BLUE PETE, FRIEND AND LOVER
Close to the waters of the Tepee River, now returned to its normal
sluggishness with the rapidity of mountain-fed streams, a man sat on
his heels in a clump of spruce. There, two miles above the
construction camp, the canyon fell away more gradually to the old river
bottom, and the trees, encouraged by a century of immunity from floods,
crept ever downward until they pressed to the very edge of the channel
that held the waters of the Tepee fifty weeks of the year.
It was evening. Clear as lines on a white sheet the woods on the other
side stood out in the dustless air against the flaming sky. The wide
band of water that intervened gleamed in the setting sun, scarce
revealing the existence of a current. Save for the low chatter of
nesting birds and the gentle gurgle of water beneath the bank there was
not a sound. The wind was against the camp. For all the solitary man
could hear he might have been the only human within the northland.
About him was a furtiveness of the wilds, not guilty but protective.
In such surroundings he had been born, there he had spent most of his
days. You could read it in the crouch, the quiet, unwasted movements,
the unconscious attitudes.
His face told much of his story. Those bright, darting eyes, crooked
though they were, missed nothing; those sudden spaces of
motionlessness, the peculiar, utterly still tilt of the head, were the
natural impulses of one ever listening; the calm immobility of the
dusky face was bred of a life of self-sufficiency, where muscle and eye
were ever-active guardians. The coarse black hair that straggled from
beneath a dirty Stetson, the high cheek bones, the swarthy complexion;
these the outward signals of his half-breed origin. Yet from Stetson
to high-heeled boots he was a cowboy, with the individual
eccentricities in dress that scorned hairy chaps for leather, and
walked with an arch of leg that craved the back of a horse to fill it.
The half breed was whittling, yet even in that simple recreation of the
careless he bent to his surroundings. No crackling of hasty knife, no
splashing about of shavings. Already one capacious pocket was filled
with them, and those just made lay in a neat heap for hasty collection.
Often his hand held to listen, and always as he listened his eyes
sought the shadows among the trees on the far shore. A scowl was
twisting his face, of worry, not of anger; sometimes the knife bit into
the soft stick with muscular response to his thoughts.
Presently he pushed the dirty Stetson back and ran a sleeve across his
forehead, though it was not warm. Raising himself to his feet within
the limited range of the clump of trees, he peered anxiously across the
river, searching the opposite bank from the east to where it curved
southward above the camp.
"Gor swizzle! Ef she don't come soon I gotta git over thar an' trail
her. . . . An' that means givin' up the job . . . an' mebbe losin'
out. Suthin' 's happened; she never took so long before. . . . But
pshaw! what with Whiskers 'n' Juno--they'd take's good keer o' her as I
cud myself."
He resumed his seat, but not the whittling, leaning against a tree with
closed eyes. But he was not resting, for deep sighs broke from him,
and his muscles were not loose.
Suddenly his eyes opened wide with a look of alarm, though not a muscle
twitched. His quick ears had caught a sound among the trees at his
back. On the instant he appraised the risk of the gleaming water
before him, and then, like a part of the shadows, seemed to melt into
the ground. The clump of spruce was there, and the shadows, just as
they had been all these years, but not a shaving, not a mark.
Far out in the current the smooth gleam of the water was broken in
moving eddies. Some round object was making its way toward the bank.
In the cover of another cluster of trees further down the bank the
halfbreed leaned out over the water and waved a warning hand. He dare
not whistle or shout. But the round object, not forty yards out,
turned sideways, revealing the head of a large dog.
At the same moment a rifle snapped from the thickets behind, and even
as the halfbreed flattened out he noted the swift flash of spume close
to the dog's head. Instantly the head dived. Instantly, too, the
second cluster of trees was empty, though there had been no sound, no
perceptible movement.
Yards further down the stream the head reappeared, directed now to the
far bank and moving more swiftly. A second shot from the thicket told
of a watchful enemy.
Before the echo had returned from the opposite bank, a third shot, this
time that of a revolver, split the evening silence. A stifled
exclamation of alarm, and then the crashing of hasty flight up the
slope.
The half breed thrust his gun in his belt and glided across the open to
pick up a rifle with shattered stock.
"Don't know wot makes me so squeamish these days," he drawled, with a
slow smile. "He sartin desarved it in the throat. That Pole 'n' me's
goin' to butt agin each other some more. I never was wuth shucks when
it comes to justice . . . an' I allus suffer fer it after. Look at
Bilsy, an' Dutch Henry, an' a bunch more!"
He carried the broken rifle to the river's edge and whistled. The dog,
now near the opposite shore, turned about. As it approached the clump
that hid the halfbreed, ears came forward to assist eyes and nose, and
a waggle of welcome told that all was well. With a shudder that sent a
cloud of spray about, a great cross-bred Russian wolf-hound, with the
head of a mastiff, clambered up the bank and bounded into the trees.
The halfbreed threw his arms about the wet neck and hugged it in silent
joy. His eyes were moist as he glanced sheepishly across to the other
shore.
