Dust rose from the corral. Now Jeff's ostensible errand to the West Side had been the search for strays; three days before he had prudently been three days' ride farther to the north. The reluctance with which he had turned back southward was justified by the fact that this critical afternoon found him within striking distance of Arcadia--striking distance, that is, should he care for a bit of hard riding. This was exactly what Jeff had fought against all along. So, when he saw the dust, he loped up.

It was as he had feared. A band of horses was in the waterpen; among them a red-roan head he knew--Copperhead, of Pringle's mount; confirmed runaway. Jeff shut the gate. For the first time that day, he permitted himself a discreet glance eastward to Arcadia.

"Three days," he said bitterly, while Gra.s.shopper thrust his eager muzzle into the water-trough--"three days I have braced back my feet and slid, like a yearlin' at a brandin' bee--and look at me now! Oh, Copperhead, you darned old fool, see what you done now!"

In this morose mood he went to the house. There was no one at home. A note was tacked on the door.

Gone to Plomo. Back in two or three days. Beef hangs under platform on windmill tower. When you get it, oil the mill.

Books and deck of cards in box under bed. Don't leave fire in stove when you go.

GENE BAIRD.

N. B.--Feed the cat.

Jeff built a fire in the stove and unsaddled the weary Gra.s.shopper. He found some corn, which he put into a woven-gra.s.s _morral_ and hung on Gra.s.shopper's nose. He went to the waterpen, roped out Copperhead and shut him in a side corral. Then he let the bunch go. They strained through the gate in a mad run, despite shrill and frantic remonstrance from Copperhead.

"Jeff," said Jeff soberly, "are you going to be a d.a.m.ned fool all your life? That girl doesn't care anything about you. She hasn't thought of you since. You stay right here and read the pretty books. That's the place for you."

This advice was sound and wise beyond cavil. So Jeff took it valiantly.

After supper he hobbled Gra.s.shopper and took off the nosebag. Then he went to the back room in pursuit of literature.

Have I leave for a slight digression, to commit a long-delayed act of justice--to correct a grievous wrong? Thank you.

We hear much of Mr. Andrew Carnegie and His Libraries, the Hall of Fame, the Little Red Schoolhouse, the Five-Foot Shelf, and the World's Best Books. A singular thing is that the most effective bit of philanthropy along these lines has gone unrecorded of a thankless world. This shall no longer be.

Know, then, that once upon a time a certain soulless corporation, rather in the tobacco trade, placed in each package of tobacco a coupon, each coupon redeemable by one paper-bound book. Whether they were moved by remorse to this action or by sordid hidden purposes of their own, or, again, by pure, disinterested and fa.r.s.eeing love of their kind, is not yet known; but the results remain. There were three hundred and three volumes on that list, mostly--but not altogether--fiction. And each one was a cla.s.sic. Cla.s.sics are cheap. They are not copyrighted. Could I but know the anonymous benefactor who enrolled that glorious company, how gladly would I drop a leaf on his bier or a cherry in his bitters!

Thus it was that, in one brief decade, the cowboys, with others, became comparatively literate. Cowboys all smoked. Doubtless that was a chief cause contributory to making them the wrecks they were. It destroyed their physique; it corroded and ate away their will power--leaving them seldom able to work over nineteen hours a day, except in emergencies; p.r.o.ne to abandon duty in the face of difficulty or danger, when human effort, raised to the nth power, could do no more--all things considered, the most efficient men of their hands on record.

Cowboys all smoked: and the most deep-seated instinct of the human race is to get something for nothing. They got those books. In due course of time they read those books. Some were slow to take to it; but when you stay at lonely ranches, when you are left afoot until the water-holes dry up, so you may catch a horse in the waterpen--why, you must do something. The books were read. Then, having acquired the habit, they bought more books. Since the three hundred and three were all real books, and since the cowboys had been previously uncorrupted of predigested or sterilized fiction, or by "gift," "uplift" and "helpful"

books, their composite taste had become surprisingly good, and they bought with discriminating care. Nay, more. A bookcase follows books; a bookcase demands a house; a house needs a keeper; a housekeeper needs everything. Hence alfalfa--houseplants--slotless tables--bankbooks. The chain which began with yellow coupons ends with Christmas trees. In some proudest niche in the Hall of Fame a grateful nation will yet honor that hitherto unrecognized educator, Front de Boeuf.[A]

[Footnote A: "_Bull Durham._"]

Jeff pawed over the tattered yellow-backed volumes in profane discontent. He had read them all. Another box was under the bed, behind the first. Opening it, he saw a tangled ma.s.s of clothing, tumbled in the bachelor manner; with the rest, a much-used football outfit--canvas jacket, sweater, padded trousers, woolen stockings, rubber noseguard, shinguards, ribbed shoes--all complete; for 'Gene Baird was fullback of the El Paso eleven.

Jeff segregated the gridiron wardrobe with hasty hands. His eye brightened; he spoke in an awed and almost reverent voice.

