The Cowpuncher (9 page)

Estaban’s face, underneath its coppery hue, went yellowish white. The tip of his tongue slithered out and licked his dry, cracked lips. He seemed to gulp for air. When he spoke, it was a bare, hoarse whisper.

“Estaban do,” he croaked.

“I knew I could depend on you,” Coleman crowed, triumphantly.

Impatiently, like a thoroughbred champing at the bit, Sue Doyle paced the wood-boarded station at Kansas City waiting for the train that would take her back to Stevens Gulch. To the Bar X Ranch she had left almost six weeks ago.

In her right hand, crumpled and wrinkled, was clenched a telegram which she nervously smoothed out and reread for the hundredth time. Again her hand jolted to her side and she resumed her nervous pacing, craning her neck from time to time to see if the train was in sight.

Almost six weeks had elapsed since Sue Doyle had set out in search of Huck Brannon, and a long, long time it seemed. Yet there was no change in her appearance. She was still the same long-limbed, amber-eyed, black-haired girl. Even steady disappointment had not been able to dim her radiance.

And she had been steadily disappointed until she returned to Kansas City and found the telegram from her father, waiting. That had set her feverishly stalking the platform. What a fool she’d been!

Acting on the opinion of the yardmaster that Chuck had headed East, she had boarded the first train in that direction and began a fruitless, aimless search. It had taken her through three states,
to an endless number of ranches, to mines and sometimes to saloons.

It had all been a waste of time. Not a single station master, nor rancher, nor mine foreman, nor saloonkeeper could definitely remember seeing a tall, black-haired, gray-eyed, well-knit Arizona cowpoke. A few thought they recognized the description and had added fuel to the flame of hope in Sue’s breast. But not once did she get a really definite lead. All hope had ended in failure. She shook her head as she remembered disappointment after disappointment.

She had begun to despair of ever finding trace of Huck. But she had persisted and run every lead, no matter how ambiguous, to the ground. It had never occurred to her to give up the search. Then she had decided one day that perhaps it was the yardmaster who had given her the wrong steer. Perhaps she should have headed West, rather than East. Maybe Huck had jumped a freight going in the opposite direction.

This thought had preyed on her mind, until she decided to start from the beginning again—at Kansas City—and go West. It was quite possible, she had reflected, that the yardmaster had been wrong.

Acting quickly on her decision she had taken the first train back to Kansas City. But she had not neglected to send a wire to her father advising him of her change of direction.

Arriving in Kansas City, she found a telegram addressed to her. She stopped pacing, for she just heard the engine’s whistle. It was finally coming.
Once more she smoothed out the yellowish piece of paper in her hand. It read:

DEAR SUE. COME HOME. FOUND YOUR MAN. LOVE.

FATHER

Swiftly the days passed. Lank reported progress from the mine. With amazing speed, Jaggers Dunn’s railroad builders shoved a line of track up the valley of the Apishapa. Dunn himself delayed an important trip East to supervise the work.

“Getting this coal right here on the Mountain Division will mean a saving to the road that can’t be estimated,” he told Huck Brannon. “We’ll be ready to shove your machinery a good ways up the valley by the time it arrives in Esmeralda. The boys are doing a fine job of work and not encountering any trouble.”

Huck Brannon, however,
was
encountering trouble. Day after day passed, and no word from Texas.

“I was plumb shore Wyatt Doyle, who owns the Bar X, would lend me the five thousand, under the circumstances,” he complained to Gaylord. “I worked for Doyle, you know. Doyle and my dad were mighty close friends back in the old days. Dad and he rode together in Arizona and New Mexico.

“Then Dad got married and Doyle shoved off into Texas, but they always kept track of each other. Old Ah Sing, Doyle’s Chinese cook, used to work for Dad before he lost his spread. Ah Sing just about raised me after Mom passed on when
I was six or thereabouts. When our spread busted up, Ah Sing went to the Bar X. He saved Doyle’s life one day, too.”

“How’s that, Huck?”

“Well, a passel of wideloopers rode up to the Bar X one day when the boys were all in town. They come looking for Doyle, him having hung a couple of their pals when he was deputy sheriff. They got the drop on him and started out to string him up. Decided to fill their bellies first, though, and set Ah Sing to rustling together a big kettle of stew.”

Huck paused to roll a quirly.

“And—” Old Tom prompted.

“And, Ah Sing emptied some strychnine he’d been using to poison wolves into the stew.”

“Cute feller!”

“Uh-huh, he is. Doyle told me he got almighty tired burying wideloopers that day.”

