Читать книгу Rodeo - B.M. Bower - Страница 6

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SLIM and Happy Jack, grown heavy and plodding in their years of service, came jouncing home from the upper meadow in an old Ford with flapping front fenders, two irrigating shovels rattling in the back of the car. Their raucous welcome to the four from Hollywood was distinctly audible to the Kid where he sat on a flat place in the rock rim of the coulee, glooming down at the ranch and trying to swallow his disappointment in his four idols of the past. Slim and Happy were not awed by the resplendence of the visitors, it appeared; their pungent taunts concerning the Native Son's striped socks and knee pants floated up the hill, followed by Miguel's instant attack upon the ancient vehicle they drove.

"First time in your lives you ever topped a rough one," he cried derisively, "and you have to hobble your stirrups even now to stay with it more than a couple of jumps!"

The Kid grinned in spite of himself, for Happy and Slim had always been notoriously poor riders. He watched the group go off down to the old mess house together, all talking at once and laughing for no apparent reason, and his eyes followed them meditatively, a longing to be one of them growing stronger and stronger within him. He had expected to be a part of that hilarious reunion. Until he had seen them walking across the meadow toward him and had sensed an alien quality that went deeper than the difference in their appearance, he had counted the days to their coming. And they had been like utter strangers when he saw them; youth is always slow to adapt itself to the change of years.

But now, as he sat staring absently down upon the roof that sheltered them as it had done before he was born, an ache of homesickness gripped the Kid by his throat. They were down there in the mess house—Weary, Pink, Andy Green and the Native Son—just as they used to be when he was a little tad and begged his mother to let him eat with the boys, because he was going to be a cow-puncher when he got big enough. They were there in the same big room, with the stove and kitchen things in one end and the long table in the other; the same stove, the same table, almost the same dishes. They'd be glad that nothing had changed; nothing except old Patsy, who was dead, his place filled now by another old round-up cook, old Bob Simms. Bob knew the boys too. They'd be glad the old mess house hadn't changed much. Didn't the Kid know? He who had held that room close in his affections, a secret shrine wherein he had worshiped the memory of his beloved Happy Family.

Well, the old bunch was together again; most of them, anyway. Now and then a burst of laughter floated up to him; Slim's great bellow that was so seldom heard nowadays; Andy Green's high, rocking hoo-hoo-hoo that could set the echoes laughing across the creek against the farther coulee wall. The Kid's eyes softened. After all, they were the same old boys, by the sound of them. He had maybe been too quick to judge. Knickers and putts—what if they had permitted themselves to slip into city ways and city dress? He remembered somewhat guiltily a pair of plus fours packed away in his own trunk, and that he even went so far as to wear them upon occasion.

The Kid got up and went to where Stardust stood patiently waiting, reins dropped to the ground, and rode over to where the trail dropped down through a wide gap in the rim rock, following it down across the Hogsback, down the steeper slope below to the creek. He was in a hurry now. He wanted to get in on the fun in the mess house. It seemed as though he had not seen the boys at all; those strange men who walked out of the willows had not counted. In the mess house, sitting around the long table, eating and talking and smoking, it would seem more like old times.

Cal had come sometime during the Kid's long absence. The boys were sitting around the table, just as the Kid had expected them to be doing; smoking and talking of old times. The horses they had ridden, the long drives, this mischance and that adventure—they scarcely noticed his entrance, so engrossed were they in reminiscence. The Kid, finding himself a perch on a high box back in the corner, listened and looked on and tried to close his mind against a certain disquieting conviction that was growing within him. They were boasting of their old skill, magnifying old exploits—"telling it scarey," in their own phraseology—and they were belittling the present and sneering at the riders of to-day.

"I tell you, Chip, they don't grow 'em no more!" Andy Green declared vehemently, bringing his fist down hard on the table—a gesture he had learned at the studios, no doubt. "These young squirts that have sprung up and claim to be riders are pitiful to an old cowhand! You take it in pictures, for instance. The camera does most of the stunt stuff—all that ain't done by old hands like Pink and some others. These young contest sheiks—why the poor saps don't know a bronc from a polo pony!"

"Yeah, take these contests they put on all over the country nowadays!" Pink chimed in. "Paid performers crow-hopping around on old benches that ain't got a real buck-jump in 'em and never had. Saps pay their money and go and gawp, and think they're seeing the real West! It makes you sick. There ain't any real West no more!"

The Kid, over in his corner, got up and lounged forward, hands in pockets as if he didn't care, but with a light in his eyes that said the slight had struck home.

"How is it, then, that the record for roping and tying has been lowered on you old-timers by the young squirts of to-day?" he drawled. "Bulldogging too. The saps that go and gawp will give you the laugh if your time runs over twenty seconds. And have you ever seen Chile Bean do his stuff; or Invalid, or Heel Do?" He paused to give them a chance if they wanted it.

"I'm one of the young squirts you're talking about," he went on. "You fellows were tophole—nobody knows that better than I do. But when you say there is no more West, you're dead wrong. You ought to take your heads out of the nosebag and look around, before you give us the raspberry. There is a West, and it's just as real as it used to be, even though it's different. There are real riders and ropers and bulldoggers too—under twenty-five years of age."

There was a moment of that dead silence which is a contradiction and a reproach.

"If there's any of the real West left, I sure as hell would like to see it!" said Pink, taking up the challenge.

"I can show you some, if you care to take the time."

