The Nervous Wreck

Contents

CHAPTER I. Game BuT NERvous . . « Il. THe Two-sy-NorHInG Prairigz III. “Ir You Start, FintsHo—”. . [ae CET aS Se eee ae V. Tur Nervous GUNMAN . .

VI. An Act oF ProvMENCE ..

NLS DING OUT) | ee GG IX. Tue Four-in-One Banpvir .

Chapter I Game But Nervous

AD MORGAN stood with his shoulders against the top rail of the corral fence, apparently asleep on his feet. The sun had

a persuasive warmth, which was good for kinks in the system. He never could decide whether it melted or baked the twinges out of him; but he knew it for an emollient of power and virtue. His figure dropped somnolently. His pipe hung loosely from a corner of his mouth. His eyes were half closed.

But Dad Morgan was not asleep, nor were his half-closed eyes idle. They were watching two riders descend the slope on the far side of the wide coulée in which the ranch buildings sprawled. There was a piebald horse ridden by a girl and a sorrel ridden by aman. They were still somewhat distant for disclosure of these details, but Dad Morgan knew who was coming. The pace of the riders was a walk, and Dad understood the meaning of it.

“T expect he’s got himself all chafed up,” he

I mused. ‘But he'll put it on his nerves; see if he don’t. Nothin’ ever happens to him regular and natural, except maybe swearin’.”

The riders were out upon a green level, and the piebald horse broke into an easy lope. The sorrel followed, then checked and settled down to a restless walk. The girlin front turned in her saddle, glanced backward, brought her mount to a stop and waited. When the sorrel had come abreast the two horses walked again in the direction of the ranch. Dad Morgan grinned, shifted his position against the fence and began filling his pipe.

He was smoking lazily when the riders came to a pause at the corral gate. The girl swung off with an easy sweep and waved a gauntleted hand.

% ‘Hello, Dad.”

“Howdy, Sally? Howdy, Wreck?”

The man on the sorrel made no answer, for he was engaged in a task. With both hands gripping the pommel, he raised himself in the stirrups, tightened his lips, and scowled. Then, very slowly, he fetched his right leg across the sorrel’s back. As he did this he flattened himself forward until the pommel burrowed into,the pit of his stomach and his arms gripped the sorrel’s neck in a tense embrace. Then he slid crabwise to the ground. He stood there for several seconds, looking at his legs, which had retained the posture necessary to enclose the barrel of a horse. Slowly he straightened them, one after the other. There was a groan in his look, but he did not give it speech.

He turned a savage and challenging eye in the direction of Dad Morgan.

“T’m fine,” he said.

“*You’re lookin’ real well,’’ observed Dad. ‘Had an idea you might of got lamed up some, but I can’t say as I see any signs of it.”

The rider of the sorrel stumped stiffly forward half a dozen steps.

“Who—me? Lame? What would I get lame for?”

“Come to think of it, Wreck, I’m durned if I know. I reckon anybody who can set on a flivver for fifteen hundred miles, maybe sixteen hundred, is kind of acclimated. Anyhow, the sheriff says—”

Dad Morgan broke off at a slight but peremptory gesture from the girl, who had opened the corral gate and was accelerating the piebald horse through it with a gentle flick of her quirt.

She was a free, loose-limbed girl, brown in the cheeks and neck, clear and serene of eye—a girl of the open spaces and the rolling range. The wide calm of the big country somehow found its expression in Sally Morgan. But the look that went with the gesture, while it never broke the calm, checked Dad as surely as though it had been an order from Ma herself. /

The rider of the sorrel watched his mount follow the piebald into the corral, then straightened his shoulders, set his teeth and stepped off briskly in the direction of the house. He stumbled once, pulled himself together with a wince and hastened his step.

Dad watched him until his figure disappeared through the doorway.

“Now, I’m wonderin’ which nerves—”

Sally stopped him again. ‘Let him alone, Dad. He’s game, anyhow.”

“T ain’t sayin’ anything he can hear, Sally. I’m just wonderin’ which nerves is responsible. We ain’t allowed to lay it on the sorrel, or on the saddle, or on any of the failin’s of human flesh. It’s got to be nerves or nothin’.”

