SMALLPOX HAS ITS USES
Down through the pass came two riders, drenched with the storm that had lasted through the day, with intermittent gusts of booming wind and vicious lightning, then long, steady down-pours as if the whole heavens were awash and there would be no end to the falling water. From the window overlooking the Basin Bud saw them lope heavily into the meadow trail, small geysers of clean rain water thrown up into the sunset glow whenever the horses galloped into a hollow. Bud lounged across the room and put his head into the kitchen.
"Two riders coming, Maw. Better keep that kid out of sight."
Maw nodded, clicking the china white teeth she wore to please Lark. Bud closed the door, glanced toward another behind which Lark was sleeping heavily, and opened it.
"Oh, Lark! Riders coming. What time did you get in last night—if anybody wants to know?"
Lark landed in the middle of the floor, wide-awake as a startled mountain lion. One slim hand went up to pat his hair down into place, the other reached for his gun.
"Left Smoky Ford about three o'clock in the afternoon. Got here along about midnight, didn't I? Maw ought to know." Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and yawned widely. "You go on out, Bud. If it's the boy they're after, you holler to Maw and ask if supper's ready, soon as you hit the porch. Maw and I will look after the kid."
"Craziest thing a man could do," young Bud muttered, as he left the house and walked down the path to meet the riders. His hat was tilted a bit to one side, a cigarette was in his mouth and tilted to the same angle, his thumbs were hooked negligently inside his belt and his three-inch boot heels pegged little holes in the sodden path as he went. Mildly hospitable he looked, with no more interest in their coming than custom demanded of him. But he saw their eyes go slanting this way and that as they approached, and he saw the ganted flanks of their wet horses and the flare of nostrils that told of long, hard riding.
"Howdy, cowboys," he greeted, lounging closer. "Been out in the dew, haven't you?" He grinned as youth will always grin at the mischance of his fellows.
One lean, unshaven fellow slid out of the saddle and walked stiffly up to Bud, leaving the reins dragging in the wet, steamy muck of the yard. He did not answer the smile.
"We want you folks to get out and help hunt a lost kid," he stated flatly. "Palmer's grandson, it is. Or mebbe your Lark seen him yesterday. Some said he left town yesterday, comin' this way, and he musta passed by the Palmer place 'long about the time the kid disappeared. He might of saw him. He here?"
Bud jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the house.
"Put up your horses, boys. Jake, over there forking hay, will feed them after you've pulled your saddles. Supper must be about ready. Oh, Jake!" he called, "take care of these horses, will you?" He turned back to the two who were jerking impatiently at wet latigo straps. "Lark didn't say anything about any lost kid, but you can talk to him about it. How about the town folks turning out? They're closer than we are. We'll go, of course."
"The town is out," the short man told him, grunting a little as he heaved his saddle to a dry spot under the shed. "Been out all night. Old man sent us over here because he seen Lark ride past right where the kid was workin' in the field. Looked like he stopped an' talked to the kid, he said, but it was so fur off he couldn't tell."
Bud turned and walked ahead of them up the path, and now he glanced over his shoulder at the speaker, a curious light in his eyes.
"A kid old enough to work in the field wouldn't get lost, would he?"
The thin man shook his head.
"That's what looked damn queer to me," he assented. "But it's about the only thing that could of happened—unless he was made away with," he added as an afterthought.
"How old a kid is he?" Bud's interest grew a bit keener.
"Eight—mebby nine. Too little to get anywhere on foot."
Bud considered this, shook his head as if the question was beyond him, and stepped upon the porch. "Oh, Maw! Supper ready? Two extra," he shouted, and turned squarely about to scrape his bootsoles across the edge of the porch.
"I'd run away," he said soberly, "if I wasn't more than eight or nine and had to do a man's work. Doesn't sound right to me." Having scraped all the mud from one boot, he began meticulously to scrape the other. The two from Palmer's followed his example and scraped and scraped, in evident fear of offending a careful housewife.
