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The Dude Wrangler, a novel by Caroline Lockhart |
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Chapter 14. Lifting A Cache |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. LIFTING A CACHE The Prouty barber lathering the face of a customer, after the manner of a man whitewashing a chicken coop, paused on an upward stroke to listen. Then he stepped to the door, looked down the street, and nodded in confirmation. After which he returned, laid down his brush, and pinned on a nickel badge, which act transformed him into the town constable. The patron in the chair, a travelling salesman, watched the pantomime with interest. "One moment, please." The barber-officer excused himself and stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, where he awaited the approach of a pair on horseback who were making the welkin ring with a time-honoured ballad of the country:
Returning, the constable laid the six-shooters on the shelf among the shaving mugs and removed his badge. "Who's that?" inquired the patron, since the barber offered no explanation. "Oh, them toughs--'Gentle Annie' Macpherson and 'Pinkey' Fripp," was the answer in a wearied tone. "I hate to see 'em come to town." The pair continued to warble on their way to the livery barn on a side street:
"Shall we work together or separate?" To this mysterious question Wallie replied: "Let's try it together first." After attending personally to the matter of feeding their horses oats, the two set forth with the air of having a definite purpose. Their subsequent actions confirmed it, for they approached divers persons of their acquaintance as if they had business of a confidential nature. The invariable result of these mysterious negotiations, however, was a negative shake of the head. After another obvious failure Pinkey said gloomily: "If I put in half the time and thought trying to be a Senator that I do figgerin' how to git a bottle, I'd be elected." Wallie replied hopefully: "Something may turn up yet." "I'd lift a cache from a preacher! I'd steal booze off my blind aunt! I'd----" "We'll try some more 'prospects' before we give up. It's many months since I've gone out of town sober and I don't like to establish a precedent. I'm superstitious about things like that," said Wallie. At this unquestionably psychological moment Mr. Tucker beckoned them from his doorway. They responded with such alacrity that their gait approached a trot, although they had no particular reason to believe that it was his intention to offer them a drink. It was merely a hope born of their thirst. Their reputation was such, however, that any one who wished to demonstrate his friendship invariably evidenced it in this way, taking care, in violation of the ethics of bygone days, to do the pouring himself. Mr. Tucker winked elaborately when he invited them in, and Wallie and Pinkey exchanged eloquent looks as they followed him to his Land Office in the rear of the store. Inside, he locked the door and lowered the shade of the single window which looked out on an areaway. No explanation was necessary as he took a hatchet and pried up a plank. This accomplished, he reached under the floor and produced a tin cup and a two-gallon jug. He filled it with a fluid of an unfamiliar shade and passed it to Pinkey, who smelled it and declared that he could drink anything that was wet. Wallie watched him eagerly as it gurgled down his throat. "Well?" Mr. Tucker waited expectantly for the verdict. Pinkey wiped his mouth. "Another like that and I could watch my mother go down for the third time and laugh!" "Where did you get it?" Wallie in turn emptied the cup and passed it back. "S-ss-sh!" Mr. Tucker looked warningly at the door. "I made it myself--brown sugar and raisins. You like it then?" "If I had about 'four fingers' in a wash-tub every half hour---- What would you hold a quart of that at?" Pinkey leaned over the opening in the floor and sniffed. Mr. Tucker hastily replaced the plank and declared: "Oh, I wouldn't dast! I jest keep a little on hand for my particular friends that I can trust. By the way, Mr. Macpherson, what are you goin' to do with that homestead you took up?" "Hold it. Why?" "I thought I might run across a buyer sometime and I wondered what you asked." A hardness came into Wallie's face and Tucker added: "I wasn't goin' to charge you any commission--you've had bad luck and----" "You're the seventh philanthropist that's wanted to sell that place in my behalf for about $400, because he was sorry for me," Wallie interrupted, drily. "You tell Canby that when he makes me a decent offer I'll consider it." "No offence--no offence, I hope?" Tucker protested. "Oh, no." Wallie shrugged his shoulder. "Only don't keep getting me mixed with the chap that took up that homestead. I've had my eyeteeth cut." Extending an invitation to call and quench their thirsts with his raisinade when next they came to town, Tucker unlocked the door. After the two had wormed their way through the bureaus and stoves and were once more in the street, they turned and gave each other a long, inquiring look. "Pink," demanded Wallie, solemnly, "did you smell anything when he raised that plank?" "Did I smell anything! Didn't you see me sniff? That joker has got a cache of the