CHAPTER X—IN WHICH THE X Y Z FIGURES SOMEWHAT MYSTERIOUSLY
Jim Munson, riding his pony over the home trail at a slow walk, drooped sleepily in his saddle. It was not a weirdly late bedtime, half-past ten, maybe, but he would have been sleeping soundly a good hour or more had this not been his night to go to town—if he chose. He had chosen. He would not have missed his chance for a good deal. But his dissipation had been light. The Boss never tolerated much along that line. He had drunk with some congenial cronies from the Circle E outfit complimentary to the future well-being and increasing wealth of this already well-known and flourishing cattle ranch. Of course he must drink a return compliment to the same rose-colored prosperity for the Three Bars, which he did and sighed for more. That made two, and two were the limit, and here was the limit overreached already; for there had always to be a last little comforter to keep him from nodding in his saddle.
Before the time arrived for that, there were some errands to be executed for the boys on duty at the home ranch. These necessitated a call at the post-office, the purchase of several slabs of plug tobacco, some corn-cob pipes, and some writing material for Kin Lathrop. He must not forget the baking powder for the cook. Woe to him, Munson, if there were no biscuits for breakfast. Meanwhile he must not neglect to gather what little news was going. That would be a crime as heinous as the forgetting of the baking powder. But there didn’t seem to be anything doing to-night. Only the sheriff was playing again behind the curtain. Couldn’t fool him. Damned hypocrite!
The errands accomplished to his satisfaction and nothing forgotten, as frequent and close inspection of the list written out by the Scribe proved, his comforter swallowed, lingeringly, and regretfully, he was now riding homeward, drowsy but vastly contented with the world in general and particularly with his own lot therein. It was a sleepy night, cool and soft and still. He could walk his horse all the way if he wanted to. There was no haste. The boys would all be in bed. They would not even wait up for the mail, knowing his, Jim’s, innate aversion to hurry. Had he not been so drowsy, he would like to have sung a bit; but it required a little too much effort. He would just plod along.
Must all be in bed at Williston’s—no light anywhere. A little short of where the Williston branch left the main trail, he half paused. If it were not so late, he would ride up and give them a hail. But of course they were asleep. Everything seemed still and dark about the premises. He would just plod along.
“Hello, there! Where’d you come from?” he cried of a sudden, and before he had had time to carry his resolve into action.
A man on horseback had drawn rein directly in front of him. Jim blinked with the suddenness of the shock.
“Might ask you the same question,” responded the other with an easy laugh. “I’m for town to see the doctor about my little girl. Been puny for a week.”
“Oh! Where you from?” asked Jim, with the courteous interest of his kind.
“New man on the X Y Z,” answered the other, lightly. “Must be gettin’ on. Worried about my baby girl.”
He touched spurs to his horse and was off with a friendly “So long,” over his shoulder.
Jim rode on thoughtfully.
“Now don’t it beat the devil,” he was thinking, “how that there cow-puncher struck this trail comin’ from the X Y Z—with the X Y Z clean t’other side o’ town? Yep, it beats the devil, for a fac’. He must be a ridin’ for his health. It beats the devil.” This last was long drawn out. He rode a little farther. “It beats the devil,” he thought again,—the wonder of it was waking him up,—“how that blamed fool could a’ struck this here trail a goin’ for Doc.”
At the branch road he stopped irresolutely.
“It beats the devil—for a fac’.” He looked helplessly over his shoulder. The man was beyond sight and sound. “If he hadn’t said he was goin’ for Doc and belonged to the X Y Z,” he pondered. He was swearing because he could not think of a way out of the maze of contradiction. He was so seldom at a loss, this braggadocio Jim. “Well, I reckon I won’t get any he’p a moonin’ here less’n I wait here till that son-of-a-gun comes back from seein’ Doc. Lord, I’d have to camp out all night. Guess I’ll be a movin’ on. But I’m plumb a-foot for an idee as to how that idjit got here from the X Y Z.”
He shrugged his shoulders and picked up the fallen bridle-rein. He kept on straight ahead, and it was well for him that he did so. It was not the last of the affair. The old, prosaic trail seemed fairly bristling with ghostly visitants that night. He had gone but a scant quarter-mile when he met with a second horseman, and this time he would have sworn on oath that the man had not been on the forward trail as long as he should have been to be seen in the starlight. Jim was not dozing now and he knew what he was about. The fellow struck the trail from across country and from the direction of Williston’s home cattle sheds.
“The devil!” he muttered, and this time he was in deep and terrible earnest.
“Hullo!” the fellow accosted him, genially.
“Too damned pleasant—the whole bunch of em,” found quick lodgment in Jim’s active brain. Aloud, he responded with answering good-nature, “Hullo!”
“Where ye goin’?” asked the other, as if in no particular haste to part company. If he had met with a surprise, he carried it off well.
“Home. Been to town.” Jim was on tenter hooks to be off.
“Belong to the Three Bars, don’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Thought so. Well, good luck to you.”
“Say,” said Jim, suddenly, “you don’t happen to hang out at the X Y Z, do you?”
“Naw! What d’ye suppose I’d be doing here this time of night if I did?” There was scorn in his voice and suspicion, too. “Why?” he asked.
“Oh, nothin’. Thought I knew your build, but I guess I was mistaken. So long.”
He had an itching desire to ask if this night traveller, too, was in quest of the doctor, but caution held him silent. He had need to proceed warily. He rode briskly along until he judged he had gone far enough to allay suspicion, then he halted suddenly. Very wide-awake was Jim now. His hand rested unconsciously on the Colt’s 45, protruding from his loosely hanging belt. His impulse was to ride boldly back and up to Williston’s door, and thus satisfy himself as to what was doing so mysteriously. There was not a cowardly drop in Jim’s circulation. But if foul play was abroad for Williston that night, he, Jim, of course, was spotted and would never be permitted to reach the house. It would mean a useless sacrifice. Now, he needed to be alive. There was a crying need for his good and active service. Afterwards—well, it was all in the day’s work. It wouldn’t so much matter then. He touched spurs lightly, bent his head against the friction of the air and urged his horse to the maddest, wildest race he had ever run since that day long ago, to be forgotten by neither, when he had been broken to his master’s will.
Paul Langford dropped one shoe nervelessly to the wolfskin in front of his bed. Though his bachelor room was plain in most respects, plain for the better convenience of the bachelor hands that had it to put to rights every day,—with the exception of a cook, Langford kept no servant,—the wolfskin here, an Indian blanket thrown over a stiff chair by the table, a Japanese screen concealing the ugly little sheet-iron stove that stood over in its corner all the year round, gave evidence that his tastes were really luxurious. An oil lamp was burning dimly on the table. The soot of many burnings adhered to the chimney’s inner side.
“One would know it was Jim’s week by looking at that chimney,” muttered the Boss, eyeing the offending chimney discontentedly as he dropped the other shoe. “He seems to have an inborn aversion to cleaning chimneys. It must be a birthmark, or maybe he was too anxious to get to town to-night. I see I’ll have to discipline Jim. I have to stop and think even now, sometimes, who’s boss of this shebang, he or I. Sometimes I’m inclined to the opinion that he is. Come to think of it, though,” whimsically, “I lean to a vague misgiving that I didn’t touch that low-down chimney myself last week. We’re kind of an ornery set, I’m thinking, every mother’s son of us—and I’m the worst of the lot. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for the bunch of us, if one of the boys were to marry and bring his girl to the Three Bars. But I’ll be hanged if I know which one I’d care to give up to the feminine gender. Besides, she’d be bossy—they all are—and she’d wear blue calico wrappers in the morning—they all do.”
