The Flying U Ranch, B. M. Bower [diy ebook reader .txt] 📗

the bunk-house, gossiping idly of

things purely local, when the Old Man returned from the Stock

Association at Helena; beside him on the buggy seat sat a

stranger. The Old Man pulled up at the bunk-house, the stranger

sprang out over the wheel with the agility which bespoke youthful

muscles, and the Old Man introduced him with a quirk of the lips:

 

“This is Mr. Mig-u-ell Rapponi, boys—a peeler straight from the

Golden Gate. Throw out your war-bag and make yourself to home,

Mig-u-ell; some of the boys’ll show you where to bed down.”

 

The Old Man drove on to the house with his own luggage, and Happy

Jack followed to take charge of the team; but the remainder of

the Happy Family unobtrusively took the measure of the foreign

element. From his black-and-white horsehair hatband, with tassels

that swept to the very edge of his gray hatbrim, to the crimson

silk neckerchief draped over the pale blue bosom of his shirt;

from the beautifully stamped leather cuffs, down to the

exaggerated height of his tan boot-heels, their critical eyes

swept in swift, appraising glances; and unanimous disapproval was

the result. The Happy Family had themselves an eye to picturesque

garb upon occasion, but this passed even Pink’s love of display.

 

“He’s some gaudy to look at,” Irish murmured under his breath to

Cal Emmett.

 

“All he lacks is a spot-light and a brass band,” Cal returned, in

much the same tone with which a woman remarks upon a last

season’s hat on the head of a rival.

 

Miguel was not embarrassed by the inspection. He was tall,

straight, and swarthily handsome, and he stood with the

complacence of a stage favorite waiting for the applause to cease

so that he might speak his first lines; and, while he waited, he

sifted tobacco into a cigarette paper daintily, with his little

finger extended. There was a ring upon that finger; a ring with a

moonstone setting as large and round as the eye of a startled

cat, and the Happy Family caught the pale gleam of it and drew a

long breath. He lighted a match nonchalantly, by the artfully

simple method of pinching the head of it with his fingernails,

leaned negligently against the wall of the bunk-house, and

regarded the group incuriously while he smoked.

 

“Any pretty girls up this way?” he inquired languidly, after a

moment, fanning a thin smoke-cloud from before his face while he

spoke.

 

The Happy Family went prickly hot. The girls in that neighborhood

were held in esteem, and there was that in his tone which gave

offense.

 

“Sure, there’s pretty girls here!” Big Medicine bellowed

unexpectedly, close beside him. “We’re all of us engaged to `em,

by cripes!”

 

Miguel shot an oblique glance at Big Medicine, examined the end

of his cigarette, and gave a lift of shoulder, which might mean

anything or nothing, and so was irritating to a degree. He did

not pursue the subject further, and so several belated retorts

were left tickling futilely the tongues of the Happy Family—

which does not make for amiability.

 

To a man they liked him little, in spite of their easy

friendliness with mankind in general. At supper they talked with

him perfunctorily, and covertly sneered because he sprinkled his

food liberally with cayenne and his speech with Spanish words

pronounced with soft, slurred vowels that made them sound

unfamiliar, and against which his English contrasted sharply with

its crisp, American enunciation. He met their infrequent glances

with the cool stare of absolute indifference to their opinion of

him, and their perfunctory civility with introspective calm.

 

The next morning, when there was riding to be done, and Miguel

appeared at the last moment in his working clothes, even Weary,

the sunny-hearted, had an unmistakable curl of his lip after the

first glance.

 

Miguel wore the hatband, the crimson kerchief tied loosely with

the point draped over his chest, the stamped leather cuffs and

the tan boots with the highest heels ever built by the cobbler

craft. Also, the lower half of him was incased in chaps the like

of which had never before been brought into Flying U coulee.

Black Angora chaps they were; long-haired, crinkly to the very

hide, with three white, diamond-shaped patches running down each

leg of them, and with the leather waistband stamped elaborately

to match the cuffs. The bands of his spurs were two inches wide

and inlaid to the edge with beaten silver, and each concho was

engraved to represent a large, wild rose, with a golden center. A

dollar laid upon the rowels would have left a fringe of prongs

all around.

 

He bent over his sacked riding outfit, and undid it, revealing a

wonderful saddle of stamped leather inlaid on skirt and cantle

with more beaten silver. He straightened the skirts, carefully

ignoring the glances thrown in his direction, and swore softly to

himself when he discovered where the leather had been scratched

through the canvas wrappings and the end of the silver scroll

ripped up. He drew out his bridle and shook it into shape, and

the silver mountings and the reins of braided leather with

horsehair tassels made Happy Jack’s eyes greedy with desire. His

blanket was a scarlet Navajo, and his rope a rawhide lariat.

 

Altogether, his splendor when he was mounted so disturbed the

fine mental poise of the Happy Family that they left him jingling

richly off by himself, while they rode closely grouped and

discussed him acrimoniously.

 

“By gosh, a man might do worse than locate that Native Son for a

silver mine,” Cal began, eyeing the interloper scornfully. “It’s

plumb wicked to ride around with all that wealth and fussy stuff.

He must ‘a’ robbed a bank and put the money all into a riding

outfit.”

 

“By golly, he looks to me like a pair uh trays when he comes

bow-leggin’ along with them white diamonds on his legs,” Slim

stated solemnly.

