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Meadowlark Basin

<h2>CHAPTER EIGHT</h2> <h3>BUD HOLDS COUNCIL WITH HIMSELF</h3> When he sauntered down from the Council Rock in the full flood of moonlight, left Lark to enter the house alone and continued to the bunk house, where the boys still lingered by the doorway, Bud did not look like a man whose life depends upon getting a pair of black bronchos into his possession. His walk and his softly whistled tune betokened care-free youth. Cigarettes pricked little, red stars in the line of shadow before the long, low-roofed building where the riders of the Meadowlark were housed and fed to their complete content. The murmur of voices dwindled so that the frog chorus came sharp to the ears as Bud came up and squatted on his boot-heels alongside a man whom he identified even in the shadow as his particular friend, Frank Gelle—called Jelly with a frank disregard for proper pronunciation. "Have a good trip, Bud?" Not for a top horse would Gelle have betrayed his curiosity over the mysterious visitors. "Pretty fair. Hot as blazes riding across the reservation yesterday. Oh, by the way, Rosy, I didn't get those socks you wanted if I rode back through town. I meant to, but when the bank was robbed—" "Get out!" Gelle exclaimed, as an expression of surprise. "Some of these days, Bud, somebody's goin' to lose his patience all of a sudden. He'll just kill you and drag you off somewhere and leave you. I hate to do it, but you won't be human till somebody asks the question, so who's the girl you brought in?" "The girl? Oh, she's Lightfoot's sister. She's going to teach our school, Jelly." "School?" chorused six shaken voices. "Now I know you're lying, Bud," Gelle mourned. "I've got to have a serious talk with you, I kin see that. This habit of lyin' where there ain't no cause or provocation—if you'll walk awn over to the Rock with me now, Bud, I'll tell you what I think about it." "It's him that'll do the tellin', and that right now," a voice broke in ominously. "They's a certain Meddalark that won't have a damn' chirp left in 'im, time we git the pinfeathers plucked out. Us fellers have stood about all we're goin' to from Bud." "Just another prophet in his own country," sighed Bud, reaching out a hand for Gelle's tobacco sack because he was too lazy to reach into his pocket for his own. "She is Lightfoot's sister. And the bank was robbed, and Charlie Mulholland was killed. I discovered him myself—" Half an hour went to the telling of the story to the smallest detail, accurately as if he were talking before a jury. For when all the jokes were done, Bud appreciated the hunger these young men felt for news of their world after plugging hard on round-up. They were sick of their own stale company and they craved action, even the vicarious excitement of Bud's experiences. He gave them all he knew, and by the time he had exhausted his store of impressions each man there could visualize the whole affair so far as Bud knew it. They discussed at length the mystery of its quiet perpetration on the edge of banking hours while forty or fifty men foregathered within gunshot of the place. Then Tony Scarpa, more American than his name implied, swung to the more immediate event. "Who's Lightfoot and who's his sister, and what's the joke about teaching our school?" "Straight goods." In the narrowing shadow as the moon swam higher they could see Bud's eyes gleam with mischief. "Lightfoot's a pilgrim; an artist, so he says. I know he's a darn good dancer, for I saw him dance. His sister's a pilgress. They went broke when the bank did, and had to rustle jobs—being perfect strangers in the country and having a bad habit of eating every day. She wanted a school to teach. That's the first and only thing a girl from the East ever thinks of when she comes West; that and marrying some cattle king and wearing diamonds. He wanted to be a cowboy—and I, being an accommodating cuss, gave them both jobs. I recalled the fact that there's a lot you fellows don't know yet, and while you're acquiring useful knowledge she can study your types. You see—" "Study our what?" A man leaned forward so that the moon shone fully and clearly on his astonished face. "Study your types. She's an amateur author and she means to write stories about cowboys. So she's looking for good types." "Sa-ay!" Tony's irrepressible drawl cut musically through the amazed silence. "Loan me your type, will yuh, Bob? I lost mine back there where I bulldogged that roan steer." "I will not! I'm goin' to need all the type I got. Is she purty, Bud?" "She sure is." Bud glanced up at the moon and softly rhapsodized, "Big, devilish gray eyes—they'd drown a man's troubles so deep he'd swear he never had one. Her mouth—if her mouth has never been kissed it should be." "It's goin' to be," Tony murmured, and made a motion of rising to his feet. Big Bob Leverett yanked him down. "You ain't in this, Tony. Bud's givin' me the dope. You gwan to bed. You ain't got no type, and there ain't nothin' to set up for!" "Law-zee, boss!" cried a tall young man with unbelievably small feet thrust straight out before him into the moonlight. "Here's one scholar that'll sure never be tardy!" "I'm goin' to whisper an' stick out my tongue at you pelicans, and git to stay after school," Gelle