Gaylord shook his head sadly. “Awful waste o’ labor!” he commented. “Looks like Doyle woulda answered yore telegram, anyhow.”

“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. Well, it sure seems like I’ll have to try to get the dinero from the bank; and I figure they’ll charge me plenty for it.”

“Uh-huh, puhlenty!” Gaylord agreed dryly. “I un’stan’ that feller Coleman, the one you walloped the waddin’ outa, jest ‘bout owns the bank. I reckon he won’t want more’n a half-interest in the mine!”

“Whe-e-e-e-ew!” Huck stared at his partner. “You sure of that?”

Gaylord nodded somberly.

“And that machinery is due day after tomorrow!” Huck growled. “Tom, I gotta do some figuring!”

He was still figuring, with a jumble of figures that refused to come out right, the next day when Old Tom entered the office.

“Feller out here wants to see you—Chinese feller,” said Gaylord.

“I already gave my washing to the one across the street,” grunted Huck, frowning over his pencil.

“Mebbe he’s finished with it and’s deliverin’ it,” suggested Gaylord. “He’s got a big sack.”

“All right,” Huck sighed, fumbling in his pockets. “Send him in.”

Still staring at the paper before him, he heard slippered feet slither across the rough floor. He turned absently, and then leaped to his feet, his overturned chair crashing to the floor.

Across the desk were peering two beady black eyes set aslant in a yellow, wrinkled old face. The owner of eyes and face showed a line of gums in a toothless grin.

“H’lo, Huck,” he said in a voice like a rusty hinge. “Belly cold t’day, belly cold!”

After a moment of goggle-eyed astonishment, Huck found his voice.

“You yellow heathen!” he exclaimed, pumphandling the old Chinaman’s withered claw. “How many times have I told you if you’d tuck your shirt inside your pants like decent folks, your belly wouldn’t be cold! Where in blazes did you come from?”

Old Ah Sing, the Bar X cook, chuckled as he always
did at that ancient joke about his inability to properly pronounce v’s and r’s.

“Me come flom Texas,” he said.

“So I figure,” Huck agreed. “But what are you doing way up here?”

“You f’glet clothes when you no come back from Kansas City,” Ah Sing replied. “Me bling!”

He heaved a bulging sack to the top of the desk and loosened the pucker string. While Huck stared at him in slack-jawed amazement, he produced riding breeches, shiny high-heeled boots, well-worn shotgun chaps, shirts, silk handkerchiefs, a much crumpled Stetson broad of brim and dimpled of crown, and finally two long-barreled Colts with plain, serviceable handles and snugged into carefully worked and oiled cut-out holsters attached to a well filled home-made double cartridge belt.

Huck stared at the “workin’” clothes that had come back to him after this considerable period.

“Old Man send,” said Ah Sing.

“You mean to tell me Old Man Doyle sent you all the way up here with my outfit?” demanded the amazed cowboy.

“Can do,” admitted Ah Sing. He fumbled in the flattened sack and drew forth a securely wrapped package.

“Send this too,” he observed, laying it on the desk.

“What’s that?” wondered Huck.

“Fi’ thousand dollas—you count,” Ah Sing said blandly.

Dazedly Huck ripped open the package and exposed the stack of big bills.

“Oh, my gosh!” Old Tom Gaylord gurgled. “Send a Chinaman all the way from Texas with five thousand dollars in a sack of clothes!”

“Safe!” observed Ah Sing. “Nobody steal old clothes!”

“Reckon that’s right,” Gaylord admitted. “Feller, you ain’t no fool.”

“No,” agreed Ah Sing, “me cook.”

“Five thousand is correct,” said Huck, glancing up with shining eyes. “How is the Old Man—and everybody, Ah Sing?”

“Ev’body fine,” said the Chinaman.

Huck hesitated, then asked another question.

“How—how’s Sue—an’ Smoke? Smoke was my pet cuttin’ hoss,” he explained to Gaylord. “I set a heap of store by Smoke.”

Ah Sing chuckled again. “You come outside,” he invited.

Wondering, Huck obeyed. He stopped short at the door and for the third time stared in almost unbelief.

Standing by the stoop, complete with silver stamped bridle and huge Mexican saddle, was a tall horse of a peculiar gray-blue color.

His horse, Smoke. But what was more astounding and breathtaking to Huck, was that sitting straight-backed in the saddle—was Sue! Sue Doyle!

Huck blinked helplessly at Sue, who was smiling across at him; consciously he took a deep breath and his cheeks puckered and lips pursed.

“Hello, Huck.” Sue’s voice seemed to float from a great distance.

