Oh, You Tex!. William MacLeod Raine

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ call of the cattle for drink was insistent. Above it rose an occasional sharp "Yip yip!" of a cowboy.

      Ramona stopped, aghast. The cattle blocked the road, their moving backs like the waves of a sea. The dust would irreparably soil the clean frock fresh from the hands of her black mammy. She made as if to turn, and knew with a flash of horror that it was too late.

      Perhaps it was the gleam of scarlet in her sash that caught the eye of the bull leading the van. It gave a bellow of rage, lowered its head, and dashed at her.

      Ramona gave a horror-stricken little cry of fear and stood motionless. She could not run. The fascination of terror held her paralyzed. Her heart died away in her while the great brute thundered toward her.

      Out of the dust-cloud came a horse and rider in the wake of the bull. Frozen in her tracks, Ramona saw with dilated eyes all that followed. The galloping horse gained, was at the heels of the maddened animal, drew up side by side. It seemed to the girl that in another moment she must be trampled underfoot. Nothing but a miracle from God's blue could save her.

      For what registered as time without end to the girl's fear-numbed brain, horse and bull raced knee to knee. Then the miracle came. The rider leaned far out from the saddle, loosened his feet from the stirrups, and launched himself at the crazed half-ton of charging fury.

      His hands gripped the horns of the bull. He was dragged from the saddle into the dust, but his weight deflected the course of the animal. With every ounce of strength given by his rough life in the open the cowboy hung on, dragging the head of the bull down with him toward the ground. Man and beast came to a slithering halt together in a great cloud of dust not ten feet from Ramona.

      Even now terror held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed, then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its horns. The man hung on for life. All his power and weight were centered in an effort to twist the head of the bull sideways and back. Slowly, inch by inch, by the steady, insistent pressure of muscles as well packed as any in Texas, the man began to gain. The bull no longer tossed and flung him at will. The big roan head went down, turned backward, yielded to the pressure on the neck-muscles that never relaxed.

      The man put at the decisive moment his last ounce of strength into one last twist. The bull collapsed, went down heavily to its side.

      A second cowboy rode up, roped the bull, and deftly hogtied it.

      The bulldogger rose and limped forward to the girl leaning whitely against a wall.

      "Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn't ought to have brought the herd through town. We was drivin' to water."

      "Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.

      "Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma'am."

      He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.

      "It threw you around so," she murmured.

      "Sho! I reckon I can curry a li'l ol' longhorn when I have it to do, ma'am," he answered, a bit embarrassed.

      "Are—are you hurt?" another voice quavered.

      With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been when she so desperately needed help?

      "No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.

      "I—went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.

      "Thank you," she said.

      The girl was miserably unhappy. For the boy to whom she had given the largesse of her friendship had fled in panic; the one she hated for bullying and mistreating her brother had flung himself in the path of the furious bull to save her.

      Captain Ellison came running up. He bristled at the trail foreman like a bantam. "What do you mean by drivin' these wild critters through town? Ain't you got a lick o' sense a-tall? If anything had happened to this little girl—"

      The Ranger left his threat suspended in midair. His arms were round Ramona, who was sobbing into his coat.

      The red-headed foreman shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was acutely uncomfortable at having made this young woman weep. "I ain't got a word to say, Captain. It was plumb thoughtless of me," he apologized.

      "You come to my office this mo'nin' at twelve o'clock, young fellow. Hear me? I've got a word to say to you."

      "Yes," agreed the bulldogger humbly. "I didn't go for to scare the young lady. Will you tell her I'm right sorry, Captain?"

      "You eat yore own humble pie. You've got a tongue, I reckon," snorted Ellison, dragging at his goatee fiercely.

      The complexion of Roberts matched his hair. "I—I—I'm turrible sorry, miss. I'd ought to be rode on a rail."

      With which the range-rider turned, swung to the saddle of his pony without touching the stirrups, and fairly bolted down the street after his retreating herd.

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

CAPTAIN ELLISON HIRES A HAND

       Table of Contents

      Captain Ellison was preparing for the Adjutant-General a report of a little affair during which one of his men had been obliged to snuff out the lives of a couple of Mexican horsethieves and seriously damage a third. Writing was laborious work for the Captain of Rangers, though he told no varnished tale. His head and shoulders were hunched over the table and his fingertips were cramped close to the point of the pen. Each letter as it was set down had its whispered echo from his pursed lips.

      "Doggone these here reports," he commented in exasperation. "Looks like a man hadn't ought to make out one every time he bumps off a rustler."

      He tugged at his goatee and read again what he had just written:

      Then this José Barela and his gang of skoundrels struck out for the Brazos with the stolen stock. Ranger Cullom trailed them to Goose Creek and recovered the cattle. While resisting arrest Barela and another Mexican were killed and a third wounded. Cullom brought back the wounded man and the rustled stock.

      A short noontime shadow darkened the sunny doorway of the adobe office. Ellison looked up quickly, his hand falling naturally to the handle of his forty-five. Among the Rangers the price of life was vigilance. A tall, lean, young man with a sardonic eye and a sunburned face jingled up the steps.

      "Come in," snapped the Captain. "Sit down. With you in a СКАЧАТЬ