THE HOME COMING OF RED RECKLESS
Winter went its white way, the spring brought a thawing sun,
innumerable muddy torrents and an occasional visitor, the robins and
blue birds began to troop back to the mountains. Martin Leland was at
home, his sturdier steers were in the valleys, Conway came back to the
Bar L-M and often visited the Lelands. Sledge Hume rode up from the
Dry Lands, fifty miles down the slope of the mountains and was often in
consultation with Martin and with Garth Conway.
Warm weather battled against the rear guard of winter, only patches of
soiled snow remained upon the north side of the ridges, in the narrow
cañons and upon the lofty summits of the peaks standing up about the
valleys. The early flowers dotted the valleys, more cattle were moved
in, and the season developed rapidly. Conway came frequently to talk
with Martin, to remain for supper, to chat with Wanda and her mother.
And then one day, unheralded, unlooked for, Red Reckless came home.
It was the supper hour, just after dark. Father, mother and daughter
were at the table, when there came a quick step upon the veranda, and
the joy which the gay springtime had put into Wanda's heart brimmed up
and spilled over.
"It's Garth," said Martin Leland lightly. "I expected he'd ride over
to-night."
"_It's Wayne_!" cried Wanda, already upon her feet.
"Wayne!" snapped her father, his face suddenly stern. "What are you
talking about?"
"I know his step. It is Wayne!"
Wanda had already run to the door, and flung it wide open. It was very
dark outside. The tall form of a man loomed strangely large, dimly
outlined against the black curtain of the night.
"Welcome home, Wanderer!" Wanda cried gaily.
Wayne Shandon came in, his big boots dusty with his ride, his red hair
catching fire from the light in the room, his eyes laughing, his lips
laughing, his voice laughing when he greeted Wanda with two eager
hands. He was the same Wayne Shandon who had ridden away a year ago,
the same Red Reckless he had ever been.
Mrs. Leland's startled surprise vanished swiftly before her joy in
seeing him. But Martin Leland's face went black, his eyes burned
ominously, it was as though he had been gripped with a choking,
speechless wrath.
"Wayne!" cried Mrs. Leland. "Where in the world have you come from?"
"From a place they call Hell's Annex, seven hundred miles inland from
the South African Coast," he laughed lightly. "My arrival timed just
to the minute for supper!"
He dropped Wanda's hands with a parting squeeze which was frankly
unhidden, strode over to Mrs. Leland whom he kissed resoundingly, and
put out a big, strong hand to Martin Leland.
For just a fraction of a second the two women knew that Leland was
hesitating, for an instant they waited fearfully, for what he might do.
Then he took the hand proffered him, his lips twitched into a hard,
forced smile and he said rather colourlessly,
"Well, Wayne, you've come home at last, have you?"
Wayne's answer was a laugh. He seemed filled with laughter to-night.
Evidently he had noticed nothing strange in Leland's greeting; he was
in the gayest of his gay moods. He had no opportunity to answer
Leland's words, for Julia, who had forgotten her usual slow, ponderous
method of travel bounced into the room like a wonderfully animated ball
at the sound of his voice, and he actually swept the two hundred pounds
of her off of her feet as he gathered the big woman up into his arms
and kissed her. Then Julia dabbed at her eyes and fled to her kitchen,
her emotions finding outlet in an instantaneous desire to make him a
pie, Wanda laid a plate for him and supper went on.
Chiefly because of Wanda's eager questions and Wayne Shandon's laughing
willingness to tell about his adventures, the abstraction on the part
of Martin Leland and the growing anxiety in Mrs. Leland's eyes went
unnoticed. Wayne was immoderately hungry as he first frankly confided
and then demonstrated, but he found opportunity between mouthfuls to
draw, in his sketchy way, the series of pictures which made up the year
of his wanderings. He had travelled from New York to London, he had
whizzed through Paris and dipped into Baden, he had been seasick on a
Mediterranean which wasn't blue, he had barked his shins on a pyramid,
he had been swindled out of a ridiculously large sum of money by a
little scientist in green spectacles who was out on a mummy digging
expedition, and he had gone into the interior after big game. He had
managed to take in a Derby and to pick a winner, he had made Monte
Carlo recognise that he had come,--although he did not go into detail
as to the manner of his departure,--and he had brought home a present
for everybody. The skin he had taken from a lion somewhere in some
remote jungle to sprawl, rug fashion in Wanda's room, where it created
no little havoc in the furniture arrangement and finally caused the
dressing table to be shifted to a corner to make place for the
enormous, gaping head with the fierce eyes; an Indian shawl for Mrs.
