While the Cross Canonites were liquoring at the Fashion Bar (Circuit drinking sarsaparilla), Lame Johny, the barkeeper, remarked: "You-uns missed it a lot, not seein' the pr'cesh. She were a ring-tailed tooter for fair, with the d.a.m.nedest biggest noise-makin' band you ever heard, an' th' p'rformers wearin' more pr'tys than I ever allowed was made.

An' say, they've got a gal in th' bunch, rider I reckon, that's jest that d.a.m.ned good to look at it _hurts_. d.a.m.ned ef I kin git her outen my eyes yet. Say, she's sh.o.r.e prittier than airy red wagon in th' show built like a quarter horse, got eyes like a doe, and a sorrel mane she could hide in. She 's sure a _chile con carne_ proposition, if I ever see one."

"Huh!" grunted Lee; "may be a good-looker, but I'll gamble she ain't in it with our Sorrel-top; hey, boys? Here 's to _our_ Sorrel-top, fellers, an' th' day Circuit prances into Mancos wi' her."

Several who tried to drink and cheer at the same time lost much of their liquor, but none of their enthusiasm. After dinner at Charpiot's, a wretched counterfeit of the splendid old Denver restaurant of that name, the Cross Canonites joined the throng streaming toward the circus.

For his sobriety designated treasurer of the outfit for the day and night, Circuit marched up to the ticket wagon, pa.s.sed in a hundred dollar bill and asked for thirty tickets. The tickets and change were promptly handed him. On the first count the change appeared to be correct, but on a recount Circuit found the ticket-seller had cunningly folded one twenty double, so that it appeared as two bills instead of one. Turning immediately to the ticket-seller, Circuit showed the deception and demanded correction.

"Change was right; you can't dope and roll me; gwan!" growled the ticket-agent.

"But it's plumb wrong, an' you can't rob me none, you kiyote," answered Circuit; "hand out another twenty, and do it sudden!"

"Chase yourself to h.e.l.l, you bow-legged hold-up," threatened the ticket-seller.

When, a moment later, the ticket man plunged out of the door of his wagon wildly yelling for his clan, it was with eyes flooding with blood from a gash in his forehead due to a resentful tap from the barrel of Circuit's gun.

Almost in an instant pandemonium reigned and a ma.s.sacre was imminent.

Stalwart canvasmen rushed to their chief's call till Circuit's bunch were outnumbered three to one by tough trained battlers on many a tented field, armed with hand weapons of all sorts. Victors these men usually were over the town roughs it was customarily theirs to handle; but here before them was a bunch not to be trifled with, a quiet group of thirty bronzed faces, some grinning with the antic.i.p.ated joy of the combat they loved, some grim as death itself, each affectionately twirling a gleaming gun. One overt act on the part of the circus men, and down they would go like ninepins and they knew it--knew it so well that, within two minutes after they had a.s.sembled, all dodged into and lost themselves in the throng of onlookers like rabbits darting into their warrens.

"Mighty pore 'pology for real men, them elephant-busters," disgustedly observed Bill Ball. "Come fellers, le's go in."

"Nix for me," spoke up Circuit; "I'm that hot in the collar over him tryin' to rob me I've got no use for their old show. You-all go in, an' I'll go down to Chapps' and fix my traps to hit the trail for the railroad in the mornin'."

On the crest of a jutting bastion of the lofty escarpment that formed the west wall of the canon, the sun lingered for a good-night kiss of the eastern cliffs which it loved to paint every evening with all the brilliant colors of the spectrum; it lingered over loving memories of ancient days when every niche of the Mancos cliffs held its little bronze-hued line of primitive worshippers, old and young, devout, prostrate, fearful of their Red G.o.d's nightly absences, suppliant of his return and continued largess; over memories of ceremonials and pastimes barbaric in their elemental violence, but none more primitively savage than the new moon looked down upon an hour later.

Supper over, on motion of Lee Skeats the Cross Canonites had adjourned to the feed corral and gone into executive session.

Lee called the meeting to order.

"Fellers," he said, "that dod-burned show makes my back tired. A few geezers an' gals flipfloopin' in swings an' a bunch o' dead ones on ol'

broad-backed work hosses that calls theirselves riders! Shucks! thar hain't one o' th' lot could sit a real twister long enough to git his seat warm; about th' second jump would have 'em clawin' sand.

