The Mysterious Rider by Zane Grey

Author:Zane Grey [Grey, Zane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466340015
Amazon: 1466340010
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2011-09-30T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

When Bent Wade desired opportunities they seemed to gravitate to him.

Upon riding into the yard of White Slides Ranch he espied Jack Belllounds sitting in idle, moping posture on the porch. Something in his dejected appearance roused Wade’s pity. No one else was in sight, so the hunter took advantage of the moment.

“Hey, Belllounds, will you give me a lift with this meat?” called Wade.

“Sure,” replied Jack, readily enough, and he got up. Wade led the pack-horse to the door of the store-cabin, which stood back of the kitchen and was joined to it by a roof. There, with Jack’s assistance, he unloaded the meat and hung it up on pegs. This done, Wade set to work with knife in hand.

“I reckon a little trimmin’ will improve the looks of this carcass,” observed Wade.

“Wade, we never had any one round except dad who could cut up a steer or elk,” said Jack. “But you’ve got him beat.”

“I’m pretty handy at most things.”

“Handy!… I wish I could do just one thing as well as you. I can ride, but that’s all. No one ever taught me anything.”

“You’re a young fellow yet, an’ you’ve time, if you only take kindly to learnin’. I was past your age when I learned most I know.”

The hunter’s voice and his look, and that fascination which subtly hid in his presence, for the first time seemed to find the response of interest in young Belllounds.

“I can’t stick, dad says, and he swears at me,” replied Belllounds. “But I’ll bet I could learn from you.”

“Reckon you could. Why can’t you stick to anythin’?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been as enthusiastic over work as over riding mustangs. To ride came natural, but in work, when I do it wrong, then I hate it.”

“Ahuh! That’s too bad. You oughtn’t to hate work. Hard work makes for what I reckon you like in a man, but don’t understand. As I look back over my life—an’ let me say, young fellar, it’s been a tough one—what I remember most an’ feel best over are the hardest jobs I ever did, an’ those that cost the most sweat an’ blood.”

As Wade warmed to his subject, hoping to sow a good seed in Belllounds’s mind, he saw that he was wasting his earnestness. Belllounds did not keep to the train of thought. His mind wandered, and now he was examining Wade’s rifle.

“Old Henry forty-four,” he said. “Dad has one. Also an old needle-gun. Say, can I go hunting with you?”

“Glad to have you. How do you handle a rifle?”

“I used to shoot pretty well before I went to Denver,” he replied. “Haven’t tried since I’ve been home…. Suppose you let me take a shot at that post?” And from where he stood in the door he pointed to a big hitching-post near the corral gate.

The corral contained horses, and in the pasture beyond were cattle, any of which might be endangered by such a shot. Wade saw that the young man was in earnest, that he wanted to respond to the suggestion in his mind.

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