A HALF-DOZEN MEN SPRAWLED COMFORTABLY in back-tilted chairs against the side of the Bar Y bunk-house at the home ranch. They were young men, lithe of limb, tanned of face and clear of eye. Their skins shone from recent ablutions and their slicked hair was still damp, for they had but just come from the evening meal, and meals at the home ranch required a toilet.
One of them was singing.
“In the shade of a tree we two sat, him an’ me, Where the Haegler Hills slope to the Raft While our ponies browsed ‘round, reins a-draggin’ the ground; Then he looks at me funny an’ laft.”
“Most anyone would,” interrupted a listener.
“Shut up,” admonished another, “I ain’t only heered this three hundred an’ sixty-five times in the las’ year. Do you think I want to miss anything?”
Unabashed, the sweet singer continued.
“‘Do you see thet there town?’ he inquires, pintin’ down To some shacks sprawlin’ ‘round in the heat. I opined thet I did an’ he shifted his quid After drowndin’ a tumble-bug neat. Then he looks at me square. ‘There’s a guy waitin’ there Thet the sheep-men have hired to git me. Are you game to come down to thet jerk-water town Jest to see what in Hell you will see?’”
One of the group rose and stretched, yawning. He was a tall, dark man. Perhaps in his expression there was something a bit sinister. He seldom smiled and, when not in liquor, rarely spoke.
He was foreman—had been foreman for over a year, and, except for a couple of sprees, during which he had playfully and harmlessly shot up the adjoining town, he had been a good foreman, for he was a thorough horseman, knew the range, understood cattle, was a hard worker and knew how to get work out of others.
It had been six months since he had been drunk, though he had taken a drink now and then if one of the boys chanced to bring a flask back from town. His abstinence might have been accounted for by the fact that Elias Henders, his boss, had threatened to break him the next time he fell from grace.
“You see, Bull,” the old man had said, “we’re the biggest outfit in this part of the country an’ it don’t look good to see the foreman of the Bar Y shootin’ up the town like some kid tenderfoot that’s been slapped in the face with a bar-rag. You gotta quit it, Bull; I ain’t a-goin’ to tell you again.”
And Bull knew the old man wouldn’t tell him again, so he had stayed good for six long months. Perhaps it was not entirely a desire to cling to the foreman’s job that kept him in the straight and narrow path. Perhaps Diana Henders’ opinion had had more weight with him than that of her father.
“I’m ashamed of you, Bull,” she had said, and she refused to ride with him for more than a week. That had been bad enough, but as if to make it worse she had ridden several times with a new hand who had drifted in from the north a short time before and been taken on by Bull to fill a vacancy.
At first Bull had not liked the new man. “He’s too damned pretty to be a puncher,” one of the older hands had remarked, and it is possible that the newcomer’s rather extreme good looks had antagonized them all a little at first, but he had proven a good man and so the others had come to accept Hal Colby in spite of his wealth of waving black hair, his perfect profile, gleaming teeth and laughing eyes.
“So I told him I’d go, fer I liked thet there bo, And I’d see thet the shootin! was fair; But says he: ‘It is just to see who starts it fust Thet I wants anyone to be there.’” “I’m going to turn in,” remarked Bull.
Hal Colby rose. “Same here,” he said, and followed the foreman into the bunk-house. A moment later he turned where he stood beside his bunk and looked at Bull who was sitting on the edge of his, removing his spurs. The handsome lips were curved in a pleasant smile. “Lookee here, Bull!” he whispered, and as the other turned toward him he reached a hand beneath the bag of clothes that constituted his pillow and drew forth a pint flask. “Wet your whistle?” he inquired.
“Don’t care if I do,” replied the foreman, crossing the room to Colby’s bunk.
Through the open window floated the drawling notes of Texas Pete’s perennial rhapsody.
“When the jedge says: ‘Who drew his gun fust, him or you?’ Then I wants a straight guy on my side, Fer thet poor puddin’ head, why, he’s already dead With a forty-five hole in his hide.”
“Here’s lookin’ at you!” said Bull.
“Drink hearty,” replied Colby.
“‘Taint so bad at that,” remarked the foreman, wiping his lips on the cuff of his shirt and handing the flask back to the other.
“Not so worse for rot-gut,” agreed Colby. “Have another!”
The foreman shook his head.
“‘T won’t hurt you any,” Colby assured him. “It’s pretty good stuff.”
