MOCHA AND JAVA
Old Heck and Skinny had left Ophelia and Carolyn June at the Occidental
Hotel, where a room was reserved by Old Heck for the use of the two
women during the Rodeo. They had then gone direct to Mike Sabota's place
for the express purpose of running into Dorsey and his crowd. Old Heck
knew that if any large bets were to be laid on the two-mile sweepstakes
the only chance would be to place them before the Ramblin' Kid brought
the Gold Dust maverick to Eagle Butte and the Vermejo bunch discovered
the identity of the horse Thunderbolt was up against.
The Quarter Circle KT cow-men stepped into the pool-room at exactly the
instant most favorable for their purpose.
Dorsey had made his boast in the presence of a crowd.
He would hardly dare back up without covering, at least to some
worth-while extent, his words with his money.
For a full minute Old Heck drilled Dorsey with a look such, as a hound
dog might have in his eyes after he has cornered a coyote and pauses
before he springs.
Instinctively the crowd stepped back from the two cattlemen while a
death-like hush fell over the place.
"Th' Ramblin' Kid don't need to back the filly with his money, Dorsey,"
Old Heck said slowly and in a voice audible in every part of the room;
"I'm here to back her with mine! You've done a lot of talking--now,
damn you, cover your chatter with coin or shut up!" the end of the
sentence coming like the crack of a whip.
With a nervous laugh the Vermejo cattleman jerked a wallet from his
pocket.
"Here's a thousand that says Thunderbolt does the same thing to the
Ramblin' Kid's filly that he done to Quicksilver!" Dorsey snapped.
Old Heck threw back his head and laughed scornfully.
"A thousand? I thought you were a sport, Dorsey!" he sneered. "Match
this," he continued, reaching for his check-book and fountain pen and
quickly filling out a check payable to "Cash" for ten thousand dollars,
which he laid on the hardwood bar. "Match that, or admit you're a cheap,
loud-howlin' bluffer!"
Dorsey paused just an instant as he noted the amount of the check.
"I'll match it!" he exclaimed, flushing angrily, drawing his own
check-book from his pocket, and then, carried away by his passion
added, throwing down the bars completely as Old Heck had hoped he would,
"and go with you to the end of the trail!"
"Good!" Old Heck laughed, "now you are talking like a sport! Let's see,"
he added calculatingly, "how many Y-Bar cattle do you figure you've got
running on the Vermejo range--five thousand?"
"There's that many," Dorsey started to say.
"Call it fifty-five hundred!" Old Heck flung at him. "Steer for steer,
cow for cow, hoof for hoof--I'll put Quarter Circle KT critters against
every brute you own that th' Ramblin' Kid lands his horse tinder the
wire ahead of Thunderbolt!"
Dorsey paled, then a purple-red of fury spread over his neck and face,
and with an oath he cried:
"I'll call you!"
Bills of sale were drawn and turned over to Judge Ivory, to be
delivered, after the race, to the winner.
"Now," Old Heck said with a hard laugh, "maybe you'd like to own the
Quarter Circle KT ranch, Dorsey? It's worth twice as much as your
Vermejo holdings but I'll just give you that percentage of odds and call
it an even bet that your black stallion don't outrun the little animal
th' Ramblin' Kid has entered in the sweepstakes!"
But Dorsey did not answer except with a muttered: "Hell, a man's crazy
that--" He had gone his limit. He had suddenly come to his senses and
grown suspicious.
Before Skinny and Old Heck left the pool-room the former managed to get
a bet of five hundred dollars with Sabota.
The next afternoon the Ramblin' Kid rode into Eagle Butte on Captain
Jack. By his side he led the Gold Dust maverick. The noise and confusion
in the streets filled the mare with nervousness and she crowded closely
against the little roan stallion. Before he got the outlaw filly to the
stables a half dozen cowboys had recognized the Cimarron maverick.
Within an hour Dorsey and Sabota knew the identity of the Ramblin' Kid's
entry in the big race that was to be run Friday afternoon and which was
the big and closing event of the Rodeo.
The Greek was furious.
Wednesday night he called "Gyp" Streetor, a carnival tout, who had one
time been a jockey but was ruled off the track for crooked work and was
now picking up "easies" at the Eagle Butte Rodeo, into a side room of
the Amusement Parlor.
For half an hour the two talked earnestly and furtively.
"Nothin' doin'--absolutely nothin'!" the tout finally said in reply to
some suggestion of Sabota's. "That Captain Jack horse would murder any
man but th' Ramblin' Kid that tried to get in the stall--"
"Well, by hell!" the Greek exclaimed, clenching his hairy fists, while
his mouth twitched with passion, "that filly's got to be kept out of the
sweepstakes someway or other--"
"You can't get to her, I tell you," Gyp said sullenly, then with a look
of cunning suddenly coming into his eyes: "They say she's a one-man
brute like the stallion--nobody can ride her but th' Ramblin' Kid,"
significantly looking at Sabota. "If you could--but he don't drink!"
The Greek laughed.
"There are other ways!" he said. "He eats, don't he? Listen: To-morrow
and Friday you take that 'sandwich and coffee' run at the stables--"
referring to the concession to peddle lunch stuff among the horsemen who
seldom left their charges, a concession which Sabota, with other
privileges, had purchased the right to operate. "Th' Ramblin' Kid eats
off the trays--it will be your business to see that he ain't feeling
well when the sweepstakes is called! I'll get the 'pills' for you
to-night--"
"No killin', Sabota!" Gyp warned.
