The Sheriff of Badger Part 25

Steve Moffatt broke jail here yesterday. Gone over the Border.

This, also, Lafe handed to his wife.

"Doggone his fat head," he said. "Why couldn't he wait? Let somebody else catch him. My successor can do that."

"Of course," she answered, sighing happily. "You'll never be bothered with him again."

"Never no more," said the sheriff, not knowing what the years would bring.

Although it was ten o'clock when they finished their meal, both insisted on setting out for their new home in Hope Canon.

"Don't go to-night. You can stay with me," said the Widow Brown.

"There's lots of room. Or wait--I'll move out. You'll be more comfortable all alone."

"No, thank you, ma'am," answered the sheriff. "I know the trail like I do the path from your front gate. We'll be there in two hours."

So they set out through the languorous dark. Lafe drove easily with one hand.

CHAPTER XXV

JOHNSON BECOMES BOSS OF THE ANVIL

The Johnsons went to live at Lafe's place beyond the Willows, in Hope Canon. And there they occupied a frame house on the crest of a knoll. It was an ideal locality for a bridal couple, privacy being its most p.r.o.nounced feature. For n.o.body else lived in the Canon and their nearest neighbors were the citizens of Badger, fourteen miles distant, beyond a swelling valley and a fringe of hills.

Hetty was so busy making habitable the three bare rooms of the home, that the days were as minutes to her and the weeks took wings. It was absolutely amazing what she achieved with two tables, a packing case, six chairs, a bureau and some mats and window curtains--all these freighted from Badger in a wagon. No room of the three gave the appearance of having been slighted. In lieu of pictures, she contrived to bestow brightness to the walls by tacking up covers from magazines, and solid comfort was afforded by bunks built in corners of two of the rooms. They were draped with Navajo blankets and Hetty had constructed them herself of substantial oak, Lafe being an indifferent carpenter and immensely impatient of it. After the manner of his kind he hated any task that could not be done on horseback. That Hetty had a taste for show cannot be denied, because the bed in her room was hung with mosquito netting in the shape of a canopy, and there was a wondrous blue coverlet. Indeed, it was fit for a royal couch.

To a bachelor of long standing, adjustment to married life brings with it certain brain shocks and sudden vistas. It is constantly unfolding surprises that burst on his vision as wonders. So many s.h.i.+fts of their household arrangements struck Lafe as unique that he could not forbear mention of them to his friends in Badger--with the air of a discoverer, confident that nothing like this had ever been done or attempted before in history. Whereupon they would emit merry jeers and the older men would a.s.sure him that he would soon be harness-broken.

But the greatest change was in his outlook on life, in the new perspective and the new responsibilities that the married state opened to him. A year before, the sheriff would have chafed at any restraint which prohibited enjoyment with his friends after the fas.h.i.+on of the country. Now, he willingly abandoned all his former boon companions whom he chanced to meet, and did not do it with a sense of righteousness for having lived up to his duty, but cheerfully, gladly, because their companions.h.i.+p seemed now stale and flat and purposeless. And he was always anxious to get home.

"Don't you lose none of them parcels, sheriff," they would chaff, standing on the sidewalk to watch Johnson tie his purchases to the saddle.

"Has she done begun to cut your hair yet, Lafe?" another inquired.

Johnson would grin comfortably, and with an "Adios, you fellers," ride off towards Hope Canon. Invariably he brought a present for Hetty.

Everything pretty that he saw struck him as a possible gift for her, so that their home waxed in comfort.

In his blighted days of singleness, Lafe had often taken hearty amus.e.m.e.nt out of the simple fact that some among his married friends were obliged to rise at unearthly hours in order to light fires and do household ch.o.r.es which he considered to be within the feminine province.

On the first mornings of their residence in the new home, he performed these tasks as a loving attention. Of course, ever after he had to do them as a duty. Once a man does a thing, he establishes a precedent which a conscientious individual finds it hard to break--but, bless you, Lafe would never have permitted Hetty to do jobs of this sort, that were within his own powers of performance. So he helped cheerily as dishwasher and a.s.sistant housemaid, this gunfighting sheriff of Badger.