Sang Texas Pete:
“And thet wasn’t jest jaw—when it come to a draw This here guy was like lightnin’ turned loose. Then we rolls us a smoke an’ not neither one spoke ‘Til he said: ‘Climb aboard your cayuse.’ Then we reined down the hill each a-puffin’ his pill To the town ‘neath its shimmer o’ heat An’ heads up to the shack that’s a-leanin’ its back ‘Gainst the side o’ The Cowboys’ Retreat.”
Bull took another drink—a longer one this time, and, rolling a cigarette, sat down on the edge of Colby’s bunk and commenced to talk—whiskey always broke the bonds of his taciturnity. His voice was low and not unpleasant.
He spoke of the day’s work and the plans for tomorrow and Hal Colby encouraged him. Perhaps he liked him; perhaps, like others, he felt that it paid to be on friendly terms with the foreman.
While from outside:
“It is Slewfoot’s Good Luck
Where they hand you out chuck
Thet is mostly sow-belly an’ beans.
Says he: ‘Bub, let us feed—
I’m a-feelin’ the need
O’more substance than air in my jeans.’
So ol’ Slewfoot was there,
All red freckles an’ hair,
An’ we lined our insides with his grub.
Says Bill, then: ‘Show your gait—
Let’s be pullin’ our freight,
Fer I’m rarin’ to go,’ says he, ‘Bub.’”
Inside the bunk-house Bull rose to his feet. “That’s damn good stuff, Hal,” he said. The two had emptied the flask.
“Wait a minute,” said the other, “I got another flask,” and reached again beneath his bag.
“No,” demurred the foreman, “I guess I got enough.”
“Oh, hell, you ain’t had none yet,” insisted Colby.
The song of Texas Pete suffered many interruptions due to various arguments in which he felt compelled to take sides, but whenever there was a lull in the conversation he resumed his efforts to which no one paid any attention further than as they elicited an occasional word of banter.
The sweet singer never stopped except at the end of a stanza, and no matter how long the interruption, even though days might elapse, he always began again with the succeeding stanza, without the slightest hesitation or repetition. And so now, as Bull and Colby drank, he sang on.
“Now we’ll sashay next door
To thet hard-licker store
Where his nibs is most likely to be.
An’ then you goes in first
An’ starts drownin’ your thirst;
But a-keepin’ your eyes peeled fer me.’”
Bull, the foreman, rose to his feet. He stood as steady as a rock, but Colby saw that he was drunk. After six months’ of almost total abstinence he had just consumed considerably more than a pint of cheap and fiery whiskey in less than a half hour.
“Goin’ to bed?” asked Colby.
“Bed, hell,” replied the other. “I’m goin’ to town—it’s my night to howl. Comin’?”
“No,” said Colby. “I think I’ll turn in. Have a good time.”
“I sure will.” The foreman walked to his bunk and strapped his guns about his hips, resumed the single spur he had removed, tied a fresh black silk handkerchief about his neck, clapped his sombrero over his shock of straight black hair and strode out of the bunk-house.
“‘Fer I wants you to see thet it’s him draws on me So the jedge he cain’t make me the goat.’ So I heads fer that dump an’ a queer little lump Starts a-wrigglin’ aroun’ in my throat.”
“Say, where in hell’s Bull goin’ this time o’ night?” Pete interrupted himself.
“He’s headin’ fer the horse c’rel,” stated another.
“Acts like he was full,” said a third. “Didje hear him hummin’ a tune as he went out? That’s always a sign with him. The stuff sort o’ addles up his brains, like Pete’s always is, an’ makes him sing.”
“Fer I wants you to know thet I likes thet there bo An’ I’d seen more than one good one kilt, Fer you cain’t never tell, leastways this side o’ Hell, When there’s shootin’ whose blood will be spilt.”
“There he goes now,” said one of the men as the figure of a rider shown dimly in the starlight loped easily away toward the south, “an’ he’s goin’ toward town.”
“I wonder,” said Texas Pete, “if he knows the old man is in town tonight.”
“Jest inside o’ the door with one foot on the floor An’ the other hist up on the rail Stands a big, raw-boned guy with the orn’riest eye Thet I ever seen outen a jail.”
“By gollies, I’m goin’ after Bull. I doan b’lieve he-all knows thet the of man’s in town,” and leaping to his feet he walked off toward the horse corral, still singing:
“An’ beside him a girl, thet sure looked like a pearl Thet the Bible guy cast before swine, Was a-pleadin’ with him, her eyes teary an’ dim, As I high-sign the bar-keep fer mine.”