“Well, don’t plague him about it. If he wants to blame it on his nerves, why should we care? And I don’t think he likes to have you call him ‘Wreck.’ ”

Dad viewed his daughter with a glance of surprise.

“Fle ain’t ever said so,” he remarked.

“And would you expect him to? He’s a guest.”

““He’s payin’ eight dollars a week to Ma. [I ain’t sayin’ we asked him for it. Ma didn’t want to take nothin’. But when a man’s payin’ he’s got the rights of free and unlimited speech. And if he don’t like—”

““He’s a guest, just the same,” repeated Sally. “And so long as he stays here we’re under an obligation to treat him right.”

“I’m treatin’ him all right, ain’t 1? There ain’t a single thing about life in these wild and irreverent parts I haven’t told him, any time he asked me. Why, all I been doin’ the past two weeks is easin’ education into him.”

Sally smiled.

“And I’ve picked up considerable about nerves, which sort of makes it an even split,” added Dad. “He don’t mind my callin’ him ‘Wreck.’ If he was goin’ to squeal about it, why would he lay claim to bein’ such? You heard him say it. ‘I’m a nervous wreck,’ he says, sort of proud.”

“Oh, well, don’t rub it in, Dad.”

‘Ain’t rubbin’ it in. Ain’t goin’ to,” Dad looked up suddenly. “Did you say something about his bein’ game?”

Sally smiled again and her glance wandered to the crest of the grassy slope and seemed to go beyond it.

“It was awfully funny,” she said, “but I was scared for a minute. We rode over as far as the second ridge; I wanted him to see a real piece of range country. He wouldn’t admit he’d never been on a horse before. But he did pretty well, although the sorrel was getting nervous from the way his mouth was pulled.”

“It’s catchin’, maybe.”

“Perhaps. At any rate, we were standing there, right close to the edge, when a bee lit—on the sorrel. You know what happened. The way he went over that horse’s head you’d have thought he’d learned to fly. It carried him over the edge, too, and he went down about twenty feet before he grabbed hold of a bush and stopped himself. I thought he was going all the way.”

“I expect you roped him?” observed Dad.

‘Fe wouldn’t let me. He got mad as fury when he saw I was going to. He said he guessed he could climb back without any help, and he did. And he wouldn’t let me catch the sorrel, either. It must have taken him twenty minutes at least. And then it took him another five minutes to get on. I can’t describe exactly the way he did it. It was like shinning up. Of course, he was pretty well scratched and mussed, and his temper was in a frightful state.”

‘““Any language?” asked Dad.

‘No; he was too busy, I think. Coming home he nearly fell off twice, trying to ease himself in the saddle. But he never squealed. And he says he’s going out riding to-morrow morning. He won't make it, though; he’ll be too lame to move.”

Dad nodded with understanding. Any dude would be too lame to move under equal circumstances. Yet he was not entirely certain that the Wreck would fail to move, even though too lame; for he had a way of playing the game according to his own rules.

“Tl put on a house dress, I believe,” said Sally.

“Sure,” agreed Dad. ‘‘Bob’s here.”

She paused for an instant, a look of surprise in her eyes.

‘When did he come? I didn’t expect him until to-morrow morning.”

‘Fle came a while back. He ain’t goin’ to be able to go with you to-morrow, as near as I can make out.”

Sally frowned involuntarily, then shrugged and continued her march toward the house. Dad settled back against the fence and resumed his musing. Sally would be mighty disappointed if she did not get to the train to-morrow; she was all packed and expectant. But he knew that she would not say very much; she was not much of a hand at complaining. Still, it seemed, even to Dad, that it was too bad to postpone everything right at the last minute. He would not mind riding over with her himself, but it was too long a trail for people with twinges and kinks. Sometimes he wished the ranch was a little mite nearer the railroad. But Sally never even complained about that.

