LAFE HELPS A DESERTER
After this experience, Johnson settled to hard work for Horne, and hard
work on a range means unremitting toil. When everything moved smoothly,
he would act as Horne's trail boss. At this time the cowman was buying
large herds in Mexico, principally yearling steers and cows and calves.
He would throw these cattle across the line and pasture them until a
rising market offered the profits he had set his mind on. Success had so
puffed up Horne that nothing less than sixty per cent would tempt his
investment.
At the setting-in of winter again, Lafe took his outfit far down below
Arizpe and purchased a herd of nine hundred head. Then the American
authorities declared a quarantine and the cattle could not be brought up
until it was lifted. Johnson started back. His party camped on the San
Pedro, and just before they crawled under the blankets, they were joined
by a native outfit. Of course the Mexicans had no beef or anything to
eat. The boss gave them a quarter from the yearling they had killed that
evening.
Five of them began to shoot dice on a saddle blanket in a decent,
gentlemanly manner--two of the cowboys, the Chinese cook, a Yaqui
vaquero and a Mexican horse thief from the Cuitaca valley. The boss
smoked and watched the game. Another man lay under the wagon with his
collar bone broken and at times his plaints became a nuisance.
"Come a eight," the Celestial invoked. "Heap bum thlow. Me ketchum soon.
You wait."
Presently they became aware that somebody was ministering to their
injured companion. His moans ceased. "Feel any better, now?" a voice
asked. There followed murmurings and a movement as if the newcomer were
easing the sufferer's position.
"Well," he said, "if you can swear that way, you shouldn't ought to be
dying. Keep it up. You're doing fine."
A tall man walked into the group around the lantern. He surveyed each
face in turn. The Yaqui was blowing on the dice to bring luck and was
fearfully disgusted at the interruption. Addressing himself to Johnson,
as though somebody had told him that he was the leader, the stranger
said: "Hello! Got anything to eat?"
"Sure," Lafe answered readily. "Here, you, Charlie--go get this
gentleman some cold beef and bread. Drag it now; ketchum quick. Fly at
it, pardner."
The visitor was ravenous and bolted the beef in hunks. Lafe judged that
he had walked into camp, but refrained from asking why, although the
man is poor indeed who cannot obtain a horse to ride in that country.
Bedding was scarce, for they were traveling light, and the best that
Johnson could offer was that he should double up with the Chinaman.
Their guest appeared no whit abashed by the prospect.
"Well, me for the hay," he said at once. "I'm all in. Lordy, hark to my
joints creak. I bet I've footed it a million miles through the sand, Mr.
Johnson. Your name's Johnson, ain't it? Mine's Wilkins. Say, if this
here Chink snores, you'll be burying a cook in the morning, sure as
you're alive."
They headed for the Border at daybreak. It was a long thirty miles, and
Lafe impressed a horse and the injured man's saddle for Wilkins' use. He
noted that Wilkins' overalls and shirt were trying to forsake him and
that his toes were taking the air, so when he perceived Charlie
measuring him with a comparative eye, in which lurked a gleam of
satisfaction, he sent the cook sharply about his business. Lafe held
that superiority of race should ever be maintained.
For the most part they rode in silence, as men do at the beginning of
day. Their eyes were heavy with sleep. Wilkins seemed sullen and gave no
explanation of his presence in that region. He sat stiffly erect in the
saddle with his right arm hanging straight at his side. A cowboy or a
native westerner crooks his elbows and lets them jog.
"He's a soldier," Lafe concluded, and because he entertained an
undefined contempt for soldiers, he trotted ten yards ahead of his guest
throughout the morning.
The sun was high when they sighted a white stone monument on a ridge
below the Huachucas. A wire fence ran past it. They could see it stretch
for miles and miles in a straight line. On their side of the fence was
Mexico. Beyond lay the United States.
They reached a gate. Johnson got down and held it open for his men to
pass through. Wilkins stopped and remained a dozen yards within the
Mexican Border.
"I don't reckon I'll go on with you," said he; "I'll just stick around
here for a spell. Here's your horse, Mr. Johnson. Much obliged. He's
sure some horse."
"All right," Lafe answered, and ordered one of his men to throw the
horse in with the saddle bunch, which they were driving loosely ahead of
them. It struck him as curious that a man should voluntarily go afoot in
that unsettled mountain country, but he never abandoned the tenet that a
man's business is his own. Consequently he showed no surprise, nor did
his men, but they moved off northward, leaving Wilkins gazing after them
from the far side of the fence.
"Look!" said a cowboy. "What's that girl doing here?"
