Chapter 11

Tears! He remembered his last tears, and they kept on sliding down his cheek now as he recalled the occasion. His father had given him a colt back there where they slept between sheets. He had broken it himself, and taught it tricks. It whinnied to him when he passed the stable. The other boys envied him his colt, and he meant to show it at the fair. He came home one day and the colt was gone. His father handed him a silver dollar. He had thrown the money at his father and struck him in the face, and while the tears streamed from his eyes he had cursed his father with the oaths with which his father had so frequently cursed him; and he had kept on cursing until he was beaten into unconsciousness. There had been no love between them, ever, but he had not expected that. Since then there had been no time or inclination for tears, for it was then he had "quit the flat." The rage of his boyhood came back to Smith as he thought of it now. He swore, though it hurt him to speak.

His eyes were still smarting when he raised them to see a horseman on a distant ridge. The sight roused him like a stimulant. Was he friend or foe? He reined his horse, and, drawing his rifle from its scabbard, waited; for the stranger had seen him and was riding toward him down the ridge.

"If he ain't my kind, I'll have to stop him," Smith muttered.

The strength of excitement came to him, and once more he sat erect in the saddle, fingering the trigger as the horseman came steadily on.

"He rides like a Texican," Smith thought. There was something familiar in the stranger's outlines, the way he threw his weight in one stirrup, but Smith was taking no chances. He put out a hand in warning, and the other man stopped.

The swarthy face of the stranger wore a comprehending grin. No honest man drove horses across the Bad Lands. He threw the Indian sign of friendship to Smith, and they each advanced.

"How far to water, Clayt?"

"Well, dog-gone me! Smith!"

"How far to water?" Smith yelled the words in hoarse ferocity.

The stranger glanced at the barebacked horses, and then at the shimmering heat waves of the desert.

"Just around the ridge," he answered. "My God, man, didn't you pack water?"

But Smith was already out of hearing.

XVI

TINHORN FRANK SMELLS MONEY

Smith did not care for money in itself; that is, he did not care for it enough to work for it, or to hoard it when he had it. Yet perhaps even more than most persons he loved the feel of it in his fingers, the sensation of having it in his pocket. Smith was vain, in his way, and money satisfied his vanity. It gave him prestige, power, the attention he craved. He could call any flashy talker's bluff when his pockets were full of money. It imparted self-assurance. He could the better indulge his propensity for resenting slights, either real or fancied. Money would buy him out of trouble. Yes, Smith liked the feel of money. He took a roll of banknotes from the belt pocket of his leather chaps and counted them for the third time.

"I'll buy a few drinks, flash this wad on them pinheads in town, and then I'll soak it away." He returned the roll to his pocket with an expression of satisfaction upon his face.

He had done well with the horses. The "boys" had paid him a third more than he had expected; they had done so, he knew, as an incentive to further transactions. And Smith had outlined a plan to them which had made their eyes sparkle.

"It's risky, but if you can do it----" they had said.

"Sure, I can do it, and I'll start as soon as it's safe after I get back to the ranch. I gotta get to work and make a stake--_me_," he had declared.

They had looked at him quizzically.

"The fact is, I'm tired of livin' under my hat. I aims to settle down."

"And reform?" They had laughed uproariously.

"Not to notice."

Smith sincerely believed that nothing stood between him and Dora but his lack of money. Once she saw it, the actual money, when he could go to her and throw it in her lap, a hatful, and say, "Come on, girl"--well, women were like that, he told himself.

Ahead of Smith, on the dusty flat, was the little cow-town, looking, in the distance, like a scattered herd of dingy sheep. He was glad his ride was ended for the day. He was thirsty, hot, and a bit tired.

Tinhorn Frank, resting the small of his back against a monument of elk and buffalo horns in front of his log saloon, was the first to spy Smith ambling leisurely into town.

"There's Smithy!" he exclaimed to the man who loafed beside him, "and he's got a roll!"

His fellow lounger looked at him curiously.

"Tinhorn, I b'lieve you kin _smell_ money; and I swear they's kind of a scum comes over your eyes when you see it. How do you know he's carryin' a roll?"

Tinhorn Frank laughed.

