Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan «Outlaw» and Other Stories

About half an hour before dark that evening a long string of pack horses, with a rider in the lead and another following, came ploughing through the snow up to the cliff above where the sheep had been bedded. Two of the horses carried ordinary camp packs, the rest were loaded with hay, three bales to the horse. At the edge of the cliff the leader pulled up while every animal stopped in its tracks.

"If we can't see anything of the sheep from here we might just as well give it up for the night," he called back to his companion. "Come on up and have a look."

For a few minutes they both sat gazing out into the plain below, across which the evening shadows were slowly trailing. As far as they could see there was but a white unbroken sheet of snow, the only living thing visible being half a dozen ravens cawing hoarsely as they drifted into the distance.

The second man pulled out his pipe, loaded, and lit it.

"Jim," he queried, "do you know what night this is?"

"I reckon I do," and Stanley's voice choked. "It's Christmas eve, an' I been a-thinkin' an' a-thinkin' all afternoon of that poor little chap out here a-fightin' his way through a storm, the like of which this range ain't seen in twenty years. Don't seem possible he's pulled through, although I'd back Dummy to make it and save his herd if any kid could."

Suddenly he turned his head and sniffed.

"Seems like I smell smoke, and cedar smoke at that," he said eagerly. "Don't you git it, Bob?"

"Which way's the wind?" and Bob blew a cloud of smoke into the frosty air.

"What there is comes from the direction of that there little hill," pointing to the very hill on which Dummy had stood.

The instant they topped it, each caught sight of the dry farmer's place, the haystack, the sheep in the field and knew they had found that for which they sought.

"You know the place?" asked Bob, as they hurried down.

"I do for a fact," Stanley grinned, "last time I passed this-a-way the old digger what built that shack an' taken up the dry farm was cuttin' an' stackin' Russian thistles. When I laughed at him for a fool he said he ain't raised nothing' else, an' up North Dakota way they used to put 'em up for roughness when the crops failed, an' he's seen many an old Nellie pulled through a hard winter on 'em."

Ten minutes later the two rode up to the shack. A line of scattered fodder from the stack to the shed showed what the boy had been doing. Bob picked up a handful of the stuff: "Roosian thistles by all that's holy," was his comment, "an' whoever before heerd tell of them tumble weeds a-bein' good for anything to eat."

As he spoke the lad came round the corner of the shed in which "Slippers" had been comfortably stabled and fed.

What with smoke from campfires, and the charcoal he had smeared over it to save his eyes, his face was as black as Toby's hat, but to Stanley it was the face of a hero. Uttering those strange guttural sounds, waving his arms towards the sheep, his dark eyes shining with pride and joy the boy ran to Stanley as a child to its father.

The man, too overwhelmed and happy to speak, grabbed the lad close to his heart, stroking the tousled head and patting tenderly the dirty cheeks down which the child's tears were now cutting deep trails in their extra covering while, as he realized the boy could hear not a word of the praise and thanks he was showering on him for his pluck and fidelity the tears came to his own eyes nor did he try to stop them.

In the shack that night the boy, worn out by his exposure and the reaction, dropped into his bed the instant supper had been eaten and was fast asleep in ten seconds.

The two men smoked in silence before the little fireplace in the corner.

"Do you reckon we could make a stab at some sort of a Christmas tree an' kinda s'prise the kid in the morning?" Stanley glanced toward the figure asleep on the floor.

"Jest what I was a studyin' over," was Bob's reply. "These here bascos make a heap of such holidays an' Dummy he'd be the tickledest kid ever, if he was to find something like Christmas time a settin' by his bed when he wakes up in the morning."

Bob knocked the ashes from his pipe and put it away.

"There's a bunch of piñons and cedars down along the wash," he said, "sposin' I take the axe an' git a little branch, or the tip of a piñon an' we set her up here by his bed? What kin we dig up to put onto it that's fittin' for such a thing?"

"For a starter I got them nine silver cart wheels the store keeper give me in change," was Stanley's quick response. Bob was already going through his pockets.

"Here's a handful of chicken feed, that'll help some," handing the change to Stanley, "yep, an' a paper dollar the postmaster gimme. Reckon the kid'll know what it is? I been skeert I'd use it fer a cigarette paper."

Stanley started for the two kyacks lying in the corner.

