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Title: Troubled Waters
Author: Raine, William MacLeod
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Troubled Waters" ***
[Cover Illustration]
=T R O U B L E D=
=W A T E R S=
=BY=
=WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE=
=AUTHOR OF=
=BUCKY O’CONNOR, MAN-SIZE,=
=THE BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP,=
=GUNSIGHT PASS, ETC.=
=[Illustration]=
=G R O S S E T= =&= =D U N L A P=
=P U B L I S H E R S= =N E W Y O R K=
COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1925, BY WILLIAM
MACLEOD RAINE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
=CONTENTS=
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AMONG THE APPLE BLOSSOMS. . . . 1
II. TIM FLANDERS OFFERS INFORMATION AND
OPINIONS. . . . . . . . . 11
III. A CHALLENGE. . . . . . . . 17
IV. INTRODUCING ROWAN MCCOY TO RUTH
TROVILLION. . . . . . . . 25
V. A RIDE. . . . . . . . . . 32
VI. CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. . . . . 42
VII. FATE FLINGS OPEN A CLOSED DOOR. . 56
VIII. A COLD TRAIL. . . . . . . . 65
IX. A RIFT IN THE LUTE. . . . . . 70
X. THE RIFT WIDENS. . . . . . . 84
XI. LARRY GOES CALLING. . . . . . 92
XII. ACROSS THE DEAD LINE. . . . . 103
XIII. THE NIGHT RAID. . . . . . . 114
XIV. THE DAY AFTER. . . . . . . . 129
XV. A HOT TRAIL. . . . . . . . 135
XVI. MATSON MAKES HIS GATHER. . . . 147
XVII. PADLOCKED LIPS. . . . . . . 155
XVIII. “I RECKON I’LL HANG”. . . . . 162
XIX. SAM YERBY SINGS. . . . . . . 169
XX. “YOU DAMNED JUDAS”. . . . . . 174
XXI. A COMPROMISE. . . . . . . . 185
XXII. FALKNER TALKS. . . . . . . . 195
XXIII. RUTH WHISPERS A SECRET. . . . . 207
XXIV. AT THE CIRCLE DIAMOND. . . . . 216
XXV. SILCOTT DISCOVERS HE IS NOT WELCOME 221
XXVI. AN EXPLANATION. . . . . . . 232
XXVII. THE SYMBOL. . . . . . . . . 242
XXVIII. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. . . . . 250
XXIX. A DISAPPOINTMENT. . . . . . . 256
XXX. THE BLIZZARD. . . . . . . . 267
XXXI. “COMPANY FOR EACH OTHER”. . . . 275
XXXII. THE CLOUDS BREAK. . . . . . . 283
XXXIII. GOOD NEWS. . . . . . . . . 294
XXXIV. A HONEYMOON IN THE HILLS. . . . 299
TROUBLED WATERS
TROUBLED WATERS
CHAPTER I
AMONG THE APPLE BLOSSOMS
THE young man drew up his horse at the side of the dusty road and looked
across the barbed-wire fence into the orchard beyond. Far distant
against the horizon could be seen the blue mountain range of the Big
Horns, sharp-toothed, with fields of snow lying in the gulches. But in
the valley basin where he rode an untempered sun, too hot for May, beat
upon his brown neck and through the gray flannel shirt stretched taut
across his flat back.
The trees were clouds of soft blossoms and the green alfalfa beneath
looked delightfully cool. Warm and dry from travel as he was, that
shadowy paradise of pink and white bloom and lush deep grass called
mightily to him. A reader of character might have guessed that handsome
Larry Silcott followed the line of least resistance. If his face
betrayed no weakness, certainly it showed self-satisfaction, an assured
smug acceptance of the fact that he was popular and knew it. Yet his
friends, and he had many of them, would have protested that word smug.
He was a good fellow, amiable, friendly, anxious to please. At dance and
round-up he always had a smile or a laugh ready.
He caught a glimpse of the weathered roof of the ranch house where the
rambling road dipped into a draw. Well, it would wait there for him.
There were twenty-four hours in every day and seven days in each week.
Time was one thing Larry had plenty of. Why not climb the fence and
steal a long luxurious nap in the orchard of the Elkhorn Lodge? He
looked at his watch—and ten seconds later was trespassing with long
strides through the grass.
Larry was Irish by descent. He was five-and-twenty. He had the digestion
of an ostrich. For which good reasons and several others he whistled as
his quirt whipped the alfalfa tops from the stems. For the young range
rider was in love with life, the mere living. Take last night, now. He
had flirted outrageously at the Circle O T Ranch dance with Jack Cole’s
girl, though he had known she was expecting to be married before winter.
Jack was his friend, and he had annoyed him and made him jealous. Larry
had excited Kate with the flattery of a new conquest, and he had made
the ranchers and their wives smile tolerantly at the way he had “rushed”
her. All of this was grist to his mill. He liked to be envied, to be
admired, to be thought irresistible. His vanity accepted it as tribute
to his attractiveness. Besides, what harm did it do? Kate and Jack would
quarrel and make up. This would be a variation to the monotony of their
courtship. He had really done them a kindness, though probably Jack
would not recognize it as one.
Flinging himself down beneath a tree, he drew a deep breath of content.
Roving eyes swept the open pasture adjoining, the blue sky with its
westering sun ready to sink behind a crotch of the hills. His blinking
lids closed sleepily, and opened again while he nestled closer to the
ground and pillowed a dusky head on an arm. He had slept only two hours
the night before.
From the foliage above came a faint rustle followed by what might pass
as a discreet little cough. The range rider sat up as though he were
hinged at the hips, rose to his feet, and lifted the pinched-in felt hat
to a glimpse of blue in the shower of blossoms.
“Where did _you_ come from?” he demanded, face lifted to the foliage.
“From Keokuk, Iowa,” came the prompt answer.
He laughed at this literal response. “I’ll never believe it, ma’am.
You’re one of these banshees my mother used to talk about, or else
you’re a fairy or one of these here nymphs that dwell in trees.”
Through the blossoms he made out a slim figure of grace, vaguely
outlined in the mass of efflorescence.
Her laughter rippled down to him. “Sorry to disappoint you, sir. But I’m
a mere woman.”
“I ain’t so sure you won’t open up yore wings an’ fly away,” he
protested. “But if you’re givin’ me the straight of it, all I’ve got to
say is that I like women. I been waitin’ for one twenty-odd years. Last
night I dreamed I was gonna find her before sunset to-day. That’s
straight.”
She was seated on a branch, chin tilted in a little cupped fist, one
heel caught on the bough below to steady her. With an instinct wholly
feminine she dexterously arranged the skirt without being able to
conceal some inches of slender limb rising from a well-turned ankle.
“You’ll have to hasten on your way, then. The sun sets in half an hour,”
she told him.
His grin was genial, insinuating, an unfriendly critic might have said
impudent. “Room for argument, ma’am,” he demurred. “Funny, ain’t it,
that of all the millions of apple trees in the world I sat down under
this one—an’ while you were in it? Here we are, the man, the tree, an’
the girl, as you might say.”
“Are you listing the items in the order of their importance?” she asked.
“And anyhow we won’t be here long, since I am leaving now.”
“Why are you going?” he wanted to know.
“A little matter, a mere trifle. You seem to have forgotten it, but—we
haven’t been introduced.”
“Now looky here, ma’am. What’s in a name? Some guys says, ‘Meet Mr.
Jones,’ an’ you claim you know me. Not a thing to that. It’s a heap more
fun to do our own introducin’. Now ain’t it? Honest Injun! I’m anything
you want to call me, an’ you’re Miss-Lady-in-the-Apple-Blossoms. An’ now
that’s been fixed, I reckon I’ll take the elevator up.”
The girl’s eyes sparkled. There was something attractive about this
young fellow’s impudence that robbed it of offence. Womanlike, her mind
ran to evasions. “You can’t come up. You’d shake down all the blossoms.”
“If I shook ’em all down but one I’ll bet the tree would bloom to beat
any other in the orchard.”
“If that is meant for a compliment——”
“No, Lady, for the truth.”
He caught the lowest limb and was about to swing himself up. Her sharp
“No!” held him an instant while their eyes met. A smile crept into his
and gave the face a roguish look, a touch of Pan.
“Will you come down then?”
“At my convenience, sir.”
An upward swing brought him to the fork of the tree. Yet a moment, and
he was beside her among the blossoms. Her eyes swept him in one swift
glance, curiously, a little shyly.
“With not even a by-your-leave. You are a claim jumper,” she said.
“No, ma’am. I’m locatin’ the one adjoinin’ yores.”
“You may have mine, since I’m vacating it.”
“Now don’t you,” he protested. “Let yoreself go once an’ be natural.
Like a human being. Hear that meadow-lark calling to his mate. He’s
tellin’ his lady friend how strong he is for her. Why even the
irrigation ditch is singin’ a right nice song about what a peach of a
day it is.”
The girl’s eyes appraised him without seeming to do so. So far the
cow-punchers she had met had been shy and awkward, red-faced and
perspiring. But this youth was none of these. The sun and the wind of
the Rockies had painted the tan on face and neck and hands, had
chiselled tiny humorous wrinkles that radiated from the corners of his
eyes. Every inch of the broad-rimmed felt hat, of the fancy silk
kerchief, of the decorated chaps, certified him a rider of the range.
But where had he picked up that spirited look of gay energy, that
whimsical smile which combined deference and audacity?
“He travels fast,” the girl announced to the world at large. “Which
reminds me that so must I.”
Larry too made a confidant of his environment. “I wonder how she’ll get
past me—unless she really has wings.”
“I’ve heard that all Westerners are gentlemen at heart,” she mused
aloud. “Of course he’ll let me past.”
“Now she’s tryin’ to flatter me. Nothin’ doing. We’ll give it out right
now that I’m no gentleman,” he replied, impersonally. Then, abandoning
his communion with the apple blossoms, he put a question to the young
woman who shared the tenancy of the tree with him: “Mind if I smoke?”
“Why should you ask me, since you confess—or do you boast?—that you
are no gentleman?”
From the pocket of his shirt he drew tobacco and paper, then rolled a
cigarette. “I’m one off an’ on,” he explained. “Whenever it don’t cramp
my style, you understand.”
She took advantage of his preoccupation with the “makings,” stepped
lightly to a neighbouring branch, swung to a lower one, and dropped
easily to earth.
The eyes that looked up at him sparkled triumph. “I wish you luck in
your search for that paragon you’re to meet before sunset,” she said.
“I’ll be lucky. Don’t you worry about that,” he boasted coolly. “Only I
don’t have to find her now. I’ve found her.”
Then, unexpectedly, they went down into the alfalfa together amid a
shower of apple blossoms. For he, swinging from the branch upon which he
sat, had dropped, turned his ankle on an outcropping root, and clutched
at her as he fell.
The girl merely sat down abruptly, but he plunged cheek first into the
soft loam of the plowed orchard. His nose and the side of his face were
decorated with débris. Mopping his face with a handkerchief, he
succeeded in scattering more widely the soil he had accumulated.
She looked at him, gave a little giggle, suppressed it decorously, then
went off into a gale of laughter. He joined her mirth.
“Not that there’s anything really to laugh at,” he presently assured her
with dignity.
The young woman made an honest attempt at gravity, but one look at his
embellished face set her off again.
“We just sat down,” he explained.
“Yes. On your bubble of romance. It’s gone—punctured——”
“No, no, Miss Lady-in-the-Apple-Blossoms. I’m stickin’ to my story.”
“But it won’t stick to you, as for instance the dirt does that you
grubbed into.”
“Sho!” He mopped his face again. “You know blame’ well we’re gonna be
friends. Startin’ from right now.”
She started to rise, but he was before her. With both hands he drew her
to her feet. She looked at him, warily, with a little alarm, for he had
not released her hands.
“If you please,” she suggested, a warning in her voice.
He laughed, triumphantly, and swiftly drew her to him. His lips brushed
her hot cheek before she could push him away.
She snatched her hands from him, glared indignantly for an instant at
him, then turned on her heel in contemptuous silence.
Smilingly he watched her disappear.
Slowly, jubilation still dancing in his eyes, he waded through the
alfalfa to the fence, crept between two strands, and mounted the patient
cow pony.
As he rode by the ranch house the girl he had kissed heard an unabashed
voice lifted gaily in song. The words drifted to her down the wind.
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,
Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
It came to her as a boast, almost as a challenge. She recognized the
voice, the jaunty impudence of its owner. There was no need to go to the
window of her room to make sure of who the singer was. The blood burned
in her cheeks. Fire sparked in her eyes. If he ever gave her a chance
she would put him in his place, she vowed.
CHAPTER II
TIM FLANDERS OFFERS INFORMATION AND OPINIONS
AFTER dinner at the Elkhorn Lodge Ruth Trovillion left her aunt reading
an installment of a magazine serial and drifted across to the large log
cabin which was used as a recreation hall by guests of the “dude” ranch.
At least she appeared to drift, to hesitate before starting, and after
arriving gave an impression of being there tentatively. The thoughts and
motives of young women are not always to be read by their manner.
Tim Flanders, owner of the ranch, was sitting on the porch smoking a
postprandial pipe, his chair tilted back and his feet propped against
one of the posts. At sight of Miss Trovillion, who was a favourite of
his, the legs of the chair and his feet came to the floor
simultaneously.
“Don’t disturb yourself on my account, Mr. Flanders,” she told him. “I’m
not staying.”
“Might as well ’light an’ stay for a while,” he said, and dragged a
chair forward.
Ruth stood for a moment, as though uncertain, before she sat down.
“Well, I will, thank you, since you’ve taken so much trouble.”
They sat in silence, the girl looking across at the dark blue-black line
of mountains which made a jagged outline against a sky not quite so
dark. She had not yet lived long enough among the high hills to have got
over her wonder at their various aspects under different lights and
atmospheres.
“It’s been kinda hot to-day for this time o’ year,” her host said at
last by way of a conversational advance.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But it will be June in a few days. Doesn’t it begin
to get warmer here then?”
“Not what you’d call real warm, ma’am. We’re a mile high, an’ then some
more on top o’ that,” he reminded her.
Presently, the subject of the weather having been exhausted, Flanders
offered another gambit.
“I hope, ma’am, you didn’t break any more cowboy hearts to-day.”
She turned eyes of amiable scorn upon him. “Cowboys! Where are they,
these cowboys you promised me?”
“They been kinda scarce down this way lately, sure enough,” he admitted.
“But you mighta seen one to-day if you’d happen’ to have been lookin’
when he passed. His name is Larry Silcott.”
Tim’s shrewd eyes rested on her. He indulged in mental gossipy
instincts, and it happened that he had seen Silcott come out of the
orchard only a few moments before Miss Trovillion had arrived at the
house, evidently also from the orchard.
Indifferently Miss Trovillion answered, her eyes again on the distant
blue-black silhouette. “Is he the one that was claiming so loudly to be
the best cowboy in the world?”
“Yes, ma’am. Larry’s liable to claim anything. He’s that-a-way.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“He’s got his nerve, Larry has.” He chuckled. “Last night, for instance,
by what the boys say.”
“Yes?”
“There was a dance at the Circle O T. I reckon Larry was pretty
scand’lous the way he shined up to another fellow’s girl.”
“I suppose he’s one of the kind that thinks he’s irresistible,” she
said, an edge of contempt in her voice.
“Maybe he has got notions along that line. Probably he’s got some basis
for them too. Larry is the sort women like, I judge.”
“What sort is that?” she wanted to know.
“They like a fellow who is gay an’ puts up a good bluff, one who has
lots of little laughin’ secrets to whisper to ’em behind his hand when
other folks are in the room.”
“You seem to know all about it, Mr. Flanders. Why don’t you write a book
about us?”
He refused to be daunted by her sarcasm. “I notice what I notice.”
“And I suppose this Mr. Silcott is really what they call a
four-flusher?” she asked.
“Well, no, he ain’t. In his way Larry is a top hand. I ain’t right keen
on his way, but that’s a matter of opinion. He’s mighty popular, an’ he
delivers the goods. None of the boys can ride a buckin’ bronco with him,
onless it’s Rowan McCoy.”
“And who’s he? Another poser?”
Flanders’ answer came instantly and emphatically. “No, _ma’am_. He’s a
genuwine dyed-in-the-wool he-man, Rowan is. If you want to see a real
Westerner, one of the best of the breed, why, Rowan McCoy is yore man.”
“Yes—and where is he on exhibit?” she asked lightly.
“He’s a cattleman. Owns the Circle Diamond Ranch—not so gosh awful far
from here. I’ll ride over with you some day when I get time.”
Ruth knew he would never find time. Tim was temperamentally indolent. He
could work hard when he once got his big body into action. But it took a
charge of dynamite to start him. His promises were made in good faith,
but he often did not quite get round to fulfilling them. He was always
suggesting some place of interest she ought to see and offering to take
her there some day. This suited Ruth well enough. She could always
organize at any time a party for a day’s horseback trip among the guests
of the “dude” ranch.
The girl referred again to her pretended grievance. “You’re a false
alarm, Mr. Flanders, and I’m going to sue you for breach of contract.
You promised me the second day we were here—you know you did—to round
up a likely bunch of cow-punchers for me to study. We dudes don’t come
out here just for the scenery, you know. We want all the local colour
there is. It’s your business to supply it. I suppose it isn’t reasonable
to ask for Indian raids any more, or hold-ups, or anything of that sort.
But the least you can do is to supply us a few picturesque cowboys, even
if you have to send to the moving-picture people to get them.”
“Say, Miss Trovillion, I’ve been readin’ about these new moving
pictures. Last time I was in Denver I went to see one. It’s great. Of
course I reckon it’s only a fad, but——”
“You’re dodging the issue, Mr. Flanders. Are you going to make good on
those cowboys or aren’t you?”
The owner of the Elkhorn Lodge scratched his gray poll. “Sure I am.
Right now most of the boys are busy up in the hills, but they’ll be
driftin’ down soon. Say, I’m sure thick-haided. I’d ought to have taken
you to that Circle O T dance last night. I expect Mrs. Flanders would
have gone if I’d mentioned it. You would have seen plenty of the boys
there. But one of these days there will be another dance. And say,
ma’am, there’s Round-up Week at Bad Ax pretty soon. They’ll come ridin’
in for a hundred miles for that, every last one of these lads that throw
a rope. That’s one real _rodeo_—ropin’, ridin’, bull-doggin’, pony
races, Indian dances, anything you like.”
“Will they let a tenderfoot attend?”
“That’s what it’s for, to grab off the tenderfoot’s dough. But honest,
it’s a good show. You’ll like it.”
“I’ll certainly be there, if Aunt is well enough,” Ruth announced with
decision.
CHAPTER III
A CHALLENGE
THE road meandered over and through brown Wyoming in the line of least
resistance. It would no doubt reach the Fryingpan some time and
ultimately Wagon Wheel, but the original surveyors of the trail were
leisurely in their habits. They had chewed the bovine cud and circled
hills with a saving instinct that wasted no effort. The ranchman of the
Hill Creek district had taken the wise hint of their cattle. They, too,
were in no haste and preferred to detour rather than climb.
If Rowan McCoy was in any hurry he gave no sign of it. He let his horse
fall into a slow walk of its own choice. The problem of an overstocked
range was worrying him. Sheep had come bleating across the bad lands to
steal the grass from the cattle, regardless of priority of occupancy. It
was a question that touched McCoy and his neighbours nearly. They had
seen their stock pushed back from one feeding ground after another by
herds of woolly invaders. Rowan could name a dozen cattlemen within as
many miles who were face to face with ruin. All of them had well-stocked
ranches, were heavily in debt, yet stood to make a good thing if they
could hold the range even for two years longer. The price of a cattle
had begun to go up and was due for a big rise. The point was whether
they could hang on long enough to take advantage of this.
With a sweeping curve the road swung to the rim of a saucer-shaped
valley and dipped abruptly over the brow—a white ribbon zigzagging
across the tender spring green of the mountain park. Bovier’s Camp the
place was still called, but the Frenchman who had first set up a cabin
here had been dead twenty years. The camp was a trading centre for
thirty miles, though there was nothing to it but a blacksmith shop, a
doctor’s office with bachelor’s quarters attached, a stage station, a
general store and post office, and the houses of the Pin and Feather
Ranch. Yet cow-punchers rode a day’s journey to get their “air-tights”
and their tobacco here and to lounge away an idle hour in gossip.
A man was swinging from his saddle just as McCoy rode up to the store.
He was a big, loose-jointed fellow, hook-nosed, sullen of eye and mouth.
His hard gaze met the glance of the cattleman with jeering hostility,
but he offered no greeting before he turned away.
Two or three cow-punchers and a ranch owner were in the store. The
hook-nosed man exchanged curt nods with them and went directly to the
post office cage.
“Any mail for J. C. Tait?” he asked.
The postmistress handed him a letter and two circulars from liquor
houses. She was an angular woman, plain, middle-aged, severe of feature.
“How’s Norma?” she asked.
“Nothin’ the matter with her far as I know,” answered Tait sulkily. His
manner gave the impression that he resented her question.
A shout of welcome met McCoy as he appeared in the doorway. It was plain
that he was in the good books of those present as much as Tait was the
opposite. For Rowan McCoy, owner of the Circle Diamond Ranch, was the
leader of the cattle interests in this neighbourhood, and big Joe Tait
was the most aggressive and the most bitter of the sheepmen fighting for
the range.
Bovier’s Camp was in the heart of the cattle country, but Tait made no
concession to the fact that he was unwelcome here. He leaned against the
counter, a revolver in its holster lying along his thigh. There was
something sinister and deadly in the sneer with which he returned the
coldness of the men he was facing.
He glanced over the liquor circulars before he ripped open the envelope
of the letter. His black eyes, set in deep sockets, began to blaze. The
red veined cheeks of his beefy face darkened to an apoplectic purple.
Joe Tait enraged was not a pleasant object to see.
He flung a sudden profane defiance at them all. “You’re a fine bunch of
four-flushers. It’s about your size to send a skull-and-crossbones
threat through the mail, but I notice you haven’t the guts to sign it.
I’m not to cross the bad lands, eh? I’m to keep on the other side of the
dead line you’ve drawn. And if I don’t you warn me I’ll get into
trouble. To hell with your warning!” Tait crumpled the letter in his
sinewy fist, flung it down, spat tobacco juice on it, and ground it
savagely under his heel. “That’s what I think of your warning, McCoy.
Trouble! Me, I eat trouble. If you or any of your bunch of false alarms
want any you can have it right now and here.”
McCoy, sitting on a nail keg, had been talking with one of his friends.
He did not move. There was a moment’s chill silence. Every man present
knew that Tait was ready to back his challenge. He might be a bully, but
nobody doubted his gameness.
“I’m not looking for trouble,” the cattleman said coldly.
“I thought you weren’t,” jeered Tait. “You never have been, far as I can
make out.”
The blood mounted to McCoy’s face. Nobody in the room could miss the
point of that last taunt. It was common knowledge in the Hill Creek
country that years before Norma Davis had jilted him to run away with
Joe Tait.
“I reckon you’ve said enough,” suggested Falkner, the range rider to
whom Rowan had been talking. “And enough is aplenty, Joe.”
“Do I have to get your say-so before I can talk, Falkner? I’ll say to
you, too, what I’m saying to the man beside you. There can’t any of
you—no, nor all of you—run me out the way you did Pap Thomson. Try
anything like that, and you’ll find me lying right in the door of my
sheep wagon with hell popping. Hear that, McCoy?”
“Yes, I hear you.” McCoy looked at him hard. One could have gathered no
impression of weakness from the lean brown face of the cattleman. The
blue-gray eyes were direct and steely. Power lay in the packed muscles
of the stocky frame. Confidence rested in the set of the broad shoulders
and the poise of the close-cropped head. “I didn’t write that letter to
you, and I don’t know who did. But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Keep
your sheep on the other side of the dead line. They’ll maybe live
longer.”
