Read Ebook: The splendour of Asia: The story and teaching of the Buddha by Beck L Adams Lily Adams

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Ebook has 1700 lines and 76438 words, and 34 pages

THE BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP

FOREWORD

The driver of the big car throttled down. Since he had swung away from the dusty road to follow a wagon track across the desert, the speedometer had registered many miles. His eyes searched the ground in front to see whether the track led up the brow of the hill or dipped into the sandy wash.

"Where's the round-up?" asked the driver.

The coffee-brown youth gave a little lift of his head to the right. He was apparently a man of few words. But his answer sufficed. The bawling of anxious cattle was now loud and persistent.

The car moved forward to the edge of the mesa and dropped into the valley. The girl in the back seat gave a little scream of delight. Here at last was the West she had read about in books and seen on the screen.

The automobile swept around the beef herd and drew to a halt between it and the noisier one beyond. In a fire of mesquite wood branding-irons were heating. Several men were busy branding and marking the calves dragged to them from the herd by the horsemen who were roping the frightened little blatters.

It was a day beautiful even for Arizona. The winey air called potently to the youth in the girl. Such a sky, such atmosphere, so much life and color! She could not sit still any longer. With a movement of her wrist she opened the door and stepped down from the car.

A man sitting beside the chauffeur turned in his seat. "You'd better stay where you are, honey." He had an idea that this was not exactly the scene a girl of seventeen ought to see at close range.

"I want to get the kinks out of my muscles, Dad," the girl called back. "I'll not go far."

She walked along a ridge that ran from the mesa into the valley like an outstretched tongue. Her hands were in the pockets of her fawn-colored coat. There was a touch of unstudied jauntiness in the way the tips of her golden curls escaped from beneath the little brown toque she wore. A young man guarding the beef herd watched her curiously. She moved with the untamed, joyous freedom of a sun-worshiper just emerging from the morning of the world. Something in the poise of the light, boyish figure struck a spark from his imagination.

As she stood on the spit of the ridge, a slim, light figure silhouetted against the skyline, the young man guarding the beef herd called something to her that was lost in the bawling of the cattle. From the motion of his hand she knew that he was telling her to get back to the car. But the girl saw no reason for obeying the orders of a range-rider she had never seen before and never expected to see again. Nobody had ever told her that a rider is fairly safe among the wildest hill cattle, but a man on foot is liable to attack at any time when a herd is excited.

A shout of warning startled her. Above the bellowing of the herd she heard another yell.

"Hi-yi-ya-a!"

She stood paralyzed for a moment.

Out of the gathering darkness a voice came to her sharp and clear. "Don't move!" It rang so vibrant with crisp command that the girl, poised for flight, stood still and waited in white terror while the huge steer lumbered toward her.

The rider, lifting his bronco forward at full speed, won by a fraction of a second. He guided in such a way as to bring his horse between her and the steer. The girl noticed that he dropped his bridle rein and crouched in the saddle, his eyes steadily upon her. Without slackening his pace in the least as he swept past, the man stooped low, caught the girl beneath the armpits, and swung her in front of him to the back of the horse. The steer pounded past so close behind that one of its horns grazed the tail of the cowpony.

It was a superb piece of horsemanship, perfectly timed, as perfectly executed.

The girl lay breathless in the arms of the man, her heart beating against his, her face buried in his shoulder. She was dazed, half fainting from the reaction of her fear. The next she remembered clearly was being lowered into the arms of her father.

He held her tight, his face tortured with emotion. She was the very light of his soul, and she had shaved death by a hair's breadth. A miracle had saved her, but he would never forget the terror that had gripped him. Naturally, shaken, as he was, his relief found vent in scolding.

"I told you to stay by the car, honey. But you're so willful. You've got to have your own way. Thank God you're safe. If . . . if . . ." His voice broke as he thought of what had so nearly been.

The girl snuggled closer to him, her arms round his neck. His anxiety touched her nearly, and tears flooded her eyes.

"I know, Dad. I . . . I'll be good."

