THE RAMBLIN' KID
BY EARL WAYLAND BOWMAN
FRONTISPIECE BY W.H.D. KOERNER
1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I A NIGHT LETTER
II A BLUFF CALLED
III WHICH ONE'S WHICH
IV THE UNUSED PLATE
V A DUEL OF ENDURANCE
VI YOU'RE A BRUTE
VII THE GREEDY SANDS
VIII QUICK WITH A VENGEANCE
IX OLD HECK'S STRATEGY
X FIXING FIXERS
XI A DANCE AND A RIDE
XII YOU'LL GET YOUR WISH
XIII THE ELITE AMUSEMENT PARLOR
XIV THE GRAND PARADE
XV MOCHA AND JAVA
XVI THE SWEEPSTAKES
XVII OLD HECK GOES TO TOWN
XVIII A SHAME TO WASTE IT
XIX THE GREEK GETS HIS
XX MOSTLY SKINNY
XXI A GIRL LIKE YOU
THE RAMBLIN' KID
CHAPTER I
A NIGHT LETTER
Sand and gravel slithered and slid under the heels of Old Pie Face as
Skinny Rawlins whirled the broncho into the open space in front of the
low-built, sprawling, adobe ranch house of the Quarter Circle KT and
reined the pinto to a sudden stop. Skinny had been to Eagle Butte and
with other things brought back the mail. It was hot, late June, the time
between cutting the first crop of alfalfa and gathering, from the open
range, the beef steers ready for the summer market. Regardless of the
heat Skinny had ridden hard and his horse was a lather of sweat. A
number of cowboys lounged, indolently, in the shade of the bunk-house,
smoking cigarettes and contentedly enjoying the hour of rest after the
noon-day dinner. Another, lean-built, slender, boyish in appearance and
with strangely black, inscrutable eyes, stepped from around the corner
of the house as Skinny jerked Old Pie Face to a standstill.
"Where's Old Heck?" Skinny asked excitedly. "I brought the mail--here,
take it to him!"
The other, known on the Kiowa and the range of western Texas and Mexico
only as "the Ramblin' Kid," strolled leisurely out through the sagging,
weight-swung gate and up to the panting horse from which Skinny had not
yet dismounted.
"Asleep, I reckon," he replied in a voice peculiarly low and deliberate,
"--what's your spontaneousness about? You act like a special d'livery or
somethin'."
"Old Heck's got a letter," Skinny said, jerkily; "maybe's it's bad news
an' he ought to have it quick," as the Ramblin' Kid reached for a yellow
envelope held in the outstretched hand.
At that instant Old Heck, owner and boss of the Quarter Circle KT cow
outfit, stepped from the shadow of the open ranch-house door. He was
short and stocky, red-faced, somewhere near the fifties, and a
yellowish-gray mustache hung over tobacco blackened lips. Overalls, a
checked blue and white shirt, open at the throat, boots into which the
trousers legs were loosely jammed comprised his attire. He was
bareheaded and the sun glistened on a wrinkly forehead, topped by a thin
sprinkling of hair.
"What's the matter?" he asked drowsily, his small, gray-blue eyes
blinking in the yellow sun-glare and still sluggish from the nap
disturbed by the noise of Skinny's arrival.
"Nothin'. Skinny's just got a letter an' is excited about it," the
Ramblin' Kid said, handing the envelope to him. "It's for you."
"My Gawd!" Old Heck exclaimed, "it's a telegram!"
The cowboys resting in the shade of the bunk-house rose to their feet,
sauntered over and surrounded Old Heck and the Ramblin' Kid, commenting
meanwhile, frankly and caustically, on the fagged condition of the
broncho Skinny was on:
"Must 'a' been scared, the way you run that horse," Parker, range
foreman of the Quarter Circle KT, a heavy-built, sandy-complexioned man
in the forties, remarked witheringly to Skinny as the cow-puncher
climbed from the saddle and slid to the ground.
"He's mine, I reckon," Skinny retorted, "an' I figure it's nobody's
darn' business how I ride him--anyhow I brought Old Heck a telegram!" he
added triumphantly.
"Blamed if he didn't!" Charley Saunders, with a trifle of awe, pretended
or real, in his tone, said. "It sure is!"
"My Gawd!" Old Heck repeated, slowly turning the envelope over in his
hand, "it's a telegram! Wonder what it's about?"
"Why don't you open it and see?" Parker suggested.
"Yes, open th' blamed thing and find out," Skinny encouraged.
"I--I've a notion to," Old Heck whispered.
"Go on and do it, it won't take but a minute," Charley Saunders
entreated.
"Maybe he's one of these mind-readers and can read it through the
envelope," Bert Lilly volunteered.
"Aw, shut up and give him a chance!"
Trembling, Old Heck tore open the envelope and silently read the
message.
"My Gawd!" he groaned again. "The worst has come to the worst!"
"That ought to make it middlin' bad," Charley remarked soberly.
"Ought to," Bert added sententiously.
Parker crowded forward on sympathy bent.
"Tell us what's in it," he said; "if it's sorrowful we'll be plumb glad
to condole!"
