The Plow-Woman Part 46

Sudden fury seized Dallas. Her lips moved.

A few rods away was another as furious, one whose eyes were as red as the interpreter's. Simon was pawing with alternate hoofs, and tossing dirt and gra.s.s into the air. With each stroke he gave a sullen rumble.

"Now," proceeded Matthews, speaking from one side of his mouth, "you and me wouldn't jibe." He giggled with a feeble attempt at mirth. "But your sister, she's a nice little gal. And she'd like me. I'm----"

He got no further, nor was Dallas given time to reply. A resonant blare rang through the lanes of corn. Then came the sound of trotting. They turned, to behold Simon advancing. He had jerked up the picket-pin!

Matthews saw his peril. With a curse of alarm he dropped coat and hat and made for the coulee.

But to no use. The sight of that fleeing red maddened the bull. His feet stretched to a gallop, his broad horns lowered until his muzzle touched the gra.s.s, his tail sprang out to the level of his curly back. With the picket-rope hissing across his flanks, and with no eye for his mistress, he bore down upon the hapless Matthews.

"Shoot him! Shoot----" screamed Matthews. The bull was at his heels.

With quick thought, he side-stepped.

It gave him a brief respite. But, since Simon went on for a s.p.a.ce and then wheeled, it also cut him off from the coulee. He tore toward the shack, now. After him, tether whipping among the stalks, charged the bull. Again the interpreter side-stepped, just in time, and with the dexterity of a matador. But Simon was more alert, and came about like a cow-pony, emitting terrible bellows. Matthews fled toward Dallas. His face was a sickly green; his hair was loosened and waved backward in the sun.

"Simon!" cried Dallas, as the two went by.

Matthews was winded, and when the bull's hot breath fanned his back for the third time, he resorted to strategy. Once more stepping aside, and escaping the sharp horns by less than a foot, he followed, and, in desperation, seized Simon by the tail.

And now the bull's anger was suddenly changed to fear; his desire to horn that scarlet thing became a desire to get rid of it. With a bawl of terror he darted this way and that, trying to shake himself free, and swinging Matthews clear of the ground. This method failed. At once he adopted new tactics. Bellowing, he raced away through the corn, dragging the interpreter astride of the stalks, plowing up the earth with him, rolling him feet-first or sidelong down the rows. But like grim death, and with raucous oaths, Matthews hung on.

Out of the corn to the coulee road, they went--when Simon saw the grove at the landing. Among those trees many a pestering buffalo-fly had been outwitted; there, where grapevines tangled, many a mosquito had been rubbed away. Quick as a flash, Simon made for the cut, with Matthews coming breathlessly after.

The interpreter thanked his stars for the bull's manoeuvre. The grove would give him shelter; he could dodge behind a friendly trunk, or s.h.i.+n one to safety. He----

Simon had stopped to indulge in more whiplash waltzing, and the arm-weary Matthews could scarcely keep his hold. "_Ma-a-aw! Ma-a-aw!_"

roared the bull. Then, discouraged, he shot forward again.

But now fright consumed him, and he lost thought of scratching free of his tormentor. His red eyes were popping from his curly face. His mouth was wide. His tongue lolled. With great jumps, he sped straight through the grove.

It was all too swift for calculation. Matthews was conscious only of a great wind, of an invisible power that bound him to that bull's tail, of a dull roar in the ears, a blur in the eyes----

Simon leaped the hedge of fruit-hung grapevines, poised for a second on the brink of the river's caving bank--his feet together, his neck stretched. Then, the red of him disappeared. And, after it, the more vivid tuft at the end of his tail.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A CHANGE IN PLAN

It was Old Michael who fished the interpreter from his unwelcome bath.

Choking with rage and spewing muddy water, Matthews was hauled into the stern of a pirogue. There, while the pilot rowed slowly to the Brannon sh.o.r.e, he stretched his sorry, bedrabbled figure--a figure in striking contrast to that of an hour before. His handkerchief hung upon one ear, his red s.h.i.+rt clung, his buckskin trousers, dark and slick from their sousing, bellied with water let in at the band; his bright-topped boots spurted like pump-nozzles, his pale hair straggled and dripped into his eyes.

When the boat touched at the steamer-side, he raised himself to look back. Simon was leisurely ascending the cut, and reaching to left and right for tender wisps of vine. Matthews gave his hard laugh. "I'll make meat of _you_," he promised savagely. Then he turned to Michael.

