CHAPTER XII: FREE LANCES OF THE RANGE
The next few days were quiet ones in Lobo Wells. Hashknife and Sleepy met Silver Jim Prescott of the JP ranch, but he had no jobs open. It was the same with Oscar Knight, the little bow-legged owner of the OK outfit. He sized both men up seriously and told Hashknife frankly that he was sorry he didn’t have a job for them.
But the pair did not seem worried about the inability to secure work, and made no effort to move farther down the valley, where there were other cattle outfits. They spent much of their time at the Oasis, playing pool or poker, and loafing around the sheriff’s office, imbibing local colour and gossip from Breezy, who never seemed to run out of conversation.
Charley Prentice had narrowly succeeded in evading an attack of delirium tremens, but was now back at the liquor again. Hashknife had met him several times, but Prentice did not recognise him. Hashknife had been introduced to Amos Baggs, who was also drinking more than was good for him, which caused the Lobo Wells lawyer to appear morose and grim.
“I don’t like this place,” decided Sleepy. “Nothin’ ever happens around here, Hashknife. Another week in this town and I’ll start sproutin’ like a potato.”
Hashknife grinned slowly.
“It ain’t very fast, Sleepy. But ain’t it restful?”
“Yeah, it’s shore restful.”
“All my life I’ve wished for a peaceful town. This is it, Sleepy; Peaceful Town. Lobo Wells sounds like a place where things might happen, but she’s misnamed. Mebbe.”
“Why the mebbe, cowboy?”
“Who knows what’s under the surface? Consider dynamite; it’s just a brown cylinder. Just about as dangerous as a stick of wood, unless yuh monkey with it. Never judge anythin’ by what yuh can see, Sleepy. And for a change I’d suggest that me and you ride out to the Box S.”
“Suits me. Anythin’ to get away from this town.”
Whispering Taylor looked upon them with suspicion until it dawned upon him that Hashknife was the tall stranger who had prevented Charley Prentice from shooting Len Ayres. Len had told him about the incident.
“I’m Whisperin’ Taylor,” he told Hashknife. “Len and Sailor are out in the hills some’eres to-day. Git down and rest yore feet. I’m bakin’ some apple pies and there’ll be a-plenty for everybody. Tie yore broncs in the stable and heave a few oats into ’em.”
Nan, hearing voices, came out on the porch, and Whispering managed to perform a sort of introduction, after which he headed for the woodpile in a hurry.
“Len told me about you,” smiled Nan. “I’m glad you came out to see us.”
“Yes’m,” nodded Sleepy quickly. “Nice place yuh got, ma’am.”
“It really is nice.”
“One of the nicest I ever seen,” seriously. “And it’s kind of a novelty to find a woman runnin’ a cow ranch.”
“Oh, I’m not running it—much. I leave that to the men.”
“I reckon that’s the right thing to do.”
“Won’t you put up your horses and stay for supper? Len and Sailor will be along pretty soon, and I feel sure they would be sorry if you didn’t stay.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” grinned Sleepy. “I’ll stay.”
“I expected that,” said Hashknife seriously. “Thank yuh, Miss Singer.”
“By golly, that’s a pretty girl,” declared Sleepy, as they unsaddled their horses at the stable.
“Not bad,” said Hashknife.
“I’d tell a man!”
Hashknife chuckled softly. Sleepy felt the same about every girl he met, and still he had never had a girl he could call his own.
“What are you grinnin’ about?” asked Sleepy.
“Nothin’. Only I’ve heard that same thing before, Sleepy.”
“Well, why not? I’m old enough to know what I—aw, quit it! Just because yo’re girl-proof, yuh don’t need to think I am.”
“I never thought yuh was, pardner. Go ahead. This would be a great country to settle down in—and sprout.”
“A feller could move, couldn’t he? Say, who ever started this argument? My gosh, can’t I even look at a girl?”
Hashknife chuckled loudly as he removed his spurs and shook himself loose from his batwing chaps.
“You’ve got my permission, pardner,” he said.
“Thank yuh kindly, sir.”
They went back to the house and sat down on the porch. Sleepy sat on the steps, hugging his knees and watching Nan, as they talked. She had absorbed considerable range knowledge from the three men at the ranch and was able to discuss the cattle business rather fluently for a beginner.
Hashknife mentioned different ranges and the things they had seen in their wanderings from Alberta to the Mexican border, and Nan seemed greatly interested. “You must have done a lot of wandering in your time,” she said.
“Quite a little,” agreed Hashknife thoughtfully. “There’s a lot of trails behind us, and I hope there’s a lot ahead. But yuh never can tell. That’s the best of life—the uncertainty of the future. Always gamblin’ with to-morrow; takin’ a chance. Do you believe in takin’ chances, Miss Singer?”
Nan looked away quickly to escape those level gray eyes of the tall, serious-faced cowboy. Did she believe in taking chances? It seemed to her as though this man knew.
“I suppose we all take chances,” she said softly, not looking at him.
“Yeah, that’s true. When we get up in the mornin’ we take chances.”
“Might choke on a aig,” drawled Sleepy, and they all laughed.
“Do yuh like this life?” asked Hashknife.
