BLUE PETE RETURNS
Inspector Barker drummed on his desk.
"Bert, of the 3-bar-Y, has turned up, Priest tells me."
Sergeant Mahon managed to stifle outward evidence of the thrill that
sent his blood tingling. He did not reply. "Don't mangle your brains
over it, Boy. You've been in the Police long enough to add two and
two."
Still no reply.
"While you're digesting it, bite on this: Most of the horses Dutch
Henry and Bilsy stole last fall are back in their owners' hands."
Mahon began to laugh happily. "I'll stake my life that every one Blue
Pete stole--every one that's alive, anyway--is among them."
"You're coming along, Boy . . . but just a bit too fast. Try and take
this standing: Blue Pete never stole a horse after he left the Police!"
Mahon's brows met in surprise.
"No, I'm not crazy," grinned the Inspector. "I'm not even trying to
delude myself. . . . And he never was such a friend of mine as you
thought he was of yours."
Mahon controlled himself to formality. "I'll go out and find him, sir,
if you say so, and let him tell his own story."
"You'll find him when it pleases him to be found."
"If you don't mind, sir, I'd like to get back to the Lodge right away.
I feel as if I need ranchers and cowboys to remove the taste of that
north country from my mouth."
A slow smile crept into the Inspector's face.
"I imagine it'll please him to be found--and by you," he said.
As the door was closing behind the Sergeant, the grey-haired man threw
a parting word: "Take my advice, Boy, and don't do any adding till Blue
Pete gives you the figures. If the addition's unpleasant then . . .
wait till I add for you."
Mahon covered the thirty miles to the Police post at Medicine Lodge
without a rest. A fever of uncertainty was consuming him. The
Inspector's faith in the halfbreed made the whole uncanny affair a
deeper mystery than ever. For eight months Blue Pete had been "on the
run," and then had come the great sacrifice they had all believed--at
least all but the Inspector--to be his death. During those eight
months the Sergeant himself had traced northward the horses the
halfbreed had stolen. He had actually caught Mira Stanton, Blue Pete's
partner, in the act of rustling.
Yet, insisted the Inspector, the halfbreed was not rustling. Mahon
gave it up.
Ahead of him loomed the dark line of the beloved Hills, swelling as he
cantered along. Over the yellow glare of the dead prairie grass his
eyes rested on the deep green with the affection of a long-absent
friend. There swept over him an irrepressible longing to dash into the
cool shadows and feast his eyes on the maze of hill and dell, rocky
height and grass-grown bottom, mirrored lake and whispering stream; to
hear the leap of fish and the rustle of creeping things unseen, the cry
of distant birds and the howl of prowling wolf. There he would be in
touch with the spirit of his old friend, wherever he might be now.
Some day--he felt certain of it--he would grasp the hand of Blue Pete
somewhere within the Hills.
Constable Priest was not at the post when he pushed open the barracks
door. He was glad of that. Leaving a short note, he galloped off
south-east toward the Hills. His horse, with memories of many a free
run there, made straight for Windy Coulee, the familiar western
entrance to the mysteries of the Cypress Hills.
Mahon did not direct. When the sloping trail leading up into the trees
rose before him, he smiled. With Windy Coulee the halfbreed's memory
was bound by a hundred incidents. There they had entered their first
great adventure together; there they had dived into the shadows on the
trail of many a rustler. And there he had erected the rough stone that
marked his grief when he thought Blue Pete had given his life for him.
Wrapped in the past, Mahon gave the horse his head.
At the top of the hollowed trail, just where the trees began, the horse
came to a halt so suddenly that Mahon jerked against the pommel and
lifted his eyes in surprise.
Not thirty yards ahead stood the granite column with its simple
tribute, "Greater Love." But Mahon did not notice it. All he saw was
a man slouched on its pedestal. He was smiling at him--a twisted,
awkward smile of embarrassed affection.
