Rangy Pete

Chapter I

_ AN individual known to all his friends and to most of his enemies as Rangy Pete sat with his sketchy frame draped over an up-ended sugar barrel in front of a building advertised to the whole world as “Tke Collander’s General Purpus Store.’ One glance at Rangy Pete was enough to convince the most critical that, whatever else he might be, he was not a misnomer. A second glance brought out the lamentable fact that Rangy Pete was totally indifferent to the liberties which Ike Collander’s advertising propaganda took with the language of the land.

As a matter of fact, he seemed quite fascinated by the sign, for there was a look of pride in his eyes as he continued to drape himself over the sugar barrel and gaze aloft at this evidence of Ike’s bustling business activity. While Rangy Pete continued to stare with rapt gaze, a dribble of crimson paint trickled from his brush down over the lower clothing of his lanky anatomy and ambled its way in time through a crack in the upper face of a box labeled

“Evaporated Apples. Special. Merrill, Snaky Y Ranch.”

When Rangy Pete’s artistic instinct had at length been gratified, his gaze dropped low enough to enable him to discover that the paint was obeying one of the first laws of nature.

“Jumping Mavericks!’ he exclaimed, “‘and that box’s for Rough House Dan. Bet he'll say I done it apurpos. Trying to pisen him, or something like that.”

Rangy Pete doubled up his frame with a Jack-knife effect, swabbed off as much of the: paint as would stick to his fingers, then he raised his voice in unharmonious volume.

.. “Hey, Ike! Cummere.”’

ie Collander, being unhampered by custome and being only half asleep at the moment the volume of noise reached his ears, lowered his feet from the imitation counter and sauntered out in the direction of the familiar sounds.

“What you bellerin’ about?’ Ike demanded plaintively as he thrust his head out through the doorway and encountered the dry blaze of the sun reflected back from an unnecessarily dusty highway.

“T’m Just wantin’ to advise you, Ike, to learn to patter your prayers,’ Rangy Pete remarked imperturbably, in his wonted mode of conversation. “I’m thinking they ain’t nobody this side the Twin Peaks what can throw a peevish fit quicker’n Dan Merrill.

He’s got a touchy spot what licker ner nothing else ain’t been able to wash outa him, so I’m thinkin’, Ike, if you learn pretty pronto to patter the prayers, well meet sometime in the Great Beyond. Ain’t that what the Methody fellow said t’other night down in the tent?”

Ike Collander, knowing something of the erratic ways of Rangy Pete, did not stop to ask the reason of Pete’s harangue. Instead, he sallied forth into the glaring sun and he began a personal investigation.

“That’s what I’m calling some swell sign,” Rangy Pete volunteered. “They ain’t nobody else coulda painted —”’

“But what’s that gotta do with Dan Merrill?” Ike interrupted impatiently. “You don’t mean to say you got me out here in the sun just to hear you tell me what a rum job you made of that sign?” Then, as Ike’s eyes dropped to the level of Rangy Pete’s shoes, and as one of the-shoes shifted, Ike made a noise which sounded like a gasp. “You tarnation idyot,” he offered with emphasis. “You gone and daubed paint into Merrill’s evaporated apples. Ain’t you got no better sense —”

“That’s what we gonna talk over,’ Rangy Pete - broke in, as he fell back upon his characteristic habit of tormenting the mother tongue.

At the best, Rangy’s selection of words would hardly have gratified the ear of an Oxford don, but at the worst, in moments of stress, or when a calculated impression must be left upon the ears of the hearers, his mode was apt to slip into a slurring drawl which ignored even the rudiments of beginnings or endings. Just now he chose to have one of his worst conversational lapses.

“You ain’t got no head on you, Ike, and that’s why you're branded to die sudden some day. Take this box of apples. You know Rough House’s touchy over ’vaporated apples, yet you ain’t got no better head than to leave the case right out here where it gets in the way of a little bit of paint when it falls off my brush. Don’t you know ’at paint’s gotta fall some time? It can’t stay up in the air like a bird. I’d a thought you’d a knowed that, Ike. I’d a thought you’d take some care of Dan Merrill’s stuff. You heard often enough ’at he likes ’vaporated apples fit to kill —”

Rangy’s dissertation came to a close because of an angry gurgle in Ike Collander’s throat.

