Under Handicap Page 4

  CHAPTER IV

  Lonesome Pete dragged from the buckboard a couple of much-worn quilts,a careful examination of which hinted that they had once upon a timebeen gay and gaudy with brilliant red and green patterns. Now theywere an astonishing congregation of lumps where the cotton hadsucceeded in getting itself rolled into balls and of depressions wherethe cotton had fled. Light and air had little difficulty in passingthrough. Lonesome Pete jerked off the piece of rope which had heldthem in a roll and flung them to the ground, directing toward Hapgooda glance which was an invitation. And Hapgood, the fastidious, laydown.

  The red-headed man dumped a strange mess out of a square pasteboardbox into his frying-pan and set it upon some coals which he hadscraped out of his little fire. There was dried beef in that mess, andonions and carrots and potatoes, and they had all been cooked uptogether, needing only to be warmed over now. The odor of them wentabroad over the land and assailed Hapgood's nostrils. And Hapgood didnot frown, nor yet did he sneer. He lifted himself upon an elbow andwatched with something of real interest in his eyes. And when blackcoffee was made in a blacker, spoutless, battered, dirty-lookingcoffee-pot Roger Hapgood put out a hand, uninvited, for the tin cup.

  Conniston, his appetite being a shade further removed from starvationthan his friend's, divided his interest equally between the meal andthe man preparing it. He found his host an anomaly. In spite of thefiery coloring of mustache and hair he was one of the meekest-lookingindividuals Conniston had ever seen, and certainly the mostsoft-spoken. His eyes had a way of losing their brightness as he fellto staring away into vacancy, his lips working as though he wererepeating a prayer over and over to himself. The growth upon his upperlip had at first given him the air of a man of thirty, and now whenone looked at him it was certain he could not be a day over twenty.And about his hips, dragging so low and fitting so loosely thatConniston had always the uncomfortable sensation that it was going toslip down about his feet, he wore a cartridge-belt and two heavyforty-five revolvers. He gave one the feeling of a cherub with awar-club.

  During the scanty meal Lonesome Pete ate noisily and rapidly and spokelittle, contenting himself with short answers to the few questionswhich were put to him, for the most part staring away into thegathering night with an expression of great mildness upon his face.Finishing some little time before his guests, he rolled a cigarette,left them to polish out the frying-pan with the last morsels of bread,and, going back to the buckboard, fumbled a moment in a secondsoap-box under the seat. It was growing so dark now that, while theycould see him take two or three articles from his box and thrust themunder his arm, they could not make out what the things were. But inanother moment he had lighted the lantern which had swung under thebuckboard and was squatting cross-legged in the sand, the lantern onthe ground at his side. And then, as he bent low over the things inhis hand, they saw that they were three books and that Lonesome Petewas applying himself diligently to them.

  He opened them all, one after the other, turned many pages, stoppingnow and then to bend closer to look at a picture and decipherpainstakingly the legend inscribed under it. Finally, after perhapsten minutes of this kind of examination, he laid two of them besidehim, grasped the other firmly with both awkward hands and began toread. They knew that he was reading, for now and again his droningvoice came to them as he struggled with a word of some difficulty.

  Hapgood smoked his last cigarette; Conniston puffed at his pipe. Atthe end of ten minutes Lonesome Pete had turned a page, the rustlingof the leaves accompanied by a deep sigh. Then he laid his book, open,across his knee, made another cigarette, lighted it, and, after aglance toward Conniston and Hapgood, spoke softly.

  "You gents reads, I reckon? Huh?"

  "Yes. A little," Conniston told him; while Hapgood, being somewhatstrengthened by his rest and his meal, grunted.

  "After a man gets the swing of it, sorta, it ain't always such hardwork?"

  "No, it isn't such hard work after a while."

  Lonesome Pete nodded slowly and many times.

  "It's jest like anything else, ain't it, when you get used to it? Jestas easy as ropin' a cow brute or ridin' a bronco hoss?"

  Conniston told him that he was right.