"You hustle out an' git the tree," said he, "an' I'll see what else I can scare up in the packs. I know there's a couple of apples an' a orange I throwed in with the grub when we was packin'."

An hour later the two men stood by the boy's bed, their faces fairly shining with the true Christmas spirit over their efforts to make an acceptable Christmas tree out of such scanty material. On the floor at his head stood a small piñon tree top held erect by several stones. Both men had exhausted their ingenuity to find things with which to decorate it and on its branches hung the oddest lot of plunder that ever old "Santy" left on his rounds.

"I'll never miss them spurs," said Bob pointing to an almost new pair he had recently bought, "an' Dummy, he's been just daffy about 'em."

"Same with that new knife," said Stanley. "I jist bought it to be a doin' somethin' an' I know Dummy ain't got one that'll cut cold butter."

In nine separate little packages wrapped in newspaper the silver dollars were swinging at the end of pieces of thread from a spool in Bob's "war bag," the loose silver had been placed in two empty tobacco sacks each hanging pendant from the tip of a limb, while three unbroken packages of chewing gum, two apples and one rather dilapidated orange swung from other branches.

Stanley picked up the boy's slate. "Less' see," he asked, "what's Dummy's real name?"

"Pedro," answered Bob, busy making down their bed on the floor.

Painstaking and slowly, he wrote:

TO PEDROA MERRY CHRISTMASYOU ARE SURE SOME SHEEP MAN

Then he propped the slate against the tree in plain sight of the lad's eyes when he woke.

"Beats hell how a man's eyes gits to waterin' this cold weather." Stanley wiped his eyes rather furtively as he turned toward their bed.

"Same here," replied Bob, blowing his nose with more than usual vigor. "Somethin' sure does act onto 'em."

THE MUMMY FROM THE GRAND CAÑON

"Bang, bang, bang!" went three shots in the night air. Sounds like some feller's a huntin' a warm place to sleep," said Little Bob Morris, one of three men who were sitting in front of the fireplace in the snug little dugout at the winter horse camp of the X bar outfit.

"Open the door, Bob, and show 'em a light," said one of the others. In a few minutes, with a wild "whoo-pee," a mounted figure rode out of the darkness and the boys were shaking hands with "Hog-eye" Jackson, who had a pair of eyes that, as one man put it, "didn't track," one being blue, the other black, and both so badly crossed that he looked both ways at once.

After supper had been cooked and the dishes put away, the boys gathered about the fireplace for a smoke.

"I hain't been out this a-way since the time me and Little Bob here was a huntin' for a dead Chinee," said Jackson, with a look about the room.

"Huntin' for a dead Chink?" said Grimes. "What ye mean by that?"

"Ain't you never heard tell about the Chinee what died over in Williams and was stoled away from the joss house where the other Chinks had him laid out?" said Jackson, with a look of surprise.

"Nary a hear," replied the two boys, "le's have it."

"'Bout two years ago, along in the fall," Jackson began, "after we had shipped the last steers from Williams, a Chinese laundryman there died one night, and was laid out in the little room where the Chinamen of the town kept their joss. The day following there was a tremendous squalling among the heathen, for during the night Ah Yen had disappeared from the coffin, and not a trace of him could be found. The coffin was there all right; it stood just where they left it the night before, surrounded by paper prayers, burning punk sticks, and all the other things used by the heathens to frighten away the devils which are supposed to be lyin' in wait for the spirit of a diseased celestial. But punk or no punk, devils or no devils, Ah Yen was gone, of that there was no doubt. The city marshal and the sheriff both came to investigate and question, the town was scoured, old stables and lofts searched, but still, 'no catch 'em.' After a couple of days' work the sheriff said: 'I'm danged if I'm not clear stumped. The Chink was plum dead, that's a sure thing, so he didn't git up and walk away, and if he was hauled off by some one, they didn't leave any sign that I can find, and, anyhow (which to him was the most convincing thing of all), what'd any one want for to steal a dead Chinaman, I'd like to know?'

"There was a doctor livin' over on Cataract cañon that fall, a sort of lunger chap, and when some one suggested that perhaps he had packed the Chink off for dissectin' purposes (Ah Yen bein' six feet tall and the best specimen of a Chinaman I'd ever seen), the sheriff, just to make a sort of showin' to the other Chinks, sent me – I bein' a deputy sheriff at that time – to make a sort of scout round and see what I could pick up.