"Juno, ole woman, I sure love yuh to-night."
From about the dog's neck he untied a tiny water-proof bag and exposed
a note, which he laboriously spelt out. Then, moving to the water's
edge, he reached down and waved a hand twice back and forward.
Followed by the dog, he struck noiselessly upstream through the woods,
and at last lowered himself over the gravel bank by means of
overhanging boughs. Ankle-deep, screened by the foliage, he untied a
raft of freshly cut logs, made a careful survey of the shore about him,
and shoved out into the river, pointing slightly upstream. The dog
established herself on the bow, her eyes on the shore they were
approaching.
As he worked the sweep at the stern the man talked to the dog.
"Guess you 'n' Whiskers 'n' the missus has bin gallivantin', eh, Juno,
ole woman? Sort o' leadin' the gay life all down them coupla hunderd
miles to the Hills whar nobody lives. Trust the women! Yuh wudn't
'member thar was a feller back here chewin' his fingers off worryin'
about yuh . . . an' workin' the shart offen his back an' gittin' thin
fer the fambly, an' not even a horse to git about. . . . Nobody but a
bunch o' roughnecks an' houn's--'poligisin' tuh yuh, Juno, fer callin'
them critters houn's. They're c'yutes, that's wot they are. Ef thar
was trees 'nough I'd len' my bes' rope to hang 'em . . . every dang one
of 'em, 'cept Mister Conrad 'n' the boss."
Juno's only response was a periodic and perfunctory wagging of a
limited tail, further limited by being sat on.
"'Magine me, Blue Pete, bes' shot in the Badlands, an' Canada, too, fer
that matter--least that's so, now Dutchy's gone, an' it was nip 'n'
tuck between us--'magine me, cow-puncher from my born days, sometime
rustler, sometime Mounted P'lice detective, sometime--oh, sometime
pretty near everythin' with a horse in it, an' a rifle, an' a
rope--'magine me workin' 'longside a gang o' Dagoes 'n' Poles that
think a knife's fer stickin' people, an' a rifle fer the P'lice . . .
me shovin' rocks 'n' logs into a hole in the groun' that won't fill
this side everlastin'! . . . Kin yuh 'magine it, ole woman? An' them
joshin' 'n' guyin' me, an' me swallerin' it like a tenderfoot! . . .
An' never did fer one of 'em!"
The dog evidently considered it too preposterous for caudal comment;
eyes and ears and nose were stretched toward the shore they were
nearing.
"Yah, she's thar all right, eh, Juno? Yer eyes is better'n mine--but I
bet I kin feel her thar. That's whar I git the bulge on yuh, ole
woman." The half-breed chuckled, and leaned more powerfully to the
sweep. "An 'magine me shakin' chaps fer overalls, an' this ole Stetson
fer a fi'-cent cap, an' these nifty ridin' boots fer things as big as
this scow . . . an' takin' back-talk from a two-by-five Pole I cud
break over one knee 'n' kick the pieces tuh Medicine Hat. . . . But it
won't be fer long now, Juno. Jest two more little horses 'n' it's
did . . . all did. . . . An' then mebbe we kin go back an' hold up our
heads, Mira 'n' you 'n' Whiskers 'n' me. . . . Wonder wot Whiskers
thinks o' me these days!"
He concentrated on the working of the sweep. Juno raised herself to
give every inch of her stubby tail a chance. Blue Pete peered eagerly
into the shadows along the shore.
"An' thar's yer missus, Juno," he cried joyfully. "Mira--our Mira!"
A few powerful movements of his arm swept the raft sideways against the
bank. A woman, small and dainty, swarthy but without Indian blood,
leaned eagerly forward--eager but shy. Waves of dark hair peeped from
beneath her Stetson, and her green blouse blazed against the darker hue
of the trees as she stood, one foot advanced, holding her arms toward
the halfbreed.
Tossing the painter to the dog, Blue Pete leaped ashore and gathered
her in his arms without a word. Then, tremulously happy but abashed by
the fervour of their meeting, he released her and looked enquiringly
about.
"I suppose it should have been Whiskers first," she pouted.
He laughed and whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly
little pinto, all blotches of yellowish white and faded red, with a
ragged tail that looked as if something had started to make a meal of
it but became disgusted just before the end; and the left ear drooped
humorously in its upper third. It nosed up against the halfbreed,
nibbling playfully at his ears, his hands, the brim of his Stetson, the
leather fringe of his chaps, the ends of the polka-dot handkerchief
knotted about his neck.
"Yuh're some glad to see me, Whiskers, ole gal--if Mira ain't. But
then yuh 'n' me knowed each other longer, an' sort o' got to see the
good p'ints."
He laughed slyly at Mira from the corner of his eyes, and she laughed
back, with a tinge of sadness in the tone, and turned away to take the
painter from Juno. A second horse that had followed Whiskers from the
trees stepped aboard the raft after the pinto.
"Bes' wait till it's darker," advised Blue Pete. "They got mighty
peery since that las' raft showed us up. How d'yuh like the new one?
