Bat Wing Bowles

"Um," assented Henry Lee, glancing for a moment at Bowles' skinned cheek. "Well, we don't want to have any racket now, boys – not while we've got these wild cattle on our hands – and I'm much obliged. Hope you don't have any more trouble, Mr. Bowles."

He bowed them out of the tent without any more words, and they proceeded back to the camp. A significant smile went the rounds as Bowles came back from the tent, but in the morning he went to the corral as usual.

"I thought you'd got yore time," ventured Buck Buchanan, as Bowles began to saddle up; and as the word passed around that he had not, Hardy Atkins rode over to inquire.

"What's this I hear?" he said. "I thought you was goin' to quit."

"Then you were mistaken, Mr. Atkins," answered Bowles politely. "I am not."

"Then what did you see the boss fer? Makin' some kick about me?"

"Your name was not mentioned, Mr. Atkins," replied Bowles, still politely. "I simply turned over my gun to Mr. Lee and told him I'd had some trouble."

"Well, it's nothin' to what you will have!" scowled the ex-twister hatefully. "I can tell you that! And I give you till night to pull. If you don't – "

He paused with meaning emphasis and turned his horse to go, but Henry Lee had been watching him from a distance and now he came spurring in.

"Hardy," he said, "I'll have to ask you to leave Bowles strictly alone. He's turned his gun in to me and is tending to his own business, so don't let me speak to you again. D'ye understand?"

"Yes, sir!" mumbled the cow-puncher, fumbling sullenly with his saddle-strings; but his mind was not turned from his purpose, as Bowles found out that same night.

They were swinging around toward the south and west, raking the last barren ridges before they started the day-herd for home; and in the evening they camped in the open and threw their beds down anywhere. After a hasty supper by the fire, Bowles spread out his blankets, coiled up his bed-rope, and rode forth to stand the first guard. For Bowles was a top hand now, whatever his enemy might say, and he had his choice of guards. It was very dark when he came in at ten-thirty, and he was too sleepy to notice the change, but after he had slipped under his tarpaulin he felt something through the bed. It was his bed-rope, stretched carelessly across the middle, from side to side, and he grumbled for a moment to himself as he squirmed down where it would not hurt him. Then he went to sleep.

After a man has ridden hard all day and stood his guard at night, a little thing like a rope under his bed is not likely to disturb his dreams – the way the pea did the soft-sleeping True Princess – but with this particular rope it was different. Hardy Atkins had stretched it there with malice aforethought; and when, later in the night, he saddled his snorting night horse and prepared to ride out to the herd, he tied the two ends into a loop and silently stepped away with the slack. Then he took a turn around the horn, put spurs to his horse, and went plunging out into the night.

A sudden yank almost snapped Bowles in two in the middle; he woke up clutching, to find himself side-swiping the earth; then an agonizing series of bumps and jolts followed, and he fetched up against a juniper with a jar that rattled his teeth. There was a strain, a snap, and as the rope parted he heard a titter, and a horse went galloping on. It was a practical joke – Bowles realized that the moment he woke up – but the terror of that first grim nightmare wrenched his soul to the very depths. He came to, cursing and fighting, still bound by the loop of the lariat and half-buried in the wreck of the juniper. Then he jerked himself loose and sprang up, staring about in the darkness for some enemy that he could kill. The titter of the galloping horseman gave the answer, and he knew it was Hardy Atkins. Hardy had given him till nightfall to quit camp or look out for trouble. This was the trouble.

Bowles spread out his bed as best he could and slept where he lay till dawn. Then he went to Henry Lee and said he would like his gun. His hands were bloody and torn from contact with the brush, and there was a fresh welt above one eye that gave him a sinister leer. There was no doubt about it – Bowles was mad – and after a cursory glance the boss saw he was out for blood.

"Just a moment, Mr. Bowles," he said, advancing to the fire. "Boys," he continued, addressing the smirking hands who stood there, "I make it a rule on my round-ups that nobody carries a gun. That includes you, too, Mr. Bowles," he added meaningly. "Mosby, get me a gunny-sack."

With the gunny-sack under one arm the wagon-boss went the rounds, and when he had finished his trip the sack was full of guns.

"I'll just keep these till we get back to the ranch," he observed. "And," he added, "the next man that picks on Bowles will have to walk to town. Hardy, were you in on this?"

"No, sir!" replied Atkins stoutly. "I don't know a thing about it!"

"Well, be mighty careful what you do," charged Henry Lee severely. "Brig, throw that herd on the trail – we might as well hit for the ranch."

CHAPTER XX

THE DEATH OF HAPPY JACK

When Bowles rode back to the Bat Wing Ranch he was a hard-looking citizen. His aunt, the hypothetical Mrs. Earl-Bowles, would scarcely have recognized him; Mrs. Lee started visibly at sight of his battered face; and Dixie smiled knowingly as she glanced at his half-closed eye.

