Out of the Depths Page 8

“What d’you want me to do?”

  “Fire him––run him off Dry Mesa,” snapped Gowan.

  “Sorry I can’t oblige you, Kid,” replied Knowles. “You mean well, but you’ll have to make a better showing before I’ll turn adrift any man that seems to be trying to make good.”

  Gowan looked down. After a brief pause he replied with unexpected submissiveness: “All right, Mr. Knowles. You’re the boss. Reckon you know best. I don’t savvy these city folks.”

  “Glad you admit it,” said Knowles. “You’re all wrong in sizing him up that way. I’ve a notion he’s got a lot of good in him, spite of his city rearing. I wouldn’t object, though, if you wanted to test him out with a little harmless hazing, long as you didn’t go too far.”

  “No,” declined Gowan. “I’ve got my own notion of what he is. There’s just one way to deal with skunks, and that is, don’t fool with them.”

  The cowman accepted this as conclusive. But when, a little later, Ashton met Gowan at the supper table he was rendered uneasy by the cold glint in the puncher’s gray eyes. As nothing was said about the postmaster’s receipt, he could conjecture no reason for the look other than that Gowan was planning to render him ridiculous with some cowboy trick.

  Isobel had assured him with utmost confidence that the testing of his horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and consequently all the more humiliating unless evaded.

  In apprehension of this, the tenderfoot lay awake most of that night and fully half of the next. His watch was fruitless. Each night Gowan and the other men left him strictly alone in his far dark corner of the bunkhouse. In the daytime the puncher was studiously polite to him during the few hours that he was not off on the range.

  The third evening, after supper, Gowan handed Isobel the horny, half-flattened rattles of an unusually large rattlesnake.

  “What is it? Do you wish me to guess his length?” she asked, evidently surprised that he should fetch her so commonplace an object. “I make it four feet.”

  “You’re three inches short,” he replied.

  “Well, what about it?” she inquired.

  “Nothing––only I just happened to get him up near the bunkhouse, Miss Chuckie. Thought I’d tell you, in case he has a mate around.”

  “We must all look sharp. You, too, Mr. Ashton. They are more apt to strike without warning, this time of year.”

  “I know,” remarked Ashton. “It’s before they cast their old skin, and it makes them blind.”

  “Too early for that,” corrected Knowles. “I figure it’s the long spell of the summer’s heat. Gets on their nerves, same as with us.”

  “They shore are mighty like some humans,” observed Gowan. “Look at the way they like to snuggle up in your blankets on a cool night. Remember how I used to carry a hair rope on spring round-up?”

  “I remember that they used to crawl into the bunkhouse before the floor was laid,” said Isobel. She smiled at Ashton. “That was the Dry Mesa reptilian age. I first learned to handle a ‘gun’ shooting at rattlers. There were so many we had to make it a rule to kill everyone we could. But there hasn’t been one killed so near the house for years.”

  “They often go in pairs. This one, though, may have been a lone stray,” added Gowan. He looked at his employer. “Talking about strays, guess I’d best go out in the morning and head back that Bar-Lazy-J bunch. I can take an iron along and brand those two calves, same trip.”

  Knowles nodded and returned to his Government report. The two young men and Isobel began an evening’s entertainment at the piano. Ashton enjoyed himself immensely. Though so frank and unconstrained in manner, the girl was as truly refined as the most fastidiously reared ladies of the East.

  At the end of the delightful evening he withdrew with Gowan to the bunkhouse, reluctant to leave, yet aglow with pleasure. Isobel had so charmed him that he lay in his bunk forgetful of all else than her limpid blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. But after his two nights of broken rest he could not long resist the heaviness that pressed together his eyelids. He fell asleep, smiling at the recollection of the girl’s gracious, “Good-night and pleasant dreams!”

  With such a kindly wish from her, his dreams certainly should have been heavenly. Yet he began the night by sinking into so profound a sleep that he had no dreams whatever. When at last he did rouse to the dream-state of consciousness, it was not to enjoy any pleasant fantasy of music and flowers.

