The Ridin' Kid from Powder River Part 65

They sat in the bunk-house doorway chatting about the various happenings during Pete's absence until they saw the buckboard top the distant edge of the mesa. Pete immediately secluded himself in the barn, while Andy hazed Blue Smoke into a box stall and hid Pete's saddle.

Ma Bailey, alighting from the buckboard, heard Andy's brief explanation of his absence with indifference most unusual in her, and glanced sharply at him when he mentioned having shot a wild turkey.

"I suppose you picked it and cleaned it and got it all ready to roast,"

she inquired. "Or have you just been loafing around waiting for me to do it?"

"I et it," a.s.serted Andy.

Ma Bailey glared at him, shook her head, and marched into the house while Andy helped Bailey put up the horses.

"Ma's upset about somethin'," explained Bailey. "Seems a letter came for Pete--"

"Letter from Pete! Why, he ain't comin' back, is he?"

"A letter for Pete. Ma says it looks like a lady's writin' on the envelope. She says she'd like to know what female is writin' to Pete, and him goodness knows where, and not a word to say whether he's sick or broke, or anything."

"I sure would like to see him," said Andy fervently.

"Well, if somebody's writin' to him here at the Concho, looks like he might drift in one of these days. I'd sure like to know how the kid's makin' it."

And Bailey strode to the house, while Andy led the team to the corral.

Later Andy appeared in the kitchen and asked Mrs. Bailey if he couldn't help her set the table, or peel potatoes, or something. Ma Bailey gazed at him suspiciously over her gla.s.ses. "I don't know what's ailin' you, Andy, but you ain't actin' right. First you tell me that you had to camp at the Blue last night account o' killin' a turkey. Then you tell me that you et the whole of it. Was you scared you wouldn't get your share if you fetched it home? Then you want to help me get supper. You been up to something! You just keep me plumb wore out worrying about you.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"For why, Ma? What have I done?"

"I don't know, but it'll come to the top. There's the boys now--and me a-standing here-- Run along and set the table if you ain't so full of whatever is got into you that you can't count straight. Bill won't be in to-night. Leastwise, Jim don't expect him." And Ma Bailey flapped her ap.r.o.n at him and shooed him out as though he were a chicken that had dared to poke its inquisitive neck into the kitchen.

"Count straight!" chuckled Andy. "Mebby I know more about how many's here than Ma does."

Meanwhile Ma Bailey busied herself preparing supper, and it was evident to the boys in the bunkhouse that Ma had something on her mind from the sounds which came from the kitchen. Ma scolded the potatoes as she fried them, rebuked the biscuits because they had browned a little too soon, censured the stove for its misbehavior in having scorched the biscuits, accused the wood of being a factor in the conspiracy, reprimanded the mammoth coffee-pot that threatened to deluge the steak, and finally chased Andy from the premises when she discovered that he had laid the table with her best set of dishes.

"Ma's steamin' about somethin'," remarked Andy as he entered the bunk-house.

This information was received with characteristic silence as each and every cowboy mentally straightened up, vowing silently that he wasn't goin' to take any chances of Ma b'ilin' over on him.

The clatter of the pack-horse bell brought the men to their feet and they filed across to the house, a preternaturally silent aggregation that confirmed Ma Bailey's suspicion that there was something afoot.

Andy, loitering behind them, saw Pete coming from the stables, tried to compose himself, but could not get rid of the boyish grin, which provoked Ma Bailey to mutter something which sounded like "idiot," to which the cowboys nodded in cheerful concurrence, without other comment.

Hank Barley, the silent, was gazing surrept.i.tiously at Ma's face when he saw her eyes widen, saw her rise, and stand staring at the doorway as Andy clumped in, followed by Pete.

Ma Bailey sat down suddenly.

"It's all right, Ma," laughed Andy, alarmed at the expression on her face. "It's just Pete."

"Just Pete!" echoed Ma Bailey faintly. And then, "Goodness alive, child, where you been?"

Pete's reply was lost in the shuffle of feet as the men rose and shook hands with him, asking him a dozen questions in as many seconds, a.s.serting that he was looking fine, and generally behaving like a crowd of schoolboys, as they welcomed him to their midst again.

Pete sat in the absent Bill Haskins's place. And "You must 'a' knowed he was coming" a.s.serted Avery. "Bill is over to the line shack."

"I got a _letter_," a.s.serted Ma Bailey mysteriously.