"We dropped into his camp, but nothin' doin', and after prowling around for a day or two I went back to town. The next day Scotty Jones got on a tear and shot up the burg pretty plenty, and in tryin' to ride his horse into a Front Street saloon got a load of buckshot into his countenance. This made so much excitement that by the time the coroner's jury got done with the inquest the loss of Ah Yen's remains had become a matter of past history.

"Meantime the Chinks raised a powerful rookus over the loss of the body of Ah Yen, he bein' a sort of high muck-a-muck among them, but even the offer of a $100 reward for the body didn't get any clews to the disappearance."

"I remember hearin' something about it," said Grimes, "but I was down in the Tonto basin that fall a-huntin' some hosses we lost on the spring work, and never before did hear jist what happened."

"An' didn't they never find out what went with the Chink?" queried Russel, who was a newcomer in the country.

"Well," said Jackson rather evasively, "so fur as I know nobody's ever yit claimed the reward."

"Le's change the subject," said Grimes, lighting his pipe with a long pine sliver. "Hog-eye, where you been sence I seen you last fall a year ago over on the Tonto steer round up?" he asked of the newcomer.

"Me?" said Jackson, with a start, blowing a cloud of smoke skyward. "Oh, I been a driftin' about pretty promiscous like sence then. When we come to ship the last of the steers that fall, old Mose, the Spur boss, axed me if I wanted to go back to Kansas and help take care of 'em where the outfit was going to winter 'em. Well, me not being sure of a winter's job here, and likely to have to ride the chuck line before spring, I reckons I'd best nab the job whilst it was open, so I took it."

"How long did you last on the cornstalk job?" asked Russel.

"Oh, I hung and rattled with it till about April, and then I begins to git oneasy and sort of hankering for the range agin. One day I was in town for some grub and other plunder and goes down to the depot to see the train come through, and me a wishin' to God I was a goin' off in her, no matter which-a-way she was pointed. When number two comes along, who should drop off but old Pickerell, who used to live out here on the cañon and take tourists out and show 'em the sights. Pick were powerful glad to see me and he sed, ses he, 'What be ye a doin' here, Jackson?'

"'I'm a doin' of the prodigal son act,' ses I.

"'Come again,' ses he, lookin' sort of mystified like.

"'I'm a-feedin' a bunch of hawgs and steers out here on a farm,' ses I, 'where I ain't seen the sun shine but twicet in four months.'

"Pickerell, he laughed sort of tickled like, an' ses to me, 'Why don't you quit and go back to Arizony, where the sun shines all the time?'

"'I'm a goin' to,' ses I, 'just as shore as next pay day comes.' I didn't like to tell him that I was flat busted count of goin' into K. C. with a load of hawgs an' meetin' up with a bunch of amigos what worked me for a sure enough sucker. They gits all my dinero an' leaves me locked up in a little old room where we went to git a drink."

Hog-eye sighed and sucked vigorously at his pipe, while the boys grinned at each other and waited to hear the rest of the story, which was evidently hanging on his lips.

"Well, go on Hog-eye, tell us the rest. Might as well 'fess up and feel better," said High-pockets encouragingly.

"I reckon so," replied Jackson with a chuckle, as if there was some pleasure in the memories of the past. "You see, after talkin' a few minutes with Pick he up and makes me an offer to go back east, where he was a runnin' a show what were a part of a street carnival outfit and a-makin' all kinds of money. He wanted me to rig up in a 'Montgomery Ward outfit,' big hat, goatskin chaps, spurs an' gloves, with stars and fringe like them fellers in the movie outfits gits onto 'em, an' sort of loaf round the door and git people excited an' toll 'em into the show. So I hits the high places back to the farm, and tells the granger feller to git him a new cornstalk pusher to take my place pretty pronto. When he comes I strikes out for the place back in Illinoy where Pick sed he'd be showin' an' waitin' for my arrival.

"Pick he pays me forty beans a month, an we sleeps on our round-up beds in one of the tents. He shore had a mess of plunder inside the big tent. They was a Navajo squaw weavin' blankets, a couple of loafer wolves, some coyotes, wildcats, badgers, a lot of rattlers, centipedes and tarantulas, and a whole box full of them heely monsters. Besides this, he had a lot of glass cases in which he had a bunch of them stone axes, metates, mano stones, arrow-heads, and all that sort of plunder which they digs up from them prehistoric ruins all over this country out here.

