The Cow Puncher - Robert J. C. Stead (best reads .TXT) 📗

tired, so let's walk.… It's our last chance."

She ran for her sweater and rejoined him in a moment. They walked in silence down a path through the fragrant trees, but Dave turned from time to time to catch a glimpse of her face, white and fine as ivory in the soft light. He had much to say; he felt that the ages could not utter all he had to say to-night, but he was tongue-tied under the spell of her beauty.

"You squelched him, all right," he broke out at length.

"Just in time, too, I think," she replied. "I was watching your hands."

He smiled a quiet but very confident smile. "Reenie," he said, "that fellow makes me sick. All the way out he talked about girls. If it hadn't been that I was makin' the trip for your father I'd 'a' licked him on the road, sure. He's a city chap, an' wears a white collar, but he ain't fit to speak your name. Another minute an' I'd 'a' had 'im by the neck." He seized a spruce limb that stuck across their path. It was the size of a stout stick but he snapped it with a turn of his wrist. It was very tough; it oozed sticky stuff where he broke it. "His neck," he said, between his teeth. "Jus' like that."

They reached an open space. Something black—or was it red?—lay on the ground. Dave bent over it a moment, then looked up to her white, clear face, whiter and clearer than ever since witnessing the strength of his hate.

"It's Brownie," he said, as calmly as he could. "Half et up. Wolves, I guess."

He saw her eyes grow slowly larger in the moonlight. Without a word she sank to her knees. He saw her fingers about her head, burrowing in her hair. Then she looked up, over the black trees, to the sky with its white moon and its few great stars.

"The poor, poor thing," she breathed. "The poor, innocent thing. Why did it have to die?"

"It's always the innocent things 'at suffers," he answered.

"Always the innocent things," she repeated mechanically. "Always—"

She sprang to her feet and faced him. "Then what about the justice of God?" she demanded.

"I don' know nothin' about the justice of God," he answered, bitterly. "All I know is the crittur 't can't run gets caught."

There was a long pause. "It doesn't seem right," she said at length.

"It ain't right," he agreed. "But I guess it's life. I see it here on the prairies with every living thing. Everything is a victim, some way or other. Even the wolves 'at tore this little beast 'll go down to some rancher's rifle, maybe, although they were only doing what nature said … I guess it's the same way in the cities; the innocent bein' hunted, an' the innocenter they are the easier they're caught. An' then the wolves beggin' off, an' sayin' it was only nature."

The girl had no answer. No one had ever talked to her like this. What did this country boy know? And yet it was plain he did know. He had lived among the fundamentals.

"I guess I was like that, some," he went on. "I've been caught. I guess a baby ain't responsible for anything, is it? I didn't pick my father or my mother, did I? But I got to bear it."

There was something near a break in his voice on the last words. She felt she must speak.

"I think your father is a wonderful old man," she said, "and your mother must have been wonderful, too. You should be proud of them both."

"Reenie, do you mean that?" he demanded. His eyes were looking straight into hers. Once before he had faced her with that question, and she had not forgotten.

"Absolutely," she answered. "Absolutely, I mean it."

"Then I'm goin' to say some more things to you," he went on, rapidly. "Things 'at I didn't know whether to say or not, but now they've got to be said, whatever happens. Reenie, I haven't ever been to school, or learned lots of things I should 'a' learned, but I ain't a fool, neither. I know 'at when you're home you live thousands of miles from me, but I know 'at in your mind you live further away than that. I know it's like all the prairies an' all the oceans were between us. But I know, too, that people cross prairies an' oceans, an' I'm wantin' to cross. I know it takes time, an' I'll be a slow traveller, but I'm a mighty persistent crittur when I start out. I didn't learn to break all those bottles in a day. Well, I can learn other things, too, an' I will, if only it will take me across. I'm goin' to leave this old ranch, someway, jus' as soon as it can be arranged. I'm goin' to town, an' work. I'm strong; I can get pretty good wages. I've been thinkin' it all over, and was askin' some questions in town to-day. I can work days and go to school nights. An' I'll do it if—if it'll get me across. You know what I mean. I ain't askin' no pledges, Reenie, but what's the chance? I know I don't talk right, an' I don't eat right—you tried not to notice, but you couldn't help—but Reenie, I think right, an' I guess with a girl like you that counts more than eatin' and talkin'."

She had thought she could say yes or no to any question he could ask, but as he poured forth these plain passionate words she found herself enveloped in a flame that found no expression in speech. She had no words. She was glad when he went on.

