Langford of the Three Bars Part 3

He came nearer and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. "Say, Jim, how did it come about? And who's the lady? Lord, Jim, you of all people!" He laughed uproariously.

"Aw, come off!" growled Jim, in petulant scorn. "You make me tired!

You're plumb luney, that's what you are. I'm after the new gal reporter.

She's due on that low-down, ornery train. Wish-it-was in Kingdom Come.

Yep, I do, for a fac'."

"Oh, well, never mind! I didn't mean anything," laughed Brown, good-naturedly. "But it does beat the band, Jim, now doesn't it, how you people scare at petticoats. They ain't pizen-honest."

Jim looked on idly. Occasionally, he condescended to head a rebellious steer shute-wards. Out beyond, it was still and sweet and peaceful, and the late afternoon had put on that thin veil of coolness which is a G.o.d-given refreshment after the heat of the day. But here in the pen all was confusion. The raucous cattle-calls of the cowboys smote the evening air startlingly.

"Here, Bill Brown!" he exclaimed suddenly, "where did you run across that critter?" He slapped the shoulder of a big, raw-boned, long-eared steer as he spoke. The animal was on the point of being driven up the shute.

"What you want to know for?" asked Brown in surprise.

"Reason 'nough. That critter belongs to us, that's why; and I want to know where you got him, that's what I want to know."

"You're crazy, Jim! Why, I bought that fellow from Jesse Black t' other day. I've got a bill-of-sale for him. I'm shippin' a couple of cars to Sioux City and bought him to send along. That's on the square."

"I don't doubt it-s' far as you're concerned, Bill Brown," said Jim, "but that's our critter jest the same, and I'll jest tote 'im along 'f you've no objections."

"Well, I guess not!" said Brown, laconically.

"Look here, Bill Brown," Jim was getting hot-headedly angry, "didn't you know Jesse Black stands trial to-morrow for rustlin' that there very critter from the Three Bars ranch?"

"No, I didn't," Brown answered, shortly. "Any case?"

"I guess yes! Williston o' the Lazy S saw this very critter on that island where Jesse Black holds out." He proceeded to relate minutely the story to which Williston was going to swear on the morrow. "But," he concluded, "Jesse's goin' to fight like h.e.l.l against bein' bound over."

"Well, well," said Brown, perplexedly. "But the brand, Jim, it's not yours or Jesse's either."

"'Quainted with any J R ranch in these parts?" queried Jim, shrewdly. "I ain't."

"Well, neither am I," confessed Brown, "but that's not sayin' there ain't one somewhere. Maybe we can trace it back."

"Shucks!" exploded Jim.

"Maybe you're right, Jim, but I don't propose to lose the price o' that animal less'n I have to. You can't blame me for that. I paid good money for it. If it's your'n, why, of course, it's your'n. But I want to be sure first. Sure you'd know him, Jim? How could you be so blamed sure?

Your boss must range five thousand head."

"Know him? Know Mag? I'd know Mag ef my eyes were full o' soundin'

cataracts. He's an old and tried friend o' mine. The meanest critter the Lord ever let live and that's a fac'. But the Boss calls 'im his maggot.

Seems to actually cherish a kind o' 'fection for the ornery critter, and says the luck o' the Three Bar would sort o' peak and pine ef he should ever git rid o' the pesky brute. Maybe he's right. Leastwise, the critter's his, and when a thing's yours, why, it's yours and that's all there is about it. By cracky, the Boss is some mad! You'd think him and that walleyed, cross-grained son-of-a-gun had been kind and lovin' mates these many years. Well, I ain't met up with this ornery critter for some time. Hullo there, Mag! Look kind o' sneakin', now, don't you, wearin'

that outlandish and unbeknownst J R?"

Bill Brown thoughtfully surveyed the steer whose ownership was thus so unexpectedly disputed.

"You hold him," insisted Jim. "Ef he ain't ours, you can send him along with your next shipment, can't you? What you wobblin' about? Ain't afraid the Boss'll claim what ain't his, are you, Bill Brown?"

