Read Ebook: Repertory of The Comedie Humaine Complete A — Z by Cerfberr Anatole Christophe Jules Fran Ois McSpadden J Walker Joseph Walker Translator

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THE X BAR X BOYS ON THE RANCH

THE ROAD TO EAGLES

Two boys loped along the winding, dusty road on the way to Eagles. One of them, astride a white-faced mustang, was leading a third horse, a bay, which, though riderless, was saddled and bridled. The day was hot; the road steep and tortuous; and the riderless horse, with head held low, was doing his best to retard the procession.

Taking a firmer hold of the leading rein, the boy gave it a jerk forward.

"Come up here, General!" he cried. "Where do you think you're going--to a funeral? Pretty near train time and we still have a good stretch ahead of us!"

His companion, a slightly older youth, riding a brown pony, turned in his saddle.

"Is he holding back on you, Teddy? Those Spanish bridles make awfully poor leading. I think he's got a sore mouth. And, if he has, dad'll find it out quick!"

"Boy, don't I know it! Why," Teddy Manley added with a chuckling laugh, "I bet dad could tell if General didn't sleep well the night before. He sure is crazy over this horse!"

"I'll tell a maverick he is!" cried Roy Manley. "Last thing he told me before he left was to be sure to bring General in to meet him. But as far as liking goes, you don't exactly hate that Flash of yours, I notice."

The other boy grinned and patted the side of his bronco.

"Well," he admitted, "I'm not saying much, but you have no right to talk about falling in love with a horse. The way you treat Star would make any one think he was made of cut glass! All the while it's easy now, Star, you might hurt yourself! Is that cinch-strap too tight, Star? Here, let me brush that fly off your ear!' Huh! Do you tuck him in bed and kiss him good-night, Roy?"

Roy Manley refused the bait.

"I remember," he said calmly, wiping the sweat from his upper lip and leaving in its stead a streak of black dust, "when you first got Flash. Dad gave him to you for your birthday. You were just a little shaver then--"

"Aw, donkey-dust! Who do you think you are--Methuselah? Just because you're a year older--"

"You were just a little shaver then," Roy went on imperturbably, "and maybe you didn't know what you were doing. You simply went into ecstasy. Get that--ecstasy? Sixty-cent word. Yep, you jumped up and down with glee, I'll tell a maverick!"

"Well, if I jumped up and down with glee, you, by golly, stood on your head when dad gave you Star! Now laugh that off!"

"We won't argue about it," Roy replied, with assumed dignity. "Baby, this road is sure some dusty! Wind's right at our backs, too. If I took a drink of water now I'd turn into a mud-pie. Hey, Teddy, think you can coax that cayuse you're riding into something more than a trickle? Maybe he'll run, if you talk to him real nice."

Teddy Manley did not reply, but clucked softly to his mount. Flash responded with a leap that caused General, the bay that Teddy was leading, to toss his head in protest.

"Down in the cellar eating spinach," Teddy answered, with a grin. "Flash, here, won't let General balk on us! will you, old boy?" and Teddy leaned forward and rubbed the horse's nose. Flash nuzzled his master's hand affectionately.

"Why don't you let up on that mush?" Roy asked in a disgusted tone. "Go on, whisper pretty nothings in his ear! Talk about me and Star! Why, when Gilly Froud--"

Eyes blazing, Teddy turned swiftly on his brother.

"Don't mention that cur's name to me," he said thickly. "You know what he did to Flash? He kicked him, that's what he did! Kicked him! And if dad hadn't stopped me, I'd have--I'd have--"

"Cool off, cool off," Roy advised soothingly. "I don't like Froud any more than you do. You know that. Anyway, dad threw him off the ranch, so let's forget him. Come on, step on it. Dad's train is due soon."

Breathing heavily at the memory of Froud's mistreatment of Flash, Teddy pulled General's leading rein and urged his own mount to a faster pace.

This Gilly Froud had been a hand on the X Bar X ranch, which was owned by Mr. Manley, the father of Roy and Teddy. One day the ranch owner had caught Froud abusing Flash. Teddy had come around the corner of the bunkhouse at the same instant, and took in the scene at a glance. White to the lips, the boy started for Froud. Mr. Manley took one look at his son's face, and, springing forward, seized Teddy by the shoulders. Flash--Teddy's Flash--had been kicked, and Teddy had seen it. Mr. Manley tightened his grip on his son's shoulders. There was not going to be that sort of fight on his ranch if he could prevent it.

Teddy had come to his senses quickly, and Mr. Manley released him. Then he turned and looked at Froud, whose face was sickly pale underneath his tan. After this occurrence, Froud went away from that ranch in something of a hurry.

As Teddy recalled the incident, his fist clenched and he unconsciously drew up on Flash's rein. The horse snorted and shook his head, as though he knew what was passing through his master's mind.

"Always did hate a man who mistreated a horse," Teddy murmured. "Sure to be something else the matter with him. No decent fellow would kick a pony."

"Still thinking about Gilly Froud?" Roy asked. "Come on, snap out of it! Lots of nicer things to think about. For instance, that wrist watch you bought at school. Baby, wait till Nick Looker finds out you own a wrist watch! Maybe he won't ride you a little!"

