Читать книгу Texas Man - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 4

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BOONE did not have with him a cent, but he would not have been able to use money if he had had any. In the pioneer Southwest the settlers did not go in debt, but work and supplies were often used as a medium of exchange instead of coin. He was beyond the farthest settlement, and in this wilderness there was nothing to sell. To offer to pay for a meal or a night’s lodging would have been an insult. These were courtesies due every chance comer.

After breakfast he rose and thanked his host, as one man to another. “Much obleeged, Mr. McLennon. I reckon I’ll be joggin’ on.”

Father and son exchanged looks.

“No need to push on yore reins,” the older man drawled. “You’re aimin’ to travel nights, you say. Rest yore saddle and stick around with us awhile. Our stock is some gaunted. Feed is good here. We won’t break camp for a day or two.”

The boy considered this. It would be safer to stay till dark. He might meet a band of Comanches, and that would not be so good. On the other hand, there was always the chance that his father or one of his brothers might arrive and ignominiously take him home. Already, no doubt, they were casting over the country on a search for him. If they should find his trail they might be here within a few hours.

“I’ll shove on,” he said.

McLennon shook his head. “Better not. We cut Injun sign yesterday. Maybe they’re peaceable hunters and maybe they’re not. Cain’t ever tell. Give ’em a chance to get outa the neighbourhood.”

“I’ll watch keerful.”

“No, son. Not for a while. If anything happened to you I couldn’t forgive myself.”

“There ain’t anything gonna happen to me.”

“Not as long as you stay here. The camp is yours. Make yoreself to home. You and Til can play together.”

Boone flushed angrily. They intended to detain him. He saw that. He resented this infringement on his individuality, but he knew that protest would be of no avail. It would be better to pretend to accept their decision, to assume that he was staying of his own free will. Unwittingly the mover had added to injury insult. Boone did not play with little girls. He wanted to say so, indignantly, but it seemed to him more dignified to ignore the suggestion.

He busied himself cleaning his rifle. This had to be done, anyhow, to avoid the chance of rust from the wetting it had received. Tilatha sat down on her heels and watched him. He paid no attention to her. Perhaps this did not please her. At any rate, she fired at him a verbal barb.

“Pap won’t let you go ’cause you’re so teeny.”

Boone squinted into the barrel of the gun. He was furious, but he did not want to give her the satisfaction of letting her know. Apparently, she was not on the map for him.

“My, you’ll get a nawful whoppin’ when yore pap comes,” she continued.

This was altogether likely, but Boone did not care to hear prophecies on that subject. He finished cleaning the rifle and started to go toward the wagon to return a borrowed rag. Tilatha pretended to think that he was trying to escape. She shrieked for her father.

“Pap—Pap, he’s fixin’ to run away.”

At once Boone lost what was left of his self-control. “Don’t you ever mind yore own doggone business?” he cried. “ ’F I was yore pop I’d sure drown you.”

“He’s swearin’ at me, Pap,” she screamed.

Hugh sauntered up. He was used to his sister’s little ways. “Shet up, Til, or I’ll wear you to a frazzle. Dad’s gone fishin’.”

“You won’t either. If you dass touch me——”

Hugh did not discuss the subject. He picked her up, deposited her in an empty flour barrel, put the lid on partially, and sat on it.

“You’ll stay right there till you quit yelpin’,” he informed her.

Miss Tilatha in turn threatened, wept, and promised amendment. When her brother thought her sufficiently subdued, he allowed her to return to society. She came back chastened and evidently rather proud of herself.

“I’m a nawful bad girl sometimes. Pap says I’m a limb,” she confided to Boone.

“What are you allowin’ to do at the buffalo camp?” Hugh asked the boy.

“Kill ’em, skin ’em, salt ’em down.”

Hugh suppressed a grin. This midget spoke as though he were of mature age. Even on the frontier, where circumstances develop men young, Boone would hardly pass as an adult. Hugh himself was nineteen, and he did not consider that he had been grown up more than two years.

“Can you handle that cannon you carry?” he asked, pointing at the rifle.

“I’ve made out to kill two—three deer, an antelope, an’ se-ve-real turkeys with it,” Boone answered with dignity.

“Deer an’ turkeys ain’t buffalo.”