He began pacing the floor in his stocking feet.
“Wish I could get that blamed little girl of Williston’s out of my head to-night. Positively red-headed. Well, call it auburn for the sake of politeness. What’s the difference? She’s a winner, though. Wonder why I didn’t know about her before? Wonder if Dick’s in love with her? Shouldn’t wonder. He’s plumb daffy on the subject of the old man. Never thought of that before. Or maybe it’s Jim. No, she’s not his kind.” He stopped for a moment at the open window and looked out into the still, starry night “Guess I’ll have to let the Scribe commit matrimony, if he’s ‘willin’.’ He’s the only one of the bunch—fit.”
The sound of galloping hoof-beats on the hard road below came up to him as he stood at the window. A solitary horseman was coming that way and he was putting his horse to the limit, too.
“Who the—deuce,” began Langford. “It’s Jim’s cow pony as sure as I’m a sinner! What brings him home at that pace, I wonder? Is he drunk?”
He peered out indifferently. The hoof-beats rang nearer and nearer, clattered through the stable yards and, before they ceased, two or three revolver shots rang out in rapid succession. Jim had fired into the air to arouse the house.
Springing from his reeking bronco, he ran quickly to the stable and threw wide the door. Here the Boss, the first to gain the outside because already dressed, found him hastily saddling a fresh mount. Langford asked no question. That would come later. He stepped silently to Sade’s stall.
In an incredibly short space of time the rest of the boys came leaping out of the ranchhouse, slamming the door behind them. To be up and doing was the meat they fed upon. In less than ten minutes they were all mounted and ready, five of them, silent, full to the brim of reckless hardihood, prime for any adventure that would serve to break the monotony of their lives. More than that, every fibre of their being, when touched, would respond, a tuneful, sounding string of loyalty to the traditions of the Three Bars and to its young master. Each was fully armed. They asked no question. Yet there could be no doubt of a surprise when the time came for action. They were always prepared, these boys of the most popular ranch outfit west of the river. Right in the face of this popularity, perhaps because of it, they were a bit overbearing, these boys, and held fellowship with any outside the Three Bars a thing not to be lightly entered into. It was a fine thing to work for the Boss, and out of the content accruing therefrom sprang a conservatism like that of the proudest aristocrat of the land.
Langford took the trail first. Jim had said but the one word, “Williston.” It was enough. Nothing was to be heard but the rapid though regular pound of hoof-beats on the level trail. It is a silent country, the cow country, and its gravity begets gravity.
Langford, riding slightly in advance, was having a bad time with himself. The keenest self-reproach was stabbing him like a physical pain. His honor—his good honor, that he held so high and stainless—was his word not given by it that the Willistons might count on his sure protection? What had he done to merit this proud boast? Knowing that Jesse Black was once more at liberty, fully realizing of what vast import to the State would be Williston’s testimony when the rustlers should be brought to trial, he had sat stupidly back and done nothing. And he had promised. Would Williston have had the courage without that promise? Why were not some of his cowboys even now sleeping with an eye upon that little claim shack where lived that scholar-man who was not fit for the rough life of the plains, maybe, but who had been brave enough and high-minded enough to lay his all on the white altar of telling what he knew for right’s sake. And the girl—
“God! The girl!” he cried aloud.
“What did you say, Boss?” asked Jim, pounding alongside.
“Nothing!” said Langford, curtly.
He spurred his mare savagely. In the shock of the surprise, and the sting that his neglected word brought him, he had forgotten the girl—Williston’s “little girl” with the grave eyes—the girl who was not ten but twenty and more—the girl who had waited for him, whom he had sent on her long way alone, joyously, as one free of a duty that promised to be irksome—the girl who had brought the blood to his face when, ashamed, he had galloped off to the spring—the girl who had closed her door when a man’s curious eyes had roved that way. How could he forget?
The little cavalcade swept on with increased speed, following the lead of the master. Soon the sound of shooting was borne to them distinctly through the quiet night.
“Thank God, boys!” cried Langford, digging in his spurs, once more. “They are not surprised! Listen! God! What a plucky fight! If they can only hold out!”
At that moment a tiny tongue of flame leaped up away to the front of them, gleaming in the darkness like a beacon light. Now there were two—they grew, spread, leaped heavenward in mad revel. Langford’s heart sank like lead. He groaned in an exceeding bitterness of spirit. The worst had happened. Would they be in time? These claim shanties burn like paper. And the girl! He doubted not that she had sustained her share of the good fight. She had fought like a man, she must die like a man,—would be the outlaw’s reasoning. He believed she would die like a man—if that meant bravely,—but something clutched at his heart-strings with the thought. Her big, solemn eyes came back to him now as they had looked when she had lifted them to him gravely as he sat his horse and she had said she had waited for him. Was she waiting now?
The boys rallied to the new impetus gloriously. They knew now what it meant and their hardy hearts thrilled to the excitement of it, and the danger. They swept from the main trail into the dimmer one leading to Williston’s, without diminution of speed. Presently, the Boss drew rein with a suddenness that would have played havoc with the equilibrium of less seasoned horsemen than cowboys. They followed with the precision and accord of trained cavalrymen. Now and then could be seen a black, sinister figure patrolling the burning homestead, but hugging closely the outer skirt of darkness, waiting for the doomed door to open.
“Boys!” began Langford. But he never gave the intended command to charge at once with wild shouting and shooting to frighten away the marauders and give warning to the besieged that rescue was at hand. For at that moment the door opened, and Williston and his daughter stepped out in full view of raider and rescuer. Would there be parley? A man, slouching in his saddle, rode up into the circle of lurid light. Was it Jesse Black? There was something hauntingly familiar about the droop of the shoulders. That was all; hardly enough to hang a man.
Langford raised his rifle quickly. His nerves were perfectly steady. His sight was never truer. His bullet went straight to the rifle arm of the outlaw; with a ringing shout he rallied his comrades, spurred his pony forward, and the little party charged the astounded raiders with a fury of shots that made each rustler stand well to his own support, leaving the Willistons, for the time being, free from their attention.
The desperadoes were on the run. They cared to take no risk of identification. It was not easy to determine how many there were. There seemed a half-dozen or more, but probably four or five at the most would tell their number.
The flames were sinking. Williston had disappeared. The boys scattered in wild pursuit. Wheeling his horse, Langford was in time to see a big, muscular fellow swing a girlish form to the saddle in front of him. Quick as a flash he spurred forward, lifted his heavy Colt’s revolver high over his head and brought it down on the fellow’s skull with a force that knocked him senseless without time for a sigh or moan. As his arms fell lax and he toppled in his saddle, Langford caught the girl and swung her free of entanglement.
“Poor little girl,” he breathed over her as her white face dropped with unconscious pathos against his big shoulder. “Poor little girl—I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—honest—I’m sorry.” He chafed her hands gently. “And I don’t know where your father is, either. Are you hurt anywhere, or have you only fainted? God knows I don’t wonder. It was hellish. Why, child, child, your arm! It is broken! Oh, little girl, I didn’t mean to—honest—honest. I’m sorry.”
