Cow Country
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B. M. Bower >> Cow Country
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She stopped then and asked for a match, and when Bud gave her
one she lighted a candle and held it up so that she could
examine the walls. "It's a natural tunnel," she volunteered
in a different tone. "Somewhere along here there is a branch
that goes back into the hill and ends in a blow-hole. But
we're all right so far."
She blew out the candle and urged Boise forward, edging over
to the right.
"Wasn't that taking quite a chance, making a light?" Bud
asked as they went on.
"It was, but not so great a chance as missing the way. Jerry
didn't hear anything of them when he went to the pasture
gate, and they may not come through this way at all. They may
not realize at first that you have left, and even when they
did they would not believe at first that you had gone to
Crater. You see "--and in the darkness Bud could picture her
troubled smile--" they think you are an awful fool, in some
ways. The way you bet to-day was pure madness."
"It would have been, except that I knew I could win."
"They never bet like that. They always 'figure', as they call
it, that the other fellow is going to play some trick on
them. Half the time Jeff bets against his own horse, on the
sly. They all do, unless they feel sure that their own trick
is best."
"They should have done that to-day," Bud observed dryly. "But
you've explained it. They thought I'm an awful fool."
Out of the darkness came Marian's voice. "It's because you're
so different. They can't understand you.
Bud was not interested in his own foolishness just then.
Something in her voice had thrilled him anew with a desire to
help her and with the conviction that he was desperately in
need of help. There was a pathetic patience in her tone when
she summarized he whole affair in those last two sentences.
It was as if she were telling him how her whole life was
darkened because she herself was different--because they
could not understand a woman so fine, so true and sweet.
"What will happen if you are missed? If you go back and
discover Jerry's handkerchief on that bush, what will you do?
You can't go back if they find out--" There was no need for
him to finish that sentence.
"I don't know," said Marian, "what I shall do. I hadn't
thought much about it."
"I haven't thought much about anything else," Bud told her
straightforwardly. "If Jerry flags you, you 'd better
keep going. Couldn't you go to friends?"
"I could--if I had any. Bud, you don't understand. Eddie is
the only relative I have on earth, that I know at all. He
is--he's with the Catrockers and Lew dominates him
completely. Lew has pushed Ed into doing things so that I
must shield both or neither. And Eddie's just a boy. So I've
no one at all."
Bud studied this while they rode on through the defile that
was more frequently a tunnel, since the succession of caves
always had an outlet which Marian found. She had stopped now
and dismounted, and they were leading their horses down a
steep, scrambling place with the stars showing overhead.
"A blowhole," Marian informed him briefly. "We'll come into
another cave, soon, and while it's safe if you know it, I'll
explain now that you must walk ahead of your horse and keep
your right hand always in touch with the wall until we see
the stars again. There's a ledge-five feet wide in the
narrowest place, if you are nervous about ledges--and if you
should get off that you'd have a drop of ten feet or so. We
found that the ledge makes easier travelling, because the
bottom is full of rocks and nasty depressions that are
noticeable only with lights."
She started off again, and Bud followed her, his gloved
fingers touching the right wall, his soul humbled before the
greatness of this little woman with the deep, troubled eyes.
When they came out into the starlight she stopped and
listened for what seemed to Bud a very long time.
"If they are coming, they are a long way behind us," she said
relievedly, and remounted. "Boise knows his trail and has
made good time. And your horse has proven beyond all doubt
that he's a thoroughbred. I've seen horses balk at going
where we have gone."
"And I've seen men who counted themselves brave as any, who
wouldn't do what you are doing to-night; Jerry, for instance.
I wish you'd go back. I can't bear having you take this
risk."
"I can't go back, Bud. Not if they find I've gone." Then he
heard her laugh quietly. "I can't imagine now why I stayed
and endured it all this while. I think I only needed the
psychological moment for rebellion, and to-night the moment
came. So you see you have really done me a service by getting
into this scrape. It's the first time I have been off the
ranch in a year."
"If you call that doing you a service, I'm going to ask you
to let me do something also for you." Bud half smiled to
himself in the darkness, thinking how diplomatic he was. "If
you're found out, you'll have to keep on going, and I take it
you wouldn't be particular where you went. So I wish you 'd
take charge of part of this money for me, and if you leave,
go down to my mother, on the Tomahawk ranch, out from
Laramie. Anyone can tell you where it is, when you get down
that way If you need any money use it. And tell mother I sent
her the finest cook in the country. Mother, by the way, is a
great musician, Marian. She taught me all I know of music.