"I know Smithy as well as if I had made him. I kin tell by the way he rides. I always could. When he's broke he's slouchy-like. He don't take no pride in coilin' his rope, and he jams his hat over his eyes--tough. Look at him now--settin' square in the saddle, his rope coiled like a top Californy cowboy on a Fourth of July. That's how I know. Hello, Smithy! Fall off and arrigate."

"Hullo!" Smith answered deliberately.

"How's she comin'?"

"Slow." He swung his leg over the cantle of the saddle.

"What'll you have?" Tinhorn slapped Smith's back so hard that the dust rose.

"Get me out somethin' stimulating, somethin' fur-reachin', somethin' that you can tell where it stops. I want a drink that feels like a yard of barb-wire goin' down." Smith was tying his horse.

"Here's somethin' special," said Tinhorn, when Smith went inside. "I keeps it for my friends."

Smith swallowed nearly a tumblerful.

"When I drinks, I drinks, and I likes somethin' I can notice." He wiped the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

"I guarantee you kin notice that in about five minutes. It's a never failing remedy for man and beast--not meaning to claim that its horse liniment at all. Put it back, Smithy; your money ain't good here!"

Tinhorn Frank's dark eyes gleamed with an avaricious light at sight of the roll of yellow banknotes which Smith flung carelessly upon the bar, but he had earned his living by his wits too long to betray eagerness. He masked the adamantine hardness of his grasping nature beneath an air of generous and bluff good-fellowship.

He was a dark man, with a skin of oily sallowness; thickset, with something of the slow ungainliness of a toad. His head was set low between stooped shoulders, and his crafty eyes had in them a look of scheming, scheming always for his own interests. Smith knew his record as well as he knew his own: a dance-hall hanger-on in his youth, despised of men; a blackmailer; the keeper of a notorious road-house; a petty grafter in a small political office in the little cow-town. Smith understood perfectly the source of his present interest, yet it flattered him almost as much as if it had been sincere, it pleased him as if he had been the object of a gentleman's attentions. When he had money, Smith demanded satellites, sycophants who would laugh boisterously at his jokes, praise him in broad compliments, and follow him like a paid retinue from saloon to saloon. This was enjoying life! And upon this weakness, the least clever, the most insignificant and unimportant person could play if he understood Smith.

The word had gone down the line that Smith was in town with money. They rallied around him with loud protestations of joy at the sight of him. Smith held the centre of the stage, he was the conspicuous figure, the magnet which drew them all. He gloried in it, revelled in his popularity; and the "special brand" was beginning to sizzle in his veins.

"I'm feelin' lucky to-day, me--Smith!" he cried exultantly. "I has a notorious idea that I can buck the wheel and win!"

He had not meant to gamble--he had told himself that he would not; but his admiring friends urged him on, his blood was running fast and hot, his heart beat high with confidence and hope. Big prospects loomed ahead of him; success looked easy. He flung his money recklessly upon the red and black, and with throbbing pulses watched the wheel go round.

Again and again he won. It seemed as if he could not lose.

"I told you!" he cried. "I'm feelin' lucky!"

When he finally stopped, his winnings were the envy of many eyes.

"Set 'em up, Tinhorn! Everybody drink! Bring in the horses!"

Bedlam reigned. It was "Smithy this" and "Smithy that," and it was all as the breath of life to Smith.

"Tinhorn"--he leaned heavily on the bar--"when I feels lucky like this, I makes it a rule to crowd my luck. Are you game for stud?"

The film which the lounger had mentioned seemed to cover Tinhorn's eyes.

"I'm locoed to set agin such luck as yours, but I like to be sociable, and you don't come often."

"I likes a swift game," said Smith, as he pulled a chair from the pine table. "Draw is good enough for kids and dudes, but stud's the only play for men."

"Now you've talked!" declared the admiring throng.

"Keep 'em movin', Tinhorn! Deal 'em out fast."

"Smithy, you're a cyclone!"

A hundred of Smith's money went for chips.

"Dough is jest like mud to some fellers," said a voice enviously.

"I likes a game where you make or break on a hand. I've lost thousands while you could spit, me--Smith!"

"It's like a chinook in winter just to see you in town agin, Smithy."