The sheepman shook a fist at him furiously. “That’s a threat, McCoy.
Don’t you back it. Don’t you dare lift a finger to my sheep. I’ll run
them where I please. I’ll bring ’em right up to the door of the Circle
Diamond, too, if it suits me.”
A young ranchman lounging in the doorway cut into the talk. “I reckon
you can bring ’em there, Joe, but I ain’t so sure you could take ’em
away again.”
“Who’d stop me?” demanded Tait, whirling on him. “Would it be you, Jack
Cole?”
“I might be there, and I might not. You never can tell.”
Tait took a step toward him. The undisciplined temper of the man was
boiling up. He had for nearly two days been drinking heavily.
“Might as well settle this now—the sooner the quicker,” he said
thickly.
Sharply McCoy spoke: “We’re none of us armed, Tait. Don’t make a
mistake.”
The sheep owner threw his revolver on the counter. “I don’t need any gun
to settle any business I’ve got with Jack Cole.”
“Don’t you start anything here, Joe Tait,” ordered the postmistress in a
shrill voice. She ran out from her cage and confronted the big man
indomitably. “You can’t bully _me_. I’m the United States Government
when I’m in this room. Don’t you forget it, either.”
A shadow darkened the doorway, and a young woman came into the store.
She stopped, surprised, aware that she had interrupted a scene. Her soft
dark eyes passed from one to another, asking information.
There was an awkward silence. The sheepman turned with a half-suppressed
oath, snatched up his weapon, thrust it into the holster, and strode
from the room. Yet a moment, and the thudding of hoofs could be heard.
The postmistress turned in explanation to the girl. “It’s Joe Tait. He’s
always trying to raise a rookus, that man is. But he can’t bully me, no
matter how bad an actor he is. I’m not his wife.” She walked around the
counter and resumed a dry manner of business. “Do you want all the mail
for the Elkhorn Lodge or just your own?”
“I’ll take it all, Mrs. Stovall.”
The young woman handed through the cage opening a canvas bag, into which
papers and letters were stuffed.
“Three letters for you, Miss Trovillion,” the older woman said, sliding
them across to her.
“You’re good to me to-day.” The girl thanked her with a quick smile.
“I notice I’m good to you most days,” Mrs. Stovall replied with friendly
sarcasm.
Ruth Trovillion buckled the mail bag and turned to go. As she walked out
of the store her glance flashed curiously over the men. It lingered for
a scarcely perceptible instant on McCoy.
CHAPTER IV
INTRODUCING ROWAN McCOY TO RUTH TROVILLION
McCOY followed a road that led from Bovier’s Camp into the hills. He was
annoyed at the altercation with Tait that had flared up in the store.
Between the sheep and cattle interests on the Fryingpan there had been a
good deal of bickering and recrimination, some night raiding, an
occasional interchange of shots. But for the most part there had been so
far at least a decent pretense of respect for the law.
Except for Tait a compromise settlement might have been effected. But
the big sheepman was not reasonable. Originally a cattleman himself, he
had quarrelled violently with all of his range neighbours, and at last
gone into sheep out of spite. There was no give-and-take about him. The
policy of live and let live did not commend itself to his turbulent
temper. What he wanted he intended to take with a high hand.
There were personal reasons why McCoy desired no trouble with him. Rowan
had not seen Norma half a dozen times since she had run away with Tait
in anger after a quarrel between the lovers. If she regretted her folly,
no word to that effect had ever reached McCoy or any other outsider. On
the few occasions when she came out into her little neighbourhood world
it was with a head still high. Without impertinence, one could do no
more than guess at her unhappiness. Upon one thing her former lover was
determined: there would be no trouble of his making between him and the
man Norma had chosen for a husband.
The cattleman turned up a cañon, followed it to its head, cut across the
hills, and descended into the valley of the Fryingpan. The river was
high from the spring thaw of the mountain snows. Below him he could see
its swirling waters tumbling down in agitated hurry.
On the road in front of him a trap was moving toward the stream. He
recognized the straight back of the slim driver as that of the girl he
had seen at the post office. Evidently she was taking the cut-off back
to the ranch, unaware that the bridge had been washed out by the
freshet. Would she turn back or would she try the ford just below the
bridge? He touched his horse with the spur and put it to a canter.
The girl drew up and viewed the remains of the bridge, then turned to
the ford. Presently she drove slowly down to its edge. After a moment’s
apparent hesitation she forced the reluctant horse to take the water. As
the wheels sank deeper, as the turbid current swept above the axles and
into the bed of the trap, the heart of the young woman failed. She gave
a little cry of alarm and tried to turn back.
The man galloping toward the ford shouted a warning: “Keep going! Swing
to the right!”
It is likely the driver did not hear his call. She tried to cramp to the
left. The horse, frightened, plunged forward into the deep pool below
the ford. The force of the stream swept horse and rig down. The girl
screamed and started to rise, appalled by the whirling torrent.
Miraculously, a horse and rider appeared beside her. She was lifted
bodily from the trap to the arms of a rescuer. For a few moments the cow
pony struggled with the waters. It fought hard for a footing, splashed
into the shallows nearer shore, and emerged safely at the farther bank.
She found herself lifted to the ground and deserted. The Heaven-sent
horseman unfastened the rope at his saddle, swung it round his head, and
dropped a large loop over the back of the trap. The other end he tied to
the pommel of the saddle. The cow pony obeyed orders, braced its legs,
and began to pull. The owner of the animal did not wait for results, but
waded deep into the river and seized the bridle of the exhausted buggy
horse.
Even then it was a near thing. The Fryingpan fought with a heavy
plunging suction to keep its prey. The man and the horses could barely
hold their own, far less make headway against the current. As to the
girl, she watched the battle with big, fascinated eyes, the blood driven
from her heart by terror. Soon it flashed across her brain that these
three creatures of flesh and blood could not win, for while they wore
out their strength in vain the cruel river pounded down on them with
undiminished energy.
She flew to the rope and pulled, digging her heels into the sand for a
better purchase. After what seemed to her a long time, almost
imperceptibly, at first by fitful starts, the rope moved. McCoy inched
his way to the shallower water and a more secure footing. Man, horse,
and trap came jerkily to land.
Almost exhausted, the cattleman staggered to his bronco and leaned
against its heaving flanks. His eyes met those of the girl. Her
tremulous lips were ashen. He guessed that she was keeping a tight rein
on a hysterical urge to collapse into tears.
“It’s all right,” he said, and she liked the pleasant smile that went
with the words. “We’re all safe now. No harm done. None a-tall.”
“I thought—I was afraid——” She caught her lip between her white
teeth.
“Sure. Anybody would be. You oughtn’t to have tried the ford. There
should be a sign up there. I’ll get after the road commissioners.”
Ruth knew he was talking to give her time to recover composure. He went
on, casually and cheerfully.
“The Fryingpan is mighty deceiving. When she’s in flood she certainly
tears along in a hurry. More than one cow-puncher has been drowned in
her.”
She managed a smile. “I’ve been complaining because I couldn’t find an
adventure. This was a little too serious. I thought, one time,
that—that you might not get out.”
“So you pulled me out. That was fine. I won’t forget it.”
The girl looked at the blisters on her soft palms, and again a faint
little smile twitched at her face. “Neither shall I for a day or two. I
have souvenirs.”
He began to arrange the disordered harness, rebuckling a strap here and
pulling the leather into place there. Dark eyes under long, curved
lashes observed him as he moved, lean-loined and broad of shoulder, the
bronze of the eternal outdoors burned into his hands and neck and lean
face.
“My name is Trovillion; Ruth Trovillion,” she said shyly. “I’m staying
at Elkhorn Lodge, or the Dude Ranch, as you people call it.”
He shook hands without embarrassment. “My name is Rowan McCoy.”
Level eyes, with the blue of Western skies in them, looked straight into
hers. A little wave of emotion beat through her veins. She knew, warned
by the sure instinct of her sex, that this man who had torn her from the
hands of death was to be no stranger in her life.
“I think I saw you at the store to-day. And I’ve heard of you, from Mr.
Flanders.”
“Yes.”
She abandoned that avenue of approach, and came to a more personal
one—came to it with a face of marble except for the live eyes.
“But for you I would have drowned,” she said, and shuddered.
“Maybe so; maybe not.”
“Yes. I couldn’t have got out alone,” she insisted. “Of course I can’t
thank you. There’s no use trying. But I’ll never forget—never as long
as I live.”
About her there was a proud, delicate beauty that charmed him. She was
at once so slender and so vital. Her face was like a fine, exquisitely
cut cameo.
“All right,” he agreed cheerfully. “Honours are easy then, Miss
Trovillion. I lifted you out and you pulled me out.”
“Oh, you can _say_ that! As if I did anything that counted.” The fount
of her feelings had been touched, and she was still tremulous. It was
impossible for her to dismiss this adventure as casually as he seemed
ready to do. After all, it had been the most tremendous hazard of her
young, well-sheltered life.
When he had made sure the trap was fit for the road, McCoy turned to his
companion and helped her in. She drove slowly. The cattleman rode beside
her. He was going out of his way, but he found for himself a sufficient
excuse. She was a slim slip of a girl who had lived her nineteen or
twenty years in cities far from the primitive dangers of the wild.
Probably she was unstrung from her experience and might collapse.
Anyhow, he was not going to take the chance of it.
CHAPTER V
A RIDE
STILL at the age when she was frankly the centre of her own universe,
Ruth Trovillion had an abundant sense of romance. There was no intention
in her decided young mind of treading a road worn dusty by the feet of
the commonplace. On occasion a fine rapture filled her hours. She was
still reacting to the ecstatic shock of youth’s early-morning plunge
into the wonderful river of life.
Rowan McCoy had impressed himself upon her imagination. He had not come
into her life with jingling spurs, garnished like Larry Silcott with all
the picturesque trimmings of the frontier. Larry was too free, too
fresh, she thought. But McCoy, quiet, competent son of the hard-riding
West, depended on no adventitious aid of costume. He was as indigenous
and genuine as one of his own hill cattle. Ruth had admirers in plenty,
but they dwindled to non-heroic proportions before his brown virility,
his gentle, reticent strength.
Quietly she gathered information about him. The owner of the Circle
Diamond was a leader in the community by grace of natural fitness. Tim
Flanders, who kept the Elkhorn Lodge, summed him up for Ruth in two
sentences:
“He’s a straight-up rider, Mac is. He’ll do to take along.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked his young guest.
“You can tie to him. He’ll go through. There’s no yellow in Rowan
McCoy.”
She thought over that a good deal. Her judgment concurred. So far as it
went, the verdict of Flanders was sound. But it did not go far enough.
During the ride to the ranch she had discovered that the cattleman had a
capacity for silence. Ruth found herself fascinated by the desire to
push through to the personality behind the wall of reserve.
For some time she was given no chance. It was ten days after the rescue
before she saw him again.
She went on her way with what patience she could, enjoying the
activities of the “dude” ranch. She rode, fished, and picnicked in the
hills with the other guests. Two days were spent in climbing Big Twin
Peak. In the evenings she read to her aunt while that lady indefatigably
knitted. The surface of her mind was absorbed by the details of the life
arranged for her. McCoy was not on the horizon of her movements, but he
was very much in the map of her thoughts. She did not hear his name
mentioned. To these well-to-do people from the East spending a pleasant
vacation in Wyoming he did not exist. But it was impossible for Ruth to
get this quiet, steady-eyed man out of her mind.
Why did he not come to see her? Yet, even as she asked herself the
question, Ruth found an adequate answer. She had very little vanity.
Probably she had not interested him. There was no real reason why he
should call unless he wanted to do so.
Then one day, unexpectedly, she met him on a hill trail.
“Why haven’t you been to see me?” she asked, with the directness that
characterized her at times.
Yet she quaked at her own audacity. He might think even though he would
be too courteous to say so, that he did not care to waste the time.
He thought a moment before he committed himself to words. He had wanted
to come, but he had passed through an experience which made him very
reserved with women. He never called on any, nor did he go to dances or
merrymakings.
“I’ve been pretty busy, Miss Trovillion,” he said.
“That’s no excuse. I might have got pneumonia from wet feet or gone into
a nervous breakdown from the shock. You’ve got no right to pull a girl
out of the river and then ride away and forget she ever existed. It’s
not good form. They are not doing it this year.”
He laughed at the jaunty impudence of her tilted chin. Somehow she
reminded him of a young, singing meadow-lark experimenting with its
wings. He suspected shyness back of her audacity. Yet he was surprised
at his own answer when he heard it; at least he was surprised at the
impulse which had led him to make it.
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll be glad to come to see you, if I
may.”
“When?”
“Will this evening do?”
“I’ll be looking for you, Mr. McCoy.”
The cattleman told the simple truth when he said that he had not
forgotten her. The girl had been very much in his mind ever since he had
left her at the gate of the Lodge. He loved all young, clean life even
among animals, and she seemed to him the embodied youth of the world,
free and light-footed as a fawn in the misty break of day.
When McCoy reached Elkhorn Lodge after dinner Ruth introduced him to her
aunt, a thin, flat-bosomed spinster with the marks of ill health on her
face. Miss Morgan and her niece had come to the Rockies for the health
of the older woman, and were scheduled to make an indefinite stay.
Before the cattleman had talked with her five minutes he knew that Miss
Morgan viewed life from a narrow, Puritanic standpoint. He guessed that
there was little real sympathy between her and the vivid girl by her
side.
In her early years Ruth had been a lonely, repressed little soul. An
orphaned child, she had been brought up by this maiden lady, who looked
on the leggy, helter-skelter youngster with the tangled flying hair as a
burden laid upon her by the Lord. Ruth had been a lawless, wilful little
thing, naughty and painfully plain by the standard of her aunt; a
difficult little girl to train in the way she should go.
Surprisingly she had blossomed from the ugly-duckling stage into a most
attractive girl. Nobody had been more amazed at the transformation than
her aunt. The change was not merely external. The manner of Ruth had
become gentler, less wilful. As a nurse she had developed patience
toward the invalid.
“Do you mind if Mr. McCoy and I ride out to Flat Top for the sunset?”
she asked now.
“No, child. I’ll be all right. But don’t stay late,” Miss Morgan
assented a little fretfully. It was one of Ruth’s ways to become
absorbed in the interest of the moment to forgetfulness of everything
else. This was one of the penalties her friends paid for her vivid
enthusiasms.
The riders passed a poster tacked to a tree just outside the gates of
the ranch. It bore this legend:
─────────────────────────────────────
RIDE ’EM, COWBOYS!
ANNUAL ROUND-UP AT BAD AX
July 2, 3, and 4.
————
Best Bronco Busters, Ropers,
And Bulldoggers
From a Dozen States Will Compete
FOR WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP
————
Pony Races, Indian Dances, Balls,
and Street Carnival.
————
Also Fancy Roping and Riding
————
DON’T MISS THIS GREAT ROUND-UP.
IT’S A BIG LEAGUE SHOW.
─────────────────────────────────────
Ruth drew up to read it. She turned to her companion. “You’ll ride, I
suppose? Mr. Flanders says you’re a famous bronco buster.”
“I don’t reckon I will,” he answered. “Some of the boys entered me, but
I’ve decided not to go in this year.”
“Why not?”
“Gettin’ too old to be jolted around so rough,” he replied, smiling.
“The younger lads can take their turn.”
“Yes, you look as though you had one foot in the grave,” she derided,
with a swift glance at the muscular shoulders above the long, lean body.
“Of course you’ll ride. You’ve got to. Aren’t you champion of the
world?”
“That’s just a way of talkin’,” he explained. “They have one of these
shows each year at Cheyenne. Other places have ’em too. The winners
can’t all be champions of the world.”
“But I want to see you ride,” she told him, as though he could not
without discourtesy refuse so small a favour.
He dismissed this with a smile.
From Flat Top they watched the sun go down behind a sea of rounded
hills. The flame of it was in her blood, the glow of it on her face. She
was in love with Wyoming these days, with the cool and crystalline air
of its mornings, with the scarfs of heat waving across the desert at
noon, with the porphyry mountain peaks edged with fire at even. There
was this much of the poet in Ruth Trovillion, that she could go out at
dewy dawn and find a miracle in the sunrise.
Impulsively she turned to her companion a face luminous with joy.
“Don’t you just love it all?”
He nodded. The picture struck a spark from his imagination. By some
trick of light and shade she seemed the heart of the sunset, a golden,
glowing creature of soft, warm flesh through which an ardent soul
quivered and palpitated with vague yearnings and inarticulate desires.
Into the perfect peace of a harmonious world jarred a raucous shout.
From a hill pocket back of Flat Top came a cloud of dust. In the falling
light a dim, gray mass poured out upon the mesa. It moved with a soft
rustle of small, padded feet, of wool fleeces rubbing against each
other.
A horseman cantered into view and caught sight of McCoy. With a jeering
laugh he shouted a greeting:
“Fine sheep weather these days, McCoy. How about cows?”
The eyes of the cattleman blazed. The girl noticed the swift flush under
the tan of the cheeks, the lips that closed like a steel trap. It was
plain that the man rode himself with a strong rein.
“I’m still waiting in the door of my sheep wagon for you and your
friends,” scoffed the drunken voice. “And my wagon is a whole lot nearer
the Circle Diamond than it was. One of these days I’ll drive up to your
door like I promised.”
Still McCoy said nothing, but the muscles stood out on his clamped jaws
like ropes. The sheepman rode closer, turned insolent eyes on the girl.
From his ribald, hateful mirth she shrank back with a sense of
degradation.
Tait turned his horse and galloped away. He shouted an order to a
herder. A dog passed silently in and out of the gray mass, which moved
across the mesa like an agitated wave of the sea.
The girl asked a question: “Has he crossed the dead line?”
“Yes.” Then: “What do you know about the dead line?” asked her
companion, surprised.
“Oh, I have eyes and ears.” She put herself swiftly on his side. “I
think you’re right. He’s bad—hateful. Your cattle were here first. He
brought sheep in to spite you and his other neighbours. Isn’t that
true?”
“Yes.”
McCoy wondered how much more this uncannily shrewd young person knew
about the relations between him and Tait. Did she know, for instance,
the story of how Norma Davis had jilted him to marry the sheepman?
“What will you do? Will you fight for the range?”
“Yes.” This was a subject the cattleman could not discuss. He dismissed
it promptly. “Hadn’t we better be moving toward the ranch, Miss
Trovillion?”
They rode back together in the gathering dusk.
CHAPTER VI
CHAMPION OF THE WORLD
“LARRY SILCOTT on Rocking Chair,” boomed a deep voice through a
megaphone.
A girl in one of the front boxes of the grand stand saw a young
cow-puncher move with jingling spurs across the wide race track toward
the corral beyond. He looked up, easy and debonair as an actor, and
raked with his eyes the big crowd watching him. Smile met smile, when
his glance came to halt at the eager girl looking down.
Ruth Trovillion’s smile went out like the flame of a blown candle. She
had not caught the name announced through the megaphone, but now she
recognized him. The last time she had seen this gay youth, now sunning
himself so jauntily in the public regard, had been in the orchard of
Elkhorn Lodge; he had kissed her impudently, and when their eyes had met
hers had flashed hatred at him for the affront he had dared to put upon
her.
She turned away, flaming, chin in the air.
“Is he a good rider?” she asked the man sitting beside her.
“Wyoming doesn’t raise better riders than Larry Silcott,” he answered
promptly. “He’s an A-1 rider—the best of the lot.”
“You beat him last year, didn’t you?” she challenged.
McCoy did not quite understand her imperious resentment. It seemed to go
a little farther than the occasion called for. “That was the luck of the
day. I happened——”
“Oh, yes, you happened!” scoffed Ruth. “You could go out and beat him
now if you wanted to. Why don’t you ride? Your name is entered. I should
think you would defend your championship. Everybody wants to see last
year’s winner ride. I haven’t any patience with you.”
Rowan smiled. “I see you haven’t, Miss Ruth. I’ve tried to explain. I
like Larry. We’re friends. Besides, I taught him his riding. Looks to me
as if it is one of the younger fellow’s turn. Now is a good time for me
to quit after I have won two years running.”
The young woman was not convinced, but she dropped the argument. Her
resentful eyes moved back to the arena, into which a meek-looking
claybank had been driven. It stood with blinking eyes, drooping at the
hip, palpably uninterested in the proceedings.
Of a sudden the ears of the bronco pricked, its eyes dilated. A man in
chaps was moving toward it, a rope in his hands. The loop of the lariat
circled, went whistling forward, fell true over the head of the outlaw
horse. The claybank reared, tried to bolt, came strangling to a halt as
the loop tightened. A second rope slid into place beside the first. The
horse stood trembling while a third man coaxed a blanket over its eyes.
Warily and deftly Silcott saddled, looking well to the cinch.
“All ready,” he told his assistants.
Ropes and blanket were whipped off as he swung to the seat. Rocking
Chair stood motionless for a moment, bewildered at the things happening
so fast. Then the outlaw realized that a human clothespin was straddling
its back. It went whirling upward as if trying to tie itself into a
knot. The rider clamped his knees against the sides of the bronco and
swung his hat with a joyous whoop.
Rocking Chair had a reputation to live up to. It was a noted fence
rower, weaver, and sunfisher. Savagely it whirled, went up in another
buck, came down stiff-legged, with arched back. The jolt was like that
of a pile driver, but Silcott met it with limp spine, his hat still
fanning against the flank of the animal. The outlaw went round and round
in a vicious circle. The incubus was still astride of its back. It
bolted; jarred to a sudden, sideways halt. Spurs were rowelling its
sides cruelly.
Up again it went in a series of furious bucks, one after another, short,
sharp, violent. Meanwhile, Silcott, who was a trick rider, went through
his little performance. He drank a bottle of ginger ale and flung away
the bottle. He took the rein between his teeth and slipped off coat and
waistcoat. He rode with his feet out of the stirrups. The grand stand
clamoured wild applause. The young cattleman from the Open A N C was
easily the hero of the day.
The outlaw horse stopped bucking as suddenly as it had begun. Larry
slipped from the saddle in front of the grand stand and stood bowing, a
lithe, graceful young figure of supple ease, to the plaudits which
rained upon him.
Abruptly Ruth turned to McCoy. “I want you to ride,” she told him in a
low voice.
The cattleman hesitated. He did not want to ride. Without saying so in
words, he had let the other competitors understand that he did not mean
to defend his title. There had been a good deal of pressure to induce
him to drag a saddle into the arena but so far he had resisted it.
He turned to decline, but the words died on his lips. The eyes of the
girl were stormy; her cheeks flushed. It was plain that for some reason
she had set her heart on his winning. Why? His pulses crashed with the
swift, tumultuous beating of the red blood in him. Rowan McCoy was not a
vain man. It was hard for him to accept the conclusion for which his
whole soul longed. But what other reason could there be for her
insistence?
During the past few weeks he had been with Ruth Trovillion a great deal.
He had ridden with her, climbed Old Baldy by her side, eaten picnic
lunches as her companion far up in flower-strewn mountain parks. He had
taught her to shoot, to fish, to make camp. They had been gay and
wholesome comrades for long summer days. The new and secret thing that
had come into his life he had hidden from her as if it had been a sin.
The desire of his heart was impossible, he had always told himself. How
could it be otherwise? This fine, spirited young creature, upon whom was
stamped so ineradicably the look of the thoroughbred, would go back to
her own kind when the time came. Meanwhile, let him make the best of his
little day of sunshine.
“I told the boys I wasn’t expecting to ride,” he parried. “It has been
rather understood that I wouldn’t.”
“But if I ask you?” she demanded.
