A Man Four-Square
BY WILLIAM MAC LEOD RAINE
AUTHOR OF THE YUKON TRAIL, BUCKY O'CONNOR, STEVE YEAGER, WYOMING, ETC.
1919
Contents
PROLOGUE
I. "CALL ME JIMMIE-GO-GET-'EM"
II. SHOOT-A-BUCK CAÑON
III. RANSE ROUSH PAYS
IV. PAULINE ROUBIDEAU SAYS "THANK YOU"
V. NO FOUR-FLUSHER
VI. BILLIE ASKS A QUESTION
VII. ON THE TRAIL
VIII. THE FIGHT
IX. BILLIE STANDS PAT
X. BUD PROCTOR LENDS A HAND
XI. THE FUGITIVES
XII. THE GOOD SAMARITAN
XIII. A FRIENDLY ENEMY
XIV. THE GUN-BARREL ROAD
XV. LEE PLAYS A LEADING RÔLE
XVI. THREE MODERN MUSKETEERS
XVII. "PEG-LEG" WARREN
XVIII. A STAMPEDE
XIX. A TWO-GUN MAN
XX. EXIT MYSTERIOUS PETE
XXI. JIM RECEIVES AND DECLINES AN OFFER
XXII. THE RUSTLERS' CAMP
XXIII. MURDER FROM THE CHAPARRAL
XXIV. JIMMIE-GO-GET-'EM LEAVES A NOTE
XXV. THE MAL-PAIS
XXVI. A DUST-STORM
XXVII. "A LUCKY GUY"
XXVIII. SHERIFF PRINCE FUNCTIONS
XXIX. "THEY CAN'T HANG ME IF I AIN'T THERE"
XXX. POLLY HAS A PLAN
XXXI. GOODHEART MAKES A PROMISE AND BREAKS IT
XXXII. JIM TAKES A PRISONER
XXXIII. THE ROUND-UP
XXXIV. PRIMROSE PATHS
A Man Four-Square
Prologue
A girl sat on the mossy river-bank in the dappled, golden sunlight.
Frowning eyes fixed on a sweeping eddy, she watched without seeing the
racing current. Her slim, supple body, crouched and tense, was
motionless, but her soul seethed tumultuously. In the bosom of her coarse
linsey gown lay hidden a note. Through it destiny called her to the
tragic hour of decision.
The foliage of the young pawpaws stirred behind her. Furtively a pair of
black eyes peered forth and searched the opposite bank of the stream, the
thicket of rhododendrons above, the blooming laurels below. Very
stealthily a handsome head pushed out through the leaves.
"'Lindy," a voice whispered.
The girl gave a start, slowly turned her head. She looked at the owner of
the voice from steady, deep-lidded eyes. The pulse in her brown throat
began to beat. One might have guessed her with entire justice a sullen
lass, untutored of life, passionate, and high-spirited, resentful of all
restraint. Hers was such beauty as lies in rich blood beneath dark
coloring, in dusky hair and eyes, in the soft, warm contours of youth.
Already she was slenderly full, an elemental daughter of Eve, primitive
as one of her fur-clad ancestors. No forest fawn could have been more
sensuous or innocent than she.
Again the man's glance swept the landscape cautiously before he moved out
from cover. In the country of the Clantons there was always an open
season on any one of his name.
"What are you doin' here, Dave Roush?" the girl demanded. "Are you
crazy?"
"I'm here because you are, 'Lindy Clanton," he answered promptly. "That's
a right good reason, ain't it?"
The pink splashed into her cheeks like spilled wine.
"You'd better go. If dad saw you--"
He laughed hardily. "There'd be one less Roush--or one less Clanton," he
finished for her.
Dave Roush was a large, well-shouldered man, impressive in spite of his
homespun. If he carried himself with a swagger there was no lack of
boldness in him to back it. His long hair was straight and black and
coarse, a derivative from the Indian strain in his blood.
"Git my note?" he asked.
She nodded sullenly.