“I don’t know,” said Nan quickly. “I have never been so lonesome in my life, and yet I am happier than I have ever been. Why, I haven’t seen a woman since I’ve been here. I’ve been too busy to go to Lobo Wells. I suppose there are women in the town.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen some,” nodded Hashknife. “But not the kind you’ve been used to seein’. Paint, powder and styles don’t mean anythin’ to ’em. They’re hard-workin’ folks and they don’t get much enjoyment out of life, but they’re human. They won’t never say mean things about yuh, and no matter who yuh are or what you’ve been, they’ll shoot square with yuh. It ain’t a case of the survival of the fittest out here, like it is in the city. They don’t drive the weak ones to the outside of the herd for the wolves to pull down. All they ask is honesty, ma’am. Yore word is yore security.”
Nan drew a deep breath. All they asked was honesty. And she wasn’t honest. But if she had been honest she would still be tramping the streets, looking for work, or working for a small wage and living in a hall bedroom, cooking hamburger over a gas jet.
“Everybody ain’t honest,” said Sleepy.
“If they was,” said Hashknife softly, “we’d settle down, pardner.”
“And sprout,” added Sleepy.
Nan didn’t know what they meant, and it was possibly just as well for her peace of mind that she did not, although they knew nothing wrong of her. To her they were but two drifting cowboys, looking for work, but the back trails that Hashknife had spoken about knew them for more than that.
Their partnership had begun when Henry Hartley, a long, gangling cowboy, fairly fresh from the Milk River country in Montana, drifted south and became a rider for the brand from which he had later been nicknamed.
And on this same ranch was Dave Stevens, nicknamed Sleepy, a cowboy with an itching foot. Together they rode the range of the Hashknife, bunking together, sharing what they had, until the horizon called them and they rode away together, for ever ordained by Fate to keep on going, always looking to see what was on the other side of the hill.
Hashknife was the son of a range preacher, who propounded the gospel of life in bunk-house or in the open; teaching men how to live rather than how to die; and Hashknife had absorbed much of his philosophy as a foundation.
But through some kink Hashknife had been born with a keenly analytical mind. He knew that every effect must have a cause. His keen eyes registered impressions of things that other men might overlook, and as Sleepy had said: “He hears the grass grow.”
It seemed as though fate threw them into troubled places. Unconsciously they would blunder into a range mystery, where Hashknife would be in his element until it was cleared up. Again they would accept an assignment from a cattle association to clear up some trouble.
Sleepy analysed nothing. He was the man Friday, supreme in his confidence in Hashknife’s ability, following along, never knowing just when they might strike the end of the trail; but always ready to back Hashknife with a smoking gun or the weight of his two hard fists.
It had not been a remunerative partnership. They were poorer in pocket than the day they had ridden away together. They did not ask for pay—did not wait for it. The job was the thing.
And there had been many mighty hard jobs. Death had ridden knee to knee with them many times; struck at them from beside the bushy trail, lashed out of the darkness, darted out at them from a pall of powder smoke; but still it fell short.
Their life had made them confirmed fatalists. Perhaps that and their sense of humour carried them on. Neither of them was a split-second gunman. At times they marvelled at their luck, which left them unscathed while gunmen went down, leaving them to carry on.
“Some day there won’t be no other side of the hill,” Sleepy had predicted.
“It comes to every man,” Hashknife had agreed. “But if we’re lucky we’ll get high enough up to peek over the top.”
It was nearly supper time when Len and Sailor rode in. Len seemed pleased to find Hashknife and Sleepy there.
“I was wonderin’ if you’d left the country,” he told them.
“We don’t move very fast,” grinned Hashknife. “Miss Singer invited us to supper, so we decided to stay.”
“I’m shore glad she did.”
Sailor was friendly enough, and even intimated to Whispering that these two punchers never came from any mail-order house, which was quite a lot for Sailor to say about anybody.
After supper Len decided to ride to Lobo Wells with them. They were out of tobacco at the ranch and there were a few other small purchases to be made. Nan shook hands with them and asked them to come back soon. After they had ridden away with Len, Nan said to Whispering:
“I like those two men, Whispering. I think the tall one has the cleverest eyes I have ever seen.”
“Don’t get fooled on no cowpuncher,” advised Sailor. “Clear eyes ain’t no bay-rom-eter on his conscience. Most honest man I ever knowed was plumb cross-eyed and had a sty on one of ’em.”
“Yore idea of honesty,” said Whispering. “I was kinda impressed by this tall one m’self.”
“Shore yuh would; didn’t he brag about yore biscuits?”
“I dunno,” Whispering shook his head sadly. “Sometimes I look at you, Sailor—and wonder. To begin with, yore parents must ’a’ been easy-goin’ folks, or they’d ’a’ strangled yuh early in life. To think of a man at yore advanced age havin’ lived all this time!”
“Advanced age!” snorted Sailor. “My gosh, to hear you talk you’d think I was sixty-five.”
“To hear you talk, I’d think yuh was a hundred, Sailor.”
“Some day,” said Sailor ominously, “I’m goin’ to take you out and whip yuh, Whisperin’.”
“Yea-a-a-ah? I’ve heard that lotsa times. You’ll probably wait until we both have to travel in wheel-chairs, and then settle it with a race instead of a fight.”
“What is all this argument about, anyway?” choked Nan.
“He started it,” said Whispering.
“I did not,” bristled Sailor. “You said⸺”
“Yeah? I said what?”
They looked blankly at each other for several moments.
“You better git me some wood, Sailor,” said Whispering. “That last yuh got was better’n usual, but the woodbox is empty.”
“Yeah—all right. It was some of that old corral that me and Len tore down. It’s danged hard to saw—but thasall right.”