"And you jest said nothin' and sprung him on us! Well, Ma, you sure fooled me," said Andy, grinning.

"You go 'long." Mrs. Bailey smiled at Andy, who had earned her forgiveness by crediting her--rather wisely--with having originated the surprise.

They were chatting and joking when Bill Haskins appeared in the door-way, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief.

Ma Bailey glared at him over her spectacles. "Got any stickin'-plaster?"

he asked plaintively, as though he had committed some misdemeanor. She rose and placed a plate and chair for him as he shook hands with Pete, led him to the kitchen and inspected and bandaged his hand, which he had jagged on a wire gate, and finally reinstated him at the table, where he proved himself quite as efficient as most men are with two hands. "Give Bill all the coffee he wants and plenty stickin'-plaster, and I reckon he never would do no work," suggested Hank Barley.

Bill Haskins grinned good-naturedly. "I see Pete's got back," he ventured, as a sort of mild intimation that there were other subjects worth discussing. He accompanied this brilliant observation by a modest request for another cup of coffee, his fourth. The men rose, leaving Bill engaged in his favorite indoor pastime, and intimated that Pete should go with them. But Ma Bailey would not bear of it. Pete was going to help her with the dishes. Andy could go, however, and Bill Haskins, as soon as he was convinced that the coffee-pot was empty. Ma Bailey's chief interest in life at the moment was to get the dishes put away, the men out of the way, and Pete in the most comfortable rocking-chair in the room, that she might hear his account of how it all happened.

And Pete told her--omitting no circ.u.mstance, albeit he did not accentuate that part of his recital having to do with Doris Gray, merely mentioning her as "that little gray-eyed nurse in El Paso"--and in such an offhand manner that Ma Bailey began to suspect that Pete was keeping something to himself. Finally, by a series of cross-questioning, comment, and sympathetic concurrence, she arrived at the feminine conclusion that the gray-eyed nurse in El Paso had set her cap for Pete--of course Pete was innocent of any such adjustment of headgear--to substantiate which she rose, and, stepping to the bedroom, returned with the letter which had caused her so much speculation as to who was writing to Pete, and why the letter had been directed to the Concho.

Pete glanced at the letter, and thanked Ma Bailey as he tucked it in his pocket.

"I don't mind if you open it, Pete," she told him. "Goodness knows how long it's been laying in the post-office! And it, mebby, is important--from that doctor, or that lawyer, mebby. Oh, mebby it's from the bank. Sakes alive! To think of that man leaving you all that money!

Mebby that bank has failed!"

"Well, I'd be right where I started when I first come here--broke--lookin' for a job."

"And the boys'll worry you most to death if you try to read any letters in the bunk-house to-night. They're waitin' to hear you talk."

"Guess the letter can wait. I ain't such a fast reader, anyhow."

"And you're like to lose it, carryin' it round."

"I--I--reckon I better read it," stammered Pete helplessly.

He felt somehow that Ma would feel slighted if he didn't. Ma Bailey watched his face as he read the rather brief note from Doris, thanking him for his letter to her and congratulating him on the outcome of his trial, and a.s.suring him of her confidence in his ultimate success in life. "Little Ruth," wrote Doris, "cried bitterly when I told her that you had gone and would not come back. She said that when you said 'good-bye' to her you promised to come back--and of course I had to tell her that you would, just to make her happy. She has lost all interest in the puzzle game since you left, but that queer watch that you gave her, that has to be shaken before taken--and then not taken seriously--amuses her quite a bit. She gets me to wind it up--her fingers are not strong enough--and then she laughs as the hands race around. When they stop she puts her finger on the hour and says, 'Pitty soon Pete come back.'

Little Ruth misses you very much."

Pete folded the letter and put it in his pocket. "From a friend of mine," he said, flushing slightly.

Ma Bailey sighed, smiled, and sighed again. "You're just itching to go see the boys. Well, run along, and tell Jim not to set up all night." Ma Bailey rose, and stepping to the bedroom returned with some blankets.

"You'll have your old bunk. It's yours just as long as you want to stay, Pete. And--and I hope that girl in El Paso--is a--a nice--sensible--"

"Why, Ma! What's the matter?--" as Mrs. Bailey blinked and showed unmistakable signs of emotion.

"Nothing, Pete. I reckon your coming back so sudden and all you been through, and that letter, kind of upset me. D-does she powder her face, Pete?"

"Who? You mean Miss Gray? Why, what would she do that for?"

"Does she wear clothes that--that cost lots of money?"