  He was lying in Deep Cañon, down at the very bottom of those gloomy depths. About him was an awful stillness. The river of the abyss was no longer roaring. It had risen up, up, up to the very rim of the precipices––and all the tremendous weight of its waters was above him, bearing down upon him, smothering him, crushing in his chest! He sought to shriek, and found himself dumb.

  Suddenly an Indian stood over him, a gigantic Indian with feet set upon his breast. The red giant was a medicine man, for he clashed and rattled an enormous gourd full of bowlders.

  The rattle sounded sharper, shriller, more vibrant in the ears of the rousing sleeper. His eyelids fluttered, rose a little way, and snapped wide apart. His eyes, bared of their covers, glared in utter horror of that which they saw. Their pupils dilated, their balls bulged as if about to burst from the sockets.

  The weight was still on his chest,––a weight far more to be dreaded than a cañon full of water or the foot of an Indian Titan. It was a weight of living, quivering coils. Above those coils, clearly illuminated in the full daylight that streamed through the open door of the bunkhouse, there upreared a hideous gaping maw, set with four slender curved fangs of dazzling whiteness.

  The snake’s eyes, green as emeralds, glared down into the face of the man with such intense malignancy that they seemed to stream forth a cold evil light. Fortunately he was paralyzed with fright. The slightest movement would have caused that fanged maw to lash down into his face.

  Something partly obscured the light in the doorway. Ashton was too terrified to heed. But the snake was more sensitive to the change in the light. Without altering the deadly poise of its head, it again sounded its shrill, menacing rattle. The shadow passed and the light streamed in as before. The rattling ceased. There followed a pause of a few seconds’ duration––To the man every second was an age-long period of horror.

  A faint metallic click came from across the room. Slight as was the sound, the irritated snake again set its rattle to quivering. The triangular head flattened back for the delayed stroke at the ashen face of the man. The billowing coils stiffened––the stroke started. In the same instant came a report that to the strained ears of the man sounded like the crashing roar of a cannon.

  It sounded its shrill, menacing rattle

  The head and forepart of the snake’s body shot alongside his face, writhing in swift convulsions. The first touch of its cold scales against his cheek broke the spell of horror that had bound him. He jerked his head aside, and flung out his left hand to push the hideous thing from him. As his fingers thrust away the nearest coil, the head flipped around on its half-severed neck, and the deadly jaws automatically gaped and snapped together. Two of the dripping poison fangs struck in the cushion of flesh on the outer edge of Ashton’s hand. With a shriek, he flung the dying snake on the floor and put the wounded hand to his mouth.

  “He struck you!” cried the voice of Isobel, “but only on the hand, thank goodness! Wait, I’ll fix it. Lie still.”

  She came swiftly across the room, thrusting a long-barreled automatic pistol into its holster under a fold of her skirt. Her other hand drew out a locket that was suspended in her bosom.

  “Whiskey! I’m bitten!” panted Ashton, sucking frantically at his wounds. “Quick! I’m bitten. Give me whiskey!”

  “Steady, steady,” she reassured. “It’s not bad––only on your hand. Give
it to me. Here’s something a thousand times better than whiskey––permanganate.”

  While speaking, she caught up his neckerchief from the head of the bunk and knotted it about the wrist of the wounded hand tightly enough to check the circulation.

  “Now hold it steady,” she directed. “Won’t have to use a knife. You tore open the holes when you jerked off the horrid thing.”

  Obedient but still sweating with fear, he held up the bleeding hand. She had opened her locket, in which were a number of small, dark-purple crystals. Two of the larger ones she thrust lengthwise as deeply as she could into the little slits gashed by the fangs. Another large and two small crystals were all that she could force into the openings.

  “There!” she cheerily exclaimed. “That will kill the poison in short order, and will not hurt you a particle. It’s the best thing there is to cheat rattlers,––just cheap, ordinary permanganate of potash. If people only had sense enough always to carry a few crystals, no one would ever die of rattlesnake bites.”

  “I’ve––I’ve heard that whiskey––” began Ashton.

  “Yes, and far more victims die from the whiskey than from the bites,” rejoined Isobel.

