“Awake and on the way, Tad. Yonder he comes, limpin’. Bet he stepped on a cactus in his sock feet.”
“I reckon Joe wants tuh be left alone, pard. Tell——”
“Hold on, Ladd,” said Kipp quietly, rising. “Let Pete come. The time has come fer explainin’ off a few things. Come in and set.”
The three younger men, awed into respectful silence by Kipp’s gravity, did as he asked.
“I won’t take long, boys,” Kipp began. “Ner will I try fer tuh git yore sympathy. Yonder lays my boy, the only child by a marriage that never should uh bin. She was Apache, I was a white man. We was both kids at the time and mistook lonesomeness fer love. We run off and was married down in Mexico.
“When she run off with me, she outlawed herself from her folks. They hated white men. I was —— fool enough tuh think I could make her over into a white woman. —— knows she was purty enough and as decent as ary white gal that ever lived. But in the towns, the white women shied off from her. Men called me a squaw-man and treated me as such. We wa’n’t so happy as we might uh bin them days, and we stuck clost to the little cow ranch I had down on the border. Then the boy come and fer a while it looked like we was goin’ tuh be happy onct more.
“But it didn’t last long. I was gone a heap, round-ups and hoss huntin’ and such. She was left alone on the ranch. There was a good lookin’ Mexican that used tuh drop in sometimes. Fancy outfit and always shaved and wearin’ of a clean shirt. He had money. I didn’t know till later that he made it sellin’ stolen hosses. She was a right purty little thing. I come in from a week’s work in the hills tuh find her gone. She’d took the boy, then a kid ten years old, with her.
“I oiled my gun and hit their trail. But ——, they was plumb gone. I rode over half uh Mexico, then come home tuh find my cattle scattered and run off and nary hoss left. The Mexicans had stole me blind, durin’ the twelve months I’ve bin gone. Travelers has tore down my corrals tuh build camp fires. A rattler strikes at me as I steps into the gutted cabin which I’d called home, and I’m that low in speerits that I goes back to my hoss without shootin’ the snake’s head off. Keepin’ clear uh town er the ranches where I’m known, I quits that range fer keeps.
“Cowpunchin’, ridin’ grub-line, breakin’ broncs, night-hawkin’, even takin’ a whirl at cookin’, and I’m driftin’ like a tumbleweed afore a norther. Doin’ my share uh drinkin’ and —— raisin’ with the rest, aimin’ tuh fergit that I got a wife an’ kid a strayin’ somewheres. But it ain’t noways easy tuh fergit and I keeps driftin’ back across the border hopin’ tuh cut their trail and always I got a shell in my gun fer the greaser that’s mavericked my wife an’ kid.
“It’s ten years from the day they run off from me, that I finds Mister Mex. I’m ridin’ into a li’l’ ol’ Mex town when I hears shootin’. I rounds the corner uh the adobe rurale fort in time tuh see a rurale firin’ squad blowin’ the smoke from their carbines. In a heap against a ’dobe wall is my Mex, plumb full uh lead. They’ve done ketched him stealin’ hosses. His pardner, a ’breed kid, has out rode ’em and got away after killin’ three uh their men. That ’breed kid, understand, is my son.