  "But what gits me," Lonesome Pete went on, closing his book andmarking the place with a big thumb, "is knowin' words that comesstampedin' in on you onexpected like. When a man sees a cow brute ora hoss or a mule as he ain't never clapped his peepers on he knows thebrute right away. He says, 'That's a Half Moon,' or, 'It's a BarCircle,' or 'It's a U Seven.' 'Cause why? 'Cause she's got a bran' asa man can make out. But these here words"--he shook his head as heopened his book and peered into it--"they ain't got no bran'. Ain't ithell, stranger?"

  "What's the word, Pete," smiled Conniston.

  "She ain't so big an' long as bothers me," Lonesome Pete answered."It's jest she's so darn peculiar-lookin'. It soun's like it might be_izzles_, but what's _izzles_? You spell it i-s-l-e-s. Did you everhappen to run acrost that there word, stranger?"

  Conniston told him what the word was, and Lonesome Pete's softlybreathed curse was eloquent of gratitude, amazement, and a certaindeep admiration that those five letters could spell a little island.

  "The nex' line is clean over my head, though," he went on, after amoment of frowning concentration.

  Conniston got to his feet and went to where the reader sat, stoopingto look over his shoulder. The book was "Macbeth." He picked up thetwo volumes upon the ground. They were old, much worn, much torn,their backs long ago lost in some second-hand book-store. One of themwas a copy of Lamb's _Essays_, the other a state series second reader.

  "Quite an assortment," was the only thing he could think to say.

  Lonesome Pete nodded complacently. "I got 'em off'n ol' Sam Bristow.You don't happen to know Sam, do you, stranger?"

  Conniston shook his head. Lonesome Pete went on to enlighten him.

  "Sam Bristow is about the eddicatedest man this side San Francisco, Ireckon. He's got a store over to Rocky Bend. Ever been there?"

  Again Conniston shook his head, and again Lonesome Pete explained:

  "Rocky Bend is a right smart city, more'n four times as big as InjunCreek. It's a hundred mile t'other side Injun Creek, makin' it ahundred an' fifty mile from here. In his store he's got a lot ofbooks. I went over there to make my buy, an' I don't mind tellin' you,stranger, I sure hit a bargain. I got them three books an nine more asis in that box under the seat, makin' an even dozen, an' ol' Sam letthe bunch go for fourteen dollars. I reckon he was short of cash,huh?"

  Since the books at a second-hand store should have been worth aboutninety cents, Conniston made no answer. Instead he picked up thedog-eared volume of "Macbeth."

  "How did you happen to pick out this?" he asked, curiously.

  "I knowed the jasper as wrote it."

  Conniston gasped. Lonesome Pete evidently taking the gasp as promptedby a deep awe that he should know a man who wrote books, smiledbroadly and went on:

  "Yes, suh. I'm real sure I knowed him. You see, I was workin' a coupleer years ago for the Triangle Bar outfit. Young Jeff Comstock, the ol'man's son, he used to hang out in the East. An' he had a fellervisitin' him. That feller's name was Bill, an' he was out here to gitthe dope so's he could write books about the cattle country. I reckonhis las' name was the same as the Bill as wrote this. I don't know noother Bills as writes books, do you, stranger?"

  Conniston evaded. "Are you sure it's about the cattle country?"

  "It sorta sounds like it, an' then it don't. You see it begins in adesert place. That goes all right. But I ain't sure I git jest whatthis here firs' page is drivin' at. It's about three witches, an' theydon't say much as a man can tie to. I jest got to where there'ssomething about a fight, an' I guess he jest throwed the witches in,extry. Here it says as they wear chaps. That oughta settle it, huh?"

  There was the line, half hidden by Lonesome Pete's horny forefinger."_He unseamed him from the nave to the chaps!_" That certainly settledit as f
ar as Lonesome Pete was concerned. Macbeth was a cattle-king,and Bill Shakespeare was the young fellow who had visited the TriangleBar.

  Thoughtfully he put his books away in the box, which he covered with asack and which he pushed back under the seat. Then he looked to hishorses, saw that they had plenty of grass within the radius oftie-rope, and after that came back to where Hapgood lay.

