Cow Country

B >> B. M. Bower >> Cow Country

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In his heart Bud thanked Little Lost for that hidden path
through the bushes. He heard Dave asking Honey what was the
matter with her, heard the unwomanly reply of the girl, heard
her curse Pop for his neglect of the kitchen stove at that
hour of the morning. Heard, too, her questioning of Dave. Had
they found Bud, or Marian?

"If you got 'em together, and didn't string 'em both up to
the nearest tree--"

Bud bit his lip and went on, his face aflame with rage at the
brutishness of a girl he had half respected. "Honey!" he
whispered contemptuously. "What a name for that little
beast!"

At the rocks Eddie was waiting with Stopper, upon whom they
hurriedly packed the beds and Bud's luggage. They spoke in
whispers when they spoke at all, and to insure the horse's
remaining quiet Eddie had tied a cotton rope snugly around
its muzzle.

"I'll take Pop," Bud whispered, but Jerry shook his head and
once more shouldered the old fellow as he would carry a bag
of grain. So they slipped back down the trail, took a turn
which Bud did not know, and presently Bud found that Jerry
was keeping straight on. Bud made an Indian sign on the
chance that Jerry would understand it, and with his free hand
Jerry replied. He was taking Pop somewhere. They were to wait
for him when they had reached the horses. So they separated
for a space.

"This is sure a great country for hideouts, Mr. Birnie,"
Eddie ventured when they had put half a mile between
themselves and Little Lost, and had come upon Smoky, Sunfish
and Eddie's horse feeding quietly in a tiny, spring-watered
basin half surrounded with rocks. "If you know the country
you can keep dodgin' sheriffs all your life--if you just have
grub enough to last."

"Looks to me as if there aren't many wasted opportunities
here," Bud answered with some irony. "Is there an honest man
in the whole country, Ed? I'd just like to know."

Eddie hesitated, his eyes anxiously trying to read Bud's
meaning and his mood. "Not right around the Sinks, I guess,"
he replied truthfully. "Up at Crater there are some, and over
to Jumpoff. But I guess this valley would be called pretty
tough, all right. It's so full of caves and queer places it
kinda attracts the ones that want to hide out." Then he
grinned. "It's lucky for you it's like that, Mr. Birnie, or
I don't see how you'd get away. Now I can show you how to get
clear away from here without getting caught. But I guess we
ought to have breakfast first. I'm pretty hungry. Ain't you?
I can build a fire against that crack in the ledge over
there, and the smoke will go away back underneath so it won't
show. There's a blow-hole somewhere that draws smoke like a
chimney."

Jerry came after a little, sniffing bacon. He threw himself
down beside the fire and drew a long breath. "That old
skunk's heavier than what you might think," he observed
whimsically. "I packed him down into one of them sink holes
and untied his feet and left him to scramble out best way he
can. It'll take him longer'n it took me. Having the use of
your hands helps quite a lot. And the use of your mouth to
cuss a little. But he'll make it in an hour or two--I'm
afraid." He looked at Bud, a half-shamed tenderness in his
eyes." It sure was hard to leave him like I did. It was like
walking on your toes past a rattler curled up asleep
somewhere, afraid you might spoil his nap. Only Pop wasn't
asleep." He sat up and reached his hand for a cup of coffee
which Eddie was offering. "Anyway, I had the fun of telling
the old devil what I thought about him," he added, and blew
away the steam and took another satisfying nip.

"He'll put them on our trail, I suppose," said Bud, biting
into a ragged piece of bread with a half-burned slice of hot
bacon on it.

"When he gets to the ranch he will. His poison fangs was sure
loaded when I left. He said he wanted to cut your heart out
for robbing him, and so forth, ad swearum. We'd best not
leave any trail."

"We ain't going to," Eddie assured him eagerly. "I'm glad
being with the Catrockers is going to do some good, Mr.
Birnie. It'll help you git away, and that'll help find Sis. I
guess she hit down where you live, maybe. How far can your
horse travel to-day--if he has to?"

