The Sunset Trail Part 27

"I've been sent over to rope you up, Rattlesnake," quoth Cimarron.

"Calamity says you're to wash off your warpaint an' report at the agency."

"Does she still adhere to them demands about bustin' my laig?" asked Rattlesnake. "Not that it much matters," he added hastily, for the doughty resolve to see no more of Miss Barndollar, expressed to Mr.

Masterson, had long since oozed away, "not that it matters. The round-ups are eight weeks away, an' I'd easy be able to ride by then."

After this exchange the two munched wordless flapjacks, diversified by mouthfuls of salt pork. Rattlesnake Sanders broke the silence.

"Then I takes it we starts back by sun-up."

"Rattlesnake," observed Cimarron Bill, with a pompous solemnity that was not wanting in effect upon his auditor, "you've come to a bad, boggy, quicksand crossin'. My advice is not to jump your pony off the bank, but ride in slow."

"As how?" asked Rattlesnake Sanders, somewhat mystified.

"You think I'm honest, don't you?" demanded Cimarron.

"Sh.o.r.e, I think you're honest," returned Rattlesnake Sanders. Then, cautiously: "But still I allers sort o' allowed you had you're honesty onder control."

"Well, this is the straight goods at any rate," said Cimarron. "Thar's two kinds of folks you must never surrender to: ladies an' Injuns.

Surrender to either is the sh.o.r.e preloode to torture. For you, now, to go surgin' rapturously into Dodge, like a drunkard to a barbecue, would be the crownin' disaster of your c'reer."

"Whatever then should be my little game?"

"It's this a-way: I said you can't afford to surrender to Injuns an'

ladies. But you can make treaties with 'em. That gives you a chance to preeserve yourse'f for yourse'f. What you ought to do is plant yourse'f as solid as a gob of mud, an' send back word that you're thinkin' it over."

"But s'pose Calamity goes in the air, an' says it's all off?"

"That's a resk no brave man should refoose to take. You want to remember that she slammed a door in your face; that she set Bat to run you out o'

camp." These reminders clearly stiffened Rattlesnake Sanders. "For you to surrender, onconditional, would incite her to new crooelties that would lay over them former inhoomanities like a king-full lays over a pa'r of treys. Once," went on Cimarron, who began to be intoxicated with his own eloquence, "once a party back in St. Looey shows me a picture of a man chained to a rock, an' a turkey buzzard t'arin' into him, beak an'

claw. He said it was a sport named Prometheus bein' fed upon by vultures. In my pore opinion that party was barkin' at a knot. The picture wasn't meant for Prometheus an' the vultures. The painter who daubs it had nothin' on his mind but jest to show, pictor'ally, exactly what marriage is like. It was nothin' more nor less than that gifted genius' notion of a married man done in colours."

This outburst so moulded the hopes and fears, especially the fears, of Rattlesnake that he gave himself completely to the guidance of Cimarron Bill.

"I'm to stand a pat hand," said Rattlesnake tentatively, "an' you'll go cavortin' back an' tell Calamity I'll let her know."

"An' yet," interposed Cimarron Bill, "I think on that p'int I'd better be the bearer of a note in writin'. Ladies is plenty imaginative, an' if I takes to packin' in sech messages, verbal, Calamity may allow I'm lyin' an' lay for me."

There was no material for letter-making about the camp. The ingenious Cimarron suggested an "Injun letter." Acting on his own happy proposal he tore a small board from the top of a box that had held a dozen cans of corn, and set to work with charcoal. Cimarron Bill drew in one corner what might have pa.s.sed for the sketch of a woman, while the center was adorned with an excited antelope in full flight, escaping over a ridge.

"I'll mark the antelope, 'Bar D'," said Cimarron, "so's she'll know it's you, Bar D bein' your brand."

"But whatever is Calamity to onderstand by them totems?"

"Nothin' only that you're goin' to be a heap hard to ketch," replied Cimarron. "It'll teach her your valyoo."

The antelope looked vastly like a disfigured goat, and the resemblance disturbed Rattlesnake.

"That'll be all right," returned Cimarron, confidently; "I'll explain that it's an antelope. All pictures has to be explained."