Teddy grinned in reply, and pushed his sombrero back from his forehead. It was certainly a hot day.

The two Manley brothers, Teddy, aged fifteen, and Roy, one year older, were at home, for a long time, they hoped, if not for good, from the Hopper Boarding School, an institution just outside of Denver. Teddy had the golden hair and blue eyes of his mother, Barbara Manley, "the blonde angel of the West," her husband often jokingly called her. But the laugh that always went with this remark deceived no one--least of all the boys. They caught the note of love in their father's voice, and it found an echo in their own hearts.

Roy, the taller of the two, had hair as brown as the hills around him, and eyes but a trifle lighter in hue. He it was who had inherited from his mother a fondness for literature, and, though this last was carefully concealed, a liking for poetry.

Barbara Manley, before her marriage, had been a teacher of English in a Denver school, and until she had met Bardwell Manley, poetry had been her only sweetheart. Her eyes would shine with maternal pride when she observed Roy reading a "book of silly verses," as Teddy called it.

Yet Roy was a real boy. More, he was a real Western boy, which is saying a great deal. He was one of the best shots on the X Bar X ranch, and although Teddy had a slight edge on him when it came to riding, Roy could "fork" an unbroken bronco almost as well as any man on the ranch. In build the boys were much alike--lean, wiry products of range life.

Their father, Bardwell Manley, owned the X Bar X, a cattle ranch some thirty hours' ride "on the cars" west from Chicago on Rocky Run River, a small stream. This ranch had been in the Manley family since Temple Manley, the boys' grandfather, now several years dead, had settled there in 1868.

Although their school days were happy enough, both boys were always eager for summer to come, bringing with it vacation time, which meant the ranch, with Flash and Star to gallop about on over many a winding trail. Roy and Teddy had the real cowboy's love for a good pony and the wind-swept range. Though they did as well as most boys at their studies and Roy rather better than the average, they were both eager for the time to come when they could leave school and follow in the footsteps of their father.

It was now the third week since school had closed, and today the boys were riding to Eagles, a railroad station twelve miles from the X Bar X, to meet Mr. Manley, who had stipulated that they must bring his own special mount, General, for him to ride back. Of course they could have made the trip in an auto, but Mr. Manley always said he preferred "hoss flesh to flivvers."

"Shucks! I don't see the use of having an auto trail to Eagles when dad rides General all the time," Teddy half grumbled as he sank his chin deeper into his neckerchief. "This is too blame dusty!"

In the memory of some at the X Bar X, there had been a time when this road, winding up the mountain, had been just a trail, hardly wide enough for two horses abreast. But the auto had since invaded the West, and had widened the path into a dusty highway. In the opinion of Roy and Teddy Manley, it was a change for the worse.

"Stop beefing," challenged Roy, grinning. "Here! Take a look at that and be thankful you're allowed to live in the country!"

The two boys had come to a turn in the road almost at the top of the mountain. The horses stood, champing their bits, on a small plateau. The road wound itself about the elevation on either side, stretching out like a long, brown ribbon. To the left, where the highway made its sharpest curve, was a small slope, and beyond this the mountain seemed to have been shorn off with a giant axe, making a sheer drop of some three hundred feet.

Often and often the boys traveled this road, yet each time they reached Bitter Cliff, as it was called, and looked off over that vast stretch of country, they halted, fascinated anew by the beauty of the scene before them.

Down below, the whole range was spread out in a clear-cut panorama. Far in the rear rose the ranch buildings of X Bar X; the mess-house, where Sing Lung, the cook, invented the sometimes strange but always very palatable combinations of food; the high-fenced corral, now almost empty, for the cattle were out on the grazing ground; the ranch house--the home of Roy and Teddy; the "bronco-peeler's" bunkhouse; and the Rocky Run River, like a streak of dull silver, flowing placidly through a border of cottonwoods and willows about half a mile from the ranch house.

To the west, like another section of some great map, lay 8 X 8 ranch, owned by Peter Ball, an old friend and neighbor of Bardwell Manley.

"She's sure some view!" exclaimed Teddy, with a long, indrawn sigh of peace and satisfaction. "Some view! Just as good as that picture of the Great Open Spaces we've got hanging up in the school auditorium."

"All right! All right!" Teddy said easily. "Then it isn't! You can't get me sore," he smiled amiably.

"What isn't?" demanded his brother. "You mean to tell me you'd speak of a picture in our school auditorium in the same breath with--with--" and Roy flung out his arm in a mute and helpless gesture of finality.

"All right, I said! Go easy with that arm of yours! You made General jump then! But look! Isn't the air clear? You can almost count the horses down at 8 X 8!"

"So you can. Well, we'd better be on our way. Dad won't want to be kept waiting. He'll be anxious to climb aboard General again, after a week of walking and flivvers in the city."

"My boy, that's just what I've been thinking. You show remarkable powers of perception. As soon as you can wake up that cayuse of yours, we'll be moving."

A DISHEARTENING LOSS

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