The Cowpuncher (4 page)

The Bar X Ranch stood strategically in the center of a wide, sweeping valley. To the north and south as far as the eye could see, rolled rich and luxurious grassland, with heavy gramma grass reaching belly-high to a good-sized horse. Cotton-woods, cool and inviting in the warm autumn sun, dotted the range.

To the east and west, hills rose gently to mark the outer boundaries of this pleasant, sun-warmed valley. A broad leisurely stream stemmed out of the upper reaches of the northern slopes, feeding the soil with its watery richness.

Large herds of cattle watched by lazy-riding cowboys grazed and wandered along the banks of the meandering stream. The cattle were fat and sleek and content.

Sue Doyle, in the midst of all this rich contentment and serenity, felt its gnawing contrast to her own state of mind. For a long time she had been lying on her back in the shade of a large elm tree that stood directly in front of the low, rambling ranchhouse. She stared moodily and sightlessly up through the leaves to the opaque blue of the Texas sky; her mouth was drawn in a fretful line and her slender fingers drummed nervously on the turf.

Suddenly a shadow fell across her line of vision.
For an instant it was only a patch of darkness. Then it took shape.

“Dad!” she cried, suddenly agitated, and rose to her feet with inexplicable speed. In fact, she behaved just as she had, as a child, when she’d been caught trying to roll a cigarette behind the barn. “I didn’t see you.”

“I reckon you didn’t,” said her father.

Old Man Doyle, as he was called by all who knew him, including his hired hands, was short, thin and wiry; his hair was scraggly, with patches of red, sun-frazzled scalp showing through where the hair was thinning. The patches were hidden now, by an old, battered Stetson that crowned his top.

From under its misshapen brim stared two mildly inquisitive brown eyes, between which ran a short, decisive nose whose end exploded into a bright red bulb. The mouth was long and wide, and was shaped for loud and raucous laughter.

For a small man, his voice was deep and resonant. His talk seemed to rumble up out of his belly rather than from his vocal chords.

“I didn’t see you,” Sue repeated, stupidly. She was a head taller than her father and looked down upon him with a curiously disturbed glance.

He looked at her shrewdly for a moment and cocked his head on a side. “Yuh ain’t been seein’
anythin’
lately,” he said good-naturedly. Then his tone grew more earnest. “What’s troublin’ yuh, lass? Yuh ain’t been yourself for a couple weeks now—ever since the boys come back from K.C. What’s eatin’ yuh?”

“Nothing,” she replied quickly. Almost too quickly. “I’m restless, I guess.”

“Yeah,” said Old Man Doyle, eyeing her steadily. Her gaze dropped under his. “I reckon I ain’t much of a ma to yuh, Sue. Been a mite easier if she’d of been here for yuh to talk to. Ma’s are a sight better’n easier to talk to than pa’s, I reckon.”

Sue’s white teeth showed in a smile. Impulsively she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. For a moment they grinned at each other self-consciously.

“You’ve been both to me, Dad,” she said. Then her tone deepened as her eye fell on a big bluehorse, cropping grass in the courtyard. “Do you think anything’s happened to Huck?”

Doyle’s eye followed her gaze. She was staring at Huck Brannon’s Smoke. His brow corrugated in a wrinkle, then smoothed out. When he spoke, his tone was casual, hearty and innocent.

“To Huck Brannon?” he cried. “Nothin’ could happen to that young hellion.”

“Then why hasn’t he come back? Why didn’t he return with the rest of the boys?”

“Why, they told yuh, Sue,” replied her father, his eyes peering keenly at her from beneath his battered hat. “He had a coupla drinks too many an’ jest forgot to get up the next mornin’; an’ the boys said he was plumb busted. I reckon he kinda got stranded in K.C.”

“But why didn’t he wire for money to come back?”

“I figger he wouldn’t want to do that, daughter. You know Huck.”

“Then where is he now?”

“I cal’late he’s hoofin’ it back, Sue—that is—if he aims to come back atall.”

The blood ebbed slowly from the girl’s face. Her eyes widened to deep, amber pools. “What do you mean, Dad?”

“I mean, mebbe he’s left the Bar X for good. He always said he’d wander on, some fine day.”

For a moment the only sound in the afternoon was the far-off tinkle of a horse’s bell. “Yes, I know,” Sue said. “Only—no, it just isn’t possible!”

