THE OLD TRAIL
The following afternoon Pete, stiff and weary from his two days' ride,
entered the southern end of Flores's cañon and followed the trail along
the stream-bed--now dry and edged with crusted alkali--until he came
within sight of the adobe. In the half-light of the late afternoon he
could not distinguish objects clearly, but he thought he could discern
the posts of the pole corral and the roof of the meager stable. Nearer
he saw that there was no smoke coming from the mud chimney of the
adobe, and that the garden-patch was overgrown with weeds.
No one answered his call as he rode up and dismounted. He found the
place deserted and he recalled the Mexican woman's prophecy.
He pushed open the sagging door and entered. There was the
oilcloth-covered table and the chairs--a broken box in the middle of
the room, an old installment-house catalogue, from which the colored
prints had been torn, an empty bottle--and in the kitchen were the
rusted stove and a few battered and useless cooking-utensils. An odor
of stale grease pervaded the place. In the narrow bedroom--Boca's
room---was a colored fashion-plate pinned on the wall.
Pete shrugged his shoulders and stepped out. Night was coming swiftly.
He unsaddled Blue Smoke and hobbled him. The pony strayed off up the
stream-bed. Pete made a fire by the corral, ate some beans which he
warmed in the can, drank a cup of coffee, and, raking together some
coarse dried grass, turned in and slept until the sound of his pony's
feet on the rocks of the stream-bed awakened him. He smelt dawn in the
air, although it was still dark in the cañon, and having in mind the
arid stretch between the cañon and Showdown, he made breakfast. He
caught up his horse and rode up the trail toward the desert. On the
mesa-edge he re-cinched his saddle and turned toward the north.
Flores, who with his wife was living at The Spider's place, recognized
him at once and invited him in.
"What hit this here town, anyhow?" queried Pete. "I didn't see a soul
as I come through."
Flores shrugged his shoulders. "The vaqueros from over there"--and he
pointed toward the north--"they came--and now there is but this
left"--and he indicated the saloon. "The others they have gone."
"Cleaned out the town, eh? Reckon that was the T-Bar-T and the boys
from the Blue and the Concho. How'd they come to miss you?"
"I am old--and my wife is old--and after they had drank the
wine--leaving but little for us--they laughed and said that we might
stay and be dam': that we were too old to steal cattle."
"Uh-huh. Cleaned her out reg'lar! How's the señora?"
Flores touched his forehead. "She is thinking of Boca--and no one else
does she know."
"Gone loco, eh? Well, she ain't so bad off at that--seein' as _you're_
livin' yet. No, I ain't comin' in. But you can sell me some
tortillas, if you got any."
"It will be night soon. If the señor--"
"Go ask the Señora if she has got any tortillas to sell. I wouldn't
bush in there on a bet. Don't you worry about my health."
"We are poor, señor! We have this place, and the things--but of the
money I know nothing. My wife she has hidden it."
"She ain't so crazy as you think, if that's so. Do you run this
place--or are you jest starvin' to death here?"
"There is still a little wine--and we buy what we may need of
Mescalero. If you will come in--"
"So they missed old Mescalero! Well, he's lucky. No, I don't come in.
I tried boardin' at your house onct."
"Then I will get the tortillas." And Flores shuffled into the saloon.
Presently he returned with a half-dozen tortillas wrapped up in an old
newspaper. Pete tossed him a dollar, and packing the tortillas in his
saddle-pockets, gazed round at the town, the silent and deserted
houses, the empty street, and finally at The Spider's place.
Old Flores stood in the doorway staring at Pete with drink-blurred
eyes. Pete hesitated. He thought of dismounting and going in and
speaking to Flores's wife. But no! It would do neither of them any
good. Flores had intimated that she had gone crazy. And Pete did not
want to talk of Boca--nor hear her name mentioned. "Boca's where she
ain't worryin' about anybody," he reflected as he swung round and rode
out of town.
Once before he had camped in the same draw, a few miles west of
Showdown, and Blue Smoke seemed to know the place, for he had swung
from the trail of his own accord, striding straight to the water-hole.
