CHAPTER XIX
AN OLD, OLD FRIEND
Bowers lay slumbering tranquilly in the shade of the wagon, his saddleblanket beneath him and his folded arms for a pillow as he slept on hisface. The herd chewed its cud drowsily under the quaking asp nearby, outof the mid-day heat and away from pestiferous flies, while under a bushnot far from the wagon a lamb lay with eyes half closed, waggling itsnarrow jaw, and grinding its sharp white teeth noisily.
Quite as though some thought had come to it forcibly, the lamb got upand stood regarding Bowers reflectively with its soft black eyes. Thenit swallowed its cud with a gulp and, making a run the length of theherder's legs and spine, planted its forefeet in his neck, where itstopped.
"Mary! You quit that!" Bowers murmured crossly.
The lamb merely reached down and chewed energetically on Bowers's ear.
"Confound you--can't you let a feller sleep?" The hand that pushed thelamb away was gentle in spite of the exasperation of his tone.
The lamb backed away, eyed him attentively for several minutes as he layprostrate, and then quite as though a tightly coiled spring had beenreleased, leaped into the air and landed with all four feet bunched inthe small of Bowers's back.
Bowers sat up and said complainingly as he grabbed the lamb by the wooland drew it towards him:
"There ain't a minute's peace when you're awake, Mary! If I done what Iort, I'd work you over. You're the worst nuisance of a bum lamb everraised on canned milk."
The lamb, which Bowers had named regardless of its sex, stood motionlesswith bliss as he rubbed the base of what would some day probably be asfine a pair of horns as ever grew on a buck. At present they were softand not more than an inch and a half in length as they sprouted throughits dingy wool. Thin in the shoulders and rump, yet "Mary's" sides weredistended until their contour resembled that of a toy balloon inflatedto the bursting point.
Now as the lamb's long white lashes drooped until he seemed about to goto sleep and fall down under Bowers's soothing ministrations, the lattercontinued the one-sided conversation which was a part of their dailylife together:
"You're a smart sheep, Mary--no gittin' away from it--but you're atorment, and you ain't no gratitude. Whur'd you been at if I hadn'theard you blattin' and went after you? A coyote would a ketched youbefore sundown. And ain't I been a mother to you, giving up all myair-tight milk to feed you? Warmin' it fer you and packin' you 'roundlike you was a million-dollar baby so the bobcats won't git you--kin youdeny it? An' this is my thanks fer it--wake me up walkin' on me, to saynothin' of mornin's when you start jumpin' on my tepee, makin' atoboggan slide out'n it before any other sheep is stirrin'. Ain't you noconscience a-tall, Mary?"
"Ma-a-a-aa!"
The quavering plaintiff bleat evoked a look of admiration.
"Oh, you have--have you? I more'n half believe you know what I'msayin'. You're some sheep, Mary, an' if you jest stick 'round with metill you're growed I'll make a man of you. How'd you like a cigarette?"
"Ma-a-aa-aa!"
Bowers chuckled.
"Wait till I have my smoke an' then you kin have yourn, young feller."
He rolled and smoked half a cigarette while the lamb stood looking upinto his face wistfully.
"I'll jest knock the fire out fer you first, then you kin have yourwhack out of it."
He shook the tobacco from the paper into his hand and the lamb ate it tothe last fleck with gusto.
Bowers cried gleefully:
"You're a reg'lar roughneck, Mary! Doggone you! As you might say--youain't no lady!"
The herder laughed aloud at his witticism and might have rambled on forsome time longer if the crashing of brush had not attracted hisattention. A man on horseback was picking his way through the quakingasp and Bowers awaited his approach with keen interest.
"How are you?" the stranger nodded.
"Won't you git off?"
Bowers strained his eyes to read the brand on the shoulder of the horsethe man turned loose, but it told him nothing. While the strangersquatted on his heel, Bowers rubbed Mary's horns during an interval ofunembarrassed silence.
"Bum?" inquired the stranger, eying Mary with a look which could not becalled admiring.
"Yep." The garrulous Bowers had become suddenly reticent. The notion wasgrowing that he did not like his visitor. He asked finally:
"Et yet?"
"Not sence daylight. I seen your tepee up toward the top and thoughtmaybe I could locate your wagon and git dinner."
"I'll feed anybody that's hungry," Bowers replied ambiguously.
The stranger asked innocently:
"Who does this Outfit belong to?"
"Miss Kate Prentice owns this brand."
"Oh--the 'Cheap Queen'!"
Bowers's head swung as though on a pivot.
