Overland Red | Page 7

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 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