The Fighting Shepherdess Part 40

"Not sence daylight. I seen your tepee up toward the top and thought maybe I could locate your wagon and git dinner."

"I'll feed anybody that's hungry," Bowers replied ambiguously.

The stranger asked innocently:

"Who does this Outfit belong to?"

"Miss Kate Prentice owns this brand."

"Oh--the 'Cheap Queen'!"

Bowers's head swung as though on a pivot.

"What did you say?"

"I've heerd that's what they call her."

Bowers's eyes narrowed as he answered:

"Not in my hearin'." Then he added: "n.o.body can knock the outfit I'm workin' for and eat their grub while they're doin' it. Sabe?"

"Don't know as I blame you," the stranger conciliated.

"I'll go cook," said Bowers shortly, getting up.

The stranger urged politely:

"Don't do nothin' extry on my account."

"I ain't goin' to," Bowers responded. "If we had some ham we'd have some ham and eggs if we had eggs. Do you like turnips?"

"I kin eat 'em."

"My middle name is 'turnips,'" said Bowers. "I always cooks about a bushel!"

The look that his guest sent after him was not pleasant, if Bowers had chanced to see it, but since he did not, he was in a somewhat better humor by the time he hung out of the wagon and called with a degree of cordiality:

"Come and git it!"

The visitor arose with alacrity.

"Want a warsh?"

The stranger inspected a pair of hands that looked as if they had been greasing axles.

"No, I ain't very dirty."

"Grab a root and pull!" Bowers urged with all the hospitality he could inject into his voice, as the guest squeezed in between the table and the sideboard. "Jest bog down in that there honey, pardner--it's something special--cottonwood blossoms and alfalfy. And here's the turnips!"

Conversation was suspended until a pan of biscuits had vanished along with the fried mutton, when Bowers, feeling immeasurably better natured, inquired sociably as he pa.s.sed the broom:

"Where have I saw you before, feller? Your countenance seems kind of familiar."

The stranger looked up quickly.

"I don't think it. I'm a long way off my own range."

He averted his eyes from Bowers's puzzled inquiring gaze and focused his attention upon the business of extracting a suitable straw from the politely tendered broom. When he had found one to his liking, he leaned back and operated with a large air of nonchalance.

"You're fixed pretty comfortable here," he commented, as his roving eye took in the interior of the wagon.

"'Tain't bad," Bowers agreed, prying into the broom for a straw that was clean, comparatively.

"Is them all kin o' yourn?" The stranger pointed to a wire rack suspended from a nail on the opposite side of the wagon in which was thrust some two dozen photographs, fly-specked and yellow, while the cut of the subjects' clothes bore additional evidence of their antiquity.

"Lord, no! I don't know none of 'em. There was a couple of travelin'

photygraphers got snowed up here several year ago and I bought ten dollars' worth of old pictures off 'em for company. I got 'em all named, and it's real entertainin' settin' here evenin's makin' up yarns about 'em that's more'n half true, maybe--Mis' Taylor over to Happy Wigwam says I'm kind of a medium."

Glancing at his guest he observed that his eyes were fixed intently upon a photograph in the center and his expression was so peculiar that Bowers asked, curiously:

"Ary friend o' yours in my gallery?"

"Not to say friend, exactly," was the dry answer, "but what-fer-a-yarn have you made up about that feller?"

"Well, sir," Bowers said whimsically, "I'm sorry to tell you but that feller had a bad endin'. He had everything done fur him, too--good raisin' and an education, but it was all wasted. That horse there was, as you might say, his undoin'. It was just fast enough to be beat everywhur he run him. But he kept on backin' him till it broke him--no, sir, he hadn't a dollar! Lost everything his Old Man left him and then took to drinkin'. His wife quit him and his only child died callin' for its father. After that he drunk harder than ever, and finally died in the asylum thinkin' he was Marcus Daly." He demanded eagerly, "How clost have I come to it?"

"Knowin' what I know, it makes me creepy settin' here listenin'."

"Shoo! I ain't that good, am I?" Bowers looked his pleasure at the tribute.

"Good?" ironically. "You oughta sew spangles on your shirt and wear ear-rings and git you a fortune-tellin' wagon. You're right about everything except that that horse never was beat while he owned him and he win about twenty thousand dollars on him, and that the last time I saw that feller he could buy sixteen outfits like this one without crampin' him, and instead of goin' to the asylum they sent him to the state senate."

Bowers laughed loudly to cover his annoyance at having bitten.

"It's come about queer, though," he said, "your knowin' him."

The stranger seemed to check an impulse to say something further; instead, he volunteered to wipe the dishes.

"No, you go out and set in the shade--it's cooler."

The truth was, Bowers did not want the man in the wagon, for his first feeling of mistrust and antagonism had returned even stronger.

"That feller's liable to pick up somethin' and make off with it," he mused as the stranger obeyed without further urging. "I sh.o.r.e have saw them quare eyes of his somewhur. Maybe it'll come to me if I keep on thinkin'."

In the meanwhile the visitor dragged Bowers's saddle blanket into the shade of the wagon and stretched himself upon it. Pulling his hat over his eyes he soon was dozing.

Bowers, rattling the plates and pans inside the wagon, suddenly bethought himself of Mary. What was the lamb doing not to be about his feet begging for the condensed milk which he always prepared for it when his own meal was finished? He flirted the water from his hands and hung out of the doorway.