"What did you say?"
"I've heerd that's what they call her."
Bowers's eyes narrowed as he answered:
"Not in my hearin'." Then he added: "Nobody can knock the outfit I'mworkin' for and eat their grub while they're doin' it. Sabe?"
"Don't know as I blame you," the stranger conciliated.
"I'll go cook," said Bowers shortly, getting up.
The stranger urged politely:
"Don't do nothin' extry on my account."
"I ain't goin' to," Bowers responded. "If we had some ham we'd have someham and eggs if we had eggs. Do you like turnips?"
"I kin eat 'em."
"My middle name is 'turnips,'" said Bowers. "I always cooks about abushel!"
The look that his guest sent after him was not pleasant, if Bowers hadchanced to see it, but since he did not, he was in a somewhat betterhumor by the time he hung out of the wagon and called with a degree ofcordiality:
"Come and git it!"
The visitor arose with alacrity.
"Want a warsh?"
The stranger inspected a pair of hands that looked as if they had beengreasing axles.
"No, I ain't very dirty."
"Grab a root and pull!" Bowers urged with all the hospitality he couldinject into his voice, as the guest squeezed in between the table andthe sideboard. "Jest bog down in that there honey, pardner--it'ssomething special--cottonwood blossoms and alfalfy. And here's theturnips!"
* * * * *
Conversation was suspended until a pan of biscuits had vanished alongwith the fried mutton, when Bowers, feeling immeasurably better natured,inquired sociably as he passed the broom:
"Where have I saw you before, feller? Your countenance seems kind offamiliar."
The stranger looked up quickly.
"I don't think it. I'm a long way off my own range."
He averted his eyes from Bowers's puzzled inquiring gaze and focused hisattention upon the business of extracting a suitable straw from thepolitely tendered broom. When he had found one to his liking, he leanedback and operated with a large air of nonchalance.
"You're fixed pretty comfortable here," he commented, as his roving eyetook in the interior of the wagon.
"'Tain't bad," Bowers agreed, prying into the broom for a straw that wasclean, comparatively.
"Is them all kin o' yourn?" The stranger pointed to a wire racksuspended from a nail on the opposite side of the wagon in which wasthrust some two dozen photographs, fly-specked and yellow, while the cutof the subjects' clothes bore additional evidence of their antiquity.
"Lord, no! I don't know none of 'em. There was a couple of travelin'photygraphers got snowed up here several year ago and I bought tendollars' worth of old pictures off 'em for company. I got 'em all named,and it's real entertainin' settin' here evenin's makin' up yarns about'em that's more'n half true, maybe--Mis' Taylor over to Happy Wigwamsays I'm kind of a medium."
Glancing at his guest he observed that his eyes were fixed intently upona photograph in the center and his expression was so peculiar thatBowers asked, curiously:
"Ary friend o' yours in my gallery?"
"Not to say
friend, exactly," was the dry answer, "but what-fer-a-yarnhave you made up about that feller?"
"Well, sir," Bowers said whimsically, "I'm sorry to tell you but thatfeller had a bad endin'. He had everything done fur him, too--goodraisin' and an education, but it was all wasted. That horse there was,as you might say, his undoin'. It was just fast enough to be beateverywhur he run him. But he kept on backin' him till it broke him--no,sir, he hadn't a dollar! Lost everything his Old Man left him and thentook to drinkin'. His wife quit him and his only child died callin' forits father. After that he drunk harder than ever, and finally died inthe asylum thinkin' he was Marcus Daly." He demanded eagerly, "How closthave I come to it?"
"Knowin' what I know, it makes me creepy settin' here listenin'."
"Shoo! I ain't that good, am I?" Bowers looked his pleasure at thetribute.
"Good?" ironically. "You oughta sew spangles on your shirt and wearear-rings and git you a fortune-tellin' wagon. You're right abouteverything except that that horse never was beat while he owned him andhe win about twenty thousand dollars on him, and that the last time Isaw that feller he could buy sixteen outfits like this one withoutcrampin' him, and instead of goin' to the asylum they sent him to thestate senate."
Bowers laughed loudly to cover his annoyance at having bitten.
"It's come about queer, though," he said, "your knowin' him."
The stranger seemed to check an impulse to say something further;instead, he volunteered to wipe the dishes.
"No, you go out and set in the shade--it's cooler."
The truth was, Bowers did not want the man in the wagon, for his firstfeeling of mistrust and antagonism had returned even stronger.