“IT might a knowed better’n to hire a good-fornothing long leg like you,” Ike reproached himself. “Tf I'd a had any sense I wouldn’t a kept you round here longer’n a minute. And now you wanta blame me fer that box getting all daubed up.”’

“You shore don’t think you ain’t to blame?” Rangy Pete demanded in astonishment. “You ain’t gonna say next ’at I put the box there, are you? Shorely you got a little spark of honesty in you summers, Ike. Tell me, Ike, that you got a little honest feeling right now. I don’t think I could go on living —”

Rangy Pete’s plaint was submerged in a greater volume of noise which came from Ike’s throat.

“We gotta do something about it, I’m telling you. We gotta do something —”

When Ike Collander had repeated the phrases a number of times, so often that his voice had lost the edge of its asperity, Rangy Pete chimed in.

“That’s what I been tellin’ you all along. I sorta thought it might be best if you pattered some prayers, Ike. I’m knowin’ you can’t think of any yourself, but if we went down to that Methody gospel-flail’s tent, he might —”

“Shut up,” Collander replied with more selfcontrol. “Merrill’s coming in this afternoon for a load of stuff, and I’m telling you we gotta do something. He’s all-fired particular about these evaporated apples what’s been coming in from the East. You'd think they’s boxes of booze, the way he hugs ‘em. He don’t drink much red licker, that boy, but he’s sure got the evaporated apple habit.”

“You're saying something, Ike,’ Rangy Pete supplemented, as he began to roll a cigarette. “They tell me the apple habit’s worse’n dope. It sorta get’s you till you can’t leave the house for two minutes unless you got a piece of ’vaporated apple in your pocket. They tell me it don’t act the same on all men; but it ain’t made Rough House Dan any more like a suckin’ calf. He’s got a tongue like a snake, and he’s the boy what knows how to handle a quirt. If you ain’t got no objections, Ike, I’m thinkin’ I’ll go for a ride this afternoon. Since you've fired me, I’ll drop over to the Double K and see if they’ve got any use for another puncher.”’

“T ain’t fired you,” Ike snapped out. “We gotta do something, and we ain’t got all day to do it.”

“S’pose we swab the box down with a pail of water,” Rangy Pete offered. “Tl sit here and watch you do it. You ain’t much use, Ike, but surely you know enough to sling some water on that paint spot. Tl tell you how to do it.”

“Yeah,” Ike leered. ‘You don’t catch me that way. You know the water’d run inside, and the apples’d swell up and bust the box.”

“That’s right, Ike, so they would. We got a big job on our hands. You might tell Rough House Dan that it’s blood. You could say you shot a road agent last night when he’s trying to steal the box. That’d put you in right. Dan’s suspected all along ‘at you’d horn into a fight fer him any ole time you got haffa chance, so if you told him that’s blood —”

“Who ain’t got no head now?” Ike intercepted the flow of words in an aggrieved tone. ‘He wouldn’t believe it. “Sides, any fool knows blood from paint. An’ they ain’t been no road agents around this way fer months. They ain’t been within thirty miles of Triple Butte, and you know it, Rangy Pete, so

RANGY PETE fi whyn’t you think of something what’s got some sense in it?”’

“Thirty mile ain’t so much,” Rangy Pete reflected. “* *Sides, you said something hadda be done. I could write you a note, signin’ Dervish Dick’s name to it, and I could make it look like the real thing. I’d put a bloody cross on top of it, and I'd say, ‘You plugged me last night, Ike Collander, but I’m a gonna git you if I haveta swim in blood to do it.’ That'd make Rough House Dan open his eyes, and perhaps, Ike —”’

“No more Eee: Ike Goaltender: insisted, with diminishing patience. “You know nobody wouldn’t believe me when I told them I put up a fight.”

Rangy Pete slipped down off the barrel with'a sigh of resignation.

“Now you're talkin’ like somebody who knows your father’s little boy,” Pete rejoined as he bent ~ over and lifted the box of evaporated apples and placed it upon the sugar barrel where it came more nearly within his range of vision. “‘Ike, you’re like a swaddled kid. You gotta have somebody running after you alla time. If it wasn’t fer me, I s’pose Rough House Dan ’d soon be wrappin’ his quirt around your legs to keep you from catchin’ sunburn through that hole in your pants. You're a shiftless cuss, Ike, but if I gotta do all the thinkin’, I s’pose I gotta. A kid coulda told you what to do long ago.”

