The Ramblin' Kid Part 3

"I didn't find out--I'm just guessin'--"

"There ain't no use arguing," Old Heck broke in. "Skinny will have to be expert love-maker for that Carolyn June niece of mine--I'll allow him ten dollars a month more wages while he's doing it. I ain't going to have her writing letters to her pa and telling him she didn't have no conveniences or nothing. Anyhow, she's young and I reckon it's sort of necessary."

"What about th' other one--Ophelia Cobb or whoever she is?" Bert Lilly asked.

"She's past the age for it, probably," Parker said uneasily.

"They don't pa.s.s it," the Ramblin' Kid interrupted laconically; "when females get too old to want to be made love to they die--"

"I'd like to know where in h.e.l.l a juvenile like you got your education about women!" Bert insisted to the Ramblin' Kid.

"I ain't got none--I'm just guessing I told you," the other replied, "but it's the truth, anyhow."

"Well, if I've got to make love to the young one Old Heck or Parker or somebody's got to do it for the other one," Skinny declared positively.

"Ophelia don't need it," Old Heck said hastily, "she's a widow and has done been--"

"Widows are th' worst," the Ramblin' Kid drawled; "they've had experience an' don't like to give it up."

"Th' Ramblin' Kid's right," Chuck broke in. "I read a book once that said that's the way they are. It's up to Old Heck or Parker to represent Cupid to the widow--"

"Who the h.e.l.l's Cupid?" Skinny asked curiously.

"He's a dangerous little outlaw that ain't got no reg'lar range," the Ramblin' Kid answered for Chuck.

"I'll not do it--" Old Heck and Parker spoke at once.

"Then I won't either," Skinny declared flatly, "I'll quit the dog-goned Quarter Circle KT first!"

"Let Sing Pete make love to the widow," Bert suggested.

"No, no! Me busy cookee," Sing Pete, who had been listening from the open doorway, jabbered and darted, frightened, back into the house.

"Anyhow I'd kill him if he did," the Ramblin' Kid said softly; "no darned c.h.i.n.k can make love to a white woman, old, young or indifferent, in my presence an' live!"

"Well, Old Heck'll have to do it, then," Skinny said; "hanged if I'm going to be the only he-love-maker on this ranch!"

"Let Parker and Old Heck divide up on Ophelia," Chuck advised, "one of them can love her one day and the other the next--"

"That's reasonable," Bert declared, "she'd probably enjoy a change herself."

"I tell you I ain't got time," Parker protested.

"Neither have I," Old Heck added.

"All right then, I ain't either!" Skinny declared. "If you two ain't willing to take turn about with the widow and love her off and on between you I'll be everlastingly h.e.l.l-tooted if I'm going to stand for a whole one by myself all of the time! I'll go on strike first and start right now!"

"We'll stay with you, Skinny," the Ramblin' Kid exclaimed with a laugh, "th' whole bunch will quit till Parker an' Old Heck grants our demands."

"We'll all quit!" the cowboys chorused.

"Oh, well, Parker," Old Heck grumbled, "I reckon we'll have to do it!"

"It won't be hard work," the Ramblin' Kid said consolingly, "all you got to do is set still an' leave it to Ophelia. Widows are expert love-makers themselves an' know how to keep things goin'!"

It was settled. Skinny Rawlins, at an increase of ten dollars a month on his wage, protestingly, was elected official love-maker to Carolyn June Dixon, Old Heck's niece, speeding unsuspectingly toward the Quarter Circle KT, and Old Heck and Parker between them were to divide the affections of Ophelia Cobb, widow and chaperon.

In the mind of every cowboy on the ranch there was one thought unexpressed but very insistent that night, "Wonder what She looks like?"

thinking, of course, of Carolyn June.

Old Heck and Parker also were disturbed by a common worry. As each sank into fitful sleep, thinking of Ophelia Cobb, the widow, and his own predestinated affinity he murmured:

"What if she insists on getting married?"

