The Ramblin' Kid Part 44

"Give me a white shirt--number fifteen," he said to the clerk; "and be blamed sure it's the right size--they ain't worth a cuss if they're too big!"

CHAPTER XXI

A GIRL LIKE YOU

A lone rider guided his horse in the early night, among the black lavas, on the desolate desert near Capaline, the dead volcano. He rode to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron. Silently, steadily, like a dark shadow, the broncho picked his way among the fields of fire-blistered rock and held his course, unerringly, through the starlit gloom hanging over the earth before the late moon should flash its silver disk above the sand-hills miles to the east.

The rider was the Ramblin' Kid; the little horse--Captain Jack.

For a week, following the fight in Eagle b.u.t.te, the Ramblin' Kid had found shelter in the hut of "Indian Jake"--a hermit Navajo who, long ago, turned his face toward the flood of white civilization rolling over the last pitiful remnants of his tribe and drifted far toward the land of the rising sun. Among the scenes of desolation around the grimly cold volcano, alone, the old Indian made his last stand, and in a rude cabin, beside a tiny spring that seeped from under the black rock on the mountain-side, lived in splendid isolation--silent, brooding, desiring only to be left in peace with his few ponies, his small herd of cattle and the memories and traditions of his people.

The Ramblin' Kid and the lonely Navajo were friends since the Ramblin'

Kid could remember.

The aged Indian's face was pitted with horrible scars--marks of the same disease that had cost the wandering cowboy his father and left him, years ago, an orphan, almost worshiped, because of the sacrifice his parent had made fighting the epidemic among the tribes of the Southwest.

Often the "Young Whirlwind"--the name by which the Indians knew the Ramblin' Kid and which old Jake himself always called the cowboy--spent a night, sometimes days, with his stoical friend among the lavas.

To him the cabin door was always open.

As Captain Jack, followed by the bullets from the marshal's revolver, dashed madly down the street of Eagle b.u.t.te, instinctively the Ramblin'

Kid had turned the stallion toward the hut of the old Navajo.

The fugitive cowboy believed Sabota was dead.

Naturally the law would demand vengeance, even though the brutal Greek had deserved to die. Posses, undoubtedly, would scour the country, searching for his slayer. The Quarter Circle KT would be watched.

There was no regret in the heart of the Ramblin' Kid. Instead he felt a strange elation. With his fists and heels he had beaten the giant Greek into a lifeless ma.s.s!

"'Ign'rant--savage--stupid--brute!" he muttered as Captain Jack sped from the scene of fight; "I reckon she _was pretty near right!_"

At gray dawn he swung down from the back of the little stallion at the door of the Indian's hut.

Old Jake asked no questions.

The Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered:

"Killed a man--Sabota--got to lay low, Jake--some three, four, five days! Then I go--south--Mexico!"

"The Young Whirlwind had cause?" the Navajo grunted sententiously.

"Sure--plenty!" the Ramblin' Kid laughed, slipping his hand to his breast pocket and caressing the pink satin garter.

"It is good," the Indian said. "The Navajo will watch!"

For seven days the Ramblin' Kid rested, securely, in the lonely hut among the lavas and "pot-holes" of the desert. Then he saddled Captain Jack and when the full shadow of night had settled over the desolation about him mounted the little broncho and turned him to the south, in the direction of the Cimarron, toward the Quarter Circle KT, where the Gold Dust maverick waited, alone, in the corral.

Carolyn June could not sleep. The night was more than half gone and still she sat on the front porch and watched the gradual spread of a misty, silvery sheen over the brow of the bench and the distant peaks of the shadowy Costejo range as the pale moon, in its last half, lifted itself above the sand-hills at the gap through which the Cimarron tumbled out of the valley.

Old Heck and Ophelia had retired hours ago.

The Quarter Circle KT was sleeping. From the meadows the heavy odor of wilted alfalfa hung on the night air as the dew sprinkled the windrows of new-cut hay.