 

“And I’ll gamble that’s a spot higher than he stacks up in the

cow game,” Pink observed with the pessimism which matrimony had

given him. “You mind him asking about bad horses, last night?

That Lizzie-boy never saw a bad horse; they don’t grow ‘em where

he come from. What they don’t know about riding they make up for

with a swell rig—”

 

“And, oh, mamma! It sure is a swell rig!” Weary paid generous

tribute. “Only I will say old Banjo reminds me of an Irish cook

rigged out in silk and diamonds. That outfit on Glory, now—” He

sighed enviously.

 

“Well, I’ve gone up against a few real ones in my long and varied

career,” Irish remarked reminiscently, “and I’ve noticed that a

hoss never has any respect or admiration for a swell rig. When he

gets real busy it ain’t the silver filigree stuff that’s going to

help you hold connections with your saddle, and a silver-mounted

bridle-bit ain’t a darned bit better than a plain one.”

 

“Just take a look at him!” cried Pink, with intense disgust.

“Ambling off there, so the sun can strike all that silver and

bounce back in our eyes. And that braided lariat—I’d sure love

to see the pieces if he ever tries to anchor anything bigger than

a yearling!”

 

“Why, you don’t think for a minute he could ever get out and rope

anything, do yuh ?” Irish laughed. “That there Native Son throws

on a-w-ltogether too much dog to really get out and do

anything.”

 

“Aw,” fleered Happy Jack, “he ain’t any Natiff Son. He’s a dago!”

 

“He’s got the earmarks uh both,” Big Medicine stated

authoritatively. “I know ‘em, by cripes, and I know their ways.”

He jerked his thumb toward the dazzling Miguel. “I can tell yuh

the kinda cowpuncher he is; I’ve saw ‘em workin’ at it. Haw-haw-haw! They’ll start out to move ten or a dozen head uh tame old

cows from one field to another, and there’ll be six or eight

fellers, rigged up like this here tray-spot, ridin’ along,

important as hell, drivin’ them few cows down a lane, with peach

trees on both sides, by cripes, jingling their big, silver spurs,

all wearin’ fancy chaps to ride four or five miles down the road.

Honest to grandma, they call that punchin’ cows! Oh, he’s a

Native Son, all right. I’ve saw lots of ‘em, only I never saw one

so far away from the Promised Land before. That there looks queer

to me. Natiff Sons—the real ones, like him—are as scarce

outside Calyforny as buffalo are right here in this coulee.”

 

“That’s the way they do it, all right,” Irish agreed. “And then

they’ll have a ‘rodeo’—”

 

“Haw-haw-haw!” Big Medicine interrupted, and took up the tale,

which might have been entitled “Some Cowpunching I Have Seen.”

 

“They have them rodeos on a Sunday, mostly, and they invite

everybody to it, like it was a picnic. And there’ll be two or

three fellers to every calf, all lit up, like Mig-u-ell, over

there, in chaps and silver fixin’s, fussin’ around on horseback

in a corral, and every feller trying to pile his rope on the same

calf, by cripes! They stretch ‘em out with two ropes—calves,

remember! Little, weenty fellers you could pack under one arm!

Yuh can’t blame ‘em much. They never have more’n thirty or forty

head to brand at a time, and they never git more’n a taste uh

real work. So they make the most uh what they git, and go in

heavy on fancy outfits. And this here silver-mounted fellow

thinks he’s a real cowpuncher, by cripes!”

 

The Happy Family laughed at the idea; laughed so loud that Miguel

left his lonely splendor and swung over to them, ostensibly to

borrow a match.

 

“What’s the joke?” he inquired languidly, his chin thrust out and

his eyes upon the match blazing at the end of his cigarette.

 

The Happy Family hesitated and glanced at one another. Then Cal

spoke truthfully.

 

“You’re it,” he said bluntly, with a secret desire to test the

temper of this dark-skinned son of the West.

 

Miguel darted one of his swift glances at Cal, blew out his match

and threw it away.

 

“Oh, how funny. Ha-ha.” His voice was soft and absolutely

expressionless, his face blank of any emotion whatever. He merely

spoke the words as a machine might have done.

 

If he had been one of them, the Happy Family would have laughed

at the whimsical humor of it. As it was, they repressed the

impulse, though Weary warmed toward him slightly.

 

“Don’t you believe anything this innocent-eyed gazabo tells you,

Mr. Rapponi,” he warned amiably. “He’s known to be a liar.”

 

“That’s funny, too. Ha-ha some more.” Miguel permitted a thin

ribbon of smoke to slide from between his lips, and gazed off to

the crinkled line of hills.

 

“Sure, it is—now you mention it,” Weary agreed after a

perceptible pause.

 

“How fortunate that I brought the humor to your attention,”

drawled Miguel, in the same expressionless tone, much as if he

were reciting a text.

 

“Virtue is its own penalty,” paraphrased Pink, not stopping to

see whether the statement applied to the subject.

 

“Haw-haw-haw!” roared Big Medicine, quite as irrelevantly.

 

“He-he-he,” supplemented the silver-trimmed one.

 

Big Medicine stopped laughing suddenly, reined his horse close to

the other, and stared at him challengingly, with his pale,

protruding eyes, while the Happy Family glanced meaningly at one

another. Big Medicine was quite as unsafe as he looked, at that

moment, and they wondered if the offender realized his precarious

situation.

 

Miguel smoked with the infinite leisure which is a fine art when

it is not born of genuine abstraction, and none could decide

whether he was