CHAPTER XV—THE ONE WHO CAME BACK
“Frank, do you remember what I did with the glasses?” asked Andy, after he had been looking all around for a minute or two, with a puzzled expression on his face.
Now, Andy was not quite so methodical as his cousin. He had on occasion been known to seem a bit careless, to confess the actual truth. And Frank, knowing how such a habit is apt to grow on anyone unless severely checked, sometimes played a little trick on his chum with the sole idea of impressing things upon his mind, and correcting this fault.
He raised his head at Andy’s question.
“Stop and think, where did you have them last?” he remarked, quietly.
“Oh! say, didn’t I fetch them in last night when we were all looking at the man in the moon, and those stars that Uncle Jethro said were the Belt of Orion the Hunter? I’m dead sure I did, Frank; but they don’t seem to be around here. Do you know where they are? Has anybody borrowed our glasses, Frank? I want them right now, and I want them bad.”
“Look on the table in the living room, and I think you’ll find them,” returned Frank, sitting up. “I saw you drop them there last night, and just wanted to see if you’d remember to fetch them to our room. But what’s up, Andy?”
“You seem to be, just now, old fellow; which I take it is a good sign you’re feeling a whole lot better. Glad to know it, and that’s straight. But about the glasses—why, there’s a lone horseman coming along at a slow lope, as if he didn’t care to hurry one little bit; and I’m wondering who it can be.”
“Perhaps some neighboring rancher coming to ask a lot more fool questions about the cost of biplanes, and whether any puncher who has broken bronchos all his life could learn to herd cattle with one of these up-to-date fliers;” and Frank, getting up from the cot, started to stretch, as though he might indeed be feeling more like himself again, the dizzy feeling gone.
Andy chuckled at what his cousin said; then, being really curious to learn the identity of the approaching horseman, he hurried out of the room.
Frank followed leisurely, and on getting outside found the other with his eyes glued to the small end of the fine glasses, which had come in so useful dozens of times when the Bird boys were whirring through the upper currents, and looking for a place below to land.
“Well, have you made him out?” asked Frank, coming up behind the other.
Andy took the glasses down as he replied:
“That’s as easy as falling off a log, Frank; but I’m wondering what under the sun brings Alkali Joe back home again.”
“Alkali Joe, you say, Andy; why, he went with the bunch this morning!”
“That’s just what he did,” the other went on to say, a little excitedly, “but all the same, that’s Joe, as big as life. And if you notice, Frank, you’ll think it queer that he doesn’t act like they all do when in the saddle, making his pony go like the wind, and whirling his hat around his head.”
“That’s so, Andy, he doesn’t,” remarked Frank, when he had clapped the glasses to his eyes; “fact is, Joe acts like he might be going to a funeral. I never saw a cow puncher come jogging along like that, taking things as easy as he can.”
“Gee! I hope he isn’t bringing us any bad news!” exclaimed Andy.
“Well, now,” Frank remarked, “I never thought of that; but what sort of bad news could Uncle Jethro be sending back; and even that wouldn’t be apt to keep down the bubbling spirits of an average cowboy.”
“Then what do you think can be the matter?” went on the other.
“I rather believe that Joe has had some sort of attack, just like I did; and your uncle has sent him home to be dosed and to lie down, knowing that he’d never be able to keep his seat in the saddle during the wild dash of the round-up.”
“Frank, I wonder if that could be so?” Andy observed, seriously. “P’raps it’s going to be an epidemic and the whole of us may be down with the same, yet. Couldn’t have been locoed by any of that weed they tell us about, could we? If the cows they use for milkers gobbled any of the same, would it affect us, do you think?”
That idea tickled Frank, for he laughed.
“I don’t think we stand in any danger that way, Andy,” he went on to remark, “but anyhow, you’ll know about Joe pretty soon, for he’s coming along on a steady lope, and will be here inside of ten minutes, at most.”
They stood and watched the cow puncher swinging along at that easy gait; it seemed as though the man in the sheepskin chaps might be part and parcel with his pony they moved with such a steady rhythm. And before the time limit which Frank had set expired he had come to a full stop before them.
But Frank had already made a discovery. This was to the effect that one of Joe’s lower limbs seemed to be bound up with a rough bandage.
“What happened, Joe?” he asked, stepping forward to the side of the other, who seemed to have what might be called a sheepish grin on his sunburned face.
“I made a fool play, and got pitched over the head of my pony, when he stepped into a gopher hole. Broke a leg, that’s all; reckons as how I orter broke my fool neck to even her up. Have to get you boys to help me off the hoss. Never knew that to happen before to a feller my size. Mr. Witherspoon, he did her up in fust class shape, and sez he, ‘You get back to the ranch the best way you can, and the boys’ll do what’s needed, with the help of Mrs. Ogden.’ So if you’ll jest give me a hand, mebbe I might hop inside the bunk house.”
