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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Where's the tick-tock?" he asked, absent-mindedly. "The clock," cried old "Kiowa" loudly. "The eight-day clock used to stand there. Why " He turned to Ranse, but Ranse was not there. Already a hundred yards away, Vaminos, the good flea-bitten dun, was bearing him eastward like a racer through dust and chaparral towards the Rancho de los Olmos.
A rabbit might tear you to pieces." He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were kept. There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets. "I don't suppose you can sleep," said Ranse, "since you've been pounding your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till morning. I'll have Pedro fetch you up some grub." "Sleep!" said Curly. "I can sleep a week.
"Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo. Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to Mississippi for a visit.
If the two brothers expected her to make a scene, they were disappointed. Numb with the shock of the blow, she made no outcry and no reproach. "Git a move on ye, gal," ordered Ranse after he had finished eating. "You're goin' with us, so you better hurry." "What are you goin' to do with me?" she asked dully. "Why, Dave don't want you any more. We're goin' to send you home."
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 six-shooter and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what's the diff? That's all I know."
"Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you a while." An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose from a stool. "Sit down," said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in the jacal. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish. "Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" answered the old woman wonderingly.
Ain't odds of two to one good enough for you an' that one only a kid without you runnin' to cover like the coyote you are? Looks like you'll soon be whinin' for me not to shoot, just like Ranse did." If any one had cared to notice, the colored roust-about might have been seen at that moment vanishing out of the back door to a zone of safety. He showed no evidence whatever of being sleepy.
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."
"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 torture." Ranse took off his coat. "I've got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done.
In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily. "I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never will let me." Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white teeth and fearless eyes.
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