"Drag him out, Collins," said Ranse.
Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.
"How'd you come in my wagon?" repeated Ranse, this time in a voice that drew a reply.
Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen and large persons in blue carrying clubs.
"Me?" he growled. "Oh, was you talkin' to me? Why, I was on my way to the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled into that wagon in the wagon-yard--see? I never told you to bring me out to this bloomin' farm--see?"
"What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke in his ecstasy. "What do it live on?"
"It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. "It's the thing that hollers 'willi-walloo' up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don't know if it bites."
"No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Collins. "Them galliwampuses has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don't stand so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its prehensile tail."
Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.
"Well, ain't that a Willie for your whiskers?" he commented. "Where'd you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin' to make an auditorium for inbreviates out of the ranch?"
"Say," said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell blunted. "Any of you kiddin' guys got a drink on you? Have your fun. Say, I've been hittin' the stuff till I don't know straight up."
He turned to Ranse. "Say, you shanghaied me on your d--d old prairie schooner--did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I'm goin' all to little pieces. What's doin'?"
Ranse saw that the tramp's nerves were racking him. He despatched one of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a glass of whisky. Curly gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow--as human as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog.
"Thanky, boss," he said, quietly.
"You're thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon," said Ranse.
Curly fell back weakly against the steps.
"Since you are here," continued the ranchman, "come along with me. We can't turn you out on the prairie. A rabbit might tear you to pieces."
He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were kept. There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets.
"I don't suppose you can sleep," said Ranse, "since you've been pounding your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till morning. I'll have Pedro fetch you up some grub."
"Sleep!" said Curly. "I can sleep a week. Say, sport, have you got a coffin nail on you?"
*****
Fifty miles had Ransom Truesdell driven that day. And yet this is what he did.
Old "Kiowa" Truesdell sat in his great wicker chair reading by the light of an immense oil lamp. Ranse laid a bundle of newspapers fresh from town at his elbow.
"Back, Ranse?" said the old man, looking up.
"Son," old "Kiowa" continued, "I've been thinking all day about a certain matter that we have talked about. I want you to tell me again. I've lived for you. I've fought wolves and Indians and worse white men to protect you. You never had any mother that you can remember. I've taught you to shoot straight, ride hard, and live clean. Later on I've worked to pile up dollars that'll be yours. You'll be a rich man, Ranse, when my chunk goes out. I've made you. I've licked you into shape like a leopard cat licks its cubs. You don't belong to yourself --you've got to be a Truesdell first. Now, is there to be any more nonsense about this Curtis girl?"
"I'll tell you once more," said Ranse, slowly. "As I am a Truesdell and as you are my father, I'll never marry a Curtis."
"Good boy," said old "Kiowa." "You'd better go get some supper."
Ranse went to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Pedro, the Mexican cook, sprang up to bring the food he was keeping warm in the stove.
"Just a cup of coffee, Pedro," he said, and drank it standing. And then:
"There's a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to eat. Better make it enough for two."
Ranse walked out toward the /jacals/. A boy came running.
"Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?"
"Why not, senor? I saw him near the /puerta/ but two hours past. He bears a drag-rope."
"Get him and saddle him as quick as you can."
"/Prontito, senor/."
Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his guitar in the moonlight.
Vaminos shall have a word--Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans, who have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him /gruyo/. He was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roandun, if you can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail went a line of black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not laid off as many miles in the world as he could travel in a day.
Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal sky for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together like kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that appeared to have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often steered their course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de los Olmos.
In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily.
"I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never will let me."
Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to meet him.
"How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way girl? Always half-way."
"Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones.
"I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh. "I told him after dinner when I thought he would be in a good humour. Did you ever wake up a lion, Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost tore the ranch to pieces. It's all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid of him too. He ordered me to promise that I'd never marry a Truesdell. I promised. That's all. What luck did you have?"
"The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty old. I'm sorry, Yenna."
The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the horn of his saddle.
"I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour."
"Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes."
They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her saddle and called clearly:
"Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse."
"Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.
Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely--as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins--as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from somewhere--probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.