Bat Wing Bowles. Coolidge Dane

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he must try to save her life! He was in a fever of excitement when the dining-room door finally swept open and Dixie May entered the room; but she was calm, very calm, and something about her bade him hold his hand. Then the barroom door swung in again and the cowboy appeared, walking head up with a masterful stride – and a look in his eyes that Bowles knew all too well.

      "Why, hello, Dix!" he cried, hurrying over and striking hands with her. "Well, well, how're you comin'? What, don't I draw nothin'?"

      "No, you don't!" responded Dixie Lee, stepping back as he impudently offered to kiss her. "Not unless it's a good slap for not meeting me down at the train! How's Maw and Paw and all the boys? Have you gentled that colt for me yet?"

      And so, with many laughing sallies, they passed out into the cold dawn, leaving Bowles to sit by the fire and stare. But in her last glance he had read a challenge, and he did not let it pass.

      CHAPTER III

      THE BAT WING RANCH

      A week passed by while Mr. Bowles prepared for his great emprise, and then one evening as the sun set behind the purple peaks of the Tortugas and lighted up the white walls of the big house on the hill a stranger might have been seen riding up toward the Bat Wing gate. In fact, he was seen, and the round-up cook, who was washing supper dishes at the rear of the chuck-wagon, delivered himself of a heartfelt curse.

      "What's the matter, Gus?" inquired a lounging cowboy who was hovering over the fire. "Drop yore dishrag?"

      "No; and I don't need to around this ranch!" commented Gus with bitter emphasis. "It's a common remark or sayin' that when you drop yore dishrag it means a visitor is comin' – or, as some say, it means bad luck. Now jest look at that ornery feller comin' up the road! Can't let his hawse out none – can't whip up a little and git in by supper-time – has to come draggin' in jest as I'm finishin' my work!"

      The cowboy raised himself up slowly from crouching on his heels and regarded the stranger intently.

      "Say, who is that?" he said at last. "Looks like he was ridin' that little bald-faced sorrel that Lon Morrell traded to Jim Scrimsher last summer. Yes, sir, it's the very same hawse – that's somebody from down Chula Vista way!"

      "Well, I don't care where he comes from," grumbled the cook, "as long as he comes a-runnin'! I sure will be one happy man when the wagon gits away from this ranch and I git shut of these no-'count, worthless chuck-riders. Well, biscuits and coffee is all he gits now, I don't care if he's a cattle-buyer!"

      He wiped his hands carefully on a clean towel he kept hid for that purpose, pulled out his long gray mustaches and regarded the stranger with a baleful stare.

      "Hoo!" he sneered. "Look at them shaps, will you? Ain't them the fancy pants though! Right new, too – and git on to that great big six-shooter! Must be a forest ranger!"

      "Shut up!" said the cowboy as the stranger dropped off at the gate. "He might hear ye!"

      "Don't give a rip if he did!" snorted Gus, to whom Uncle Sam's gay young forest-savers were intimately associated with an extra plate; and, grumbling and slamming down dishes, he returned to his manifold duties.

      But the stranger was evidently not a common chuck-rider; in fact, so gloriously was he appareled that the moment his rigging became apparent the idling cowboy made a swift sneak to the bunk-house, where the boys were wrangling over a pitch game, and turned in a general alarm.

      "Come out, fellers," he whispered hoarsely, "and see the new tenderfoot! Hurry up, he's goin' over to the big house! Say, he's a forest ranger all right!"

      "Nothin' of the kind!" asserted a burly cow-puncher, thrusting his head out the door. "Movin' picture cowboy, I'll bet a hat!"

      The stranger remounted gracefully as they gazed out at him; then he touched his jaded sorrel with the spur and trotted over to the big house gate – and as he trotted he rose rhythmically in his stirrups, while all cowboy-land stood aghast!

      "English!" they gasped in a chorus, and burst into fervid curses as they stared at the uncouth sight. A grown man, a white man, and hopping up and down like that! Holy, jumping Jerusalem! They beat each other on the back in an agony of despair – and yet it was no more than Mr. Bowles, dropping back into his old Central Park habits. To be sure, the man who coached him at Chula Vista had warned him against it repeatedly, but the customs of a lifetime are not wiped out in a minute, and to that extent Mr. Bowles was still an Easterner.

      The big white house in which Henry Lee made his home was a landmark in southeast Arizona. Some people merely referred to it as "The White House," and though it was forty miles from the railroad it was as well known in its way as the abiding place of Presidents in Washington. The White House was a big, square, adobe building, set boldly on the top of a low hill and surrounded by a broad wooden gallery, from behind whose clambering honeysuckles and gnarled rose-bushes Mrs. Lee and Dixie May looked down upon the envious world below. To be invited up to the big house, to sit on the flower-scented porch and listen to the soft voices of the women – that was a dream to which every cow-puncher's heart aspired, although in the realization many a bold, adventurous man lost face and weakened. But to Bowles the big house was the natural place to go, and he unlatched the gate and mounted to the gallery without a tremor.

      Upon the edge of the porch, smoking his pipe and gazing out over his domain, sat Henry Lee, the pioneer cattleman of the Tortugas Valley, and a man who had fought Indians to get his start. He was a great man – old Henry Lee – but to Bowles chiefly distinguished by being the father of Dixie May.

      "Ah, good-evening!" he began, bringing his heels together and bowing. "Are you Mr. Lee?"

      The cattleman looked at him a moment with a calm, appraising eye. He was a small, rather slight man, but square-shouldered and far from decrepit – also, he had seen the procession go by for quite a while, and he could judge most men by their faces.

      "That's my name," he said, rising quietly from his place. "What can I do for you?"

      "My name is Bowles," said that gentleman, following the procedure he thought most fitting in one seeking employment. "Mr. Scrimsher, of Chula Vista, has referred me to you in regard to a position as cowboy. I should like very much to get such a place."

      "Sorry, Mr. Bowles," answered Mr. Lee, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "but I'm not taking on any hands at present."

      "Oh, indeed!" murmured the would-be cowboy, not at all dismayed. "Perhaps there will be an opening for me later?"

      "No; I'm afraid not. I generally take on about the same boys every year, or men that know the country, and there won't be any place for you."

      There was something very final about the way that this was said, and Bowles paused to meditate.

      "Turn your horse into the pasture and git some supper at the wagon," added the old man, with a friendly gesture; but supper was not what Bowles had come for. He had come to get a job where he could be near the queen of his heart, and perhaps win her by some deed of prowess and daring. So he ignored this tacit dismissal and returned again to the charge.

      "I can readily understand, Mr. Lee," he began, "why you hesitate to employ a stranger, and especially a man who has newly come from the East, but if you would give me a trial for a few days I am sure you would find me a very willing worker. I have come out here in order to learn the cattle business, and the compensation is of no importance to me at first; in fact, I should be glad to work without pay until you found my services of value. Perhaps now – "

      "Nope," interposed the cattleman, shaking СКАЧАТЬ