The Cowpuncher (5 page)

Huck Brannon quietly stepped from the plat-form to the ground and stared coldly at the gasping Coleman.

“That far enough to the right?” he asked softly.

The scared white of Coleman’s face abruptly burned fiery red. With a roar of fury he rushed at the cowpuncher, his fists flailing, curses spewing from his mouth.

Huck Brannon stepped lightly aside and struck, his left hand coming up from the level of his knee. His fist smacked against the big man’s jaw with the spatting sound of a flat stone hitting the surface of a quiet pool. Coleman seemed to ripple through his whole six-foot length. His big body shot into the air and crashed down to the hard-frozen ground.

But it didn’t stay. He came up like a cat off a hot stove, blood spurting from a long cut on his cheekbone, his face black with rage.

Huck instantly realized that he had a fight on his hands. Coleman was at least twenty-five pounds heavier, and he wasn’t fat. He was perhaps an inch shorter than Huck, but his gorilla reach was longer. His fists working like pistons, he hurled himself at the cowpuncher, took a stunning right and left to the jaw, ducked his big head and kept coming.

Huck weaved, shifted, hammering out lefts and
rights. Coleman grunted, spat blood and came on. He got through Huck’s guard and spun him sideways with a mighty swing. Before Huck could recover, another blow caught him flush on the jaw.

Huck went down, head ringing, a taste of sulphur in his mouth. He rolled over just in time to escape the vicious kick Coleman launched at his body, streaked to his feet and knocked Coleman clean past the nozzle platform with a slashing left hook to the chin.

Again Coleman came to his feet, shaking his head, mumbling curses; and again he rushed, head down, thick arms flailing, more than willing to take a blow for every one he could give back.

Huck blocked his rush, clinched, and the two wrestled breast to breast, blowing bloody froth into each other’s face from their cut lips, glaring with swollen eyes. Huck was dimly aware that they were surrounded by a yelling crowd; he heard Lank Mason’s voice booming encouragement.

Coleman suddenly lifted him off his feet and hurled him down, hard. Huck landed on his left shoulder, skidded along the frozen ground. With a whoop of triumph Coleman rushed in to kick the life out of the prostrate cowboy.

Huck knew he could not get to his feet in time to block the rush. Coleman’s heavy boots would smash him back before he got to his knees, and that would be the end. His brain worked at top speed, and with equal rapidity he whirled his sinewy legs toward the mine owner, kicking the right foot out with all his strength.

The booted sole caught Coleman on the knee.
At the same instant, Huck hooked his left foot behind Coleman’s ankle and jerked.

There was a crackling sound, a yell of agony from Coleman and he fell to the ground, writhing and gasping. With another howl of pain he flopped over on his side and his hand streaked to his hip.

Lank Mason leaped forward, but Huck Brannon, bounding to his feet, was ahead of him. He kicked the gun from Coleman’s hand even as Coleman pulled the trigger.

The crowd ducked and scattered at the roar of the shot and the screech of the slug that whipped a stinging red streak along the cowboy’s bronzed cheek.

Huck picked up the big gun and thrust it in his belt.

“Been wantin’ a gun quite a spell now,” he said, panting and managing a bloody grin. “Thanks!”

“You get the hell off this property, you dirty killer!” Coleman bawled. “Get me to the hospital, some of you damned loafers, my leg’s busted to hell!”

“Jest knocked out at the knee j’int, I figger,” Lank Mason remarked as Coleman was carried away. “Well, get yore coat, feller, and let’s mosey up and see if Tom Gaylord’s ready to travel. Reckon we better be lookin’ for a new stampin’ ground now.”

“He didn’t fire you,” Huck pointed out.

“Nope. I’m firin’ myself,” Lank said cheerfully. “I don’t hanker to work for a horned toad what tries to kick a feller when he’s on the ground, and goes for his gun when he’s licked in a fair fight.
C’mon, we’ll stop at the office and get our pay. You’d better have them cuts on yore face washed out and plastered while we’re at the hospital.”

They found Old Tom smoking his pipe in comfort and staring speculatively out of the window toward where, raggedly cutting the western skyline, the saw-tooth peaks of the
Sangre de Cristo Range
loomed blue and misty in the distance. There was a gleam in his keen blue eyes as he listened to Lank’s highly colored account of the fight.

