“Looks like a couple of drummers had come in, Skeeter.”
“Tell ’em we ain’t buyin’ nothin’ today.”
“One of ’em has got on a hard hat. I’ll betcha they’re comin’ to see us,
Skeeter.”
Skeeter got to his feet and walked to the doorway, where he watched the
two middle-aged, well-dressed men approach the office door. He nodded to
them and they stopped.
“Howdy, folks,” said Skeeter pleasantly.
“How do you do?” said one of them, looking at the sign over the door.
“Thought perhaps you would be able to furnish us with some information.
We are on our way to the Silver Bell mine, and it seemed impossible for
us to get reliable information as to when the stage trips are made.”
“You just about hit it,” said Skeeter, squinting up the street. “The
stage is about due to travel, I think. Stay on this side of the street
and yuh can’t miss it.”
They thanked him and went on.
“Them ain’t drummers,” declared Kaintuck.
“No-o-o? Jist how do yuh read their sign?”
“Don’t have to read, Skeeter. What in —— would a drummer do at the
Silver Bell—sell ’em some silver?”
Skeeter grinned slowly.
“You’ve got all the instincts of a successful detective, Kaintuck
Kennedy. Let’s me and you go and find somethin’ to eat. We ought to be
detectives enough to find food.”
* * * * *
They closed the office, crossed the street and walked past the big
Half-Moon Saloon and gambling house to a little Chinese restaurant.
Several cowboys were eating their noonday meal, and one of them waved a
fork at them as they sat down.
“That’s ‘Curley’ Adams,” said Kaintuck. “He worked for the KG7 before
yuh came, Skeeter. He’s with the Tin Cup now.”
Adams was a young man, with a pleasant, devil-may-care sort of face, and
a winning smile. In a few minutes he came over and shook hands with
Kaintuck, who introduced him to Skeeter.
“Yo’re with the Tin Cup, ain’t yuh, Curley?” asked Kaintuck.
“Yeah. I’ve been out there almost a year now, Kaintuck. How do yuh like
bein’ a deputy sheriff?”
“Got a good bed,” grinned Kaintuck. “Been settin’ on a chair for so long
that my legs prob’ly won’t bend sideways enough to let me set in a
saddle. Yo’re stickin’ to the job kinda steady, ain’t yuh, Curley?”
“Yeah,” Curley flushed slightly. “Savin’ my money these days. Yuh see,
I’ve kinda got an idea I’d like to have somethin’ for myself, Kaintuck.”
“Yea-a-a-a-ah? My ——!” Kaintuck opened his eyes wide and stared at
Skeeter. “I’ll betcha the boy’s in love!”
Curley’s ears grew red and he tried to smile.
“Don’t try to fool yore Uncle Dudley,” warned Kaintuck. “I _sabe_ all
about it. Now, you take my advice and—”
“Don’t do it, Adams,” advised Skeeter. “I mean—don’t take his advice.
He’s never been married, and I don’t reckon he’s ever been in love; so
tighten yore own cinch.”
“Ain’t never been in love!” Kaintuck snorted loudly. “Say, I’m the
jigger that showed Romeo what to say.”
“You’d run if a woman tried to speak to yuh.”
“Shore I would. ’F you had as much experience as I have, you’d run, too.
I could write books about my love experiences.”
Curley Adams laughed and walked out with the other cowboys from the Tin
Cup ranch. Kennedy squinted after them, a grin on his lips.
“I wonder who the girl is, Skeeter?” he said. “Curley shore is a real
nice boy. He ain’t as wild as the rest of that gang, and he’s got brains
enough to start out for himself.”
“Other folks’ matrimonial affairs don’t interest me none,” said Skeeter
thoughtfully. “I can’t think of nothin’ but bad dollars these days.
Tomorrow me and you start detectin’.”
“Sounds good,” grinned Kaintuck. “I’ve read detective stories and they
shore listened real good. But yuh got to find yuh a clue, Skeeter. Yuh
never get nowhere without a clue.”
“I’ve got me one.”
“Yuh have? Gee, that’s fine! Lemme hear it.”
“I will not. Go get yore own clue, Kaintuck.”
“Shucks! Ain’t it big enough for two of us?”
“Well,” explained Skeeter softly, “it ain’t big enough yet. Mebbe it’ll
grow, and if it gets big enough, and you ain’t got one by that time,
mebbe I’ll let yuh gnaw on a corner of mine.”
* * * * *
A buckboard, drawn by a pair of tired-looking bronchos, bumped along
over the dusty road, heading away from Crescent City and going toward
the HG ranch, which was located about five miles east of the town.
Hank Gregory, the owner of the ranch, humped over in his seat, the reins
held loosely in his big hands, while beside him sat his twenty-year-old
daughter, Joy. The rear of the buckboard held a trunk and numerous
hand-baggage.
There had been no rain for months in the Moon River Valley, and the
yellow dust of the road was fetlock deep to the horses. It rolled up on
the wheels, drifting away in clouds to turn more gray the immediate
landscape.
