_ CHAPTER V. BLUE PETE, FRIEND AND LOVER
Close to the waters of the Tepee River, now returned to its normal sluggishness with the rapidity of mountain-fed streams, a man sat on his heels in a clump of spruce. There, two miles above the construction camp, the canyon fell away more gradually to the old river bottom, and the trees, encouraged by a century of immunity from floods, crept ever downward until they pressed to the very edge of the channel that held the waters of the Tepee fifty weeks of the year.
It was evening. Clear as lines on a white sheet the woods on the other side stood out in the dustless air against the flaming sky. The wide band of water that intervened gleamed in the setting sun, scarce revealing the existence of a current. Save for the low chatter of nesting birds and the gentle gurgle of water beneath the bank there was not a sound. The wind was against the camp. For all the solitary man could hear he might have been the only human within the northland.
About him was a furtiveness of the wilds, not guilty but protective. In such surroundings he had been born, there he had spent most of his days. You could read it in the crouch, the quiet, unwasted movements, the unconscious attitudes.
His face told much of his story. Those bright, darting eyes, crooked though they were, missed nothing; those sudden spaces of motionlessness, the peculiar, utterly still tilt of the head, were the natural impulses of one ever listening; the calm immobility of the dusky face was bred of a life of self-sufficiency, where muscle and eye were ever-active guardians. The coarse black hair that straggled from beneath a dirty Stetson, the high cheek bones, the swarthy complexion; these the outward signals of his half-breed origin. Yet from Stetson to high-heeled boots he was a cowboy, with the individual eccentricities in dress that scorned hairy chaps for leather, and walked with an arch of leg that craved the back of a horse to fill it.
The half breed was whittling, yet even in that simple recreation of the careless he bent to his surroundings. No crackling of hasty knife, no splashing about of shavings. Already one capacious pocket was filled with them, and those just made lay in a neat heap for hasty collection.
Often his hand held to listen, and always as he listened his eyes sought the shadows among the trees on the far shore. A scowl was twisting his face, of worry, not of anger; sometimes the knife bit into the soft stick with muscular response to his thoughts.
Presently he pushed the dirty Stetson back and ran a sleeve across his forehead, though it was not warm. Raising himself to his feet within the limited range of the clump of trees, he peered anxiously across the river, searching the opposite bank from the east to where it curved southward above the camp.
"Gor swizzle! Ef she don't come soon I gotta git over thar an' trail her. . . . An' that means givin' up the job . . . an' mebbe losin' out. Suthin' 's happened; she never took so long before. . . . But pshaw! what with Whiskers 'n' Juno--they'd take's good keer o' her as I cud myself."
He resumed his seat, but not the whittling, leaning against a tree with closed eyes. But he was not resting, for deep sighs broke from him, and his muscles were not loose.
Suddenly his eyes opened wide with a look of alarm, though not a muscle twitched. His quick ears had caught a sound among the trees at his back. On the instant he appraised the risk of the gleaming water before him, and then, like a part of the shadows, seemed to melt into the ground. The clump of spruce was there, and the shadows, just as they had been all these years, but not a shaving, not a mark.
Far out in the current the smooth gleam of the water was broken in moving eddies. Some round object was making its way toward the bank. In the cover of another cluster of trees further down the bank the halfbreed leaned out over the water and waved a warning hand. He dare not whistle or shout. But the round object, not forty yards out, turned sideways, revealing the head of a large dog.
At the same moment a rifle snapped from the thickets behind, and even as the halfbreed flattened out he noted the swift flash of spume close to the dog's head. Instantly the head dived. Instantly, too, the second cluster of trees was empty, though there had been no sound, no perceptible movement.
Yards further down the stream the head reappeared, directed now to the far bank and moving more swiftly. A second shot from the thicket told of a watchful enemy.
Before the echo had returned from the opposite bank, a third shot, this time that of a revolver, split the evening silence. A stifled exclamation of alarm, and then the crashing of hasty flight up the slope.
The half breed thrust his gun in his belt and glided across the open to pick up a rifle with shattered stock.
"Don't know wot makes me so squeamish these days," he drawled, with a slow smile. "He sartin desarved it in the throat. That Pole 'n' me's goin' to butt agin each other some more. I never was wuth shucks when it comes to justice . . . an' I allus suffer fer it after. Look at Bilsy, an' Dutch Henry, an' a bunch more!"
He carried the broken rifle to the river's edge and whistled. The dog, now near the opposite shore, turned about. As it approached the clump that hid the halfbreed, ears came forward to assist eyes and nose, and a waggle of welcome told that all was well. With a shudder that sent a cloud of spray about, a great cross-bred Russian wolf-hound, with the head of a mastiff, clambered up the bank and bounded into the trees. The halfbreed threw his arms about the wet neck and hugged it in silent joy. His eyes were moist as he glanced sheepishly across to the other shore.
"Juno, ole woman, I sure love yuh to-night."
