The Sheriff of Badger Part 31

The misery of indecision had dropped from the deserter like a cloak that is shed. He laughed encouragingly over his shoulder at Hetty, as he turned to leave.

"Did you expect me to holler, Johnson?" he asked. "Not much! Why, this is going home, to me."

"Ready?" Osborne cried.

"And when I get out, I'll be able to look you boys in the face, too. Not you, Osborne. You can't look me in the eye right now. Pshaw! What is a year in a lifetime?"

"Quit your preaching. Come on."

"Adios, Mary Lou. Adios, Hetty. So long, Johnson. I'll see you soon."

"Guard and prisoner--'tention! Fours--left about--march!"

They swung around and made northwest, Wilkins in their midst. He was making his horse prance and was humming "Dixie." Once he looked back and waved his arm in a wide gesture towards the Huachucas, towering on the left; to the right, the straggling Mules range; and the San Pedro valley between, stretching away for eighty miles.

"What about this little ol' country now, hey?" he shouted. "What do you think of her, hey? How about this air? Lord!"

Hetty waved at him, but Mary Lou, who had drawn out a handkerchief to do the same, wept into it instead. They started slowly homeward, Lafe ambling along in gloomy quiet. Hetty did not perceive his mood, being too uplifted over her brother's recovery to be cognizant of lesser things. She ranged beside her husband. There were tears on her cheeks, but she was smiling and humming "Dixie."

"Isn't it just like heaven? Here I haven't seen him in six years. Just think of finding him like this. Oh, I never thought I could be so happy."

"You bet," the boss said scathingly. "This is simply great, this is.

He's gone to jail, I suppose you know? And I've got to get him out, I reckon."

"You can do that all right," Hetty declared--she had a vague idea that Lafe administered the entire law of the land, the High justice and the Low--"What does the jail matter, anyhow? We've got him back."

"Yes, it's all right now," Mary Lou agreed and dried her eyes.

"Oh, pshaw," said Lafe, settling to the ride. "What's the use?"

CHAPTER x.x.xI

GREAT EXPECTATIONS IN JOHNSON FAMILY

"Say, Dan."

"Huh-huh?"

"Did you ever feel kind of sudden like you'd done something before?"

Lafe inquired.

It was a month later and we were riding through the dusk up the Canon towards his home. This was too abstruse.

"I mean," he explained, "sometimes when you're at some place or looking at something, haven't you had a quick idea that you'd done the same thing in the same place a long time ago? Haven't you ever felt that way, Dan?"

"Often."

"I wonder," said he, "what's the reason?"

"It's probably a recurring impression--a remembrance of an act performed years ago."

He shook his head. "No-oo. It ain't that. I ain't never rode up here with you before. This is the first time me and you have been here together, ain't it? Yet I swear it struck me just now that, so long ago I can't call to mind when, me and you were trotting along just like this."

"Perhaps we were chums in a previous existence. There is the transmigration of souls, you know."

Lafe answered impatiently that the phenomenon could not be explained on any such grounds and expressed surprise that a man of my seeming sense would credit such theories. It seemed to rankle in him strangely. He grumbled to himself for a considerable distance, and was so visibly put out that I switched the talk.

"How's Bob getting along?" I ventured.

It proved an unfortunate choice of topics. Ferrier had been given a year in the cells by the commandant of the post, and then Horne had gone to his succor. And although the major had vowed to high heaven that no deserter would ever be dealt with leniently by him, he had yielded finally to the point of cutting down his punishment. It is true that there were many extenuating circ.u.mstances, and Ferrier seemed so sincere in his desire to atone that his commander was favorably inclined. So it ended by Hetty's brother escaping with thirty days' confinement. Then, anxious to get him away from old a.s.sociations, and comrades who knew the mistakes of his past, Johnson arranged through Horne to pay for his discharge.

All this had he done. Indeed, Lafe had labored unceasingly for his brother-in-law. Yet he railed against him, even while he aided. Like many men who never shirk from helping when it is most needed, Johnson could never hear the object of his benefactions mentioned without falling a victim to spleen. I should have avoided all reference to Ferrier.

"There's a brother-in-law for you," he snorted. "Yes, sir, he's sure a treasure. I no sooner get him out of the cells for deserting, than off he goes and--guess what he wants to do now?"

"Borrow some money?"

"You've hit it. Yes, sir, you've nailed it dead to rights. Here, after all the trouble me and ol' Horne took with that general at the Fort, that there feller Ferrier asks me to stake him, just as cool as you'd ask for a match. Say, have you got one? I'm plumb out."

"Oh, well," said I, "a man has to stand by his family."

"He ain't my family."

"He's Hetty's brother."

"Sure. He's Hetty's brother and I ain't allowed to forget it, either. I tell you what, Dan--when a man marries a woman, he marries all her kin, too."

With which bitter reflection Johnson borrowed some tobacco and rolled a cigarette. After a s.p.a.ce he remarked that Ferrier planned to settle on a quarter-section within the Horne range, and that he required three hundred dollars to make a start. Mary Lou Hardin was included in this scheme of settlement, said Lafe, the idea being that two could live as cheaply as one and that Bob would never amount to a row of beans unless anch.o.r.ed and domesticated. He had nothing but scorn for such adolescent reasoning.

"When I think of the way a young feller cares for a girl, I want to laugh," he said. "Pshaw, it's all mush. Nothing but talk, and those kids make the talk do instead of work. And if it ain't mush, it's wind. I tell you what--a man and a woman don't rightly care for each other, Dan, until they're married."

I stared at him. "Is that so? Well, well. Suppose they only wake up then and find they don't care at all. That would be fierce."

"Sure," he answered gravely. "It's a gamble. Why don't you take a chance?"

"That's my business."

"Well, you needn't get all swelled up about it. Hetty was saying to me only the other day--say, what're you so red in the face about?"

"You and Hetty stick to housekeeping and let me run my own affairs," I retorted hotly. Their presumption pa.s.sed all bounds. "Whenever a man's friends get married, they begin picking out a girl for him right off. I suppose misery likes company."

Johnson chuckled and said: "All right, let's forget it." It was very apparent in what channel his thoughts moved, however, for he would keep turning on me a broad smile.

"What good are bachelors, anyhow?" he demanded. "They'd ought for to tax 'em heavy."