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Meadowlark Basin

<h2>CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO</h2> <h3>EAVESDROPPER</h3> Five days may not seem long as a rule, but Bud's nerves were ragged with the strain of searching foot by foot the likely places along the trail Butch Cassidy had taken; with eating just enough to allay the sharpest hunger pangs, and with sleeping where dark overtook him, with no pillow save his saddle—which is mighty uncomfortable even though it may sound picturesque to those who have not tried it. Bob grew daily more lugubrious, but Bud began to talk rather wildly of riding again to the Frying Pan, getting Butch Cassidy by the throat and choking the truth out of him—a reckless notion which appealed to him more and more as the fruitless quest continued. He began to imagine how it would seem to go galloping up the lane, meet Butch and lash out at him with biting words until they fought. A vengeful dream that grew upon him. On this fifth day Bob had ridden early to the Basin for more food; the baked ham being no more than a wistful memory, the cookies likewise and the four loaves of bread a dwindling, dried-out fragment. It was insufferably hot down in the canyon where he was dispiritedly searching the craggy walls for safe hiding places and thinking, among other things, that the country between Palmer's ranch and the Frying Pan held places of concealment for all the gold coin the world contains. Probably he was right. There surely was an ungodly amount of rough ledges and cliffs and heaped bowlders along the route indicated by the occasional hoofprints they identified as Butch's horse. In five days they had covered perhaps twice as many miles. Off to the southwest a ragged blue-brown ridge of storm clouds crept slowly over the high peaks. A swashing rain would render their quest more hopeless still, for they would lose the tracks that now guided them sketchily from gully to bare ridge perhaps and into another canyon. The outlook was not cheerful, and the heat radiating from the rocks became unbearable. It was then that Bud, climbing to a promising splinter of rock thrust upward like a crude needle from the broken ledge beneath it, sighted the cool, still pool sunk between banks of rock and gravel so that from the canyon floor it was invisible. Some sunken stream had risen there for a look at the sky, perhaps. Bud gave a hoarse whoop, forgetting caution in his sudden joy, and immediately began to climb down as eagerly as if he had sighted the gold. The frivolous buckskin had long since lost all desire for prancing or taking the steep hills in jackrabbit leaps. He stood half asleep in the shade of a rock, with trickles of sweat running down thigh and shoulder; a tamed horse that had learned to conserve his energy and put aside his play. Bud mounted and rode to the pool though it was almost within pistol range. Side by side he and the buckskin drank their fill before Bud stripped and went into it in a long, clean dive from a rock thrust up into the sunshine and so hot it curled his toes with pain during the few seconds he stood there poised for the jump. The water was cold, the shock to his fevered skin a gorgeous sensation of sheer physical thrill. Bud went deep, tilted and shot to the surface and spouted happily, the cobwebs washed from his brain, the gnawing rancor from his soul. For the moment at least he was his normal, care-free self; hungry, but enjoying to the full this glorious swimming pool set apart from the haunts of men, passed by a dozen times or a hundred, perhaps, without discovery. And then, swimming and diving, floating and treading water and splashing in pure devilment, he heard some one laugh; a chuckling sort of subdued cackle which Bud knew quite well. By treading water and craning his neck he could see the spot where he had left his clothes, and Butch was there, sitting with his knees drawn up and his ungloved hands clasped around them, smoking and grinning between puffs, with his hat pushed back on his head and the knot of his neckerchief askew under his ear—where he would maybe wear a knot of another kind one day, Bud thought balefully. Butch looked a very good sort of fellow, a pal perhaps who had no whim for a bath that day. But he was not at all like that when he spoke. "Divin' for it, Bud?" he fleered. "Better claw around there on the bottom, why don't yuh? Gold sinks, yuh know; or don't yuh? I savvy you've had lots of schoolin', but that don't mean you got good sense. What time yuh expect Bob back with the grub? Oughta be showin' up, now, most any time. I heard him say when he left he'd git here b'fore three o'clock. It's way past that now, by the sun." He squinted upward, then spat reflectively toward the pool. "Of course you'll stay and eat with us," Bud invited urbanely. "Bob promised to bring some fresh eggs and a couple of chickens." "Yeah, I know he did. I heard 'im." Butch's narrow, light blue eyes were studying Bud's black head, sleek as a wet muskrat, with some curiosity. He had expected a blasphemous series of epithets—and, fifteen minutes