"Only thing in their hull circus wo'th lookin' at is that red-maned gal, an' she looks that sweet an' innercent she don't 'pear to rightly belong in that thar bare-legged bunch o' she dido-cutters. They-all must 'a mavericked her recent. Looks like a pr'ty ripe red apple among a lot o' rotten ones.

"Hated like h.e.l.l to see her thar, specially with next to nothin' on, fer somehow I couldn't help her 'mindin' me o' our Sorrel-top. Reckon ef we busted up their d.a.m.n show, that gal'd git to stay a while in a decent woman's sort o' clothes. What say, shall we bust her!"

"Fer one, I sits in an' draw cards in your play cheerful," promptly responded Bill Ball; "kind o' hurt me too to see Reddy thar. An' then them animiles hain't gittin' no squar' deal. Never did believe in cagin' animiles more'n men. Ef they need it bad, kill 'em; ef they don't, give 'em a run fo' their money, way ol' Mahster meant 'em to have when He made 'em. Let's all saddle up, ride down thar, tie onto their tents, an' pull 'em down, an' then bust open them cages an' give every dod-blamed animile th' liberty I allows he loves same as humans!

An' then, jest to make sure she's a good job, le's whoop all their hosses ove' to th' Dolores an' scatter 'em through th' pinons!"

This motion was unanimously carried, even Circuit cheerfully consenting, from memories of the outrage attempted upon him earlier in the day. Ten minutes later the outfit charged down upon the circus at top speed, arriving among the first comers for the evening performance.

Flaming oil torches lit the scene, making it bright almost as day.

By united action, thirty lariats were quickly looped round guy ropes and snubbed to saddle horns, and then, incited by simultaneous spur digs and yells, thirty fractious broncos bounded away from the tent, fetching it down in sheets and ribbons, ropes popping like pistols, the rent canvas shrieking like a creature in pain, startled animals threshing about their cages and crying their alarm. Cowboys were never slow at anything they undertook. In three minutes more the side shows were tentless, the dwarfs trying to swarm up the giant's st.u.r.dy legs to safety or to hide among the adipose wrinkles of the fat lady, and the outfit tackled the cages.

In another three minutes the elephant, with a sociable shot through his off ear to make sure he should not tarry, was thundering down Mancos's main street, trumpeting at every jump, followed by the lion, the great tuft of hair at the end of his tail converted, by a happy thought of Lee Skeats, into a brightly blazing torch that, so long as the fuel lasted, lighted the shortest cut to freedom for his escaping mates--for the lion hit as close a bee-line as possible trying to outrun his own tail. For the outfit, it was the lark of their lives. Crashing pistol shots and ringing yells bore practical testimony to their joy. But they were not to have it entirely their own way.

Just as they were all balled up before the rhinoceros, staggered a bit by his great bulk and threatening horn, out upon them charged a body of canvasmen, all the manager could contrive to rally, for a desperate effort to stop the damage and avenge the outrage. In their lead ran the ticket seller, armed with a pistol and keen for evening up things with the man who had hit him, dashing straight for Circuit. Circuit did not see him, but Lee did; and thus in the very instant Circuit staggered and dropped to the crack of his pistol, down beside Circuit pitched the ticket man with a ball through his head. Then for two minutes, perhaps, a h.e.l.l of fierce hand-to-hand battle raged, cowboy skulls crunching beneath fierce blows, circus men falling like autumn leaves before the cowboys' fire. And so the fight might have lasted till all were down but for a startling diversion.

Suddenly, just as Circuit had struggled to his feet, out from among the wrecked wagons sprang a dainty figure in tulle and tights, ma.s.ses of hair red as the blood of the battlers streaming in waves behind her, and fired at the nearest of the common enemy, which happened to be poor Circuit. Swaying for a moment with the shock of the wound, down to the ground he settled like an empty sack, falling across the legs of the ticket-seller.

