I never asked you to bring me to your d — d farm.”
“Stand up out here in the light,” said Ranse, looking at him closely.
Curly got up sullenly and took a step or two.
His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a peculiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink; and his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square cleft chin almost gave distinction to his looks.
Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously.
“Where did you come from — have you got any home or folks anywhere?”
“Me? Why, I’m a dook,” said Curly. “I’m Sir Reginald — oh, cheese it. No; I don’t know anything about my ancestors. I’ve been a tramp ever since I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set ’em up again tonight or not?”
“You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be a tramp?”
“Me?” answered Curly. “Why, I adopted that profession when I was an infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a big, lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses to beg. I wasn’t hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate.”
“Did he ever tell you how he got you?” asked Ranse.
“Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old sixshooter and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what’s the diff? That’s all I know.”
“All right,” said Ranse. “I reckon you’re a maverick for certain. I’m going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I’ll start you to work in one of the camps tomorrow.”
“Work!” sniffed Curly, disdainfully. “What do you take me for? Do you think I’d chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep like that pink and yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do? Forget it.”
“Oh, you’ll like it when you get used to it,” said Ranse. “Yes, I’ll send you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you’ll make a first-class cowpuncher before I get through with you.”
“Me?” said Curly. “I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can go chase themselves. Don’t forget my nightcap, please, boss.”
Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Rivell was taking off his tan shoes regretting and preparing for bed.
“Any of the boys from the San Gabriel camp riding in early in the morning?” asked Ranse.
“Long Collins,” said Sam briefly. “For the mail.”
“Tell him,” said Ranse, “to take that tramp out to camp with him and keep him till I get there.”
Curly was sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing talentedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next afternoon. The cowpunchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in favour of the conventions.
Ranse went up to Buck Rabb, the camp boss, and spoke briefly.
“He’s a plumb buzzard,” said Buck. “He won’t work, and he’s the low-downest passel of inhumanity I ever see. I didn’t know what you wanted done with him, Ranse, so I just let him set. That seems to suit him. He’s been condemned to death by the boys a dozen times, but I told ’em maybe you was savin’ him for the torture.”
Ranse took off his coat.
“I’ve got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done. I’ve got to make a man out of that thing. That’s what I’ve come to camp for.”
He went up to Curly.
“Brother,” he said, “don’t you think if you had a bath it would allow you to take a seat in the company of your fellow-man with less injustice to the atmosphere.”
“Run away, farmer,” said Curly, sardonically. “Willie will send for nursey when he feels like having his tub.”
The charco, or water hole, was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of Curly’s ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink. Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the offending member of society far into the lake.
Curly crawled out and up the bank spluttering like a porpoise.
Ranse met him with a piece of soap and a coarse towel in his hands.
“Go to the other end of the lake and use this,” he said. “Buck will give you some dry clothes at the wagon.”
The tramp obeyed without protest. By the time supper was ready he had returned to camp. He was hardly to be recognised in his new shirt and brown duck clothes. Ranse observed him out of the corner of his eye.
“Lordy, I hope he ain’t a coward,” he was saying to himself. “I hope he won’t turn out to be a coward.”
His doubts were soon allayed. Curly walked straight to where he stood. His light-blue eyes were blazing.
“Now I’m clean,” he said meaningly, “maybe you’ll talk to me. Think you’ve got a picnic here, do you? You clodhoppers think you can run over a man because you know he can’t get away. All right. Now, what do you think of that?”
Curly planted a stinging slap against Ranse’s left cheek. The print of his hand stood out a dull red against the tan.
Ranse smiled happily.
The cowpunchers talk to this day of the battle that followed.
Somewhere in his restless tour of the cities Curly had acquired the art of self-defence. The ranchman was equipped only with the splendid strength and equilibrium of perfect health and the endurance conferred by decent living. The two attributes nearly matched. There were no formal rounds. At last the fibre of the clean liver prevailed. The last time Curly went down from one of the ranchman’s awkward but powerful blows he remained on the grass, but looking up with an unquenched eye.
Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on his chin in the stream from the faucet.
On his face was a grin of satisfaction.
Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they could know the details of the curriculum of reclamation through which Ranse put his waif during the month that he spent in the San Gabriel camp. The ranchman had no fine theories to work out — perhaps his whole stock of pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of horse-breaking and a belief in heredity.
The cowpunchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out of the strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly organised themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system was their own.
Curly’s first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on intimate terms with soap and water. And the thing that pleased Ranse most was that his “subject” held his ground at each successive higher step. But the steps were sometimes far apart.
Once he got at the quart bottle of whisky kept sacredly in the grub tent for rattlesnake bites, and spent sixteen hours on the grass, magnificently drunk. But when he staggered to his feet his first move was to find his soap and towel and start for the charco. And once, when a treat came from the ranch in the form of a basket of fresh tomatoes and young onions, Curly devoured the entire consignment before the punchers reached the camp at supper time.
And then the punchers punished him in their own way. For three days they did not speak to him, except to reply to his own questions or remarks. And they spoke with absolute and unfailing politeness. They played tricks on one another; they pounded one another hurtfully and affectionately; they heaped upon one another’s heads friendly curses and obloquy; but they were polite to Curly. He saw it, and it stung him as much as Ranse hoped it would.