Sundown Slim

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13. Sundown, Vaquero



The strenuous days of the round-up were over. Bands of riders departed for their distant ranches leaving a few of their number to ride line and incidentally to keep a vigilant eye On the sheep-camps.

David Loring, realizing that he had been checkmated in the first move of the game in which cattle and sheep were the pawns and cowboys and herders the castles, knights, and, stretching the metaphor a bit, bishops, tacitly admitted defeat and employed a diagonal to draw the cattle-men's forces elsewhere. He determined to locate on the abandoned water-hole ranch, homestead it, and, by so doing, cut off the supply of water necessary to the cattle on the west side of the Concho River. This would be entering the enemy's territory with a vengeance, yet there was no law prohibiting his homesteading the ranch, the title of which had reverted to the Government. Too shrewd to risk legal entanglement by placing one of his employees on the homestead, he decided to have his daughter file application, and nothing forbade her employing whom she chose to do the necessary work to prove up. The plan appealed to the girl for various reasons, one of which was that she might, by her presence, avert the long-threatened war between the two factions.

Sundown and, indirectly, Fadeaway precipitated the impending trouble. Fadeaway, riding for the Blue, was left with a companion to ride line on the mesas. Sundown, although very much unlike Othello, found that his occupation was gone. Assistant cooks were a drug on the range. He was equipped with a better horse, a rope, quirt, slicker, and instructions to cover daily a strip of territory between the Concho and the sheep-camps. He became in fact an itinerant patrol, his mere physical presence on the line being all that was required of him.

It was the Señora Loring who drove to the Concho one morning and was welcomed by Corliss to whom she gave the little sack of gold. She told him all that he wished to know in regard to his brother Will, pleading for him with motherly gentleness. Corliss assured her that he felt no anger toward his brother, but rather solicitude, and made her happy by his generous attitude toward the wrongdoer. He had already heard that his brother had driven to Antelope and taken the train for the West. His great regret was that Will had not written to him or come to him directly, instead of leaving to the good Señora the task of explanation. "Never figured that repenting by proxy was the best plan," he told the Señora. "But he couldn't have chosen a better proxy." At which she smiled, and in departing blessed him in her sincere and simple manner, assuring him in turn that should the sheep and cattle ever come to an understanding--the Spanish for which embraced the larger aspect of the problem--there was nothing she desired or prayed for more than the friendship and presence of Corliss at the Loring hacienda. Corliss drew his own inference from this, which was a pleasant one. He felt that he had a friend at court, yet explained humorously that sheep and cattle were not by nature fitted to occupy the same territory. He was alive to sentiment, but more keen than ever to maintain his position unalterably so far as business was concerned. The Señora liked him none the less for this. To her he was a man who stood straight, on both feet, and faced the sun. Her daughter Nell . . . Ah, the big Juan Corliss has such a fine way with him . . . what a husband for any woman! In the mean time . . . only thoughts, hopes were possible . . . yet . . . mañana . . . mañana . . . there was always to-morrow that would be a brighter day.

To say that Sundown was proud of his unaccustomed regalia from the crown of his lofty Stetson to the soles of his high-heeled riding-boots, would be putting it mildly. To say that he was especially useful in his new calling as vaquero would not be to put it so mildly. Under the more or less profane tutelage of his companions, he learned to throw a rope after a fashion, taking the laughing sallies of his comrades good-naturedly. He persevered. He was forever stealing upon some maternal and unsuspicious cow and launching his rope at her with a wild shout--possibly as an anticipatory expression of fear in case his rope should fall true. More than once he had been yanked bodily from the saddle and had arisen to find himself minus rope, cow, and pony, for no self-respecting cow-horse could watch Sundown's unprecedented evolutions and not depart thitherward, feeling ashamed and grieved to think that he had ever lived to be a horse. And Sundown, despite his length of limb, seemed unbreakable. "He's the most durable rider on the range," remarked Hi Wingle, incident to one of his late assistant's meteoric departures from the saddle. "He wears good."