"But the main drawin' card he had was the mummy which he sed he dug up somewheres out here in the Grand Cañon. He had all sorts of certificates and letters to prove its genuineness, as well as photographs taken when they dug it up in the cave.

"One day a odd-lookin' four-eyed feller comes along, and he ses to Pick, 'Mought I inspect this mummy of your'n?' and Pick he ses, 'Shore, pardner, jist as much as you like. You come round to-morrow mornin' fore the show begins and I'll be glad to have you look the gent over.'

"The old boy ses he'll shore be on hand, for he's powerful interested in them prehistoric things out West. So that evening, after the show closed, Pick ses to me, 'Jackson, you git a screwdriver and take them screws outen the lower lid of that there mummy case.' So I loosens up the screws, and havin' nothin' particular to do, I takes off the lid to get a better look at his Nibs. I ain't never seen a mummy before, an' was sort of curious to know what a shore enuff mummy did look like. He was naked down to his waist, and the skin was as dry and leathery as an old cowhide that's been laying out in the weather for ten years. His eyes were shut tight and his teeth showed through his thin lips with a grin that give me a cold chill for a month afterwards. But, say, boys, talk about a surprise. One look was all I wanted to show me that this here mummy of old Pick's was nothin' else but the remains of old Ah Yen, the Chink what died in Williams and was stole out of the joss house. Then I remembered the reward offered for it, but old Pick were too square a feller to soak that-a-way. I never said nothin' to nobody about what I'd seen, but slipped the lid back on the case and went off to bed in the other tent.

"Long about midnight I was woke up by somebody a hollerin' fire, and when I busted out of the tent the whole row of shacks was a blazin'. Our big tent was too far gone to save anything, but we drug out our beds and what little baggage we had in the small tent and did well to git that much out. Inside an hour there wasn't nothin' left but a pile of ashes to show where the whole outfit stood.

"Old man Pick, he took on considerable, but 'twan't no use cryin' over spilt milk, an' so we hit the trail for Arizony an' a little sunshine."

"But how did Pickerell git holt of that there Chink's body?" asked Morris, who had listened with amazement at the story.

Jackson grinned as he slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe. "It sort of hacked the old man when he found I was wise to his little game with the Chink," he said. "Over in Albuquerque he met up with a feller who was a-goin' down into Central America on a sort of bug huntin' expedition and he talked Pick into goin' with him. The night before we split at Albuquerque he gits fuller than a goat, an' seein' as how he wasn't comin' back to these parts agin, he give me a great old confidential an' tole me how he turned the trick.

"I disremember all that Pickerell done tole me of the way the job was worked," continued Jackson, "but, howsomever, the day the Chink died the one-lunged doctor was in town. Pickerell he's been a tellin' him about the mummies they occasionally found out in them cliff dwellers' ruins in the cañon, and when the Doc meets Pick hangin' about town that afternoon he suggests carryin' off the Chink's body and makin' a mummy out of it. That hits Pick all right and he didn't let no grass grow under his feet gittin' ready to do it.

"The night of the body snatchin', he gits up about midnight, slips uptown, finds the door of the joss house open and no one watchin' it. Hurryin' back to his cabin, he saddles up one mule and slaps a packsaddle on the other, an' an hour later drifted out of town with a pack on his mule lookin' for all the world like a long roll of bedding. By noon the next day he reached his den in the cañon, where he and the doctor went to work, and between 'em did a mighty good job of embalmin', endin' it all up with a three months' smokin' of the body with green cedar wood.

"Pick ses that then come the tickledest part of the hull job, fer whilst he's got a mummy all right, he's got to git it sort of discovered like to make it of any scientific value, an' he studies the matter aplenty. He knows a bunch of fellers what was a-coming out to the Grand Cañon from the East to poke about an' try an' discover prehistoric things, and he knows them's the very chaps to help him out. So when they shows up he tells 'em sort of accidental like that he knows where they's a bunch of them there clift dwellings what nobody'd ever yit seen, and they grabs at his bait like hungry trout. They just can't skeercely wait to git out there, and Pick ses the rest were plumb easy, for the whole place looked like it had never been disturbed before, and when they digs out the mummy all buried in the dirt and rubbish in one of the cliff dwellings, the thing was done.