A young woman was fording the river some distance to their left, just
below the Palomino. Johnson recognized her mount and made as if to hail
her. Then a sudden remembrance of Wilkins waiting beyond the gate
caused him to pull up. He grinned and grew solemn abruptly, because she
was a friend of his wife's, and her brother worked for Horne.
Of course he told Hetty all about it on his return home and of course
she refused to see the matter from his standpoint at all and exhibited
the liveliest sympathy and understanding of the case. Lafe need not try
to tell her that she was indiscreet; Mary Lou Hardin could afford to be
indiscreet. Hetty had never known a sweeter, nicer girl. To this Lafe
grunted. He had not much faith in women's estimates of their own sex and
he considered that any girl who would go to meet a soldier who dare not
enter his own country were better off under careful surveillance.
"Nonsense!" cried Hetty. "I tell you it's all right. Anything Mary Lou
does must be all right. I'll ride over to-morrow and see her. I bet she
tells me all about it."
When Johnson returned to the Canon next night from a day of
horse-breaking, he found Hetty simply bursting with news. Yes, Mary Lou
had told her all about it. Wilkins had been a trooper--a corporal or a
colonel or something--and he and Mary Lou had been sweethearts for over
a year. But Mr. Hardin would not hear of her marrying a soldier, so Mr.
Wilkins had done the only thing possible under the circumstances--he had
gone over into Mexico to make a fortune in the mines. It would appear,
however, that something ailed the price of copper. The company closed
down one of its shafts and Mr. Wilkins was released. He had grown lonely
for Mary Lou and homesick for his own country. Wasn't it noble of him?
The whole tangle was perfectly clear to Hetty.
"Noble, my foot!" said Lafe. "The feller's a deserter. And here I done
lent him a horse!"
That was not all Hetty had to say. She had a clever scheme, concocted by
herself and Mary Lou while they mingled their tears over this recital of
self-sacrifice. It was this--Wilkins wanted to come back. If he did so
without preliminary negotiation, they would be apt to lock him in a cell
and then he would not be able to see Mary Lou at all. Wasn't it inhuman?
There were some silly rules or regulations Mr. Wilkins had overlooked
when he departed, and Mary Lou said that the commandant would probably
not see the thing in the right light and would give no consideration
whatever to their feelings. Mary Lou was sure that the commandant had a
pick on Mr. Wilkins.
"I reckon he'd ought to give this here Wilkins a better job and present
him with a purse, hey?" Lafe sneered. "I reckon they'd ought to make him
boss of all them soldiers. Then him and Mary Lou could get married and
everything would be lovely. Yes, I reckon that's the nicest way to treat
a deserter."
"Why, Lafe," Hetty remonstrated, "don't you see? He just left to make
enough money to marry Mary Lou. He did it all for her. Wasn't it grand
of him?"
The boss threw up his hands and walked off to the spring, where he could
smoke and clear his brain of the cobwebs of sentiment. He was not to be
allowed to dismiss the matter so lightly. When she had him in the house,
Hetty pounced upon him again. Hardly had he taken a chair, than she came
to sit on his knee and began stroking his hair. Lafe would not have had
a citizen of Badger see this ridiculous performance for all the wealth
stored in the depths of the mountains, but he nevertheless submitted to
it with a sort of reluctant enjoyment.
"Mary Lou and I," said Hetty, "we thought that if you would speak to Mr.
Horne, he would speak to that soldier man."
"Would he, now? And what has ol' Horne got to say to that general, or
whatever he is?"
"Why, you baby, don't you see? Mr. Horne and that man who runs the fort
are friends. Now, Mary Lou and I thought that if Mr. Horne would only
say something nice about Wilkins, he'd let him go. Don't you think he
would?"
"Oh, sure. He'd pin a medal on that feller. It's like he'd put it on
with a sword, though, to make it stick."
"Oh, Lafe," Hetty said, almost in tears.
Lafe groaned and gave up the fight. It would be utterly useless, he told
her--who ever heard of such a proposition made to serious men? But, of
course, if Hetty wanted her husband to make an idiot of himself, he
supposed he would have to do so.
"It won't be much trouble," Hetty coaxed. She added: "There, I knew my
boy would help me."
Her boy approached the task with much misgiving and very shamefacedly.
He was not a skillful pleader at any time, being accustomed to take what
he wanted, instead of asking for it. As a result, old Horne bellowed:
"Haw, haw," and slapped his leg and rolled about in his chair, gurgling
that Lafe would be the death of him yet. Then Mrs. Horne came into the
room.
"What's this all about?" she inquired.
Johnson told her and withdrew. The cowman was still chortling.