real stuff and he gave us raisinade! I couldn't git an answer from a barrel of that. He couldn't have insulted us worse if he'd slapped our faces." "A man ought to be punished that would do a wicked thing like that." "You've said somethin', Gentle Annie." The two looked at each other in an understanding that was beautiful and complete. The behaviour of the visitors was nearly too good to be true--it was so exemplary, in fact, as to be suspicious, and acting upon this theory, the barber closed his shop early, pinned on his badge of office, and followed them about. But when at ten o'clock they had broken nothing, quarrelled with nobody, and drunk only an incredible quantity of soda pop, he commenced to think he had been wrong. At eleven, when they were still in a pool-hall playing "solo" for a cent a chip, he decided to go home. There he confided to his wife that no more striking example of the benefits of prohibition had come under his observation than the conduct of this notorious pair who, when sober, were well mannered and docile as lambs. It was twelve or thereabouts when two figures crept stealthily up the alley behind Mr. Tucker's Second-Hand Store and raised the window looking out on the areaway. As noiselessly as trained burglars they pried up the plank and investigated by the light of a match. "Well, what do you think of that!" "I feel like somebody had died and left me a million dollars!" said Pinkey in an awed tone, reaching for a tin cup. "I didn't think they was anybody in the world as mean as Tucker." "You mustn't get too much," Wallie admonished, noting the size of the drink Pinkey was pouring for himself. "I've never had too much. I may have had enough, but never too much," Pinkey grinned. "I don't take no int'rest in startin' less'n a quart." "I hope he'll have the decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in the face," Wallie declared, virtuously. "He won't git a chanst to look in my face for some time to come if we kin lift this cache." Together they filled the grain sack they had brought and carefully replaced the plank, then, staggering under the weight of the load, made their way to a gulch, buried the sack, and marked the hiding-place with a stone. With a righteous sense of having acted as instruments of Providence in punishing selfishness, they returned to town to follow such whims as seized them under the stimulus of a bottle of Mr. Tucker's excellent Bourbon. The constable had been asleep for hours when a yell--a series of yells--made him sit up. He listened a moment, then with a sigh of resignation got up, dressed, and took the key of the calaboose from its nail by the kitchen sink. "I'll lock 'em up and be right back," he said to his sleepy wife, who seemed to know whom he meant too well to ask. Under the arc light in front of the Prouty House he found them doing the Indian "stomp" dance to the delight of the guests who were leaning from their windows to applaud. "Ain't you two ashamed of yerselves?" the constable demanded, scandalized--referring to the fact that Pinkey and Wallie had divested themselves of their trousers and boots and were dancing in their stocking feet. "Ashamed?" Wallie asked, impudently. "Where have I heard that word?" "Who sold liquor to you two?" "I ate a raisin and it fermented," Wallie replied, pertly. "Where's your clothes?" To Pinkey. "How'sh I know?" "You two ought to be ordered to keep out of town. You're pests. Come along!" "Jus' waitin' fer you t'put us t'bed," said Pinkey, cheerfully. The two lurched beside the constable to the calaboose, where they dropped down on the hard pads and temporarily passed out. The sun was shining in Wallie's face when he awoke and realized where he was. He and Pinkey had been there too many times before not to know. As he lay reading the pencilled messages and criticisms of the accommodation left on the walls by other occupants he subconsciously marvelled at himself that he should have no particular feeling of shame at finding himself in a cell. He was aware that it was accepted as a fact that he had gone to the bad. He had been penurious as a miser until he had saved enough from his wages as a common cowhand to buy his homestead outright from the State. After that he had never saved a cent, on the contrary, he was usually overdrawn. He gambled, and lost no opportunity to get drunk, since he calculated that he got more entertainment for his money out of that than anything else, even at the "bootlegging" price of $20 per quart which prevailed. So he had drifted, learning in the meantime under Pinkey's tutelage to ride and shoot and handle a rope with the best of them. Pinkey had left the Spenceley ranch and they were both employed now by the same cattleman. He rarely saw Helene, in consequence, but upon the few occasions they had met in Prouty she had made him realize that she knew his reputation and disapproved of it. In the East she had mocked him for his inoffensiveness, now she criticized him for the opposite. It was plain, he thought disconsolately, that he could not please her, yet it seemed to make no difference in his own feelings for her. His face reddened as he recalled the boasts he had made upon several occasions and how far he had fallen short of fulfilling them. He was going to "show" them, and now all he had to