CHAPTER XV
The Dream-Book
Spiser was in no gentle mood for days after his call upon Nan at Las Rubertas. The episode rankled like a thorn, and he still itched for satisfaction.
He had planted the seeds of unpleasantness and trouble for her before he left the village, but he wanted a swifter and surer revenge, and this would come through Ben Evans.
Urgent business took him to the farther end of the county, and the days which intervened before he could act seemed long indeed, but when he did return to the ranch he awaited the appearance of Ben with savage eagerness.
Ben, as was customary, gave a detailed report of the movements and work of the outfit during his absence, which included an account of his encounter with Kansas Ed in the arroyo.
Before his brief statement was done he saw the hostility in Spiser's face and manner. He was not kept long in doubt as to its cause.
"You're gettin' damn' conscientious, ain't you?" he sneered.
Ben flushed.
"I ain't got no wings sproutin', but I don't aim to rustle from my friends."
"It seems to me you're a lookin' out a whole lot sharper for your friends' interests than you are for mine. And to be candid, Evans"—he eyed Ben insolently—"I think you're too much of a lady's man to be doin' much good for the L.X. outfit.
"And, as a matter of fact, I've come to the conclusion that you'd better get your time, take your blankets, and ride on. Kansas Ed is foreman of this outfit from now on."
Ben stood dazed with the unexpectedness of it, then with a show of spirit:
"All right, I'll go. The L.X. isn't the only cattle outfit in the State."
"The only one in this part of it that you'll be allowed to work for."
"We'll see about that." But the retort was bravado only, for Ben knew as well as Spiser the latter's power.
In the light of this interview there would seem to be little of the miraculous in the appearance of Ben Evans at the Longhorn bosque that same day, but so his arrival seemed to Mrs. Blakely, who cried triumphantly when she saw him:
"I knowed it! Just as shore as I'm standin' here I knowed he'd come! I wished him here, honey! All day long I been sayin' to myself, 'Come along, Ben Evans—make haste now.' Edie," Mrs. Blakely shifted her snuff-stick and said with solemn conviction, "I got a powerful strong will when I sets out to use it. If I weren't a good woman and the mother of a fambly, I'd be a reg'lar Cleopatra—destroyin' of men."
"Ma," Edith said impatiently, "you been sittin' in flour or something; your skirt looks awful. Do change it before Ben comes in."
With a deft twist the siren-that-might-have-been merely turned her apron around and wore it behind. Peering eagerly through the window—
"He's brought his bed, Edie, he aims to visit a spell! Don't you tell him nothin' about my givin' him absent treatments."
"Don't worry, Ma," Edith assured her dryly.
Ben, however, looked anything but the light-hearted wooer as he untied his roll of blankets from the saddle-horn and threw them inside the stockade.
"I'm a grub-liner now," he announced grimly by way of greeting.
"You don't have to ride no farther than here, honey-dumplin'." Mrs. Blakely's was the caressing tone of a new mother-in-law.
Ben looked slightly startled at the unusual appellation.
"What happened?" Edith guessed something of the truth from his moody eyes.
He replied curtly:
"Fired."
"T-ts-ts-ts!" Mrs. Blakely wagged her head with proper sympathy, then cried gaily: "You won't starve, my boy! There's a slab of swine-buzzum in the pork-barrel, and we ain't shuck the bottom of the meal-sack yet. Why, honey-dumplin',"—she laid a motherly hand upon his arm, and Ben's alarm increased perceptibly—"you can take yoah little stake and go in the cattle business with pap."
Ben laughed with some acidity.
"Me? I couldn't go in business with a peanut-man. I haven't got the dinero. If I was to go off sudden, there'd be eighty dollars, one sorrel horse, a pair of blankets and a pet coyote to divide among my heirs."
"Laws, honey," declared Mrs. Blafcely easily, "like as not pap will take you in for nothin'. If he won't,"—she smiled mysteriously—"I'll put my mind to it and will some good to you."
"Wish somebody'd will me something besides hard luck," Ben replied sourly. "All Las Rubertas has threatened to dry-gulch me for runnin' that greaser into the river."
"You'd ought to marry and settle down," said Mrs. Blakely pointedly, but a warning look from Edith stopped further suggestions along that line, so, suddenly mindful of the duties of a hostess, she commanded with dignity that daughter upon whom her glance happened to fall—"Carmencita, spat up a piller and lay down a little straw for Mr. Evans to spread his blankets. Clytie clean out the top burry drawer for Mr. Evans's gatherin's and git a cake of that perfumery soap. Undine, I done tole you fifty times not to take that comb away from the house. Look out there where you was combin' Rover and see if you dropped it in the yard. Make yoahself perfectly to home, Mr. Evans, for I aims to treat you like you was my own."
Ben, without more ceremony, was temporarily installed as a member of the Blakely household, sleeping that night among innumerable Blakelys of both sexes, and at the table battling good-naturedly, but determinedly, for his portion of sour-dough bread and salt pork.
It was seldom that Mrs. Blakely's suggestions met with much favor from her husband, but in this instance her proposal as to a partnership between him and Ben did appeal to him because of its very obvious advantages.
Now that there was no longer any question as to who was depleting his herd, it meant constant vigilance and warfare, and of Ben's physical courage there could be but one opinion. The obstacle was Ben's entire lack of capital.
Mrs. Blakely furnished the solution of this problem also.
"Did you hear me scream and grab you in my sleep?"
Blakely, eating his breakfast in taciturn silence, admitted briefly that he recollected it quite well. The experience was not new.
"Last night I dreamed"—Blakely resigned himself to a period of suffering. For twenty years he had listened to his wife's dreams, and he had not grown to relish the recital more with the passing of time.
"Last night I dreamed"—reiterated Mrs. Blakely with zest—resting her elbows comfortably on the table and clasping both hands around her cup, "that rattlesnakes was swarmin' down on me from everywhars—big ones—little ones—all kinds of colors—and on the fight. I got a good holt on one back of the ears"
"Ears, Ma?"
"I said ears—an' he couldn't git away, but I dassn't let go, an' all the rest was gittin' ready to strike—that's when I screamed out loud, Charlie—and then who do you 'spose come along and made 'em cl'ar out? Regina, take yoah fingers out of the sugar-bowl!"
"John L. Sullivan," hazarded a youthful male Blakely humorously.
"That dude of Riley's!" declared Mrs. Blakely impressively. "Mr. Ellison scattered my enemies right and left. Ain't it plain as the hand-writin' on the wall that he's goin' to help you-all out? Don't you lose a minute, Ben. You ride over and borry enough off him to buy in with Pap. Luna, honey, chase that chicken out of the fryin' pan while your up, and Undine retch under the shelf-paper and fetch Ma the dream-book."