The Bandit of Hell's Bend, Edgar Rice Burroughs [good novels to read txt] 📗

A HALF-dozen men sprawled comfortably in back-tilted chairs against the side of the Bar Y bunkhouse at the home ranch. They were young men, lithe of limb, tanned of face and clear of eye. Their skins shone from recent ablutions and their slicked hair was still damp, for they had but just come from the evening meal, and meals at the home ranch required a toilet.

One of them was singing.

“In the shade of a tree we two sat, him an’ me, Where the Haegler Hills slope to the Raft While our ponies browsed ‘round, reins a-draggin’ the ground; Then he looks at me funny an’ laft.”

“Most anyone would,” interrupted a listener.

“Shut up,” admonished another, “I ain’t only heered this three hundred an’ sixty-five times in the las’ year. Do you think I want to miss anything?”

Unabashed, the sweet singer continued.

“‘Do you see thet there town?’ he inquires, pintin’ down To some shacks sprawlin’ ‘round in the heat. I opined thet I did an’ he shifted his quid After drowndin’ a tumble-bug neat. Then he looks at me square. ‘There’s a guy waitin’ there Thet the sheep-men have hired to git me. Are you game to come down to thet jerk-water town Jest to see what in Hell you will see?’”

One of the group rose and stretched, yawning. He was a tall, dark man. Perhaps in his expression there was something a bit sinister. He seldom smiled and, when not in liquor, rarely spoke.

He was foreman-had been foreman for over a year, and, except for a couple of sprees, during which he had playfully and harmlessly shot up the adjoining town, he had been a good foreman, for he was a thorough horseman, knew the range, understood cattle, was a hard worker and knew how to get work out of others.

It had been six months since he had been drunk, though he had taken a drink now and then if one of the boys chanced to bring a flask back from town. His abstinence might have been accounted for by the fact that Elias Henders, his boss, had threatened to break him the next time he fell from grace.

“You see, Bull,” the old man had said, “we’re the biggest outfit in this part of the country an’ it don’t look good to see the foreman of the Bar Y shootin’ up the town like some kid tenderfoot that’s been slapped in the face with a bar-rag. You gotta quit it, Bull; I ain’t a-goin’ to tell you again.”

And Bull knew the old man wouldn’t tell him again, so he had stayed good for six long months. Perhaps it was not entirely a desire to cling to the foreman’s job that kept him in the straight and narrow path. Perhaps Diana Henders’ opinion had had more weight with him than that of her father.

“I’m ashamed of you, Bull,” she had said, and she refused to ride with him for more than a week. That had been bad enough, but as if to make it worse she had ridden several times with a new hand who had drifted in from the north a short time before and been taken on by Bull to fill a vacancy.

At first Bull had not liked the new man. “He’s too damned pretty to be a puncher,” one of the older hands had remarked, and it is possible that the newcomer’s rather extreme good looks had antagonized them all a little at first, but he had proven a good man and so the others had come to accept Hal Colby in spite of his wealth of waving black hair, his perfect profile, gleaming teeth and laughing eyes.

“So I told him I’d go, fer I liked thet there bo, And I’d see thet the shootin! was fair; But says he: ‘It is just to see who starts it fust Thet I wants anyone to be there.’” “I’m going to turn in,” remarked Bull.

Hal Colby rose. “Same here,” he said, and followed the foreman into the bunkhouse. A moment later he turned where he stood beside his bunk and looked at Bull who was sitting on the edge of his, removing his spurs. The handsome lips were curved in a pleasant smile. “Lookee here, Bull!” he whispered, and as the other turned toward him he reached a hand beneath the bag of clothes that constituted his pillow and drew forth a pint flask. “Wet your whistle?” he inquired.

“Don’t care if I do,” replied the foreman, crossing the room to Colby’s bunk.

Through the open window floated the drawling notes of Texas Pete’s perennial rhapsody.

“When the jedge says: ‘Who drew his gun fust, him or you?’ Then I wants a straight guy on my side, Fer thet poor puddin’ head, why, he’s already dead With a forty-five hole in his hide.”

“Here’s lookin’ at you!” said Bull.

“Drink hearty,” replied Colby.

“‘Taint so bad at that,” remarked the foreman, wiping his lips on the cuff of his shirt and handing the flask back to the other.

“Not so worse for rot-gut,” agreed Colby. “Have another!”

The foreman shook his head.

“‘T won’t hurt you any,” Colby assured him. “It’s pretty good stuff.”

Sang Texas Pete:

“And thet wasn’t jest jaw-when it come to a draw This here guy was like lightnin’ turned loose. Then we rolls us a smoke an’ not neither one spoke ‘Til he said: ‘Climb aboard your cayuse.’ Then we reined down the hill each a-puffin’ his pill To the town ‘neath its shimmer o’ heat An’ heads up to the shack that’s a-leanin’ its back ‘Gainst the side o’ The Cowboys’ Retreat.”