"That feller's liable to pick up somethin' and make off with it," hemused as the stranger obeyed without further urging. "I shore have sawthem quare eyes of his somewhur. Maybe it'll come to me if I keep onthinkin'."
In the meanwhile the visitor dragged Bowers's saddle blanket into theshade of the wagon and stretched himself upon it. Pulling his hat overhis eyes he soon was dozing.
Bowers, rattling the plates and pans inside the wagon, suddenlybethought himself of Mary. What was the lamb doing not to be about hisfeet begging for the condensed milk which he always prepared for it whenhis own meal was finished? He flirted the water from his hands and hungout of the doorway.
Mary, a few feet from the unconscious stranger, was regarding him withthe gentle speculative look which Bowers knew to presage mischief. Itwas not difficult to interpret Mary's intentions, and Bowers was fullyaware that it was his duty either to warn the sleeper or reprimand Mary.His eyes, however, had the fondness of a doting parent who takes asecret pride in his offspring's naughtiness as he watched Mary. He didnot like the stranger, anyhow, and the incident of the photograph stillrankled.
"The Smart Alec," he muttered, grinning, "it won't hurt him."
The lamb backed off a little, made a run, and with its four feetbunched, landed in the pit of the stranger's stomach.
With an explosive grunt, the stranger's knees and chin came togetherlike the sudden closing of a large pocket knife.
In spite of himself, Bowers snickered, but his grin faded at theexpression which came to the stranger's face when he realized the causeof his painful awakening. It was devilish, nothing less than appalling,in its ferocity. Bowers had seen rage before, but the peculiarfiendishness of the man's expression, not knowing himself observed,fascinated him.
The lamb had backed off for another run when the stranger jumped for it.Bowers called sharply:
"Don't tech that little sheep, pardner!"
The answer was snarled through white teeth:
"I'm goin' to kick its slats in! I'm goin' to break every bone in itsbody."
"I wouldn't advise nothin' like that. Come here, Mary!" Bowersendeavored to speak calmly, but he was seized with a tremulousexcitement when he saw that the stranger intended to carry out histhreat.
"I'll pay you fer it," he panted as he tried to catch the lamb, "but I'maimin' to kill that knot-head!"
Bowers dried his hands on his overalls and stepped inside the wagon. Hereturned with his shotgun.
"And I aim to blow the top of your head off ef you try it," Bowers said,breathing heavily. "That little innercent sheep don't mean no harm tonobody. Sence we're speakin' plain, I don't like you nohow. I don't likethe way you act; I don't like the way you talk; I don't like the wayyour face grows on you; I don't like nothin' about you, and ef I neversee you agin it'll be soon enough. You'd better go while I'm ca'm, forwhen I gits mad I breaks in two in the middle and flies both ways!"
Panting from his chase, the stranger stopped and stood looking at Bowersin baffled fury. Then he turned sharply on his heel, caught his horseand swung into the saddle. He hesitated for the part of a second beforespurring his horse a little closer.
"You kin take a message to your boss--you locoed sheepherder. Tell herit's from an old friend that knew her when she was kickin' in hercradle. Show her that photygraph of the feller with the runnin' horseand tell her I said it was the picture of her father, and that he'sscoured the country for her, spendin' more money to locate her thanshe'll make if she wrangles woolies till she's a hundred. Tell her atelegram would bring him in twenty-four hours--on a special, probably.Give her that message, along with the love of an old, old friend whatwas well acquainted with her at the Sand Coulee!" He laughed mockingly,and with a malevolent look at Bowers, plunged into the quaking asp andvanished.
Bowers stared after him open-mouthed and round-eyed. He had placed hisvisitor. "The feller that smelled like a Injun tepee in the drug storethe night Mormon Joe was murdered!"
The discovery that his visitor was the malodorous stranger of the drugstore impressed Bowers far more than his mocking message to Kateconcerning her father. That might or might not be true, but he wasentirely sure about the other.
His first impulse was to deliver the message, but upon second thought hedecided that nothing would be accomplished by it, and it might disturbher. He argued that with a range war pending she already had enoughworries. If only he could get word to Teeters somehow--or Lingle,even--to keep a lookout for the fellow, but since he was many miles offthe line of travel and he dared not leave his sheep, there was smallchance of notifying either.
It was a good many days before the incident was out of Bowers's mind forany length of time. He kept his shotgun handy and was on the alertconstantly, listening, searching the surrounding country for a movingobject, and muttering frequently, "What was he doin' here,anyhow--moggin' round the mountains--comin' from nowhur, goin' nowhur!"