Ike Collander’s eyes had been instinctively watching the dusty trail ambling its way between the two rows of buildings which went by the name of Triple Butte, and as his eyes followed that trail they eventually came up against a dead, monochrome wall of nothingness representing a point in the distance where earth and sky and dust and hazy sunshine all blended into one. Ordinarily, on a day like this, when the world merely seemed to drone along under a blistering sun, that dull grayness was all Ike Collander’s eyes would see when they studied the trail leading out to the Snaky Y Ranch.

But now there was a fleck of activity in the gray distance which caused Ike to step out into the dusty trail and stare into the west, with his eyes shaded from the glare of the sun. Rangy Pete’s eyes followed in the same direction, but without keen interest.

* *Tain’t nothing but a few horses kicking up a cloud of dust,” Pete informed. “ ’Sfunny, Ike, that you been here ten years and you ain’t never afore seen a horse kickin’ up the dust. I bet they’s some men on the horses’ backs, and if little Ike’ll come up here and be good, daddy’ll show him a purty man riding a horse. Now won’t that be nice?”

Ike Collander returned to the front of the store. He appeared to be keen to say something to Rangy Pete, but it was the greater part of a minute before he could get his lips and his tongue under control.

“You're fired, blast you. You're fired,” Ike’s first words poured out in a stream. “I ain’t gonna have no impertinent lummux like you hangin’ around here no more. You git out, and stay out.”

“Thanks, Ike,’’ Rangy Pete replied, with unruffled voice. “Lend me the makings, and I'll be sifting along. I just about got time to decorate Triple Butte with my absence afore Dan Merrill gets here. Don’t forget, Ike, to tell him ’at’s blood on the *vaporated apples. If I’s you, I’d put salt and water on them quirt marks you’re gonna get. It'll hurt a bit at first, but it'll take the soreness out in no time. That’s what we do with the critters.”

“Here’s the makings, Rangy, and you ain't fired,” Collander replied hurriedly. “I didn’t mean nothin’ what I said. We gotta stand together, Pete. What’s that you said awhile ago about knowin’ whata do with these apples?”’

Rangy Pete looked past Ike Collander’s head, aid the faintest suggestion of interest came into his manner as he stared out along the Snaky Y trail in the direction of the approaching dust cloud. Rangy shaded his eyes from the sun, as Collander had done, then he held one hand in front of him, as though taking sight along some imaginary line.

“T’ll be smoked if that ain’t funny,’ Rangy Pete commented. ‘‘Whatta you see out there along the trail, Ike?”

“Nothing but something we gotta hurry about,”

Collander returned crustily. “It’s Merrill or some of his punchers riding in.”

“Perhaps, and then perhaps not,” Rangy Pete reflected aloud. “They ain’t been no windstorm fer a month, an’ that means the Snaky Y trail couldn’t a jumped up over night and lit down so far to the south. The Snaky Y bunch’d have to climb the Yellow Butte to come in thatta way, and they ain’t gonna climb no buttes when they don’t haveta.”’ |

“Tt don’t matter. Merrill said he’s coming today to get this box of evaporated apples, and that’s him.”

**Sfunny. Whole bunch of cowpunchers chasin’ around after ’vaporated apples.”

“Nothing funny about it. Now tell me what were gonna do.”’

“Oh, yah,” Pete replied. “‘Now, ’spose you use them holes in yer head what some people calls eyes. They’s a box in front of you, and it’s got a tag on it what shows that somebody back East has shipped a case of ’vaporated apples to one Dan Merrill of the Snaky Y ranch. ’Cept fer that tag, I don’t see that they’s any difference between that box and the boxes what you got back ahind the counter.”

“Gosh, Pete, but you gotta head,” Ike exclaimed in appreciation.

“Most people’s got a head, but *tain’t everybody Knows what a head’s for,’”’ Pete rejoined. “All you gotta do, Ike, is slip the point of a screwdriver under the “tacks what’s holding down this tag, then if it sorta jumps over onto one of your own boxes, you can’t help that none. You trades boxes and he keeps the tag. They ain’t nothing unfair in that.”

