The Texan - James B. Hendryx (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📗

bare rocks. Then he crossed to the very verge of the precipice and seated himself with his feet hanging over the edge. For some moments he sat gazing out over the bad lands, and then his hand slipped into the front of his shirt and withdrew a bottle of whiskey.

The girl's lips tightened as she watched him from behind her screen of naked roots and branches. He looked a long time at the bottle, shook it, and held it to the sun as he contemplated the little beads that sparkled at the edge of the liquor line. He read its label, and seemed deeply interested in the lines of fine print contained upon an oval sticker that adorned its back. Still holding the bottle, he once more stared out over the bad lands. Then he drew the cork and smelled of the liquor, breathing deeply of its fragrance, and turning, gazed intently toward the little white tent beside the stunted pines.

Alice saw that his eyes were serious as he set the bottle upon the rock beside him. And then, hardly discernible at first, but gradually assuming distinct form, a whimsical smile curved his lips as he looked at the bottle.

"Gosh!" he breathed, softly, "ain't you an' I had some nonsensical times? I ain't a damned bit sorry, neither. But our trails fork here. Maybe for a while—maybe for ever. But if it is for ever, my average will be right honourable if I live to be a hundred." Alice noticed how boyish the clean-cut features looked when he smiled that way. The other smile—the masking, cynical smile—made him ten years older. The face was once more grave, and he raised the bottle from the rock. "So long," he said, and there was just that touch of honest regret in his voice with which he would have parted from a friend. "So long. I've got a choice to make—an' I don't choose you."

The hand that held the bottle was empty. There was a moment of silence and then from far below came the tinkle of smashing glass. The Texan got up, adjusted the silk scarf at his neck, rolled a cigarette, and clambering down the sharp descent, made his way toward the grazing horses. Alice watched for a moment as he walked up to his own horse, stroked his neck, and lightly cuffed at the ears which the horse laid back as he playfully snapped at his master's hand. Then she scrambled from her hiding-place and hurried unobserved to her tent, where she threw herself upon the blankets with a sound that was somehow very like a sob.

When the breakfast of cold coffee and biscuits was finished the Texan watched Endicott's clumsy efforts to roll a cigarette.

"Better get you a piece of twine to do it with, Win," he grinned; "you sure are a long ways from home when it comes to braidin' a smoke. Saw a cow-hand do it once with one hand. In a show, it was in Cheyenne, an' he sure was some cowboy—in the show. Come out onto the flats one day where the boys was breakin' a bunch of Big O Little O horses—'after local colour,' he said." The Texan paused and grinned broadly. "Got it too. He clum up into the middle of a wall-eyed buckskin an' the doc picked local colour out of his face for two hours where he'd slid along on it—but he could roll a cigarette with one hand. There, you got one at last, didn't you? Kind of humped up in the middle like a snake that's swallowed a frog, but she draws all right, an' maybe it'll last longer than a regular one." He turned to Alice who had watched the operation with interest.

"If you-all don't mind a little rough climbin', I reckon, you'd count the view from the rim-rocks yonder worth seein'."

"Oh, I'd love it!" cried the girl, as she scrambled to her feet.

"Come on, Win," called the Texan, "I'll show you where God dumped the tailin's when He finished buildin' the world."

Together the three scaled the steep rock-wall. Alice, scorning assistance, was the first to reach the top, and once more the splendour of the magnificent waste held her speechless.

For some moments they gazed in silence. Before them, bathed in a pale amethyst haze that thickened to purple at the far-off edge of the world, lay the bad lands resplendent under the hot glare of the sun in vivid red and black and pink colouring of the lava rock. Everywhere the eye met the flash and shimmer of mica fragments that sparkled like the facets of a million diamonds, while to the northward the Bear Paws reared cool and green, with the grass of the higher levels reaching almost to the timber line.

"Isn't it wonderful?" breathed the girl. "Why do people stay cooped up in the cities, when out here there is—this?" Endicott's eyes met hers, and in their depths she perceived a newly awakened fire. She was conscious of a strange glow at her heart—a mighty gladness welled up within her, permeating her whole being. "He has awakened," her brain repeated over and over again, "he has——"

The voice of the Texan fell upon her ears softly as from a distance, and she turned her eyes to the boyish faced cow-puncher who viewed life lightly and who, she had learned, was the thorough master of his wilderness, and very much a man.

"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I suppose God foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated, "an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an' there—the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies, an' them big black buttes to the south are the Judith, an' you can see—way beyond the Judith—if you look close—the Big Snowy Mountains. They're more than a hundred miles away."

The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze, made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair of glasses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.

"What is it?" asked the girl.

