Overland Red Part 10

Walter Stone cinched up the saddle and mounted his pony. The boy's eyes shone as he gazed at the strong, soldierly figure. Ah, to look like that, and ride a horse like that!

Boyar, the black pony, clattered up and stopped. "h.e.l.lo, folks!" said Louise, purposely including the boy in her greeting.

Collie flushed happily. Then a bitterness grew in his heart as he thought of his friend Overland, hunted from town to town by the same law that protected these people--an unjust law that they observed and fostered.

"Well?" said Stone.

Collie's gaze was on the ground. "I don' know," he muttered. "I don'

know."

"Well, good luck to you!" And the ponies swung into that philosophical lope of the Western horse who knows his journey's length.

The figures of the riders grew smaller. Still the boy stood in the road, watching them. Undecided, he gazed. Then came an answer to his stubborn self-questioning. Louise glanced back--glanced back for an instant in mute sympathy with his loneliness.

Slowly the boy turned and entered the jail. He folded his coat over his arm, stepped outside, and closed the door.

Before him stretched the hot gray level of El Camino Real, the road to the beyond. From it branched a narrower road, reaching up into the southern hills,--on, up to the mysterious Moonstone Canon with its singing stream and its gracious shade. Somewhere beyond, higher, and in the shadowy fastness of the great ranges lay the Moonstone Ranch ... her home.

"I guess, steppin' up smart, I'll be there just about in time for supper," said the boy. And whistling cheerily, he set his feet toward the south and the Moonstone Trail.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TEST

After a week of weeding in the vegetable garden, Collie was put to work repairing fence. There were many miles of it, inclosing some twenty thousand acres of grazing-land, and the cross-fencing of the oat, alfalfa, fruit, and vegetable acreage. The fence was forever in need of repair. The heavy winter rains, torrential in the mountains, often washed away entire hillsides, leaving a dozen or so staggering posts held together by the wires, tangled and sagging. Cattle frequently pulled loosened posts from the earth by kneeling under the wire and working through, oblivious to the barbs. Again, "stock gone a little loco" would often charge straight through the rigid and ripping wire barriers as though their strands were of thread. Posts would split in the sun, and staples would drop out, leaving sagging s.p.a.ces which cattle never failed to find and take advantage of. Trees uprooted by the rain and wind would often fall across the fence.

Altogether, the maintaining of a serviceable fence-line on a well-ordered ranch necessitates eternal vigilance.

The Moonstone Rancho was well ordered under the direct supervision of Walter Stone's foreman, "Brand" Williams. Williams was a Wyoming cowman of the old school; taciturn, lean, sinewy.

Some ten years before, Williams, seeking employment, had ridden over the range with Stone. Returning, the cowman remarked disconsolately, "I like your stock, and I'll tie to you. But, say, it's only playin' at ranchin'

on twenty thousand fenced. I was raised in Wyoming."

"All right," Stone had replied. "Play hard and we'll get along first-rate."

Every inch of Brand Williams's six feet was steeped in the astringent of experience. He played hard and prospered, as did his employer.

Collie stood awaiting the foreman's instructions.

"Ever mend fence?" asked Williams.

"Nope."

"Good. Then you can learn right. Go rope a cayuse--get some staples and that leetle axe in my office, and go to it. There's plenty fence."

The "Go rope a cayuse" momentarily staggered the boy, but he went silently to the corral, secured a riata, and by puzzling the playful ponies by his amateur tactics he finally entangled "Baldy," a white-faced cow-pony of peaceful mien but uncertain disposition.

Williams, watching the performance, lazily rolled a straw-paper cigarette.

Snubbed to the post, bridled and saddled awkwardly, Baldy gave no outward sign of his malignant inward intent of getting rid of the lad the minute he mounted.

Williams slowly drew a match across his sleeve from elbow to wrist, ending with a flame that was extremely convenient to his cigarette. He wasted no effort at anything. He was a man who never met a yawn halfway, but only gave in to it when actually obliged to. Collie climbed into the saddle and started for the corral gate. He arrived there far ahead of the horse. He got to his feet and brushed his knees. The pony was humping round the corral with marvelous agility for so old a horse.

"He never did like a left-handed man," said Williams gravely. "Next time get on him from the _other_ side, and see if he don't behave. Hold on; don't be in a hurry. Let him throw a few more jumps, then he'll quit for to-day most likely. And say, son, if he does take to buckin' with you again, don't choke that saddle to death hangin' on to the horn. Set up straight, lean a little back, and clinch your knees. You'll get piled, anyhow, but you might as well start right."

The boy approached the horse again, secured the dangling reins, and again mounted. Baldy was as demure as a spinster in church. He actually looked pious.

Collie urged the pony toward the gate. Baldy reared.