Bud looked across to where Sunfish, having rolled in a wet
spot near the spring and muddied himself to his satisfaction,
was greedily at work upon a patch of grass. "If he has to,
till he drops in his tracks. And that won't be for many a
mile, kid. He's thoroughbred; a thoroughbred never knows when
to quit."

"Well, there ain't any speedy trail ahead of us today," Eddie
vouchsafed cheeringly. "There's half-a mile maybe where we
can gallop, and the rest is a case of picking your footing."

"Let's begin picking it, then," said Bud, and got up,
reaching for his bridle.

By devious ways it was that Eddie led them out of that
sinister country surrounding the Sinks. In the beginning Bud
and Jerry exchanged glances, and looked at their guns,
believing that it would be through Catrock Canyon they would
have to ride. Eddie, riding soberly in the lead, had yet a
certain youthful sense of his importance. "They'll never
think of following yuh this way, unless old Pop Truman gits
back in time to tell 'em I'm travelling with yuh," he
observed once when they had penetrated beyond the
neighborhood of caves and blow-holes and were riding safely
down a canyon that offered few chances of their being
observed save from the front, which did not concern them.

"I guess you don't know old Pop is about the ringeader of the
Catrockers. Er he was, till he began to git kinda childish
about hoarding money, and then Dave stepped in. And Mr.
Birnie, I guess you'd have been dead when you first came
there, if it hadn't been that Dave and Pop wanted to give you
a chance to get a lot of money off of Jeff's bunch. Lew was
telling how you kept cleaning up, and he said right along
that they was taking too much risk having you around. Lew
said he bet you was a detective. Are you, Mr. Birnie?"

Bud was riding with his shoulders sagged forward, his
thoughts with Marian--wherever she was. He had been convinced
that she was not at Little Lost, that she had started for
Laramie. But now that he was away from that evil spot his
doubts returned. What if she were still in the neighborhood--
what if they found her? Memory of Honey's vindictiveness made
him shiver, Honey was the kind of woman who would kill.

"I am, from now on, kid," he said despondently. "We're going
to ride till we find your sister. And if those hell-hounds
got her--"

"They didn't, from the way Honey talked," Jerry comforted.
"We'll find her at Laramie, don't you ever think we won't!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:TRAILS END

At the last camp, just north of the Platte, Bud's two black
sheep balked. Bud himself, worn by sleepless nights and long
hours in the saddle, turned furiously when Jerry announced
that he guessed he and Ed wouldn't go any farther.

"Well, damn you both for ungrateful hounds!" grated Bud, hurt
to the quick. "I hope you don't think I brought you this far
to help hold me in the saddle; I made it north alone, without
any mishap. I think I could have come back all right. But if
you want to quit here, all right. You can high-tail it back
to your outlaws--"

"Well, if you go 'n put it that way!" Jerry expostulated,
lifting both hands high in the air in a vain attempt to pull
the situation toward the humorous. "You're a depity sheriff,
and you got the drop." He grinned, saw that Bud's eyes were
still hard and his mouth unyielding, and lowered his hands,
looking crestfallen as a kicked pup that had tried to be
friendly.

"You can see for yourself we ain't fit to go 'n meet your
mother and your father like we was--like we'd went straight,"
Eddie put in explanatorily. "You've been raised good, and--
say, it makes a man want to BE good to see how a feller don't
have to be no preacher to live right. But it don't seem
square to let you take us right home with you, just because
you're so darned kind you'd do it and never think a thing
about it. We ain't ungrateful--I know I ain't. But--but--"

"The kid's said it, Bud," Jerry came to the rescue. "We come
along because it was a ticklish trip you had ahead. And I've
knowed as good riders as you are, that could stand a little
holding in the saddle when some freak had tried to shoot 'em
out of it. But you're close to home now and you don't need us
no more, and so we ain't going to horn in on the prodigal
calf's milkbucket. Marian, She's likely there--"

