an hour prior to this little episode, jim munson had sauntered up to the ticket window only to find that the train from the east was forty minutes late. he turned away with a little shrug of relief. it was a foreign role he was playing,—this assumption of the duties of a knight in dancing attendance on strange ladies. secretly, he chafed under it; outwardly, he was magnificently indifferent. he had a reputation to sustain, a reputation of having yet to meet that which would lower his proud boast that he was afraid of nothing under the sun, neither man nor devil. but he doubted his ability so to direct the point of view of the boss or the scribe or the rest of the boys of the three bars ranch, who were on a still hunt for his spot of vulnerability.
the waiting-room was hot,—unbearably so to a man who practically lived in the open. he strolled outside and down the tracks. he found himself wishing the train had been on time. had it been so, it—the impending meeting—would now have been a thing of the forgotten past. he must needs fortify himself all over again. but sauntering down the track toward the stockyards, he filled his cob pipe, lighted it, and was comforted. he had a forty-minute reprieve.
the boys had tried most valiantly to persuade him to “fix up” for this event. he had scorned them indignantly. if he was good enough as he was—black woollen shirt, red neckerchief and all—for men, just so was he good enough for any female that ever lived. so he assumed a little swagger as he stepped over the ties, and tried to make himself believe that he was glad he had not allowed himself to be corrupted by proffers of blue shirts and white neckerchiefs.
he was approaching the stockyards. there was movement there. sounds of commands, blows, profane epithets, and worried bawlings changed the placid evening calm into noisy strife. it is always a place interesting to cowmen. jim relegated thoughts of the coming meeting to the background while he leaned on the fence, and, with idle absorption, watched the loading of cattle into a stock car. a switch engine, steaming and spluttering, stood ready to make way for another car so soon as the present one should be laden. he was not the only spectator. others were before him. two men strolled up to the side opposite as he settled down to musing interest.
“gee!” he swore gently under his breath, “ef that ain’t bill brown! yep. it is, for a fac’. wonder what he’s a shippin’ now for!” he scrambled lightly over the high fence of the pen.
“hullo, there, bill brown!” he yelled, genially, making his way as one accustomed through the bunch of reluctant, excited cattle.
“hullo yourself, jim! what you doin’ in town?” responded the man addressed, pausing in his labor to wipe the streaming moisture from his face. he fanned himself vigorously with his drooping hat while he talked.
“gal huntin’,” answered jim, soberly and despondently.
“hell!” brown surveyed him with astonished but sympathetic approbation. “hell!” he repeated. “you don’t mean it, do you, jim, honest? come, now, honest? so you’ve come to it, at last, have you? well, well! what’s comin’ over the three bars? what’ll the boys say?”
he came nearer and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “say, jim, how did it come about? and who’s the lady? lord, jim, you of all people!” he laughed uproariously.
“aw, come off!” growled jim, in petulant scorn. “you make me tired! you’re plumb luney, that’s what you are. i’m after the new gal reporter. she’s due on that low-down, ornery train. wish—it—was in kingdom come. yep, i do, for a fac’.”
“oh, well, never mind! i didn’t mean anything,” laughed brown, good-naturedly. “but it does beat the band, jim, now doesn’t it, how you people scare at petticoats. they ain’t pizen—honest.”
jim looked on idly. occasionally, he condescended to head a rebellious steer shute-wards. out beyond, it was still and sweet and peaceful, and the late afternoon had put on that thin veil of coolness which is a god-given refreshment after the heat of the day. but here in the pen all was confusion. the raucous cattle-calls of the cowboys smote the evening air startlingly.
“here, bill brown!” he exclaimed suddenly, “where did you run across that critter?” he slapped the shoulder of a big, raw-boned, long-eared steer as he spoke. the animal was on the point of being driven up the shute.
“what you want to know for?” asked brown in surprise.
“reason ’nough. that critter belongs to us, that’s why; and i want to know where you got him, that’s what i want to know.”
“you’re crazy, jim! why, i bought that fellow from jesse black t’ other day. i’ve got a bill-of-sale for him. i’m shippin’ a couple of cars to sioux city and bought him to send along. that’s on the square.”
“i don’t doubt it—s’ far as you’re concerned, bill brown,” said jim, “but that’s our critter jest the same, and i’ll jest tote ’im along ’f you’ve no objections.”
