Trails End

: Cow-country

At the last camp, just north of the Platte, Bud's two black sheep

balked. Bud himself, worn by sleepless nights and long hours in the

saddle, turned furiously when Jerry announced that he guessed he and Ed

wouldn't go any farther.



"Well, damn you both for ungrateful hounds!" grated Bud, hurt to the

quick. "I hope you don't think I brought you this far to help hold me in

the saddle; I made it north alone, ithout any mishap. I think I could

have come back all right. But if you want to quit here, all right. You

can high-tail it back to your outlaws--"



"Well, if you go 'n put it that way!" Jerry expostulated, lifting both

hands high in the air in a vain attempt to pull the situation toward the

humorous. "You're a depity sheriff, and you got the drop." He grinned,

saw that Bud's eyes were still hard and his mouth unyielding, and

lowered his hands, looking crestfallen as a kicked pup that had tried to

be friendly.



"You can see for yourself we ain't fit to go 'n meet your mother

and your father like we was--like we'd went straight," Eddie put in

explanatorily. "You've been raised good, and--say, it makes a man want

to BE good to see how a feller don't have to be no preacher to live

right. But it don't seem square to let you take us right home with you,

just because you're so darned kind you'd do it and never think a thing

about it. We ain't ungrateful--I know I ain't. But--but--"



"The kid's said it, Bud," Jerry came to the rescue. "We come along

because it was a ticklish trip you had ahead. And I've knowed as good

riders as you are, that could stand a little holding in the saddle when

some freak had tried to shoot 'em out of it. But you're close to home

now and you don't need us no more, and so we ain't going to horn in on

the prodigal calf's milkbucket. Marian, She's likely there--"



"If Sis ain't with your folks we'll hunt her up," Eddie interrupted

eagerly. "Sis is your kind--she--she's good enough for yuh, Bud, and I

hope she--ll--well if she's got any sense she will--well, if it comes to

the narrying point, I--well, darn it, I'd like to see Sis git as good a

man as you are!" Eddie, having bluntered that far, went headlong as if

he were afraid to stop. "Sis is educated, and she's an awful good singer

and a fine girl, only I'm her brother. But I'm going to live honest from

now on, Bud, and I hope you won't hold off on account of me. I

ain't going to have sis feel like crying when she thinks about me!

You--you--said something that hurt like a knife, Bud, when you told me

that, up in Crater. And she wasn't to blame for marryn' Lew--and she

done that outa goodness, the kind you showed to Jerry and me. And we

don't want to go spoilin' everything by letting your folks see what

you're bringin' home with yuh! And it might hurt Sis with your folks, if

they found out that I'm--"



Bud had been standing by his horse, looking from one to the other,

listening, watching their faces, measuring the full depth of their

manhood. "Say! you remind me of a story the folks tell on me," he said,

his eyes shining, while his voice strove to make light of it all. "Once,

when I was a kid in pink-aprons, I got lost from the trail-herd my folks

were bringing up from Texas. It was comin' dark, and they had the whole

outfit out hunting me, and everybody scared to death. When they were all

about crazy, they claim I came walking up to the camp-fire dragging

a dead snake by the tail, and carrying a horn toad in my shirt, and

claiming they were mine because I 'ketched 'em.' I'm not branding that

yarn with any moral--but figure it out for yourself, boys."



The two looked at each other and grinned. "I ain't dead yet," Eddie

made sheepish comment. "Mebbe you kinda look on me as being a horn toad,

Bud."



"When you bear in mind that my folks raised that kid, You'll realize

that it takes a good deal to stampede mother." Bud swung into the saddle

to avoid subjecting his emotions to the cramped, inadequate limitations

of speech. "Let's go, boys. She's a long trail to take the kinks out of

before supper-time."



They stood still, making no move to follow. Bud reined Smoky around so

that he faced them, reached laboriously into that mysterious pocket of

a cowpuncher's trousers which is always held closed by the belt of his

chaps, and which invariably holds in its depths the things he wants in a

hurry. They watched him curiously, resolutely refusing to interpret his

bit of autobiography, wondering perhaps why he did not go.



"Here she is." Bud had disinterred the deputy sheriff's badge, and began

to polish it by the primitive but effectual method of spitting on it and

then rubbing vigorously on his sleeve. "You're outside of Crater County,

but by thunder you're both guilty of resisting an officer, and county

lines don't count!" He had pinned the badge at random on his coat while

he was speaking, and now, before the two realized what he was about, he

had his six-shooter out and aimed straight at them.



Bud had never lived in fear of the law. Instantly was sorry when he

saw the involuntary stiffening of their muscles, the quick wordless

suspicion and defiance that sent their eyes in shifty glances to right

and left before their hands lifted a little. Trust him, love him they

might, there was that latent fear of capture driven deep into their

souls; so deep that even he had not erased it.