One morning as Sundown was jogging along, engaged chiefly in watching his shadow bob up and down across the wavering bunch-grass, he saw that which appeared to be the back of a cow just over a rise. He walked his horse to the rise and for some fantastic reason decided to rope the cow. He swung his rope. It fell true--in fact, too true, for it encircled the animal's neck and looped tight just where the neck joins the shoulders. He took a turn of the rope around the saddle horn. At last he had mastered the knack of the thing! Why, it was as easy as rolling pie-crust! He was about to wonder what he was going to do next, when the cow--which happened to be a large and active steer--humped itself and departed for realms unknown.

With the perversity of inanimate objects the rope flipped in a loop around Sundown's foot. The horse bucked, just once, and Sundown was launched on a new and promising career. The ground shot beneath him. He clutched wildly at the bunch-grass, secured some, and took it along with him. Chance, who always accompanied Sundown, raced alongside, enjoying the novelty of the thing. He barked and then shot ahead, nipping at the steer's heels, and this did not add to his master's prospects of ultimate survival. Sundown shouted for help when he could, which was not often. Startled prairie-dogs disappeared in their holes as the mad trio shot past. The steer, becoming warmed up to his work, paid little attention to direction and much to speed. That a band of sheep were grazing ahead made no difference to the charging steer. He plunged into the band. Sundown dimly saw a sea of sheep surge around him and break in storm-tossed waves of wool on either side. He heard some one shout. Then he fainted.

When he again beheld the sun, a girl was kneeling beside him, a girl with dark, troubled eyes. She offered him wine from a wicker jug. He drank and felt better.

"Are you hurt badly?" she asked.

"Am--I--all here?" queried Sundown.

"I guess so. You seem to be."

"Was anybody else killed in the wreck?"

The girl smiled. "You're feeling better. Let me help you to sit up."

Sundown for the moment felt disinclined to move. He was in fact pretty thoroughly used up. "Say, did he win?" he queried finally.

"Who?"

"Me dog, Chance. I got the start at first, but he kind of got ahead for a spell."

"I don't know. Chance is right behind you. He's out of breath."

"Huh! Reckon I'm out more'n that. He's in luck this trip."

"How did it happen?"

"That's what I'm wonderin', lady. And say, would you be so kind as to tell me which way is north?"

Despite her solicitude for the recumbent Sundown, Eleanor Loring laughed. "You are in one of the sheep-camps. I'm Eleanor Loring."

"Sheep-camp? Gee Gosh! Did you stop me?"

"Yes. I was just riding into camp when you--er--arrived. I headed the steer back and Fernando cut the rope."

"Thanks, miss. And Fernando is wise to his business, all right."

"Can you sit up now?" she asked.

"Ow! I guess I can. That part of me wasn't expectin' to be moved sudden-like. How'd I get under these trees?"

"Fernando carried you."

"Well, little old Fernando is some carrier. Where is he? I wouldn't mind shakin' hands with that gent."

"He's out after the sheep. The steer stampeded them."

"Well, miss, speakin' from me heart--that there steer was no lady. I thought she was till I roped him. I was mistook serious."

"He might have killed you. Let me help you up."

Sundown had been endeavoring to get to his feet. Finally he rose and leaned against a tree. Fortunately for him his course had been over a stretch of yielding bunch-grass, and not, as might have been the case, over the ragged tufa. As it was his shirt hung from his back in shreds, and he felt that his overalls were not all that their name implied. The numbness of his abrasions and bruises was wearing off. The pain quickened his senses. He realized that his hat was missing, that one spur was gone and the other was half-way up his leg. He was not pleased with his appearance, and determined to "make a slope" as gracefully and as quickly as circumstances would permit.

Chance, gnawing at a burr that had stuck between his toes, saw his master rise. He leaped toward Sundown and stood waiting for more fun.

"Chance seems all right now," said the girl, patting the dog's head.