The "hole" card was not promising--it was only a six-spot; but, backing his luck, Smith bet high on it. Tinhorn came back at him strong. He wanted Smith's money, and he wanted it quick.

Smith's next card was a jack, and he bet three times its value. When Tinhorn dealt him another jack he bought more chips and backed his pair, for Tinhorn, as yet, had none in sight. The next turn showed up a queen for Tinhorn and a three-spot for Smith. And they bet and raised, and raised again. On the last turn Smith drew another three and Tinhorn another queen. With two pairs in sight, Smith had him beaten. When Smith bet, Tinhorn raised him. Was Tinhorn bluffing or did he have another queen in the "hole"? Smith believed he was bluffing, but there was an equal chance that he was not. While he hesitated, the other watched him like a hungry mountain lion.

"Are you gettin' cold feet, Smithy?" There was the suspicion of a sneer in the satellite's voice. "Did you say you liked to make or break on a hand?"

"I thought you liked a swift game," gibed Tinhorn.

The taunt settled it.

"I can play as swift as most--and then, some." He shoved a pile of chips into the centre of the table with both hands. "Come again!"

Tinhorn did come again; and again, and again, and again. He bet with the confidence of knowledge--with a confidence that put the fear in Smith's heart. But he could not, and he would not, quit now. His jaw was set as he pulled off banknote after banknote in the tense silence which had fallen.

When the last of them fluttered to the table he asked:

"What you got?"

For answer, Tinhorn turned over a third queen. Encircling the pile of money and chips with his arm, he swept them toward him.

Smith rose and kicked the chair out of his way.

"That's the end of my rope," he said, with a hard laugh. "I'm done."

"Have a drink," urged Tinhorn.

"Not to-day," he answered shortly.

The crowd parted to let him pass. Untying his horse, he sprang into the saddle, and not much more than an hour from the time he had arrived he rode down the main street, past the bank where he was to leave his roll, flat broke.

At the end of the street he turned in his saddle and looked behind him. His satellites stood in the bar-room door, loungers loafed on the curbstone, a woman or two drifted into the General Merchandise Store. The Postmaster was eying him idly through his fly-specked window, and a group of boys, who had been drawing pictures with their bare toes in the deep white dust of the street, scowled after him because his horse's feet had spoiled their work. His advent had left no more impression than the tiny whirlwind in its erratic and momentary flurry. The money for which he had sweat blood was gone. Mechanically he jambed his hands into his empty pockets.

"Hell!" he said bitterly. "Hell!"

XVII

SUSIE HUMBLES HERSELF TO SMITH

Smith's return to the ranch was awaited with keen interest by several persons, though for different reasons.

Bear Chief wanted to learn the whereabouts of his race-horse, and seemed to find small comfort in Ralston's assurance that the proper authorities had been notified and that every effort would be made to locate the stolen ponies.

Dora was troubled that Smith's educational progress should have come to such an abrupt stop; and she felt not a little hurt that he should disappear for such a length of time without having told her of his going, and disappointed in him, also, that he would permit anything to interfere with the improvement of his mind.

Susie's impatience for his return increased daily. Her chagrin over being outwitted by Smith was almost comical. She considered it a reflection upon her own intelligence, and tears of mortification came to her eyes each time she discussed it with Ralston. He urged her to be patient, and tried to comfort her by saying:

"We have only to wait, Susie."

"Yes, I thought that before, and look what happened."

"The situation is different now."

"But maybe he'll reform and we'll never get another crack at him," she said dolefully.

Ralston shook his head.

"Don't let that disturb you. Take certain natures under given circumstances, and you can come pretty near foretelling results. Smith will do the same thing again, only on a bigger scale; that is, unless he learns that he has been found out. He won't be afraid of you, because he will think that you are as deep in the mire as he is; but if he thought I suspected him, or the Indians, it would make him cautious."

"You don't think he's charmed, or got such a stout medicine that nobody can catch him?"

Ralston could not refrain from smiling at the Indian superstition which cropped out at times in Susie.