There was no resisting that low, imperious appeal.
He looked straight into her eyes. “If you ask it, I’ll ride.”
“I do ask it.”
He rose. “It’s your say-so, little partner. I’ll let the committee
know.”
The eyes of the girl followed him, a brown, sun-baked man, quiet and
strong and resolute. Her glance questioned shyly what manner of man this
was, after all, who had imposed himself so greatly upon her thoughts. He
was genuine. So much she knew. He did not need the gay trappings of
Larry Silcott to brand him a rider of the hills, foursquare to every
wind that blew. Behind the curtain of his reticence she had divined some
vague hint of a woman in his life. Now a queer little thrill of
jealousy, savage and primeval, claimed her for the first time. She knew
her own power over Rowan McCoy. It hurt her to feel that another girl
had once possessed it, too.
A cow-puncher from Laramie, in yellow wool chaps and a shirt of
robin’s-egg blue, took the stage after Silcott. He drew a roan with a
red-hot devil of malice in its eye. The bronco hunched itself over to
the fence in a series of jarring bucks, and jammed the leg of the rider
against a post. The Laramie youth, beside himself with pain, caught at
the saddle horn to save his seat. The nearest judge fired a revolver to
tell him he was out of the running. He had “touched leather.”
His successor took the dust ignominiously in a clean tumble. He got up,
looked ruefully at the bronco that had unseated him, and went his
bowlegged way back to meet the derisive condolences of forty grinning
punchers.
“Too bad the judges didn’t have the ground plowed up for you, Shorty. It
would ’a’ been a heap softer,” murmured one.
“If I’d only remembered to ride on my spurs like you done, Wade, I
needn’t have fallen at all,” came back Shorty with genial malice at his
tormentor.
Whereat the laugh was on Wade, who had been detected earlier in the day
digging his spurs into the cinch to help him stick to the saddle.
“Rowan McCoy on Tenderfoot,” announced the leather-lunged megaphone man.
A wave of interest swept through the grand stand. Everybody had wanted
to see the champion ride. Now they were going to get the chance. The
announcement caused a stir even among the hard-bitten riders at the
entrance to the corral. For McCoy was not only a famous bronco buster;
he was a man whose personality had won him many friends and some
enemies.
The owner of the Circle Diamond rode like a centaur. He tried no tricks,
no fancy business to win the applause of the spectators. But he held his
seat with such ease and mastery that his long, lithe body might have
been a part of the horse. His riding was characteristic of him—straight
and strong and genuine.
The outlaw tried its wicked best, and no bronco in the Rockies was
better known than Tenderfoot for the fighting devil that slumbered in
its heart. Neither side bucking nor pitching, sunfishing nor weaving
could shake the lean-loined, broad-shouldered figure from his seat. It
was not merely that McCoy could not be unseated; there was never a
moment when there was any doubt of whether man or beast was master. Even
when the bronco flung itself backward, McCoy was in the saddle again
before the animal was on its feet.
The eyes of Ruth never left the fighting pair. She leaned forward,
fascinated, lost to everything in the world but the duel that was being
fought out in front of her. They were a splendid pair of animals, each
keyed to the highest notch of efficiency. But the one in the saddle was
something more. His perfect poise was no doubt instinctive, born of long
experience. His skill had become automatic. Yet back of this she sensed
mind, a will that flashed along the reins to the brute beneath. Slowly
Tenderfoot answered to its master, acknowledged the dominion of the man.
Its pitching became less violent, its bucking halfhearted. At a signal
from one of the judges, McCoy slipped from the saddle. Without an
instant’s delay, without a single glance at the storm-tossed grand
stand, the rider strode across the arena and disappeared. He did not
know that Ruth Trovillion was beating her gloved hands excitedly along
with five thousand other cheering spectators. He could not guess how her
heart had stood still when the bronco toppled backward, nor how it had
raced when his toes found again the stirrups as the horse struggled to
its feet.
The judges conferred for a few minutes before the megaphone man
announced that the championship belt went to McCoy, second prize to
Silcott. Once more the grand stand gave itself to eager applause of the
decision.
Just before the wild-horse race, which was the last event on the
program, McCoy made his way to the box where Miss Trovillion was sitting
with Tim Flanders, of the Elkhorn Lodge, and his wife.
The girl looked up, her eyes shining. “Congratulations, Mr. Champion of
the World.” She felt after a fashion that she had helped to beat the
conceited Silcott, the youth who had affronted her with his presumptuous
kiss.
“I was lucky,” he said simply.
“You were the best rider.” Then, with a little touch of feminine
ferocity: “I knew you would beat _him_.”
“Silcott? I still think I was lucky.”
Already the grand stand was beginning to empty. Round-up Week was almost
over.
“We’d better be getting back to town if we want any supper,” proposed
Flanders.
The same idea had suggested itself to several thousand more visitors to
Bad Ax. A throng of automobiles was presently creeping toward the gates,
every engine racing and every horn squawking. Once outside, the whole
plain seemed alive with moving cars, buckboards, wagons, and horses all
going swiftly townward in a mad race for hotels and restaurants.
Bad Ax was crowded to its suburbs. Hotels were jammed, rooming houses
doing a capacity business. A steady stream of automobiles had poured in
all week from Denver and other points. Trains loaded to the vestibules
had emptied themselves into the town. The bells of saloon cash registers
were ringing continuously. Cow-punchers from Sheridan and Cody jostled
shoulders with tourists from New Haven and Kansas City, their worn
leathers and faded gray shirts discarded for gaudy costumes that ran the
rainbow from sunset orange to violent shades of blue.
The whole town was a welter of barbaric colour. Streamers stretched
across from building to building, and “spielers” for side shows bawled
the merits of their attraction. Everywhere one met the loud gaiety of
youth on a frolic. Young as the night was, merrymakers were surging up
and down the streets tossing confetti and blowing horns.
In the crowded streets, after they had found something to eat in a
vacant store where the ladies of the Baptist church were serving a
supper, McCoy and Miss Trovillion became separated from their friends.
Hours later they wandered from the crowd toward the suburb where the
young woman and the Flanders family had found rooms.
Unaccountably their animation ebbed when they were alone under the
stars. They had been full of laughter and small talk so long as the
crowd jostled them. Now they could find neither. In every fibre of him
Rowan was aware of the slight, dainty figure moving by his side so
lightly. The delicate, penetrating fragrance of her personality came to
him with poignant sweetness.
Once his hand crept out and touched her white gown in the darkness. If
she knew, she gave no sign.
Her eyes were on the hills which rose sheer back of the town high into
the sky line. They seemed to press in closely and to lift her vision to
the heavens, to shut out all the little commonplace things of life.
“Do you suppose God made them to wash sin out of the hearts of people?”
she asked.
“A night like this does give a fellow queer feelings,” he answered in a
low voice. “Have you ever camped in the high hills with the wind blowin’
kinda soft through the pines? I have, alone, often. Makes a fellow feel
as though he’d like to begin again with a clean page.”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ve felt it, too, though I never camped alone of
course. As though something fine and wonderful and all-powerful was
whispering to me and drawing me nearer to eternal things. It must be
something in ourselves, don’t you think? It can’t be that the mountains
at night are really a kind of Holy of Holies.”
“I reckon,” he agreed. He had never before tried or heard anybody else
try to put into words the strange influence of the shadowy range at
night upon one camped in the hollow of a draw, an influence which at the
same time seemed to reduce one to an atom in an ocean of space and to
lift one into the heights of the everlasting verities. He was shy of any
expression of his emotions.
They fell into silence, and presently she turned reluctantly back toward
the town. He fell into step beside her. Soon now, he knew, they would be
caught again into the spirit of the commonplace.
So he spoke, abruptly, to hold in his heart some permanent comfort from
the hour when they had been alone with each other and the voices of the
world had been very far and faint.
“Why did you want me to ride?”
It was a simple question, but one not so easily answered. She could have
told him the truth, that she did not want Larry Silcott to win. But that
would have been only part of the truth. She wanted Rowan McCoy to win,
wanted it more than she had wished anything for a long time. Yet why?
She was not ready to give a candid reason even to herself, far less to
him.
Womanlike, she evaded. “Why shouldn’t I want you to win? You’re my
friend. I thought——”
He surprised himself almost as much as he did her by his answer. “I’m
not yore friend.”
She looked at him, startled at his brusqueness.
“I’m a man that loves you,” he said roughly.
A tremor passed through her. She was conscious of a strange sweet
faintness. The soft eyes veiled themselves beneath dark lashes.
“Have I spoiled everything, little partner?” he asked gently.
“How can I tell—yet?” she whispered, and looked up at him shyly,
tremulously.
He knew, as his arms went around her, that he had entered upon the
greatest joy of his life.
CHAPTER VII
FATE FLINGS OPEN A CLOSED DOOR
ROWAN McCOY drove his new car—it was a flivver, though they did not
call it that in those days—with the meticulous care of one who still
distrusts the intentions of the brute and his own skill at circumventing
them.
As he skidded to a halt in front of the store with brakes set hard a
woman came out to the porch and nodded to him. She waited until the
noise of the engine had died before she spoke:
“Going down to Wagon Wheel, Mac?”
“If I can stay with this gasoline bronc that far. Anything I can do for
you, Mrs. Stovall?”
The woman hesitated, her thin lips pressed tight in an habitual
expression of dry irony. She moved closer.
“That houn’ Joe Tait has been a-beatin’ up Norma again. She phoned up
she wanted to get down to the train. I’ve a fool notion she’s quittin’
him for good.”
The cattleman waited in silence. It was not a habit of his to waste
words.
“Wanted I should find someone to take her and her traps to Wagon Wheel.
But seems like everybody’s right busy all of a sudden.” A light sarcasm
filtered through the thin, cool voice of the postmistress. “Folks just
hate to be onneighbourly, but their team has done gone lame or the
wife’s sick or the wagon broke a wheel. O’ course it ain’t that any of
them’s afraid to mad that crazy gunman, Tait. Nothin’ like that.”
McCoy looked across at the blue-ribbed mountains. Mrs. Stovall noticed
that the muscles stood out like ropes on the brown cheeks of his
close-gripped jaw. She did not need to ask the reason. Everybody in the
Hill Creek country knew the story of Norma Davis and Rowan.
“I’m not asking you to take her, Mac,” the woman ran on sharply. “You
got more right to have a flat tire than Pete Henderson has to have——”
“Where is she?” interrupted the man.
“You’ll find her the yon side of the creek.”
Mrs. Stovall knew when she had said enough. Silently she watched him
crank the car and drive away. As he disappeared at the rim of the park a
faint, grim smile of triumph touched her sunken mouth.
“I ’most knew he’d take her,” she said aloud to herself. “Course
there’ll be a rookus between him and Joe Tait, but I reckon that’s his
business.”
At intervals during the morning that sardonic smile lit the wrinkled
face. It was an odd swing of the pendulum, she thought, that had
reversed the situation. Years ago Norma had run away from her lover with
good-for-nothing Joe Tait. Now she was escaping from Tait with McCoy by
her side. How far would fate carry the ironic jest? Mrs. Stovall was no
Puritan. If Norma could unravel some scattered threads of happiness from
the tangled skein of her wretched life, Martha Stovall cared little
whether she kept within the code or not. No woman was ever more entitled
to a divorce than the abused wife of the sheepman.
A woman came out from the cottonwoods beyond the ford to meet McCoy. She
was dressed in a cheap gown hopelessly out of date, and she carried a
telescope valise with two broken straps.
If any of the bitterness McCoy had felt toward her when his wound was
fresh survived the years it must have died now. Life had dealt harshly
with her. There had been a time when she was the belle of all this ranch
country, when she had bloomed with health and spirits, had been as full
of fire as an unbroken bronco. Now her step dragged. The spark of
frolicsome deviltry had long been quenched from her eye. Her pride had
been dragged in the dust, her courage brutally derided. Even the good
looks with which she had queened it were marred. She was on the way to
become that unattractive creature, the household drudge. Yet on her
latest birthday she had reached only the age of twenty-six.
At recognition of the man in the car she gave a startled little cry:
“You—Rowan!”
It was the first time they had been alone together in seven years, the
first time she had directly addressed him since the hour of their
quarrel. At the unexpectedness of the meeting emotion welled up in her
throat and registered there like the quicksilver in a thermometer.
He tossed her grip into the back of the car, along with his own, and
turned to help her to the seat beside the driver. For just an instant
she hesitated, then with a bitter, choking little laugh gave way. What
else could she do? It was merely another ironic blow of fate that the
lover she had discarded should be the man to help her fly from the
destiny her wilfulness had invited.
In silence they sat knee to knee while the car rolled the miles. The
distant hills and valleys which slid indistinguishably into each other
detached themselves as they approached, took on individuality, vanished
in the dusty rear.
Neither of them welcomed the chance that had thrown them together again.
It shocked the pride of the woman, put her under an obligation to the
man against whom she had nursed resentment for years. His presence
stressed the degradation into which she seemed to herself to have
fallen. For him, too, the meeting was untimely. To-day of all days he
wanted to forget the past, to turn over a page that was to begin the
story of a new record. Deliberately he had shut the door on the story of
his unhappy love for Norma Davis, and with an impish grin fate had flung
it open again.
The heady wilfulness of the girl had given place to the tight-lipped
self-repression of a suffering woman. Not once in all the years had she
complained to an outsider. But her flight was a confession. The stress
of her feeling overflowed into words bitter and stinging.
“You’ve got your revenge, Rowan McCoy. If I treated you shabbily you can
say ‘I told you so’ now. They used to say I was too proud. Maybe I was.
Well, I’ve been paid for it a thousand times. I’ve got mighty little to
be proud of to-day.”
“Norma!” he pleaded in a low voice.
With the instinct of one who bites on an ulcerated tooth to accent the
pain, she drew up a loose sleeve and showed him blue-and-yellow bruises.
“Look!” she ordered in an ecstasy of self-contempt. “I’ve hidden this
sort of thing for years—and worse—a hundred times worse.”
“The hound!” His strong, clenched teeth smothered the word.
Instantly the mood of the woman changed. She would have none of his
sympathy.
“I’m a fool,” she snapped. “I’ve made my bed. I’ll lie in it. This world
wasn’t built for women, anyhow. Why should I complain?”
Never a talkative man, McCoy said nothing now.
They had reached the Fryingpan, and the road wound down beside the
little river as it tumbled toward the plains over bowlders and around
them. The trout were feeding, and occasionally one leaped for a fly, a
flash of silver in the sunlight. Both of them recalled vividly the time
they had last gone fishing here. They had taken a picnic lunch, and it
had been on the way home that a quarrel had flashed between them about
the attentions of Joe Tait to her. That night she had eloped.
The woman noticed that McCoy was not wearing to-day the broad-rimmed
white felt hat and the wrinkled corduroys that were so much an
expression of his personality. He was in a new, dark suit, new shoes,
and an up-to-date straw hat. The suitcase that jostled her shabby
telescope valise would have done credit to a Chicago travelling
salesman.
“You’re going to take the train,” she suggested.
“To Cheyenne,” he answered.
“Why, I’m going to Laramie, if——”
She cut her sentence short. It was not to be presumed that he cared
where she was going. Moreover, she could not finish without telling more
than she wanted to. But McCoy guessed the condition. She would go if she
could borrow at Wagon Wheel the money for a ticket.
They drove into the county seat long before train time.
“Where shall I take you?” he asked.
“To Moody’s, if you will.”
He helped her from the car and carried the valise into the store. Moody
was in the cubby-hole that had been cut off from the store for an
office. Rowan hailed him cheerfully.
“Look here, Trent. What’s the best price you can give me for those
hides?” He walked toward the storekeeper and bargained with him audibly,
but he found time to slip in an undertone: “If Mrs. Tait wants any
money, give it to her. I’ll be responsible. But don’t tell her I said
so.”
Moody grinned dubiously. He was a little embarrassed and not a little
curious. “All right, Mac. Whatever you say.”
As Rowan went out of the office Norma timidly entered. Moody was a
tight, hard little man, and she did not expect him to let her have the
money. If he refused she did not know what she would do.
McCoy strolled down to the station to inquire about the lower he had
reserved in the Pullman.
“You’re in luck, Mac,” the station agent told him. “Travel is heavy.
There isn’t another berth left—not even an upper. You got the last.”
“Then I’m out of luck, Tim,” smiled the cattleman. “A lady from our part
of the country is going to Laramie. Give her my berth, but don’t let her
know I had reserved it. The lady is Mrs. Tait.”
A quarter of an hour later Norma Tait, not yet fully recovered from her
surprise at the ease with which she had acquired the small roll of bills
now in her pocketbook, learned from the station agent that there was one
sleeper berth left. She exchanged three dollars for the ticket, and sat
down to wait until the Limited arrived. It was a nervous hour she spent
before her train drew in, for at any moment her husband might arrive to
make trouble. That she saw nothing more of Rowan McCoy before the
Limited reached Wagon Wheel was a relief. Tait had always been jealous
of him, and would, she knew, jump to the wrong conclusion if he saw them
ready to leave together. At the first chance she vanished into the
Pullman.
Just as the conductor shouted his “All aboard!” a big, rawboned man
galloped up to the station and flung himself from the saddle. He caught
sight of McCoy standing by the last sleeper.
“What have you done with my wife?” he roared.
The train began to move. McCoy climbed to the step and looked down
contemptuously at the furious man. “Try not to be a fool, Tait,” he
advised.
The man running beside the train answered the spirit of the words rather
than the letter. “You’re a liar. She’s in that car. You’re running away
with her. You sneak, I’m going in to see.”
He caught at the railing to swing himself up.
The cattleman wasted no words. His left fist doubled, shot forward a
scant six inches, collided with the heavy chin of Tait. The big
sheepman’s head snapped back, and he went down heavily like a sack of
meal.
CHAPTER VIII
A COLD TRAIL
THE white-rimmed eyes of the porter rolled admiringly toward McCoy as
the cattleman disappeared into the sleeper. “Some kick, b’lieve me!” he
murmured to the world at large.
Rowan stopped at the section where Norma Tait sat. “I’m going forward to
the day coach,” he explained. “If there’s anything I can do for you,
Norma, now or at any time, I want you to call on me.”
The woman looked at him, a man from his soles up, coffee-brown, lean,
steady as a ground-sunk rock. She knew his standing in the countryside.
His fellows liked him, trusted him, followed him, for by the grace of
Heaven he had been born a leader of men. McCoy was no plaster saint. The
wild and sometimes lawless way of his kind he had trodden, but always
there burned in him the dynamic spark of self-respect that lifted him
above meanness, held him to loyalty and decency. It came to her with a
surge of emotion that here a woman’s love could find safe anchorage.
What a fool she had been to throw him aside in the pride of her youth!
“Why should I ask favours of you? What have I ever done but bring
trouble and unhappiness to you?” she cried in a low voice.
“Never mind that. If there’s anything I can do for you I’m here to do
it.”
She gulped down a sob. “No, you’ve done enough for me—too much. Joe
will hear that you drove me to town. He’ll make trouble for you. I know
him.” A faint flush of anger dyed her thin cheeks. “No, I’ll go my road
and you’ll go yours. I’m an old woman already in my feelings. I’m burned
out, seems like. But you’re young. Forget there was ever such a girl as
Norma Davis.”
He hesitated, uncertain what to say, and while he groped she spoke
again:
“There’s a girl waiting for you somewhere, Rowan. Go and find her—and
marry her.”
Beneath the tan he flushed, but his eyes did not waver. “I’m going to
her now, Norma.”
“Now?” Her surprised glance swept the dark, new suit and the modish
straw hat.
“She’s waiting for me at Cheyenne. We’re to be married to-morrow.”
After just an instant came the woman’s little, whispered cry: “Be good
to her, Rowan.”
He nodded, then shook hands with her.
“And you be good to yourself, Norma. Better luck ahead.”
She gave a little wry smile. “Good-bye!”
McCoy passed forward to the day coach. From the train butcher he bought
a magazine and settled himself for a long ride. He intended to spend the
night where he was, even if a vacant berth should develop later in the
sleeper. Tait would mole out quite enough evidence against him without
any additional data supplied by indiscretion.
At Red Gulch a big, tanned Westerner entered the car and stopped beside
the cattleman.
“’Lo, Mac,” he nodded genially.
“’Lo, Sheriff! Ain’t you off your range?”
The big man was booted and spurred. As he sat down something metallic on
his hip struck the woodwork of the seat arm.
“Been looking for a horse thief I heard was at Red Gulch. False alarm,”
he explained.
“We can’t any of us strike a warm trail every time.”
“That’s right.” The cool, hard eyes of Sheriff Matson rested quietly in
those of the cattleman. “Wonder if I’m on one now. I’ve been asked to
arrest a man eloping with another man’s wife, Mac.”
“I reckon Tait phoned you from Wagon Wheel.”
“You done guessed it.”
“He’s gone crazy with the heat. False alarm, sure.”
“Says his wife is aboard this train. Is she?”
“Yes.”
“Says you took him by surprise and knocked him cold on the depot as the
train was leaving.”
“He’s made a record and told the truth twice running.”
“Where’s she going? Mrs. Tait, I mean.”
“To Laramie. Her sister lives there.”
“Running away from Tait?”
“Looks like it.”
Again the sheriff’s hard gaze searched McCoy. “Came down from Bovier’s
camp with you in your car, I understand.”
“Yes. I gave her a lift down.” Rowan’s voice was as even as that of the
officer.
“Suppose you give me a bill of particulars, Mac.”
The cattleman told a carefully edited story. When he had finished,
Matson made one comment: “Tait says she hadn’t a dollar. Wonder where
she got the money for a ticket.”
“I wonder.”
The eyes of the two men met in the direct, level fashion of the country.
“Going anywhere in particular in those glad rags, Mac?”
The sheriff’s question was dropped lightly, but McCoy did not miss its
significance. He knew that for the sake of Norma’s reputation he must
remove all doubt from the mind of the officer.
“Why, yes, Aleck. I’m going to Cheyenne,” he assented.
“A cattle deal?”
“Not exactly—object-matrimony, Sheriff.”
Matson shot a direct, stabbing look at him. “You’ve told me too much or
too little.”
“The young lady is named Trovillion. She spent two months at the Dude
Ranch this summer.”
The sheriff rose. “Nuff said, Mac. I wasn’t elected to do Tait’s dirty
work for him. I get off at this crossing. So long, old scout—and good
luck to you on that object-matrimony game.”
Left to himself, Rowan did not at once return to his magazine. His mind
drifted to the girl he was on his way to marry. It was likely these
days, whenever he was not busy, to go back to her, magnetized by the
lure of her dark-eyed beauty. The softness and fragility of his
sweetheart moved him to awe. That her fancy had selected him out of so
many admirers was to him still an amazing miracle. He did not know that
the mystery back of his silence had captured her imagination just as the
poignancy of her piquant charm had laid a spell on his.
CHAPTER IX
A RIFT IN THE LUTE
THEY were married. And in swift procession the months followed the
weeks.
At the Circle Diamond, Ruth queened it with a naïve childishness from
which her youth had not yet escaped. Eagerly she played at housekeeping
for a fortnight under the amused eyes of Mrs. Stovall, who had been
employed by McCoy to do the cooking, her term as postmistress having
expired. The next game that drew her was the remodelling of the house.
Carpenters and decorators from Wagon Wheel came up, filled the place
with litter and confusion, and under the urge of the young mistress
transformed the interior of the unsightly dwelling into a delightful
home. An absorbing period of needlework followed. New and pretty dresses
took shape and were exhibited to Rowan, who did not have to feign
admiration. For if she had been Paris gowned the slender grace of the
girl could not have been enhanced in his eyes. She had a native instinct
for style, a feeling for the harmonies and values of dress. Whatever she
wore became an expression of her personality.