You'd get along just fine with mother. And she needs you,
honest. She isn't very strong, yet she can't find anyone to
suit, down there--"
"I might not suit, either," said Marian, her voice somewhat
muffled.
"Oh, I'm not afraid of that. And--there's a message I want to
send--I promised mother I'd--"
"Oh, hush! You're really an awfully poor prevaricator, Bud.
This is to help me, you're planning."
"Well--it's to help me that I want you to take part of the
money. The gang won't hold you up, will they? And I want
mother to have it. I want her to have you, too,--to help out
when company comes drifting in there, sometimes fifteen or
twenty strong. Especially on Sunday. Mother has to wait on
them and cook for them, and--as long as you are going to cook
for a bunch, you may as well do it where it will be
appreciated, and where you'll be treated like a--like a lady
ought to be treated."
"You're even worse--" began Marian, laughing softly, and
stopped abruptly, listening, her head turned behind them."
Sh-sh-someone is coming behind us," she whispered. "We're
almost through--come on, and don't talk!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:GUARDIAN ANGELS ARE RIDING POINT
They plunged into darkness again, rode at a half trot over
smooth, hard sand, Bud trusting himself wholly to Marian and
to the sagacity of the two horses who could see, he hoped,
much better than he himself could. His keen hearing had
caught a faint sound from behind them--far back in the
crevice-like gorge they had just quitted, he believed. For
Marian's sake he stared anxiously ahead, eager for the first
faint suggestion of starlight before them. It came, and he
breathed freer and felt of his gun in its holster, pulling it
forward an inch or two.
"This way, Bud," Marian murmured, and swung Boise to the
left, against the mountain under and through which they
seemed to have passed. She led him into another small gorge
whose extent he could not see, and stopped him with a hand
pressed against Sunfish's shoulder.
"We'd better get down and hold our horses quiet," she
cautioned. "Boise may try to whinny, and he mustn't."
They stood side by side at their horses' heads, holding the
animals close. For a time there were no sounds at all save
the breathing of the horses and once a repressed sigh from
Marian. Bud remembered suddenly how tired she must be. At six
o'clock that morning she had fed twelve men a substantial
breakfast. At noon there had been dinner for several more
than twelve, and supper again at six--and here she was,
risking her life when she should be in bed. He felt for her
free hand, found it hanging listlessly by her side and took
it in his own and held it there, just as one holds the hand
of a timid child. Yet Marian was not timid.
A subdued mutter of voices, the click of hoofs striking
against stone, and the pursuers passed within thirty feet of
them. Boise had lifted his head to nicker a salute, but
Marian's jerk on the reins stopped him. They stood very
still, not daring so much as a whisper until the sounds had
receded and silence came again.
"They took the side-hill trail," whispered Marian, pushing
Boise backward to turn him in the narrow defile. "You'll have
to get down the hill into the creek-bed and follow that until
you come to the stage road. There may be others coming that
way, but they will be two or three miles behind you. This
tunnel trail cuts off at least five miles but we had to go
slower, you see.
"Right here you can lead Sunfish down the bluff to the creek.
It's all dry, and around the first bend you will see where
the road crosses. Turn to the left on that and ride! This
horse of yours will have to show the stuff that's in him. Get
to Crater ahead of these men that took the hill trail.
They'll not ride fast--they never dreamed you had come
through here, but they came to cut off the distance and to
head you off. With others behind, you must beat them all in
or you'll be trapped between."
She had left Boise tied hastily to a bush and was walking
ahead of Bud down the steep, rocky hillside to show him the
easiest way amongst the boulders Halfway down, Bud caught her
shoulder and stopped her.
"I'm not a kid," he said firmly. "I can make it from here
alone. Not another step, young lady. If you can get back home
You'll be doing enough. Take this--it's money, but I don't
know how much. And watch your chance and go down to mother
with that message. Birnie, of the Tomahawk outfit--you'll
find out in Laramie where to go. And tell mother I'm all
right, and she'll see me some day--when I've made my stake.
God bless you, little woman. You're the truest, sweetest
little woman in the world. There's just one more like you--
that's mother. Now go back--and for God's sake he careful!"