“How do yuh know, daughter,”

“I do know it,” she replied quickly. She couldn’t tell her father about kissing Huck. Not when it might look as if Huck was staying away because of it. She pointed to Smoke instead.

“Huck’s horse is here. He’d never leave his horse. Besides, his clothes are here too—and his guns.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied hesitantly.

“Wal, I reckon a hombre can get other clothes an’ buy another hoss.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “Huck wouldn’t go away without—I’m sure something must have happened to him! I’m sure of it! We’d have heard something by now.”

Doyle surveyed his daughter, from the tips of her small booted feet to the crest of her thick, wavy black hair. She colored under his penetrating gaze, but her eyes held firm.

“Wal,” he drawled, “ ‘pears to me that yuh been mighty concerned over that cowboy since he ain’t
come back.” He hesitated a moment, then, “Don’t tell me yuh’ve gone soft on Huck, Sue?”

It was a question that demanded an answer. For a moment, her glance held steady, then it faltered. “I don’t know, Dad. I honestly don’t know.” She looked up into his face again. “I guess I sort of got used to riding with him and being with him—I don’t know, Dad. All I know is that I’m lonely when Huck’s not around. And so I miss him.”

“An’ how does this here cowboy feel ‘bout yuh, daughter?”

She laughed aloud, tossing her head. “I don’t know.”

“See here, Sue,” he cried indignantly. “I ain’t gonna have a daughter of mine throwin’ herself into the arms of the first good-lookin’ rapscallion that sets foot in a stirrup.”

“I’m not throwing myself at anybody, Dad,” she assured him quietly.

“Then what are yuh aimin’ to do?”

“I’m going to Kansas City to look for him. I think something has happened to him.”

He was on the point of raising an objection, but one look at the determination written bright and steady in his daughter’s face, changed his mind.

“Yuh always was a stubborn monkey!” he exclaimed. There was a hint of admiration in his voice, as well as love for this headstrong daughter of his. Then a thought struck him.

“Why don’t yuh let me send one of the boys first, to look for him? If he’s in trouble maybe he’ll need more help than a girl can give him.” She looked
hesitant. “Ain’t no use yuh’re chasin’ after him, when I can send Lem or Jim. Is there?”

She shook her head again.

“No, Dad,” she said. “I’ve got to go myself. If something’s happened to Huck—I want to be there.”

He tried one last appeal.

“A’right, Sue,” he said. “But why not wait a couple of days more? Mebbe yore Huck Brannon will turn up by his own self.”

“I’ll wait two days—but if Huck doesn’t return—I’m going to look for him.” And there was no hesitation at all on her face or in her voice.

Esmeralda! Division point for the great C. & P. railroad, whose fingers of steel were reaching through the mountains toward the far-off Pacific. As yet, the great yellow passenger trains and the rumbling freights had to use a leased line to reach the western coast; but the dream of Jaggers Dunn, ex-cowboy, miner, engineer, division-superintendent—now empire builder, guiding genius of the great trunk line—the dream of a network of steel from the gray Atlantic to the blue waters of the “Peaceful Ocean,” from the pines of Canada to the palms of the Gulf, was at last coming true.

Here at Esmeralda was his newest outpost. Here on the grim mountain frontier, where the law of knife and gun was still the ruling law. Where blood and passions ran crimson-bright in the veins of strong-limbed, lusty men, glorious in their recklessness; gallant in their disregard for hardship and personal danger; superb in their thirst for adventure and achievement, which meant to them nothing more than the wild and heady thrill of victory over over-whelming odds; or the grim satisfaction of losing, of starting again with a laugh and a bitter joke and the uncomplaining tightening of their belts.

When it had been just a construction camp and
division point, Esmeralda had been uproarious enough; but when a wandering prospector had panned flakes of yellow dust in the gravel that formed the lower slopes of towering Quentin Mountain, Esmeralda took a deep breath and roared the louder.

A genius by the name of Cale Coleman saw his opportunity and grasped it firmly. He brought in hydraulic machinery, and blasted down the gravel beds with eight-inch streams of fiercely driven water, manifolding the results obtained by the primitive methods of pan and cradle.

Cale Coleman was hard, arrogant, confident of his powers, not bothered much by false modesty and less by the other kind. Not bothered, either, by such mewlings as other men ascribed to qualms of conscience or fear of the possible consequence of their own acts.

“Get out of my way!” was Cale Coleman’s motto and he never hesitated to apply it.