"Come right in, boys." Maw herself pulled open the door and stood there, smiling and showing the three yellow teeth like stripes dividing the glaring white ones. "Supper's about ready. What's these gentlemen's names, Buddy?"
"You'll have to ask them," Bud replied evenly. "They're in a hurry and upset, and didn't introduce themselves. Bat and Ed, the boys call them. Come on in, boys. They're out hunting a lost child, Maw. They think maybe Lark might have seen him last evening as he was riding out from town."
"Johnson's my name," the thin man introduced himself perfunctorily to maw. "This other man is named White. Is Mr. Larkin in?"
"Come right into the kitchen. Yes, Lark's here, going over his guns after the rain; leaky roof to the closet—Bud, you'd ought to patch that roof right away to-morrow. It was just an accident Lark went into the closet for something and found all the guns soaking wet. A child lost, did you say?"
"Don't seem to worry folks over this way very much," Johnson observed suspiciously. "How d' do, Lark; seen you in Smoky Ford, you remember."
"Hel-lo!" Lark, entrenched behind a table littered with guns, greasy rags, cleaning rods and odorous bottles, looked up and grinned a welcome. "Excuse me for not shakin' hands—coal-oil and bear's grease all over me. What was that, Maw, about a lost child?"
"They want to know if you saw anything of a boy back at Palmer's ranch. Old Palmer saw you ride past there about the time they missed the kid." Bud, pulling chairs to the supper table, spoke more rapidly than was his habit.
"I'll tell it," Johnson interrupted. "It's Palmer's grandson—Dick Palmer's boy. He was out in the field, and the horses come in without 'im. Palmer claims he seen you ride past, and he says you stopped an' talked to the boy. He wasn't seen after that, and the hull country's out lookin' through the hills for 'im. It seemed like you'd oughta know somethin' about 'im." Johnson's eyes clung tenaciously to the ivory-handled, silver-mounted six-shooter that lay close to Lark's hand on the table. The gun which Lark was working on at the moment was a shotgun, double-barreled and ominous.
"Yeah, I remember that kid." Lark spoke without haste, his eyes on the gunstock he was polishing. "Pore little devil, I rode along and found him hung up at the edge of the field, with the drag caught on a rock when he tried to turn around. He couldn't lift it off, and the team wouldn't pull it off, an' there he was, cryin' because he'd get a lickin' if he broke any teeth outa the harrer, an' if he didn't finish the draggin' along that end of the field, he'd get a lickin'—way he figured it, he was due for a whalin' any way the cat jumped." Lark inspected his work, broke open the gun and shoved in two pinkish cartridges.
"Too small a boy to be away out there, half a mile from the house, tryin' to do a man's work. I got off my horse and heaved the drag off the rock for him, and gave him a bag of gumdrops I was bringin' home to maw." He glanced at the old lady and smiled. "That's why you never got any candy this trip, Maw," he explained apologetically. "I gave the whole bag to the boy. It was worth it, too—way he began to put 'em away, two at a time. Mebbe he run off and hid from that lickin'," he added hopefully, picking up a rifle.
"The team come home," Johnson pointed out impatiently, "and the hull country for ten mile around has been combed. He never got off afoot." But he said it mildly and stared uneasily at the way Lark was handling the rifle; not pointing it at any one, but holding it so that any man there could look down its muzzle if he but turned his wrist a bit.
"Set up to the table, folks," Maw invited briskly. "Larkie, can't you leave them smelly old guns long enough to eat?" Then she sighed, almost as an afterthought. "My, my, it's terrible to think of a child like that."
"Might as well finish this job, Maw. Hands all stunk up, now. You folks go ahead. Well, a kid like that can only be crowded just so far," he returned to the subject. "I know he was scared of somebody that would give him a lickin', and I know what a horse will do when it gets the notion it ain't being treated right. It'll quit the range, give it a chance. That boy was a mile from his lickin', just about, and he wasn't more than twenty rods from the hills. I expect a pound of gumdrops would look to him like supplies enough to carry him a hundred miles. Betcha a broke horse the kid beat it. And if he did I hope he makes it outa the country."
