Читать книгу Twin Sombreros - Zane Grey - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Brazos heard Inskip’s horse pound over the rocks and plow the brook. The Texan was racing for town. Bodkin turned a ghastly hue. Barsh gasped and dropped the rope. The others stood stiff, surely expecting those menacing guns to belch fire and death.

“Hands up! ... Turn yore backs!” ordered Brazos, his voice ice-edged. “Bodkin, tell yore men to fork their hawses. One move for a gun means I’ll kill you first.”

“Fellars—he’s got—me cold,” rejoined the deputy, huskily. “Fer Gawd’s sake—lay off your hardware.... Climb on.”

While they mounted stiffly, Brazos hauled the lasso in with his left hand and wound it around the pommel.

“Ride oot, you hombres.... Yu go last, Bodkin. An’ when we hit the road yell for Segel an’ yore other man to go ahaid.”

When the riders emerged from the grove Bodkin bawled to the couple on guard with the dead man.

“Ride on, you fellars—an’ don’t look back!”

It might have been only a few moments and it might have been longer before the strange cavalcade entered the outskirts of Las Animas—Brazos never knew. But once having passed the portal of the town, he drew a deep breath and sat back in his saddle, lowering the big guns to rest on his knees. Bodkin had treasured his swarthy skin too dearly to make any false move, and his men evidently were not forcing any deadly issue.

The wide long main street was familiar to Brazos, despite the many new buildings. Las Animas had doubled its population in five years. The old gray clapboard and brown adobe structures stood side by side with new ones of more imposing front. Brazos’ roving gaze caught sight of a sign: Mexican Joe. Hot Tamales. And his heart leaped. If old Joe happened to come out of his restaurant now, there would be a recognition somewhat disconcerting to Bodkin and his posse. But Joe was not one of the many to see the strange procession ride down the street. Brazos was aware of a quickly augmenting crowd in his rear. Before half a block had been traversed, Brazos saw to his left a building and a sign that had not been there in his day. Both sheriff and jail had come to the cattle town.

“Turn in, yu-all, an’ set tight,” called Brazos. A quick glance assured him that either he or something unusual was expected. Men were grouped about, and out in front stood a tall bareheaded man in his shirt sleeves. He had a silver star on his black vest. He stood significantly sidewise toward the street, his right hand low. Brazos breasted the hitching rail to see a broad lined face, deep piercing eyes, a thin-lipped, close-shut mouth, and bulging chin. Texas was written all over that wonderful visage.

“Wal, Bodkin,” he drawled, in a dry crisp voice, “you ride away in the daid of night withoot orders from this office, an’ you ride back with a daid man haidin’ yore parade an’ a shore enough live cowboy with guns at yore back. What the hell kind of deputy air you?”

“Boss—I had this cowboy arrested fer murder,” panted Bodkin, “an’ thet —— Inskip double-crossed me——”

“Shut up, Bodkin,” interposed Brazos. “I still want to bore yu awful bad. It’s shore only oot of respect for this office thet I haven’t shot yu long ago.”

“Cowboy, talk to me,” said the man with the star.

Brazos had not looked into many as clear hawk eyes as those with which this Texan took stock of him.

“Air yu Kiskadden?” queried Brazos, sharply.

“Thet’s me,” came the curt reply.

“Did Inskip give yu a hunch aboot this?”

“He told me you’d be likely to ride in, but I’m bound to admit I didn’t expect you.”

“Sheriff, will yu give me a square deal?”

“You can rest assured of thet, cowboy. I’m the law heah.”

“My Gawd, but it’s a relief to pass these over. Heah!” burst out Brazos, and with a dexterous flip of the guns, he turned them in the air to catch them by the barrels and hand them to the sheriff. “Sheriff, I shore haven’t had many deals where I was more justified in throwin’ guns than in this one. But when Inskip gave me a chance to use them, he whispered for me not to shoot unless I had to. So I bluffed yore deputy an’ his posse.”

