The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
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the letter he was seeking, Andy helped himself to a doughnut from a two-gallon stone jar and went out, taking large bites.
“Gimme a doughnut. I wanta doughnut! Maw, can’t I have a doughnut?”
Andy ate fast, moving forward in the midst of beseeching young Pilgreens. As the last crisp morsel disappeared down his throat, he reached the Countess. Through the open doorway Mrs. Pilgreen could be seen in the living room, solemnly rocking, with her hands folded in unaccustomed idleness across her starched white apron. Andy gave her one swift, appraising look. An overworked ranch woman on a Sunday visit is pretty hard to dislodge, as he had long ago learned from observation, but there was something in her personality that grated on his nerves. He turned to the Countess and said, in a voice pitched to carry above the clamor of young voices:
“Here’s a letter from Mrs. Chip. Somebody ought to telegraph Chip not to bring her and the kid home yet. With smallpox on the ranch—”
In the living room Mrs. Pilgreen had stopped rocking. The Countess gasped, caught Andy’s look and nodded.
“I don’t know what under the shinin’ sun we’re goin’ to do,” she complained fretfully. “D’ you s’pose that pore feller they brought in last night—”
“It’s a wonder he ever got this far. They’re all stirred up over it in town. Worst case—”
There was a swish of starched calico, and Mrs. Pilgreen stood glaring in the doorway. Behind her stood Annie, her listless blue eyes wider than Andy had ever seen them.
“Louise Bixby, d’ you mean to tell me there’s smallpox on this ranch and we was let to come here without a word bein’ said?” The old lady’s eyes glittered as they darted quick glances from one to the other.
“You come of your own accord,” snapped the Countess. “I’m sure I never asked you.”
“You’d let us expose these innocent children without a word of warnin’. Annie, you get them kids’ bunnits on ’em, quick. Alviry, you run tight as you can and tell your paw we’re goin’ home this minute.”
More was said, to which Andy Green listened with a lifting of his spirits. Through the window he watched the departure. More than ever Mrs. Pilgreen resembled a hen turkey anxiously hustling her brood in out of the wet. The Countess, waiting until they were well through the big gate, turned then upon Andy Green.
“The Bible says a tongue without a bridle on is worse than a runaway horse, and I guess it’s so,” she snorted. “Why under the shinin’ sun couldn’t you think up something besides that? Lyin’ outa whole cloth—she’ll backbite this bunch for the rest of the summer. I should think you’d be afraid the wrath of the Lord’d fall upon yuh for talkin’ that way.” But the twinkle in her near-sighted blue eyes softened the rebuke.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Andy pushed back his hat and ran his fingers absently through his hair where it was inclined to curl at the temples. “I did hear something about smallpox in town. Jimmy Myers at the store was talkin’ about it while he was loading the groceries for Rogers. They’ve got a case, or think they have. Jimmy was kiddin’ old Rogers about layin’ in a supply because he’d be scared to show up in town again for a month. I didn’t get the straight of it—Jimmy’s an awful liar. But I wasn’t lyin’ outa whole cloth, Countess. And anyway, it worked.”
“It’s workin’ like a jug of yeast,” the Countess complained, glancing uneasily down the path. “’Tain’t much to start with, but if it’s left long enough, it’ll be all over the suller. Let Sary Pilgreen tell that yarn a few times and she’ll have us all dead and buried and the coroner settin’ on us. Seems to me you coulda thought up something that wouldn’t spread so easy. I d’know but what, if I slapped one of them kids, it woulda had the same identical effect of startin’ ’em fer home and she wouldn’t find so much to talk about!”
“Well, by gracious!” Andy exclaimed, in a hurt tone. “If there’s no gratitude around this ranch, how about another doughnut? They certainly are fine; about as good as I ever laid a lip across.”
The Countess succumbed to the flattery and gave him three, which Andy strung neatly on the butt end of his quirt, the Countess scolding him continuously. She told him to get along out of the kitchen or she wouldn’t have a crumb of anything left, and she pinched her lips tightly together to keep from smiling at him. So Andy mounted and rode down to the bunk-house—a distance of about fifty yards—carrying the quirt like a spear. He dismounted there and went in after his chaps, spurs and a new silk neckerchief. As he stood before the uneven square of broken bar mirror, adjusting the shining folds of blue silk around his throat, he suddenly decided that he needed a shave. Anyway, the Pilgreens might not have left yet, and it would do no harm to wait awhile before he showed up at the stable. And this thought reminded him to take a look at the lightning-struck jasper Big Medicine had carried all the way from Dry Gulch.
Andy pivoted slowly, scanning each bed as he turned. He had the bunk-house to himself. The fellow couldn’t be much hurt, after all. With a sudden chill running down his spine, Andy stepped back to where he could crane through a window and see the trail where it left the stable yard. If old lady Pilgreen saw that fellow walking around—but no, there they went, driving off in their lumber wagon, the Happy Family with Myrtle Forsyth watching them go. Andy’s eyesight was keen, but to satisfy himself, he made a deliberate count of the figures down there. No sign of the pilgrim anywhere. Then, just as he was turning away puzzled, he saw the fellow emerge from the mess house a few rods away and go down the path, walking wide, as a man will do who has saddle sores to think about.
Andy grinned in complete understanding. He knew that gait and all that it implied. He watched until the group at the stable turned to receive the stranger and moved on toward the corral out of sight, then got his white enamel shaving cup and ducked across to the mess house to beg hot water from old Patsy. Though he would not admit to himself that he felt any uneasiness whatever over the competition foreshadowed down there, he wasted no seconds after that.
Smooth and bearing a faint odor of bay rum, Andy pinched his gray hat crown into the creases he favored most, set it upon his fresh-combed brown hair at a jaunty angle which he also especially favored, pulled his chap belt into position, stepped into the saddle and rode leisurely down the slope, munching the third doughnut as he went along and looking very well satisfied with life.
His reception was all that he hoped it would be. Myrtle Forsyth, standing on the rear end of a hay-rack backed against the corral, was clinging to the top rail and watching breathlessly the saddling of a bronk inside. But she saw Andy at once and beckoned with a slim, gloved hand. Andy left his horse standing with dropped bridle reins and climbed the fence limberly, settling himself astride the top rail to which she clung.
“You bad, wicked man! You told a fib, didn’t you? All the boys said so when those poor Pilgreens started home.” She shook a finger at him, with a sidelong glance which any man would have found disturbing. “They say no one can believe a word you say! I think you’re perfectly awful!”
Andy opened his mouth to defend himself, but some of the boys in the corral had spied him and he was given a minute’s respite while he answered their helloes. When he turned to the girl, she was looking at the stranger who leaned against the fence near the gate, peering into the corral between poles.
“That’s the poor boy you fibbed about,” she murmured. “If you had only known what really is the matter with him—I think it’s the most tragic thing I ever heard of!”
Andy glanced again. “He looks all right to me,” he said. “Better than I’d expect, after what happened to him last night.”
“Oh, but you haven’t heard!” She leaned closer, speaking behind her hand. “That poor boy—he just tottered down here as the Pilgreens were driving away—and it’s lucky for you he didn’t come before they left—that lightning shock gave him amnesia!” Since she apparently expected astonishment, Andy permitted his mouth to sag open.
“Mr. Rapponi and that