_ CHAPTER XLIV. THE OLD TRAIL
The following afternoon Pete, stiff and weary from his two days' ride, entered the southern end of Flores's canon and followed the trail along the stream-bed--now dry and edged with crusted alkali--until he came within sight of the adobe. In the half-light of the late afternoon he could not distinguish objects clearly, but he thought he could discern the posts of the pole corral and the roof of the meager stable. Nearer he saw that there was no smoke coming from the mud chimney of the adobe, and that the garden-patch was overgrown with weeds.
No one answered his call as he rode up and dismounted. He found the place deserted and he recalled the Mexican woman's prophecy.
He pushed open the sagging door and entered. There was the oilcloth-covered table and the chairs--a broken box in the middle of the room, an old installment-house catalogue, from which the colored prints had been torn, an empty bottle--and in the kitchen were the rusted stove and a few battered and useless cooking-utensils. An odor of stale grease pervaded the place. In the narrow bedroom--Boca's room---was a colored fashion-plate pinned on the wall.
Pete shrugged his shoulders and stepped out. Night was coming swiftly. He unsaddled Blue Smoke and hobbled him. The pony strayed off up the stream-bed. Pete made a fire by the corral, ate some beans which he warmed in the can, drank a cup of coffee, and, raking together some coarse dried grass, turned in and slept until the sound of his pony's feet on the rocks of the stream-bed awakened him. He smelt dawn in the air, although it was still dark in the canon, and having in mind the arid stretch between the canon and Showdown, he made breakfast. He caught up his horse and rode up the trail toward the desert. On the mesa-edge he re-cinched his saddle and turned toward the north.
Flores, who with his wife was living at The Spider's place, recognized him at once and invited him in.
"What hit this here town, anyhow?" queried Pete. "I didn't see a soul as I come through."
Flores shrugged his shoulders. "The vaqueros from over there"--and he pointed toward the north--"they came--and now there is but this left"--and he indicated the saloon. "The others they have gone."
"Cleaned out the town, eh? Reckon that was the T-Bar-T and the boys from the Blue and the Concho. How'd they come to miss you?"
"I am old--and my wife is old--and after they had drank the wine--leaving but little for us--they laughed and said that we might stay and be dam': that we were too old to steal cattle."
"Uh-huh. Cleaned her out reg'lar! How's the senora?"
Flores touched his forehead. "She is thinking of Boca--and no one else does she know."
"Gone loco, eh? Well, she ain't so bad off at that--seein' as
you're livin' yet. No, I ain't comin' in. But you can sell me some tortillas, if you got any."
"It will be night soon. If the senor--"
"Go ask the Senora if she has got any tortillas to sell. I wouldn't bush in there on a bet. Don't you worry about my health."
"We are poor, senor! We have this place, and the things--but of the money I know nothing. My wife she has hidden it."
"She ain't so crazy as you think, if that's so. Do you run this place--or are you jest starvin' to death here?"
"There is still a little wine--and we buy what we may need of Mescalero. If you will come in--"
"So they missed old Mescalero! Well, he's lucky. No, I don't come in. I tried boardin' at your house onct."
"Then I will get the tortillas." And Flores shuffled into the saloon. Presently he returned with a half-dozen tortillas wrapped up in an old newspaper. Pete tossed him a dollar, and packing the tortillas in his saddle-pockets, gazed round at the town, the silent and deserted houses, the empty street, and finally at The Spider's place.
Old Flores stood in the doorway staring at Pete with drink-blurred eyes. Pete hesitated. He thought of dismounting and going in and speaking to Flores's wife. But no! It would do neither of them any good. Flores had intimated that she had gone crazy. And Pete did not want to talk of Boca--nor hear her name mentioned. "Boca's where she ain't worryin' about anybody," he reflected as he swung round and rode out of town.
Once before he had camped in the same draw, a few miles west of Showdown, and Blue Smoke seemed to know the place, for he had swung from the trail of his own accord, striding straight to the water-hole.