'Lindy had met Dave Roush at a dance up on Lonesome where she had no
business to be. At the time she had been visiting a distant cousin in a
cove adjacent to that creek. Some craving for adventure, some instinct of
defiance, had taken her to the frolic where she knew the Roush clan would
be in force. From the first sight of her Dave had wooed her with a
careless bravado that piqued her pride and intrigued her interest. The
girl's imagination translated in terms of romance his insolence and
audacity. Into her starved existence he brought color and emotion.
Did she love him? 'Lindy was not sure. He moved her at times to furious
anger, and again to inarticulate longings she did not understand. For
though she was heritor of a life full-blooded and undisciplined, every
fiber of her was clean and pure. There were hours when she hated him,
glimpsed in him points of view that filled her with vague distrust. But
always he attracted her tremendously.
"You're goin' with me, gal," he urged.
Close to her hand was a little clump of forget-me-nots which had pushed
through the moss. 'Lindy feigned to be busy picking the blossoms.
"No," she answered sulkily.
"Yes. To-night--at eleven o'clock, 'Lindy,--under the big laurel."
While she resented his assurance, it none the less coerced her. She did
not want a lover who groveled in the dust before her. She wanted one to
sweep her from her feet, a young Lochinvar to compel her by the force of
his personality.
"I'll not be there," she told him.
"We'll git right across the river an' be married inside of an hour."
"I tell you I'm not goin' with you. Quit pesterin' me."
His devil-may-care laugh trod on the heels of her refusal. He guessed
shrewdly that circumstances were driving her to him. The girl was full of
resentment at her father's harsh treatment of her. Her starved heart
craved love. She was daughter of that Clanton who led the feud against
the Roush family and its adherents. Dave took his life in his hands every
time he crossed the river to meet her. Once he had swum the stream in the
night to keep an appointment. He knew that his wildness, his reckless
courage and contempt of danger, argued potently for him. She was coming
to him as reluctantly and surely as a wild turkey answers the call of the
hunter.
The sound of a shot, not distant, startled them. He crouched, wary as a
rattlesnake about to strike. The rifle seemed almost to leap forward.
"Hit's Bud--my brother Jimmie." She pushed him back toward the pawpaws.
"Quick! Burn the wind!"
"What about to-night? Will you come?"
"Hurry. I tell you hit's Bud. Are you lookin' for trouble?"
He stopped stubbornly at the edge of the thicket. "I ain't runnin' away
from it. I put a question to ye. When I git my answer mebbe I'll go. But
I don't 'low to leave till then."
"I'll meet ye there if I kin git out. Now go," she begged.
The man vanished in the pawpaws. He moved as silently as one of his
Indian ancestors.
'Lindy waited, breathless lest her brother should catch sight of him. She
knew that if Jimmie saw Roush there would be shooting and one or the
other would fall.
A rifle shot rang out scarce a hundred yards from her. The heart of the
girl stood still. After what seemed an interminable time there came to
her the sound of a care-free whistle. Presently her brother sauntered
into view, a dead squirrel in his hand. The tails of several others
bulged from the game bag by his side. The sister did not need to be told
that four out of five had been shot through the head.
"Thought I heard voices. Was some one with you, sis?" the boy asked.
"Who'd be with me here?" she countered lazily.
A second time she was finding refuge in the for-get-me-nots.
He was a barefoot little fellow, slim and hard as a nail. In his hand he
carried an old-fashioned rifle almost as long as himself. There was a
lingering look of childishness in his tanned, boyish face. His hands and
feet were small and shapely as those of a girl. About him hung the stolid
imperturbability of the Southern mountaineer. Times were when his blue
eyes melted to tenderness or mirth; yet again the cunning of the jungle
narrowed them to slits hard, as jade. Already, at the age of fourteen, he
had been shot at from ambush, had wounded a Roush at long range, had
taken part in a pitched battle. The law of the feud was tempering his
heart to implacability.
The keen gaze of the boy rested on her. Ever since word had reached the
Clantons of how 'Lindy had "carried on" with Dave Roush at the dance on
Lonesome her people had watched her suspiciously. The thing she had done
had been a violation of the hill code and old Clay Clanton had thrashed
her with a cowhide till she begged for mercy. Jimmie had come home from
the still to find her writhing in passionate revolt. The boy had been
furious at his father; yet had admitted the substantial justice of the
punishment. Its wisdom he doubted. For he knew his sister to be stubborn
as old Clay himself, and he feared lest they drive her to the arms of Bad
Dave Roush.