  "I reckon you can git along with one of them blankets, stranger. Youtwo fellers can have it, an' I'll make out with the other."

  Hapgood moved and groaned as he put his weight on a sore muscle.

  "The ground will be d----d hard with just one blanket," he growled.

  Lonesome Pete, his two hands upon his hips, stood looking down at him,the far-away look stealing back into his eyes.

  "I hadn't thought of that. But I reckon I can make one do, all right."

  Whereupon without more ado and with the same abstracted gleam in hiseyes he stooped swiftly and jerked one of the quilts out from underthe astonished Hapgood.

  The man who had traveled from the Half Moon one hundred and ninetymiles to spend fourteen dollars for a soap-box half full of books wasawake the next morning before sunrise. Conniston and Hapgood didn'topen an eye until he called to them. Then they looked up from theirquilt to see him standing over them pulling thoughtfully at the endsof his red mustache, his face devoid of expression.

  "I'll have some chuck ready in about three minutes," he told them,quietly. "An' we'll be gittin' a start."

  "In the middle of the night!" expostulated Hapgood, his words all butlost in a yawn.

  "I ain't got my clock along this trip, stranger. But I reckon if wewant to git acrost them hills before it gits hot we'll be travelin'real soon. Leastways," as he turned and went back to squat over thelittle fire he had blazing merrily near the watering-trough, "I'mgoin' to dig out in about twenty minutes."

  Hapgood, remembering the ride of yesterday, scrambled to his feet evenbefore Conniston. And the two young men, having washed their faces andhands at the pipe which discharged its cold stream into the trough,joined the Half Moon man.

  He had already fried bacon, and now was cooking some flapjacks in thegrease which he had carefully saved. The coffee was bubbling awaygaily, sending its aroma far and wide upon the whispering morningbreeze. The skies were still dark, their stars not yet gone from them.Only the faintest of dim, uncertain lights in the horizon told wherethe east was and where before long the sun would roll up above thefloor of the desert. The horses, already hitched to the buckboard,were vague blots in the darkness about them.

  They ate in silence, the two Easterners too tired and sleepy to talk,Lonesome Pete evidently too abstracted. And when the short meal wasover it was Lonesome Pete who cleaned out the few cooking-utensils andstored them away in the buckboard while Conniston and Hapgood smokedtheir pipes. It was Lonesome Pete who got his two quilts, rolled,tied, and put them with the box of utensils. And then, making acigarette, he climbed to his seat.

  "An' now if one of you gents figgers on ridin' along with me--"

  "I do!" cried Hapgood, quickly. And he hastened to the buckboard,taking his seat at the other's side.

  "I thought you had a hoss somewheres! An' your saddle?" continuedLonesome Pete.

  "I thought that while you were getting your horses--Didn't you saddlehim?"

  For a moment Lonesome Pete made no answer. He drew a deep breath as hegathered in his reins tightly. And then he spoke very softly.

  "Now, ain't I sure a forgetful ol' son of a gun! I did manage torec'lec' to make a fire an' git breakfas' an' hitch up my hosses an'clean up after breakfas' an' put the beddin' in--but would you believeI clean forgot to saddle up for you!"

  He laughed as softly as he had spoken. Hapgood glanced at him quickly,but the cowboy's face was lost in the black shadow of his low-drawnhat. Hapgood got down and saddled his own horse, and it was Hapgoodwho, riding with Lonesome Pete, led a stubborn animal that jerked backuntil both of Hapgood's arms were sore in their sockets. LonesomePete, the forgetful, remembered after an hour or two of quietenjoyment to tell the tenderfoot that he could tie the rope to thebuckboard instead of holding it. For the first hour Hapgood was,consequently, altogether too busy even to try to see the country abouthim, and Conniston, riding behind, could make out little in thedarkness. The one thing of which he could be sure was that they wereleaving the floor of the desert behind, that they were climbing asteep, narrow road which wound ever higher and higher in the hills.Then finally the day broke, and he could see that they were alreadydeep in the brown hills which he had seen from Indian Creek. There wasscant vegetation, a few scattered, twisted, dwarfed trees, withpatches of brush in the ravines and hollows. Nowhere water, nowhere asprig of green grass. As in the flat land below here, there was onlybarrenness and desolation and solitude.

