When A Man's A Man Part 21

"That must have been this same Horse Wash that we're following now,"

replied Phil; "it widens out a bit below here. What makes you think it was Nick and Joe?"

"Why, those fellows up there look like the two that I saw, one big one and one rather lightweight. They were the same distance from me, you know, and--yes--I am sure those are the same horses."

"Pretty good, Patches, but you ought to have reported it when you got home."

"Why, I didn't think it of any importance."

"There are two rules that you must follow, always," said the cowboy, "if you are going to learn to be a top hand in this business. The first is: to see everything that there is to see, and to see everything about everything that you see. And the second is: to remember it all. I don't mind telling you, now, that Jim Reid found a calf, fresh-branded with the Tailholt iron, that same afternoon, in that same neighborhood; and that, on our side of the drift fence, he ran onto a Cross-Triangle cow that had lost her calf. There come our friends now."

The two hors.e.m.e.n were riding down the side of the hill at an angle that would bring about the meeting which Phil had foreseen. And Patches immediately broke the first of the two rules, for, while watching the riders, he did not notice that his companion loosened his gun in its holster.

Nick Cambert was a large man, big-bodied and heavy, with sandy hair, and those peculiar light blue eyes which do not beget confidence. But, as the Tailholt Mountain men halted to greet Phil, Patches gave to Nick little more than a pa.s.sing glance, so interested was he in the big man's companion.

It is doubtful if blood, training, environment, circ.u.mstances, the fates, or whatever it is that gives to men individuality, ever marked a man with less manhood than was given to poor Yavapai Joe. Standing erect, he would have been, perhaps, a little above medium height, but thin and stooped, with a half-starved look, as he slouched listlessly in the saddle, it was almost impossible to think of him as a matured man.

The receding chin, and coa.r.s.e, loosely opened mouth, the pale, lifeless eyes set too closely together under a low forehead, with a ragged thatch of dead, mouse-colored hair, and a furtive, sneaking, lost-dog expression, proclaimed him the outcast that he was.

The big man eyed Patches as he greeted the Cross-Triangle's foreman.

"Howdy, Phil!"

"h.e.l.lo, Nick!" returned Phil coldly. "Howdy, Joe!"

The younger man, who was gazing stupidly at Patches, returned the salutation with an unintelligible mumble, and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

"You folks at the Cross-Triangle short of horses?" asked Nick, with an evident attempt at jocularity, alluding to the situation of the two men, who were riding one horse.

"We got mixed up with a bull back yonder," Phil explained briefly.

"They can sure put a horse out o' the game mighty quick sometimes,"

commented the other. "I've lost a few that way myself. It's about as far from here to my place as it is to Baldwin's, or I'd help you out. You're welcome, you know."

"Much obliged," returned Phil, "but we'll make it home all right. I reckon we'd better be moving, though. So long!"

"Adios!"

Throughout this brief exchange of courtesies, Yavapai Joe had not moved, except to puff at his cigarette; nor had he ceased to regard Patches with a stupid curiosity. As Phil and Patches moved away, he still sat gazing after the stranger, until he was aroused by a sharp word from Nick, as the latter turned his horse toward Tailholt Mountain. Without changing his slouching position in the saddle, and with a final slinking, sidewise look toward Patches, the poor fellow obediently trailed after his master.

Patches could not resist the impulse to turn for another look at the wretched shadow of manhood that so interested him.

"Well, what do you think of that pair?" asked Phil, breaking in upon his companion's preoccupation.

Patches shrugged his shoulders much as he had done that day of his first experience with the screwworms; then he said quietly, "Do you mind telling me about them, Phil?"

"Why, there's not much to tell," returned the cowboy. "That is, there's not much that anybody knows for certain. Nick was born in Yavapai County. His father, old George Cambert, was one of the kind that seems honest enough, and industrious, too, but somehow always just misses it.

They moved away to some place in Southern California when Nick was about grown. He came back six years ago, and located over there at the foot of Tailholt Mountain, and started his Four-Bar-M iron; and, one way or another, he's managed to get together quite a bunch of stock. You see, his expenses don't amount to anything, scarcely. He and Joe bach in an old shack that somebody built years ago, and they do all the riding themselves. Joe's not much force, but he's handier than you'd think, as long as there's somebody around to tell him what to do, and sort of back him up. Nick, though, can do two men's work any day in the year."

"But it's strange that a man like Nick would have anything to do with such a creature as that poor specimen," mused Patches. "Are they related in any way?"

"n.o.body knows," answered Phil. "Joe first showed up at Prescott about four years ago with a man by the name of Dryden, who claimed that Joe was his son. They camped just outside of town, in some dirty old tents, and lived by picking up whatever was lying around loose. Dryden wouldn't work, and, naturally, no one would have Joe. Finally Dryden was sent up for robbing a store, and Joe nearly went with him. They let him off, I believe, because it was proved pretty well that he was only Dryden's tool, and didn't have nerve enough to do any real harm by himself. He drifted around for several months, living like a stray cur, until Nick took him in tow. Nick treats him shamefully, abuses him like a beast, and works him like a slave. The poor devil stays on with him because he doesn't know what else to do, I suppose."

"Is he always like we saw him to-day?" asked Patches, who seemed strangely interested in this bit of human drift. "Doesn't he ever talk?"

"Oh, yes, he'll talk all right, when Nick isn't around, or when there are not too many present. Get off somewhere alone with him, after he gets acquainted a little, and he's not half such bad company as he looks. I reckon that's the main reason why Nick keeps him. You see, no decent cow-puncher would dare work at Tailholt Mountain, and a man gets mighty lonesome living so much alone. But Joe never talks about where he came from, or who he is; shuts up like a clam if you so much as mention anything that looks like you were trying to find out about him. He's not such a fool as he looks, either, so far as that goes, but he's always got that sneaking, coyote sort of look, and whatever he does he does in that same way."

