Cow-Country Part 25

In his heart Bud thanked Little Lost for that hidden path through the bushes. He heard Dave asking Honey what was the matter with her, heard the unwomanly reply of the girl, heard her curse Pop for his neglect of the kitchen stove at that hour of the morning. Heard, too, her questioning of Dave. Had they found Bud, or Marian?

"If you got 'em together, and didn't string 'em both up to the nearest tree--"

Bud bit his lip and went on, his face aflame with rage at the brutishness of a girl he had half respected. "Honey!" he whispered contemptuously. "What a name for that little beast!"

At the rocks Eddie was waiting with Stopper, upon whom they hurriedly packed the beds and Bud's luggage. They spoke in whispers when they spoke at all, and to insure the horse's remaining quiet Eddie had tied a cotton rope snugly around its muzzle.

"I'll take Pop," Bud whispered, but Jerry shook his head and once more shouldered the old fellow as he would carry a bag of grain. So they slipped back down the trail, took a turn which Bud did not know, and presently Bud found that Jerry was keeping straight on. Bud made an Indian sign on the chance that Jerry would understand it, and with his free hand Jerry replied. He was taking Pop somewhere. They were to wait for him when they had reached the horses. So they separated for a s.p.a.ce.

"This is sure a great country for hideouts, Mr. Birnie," Eddie ventured when they had put half a mile between themselves and Little Lost, and had come upon Smoky, Sunfish and Eddie's horse feeding quietly in a tiny, spring-watered basin half surrounded with rocks. "If you know the country you can keep dodgin' sheriffs all your life--if you just have grub enough to last."

"Looks to me as if there aren't many wasted opportunities here," Bud answered with some irony. "Is there an honest man in the whole country, Ed? I'd just like to know."

Eddie hesitated, his eyes anxiously trying to read Bud's meaning and his mood. "Not right around the Sinks, I guess," he replied truthfully. "Up at Crater there are some, and over to Jumpoff. But I guess this valley would be called pretty tough, all right. It's so full of caves and queer places it kinda attracts the ones that want to hide out." Then he grinned. "It's lucky for you it's like that, Mr. Birnie, or I don't see how you'd get away. Now I can show you how to get clear away from here without getting caught. But I guess we ought to have breakfast first.

I'm pretty hungry. Ain't you? I can build a fire against that crack in the ledge over there, and the smoke will go away back underneath so it won't show. There's a blow-hole somewhere that draws smoke like a chimney."

Jerry came after a little, sniffing bacon. He threw himself down beside the fire and drew a long breath. "That old skunk's heavier than what you might think," he observed whimsically. "I packed him down into one of them sink holes and untied his feet and left him to scramble out best way he can. It'll take him longer'n it took me. Having the use of your hands helps quite a lot. And the use of your mouth to cuss a little.

But he'll make it in an hour or two--I'm afraid." He looked at Bud, a half-shamed tenderness in his eyes. "It sure was hard to leave him like I did. It was like walking on your toes past a rattler curled up asleep somewhere, afraid you might spoil his nap. Only Pop wasn't asleep."

He sat up and reached his hand for a cup of coffee which Eddie was offering. "Anyway, I had the fun of telling the old devil what I thought about him," he added, and blew away the steam and took another satisfying nip.

"He'll put them on our trail, I suppose," said Bud, biting into a ragged piece of bread with a half-burned slice of hot bacon on it.

"When he gets to the ranch he will. His poison fangs was sure loaded when I left. He said he wanted to cut your heart out for robbing him, and so forth, ad swearum. We'd best not leave any trail."

"We ain't going to," Eddie a.s.sured him eagerly. "I'm glad being with the Catrockers is going to do some good, Mr. Birnie. It'll help you git away, and that'll help find Sis. I guess she hit down where you live, maybe. How far can your horse travel to-day--if he has to?"

Bud looked across to where Sunfish, having rolled in a wet spot near the spring and muddied himself to his satisfaction, was greedily at work upon a patch of gra.s.s. "If he has to, till he drops in his tracks. And that won't be for many a mile, kid. He's thoroughbred; a thoroughbred never knows when to quit."

"Well, there ain't any speedy trail ahead of us today," Eddie vouchsafed cheeringly. "There's half-a mile maybe where we can gallop, and the rest is a case of picking your footing."

"Let's begin picking it, then," said Bud, and got up, reaching for his bridle.

By devious ways it was that Eddie led them out of that sinister country surrounding the Sinks. In the beginning Bud and Jerry exchanged glances, and looked at their guns, believing that it would be through Catrock Canyon they would have to ride. Eddie, riding soberly in the lead, had yet a certain youthful sense of his importance. "They'll never think of following yuh this way, unless old Pop Truman gits back in time to tell 'em I'm travelling with yuh," he observed once when they had penetrated beyond the neighborhood of caves and blow-holes and were riding safely down a canyon that offered few chances of their being observed save from the front, which did not concern them.

