The Dude Wrangler (7 page)

"Get off my foot!" he shouted.

Mrs. Budlong obeyed by stepping on his other foot.

Mr. Appel, who had lurched over the railing, observed sarcastically:

"They ought to put that engineer on a stock train."

The party did not immediately recognize Wallie in his Western clothes, but when they did they waved grimy hands at him and cried delightedly:

"Here we are, Wallie!"

Wallie made no reply to this self-evident fact and, indeed, he could not, for he was too aghast at the shabby appearance of his wealthy friends to think of any that was appropriate. They looked as if they had ransacked their attics for clothes in which to make the trip.

The best Wallie could immediately manage was a limp handshake and a sickly grin as the coal baron and street-railway magnate, Mr. Henry Appel, stepped off in a suit of which he had undoubtedly been defrauding his janitor for some years.

Mrs. J. Harry Stott was handed down in a pink silk creation, through the lace insertion of which one could see the cinders that had settled in the fat crease of her neck. While Mrs. Stott recognized its inappropriateness, she had decided to give it a final wear and save a fresh gown.

Upon her heels was Mr. Stott, in clothes which bore mute testimony to the fact that he led a sedentary life. Mr. Stott was a "jiner" for business purposes and he was wearing all his lodge pins in the expectation of obtaining special privileges from brother members while travelling.

C. D. Budlong wore a "blazer" and a pair of mountain boots that had involved him in a quarrel with a Pullman conductor, who had called him a vandal for snagging a plush seat with the hob-nails. At his wife's request, Mr. Budlong was bringing a canvas telescope filled with a variety of tinned fruits. It was so heavy that it sagged from the handle as he bore it in front of him with both hands, so no one was deceived by his heroic efforts to carry it jauntily and make it appear that he did not notice the weight.

The only stranger in the party was Mrs. Henry Appel's maiden aunt-Miss Lizzie Philbrick-sixty or thereabouts. "Aunt Lizzie" was a refugee from the City of Mexico, and had left that troublesome country in such a panic that she had brought little besides a bundle of the reports of a Humane Society with which she had been identified, and an onyx apple, to which it was assumed there was much sentiment attached, since she refused to trust it to the baggage car, and was carrying it in her hand.

"Aunt Lizzie" looked as if she had been cast for a period play-early General Grant, perhaps-as she descended wearing a beaded silk mantle and a bonnet with strings.

"Be careful, Aunt Lizzie! Look where you step!"

The chorus of warnings was due to the fact that Aunt Lizzie already had fallen fourteen times in transit, a tack-head seeming sufficient to trip her up, and now, quite as though they had shouted the reverse, Aunt Lizzie stumbled and dropped the onyx apple upon old Mr. Penrose's felt-shod foot.

This was too much. Mr. Penrose shouted furiously:

"I wish you'd lose that damned thing!"

When it came to altered looks, Wallie had no monopoly on surprise. The Happy Family found it difficult to reconcile this rather tough-looking young man with the nice, neat boy who had blown them kisses from the motor bus.

"Now, what sort of a conveyance have you provided?" inquired Mr. Stott, who had taken the initiative in such matters during the trip.

Wallie pointed proudly to the stage-coach with Pinkey on the box and Mr. Tucker standing faithfully at the leaders' heads.

Everybody exclaimed in delight and lost no time in greeting Pinkey, whose response was cordial but brief. To Wallie he said, out of the corner of his mouth:

"Load 'em on. The roan is gittin' a hump in his back."

"We have twenty-five miles to make," Wallie hinted.

"Our luggage? How about that?" inquired Mr. Stott.

"It will follow." Wallie opened the stage-coach door as a further hint.

"I want to get some snap-shots of the town," said Mr. Penrose, who had his camera and a pair of field-glasses slung over his shoulder.

"What an experience this will be to write home!" gushed Miss Gaskett. "Let's stop at the office and mail post-cards."

Pinkey leaned over the side and winked at Wallie, who urged uneasily:

"We must start. Twenty-five miles is a good distance to make before dark."