"If Sis ain't with your folks we'll hunt her up," Eddie
interrupted eagerly. "Sis is your kind--she--she's good
enough for yuh, Bud, and I hope she--ll--well if she's got
any sense she will--well, if it comes to the narrying point,
I--well, darn it, I'd like to see Sis git as good a man as
you are!" Eddie, having bluntered that far, went headlong as
if he were afraid to stop. "Sis is educated, and she's an
awful good singer and a fine girl, only I'm her brother. But
I'm going to live honest from now on, Bud, and I hope you
won't hold off on account of me. I ain't going to have sis
feel like crying when she thinks about me! You--you--said
something that hurt like a knife, Bud, when you told me that,
up in Crater. And she wasn't to blame for marryn' Lew--and
she done that outa goodness, the kind you showed to Jerry and
me. And we don't want to go spoilin' everything by letting
your folks see what you're bringin' home with yuh! And it
might hurt Sis with your folks, if they found out that I'm--"

Bud had been standing by his horse, looking from one to the
other, listening, watching their faces, measuring the full
depth of their manhood. "Say! you remind me of a story the
folks tell on me," he said, his eyes shining, while his voice
strove to make light of it all. "Once, when I was a kid in
pink-aprons, I got lost from the trail-herd my folks were
bringing up from Texas. It was comin' dark, and they had the
whole outfit out hunting me, and everybody scared to death.
When they were all about crazy, they claim I came walking up
to the camp-fire dragging a dead snake by the tail, and
carrying a horn toad in my shirt, and claiming they were mine
because I 'ketched 'em.' I'm not branding that yarn with any
moral--but figure it out for yourself, boys."

The two looked at each other and grinned. "I ain't dead yet,"
Eddie made sheepish comment. "Mebbe you kinda look on me as
being a horn toad, Bud."

"When you bear in mind that my folks raised that kid, You'll
realize that it takes a good deal to stampede mother." Bud
swung into the saddle to avoid subjecting his emotions to the
cramped, inadequate limitations of speech. "Let's go, boys.
She's a long trail to take the kinks out of before supper-
time."

They stood still, making no move to follow. Bud reined Smoky
around so that he faced them, reached laboriously into that
mysterious pocket of a cowpuncher's trousers which is always
held closed by the belt of his chaps, and which invariably
holds in its depths the things he wants in a hurry. They
watched him curiously, resolutely refusing to interpret his
bit of autobiography, wondering perhaps why he did not go.

"Here she is." Bud had disinterred the deputy sheriff's
badge, and began to polish it by the primitive but effectual
method of spitting on it and then rubbing vigorously on his
sleeve. "You're outside of Crater County, but by thunder
you're both guilty of resisting an officer, and county lines
don't count!" He had pinned the badge at random on his coat
while he was speaking, and now, before the two realized what
he was about, he had his six-shooter out and aimed straight
at them.

Bud had never lived in fear of the law. Instantly was sorry
when he saw the involuntary stiffening of their muscles, the
quick wordless suspicion and defiance that sent their eyes in
shifty glances to right and left before their hands lifted a
little. Trust him, love him they might, there was that latent
fear of capture driven deep into their souls; so deep that
even he had not erased it.

Bud saw--and so he laughed.

"I've got to show my folks that I've made a gathering," he
said. "You can't quit, boys. And I'm going to take you to the
end of the trail, now you've started." He eyed them, saw that
they were still stubborn, and drew in his breath sharply,
manfully meeting the question in their minds.

"We've left more at the Sinks than the gnashing of teeth," he
said whimsically. "A couple of bad names, for instance.
You're two bully good friends of mine, and--damn it, Marian
will want to see both of you fellows, if she's there. If she
isn't--we'll maybe have a big circle to ride, finding her.
I'll need you, no matter what's ahead." He looked from one to
the other, gave a snort and added impatiently, "Aw, fork your
horses and don't stand there looking like a couple of damn
fools!"

Whereupon Jerry shook his head dissentingly, grinned and gave
Eddie so emphatic an impulse toward his horse that the kid
went sprawling.

"Guess We're up against it, all right--but I do wish yo 'd
lose that badge!" Jerry surrendered, and flipped the bridle
reins over the neck of his horse. "Horn toad is right, the
way you're scabbling around amongst them rocks," he called
light-heartedly to the kid. "Ever see a purtier sunrise? I
never!"

