The Ridin' Kid from Powder River Part 11

"That's right--honest!"--and Pete rose.

The sheep-dog's quivering joy ceased at the word. His alertness vanished. A veritable statue of dejection he stood as though pondering the situation. Then he lifted his head and howled--the long, lugubrious howl of the wolf that hungers.

"You said it all," muttered Pete, turning swiftly and trudging down the road. He would have liked to howl himself. Montoya's kindliness at parting--and his gift--had touched Pete deeply, but he had fought his emotion then, too proud to show it. Now he felt a hot something spatter on his hand. His mouth quivered. "Doggone the dog!" he exclaimed. "Doggone the whole doggone outfit!" And to cheat his emotion he began to sing, in a ludicrous, choked way, that sprightly and inimitable range ballad;

"'Way high up in the Mokiones, among the mountain-tops, A lion cleaned a yearlin's bones and licked his thankful chops, When who upon the scene should ride, a-trippin' down the slope,"

"Doggone the slope!" blurted Pete as he stubbed his toe on a rock.

But when he reached Concho his eyes had cleared. Like all good Americans he "turned a keen, untroubled face home to the instant need of things," and after visiting Roth at the store, and though sorely tempted to loiter and inspect saddlery, he set out to hunt up a boy--for Montoya.

None of the Mexican boys he approached cared to leave home. Things looked pretty blue for Pete. The finding of the right boy meant his own freedom. His contempt for the youth of Concho grew apace. The Mexicans were a lazy lot, who either did not want to work or were loath to leave home and follow the sheep. "Jest kids!" he remarked contemptuously as his fifth attempt failed. "I could lick the whole bunch!"

Finally he located a half-grown youth who said he was willing to go.

Pete told him where to find Montoya and exacted a promise from the youth to go at once and apply for the place. Pete hastened to the store and immediately forgot time, place, and even the fact that he had yet to get a job riding for the Concho outfit, in the eager joy of choosing a saddle, bridle, blanket, spurs, boots and chaps, to say nothing of a new Stetson and rope. The sum total of these unpaid-for purchases rather staggered him. His eighteen-odd dollars was as a fly-speck on the credit side of the ledger. He had chosen the best of everything that Roth had in stock. A little figuring convinced him that he would have to work several months before his outfit was paid for. "If I git a job I'll give you an order for my wages," he told Roth.

"That's all right, Pete; I ain't worryin'."

"Well--I be, some," said Pete. "Lemme see--fifty for the saddle, seven for the bridle---and she's some bridle!--and eighteen for the chaps--fifteen for the boots--that's ninety dollars. Gee whizz! Then there's four for that blanket and ten for them spurs. That's a hundred and four. 'Course I _could_ git along without a new lid. Rope is three-fifty, and lid is ten. One hundred and seventeen dollars for four bits. Guess I'll make it a hundred and twenty. No use botherin'

about small change. Gimme that pair of gloves."

Roth had no hesitation in outfitting Pete. The Concho cattlemen traded at his store. He had extended credit to many a rider whom he trusted less than he did Pete. Moreover, he was fond of the boy and wanted to see him placed where he could better himself. "I've got you on the books for a hundred and twenty," he told Pete, and Pete felt very proud and important. "Now, if I could borrow a hoss for a spell, I'd jest fork him and ride over to see Bailey," he a.s.serted. "I sure can't pack this outfit over there."

Roth grinned. "Well, we might as well let the tail go with the hide.

There's old Rowdy. He ain't much of a horse, but he's got three good legs yet. He starched a little forward, but he'll make the trip over and back. You can take him."

"Honest?"

"Go ahead."

Pete tingled with joyful antic.i.p.ation as he strode from the store, his new rope in his hand. He would rope that cayuse and just about burn the ground for the Concho! Maybe he wouldn't make young Andy White sit up! The Ridin' Kid from Powder River was walking on air when--

"Thought you was goin' over to see Montoya!" he challenged as he saw the Mexican youth, whom he had tentatively hired, sitting placidly on the store veranda, employed solely in gazing at the road as though it were a most interesting spectacle. "Oh, manana," drawled the Mexican.

"Manana, nothin'!" volleyed Pete. "You're goin' now! Git a-movin'--if you have to take your hands and lift your doggone feet off the ground.

Git a-goin'!"

"Oh, maybe I go manana."

"You're dreamin', hombre." Pete was desperate. Again he saw his chance of an immediate job go glimmering down the vague vistas of many to-morrows.

"See here! What kind of a guy are you, anyhow? I come in here yesterday and offered you a job and you promised you'd git to work right away. You--"

"It was _to-day_ you speak of Montoya," corrected the Mexican.

"You're dreamin'," reiterated Pete. "It was _yesterday_ you said you would go manana. Well, it's to-morrow, ain't it? You been asleep an'

don't know it."

An expression of childish wonder crossed the Mexican youth's stolid face. Of a certainty it was but this very morning that Montoya's boy had spoken to him! Or was it yesterday morning? Montoya's boy had said it was yesterday morning. It must be so. The youth rose and gazed about him. Pete stood aggressively potent, frowning down on the other's hesitation.

"I go," said the Mexican.

Pete heaved a sigh of relief. "A fella's got to know how to handle 'em," he told the immediate vicinity. And because Pete knew something about "handlin' 'em," he did not at once go for the horse, but stood staring after the Mexican, who had paused to glance back. Pete waved his hand in a gesture which meant, "Keep goin'." The Mexican youth kept going.