“Which lets us out of a good job jest because the mines here happen to be owned by a skunk,” concluded Lank. “Huck and me sorta cal’late on movin’ on—mebbe inter Utah or over to Nevada—and we reckoned you might be int’rested in amblin’ ‘long with us, if you’re feelin’ pert ‘nough by now.”

“I’m feelin’ pert, all right,” Old Tom told them. “Woulda moseyed outa here last week if I’d made up my mind what my next move was. You fellers bein’ set to trail yore rope sorta clears things up for me.”

He paused, puffing at his pipe, turning something over in his mind. Finally he removed the stem from between his teeth, blew out a cloud of smoke and cleared his throat.

“You fellers,” he began rather diffidently, “you fellers saved my life over to that wreck, and took mighty big chances on cashin’ in yore own chips to do it. I ain’t much on gabbin’ and I can’t say what I feel, but I jest want you to know I ain’t fergettin’ it.”

He held up his hand as Huck and Lank began to disclaim any such heroics.

“Nev’ mind all that—know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout and you fellers makin’ light of what you did won’t change it. What I got to say is I’m plumb grateful for what you did, and I aim to try and even it up by lettin’ you in on somethin’ big. Either of you ever hear tell of
La Mina del Padre?
”

Huck looked blank, but Lank Mason’s eyes brightened with interest.

“The
Padre
Mine,” he translated, “the lost
Padre
Mine? What minin’ feller in the west ain’t heerd tell of it?” He turned to Huck. “The story goes that there’s five thousand bars of silver, mebbe more, hid in that mine—silver that Don Fernando de Castro, the Spaniard, and old Padre Diego Escalante made the Injuns mine for them. Story says Don Fernando was so ‘fernal mean to the Injuns that the tribes got t’gether and wiped him and his men out, includin’ the padre, who’d allus tried to be their friend. But ‘fore they was attacked they managed to hide the silver in the mine and hide the mine, too. That’s the yarn you hear down in the Southwest, but I figger it’s jest a yarn, like lots of others.”

Old Tom slowly shook his head.

“It ain’t a yarn,” he said, “it’s the God’s truth.”

“What makes you think so, oldtimer?”

“‘Cause I got the map old Padre Diego drew ‘fore he died—the map what shows where the lost mine’s at.”

Lank Mason guffawed, his belly bobbing up and down like a seal beside an iceberg. “Yeah, ev’body’s got a map,” he said. “Lots of ‘em for sale down in the Southwest. I knowed a feller what
raised a family of kids and sent ‘em through school sellin’ maps of lost mines and hid gold and such.”

Tom Gaylord said nothing. But he drew from his pocket a huge cowhide wallet, opened it, and took out a package wrapped in oiled silk. He unwrapped the silk and spread out on his knee an irregular fragment of linen, yellowed and old. Upon it, faded rusty words were dimly visible.

“Ever see a map like
this
one?” he asked quietly.

Lank picked up the fragment of linen, a wondering expression on his face. He examined the irregular tracing, translated the Spanish words with muttering lips. Huck Brannon, also eyeing the peculiar document, saw Lank’s begin to blaze with excitement.

Lank stabbed at the tracing with a great hairy sausage of a finger, scratched a line lightly with a blunt nail.

“Blood!” he muttered. “Writ in blood, shore as hell! Why this damn thing must be nigh onto a hundred years old!”

He wet his lips, staring harder at the lines and markings. “Hell, I know this country!” he exclaimed. “See—there’s the twin Spanish Peaks marked plain, and the Apishapa River, and Carson’s Peak, and Dominguez Crik in its narrer canyon! Gaylord, where did you get this thing?”

Old Tom chuckled, glancing shrewdly at the miner’s flushed face.

“Get’s you, eh? It got me, too, and I don’t know the section like you do—jest the gen’ral lay of the land. I got that map from an old Mexican down El
Paso way. It was handed down to him by his grandpappy who claimed it was give to him by the old padre who drew it on the tail of his shirt with his blood after the Injuns had ambushed Don Fernando and his men while they was tryin’ to make it back to Mexico.

“The padre told the greaser, who was jest a boy then, to take the map and the wordin’ on it to Mexico and turn it over to the Officers of the King of Spain. But ‘fore the boy got there, the rev’lution had took place and there weren’t no king’s officers in Mexico any more. His mother told him the rag was sacred ‘cause it had the padre’s blood on it and the family should keep it so it’d bring ‘em good luck.

