Free Monty Price's Nightmare by Zane Grey Page A

Monty went to work for Muncie, and rode for him for six months. Then, in a dry season, with Muncie short of help and with long drives to make, Monty quit in his inexplicable way and left the rancher in dire need. Muncie lost a good deal of stock that fall, and he always blamed Monty for it.
    Some weeks later it chanced that Muncie was in Bellville the very day Monty returned from his latest mys­terious absence. And the two met in a crowded store.
    Monty appeared vastly different from the lean-jawed, keen-eyed, hard-riding cowboy of a month back. He was hag-
    gard and thin and shaky and spiritless and somber.
    â€œSee here, Monty Price,” said Muncie, with stinging scorn, “I reckon you’ll spare me a minute of your precious time.”
    â€œI reckon so,” replied Monty.
    Muncie used up more than the al­lotted minute in calling Monty every bad name known to the range.
    â€œAn’ the worst of all you are is thet you’re a liar!” concluded the rancher passionately. “I relied on you an’ you failed me. You lost me a herd of stock. Put me back a year! An’ for what? God only knows what! We ain’t got you figgered here—not thet way. But after this trick you turned me, we all know you’re not square. An’ I go on record callin’ you as you deserve. You’re no good. You’ve got a streak of yellow, an’ you sneak off now an’ then to indulge it. An’ most of all you’re a liar! Now, if it ain’t all so—flash your gun!”
    But Monty Price did not draw.
    The scorn and abuse of the cowboys might never have been, for all the ef­fect it had on Monty. He did not see it or feel it. He found employment with a rancher named Wentworth, and went at his work in the old, inimitable manner, that was at once the admiration and despair of his fellows. He rolled out of his blankets in the gray dawn, and he was the last to roll in at night. In a week all traces of his weakened condition had vanished, and he grew strong and dark and hard, once more like iron. And then again he was up to his old tricks, more intense than ever, eager and gruff at bargaining his time, obsessed by the one idea—to make money.
    To Monty the long, hot, dusty, blast­ing days of summer were as moments. Time flew for him. The odd jobs; the rough trails; the rides without water or food; the long stands in the cold rain; the electric storms when the light­ning played around and cracked in his horse’s rnane, and the uneasy herd bawled and milled—all these things that were the everlasting torment of his comrades were as nothing to Monty. He endured the smart of rope-burned wrist, the bruise and chafe and ache of limb—all the knocks and hurts of this strenuous work, and he endured them as if they were not.
    And when the first pay day came and Monty tucked away a little roll of greenbacks inside his vest, and kept adding to it as one by one his com­rades paid him for some bargained serv­ice—then in Monty Price’s heart began the low and insistent and sweetly allur­ing call of the thing that had ruined him. Thereafter sleeping or waking, he lived in a dream, with that music in his heart, and the hours were fleet­ing.
    On the mountain trails, in the noonday heat of the dusty ranges, in the dark, sultry nights with their thunderous atmosphere he was always listen­ing to that song of his nightingale. To his comrades he seemed a silent, mo­rose, greedy cowboy, a demon for work, with no desire for friendship, no thought of home or kin, no love of a woman or a horse or anything, except money. To Monty himself, his whole inner life grew rosier and mellower and richer as day by day his nightingale sang sweeter and louder. Every time he felt that little bundle inside his vest a warm and delicious thrill went over him. On the long rides he pressed it with his hand a hundred times to feel if it were there, to feel the substance that