Ruth’s husband confessed to himself with a sinking heart that she did
not really belong on a frontier ranch. The girl wife brought to her new
home all the fastidiousness that had charmed him. Her sewing room was
cheerful with Indian paint brushes and columbines, her little bedroom a
study in delicate blues. He was glad of that. He did not want the dust
of the commonplace to dull her vividness.
It pleased him that she accepted lightly all responsibility except that
of having a good time. She had shipped her own piano to Wyoming, and she
played a good deal. Sometimes she read a little, more often rode or
hunted. Occasionally Rowan joined her on these excursions, but usually
she went alone. For business more and more absorbed his time. The war
between the sheep and cattle interests was becoming acute. Ranchmen,
watching the range jealously, saw themselves being pushed closer to
bankruptcy by Tait and his associates. Already there had been sheep
raids. Cattle had been found dead at the water holes. Bullets had sung
back and forth.
But though Rowan could spend little time with the girl he had married, a
deep tenderness permeated his thought of her. It was still a miracle to
him that she had come to the Circle Diamond as his wife.
When he rode the range he carried with him mental etchings of her little
graces—the swiftness of the ready smile, the turn of the small,
beautifully poised head, the virginal shyness that always captivated
him. He missed sheer joy because he was profoundly unsure of holding
her. Ruth, he felt, was in love with life, and he was merely a detail of
the Great Adventure. Some day she might grow weary, take wings, and fly.
Meanwhile a certain diffidence born of reticence sealed his lips. He
found it impossible to express the emotion he knew so poignantly. It was
of the hill code that a man must not show his naked soul.
On an August morning Ruth, dawdling over breakfast alone, glimpsed
through the dining-room window a rider galloping toward the ranch. Since
Rowan had been in the saddle and away long before she was awake, the
young woman answered the hail from without by going to the door.
The horseman had dismounted, flung the bridle rein to the ground, and
was coming up the porch steps when Ruth appeared. He lifted the broad
hat from his curly head and bowed.
“Rowan at home?” he asked.
“No, he isn’t.”
Swift anger blazed in the eyes of the girl. She had seen this slender,
black-haired stranger twice before, once in the orchard of the Dude
Ranch, again astride a volcanic bronco in the arena at Bad Ax.
Some wise instinct warned him not to smile. He spoke gravely. “Sorry.
I’ve got news for him. It’s important. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say when he would be back?”
“No.” Ruth cut short the conversation curtly. “I’ll send one of the boys
to talk with you.”
She turned and walked into the house, leaving him on the porch. Out of
the tail of her eye she caught sight of her husband riding into the yard
with his foreman. From the dining-room window she presently watched
McCoy canter away in the company of Silcott.
Ruth was annoyed, even though she recognized that her vexation at Rowan
was not quite fair. It was true that he had lately fallen into a habit
of disappearing for a day at a time without explanation of his absence.
He was worried about something, and he had not made a confidante of her.
This was bad enough, but what she resented most was the fact that he was
on the best of terms with the handsome young scamp who had kissed her so
blithely in the orchard. Of course she had no right to blame her husband
for this, since she had never told him of the episode. Yet she did. For
her mind moved by impulse and not by logic.
She wandered into the kitchen and whipped together a salad for luncheon.
She knitted two rows on a sweater at which she was working, and flung it
aside to plunge into one of Chopin’s waltzes at the piano. But Ruth was
not in the mood for music. Restlessly she turned to a magazine, fingered
the pages aimlessly, read at a story for a paragraph or two, then with a
sudden decision tossed the periodical on the table and walked out of the
house to the garage. Yet a minute, and she was spinning down the road
toward Bovier’s Camp.
It was such a day in late summer as comes only to the Rockies. From a
blue sky, flecked with a few mackerel clouds, poured a bath of sunshine.
Her lungs drank in an air like wine, pure and strong. The sunny slopes
of the high peaks pushed up into the rare, untempered light of Wyoming.
The scent of the pines was in her nostrils. Once, when she stopped to
look at a doubtful tire, the murmurous voices of the desert whispered in
her ears. In spite of herself Ruth’s heart answered the call of the
distant, shining mountain to rejoice and be glad.
The car topped the rim of the saucer-shaped valley and swept down toward
the little village. What Ruth saw quickened her blood. Beyond the post
office a great huddle of sheep was being driven forward. At the head of
them rode a man with a rifle in one hand lying across the horn of the
saddle. On the porch of the store sat Larry Silcott and her husband
watching the man steadily. Neither of them carried any arms exposed to
view.
The young wife drove the car down the basin and stopped near the store,
leaving the engine still running. None of the men even glanced her way.
Their eyes were focused on each other with a tenseness that made her
want to scream. She waited, breathless, uncertain what to expect. The
pulse in her throat beat fast with excitement. That a collision of some
sort impended she did not need to be told.
The man with the rifle spoke thickly in a heavy, raucous voice: “I’ve
been looking for you, Rowan McCoy. First off, I’ll tell you something.
I’m here with my sheep like I promised, on the way to Circle Diamond.
I’m going right past the door of the ranch to Thunder Mountain. If any
man tries to stop me, I’ll fix his clock. Get that?”
Rowan’s eyes were like chilled steel, his body absolutely motionless.
“Better turn back while you can, Tait,” he advised quietly.
“I’ll see you in hell first. I’m going through. But there’s another
thing I’ve got to settle with you, Rowan McCoy. That’s about my wife.
Stand up and fight, you white-livered coyote!” A sudden passionate venom
leaped into the voice of the sheepman. He cursed his enemy savagely and
flung at him a string of vile names.
Ruth, terror-stricken, believed the man was working himself up to do
murder. She wanted to cry out, to rush forward and beg him to stop. But
her throat was parched and her limbs weighted with heavy chains.
“Your wife left you because you are a bully and a drunkard. I had
nothing to do with her going,” retorted McCoy.
“You’re a liar—a rotten liar! You got her to run away with you. You
took her in your car to Wagon Wheel. You gave her money to buy a ticket.
You were seen on the train with her. I swore I’d kill you on sight, and
I’m going to do it. Get out of the way, Silcott!”
The energy flowed back into Ruth’s limbs. She threw in the clutch and
drove forward furiously. There was the sound of a shot, then of another.
Next moment she was pushing home the brake and shutting off the gas. The
car slammed to a halt, its wheels hard against the porch. She had driven
directly between the sheepman and his intended victim.
Out of the haze that for a moment enveloped Ruth’s senses boomed a
savage, excited voice:
“Turn me loose, Mac! Lemme go! I’ll finish the damned sheepman while I’m
on the job.”
The scene opened before her eyes like a moving-picture film. On the
porch her husband was struggling with a man for the possession of a gun,
while young Silcott was sagging against a corner pillar, one hand
clutched to his bleeding shoulder. Thirty yards away Tait lay on the
ground, face down, beside his horse. From the corral, from the store,
from the adjoining doctor’s office men poured upon the scene.
The place was suddenly alive with gesticulating people.
Rowan tore the rifle from the man with whom he was wrestling. “Don’t be
a fool, Falkner. You’ve done enough already. I shouldn’t wonder if Tait
had got his.”
“He had it coming to him, if ever a man had. If I’d been two seconds
later you’d have been a goner, Mac. I just beat him to it. Good riddance
if he croaks, I say.”
McCoy caught sight of Ruth. He moved toward her, his eyes alive with
surprise and dismay.
“You—here!”
“He didn’t hit you!” She strangled a sob.
“No. Falkner fired from the store window. It must have shaken his aim.
He hit Larry.”
Rowan turned swiftly to his friend, who grinned feebly up at him.
“’S all right, Mac. I’ll ride in a heap of round-ups yet. He punctured
my shoulder.”
“Good! Let’s have a look at it.”
A fat little man with a doctor’s case puffed up to the porch as McCoy
was cutting away the shirt of the wounded man from the shoulder.
“Here! Here! Wha’s the matter? Lemme see. Get water—bandages,” he
exploded in staccato snorts like the engine of a motor cycle.
Ruth flew into the house to obey orders. When she returned with a basin
of water and towels the doctor had gone.
“Doc is over looking at Tait,” explained her husband. “Says Larry has
only a flesh wound. We’ll take him home with us in the car. You don’t
mind?”
“Of course we’ll look after him till he’s well,” Ruth agreed.
“I wouldn’t think of troubling you, Mrs. McCoy,” objected Silcott. “All
I need is——”
“Rest and good food and proper care. You’ll get it at the Circle
Diamond,” the girl interrupted decisively. “We needn’t discuss that.
You’re going with us.”
She had her way, as she usually had. After Doctor Irwin had dressed the
shoulder the young ranchman got into the back seat of the car beside
Ruth. McCoy asked a question point-blank of the fussy little physician:
“What about Tait? Will he live?”
“Ought to. If no complications. Just missed lower intestines—near
thing. Lot of damn fools—all of you!” he snorted.
“Sure thing,” grinned Silcott. “Come and see me to-night, Doc.”
“H’mp!”
“I’ll be looking for you, Doctor Irwin,” Ruth called back from the
moving car.
The doctor growled out what might be taken for a promise if one were an
optimist.
From the rim of the valley McCoy looked down and spoke grimly: “I notice
that Tait’s herders have changed their minds. They’re driving the sheep
back along the road they came.”
“Before we’re through with them they’ll learn where to head in,” boasted
Larry querulously, for his wound was aching a good deal. “Next time they
cross the dead line there’ll be a grave dug for someone.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Larry,” objected Rowan gently. “We’d better cut
out threats. They lead to trouble. We don’t want to put ourselves in the
wrong unnecessarily. Take Falkner now. I was just in time to keep him
from finishing Tait.”
“Oh, Falkner! He’s crazy to be a killer. But at that I don’t blame him
this time,” commented the younger man.
Silcott went to bed in the guest chamber between clean sheets, and sank
back with a sigh of content into the pillow. The atmosphere of home
indefinably filled the room. The cool tints of the wall paper, the
pictures, the feminine touches visible here and there, all were
contributing factors, but the light-footed girl, so quiet and yet so
very much alive in every vivid gesture, every quick glance, was the
centre of the picture.
He knew that she had something on her mind, that she was troubled and
distrait. He thought he could guess the reason, and felt it incumbent
upon him to set himself right with her. When, toward evening, she
brought him a dainty tray of food he could keep away from the subject no
longer.
“I was a sweep,” he confessed humbly.
For an instant she did not know what he meant. Then: “Yes,” she agreed.
“I’m sorry. You’ve made me ashamed. Won’t you forgive me?” he pleaded.
Ruth had plenty of capacity for generosity. This good-looking boy was
ill and helpless. He appealed strongly to the mother instinct that is
alive in all good women. He was the central figure, too, of an adventure
which had excited her and intrigued her interest. Moreover, she was
cherishing a new and more important resentment, one which made her
annoyance at him of small moment.
“Do you mean it? Are you really sorry?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think so. I know I ought to be. Anyhow, I’m sorry you’re
angry at me,” he answered with a little flare of boyish audacity.
She bit her lip, then laughed in spite of herself. She held out her hand
a little hesitantly, but he knew he was forgiven.
Young Silcott’s fever mounted toward evening, but when Doctor Irwin
arrived he gave him a sleeping powder and before midnight the wounded
man fell asleep. Ruth tiptoed about the room while she arranged on a
little table beside the bed his medicines and drinks in case he awakened
later. After lowering the light she stole away silently to her own
bedroom.
Rowan knocked a few minutes later. He heard her move across the floor in
her soft slippers. She wore a dainty crepe-de-Chine robe that lent
accent to the fresh softness of her young flesh. She had just been
brushing her hair, and the long, heavy, blue-black braids were thrown
forward over her shoulders.
All day McCoy had been swept by waves of tenderness for this girl wife
of his who had risked her life to save him by driving into the line of
fire so pluckily. He had longed to open his heart to her, and he had not
dared. Now there was a new note about her that puzzled him, one he had
never seen before. The eyes that flashed into his were fierce with
defiance. Her slim figure was very erect and straight.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
He was taken aback. Never before had her manner been less than friendly
to him. While she was in this mood he could not voice his surcharge of
feeling for her.
“You are tired,” he suggested.
A sudden gusty passion flared in her face. “Did you come to tell me
that?”
“No. To thank you.”
“What for?”
“For risking your life for me this morning. It was splendid.”
She dismissed his thanks with a contemptuous little snap of finger and
thumb.
“If that’s all you have to say——”
“That’s all, except good-night, dear.”
Definitely she refused his wistfulness, definitely withdrew into herself
and met his appeal icily.
“Good-night.” Her voice rejected flatly the love he offered.
Always he had been chary of embraces with her. To him she was so fine
and exquisite that her kisses were a privilege not to be claimed of
right. Now he merely hid his hurt with a patient smile.
“I hope you’ll sleep well.”
Her eyes flamed with scorn. She closed the door. He heard the key turn
in the lock. Rowan knew that she was locking him out of her heart as
well as out of the room.
CHAPTER X
THE RIFT WIDENS
ACROSS the breakfast table next morning Rowan faced a hostile young
stranger. The gay comrade who was so dear to him, the eager, impulsive
girl all fire and flame and dewy softness, had vanished to give place to
a cold and flinty critic. Abruptly and without notice she had withdrawn
her friendship. Why? Was it that she had grown tired of him and what he
had to offer? Or had he done something to displease her?
Manlike, he tried gifts.
“I’ve decided to have that conservatory built for you off the living
room as soon as I can get the glass. Better draw up your plans right
away.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want it.”
Her voice was like icy water.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, and presently he finished his breakfast and
left the room.
Ruth bit her lip and looked out of the window. Tears began to film her
eyes. She went to her room, locked the door, and flung herself down on
the bed in a passion of weeping.
Ever since the first days of her acquaintance with Rowan she had known
the story of how Norma Davis had jilted him. Mrs. Flanders, of the Dude
Ranch, was a gossip by nature and had told Ruth the history of the
affair with gusto. The girl had been merely interested. She had had too
many transient affairs herself to object to any dead and buried ones of
Rowan. But yesterday afternoon she had ridden over to the summer resort
and asked Mrs. Flanders some insistent questions. The mistress of the
Dude Ranch was a reluctant witness, but a damning one. It was true that
Mrs. Tait had run away with McCoy in his car and that they had taken the
train together. There were witnesses to prove that he had paid for the
sleeper berth she used and that it was in his name. For once Joe Tait
had told the truth.
The thing which hit Ruth like a sudden slap in the face from a friend
was that this escapade had taken place while McCoy had been on his way
to marry her. It was not an episode of the past, but a poisonous canker
that ate into the joy of her life. If he could do a thing so vile there
was no truth in him.
All the golden hours they had spent together were tainted by his
infidelity. Never in all her life had she met a man who had seemed so
genuine, so wholly true. She had offered him her friendship and love,
had given her young life into his keeping. His reverence for her had
touched her deeply. Now she knew there was nothing but hypocrisy to it.
She must leave him, of course. She must crawl away like a wounded wild
creature of the forest and suffer her hurts alone. The sooner she left
the better.
On the very heel of this resolution came Mrs. Stovall with bad news
about their patient.
“His fever’s mighty high. Looks like someone will have to nurse that boy
regular for quite a while,” she said.
“I’ll look after him—anyhow till the doctor comes,” Ruth volunteered in
swift compunction because she had not been in to see him that morning.
“H’mp! Been crying her eyes out. What’s _she_ got to worry about—with
the best man in the Fryingpan country crazy about her?” wondered the
housekeeper. “Trouble with her is that Rowan’s too good to her. She
needs to bump up against real grief before she’ll know how well off she
is.”
Once installed in the sick room, Ruth did not find it easy to get away.
For three days Silcott needed pretty constant attention. After the
delirium had passed he lay and watched her, too weak to wait upon
himself.
“You’ll not leave me,” he whispered to her once, and there was something
so helpless and boyish about his dependence upon her that Ruth felt a
queer little lump in her throat. Just now at least there could be no
doubt of the genuineness of _his_ need of her.
“Not till you’re better,” she promised.
And if there were tears in her eyes they were less for him than for
herself. She was thinking of another man who had told her how greatly he
needed her and how her coming had filled his life with sunshine, of
another man whose whole relation to her had been a lie.
It was like Larry to take her emotion and her kindness as evidence of
her special interest in him, just as it had been characteristic of him a
few days before to jump to the conclusion that her worry was on his
account. He was a debonair young fellow, picturesque and good-looking.
Nor did Ruth resent it that he claimed it as a privilege of his
invalidism to pass into immediate friendship with her. His open
admiration of her was balm to the sick heart of the girl.
In the days that followed Rowan caught only glimpses of his wife. She
was never up now in time for his early breakfast. All day he was away,
and she contrived to be busy with her patient while Mrs. Stovall served
his supper.
Whenever they did meet Ruth incased herself instantly in a still white
armour of reserve. She treated him to no more of her winsome vagaries,
never now mocked him with her dear impudence. He noticed that she never
called him by name and that her manner was one of formal politeness. In
his presence her joy was struck dead.
A less sensitive man might have come to grips with her and fought the
thing out. Once or twice Rowan tried in a halting fashion to discover
the cause of the change in her, but she made it plain to him that she
would not discuss the matter. At the bottom of his heart he had no doubt
as to the reason. She had found out that his ways were not hers. He held
no resentment. It was natural that her eager youth should weary of the
humdrum life he offered.
Sometimes, as he passed Silcott’s room, Rowan heard the gay laughter of
the young people. Later, when Larry was strong enough, McCoy met them
driving, on their way to a picnic for two. If the sight of their
merriment was a knife in his heart, Rowan gave no sign of it. His
friendly smile did not fail.
“Better come along, Mac. You’ll live only once, and then you’ll be dead
a long time,” suggested Larry.
McCoy shook his head. “Can’t—business.”
He noticed that Ruth had not seconded the invitation of her companion.
Though he never intruded, it was impossible for Rowan to live in the
same house without running into them occasionally. Sometimes she would
be accompanying Larry on the piano while he sang “Mandalay.” Or they
would be quarrelling over a verse in a volume of recent poems. Rowan was
not of a jealous disposition, but their good-fellowship stabbed him. He
neither sang nor read poems. What was worse, he was not on good enough
terms with Ruth for her to quarrel with him. The most he could get from
her was frigid politeness.
Ruth was in the grip of one of the swift friendships to which she was
subject. She liked Larry a lot. They had many common interests. But she
plunged into her little affair with him only because misery made her
reckless. Quite well she knew that Larry’s coaxing smile, his dancing
eyes, his boyish winsomeness, cloaked a purpose of making love to her as
much as he dared. She felt no resentment on that account. Indeed she was
grateful to him for distracting her from her woe. To her husband she
owed nothing. If she could hurt him by playing his own game so much the
better. For conventions she never cared. As for Larry, when the time
came, she told herself, she would know how to protect her heart. She was
willing to flirt desperately with him, but she had no intention of
really caring for him.
Because she was such a child of impulse, so candid and so frank, Rowan
worried lest her indiscretions should be noticed. He did not like to
interfere, but he considered dropping a hint to Larry that he was needed
at the Open A N C.
It was not necessary. Over the telephone one morning came the news that
Miss Morgan, who was still stopping at the Dude Ranch, had suffered a
relapse and was not expected to live. Ruth fled at once to join her and
Larry discovered a few hours later that he was well enough to go home.
As Ruth nursed her aunt through the silent hours of the night her mind
was busy with her own shattered romance. She confessed to herself that
she had not really been having a good time with Larry. She had turned to
him as an escape and to punish her husband. But all the while her heart
had been full of bitterness and desolation. It was unthinkable that
Rowan could have treated her so. Her young, clean pride had been
dreadfully humiliated. It seemed to her that her heart was frozen, that
she never again could pulse with warm life. The thing that had fallen
upon her was a degradation. In her thoughts she held herself soiled
irretrievably.
Miss Morgan died the third day after the arrival of her niece. In accord
with a desire she had once expressed, she was buried in a grove back of
the pasture at the ranch.
Ruth accepted the invitation of Mrs. Flanders to stay a few days at the
Dude Ranch as her guest. The days lengthened into weeks, and still she
did not return to the Circle Diamond. Larry made occasions to come to
the hotel to see Ruth. Sometimes Rowan came, but not often. The gulf
between him and his young wife had widened until he despaired of
bridging it. He felt that the kindest thing he could do was to stay
away. The whole passionate urge of his heart swept him toward her, but
his iron will schooled his impulses to obedience.
But as Rowan rode the range he carried with him the memory of a white
face, fragile as a flower, out of which dark eyes looked at him
defiantly. His heart ached for her. In his own breast he carried a block
of ice that never melted, but he would gladly have taken her grief, too,
if that had been possible.
CHAPTER XI
LARRY GOES CALLING
RUTH and Mrs. Flanders sat on the porch at Elkhorn Lodge and watched a
rider descend a hill trail toward the ranch. It was late in the season.
Except a hunting party, only a few stray boarders remained, and these
would soon take flight for the cities. But in spite of the almanac the
day had been hot. Even after sunset it was pleasant outdoors.
The rider announced his coming with song. For a fortnight he had been on
the round-up, working sixteen hours a day, and now that it was nearly
over he was entitled to sing. The words drifted down to the women on the
porch:
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,
Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
“It’s Larry Silcott,” announced Mrs. Flanders, brightening. She was a
born gossip. When the owner of the Open A N C was with her there was a
pair of them present.
“Yes,” assented Ruth. She had known for some moments that the
approaching rider was Larry.
He offered for their entertainment another selection.
“Sift along, boys, don’t ride so slow.
Haven’t got much time but a long round to go.
Quirt him on the shoulders and rake him down the hip,
I’ll cut you toppy mounts, boys, now pair off and rip.”
After a few moments of silence the wind brought more song to the women
on the porch:
“Bunch the herd at the old meet,
Then beat ’em on the tail;
Whip ’em up and down the side
And hit the shortest trail.”
The young man appeared to catch sight of the women and waved his
pinched-in felt hat at them, finishing his range ditty with a cowboy
cheer for a rider to the last stanza:
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya youpy ya,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.”
He cantered up to the ranch, flung himself from the saddle without
touching the stirrups, grounded the reins, and came forward to the porch
with jingling spurs. Ruth did not deny that he was a most engaging
youth. The outdoor bloom on his cheeks, the sparkle in his eyes, the
nonchalant pose that had just a touch of boyish swagger, all carried
their appeal even with women old enough to be his mother.
“Is the round-up finished?” asked Mrs. Flanders.
“They’ve got to comb Eagle Creek yet and the Flat Tops.” He fell into
the drawl of the old cowman. “But I’m plumb fed up with the dust of the
drag driver. Me, I’m through. Enough’s plenty. The boys can finish
without Larry Silcott.”
“Oh, I’m going home
Bullwhacking for to spurn,
I ain’t got a nickel,
And I don’t give a dern.”
“You seem to have quite an attack of doggerel to-night,” suggested Ruth.
“Doggerel nothing. Every one of ’em is a range classic. I got them from
old Sam Yerby, who brought them up from Texas. I’ve been giving you the
genuwine, blown-in-the-bottle ballads of the man who wears leathers,”
defended Larry.
“Who is boss of the round-up this year?” asked Mrs. Flanders.
“Rowan is, and believe me he worked us to a fare-you-well. He’s some
driver, Mac is; one of your sixty-horsepower dynamos on two legs. He is
good for twenty-four hours a day himself, and he figures the rest of us
are made of leather and steel, too. I’m a wreck.”
“What’s that I hear about Falkner and Tait having some more trouble?”
“Trouble is right, Mrs. Flanders. They met over by the creek at Three
Willows. One thing led to another, and they both got down from their
horses and mixed it. Tait had one of his herders with him, and he took a
hand in the fracas. The two of them gave Falkner an awful beating. He
was just able to crawl to his horse.”
