Part 21 (1/2)
The man shook his head: ”I'll be goin' now,” he said. ”You'd better make you some coffee.”
”You're going to--to----”
Tex nodded: ”Yes. To find the pilgrim. If he's alive I'll find him.
An' if he ain't I'll find him. An' when I do, I'll bring him back to you.” He turned abruptly, swung onto his horse, and Alice watched him as he disappeared down the valley, keeping to the higher ground. Not until she was alone did the girl realize how miserably cold and uncomfortable she was. She rose stiffly, and walking slowly to the edge of the bank, looked out over the little valley. The great reservoir had run out in that first wild rush of water and now the last rays of moonlight showed only wide, glistening pools, and the creek subsided to nearly its normal proportions. With a shudder she turned toward the fire. Its warmth felt grateful. She removed the slicker and riding costume and, wrapping herself, squaw-like, in a blanket, sat down in the little shelter tent. She found that the Texan had filled the coffee pot and, throwing in some coffee, she set it to boil.
”He's so thoughtful, and self-reliant, and--and competent,” she murmured. ”And he's brave, and--and picturesque. Winthrop is brave, too--just as brave as he is, but--he isn't a bit picturesque.” She relapsed into silence as she rummaged in the bag for a cup, and the sugar, and a can of milk. The moon sank behind the ridge and the girl replenished her fire from the pile of wood the Texan had left within reach of her hand. She drank her coffee and her eyes sought to penetrate the blackness beyond the firelight. Somewhere out there in the dark--she shuddered as she attempted to visualize _what_ was somewhere out there in the dark. And then a flash of memory brought with it a ray of hope that cheered her immeasurably. ”Why, he was a champion swimmer in college,” she said aloud. ”He was always winning cups and things. And he's strong, and brave--and yet----” Vividly to her mind came the picture of the wildly rus.h.i.+ng flood with its burden of tossing trees, and the man being swept straight into the gurge of it. ”I'll tell him he's brave--and he'll spoil it all by saying that it was the only _practical_ thing to do.” ”Oh,” she cried aloud, ”I could love him if it were not for his deadly practicability--even if I should have to live in Cincinnati.” And straightway fell to comparing the two men. ”Tex is absurdly unconventional in speech and actions, and he has an adorable disregard for laws and things. He's just a big, irresponsible boy--and yet, he makes you feel as if he always knew exactly what to do and how to do it. And he is brave, too, with a reckless, devil-may-care sort of bravery that takes no thought of cost or consequences. He knew, when he let go his bridle reins, that he couldn't swim a stroke--and he smiled and didn't care. And he's gentle and considerate, too.” She remembered the look in his eyes when he said: ”You are cold,” and blushed furiously.
It seemed hours she sat there staring into the little fire and listening for sounds from the dark. But the only sounds that came to her were the sounds of the feeding horses, and in utter weariness she lay back with her head upon a folded blanket, and slept.
When the Texan swung onto his horse after having made the girl comfortable for her long vigil, a scant half-hour of moonlight was left to him. He gave the horse his head and the animal picked his way among the loose rocks and scrub timber that capped the ridge. When darkness overtook him he dismounted, unsaddled, and groped about for firewood.
Despite its recent soaking the resinous bull pine flared up at the touch of a match, and with his back to a rock-wall, the cowboy sat and watched the little flames shoot upward. Once more he felt for his ”makings” and with infinite pains dried out his papers and tobacco.
”It's the chance I be'n aimin' to make for myself,” he mused, as he drew the grey smoke of a cigarette deep into his lungs, ”to get Bat an'
the pilgrim away--an' I ride off and leave it.” The cigarette was consumed and he rolled another. ”Takin' a slant at himself from the inside, a man kind of gets a line on how d.a.m.ned ornery folks can get.
Purdy got shot, an' everyone said he got just what was comin' to him---- Me, an' everyone else--an' he did. But when you get down to cases, he wasn't no h.e.l.l of a lot worse'n me, at that. We was both after the same thing--only his work was coa.r.s.er.” For hours the man sat staring into his fire, the while he rolled and smoked many cigarettes.
”Oh, h.e.l.l!” he exclaimed, aloud. ”I can't turn nester, an' even if I did, she couldn't live out in no mud-roof shack in the bottom of some coulee! Still, she---- There I go again, over the same old trail.
