The Ramblin' Kid, Earl Wayland Bowman [mind reading books .TXT] 📗

by her varying moods. He looked foolishly at Parker a moment. Going to the graphophone he put on a record—

"I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air!"

wailed disconsolately through the house.

"Good heavens," Carolyn June called, "do you blow bubbles this early in the morning?"

"Don't you like it?" Skinny asked soberly. "I thought that was a pretty good tune."

"I'm crazy about it!" Carolyn June answered sarcastically. "There and then, but not here and now—"

"Where and when?" Skinny queried innocently.

"In the valley of the moon at the end of a perfect day!" she laughed back. "—Forgive me, I couldn't help it!"

"What does she mean?" Skinny asked Parker in a whisper. "Is she making fun of me?"

"No, you blamed fool," Parker replied, "she feels good and is just joking—"

Skinny brightened up immediately.

"That's a good one," he called to Carolyn June with a snicker; "I never thought of it before!"

A ripple of laughter came from Carolyn June's room.

"Really, I don't mind," she said; "play Bubbles as much as you like—I think it's rather soothing, but truly I must write my letters now so Ophelia can take them to town."

Half an hour later Ophelia appeared dressed for the drive to Eagle Butte. Carolyn June and Skinny went out on the front porch and watched the widow and Parker climb into the Clagstone "Six." As Parker started the engine Skinny suddenly called to him. Parker sat with his foot on the clutch while Skinny hurried out to the car.

"What do you want?" he asked impatiently, "We've got to be going!"

"Lean over here," Skinny said, his face flushing scarlet, "I want to tell you something."

"Well?"

"Stop at the Golden Rule and get me a white shirt size number fifteen and—a purple necktie if they've got any!" Skinny whispered.

Ophelia heard and choked back a laugh.

"Thunderation, he's plumb locoed!" Parker exclaimed, as he jammed the clutch into gear and the car sprang forward.

"Don't forget it, Parker," Skinny called earnestly, "I actually need it!"

Carolyn June and Skinny stood on the porch and watched the car climb the grade and out on to the bench. The storm of the night before had washed the earth clean and cooled the air. A faint after-breeze fanned the tree-tops. The Costejo peaks stood out, with stereoscopical clearness, against a cloudless sky. The day was a challenge to one who loved the open.

"You may saddle 'Old Blue,'" Carolyn June said to Skinny. "—I'll see if
I can 'stick on him' long enough to ride as far as the river!"

"He's already saddled," Skinny replied, "him and Old Pie Face both."

"Man, dear," she cried in mock misunderstanding, "you surely are not expecting me to ride the two of them at once!"

"No," he answered meekly, "Old Pie Face is my horse, I'm going to ride him and go with you."

"Indeed!" she exclaimed, then laughing mischievously. "Oh, certainly—that's a good one—I hadn't thought of it before!"

"Don't you want me to go?" Skinny asked doubtfully.

"Surely. I should be utterly unhappy if you didn't—I'll get my hat."

"Blamed if I can figure her out," Skinny said to himself as Carolyn June ran lightly into the house. "She keeps a feller freezing to death and burning up all at once—sort of in heaven and hell both mixed together."

A white, medium-brimmed felt hat was set jauntily on the fluffy brown hair when she reappeared. Skinny's heart leaped hungrily. Carolyn June was a picture of perfect physical fitness. The cowboy silently wondered how long he could keep from making "a complete, triple-expansion, darned fool of himself!"

"I'm glad you want me to go," he said, renewing the conversation as they started around the house, "because I wanted to and, well, anyhow it's my job—"

"What do you mean 'your job'?" Carblyn June asked quickly.

Skinny was stricken silent. He realized he was on dangerous ground. He wasn't sure it would be wise to tell her what he meant. Someway he felt Carolyn June would resent it if she knew he was drawing wages for acting the lover to her. It seemed wholly impossible for him, just at that moment, to explain that, although Old Heck was paying him ten dollars a month extra salary to court, temporarily, his attractive niece, he, Skinny Rawlins, would personally be overjoyed to reverse the order and give his entire income, adding a bonus as well, for the privilege of continuing indefinitely and of his own choice the more than pleasant employment. Yet this was the literal truth, so quickly had his susceptible heart yielded to the charms of the girl. But he dared not try to tell her. He knew the words would not come and if they did he would probably choke on them and she, not believing the truth, would detest him. Skinny had heard of men who courted girls of wealth to win their money and with sincere contempt he despised these degenerates of his sex. Now, suddenly, he felt that he himself was in their class. The thought made him sick, actually caused his stomach to quiver with a sort of nausea.

"Skinny Rawlins," Carolyn June said sternly, stopping and looking straight at the confused and mentally tortured cowboy, "tell me—and don't lie—what you meant when you said to go with me was 'your job!'"

Skinny raised his eyes; in them was piteous appeal.

"I meant—I—" he hesitated.

"Tell me the truth," she ordered relentlessly, "or I'll—I'll—do something awful!"

"I meant it was my job—" suddenly inspired, he blurted out, "to ride Old Pie Face. He's—he's dangerous and has to be rode every so often to keep him from getting worse and to-day's the day to ride him!"

"Skinny," Carolyn June spoke gently, "I feel sorry for you. I want to like you and I'm disappointed. It breaks my heart to say it but you are a liar—you're just a common double dashed liar—like Uncle Josiah was when he sent that telegram saying there was smallpox at the Quarter Circle KT—"

"Am I?" Skinny asked humbly.

"You are," she retorted impatiently, "and you know it—"

"Do I?" as if dazed.

"You do, and did all the time—"

"Did I?" he felt like a parrot.