"In other words," commented Patches thoughtfully, "poor Joe must have someone to depend on; taken alone he counts no more than a cipher."

"That's it," said Phil. "With somebody to feed him, and think for him, and take care of him, and be responsible for him, in some sort of a way, he makes almost one."

"After all, Phil," said Patches, with bitter sarcasm, "poor Yavapai Joe is not so much different from hundreds of men that I know. By their standards he should be envied."

Phil was amazed at his companion's words, for they seemed to hint at something in the man's past, and Patches, so far as his reticence upon any subject that approached his own history, was always as silent as Yavapai Joe himself.

"What do you mean by that?" Phil demanded. "What sort of men do you mean?"

"I mean the sort that never do anything of their own free wills; the sort that have someone else to think for them, and feed them, and take care of them and take all the responsibility for what they do or do not do. I mean those who are dependents, and those who aspire to be dependent. I can't see that it makes any essential difference whether they have inherited wealth and what we call culture, or whether they are poverty-stricken semi-imbeciles like Joe; the principle is the same."

As they dismounted at the home corral gate, Phil looked at his companion curiously. "You seem mighty interested in Joe," he said, with a smile.

"I am," retorted Patches. "He reminds me of--of some one I know," he finished, with his old, self-mocking smile. "I have a fellow feeling for him, the same as you have for that wild horse, you know. I'd like to take him away from Nick, and see if it would be possible to make a real man of him," he mused, more to himself than to his companion.

"I don't believe I'd try any experiments along that line, Patches,"

cautioned Phil. "You've got to have something to build on when you start to make a man. The raw material is not in Joe, and, besides," he added significantly, "folks might not understand."

Patches laughed bitterly. "I have my hands full now."

The next morning the foreman said that he would give that day to the horses he was training, and sent Patches, alone, after the saddle and bridle which they had left near the scene of the accident.

"You can't miss finding the place again," he said to Patches; "just follow up the wash. You'll be back by noon--if you don't try any experiments," he added laughing.

Patches had ridden as far as the spot where he and Phil had met the Tailholt Mountain men, and was thirsty. He thought of the distance he had yet to go, and then of the return back to the ranch, in the heat of the day. He remembered that Phil had told him, as they were riding out the morning before, of a spring a little way up the small side canyon that opens into the main wash through that break in the ridge. For a moment he hesitated; then he turned aside, determined to find the water.

Riding perhaps two hundred yards into that narrow gap In the ridge, he found the way suddenly becoming steep and roughly strewn with boulders, and, thinking to make better time, left his horse tied to a bush in the shadow of the rocky wall, while he climbed up the dry watercourse on foot. He found, as Phil had said, that it was not far. Another hundred yards up the boulder-strewn break in the ridge, and he came out into a beautiful glade, where he found the spring, clear and cold, under a moss-grown rock, in the deep shade of an old gnarled and twisted cedar.

Gratefully he threw himself down and drank long and deep; then sat for a few moments' rest, before making his way back to his horse. The moist, black earth of the cuplike hollow was roughly trampled by the cattle that knew the spot, and there were well-marked trails leading down through the heavy growth of brush and trees that clothed the hillsides.

So dense was this forest growth, and so narrow the glade, that the sunlight only reached the cool retreat through a network of leaves and branches, in ever-s.h.i.+fting spots and bars of brightness. Nor could one see very far through the living screens.

Patches was on the point of going, when he heard voices and the sound of horses' feet somewhere above. For a moment he sat silently listening.

Then he realized that the riders were approaching, down one of the cattle trails. A moment more, and he thought he recognized one of the voices. There was a low, murmuring, whining tone, and then a rough, heavy voice, raised seemingly in anger. Patches felt sure, now, that he knew the speakers; and, obeying one of those impulses that so often prompted his actions, he slipped quietly into the dense growth on the side of the glade opposite the approaching riders. He was scarcely hidden--a hundred feet or so from the spring--when Nick Cambert and Yavapai Joe rode into the glade.

If Patches had paused to think, he likely would have disdained to play the part of a hidden spy; but he had acted without thinking, and no sooner was he concealed than he realized that it was too late. So he smiled mockingly at himself, and awaited developments. He had heard and seen enough, since he had been in the Dean's employ, to understand the suspicion in which the owner of the Four-Bar-M iron was held; and from even his few days' work on the range in company with Phil, he had come to understand how difficult it was for the cattlemen to prove anything against the man who they had every reason to believe was stealing their stock. It was the possibility of getting some positive evidence, and of thus protecting his employer's property, that had really prompted him to take advantage of the chance situation.

As the two men appeared, it was clear to the hidden observer that the weakling had in some way incurred his master's displeasure. The big man's face was red with anger, and his eyes were hard and cruel, while Joe had more than aver the look of a lost dog that expects nothing less than a curse and a kick.

Nick drank at the spring, then turned back to his companion, who had not dismounted, but sat on his horse cringing and frightened, trying, with fluttering fingers, to roll a cigarette. A moment the big man surveyed his trembling follower; then, taking a heavy quirt from his saddle, he said with a contemptuous sneer, "Well, why don't you get your drink?"

"I ain't thirsty, Nick," faltered the other.

"You ain't thirsty?" mocked the man with a jeering laugh. "You're lying, an' you know it. Get down!"

"Hones' to G.o.d, Nick, I don't want no drink," whimpered Joe, as his master toyed with the quirt suggestively.