But a month passed and nothing happened, either in Bowers's camp or atthe others. Since the warning had implied that any attempt to movefurther would be stopped immediately, and yet all the wagons were nowwell up the mountain, both Kate and Bowers concluded that thethreatening scrawl was intended only to annoy her.
"Ma-aa-aa!" Mary bleated like a fretful teething child, and held up hishead for Bowers to rub the feverish horns as his foster parent sat on abox beside the wagon one lazy afternoon.
"I declare, Mary, I'll be most as glad when them horns cut through as ifthey growed on me! I could raise a baby by hand 'thout any more troublethan it's took to bring you up." The lamb stood stock still as heyielded to his importunities, and Bowers continued whimsically: "I beena father and mother to you, Mary, an' you might a-been an orphingthrough your own orn'riness if I hadn't throwed down on that fellerpretty pronto.
"No denyin' 'twould have made a preacher peevish to have you land inthe pit of his stummick with them sharp hoofs of yourn. But you're onlyan innercent little sheep, and they wan't no sense in his tryin' tostomp on you.
"Well, I got to be stirrin' up them woolies. Sorry I got to tie you, butyou're gittin' such a durned nuisance, with playin' half the night andslidin' down my tepee. I'll give you the big feed when I come down inthe mornin', so say your prayers and go to bed like a good lamb orta."
Bowers tied Mary to the wagon wheel, and, with a
final rub and pat andadmonition, left the lamb, to start the herd feeding toward theirbed-ground on the summit.
"Come out o' that, Mother Biddies! Better start now and go to fillin'up. I want them children of yourn to weigh sixty poun' each, come fall."
The sheep, which had been lying in the shade or standing in a circlewith their heads together as a protection against the flies, obeyedslowly, and Bowers followed as they grazed their way toward his tepeegleaming white among the rocks on the top of the mountain.
Occasionally he stopped to pick up something and examine it--a curiouspebble, a rock that might make his fortune, a bit of grey moss, whichalways made him wonder what there was about it, dry as punk, brittle andtasteless, to make sheep prefer it to far better feed, to hisnotion--salt sage, black sage, grease wood, or even cactus with thethorns pawed off. No accounting for sheep anyway--"the better you knew'em the less you understood 'em."
"Git to the high hills, Sister!" He tossed a pebble at a lagging ewe."Want to feed all day in the same spot? Climb, there, Granny! Betterlook out or you'll git throwed in with the gummers and shipped afore youknow it!"
While the sheep fed slowly toward the summit, Bowers saunteredafter--tall, lank, neutral-tinted, his thoughts going round and round inthe groove peculiar to herders--the sheep before him and theirindividual characteristics, the condition of the range, the weather,religion, the wickedness of "High Society," the items on the next listhe would send to the mail-order house in Chicago.
And so the afternoon passed as had hundreds like it in Bowers's lifeuntil he sat down finally on a rock to watch the rays of the setting sunpaint the clouds in ever-changing colors and lose himself inreflections, studying the gorgeous sea surrounding him.
It would be a great place up there for a feller's soul tofloat--provided he had one--restin' a while in that yaller one, or therose-colored one up yonder, or takin' a dip into that hazy purple anddisappearin'. Personally, he told himself, he believed that when he wasdead he was dead as a nit, and he'd never seen anything about dyingfolks to make him think otherwise.
That Scissor-bill from back East in Ioway that died of heart failurejest slipped and slid off his chair, slow and easy like a sack ofbran--he didn't show in his eyes any visions of future glory when hestretched on the floor behind the stove in the bunkhouse and closed 'emfor good. Sometimes they kicked and struggled like pizened sheep intheir sufferin', and again they went off easy and comfortable, butwithout any glimpses of Paradise brightenin' their countenances, so faras he could notice.
If he had a soul, all right; if he didn't, all right; that's the way hefiggered it.
The lead sheep started for the bed-ground.
"Kick up your dust piles good, Mother Biddies, and git comfortable.Hurry up and blow out your lights so I can git to my readin'."
The light had faded, and the dingy gray-white backs becameindistinguishable from the rounded tops of the sagebrush, as night cameupon the mountain. With much sniffling, bleating, asthmatic coughing andcrackling of small split hoofs, each sheep settled itself in practicallythe same little hollow it had previously pawed out to fit itself. A softrumble came from the band as they stirred in their little wallows.
Then Bowers fired a barrel of his shotgun into the air as a reminder topossible coyotes in the rim rocks that he was present, and lighted thelantern in his tepee.
