The Ramblin' Kid - Earl Wayland Bowman (snow like ashes series .txt) 📗

waltz, drifting out from the lighted windows and the open door of the room where Carolyn June and Ophelia, in a spirit of sport and for revenge, juggled the hearts of men afraid of nothing in all the world but the look in a Woman's eyes.

The music tortured the soul of the Ramblin' Kid. It breathed the unfathomable strife of life—of love, longing, hope, despair—almost, yet subtly, elusively, would not tell the eternal "Why?" of all things.

Not heeding time, he stood and listened. The crunching sound made by the Gold Dust maverick, munching at the pile of hay on the ground in the corral, blended with and seemed a queer accompaniment to the melody that came from the scene of revelry up at the house.

The orange disk of a late-rising moon showed above the rim of the sand-hills at the lower end of the valley. The Ramblin' Kid watched it—until it grew into a rounded plate of burnished, glistening silver. The Gold Dust maverick was suddenly flooded with a glare of light as the moonbeams poured over the top of the shed and streamed through the bars of the circular corral. The filly lifted her head.

An impulse to ride—ride—ride, to get away from it all—far out on the wide unpeopled plains where there was nothing above but God, and the unmeasured depths of His heavens, and nothing beneath but the earth and the rhythmic beat of his horse's feet, came over the Ramblin' Kid. Men, and the works of men—their passions, their strifes, their foolishness—and women—women who played with love—he wanted to forget, to leave miles and miles behind.

He started to open the gate, thinking to saddle Captain Jack and obey the impulse of the moment. Carolyn June's words, spoken of the Gold Dust maverick: "It would be fun to see her run!" and uttered lightly and in a spirit of coquetry that morning when she teased him to enter the outlaw filly in the race against the Thunderbolt horse from the Vermejo, came to his mind. The selfishness of the plea maddened him. She cared nothing for the price in effort—the straining muscles, the panting breath—the agony the beautiful mare must pay to defeat the black wonder from the other part of the range. She wanted only to see the maverick run—to coax him to yield and run the filly merely to please the cheap vanity of her sex! No doubt also she counted on entertainment when, to-morrow, he would ride the outlaw for the first time. It would be a kind of show—the battle for mastery between himself and the high-bred untamed mare. The whole bunch—Old Heck, Parker, Ophelia, Carolyn June, the cowboys—yes, even that damned Chink—unquestionably would be crowded about the corral to watch the fear and pain of the maverick as she learned her first hard lesson of servitude to man! They would laugh at her frenzied efforts to throw him.

He would fool them. He would ride the filly to-night!

He went to the shed, slipped his legs into the worn leather chaps, took saddle, bridle, blanket and rope and returned to the corral.

Stepping inside he closed the gate behind him.

Captain Jack came to him and nosed at his shoulder.

"No, Little Man," the Ramblin' Kid said gently, "this ain't your turn.
You can go with us though, if you want to!" he laughed.

The Gold Dust maverick stood, half-afraid, at the other side of the corral. She had not yet wholly conquered her dread of him. She did not, however, offer to fight as she had done that morning when Skinny entered the enclosure.

The Ramblin' Kid spoke to the filly and, as she began to move shyly away, with one toss threw the loop over her head. The instant the mare felt the rope she stopped and stood trembling a moment, then came straight up to him. She was "rope-wise." The experience at the North Springs the night he caught her, and when she had, three separate times, been cruelly thrown by this same rope; had taught the Gold Dust maverick the power that lay in those pliant strands.

She flinched from the touch of the blanket. The Ramblin' Kid worked easily, carefully, but in absolute confidence, with her. As he cautiously saddled the mare he talked in a low, drawling monotone, uttering endearing phrases and occasionally slipping a lump of sugar—a supply of which he had got that night from the kitchen—into her mouth. She ate it ravenously.

"Darn, Little One," he laughed, "you sure have got a sweet tooth—you gobble that sugar like an Indian squaw eatin' choc'late candy!"

At last the mare was saddled. Still holding to the rope, the Ramblin' Kid, without trying to get the filly to follow, moved over and opened the gate, giving it a push and swinging it wide. During the performance the Gold Dust maverick stood perfectly still, save for a constant chewing at the iron bit between her teeth.

The Ramblin' Kid went quietly up to her, coiling the slack of the rope as he advanced. Without bothering to tighten the reins, but watching closely the look in the maverick's big brown eyes and the nervous twitching of her ears, he laid one hand on the withers of the outlaw, with the other he grasped the horn of the saddle and slipping his foot in the stirrup swung quickly and lightly on to her back.

For the space of a deep breath the maverick crouched, grew tense in every muscle, slowly arched her back, gathered herself together for a great effort.

A quiet smile curled the lips of the Ramblin' Kid as he looked down on the curving neck of the beautiful creature.

With a tremendous leap the Gold Dust maverick sprang high into the air, lunging forward while all her hoofs were off the ground. Her forefeet came down across the back of Captain Jack—she had all but cleared the little roan. The shock almost threw the stallion to the ground. As he surged from under her the filly slid and sprawled on her shoulder and side. Instantly she was on her feet, the Ramblin' Kid still in the saddle. His spurs had not touched the mare—instead he had been careful not to let their steel points so much as ruffle the golden-chestnut hair of her belly or flank. Only when the outlaw fell had he thrown forward his right leg and hooked the sharp rowels into the strong fiber of the forward cinch. With the left hand he loosely held the reins, giving the maverick her head—the other hand he brushed with a caressing upward movement along her glossy neck.

