The Trail Rider/Chapter 18
FEW people were passing that hour, for it was late for respectable Cottonwood, and the other half didn't roam down into that section. Texas had not waited long on the bench beside the door, scanning hurriedly every man who came into view, his mind alert, his hand ready to his gun, when the one for whom he waited came.
The stranger approached him without hesitation, Texas standing, turning to bring his elbow free from interference against the wall.
"Hello, Texas," came the familiar hail.
"Sir, good evening," Texas returned, watching the stranger narrowly, puzzled by his familiarity.
The stranger was of medium height, but' slender. He was dressed in the regulation cowboy style, except that his chaparejos were of plain leather instead of the hairy kind so much in vogue at that time on the Arkansas Valley range.
He was standing where the light fell full on him through the open door, and the friendliness of his attitude was as mystifying to Texas as his identity.
"Don't you know me, Texas?"
He came a step nearer, turning his head in the light so Texas could see his face clearly. But beyond establishing that he was a comely youth, dark-skinned as an Indian, with dark hair cut close to his handsome head, Texas could make out nothing at all.
"No, sir; you've got me, as sure as you're born."
"Why, I'm your old side-pardner, Ben Chouteau, from the Nation," said the unaccountable stranger, speaking a little louder, for the benefit of Malvina, apparently, who had come to the door.
Texas started at the clearer note of that boyish treble, held out his hand, giving the cowboy the grip of genuine friendliness.
"I'm glad to see you—I'm more than glad, old feller!" he said. "It's an old friend of mine, a sure-enough good friend, like the rest of you-all here at this ho-tel, ma'am," he assured Malvina, who nodded, entirely satisfied, and returned to her duties within the house.
Texas drew the stranger into the shadow, still holding him by the hand.
"Miss Fannie!" he whispered. "Where in this world did you come from—what're you doin' rigged up thataway?"
"Even you didn't know me!"
"Not till you spoke loud thataway, then it come to me in a flash."
"I'm supposed to be dead, Texas."
"You don't tell me, Miss Fannie!"
"Well, I am. So we've got to go easy, and don't forget I'm your old side-pardner from the Nation, and Ben Chouteau's my name."
"I'll remember; don't you doubt I'll remember."
"I've come back to this town to throw a crimp into some of the crooks that thought they'd salted my old hide down, and I want you to help me, Texas."
"My heart's with you, and my hand's the same as your own."
"We'll have a bunch of these crooks breakin' their necks to hit the timber before this time to-morrow night. But I don't want to talk around here where somebody might be listenin'. Do you care to take a little walk?"
They walked toward the railroad station, for in that direction the town quickly blended out to open prairie, where there was room for all the confidences in the world to pass from ear to ear without danger of a leak. They came into range of a noise of shouting men and the rumble of hoofs on planks as they left the town, telling that cattle were being loaded.
"It's that Texas crowd," said Fannie; "they're roundin' them up fast. They shipped a big bunch two days ago, they told me—I came up that way to-day, passed right through the thick of them. I guess there'll not be any trouble over them."
"Lucky for Stott!" said he.
"How did you know Stott was in it, Texas?"
"I knew him by his cussed voice."
"Anybody would that ever heard him twice."
They sat down by the roadside, far from any house. There was no moon, but starlight strong enough to break the density of the night, and a soft wind filled with the spicy ripe scents of drying grasses and blooming flowers in the boundless meadow lands.
"Stott's the first man on my list," she said.
"And mine, too, Fannie."
"He thought he left both of us dead down there on Clear Creek that night, Texas."
"Did that monstrous scoun'rel lift his hand—"
"Here—feel here." She guided his hand to the back of her head, where he felt a strip of adhesive plaster over a long wound.
"The houn' hit you!"
"I tried to go back and turn you loose."
"You pore little lamb! He hit you with his gun, didn't he, Fannie?"
"My horse ran away when I lopped over in the saddle, just sense enough left in me to hang on somehow. I think he shot after me—I think I can remember shots. Anyhow, I fell off after a while, and the horse went on. I heard Stott go by chasin' it, and go back with it. Then I crawled into the brush and fainted, I guess, like a regular woman."
"How in this merciless world did you ever get out of there?"
"I don't hardly know, Texas. I knew Stott would be back there at daylight to look for me, and finish me off if he found me alive, and I remember startin' to run away. When I got my head again I was away down in the Nation, miles from that place, and it was afternoon. I guess it must have been the next day."
"And you knew where you was—I'll bet a purty you knew!"
