LARK DOES A LITTLE BRANDING
Lark stacked his cup and saucer in his breakfast plate, added knife, fork and spoon as range custom had taught him to do, and reached absently for his tobacco sack and papers. Maw was going to spoil the kid, he thought. Already she was mystifying him with a fascinating game of "Two-little-birds-set-on-a-hill," with bits of the inner lining of an eggshell pasted on her fore-fingers to represent the two little birds, and sending the kid into hilarious squeals when Jack and Jill flew away and returned again with incomprehensible facility.
"Maw," said Lark, as he drew a match sharply along the underside of his chair, "looks like that smallpox is about cured, right now. I'm goin' to Smoky Ford, and I might be late gettin' back. Anybody you don't like the looks of rides into the Basin, why, there's the shotgun loaded with buckshot. She kicks, so hold her tight to your shoulder and pull one trigger at a time. You'll find extra shells in my room, in the cupboard behind the door. Don't stand fer no monkey work, Maw. The boys ain't likely to get in with that bunch of cattle before to-morra, so it'll be you and Jake to hold the fort; and Bud—" His eyes went to the glum face of his handsome young nephew.
"I'll ride with you, if you're damn' fool enough to go hunting trouble," Bud stated calmly, pushing back his chair.
"If Bat Johnson comes here again, I'll shoot him," said the boy abruptly, ignoring Maw's little white birds while he stared across at Lark. "He's a mean devil. Meaner 'n gran'pa. He—he goes an' tells gran'pa everything. He's a mean old tattle-tale."
"Now, Lark," Maw began worriedly, "there ain't a mite of use in you going to town. Them men was scared off last night. You couldn't hire 'em to come here and run the risk—"
"That's where you're fooled, Maw. They'll be back, don't you fret—leave 'em alone. My old dad brought me up to meet trouble halfway down the trail and shootin' as I ride. It's a good way—only way I know anything about. The Meddalark's never learnt how to lie and dodge, Maw, and now's a pore time to begin, looks like to me. Last night don't set well with me; when you come to think it over, I'm the feller that's got to live with me the closest and the longest, Maw. I'd hate to have to live with a feller all my life that I was ashamed of." He smiled suddenly with a boyish grin. "You see, Maw, I kinda put a spoke in the wheel of destiny, and she's liable to bust something if she ain't watched till she hits her stride again.
"Son, yore fightin' days are yet to come. How about some more gumdrops? You be a good boy to-day, and mind what Maw tells you, and mebbe there'll be a bag of candy in my pocket when I git back. You betcha."
Maw rose and stood goblinlike behind the boy's chair, her face turned grayish under the tan.
"Larkie, I know that town better than you do. There's a mean, low-lived bunch hanging around that I wouldn't put nothing past. If you must go, wait till the boys come with the cattle so you can have help. Six of you won't be any too many to face Palmer's bunch, and what saloon loafers he can drum up in town. Lark, I know. I was there when that trouble with the Willis boys come up, and I know just what that mob is capable of when they've got somebody to stir 'em up. You wait, Larkie. Don't go and do anything foolish, like riding to Smoky Ford to-day, right when—" Her voice broke and she turned her back on them, wiping her eyes surreptitiously on her apron.
"I like the way you count me," Bud cried with thin cheerfulness. "Never mind, Maw. I can rope and throw Lark any time he gets to horning in where he shouldn't, and I promise you that he isn't going to pull open any hornet's nest just to see how it's made. And Lark's right about one thing, anyway. The best thing to do, now it's pretty well known where we stand, is to ride in and show we aren't ashamed of ourselves. The Willis boys were afraid, Maw. They tried to run, and then when they were caught, they begged like whipped pups. And moreover, they were guilty as hell. Buck up, Maw." He went over and patted her on the shoulder. "Lark isn't going to do anything you'd be ashamed of."
"If you see gran'pa," said the boy fiercely, "you tell—tell him I'm goin' t' stay with—with you. Tell him I—I'm goin' t' kill him when I get big."
Lark looked down at him thoughtfully, smiled a bit at Maw's shocked expostulations, and turned to the door.
"I'll sure tell him that, son," he promised gravely. "And don't you worry a minute about me, Maw."
Maw did worry, however. She would have worried more if she could have seen and heard what was going on in Smoky Ford that morning. Old Palmer—who must have been old in sin, since he was not more than forty-five—had ridden in early with Johnson, White and two others of similar type. He did not go to the sheriff, as a man would have done whose cause was unassailable, but had talked in the saloons, his listeners for the most part those men who had joined in the search for the lost boy.
