Green to discover her presence, and the rumors which at first buzzed
unheeded in the ears of the Happy Family, stung them at last to the
point of investigation; so that on a Sunday--the last Sunday before
the Flying U wagons took again to the trailless range-land, Irish and
Jack Bates rode surreptitiously up the coulee half an hour after Andy,
blithe in his fancied security, had galloped that way to spend a long
half-day with Mary. If he discovered them they would lose a dollar
each--but if they discovered a girl such as Andy had pictured, they
felt that it would be a dollar well lost.
In the range-land many strange things may happen. Irish and Jack
pulled up short when, off to their right, in a particularly, lonely
part of that country, broken into seamed coulees and deep-scarred
hills, they heard a faint halloo. With spurs pricking deep and
frequent they hurried to the spot; looked down a grassy swale and saw
Andy lying full length upon the ground in rather a peculiar pose,
while his horse fed calmly a rein-length away.
They stopped and looked at him, and at each other; rode cautiously to
within easy rifle shot and stopped again.
"Ain't yuh getting tired feelings kinda unseasonable in the day?" Jack
Bates called out guardedly.
"I--I'm hurt, boys," Andy lifted his head to say, strainedly. "My hoss
stepped in a hole, and I wasn't looking for it. I guess--my leg's
broke."
Jack snorted. "That so? Sure it ain't your neck, now? Seems to me your
head sets kinda crooked. Better feel it and find out, while we go on
where we're going." He half turned his horse up the hill again,
resenting the impulse which had betrayed him a hand's breadth from the
trail.
Andy waited a moment. Then: "On the dead, boys, my leg's broke--like
you'd bust a dry stick. Come and see--for yourselves."
"Maybe--" Irish began, uncertainly, in an undertone. Andy's voice had
in it a note of pain that was rather convincing.
"Aw, he's just trying to head us off. Didn't I help pack him up that
ungodly bluff, last spring, thinking he was going to die before we got
him to the top--and him riding off and giving us the horse-laugh to
pay for it? You can bite, if yuh want to; I'm going on. I sure savvy
Andy Green."
"Come and look," Andy begged from below. "If I'm joshing--"
"You can josh and be darned," finished Jack for him. "I don't pack you
up hill more than once, old-timer. We're going to call on your
Mary-girl. When yuh get good and refreshed up, you can come and look
on at me and Irish acting pretty and getting a stand-in. So-long!"
Irish, looking back over his shoulder, saw Andy raise his head and
gaze after them; saw it drop upon his arms just before they went quite
over the hill. The sight stuck persistently and unpleasantly in his
memory.
"Yuh know, he _might_ be hurt," he began tentatively when they had
ridden slowly a hundred yards or so.
"He might. But he ain't. He's up to some game again, and he wouldn't
like anything better than to have us ride down there and feel his
bones. If you'd been along, that day in the Bad-lands, you'd know the
kind of bluff he can put up. Why, we all thought sure he was going to
die. He acted that natural we felt like we was packing a corpse at a
funeral--and him tickled to death all the while at the load he was
throwing! No sir, yuh don't see me swallowing no such dope as _that_,
any more. When he gets tired uh laying there, he'll recover rapid and
come on. Don't yuh worry none about Andy Green; why, man, do yuh
reckon any horse-critter could break _his_ leg--a rider like him? He
knows more ways uh falling off a horse without losing the ashes off
his cigarette than most men know how to--how to punish grub! Andy
Green _couldn't_ get hurt with a horse! If he could, he'd uh been dead
and playing his little harp long ago."
Such an argument was more convincing than the note of pain in the
voice of Andy, so that Irish shook off his uneasiness and laughed at
the narrow escape he'd had from being made a fool. And speedily they
forgot the incident.
It was Take-Notice who made them remember, when they had been an hour
or so basking themselves, so to speak, in the smiles of Mary. They had
fancied all along that she had a curiously expectant air, and that she
went very often to the door to see what the lambs were up to--and
always lifted her eyes to the prairie slope down which they had ridden
and gazed as long as she dared. They were not dull; they understood
quite well what "lamb" it was that held half the mind of her, and they
were piqued because of their understanding, and not disposed to
further the cause of the absent. Therefore, when Take-Notice asked
casually what had become of Andy, Jack Bates moved his feet
impatiently, shot a sidelong glance at the girl (who was at that
moment standing where she could look out of the window) and laughed
unpleasantly.