"Lucky for my skin, I did, Texas. I wasn't more than fifteen miles from Colby's ranch. I got over there about dark. My head was as big as a barrel, and my hair so mussed and matted with blood and tangles I had Belle whack it off right close up to the handle. She stitched up the gap in my scalp, and in the morning I was about as usual. Oh, well, I was a little fuzzy around the edges, like you feel after a drunk. Belle stained me up with walnut hulls, and I borrowed a horse and rode up here, hoping that I'd find you. And that's all there is to that, Texas."
Texas marveled over her escape, and sympathized with her in little soft ejaculations. She inquired of his own adventures after they parted, and he told her all that had overtaken him from that time forward. Fannie sat silent a long time when he had ffinshed, as if there was something in his story that threw her into deep thought. After a while:
"Texas?"
"Yes, Fannie."
"That girl they fired, the one I helped Mackey and Stott and that gang hand out the crooked deal to—you think a good deal of her, don't you, Texas?"
"I hold her in the highest of respect—I have a very warm, friendly feelin' for her, Fannie."
"Of course you have, Texas, and more than that," she said, as if she had thought it out to an indisputable conclusion. "That's all right—you've got a right to—she's a nice kid, you can see it in her eyes."
"She's not exactly a kid, Fannie; she's a woman as old as you."
"Yes, but she's a kid in experience. Well, I wish to God I was, too! If I was, maybe—"
She let it stop there, and sat with her chin in her hands, her hat on the ground. He could see the white strip of adhesive plaster on her head, and his compassion for her was as deep as the sea.
"How do you know I'm square with you, Texas—how do you know I'm not planning to draw you into some fresh trouble?"
"I can't tell you just how I know, Fannie, but I know."
"Well, I am square with you. It came to me down there on Clear Creek that night that I had to be square; that it was the time set for me to part company with crooks. I'm through with them; they never brought me anything but trouble, anyhow."
"No, I don't reckon it pays out, Fannie."
"There's no use to tell you what my life's been, Texas—you know!"
"You pore little dove!"
He spoke with great tenderness, with boundless compassion; took her hand and stroked it, as if to console her for all that had been denied her in the parched ways that she had walked. Fannie bent her head to her updrawn knees and sobbed as if some great growth of sorrow had suddenly broken in her heart.
Her gust of weeping passed away slowly, only coming back now and then in diminishing force, like a bitter wind, making her voice shiver when she spoke.
"You're the only man that ever treated me like I was as good as other women," she said; "the only man I ever knew since I was a little girl, it seems to me, that says the same things with eyes and words to me at the same time. I'd die for you, Texas—I'd die for you, and be glad!"
Texas was greatly disturbed by her sudden and stormy confession. No woman, good or bad, ever had gone to such an honest and outspoken length with him before, and he had no precedent to guide him in the circumstances. But he still held her hand and stroked it to comfort her, and make amends for what he could not give her out of his heart.
"I couldn't ever permit you to do that, Miss Fannie," he said in all seriousness; "I couldn't begin to hear of it!"
Along the railroad half a mile away he could see the bobbing lanterns of the men who were loading part of the big drove of Texas cattle. He knew that Stott had gone on ahead to Kansas City to arrange for the sale of them, and collect for those already shipped, and a feeling of impatience came up in his breast at the thought of how many days it would be before he returned to face the adjustment that he could not now escape. He got up with an air of briskness, and drew gently on her hand to lift her to her feet.
"Don't you think we'd better go now, Fannie? You'll be drug plumb to death, you'll be so tired."
"Sit down, Texas; I haven't begun to tell you what I've got on that gang. We've both suffered by what they've handed us, but it's our day to talk now. Sit down—I'll tell you something."
When they started back to the hotel, Texas could read in the Big Dipper that it was close to two o'clock. But his weariness had gone from him, his troubles had dissolved. He felt like a man who had been armed to meet an enemy before whom he had stood bare-handed and hopeless a little while before.
Only a few hours since he had walked through the streets of Cottonwood in the distrust and contempt of the earth's mean cowards, such as Ollie Noggle, and the accusation of others, a load so heavy that it almost broke his heart. The back door of that town had stood open to him, and fingers were pointing him out that way between the dusk and dawn.
But it was different now. Confidence was in his heart, power in his hand. There would be a smoke in that town before long, and the crooks would be running ahead of it, like chinch bugs out of a blazing stubble field.
Even Mrs. Goodloe had gone to bed when they reached the hotel, and there was nobody to place Fannie. But Texas knew that half the rooms were empty, and one had but to go roaming along the hall until he found an open door. That was the rule for late arrivals at the Woodbine, known far and wide over the range.
The room next to his own was empty, investigation disclosed, although a heavy-snoring cow-man had inhabited it the night before. Here Texas installed his side-partner, to go and sit by his own window until dawn, aflame with eagerness to make use of the astonishing information which Fannie Goodnight had put that night into his hands.