When Cimarron Bill laid before Miss Barndollar the message embodied in that "Injun letter," she was so swept away by woe that even the hardened messenger was shocked. More and worse: Miss Barndollar, with a lack of logic for which her s.e.x has celebration, laid these new troubles, as she had the old, at the door of Mr. Masterson.

"You druv him from me!" cried Miss Barndollar, as she reproached Mr.

Masterson with her loss. "In your heartlessness you druv him from me!

An' now, although Sheriff of this yere county, you fails to restore him to my heart." Throughout that day and the next Miss Barndollar made it a practice to burst into tears at sight of Mr. Masterson. "Which I wants my Rattlesnake," she wailed.

Mr. Masterson was turning desperate. This mood found display in an exclamation that was wrung from him while refreshing his weary soul in the Long Branch.

"There's no use talking, Luke," observed Mr. Masterson, turning in his despair to Mr. Short, "Dodge can't stand this! Calamity must and shall be married! If Rattlesnake won't have her, some other man must."

In making this last remark Mr. Masterson let his glance fall by chance on Cimarron Bill. That determined person was startled to the core.

"You needn't look at me!" he roared. "Which I gives notice I'll never be married alive!"

"No one's thinking of you, Cimarron." retorted Mr. Masterson, and the suspicious one breathed more evenly.

Mr. Masterson and Mr. Short consulted in low tones across the counter.

At last Mr. Short straightened up as one who is clear, and said:

"Calamity in effect offers herse'f to this Rattlesnake person, an' he equiv'cates. Thar's two things in this republic which no white man has a license to decline; one's the presidency, an' t'other's a lady. This Rattlesnake has no rights left."

"But," said Mr. Masterson, hesitating over the point, "I don't quite see my way clear-as Sheriff."

"Speakin' technicle, you're c'rrect," observed Mr. Short. "An' it's thar where you makes the shift. Nail him for shootin' up Kell that time.

You-all knows me, Bat," continued Mr. Short. "I'm a mighty conserv'tive man, speshully about other folks' love affairs. An' yet I gives it as my jedgment that steps should be took."

Mr. Masterson, bidding Cimarron Bill follow with a buckboard, started for the White Woman.

It was in the afternoon of the next day, and Rattlesnake Sanders was seated by his fire, wrapped in gloomy thought.

"Hands up!" was his earliest notice of the threatening nearness of Mr.

Masterson who, dismounting two hundred yards away and beyond a swell, had crept cat-foot upon the camp. "Hands up! You're wanted for creasing Kelly!"

Quick as thought, Rattlesnake was on his feet. In a moment his hand as though by instinct slipped to the b.u.t.t of his Colt's. Sharp as was his work, Mr. Masterson's was even brisker. With the first shadow of resistance, he sent a bullet into Rattlesnake's leg-the other leg. The shock sent the unlucky Rattlesnake spinning like a top. He fell at full length, and before he might pull himself together Mr. Masterson had him disarmed.

"What for a racket is this?" demanded Rattlesnake fiercely, when he had collected his wits and his breath. "What's the meanin' of this yere bluff?"

"Speaking unofficially," returned Mr. Masterson, "it means that you're about to become a married man. If you think Dodge will sit idly by while you break the heart of that child Calamity, you're off."

"Calamity!" exclaimed Rattlesnake, in a maze of astonishment. "Which I was jest tryin' to figger out a way to squar' myse'f with that angel when you plugged me! If you'd said 'Calamity!' instead of 'Kelly' it wouldn't have called for a gun play. I'd have followed you back to town on all fours, like a collie dog."

"Why didn't you report, then, when I sent for you? What did you mean by sending in that infernal hieroglyphic?"

"Me an' Cimarron was simply holdin' out for guarantees," groaned Rattlesnake.

"You and Cimarron!" cried Mr. Masterson indignantly.

From over a knoll a clatter was heard, and Cimarron Bill came rattling into camp with the buckboard. This may or may not have had to do with Mr. Masterson's failure to finish his last remark. Possibly that adage, which tells of how soon things mend when least is said, occurred to him as a reason for holding his peace.

The perforated Rattlesnake was comfortably moved away in a Wright House bed, his beloved Calamity bending over him. When the first joy of their meeting had been given time to wear itself away, the lady was called into the hall by Mr. Masterson. Mr. Short was with him.