Chapter I
"Call Me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em"
The boy had spent the night at a water-hole in a little draw near thefoot of the mesa. He had supped on cold rations and slept in his blanketwithout the comfort of glowing pinon knots. For yesterday he had cutIndian signs and after dark had seen the shadow of Apache camp-firesreflected in the clouds.
After eating he swung to the bare back of his pony and climbed to thesummit of the butte. His trained eyes searched the plains. A big bunch ofantelope was trailing down to water almost within rifle-shot. But he wasnot looking for game.
He sniffed the smoke from the pits where the renegades were roastingmescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles.His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud ofdust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the PecosValley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders werelikely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boywaited to make sure of their line of travel.
Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spendsmuch time alone in the saddle. "Looks like they'll throw off to-nightclose to the 'Pache camp. If they do hell's a-goin' to pop just beforesunup to-morrow. I reckon I'll ride over and warn the outfit."
From a trapper the boy had learned that a band of Mescalero Apaches hadleft the reservation three weeks before, crossed into Mexico, goneplundering down the Pecos, and was now heading back toward the StakedPlains. Evidently the drover did not know this, since he was moving hiscattle directly toward the Indian camp.
The young fellow let his cowpony pick its way down the steep shale hillto the draw. He saddled without a waste motion, packed his suppliesdeftly, mounted, and was off. In the way he cut across the desert towardthe moving herd was the certainty of the frontiersman. He did not hurry,but he wasted no time. His horse circled in and out among the sand dunes,now topped a hill, now followed a wash. Every foot of the devious trailwas the most economical possible.
At the end of nearly an hour's travel he pulled up, threw down his bridlereins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What hesaw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had beenpointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood itssignificance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for thisboy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knewthat within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero bucks hadreturned to camp this way from an antelope hunt and that they carriedwith them half a dozen pronghorns. It was a safe guess that they werepart of the large camp the smoke of which he had seen.
Long before the young man struck the drive, he knew he was close by thecloud of dust and the bawling of the cattle. His course across countryhad been so accurate that he hit the herd at the point withoutdeflecting.
An old Texan drew up, changed his weight on the saddle to rest himself,and hailed the youngster.
"Goin' somewheres, kid, or just ridin'?" he asked genially.
"Just takin' my hawss out for a jaunt so's he won't get hog-fat," grinnedthe boy.
The Texan chewed tobacco placidly and eyed the cowpony. The horse hadbeen ridden so far that he was a bag of bones.
"Looks some gaunted," he commented.
"Four Bits is so thin he won't throw a shadow," admitted the boy.
"Come a right smart distance, I reckon?"
"You done said it."
"Where you headin' for?"
"For Deaf Smith County. I got an uncle there. Saw your dust an' droppedover to tell you that a big bunch of 'Paches are camped just ahead ofyou."
The older man looked at him keenly. "How do you know, son?"
"Smelt their smoke an' cut their trail."
"Know Injuns, do you?"
"I trailed with Al Sieber 'most two years."
To have served with Sieber for any length of time was a certificate ofefficiency. He was the ablest scout in the United States Army. Throughhis skill and energy Geronimo and his war braves were later forced togive themselves up to the troops.
"'Nuff said. Are these 'Paches liable to make us any trouble?"
"Yes, sir. I think they are. They're a bunch of broncos from thereservation an' they have been across the line stealin' horses an'murderin' settlers. They will sure try to stampede your cattle an' runoff a lot of 'em."
"Hmp! You better go back an' see old man Webb about it. What's yore name,kid?"
For just an eye-beat the boy hesitated. "Call me Jim Thursday."
A glimmer of a smile rested in the eyes of the Texan. He was willing tobet that this young fellow would not have given him that name if to-dayhad not happened to be the fifth day of the week. But it was all one tothe cowpuncher. To question a man too closely about his former residenceand manner of life was not good form on the frontier.
"I'll call you Jim from Sunday to Saturday," he said, pulling a tobaccopouch from his hip pocket. "My name is Wrayburn--Dad Wrayburn, the boyscall me."
The Texan shouted to the man riding second on the swing. "Oh, you, BilliePrince!"
A tanned, good-looking young fellow cantered up.
"Meet Jimmie Thursday, Billie," the old-timer said by way ofintroduction. "This boy says there's heap many Injuns on the war-pathright ahead of us. I reckon I'll let you take the point while I rideback with him an' put it up to the old man."
The "old man" turned out to be a short, heavy-set Missourian who hadserved in the Union Army and won a commission by intelligence andcourage. Wherever the name of Homer Webb was known it stood for integrityand square-dealing. His word was as good as a signed bond.
Webb had come out of the war without a cent, but with a very definitepurpose. During the last year of the Confederacy, while it was totteringto its fall, he had served in Texas. The cattle on the range had foryears been running wild, the owners and herdsmen being absent with theSouthern army. They had multiplied prodigiously, so that many thousandsof mavericks roamed without brand, the property of any one who wouldround them up and put an iron on their flanks. The money value of themwas very little. A standard price for a yearling was a plug of tobacco.But Webb looked to the future. He hired two riders, gathered together asmall remuda of culls, and went into the cattle business with energy.To-day the Flying V Y was stamped on forty thousand longhorns.
The foreman of the Flying V Y was riding with the owner of the brand atthe drag end of the herd. He was a hard-faced citizen known as JoeYankie. When Wrayburn had finished his story, the foreman showed a row oftobacco-stained teeth in an unpleasant grin.
"Same old stuff, Dad. There always is a bunch of bucks off thereservation an' they're always just goin' to run our cattle away. If youask me there's nothin' to it."
Young Thursday flushed. "If you'll ride out with me I'll show you theirtrail."
