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

aware of the unfriendly proximity of Big Medicine.

Weary was just on the point of saying something to relieve the

tension, when Miguel blew the ash gently from his cigarette and

spoke lazily.

 

“Parrots are so common, out on the Coast, that they use them in

cheap restaurants for stew. I’ve often heard them gabbling

together in the kettle.”

 

The statement was so ambiguous that the Happy Family glanced at

him doubtfully. Big Medicine’s stare became more curious than

hostile, and he permitted his horse to lag a length. It is

difficult to fight absolute passivity. Then Slim, who ever

tramped solidly over the flowers of sarcasm, blurted one of his

unexpected retorts.

 

“I was just wonderin’, by golly, where yuh learnt to talk!”

 

Miguel turned his velvet eyes sleepily toward the speaker. “From

the boarders who ate those parrots, amigo,” he smiled serenely.

 

At this, Slim—once justly accused by Irish of being a

“single-shot” when it came to repartee—turned purple and dumb.

The Happy Family, forswearing loyalty in their enjoyment of his

discomfiture, grinned and left to Miguel the barren triumph of

the last word.

 

He did not gain in popularity as the days passed. They tilted

noses at his beautiful riding gear, and would have died rather

than speak of it in his presence. They never gossiped with him of

horses or men or the lands he knew. They were ready to snub him

at a moment’s notice—and it did not lessen their dislike of him

that he failed to yield them an opportunity. It is to be hoped

that he found his thoughts sufficient entertainment, since he was

left to them as much as is humanly possible when half a dozen men

eat and sleep and work together. It annoyed them exceedingly that

Miguel did not seem to know that they held him at a distance;

they objected to his manner of smoking cigarettes and staring off

at the skyline as if he were alone and content with his dreams.

When he did talk they listened with an air of weary tolerance.

When he did not talk they ignored his presence, and when he was

absent they criticized him mercilessly.

 

They let him ride unwarned into an adobe patch one day—at least,

Big Medicine, Pink, Cal Emmett and Irish did, for they were with

him—and laughed surreptitiously together while he wallowed there

and came out afoot, his horse floundering behind him, mud to the

ears, both of them.

 

“Pretty soft going, along there, ain’t it?” Pink commiserated

deceitfully.

 

“It is, kinda,” Miguel responded evenly, scraping the adobe off

Banjo with a flat rock. And the subject was closed.

 

“Well, it’s some relief to the eyes to have the shine taken off

him, anyway,” Pink observed a little guiltily afterward.

 

“I betche he ain’t goin’ to forget that, though,” Happy Jack

warned when he saw the caked mud on Miguel’s Angora chaps and

silver spurs, and the condition of his saddle. “Yuh better watch

out and not turn your backs on him in the dark, none uh you guys.

I betche he packs a knife. Them kind always does.”

 

“Haw-haw-haw!” bellowed Big Medicine uproariously. “I’d love to

see him git out an’ try to use it, by cripes!”

 

“I wish Andy was here,” Pink sighed. “Andy’d take the starch outa

him, all right.”

 

“Wouldn’t he be pickings for old Andy, though? Gee!” Cal looked

around at them, with his wide, baby-blue eyes, and laughed.

“Let’s kinda jolly him along, boys, till Andy gets back. It sure

would be great to watch ‘em. I’ll bet he can jar the eternal calm

outa that Native Son. That’s what grinds me worse than his

throwin’ on so much dog; he’s so blamed satisfied with himself!

You snub him, and he looks at yuh as if you was his hired man—

and then forgets all about yuh. He come outa that ‘doby like he’d

been swimmin’ a river on a bet, and had made good and was a

hee-ro right before the ladies. Kinda ‘Oh, that’s nothing to what

I could do if it was worth while,’ way he had with him.”

 

“It wouldn’t matter so much if he wasn’t all front,” Pink

complained. “You’ll notice that’s always the way, though. The

fellow all fussed up with silver and braided leather can’t get

out and do anything. I remember up on Milk river—” Pink trailed

off into absorbing reminiscence, which, however, is too lengthy

to repeat here.

 

“Say, Mig-u-ell’s down at the stable, sweatin from every pore

trying to get his saddle clean, by golly!” Slim reported

cheerfully, just as Pink was relighting the cigarette which had

gone out during the big scene of his story. “He was cussin’ in

Spanish, when I walked up to him—but he shut up when he seen me

and got that peaceful look uh hisn on his face. I wonder, by

golly—”

 

“Oh, shut up and go awn,” Irish commanded bluntly, and looked at

Pink. “Did he call it off, then? Or did you have to wade in—”

 

“Naw; he was like this here Native Son—all front. He could look

sudden death, all right; he had black eyes like Mig-u-ell— but

all a fellow had to do was go after him, and he’d back up so

blamed quick—”

 

Slim listened that far, saw that he had interrupted a tale

evidently more interesting than anything he could say, and went

off, muttering to himself.

 

CHAPTER II. “When Greek Meets Greek”

 

The next morning, which was Sunday, the machinations of Big

Medicine took Pink down to the creek behind the bunk-house.

“What’s hurtin’ yuh?” he asked curiously, when he came to where

Big Medicine stood in the fringe of willows, choking between his

spasms of mirth.

 

“Haw-haw-haw!” roared Big Medicine; and, seizing Pink’s arm in a

gorilla-like grip, he pointed down the bank.