"Not for a moment," he answered positively. "He appears to have been fortunate--lucky--but in a case like this, I don't believe there's any luck can win, in the long run, against vigilance, patience, and determination; and the greatest of these is patience." Ralston, waxing philosophical went on: "It's a great thing to be able to wait, Susie--coolly, smilingly, to wait--providing, as the phrase goes, you hustle while you wait. One victory for your enemy doesn't mean defeat for yourself. It's usually the last trick that counts, and sometimes games are long in the playing. Wait for your enemy's head, and when it comes up, _whack it_! Neither you nor I, Susie, have been reared to believe that when we are swatted on one cheek we should turn the other."

"No;" Susie shook her head gravely. "That ain't sense."

The person who took Smith's absence most deeply to heart was the Indian woman. She missed him, and, besides, she was tormented with jealous suspicions. She knew nothing of his life beyond what she had seen at the ranch. There might be another woman. She suffered from the ever-present fear that he might not come back; that he would go as scores of grub-liners had gone, without a word at parting.

In the house she was restless, and her moccasined feet padded often from her bench in the corner to the window overlooking the road down which he might come. She sat for hours at a time upon an elevation which commanded a view of the surrounding country. Heavy-featured, moody-eyed, she was the personification of dog-like fidelity and patience. Naturally, it was she who first saw Smith jogging leisurely down the road on his jaded horse.

The long roof of the MacDonald ranch, which was visible through the cool willows, looked good to Smith. It looked peaceful, and quiet, and inviting; yet Smith knew that the whole Indian police force might be there to greet him. He had been gone many days, and much might have happened in the interim. It was characteristic of Smith that he did not slacken his horse's pace--he could squirm out somehow.

It gave him no concern that he had not a dollar to divide with Susie, as he had promised, and his chagrin over the loss of the money had vanished as he rode. His temperament was sanguine, and soon he was telling himself that so long as there were cattle and horses on the range there was always a stake for him. Following up this cheerful vein of thought, he soon felt as comfortable as if the money were already in his pocket.

Smith threw up his hand in friendly greeting as the Indian woman came down the path to meet him.

There was no response, and he scowled.

"The old woman's got her sull on," he muttered, but his voice was pleasant enough when he asked: "Ain't you glad to see me, Prairie Flower?"

The woman's face did not relax.

"Where you been?" she demanded.

He stopped unsaddling and looked at her.

"I never had no boss, me--Smith," he answered with significance.

"You got a woman!" she burst out fiercely.

Smith's brow cleared.

"Sure I got a woman."

"You lie to me!"

"I call her Prairie Flower--my woman." He reached and took her clenched hand.

The tense muscles gradually relaxed, and the darkness lifted from her face like a cloud that has obscured the sun. She smiled and her eyelids dropped shyly.

"Why you go and no tell me?" she asked plaintively.

"It was a business trip, Prairie Flower, and I like to talk to you of love, not business," he replied evasively.

She looked puzzled.

"I not know you have business."

"Oh, yes; I do a rushin' business--by spells."

She persisted, unsatisfied:

"But what kind of business?"

Smith laughed outright.

"Well," he answered humorously, "I travels a good deal--in the dark of the moon."

"Smith!"

She was keener than he had thought, for she drew her right hand slyly under her left arm in the expressive Indian sign signifying theft. He did not answer, so she said in a tone of mingled fear and reproach:

"You steal Indian horses!"

"Well?"

She grasped his coat-sleeve.

"Don't do dat no more! De Indians' hearts are stirred. Dey mad. Dis time maybe dey not ketch you, but some time, yes! You get more brave and you steal from white man. You steal two, t'ree cow, maybe all right, but when you steal de white man's horses de rope is on your neck. I know--I have seen. Some time de thief he swing in de wind, and de magpie pick at him, and de coyote jump at him. Yes, I have seen it like dat."

Smith shivered.

"Don't talk about them things," he said impatiently. "I've been near lynchin' twice, and I hates the looks of a slip-noose yet; but I gotta have money."

As he stood above her, looking down upon her anxious face, a thought came to him, a plan so simple that he was amazed that it had not occurred to him before. Undoubtedly she had money in the bank, this infatuated, love-sick-woman--the Scotchman would have taught her how to save and care for it; but if she had not, she had resources which amounted to the same: the best of security upon which she could borrow money. He was sure that her cattle and horses were free of mortgages, and there was the coming crop of hay. She had promised him the proceeds from that, if he would stay, but the sale of it was still months away.

