YUMA
It was midafternoon before Penelope returned to the clearing in the
woods. She had found some difficulty in slipping unobserved into the
storeroom on the ranch to secure the things that now reposed in
saddlebags. While in the Basin the girl had made sure that Mort
Cavendish would be occupied with the supervision of branding a lot of
new cattle. He could hardly get back home before dark. This would give
Penny ample time to make her call on Becky and be with her when Mort
came in.
When Penny turned the supplies over to Tonto, she saw the gratitude in
the Indian's eyes. "It was almost as if the food were going to save his
life," she later thought. The truth of the matter was that the food was
to save a life that was more important to the Indian than his own could
possibly be.
While in the clearing Penny tried to learn more about the trail, but
Tonto either would not or could not inform her regarding its origin. She
tried again to make friends with the horse called "Silver," but her
overtures were rejected. Silver remained aloof. Las Vegas stood by, and
Penny had the impression that he was laughing at her rebuff by Silver in
whatever way a mustang had of laughing. It irked her.
"I'll come back," she said to Silver, "and bring some sugar and oats
that'll make you beg to be friends."
She mounted Las Vegas and rode away, little realizing the grim sequence
of events that was to be started simply because she decided to take
sugar to a stallion, or the appalling episode that portended in the
Basin.
Penny reached the Basin and rode directly to the ranch house. As she
rounded the corner and came into view of the porch, she saw, first of
all, big, stockinged feet resting on the railing, then long legs, and
then the sleepy-looking face of Cousin Jeb.
Jeb was looked upon by everyone as worthless. Details of work about the
ranch were mysteries he'd never tried to fathom, and he helped best by
keeping out of people's way. While Penny had no respect for Jeb, she
disliked him far less than she did her other cousins, Jeb's three
brothers.
She had thought several times that Jeb was not nearly so simple as he
was thought to be. He had a lot of idle time and he spent it all in
thinking. Sometimes the results of his periods of concentration were
surprisingly astute.
The girl dismounted near the steps and slapped Las Vegas in the proper
place. "Get going," she said, her respect for the mustang lessened after
seeing the silver stallion. Las Vegas scampered toward the corral while
Penny mounted the porch and perched on the railing.
"What's new, Jeb?" she greeted her cousin.
Jeb looked at the girl with eyes that were watery and weak. "Nothin'
much, I guess," he replied without breaking the rhythm of his long-jawed
chewing of a match.
He stared off at the distant Gap. "Got some more thinkin' tuh do before
I come tuh any conclusions. So far, I'd say they hain't nothin' much
that's new."
He let his tilted-back chair drop to its normal four-legged position. He
slipped his feet into heavy lace-up shoes that had no laces, and pushed
himself by the arms of the chair to his feet. Standing erect, Jeb
Cavendish would have been uncommonly tall. Even in his slouching posture
he was well over six feet two inches. His growin' all went one way, he
explained from time to time, and it was true. The same poundage would
have made a normal man of five feet eight. Jeb was that lean.
"Lot o' thinkin' tuh git done," he repeated musingly, as he pushed his
tapering hands deep into the pockets of faded dungarees that ended
halfway between his knees and shoe-tops. Penny waited, knowing that Jeb
would have more to say if given sufficient time. Jeb spat through teeth
that were large and horsy. Then he took off a battered hat that was
ventilated with several holes, and scratched the naked part of his head
that was constantly widening with the ebbing of his thin, sandy-colored
hair.
"Yuh know, Penelope," he said at length, "it's writ' in Scripture that
the Lord tempers the wind tuh the shorn lamb."
So Jeb was in one of the Scripture-quoting moods.
"What about it?" asked Penny. "I've heard of that, and I've always
thought that if the lamb hadn't been shorn, the wind wouldn't have had
to be tempered."
Jeb looked at the girl reprovingly and went on. "Mebbe, reasonin' along
them same lines, it's the Lord's will tuh blind Uncle Bryant so's he
can't see what goes on around here."
"Meaning what?" asked Penny quickly.
"Meanin' it'd save Bryant a powerful lot of mental sufferin' an' bloody
sweat if he didn't see too much."
Penny rose and faced her cousin directly. "Jeb," she said, "is it true
that Uncle Bryant's eyes are going back on him?"
"Dunno."
"But you think they are?"
"Bryant's never complained about his sight."
"Why do you think he's losing it?"
Jeb answered with another question. "Have yuh seen him readin' of late?"
Penny hadn't and she said so. "But he never did spend much time reading,
so you can't tell anything by that."
"Yuh seen the God-defyin' sort o' men that's come tuh work here?"
Penny nodded. "I don't like their looks at all."