A strange restlessness filled the heart of the girl.

Something seemed to be holding her in a tense, relentless grip. She had no desire to seek her room. Indeed, she felt that the air of the house would stifle her. She arose and strolled idly through the gate, past the bunk-house where Skinny, Pedro and the hay hands snored peacefully, as she wandered aimlessly through the slanting moonlight down to the circular corral.

The Gold Dust maverick seemed to reflect the girl's own uneasy mood.

The filly moved with quick nervous strides about the corral. As Carolyn June leaned against the bars and stretched out her hand the mare whinnied softly, tossed her head, nosed an instant the white fingers and trotted in a circle around the enclosure.

"What's the matter, Heart o' Gold?" Carolyn June laughed sympathetically, "can't you either?"

In the shed at the side of the corral, on the spot where, that first morning, the Ramblin' Kid's saddle had rested and the cowboy slept, Carolyn June's own riding gear was lying. She glanced at the outfit For a second she fancied she saw again the slender form stretched in the shadow upon the ground while a pair of black inscrutable eyes looked with unfathomable melancholy up into her own.

"Seein' things!" she laughed jerkily, with a little catch in her throat.

"I'll ride it off!"

Quickly she stepped over, picked up the saddle, bridle and blanket, returned to the corral gate, swung it open and entered.

The Gold Dust maverick came to her, as if eager, herself, to get out into the night.

A moment later Carolyn June was in the saddle and the mare, dancing lightly, pranced out of the gate. She turned swiftly toward the grade that led out to the bench and to Eagle b.u.t.te. They had almost reached the foot of the grade, when some impulse caused Carolyn June to whirl the filly about and gallop back past the barn and down the lane toward the Cimarron.

As the feet of the outlaw mare splashed into the water at the lower ford the Ramblin' Kid rode past the corner of the upland pasture fence and stopped Captain Jack on the brink of the ridge looking down at the crossing. Below him the river whirled in dark eddies under the overhanging curtains of cottonwoods and willows; the Quarter Circle KT lay in the hollow of the valley, like a faint etching of silent restfulness; through the tops of the trees a white splash of moonlight struck on the smooth level surface of the treacherous quicksand bar that had drawn Old Blue down to an agonizing death and from which, scarcely a month ago, the Ramblin' Kid had dragged Carolyn June.

This, the Ramblin' Kid believed, was his last long look at the Quarter Circle KT.

He would ride down to the circular corral, turn out the Gold Dust maverick--give her again to the range and freedom--and while the unconscious sleepers at the ranch dreamed he would pa.s.s on, silently, toward the south and Mexico should throw about him her black arms of mystery!

For a while he sat and gazed down on the shadowy scene while his mind throbbed with memory of the incidents of the last few weeks. He drew the pink satin garter from his pocket, looked at it a long moment--suddenly crushed it tightly in his hand while his eyes closed as if renouncing a vision that had come before them--then carefully, that the dainty thing might not be lost, replaced it in the pocket that was over his heart.

At last he swung to the ground and tightened the front cinch of his saddle.

As he pulled the leather into place the sound of nervous hoofs kicking the gravel on the grade that led to the ridge on which he stood shattered the silence around him. The Ramblin' Kid whirled and faced the direction in which the approaching horse, would appear. His hand dropped to his gun and without raising the weapon from his hip he leveled it to cover the turn in the road a few feet away.

The waxy mane of the outlaw filly rocked into view as she sprang up and around the turn on to the ridge.

On the maverick's back, bareheaded, her brown hair tumbled about her neck, was Carolyn June.

Captain Jack p.r.i.c.ked forward his ears at the sound of hoofs and as the beautiful mare leaped around the turn and appeared above the bank of the grade the little roan squealed a nicker of recognition. The filly sprang forward, swerved to the side of the stallion, and with an answering whinny stopped.

"Oh!" Carolyn June gasped, as the horses met and she saw the Ramblin'

Kid, his gun still in his hand, standing beside Captain Jack.