 

Miguel, seated upon a convenient rock in a sunny spot, was

painstakingly combing out the tangled hair of his chaps, which he

had washed quite as carefully not long before, as the cake of

soap beside him testified.

 

“Combing—combing—his chaps, by cripes!” Big Medicine gasped,

and waggled his finger at the spectacle. “Haw-haw-haw! C-combin’—his—chaps!”

 

Miguel glanced up at them as impersonally as if they were two

cackling hens, rather than derisive humans, then bent his head

over a stubborn knot and whistled La Paloma softly while he

coaxed out the tangle.

 

Pink’s eyes widened as he looked, but he did not say anything. He

backed up the path and went thoughtfully to the corrals, leaving

Big Medicine to follow or not, as he chose.

 

“Combin’—his chaps, by cripes!” came rumbling behind him. Pink

turned.

 

“Say! Don’t make so much noise about it,” he advised guardedly.

“I’ve got an idea.”

 

“Yuh want to hog-tie it, then,” Big Medicine retorted, resentful

because Pink seemed not to grasp the full humor of the thing.

“Idees sure seems to be skurce in this outfit—or that there

lily-uh-the-valley couldn’t set and comb no chaps in broad

daylight, by cripes; not and get off with it.”

 

“He’s an ornament to the Flying U,” Pink stated dreamily. “Us

boneheads don’t appreciate him, is all that ails us. What we

ought to do is—help him be as pretty as he wants to be, and—”

 

“Looky here, Little One.” Big Medicine hurried his steps until he

was close alongside. “I wouldn’t give a punched nickel for a

four-horse load uh them idees, and that’s the truth.” He passed

Pink and went on ahead, disgust in every line of his square-shouldered figure. “Combin’ his chaps, by cripes!” he snorted

again, and straightway told the tale profanely to his fellows,

who laughed until they were weak and watery-eyed as they

listened.

 

Afterward, because Pink implored them and made a mystery of it,

they invited Miguel to take a hand in a long-winded game—rather,

a series of games—of seven-up, while his chaps hung to dry upon

a willow by the creek bank—or so he believed.

 

The chaps, however, were up in the white-house kitchen, where

were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing

expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink

and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with

the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and those of the Countess

besides.

 

“It’s a shame, and I just hope Miguel thrashes you both for it,”

the Little Doctor told them more than once; but she laughed,

nevertheless, and showed Pink how to give the twist which made of

each lock a corkscrew ringlet. The Countess stopped, with her

dishcloth dangling from one red, bony hand, while she looked.

“You boys couldn’t sleep nights if you didn’t pester the life

outa somebody,” she scolded. “Seems to me I’d friz them diamonds,

if I was goin’ to be mean enough to do anything.”

 

“You would, eh?” Pink glanced up at her and dimpled. “I’ll find

you a rich husband to pay for that.” He straightway proceeded to

friz the diamonds of white.

 

“Why don’t you have a strip of ringlets down each leg, with tight

little curls between?” suggested the Little Doctor, not to be

outdone by any other woman.

 

“Correct you are,” praised Irish.

 

“And, remember, you’re not heating branding-irons, mister man,”

she added. “You’ll burn all the hair off, if you let the tongs

get red-hot. Just so they’ll sizzle; I’ve told you five times

already.” She picked up the Kid, kissed many times the finger he

held up for sympathy—the finger with which he had touched the

tongs as Pink was putting them back into the grate of the kitchen

stove, and spoke again to ease her conscience. “I think it’s

awfully mean of you to do it. Miguel ought to thrash you both.”

 

“We’re dead willing to let him try, Mrs. Chip. We know it’s mean.

We’re real ashamed of ourselves.” Irish tested his tongs as he

had been told to do. “But we’d rather be ashamed than good, any

old time.”

 

The Little Doctor giggled behind the Kid’s tousled curls, and

reached out a slim hand once more to give Pink’s tongs the expert

twist he was trying awkwardly to learn. “I’m sorry for Miguel;

he’s got lovely eyes, anyway.”

 

“Yes, ain’t he?” Pink looked up briefly from his task. “How’s

your leg, Irish? Mine’s done.”

 

“Seems to me I’d make a deep border of them corkscrew curls all

around the bottoms, if I was doin’ it,” said the Countess

peevishly, from the kitchen sink. “If I was that dago I’d murder

the hull outfit; I never did see a body so hectored in my life—

and him not ever ketchin’ on. He must be plumb simple-minded.”

 

When the curling was done to the hilarious satisfaction of Irish

and Pink, and, while Pink was dancing in them to show them off,

another entered with mail from town. And, because the mail-bearer was Andy Green himself, back from a winter’s journeyings,

Cal, Happy Jack and Slim followed close behind, talking all at

once, in their joy at beholding the man they loved well and hated

occasionally also. Andy delivered the mail into the hands of the

Little Doctor, pinched the Kid’s cheek, and said how he had grown

good-looking as his mother, almost, spoke a cheerful howdy to the

Countess, and turned to shake hands with Pink. It was then that

the honest, gray eyes of him widened with amazement.

 

“Well, by golly!” gasped Slim, goggling at the chaps of Miguel.

 

“That there Natiff Son’ll just about kill yuh for that,” warned

Happy Jack, as mournfully as he might with laughing. “He’ll knife

yuh, sure.”

 

Andy, demanding the meaning of it all, learned all about Miguel

Rapponi—from the viewpoint of the