"Rider of some kind. Maybe the I X round-up is workin' the south slope. An' maybe it's just a horse-thief. But it mightn't be either. Guess I'll just throw the hull on that cayuse of mine an' siyou down and see. He's five or six miles off yet, an' I've got plenty of time to slip down there. Glad the trail's on the west side. You two stay up here, but you got to be awful careful not to show yourselves. Folks down below look awful little from here, but if they've got glasses you'd loom up plenty big, an' posse men's apt to pack glasses." The two followed him to camp and a few moments later watched him ride off at a gallop and disappear in the scrub that concealed the mouth of the precipitous trail.

Hardly had he passed from sight than Bat rose and, walking to his saddle, uncoiled his rope.

"Where are you going?" asked Endicott as the half-breed started toward the horses.

"Me, oh, A'm trail long behine. Mebbe-so two kin see better'n wan."

A few minutes later he too was swallowed up in the timber at the head of the trail, and Alice and Endicott returned to the rim-rocks and from a place of concealment watched with breathless interest the course of the lone horseman.

After satisfying himself he was unobserved, the Texan pushed from the shelter of the rocks at the foot of the trail and, circling the butte, struck into a coulee that led south-eastward into the bad lands. A mile away he crossed a ridge and gained another coulee which he followed northward.

"If he's headin' into the bad lands I'll meet up with him, an' if he's just skirtin' 'em, our trails'll cross up here a piece," he reasoned as his horse carried him up the dry ravine at a steady walk. Presently he slanted into a steep side coulee that led upward to the crest of a long flat ridge. For a moment he paused as his eyes swept the landscape and then suddenly a quarter of a mile away a horseman appeared out of another coulee. He, too, paused and, catching sight of the Texan, dug in his spurs and came toward him at a run.

The cowboy's brows drew into a puzzled frown as he studied the rapidly approaching horseman. "Well, I'll be damned!" he grinned, "ain't he the friendly young spirit! His ma had ought to look after him better'n that an' teach him some manners. The idea of any one chargin' up to a stranger that way in the bad lands! One of these days he's a-goin' to run up again' an abrupt foreshortin' of his reckless young career." The rider was close now and the Texan recognized a self-important young jackass who had found work with one of the smaller outfits.

"It's that mouthy young short-horn from the K 2," he muttered, disgustedly. "Well, he'll sure cut loose an' earful of small talk. He hates himself, like a peacock." The cowboy pulled up his horse with a vicious jerk that pinked the foam at the animal's mouth and caused a little cloud of dust to rise into the air. Then, for a moment, he sat and stared.

"If you was in such a hell of a hurry," drawled the Texan, "you could of rode around me. There's room on either side."

The cowboy found his voice. "Well, by gosh, if it ain't Tex! How they stackin', old hand?"

"Howdy," replied the Texan, dryly.

"You take my advice an' lay low here in the bad lands an' they won't ketch you. I said it right in the Long Horn yeste'day mornin'—they was a bunch of us lappin' 'em up. Old Pete was there—an' I says to Pete, I says, 'Take it from me they might ketch all the rest of 'em but they won't never ketch Tex!' An' Pete, he says, 'You're just right there, Joe,' an' then he takes me off to one side, old Pete does, an' he says, 'Joe,' he says, 'I've got a ticklish job to be done, an' I ain't got another man I kin bank on puttin' it through.'"

The Texan happened to know that Mr. Peter G. Kester, owner of the K 2, was a very dignified old gentleman who left the details of his ranch entirely in the hands of his foreman, and the idea of his drinking in the Long Horn with his cowboys was as unique as was hearing him referred to as "Old Pete."

"What's ailin' him?" asked the Texan. "Did he lose a hen, or is he fixin' to steal someone's mewl?"

"It's them Bar A saddle horses," continued the cowboy, without noticing the interruption. "He buys a string of twenty three-year-olds offen the Bar A an' they broke out of the pasture. They range over here on the south slope, an' if them horse-thieves down in the bad lands has got 'em they're a-goin' to think twict before they run off any more K 2 horses, as long as I'm workin' fer the outfit."

"Are you aimin' to drive twenty head of horses off their own range single handed?"

"Sure. You can do it easy if you savvy horses."

The Texan refrained from comment. He wanted to know who was supposed to be interested in catching him, and why. Had someone told the truth about the lynching, and was he really wanted for aiding and abetting the pilgrim's escape?

"I reckon that's true," he opined. "They can't get me here in the bad lands."

The other laughed: "You bet they can't! Say, that was some ride you put up down to Wolf River. None of us could have done better."

"Did you say they was headin' this way?"

"Who?"

"Who would I