“So I see. Wal, if you bluffed them, why didn’t you ride the other way, instead of insultin’ my office this heah way?”

“I happen to be a Texan an’ I’m sore.”

“I seen thet long ago. Go on. Why’d you come?”

“Last night I was held up oot heah by three men. I’ll tell yu in private how they acted, what they said, an’ the lie they told me.... It was aboot night. I was cold an’ tired. Bay heah was lame. So when the three hombres rode away, I went to sleep in the cabin there. In the mawnin’ I found too I’d been sleepin’ with a daid man. An’ I’d just got ootside the cabin when Bodkin with his posse came tearin’ up. I had no idee what they wanted an’ they’d covered me before I found oot. Wal, they arrested me for the murder of the young man they found in the cabin, shot in the back. Sheriff, you can bet yore life thet those three hombres last night an’ Bodkin’s ootfit this mawnin’ knew the daid boy was in the cabin nine hours before I knew.... There was nothin’ for me to do but go along. I went. Bodkin is a surly hombre, an’ he’s a hell of a queer deputy sheriff. First off it didn’t look like he had any idee of hangin’ me. But he stopped at this Twin Sombreros Ranch oot heah, held up by the rancher Surface. An’ from thet moment Bodkin grew hell-bent to hang me. Inskip saw it comin’ an’ he tried to reason with Bodkin. But yu cain’t reason with a bull-haided, fourflush, notoriety-huntin’ deputy sheriff who from some queer twist was daid-set to hang me. When they had the lariat aboot my neck, Inskip rode in so I could grab his guns. Thet saved my life, sheriff, I’m innocent an’ I can prove it. I want my name cleared. Thet’s why I took the risk of holdin’ up yore ootfit an’ ridin’ in heah to surrender.”

“Who air you, cowboy?” queried Kiskadden, searchingly.

“Thet’ll have to come oot, I reckon,” returned Brazos, reluctantly. “I haven’t been in Las Animas for six years. But there’ll be men heah who’ll vouch for me.”

“All right. Get down, cowboy.... Bodkin, you look burstin’ with yore side of this story. Mebbe you’d better hold in——”

“Aw hell!” interrupted the deputy, his face working. “Wait till you hear my side. He’s a slick-tongued fellar, believe me. I’ll gamble he turns out to be a range-ridin’ desperado. An’ it’s a thousand to one thet he murdered young Neece.”

“Neece! Not Abe Neece’s boy?” exclaimed Kiskadden, shocked out of his composure.

“Yes. Young Allen Neece.”

“Aw, too bad—too bad!” rejoined the sheriff, in profound regret. “As if poor Abe had not had enough trouble!”

“Boss, you just bet it’s too bad. It’ll sure go hard with Allen’s twin sisters. Them gurls thought the world of him.”

“Fetch Neece in,” ended Kiskadden, and taking Brazos’ arm he led him into the office.

“An’ see heah, sheriff,” spoke up Brazos. “Will yu have my hawse taken good care of? An’ Bodkin took my gun, watch, penknife—an’ a personal letter. Thet’s all I had, an’ the letter means most to me.”

“Cowboy, I’ll be responsible for your hawse an’ your belongings.”

“Thanks. Thet’s a load off my mind. An’ one thing more,” said Brazos, lowering his voice so that the men carrying in the body of Neece could not hear him. “I reckon thet letter will prove my innocence. I got it yesterday mawnin’ at Latimer, which you shore know is a hell of a long day’s ride. An’ if I know anythin’ aboot daid men, young Neece was killed durin’ the day. Hold an inquest, sheriff, an’ make shore what hour thet pore boy was murdered. ’Cause the whole deal has a look of murder.”

“You’re a cool hand,” replied Kiskadden, admiringly. “I kinda like you. From Texas, eh?”

“Shore. I was born in Uvalde.”

“How old air you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Wal, you don’t look thet. Any folks livin?”

