Curly Part 24

"We're sure saved, Curly, from being tracked down by the Guards and murdered."

I calculate that one ordinary Arizona day without food and water would have finished Curly, but as it happened this was a desert Sabbath, when the clouds had a round-up for prayer. I ain't religious; it's no use for a poor devil like me to make a bluff at being holy, and if I went to church the Big Spirit would say: "Look at this Chalkeye person playing up at Me in a boiled shirt--ain't this plumb ridiculous?"

It's no use, because I'm bad, but yet it humbles me down low to watch the clouds when they herd together for prayers, flirting their angel wings against the sun, lifting their gruff voices in supplication, tearing up the sky with their lightnings, sending down the rain of mercy to us poor desert creatures. The respectable people hire preachers to tell the Big Spirit of their wants, but it's the white clouds of the sky that says prayers for us ignorant range folks, for the coyotes, the deer and panthers, the bears and cows, the ponies and the cowboys. Then the rain comes to save us from dying of thirst, and we cusses around ungrateful because it makes us wet.

When the storm broke that morning, the rain roared, the ground splashed, the hills ran cataracts, and Jim and Curly got washed out of their camp, the same becoming a pool all of a sudden, and were much too wet to go to sleep again. Moreover, the fever had left off prancing around in Curly's brain, and the cold had eased her wound like some big medicine.

Jim had found a corner under the rock ledge which was perfectly dry. His leather Mexican clothes were shrunk tight with rain, the staining ran in streaks on his face, his teeth played tunes with the cold.

"El Senor Don Santiago," says Curly, "yo' face has all gawn pinto, and it don't look Mexican that a-way in stripes. Maybe yo're changing into a sort of half-breed."

"I'm beastly cold," says Jim, grave as a funeral.

"Same here," she laughed. "Don't you think yo' disguise would pa.s.s for something in the way of striped squir'ls? With a rat in yo' paws you'd do for a chipmunk."

"Let me be," says Jim. "How's your wound?"

"Not aching to hurt, just to remind me it's there. How did we get to this rock?"

Jim told her about the escape, and how the Frontier Guards had been left afoot, and how the storm had come convenient to wash out the raiders'

tracks as well as his own.

The rain had quit, and the plain was shining like a sea of gold which ran in channels between the island groups of purple mountains. So one could sure see range after range melting off into more than a hundred miles of clear distance, to where the sunshine was hot beyond the clouds. That clearness after rain is a great wonder to see, and makes one feel very good.

"Talk some more," says Curly, "then I won't be encouraging this wound by taking notice of it."

"Shall I lift you here to this dry corner?"

"No; it's sure fighting, moving. Leave me be."

"Curly, how did you get that scar above your eye?"

"Buck handed me that. He's sh.o.r.ely fretful at times. Who's Buck? Why, he's second in command of our gang. No, he's a sure man. I'm plenty fond of Buck."

"The brute! I'll wring his beastly neck! You love him?"

"Wouldn't you love all yo' brothers, Jim?"

"Oh, brothers--that's all right. But why did the rotten coward make that scar?"

"You see, Buck's plenty fond of me, and his emotions is r'aring high, specially when--wall, I refused to be Mrs. Buck. It sounded so funny that I had to laugh. Then he got bucking squealing crazy, and when he's feeling that a-way he throws knives, which it's careless of him."

"He wounded you with a knife? The cur!"

"Oh, but Buck was remorseful a whole lot afterwards, and father shot him too. Father always shoots when the boys get intimate. Poor Buck! I nursed him until he was able to get around again, and he loves me worse than ever. It cayn't be helped."

"So these robbers know that you--that you're a girl?"

"They found me out last year. Yes, it's at the back of their haids that I'm their lil sister, and they're allowed to be brothers to me, Jim. Now don't you snort like a hawss, 'cause they're all the brothers I've got."

"You're not afraid of them?"

"You cayn't think what nice boys they are. Of course, being robbers, they claims to have been hatched savage, and brung up dangerous, pore things. Father tells 'em that they has no occasion for vain-glorious pride, 'cause their vocation is mean."