“Tait ought to be driven out of the country,” pronounced Mrs. Flanders
indignantly. “He’s always making trouble.”
“Joe is certainly a bad actor, but it would be some job to drive him
away. He hasn’t got sense enough to realize what is going to happen to
him. If Falkner ever gets him at the wrong end of a gun——” He left his
sentence unfinished. The imagination could supply the rest.
“They say Tait has driven his sheep across the dead line again.” Mrs.
Flanders put her statement as if it were a question.
Larry, recalling a warning he had been given, became suddenly discreet.
“Do they?”
“Will the Hill Creek cattlemen stand for it?”
There was a sullen, mulish look on his face that suggested he knew more
than he intended to tell. “Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”
Business called the Mistress of Elkhorn Lodge into the house.
Ruth, with a slant of dark eyes toward her guest, asked him a question:
“Do you call this two weeks?”
“I call it a month, reckoning by my feelings.”
She scoffed. “It’s a pity about your feelings. I told you not to come
again for two weeks.”
“I thought as I happened to be passing——”
“On your way to nowhere.”
“—that I’d drop in and say ‘_Buenas tardes_.’”
“Good of you, I’m sure.”
He settled himself comfortably on the porch against a pillar. “I want to
ask your advice. I’m just a plain cow-puncher and you’re a wise young
lady from a city. So you can tell me all about it. I’m getting old and
lonesome, and my mind has been running on a girl a heap.”
Her glance took in the slim, wiry youth at her feet. She smiled. “You’d
better ask Mrs. Flanders. I’m too young to advise you.”
“No. You’re just the right age. I’ll tell you about her. There never was
anybody prettier—not in Wyoming. She’s fresh and sweet, like those wild
roses we picked in Bear Creek Cañon. Her eyes are kind o’ rippled by a
laugh ’way down deep in them, then sometimes they are dark and still
and—sort of tender. She has the kindest heart in the world—and the
cruelest. I wouldn’t want a better partner, though she’s as wild as an
unbroken bronc sometimes. You never can tell when she’s going to bolt.”
There was a faint flush of pink in her cheeks, but her eyes danced. “You
don’t make her sound like a really _nice_ girl.”
“Oh, she’s nice enough, when she isn’t a little divvle. The trouble is
she isn’t foot-loose.”
“Of course she is tremendously in love with you.”
“She likes me a heap better than she pretends.”
“I’m sure she would adore you if she knew how modest you are,” Ruth
answered with amiable malice.
Silcott’s gaze absorbed her dainty sweetness. He spoke with an emphasis
of the cattleman’s drawl.
“I’d like right well to take her up on my hawss and ride away with her
like that Lochinvar fellow did in the poetry book y’u lent me onct—the
one that busted up the wedding of the laggard guy and went a-fannin’ off
with his gyurl behind him, whilst the no’count bridegroom and her paw
hollered ‘Help!’”
“Lochinvar. Oh, he’s out of date.”
“Maybe so. But it’s a great thing to know when to butt in.” He watched
her covertly as he spoke.
“And when not to,” added Ruth, with the insolent little tilt of her chin
that made men want to demonstrate. “Come on. Let’s go over to the mesa
and look at the desert in the moonlight.”
Beneath the stars this land of splintered peaks and ragged escarpments
always took on a glory denied to it by day. The obscuration of detail,
the vagueness of outline, lent magic to the hills. Below, the valley
swam in a sheen of gleaming silver.
Ruth drew a deep breath of sensuous delight and lifted her face to the
star-strewn sky. Her companion watched her, his eyes shining. She was
standing lance straight, everything forgotten but the beauty of the
night. In the air was a faint, murmurous stir of desert denizens.
“The world’s going to bed,” she whispered. “It always says its prayers
first—wonderful prayers full of the fragrance of roses and the sough of
wind just touching the pines, and the far, far song of birds. You have
to listen—oh, so still!—before you can hear them. The world is sad
because the lovely day is dead and because life is so short and so
filled with loss, and it’s just a wee bit afraid of the darkness. So God
lights up millions of candles in His sky as a sign that He’s up there
and all’s well with the universe.”
Larry had another Ruth to add to his list of portraits of her. It was
amazing how many women were wrapped up in her slim young body, not to
mention the Ruth that was a naughty child and the one that was all eager
boy. He had known her in the course of a morning grave and gay,
whimsical and coquettish, sulky and passionate. She was given to
generous impulses and unjust resentments. At times her soul danced on
the hilltops of life, and again she beat with her fists indignantly at
the bars that prisoned her. Of late he had more than once surprised her
with the traces of tears on her face.
He knew that all was not well between her and Rowan, but he did not know
what was amiss. Only Mrs. Flanders guessed that, and for once she kept
her own counsel.
Larry slipped his big brown hand over her little one.
“But you’re not happy just the same,” he told her.
He was one of those men whose attitude toward a young and attractive
woman is always that of the lover potential or actual. He was never
quite satisfied until the talk became personal and intimate, until he
had established an individual relationship with any woman who interested
him.
Ruth nodded agreement.
She let her hand lie in his. Since her break with Rowan she was often
the victim of moods when she craved a sympathy such as Larry offered,
one that took her trouble for granted without discussing it. There were
other times when her spirit flared into rebellion, when she was eager to
punish her husband’s faithlessness by letting Silcott make veiled love
to her with only a pretense of disapproval.
“Why don’t you chuck it all overboard and make a new start?” he asked
her abruptly.
She looked at him, a little startled. He had never before made so direct
a reference to her situation.
“I don’t care to talk about that.”
“But you’ll have to talk about it some time. You can’t go on like this
for ever, and—you know I love you, that I’d do anything in the world
for you.”
“I know you talk a lot of foolishness, Larry,” she retorted sharply. “I
may be a goose, but I’m not silly enough to take you seriously all the
time. Let’s go back to the house.”
“I don’t see why you can’t take me seriously,” he said sulkily.
“Because you’re only a boy. You think you want the moon, but you don’t;
at least the only reason you want it is because it’s in somebody else’s
yard.”
“It doesn’t need to stay there always, does it?”
“That isn’t a matter for you and me to discuss,” she flashed at him with
spirit. “Whenever I need your advice I’ll ask for it, my friend.”
She led the way to the house, her slender limbs moving rhythmically with
light grace. Larry walked beside her sullenly. What was the matter with
her to-night? Last week she had almost let him kiss her. If she had held
him back, still it had been with the promise in her manner that next
time he might be more successful. But now she had pushed him back into
the position of a friend rather than a lover.
Larry had no intention of being her friend. It was not in his horoscope
to be merely a friend to any charming woman. Moreover, he was as much in
love with Ruth as he could be with anybody except himself.
Just before they reached the porch she asked him a question: “When will
they be through with the round-up?”
“In two or three days. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
Her eyes evaded his. His annoyance flashed suddenly into words.
“If it’s Rowan you want, why don’t you go back to him like a good little
girl and say you’re sorry? I expect he would forgive you.”
Anger, sudden and imperious, leaped into her eyes. “I wish you’d learn,
Larry Silcott, to mind your own business.”
She turned and fled into the house.
CHAPTER XII
ACROSS THE DEAD LINE
NOWHERE outside of Cattleland would such a scene have been possible. The
air was filled with the fine dust of milling cattle, with the sound of
bawling cows and blatting calves. Hundreds of them, rounded up on the
Flat Tops and driven down Eagle Creek, were huddled in a draw fenced by
a score of lean brown horsemen.
Now and again one of the leggy hill steers made a dash for freedom. The
nearest puncher wheeled his horse as on a half dollar, gave chase, and
headed the animal back into the herd. Three of the old stockmen rode in
and out among the packed cattle, deciding on the ownership of stray
calves. These were cut out, roped, and branded on the spot.
Everybody was busy, everybody cheerful. These riders had for weeks been
in the saddle eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. They were grimy
with dust, hollow-eyed from want of sleep. But every chap-clad,
sun-baked horseman was hard as nails and tough as leather. To feel the
press of a saddle under his knees in all this clamour and confusion was
worth a month of ordinary life to a cow-puncher.
McCoy, since he was boss of the round-up, was chief of the board of
arbiters. An outsider would have been hopelessly at a loss to decide
what cow was the mother of each lost and bewildered calf. But these
experts guessed right ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
“Goes with the big bald-faced cow—D Bar Lazy R brand,” was the verdict
of Rowan as to one roan stray.
“You done said it, Mac!” agreed Sam Yerby, chewing his quid of tobacco
lazily.
The third judge, Brad Rogers, of the Circle B R, nodded his head. Duncan
King, whose father owned a ranch near the headwaters of Hill Creek, cut
out the bawling little maverick for the branders.
While the outfit was at supper after the day’s work a man rode up to the
chuck wagon and fell into the easy, negligent attitude of the range
rider at rest.
“Hello, Larry! Come and get it,” shouted the cook, waving a beefsteak on
the prongs of a long fork.
Silcott slid from the saddle and joined the circle. He found a seat
beside McCoy.
“I want to see you alone, Mac,” he said in a low voice.
Rowan nodded, paid no more attention to him, and joined again in the
general conversation. But presently he got up and strolled toward the
remuda.
Larry casually joined him.
“Tait has been across the dead line for two days, Mac. He’s travelling
straight for the Circle Diamond with fifteen hundred sheep. About a
third of them belong to Gilroy. Joe has two herders with him.”
“Where are they camped to-night?”
“At the foot of Bald Knob.”
“Is Gilroy with them?”
“No. He was this morning, but he telephoned his wife from Westcliff that
he would be home to-night.”
The boss of the round-up looked away at the purple hills, his
close-gripped jaw clamped tight, his eyes narrowed almost to slits.
“Drift back to the wagon, Larry, and tell Yerby and Rogers to drop out
of the crowd and meet me here quietly.”
“Sure.” The younger man hung in the wind. “What are you going to do,
Mac?”
“What would you do?”
Silcott broke into a sudden angry oath. “Do? I’d meet Joe Tait halfway.
I’d show him whether he can spoil the range for us at his own sweet
will. He wants war. By all that’s holy, I’d carry it right into his
camp!”
Rowan did not deny to himself the seriousness of the issue as he waited
for the coming of the two men. He faced the facts squarely, as he always
did. Tait had again declared war. To let the man have his own way meant
ruin to the cattle interests on the Fryingpan. For if one sheepman were
permitted to invade the range, dozens of others would drive across into
the forbidden territory. The big, fearless bully had called for a
show-down. Let him win now, and it would be a question of months only
until McCoy and his neighbours were sold out at a sheriff’s sale.
Out of the darkness sauntered Yerby, followed presently by Rogers.
“What’s on yore mind, Mac?” drawled Yerby, splattering expertly with
tobacco juice a flat rock shining in the moonlight.
Sam Yerby was an old cowman from Texas. As a youth he had driven cattle
on the Chisum Trail. Once, a small boy, he had spoken with Sam Bass, the
outlaw. In the palmy days of Dodge City and Abilene, while still in his
early teens, he had been a spectator of the wild life that overflowed
into the frontier towns. Physically he was a wrinkled little man with a
merry eye and a mild manner that was apt to deceive.
“Tait has crossed the dead line again. He is headed for the Thunder
Mountain country.”
Yerby rubbed a bristling cheek slowly with the palm of his hand. “Well,
I’ll be dog-goned! Looks like he’s gone loco,” he commented mildly.
The owner of the Circle B R broke into excited threats. “He’ll never
take his sheep back again—never in the world. I’ll not stand for it;
none of the boys will. Right now is when he gets all the trouble he
wants.”
“That your opinion, too, Sam?” asked Rowan quietly.
The faded blue eyes of the Texan had a far-away look. His fingers
caressed a chin rough with gray stubbles. He was thinking of his young
wife and his year-old baby. Their future depended upon his little cattle
ranch.
“I reckon, Mac. We got to fight some time. Might as well be right now.”
“To-night,” agreed McCoy decisively. “We’ll settle this before daybreak.
We don’t want too many in this thing. Five or six are enough.”
“Here are three of your six,” suggested Rogers.
“Larry Silcott is four. We’ve got to take Larry. He brought me the
news.”
“How about Dunc King? He’s a good boy—absolutely on the square.”
Rowan shook his head. “Let’s keep Dunc out of this. You know what a good
old lady Mrs. King is. We’ll not take her only son into trouble.
Besides, Dunc talks too much.”
“Well, Jack Cole. He’ll go through and padlock his mouth, too. I’d trust
Jack to a finish.”
“Cole is all right, Brad. You feel him out. Five of us are all that’s
needed. We’ll meet at the Three Pines at midnight. Sam, you and Brad can
decide to spend the night at home since we’re camping so near your
places. I’ll drive my bunch of cows down to the Circle Diamond as an
excuse to get away. I can take Jack and Larry with me to help. Probably
you had better hang around till after we’ve been gone a while.”
The Circle Diamond cattle were cut out from the bunch and started
homeward. Rowan, with Silcott and Cole to help him on the drive,
vanished after them into the night.
“Funny Mac didn’t start at sunset. What’s the idea of waiting till
night?” asked King of Falkner, who sat beside him at the campfire.
“Beats me.” Falkner scowled at the leaping flames. His face was still
decorated with half a dozen ugly cuts and as many bruises, souvenirs of
his encounter with Tait. Just now he was full of suspicions, vague and
indefinite as yet, but none the less active. For Larry had told him the
news he had brought.
“Sing the old Chisum Trail song, Sam,” demanded a cow-puncher.
A chorus of shouts backed the request.
“Cain’t you boys ever leave the old man alone?” complained Yerby. “I
done bust my laig to-day when I fell off’n that pinto. I’ve got a half a
notion to light a shuck for home and get Missie to rub on some o’ that
white liniment she makes. It’s the healin’est medicine ever I took.”
“Don’t be a piker, Sam. Sing for us.”
“What’ll I sing? I done sung that trail song yesterday.”
“Anything. Leave it to you.”
The old Texan piped up lugubriously, a twinkle in his tired eyes:
“Come, all you old cow-punchers, a story I will tell,
And if you’ll be quiet I’m sure I’ll sing it well,
And if you boys don’t like it, you sure can go to hell!”
A shout of laughter greeted this unexpected proposition. “Fair enough.”
“Go to it, Sam!” “Give us the rest!” urged the chap-clad young giants
around the fire.
Yerby took up his theme in singsong fashion, and went through the other
stanzas, but as he finished he groaned again.
“My laig sure is hurting like sixty. I’m going home. Wish one of you
lads would run up a hawss for me. Get the roan with the white stockings,
if you can.”
“I’ll go with you, Sam,” announced Rogers. “I’m expecting an important
business letter and I expect it’s waiting at the house for me. Be with
you to-morrow, boys.”
After they had gone Falkner made comment to young King satirically:
“What with busted laigs and important letters and night drives, we’re
having quite an exodus from camp, wouldn’t you say?”
“Looks like,” agreed King. “Tha’s the way with married men. They got
always to be recollectin’ home ties. We been on this round-up quite a
spell, an’ I reckon they got kinda homesick to see their better halfs,
as you might say.”
“Tha’s yore notion, is it?” jeered Falkner.
“Why, yes, you see——”
“Different here. They got a hen on. Tha’s what’s the matter with them.”
“Whajamean, a hen on?” King leaned forward, eyes sparkling, cigarette
half rolled. If there was anything doing he wanted to know all about it.
“Larry let it out to me at supper. He was so full of it he couldn’t hold
it in. Tait has done crossed the dead line again.”
“No?” The word was a question, not a denial. Young King’s eyes were wide
with excitement. This was not merely diverting news. It might turn out
to be explosive drama.
“I’m tellin’ you, boy.” Falkner rapped out an annoyed impatient oath.
“They left me out of it. Why? I got as good a right to know what’s doing
as any of ’em. More, by God! I’ve still got to settle with Joe Tait for
these, an’ I aim to pay him interest aplenty.” He touched the scars on
his face, and his eyes flamed to savage anger.
“What do you reckon Mac aims to do?” asked King.
“I reckon he means to raid Tait’s herd. Can’t be anything else. But I
mean to find out. Right now I’m declarin’ myself in.”
The campfire circle broke up, and the cow-punchers rolled into their
blankets. Falkner did not stay in his long. He slipped out to the remuda
and slapped a saddle on one of his cow ponies. The explanation he gave
to the night herders was that he was going to ride down to Bovier’s Camp
to get some tobacco.
He struck the trail of McCoy’s bunch of cows and followed across the
hills. Falkner rode fast, since he knew the general direction the driver
must take. Within the hour he heard the lowing of cattle, and felt sure
that he was on the heels of those he followed. From the top of the next
ridge he looked down upon them in the valley below.
This was enough for Falkner. Evidently Rowan intended to get the cattle
to his corral before any move was made against Tait. The range rider
swung to the right across the brow of the hill, dipped into the next
valley, struck a trail that zigzagged up the shale slope opposite, and
by means of it came, after a half hour of stiff riding, to the valley
where the Triangle Dot Ranch had its headquarters.
He tied his horse in a pine grove and stole silently down to the bunk
house. This he circled, came to the front door on his tiptoes, and
entered noiselessly. A man lay sleeping on one of the farther bunks,
arms flung wide in the deep slumber of fatigue.
Falkner reached for a rifle resting on a pair of elk horns attached to
the wall, and took from one of the tines an ammunition belt. He turned,
knocked over in the darkness a chair, and fled into the night with the
rifle in one hand, the belt in the other.
Reaching the pine grove, he remounted, skirted the lip of the valley,
and struck at its mouth the trail to the Circle Diamond. Three quarters
of an hour later he was lying on the edge of a hill pocket above that
ranch with his eyes fastened to the moonlit corral in which stood two
saddled horses.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NIGHT RAID
THE moon was just going under a cloud when Rowan and his two companions
rode away from the Circle Diamond. They had plenty of time before the
appointed hour at the Three Pines. Since they expected to ride hard
during the night, they took now a leisurely road gait in and out among
the hills.
There was little conversation. Cole was not friendly toward Silcott,
though he had had no open break with him. He still remembered with
resentment that night when Larry had flirted so outrageously with Kate.
To Jack Cole’s simple mind the thing had carried the earmarks of
treachery. The two had been rather close. They had slept under the same
tarp many a time. He could not understand the vanity which had driven
Larry to a public exhibition of his power with women. But he and Kate
had talked the thing out, had quarrelled and made up. His sense of
dignity kept him from settling the matter with Silcott by the simple
primitive method of fisticuffs. Therefore he bottled up his sense of
injury under a manner of cool aloofness.
Yerby and Rogers were waiting for them beneath the largest of the big
pines.
“Better ’light, boys,” suggested the Texan. “I reckon we might as well
kinder talk things over. We aim to bend the law consid’able to-night. If
any of you lads is feelin’ tol’able anxious he’d better burn the wind
back to camp. Old Man Trouble is right ahaid of us on the trail. Now’s
the time to holler. No use bellyachin’ when it’s too late.”
“Think we’re quitters?” Larry demanded indignantly.
“No, son, I don’t allow you are. If I did you can bet them
fifteen-dollar boots of yours that you or Sam Yerby one wouldn’t be
here. What I’m sayin’ is that this is serious business. Take a good,
square look at it before you-all go ahaid.”
“Sam’s quite right,” assented McCoy. “We’re going on a sheep raid, and
against a desperate man. We’re going to kill his sheep—ride them
down—stampede them. It’s not a nice business, and the law is dead
against us. I don’t like it a bit, but I’m going because it is the only
way to pound sense into Tait’s fool head. We’ve got to do it or shut up
shop.”
Rowan spoke with a gravity that carried conviction. He was a man notable
even in that country which bred strong men. His steel-gray eyes looked
out unafraid upon a world still primitive enough to demand proofs of any
man who aspired to leadership among his fellows. McCoy had long since
demonstrated his fitness to lead. No man in the Fryingpan country
doubted this. Hence his words now carried weight.
“I stand pat,” said Silcott.
Cole nodded agreement.
“Good enough. But understand this: We’re not man-killers. Tait is a bad
lot, all right, but we’re not out to get him. We’re going to mask,
surprise the camp, hold it up, do our business, then get out. Is that
plain?”
“Plain as the Map of Texas brand,” assented Yerby with a grin. “Listens
fine, too. But what have you arranged for Tait to be doing while you-all
is making him a prisoner?”
“He’ll be sleeping, Sam. Here’s the layout. One of the herders and the
dogs will be with the sheep. We’ll slip right up to the wagon and
capture Tait first thing. He’s a heavy sleeper—always was. Once we get
him the rest will be easy.”
The Texan nodded. “Ought to go through as per plan if the sheep are far
enough from the wagon.”
“They’ll be far enough away so that the dogs won’t bark at us.”
“Who is that?” cried Rogers, pointing to the trail below.
All of them with one consent stopped to watch the horseman riding up out
of the darkness.
“It’s Hal Falkner,” Cole cried in a low voice.
“Falkner! What’s he doing here?” demanded McCoy. He whirled on Silcott.
“Did you tell him where we were to-night, Larry?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You told him something—that Tait had crossed the dead line and was
heading for Thunder Mountain.”
“I might have said that,” admitted Silcott a little sulkily.
“Did you tell any one else?”
“No. What’s ailin’ you, Mac?”
“Just this. I don’t want to go to the penitentiary because you can’t
keep your mouth shut, Larry. Falkner is the last man you ought to have
told. I don’t want him with us to-night. He’s too anxious to get at
Tait.”
“Oh, well, I guess he’ll be reasonable.”
Falkner rode up the trail out of the shadowy gloom. “Thought you’d lose
me, did you? Fine stuff, boys. How’s yore busted laig, Sam? And did you
get that important letter, Brad? I know you other lads got the cattle to
the Circle Diamond because I saw them there.”
“What do you want, Hal?” asked Rowan curtly.
“Me, Mac? Same as you. I want to shoot some pills into Mary’s little
lambs. Did you think I was riding for my health?”
“We don’t want you along with us. Our party’s made up.”
“Short and sweet, Mac. What’s the objection to my company?” demanded
Falkner frostily.
“No personal objection whatever, Hal. But we don’t want any one along
that has a grudge at Tait. We’re fighting for the range, and we don’t
intend to settle any individual scores.”
“Suits me. I expect I can square accounts with Joe Tait at the proper
time without lugging all you fellows along.”
McCoy looked directly at him. “This party is ducking trouble, not
looking for it, Hal. We intend to get the drop on Tait and hold him
prisoner till we’re through. Our only targets will be sheep.”
“Fine! I’ll take orders from you to-night, Rowan.”
“That makes everything all right then,” put in Larry cheerfully.
McCoy still hesitated. He knew of Falkner’s gusty and ungovernable
temper, and suspected the bilious rancour of his ill will toward Tait.
“Oh, let him go,” decided Rogers impatiently. “One more won’t do any
harm, and we might need him. Falkner is not a fool. He knows we can’t
afford to shoot up Tait or his men.”
“Sure I know it. What’s the use of so much beefing? I’m going with you,
whether or no.”
“Looks like our anxious friend has elected himself one of us,” Sam
assented amiably.
Rowan was outvoted. He shrugged, and, against his better judgment, gave
up the point.
They rode hard across a rough, hilly country. The moon had gone under
scudding clouds. It had turned a good deal colder, and there was a feel
of rain in the air.
They were following no trail, but were cutting as near a bee-line as
possible over mountains, through gulches, and along washes. McCoy led
them with the sure instinct of the hillsman. The night was dark, and the
hill pockets they traversed were like one another as peas in a pod. But
there was never a moment when he hesitated as to direction.
The time was half-past two when Rogers struck a match and looked at his
watch.
“Bald Knob is less than a mile from here,” said McCoy. “We’ll mask now
in case we should bump into the camp sooner than we expect. Think we’d
better cut out talking. We’ve got to surprise them. If we don’t, Tait
will fight and that isn’t what we want.”