“There was—a few years ago. But I’ve been too unhappy lately to write home.”

“Air you straight, cowboy?”

“I am, sheriff, so help me Gawd!” answered Brazos, passionately, meeting full the penetrating gray eyes, that had something of shadow in them.

“Wal, I promised you a square deal,” concluded Kiskadden. “Come with me. I’ll have to lock you up.”

A corridor opened from the office. Kiskadden unlocked the first door on the right, to disclose a small room with one barred window. The only article Brazos could see at quick glance was a blanketed couch. Kiskadden escorted Brazos in and halted in the doorway.

“Cowboy, one thing bothers me. In case you air innocent, which Inskip swore you was, an’ I substantiate thet, you’re liable to hold somethin’ against Bodkin an’ mebbe his men.”

“Hell! Thet bothers me,” flashed Brazos, sitting down heavily on the couch. “Bodkin? I didn’t know aboot him. ... An’ thet Barsh, who put a rope around my neck. Only man who ever did thet! ... But, Kiskadden, I’ll be more interested in the three hombres who tricked me into this mess.”

“Cowboy, you don’t seem to concern yourself aboot why I’m lockin’ you up.”

“Concern? Say, I’m tickled to death. What have I got to worry aboot now? You’re a Texan an’ a man. You’ll see through my part in this deal.... But when I get oot ... Sheriff, I’m askin’ yu—please get possession of my letter an’ please don’t let anybody but yu read it. I shore couldn’t stand thet.”

“We’ll see.” The sheriff went out to close and lock the heavy door.

Brazos lay down on the couch. As he composed himself, the sound of heavy boots and indistinct voices came through the walls from the sheriff’s office. The window of his cell opened on the back.

After a while, his blood ceased to race and his thoughts to whirl. “Doggone!” soliloquized Brazos. “When did I ever have a closer shave than thet?” He was well off in jail for a few days. He would be well fed and have a bed to sleep on. And meanwhile, he would piece the fragments of this case together. Something more would come out at his trial, or at least the perfunctory hearing Kiskadden would have to give him.

He had not the least doubt that Kiskadden would not only release him, but establish his innocence. This Texan recalled other denizens of the Lone Star State that he had known—Cap Britt, for one, for whom he had ridden and shot himself into notoriety some years before. Inskip was another. These men knew their kind. Brazos wondered if this Abe Neece had come from the Lone Star State. Surface was certainly not a Texan. Brazos tried to side-track an insidious impression of intrigue involving the three riders who had accosted him out at the cabin, this deputy Bodkin, and the young man Barsh, who had been afraid to show his face, and Surface. Brazos had only slim pegs on which to hang these suspicions. But a remarkable career on the ranges had given him an experience far beyond his years. Always he had been thrown against a background of cattle dealing, with its multiplicity of angles. The vast plains of Texas, the Panhandle and the Llano Estacado, the silver-grassed ranges of New Mexico, the Colorado steppes and the many valleys of Wyoming—these he knew as well as any cowboy who had ever ridden them. Rustlers, outlaws, desperadoes, bandits, and the ever-increasing number of cowboys gone wrong—these had multiplied with the building of the cattle empire. Likewise, the strange fact of apparently honest cattlemen being in league with the evil forces had flourished since the first great herds of longhorns had been driven north from Texas. Brazos recalled a few he had known, the most notable of whom, though not the last—Sewall McCoy—brought a cold jerk along Brazos’ nerves.

The redheaded daughter of Surface came back to mind—Lura Surface. She had certainly made him a target for wonderful blue-green hungry eyes. “I know her kind,” muttered Brazos. “A flirt—for whom cowboys air apple pie. I’ll shore have to see her again, risk or no risk. She saw I was no low-down murderer. An’ I’ll have to remember thet.”

Brazos had innumerable questions to ask somebody about this Twin Sombreros Ranch, the Surfaces, and the Neeces. At this point he was interrupted by footsteps out in the hall. He heard a heavy bolt or lock shot back. The door opened to admit a man carrying a tray.