“Unless them apples of his does happen to be special extra —”

“Won’t yours be special too when they get that tag on ’em? You should a knowed, Ike, ’at it ain’t the apples what makes ’em special. It’s the tag. Now cummon. That dust cloud’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

Ike Collander required no further stimulus. He produced the essential implements of the hardware trade and while Rangy Pete leaned against a hitching post and proved most generous in the flow and range of his advice, he hurriedly transferred the shipping tag from Merrill’s box to one of his own, which, to all external appearances, was an exact duplicate. With the transfer made, he left the box bearing the Merrill tag upon the top of the sugar barrel, while he removed the paint-marked box to an inner portion of the ramshackle store which he commonly dignified by the term ‘‘storeroom.”’

Ike brushed away the signs of toil, Rangy Pete shifted the paint pot to the shady side of the building, and as the cloud of horsemen reached the first shack of Triple Butte the two men sat down in the doorway of the “General Purpus”’ store to await their coming.

*

Rangy Pete’s gaze wandered up the dusty trail, but apart from the life represented by that dustcloud, Triple Butte had but little to interest even Rangy’s listless gaze. There were two or three dejected bronchos standing with drooping heads in front of the saloon across the way; there were other horses in the corral, and there was an intermittent sound from the saloon itself which Rangy recognized as an indeterminate effort on the part of Shifty Lizz to coax musical sounds from the only piano in Triple Butte. Shifty Lizz was a female, and for the lack of anything better she was sometimes regarded as one of the attractions about Tony Burke’s saloon, the degree of her charms being regulated pro rata to the amount of Tony’s liquor which had filmed the eyes of the attraction hunter.

Shifty had won her prefix from the rapid manner in which she had once disposed of a brash cow-puncher who had fancied that the eating room of Tony Burke’s “Mansion House” was the proper place in which to display his affections for Lizz. At the moment Shifty Lizz had been rounding up fodder for a number of Tony’s guests, but in the heat of the moment it was all shifted with such remarkable dexterity that it landed upon various weak points in the cowboy’s anatomy. Since that time it had been quite possible for Shifty Lizz to while away an idle hour in the barroom for the making of such noises as now reached the ear of Rangy

Pete without the slightest fear of amorous approach on the part of any but the most utter stranger.

Now, Rangy Pete wished that the brash cow-puncher had not brought this punishment upon Triple Butte. He experienced a keen feeling of grievance against the absent puncher, and _ that, combined with the heat of the day, made him suddenly wish that the amorous one might be in Merrill’s party.

Rangy Pete was suddenly roused from his vindictive mood by the voice of Ike Collander.

“They’re makin’ an awful lot of dust, an’ Merrill don’t ride so fast as that on a hot day.”

“Yeah. Keep it up. Keep on yammering,” Rangy Pete returned peevishly. “Ain’t you got nothin’ to do all day but sit there and yammer about nothin’ atoll? This ain’t no exhortin’ meeting down at the Methody tent. Ain’t you never gonna learn to sit still a minute and keep your mouth shut like me?”’

“Like you?” Ike flared at some indignity which he appeared to find in Rangy’s words. “I’m thankin’ all the saints I ever heard of that I ain’t like you. Look at the mess you near got us into —”

“Me get you into a mess,” Rangy returned with reproach. “If they was ever a more ongrateful critter runnin’ around without a brand than you be, Ike, I'd like to see it. Ain’t I been a punishin’ my brains to get you outa the scrape you got into by leaving them ’vaporated apples right where the paint’d fall on them? Ain’t I got you out of a hole, I’m asking? An’ you got nothing to do but sit there and yammer —”

Rangy Pete paused because of the striking lack of interest on the part of his audience. Far from displaying the necessary amount of umbrage, Ike had abruptly seized his associate by the arm and he was going through a gasping motion. Collander’s eyes were rolling, as though from fright or the effects of the sun, and his lips were stammering.

“Try a hot pebble in the mouth,” Rangy Pete suggested. “It sometimes helps —”

Then Rangy’s eyes followed Ike’s dramatic gesture, and he committed the unusual offence of stopping half way through an idea.

