Patches (Hawkes)/Chapter 14
THREE friends of the once famous cow-puncher polo team sat in the smoker of the Rocky Mountain Limited as the long train coasted down the shiny rails close to the foot-hills of the Sierra Madre mountains on the way to Wyanne. These friends were Pony Perkins, Long Tom and Larry. Pony and Tom were playing pitch while Larry sat in the seat next to them looking rather wistfully out of the window. They were passing through the sage brush country, the land of the purple sage or whispering sage if you happened to be in poetic mood. He was thinking how much more beautiful was the Crooked Creek country back in the mountains than was this land of sage brush.
Presently Pony paused in shuffling the cards and said, "I hev been thinkin' ever since we boarded this here flyer that there's one gent missing in this here party. Our company ain't complete. Of course, I am thinkin' of Big Bill."
"Pony, you get out," ejaculated Long Tom, "jest as if we didn't know of whom you was thinkin', Why, I hev been thinkin' of him ever since we been here playing cards. That's the reason I played my jack on your ace the last hand in that fool way cause I was thinkin' of Bill."
"I have been thinking of him all day," said Larry wistfully. "Hardly a day passes but what I think of him in some way."
"Well you may," said Pony, "for he looked upon you almost as a son and he was as proud as Lucifer of your way with a hoss."
"What a whale he would have been with a mechette! What a swath he would have mowed among the dons if he'd got into this here enterprise!" put in Long Tom.
"I am thinkin' there won't be much mechette business in this," returned Pony. "I guess it will be all long range rifles. I don't even think our .45's will be of much use unless it comes to a close-up brush with the dons."
At this point in the conversation Pony and Long Tom resumed their game and Larry returned to his looking out of the window. He well remembered the first night he had seen this sage brush country. He had thought it the most monotonous sight in the world with its endless grays and dull browns. But to-night as he saw it in the gathering shadows of the late afternoon he rather liked it although it could not compare with the mesas and canyons up in the Crooked Creek country.
As he sat there by the window he recalled how this strange adventure had all come about. It seemed to him more like a weird dream than a stern reality in his own young life.
Two weeks before he had been sent down to Wyanne on business by his uncle. He had been sitting in a restaurant one morning eating bacon and eggs and drinking hot coffee when as he happened to pick up a newspaper while he was waiting for more bacon, his eye fell upon an account of the hideous atrocity in Cuba. Some Spanish soldiers had captured half a dozen unfortunate peons and in order to get these Cubans to reveal the whereabouts of General Garcia's army they had crushed their hands and feet in a cane-crushing mill on a sugar plantation. As Larry pictured this hideous scene his eyes filled with tears and to cover his embarrassment he arose and went to the window. The first thing that his eyes fell upon as he looked across the street was Old Glory waving above the recruiting office just over the way. The beautiful flag was rising and falling in the morning wind and as Larry beheld it he thought it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in the whole world; and when he remembered that this flag sheltered one hundred million happy people and that it protected every citizen in the land, rich or poor, his love for the flag which he had always worshipped redoubled; and without stopping to think what he was doing he walked out of the restaurant, crossed the street to the recruiting office and wrote down his name as one of Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
When the deed had been done he went back to the restaurant and finished his coffee and paid his bill. When he had told his uncle of the step on returning to the ranch, at first Hank Brodie had looked very serious, then he had embraced his nephew and kissed him as tenderly on the cheek as his own mother could have done.
"Son," he said, "I always knew you had good stuff in you, but of course I did not dream it would come to this."
Then Larry sought out his two friends, Pony and Long Tom, and told them. They had both clapped him on the shoulder and told him it was all right. A few minutes later, after consulting Hank Brodie, they had mounted their horses and ridden away. When Larry asked his uncle where they had gone he smiled and said, "Oh, they've gone down to Wyanne to enlist."
So here they were, the three Crooked Creek cow-punchers on their way to Wyanne where they were to join half a dozen other brave fellows and the little party was to make its way to San Antonio and thence to Cuba.
"Who is this here Theodore Roosevelt that is going to be our Lieutenant Colonel?" inquired Long Tom as he gathered up the cards and began shuffling.
"Why, don't you know," returned Pony who was something of a reader, "why, he's a rich New York gent and if all we read about him is true he's a real guy. Why, he scared the entire New York police force out of their boots when he was police commissioner. Then he came out to northwestern Missouri and went into the ranch business. He's a regular cow-puncher, he is, and the bad men of Missouri were as afraid of him as good folks are of the devil. He's a regular guy all right and we can bank on him."
"He's good enough for me, then," replied Long Tom.
"Me, too," said Larry.
Presently as Larry noted that his friends had begun another rubber he arose and said casually, "If you gents will excuse me for a few minutes guess I will go back to the observation car. I want to see the sun sink behind the old Sierras once more and I want to say good-night to the Wyoming hills."
"That's right, son," said Long Tom, "allus stick to your colors and be faithful to the homeland."
