The Sunset Trail Part 32

with her phaeton to the rescue of a friend beset."

The Cochino Colorow roped and brought up a mud-hued, ewe-necked, hammer-headed beast of burden, and said its name was Julius Caesar. This animal, which had a genius for bolting one moment and backing up the next, he hooked to the phaeton. Cimarron, whose helplessness was not of the hands, could hold the reins and guide Julius Caesar. Mr. Masterson would ride a pinto pony furnished by the generous partisanship of the Cochino Colorow. It would take a week to make Dodge, and a week's provisions, solid and liquid, were loaded into the phaeton.

The faithful Cochino Colorow rode with them on a favourite sorrel as far as Antelope Springs. Arriving at that water, he bade the travellers farewell.

"Good luck to you," cried the Cochino Colorow, waving a fraternal hand.

"Give my regyards to Wright an' Kell an' Short."

"I hope you won't have trouble with that outfit from Ogallala," returned Mr. Masterson.

The Cochino Colorow snapped his fingers.

"Since my mind's took to runnin' on my mother-in-law," he said, "I've done quit worryin' about sech jim-crow propositions."

And thus they parted.

It was a week later when Mr. Masterson and the rescued one made Dodge.

When he had seen the suffering Cimarron safely in bed at the Wright House, Mr. Masterson began looking after his own welfare at the Long Branch.

"You cert'nly had a strenuous time, Bat," observed Mr. Short, sympathetically.

"Strenuous!" repeated Mr. Masterson. "I should say as much! Cimarron was as ugly as a sore-head dog, and wanted everything he could think of from a sandwich to a six-shooter. I was never so worn to a frazzle. It was certainly," concluded Mr. Masterson, replenishing his gla.s.s, "the most arduous rescue in which I ever took a hand; and we'd have never pulled it off if it hadn't been for the Cochino Colorow. Here's hoping he can square himself with that relative he robbed. She's as sour as pig-nuts, and I don't feel altogether easy about the Cochino Colorow. However, if the lady puts up too rough a deal, I told him he'd find a ready-made asylum here."

CHAPTER XIV

THE WORRIES OF MR. HOLIDAY

It was growing dark in California Gulch. Red Jack, the barkeeper of the Four Flush saloon, began to light up one by one the kerosene lamps, so that the Four Flush might be made resplendent against the advent of its evening customers. Just then the customers were at flap-jacks and bacon, for it was supper time in California Gulch. Having rendered the Four Flush a blaze of expectant glory, Red Jack took a rag and mopped the bar, already painfully clean. Then he shifted the two six-shooters, which were part of the concealed furniture of the bar, so that vagrant drops from careless gla.s.ses might not bespatter them.

Commonly, Red Jack consoled himself by whistling the "Mocking Bird," at this hour, when the stones of the Four Flush were grinding low. On this particular evening he was mute. Also his glance, when now and then he cast it upon Mr. Masterson and Mr. Holiday, who were engaged in whispered converse over a monte table just across the room, showed full of decorous interest.

Not that Red Jack objected to Mr. Masterson and Mr. Holiday holding a conference on the premises. It was plain by the respectful softness of his eye that he dwelt in sympathy therewith, and was only restrained from making a third for the pow-wow by an experience which taught him never to volunteer advice or put a question. Patronage and curiosity are crimes in the West, and ones sophisticated will not risk their commissions.

However, Red Jack might, without violating the canons of his tribe and region, relieve himself with one act of amiable politeness. While he could not have a share in the talk between Mr. Masterson and Mr.

Holiday, wanting an invitation to join them therein, he was free to provide the inspiration. Wherefore Red Jack brought a bottle and two gla.s.ses, and set them between Mr. Masterson and Mr. Holiday. Having thus made himself one with them in spirit, Red Jack left the pair to themselves, and made the rounds of the lamps to turn down ones which in a primary exuberance had begun to smoke.

"It's tough lines, Bat," said Mr. Holiday, as he poured himself a drink.

"I've never done anything worse than down a man, always a warrior at that, and now to have to rustle a party, even when it isn't on the level, comes plenty hard."

"But it's the one thing to do, Doc," returned Mr. Masterson. Mr. Holiday had been a dentist in his native Georgia, and his intimates called him Doc. "It's the only trail," reiterated Mr. Masterson. "The message says that they start to-day from Tucson. They'll be in Denver day after to-morrow. The only way to beat them is to have you under arrest. Our Governor won't give up a man to Arizona who's wanted here at home. Those reward-hungry sports from Tucson will get turned down, and meanwhile you will be on bail. That Arizona outfit can never take you away while a charge is pending against you in Colorado. You'll be safe for life."

"That wouldn't be for long," returned Mr. Holiday, "at the rate my lungs are losing."

Mr. Holiday was in the grasp of consumption, as one might tell by the sunken chest and hollow eye, even without the cough which was never long in coming. It was this malady of the lungs which had brought him West in the beginning.

"On the whole," objected Mr. Holiday, following a moment of thought, "why not go back to Arizona and be tried? It's four to one they couldn't convict; and I've gone against worse odds than that every day since I was born."