  As had been the case yesterday, so now to-day when the sun shotsuddenly into the sky the heat came with it. But already the threetravelers had climbed to the top of the hills where Pocket Pass ledacross the uplands and were once more dropping down toward a graylevel floor. On a narrow bit of bench land, where for a space thecountry road ran level, lined with ruts, gouged with uncomfortablefrequency into dust-concealed chuck-holes, Lonesome Pete pulled in hishorses and waited for Conniston to ride up to his side.

  "In case you've got a sorta interest in the country we're goin' todrop down in," he said, as he took advantage of the stop to roll acigarette, "you might jest take a look from here. This is what theycall Pocket Pass as we jest rode through. An' from this en' you cansee purty much everything as is worth seein' in this country an' awhole hell of a lot as ain't." He made a wide sweep with his arm,pointing southward and downward. "That there's where we're headedfor."

  "And that's the Half Moon!" Conniston was eager, as he saw at a glancehow the range got its name.

  The hills fell away even more abruptly here than they did in thenorth, cut so often into straight, stratified brown cliffs ofcrumbling dirt that Conniston wondered how and where the road couldfind a way out and down into the lower land. They swept away, botheast and west, in a wide curve, roughly resembling a half moon. Towardthe east, perhaps twenty-five miles from where Conniston sat upon hishorse, the distant mountains sent out two far-reaching spurs ofpine-clad ridges between which lay Rattlesnake Valley. Due south, asLonesome Pete's outstretched finger indicated, lay the road which theywere to follow and the headquarters of the Half Moon. There again athickly timbered spur of the mountains ran down into the plain on eachside of a deeply cleft canon from which Lonesome Pete told them thatIndian Creek issued, and in which were the main corrals and the rangehouse of the Half Moon.

  "Which is sure the finest up-an'-down cow-country I ever see," headded, by way of rounding off his information. "Bein' well watered bythat same crick, an' havin' good feed both in the Big Flat, as folkscalls that country down below us, an' in the foothills. RattlesnakeValley, over yonder, ain't never been good for much exceptin' thefinest breed of serpents an' horn-toads a man ever see outside acircus or the jimjams. There ain't nothin' as 'll grow there outsidethem animals. The ol' man's workin' over there now, tryin' to throwwater on it an' make things grow. The ol' man," he ended, shaking hishead dubiously, "has put acrost some big jobs, but I reckon he's sortaup against it this trip."

  "Reclamation work," nodded Conniston.

  "That's what some folks calls it. Others calls it plumb foolishness.Git up, there, Lady! Stan' aroun', you pinto hoss!"

  An hour more of winding in and out, back and forth, along the narrowgrade cut into the sides of the hills, just wide enough for one teamat the time, with here and there a wider place where wagons might meetand pass, and they were down in the Half Moon country. The cowboy lethis horses out into a swinging trot; Conniston followed just farenough behind to escape their dust; and the miles slipped swiftlybehind them.

  They had crossed the floor of the lower Half Moon and were moving up agentle slope leading along the spur of the mountains to the right ofIndian Creek when they met one o
f the Half Moon cowboys driving asmall band of saddle-horses ahead of him. Lonesome Pete stopped for aword with him, and Conniston, seeing the road plain ahead, rode onalone. A mile farther and he had entered the forest of pines throughwhich the road lay, winding and twisting to avoid the boles of thelarger trees or the big scattered boulders which were many upon thesteepening slope. Now he could seldom see more than a hundred yards infront of him, and now he had left the stifling heat behind him for thecool shadows which made a dim twilight of midday.

  Two miles of this pleasant shade, fragrant with the spicy balsam ofthe forest, and the road began to turn to the left, across the spineof the ridge and into the deep ravine. Presently he heard the bawlingof the stream somewhere through the undergrowth below him, its gurgleand clatter making merry music with the swish of the stirringpine-tops. And suddenly, as he made a sharp turn, he drew in his horsewith a little exclamation of surprise.

