Valley of Wild Horses Part 6

"Your pa never told me where, but I heerd afterward that he hit Hardman's trail an' went to western New Mexico. Marco is the name of the place. New country up there. Gold an' silver minin', some cattle outfits goin' in, an lately I heerd of some big wild-hoss deals on."

"Well," exclaimed Pan, in profound amaze and sorrow at this news.

"It's a wide-open frontier place, all right," declared Campbell. "Some cowpuncher rode through here an' talked about Marco. He said they stepped high, wide an' handsome up there."

"Why did Dad go?" asked Pan in wonder.

"Reckon I couldn't say fer sure. But he was sore at Hardman, an' the funny thing is he wasn't sore till some time after Hardman left these parts. Mebbe he learned somethin'. An' you can learn whatever it was if you hunt up them ranchers who once got stung by Hardman."

"Ah-uh!" muttered Pan, thoughtfully. "Don't know as I care to learn.

Dad will tell me.... Jim Blake, now, what become of him?"

"Jim, a while back, I reckon some years though after you left home, was foreman for Hardman's outfit. An' he went to Marco first. Reckon Hardman sent him up there to scout around."

"Did Jim take his family along?" inquired Pan, pondering.

"No. But they left soon after. In fact, now I tax myself, several homesteaders from hereabouts went. There's a boom over west, Pan, an'

this here country is gettin' crowded."

"Marco. How do you get there?"

"Wal, it's on the old road to Californy."

Pan went to the seclusion of his room, and there in the dark, sleepless, he knew the pangs of remorse. Without realizing the flight of years, always meaning to return home, to help father, mother, little sister, to take up again with his never-forgotten Lucy--he had allowed the wild life of the range to hold him too long. Excuses were futile.

Suppose he had failed to save money--suppose he had become numbered among those whom his old schoolteacher had called "bad cowboys"!

Pride, neglect, love of the range and new country, new adventure had kept him from doing his duty by his parents. That hour was indeed dark and shameful for Panhandle Smith. Instead of drowning his grief in drink, as would have been natural for a cowboy, he let it work its will upon him. He deserved the pangs of self-reproach, the futile wondering, the revived memories that roused longings stronger than that which had turned him on the homeward trail.

Next day Pan sold his outfit except the few belongings he cherished, and boarded a west-bound stage. Once on the way he recovered from his brooding mood and gradually awakened to the fact that he was riding to a new country, a new adventure--the biggest of his life--in which he must make amends to his mother, and to Lucy. Quite naturally he included Lucy in the little circle of beloved ones--Lucy, whom he had deserted for the open range, for pitching horses and running steers, for the dust and turmoil of the roundup, for the long day ride and the lonely night watch, for the gaming table, the bottle, the gun--for all that made life so thrilling to the American cowboy.

Riding by stage was not new to Pan, though he had never before taken more than a day's journey. The stage driver, Jim Wells, was an old-timer. He had been a pony-express rider, miner, teamster and freighter, and now, grizzled and scarred he liked to perch upon the driver's seat of the stage, chew tobacco and talk. His keen eyes took Pan's measure in one glance.

"Pitch your bag up, cowboy, an' climb aboard," he said. "An' what might your handle be?"

"Panhandle Smith," replied Pan nonchalantly, "late of Sycamore Bend."

"Wal, now, whar'd I hear thet name? I got a plumb good memory fer names an' faces. 'Pears I heerd thet name in Cheyenne, last summer....

I got it. Cowpuncher named Panhandle rode down street draggin' a bolt of red calico thet unwound an' stampeded all the hosses. Might thet lad have happened to be you?"

"I reckon it might," replied Pan, with a grin. "But if you know any more about me keep it under your sombrero, old-timer."

"Haw! Haw!" roared Wells, slapping his knee. "By golly, I will if I can. There's a funny old lady inside what's powerful afeerd of bandits, an' there's a gurl. I seen her takin' in your size an' spurs, an' thet gun you pack sort of comfortable like. An' there's a gambler, too, if I ever seen one. Reckon I'm agoin' to enjoy this ride."

After the next stop, where the travelers got dinner, Pan returned to the stage to find a young lady perched upon the driver's seat. She had serious gray eyes and pale cheeks.

"I took your seat," she said, shyly, "but there's enough room."

"Thanks, I'll ride inside," replied Pan.

"But if you don't sit here--someone else might--and I--he--" she faltered, flushing a little.

"Oh, in that case, I'll be glad to," interrupted Pan, and climbed to the seat beside her. He had become aware of the appearance of a flashily dressed, hawk-eyed individual about to enter the stage. "Are you traveling alone?"

"No, thank you. Father is with me, but he never sees anything. I have been annoyed," she replied.

The stage driver arrived, and surveyed the couple on the seat with a wink and a grin and a knowing look that quite embarra.s.sed the young lady.

