The Dude Wrangler (5 page)

"Shore-Canby! It come to my mind last night when I seen that bunch movin'. Pretty coarse work I call it, but he thought you was alone and wouldn't ketch on to it."

"He'll pay for this!" cried Wallie, chokingly.

"You can't do nothin' with him but deal him misery. He's got too much money and pull fer you. Do you know what I think's gnawin' on him?"

"My taking up a homestead--"

"That, too, but mostly because Helene dressed him down for sellin' that locoed team to you. He's jealous."

Even in his despair Wallie felt pleased that any one, especially Canby, should be jealous of him because of Helene Spenceley.

"He aims to marry her," Pinkey added. "I wisht you could beat his time and win yerself a home somehow. I don't think you got any show, but if I was you I'd take another turn around my saddle-horn and hang on. Whenever I kin," kindly, "I'll speak a good word for you. Throw your saddle on your horse and step, young feller. I'm gone!"

The faint hope which Wallie had nursed that the damage might not be so great as he had feared vanished with daylight. Not only was the grain trampled so the field looked like a race course, but panel after panel of the fence was down where the quaking-asp posts had snapped like lead-pencils.

As Pinkey and Wallie surveyed it in the early dawn Wallie's voice had a catch in it when he said finally:

"I guess I'm done farming. They made a good job of it."

"I'm no 'sharp' but it looks to me like some of that wheat would straighten up if it got a good wettin'."

Wallie said grimly:

"The only thing I forgot to buy when I was outfitting in Philadelphia was a rain-making apparatus."

"On the level," Pinkey declared, earnestly, "I bleeve we're goin' to have a shower-the clouds bankin' up over there in the northwest is what made me think of it."

Wallie's short laugh was cynical.

"It might drown somebody half a mile from me but it wouldn't settle the dust in my dooryard."

"I see you're gittin' homesteaditis," Pinkey commented, "but jest the same them clouds look like they meant business."

Wallie felt a glimmer of hope in spite of himself and he scrutinized the clouds closely.

"They do look black," he admitted. "But since it hasn't rained for two months it seems too much to expect that it will rain when I need it so desperately."

"It's liable to do anything. I've seen it snow here in August. A fur-lined linen duster is the only coat fer this country. I'll gamble it's goin' to dosomethin' , but only the Big Boss knows what."

During breakfast they got up at intervals to look through the doorway, and while they washed dishes and tidied the cabin they watched the northwest anxiously.

"She's movin' right along," Pinkey reported. "It might be a stiddy rain, and then agin it might be a thunder-shower, though you don't often look for 'em in the morning."

The light grew subdued with the approaching storm and Wallie commented upon the coolness. Then he went out in the dooryard and stood a moment.

"The clouds are black as ink, and how still it is," he said, wonderingly. "There isn't a breath of air stirring."

Pinkey was sitting on the floor oiling his saddle when he tilted his head suddenly, and listened. He got up abruptly and stood in the doorway, concentrating all his faculties upon some sound of which he alone was cognizant, for Wallie was aware of nothing unusual save the uncanny stillness.

"Hear that?" The sharp note in Pinkey's voice filled Wallie with a nameless fear.

"No-what?"

"That roar-can't you hear it?"

Wallie listened intently.

"Yes-like a crashing-what is it?"

"Hail! And a terror! We've got to run the stock in." He was off with Wallie following and together they got the cow and horses under shelter with all the haste possible.

The sound preceded the storm by some little time, but each moment the roar and the crash of it grew louder and when it finally reached them Wallie gazed open-mouthed.

Accustomed to hail like tapioca, he never had seen anything like the big, jagged chunks of ice which struck the ground with such force that they bounded into the air again. Any one of them would have knocked a man unconscious. It seemed as if they would batter his roof in, and they came so thick that the stable and corral could be seen only indistinctly.

They both stood in the doorway, fascinated and awe-stricken.

"Hear it pound! This is the worst I've seen anywhur. You're licked, Gentle Annie."

"Yes," said Wallie with a white face. "This finishes me."

"You'll have to kiss your wheat good-bye. It'll be beat into the ground too hard ever to straighten." He laid an arm about Wallie's shoulder and there was a sympathy in his voice few had heard there:

"You've put up a good fight, old pardner, and even if you are counted out, it's no shame to you. You've done good fer a Scissor-bill, Gentle Annie."

Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey's arm while his tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm:

"I'm not licked! Iwon't be licked! I'm going to stick, somehow! And what's more," he turned to Pinkey fiercely, "if you don't stop calling me 'Gentle Annie,' I'll knock your block off!"

Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamed approvingly.

* * *

The Prouty barber lathering the face of a customer, after the manner of a man whitewashing a chicken coop, paused on an upward stroke to listen. Then he stepped to the door, looked down the street, and nodded in confirmation. After which he returned, laid down his brush, and pinned on a nickel badge, which act transformed him into the town constable.

The patron in the chair, a travelling salesman, watched the pantomime with interest.

"One moment, please." The barber-officer excused himself and stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, where he awaited the approach of a pair on horseback who were making the welkin ring with a time-honoured ballad of the country:

I'm a howler from the prairies of the West.

If you want to die with terror, look at me.

I'm chain-lightnin'--

As they came abreast the constable held out his hand and the pair automatically laid six-shooters in it and went on without stopping in their song:

-if I ain't, may I be blessed.

I'm a snorter of the boundless, lone prairee.

Other citizens than the barber recognized the voices, and frowned or smiled as happened, among whom was Mr. Tucker repairing a sofa in the rear of his "Second-Hand Store."

Returning, the constable laid the six-shooters on the shelf among the shaving mugs and removed his badge.

