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Updated: May 31, 2025
"He's right outside, unless I'm mighty mistaken," said Ranse, opening the door and beckoning. Curly walked in. No one could have doubted. The old man and the young had the same sweep of hair, the same nose, chin, line of face, and prominent light- blue eyes. Old "Kiowa" rose eagerly. Curly looked about the room curiously. A puzzled expression came over his face. He pointed to the wall opposite.
After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from the bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pair of hasty hands dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for the cases of tobacco. Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm like the tongue of a wagon.
No sentimentality there, in spite of the moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to meet him. "How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way girl? Always half-way." "Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones. "I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh.
The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from somewhere probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously. Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican /jacals/.
"How'd you come in my wagon?" repeated Ranse, this time in a voice that drew a reply. Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen and large persons in blue carrying clubs. "Me?" he growled. "Oh, was you talkin' to me? Why, I was on my way to the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled into that wagon in the wagon-yard see?
"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.
"Reach out your hand, Ranse Truesdell," he said, "and you'll touch him. And you can shake his'n, too, if you like, for he's plumb white and there's none better in no camp." Ranse looked again at the clear-faced, bronzed, smiling cowpuncher who stood at Collins's side. Could that be Curly? He held out his hand, and Curly grasped it with the muscles of a bronco-buster.
Curly gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow as human as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog. "Thanky, boss," he said, quietly. "You're thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon," said Ranse. Curly fell back weakly against the steps. "Since you are here," continued the ranchman, "come along with me. We can't turn you out on the prairie.
And she said it was the same day that the sheep-shearers got on a bender and left the ranch." "Our boy strayed from the house when he was two years old," said the old man. "And then along came those emigrant wagons with a youngster they didn't want; and we took you. I never intended you to know, Ranse. We never heard of our boy again."
"The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty old. I'm sorry, Yenna." The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the horn of his saddle. "I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse.
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