Partners of Chance. Henry Herbert Knibbs
"TOP HAND ONCE"
Bartley happened to be alone on the veranda of the Antelope House that evening. Senator Brown and his "missus" had departed for their ranch. Mrs. Senator Brown had been a bit diffident when first meeting Bartley, but he soon put her at her ease with some amusing stories of Eastern experiences. The dinner concluded with an invitation from Mrs. Brown that anticipated Bartley visiting the ranch and staying as long as he wished. The day following the Senator's departure Bartley received a telegram from his friend in California, wishing him good luck and a pleasant journey in the Arizona country. The friend would see to Bartley's baggage, as Bartley had forwarded the claim checks in his letter.
The town was quiet and the stars were serenely brilliant. The dusty, rutted road past the hotel, dim gray in the starlight, muffled the tread of an occasional Navajo pony passing in the faint glow of light from the doorway. Bartley was content with things as he found them, just then. But he knew that he would eventually go away from there--from the untidy town, the railroad, the string of box-cars on the siding, and seek the new, the unexpected, an experience to be had only by kicking loose from convention and stepping out for himself. He thought of writing a Western story. He realized that all he knew of the West was from hearsay, and a brief contact with actual Westerners. He would do better to go out in the fenceless land and live a story, and then write it. And better still, he would let chance decide where and when he would go.
His first intimation that chance was in his vicinity was the distant, faint cadence of a song that floated over the night-black mesa from the north. Presently he heard the soft, muffled tread of horses and a distinct word or two of the song. He leaned forward, interested, amused, alert. The voice was a big voice, mellowed by distance. There was a take-it-or-leave-it swing to the melody that suggested the singer's absolute oblivion to anything but the joy of singing. Again the plod, plod of the horses, and then:
I was top-hand once for the T-Bar-T,
In the days of long ago,
But I took to seein' the scenery
Where the barbed-wire fence don't grow.
I was top-hand once--but the trail for mine,
And plenty of room to roam;
So now I'm ridin' the old chuck line,
And any old place is home … for me …
And any old place is home.
Bartley grinned. Whoever he was, drifting in from the northern spaces, he had evidently lost the pack-horse that bore his troubles. Suddenly, out of the wall of dusk that edged the strip of road loomed a horse's head, and then another. The lead horse bore a pack. The second horse was ridden by an individual who leaned slightly forward, his hands clasped comfortably over the saddle horn. The horses stopped in the light of the doorway.
"Well, I reckon we're here," said a voice. "But hotels and us ain't in the same class. I stop at the Antelope House, take a look at her, and then spread my roll in the brush, same as always. Nobody to home? They don't know what they're missin'."
Bartley struck a match and lighted his cigar. The pack-horse jerked its head up.
"Hello, stranger! Now I didn't see you settin' there."
"Good-evening! But why 'stranger' when you say you can't see me?"
"Why? 'Cause everybody knows me, and you didn't whoop when I rode up. Me, I'm Cheyenne, from no place, and likewise that's where I'm goin'. This here town of Antelope got in the way--towns is always gittin' in my way--but nobody can help that. Is Wishful bedded down for the night or is he over to the Blue Front shootin' craps?"
"I couldn't say. I seem to be the only one around here, just now."
"That sure excuses me and the hosses. Wishful is down to the Blue Front, all right. It's the only exercise he gets, regular." Cheyenne pushed back the brim of his faded black Stetson and sighed heavily. Bartley caught a glimpse of a face as care-free as that of a happy child--the twinkle of humorous eyes and a flash of white teeth as the other grinned. "Reckon you never heard tell of me," said the rider, hooking his leg over the horn.
I just arrived yesterday. I have not heard of you--but I heard you down the road, singing. I like that song."
"One of my own. Yes, I come into town singin' and I go out singin'. 'Course, we eat, when it's handy. Singin' sure keeps a fellow's appetite from goin' to sleep. Guess I'll turn the hosses into Wishful's corral and go find him. Reckon you had your dinner."
"Several hours ago."
"Well, I had mine this mornin'. The dinner I had this mornin' was the one I ought to had day before yesterday. But I aim to catch up--and mebby get ahead a couple of eats, some day. But the hosses get theirs, regular. Come on, Filaree, we'll go prospect the sleepin'-quarters."
Bartley sat back and smiled to himself as Cheyenne departed for the corral. This wayfarer, breezing in from the spaces, suggested possibilities as a character for a story No doubt the song was more or less autobiographical. "A top-hand once, but the trail for mine," seemed to explain the singer's somewhat erratic dinner schedule. Bartley thought that he would like to see more of this strange itinerant, who sang both coming into and going out of town.
Presently Cheyenne was back, singing something about a Joshua tree as he came.
He stopped at the veranda rail. His smile was affable. "Guess I'll go over and hunt up Wishful. I reckon you'll have to excuse me for not refusin' to accompany you to the Blue Front to get a drink."
Bartley was puzzled. "Would you mind saying that again?"
"Sure I don't mind. I thought, mebby, you bein' a stranger, settin' there alone and lookin' at the dark, that you was kind of lonesome. I said I reckoned you'd have to excuse me for not refusin' to go over to the Blue Front and take a drink."
"I think I get you. I'll buy. I'll try anything, once."
Cheyenne grinned. "I kind of hate to drink alone, 'specially when I'm broke."
Bartley grinned in turn. "So do I. I suppose it is all right to leave. The door is wide open and there doesn't seem to be any one in charge.
"She sure is an orphan, to-night. But, honest, Mr.--"
"Bartley."
"Mr. Bartley, nobody'd ever think of stealin' anything from Wishful. Everybody likes Wishful 'round here. And strangers wouldn't last long that tried to lift anything from his tepee. That is, not any longer than it would take Wishful to pull a gun--and that ain't long."
"If he caught them."
"Caught 'em? Say, stranger, how far do you think a man could travel out of here, before somebody'd get him? Anyhow, Wishful ain't got nothin' in his place worth stealin'."
"Wishful doesn't look very warlike," said Bartley.
"Nope. That's right. He looks kind of like he'd been hit on the roof and hadn't come to, yet. But did you ever see him shoot craps?"
"No."
"Then you've got somethin' comin', besides buyin' me a drink."
Bartley laughed as he stepped down to the road. Bartley, a fair-sized man, was surprised to realize that the other was all of a head taller than himself. Cheyenne had not looked it in the saddle.
"Are you acquainted with Senator Brown?" queried Bartley as he strode along beside the stiff-gaited outlander.
Cheyenne stopped and pushed back his hat. "Senator Steve Brown? Say, pardner, me and Steve put this here country on the map. If kings was in style, Steve would be wearin' a crown. Why, last election I wore out a pair of jeans lopin' around this here country campaignin' for Steve. See this hat? Steve give me this hat--a genuwine J.B., the best they make. Inside he had printed