Jim rode up panting, eyes blood-shot.
“We can’t find him, Boss. They’ve carried him off, dead or alive.”
“Is it so, Jim? Are you sure? How far did you follow?”
“We must have followed the wrong lead. If any one was ridin’ double, it wasn’t the ones we was after, that’s one thing sure. The blamed hoss thieves pulled clean away from us. Our hosses were plumb winded anyway. And—there’s a deader out there, Boss,” lowering his voice; “I found him as I came back.”
“That explains why no one was riding double,” said Langford, thoughtfully.
“How’s the gal, Boss?”
“I don’t know, Jim. I—don’t know what to do now.”
His eyes were full of trouble.
“Ain’t no use cryin’ over spilt milk and that’s a fac’. ’Bout as sensible as a tryin’ to pick it up after it is spilt. We won’t find Williston this here night, that’s one thing sure. So we’ll just tote the little gal home to the Three Bars with us.”
The boys were returning, silent, gloomy, disconsolate. They eyed the Boss tentatively. Would they receive praise or censure? They had worked hard.
“You’re all right, boys,” said Langford, smiling away their gloom. “But about the girl. There is no woman at the Three Bars, you know—”
“So you’d leave her out all night to the dew and the coyotes and the hoss thieves, would you,” interrupted Jim, with a fine sarcasm, “jest because there ain’t no growed-up woman at the Three Bars? What d’ye think Williston’s little gal’d care for style? She ain’t afraid o’ us ol’ grizzled fellers. I hope to the Lord there won’t never be no growed-up woman at the Three Bars,—yep, that’s what I hope. I think that mouse-haired gal reporter’d be just tumble fussy, and I think she’s a goin’ to marry a down Easterner chap, anyway.”
“Just pick up that fellow, will you, boys, and strap him to his horse, and we’ll take him along,” said Langford. “I don’t believe he’s dead.”
“What fellow?” asked the Scribe, peering casually about.
Langford had unconsciously ridden forward a bit to meet the boys as they had clattered up shamefacedly. Now he turned.
“Why, that fellow over there. I knocked him out.”
He rode back slowly. There was no man there, nor the trace of a man. They stared at each other a moment, silently. Then Langford spoke.
“No, I am not going to leave Williston’s little girl out in the dew,” he said, with an inscrutable smile. “While some of you ride in to get some one to see about that body out there and bring out the doctor, I’ll take her over to White’s for to-night, anyway. Mrs. White will care for her. Then perhaps we will send for the ‘gal reporter,’ Jim.”
CHAPTER XI—“YOU ARE—THE BOSS”
She held out her left hand with a sad little smile. “It is good of you to come so soon,” she said, simply.
She had begged so earnestly to sit up that Mrs. White had improvised an invalid’s chair out of a huge old rocker and a cracker box. It did very well. Then she had partially clothed the girl in a skimpy wrapper of the sort Langford abominated, throwing a man’s silk handkerchief where the wrapper failed to meet, and around the injured arm. Mrs. White had then recalled her husband from the stables where he was on the point of mounting to join the relief party that was to set off in search of Williston at ten o’clock. The starting point unanimously agreed upon was to be the pitiful remnants of Williston’s home. Men shook their heads dubiously whenever the question of a possible leading trail was broached. The soil was hard and dry from an almost rainless July and August. The fugitives might strike across country anywhere with meagre chances of their trail being traced by any.
Mrs. White and her husband, kindly souls both, lifted the girl as gently as might be from the bed to the rudely constructed invalid’s chair by the sitting-room window. Then they had left her—the woman to putter around her kitchen, the man to make good his appointment. But the exertion had been too much for Mary. She had counted on strength that she did not possess. Where had she lost it all? she wondered, lacking comprehension of her exceeding weakness. To be sure, her arm alternately ached and smarted, but one’s arm was really such a small part of one, and she had been so strong—always. She tried to shake off the faintness creeping over her. It was effort thrown away. She lay back on her pillow, very white and worn, her pretty hair tangled and loosened from its coils.
Paul came. He was dusty and travel-stained. He had been almost continuously in his saddle since near midnight of the night before. He was here, big, strong, and worthy. Mary did not cry, but she remembered how she had wanted to a few hours ago and she wondered that she could not now. Strangely enough, it was Paul who wanted to cry now—but he didn’t. He only swallowed hard and held her poor hand with all gentleness, afraid to let go lest he also let go his mastery over the almost insurmountable lump in his throat.
“I tried to come sooner,” he said, huskily, at last, releasing her hand and standing before her. “But I’ve been riding all over—for men, you know,—and I had a talk with Gordon, too. It took time. He is coming out to see you this afternoon. He is coming with Doc. Don’t you think you had better go back to bed now? You are so—so white. Let me carry you back to bed before I go.”
“Are you going, too?” asked Mary, looking at him with wide eyes of gratitude.
“Surely,” he responded, quickly. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I—I—didn’t know. I thought—there were a lot going—there would be enough without you. But—I am glad. If you go, it will be all right. You will find him if any one can.”
“Won’t you let me carry you back to bed till Doc comes?” said Langford, brokenly.
“I could not bear it in bed,” she said, clearly. Her brown eyes were beginning to shine with fever, and red spots had broken out in her pale cheeks. “If you make me go, I shall die. I hear it all the time when I am lying down—galloping, galloping, galloping. They never stop. They always begin all over again.”
“What galloping, little girl?” asked Langford, soothingly. He saw she was becoming delirious. If Doc and Dick would only come before he had to go. But they were not coming until after dinner. He gazed down the dusty road. They would wait for him, the others. He was their leader by the natural-born right of push and energy, as well as by his having been the sole participant, with his own cowboys, in the last night’s tragedy. But would he do well to keep them waiting? They had already delayed too long. And yet how could he leave Williston’s little girl like this—even to find Williston?
“They are carrying my father away,” she said, with startling distinctness. “Don’t you hear them? If you would listen, you could hear them. Do listen! They are getting faint now—you can hardly hear them. They are fainter—fainter—fainter—”
She had raised her head. There was an alert look on her face. She leaned slightly toward the window.
“Good God! A man can’t stand everything!” cried Langford, hoarsely. He tore the knotted handkerchief from his throat. It was as if he was choking. Then he put his cool, strong hand to her burning forehead and gently smoothed back the rough hair. Gradually, the fixed look of an indescribable horror passed away from her face. The strained, hard eyes softened, became dewy. She looked at him, a clinging helplessness in her eyes, but sweet and sane.
“Don’t you worry, child,” he said, comfortingly. “They can’t help finding him. Twenty men with the sheriff start on the trail. There’ll be fifty before night. They can’t help finding him. I’m going to stay right here with you till Doc comes. I’ll catch up with them before they’ve gone far. I’ll send word to the boys not to wait. Must be somebody around the house, I reckon, besides the old lady.”
He started cheerily for the door.
“Mr. Langford!”
“Yes?”
“Please come back.”
He came quickly to her.
“What is it?”
“Mr. Langford, will you grant me a favor?”
“Certainly, Miss Mary. Anything in this world that I can do for you, I will do. You know that, don’t you?”
“I am all right now. I don’t think I shall get crazy again if you will let me sit here by this window and look out. If I can watch for him, it will give me something to do. You see, I could be watching all the time for the party to come back over that little rise up the road. I want you to promise me,” she went on, steadily, “that I may sit here and wait for you—to come back.”