He caught up one of the loose horses in the corral, rammed a great, silver-mounted spade bit between its jaws, threw a heavy, carved saddle upon the animal’s back, stepped one foot into a trailing, tapadera-ed stirrup and was off in a swirl of dust. Texas Pete never rode other than in a swirl of dust, unless it happened to be raining, then he rode in a shower of mud.
His speed tonight was, therefore, not necessarily an indication of haste. He would have ridden at the same pace to either a funeral or a wedding, or home from either.
But any who knew Texas Pete could have guessed that he was in considerate haste, for he rode without his woolly, sheepskin chaps—one of the prides of his existence. If he had been in too much of a hurry to don them he must have been in a great hurry, indeed.
Texas Pete might be without a job, with not more than two-bits between himself and starvation, but he was never without a fine pair of sheepskin chaps, a silver-encrusted bit, a heavy bridle garnished with the same precious metal, an ornate saddle of hand carved leather and silver conchas, a Stetson, two good six-guns with their belt and holsters and a vivid silk neckerchief.
Possibly his pony cost no more than ten dollars, his boots were worn and his trousers blue denim overalls, greasy and frayed, yet Texas Pete otherwise was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The rowels of his silver-inlaid Mexican spurs dragged the ground when he walked and the dumb-bells depending from their hubs tinkled merrily a gay accompaniment to his boyish heart beating beneath ragged underclothing.
Texas Pete galloped along the dusty road toward the small cattle-town that served the simple needs of that frontier community with its general store, its restaurant, its Chinese laundry, blacksmith shop, hotel, newspaper office and five saloons, and as he galloped he sang:
“Then the door swings agin an’ my pal he steps in An’ the light in his eye it was bad, An’ the raw-boned guy wheels an’ the girl there she squeals: ‘O, fer gawd’s sake don’t shoot, Bill, it’s dad!’”
A mile ahead of Pete another pony tore through the dust toward town —a blazed-face chestnut with two white hind feet—Blazes, the pride of the foreman’s heart.
In the deep saddle, centaurlike, sat the horseman.
Hendersville tinkled softly in the quiet of early evening. Later, gaining momentum, it would speed up a bit under his own power. At present it reposed in the partial lethargy of digestive functionings—it was barely first drink time after supper. Its tinkling was the tinkling of spurs, chips and only very occasional glassware.
Suddenly its repose was shattered by a wild whoop from without, the clatter of swift hoofs and the rapid crack, crack, crack of a six-gun. Gum Smith, sheriff, rose from behind the faro layout and cocked an attentive ear.
Gum guided the destinies of the most lucrative thirst emporium in Hendersville. Being sheriff flattered his vanity and attracted business, but it had its drawbacks; the noises from without sounded like one of them and Gum was pained.
It was at times such as this that he almost wished that someone else was sheriff, but a quick glance at the shiny badge pinned to the left hand pocket of his vest reassured him quickly on that point and he glanced swiftly about the room at its other occupants and sighed in relief—there were at least a dozen husky young punchers there.
Across the street, in the office of the Hendersville Tribune, Elias Henders sat visiting with Ye Editor. As the shouting and the shots broke the quiet of the evening the two men looked up and outward toward the street.
“Boys will be boys,” remarked the editor.
A bullet crashed through the glass at the top of the window. With a single movement the editor extinguished the lamp that burned on the desk before them, and both men, with a celerity that spoke habit, crouched quickly behind that piece of furniture.
“Sometimes they’re damn careless, though,” replied Elias Henders.
Down the road Texas Pete galloped and sang:
“For the thing she had saw was Bill reach for to draw When the guy she called dad drawed on Bill. In the door was my pal with his eyes on the gal An’ his hand on his gun—standin’ still.”
From the distance ahead came, thinly, the sound of shots.
“By gollies!” exclaimed Texas Pete, “the darned son-of-a-gun!”
The men lolling about the barroom of Gum’s Place—Liquors and Cigars—looked up at the sound of the shots and grinned. An instant later a horse’s unshod hoofs pounded on the rough boards of the covered “porch” in front of Gum’s Place, the swinging doors burst in and Blazes was brought to his haunches in the center of the floor with a wild whoop from his rider, who waved a smoking gun above his head.
Bull, the Bar Y foreman, let his gaze run quickly about the room. When his steel-grey eyes alighted upon the sheriff they remained there. Gum Smith appeared to wilt behind the faro table. He shook a wavering finger at the Bar Y foreman.