“The old feller I got it from said it hadn’t never brought ‘em anythin’ but bad luck, so far as he could make out—I’d jest saved him from starvin’ with a broken leg in the Cuevas salt desert and he was sorta grateful to me. ‘Sides, he’d got the notion inter his haid that the rag with the blood on it might be to blame for his trouble. I’d run onter it when I went through his clothes while he was still unconscious, tryin’ to find out who he might be in case he cashed in, and when I asked him ‘bout it, he told me the story. He was plumb willin’ to let me have the rag for a handful of pesos.”

Huck Brannon was of a practical turn of mind.

“Why didn’t he, or his father or grandfather, go after the silver?” he asked.

“I gather they figgered there was a curse on it,” replied Gaylord. “I cal’late there was a lot more to the yarn than what my greaser remembered. Details sorta get lost with ignorant folks like that after
a gen’ration or two. He couldn’t even read the words wrote on the rag and I don’t figger he knowed there was sich a place as Colorado.

“If I hadn’t happened to know somethin’ ‘bout this section, I’d never been able to figger it out from the map. All he could say was that his grandpappy brought it from the mountains of the north. That nacherly meant northern New Mexico or Colorado—that’s ‘bout as far north as the Spaniards ever got lookin’ for gold and silver—and I figgered the rest. What you say, fellers, willin’ to give it a whirl with me?”

“Count me in,” Lank replied instantly. “I really b’lieve you got somethin’ here. What you think, Brannon?”

Huck laughed. “I’m afraid I haven’t much faith in the yarn,” he admitted, “but we haven’t anything particularly pressing on hand just now, and from what you say, the section is less than fifty miles off. So why not?”

Lank arose with alacrity. “We’ll get an outfit t’gether pronto,” he said. “Picks, shovels, blastin’ powder, grub. I’ll ‘tend to them. Huck, see if you can pick up a coupla burros—I seed some over to the Mexican quarter t’other day. Bring ‘long that gun you took off Coleman; I think I’ll try and pick up a shotgun—grouse and sich sorta busts up the monotony of bacon and beans.”

The following morning Cale Coleman, lying in an upper story bed beside the window, saw them pass the hospital, loaded burros wagging long ears with simulated docility, the tall figure of Huck Brannon striding in front.

The mine owner craned his neck, cursed viciously as a twinge shot through his leg, and glared murder after the passing forms. A moment later, however, a speculative gleam replaced the angry light in his eyes. He summoned an orderly and gave him profane instructions. A little later his drift foreman, Jeff Eades, clumped into the room.

Eades was big, almost as big as his boss, with a hard face, a tight mouth and uncertain eyes. He listened in silence to what Coleman had to say, nodding his head from time to time.

“Okay,” he said when Coleman had finished. “I’ll put Esteban on the trail. We’ll find out, and then we’ll even things up.”

Coleman sank back on his pillow after his foreman had departed, in his eyes a look of subtle satisfaction.

Kansas City was only a three-week-old memory to Huck Brannon in Esmeralda, on the day that Sue Doyle stepped off the train at the big woodshed station.

She strode purposefully down the street. She had been to Kansas City before and knew her way around. Her immediate destination was Ma Hennessey’s rooming house, where the boys had spent the night, before returning to the Bar X.

The house, a dingy, gray-boarded two-story affair she remembered, was located at the other end of the street. As she walked along, her father’s parting words buzzed through her brain.

“Yuh’re makin’ a big mistake chasin’ after him, Sue,” he had said. “Even if he is the son of my old friend.”

But she had been adamant.

There was one question Sue was glad her father hadn’t asked her, for she didn’t know the answer herself. And that question was what she would do if she did find Huck? She avoided it like the plague, but it returned continually to torment her. The iron clank of the wheels on the train that bore her here had flung the question at her, and the crunch of her boot in the dirt echoed it.

She still felt the shock of his lips meeting hers,
of his arms suddenly thrown around her, of the queer, half-surprised light in his eye, of the eager look on the face that stared after her. At least, she had thought it was eager then. Now in the face of Huck’s desertion, she wondered. At one moment, she was sure of it.
Sure.
Then a doubt would spring up in her mind. Over and over, endlessly. Certainty, doubt, then certainty again.

Again she asked herself why that sudden kiss had happened this time. She had seen Huck off on previous trips, many times, and the good-bye had been casual, friendly. But this time, without warning, emotion had swept over her like a stampeding herd, leaving her giddy and faint. Why? She could not say. All she knew was that when she saw Huck Brannon on the point of leaving, she hadn’t wanted him to go.