"Switzerland has nothing to surpass this view!" declared Mr. Stott, who had never been in Switzerland.

Everyone took a leisurely survey of the mountains.

"And the air is very like that of the Scotch moors." No one ever would have suspected from his positive tone that Mr. Stott never had been in Scotland, either.

"I am sorry to insist," said Wallie in response to another significant look from Pinkey, "but we really will have to hurry."

Thus urged, they proceeded to clamber in, except Miss Gertie Eyester, who was patting the roan on the nose.

"Dear 'ittie horsey!"

"'Ittie horse eats human flesh, you'd better not git too close," said Pinkey.

Miss Eyester looked admiringly at Pinkey in his red shirt and declared with an arch glance:

"You're so droll, Mr. Fripp!"

Since Mr. Fripp thought something of the sort himself he did not contradict her, but told himself that she was "not so bad-for a dude."

"I hope the horses are perfectly safe, because my heart isn't good, and when I'm frightened it goes bad and my lips get just asb-l-u-e !"

"They look all right now," said Pinkey, after giving them his careful attention.

Miss Eyester observed wistfully:

"I hope I will get well and strong out here."

"If you'd go out in a cow-camp fer a couple of months it would do you a world of good," Pinkey advised her. "You'd fatten up."

Mr. Budlong, who had gotten in the coach, got out again to inquire of Pinkey if he was sure the horses were perfectly gentle.

"I'd trust my own step-mother behind 'em anywhere."

Mr. Budlong, who had had a step-mother, intimated that that was not convincing proof, and returned to the coach declaring that he had no fears for himself, but his wife was nervous.

To show his contempt of danger, Mr. Stott said: "Poof!"

Wallie, having closed the door, climbed up beside Pinkey, who unlocked the brake.

"I always feel helpless shut inside a vehicle," declared Mr. Budlong.

Mr. Stott again said recklessly: "Poof!"

Just as he said "poof!", the leaders rose on their hind legs. Mr. Tucker, who rose with them, clung valiantly to their bits and dangled there. One of the wheel horses laid down and the other tried to climb over the back of the leader in front of him, while the bystanders scattered.

"There seems to be some kind of a ruckus," Mr. Appel remarked as he stood up and leaned out the window.

Before he had time to report, however, two side wheels went over the edge of the station platform, tipping the coach to an angle which sent all the passengers on the upper side into the laps of those on the lower.

Aunt Lizzie pitched headlong and with such force that when she struck Mr. Stott on the mouth with her onyx apple she cut his lip.

"You'll kill somebody with that yet!" Mr. Stott glared at the keepsake.

Aunt Lizzie scrambled back into her seat and looked composedly at the drop of blood he offered in evidence, on the corner of his handkerchief.

Mr. Appel, who undoubtedly would have gone on through the window when the coach lurched had it not been for his wife's presence of mind in clutching him by the coat, demanded in an angry voice-instead of showing the gratitude she had reason to expect:

"Whatch you doin'? Tearin' the clothes off'n m'back? Wisht you'd leave me be!"

It had been years since Mr. Appel had spoken to his wife like that. Mrs. Appel opened her reticule, took out a handkerchief and held it to her eyes.

In the meantime the side wheels had dropped off the station platform and the coach had righted itself, but in spite of all that Pinkey and Wallie could do the leaders swung sharply to the left and dragged the wheel horses after them down the railroad track.

When the wheels struck the ties, Miss Mattie Gaskett bounded into the air as if she had been sitting upon a steel coil that had suddenly been released. She was wearing a tall-crowned hat of a style that had not been in vogue for some years and as she struck the roof it crackled and went shut like an accordeon, so that it was of an altogether different shape when she dropped back to the seat.

"Oh, my!" she exclaimed, blinking in a dazed fashion as she felt of her hat.

