The Ridin' Kid from Powder River Part 27

Boca was piqued. This young caballero did not seem anxious to know her--like the other men. He did not smile.

"Pete," she lisped, with a tinge of mockery in her voice. "Pete has not learned to talk yet--he is so young?"

Malvey slapped his thigh and guffawed. Pete stood solemnly eying him for a moment. Then he turned to the girl. "I ain't used to talkin' to women--'specially pretty ones--like you."

Boca clapped her hands. "There! 'Bool' Malvey has never said anything so clever as that."

"Bool" Malvey frowned. But he was hungry, and Flores's wife was preparing supper. Despite Boca's pretty mouth and fine dark eyes, which invited to conversation, Pete felt very much alone--very much of a stranger in this out-of-the-way household. He thought of his chum Andy White, and of Ma Bailey and Jim, and the boys of the Concho. He wondered what they were doing--if they were talking about him--and Gary. It seemed a long time since he had thrown his hat in the corner and pulled up his chair to the Concho table. He wished that he might talk with some one--he was thinking of Jim Bailey--and tell him just what there had been to the shooting. But with these folks . . .

The shadows were lengthening. Already the lamp on Flores's table was lighted, there in the kitchen where Malvey was drinking wine with the old Mexican. Pete had forgotten Boca--almost forgotten where he was for the moment, when something touched his arm. He turned a startled face to the girl. She smiled and then whispered quickly, "It is that I hate that 'Bool' Malvey. He is bad. Of what are you thinking, senor?"

Pete blinked and hesitated. "Of my folks--back there," he said.

Boca darted from him as her mother called her to help set the table.

Pete's lips were drawn in a queer line. He had no folks "back there"--or anywhere. "It was her eyes made me feel that way," he thought. And, "Doggone it--I'm livin'--anyhow."

From the general conversation at the table that evening Pete gathered that queer visitors came to this place frequently. It was a kind of isolated, halfway house between the border and Showdown. He heard the name of "Scar-Face," "White-Eye," "Sonora Jim," "Tio Verdugo," a rare a.s.sortment of border vagabonds known by name to the cowboys of the high country. The Spider was frequently mentioned. It was evident that he had some peculiar influence over the Flores household, from the respectful manner in which his name was received by the whole family.

And Pete, unfamiliar with the goings and comings of those men, their quarrels, friendships, and sinister escapades, ate and listened in silence, realizing that he too had earned a tentative place among them.

He found himself listening with keen interest to Malvey's account of a machine-gun duel between two white men,--renegades and leaders in opposing factions below the border,--and how one of them, shot through and through, stuck to his gun until he had swept the plaza of enemy sharp-shooters and had then crawled on hands and knees to the other machine gun, killed its wounded operator with a six-shooter, and turned the machine gun on his fleeing foes, shooting until the Mexicans of his own company had taken courage enough to return and rescue him. "And he's in El Paso now," concluded Malvey, "at the hospital. He writ to The Spider for money--and The Spider sure sent it to him."

"Who was he fightin' for?" queried Pete, interested in spite of himself.

"Fightin' for? For hisself! Because he likes the game. You don't want to git the idea that any white man is down there fightin' just to help a lot of dirty Greasers--on either side of the sc.r.a.p."

A quick and significant glance shot from Boca's eyes to her mother's.

Old Flores ate stolidly. If he had heard he showed no evidence of it.

"'Bull' Malvey! A darn good name for him," thought Pete. And he felt a strange sense of shame at being in his company. He wondered if Flores were afraid of Malvey or simply indifferent to his raw talk.

And Pete--who had never gone out of his way to make a friend--decided to be as careful of what he said as Malvey was careless. Pete had never lacked nerve, but he was endowed with considerable caution--a fact that The Spider had realized and so had considered him worth the trouble of hiding--as an experiment.

After supper the men sat out beneath the vine-covered portal--Malvey and Flores with a wicker-covered demijohn of wine between them--and Pete lounging on the doorstep, smoking and gazing across the canon at the faint stars of an early evening. With the wine, old Flores's manner changed from surly indifference to a superficial politeness which in no way deceived Pete. And Malvey, whose intent was plainly to get drunk, boasted of his doings on either side of the line. He hinted that he had put more than one Mexican out of the way--and he slapped Flores on the back--and Flores laughed. He spoke of raids on the horse-herds of white men, and through some queer perversity inspired in his drink, openly a.s.serted that he was the "slickest hoss-thief in Arizona," turning to Pete as he spoke.

"I'll take your word for it," said Pete.

"But what's the use of settin' out here like a couple of dam' buzzards when the ladies are waitin' for us in there?" queried Malvey, and be leered at Flores.

The old Mexican grunted and rose stiffly. They entered the 'dobe, Malvey insisting that Pete come in and hear Boca sing.

