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

on Old Heck's face, "or you can send your own crew, just as you please. I suppose you'll meet me half-way and receive the stock in Eagle Butte?"

"Can Thunderbolt run?" Old Heck asked irrelevantly.

"Not as fast as that imp of hell of the Ramblin' Kid's!" Dorsey answered instantly and with a short laugh.

Old Heck chuckled.

"You say you'll turn the Y-Bar cattle over to me within fifteen days?" he asked again, reverting to a study of the paper he held in his hand.

"Yes," Dorsey replied; "is that satisfactory?"

"You're a pretty good sport, after all, Dorsey," Old Heck said quietly. "I'll cash this check"—glancing at the yellow slip of paper—"and this thing, here—we'll just tear it up!" as he reduced the bill of sale to fragments. "Keep your cattle, Dorsey," he added, "ten thousand dollars is enough for you to pay for your lesson!"

Dorsey flushed a dull red.

"I ain't asking—"

"I know you're not," Old Heck interrupted, "and that's the reason I tore up that bill of sale!"

"Old Heck," Dorsey said, his voice trembling, "you're white! I'd like to shake—"

The rival cattlemen gripped hands and the racing feud between the
Quarter Circle KT and the Y-Bar was ended.

A week later Dorsey sent Flip Williams to the Quarter Circle KT. The
Vermejo cowboy led the beautiful black stallion that had mastered
Quicksilver and had in turn been whipped by the Gold Dust maverick.

"Dorsey said, Tell Old Heck Thunderbolt's a pretty good saddle horse,'" Flip explained, "'and he'd do to change off with Quicksilver once in a while! So he sent him over as a sort of keepsake!'"

The Ramblin' Kid did not return to the Quarter Circle KT until late
Sunday night. After the two-mile sweepstakes he was horribly ill. All
Friday night he laid, in a semi-conscious condition, in the stall with
Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick.

Parker and some of the cowboys visited the stall after the race, but they thought the Ramblin' Kid was drunk and the best thing was to allow him to sleep it off.

"I can't figure it out," Chuck said as they turned away, "he never did get drunk before that I knew of—"

"You can't tell what he's liable to do," Charley interrupted, "he sure took an awful chance getting on a tear at the time he did!"

"Well, he won the race," Parker said admiringly, "drunk or sober, you've got to give him credit for that!"

Saturday the Ramblin' Kid got Pedro to stay with the horses while he went over to the Elite Amusement Parlor. He had nothing to say to Sabota or any of the loafers in the place.

He was looking for Gyp Streetor.

Until Sunday afternoon he searched Eagle Butte, trying to find the tout. All he wanted was to locate the man who had sold him that cup of coffee—he could remember drinking the coffee; after that until the following morning all was hazy.

But Gyp was gone.

When the Gold Dust maverick, with the Ramblin' Kid swaying uncertainly on her back, had appeared on the track for the two-mile run, the tout, his eyes like those of a harried rat, sneaked out of the crowd in front of the book-makers' booths and hurried toward the Santa Fe railroad yards. An hour later he slipped into an empty freight car—part of a train headed for the West—and Eagle Butte saw him no more.

It was midnight Sunday when the Ramblin' Kid reached the Quarter Circle KT, turned Captain Jack and the outlaw filly into the circular corral, and without disturbing Old Heck, Parker, or the cowboys, already asleep in the bunk-house, sought his bed.

Monday morning he was at breakfast with the others.

Throughout the meal the Ramblin' Kid was silent. Carolyn June, still shocked by what she thought was his intoxication the day of the race, and believing he had remained in Eagle Butte over Saturday night and Sunday to continue the debauch, ignored him.

None of the others cared to question him and the Ramblin' Kid himself volunteered no information.

Once only, Old Heck mentioned the race.

"That was a pretty good ride you made in the two-mile event," he said, addressing the Ramblin' Kid; "it looked at first like the filly—"

"You won your money, didn't you?" the Ramblin' Kid interrupted in a tone that plainly meant there was nothing further to be said.

That was the only reference to the incidents of Friday afternoon.

After breakfast the Ramblin' Kid saddled the Gold Dust maverick, turned
Captain Jack with the cavallard, and with Parker and the other Quarter
Circle KT cowboys rode away to help gather the beef cattle from the west
half of the Cimarron range.

The week that followed passed quickly.

During the entire period the Kiowa lay under a mantle of sunshine by day and starlit skies by night.

Carolyn June once more provided the evening dessert of coffee-jelly and Skinny finished teaching her the art of dipping bread in milk and egg batter, frying it in hot butter, and calling the result "French toast"

Skinny again put on the white shirt and the shamrock tinted tie. He had not dared to wear what Chuck called his "love-making rigging" during the week of the Rodeo. It would have made him entirely too conspicuous among the hundreds of other cowboys gathered at Eagle Butte for the big celebration. Situations filled with embarrassment would have been almost certain to develop.

"It's getting so it needs a washing a little," Skinny remarked to
Carolyn June the first time he reappeared in the once snowy garment.

He was quite right.

Carolyn June herself had noticed that the shirt had lost some of its immaculateness.

"It doesn't look hardly as white as it did at first!"

"No, it don't," Skinny answered seriously. "I guess I'll wash it to-morrow. I never did wash one but I reckon it ain't so awful hard to do—"

"I'll help you," Carolyn June volunteered. "I've never washed one either, but it will be fun to learn how!"

The next day they washed the shirt.

The ceremony was performed in the kitchen after they had finished doing the breakfast dishes. Ophelia, after water for a vase of roses, came into the room while Skinny was rinsing the shirt in the large tin dishpan.