“Gosh A’mighty!’’ Pete exclaimed for the second time that day, as he caught sight of the faces of the approaching riders.

For even a hundred yards distant he could see that across the face of each mounted man there was a dull, grayish bandage which covered the eyes and ran well up to the hat band and down to the tip of the nose.

“They’re r-r--road a--agents,” Ike Collander put his gasping into words. “ An’ I gotta get outa here. IT got ten dollars —”

Ike made a movement as though to rise, but Rangy Pete put out a hand and returned him to his former position with the ease of one handling a child.

‘“‘Ain’t you got no sense atoll?’? Rangy asked. “Don’t you know road agents shoot on sight when they see a coyote takin’ to cover thatta way? They oughtn’t to wear them eye blankets, fer no man can shoot straight with a thing like that over his face. They’d be just as apt to hit me as you —’”

Any further wisdom which Rangy Pete may have intended to impart to Collander was drowned in the clatter of hoofs and the whir of noise as the troupe slithered to a halt across the roadway, with two horsemen facing Ike Collander’s store and with the balance taking an interest in Tony Burke’s saloon. With a medley of fright, Shifty Lizz’ strumming at the musical fount of Triple Butte came to an abrupt end. The sound of voices died away, and for a space of ten seconds or more there was the absolute calm of utter desolation.

Rangy Pete felt that Triple Butte had automatically wakened to the presence of the road agents and that this unnatural silence was but the armistice through which the leading citizens deliberated with themselves whether or not it were flirting with the Great Beyond to give battle to the diminutive army of Dervisher Dick. So Rangy’s eyes darted here and there, to every opening in the walls of Tony Burke’s fragile castle. For if there were to be battle, it would come from Tony’s place. If Triple Butte ever swaggered, it was through the front doorway of Tony’s saloon, and at this particular moment the decision of battle or of peace would depend entirely upon the assortment of individuals who happened to be hugging Tony’s bar, and also upon the state of their liquid mellowness.

As Rangy Pete sat through those seconds, he tried to recall just whom he had seen enter the saloon through the past hour. There were none of the Snaky Y boys, for Merrill’s party was still due to arrive. And there couldn’t be any of the Double K punchers, or the battle would have been on before this. And there wasn’t Sheriff Stipples, for Stipples had ridden away in the opposite direction shortly after daylight.

Rangy Pete sighed before the ten seconds were up. The most formidable of Triple Butte’s defences would be Shifty Lizz, and Shifty, he could see, had regained her composure, for she was already grinning through the open window at Dervisher Dick.

With a gesture to his men, Dervisher Dick sprang to the dusty highway, and with a pistol in either hand he walked briskly through the doorway of the saloon. |

The hands of the road agents, Rangy Pete could see, were bristling with revolvers, but whatever happened to be going on behind their eyes was totally concealed by the masks. As Rangy stared, he fancied that the lips of one of the riders facing Collander’s store parted with the suggestion of a smile.

Rangy promptly grinned in return.

“Hands up, you long string of horse-hide,” the man bellowed, with a flourish of one of his revolvers. “Don’t think you can set there grinnin’ at me.”

Rangy Pete’s arms stretched into the air for a surprising distance, but he did not take the trouble to move from his sitting position in the doorway.

“ *Twan’t you I was grinnin’ at,” Rangy returned in an aggrieved manner. “I sorta smiled at that handsome person at your side. He makes me think of my long-lost brother.”

“Swallow the chatter,” the road agent elevated his voice still more, “And you too, you little fat toad. Get on your feet. Don’t set there like a pair of dead coyotes. Reach for the stars, you long drink of water. Reach for ’em. Pick ’em out. Hand me that big green one what sits on top of the North Pole.”

Ike Collander sprang to his feet with surprising alacrity, and Rangy Pete ambled into a standing position, with his hands thrust high above his head.

“T’m tellin’ you, Mister, this ain’t no comfortable way to stand,’ Rangy found his voice in protest. An’ I ain’t gonna pick no stars ‘cause I once got some star slivers in my fingers a-doin’ this, and it ain’t no fun gettin’ ’em out again.”

“Higher! Higher! Reach up and hand me down Ike Collander’s chimbley.”

“T can’t go no higher, Mister,” Rangy protested.