Startled and shocked, it seemed, by the consequences of her deed, the woman approached and for a moment gazed down, horror-stricken, into Circuit's face. Then suddenly, with a shriek of agony, she dropped beside him, drew his head into her lap, wiped the gathering foam from his lips, fondled and kissed him. Ripping his shirt open at the neck to find his wound, she uncovered Circuit's buckskin bag and memorandum book, showing through its centre the track of a bullet that had finally spent itself in fracturing a rib over Circuit's heart, the ticket-seller's shot, that would have killed him instantly but for the shielding bulk Netty's treasured letters interposed. Moved, perhaps, by some subtle instinctive suspicion of its contents, she glanced within the book, started to remove it from Circuit's neck, and then gently laid it back above the heart it so long had lain next and so lately had shielded.

Meantime about this little group gathered such of the Cross Canonites as were still upon their legs, while, glad of the diversion, their enemies hurriedly withdrew; round about the outfit stood, their fingers still clutching smoking guns, but pale and sobered.

Circuit lay with eyes closed, feebly gasping for breath, and just as the girl's nervous fingers further rent his shirt and exposed the mortal wound through the right lung made by her own tiny pistol, Circuit half rose on one elbow and whispered: "Boys, write--write Netty I was tryin' to git to her."

And then he fell back and lay still.

For five minutes, perhaps, the girl crouched silent over the body, gazing wide-eyed into the dead face, stunned, every faculty paralyzed.

Presently Lee softly spoke:

"Sis, if, as I allows, you're Netty, you sh.o.r.e did Mat a good turn killin' him 'fore he saw you. Would 'a hurt him pow'ful to see you in this bunch; hurts us 'bout enough, I reckon."

Roused from contemplation of her deed, the girl rose to her knees, still clinging to Circuit's stiffening fingers, and sobbingly murmured, in a voice so low the awed group had to bend to hear her:

"Yes, I'm Netty, and every day while I live I shall thank G.o.d Mat never knew. This is my husband lying dead beneath Mat. They made me do it--my family--nagged me to marry Tom, then a rich horse-breeder of our county, till home was such a h.e.l.l I couldn't stand it. It was four long years ago, and never since have I had the heart to own to Mat the truth. His letters were my greatest joy, and they breathed a love I little have deserved.

"Reckon that's dead right, Netty," broke in Bill Ball; "hain't a bit sh.o.r.e myself airy critter that ever stood up in petticoats deserved a love big as Circuit's. Excuse _us_, please."

And at a sign from Bill, six bent and gently lifted the body and bore it away into the town.

In the twilight of an Autumn day that happened to be the twenty-second anniversary of Circuit's death, two grizzled old ranchmen, ambling slowly out of Mancos along the Dolores trail, rode softly up to a corner of the burying ground and stopped. There within, hard by, a woman, bent and gnarled and gray as the sage-brush about her, was tenderly decking a grave with pinon wreaths.

"Hope to never c.o.c.k another gun, Bill Ball, ef she ain't thar ag'in!"

"She sh.o.r.e is, Lee," answered Bill; "provin' we-all mislaid no bets reconsiderin', an' stakin' Sorrel-top to a little ranch and brand."

Thus, happily, does time sweeten the bitterest memories.

CHAPTER IX

ACROSS THE BORDER

Yes, there he was, just ahead of me on the platform of the Union Depot in Kansas City, my partner, James Terry Gardiner, who had wired me to meet him there a few weeks after I had closed the sale of our Deadman Ranch, in November, 1882. While his back was turned to me, there was no mistaking the lean but st.u.r.dy figure and alert step.

From the vigorous slap of cordiality I gave him on his shoulder, he winced and shrank, crying: "Oh, please don't, old man. Been sleeping in Mexican northers for a fortnight, and it's got my shoulder muscles tied in rheumatic knots. Don Nemecio Garcia started me off from Lampadasos with the a.s.surance that my ambulance was generously provisioned and provided with his own camp-bed, but when night of the first day's journey came, I found the food limited to _tortillas, chorisos_, and coffee, and the bed a sheepskin--no more. Stupid of an old campaigner not to investigate his equipment before starting, was it not?"

"Worse than that, I should say--sheer madness," I answered. "How did it happen?"

"Well, you see, Don Nemecio is the _Alcalde_, of his city, and he showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in extraordinary luxury.

"But that's over now, thank goodness. And now to business.