Mahon's lips parted, but he could not speak. With unsteady hand he
quieted the impatient horse--blinking incredulously. There were the
high cheek bones, the bluish tinge--darker now--the pleading smile, the
leather chaps and dirty Stetson and polka dot neckerchief and huge
spurs, there the coarse brown hands hanging limply over the
leather-clad knees. Two changes had come--one shoulder hung lower than
its mate, and the stiff black hair was tidier. The first, he knew, was
the result of the old wound; the last the outward token of a woman's
care.
"Pete!"
He breathed the beloved name without knowing that he spoke.
The grin on the dusky face widened, the big hands rubbed each other in
confusion. For several seconds they faced each other thus. Suddenly
the half breed whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly
little pinto. Its right ear turned forward for Mahon's familiar
welcome, the left, struggling to follow, fell away grotesquely in its
upper half. But the weirdly coloured blotches that made it a pinto
were unlike any colour of living hide; and the pinto seemed to feel it.
"Whiskers ain't quite got back 'spectable yet, Boy," grinned Blue Pete.
"I sure dosed her fer fair up thar among them bohunks, an' she's
hangin' her head a bit. But she's the same ole gal, ain't yuh,
Whiskers?"
He whistled again. The pinto sank to the ground and lay as motionless
as the rocks about.
"Ain't lost a trick, not a dang one. An' she knows yuh, Boy. Yuh
ain't changed--not 's much as me. . . . But I'm sure the same old Blue
Pete."
Mahon dug cruel spurs into his horse's sides. Throwing himself from
the saddle, he seized the half-breed's hand and held it in both his own
without a word. A great tear gathered on either eyelid. Blue Pete
laughed in shamefaced happiness and dropped his squinting eyes.
And the pinto tore to shreds the rule of a lifetime: she clambered to
her feet without orders and reached up to nibble at the edge of Mahon's
Stetson. The Sergeant threw an arm about her neck and pressed his face
to the yellow blotch below the left eye. . . .
As the evening shadows from the Hills lay long across the prairie, and
the birds chirped sleepily, Mahon stood up with a sigh.
"You'll have to come in to the barracks, Pete. I--I can't help it."
"Get goin'," grinned the halfbreed.
The Sergeant bent over his girth with flushed face.
"I have no idea what's in store for you, Pete. The Inspector has a lot
of faith in you."
Blue Pete studied him quizzically. "More'n you have?"
"I don't know. Oh, I don't understand."
A shadow of pain came into the halfbreed's face. "I wudn't try then,"
he said shortly. And Mahon remembered that the Inspector had advised
the same.
When they had been riding a long time the half-breed spoke wistfully.
"I wasn't rustlin', Boy. All I did was to take from Duchy and Bilsy
some o' the horses they rustled. If I hadn't, yuh wudn't 'a' seed 'em
ever again. I've got 'em all back--all I took from them. . . . An' I
ain't chargin' nothin' fer it neither."
Mahon thought it all out laboriously.
"But you stole them again from Torrance."
"Sure! Torrance knowed they was stole. He wudn't 'a got any other
kind fer ten bucks. Yuh don't call that rustlin'?"
Mahon smiled--the halfbreed's code was so simple.
"Tell it to the Inspector like that," he pleaded.
"Sure I will! An' I know dang well _he'll_ see."
Inspector Barker lifted frowning eyes to the opening door. Stiff,
waiting for permission to enter, Sergeant Mahon stood looking at him
from the hall. A brown hand reached forward from behind and pushed him
aside. And there was the grinning face of the half-breed.
The Inspector cleared his throat huskily. The proper thing, he knew,
was to look severe, but the lines wouldn't form in the right places.
Hungrily the halfbreed's eyes roamed to the tobacco pouch spilled on
the blotter; the old corncob pipe was fumbling expectantly in his big
fist.
"Same baccy, Inspector?" he enquired innocently, stepping through the
door.
The lines in the Inspector's face were getting out of hand entirely.
In another moment--
He swung fiercely on the Sergeant.
"Get out!" he snapped; and slammed the door in his face.