  Here the road plunged abruptly downward and across the rocky bed ofIndian Creek. Just above the crossing, so near that a passing vehiclemust be sprinkled with the spray of its headlong leaping waters, was awaterfall flashing in white and crystal down a cliff of black rock tenfeet high. On either side the stately pine-trees, their lowest limbsforty feet above the ground, marched in patriarchal dignity to theedge of the stream. And above the waterfall, farther back between thejaws of the ravine, Conniston could see the red-tiled roofing andsnow-white towers of such a house as he had never dreamed of findinglost in the Western wilderness.

  He rode on down into the stream and across. Upon the other side theroad again ran on into the canon, climbing twenty feet up a gradualslope. And here upon the top of the bank Conniston again drew in hisreins with a jerk, again surprised at what he saw before him.

  Here was a long, wide bench of land which had been carefully leveled.Through the middle of it ran the creek. Feeding the waterfall was adam, its banks steep, its floor, seen through the clear water, whitesand. And it was more than a dam; it was a tiny mountain lake. Adrifting armada of spotlessly white ducks turned their round, yelloweyes upon the trespasser. Over yonder a wide flight of stone stepsled to the water's edge. And the flat table-land, bordered with adense wall of pines and firs, was a great lawn, brilliantly green,thick strewn with roses and geraniums and a riot of bright-huedflowers Conniston did not know.

  He turned his eyes to the house itself. It was a great, two-storied,wide-verandaed building, with spacious doors, deep-curtained windows,a tower rising above the red tiles of the roof at each corner,everywhere the gleam of white columns. Each tower had its balconies,and each balcony was guessed more than seen through the green and redand white of clambering roses.

  Midway between the broad front steps and the edge of the little toylake was a summer-house grown over with vines, its broad doorwayopening toward Conniston. And sitting within its shade, a book in herlap, her gray eyes raised gravely to meet his, was the girl he hadseen on the Overland Limited. Conniston rode along a graveled walktoward her, his hat in his hand.

  "Good morning," she said, as he drew in his horse near her. "Won't youget down?"

  "Good morning."

  He swung to the ground with no further invitation, his horse's reinsover his arm.

  His eyes were as grave as hers, and he was glad, glad that he hadridden here through the desert.

  "You came to see my father?"

  Conniston colored slightly. Why had he come? What was he going to donow that he was here? How should he seek to explain? He hesitated amoment, and then answered, slowly:

  "I am afraid that my reasons for coming at all are too complicated tobe told. You see, we just got off the train in Indian Creek out ofidle curiosity to see what the desert country was like. We're from NewYork. And then we rode out toward the hills. One of your father's menovertook us there, and, as he was coming this way and as we wereanxious to see the cattle-country and--" he broke off, smiling. "Yousee, it is hard to make it sound sensible. We just came!"

  She looked up at him, a little puzzled frown in her eyes.

  "You have friends with you?"

  "One friend. He was pretty well tuckered out, and the red-headedgentleman who calls himself Lonesome Pete is bringing him along in hisbuckboard."

  "And you have no business at all out here?"

  "I _had_ none," he retorted.

  "You don't know father?"

  "I am sorry that I don't."

  "You are going on to Crawfordsville?"

  "I don't know where Crawfordsville is. Is it the nearest town?"

  "Yes."

  "Since I don't see how we can stay here, I suppose we'll go on toCrawfordsville, then. That would be the best way, wouldn't it?"

  "Really," she replied, quietly, "I don't see that I am in a positionto advise. If you haven't any business with my father--"

  Then the buckboard drove up, and Greek Conniston devoutly wished thathe had left Roger Hapgood behind. And when he saw the radiant smilewhich lightened the girl's gray eyes as they rested upon LonesomePete and took notice of the wide, sweeping flourish with which thecowboy's hat was lifted to her, he wished that the red-headed studentof Shakespeare was with Hapgood on Broadway.