"Jest so. Neither would Bryant. He's left the hirin' of new hands tuh
Mort an' Vince. If he'd seen Rangoon, an' Sawtell, an' some o' the rest,
he'd shoot 'em on general principles in the same way a man'd step on a
pizon-bad, murder-spider. Those men've been here; Bryant's had chances
tuh see 'em an' done nothin'." Having delivered himself of this, Jeb
resumed his chair and slipped his feet out of the shoes again. "Take's
more thinkin'," he finished, letting his eyes return to far-off places.
Penny gripped her cousin's arm. "Look here, Jeb," she said, "I want to
know more about things in the Basin. Everyone has been so darned quiet,
and so strained-acting, that it almost seems as if the place is filled
with ... with ghosts or something. What's it all about?"
Jeb fixed his pale eyes on the girl. They seemed to cover themselves
with a veil. He leaned forward and spoke in a soft confidential voice.
"Cousin, t'others around here think I'm tetched in the head. None of 'em
listens tuh me but you. They don't figger me worth listenin' to, but I
ain't sleepin'. I see things, I think things out. I dunno what it is, I
can't put my finger on't, but they's ugly happenin's in this here Basin.
They'll be some killin' here."
Jeb's voice took on a quality that chilled Penelope more than the rain
that had but recently stopped falling. There was something almost
sepulchral about the way he spoke. He seemed to be foretelling events
with an authority that could not be doubted.
"Things can't boil underneath without breakin' out soon. Murder is
comin' an' that won't be all. And I'll tell yuh some more." His voice
fell to a hoarse whisper. "Uncle Bryant is gettin' ready tuh die."
Penelope broke in. "But that's--"
Jeb stopped the girl. "It's true. Don't ask fer no more. Bryant is
makin' ready. I know it, he's makin' ready tuh die."
Penny knew that she'd gain nothing by pressing Jeb for further
information at that time. She also knew that it was time for her to go
to Rebecca. She crossed the porch and entered the house, to find another
cousin sprawling in the living room. The mere fact that Wallie was there
in his overdressed glory was substantial evidence that Bryant was not
around. Bryant hated Wallie chiefly for his clothes, secondarily for his
indolent love of social life and the girls in the nearest town. Wallie
was experimenting with a guitar, doubtless practicing some new tune to
play in his part of Don Juan. His shirt and the tightly wound
neckerchief on his fat neck were of the finest silk and of brilliant
hue. His trousers were of high-priced fawnskin, and his boots, as usual,
gleamed like mirrors. He had practiced long to strum the strings of his
guitar in the manner that would best bring out the sparkle of the
imitation diamond on one of ten fat fingers.
He wore two guns, but wouldn't have had the nerve to use them. The guns
were hypocrisy, the ring an imitation. The two were symbolic of the man
who wore them--an "imitation," and a hypocrite.
Penny walked past without speaking, and entered the kitchen where old
Gimlet was cooking supper. His one good eye, set in a round and wrinkled
face, was like the currant in a hot cross bun. The one eye that gave the
man his nickname was sharp and penetrating, but now it lighted with
pleasure at the sight of the girl.
"Keee-ripes," exclaimed Gimlet, "I'm glad tuh see yuh back, Miss Penny.
I shore as hell--pardon the cussin'--I shore worry when yuh ain't
around."
Penny smiled. "I just wanted to tell you that I won't be here for
supper. I'm going over to Becky's place."
Gimlet frowned. "If I'd o' knowed that I'd o' taken a lot less trouble
in fixin' good eatin' steaks."
The girl exchanged a few more words with the cook, then left by the rear
door. At the corral, which lay between her home and Rebecca's, she saw
Yuma working on Las Vegas.
Yuma was the only new employee in the Basin that Penny could look at
without an instinctive feeling of revulsion. Yuma was working a brush
vigorously over the hide of the mustang when Penny approached. She had
heard a few rumors about the big, pleasant-faced cowpuncher, with
shoulders so big and broad that they seemed to droop of their own
weight.
It had been said by expert judges of good fighters that a blow from
Yuma's fist would drop a bull. He had once been locked in the back room
of a saloon with four men in what was to be a fight to the
finish--Yuma's finish, supposedly. A short time later his fists crashed
through the panels of a locked door and a mighty demon of a man walked
out. His clothing was in shreds. Inside the room, debris and wreckage
were everywhere, and four men were prostrate on the floor.
"You needn't rub the hide off him," said Penny as she came near. Yuma
looked up and grew red in the face. Before the pretty girl, the giant
was flushed and bashful.
"Shore, ma'am, I'm right sorry. I--I had a little time on my hands an'
seen yore hoss. Bein' as you warn't around, I figgered tuh clean the
hoss up some."
