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Show USELESS ; a COWBOY MkK THE STORY THUS FAR: Melody Jones and his side-rider George Fary rode Into PayneviUe, a cow town on the wagon route to California. Fury entered the first bar, where the other customers began to laugh at him for some unknown reason. Melody walked up to the general store. In a flare of temper he knocked down a man, called Ira, for whistling at a girl. Melody then entered the store and ordered canned food, which the owner re fused to accept payment for. He picked p Fury, and the girl Melody had previously pre-viously seen came running up to Melody. She kissed him, then said It was unsafe In town and for them to follow her out. The girl. Cherry, went after their horses while they waited out of sight. CHAPTER IV Nothing happened to stop their ride out of PayneviUe. George Fury, who had decided he had to die there, felt as if he had slipped a stirrup, which is about the same as missing the top step in the dark; but in half an hour PayneviUe was a peculiar memory, lost behind the lazy roU of the plain. Riding at the hub' of the buck-board, buck-board, Melody kept sliding sidelong , glances at the profile of the girl as I she drove the team. Her mouth was j drawn down a little at the corners, and her eyes were hidden by her hat brim. She was watching the badly ! broken mustangs, which were slash- I ing about in the harness as they loped. He let his pony drift sideways un- til he was stirrup to stirrup with George Fury. ! "Loco weed never drove no crit ter thet crazy. Thet girl knows you, and knows you good too good to be fooled. Looky here, Melody i you mind last year when you was kicked in the head at Cheyenne? You was missing four days. You sure you didn't marry nobody, or nothing, whUe you was out of your ! head?" "I wasn't any more out of my I haid than you," Melody said coolly. i "Anyway," he added with less con- fidence, "I thunk of that. She says I she's never been in Cheyenne." George Fury looked hard at Melo- i dy. He shrugged his gaunt shoul- I ders, and looked grim. 1 Now the girl beckoned to Melody I to ride closer; she pulled the team I to a slogging trot. "Do you want to do one thing for j me?" she asked him. I "Mam?" I "Take off your hat." He looked at her in bewilderment. "I want to see something," she explained. ex-plained. Melody slowly took off his floppy sombrero, and she looked at him ! closely, with such concentration that he reddened. I "I want you to keep your hair clawed down over your left eye," she told him. "Just like it is now." "Mam?" he said; and she re- peated it. Slowly he put his hat back on. "Why?" he asked at last. "As a favor to me. A personal I favor. Is it a big thing to ask?" "Hey look," he shouted over the I trundle of the wheels. "Hey" She shot him an inquiring smile, but as she turned her head, she let 1 the driving lines slack, and the mus tangs plunged into a run. The buck-I buck-I board careened and bounded into the snaky ruts. "What?" j "Nothing!" I "Speaking of uncles," Melody said, "I fetched this here off a post I down in the town." He gave George I the bit of paper. WANTED BAD I For murder, robbery, and difor- I derly conduct 1 MONTE JARRAD 5 foot 10, 140 pound, ftraw color hair, fear over left eye. May be travelling with half-wit uncle name of Rofcoe fomething. Laft feen go- I ing over Syke Mt. on a bald-tail horfe. $1000 REWARD DEAD OR ALIVE whichever way he packf beft. I "Wtt the heck is a horfe?" Mel- ! ody snid. He swiveled in his saddle 1 to study his pony's tail with melan- j choly. "I reckon they mean Harry Henshaw. But Hairy ain't reaUy baldtail. It's just wore off in that one place, from being shet in a stable, sta-ble, that time." George was turning purple. "Halfwit "Half-wit uncle," he said between set teeth. "It was aU coming clear to him now. Half-wit uncle name of Roscoe. I be damned if any man could stand fer this!" "That's whut done it," Melody aid sadly. "There ain't any other resemblance hardly, except I got the ame initials burnt on my saddle, two-three places." "Half-wit uncle," George said again, his voice shaking. "George," Melody said, "I tried to get you over that foolish look!" "Name of Roscoe," George whimpered. whim-pered. "I been thinkin'," Melody said. "I suppose," George consoled himself, him-self, "to be your uncle a feUer would have to be a half-wit." "Of