Bunch Grass Part 39

"Never," said Ajax.

"The International! You ought to see him go through a scrum with half a dozen fellows on his back."

"A footballer," said my brother thoughtfully.

"One of the best. Naturally he puts on a little side. He has money, and I told him he could double it in a year or two."

"_You_ told him that? Have you doubled your capital, Jim?"

"Well--er--no. But I'm rather a Juggins. Thorpe is as 'cute as they make 'em."

"A man of mind and muscle," murmured Ajax.

"And my greatest pal," added the enthusiastic James.

Both Ajax and I took a profound dislike to Tomlinson-Thorpe the moment we set eyes upon him. He presented what is worst in the Briton abroad --a complacent aggressiveness tempered by a condescension which nothing but a bullet can lay low. But undeniably he was specially designed to go through scrums or Kitchen Lancers, the admired of all beholders.

"A schoolgirl's darling," growled the injudicious Ajax.

"Nothing of the sort," retorted Jim. "I mean," he added, "that Thorpe appeals to--er--mature women. I know for a fact that the wife of a baronet is head over ears in love with him."

"I hope he didn't tell you so," said Ajax.

"I should think not. First and last he's a gentleman."

During the next few weeks we had abundant opportunity of testing this a.s.sertion, for Thorpe was kind enough to consume much of our time and provisions. He bought himself a smart pony, and, very accurately turned out, would canter down to the ranch-house three or four times a week.

"There's nothing to learn up there," he explained.

It is fair to add that he helped us on the range, and exhibited apt.i.tude in the handling of cattle and horses.

Meanwhile, his advent had made an enormous difference to the Mistertons. Jim fetched a hired girl from town, and Angela was relieved, during a scorching summer, of a housewife's most intolerable duties. Also, when Jim was hard at work clearing his brush-hills, wrestling with refractory roots of chaparral and manzanita, his greatest pal was kind enough to undertake the entertainment of Angela.

The pair rode about together, and Jim told us that it did his heart good to see how the little woman had brightened up. Thorpe, for his part, admitted with becoming modesty that he was most awfully sorry for his friend's wife.

"My heart bleeds for her," he told Ajax.

"The bounder with the bleeding heart," said Ajax to me that same evening.

"We don't know that he is a bounder," I objected.

"He bounds, and he is as unconscious of his bounds as a kangaroo. As for Jim, he is the apex of the world's pyramid of fools."

"Angela can take care of herself."

"Can she?"

At our fall round-up, Ajax's question was answered. Conspicuously Angela attached herself to Tomlinson-Thorpe, regardless of the gaping eyes and mouths of neighbours, Puritan to the backbone in everything except the stealing of unbranded calves.

Most unfortunately, Thorpe--I think more kindly of him when I don't give him his double-barrelled name--was daily exhibiting those qualities which had carried him through scrums. In a bar-room brawl with two pot-valiant cowboys, he had come out supremely "on top." They had jeered at his riding-breeches, at his bob-tailed cob, at his English accent, and Thorpe had suffered them gladly. Then, quite suddenly, Angela's name fell upon a silence. As suddenly Thorpe seized both men, one in each hand, and brought their heads together with a crash which the barkeeper described afterwards as "splendiferous."

With an amazing display of physical violence, he flung them apart, each falling in a crumpled heap of profanity upon the floor.

"Don't fool with that feller," was the verdict in the foothills.

The affair would have been of no consequence had not Jim been present when the row took place. Jim might have played the _beau role_ had he carried a pistol. Admittedly he would have been licked in a fight with either cowboy singly. Thorpe, so I was told, entreated Jim to keep the story from his wife. Angela had it, with slight exaggeration, from the hero-wors.h.i.+pper's lips within an hour. "It brought her heart into her mouth, I tell you," the simple fellow told Ajax, and later Ajax murmured to me: "I wonder whether it struck Angela that Jim would have tackled both of 'em, if Thorpe had not interfered."

A dozen trifles hardly worth recording emphasised the difference between Jim and his greatest pal. Thorpe mastered the colt which had thrown Jim; Thorpe, when fresh meat was wanted, killed handsomely the fat buck missed by the over-eager James; Thorpe made a pretty profit over a hog deal at the psychological moment when poor Misterton allowed three Poland-China sows to escape through an improperly constructed fence!

Thorpe was a man. Did Angela think of Jim as a mouse?

After the fall round-up, Ajax and I spent a month fis.h.i.+ng in British Columbia. When we got back to the ranch, one of the first to greet us happened to be Jim Misterton. He looked so pale and thin that I thought for a moment his old enemy had attacked him. However, he a.s.sured us that he was perfectly well, but unable to sleep properly.

We asked him to stay to supper, rather as a matter of form, for he had always refused our invitations unless Angela were included. To our surprise he accepted.

"He'll uncork himself after the second pipe," said the sage Ajax.

He did. And, oddly enough, our cousin's photograph in Court dress moved him as it had moved his wife.

"Boys," he said, "I'm the biggest fool that ever came to this burnt-up wilderness; and I'm a knave because I persuaded the sweetest girl in England to join me."

Oil may calm troubled waters, but it feeds flames. We said something, nothing worth repeating; then Jim stood up, trembling with agitation, waving his briar pipe (which had gone out), cursing himself and the brazen skies, and the sterile soil, and the jack-rabbits, and barb- wire, and his spring, now a pool of stagnant mud. When he had finished--and how his tongue must have ached!--Ajax said quietly--

"Were you any good as a clerk?"

Jim nodded sullenly.

"I knew my business, of course. Heavens! what a soft job that was compared to what I've tackled out here!"

"It might be possible to find another such job in California. You never thought of that?"

Jim's face brightened.

"Never," he declared. "Fresh air and exercise was the prescription-- and I'm fed up on both. If I could get a billet as clerk in San Lorenzo, if----" He clenched his fists, unable to articulate another word, then, very slowly, he went on: "Boys, I'd give my life to get Angela away from Paradise."

"We'll help you," said Ajax.

"Mrs. Misterton would be much happier in San Lorenzo," I added.

Jim flushed scarlet.

"Angela married the wrong man," he said deliberately.

Ajax interrupted.

"Jim, fill your pipe!"

He held out his pouch, which Jim waved aside.