"Who's that?" inquired the patron, since the barber offered no explanation.

"Oh, them toughs-'Gentle Annie' Macpherson and 'Pinkey' Fripp," was the answer in a wearied tone. "I hate to see 'em come to town."

The pair continued to warble on their way to the livery barn on a side street:

I'm the double-jawed hyena from the East.

I'm the blazing, bloody blizzard of the States.

I'm the celebrated slugger--

The song stopped as Pinkey asked:

"Shall we work together or separate?"

To this mysterious question Wallie replied:

"Let's try it together first."

After attending personally to the matter of feeding their horses oats, the two set forth with the air of having a definite purpose.

Their subsequent actions confirmed it, for they approached divers persons of their acquaintance as if they had business of a confidential nature. The invariable result of these mysterious negotiations, however, was a negative shake of the head.

After another obvious failure Pinkey said gloomily:

"If I put in half the time and thought trying to be a Senator that I do figgerin' how to git a bottle, I'd be elected."

Wallie replied hopefully:

"Something may turn up yet."

"I'd lift a cache from a preacher! I'd steal booze off my blind aunt! I'd--"

"We'll try some more 'prospects' before we give up. It's many months since I've gone out of town sober and I don't like to establish a precedent. I'm superstitious about things like that," said Wallie.

At this unquestionably psychological moment Mr. Tucker beckoned them from his doorway. They responded with such alacrity that their gait approached a trot, although they had no particular reason to believe that it was his intention to offer them a drink. It was merely a hope born of their thirst.

Their reputation was such, however, that any one who wished to demonstrate his friendship invariably evidenced it in this way, taking care, in violation of the ethics of bygone days, to do the pouring himself.

Mr. Tucker winked elaborately when he invited them in, and Wallie and Pinkey exchanged eloquent looks as they followed him to his Land Office in the rear of the store.

Inside, he locked the door and lowered the shade of the single window which looked out on an areaway. No explanation was necessary as he took a hatchet and pried up a plank. This accomplished, he reached under the floor and produced a tin cup and a two-gallon jug.

He filled it with a fluid of an unfamiliar shade and passed it to Pinkey, who smelled it and declared that he could drink anything that was wet. Wallie watched him eagerly as it gurgled down his throat.

"Well?" Mr. Tucker waited expectantly for the verdict.

Pinkey wiped his mouth.

"Another like that and I could watch my mother go down for the third time and laugh!"

"Where did you get it?" Wallie in turn emptied the cup and passed it back.

"S-ss-sh!" Mr. Tucker looked warningly at the door. "I made it myself-brown sugar and raisins. You like it then?"

"If I had about 'four fingers' in a wash-tub every half hour--What would you hold a quart of that at?" Pinkey leaned over the opening in the floor and sniffed.

Mr. Tucker hastily replaced the plank and declared:

"Oh, I wouldn't dast! I jest keep a little on hand for my particular friends that I can trust. By the way, Mr. Macpherson, what are you goin' to do with that homestead you took up?"

"Hold it. Why?"

"I thought I might run across a buyer sometime and I wondered what you asked."

A hardness came into Wallie's face and Tucker added:

"I wasn't goin' to charge you any commission-you've had bad luck and--"

"You're the seventh philanthropist that's wanted to sell that place in my behalf for about $400, because he was sorry for me," Wallie interrupted, drily. "You tell Canby that when he makes me a decent offer I'll consider it."

"No offence-no offence, I hope?" Tucker protested.

"Oh, no." Wallie shrugged his shoulder. "Only don't keep getting me mixed with the chap that took up that homestead. I've had my eyeteeth cut."

Extending an invitation to call and quench their thirsts with his raisinade when next they came to town, Tucker unlocked the door.

After the two had wormed their way through the bureaus and stoves and were once more in the street, they turned and gave each other a long, inquiring look.

"Pink," demanded Wallie, solemnly, "did you smell anything when he raised that plank?"

"Did I smell anything! Didn't you see me sniff? That joker has got a cache of the real stuff and he gave us raisinade! I couldn't git an answer from a barrel of that. He couldn't have insulted us worse if he'd slapped our faces."

"A man ought to be punished that would do a wicked thing like that."

"You've said somethin', Gentle Annie."

The two looked at each other in an understanding that was beautiful and complete.

The behaviour of the visitors was nearly too good to be true-it was so exemplary, in fact, as to be suspicious, and acting upon this theory, the barber closed his shop early, pinned on his badge of office, and followed them about. But when at ten o'clock they had broken nothing, quarrelled with nobody, and drunk only an incredible quantity of soda pop, he commenced to think he had been wrong.

At eleven, when they were still in a pool-hall playing "solo" for a cent a chip, he decided to go home. There he confided to his wife that no more striking example of the benefits of prohibition had come under his observation than the conduct of this notorious pair who, when sober, were well mannered and docile as lambs.

It was twelve or thereabouts when two figures crept stealthily up the alley behind Mr. Tucker's Second-Hand Store and raised the window looking out on the areaway. As noiselessly as trained burglars they pried up the plank and investigated by the light of a match.

"Well, what do you think of that!"

"I feel like somebody had died and left me a million dollars!" said Pinkey in an awed tone, reaching for a tin cup. "I didn't think they was anybody in the world as mean as Tucker."

"You mustn't get too much," Wallie admonished, noting the size of the drink Pinkey was pouring for himself.

"I've never had too much. I may have had enough, but never too much," Pinkey grinned. "I don't take no int'rest in startin' less'n a quart."

"I hope he'll have the decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in the face," Wallie declared, virtuously.

"He won't git a chanst to look in my face for some time to come if we kin lift this cache."