Cow-Country Part 12

"Well, I'll just make sure they don't try out Smoke when I'm not looking," he decided, and slipped away in the dark.

By a roundabout way which avoided the trail he managed to reach the pasture fence without being seen. No horses grazed in sight, and he climbed through and went picking his way across the lumpy meadow in the starlight. At the farther side he found the horses standing out on a sandy ridge where the mosquitoes were not quite so pestiferous. The Little Lost horses snorted and took to their heels, his three following for a short distance.

Bud stopped and whistled a peculiar call invented long ago when he was just Buddy, and watched over the Tomahawk REMUDA. Every horse with the Tomahawk brand knew that summons--though not every horse would obey it. But these three had come when they were sucking colts, if Buddy whistled; and in their breaking and training, in the long trip north, they had not questioned its authority. They turned and trotted back to him now and nosed Bud's hands which he held out to them.

He petted them all and talked to them in an affectionate murmur which they answered by sundry lipnibbles and subdued snorts. Smoky he singled out finally, rubbing his back and sides with the flat of his hand from shoulder to flank, and so to the rump and down the thigh to the hock to the scanty fetlock which told, to those who knew, that here was an aristocrat among horses.

Smoky stood quiet, and Bud's hand lingered there, smoothing the slender ankle. Bud's fingers felt the fine-haired tail, then gave a little twitch. He was busy for a minute, kneeling in the sand with one knee, his head bent. Then he stood up, went forward to Smoky's head, and stood rubbing the horse's nose thoughtfully.

"I hate to do it, old boy--but I'm working to make's a home--we've got to work together. And I'm not asking any more of you than I'd be willing to do myself, if I were a horse and you were a man."

He gave the three horses a hasty pat apiece and started back across the meadow to the fence. They followed him like pet dogs--and when Bud glanced back over his shoulder he saw in the dim light that Smoky walked with a slight limp.

CHAPTER TWELVE: SPORT O' KINGS

Sunday happened to be fair, with not too strong a wind blowing. Before noon Little Lost ranch was a busy place, and just before dinner it became busier. Horse-racing seemed to be as popular a sport in the valley as dancing. Indeed, men came riding in who had not come to the dance. The dry creek-bed where the horses would run had no road leading to it, so that all vehicles came to Little Lost and remained there while the pa.s.sengers continued on foot to the races.

At the corral fresh shaven men, in clean shirts to distinguish this as a dress-up occasion, foregathered, looking over the horses and making bets and arguing. Pop shambled here and there, smoking cigarettes furiously and keeping a keen ear toward the loudest betting. He came sidling up to Bud, who was leading Smoky out of the stable, and his sharp eyes took in every inch of the horse and went inquiringly to Bud's face.

"Goin' to run him, young feller--lame as what he is?" he demanded sharply.

"Going to try, anyway," said Bud. "I've got a bet up on him, dad."

"Sho! Fixin' to lose, air ye? You kin call it off, like as not. Jeff ain't so onreason'ble 't he'd make yuh run a lame horse. Air yuh, Jeff?"

Jeff strolled up and looked Smoky over with critical eyes. "What's the matter? Ain't the kid game to run him? Looks to me like a good little goer."

"He's got a limp--but I'll run him anyway." Bud glanced up. "Maybe when he's warmed up he'll forget about it."

"Seen my Skeeter?"

"Good horse, I should judge," Bud observed indifferently. "But I ain't worrying any."

"Well, neither am I," Jeff grinned.

Pop stood teetering back and forth, plainly uneasy. "I'd rub him right good with liniment," he advised Bud. "I'll git some't I know ought t'

help."

"What's the matter, Pop? You got money up on that cayuse?" Jeff laughed.

Pop whirled on him. "I ain't got money up on him, no. But if he wasn't lame I'd have some! I'd show ye 't I admire gameness in a kid. I would so."

Jeff nudged his neighbor into laughter. "There ain't a gamer old bird in the valley than Pop," Jeff cried. "C'm awn, Pop, I'll bet yuh ten dollars the kid beats me!"

Pop was shuffling hurriedly out of the corral after the liniment. To Jeff's challenge he made no reply whatever. The group around Jeff shooed Smoky gently toward the other side of the corral, thereby convincing themselves of the limp in his right hind foot. While not so p.r.o.nounced as to be crippling, it certainly was no a.s.set to a running horse, and the wise ones conferred together in undertones.

"That there kid's a born fool," Dave Truman stated positively. "The horse can't run. He's got the look of a speedy little animal--but shucks! The kid don't know anything about running horses. I've been talking to him, and I know. Jeff, you're taking the money away from him if you run that race."

"Well, I'm giving the kid a chance to back out," Jeff hastened to declare. "He can put it off till his horse gits well, if he wants to. I ain't going to hold him to it. I never said I was."

"That's mighty kind of you," Bud said, coming up from behind with a bottle of liniment, and with Pop at his heels. "But I'll run him just the same. Smoky has favored this foot before, and it never seemed to hurt him any. You needn't think I'm going to crawfish. You must think I'm a whining cuss--say! I'll bet another ten dollars that I don't come in more than a neck behind, lame horse or not!"

"Now, kid, don't git chancey," Pop admonished uneasily. "Twenty-five is enough money to donate to Jeff."