“Hyar’s some grub, cowboy,” he said gruffly, setting the tray down on the couch.

Brazos rolled to a sitting posture, his boots clanging on the floor.

“Say, yu’re one hombre I’m gonna treat white in this burg,” sang out Brazos. “Hungry? Wal, look at thet grub! ... Stay an’ talk to me, pardner.”

“Agin’ orders,” rejoined the guard, who went out to lock Brazos in again.

Brazos made the most of that generous meal. A starved condition was not conducive to optimism and clear thinking. He felt vastly better. Pacing the narrow confines of his cell, he lived his experience over again and realized that he got more out of it. Then he lay down to rest, and anon, he stood up on the bed to peep out of the small window. It opened out upon a high-fenced compound rather than corral, at the back of which ran a long shed of stalls. He saw the flank of his horse Bay.

The afternoon passed far from tediously for Brazos. Those heavy footfalls in the office and on the flagstone sidewalk had meaning for him. Unless Las Animas had more than doubled the population of his day, he estimated that very nearly every man in the town had visited Kiskadden. Late in the afternoon, two guards brought his supper.

“We’ve orders to take you out back fer a little exercise, if you want,” announced one.

“Wal, in the mawnin’,” replied Brazos. “An’ if yu’ll fetch me water, soap an’ towel, an’ a razor, I’ll consider myself obligated.”

“Glad to, cowboy.” They went out in the gathering dusk.

Brazos took off his clothes and went to bed, his eyes shutting as with glue. That night he made up lost sleep, and it was very late when he awoke. The stars told him that the dark hour before dawn was close at hand. The lonely silent hour Brazos had always chosen to guard the herd!

If he could not sleep, that had always been a bad hour for him. His reckless life always spread out for him to review, the ghosts of dead men haunted him, the many opportunities for betterment that he had missed, the many times he had had to ride away from ranges and cowboys he loved, and lastly the dark-eyed lovely girl who had made him a wandering, line-riding cowboy.

From now on his torture would be relentless and unabatable. That letter! He felt for it against his heart. Gone! And a wrench of pain and fury shook him. Would the sheriff read that letter aloud at the trial? Brazos did not believe the Texan would subject him to that ordeal.

That letter had wrenched Brazos’ soul. And he had not dared to read it all or go back to it. He had been flayed. The bitter anguish of the past had softened. What hurt so terribly was to find that his name had been revered, that love and faith still abided out there beyond the Cimarron, that Holly Ripple had named her boy for him, that her husband Frayne and her foreman Britt, and all that hard-riding, hard-shooting outfit of cowboys, the like of which had never been known on the ranges, all swore by him, made him a tradition, and never ceased to believe he would end his reckless wandering and come back to them.

“Aw, I cain’t ever go back,” moaned Brazos into the silent blackness of the night. “An’ I cain’t ever drink no more—to make me forget—an’ fight—an’ ride on some place new.... Thet boy will find me some day, unless I’m daid—she will send him—an’ then he’d see true. ... By Gawd, it’s tough! I’m drove to be what she trusted me to become—what thet boy thinks I am.”

Daylight brought a cessation of Brazos’ unhappy memories and resolves. But he divined that a leaning to evil had passed out of him during his dark hour. He felt himself transformed, gone back to the old gay cool Brazos Keene with something inexplicable added.

The guards brought his breakfast, and the necessary articles with which to wash and shave, and make himself presentable.

“Your trial is comin’ off today,” the kindly one of the two announced. “An’ I reckon you needn’t be ondue worried.”

“Thanks, pardner. Thet’s fine. Take me ootside for a stretch.”

All morning, however, he was left alone, waiting for a footfall that did not come. The fact of the omission of his noonday meal augured further for his release. Brazos paced his cell, finally achieving patience. At last a slow clinking step in the corridor ended his wait. That was the step of a Texan.

