Cow-Country Part 22

Mrs. Hanson was talking to herself when she went to her milk pans, and Bud released Eddie Collier, guessing how humiliating it must be to be a young fellow pinned into a blanket with safety pins, and knowing from certain experiences of his own that humiliation is quite as apt to breed trouble as any other emotion.

Eddie sat up on the edge of the bed and stared at Bud. His eyes were like Marian's in shape and color, but their expression was suspicion, defiance, and watchfulness blended into one compelling stare that spelled Fear. Or so Bud read it, having trapped animals of various grades ever since he had caught the "HAWNTOAD", and seen that look many, many times in the eyes of his catch.

"How'd you like to take a trip with me--as a kind of a partner?" Bud began carelessly, pulling a splinter off the homemade bed for which Mrs.

Hanson would not thank him--and beginning to whittle it to a sharp point aimlessly, as men have a way of doing when their minds are at work upon a problem which requires--much constructive thinking.

"Pardner in what?" Eddie countered sullenly.

"Pardner in what I am planning to do to make money. I can make money, you know--and stay on friendly terms with the sheriff, too. That's better than your bunch has been able to do. I don't mind telling you--it's stale news, I guess--that I cleaned up close to twelve thousand dollars in less than a month, off a working capital of three thoroughbred horses and about sixty dollars cash. And I'll add the knowledge that I was playing against men that would slip a cold deck if they played solitaire, they were so crooked. And if that doesn't recommend me sufficiently, I'll say I'm a deputy sheriff of Crater County, and Jesse c.u.mmings knows my past. I want to hire you to go with me and make some money, and I'll pay you forty a month and five per cent bonus on my profits at the end of two years. The first year may not show any profits, but the second year will. How does it sound to you?"

He had been rolling a cigarette, and now he offered the "makings" to Ed, who accepted them mechanically, his eyes still staring hard at Bud. He glanced toward the door and the one little window where wild cuc.u.mber vines were thickly matted, and Bud interpreted his glance.

"Lew and another Catrocker--the one that tried to rope me down in the Sinks--are dead, and three more are in jail. Business won't be very brisk with the Catrock gang for a while."

"If you're trying to bribe me into squealing on the rest, you're a d.a.m.n fool," said Eddie harshly. "I ain't the squealing kind. You can lead me over to jail first. I'd rather take my chances with the others." He was breathing hard when he finished.

"Rather than work for me?" Bud sliced off the sharp point which he had so carefully whittled, and began to sharpen a new one. Eddie watched him fascinatedly.

"Rather than squeal on the bunch. There's no other reason in G.o.d's world why you'd make me an offer like that. I ain't a fool quite, if my head does run up to a peak."

Bud chewed his lip, whittled, and finally threw the splinter away. When he turned toward Eddie his eyes were shiny.

"Kid, you're breaking your sister's heart, following this trail. I'd like to see you give her a chance to speak your name without blinking back tears. I'd like to see her smile all the way from her dimples to her eyes when she thinks of you. That's why I made the offer--that and because I think you'd earn your wages."

Eddie looked at him, looked away, staring vacantly at the wall. His eyelashes were blinking very fast, his lip began to tremble. "You--I--I never wanted to--I ain't worth saving--oh, h.e.l.l! I never had a chance before--" He dropped sidewise on the bed, buried his face in his arms and sobbed hoa.r.s.ely, like the boy he was.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: BUD RIDES THROUGH CATROCK AND LOSES MARIAN

"You'll have to show me the trail, pardner," said Bud when they were making their way cautiously out of town by way of the tin can suburbs.

"I could figure out the direction all right, and make it by morning; but seeing you grew up here, I'll let you pilot."

"You'll have to tell me where you want to go, first," said Eddie with a good deal of sullenness still in his voice.

"Little Lost." Without intending to do so, Bud put a good deal of meaning in his voice.

Eddie did not say anything, but veered to the right, climbing higher on the slope than Bud would have gone. "We can take the high trail," he volunteered when they stopped to rest the horses. "It takes up over the summit and down Burroback Valley. It's longer, but the stage road edges along the Sinks and--it might be rough going, after we get down a piece."

"How about the side-hill trail, through Catrock Peak?"

Eddie turned sharply. In the starlight Bud was watching him, wondering what he was thinking.

"How'd you get next to any side-hill trail?" Eddie asked after a minute.

"You been over it?"

"I surely have. And I expect to go again, to-nigh! A young fellow about your size is going to act a pilot, and get me to Little Lost as quick as possible. It'll be daylight at that."

"If you got another day coming, it better be before daylight we get there," Eddie retorted glumly. H hesitated, turned his horse and led the way down the slope, angling down away from the well-travelled trail over the summit of Gold Gap.

That hesitation told Bud, without words, how tenuous was his hold upon Eddie. He possessed sufficient imagination to know that his own carefully discipline past, sheltered from actual contact with evil, had given him little enough by which to measure the soul of a youth like Eddie Collier.

How long Eddie had supped and slept with thieves and murderers, Bud could only guess. From the little that Marian had told him, Eddie's father had been one of the gang. At least, she had plainly stated that he and Lew had been partners--though Collier might have been ranching innocently enough, and ignorant of Lew's real nature.

At all events, Eddie was a lad well schooled in inequity such as the wilderness fosters in st.u.r.dy fashion. Wide s.p.a.ces give room for great virtues and great wickedness. Bud felt that he was betting large odds on an unknown quant.i.ty. He was placing himself literally in the hands of an acknowledged Catrocker, because of the clean gaze of a pair of eyes, the fine curve of the mouth.