'Tain't's nifty 's the ole one, but it's easier handled, an' it'll last
us through, I guess."
Mira was examining it soberly. "What's the matter with it? It don't
seem even somehow."
He looked it over sheepishly. "I figured if I made it a bit shorter
one side, yuh'd have less to pull. What bustin' I've did's run more to
horses than boats, but ain't that about right? But the dang thing
don't seem to work--like a loco'ed cayuse. Anyway it was a job. Them
bohunks is getting' to roamin' about real annoyin', an' Koppy wust of
all."
"Who was shooting just before you gave me the signal?"
"The bohunks, out after sparrow pie fer supper, I guess," he lied
placidly, "ur larnin' which end a gun fires at. It's real dangerous in
the bush these days. Fus' thing we know we'll have to show ourselves
'n' ask 'em to shoot at us to be safe. These loose bullets ain't a bit
reasonable."
Mira let him ramble on; she loved to hear him, loved it now more than
ever, after her absence south with the last lot of stolen horses.
"Ain't it a bit small for horses, Pete?"
He eyed the raft doubtfully. "Thar's jes' two more, yuh know. It'll
carry 'em, I guess. Anyway we kin make two trips of it." He paused
and turned his gleaming eyes full on her face. "Jes' two more, Mira,
an' then we kin clear out!"
"Where to, Pete?" She looked up at him in sudden fright then that she
had spoken so plainly.
"Why--why--down south--to the 3-bar-Y--to suthin' wuth livin' fer--to
whar yuh'll be a sight better off than with a rough cuss like me."
The wistfulness that had stilled her laugh and sobered her face these
many weeks spoke at last; her eyes were wet.
"Have you thought, Pete, dear--thought what'll happen when they get us
again?"
"Sure I have," he replied bravely. "Wot d'yuh mean?"
"What will the Police say?"
He reached out to tickle Whiskers' neck with a twig and laughed
lightly. "I don' know wot they'll say, an' I don' care, but I know wot
they'll do. They'll take hold o' my hands an'--an'--Gor-swizzle! I
shud oughta know the Sergeant. . . . No more I ain't skeered o' th'
Inspector."
"But we're still stealing horses, Pete."
"Yuh still want me to pay Torrance, the ole sinner, fer horses he knew
was stole when he bought 'em?" He frowned. "If yuh say so when I got
the money myself, I'll give him the ten bucks a head he paid me fer 'em
las' year . . . but I'm sure goin' to git them horses back fust the way
they come, an' I'm not goin' to take any o' your money. Anyway he
wudn't sell fer ten bucks."
"The Police never forgive," she sighed.
The half breed leaned thoughtfully against a tree, chewing the twig.
"I kind o' feel, Mira," he said presently, "th' Inspector's got
feelin's some bigger'n that furrin sign he faces every day over his
desk, 'maintins he drut,'[1] ur suthin' like that. He's a bully
P'liceman, but he's a bully sight better friend, I'm gamblin'. Have
any trouble this trip?"
She threw aside her melancholy. "The two corrals this side of the Red
Deer are falling to pieces. Whiskers and Juno and I managed to keep
them in at nights, but we couldn't do it again, I'm afraid. I used the
old ford near the H-Lazy-Z; the water was too high to risk the other.
Of course I crossed at night. Met a farmer just over the railway, but
it was too dark to mean anything. Bert is having an easy time with the
bunch in the Hills, but we moved them further east. He's saw the
Police poking about the Hills a lot, specially Sergeant Mahon. . . .
I'll be glad when it's over, Pete. Things has gone too easy for a long
time. Something always turns up to spoil things."
"Didn't the raft 'most get away on us in the rapids? Ain't that 'nough
to happen?"
"I wasn't scared a bit," she said. "I knew you'd get us through."
"Swizzled if I did," he laughed. "I was skeered stiff."
"Well, you fooled me," patting his cheek with loving incredulity.
"An' all the time my knees fair tremblin'--wuss'n when Dutchy had the
drop on me an' me without a gun. Juno, ole woman, yuh done us fine
that time. . . . Only two more to git, Mira, an' then we're free. I
don' say them two ain't goin' to take some gittin'; they're in the
boss's own stable, an' he has ears like a gopher. He 'n' the young
missus ride 'em--ur they think they do."
He handed her aboard the raft and took his place at the stern.
"Lie down, Whiskers; yer legs is too teetery fer this craft. Yuh might
take a day off 'n' larn that fool jinny o' Mira's to lie down when
she's told to. No, Mira, I'll git it across myself. It's down stream,
an' I wantuh show yuh she ain't so bad a boat fer a cow-puncher to make
with wooden trees outen a wooden head. I got all my ole muscles
back . . . workin' fer Torrance, dang hard work, too, to say nothin' o'
them dirty Poles and other cats. . . . I gotta turn up to the minute
every mornin' ur they wanta know why. That nigger, Koppy! Some day
I'll jes' natcherl bust up an' take him to Heaven with me. I'm sure
losin' my spunk."
[1] "Maintiens le droit," the motto of the Mounted Police.