“No. Buffaloes are bigger an’ easier to hit.”

True to her sex, Tilatha made an about face shamelessly. “Bet yore boots Boone could kill a buffalo ’f he wanted to.”

“Little girls don’t bet their boots,” reproved Hugh.

Tilatha exonerated herself with characteristic logic. “I wasn’t bettin’ my boots. I was bettin’ yore boots.” She added, not without malice, “ ’N’ if you don’t stir yore stumps you’ll lose the mules, too. They’ve strayed clear over the hill.”

Her brother turned on his elbow and took one look. The mules were out of sight. It would not do to let them get too far away, for there was always the possibility that Indians might stampede them. He rose and moved away to drive back the straying animals.

Before he had gone a dozen yards Tilatha was whispering eagerly to Boone: “Now’s yore chance. Saddle up an’ ride lickety split.”

Boone looked at her, astonished. Less than half an hour ago she had been in battle drawn with him. Now she seemed to be on his side. He half suspected treachery, and yet ...

“Hurry, slowpoke,” she urged. “Ain’t you got no sense a-tall?”

The boy rose to swift action. He caught the hoppled pony, brought it back to camp, and with difficulty got the heavy saddle on its back. One of the skirts was doubled under. He pulled this out and cinched the girths of the double-rigged saddle.

She watched him, a forefinger pressed against her lower lip. Now that he was going she had discovered that she did not want him to go.

“Oh, Boone, maybe the Injuns will get you,” she wailed.

“They will not,” he answered promptly, preparing to mount.

She sidled closer. “But they might. ’F I never see you again, Boone?”

The boy was not sentimentalizing the situation. He did not care whether he ever saw her or not. But since she had had a change of heart he did not want to be impolite.

“S’ long,” he said, reaching for the horn and the cantle.

She took advantage of his distraction to throw her arms tightly around his neck and kiss the nearest cheek. Furiously embarrassed, Boone pushed her from him, glared at her a fraction of a second, and dragged himself to the saddle seat. He dug his heels into the sides of the pony, and it started at a lope.

Tilatha flung after him her defiance. “You’re a nasty, horrid li’l’ boy, ’n’ I knew it all the time.”

He did not look back. The shame of what had taken place burned him up. To be kissed by a girl! Bah! What was the matter with them, anyhow? Why couldn’t they leave a fellow alone?

Boone caught sight of Quinn and veered to the right. He paid no attention to the camper’s shout for him to stop. The man tried to head him off, but the youngster put his pony at full speed. Quinn stopped running.

Out of sight, beyond the next rise, Boone began working away from the river. They might pursue him, and he wanted to be hidden deep among the land waves that rolled westward. All day he travelled, guiding his course by the sun. He went cautiously, watching for Indians. If he was seen by them, they might or might not kill him. But they would certainly take his pony, and to be left unhorsed on the plains might mean death, since, as a matter of course, they would rob him of his rifle.

Late in the afternoon he hid in a grape thicket and slept. When he awoke, the moon rode high in the heavens. He mounted and rode toward the river. It was necessary for him to find the wheel tracks at the lower ford so that he would know the direction taken by the buffalo hunters.

He was hungry, for he had not eaten since breakfast. The country was full of game both large and small, but he had been afraid to fire his rifle for fear of attracting attention.

Young as he was, there was no danger of his getting lost as long as he could see the sun by day and the stars at night. He was far more competent to look after himself alone on the plains than a tenderfoot of twice his age. He had been brought up in a school of hard experience which had no vacations.

When he reached the river, he turned down it and followed the bank to the ford. In the brush, a little way back from this, he dismounted, picketed the pony, and slept again. Not till daylight did he awake.

Boone picked up the wagon tracks of the hunters, but before he followed them he looked longingly across the river. He had backtracked almost to his home. The house and clearing were hidden in a hollow half a mile or more down stream. He could not see them, but their location was indicated by a banner of smoke rising in the clear morning air. His mother was probably baking biscuits and frying ham. Almost he could sniff the aroma of her coffee.

It did not even occur to him that he might go back home. He had started for the buffalo camp and he meant to go there. The wagon tracks led westward, into the unknown wilds of Palo Pinto. Where they went, he too intended to go.