declared. "You—you fellers can go to her darned old school, but I won't," a young, rebellious voice cried from within the open door. "Skookum?" Bud leaned and peered into the dark. "Come on out here, pardner. Why aren't you in bed?" "How'd the kid git in?" Gelle swung his lean body sidewise, reached a long arm into the house and plucked the boy expertly by his middle. "Here he is, Bud. Clumb through the window, I reckon." Skookum wriggled free and sat down in the dirt, crossing his legs and folding his arms in exact imitation of Bud's favorite pose when at ease among his fellows. He glanced up and down the row of cowpunchers leaning against the wall, and the moonlight gilded his hair like a halo and made of his eyes two deep, dark pools. "I don't like her," he stated flatly. "She turned up her nose at—at Maw, and she asked her brother if he s'posed that hid-hid-e-ous creature was any relation to—to Bud. She said she couldn't bear to—to eat Maw's cookin' 'cause it was 'pulsive. And it was chicken dumpluns and—and pie!" Dead silence for a space; then Gelle spoke diffidently, uncertain between apology and resentment. "We get you, Skookum. But you see, Maw—well, she needs to be took kinda gradual, right at first. You know Maw's a kinda hard looker till you git used to her—" "Maw's the purtiest woman in—in Montana!" Skookum declared hotly. "She's cute and—and sweet. When I get big, I'm agoin' to—to marry Maw. I asked her, and she said she—she would. You shut up about Maw. She's purtier than that darned old girl! Ain't she, Bud?" "Handsome is as handsome does makes Maw the most beautiful woman in the world. You're right about that, pardner." Bud's voice had a queer note in it. "You stand up for Maw, Skookum, and I'm right with you. But I don't believe Maw would want you to pass up a chance to learn something. She thought it would be just fine to have a school here. It's that, or go to a boarding school where all the boys would laugh at you, and I don't believe Maw could stand that, pardner. It seems to me that your duty to Maw would make you want to learn just as fast as you can from Miss Brunelle." "I don't care! She's a mean old—" "Careful, Skookum. Never call a woman names—and besides, in this case it isn't fair. Miss Brunelle's an orphan, and she's among strangers, and she was all tired out—and you know yourself that even Lark can't stand it to see Maw with her teeth out and laid up on a shelf somewhere. I couldn't get her off to one side and speak to her about it before strangers, and neither could Lark. But Maw ought to have thought of it herself and put in her teeth when she saw company coming." "Well, maybe she's purtier with—with her teeth on. But I bet if that old girl's teeth wabbled like—like Maw's teeth do, she wouldn't wear 'em, either. They tip up on the side and—and pinch. Maw showed me!" "Well, then, we'll let Maw suit herself about it. Miss Brunelle will gentle down and get used to her, teeth or no teeth. It's like a horse getting accustomed to a yellow slicker," he went on. "He always stampedes at first. He'll pitch and strike and raise Cain generally—but there always comes a time when that same old yellow slicker feels mighty good spread over his back when he's humped up in a cold rain. We won't say a word, pardner. We'll just go along as if we didn't notice anything, and you'll see how soon Miss Brunelle will learn to love Maw." "And—and Maw needn't wear her teeth if—if she don't want to," Skookum stipulated earnestly, "unless Lark ketches her w-without 'em." "That's the idea, exactly," Bud assured him as man to man. "You see, Lark feels sensitive about Maw's teeth, because he took a beeswax impression himself and sent it to a dentist that advertised pretty extensively and wrote that teeth could be made by what Lark called absent treatment. He'd hate like thunder to admit he'd made a fizzle of the job, and Maw wouldn't for the world hurt his feelings by telling him straight out that they don't fit. So there you are, and we'll just have to let them manage the affair themselves, and show Miss Brunelle what we think of Maw, teeth or no teeth." Skookum nodded acquiescence, heaving a great sigh of relief. "I was goin' to—to tell Maw what that girl said. But—but I'm glad I never." "Real men don't repeat things that may cause hard feelings. You remember that, Skookum. If you'd gone tattling that, Maw would have felt badly and cried." In the moonlight they could see how the boy's big eyes brimmed suddenly. "Maw does—every time I change my shirt. It's where grandpa quirted me, and—and the marks is there." "Grandpa—hunh! I'll grandpa that old devil if I ever run across him," Frank Gelle rapped out viciously. "You leave grandpa alone! I'm waitin' till—till I get big as Bud, and then grandpa's—my meat!" "There's Maw calling you to go to bed," Bud reminded him hastily—and unnecessarily, since Maw's voice was full size and not to be ignored. "Come on—I feel like rolling in, myself. Let's go pound our ears, as Shakespeare says." But when Skookum had been safely delivered to Maw, Bud strolled back to the Council Rock, which was usually free from the humming hordes of mosquitoes, and where the acrid smoke of the smudges were but a pleasantly faint aroma. Thinking was not a popular pastime with young Bud Larkin as a rule, but nevertheless there