"Aha, Mr. Man," she said, "it looks like you'd been into a juniper, too!"

"Well, something like that," acknowledged Bowles, gazing lover-like into her eyes; and from that he led the conversation into other channels, less intimately associated with common brawls. For though Bowles had given way to his evil passions and had even gone so far as to call for his gun in order to beard his rival, he did not wish it known to his lady. As he contemplated her grace in a plain white dress, and the witchery of her faintest smile, it seemed indeed a profanation of the sacred Temple of Love to so much as allude to a fight. Undoubtedly in the wooings of the stone age the males had competed with clubs, but certainly for no woman like this. Love, as Bowles had learned it from the poets, was above such sordid scenes; and as he had learned it from her – when she had chastened his soul with a kiss – ah, now he could sing with old Ben Jonson and the deathless Greeks:

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine."

Here was the shrine at which he worshiped, and he wished no carnal thought to enter in. So he spoke to her softly and went his way, lest some one should read his heart and break the spell with jeering.

The dust of a day's hard driving was on his face; there was a red weal over one eye and a bruise on his bearded cheek, but he was a lover still. Dixie knew it by his eyes, that glowed and kindled; by his voice, whose every word veiled a hidden caress; and she greeted the others coldly from thinking of this one who had come. Then she dissembled and went down among them, but her ways were changed and she only smiled at their jests.

"Hey, Dix," challenged Hardy Atkins at last, thrusting a grimy hand down into his shap pocket, "look what I got fer ye!"

He drew out a money-order ring that he had won in a mountain poker game, and flashed the stone in the sun.

"It's a genuwine, eighteen-carat diamond," he announced. "Come over hyer and let's see which finger it fits. If it fits yore third finger, you know – "

"Well, I like your nerve," observed Dixie Lee, smiling tolerantly with Gloomy Gus. "'Come over hyer!' eh? It's a wonder you wouldn't come over here – but I don't want your old ring, so don't come."

"W'y, what's the matter?" inquired Hardy Atkins, who loved to do his courting in public. "You ain't goin' back on me, are you, Dix?"

"Well, if I went very far back on your trail," answered Dixie, "I reckon I'd find where you got that ring. What's the matter? Wouldn't she have it? Or did that other girl give it back?"

She turned away with a curl on her lips, and when he saw that she meant it, Hardy Atkins was filled with chagrin. From a man now, that would be a good joke; but from Dixie – well, somebody must have blabbed! He turned a darkly inquiring eye upon Bowles, and looked no farther; but Henry Lee had spoken, and all that rough work was barred. Still there were ways and ways, and after thinking over all the dubious tricks of the cow camp he called in his faithful friends and they went into executive session.

"Now, hyer," expounded the ex-twister, as they got together over the butchering of a beef, "the way to bump that Hinglishman off is to make a monkey of 'im – skeer 'im up and laugh 'im out o' camp. He's so stuck on himse'f he cain't stand to be showed up – what's the matter with a fake killin'? Here's lots of blood."

He cupped up a handful of blood from the viscera of the newly killed beef, and his side partners chuckled at the thought.

"Let me do the shootin', and I'll throw in with ye," rumbled Buck Buchanan.

"I'll hold the door on 'im," volunteered Poker Bill.

"Well, who's goin' to play dead?" grinned Happy Jack. "Me? All right. Git some flour to put on my face, and watch me make the fall – I done that once back on the Pecos."

So they laid their plans, very mysteriously, and when the big poker game began that night there was no one else in on the plot. Buck had the pistol he had killed the beef with tucked away in the slack of his belt; Jack had changed to a light shirt, the better to show the blood; and Hardy Atkins was a make-up man, with bottled blood and a pinch of flour in his pockets to use when the lights went out.

The game was straight draw poker, and the prize a private horse. Ten dollars apiece was the price of a chance, and it was freeze-out at four-bits a chip. That served to draw the whole crowd, and as the contest narrowed down to Buck Buchanan and Happy Jack, the table was lined three deep.

"How many?" asked Buck, picking up the deck.

"Gimme one!" said Jack, and when he got it he looked grave and turned down his hand, the way all good poker players do when they have tried to fill a flush and failed.

"I bet ye ten!" challenged Jack.

"Go you – and ten more!" came back Buck.

"Raise ye twenty!"

"What ye got?" demanded Buck, shoving his beans to the center, and then, with a sudden roar, he leaped up and seized the stakes. "Keep yore hands off that discyard!" he bellowed, hammering furiously on the table. "You lie, you – "

Whack! came Happy Jack's hand across his face, and Buchanan grabbed for his gun. Then, as the crowd scattered wildly, he thrust out his pistol and shot a great flash of powder between Happy Jack's arm and his ribs.