“Sue!” he cried, with a sharp intake of breath.

He was dimly aware of a heavy pulse pounding in his ears, and of a giddy lightheartedness that suddenly came to him. Then he galvanized into action.

He took the steps three at a time and passed Smoke, who stretched his glossy neck and wickered plaintively at the sight of the cowboy.

But for once Huck was impervious to the sight of his horse. It was the girl
on
the horse who held his attention.

Sue had slipped out of the saddle as he came down the steps and now Huck took her in his arms, almost without realizing what he was doing, and kissed her hard on the lips.

“Sue, darling,” he heard a voice say. It sounded like his own.

Almost in a daze he felt her respond, and heard her whisper:

“Huck, dear.” Then he heard her laugh. “Let me down, Huck,” she was saying. “Everyone is looking at us.”

Slowly he let her slide out of his arms, a red, telltale flush burning into his cheeks. He turned to find Lank Mason, Old Tom and Ah Sing grinning down at him from the porch. They made no pretense of hiding their delighted and rapt interest in the proceedings.

Embarassedly, Huck introduced his partners and friends to Sue Doyle. They eyed her with immediate approval; and with Old Tom, the swift approval grew to almost a fatherly fondness.

“So this here is the gal yuh been moonin’ over,” cried Mason gleefully, a smile cutting his face.
“Wal—I reckon I can’t say’s I blame yah. No sir, by heck—makes we wish I was twenty years younger myself.”

“Hold yore tongue, Mason,” Old Tom cried with pretended indignation. “What’s none of yore bus’ness is none of yore bus’ness.”

“I’m starved,” said Sue, relieving the situation for Huck, who was growing redder by the minute.

“C’mon, Lank,” said Old Tom. “We got a million things to attend to. Huck, why don’t yuh take Miss Doyle to the restaurant? Yuh heard her say she’s starvin’? ‘Pears to me if I heard a young lady—an’ a right purty one, too—say she’s hungry—I’d know what to do.”

Huck shook his head dazedly. He still couldn’t believe that Sue had come all the way out here to join him, and he was afraid to trust the obvious interpretation of her act. He couldn’t think of a thing to say or do except to follow Old Tom’s advice, and take Sue to a restaurant.

Before he did that, however, he answered the appeal in the luminous eyes of his horse, Smoke, whom he had almost forgotten until this moment. He stroked the gracefully arched neck; and in gratefulness, the big horse thrust a velvet muzzle into his hand and snorted his pleasure.

Matt Bird’s restaurant, the cleanest in Esmeralda, was virtually deserted when Huck and Sue entered. Now, seated opposite one another, eating the well-cooked meal Huck had ordered and Mat himself had served, Sue was chattering happily. And if she noticed any gaps in Huck’s conversation, she did not comment on it.

It was a strange silence that had paralyzed Huck’s tongue, so that he merely sat and gazed at the face he saw was flushed and lovely looking.

“I was mighty surprised to see you, Sue,” he said.

“Well,” she returned, “you don’t think Father was going to make a loan without sending someone to see to it that his interests were protected.”

“But I sent him my share in the mine, as security,” Huck protested.

“Of course you did, Huck,” said Sue. “Nevertheless, Dad wanted to make certain his money was used properly. So I came as his representative to make sure.” She laughed aloud as she saw his face darkening. “Oh, you’re such a goose, Huck. You know Dad would trust you without any security. As a matter of fact, he told me to give you back the assignment on your mine that you sent him.”

“Thanks.” Huck’s gray eyes gleamed and the crowsfeet lines of a smile webbed the corners of his eyes as he accepted the paper Sue held out.

“I really came with Ah Sing to bring the money to you,” Sue continued, “and besides, Dad thought I needed a vacation. So here I am.”

“But Smoke?” asked Huck. “How did you get him here?”

“We brought him in a box stall,” replied Sue. “I thought you might need him.”

“Don’t figure I’ll need him much up here,” Huck said, “but I’m glad you brought him.”

Little did Huck know that the time would soon come when he would need the big blue horse, and need him plenty!

When his tongue finally loosened, it was to ask about the Bar X Ranch. He hadn’t realized until now how he hungered for information—about the boys, about Doyle, about the place. But all the time his eyes were fastened on her face.

Sue satisfied him on all counts and also casually mentioned that she had been to Kansas City some time ago and heard that he had gotten into a little scrape there.

“Yes,” said Huck, his anxiety showing on his face. “I always wondered how that jigger I hit was doing. Always meant to find out, too, but I’ve been kinda busy—or maybe to tell the truth I just plumb forgot.”