"I reckon you was talkin' to yo'self, mebbe," he suggested.
"I reckon."
They walked home together along a path through the rhododendrons. The
long, slender legs of the girl moved rhythmically and her arms swung like
pendulums. Life in the open had given her the litheness and the grace of
a woodland creature. The mountain woman is cheated of her youth almost
before she has learned to enjoy it. But 'Lindy was still under eighteen.
Her warm vitality still denied the coming of a day when she would be a
sallow, angular snuff-chewer.
Within sight of the log cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the
sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved
her to alien speech. She turned upon him with an imperious, fierce
tenderness in her eyes.
"You'll never forgit me, Bud? No matter what happens, you'll--you'll not
hate me?"
Her unusual emotion embarrassed and a little alarmed him. "Oh, shucks!
They ain't anything goin' to happen, sis. What's ailin' you?"
"But if anything does. You'll not hate me--you'll remember I allus
thought a heap of you, Jimmie?" she insisted.
"Doggone it, if you're still thinkin' of that scalawag Dave Roush--" He
broke off, moved by some touch of prescient tragedy in her young face.
"'Course I ain't ever a-goin' to forgit you none, sis. Hit ain't likely,
is it?"
It was a comfort to him afterward to recall that he submitted to her
impulsive caress without any visible irritability.
'Lindy busied herself preparing supper for her father and brother. Ever
since her mother died when the child was eleven she had been the family
housekeeper.
At dusk Clay Clanton came in and stood his rifle in a corner of the room.
His daughter recognized ill-humor in the grim eyes of the old man. He was
of a tall, gaunt figure, strongly built, a notable fighter with his fists
in the brawling days before he "got religion" at a camp meeting. Now his
Calvinism was of the sternest. Dancing he held to be of the devil.
Card-playing was a sin. If he still drank freely, his drinking was within
bounds. But he did not let his piety interfere with the feud. Within the
year, pillar of the church though he was, he had been carried home
riddled with bullets. Of the four men who had waylaid him two had been
buried next day and a third had kept his bed for months.
He ate for a time in dour silence before he turned harshly on 'Lindy.
"You ain't havin' no truck with Dave Roush are you? Not meetin' up with
him on the sly?" he demanded, his deep-set eyes full of menace under the
heavy, grizzled brows.
"No, I ain't," retorted the girl, and her voice was sullen and defiant.
"See you don't, lessen yo' want me to tickle yore back with the bud
again. I don't allow to put up with no foolishness." He turned in
explanation to the boy. "Brad Nickson seen him this side of the river
to-day. He says this ain't the fustest time Roush has been seen hangin'
'round the cove."
The boy's wooden face betrayed nothing. He did not look at his sister.
But suspicions began to troop through his mind. He thought again of the
voices he had heard by the river and he remembered that it had become a
habit of the girl to disappear for hours in the afternoon.
'Lindy went to her room early. She nursed against her father not only
resentment, but a strong feeling of injustice. He would not let her
attend the frolics of the neighborhood because of his scruples against
dancing. Yet she had heard him tell how he used to dance till daybreak
when he was a young man. What right had he to cut her off from the things
that made life tolerable?
She was the heritor of lawless, self-willed, passionate ancestors. Their
turbulent blood beat in her veins. All the safeguards that should have
hedged her were gone. A wise mother, an understanding father, could have
saved her from the tragedy waiting to engulf her. But she had neither of
these. Instead, her father's inhibitions pushed her toward that doom to
which she was moving blindfold.
Before her cracked mirror the girl dressed herself bravely in her cheap
best. She had no joy in the thing she was going to do. Of her love she
was not sure and of her lover very unsure. A bell of warning rang faintly
in her heart as she waited for the hours to slip away.
A very little would have turned the tide. But she nursed her anger
against her father, fed her resentment with the memory of all his wrongs
to her. When at last she crept through the window to the dark porch
trellised with wild cucumbers, she persuaded herself that she was going
only to tell Dave Roush that she would not join him.
