The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

out to him, looking about him at the strange, new country, in which he felt the proprietorship of early discovery. He drew in deep breaths of an air delightfully fresh, squaring his shoulders and throwing up his head instinctively as he strode forward. The sky was faultlessly clear. The prospect all about him, devoid as it was of variety, was none the less abundantly filling to the eye. Far as the eye could reach rolled an illimitable, tawny sea. The short, harsh grass near at hand he discovered to be dotted here and there with small, gay flowers. Back of him, as he turned his head, he saw a square of vivid green, which water had created as a garden spot of grass and flowers at the stone hotel. He did not find this green of civilization more consoling or inspiring than the natural colour of the wild land that lay before him. For the first time in his life he looked upon the great Plains, and for the first time felt their fascination. There came to him a subtle, strange exhilaration. A sensation of confidence, of certainty, arose in his heart. He trod as a conqueror upon a land new taken. All the earth seemed happy and care-free. A meadow lark was singing shrilly high up in the air; another lark answered, clanking contentedly from the grass, whence in the bright air its yellow breast showed brilliantly.

As Franklin was walking on, busy with the impressions of his new world, he became conscious of rapid hoof-beats coming up behind him, and turned to see a horseman careering across the open in his direction, with no apparent object in view beyond that of making all the noise possible to be made by a freckled-faced cowboy who had been up all night, but still had some vitality which needed vent.

"Eeeeee-yow-heeeeee!" yelled the cowboy, both spurring and reining his supple, cringing steed. "Eeeeeee-yip-yeeeee!" Thus vociferating, he rode straight at the footman, with apparently the deliberate wish to ride him down. He wist not that the latter had seen cavalry in his day, and was not easily to be disconcerted, and, finding that he failed to create a panic, he pulled up with the pony's nose almost over Franklin's shoulder.

"Hello, stranger," cried the rider, cheerfully; "where are you goin', this bright an' happy mornin'?"

Franklin was none too pleased at the method of introduction selected by this youth, but a look at his open and guileless face forbade the thought of offence. The cowboy sat his horse as though he was cognizant of no such creature beneath him. His hand was held high and wabbling as he bit off a chew from a large tobacco plug the while he jogged alongside.

Franklin made no immediate reply, and the cowboy resumed.

"Have a chaw?" he said affably, and looked surprised when Franklin thanked him but did not accept.

"Where's yore hoss, man?" asked the new-comer with concern. "Where you goin', headin' plum south, an' 'thout no hoss?"

"Oh," said Franklin, smiling, "I'm not going far; only over south a mile or so. I want to find a friend. Colonel Battersleigh. I think his place is only a mile or so from here."

"Sure," said the cowboy. "Old Batty—I know him. He taken up a quarter below here. Ain't got his shack up yet. But say, that's a full mile from yer. You ain't goin' to walk a mile, are you?"

"I've walked a good many thousand miles," said Franklin, "and I shouldn't wonder if I could get over this one."

"They's all kind of fools in the world," said the rider sagely, and with such calm conviction in his tone that again Franklin could not take offence. They progressed a time in silence.

"Say," said the cowboy, after a time—"say, I reckon I kin lick you."

"Do you think so?" said Franklin calmly, pulling up his shoulders and feeling no alarm.

"Shorely I do," said the other; "I reckon I kin lick you, er beat you shootin', er throw you down."

"Friend," said Franklin judicially, "I have a good many doubts about your being able to do all that. But before we take it up any further I would like to ask you something."

"Well, whut?"

"I'd just like to ask you what makes you tell me that, when I'm a perfect stranger to you, and when perhaps you may never see me again?"

"Well, now," said the cowboy, pushing back his hat and scratching his head thoughtfully, "blame if I know why, but I just 'lowed I could, sorter. An' I kin!"

"But why?"

"Say, you're the d——dest feller I ever did see. You got to have a reason fer everything on earth?" His tone became more truculent. "First place, 'f I didn't have no other reason, I kin lick ary man on earth that walks."

"Friend," said Franklin, "get down off that horse, and I'll give you a little wrestle to see who rides. What's your name, anyhow?"

"Whoa!" said the other. "Name's Curly." He was on the ground as he said this last, and throwing the bridle over the horse's head. The animal stood as though anchored. Curly cast his hat upon the ground and trod upon it in a sort of ecstasy of combat. He rushed at Franklin without argument or premeditation.

The latter had not attended country school for nothing. Stepping lightly aside, he caught his ready opponent as he passed, and, with one arm about his neck, gave him a specimen of the "hip-lock" which sent him in the air over his own shoulder. The cowboy came down much in a heap, but presently sat up, his hair somewhat rumpled and sandy. He rubbed his head and made sundry exclamations of surprise. "Huh!" said he. "Well, I'm d——d! Now, how you s'pose that happened? You kain't do that again," he said to Franklin, finally.

"Shouldn't wonder if I could," said Franklin, laughing.

"Look out fer me—I'm a-comin'!" cried Curly.

