Cow-Country by B. M. Bower (best color ereader txt) 📗

Pop was shuffling hurriedly out of the corral after the liniment. To Jeff's challenge he made no reply whatever. The group around Jeff shooed Smoky gently toward the other side of the corral, thereby convincing themselves of the limp in his right hind foot. While not so pronounced as to be crippling, it certainly was no asset to a running horse, and the wise ones conferred together in undertones.

“That there kid's a born fool,” Dave Truman stated positively. “The horse can't run. He's got the look of a speedy little animal—but shucks! The kid don't know anything about running horses. I've been talking to him, and I know. Jeff, you're taking the money away from him if you run that race.”

“Well, I'm giving the kid a chance to back out,” Jeff hastened to declare. “He can put it off till his horse gits well, if he wants to. I ain't going to hold him to it. I never said I was.”

“That's mighty kind of you,” Bud said, coming up from behind with a bottle of liniment, and with Pop at his heels. “But I'll run him just the same. Smoky has favored this foot before, and it never seemed to hurt him any. You needn't think I'm going to crawfish. You must think I'm a whining cuss—say! I'll bet another ten dollars that I don't come in more than a neck behind, lame horse or not!”

“Now, kid, don't git chancey,” Pop admonished uneasily. “Twenty-five is enough money to donate to Jeff.”

“That's right, kid. I like your nerve,” Jeff cut in, emphasizing his approval with a slap on Bud's shoulder as he bent to lift Smoky's leg. “I've saw worse horses than this one come in ahead—it wouldn't be no sport o' kings if nobody took a chance.”

“I'm taking chance enough,” Bud retorted without looking up. “If I don't win this time I will the next, maybe.”

“That's right,” Jeff agreed heartily, winking broadly at the others behind Bud's back.

Bud rubbed Smoky's ankle with liniment, listened to various and sundry self-appointed advisers and, without seeming to think how the sums would total, took several other small bets on the race. They were small—Pop began to teeter back and forth and lift his shoulders and pull his beard—sure signs of perturbation.

“By Christmas, I'll just put up ten dollars on the kid,” Pop finally cackled. “I ain't got much to lose—but I'll show yuh old Pop ain't going to see the young feller stand alone.” He tried to catch Bud's eye, but that young man was busy saddling Smoky and returning jibe for jibe with the men around him, and did not glance toward Pop at all.

“I'll take this bottle in my pocket, Pop,” he said with his back toward the old man, and mounted carelessly. “I'll ride him around a little and give him another good rubbing before we run. I'm betting,” he added to the others frankly, “on the chance that exercise and the liniment will take the soreness out of that ankle. I don't believe it amounts to anything at all. So if any of you fellows want to bet—”

“Shucks! Don't go 'n-” Pop began, and bit the sentence in two, dropping immediately into a deep study. The kid was getting beyond Pop's understanding.

A crowd of perhaps a hundred men and women—with a generous sprinkling of unruly juveniles—lined the sheer bank of the creek-bed and watched the horses run, and screamed their cheap witticisms at the losers, and their approval of those who won. The youngster with the mysterious past and the foolhardiness to bet on a lame horse they watched and discussed, the women plainly wishing he would win—because he was handsome and young, and such a wonderful musician. The men were more cold-blooded. They could not see that Bud's good looks or the haunting melody of his voice had any bearing whatever upon his winning a race. They called him a fool, and either refused to bet at all on such a freak proposition as a lame horse running against Skeeter, or bet against him. A few of the wise ones wondered if Jeff and his bunch were merely “stringing the kid along “; if they might not let him win a little, just to make him more “chancey.” But they did not think it wise to bet on that probability.

While three races were being run Bud rode with the Little Lost men, and Smoky still limped a little. Jerry Myers, still self-appointed guardian of Bud, herded him apart and called him a fool and implored him to call the race off and keep his money in his own pocket.

Bud was thinking just then about a certain little woman who sat on the creek bank with a wide-brimmed straw hat shading her wonderful eyes, and a pair of little, high-arched feet tapping heels absently against the bank wall. Honey sat beside her, and a couple of the valley women whom Bud had met at the dance. He had ridden close and paused for a few friendly sentences with the quartette, careful to give Honey the attention she plainly expected. But it was not Honey who wore the wide hat and owned the pretty little feet. Bud pulled his thoughts back from a fruitless wish that he might in some way help that little woman whose trouble looked from her eyes, and whose lips smiled so bravely. He did not think of possession when he thought of her; it was the look in her eyes, and the slighting tones in which Honey spoke of her.

“Say, come alive! What yuh going off in a trance for, when I'm talking to yuh for your own good?” Jerry smiled whimsically, but his eyes were worried.

Bud pulled himself together and reined closer.

“Don't bet anything on this race, Jerry,” he advised “Or if you do, don't bet on Skeeter. But—well, I'll just trade you a little advice for all you've given me. Don't bet!”

“What the hell!” surprise jolted out of Jerry.

“It's my funeral,” Bud laughed. “I'm a chancey kid, you see—but I'd hate to see you bet on me.” He pulled up to watch the next race—four nervy little cow-horses of true range breeding, going down to the quarter post.

“They 're going to make false starts aplenty,” Bud remarked after the first fluke. “Jeff and I have it out next. I'll just give Smoke another treatment.” He dismounted, looked at Jerry undecidedly and slapped him on the knee. “I'm glad to have a friend like you,” he said impulsively. “There's a lot of two-faced sinners around here that would steal a man blind. Don't think I'm altogether a fool.”

Jerry looked at him queerly, opened his mouth and shut it again so tightly that his jawbones stood out a little. He watched Bud bathing Smoky's ankle. When Bud was through and handed Jerry the bottle to keep for him, Jerry held him for an instant by the hand.

“Say, for Gawdsake don't talk like that promiscuous, Bud,” he begged. “You might hit too close—”

“Ay, Jerry! Ever hear that old Armenian proverb, 'He who tells the truth should have one foot in the stirrup'? I learned that in school.”

Jerry let go Bud's hand and took the bottle, Bud's watch that had his mother's picture pasted in the back, and his vest, a pocket of which