Evening Star Newspaper, June 21, 1931, Page 82

SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 21, 193f. ° Thunder Pumper By Alan LeMay. A StirringRomance of the West and a Great Dog Story. ORDINARILY, good luck stuck just as closs to “Mississippi” Tyler as did that big foolish hound of his that was the laughing stock of the Rim- rock country. But, now that he needed it more than he ever had in his life, that luck seemed to peter out. It was & funny thing about Mississippi's luck. gt had first picked him up when he had come to the Southwest 10 years before, at the age of 14. The luck was still holding three years later when he sent back to Mississippi for a pack of redbone hounds, and became a lion hunter. Mountain lions drew a bounty of $100 a head, put up by the Rimrock ranchers; wolves the same; bears the same, with an added hundred for each bear pelt. In the first month of his hunting he went after a deep-canyon silvertip that had bafied the best hunters of the Rim- rock, and at the very first stab walked right into—not the one bear, but two together. And on the way home his dogs treed a mountain lion, making it a $500 day. Things like that, always, throughout the whole of his 10 years in the Southwest. Old Gar Brent was the barrier against which Missfsippi’s luck broke. You couldn't do much with Gar Brent, because the old man had a weak heart, and an attack was likely to come on him at any time. An attack was on him now, as Mississippi Tyler stood, hat in hand, in the Brent cabin, with that big woithless hound of his peering out from behind his legs. Willa Brent, old Gar's daughter, was fussing around her father, tucking a blanket around his knees. “My time’s come—this time——" old Brent gasped out. “Played out my string—this time— for sure——" Mississippi Tyer, who had heard Brent say the same thing perhaps 10 or a dozen times before, was unimpressed. But Willa took it pretty hard. She really believed that her father was going to die one of these times and always took the latest attack for the fatal one. Mississippi felt like choking old Brent for scar- ing her so. . “Shut up them gosh darn dogs!” Brent ordered. i ISSISSIPPI'S pack of redbone hounds was making considerable noise all right. There were 12 of them. And they all belled at the least excuse. Willa shot Mississippi a compassionate look as he went to the door and told the dogs to shut up. It pleased him that Willa had a liking for those hound voices. He didn't know, though, quite how much Willa did love the belling of those dogs; nor how often she had listened for the first sound of them, off over the range, musigsafly sending word downwind that Miss- issippi was on the way. « “What's that mutt doing in here?” rasped Brent pettishly, his eye falling on the one big worthless one at Mississippi's knee. Mississippi had long been aware that Brent disliked dogs in general, and this one in par- ticular; but Brent had never before come right out and insulted the dog. “Go outside, Pumps,” said Mississippi apolo- getically. The dog went out, and in a minu'e they could hear the animal muttering to himself in deep bass tones, like no other hound. The sound seemed to annoy Gar Brent out of all reason. “The Thunder Pumper,” sneered Brent. “The Thunder Pumper! Pumping noise is all he’s good for. He's never treed a lion yet, nor stood a bear, and he eats for three! of Mississippi worthlessness is what he is!” “Dad, be quiet—rest yourself,” Willa mur- mured. Mississippi reddened. Not many things ever angered him, but this did, because it' was true and no one knew it better than he. The Thunder Pumper had been sent him by mistake along with some others, and he was certainly too slow for lion work. When the pack took a hot trail, running full cry, the Thunder Pumper could be found miles to the rear, baying each individual track after a close, conscientious in- spection. “Sniff, sniff—he set foot exactly here. Bloo-oop! Sniff—here is his next step. No, wait. Yes, I am sure Bluh—wowp!” Like as not, the pack would tree the lion, and Mississippi would come up and shoot the lion, and &kin it, and the dogs would eat it. Then, five or six miles down the back-trail they would perhaps meet the Thunder Pumper, still pains- takingly baying out the trail. Yet Mississippi had a deep, understanding love for that huge uiseless dog with the homely, sorrowful face and trailing 10-inch ears. “This is the end of me,” said Gar Brent again, fixing glassy eyes on his daughter. “Maybz in th2 morning——" suggested Miss- issippi politely. “I've just got two requests,” said Gar Brent, disregarding him. “Willa, git me that box therey under my bunk.” ““Requests?” echoed Mississippi. “Requests to make!” Gar Brent snapped. From the shoe box of odds and ends that Willa brought him he rummaged-: forth-a; sealed Jetter;ii” -~ A good sample * f 2 7/ A