"Oh, Andy's been took again with an attack uh bluff," he answered
lightly. "He gets that way, ever so often, you know. We left him
laying in a sunny spot, a few miles back, trying to make somebody
think he was hurt, so they'd pack him home and he'd have the laugh on
them for all summer."
"Wasn't he hurt?" The girl turned suddenly and her voice told how much
it meant to her. But Jack was not sympathetic.
"No, he wasn't hurt. He was just playing off. He got us once, that
way, and he's never given up the notion that he could do it again. We
may be easy, but--"
"I don't understand," the girl broke in sharply. "Do you mean that he
would deliberately try to deceive you into believing he was hurt, when
he wasn't?"
"Miss Johnson," Jack replied sorrowfully, "he would. He would lose
valuable sleep for a month, studying up the smoothest way to deceive.
I guess," he added artfully, and as if the subject was nearly
exhausted, "yuh don't know Mr. Green very well."
"I remember hearing about that job he put up on yuh," Take-Notice
remarked, not noticing that the girl's lips were opened for speech,
"Yuh made a stretcher, didn't yuh, and--"
"No--he told it that way, but he's such a liar he couldn't tell the
truth if he wanted to. We found him lying at the bottom of a steep
bluff, and he appeared to be about dead. It looked as if he'd slipped
and fallen down part way. So we packed water and sloshed in his face,
and he kinda come to, and then we packed him up the bluff--and yuh
know what the Bad-lands is like, Take-Notice. It was unmerciful hot,
too, and we like to died getting him up. At the top we laid him down
and worked over him till we got him to open his eyes, and he could
talk a little and said maybe he could ride if we could get him on a
horse. The--he made us _lift_ him into the saddle--and considering the
size of him, it was something of a contract--and then he made as if he
couldn't stay on, even. But first we knew he digs in the spurs, yanks
off his hat and lets a yell out of him you could hear a mile, and
says: 'Much obliged, boys, it was too blamed hot to walk up that
hill,' and off he goes."
Take-Notice stretched his legs out before him, pushed his hands deep
down in his trousers' pockets, and laughed and laughed. "That was sure
one on you," he chuckled. "Andy's a hard case, all right."
But the girl stood before him, a little pale and with her chin high.
"Father, how can you think it's funny?" she cried impatiently. "It
seems to me--er--I think it's perfectly horrid for a man to act like
that. And you say, Mr. Bates, that he's out there _now_"--she swept a
very pretty hand and arm toward the window--"acting the same silly
sort of falsehood?"
"I don't know where he is _now_," Jack answered judicially. "That's
what he was doing when we came past."
She went to the door and stood looking vaguely out at nothing in
particular, and Irish took the opportunity to kick Jack on the
ankle-bone and viciously whisper, "Yuh damned chump!" But Jack smiled
serenely. Irish, he reflected, had not been with them that day in the
Bad-lands, and so had not the same cause for vengeance. He remembered
that Irish had laughed, just as Take-Notice was laughing, when they
told him about it; but Jack had never been able to see the joke, and
his conscience did not trouble him now.
More they said about Andy Green--he and Take-Notice, with Irish mostly
silent and with the girl extremely indignant at times and at others
slightly incredulous, but always eager to hear more. More they said,
not with malice, perhaps, for they liked Andy Green, but with the
spirit of reminiscence strong upon them. Many things that he had said
and done they recalled and laughed over--but the girl did not laugh.
At sundown, when they rode away, she scribbled a hasty note, put it in
an envelope and entrusted it to Irish for immediate delivery to the
absent and erring one. Then they rode home, promising each other that
they would sure devil Andy to death when they saw him, and wishing
that they had ridden long ago to the cabin of Take-Notice. It was not
pleasant to know that Andy Green had again fooled them completely.
None at the ranch had seen Andy, and they speculated much upon the
nature of the game he was playing. Happy Jack wanted to bet that Andy
really had broken his leg--but that was because he had a present
grievance against Irish and hated to agree with anything he said. But
when they went to bed, the Happy Family had settled unanimously upon
the theory that Andy had ridden to Dry Lake, and would come loping
serenely down the trail next day.
Irish did not know what time it was when he found himself sitting up
in bed listening, but he discovered Pink getting quietly into his
clothes. Irish hesitated a moment, and then felt under his pillow for
his own garments--long habit had made him put them there--and began to
dress. "I guess I'll go along with yuh," he whispered.