"A spade bit ain't made to pull teeth with, although you can," said Williams. "Baldy's old, but his teeth are all good yet. Just easy now.

Ride in your saddle, not on your reins. That's it! And say, kid, I would 'a' got them staples and that axe before crawlin' the hoss, eh?"

Collie flushed. He dismounted and walked to the foreman's office. When he returned to the corral, the horse was gone. Williams still sat on the corral bars smoking and gazing earnestly at nothing.

Round the corner of the stable Collie saw the pony, his nose peacefully submerged in the water-trough, but his eye wide and vigilant. The boy ran toward him. Baldy snorted and, wheeling, ran back into the corral, circled it with an expression which said plainly, "Let us play a little game of tag, in which, my young friend, you shall always be 'It.'"

Again Collie tried to rope the pony.

"Want any help?" asked Williams, as he slid from the corral bars to the ground.

"Nope." And Collie disentangled his legs from an amazing contortion of the riata and tried to whirl the loop as he had seen the cowmen whirl it.

"Hold on, son!" said Williams. "You mean right, but don't go to rope him with the saddle on. If you looped that horn, he, like as not, would yank you clean to Calabasas before you got your feet out of that mess of rope you're standin' in. Anyway, you ain't goin' to Calabasas; you're due up the other way."

Collie was learning things rapidly, and, better still, he was learning in a way that would cause him to remember.

Williams spoke sharply to the pony. Baldy stopped and eyed the foreman with vapid inquisitiveness. "Now, son, I got three things to tell you,"

and the foreman gathered up the reins. "First--keep on keepin' your mouth shut and tendin' to business. It pays. Second--always drop your reins over a hoss's head when you get off, whether he's trained that way or not. And last--always figure a hoss thinks he knows more than you do.

Sometimes he does. Sometimes he don't. Then he won't fool you so frequent, for you'll be watchin' him. I wouldn't 'a' said that much, only you're a tenderfoot from the East, I hear. If you was a tenderfoot from the West, you would 'a' had to take your own medicine."

Collie's shoulder was lame from his fall and was becoming stiff, but he grinned cheerfully, and said nothing, which pleased Williams.

The foreman leveled his slow, keen eyes at him for a minute. "You'll find a spring under the live-oaks by the third cross-fence north. Reckon you'll get there about noon. Keep your eye peeled for fire. I thought I seen somebody up there as I come across from the corral early this mornin'. We come close to burnin' out here once, account of a hobo's fire. Understand, if you ketch anybody cantelopin' around _a-foot_, you just ride 'em off the range p.r.o.nto. That's all."

As Collie rode away through the morning suns.h.i.+ne, Williams loafed across the corral, roped and saddled a white-eyed pinto, and, spurring up a narrow canon west of the ranch buildings, disappeared round a turn of the shady trail. As the foreman rode, he alternately talked to the pony and himself.

"Tramp, eh?" he said, addressing the pony. "What do you say, Sarko?

Nothin', eh? Same as me.... Overland Red's kid pal, eh? Huh! I knowed Jack Summers, Red Jack Summers, down in Sonora in '83. Mexico was some open country then. Jack was a white pardner, too. Went to the bad, account of that Chola girl that he was courtin' goin' wrong.... Funny how the boss come to pick up that kid. Thinks there's somethin' in him.

O' course they is. But what? Eh, Sarko, what? You say nothin', same as me.... Here, you! That's a lizard, you fool hoss. Never seen one before, so you're try in' to catch it by jumpin' through your bridle after it, eh? Never seen one before, oh, no! Don't like that, eh? Well, you quit, and I will. Exactly. It's me, and my ole Spanish spurs. I'm listenin'.... Nothin' to say?... Uhuh! I reckon little Louise had somethin' to do with gettin' the kid the job. Well, if _she_ likes him, I got to. Guess I'd love a snake if she said to. Yes, I'm listenin' to myself ..." And the taciturn foreman's hard, weathered face wrinkled in a smile. "I'm listenin' ... None of the boys know Red's camped up by the spring. I do. Red used to be a d.a.m.n white Injun in the old days. I'll give the kid a chance to put him wise for old times. And I'll find out if the kid means business or not ... which is some help to know how to handle him later."

Williams picketed his pony in the meadow above the third cross-fence.

Loafing down the slope toward the spring, he noticed the faint smoke of a fire. Farther down the line fence, he could see Collie in the distance, riding slowly toward the three live-oaks. The foreman found a convenient seat on a ledge, rolled another of his eternal cigarettes, and watched the boy approach from below.

Collie had already dismounted three times that morning; twice to mend fence, and once more involuntarily. He determined, with a mighty vow to the bow-legged G.o.d of all horseflesh, to learn to stay on a broncho or die learning.