“Yo’ all’s undah arrest,” he piped in a high, thin voice, and turning toward the men seated about the neighboring tables he pointed first at one and then at another. “Ah depatize yo! Ah depatize yo! Ah depatize yo!” he announced to each as he covered them in turn with his swiftly moving index finger. “Seize him, men!” No one moved. Gum Smith waxed excited. “Seize him, yo’-all! Ah’m sheriff o’ this yere county. Ef Ah depatize yo’-all, yo’-all’s got to be depatized.”
“My mother was a wild cat,
My father was a bear (announced Bull).
I picks my teeth with barb-wire.
With cactus combs my hair
... and I craves drink—pronto!”
“Yo’-all’s undah arrest! Seize him, men!” shrilled Gum.
Bull fired into the floor at the foot of the faro table and Gum Smith disappeared behind it. The men all laughed. Bull turned his attention toward the barkeep and fired into the back bar. The bar-keep grinned.
“Be keerful, Bull,” he admonished, “I got a bad heart. My doctor tells me as how I should avoid excitement.”
The front doors swung in again and Bull wheeled with ready six-gun to cover the newcomer, but at sight of the man who entered the room the muzzle of his gun dropped and he was sobered in the instant.
“Oh!” said Elias Henders, “so it’s you agin, Bull, eh?
The two men stood looking at one another in silence for a moment. What was passing in their minds no one might have guessed. It was the older man who spoke again first.
“I reckon I’ll not be needin’ you any more, Bull,” he said, and then, after a moment’s reflection, “unless you want a job as a hand—after you sober up.”
He turned and left the building and as he stepped down into the dust of the road Texas Pete swung from his pony and brushed past him.
Inside, Bull sat his horse at one side of the large room, near the bar. Behind him Gum Smith was slowly emerging from the concealment of the faro table. When he saw the man he feared sitting with his back toward him, a crafty look came into the eyes of the sheriff. He glanced quickly about the room. The men were all looking at Bull. No one seemed to be noticing Gum.
He drew his gun and levelled it at the back of the ex-foreman of the Bar Y Instantly there was a flash from the doorway, the crack of a shot, and the sheriffs gun dropped from his hand. All eyes turned in the direction of the entrance. There stood Texas Pete, his shooting iron smoking in his hand.
“You damn pole-cat!” he exclaimed, his eyes on Gum. “Come on, Bull; this ain’t no place for quiet young fellers like us.”
Bull wheeled Blazes and rode slowly through the doorway, with never a glance toward the sheriff; nor could he better have shown his utter contempt for the man. There had always been bad blood between them. Smith had been elected by the lawless element of the community and at the time of the campaign Bull had worked diligently for the opposing candidate who had been backed by the better element, consisting largely of the cattle owners, headed by Elias Henders.
What Bull’s position would have been had he not been foreman for Henders at the time was rather an open question among the voters of Hendersville, but the fact remained that he had been foreman and that he had worked to such good purpose for the candidate of the reform element that he had not only almost succeeded in electing him, but had so exposed the rottenness of the gang back of Smith’s candidacy that their power was generally considered to be on the wane.
“It’ll be Bull for sheriff next election,” was considered a safe prophecy and even a foregone conclusion, by some.
Gum Smith picked up his gun and examined it. Texas Pete’s shot had struck the barrel just in front of the cylinder. The man looked angrily around at the other occupants of the room.
“Ah wants yo’-all to remember that Ah’m sheriff here,” he cried, “an’ when Ah depatizes yo’-all it’s plum legal, an’ yo’all gotta do what Ah tell yo’ to.”
“Oh, shut up, Gum,” admonished one of the men.
Outside, Texas Pete had mounted his pony and was moving along slowly stirrup to stirrup with Bull, who was now apparently as sober as though he had never had a drink in his life.
“It’s a good thing fer us he didn’t have his gang there tonight,” remarked Pete.
Bull shrugged, but said nothing in reply. Texas Pete resigned himself to song.
“Then thet damned raw-boned guy with the ornery eye Up an’ shoots my pal dead in the door; But I’m here to opine with this bazoo o’ mine Thet he won’t shoot no hombres no more.”
“What was you doin’ up to town, Texas’?” inquired Bull.
“Oh, I jest thought as how I’d ride up an’ see what was doin’-maybe you didn’t know the old man was there tonight—reckon I was a bit late, eh?”