Neither Huck Brannon nor Lank Mason met Cale Coleman when, after seeing old Tom Gaylord comfortably settled in the big new railroad hospital, they went up to the Coleman mines in search of work. Cale was somewhere in the East buying more and improved machinery.

“Figger it’s up to me to stick around until Tom is on his feet again,” Huck told Mason. “It was mighty fine of Dunn to have him taken into the company hospital that way. I hear he gave orders Tom should have the best of everything and he’s to stay until he’s completely cured.”

“Dunn took a shine to you, feller,” Mason replied.
“You’d oughta seed his eyes snap when that freight conductor told him how you stayed in the fire with yore shirt burnin’ off yore back and your hair singein’ to pull Tom loose. I got a notion that old general manager has a hefty likin’ for skookum gents with guts and brains. He’s that sort hisself.”

The mine superintendent listened to their application and shrewdly appraised the potentialities of Huck’s tall and vigorous form. He asked Lank Mason detailed technical questions and nodded with satisfaction.

“You know the ropes, all right,” he commented. “I can use you over to the sluices as a foreman. Experienced men of your type ain’t as handy as I’d like. Now as to you, young feller—”

He paused and his eye shifted to the far-flung battery of giant nozzles set on solid steel supports with ball joints that permitted a wide range of both horizontal and vertical play. From each nozzle hissed an eight-inch stream of muddy water driven with tremendous force and focused on the towering gravel-bank side of the mountain. Flanged wheels moved the platforms forward or back on narrow-gauge tracking. Lines of flexible pipe stretched down the mountainside to where giant rams provided the pressure. Huck noticed that two of the nozzles were not in operation.

The superintendent turned to the cowboy, probing him with his eyes. “You know anything ‘bout hydraulic minin’?” he asked.

“Something about the engineering end, not very much about the practical side,” Huck told him truthfully. “I never worked in the field.”

The superintendent nodded. “Figgered as much. Well, you got the heft and you look like you have the brains. Think you could handle one of them big babies over yonder?”

“Show me how they work and I think I can,” the cowpuncher replied.

“Okay, I’ll give you a trial,” the super decided. “It’s a sorta ticklish job—not the kind for a lunkhead, like most of these muckers and rock busters are. Feller can do a awful lot of damage with one of them jets if he don’t handle it just so—bust up machinery in a hurry and mebbe kill somebody.

“You got to keep yore eyes open ev’ry minute, not only to see how she’s bringin’ the gravel down, but to be shore she’s p’inted right and there’s nothin’ in the way of the jet what hadn’t oughta be. It’s a job you can’t sleep on, and one that needs quick thinkin’ mighty often. That’s why she pays top wages. Come ‘long, and I’ll have Casey, the foreman, put you onto handlin’ the gun.”

“Top wages is right,” Huck said to Lank Mason later. “So far as the money end goes, this has shore got cow punchin’ beat one helluva way. Don’t know how I’ll like it, but seeing as there aren’t any spreads handy hereabouts, I reckon I can give it a shot until Old Tom is on his feet again.”

It had never occurred to Huck Brannon until now that he might ever accept any job other than riding herd and punching cattle, even with the smattering of engineering that he’d studied. For him the life of the saddle, the open sky, the thud of pounding hoofs, the hot, sharp reek of branding irons against hide and hair came as natural and as
welcome as breathing. It was in Brannon blood, deep-rooted. His father and his father’s father and Brannons before them had lived their lives on the range.

However he quickly discovered that he did like the new work. There was a thrill to handling the thundering giant that pulsed and quivered beneath his hand, to seeing the reddish gravel, the packed earth and the embedded boulders dissolve like soft sugar under the impact of the crashing stream that bored into the mountainside with irresistible force. A mighty power was there at his fingertips, obedient to the slightest pressure of his hand, and capable, too, of appalling destruction.

Huck learned that there was an art to playing the stream correctly, adding to quickness of eye and hand keenness of perception and understanding of the terrain against which the stream was directed.

And the superintendent quickly learned that he had at No. Seven Nozzle a hand of no mean ability, a man who got results. Before two weeks had passed, he shifted Huck to No. One, at the far right end of the cutting. There unusual accuracy was called for in laying out the course up the mountainside—the course that would be followed by the other nozzlemen. And Huck got a raise.

“You’re gettin’ better’n foreman’s pay now,” Lank Mason said congratulating him.

The weeks passed swiftly—a month, six weeks, two months—and Old Tom was on his feet again, fully recovered.

