Overland Red | Page 7

to myself talk. You
said that speech like takin' two turns round the bandstand tryin' to catch
yourself, and then climbin' a post and steppin' on your own shoulders
so you could see the parade down the street. Do you get that?" And he
sighed heavily. "Say! These here sandwiches is great!"
"Will you have one?" asked Louise, gracefully proffering the olives.
"Seein' it's you. Thanks. I always take two. The second one for a chaser
to kill the taste of the first. It's the only way to eat 'em--if you know
where to stop. They do taste like somethin' you done and are sorry for
afterwards, don't they?"
"Were you ever sorry for anything?" asked the boy, feeling a little
piqued that he had been left out of the conversation.
"I was raised in the West, myself," growled the tramp, scowling. "But
that's a good pony you got, Miss. That your saddle too?"
"Yes."
"You rope any?"
"A little. How did you know?"
"Rawhide cover to the saddle-horn is wore with a rope," said Overland,
helping himself to a second sandwich.
Then the tramp and the girl, oblivious to everything else, discussed
rawhide riatas as compared with the regular three-strand stock rope, or
lariat,--center-fire, three quarter, and double rigs, swell forks and old
Visalia trees, spade bits and "U" curbs,--neither willing, even lightly, to
admit the other's superiority of chosen rig.
The boy Collie listened intently and a trifle jealously. Overland Red

and the girl had found a common ground of interest that excluded him
utterly. The boy itched for an excuse to make the girl speak to him,
even look at him.
The sandwiches gone, Louise proffered Overland tobacco and papers.
Actual tears stood in the ex-cowboy's eyes. "Smoke! Me?" he
exclaimed. "I was dyin' for it. I'd do time for you!"
Then in that boyish spirit that never quite leaves the range-rider,
Overland Red took the tobacco and papers and cleverly rolled a
cigarette with one hand. In the other he held his battered felt hat. His
eyes had a far-away look as he reached forward and lighted his
cigarette at the fire. "I was settin' on a crazy bronc', holdin' his head up
so he couldn't go to buckin'--outside a little old adobe down in Yuma,
Arizona, then," he explained, glancing at the girl. "Did you ever drift
away complete, like that, jest from some little old trick to make you
dream?"
CHAPTER IV
"ANY ROAD, AT ANY TIME, FOR ANYWHERE"
The boy Collie took the empty tomato-can and went for water with
which to put out the fire.
Louise and Overland Red gazed silently at the youthful figure crossing
the meadow. The same thought was in both their hearts--that the boy's
chance in life was still ahead of him. Something of this was in the girl's
level gray eyes as she asked, "Why did you come up here, so far from
the town and the railroad?"
"We generally don't," replied Overland Red. "We ain't broke. Collie's
got some money. We got out of grub from comin' up here. We come up
to see the scenery. I ain't kiddin'; we sure did! 'Course, speakin' in
general, a free lunch looks better to me any day than the Yosemite--but
that's because I need the lunch. You got to be fed up to it to enjoy
scenery. Now, on the road we're lookin' at lots of it every day, but we
ain't seein' much. But give me a good feed and turn me loose in the Big

Show Pasture where the Bridal Veil is weepin' jealous of the Cathedral
Spires, and the Big Trees is too big to be jealous of anything, where
Adam would 'a' felt old the day he was born--jest take off my hobbles
and turn me out to graze there, and feed, and say, lady, I scorn the idea
of doin' anything but decomposin' my feelin's and smokin' and writin'
po'try. I been there! There's where I writ the song called 'Beat It, Bo.'
Mebby you heard of it."
"No, I should like to hear it."
The fire steamed and spluttered as Collie extinguished it. Overland Red
handed the tobacco and papers to him.
"About comin' up this here trail?" he resumed as the boy stretched
beside them on the warm earth. "Well, Miss, it was four years ago that I
picked up Collie here at Albuquerque. His pa died sudden and left the
kid to find out what a hard map this ole world is. We been across, from
Frisco to New York, twice since then, and from Seattle to San Diego on
the side, and 'most everywhere in California, it bein' my native State
and the best of the lot. You see, Collie, he's gettin' what you might call
a liberated education, full of