Her heart beat fast with excitement and dread. Poor, undisciplined
daughter of the hills though she was, a rumor of the future whispered in
her ears and weighted her bosom.
Quietly she stole past the sassafras brake to the big laurel. Her lover
took her instantly into his arms and kissed the soft mouth again and
again. She tried to put him from her, to protest that she was not going
with him. But before his ardor her resolution melted. As always, when he
was with her, his influence was paramount.
"The boat is under that clump of bushes," he whispered.
"Oh, Dave, I'm not goin'," she murmured.
"Then I'll go straight to the house an' have it out with the old man," he
answered.
His voice rang gay with the triumph of victory. He did not intend to let
her hesitations rob him of it.
"Some other night," she promised. "Not now--I don't want to go now.
I--I'm not ready."
"There's no time like to-night, honey. My brother came with me in the
boat. We've got horses waitin'--an' the preacher came ten miles to do the
job."
Then, with the wisdom born of many flirtations, he dropped argument and
wooed her ardently. The anchors that held the girl to safety dragged. The
tug of sex, her desire of love and ignorance of life, his eager and
passionate demand that she trust him: all these swelled the tide that
beat against her prudence.
She caught his coat lapels tightly in her clenched fists.
"If I go I'll be givin' up everything in the world for you, Dave
Roush. My folks'll hate me. They'd never speak to me again. You'll
be good to me. You won't cast it up to me that I ran away with you.
You'll--you'll--" Her voice broke and she gulped down a little sob.
He laughed. She could not see his face in the darkness, but the sound of
his laughter was not reassuring. He should have met her appeal seriously.
The girl drew back.
He sensed at once his mistake. "Good to you!" he cried. "'Lindy, I'm
a-goin' to be the best ever."
"I ain't got any mother, Dave." Again she choked in her throat. "You
wouldn't take advantage of me, would you?"
He protested hotly. Desiring only to be convinced, 'Lindy took one last
precaution.
"Swear you'll do right by me always."
He swore it.
She put her hand in his and he led her to the boat.
Ranse Roush was at the oars. Before he had taken a dozen strokes a wave
of terror swept over her. She was leaving behind forever that quiet,
sunny cove where she had been brought up. The girl began to shiver
against the arm of her lover. She heard again the sound of his low,
triumphant laughter.
It was too late to turn back now. No hysterical request to be put back on
her side of the river would move these men. Instinctively she knew that.
From to-night she was to be a Roush.
They found horses tied to saplings in a small cove close to the river.
The party mounted and rode into the hills. Except for the ring of the
horses' hoofs there was no sound for miles. 'Lindy was the first to
speak.
"Ain't this Quicksand Creek?" she asked of her lover as they forded a
stream.
He nodded. "The sands are right below us--not more'n seven or eight steps
down here Cal Henson was sucked under."
After another stretch ridden in silence they turned up a little cove to a
light shining in a cabin window. The brothers alighted and Dave helped
the girl down. He pushed open the door and led the way inside.
A man sat by the fireside with his feet on the table. He was reading a
newspaper. A jug of whiskey and a glass were within reach of his hand.
Without troubling to remove his boots from the table, he looked up with a
leer at the trembling girl.
Dave spoke at once. "We'll git it over with. The sooner the quicker."
'Lindy's heart was drenched with dread. She shrank from the three pairs
of eyes focused upon her as if they had belonged to wolves. She had hoped
that the preacher might prove a benevolent old man, but this man with the
heavy thatch of unkempt, red hair and furtive eyes set askew offered no
comfort. If there had been a single friend of her family present, if
there had been any woman at all! If she could even be sure of the man she
was about to marry!
It seemed to her that the preacher was sneering when he put the questions
to which she answered quaveringly. Vaguely she felt the presence of some
cruel, sinister jest of which she was the sport.
After the ceremony had been finished the three men drank together while
she sat white-faced before the fire. When at last Ranse Roush and the
red-headed preacher left the cabin, both of them were under the influence
of liquor. Dave had drunk freely himself.