The garment was a sickly yellow.

"Darned if I know what's wrong with it," Skinny said, a trifle discouraged, while Carolyn June, her sleeves rolled above dimpled elbows, stood by and watched the slushy operation. "Carolyn June and me both have blamed near rubbed our fingers off trying to get it to look right again but somehow or other it don't seem to work."

"Did you put bluing in your rinse water?" Ophelia asked with a laugh.

"Bluing?" Carolyn June and Skinny questioned together. "What does that do to it?"

"Bleaches it—makes it white," the widow replied with another laugh as she returned to the front room.

"By golly, maybe that's what it needs!" Skinny exclaimed hopefully.

"Of course," Carolyn June cried gaily. "How silly we were not to think of it! Any one ought to know you put bluing in the water when you wash things. Wonder if Sing Pete has any around anywhere?"

They searched the kitchen shelves and found a pint bottle, nearly full, of the liquid indigo compound.

"How much do you suppose we ought to put in?" Carolyn June asked, pulling the cork from the bottle and holding it poised over the pan of water in which the shirt, a slimy, dingy mass, floated drunkenly.

"Darned if I know," Skinny said, scratching his head. "She said it would make it white—I reckon the more you put in the whiter the blamed thing'll be. Try about half of it at first and see how 'it works!"

"Gee, isn't it pretty?" Carolyn June gurgled as she tipped the bottle and the waves of indigo spread through the water, covering the shirt with a deep crystalline blue.

"You bet!" Skinny exclaimed. "That ought to fix it!"

It did.

The shirt, when finally dried, was a wonderful thing—done in a sort of mottled, streaky, marbled sky and cloud effect.

But Skinny wore it, declaring he liked it better—that it more nearly matched the shamrock tie—than when it was "too darned white and everything!"

To Parker and the boys on the beef hunt everything was business.

The days were filled with hard riding as they gathered the cattle, bunched the fat animals, cut out and turned back those unfit for the market, stood guard at night over the herd, steadily and rapidly cleaned the west half of the Kiowa range of the stuff that was ready to sell.

It was supper-time on one of the last days of the round-up.

The outfit was camped at Dry Buck. Bed rolls, wrapped in dingy gray tarpaulins or black rubber ponchos, were scattered about marking the places where each cowboy that night would sleep. The herd was bunched a quarter of a mile away in a little cove backed by the rim of sand-hills. Captain Jack and Silver Tip, riderless but with their saddles still on, were nipping the grass near the camp—the Ramblin' Kid and Chuck were to take the first watch, until midnight, at "guard mount." Parker and the cowboys were squatted, legs doubled under them, their knees forming a table on which to hold the white porcelain plate of "mulligan," in a circle at the back of the grub-wagon. Sing Pete trotted around the group and poured black, blistering-hot coffee into the unbreakable cups on the ground at the side of the hungry, dusty riders.

The sun had just dipped into the ragged peaks of the Costejo range and a reddish-purple crown lay on the crest of Sentinel Mountain forty miles to the southeast.

"It looks to me like Parker's sort of losing out," Chuck suddenly remarked, as he wiped his lips on the back of his hand after washing down a mouthful of the savory stew with gulps of steaming coffee. "Ophelia stuck closer than thunder to Old Heck all through the Rodeo."

Parker reddened and growled: "Aw, hell—don't start that up again!"

"By criminy, she didn't stick any closer to Old Heck than Skinny stuck to Carolyn June," Bert complained. "Nobody else had a look-in!"

"Skinny's sure earning his money," Charley muttered half enviously.

"Bet he's got on that white shirt and having a high old time right now! They're probably in the front room and she's playing La Paloma on the piano while Old Skinny's setting back rolling his eyes up like a bloated yearling!" Chuck laughed.

"And Old Heck and Ophelia are out on the porch holding hands and looking affectionate while the mosquitos are chewing their necks and ankles!" Bert added with a snicker.

"Her and Old Heck'll probably be married before we get back," Chuck said solemnly, with a wink at the Ramblin' Kid and a sly glance in the direction of Parker.

"Do you reckon there's any danger of it?" Parker asked in a voice that showed anxiety, but not of the sort the cowboys thought.

"They're darned near sure to," Chuck replied seriously, heaving what he tried to make resemble a sigh of sympathy.

"What makes you think so?" Parker questioned, seeking confirmation from the lips of other, of a hope that had been rising in his heart since the first moment he had begun to regret his rash proposal of marriage to the widow.

"Well, for one thing"—Chuck began soberly—"the way they'd look at each other—"

"I saw her squeeze Old Heck's arm once!" Bert interrupted.

"Aw, she's done that lots of times," Chuck said airily; "that ain't nothing special! But the worst indication was them flowers she wore on her bosom every day—Old Heck bought 'em!" he finished dramatically, leaning over and speaking tensely as though it pained him immeasurably to break the news to Parker while he fixed on Old Heck's rival a look he imagined was one of supreme pity.

"Yeah, he had them sent up from Las Vegas," Bert added, picking up the cue and lying glibly. "I saw the express agent deliver a box of them to him one day. There was four dollars and eighty cents charges on 'em!"

A gleam, which the cowboys misunderstood, came into Parker's eyes.

"Why don't you and Old Heck fight a duel about Ophelia?" Bert suggested tragically and in a voice that was aimed to convey sympathy to the Quarter Circle KT foreman. "You could probably kill him!"

"Sure, that's the way they do in books," Chuck urged.

"Yes," the Ramblin' Kid broke in with a slow