He drew from his pocket half a dozen bandannas. Each man made and fitted
his own mask from a handkerchief.
“The wind is from the north. That’s lucky, because we’ve got to get at
the camp from the south. The dogs couldn’t scent us even if they are
close to the wagons,” Rowan explained.
“The dogs will be with the sheep. I ain’t worried about them,” answered
Rogers.
They rode cautiously now, one after the other in single file. From a
ridge McCoy pointed out the sheep camp at the foot of Bald Knob.
“We’ll leave our horses in that clump of pines and creep forward to the
wagons,” he gave directions. “Remember, boys. No shooting. We’re going
to get the drop on Tait and take him prisoner. If we can’t do that, the
raid is off. We’re not killing human beings. Get that, Hal.”
Falkner nodded sulkily. “I told you I was taking orders from you
to-night, Mac.”
Under cover of a hill they rode into the pines and tied their horses.
McCoy deployed his men in such a way that they could move toward the
camp in a half circle. He put Cole on the extreme left, and next to him
Yerby, Rogers, Silcott, and Falkner in the order named. Rowan chose the
place on the right for himself, because it was nearest the wagons. He
stationed Falkner next to him so that he could keep an eye on him.
The raiders crept forward slowly through the brush. It was a damp, cold
night. Clouds in battalions were sweeping across the sky. McCoy, as he
moved forward, took advantage of all the cover he could find. He could
see Falkner as a dark shadow over to his left. Silcott was lost in the
gloom.
The sound of a shot shattered the stillness. Falkner, the rifle in his
hand smoking, let out the exultant “Yip—yip!” of a cowboy.
“Back to cover, boys!” yelled Rowan instantly.
He stumbled on a clump of grass and went down. Before he reached his
feet again the tragedy was under way. Another shot rang out—a
third—and a fourth.
Tait, revealed by a fugitive moon which had escaped from behind scudding
clouds, was in the door of the wagon, as he had often promised. The
rifle in his hand was pumping lead at the foes advancing toward him from
the brush. Flashes in the darkness told Rowan that the cattlemen were
answering his fire.
The head of the big sheepman lurched forward, and the rifle slid from
his hands out of the wagon to the ground. At the same moment another man
leaped from the wagon and started to run.
“Stop firing!” ordered McCoy sharply.
He ran forward to protect the retreat of the sheepman, but he was too
late. Falkner fired. The running figure doubled up like a jack-rabbit
and went down headfirst.
McCoy plunged straight for the second wagon. He could hear a herder
tumbling hastily out of it, and he stood directly between the man and
Falkner. The runner was, he knew, scuttling into the brush for safety.
“Let him go. Don’t shoot, Hal!” shouted McCoy.
Falkner, panting, eyes burning with the lust of battle, pulled up beside
Rowan.
“Whad you get in my way for?” he cried excitedly. “We got to make a
clean sweep now. Got to do it to save ourselves.”
“No. You can’t get the others without getting me first.” McCoy’s voice
rang sharp and dominant.
“But, man, don’t you see we’ve got to destroy the evidence against us?
Leggo my arm.”
Rowan’s fingers had fastened upon the wrist of the other like steel
clamps. His steady eyes were deadly in their intentness.
“You’ve got to kill me before you kill them. Understand?”
Yerby had reached the wagon. He spoke up at once: “Mac is right. We’ve
done too much killing already. Good Lord, how did it start?”
Falkner opened his lips to speak, then closed them again. He looked at
McCoy and waited savagely for the accusation. But none came. Rowan said
nothing.
“First I knew Tait was in the wagon door with his gun and we were all
shooting. But someone fired first and brought him out from the wagon. It
came from the right. Who was it, Mac?” demanded Rogers.
Cole and Silcott joined them. They had been examining the fallen men.
“Both of them are dead,” said Cole. “I can’t hardly believe it. But it’s
so. A bullet got Gilroy right through the heart.”
Rowan looked up quickly. He was white to the lips. “Gilroy? Did we kill
Gilroy?” He turned to Larry. “I thought you said he went home to-day.”
“He telephoned his wife he would be home to-night. Must have changed his
mind.”
“It cost him his life, poor devil!” Rogers broke out.
“I ain’t so sure it won’t cost us ours,” added Yerby quietly. “If I’d
known Gilroy was here to-night, Sam Yerby wouldn’t have gone raiding.”
“That’s right,” agreed Cole. “Tait is one proposition; Gilroy is
another. This whole country is going to buzz now. He has hundreds of
friends.”
All of them recognized the truth of this. The death of Tait alone would
have stirred no resentment. But Gilroy was an old-timer, a quiet,
well-respected man who had many friends. He had been sheriff of the
county some years before, and at the last election had been chosen
county commissioner.
“Who killed him?” asked Rogers again. “Who started this shooting? That’s
what I want to know.”
Rowan answered quietly: “The less we know about that the better, boys.
We’re all tied up together in this. In the excitement some of us have
gone too far. That can’t be helped now. We’ve got to see it out
together—got to stand back of each other. Before the law we’re all
guilty. The only thing to do is to let to-night’s work be a mystery that
is never solved. We’ll fix up a story and all stand by it.”
Yerby broke a long silence. “Well, boys, we better make our get-away. A
whole passell of sheriffs will be combing these hills for us soon.
Posses will be pouring in like buzzards to a water hole in the desert. I
reckon we had better fix up our alibis and then burn the wind for home.”
“Can’t start pushing on our reins any too quick to suit me,” Cole
assented.
“That’s the only thing to do,” agreed McCoy. “Sam, you and Brad had
better get back to your homes, where you’ve been sleeping all night if
any one asks you. Falkner, you go back with us to the ranch. We’ll fix
up a story about how you joined us there and bunked with Jack and
Larry.”
“What about these?” Rogers indicated with his hand the sprawling bodies
of the sheepmen. His voice was a whisper.
“We can’t do anything for them,” answered Rowan. “We’ve got to think of
ourselves. If we talk, if we make any mistakes, we’re going to pay the
price of what we’ve done. We can’t explain we didn’t intend to kill any
one. We’re all in this. The only thing to do is to stand together and
keep our mouths shut.”
Everybody was in a sudden hurry to be gone. They tramped back to the
pine grove, and hurriedly mounted, eager to put as many miles as
possible between them and what was lying at the foot of Bald Knob.
A light snow was already falling. They welcomed it for the protection it
offered.
“We’ve bumped into good luck to start with,” said Larry to Cole. “The
snow will blot out our tracks. They can’t trail us now.”
Cole nodded. “Yep. That’s so.”
But the thing that had been done chilled their spirits, and the dread as
to what was to come of it rested like a weight upon their hearts. Mile
after mile they rode, swiftly and silently. More than once Larry glanced
over his shoulder with a shudder. He could see the snow sifting into the
sightless eyes that stared up at the breaking dawn. Always he had
laughed at the superstitions which rode ignorant people, but now he was
careful not to bring up the rear of the little procession.
Once an elk crashed out of some brush fifty feet from them. The sudden
clamour shook their nerves with dread.
Falkner laughed, but there was only bravado in his voice. “I could ’a’
brought that elk down if it hadn’t been the closed season,” he said.
The man riding next him did not speak aloud the thought that flashed
through his mind—that it had been an open season on sheepmen an hour
before.
The party broke up at the Three Pines after a hurried agreement as to
plans. They were all to meet at the round-up. None of them was to know
anything about the raid until news of it came to the camp from outside.
Yerby and Rogers rode into the hills, the rest down to the Circle
Diamond.
They covered the ground fast, so as to get into the house before any one
was astir with the coming day. Already gray was sifting into the sky, a
warning that the night was ending.
Larry, riding beside McCoy, looked furtively at him and asked a question
just as they came in sight of the ranch.
“Who shot Gilroy, Mac?”
Rowan looked at him with bleak, expressionless eyes. “We all did.”
“Yes, but——” His whisper died away.
“None of us know who fired the shot. It doesn’t matter. Never forget one
thing, Larry. We’re all in the same boat. We sink or swim together.”
“Sure. But whoever it was——”
“We don’t know who it was,” McCoy lied. “We’re not going to try to find
out. Forget that, Larry.”
They stabled their horses and stole into the bunk house. Fortunately it
was empty, Rowan’s men being at the round-up. McCoy left them there and
returned to the house.
He met Mrs. Stovall in the corridor. She was on her way to the kitchen
to begin the day’s work.
“I’ve been out looking at one of the horses,” McCoy explained. “Colic,
looks like.”
The housekeeper made no comment. It passed through her mind that it was
odd he should take his rifle out with him to look at a sick horse.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DAY AFTER
ROWAN closed the door of his bedroom with a sick heart. It was
characteristic of him that he did not debate his responsibility for the
death of the two sheepmen. It did not matter that he had repeatedly
warned his friends not to shoot nor that from the beginning to the end
of the affair he had not fired his rifle. He could not escape the
conviction of guilt by pleading to himself that but for the heady folly
of one man the raid would have worked out as planned. Nor did it avail
to clear him that he had tried to save the life of Gilroy and had
protected the herders from the blood lust of Falkner. Before the law he
was a murderer. He had led a band of raiders to an attack in which two
men had died.
The rock upon which the venture had split was Falkner’s uncontrolled
venom. But for that first shot and the triumphant shout of vengeance
Tait could have been captured and held safely a prisoner. Now they all
stood within the shadow of the gallows.
The shock of Gilroy’s death was for the time deadened to McCoy by the
obligation that lay on him to look out for the safety of his associates.
The cattleman did not deceive himself for an instant. The days when men
could ride to lawless murder in Wyoming were past. Tom Horn had been
hanged in spite of a tremendous influence on his behalf. So it would be
now. Shoshone County would flame with indignation at the outrage. A deep
cry for justice upon the guilty would run from border to border.
Beyond doubt suspicion would be directed toward them on account of their
absence from the round-up camp at the time of the raid. But unless some
of them talked there could be no proof. The snow had turned out only a
flurry of an inch or two, but it was not likely Matson could reach Bald
Knob before night. This would give them till to-morrow morning, by which
time the trail would be obliterated. There was the taste of another
storm in the air. Unless McCoy was a poor prophet, the ground would be
well covered with snow before midnight.
Rowan had collected all of the bandannas used as masks. He intended to
burn them in the kitchen stove as he passed through to breakfast. It
could not be proved that Rogers and Yerby had not slept at home unless
their wives got to gossiping, nor that the others had not spent the
night at the Circle Diamond. On the whole they were as safe as men could
be who stood over a powder mine that might be fired at any moment.
When the breakfast bell sounded McCoy descended by the back stairs to
the kitchen. Mrs. Stovall was just putting a batch of biscuits into the
oven.
“Would you mind stepping outside and ringing the bell, Mrs. Stovall?”
Rowan asked. “Three of the boys are sleeping in the bunk house. They
stayed there last night after we drove the bunch of cows home.”
As soon as his housekeeper had left the room McCoy stepped to the stove,
lifted a lid, and stuffed six coloured handkerchiefs into the fire. When
Mrs. Stovall returned he was casting a casual eye over the pantry.
“Not short of any supplies, are you, Mrs. Stovall?”
“I’m almost out of sugar and lard.”
“Better make out a list. I’ve got to send one o’ the boys to Wagon Wheel
with the team to-morrow.”
The burden of keeping up a pretense of conversation at breakfast rested
upon the host and Jack Cole. Silcott was jumpy with nerves, and Falkner
was gloomy. As soon as he was alone with the men on the trail to the
round-up camp McCoy brought them to time.
“This won’t do, boys. You’ve got to buck up and act as usual. You look
as if you were riding to your own funeral, Hal. You’re just as bad,
Larry. Both of you have ‘criminal’ written all over you. Keep yore grins
working.”
“What am I to do with this gun?” demanded Falkner abruptly. “I got it
last night from the bunk house at the Triangle Dot.”
“Did anybody see you get it?”
“No.”
“We’ll have to bury it. You can’t take it into camp with you.”
With their knives they dug a shallow ditch back of a big rock and in it
hid the rifle. The ammunition belt was put beside it.
It was perhaps fortunate that by the time they reached camp the riders
had scattered to comb Plum Creek for cattle. Rowan sent his companions
out to join the drive, while he waited in camp for a talk with Rogers
and Yerby, neither of whom had yet arrived.
About noon the two hill cattlemen rode into the draw. The men met in the
presence of the cook. They greeted each other with the careless aplomb
of the old-timer:
“’Lo, Mac!”
“’Lo, Sam—Brad! How’s every little thing?”
“Fine. Missie done fixed my game laig up with that ointment good as new.
I want to tell you-all that girl is a wiz,” bragged Yerby, firing his
tobacco juice at a white rock and making a centre shot.
McCoy breathed freer. Yerby and Rogers could be depended upon to go
through the ordeal before them with cool imperturbability. Cole, under
fire, would be as steady as a rock. Falkner and Silcott were just now
nervous as high-bred colts, but Rowan felt that this was merely the
reaction from the shock of the night. When the test came they would face
the music all right.
Late in the afternoon the bawling of thirsty cattle gave notice that the
gathered stock were nearing camp. Not until the stars were out was there
a moment’s rest for anybody.
Supper was eaten by the light of the moon. During this meal a horseman
rode up and nodded a greeting.
Young King caught sight of him first. “Hello, Sheriff!” he shouted
gaily. “Which of us do you want? And what have we been doing now?”
Rowan’s heart sank. Matson had beaten the time he had allowed him by
nearly twenty-four hours. But he turned a wooden face and a cool,
impassive eye upon the sheriff.
“’Lo, Aleck! Won’t you ’light?”
“Reckon I will, Mac.”
The sheriff swung from his horse stiffly and came forward into the
firelight. At least six pairs of eyes watched him closely, but the
tanned, leathery face of the officer told nothing.
“Anything new, Matson?” demanded a young cow-puncher. “Don’t forget
we’ve been off the map ’most three weeks. Who’s eloped, absconded,
married, divorced, or otherwise played billiards with the Ten
Commandments?”
Matson sat down tailor fashion and accepted the steak, bread, and coffee
offered him.
“The only news on tap when I left town was that the Limited got in on
time—yesterday. Few will believe it, but it’s an honest-to-goodness
fact. We had it sworn to before a notary.”
CHAPTER XV
A HOT TRAIL
IT happened that Sheriff Matson was in the hills on official business
and slept at Bovier’s Camp the night of the sheep raid. He was by custom
an early riser. The sky was faintly pink with the warning of a coming
sun when he stepped out of the house to wash in the tin basin outside
the kitchen. As he dried his face on the roller towel there came to him
the sound of dragging steps and laboured breathing.
Matson turned. A pallid little man sank down on the step and buried his
face in his hands.
“What’s up?” demanded the officer.
The panting man lifted to him eyes which still mirrored the fear of
death.
“They—they’ve killed Tait and Gilroy.”
“Who?”
“Raiders.”
“When?”
“This morning—two hours ago.” A shiver shook the fellow like a heavy
chill. “My God—it was awful!” he gasped.
The sheriff let fall a strong brown hand on his shoulder. “Tell me about
it, Purdy. You were there at the time?”
The man nodded assent. He swallowed a lump in his dry throat and
explained: “I been herding for Tait. We bedded at Bald Knob last night.
Joe was aiming to go to Thunder Mountain. They—shot up the camp and
killed Tait and Gilroy. Jim and me just escaped. We got separated in the
brush.”
“Just where was the camp?”
“Right at the foot of Bald Knob.”
“Did you recognize any of the raiders?”
“No. They wore masks.”
“How many were there?”
“About twenty; maybe twenty-five.”
“You’re sure they killed Tait and Gilroy?”
“Don’t I tell you I saw them dead?” quavered the unstrung man with weak
irritability.
The cool, hard eyes of the sheriff narrowed to slits. Matson belonged to
the class of frontier man hunter which sleeps on the trail of a criminal
until he is captured. Not hardship nor discouragement nor friendship
would stand in his way. He had a fondness for his work that amounted to
a passion and an uncanny capacity for it.
With the news that had just come to him he was a changed man. The
careless good nature was sponged from his face. His features seemed to
have sharpened. His body had grown tense like a coiled spring. There was
in his motions the lithe wariness of the panther stalking its prey for
the kill.
A few more sharp, incisive questions told him all Purdy knew. He ordered
his horse to be saddled and asked for breakfast at once. Meanwhile he
got Wagon Wheel on the long-distance, and rang his deputy up from sleep.
“There has been a big killing at Bald Knob, Lute. Drop everything else.
Get together half a dozen good men and ride up to Bovier’s Camp. Bring
with you supplies enough for several days. Wait at the camp until you
hear from me. Tait and Gilroy killed. By cattlemen, looks like. I’ll
know more about that later.”
He ate a hurried breakfast, gathered together a couple of sandwiches for
lunch, and struck across country for the raided sheep camp. He plunged
into the gray desert, keeping the rampart of hills at his left. In the
early-morning light the atmosphere gave to the panorama in front of him
an extraordinary effect of space.
As soon as he came in sight of the sheep camp Matson dismounted and tied
his horse. He had to pick up a cold trail covered with snow. The fewer
unnecessary tracks the better.
The bodies of the sheepmen lay where they had fallen, a light mantle of
snow sheeting the still forms. Three empty shells lay close to the rifle
of Tait, but Gilroy’s gun had not been fired. It was lying in the wagon,
where he had left it when he made his dash to escape.
The contour of the country was such that the attack must have been made
from in front. Matson put himself in place of the raiders, and guessed
with fair accuracy their plan of operations. The sun had already melted
most of the snow, and for hours he quartered over the ground, examining
tracks that the untrained eye would never have seen. Sometimes a bit of
broken brush, sometimes a leaf trampled into the ground, told him what
he wanted to know. Again, it was a worn heel plate that stood out to him
like a signpost on the road. Twice he picked up an empty shell that had
been thrown out of a rifle during the rush forward.
The boot tracks, faint though they were, led him to the pine grove where
the horses had been tethered. Here he went down on his hands and knees,
studying the details of every hoofprint that differentiated it from
others. The care with which he did this, the intentness of his
observation, would have surprised and perhaps amused a tenderfoot. An
unskilled tracker, though he might be a Sherlock Holmes in the city,
could have discovered nothing here worth learning. Matson found
registered marks of identification for horses as certain as those of the
Bertillon system for criminals.
With amazing pains he traced the retreat of the raiders to the Three
Pines. It was a very difficult piece of trailing, for the snow had wiped
out the tracks entirely for stretches of hundreds of yards. Once it was
a splash of tobacco juice on a flat rock that told him he was still on
the heels of those he wanted. In Shoshone County men will still tell you
that Aleck Matson’s feat of running down the night raiders in spite of
an intervening snowstorm was the best bit of trailing they ever knew.
From the Three Pines the tracks of most of the party took the sheriff
straight to the Circle Diamond Ranch. He dropped in just in time to join
Mrs. Stovall at her midday dinner.
They exchanged the casual gossip of the neighbourhood. Presently he
steered the talk in the direction he wanted.
“Mac is up at the round-up, I reckon.”
“Yes. He drove a bunch of cattle down last night.”
“So? Any of the boys with him?”
“Three of them. They stayed in the bunk house.”
“I’ve been wanting to see Art Philips. Was he one of them?”
“No. Young Silcott and Jack Cole and Hal Falkner.”
“Went back this morning, did they?” asked Matson casually. He gave
rather the impression that he was making conversation to pass the time.
“Right after breakfast.”
“Jack Cole was talking about trading me a Winchester. Don’t suppose he
had it with him.”
“No. Hal Falkner had one. A deer had been seen near camp, and he brought
it on the chance he might see it again.”
“I like a .30-30 for deer myself. Didn’t happen to notice what Falkner
carried?”
Mrs. Stovall shook her head. “A gun is a gun to me.”
“When it comes to guns I reckon a man and a woman are made different. I
never see one without wanting to look it over. Mac was going to show me
one of his next time I came up to the ranch. I don’t suppose——”
“All his guns are in that little room off the living room, as Mrs. McCoy
calls the parlour. Go in and look ’em over if you like.”
The sheriff thanked her and availed himself of the chance. When he came
out he found Mrs. Stovall clearing off the table.
“Expect the boys were glad to come down and eat a home-cooked meal at a
real table. I’ll bet they were so frolicsome at getting away from camp
that they kept you up all hours of the night.”
“They woke me when they first came, but I soon fell asleep. Likely they
were tired and turned right in.”
“Sounds reasonable. Well, I’ll be moving along, Mrs. Stovall. Much
obliged for that peach cobbler like Mother used to make.”
On his way to the stable Matson dropped in at the bunk house. He made
the discovery that at least one of McCoy’s guests had lain on top of the
blankets and not under them. Nor had he taken the trouble to remove his
boots. The mud stains of the heels were plainly printed on the wool.
The officer smiled. “Just made a bluff of lying down; figured it wasn’t
worth while taking off his boots for a few minutes. I’ll bet that was
Falkner. He’s a roughneck, anyhow.”
Matson rode back to the Three Pines, and from there followed the trail
of the two horses that had turned into the hills at this point. By the
middle of the afternoon it brought him to the Circle B R, a ranch which
nestled at the foot of the big peaks in a little mountain park.
It took no clairvoyant to see that Mrs. Rogers was not glad to see him.
Unless her face libelled her, she had been weeping. Her eyes flew a flag
of alarm as soon as they fell upon him.
“G’afternoon, Mrs. Rogers. Brad home?”
“No. He’s at the round-up.”
“Gone back, has he?”
She considered a moment before a reluctant “Yes” fell from her lips.
“Reckon I’ll ride over to the camp. Is it still at the foot of the Flat
Tops?”
“Yes.” Then, as if something within forced the words out in spite of
her, she added: “Are you looking for Brad?”
“I want to have a talk with him.”
His eyes told him that she was in a flutter of apprehension. He guessed
that the dread which all day had weighed on her heart was no longer a
dull, dead thing in her bosom. Her lips were ashen.
“Maybe—maybe I could tell him what it was.”
“Oh, I’ll ride over. When did he leave?”
“I don’t rightly know just when,” she faltered.
It was clear that she feared to arouse his suspicion by refusing to talk
and that she was equally afraid of telling too much.
The sheriff smiled grimly as he rode across the hills. He had five of
the raiders identified already—five out of either six or seven, he
wasn’t quite sure which. He glanced across toward Bald Knob, and judged
from the sky that it was already snowing over there. If he had been at
Wagon Wheel instead of at Bovier’s Camp when Purdy panted in with the
news of the killing he could not have arrived in time to pick up the
trail. His luck had stood up fine. That the evidence against the
lawbreakers would sift in to him now he had no doubt. He intended that
this should be the last night raid ever made in Shoshone County. Unless
the district attorney fell down on his job, more than one of the Bald
Knob raiders would end with a rope around his throat.
Matson admitted to himself a certain surprise that McCoy and Rogers
should be involved in such an affair. Sheep raids were one thing; murder
was quite another. The sheriff liked Rowan. The cattleman was straight
as a string. His word was good against that of any man in the district.
It was known that he would fight, but it was hard to think of him as
planning the cold-blooded murder of an enemy.
The sheriff knew how high the feelings ran between the sheep and cattle
interests. The cattlemen knew they were facing ruin because Tait and his
associates maintained the right to run sheep upon any range just as
others ran stock. To them it seemed that the intruders had no right
whatever to the range. It belonged to cattle by right of a long-time
prior occupancy. Moreover, under the leadership of Tait the sheepmen had
been particularly obnoxious. They had refused to recognize any dead line
whatever and their attitude had been in the nature of a boastful
challenge.
