CHAPTER VIII

A YEAR'S MAIL

The beef herd was safely delivered at Bender, the feeders disposed of at Moroni, and the checks sent on to the absentee owner, who did not know a steer from a stag; the _rodeo_ hands were paid off and successfully launched upon their big drunk; bills were paid and the Summer's supplies ordered in, and then at last the superintendent and _rodeo_ boss settled down to a little domesticity.

Since the day that Hardy had declined to drink with him Creede had quietly taken to water, and he planted a bag of his acc.u.mulated wages in a corner of the mud floor, to see, as he facetiously expressed it, if it would grow. Mr. Bill Johnson had also saved his "cow money" from Black Tex and banked it with Hardy, who had a little cache of his own, as well. With their finances thus nicely disposed of the two partners swept the floor, cleaned up the cooking dishes, farmed out their laundry to a squaw, and set their house in order generally. They were just greasing up their _reatas_ for a run after the wild horses of Bronco Mesa when Rafael pulled in with a wagon-load of supplies and destroyed their peaceful life.

It was late when the grinding and hammering of wheels upon the boulders of the creek-bed announced his near approach and Creede went out to help unload the provisions. A few minutes later he stepped into the room where Hardy was busily cooking and stood across the table from him with his hands behind his back, grinning mischievously.

"Rufe," he said, "you've got a girl."

Hardy looked up quickly and caught the significance of his pose, but he did not smile. He did not even show an interest in the play.

"How do you figure that out?" he asked, indifferently.

"Oh, I know," drawled Creede. "Got a letter from her."

A single hawk-like glance was the only answer to this sally.

"She says: 'Why the h.e.l.l don't you write!'" volunteered the cowboy.

"'S that so!" commented Hardy, and then he went on with his cooking.

For a minute Creede stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning nothing, yet far away, as in a dream.

"Huh!" exclaimed Creede, disgusted with his own make-believe, "you don't seem to care whether school keeps or not. I'll excuse you from any further work this evenin'--here's your mail."

He drew a bundle of letters from behind his back and dropped it heavily upon the table, but even then Hardy did not rise.

"Guess the Old Man must've forwarded my mail," he remarked, smiling at the size of the pack. "I've been knocking around so, I haven't received a letter in a year. Chuck 'em on my desk, will ye?"

"Sure," responded Creede, and stepping across the broad living-room he threw the bundle carelessly on the bed.

"You're like me," he remarked, drawing his chair up sociably to supper, "I ain't got a letter fer so long I never go near the dam'

post office."

He sighed, and filled his plate with beans.

"Ever been in St. Louis?" he inquired casually. "No? They say it's a fine burg. Think I'll save up my _dinero_ and try it a whirl some day."

The supper table was cleared and Creede had lit his second cigarette before Hardy reverted to the matter of his mail.

"Well," he said, "I might as well look over those letters--may be a thousand-dollar check amongst them."

Then, stepping into his room, he picked up the package, examined it curiously, and cut the cords with his knife.

A sheaf of twenty or more letters spilled out and, sitting on the edge of the bed, he shuffled them over in the uncertain light of the fire, noting each inscription with a quick glance; and as he gathered up the last he quietly tucked three of them beneath the folds of his blankets--two in the same hand, bold and dashing yet stamped with a certain feminine delicacy and grace, and each envelope of a pale blue; the third also feminine, but inscribed in black and white, a crooked little hand that strayed across the page, yet modestly shrank from trespa.s.sing on the stamp.

With the remainder of his mail Hardy blundered over to the table, dumping the loose handful in a great pile before the weak glimmer of the lamp.

"There," he said, as Creede blinked at the heap, "I reckon that's mail enough for both of us. You can read the advertis.e.m.e.nts and I'll see what the judge has to say for himself. Pitch in, now." He waved his hand towards a lot of business envelopes, but Creede shook his head and continued to smoke dreamily.

"Nope," he said briefly, "don't interest me."

He reached out and thumbed the letters over dumbly, spelling out a long word here and there or scrutinizing some obscure handwriting curiously, as if it were Chinese, or an Indian sign on a rock. Then, shoving back his chair, he watched Hardy's face as he skimmed rapidly through the first letter.

"Good news in the first part of it and bad in the last," he remarked, as Hardy put it down.

"That's right," admitted Hardy, "but how'd you know?"

He gazed up at his complacent partner with a look of innocent wonder, and Creede laughed.

"W'y, h.e.l.l boy," he said, "I can read you like a book. Your face tells the whole story as you go along. After you've been down here in Arizona a few seasons and got them big eyes of yourn squinched down a little--well, I may have to ast you a few questions, then."

He waved his hand in a large gesture and blew out a cloud of smoke, while a twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt crept into Hardy's unsquinched eyes.

"Maybe I'm smoother than I look," he suggested dryly. "You big, fat fellows get so self-satisfied sometimes that you let lots of things go by you."

"Well, I'll take my chances on you," answered Creede placidly. "What did the old judge say?"

"He says you did fine with the cattle," said Hardy, "and sold 'em just in time--the market fell off within a week after we shipped."

"Um-huh," grunted Creede. "And what's the bad bunch of news at the end?"

The bad bunch of news was really of a personal nature, stirring up unpleasant memories, but Hardy pa.s.sed it off by a little benevolent dissimulation.

"He says he's mighty glad I steered the sheep away, but there is something funny going on back in Washington; some combine of the sheep and lumber interests has got in and blocked the whole Forest Reserve business and there won't be any Salagua Forest Reserve this year. So I guess my job of sheep-wrangler is going to hold; at least the judge asked me to stay with it until Fall."

"Well, you stay then, Rufe," said Creede earnestly, "because I've kinder got stuck on you--I like your style," he added half apologetically.

"All right, Jeff," said Hardy. "Here's another letter--from my father.

See if you can guess what it is like."

He set his face rigidly and read the short letter through without a quaver.

"You and the Old Man have had a fallin'-out," observed Creede, with a shrewd grin, "and he says when you git good and tired of bein' a dam'

fool you might as well come home."

"Well, that's about the size of it," admitted Hardy. "I never told you much about my father, did I?"

"Never knew you had one," said Creede, "until Bill Johnson began to blow about what an Injun-fighter he was. I reckon that's where you git your sportin' blood, ain't it?"

"Well, I'll tell you," began Hardy. "The Old Man and I never did get along together. He's used to commanding soldiers and all that, and I'm kind of quiet, but he always took a sneaking pride in me when I was a boy, I guess. Anyway, every time I'd get into a fight around the post and lick two or three Mexican kids, or do some good work riding or shooting, he'd say I'd be a man before my mother, or something like that--but that was as far as he got. And all the time, on the quiet, he was educating me for the Army. His father was a captain, and he's a colonel, and I can see now he was lotting on my doing as well or better--but h.e.l.l, that only made matters worse."

He slid down in his chair and gazed into the fire gloomily. It was the first time Creede had heard his partner use even the mildest of the range expletives, for in that particular he was still a tenderfoot, and the word suddenly conveyed to him the depths of the little man's abandonment and despair.