Old Mr. Penrose, who had elongated his naturally long neck preparatory to looking out the window, also struck the roof and with such force that his neck was bent like the elbow in a stove-pipe when he came down. He said such a bad word that Aunt Lizzie Philbrick exclaimed: "Oh, how dread-ful!" and asked him to remember where he was.

Mr. Penrose replied that he did not care where he was-that if her neck had been driven into her shoulders a foot she would say something, too.

Mrs. J. Harry Stott and Mr. Budlong, who had bumped heads so hard that the thud was heard, were eyeing each other in an unfriendly fashion as they felt of their foreheads, waiting for the lump.

Mr. Stott, who was still patting his lip with his handkerchief, declared:

"Such roads as these retard the development of a county."

"Undoubtedly," agreed Mr. Appel, getting up out of the aisle. "They are a disgrace!"

"We are goingaway from the mountains-I don't understand--"

Mr. Stott smiled reassuringly at Mrs. Budlong and told her that Wallie and Pinkey, of course, knew the road.

"I don't care," she insisted, stoutly, "I believe something's wrong. We are going awfully fast, and if I thought it was as rough as this all the way I should prefer to walk."

"You must remember that you are now in the West, Mrs. Budlong," Mr. Stott replied in a kind but reproving tone, "and we cannot expect--"

Mrs. Budlong, who had just bitten her tongue, retorted sharply:

"We certainly could expect a more comfortable conveyance than this. If I live to get out I shall never step foot in it again."

"When we stop at the post-office," said Mr. Budlong in a tone of decision as he clung to the window frame, "I shall hire a machine and go out-the rest of you can do as you like."

If there was dissatisfaction inside the coach it was nothing at all compared to the excitement on the box as the horses galloped down the railroad track. The leaders' mouths might have been bound in cast-iron for all the attention they paid to the pull on their bits, although Pinkey and Wallie were using their combined strength in their efforts to stop the runaways.

"Them dudes must be gittin' an awful churnin'," said Pinkey through his clenched teeth.

"We'll be lucky if we are not ditched," Wallie panted as he braced his feet.

"Wouldn't that be some rank! Even if we 'rim a tire' we got to swing off this track, for there's a culvert somewheres along here and--"

"Pink!"

Pinkey had no time to look, but he knew what the sharp exclamation meant.

"Pull my gun out-lay it on the seat-I can stop 'em if I must."

Pinkey's face was white under its sunburn and his jaw was set.

"How far we got?"

"About a hundred yards," Wallie answered, breathing heavily.

"We'll give 'em one more try. My hands are playin' out. You pop it to the roan when I say. Cut him wide open! If I can't turn him, I'll drop him. They'll pile up and stop. It's the only way."

Pinkey dug his heels into the foot-brace in front and took a tighter wrap of the lines around his hands. He could see the culvert ahead. His voice was hoarse as he gave the word.

Wallie stood up and swung the long rawhide braided whip. At the same time Pinkey put all his failing strength on one line. As the roan felt the tremendous pull on his mouth and the whip-thongs stung his head and neck, he turned at a sharp angle, dragging his mate. The wheel horses followed, and some of the stout oak spokes splintered in the wheels as they jerked the coach over the rail.

The pallid pair exchanged a quick glance of unutterable relief. The horses were still running but their speed was slackening as Pinkey swung them in a circle toward the town. Dragging the heavy coach over sagebrush hummocks and through sand had winded them so that they were almost ready to quit when they turned down the main street.

"If we'd 'a' hit that culvert we mighta killed off half our dudes. That woulda been what I call notorious hard luck," Pinkey had just observed, when Wallie commenced to whip the horses to a run once more.

"What you doin' that for?" He turned in astonishment.

"Let 'em go-I know what I'm about!"

"I think you're crazy, but I'll do what you say till I'm sure," Pinkey answered as Wallie continued to lay on the lash.

Imperative commands were coming from inside the coach as it tore through the main street.

"Let me out of this death-trap!" Old Mr. Penrose's bellow of rage was heard above the chorus of voices demanding that Pinkey stop.