sooner, he probably would have heard them. He had not reckoned upon the steadying effect of that cold plunge. "Then of course you'll stay." (Privately, Bud was certain that Butch was not to be shaken off before he had accomplished his purpose; and, frankly, Bud believed that murder was his purpose.) "Might, seein' you insist. I'm purty well hooked up with grub, but my kew-seen don't include chicken. How yuh goin' to cook it, Bud?" "Broil mine—and rub it with butter, salt and pepper now and then. How you want yours?" "Sounds good t' me. I'll take the same." To gain time for thought, Bud curved in his body and dived, expecting that he would come up to meet a .45 slug somewhere in his brain; between the eyes, he guessed—since Butch was called a good shot. As may be surmised, Bud did considerable thinking under water, but he could not think of anything better than he was already doing, since his manner was puzzling Butch and what puzzled Butch Cassidy also worried him. Still, he might shoot, and there was just one way to find out. Bud came up, shook the water from his eyes and saw that Butch was apparently much interested in the pinned-back hatbrim. "Where'd yuh make the raise, Bud? I been kinda curious about that pin." Bud hesitated. There is a fiction that two men must never let a good woman's name pass between them, but there was nothing secret about the pin—except before Marge. Every cowpuncher who went to dances in that country should have recognized it. "Grandma Parker's," he lied shortly, and dived again as if he enjoyed diving. When he came up, Butch had laid aside the hat and was looking speculatively at Bud. "'Course, I could shoot yuh," he mused aloud. "Lots a things I could do. S'pose it'll be a bullet. Ain't yuh about ready to come out? Bob'll likely be startin' supper 'bout now. Come awn—git into yore clothes." Butch spoke as he would have admonished a small boy. Because there was nothing else that he could do Bud came out of the pool, nipping over the hot gravel to where his clothes lay in a heap ten feet from where Butch sat smoking. Butch had moved while Bud was under water, and Bud's gun and belt had moved with him; also Bud's big clasp knife that was useful for so many things. Bud dressed as unconcernedly as if the man sitting there in the shade had been Bob. Butch spun Bud's hat to him—without the cameo pin,—and eyed Bud sharply when he picked it up and looked at the flopping brim with the two blackened pinholes. Bud looked up at him, his eyes black with anger. "Pretty small, Butch! I knew you were a thief, but I did have some respect for you for taking a chance, anyway. A stunt like this is so low-down you'd have to climb a ladder to scratch a snake on the belly!" He stared a moment longer and put on his hat. To move toward Butch would have been one way of committing suicide, and even in anger Bud was no fool. "Yeah—one more reason why I'll kill yuh, Bud. Some day." Butch got up, dusting off his trousers with downward sweeps of his palms—close to his gun, Bud saw with a curl of the lip. "Yes? Well, you'll have to go some unless you play safe and do it now." "I'll be willin' t' go when the time comes," Butch retorted. "Move awn—my mouth's waterin' fer chicken." They moved on, Bud in the lead. Lark's rifle, he saw, was gone from the saddle. A foolish thing he had done, and a costly, to go swimming in that pool as carelessly as if he were down in the Basin pasture. He could find no excuse for it in his belief that he had the hills to himself that day. After so long a time he and Bob had both come to the conclusion that Kid Kern was watching Butch so closely that there would be no attempt made at present to retrieve the loot, and that they were therefore perfectly safe to search where they would. At Butch's command, Bud dismounted some distance from the spring where they had made a makeshift camp. They approached the place on foot and so came upon Bob when he was least looking for callers, the supposition being that Bud would search until close to sundown before coming to camp. It was Butch's casual tones that brought Bob facing them in blank astonishment. "I got a gun ag'inst Bud's backbone," Butch announced in a cheerful, conversational manner. "He'll git it, right plumb through the liver, first crooked move you make. Toss yore gun into the spring. It won't hurt the water none." "Get him if you can, Bob," Bud countermanded. "Let the damned skunk shoot if he wants to; he will, anyway." Bob looked at Bud, glanced over his shoulder into Butch's narrowed eyes, drew his gun and threw it into the spring with a muttered oath. Butch grinned. "Got a knife? Throw that in too. All right, boys, let's go awn and have that chicken dinner. I an' Bud's been talkin' about it all the way over." "'Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred thereby,'" Bud quoted under his breath with a grim humor not lost upon Butch, who overheard him. "Nh-nh. This is goin' to be stalled chicken an' hatred thereby," he drawled. "An' I bet a dollar I'll hate harder 'n the both of yuh put t'gether. Wanta bet?" The two ignored him and