“Yes. Thanks, just the same—I won’t ferget it.”
“Tough luck.”
“How’d you know the old man was goin’ to be in town tonight?”
“Why, I reckon as how everybody exceptin’ you knew it, Bull.”
“Did Colby know it?”
“Why, I recken as how he must of.”
They rode on for some time in silence, which Texas finally broke.
“Jest a moment, an’ where
They’d been five o’ us there,
We hed suddenly dwindled to three.
The bar-keep, he was one—
The darned son-of-a-gun—
An’ the others, an orphan an’ me.”
When Bull and Texas entered the bunk-house most of the men were asleep, but Hal Colby rolled over on his bunk and smiled at Bull as the latter lighted a lamp.
“Have a good time, Bull?” he inquired.
“The old man was there,” said Bull, “an’ I ain’t foreman no more.”
“Touch luck,” sympathized Colby.
AFTER BREAKFAST THE FOLLOWING MORNING the men were saddling-up listlessly for the day’s work. There was no foreman now and they were hanging about waiting for the boss. Bull sat on the top rail of the corral, idle. He was out of a job. His fellows paid little or no attention to him, but whether from motives of consideration for his feelings, or because they were not interested in him or his troubles a casual observer could not have deduced from their manner.
Unquestionably he had friends among them, but he was a taciturn man and, like all such, did not make friends quickly. Undemonstrative himself, he aroused no show of demonstration in others. His straight black hair, and rather high cheek bones, coupled with a tanned skin, gave him something the appearance of an Indian, a similarity that was further heightened by his natural reserve, while a long, red scar across his jaw accentuated a suggestion of grimness that his countenance possessed in repose.
Texas Pete, saddling his pony directly below him in the corral, was starting the day with a new song.
“I stood at the bar, at The Spread Eagle Bar,
A-drinkin’ a drink whilst I smoked a seegar.”
“Quittin’, Bull?” he inquired, looking up at the ex-foreman.
“Reckon so,” came the reply.
“When in walks a gent thet I ain’t never see An’ he lets out a beller an’ then says, says he:”
Texas Pete swung easily into his saddle.
“Reckon as how I’ll be pullin’ my freight, too,” he announced. “I been aimin’ to do thet for quite a spell. Where’ll we head fer?”
Bull’s eyes wandered to the front of the ranch house, and as they did so they beheld “the old man” emerging from the office. Behind him came his daughter Diana and Hal Colby. The latter were laughing and talking gaily. Bull could not but notice how close the man leaned toward the girl’s face. What an easy way Colby had with people—especially women.
“Well,” demanded Texas Pete, “if you’re comin’ why don’t you saddle up?”
“Reckon I’ve changed my mind.”
Texas Pete glanced toward the ranch house, following the direction of the other’s eyes, and shrugged his shoulders.
“O, well,” he said, “this ain’t a bad place. Reckon as how I’ll stay on, too, fer a spell.”
Elias Henders and Hal Colby were walking slowly in the direction of the horse corral. The girl had turned and reentered the house. The two men entered the corral and as they did so Bull descended from the fence and approached Henders.
“You don’t happen to need no hands, do you?” he asked the older man.
“I can use you, Bull,” replied Henders with a faint smile. “Thirty-five a month and found.”
The former foreman nodded in acceptance of the terms and, walking toward the bunch of horses huddled at one side of the corral, whistled. Instantly Blazes’ head came up above those of the other animals. With up-pricked ears he regarded his owner for a moment, and then, shouldering his way through the bunch, he walked directly to him.
Elias Henders stopped in the center of the corral and attracted the attention of the men. “Colby here,” he announced, “is the new foreman.”
That was all. There was a moment’s embarrassed silence and then the men resumed their preparations for the work of the day, or, if they were ready, lolled in their saddles rolling cigarettes. Colby went among them assigning the various duties for the day—pretty much routine work with which all were familiar.
“And you, Bull,” he said when he reached the ex-foreman, “I wish you’d ride up to the head of Cottonwood Canyon and see if you can see anything of that bunch of Crazy J cows—I ain’t seen nothin’ of ‘em for a week or more.”
It was the longest, hardest assignment of the day, but if Bull was dissatisfied with it he gave no indication. As a matter of fact he probably was content, for he was a hard rider and he liked to be off alone. A trait that had always been a matter for comment and some conjecture.