She had told her father that she wasn’t sure when he asked her if she had gone soft on that “young hellion.” But now she knew. Not only
soft,
but soft enough to go chasing after him, determined to find him if it meant staying on his trail for months.

It was true she had little to go on, so far as his feelings were concerned—only that look on his face which she was certain she had seen when she kissed him. That and the many hours they had spent together. Certain things which seemed inexplicable then, but on which her new emotions had shed new light. Once he had gazed at her with an odd, questioning look in his eye, then quickly turned when he saw she was watching him. And told her that he meant to settle down with a family
as soon as he had the money to buy a spread and stock it with cattle.

She had brought up the question of his being so footloose. Then she had pointed out that to raise a family he first needed a wife. She remembered his reply:

“Why, sure, Sue, that’s what I’ve been thinking. As a matter of fact, I reckon I’ve got one already picked out.”

A sharp pang had cut through her heart like a knife. But now she recalled it half hopefully—almost sure he had meant her. And she blamed herself for having been so blind then. Because he’d never spoken to her that way again.

The square sign, lettered in black and nailed beside the door read,
Rooming House.
Underneath these two words, in smaller characters:
M. Hennessey, Prop.

She had heard vague reports of Ma Hennessey, and had composed a picture of her out of scraps of talk on the boys’ returns from Kansas City. Why the boys continued to frequent this particular rooming house, she could never understand, for Ma Hennessey was reputed to have a roaring, slashing tongue and the disposition of a catamount. But year after year the Bar X kept going back.

She had also heard that Ma Hennessey was a giantess afraid of no man—and was physically capable of bouncing out any puncher for whatever reason. Indeed, one of the boys swore he had seen her pick up a puncher in her two big hands and
heave him through the nearest window as casually as she would bite into an apple.

In spite of all these warnings, Sue was hardly prepared for the figure that answered her knock.

Ma Hennessey stood about six feet four, with a frame that filled the doorway. Hulking arms, like an ape’s, hung down her sides. And attached to their ends were two huge paws with fingers of iron.

But what struck Sue most was Ma Hennessey’s face. Separated from the body, it would have been difficult to decide whether the face was a man’s or woman’s. In fact, it looked neither. It possessed a cold, sexless hardness that was repellently fascinating.

“Well—what do you want?” Like her face, Ma Hennessey’s voice was hard and expressionless.

“I wonder if you can help me?” asked Sue.

“Looking for a room?”

“No—I was looking for—”

“This is a rooming house, miss. If you ain’t looking for a room, you better go somewhere else.” Ma Hennessey started to close the door in Sue’s face.

“No—wait, please.” There was a note of appeal in her voice.

For a moment Ma hesitated, then she snapped: “What do you want?”

“Huck Brannon, of the Bar X Ranch, Stevens Gulch, Texas, stopped here about three weeks ago with the rest of the boys. Do you know what happened to him? He hasn’t returned to the ranch.”

“That drunken rapscallion—”

“He is not! I won’t let you talk like that about him,” Sue said very firmly.

Ma Hennessey gazed at Sue queerly for a moment and a glint came to her eye. She seemed to unbend a little.

“Keep your shirt on, lady. Are you his sister?”

She could feel her face heat. “No,” she said. “He rides for my father.”

“Oh! So you’re Sue Doyle.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Your drunken cowboy spent the whole livelong night singing and shouting your name at the top of his lungs.”

Sue’s heart leaped. A sudden fever ran through her veins.

“He isn’t my cowboy,” she protested helplessly.

“So the rancher’s daughter falls in love with her old man’s rider,” Ma mocked, “and comes running after him when he don’t come runnin’ home to the ranch.”

Anger coursed through Sue’s brain and she could hardly keep back her furious retort. Ma might know where Huck had gone, and if she did, Sue wanted to learn it. And something told her she’d find out nothing if she made Ma angry.

“It doesn’t matter why I came looking for Mr. Brannon,” she said. “All I asked is what you know about what happened to him.”

“Nothing!” snapped Ma Hennessey. “Nothing happened to your cowboy. He came in roaring drunk and singing and I told him to shut up or I’d throw him out. So he shut up and went to sleep.
The other boys left early, but your
Mr. Brannon
slept nearly to noon and then cleared out. I would have charged him for another day if he stayed one minute later:”

“But where did he go?”

