Arizona Guns. William MacLeod Raine

beard?”

      “A bristly little red mustache.”

      “That’s Micky to a T.” Webb made up his mind swiftly. “The boy’s all right, Yankie. He’ll do to take along.”

      “It’s your outfit. Suits me if he does you.” The foreman turned insolently to the newcomer. “What’d you say your name was, sissie?”

      The eyes of the boy, behind narrowed lids, grew hard as steel.

      “Call me Jimmie-Go-Get-’Em,” he drawled in a soft voice, every syllable distinct.

      There was a moment of chill silence. A swift surprise had flared into the eyes of the foreman. The last thing in the world he had expected was to have his bad temper resented so promptly by this smooth-faced little chap. Since Yankie was the camp bully he bristled up to protect his reputation.

      “Better not get on the prod with me, young fellow me lad. I’m liable to muss up your hair. Me, I’m from the Strip, where folks grow man-size.”

      The youngster smiled, but there was no mirth in that thin-lipped smile. He knew, as all men did, that the Cherokee Strip was the home of desperadoes and man-killers. The refuse of the country, driven out by the law of more settled communities, found here a refuge from punishment. But if the announcement of the foreman impressed him, he gave no sign of it.

      “Why didn’t you stay there?” he asked with bland innocence.

      Yankie grew apoplectic. He did not care to discuss the reasons why he had first gone to the Strip or the reasons why he had come away. This girl-faced boy was the only person who had asked for a bill of particulars. Moreover, the foreman did not know whether the question had been put in child-like ignorance of any possible offense or with an impudent purpose to enrage him.

      “Don’t run on the rope when I’m holdin’ it, kid,” he advised roughly. “You’re liable to get thrown hard.”

      “And then again I’m liable not to,” lisped the youth from Arizona gently.

      The bully looked the slim newcomer over again, and as he looked there rang inside him some tocsin of warning. Thursday sat crouched in the saddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike. A sawed-off shotgun lay under his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was even closer to those smooth, girlish fingers. In the immobility of his figure and the steadiness of the blue eyes was a deadly menace.

      Yankie was no coward. He would go through if he had to. But there was still time to draw back if he chose. He was not exactly afraid; on the other hand, he did not feel at all easy.

      He contrived a casual, careless laugh. “All right, kid. I don’t have to rob the cradle to fill my private graveyard. Go get your Injuns. It will be all right with me.”

      Webb drew a breath of relief. There was to be no gunplay after all. He had had his own reasons for not interfering sooner, but he knew that the situation had just grazed red tragedy.

      “I’m goin’ to take the boy’s advice,” he announced to Yankie. “Ride forward an’ swing the herd toward that big red butte. We’ll give our Mescalero friends a wide berth if we can.”

      The foreman hung in the saddle a moment before he turned to go. He had to save his face from a public backdown. “Bet you a week’s pay there’s nothin’ to it, Webb.”

      “Hope you’re right, Joe,” his employer answered.

      As soon as Yankie had cantered away, Dad Wrayburn, ex-Confederate trooper, slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a modulated rebel yell.

      “Dad burn my hide, Jimmie-Go-Get-’Em, you’re all right. Fustest time I ever saw Joe take water, but he shorely did splash some this here occasion. I wouldn’t ’a’ missed it for a bunch of hog-fat yearlin’s.”

      Webb had not been sorry to see his arrogant foreman brought up with a sharp turn, but in the interest of discipline he did not care to say so.

      “Why can’t you boys get along peaceable with Joe, I’d like to know? This snortin’ an’ pawin’ up the ground don’t get you anything.”

      “I reckon Joe does most of the snortin’ that’s done,” Wrayburn answered dryly. “I ain’t had any trouble with him, because he spends a heap of time lettin’ me alone. But there’s no manner of doubt that Joe rides the boys too hard.”

      The drover dismissed the subject and turned to Thursday.

      “Want a job?”

      “Mebbe so.”

      “I need another man. Since you sabe the ways of the ’Paches I can use you to scout ahead for us.”

      “What you payin’?”

      “Fifty a month.”

      “You’ve hired a hand.”

      “Good enough. Better pick one of the boys to ride with you while you are out scoutin’.”

      “I’ll take Billie Prince,” decided the new rider at once.

      “You know Billie?”

      “Never saw him before to-day. But I like his looks. He’s a man to tie to.”

      “You’re right he is.”

      The drover looked at his new employee with a question in his shrewd eyes. The boy was either a man out of a thousand or he was a first-class bluffer. He claimed to have cut Indian sign and to know exactly what was written there. At a single glance he had sized up Prince and knew him for a reliable side partner. Without any bluster he had served notice on Yankie that it would be dangerous to pick on him as the butt of his ill-temper.

      In those days, on the Pecos, law lay in a holster on a man’s thigh. The individual was a force only so far as his personality impressed itself upon his fellows. If he made claims he must be prepared to back them to a fighting finish.

      Was this young Thursday a false alarm? Or was he a good man to let alone when one was looking for trouble? Webb could not be sure yet, though he made a shrewd guess. But he knew it would not be long before he found out

      CHAPTER II

       Shoot-a-Buck Cañon

      WEBB sent for Billie Prince.

      “Seems there’s a bunch of bronco ’Paches camped ahead of us, Billie. Thursday here trailed with Sieber. I want you an’ him to scout in front of us an’ see we don’t run into any ambush. You’re under his orders, y’understand.”

      Prince was a man of few words. He nodded.

      “You know the horses that the boys claim. Well, take Thursday to the remuda an’ help him pick a mount from the extras in place of that broomtail he’s ridin’,” continued the drover. “Look alive now. I don’t want my cattle stampeded because we haven’t got sense enough to protect ’em. No ’Paches can touch a hoof of my stock if I can help it.”

      “If they attack at all it will probably be just before daybreak, but it is just as well to be ready for ’em,” suggested Thursday.

      “I brought along some old Sharps an’ some Spencers. I reckon I’ll have ’em loaded an’ distribute ’em among the boys. Billie, tell Yankie to have that done. The rifles are racked up in the calf wagon.”

      Billie delivered the orders of the drover to the foreman as they passed on their way to the remuda. Joe gave a snort of derision, but let it go at that. When Homer Webb was with one of his trail outfits he was always its boss.

      While Thursday watched him, Prince roped out a cinnamon horse from the remuda. The cowpuncher was a long-bodied man, smooth-muscled and lithe. The boy had liked his level eye and his clean, brown jaw before, just as now he approved the swift economy of his motions.

      Probably Billie was about twenty years of age, but in that country men ripened