"And if you keep on actin' polite," Pete told the pony as he hobbled him that evening, "you'll get a good reputation, like Jim Owen said; which is plumb necessary, if you an' me's goin' to be pals. But if gettin' a good reputation is goin' to spoil your wind or legs any--why, jest keep on bein' onnery--which Jim was tellin' me is called 'Character.'"
As Pete hardened to the saddle and Blue Smoke hardened to the trail, they traveled faster and farther each day, until, on the Blue Mesa, where the pony grazed and Pete squatted beside his night-fire in the open, they were but a half-day's journey from the Concho. Pete almost regretted that their journey must come to an end. But he could not go on meandering about the country without a home and without an object in life:
that was pure loafing.
Pete might have excused himself on the ground that he needed just this sort of thing after his serious operation; but he was honest with himself, admitting that he felt fit to tackle almost any kind of hard work, except perhaps writing letters--for he now thought well enough of himself to believe that Doris Gray would answer his letter to her from Sanborn. And of course he would answer her letter--and if he answered that, she would naturally answer . . . Shucks! Why should she write to him? All he had ever done for her was to make her a lot of bother and hard work. And what good was his money to him? He couldn't just walk into a store and buy an education and have it wrapped up in paper and take it to her and say, "Here, Miss Gray. I got a education--the best they had in the outfit. Now if you'll take it as a kind of present--and me along with it . . ."
Pete was camping within fifty yards of the spot where old Pop Annersley had tried to teach him to read and write--it seemed a long time ago, and Annersley himself seemed more vague in Pete's memory, as he tried to recall the kindly features and the slow, deliberate movements of the old man. It irritated Pete that he could not recall old man Annersley's face distinctly. He could remember his voice, and one or two characteristic gestures--but his face--
Pete stared into the camp-fire, dreaming back along that trail over which he had struggled and fought and blundered; back to the time when he was a waif in Enright, his only companion a lean yellow dog . . . Pete nodded and his eyes closed. He turned lazily and leaned back against his saddle.
The mesa, carpeted with sod-grass, gave no warning of the approaching horseman, who had seen the tiny fire and had ridden toward it. Just within the circle of firelight he reined in and was about to call out when that inexplicable sense inherent in animals, the Indian, and in some cases the white man, brought Pete to his feet. In that same lightning-swift, lithe movement he struck his gun from the holster and stood tense as a buck that scents danger on the wind.
Pete blinked the sleep from his eyes. "Keep your hands right where they be and step down off that hoss--"
The rider obeyed. Pete moved from the fire that his own shadow might not fall upon the other. "Pete!" exclaimed the horseman in a sort of choking whisper.
The gun sagged in Peter's hand. "Andy! For God's sake!--I come clost to killin' you!" And he leaped and caught Andy White's hand, shook it, flung his arm about his shoulders, stepped back and struck him playfully on the chest, grabbed him and shook him--and then suddenly he turned and walked back to the fire and sat down, blinking into the flames, and trying to swallow nothing, harder than he had ever tried to swallow anything in his life.
He heard Andy's step behind him, and heard his own name spoken again. "It was my fault, Pete. I ought to 'a' hollered. I saw your fire and rode over--" Andy's hand was on Pete's shoulder, and that shoulder was shaking queerly. Andy drew back. "There goes that dam' cayuse," cried Andy. "I'll go catch him up, and let him drag a rope."
When Andy returned from putting an unnecessary rope on a decidedly tired horse that was quite willing to stand right where he was, Pete had pulled himself together and was rolling a cigarette.
"Well, you ole sun-of-a-gun!" said Pete; "want to swap hats? Say, how'll you swap?"
Andy grinned, but his grin faded to a boyish seriousness as he took off his own Stetson and handed it to Pete, who turned it round and tentatively poked his fingers through the two holes in the crown. "You got my ole hat yet, eh? Doggone if it ain't my ole hat. And she's ventilated some, too. Well, I'm listenin'."