"If I had a stake, Prairie Flower," he said mournfully, "I'd cut out this crooked work and quit takin' chances. But a feller like me has got pride: he can't go around without two bits in his pocket, and feel like a man. If I had the price, I'd buy me a good bunch of cattle, get a permit, and range 'em on the reserve."

"When we get tied right," said the woman eagerly, "I give you de stake _quick_."

Smith shook his head.

"Do you think I'm goin' to have the whole country sayin' I just married you for what you got? I've got some feelin's, me--Smith, and before I marry a rich woman, I want to have a little somethin' of my own."

She looked pleased, for Susie's words had rankled.

"How big bunch cattle you like buy? How much money you want?"

He shook his head dejectedly.

"More money nor I can raise, Prairie Flower. Five--ten thousand dollars--maybe more." He watched the effect of his words narrowly. She did not seem startled by the size of the sums he mentioned. He added: "There's nothin' in monkeyin' with just a few."

"I got de money, and I gift it to you. My heart is right to you, white man!" she said passionately.

"Do you mean it, Prairie Flower?"

"Yas, but don't tell Susie."

He watched her going up the path, her hips wobbling, her step heavy, and he hated her. Her love irritated him; her devotion was ridiculous. He saw in her only a means to an end, and he was without scruples or pity.

"She ain't no more to me nor a dumb brute," he said contemptuously.

Smith felt that he was able to foretell with considerable accuracy the nature of his interview with Susie upon their meeting, and her opening words did not fall short of his expectations.

"You're all right, you are!" she said in her high voice. "I'd stick to a pal like you through thick and thin, I would! What did you pull out like that for anyhow?"

Smith chuckled.

"Well, sir, Susie, it fair broke my heart to start off without seein' your pretty face and hearin' your sweet voice again, but the fact is, I got so lonesome awaitin' for you that I just naturally had to be travellin'. I ups and hits the breeze, and I has no pencil or paper to leave a note behind. It wasn't perlite, Susie, I admits," he said mockingly.

"Dig up that money you're goin' to divide." Susie looked like a young wildcat that has been poked with a stick.

Smith drew an exaggerated sigh and shook his head lugubriously.

"Child, I'm the only son of Trouble. I gets in a game and I loses every one of our honest, hard-earned dollars. The tears has been pilin' out of my eyes and down my cheeks for forty miles, thinkin' how I'd have to break the news to you."

"Smith, you're just a common, _common_ thief!" All the scorn of which she was capable was in her voice. "To steal from your own pal!"

"Thief?" Smith put his fingers in his ears. "Don't use that word, Susie. It sounds horrid, comin' from a child you love as if she was your own step-daughter."

The muscles of Susie's throat contracted so it hurt her; her face drew up in an unbecoming grimace; she cried with a child's abandon, indifferent to the fact that her tears made her ludicrously ugly.

"Smith," she sobbed, "don't you ever feel sorry for anybody? Couldn't you ever pity anybody? Couldn't you pity me?"

Smith made no reply, so she went on brokenly;

"Can't you remember that you was a kid once, too, and didn't know how, and couldn't, fight grown up people that was mean to you?--and how you felt? I know you don't _have_ to do anything for me--you don't _have_ to--but won't you? Won't you do somethin' good when you've got a chance--just this once, Smith? Won't you go away from here? You don't care anything at all for Mother, Smith, and she's all I've got!" She stretched her hands toward him appealing, while the hot tears wet her cheeks. She was the picture of childish humiliation and misery.

Smith looked at her and listened without derision or triumph. He looked at her in simple curiosity, as he would have looked at a suffering animal biting itself in pain. The unexpected outbreak interested him.

Through a blur of tears, Susie read something of this in his face, and her hands dropped limply to her sides. Her appeal was useless.

It was not that Smith did not understand her feelings. He did--perfectly. He knew how deep a child's hurt is. He had been hurt himself, and the scar was still there. It was only that he did not care. He had lived through his hurt, and so would she. It was to his interest to stay, and first and always he considered Smith.