“God knows you may, little girl, anyway till Doc comes.”
“You are wiser than Doc,” pursued the girl. “He is a good fellow, but foolish, you know, sometimes. He might not understand. He might like to use authority over me because I am his patient—when he did not understand. Promise that I may sit up till you come back.”
“I do promise, little girl. Tell him I said so. Tell him—”
“I will tell him you are—the Boss,” she said, with a pitiful little attempt at a jest, and smiling wanly. “He will mind—the Boss.”
Langford was in agony. Perspiration was springing out on his forehead though August was wearing away peacefully in soft coolness with drifting depths of white cloud as a lounging-robe,—a blessed reprieve from the blazing sun of the long weeks which had gone before.
“And then I want you to promise me,” went on Mary, quietly, “that you will not think any more of staying behind. I could not bear that. I trust you to go. You will, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will go. I will do anything you say. And I want you to believe that everything will be all right. They would not dare to kill him now, knowing that we are after them. If we are not back to-night, you will not worry, will you? They had so much the start of us.”
“I will try not to worry.”
“Well, good-bye. Be a good girl, won’t you?”
“I will try,” she answered, wearily.
With a last look into the brave, sweet face, and smothering a mad, uncowman-like desire to stay and comfort this dear little woman while others rode away in stirring quest, Langford strode from the sick-room into the kitchen.
“Don’t let her be alone any more than you can help, Mother White,” he said, brusquely, “and don’t worry her about going to bed.”
“Have a bite afore you start, Mr. Langford, do,” urged the good woman, hospitably. “You’re that worn out you’re white around the gills. I’ll bet you haven’t had ary bite o’ breakfast.”
“I had forgotten—but you are right. No, thank you, I’ll not stop for anything now. I’ll have to ride like Kingdom come. I’m late. Be good to her, Mother White,” this last over his shoulder as he sprang to his mount from the kitchen stoop.
The long day wore along. Mother White was baking. The men would be ravenous when they came back. Many would stop there for something to eat before going on to their homes. It might be to-night, it might be to-morrow, it might not be until the day after, but whenever the time did come, knowing the men of the range country, she must have something “by her.” The pleasant fragrance of new bread just from the oven, mixed with the faint, spicy odor of cinnamon rolls, floated into the cheerless sitting-room. Mary, idly watching Mother White through the open door as she bustled about in a wholesome-looking blue-checked gingham apron, longed with a childish intensity to be out where there were human warmth and companionship. It was such a weary struggle to keep cobwebs out of her head in that lonely, carpetless sitting-room, and to keep the pipe that reared itself above the squat stove, from changing into a cottonwood tree. Some calamity seemed to hover over her all the time. She was about to grasp the terrible truth,—she knew she must look around. Now some one was creeping toward her from under the bed. Unless she stared it out of countenance, something awful would surely come to pass.
Mother White came to the door from time to time to ask her how she was, with floury hands, and stove smutch on her plump cheek. She never failed to break the evil spell. But Mary was weak, and Mrs. White on one of her periodical pauses at the door found her sobbing in pitiful self-abandonment. She went to her quickly, her face full of concern.
“My dear, my dear,” she cried, anxiously, “what is it? Tell me. Mr. Langford will never forgive me. I didn’t mean to neglect you, child. It’s only that I’m plumb a-foot for time. Tell me what ails you—that’s a dearie.”
Mary laid her head on the motherly shoulder and cried quietly for a while. Then she looked up with the faintest ghost of a smile.
“I’m ashamed to tell you, Mother White,” she half whispered. “It is—only—that I was afraid you hadn’t put enough cinnamon in the rolls. I like cinnamon rolls.”
“Lord love the child!” gasped Mrs. White, but without the least inclination to laugh. “Why, I lit’rally buried ’em in cinnamon. I couldn’t afford not to. If I do say it who shouldn’t, my rolls is pretty well known in Kemah County. The boys wouldn’t stand for no economizin’ in spice. No, sirree.”
She hastened wonderingly back to her kitchen, only to return with a heaped-up plate of sweet-smelling rolls.
“Here you are, honey, and they wont hurt you a mite. I can’t think what keeps that fool Doc.” She was getting worried. It was nearly four and he was not even in sight.
Now that she had them, Mary did not want the rolls. She felt they would choke her. She waited until her kindly neighbor had trotted back to her household cares, and pushed the plate away. She turned to her window with an exaggerated feeling of relief. It was hard to watch ceaselessly for some one to top that little rise out yonder and yet for no one ever to do it. But there were compensations. It is really better sometimes not to see things than to see—some things. And it was easier to keep her head clear when she was watching the road.
A younger White, an over-grown lad of twelve, came in from far afield. He carried a shot-gun in one hand and a gunny-sack thrown over his shoulder. He slouched up and deposited the contents of the bag in front of Mary’s window with a bashful, but sociable grin. Mary nodded approvingly, and the boy was soon absorbed in dressing the fowls. What a feast there would be that night if the men got back!
At last came the doctor and Gordon, driving up in the doctor’s top-buggy, weather-stained, mud-bedaubed with the mud of last Spring, of many Springs. The doctor was a badly dressed, pleasant-eyed man, past middle age, with a fringe of gray whiskers. He was a sort of journeyman doctor, and he had drifted hither one day two Summers ago from the Lake Andes country in this selfsame travel-worn conveyance with its same bony sorrel. He had found good picking, he had often jovially remarked since, chewing serenely away on a brand of vile plug the while. He had elected to remain. He was part and parcel of the cattle country now. He was an established condition. People had learned to accept him as he was and be grateful. Haste was a mental and physical impossibility to him. He took his own time. All must perforce acquiesce.
But as he took Mary’s wrist between well-shaped fingers disfigured with long, black nails, he had not been able as yet to readjust himself to old conditions after last night’s grewsome experience. He was still walking in a maze. He occasionally even forgot the automatic movement of his jaws. Ah, little doctor, something untoward must have happened to cause you to forget that! What that something was he was thinking about now, and that was what made his blue eyes twinkle so merrily.
Last night,—was it only last night?—oh, way, way in the night, when ghosts and goblins stalked abroad and all good people were safely housed and deeply asleep, there had come a goblin to his door in the hotel, and cried for admittance with devilish persistence and wealth of language. When he, the doctor, had desired information as to the needs of his untimely visitant, the shoulders of some prehistoric giant had been put to the door, and it had fallen open as to the touch of magic. A dazzling and nether-world light had flamed up in his room, and this Hercules-goblin with lock-destroying tendencies had commanded him to clothe himself, with such insistency that the mantle of nimbleness had descended upon all the little doctor’s movements. That this marvellous agility was the result, pure and simple, of black arts, was shown by the fact that the little doctor was in a daze all the rest of the night. He did not even make show of undue astonishment or nervousness when, clothed in some wonderful and haphazard fashion, he was escorted through the dimly lit hall, down the dark stairway, past the office where a night-lamp burned dully, out into the cool night air and into the yawning depths of a mysterious vehicle which rattled with a suspiciously familiar rattle when it suddenly plunged into what seemed like everlasting darkness ahead. He had felt a trifle more like himself after he had unconsciously rammed his hand through the rent in the cushion where the hair stuffing was coming out. But he had not been permitted the reins, so he could not be sure if they were tied together with a piece of old suspender or not; and if that was Old Sorrel, he certainly had powers of speed hitherto unsuspected.