White and Johnson ate uncomfortably, more than half their attention given to the nonchalant handling of the guns across the room. Just behind Lark's chair was a closed door, and from behind that closed door came the sound of footsteps; rather, the creaking of boards beneath the weight of some person.
"Old man Palmer," Lark stated emphatically, "is the kinda man that would skin a louse for its hide and tallow. He'd likely keep every man in the country riding the hills and neglecting his work, huntin' down a little shaver of a boy that he can drive to a man's work and save, mebby, two dollars a day. Betcha a beef critter he won't say thank-yuh or go-ta-hell for the ridin'. No, sir, I don't feel called upon to put any Meddalark horses under the saddle for that kinda slave-chasin'. If the kid had the spunk to drift outa there, he's got my good wishes. And you can go tell him I said so."
"Ain't it struck yuh that might look kinda bad?" Johnson was stirring his coffee with his left hand, his right hand under the edge of the table.
"Think it does?" Lark very casually laid down the rifle—with his left hand—and picked up the six-shooter with his right. He seemed to be studying the W L filed on the metal behind the trigger, and while he was looking at that the muzzle pointed at the wall two feet behind Johnson.
"My Jonah, this gun of dad's is all specked with tarnish!" Lark exclaimed, interrupting himself. "Four of the notches is plumb rusty, which they wouldn't be if my old dad was alive to-day. My Lord, how he could shoot! I've seen him wing a horsefly at forty yards and never ruffle the hair on the horse. Fact. Makes me think of what he used to say about how things look. He always told me to let my conscience and cartridges guide me, and tahell with the looks. Dad would likely ride over and beef the man that made that little kid stand and cry because he couldn't lift a heavy drag off a rock for fear a tooth might be broke and he'd get a beatin'. What I'd ought to of done is ride on up to the house and call old man Palmer out and shoot him. What do you think, Johnson?"
Johnson's hand came up and rested ostentatiously on the table. He shuffled his feet and nodded, his eyes on his plate. White cleared his throat and glanced sidewise toward the door that would let him out of the house by the shortest route.
"Have some goozeberry pie," Maw urged, and sucked her new teeth into place with a click of her tongue. "I hope they never catch that poor little feller. If they do, and I ever hear of old Palmer whippin' him again, I'll walk right over there with a black-snake and give him a good horsewhipping. I'll teach him!"
"I'll hold him for you, Maw." Bud Larkin reached out and patted her approvingly on the shoulder.
"Buddy, you go in and ask Mr. Smith if he could drink a cup of tea. You was vaccinated whilst you were off to school—"
"Somebody sick?" Johnson looked up, poising a knife loaded with mashed potatoes. "You ain't got smallpox here, have you?"
"No!" Lark spoke sharply. "Been a long time since I've saw a case, and I don't hardly believe this is smallpox. Sores break out on the forehead first, as I've heard it. These are on the back—back and shoulders, mostly. You take a close look, Bud, when you go in, and see if there's anything showin' on his face. And, my Jonah, be careful you don't pull down that sheet!"
Bud took the cup of tea that Maw had ready and walked to the door behind Lark. He opened it, letting out a whiff of carbolic acid from the soaked sheet hung straight across the doorway.
"Feller rode in here to-day in pretty bad shape," Lark observed soberly. "Couldn't turn him out, couldn't put him in the bunk house with the boys, couldn't do a darn thing but fix him up comfortable where we could watch him. But I don't hardly think it's smallpox. All the cases I ever seen, the sores—"
Johnson pushed back his chair with a loud scraping sound on the white boards of the floor. White duplicated the sound and the haste.
"I guess we better be goin'," said Mr. Johnson, stooping to retrieve his hat from the floor. "I—you folks better not ride over with us, seein' as you've got sickness. Might spread somethin'—with everybody millin' around."
