The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
yes—don't be so tyrannical, my dear. This is the first cowboy! Will you tell me your name, please?"
"Montana Kid," the first cowboy told him distinctly, raising his voice so that the girl could not fail to hear. "I'm shore proud to meet yo' all and I'm shore obleeged to yuh fer the map. I'll see yuh right soon ag'in, I reckon."
As if he understood and appreciated the Kid's drawling dialect, the man laughed, patted him on the shoulder and hurried over to where the girl waited with a little smile of disdain. The waiting chauffeur pulled open the door, touched his cap with two fingers and climbed in. The man looked back, waved his hand and smiled, and the car slid forward, gathered momentum as it reached smooth pavement and swiftly diminished in size to a shapeless black spot rapidly receding down the road.
The Kid gave Blazes and Sunup another bucket of water apiece, tied the bucket to Sunup's pack rope, picked up Stardust's reins and mounted, the lead rope of the other horses held loosely in his hand, now that they had reached the much-traveled ways where he must keep his small outfit well in hand. The envelope he had thrust into the pocket of his shirt, and he pulled it out now and read the note as he jogged slowly down the highway:
To Whom it May Concern—Please extend what courtesies your rules will permit to this cowboy, who has come a long way and needs rest. Make him at home and see that the ponies have everything they need. Yours, J. N. Harlan.
The Kid read the note twice, frowning thoughtfully over the message. Must be pretty important, this J. N. Harlan, to give orders like that. The mayor, maybe—though he seemed too human and friendly for a mayor; somebody away up the list, anyway. In his long journey the Kid had learned to take the idle talk of strangers lightly, but this seemed different. He might not use the note at all, but the map would be a help—or at least he hoped that it would.
"I guess he meant well enough," he mused as he rode. "I've got no use for that sassy Jane he had with him, darn her picture! But the old boy's all right. Maybe it's lucky I happened along just as his tire went blooey."
Chapter VII. The Kid Makes Himself at Home
Fog and a drizzle of rain turned noon to a murky twilight on the day that the Kid rode halfway round the big oval of the stadium, looking for a gate that was open. Now and then a truck lumbered past him loaded with raw, new planks that waved a red rag dispiritedly from the swaying rear as they went on. Occasionally an empty vehicle came rattling to meet him. Taxis like yellow bugs scooted by, hurrying to cover somewhere beyond.
Finally a gate where a keeper consented to look him over with a sour expression and beckon to another man in a yellow slicker with whom he conferred in an undertone.
"Come around next week," the keeper growled their verdict. "Maybe by that time—"
The Kid had not meant to seek favors of any one, but he was cold and wet and his money was nearly gone and he did not know where he would find a livery stable—he doubted whether there was such a place in the city. He unfolded the envelope and held it out in the desperate hope that it would work. The gatekeeper looked at it, made an inarticulate sound and gave the note to the man in the slicker.
"Better take him to Norm, I guess."
The slickered one nodded, handed back the envelope with a curious glance at the Kid and beckoned him to follow. Through dismal subterranean passages they went then, following the curve of the stadium, and paused before a door upon which the guide beat an uneven staccato. After an interval a face peered out.
"Norm in there? Ask him to come out a minute, will you?" While they waited, the slickered one swore plaintively at the weather. The door opened again and a tall, sleepy-eyed man stepped out.
"Here's a cowboy that Harlan wants us to take in. What'll I do with him?" The man in the slicker was evidently not the nature that beats around the bush.
"Harlan? He ought to know we ain't prepared—" The envelope which the Kid extended cut short the sentence. He read and pursed his lips, puzzling over the situation.
"Well, I guess he can put his horses where the stables are going to be," he said finally. "You'll have it all to yourself, Cowboy, and you'll have to keep out of the way of the carpenters. You go show him, Pete—you know, up the other side of the main entrance to the arena. I'll call up and see if we can get some hay over here. S'pose they'll throw on a sack or so of grain, too. Nothing ready for the rodeo yet," he explained good-naturedly, turning to the Kid. "You're over a week too soon. Where you from?"
The Kid explained, feeling apologetic and out of place and a general nuisance all round, and Norm listened and nodded absently, as if after all it didn't matter in the least when there were so many things of far greater importance. Then he went on down other great echoing corridors, to emerge finally into the clamor of carpenters building stout pens just within the shelter of the huge grandstand. This bedlam they left behind them, turning into vast emptiness and gloom.
"I guess this is about as good as any place," Pete finally told him. "Here's where the stables are going to be, I know. I'll see you get hay and grain. Make yourself at home, Cowboy; pick yourself a spot and hang to it. The crowd will be drifting in next week."
"Can I have the privilege of working out a little on the track, after a few days?"
"After the fence is built, I don't know why not," Pete told him. "Not if you wait till the men aren't working; after five, say."
The Kid thanked him and began unpacking Blazes and Sunup. The other hurried off down the echoing, empty place, his slicker slapping against his legs with an eerie sound that won a slow, questioning snort from Stardust, gazing after him. The Kid listened too for a minute before he shrugged and turned back to his work, fighting off the mood of depression that seized hold of him.
Of course it wasn't what he had expected, he told himself over and over. It was like going to the theater hours ahead of the performance and waiting alone in the dusky auditorium until the stage hands come and the commonplace preparation of the stage begins. The hollow sound of the hammers meant only that the scene was being set for the big show. They were getting the place ready for him! They were working backstage now, where next week he and all the others would be showing Chicago what they could do with horses and cattle and a bit of rope.
So he tried to whip up his enthusiasm, tried to thrill at the thought of being here at journey's end, where he had dreamed for months of seeing his dreams come true. But always in his dreams he had pictured the life, the color, the galloping to and fro in the arena, the shouts and cheers of the crowd. He had never dreamed of emptiness and chill, foggy drizzle, of silence save for the hollow sound of hammer blows in the distance. He told himself over and over how glad he was to have the place to himself, so that he and the ponies could rest. He remembered the weary plodding, mile after mile for days and days and days; the hot sun and the dust and the wind; the search for horse feed where only gasoline and oil were provided for travelers; the gabbling tourists in auto camps where he was sometimes compelled to stop for want of a better camp ground; the tearing himself from sleep when daylight came, the repacking, the plod, plod, plod down the endless road. And here he was at the goal it seemed he never would reach. "Plenty early for the show"—Of course he was plenty early! It was exactly what he had wanted. Yet the great cemented caverns pressed upon his spirits. The hours lagged.
Hay came at last; a truckload of fragrant bales and a careless, cheerfully blasphemous driver who chewed gum and jabbed an iron hook into the bales and skidded them into a pile on the floor with muscular dexterity, then painted a wide arc on the distant walls with his headlights and went rumbling back into the outer world, leaving silence and dusk behind him. The Kid busied himself for awhile, dragging down bales and pulling them into a square within which the horses could be enclosed, there being no mangers yet and no projection to which he could tie them. He left them munching contentedly and went off to find Pete or Norm or some one and ask where and how he might cook a meal for himself, since no restaurants had manifested themselves in the neighborhood of the stadium when he arrived.
He