“We’ll discharge him the first of next week,” the
hospital superintendent told Huck. “Ordinarily we would have let him go last week or the week before, but Mr. Dunn’s orders were very definite and nobody is anxious to violate the orders of Jaggers Dunn. It isn’t apt to be healthy.”

“You gonna quit when Gaylord gets out?” Lank Mason asked Huck when he reported the news.

“Got a notion I’ll hang on for a while,” Huck told him. “Winter’s right on top of us—gravel was froze so hard this morning I had to add pressure to bust the crust—and there isn’t much doing in the cow business this time of year. Got a notion I’ll hang on until Spring. It’s not a bad job; and I sorta like this salty town…Wasn’t that fight in the Blue Whistler last night a lulu!”

Yes, the fight at the Blue Whistler had been a lulu. Huck, handy with fists himself, was something of an expert in the pugilistic art. But he hadn’t gone to the fight because he liked to watch fights. He’d gone for the same reason these days he sought other diversions. To forget. To forget an amber-eyed, smiling, slender-limbed girl whose face haunted his dreams; the girl who, more than any other he’d ever seen, fitted into the pattern of his future. The girl he’d met before that future was sure enough for him to claim her.

Still he felt he had done the sensible thing. Getting away before he fell too much in love. He, a cowboy, worth less than the shirt on his back, dreaming about marriage, too soon. He had no business letting it happen. He would have preferred that his taking leave of the Bar X had been different. Not so abrupt. But since it had happened
the way it had, he had to be content. It was a whole lot easier this way, in fact. No farewells, no painful explanations, no lingering doubts.

But now it was more than two months since he had last seen Sue Doyle; and her memory was just as strong and compelling as if it had been only the night before. The more he tried the harder it was to forget her. And each time she returned to his mind, she seemed prettier and more desirable.

The result was that he became moody, silent, preoccupied. Even at the saloon in that crowded, roaring roomful of revelers, he would suddenly forget what he was saying, forget the drink in his hand and go staring off into space. Several times Lank Mason had asked him what he was staring at—and had gotten only a grunt for an answer.

The only remedy he himself could find was work, work, and more work. He drove himself, working at the top of his strength all the time. He was pace-maker for the nozzlemen, and soon had outdistanced them in cutting his way up the mountainside. He strove hard and mightily to shut out the echo of a voice, the memory of a smile.

And for a while it seemed to succeed; but soon he found that the work had so built up his strength that it became increasingly difficult to achieve a fatigue that would let him sleep without dreaming…

It was the morning after his conversation with Lank Mason about Old Tom that Huck, busily pounding the frozen gravel with his “gun,” heard a voice shouting peremptorily, its bellow carrying above the racket kicked up by the nozzle. A
warning hiss sounded from the mechanic working at a minor repair.

“That’s Coleman hisself, the Big Boss!”

Huck glanced to the right and saw a tall, broad man standing a yard or two beyond the play of the water jet. He was flashily dressed, had a square beefy face, long arms and huge hairy hands. His face was arrogant and ill-tempered, with a prominent straight nose, a straight mouth and straight black brows. Horizontal lines appeared to dominate the countenance that was in spite of its harshness, handsome in a sullen, rough-hewn style.

“Cut that jet farther to the right, you!” boomed the voice.

Huck obeyed, although his gray eyes narrowed slightly at Coleman’s tone. He touched the nozzle control lightly, with perfect assurance, and the gleaming snout swung a trifle in its horizontal arc. The difference at the far end of the jet, where it beat against the gravel bank, was considerable.

Coleman watched the water smash the gravel, his face glowering and slightly flushed. He raised a big hand and knuckled his forehead savagely.

“He’s got a pip of a hangover and wants to take it out on somebody,” Huck guessed.

The mine-owner continued to glower at the cutting. The gravel was coming down swiftly, the jet hollowing out a beautifully straight furrow. The very skill of the performance seemed to anger Coleman further. He whirled, his eyes red and swollen with senseless anger.

“Blast the eyes off you!” he roared. “I said to cut that jet to the right, you thumping jackass!”

Huck Brannon’s mouth suddenly clamped tight and his gray eyes turned smoky green. His right hand moved swiftly, surely, clamping hard on the control.

With a howl, Coleman leaped aside with catlike agility, his face paper-white. The missing eightinch stream grazed his coat. If it had struck him squarely, it would have killed him.