"Well, I can't he'p myself, I guess," said Brown, in a tone of voice which told plainly of his laudable effort to keep his annoyance in subjection to his good fellowship. "You send Langford down here first thing in the morning. If he says the critter's his'n, that ends it."

Now that he had convinced his quondam acquaintance, the present shipper, to his entire satisfaction, Jim glanced at his watch with ostentatious ease. His time had come. If all the minutes of all the time to come should be as short as those forty had been, how soon he, Jim Munson, cow-puncher, would have ridden them all into the past. But his "get away" must be clean and dignified.

"Likely bunch you have there," he said, casually, turning away with una.s.sumed reluctance.

"Fair to middlin'," said Brown with pride.

"Shippin' to Sioux City, you said?"

"Yep."

"Well, so long."

"So long. Shippin' any these days, Jim?"

"Nope. Boss never dribbles 'em out. When he ships he ships. Ain't none gone over the rails since last Fall."

He stepped off briskly and vaulted the fence with as lightsome an air as though he were bent on the one errand his heart would choose, and swung up the track carelessly humming a tune. But he had a vise-like grip on his cob pipe. His teeth bit through the frail stem. It split. He tossed the remains away with a gesture of nervous contempt. A whistle sounded.

He quickened his pace. If he missed her,-well, the Boss was a good fellow, took a lot of nonsense from the boys, but there were things he would not stand for. Jim did not need to be told that this would be one of them.

The platform was crowded. The yellow sunlight fell slantingly on the gay groups.

"Aw, Munson, you're bluffin'," jested the mail carrier. "You ain't lookin' fer n.o.body; you know you ain't. You ain't got no folks. Don't believe you never had none. Never heard of 'em."

"Lookin' for my uncle," explained Jim, serenely. "Rich old codger from the State o' Pennsylvaney some'ers. Ain't got n.o.body but me left."

"Aw, come off! What you givin' us?"

But Jim only winked and slouched off, prime for more adventures. He was enjoying himself hugely,-when he was not thinking of petticoats.

CHAPTER V

AT THE BON AMI

Unlike most of those who ride much, her escort was a fast walker. Louise had trouble in keeping up with him, though she had always considered herself a good pedestrian. But Jim Munson was laboring under strange embarra.s.sment. He was red-facedly conscious of the attention he was attracting striding up the inclined street from the station in the van of the prettiest and most thoroughbred girl who had struck Velpen this long time.

Not that he objected to attention under normal conditions. Not he! He courted it. His chief aim in life seemed to be to throw the limelight of publicity, first, on the Three Bars ranch, as the one and only in the category of ranches, and to be connected with it in some way, however slight, the unquestioned aim and object of existence of every man, woman, and child in the cattle country; secondly, on Paul Langford, the very boss of bosses, whose master mind was the prop and stay of the Northwest, if not of all Christendom; and lastly upon himself, the modest, but loyal servitor in this Paradise on earth. But girls were far from normal conditions. There were no women at the Three Bars. There never had been any woman at the Three Bars within the memory of man. To be sure, Williston's little girl had sometimes ridden over on an errand, but she didn't count. This-this was the real thing, and he didn't know just how to deal with it. He needed time to enlarge his sight to this broadened horizon.

He glanced with nonchalance over his shoulder. After all, she was only a girl, and not such a big one either. She wore longer skirts than Williston's girl, but he didn't believe she was a day older. He squared about immediately, and what he had meant to say he never said, on account of an unaccountable thickening of his tongue.

Presently, he bolted into a building, which proved to be the Bon Ami, a restaurant under the direct supervision of the fat, voluble, and tragic Mrs. Higgins, where the men from the other side of the river had right of way and unlimited credit.

"What'll you have?" he asked, hospitably, the familiar air of the Bon Ami bringing him back to his accustomed self-confident swagger.

"Might I have some tea and toast, please?" said Louise, sinking into a chair at the nearest table, with two startling yet amusing thoughts rampant in her brain. One was, that she wished Aunt Helen could have seen her swinging along in the wake of this typical "bold and licentious" man, and calmly and comfortably sitting down to a cosy little supper for two at a public eating house; the other startling thought was to the effect that the invitation was redolent with suggestiveness, and she wondered if she was not expected to say, "A whiskey for me, please."