"I guess you don't know old Pop is about the ringeader of the Catrockers. Er he was, till he began to git kinda childish about h.o.a.rding money, and then Dave stepped in. And Mr. Birnie, I guess you'd have been dead when you first came there, if it hadn't been that Dave and Pop wanted to give you a chance to get a lot of money off of Jeff's bunch. Lew was telling how you kept cleaning up, and he said right along that they was taking too much risk having you around. Lew said he bet you was a detective. Are you, Mr. Birnie?"

Bud was riding with his shoulders sagged forward, his thoughts with Marian--wherever she was. He had been convinced that she was not at Little Lost, that she had started for Laramie. But now that he was away from that evil spot his doubts returned. What if she were still in the neighborhood--what if they found her? Memory of Honey's vindictiveness made him shiver, Honey was the kind of woman who would kill.

"I am, from now on, kid," he said despondently. "We're going to ride till we find your sister. And if those h.e.l.l-hounds got her--"

"They didn't, from the way Honey talked," Jerry comforted. "We'll find her at Laramie, don't you ever think we won't!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: TRAILS END

At the last camp, just north of the Platte, Bud's two black sheep balked. Bud himself, worn by sleepless nights and long hours in the saddle, turned furiously when Jerry announced that he guessed he and Ed wouldn't go any farther.

"Well, d.a.m.n you both for ungrateful hounds!" grated Bud, hurt to the quick. "I hope you don't think I brought you this far to help hold me in the saddle; I made it north alone, without any mishap. I think I could have come back all right. But if you want to quit here, all right. You can high-tail it back to your outlaws--"

"Well, if you go 'n put it that way!" Jerry expostulated, lifting both hands high in the air in a vain attempt to pull the situation toward the humorous. "You're a depity sheriff, and you got the drop." He grinned, saw that Bud's eyes were still hard and his mouth unyielding, and lowered his hands, looking crestfallen as a kicked pup that had tried to be friendly.

"You can see for yourself we ain't fit to go 'n meet your mother and your father like we was--like we'd went straight," Eddie put in explanatorily. "You've been raised good, and--say, it makes a man want to BE good to see how a feller don't have to be no preacher to live right. But it don't seem square to let you take us right home with you, just because you're so darned kind you'd do it and never think a thing about it. We ain't ungrateful--I know I ain't. But--but--"

"The kid's said it, Bud," Jerry came to the rescue. "We come along because it was a ticklish trip you had ahead. And I've knowed as good riders as you are, that could stand a little holding in the saddle when some freak had tried to shoot 'em out of it. But you're close to home now and you don't need us no more, and so we ain't going to horn in on the prodigal calf's milkbucket. Marian, She's likely there--"

"If Sis ain't with your folks we'll hunt her up," Eddie interrupted eagerly. "Sis is your kind--she--she's good enough for yuh, Bud, and I hope she--ll--well if she's got any sense she will--well, if it comes to the narrying point, I--well, darn it, I'd like to see Sis git as good a man as you are!" Eddie, having bluntered that far, went headlong as if he were afraid to stop. "Sis is educated, and she's an awful good singer and a fine girl, only I'm her brother. But I'm going to live honest from now on, Bud, and I hope you won't hold off on account of me. I ain't going to have sis feel like crying when she thinks about me!

You--you--said something that hurt like a knife, Bud, when you told me that, up in Crater. And she wasn't to blame for marryn' Lew--and she done that outa goodness, the kind you showed to Jerry and me. And we don't want to go spoilin' everything by letting your folks see what you're bringin' home with yuh! And it might hurt Sis with your folks, if they found out that I'm--"

Bud had been standing by his horse, looking from one to the other, listening, watching their faces, measuring the full depth of their manhood. "Say! you remind me of a story the folks tell on me," he said, his eyes shining, while his voice strove to make light of it all. "Once, when I was a kid in pink-ap.r.o.ns, I got lost from the trail-herd my folks were bringing up from Texas. It was comin' dark, and they had the whole outfit out hunting me, and everybody scared to death. When they were all about crazy, they claim I came walking up to the camp-fire dragging a dead snake by the tail, and carrying a horn toad in my shirt, and claiming they were mine because I 'ketched 'em.' I'm not branding that yarn with any moral--but figure it out for yourself, boys."

The two looked at each other and grinned. "I ain't dead yet," Eddie made sheepish comment. "Mebbe you kinda look on me as being a horn toad, Bud."

