Chapter VII
On the Trail
The convalescents rode away into a desert green with spring. The fragrantchaparral thickets were bursting into flower. Spanish bayonets studdedthe plains. Everywhere about them was the promise of a new life not yetburnt by hot summer suns to a crisp.
During the day they ran into a swamp country and crossed a bayou wherecypress knees and blue gums showed fantastic in the eerie gloom of thestagnant water. From this they emerged to a more wooded region and madean early camp on the edge of a grove of ash trees bordering a smallstream where pecans grew thick.
Shortly after daybreak they were jogging on at a walk-trot, the road gaitof the Southwest, into the treeless country of the prairie. They noonedat an arroyo seco, and after they had eaten took a siesta during the heatof the day. Night brought with it a thunderstorm and they took refuge ina Mexican hut built of palisades and roofed with grass sod. A widow livedalone in the jacal, but she made them welcome to the best she had. Theyoung men slept in a corner of the hut on a dry cowskin spread upon themud floor, their saddles for pillows and their blankets rolled aboutthem.
While she was cooking their breakfast, Prince noticed the tears rollingdown her cheeks. She was a comely young woman and he asked her gallantlyin the bronco Spanish of the border if there was anything he could do torelieve her distress.
She shook her head mournfully. "No, senor," she answered in her nativetongue. "Only time can do that. I mourn my husband. He was a drunkenne'er-do-well, but he was my man. So I mourn a fitting period. He died inthat corner of the room where you slept."
"Indeed! When?" asked Billie politely.
"Ten days ago. Of smallpox."
The young men never ate that breakfast. They fled into the sunlight andput many hurried miles between them and their amazed hostess. At thefirst stream they stripped, bathed, washed their clothes, dipped thesaddles, and lay nude in the warm sand until their wearing apparel wasdry.
For many days they joked each other about that headlong flight, butunderneath their gayety was a dread which persisted.
"I'm like Dona Isabel with her grief. Only time can heal me of that scareshe threw into Billie Prince," the owner of that name confessed.
"Me too," assented Clanton, helping himself to pinole. "I'll bet I lost ayear's growth, and me small at that."
Prince had been in the employ of Webb for three years. During the longhours when they rode side by side he told his companion much about theFlying V Y outfit and its owner.
"He's a straight-up man, Homer Webb is. His word is good all over Texas.He'll sure do to take along," said Billie by way of recommendation.
"And Joe Yankie--does he stack up A 1 too?" asked the boy dryly.
"I never liked Joe. It ain't only that he'll run a sandy on you if he canor that he's always ridin' any one that will stand to be picked on. Joe'ssure a bully. But then he's game enough, too, for that matter. I've seenhim fight like a pack of catamounts. Outside of that I've got a hunchthat he's crooked as a dog's hind leg. Mebbe I'm wrong, I'm tellin' youhow he strikes me. If I was Homer Webb, right now when trouble is comin'up with the Snaith-McRobert outfit, I'd feel some dubious about Joe. He'sa sulky, revengeful brute, an' the old man has pulled him up with a tightrein more'n once."
"What do you mean--trouble with the Snaith-McRobert outfit?"
"That's a long story. The bad feelin' started soon after the war whenSnaith an' the old man were brandin' mavericks. It kind of smoulderedalong for a while, then broke out again when both of them began to bidon Government beef contracts. There's been some shootin' back an' forthan' there's liable to be a whole lot more. The Lazy S M--that's theSnaith-McRobert brand--claims the whole Pecos country by priority. Theold man ain't recognizin' any such fool title. He's got more 'n thirtythousand head of cattle there an' he'll fight for the grass if he has to.O' course there's plenty of room for everybody if it wasn't for the beefcontracts an' the general bad feelin'."
"Don't you reckon it will be settled peaceably? They'll get together an'talk it over like reasonable folks."
Billie shook his head. "The Lazy S M are bringin' in a lot of bad menfrom Texas an' the Strip. Some of our boys ain't exactly gun-shy either.One of these days there's sure goin' to be sudden trouble."
"I'm no gunman," protested Clanton indignantly. "I hired out to theold man to punch cows. Whyfor should I take any chances with theSnaith-McRobert outfit when I ain't got a thing in the world againstthem?"
"No, you're no gunman," grinned his friend in amiable derision."Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em is a quiet little Sunday-go-to-meetin' kid. It waskinder by accident that he bumped off four Apaches an' a halfbreed theother day."
"Now don't you blame me for that, Billie. You was hell-bent on goin' intothe Roubideau place an' I trailed along. When you got yore pill in thelaig you made me ride up the gulch alone. I claim I wasn't to blame forthem Mescaleros. I wasn't either."
Prince had made his prophecy about the coming trouble lightly. He couldnot guess that the most terrible feud in the history of the West was tospring out of the quarrel between Snaith and Webb, a border war so grimand deadly that within three years more than a hundred lusty men were tofall in battle and from assassination. It would have amazed him to knowthat the bullet which laid low the renegade in Shoot-a-Buck Canon had setthe spark to the evil passions which resulted in what came to be calledthe Washington County War. Least of all could he tell that the girl-facedboy riding beside him was to become the best-known character of all thedesperate ones engaged in the trouble.