Then Corliss explained his plan. He told Sundown to keep the water-hole fenced and so keep the sheep-men from using it. This would virtually control several thousand acres of range around the water-hole ranch. He told Sundown that he expected him to homestead the ranch for himself--do the necessary work to secure a t.i.tle, and then at his option either continue as a rancher or sell the holding to the Concho.

"I'll start you with some stock--a few head, and a horse or two. All you have to do is to 'tend to business and forget that I have ever spoken to you about homesteading the place. You'll have to play it alone after you get started."

"Suits me, boss. I ain't what you'd call a farmer, but me and Chance can scratch around and act like we was. But the smooth gent as pinched me--ain't he goin' to come again?"

"Sure as you're wearing spurs! But you just take it easy and you'll come out all right. Loring put Jim Banks after you. Jim is all right and he's business. Loring wants the water-hole ranch. So do I. Now, if Loring tells the sheriff he saw you in Usher, and later at the water-hole, Jim will begin to think that Loring is keeping pretty close trail on you. When Jim finds out you've filed on the water-hole,--and he already knows that Loring wants it,--he'll begin to figure that Loring had you jailed to keep you out of his way. And you can take it from me, Jim Banks is the squarest man in Apache County. He'll give you a chance to make good. If we can keep you out of sight till he hears from over the line, I think you'll be safe after that. If we can't, why, you still have your t.i.tle to the water-hole ranch and that holds it against trespa.s.sers."

"Well, you're sure some shark on the long think! Say, I been scared stiff so long I'm just commencin' to feel me legs again. The sun is shinin' and the birds are sawin' wood. I get you, boss! The old guy that owns the wool had me pinched. Well, I ain't got nothin' ag'in'

him, but that don't say I ain't workin' for you. Say, if he comes botherin' around me farm, do I shoot?"

"No. You just keep right on. Pay no attention to him."

"Just sick Chance on him, eh?"

"He'd get Chance. I'm going to run some cattle over that way soon.

Then you'll have company. You needn't be scared."

"Cattle is some comp'ny at that. Say, have I got to ride that there bronc Bud jest went down the street on?"

"As soon as we get out of town."

"Which wouldn't be long if we had hosses like him, eh?"

"I'll give you a note to Murphy. He'll send your horse back to Usher and let you take a fresh horse when you start for the Concho. Take it easy, and don't talk."

"All right, boss. But I was thinkin'--"

"What?"

"Well, it's men like me and you that puts things through. It takes a man with sand to go around this country gettin' pinched and thrun and burnt up and bein' arrested every time he goes to spit. Folks'll be sayin' that there Sundown gent is a brave man--me! Never shot n.o.body and dependin' on his nerve, every time. They's nothin' like havin' a bad repetation."

"Nothing like it," a.s.sented Corliss, smiling. "Well, here's your road.

Keep straight on till you cross the river. Then take the right fork and stick to it, and you'll ride right into Murphy's. He'll fix you up, all right."

"Did you think in this note to tell him to give me a hoss that only travels one way to onct?" queried Sundown.

Corliss laughed. "Yes, I told him. Don't forget you're a citizen and a homesteader. We're depending on you."

"You bet! And I'll be there with the bells!"

Shoop and Corliss watched Sundown top a distant rise and disappear in a cloud of dust. Then they walked back to the station. As they waited for the local, Shoop rolled a cigarette. "Jest statin' it mild and gentle," he said, yawning, "the last couple of weeks has been kind of a busy day. Guess the fun's all over. Sundown's got a flyin' start; Loring's played his ace and lost, and you and me is plumb sober. If I'd knowed it was goin' to be as quiet as this, I'd 'a' brought my knittin' along."

"There are times . . ." said Corliss.

"And we got just five minutes," said Shoop. "Come on."

CHAPTER XX

THE WALKING MAN

Sundown's sense of the dramatic, his love for posing, with his linguistic ability to adopt the vernacular of the moment so impressed the temperamental Murphy that he disregarded a portion of his friend Corliss's note, and the morning following his lean guest's arrival at the ranch the jovial Irishman himself saddled and bridled the swiftest and most vicious horse in the corral; a gla.s.s-eyed pinto, bronc from the end of his switching tail to his pink-mottled muzzle. He was a horse with a record which he did not allow to become obsolete, although he had plenty of compet.i.tion to contend with in the string of broncs that Murphy's riders variously bestrode. Moreover, the pinto, like dynamite, "went off" at the most unexpected intervals, as did many of his riders. Sundown, bidding farewell to his host, mounted and swung out of the yard at a lope. The pinto had ideas of his own. Should he buck in the yard, he would immediately be roped and turned into the corral again. Out on the mesas it would be different--and it was.

He paid no attention to a tumble-weed gyrating across the Apache road.

Neither did he seem disturbed when a rattler burred in the bunch-gra.s.s.

Even the startled leap of a rabbit that shot athwart his immediate course was greeted with nothing more than a snort and a toss of his swinging head. Such things were excuses for bad behavior, but he was of that type which furnishes its own excuse. He would lull his rider to a false security, and then . . .