"And you sure are lookin' fine, Pete. Say, is it you? Or did my hoss pitch me--and I'm dreamin'--back there on the flat? No. I reckon it's you all right. I ain't done shakin' yet from the way you come at me when I rode in. Say, did you git Jim's letter? Why didn't you write to a guy, and say you was comin'? Reg'lar ole Injun, same as ever. Quicker 'n a singed bob-cat gittin' off a stove-lid. That Blue Smoke 'way over there? Thought I knowed him. When did they turn you loose down to El Paso? Ma Bailey was worryin' that they wasn't feedin' you good. When did you get here? Was you in the gun-fight when The Spider got bumped off?"
Pete was still gazing at the little round holes in Andy's hat. "Andy, did you ever try to ride a hoss down the ole mesa trail backwards?"
"Why, no, you sufferin' coyote! What you drivin' at?"
"Here's your hat. Now if you got anything under it, go ahead and talk up. Which way did you ride when we split, over by the timber there?"
Andy reached over and put a stick of wood on the fire. "Well, seein' it's your hat, I reckon you got a right to know how them holes come in it." And he told Pete of his ride, and how he had misled the posse, and he spoke jestingly, as though it had been a little thing to do; hardly worth repeating. Then he told of a ride he had made to Showdown to let Pete know that Gary would live, and how The Spider had said that he knew nothing of Pete--had never seen him. And of how Ma Bailey upheld Pete, despite all local gossip and the lurid newspaper screeds. And that the boys would be mighty glad to see him again; concluding with an explanation of his own presence there--that he had been over to the T-Bar-T to see Houck about some of his stock that had strayed through some "down-fence"--"She's all fenced now," he explained--and had run into a bunch of wild turkeys, chased them to a rim-rock and had managed to shoot one, but had had to climb down a canon to recover the bird, which had set him back considerably on his home journey. "And that there bird is hangin' right on my saddle now!" he concluded. "And I ain't et since mornin'."
"Then we eat," asserted Pete. "You go git that turkey, and I'll do the rest."
Wild turkey, spitted on a cedar limb and broiled over a wood fire, a bannock or two with hot coffee in an empty bean-can (Pete insisted on Andy using the one cup), tastes just a little better than anything else in the world, especially if one has ridden far in the high country--and most folk do, before they get the wild turkey.
It was three o'clock when they turned in, to share Pete's one blanket, and then Andy was too full of Pete's adventures to sleep, asking an occasional question which Pete answered, until Andy, suddenly recalling that Pete had told him The Spider had left him his money, asked Pete if he had packed all that dough with him, or banked it in El Paso. To which Pete had replied drowsily, "Sure thing, Miss Gray." Whereupon Andy straightway decided that he would wait till morning before asking any further questions of an intimate nature.
Pete was strangely quiet the next morning, in fact almost taciturn, and Andy noticed that he went into the saddle a bit stiffly. "That--where you got hurt botherin' you, Pete?" he asked with real solicitude.
"Some." And realizing that he had scarcely spoken to his old chum since they awakened, he asked him many questions about the ranch, and the boys, as they drifted across the mesa and down the trail that led to the Concho.
But it was not the twinge of his old wound that made Pete so silent. He was suffering a disappointment. He had believed sincerely that what he had been through, in the past six months especially, had changed him--that he would have to have a mighty stern cause to pull a gun on a man again; and at the first hint of danger he had been ready to kill. He wondered if he would ever lose that hunted feeling that had brought him to his feet and all but crooked his trigger-finger before he had actually realized what had startled him. But one thing was certain--Andy would never know just
how close he had come to being killed; Andy, who had joked lightly about his own ride into the desert with an angry posse trailing him, as he wore Pete's black Stetson, "that he might give them a good run for their money," he had laughingly said.
"You're jest the same ornery, yella-headed, blue-eyed singin'-bird you always was," declared Pete as they slithered along down the trail.
Andy turned in the saddle and grinned at Pete. "Now that you've give the blessing parson, will you please and go plumb to hell?"
Pete felt a lot better.
A loose rock slipped from the edge of the trail, and went bounding down the steep hillside, crashing through a thicket of aspens and landing with a dull clunk amid a pile of rock that slid a little, and grumbled sullenly. Blue Smoke had also slipped as his footing gave way unexpectedly. Pete felt still better. This was something like it! _