Читать книгу Benton of the Royal Mounted: A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police - Ralph S. Kendall - Страница 9

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“Whoo-oh!—Steady!... Let’s git me cigarette lit!

Oh, a cow-puncher’s curse on that frizzling sun!

There!... Whoop!... Go to her, goldarn it!

Yu’ dirty, mean, locoed old son of a gun!”

—Bronco-Buster’s Chorus

Morning came, and with it a visit from one Gallagher, a middle-aged bachelor, his nearest neighbor, whose ranch lay about a mile distant. The Sergeant, seated outside the door, in the sun, smoking an after-breakfast pipe, greeted the newcomer civilly as he lowered himself stiffly out of the saddle, and waited for the other to divulge his business.

Nature had not been kind to Mr. Gallagher in regard to his physiognomy, and Ellis, whenever he contemplated that homely visage, from certain canine peculiarities therein, always mentally labeled him “Old Dog-face.” It was an ugly, repellant countenance in a way, but the eyes were those of an honest man, and the thick lips expressed a species of genial humor.

Meeting each other casually at the usual weekly mail gatherings, Benton was always conscious of a kind of surly friendliness on Gallagher’s part, that showed up in marked contrast to the silent, mistrustful antipathy, with which many of those present generally regarded him; which attitude, be it remarked, worried the Sergeant but little. The rancher broached the subject of his visit with little preamble.

“Old man Tucker, from Fish Creek, was over wantin’ to see yu’ yesterday, Sargint. Didn’t find yu’ in, so he come around to my place before he went back.”

“Oh,” said Ellis absently, and with a slight trace of weary irritation in his tones; “what’s bitin’ that old fool now—was he full?”

It was curiously noticeable that, when back amidst the habitues and surroundings of his former life and calling, how naturally he reverted to the terse, ungrammatical speech of the range.

Gallagher, with a grin, lit his pipe, and leaning back in the chair that the Sergeant had dragged out for him, blew out a cloud of smoke reflectively.

“Well, he weren’t what you’d call exactly sober,” he drawled. “It was the same old business.... Says there’s some of them a layin’ to run off that bunch o’ hawsses o’ his. Reckons he’s got it straight this time.”

“He always has,” responded the policeman, spitting with contemptuous remembrance. “I’m just about fed up with his picayune happenings. He makes me tired. Time and again he’s got me a chasin’ over to his place, and there’s never nothin’ doin’.... Just some gag they’ve bin a throwin’ into him.”

The other was silent for a space. “Mebbe,” he acquiesced musingly. “But I don’t know, Sargint ... he seemed more worked up this time’n I ever see him.”

Ellis pondered over this dilemma. A complaint was a complaint, and anyhow, no one could ever accuse him of neglecting his duty.

“See here; look,” he said presently. “I’d go on over and see what’s worryin’ that old soor, but fact is, I’m stuck for a hawss. That black o’ mine went lame on me comin’ home last night. Picked up a nail. He won’t be fit to ride for three or four days. Got anythin’ in yore bunch yu’ could fix me up with till he gets sound again, Gallagher?”

The rancher considered a moment or two with a grave, inscrutable face. “Let’s see,” he said thoughtfully, the corners of his mouth twitching ever so little. “I guess,” he broke out finally. “Will yu’ come on over, Sargint?”

An hour later Benton, perched on the top rail of Gallagher’s horse corral, lazily watched that worthy driving in his band of horses from their range in a neighboring coulee and, slipping down on their near approach, he opened the gate and then effaced himself out of their sight carefully, to prevent a possible scare.

Well strung out, with heads up and manes and tails flying, they followed their leader, a powerfully-built, buckskin gelding. It was an old, well-known trail to them and, presently, with customary obedience, they surged through the opening into the big main corral, where they stood around, a playfully biting, kicking mass of horseflesh, while their owner, bringing up the rear, dismounted from his quiet old cow-pony and hung up the gate behind them. Ellis, emerging from his hiding-place, climbed up beside him on the fence, and together the two men gazed silently awhile at the animated scene below them.