I don't know what they thought of the sunset. Gorgeous it
was, with many soft colors blended into unnamable tints and
translucencies, and the songs of birds in the thickets as
they passed. Smoky, Sunfish and Stopper walked briskly, ears
perked forward, heads up, eyes eager to catch the familiar
landmarks that meant home. Bud's head was up, also, his eyes
went here and there, resting with a careless affection on
those same landmarks which spelled home. He would have let
Smoky's reins have a bit more slack and would have led his
little convoy to the corrals at a gallop, had not hope begun
to tremble and shrink from meeting certainty face to face.
Had you asked him then, I think Bud would have owned himself
a coward. Until he had speech with home-folk he would merely
be hoping that Marian was there; but until he had speech with
them he need not hear that they knew nothing of her. Bud--
like, however, he tried to cover his trepidation with a joke.

"We'll sneak up on. 'em," he said to Ed and Jerry when the
roofs of house and stables came into view.

Here's where I grew up, boys. And in a minute or two more
you'll see the greatest little mother on earth--and the
finest dad," he added, swallowing the last of his Scotch
stubbornness.

"And Sis, I hope," Eddie said wistfully. "I sure hope she's
here."

Neither Jerry nor Bud answered him at all. Smoky threw up his
head suddenly and gave a shrill whinny, and a horse at the
corrals answered sonorously.

"Say! That sounds to me like Boise!" Eddie exclaimed, standing
up in his stirrups to look.

Bud turned pale, then flushed hotly. "Don't holler!" he
muttered, and held Smoky back a little. For just one reason a
young man's heart pounds as Bud's heart pounded then. Jerry
looked at him, took a deep breath and bit his lip
thoughtfully. It may be that Jerry's heartbeats were not
quite normal just then, but no one would ever know.

They rode slowly to a point near the corner of the table, and
there Bud halted the two with his lifted hand. Bud was
trembling a little--but he was smiling, too. Eddie was frankly
grinning, Jerry's face was the face of a good poker-player--
it told nothing.

In a group with their backs to them stood three: Marian,
Bud's mother and his father. Bob Birnie held Boise by the
bridle, and the two women were stroking the brown nose of the
horse that moved uneasily, with little impatient head-
tossings.

"He doesn't behave like a horse that has made the long trip
he has made," Bud's mother observed admiringly. "You must be
a wonderful little horsewoman, my dear, as well as a
wonderful little woman in every other way. Buddy should never
have sent you on such a trip--just to bring home money, like
a bank messenger! But I'm glad that he did! And I do wish you
would consent to stay--such an afternoon with music I
haven't had since Buddy left us. You could stay with me and
train for the concert work you intend doing. I'm only an old
ranch woman in a slat sunbonnet--but I taught my Buddy--and
have you heard him?"

"An old woman in a slat sunbonnet--oh, how can you? Why,
you're the most wonderful woman in the whole world." Marian's
voice was almost tearful in its protest. "Yes--I have
heard--your Buddy."

"'T is the strangest way to go about selling a horse that I
ever saw," Bob Birnie put in dryly, smoothing his beard while
he looked at them. "We'd be glad to have you stay, lass. But
you've asked me to place a price on the horse, and I should
like to ask ye a question or two. How fast did ye say he
could run?"

Marian laid an arm around the shoulders of the old lady in a
slat sunbonnet and patted her arm while she answered.

"Well, he beat everything in the country, so they refused to
race against him, until Bud came with his horses," she
replied. "It took Sunfish to outrun him. He 's terribly fast,
Mr. Birnie. I--really, I think he could beat the world's
record--if Bud rode him!"

Just here you should picture Ed and Jerry with their hands
over their mouths, and Bud wanting to hide his face with his
hat.

Bob Birnie's beard behaved oddly for a minute, while he
leaned and stroked Boise's flat forelegs, that told of speed.
"Wee-ll," he hesitated, soft-heartedness battling with the
horse-buyer's keenness, "since Bud is na ere to ride him,
he'll make a good horse for the roundup. I'll give ye "--more
battling--"a hundred and fifty dollars for him, if ye care to
sell--"

"Here, wait a minute before you sell to that old skinflint!"
Bud shouted exuberantly, dismounting with a rush. The rush, I
may say, carried him to the little old lady in the slat
sunbonnet, and to that other little lady who was staring at
him with wide, bright yes. Bud's arms went around his mother.
Perhaps by accident he gathered in Marian also--they were
standing very close, and his arms were very long--and he was
slow to discover his mistake.

