The Texan Part 35

"You'll get them back," a.s.sured Endicott. "I am only borrowing them to go and hunt for a couple of friends of mine back there in the bad lands."

"Back in the bad lands! What do ye know about the bad lands? Ye'll git lost, an' then what'll happen to me? I'll die like a coyote in a trap! I'll starve here where no one comes along fer it's sometimes a week--mebbe two!"

"It will be a long time between meals if anything should happen to us, but it will do you good to lie here and think it over. We'll be back sometime." Endicott made the sack of provisions fast to the saddle of the lead-horse, and a.s.sisted Alice to mount.

"I'll kill ye fer this!" wailed the man; "I'll--I'll--" but the two rode away with the futile threats ringing in their ears.

CHAPTER XIX

THE END OF THE TRAIL

"How are we going to find them?" asked the girl, as the two drew their mounts to a stand on the top of a low ridge and gazed out over the sea of similar ridges that rolled and spread before them as far as the eye could reach in three directions--bare coulees, and barer ridges, with here and there a low bare hill, all black and red and grey, with studdings of mica flas.h.i.+ng in the rays of the afternoon sun.

"We'll find them. We've got to. I have just been thinking: Living on the edge of the bad lands the way this man does he must occasionally cross them. Tex said that the Split Rock water-hole was the only one between the river and the mountains. We'll start the horses out and give them their heads, and the chances are they will take us to the water-hole. In all probability Tex and Bat will be there. If they are not we will have to find them."

"Of course!" a.s.sented the girl. "Oh, Win, I'm so proud of you! I couldn't be any prouder if you were a--a real cowboy!" Endicott laughed heartily, and urged his horse forward. The animals crossed several low ridges and struck into a coulee which they followed unhesitatingly. When it petered out in a wide basin, they struck into another coulee, and continued their course, covering the miles at a long, swinging trot. At sundown Endicott reined in sharply and pointed to the northward. "It's the ridge of the Split Rock!" he cried; "and look, there is the soda hill!" There it was only a mile or two away--the long black ridge with the huge rock fragment at its end, and almost touching it, the high round hill that the Texan had described.

The horses pressed eagerly forward, seeming to know that rest and water were soon to be theirs. "I wonder if they are there," breathed the girl, "and I wonder if they are--all right."

A few minutes later the horses swung around the base of the hill and, with an exclamation of relief, Endicott saw two figures seated beside the detached fragment of rock that lay near the end of the ridge.

The Texan arose slowly and advanced toward them, smiling: "Good evenin'," he greeted, casually, as he eyed the pair with evident approval. "You sure come a-runnin'. We didn't expect you 'til along about noon tomorrow. And we didn't expect you at all," he said to the girl. "We figured you'd shove on to Timber City, an' then Win would get a guide an' come back in the mornin'."

Endicott laughed: "When I learned there was such a place as Timber City, I intended to leave her there and return alone--only I was not going to wait 'til morning to do it. But she wouldn't hear of it, so we compromised--and she came with me."

Tex smiled: "It's a great thing to learn how to compromise." He stared for a few moments toward the west, where the setting sun left the sky ablaze with fiery light. Then, still smiling, he advanced toward them with both hands extended: "I wish you luck," he said, softly. "I cared for you a mighty lot, Miss Alice, but I'm a good loser. I reckon, maybe it's better things worked out the way they did." Endicott pressed the outstretched hand with a mighty grip and turned swiftly away to fumble at his latigo strap. And there were tears in the girl's eyes as her fingers lingered for a moment in the Texan's grasp: "Oh, I--I'm sorry. I----"

"You don't need to be," the man whispered. "You chose the best of the two." He indicated Endicott with a slight jerk of the head. "You've got a real man there--an' they're oncommon hard to find. An' now, if you've got some grub along suppose we tie into it. I'm hungry enough to gnaw horn!"

As Alice proceeded to set out the food, the Texan's eyes for the first time strayed to the horses. "How much did Long Bill Kearney soak you for the loan of his saddle-horses?"

"Nothing," answered Endicott, "and he supplied us with the grub, too."

"He, what?"

"Fact," smiled the other, "he demurred a little, but----"

"Long Bill's the hardest character in Choteau County."

Endicott glanced at his swollen knuckles: "He is hard, all right."

Tex eyed him in amazement, "Win, you didn't--punch his head for him!"

"I did--and his stomach, too. We were nearly starved, and he refused us food. Told us to go back where we came from. So I reached for him and he dozed off."

"But where was his guns?"

"I took them away from him before I tied him up."

"Where is he now?"

"Tied up. He called me a lot of names because I turned the horses into his alfalfa. They were hungry and they enjoyed it, but Bill nearly blew up. Then we got dinner and took the horses and came away."

"You're the luckiest man out of h.e.l.l! You doggoned pilgrim, you!" Tex roared with laughter: "Why accordin' to dope, he'd ought to just et you up."

"He whined like a puppy, when we left him, for fear we would get lost and he would starve to death. He is yellow."

"His kind always is--way down in their guts. Only no one ever made him show it before."

"How far did we miss the water-hole last night?" asked Endicott, as he and Tex sat talking after the others had sought their blankets.