ity i / ’/ % 4 / = 7/ Said the strained voice of the old man: “Shoot that worthless hound and I'll take back my request that Willa have “This here is to your second cousin at Red Stick. If I pass in my chips, promise you’ll send this to him.” “I promise,” whispered Willa. “That’s Henery Brent, the widowed fellow with the five young kids?" Mississippi inquired. He was disregarded again. “My will is in that, and my instructions,” said Gar Brent. “Henery is to work this horse ranch for you, and hold it in trust until you're 31 years old.” “Don’t you mean 21, Mr. Brent?" Mississippi offered. “Thirty-one, I said!” Gar Brent paused to glare at Mississippi Tyler, then at the Thunder Pumper, who had sneaked back in, and re- garded Brent with dolorous interest. “I got one other last request,” Brent went on. “I know that w you promise, Willa, that you'll do. From here out, I want you to have nothing more to do with this Mississippi Tyler.” There was a moment's silence, while the labored breathing of Gar Brent continued reg- ularly. Then Willa said slowly, her voice low: ,” said Gar Brent, “is the last thing I'll ever be asking of you. It's Yor your own good; and you owe me that much, Willa, if only so's I can die in peace,” “But——" began Wilia, her voice queer, and stopped. “I reckon,” said Mississippi, “I'll be going now. Don't answer him yet, Willa; I don't want to hear this, I guess.” “Wait, Mississippi,” said the girl. “You hadn't ought to ask me,” said Tyler. “Moo-woh,” commented the Thunder Pumper in a dolorous moan. “Shut up, Pumps!” “Take that dog out and shoot it!” snarled Gar Brent. “Pardon me, Mr. Brent?"” “If you think I'm joking, I'll put it like this,” said the strained voice of the old man: “shoot ‘t)hut worthless hound, and I'll take my request ack!” “That’s ridiculous, Mr. Brent.” “It aint the dog,” said Brent, “so much as the vrinciple of the thing. It’s a test, to see if you can choose hetween Willa and your own worth- less ways.” “It's a plumb tyrannical old whim,” said Mississippi. _ “If you like that dog better than Willa, that’s up to you.” “But,” the girl put in, her eyes dark with emotion, “if he’ll get rid of Pumps some other way- e “No,” Mississippi supplied; “I'm not going to get rid of Pumps, not in any way at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I'll go.” “And you don’t need——" the raving voice of Gar Brent followed him—“you don’t need to come back! Worthless—Mississippi hound- pusher——" HEN Mississippi Tyler had mounted, how- ever, he delayed a bit. The little half- broke mustang on which he sat kept jigging and skittering sideways, anxious to be gone. But Mississippi held him in, and waited. He had a hunch that Willa was going to come out and speak to him, just once more. And after a minute or two she proved him right. He swung off his pony as she came out to him, and when he saw that Willa Brent’s lips were quivering, and that her eyes were full of tears, he took a step toward her to pick her up in his arms. But, for some reason, he did not. “I'm sorry Mississip’; I've liked you—a lot; I guess you know.” He walted: sz v dodo s 1 3adW- (¢ nothing more to do with you.” “I guess I'll have to ask you not to come here any more, though, now.” “He's not dying,” Tyler said. “He's not dying any more than I am,” he said again. & But I'll do like you say.” He turned suddenly, and brought down the head of the pony with such a heavy hand that for a moment the little beast stood mo- tionless, in sheer amazement, while he mounted. “I'll tell you this,” said Mississippi slowly, with the nervous pony shifting back and forth under him: “Some day you're going to come looking for me, Willa. Heaven grant us I be there, that's all.” “Never!” she cried furiously. were the last man in the world!” Back in his cabin above the Mogollon rim Mississippi remembered that, and believed it, too; and he wondered what had ailed him, that he should have said what he did. Slowly he packed his mule. Then he rum- maged in his traps until he found an old rusty padlock and hasp, and with this he locked the door. That was something that was new in the Rimrock, for a man to lock his door. “L-i-on-n-n!" he told the dogs. They always answered when you spoke to them in certain tones, and though he had heard that absurdly unanimous chorus answer his voice thousands of times it always tickled him, and made him smile. He smiled now. “Time to move on,” he told them. The key to the cabin he threw into Rustler's Gulch. He had no way of knowing that Gar Brent died that n’ght. Mississippi was gone a month. The redbone pack picked up no sign of lion or bear, Some- times the pack bayed a hot trail, but Missis- sippi could tell by their voices what the quarry was, and each t'me he pulled them coff some trail of no worth. The end of the month found Mississippi in morose temper. He had