Part 14 (2/2)

As a disciplinary design he felicitated himself as having hit upon the most humiliating and distasteful position in Keno. It was understood that Harford of the Cottonwood Corral never hired a real man as hostler.

He seemed to prefer b.u.ms and tramps, either because he could get them cheaper or else because no decent man would work for him. He was an ”arbitrary cuss” and ready with gun or boot. He came down a long trail of weather-worn experiences in the Southwest, and showed it in both face and voice. He was a big man who had once been fatter, but his wrinkled and sour visage seldom crinkled into a smile. He had never been jolly, and he was now morose.

Kelley hated him. That, too, was another part of his elaborate scheme of self-punishment--hated, but did not fear him, for Tall Ed Kelley feared nothing that walked the earth or sailed the air. ”You b.u.m,” he continued to say in bitter derision as he caught glimpses of himself of a morning in the little fragment of broken gla.s.s which, being tacked on the wall, served as mirror in the office. ”You durned mangy coyote, you need a shave, but you won't get it. You need a clean s.h.i.+rt and a new bandanna, but you won't get them, neither--not yet awhile. You'll earn 'em by going without a drop of whisky and by forking manure fer the next six months. You hear me?”

He slept in the barn on a soiled, ill-smelling bunk, and his hours of repose were broken by calls on the telephone or by some one beating at the door late at night or early in the morning; but he always responded without a word of complaint. It was all lovely discipline. It was like batting a measly bronco over the head in correction of some grievous fault (like nipping your calf, for example), and he took a grim satisfaction in going about degraded and forgotten of his fellows, for no one in Keno knew that this grimy hostler was cow-boss on the Perco.

This, in a certain degree, softened his disgrace and lessened his punishment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to the task of explaining just how he had come to leave the range and go into service with Harford.

The officers of the fort, when tired of the ambulance, occasionally took out a team and covered rig, and so Kelley came in contact with the commanding officer, Major Dugan, a fine figure of a man with carefully barbered head and immaculate uniform. In Kelley's estimation he was almost too well kept for a man nearing fifty. He was, indeed, a gallant to whom comely women were still the fairest kind of game.

In truth, Tall Ed as hostler often furnished the major with a carriage, in which to make some of his private expeditions, and this was another and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To a.s.sist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys was the nethermost deep of ”self-discipline,” but when the pretty young wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley was thrown into doubt.

Anita Harford, part Spanish and part German, as sometimes happens in New Mexico, was a curious and interesting mixture with lovely golden-brown hair and big, dark-brown eyes. She had the ingratiating smile of the senora, her mother, and the moods of gravity, almost melancholy, of her father.

She had been away in Albuquerque during the first week of Kelley's hostlers.h.i.+p, and though he had heard something of her from the men about the corral, he had no great interest in her till she came one afternoon to the door of the stable, where she paused like a snow-white, timid antelope and softly said:

”Are you the new hostler?”

”I am, miss.”

She smiled at his mistake. ”I am Mrs. Harford. Please let me have the single buggy and bay Nellie.”

Kelley concealed his surprise. ”Sure thing, mom. Want her right now?”

”If you please.”

As she moved away so lightly and so daintily Kelley stared in stupefaction. ”Guess I've miscalculated somewhere. Old Harf must have more drag into him than I made out. How did the old seed get a woman like that? 'Pears like he's the champion hypnotic spieler when it comes to 'skirts.'”

He hitched-up the horse in profound meditation. For the first time since his downfall his humiliation seemed just a trifle deeper than was necessary. He regretted his filthy s.h.i.+rt and his unshorn cheeks, and as he brought the horse around to the door of the boss's house he slipped out of the buggy on the off side, hurriedly tethered the mare to the pole, and retreated to his alley like a rat to its burrow. The few moments when Anita's clear eyes had rested upon him had been moments of self-revelation.

”Kelley, you're all kinds of a blankety fool,” said he. ”You're causing yourself a whole lot of extra misery and you're a disgustin' object, besides. It isn't necessary fer you to be a skunk in order to give yourself a welting. Go now and get a shave and a clean s.h.i.+rt, and start again.”

This he did, and out of his next week's pay he bought a clean pair of overalls and a new sombrero, so that when he came back to the barn Harford was disturbed.

”Hope you aren't going to pull out, Kelley? You suit me, and if it's a question of pay, I'll raise you a couple of dollars on a week.”

”Oh no, I'm not leaving. Only I jest felt like I was a little too measly. 'Pears like I ought to afford a clean s.h.i.+rt. It does make a heap of difference in the looks of a feller. No, I'm booked to stay with you fer a while yet.”

Naturally thereafter little Mrs. Harford filled a large place in Kelley's gloomy world. He was not a romantic person, but he was often lonesome in the midst of his self-imposed penance. He forbade himself the solace of the saloon. He denied himself a day or even an hour off duty, and Harford, secretly amazed and inwardly delighted, went so far one day as to offer him a cigar.

Kelley waved it away. ”No, I've cut out the tobacco, too.”

This astounded his boss. ”Say, it's a wonder you escaped the ministry.”

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