Waifs and Strays, etc | Page 8

in trying to "fix up."
~Well, ef I must say it, Sam," she drawled, "you look jest like one of
them hayseeds in the picture papers, 'stead of a free and independent
sheepman of the State o' Texas."
Sam climbed awkwardly into the saddle.
"You're the one ought to be 'shamed to say so," he replied hotly. "'Stead
of 'tendin' to a man's clothes you're al'ays setting around a-readin' them
billy-by-dam yaller-back novils."
"Oh, shet up and ride along," said Mrs. Webber, with a little jerk at the
handles of her chair; "you always fussin' 'bout my readin'. I do a-plenty;
and I'll read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like a varmint, never

seein' nor hearin' nothin', and what other 'musement kin I have? Not in
listenin' to you talk, for it's complain, complain, one day after another.
Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace."
Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and "shoved" down the
wagon trail that connected his ranch with the old, open Government
road. It was eight o'clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He
should have started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only
eighteen miles away, but there was a road for only three miles of the
distance. He had ridden over there once with one of the Half-Moon
cowpunchers, and he had the direction well-defined in his mind.
Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and
struck down the arroyo of the Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch of
smiling valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite
grass; and Mexico consumed those few miles quickly with his long,
easy lope. Again, upon reaching Wild Duck Waterhole, must he
abandon well-defined ways. He turned now to his right up a little hill,
pebble-covered, upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny prickly
pear and chaparral. At the summit of this he paused to take his last
general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through
brakes and thickets of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part
seeing scarcely farther than twenty yards in any direction, choosing his
way by the prairie-dweller's instinct, guided only by an occasional
glimpse of a far distant hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or the
position of the sun.
Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat that
lies between the Quintanilla and the Piedra.
In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual
confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was
anxious to redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the
tortuous labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master's sureness
of the route had failed his horse had divined the fact. There were no
hills now that they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They
came upon a few, but so dense and interlaced was the brush that
scarcely could a rabbit penetrate the mass. They were in the great,
lonely thicket of the Frio bottoms.
It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheepman to be lost for a day
or a night. The thing often happened. It was merely a matter of missing

a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blankets on a
soft mattress of mesquite grass. But in Sam's case it was different. He
had never been away from his ranch at night. Marthy was afraid of the
country--afraid of Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, even of sheep. So
he had never left her alone.
It must have been about four in the afternoon when Sam's conscience
awoke. He was limp and drenched, rather from anxiety than the heat or
fatigue. Until now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to the
Frio crossing and the Chapman ranch. He must have crossed it at some
dim part of it and ridden beyond. If so he was now something like fifty
miles from home. If he could strike a ranch-- a camp--any place where
he could get a fresh horse and inquire the road, he would ride all night
to get back to Marthy and the kid.
So, I have hinted, Sam was seized bv remorse. There was a big lump in
his throat as he thought of the cross words he had spoken to his wife.
Surely it was hard enough for her to live in that horrible country
witnout having to bear the burden of his abuse. He cursed himself
grimly, and felt a sudden flush of shame that over-glowed the summer
heat as he remembered the many times he had flouted and railed at her
because she had a liking for reading fiction.
"Ther only so'ce