Twin Sombreros

Twin Sombreros

by Zane Grey

CHAPTER 1

The sun hung gold and red above the snow-tipped ramparts of the Colorado Rockies. On a high bluff across the Purgatory River a group of Indians sat their mustangs watching the slow, winding course of a railroad train climbing toward the foothills, fearful of this clattering, whistling monster on wheels that might spell doom to the red man. Had they not seen train after train loaded with buffalo hides steam eastward across the plains?

A lithe rider, dusty and worn, mounted on a superb bay horse, halted on the south side of the river to watch the Indians.

“Utes, I reckon,” he said, answering to the habit of soliloquy that loneliness had fostered in him. “Like the Kiowas they shore die hard. Doggone me if I don’t feel sorry for them! The beaver an’ the buffalo aboot gone! The white man rangin’ with his cattle wherever grass grows! Wal, Reddies, if yu air wise, yu’ll go way back in some mountain valley an’ stay there.”

“Wal, come to think aboot it,” mused the lone rider, “they’re not so bad off as me—No money. No job. No home! Ridin’ a grub line, an’ half starved. Nothin’ but a hawss an’ a gun.”

He put a slow hand inside his open vest to draw forth a thick letter, its fresh whiteness marred by fingerprints and soiled spots. He had wept over that letter. Marvelling again, with a ghost of the shock which had first attended sight of that beautiful handwriting, he reread the postmark and the address: Lincoln, New Mexico, May 3, 1880. Mr. Brazos Keene, Latimer, Colorado, c/o Two-bar X Ranch. The Latimer postmark read a day later.

“My Gawd, but this heah railroad can fetch a man trouble pronto,” he complained, and he stuck the letter back. “What in the hell made me go into thet post office for? Old cowboy habit! Always lookin’ for letters thet never come. I wish to Gawd this one had been like all the others. But aw no! Holly Ripple remembers me—has still the old faith in me—An’ she named her boy Brazos—after me.”

“Only five years!” mused the rider, with unseeing eyes on the west. “Five years since I rode along heah down the old trail from Don Carlos’s Rancho—An’ what have I done with my life?”

A savage shake of his head was Brazos’s answer to that disturbing query, as also it was a passionate repudiation of memory. He rode on down the river trail toward Las Animas. He did not know how far it was in to town. His horse was lame and weary. This stretch along the Purgatory was not prolific of cow-camps; nevertheless, Brazos hoped to run into one before nightfall.

The trail worked up from the river to an intersection with a road. In the gathering darkness, Brazos’s quick eye caught sight of three horsemen riding out from a clump of dead trees which only partly obscured a dark cabin. The riders wheeled back, apparently thinking Brazos had not seen them.

Brazos heard a sibilant hissing “hold thar!” and a sound that seemed like a gloved hand slapped on metal. A hoarse voice, thick-tongued from liquor, rasped low. Then came a young high-pitched answer: “But, Bard, I’m not risking—” The violent gloved hand cut that speech short. To Brazos the name that had been mentioned sounded like Bard, but it might have been Bart or even Brad.

“Hey, riders,” called Brazos curtly, “I seen yu before yu seen me.”

After a moment of silence, Brazos heard the word “Texan” whispered significantly. Then one of the three rode out.

“What if you did, stranger?” he asked.

“Nothin’. I just wanted yu to know all riders ain’t blind and deaf.”

Brazos’s interrogator’s features were indistinguishable. But Brazos registered the deep matured voice, the sloping shoulders, the bull neck.

“Thar’s been some holdups along hyar lately,” he said.

“Ahuh. An’ thet’s why you acted so queer?”

“Queer? Playin’ safe, stranger.”

“Yeah? Wal, if yu took me for a bandit yu’re way off.”

“Glad to hear thet—an’ who might you be?”

“I’m a grubline-ridin’ cowboy.