Witchcraft? Ay! Had not he, the little doctor, heard ghostly hoof-beats alongside all the way? It had been nerve-racking. Sometimes he had thought it might just be a cow pony, but he could not be sure; and when he had been tossed profanely and with no dignity into the house of one White, homesteader, with the enigmatical words, “There, damn ye, Doc! I reckon ye got a move on once in your life, anyway,” the voice had sounded uncannily like that of one Jim Munson, cow-puncher; but that was doubtless a hallucination of his, brought about by the unusualness of the night’s adventures.
“You have worked yourself into a high fever, Miss Williston, that’s what you’ve done,” he said, with professional mournfulness.
“I know it,” she smiled, wanly. “I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry.”
Gordon drew up a chair and sat down by her, saying with grave kindness, “You are fretting. We must not let you. I am going to stay with you all night and shoo the goblins away.”
“You are kind,” said Mary, gratefully. “May I tell you when they come? If some one speaks to me, they go away.”
“Indeed you may, dear child,” he exclaimed, heartily. He had been half joking when he spoke of keeping things away. He now perceived that these things were more serious than he knew.
The doctor administered medicine to reduce the fever, dressed the wounded arm, with Gordon’s ready assistance, and then called in Mother White to prepare the bed for his patient; but he paused nonplussed before the weight of entreaty in Mary’s eyes and voice.
“Please don’t,” she cried out, in actual terror. “Oh, Mr. Gordon, don’t let him! I see such awful things when I lie down. Please! Please! And Mr. Langford said I might sit up till he came. Mr. Gordon, you will not let him put me to bed, will you?”
“I think it will be better to let her have her way, Lockhart,” said Gordon, in a low voice.
“Mebbe it would, Dick,” said the doctor, with surprising meekness.
“I’ll stay all night and I’ll take good care of her, Lockhart. There’s Mother White beckoning to supper. You’ll eat before you go? No, I won’t take any supper now, thank you, mother, I will stay with Mary.”
And he did stay with her all through the long watches of that long night. He never closed his eyes in sleep. Sometimes, Mary would drop off into uneasy slumber—always of short duration. When she awakened suddenly in wide-eyed fright, he soothed her with all tenderness. Sometimes when he thought she was sleeping, she would clutch his arm desperately and cry out that there was some one behind the big cottonwood. Again it would be to ask him in a terrified whisper if he did not hear hoof-beats, galloping, galloping, galloping, and begged him to listen. He could always quiet her, and she tried hard to keep from wandering; but after a short, broken rest, she would cry out again in endless repetition of the terrors of that awful night.
Mrs. White and several of her small progeny breathed loudly from an adjoining room. A lamp burned dimly on the table. It grew late—twelve o’clock and after. At last she rested. She passed from light, broken slumber to deep sleep without crying out and thus awakening herself. Gordon was tired and sad. Now that the flush of fever was gone, he saw how white and miserable she really looked. The circles under her eyes were so dark they were like bruises. The mantle of his misfortune was spreading to bring others besides himself into its sombre folds.
The men were coming back. But they were coming quietly, in grim silence. He dared not awaken Mary for the news he knew they must carry. He stepped noiselessly to the door to warn them to a yet greater stillness, and met Langford on the threshold.
The two surveyed each other gravely with clasped hands.
“You tell her, Dick. I—I can’t,” said Langford. His big shoulders drooped as under a heavy burden.
“Must I?” asked Gordon.
“Dick, I—I can’t,” said Langford, brokenly. “Don’t you see?—if I had been just a minute sooner—and I promised.”
“Yes, I see, Paul,” said Gordon, quietly. “I will tell her.”
“You need not,” said a sweet clear voice from across the room. “I know. I heard. I think I knew all the time—but you were all so good to make me hope. Don’t worry about me any more, dear friends. I am all right now. It is much better to know. I hope they didn’t hang him. You think they shot him, don’t you?”
“Little girl, little girl,” cried Langford, on his knees beside her, “it is not that! It is only that we have not found him. But no news is good news. That we have found no trace proves that they have to guard him well because he is alive. We are going on a new tack to-morrow. Believe me, little girl, and go to bed now, won’t you, and rest?”
“Yes,” she said, wearily, as one in whom no hope was left, “I will go. I will mind—the Boss.”
As he laid her gently on the bed, while Mrs. White, aroused from sleep, fluttered aimlessly and drowsily about, he whispered, his breath caressing her cheek:
“You will go to sleep right away, won’t you?”
“I will try. You are the Boss.”
CHAPTER XII—WAITING
The man found dead the night the Lazy S was burned out was not easily identified. He was a half-breed, but half-breeds were many west of the river, and the places where they laid their heads at night were as shifting as the sands of that rapid, ominous, changing stream of theirs, which ever cut them off from the world of their fathers and kept them bound, but restless, chafing, in that same land where their mothers had stared stolidly at a strange little boat-load tugging up the river that was the forerunner of the ultimate destiny of this broad northwest country, but which brought incidentally—as do all big destinies in the great scheme bring sorrow to some one—wrong, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, to a once proud, free people now in subjection.
At last the authorities found trace of him far away at Standing Rock, through the agent there, who knew him as of an ugly reputation,—a dissipated, roving profligate, who had long since squandered his government patrimony. He had been mixed up in sundry bad affairs in the past, and had been an inveterate gambler. So much only were the Kemah County authorities able to uncover of the wayward earthly career of the dead man. Of his haunts and cronies of the period immediately preceding his death, the agent could tell nothing. He had not been seen at the agency for nearly a year. The reprobate band had covered its tracks well. There was nothing to do but lay the dead body away and shovel oblivion over its secret.
In the early morning after the return of the men from their unsuccessful man hunt, Gordon, gray and haggard from loss of sleep and from hard thought, stepped out into the kitchen to stretch his cramped limbs. He stumbled over the figure of Langford prone upon the floor, dead asleep in utter exhaustion. He smiled understandingly and opened the outer door quietly, hoping he had not aroused the worn-out Boss. The air was fresh and cool, with a hint of Autumn sharpness, and a premature Indian Summer haze, that softened the gauntness of the landscape, and made the distances blue and rest-giving. He felt the need of invigoration after his night’s vigil, and struck off down the road with long strides, in pleasant anticipation of a coming appetite for breakfast.
Thus it was that Langford, struggling to a sitting posture, rubbing his heavy eyes with a dim consciousness that he had been disturbed, and wondering drowsily why he was so stupid, felt something seeping through his senses that told him he did not do well to sleep. So he decided he would take a plunge into the cold artesian pond, and with such drastic measures banish once and for all the elusive yet all-pervading cobwebs which clung to him. Rising to his feet with unusual awkwardness, he looked with scorn upon the bare floor and accused it blindly and bitterly as the direct cause of the strange soreness that beset his whole anatomy. The lay of the floor had changed in a night. Where was he? He glanced helplessly about. Then he knew.
Thus it was, that when Mary languidly opened her eyes a little later, it was the Boss who sat beside her and smiled reassuringly.
“You have not slept a wink,” she cried, accusingly.
“Indeed I have,” he said. “Three whole hours. I feel tip-top.”
“You are—fibbing,” she said. “Your eyes look so tired, and your face is all worn.”
His heart leaped with the joy of her solicitude.