CHAPTER III

WHICH ONE'S WHICH

Eagle b.u.t.te sprawled hot and thirsty under the melting sunshine of mid-forenoon. It was not a prepossessing town. All told, no more than two hundred buildings were within its corporate limits. A giant mound, capped by a crown of crumbling, weather-tinted rock, rose abruptly at the northern edge of the village and gave the place its name. Cimarron River, sluggish and yellow, bounded the town on the south. The dominant note of Eagle b.u.t.te was a pathetic mixture of regret for glories of other days and clumsy ambition to a.s.sume the ways of a city. Striving hard to be modern it succeeded only in being grotesque.

The western plains are sprinkled with towns like that. Towns that once, in the time of the long-horn steer and the forty-four and the nerve to handle both, were frankly unconventional. Touched later by the black magic of development, bringing brick buildings, prohibition, picture shows, real-estate boosters, speculation and attendant evils or benefits as one chooses to cla.s.sify them, they became neither elemental nor ethical--mere gawky mimics of both.

When western Texas was cow-country and nothing else Eagle b.u.t.te at least was picturesque. Flickering lights, gay laughter--sometimes curses and the sounds of revolver shots, of battles fought close and quick and to a finish--wheezy music, click of ivory chips, the clink of gla.s.ses, from old Bonanza's and similar rendezvous of hilarity lured to the dance, faro, roulette, the poker table or the hardwood polished bar.

The Mecca it was in those days for cowboys weary with months on the wide-flung range.

To-day Eagle b.u.t.te is modest, mild and super-subdued.

A garage, cement built, squatty and low and painfully new, its wide-mouthed entrance guarded by a gasoline pump freshly painted and exceedingly red, stands at the eastern end of the single, broad, un-paved business street. All of the stores face one way--north--and look sleepily across at the railroad track, the low-eaved, yellow, Santa Fe station and the sunburnt sides of the b.u.t.te beyond. Opposite the station the old Occidental Hotel with its high porch, wide steps, narrow windows, dingy weather-board sides and blackened roof, still stands to remind old-timers of the days of long ago.

A city marshal, Tom Poole, a long, slim, Sandy-mustached Missourian, completes the picture of Eagle b.u.t.te. Regularly he meets the arriving trains and by the glistening three-inch nickel star pinned to his left suspender announces to the traveling world that here, on the one time woolly Kiowa, law and order at last prevail. Odd times the marshal farms a ten-acre truck patch close to the river at the southern edge of the town. Pending the arrival of trains he divides his time between the front steps of the old hotel and the Elite Amus.e.m.e.nt Parlor, Eagle b.u.t.te's single den of iniquity where pocket pool, billiards, solo--devilish dissipations these!--along with root beer, ginger ale, nut sundaes, soda-pop, milk shakes and similar enticements are served to those, of reckless and untamed temperaments.

From the open door of the pool hall the marshal saw a thin, black streak of smoke curling far out on the horizon--a dozen miles--northeast of Eagle b.u.t.te.

"Seventeen's comin'," he remarked to the trio of idlers leaning against the side of the building; "guess I'd better go over an' see who's on her," moving as he spoke out into the sizzling glare of the almost deserted street. Glancing toward the east his eyes fastened on a cloud of dust whirling rapidly along the road that came from the direction of the lower Cimarron.

"Gosh, lookey yonder," he muttered, "that must be Old Heck drivin' his new automobile--th' darn fool is goin' to bust something some day, runnin' that car the way he does!"

Walking quickly, to escape the heat, he crossed the street to the station.

Two minutes later the cloud of dust trailed a rakish, trim-lined, high-powered, purring Clagstone "Six" to a stop in front of the Occidental Hotel and Old Heck and Skinny Rawlins climbed glumly and stiffly from the front seat, after the thirty-minute, twenty-mile run from the Quarter Circle KT.

Old Heck had his peculiarities. One of them was insistence for the best--absolutely or nothing. The first pure-bred, hot-blood stallions turned on the Kiowa range carried the Quarter Circle KT brand on their left shoulders. He wanted quality in his stock and spent thousands of dollars importing bulls and stallions to get it. When the automobile came it was the same. No jit for the erratic owner of the last big genuine cow-ranch on the Cimarron. Consequently the beautiful car--a car fit for Fifth Avenue--standing now in front of the old hotel in Eagle b.u.t.te.

The smoke on the northeastern sky-line was yet some miles away.