"And if I'd been around," replied the girl in a teasing voice, "I
suppose you'd have cleaned _me_ up."
Yuma stared, mouth open. "Y-y-yew, g-g-gosh, Miss Penelope,
I--er--uh...." He paused, completely at a loss.
Penny really enjoyed watching the young giant squirm in his
embarrassment. She rested her elbows on a rail of the corral, and hooked
the heel of one boot on a lower rail. Leaning back, she watched him for
a moment, then said, "What's your name?"
"Folks jest sort o' call me 'Yuma'--that's where I come from, Yuma."
"But everyone has to have at least two names. Don't you have any other?"
"Most o' the gents I seen around this yere Basin lays claim tuh a couple
o' names an' lies when they does so." Yuma straightened and looked
directly at the girl with his clear blue eyes.
"That remark," she said, "calls for a little expanding. What do you
mean?"
"Oh, 'tain't nothin' tuh take offense at," the blond man said slowly. "A
lot o' gents in this country left their right names east of the
Mississippi, but I'd sooner not use any name than tuh borrow one that
might belong tuh some other gent."
Penny feigned a bit of anger. "Do you mean to imply that Cavendish isn't
our right name?"
"Aw, shucks, ma'am--nothin' like that. I reckon you an' yore relatives
has a right tuh the name, but they hain't many others on this spread
that was born with the handle they're usin' right now."
"Go on, Yuma. This is interesting."
Yuma saw Rangoon crossing toward the bunkhouse from the saddle shed.
"Thar," he said, "goes a gent that lays claim tuh the name o' Rangoon.
Last time I seen him, he called himself Abe Larkin, but he made that
name sort o' dangerous by usin' it when he shot up a couple homesteaders
near Snake Flats."
"You mean he's a murderer?"
"That's what the law'd like tuh hang him fer bein' if they knowed where
tuh reach him."
Yuma took a step closer to the girl, his thumb jerked over his shoulder
in the general direction of the open grazing land. "Out thar brandin'
cattle," he said, "they's a couple _hombres_ that was in the
hoss-tradin' business in Mexico last year. They sold hosses tuh some
soldiers down thar. Only trouble with that was that they wasn't
pertickler whar from the hosses came. When they got catched takin' some
hossflesh from a gent named Turner, without payin' fer the same, they
shot old Turner."
Penny knew from his manner that Yuma told the truth, but she
nevertheless found it hard to believe him. "What are their names?" she
asked.
"No one knows their real names, but they draw pay here under the names
of Lombard an' Sawtell. As fer me, yuh c'n jest call me 'Yuma.'"
Penny grew serious. "Very well," she said, "I'll call you Yuma."
"I suppose it's right nervy o' me tuh make mention o' this next," said
Yuma, "But, I--er--uh...."
"Perhaps," interrupted the girl, "if you think it nervy, you'd better
not say it."
"Wal, I'm agoin' tuh jest the same. Now see here, Miss Penelope, I would
sure like yuh tuh feel that if ever yuh want someone that yuh c'n count
on tuh do somethin', no matter what it is, you'll call on me."
"But I hardly know you," said Penny--then, irrepressibly, "this is so
sudden!"
Yuma's eyes dropped. Penny could have bitten her tongue. She had turned
the sincerity of the man from Arizona aside with banter. She realized
instantly that Yuma sensed the danger others had mentioned and wanted
her to know where he stood.
"I'm right sorry," he apologized, "I should o' knowed better'n tuh try
tuh suggest that a no-good saddle tramp like me could be of any good tuh
a lady like you."
Penny laid a brown hand on the solid arm of Yuma. She felt the hard
muscles trembling at her touch.
"Forgive me, Yuma," she said seriously, "I'm sorry. I want you to know
that I do appreciate your offer and that you'll be the first one I'll
call on if I need a friend."
Yuma looked startled. "Yuh--yuh mean t-t-tuh say ... that is, I
mean--you--"
"My friends call me Penny." The girl stuck her right hand out,
man-style. "What say, Yuma?--let's be friends."
Yuma hurriedly wiped his right hand on his shirt. He clasped Penny's
hand as if it were a delicate thing that might break at a calloused
touch. "G-gosh," he said.
Penny left and ran toward Becky's. Yuma watched the girl, who ran as
gracefully as a fawn. He looked in awe at his hand, the hand that had
touched the girl's slim fingers. Once more he muttered, "Gosh." He saw
Las Vegas eyeing him. "Las Vegas," he said to the mustang, "me an' you
are downright lucky critters, an' the only difference is that you ain't
the brains tuh know it."