Brazos was not disappointed. The door opened to admit Kiskadden, who closed and locked it.

“Wal, Brazos,” he drawled, “I’m missin’ my dinner to have a confab with you.”

“Yu know my name?” queried Brazos, sharply.

“Shore. It’s on the back of this letter. Brazos Keene. Wrote small an’ pretty, but I read thet much anyway. I’m glad to tell you no one else has seen it. I reckon Bodkin’s man, Segel, put no store on it. An’ heah it is, cowboy.”

“My Gawd, sheriff, but I could die for yu—savin’ me the shame of disgracin’ a girl I once loved,” replied Brazos, in grateful emotion.

“Wal, I’m glad if it means as much as thet,” returned Kiskadden, and he sat down on the couch to take out a black pipe. “I always figger better when I smoke. Not thet I’m not shore you’ll go free. It’s a pore case agin’ you, Brazos, an’ has some queer angles.”

“Ha! I had thet hunch. Yu wouldn’t be a Texas sheriff if yu hadn’t seen thet.”

“You got this letter the mawnin of day before yestiddy, at Latimer, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir. An’ all by accident, or mebbe a hunch. I was ridin’ through aboot eight o’clock. I went in the post office an’ was paralyzed to get it. I rode oot of town scared to death. But finally I sloped off under a tree.... Gosh, I must have been there for hours but I didn’t have the nerve to read it all. But the sun was high an’ hot when I rode on again.”

“Wal, we had two doctors make the inquest on young Neece,” went on Kiskadden. “Our Doc Williamson, who lives heah, an’ a surgeon from Denver, who was on a train. Williamson seen him an’ dragged him off. They found young Neece had been killed early in the evenin’ of thet day you rode oot of Latimer. The bullet hole in his back was shot there after Neece was daid. Both doctors agreed thet he had been roped—there were abrasions on his arms above his elbows—an’ jerked off his hawse on his haid. Thet caused his death.”

“Wal, my Gawd!” ejaculated Brazos, in wondering fire. “I had no rope on my saddle.”

“Brazos, I was convinced of yore innocence yestiddy, an’ now I know it. But for yore good, I reckon you better stay for the hearin’. It’ll show Bodkin up an’ I’ll discharge him pronto. Another angle, it leaked oot somewhere thet Surface would jest as lief see you hanged, along with all the grub-line cowboys thet ride through.”

“Hell yu say?” queried Brazos, thoughtfully. “Sheriff, I shore didn’t take a shine to him.”

“Surface is new heah. Claims to be from Nebraska. But he’s from Kansas. Rich cattleman—an’ has a lot of stock. Same as all of us, for thet matter.”

“Ahuh. How’d Surface get thet Twin Sombreros Ranch from Neece?”

“Wal, thet’s kind of complicated, an’ never was cleared up to suit me. Neece was operatin’ big. He had five thousand haid comin’ up from Texas for Surface. The cash for this herd was paid Neece at the Cattleman’s Bank in Dodge. More than fifty thousand dollars. Neece was fetchin’ thet sum over heah to our bank. But he got held up by three masked men, an’ robbed. Wal, the queer angle is thet the big herd jest vanished off the range. Neither hoof nor hair of them was ever found.”

“But the cow ootfit!” exclaimed Brazos, aghast.

“Same as the herd. They vanished. Neece made a blunder at Dodge. He hired a foreman thet he didn’t know, let him pick an ootfit, an’ sent them south after the herd.”

“Thet ootfit was bought off,” said Brazos, abruptly.

“Wal, there was no proof of anythin’ except the longhorns were gone. Neece couldn’t deliver to Surface. An’ he had been robbed of the money. Twin Sombreros was mortgaged an’ the banks wouldn’t advance more. Neece lost all to Surface. He’s a broken man now, livin’ oot of town down the Purgatory. An’ the twin gurls, Neece’s joy an’ pride, air running a restaurant over by the railroad station.”