"John Corliss give him to me, miss. He's my dog now. Yes, he's active all right, 'specially chasin' steers."

"I remember you. You're the man that carried Chance up the cañon trail that day when he was hurt."

"Yes, miss. He ain't forgettin' either."

The girl studied Sundown's lean face as he gazed across the mesas, wondering how he was going to make his exit without calling undue attention to his dearth of raiment. She had heard that this man, this queer, ungainly outlander, had been companion to Will Corliss. She had also heard that Sundown had been injured when the robbery occurred. Pensively she drew her empty gauntlet through her fingers.

"Do you know who took the money--that night?" she asked suddenly, and Sundown straightened and gazed at her.

He blinked and coughed. "Bein' no hand to lie to a lady, I do," he said, simply. "But I can't tell, even if you did save me life from that there steer."

She bit her lips, and nodded. "I didn't really mean to ask. I was curious to know. Won't you take my horse? You can send him back to-morrow."

"And you beat it home afoot? Say, lady, I mebby been a Bo onct, but I ain't hurt that bad. If I can't find me trail back to where I started from, it won't be because it ain't there. Thanks, jest the same."

Sundown essayed a step, halted and groaned. He felt of himself gingerly. He did not seem to be injured in any special place, as he ached equally all over. "I'll be goin', lady. I say thanks for savin' me life."

The girl smiled and nodded. "Will you please tell Mr. Corliss that I should like to see him, to-morrow, at Fernando's camp? I think he'll understand."

"Sure, miss! I'll tell him. That Fernando man looks to be havin' some trouble with them sheep."

The girl glanced toward the mesa. Fernando and his assistant were herding the sheep closer, and despite their activity were really getting the frightened animals bunched well. When she turned again Sundown had disappeared.

Sundown's arrival in camp, on foot, was not altogether unexpected. One of the men had seen a riderless horse grazing on the mesa, and had ridden out and caught it. Circumstantial evidence--rider and rope missing--confirmed Hi Wingle's remark that "that there walkin' clothes-pin has probably roped somethin' at last." And the "walking clothes-pin's" condition when he appeared seemed to substantiate the cook's theory.

"Lose your rope?" queried Wingle as Sundown limped up.

"Uhuh. And that ain't all. You ain't got a pair of pants that ain't working have you?"

Wingle smiled. "Pants? Think this here's a Jew clothin'-store?"

"Nope. But if she was a horsepital now--"

"Been visitin'?"

"Uhuh. I jest run over to see some friends of mine in a sheep-camp."

"Did, eh? And mebby you can tell me what you run over?"

"'Most everything out there," said Sundown, pointing to the mesa. "Say, you ain't got any of that plaster like they put on a guy's head when he gets hit with a brick?"

"Nope. But I got salt."

"And pepper," concluded Sundown with some sarcasm. "Mebby I do look like a barbecue."

"Straight, Sun, salt and water is mighty healin'. You better ride over to the Concho and get fixed up."

"Reckon that ain't no dream, Hi. Got to see the boss, anyhow."

"Well, 'anyhow' is correc'. And, say, you want to see him first and tell him it's you. Your hoss is tied over there. Sinker fetched him in."

"Hoss? Oh, yes, hoss! My hoss! Uhuh!"

With this somewhat ambiguous string of ejaculations Sundown limped toward the pony. He turned when halfway there and called to Wingle. "The cattle business is fine, Hi, fine, but between you and me I reckon I'll invest in sheep. A fella is like to live longer."

Wingle stared gravely at the tall and tattered figure. He stared gravely, but inwardly he shook with laughter. "Say, Sun!" he managed to exclaim finally, "that there Nell Loring is a right fine gal, ain't she?"

"You bet!"

"And Jack ain't the worst . . ." Wingle spat and chewed ruminatively. "No, he ain't the worst," he asserted again.

"I dunno what that's got to do with gettin' drug sixteen mile," said Sundown. "But, anyhow, you're right."