They met more fairly this time, and Franklin found that he had an antagonist of little skill in the game of wrestling, but of a surprising wiry, bodily strength. Time and again the cowboy writhed away from the hold, and came back again with the light of battle in his eye. It was only after several moments that he succumbed, this time to the insidious "grapevine." He fell so sharply that Franklin had difficulty in breaking free in order not to fall upon him. The cowboy lay prone for a moment, then got up and dusted off his hat.

"Mount, friend," said he, throwing the bridle back over the horse's neck without other word. "You done it fair!"

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Franklin, extending his hand. "We'll just both walk along together a way, if you don't mind. I'll get me a horse pretty soon. You see, I'm a new man here—just got in this morning, and I haven't had time to look around much yet. I thought I'd go out and meet my friend, and perhaps then we could talk over such things together."

"Shore," said Curly. "Why didn't you tell me? Say, ole Batty, he's crazy to ketch a whole lot o' hosses out'n a band o' wild hosses down to the Beaver Creek. He always a-wantin' me to help him ketch them hosses. Say, he's got a lot o' sassafiddity, somethin' like that, an' he says he's goin' to soak some corn in that stuff an' set it out fer hosses. Says it'll make 'em loco, so'st you kin go right up an' rope 'em. Now, ain't that the d——dest fool thing yet? Say, some o' these pilgrims that comes out here ain't got sense enough to last over night."

"Battersleigh is fond of horses," said Franklin, "and he's a rider, too."

"That's so," admitted Curly. "He kin ride. You orter see him when he gits his full outfit on, sword an' pistol by his side, uh-huh!"

"He has a horse, then?"

"Has a boss? Has a hoss—has—what? Why, o' course he has a boss. Is there anybody that ain't got a hoss?"

"Well, I haven't," said Franklin.

"You got this one," said Curly.

"How?" said Frank, puzzled.

"Why, you won him."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Franklin. "Nonsense! I wasn't wrestling for your horse, only for a ride. Besides, I didn't have any horse put up against yours. I couldn't lose anything."

"That's so," said Curly. "I hadn't thought of that. Say, you seem like a white sort o' feller. Tell you what I'll just do with you. O' course, I was thinkin' you'd win the whole outfit, saddle an' all. I think a heap o' my saddle, an' long's you ain't got no saddle yet that you have got used to, like, it don't make much difference to you if you get another saddle. But you just take this here hoss along. No, that's all right. I kin git me another back to the corral, just as good as this one. Jim Parsons, feller on the big bunch o' cows that come up from the San Marcos this spring, why, he got killed night before last. I'll just take one o' his hosses, I reckon. I kin fix it so'st you kin git his saddle, if you take a notion to it."

Franklin looked twice to see if there was affectation in this calm statement, but was forced, with a certain horror, to believe that his new acquaintance spoke of this as a matter of fact, and as nothing startling. He had made no comment, when he was prevented from doing so by the exclamation of the cowboy, who pointed out ahead.

"There's Batty's place," said he, "an' there's Batty himself. Git up, quick; git up, an' ride in like a gentleman. It's bad luck to walk."

Franklin laughed, and, taking the reins, swung himself into the saddle with the ease of the cavalry mount, though with the old-fashioned grasp at the cantle, with the ends of the reins in his right hand.

"Well, that's a d——d funny way gittin' on top of a hoss," said Curly. "Are you 'fraid the saddle's goin' to git away from you? Better be 'fraid 'bout the hoss.—Git up, Bronch!"

He slapped the horse on the hip with his hat, and gave the latter a whirl in the air with a shrill "Whoooop-eee!" which was all that remained needful to set the horse off on a series of wild, stiff-legged plunges—the "bucking" of which Franklin had heard so much; a manoeuvre peculiar to the half-wild Western horses, and one which is at the first experience a desperately difficult one for even a skilful horseman to overcome. It perhaps did not occur to Curly that he was inflicting any hardship upon the newcomer, and perhaps he did not really anticipate what followed on the part either of the horse or its rider. Had Franklin not been a good rider, and accustomed to keeping his head while sitting half-broken mounts, he must have suffered almost instantaneous defeat in this sudden encounter. The horse threw his head down far between his fore legs at the start, and then went angling and zigzagging away over the hard ground in a wild career of humpbacked antics, which jarred Franklin to the marrow of his bones. The air became scintillant and luminously red. His head seemed filled with loose liquid, his spine turned into a column of mere gelatine. The thudding of the hoofs was so rapid and so punishing to his senses that for a moment he did not realize where he actually was. Yet with the sheer instinct of horsemanship he clung to the saddle in some fashion, until finally he was fairly forced to relax the muscular strain, and so by accident fell into the secret of the seat—loose, yielding, not tense and strung.

"Go it, go it—whooop-e-e-e!" cried Curly, somewhere out in a dark world. "Ee-eikee-hooo! Set him fair, pardner! Set him fair, now! Let go that leather! Ride him straight up! That's right!"

Franklin had small notion of Curly's locality, but he heard his voice, half taunting and half encouraging, and calling on all his