There were perhaps about thirty head all told, of different grades, ages, and colors, from the heavy Percheron-bred draught-horse to the slender, cat-like cayuse.

Benton, with the eye of a connoisseur of horseflesh, quickly ran them over. “Pretty mixed bunch,” he mumbled, ungraciously.

“Well, yu’ ain’t buyin’ ’em, Sargint,” answered Gallagher, somewhat nettled at the other’s remark, and a silence ensued which was finally broken by Ellis “shooing” at a big Clyde-built mare, heavy in foal, that was hiding another horse from his view. The startled animal slowly waddled away, disclosing the aforementioned buckskin, which bad somehow escaped the Sergeant’s notice.

He quickly appraised its points. “Eyah,” he muttered; “now that’s some horse!”

And indeed his approval was justified for it was about as likely a looking specimen of the saddle-remount as one could wish to see, with the short, strong back, long, springy fetlocks, and powerful quarters that denoted speed and endurance no less than an easy gait.

“That sorrel ain’t a bad looker, either,” he pursued. “Are they saddle-broke, them two?”

“Yep,” said Gallagher shortly. “Yu’ kin take yore pick, Sargint, of anythin’ that’s in here.”

Benton, shading his eyes from the sun, scrutinized the two horses a little longer and then, leisurely dropping to the ground, slid into the saddle of Gallagher’s waiting horse.

“Guess I’ll have to borrow yore saddle and bridle a space, old-timer, if yu’ don’t mind,” he remarked. “Lord, but yu’ must be split to the chin. I’ll have to take these stirrups up a hole or two.”

Quickly unlacing the rawhide thongs, he adjusted them to his liking and, tying the horse’s halter-shank to the corral, unshipped the heavy stock-saddle and bridle, depositing them on the ground beside the fence.

The rancher’s high-heeled Kansas boots, with their huge-rowelled Mexican spurs, next attracted his attention and he stood for a moment silently eyeing them and his own broad-welted, flat-heeled footwear.

“What size boots d’yu’ wear, Gallagher?” he inquired, with a mild grin. “Nines, eh? ... same as me. D’yu’ mind changin’? I’m sure on the borrowin’ stunt all right this trip, but them stirrups of yores ain’t none too wide an’ I don’t much fancy gettin’ ‘hung up.’”

The other acquiesced willingly enough and the exchange was soon effected. Unstrapping the lariat from off the saddle, Benton climbed up and dropped inside the corral, the horses beginning immediately to circle around uneasily at his approach, raising clouds of dust.

“Which ’un yu’ goin’ to take, Sargint?” inquired their owner.

“Guess I’ll try out that buckskin first!” Ellis answered laconically. “I wanta hold him and that sorrel. We’ll let the others drift.”

Standing in the center of the corral, with an ease that bespoke long practise, he slowly shook out a workable loop and began to adroitly maneuver the buckskin to the rear of the bunch. But the latter, scenting danger, and being apparently an old hand at the game, was very elusive, diving head-down into the ruck always at the psychological moment. Patiently watching his chance as, for about the twentieth time the buckskin’s head reappeared amidst the flying manes, the Sergeant carelessly, with a curious overhand flip, swung and threw, the noose dropping fairly over the ears and nose.

Tailing onto the rope, with heels digging into the soft ground, he slid for a few yards, then suddenly detaching the animal from the retreating bunch with a powerful hip-heave he brought it up facing him.

Gallagher watched the performance with a lazy curiosity. “Knows his business with a rope all right,” was his silent comment.

Once caught, as Benton coiled in the slack, hand over hand, the buckskin walked meekly up to his captor like one who knows the game is up, and allowed himself to be patted. Leaving Gallagher to hold the animal, Ellis proceeded to cut the sorrel into a small inner corral. This done, he opened the gate once more, and with a wild whirl and surge that scattered clouds of dust the late occupants eagerly streamed out on the run back to their range again.