More than one had asked himself or a neighbor what Bull found to do that took him off by himself so often. There are those who cannot conceive that a man can find pleasure in his own company, or in that of a good horse and the open.
The mouth of Cottonwood Canyon lay a good twenty miles from the ranch and the head of it five miles of rough going farther. It was ten o’clock when Bull suddenly drew rein beside the lone cottonwood that marked the entrance to the canyon and gave it its name.
He sat motionless, listening intently. Faintly, from far up the canyon, came the staccato of rifle shots. How far it was difficult to judge, for the walls of a winding canyon quickly absorb sound. Once convinced of the direction of their origin, however, the man urged his pony into a gallop, turning his head up the canyon.
As the last of the cow hands loped away from the ranch upon the business of the day Elias Henders turned back toward the office, while Hal Colby caught up two ponies which he saddled and bridled, humming meanwhile a gay little tune. Mounting one, he rode toward the ranch house, leading the other, just as Diana Henders emerged from the interior, making it apparent for whom the led horse was intended.
Taking the reins from Colby, the girl swung into the saddle like a man, and she sat her horse like a man, too, and yet, though she could ride with the best of them, and shoot with the best of them, there was nothing coarse or common about her. Some of the older hands had known her since childhood, yet even that fact, coupled with the proverbial freedom of the eighties in Arizona, never permitted them the same freedom with Diana Henders that most of the few girls in that wild country either overlooked or accepted as a matter of course.
Men did not curse in Diana’s presence, nor did they throw an arm across her slim shoulders, or slap her upon the back in good fellowship, and yet they all worshipped her, and most of them had been violently in love with her. Something within her, inherently fine and noble, kept them at a distance, or rather in their places, for only those men who were hopelessly bashful ever remained at a distance from Diana where there was the slightest chance to be near her.
The men often spoke of her as a thoroughbred, sensing, perhaps, the fine breeding that made her what she was. Elias Henders was one of the Henders of Kentucky, and, like all the males of his line for generations, held a degree from Oxford, which he had entered after graduation from the beloved alma mater of his native state, for the very excellent reason that old Sir John Henders, who had established the American branch of the family, had been an Oxford man and had seen his son and his grandson follow his footsteps.
Twenty-five years before Elias Henders had come west with John Manill, a class-mate and neighbor of Kentucky, and the two young men had entered the cattle business. Their combined capital managed to keep them from the embarrassments and annoyances of a sheriffs sale for some three years, but what with raiding Apaches, poor rail facilities and a distant market, coupled with inexperience, they were at last upon the very brink of bankruptcy when Henders discovered gold on their property. Two years later they were rich men.
Henders returned to Kentucky and married Manill’s sister, and shortly afterwards moved to New York, as it was decided that the best interests of the partnership required an eastern representative. Manill remained in Arizona.
Diana Henders was born in New York City, and when she was about five years old her mother contracted tuberculosis of the lungs. Physicians advising a dry climate, Henders and Manill changed places, Henders taking his family to Arizona and Manill removing to New York with his wife and little daughter. He had married beneath him and unhappily with the result that being both a proud and rather reserved man he had confided nothing to his sister, the wife of his partner and best friend.
When Diana was fifteen her mother had died, and the girl, refusing to leave her father, had abandoned the idea of finishing her education in an eastern college, and Elias Henders, loath to give her up, had acquiesced in her decision. Qualified by education as he was to instruct her, Diana’s training had been carried on under the tutelage of her father, so that at nineteen, though essentially a frontier girl unversed in many of the finer artificialities of social usage, she was yet a young woman of culture and refinement. Her music, which was the delight of her father, she owed to the careful training of her mother as well as to the possession of a grand piano that had come over Raton Pass behind an ox team in the seventies.
Her father, her books, her music and her horses constituted the life of this young girl; her social companions the young vaqueros who rode for her father, and without at least one of whom she was not permitted to ride abroad, since the Apaches were still a menace in the Arizona of that day.
And so it was that this morning she rode out with the new foreman. They walked their horses in silence for a few minutes, the man’s stirrup just behind that of the girl, where he might let his eyes rest upon her profile without detection. The heavy-lashed eye, the short, straight nose, the patrician mouth and chin held the adoring gaze of the young foreman in mute worship; but it was he who, at length, broke the silence.
“You ain’t congratulated me yet, Di, “ he said, “or maybe you didn’t know?”
“Yes, I knew,” she replied, “and I do congratulate you; but I cannot forget that your fortune means another man’s sorrow.”