'Lindy would have given her hopes of heaven to be back safely in the
little mud-daubed bedroom she had called her own.
Three days later 'Lindy wakened to find a broad ribbon of sunshine across
the floor of the cabin. Her husband had not come home at all the night
before. She shivered with self-pity and dressed slowly. Already she knew
that her life had gone to wreck, that it would be impossible to live with
Dave Roush and hold her self-respect.
But she had cut herself off from retreat. All of her friends belonged to
the Clanton faction and they would not want to have anything to do with
her. She had no home now but this, no refuge against the neglect and
insults of this man with whom she had elected to go through life. To her
mind came the verdict of old Nance Cunningham on the imprudent marriage
of another girl: "Randy's done made her bed; I reckon she's got to lie
on it."
A voice hailed the cabin from outside. She went to the door. Ranse Roush
and the red-haired preacher had ridden into the clearing and were
dismounting. They had with them a led horse.
"Fix up some breakfast," ordered Ranse.
The young wife flushed. She resented his tone and his manner. Like Dave,
he too assumed that she had come to be a drudge for the whole drunken
clan, a creature to be sneered at and despised.
Silently she cooked a meal for the men. The girl was past tears. She had
wept herself out.
While they ate the men told of her father's fury when he had discovered
the elopement, of how he had gone down to the mill and cast her off with
a father's curse, renouncing all relationship with her forever. It was a
jest that held for them a great savor. They made sport of him and of the
other Clantons till she could keep still no longer.
"I won't stand this! I don't have to! Where's Dave?" she demanded, eyes
flashing with contempt and anger.
Ranse grinned, then turned to his companion with simulated perplexity.
"Where is Dave, Brother Hugh?"
"Damfino," replied the red-headed man, and the girl could see that he was
gloating over her. "Last night he was at a dance on God Forgotten Crick.
Dave's soft on a widow up there, you know."
The color ebbed from the face of the wife. One of her hands clutched at
the back of a chair till the knuckles stood out white and bloodless. Her
eyes fastened with a growing horror upon those of the red-headed man. She
had come to the edge of an awful discovery.
"You're no preacher. Who are you?"
"Me?" His smile was cruel as death. "You done guessed it, sister. I'm
Hugh Roush--Dave's brother."
"An'--an'--my marriage was all a lie?"
"Did ye think Dave Roush would marry a Clanton? He's a bad lot, Dave is,
but he ain't come that low yet."
For the first and last time in her life 'Lindy fainted.
Presently she floated back to consciousness and the despair of a soul
mortally stricken. She saw it all now. The lies of Dave Roush had enticed
her into a trap. He had been working for revenge against the family he
hated, especially against brave old Clay Clanton who had killed two of
his kin within the year. With the craft inherited from savage ancestors
he had sent a wound more deadly than any rifle bullet could carry. The
Clantons were proud folks, and he had dragged their pride in the mud.
If the two brothers expected her to make a scene, they were disappointed.
Numb with the shock of the blow, she made no outcry and no reproach.
"Git a move on ye, gal," ordered Ranse after he had finished eating.
"You're goin' with us, so you better hurry."
"What are you goin' to do with me?" she asked dully.
"Why, Dave don't want you any more. We're goin' to send you home."
"I reckon yore folks will kill the fatted calf for you," jeered Hugh
Roush. "They tell me you always been mighty high-heeled, 'Lindy Clanton.
Mebbe you won't hold yore head so high now."
The girl rode between them down from the hills. Who knows into what an
agony of fear and remorse and black despair she fell? She could not go
home a cast-off, a soiled creature to be scorned and pointed at. She
dared not meet her father. It would be impossible to look her little
brother Jimmie in the face. Would they believe the story she told? And if
they were convinced of its truth, what difference would that make? She
was what she was, no matter how she had become so.
On the pike they met old Nance Cunningham returning from the mill with a
sack of meal. The story of that meeting was one the old gossip told after
the tragedy to many an eager circle of listeners,
"She jes' lifted her han' an' stopped me, an' if death was ever writ on a
human face it shorely wuz stomped on hers. 'I want you to tell my father
I'm sorry,' she sez. 'He swore he'd marry me inside of an hour. This man
hyer--his brother--made out like he wuz a preacher an' married us. Tell
my father that an' ask him to forgive me if he can.' That wuz all she
said. Ranse Roush hit her horse with a switch an' sez, 'Yo' kin tell him
all that yore own self soon as you git home.' I reckon I wuz the lastest
person she spoke to alive."