It was generally known that several of the cattlemen had personal
grievances against Tait. First there was McCoy, with one that dated back
several years. Silcott had been wounded by the sheepman and Falkner had
been badly beaten by him. Cole, too, had quarrelled with him. One of
these four might have started the shooting, Matson reasoned, or Tait
might have done so himself. Legally, the question was not a vital one,
since Tait had been shot down while defending his property against
attack. Those who had ridden on the raid were guilty of murder no matter
who fired the first shot.
Yet Matson was puzzled. McCoy had been the leader of the group. There
could be no doubt about that. His was far and away the strongest
personality. And McCoy usually thought straight. He did not muddle his
brain with false reasoning. How, then, had he come to do such a thing?
As the sheriff sat by the campfire at the round-up later, it was even
more difficult to think of this clean, level-eyed boss of the rodeo as
an ambusher by night. The whole record of the man rose up to give the
lie to the story that he had ridden out to kill his foe in the dark.
While Sam Yerby entertained the boys with one of his trail songs,
Matson’s mind was going over the facts he had gathered.
“Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.”
Sam looked around carefully, selected a flat rock at the edge of the
fire, and splashed the centre of it accurately with tobacco juice. Give
him a chew of tobacco as a weapon and the Texan was the champion shot of
Wyoming.
His singsong voice took up the next stanza:
“Oh, you’ll be soup for Uncle Sam’s Injuns!
‘It’s beef, heap beef!’ I hear them cry.
Git along, git along, git along, little dogies,
You’re going to be beef steers by and by.”
Matson did not listen to the song. He was no longer thinking of McCoy.
From the shadow where he lounged his narrowed eyes watched Yerby
intently. He had not moved a muscle of his big body, but every nerve had
suddenly grown taut. For he guessed now who the sixth man was that had
ridden on the sheep raid. Sam’s habit of selecting a rock target for his
tobacco juice had betrayed him.
CHAPTER XVI
MATSON MAKES HIS GATHER
LIKE wildfire the news spread through western Wyoming that Tait and
Gilroy had been shot down in their sheep wagon by night raiders. Soon
there was no ranch so deep-hidden in the hills, no herder’s camp so
remote that the story had not been carried there. The tale was a
nine-days’ wonder, a sensation that gave zest to colourless lives. The
identity of the raiders was a mystery that promised much pleasant
gossip.
Furtive whispers of names began to be heard. That of Falkner was
mentioned first. He had made threats against Tait, and he was known to
be quarrelsome and vindictive. Then the murmured gossip took up the name
of McCoy, added shortly to it those of Cole and Silcott. It was known
that all four of the suspected men had been absent from the round-up the
night of the killing. Two of them were enemies of Tait, the others had
been mixed up in the cattle-sheep feud. By their own statements they had
all been together during the hours when the raid took place.
The gossipers had no direct evidence, but a great deal of opinion was
whispered back and forth in corrals, on porches, and in the saddle. The
sentiment was general that Tait had for a long time laid himself open to
such an end. But Gilroy was a good citizen, not turbulent, friendly to
his neighbours. His murder stirred a deep but not too loudly expressed
resentment.
Meanwhile Sheriff Matson moved about his business of gathering evidence
with relentless singleness of purpose. He, too, heard whispers and
followed them to sources. He rode up and down the country piecing this
and that together until he had a net of circumstance encircling the
guilty ones.
From one of the herders whom McCoy had saved he gathered valuable
information. The man had been awakened by the sound of firing. He had
run to the door of the wagon in time to see Gilroy shot down. Tait was
already down. The herder had been saved by one of the attackers who had
stood between him and another and prevented the second man from
murdering him. The first man had called the other one Hal. The raiders
were all masked and he had not recognized any of them.
“I ain’t lost any of them raiders, Mr. Sheriff,” the man said with a
kind of dogged weakness. “If I know too much, why someone takes a shot
in the dark at me an’ that’s the last of Johnnie Mott. No, sir, I done
told you too much already. I was plumb excited, an’ maybe I ain’t got it
jest the way it was. He mighta called the other fellow Hardy instead of
Hal.”
“He might have, but he didn’t, Mott. Keep yore mouth shut and you don’t
need to worry about gettin’ shot. I’ll look after you if you’ll stay
right here in town. You can hold down that job I got you as janitor at
the court house. Nobody’s gonna hurt you any.”
One of the whispers Matson heard took him to Dunc King. That young man
had, as usual, been talking too much. The sheriff found him at his
mother’s ranch mending a piece of broken fence.
“’Lo, Dunc. How’s everything?” the officer asked by way of greeting.
The young man looked at him with suspicion and alarm. “Why, all right, I
reckon. How’s cases with you, Sheriff?”
“I hear you had a little talk with Hal Falkner the night of the raid. Do
you remember exactly what he said to you?”
“Why, no. I don’t remember a thing about it,” the young man returned
uneasily. He knew his tongue had once more tripped him up.
“You will if you think hard, don’t you reckon? You remembered it well
enough to tell Flanders and Mrs. Henson. I’ll start you off. Falkner an’
you were discussing the reason why so many men left camp after supper.
He told you Larry Silcott had told him Tait was across the dead line
again. Recollect that?”
“Why, no. I don’t guess I do, Sheriff.”
“You’d better, Dunc, onless you want to get into mighty serious
trouble.”
“Sho! Nothing to that, Sheriff. Nothing a-tall. I might’ve got to
shootin’ off my mouth the way I sometimes do. Kinda playin’ like I was
on the inside, y’ understand.”
“Or, on the other hand, you might be trying to duck out from
responsibility, Dunc. Don’t make any mistakes, boy. You’re going to come
through with what you know.”
“But I’m tellin’ you I don’t know a thing,” the boy protested.
“Not what you told several other people. How about it, Dunc? You want to
be an accessory to this crime?”
“No, sir, an’ I ain’t aimin’ to be either. If I knew anything I’d tell
you, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know, can I?”
The young man was no match for the sheriff. Before Matson had left the
place he knew all that King did.
Forty-eight hours later the sheriff with a posse rode up to the Circle
Diamond Ranch. Rowan McCoy was sitting on the porch oiling a gun. The
first glance told him that Matson had two prisoners, the second that
they were Falkner and Silcott.
Matson swung from the saddle and came up the steps to the porch.
“I’ve got bad news for you, Mac,” he said bluntly. “You’re under
arrest.”
The cattleman did not bat an eye. “What for?” he asked evenly.
“For killing Gilroy and Tait.”
“The damn fool’s going around arrestin’ everybody he knows, Mac,” broke
in Falkner.
McCoy observed that Falkner was hand-cuffed and that Silcott was not.
He asked the sheriff a question. “Do I understand that you’ve arrested
Hal an’ Larry for this, too?”
“Yes, Mac. Larry behaved sensible an’ promised not to make any trouble,
so I aim to be as easy on him as I can. Falkner had other notions. He
tried to make a gun play.”
“You takin’ us to Wagon Wheel, Aleck?”
“Yes.”
“You have a warrant for my arrest?”
The officer showed the warrant and Rowan glanced over it.
“All right,” said McCoy. “I’ll saddle up an’ be ready in a jiffy.”
“No need for that, Mac. Fact is, I’m not quite ready to start. Got a
little more business to do first. If you don’t mind I’ll make the Circle
Diamond my headquarters for a few hours,” Matson proposed amiably.
The owner of the ranch answered pleasantly but perhaps with a touch of
sarcasm. “Anything you say, Aleck. If yore boys are here at dinner time
I expect Mrs. Stovall can fix you-all up.”
“Sure, Mac, an’ if he needs horses or guns probably you can lend him a
few,” Falkner added with an oath. “An’ maybe a puncher or two to join
his damned posse.”
“No use gettin’ annoyed, Hal,” the ranch owner said quietly. “This looks
like a silly business to us, but Aleck has to make his play. He’s not
arrestin’ us for pleasure. I reckon he thinks he’s got some evidence, or
maybe he wants to scare us into thinkin’ he has some so he can pick up
something against someone else.”
“You’ll find I’ve got evidence aplenty, Mac,” the sheriff answered
mildly. “No hard feelings, you understand. All in the way of business.
Have I got yore word if I don’t put the cuffs on you that you’ll go with
me to Wagon Wheel quietly?”
“Yes. We’re not desperadoes, Aleck. We are just plain hill ranchmen. If
you’d just mentioned it we’d have come in without any posse to guard
us.”
“H’mp!” The sheriff made no other comment. He glanced at Falkner by way
of comment on McCoy’s criticism. “I’m leavin’ three of the boys here,
Mac. Be back here myself in a few hours, I reckon. If I don’t get back
I’ve arranged for you to make a start for town about two o’clock. That
agreeable to you?”
“Any time that suits you,” McCoy answered.
The sheriff was back within the specified time limit. He brought with
him Rogers and Yerby. From a remark he dropped later McCoy learned that
Cole had been arrested earlier in the day at Wagon Wheel.
“You are makin’ quite a gather, Aleck,” said Rogers. “There are several
other ranchmen up here you’ve overlooked. How about them?”
“I’ve got all I want for the present, Brad,” the sheriff replied.
His manner was not reassuring, nor was the fact that he had picked out
and arrested just the six men who had been engaged in the night raid.
Silcott, temperamentally volatile, was plainly downhearted. McCoy
manœuvred so that he rode beside him when they took the road.
“Don’t you worry, Larry,” the older man said in a cheerful voice, but
one so low that it carried only to the ears of the man it addressed. “He
can’t make his case stick, if we all stand pat on our story.”
“I’m not worried, Mac, but he must know something or he wouldn’t be
arresting us. That’s a cinch.”
“He knows a little, an’ guesses a lot more, an’ figures probably that
there’s a quitter among us. That’s where his case will break down. All
we’ve got to do is to keep mum. In a week or so we’ll be ridin’ the
range again.”
“Yes,” agreed Larry, but without conviction.
CHAPTER XVII
PADLOCKED LIPS
YET though the public was in a measure prepared there was a gasp of
surprise when the word spread that Sheriff Matson had arrested and
brought to Wagon Wheel six cattlemen from the Hill Creek district. McCoy
and Rogers were so well and favourably known that the charge of murder
against them set tongues buzzing far and wide. Yerby had not been so
long in the district, but he, too, bore the best of reputations. By
reason of his riding and his gay good-fellowship Larry Silcott was a
favourite with the young people. In the cattle country, where he was
best known, Jack Cole’s character was as good as a letter of credit. Of
the six, Falkner alone bore a rather doubtful reputation.
When the news of the arrests reached the Dude Ranch, Ruth was out on the
mesa doing a sketch of the sunset. She was not really painting to any
purpose, but had come out to be alone. It had been a wonderful autumn
day of purple hills and drifting mists that wrapped the cañons in a
gossamer scarf of gray. Just below the mesa the valley lay in a golden
harmony of colour beneath a sky soft with rain clouds. It was a picture
that just now filled Ruth with deep peace. The brush lay idle in her
fingers, and on the face of the girl was a soft and rapt exaltation.
She had a secret. Sometimes it filled her with a wild and tremulous
delight. Again she stood before it with awe and even terror. More than
once in the night she had found herself weeping with poignant self-pity.
There were hours when her whole soul cried out for Rowan, and others
when she hated him with all the passionate intensity of her untutored
heart. Life, which had been so familiar and easy, took on strange and
inexplicable phases. She had become a mystery to herself.
A chill wind from the snow peaks swept the mesa. Ruth gathered up her
belongings and walked back to the house. She slipped in quietly by the
back door, intent on reaching her room unnoticed. As she passed the door
of the big lounging room the voice of Tim Flanders boomed out:
“I tell you that if McCoy led that raid there was no intention of
killing Tait and Gilroy. I’ve known Mac twenty-five years. He’s white
clear through.”
Ruth wheeled into the room instantly. She went straight to Flanders.
“Who says Rowan led that raid?” she demanded, white to the lips.
There was a long moment of silence. Then: “He’ll clear himself,”
Flanders replied lamely.
The young wife had not known her husband was even suspected. She caught
the back of a chair with a grip so tight that the knuckles lost their
colour.
“Tell me—tell me what you mean.”
He tried to break it gently, but blundered out that the sheriff had to
arrest somebody and had chosen McCoy among others.
“Where is he?” And when she knew: “Take me to him!” she ordered.
Flanders wasted no words in remonstrance. He agreed at once, and had his
car waiting at the door before Ruth had packed her suitcase. Through the
darkness he drove down the steep mountain road to Wagon Wheel.
By the time they reached town it was too late to get permission of the
sheriff to see her husband that night, but Tim made arrangements by
which she was to be admitted to his cell as soon as breakfast was over
next morning.
Ruth slept brokenly, waking from bad dreams to a realization of the
dreary truth. One of the dreams was that they were taking Rowan out to
hang him and he refused to say good-bye to her.
When she came to breakfast at the hotel it was with no appetite. Tim
insisted on her eating, but the toast she munched at stuck in her
throat.
“You drink your coffee, anyhow, honey. You’ll feel better,” he urged.
* * * * *
The limbs of the girl trembled as she followed the jailer. The pulse in
her throat was beating fast.
At sight of her standing in the shadow of his cell, Rowan drew a deep,
ragged breath. The tired eyes in the oval of her pale face held the
weariness of woe. Always the clear-cut, delicate face of his sweetheart
had touched him nearly, but now it seemed to have the poignant,
short-lived charm of a flower. The youth in her was quenched. He had
ruined her life.
His impulse was to sweep her into his arms and comfort her, but he
lacked the courage of his desire. Every fibre of him was hungry for her,
but he looked at her impassively without speaking. The tragic gravity of
her told him that she had come as a judge and not as a lover.
When the guard had gone she asked her question: “You didn’t do it, did
you?”
His throat ached with tightness. There was nothing he could say to
comfort her. He could not even, on account of the others, tell her the
truth and let her decide for herself the extent of his guilt.
“Tell me you didn’t do it!” she demanded.
Beneath the tan he was gray. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you
everything. But I can’t talk—even to you.”
“Can’t talk!” she echoed. “When you are accused of—of this horrible
thing, aren’t you going to tell everybody that it is a lie?”
He shook his head. “It isn’t so simple as that. I can’t talk about the
case because——”
“I’m not asking you to talk about the case. I’m asking you to tell me
that you’re innocent—that it’s all an awful mistake,” she ended with a
sob.
“If you’ll only trust me—and wait,” he began desperately. “Some day
I’ll tell you everything. But now—I wish I could tell you—I wish I
could.”
“You mean that you don’t trust me.”
“No. I trust you fully. But the charge against me lies against others,
too. I can’t talk.”
“You can’t even tell me that you didn’t murder two men in their sleep?”
Her voice was sharp. All the pain and torture of the long night rang out
in it.
He winced. “I’ll have to trust to your mercy to believe the best you can
of me.”
“What can I believe when you won’t even deny the charge? What else is
there to think but that——” She broke off and began to whimper.
He took a step toward her, but a swift gesture of her hand held him
back. “No—no! You can’t trust me. That’s all there is to it—except
that you’re guilty. I’d never have believed it—never in the world—not
even after what I know of you.”
Rowan longed to cry out to her to have faith in him. He wanted
desperately to bridge the gulf that was growing wider between them, to
have her see that he had closed the door behind him and must follow the
course he had chosen. But he was dumb. It was not in him to express his
feeling in words.
Into the delicate white of her cheeks excitement had brought a stain of
pink. Eagerly she poured out her passionate protest:
“You don’t mean me to think—surely you can’t mean—that—that—you did
this horrible thing! You couldn’t have done it! The thing isn’t
possible. Tell me you had nothing to do with it.”
He felt himself trapped in a horrible ambuscade. He would not lie to
her. He could not tell the truth. If she would only have faith in
him——
But there was no chance of that. To look at the hostile, accusing gaze
of this girl was to know that he had lost her. She had demanded of him a
confidence that was not his to give, a pledge of innocence he could not
make.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Her affronted eyes stabbed him. “That’s all you have to tell me?”
“If you only knew.”
The dumb appeal of him might have moved her, but it did not. She was too
full of her wrongs.
“But I don’t know, and you won’t tell me. So there’s nothing more to be
said.”
Suddenly she broke down, turned away with a sob, and through the
blindness of her tears groped to the door. She had rushed to him—to
tell him that she knew he was innocent, and he had repulsed her, had
made a stranger of her. In effect, he had told her that he did not want
her help, that he would go through his trouble alone. If he had really
loved her—ah, if he had loved her, how differently he would have acted!
A great lump filled her throat and choked her.
Rowan watched her go, his fingers biting into the palms of his hands.
The hunger of his soul stared out of his eyes.
CHAPTER XVIII
“I RECKON I’LL HANG”
MATSON nodded a pleasant good-morning, offered his prisoner a cigar, and
sat down on the bed.
“How’s everything, Mac?”
The cattleman smiled ironically. “Fine as silk, Aleck. How are they
a-coming with you?”
“If there’s anything you want, Mac, if the grub don’t suit you or
anything, just say the word.”
“I’m not complaining. You run a good hotel, Sheriff.”
Matson looked out of the barred window at the warm sunshine flooding the
yard. From where he sat he could not see the blue, unclouded sky, but he
knew just how it looked. When his gaze returned to McCoy it was grave
and solicitous.
“I’m going to give you straight talk, Mac. Don’t fool yourself. Shoshone
County has made up its mind. The men that killed Dan Gilroy are going to
hang.”
“Sounds cheerful, Aleck.”
“I’m here for the last time to ask you to come through. If you’ll give
evidence for the State I can save you, Mac.”
McCoy looked straight at him from cold, bleak eyes. “We discussed this
subject once before, Sheriff. Isn’t once enough?”
“No,” returned the officer doggedly. “I’ve been talking with Haight.
Inside of twelve hours he’s going to get a confession out of—well,
never mind his name. But the man’s weakening. He’ll come through to save
his skin. Mac, beat him to it.”
The cattleman laughed without mirth. “I reckon this confession talk is
come-on stuff. Even if any of the boys knew anything, he wouldn’t tell
it.”
“Wouldn’t he? You ought to know that there’s always a weak link in every
chain. In every bunch of men there’s a quitter.”
“So you’re offering me the chance to be that quitter. Fine, Aleck!
You’ve got a high opinion of me. But why give me the chance? By your way
of it, I led the raid. There was bad blood between me and Tait. I
outfitted some of the boys with guns, you say. According to your theory,
I’m the very man that ought to be hanged.”
“I’m not a fool, Mac. I know you didn’t set out to kill. If you ask me
who started the gun play I can come pretty near giving his name. It’s a
cinch you didn’t. One of your party has been talking, and the rumour is
that you saved the herders. Anyhow, I don’t want to see you hang if I
can help it.”
“Good of you,” derided the prisoner.
“But that’s what is going to happen if you don’t take my offer. You are
going to trial first—and for the killing of Gilroy. You’ll be
convicted. The Governor daren’t commute the sentence. Last call, Mac.
Will you come through?”
“No, Aleck. I don’t admit I have anything to tell, but if I had I expect
I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“Then you’ll hang.”
“Maybe I will; maybe I won’t,” answered Rowan coolly. “I can throw a cat
through some of your evidence.”
“Don’t you think it. I’ve got you tied up in a net you can’t break. One
of the herders will testify he heard you called ‘Mac’ just after the
shooting.”
This was news to McCoy, but he did not bat an eye.
“Heard someone called Mac, you mean, Sheriff. There are quite a few Macs
in Shoshone County.”
“Perhaps you don’t know that we have a witness who saw Falkner take a
rifle out of the Triangle Dot bunk house a few hours before the raid.”
“I heard Hal was anxious to shoot a deer for meat for the camp.”
“The gun was a .35 Winchester.”
“He used judgment. I always liked a .35 for deer,” commented the
prisoner.
“A .35 will kill a man, too,” said Matson significantly. “The shells I
picked up in front of the camp at Bald Knob would fit the gun taken from
the rack at the Triangle Dot.”
“If I had an imagination like you, Aleck, I’d go in for writing these
moving pictures. You’re plumb wasting it here.”
Matson rose. “No use spilling words. Are you going to be reasonable or
not?”
The men looked at each other with direct, level gaze.
“I aim always to try to be,” replied McCoy.
“Well, will you come through with what I want, or will you hang?”
“Since you put it that way, Sheriff, I reckon I’ll hang.”
“You damn fool!” exploded the sheriff.
But there was no censure in his voice. The cattleman had done what he
would have done under the same test—come clean as a whistle from the
temptation to betray his accomplices.
“I knew you wouldn’t do it,” continued Matson. “But I’ve given you your
chance. Don’t blame me.”
McCoy nodded. It was the business of a sheriff to run down crime. The
cattleman was too good a sportsman to hold a grudge on that account,
even if the officer fastened a rope around his neck.
Though Rowan had been under no temptation to turn State’s evidence, the
sheriff left him worried at what he had predicted as to a confession. He
might of course be telling the truth. The sheriff had said that there is
a weak link in every chain. If so, who was the weak one among the
prisoners?
Rogers and Yerby were married. It was likely that Haight and Matson
might have been at their wives to harry them into a confession. Women
did not always have the same point of view about honour when their
feelings were involved. They might have insisted on their husbands
saving themselves if they could. But, somehow, neither Rogers nor Yerby
seemed the type of man to save himself at the expense of others. Rogers
he had known a long time and had never found him anything but reliable.
Yerby had been in the neighbourhood six or seven years. McCoy sized up
the Texan as a simple man, frank and direct in his thinking. On all the
evidence at hand he would live up to the code by which he guided his
life.
The other three were single men. There would be less excuse for one of
them if he betrayed his friends.
Larry Silcott! No, certainly not Larry. Rowan had tied the young fellow
to him by a hundred favours. Moreover, Larry lived in the sunshine of
popular applause. He could not go into the witness box to testify
against his companions without for ever forfeiting the good opinion of
all decent people. It could not be Larry.
Jack Cole! He felt confident it was not Jack. The young fellow was of
the stuff that carries through.
This left Falkner. Rowan considered Falkner with no assurance of his
loyalty. The man was wild, reckless, and undisciplined. It was hard to
predict what he would do under any set of circumstances. He had the
reputation of being game, but he was given to suspicions and
resentments. It was possible that if they plied him in just the right
way he might burst out in invectives against his companions. Suppose,
for instance, Haight persuaded him that the others were planning to
deliver him as the sacrifice. On the other hand, Falkner was in a
different class from the others. He had fired the first shot. He had
killed Gilroy and knew that McCoy knew it. If he went on the stand
against the others his accomplices would be free to fling the onus of
the murders upon him. No, Falkner would not dare weaken.
Rowan’s thoughts drifted from the problem Matson had left with him and
reverted to his wife. He was more unhappy about his relationship with
her than about the danger to his life. She had asked for his confidence
and he had refused it. What else could he do? But his sick heart told
him that she had opened a door to the chance of a better understanding
between them and he had been forced to shut it again.
Life was full of little ironies that embittered and made vain the best
intentions.
CHAPTER XIX
SAM YERBY SINGS
LATER in the day the sheriff tried out another of his prisoners. He had
told McCoy the truth. One of the six was weakening. Matson had his own
favourites and wanted to give them a chance before the State’s attorney
was pledged. By sunset a confession would be in the hands of Haight, and
it would be too late to save his friends.
He found Yerby whittling out a boat for his baby. The Texan looked up
with a faint, apologetic smile in his faded blue eyes.
“I was making a pretty for my little trick at home, Sheriff. He’s the
dad-blamedest kid you ever saw—keeps his old dad humping to make toys
for him to bust. Don’t you blame Steve for loaning me this two-bit
Barlow. He takes it back every night. Steve’s a good jailer all right.”
The Southerner was a shabby little man, tobacco-stained, with a week’s
growth of red stubble on his face. But it was impossible to deny him a
certain pathetic dignity.