“It’s his own fault. A man that can’t keep sober can’t be trusted with a job like this.”
“He was a good foreman.”
“Maybe so—I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about a man that’s down. It seems to me you set a lot of store by him, though; and what do you know about him? You can’t be too careful, Di. There’s lots of bad ‘uns in these parts and when a feller never talks none, like him, it’s probably because he’s got something on his mind he don’t want to talk about.”
“I thought he was your friend,” said the girl.
Colby flushed. “He is my friend. I set a lot of store by Bull; but it’s you I’m thinkin’ of—not him or me. I wouldn’t want nothin’ to happen that you’d have to be sorry about.”
“I don’t understand you, Hal.”
He flecked the leg of his chaps with the lash of his quirt. “Oh, pshaw, Di,” he parried, “I don’t want to say nothin’ about a friend. I only want to put you on your guard, that’s all. You know there ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you—no, not even if it cost me all the friends I got.”
He passed his reins to his right hand and reaching across laid his left across one of hers, which she quickly withdrew.
“Please don’t,” she begged.
“I love you, Di,” he blurted suddenly.
The girl laughed gaily, though not in derision. “All the men think they do. It’s because I’m the only girl within miles and miles.”
“You’re the only girl in the world for me.”
She turned and looked at him quizzically. He was very handsome. That and his boyish, laughing manner had attracted her to him from the first. There had seemed a frankness and openness about him that appealed to her, and of all the men she knew, only excepting her father, he alone possessed anything approximating poise and self confidence in his intercourse with women. The others were either shy and blundering, or loud and coarse, or taciturn sticks like Bull, who seemed to be the only man on the ranch who was not desperately in love with her.
“We’ll talk about something else,” she announced.
“Isn’t there any hope for me?” he asked.
“Why yes,” she assured him. “I hope you will keep on loving me. I love to have people love me.”
‘ ‘But I don’t want to do all the loving,” he insisted.
“Don’t worry—you’re not. Even the cook is writing poems about me. Of all the foolish men I ever heard of Dad has certainly succeeded in corraling the prize bunch.”
“I don’t care a hang about that red-headed old fool of a cook,” he snapped. “What I want is for you to love me.”
“Oh, well, that’s a horse of another color. Now we will have to change the subject.”
“Please, Di, I’m in earnest,” he pleaded; “won’t you give me a little to hope for?”
“You never can tell about a girl, Hal,” she said.
Her voice was tender and her eyes suddenly soft, and that was as near a promise as he could get.
As Bull urged Blazes up the rough trail of Cottonwood Canyon the continued crack of rifles kept the man apprised of the direction of the origin of the sounds and approximately of their ever lessening distance ahead. Presently he drew rein and, pulling his rifle from its boot, dismounted, dropping the reins upon the ground.
“Stand!” he whispered to Blazes and crept forward stealthily.
The shooting was close ahead now just around the brush-covered shoulder of a rocky hill. The detonations were less frequent. Bull guessed that by now both hunters and hunted were under cover and thus able to take only occasional pot shots at one another’s refuse.
To come upon them directly up the trail in the bottom of the canyon would have been to expose himself to the fire of one side, and possibly of both, for in this untamed country it was easily conceivable that both sides of the controversy might represent interests inimical to those of his employer. With this idea in mind the ex-foreman of the Bar Y Ranch clambered cautiously up the steep side of the hill that hid from his view that part of the canyon lying just beyond.
From the varying qualities of the detonations the man had deduced that five and possibly six rifles were participating in the affair. How they were divided he could not even guess. He would have a look over the crest of the hog-back and if the affair was none of his business he would let the participants fight it out by themselves. Bull, sober, was not a man to seek trouble.
Climbing as noiselessly as possible and keeping the muzzle of his rifle ahead of him he came presently to the crest of the narrow ridge where he pushed his way cautiously through the brush toward the opposite side, passing around an occasional huge outcropping of rock that barred his progress. Presently the brush grew thinner. He could see the opposite wall of the canyon.
A sharp report sounded close below him, just over the brow of the ridge. In front of him a huge outcropping reared its weather-worn surface twenty feet above the brush.
Toward this he crept until he lay concealed behind it. Then, warily, he peered around the up-canyon edge discovering that his hiding place rested upon tire very edge of a steep declivity that dropped perpendicularly into the bottom of the canyon. Almost below him five Apaches were hiding among the rocks, arid boulders that filled the bottom of the canyon. Upon the opposite side a single man lay sprawled upon his belly behind another.