“How do I know?” snapped the woman. “I ain’t his Ma. The last I seen of him, he was cutting across to them railroad yards.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hennessey. Thank you very much. You’ve been very kind,” Sue lied.

Ma Hennessey glared at Sue, shouted an angry, “Bah” at her and slammed the door. But Sue was beyond caring about Ma’s rugged manners.

All she could think of was that Huck Brannon had sung and shouted her name. She was no longer in doubt. But she was certain now that something had happened to Huck.

Suddenly her heart contracted. Suppose he was hurt—hurt badly and needed her care? She brushed the thought from her mind, as she turned rapidly back to the railroad station.

She was oblivious of the hot sun beating down on her, of the men flirting with her from street-sides—of everything—until she reached the station shed.

The ticket agent, although interested and sympathetic, was unable to give Sue any helpful information—except that he remembered selling a batch of tickets for Stevens Gulch to a flock of cowboys some weeks back. He was certain no one answering the description of Huck Brannon bought a ticket later that same day for Stevens Gulch. As a
matter of fact, he assured Sue, no one had bought any tickets for the Gulch since that one morning.

Sue groaned inwarly. “You’re sure you don’t remember him?” she asked for the tenth time.

“I’m sartain, ma’am,” the agent replied kindly. It was evident that the young lady was deeply distressed. “Say, why don’t you try the yardmaster. Mebbe he seen him.”

Sue, following his directions, walked down the railroad yard, threaded her way past a line of empties, crossed ties and tracks and finally located the yardmaster at a caboose. He was directing the loading of railroad ties and piles for construction work somewhere on the line. He turned when one of his men pointed to Sue.

He was a squat, bulky, bald-headed man and stood mopping his sweat-beaded forehead with a large gray kerchief as Sue repeated her questions. When she began describing Huck, he gave a start, brought his hand down from his head and peered hard at her.

“If that’s the man I think it is,” he snapped, “
we’re
lookin’ for him, too.”

Sue’s heart leaped. “You recognize that description?”

“Shore,” the yardmaster snorted. “That’s the hellion who put Fred Rowles in the hospital for two weeks with a busted head. We been hankerin’ to lay our hands on that hobo.”

“What do you mean?” Sue cried.

The yardmaster told Sue about the fracas in the railroad yards when two hobos, trying to get a free
ride, were discovered by Fred Rowles who tried to throw them off the train and was badly beaten up by one of them.

“That sounds like Huck.”

“Lucky for him,” the yardmaster concluded, “that Rowles came outa this alive, or there would’ve been a murder charge on this hombre’s head.”

“But what happened to him? Did you catch him?”

“No, dashblame it,” the man growled. “Him an’ the other feller gave us the slip.”

“Where could they have gone?”

“I wish you could tell me, ma’am,” he said grimly. “The boys would kinda like to get their hands on both of them. But they run out on us. Mebbe they hopped the train goin’ east—and mebbe they hopped the train headed west. Think most likely it was east—that freight left quicker than the westbound.”

“Oh.”

Sue thanked him and headed back to the station. The first joy at finding some trace of Huck had already gone, and disappointment was taking its place. There was no doubt in her mind that it
was
Huck who had been involved in the fighting.

The dispatch and ease with which he had handled the railroad detective fitted the Huck who had given a hiding to a town bully who had boldly accosted her on the street in Stevens Gulch several months before.

And the important thing was that Huck was all right—even if she hadn’t found him.

According to the yardman, he was headed east.
Probably, Sue thought, because he feared he had murdered the “bull” and was running away. Running away didn’t sound like Huck. But she was forced to admit that it provided the first good reason she had found for Huck’s failure to return to the Bar X.

As Sue reconstructed it, Huck, out of funds and too proud to wire for money, had decided to hop a freight and ride back to Stevens Gulch—she knew how any cowboy detests walking. Apparently he had picked up a companion and together they tried to find an open car, when they were surprised by the railroad “bull.” Huck had beaten the man in a fist fight; but then another “bull” came along and before Huck had time to discover how badly hurt the first man was, he had to flee. Then, fearing he had killed the man, and knowing the obvious consequences, he had impulsively decided to get away.

Sue Doyle accepted this gratefully, for it left her her pride. Huck hadn’t deserted her. Her kiss hadn’t driven him away. The telegram she sent her father when she got to the station was brief and business-like:

DEAR DAD: ON HIS TRAIL. TAKING THE TRAIN EAST. LOVE. SUE.