“Twin girls!”

“Shore. Eighteen years old—the prettiest gurls in all the West. An’ you cain’t tell them apart—not to save yore life. June an’ Janis, they’re called. Neece was powerful proud of them twins. He sent them back to Kansas City to go to school. Thet was ten years ago. An’ he didn’t see them often an’ not atall of late years. He developed this Twin Sombreros Ranch for them. Thet was his brand. Two high-peaked sombreros. Wal, the gurls just got heah when the crash came. Hard luck fer them, everybody swore, an’ was sorry. But them gurls had spunk. They borrowed money an’ started a restaurant. Old Abe’s Mexican cook stuck to them. An’ say, thet little restaurant is packed every mealtime, with a crowd waitin’ ootside. They’ve paid back what they borrowed an’ now they’re makin’ money.”

“Stampedin’ mavericks!” burst out Brazos. “I reckoned I’d heahed some range yarns in my day. But this one takes the cake.... I’ll bet thet Lura Surface sticks up her nose at the Neece twins, huh?”

“Wal, the wimmen folks all say Lura is a cat an’ powerful jealous of the twins. You see, she queened it over the range till Neece’s gurls got heah. An’ now she’s not got it all her own way.”

“Kiskadden, what yu tellin’ me all this for?” suddenly queried Brazos, sharp with suspicion.

“Aw, just range gossip, cowboy,” drawled the Texan, with an evasive smile.

“Yeah? Wal, it’s shore powerful interestin’ an’ yu don’t strike me as the gossipin’ kind.... I figure Inskip’s a friend of yores?”

“Yes. We’re pardners in a cattle business, but I’m the silent one.... Wal, to come back to yore hearin’, which is set fer two o’clock, I’d like you to read thet letter to me.”

“Aw! Sheriff, you didn’t open it?”

“No.”

“What yu want me to read it for?”

“Brazos, I really don’t have to heah it, if yu object. But it’ll strengthen my conviction, I’m shore. An’ I may have to talk turkey to Surface an’ some of his cattle association. All the same, I’ll respect yore confidence.”

“Shore. I—I’ll read it to yu,” replied Brazos, soberly, and as he opened the thick letter his lean brown hands shook slightly.

Don Carlos’ Rancho

Cimarron, N. M.

May 2, 1880

Dear Brazos:

This is the third letter I have written you since you left us over five years ago. I am sure the others never reached you else you would have written. They were sent at a venture. This time, however, I know you will receive this one, and I am writing much that I omitted before. We have a railroad mail service now, caballero mio; and this epistle should reach your post-office in less than two days. So near yet so far, Brazos!

We heard quite by accident that you had lately ridden down from Wyoming to a job with the Two-bar X outfit. A cattleman neighbor of ours, Calhoun, had just returned from Latimer, and he met Britt at the station. Wherever Brazos Keene rides, it will be known! Calhoun told Britt a lot of range gossip, including your latest exploit at Casper, Wyoming (which I did not believe) and poor Britt came home like a man who had seen ghosts. He told the cowboys and Nigger Johnson (bless his white heart) told me. Not one of the other boys mentioned it to me. You’ll be amazed, Brazos, and I hope hurt a little to learn that every single one of the old outfit you once lorded it over so gayly is still riding for me. They were a sick bunch of cowboys. How they loved you, Brazos! I’d have given much to have been hidden in the bunkhouse when Britt told them about you.

They are spoiling little Brazos Ripple Frayne, your namesake, who is nearly five years old. He is a little devil and drives me frantic. He favors his father, Renn, more than me. But he has a little of my Spanish. He never tires of stories about rustlers, gunmen, bandits, buffalo and cattle stampedes. And your name makes his eyes grow big and round. You should see Brazos roll a gun and hear him say: “When I grow up, I’m gonna bore that Billy the Kid!” Oh! it is dreadful, the propensities he shows already. His father does not seem to mind. Britt, who worships the lad, says that when Brazos takes to riding the range, the hard years of the New Mexican border will be past.