“You are wrong,” he laughed, teasingly. “I slept on the floor; and a good bed it was, too. No, Miss Williston, I am not ‘all in’ yet, by any means.”
In his new consciousness, a new formality crept into his way of addressing her. She did not seem to notice it.
“Forgive me for forgetting, last night,” she said, earnestly. “I was very selfish. I forgot that you had not slept for nearly two days, and were riding all the while in—our behalf. I forgot. I was tired, and I went to sleep. I want you to forgive me. I want you to believe that I do appreciate what you have done. My father—”
“Don’t, don’t, little girl,” cried Langford, forgetting his new awe of her maidenhood in his pity for the stricken child.
“My father,” she went on, steadily, “would thank you if he were here. I thank you, too, even if I did forget to think whether or no you and all the men had any sleep or anything to eat last night. Will you try to believe that I did not forget wittingly? I was so tired.”
When Langford answered her, which was not immediately, his face was white and he spoke quietly with a touch of injured pride.
“If you want to hurt us, Miss Williston, that is the way to talk. We cowmen do not do things for thanks.”
She looked at him wonderingly a moment, then said, simply, “Forgive me,” but her lips were trembling and she turned to the wall to hide the tears that would come. After all, she was only a woman—with nerves—and the reaction had come. She had been brave, but a girl cannot bear everything. She sobbed. That was too much for Langford and his dignity. He bent over her, all his heart in his honest eyes and broken voice.
“Now you will kill me if you don’t stop it. I am all sorts of a brute—oh, deuce take me for a blundering idiot! I didn’t mean it—honest I didn’t. You will believe me, won’t you? There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you, little girl.”
She was sobbing uncontrollably now.
“Mr. Langford,” she cried, turning to him with something of the past horror creeping again into her wet eyes, “do you think I killed—that man?”
“What man? There was only one man killed, and one of my boys potted him on the run,” he said.
“Are you sure?” she breathed, in quick relief.
“Dead sure,” convincingly.
“And yet,” she sobbed, memory coming back with a rush, “I wish—I wish—I had killed them all.”
“So do I!” he agreed, so forcefully that she could but smile a little, gratefully. She said, with just the faintest suggestion of color in her white cheeks:
“Where is everybody? Have you been sitting with me long?”
“Mrs. White is getting breakfast, and I haven’t been sitting with you as long as I wish I had,” he answered, boldly; and then added, regretfully, “Dick was the man who had the luck to watch over you all night. I went to sleep.”
“You were so tired,” she said, sympathizingly. “And besides, I didn’t need anything.”
“It is good of you to put it that way,” he said, his heart cutting capers again.
“Mr. Gordon is the best man I know,” she said, thoughtfully.
“There you are right, Miss Williston,” he assented, heartily, despite a quick little sting of jealousy. “He is the best man I know. I wish you would shake hands on that—will you?”
“Surely.”
He held the smooth brown hand in his firmly with no thought of letting it go—yet.
“I am not such a bad chap myself, you know, Miss Williston,” he jested, his bold eyes flashing a challenge.
“I know it,” she said, simply. “I do not know what I should do without you. You will be good to me always, wont you? There is no one but me—now.”
She was looking at him trustingly, confident of his friendship, innocent, he knew, of any feminine wile in this her dark hour. The sweetness of it went to his head. He forgot that she was in sorrow he could not cure, forgot that she was looking to him in all probability only as the possible saviour of her father. He forgot everything except the fact that there was nothing in all the world worth while but this brown-eyed, white-cheeked, grieving girl, and he went mad with the quick knowledge thereof. He held the hand he had not released to his face, brushed it against his lips, caressed it against his breast; then he bent forward—close—and whispering, “I will be good to you—always—little girl,” kissed her on the forehead and was gone just as Gordon, filled with the life of the new day, came swinging into the house for his well-earned breakfast.
The sheriff and his party of deputies made a diligent search for Williston that day and for many days to come. It was of no avail. He had disappeared, and all trace with him, as completely as if he had been spirited away in the night to another world—body and soul. That the soul of him had really gone to another world came to be generally believed—Mary held no hope after the return of the first expedition; but why could they find no trace of his body? Where was it? Where had it found a resting place? Was it possible for a man, quick or dead, even west of the river in an early day of its civilization when the law had a winking eye, to fall away from his wonted haunts in a night and leave no print, neither a bone nor a rag nor a memory, to give mute witness that this way he passed, that way he rested a bit, here he took horse, there he slept, with this man he had converse, that man saw his still body borne hence? Could such a thing be? It seemed so.
After a gallant and dauntless search, which lasted through the best days of September, Langford was forced to let cold reason have its sway. He had thought, honestly, that the ruffians would not dare commit murder, knowing that they were being pursued; but now he was forced to the opinion that they had dared the worst, after all. For, though it would be hard to hide all trace of a dead man, infinitely greater would be the difficulty in covering the trail of a living one,—one who must eat and drink, who had a mouth to be silenced and strength to be restrained. It came gradually to him, the belief that Williston was dead; but it came surely. With it came the jeer of the spectre that would not let him forget that he should have foreseen what would surely happen. With it came also a great tenderness for Mary, and a redoubled vigilance to keep his unruly tongue from blurting out things that would hurt her who was looking to him, in the serene confidence in his good friendship, for brotherly counsel and comfort.
In the first dark days of his new belief, he spoke to Gordon, and the young lawyer had written a second letter to the “gal reporter.” In response, she came at once to Kemah and from thence to the White homestead in the Boss’s “own private.” This time the Boss did the driving himself, bringing consternation to the heart of one Jim Munson, cow-puncher, who viewed the advent of her and her “mouse-colored hair” with serious trepidation and alarm. What he had dreaded had come to pass. ’T was but a step now to the Three Bars. A fussy woman would be the means of again losing man his Eden. It was monstrous. He sulked, aggrievedly, systematically.
Louise slipped into the sad life at the Whites’ easily, sweetly, adaptably. Mary rallied under her gentle ministrations. There was—would ever be—a haunting pathos in the dark eyes, but she arose from her bed, grateful for any kindness shown her, strong in her determination not to be a trouble to any one by giving way to weak and unavailing tears. If she ever cried, it was in the night, when no one knew. Even Louise, who slept with her, did not suspect the truth for some time. But one night she sat straight up in bed suddenly, out of her sleep, with an indefinable intuition that it would be well for her to be awake. Mary was lying in a strange, unnatural quiet. Instinctively Louise reached out a gentle, consoling hand to her. She was right. Mary was not sleeping. The following night the same thing happened, and the next night also; but one night when she reached over to comfort, she found her gentle intention frustrated by a pillow under which Mary had hidden her head while she gave way guardedly to her pent-up grief.