"Them fellers jist nachelly never suspicioned a thing and was perfectly willin' to sign a statement testifyin' to the genuineness of the mummy. Then they took photographs of the cliff dwellings and the mummy as it lay in the room, and all the surroundin's, with all these here scientific chaps a-standin' around, which clinched the thing. Pick ses he'll take the mummy fer his share, and he gits the fellers to take it on east with their plunder when they goes, so no one won't never suspicion him and connect him up with the deal."

"I reckon you and him would have been chasin' 'bout the country back thar to this very yit, if the fire hadn't cleaned up the outfit, wouldn't you?" inquired Russel.

"Sure," replied the ex-showman; "we was makin' all kinds of money at it and makin' of it easier than I ever did in all my life before. But, say, when it comes to makin' mummies, old Pickerell and that there one-lung doctor had 'em old Pharaoh fellers beaten a whole mile."

JUMPING AT CONCLUSIONS

It certainly seemed good to be back on the old range again after a six months' absence. As we "topped" the last hill I pulled up the team. Down in the Valley below us the white adobe walls of the ranch house, like some desert light house, blazed through the glorious green of the cottonwoods that hovered about it. To its right a brown circle marked the big stockade corral. A smooth mirror-like spot out in the flat in front of the house was the stock-watering reservoir, into which the windmill, seconded by an asthmatic little gas engine, pumped water from the depths. Above it the galvanized iron sails of the great mill glittered and flickered and winked in the bright sunlight as if to welcome us home. A cloud of dust stringing off into the distance marked the trail where a bunch of "broom tails" were scurrying out onto the range after filling themselves at the tank with water and salt.

Suddenly, a gleam of color caught our eyes. It was "Old Glory" at the top of the tall pole, stirred by a little gust of wind that shook out its folds, the green of the trees making a splendid background. Evidently the boys were expecting us, for the flag was only run up on holidays, Sundays, and when guests were due to arrive.

A soft hand slipped quietly into mine. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home," she sang, and as the words of the homesick, world-tired Payne came from her lips, there came into my throat a great lump, my eyes filled with tears, and to us both, the sage brush plain shimmering and baking in the bright Arizona sunshine, those brown rugged mountains in the distance and that desert oasis in the foreground were by far the loveliest thing we had seen in all our travels. The team, too, seemed to sense our feelings, for they freshened up and took us across the intervening distance as if they had not already made a good forty miles from the railroad.

Old Dad, the ranch cook, was at the "snorting post" to greet us as we pulled up, and we soon were sitting on the broad veranda plying the old rascal with questions about the work, the men, and all the happenings while we had been away; for of all forlorn, unsatisfactory things on earth the worst are the letters written by the average cow-puncher ranch foreman concerning matters upon which his absent boss has requested full and frequent information.

One of the first anxious inquiries on the part of the madam was as to the whereabouts of her Boston terrier, a bench show prize winner sent out to her shortly before we left. The letter accompanying the dog advised us that, barring accidents, the animal should in a few months bring into the world some offspring, which, considering its parentage, ought to bring fancy prices on the dog market.

"Where's Beauty?" she asked.

"I reckon she done went off with the boys this morning. They's down to Walnut Spring, buildin' a new corral."

"But didn't she – er – hasn't she – " She looked at me appealingly.

"Where are her pups?" was my blunt inquiry.

"Them pups?" The old man took his pipe from his jaws. A queer look flashed across his brown face; he chuckled as if the words brought up some rather amusing recollection. Now, old Dad was one of the worst practical jokers in the West. Nor did he count the cost or think of the results as long as he could carry his point, and fool some one with one of his wildly improbable yarns. To "pick a load" into some innocent tenderfoot was his most joyous occupation. I waited patiently for him to recover from the fit of mirth into which my innocent question seemed to have plunged him. There was a look of extreme disgust on the face of the lady sitting nearby.

"Ye 'member that there young kid-like chap what drifted in here last spring after the steer gatherin'?" Again that witless chuckle.

Yes, I remembered. We both did – the madam nodded.

"Well, along about the time them there pups came into this here state of Arizony" – the madam's face lighted; there were some pups after all – "the kid and I was here at the ranch all alone, the whole outfit bein' out on the rodeo, an' we havin' been left behind to watch the pasture fence, where a bunch of yearlin's was bein' weaned. One mornin' the kid busted into the kitchen. 'The mut's got four purps! Come an' look at em; they's all de-formed!' ses he, almost breathless with the news."