Since you and your outfit broke up the Slaughter gang and did away with Sewall McCoy, Clements and their tools, we have no rustling on a big scale. Strange to say, we were never drawn into the Lincoln County War, which was in its incipiency when you rode for Don Carlos’ Rancho. That terrible feud accounted for the lives of three hundred men, surely the bloodiest war the West ever knew. Billy the Kid came out of it alive. He and a few of his desperado allies still actively rustle cattle and find a ready market. Billy has more friends than enemies. He has visited Don Carlos’ Rancho twice during the last year. He is twenty years old and has killed twenty men, not including Indians and Mexicans. Billy would not be bad looking but for his buck tooth. He is a quiet little fellow. Such eyes! They are like forked blue lightning. Pat Garrett is on Billy’s trail. They are expected to meet any day. The range is speculating. Britt and Renn both say Garrett will never risk an even break with Billy. If he does, he’ll get killed. Renn said once: “I’ve seen the day I could beat that little hombre to a gun!” And Britt said: “Brazos could do it now!” ... Oh, you border ruffians! You strange cold Westerners! I confess to a little weakness for Billy the Kid. That’s not strange, considering my Spanish heritage, and the fact that before I married an outlaw gunman, I had a soft spot in my heart for a gunman cowboy, one Señor Brazos Keene.

So far as we know, Billy’s outfit never stole a steer off our range. After my father’s custom here, I had Billy and his gang to dinner. He told me he remembered my father and evidently cherished that memory.

Well, the good, bad old days are over, at least for Don Carlos’ Rancho. We are running over seventy thousand head. The railroad has simplified cattle-raising. The long hard drives are a thing of the past in this territory. Chisum, the old rustler baron with his jingle-bobbed cattle, survived the Lincoln County War. Billy the Kid, who rode for Chisum once, had sworn to kill him. But the old man still holds forth at Seven Rivers, surrounded by a hard outfit, and a hundred thousand head of longhorns. Brazos, he once asked me to marry him. I’ve never forgotten the shock of that. Right now I can see you shake your handsome curly head and say as you did once: “Wal, who’n hell hasn’t asked Holly Ripple thet?”

Brazos, I am wonderfully happy. Renn has more than justified the faith I placed in him. He is a big man on the New Mexico ranges and long ago has lived down that vague hard name that came with him from Dodge and Abilene. My father’s traditions and work have been carried on. We have our darling little boy and—dare I confess it?—expect another little Frayne at no distant date. May it be a girl—Señorita Holly Ripple Frayne! Our material riches do not mean very much. I forgot to tell you that my riders have a share in our cattle business. In fact, Brazos, there is only one drop of bitterness to taint the sweet cup of Don Carlos’ Rancho. And that is your loss, your wandering, rolling-stone life, your bitter fiery spirit and your fate to throw a gun, your inevitable fall.

We have heard of you often. You know range gossip—how cowboys love to talk, to carry tales. If I believed all I have heard, my heart would be broken. But I know you would never be crooked. Still all my faith in you cannot change the fact that haunts me. If you persist in your lone wolf wandering from bad cow-camps to hard cow-towns, always with that chip on your shoulder, it will not be long until you too, like many of your old pards, find a grave on the “lone prairie.” That would be a pity, Brazos. You are such a fine boy. You have such splendid possibilities.

Britt tells me that I broke your heart. Oh, how I have prayed that was untrue! I know you loved me. But you were a wild boy, Brazos. You were only nineteen years old—my own age. I felt like a mother to you. Indeed I did love you, but it was as a sister. That, of course, I did not know until Renn came into our lives. He was my man, Brazos.

If you loved me so deeply as Britt and the cowboys seem to believe, you could never go to the bad. The greatest grief can be a source of joy. I don’t believe you loved me greatly. If you had, you would have paid me the honor of being better for it. You were just disappointed, cut to the soul, and instead of letting the goodness, the sweetness in you dominate your future, you rode away with that proud, passionate, devilish side uppermost.