He pressed money into her two hands, held them tightly
together, kissed them both hurriedly and plunged down the
hill with Sunfish slipping and sliding after him. For her
safety, if not for his own, he meant to get away from there
as quickly as possible.
In the creek bed he mounted and rode away at a sharp gallop,
glad that Sunfish, thoroughbred though he was, had not been
raised tenderly in stall and corral, but had run free with
the range horses and had learned to keep his feet under him
in rough country or smooth. When he reached the crossing of
the stage road he turned to the left as Marian had commanded
and put Sunfish to a pace that slid the miles behind him.
With his thoughts clinging to Marian, to the harshness which
life had shown her who was all goodness and sweetness and
courage, Bud forgot to keep careful watch behind him, or to
look for the place where the hill trail joined the road, as
it probably did some distance from Crater. It would be a
blind trail, of course--since only the Catrock gang and
Marian knew of it.
They came into the road not far behind him, out of rock-
strewn, brushy wilderness that sloped up steeply to the
rugged sides of Gold Gap mountains. Sunfish discovered them
first, and gave Bud warning just before they identified him
and began to shoot.
Bud laid himself along the shoulder of his horse with a
handful of mane to steady him while he watched his chance and
fired back at them. There were four, just the number he had
guessed from the sounds as they came out of the tunnel. A
horse ran staggering toward him with the others, faltered and
fell. Bud was sorry for that. It had been no part of his plan
to shoot down the horses.
The three came on, leaving the fourth to his own devices--and
that, too, was quite in keeping with the type of human
vultures they were. They kept firing at Bud, and once he felt
Sunfish wince and leap forward as if a spur had raked him.
Bud shot again, and thought he saw one horseman lurch
backward. But he could not be sure--they were going at a
terrific pace now, and Sunfish was leaving them farther and
farther behind. They were outclassed, hopelessly out of
pistol range, and they must have known it, for although they
held to the chase they fired no more shots.
Then a dog barked, and Bud knew that he was passing a ranch.
He could smell the fresh hay in the stacks, and a moment
later he descried the black hulk of ranch buildings. Sunfish
was running easily, his breath unlabored. Bud stood in the
stirrups and looked back. They were still coming, for he
could hear the pound of hoofs.
The ranch was behind him. Clear starlight was all around, and
the bulk of near mountains. The road seemed sandy, yielding
beneath the pound of Sunfish's hoofs. Bud leaned forward
again in the saddle, and planned what he would do when he
reached Crater; found time, also, to hope that Marian had
gone back, and had not heard the shooting.
Another dog barked, this time on the right. Bud saw that they
were passing a picket fence. The barking of this dog started
another farther ahead and to the left. Houses so close
together could only mean that he was approaching Crater. Bud
began to pull Sunfish down to a more conventional pace. He
did not particularly want to see heads thrust from windows,
and questions shouted to him. The Catrock gang might have
friends up this way. It would be strange, Bud thought, if
they hadn't.
He loped along the road grown broader now and smoother. Many
houses he passed, and the mouths of obscure lanes. Dogs ran
out at him. Bud slowed to a walk and turned in the saddle,
listening. Away back, where he had first met the signs of
civilization, the dog he had aroused was barking again, his
deep baying blurred by the distance. Bud grinned to himself
and rode on at a walk, speaking now and then to an inquiring
dog and calling him Purp in a tone that soothed.
Crater, he discovered in a cursory patrol of the place, was
no more than an overgrown village. The court-house and jail
stood on the main street, and just beyond was the bank. Bud
rode here and there, examining closely the fronts of various
buildings before he concluded that there was only the one
bank in Crater. When he was quite sure of that he chose place
near by the rear of the bank, where one horse and a cow
occupied a comfortable corral together with hay. He unsaddled
Sunfish and turned him there, himself returning to the bank
before those other night-riders had more than reached the
first straggling suburbs of the town.
On the porch of the court-house, behind a jutting corner
pillar that seemed especially designed for the concealment of
a man in Bud's situation, he rolled cigarette which he meant
to smoke later on when the way was clear, and waited for the
horsemen to appear.
Presently they came, rode to a point opposite the court-house
and bank with no more than a careless glance that way, and
halted in front of an uninviting hotel across the street. Two
remained on their horses while the third pounded on the door
and shook it by the knob and finally raised the landlord from
his sleep. There was a conference which Bud witnessed with
much interest. A lamp had been lighted in the bare office,
and against the yellow glow Bud distinctly saw the landlord
nod his head twice--which plainly betokened some sort of
understanding.
