The Dude Wrangler (4 page)

"Do you see much of him?" Wallie asked, indifferently.

"Too much," said Pinkey, shortly.

Wallie dropped the pan he was turning in the oven.

"They're browning beautifully," he exclaimed hastily.

"You said that before. Ain't it gittin' time to work on 'em?"

"Remove your feet and I'll set the table."

"Can't you spread a paper for a tablecloth? I always git splinters in my elbows when I eat off rough lumber."

Wallie laughed good-humouredly as he obliged him.

"That's shore a great smell comin' from the oven! Let's eat, feller."

"You certainly are hungry, Pinkey. If I may judge by appearances, you are not going to be disappointed. You sit down while I put things on the table."

Pinkey needed no second invitation.

"I like spuds cooked with the clothes on," he observed as he skinned a potato.

"I trust everything is going to be to your liking," Wallie declared, cordially, as he drew the prairie-dogs from the oven and laid them on an agate-ware platter.

Busy with his potato, Pinkey did not see them until they were before him. Then he stopped and stared hard as they lay on their backs grinning up at him with the "forcemeat" oozing through the stitching.

"What are they?" His emphasis was not flattering.

"I shan't tell you yet," declared Wallie.

Pinkey continued to eye them suspiciously.

"They kinda remind me of a mummy I seen in a side-show; then, again, they look like incubator childern-roasted. Them teeth are what git me. I can't quite place 'em. 'Tain't wood-pussy or nothin', Wallie? 'Tain't no notorious animal like pole-kitty?"

Wallie looked offended.

"I intend to eat some myself," he replied with dignity.

"Are they some kind of a varmint?" Dubiously.

"Varmint?"

"Pack-rat or weasel?"

"Scarcely!"

Wallie looked so injured that Pinkey said apologetically:

"I was jest cur'ous." But inquired further: "Is that stuffin' or in'ards coming through the sewin' down the front of 'em?"

"Forcemeat. I made it according to a recipe."

"Indeed?" Politely. "Don't go shy yourself jest because I'm here," he protested, as Wallie attempted to cut one in two with the butcher-knife. "I ain't feelin' so hungry-somethin' has took my appetite."

As the table swayed under Wallie's efforts to carve a prairie-dog, he suggested:

"Perhaps if you took hold of one leg--"

"Ye-ah," said Pinkey, humorously, "and you take holt of the other and put your foot on my chest so you kin git a purchase, then we'll both pull and somethin's bound to happen."

"If I could only find a joint--"

"Worry one of them legs off and we'll see how we like it before you play yourself out on it."

Wallie acted upon the suggestion and presented the severed member.

"Try it," he urged, persuasively.

Pinkey sunk his grinders into the leg and laid back on it.

"Does it seem tough?" Wallie asked, watching him anxiously.

"Tough! I'm scairt it's goin' to snap back and knock me over. Wait till I git a fresh holt on it."

"Do you get the flavour at all?"

"I can't pull enough off to taste it," Pinkey replied, plaintively.

"Try the dressing and tell me what you think of it." Wallie scooped out a generous spoonful and placed it on his plate, waiting confidently for the verdict.

Pinkey conveyed his knife to his mouth while Wallie stood regarding him with an expression of pleased expectancy as he tasted.

A startled look was succeeded by one that was unmistakably horror. Pinkey knocked over the box upon which he was sitting as he jumped from the table and tore the kitchen door open.

Wallie watched him wonderingly:

"Tell you what I think of it!" Pinkey declared, returning. "I ain't got words-they ain't none in the dictionary. My Gawd! what is it made of?"

"Just biscuit crumbs and onions," said Wallie, colouring.

"Where did you keep 'em?"

Wallie pointed to the box on the floor in the corner.

Pinkey made a hideous grimace.

"Gimme a drink of water! Gimme a chew of tobacco! Gimme anything to take the taste ofmouse out'n my mouth. Wallie," solemnly, "men have died fer less'n that in this country. If I thought you'd done that on purpose I'd slit your throat from ear to ear and leave you."

"I thought I was very particular and cut off everything that looked suspicious," said Wallie, meekly, "I must have missed something."

"You shore did! And," Pinkey demanded, "what might them horrors be on the platter? Them teeth are mighty familiar."

Wallie quavered:

"Prairie-dog-I was experimenting to see if they were edible."

"Leave me out in the air again!" Pinkey groaned as he swallowed a drink of water. "And I passed up a turkey dinner to come and eat with you!"

"Shan't I cook you some bacon?" asked Wallie, contritely.

"I doubt if I ever feel like eatin' agin, but if the cake's thawed out I'll try a chunk of it to take my mind off that stuffin'."

Wallie opened the can of pineapple he had been treasuring and Pinkey helped himself freely to the Christmas cake.