From about the dog's neck he untied a tiny water-proof bag and exposed a note, which he laboriously spelt out. Then, moving to the water's edge, he reached down and waved a hand twice back and forward.
Followed by the dog, he struck noiselessly upstream through the woods, and at last lowered himself over the gravel bank by means of overhanging boughs. Ankle-deep, screened by the foliage, he untied a raft of freshly cut logs, made a careful survey of the shore about him, and shoved out into the river, pointing slightly upstream. The dog established herself on the bow, her eyes on the shore they were approaching.
As he worked the sweep at the stern the man talked to the dog.
"Guess you 'n' Whiskers 'n' the missus has bin gallivantin', eh, Juno, ole woman? Sort o' leadin' the gay life all down them coupla hunderd miles to the Hills whar nobody lives. Trust the women! Yuh wudn't 'member thar was a feller back here chewin' his fingers off worryin' about yuh . . . an' workin' the shart offen his back an' gittin' thin fer the fambly, an' not even a horse to git about. . . . Nobody but a bunch o' roughnecks an' houn's--'poligisin' tuh yuh, Juno, fer callin' them critters houn's. They're c'yutes, that's wot they are. Ef thar was trees 'nough I'd len' my bes' rope to hang 'em . . . every dang one of 'em, 'cept Mister Conrad 'n' the boss."
Juno's only response was a periodic and perfunctory wagging of a limited tail, further limited by being sat on.
"'Magine me, Blue Pete, bes' shot in the Badlands, an' Canada, too, fer that matter--least that's so, now Dutchy's gone, an' it was nip 'n' tuck between us--'magine me, cow-puncher from my born days, sometime rustler, sometime Mounted P'lice detective, sometime--oh, sometime pretty near everythin' with a horse in it, an' a rifle, an' a rope--'magine me workin' 'longside a gang o' Dagoes 'n' Poles that think a knife's fer stickin' people, an' a rifle fer the P'lice . . . me shovin' rocks 'n' logs into a hole in the groun' that won't fill this side everlastin'! . . . Kin yuh 'magine it, ole woman? An' them joshin' 'n' guyin' me, an' me swallerin' it like a tenderfoot! . . . An' never did fer one of 'em!"
The dog evidently considered it too preposterous for caudal comment; eyes and ears and nose were stretched toward the shore they were nearing.
"Yah, she's thar all right, eh, Juno? Yer eyes is better'n mine--but I bet I kin feel her thar. That's whar I git the bulge on yuh, ole woman." The half-breed chuckled, and leaned more powerfully to the sweep. "An 'magine me shakin' chaps fer overalls, an' this ole Stetson fer a fi'-cent cap, an' these nifty ridin' boots fer things as big as this scow . . . an' takin' back-talk from a two-by-five Pole I cud break over one knee 'n' kick the pieces tuh Medicine Hat. . . . But it won't be fer long now, Juno. Jest two more little horses 'n' it's did . . . all did. . . . An' then mebbe we kin go back an' hold up our heads, Mira 'n' you 'n' Whiskers 'n' me. . . . Wonder wot Whiskers thinks o' me these days!"
He concentrated on the working of the sweep. Juno raised herself to give every inch of her stubby tail a chance. Blue Pete peered eagerly into the shadows along the shore.
"An' thar's yer missus, Juno," he cried joyfully. "Mira--our Mira!"
A few powerful movements of his arm swept the raft sideways against the bank. A woman, small and dainty, swarthy but without Indian blood, leaned eagerly forward--eager but shy. Waves of dark hair peeped from beneath her Stetson, and her green blouse blazed against the darker hue of the trees as she stood, one foot advanced, holding her arms toward the halfbreed.
Tossing the painter to the dog, Blue Pete leaped ashore and gathered her in his arms without a word. Then, tremulously happy but abashed by the fervour of their meeting, he released her and looked enquiringly about.
"I suppose it should have been Whiskers first," she pouted.
He laughed and whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly little pinto, all blotches of yellowish white and faded red, with a ragged tail that looked as if something had started to make a meal of it but became disgusted just before the end; and the left ear drooped humorously in its upper third. It nosed up against the halfbreed, nibbling playfully at his ears, his hands, the brim of his Stetson, the leather fringe of his chaps, the ends of the polka-dot handkerchief knotted about his neck.
"Yuh're some glad to see me, Whiskers, ole gal--if Mira ain't. But then yuh 'n' me knowed each other longer, an' sort o' got to see the good p'ints."
He laughed slyly at Mira from the corner of his eyes, and she laughed back, with a tinge of sadness in the tone, and turned away to take the painter from Juno. A second horse that had followed Whiskers from the trees stepped aboard the raft after the pinto.
"Bes' wait till it's darker," advised Blue Pete. "They got mighty peery since that las' raft showed us up. How d'yuh like the new one? 'Tain't's nifty 's the ole one, but it's easier handled, an' it'll last us through, I guess."