were times when he felt the need of a quiet hour to meditate upon late impressions and events, especially when they came thick and fast, as the last two days had brought them. For one thing, he was depressed over the murder of the bank cashier and he felt more responsibility in the matter than he had owned to Lark. There was no getting around the fact that he might have prevented the whole thing had he gone straight to the bank instead of stopping at the Elkhorn. When he thought how that one glass of beer had cost a man's life, Bud felt as if he never wanted another drink. He rolled and smoked a cigarette while he recalled each incident of yesterday afternoon. Palmer's peculiar look when Bud had first tried to open the saloon door, for instance. Did that mean anything more than a natural enmity toward a Meadowlark man and a malicious satisfaction in knowing that the door was locked? According to his own voluntary statement at the inquest, Palmer had just come from the bank where he had made a deposit of five thousand dollars, the price of a herd of cattle which he had sold to the Government for the Indians; so he said, and two men present had borne out the statement regarding the sale. The pass book which he exhibited showed the amount, in Charlie's meticulous figures—perhaps the last he had written. Palmer, of course, couldn't have robbed the bank, for Bud felt sure that Charlie had not been dead so long when he discovered him. The locking of the saloon door might have been a suspicious circumstance, but there also Bud felt baffled by the plausibility of the incident. Steve Godfrey frequently "bought" whatever place he chanced to celebrate in after a sale of stock that made him feel rich for a day or two. He too had sold cattle for use on the reservation. Buying a place in which to entertain all the loose men in town was merely a figurative purchase, meaning that all drinks were free for an hour or two, and that Steve would pay double for everything and waken next morning with a head the size of a barrel—according to his belief—and would forswear strong drink for a month or two thereafter. No, Bud decided, the locking of the Elkhorn door had been merely a coincidence that facilitated the murder and robbery. But there was the mysterious incident of the four shod horses which had no riders, galloping out across the river to mingle unrecognizably with the herd on the high plateau, mostly saddle horses and half-broken bronchos turned loose after the spring round-up to fatten on the sweet bunch grass of the higher ground until September brought shipping time and another strenuous season of work. The Meadowlark horses had grazing grounds across the river, and so had several other outfits. Bud had not won close enough to read the brands on the herd which the four had joined, but he felt certain that they were not Meadowlark horses. Indeed, he could recognize their own herd as far as he could distinguish the individual animals. But why had four riderless horses left the outskirts of town at that particular time and scurried out across the range to the west? To hide for a time the route taken by the robbers, Bud was certain; and admitted that it was a clever ruse, spoiled only by the quick action he himself had taken. Or had the robbers ridden the horses out of town and turned them loose to seek their own herd later on, hiding themselves and their saddles in some rocky gulch where the tracks would not show? Bud wished that he had thought of that sooner, though it seemed a far-fetched possibility. Then there was Bat Johnson, a Palmer man and the only person Bud had seen in the vicinity of the bank. But Bat had made no attempt to escape, and he had volunteered the information about the horses that crossed the river. Bat had not taken the trail through the dry wash back of town where the four horses must have been concealed, because, as he explained at the inquest, his pack horse was barefooted, which Bud knew was the truth. The wash was gravel and loose rocks, and Bat had taken the longer trail through the sand grass and the willows. According to his statement to Bud and at the inquest, Bat had a glimpse of the horses moving out of sight among the willows near the ford, and had taken it for granted that riders bestrode them. But his pack horse, a little pinto, was hard to lead at the beginning of a trip, and Bat had been busy arguing the matter—Bat's side of the argument being the end of the lead rope or a quirt, Bud shrewdly guessed. "I guess that lets him out," Bud muttered finally. "And I can't sleuth it out to-night. But there's another day coming. Marge will have to be blindfolded, I expect, to get her into what we'll have to call a schoolroom. Hm-m-m. Asked me where the town is, when we started down the pass. Wonder what time Lark wants to start in the morning? Have to explain to Lightfoot what a horse is, in the morning, and initiate him into the mysteries of a saddle. I like that geezer, somehow. He's the stuff, even if he is green. Wel-l—I guess I'll go to bed." This, merely to show you that Bud could smile into a pretty girl's eyes and still keep his head clear for other things, and go about his business untroubled by dreams and fancies. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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