offer in evidence was 160 acres gone to weeds and grasshoppers, his saddle, and the clothes he stood in. It was not often that Wallie stopped to take stock, for it was an uncomfortable process, but his failure seemed to thrust itself upon him this morning. He was glad when Pinkey's heavy breathing ceased in the cell adjoining and he began to grumble. "Looks like a town the size of Prouty would have a decent jail in it," he said, crossly. "They go and throw every Tom, Dick, and Harry in this here cell, and some buckaroo has half tore up the mattress." "You can't have your private cell, you know," Wallie suggested. "I've paid enough in fines to build a cooler the size of this one, and looks like I got a little somethin' comin' to me." "I suppose they don't take that view of it," said Wallie, "but you might speak to the Judge this morning." After a time Pinkey asked, yawning: "What did we do last night? Was we fightin'?" "I don't know--I haven't thought about it." "I guess the constable will mention it," Pinkey observed, drily. "He does, generally." "Let's make a circle and go and have a look at my place," Wallie suggested. "It's not far out of the way and we might pick up a few strays in that country." Pinkey agreed amiably and added: "You'll prob'ly have the blues for a week after." The key turning in the lock interrupted the conversation. "You two birds get up. Court is goin' to set in about twenty minutes." The constable eyed them coldly through the grating. "Where's my clothes?" Pinkey demanded, looking at the Law accusingly. "How should I know?" "I ain't no more pants than a rabbit!" Pinkey declared, astonished. "Nor I!" said Wallie. "You got all the clothes you had on when I put you here." "How kin we go to court?" "'Tain't fur." "Everybody'll look at us," Pinkey protested. The constable retorted callously: "Won't many more see you than saw you last night doin' the stomp dance in Main Street." "Did we do that?" Pinkey asked, startled. "Sure--right in front of the Prouty House, and Helene Spenceley and a lot of folks was lookin' out of the windows." Wallie sat down on the edge of his cot weakly. That settled it! He doubted if she would ever speak to him. "I've got customers waitin'," urged the constable, impatiently. "Wrap a soogan around you and step lively." There was nothing to do but obey, in the circumstances, so the shame-faced pair walked the short block to a hardware store in the rear of which the Justice of the Peace was at his desk to receive them. "Ten dollars apiece," he said, without looking up from his writing. "And half an hour to get out of town." Pinkey and Wallie looked at each other. "The fact is, Your Honour," said the latter, ingratiatingly, "we have mislaid our trousers and left our money in the pockets. If you would be so kind as to loan us each a ten-spot until we have wages coming we shall feel greatly indebted to you." The Court vouchsafed a glance at them. Showing no surprise at their unusual costume, he said as he fumbled in the pocket of his waistcoat: "Such gall as yours should not go unrewarded. You pay your debts, and that's all the good I know of either of you. Now clear out--and if you show up for a month the officer here is to arrest you." He transferred two banknotes to the desk-drawer and went on with his scratching. "Gosh!" Pinkey lamented, as they stood outside clutching their quilts, "I wisht I knowed whur to locate them mackinaws. I got 'em in Lethbridge before I went to the army, and I think the world of 'em. I don't like 'poor-boys-serge,' but I guess I'll have to come to it, since I'm busted." "What's that?" Wallie asked, curiously. "Denim," Pinkey explained, "overalls. That makes me think of a song a feller wrote up:
"Don't overtax your brain--I've heard plenty. Let's cut down the alley and in the back way of the Emporium. Oh!" He gripped his quilt in sudden panic and looked for a hiding-place. Nothing better than a telegraph pole offered. He stepped behind it as Helene Spenceley passed in Canby's roadster. "Did she see me?" "Shore she saw you. You'd oughta seen the way she looked at you." Wallie, who was too mortified and miserable for words over the incident, declared he meant never again to come to town and make a fool of himself. "I know how you feel, but you'll git over it," said Pinkey, sympathetically. "It's nothin' to worry about, for I doubt if you ever had any show anyhow." Canby laughed disagreeably after they had passed the two on the sidewalk. "That Montgomery-Ward cowpuncher has been drunk again, evidently," he commented. "I wouldn't call him that. I'm told he can rope and ride with any of them." He looked at her quickly. "You seem to keep track of him." She replied bluntly: "He interests me." "Why?" curtly. Canby looked malicious as he added: "He's a fizzle." "He'll get his second wind some day and surprise you." "He will?" Canby replied, curtly. "What makes you think it?" "His aunt is a rich woman, and he could go limping back if he wanted to; besides, he has what I call the 'makings'." "He should feel flattered by your confidence in him," he answered, uncomfortably. "He doesn't know it." Canby said no more, but it passed through his mind that Wallie would not, either, if there was a way for him to prevent it. _ |
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