“No you don’t,” said impulsive Andy, instantly, “you’ll go right in the main house. Guess I know what Uncle Jethro’d do if he was here. That bunk house may be all right for a well puncher, but with its noisy crowd it’s no place for a man with a broken leg. Now, rest your whole weight on us, Joe; we can stand it, all right. That’s the way; hope it didn’t hurt much when you dropped out of the saddle. Now, use us like you would a pair of crutches, and we’ll get there, step by step.”
The housekeeper and little Becky came running out just then, alarmed by seeing Alkali Joe, who was something of a favorite on the ranch, in dire straits. Even Charley Woo was solicitous about the comfort of the injured man, and hurried in with Mrs. Ogden to get a bed ready in the spare room.
After the boys had gotten the cow puncher in bed, Frank took a look at the way Mr. Witherspoon had bound up the broken leg.
“Why, your uncle must be a regular surgeon, Andy!” he declared, “that’s as neat a job as I ever saw; and done while on the gallop, too, you might say. I take off my hat to Uncle Jethro, let me tell you right now.”
“We all do that, Frank,” said Joe, emphatically. “He’s the most wonderful man in the whole country. There ain’t a puncher that ever worked for him as wouldn’t go through fire and flood for Mr. Witherspoon; well, I take that back, ’cause I reckon they has been one or two as he had to fire, and for mighty good reasons, that’d like to see him lose all his stock through a norther, or else that Mexican cattle rustler.”
Inside half an hour the injured man had been made as comfortable as possible; he himself said it was the greatest snap that had ever befallen him, and that he hadn’t lain between soft white sheets since he was a kid at home in the East. Frank thought that old memories were being stirred in Joe’s mind; perhaps, after all, his accident might work for his good, in that it would cause him to recollect that there was an old mother or father somewhere east of the Mississippi, whom he had almost forgotten, and who would be wild with joy if only a letter came from the boy who had gone away from home so many years ago, and in the excitement of his life in the Southwest shut out all thoughts of the past from his heart.
Frank and Andy after having lunch sat outside where the shadows were thickest at this sweltering time of day. There could always be found a gentle puff of air at this favorite place; and lounging in a hammock, while Andy worked at some of his prints, Frank watched a lone white cloud that was drifting across the azure sky above.
Perhaps his thoughts too were turning back to other scenes as he lay there. It might be that the sight of that single fleecy fog-like vapor caused him to remember events that were connected with other scenes in the lively experiences which had come to the Bird boys while harnessing their chariot to the clouds.
“What you thinking about, Frank?” Andy asked, suddenly, after he had been watching the face of his cousin for a full minute without the other knowing it.
“Why, I was trying to picture rough Alkali Joe in the past,” replied Frank. “What he said about not having slept between sheets since he was a kid, made me think. Did you see that picture that fell out of his pocket when we took off his Mexican jacket, the one he won at the raffle they told us about?”
“Sure I did; but that wasn’t Joe’s best girl, Frank; when I picked it up and put it back I saw that it was the face of an elderly woman.”
“All the same it ought to be Joe’s best girl; because I reckon it’s his mother. And I remember him saying one day that he didn’t know whether there was anybody alive in his family or not, because he hadn’t written a letter home for six whole years. And Andy, I was just thinking, that while he’s on his back there, it might be a good time to get talking to Joe, and see if he wouldn’t think to write. If his mother’s alive still, I reckon she’d be happy to hear from him again.”
“Frank, that’s just like you for all the world; always wanting to do somebody a good turn. Now, that wouldn’t have struck me at all; but since you’ve mentioned it, I’m going to watch my chance to get talking about home and all such things, and see if I can’t wake Joe up. He’s a good-hearted fellow, if he is tough. But by the way you’re getting back to your old self, I think the chances look good for our making that start tomorrow in the biplane.”
“It does look that way, if nothing happens between now and then to break up our plans,” replied the other. “Doctor Witherspoon has certainly knocked that dizziness out of my system, and I’m as well as ever now. Fact is, there’s a little job connected with the motor that ought to be attended to, to put it in first-class condition, and when the sun gets lower down, so that a fellow can breathe better, why I think I’ll get busy.”
“And me to help you,” chirped Andy, promptly, “I’m about done with this printing business anyway. Say, what d’ye think of this lot of pictures? Don’t it give you a cold chill just to look at that old grizzly scattering things around at the mouth of his den? And every time I glimpse Buckskin hanging on to that log bridge with his fingers and teeth, trying to climb back again after losing his balance, it makes me shake all over, I want to laugh so hard. A pretty good lot all told, Frank.”
“That’s what they are; Andy, and the folks at home will have a fine time looking them over. You’ll be able to illustrate nearly every big yarn you have to tell; and the round-up tomorrow ought to just fill out the bill. But I can make use of you, if you care to come over with me to the hangar. An air has started up, you notice, and it doesn’t feel quite so hot,” and accompanied by his cousin, after Andy had put his prints and trays away in the house, Frank sauntered leisurely over to where stood the new shed, which had been built to shelter the precious aeroplane wonder.