Overland Red | Page 8

big ideas--no dinky stuff. Yes, I picked
him up at Albuquerque, a half-starved, skinny little cuss that was cryin'
and beggin' me to get him out of there."
"Albuquerque?" queried Louise.
"Uhuh. Later, comin' acrost the Mojave, we got thrun off a freight by
mistake for a couple of sewin'-machines that we was ridin' with to
Barstow, so the tickets on the crates said. That was near Daggett, by a
water-tank. It was hotter than settin' on a stove in Death Valley at 12
o'clock Sunday noon. We beat it for the next town, afoot. Collie
commenced to give out. He was pretty tender and not strong. I lugged
him some and he walked some. He was talkin' of green grass and
cucumbers in the ice-box and ice-cream and home and the Maumee
River, and a whole lot of things you can't find in the desert. Well, I got
him to his feet next mornin'. We had some trouble, and was detained a
spell in Barstow after that. They couldn't prove nothin', so they let us
go. Then Collie got to talkin' again about a California road that wiggled

up a hill and through a cañon, and had one of these here ole Mission
bells where it lit off for the sky-ranch. Funny, for he was never in
California then. Mebby it was the old post-card he got at Albuquerque.
You see his pa bought it for him 'cause he wanted it. He was only a kid
then. Collie, he says it's the only thing his pa ever did buy for him, and
so he kept it till it was about wore out from lookin' at it. But considerin'
how his pa acted, I guess that was about all Collie needed to remember
him by. Anyhow, he dreamed of that road, and told me so much about
it that I got to lookin' for it too. I knowed of the old El Camino Real
and the bells, so we kept our eye peeled for that particular dream road,
kind of for fun. We found her yesterday."
"What, this? The road to our ranch?"
"Uhuh. Collie, he said so the minute we got in that cañon, Moonstone
Cañon, you said. We're restin' up and enjoyin' the scenery. We need the
rest, for only last week we resigned from doin' a stunt in a
movin'-picture outfit. They wanted somebody to do native sons. We
said we didn't have them kind of clothes, but the foreman of the outfit
says we'd do fine jest as we was. It was fierce--and, believe me, lady, I
been through some! I been through some!
"They was two others in checker clothes and dip-lid caps, and they
wasn't native sons. They acted like sons of--I'd hate to tell you what,
Miss--to the chief dollie in the show. They stole her beau and tied him
to the S. P. tracks; kind of loose, though. She didn't seem to care. She
jest stood around chewin' gum and rollin' her lamps at the head guy.
Then the movin'-picture express, which was a retired switch-engine
hooked onto a Swede observation car, backs down on Adolphus, and
we was to rush up like--pretty fast, and save his life.
"She was a sassy little chicken with blond feathers and a three-quarter
rig skirt. She had a regular strawberry-ice-cream-soda complexion, and
her eyes looked like a couple of glass alleys with electric lights in 'em. I
wondered if she took 'em out at night to go to sleep or only switched
off the current. Anyhow, up she rides in a big reddish kind of
automobile and twists her hands round her wrists and looks up the track
and down the track and sees us and says, 'Oh, w'ich way has he went?

W'ich way did Disgustus Adolphus beat it to?' And chewin' gum right
on top of that, too. It was tough on us, Miss, but we needed the money.
"'Bout the eighteenth time she comes coughin' up in that old one-lung
machine,--to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',--why, I
gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such
monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if
he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap
turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie,
the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we was actin' natural,
jest restin'. I got sick and tired. The next time up coughs that
crippled-up automobile with the mumps on its front tire, and she says,
'Where, oh, where has he went?' I ups and says, 'Crazy, Miss, and can
you blame him?'
"She didn't see no joke in that, so the boss he fired us. He wasn't goin'