The Sheriffs Son | Page 2

His unease communicated itself to the boy, who began to whimper
softly. Beaudry, distressed, tried to comfort him.
"Now, don't you, son--don't you. Dad ain't going to let anything hurt
you-all."
Presently he touched the flank of his roan with a spur and the animal
began to pick its way down the steep trail among the loose rubble. Not
for an instant did the rider relax his vigilance as he descended. At the
ford he examined the ground carefully to make sure that nobody had

crossed since the shower of the afternoon. Swinging to the saddle again,
he put his horse to the water and splashed through to the opposite shore.
Once more he dismounted and studied the approach to the creek. No
tracks had written their story on the sand in the past few hours. Yet
with every sense alert he led the way to the cottonwood grove where he
intended to camp. Not till he had made a tour of the big rocks and a
clump of prickly pears adjoining was his mind easy.
He came back to find the boy crying. "What's the matter, big son?" he
called cheerily. "Nothing a-tall to be afraid of. This nice
camping-ground fits us like a coat of paint. You-all take forty winks
while dad fixes up some supper."
He spread his slicker and rolled his coat for a pillow, fitting it snugly to
the child's head. While he lit a fire he beguiled the time with animated
talk. One might have guessed that he was trying to make the little
fellow forget the alarm that had been stirred in his mind.
"Sing the li'l' ole hawss," commanded the boy, reducing his sobs.
Beaudry followed orders in a tuneless voice that hopped gayly up and
down. He had invented words and music years ago as a lullaby and the
song was in frequent demand.
"Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow, Amblin' along by the ole haymow, Li'l'
ole hawss took a bite an' a chew, 'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow,
too."
Seventeen stanzas detailed the adventures of this amazing horse and
predatory cow. Somewhere near the middle of the epic little Royal
Beaudry usually dropped asleep. The rhythmic tale always comforted
him. These nameless animals were very real friends of his. They had
been companions of his tenderest years. He loved them with a devotion
from which no fairy tale could wean him.
Before he had quite surrendered to the lullaby, his father aroused him to
share the bacon and the flapjacks he had cooked.

"Come and get it, big son," Beaudry called with an imitation of manly
roughness.
The boy ate drowsily before the fire, nodding between bites.
Presently the father wrapped the lad up snugly in his blankets and
prompted him while he said his prayers. No woman's hands could have
been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman. The boy was
his life. For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this son
birth.
Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked. The hills had faded to black,
shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars. During the day the
mountains were companions, heaven was the home of warm friendly
sunshine that poured down lance-straight upon the traveler. But now
the black, jagged peaks were guards that shut him into a vast prison of
loneliness. He was alone with God, an atom of no consequence. Many a
time, when he had looked up into the sky vault from the saddle that was
his pillow, he had known that sense of insignificance.
To-night the thoughts of John Beaudry were somber. He looked over
his past with a strange feeling that he had lived his life and come to the
end of it. He was not yet forty, a well-set, bow-legged man of medium
height, in perfect health, sound as to every organ. From an old war
wound he had got while raiding with Morgan he limped a little. Two
more recent bullet scars marked his body. But none of these interfered
with his activity. He was in the virile prime of life; yet a bell rang in his
heart the warning that he was soon to die. That was why he was taking
his little son out of the country to safety.
He took all the precautions that one could, but he knew that in the end
these would fail him. The Rutherfords would get him. Of that he had no
doubt. They would probably have killed him, anyhow, but he had made
his sentence sure when he had shot Anse Rutherford and wounded Eli
Schaick ten days ago. That it had been done by him in self-defense
made no difference.
Out of the Civil War John Beaudry had come looking only for