"I'll have to warsh that chimbly in a couple o' years," he commented ashe set the lantern down and reached for a worn and tattered mail-ordercatalogue in the corner.
Fumbling under his pillow, he produced the stub of a pencil and atablet, after which, crosslegged on his blankets and soogan, he poredover the catalogue. Jewelry, clothing, cooking utensils and upholsteredfurniture were on the list which Bowers, with corrugated forehead andmuch chewing of the pencil, made out laboriously. When the amountreached three hundred and sixty-five dollars, he hesitated over afurther expenditure of nine for a manicure set and a pair of pink satinsleeve holders. That was a good deal of money to spend in one evening.
"Thunder!" he finally said recklessly. "No use to deny myself! I ain'tgoin' to send it, anyway!"
Having written it all in proper form and affixed his signature, hefolded the paper and slipped it under his bed along with some threedozen other such orders that never got any farther.
This was Bowers's evening diversion, one in which he experienced all thethrills of purchasing without the pain of paying. He entertained apeculiar feeling of friendship for the House whose catalogue had helpedhim through long winter evenings, when night came at four, andinterminable spells of wet weather, so when he sent a _bona fide_ orderto Chicago he never failed to inquire as to the health of each member ofthe firm and inform them that his own was excellent at time of writing,adding such items concerning the condition of the range and stock as hethought would interest them.
Bowers now slipped the lantern inside a flour sack, went outside in hisstocking feet, and wedged the lantern between two rocks. The light"puzzled" coyotes, according to his theory, and gave them something tothink about besides getting into his sheep.
When he had folded his trousers under his head his preparations for thenight were complete and, this accomplished, the almost immediateexpulsion of his breath in little puffs was proof enough that he wassleeping the peaceful sleep of the carefree.
A brisk breeze came at intervals to sway the tepee and snap the looseflaps. Sometimes a lamb bleated in a sleepy tremolo; occasionally,instead of puffing, Bowers snorted; but mostly it was as still as anuninhabited world up there on the tip-top of the Rockies.
Suddenly Bowers half sprang from his blankets--wide-awake, alert,listening intently. He had a notion that a sound had awakened him,something foreign, unfamiliar. Holding his breath, he strained his earsfor a repetition. Everything was still. He stepped outside lightly. Thesheep lay on their bed-ground, quiet and contented. Had he beendreaming? It must be. Too much shortening in the dough-gods probably.He'd have to stir up a batch of light bread to-morrow. It was curious,though--that strong impression of having heard something. He returned tohis blankets and was puffing again almost immediately.
It was not much after half-past three when the first ewe got up,bleated for her lamb, and moved off slowly. Others rose, stood a momentas though to get the sleep out of their eyes, and followed her example.Ewes bleated for their lambs, lambs for their mothers, until quaveringcalls in many keys made a din to awaken any sleeper, while the wholemass of dingy, rounded woolly backs started moving from the bed-ground.
"Workin' like angels," Bowers muttered as he came out of the tepeedressed in his erstwhile pillow, to see the sheep spreading out beforehim.
He extinguished the lantern, replaced it in the tepee, and tied theflap, while the faint, gray streak in the east grew brighter.
"Ouhee! You pinto gypsy! Whur you roamin' to now? Think I want to climbup there and pry you out o' the rocks? Come back here 'fore I git inyour wig. Ouhee! Mother Biddies! I'll whittle on your hoofs, first thingyou know. You won't enjoy traveling' so fast, if you're a little tenderfooted.
"That's better--now you're actin' like ladies!"
The air was redolent of sheep and sagebrush, and pink and amber streaksshot up to paint out the dimming stars. Bowers drew a deep breath ofsatisfaction. O man! but sheep-herding was a great life in summer--likedrawing, wages through a vacation. If those "High Society" folks thatthe Denver _Post_ told of, them worse than Sodomites, steeped in sin andextravagance, could know the joys of getting up at half-past three inthe morning and going down at ten to eat off a fat mutton--
Bowers's rhapsody ended abruptly. He drew a hand across his eyes toclear his vision. Down below, where he was wont to look for the whitetop of the wagon, there was nothing but scattered wreckage! He heard thesound now that had awakened him--the detonation of a charge ofdynamite! There was no need to go closer to learn the rest of the story.
Bowers's face twisted in a queer grimace. He cried brokenly in a griefthat can be understood fully only by the lonely:
br /> "Pore little Mary! Pore little feller! Pore little innercent sheep thatnever done no harm to nobody!"