"I know I'm only a boy, an' you're only a girl. That's why I don' ask no pledge. I leave you free, only I want you to stay free until I have my chance. Will you promise that?"

She tried to pull herself together. "You know I've had a good time with you, Dave," she said, "and I've gone with you everywhere, like I would not have gone with any other boy I ever knew, and I've talked and let you talk about things I never talked about before, and I believe you're true and clean, and—and—"

"Yes," he said. "What's your answer?"

"I know you're true and clean," she repeated. "Come to me—like that—when I'm a woman and you're a man, and then—then we'll know."

He was tall and straight, and his shadow fell across her face, as though even the moon must not see. "Reenie," he said, "kiss me."

For one moment she thought of her mother. She knew she stood at the parting of the ways; that all life for her was being moulded in that moment. Then she put both her arms about his neck and drew his lips to hers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dave's opportunity came sooner than he expected. After the departure of the Hardys things at the old ranch were as both father and son had predicted, very different. They found themselves on a sort of good behaviour; a behaviour which, unhappily excited in each other grave suspicions as to purpose. Between these two men rude courtesies or considerations of any kind had been so long forgotten that attempts to reintroduce them resulted in a sort of estrangement more dangerous than the old open hostility. The tension steadily increased, and both looked forward to the moment when something must give way.

For several weeks the old man remained entirely sober, but the call of the appetite in him grew more and more insistent as the days went by, and at last came the morning when Dave awoke to find him gone. He needed no second guess; the craving had become irresistible and his father had ridden to town for the means to satisfy it. The passing days did not bring his return, but this occasioned no anxiety to Dave. In the course of a carouse his father frequently remained away for weeks at a stretch, and at such times it was Dave's custom to visit the boys on a ranch a dozen miles over the foothills to the southward. These boys had a sister, and what was more natural than that Dave should drown his loneliness in such company?

But this time he did not ride southward over the hills. He moped around the ranch buildings, sat moodily by the little stream, casting pebbles in the water, or rode over the old trails on which she had so often been his companion. The season was bright with all the glory of the foothill September; the silver dome of heaven, cloudless morning and noon, ripened with the dying day into seas of gold on which floated cloud-islands of purple and amethyst, and through the immeasurable silence of the night moon and stars bathed the deep valleys in celestial effulgence. But in the heart of the boy was neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, but only the black gulfs of loneliness from which his light had gone out.

Then the old man's horse came home. Dave saw it coming up the trail, not running wildly, but with nervous gallop and many sidelong turnings of the head. As the boy watched he found a strange emptiness possess him; his body seemed a phantom on which his head hung over-heavy. He spoke to the horse, which pulled up, snorting, before him; noted the wet neck and flanks, and at last the broken stirrup. Then, slowly and methodically, and still with that strange sensation of emptiness, he saddled his own horse and set out on the search.…

After the last rites had been paid to the old rancher Dave set about at once to wind up his affairs, and it was not until then that he discovered how deeply his father had been involved. The selling of the cattle and the various effects realized only enough to discharge the liabilities, and when this had been done Dave found himself with a considerable area of unmarketable land, a considerable bundle of paid bills, and his horse, saddle and revolver. He rode his horse to town, carrying a few articles of wear with him. It was only after a stiff fight he could bring himself to part with his one companion. The last miles into town were ridden very slowly, with the boy frequently leaning forward and stroking the horse's neck and ears.

"Tough doin's, ol' Slop-eye," he would say. "Tough doin's. But it's got to be done. I can't keep you in town; 't ain't like out on the old ranch. An' I got a bigger job now than ever you an' me stood in on, an' we've stood in on some big ones, too, ain't we? But that's gone an' done; that old life's all busted, all of a sudden, like a bottle. Busted an' run out. I got a big job on now, an' you can't take no part. You jus' got to get out. You're done, see?" He sold horse and saddle for sixty dollars and took a room at a cheap hotel until he should find work and still cheaper lodgings.

In the evening he walked through the streets of the little cow-town. It was not altogether new to him; he had frequently visited it for business or pleasure, but he had never felt the sense of strangeness which oppressed him this night. In the past he had always been in the town as a visitor; his roots were still in the ranch; he could afford to notice the ways of the town, and smile to himself a whimsical smile and go on. But now he was throwing in his lot with the town; he was going to be one of it, and it stretched no arms of welcome to him. It snubbed him with its indifference.… He became aware that he was very lonely. He became aware that the gathering twilight in the great hills had never seemed so vague and