“You otta know that. Can’t you see I broke my suspenders a reaching fer them stars, an’ I got human feelings —”

Immediate diversion to the road agent’s mood came in the form of a bellowing noise from the door of Tony’s saloon. The sound came from Dervisher Dick who was herding the full human contents of the barroom out into the street at the points of two revolvers, and who, at the same time, was inviting his troupe inside to enjoy the enforced hospitality of Tony Burke.

There appeared to be the discipline of system in Dervisher Dick’s party, for instantly, without definite instructions, the complete troupe, with the exception of two riders, disappeared through the saloon doorway and instantly there came back the sounds of revelry among the breaking bottles.

Two riders still sat their horses in the dusty highway. One stood guard over many of the leading citizens of Triple Butte who were clustered conveniently in a sunny little nook in front of the saloon. The other loomed up in front of Rangy Pete and Ike Collander. As for the rest of Triple Butte, there was not so much as a toddling child to be seen for the full length of its one dusty highway. Triple Butte, it became evident to Rangy Pete, though personally unfamiliar with the habits of road agents, had listened to the stories which had recently come out of the south about Dervisher Dick, and was quite willing to give him full credit for a violent disposition without putting the rumor to the test.

The little cluster of citizens across the highway appeared to be in much the same mood. Rangy looked across, past the two road agents, and something in the pose of Triple Butte’s leading citizenry seemed to appeal to his sense of humor.

There was Tony Burke, lean, wiry, dark of countenance, though just now growing increasingly red because of the flame of the sun and that steady sound of cracking bottles from the interior. There was Rummy Lister, Tony’s right-hand man, sometimes known in more polite circles as a bouncer, and always known in Triple Butte as the one-on-thehouse man whenever the courage of the guests seemed to flag. There was Lefty Merker, the set-’em-up man, who constantly held forth behind Burke’s bar, and who had won the first half of his name because of the unusual habit of wearing a gun where the left hand could reach it the most conveniently. Lefty, it was rumored, had once “potted”’ an impertinent stranger, and because of this peculiar arrangement of his armament he had not even stopped the serving of liquor with the other hand. Lefty was supposed to possess a bull-dog brand of courage, and until this particular moment Rangy Pete had never been given cause to suspect that the breed had been crossed with any less warlike strain.

There was Buck Menzie, the stage-driver who had taken a day off; there was Lonzo Rafters, who catered to the public in direct opposition to Ike Collander; and there were a half dozen other dwellers of Triple Butte, less fiery but not less bibulous in disposition. But there was no Shifty Lizz.

A grin came to Rangy Pete’s lips as his glance strayed over the inartistic group of citizens. Then his eyes crossed those of Tony Burke and he found there an encouragement to battle.

That started Rangy Pete upon a new line of thought which had nothing whatever to do with humor. He looked back at Tony Burke, and he saw that Tony’s eyes traveled deliberately to the gun at Pete’s hip, then to the rider standing guard over Collander’s store, then back to the second rider.

Quite plainly, Tony Burke was giving his mute instructions. He was suggesting that if Rangy Pete would only start something, he would join in.

While the revelry across the way grew in intensity, Rangy Pete began to reflect. First of all, why should Dervisher Dick have led his troupe into Triple Butte? So far as Rangy knew, the accumulated wealth of Triple Butte could hardly have been gratifying to the Dervishers. And as yet, while the road agents had done a number of things which would not win them many lasting friendships, there had been no systematic attempt to collect wealth.

Doubtless they would already have looted the faro and other gambling outfits which were the rear auxiliary of Tony’s establishment, but Rangy had reason to know that there was but little gold to be rifled there. It was the off season for punchers, and strangers had been scattered of late. Dervisher Dick should also have known that. Further, the road agents had not even taken the trouble to deprive the citizens of their accustomed weapons. But that, Rangy Pete knew, was the way with the Dervishers. It was the kind of daring they favored.

But now, as Rangy reflected, he wondered just what the Dervishers could hope to gain from Triple Butte. Of course, there was the establishment of Burk Laxton, the private banker, down the street; but Laxton, Pete knew, had a safe which road agents could neither crack nor carry away. Further than that, Laxton had been absent for a week, so no amount of compulsion could force a way into the doubtful treasures of that safety vault.