Brazos, in this letter, which I am certain you will receive, you have come to the end of your rope. You will stop your wandering—your drinking. You were never a drunkard, but you could easily have become one. You must find a steady job—if you refuse to return to Don Carlos’ Rancho—and you will be worthy of my faith, and Renn’s regard, and the love of these cowboys.

There are hundreds of pretty lovable western girls just aching, just eating their hearts out for a man like you. Find one of them, and love her. (Oh, don’t tell me you couldn’t. You could. Didn’t you have a case on Señorita Dolores Mendozo, while you were courting me?) Ah, Brazos! ... Love her and marry her and settle down to deserve the reward that should come to all cowboys like you—who have made this glorious West habitable for us—made its empire possible.

Fetch her out here to live. To be my friend! And if in the fulness of time you and she were to be blessed with a little girl, let us pledge her and little Brazos to each other.

This is the last letter I shall ever write you, my friend. I hope and pray you take it as I have written it, and that you will consider my husband’s proposition, which follows in a postscript.

Adios Señor

Ever yours faithfully,

Holly Ripple Frayne

P.S. Dear Cowboy Old Timer.

I am adding a few words to Holly’s letter, which I have read. But she will not get to see what I write you.

Britt wants you to come back to Don Carlos’ Rancho. So do I. So does the outfit. We are going to need you.

Brazos, let me hurry to get rid of things hard to express. I know how you felt about Holly. I know because I felt the same. If she had chosen you, I still would have stayed on. I would never have expected—never have wanted to get over it. Loving such a woman changed me from an outlaw to a man. For years, I have worried about you. Britt and I, all the cowboys, have never stopped looking for you to come back. But the deeper hope, of course, is that you would go straight and true, wherever you were.

That’s that.

Brazos, Holly’s letter might mislead you about affairs of the range out here. Well, as a matter of fact, the rustling business is as good as the cattle business. There’s a new outfit up in the hills where Slaughter used to hide out. And Britt doesn’t like the prospects one damn little bit.

I could tell you several queer looking deals, but one will go to show you the old game is kicking back, as we always expected it’d do. Not so long ago, the biggest herd of longhorns Britt ever saw drifted up the Cimarron—a gaunted bunch that had seen long and hard travel. The outfit worked them across the valley, avoiding the cow-camps, taking scarce enough time to fatten up, and they split the herd and drove to the railroad, shipping from Maxwell and Hebron to Kansas City.

Britt, the old fox, thought the drive had a queer look and took pains to get these details. They were all the facts obtainable. But somewhere along this trail to the railroad, the name Surface leaked out. You know how strange things happen in this cattle game. It’s a safe bet, Brazos, that this drive was a steal, as big a one as we ever saw come out of Texas. And naturally we’re passing the buck with a hunch to you. Britt swears he never knew a cowboy in your class to scent and follow crooked tracks. Keep this under your hat, old timer, and look around over your Colorado way. There probably is another Sewall McCoy cropping up. These cattlemen-rustlers are the bane of the ranges. A real honest to God rustler was always easy to contend with, till it came to the fight, and then you could gamble on hell and bullets. But these respectable buyers and sellers of cattle, while all the while they have outfits rustling for them—these are the tough nuts to crack.

It’s Britt’s hunch and mine that this man Surface might turn out to belong to the class mentioned above. No need to tell you, Brazos, what a delicate matter such suspicion is. It’s something you just can’t speak out loud in the West. Every rancher has stolen cattle, knowingly or not, and he’s testy about it. As for the crooked rancher—at the least hint he goes for his gun, and roars to the law and his associations afterward. Ride down this man Surface, and write to us, Brazos.

And, cowboy, while you’re doing it, consider coming back to be my foreman of the outfit running the Ripple brand. On shares!