He was glad that he had not stopped at the hotel. He felt
much more comfortable on the court-house porch. "Mother's
guardian angels must be riding 'point' to-night," he mused.
The horsemen rode back to a livery stable which Bud had
observed but had not entered. There they also sought for news
of him, it would appear. You will recall, however, that Bud
had ridden slowly into the business district of Crater, and
his passing had been unmarked except by the barking of dogs
that spent their nights in yammering at every sound and so
were never taken seriously. The three horsemen were plainly
nonplussed and conferred together in low tones before they
rode on. It was evident that they meant to find Bud if they
could. What they meant to do with him Bud did not attempt to
conjecture. He did not intend to be found.
After a while the horsemen rode back to the hotel, got the
landlord out with less difficulty than before and had another
talk with him.
"He stole a horse from Dave Truman," Bud heard one of the
three say distinctly. "That there running horse Dave had."
The landlord tucked in his shirt and exclaimed at the news,
and Bud heard him mention the sheriff. But nothing came of
that evidently. They talked further and reined their horses
to ride back whence they came.
"He likely's give us the slip outside of town, some place,"
one man concluded. "We'll ride back and see. If he shows up,
he'll likely want to eat. . . And send Dick out to the
Stivers place. We'll come a-running." He had lowered his
voice so that Bud could not hear what was to happen before
the landlord sent Dick, but he decided he would not pry into
the matter and try to fill that gap in the conversation.
He sat where he was until the three had ridden back down the
sandy road which served as a street. Then he slipped behind
the court-house and smoked his cigarette, and went and
borrowed hay from the cow and the horse in the corral and
made himself some sort of bed with his saddle blanket to help
out, and slept until morning.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:THE CATROCK GANG
A woman with a checkered apron and a motherly look came to
let her chickens out and milk the cow, and woke Bud so that
she could tell him she believed he had been on a "toot", or
he never would have taken such a liberty with her corral. Bud
agreed to the toot, and apologized, and asked for breakfast.
And the woman, after one good look at him, handed him the
milk bucket and asked him how he liked his eggs.
"All the way from barn to breakfast," Bud grinned, and the
woman chuckled and called him Smarty, and told him to come in
as soon as the cow was milked.
Bud had a great breakfast with the widow Hanson. She talked,
and Bud learned a good deal about Crater and its
surroundings, and when he spoke of holdup gangs she seemed to
know immediately what he meant, and told him a great deal
more about the Catrockers than Marian had done. Everything
from murdering and robbing a peddler to looting the banks at
Crater and Lava was laid to the Catrockers. They were the
human buzzards that watched over the country and swooped down
wherever there was money. The sheriff couldn't do anything
with them, and no one expected him to, so far as Bud could
discover.
He hesitated a long time before he asked about Marian Morris.
Mrs. Hanson wept while she related Marian's history, which in
substance was exactly what Marian herself had told Bud. Mrs.
Hanson, however, told how Marian had fought to save her
father and Ed, and how she had married Lew Morris as a part
of her campaign for honesty and goodness. Now she was down at
Little Lost cooking for a gang of men, said Mrs. Hanson, when
she ought to be out in the world singing for thousands and
her in silks and diamonds instead of gingham dresses and not
enough of them.
"Marian Collier is the sweetest thing that ever grew up in
this country," the old lady sniffled. "She's one in a
thousand and when she was off to school she showed that she
wasn't no common trash. She wanted to be an opery singer, but
then her mother died and Marian done what looked to be her
duty. A bird in a trap is what I call her."
Bud regretted having opened the subject, and praised the
cooking by way of turning his hostess's thoughts into a
different channel. He asked her if she would accept him as a
boarder while he was in town, and was promptly accepted.
He did not want to appear in public until the bank was
opened, and he was a bit troubled over identification. There
could be no harm, he reflected, in confiding to Mrs. Hanson
as much as was necessary of his adventures. Wherefore he
dried the dishes for her and told her his errand in town, and
why it was that he and his horse had slept in her corral
instead of patronizing hotel and livery stable. He showed her
the checks he wanted to cash, and asked her, with flattering
eagerness for her advice, what he should do. He had been
warned, he said, that Jeff and his friends might try to beat
him yet by stopping payment, and he knew that he had been
followed by them to town.