They left the old woman staring after them with her mouth open. It could
have been only a few minutes later that they reached Quicksand Creek.
'Lindy pulled up her horse to let the men precede her through the ford.
They splashed into the shallows on the other side of the creek and waited
for her to join them. Instead, she slipped from the saddle, ran down the
bank, and plunged into the quicksand.
"Goddlemighty!" shrieked Ranse. "She's a-drowndin' herself in the sands."
They spurred their horses back across the creek and ran to rescue the
girl. But she had flung herself forward face down far out of their reach.
They dared not venture into the quivering bog after her. While they still
stared in a frozen horror, the tragedy was completed. The victim of their
revenge had disappeared beneath the surface of the morass.
Chapter I
"Call Me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em"
The boy had spent the night at a water-hole in a little draw near the
foot of the mesa. He had supped on cold rations and slept in his blanket
without the comfort of glowing piñon knots. For yesterday he had cut
Indian signs and after dark had seen the shadow of Apache camp-fires
reflected in the clouds.
After eating he swung to the bare back of his pony and climbed to the
summit of the butte. His trained eyes searched the plains. A big bunch of
antelope was trailing down to water almost within rifle-shot. But he was
not looking for game.
He sniffed the smoke from the pits where the renegades were roasting
mescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles.
His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud of
dust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos
Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders were
likely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boy
waited to make sure of their line of travel.
Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spends
much time alone in the saddle. "Looks like they'll throw off to-night
close to the 'Pache camp. If they do hell's a-goin' to pop just before
sunup to-morrow. I reckon I'll ride over and warn the outfit."
From a trapper the boy had learned that a band of Mescalero Apaches had
left the reservation three weeks before, crossed into Mexico, gone
plundering down the Pecos, and was now heading back toward the Staked
Plains. Evidently the drover did not know this, since he was moving his
cattle directly toward the Indian camp.
The young fellow let his cowpony pick its way down the steep shale hill
to the draw. He saddled without a waste motion, packed his supplies
deftly, mounted, and was off. In the way he cut across the desert toward
the moving herd was the certainty of the frontiersman. He did not hurry,
but he wasted no time. His horse circled in and out among the sand dunes,
now topped a hill, now followed a wash. Every foot of the devious trail
was the most economical possible.
At the end of nearly an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle
reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he
saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been
pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its
significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this
boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knew
that within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero bucks had
returned to camp this way from an antelope hunt and that they carried
with them half a dozen pronghorns. It was a safe guess that they were
part of the large camp the smoke of which he had seen.
Long before the young man struck the drive, he knew he was close by the
cloud of dust and the bawling of the cattle. His course across country
had been so accurate that he hit the herd at the point without
deflecting.
An old Texan drew up, changed his weight on the saddle to rest himself,
and hailed the youngster.
"Goin' somewheres, kid, or just ridin'?" he asked genially.
"Just takin' my hawss out for a jaunt so's he won't get hog-fat," grinned
the boy.
The Texan chewed tobacco placidly and eyed the cowpony. The horse had
been ridden so far that he was a bag of bones.
"Looks some gaunted," he commented.
"Four Bits is so thin he won't throw a shadow," admitted the boy.
"Come a right smart distance, I reckon?"
"You done said it."
"Where you headin' for?"
"For Deaf Smith County. I got an uncle there. Saw your dust an' dropped
over to tell you that a big bunch of 'Paches are camped just ahead of
you."
The older man looked at him keenly. "How do you know, son?"
"Smelt their smoke an' cut their trail."
"Know Injuns, do you?"
"I trailed with Al Sieber 'most two years."
To have served with Sieber for any length of time was a certificate of
efficiency. He was the ablest scout in the United States Army. Through
his skill and energy Geronimo and his war braves were later forced to
give themselves up to the troops.