Leland, selected evidently for size and brilliance of pattern, very
nearly large enough to carpet the dining room and of an astonishing
combination of dark greens and riotous reds and royal purples; an
ornate scarf pin for Martin Leland who had as much use for a scarf pin
as a Mohammedan for a Bible; an exquisite set of chessmen for Garth
purchased with a quick eye to the subtle art which had gone into their
carving and with a fine disregard for the fact that Garth had existed
for thirty odd years without learning that the curveting progress of a
knight is in any way different from the ecclesiastical slant of a
bishop, completed the assortment of presents.
Garth himself came in as they were pushing back their chairs from the
table, throwing open the door with a merry, "Hello, folks," on his
lips. Then as he caught sight of Wayne who had leaped up and swung
about he stared, suddenly speechless, his mouth dropping open.
"Well, Garth, old boy," cried Wayne heartily. "Aren't you glad to see
me?"
Garth came forward then swiftly, his hand out-stretched. But his eyes
were still startled rather than glad, and they passed his cousin
turning, full of question, to Martin Leland.
"Of course I'm glad," he said, his voice a little uncertain. And then,
laughing, "You just surprised me out of my senses. Why didn't you
write that you were coming?"
"Because I'd rather travel three thousand miles to tell you about it
than write a letter. I'm amazingly glad to see you. How's everything?
How is the range making out?"
"Fine," Garth answered quickly. "You have come to stay? You will be
running the outfit yourself now?"
"Business to-morrow," retorted Wayne lightly. "It is after sundown and
business should be asleep."
"And does it wake at sunup?" Garth returned with an attempt at Wayne's
bantering mood, although a little suspicion of venom lay under the
words.
"I had a Mexican friend once," grinned Wayne by way of answer, "who was
the wisest man I ever saw. He used to say, 'The day is made to rest,
the night to sleep!' We will give our attention to Mañana when Mañana
comes. Wanda!" he cried suddenly in the old impulsive way, "will you
play something for me?"
Wayne and Wanda went to the piano. Mrs. Leland watched them, her face
a little troubled, a little wistful. Garth and Martin Leland, after
one swift exchange of glances, rose and went to the rancher's room
where they remained for a long time. When at last they returned to the
living room Leland glanced curiously at Wayne. He was sitting with
Wanda upon the sofa under the big wall lamp, examining her pictures.
Garth approached the sofa abruptly.
"We'd better be hitting the trail, Wayne, hadn't we?" he asked. "It's
nearly ten o'clock and you remember it's six miles to bed."
Reluctantly Wayne Shandon said his good nights, calling in to Julia
that he was going to expect a pie the next time he came, which would be
to-morrow if Garth would let him, and the two men went out to their
horses. Wanda, bright and happy, waved to the departing horsemen from
the door and came back into the room to drop naturally into the silence
which had fallen over her mother and father.
Long that night Wanda stared out through the darkness which lay about
the orchard with no thought of sleep. She had the feeling that no one
in the house was asleep yet, not even Julia whom she could hear now and
then moving as softly as physical conditions permitted in her room.
That her father and mother were awake, she knew from the drone of their
voices coming to her indistinctly.
The spirit of restless anxiety falling upon a household is a thing to
be felt through stick and stone and mortar. There had been no such
spirit here to-night until Red Reckless had come home. He had not
brought it with him, he had brought only his sheer madness of exuberant
life, and yet he had left this other thing behind him. Wanda wondered
what thoughts, what fears or evil premonitions troubled those other
unsleeping brains.
Her own thoughts fled back a year and clung fearfully about the
revolver with the pearl grip. She knew that the murder of his brother
still remained a mystery and that people do not like mysteries to go
long without solution. MacKelvey was sheriff, it was his duty, and it
was his habit, to bring some man to book for every crime committed in
the county. It was quite possible that the sheriff had been playing a
waiting game throughout the year, and that he was waiting for this man
to come back as he must do soon or late.
