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Title: The Ramblin' Kid

Author: Earl Wayland Bowman

Posting Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #10374] Release Date: December 3, 2003

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAMBLIN' KID ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders

THE RAMBLIN' KID BY EARL WAYLAND BOWMAN FRONTISPIECE BY W.H.D. KOERNER

1920

CONTENTS CHAPTER I A NIGHT LETTER II A BLUFF CALLED III WHICH ONE'S WHICH IV THE UNUSED PLATE V A DUEL OF ENDURANCE VI YOU'RE A BRUTE VII THE GREEDY SANDS VIII QUICK WITH A VENGEANCE IX OLD HECK'S STRATEGY X FIXING FIXERS XI A DANCE AND A RIDE XII YOU'LL GET YOUR WISH XIII THE ELITE AMUSEMENT PARLOR XIV THE GRAND PARADE XV MOCHA AND JAVA XVI THE SWEEPSTAKES XVII OLD HECK GOES TO TOWN XVIII A SHAME TO WASTE IT XIX THE GREEK GETS HIS XX MOSTLY SKINNY XXI A GIRL LIKE YOU THE RAMBLIN' KID CHAPTER I A NIGHT LETTER

Sand and gravel slithered and slid under the heels of Old Pie Face as Skinny Rawlins whirled the broncho into the open space in front of the low-built, sprawling, adobe ranch house of the Quarter Circle KT and reined the pinto to a sudden stop. Skinny had been to Eagle Butte and with other things brought back the mail. It was hot, late June, the time between cutting the first crop of alfalfa and gathering, from the open range, the beef steers ready for the summer market. Regardless of the heat Skinny had ridden hard and his horse was a lather of sweat. A number of cowboys lounged, indolently, in the shade of the bunk-house, smoking cigarettes and contentedly enjoying the hour of rest after the noon-day dinner. Another, lean-built, slender, boyish in appearance and with strangely black, inscrutable eyes, stepped from around the corner of the house as Skinny jerked Old Pie Face to a standstill.

"Where's Old Heck?" Skinny asked excitedly. "I brought the mail—here, take it to him!"

The other, known on the Kiowa and the range of western Texas and Mexico only as "the Ramblin' Kid," strolled leisurely out through the sagging, weight-swung gate and up to the panting horse from which Skinny had not yet dismounted.

"Asleep, I reckon," he replied in a voice peculiarly low and deliberate, "—what's your spontaneousness about? You act like a special d'livery or somethin'."

"Old Heck's got a letter," Skinny said, jerkily; "maybe's it's bad news an' he ought to have it quick," as the Ramblin' Kid reached for a yellow envelope held in the outstretched hand.

At that instant Old Heck, owner and boss of the Quarter Circle KT cow outfit, stepped from the shadow of the open ranch-house door. He was short and stocky, red-faced, somewhere near the fifties, and a yellowish-gray mustache hung over tobacco blackened lips. Overalls, a checked blue and white shirt, open at the throat, boots into which the trousers legs were loosely jammed comprised his attire. He was bareheaded and the sun glistened on a wrinkly forehead, topped by a thin sprinkling of hair.

"What's the matter?" he asked drowsily, his small, gray-blue eyes blinking in the yellow sun-glare and still sluggish from the nap disturbed by the noise of Skinny's arrival.

"Nothin'. Skinny's just got a letter an' is excited about it," the
Ramblin' Kid said, handing the envelope to him. "It's for you."

"My Gawd!" Old Heck exclaimed, "it's a telegram!"

The cowboys resting in the shade of the bunk-house rose to their feet, sauntered over and surrounded Old Heck and the Ramblin' Kid, commenting meanwhile, frankly and caustically, on the fagged condition of the broncho Skinny was on:

"Must 'a' been scared, the way you run that horse," Parker, range foreman of the Quarter Circle KT, a heavy-built, sandy-complexioned man in the forties, remarked witheringly to Skinny as the cow-puncher climbed from the saddle and slid to the ground.

"He's 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 1/2 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 with varying emotions the hearts of Old Heck, Parker and the cowboys.

To Old Heck their presence meant nothing less than calamity. Long years of he-man association had made him dread the petty restraints he imagined would be imposed by intimate contact with womankind. Good lord, a man wouldn't be able even to cuss freely, and without embarrassment, with a couple of women in the house and prowling around the ranch!

Skinny, Bert, Chuck, Pedro, Charley, the Ramblin' Kid, even the Chink cook and Parker, quivered with excitement and curiosity behind thinly veiled pretense of fear and horror. Secretly they rejoiced. It was marvelous news borne by the telegram Skinny brought. Here would be diversion ample, unusual, wholly worth while and filled with possibilities of romance as luring as the first glimpse of a strange new land shadowed with mystery and promise of thrilling adventure.

Sing Pete paddled back to the unfinished business of the kitchen, chattering excitedly. The cowboys stood mutely and stared at Old Heck and the fatal slip of yellow paper.

"What'll I do?" Old Heck asked the group despairingly. "They'll ruin everything."

"Can't you head 'em off, somehow?" Parker suggested.

"Can't be done. They're already on their way and probably somewhere this side of Kansas City by now."

"Find out which train they're on and let the Ramblin' Kid and me cut across to the Purgatory River bridge and wreck it," Skinny Rawlins, always tragic, darkly advised.

"I ain't particular about killin' females," the Ramblin' Kid objected, "besides, we ain't