"So long, Larry," said Pony affectionately, "we'll meet you in half an hour in the dining car."
To his great joy Larry found the observation car entirely deserted and he sat down where he had a splendid view of the Sierras away to the southwest. The sun still stood about fifteen minutes above the horizon's rim and the full blaze of its departing glory fell upon the foothills some eight or ten thousand feet below the mountains' crest. This radiant splendor of the sunlight shed such a glory over the foothills that they looked like ancient battlements with little minarets and domes of gold. But soon the light receded up the mountain side and dark shadows took its place over—the hills. Larry could plainly discern the dark blue-green of the forest and he knew his old friends, the pines, the spruces, the cedars, and the hemlocks, were there in all their dark mystic beauty. But once more the advancing shadows forced the sunlight to retreat to the mountains' crest and the full glory of departing day was seen along the top of the range upon the snow and ice fields that still lingered on the caps of the highest peaks. Then the mountain top for twenty miles became a gorgeous rainbow, so bright that the eye could scarce behold it. But the shadows still pursued and almost before the full beauty had been realized the lower side of the rainbow had faded and shadows took its place. Up, up the legions of darkness pursued until a dark red band on the horizon's rim had succeeded the rainbow. But still the shadows pursued and soon the dark red faded into crimson, the crimson into pink, the pink into lighter pink, until finally all color had faded out and an aurora of white light streamed upward into the sky from the point where the sun had disappeared.
Larry had been deeply moved by the wonder of the spectacle and as the last vestige of color faded, a little cry escaped him. "My God, how I love it all," he said under his breath. "These mountains, and the hills, and the canyons and the rivers. There is nothing I know of like it in the whole world."
Then he covered his eyes with his hands and said reverently, "God bless Wyoming and guard these hills and Crooked Creek ranch until I come again."
The ranch was now hidden from sight some forty or fifty miles behind the mountains, but Larry could still see in memory the long gray ranch buildings with the friendly old cottonwoods keeping guard above them. How well he knew every season upon the ranch; the spring time with the hundreds of little white-faced calves playing on the green carpet of the mesa and vying with the homely little colts in their capers; the summer time with its wild strawberries, wild plums and service berries, and with its wild roses. He had never seen such wild roses anywhere else in the whole world. They clambered over fallen logs and boulders and even up the sides of the canyons. And then in the autumn time there was the goldenrod and asters. Where else in the world was such vital vibrant color as during this season when Piñon birds and magpies flocked for their southern flight. Then winter with its endless snow and biting wind, and the stern music of howling coyotes and howling winds had a peculiar beauty all its own. And this beautiful country which for four years he had called home was fading, fading, fading; it was slipping away from him at the rate of fifty miles an hour. When would he see it again?
Now although the last shimmer of light which showed where the sun had sunk a few minutes before had disappeared and night had let down her dusky mantle, yet Larry knew that far away in Piñon Valley the sun was still shining.
And Patches, faithful Patches who would have run until he dropped for his master, knew even better than Larry did that the sun was shining in Piñon Valley, for he was standing at the lower end of the valley in the full blaze of departing day with his head up, his ears thrust forward, his eyes bright, and his nostrils extended. He seemed to be waiting, or looking, or listening for something. It was a picture that would have delighted the eye of a Remington or a Rosa Bonheur. Who shall say that Patches did not receive a message, or that he did not feel the great wave of love and admiration that welled up in his master's heart for him as he turned to leave the observation car and rejoin his friends at dinner? It is not for us humans to say this was not so, for we are continually making new discoveries in the world of animal psychology which amaze us. Presently the spell was broken and without warning Patches wheeled like a flash and raced up the valley at a wild gallop and a minute later disappeared through the cul-de-sac on his way to the upper mesa.
The upper mesa had been the favorite feeding ground of the wild horses for a long time before man ever came to Wyoming with his countless cattle. The grass was sweeter there than anywhere else on the ranch and Patches knew this fact full well. The water in Crooked Creek up there was clear and cool, and in the summer time when it was hot on the mesa the shade in Aspen Draw was cool and refreshing. So Patches was going back to the wild and once again he would be a free horse ranging in the hills just as his wild kindred had done in years gone by. Once again he would come and go at will with no hand to bridle or saddle him for Larry had given orders that he should not be ridden or driven until he returned. So his life was once more his own just as it had been before he had been broken and he was as free to come and go as the wandering wind.
And who should say when that master would return? He had gone upon stern business. But even Larry's most enthusiastic admirers and ardent well-wishers could not have guessed that he would be back within sixty days without a scratch from bullet or shrapnel. If his eyes were sunken and his cheeks hollow and he had lost twenty pounds during the campaign, what did that matter, he was still strong and vigorous and as ready for the storms of life as a young oak for the blasts of winter. Not only this but he had brought back with him the added distinction of being Lieutenant Larry Winton and a close friend of the impetuous Colonel.
The End
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