[The Chicken-hearted Tenderfoot.]
"Yah! Call yourself a cowpuncher? And you can't even rope a yearling colt, let alone do anything else! Take my tip, kid, and get back East by the quickest route; we don't want the like of you in Montana. There's too many good men round to make us have to keep you, doing nothing for your board. Get off the ranch!" The foreman of the Cup and Spur Ranch, never a man to spare the feelings of those under him, this time surpassed himself in expressing his contempt for the youngster who had earned his displeasure. The object of his scorn, a fresh-looking lad of some eighteen years of age, returned the foreman's irate and withering glance with one full of resentment, but entirely devoid of fear.
"I told you I'd never worked on the ranges before," he said angrily, "and you took me on under that knowledge. I never said I could rope a colt, and now I've found out I can't—yet. Do you expect a man to do everything for a miserable fifteen dollars a month? Oh, all right; I'll get off the place, and be mighty glad to do so, too!" The foreman had made a threatening gesture, as though he meant to teach this stripling that his reputation as the bully of the district was not unfounded.
"So I've got the bounce, eh?" muttered Ted Macbain to his horse, as he slowly rode away from the scene. "Well, perhaps the foreman's right, and I'm no good on a ranch. Guess I'll have to get back to the old farm in Minnesota. Just at present town's the place for me to make." And he headed for Elk Creek, some twenty miles away.
"Wish I hadn't made such a fool of myself with that rope, just the same," he told himself. "How the mischief do they make the beastly thing go where they want it?" He unslung his lariat as he spoke to himself, and, shaking its coils loose, swung the noose wide above his head, fixing his eye on the stump of a tree he was passing. His horse was traveling at a brisk canter, but he measured the distance with his eye, and let the rope go on its way. It fell fair and true over the stump, but he forgot to pull the horse in. The result was that he felt a great jerk at his saddle, and the horse, shying, threw him violently to the ground. He was half stunned by his fall, and he did not open his eyes until a dim speck on the horizon was all that could be seen of the animal he had been bestriding.
To catch the brute looked impossible, but as it was heading for the town, and as it was likely it would be caught there, Ted did not feel any anxiety on its behalf. The remaining ten miles would have to be walked.
He had time to think things over for the next two or three hours. To be candid, he had not been an absolute success in Montana, the land where daredevil horsemanship and an utter disregard for human life are the main essentials. He would have been far better off to have stayed at home in Minnesota, where his father was a prosperous farmer. But the confinement of that life jarred on him to such an extent that he felt himself compelled to strike out for fresh scenes. A passionate love for horses caused him to go to the horse-ranching State, where he thought he would be able to give his passion full satisfaction. Oh, what a disillusionment! He found that to treat horses kindly on the ranges, where the animals, for the most part, had never looked on man as anything but a cruel enemy, did not serve to win their love. He could not bring himself to administer the brutal treatment he saw other cowboys deliver, and was not afraid of expressing his displeasure at their methods. This earned for him the sobriquet of "the chicken-hearted tenderfoot," which name became a byword on the plains. His most vehement denunciations of their behavior only served to create mirth among the others. The foreman of the Cup and Spur Ranch—the fifth ranch in six months on which Ted had tried his fortunes—was loudest of all in his expressions of contempt, giving the youngster the most objectionable jobs to perform out of pure malice. When he was told to throw a year-old colt that had quite won the young fellow's heart, as all colts did, he had had so little heart for the task that the scene which opens this story was the result.
"Guess ranching isn't in my line," he told himself, as he trudged along the prairie under the blazing, withering sun of an exceptionally hot August. "It's all right to raise colts by hand, but to knock 'em about as they do here goes for me too strongly."
It was very hot, as he soon began to discover, as the miles slowly passed under his feet. He grew thirsty; the alkali dust, resultant of a three weeks' drought, parched his throat until he decided that water was the only thing in his life he needed at that moment. There was no stream at hand. The only habitation near was a shack. He made for this, and as he came closer he saw a well and bucket. As is the custom, he did not trouble to inquire whether he might be allowed to partake of the well's contents, but let down the bucket, and drew himself a quantity of the cheerful, refreshing fluid, and drank his fill.
He poured the remainder of the pailful on the ground. As he did so something glittered at his feet, something that was not water. He stooped and picked it up. It was an American ten-dollar gold piece.