"_Cer_tainly!"

And out we went into North Dakota's congealed envelope, with the smoke from the main-house chimney rising three hundred feet into the air, a snow-white column straight as a mast, Charley stalking majestically ahead, while we three floundered weakly behind him.

"Ain't he the corker?" gasped Oscar. "When he gets to jumping sideways among those four-legged words he separates me from my good intentions."

"'With scorn and hoomiliation,'" quoted Steve, and stopped, overcome.

"'I tells you what's the matter and leaves you to figger it out for yourself,'" I added. Then Charley heard us. He turned and approached, an awful frown upon his brow.

"May I inquire what is the reason of this yere merriment?" he asked.

The manner was that of a man who proposed to find out. It sat on Charley with so ludicrous a parody that we were further undone. Steve raised his hands in deprecation, and spoke in a m.u.f.fled voice that broke at intervals.

"Can't I laugh in my own backyard, Charley?" he said. "By the Lord Harry, I _will_ laugh inside my stakes! No man shall prevent me. The Const.i.tution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Continental Congress give me the right. Now what have you got to say?"

"I dunno but what you have me whipsawed there, Steve," replied Charley, scratching his head. "Ef it's your right by the Const.i.tootion, o'

course I ain't goin' to object."

"Do either of you object?" demanded Steve of Oscar and me in his deepest ba.s.s. No, we didn't object; we fell down in the snow and crowed like chanticleer.

"Hunh!" snorted Charley. "Hunh! Them boys hain't got brains in their heads at all--nothin' but doodle-bugs!"

"Well, Charley," continued Steve, "as you don't object, and they don't object, and I don't object, for G.o.d's sake let's have breakfast!"

"I'll go you, Steve," replied Charles seriously, and we entered the house uproarious.

There in the kitchen was Mrs. Steve and the "company," a pretty little bright-eyed thing, whose colour went and came at a word--more particularly if Oscar said the word. The affair was at present in the formal state--the dawn of realisation that two such wonderful and magnificent creatures as Oscar and Sally existed. But they were not Oscar and Sally except in the dear privacy of their souls. Yet how much that is not obvious to the careless ear can be put into "Will you have a buckwheat cake, Mr. Kendall?" or "May I give you a helping of the syrup, Miss Brown?" It took some preparation for each to get out so simple a remark, and invariably the one addressed started guiltily, and got crimson. It was the most uncomfortable rapture I ever saw, However, they received very little plaguing. I can remember but one hard hit. Oscar was pouring syrup upon Sally's cakes, his eyes fixed upon a dainty hand, that shook under his gaze like a leaf. He forgot his business. Steve looked at the inverted, empty syrup-cup for some moments in silence. Then he said to his wife, "Emma, go and get Sally a nice cupful of fresh air to put on her cakes; that that Oscar has in the pitcher is stale by this time."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The affair was at present in the formal state]

Oh, those cakes! And the ham! And the fried eggs and potatoes. We lived like fighting c.o.c.ks at Steve's, as happens on most of the small ranches. The extreme glory of the prairie was not ours. We were wood-choppers, hay-cutters, and farmers, as well as punchers; but what we lost in romance, we made up in sustenance. No one ever saw a biscuit suffering from soda-jaundice on Steve's table. And how, after a night's sleep in a temperature of forty below zero, I would champ my teeth on the path to breakfast! Eating was not an appet.i.te in those days--it was a pa.s.sion.

Charley and I went forth after breakfast, Oscar lingering a moment, according to his use, to pa.s.s a painful five minutes in making excuses for staying that time, where no one needed any explanation.

"I wish to gracious Sally and Oscar would just act like people," said Mrs. Steve once in exasperation. "They get me so nervous stammering at each other that I drop everything I lay my hands on, and I feel as if I'd robbed somebody for the rest of the day."

The interview over, Oscar came out, burning with his own embarra.s.sment, and made a sore mess of everything he did for the next hour. A man must have his mind about him on a ranch.

Once upon a time Steve came to Charley and me, literally prancing. We had heard oaths and yells and sounds of a battle royal previously, and wondered what was going on. When he neared us he moved slowly, his hands working like machinery. "I would like to know," he began, and stopped to glare at us and grind his teeth. "I should like to know,"

he continued, in a voice so weak with rage we could hardly hear it, "who turned the red bull into number three corral."