There had been no railroad at all when Dad Morgan came into the range country; at least, none within a couple of hundred miles or more. Now there was a main line north of them, only about thirty-five miles on a good trail. It seemed very near to Dad when it first came; but when Sally began going to school in the East, and there were seasonal goings and comings, with the necessity of maintaining communications between city and ranch, Dad realized that it was not very close, after all. So far as he and Ma were concerned, that made no difference. But Sally had grown up, and she had an education, and she knew the ways of places far beyond the range, and—well, Dad understood. Still, even Sally . was quite satisfied with the range country, provided she was not quarantined there.

It was not a very large ranch that Dad Morgan surveyed through half-squinted eyes, nor was it a busy one. The air of idleness was everywhere about it; idleness, but not decay. It was simply a ranch taking a long and honorable rest. The busy years were behind it. They had been busy indeed when Dad Morgan and Ma were young and when, coming out of Kentucky, they staked their tiny fortune in a land so big that it gripped them with awe. Time passed, cattle went to market and the ranch prospered. There were others who came into the country and there were new brands on the range. So imperceptibly that he scarcely sensed the change, Dad slid out of the competition. He had all he needed; let the newcomers do the striving. And now there were only a few head bearing the Bar-M brand and scarcely enough work for a single hand.

“T aint got any kick,” mused Dad. “I got mine; enough, anyhow. Let the rest of ’em hustle. They haven’t come into their rheumatism yet. Only I’m sure sorry that Sally’s goin’ to miss her train.”

So was Sally. But, true to Dad’s mental prediction, she did not say much about it, even to Bob Wells, who had ridden twenty miles to explain and would have to ride back again that night. Bob was the sheriff. He was other things besides sheriff; things that were much more important in a material way. He had cattle of his own, and a couple of mining claims that promised, and he owned a general store at the county seat. Dad Morgan said there wasn’t a more likely young hustler in all Montana than Bob Wells. And when Bob took to calling on Sally, Dad felt that the future was working itself out in a proper and prosperous fashion.

As nearly as Dad could figure it out, in the absence of direct information, Sally was going East to see about things for her trousseau. Anyhow, the sheriff seemed to be certain enough about it, and Sally made no denial. She had known Bob Wells since she first rode her own pony, as a little wild thing raised on the Bar-M, dnd she did not encounter any surprise in the idea of marrying him. It was all very natural and according to the custom of the country.

“I reckon,” said Dad, as he glanced up from his supper, “that Bob’s got more to lose by your missin’ that train than maybe anybody else around these parts.”

The sheriff winked as he reached for the coffee pot and helped himself to another cup. He was a large, healthy and well-pleased young man, with a slightly boisterous air, even in moments of repose.

“Bob can’t help it,” said Sally, promptly, ignoring her father’s allusion. ‘He has a sheriff’s job down at Fisher and he has to be back there to-night. It really doesn’t make any difference if I wait a few days, only— Well, Milly Field is going to be in St. Paul, and I thought I might spend a day with her before I went on to Chicago. But I can see Milly some other time; maybe I can get her to come out here.”

Ma Morgan nodded, but made no comment. Ma was never very talkative; ordinarily she contented herself with confirmatory nods, the opinions and conclusions of others usually being sufficient for her.

“Tf it wasn’t for the fact that there’d be no way of getting the horse back, I’d ride over alone,” said Sally.

“Noo chance,” declared the sheriff.

“Pooh! Why not? Why, Bob, I’ve done it. I rode as far as the railroad last summer and I know every inch of the trail. And it’s only about thirty-five miles.”

“Well, I wouldn’t let you ride alone. Besides, there’ll have to be a pack horse to take your grips. You can’t manage everything, Sally.”

Sally thought she could, and she felt a faint resentment at the contrary implication. But she had no intention of arguing it with Bob; he was always positive about things.

“Did you want to go to the railroad to-morrow?”

It was the Wreck speaking. All through supper he had been eating with a silent voraciousness that caused Dad Morgan to wonder if there were any nerves in the stomach.

“Why, I'd planned to go,” said Sally, “but it seems we can’t make it.”

“Certainly we can make it,” declared the Wreck, with sudden asperity in his voice. ‘Why not? I'll take you.”