Yankie looked at him with a sneer. He guessed this boy to be abouteighteen. There was a suggestion of effeminacy about the lad's small,well-shaped hands and feet. He was a slender, smooth-faced youth withmild blue eyes. It occurred to Webb, too, that the stranger might haveimagined the Apaches. But in his motions was something of the lithe graceof the puma. It was part of the business of the cattleman to judge menand he was not convinced that this young fellow was as inoffensive as helooked.
"Where you from?" asked the drover.
"From the San Carlos Agency."
"Ever meet a man named Micky Free out there?"
"I've slept under the same tarp with him many's the time when we werefollowin' Chiricahua 'Paches. He's the biggest dare-devil that everforked a horse."
"Describe him."
"Micky's face is a map of Ireland. He's got only one eye; a buck punchedthe other out when he was a kid. His hair is red an' he wears it long."
"Any beard?"
"A bristly little red mustache."
"That's Micky to a T." Webb made up his mind swiftly. "The boy's allright, Yankie. He'll do to take along."
"It's your outfit. Suits me if he does you." The foreman turnedi
nsolently to the newcomer. "What'd you say your name was, sissie?"
The eyes of the boy, behind narrowed lids, grew hard as steel.
"Call me Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em," he drawled in a soft voice, every syllabledistinct.
There was a moment of chill silence. A swift surprise had flared into theeyes of the foreman. The last thing in the world he had expected was tohave his bad temper resented so promptly by this smooth-faced littlechap. Since Yankie was the camp bully he bristled up to protect hisreputation.
"Better not get on the prod with me, young fellow me lad. I'm liable tomuss up your hair. Me, I'm from the Strip, where folks grow man-size."
The youngster smiled, but there was no mirth in that thin-lipped smile.He knew, as all men did, that the Cherokee Strip was the home ofdesperadoes and man-killers. The refuse of the country, driven out by thelaw of more settled communities, found here a refuge from punishment. Butif the announcement of the foreman impressed him, he gave no sign of it.
"Why didn't you stay there?" he asked with bland innocence.
Yankie grew apoplectic. He did not care to discuss the reasons why hehad first gone to the Strip or the reasons why he had come away. Thisgirl-faced boy was the only person who had asked for a bill ofparticulars. Moreover, the foreman did not know whether the question hadbeen put in child-like ignorance of any possible offense or with animpudent purpose to enrage him.
"Don't run on the rope when I'm holdin' it, kid," he advised roughly."You're liable to get thrown hard."
"And then again I'm liable not to," lisped the youth from Arizona gently.
The bully looked the slim newcomer over again, and as he looked thererang inside him some tocsin of warning. Thursday sat crouched in thesaddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike. A sawed-off shotgun layunder his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was evencloser to those smooth, girlish fingers. In the immobility of his figureand the steadiness of the blue eyes was a deadly menace.
Yankie was no coward. He would go through if he had to. But there wasstill time to draw back if he chose. He was not exactly afraid; on theother hand, he did not feel at all easy.
He contrived a casual, careless laugh. "All right, kid. I don't have torob the cradle to fill my private graveyard. Go get your Injuns. It willbe all right with me."
Webb drew a breath of relief. There was to be no gunplay after all. Hehad had his own reasons for not interfering sooner, but he knew that thesituation had just grazed red tragedy.
"I'm goin' to take the boy's advice," he announced to Yankie. "Rideforward an' swing the herd toward that big red butte. We'll give ourMescalero friends a wide berth if we can."
The foreman hung in the saddle a moment before he turned to go. He had tosave his face from a public back-down, "Bet you a week's pay there'snothin' to it, Webb."
"Hope you're right, Joe," his employer answered.
As soon as Yankie had cantered away, Dad Wrayburn, ex-Confederatetrooper, slapped his hand on his thigh and let out a modulated rebelyell.
"Dad burn my hide, Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em, you're all right. Fustest time Iever saw Joe take water, but he shorely did splash some this hereoccasion. I wouldn't 'a' missed it for a bunch of hog-fat yearlin's."
Webb had not been sorry to see his arrogant foreman brought up with asharp turn, but in the interest of discipline he did not care to say so.
"Why can't you boys get along peaceable with Joe, I'd like to know? Thissnortin' an' pawin' up the ground don't get you anything."
"I reckon Joe does most of the snortin' that's done," Wrayburn answereddryly. "I ain't had any trouble with him, because he spends a heap oftime lettin' me alone. But there's no manner of doubt that Joe rides theboys too hard."
The drover dismissed the subject and turned to Thursday.
"Want a job?"
"Mebbe so."
"I need another man. Since you sabe the ways of the 'Paches I can use youto scout ahead for us."
"What you payin'?"
"Fifty a month."
"You've hired a hand."
"Good enough. Better pick one of the boys to ride with you while you areout scoutin'."
"I'll take Billie Prince," decided the new rider at once.
"You know Billie?"
"Never saw him before to-day. But I like his looks. He's a man to tieto."
"You're right he is."
The drover looked at his new employee with a question in his shrewd eyes.The boy was either a man out of a thousand or he was a first-classbluffer. He claimed to have cut Indian sign and to know exactly what waswritten there. At a single glance he had sized up Prince and knew himfor a reliable side partner. Without any bluster he had served notice onYankie that it would be dangerous to pick on him as the butt of hisill-temper.
In those days, on the Pecos, law lay in a holster on a man's thigh. Theindividual was a force only so far as his personality impressed itselfupon his fellows. If he made claims he must be prepared to back them to afighting finish.
Was this young Thursday a false alarm? Or was he a good man to let alonewhen one was looking for trouble? Webb could not be sure yet, though hemade a shrewd guess. But he knew it would not he long before he foundout.