"Wal, guess we"d best git goin". Willow Bluff station"s fair to decent, so we"ll only need our blankets an" grub--an" a tidy bunch of ammunition. Guess I"ll go an" see Teddy fer the rations."
He went off in a hurry. Tresler looked after him. It was good to be dealing with such a man after those others, Jake and the rancher.
Arizona"s manner of accepting his selection pleased him. There was no "yes" or "no" about it: no argument. A silent acceptance and ready thought for their needs. A thorough old campaigner. A man to be relied on in emergency--a man to be appreciated.
In two hours everything was in readiness, Tresler contenting himself with a rea.s.suring message to Diane through the medium of Joe.
They rode off. Jezebel was on her good behavior, and Arizona"s mount kept up with her fast walk by means of his cowhorse amble. As they came to the ford, Tresler drew up and dismounted, and the other watched him while he produced a wicker-covered gla.s.s flask from his pocket.
"What"s that?" he asked. "Rye?"
Tresler shook his head, and tried the metal screw cap.
"No," he replied shortly.
Then he leant over the water and carefully set the bottle floating, pushing it out as far as possible with his foot while he supported himself by the overhanging bough of a tree. Then he stood watching it carried slowly amid-stream. Presently the improvised craft darted out with a rush into the current, and swept onward with the main flow of the water. Then he returned and remounted his impatient mare.
"That," he said, as they rode on, "is a message. Fyles"s men are down the river spying out the land, and, incidentally, waiting to hear from me. The message I"ve sent them is a request for a.s.sistance at Willow Bluff. I have given them sound reason, which Fyles will understand."
Arizona displayed considerable astonishment, which found expression in a deprecating avowal.
"Say, I guess I"m too much o" the old hand. I didn"t jest think o"
that."
It was all he vouchsafed, but it said a great deal. And the thin face and wild eyes said more.
Now they rode on in silence, while they followed the wood-lined trail along the river. The shade was delightful, and the trail sufficiently sandy to m.u.f.fle the sound of the horses" hoofs and so leave the silence unbroken. There was a faint hum from the insects that haunted the river, but it was drowsy, soft, and only emphasized the perfect sylvan solitude. After a while the trail left the river and gently inclined up to the prairie level. Then the bush broke and became scattered into small bluffs, and a sniff of the bracing air of the plains brushed away the last odor of the redolent glades they were leaving.
It was here that Arizona roused himself. He was of the prairie, belonging to the prairie. The woodlands depressed him, but the prairie made him expansive.
"Seems to me, Tresler, you"re kind o" takin" a heap o" chances--mostly onnes"ary. Meanin" ther" ain"t no more reason to it than whistlin"
Methody hymns to a deaf mule. Can"t see why you"re mussin" y"self up wi" these all-fired hoss thieves. You"re askin" fer a sight more"n you ken eat."
"And, like all men of such condition, I shall probably eat to repletion, I suppose you mean."
Arizona turned a doubtful eye on the speaker, and quietly spat over his horse"s shoulder.
"Guess your langwidge ain"t mine," he said thoughtfully; "but if you"re meanin" you"re goin" to git your belly full, I calc"late you"re li"ble to git like a crop-bound rooster wi" the moult "fore you"re through. An" I sez, why?"
Tresler shrugged. "Why does a man do anything?" he asked indifferently.
"Gener"ly fer one of two reasons. Guess it"s drink or wimmin." Again he shot a speculating glance at his friend, and, as Tresler displayed more interest in the distant view than in his remarks, he went on. "I ain"t heerd tell as you wus death on the bottle."
The object of his solicitude smiled round on him.
"Perhaps you think me a fool. But I just can"t stand by seeing things going wrong in a way that threatens to swamp one poor, lonely girl, whose only protection is her blind father."
"Then it is wimmin?"
"If you like."
"But I don"t jest see wher" them hoss thieves figger."
"Perhaps you don"t, but believe me they do--indirectly." Tresler paused. Then he went on briskly. "There"s no need to go into details about it, but--but I want to run into this gang. Do you know why?
Because I want to find out who this Red Mask is. It is on his personality depends the possibility of my helping the one soul on this ranch who deserves nothing but tender kindness at the hands of those about her."
"A-men," Arizona added in the manner he had acquired in his "religion"
days.
"I must set her free of Jake--somehow."
Arizona"s eyes flashed round on him quickly. "Jest so," he observed complainingly. "That"s how I wanted to do last night."
"And you"d have upset everything."
"Wrong--plumb wrong."
"Perhaps so," Tresler smiled confidently. "We are all liable to mistakes."
Arizona"s dissatisfied grunt was unmistakable. "Thet"s jest how that sa.s.safras-colored, bull-beef Joe Nelson got argyfyin" when Jake come around an" located him sleepin" off the night before in the hog-pen.
But it don"t go no more"n his did, I guess. Howsum, it"s wimmin. Say, Tresler," the lean figure leant over toward him, and the wild eyes looked earnestly into his--"it"s right, then--dead right?"
"When I"ve settled with her father--and Jake."
Arizona held out his h.o.r.n.y, claw-like hand. "Shake," he said. "I"m glad, real glad."
They gripped for a moment, then the cowpuncher turned away, and sat staring out over the prairie. Tresler, watching him, wondered at that long abstraction. The man"s face had a softened look.
"We all fall victims to it sooner or later, Arizona," he ventured presently. "It comes once in a man"s lifetime, and it comes for good or ill."
"Twice--me."
The hard fact nipped Tresler"s sentimental mood in the bud.
"Ah!"
The other continued his study of the sky-line. "Yup," he said at last.
"One died, an" t"other didn"t hatch out."
"I see."
It was no use attempting sympathy. When Arizona spoke of himself, when he chose to confide his life"s troubles to any one, he had a way of stating simple facts merely as facts; he spoke of them because it suited his pessimistic mood.
"Yup. The first was kind o" fady, anyways--sort o" limp in the backbone. Guess I"d got fixed wi" her "fore I knew a heap. Must "a"
bin. Yup, she wus fancy in her notions. Hated sharin" a pannikin o"
tea wi" a friend; guess I see her sc.r.a.pe out a fry-pan oncet. I "lows she had cranks. Guess she hadn"t a pile o" brain, neither. She never could locate a hog from a sow, an" as fer stridin" a hoss, h.e.l.l itself couldn"t "a" per-suaded her. She"d a notion fer settin" sideways, an"
allus got muleish when you guessed she wus wrong. Yup, she wus red-hot on the mission sociables an" eatin" off"n chiny, an" wa"n"t satisfied wi" noospaper on the table; an" took the notion she"d got pimples, an"
worried h.e.l.l out o" her old man till he bo"t a razor an" turned his features into a patch o" fall ploughin", an" kind o" bulldozed her mother into lashin" her stummick wi" some noofangled fixin" as wouldn"t meet round her nowheres noways. An" she wus kind o" finnicky wi" her own feedin", too. Guess some wall-eyed cuss had took her into Sacramento an" give her a feed at one of them Dago joints, wher" they disguise most everythin" wi" langwidge, an" ile, an" garlic, till you hate yourself. Wal, she died. Mebbe she"s got all them things handy now. But I ain"t sayin" nothin" mean about her; she jest had her notions. Guess it come from her mother. I "lows she wus kind o" struck on fool things an" fixin"s. Can"t blame her noways. Guess I wus mostly sudden them days. Luv ut fust sight is a real good thing when it comes to savin" labor, but like all labor-savin" fixin"s, it"s liable to git rattled some, an" then ther" ain"t no calc"latin" what"s goin" to bust."