"Wal, now, this here stage drivin' is gettin' to be mighty fine," he said, as he clambered up to the seat, and unwound the reins from the brake handle. "Lady, I reckon I seen you didn't like ridin' inside.

Wal, you'll sh.o.r.e be all right ridin' between me an' my young friend Panhandle Smith."

"I think I will," replied the girl, dimpling prettily. "My name is Emily Newman. I'm on my way with my father to visit relatives in California."

Pan soon found it needful to make conversation, in order to keep the loquacious old stage driver from talking too much. He had told Miss Newman about Pan's escapade with the red calico, and had launched upon another story about him, not funny at all to Pan, but one calculated to make conquest of a romancing young girl. Pan managed to shut Wells up, but too late. Miss Newman turned bright eyes upon Pan.

"Oh, of course, I saw you were a cowboy," she said, dimpling again.

"Those enormous spurs you wear! I wondered how you could walk."

"These spurs? They're nothing. I sleep in them," replied Pan.

"Indeed. You're not serious.... Was that true about your riding round Cheyenne dragging yards and yards of red calico behind your horse?"

"Yes. It was silly of me. I fear I had been looking upon something beside calico that was red."

"Oh, you mean red liquor? ... You were--under its influence!"

"A little," replied Pan laughing, yet not liking the turn of the conversation.

"I wouldn't have guessed that you--" she added, without concluding what she meant to say. But her tone, her look, and the intimation conveyed a subtle flattery to Pan. It seemed that whenever he approached young women he always received similar impressions. That was seldom, for his encounters with girls were few and far between. He could not help feeling pleased, somehow embarra.s.sed, and rather vaguely elated. He divined danger for him in these potent impressions. Without ever understanding why he had avoided friendships with girls.

"Miss Newman, cowboys as a rule aren't worth much," rejoined Pan, submerging his annoyance in good humor. "But at that they are not terrible liars like most of the stage drivers you meet."

"Haw! Haw!" roared Jim Wells, cracking his long whip, as the stage bowled over the road. "He's a modest young fellar, Miss, a most extraordinary kind of a cowboy."

And so they bandied words and laughs from one to another, while the long white road stretched ahead, and rolled behind under the wheels.

The girl was plainly curious, interested, fascinated. Old Jim, after the manner of westerners, was bent on making a conquest for Pan. And Pan, trying hard to make himself appear only an ordinary and quite worthless cowboy, succeeded only in giving an opposite impression.

The little lady rode three whole days on the driver's seat between Pan and Wells. She made the hours flee. When the stage reached Las Vegas, she got off with her father and turned in the crowd to wave good-by.

Her eyes were wistful with what might have been. They haunted Pan for days, over the mountain uplands and on and on. Pan cherished the experience. To him it had been just a chance meeting with a nice girl, but somehow it opened his eyes to what he had missed. The way of cowboys with girls was the one way in which he had been totally unfamiliar. What he had missed was not the dancing and flirting and courting that cowboys loved so well, but something he could not quite grasp. It belonged to the never-fading influence of his mother; and likewise it had some inscrutable a.s.sociation with little Lucy Blake.

Little? Surely she could not be little now. She was a grown girl, a young woman like this Emily Newman, beautiful perhaps, with all the nameless charms women had for men. Pan grew conscious of a mounting eagerness to see Lucy, and each day during the ride across the desert the feeling augmented, and with it a bewilderment equally incomprehensible to him.

New Mexico was strange and new. He saw the desert through eyes intensified by emotion. He knew the plains from Montana to Texas. But this was different country, with its stretches of valley, its walls of red and yellow, its strange shafts of rock, its amber ranges, and far away on every horizon the dim purple and white of great peaks were magnificent.

The Mormon ranches were scattered along the few green valleys. Cattle were scarce, only a few herds dotting the endless sweeps of green sage and bleached gra.s.s. As he traveled farther westward, however, the numbers of wild horses increased until they ran into the thousands.

Horses had meant more to Pan than anything. In his wanderings up and down the western slope of the prairie land east of the Rockies he had often encountered wild horses, and had enjoyed many a chase after them.

Every cowboy was a wild horse hunter, on occasions. If he had ridden these desert ranges, he would inevitably have become permanently a hunter and lover of wild horses. Moreover, Pan did not see why there would not be vastly more money in it than in punching cows. He grew charmed with the idea.

Western New Mexico at last! It appeared a continuation and a magnifying of all the color and wildness and vastness. Sand dunes and wastes of black lava, dry lake beds and cone-shaped extinct volcanoes, with the ragged crater mouths gaping, low ranges of yellow cedar-dotted hills, valleys of purple, and green forests on the mountain slopes--all these in endless variety were new to the cowboy of the plains. Water was conspicuous for its absence, though at long intervals of travel he crossed a stream. The homesteader, that hopeful and lonely pioneer, was as scarce as the streams.