Louise changed her tactics. She took Mary on long walks over the prairie, endeavoring to fatigue her into sleep. The length of these jaunts grew gradually and systematically. It came at last to be an established order of the day for the two girls to strike off early, with a box of luncheon strapped over Louise’s shoulder, for—nowhere in particular, but always somewhere that consumed the better part of the day in the going and coming. Sometimes the hills and bluffs of the river region drew them. Sometimes a woman’s whim made them hold to a straight line over the level distance for the pure satisfaction of watching the horizon across illimitable space remain stationary and changeless, despite their puny efforts to stride the nearer to it. Sometimes, when they chose the level, they played, like children, that they would walk and walk till the low-lying horizon had to change, until out of its hazy enchantment rose mountain-peaks and forests and valleys and cities. It proved an alluring game. A great and abiding friendship grew out of this wanderlust, cemented by a loneliness that each girl carried closely in the innermost recesses of her heart and guarded jealously there. It was a like loneliness in the littleness and atom-like inconsequence of self each must hug to her breast,—and yet, how unlike! Louise was alone in a strange, big land, but there was home for her somewhere, and kin of her own kind to whom she might flee when the weight of alienism pressed too sorely. But Mary was alone in her own land; there was nowhere to flee to when her heart rebelled and cried out in the bitterness of its loneliness; this was her home, and she was alone in it.
Louise learned to love the plains country. She revelled in its winds; the high ones, blowing bold and free with their call to throw off lethargy and stay from drifting; the low ones, sighing and rustling through the already dead grass—a mournful and whispering lament for the Summer gone. She had thought to become reconciled to the winds the last of all. She was a prim little soul with all her sweet graciousness, and dearly desired her fair hair ever to be in smooth and decorous coil or plait. Strangely enough, the winds won her first allegiance. She loved to climb to the summit of one of the barren hills flanking the river and stand there while the wind just blew and blew. Loosened tendrils of hair bothered her little these days. She relegated hats and puny, impotent hat-pins to oblivion. Her hair roughened and her fair skin tanned, but neither did these things bother her. It was the strength of the wind and the freedom, and because it might blow where it listed without regard to the arbitrary and self-important will of strutting man, that enthralled her imagination. It came about that the bigness and loneliness of this big country assumed a like aspect. It was not yet subjugated. The vastness of it and the untrammelled freedom of it, though it took her girl’s breath away, was to dwell with her forever, a sublime memory, even when the cow country—unsubjugated—was only a retrospection of silver hairs.
Mary, because of her abounding health, healed of her wound rapidly. Langford took advantage of the girls’ absorption in each other’s company to ride often and at length on quests of his own creation. With October, Louise must join Judge Dale for the Autumn term of court. He haunted the hills. He was not looking now for a living man; he was seeking a cleverly concealed grave. He flouted the opinion—held by many—that the body had been thrown into the Missouri and would wash ashore some later day many and many a mile below. He held firmly to his fixed idea that impenetrable mystery clouding the ultimate close of Williston’s earthly career was the sought aim of his murderers, and they would risk no river’s giving up its dead to their undoing.
It had been ascertained beyond reasonable doubt that Williston could not have left the country in any of the usual modes. His description was at all the stations along the line, together with the theory that he would be leaving under compulsion.
Meanwhile, Gordon had buckled down for the big fight. He was sadly handicapped, with the whole prop of his testimony struck from under him by Williston’s disappearance. However, those who knew him best—the number was not large—looked for things to happen in those days. They, the few, the courageous minority, through all the ups and downs—with the balance in favor of the downs most of the time—of the hardest-fought battle of his life, the end of which left him gray at the temples, maintained a deep and abiding faith in this quiet, unassuming young man, who had squared his shoulders to this new paralyzing blow and refused to be knocked out, who walked with them and talked with them, but kept his own counsel, abided his time, and in the meantime—worked.
One day, Langford was closeted with him for a long two hours in his dingy, one-roomed office on the ground floor. The building was a plain wooden affair with its square front rising above the roof. In the rear was a lean-to where Gordon slept and had his few hours of privacy.
“It won’t do, Paul,” Gordon said in conclusion. “I have thought it all out. We have absolutely nothing to go upon—nothing at least but our own convictions and a bandaged arm, and they won’t hang a man with Jesse’s diabolical influence. We’ll fight it out on the sole question of ‘Mag,’ Paul. After that—well—who knows? Something else may turn up. There may be developments. Meanwhile, just wait. There will be justice for Williston yet.”
CHAPTER XIII—MRS. HIGGINS RALLIES TO HER COLORS
The Kemah County Court convened on a Tuesday, the second week in December. The Judge coming with his court reporter to Velpen on Monday found the river still open. December had crept softly to its appointed place in the march of months with a gentle heralding of warm, southwest winds.
“Weather breeder,” said Mrs. Higgins of the Bon Ami, with a mournful shake of her head. “You mark my words and remember I said it. It’s a sorry day for the cows when the river’s running in December.”
She was serving the judicial party herself, and capably, too. She dearly loved the time the courts met, on either side of the river. It brought many interesting people to the Bon Ami, although not often the Judge. His coming for supper was a most unusual honor, and it was due to Louise, who had playfully insisted. He had humored her much against his will, it must be confessed; for he had a deeply worn habit of making straight for the hotel from the station and there remaining until Hank Bruebacher, liveryman, who never permitted anything to interfere with or any one to usurp his prerogative of driving his honor to and from Kemah when court was in session, whistled with shameless familiarity the following morning to make his honor cognizant of the fact that he, Hank, was ready. But he had come to the Bon Ami because Louise wished it, and he reflected whimsically on the astonishment, amounting almost to horror, on the face of his good landlord at the Velpen House when it became an assured fact that he was not and had not been in the dining-room.
“You are right, Mrs. Higgins,” assented the Judge gravely to her weather predictions, “and the supper you have prepared for us is worthy the hand that serves it. Kings and potentates could ask no better. Louise, dear child, I am fond of you and I hope you will never go back East.”
“Thank you, Uncle Hammond,” said Louise, who knew that an amusing thought was seeping through this declaration of affection. “I am sorry to give you a heartache, but I am going back to God’s country some day, nevertheless.”
“Maybe so—maybe not,” said the Judge. “Mrs. Higgins, my good woman, how is our friend, the canker-worm, coming on these days?”
“Canker-worm?” repeated Mrs. Higgins. “Meanin’, your honor—”
“Just what I say—canker-worm. Isn’t he the worm gnawing in discontent at the very core of the fair fruit of established order and peace in the cow country?”
“I—I—don’t understand, your honor,” faltered the woman, in great trepidation. Would his honor consider her a hopeless stupid? But what was the man talking about? Louise looked up, a flush of color staining her cheeks.
“Maybe fire-brand would suit you better, madame? My young friend, the fire-brand,” resumed the Judge, rising. “That is good—fire-brand. Is he not inciting the populace to ‘open rebellion, false doctrine, and schism’? Is it not because of him that roofs are burned over the very heads of the helpless homesteader?”
“For shame, Uncle Hammond,” exclaimed Louise, still flushed and with a mutinous little sparkle in her eyes. “You are poking fun at me. You haven’t any right to, you know; but that’s your way. I don’t care, but Mrs. Higgins doesn’t understand.”
“Don’t you, Mrs. Higgins?” asked the Judge.
“No, I don’t,” snapped Mrs. Higgins, and she didn’t, but she thought she did. “Only if you mean Mr. Richard Gordon, I’ll tell you now there ain’t no one in this here God-forsaken country who can hold a tallow candle to him. Just put that in your pipe and smoke it, will you?”
She piled up dishes viciously. She did not wait for her guests to depart before she began demolishing the table. It was a tremendous breach of etiquette, but she didn’t care. To have an ideal shattered ruthlessly is ever a heart-breaking thing.
“But my dear Mrs. Higgins,” expostulated the Judge.