"You did!" Carolyn June snapped. "Good heavens," she continued, "why do men think they have to lie to women? Common sense and experience ought to teach them they can never fool them long—I hoped out here in the big West I would find one man who wouldn't lie—"

"Th' Ramblin' Kid won't," Skinny said as if suddenly struck by a bright thought, "—he wouldn't lie to you!"

Carolyn June laughed scornfully.

"Oh, yes he would," she declared, "all of them do—every last one of the poor frail"—contemptuously—"turtles!"

"But th' Ramblin' Kid wouldn't," Skinny persisted; "he won't lie to anybody."

"Not even to a woman?" she questioned incredulously.

"No," he answered positively, "I'm sure he wouldn't."

"And why wouldn't he?" she asked.

"Well," Skinny replied, "for one thing he don't give a darn. Th' Ramblin' Kid don't care what anybody, man, woman or anything else thinks about him or whether they like what he says or not so there ain't any use of him lying. Maybe he wouldn't tell what was in his mind unless you asked him, but if you did ask him he'd say what it was whether he thought it satisfied you or not. He's funny that way. He just naturally don't seem to be built for telling lies and he wouldn't do it—"

"Oh, Skinny, poor simple Skinny!" Carolyn June laughed. "You don't know men—men when they're dealing with women! Through all the unnamed years of my life I've never found one man who was absolutely truthful when talking with a 'female.' They think they have to lie to women. They do it either to keep from hurting them—or else they do it intentionally for the purpose of hurting them, one or the other! And they are so stupid! No man can hide anything long from a woman—"

Reaching over she jerked a spray of tiny roses from the rambler at the window near which they were standing; tapping the blossoms against her lips, beginning to smile whimsically, she continued: "Why, I can almost read your own thoughts right now! If I wanted to I could tell you more about what is in your mind than you yourself could tell—"

"Could you?" Skinny said, a guilty look coming in his eyes.

"For one thing," Carolyn June went on, ignoring the inane question, "you are in love—"

"I ain't!" the over-hasty denial slipped from his lips unintentionally.

"Lie!" she laughed, "you can't help telling 'em, can you? And you are thinking—" She paused while her eyes rested demurely on the roses in her hand.

"What am I thinking?" Skinny asked breathlessly.

Before she could reply an agonized spitting, yowling and hissing, accompanied by the rattle of tin, came from behind the kitchen. "What's that?" Carolyn June cried half frightened at the instant a yellow house cat, his head fastened in an old tomato can, came bouncing backward, clawing and scratching, from around the corner.

"Gee whiz!" Skinny exclaimed, "it's that darned cat again—Sing Pete goes and dabs butter in the bottoms of the cans and the fool cat sticks his head in trying to lick it out and gets fastened. It looks like the blamed idiot would learn sometime. It's what I call a rotten joke anyhow!"

Sing Pete appeared at the kitchen door cackling with fiendish joy at the success of his ruse.

Carolyn June stared, apparently stricken dumb by the antics of the struggling animal.

"Sun-fish! Go to it—you poor deluded son-of-sorrow!" The Ramblin' Kid, who, unnoticed by Carolyn June and Skinny, at that moment had come from the corral and stood leaning against the fence, chuckled half pityingly, yet making no move toward the creature.

"Catch him and take it off," Carolyn June cried, "it's hurting him!"

Skinny started toward the rapidly gyrating jumble of claws, can and cat.

"I will if the darn' thing'll hold still a minute!" he said.

Carolyn June looked at the Ramblin' Kid, still leaning against the fence watching the cat's contortions.

"Why don't you help him?" she asked impatiently. "Skinny can't do it alone—can't you see it's choking?"

"No, he's not choking," the Ramblin' Kid replied without moving from where he stood, "—he's sufferin' some, but he ain't chokin'. He's got quite a lot of wind yet an' is gettin' some valuable experience. That cat's what I call a genuine acrobat!" he mused as the terrified creature leaped frantically in the air and somersaulted backward, striking and clawing desperately to free itself of the can tightly wedged on its head.

Carolyn June was accustomed to obedience from men creatures. The Ramblin' Kid's indifference to her request, together with his apparent cruelty in refusing to aid in relieving the cat from its torturing dilemma, angered and piqued the girl.

"Help Skinny take it off, I tell you!" she repeated, "haven't you a spark of sympathy—"

The Ramblin' Kid resented her tone and detected as well the note of wounded pride. Instinctively he felt that at that instant the cat, with Carolyn June, had become a secondary consideration.

"Well, some, I reckon," he answered, speaking deliberately, "generally a little, but right now darned little for that old yaller cat. I figure he's a plumb free moral agent," he continued as if speaking to himself; "he got his head in that can on his own hook an' it's up to him to get it out or let it stay in this time, just as he pleases—"

"But Sing Pete put butter in the can!" Carolyn June said, arguing.

"He's done it before," the Ramblin' Kid answered with a glance at the Chinese cook still gleefully enjoying the results of his cruel joke. "He won't no more. But that don't make no difference," he laughed, "th' darn' cat hadn't ought to have yielded to temptation!"

"You're a brute!" she exclaimed passionately, "—an ignorant, savage, stupid brute—" The harsh words sprang from the lips of Carolyn June before she thought. The Ramblin' Kid flinched involuntarily as if he had been struck full in the face. A look came in his eyes that almost made her regret what she had said.

"I reckon I am," he replied, gazing steadily at her without feeling or resentment and speaking slowly, "yes, I'm an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute,'" deliberately accenting each word as he repeated the stinging phrase, "—but—what's the use?" he finished with a mirthless laugh. "Anyhow," he added, glancing again at the cat and Skinny's futile efforts to catch it, "I ain't interferin' this