Overland Red. Henry Herbert Knibbs

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СКАЧАТЬ so the tickets on the crates said. That was near Daggett, by a water-tank. It was hotter than settin' on a stove in Death Valley at 12 o'clock Sunday noon. We beat it for the next town, afoot. Collie commenced to give out. He was pretty tender and not strong. I lugged him some and he walked some. He was talkin' of green grass and cucumbers in the ice-box and ice-cream and home and the Maumee River, and a whole lot of things you can't find in the desert. Well, I got him to his feet next mornin'. We had some trouble, and was detained a spell in Barstow after that. They couldn't prove nothin', so they let us go. Then Collie got to talkin' again about a California road that wiggled up a hill and through a cañon, and had one of these here ole Mission bells where it lit off for the sky-ranch. Funny, for he was never in California then. Mebby it was the old post-card he got at Albuquerque. You see his pa bought it for him 'cause he wanted it. He was only a kid then. Collie, he says it's the only thing his pa ever did buy for him, and so he kept it till it was about wore out from lookin' at it. But considerin' how his pa acted, I guess that was about all Collie needed to remember him by. Anyhow, he dreamed of that road, and told me so much about it that I got to lookin' for it too. I knowed of the old El Camino Real and the bells, so we kept our eye peeled for that particular dream road, kind of for fun. We found her yesterday."

      "What, this? The road to our ranch?"

      "Uhuh. Collie, he said so the minute we got in that cañon, Moonstone Cañon, you said. We're restin' up and enjoyin' the scenery. We need the rest, for only last week we resigned from doin' a stunt in a movin'-picture outfit. They wanted somebody to do native sons. We said we didn't have them kind of clothes, but the foreman of the outfit says we'd do fine jest as we was. It was fierce—and, believe me, lady, I been through some! I been through some!

      "They was two others in checker clothes and dip-lid caps, and they wasn't native sons. They acted like sons of—I'd hate to tell you what, Miss—to the chief dollie in the show. They stole her beau and tied him to the S. P. tracks; kind of loose, though. She didn't seem to care. She jest stood around chewin' gum and rollin' her lamps at the head guy. Then the movin'-picture express, which was a retired switch-engine hooked onto a Swede observation car, backs down on Adolphus, and we was to rush up like—pretty fast, and save his life.

      "She was a sassy little chicken with blond feathers and a three-quarter rig skirt. She had a regular strawberry-ice-cream-soda complexion, and her eyes looked like a couple of glass alleys with electric lights in 'em. I wondered if she took 'em out at night to go to sleep or only switched off the current. Anyhow, up she rides in a big reddish kind of automobile and twists her hands round her wrists and looks up the track and down the track and sees us and says, 'Oh, w'ich way has he went? W'ich way did Disgustus Adolphus beat it to?' And chewin' gum right on top of that, too. It was tough on us, Miss, but we needed the money.

      "'Bout the eighteenth time she comes coughin' up in that old one-lung machine—to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin'—why, I gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we was actin' natural, jest restin'. I got sick and tired. The next time up coughs that crippled-up automobile with the mumps on its front tire, and she says, 'Where, oh, where has he went?' I ups and says, 'Crazy, Miss, and can you blame him?'

      "She didn't see no joke in that, so the boss he fired us. He wasn't goin' to pay us at that, but I picks up the little picture-machine box and I swings her up over the track kind of suggestive like. 'One!' said I. 'Do we get our money?'

      "'Drop that machine!' says he, rushin' up to me.

      "'I'm a-goin' to,' says I, 'good and hard. Think again, while I count. Do we get our money?'

      "'You get pinched!' says he.

      "'Two,' says I, and I swings the box up by the legs.

      "'Hole on!' yells the boss. 'Pay the mutt, Jimmy, and, for Gord sake, get that machine before he ruins the best reel we made yet!'

      "We got paid."

      "But the bell and Moonstone Cañon?" questioned Louise, glancing back at Boyar grazing down the meadow.

      "Sure! Well, we flopped near here that night—"

      "Flopped?"

      "Uhuh. Let's see, you ain't hep to that, are you? Why, we crawled to the hay, hit the feathers, pounded our ear—er—went to bed! That's what it used to be. Well, in the morning, me and Collie got some sardines and crackers to the store and a little coffee. It was goin' over there that we seen the bell and the road and the whole works. I got kind of interested myself in that cañon. I never saw so many moonstones layin' right on top the gravel, and I been in Mex., too. We liked it and we stayed over last night, expectin' to be gone by now."

      "And when you leave here?" queried Louise.

      "Same old thing," replied Overland cheerfully. "I know the ropes. Collie works by spells. Oh, we're livin', and that's all you need to do in California."

      "And that is all—now that you have found the road?"

      "Oh, the road is like all of them dreams," said Overland. "Such things are good for keepin' people interested in somethin' till it's done, that's all. It was fun at first, lookin' up every arroyo and slit in the hills, till we found it. Same as them marriages on the desert, after that."

      "Marriages?"

      "Uhuh. Seein' water what ain't there, like."

      "Oh, mirages!" And Louise laughed joyfully.

      "I don't see no joke," said Overland, aggrieved.

      "I really beg your pardon."

      "That's all right, Miss. But what would you call it?"

      "Oh, an illusion, a mirage, something that seems to be, but that is not."

      "I don't see where it's got anything on marriages, then, do you? But I ain't generally peppermistic. I believe in folks and things, although I'm old enough to know better."

      "I'm glad you believe in folks," said Louise. "So do I."

      "It's account of bein' a pote, I guess," sighed the tramp. "'Course I ain't a professional. They got to have a license. I never took out one, not havin' the money. Anyway, if I did have enough money for a regular license, I'd start a saloon and live respectable."

      "Won't you quote something?" And the girl smiled bewitchingly. "Boyar and I must go soon. It's getting hot."

      "I'm mighty sorry you're goin', Miss. You're real California stock. Knowed it the minute I set eyes on you. Besides, you passed us the smokes."

      "Red, you shut up!"

      Overland turned a blue, astonished eye on Collie. "Why, kiddo, what's bitin' you?"

      "Because the lady give us the makings don't say she smokes, does it?"

      Overland grunted. "Because you're foolish with the heat, don't say I am, does it? Them sandwiches has gone to your head, Chico. Who said she did smoke?"

      Louise, grave-eyed, watched the two men, Overland sullen and scowling, Collie fierce and flaming.

      "We СКАЧАТЬ