course, George, you know," Melody said, "it ain't as if I asked to get into this." "The name even had to be Roscoe," Ros-coe," George hung on to it. "I'm going to flU somebody so fuU of holes you can button him like a vest!" "I didn't force my way into this here," Melody said mildly, "but if these people aim to drag me in by the slack of my pants, and git me in trouble, and force theirself on me, so I can't hardly keep from catching up with him" George suddenly became perfectly perfect-ly stiU. He fixed his gaze on Melody's Mel-ody's profile and his eyes were weird. "Melody," he said at last. His words muffled, "what in aU heU is eating you?" "You know, George," Melody said slowly, "in all my life I ain't ever been so low in my mind as I been in this last half hour, here." "We'U git out of this aU right," George said. "No, George; no, it ain't that. But, you know, back there in PayneviUe, when we rode in it seemed at first like the whole world was changed. Nothin' Uke it ever happened to me before. I taken and walked down the street, and people stood back to leave me pass. I taken and went up to a bar, and people give me room. AU of a sudden, it seemed Uke, everyone thunk I was somebody. I guess it fooled me, George. For a Uttle whUe there, I guess I thunk I was somebody myself." "I can't never be Monte Jarrad," Melody said. "But I can be the feUer that caught up with him!" Around sundown they cUmbed a quarter-mile of ragged side-trail, the wheels of the buckboard tilting charicily over the rock ledges; and came out on a mountain crag where clung a weathered ranch house, a sagging barn, and some sketchy corrals. cor-rals. Within the erratic fences an "Howdy, boy, howdy." unnecessary number of ten-dollar mustangs cUmbed about the rocks and steeps. The smallest bear cub Melody had ever seen was chained beside the back door. The place appeared ap-peared unprosperous, and shiftless; but the fact that the girl seemed to live here gave it imaginary possibilities. possi-bilities. In the red sunset Ught it looked okay to Melody, even attractive, attrac-tive, in a go-to-heU sort of way. George Fury spoke to Melody through a buttonhole in his gaunt cheek, screened by his mustache. "What's the idee stoppin' here?" "Maybe it's her home." "WeU, it ain't my home! Let's hear you name just one thing it could get us to off-saddle here?" "A meal," Melody said. "Goodbye," said George savagely, savage-ly, making as if to turn his horse. Melody ignored the threat. "I been thinkin'," he said. "George, you know something? I'm bait." "What?" "I figured out the reason she drug us all the way out here. I see now why she r,un up to me and made out like I was Monte. I see it just as plain. It's so's the posse would take out after me, and chase me." "It took you aU the way out here to figure out that?" "WeU, it's some forwarder than I was when I started." "This is wonderful," George said. "This is the best thing happened yet. So now you and her have got it fixed that a posse takes out and runs us to hell and gone!" "I don't see how they kin," Melody Melo-dy said. "Why can't they?" "Because I don't aim to go no place. You can git them to chase you, if you want to, George." Now a rangy, gangling figure came out of the ranch house, letting the broken screen door slam to with a bang that lifted the bear cub a foot. The man who came toward Melody with enormous looping strides was of exceptional height, of the high-pockets high-pockets design spidery of limb, narrow-chested, with a small head. The gun that slatted against his bony thigh looked out of place, as if hung upon a tree. "Howdy, boy, howdy," he bawled nasally. His long slit of a mouth was bracketed by a mustache so narrow and drooping it was almost Chinese. "It's good to see you. It's been a long time!" As he drew closer and got to windward, wind-ward, Melody noticed the smeU of forty-rod. He looked the taU man over cooUy from the saddle, but as the stranger came to his stirrup he could not refuse the offered hand. It felt Uke a fistful of dry mesquite. "Cherry sent Avery out with word you was here. Come out here, Avery! Av-ery! He's spilin' the grub," he explained ex-plained to Melody. So her name's Cherry, MSody thought. He looked at her to see how the name fitted. She had stepped down, and was unharnessing the buckboard team. George Fury had been watching Melody to catch any