Part 9 (1/2)
”No, I mean it. Mr. Tenlow still seemed pretty hot about your share in this--er--enterprise. You seem to have no hard feelings against him.”
”Huh! He shouldn't to be sore at _me_. I didn't spur no horse onto him and ride him down like a dog. I guess Red would 'a' killed him if he'd seen it. Say, n.o.body got Red, did they?”
”I haven't heard of it. How did this man Red come to pick you up? You're pretty young to be tramping.”
”Cross your heart you ain't tryin' to queer Red? You ain't tryin' to put the Injun sign on us, are you?”
”No. I have heard all about the Mojave affair--the prospector that died on the track--and the arrest of Overland Red at Barstow. You told my niece that this Overland Red was 'square.' How did you come to be mixed up in it?”
”I guess I'll have to tell you the whole thing, straight. Red always said that to tell the truth was just as good as lyin', because n.o.body would believe us, anyway. And if a fella gets caught tellin' the truth, why, he's that much to the good.”
”Well, I shall try and believe you this time,” said Stone. ”Miss Lacharme thinks you're honest.”
”A guy couldn't lie to her!” said the boy.
”Then just consider me her representative,” said Stone, smiling.
Collie squatted in the meager shade of the ”coop.”
Walter Stone, dropping the pony's reins, came and sat beside the lad.
There was something in the older man's presence, an unspoken a.s.surance of comrades.h.i.+p and sincerity that annulled the boy's tendency to reticence about himself. He began hesitatingly, ”My dad was a drinkin'
man. Ma died, and he got worse at it. I was a kid and didn't care, for he never done nothin' to me. We lived back East, over a p.a.w.nbroker's on Main Street. One day pa come home with a timetable. He sat up 'most all night readin' it. Every time I woke up, he was readin' it and talkin' to himself. That was after ma died.
”In the mornin', when I was gettin' dressed, he come over and says to take the needle he had and stick it through the timetable anywhere. I was scared he was goin' to have the jimmies. But I took the needle--it had black thread in it--and stuck it through the timetable. He opened the page and laughed awful loud and queer. Albuquerque was where the needle went in. He couldn't say the name right, but he kept lookin' at it.
”Then he went out and was gone all day and all night. When he come back he showed me a whole wad of money. I says, 'Where did you get it?' He got mad and tells me to shut up.
”That day we got on a train. I says, 'Where are we goin'?' and he says to never mind, and did I want some peanuts.
”We kept ridin' and ridin' in the same car, and eatin' bananas and san'wiches and sleepin' settin' up at nights. I was just about sick when we come to Albuquerque. You see, that was where the needle went through the timetable, and dad said we would get off there. He got awful drunk that night.
”Next day he said he was goin' to quit liquor and make a fresh start. I knowed he wouldn't, 'cause he always said that next mornin'. But I guess he tried to quit. I don't know.
”One night he didn't come back to the room where we was stayin' upstairs over the saloon. They found him 'way down the track next day, all cut to pieces by the train.”
The boy paused, reached forward, and plucked a withered stem of gra.s.s which he wound round and round his finger.
Walter Stone sat looking across the valley.
”I guess his money was all gone,” resumed the boy. ”Anyhow, 'bout a year after, Overland Red comes along. He comes to the saloon where I was stayin',--they give me a job cleanin' out every day,--and he got to talkin' a lot of stuff about scenery and livin' the simple life, and all that guff. The bartender got to jawin' with him, and I laughed, and the bartender hits me a lick side the head. Red, he hits the bartender a lick side of _his_ head--and the bartender don't get up right away.
'I'll learn him to hit kids,' said Red. 'If you learn him to hit 'em as hard as that,' I says to Red, 'then it will be all off with me the next time.'
”Does he hit you very often?' said Red.
”Whenever he feels like it,' I told him.
”Red laughed and said to come on. I was sick of there, so I run away with Red. We tried it on a freight and got put off. Red had some water in a canteen he swiped. It was lucky for us he did. We kept walkin' and goin' nights, and mebby ridin' on freights in the daytime if we could.
One day, a long time after that, we was crossin' the desert again. We got put off a freight that time, too. We was walkin' along when we found a guy layin' beside the track. Red said he wasn't dead, but was dyin'.