Mira was examining it soberly. "What's the matter with it? It don't seem even somehow."
He looked it over sheepishly. "I figured if I made it a bit shorter one side, yuh'd have less to pull. What bustin' I've did's run more to horses than boats, but ain't that about right? But the dang thing don't seem to work--like a loco'ed cayuse. Anyway it was a job. Them bohunks is getting' to roamin' about real annoyin', an' Koppy wust of all."
"Who was shooting just before you gave me the signal?"
"The bohunks, out after sparrow pie fer supper, I guess," he lied placidly, "ur larnin' which end a gun fires at. It's real dangerous in the bush these days. Fus' thing we know we'll have to show ourselves 'n' ask 'em to shoot at us to be safe. These loose bullets ain't a bit reasonable."
Mira let him ramble on; she loved to hear him, loved it now more than ever, after her absence south with the last lot of stolen horses.
"Ain't it a bit small for horses, Pete?"
He eyed the raft doubtfully. "Thar's jes' two more, yuh know. It'll carry 'em, I guess. Anyway we kin make two trips of it." He paused and turned his gleaming eyes full on her face. "Jes' two more, Mira, an' then we kin clear out!"
"Where to, Pete?" She looked up at him in sudden fright then that she had spoken so plainly.
"Why--why--down south--to the 3-bar-Y--to suthin' wuth livin' fer--to whar yuh'll be a sight better off than with a rough cuss like me."
The wistfulness that had stilled her laugh and sobered her face these many weeks spoke at last; her eyes were wet.
"Have you thought, Pete, dear--thought what'll happen when they get us again?"
"Sure I have," he replied bravely. "Wot d'yuh mean?"
"What will the Police say?"
He reached out to tickle Whiskers' neck with a twig and laughed lightly. "I don' know wot they'll say, an' I don' care, but I know wot they'll do. They'll take hold o' my hands an'--an'--Gor-swizzle! I shud oughta know the Sergeant. . . . No more I ain't skeered o' th' Inspector."
"But we're still stealing horses, Pete."
"Yuh still want me to pay Torrance, the ole sinner, fer horses he knew was stole when he bought 'em?" He frowned. "If yuh say so when I got the money myself, I'll give him the ten bucks a head he paid me fer 'em las' year . . . but I'm sure goin' to git them horses back fust the way they come, an' I'm not goin' to take any o' your money. Anyway he wudn't sell fer ten bucks."
"The Police never forgive," she sighed.
The half breed leaned thoughtfully against a tree, chewing the twig.
"I kind o' feel, Mira," he said presently, "th' Inspector's got feelin's some bigger'n that furrin sign he faces every day over his desk, 'maintins he drut,'[1] ur suthin' like that. He's a bully P'liceman, but he's a bully sight better friend, I'm gamblin'. Have any trouble this trip?"
She threw aside her melancholy. "The two corrals this side of the Red Deer are falling to pieces. Whiskers and Juno and I managed to keep them in at nights, but we couldn't do it again, I'm afraid. I used the old ford near the H-Lazy-Z; the water was too high to risk the other. Of course I crossed at night. Met a farmer just over the railway, but it was too dark to mean anything. Bert is having an easy time with the bunch in the Hills, but we moved them further east. He's saw the Police poking about the Hills a lot, specially Sergeant Mahon. . . . I'll be glad when it's over, Pete. Things has gone too easy for a long time. Something always turns up to spoil things."
"Didn't the raft 'most get away on us in the rapids? Ain't that 'nough to happen?"
"I wasn't scared a bit," she said. "I knew you'd get us through."
"Swizzled if I did," he laughed. "I was skeered stiff."
"Well, you fooled me," patting his cheek with loving incredulity.
"An' all the time my knees fair tremblin'--wuss'n when Dutchy had the drop on me an' me without a gun. Juno, ole woman, yuh done us fine that time. . . . Only two more to git, Mira, an' then we're free. I don' say them two ain't goin' to take some gittin'; they're in the boss's own stable, an' he has ears like a gopher. He 'n' the young missus ride 'em--ur they think they do."
He handed her aboard the raft and took his place at the stern.
"Lie down, Whiskers; yer legs is too teetery fer this craft. Yuh might take a day off 'n' larn that fool jinny o' Mira's to lie down when she's told to. No, Mira, I'll git it across myself. It's down stream, an' I wantuh show yuh she ain't so bad a boat fer a cow-puncher to make with wooden trees outen a wooden head. I got all my ole muscles back . . . workin' fer Torrance, dang hard work, too, to say nothin' o' them dirty Poles and other cats. . . . I gotta turn up to the minute every mornin' ur they wanta know why. That nigger, Koppy! Some day I'll jes' natcherl bust up an' take him to Heaven with me. I'm sure losin' my spunk."
[1] "Maintiens le droit," the motto of the Mounted Police. _