"Just enough to put him out for an hour or two!" the Greek answered.
Wednesday night the Ramblin' Kid slept in the stall with the Gold Dust
maverick and Captain Jack. Thursday he remained close to the horses.
Thursday night he again slept on a pile of hay in one corner of the
box-compartment. Under no circumstances would he leave the animals.
Occasionally Parker or some of the Quarter Circle KT cowboys came down
to the stables.
Each night Old Heck and Skinny, with Carolyn June and Ophelia, after the
evening program was concluded, drove out to the ranch in the Clagstone
"Six," returning early the following day.
Friday forenoon Old Heck drove the car down to the stall in which
Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick were confined. The two horses
were standing, side by side, with their heads out of the door, the upper
half of which was swung back. The Ramblin' Kid leaned against the door
at the side of the horses.
To Carolyn June he looked tired and worn.
"How's the filly?" Old Heck asked, as the outlaw mare sprang back away
from the door when the car stopped.
"She's all right."
"Hadn't you ought to exercise her?" Skinny asked.
"She don't need it," the Ramblin' Kid replied with a note of weariness
in his voice. "She'll get enough exercise this afternoon!"
"You're all right, yourself, are you?" Old Heck asked a bit anxiously.
"Of course I'm all right," was the rather impatient reply. "Don't be
uneasy," he added with a laugh; "--th' filly'll be in th' race an' beat
old Thunderbolt!"
"Good luck!" Carolyn June cried, as Old Heck turned the car about and
started back toward the grandstand.
"Good luck!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered to himself, watching the car as
it whirled away. "Ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!" he repeated bitterly,
then with a queer smile in which was a world of tenderness he pulled the
pink satin elastic garter he had picked up at the circular corral, from
his pocket and looked at it long and wistfully. "Good luck?" he
exclaimed again questioningly. "Well, maybe that little jigger'll bring
it!" and he slipped the band back in his pocket.
"Th' Ramblin' Kid acts like he's got the blues this morning," Skinny
said as the Clagstone "Six" rolled away from the stables. "He looks to
me like a feller that's in just the right humor to get on a whale of a
drunk--"
"That's one thing about him you can depend on," Old Heck broke in, "--he
never poisons himself with liquor. That's why when he says he'll do
anything you can bet all you've got he'll do it!"
"Well, if he ever does break loose," Skinny retorted, "it'll be sudden
and wild!"
"Probably," Old Heck replied as though there wasn't the slightest danger
of such an eventuality.
That morning Gyp purposely avoided going as far, with his stock of
provisions, as the stall in which were Captain Jack and the Gold Dust
maverick. Nor did he come with his lunch tray and tin pot of coffee
until nearly one o'clock.
The Ramblin' Kid had no breakfast. To secure it he would have been
required to leave the horses. That he would not do. Of course he might
have told Old Heck or Skinny to bring or send him something, but he did
not feel inclined to mention, in the presence of Carolyn June and
Ophelia, that he was hungry. Anyhow, well, they were having a good time
and what was the use of bothering them?
When Gyp finally came with the lunch the Ramblin' Kid was outside the
stall and had walked a little way up the stable street. Captain Jack and
the filly were in a compartment at the end of the string of stalls. The
one next to it, back toward the grandstand, was unoccupied, and
adjoining that was a hay room. Gyp stopped opposite the open door of the
compartment in which the bales of hay and straw were piled. He paused a
moment and turned as if to go back.
"Hold on there!" the Ramblin' Kid called to him. "What you tryin' to do?
Starve me to death?"
"D' last thing I'd want to do, Bo!" Gyp laughed good-naturedly. "Did I
miss you this mornin'? Here, come inside where I can set this bloomin'
junk down on a bale of hay for a minute an' I'll fix you up!"
The Ramblin' Kid followed Gyp into the stall.
The tout stooped over, with his back to the other, and slipped a capsule
containing a white powder into a coffee cup which he filled quickly with
the black liquid from the tin pot he carried. He handed the cup to the
Ramblin' Kid. The latter took it and sat down on a bale of hay lying
opposite. The coffee was just hot enough to melt, instantly, the capsule
and not too warm to drink at once. The Ramblin' Kid was thirsty as well
as hungry. Lifting the cup to his lips, while Gyp, fumbling for a
sandwich, watched him furtively, he drained it without stopping.
"That's--what was in that?'" he asked, eying the tout keenly. "It tastes
like--!"
"Just good old Mocha an' Java!" Gyp interrupted lightly. "Maybe it's a
little strong. Here, take another one!" reaching for the cup.
The Ramblin' Kid started to hand the cup to Gyp to be refilled--a queer
numbness swept over him--the cup fell from his hand--he swayed--tensed
his body in an effort to get up--mumbled thickly:
"What th'--what th'--?"
The tout backed away toward the door, crouching like a cat ready to
spring, his beady eyes half-frightened, watching the poison deaden the
faculties of the other. He leaped through the door, glanced up and down
the stable street--deserted at that hour except for a few drowsy
attendants lounging in front of their stalls--jerked the door shut,
hooked the open padlock through the iron fastenings, snapped its jaws
together and muttered, as he hurried away:
"I guess that guy won't ride the Gold Dust maverick in any two-mile
sweepstakes to-day!"
As the door slammed shut the Ramblin' Kid pitched forward, unconscious,
on the bale of hay.