"Man!" expostulated Mr. Masterson, "it would never come to trial. You wouldn't get as far as Albuquerque. Some of the band would board the train and shoot you in the car-seat-kill you, as one might say, on the nest! It isn't as though you were to have a square deal. They'd get you on the train: get you with your guns off, too, for you'd be under arrest. Doc, you wouldn't last as long as a pint of whiskey at a barn-raising."

Mr. Masterson spoke with earnestness. His brow was wise and wide, his cool eye the home of counsel. It was these traits of a cautious intelligence that had given him station among his fellows as much as any wizard accuracy which belonged with his six-shooters.

"What is your plan, then?" said Mr. Holiday.

"You see the Off Wheeler over yonder?" Mr. Masterson pointed to a drunken innocent who was sunk in slumber in a far corner of the saloon.

The Off Wheeler having no supper to eat, was taking it out in sleep.

"You go to the edge of the camp," continued Mr. Masterson. "When you've had time to place yourself, I'll wake up the Off Wheeler and tell him to take my watch to the Belle Union. You stand him up and get it. Then I'll have him before the alcalde to swear out a warrant. You see, it will be on the square as far as the Off Wheeler is concerned. At the same time, because we don't mean it, it won't be robbery; you can console yourself with that. It'll be a bar to those reward hunters from Tucson, however, with their infernal requisition papers. They ought to be called a.s.sa.s.sination, not requisition, papers, for that is what it would come to if they took you from here. Now, do as I tell you, Doc; your friends will understand."

Mr. Holiday pulled his sombrero over his forehead and went out. Ten minutes later Mr. Masterson aroused the Off Wheeler by the genial expedient of holding a gla.s.s of whiskey beneath his sleeping nose. The Off Wheeler, under this treatment, revived, with all his feeble faculties, and drank the same. Then he turned a vacant look on Mr.

Masterson.

"Take my watch to the Belle Union," observed Mr. Masterson, giving the Off Wheeler the timepiece. "Give it to d.i.c.k Darnell and tell him to take care of it. I'm going to play poker to-night, and if I keep it with me it'll work its way into a jack-pot and get lost. I go crazy when I'm playing poker, and will bet the clothes off my back."

The Off Wheeler was pleased with this speech; the more since it smacked of a friendly confidence on the part of Mr. Masterson. To be on even terms with the most eminent personage in camp flattered the Off Wheeler.

He departed on Mr. Masterson's errand, Mr. Masterson having first enlivened his heels with a five-dollar bill.

In twenty minutes the Off Wheeler was back in the Four Flush, and as well as he might for the chattering terrors of his teeth telling Mr.

Masterson how Mr. Holiday had held him up at the street corner with one hand, and confiscated the watch with the other.

"He didn't even pull a gun!" wailed the Off Wheeler. "I wouldn't feel it so much if he had. But to be stood up, an' no gun-play, makes it look like he was tryin' to insult me."

"All right," returned Mr. Masterson, preserving a grave face, "you get a drink, and then we'll have out a warrant for that bandit's arrest. We'll show him that he can't go through the quietest gent in California Gulch and get away unpunished."

"You don't reckon now," observed the Off Wheeler faintly, "that Mr.

Holiday would turn in an' blow the top off my head, if I swore ag'inst him, do you?"

"I'll attend to that," said Mr. Masterson; "I'll see that he doesn't harm you."

Then the Off Wheeler was brave and comforted; for who did not know the word of Mr. Masterson?

"It's all right, judge," said Mr. Masterson.

The magistrate, with his sleeves rolled up from a hard day's work in his shaft, had been brought from supper to make out the affidavit. When he understood for whom it was designed he hesitated in a mystified way.

"It's all right," repeated Mr. Masterson. "Let the Off Wheeler swear to the papers; I'll take the responsibility. And, by the way, you might better authorise me to execute the warrant."

Thus it befell that Mr. Holiday was presently brought in by Mr.

Masterson on a charge of robbing, with force and arms, one Charles Stackhouse alias the Off Wheeler. The bail was fixed, and half the men in California Gulch went on the bond. When these technicalities were complied with, Mr. Masterson, glancing at the very watch of which the Off Wheeler had been depleted, said:

"Doc, it's eight o'clock. We've got to get back to the Four Flush. You know we're to have a game there at eight-thirty."

Mr. Holiday, six years before, had left Georgia for the West. He brought with him a six-shooter, a dentist's diploma, a knowledge of cards, and a hacking cough. When story-tellers mean to kill a character off without giving him a chance, they confer upon him a hacking cough. It was true, however, in the case of Mr. Holiday; a hacking cough he had, and whenever it seized him it was as though one smote against his breastbone with the bit of an axe.

In the West Mr. Holiday's diploma would do him little good. There lives no more of Western call for a dentist than for one who paints flowers upon silks. Wherefore, and because Mr. Holiday must dine and drink until he died of that consumption, he took to cards.

Now, cards make up a commerce wherein the West confesses an interest.