"They must be about four meals in one of them slices, the way it feels inside of me," the latter commented, nibbling delicately on a ring of pineapple he held in his fingers.

"It's fruit-cake, and rich; you're not supposed to eat so much of it," Wallie said, sharply.

Pinkey raised his eyebrows and regarded Wallie attentively as he continued to nibble.

"Looks like you're turrible touchy about her cookin', and swelled up over gittin' a Christmas present," he remarked, finally. "You needn't be, because she made eight other cement bricks jest like this one and sent 'em around to fellers she's sorry for."

"Oh, did she!" Wallie ejaculated, crestfallen.

"Yes, indeed," Pinkey went on, complacently, feeling a glow of satisfaction at Wallie's lengthened countenance; "she does it every Christmas. She's kind to the pore and sufferin', but it don't mean nothin' more than a dollar she'd drop in a hat somebody was passin'."

Noting the deep gloom which immediately settled upon Wallie, Pinkey could think of the prairie-dogs with more equanimity.

* * *

"It's shore wicked the way you curse, Old Timer," said Pinkey, reprovingly, as Wallie came up from the corral carrying an empty milk bucket in one hand and testing the other for broken bones. "I could hear you talkin' to Rastus from whur I'm settin'."

Wallie exhibited a row of bruised knuckles and replied fiercely:

"If ever I had an immortal soul I've lost it since that calf came! Between his bunting on one side and me milking on the other, the cow kicked the pail over."

"Quirl you a brownie and blow it threw your hackamore and forgit it," said Pinkey, soothingly, as he handed him a book of cigarette papers, with a sack of tobacco and made room for him on the door-sill. "I ain't used to cow milk anyhow; air-tight is better."

Wallie took the offering but remained standing, rolling it dextrously as he looked off at his eighty acres of spring wheat showing emerald green in the light of a July sunset.

Pinkey eyed him critically-the tufts of hair which stood out like brushes through the cracks in what had once been a fine Panama hat, his ragged shirt, the faded overalls, the riding boots with heels so run over that he walked on the side of them.

Unconscious of the scrutiny, Wallie continued to gaze in a kind of holy ecstasy at his wheat-field until Pinkey ejaculated:

"My, but you've changed horrible!"

"How, changed?" Wallie asked, absently.

"You're so danged dirty! I should think you'd have to sand that shirt before you could hold it to git into it."

"I hardly ever take it off," said Wallie. "I've been so busy I haven't had time to think how I looked, but I hope now to have more leisure. Pinkey," impressively, "I believe my troubles are about over."

"Don't you think it!" replied Pinkey, bluntly. "A dry-farmer kin have six months of hard luck three times a year for four and five years, hand-runnin'. In fact, they ain't no limit to the time and the kind of things that kin happen to a dry-farmer."

"But whatcould happen now?" Wallie asked, startled.

"It's too clost to bed-time fer me to start in tellin' you," said Pinkey, drily.

"You're too pessimistic, Pinkey. I've prepared the soil and seed according to the instructions in the Farmers' Bulletins from Washington, and as a result I've got the finest stand of wheat around here-even Boise Bill said so when he rode by yesterday."

"Rave on!" Pinkey looked at him mockingly. "It's pitiful to hear you. You read them bulletins awhile and you won't know nothin'. I seen a feller plant some corn his Congressman sent him and the ears was so hard the pigs used to stand and squeal in front of 'em. But of course I'm glad you're feelin' so lucky; I'm scairt of the feelin' myself for it makes me take chances and I always git a jolt for it."

Wallie's face was sober as he confided:

"If anything went wrong I'd be done for. I'm so near broke that I count my nickels like some old woman with her butter-and-egg money."

"I guessed it," said Pinkey, calmly, "from the rabbit fur I see layin' around the dooryard."

"Nearly everything has cost double what I thought it would, but if I get a good crop and the price of wheat holds up I'll come out a-flying."

"If nothin' happens," Pinkey supplemented.

"I want to show you one of those bulletins."

"I've seen plenty of 'em. You can't stop 'em once you git 'em started. Them, and pamphlets tellin' us why we went to war, has killed off many a mail-carrier that had to fight his way through blizzards, or be fined fer not deliverin' 'em on schedule. I ain't strong fer gover'mint literature."

Wallie stepped inside the cabin and brought out a pamphlet with an illustration of twelve horses hitched to a combined harvester and thresher, standing in a wheat-field of boundless acreage.

"There," he said, proudly, "you see my ambition!"

Pinkey regarded it, unexcited.

"That's a real nice picture," he said, finally, "but I thought you aimed to go in for cattle?"

"I did. But I've soured on them since that calf came and I've been milking."