carried a picture of Willa Brent’s face in his mind ever since he had first seen her, three years before, and it had cast a glow over the commonplaces of his rigorcus life. But now he was trying to shut that picture out, and the light was gone out of the Rimrock. Then one night, as he called in his dogs, the long trombone blast of the cowhorn he used was answered by signal shots a couple of miles away, and by the time he had lit his fire he was joined by Clem Harky, an old acquaint- ance of the Lazy Y outfit. “Right glad to see you, boy,” Mississippi told him. “I——" He paused suddenly, for as the rider came into the firelight Mississippi saw that he was haggard and weary, “What's bust?” he demanded. “You ain’t heard?” said Harky. “How would I?” growled Mississippi. “Willa Brent's lost.” “Lost? What do you mean? How lost?” “She’s missing a week already, today.” “What—how—where was she seen Mississippi finally got out. Harky squatted on his heels and filled one cheek with Copenhagen snuff before he an- swered slowly: “A week ago today I seen her riding up that Mogollon trail tceward your cabin. She was too fur to speak, but I waved, and she waved back. That night I rode over to see her. She never come home. “I waited up for her at the Brents’; and see- ing she didn’t come in, I took the up trail about 3 in the morning. I got to your shack about 6. The fresh tracks of her pony was there. But the door was locked; she hadn’t been in. I followed on down her trail. After- ward, it seemed like to me, she was following ¢he old trail of your horse and mule, but I didn’t think anything about it .then.. Willa’s “Not if you last?” 2 0y slept-out before; thive wastitbanytiing specislly peculiar about it. Only, I followed along te make sure she was all right, “By and by I begun to worry and pressed along pretty hard. So before night I come on her night camp. She seemed to have shot something to eat. & “Next day, early, I found her pony in Cross Canyon. He'd fell and busted a leg, and she'd shot him through the head. I'd have supposed ‘she’d turn back, but, instead, she'd walked on.” /IISSISSIPPI was counting back. ‘“That would have been about last Tuesday,” he computed. “Why—I was within two miles of Cross Canyon that morning!"” “That maybe accounts for her walking on,” said Harky, talking to the fire. “Heard your hounds, likely, and hoped to borry an animal to go back on. Did she signal you, that you know of?” “I heard shots, over thataway; thought it was somebody hunting,” said Mississippi in a strained voice. “And then—well, now that you mention being over there, it looks like she’d just kind of fol- lowed you on..." “Oh, good Lord!” burst out Mississippi. He remembered that he had worked -all up and down anpd aeross that ragged and forbidding country of pine and broken granite, and he could imagine how often Willa had heard his hounds, sometimes near, then presently far away again, taunting her like a will-o’~-the-wisp of sound. . . . “I managed to work out the trail to within a few miles of Crackman’s Rocky before I lost it in the rocks. The trail had .got kind of wandering and uncertain by then, like as if she wasn't going to be able to go on much more. Mississipp’, we've combed the Crack- man countiry with a currycomb since then. There’s been about 20 fellows searching last few days; we've hallooed and fired off guns fit to raise the dead. “But she’s disappeared into thin air. Today I heard your dogs coming nearer all day, and I rode to meet you, to see if maybe you’d picked her up. Or else—I thought we might give the dogs a try at following her across Crackman's Rocky.” “We're starting now,” said Mississippi. Mississippi saddled his horse and they set out, with the dogs following. “I can’t figure why on earth she should take it in her head P “Can’'t say I blame her much for running out,” said Harky. “Ever since Gar Brent died——" “Since Gar Brent what?” “You didn’t know her paw was dead? you was there the afternoon he was took!” “I supposed it was just another of those wolf-wolf conniptions.” “Yeah, that’s what any of us would of thought. Well, she sent a letter he’d writ to her second cousin at Red Stick; and Gar hadn’t been buried a week when this Henery Brent moved in on her with his five kids. Quite a heap of washing and cooking to_come down on a girl, all in a lump. And Henery, he just set around watching her work. And, Mississip’ boy, them fiendish kids! I could see how she might™ get driven out of house and home, all right.” “And me gone hunting,” Mississippi almost wept. “I should have kept better track, Clem. Only—her paw made her promise she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I should be shot for paying any attention to it.” “Yeah, you should,” Clem monotoned. “Bverybody knew Willa was right sweet on you, Mississip’. - Everybody but you, anyway...And Why,