"About two miles. The wind drifted us to the east. Bat didn't get far 'til his horse went down, so he bled him like we did, and holed up 'til the storm quit. Then, after things cleared up, we got here about the same time. The water ain't much--but it sure did taste good." For a long time the two lay close together looking up at the million winking stars. Tex tossed the b.u.t.t of a cigarette into the grey dust. "She's a great girl, Win. Game plumb to her boot heels."

"She is, that. I've loved her for a long time--since way back in my college days--but she wouldn't have me."

"You hadn't earnt her. Life's like that--it's ups an' downs. But, in the long run, a man gets about what's comin' to him. It's like poker--in the long run the best player is bound to win. There's times when luck is against him, maybe for months at a stretch. He'll lose every time he plays, but if he stays with it, an' keeps on playin' the best he knows how, an' don't go tryin' to force his luck by drawin'

four cards, an' fillin' three-card flushes, why, some day luck will change an' he wins back all he's lost an' a lot more with it, because there's always someone in the game that's throwin' their money away drawin' to a Judson."

"What is a Judson?"

"Bill Judson was a major, an' next to playin' poker, he liked other things. Every time he'd get three cards of a suit in a row, he'd draw to 'em, hopin' for a straight flush. That hope cost him, I reckon, hundreds of dollars, an' at last he filled one--but, h.e.l.l! Everyone laid down, an' he gathered the ante." The Texan rolled another cigarette. "An' that's the way it is with me--I tried to force my luck. I might as well own up to it right here an' get it over with.

You've be'n square, straight through, an' I haven't. I was stringin'

you with all that bunk about politics, an' you bein' sure to get hung for shootin' Purdy. Fact is, the grand jury would have turned you loose as soon as your case come up. But, from the first minute I laid eyes on that girl, I wanted her. I'm bad enough, but not like Purdy.

I figured if she'd go half-way, I'd go the other half. So I planned the raid on the wool-warehouse, an' the fake lynchin', purpose to get her out of town. I didn't care a d.a.m.n about you--you was just an excuse to get her away. I figured on losing you after we hit the mountains. The first jolt I got was in the warehouse, when we didn't have to drag you out. Then I got another h.e.l.l of a one in the coulee under the cottonwoods. Then they got to comin' so thick I lost track of 'em. An' the first thing I knew I would have killed any man that would look crossways at _her_. It come over me all of a sudden that I loved her. I tried to get out of it, but I was hooked. I watched close, an' I saw that she liked me--maybe not altogether for what she thought I'd done for you. But you was in the road. I knew she liked you, too, though she wouldn't show it. 'Everything's fair in love or war,' I kept sayin' over an' over to myself when I'd lay thinkin' it over of nights. But, I knew it was a d.a.m.ned lie when I was sayin' it.

If you'd be'n milk-gutted, an' louse-hearted, like pilgrims are supposed to be, there'd be'n a different story to tell, because you wouldn't have be'n fit for her. But I liked you most as hard as I loved her. 'From now on it's a square game,' I says, so I made Old Man Johnson cough up that outfit of raiment, an' made you shave, so she wouldn't have to take you lookin' like a sheep-herdin' greaser, if she was a-goin' to take you instead of me. After that I come right out an'

told her just where I stood, an' from then on I've played the game square. The women ain't divided up right in this world. There ought to have be'n two of her, but they ain't another in the whole world, I reckon, like her; so one of us had to lose. An', now, seein' how I've lied you into all this misery, you ought to just naturally up an' knock h.e.l.l out of me. We'll still keep the game fair an' square. I'll throw away my gun an' you can sail in as quick as you get your sleeves rolled up. But, I doubt if you can get away with it, at that."

Endicott laughed happily, and in the darkness his hand stole across and gripped the hand of the Texan in a mighty grip: "I wish to G.o.d there was some way I could thank you," he said. "Had it not been for you, I never could have won her. Why, man, I never got acquainted with myself until the past three days!"

"There ain't any posses out," grinned Tex. "The fellow I met in the coulee there by Antelope b.u.t.te told me. They think you were lynched.

He told me somethin' else, too--but that'll keep."

As they were saddling up, the following morning, the Texan grinned: "I'll bet old Long Bill Kearney's in a pleasin' frame of mind."

"He's had time to meditate a little on his sins," answered Alice.

"No--not Long Bill ain't. If he started in meditatin' on them, he'd starve to death before he'd got meditated much past sixteen--an' he's fifty, if he's a day."

"There are four of us and only three horses," exclaimed Endicott, as he tightened his cinch.

"That's all right. The horses are fresh. I'm light built, an' we'll change off makin' 'em carry double. It ain't so far."

The morning sun was high when the horses turned into the coulee that led to Long Bill's ranch. Bat, who had scouted ahead to make sure that he had not succeeded in slipping his bonds and had plotted mischief, sat grinning beside the corral fence as he listened, un.o.bserved, to the whimpering and wailing of the man who lay bound beside the cabin door.

"What's the matter, Willie?" smiled Tex, as he slipped from his seat behind Endicott's saddle. "Didn't your breakfast set right?"