Bull could not see his face, hidden as it was beneath a huge sombrero, but he saw that he was garbed after the fashion of a vaquero—he might be either an American or a Mexican. That made no difference now, however, for there were five against him, and the five were Indians. Bull watched for a moment. He saw that the Indians were doing all the firing, and he wondered if the man lying across the canyon was already dead. He did not move.
Cautiously one of the Indians crept from cover as the other four fired rapidly at their victim’s position, then another followed him and the three remaining continued firing, covering the advance of their fellows.
Bull smiled, that grim, saturnine smile of his. There were some redskins in the vicinity that were dike for the surprise of their lives.
The two were working their way across the canyon, taking advantage of every particle of cover. They were quite close to the hiding place of the prone man now—in another moment the three upon Bull’s side of the canyon would cease firing and the two would rush their unconscious quarry and finish him:
Bull raised his rifle to his shoulder. There followed two reports, so close together that it was almost inconceivable that they had come from the same weapon, and the two, who had already risen for the final attack, crumpled among the rocks beneath the blazing sun.
Instantly apprehending their danger, the other three Apaches leaped to their feet and scurried up the canyon, searching new cover as they ran; but it was difficult to find cover from a rifle holding the commanding position that Bull’s held.
It spoke again, and the foremost Indian threw his hands above his head, spun completely around and lunged forward upon his face. The other two dropped behind large boulders.
Bull glanced across the canyon. He saw that the man had raised his head and was attempting to look around the edge of his cover, having evidently become aware that a new voice had entered the grim chorus of the rifles.
“Hit?” shouted Bull.
The man looked in the direction of the voice. “No,” he replied.
“Then why in hell don’t you shoot? There’s only two of them left— they’re up canyon on this side.”
“Out of ammunition,” replied the other.
“Well, you were in a hell of a fix,” mused Bull as he watched the concealment of the two Indians.
“Any more of ‘em than this bunch?” he called across to the man.
“No.”
For a long time there was silence—the quiet and peace that had lain upon this age-old canyon since the Creation—and that would lie upon it forever except as man, the disturber, came occasionally to shatter it.
“I can’t lie here all day,” mused Bull. He crawled forward and looked over the edge of the cliff. There was a sheer drop of forty feet. He shook his head. There was a sharp report and a bullet tore up the dirt beneath him. It was followed instantly by another report from across the canyon.
Bull kept his eyes on the cover of the Indians. Not a sign of them showed. One of them had caught him napping—that was all—and ducked back out of sight after firing, but how was the man across the canyon firing without ammunition?
“I got one then,” came the man’s voice, as though in answer, “but you better lie low—he come near getting you.”
“Thought you didn’t have no ammunition,” Bull called across.
“I crawled out and got the rifle of one of these you potted.”
Bull had worked his way back to his cover and to the brush behind it and now he started up along the ridge in an attempt to get behind the remaining Indian.
A minute or two later he crawled again to the edge of the ridge and there below him and in plain sight the last of the redskins crouched behind a great boulder. Bull fired and missed, and then the Apache was up and gone, racing for his pony tethered further up the canyon. The white man shrugged, rose to his feet and sought an easy way down into the bed of the canyon.
The other man had seen his action, which betokened that the fight was over,—and as Bull reached the bottom of the cliff he was walking forward to meet him. A peculiar light entered the eyes of each other as they came face to face.
“Ah!” exclaimed the one, “it is Senor Bull.” He spoke now in Spanish.
“Gregorio!” said Bull. “How’d they git you in this fix?”
“I camped just above here last night,” replied the other, “and this morning I walked down with my rifle on the chance of getting an antelope for breakfast. They come on me from above and there you are. They been shootin’ at me since early this morning.” He spoke English with scarce the slightest accent. “You have saved my life, Senor Bull, and Gregorio will not forget that.”
“You haven’t happened to see a bunch of Crazy J cows hereabouts, have you?” inquired Bull, ignoring the other’s expression of gratitude.
“No, Senor, I have not,” replied Gregorio.
“Well, I’ll go get my horse and have a look up toward the head of the canyon, anyway,” and Bull turned and walked down to get Blazes.
Fifteen minutes later, riding up again, he passed Gregorio coming down, the latter having found his pony and his belongings intact at his camp.
“A Dios, Senor,” called Gregorio in passing.
“So long,” returned the American.