A young man descended from the car, handsome, trim, and well got up. He had been tailored by the best man's outfitter in New York. Nobody on Broadway could order a dinner better than he. The latest dances he could do perfectly. He had the reputation of knowing exactly the best thing to say on every occasion. Now he proceeded to say it.

"Corking bit of riding--never saw better. I'll give you my hand on that, my man."

The cowpuncher found a bunch of manicured fingers in his rough brown paw. He found something else, for after the pink hand had gone there remained a fifty-dollar bill. He looked at it helplessly for a moment; then, beneath the brown outdoor tan, a flush of anger beat into his face. Without a word he leaned forward and pressed the note into the mouth of the bronco.

The buckskin knew its master for a very good friend. If he gave it something to eat--well, there was no harm in trying it once. The buckskin chewed placidly for a few seconds, decided that this was a practical joke, and ejected from its mouth a slimy green pulp that had recently been a treasury note.

The father stammered his thanks to the rescuer of the girl. "I don't know what I can ever do to let you know . . . I don't know how I can ever pay you for saving . . ."

"Forget it!" snapped the brown man curtly. He was an even-tempered youth, as genial and friendly as a half-grown pup, but just now the word "pay" irritated him as a red rag does a sulky bull.

"If there's anything at all I can do for you--"

"Not a thing."

The New Yorker felt that he was not expressing himself at all happily. What he wanted was to show this young fellow that he had put him under a lifelong obligation he could never hope to wipe out.

"If you ever come to New York--"

The rider swung round his pony and cantered back to the beef herd.

CONCERNING A STREET TWELVE MILES LONG

"I like yore outfit," Red Hollister grumbled. "You're nice boys, and good to yore mothers--what few of you ain't wore their gray hairs to the grave with yore frolicsome ways. You know yore business and you got a good cook. But I'm darned if I like this thing of two meals a day, one at a quarter to twelve at night and the other a quarter past twelve, also and likewise at night."

None the less Red's grumbling was a pretense. He would not have been anywhere else for twice the pay. This was what he lived for.

Johnnie Green, commonly known as "the Runt," helped himself to another flank steak. He was not much of a cow-hand, but when it came to eating Johnnie was always conscientiously on the job.

"These here New Yorkers must be awful hardy," he ventured, apropos of nothing. "Seems like they're night birds for fair. Never do go to bed, far as I can make out. They tromp the streets all day and dance at them cabby-rets all night. My feet would be all wore out."

Stace Wallis grinned. "So would my pocketbook. I've heard tell how a fellow can pay as high as four or five dollars for an eat at them places."

"Nothin' to it--nothin' a-tall," pronounced Red dogmatically. Hollister always knew everything. Nothing in the heavens above or the earth below could stump him. The only trouble with his knowledge was that he knew so much that wasn't true. "Can't be did. Do you reckon any o' them New Yorkers could get away with five dollars' worth of ham and aigs? Why, the Runt here couldn't eat more'n a dollar's worth."

"Sure," assented Johnnie. It was the habit of his life to agree with the last speaker. "You're damn whistlin', Red. Why, at the Harvey House they only charge a dollar for a square, and a man couldn't get a better meal than that."

"Onct in Denver, when I went to the stock show, I blowed myself for a meal at the Cambridge Hotel that set me back one-fifty," said Slim Leroy reminiscently. "They et dinner at night."

"They did?" scoffed Johnnie. "Don't they know a fellow eats dinner at noon and supper at night?"

"I ain't noticed any dinner at noon for se-ve-real weeks," Hollister contributed.

"Some feed that," ruminated Leroy, with memories of the Cambridge Hotel still to the fore.

"With or without?" questioned Red.

"I reckon I had one li'l' drink with it. No more."

"Then they stung you," pronounced Hollister.

"Mebbeso, and mebbe not. I ain't kickin' none. I sure was in tony society. There was fellows sittin' at a table near us that had on them swallow-tail coats."

Johnnie ventured a suggestion. "Don't you reckon if a fellow et a couple o' plates of this here cavi-eer stuff and some ice cream and cake, he might run it up to two bucks or two and a half? Don't you reckon he might, Clay?"

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