  “But a stimulant––”

  “Stimulant, then heart depressant––first up, then down––that’s alcohol. No, you’ll get only one poison, the snake’s, this time. So don’t worry. You’ll soon be all right. Even had you been struck in the face, quick action with permanganate would have saved you.”

  He shuddered. “Ah!... But if you had not come!”

  “It was fortunate, wasn’t it?” she remarked. “I did not know you were in here. I was going up to the corral and heard the rattle as I came past. It was so faint that I might not have noticed it, had not Kid told of killing the rattler yesterday.”

  Ashton stared fearfully at his blackening hand. Isobel smiled and began to unknot the neckerchief.

  “There is nothing to fear,” she insisted. “That is due only to lack of circulation. You’ll soon be all right. Come up to the house as soon as you can and get two or three cups of coffee. I’ll tell Yuki.”

  She hastened out. When he had made sure that the still writhing snake was far over on the floor, he slipped from his bunk and dressed as quickly as was possible without the use of his numbed hand. Shirt, trousers, boots––he stopped for no more, but hurried after Isobel. Whether because of the effects of the poison or merely as the reaction of the shock, he felt faint and dizzy. Several cups of hot strong coffee, however, went far towards restoring him.

  * * *

  CHAPTER X

  COMING EVENTS

  Knowles had gone with Gowan to cut out and drive back the stray cattle belonging to the adjoining range. They returned during the regular supper hour. The cowman washed quickly and hastened in to the table. Gowan, however, loitered just outside the door, fastening and refastening his neckerchief. He entered the dining-room while Isobel was in the midst of telling her father about the snake.

  “Did you hear, Kid?” she asked, when she finished her vivid account.

  “Yes, Miss Chuckie. I was slicking-up close ’longside the door. I heard all you told,” he replied as he took his seat at the corner next to the animated girl. “We shore have got one mighty lucky tenderfoot on this range.”

  “Indeed, yes!” exclaimed Ashton. “Had not Miss Chuckie chanced to be passing as the monster rattled––You know, she says that she might not have heeded it but for your killing the other snake yesterday. That put her on the alert.”

  The puncher stared across the table at the city man with a coldly speculative gaze. “You shore are a lucky tenderfoot,” he repeated. “’Tain’t every fellow gets that close to a rattler this time of year and comes out of it as easy as you have. All I can see is you’re kind of pale yet around the gills.”

  Ashton held up his bandaged left hand. “Ah, but I have also this memento of the occasion. It is far from a pleasant one, I assure you.”

  “Feels ’most as bad as a bee sting, don’t it?” ironically condoled the puncher.

  “What I can’t make out,” interposed Knowles, “is how that rattler got up into Mr. Ashton’s bunk.”

  Gowan again stared across at the tenderfoot, this time with unblinking solemnity. “Can’t say, Mr. Knowles,” he replied. “Except it might be that desperado guide of his came around in the night and brought him Mr. Rattler for bedfellow.”

  “Oh, Kid!” remonstrated Isobel. “It’s not a joking matter!”

  “No, you’re dead right, Miss Chuckie,” he agreed. “There shore ain’t any joke about it.”

  “Ah, but perhaps I can make one,” gayly dissented Ashton. “Had you not interfered, Miss Chuckie, the poor snake would have taken one bite, and then curled up and died. I’m so charged with nicotine, you know.”

  Neither Isobel nor the puncher smiled at this ancient witticism. But Knowles burst into a hearty laugh, which was caught up and reënforced by the hitherto silent haymakers.

  “By––James! Ashton, you’ll do!” declared the cowman, wiping his eyes. “When a tenderfoot can let off a joke like that on himself it’s a sure sign he’s getting acclimated. Yes, you’ll make a puncher, some day.”

  Ashton smiled with gratification, and looked at Isobel in eager-eyed appeal for the confirmation of the statement. She smiled and nodded.

  Upon his return from his remarkable ride to town she had assured him that he need not worry. Her present kindly look and the words of her father might have been expected to remove his last doubts. Such in fact was the result for the remainder of the evening.

