Ironheart

Summer had burned to autumn. The first frosts had crisped the foliage of the quaking asps and the cottonwoods to a golden glory in tune with the halcyon Indian summer. Faint threats of coming winter could be read in an atmosphere grown more pale and sharp, in coloring less rich and warm.

Betty could count the time in months now since she had sent her salvaged tramp into the hills to help her lover wrestle with the problems of the Sweetwater Dam project. It was still a joy to her that she had been intuitively right about him. He was making good. He had brains and ability and the power of initiative which marks the strong man from the subordinate. Justin admitted this generously, giving her credit for a keener insight than his own.

But that was not the best of it. She knew now, through Merrick, what the vice was that had dragged him down: and from the same source she learned that he had so far fought his campaign out to victory. Not since the day after her father had been shot had she seen the young man, but she wished she could send him a message of good cheer and faith.

She thought of him a good deal. She was thinking of him this morning as she cleaned the pantry shelves and substituted new papers for the old. Justin had been down the evening before and had told her of the threat Prowers had made through Don Black in case the young engineer did not evacuate the cañon. It was in her character to look for good rather than ill in men, but she had a conviction that the cackling little cattleman was a sink of iniquity. He would do evil without ruth. There was, she felt, something demoniac, unhuman about him.

How far would he go to begin with? She did not know, but she was glad Justin had given orders to retire from Elk Creek in case of attack. His reasons she appreciated and approved. He was no hothead, but a cool, hard-hitting, determined fighter. In the end he would win, no matter what difficulties were thrown in his way. She could not think of Justin in any way except as a success. He was the kind of man who succeeds in whatever he undertakes.

The telephone rang. Her father, at Wild Horse, was on the line.

“There’s been trouble at the cañon,” he explained. “I’ve been talkin’ with Daniels. Merrick has sent for him. A man was killed—some one working on the job. Haven’t heard any particulars yet. I’ll let you know if I do.”

“Killed—on purpose, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t hear who?”

“Daniels doesn’t know.”

Betty returned to her work very much disturbed in mind. There was no reason for assuming that the man who had been killed was her redeemed vagrant, but she could not get this possibility out of her mind. He would be in the forefront of danger if there was any. She knew him well enough for that.

She tried to get Merrick on the telephone, but the word that came down to her from the dam was that he had ridden to Elk Creek. Did the assistant superintendent know when he would be back? No, he did not.

Tremulously Betty asked another question. “Have you heard, Mr. Atchison, who the man is that was killed?”

“His name’s Coyle—a man sent out to us by an employment agency in Denver.”

Betty leaned against the wall a moment after she had hung up the receiver. She was greatly relieved, and in the reaction from the strain under which she had been holding herself tautly felt oddly weak.

“Don’t be a goose!” she told herself with stinging candor. “What does it matter to you who it was?”

But she knew it mattered a great deal. Nobody had ever stimulated her imagination as this tramp had. Her liking for Justin was of quite another sort. It had not in it the quality that set pulses pounding. She would have denied to herself indignantly that she did not love him. If not, why was she engaged to him? But her affection was a well-ordered and not a disturbing force. This was as it should be, according to her young philosophy. She gave herself with energy and enthusiasm to the many activities of life. The time had not yet come when love was for her a racing current sweeping to its goal so powerfully that there could be no dalliance by the way.

Betty moved the dishes from the last shelf. As she started to gather the soiled newspaper folded across the plank, her glance fell upon the picture of a soldier in uniform. The eyes that looked into hers were those of the man who had called himself Tug Jones.

Her breath caught as she read. The caption beneath the photograph was, “Captain Thurston K. Hollister, awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for Gallantry in France.” The story below mentioned the fact that the man who had been given this recognition had disappeared and could not be found.

The girl’s blood sang. She had known from that first day he was of good blood, but she had not been sure that his record was worthy of him. He had not only fought in France; he had covered himself with glory. It was almost too good to be true.

She was on the porch to meet her father before he had swung down from the saddle. He told her details of the affair at Elk Creek as far as he had heard them.

Betty had cut the Hollister story out of the paper. She handed it to her father, all but the picture folded under.

“Who is this, Daddy?”

Reed glanced at it and answered promptly. “Looks like that young fellow Jones.”

Triumphantly she nodded. “That’s who it is. Read what it says about him.”

The cattleman read. “Hmp!” he grunted. “An’ I called him a slacker.”

“It doesn’t matter now what you called him, Dad. But I’m awf’ly glad he wasn’t one.”

“Some li’l’ stunt that—breakin’ up a German machine-gun nest and sittin’ tight for two days under fire till the boys reached him.” Clint smiled sardonically, the memory of the tongue-lashing he had given this man still vividly with him. “I reckon I can be more kinds of a durn fool in an hour than ’most anybody you know, Bess.”

“I’m so glad he’s making good with Justin. I just knew he was a splendid fellow.”

“I’m so dawg-goned hot-headed. Can’t wait an’ give myself time to cool off,” he grumbled.

“He told Justin about it. The doctors gave him a lot of morphine or something when he was wounded and he got in the habit of using it to relieve the pain. Before he knew it he couldn’t stop.”

“You’d think I’d learn a lick or two of sense, an’ me ’most fifty.”

“He hasn’t touched the stuff since he went up to the dam. Justin says it must have been horrible for him. Some nights he kept walking till morning.”

“What else was it I called him besides a slacker—after I’d beat him up till he couldn’t stand, an’ him a sick man at that?”

Betty laughed at the way each of them, absorbed in a personal point of view, was carrying on a one-sided conversation.

“Are you going up to Elk Creek to-day, Dad? If you are, I wish you’d let me go along.”

“I was thinkin’ about it. Like to go, would you? All right. We might drive and take Ruthie.”

“That’d be fine. Let’s go.”

Betty flew into the house to get ready.