On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set. Coolidge Dane

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СКАЧАТЬ you want to jump down his throat. What do we know about ladies –– I ain’t seen none!”

      The discussion of the moral code which followed was becoming acrimonious and personal to a degree when a peal of girlish laughter echoed from the ranch house and the cowboys beheld Judge Ware and Hardy, accompanied by Miss Lucy and Kitty Bonnair, coming towards their fire. A less tactful man might have taken advantage of the hush to utter a final word of warning to his rebellious subjects, but Creede knew Kitty Bonnair and the human heart too well. As the party came into camp he rose quietly and introduced the judge and the ladies to every man present, without deviation and without exception, and then, having offered Miss Ware his cracker box, he moved over a man or two and sat down.

      In the bulk of his mighty frame, the rugged power of his countenance, and the unconscious authority of his words he was easily master of them all; but though he had the voice of Mars and a head like Olympian Zeus he must needs abase his proud spirit to the demands of the occasion, for the jealousy of mortal man is a proverb. Where the punchers that he hired for thirty dollars a month were decked out in shaps and handkerchiefs he sat in his shirt-sleeves and overalls, with only his high-heeled boots and the enormous black sombrero which he always wore, to mark him for their king. And the first merry question which Miss Kitty asked he allowed to pass unnoticed, until Bill Lightfoot –– to save the credit of the bunch –– answered it himself.

      “Yes, ma’am,” he replied politely. “That was a genuwine cowboy song we was singin’ –– we sing ’em to keep the cattle awake at night.”

      “Oh, how interesting!” exclaimed Kitty, leaning forward in her eagerness. “But why do you try to keep them awake? I should think they would be so tired, after travelling all day.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” responded Bill, twisting his silk handkerchief nervously, “but if they go to sleep and anything wakes ’em up quick they stompede –– so we ride through ’em and sing songs.”

      “Just think of that, Lucy!” cried Miss Kitty enthusiastically. “And it was such a pretty tune, too! Won’t you sing it again, Mr. Lightfoot? I’d just love to hear it!”

      Here was a facer for Mr. Lightfoot, and Jefferson Creede, to whom all eyes were turned in the crisis, smiled maliciously and let him sweat.

      “Bill ain’t in very good voice to-night,” he observed at last, as the suspense became unbearable, “and we’re kinder bashful about singin’ to company, anyway. But if you want to hear somethin’ good, you want to git Bill goin’ about Coloraydo. Sure, Mr. Lightfoot is our best story-teller; and he’s had some mighty excitin’ times up there in them parts, hain’t you, Bill?”

      Bill cast a baleful glance at his rival and thrust out his chin insolently. His Coloraydo experiences were a matter of jest with Jeff Creede, but with the ladies it might be different. His courage rose before the flattering solicitude of Kitty Bonnair and he resolved then and there to fool Mr. Creede or know the reason why.

      “Well,” he replied, stoutly, “they may look kinder tame alongside of your Arizona lies, but –– ”

      “Oh, Mr. Lightfoot, do tell me all about it!” broke in Kitty, with an alluring smile. “Colorado is an awfully wild country, isn’t it? And did you ever have any adventures with bears?”

      “Bears!” exclaimed Bill contemptuously. “Bears! Huh, we don’t take no more account of ordinary bears up in Coloraydo than they do of coons down here. But them big silver-tips –– ump-um –– excuse me!” He paused and swaggered a little on the precarious support of his cracker box. “And yet, Miss Bunnair,” he said, lowering his voice to a confidential key, “I slept a whole night with one of them big fellers and never turned a hair. I could’ve killed him the next day, too, but I was so grateful to him I spared his life.”

      This was the regular “come-on” for Lightfoot’s snow-storm story, and Creede showed his white teeth scornfully as Bill leaned back and began the yarn.

      “You see, Miss Bunnair,” began the Colorado cowboy, rolling his eyes about the circle to quell any tendency to give him away, “Coloraydo is an altogether different country from this here. The mountains is mighty steep and brushy, with snow on the peaks, and the cactus ain’t more ’n a inch high out on the perairie. But they’s plenty of feed and water –– you betcher life I wisht I was back there now instead of fightin’ sheep down here! The only thing aginst that country up there is the blizzards. Them storms is very destructive to life. Yes, ma’am. They’s never any notice given but suddenly the wind will begin to blow and the cattle will begin to drift, and then about the time your horse is give out and your ears frozen it’ll begin to snow!

      “Well, this time I’m tellin’ about I was up on the Canadian River west of the Medicine Bow Mountains and she came on to snow –– and snow, I thought it would bury me alive! I was lost in a big park –– a kind of plain or perairie among the mountains. Yes’m, they have’m there –– big level places –– and it was thirty miles across this here level perairie. The wind was blowin’ something awful and the snow just piled up on my hat like somebody was shovellin’ it off a roof, but I kept strugglin’ on and tryin’ to git to the other side, or maybe find some sheltered place, until it was like walkin’ in your sleep. And that light fluffy snow jest closed in over me until I was covered up ten feet deep. Of course my horse had give out long ago, and I was jest beginnin’ to despair when I come across one of them big piles of rocks they have up there, scattered around promiscus-like on the face of nature; and I begin crawlin’ in and crawlin’ in, hopin’ to find some cave or somethin’, and jest as I was despairin’ my feet fell into a kind of trail, kinder smooth and worn, but old, you know, and stomped hard under the snow. Well, I follers along this path with my feet until it come to a hole in the rocks; and when I come to that hole I went right in, fer I was desprit; and I crawled in and crawled in until I come to a big nest of leaves, and then I begin to burrow down into them leaves. And as soon as I had made a hole I pulled them leaves over me and fell to sleep, I was that exhausted.

      “But after a while I had some awful bad dreams, and when I woke up I felt somethin’ kickin’ under me. Yes ’m, that’s right; I felt somethin’ kinder movin’ around and squirmin’, and when I begin to investergate I found I was layin’ down right square on top of a tremenjous big grizzly bear! Well, you fellers can laugh, but I was, all the same. What do you know about it, you woolies, punchin’ cows down here in the rocks and cactus?

      “How’s that, Miss Bunnair? W’y sure, he was hibernatin’! They all hibernate up in them cold countries. Well, the funny part of this was that Old Brin had gone to sleep suckin’ his off fore foot, jest like a little baby, and when I had piled in on top of him I had knocked his paw out of his mouth and he was tryin’ to git it back. But he was all quilled up with himself under them leaves, and his claws was so long he couldn’t git that foot back into his mouth nohow. He snooped and grabbed and fumbled, and every minute he was gittin’ madder and madder, a-suckin’ and slobberin’ like a calf tryin’ to draw milk out of the hired man’s thumb, and a-gruntin’ and groanin’ somethin’ awful.

      “Well, I see my finish in about a minute if he ever got good an’ woke up, so I resolved to do somethin’ desprit. I jest naturally grabbed onto that foot and twisted it around and stuck it into his mouth myself! Afraid? Ump-um, not me –– the only thing I was afraid of was that he’d git my hand and go to suckin’ it by mistake. But when I steered his paw around in front of him he jest grabbed onto that big black pad on the bottom of his foot like it was m’lasses candy, and went off to sleep again as peaceful as a kitten.”

      The man from Coloraydo ended his tale abruptly, with an air of suspense, and Kitty Bonnair took the cue.

      “What СКАЧАТЬ