”
Before they reached the busy section of Dodge, inquiry led them up a side street to a stable and corral maintained for incoming riders. Bargaining for an extra horse with equipment took but a few moments. While Laramie paid for this and feed for the horses, Lonesome went sauntering around. Upon his return Laramie gathered from his bright wink that he had hit upon something interesting or useful.
“Leave the hawses heah in the corral. We’ll be rustlin’ out before sunup,” said Laramie.
“Ain’t youse a-goin’ to paint the town?” queried the stableman, with a grin.
“Shore. But thet takes us only one night. . . . Come on, pard, let’s rustle some fodder for ourselves.”
They made for the main street, boots scraping and spurs jangling, after the manner of riders unused to walking.
“Wal, do we hunt up a hardware store?” drawled Laramie.
“Nix. I spotted tools under thet open shed. We’ll approperate a couple of them,” replied Lonesome, grinning.
“Lonesome, this heah approperatin’ habit of yorn worries me,” declared Laramie, humorously.
“It ain’t no habit. It’s a disease.”
“Wal, whatever it is yu must curb it. Thet cowman at the camp last night — he was shore decent. An’ right under his nose yu stole his tobacco-pouch.”
“Aw, not stole.”
“Dog-gone-yu. Thet’s what he’d say. If we ever fall into respectable company yu’ll disgrace us.”
“No fear then. . . . Gosh! you can’t see the town for the dust. Regular roarin’ place, this Dodge. No wonder Tracks got run in.”
“Let’s buy a canvas bag to pack grub in, an’ a couple of water-bottles,” suggested Laramie.
They sallied into a merchandise store, where they made more purchases than Laramie had bargained for. Manifestly being in town went to Lonesome’s head. It was dusk when they arrived back at the corral with their supplies. The stableman evidently had locked up his stable for the night. While Laramie filled the canvas water-bottles at the watering-trough, Lonesome went to secure some tools. He came jingling back almost immediately.
“Got a pick an’ a crowbar,” he announced, highly elated. “We can bust thet jail wide open in a jiffy.”
“Hide ’em along the corral fence,” replied Laramie. “I shore hope this heah job doesn’t land us in jail.”
“Now I’ve found Tracks, I’d rather be with him, in jail or out.”
“Wal, I can appreciate thet,” rejoined Laramie, dryly. “But if it’s all the same to yu we’ll stay out.”
They returned to the main street and approached the center of the great stock town. Lights shone yellow through the dust. Wagons and riders were on the move. Lonesome wanted to walk on forever, but Laramie dragged him into a restaurant. Only a few customers were there, which was fortunate for the two riders, as by the time their meal was served to them the place had filled up with a noisy throng of teamsters, cow-punchers, trail drivers and ranch hands, with a sprinkling of hard-looking individuals whose calling Laramie had his doubts about. Their conversation was loud, punctuated by guffaws, and the content was movement and sale of cattle, and the excitement of Dodge.
Laramie had to drag Lonesome out of the eating-hall. By now the dust had settled and the main street was no longer obscured. Not so many pedestrians passed to and fro. But the saloons, restaurants, and dance-halls were already roaring.
“Wal, Dodge is a sight tamer than she used to be,” was Laramie’s comment.
“She’s wild enough for me,” declared Lonesome, halting in front of a wide-open palace of iniquity. “Gosh! it’s sure good we can’t linger in this burg. . . . Look at them pale-faced black-coated gamblin’ gents. They wouldn’t fleece us, not atall. An’ look — —”
“Come on, yu tenderfoot,” interrupted Laramie, dragging him on.
“Tenderfoot! Me? — Say, thet’s a good one.”