"What You'll do will be what I tell ye," Mrs Hanson replied
with decision. "The cashier is a friend to me--I was with his
wife last month with her first baby, and they swear by me
now, for I gave her good care. We'll go over there this
minute, and have talk with him. He'll do what he can for ye,
and he'll do it for my sake."
"You don't know me, remember," Bud reminded her honestly.
The widow Hanson gave him a scornful smile and toss of her
head. "And do I not?" she demanded. Do you think I've buried
three husbands and thinking now of the fourth, without
knowing what's wrote a man's face? Three I buried, and only
one died his bed. I can tell if a man's honest or not,
without giving him the second look. If you've got them checks
you should get the money on them--for I know their stripe.
Come on with me to Jimmy Lawton's house. He's likely holding
the baby while Minie does the dishes."
Mrs. Hanson guessed shrewdly. The cashier of the Crater
County Bank was doing exactly what she said he would be
doing. He was sitting in the kitchen, rocking a pink baby
wrapped in white outing flannel with blue border, when Mrs.
Hanson, without the formality of more than one warning tap on
the screen door, walked in with Bud. She held out her hands
for the baby while she introduced the cashier to Bud. In
the next breath she was explaining what was wanted of the
bank.
"They've done it before, and ye know it's plain thievery and
ought to be complained about. So now get your wits to work,
Jimmy, for this friend of mine is entitled to his money and
should have it if it is there to be had."
"Oh, it's there," said Jimmy. He looked at his watch, looked
at the kitchen clock, looked at Bud and winked. "We open at
nine, in this town," he said. "It lacks half an hour--but let
me see those checks."
Very relievedly Bud produced them, watched the cashier scan
each one to make sure that they were right, and quaked when
Jimmy scowled at Jeff Hall's signature on the largest check
of all. "He had a notion to use the wrong signature, but he
may have lost his nerve. It's all right, Mr. Birnie. Just
endorse these, and I'll take them into the bank and attend to
them the first thing I do after the door is open. You'd
better come in when I open up--"
"The gang had some talk about cleaning out the bank while
they 're about it," Bud remembered suddenly. "Can't you
appoint me something, or hire me as a guard and let me help
out? How many men do you have here in this bank?"
"Two, except when the president's in his office in the rear.
That's fine of you to offer. We've been held up, once--and
they cleaned us out of cash." Jimmy turned to Mrs. Hanson.
"Mother, can't you run over and have Jess come and swear Mr.
Birnie in as a deputy? If I go, or he goes, someone may
notice it and tip the gang off."
Mrs. Hanson hastily deposited the baby in its cradle and went
to call "Jess", her face pink with excitement.
"You're lucky you stopped at her house instead of some other
place," Jimmy observed. "She's a corking good woman. As a
deputy sheriff, you'll come in mighty handy if they do try
anything, Mr. Birnie--if you're the kind of a man you look to
be. I'll bet you can shoot. Can you?"
"If you scare me badly enough, I might get a cramp in my
trigger finger," Bud confessed. Jimmy grinned and went back
to considering his own part.
"I'll cash these checks for you the first thing I do. And as
deputy you can go with me. I'll have to unlock the door on
time, and if they mean to stop payment, and clean the bank
too, it will probably be done all at once. It has been a year
since they bothered us, so they may need a little change. If
Jess isn't busy he may stick around."
"No one expects him to round up the gang, I heard."
"No one expects him to go into Catrock Canyon after them.
He'll round them up, quick enough, if he can catch them far
enough from their holes."
Jess returned with Mrs. Hanson, swore in a new deputy, eyed
Bud curiously, and agreed to remain hidden across the road
from the bank with a rifle. He nodded understandingly when
Bud warned him that the looting was a matter of hearsay on
his part, and departed with an awkward compliment to Mrs. Jim
about hoping that the baby was going to look like her.
Jim lived just behind the bank, and a high board fence
between the two buildings served to hide his coming and
going. But Bud took off his hat and walked stooping,--by
special request of Mrs. Hanson--to make sure that he was not
observed.
"I think I'll stand out in front of the window," said Bud
when they were inside. "It will look more natural, and if any
of these fellows show up I'd just as soon not show my brand
the first thing."
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