Curly Part 1

Curly.

by Roger Poc.o.c.k.

CHAPTER I

APACHES

Back in Old Texas, 'twixt supper and sleep time, the boys in camp would sit around the fire and tell lies. They talked about the Ocean which was bigger than all the plains, and I began to feel worried because I'd never seen what the world was like beyond the far edge of the gra.s.s.

Life was a failure until I could get to that Ocean to smell and see for myself. After that I would be able to tell lies about it when I got back home again to the cow-camps. When I was old enough to grow a little small fur on my upper lip I loaded my pack pony, saddled my horse, and hit the trail, b.u.t.ting along day after day towards the sunset, expecting every time I climbed a ridge of hills to see the end of the yellow gra.s.s and the whole Pacific Ocean shining beyond, with big ships riding herd like cowboys around the grazing whales.

One morning, somewheres near the edge of Arizona, I noticed my horse throw his ears to a small sound away in the silence to the left. It seemed to be the voice of a rifle, and maybe some hunter was missing a deer in the distance, so I pointed that way to inquire. After a mile or so I heard the rifle speaking again, and three guns answered, sputtering quick and excited. That sounded mighty like a disagreement, so I concluded I ought to be cautious and roll my tail at once for foreign parts. I went on slow, approaching a small hill. Again a rifle-shot rang out from just beyond the hill, and two shots answered--muzzle-loading guns. At the same time the wind blew fresh from the hill, with a whiff of powder, and something else which made my horses shy. "Heap bad smell!" they snuffed. "Just look at that!" they signalled with their ears. "Ugh!" they snorted.

"Get up!" said I; and charged the slope of the hill.

Near the top I told them to be good or I'd treat them worse than a tiger. Then I went on afoot with my rifle, crept up to the brow of the hill, and looked over through a clump of cactus.

At the foot of the hill, two hundred feet below me, there was standing water--a muddy pool perhaps half an acre wide--and just beyond that on the plain a burned-out camp fire beside a couple of canvas-covered waggons. It looked as if the white men there had just been pulling out of camp, with their teams all harnessed for the trail, for the horses lay, some dead, some wounded, mixed up in a struggling heap. As I watched, a rifle-shot rang out from the waggons, aimed at the hillside, but when I looked right down I could see nothing but loose rocks scattered below the slope. After I watched a moment a brown rock moved; I caught the shine of an Indian's hide, the gleam of a gun-barrel. Close by was another Indian painted for war, and beyond him a third lying dead. So I counted from rock to rock until I made out sixteen of the worst kind of Indians--Apaches--all edging away from cover to cover to the left, while out of the waggons two rifles talked whenever they saw something to hit. One rifle was slow and cool, the other scared and panicky, but neither was getting much meat.

For a time I reckoned, sizing up the whole proposition. While the Apaches down below attacked the waggons, their sentry up here on the hill had forgotten to keep a look-out, being too much interested. He'd never turned until he heard my horses clattering up the rocks, but then he had yelled a warning to his crowd and bolted. One Indian had tried to climb the hill against me and been killed from the waggons, so now the rest were scared of being shot from above before they could reach their ponies. They were sneaking off to the left in search of them. Off a hundred yards to the left was the sentry, a boy with a bow and arrows, running for all he was worth across the plain. A hundred yards beyond him, down a hollow, was a mounted Indian coming up with a bunch of ponies. If the main body of the Apaches got to their ponies, they could surround the hill, charge, and gather in my scalp. I did not want them to take so much trouble with me.

Of course, my first move was to up and bolt along the ridge to the left until I gained the shoulder of the hill. There I took cover, and said, "Abide with me, and keep me cool, if You please!" while I sighted, took a steady bead, and let fly at the mounted Indian. At my third shot he came down flop on his pony's neck, and that was my first meat. The bunch of ponies smelt his blood and stampeded promiscuous.

The Apaches, being left afoot, couldn't attack me none. If they tried to stampede they would be shot from the waggons, while I hovered above their line of retreat considerably; and if they stayed I could add up their scalps like a sum in arithmetic. They were plumb surprised at me, and some discouraged, for they knew they were going to have disagreeable times. Their chief rose up to howl, and a shot from the waggons lifted him clean off his feet. It was getting very awkward for those poor barbarians, and one of them hoisted a rag on his gun by way of surrender.

Surrender? This Indian play was robbery and murder, and not the honest game of war. The man who happens imprudent into his own bear-trap is not going to get much solace by claiming to be a warrior and putting up white flags. The game was bear-traps, and those Apaches had got to play bear-traps now, whether they liked it or not. There were only two white folks left in the waggons, and one on the hill, so what use had we for a dozen prisoners who would lie low till we gave them a chance, then murder us prompt. The man who reared up with the peace flag got a shot from the waggons which gave him peace eternal.