The Irishman was leaning back, steadying his craft against the bank with one hand, holding his stub pipe out in the other. His blowzy face was blowzier than ever. Down it, from his closed lids, ran the teardrops, chasing one another into the black-notched cavern of his mouth.

Here was a culprit handy to the moment's anger. Matthews arose in his squas.h.i.+ng boots. "You lop-eared son-of-a-gun, who you laughin' at?" he demanded.

The cavern widened till the face was split in two. "W-w-w-_ah_!" gasped the pilot.

"Maybe you think it was funny," said the interpreter, with suave heat.

Cunning deviltry distorted his features. And, stepping forward in the boat, he kicked Michael on a bunion.

Pain sobered the pilot. With a roar of "Howley smoke!" he swung his paddle aloft.

The interpreter was too quick for him. Like a frightened muskrat, he sought the water, floundered to a solid footing, and waded out. "You _will_ monkey with a buzz-saw!" he taunted. "_Jus' wait._"

Clinging to his injured foot, Old Michael rocked himself and cursed. But not for long. He was soon rambling toward the barracks. "For," he argued, "there's more 'n wan way t' kill a cat."

In a frontier post, news flies with the dust in the air. Soon the story of Matthews and the bull had spread to every soul at Brannon. The Line chatted it from gallery to gallery. Clothes-Pin Row digested it in hilarious groups. At barracks, it set the men to swapping yarns. "I knowed a feller onct that was goin' past a bull-pen," declared one trooper, "and he had a pail of cherries, and I'll be darned if----"

"But, say! Down home, one time," put in a second, "there was a vaquero with a red sash that was stoopin' to fix a flank girth, and----" "Why, that ain't a two-spot to what happened in Kansas a year ago this summer.

The purtiest gal I ever seen--you know them Kansas gals can be purty--she had a wig that'd keep your hands warm in January. Well----"

When, however, the surgeon recounted the story at the bachelors' noon mess, mirth over it was noticeably lacking. To the little circle of officers there was nothing comical in the fact that a man from the post had molested the girls so recently orphaned. And all save Fraser vowed stormily that Matthews would be called to account. The young lieutenant said nothing.

Before the meal ended, the interpreter came in. He had changed his clothes and restored his hair to its pristine smoothness. He gave the group his usual bob and smile.

Cold stares answered him--from all but one, who fairly bounded from his chair. It was Fraser, face red, shoulders working under the blue of his uniform. He planted himself before Matthews.

"You d.a.m.ned blackguard!" he gasped.

The other looked highly amused. "What's got into _your_ craw, sonny?" he inquired.

"You d.a.m.ned blackguard!" repeated Fraser. And struck out.

An amazed and delighted mess room looked on. For Fraser, the tender-hearted, Fraser, the pink-cheeked "mamma's darling," was battering the interpreter hammer and tongs!

From the doorway the captain's voice interrupted the battle, and the two men were pulled apart. Matthews fell to wiping at his stained lips, which had magically puffed to proportions suggesting those of the colonel's black cook. While the lieutenant was panting, and struggling wildly to get free.

Oliver thrust the latter behind him and addressed the interpreter. "I'm not stopping this boy because I don't think you need a sound thras.h.i.+ng," he said. "I'd like to see you walloped within an inch of your life. But I can't have this kind of thing going on."

"I wasn't goin' to tech them gals," lisped Matthews. "I ain't no city tough."

"We shan't need _your_ services at Brannon any longer. You light out."

After that, mess went merrily on. "Didn't know you had it in you, Fraser," marvelled one officer. "By crackey!" added a second. "How you _can_ slug!" The surgeon sighed. "No one has ever understood Robert,"

said he, "but women, critters, and kids."

And now Matthews' blood was up, and under his sloping forehead the grey-matter was bubbling and boiling like the soup in the sutler's pot.

He hurled out terrible oaths--against the shack, against Captain Oliver, against Fraser, against the old pilot. Dallas Lancaster had made a cheap spectacle of him; the commanding officer had ordered him to leave Brannon; the "unlicked calf" of a lieutenant had whipped him out of hand; and the man most ready to guzzle his liquor had gone through the barracks a-blabbing.

He hurried to his room to pack his belongings. "I'll fix 'em, I'll fix 'em," he raged. "I'll git even with the hull crowd."

He halted at a window and looked across the Missouri at the little shack. "When the reds go to the reservation, that'll do for _you_," he said. "But--how can I soak them d.a.m.ned shoulder-straps?"