set about cooking their dinner, knowing that Butch would kill the man who made a hostile motion. "Lessee. This is the first time you've had a fire sence you been down here," Butch observed pleasantly. "I'd a dropped in awn yuh b'fore, but it looked like purty slim pickin's. Then this mornin' I heard Bob say chicken, so I plumb knowed you was goin' to have comp'ny fer dinner." "Say-ay," drawled Bob, after further small talk of the sort, "I'd ruther be shot than talked t' death, Butch." "Yeah—but I'd ruther talk," Butch grinned. "Pass over the pepper 'nd salt, will yuh, Bud?" "Certainly," said Bud politely, though his eyes were murderous. They ate and were filled, but two of the trio did not enjoy the meal. Butch persisted in desultory talk, friendly on the surface but with a sting beneath. Now and then Bob grunted, while Bud relapsed into absolute silence. "Can't figure out no way that'll work, Bud," Butch told him impudently, when the three were smoking afterwards—Butch performing nonchalantly the art of rolling and lighting a cigarette almost entirely with one hand. "Y' see, in the first place, I got yore guns. Y' won't jump me, so that lets you out. Anyway, I got t' be goin' in a minute. Main reason I give m'self an invite to supper was t' tell you fellers I'm shore tickled at the way yo're combin' these canyons. Y' see, I dunno but what yuh might run onto somethin' way yo're goin' about it, you shore ain't leavin' no stones unturned. "When you've crawled all over these hills, mebbe you'll believe what I told yuh over to the Fryin' Pan, Bud; that I never got no money over to Palmer's place. Still, I dunno. Yo're so damn' pig-headed you won't believe nothin' you don't want to. Well, go ahead an' look. Look yore damn' eyes out, fer all me. You won't find nothin'. An' don't fergit I'll be right there, close hand by, all the time. So-long—shore enjoyed that chicken!" While he talked, Butch had backed toward the bushes that grew near. At the last moment he drew something from his shirt pocket, looked at it, gave a snort of scornful amusement and tossed the object so that it fell between Bud's feet. Then he disappeared. Bud stooped, picked up the cameo pin and turned it absent-mindedly in his fingers. His sign of the Golden Arrow. The red blood of youth crept upward and dyed his cheeks at the thought of the ignominy he would have suffered had he been obliged to go and confess to Bonnie Prosser that he had lost her pin; that Butch Cassidy had taken it away from him! In the pressure of events since that day when he had ridden blithely across the reservation with the cameo pin worn proudly above his forehead, he had not thought so much about it. He had fancied himself invulnerable to the young archer's barbed darts. Now—now he was suddenly aware of a great hunger, a longing that engulfed even his hatred for Butch. "Hell!" said Bob, thinking of his gun lying at the bottom of the spring. "Hunh?" said Bud, thinking that he had time in plenty to ride to Prosser's ranch before dark. "Hell, you damn' fool!" Bob looked at him with his mouth drawn down at the corners like a child about to cry. "Oh, sure," Bud agreed, without having the faintest idea of what had been said. Bob's mouth opened, closed again very slowly. He was staring from Bud's face to the brooch in Bud's hand, and at the fingers softly caressing the carved face of the woman. "Looks like her," said Bob with much sarcasm. "A—a little." Bud's forefinger closed tenderly upon the profile. "Say, come out of it!" growled Bob. "What about Butch?" "Butch? Why, Butch will get killed if he crosses my trail again. Why?" Young Bud's eyes turned surprisedly toward Bob. "Goin' to keep up the hunt, knowin' he's p'pared to jump us the minute we find it?" "Why, sure! You don't think Butch cuts any figure with me, do you?" (Plenty of time—and he could get there before dark, if he hurried.) "No—'course he don't!" cried a mocking voice somewhere among the rocks. Bud started, closed his fingers upon the brooch and turned toward the voice. The softness had left his eyes, which snapped with their old fire. "You know it, Butch! You heard what I said." Strange how the flinging of that cameo pin at his feet brought Bonnie so vividly before him that even his quarrel with Butch seemed irrelevant, a matter of secondary importance. Now he knew that the illuminating truth had come upon him at the pool when he picked up his hat and saw that the brooch was gone. It was like losing Bonnie herself—and of course he had always known, deep in his heart, that he meant never to lose Bonnie Prosser out of his life; that some day—but the time of easy assurance was past, and it had taken the rough hand of Butch Cassidy to tear away the film from his eyes, just as he had torn the pin from Bud's hat. "See you later, Butch!" he called defiantly, and started on a run for his horse. "Yeah—yo're damn' right!" Butch's mocking laughter followed him, echoed and was flung back again and again from the farther wall of the canyon. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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