"Smallpox, my eye!" Palmer cried thickly. "There ain't a case in the country. It was my son's boy that they had hid away in that room—and us all huntin' the hills for him! It's like the Meddalark—an outlaw bunch if ever there was one. Look at old man Larkin! If ever a man deserved stringin' up, he did. And Lark and that kid nephew ain't any better. Stealin' calves from me right along—and now they take the boy and hide him away in a room—" There was a great deal of the same kind of talk, for Palmer was not the man to let anything slip away from him.
Smoky Ford men should have stopped to wonder why Palmer the tight-fisted was buying whisky for every man that joined the listening group around him. It never had happened before that any one could remember, nor was it likely to happen again. But men do not as a rule stop to ask why, when the bartender is busy and makes no sign that he expects pay for every filled glass. Palmer's money was good that morning; he had a grievance and the men who had turned out to search for a lost child discovered that Palmer was a human kinda cuss, after all, and that it looked as if a crime had been committed boldly, in broad daylight. Then Bat Johnson artfully crystallized the growing sentiment born of whisky and Palmer's loud-mouthed denunciations.
"Hell, if it was a horse that was stole, that p'ticular Meddalark bunch would be busted up in short order. Being a kid that's made 'way with—" he stopped there to empty his glass "—why, mebby we oughta let 'em get away with it. Some places, though, folks count humans worth as much as horses, anyway."
"Damn' right," a Palmer man muttered. "I'm goin' t' ride up river, t'night, and ask how about it. Bat an' me figures we c'n clean out that nest by our lonely, an' git the kid back. Rest of you folks better pull the blankets over your heads t'night er you might hear shootin'."
"Rope beats that," suggested another, his tongue thickened by what had been poured over it.
Two or three grunted approval—a bit uncertainly, because in normal times they liked the Meadowlark outfit, Lark himself in particular, and they did not like Palmer.
"Better send the sheriff after the kid," one level-headed cowpuncher advised. "Lark just done it fer a josh, most likely."
"Yeah, better send the sheriff up there," some one agreed.
"Sheriff ain't here," said Palmer shortly. The crowd was colder on the scent than he liked. Had he known it, there had been hints among the searchers that the boy was better off in the hills than with his grandfather, and that he had probably run away. Which proves that they were human enough in their mental reactions if left alone.
He presently left that saloon and wandered into another, and there were plenty of half-drunken men by that time who would follow him for the free drinks that were in it. By noon the crowd was convinced that stealing a child is as serious a crime as stealing a horse and that the punishment should be as swift and sure. And it is a fact that when men dealt with the crime of horse-stealing they did not stop to inquire whether the owner had been kind to the beast. A horse was a horse, and stealing was stealing. So the Meadowlark outfit was declared outlaw, and at least fifty men prepared to stage a lynching that night in Meadowlark Basin.
They were making the last sinister plans and electing a captain of the mob—Palmer, of course—when Lark rode into town and down the road that was called a street, Bud's right stirrup swinging close to his left one. A man crossing the street to a saloon gave them a startled glance and dived inside bearing all the earmarks of one who is about to spill a mouthful of amazing news.
"Right there's the bee tree," Lark observed under his breath, and rode after him. The half door was still swinging when Lark's horse pushed in with a snort of distaste for the job, and Lark himself ducked his tall hat crown under the casing.
"Howdy, folks," he cried cheerful greeting. "Come on down to the Chester House, will you? I've got something to tell you—and I want Palmer there, particular. Fetch him along—I see he's here. Missed him at the ranch." He began backing out again. "If you please," he added carefully, as a polite afterthought.
Outside, he headed for the next saloon, looked in and found no one there but the bartender. Him he beckoned with a crooked finger, and rode on to the next, with Bud beside him and the mob hurrying curiously at his heels. Lark's restless eyes darted to Bud's right hand that fumbled the butt of his six-shooter thrust within his belt, and he grinned and shook his head.
"Don't think you'll need it, m' son," he said softly, as they reached the little hotel with the high platform in front, and he swung his horse to meet the crowd. There was no smile now on his lips, and his eyes were steady except for the light that flickered deep within.
"All right, folks. Just put Palmer up in front here, will you? I've got a message for him that I promised to deliver."
"Ransom, eh?" Palmer's teeth showed under his lifted lip. "You're crazy to come here and stick your neck in the noose—"
"You shut up, will you?" Lark's voice was so quiet that men in the rear crowded forward to hear what he was saying. "I'll do the talking for a minute. No, the boy you been hunting sent you a message. He said to tell you that he was going to stay with me, and that when he's big enough, he's going to kill you." Lark paused. "I think he'll do it, Palmer. There's good stuff in that kid and he won't forget." He lifted his eyes to the crowd behind Palmer.