Meanwhile the man who was so vividly in Wanda's thoughts rode through
the silent night with his cousin, drinking deep of the peace of the
starlit night, finding an old familiar music in the hammering of his
horse's hoofs on the grassy hills. Silent himself while thinking of
other days and other rides, he did not notice how silent Garth was.
They topped the rocky ridge which stood as boundary line between the
two ranges, and swerved westward taking the long curve to the Crossing,
welcomed back to the home outfit by the great booming voice of the
distant river. Another mile and the river itself, flashing, turbulent
molten silver, swollen with the wet winter in the mountains, swept
shouting past them.
They turned upward along the river and raced wordlessly the greater
part of the remaining half mile to the Bar L-M corrals. When they drew
rein in the wide clearing in which stood range house, bunk house,
stables and corrals, there was no spark of light about. They unsaddled
swiftly, turned their horses loose with a resounding slap to send them
out toward the little enclosed pasture, and went up to the range house.
At the door of the men's quarters Wayne stopped.
"I think I'll drop in and say hello to the boys," he remarked, already
at the door.
"Are you crazy?" cried Garth. "They've been asleep two hours, man.
And they've got a big day's work ahead of them to-morrow."
"Oh, shut up, Garth," laughed Wayne good naturedly. "Don't you ever
think of anything but work? Come ahead, and watch me bring 'em to
life!"
He flung open the door and entered, Garth following in stony silence.
It was dark within the long, narrow room, although the starlight
gleamed feebly through the dirty window panes. Wayne found the lantern
upon the nail where it had hung when he was a boy, lighted it, and
turned the wick low so that there was only a wan light in the bunk
house.
"Where's Big Bill's bunk?" he whispered to Garth.
Chuckling softly he drew near the bunk which Garth indicated against
the wall at the far end of the room. He leaned forward, stooping low,
peering into the shadows. Big Bill was fast asleep, his great, deep
lungs expelling his breath regularly and mightily, his head with its
touseled ink black hair half hidden by the hairy arm flung up over it.
Wayne tiptoed away from the bunk, moved two chairs further back against
the other wall, and still chuckling with vastly amused anticipation,
again approached Big Bill's bedside.
He put out his hands slowly, gently, until they slipped into Big Bill's
arm pits. Then, his laughter suddenly booming out he bunched his
muscles and a black haired giant of a man in shirt and underdrawers was
jerked floundering out of his bunk to the middle of the room.
Big Bill's mighty roar of mingled astonishment and anger brought a
dozen cowboys leaping out of their bunks. In the dimly lighted room
their blinking eyes made out the forms of two men struggling, one in
his night dress, the other in hat and boots. One was Big Bill, for his
roar was an unmistakable as the roar of summer thunder. But the other?
"I've been hungering to get my hands on you for a year!" came the
laughing voice of the man in hat and boots. "You said that you could
roll me, Bill. Now go to it!"
He lifted the mighty body of the struggling, half wakened cowboy clean
off the floor, carried him across the room and slammed him down in a
chair.
"It's Red Reckless!" cried a voice from the group of stupefied men.
"He's come home!"
"You ol' son-of-a-gun!" bellowed Big Bill, half in the surly anger
which is the natural right of a man rudely awakened, half in tremulous
joy. "Wait ontil I git my eyes open good an' I'll roll you like you
was dough an' I'm makin' biscuits out'n you!"
Evidently he had his eyes "open good" before he had done talking. He
was upon his feet, the big, swaying body oddly like a clumsy black
bear's, his big hands lifted in front of him. And then he threw
himself forward, close to two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn and
bone hurled like a boulder from a catapult. Some one had turned up the
lantern wick. The black head and the red head from which the hat had
dropped came together, there was the thud of two strong bodies meeting
with an impact that brought a little coughing grunt from each, and Red
Reckless had done what any man must do before such a thunderbolt. He
was flung backward, went down, and the two big bodies struck hard upon
the bare floor. And above the crash of the falling bodies there were
two other sounds, Big Bill's grunt, and the laughter of Red Reckless.
They were down, and Big Bill was topmost. But by the laws of the game
a man must be forced back until his two shoulders touch the floor
before he is beaten. Wayne Shandon's left shoulder was still two
inches from the floor.
"You would wake a man up," grumbled Big Bill with that fierceness of
tone which spoke a moment of rare delight.
"I'm going to show you something, Bill," gasped Wayne, half choked with
the breath driven out of his lungs by the great bulk on top of him and
by the laughter within his soul which had not been driven out.