"I ain't mostly superst.i.tious, but this looks like a leading. First, I'm here; second, Copperhead's here; third, no one else is here; and, for the final miracle, here's a costume made to my hand. Thirty-five miles.

Ten o'clock, if I hurry. H'm!

"'When first I put this uniform on'--how did that go? I'm forgetting all my songs. Getting old, I guess."

Rejecting the heavy shoes, as unmeet for waxed floors, and the shinguards, he rolled the rest of the uniform in his slicker and tied it behind his saddle. Then he rubbed his chin.

"Huh! That's a true saying, too. I am getting old. Youth turns to youth.

Buck up, Jeff, you old fool! Have some pride about you and just a little old horse-sense."

Yet he unhobbled Gra.s.shopper, who might then be trusted to find his way to Rainbow in about three days. He went to the corral and tossed a rope on snorting Copperhead. "No; I won't go!" he said, as he slipped on the bridle. "Just to unc.o.c.k old Copperhead, I'll make a little horse-ride to Hospital Springs and look through the stock." He threw on the saddle with some difficulty--Copperhead was fat and frisky. "She don't want to see you, Jeff--an old has-been like you! No, no; I'd better not go. I won't! There, if I didn't leave that football stuff on the saddle! I'll take it off. It might get lost. Whoa, Copperhead!"

Copperhead, however, declined to whoa on any terms. His eyes bulged out; he reared, he pawed, he snorted, he bucked, he squealed, he did anything but whoa. Exasperated, Jeff caught the bridle by the cheek piece and swung into the saddle. After a few preliminaries in the pitching line, Jeff started bravely for Hospital Springs.

It was destined that this act of renunciation should be thwarted.

Copperhead stopped and dug his feet in the ground as if about to take root. Jeff dug the spurs home. With an agonized bawl, Copperhead made a creditable ascension, shook himself and swapped ends before he hit the ground again. "_Wooh!_" he said. His nose was headed now for Arcadia; he followed his nose, his roan flanks fanned vigorously with a doubled rope.

"Headstrong, stubborn, unmanageable brute! Oh, well, have it your own way then, you old fool! You'll be sorry!" Copperhead leaped out to the loosened rein. "This is just plain kidnapping!" said Jeff.

Kidnapped and kidnapper were far out on the plain as night came on.

Arcadia road stretched dimly to the east; the far lights of La Luz flashed through the leftward dusk; straight before them was a glint and sparkle in the sky, faint, diffused, wavering; beyond, a warm and mellow glow broke the blackness of the mountain wall, where the lights of low-hidden Arcadia beat up against Rainbow Rim.

Jeff was past his first vexation; he sang as he rode:

"There was ink on her thumb when I kissed her hand, And she whispered: 'If you should die I'd write you an epitaph, gloomy and grand!'

'Time enough for that!' says I.

"Keep a-movin here, Copperhead! Time fugits right along. You will play hooky, will you? 'I'm going to be a horse!'"

CHAPTER V.

THE MASKERS

"For Ellinor (her Christian name was Ellinor) Had twenty-seven different kinds of h.e.l.l in her."

--RICHARD HOVEY.

It lacked little of the eleventh hour when the football player reached the ballroom--last comer to the revels. A bandage round his head and a rubber noseguard, which also hid his mouth, served for a mask, eked out by crisscrossed strips of courtplaster. One arm was in a sling--for stage purposes only.

As he limped through the door, Diogenes hurried to meet him, held up his lantern, peered hopefully into the battered face and shook his disappointed head. "Stung again!" muttered Diogenes.

Jeff lisped in numbers which fully verified the cynic's misgiving.

"7--11--4--11--44!" he announced jerkily. This was strictly in character and also excused him from entangling talk, leaving him free to search the whirl of dancers.

A bulky Rough Rider volunteered his help. He fixed a gleaming eyegla.s.s on his nose and politely offered Jeff a Big Stick by way of a crutch.

"Hit the line hard!" he barked. He bit the words off with a prize-bulldog effect. He had fine teeth.

Jeff waved him off. "16--2--1!" he proclaimed controversially. He felt his spirits sinking, with a growing doubt of his ability to identify the Only One, and was impatient of interruption. He kept his slow and watchful way down the floor.

Topsy broke away from her partner and stopped Jeff's crippled progress.

Her short hair, braided to a dozen tight and tiny pigtails, bristled away in all directions.

"Laws, young marsta', you suhtenly does look puny!" she said. Then she clutched at her knee. "_Aie!_" she t.i.ttered, as a loose red stocking dropped flappingly to her ankle. Pray do not be shocked. The effect was startling; but a black stocking, decorously tight and smooth, was beneath the red one. Jeff's mathematics were not equal to the strain of adequate comment. Topsy dived to the rescue. "Got a string?" she giggled, as she hitched the fallen stocking back to place. "I cain't fix this good nohow!"