"That's right, kid. I like your nerve," Jeff cut in, emphasizing his approval with a slap on Bud's shoulder as he bent to lift Smoky's leg.

"I've saw worse horses than this one come in ahead--it wouldn't be no sport o' kings if n.o.body took a chance."

"I'm taking chance enough," Bud retorted without looking up. "If I don't win this time I will the next, maybe."

"That's right," Jeff agreed heartily, winking broadly at the others behind Bud's back.

Bud rubbed Smoky's ankle with liniment, listened to various and sundry self-appointed advisers and, without seeming to think how the sums would total, took several other small bets on the race. They were small--Pop began to teeter back and forth and lift his shoulders and pull his beard--sure signs of perturbation.

"By Christmas, I'll just put up ten dollars on the kid," Pop finally cackled. "I ain't got much to lose--but I'll show yuh old Pop ain't going to see the young feller stand alone." He tried to catch Bud's eye, but that young man was busy saddling Smoky and returning jibe for jibe with the men around him, and did not glance toward Pop at all.

"I'll take this bottle in my pocket, Pop," he said with his back toward the old man, and mounted carelessly. "I'll ride him around a little and give him another good rubbing before we run. I'm betting," he added to the others frankly, "on the chance that exercise and the liniment will take the soreness out of that ankle. I don't believe it amounts to anything at all. So if any of you fellows want to bet--"

"Shucks! Don't go 'n-" Pop began, and bit the sentence in two, dropping immediately into a deep study. The kid was getting beyond Pop's understanding.

A crowd of perhaps a hundred men and women--with a generous sprinkling of unruly juveniles--lined the sheer bank of the creek-bed and watched the horses run, and screamed their cheap witticisms at the losers, and their approval of those who won. The youngster with the mysterious past and the foolhardiness to bet on a lame horse they watched and discussed, the women plainly wishing he would win--because he was handsome and young, and such a wonderful musician. The men were more cold-blooded.

They could not see that Bud's good looks or the haunting melody of his voice had any bearing whatever upon his winning a race. They called him a fool, and either refused to bet at all on such a freak proposition as a lame horse running against Skeeter, or bet against him. A few of the wise ones wondered if Jeff and his bunch were merely "stringing the kid along "; if they might not let him win a little, just to make him more "chancey." But they did not think it wise to bet on that probability.

While three races were being run Bud rode with the Little Lost men, and Smoky still limped a little. Jerry Myers, still self-appointed guardian of Bud, herded him apart and called him a fool and implored him to call the race off and keep his money in his own pocket.

Bud was thinking just then about a certain little woman who sat on the creek bank with a wide-brimmed straw hat shading her wonderful eyes, and a pair of little, high-arched feet tapping heels absently against the bank wall. Honey sat beside her, and a couple of the valley women whom Bud had met at the dance. He had ridden close and paused for a few friendly sentences with the quartette, careful to give Honey the attention she plainly expected. But it was not Honey who wore the wide hat and owned the pretty little feet. Bud pulled his thoughts back from a fruitless wish that he might in some way help that little woman whose trouble looked from her eyes, and whose lips smiled so bravely. He did not think of possession when he thought of her; it was the look in her eyes, and the slighting tones in which Honey spoke of her.

"Say, come alive! What yuh going off in a trance for, when I'm talking to yuh for your own good?" Jerry smiled whimsically, but his eyes were worried.

Bud pulled himself together and reined closer.

"Don't bet anything on this race, Jerry," he advised "Or if you do, don't bet on Skeeter. But--well, I'll just trade you a little advice for all you've given me. Don't bet!"

"What the h.e.l.l!" surprise jolted out of Jerry.

"It's my funeral," Bud laughed. "I'm a chancey kid, you see--but I'd hate to see you bet on me." He pulled up to watch the next race--four nervy little cow-horses of true range breeding, going down to the quarter post.

"They 're going to make false starts aplenty," Bud remarked after the first fluke. "Jeff and I have it out next. I'll just give Smoke another treatment." He dismounted, looked at Jerry undecidedly and slapped him on the knee. "I'm glad to have a friend like you," he said impulsively.

"There's a lot of two-faced sinners around here that would steal a man blind. Don't think I'm altogether a fool."

Jerry looked at him queerly, opened his mouth and shut it again so tightly that his jawbones stood out a little. He watched Bud bathing Smoky's ankle. When Bud was through and handed Jerry the bottle to keep for him, Jerry held him for an instant by the hand.

"Say, for Gawdsake don't talk like that promiscuous, Bud," he begged.

"You might hit too close--"

"Ay, Jerry! Ever hear that old Armenian proverb, 'He who tells the truth should have one foot in the stirrup'? I learned that in school."

Jerry let go Bud's hand and took the bottle, Bud's watch that had his mother's picture pasted in the back, and his vest, a pocket of which contained a memorandum of his wagers. Bud was stepping out of his chaps, and he looked up and grinned. "Cheer up, Jerry. You're going to laugh in a minute." When Jerry still remained thoughtful, Bud added soberly, "I appreciate you and old Pop standing by me. I don't know just what you've got on your mind, but the fact that there's something is hint enough for me." Whereupon Jerry's eyes lightened a little.