Bud saw--and so he laughed.



"I've got to show my folks that I've made a gathering," he said. "You

can't quit, boys. And I'm going to take you to the end of the trail, now

you've started." He eyed them, saw that they were still stubborn, and

drew in his breath sharply, manfully meeting the question in their

minds.



"We've left more at the Sinks than the gnashing of teeth," he said

whimsically. "A couple of bad names, for instance. You're two bully

good friends of mine, and--damn it, Marian will want to see both of you

fellows, if she's there. If she isn't--we'll maybe have a big circle

to ride, finding her. I'll need you, no matter what's ahead." He looked

from one to the other, gave a snort and added impatiently, "Aw, fork

your horses and don't stand there looking like a couple of damn fools!"



Whereupon Jerry shook his head dissentingly, grinned and gave Eddie so

emphatic an impulse toward his horse that the kid went sprawling.



"Guess We're up against it, all right--but I do wish yo 'd lose that

badge!" Jerry surrendered, and flipped the bridle reins over the neck of

his horse. "Horn toad is right, the way you're scabbling around amongst

them rocks," he called light-heartedly to the kid. "Ever see a purtier

sunrise? I never!"



I don't know what they thought of the sunset. Gorgeous it was, with many

soft colors blended into unnamable tints and translucencies, and the

songs of birds in the thickets as they passed. Smoky, Sunfish and

Stopper walked briskly, ears perked forward, heads up, eyes eager to

catch the familiar landmarks that meant home. Bud's head was up, also,

his eyes went here and there, resting with a careless affection on those

same landmarks which spelled home. He would have let Smoky's reins have

a bit more slack and would have led his little convoy to the corrals

at a gallop, had not hope begun to tremble and shrink from meeting

certainty face to face. Had you asked him then, I think Bud would have

owned himself a coward. Until he had speech with home-folk he would

merely be hoping that Marian was there; but until he had speech with

them he need not hear that they knew nothing of her. Bud--like, however,

he tried to cover his trepidation with a joke.



"We'll sneak up on 'em," he said to Ed and Jerry when the roofs of

house and stables came into view.



"Here's where I grew up, boys. And in a minute or two more you'll see

the greatest little mother on earth--and the finest dad," he added,

swallowing the last of his Scotch stubbornness.



"And Sis, I hope," Eddie said wistfully. "I sure hope she's here."



Neither Jerry nor Bud answered him at all. Smoky threw up his head

suddenly and gave a shrill whinny, and a horse at the corrals answered

sonorously.



"Say! That sounds to me like Boise!" Eddie exclaimed, standing up in his

stirrups to look.



Bud turned pale, then flushed hotly. "Don't holler!" he muttered, and

held Smoky back a little. For just one reason a young man's heart pounds

as Bud's heart pounded then. Jerry looked at him, took a deep breath

and bit his lip thoughtfully. It may be that Jerry's heartbeats were not

quite normal just then, but no one would ever know.



They rode slowly to a point near the corner of the table, and there Bud

halted the two with his lifted hand. Bud was trembling a little--but he

was smiling, too. Eddie was frankly grinning, Jerry's face was the face

of a good poker-player--it told nothing.



In a group with their backs to them stood three: Marian, Bud's mother

and his father. Bob Birnie held Boise by the bridle, and the two women

were stroking the brown nose of the horse that moved uneasily, with

little impatient head-tossings.



"He doesn't behave like a horse that has made the long trip he has

made," Bud's mother observed admiringly. "You must be a wonderful little

horsewoman, my dear, as well as a wonderful little woman in every other

way. Buddy should never have sent you on such a trip--just to bring home

money, like a bank messenger! But I'm glad that he did! And I do wish

you would consent to stay--such an afternoon with music I haven't had

since Buddy left us. You could stay with me and train for the

concert work you intend doing. I'm only an old ranch woman in a slat

sunbonnet--but I taught my Buddy--and have you heard him?"



"An old woman in a slat sunbonnet--oh, how can you? Why, you're the most

wonderful woman in the whole world." Marian's voice was almost tearful

in its protest. "Yes--I have heard--your Buddy."



"'T is the strangest way to go about selling a horse that I ever saw,"

Bob Birnie put in dryly, smoothing his beard while he looked at them.

"We'd be glad to have you stay, lass. But you've asked me to place a

price on the horse, and I should like to ask ye a question or two. How

fast did ye say he could run?"



Marian laid an arm around the shoulders of the old lady in a slat

sunbonnet and patted her arm while she answered.



"Well, he beat everything in the country, so they refused to race

against him, until Bud came with his horses," she replied. "It took

Sunfish to outrun him. He 's terribly fast, Mr. Birnie. I--really, I

think he could beat the world's record--if Bud rode him!"