"He's dead right, and I'm glad he shoots them!"

"Generally in the laigs. He says he reckons that a tender inducement to being good is better than a bullet through the eye. Of co'se thar has to be some discipline to chasten they'r hearts, or they'd get acting b.u.mptious."

"Humph!"

"But you don't savvy. Father has to press his views on the boys, but they'd be much worse if it wasn't for him. He says he's a heaps indulgent parent to 'em, and I reckon he sh.o.r.ely is. Father's the best man in the whole world. Do you know he only kills when he has to, and not for his own honour and glory? Why, he won't rob a man unless he's got lots of wealth. Once he was a bad man, but that's a long while ago, before I remember."

"Were you always raised as a boy?"

"Allus. He made me learn to ride, and rope, and shoot, from--ever since I was weaned. When I got old enough he learned me scouting, cooking, packing a hawss, tending wounds, hunting--all sorts of things. I been well educated sh.o.r.e enough, more than most boys."

"It's all beastly rot calling him good--McCalmont good!"

"A hawss or a dawg, or a lil' child will run from a bad man, but they love my father. Oh, but you don't know how good he is!"

"Well, let it go at that. You wanted to be a robber?"

"Sh.o.r.ely, yes, but he never would let me. It ain't true what that sign-paper says up in the city yonder, that I robbed a train. I wasn't there at all. You see, father picked up on the home trail with a starving man, and helped him. That mean, or'nary cuss went and told Joe Beef, the sheriff, that I was in the gang which held up the train.

That's why I'm due to be hunted and roped, or shot at by any citizen who wants two thousand dollars. Of co'se, it's nacheral there should be a bounty offered on wolf haids, but I'd like to have a nice wolf-time before I'm killed. I never had a chance to get my teeth in, 'cept only once. Yes, we stole six hundred head of cattle from the Navajos, and you should just have seen the eager way they put out after us. They was plenty enthoosiastic, and they came mighty near collecting our wigs."

"It makes me sick to think of you with a gang of thieves."

"Father says that the worst crimes is cowardice, meanness, and cheating.

The next worse things is banks, railroad companies, lawyers; and that young Ryan--'specially Ryan--he says that us robbers is angels compared with trash like that."

"That's no excuse."

"Father says that robbery is a sign that the law is rotten, and a proof that the Government's too pore and weak to cast a proper shadow. He allows we're a curse to the country, and it serves the people right."

"It's bad--you know it's bad!"

"Sh.o.r.e thing it's bad. Do you know what made us bad? All of our tribe was cowboys and stockmen once; not saints, but trying to act honest, and only stealing cows quite moderate, like ole Chalkeye. Then rich men came stealing our water-holes, fencing in our gra.s.s, driving our cattle away."

"Why didn't you get a lawyer--wasn't there any law?"

"There sh.o.r.ely was. My father's farm was way back in Kansas. His neighbour was a big cattle company, which hadn't any use for farms or settlers. They turned their cattle into his crops, they shot my brother Bill, they wounded father. Then father went to law, and the lawyers skinned him alive, and the judge was a shareholder in the Thomas Cattle Company--he done gave judgment that we-all was in the wrong. Then father appealed to the big Court at Washington, which says he had the right to his land and home. So the cattle company set the gra.s.s on fire and burned our home. Mother was burned to death, and father he went bad. I was the only thing he saved from the fire."

"Poor beggar! No wonder he turned robber. I'd have done the same, by Jove!"

"He shot Judge Thomson first, then he killed Mose Thomson, and the sheriff put out to get him. He got the sheriff. Then he went all through Kansas and Colorado, gathering pore stockmen what had been robbed and ruined by the rich men's law. They held up pay-escorts, stage coaches, banks, the trains on the railroad. That was the beginning of the Robbers' Roost."

Jim sat heaps thoughtful looking away across the desert. "Our breeding cattle," says he, tallying on his fingers, "then Holy Cross, then mother, then father, and now I'm being hunted for a murder I didn't commit."