Charley and I went right on cleaning out the shed. We weren't going to tell on Oscar.

"So it's him again, heh?" shrieked Steve. "Well, now I propose to show him something. I'll show him everything!" He was entirely beyond the influence of reason and grammar. Charley had an ill-advised notion to play the paternal.

"Now, I'd cool down if I was you, Steve," he admonished.

"You would, would you!" foamed Steve. "Well, who the devil cares what you'd do, anyhow? And if you tell me to cool down just once more, I'll drive you into the ground like a tent-pin."

I jumped through the window, and then laughed, while Charley administered his reproof with appropriate gestures. His long arms flew in the air as he delivered the inspired address, Steve looking at him, a bit of shamefacedness and fun showing through his heat.

"An' mo' I tell you, Steven P. Hendricks!" rolled out Charley in conclusion. "That this citizen of Texas, jus'ly and rightjus'ly called the Lone Star State, has never yet experienced the feeling of bein'

daunted by face of man. No, su'! By G.o.d, su'!" He held the shovel aloft like a sword. "Let 'em come as they will, male and female after their kind, from a ninety poun' Jew peddler to Sittin' Bull himself, and from a pigeon-toed Digger-Injun squaw to a fo'-hundred-weight Dutch lady, I turn my back on none!"

"You win, Charley," said Steve, and walked off. All Oscar caught out of it was the request that when he felt like reducing the stock on the ranch he'd take a rifle.

Poor Oscar! All n.o.ble and heroic sentiments struggling within him, with no outlet but a hesitating advancing of the theory that "if we didn't get rain before long, the country'd be awful dry." Small wonder that he burst out in the bull-pen one night with "I wish the Injuns would jump this ranch!"

"You do?" said Charley. "Well, durn your hide for that wish! What's got into you to make you wish that?"

"Aw!" said Oscar, twitching around on his stool, "I'm sick and tired of not being able to say anything. If the Sioux got up, I could do something."

"Oh, that's it," retorted Charles. "Well, Oscar, far's I can see, if it's necessary to have a war-party of Injuns whoopin' an' yellin' an'

crow-hoppin' an' makin' fancywork out of people to give you the proper start afore your gal, it'd be jes' as well for you to stay single the res' of your days. The results wouldn't justify the trouble."

Afterward Oscar told me in private that Charley was an old stiff, and he didn't believe he'd make a chest at a gra.s.shopper if the latter s.p.u.n.ked up any. That wronged old Charley. But Oscar must be excused--he was a singularly unhappy man.

To come back to what happened. Oscar that morning had the care of Geronimo, a coal-black, man-eating stallion, a brute as utterly devoid of fear as of docility. A tiger kills to eat, and occasionally for the fun of it; that horse killed out of ferocity, and hate of every living thing.

A fearful beast is a bad horse. One really has more chance against a tiger. Geronimo stood seventeen hands high, and weighed over sixteen hundred pounds. When he reared on his hind legs and came for you, screaming, his teeth snapping like bear-traps, his black mane flying, a man seemed a pigmy. One blow from those front hoofs and your troubles were over. Once down, he'd trample, bite, and kick until your own mother would hesitate to claim the pile of rags and jelly left. He had served two men so; nothing but his matchless beauty saved his life.

Nowhere could one find a better example of h.e.l.l-beautiful than when he tore around his corral in a tantrum, as lithe and graceful as a black panther. His mane stood on end; his eyes and nostrils were of a colour; the muscles looked to be bursting through the silken gloom of his coat. His swiftness was something incredible. He caught and most horribly killed Jim Baxter's hound before the latter could get out of the corral--and a bear-hound is a pretty agile animal. We had to tie Jim, or he'd made an end of Geronimo. He left the ranch right after that. The loss of his dog broke him all up.

We fed and watered Geronimo with a pitchfork, and in terror then, for his slyness and cunning were on a par with his other pleasant peculiarities. One of the poor devils he killed entered the stable all unsuspecting. Geronimo had broken his chains, and stood close against the wall of his stall in the darkness, waiting. The man came within reach. Suddenly a black ma.s.s of flesh flashed in the air above him, coming down with all four hoofs--and that's enough of that story.