The pinto loped over level and rise tirelessly. Sundown stood in his stirrups and gazed ahead. The wide mesas glowing in the sun, the sense of illimitable freedom, the keen, odorless air wrought him to a pitch of inspiration. He would, just over the next rise, draw rein and woo his muse. But the next rise and the next swept beneath the pinto's rhythmic hoofs. The poetry of motion swayed his soul. He was enjoying himself. At last, he reflected, he had mastered the art of sitting a horse. He had already mastered the art of mounting and of descending under various conditions and at seemingly impossible angles. As Hi Wingle had once remarked--Sundown was the most _durable_ rider on the range. His length of limb had no apparent relation to his shortcomings as a vaquero.

Curiosity, as well as pride, may precede a fall. Sundown eventually reined up and breathed the pinto, which paced with lowered head as though dejected and altogether weary--which was merely a pose, if an object in motion can be said to pose. His rider, relaxing, slouched in the saddle and dreamed of a peaceful and domestic future as owner of a small herd of cattle, a few fenced acres of alfalfa and vegetables, a saddle-horse something like the pinto which he bestrode, with Chance as companion and audience--and perhaps a low-voiced senora to welcome him at night when he rode in with spur-chains jingling and the silver conchas on his chaps gleaming like stars in the setting sun. "But me chaps did their last gleam in that there fire," he reflected sadly.

"But I got me big spurs yet." Which after-thought served in a measure to mitigate his melancholy. Like a true knight, he had slept spurred and belted for the chance encounter while held in durance vile at Antelope. "But me ranch!" he exclaimed. "Me! And mebby a tame cow and chickens and things,--eh, Chance!" But Chance, he immediately realized, was not with him. He would have a windmill and shade-trees and a border of roses along the roadway to the house--like the Loring rancho. But the senorita to be wooed and won--that was a different matter. "'T ain't no woman's country nohow--this here Arizona. She's fine! But she's a man's country every time! Only sech as me and Jack Corliss and Bud and them kind is fit to take the risks of makin' good in this here State. But we're makin' good, you calico-hoss! Listen:--

"Oh, there's sunshine on the Concho where the little owls are cryin', And red across the 'dobe strings of chiles are a-dryin'; And if Arizona's heaven, tell me what's the use of dyin'?

Yes, it's good enough down here, just breathin' air;

"For the posies are a-bloomin' and the mockin'-birds are matin', And somewhere in Arizona there's a Chola girl a-waitin'

For to cook them enchiladas while I do the irrigatin'

On me little desert homestead over there.

"While I'm ridin' slow and easy . . ."

"Whoa! Wonder what that is? Never seen one of them things before. 'T ain't a lizard, but he looks like his pa was a lizard. Mebby his ma was a toad. Kind of a Mormon, I guess."

He leaned forward and gravely inspected the horned toad that blinked at him from the edge of the gra.s.s. The pinto realized that his rider's attention was otherwise and thoroughly occupied. With that unforgettable drop of head and arch of spine the horse bucked. Sundown did an unpremeditated evolution that would have won him much applause and gold had he been connected with a circus. He landed in a clump of brush and watched his hat sail gently down. The pinto whirled and took the homeward road, snorting and bounding from side to side as the dust swirled behind him. Sundown scratched his head. "Lemme see. 'We was ridin', slow and easy . . .' Huh! Well, I ain't cussin' because I don' know how. Lemme see . . . I was facin' east when I started. Now I'm lit, and I'm facin' south. Me hat's there, and that there toad-lizard oughter be over there, if he ain't scared to death. Reckon I'll quit writin' po'try jest at present and finish gettin' acquainted with that there toad-lizard. Wonder how far I got to walk? Anyhow, I was gettin' tired of ridin'. By gum! me eats is tied to the saddle!

It's mighty queer how a fella gets set back to beginnin' all over ag'in every onct in a while. Now, this mornin' I was settin' up ridin' a good hoss and thinkin' poetical. Now I'm settin' down restin'. The sun is shinin' yet, and them jiggers in the brush is chirpin' and the air is fine, but I ain't thinkin' poetical. I'd sure hate to have a real lady read what I'm thinkin', if it was in a book. 'Them that sets on the eggs of untruth,' as the parson says, 'sure hatches lies.' Jest yesterday I was tellin' in Usher how me bronc piled me when I'd been ridin' the baggage, which was kind of a hoss-lie. I must 'a' had it comin'."

He rose and stalked to the roadway. The horned toad, undisturbed, squatted in the gra.s.s and eyed him with bright, expressionless eyes.

"If I was like some," said Sundown, addressing the toad, "I'd pull me six-shooter, only I ain't got it now, and bling you to nothin'.

Accordin' to law you're the injudicious cause preceding the act, which makes you guilty accordin' to the statues of this here commonwealth, and I seen lots of 'em on the same street, in Boston, scarin' hosses to death and makin' kids and nuss-girls cry. But I ain't goin' to shoot you. If I was to have the sayin' of it, I'd kind o' like to shoot that hoss, though. He broke as fine a pome in the middle as I ever writ, to say nothin' of hurtin' me personal feelin's. Well, so-long, leetle toad-lizard. Just tell them that you saw me--and they will know the rest--if anybody was to ask you, a empty saddle and a man a-foot in the desert is sure circ.u.mvential evidence ag'in the hoss. Wonder how far it is to the Concho?"