"I'll give you two hundred for Boise, and I'll throw in one
brother, and one long-legged, good-for-nothing cowpuncher--"

"Meaning yourself, Buddy?" came teasingly from he slat
sunbonnet, whose occupant had not been told just everything.
"I'll be surprised if she'll have you, with that dirty face
and no shave for a week and more. But if she does, you're
luckier than you deserve, for riding up on us like this!
We've heard all about you, Buddy--though you were wise to
send this lassie to gild your faults and make a hero of
you!"

Now, you want to know how Marian managed to live through
that. I will say that she discovered how tenaciously a young
man's arms may cling when he thinks he is embracing merely
his mother; but she freed herself and ran to Eddie, fairly
pulled him off his horse, and talked very fast and
incoherently to him and Jerry, asking question after question
without waiting for a reply to any of them. All this, I
suppose, in the hope that they would not hear, or, hearing,
would not understand what that terrible, wonderful little
woman was saying so innocently.

But you cannot faze youth. Eddie had important news for Sis,
and he felt that now was the time to tell it before Marian
blushed any redder, so he pulled her face up to his, put his
lips so close to her ear that his breath tickled, and
whispered--without any preface whatever that she could marry
Bud any time now, because she was a widow.

"Here! Somebody--Bud--quick! Sis has fainted! Doggone it, I
only told her Lew's dead and she can marry you--shucks! I
thought she'd be glad!"

Down on the Staked Plains, on an evening much like the
evening when Bud came home with his "stake" and his hopes and
two black sheep who were becoming white as most of us, a
camp-fire began to crackle and wave smoke ribbons this way
and that before it burned steadily under the supper pots of a
certain hungry, happy group which you know.

"It's somewhere about here that I got lost from camp when I
was a kid," Bud observed, tilting back his hat and lifting a
knee to snap a dry stick over it. "Mother'd know, I bet. I
kinda wish we'd brought her and dad along with us. That's
about eighteen years ago they trailed a herd north--and here
we are, taking our trail--herd north on the same trail! I
kinda wish now I'd picked up a bunch of yearling heifers
along with our two-year-olds. We could have brought another
hundred head just as well as not. They sure drive nice.
Mother would have enjoyed this trip."

"You think so, do you?" Marian gave him a superior little
smile along with the coffee-boiler. "If you'd heard her talk
about that trip north when there weren't any men around
listening, you'd change your mind. Bud Birnie, you are the
SIMPLEST creature! You think, because a woman doesn't make a
fuss over things, she doesn't mind. Your mother told me that
it was a perfect nightmare. She taught you music just in the
hope that you'd go back to civilization and live there where
there are some modern improvements, and she could visit you!
And here you are--all rapped up in a bunch of young stock,
dirty as pig and your whiskers--ow! Bud! Stop that immediatly,
or I'll go put my face in a cactus just for relief!"

"Maybe you're dissatisfied yourself with my bunch of cattle.
Maybe you didn't go in raptures over our aim and make more
plans in a day than four men could carry out in a year. Maybe
you wish your husband was a man that was content to pound
piano keys all his life and let his hair grow long instead of
his whiskers. If you hate this, why didn't you say so?"

"I was speaking," said Marian as dignifiedly as was possible,
"of your mother. She was raised in civilization, and she has
simply made the best of pioneering all her married life. I
was born and raised in cow-country and I love it. As I said
before, you are the SIMPLEST creature! Would you really bring
a father and mother a honeymoon trail--especially when the
bride didn't want them, and they would much rather stay home?"

"Hey!" cried Eddie disgustedly, coming up from a shallow
creek with a bucket of water and a few dry sticks. "The
coffee's upset and putting the fire out. Gee whiz! Can't you
folks quit love-makin' and tend to business long enough to
cook a meal?"

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