"'Nuff said. Are these 'Paches liable to make us any trouble?"
"Yes, sir. I think they are. They're a bunch of broncos from the
reservation an' they have been across the line stealin' horses an'
murderin' settlers. They will sure try to stampede your cattle an' run
off a lot of 'em."
"Hmp! You better go back an' see old man Webb about it. What's yore name,
kid?"
For just an eye-beat the boy hesitated. "Call me Jim Thursday."
A glimmer of a smile rested in the eyes of the Texan. He was willing to
bet that this young fellow would not have given him that name if to-day
had not happened to be the fifth day of the week. But it was all one to
the cowpuncher. To question a man too closely about his former residence
and manner of life was not good form on the frontier.
"I'll call you Jim from Sunday to Saturday," he said, pulling a tobacco
pouch from his hip pocket. "My name is Wrayburn--Dad Wrayburn, the boys
call me."
The Texan shouted to the man riding second on the swing. "Oh, you, Billie
Prince!"
A tanned, good-looking young fellow cantered up.
"Meet Jimmie Thursday, Billie," the old-timer said by way of
introduction. "This boy says there's heap many Injuns on the war-path
right ahead of us. I reckon I'll let you take the point while I ride
back with him an' put it up to the old man."
The "old man" turned out to be a short, heavy-set Missourian who had
served in the Union Army and won a commission by intelligence and
courage. Wherever the name of Homer Webb was known it stood for integrity
and square-dealing. His word was as good as a signed bond.
Webb had come out of the war without a cent, but with a very definite
purpose. During the last year of the Confederacy, while it was tottering
to its fall, he had served in Texas. The cattle on the range had for
years been running wild, the owners and herdsmen being absent with the
Southern army. They had multiplied prodigiously, so that many thousands
of mavericks roamed without brand, the property of any one who would
round them up and put an iron on their flanks. The money value of them
was very little. A standard price for a yearling was a plug of tobacco.
But Webb looked to the future. He hired two riders, gathered together a
small remuda of culls, and went into the cattle business with energy.
To-day the Flying V Y was stamped on forty thousand longhorns.
The foreman of the Flying V Y was riding with the owner of the brand at
the drag end of the herd. He was a hard-faced citizen known as Joe
Yankie. When Wrayburn had finished his story, the foreman showed a row of
tobacco-stained teeth in an unpleasant grin.
"Same old stuff, Dad. There always is a bunch of bucks off the
reservation an' they're always just goin' to run our cattle away. If you
ask me there's nothin' to it."
Young Thursday flushed. "If you'll ride out with me I'll show you their
trail."
Yankie looked at him with a sneer. He guessed this boy to be about
eighteen. There was a suggestion of effeminacy about the lad's small,
well-shaped hands and feet. He was a slender, smooth-faced youth with
mild blue eyes. It occurred to Webb, too, that the stranger might have
imagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe grace
of the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge men
and he was not convinced that this young fellow was as inoffensive as he
looked.
"Where you from?" asked the drover.
"From the San Carlos Agency."
"Ever meet a man named Micky Free out there?"
"I've slept under the same tarp with him many's the time when we were
followin' Chiricahua 'Paches. He's the biggest dare-devil that ever
forked a horse."
"Describe him."
"Micky's face is a map of Ireland. He's got only one eye; a buck punched
the other out when he was a kid. His hair is red an' he wears it long."
"Any beard?"
"A bristly little red mustache."
"That's Micky to a T." Webb made up his mind swiftly. "The boy's all
right, Yankie. He'll do to take along."
"It's your outfit. Suits me if he does you." The foreman turned
insolently to the newcomer. "What'd you say your name was, sissie?"
The eyes of the boy, behind narrowed lids, grew hard as steel.
"Call me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em," he drawled in a soft voice, every syllable
distinct.
There was a moment of chill silence. A swift surprise had flared into the
eyes of the foreman. The last thing in the world he had expected was to
have his bad temper resented so promptly by this smooth-faced little
chap. Since Yankie was the camp bully he bristled up to protect his
reputation.
"Better not get on the prod with me, young fellow me lad. I'm liable to
muss up your hair. Me, I'm from the Strip, where folks grow man-size."