sign of recognition recog-nition in Melody's face. George was looking very grim. "I crave to ask jist a couple o' things," George said, carefuUy po-Ute; po-Ute; then hesitated. Since this afternoon aft-ernoon he had a sensitivity about certain questions. "What ranch is this," he got it out, "and who are you?" The girl called Cherry spoke in a quick mumble from behind her horse. "You've heard speak of Roscoe Ros-coe Symes, Paw. I guess you never ran into him but that's him. Remember?" Re-member?" George could not see, but Melody saw, as she tapped her forehead. Her Ups formed the word, "Different." "Differ-ent." "Shore, I remember," the taU man said. "Monte's uncle, eh?" He slid off into the patronizing smile that George Fury had seen before, and spoke as if to a chUd. "I'm Fever Crick de Longpre," he told George. "Reckon you heard Monte speak of me. You know Cherry's paw?" Cherry de Longpre Melody thought that's right pretty; and this long mix of dulls and snake-oil is her old man. WeU, you never know. "This here Uttle lay-out," Fever Crick de Longpre was saying, "we caU the Busted Nose, on account of our brand. We started to have it the Flying W, but Avery tripped and feU, and bent our branding iron on a rock, while it was hot. It won't burn a 'W' any more. But it looks as much Uke a busted snoot as a man could ask." "Oh?" Melody said. The man who came out of the ranch house now was of unplaceable age he might have been years older old-er than Melody, or he might have been eighteen. I can't telL Melody thought, without I taken a look at his teeth. Even before he appeared, Melody had sensed him lurking behind be-hind the iU-matched boards of the kitchen, watching Melody Jones and George Fury, estimating them both. And when he left the ramshackle house he left it empty; somehow Melody knew that, too. His strung-up strung-up senses were teUing him things he could not have decided with his head. He watched Avery de Longpre's face. He didn't much Uke the flat-muscled flat-muscled cheek bones, nor the hard line of the jaw, bulged faintly by a meager chew of tobacco. But espe-ciaUy espe-ciaUy he didn't Uke the small pale eyes, expressionless as gooseberries, and the same color. There was a weight of immovable suUenness behind be-hind Avery de Longpre's unfetching pan. "Hello, Monte," Avery said. He made a vague gesture of salute, but without coming near enough to have to shake hands; and the green eyes dropped away from Melody's flat stare. "Chuck's up," Avery said. His speech was duU and thick; he hardly hard-ly opened, his jaws for it. "Light and we'U eat." Melody Jones paid less attention to the men and more to Cherry de Longpre; she met his eyes seldom, and her face was stiU. She busied herself waiting on them, and the poor light from the hurricane lamps helped her face to be undisclosing. She had got a clean red-checkered cloth on to the plank-and-tres-tle table, and the cooking stuff on the wall copper, brass, and iron shone very clean. This streak of good order suggested that these things were Cherry's, though the ranch itself, with its shaky tilt and dilapidation, was the men's responsibility. respon-sibility. She was prettier than he had thought, much prettier, and he ' was sorry to see this. If a girl had to set out to do him wrong, he j wished it could have been a homely girl, with one of these here hay- I bag figures and a hostile look. Fever Crick, who was talking con- j tinuously, in an obvious effort to ! make a good impression on Melody, kept apologizing for the wretched lay-out, and trying to explain it. It j needed aU the apology it could get. j It was less a house than a shack, and, except for a broad gaUery on two sides, would never have been I mistaken by even a wandering cowboy cow-boy for anything else. Fever Crick said it was "previous to the summer," sum-mer," whatever that meant, and obscurely ob-scurely necessary for horse ranching. ranch-ing. But Melody could feel the girl's disdain, whenever her father spoke. But now he perceived, unexpectedly, unexpect-edly, that he had the girl in an even more puzzling position than that in which he found himself. She had set him up to be Monte Jarrad. for purposes of her own, without even knowing his name. But probably she hadn't figured on his just casually casu-ally insisting on being the exact person she had made him out to be. (TO BE CONTINUED) |