Pinkey agreed heartily:

"I'd ruther 'swamp' fer a livin' than do low-down work like milkin'."

"When I come in at night, dog-tired and discouraged, I get out this picture and look at it and tell myself that some day I'll be driving twelve horses on a thresher. A chap thinks and does curious things when he has nobody but himself for company."

"That's me, too," said Pinkey, understandingly. "When I'm off alone huntin' stock, I ride fer hours wonderin' if it's so that you kin make booze out of a raisin."

"Let's walk out and look at the wheat," Wallie suggested.

Pinkey complied obligingly, though farming was an industry in which he took no interest.

Wallie's pride in his wheat was inordinate. He never could get over a feeling of astonishment that the bright green grain had come from seeds of his planting-that it was his-and he would reap the benefit. Nature was more wonderful than he had realized and he never before had appreciated her. He always forgot the heart-breaking and back-breaking labour when he stood as now, surveying with glowing face the even green carpet stretching out before him. In such moments he found his compensation for all he had gone through since he arrived in Wyoming, and he smiled pityingly as he thought of the people at The Colonial, rocking placidly on the veranda.

"Did you ever see anything prettier?" Wallie demanded, his eyes shining.

"It's all right," Pinkey murmured, absently.

"You're not looking," Wallie said, sharply.

"I was watchin' them cattle."

"I don't see any."

Pinkey pointed, but Wallie could see nothing.

"If they got cows on Mars, I'll bet I could read the bran's," Pinkey boasted. "Can't you see them specks movin' off yonder?"

Wallie admitted he could not.

"It's cattle, and they act like somebody's drivin' 'em," Pinkey declared, positively. "Looks like it's too early to be movin' 'em to the mountain."

His curiosity satisfied, he gave the wheat his attention.

"It looks fine, Wallie," he said with sincerity.

Wallie could not resist crowing:

"You didn't think I'd last, did you? Miss Spenceley didn't, either. She'll be disappointed very likely when she hears I've succeeded."

"Don't cackle till you've laid your aig, Gentle Annie. When you've thrashed and sold your grain and got your money in the bank, then I'll help you. We'll git drunk if I have to rob a drug-store."

"You're always putting a damper on me. It was you who advised me to go in for dry-farming," Wallie reminded him.

"I figgered that if you lived through a year of it," Pinkey replied, candidly, "then almost anything else would look like a snap to you."

It was plain that in spite of his prospects Pinkey was not sanguine, but in this moment of his exultation failure seemed impossible to Wallie.

In various small ways Canby had tried to break him and had not succeeded. Boise Bill had prophesied that he would not "winter"-yet here he was with every reason to believe that he would also "summer." Wallie felt rather invincible as he reflected upon it, and the aurora borealis did not exceed in colour the outlook his fancy painted that evening.

"It's eight-thirty," Pinkey hinted. "When I set up till all hours I over-sleep in the morning."

Wallie came to earth reluctantly, and as he returned to the cabin he again permitted himself the luxury of pitying the folk of The Colonial who knew nothing of such rapturous moments in that stale, uneventful world which was so remote and different from the present that it was beginning to seem like a dream to him.

They had been asleep for an hour, more possibly, when Pinkey nudged Wallie violently.

"What's that huffin', do you reckon?"

Wallie awoke with a start and listened.

"Huffing" was the right word. Lying next to the logs, some large animal was breathing so heavily in Wallie's ear that it sounded like a bellows. He peered through a crack and saw something that looked like a mastodon in the darkness tugging at a sack he had used for chinking. It was not a horse and was too large for his Jersey. It flashed through his mind that it might be a roaming silvertip from the mountain.

Pinkey was out of the bunk at a bound and around the corner of the cabin, where his suspicions were instantly verified.

"It's a bull!" he shouted. "I thought it. Looks like a thousand head of cattle tramplin' down your wheat-field!"

Wallie turned sick. He could not move for a moment. His air-castles fell so hard he could almost hear them.

"Do you think they've been in long?" he asked, weakly.

"Can't tell till daylight." Pinkey was getting into his clothes hurriedly.

Wallie was now in the doorway and he could make out innumerable dark shapes browsing contentedly in his grain-field.

"What'll we do?" he asked, despairingly.

"Do?" replied Pinkey, savagely, tugging at his boot straps. "I'll send one whur the dogs won't bite him with every ca'tridge. We'll run a thousand dollars' worth of taller off the rest of 'em. Git into your clothes, Gentle Annie, and we'll smoke 'em up proper."

"I don't see how it could happen," said Wallie, his voice trembling. "The fence was good!"

"If it had been twenty feet high 'twould 'a' been all the same," Pinkey answered. "Them cattle wasdrove in."

"You mean--" Wallie's mouth opened.