The youngster smiled, but there was no mirth in that thin-lipped smile.
He knew, as all men did, that the Cherokee Strip was the home of
desperadoes and man-killers. The refuse of the country, driven out by the
law of more settled communities, found here a refuge from punishment. But
if the announcement of the foreman impressed him, he gave no sign of it.
"Why didn't you stay there?" he asked with bland innocence.
Yankie grew apoplectic. He did not care to discuss the reasons why he
had first gone to the Strip or the reasons why he had come away. This
girl-faced boy was the only person who had asked for a bill of
particulars. Moreover, the foreman did not know whether the question had
been put in child-like ignorance of any possible offense or with an
impudent purpose to enrage him.
"Don't run on the rope when I'm holdin' it, kid," he advised roughly.
"You're liable to get thrown hard."
"And then again I'm liable not to," lisped the youth from Arizona gently.
The bully looked the slim newcomer over again, and as he looked there
rang inside him some tocsin of warning. Thursday sat crouched in the
saddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike. A sawed-off shotgun lay
under his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was even
closer to those smooth, girlish fingers. In the immobility of his figure
and the steadiness of the blue eyes was a deadly menace.
Yankie was no coward. He would go through if he had to. But there was
still time to draw back if he chose. He was not exactly afraid; on the
other hand, he did not feel at all easy.
He contrived a casual, careless laugh. "All right, kid. I don't have to
rob the cradle to fill my private graveyard. Go get your Injuns. It will
be all right with me."
Webb drew a breath of relief. There was to be no gunplay after all. He
had had his own reasons for not interfering sooner, but he knew that the
situation had just grazed red tragedy.
"I'm goin' to take the boy's advice," he announced to Yankie. "Ride
forward an' swing the herd toward that big red butte. We'll give our
Mescalero friends a wide berth if we can."
The foreman hung in the saddle a moment before he turned to go. He had to
save his face from a public back-down, "Bet you a week's pay there's
nothin' to it, Webb."
"Hope you're right, Joe," his employer answered.
As soon as Yankie had cantered away, Dad Wrayburn, ex-Confederate
trooper, slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a modulated rebel
yell.
"Dad burn my hide, Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em, you're all right. Fustest time I
ever saw Joe take water, but he shorely did splash some this here
occasion. I wouldn't 'a' missed it for a bunch of hog-fat yearlin's."
Webb had not been sorry to see his arrogant foreman brought up with a
sharp turn, but in the interest of discipline he did not care to say so.
"Why can't you boys get along peaceable with Joe, I'd like to know? This
snortin' an' pawin' up the ground don't get you anything."
"I reckon Joe does most of the snortin' that's done," Wrayburn answered
dryly. "I ain't had any trouble with him, because he spends a heap of
time lettin' me alone. But there's no manner of doubt that Joe rides the
boys too hard."
The drover dismissed the subject and turned to Thursday.
"Want a job?"
"Mebbe so."
"I need another man. Since you sabe the ways of the 'Paches I can use you
to scout ahead for us."
"What you payin'?"
"Fifty a month."
"You've hired a hand."
"Good enough. Better pick one of the boys to ride with you while you are
out scoutin'."
"I'll take Billie Prince," decided the new rider at once.
"You know Billie?"
"Never saw him before to-day. But I like his looks. He's a man to tie
to."
"You're right he is."
The drover looked at his new employee with a question in his shrewd eyes.
The boy was either a man out of a thousand or he was a first-class
bluffer. He claimed to have cut Indian sign and to know exactly what was
written there. At a single glance he had sized up Prince and knew him
for a reliable side partner. Without any bluster he had served notice on
Yankie that it would be dangerous to pick on him as the butt of his
ill-temper.
In those days, on the Pecos, law lay in a holster on a man's thigh. The
individual was a force only so far as his personality impressed itself
upon his fellows. If he made claims he must be prepared to back them to a
fighting finish.
Was this young Thursday a false alarm? Or was he a good man to let alone
when one was looking for trouble? Webb could not be sure yet, though he
made a shrewd guess. But he knew it would not he long before he found
out.