"That's good sense," chirped Maw. "Lark don't think it's anything ketchin', but that poor feller caught it, didn't he? He don't make no bones of it. No use exposin' the whole country—and you may be mighty sure, Mr. Johnson, that we ain't going to take any chances."
"You let Bud Larkin set right at the table with us, and you been passin' us dishes—that's chances enough for me." Mr. Johnson, herding Mr. White before him, went out and slammed the door.
Maw stood with her head tilted grotesquely to one side, listening. A closed door, in her experience, did not always mean departure.
"Lark," she cried shrewishly, "what made you go and belittle that poor man's sickness to them fellers? They mighta stayed around here an' got exposed, an' you know as well as I do what ails that poor feller we took in. If they catch something, they needn't blame me, for I washed my hands good before I set the table. You'd oughta told them when they first come in—"
A board squeaked on the porch. Maw smiled, turned back to the stove and picked up the coffee-pot; hesitated, put up a furtive hand and pulled out the new teeth which she slid into her apron pocket.
"Come on and eat your supper, Lark, before it's stone cold," she said in a relaxed tone. "I guess the gun cleanin' can wait; they're gone."
Lark slid some more cartridges into the cylinder of the notched gun, slipped it inside his waistband and rose.
"You got a case of smallpox on the ranch now; what you goin' to do with it, Maw?" he demanded querulously. "A gun fight I can handle; I was raised on 'em. But how do you expect me to live up to smallpox? Answer me that!" Then he observed a certain vacancy in Maw's smile and frowned. "Where's your teeth? Swaller 'em?"
"No, I didn't!" Maw's leathery face showed a tinge of red. "You know as well as I do that I can't eat with them fillin' up my mouth. And as fer smallpox, how else you expect to keep folks from snoopin' around, lookin' fer that boy? Them men suspicioned you, Larkie, you know it as well as I do. It's a mercy I wrung out that sheet and hung it up—they heared the boy movin' around in there. Mebby you didn't see 'em wallin' their eyes that way, but I did. Lucky I could give 'em something for their pains of stretching their ears—you'd likely have two dead men on your hands to explain."
"Feller knows where he's at when it's straight shootin'," Lark contended in a tone of complaining. "This thing of lyin' out of a scrape—"
"I didn't lie, and neither did you. But I expect we'll all of us do some tall old falsifying before we're through. They ain't goin' to let the matter rest where it's at, Lark. You'd ought of thought about these things—Lark, do you s'pose them fellers will stop and quiz Jake about our Mr. Smith?"
"My Jonah!" Lark ejaculated under his breath, and went out bareheaded to see for himself.
He found Jake leaning against the shed wall with his hands in his pants pockets and his mouth wide open, laughing with a silent quaking of his whole body. He stopped when Lark walked up to him and pointed to where two horsemen were making one blurred shadow on the trail down past the meadow.
"Smoky Ford's goin' t' have a hell of a time supplyin' the demand fer carbolic acid and such," Jake declared maliciously. "And there goes two men that'll bile their shirts, I betcha." He gave Lark a facetious poke in the ribs. "Dunno what the idee is, but I rode right in your dust. They come down past the bunk house and wanted to know what we done with the outfit of the feller that rode in here with smallpox, and was he broke out bad. I played 'er strong, y' betcha. Told 'em I'd burnt saddle, bridle, blanket an' all the clothes the feller was wearin' at the time, an' shot an' cremated the hoss—by his consent durin' a loocid minute. An' as fer bein' broke out, I tells 'em you couldn't put a burnt match down anywhere on his face without bustin' a sore. Told 'em it was the worst case I ever seen. I kinda had t' play 'er with m' eyes shet, Lark, but if you'd saw fit t' have a man here that was down with smallpox, I knowed damn' well he'd oughta have it mighty bad an' be right down sick with it. Hunh?"
"You shore made 'im sick, all right," Lark grunted, and went off to the house without another word.