The Ramblin' Kid. Earl Wayland Bowman
mine, I reckon," Skinny retorted, "an' I figure it's nobody's darn' business how I ride him—anyhow I brought Old Heck a telegram!" he added triumphantly.
"Blamed if he didn't!" Charley Saunders, with a trifle of awe, pretended or real, in his tone, said. "It sure is!"
"My Gawd!" Old Heck repeated, slowly turning the envelope over in his hand, "it's a telegram! Wonder what it's about?"
"Why don't you open it and see?" Parker suggested.
"Yes, open th' blamed thing and find out," Skinny encouraged.
"I—I've a notion to," Old Heck whispered.
"Go on and do it, it won't take but a minute," Charley Saunders entreated.
"Maybe he's one of these mind-readers and can read it through the envelope," Bert Lilly volunteered.
"Aw, shut up and give him a chance!"
Trembling, Old Heck tore open the envelope and silently read the message.
"My Gawd!" he groaned again. "The worst has come to the worst!"
"That ought to make it middlin' bad," Charley remarked soberly.
"Ought to," Bert added sententiously.
Parker crowded forward on sympathy bent.
"Tell us what's in it," he said; "if it's sorrowful we'll be plumb glad to condole!"
"It's worse than sorrowful—"
"Melancholical?" Skinny inquired.
"My Gawd!" Old Heck said again, his weatherworn features working convulsively, "it's more than a mortal man can endure and stand!"
"Bet somebody's dead!" Bert whispered to the Ramblin' Kid.
"Probably. Most everybody gets to be sooner or later," was the answer without emotion.
Sing Pete, Chinese cook for the outfit, dish-rag over his shoulder, edged out of the kitchen door and shuffled around to the group. Glimpsing the yellow slip of paper held in the shaking hand of Old Heck and the awed interest of the cowboys gathered about the boss, he queried:
"Teleglam?"
No answer.
"Teleglam? Maybe alle samee somebody sickee?" he continued, cheerfully confident that questions enough would ultimately bring a reply. He was rewarded:
"What do you know about 'teleglams'? You slant-eyed burner of beef-steaks!"
"Who's it from?" Charley asked. "Anybody we know—"
"My Gawd," Old Heck mourned once more, "she's comin'!"
"Who's she?" Parker coaxed.
"A female," Old Heck replied, "she's a female!"
"The darned old cuss has had a wife sometime and run off from her and deserted her and she's pursuing him and trailing him down to earth!" Chuck Slithers, doubting Thomas of the outfit and student of Sherlock Holmes, cunningly suggested. "I always imagined he was a varmint with a past—a' ex-heart breaker of innocent women or a train-robber or—"
"Aw, hell," the Ramblin' Kid rebuked, "him have a wife? Don't insult th' female population!"
"Carramba!" exclaimed Pedro Valencia, Mexican line-rider for the Quarter Circle KT, "perhaps she will stick him with the dagger, or shoot him with the gun when she arrive! The ladies with love kill quick when the love is—what you call him?—the jilt?"
"And I'd almost forgot I ever had one!" Old Heck continued talking as if to himself.
"What'd I tell you?" Chuck exulted.
"Shut up! He's confessin'—let him alone an' he'll get it out of his conscience sooner or later!"
"Had a what?" Parker urged sympathetically. "Maybe you didn't have one—maybe you only imagined you did!"
"Had a brother—anyhow a half a one—our mothers was the same but different fathers on account of mine dyin' when I was little and his marrying our mother again; we was playmates together in our innocent childhood and infancy until I run away and went to sea and finally anchored on the Kiowa and got to raisin' cattle—"
"Where does he come in at?" Parker questioned.
"He said it was a female, to start with," Skinny added.
"—and his name is Simeon Dixon on account of his father's being the same thing, and he went in the street railroad business in a place named Hartville in Connecticut, and he got married and had a wife—she was Zithia Forbes, and she's dead, and I knowed that, and he's rich I reckon and—"
"An' Amrak begat Meshak an' Meshak begat Zimri an' Zimri was th' founder of th' House of Old Heck," the Ramblin' Kid chanted. "What in thunder does details amount to, anyhow?"
"But you was mournin' about a she!" Parker insisted.
"Well, I reckon it ain't a wife—at least not the one I was thinking about," Chuck murmured disappointedly, "but I bet he's had one somewhere in his vari'gated career and is hiding out from her in fear an' tremblin'—"
"And there will not be the grand, the beautiful murder?" Pedro sighed, questioningly.
"Wait a minute," Skinny pleaded, "—give him air!"
"—and he's got a female daughter—and I didn't know that—and he's—oh, Gawd!—he's sending her out to the Quarter Circle KT!"
"How big is she?" Parker whispered.
"She's—she's twenty-two—"
"Inches around or what?" Charley gasped.
"—and Ophelia is coming with her—Ophelia Cobb—C-o-double-b it is—is coming with her for a chaperon—"
"Great guns!" Skinny breathed,"—two females!"
"Hold still and I'll read it—no, you do it, Parker—I'm too full of emotion—my voice'd quiver—"
Parker read:
"Josiah Heck, Eagle Butte, Texas:
"Am sending my daughter, Carolyn June, out to your ranch for a while. She needs a change. She has broke all the he-human hearts in Hartville—that is all of them old enough or young enough to be broke—and is what's called a love-stimulator and won't settle. She is twenty-two and it's time she was calmed. Hoping six months on the Kiowa range will gentle her quite a lot, I am sympathetically your ½ brother, Simeon.
"P.S.—Mrs. Ophelia Cobb, a lady widow, is coming with her for a chaperon. Beware of both of them. They will arrive at Eagle Butte the 21st.—S."
"Gee, it's a long one!" Chuck said admiringly.
"It's one of these 'Night Letters,'" Parker explained.
"I knowed it was bad news," Skinny exclaimed, "—poor old Heck!"
"Better say, 'Poor we all!'" Bert declared. "Farewell peace and joy on the Quarter Circle KT!"
"The Lord have mercy on Old Heck!" Charley cried with dramatic fervor.
"Holy smoke," Parker murmured desperately, "two of them on the twenty-first—and that's to-morrow!"
CHAPTER II
A BLUFF CALLED
The Quarter Circle KT was a womanless ranch. Came now, like a bolt from the clear sky or the sudden clang of a fire-alarm bell, the threat of violation of this Eveless Eden by the intrusion of a pair of strange and unknown females. The arrival of the telegram telling of the coming of Carolyn June Dixon, Old Heck's niece, and Ophelia Cobb, her chaperon, filled