Part 9 (2/2)

”Let 'em feed a while,” he said, as Bowles rode up to inquire. ”The drag is gittin' weak.” Then he sat silent on his rough-haired bronk, his inscrutable eyes gazing dully over the plain to the south, and Bowles dropped wearily off his horse and stretched himself out on the ground.

Half an hour afterward he roused up with a start just as Dixie Lee, mounted on a long, rangy bay, came galloping up the road. Her eyes were very bright, and her cheeks were flushed from riding against the wind, and as she reined her horse in with a jerk her hair framed her face like a halo. But she did not see Bowles, though he stood up and took off his hat.

”h.e.l.lo, Brig,” she called. ”Watching 'em pick the flowers?”

”Yes'm,” answered Brigham, grinning amiably. ”Watchin' 'em pluck the blossoms. What's goin' on down below now? Seen you go down there several times.”

”Oh, you're still keeping track of me, are you?” queried Dixie Lee gaily. ”Well, you want to look out, Brigham--I'm getting awfully interested in a young Texican down there. He's got a nice farm, too--hundred and sixty acres!”

”Sure!” agreed Brigham. ”All covered with loco weed and this nice white stuff!”

He nodded at the glistening alkali along the flat, and his eyes twinkled with furtive humor as Dixie Lee raised her quirt.

”Aw, Brigham,” she chided, ”I believe you're jealous!” She leaned forward as she spoke, and the bay broke into a gallop, while Dixie sent a laugh down the wind.

”Heh, heh, heh,” chuckled Brigham, reaching into his vest for a cigarette paper. ”That's Dix, all right. Don't you know, stranger,” he went on as he rolled himself a smoke, ”that's the finest gal in Arizona.

Good folks an' all that, but nothin' stuck up about her. Heh, heh, mighty nigh ast her to marry me one time, but couldn't quite cut it--she's been jos.h.i.+n' me ever since. Got 'em all comin' and won't have none of 'em. Oh, hookey, wisht I wasn't a common, ornery cow-punch!”

He paused and smoked a while, still gazing at the streak of dust.

”Good rider, too,” he observed; ”beat most of the boys. I knowed her four miles away by section lines.”

Once more he paused, and Bowles preserved his Sphinx-like silence. He was learning the customs of the country fast.

”Don't have any like her back where you come from, I reckon,” suggested Brigham, his eyes s.h.i.+ning with local pride; and Bowles sadly shook his head. No, they did not--there was no one like Dixie Lee.

CHAPTER X

THE FIRST SMILE

The next three days were one long, aching agony for Bowles. He carried a little water for Gloomy Gus, but stubbornly refused the job of flunky.

He helped the horse wrangler--a wild-eyed youth who could pop a rope like a pistol-shot and yell like a murdering Apache--but as resolutely refused the job of a.s.sistant. He had been taken on as a cowboy, and a cowboy he tried to be, though every nerve and muscle called a halt. From the first morning, when they sent him out in the dark to wrangle the horse pasture, to the third evening, when he crawled wearily into an old ”bed” that he had picked up, his life was a prolonged succession of accidents, mistakes, and awkward happenings; yet he stayed with it, bull-headed and determined, until Henry Lee grew tired of hazing him and put him on the day-herd to get healed up.

There was very little left of the lily-white Mr. Bowles when the ordeal came to an end. His hands that had been so trim and slender were swelled up too big for his gloves. The outside was raw with sunburn and wind-chap and the inside was blistered and rope-worn. His lips had cracked wide open from the dry north wind, and his face was beginning to peel like a snake. Also his arms had been nearly jerked from the sockets by a horse he had tried to hold, and a calf had kicked him in the leg while he was trying to bulldog it at the branding. Like the cowboy in the ballad, ”he was busted from his somber to his heel,” but he had managed to come through alive. And now, as a reward for his prowess and daring, he was set to mind the day-herd.

Gra.s.s was short in the Bat Wing pastures, and every day brought in new herds of dogies to be held for the April s.h.i.+pping; so, just to keep all hands busy and save a little feed, Henry Lee turned his gentle cattle out on to the prairie to rustle what provender they could. Now riding day-herd is not supposed to be a very high-grade or desirable occupation, and good punchers have been known to quit a boss who put them at it; but Bowles was led to believe that it was a post of honor.

Awful stories of cowboys who had gone to sleep on guard were told by the fire at night, and the danger from sudden stampedes was played up to the skies. The monotony of the job was admitted, but the responsibility was great. So Bowles accepted the position gladly, and the round-up went on unimpeded.

Lolling in the shade of his horse or sitting with his back to the dry wind, Bowles watched them ”pluck the blossoms” while he doctored his numerous wounds, meanwhile falling into lovelorn reveries on the subject of Dixie Lee. It was humiliating, in a way, to be reduced to the ranks; to be compelled to wait on her pleasure, and court her from afar; but something told him that Dixie thought of him even though she pa.s.sed him by; and just to be one of her lovers, to be allowed to wors.h.i.+p with the rest--that was enough to bear him up and give him courage to wait. And either in the end she would speak to him and take him back into her life, or he would depart in silence to hide from her laughing eyes. The game of love was new to Bowles and he knew little of its stealth and wiles; just to be near her was all he knew, and the future must solve the rest. So, like a questing knight, nursing his hurts after his first combat, he sat out on the boundless prairie and communed with his own sad heart.

Across the herd from him a battered old-time cowboy sat, crooked-legged, on his horse. On the day before a bronk had thrown him by treachery and kicked him as he dragged--even turned around and jumped on him and stamped him in the face. A great bruise, red and raw, ran up from his brows to his bald-spot where the iron shoe had struck; but still the old-timer was content.

”A cowboy don't need no haid above his eyebrows, nohow,” he had said.

”Jest think if he had hit me on the jaw!” Yes, indeed, but what if he had hit him in the temple or trampled him to death! Or suppose, just for instance, that Mr. Bowles, of New York, had been on the bronk instead of Uncle Joe, the veteran--would he have had sense enough to get his foot out of the stirrup? That was the trouble with standing day-herd--it gave the imagination a chance to work.

Bowles looked out over the plain again and noticed every little thing--the rattleweed, planted so regularly on the sandy flat; the dogholes, each with its high-topped mound to keep out the rain and floods; the black line of mesquite brush against the distant hills; the band of yuccas along their flanks; and then the soft, moulded summits, now green, now yellow, now creamy white as shrubs and bushes and bunch gra.s.s caught the light. It was very beautiful, but lonely. Yes, it lacked color--a vigorous girlish figure in the foreground to give it the last poetic touch.

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