It was a fairly steady climb from town to the HG ranch, the road winding
through brushy coulées, twisting to higher ground, where patches of
alkali, like spilled mortar, made huge gaps in the purple and gray of
the sage.
To the eastward towered the blue line of the main divide, as if a
painter had swept a full brush of blue to break the line between the
gray of the hills and the pale blue of the sky. Grasshoppers buzzed and
crackled away from the plodding team, and from along the slope came the
piping bark of a prairie-dog, as though protesting against any one
stirring up so much dust.
Gregory was a big, slow-moving sort of person, with iron-gray hair and a
deeply lined face. Joy did not resemble her paternal ancestor in any
way. She was not beautiful, but by no means unbeautiful. Joy Gregory was
just an average girl; possibly a trifle more capable than the average,
due to living where capability rates higher than feminine
attractiveness.
She studied the serious profile of her father’s face for several
moments, as they rode along through the filmy dust.
“Dad, you don’t seem glad to have me back,” she said.
He glanced sideways at her, spat over the wheel and cleared his throat.
“No, you don’t need to fix up any excuse,” she said quickly. “You can’t
blame me, Dad. Aunt Emma died so suddenly that I hardly knew what to do;
and you couldn’t expect me to stay down there in Cheyenne alone. I know
what you want to say. You contend that a cattle ranch is no place for a
young lady. Well, what’s to be done about it? I’m here.”
“Yeah, yo’re here,” nodded Gregory grimly.
“And I’ve been away a year,” said Joy slowly, “and my own father never
said he was glad to see me.”
“Joy, don’t say that. I’m glad to see yuh. But I’ve always said—”
“That a cattle ranch wasn’t any place for your daughter. My mother was
the daughter of a rancher.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“And I’m as good at punching cows as any man, Dad.”
Gregory snorted and helped himself to another huge chew of tobacco. He
had his own ideas of how his daughter should be raised.
“And besides,” Joy smiled softly, “I might marry a cowboy.”
“That’s what I reckoned—” dryly. “Curley Adams, eh?”
Joy laughed.
“_Quien sabe_, Dad? I haven’t seen Curley for over a year. But he writes
wonderful letters. Curley is educated. He has been saving his money all
that year, and—who knows?”
“Yeah! He must ’a’ saved as much as four hundred dollars in a year. That
won’t give him much of a start.”
“You started on nothing, Dad.”
Gregory winced slightly, but did not reply.
“And he’s honest,” continued Joy. “That is something that you can’t say
about a majority of the cowpunchers in the Moon River hills.”
“Well, we won’t argue that point, Joy. There’s a lot of honest men in
the poorhouse.”
“But not many in the penitentiary.”
Gregory laughed shortly.
“I’ve had the last word on the HG ranch for over a year, but I’m runnin’
second now. Well, there’s the old starve-to-death layout, Joy. It ain’t
changed much in a year, has it?”
They had driven around the point of a hill, where they might look down
at the sprawling buildings of the little ranch. It was located on a
little flat, at the mouth of a cañon; a huddle of one-story buildings,
sheds and corrals. None of the buildings had ever felt the caress of a
paint-brush.
Two huge oaks shaded the rambling old ranch-house, giving a note of
color to the otherwise drab exterior. Several horses drowsed inside the
pole-corrals, a tall, red steer poked around the fence, picking up an
occasional straw, while a flock of mongrel chickens chased grasshoppers
in the front yard of the ranch-house.
“No-o-o-o, it hasn’t changed much,” agreed Joy. “I don’t believe that
the red steer was there the last time I saw it; so there is some change,
Dad. I don’t suppose the house has been cleaned since I left.”
“Yes it has. When I got yore letter, I had old ‘Calamity’ give it a
cleanin’.”
“I’ll bet it was good,” laughed Joy. “How is old Calamity?”
“Well, I dunno. The —— old mossback is prob’ly a little worse than he
was a year ago.”
They drove up to the front of the ranch-house and Calamity came out to
greet them. No one had ever known—that is, no one in Moon River Valley
had ever known—what his right name was.
He was just Calamity; a thin-faced, hawk-nosed, little old man;
philosopher, liar, who loved his friends, but cursed them as thoroughly
as he did his enemies. Calamity lived almost entirely in the past, when
he was a gunman, and when, as he expressed it—
“There wasn’t a —— stran’ of bob-wire as long as yore finger from Laredo
to the No’th Pole.”
“Hello, Calamity!” called Joy.
The old man came slowly out to the buckboard, squinting at her, as if
trying to remember her, although he knew she was coming.
“Well, ’f it ain’t little Joy!” he exploded. “Ha, ha, ha, ha! Growed up
so I didn’t know yuh. Took one look at yuh, and I says to myself,
‘Darned if Hank ain’t brought a strange woman home with him.’ I did so.
“Brought yore trunk, too. Look at the valises! Whooee! Say, I knowed a
woman that traveled plumb from the Gulf of Mexico to Astoria, Oregon,
and didn’t even have a pocket-book.”