CHAPTER XL

MR. RUDABAUGH APPEARS

LEN Hersey, one of the swing men, condescended to converse with Cinquo Centavos, the fourteen-year-old horse herder. They sat their horses in the sunshine, watching the distant herd contentedly grazing. The wind was very soft and the sky very blue. Life would have been a pleasant thing for them both had they not been so close to town. They planned metropolitan conquest, both of them.

“I want to take a ride on the railroad kyars afore I go back home,” resumed Cinquo. “If I didn’t, my folks wouldn’t think I wasn’t much noways.”

“Them kyars probably don’t go nowheres near where you live at,” replied Len. “I don’t feel like taking no chances. Ef I am on a horse I’m all right; but ef a man’s on the kyars, where is he?

“If you was in town what would you advise fer to buy first, Cinquo?” he continued.

“Some onions and some fried potatoes and pie first, I reckon,” replied the boy. “Then some ammernition. Then maybe I’d get my hair cut. I had orter have some new pants. I mean ef I had any money.”

“And then a shave?”

The boy blushed red.

“I reckon I can get shaves if I pay the man,” said he, “and I reckon I am going to have plenty of money afore long. What’re you going to do?”

“Fust thing I am going to do when I get to town,” replied Len, “I am going to get a drink.”

“Then what?”

His companion gazed in deep thought.

“Then I think I’ll get another drink. Fur as I can see now, that’s about how I’m going to perceed. Of course, I may take both drinks at oncet. I can take other things under advisement, as the justice of the peace said. Maybe I would buy me a new pair pants; maybe I’d work around to the barber atter a while. When I got fixed up I might go and see what kind o’ dancin’ was in this town. Oh, yes! I did fergit about my shirt. I may buy me a shirt—ef there’s any kind of monte played in Aberlene.”

They both saw approaching across the prairies to the eastward a low-lying cloud of smoke. It was the first railroad train either of them had ever seen. They became very much excited.

“Look at her come!” said Cinquo. “Bet I ain’t skeered to ride on that thing! Now you see!”

“You’re a long ways off when you say it!” scoffed Len Hersey. “She’s goin’ to look a heap bigger and dangerouser, clost up. I bet we’d have to blindfold you and put two ropes on you afore we could put you on that there train, and then you’d be so skeered you’d shake your spurs off.”

“I ain’t got no more shakes than what you have,” said the boy. “You ain’t saw any more railroad kyars than what I have. But I don’t reckon I’ll go to town untel we sell our cows.”

“Nor me,” nodded Len. “But did you ever see such a town like this here one, now? They don’t savvy dobe none, it seems like; they don’t dry no mud; they just cut slabs of grass roots and build ’em up into a house, and put on a dirt roof. I looked inside of one as I rid by. It was lined with red caliker, walls and ceilings; no gypsum to white it up, nor nothing. Yet humans was livin’ in it. They live in them dugouts, too—just push a hole back into a bank an’ crawl in atter the hole like badgers. An’ there ain’t no trees; an’ when they do have trees, hain’t no moss on ’em. I ain’t saw a cactus nowheres, an’ as fer mesquite, I’m a notion to ride into one o’ these plum thickets an’ stick some plum thorns in my laigs, so’s’t a feller kin feel more nache’l.”

Meantime the continuous shriek of the locomotive whistle had brought to the station practically the entire population of the city of Abilene. It was a great day—a trail herd and a railroad train all in one day.

From the four coaches which made up the train there now descended an astonishing number of men, comprising all sorts and conditions of humanity. Some obviously were Eastern, and as many bore the imprint of the border. All of them pushed on toward the head of the train. There was no station building. The Drovers’ Cottage stood then for all of Abilene, and in that general direction the newcomers made their way. The ubiquitous McCoyne was first to greet them.

“Right this way, gentlemen!” said he. “Let me lead you to our hotel, the finest in the West. Welcome to Abilene, my friends! Yonder is the stockyards. I suppose some of you are looking after cattle. There is some in there now, and there is three thousand more right north of town. If you’re looking for cattle, we’ve got them and don’t you never doubt it! Gentlemen, you certainly have come to the right place. Boys, where’s the band?”

With some sort of instinct of his own McCoyne more especially addressed a quiet-looking sandy-bearded man in dark clothing, who seemed to be a man of distinct purposes and direct methods in life.

“How’d you like to ride out this evening and see our herd? They’ve just got in from Texas this morning.”

The stranger made a noncommittal reply to the effect that he was hungry. The crowd of newcomers began to disintegrate. Men looked after their hand bags, their rifles. Picturesque, certainly, was the personnel of every westbound train in Kansas at that time, when the head of steel was but little beyond the boom town of Abilene, first cow camp of Kansas.

Hickok and McMasters stood near the door of the Drovers’ Cottage, looking at the stirring and curious scene before them. The man of the Northern border was quiet after his fashion, moody. He turned suddenly to Dan McMasters.

“Look at them come!” he said. “Next year they’ll be here in thousands; and there’ll be cattle here in thousands too.”

McMasters nodded. The older man went on:

“Let me give you some advice. There is going to be big money in raising and selling cattle right up in this country; more money than there will be in trailing them north and selling at the road. If you’ll listen to me, you’ll get some land of your own up here. I’ll tell you where you can get a ranch, and a good one, over on the Smoky Hill, with all outdoors for your pasture. Put some cows on there. They’ll get fatter here than they ever will in Texas, though you don’t believe it. I’ve seen cattle up here, around the Army posts—and fat too. There’s no money in selling thin cattle. You’ll find that out if you keep at it. I’ve lived up here, north of the tick line, longer than you have.”

McMasters nodded.

“I’ve been studying this country now for quite a while,” said he. “I’ve seen some wintered cattle up in here, and as you say they were heavier. There’s a lot to be learned by Texas men. They don’t know that there is any world north of thirty-six. They’re still fighting the war, down in my state.”

“Huh! Well, this trial outlet for your cattle’ll end the war quicker than all your speech makers ever will.

“Of course,” he continued, “if you settle down to ranching you’ve got to get married some time. It’s a hard life for a woman here on the front, with the Indians not so far away. They tell me you have brought a young woman up here with this herd. I haven’t seen her. Lou Gore took her in charge and I’ll bet she’ll keep her close. She’s young? She can ride? Why don’t you marry her and settle down up here?”

He laughed at his conceit.

“You can bring up cattle from below as fast as you need more stock. Marry and settle down, son, and go into the sheriff business up here. I’ll give you my recommendation that you’re the best pistol shot I ever saw, unless it’s myself, and I’m not any too damn sure of that last.

“I’d bring Agnes out here if I was in a little different line of work myself,” he added. “That’s my wife.”

No man ever heard him speak in other but terms of gentleness of the woman who had married him, knowing what he was.

“I have got to finish my work first before I can settle down,” said Dan McMasters, almost as sad and moody as his companion here—indeed, singularly like to him.

Suddenly he touched the arm of Wild Bill, spoke in a low voice.

“Look!” said he, “Don’t move! There’s our man! That’s Rudabaugh down there by the last car! So that’s the way he took to get here!”

“Yes,” smiled Hickok, only amusement on his face. “He’s got here too late to stop that herd from making Abilene.”

“Yes; but he got here at just the right time, for all that!”

McMasters’ face was cold. The mask of expressionlessness again was covering it. His eyes, narrow, the skin of the upper eyelids drawn triangularly down, never left the man for whom so long and patiently he had been waiting.