"Yuh can if yuh want to," Pink answered ungraciously. "But yuh needn't
raise the long howl if--"
"Hold on, boys; my ante's on the table," came guardedly from Weary's
bunk, and there was a soft, shuffling sound as of moving blankets; the
subdued scrape of boots pulled from under bunks, and the quiet
searching for hats and gloves. There was a clank of spur-chains, the
faint squeal of a hinge gone rusty, a creak of a loose board, and then
the three stood together outside under the star-sprinkle and avoided
looking at one another. Without a word they went down the deep-worn
path to the big gate, swung it open and headed for the corral where
slept their horses.
"If them bone-heads don't wake up, nobody'll be any the wiser--and
it's a lovely night for a ramble," murmured Weary, consoling himself.
"Well, I couldn't sleep," Irish confessed, half defiantly. "I expect
it's just a big josh, but--it won't do any hurt to make sure."
"Yuh all think Andy Green lives to tell lies," snapped Pink, throwing
the saddle on his horse with a grunt at the weight of it. The horse
flinched away from its impact, and Pink swore at it viciously. "Yuh
might uh gone down and made sure, anyhow," he criticised.
"Well, I was going to; but Jack said--" Irish stooped to pick up the
latigo and did not finish. "But I can't get over the way his head
dropped down on his arms, when we were riding out uh sight. As if--oh,
hell! If it was a josh, I'll just about beat the head off him for
spoiling my sleep this way. Get your foot off that rein, yuh damned,
clumsy bench!" This last to his horse.
They rode slowly away from the ranch and made the greater haste when
the sound of their galloping could not reach the dulled ears of those
who slept. They did not talk much, and when they did it was to tell
one another what great fools they were--but even in the telling they
urged their horses to greater speed.
"Well," Pink summed up at last, "if he's hurt, out here, we're doing
the right thing; and if he ain't, he won't be there to have the laugh
on us; so it's all right either way."
There was black shadow in the grassy swale where they found him. His
horse had wandered off and it was only the sure instinct of Irish that
led them to the spot where he lay, a blacker shadow in the darkness
that a passing cloud had made. Just at first they thought him dead,
but when they lifted him he groaned and then spoke.
"It's one on me, this time," he said, and the throat of Irish pinched
achingly together at the sound of his voice, which had in it the note
of pain he had been trying to forget.
After that he said nothing at all, because he was a senseless weight
in their arms.
At daylight Irish was pounding vehemently the door of the White House
and calling for the Little Doctor. Andy lay stretched unconscious upon
the porch beside him, and down in the bunk-house the Happy Family was
rubbing eyes and exclaiming profanely at the story Pink was telling.
"And here," finished Irish a couple of hours later, when he was
talking the thing over with the Little Doctor, "here's a note
Take-Notice's girl gave me for him. I don't reckon there's any good
news in it, so maybe yuh better hold it out on him till he's got over
the fever. I guess we queered Andy a lot--but I'll ride over, soon as
I can, and fix it up with her and tell her he broke his leg, all
right. Maybe," he finished optimistically, "she'll come over to see
him."
Irish kept his word, though he delayed until the next day; and the
next day it was too late. For the cabin of Take-Notice was closed and
empty, and the black lamb and the white were nosing unhappily their
over-turned pan of mush, and bleating lonesomely. Irish waited a while
and started home again; rode into the trail and met Bert Rogers, who
explained:
"Take-Notice was hauling his girl, trunk and all, to the depot," he
told Irish. "I met 'em just this side the lane. They aimed to catch
the afternoon train, I reckon. She was going home, Take-Notice told
me."
So Irish rode thoughtfully back to the ranch and went straight to the
White House where Andy lay, meaning to break the news as carefully as
he knew how.
Andy was lying in bed looking big-eyed at the ceiling, and in his hand
was the note. He turned his head and glanced indifferently at Irish.
"Yuh sure made a good job of it, didn't yuh?" he began calmly, though
it was not the calm which meant peace. "I was just about engaged to
that girl. If it'll do yuh any good to know how nice and thorough yuh
busted everything up for me, read that." He held out the paper, and
Irish turned a guilty red when he took it.