“You needn’t,” said that lady, shortly. “I don’t care,” she went on, “if the president himself or an archangel from heaven came down here and plastered Dick Gordon with bad-smellin’ names from the crown of his little toe to the tip of his head, I’d tell ’em to their very faces that they didn’t know what they was a talkin’ about, and what’s more they’d better go back to where they belong and not come nosin’ round in other people’s business when they don’t understand one single mite about it. We don’t want ’m puttin’ their fingers in our pie when they don’t know a thing about us or our ways. That’s my say,” she closed, with appalling significance, flattering herself that no one could dream but that she was dealing in the most off-hand generalities. She was far too politic to antagonize, and withal too good a woman not to strike for a friend. She congratulated herself she had been true to all her gods—and she had been.
Louise smiled in complete sympathy, challenging the Judge meanwhile with laughing eyes. But the Judge—he was still much of a boy in spite of his grave calling and mature years—just threw back his blonde head and shouted in rapturous glee. He laughed till the very ceiling rang in loud response; laughed till the tears shone in his big blue eyes. Mrs. Higgins looked on in undisguised amazement, hands on hips.
“Dear me, suz!” she sputtered, “is the man gone clean daffy?”
“Won’t you shake hands with me, Mrs. Higgins?” he asked, gravely. “I ask your pardon for my levity, and I assure you there isn’t a man in the whole world I esteem more or hold greater faith in than Dick Gordon—or love so much. I thank you for your championship of him. I would that he had more friends like you. Louise, are you ready?”
Their walk to the hotel was a silent one. Later, as she was leaving him to go to her own room, Louise laid her head caressingly on her uncle’s sleeve.
“Uncle Hammond,” she said, impulsively, “you are—incorrigible, but you are the best man in all the world.”
“The very best?” he asked, smilingly.
“The very best,” she repeated, firmly.
There was a full calendar that term, and the close of the first week found the court still wrestling with criminal cases, with that of Jesse Black yet uncalled. Gordon reckoned that Black’s trial could not possibly be taken up until Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. Long before that, the town began filling up for the big rustling case. There were other rustling cases on the criminal docket, but they paled before this one where the suspected leader of a gang was on trial. The interested and the curious did not mean to miss any part of it. They began coming in early in the week. They kept coming the remainder of that week and Sunday as well. Even as late as Monday, delayed range riders came scurrying in, leaving the cattle mostly to shift for themselves. The Velpen aggregation, better informed, kept to its own side of the river pretty generally until the Sunday, at least, should be past.
The flats southeast of town became the camping grounds for those unable to find quarters at the hotel, and who lived too far out to make the nightly ride home and back in the morning. They were tempted by the unusually mild weather. These were mostly Indians and half-breeds, but with a goodly sprinkling of cowboys of the rougher order. Camp-fires spotted the plain, burning redly at night. There was plenty of drift-wood to be had for the hauling. Blanketed Indians squatted and smoked around their fires—a revival of an older and better day for them. Sometimes they stalked majestically through the one street of the town.
The judicial party was safely housed in the hotel, with the best service it was possible for the management to give in this busy season of congested patronage. It was impossible to accommodate the crowds. Even the office was jammed with cots at night. Mary Williston had come in from White’s to be with Louise. She was physically strong again, but ever strangely quiet, always sombre-eyed.
“What shall I do, Louise?” she asked, one night. They were sitting in darkness. From their east window they could see the gleaming red splotches that were fires on the flat.
“What do you mean, Mary?” asked Louise, dreamily. She was thinking how much sterner Gordon grew every day. He still had a smile for his friends, but he always smiled under defeat. That is what hurt so. She had noticed that very evening at supper how gray his hair was getting at the temples. He had looked lonely and sad. Was it then all so hopeless?
“I mean, to make a living for myself,” Mary answered, earnestly. “There is no one in the world belonging to me now. There were only father and I. What shall I do, Louise?”
“Mary, dear, dear Mary, what are you thinking of doing?”
“Anything,” she answered, her proud reticence giving way before her need, “that will keep me from the charity of my friends. The frock I have on, plain as it is, is mine through the generosity of Paul Langford. The bread I eat he pays for. He—he lied to me, Louise. He told me the cowmen had made a purse for my present needs. They hadn’t. It was all from him. I found out. Mrs. White is poor. She can’t keep a great, strapping girl like me for nothing. I am such a hearty eater, and he has been paying her, Louise, for what I ate. Think of it! I thought I should die when I found it out. I made her promise not to take another cent from him—for me. So I have been working to make it up. I have washed and ironed and scrubbed and baked. I was man of affairs at the ranch while Mr. White went out with the gang for the Fall round-up. I have herded. But one has to have things besides one’s bread. The doctor was paid out of that make-believe purse, but it must all be made up to Paul Langford—every cent of it.”
“Mr. Langford would be very much hurt if you should do that,” began Louise, slowly. “It was because of him, you know, primarily, that—”
“He owes me nothing,” interrupted Mary, sharply.
“Oh,” said Louise, smiling in the dark.
“I believe I could teach school,” went on Mary, with feverish haste, “if I could get a school to teach.”
“I should think Mr. Gordon could help you to secure a place here,” said Louise.
“I have not told Mr. Gordon my troubles,” said Mary, gravely. “I should not dream of intruding with such petty affairs while his big fight is on—his glorious fight. He will avenge my father. Nothing matters but that. He has enough to bear—without a woman’s trivial grievances.”
“But he would be glad to take that little trouble for you if he knew,” persisted Louise. She was feeling small and of little worth in the strength of Mary’s sweeping independence. She was hauntingly sure that in like circumstances she would be weak enough to take her trouble to—a man like Gordon, for instance. It came to her, there in the dark, that maybe he loved Mary. She had no cause to wonder, if this were true. Mary was fine—beautiful, lovable, stanch and true and capable, and he had known her long before he knew there was such a creature in existence as the insignificant, old-maidenish, mouse-haired reporter from the East. The air of the room suddenly became stifling. She threw open a window. The soft, damp air of the cloudy, warm darkness floated in and caressed her hot cheeks. Away, away over yonder, beyond the twinkling camp-fires on the flat, across the river, away to the east, were her childhood’s home and her kin. Here were the big, unthinking, overbearing cow country and—the man who loved Mary Williston, maybe.
It was getting late bedtime. Men were shuffling noisily through the hall on their way to their rooms. Scraps of conversation drifted in to the two girls.
“He’s a fool to make the try without Williston.”
“It takes some folks a mighty long time to learn their place in this here county.”
“Well, I reckon he thinks the county kin afford to stand good for his fool play.”
“He’ll learn his mistake—when Jesse gets out.”
“Naw! Not the ghost of a show!”
“He’d ought to be tarred and feathered and shot full o’ holes, and shipped back to where he come from to show his kind how we deal with plumb idjits west o’ the river.”
“Well, he’ll dance a different stunt ’gainst this is over.”
“You bet! Jesse’ll do his stunt next.”
And then they heard the lazy doctor’s voice drawling, “Mebby so, but let’s wait and see, shall we?”
Men’s minds were set unshiftingly on this coming trial. How Gordon would have to fight for a fair jury!
“I think it is as you said,” said Mary, presently. “Mr. Langford feels he owes me—bread and clothes. He is anxious to pay off the debt so there will be nothing on his conscience. He owes me nothing, nothing, Louise, but he is a man and he thinks he can pay off any obligation he may feel.”