Just here you should picture Ed and Jerry with their hands over their

mouths, and Bud wanting to hide his face with his hat.



Bob Birnie's beard behaved oddly for a minute, while he leaned and

stroked Boise's flat forelegs, that told of speed. "Wee-ll," he

hesitated, soft-heartedness battling with the horse-buyer's keenness,

"since Bud is na ere to ride him, he'll make a good horse for the

roundup. I'll give ye "--more battling--"a hundred and fifty dollars for

him, if ye care to sell--"



"Here, wait a minute before you sell to that old skinflint!" Bud shouted

exuberantly, dismounting with a rush. The rush, I may say, carried him

to the little old lady in the slat sunbonnet, and to that other little

lady who was staring at him with wide, bright yes. Bud's arms went

around his mother. Perhaps by accident he gathered in Marian also--they

were standing very close, and his arms were very long--and he was slow

to discover his mistake.



"I'll give you two hundred for Boise, and I'll throw in one brother, and

one long-legged, good-for-nothing cowpuncher--"



"Meaning yourself, Buddy?" came teasingly from he slat sunbonnet, whose

occupant had not been told just everything. "I'll be surprised if she'll

have you, with that dirty face and no shave for a week and more. But

if she does, you're luckier than you deserve, for riding up on us like

this! We've heard all about you, Buddy--though you were wise to send

this lassie to gild your faults and make a hero of you!"



Now, you want to know how Marian managed to live through that. I will

say that she discovered how tenaciously a young man's arms may cling

when he thinks he is embracing merely his mother; but she freed herself

and ran to Eddie, fairly pulled him off his horse, and talked very

fast and incoherently to him and Jerry, asking question after question

without waiting for a reply to any of them. All this, I suppose, in the

hope that they would not hear, or, hearing, would not understand what

that terrible, wonderful little woman was saying so innocently.



But you cannot faze youth. Eddie had important news for Sis, and he felt

that now was the time to tell it before Marian blushed any redder, so

he pulled her face up to his, put his lips so close to her ear that his

breath tickled, and whispered--without any preface whatever that she

could marry Bud any time now, because she was a widow.



"Here! Somebody--Bud--quick! Sis has fainted! Doggone it, I only told

her Lew's dead and she can marry you--shucks! I thought she'd be glad!"



Down on the Staked Plains, on an evening much like the evening when Bud

came home with his "stake" and his hopes and two black sheep who were

becoming white as most of us, a camp-fire began to crackle and wave

smoke ribbons this way and that before it burned steadily under the

supper pots of a certain hungry, happy group which you know.



"It's somewhere about here that I got lost from camp when I was a kid,"

Bud observed, tilting back his hat and lifting a knee to snap a dry

stick over it. "Mother'd know, I bet. I kinda wish we'd brought her and

dad along with us. That's about eighteen years ago they trailed a herd

north--and here we are, taking our trail--herd north on the same trail!

I kinda wish now I'd picked up a bunch of yearling heifers along with

our two-year-olds. We could have brought another hundred head just as

well as not. They sure drive nice. Mother would have enjoyed this trip."



"You think so, do you?" Marian gave him a superior little smile along

with the coffee-boiler. "If you'd heard her talk about that trip north

when there weren't any men around listening, you'd change your mind.

Bud Birnie, you are the SIMPLEST creature! You think, because a woman

doesn't make a fuss over things, she doesn't mind. Your mother told me

that it was a perfect nightmare. She taught you music just in the hope

that you'd go back to civilization and live there where there are some

modern improvements, and she could visit you! And here you are--all

rapped up in a bunch of young stock, dirty as pig and your whiskers--ow!

Bud! Stop that immediatly, or I'll go put my face in a cactus just for

relief!"



"Maybe you're dissatisfied yourself with my bunch of cattle. Maybe you

didn't go in raptures over our aim and make more plans in a day than

four men could carry out in a year. Maybe you wish your husband was a

man that was content to pound piano keys all his life and let his hair

grow long instead of his whiskers. If you hate this, why didn't you say

so?"



"I was speaking," said Marian as dignifiedly as was possible, "of your

mother. She was raised in civilization, and she has simply made the best

of pioneering all her married life. I was born and raised in cow-country

and I love it. As I said before, you are the SIMPLEST creature! Would

you really bring a father and mother a honeymoon trail--especially when

the bride didn't want them, and they would much rather stay home?"



"Hey!" cried Eddie disgustedly, coming up from a shallow creek with a

bucket of water and a few dry sticks. "The coffee's upset and putting

the fire out. Gee whiz! Can't you folks quit love-makin' and tend to

business long enough to cook a meal?"