The sheriff laid down his knife and stared. The Wreck never failed to amuse him, but this was their third meeting. If Bob Wells had nerves of his own he was unaware of their existence. He had heard of city folks with nerves, but the Wreck was his first personal encounter with such. So the Wreck

GAME BUT NERVOUS II would take her to the train, would he? The sheriff glanced at Dad and grinned.

“On a horse?” he inquired.

“In a machine,” answered the Wreck, shortly.

“Oh-h-h!” It was spoken with gusty good nature, but it carried a volume of scorn. So the Wreck thought, at any rate, for he glared through his horn-rimmed glasses and pushed his plate back.

“Want me to drive you over in the machine?” he demanded, switching his glance to Sally. He flung it out as a sort of sweeping challenge that included even Ma.

“Why, it would be lovely,” said Sally.

The sheriff took plenty of time to laugh. He rather expected Dad to join, but Dad merely remained quizzical. Ma and Sally were watching the Wreck.

“Yes, it sure would be lovely,” said the sheriff, easing down for speech. “Going to put a flivver over the trail, eh? What are you figuring to do? Run her on two wheels?”

The Wreck made an irritable movement of his shoulders and ignored him. He was still looking at Sally.

“Tsn’t there a road?” he asked.

“Tt’s a road part of the way,” said Sally. “A good part of the way. Yes, it is, Bob; you can drive a wagon over it.”

‘And what do you do when you come to the mountain?” inquired the sheriff, smiling. “I haven’t noticed any road there yet.”

“But it connects up with some other road before you get that far; I’m certain of it.” Sally was getting interested. ‘‘And the other road must go somewhere. There were some people from the north who came through in a car only last spring.”

“Well, it’s a long, roundabout road, even if you located it,” said the sheriff. “I know the people you mean. They had a car.”

Still the Wreck ignored him.

“Is it country like this around here?” he demanded. ‘All open and plain sailing?”

“There’s plenty of open country,” answered Sally, with a faint smile.

The Wreck amused Sally, just as he did the sheriff. But she found something more than amusement in him. There were times when his assurance fairly startled her. Besides, she still liked the idea of making her train.

“Road part way and open country the rest of the way,” observed the Wreck. ‘Anything the matter with that? You don’t hear me yelling.”

“Tl hear you yelling if you try to make it in a flivver,” remarked the sheriff, and he coupled another laugh with it.

Sally was musing over it, and found the idea slightly exciting.

“Bob, I don’t see any reason why it can’t be done,” she said, slowly. ‘And if we had to turn back, why there’s no harm, anyhow.”

“Turn back!’ echoed the Wreck. “What for? You want to catch a train, don’t you? Well, when

I start catching trains, I catch "em. Want to go?”

“Why, {Same

Sally looked at the sheriff. He shook his head authoritatively.

“Can’t be done, Sally. I know what I’m talking about. And besides—”

He paused to observe the Wreck, who had pushed his chair back from the table and risen. Sally nibbled at her lip; there were times when she wished Bob would not be so sweepingly authoritative.

“Any time to-morrow that you’re ready, I’m ready,” said the Wreck, regarding her with a stare that was almost belligerent. “And anybody who tells you it can’t be done is suffering from arrested mental development.”

He limped out of the room, but there was something absurdly aggressive in his gait. Dad Morgan eyed his back appraisingly and then looked at the sheriff.

“Wreck’s kind of saddle sore,’ he observed, mildly, ‘but he certainly keeps chipper.”

“Ffe’s a nut,” said the sheriff. “‘He can’t do it in a million years.”

“But he might, Bob.’ Sally had a look in her eye that boded a desire for discussion.

“What? In a flivver?”

“lve heard,” said Dad Morgan—“‘not that I’ve got personal experience—but I’ve heard that folks can go ’most anywhere in them things, except in society.’

Chapter II The Two-by-nothing Prairie

HE ranch buildings were miles back of them; how many, Sally could not exactly tell, for there was no speedometer on the flivver.