"As for the riding and roping," Andy began, in the tone of one who would presently put the Kid in his place, "they don't tie down the kinda critters we used to. A sucking calf is some different from a three-year-old steer. And horses don't buck the way they used to."

"Don't they, though! Sometime when you feel particularly lucky, go hunt up any of the horses I've named, or any one of a dozen others."

"You're speaking out of turn, Kid." Chip gave him a fatherly look of reproof. "What you know about riding and roping you could write on a dime. This bunch has spent more hours in the saddle than you have lived. Do you think none of us ever saw a contest?"

"We're going to have a chance next month," the Native Son observed in his negligently good-natured tone. "I'm due to go to Chicago on location when they hold their big rodeo there. Andy's going to direct the contest scenes, and maybe," he added dryly, "we can work it so Pink and Weary can go along. That'll give us all a chance to see some real pretty riding!"

The Kid was leaving, but he stopped in the doorway and looked back at the speaker.

"If you get in a jam and want a double to ride for you," he said evenly, "look me up, Mig. I'm liable to be there."

"Like thunder you'll be there!" Chip wrathfully exclaimed. "You'll be in school, where you belong!"

But the Kid was walking down the deep-worn path to the stable and probably did not hear him. He was a little ashamed of himself even before he reached his horse, yet he knew that he was speaking the truth—except that fling at the Native Son, of course. They didn't make any better riders than the Native Son, the Kid admitted honestly to himself; or than he had been, before the movies had got him. He hadn't meant that, and he was sorry he had said it. It discounted his other assertion. They would think he was just mouthy and stuck on himself, and let it go at that.

But no real West? The old buffalo hunters and Indian fighters had probably made the same complaint when the Happy Family rode the range. They, too, had been told that the old West was gone and the country was getting too settled and civilized. They had laughed at the notion, no doubt; but here they were, mourning in their turn the passing of the West. It angered the Kid, who loved every mile of it for its bigness, the wide sweep of its prairies, the unconquerable vastness of its mountain ranges, for the heady keenness of its whooping winds.

"They're wrong, dead wrong!" he told himself hotly, when he was lying in his camp bed gazing up at the purple sky with its millions of twinkling lights. "There are more fences and more towns and more people, but it isn't tame yet, by a long shot! They think it's slowed down, but it's just because they've slowed down themselves. The young fellows don't find it so tame! They don't hit the pace they used to hit. It—oh, heck, it's their youth that's gone, and they don't know it!"

Upon that pathetic thought the Kid meditated long and pityingly. It was a darned shame men had to grow old and soft, so they couldn't ride a bronc or throw a rope the way they used to do. He wished they had his muscle and endurance—he'd take them into country as wild as when the Indians painted their ponies and themselves and rode in breechclouts with feathers in their hair. Why a little more—just a few more years—and they'd be like his uncle J. G., just sitting in the house doing nothing but talk about old times!

"Gosh, I hadn't realized it, but the Happy Family's getting old! Too bad . . . good boys too, before they lost their stride . . ." Upon that commiserating thought the Kid's heavy-lashed eyelids drooped and stayed down. In the cool starlight he slept with the sound, untroubled slumber of youth.

In the guest room of the white house on the knoll a vastly different point of view was discussed at about that time, when Andy Green had at last felt the yearning for sleep after a hard day's drive and was making ready for bed. A muttered exclamation when he stubbed his bare toe against a rocker had roused his wife, and some conversation ensued. Part of it concerned the very thing the Kid was thinking about as he fell asleep.

"Has the Kid come back, Andy? Dell felt really put out about his going off that way when he knew we were here and all. Of course, she tried to hide it, but she kept making excuses for him—you saw him, didn't you? What's he like?"

Andy gave a grunt that might have meant anything.

"Isn't he—nice?"

"Oh-h—just a darned swell-headed goslin'—looks like Chip used to, quite a lot; something like his mother too. Thinks he's forgot more than the rest of us ever knew. I don't know where he gets it—if he was my kid I'd sure take a lot of that out of him. Chip's too easy."

"I can't imagine the Kid turning out like that," Rosemary made regretful comment. "He was the dearest boy—"

"It sure is too bad," Andy agreed. "High hat—that kind of thing. I guess maybe he'll get over it in time, but he sure as the world has got a bad attack of know-it-all now! Why—" he raised his voice indignantly, then dropped it to a mumble when his wife nudged him warningly "—he was even trying to tell us boys we didn't know what real riding and roping is! Can you beat that?"

"No!" Rosemary managed to express a world of incredulity in that one word.

"And that," Andy finished with gloomy finality, "is what a man gets when he sends a kid to college. Takes 'em ten years to get over it."

"What a shame!" yawned Mrs. Andy. "Dell is so proud she'd die before she'd own she's disappointed in Claude—"

"I don't know as she is. Mothers don't see their kids the way other folks do. Or fathers either—though I must say Chip don't seem overly keen about him."

"Too bad!" decided Rosemary, much as the Kid had done. "He was such a good boy, I hate to think of him spoiled—but of course you mustn't let on you notice it, Andy. It would hurt Dell terribly if she thought—"

"Oh, I ain't going to tell 'em what I think of him," Andy mumbled sleepily. "Gosh, it's good to get stretched out in a good bed, after some of them hotels we put up at! My old bones ache to-night—we'll take it easier going back. No sense in driving like Billy-be-damn just to get over the road. If Mig wants to step on 'er he can; I'm goin' to take it easy."

So Andy unconsciously proved the Kid's deductions were in a measure correct, though neither of them was aware of it.