Then I closed down with my rifle, taking the Indians by turns as they tried to bolt, while the quiet gun in the waggon camp arrested fugitives and the scary marksman splashed lead at the hill most generous. Out of sixteen Apaches two and the boy got away intact, three damaged, and the rest were gathered to their fathers.

When it was all over I felt unusual solemn, running my paw slow over my head to make sure I still had my scalp; then collected my two ponies and rode around to the camp. There I ranged up with a yell, lifting my hand to make the sign of peace, and a man came limping out from the waggons.

He carried his rifle, and led a yearling son by the paw.

The man was tall, clean-built, and of good stock for certain, but his clothes were in the _lo-and-behold_ style--a pane of gla.s.s on the off eye, stand-up collar, spotty necktie, boiled shirt, riding-breeches with puffed sleeves most amazing, and the legs of his boots stiff like a brace of stove-pipes. His near leg was all b.l.o.o.d.y and tied up with a tourniquet bandage. As to his boy Jim, that was just the quaintest thing in the way of pups I ever saw loose on the stock range. He was knee-high to a dawg, but trailed his gun like a man, and looked as wide awake as a little fox. I wondered if I could tame him for a pet.

"How d'ye do?" squeaked the pup, as I stepped down from the saddle.

I allowed I was feeling good.

"I'm sure," said the man, "that we're obliged to you and your friends on the hill. In fact, very much obliged."

Back in Texas I'd seen water go to sleep with the cold, but this man was cool enough to freeze a boiler.

"Will you--er--ask your friends," he drawled, "to come down? I'd like to thank them."

"I'll pa.s.s the glad word," said I. "My friends is in Texas."

"My deah fellow, you don't--aw--mean to say you were alone?"

"Injuns can shoot," said I, "but they cayn't hit."

"Two of my men are dead and the third is dying. I defer to your--er--experience, but I thought they could--er--hit."

Then I began to reckon I'd been some hazardous in my actions. It made me sweat to think.

"Well," said I, to be civil, "I cal'late I'd best introduce myself to you-all. My name's Davies."

"I'm Lord Balshannon," said he, mighty polite.

"And I'm the Honourable Jim du Chesnay," squeaked the kid.

I took his paw and said I was proud to know a warrior with such heap big names. The man laughed.

"Wall, Mister Balshannon," says I, "your horses is remnants, and the near fore wheel of that waggon is sprung to bust, and them Apaches has chipped your laig, which it's broke out bleeding again, so I reckon----"

"You have an eye for detail," he says, laughing; "but if you will excuse me now, I'm rather busy."

He looked into my eyes cool and smiling, asking for no help, ready to rely on himself if I wanted to go. A lump came into my throat, for I sure loved that man from the beginning.

"Mr. Balshannon," says I, "put this kid on top of a waggon to watch for Indians, while you dress that wound. I'm off."

He turned his back on me and walked away.

"I'll be back," said I, busy unloading my pack-horse. "I'll be back," I called after him, "when I bring help!"

At that he swung sudden and came up against me. "Er--thanks," he said, and grabbed my paw. "I'm awfully obliged, don't you know."

I swung to my saddle and loped off for help.

CHAPTER II

LORD BALSHANNON

With all the signs and the signal smokes pointing for war, I reckoned I could dispense with that Ocean and stay round to see the play. Moreover, there was this British lord, lost in the desert, wounded some, helpless as a baby, game as a grizzly bear, ringed round with dead horses and dead Apaches, and his troubles appealed to me plentiful. I scouted around until I hit a live trail, then streaked away to find people. I was doubtful if I had done right in case that lord got ma.s.sacred, me being absent, so I rode hard, and at noon saw the smoke of a camp against the Tres Hermanos Mountains. It proved to be a cow camp with all the boys at dinner.

They had heard nothing of Apaches out on the war trail, but when I told what I knew, they came glad, on the dead run, their waggons and pony herd following. We found the Britisher digging graves for three dead men, and looking apt to require a fourth for his own use.

"Er--good evening," says he, and I began to wonder why I'd sweated myself so hot to rescue an iceberg.

"Gentlemen," says he to the boys, "you find some er--coffee ready beside the fire, and afterwards, if you please, we will bury my dead."

The boys leaned over in their saddles, wondering at him, but the lord's cool eye looked from face to face, and we had to do what he said. He was surely a great chief, that Lord Balshannon.

The men who had fallen a prey to the Apaches were two teamsters and a Mexican, all known to these Bar Y riders, and they were sure sorry. But more than that they enjoyed this shorthorn, this tenderfoot from the east who could stand off an outfit of hostile Indians with his lone rifle. They saw he was wounded, yet he dug graves for his dead, made coffee for the living, and thought of everything except himself. After coffee we lined up by the graves to watch the bluff he made at funeral honours. Lord Balshannon was a colonel in the British Army, and he stood like an officer on parade reading from a book. His black hair was touched silver, his face was strong, hard, manful, and his voice quivered while he read from the little book--