"Mr. Green: I have just been greatly entertained with the history
of your very peculiar deeds and adventures, and I wish to say that
I have discovered myself wholly lacking the sense of humor which
is necessary to appreciate you.
"As I am going home to-morrow, this is my only opportunity of
letting you know how thoroughly I detest falsehood in _any_ form.
Yours truly,
"MARY EDITH JOHNSON."
"Ain't yuh proud?" Andy inquired in a peculiar, tired voice. "Maybe
I'm a horrible liar, all right--but I never done anybody a dirty trick
like that."
Irish might have said it was Jack Bates who did the mischief, but he
did not. "We never knew it was anything serious," he explained
contritely. "On the dead, I'm sorry--"
"And that does a damned lot uh good--if she's gone!" Andy cut in,
miserably.
"Oh, she's gone, all right. She went to-day," murmured Irish, and went
out and shut the door softly behind him.
* * * * *
FOOL'S GOLD.
Andy Green, unshaven as to face and haggard as to eyes, leaned upon
his stout, willow stick and looked gloomily away to the west. He was a
good deal given to looking to the west, these days when a leg
new-healed kept him at the ranch, though habit and inclination would
have sent him riding fast and far over prairies untamed. Inaction
comes hard when a man has lived his life mostly in the open, doing
those things which keep brain and muscle keyed alike to alertness and
leave no time for brooding.
If Andy had not broken his leg but had gone with the others on
roundup, he would never have spent the days glooming unavailingly
because a girl with a blond pompadour and teasing eyes had gone away
and taken with her a false impression of his morals, and left behind
her the sting of a harsh judgment against which there seemed no
appeal. As it was, he spent the time going carefully over his past in
self-justification, and in remembering every moment that he had spent
with Mary Johnson in those four weeks when she stayed with her father
and petted the black lamb and the white.
In his prejudiced view, he had never done anything to make a girl hate
him. He had not always told the truth--he would admit that with
candid, gray eyes looking straight into your own--but he had never
lied to harm a man, which, it seemed to him, makes all the difference
in the world.
If he could once have told her how he felt about it, and showed her
how the wide West breeds wider morals--he did not quite know how you
would put these things, but he felt them very keenly. He wanted to
make her feel the difference; to see that little things do not count
in a man's life, after all, except when they affect him as a man when
big things are wanted of him. A little cowardice would count, for
instance, because it would show that the man would fail at the test;
but a little lie? just a harmless sort of lie that was only a "josh"
and was taken as such by one's fellows? Andy was not analytic by
nature, and he would have stumbled vaguely among words to explain his
views, but he felt very strongly the injustice of the girl's
condemnation, and he would scarcely speak to Jack Bates and Irish when
they came around making overtures for peace and goodwill.
"If she hadn't gone home so sudden, I could uh squared it all right,"
he told the Little Doctor, whenever her sympathetic attitude won him
to speech upon the subject.
"Yes, I believe you could," she would agree cheeringly. "If she's the
right sort, and cared, you could."
"She's the right sort--I know that," Andy would assert with much
decision, though modesty forbade his telling the Little Doctor that he
was also sure she cared. She did care, if a girl's actions count for
anything, or her looks and smiles. Of course she cared! Else why did
she rush off home like that, a good month before she had intended to
go? They had planned that Andy would get a "lay-off" and go with her
as far as Butte, because she would have to wait there several hours,
and Andy wanted to take her out to the Columbia Gardens and see if she
didn't think they were almost as nice as anything California could
show. Then she had gone off without any warning because Jack Bates and
Irish had told her a lot of stuff about him, Andy; if that didn't
prove she cared, argued Andy to himself, what the dickens would you
want for proof?
It was from thinking these things over and over while he lay in bed,
that Andy formed the habit of looking often towards the west when his
hurt permitted him to hobble around the house. And when a man looks
often enough in any direction, his feet will, unless hindered by fate
itself, surely follow his gaze if you give them time enough.
It was the excursion rates advertised in a Great Falls paper that
first put the idea consciously into the brain of Andy. They seemed
very cheap, and the time-limit was generous, and--San Jose was not
very far from San Francisco, the place named in the advertisement; and
if he could only see the girl and explain--It would be another month
before he would be able to work, anyway, and--A man might as well get
rid of a hundred or so travelling, as to sit in a poker game and watch
it fade away, and he would really get more out of it. Anyhow, nobody
need know where he had gone. They could think he was just going to
Butte. And he didn't give a darn if they did find it out!
