Читать книгу On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set - Coolidge Dane - Страница 38

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In a land where the desert is king the prolonged absence of even so undesirable a citizen as Pecos Dalhart is sure, after a while, to occasion comment. For Pecos had ridden out on the Carrizo trail without water, and the barren mesa had already claimed its dead from thirst. He was also hardly in his right mind, and though his horse knew the way home he might easily have arrived there without his master. José Garcia was the first to mention the matter to Old Crit, and received a hearty cursing for his pains. Another week passed by, making three, and still the cowboy did not come in for his mail. The bunch of dissipated punchers who lingered around the bunk-house under pretence of riding the range finally worked up quite a hectic interest in the affair, but none of them volunteered to make a search. The chances were that Mr. Dalhart, if still alive, was in an ugly mood—perhaps locoed by Crit's well-known brand of whiskey—and it would be dangerous for an IC man to ride in on him. As for Crit, his asperity wore down a little as the days of absence lengthened away; he retracted several statements which he had made to the effect that he hoped the blankety-blank was dead, and when one of Boone Morgan's deputies finally rode in to investigate the rumor he told him he was afraid the poor fellow had wandered out across the desert and perished of hunger and thirst.

Bill Todhunter was Boone Morgan's regular mountain deputy—sent out to look into all such affairs as this, and incidentally to get evidence which would come handy in the big tax-collecting that was being planned for the fall. He asked a few questions, whistled through his teeth and pondered the matter for a while, meanwhile scrutinizing the hard countenance of his informant with the speculative cynicism of his profession. This was not the first sad case that he had looked into where a man who was not really needed in the community had mysteriously disappeared, and in one desert tragedy which he had in mind the corpse had assayed more than a trace of lead.

"Did this man Dalhart ever fill out that assessor's blank I left for 'im?" he inquired, after a long pause, meanwhile squatting down and drawing cattle brands in the dirt.

"Don't know," replied Crit, shortly.

"Let's see, his brand was a Wine-glass, wasn't it?"

"Nope—Monkey-wrench."

"Oh, yes! Sure! I knew they was two new irons in there, but I got 'em mixed. The Wine-glass is yourn, ain't it?"

Crittenden nodded sullenly. It was the particular phase of his relations with Pecos Dalhart which he would rather not discuss with an officer. As for the deputy, he spun the wheel in his spur, whistled "Paloma," and looked out toward the east.

"Has he got any mail here waitin' for 'im?" he asked, rising slowly from his heels. "Well, you better give it to me, then—and a little grub. I've always wanted to take a look at that Lost Dog country, anyway."

It was a long trail and the tracks were a month old, but Pecos's had been the last shod horse to travel it and what few cattle there were in the country had not been able to obscure the shoe-marks. Following those ancient signs Bill Todhunter worked his way gradually into what had been up to that time, No Man's Land, not forgetting to count the Wine-glass cattle as he passed the water holes. Not so many years before the Apaches had held full sway over all the Tonto and Verde country and when the first settlers came in they had naturally located along the rivers, leaving the barren mountains to the last. It was a long way from nowhere, that mysterious little Lost Dog Cañon, and when the deputy rode into it looking for a man whose trail was a month old he felt the sobering influence of its funereal cliffs. Black and forbidding, they bent bodingly over the tiny valley with its grove of cottonwoods and wild walnuts, and upon the western rim a squalid group of buzzards dozed as if they had made a feast. At the edge of the stream Todhunter reined in his horse, but though his flanks were gaunted the animal would not drink. Instead he raised his head and snuffed the air, curiously. It looked ominous, for they were at the end of the trail and the tracks still pointed in. The deputy spurred nervously across the stream, still with his eye out for signs, and fetched up with a jerk. There, fresh and clean in the moist sand, were the imprints of a man's boots, coming down to the water—and not once or twice, but a dozen times.

"Ahem," coughed Todhunter, turning into the path, "stan' up hyar, bronc—what's the matter with you!" He jerked his unoffending horse out of the trail and clattered him over the rocks, for your true officer does not crowd in with drawn pistol on a man he cannot see. The deputy was strictly a man of peace—and he tried to look the part. His badge was pinned carefully to the inside flap of his vest and if he had a gun anywhere it did not show. He swung his quirt in one hand, idly slapping it against his chaps, and then, having offered every sign that he came openly and as a friend, he rode cautiously up to the camp.

There was a fire smouldering upon a stone-walled mound at the entrance to the cave and beside it, reclining in a rustic chair, sat Pecos Dalhart—watchful, silent, alert. In one hand he held a cigarette and the other supported a grimy newspaper which he had been reading. Behind him on tall poles were boxes filled with food, protected by tin cans, mushroomed out around the posts to keep the rats from climbing. His saddle was hung up carefully on a rack and his carbine leaned against the chair where he was sitting, but though he had seen no one for a month Pecos barely glanced up from his paper as the stranger drew near.