  But that night the new employé must have given much anxious thought to the question of his future and his great need to “make good.” The liveliness of his concern was shown by his behavior during the next two weeks. His zeal for work astonished Knowles quite as much as his efforts to be agreeable to his fellow employés gratified Miss Isobel. He charmed the Japanese cook with his praise of the cooking, he flattered the haymakers with his interest in their opinions. Towards the girl and her father he was impeccably respectful.

  Within ten days he was “Lafe” to everybody except Gowan and the Jap. The latter addressed him as “Mistah Lafe”; Gowan kept to the noncommittal “Ashton.” The puncher had become more taciturn than ever, but missed none of the home evenings in the parlor. He watched Ashton with catlike closeness when Isobel was present, and seemed puzzled that the interloper refrained from courting her.

  “Don’t savvy that tenderfoot,” he remarked one day to Knowles. “All his talk about his dad being a multimillionaire––Acted like it at the start-off. Came down to this candidate-for-office way of comporting himself. It ain’t natural.”

  “Not when he’s on the same range with Chuckie?” queried the cowman, his eyes twinkling. “Why don’t you ever go into Stockchute and paint the town red?”

  “That’s another thing,” insisted Gowan. “He started in with Miss Chuckie brash as all hell. Now he acts towards her like I feel.”

  “That’s natural. He soon found out she’s a lady.”

  “No, it ain’t natural, Mr. Knowles––not in him, it ain’t. Nor it ain’t natural for him to be so all-fired polite to everybody, nor his pestering you to find work for him.”

  “And it’s not natural for a tenderfoot to gentle a hawss like Rocket the way he’s done already,” rallied Knowles. “That crazy hawss follows him about like a dog.”

  “Yes; Ashton feeds him sugar, like he does the rest of you,” rejoined the puncher. “It ain’t natural in his brand of tenderfoot––Bound to ride out, if there’s any riding to do; bound to fuss and stew around the corral; bound to help with the haying; bound to help haul the water; bound to practice with his rope every moment he ain’t doing something else. Can’t tell me there ain’t a nigger in that woodpile.”

  “Now, don’t go to hunting out any more mares’ nests, Kid,” admonished Knowles. “He’s just a busted millionaire, that’s all; and he’s proving he realizes it. Guess th
e smash scared him. He’s afraid he can’t make good. Chuckie says he thinks I’ll turn him adrift if he doesn’t hustle enough to earn his salt.”

  “Why not fire him anyway? You don’t need him, and you won’t need him,” argued the puncher.

  “Well, he helps keep Chuckie entertained. With you and him both on the place, she might conclude to stay over the winter, this year.”

  Gowan’s mouth straightened to a thin slit. “Better send her to Denver right off.”

  “Look here, Kid,” reproved the cowman. “You’ve had your chance, and you’ve got it yet. I’ve never interfered with you, and I’m not going to with him. It’s for Chuckie to pick the winner. Like as not it’ll be some man in town, for all I know. She has the say. Whether he wears a derby or a sombrero, she’s to have her own choice. I don’t care if he’s a millionaire or a busted millionaire or a bronco buster, provided he’s a man, and provided I’m sure he’ll treat her right.”

  Gowan lapsed into a sullen silence.

  Mounted as before on Rocket, Ashton had already made a second trip to Stockchute for mail, returning almost as quickly as on his wild first ride. Monday of his third week at the ranch he was sent on his third trip. As before, he started at dawn. But this time he did not come racing back early enough for a belated noon meal as he had on each of the previous occasions.

  By mid-afternoon Isobel began to grow uneasy. Remarkable as had been the efforts of his new rider’s training, there was the not improbable chance that Rocket had reverted to his ugly tricks. She shuddered as she pictured the battered corpse of the city man dragging over the rocks and through the brush, with a foot twisted fast in one of the narrow iron stirrups.

  Her father and Gowan were off on their usual work of inspecting the bunches of cattle scattered about the range. The other men were as busy as ever mowing more hay and hauling in that which was cured. She was alone at the ranch with the Jap. At four o’clock she saddled her best horse and rode out towards Dry Fork. She hoped to sight Ashton from the divide. But there was no sign of any horseman out on the wide stretch of sagebrush flats.