Carrying the blanket, saddle, and bridle, the Sergeant entered the corral and cautiously approaching the held horse, deftly slipped the bit between its teeth and buckled the throat-lash firmly, then, drawing off the lariat, picked up the blanket and flopped it over the withers with a smack. The saddle next followed suit; the double cinches, although slapping the animal’s belly with the same deliberate roughness, failed to produce any startling effect.

“Seems gentle,” Benton muttered aloud.

“Yep,” assented Gallagher, in a toneless voice. “Better take th’ sorrel, Sargint.”

Ellis glanced up sharply, but the rancher’s face was set like an ugly, expressionless mask, and he gleaned nothing there.

“Why?” he inquired.

“Pitches some,” said the other drily and, with calculating inference, “the sorrel, he’s gentle. I kin ride him.”

Ellis hesitated a moment. He was hardly to be classed in the same category as a greenhorn, whom ignorance, taunt, or bravado will often provoke into climbing onto a bad horse, with equally bad results, but his reputation as a rider was at stake, for he knew Gallagher’s tongue was prone to wag at times. The latter’s last words—“The sorrel, he’s gentle!”—rankled a little, and his decision was made with an unconscious snort of contempt, as he dragged at the latigo straps and drew the cinches taut.

“Pitches, does he?” he mumbled to himself. All right, then! He would show Mr. “Dog-face” Gallagher something. And bending down he buckled on the big, straight-shanked, Mexican spurs. “Gimme yore quirt, Gallagher!”

Crossing the split reins carefully in the palm of his left hand and catching the cheek-strap of the bridle, he reached out his right and guided his foot cautiously into the stirrup, eyeing the buckskin closely the while. The animal stood ominously quiet. Grasping the horn he swung lightly and warily into the saddle and settled his feet home. Still no movement from the motionless horse. Vaguely uneasy, he clucked and gave it a light touch with the spurs. The effect was magical. The ears suddenly flattened. A ripple ran along the black-striped back and as, with a hoarse, grunting scream the buckskin dropped its head and bucked into the air, in a flash Benton realized that he was on one of the worst horses it had ever been his lot to tackle.

“Oh—o-ooh—he-e—s-ss—a-ah!” in bitter bodily anguish, he groaned, as again and again the horse rocketed and propped, stiff and hard with terrible impact, and with a jarring side-shake that seemed to shiver his very soul. The blood burst from his nose and mouth under the constant violent concussions and he felt deathly sick. Still the snapping, whalebone-like back rose and descended, “sun-fishing” in midair with a curious upward flirt of the rump that was well-nigh irresistible, causing the Sergeant’s hand to swing up towards the horn more than once, and but for the fact of Gallagher watching, he would have “pulled leather” without shame. “Not grain fed.... Can’t keep this up much longer!” he gasped to himself. And shifting slightly in the saddle he threw all his dead weight on to the nigh fore-leg. It was an old trick that Ellis had often used in his younger and more elastic days, and by degrees he became conscious between the twisting, jerking leaps of the bucking fury under him, that the animal was weakening.

Its resistance provoked a wild, unreasoning wave of anger to surge through him, driving the remnants of his sick faintness before it, and raising his hand he quirted and raked the still pitching buckskin with a ferocity that finally drove it to a sweating standstill.

“Go to it, d—n yu’!” he yelled, but the horse had had enough and only broke into an easy trot around the corral. Swinging out of the saddle, he stood for a moment swaying, dazed from the terrific ordeal he had undergone.

To him came Gallagher. “Holy doodle!” exclaimed that worthy, with a sort of miserable heartiness, “he sure went after yu’ some!”

The policeman did not answer, but breathing in deep, heavy gasps, and streaming with perspiration, slowly raised his head. At the unmistakable silent animosity depicted on that drawn, bitter face, the rancher changed countenance and retreated slightly with a deprecating gesture.