"How'd do," observed the deputy, sitting at ease in his saddle.

"Howdy," Pecos grunted, and languidly touching his dead cigarette to a coal he proceeded with his reading. Todhunter looked his camp over critically, took note of the amount of food stored in the rat-proof boxes and of the ingenious workmanship on the rustic chair; then his eyes wandered back and fixed themselves on Pecos. Instead of the roistering boy he had expected he beheld a full-grown man with a month's growth of curly beard and his jaw set like a steel-trap, as if, after all, he was not unprepared for trouble. His hat, however, was shoved back carelessly on his bushy head, his legs crossed, and his pose was that of elegant and luxurious ease. To the left arm of his chair he had attached a horse's hoof, bottom up, in the frog of which he laid his cigarettes; to the right was fastened a little box filled with tobacco and brown papers, and the fire, smouldering upon its altar, was just close enough to provide a light. Evidently the lone inhabitant of the cañon had made every endeavor to be comfortable and was not above doing a little play-acting to convey the idea of unconcern, but the deputy sheriff did not fail to notice the carbine, close at hand, and the pistol by his side. It seemed to him also that while his man was apparently deeply immersed in his month-old paper, his eyes, staring and intent, looked past it and watched his every move. The conversation having ceased, then, and his curiosity having been satisfied, Bill Todhunter leaned slowly back to his saddle bags and began to untie a package.

"Are you Mr. Dalhart?" he inquired, as the cowboy met his eye.

"That's my name," replied Pecos, stiffly.

"Well, I've got s'm' papers for you," observed the deputy, enigmatically, and if he had been in two minds as to the way Pecos would take this statement his doubts were instantly set at rest. At the word "papers"—the same being used for "warrants" by most officers of the law—the cowboy rose up in his chair and laid one hand on the butt of his revolver.

"Not for me!" he said, a cold, steely-blue look comin' into his eyes. "It'll take a better man than you to serve 'em!"

"These are newspapers," corrected the deputy, quietly. "Yore friends down on the Verde, not havin' seen you for some time, asked me to take out yore mail and see if you was all right."

"Oh!" grunted Pecos, suspiciously.

"And, bein' as you seem to be all O. K.," continued Todhunter, pacifically, "I'll jest turn 'em over to you and be on my way." He threw the bundle at his feet, wheeled his horse and without another word rode soberly down the trail.

"Hey!" shouted Pecos, as the stranger plunged through the creek, but if Todhunter heard him he made no sign. There are some people who never know when to go, but Bill Todhunter was not that kind.

"No, you bet that feller ain't dead," he observed, when Crittenden and the chance residents of Verde Crossing gathered about him to hear the news. "He's sure up an' comin', and on the prod bigger 'n a wolf. I wouldn't like to say whether he's quite right in the head or not but I reckon it'll pay to humor 'im a little. He'll be down here for grub in about another week, too."

The week passed, but not without its happenings to Verde Crossing. The first event was the return of Angevine Thorne from Geronimo, after a prolonged stay in the city Bastile. Crit sent the bail money down by Todhunter immediately upon hearing the news that Pecos Dalhart was alive and on the prod. The only man on the Verde who had any influence with Pecos was his old "cumrad," Babe, and Crittenden was anxious to get that genial soul back before Pecos came in for supplies. But the same buckboard that brought the Champion of Arizona back to his old haunts took his little friend Marcelina away, and the only reason the Señora would give was that her daughter was going to school. In vain Babe palavered her in Spanish and cross-questioned the stolid José. The fear of her lawless wooer was upon them—for were they not in debt to Crit—and not even by indirection would the fiery Señora give vent to the rage which burned in her heart.

"This is not a good place for my daughter," she said, her eyes carefully fixed upon the ground. "It is better that she should go to the Sisters' school and learn her catechism." So Marcelina was sent away from the evil men of Verde, for she was already a woman; but in the haste of packing she managed to snatch just one of the forbidden blue handkerchiefs, branded M.

It was a sombre welcome which awaited the lone rustler of Lost Dog Cañon when, driven perforce to town, he led his pack-horse up to the store. For a minute he sat in his saddle, silent and watchful; then, throwing his bridle-reins on the ground, he stalked defiantly through the door. A couple of IC cowboys were sitting at the card-table in the corner, playing a three-handed game of poker with Angy, and at sight of him they measured the distance to the door with their eyes.

"W'y, hello there, Pecos!" cried Angy, kicking over the table in his haste to grasp him by the hand. "Where you been all the time—we thought for a time here you was dead!"