"Something I learned from a Jap about three feet high. It cost me a
hundred dollars and a broken collar bone. I'll let you off easier,
Bill."
The light was none too good, perhaps the boys were not yet wide awake.
They didn't know how the trick was done, and it wasn't at all clear to
Big Bill.
Wayne seemed to grow very limp beneath his hard hands and watchful
eyes. Ready for trickery Big Bill, while he bore down hard on the left
shoulder, and wrenched and twisted at the corded neck, expected
anything. He had considerably less respect for a Jap than for a horse,
looking upon the race as mimicking apes and not men at all, and he had
no wish to be bested by a Jap trick. Yet Big Bill didn't understand.
Somehow Wayne Shandon slipping out of Bill's grasp like an eel through
its native mud, had run an arm under his left arm pit, around his neck,
over his right shoulder. Wayne's left hand leaped to Big Bill's right
wrist. Bill felt that his neck was breaking, that his right arm was
broken. And then he knew that Wayne was upon his knees, that his own
two hundred and fifty pounds of big battling body were lifted high from
the floor, that he was jerked sideways and slammed down. And then the
boys were laughing and Wayne stood over him, laughing too, and he knew
that his two big shoulder blades had struck the floor together.
"It's a damn' Jap trick," he muttered, more than half angry now,
flinging himself to his feet. "White man's fightin' I c'n lick every
inch of you from red hair to toe nails."
But Red Reckless was laughing and shaking hands all round and Big Bill
found no one to listen to the explanations he made. One after another
the owner of the outfit greeted warmly the men who were working for
him. Then he swung about, and went back to Big Bill.
"Shake, Bill," he cried. "It was rather a mean trick to do you up
to-night but I couldn't wait until morning. I'll give you another
chance when you like."
Big Bill grinned and his hard brown hand shut tight about Wayne's.
"There'll be lots of chances," he said shortly, his voice fierce, his
black eyes very gentle. "You've come to stay, ain't you, Red?"
A look of vast disgust stole over Garth Conway's face.
"It's Bill and Red as if they're all dogs in one kennel," he muttered.
"It isn't hard to forecast what's going to happen to a range with a
boss like that!"
He waited a little restlessly for Wayne to finish the conversation into
which he had entered with the crowd of cowboys who seemed to have
forgotten that they had a day's work before them. But Wayne Shandon,
too, seemed to have forgotten. He was half sitting on the table, one
leg swinging, his quick hands rolling a cigarette from the "makings"
proffered by Tony Harris, his laughing eyes filled with the joy of home
coming, his tongue already busied with the answering of many rapid fire
questions. No, he hadn't seen all of the world; it was bigger than
they'd think. But he had played "gentleman's poker" with club dudes in
London, he had hunted with niggers and potted many strange things from
an alligator to a cow elephant, he had seen the pyramids--
While Garth lingered at the door, the other men, crowding closer to the
man at the table, grew into a charmed circle about him, a picturesque
congregation in their underclothes of grey and white and washed out
pinks and blues. Within five minutes after the defeat of Big Bill
every man of them was either making or smoking a cigarette with all
thought of their tumbled bunks forgotten. There were many demands for
first hand information concerning wild niggers and pyramids and the
ways of the jungle; there were many exclamations testifying in mild
profanity to startled wonderment. At last Garth, turning away, called
out,
"I say, Wayne, you mustn't forget it's getting late. There's a big
day's work for the boys to-morrow."
"This is my home coming celebration, Garth," Wayne laughed back at him.
"Hang the work, man. We'll have a half holiday to-morrow if the whole
outfit goes to pot."
Anything further Garth had to remark he said angrily to himself as he
strode away to the range house. And Wayne, with no further
interruption, explained how the games ran at Monte Carlo. Finally,
since there was nothing in the world he had learned to love as he loved
horses, he came to speak of the Derby.
"The greatest race in the world," he cried, slapping his thigh
enthusiastically. "Just because it's the straightest and the stakes
are right and the horses are as beautiful as women and as swift as
lightning!"
One o'clock came and they were talking horses and racing, the men now
upon common ground, their eyes bright with the tale retold of the
Kings' race. And before it was two Red Reckless was standing erect
upon his two feet, his eyes brighter than the rest, his voice leaping
out eagerly as he cried: