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

“You'll have to show me the trail, pardner,” said Bud when they were making their way cautiously out of town by way of the tin can suburbs. “I could figure out the direction all right, and make it by morning; but seeing you grew up here, I'll let you pilot.”

“You'll have to tell me where you want to go, first,” said Eddie with a good deal of sullenness still in his voice.

“Little Lost.” Without intending to do so, Bud put a good deal of meaning in his voice.

Eddie did not say anything, but veered to the right, climbing higher on the slope than Bud would have gone. “We can take the high trail,” he volunteered when they stopped to rest the horses. “It takes up over the summit and down Burroback Valley. It's longer, but the stage road edges along the Sinks and—it might be rough going, after we get down a piece.”

“How about the side-hill trail, through Catrock Peak?”

Eddie turned sharply. In the starlight Bud was watching him, wondering what he was thinking.

“How'd you get next to any side-hill trail?” Eddie asked after a minute. “You been over it?”

“I surely have. And I expect to go again, to-nigh! A young fellow about your size is going to act a pilot, and get me to Little Lost as quick as possible. It'll be daylight at that.”

“If you got another day coming, it better be before daylight we get there,” Eddie retorted glumly. H hesitated, turned his horse and led the way down the slope, angling down away from the well-travelled trail over the summit of Gold Gap.

That hesitation told Bud, without words, how tenuous was his hold upon Eddie. He possessed sufficient imagination to know that his own carefully discipline past, sheltered from actual contact with evil, had given him little enough by which to measure the soul of a youth like Eddie Collier.

How long Eddie had supped and slept with thieves and murderers, Bud could only guess. From the little that Marian had told him, Eddie's father had been one of the gang. At least, she had plainly stated that he and Lew had been partners—though Collier might have been ranching innocently enough, and ignorant of Lew's real nature.

At all events, Eddie was a lad well schooled in inequity such as the wilderness fosters in sturdy fashion. Wide spaces give room for great virtues and great wickedness. Bud felt that he was betting large odds on an unknown quantity. He was placing himself literally in the hands of an acknowledged Catrocker, because of the clean gaze of a pair of eyes, the fine curve of the mouth.

For a long time they rode without speech. Eddie in the lead, Bud following, alert to every little movement in the sage, every little sound of the night. That was what we rather naively call “second nature”, habit born of Bud's growing years amongst dangers which every pioneer family knows. Alert he was, yet deeply dreaming; a tenuous dream too sweet to come true, he told himself; a dream which he never dared to dream until the cool stars, and the little night wind began to whisper to him that Marian was free from the brute that had owned her. He scarcely dared think of it yet. Shyly he remembered how he had held her hand to give her courage while they rode in darkness; her poor work-roughened little hand, that had been old when he took it first, and had warmed in his clasp. He remembered how he had pressed her hands together when they parted—why, surely it was longer ago than last night!—and had kissed them reverently as he would kiss the fingers of a queen.

“Hell's too good for Lew Morris,” he blurted unexpectedly, the thought of Marian's bruised cheek coming like a blow.

“Want to go and tell him so? If you don't yuh better shut up,” Eddie whispered fierce warning. “You needn't think all the Catrockers are dead or in jail. They's a few left and they'd kill yuh quicker'n they'd take a drink.”

Bud, embarrassed at the emotion behind his statement, rather than ashamed of the remark itself, made no reply.

Much as Eddie desired silence, he himself pulled up and spoke again when Bud had ridden close.

“I guess you come through the Gap,” he whispered. “They's a shorter way than that—Sis don't know it. It's one the bunch uses a lot—if they catch us—I can save my hide by makin' out I led you into a trap. You'll get yours, anyway. How much sand you got?”

Bud leaned and spat into the darkness. “Not much. Maybe enough to get through this scary short-cut of yours.”

“You tell the truth when you say scary. It's so darn crazy to go down Catrock Canyon maybe they won't think we'd tackle it. And if they catch us, I'll say I led yuh in—and then—say, I'm kinda bettin' on your luck. The way you cleaned up on them horses, maybe luck'll stay with you. And I'll help all I can, honest.”

“Fine.” Bud reached over and closed his fingers around Eddie's thin, boyish arm. “You didn't tell me yet why the other trail isn't good enough.”

“I heard a sound in the Gap tunnel, that's why. You maybe didn't know what it was. I know them echoes to a fare-ye-well. Somebody's there—likely posted waiting.” He was motionless for a space, listening.

“Get off-easy. Take off your spurs.” Eddie was down, whispering eagerly to Bud. “There's a draft of air from the blow-holes that comes this way. Sound comes outa there a lot easier than it goes in. Sis and I found that out. Lead your horse—if they jump us, give him a lick with the quirt and hide in the brush.”

Like Indians the two made their way down a rambling slope not far from where Marian had guided Bud. To-night, however, Eddie led the way to the right instead of the left, which seemed to Bud a direction that would bring them down Oldman creek, that