"And if you keep on actin' polite," Pete told the pony as he hobbled
him that evening, "you'll get a good reputation, like Jim Owen said;
which is plumb necessary, if you an' me's goin' to be pals. But if
gettin' a good reputation is goin' to spoil your wind or legs any--why,
jest keep on bein' onnery--which Jim was tellin' me is called
'Character.'"
As Pete hardened to the saddle and Blue Smoke hardened to the trail,
they traveled faster and farther each day, until, on the Blue Mesa,
where the pony grazed and Pete squatted beside his night-fire in the
open, they were but a half-day's journey from the Concho. Pete almost
regretted that their journey must come to an end. But he could not go
on meandering about the country without a home and without an object in
life: _that_ was pure loafing.
Pete might have excused himself on the ground that he needed just this
sort of thing after his serious operation; but he was honest with
himself, admitting that he felt fit to tackle almost any kind of hard
work, except perhaps writing letters--for he now thought well enough of
himself to believe that Doris Gray would answer his letter to her from
Sanborn. And of course he would answer her letter--and if he answered
that, she would naturally answer . . . Shucks! Why should she write
to him? All he had ever done for her was to make her a lot of bother
and hard work. And what good was his money to him? He couldn't just
walk into a store and buy an education and have it wrapped up in paper
and take it to her and say, "Here, Miss Gray. I got a education--the
best they had in the outfit. Now if you'll take it as a kind of
present--and me along with it . . ."
Pete was camping within fifty yards of the spot where old Pop Annersley
had tried to teach him to read and write--it seemed a long time ago,
and Annersley himself seemed more vague in Pete's memory, as he tried
to recall the kindly features and the slow, deliberate movements of the
old man. It irritated Pete that he could not recall old man
Annersley's face distinctly. He could remember his voice, and one or
two characteristic gestures--but his face--
Pete stared into the camp-fire, dreaming back along that trail over
which he had struggled and fought and blundered; back to the time when
he was a waif in Enright, his only companion a lean yellow dog . . .
Pete nodded and his eyes closed. He turned lazily and leaned back
against his saddle.
The mesa, carpeted with sod-grass, gave no warning of the approaching
horseman, who had seen the tiny fire and had ridden toward it. Just
within the circle of firelight he reined in and was about to call out
when that inexplicable sense inherent in animals, the Indian, and in
some cases the white man, brought Pete to his feet. In that same
lightning-swift, lithe movement he struck his gun from the holster and
stood tense as a buck that scents danger on the wind.
Pete blinked the sleep from his eyes. "Keep your hands right where
they be and step down off that hoss--"
The rider obeyed. Pete moved from the fire that his own shadow might
not fall upon the other. "Pete!" exclaimed the horseman in a sort of
choking whisper.
The gun sagged in Peter's hand. "Andy! For God's sake!--I come clost
to killin' you!" And he leaped and caught Andy White's hand, shook it,
flung his arm about his shoulders, stepped back and struck him
playfully on the chest, grabbed him and shook him--and then suddenly he
turned and walked back to the fire and sat down, blinking into the
flames, and trying to swallow nothing, harder than he had ever tried to
swallow anything in his life.
He heard Andy's step behind him, and heard his own name spoken again.
"It was my fault, Pete. I ought to 'a' hollered. I saw your fire and
rode over--" Andy's hand was on Pete's shoulder, and that shoulder was
shaking queerly. Andy drew back. "There goes that dam' cayuse," cried
Andy. "I'll go catch him up, and let him drag a rope."
When Andy returned from putting an unnecessary rope on a decidedly
tired horse that was quite willing to stand right where he was, Pete
had pulled himself together and was rolling a cigarette.
"Well, you ole sun-of-a-gun!" said Pete; "want to swap hats? Say,
how'll you swap?"
Andy grinned, but his grin faded to a boyish seriousness as he took off
his own Stetson and handed it to Pete, who turned it round and
tentatively poked his fingers through the two holes in the crown. "You
got my ole hat yet, eh? Doggone if it ain't my ole hat. And she's
ventilated some, too. Well, I'm listenin'."
"And you sure are lookin' fine, Pete. Say, is it you? Or did my hoss
pitch me--and I'm dreamin'--back there on the flat? No. I reckon it's
you all right. I ain't done shakin' yet from the way you come at me
when I rode in. Say, did you git Jim's letter? Why didn't you write
to a guy, and say you was comin'? Reg'lar ole Injun, same as ever.