"When you bear in mind that my folks raised that kid, You'll realize that it takes a good deal to stampede mother." Bud swung into the saddle to avoid subjecting his emotions to the cramped, inadequate limitations of speech. "Let's go, boys. She's a long trail to take the kinks out of before supper-time."

They stood still, making no move to follow. Bud reined Smoky around so that he faced them, reached laboriously into that mysterious pocket of a cowpuncher's trousers which is always held closed by the belt of his chaps, and which invariably holds in its depths the things he wants in a hurry. They watched him curiously, resolutely refusing to interpret his bit of autobiography, wondering perhaps why he did not go.

"Here she is." Bud had disinterred the deputy sheriff's badge, and began to polish it by the primitive but effectual method of spitting on it and then rubbing vigorously on his sleeve. "You're outside of Crater County, but by thunder you're both guilty of resisting an officer, and county lines don't count!" He had pinned the badge at random on his coat while he was speaking, and now, before the two realized what he was about, he had his six-shooter out and aimed straight at them.

Bud had never lived in fear of the law. Instantly was sorry when he saw the involuntary stiffening of their muscles, the quick wordless suspicion and defiance that sent their eyes in shifty glances to right and left before their hands lifted a little. Trust him, love him they might, there was that latent fear of capture driven deep into their souls; so deep that even he had not erased it.

Bud saw--and so he laughed.

"I've got to show my folks that I've made a gathering," he said. "You can't quit, boys. And I'm going to take you to the end of the trail, now you've started." He eyed them, saw that they were still stubborn, and drew in his breath sharply, manfully meeting the question in their minds.

"We've left more at the Sinks than the gnashing of teeth," he said whimsically. "A couple of bad names, for instance. You're two bully good friends of mine, and--d.a.m.n it, Marian will want to see both of you fellows, if she's there. If she isn't--we'll maybe have a big circle to ride, finding her. I'll need you, no matter what's ahead." He looked from one to the other, gave a snort and added impatiently, "Aw, fork your horses and don't stand there looking like a couple of d.a.m.n fools!"

Whereupon Jerry shook his head dissentingly, grinned and gave Eddie so emphatic an impulse toward his horse that the kid went sprawling.

"Guess We're up against it, all right--but I do wish yo 'd lose that badge!" Jerry surrendered, and flipped the bridle reins over the neck of his horse. "Horn toad is right, the way you're scabbling around amongst them rocks," he called light-heartedly to the kid. "Ever see a purtier sunrise? I never!"

I don't know what they thought of the sunset. Gorgeous it was, with many soft colors blended into unnamable tints and translucencies, and the songs of birds in the thickets as they pa.s.sed. Smoky, Sunfish and Stopper walked briskly, ears perked forward, heads up, eyes eager to catch the familiar landmarks that meant home. Bud's head was up, also, his eyes went here and there, resting with a careless affection on those same landmarks which spelled home. He would have let Smoky's reins have a bit more slack and would have led his little convoy to the corrals at a gallop, had not hope begun to tremble and shrink from meeting certainty face to face. Had you asked him then, I think Bud would have owned himself a coward. Until he had speech with home-folk he would merely be hoping that Marian was there; but until he had speech with them he need not hear that they knew nothing of her. Bud--like, however, he tried to cover his trepidation with a joke.

"We'll sneak up on 'em," he said to Ed and Jerry when the roofs of house and stables came into view.

"Here's where I grew up, boys. And in a minute or two more you'll see the greatest little mother on earth--and the finest dad," he added, swallowing the last of his Scotch stubbornness.

"And Sis, I hope," Eddie said wistfully. "I sure hope she's here."

Neither Jerry nor Bud answered him at all. Smoky threw up his head suddenly and gave a shrill whinny, and a horse at the corrals answered sonorously.

"Say! That sounds to me like Boise!" Eddie exclaimed, standing up in his stirrups to look.

Bud turned pale, then flushed hotly. "Don't holler!" he muttered, and held Smoky back a little. For just one reason a young man's heart pounds as Bud's heart pounded then. Jerry looked at him, took a deep breath and bit his lip thoughtfully. It may be that Jerry's heartbeats were not quite normal just then, but no one would ever know.

They rode slowly to a point near the corner of the table, and there Bud halted the two with his lifted hand. Bud was trembling a little--but he was smiling, too. Eddie was frankly grinning, Jerry's face was the face of a good poker-player--it told nothing.

In a group with their backs to them stood three: Marian, Bud's mother and his father. Bob Birnie held Boise by the bridle, and the two women were stroking the brown nose of the horse that moved uneasily, with little impatient head-tossings.