"It's worse than sorrowful--"
"Melancholical?" Skinny inquired.
"My Gawd!" Old Heck said again, his weatherworn features working
convulsively, "it's more than a mortal man can endure and stand!"
"Bet somebody's dead!" Bert whispered to the Ramblin' Kid.
"Probably. Most everybody gets to be sooner or later," was the answer
without emotion.
Sing Pete, Chinese cook for the outfit, dish-rag over his shoulder,
edged out of the kitchen door and shuffled around to the group.
Glimpsing the yellow slip of paper held in the shaking hand of Old Heck
and the awed interest of the cowboys gathered about the boss, he
queried:
"Teleglam?"
No answer.
"Teleglam? Maybe alle samee somebody sickee?" he continued, cheerfully
confident that questions enough would ultimately bring a reply. He was
rewarded:
"What do you know about 'teleglams'? You slant-eyed burner of
beef-steaks!"
"Who's it from?" Charley asked. "Anybody we know--"
"My Gawd," Old Heck mourned once more, "she's comin'!"
"Who's she?" Parker coaxed.
"A female," Old Heck replied, "she's a female!"
"The darned old cuss has had a wife sometime and run off from her and
deserted her and she's pursuing him and trailing him down to earth!"
Chuck Slithers, doubting Thomas of the outfit and student of Sherlock
Holmes, cunningly suggested. "I always imagined he was a varmint with a
past--a' ex-heart breaker of innocent women or a train-robber or--"
"Aw, hell," the Ramblin' Kid rebuked, "him have a wife? Don't insult th'
female population!"
"_Carramba!_" exclaimed Pedro Valencia, Mexican line-rider for the
Quarter Circle KT, "perhaps she will stick him with the dagger, or shoot
him with the gun when she arrive! The ladies with love kill quick when
the love is--what you call him?--the jilt?"
"And I'd almost forgot I ever had one!" Old Heck continued talking as if
to himself.
"What'd I tell you?" Chuck exulted.
"Shut up! He's confessin'--let him alone an' he'll get it out of his
conscience sooner or later!"
"Had a what?" Parker urged sympathetically. "Maybe you didn't have
one--maybe you only imagined you did!"
"Had a brother--anyhow a half a one--our mothers was the same but
different fathers on account of mine dyin' when I was little and his
marrying our mother again; we was playmates together in our innocent
childhood and infancy until I run away and went to sea and finally
anchored on the Kiowa and got to raisin' cattle--"
"Where does he come in at?" Parker questioned.
"He said it was a female, to start with," Skinny added.
"--and his name is Simeon Dixon on account of his father's being the
same thing, and he went in the street railroad business in a place named
Hartville in Connecticut, and he got married and had a wife--she was
Zithia Forbes, and she's dead, and I knowed that, and he's rich I reckon
and--"
"An' Amrak begat Meshak an' Meshak begat Zimri an' Zimri was th' founder
of th' House of Old Heck," the Ramblin' Kid chanted. "What in thunder
does details amount to, anyhow?"
"But you was mournin' about a she!" Parker insisted.
"Well, I reckon it ain't a wife--at least not the one I was thinking
about," Chuck murmured disappointedly, "but I bet he's had one somewhere
in his vari'gated career and is hiding out from her in fear an'
tremblin'--"
"And there will not be the grand, the beautiful murder?" Pedro sighed,
questioningly.
"Wait a minute," Skinny pleaded, "--give him air!"
"--and he's got a female daughter--and I didn't know that--and he's--oh,
Gawd!--he's sending her out to the Quarter Circle KT!"
"How big is she?" Parker whispered.
"She's--she's twenty-two--"
"Inches around or what?" Charley gasped.
"--and Ophelia is coming with her--Ophelia Cobb--C-o-double-b it is--is
coming with her for a chaperon--"
"Great guns!" Skinny breathed,"--two females!"
"Hold still and I'll read it--no, you do it, Parker--I'm too full of
emotion--my voice'd quiver--"
Parker read:
"Josiah Heck, Eagle Butte, Texas:
"Am sending my daughter, Carolyn June, out to your ranch
for a while. She needs a change. She has broke all the
he-human hearts in Hartville--that is all of them old
enough or young enough to be broke--and is what's called
a love-stimulator and won't settle. She is twenty-two
and it's time she was calmed. Hoping six months on the
Kiowa range will gentle her quite a lot, I am
sympathetically your 1/2 brother, Simeon.
"P.S.--Mrs. Ophelia Cobb, a lady widow, is coming with
her for a chaperon. Beware of both of them. They will
arrive at Eagle Butte the 21st.--S."
"Gee, it's a long one!" Chuck said admiringly.
"It's one of these 'Night Letters,'" Parker explained.
"I knowed it was bad news," Skinny exclaimed, "--poor old Heck!"
"Better say, 'Poor we all!'" Bert declared. "Farewell peace and joy on
the Quarter Circle KT!"
"The Lord have mercy on Old Heck!" Charley cried with dramatic fervor.
"Holy smoke," Parker murmured desperately, "_two of them on the
twenty-first--and that's to-morrow!_"