The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
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was watching to see how quickly the air dried the shell, which old Patsy at the Flying U had taught him as a simple and efficient way of testing its inner degree of hardness. He glanced up from the egg, his eyes veiling themselves instantly with that aloofness of his. As plainly as words his look asked the intruders what they wanted there.
"Hello, Mr. Norm," he said, and laid the egg on Walt's plate. Norm had probably come to kick them out of there. The Kid decided to have his supper first, anyway. By to-morrow they might be rich enough to eat in a restaurant up town.
But Norm had no such harmless design upon the Kid. He turned with a forced laugh to his companion.
"Well, Mac, here they are, where they can't get away. The tall one dishing up eggs is Montana Kid in one of his gentler moods. Don't know the other boys, but they're the blue-shirt bunch, and that's what you wanted." He looked at the Kid, standing there eyeing them, his big hat pushed back on his head, his blue sleeves rolled to his elbows, the egg spoon still in his hand. "This fellow's from the News," he explained. "He wants you to tell him all about how you captured the bandit that looted our office. Somebody saw you fellows headed this way—well, I guess he can make out all right, now he's found you, I'm busy." He grinned and retreated, carefully closing the door upon himself.
"This is simply great, finding you fellows all here together and no one to butt in," said the reporter, coming forward and helping himself to a seat. "I've got to rush this story in—wish I could have brought a camera man—we'll get your pictures to-morrow. Now, Mr. Montana Kid, I wish you'd tell me just how it was you got on the trail of this bandit? What first roused your suspicion?"
The Kid simply stared at him for a minute and then turned his back and dipped out another egg, watched it dry all too soon and offered it to Beck and Billy.
"Which of you likes the yolk set?" he asked. "Billy, think you can handle it?"
Billy nodded absently, his eyes clinging fascinated to the stranger.
"Is he stringing us, Kid? Or what?"
"You tell 'em," the Kid advised shortly. "I'm no mind reader."
"Say, don't you ever think he's no mind reader!" The reporter laughed, unabashed by his cool reception, as reporters must ever be. "I'll say he's a mind reader. If all I heard is true, he read that bandit's mind a block away. Made the prettiest capture this burg has seen in many a day. Oh, I've got the whole story," he boasted to the Kid, who looked ready to do murder. "All I want is your own personal reactions—"
"I haven't got any personal reactions," said the Kid. "I don't carry 'em any more. They ain't safe. They're liable to go off unexpected and hurt somebody."
"Did you catch the bandit, honest, Kid? You told us it was your shirt."
"Well, it was. How about another piece of toast, Walt? Riding bronks is exercise, what I mean."
The reporter was busy scribbling something on a small pad of paper he drew from his coat pocket. Billy Perry, who sat alongside him and had eyes like a bald eagle looking for breakfast, told the Kid afterwards that he saw "Blue-s hero modest—denies—tall, slim, handsome as Greek—" and he would have read more if the reporter had not moved his elbow and blocked the view.
"You won the relay race this afternoon, they tell me. You expect to win again this evening, of course?"
The Kid just looked at him and said "Hunh!" eloquently, under his breath.
"I hear you boys have clubbed together to win all the cups in the contest this year," Mac insinuated smilingly.
"That's a thought," the Kid observed gravely, handing Walt a slice of toast on the end of a long-handled fork.
"Dandy start too, I hear. They say you're a knock-out at fancy roping and riding, Mr. Montana Kid."
"Washout, you probably mean." The Kid poured himself a cup of coffee, took off his hat and sat down to his supper.
"No, knock-out. And what are you going to do with all the money you'll win? Don't mind telling me, do you?"
"Delighted," said the Kid. "I'm going to send my little sisters and brothers to school, and buy maw a washin' machine—and take 'em all to the movin' pitchers and set in the best darn seats they got."
The reporter gave him a sharp look but he wrote it all down, so Billy said; probably because it came under the heading of personal reactions.
"Now tell me, Kid, what were your thoughts when you collared that bandit? You know, they've identified him as the Weasel, one of our slipperiest crooks. Just what did you think when you grabbed him?"
The Kid studied the question while he salted and peppered his eggs.
"I thought, 'Gosh-I-hope-I-don't-tear-my-shirt,'" he said finally.
"He tried to kill you, they tell me."
"The cops in this town sure have telling ways," said the Kid.
"But he did try to kill you, didn't he?"
"Oh, say not so!" the Kid picked up the cup of sugar, looked at it reflectively and set it down again without taking any.
"Ease through with the info, Kid," Beck Wilson advised. "We're all excited. Is this straight goods, or is it a plant?"
"It's a plant, Beck," the Kid answered him, smiling for the first time since the unwelcome visitor arrived.
"Oh, come now!" the reporter protested. "You may as well face the thing, you know—"
"I'm weak on botany," the Kid explained further to Beck, "but it's some kind of loco." Whereupon the three Laramie boys chortled with glee.
"You were born in Montana, weren't you?"
"Oh, no. Chicago."
"But—"
"Well, what's wrong with that? Lots of people are born in Chicago, aren't they? That's where my mother says I was born, and you can like it or not." Since he was telling the truth, the Kid was not believed. At least, Billy said afterward that the reporter wrote down "Born—Mont."
"Well, come on, boys," said the Kid, reaching for his hat and standing up. "Sorry we can't stay and visit, Mister, but we're busy right now."
For some distance in the corridor the reporter kept up with the four, and he asked questions as long as he had breath. But they outwalked him at last and retired to the stables and did not appear again until the grand entry. They had to plan some means of speeding up the Kid's changes of mounts in the relay, impossible though it seemed to do so; and they had to get the true story of the Kid's adventure with the bandit, though that, too, was next to impossible, since the Kid belittled his own part in the performance. Still, they forced the main facts from him bit by bit and had to be content.
"And I want you fellows to keep still about it too," the Kid finally told them, as they were riding out to the slope for the grand entry. "I headed off that darned reporter, so that's all right and we won't hear any more out of him, I guess, and if you boys don't talk, the thing will die down. It wasn't anything, anyway."
Chapter XVI. Mrs. Bennett—Montana Kid!
Once more the waving banners, once more the flags and the blare of music that sent the double column forward up the track past the grand stand and around the oval to the point where they rode straight out across the arena and drew up in semi-military formation before the cheering thousands. But now the great arc lights threw a white radiance upon the scene, and the visiting celebrities did not participate in the opening ensemble. The Kid missed the Happy Family and in spite of his other distractions he wondered where they were. Also he had sent a quick, searching glance up at the box as he passed, and saw it filled with strangers. His folks hadn't cared to come out in the evening, then. Bored already, he supposed.
The Kid told himself that it made no difference, that he was really