He limped back into the house and began inspecting, with much
dissatisfaction, his wardrobe. He would have to stake himself to new
clothes--but he needed clothes, anyway, that fall. He could get what
he wanted in Butte, while he waited for the train to Ogden. Now that
Andy had made up his mind to go, he was in a great hurry and grudged
the days, even the hours, that must pass before he could see Mary
Edith Johnson.
Not even the Little Doctor knew the truth, when Andy appeared next
morning dressed for his journey, ate a hasty and unsatisfactory
breakfast and took the Old Man to one side with elaborate carelessness
and asked for a sum that made the Old Man blink. But no man might have
charge of the Happy Family for long without attaining that state of
mental insulation which renders a shock scientifically impossible. The
Old Man wrote a check, twisted his mouth into a whimsical knot and
inquired mildly: "What's the brand of devilment this time, and how
long's it going to take yuh?" With a perceptible emphasis on the word
_this_.
For probably the first time in his life Andy blushed and stammered
over a lie, and before he had got out more than two words, the Old Man
seemed to understand the situation quite thoroughly. He said "Oh, I
see. Well, git a round-trip ticket and be dead sure yuh don't out-stay
the limit." He took out his pipe and filled it meditatively.
Andy blushed again--six weeks indoors had lightened the tan on his
face so that his blushes showed very plainly--and made desperate
denial. "I'm only going up to Butte. But a fellow can't have any kind
of a time there without a fair-sized roll, and--I'll be back in two or
three weeks--soon as my leg's mended thorough. I--"
"Get along with yuh!" growled the Old Man, though his eyes twinkled.
"Doggone it, don't yuh lie to _me_. Think I was shipped in on the last
train? A man don't git red in the face when he's just merely headed
for Butte. Why, doggone yuh--"
The last words had to serve for a farewell, because Andy was limping
away as fast as he could, and did not come back to the house again. He
did not even tell the Little Doctor good-by, though it was fifteen
minutes before John Wedum, the ranchhand, had the team ready to drive
Andy to town, and he was one of the Little Doctor's most loyal
subjects.
* * * * *
Andy walked haltingly down a palm-shaded street in San Jose and
wondered just what would be the best and quickest way in which to find
Mary Edith Johnson. Three ways were open to him: He could hunt up all
the Johnsons in town--there were three full pages of them in the
directory, as he remembered with a sigh--and find out which one was
the right one; but San Jose, as he had already discovered, was not a
village, and he doubted if he could stand the walking. He could visit
all the real estate offices in town--and he was just beginning to
realize that there were almost as many real estate offices as there
were Johnsons. And he could promenade the streets in the hope of
meeting her. But always there was the important fact to face--the fact
that San Jose is not a village.
He came upon a particularly shady spot and a bench placed invitingly.
Andy sat down, eased the new-healed leg out before him and rolled a
cigarette. "This is going to be some different from hunting a stray on
the range," he told himself, with an air of deliberate cheerfulness.
"If I could get out and scurrup around on a hoss, and round her up
that way--but this footing it all over town is what grinds me." He
drew a match along the under side of the bench and held the blaze
absently to the cigarette. "There was one thing--she told about an
orange tree right beside her mother's front gate, Maybe--" He looked
around him hopefully. Just across the street was a front gate, and
beside it an orange tree; he knew because there were ripe oranges
hanging upon it. He started to rise, his blood jumping queerly, sat
down again and swore. "Every darned gate in town, just about, has got
an orange tree stuck somewhere handy by. I remember 'em now, damn
'em!"
Three cigarettes he smoked while he sat there. When he started on
again his face was grimly set toward the nearest business street. At
the first real-estate sign he stopped, pulled together his courage,
and went in. A girl sat in a corner of the room before a typewriter.
Andy saw at a glance that her hair was too dark; murmured something
and backed out. At the next place, a man was crumpled into a big
chair, reading a paper. Behind a high desk a typewriter clicked, but
Andy could not see the operator without going behind the railing, and
he hesitated.
"Looking for a snap?" asked the man briskly, coming up from his
crumpled state like a spring.
"Well, I was looking--"
"Now, here. It may not be what you want, but I'm just going to show
you this proposition and see what you think of it. It ain't going to
last--somebody's goin' to snap it up before you know it. Now, here--"