Bull took another drink-a longer one this time, and, rolling a cigarette, sat down on the edge of Colby’s bunk and commenced to talk-whiskey always broke the bonds of his taciturnity. His voice was low and not unpleasant.

He spoke of the day’s work and the plans for tomorrow and Hal Colby encouraged him. Perhaps he liked him; perhaps, like others, he felt that it paid to be on friendly terms with the foreman.

While from outside:

“It is Slewfoot’s Good Luck where they hand you out chuck Thet is mostly sow-belly an’ beans. Says he: ‘Bub, let’s us feed-I’m a-feelin’ the need O’ more substance than air in my jeans.’ So of Slewfoot was there, all red freckles an’ hair, An’ we lined our insides with his grub. Says Bill, then: ‘Show your gait-let’s be pullin’ our freight, Fer I’m rarin’ to go,’ says he, ‘Bub.’”

Inside the bunkhouse Bull rose to his feet. “That’s damn good stuff, Hal,” he said. The two had emptied the flask.

“Wait a minute,” said the other, “I got another flask,” and reached again beneath his bag.

“No,” demurred the foreman, “I guess I got enough.”

“Oh, hell, you ain’t had none yet,” insisted Colby.

The song of Texas Pete suffered many interruptions due to various arguments in which he felt compelled to take sides, but whenever there was a lull in the conversation he resumed his efforts to which no one paid any attention further than as they elicited an occasional word of banter.

The sweet singer never stopped except at the end of a stanza, and no matter how long the interruption, even though days might elapse, he always began again with the succeeding stanza, without the slightest hesitation or repetition. And so now, as Bull and Colby drank, he sang on.

“‘Now we’ll sashay next door to thet hard-Ticker store Where his nibs is most likely to be An’ then you goes in first an’ starts drowdin’ your thirst; But a-keepin’ your eyes peeled fer me.’”

Bull, the foreman, rose to his feet. He stood as steady as a rock, but Colby saw that he was drunk. After six months’ of almost total abstinence he had just consumed considerably more than a pint of cheap and fiery whiskey in less than a half hour.

“Goin’ to bed?” asked Colby.

“Bed, hell,” replied the other. “I’m goin’ to town-it’s my night to howl. Comin’?”

“No,” said Colby. “I think I’ll turn in. Have a good time.”

“I sure will.” The foreman walked to his bunk and strapped his guns about his hips, resumed the single spur he had removed, tied a fresh black silk handkerchief about his neck, clapped his sombrero over his shock of straight black hair and strode out of the bunkhouse.

“‘Fer I wants you to see thet it’s him draws on me So the jedge he cain’t make me the goat.’ So I heads fer that dump an’ a queer little lump Starts a-wrigglin’ aroun’ in my throat.”

“Say, where in hell’s Bull goin’ this time o’ night?” Pete interrupted himself.

“He’s headin’ fer the horse c’rel,” stated another.

“Acts like he was full,” said a third. “Didje hear him hummin’ a tune as he went out? That’s always a sign with him. The stuff sort o’ addles up his brains, like Pete’s always is, an’ makes him sing.”

“Fer I wants you to know thet I likes thet there bo An’ I’d seen more than one good one kilt, Fer you cain’t never tell, leastways this side o’ Hell, When there’s shootin’ whose blood will be spilt.”

“There he goes now,” said one of the men as the figure of a rider shown dimly in the starlight loped easily away toward the south, “an’ he’s goin’ toward town.”

“I wonder,” said Texas Pete, “if he knows the old man is in town tonight.”

“Jest inside o’ the door with one foot on the floor An’ the other hist up on the rail Stands a big, raw-boned guy with the orn’riest eye Thet I ever seen outen a jail.”

“By gollies, I’m goin’ after Bull. I doan b’lieve he-all knows thet the of man’s in town,” and leaping to his feet he walked off toward the horse corral, still singing:

“An’ beside him a girl, thet sure looked like a pearl Thet the Bible guy cast before swine, Was a-pleadin’ with him, her eyes teary an’ dim, As I high-sign the barkeep fer mine.”

He caught up one of the loose horses in the corral, rammed a great, silver-mounted spade bit between its jaws, threw a heavy, carved saddle upon the animal’s back, stepped one foot into a trailing, tapaderaed stirrup and was off in a swirl of dust. Texas Pete never rode other than in a swirl of dust, unless it happened to be raining, then he rode in a shower of mud.

His speed tonight was, therefore, not necessarily an indication of haste. He would have ridden at the same pace to either a funeral or a wedding, or home from either.

But any who knew Texas Pete could have guessed that he was in considerate haste, for he rode without his woolly, sheepskin chaps–one of the prides of his existence. If he had been in too much of a hurry to don them he must have been in a great hurry, indeed.

Texas Pete might be without a job, with not more than two-bits between himself and starvation, but he was never without a fine pair of sheepskin chaps, a silver-encrusted bit, a heavy bridle garnished with the same precious metal, an ornate saddle of hand carved leather and silver conchas, a Stetson, two good six-guns with their belt and