A nice pet was Geronimo. An excellent decoration for a gentleman's stable--stuffed.

Well, Oscar turned him out this morning, and then he, Steve, and I went for hay. As it was toward the last of winter, all the near stacks had been used up, and we had to haul from Kennedy's bottom, eight miles away. When we started, the air was still and frozen, with a deep, biting cold unusual to Dakota; the sort that searches you and steals all the heat you own. We were numb by the time we reached the stack, and glad enough to have warm work to do. We fell to it with a rush for that reason, and because a dull grey blink upon the western skyline seemed to promise a blizzard. We were tying down the last load, when I heard the hum of wind coming, and looked up, expecting to see a wall of flying snow, and continued looking, seeing nothing of the kind. There I stood, in the air of an ice-house, when a gust of that wind struck me. A miracle! In a snap of your fingers I was bathed in genial warmth. All about me rode the scent of spring and flowers! It was as if the doors of a giant conservatory were thrown open.

"Chinook, boys! Chinook!" I called, casting down my fork. They ran from the lee of the stack, throwing their coats open, drinking it in and laughing, for, man! we were weary of winter! First it came in puffs, at length settling down to a steady breeze, as of the sea. The sun, that in the early morning was no more than a pale effigy, poured on us a heart-warming fire. We hustled for home, knowing that the Chinook would make short work of the snow. In fact, we had not covered more than half the distance before the prairie began to show brown here and there, where it lay thin between mountainous drifts. We sang and howled all the way to the sheds, feeling fine.

Here Steve left us, to go to the house, while Oscar and I unloaded the sleighs.

Suddenly I felt uncomfortable, for no reason in this world. The land about us was rejoicing with the booming of that kind, warm wind, yet a sharp uneasiness stopped me and forced me to raise my head. For three-quarters of a circle nothing met my eyes but the vanishing snow-drifts. I reached the house; nothing wrong there. Steve was walking briskly out toward us, smoking his pipe. Then the corrals--all right, number one, two, three, four--Lord have mercy!

"Oscar!" I shrieked, and s.n.a.t.c.hed him to his feet. He rose, bewildered and half angry, then looked to where I pointed.

Through the centre of number four corral tripped Sally, dear little timid Sally, glad to be out in this lovely air, her eyes and mind on Oscar doubtless, and in the same corral, shut off from her sight by a projection of the sheds, stood Geronimo. And he saw her, too, for as she waved a hand to us, he bared his great teeth and clashed them together. The earth seemed to rock and sink from me. Every soul on the ranch was told to keep away from the corral with the two buffalo skulls over the gates, a warning sufficiently big and gruesome to stop anyone. What fatal lapse of memory had struck the girl?

She was beyond help. We were all of two hundred yards away, and Steve still farther; she was not a quarter of that from the brute. If we shouted, if we moved, we might bring her end upon her--and such an end!

When I thought of that dainty, pretty little woman beneath those hoofs, I felt a hideous sickness. The man beside me said, "My G.o.d! My mistake!" A corral opened on each side of the box stall in which Geronimo was confined. One of these was usually empty, a reserve. It was into this that Oscar had turned the horse. The other was the corral of the skulls.

Geronimo leaped out. The girl halted, stark, open-mouthed, every sign of life stricken from her at a blow. Geronimo sprang high and snapped at nothing, in evil play before the earnest. It was horrible. We could do neither harm nor good now, so we ran for the spot. It was down hill from us to them. I doubt that anything on two legs ever covered distance as we did, for all the despair. Geronimo reared and stood upon his hind feet, as straight as a man. He advanced, striking, looming above his victim. "All over," I thought, and tried to take my eyes away. I could not.

At that instant a white-hatted, gaunt, tall figure rushed from the stable door, a shovel in its hand, straight between the girl and her destruction. There he stood, with his partly weapon raised, unflinching. An oath came to my lips and a hot spot to my throat at the sight. No eye ever saw a braver thing.

At this, a dip in the ground and the eight-foot fence of the corral shut out all within. G.o.d knows how we got over that fence. I swear I think we leaped it. I have no memory of climbing, but I do recall landing on the other side in a swoop.

Geronimo had old Charley in his teeth, shaking him like a rat.