Quicker 'n a singed bob-cat gittin' off a stove-lid. That Blue Smoke
'way over there? Thought I knowed him. When did they turn you loose
down to El Paso? Ma Bailey was worryin' that they wasn't feedin' you
good. When did you get here? Was you in the gun-fight when The Spider
got bumped off?"
Pete was still gazing at the little round holes in Andy's hat. "Andy,
did you ever try to ride a hoss down the ole mesa trail backwards?"
"Why, no, you sufferin' coyote! What you drivin' at?"
"Here's your hat. Now if you got anything under it, go ahead and talk
up. Which way did you ride when we split, over by the timber there?"
Andy reached over and put a stick of wood on the fire. "Well, seein'
it's your hat, I reckon you got a right to know how them holes come in
it." And he told Pete of his ride, and how he had misled the posse,
and he spoke jestingly, as though it had been a little thing to do;
hardly worth repeating. Then he told of a ride he had made to Showdown
to let Pete know that Gary would live, and how The Spider had said that
he knew nothing of Pete--had never seen him. And of how Ma Bailey
upheld Pete, despite all local gossip and the lurid newspaper screeds.
And that the boys would be mighty glad to see him again; concluding
with an explanation of his own presence there--that he had been over to
the T-Bar-T to see Houck about some of his stock that had strayed
through some "down-fence"--"She's all fenced now," he explained--and
had run into a bunch of wild turkeys, chased them to a rim-rock and had
managed to shoot one, but had had to climb down a cañon to recover the
bird, which had set him back considerably on his home journey. "And
that there bird is hangin' right on my saddle now!" he concluded. "And
I ain't et since mornin'."
"Then we eat," asserted Pete. "You go git that turkey, and I'll do the
rest."
Wild turkey, spitted on a cedar limb and broiled over a wood fire, a
bannock or two with hot coffee in an empty bean-can (Pete insisted on
Andy using the one cup), tastes just a little better than anything else
in the world, especially if one has ridden far in the high country--and
most folk do, before they get the wild turkey.
It was three o'clock when they turned in, to share Pete's one blanket,
and then Andy was too full of Pete's adventures to sleep, asking an
occasional question which Pete answered, until Andy, suddenly recalling
that Pete had told him The Spider had left him his money, asked Pete if
he had packed all that dough with him, or banked it in El Paso. To
which Pete had replied drowsily, "Sure thing, Miss Gray." Whereupon
Andy straightway decided that he would wait till morning before asking
any further questions of an intimate nature.
Pete was strangely quiet the next morning, in fact almost taciturn, and
Andy noticed that he went into the saddle a bit stiffly. "That--where
you got hurt botherin' you, Pete?" he asked with real solicitude.
"Some." And realizing that he had scarcely spoken to his old chum
since they awakened, he asked him many questions about the ranch, and
the boys, as they drifted across the mesa and down the trail that led
to the Concho.
But it was not the twinge of his old wound that made Pete so silent.
He was suffering a disappointment. He had believed sincerely that what
he had been through, in the past six months especially, had changed
him--that he would have to have a mighty stern cause to pull a gun on a
man again; and at the first hint of danger he had been ready to kill.
He wondered if he would ever lose that hunted feeling that had brought
him to his feet and all but crooked his trigger-finger before he had
actually realized what had startled him. But one thing was
certain--Andy would never know just _how_ close he had come to being
killed; Andy, who had joked lightly about his own ride into the desert
with an angry posse trailing him, as he wore Pete's black Stetson,
"that he might give them a good run for their money," he had laughingly
said.
"You're jest the same ornery, yella-headed, blue-eyed singin'-bird you
always was," declared Pete as they slithered along down the trail.
Andy turned in the saddle and grinned at Pete. "Now that you've give
the blessing parson, will you please and go plumb to hell?"
Pete felt a lot better.
A loose rock slipped from the edge of the trail, and went bounding down
the steep hillside, crashing through a thicket of aspens and landing
with a dull clunk amid a pile of rock that slid a little, and grumbled
sullenly. Blue Smoke had also slipped as his footing gave way
unexpectedly. Pete felt still better. This was something like it!