"I ain't wishin' old Jose any hard luck," muttered Pete, "but I said I'd send a boy--and that there walkin' dream _looks_ like one, anyhow.

'Oh, manana!'" he snorted. "Mexicans is mostly figurin' out to-day what they 're goin' to do to-morrow, and they never git through figurin'. I dunno who my father and mother was, but I know one thing--they wa'n't Mexicans."

CHAPTER IX

ROWDY--AND BLUE SMOKE

It has been said that Necessity is the mother of Invention--well, it goes without saying that the cowboy is the father, and Pete was closely related to these progenitors of that most necessary adjunct of success.

Moreover, he could have boasted a coat of arms had he been at all familiar with heraldry and obliged to declare himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pete.]

A pinto cayuse rampant; a longhorn steer regardant; two sad-eyed, unbranded calves couchant--one in each corner of the shield to kind of balance her up; gules, several clumps of something representing sagebrush; and possibly a rattlesnake coiled beneath the sagebrush and described as "repellent" and holding in his open jaws a streaming motto reading, "I'm a-comin'."

Had it been essential that Pete's escutcheon should bear the bar sinister, doubtless he would have explained its presence with the easy a.s.sertion that the dark diagonal represented the vague ancestry of the two sad-eyed calves couchant. Anybody could see that the calves were part longhorn and part Hereford!

Pete rode out of Concho glittering in his new-found glory of shining bit and spur, wide-brimmed Stetson, and chaps studded with nickel-plated conchas. The creak of the stiff saddle-leather was music to him. His brand-new and really good equipment almost made up for the horse--an ancient pensioner that never seemed to be just certain when he would take his next step and seemed a trifle surprised when he had taken it. He was old, amiable, and willing, internally, but his legs, somewhat of the Chippendale order, had seen better days. Ease and good feeding had failed to fill him out. He was past taking on flesh. Roth kept him about the place for short trips. Roth's lively team of pintos were at the time grazing in a distant summer pasture.

Rowdy--the horse--seemed to feel that the occasion demanded something of him. He p.r.i.c.ked his ears as they crossed the canon bottom and breasted the ascent as bravely as his three good legs would let him.

At the top he puffed hard. Despite Pete's urging, he stood stolidly until he had gathered enough ozone to propel him farther. "Git along, you doggone ole c.o.c.kroach!" said Pete. But Rowdy was firm. He turned his head and gazed sadly at his rider with one mournful eye that said plainly, "I'm doing my level best." Pete realized that the ground just traveled was anything but level, and curbed his impatience. "I'll jest kind o' save him for the finish," he told himself. "Then I'll hook the spurs into him and ride in a-boilin'. Don't care what he does after that. He can set down and rest if he wants to. Git along, old soap-foot," he cried--"soap-foot" possibly because Rowdy occasionally slipped. His antique legs didn't always do just what he wanted them to do.

Topping the mesa edge, Pete saw the distant green that fringed the Concho home-ranch, topped by a curl of smoke that drifted lazily across the gold of the morning. Without urging, Rowdy broke into a stiff trot, that sounded Pete's inmost depths, despite his natural good seat in the saddle. "Quit it!" cried Pete presently. "You'll be goin' on crutches afore night if you keep that up.--And so'll I," he added.

Rowdy immediately stopped and turned his mournful eye on Pete.

If the trot had been the rhythmic _one, two, three, four_, Pete could have ridden and rolled cigarettes without spilling a flake of tobacco; but the trot was a sort of _one, two--almost three_, then, whump!

_three_ and a quick _four_, and so on, a decidedly irregular meter in Pete's lyrical journey toward new fields and fairer fortune. "I'll sure make Andy sit up!" he declared as the Concho buildings loomed beneath the cool, dark-green outline of the trees. He dismounted to open and close a gate. A half-mile farther he again dismounted to open and close another gate. From there on was a straightaway road to the ranch-buildings. Pete gathered himself together, pushed his hat down firmly--it was new and stiff--and put Rowdy to a high lope. This was something like it! Possibly Rowdy antic.i.p.ated a good rest, and hay.

In any event, he did his best, rounding into the yard and up to the house like a true cow-pony. All would have been well, as Pete realized later, had it not been for the pup. The pup saw in Rowdy a new playfellow, and charged from the door-step just as that good steed was mentally preparing to come to a stop. The pup was not mentally prepared in any way, and in his excitement he overshot the mark. He caromed into Rowdy's one recalcitrant leg--it usually happens that way--and Rowdy stepped on him. Pete was also not mentally prepared to dismount at the moment, but he did so as Rowdy crashed down in a cloud of dust. The pup, who imagined himself killed, shrieked shrilly and ran as hard as he could to the distant stables to find out if it were not so.

Pete picked up his hat. Rowdy scrambled up and shook himself. Pete was mad. Over on the edge of the bunk-house veranda sat four or five of the Concho boys. They rocked back and forth and slapped their legs and shouted. It was a trying situation.

The foreman, Bailey, rose as Pete limped up. "We're livin' over here,"

said Bailey. "Did you want to see some one?"

Pete wet his lips. "The fo'man. I--I--jest rid over to see how you was makin' it."

"Why, we 're doin' right fair. How you makin' it yourself?"

"I'm here," said Pete succinctly and without a smile.

"So we noticed," said the foreman mildly, too mildly, for one of the punchers began to laugh, and the rest joined in.