Yet Lafe did not emerge wholly scatheless from the ill customs of a lifetime. On a day, old man Horne sent him to Badger in company of a cattle buyer, with whom Horne was making a deal that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars. And his orders were that Johnson was to get the buyer drunk and keep him in that enviable condition as long as he could.

This is considered legitimate in the cow country and "good business."

Lafe did so. And in the course of his enthusiastic labors, he took on a cargo which he found some difficulty in storing. The night of his return, Johnson, as he rode up Hope Canon, sang a ditty which were best forgotten by a respectable married man.

The house was in darkness, and when he would have entered their bedroom, he found the door locked.

"This ain't no time to get mad," Lafe said warily, winking into the dark, and went to sleep on one of the bunks.

Next morning his appet.i.te for breakfast was far below normal, but he kept Hetty busy boiling coffee.

"What was the trouble last night?" he had the brazenness to ask.

"I knew there was something the matter when I saw that note you sent from town by the boy," said Hetty, "and I didn't want to see you. What I don't know won't hurt me much, I reckon."

Lafe was feeling very shaky, and looked up at her from his plate with marked shamefacedness.

"It won't never happen again," he promised, and Hetty came around behind his chair and put her arms about his neck.

"You've been a pretty good boy," she whispered, "but, oh, Lafe, I just couldn't bear to see you. That's why I locked the door."

Johnson took to his cow work with much zest. The Anvil range was a huge domain, a kingdom in itself. The bawling of Horne's calves sounded from the 108th to the 111th meridian of longitude and the Anvil steers grazed a thousand hills. Much of this land was free range, the property of the American people; but Horne controlled it by owning all the water-holes, and defended his rights by the iron hand. In addition to the free gra.s.s, he had some hundreds of thousands of acres under fence, which was his by purchase of Spanish grants--a portion of it on the other side of the Border.

To be boss of the Anvil, then, meant something. Directly and indirectly, Lafe had two hundred men under him. Fifty of these were cowboys; the others were employed as windmill hands, as farmers to grow feed for the cattle in winter, and as laborers to put up new fences, corrals and division camps, for Horne was laying out the range on his own lines.

Johnson chose his outfit with considerable shrewdness. He was a keen judge of men and knew cattle from horn to hoof and beyond to the stock yards. Therefore the Anvil riders were famed in the land as expert cowmen. Ability to ride or dexterity with the rope did not win a cowboy a place with the Anvil. He took those who best understood the science of the range. Most of them were Texans, and men of mature years.

"The northern boys make better busters," he told Horne. "Take 'em all in all and they can beat our boys riding. But they don't know cattle like these longhorn Texans do. No, sir; it takes our southern boys to know how to handle cattle."

Thus did Lafe make a propitious start and win respect. And the months went by, and the two in Hope Canon were ridiculously happy.

Unruffled happiness cannot endure for long. Perhaps it would pall if it did. A thing, to be deemed precious, must have contrasts to establish its value. So there entered into the wedded life of the Johnsons its first severe jar.

CHAPTER XXVI

ENTERS TROUBLE

"You'll know her because she has yellow hair and gray, gray eyes and her clothes fit," said Mrs. Horne. "Besides, n.o.body else will get off."

"How'll we know they fit her?" Lafe asked. "Suppose they shouldn't happen to fit her right snug, ma'am, we'll leave her at The Tanks?"

"She'll be on the last car," said Mrs. Horn "Remember--yellow hair and gray eyes. Judith walks like this."

With these directions, Mrs. Horn sent Johnson to The Tanks to meet the Burro express. It was called that by the spa.r.s.e population of the region in a spirit of levity: a burro will pause to graze on the least excuse and takes joy in lying down with his pack.

It was twenty-seven miles from the ranch to The Tanks, and Manuel would follow with a buckboard and mule team, since it was manifestly absurd to expect Mrs. Vining to make the journey horseback. Lafe was much elated to be chosen for this mission and invited me to accompany him.

"Miz Horne," said he, "wouldn't send a greenhorn. No, sir; she wants somebody who'll look like something in decent company. Say, if I get any stronger with ol' Horne, he'd ought to raise me. Don't you reckon?"

Cheered by the prospect, he began a monologue to his horse, a habit Mr.