“well, i guess not!” said brown, laconically.
“look here, bill brown,” jim was getting hot-headedly angry, “didn’t you know jesse black stands trial to-morrow for rustlin’ that there very critter from the three bars ranch?”
“no, i didn’t,” brown answered, shortly. “any case?”
“i guess yes! williston o’ the lazy s saw this very critter on that island where jesse black holds out.” he proceeded to relate minutely the story to which williston was going to swear on the morrow. “but,” he concluded, “jesse’s goin’ to fight like hell against bein’ bound over.”
“well, well,” said brown, perplexedly. “but the brand, jim, it’s not yours or jesse’s either.”
“’quainted with any j r ranch in these parts?” queried jim, shrewdly. “i ain’t.”
“well, neither am i,” confessed brown, “but that’s not sayin’ there ain’t one somewhere. maybe we can trace it back.”
“shucks!” exploded jim.
“maybe you’re right, jim, but i don’t propose to lose the price o’ that animal less’n i have to. you can’t blame me for that. i paid good money for it. if it’s your’n, why, of course, it’s your’n. but i want to be sure first. sure you’d know him, jim? how could you be so blamed sure? your boss must range five thousand head.”
“know him? know mag? i’d know mag ef my eyes were full o’ soundin’ cataracts. he’s an old and tried friend o’ mine. the meanest critter the lord ever let live and that’s a fac’. but the boss calls ’im his maggot. seems to actually cherish a kind o’ ’fection for the ornery critter, and says the luck o’ the three bar would sort o’ peak and pine ef he should ever git rid o’ the pesky brute. maybe he’s right. leastwise, the critter’s his, and when a thing’s yours, why, it’s yours and that’s all there is about it. by cracky, the boss is some mad! you’d think him and that walleyed, cross-grained son-of-a-gun had been kind and lovin’ mates these many years. well, i ain’t met up with this ornery critter for some time. hullo there, mag! look kind o’ sneakin’, now, don’t you, wearin’ that outlandish and unbeknownst j r?”
bill brown thoughtfully surveyed the steer whose ownership was thus so unexpectedly disputed.
“you hold him,” insisted jim. “ef he ain’t ours, you can send him along with your next shipment, can’t you? what you wobblin’ about? ain’t afraid the boss’ll claim what ain’t his, are you, bill brown?”
“well, i can’t he’p myself, i guess,” said brown, in a tone of voice which told plainly of his laudable effort to keep his annoyance in subjection to his good fellowship. “you send langford down here first thing in the morning. if he says the critter’s his’n, that ends it.”
now that he had convinced his quondam acquaintance, the present shipper, to his entire satisfaction, jim glanced at his watch with ostentatious ease. his time had come. if all the minutes of all the time to come should be as short as those forty had been, how soon he, jim munson, cow-puncher, would have ridden them all into the past. but his “get away” must be clean and dignified.
“likely bunch you have there,” he said, casually, turning away with unassumed reluctance.
“fair to middlin’,” said brown with pride.
“shippin’ to sioux city, you said?”
“yep.”
“well, so long.”
“so long. shippin’ any these days, jim?”
“nope. boss never dribbles ’em out. when he ships he ships. ain’t none gone over the rails since last fall.”
he stepped off briskly and vaulted the fence with as lightsome an air as though he were bent on the one errand his heart would choose, and swung up the track carelessly humming a tune. but he had a vise-like grip on his cob pipe. his teeth bit through the frail stem. it split. he tossed the remains away with a gesture of nervous contempt. a whistle sounded. he quickened his pace. if he missed her,—well, the boss was a good fellow, took a lot of nonsense from the boys, but there were things he would not stand for. jim did not need to be told that this would be one of them.
the platform was crowded. the yellow sunlight fell slantingly on the gay groups.
“aw, munson, you’re bluffin’,” jested the mail carrier. “you ain’t lookin’ fer nobody; you know you ain’t. you ain’t got no folks. don’t believe you never had none. never heard of ’em.”
“lookin’ for my uncle,” explained jim, serenely. “rich old codger from the state o’ pennsylvaney some’ers. ain’t got nobody but me left.”
“aw, come off! what you givin’ us?”
but jim only winked and slouched off, prime for more adventures. he was enjoying himself hugely,—when he was not thinking of petticoats.