"Folks, that little kid has got welts all over him, just about, where Palmer quirted him. He's between eight and nine years old, just the age when a boy plays the hardest and grows the fastest—and when I seen him he was out in the field following a heavy drag around (or trying to) and the team he had to handle was the kind you need a pitchfork to go in the stall with 'em. The black lammed out with his heels while I was there talkin' to the kid, and the gray was wallin' his eyes and watchin' for a chance. Palmer loves that boy, don't you think? He ought to have him back. Must save him a dollar a day, and don't cost as much to feed a kid as it does a man; not that kid, anyway. You can count his ribs as far as you can see him, when his shirt's off. Starved him, Palmer did. And beat him till—" Lark stopped and swallowed and blinked, and the crowd moved uneasily and sent sidelong glances at one another.
"So the kid will carry some of them marks till he grows up, and he ain't likely to forget. He'll kill Palmer as sure as God made little apples, if Palmer ain't killed already by the time the kid's growed up t' be a man. Palmer's got that to look forward to. But that's the kid's game, and I wouldn't for the world get in and spoil it for him. I hope Palmer lives with that in mind—that the kid he beat raw is growin' fast as he can and lookin' forward to the time when he can kill the devil that used him so.
"But, as I say, that's the kid's game. What I come after Palmer for is to put the Meddalark brand on him with my quirt. I never did try to draw that bird on a man's hide, but I'll never start younger, and I feel like I'm artist enough to mark this damn' long-ear, till the kid can get around to beef him. I been lookin' at the marks on the kid's back, so I've got them to go by. Palmer, don't make me kill you! I'd hate to cheat the kid like that."
Lark, easing himself to one side in the saddle, ready to dismount swiftly, halted Palmer's incipient flight as if he had caught him by the collar.
"All right, Lark. I've got him covered," snapped Bud, just behind him, "Go to it." He spurred forward. "Give me your bridle reins," he added matter-of-factly.
On the ground, quirt in hand, Lark advanced upon Palmer, who tried to shrink into the crowd and was shoved back into the open space as unhesitatingly as if these men had not been drinking his whisky and absorbing his viewpoint since morning. Palmer staggered under the impetus of the shove, and Lark caught him expertly by the collar, yanked his coat off, grabbed again and went to work, punctuating the swish and thud of the quirt by words that bit into the soul of the man like acid.
"Drop that gun!" This was Bud, cutting short Bat Johnson's half-formed determination to do murder. "This is no shooting match—unless some fool like you makes it so." Upon the close-packed, staring crowd Bud was calmly riding herd, Lark's horse dancing at the end of his reins and lashing out at any man who pressed forward. Strange as it might have seemed to those who had watched the slow forming of the mob idea, the strongest sentiment in that crowd was irritation against Bud, who blocked their view of the show. Men darted to the hotel platform and scrambled up to a vantage point, eager to miss no vicious cut of that flailing quirt.
Palmer, on his knees, begged for mercy. It was pitiable, nauseating, to hear how he wept and pleaded under the blows.
"Did you quit beating the kid when he cried?" Lark's voice was merciless, his eyes aglare with rage.
"He'll kill you for that," a man told Lark soberly when it was all over, and Palmer had slunk away with his shoulders bent and bloody, mouthing curses and threats. "You'll need a bullet-proof back from now on. Come have a drink."
"No—thank you just the same." Lark lifted a hand, stared dully at the way it was trembling, and wiped the beads of perspiration off his face. "I—the kid is waiting for some candy I promised him." He reached out a groping hand for the reins Bud was offering, and mounted like a man who is very, very tired. "I—guess we'd better be goin'. Maw'll be worried."
"And so," Bud remarked thoughtfully, when they had ridden a mile down the trail toward the Meadowlark, thirty-five miles away, "you've stopped a lynching party, marked the back of the richest and meanest man in the country for life, staked yourself to a feud that will keep you guessing from now on, and annexed another responsibility in the form of a boy you'll feel you've got to educate same as you did me. Lark, you damned fool, you're the kind of man King Arthur would have been proud of."
"Hunh?" Larked glanced up from tightening the scanty string on the lumpy bag of candy that was too big to go in his pocket and so must be carried for thirty-five miles in his hand. "Talk United States, darn you; I ain't ridin' the range fer no king!"