For a long time they rode without speech. Eddie in the lead, Bud following, alert to every little movement in the sage, every little sound of the night. That was what we rather naively call "second nature", habit born of Bud's growing years amongst dangers which every pioneer family knows. Alert he was, yet deeply dreaming; a tenuous dream too sweet to come true, he told himself; a dream which he never dared to dream until the cool stars, and the little night wind began to whisper to him that Marian was free from the brute that had owned her. He scarcely dared think of it yet. Shyly he remembered how he had held her hand to give her courage while they rode in darkness; her poor work-roughened little hand, that had been old when he took it first, and had warmed in his clasp. He remembered how he had pressed her hands together when they parted--why, surely it was longer ago than last night!--and had kissed them reverently as he would kiss the fingers of a queen.

"h.e.l.l's too good for Lew Morris," he blurted unexpectedly, the thought of Marian's bruised cheek coming like a blow.

"Want to go and tell him so? If you don't yuh better shut up," Eddie whispered fierce warning. "You needn't think all the Catrockers are dead or in jail. They's a few left and they'd kill yuh quicker'n they'd take a drink."

Bud, embarra.s.sed at the emotion behind his statement, rather than ashamed of the remark itself, made no reply.

Much as Eddie desired silence, he himself pulled up and spoke again when Bud had ridden close.

"I guess you come through the Gap," he whispered. "They's a shorter way than that--Sis don't know it. It's one the bunch uses a lot--if they catch us--I can save my hide by makin' out I led you into a trap. You'll get yours, anyway. How much sand you got?"

Bud leaned and spat into the darkness. "Not much. Maybe enough to get through this scary short-cut of yours."

"You tell the truth when you say scary. It's so darn crazy to go down Catrock Canyon maybe they won't think we'd tackle it. And if they catch us, I'll say I led yuh in--and then--say, I'm kinda bettin' on your luck. The way you cleaned up on them horses, maybe luck'll stay with you. And I'll help all I can, honest."

"Fine." Bud reached over and closed his fingers around Eddie's thin, boyish arm. "You didn't tell me yet why the other trail isn't good enough."

"I heard a sound in the Gap tunnel, that's why. You maybe didn't know what it was. I know them echoes to a fare-ye-well. Somebody's there--likely posted waiting." He was motionless for a s.p.a.ce, listening.

"Get off-easy. Take off your spurs." Eddie was down, whispering eagerly to Bud. "There's a draft of air from the blow-holes that comes this way.

Sound comes outa there a lot easier than it goes in. Sis and I found that out. Lead your horse--if they jump us, give him a lick with the quirt and hide in the brush."

Like Indians the two made their way down a rambling slope not far from where Marian had guided Bud. To-night, however, Eddie led the way to the right instead of the left, which seemed to Bud a direction that would bring them down Oldman creek, that dry river bed, and finally, perhaps, to the race track.

Eddie never did explain just how he made his way through a maze of water-cut pillars and heaps of sandstone so bewildering that Bud afterward swore that in spite of the fact that he was leading Sunfish, he frequently found himself at that patient animal's tail, where they were doubled around some freakish pillar. Frequently Eddie stopped and peered past his horse to make sure that Bud had not lost the trail.

And finally, because he was no doubt worried over that possibility, he knotted his rope to his saddle horn, brought back a length that reached a full pace behind the tail of the horse, and placed the end in Bud's hand.

"If yuh lose me you're a goner," he whispered. "So hang onto that, no matter what comes. And don't yuh speak to me. This is h.e.l.l's corral and we're walking the top trail right now." He made sure that Bud had the loop in his hand, then slipped back past his horse and went on, walking more quickly.

Bud admitted afterwards that he was perfectly willing to be led like a tame squirrel around the top of "h.e.l.l's corral", whatever that was. All that Bud saw was an intricate a.s.sembly of those terrific pillars, whose height he did not know, since he had no time to glance up and estimate the distance. There was no method, no channel worn through in anything that could be called a line. Whatever primeval torrent had honeycombed the ledge had left it so before ever its waters had formed a straight pa.s.sage through. How Eddie knew the way he could only conjecture, remembering how he himself had ridden devious trails down on the Tomahawk range when he was a boy. It rather hurt his pride to realize that never had he seen anything approaching this madman's trail.

Without warning they plunged into darkness again. Darkness so black that Bud knew they had entered another of those mysterious, subterranean pa.s.sages which had created such names as abounded in the country: the "Sinks", "Little Lost", and Sunk River itself which disappeared mysteriously. He was beginning to wonder with a grim kind of humor if he himself was not about to follow the example of the rivers and disappear, when the soft padding of their footfalls blurred under the whistling of wind. Fine particles of sand stung him, a blast full against him halted him for a second. But the rope pulled steadily and he went on, half-dragged into starlight again.

They were in a canyon; deep, sombre in its night shadows, its width made known to him by the strip of starlight overhead. Directly before them, not more than a hundred yards, a light shone through a window.

The rope slackened in his hands, and Eddie slipped back to him shivering a little as Bud discovered when he laid a hand on his arm.

"I guess I better tie yuh--but it won't be so yuh can't shoot. Get on, and let me tie your feet into the stirrups. I--I guess maybe we can get past, all right--I'll try--I want to go and take that job you said you'd give me!"

"What's the matter, son? Is that where the Catrockers hang out?" Bud swung into the saddle. "I trust you, kid. You're her brother."

"I--I want to live like Sis wants me to. But I've got to tie yuh, Mr.