"I can listen out here." Pete was beginning to hate Malvey, with the cold, deliberate hatred born of instinct. As for old Flores, Pete despised him heartily. A man that could hear his countrymen called "a dirty bunch of Greasers," and have nothing to say, was a pretty poor sort of a man.

Disgusted with Malvey's loud talk and his raw att.i.tude toward Boca, Pete sat in the moon-flung shadows of the portal and smoked and gazed at the stars. He was half-asleep when he heard Boca tell Malvey that he was a pig and the son of a pig. Malvey laughed. There came the sound of a scuffle. Pete glanced over his shoulder. Malvey had his arm around the girl and was trying to kiss her. Flores was watching them, grinning in a kind of drunken indifference.

Pete hesitated. He was there on sufferance--a stranger. After all, this was none of his business. Boca's father and mother were also there . . .

Boca screamed. Malvey let go of her and swung round as Pete stepped up. "What's the idee, Malvey?"

"You don't draw no cards in this deal," snarled Malvey.

"Then we shuffle and cut for a new deal," said Pete.

Malvey's loose mouth hardened as he backed toward the corner of the room, where Boca cringed, her hands covering her face. Suddenly the girl sprang up and caught Malvey's arm, "No! No!" she cried.

He flung her aside and reached for his gun--but Pete was too quick for him. They crashed down and rolled across the room. Pete wriggled free and rose. In a flash he realized that he was no match for Malvey's brute strength. He had no desire to kill Malvey--but he did not intend that Malvey should kill him. Pete jerked his gun loose as Malvey staggered to his feet, but Pete dared not shoot on account of Boca. He saw Malvey's hand touch the b.u.t.t of his gun--when something crashed down from behind. Pete dimly remembered Boca's white face--and the room went black.

Malvey strode forward.

Old Flores dropped the neck of the shattered bottle and stood gazing down at Pete. "The good wine is gone. I break the bottle," said Flores, grinning.

"To h.e.l.l with the wine! Let's pack this young tin-horn out where he won't be in the way."

But as Malvey stooped, Boca flung herself in front of him. "Pig!" she flamed. She turned furiously on her father, whose vacuous grin faded as she cursed him shrilly for a coward.

Listless and heavy-eyed came Boca's mother. Without the slightest trace of emotion she examined Pete's wound, fetched water and washed it, binding it up with a handkerchief. Quite as listlessly she spoke to her husband, telling him to leave the wine and go to bed.

Flores mumbled a protest. Malvey asked him if he let the women run the place. Boca's mother turned to Malvey. "You will go," she said quietly. Malvey cursed as he stepped from the room. He could face Boca's fury, or face any man in a quarrel, but there was something in the deathlike quietness of the sad-eyed Mexican woman that chilled his blood. He did not know what would happen if he refused to go--yet he knew that something would happen. It was not the first time that Flores's wife had interfered in quarrels of the border outlaws sojourning at the ranch. In Showdown men said that she would as soon knife a man as not. Malvey, who had lived much in Old Mexico, had seen women use the knife.

He went without a word. Boca heard him speak sharply to his horse, as she and her mother lifted Pete and carried him to the bedroom.

CHAPTER XXI

BOCA DULZURA

Just before dawn Pete became conscious that some one was sitting near him and occasionally bathing his head with cool water. He tried to sit up. A slender hand pushed him gently back. "It is good that you rest," said a voice. The room was dark--he could not see--but he knew that Boca was there and he felt uncomfortable. He was not accustomed to being waited upon, especially by a woman.

"Where's Malvey?" he asked.

"I do not know. He is gone."

Again Pete tried to sit up, but sank back as a shower of fiery dots whirled before his eyes. He realized that he had been hit pretty hard--that he could do nothing but keep still just then. The hot pain subsided as the wet cloth again touched his forehead and he drifted to sleep. When he awakened at midday he was alone.

He rose, and steadying himself along the wall, finally reached the doorway. Old Flores was working in the distant garden-patch. Beyond him, Boca and her mother were pulling beans. Pete stepped out dizzily and glanced toward the corral. His horse was not there.

Pete was a bit hasty in concluding that the squalid drama of the previous evening (the cringing girl, the drunkenly indifferent father, and the malevolent Malvey) had been staged entirely for his benefit.

The fact was that Malvey had been only too sincere in his boorishness toward Boca; Flores equally sincere in his indifference, and Boca herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have antic.i.p.ated had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the cause of the quarrel.

Pete, however, saw in it a frame-up to knock him out and make away with his horse. And back of it all he saw The Spider's craftily flung web that held him prisoner, afoot and among strangers. "They worked it slick," he muttered.

Boca happened to glance up. Pete was standing bareheaded in the noon sunlight. With an exclamation Boca rose and hastened to him. Young Pete's eyes were sullen as she begged him to seek the shade of the portal.

"Where's my horse?" he challenged, ignoring her solicitude.

She shook her head. "I do not know. Malvey is gone."

"That's a cinch! You sure worked it slick."

"I do not understand."