Part 16 (1/2)
The cowpuncher whirled and spurred his horse to overtake the cowboys who, with the prisoner in charge, were already well out upon the trail.
In front of the hotel the half-breed watched the flying horseman until he disappeared from sight.
”A'm wonder if dat girl be safe wit' him, lak' she is wit' me--_bien_.
A'm t'ink mebbe-so dat d.a.m.n good t'ing ol' Bat goin' long. If she d.a.m.n fine girl mebbe-so Tex, he goin' mar' her. Dat be good t'ing. But, by Gar! if he don' mar' her, he gon' leave her 'lone. Me--A'm lak' dat Tex fine, lak' me own brudder. He got de good heart. But w'en he drink de hooch, den A'm got for look after him. He don' care wan d.a.m.n 'bout nuttin'. Dat four bit in Las Vegas, dats a'right. A'm fink 'bout dat, too. But, by Gar, it tak' more'n four bit in Las Vegas for mak' of Bat let dat girl git harm.”
An atmosphere of depression pervaded the group of riders as they wound in and out of the cottonwood clumps and threaded the deep coulee that led to the bench. For the most part they preserved an owlish silence, but now and then someone would break into a low, weird refrain and the others would join in with the mournful strain of ”The Dying Cowboy.”
”Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie-e-e, Where the coyote howls and the wind blows free.”
Or the dirge-like wail of the ”Cowboy's Lament”:
”Then swing your rope slowly and rattle your spurs lowly, And give a wild whoop as you carry me along: And in the grave throw me and roll the sod o'er me, For I'm only a cowboy that knows he's done wrong.”
”Shall we take him to Lone Tree Coulee?” asked one. Another answered disdainfully.
”Don't you know the lone tree's dead? Jest shrivelled up an' died after Bill Atwood was hung onto it. Some augers he worn't guilty. But it's better to play safe, an' string up all the doubtful ones, then yer bound to git the right one onct in a while.”
”Swing over into Buffalo Coulee,” commanded Tex. ”There's a bunch of cottonwoods just above Hansen's old sheep ranch.”
”We'll string him up to a cottonwood limb An' dig his grave in under him----”
”Shut up!” ordered Curly, favouring the singer with a scowl. ”Any one would think you was joyous-minded, which this here hangin' a man is plumb serious business, even if it hain't only a pilgrim!”
He edged his horse in beside the Texan's. ”He don't seem tore up with terror, none. D'you think he's onto the racket?”
Tex shook his head, and with his eyes on the face of the prisoner which showed very white in the moonlight, rode on in silence.
”You mean you think he's jest nach'ly got guts--an' him a pilgrim?”
”How the h.e.l.l do I know what he's got?” snapped the other. ”Can't you wait till we get to Buffalo?”
Curly allowed his horse to fall back a few paces. ”First time I ever know'd Tex to pack a grouch,” he mused, as his lips drew into a grin.
”He's sore 'cause the pilgrim hain't a-snifflin' an' a-carryin'-on an'
tryin' to beg off. Gos.h.!.+ If he turns out to be a reg'lar hand, an'
steps up an' takes his medicine like a man, the joke'll be on Tex. The boys never will quit jos.h.i.+n' him--an' he knows it. No wonder he's sore.”
The cowboys rode straight across the bench. Song and conversation had ceased and the only sounds were the low clink of bit chains and the soft rustle of horses' feet in the buffalo gra.s.s. At the end of an hour the leaders swung into an old gra.s.s-grown trail that led by devious windings into a deep, steep-sided coulee along the bottom of which ran the bed of a dried-up creek. Water from recent rains stood in brackish pools. Remnants of fence with rotted posts sagging from rusty wire paralleled their course. A dilapidated cross-fence barred their way, and without dismounting, a cowboy loosened the wire gate and threw it aside.
A deserted log-house, windowless, with one corner rotted away, and the sod roof long since tumbled in, stood upon a treeless bend of the dry creek. Abandoned implements littered the dooryard; a rusted hay rake with one wheel gone, a broken mower with cutter-bar drunkenly erect, and the front trucks of a dilapidated wagon.
The Texan's eyes rested sombrely upon the remnant of a rocking-horse, still hitched by bits of weather-hardened leather to a child's wheelbarrow whose broken wheel had once been the bottom of a wooden pail--and he swore, softly.
Up the creek he could see the cottonwood grove just bursting into leaf and as they rounded the corner of a long sheep-shed, whose soggy straw roof sagged to the ground, a coyote, disturbed in his prowling among the whitening bones of dead sheep, slunk out of sight in a weed-patch.
Entering the grove, the men halted at a point where the branches of three large trees interlaced. It was darker, here. The moonlight filtered through in tiny patches which brought out the faces of the men with grotesque distinctness and plunged them again into blackness.
Gravely the Texan edged his horse to the side of the pilgrim.