Twice the Gold Dust maverick circled the corral, plunging, bucking "side-winding," desperately—her nose between her knees, squealing pitifully—as she tried vainly to rid herself of the weight of the Ramblin' Kid.

"Go to it, Baby Girl, go to it!" he chuckled; "you've got to learn! Sooner or later you'll find out it can't be done!" He rode limply, loosely, low in the saddle, and while he made no effort to urge the filly into greater frenzy he did not try in any way to prevent her bucking her hardest in, the futile attempts to hurl him off her back.

The second time the outlaw mare came to the gate she whirled and dashed through the opening, out of the corral, across the open space, past the corner of the front-yard fence and along the road that led up to the bench and toward Eagle Butte. Captain Jack trotted around the corral once, then followed at a long, swinging gallop.

The noise of the filly bucking inside the corral reached the ears of the dancers in the big room at the house.

"What in thunderation's that commotion?" Old Heck exclaimed, starting up—he and Ophelia had just finished a two-step and Skinny was winding the graphophone to play his favorite, the alluring La Paloma.

There was an instant's pause, then a rush for the door.

Carolyn June reached the porch just in time to see the Gold Dust maverick "hitting the breeze"—careering madly, wildly pitching as she ran past the opening in front of the house and up the road out on the bench. It was almost as though a phantom horse and rider had passed before her sight.

"Lord! Look at them go!" Charley cried admiringly.

At first the girl had not recognized the outlaw mare or her rider.

"Who—what—is it?" she asked Chuck, who was standing beside her.

Bert answered for Chuck. "It's that darn-fool Ramblin' Kid—he's riding the Gold Dust maverick!" he said. "Ain't that just like the blamed idiot—to go and ride that filly to-night?"

"Aw, he's liable to do anything," Charley commented, "he's—"

Before the sentence was finished the beautiful mare and her apparently careless rider, with Captain Jack a hundred yards behind, disappeared over the brink of the bench and in the silence that followed the group on the porch heard only the distant thudding of hoofs beating an ever fainter tattoo through the calm, moonlit night.

Carolyn June went back into the house with conflicting emotions surging through her heart. She believed she knew why the Ramblin' Kid had elected to ride the outlaw filly to-night. But her thoughts she kept to herself.

For an hour longer the dance continued. But not with the spirit of earlier in the evening. The interruption took something of the eagerness to punish Old Heck, Parker and the cowboys, out of the heart of Carolyn June. A bit of doubt that the role she and Ophelia were playing was worthy of true womanhood crept into her mind.

When the widow and Carolyn June were alone Ophelia laughed.

"Whew!" she exclaimed, "that was a strenuous party! I've danced till my feet ache! Do you think our little 'counterplot' was a success?"

"Entirely!" Carolyn June replied with an uncertain chuckle. "Uncle Josiah, Parker and Charley will dream dreams about you and fight duels in their sleep to-night!"

"I think the others—" the widow started to say, then pausing, finished: "Wasn't it queer the Ramblin' Kid decided to ride that outlaw horse to-night instead of coming to the house to dance?"

"Oh, I don't know," Carolyn June answered indifferently.

"I guess it's as Charley says," Ophelia remarked: "'You can't tell what th' Ramblin' Kid's liable to do'—"

"I suppose not," Carolyn June replied wearily as she went into her room.
"Good night!"

"Good night!" Ophelia echoed.

CHAPTER XII YOU'LL GET YOUR WISH

It was a silent group that gathered in the bunk-house after the dance. Old Heck, Parker, Charley and the other cowboys had been unduly stimulated by the music, the laughter and the bright smiles of Carolyn June and Ophelia. When they stepped out of the house into the cool night these all were left behind. The cow-men quickly sobered down and by the time they reached their sleeping quarters on the faces of all were half-ashamed looks as if they had been playing at a game not quite dignified enough or proper for men of maturity and seriousness.

All were thoughtful and none seemed eager to start conversation.

Skinny was dejected and utterly miserable.

He felt that he had been cruelty treated. Carolyn June had acted all evening as though his only object in living was to stand in the corner and wind up that blamed graphophone, while she openly flirted with the other cowboys. Skinny was grateful to the Ramblin' Kid who, alone of all the cow-punchers, had decency enough to stay away and not interfere with the original agreement. The Ramblin' Kid had some sense and was square. He had realized that any fellow officially elected to make love—especially when he didn't want to do it in the first place—ought to be allowed to go ahead and make it without having a lot of darned buckaroos butting in on the job.

The way the others had acted was a regular disgrace!

Chuck, Bert, Charley and Pedro were nervously happy. In the heart of each was a thrill, caused by the memory of some secret—or what he thought was a secret—manifestation of Carolyn June's interest. Perhaps it was no more than the brushing of a stray whiff of odorous brown hair against a weather-tanned cheek, the pulsing of a warm breath on the side of a muscular neck, a melting look from a pair of luminous eyes, some low-spoken word or the pressure of a hand, but whatever it was, each of the cowboys was reasonably certain he had been singled out for special favors. Charley was doubly blessed. In addition to Carolyn June's seductive advances he had the memory, also, of Ophelia's attentions. His mind was awhirl with the effort to figure out which one, by rights, he ought to consider