This here little girl has sure gone to my head--like a couple of jolts of hundred-proof on an empty stummick. Anyhow, she's a d.a.m.n sight safer'n ever she was before, an'--I'll bet the old man _would_ let me take that Eagle Creek ranch off his hands, an' stake me to a little bunch of stock besides, if I went at him right. If it wasn't for that d.a.m.n pilgrim! Bat was right. He holds the edge on me--but he's a man.” The cowboy glanced anxiously toward the east where the sky was beginning to lighten with the first hint of dawn. He rose, trampled out his fire, and threw the saddle onto his horse. ”I've got to find him,” he muttered, ”if Bat ain't found him already. I don't know much about this swimmin' business but if he could have got holt of a tree or somethin' he might have made her through.”
Now riding, now dismounting to lead his horse over some particularly rough outcropping of rocks, or through an almost impenetrable tangle of scrub, the man made his way over the divide and came down into the valley amid a shower of loose rock and gravel, at a point some distance below the lower end of the canyon.
The mountains were behind him. Only an occasional b.u.t.te reared its head above the sea of low foothills that stretched away into the bad lands to the southward. The sides of the valley flattened and became ill-defined. Low ridges and sage-topped foothills broke up its continuity, so that the little creek that started so bravely from the mountains ended nowhere, its waters being sucked in by the parched and thirsting alkali soil long before it reached the bad lands.
As his horse toiled ankle-deep in the soft whitish mud, Tex's eyes roved over the broadened expanse of the valley. Everywhere were evidences of the destructive force of the flood. Uprooted trees scattered singly and in groups, high-flung ma.s.ses of brush, hay, and inextricably tangled barbed-wire from which dangled fence-posts marked every bend of the creek bed. And on every hand the bodies of drowned cattle dotted the valley.
”If I was Johnson,” he mused, as his eyes swept the valley, ”I'd head a right smart of ranch hands down here heeled with a spade an' a s.e.xton's commission. These here late lamented dogies'll cost him somethin' in damages.” From force of habit the man read the brands of the dead cattle as he rode slowly down the valley. ”D bar C, that's old Dave Cromley's steer. An' there's a T U, an' an I X cow, an' there's one of Charlie Green's, an' a yearlin' of Jerry Keerful's, an' a quarter-circle M,--that belongs over the other side, they don't need to bother with that one, an' there's a----”
Suddenly he drew himself erect, and rising to stand in the stirrups, gazed long and intently toward a spot a quarter of a mile below, where a thin column of smoke curled over the crest of a low ridge. Abruptly he lost interest in the brands of dead cattle and headed his horse at a run toward a coulee, that gave between two sage covered foothills only a short distance from the faint column of smoke. ”That might be Bat, an' then again it mightn't,” he muttered. ”It can't be the pilgrim without Bat's along, 'cause he wouldn't have no dry matches. An' if it's any one else--” he drew up sharply in the shelter of a thicket, dismounted, and made his way on foot to the summit of the ridge.
Removing his hat, he thrust his head through a narrow opening between two sage bushes, and peered into the hollow beyond. Beside a little fire sat Bat and the pilgrim, the latter arrayed in a suit of underwear much abbreviated as to arms and legs, while from the branches of a broken tree-top drawn close beside the blaze depended a pair of mud-caked trousers and a disreputably dirty silk s.h.i.+rt. The Texan picked his way down the hill, slipping and sliding in the soft mud.
”Breakfast about ready?” he asked, with a grin.
”Breakfas'! _Voila_! A'm lak' A'm got som' breakfas', you bet!
Me--A'm gon' for cut de chonk of meat out de dead steer but de pilgrim say: '_Non_, dat bes' we don' eat de d.a.m.n drownded cattle--dat better we sta've firs'!”
Tex laughed: ”Can't stand for the drownded ones, eh? Well I don't know as I blame you none, they might be some soggy.” Reaching into his s.h.i.+rt-front he produced a salt bag which he tossed to Endicott.
”Here's some sinkers I fetched along. Divide 'em up. I've et. It ain't no great ways back to camp----”
”How is she--Miss Marc.u.m? Did she suffer from the shock?”
”Nary suffer. I fixed her up a camp last night back in the timber where we all landed, an' then came away.”
”She spent the night alone in the timber!” cried Endicott.
The Texan nodded. ”Yes. There ain't nothin' will bother her. I judged it to be the best way.” Endicott's hand shot out and the cowboy's met it in a firm grip. ”I reckon we're fifty-fifty on that,”
he said gravely. ”How's the swimmin'?”
Endicott laughed: ”Fine--only I didn't have to do a great deal of it.