Ironheart

Tug followed the rails toward Wild Horse.

He groped in an abyss of humiliation and self-disgust. Slacker! The cattleman’s scornful word had cut to the quick. The taste of it was bitter. For he had not always been one. In war days he had done his share.

How was it McCrae’s poem ran?

Yes, he had kept the faith in France, but he was not keeping it now. The obligation was as binding on him in peace as on the battle-field. He knew that. He recognized it fully. But when the pain in his head began, his mind always flew to the only relief he knew. The drug had become a necessity to him. If the doctors had only let him fight it out from the beginning without help, he would not have become accustomed to the accursed stuff.

But what was the use of going over that again and again? He was done for. Why send his thoughts forever over the same treadmill?

The flaming sun poured down into the bowl of the valley and baked its contents. He moved from the track to the shade of a cottonwood and lay down. His racing thoughts grew more vague, for the hot sun had made him sleepy. Presently his eyes closed drowsily. They flickered open and slowly shut a second time. He began to breathe deeply and regularly.

The sun passed the zenith and began to slide down toward the western hills. Still Tug slept.

He dreamed. The colonel was talking to him. “Over the top, Hollister, at three o’clock. Ten minutes now.” He shook himself out of sleep. It was time to get busy.

Slowly he came back blinking to a world of sunshine. Two men stood over him, both armed.

“Must be one of ’em,” the shorter of the two said.

“Sure thing. See his outfit. All rags. We’ll collect him an’ take him back to the ranch.”

They were cowboys or farmhands, Tug was not sure which. He knew at once, however, that their intentions were not friendly.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You,” the short, stocky one answered curtly. He wore a big broad-rimmed hat that was both ancient and dusty.

“Interesting. You a sheriff? Got a warrant for me?”

The little man raised the point of his thirty-eight significantly. “Ain’t this warrant enough?”

“What’s the trouble? What d’you want me for?”

“Tell him, Dusty,” the lank cowboy said.

“All right, Burt.” To the tramp he said roughly: “We’ll learn you how to treat a lady. Get up. You’re gonna trail back to the Diamond Bar K with us.”

“You’ve got the wrong man,” explained Tug.

“Sure. You’re jus’ travelin’ through the country lookin’ for work,” Dusty jeered. “We’ve heard that li’l’ spiel before. Why, you chump, the ol’ man’s autograph is writ on yore face right now.”

Tug opened his mouth to expostulate, but changed his mind. What was the use? He had no evidence. They would not let him go.

“I guess you hold the aces.” He rose, stiffly, remarking to the world at large, “I’ve read about those three-gallon hats with a half-pint of brains in them.”

Dusty bridled. “Don’t get gay with me, young feller. I’ll not stand for it.”

“No?” murmured the hobo, and he somehow contrived to make of the monosyllable a taunt.

“Just for that I’ll drag you back with a rope.”

Dusty handed his weapon to the other cowboy, stepped to his horse, and brought back a rope. He uncoiled it and dropped the noose over the tramp’s head, tightening it around his waist.

The riders swung to their saddles.

“Get a move on you,” Dusty ordered, giving the rope a tug. The other end of it he had fastened to the horn of the saddle.

Tug walked ahead of the horses through the sand. It was a long hot tramp, and Dusty took pains to make it as unpleasant as possible. If the prisoner lagged, he dragged him on the ground, gibing at him, and asking him whether he would insult another woman next time he got a chance.

The cowpuncher found small satisfaction in the behavior of the man at the other end of the rope. The ragged tramp neither answered his sneers nor begged for mercy. He took what was coming to him silently, teeth clamped tight.

At last Burt interfered. “That’ll be about enough, Dusty. The old man’s gonna settle with him. It’s his say-so about what he wants done to this guy.” He added, a moment later: “I ain’t so darned sure we’ve got the right one, anyhow. This bird don’t look to me like a feller who would do a girl a meanness.”

“Hmp! You always was soft in the head, Burt,” his companion grunted.

But he left his prisoner in peace after that. Burt had said one true word. Clint Reed would not want a half-dead hobo dragged to the Diamond Bar K. He would prefer one that he could punish himself.

Tug plodded through the fine white dust that lay inches deep on the road. A cloud of it moved with them, for the horses kicked it up at every step until they ascended from the valley into the hills. The man who walked did not have the reserve of strength that had been his before he had gone to the hospital. There had been a time when he could go all day and ask for more, but he could not do it now. He stumbled as he dragged his feet along the trail.

They reached the summit of the pass and looked down on the Diamond Bar K. Its fenced domain was a patchwork of green and gold with a background of pineclad ridges. The green patches were fields of alfalfa, the gold squares were grain ripe for the mower.

Downhill the going was easier. But by the time the horsemen and their prisoner drew up to the ranch house, Tug was pretty well exhausted.

While Dusty went in to get Reed, the tramp sat on the floor of the porch and leaned against a pillar, his eyes closed. He had a ridiculous feeling that if he let go of himself he would faint.