"Might as well 'a been," said Pecos, gruffly, "for all anybody give a dam'!"

"Why? What was the matter? Did you git lost?"

"I lay out on the mesa for two days," answered the cowboy, briefly, "and about a month afterwards a feller come out to my camp to see if I was dead. This is a hell of an outfit," he observed, glancing malevolently at the IC cowboys, "and by the way," he added, "where was you all the time, Angy?"

Angevine Thorne's lips trembled at this veiled accusation and he stretched out his hands pleadingly. "I swear, Pardner," he protested, "I never heard a word about it until last Saturday! I was in the Geronimo jail."

"Oh!" said Pecos, and without more words he gave him his own right hand. The cowboys, who had been uneasy witnesses of the scene, seized upon this as a favorable opportunity to make their escape, leaving the two of them to talk it out together.

"What in the world happened to us, Angy?" demanded Pecos in a hushed voice, when the effusion of reconciliation had passed, "did Crit put gun-powder in our whiskey or was it a case of stuffed club? I was plumb paralyzed, locoed, and cross-eyed for a week—and my head ain't been right since!" He brushed his hand past his face and made a motion as of catching little devils out of the air, but Angy stayed his arm.

"Nothin' like that, Pecos," he pleaded, hoarsely, "I'm on the ragged edge of the jim-jams myself, and if I get to thinkin' of crawly things I'll sure get 'em! No, it was jest that accursed liquor! I don't know what happened—I remember Crit takin' me down to Geronimo and givin' me five dollars and then it was all a dream until I found myself in the jag-cell. But it's the liquor that does it, Pecos—that and the capitalistic classes and the officers of the law. They's no hope for the common people as long as they keep on drinkin'—there's always some feller like Crit to skin 'em, and the constables to run 'em in. It's a conspiracy, I tell you; they're banded together to drug and rob us—but, Pardner, there is one man who is going to balk the cowardly curs. Never, never, never, will I let another drop of liquor pass my lips!" He raised his hand to heaven as he swore the familiar oath, hoping and yet not hoping that some power would come down to him to help him fight his fate. "Will you join me, Cumrad?" he asked, laying hold of Pecos's shoulder. "You will? Well, let's shake on it—here's to the revolution!"

They shook, and turned instinctively toward the bar, but such a pledge cannot be cemented in the usual manner, so Angy led the way outside and sought a seat in the shade.

"Where's my little friend Marcelina?" inquired Pecos, after a long look at the white adobe with the brush ramada which housed the Garcia family, "hidin' behind a straw somewhere?"

"Gone!" said Angy, solemnly. "Gone, I know not where."

"What—you don't mean to say—" cried Pecos, starting up.

"Her mother sent her down to Geronimo the day that I came up," continued Babe, winking fast. "It looks as if she fears my influence, but she will not say. Poor little Marcelina—how I miss her!" He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and shook his head sadly. "Verde ain't been the same to me since then," he said, "an' life ain't worth livin'. W'y, Pecos, if I thought we done something we oughten to when we was drunk that time I'd go out and cut my throat—but the Señora is powerful mad. Kin you recollect what went on?"

A vision of himself trying to barter his mail-order package for a kiss flashed up before Pecos in lines of fire, but he shut his lips and sat silent. The exaltation and shame of that moment came back to him in a mighty pang of sorrow and he bowed his head on his arms. What if, in the fury of drink and passion, he had offered some insult to his Señorita—the girl who had crept unbeknown into his rough life and filled it with her smile! No further memory of that black night was seared into his clouded brain—the vision ended with the presentation of the package. What followed was confined only to the limitations of man's brutal whims. For a minute Pecos contemplated this wreck of all his hopes—then, from the abyss of his despair there rose a voice that cried for revenge. Revenge for his muddled brain, for the passion which came with drink: revenge for his girl, whom he had lost by some foolish drunken freak! He leapt to his feet in a fury.

"It's that dastard, Crit!" he cried, shaking his fists in the air. "He sold us his cussed whiskey—he sent us on our way! And now I'm goin' to git him!"

Angy gazed up at him questioningly and then raised a restraining hand.

"It's more than him, Cumrad," he said solemnly. "More than him! If Crit should die to-morrow the system would raise up another robber to take his place. It's the System, Pecos, the System—this here awful conspiracy of the capitalistic classes and the servile officers of the law—that keeps the poor man down. Worse, aye, worse than the Demon Rum, is the machinations which puts the power of government into the monopolistic hands of capital and bids the workingman earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. There is only one answer to the crime of government—the revolution!"

"Well, let 'er go then," cried Pecos, impulsively. "The revolution she is until the last card falls—but all the same I got my eye on Crit!"