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

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СКАЧАТЬ him, tucked my head under his chin, and went to sleep, holdin’ that paw in his mouth with both hands.”

      “Oh, Mr. Lightfoot,” exclaimed Kitty, “how could you? Why, that’s the most remarkable experience I ever heard of! Lucy, I’m going to put that story in my book when I get home, and –– but what are you laughing at, Mr. Creede?”

      “Who? Me?” inquired Jeff, who had been rocking about as if helpless with laughter. “W’y, I ain’t laughin’!”

      “Yes, you are too!” accused Miss Kitty. “And I want you to tell me what it is. Don’t you think Mr. Lightfoot’s story is true?”

      “True?” echoed Creede, soberly. “W’y, sure it’s true. I ain’t never been up in those parts; but if Bill says so, that settles it. I never knew a feller from Coloraydo yet that could tell a lie. No, I was jest laughin’ to think of that old bear suckin’ his paw that way.”

      He added this last with such an air of subterfuge and evasion that Kitty was not deceived for a moment.

      “No, you’re not, Mr. Creede,” she cried, “you’re just making fun of me –– so there!”

      She stamped her foot and pouted prettily, and the big cowboy’s face took on a look of great concern.

      “Oh, no, ma’am,” he protested, “but since it’s gone so far I reckon I’ll have to come through now in order to square myself. Of course I never had no real adventures, you know, –– nothin’ that you would care to write down or put in a book, like Bill’s, –– but jest hearin’ him tell that story of gittin’ snowed in reminded me of a little experience I had up north here in Coconino County. You know Arizona ain’t all sand and cactus –– not by no means. Them San Francisco Mountains up above Flag are sure snow-crested and covered with tall timber and it gits so cold up there in the winter-time that it breaks rocks. No, that’s straight! Them prospectors up there when they run short of powder jest drill a line of holes in a rock and when one of them awful cold snaps comes on they run out and fill the holes up with hot water out of the tea-kittle. Well, sir, when that water freezes, which it does in about a minute, it jest naturally busts them rocks wide open –– but that ain’t what I started to tell you about.”

      He paused and contemplated his hearers with impressive dignity.

      “Cold ain’t nothin’,” he continued gravely, “after you git used to it; but once in a while, ladies, she snows up there. And when I say ‘snows’ I don’t refer to such phenominer as Bill was tellin’ about up in Coloraydo, but the real genuwine Arizona article –– the kind that gits started and can’t stop, no more ’n a cloudburst. Well, one time I was knockin’ around up there in Coconino when I ought to’ve been at home, and I come to a big plain or perairie that was seventy miles across, and I got lost on that big plain, right in the dead of winter. They was an awful cold wind blowin’ at the time, but I could see the mountains on the other side and so I struck out for ’em. But jest as I got in the middle of that great plain or perairie, she come on to snow. At first she come straight down, kinder soft and fluffy; then she began to beat in from the sides, and the flakes began to git bigger and bigger, until I felt like the Chinaman that walked down Main Street when they had that snow-storm in Tucson. Yes, sir, it was jest like havin’ every old whiskey bum in town soakin’ you with snow-balls –– and all the kids thrown in.

      “My horse he began to puff and blow and the snow began to bank up higher and higher in front of us and on top of us until, bymeby, he couldn’t stand no more, and he jest laid down and died. Well, of course that put me afoot and I was almost despairin’. The snow was stacked up on top of me about ten feet deep and I was desprit, but I kept surgin’ right ahead, punchin’ a hole through that fluffy stuff, until she was twenty foot deep. But I wasn’t afraid none –– ump-um, not me –– I jest kept a-crawlin’ and a-crawlin’, hopin’ to find some rocks or shelter, until she stacked up on top of me thirty foot deep. Thirty foot –– and slumped down on top o’ me until I felt like a horny-toad under a haystack. Well, I was gittin’ powerful weak and puny, but jest as I was despairin’ I come across a big rock, right out there in the middle of that great plain or perairie. I tried to crawl around that old rock but the snow was pushin’ down so heavy on top o’ me I couldn’t do nothin’, and so when she was fif-ty-two foot deep by actual measurement I jest give out an’ laid down to die.”

      He paused and fixed a speculative eye on Bill Lightfoot.

      “I reckon that would be considered pretty deep up in Coloraydo,” he suggested, and then he began to roll a cigarette. Sitting in rigid postures before the fire the punchers surveyed his face with slow and suspicious glances; and for once Kitty Bonnair was silent, watching his deliberate motions with a troubled frown. Balanced rakishly upon his cracker box Bill Lightfoot regarded his rival with a sneering smile, a retort trembling on his lips, but Creede only leaned forward and picked a smoking brand from the fire –– he was waiting for the “come-on.”

      Now to ask the expected question at the end of such a story was to take a big chance. Having been bitten a time or two all around, the rodéo hands were wary of Jeff Creede and his barbed jests; the visitors, being ignorant, were still gaping expectantly; it was up to Bill Lightfoot to spring the mine. For a moment he hesitated, and then his red-hot impetuosity, which had often got him into trouble before, carried him away.

      “W’y, sure it would be deep for Coloraydo,” he answered, guardedly.

      Jefferson Creede glanced up at him, smoking luxuriously, holding the cigarette to his lips with his hand as if concealing a smile.

      “Aw, rats,” snapped out Lightfoot at last, “why don’t you finish up and quit? What happened then?”

      “Then?” drawled Creede, with a slow smile. “W’y, nothin’, Bill –– I died!”

      “Ah-hah-hah!” yelled the punchers, throwing up handfuls of dirt in the extravagance of their delight, and before Bill could realize the enormity of the sell one of his own partisans rose up and kicked the cracker box out from under him in token of utter defeat. For an hour after their precipitate retreat the visitors could hear the whoops and gibes of the cowboys, the loud-mouthed and indignant retorts of Lightfoot, and the soothing remonstrances of Jefferson Creede –– and from the house Kitty the irrepressible, added to their merriment a shriek of silvery laughter. But after it was all over and he had won, the round-up boss swore soberly at himself and sighed, for he discerned on the morrow’s horizon the Indian signs of trouble.

      CHAPTER XIV

       FOREBODINGS

       Table of Contents

      To the Eastern eye, blinded by local color, the Four Peaks country looked like a large and pleasantly variegated cactus garden, sparsely populated with rollicking, fun-loving cowboys who wore their interesting six-shooters solely to keep their balance in the saddle. The new grass stood untrampled beneath the bushes on Bronco Mesa, there were buds and flowers everywhere, and the wind was as sweet and untainted as if it drew out of Eden. But somewhere, somewhere in that great wilderness of peaks which lay to the south and through which only the dogged sheepmen could fight their way, stealthily hidden, yet watching, lay Jasper Swope and his sheep. And not only Jasper with his pet man-killing Chihuahuano and all those low-browed compadres whom he called by circumlocution “brothers,” but Jim, sore with his defeat, and many others –– and every man armed.

      After СКАЧАТЬ