When he could endure hunger no longer, he shot a prairie hen. As soon as possible he got away from the place. He had travelled a couple of miles before he could consider eating it. To light a fire, even if he had had punk and flint with him, would have been dangerous. He ate the hen raw, much to his disgust. But he had to preserve his strength. How far he would have to travel before reaching the camp he did not know.

Late in the afternoon he began to see buffalo, at first in small bunches, later in larger ones. About dusk he saw smoke. Either the buffalo camp or a party of Indians lay just ahead of him. He waited in the brush, from a little elevation watching the camp as well as he could in the failing light for signs to tell him whether these were friends or foes. It was too dark to see whether there were wagons there.

A man moved away from the fire and crossed a small open space toward the horses. As he walked, his arms swung by his sides. Boone gave a small whoop of joy. Indians do not swing their arms when they walk. He rode straight into the camp, calling out his presence as he approached. Otherwise some startled hunter might drill him through with lead before he discovered who the stranger was.

Four rifles covered Boone while he drew near.

“Be keerful, stranger. Keep yore hands right where they’re at,” a man in fringed buckskin ordered. Then, in surprise, he added, “Dog my cats, it’s a kid—Jim Sibley’s young un! What in Texas are you doing here?”

The man was Wayne Lemley. He lowered his buffalo gun and waited for an explanation. The hunter felt a little sheepish. In spite of the watch always maintained, the camp had been taken unawares. If, instead of this boy, Kiowas or Comanches had got as close, there might by this time have been one outfit of hunters the less.

“I jest drapped in to hunt with you,” Boone explained.

They gathered around him, half a dozen bearded unkempt men, everybody in camp except the two on guard.

“Yore paw back there in the brush?” asked Lew Keener, a lank, grizzled old-timer who had been with Kirby Smith’s troops during the war.

“No, seh, he ain’t.”

“Who then?”

“I came alone.”

“Alone?”

Boone slid stiffly from the saddle. “Why, yes,” he said.

“Alone—from the yon side the river?” Lemley queried.

The small boy adjusted the “one-gallus” trousers, the legs of which had climbed during the long ride. “I done told you twice,” he said evenly. “Mr. Mattock axed me to come, didn’t he?”

Mattock tugged at his ragged red beard, almost too amazed for speech. He wore a leather hunting shirt reaching almost to his boots.

“By Ginney, I did ask the little tadpole—kinda funnin’ to pass the time, but Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, I didn’t figure he’d fly to it thisaway, Wayne.”

Lemley was hard to convince. Somehow, he knew it was true, the little fellow was so serious and matter of fact. But that a child would travel for days alone through the Indian country was unbelievable.

“How come Jim Sibley to leave you start?” he demanded.

“He didn’t know I was comin’. I started at night.”

“But what for?”

“Like I said. To hunt with you-all.”

“You ran away from home to hunt with us?”

The little boy corrected gravely this method of stating the fact. “I didn’t exactly run away. I jest left.”

“Well, I’ll say you shore had nigger luck gettin’ through to us,” Keener commented.

Mattock took from the pocket of his shirt a plug of tobacco and bit off a generous portion. Chewing always helped cerebration for him.

“Something seldom about this kid,” he said, falling into a bit of local slang.

“What you aim to do with him, Wayne, now he’s wished himself on you?” asked Keener with a grin.

“I dunno. Reckon we’ll have to keep him here till his folks come for him or till we go back. Cain’t send him home. Take too long to close-herd him back across the river.”

“That’s its shape,” agreed another hunter, one who for obvious reasons went by the name of Peg Leg. “We’re not to blame because he came.”

Boone summarized the situation calmly. “Nothin’ to do but let me stay. I’ll work like the Watsons. You’ve got another hand. That’s all.”

“Hmp! What about yore folks?” Keener interjected.

“I won’t pester you-all to take me home. I’ll stay long as there’s a button on Jabe’s coat.”

“All right. That’s settled,” Lemley said grimly. “An’ to start you right I’m gonna tan yore hide proper for runnin’ away. You shag along with me back of that wagon, son, an’ take what’s comin’ to you.”

The boy shagged obediently to the spot named.

Lemley picked up a whip and followed him.