With many a backward glance, inspired by fond imaginings that the pinto _might_ have stopped to graze, Sundown stalked down the road. Waif of chance and devotee of the G.o.ddess "Maybeso," he rose sublimely superior to the predicament in which he found himself. "The only reason I'm goin' east is because I ain't goin' west," he told himself, ignoring, with warm adherence to the glowing courses of the sun the frigid possibilities of the poles. Warmed by the exercise of plodding across the mesa trail in high-heeled boots, he swung out of his coat and slung it across his shoulder. Dust gathered in the wrinkles of his boots, and more than once he stopped to mop his sweating face with his bandanna. Rise after rise swept gently before him and within the hour he saw the misty outline of the blue hills to the south. Slowly his moving shadow shifted, bobbing in front of him as the sun slipped toward the western horizon. A little breeze sighed along the road and whirls of sand spun in tiny cones around the roots of the chaparral.

He reached in his pocket, drew forth a silver dollar, and examined it.

"Now if they weren't any folks on this here earth, I reckon silver and gold and precious jools wouldn't be worth any more than rocks and mud and gravel, eh? Why, even if they weren't no folks, water would be worth more to this here world than gold. Water makes things grow and--and keeps a fella from gettin' thirsty. And mud makes things grow, too, but I dunno what rocks are for. Just to sit on when you're tired, I reckon." The sibilant burring of a rattler in the brush set his neck and back tingling. "And what snakes was made for, gets me!

They ain't good to eat, nohow. And they ain't friendly like some of the bugs and things. I'm thinkin' that that there snake what clumb the tree and got Mrs. Eve interested in the apple business would 'a' been a whole lot better for folks, if he'd 'a' stayed up that tree and died, instead o' runnin' around and raisin' young ones. Accordin' to my way of thinkin' a garden ain't a garden with a snake in it, nohow. Now, Mrs. Eve--if she'd had to take a hammer and nails and make a ladder to get to them apples, by the time she got the ladder done I reckon them apples wouldn't 'a' looked so good to her. That's what comes of havin'

a snake handy. 'Course, bein' a woman, she jest nacherally couldn't wait for 'em to get ripe and fall off the tree. That would 'a' been too easy. It sure is funny how folks goes to all kinds o' trouble to get into it. Mebby she did get kind o' tired eatin' the same breakfast-food every mornin'. Lots o' folks do, and hankers to try a new one. But I never got tired of drinkin' water yet. Wisht I had a barrel with ice in it. Gee Gosh! Ice! Mebby a cup of water would be enough for a fella, but when he's dry he sure likes to see lots ahead even if he can't drink it all. Mebby it's jest knowin' it's there that kind o' eases up a fella's thirst. I dunno."

Romance, as romance was wont to do at intervals, lay in wait for the weary Sundown. Hunger and thirst and a burning sun may not be immediately conducive to poetry or romantic imaginings. But the 'dobe in the distance shaded by a clump of trees, the gleam of the drying chiles, the glow of flowers, offered an acceptable ant.i.thesis to the barren roadway and the empty mesas. Sundown quickened his pace. Eden, though circ.u.mscribed by a barb-wire fence enclosing scant territory, invited him to rest and refresh himself. And all unexpected the immemorial Eve stood in the doorway of the 'dobe, gazing down the road and doubtless wondering why this itinerant Adam, booted and spurred, chose to walk the dusty highway.

At the gate of the homestead Sundown paused and raised his broad sombrero. Anita, dusky and buxom daughter of Chico Miguel, "the little hombre with the little herd," as the cattle-men described him, nodded a bashful acknowledgment of the salute, and spoke sharply to the dog which had risen and was bristling toward the Strange wayfarer.

"Agua," said Sundown, opening the gate, "Mucha agua, Senorita," adding, with a humorous gesture of drinking, "I'm dry clean to me boots."

The Mexican girl, slow-eyed and smiling, gazed at this most wonderful man, of such upstanding height that his hat brushed the limbs of the shade-trees at the gateway. Anita was plump and not tall. As Sundown stalked up the path a.s.suming an air of gallantry that was not wasted on the desert air, the girl stepped to the olla hanging in the shade and offered him the gourd. Sundown drank long and deep. Anita watched him with wondering eyes. Such a man she had never seen. Vaqueros? Ah, yes! many of them, but never such a man as this. This one smiled, yet his face had much of the sadness in it. He had perhaps walked many weary miles in the heat. Would he--with a gesture interpreting her speech--be pleased to rest awhile? Without hesitation, he would. As he sat on the doorstep gazing contentedly at the flowers bordering the path, Anita's mother appeared from some mysterious recess of the 'dobe and questioned Anita with quick low utterance. The girl's answer, interpretable to Sundown only by its intonation, was music to him. The Mexican woman, more than buxom, large-eyed and placid, turned to Sundown, who rose and again doffed his sombrero.

"I lost me horse--back there. I'm headed for the Concho--ma'am.

Concho," he reiterated in a louder tone. "Sabe?"