There was a hole in the instrument board where once a speedometer had been, but it had been taken out for repairs somewhere in South Dakota and the Wreck refused to linger for a week in order that it might be made to register again. But they were fifteen miles from the ranch, at least, and the railroad was still more miles to the north. By the trail which wound high along the eastern flank of Black Top it was about twenty miles, as nearly as Sally could figure. They could not follow the high trail, of course; somewhere a road branched, which they must take, and Sally was intent on watching for the road.

It was an odd sensation, bumping over the trail on wheels; it helped her to forget that there had been words with the sheriff the night before, just as he was saddling to ride back to his job at Fisher. The sheriff did not want her to go, and he made some remarks about the Wreck which, to Sally, seemed perfectly silly. The idea of anybody objecting, she thought; even Dad was willing that she should go, although he predicted they would be back at the ranch before nightfall, and probably afoot.

Now and then she studied the Wreck with a sidelong glance. It was rather funny to watch him, tensed over the wheel, his jaw set with an absurd amount of determination and his eyes staring aggressively ahead through his horn-rimmed spectacles. He seemed to make an unnecessary task of the matter, although she admitted to herself that it was a pretty bad trail for anything except a horse. Once she even remarked the fact to him, after he had navigated a detour that carried them around a boulder.

“Bad trail?” he echoed, almost sharply. ‘You don’t call this bad, do you? I call it a boulevard.”

The queer part of it was that he seemed to mean it. Most young men, had they been driving in place of the Wreck, would have bragged of an achievement that approximated the impossible. But he had a point of view that was quite different; he was obsessed with a resolve to make the task so childishly simple that the sheriff would eat his words and be overwhelmed with mortification.

The Wreck’s name was Henry Williams, and he belonged considerably farther east than Sally had ever been; as far as Pittsburgh, in fact. His coming to the Bar-M had been without specific premeditation; it was merely an incident, it appeared, in a great plan. They first sighted him in the middle of a forenoon, two weeks back, coming furiously up the coulée, with a radiator that boiled like Old Faithful and a carbon knock that sounded like the crack of doom. He brought the thing to a stop in the dooryard, introduced himself, asked for water, tarried for lunch, tinkered with the car, stayed for supper, and then kept on staying.

“T’m a nervous wreck,” he told Dad Morgan and the family. “I’ve got insomnia and things like that. I look healthy, but don’t let it fool you. I’m a wreck.”

It seemed that his doctor, back in Pittsburgh, diagnosed him, and he believed the doctor. He had been working too hard; he was on edge all the time. He was not very old, but the city was killing him. Anything that savored of excitement was in a fair way to put an end to him.

“What you need,” said the doctor, “‘is a long trip somewhere, by yourself. Cut out the cities; dodge the towns. Buy yourself a flivver and strike out for the wild West. That’s the only place where a man can lead a quiet life in these days.”

Dad Morgan allowed that the doctor was right; but the Wreck said no, the doctor was a liar. The ~ West had not been nearly so quiet as promised. He had been within three hundred yards of a cyclone in Minnesota, had three blow-outs in the two Dakotas, had collided with a runaway horse—after causing the runaway—had been arrested four times for violating speed laws, had been in one fight with a man who called him a dude and had been held up two days by a cloudburst. All this was bad for his nerves, he explained, as he passed his plate for a third helping at supper. It aggravated his insomnia, too. Dad knew that his insomnia must be pretty bad, because he had to stay so long in bed in order to get his sleep. He turned in at nine the first night and they had to call him for breakfast.

But it seemed that the Wreck liked the Bar-M. He stayed and stayed, and appeared to think they ought to be grateful to have a paying boarder. Dad and Ma and Sally were, in fact, glad to have him, for, outside of the sheriff and a few other natives, visitors at the ranch came seldom. Besides, the Wreck was something of a curiosity, and when he did not talk about his nerves he could tell interesting tales of the East, which nobody but Sally believed. She had been as far as Chicago, so that she had something to judge by.

And now the Wreck was taking her to the train, miainly because everybody but Sally said it could not be done in a flivver. Sally was not at all certain about it herself, but she had a curiosity that could only be appeased by the attempt. Besides, it was nice of the Wreck to volunteer, and she did not think it was hospitable to refuse.