“Now don’t yu’ go for to blame me, Sargint!” he began. “—’Member I warned yu’!”

Ellis looked at him loweringly, with evil irresolution. The man was right, he reflected, but nothing makes us so unforgiving as the consciousness of being in the wrong.

“Warned me?” he echoed, with a mirthless laugh, and at the same time blowing a stream of blood from his nose. “Oh, aye, yu’ warned me all right—like Paddy warned his landlord!...”

Regaining his breath somewhat, he resumed with savage ill-humor. “Yu’ve an ugly mug, Gallagher.... If I thought for a minute yu’d handed me this here stick of dynamite for a josh, I’d push what’s meant to be yore face right in, an’ don’t yu’ forget it!”

The other’s dog-like visage contracted with a grin and he emitted a short, barking laugh.

“Easy! easy there, Sargint!... Now don’t yu’ start for to get mad ’bout it,” he chuckled. “Never yu’ mind my mug. I ain’t a beauty, I know.... But handsome is that handsome does.... ’Member, I’m lendin’ yu’ a horse.”

At the remembrance of the man’s generosity, and his good-natured response, Benton’s short-lived fit of bad temper quickly evaporated, and he felt guilty and ashamed at his own illogical outburst.

“Gallagher,” he said hoarsely, spitting out a mouthful of blood and dust, “I guess I’m in wrong.... I take it all back.”

With an earnestness that there was no mistaking, the rancher reached out his hand.

“Sargint,” he said solemnly, “shake. Yu’re a rider.” And in the warmth of that grip Ellis became vaguely conscious that his nerve had won for him a friend.

Good fellowship established once more, Gallagher’s taciturnity vanished and he became voluble and communicative.

“Now, see here, look; I’ll tell yu’, Sargint,” he rambled on. “I raised that hawss, an’ I know him like a book. There’s only two men ever stayed with him. They’re no-goods, both of ’em, but they kin ride. Yu’ know ’em, too—Short an’ Dirty’s one, an’ that there Jules Le Frambois yu’ve just took down for rustlin’ Billy Jacques’ stock, t’other. Jules—he got piled higher’n a kite, first crack outer th’ box, but he stayed with him th’ second trip. Wanst he finds a feller kin ride him he quits pitchin’ right away with that feller—for good. Yu’ git on him now an’ see ’f I ain’t right.”

Ellis did so and, with a rough slap of the quirt and a thrust of the spurs, thumbing the horse’s withers and fanning its ears with his hat; but all his efforts to make the buckskin hump again were fruitless, and the Sergeant, as he felt the surge of the easy-gaited, powerful animal under him, knew that here was a remount that could be depended on in any emergency.

“What’d I tell yu’?” said Gallagher, as Benton dismounted and off-saddled. “Nary a jump—an’ Short an’ Dirty, he rode him for three months—an’ he says he’s good on th’ rope an’ll stand wherever his lines is dropped. Now yu’ take him and ride him as long as yu’ want, Sargint.... I guess there ain’t nobody else around here as is anxious,” he added, grinning. “What’s his name? Why, I calls him ‘Shakem.’ He’s sure shook a few of ’em, too. I didn’t aim to get yu’ hurt none, but some of th’ boys had it that yu’ used to bust for th’ ‘Turkey-Track,’ an’, well, I kinder own I was a bit minded to see if yu’ shaped like it,” he ended whimsically.

The ghost of a smile for a moment illuminated Benton’s blood-stained, tired face as, lighting a cigarette, he retrieved his own boots and prepared to lead his borrowed mount away.

“An’ are yu’ satisfied?” he queried wearily.

“Aye,” answered the rancher, with fervent conviction. “I sure am that. Yes, I’ll ride on over an’ fix up that black o’ yores if yu’re away th’ night. So long, Sargint.”