The trail got worse, as most of them do. It wound and climbed in a tortuous fashion, simple enough for a horse, but most of it never intended for a contraption with a 56-inch tread. Ordinarily, at the top of the rises, Sally was wont to check her horse long enough for a sweeping view of billowing range, bench land and the stern figure of

Black Top, which was their nearest mountain. Black Top was not a very high mountain, but, standing curiously alone in the range country, was a useful mark for reckoning. Nearly everybody who trav- ~ eled the neighborhood took bearings from it, even though they chanced to be strangers.

But to-day Sally took no sweeping views when they reached crests in the trail. Rather, she drew deep breaths, looked down ahead of her and gripped the seat; for the Wreck had a trick of taking the down grades with a swoop, they being the only stretches of trail which offered chances for speed. If it had not been for the horn-rimmed glasses, there would have been something positively debonair in the way he plunged into the unknown. He had a habit of hissing triumphantly through his teeth whenever he reached the bottom and found the car still running on four wheels, which Sally found almost as disconcerting as the swoops.

They had come to the end of a long, twisting descent, which he volplaned with amazing abandon, when Sally ventured a comment.

“How do you get it up again when it turns over?” she asked.

It was a look of annoyance and disappointment that he gave her.

“Listen,” he said. “Don’t you start saying it can’t be done. I thought you were different.”

“Oh, but I think it can be done, Mr. Williams,” she hastily amended. ‘‘Only—well, you might break an axle, or something. Mightn’t you?”

The Wreck brought the machine to a stop and allowed the engine to race in a horrible manner.

“Want to get that train, don’t you?” he demanded.

“Why, of course.” ;

“Am I alarming or otherwise annoying you?”

“No, indeed !”’

“Have I busted anything yet?”

“T don’t believe so.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

He stamped his foot on one of the pedals and they leaped forward along the bottom of a little draw into which the trail had carried them. Sally held tight and smiled. She enjoyed his childish faith in himself; besides, she figured that she could jump clear as soon as it became necessary. Why should she complain? The Wreck had uttered no criticism the day before, when the sorrel pitched him.

They got out of the draw after sliding back twice; he said he could climb a tree with proper traction and she expressed no doubt of the statement. After that the trail climbed and twisted again. It was winding out of the grass country and in among clumps of spruce and wild rose bushes. Also, it was narrowing steadily, but neither the Wreck nor Sally gave any early attention to that fact. Not until it was shrunken to a mere path among rocks and trees did the flivver come to a stop. The Wreck killed the engine, climbed out and went ahead for reconnaissance.

“We'll have to roll a lot of rocks out of the way,” he said when he came back. “Are you good Se GG are

Sally fought against a smile, for she was contrite with guilt.

“Tt wouldn’t do any good to start rolling rocks,” she said. ‘We'd be at it till doomsday. I’m awfully sorry, but we’ve come too far. It’s my fault.”

“Too far?” he repeated, puzzled.

“Yes. You see, we’re beginning to climb the side of Black Top, and you can’t get anything up here but a horse. I was so busy watching the trail that I didn’t notice our bearings. It was stupid of me, but—well, it’s done.”

He nodded, then glanced ahead at the disappearing trail.

“Tf a horse can do it—’’ He was thinking of the sheriff.

“Oh, no,” said Sally, emphatically, and shook her head. “It’s useless to think of it. Why, there are some places it just goes along the edge, not more than three feet wide.”

He was reluctant to abandon the idea and still stared at the trail with an appraising eye.

“We'll have to go back,” explained Sally, ‘to the place where the road turns off. We passed it.”

“T didn’t see it,” he remarked. “Did you?”

“Certainly not. If I had I’d have spoken about it. But it’s there, of course. Don’t you remember that we spoke about a road turning off, last night? That’s what we had to watch for. It’s not much of a road, I imagine; but a car came through last spring.”

“How far back is it?’ he demanded.

Sally could not even guess.

“Tt can’t be far,” she said.

The Wreck stood for a moment in gloomy contemplation.

“It upsets my nerves to turn back,” he announced. “T get jumpy and shaky. It irritates me. But—oh, blazes!”