“I’ve come to talk to you for that little kid, Sam. You don’t want him
to be an orphan, do you?”
“I reckon that don’t rest with me.”
Matson cut straight to business. “That’s just who it rests with. Sam,
it’s a show-down. Will you come through with the evidence I want, or
won’t you?”
“I won’t-you. We done talked that all out, Aleck. I wisht you-all
wouldn’t bother me if it’s not unconvenient for you to let me alone.”
He offered the officer a chew of tobacco to show that he was not peevish
about the matter.
The sheriff waved the plug aside impatiently.
“One of the boys can’t stand the gaff. He’s breaking, Sam. But you’ve
got a wife and a kid. He hasn’t. I want you to have first chance. Come
clean and I’ll look out for you. After the trial I’ll see you get out of
the country quietly. You can take your folks back to Texas.”
Sam looked out of the window. The little boat and the jackknife hung
limp in his hands. In a cracked, falsetto voice he took up a song of the
range that he had hummed a hundred times in the saddle:
“I woke one mo’ning on the old Chisum Trail,
Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail.”
He thought of the rough and turbulent life that had come at last to the
peaceful shoals of happy matrimony. A vision rose before him of his
smiling young wife and crowing baby. They needed him. Must he give them
up for a point of honour? If someone was to go clear, why not he?
“We have evidence enough. It isn’t that. I’m giving you a chance, Sam.
That’s all.”
The lips of the Texan murmured another stanza, but his thoughts were far
afield:
“Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar saddle—
And I’m goin’ to punchin’ Texas cattle.”
“Never again, Sam. Not unless you take your chance now.” The sheriff put
a hand on his shoulder. “For the sake of the wife and the little man.
You’re not going to throw them down, are you?”
“We hit Caldwell and we hit her on the fly,
We bedded down the cattle on the hill close by.”
The faded eyes were wistful. It was his chance for freedom, perhaps his
chance for life, too. What would Missie and the baby do without him? Who
would look after them?
“No chaps, no slicker, and it’s pourin’ down rain,
And damn my skin if I night-herd again!”
Matson said nothing. The Texan was building up for himself a vision of
the life he loved in the wind and the sunshine of the open range. The
old Chisum Trail song he sung must bring to his memory a hundred
pictures of the past. These would be arguments more potent than any the
sheriff could use.
“Stray in the herd and the boss said kill it,
So I shot him in the rump with the handle of the skillet.”
The cracked voice became clearer:
“I’ll sell my outfit soon as ever I can,
I won’t punch cattle for no damned man!”
“You don’t want your kid to grow up and learn that his dad was hanged,”
insinuated Matson. “That would be a fine thing to leave him.”
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn—
Best damned cowboy that ever was born!”
The voice of the singer rang like a bell at last. He turned serene eyes
on the tempter.
“What do you think I am, Aleck? If I hang I hang, but I’m damned if I’ll
be a traitor.”
The sheriff gave him up. “All right, Sam. It’s your say-so, not mine.
Got everything you want here so you’re fixed comfortable?”
“You’re treating me fine. I ain’t used to being corralled so close, but
I reckon it would be onreasonable to ask for a hawss and a saddle and an
open range in your calaboose.”
As the sheriff passed down the corridor he heard Sam’s tin-pan voice
chirruping bravely:
“There’s hard times on old Bitter Creek
That never can be beat;
It was root, hog, or die,
Under every wagon sheet.
We cleared up all the Indians,
Drank all the alkali,
And its whack the cattle on, boys—
Root, hog, or die!”
CHAPTER XX
“YOU DAMNED JUDAS”
NOT for years had Shoshone County been so interested in any public event
as it was in the trial of Rowan McCoy for the murder of Dan Gilroy.
Scores of ranchmen had driven in from the hills to be present either as
witnesses or spectators. North of town was a camp with two chuck wagons
where the cattlemen kept open house for all the range riders who had
ridden down to Wagon Wheel. A beef had been killed and a cook engaged.
Everybody was welcome to help himself. At the opposite end of town the
sheepmen also had a camp, for the two small hotels were entirely
inadequate to hold those in attendance.
The sentiment of the people was strong for a conviction. Rowan had many
friends, and the cattle interests were anxious to see him acquitted. But
the killing of Gilroy had been so unprovoked that it had aroused a
bitter and widespread resentment. The feeling of those not involved in
the cattle and sheep war was that an example must be made. Shoshone
County had irrigated lands for sale. Its oil fields were on the market
for exploitation. Its citizens were eager to prove to the world of
investment that the wild, turbulent days were past, that Wyoming had
arrived at a responsible sobriety which would not tolerate lawlessness.
Once for all they meant to show the night raiders that they were within
reach of the courts.
Haight, the new district attorney, was a young man, almost a stranger in
the county, and he wanted a record for convictions. Therefore he brought
McCoy to trial for the murder of Gilroy rather than Tait. Gilroy had
many friends and no personal enemies. He was a quiet, peaceable man.
Apparently he had been shot while unarmed and trying to escape. His
killing had been wanton and unprovoked. It might be claimed that Tait
had always wanted trouble and that he had been struck down while firing
at his enemies. But in the case of Gilroy this plea would not stand.
The courtroom was crowded to the windows. Two bailiffs stood at the door
and searched every man that entered; for the feeling was so intense that
the authorities did not want to take the chance of any possible
outbreak. A gun in a hip pocket was too easy to reach.
In his opening statement the district attorney told the story of the
sheep and cattle war. He traced the source of the bad feeling between
the prisoner and Tait, and showed that the bitterness extended to
Silcott and Falkner, two others charged with this murder, one of whom
had been wounded and the other beaten up by the sheepman. The
prosecution would prove that both Silcott and Falkner had made threats
against Tait, that Falkner had been seen to take a rifle from a ranch
bunk house in the dead of night, and that McCoy had led the party which
killed the two sheepmen. It was, he claimed, immaterial to the case of
the State whether McCoy had or had not fired the shot that killed
Gilroy. He would introduce evidence tending to show that the prisoner
actually had fired the shot, but his honour would tell the jury that
this was not necessary to prove guilt. The testimony would show that
McCoy with three of his companions rode back to the Circle Diamond
Ranch, pretended to the housekeeper that they had spent the night there,
and after breakfast returned to the round-up camp, burying on the way
the rifle that Falkner had been seen to take the night before.
Bit by bit, with the skill of the trained lawyer, Haight used his
witnesses to spin a web around the accused man. He showed how, after the
arrival of Silcott at the camp the night before the raid, McCoy decided
unexpectedly to drive the Circle Diamond cattle home and took with him
Cole and Silcott. Shortly afterward Rogers and Yerby had departed with
flimsy excuses. Falkner had stolen away without any assigned reason.
They had not been seen again at camp until late next morning. Hans
Ukena, a rider for the Triangle Dot, testified that he had been sleeping
in the bunk house the night in question and was wakened by a noise. By
the light of the moon he saw Falkner pass through the open door,
carrying a rifle in one hand and an ammunition belt in the other.
The interest grew tense when Sheriff Matson took the stand. The big
tanned Westerner made a first-class witness. He gave his evidence with a
quiet confidence that carried weight. As he told the story of how he had
followed the trail of the raiders foot by foot from the scene of the
crime to the Circle Diamond Ranch the hopes of the defense sank. For the
best part of a day he was put through a gruelling cross-examination in
an attempt to show that it would have been impossible to identify
hoofprints and boot marks after they had been covered with snow. Not
once did he contradict or falter as to his facts. He left the stand with
the jury convinced that he had told the plain truth.
It had taken three days to select a jury and four more to examine
witnesses to date. Wagon Wheel buzzed with gossip. The rumour would not
down that one of the prisoners had turned State’s evidence and was to be
put on the stand next morning.
A wise curbstone prophet mentioned the names of Silcott and Yerby. “It’s
one of them sure. Shouldn’t wonder if it’s both of them,” he announced
at the bar of the Silver Lode.
“You got another guess,” interrupted a hillman roughly. “I know ’em
both. Won’t either of them squeal. They’ll go through.”
“That’s all very well. But if McCoy dragged them into this thing——”
“He didn’t. They’re not kids. If they went in it was with their eyes
open.”
Ruth, torn by conflicting emotions, had been present with Mrs. Flanders
all through the trial. The testimony of Matson had left her shaken with
dread. She felt now that Rowan was guilty, and she believed he would be
convicted. But it was impossible for her not to admire his courage under
fire. His nerve was so cool and steady, his frank face so open and
friendly. One might gather from his manner that he was greatly
interested, but not at all anxious.
Immediately after court was declared in session next morning, Haight
turned to the bailiff.
“Call Larry Silcott.”
A murmur swept like a wave through the courtroom. Men and women craned
their necks to see the young cowman as he passed to the witness stand.
Ruth noticed that Larry’s face was gray and that he kept his eyes on the
floor. But even then she had no premonition of what he was about to do.
But Rowan knew. While Silcott answered nervously the first routine
questions of the lawyer, the prisoner watched him steadily with a
scornful little smile. Rowan had taught him the practical side of his
business, had looked after his cattle, given him his friendship. Once he
had dragged him out of the Fryingpan when he was drowning. His feeling
for the younger man was like that of an older brother. He had felt an
affectionate pride in his pupil’s skill at roping and at riding. Now
Larry, to save his own skin, was betraying him and the rest of his
companions.
Haight was very gentle and considerate of his star witness. But Silcott
was in hell none the less. Dry-lipped and pallid, with tiny sweat beads
on his damp forehead, he faced row upon row of tense, eager faces all
hanging on what he had to tell. Not one of them all but would despise
him. His stripped and naked soul writhed, the vanity for once burned out
of him. He shivered with dread. It was being driven into him that though
he had bought his life he must pay for his treachery with years of
isolation and contempt.
The prosecuting attorney led him over the story of the night when he had
ridden with the sheep raiders. Step by step the witness took the party
from the round-up to the camp at Bald Knob.
“Who had charge of your party?” continued Haight.
“McCoy.”
“Did you elect him leader?”
“No. He just took command. He was boss of the round-up.”
“Who assigned you positions before the attack?”
“McCoy.”
“In what order did he place you?”
“Counting from the left, Cole, Yerby, Rogers, myself, Falkner, McCoy.”
“Will you show on the map just how you were placed with reference to the
camp and each other?”
Silcott took the pointer and illustrated the position of each man.
“Which of you was nearest the camp?”
“McCoy was closer than the rest of us.”
“When was the first shot fired?”
“I judge we were about a hundred yards from the wagons.”
“Did it come from the camp or was it fired by one of your party?”
“By one of us.”
“Were any of the sheepmen then in sight?”
“No.”
“Was it fired to draw them from cover so as to get at them?”
The chief lawyer for the defense was on his feet instantly with an
objection. The court ruled the question out of order.
Haight rose, took a step toward the witness, and paused a moment.
“Who fired that shot, Mr. Silcott?”
Larry’s eyes went furtively about the room, met those of McCoy, and
dropped to the floor. “It—it came from the right.”
“How do you know?”
“By the smoke and the sound.”
“Did you see who fired it?”
“Falkner or McCoy; I wasn’t sure which.”
Again Rowan’s lawyer objected and was sustained. The judge cautioned the
witness to tell only what he knew.
Silcott went over the story of the shooting of Tait with great detail.
The prosecuting attorney made another dramatic pause to let the audience
get the significance of his next lead.
“Were you where you could see Dan Gilroy when he ran from the wagon?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell exactly what happened when Gilroy ran from the wagon?”
“He ran out from the back and started for the brush.”
“Was he armed?”
“No.”
“Proceed. What happened?”
“He had run about thirty feet when somebody fired. He fell.”
“Were any more shots fired?”
“No. That was the last.”
“From what direction did it come?”
“From my right.”
“How do you know?”
“By the sound and the smoke.”
“Where did the smoke rise with relation to the defendant?”
Silcott moistened his dry lips with his tongue. He was sweating blood.
“It was close to him.”
Haight threatened him with his forefinger. “Won’t you swear that the
defendant fired that shot? Don’t you know he fired it?”
“I—I can’t swear to it.”
“Weren’t you convinced that it was McCoy who——”
The defense objected angrily: “The witness has answered the question. Is
the prosecuting attorney trying to bully him to change that answer?”
When at last Haight was through with him the witness dripped with
perspiration. But his troubles were only beginning. The lawyers for the
defense took him in hand, made him confess his obligations to McCoy,
brought out that he himself had proposed the raid, and wrung from him
that he was turning State’s evidence to save his own life at the expense
of his friends. Two points they developed in favour of their
client—that he had repeatedly warned his friends against shooting and
that he had saved the lives of the herders from Falkner.
But though Silcott was left a rag, his story stood the fire of
cross-examination. When he stepped down from the stand he left behind
him a net of evidence through which McCoy could not break.
As Larry moved down the aisle someone in the back part of the room broke
the silence: “You damned Judas!”
Instantly echoes of the word filled the courtroom. The judge pounded
with his gavel for silence, but that low-hissed “Judas! Judas!” pursued
the young cowman down the stairs. It would be many years before he could
recall without scalding shame that moment when the finger of public
scorn was pointed at him in execration.
CHAPTER XXI
A COMPROMISE
MURDER in the first-degree.
Not a muscle of the prisoner’s face moved as the clerk of the court read
the verdict. He gave no sign whatever of emotion. Since Silcott’s
testimony he had expected nothing less. Now his grave eyes rested on the
face of the clerk with steady composure.
The reporters, watching him for copy, would have been disappointed if
they had had to depend upon him for it. But into the dead silence of the
courtroom was lifted the low, sobbing wail of a woman. Ruth had
collapsed into the ample bosom of Mrs. Flanders.
The face of the convicted man twitched, but he did not look around.
Without the evidence of his eyes he knew who had broken down under the
strain, whose game will had weakened at the blow. In that moment he
thought wholly of her, not at all of himself.
A grizzled old cattleman pushed his broad shoulders through the crowd
toward the condemned raider. “This ain’t the end, boy. We’ll work like
sixty to get you a new trial. This will never go through—never in the
world!” His strong arm fell with frank affection across the shoulders of
his friend. “It don’t matter what names they call you, son. You’re the
same old Mac to all of us.”
“This is when a fellow finds out who his friends are, Roswell,” answered
Rowan simply.
He had many of them. They rallied to him by scores—long, loose-jointed,
capable men with leathery brown faces, men who had fought with him
against Wyoming blizzards for the lives of driven cattle, men who had
slept beside him under the same tarp by many a campfire. From Rawlins
and Casper and Cheyenne, and even far-away Denver, came words of good
cheer. They stressed the point that the fight for his life was just
beginning and that the verdict of the jury would not be accepted as
final.
A telegram from Pendleton, Oregon, touched him deeply. It was signed by
four bronco busters whom he had beaten for the championship at Bad Ax:
Stick to the saddle, Mac. Don’t you pull leather, old scout.
We’re here hollering our heads off for the best rider that ever
slapped a saddle on an outlaw. Clamp your knees and hang on
tight. Say, Mac, we got a little pile of chips to shove into the
game any time you’re shy of blues.
ROADY DUNN.
J. C. MORGAN.
SLATS HOFFMAN.
TEX GREEN.
Mrs. Stovall, who had been a very unwilling witness for the prosecution,
brought a cake and a cherry pie to the jail for him. Incidentally, she
delivered a message with which she had been commissioned.
“Norma says for me to tell you that this trial doesn’t fool her any. She
knows you’re being punished for some of the other boys. She wanted I
should tell you that she knows you didn’t intend to kill Joe.”
This was an opinion becoming every day more widespread. Men began to say
that McCoy was the victim of evil chance. Shoshone County was still
determined to see justice done the murderers of Dan Gilroy, but it hoped
Rowan would escape the gallows. He had been so game throughout the
trial, so careful to bring out nothing to the prejudice of his fellow
prisoners that the hearts of men turned toward him.
The financial side of the affair was troubling the officials of the
county. The trial had been a long and expensive one. It had cost many
thousand dollars, and there was talk of grounds for an appeal. With four
other trials yet to come, it became apparent that Shoshone County would
be bankrupt long before the finish.
Roswell, acting for a group of friends, went to the prosecuting
attorney.
“Look here, Haight. You’re up against it. Maybe you’ve got evidence to
convict these boys. Maybe you haven’t.”
“There’s no maybe about that—I have,” Haight broke in grimly.
“Well, say you have. That ain’t the point. The county can’t stand the
expense of all those trials. You know that. What are you going to do
about it?”
“Going right ahead with the trials. We begin with Brad Rogers
to-morrow.”
“Oh, well! We got to be reasonable—all of us. Now here’s my
proposition: Let me talk with the boys and their lawyers. If I could get
them to plead guilty it would save a heap of trouble all around.”
Haight had looked at the matter from this angle before. He nodded. “All
right. See what you can do, Mr. Roswell. If they will save us the
expense of trying them, I think I can arrange for life imprisonment.”
“For all of them?” demanded the cattleman shrewdly.
“For all the rest of them.”
“How about Rowan?”
“He’s not included. We’ve got to make an example of him. He led the
raid.”
Roswell fought it out with the lawyer for an hour, but on this point
Haight stood firm. McCoy had to pay the extreme penalty for his crime.
That was not even open to argument.
The old cattleman called at once upon the leading lawyer for the
defense, and with him visited the cell of Yerby. The Texan was greatly
depressed at the issue of the trial. He could not get over his
bitterness at the part Silcott had played.
“I reckon he’s up at the ho-tel eating fried chicken and watermelon.
Well, he’s welcome. I wouldn’t swap places with him. Neither would Mac.
We all had our chance to do like he done.”
“No, Silcott’s still in jail. He asked Matson to keep him there till the
trials are over and he can light out. I expect he don’t like to trust
himself outside. Some of the boys are a mite vexed at him.” Roswell came
abruptly to the object of his call. “Sam, we got to face facts. Haight
has the goods on you boys. He’ll sure convict you.”
“Looks like,” agreed the Texan dejectedly.
“We’ll have to fix up a compromise. If you’ll all plead guilty Haight is
willing to call it life imprisonment.”
“What do the other boys say?”
“They are willing, I reckon, to take the best terms they can get.”
“I’d as lief be dead as locked up in jail for the rest of my life.”
“We’ll get you out on parole in two or three years. The worst of it is
that Mac ain’t included in the arrangement. Haight swears he has got to
hang.” Eyes narrowed to slits, Roswell watched the Texan while he fired
his next shot. “Mac was the leader. There wouldn’t ’a’ been any killing
except for him. He’s the responsible party. So Haight says that——”
“Got it all figured out, have you? Mac did the killing. Mac was to
blame. I’ll tell you this: If Mac had had his way there wouldn’t have
been any killing. Just because he shuts his mouth and stands the
gaff—— Dog-gone it, you and Haight can take yore compromise plumb to
hell!” decided the Texan, his anger rising.
Roswell gave a low whoop and fell upon him. “That’s the way to talk,
old-timer. We’ve got Haight on the hip. The county’s busted high and
dry. Folks are beginning to holler already about the expense of the
trials. If Haight were to come up for reëlection along with a special
tax levy to pay for the trials the dear pee-pul wouldn’t do a thing to
him. He’s ready to talk turkey. If you lads will stand pat, it’s an even
bet that he’ll have to crawfish about Mac.”
“I ’low we’ll stay hitched—all of us that haven’t a big yellow streak
up our backs. Why-for should we let Mac get the worst of the deal? You
go tell Haight he can’t stack the cards that-a-way.”
Rogers, coming up for trial next day, was anxious to get the matter
settled. But he, too, declined the terms.
“I’ll take my chance before a jury unless Haight agrees to lump Mac in
with the rest of us. Mac would see Haight in blazes before he would
agree to any such raw deal if he were in my place. You can let Mr.
Prosecuting Attorney start the fireworks soon as he’s a mind to. I’m
willing to go as far as I can. I reckon all the boys are. But I’m too
old and tough and stubborn to whine out of it like Larry Silcott. What’s
sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. When I see Mac’s name at
the head of the list, I’ll sign a compromise.”
Cole and Falkner in turn were visited. The former refused flatly to
consider any arrangement which did not include McCoy.
In the interest of psychology or to satisfy his own curiosity Roswell
ventured on debatable ground with Falkner.
“Course you don’t owe Mac anything. He led you into this trouble. The
whole thing is his fault. Silcott as good as admitted that Rowan did the
actual killing himself. Naturally you would be sore on him. Now by
accepting Haight’s proposition Mac will be hanged and you other
lads——”
“Mac will be hanged, will he?” growled Falkner.
“Sure thing. Nothing can save him if you accept Haight’s terms. But,
after all——”
The prisoner looked at the old cattleman blackly. Whatever faults he
had, Falkner was not a sneak. McCoy had kept quiet when he might have
told the others who had done the killing. McCoy had stood pat from start
to finish. He had taken his share of blame when he might fairly enough
have shifted it to other shoulders. If Mac had given the word, it would
have been Falkner who would have been hanged while the others got off
with prison sentences. The young cow-puncher knew he was to blame for
the predicament in which they all stood. His ungovernable rage at Tait
was responsible for the killings. Hard citizen though he was, the man
was game to the core.
“Who in Mexico wants to accept Haight’s offer?” he snarled. “I’ve lived
a wolf, by some folks’ way of it. I reckon I’ll die one. But I’m no
coyote. Make another crack like that and there’ll be trouble right here
in Cell Fifteen.”
Roswell grinned. To the prosecuting attorney he carried back word that
his proffer had been rejected. No compromise would be considered which
did not include McCoy.
The hotel where Roswell and his friends stayed became active as a hive
of bees. From it cow-punchers and cattlemen issued to make a quiet
canvass of the leading citizens of Shoshone County. The result was that
Haight and his political friends were besieged for twelve hours by
taxpayers who insisted on a compromise being arranged. The long-distance
telephone called him up three times that night to carry protests against
his policy.
“What’s the idea, Haight?” asked a prominent irrigation engineer in
charge of a project under construction. “We stand for the law. We want
to see every man punished that was in the sheep raid. But there’s no
object in starting trouble with the cattlemen, and that’s what it will
amount to if you hang Rowan McCoy. Tait and Gilroy weren’t blameless.
They knew what they were going up against. They didn’t have to cross the
dead line and ruin the ranchmen on the Fryingpan. A prison sentence all
around hits me as about right. I’ve talked with lots of people, and
that’s the general sentiment.”
Just before Rogers was to be brought into the courtroom for trial Haight
gave way. He had a long conference with the lawyers for the defense and
the presiding judge. As a result of this it was announced that the
prisoners would plead guilty.
Before sunset each of the five had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
CHAPTER XXII
FALKNER TALKS
WITH the news that Rowan would not have to pay with his life, Ruth’s
anxiety took on another phase. Their happiness had come to grief. It was
likely that the tentative separation caused by her anger at his
unfaithfulness would prove to be a final one. But her imperative need
was to demand the truth about the sheep raid killings. At the bottom of
her heart was still a residuum of deep respect for him. It was
impossible to believe that this clean, lean-flanked Westerner with the
steadfast eyes was a common murderer who had stolen up at night to
compass the death of his enemy from cover. Moreover, there was a
reason—a vital, urgent, compelling one—why she must think the best she
could of the man she had married.
This reason took her to Sam Yerby’s cell at the county jail. She and the
Texan had struck up one of the quick, instinctive friendships that were
scattered along Ruth’s pathway. They had a common sense of humor. When
she poked friendly fun at his speech he did not resent it. The girl had
completed her conquest of him by taking a great interest in Missie and
the baby. She had embroidered for the little fellow a dress which Sam
thought the daintiest in the world.
The tired eyes of the old cattleman lit when she came to the door of his
prison.
“It’s right good of you, Miss Ruth, to come and see the old man before
he goes over the road.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Yerby.” She choked up. “But everybody tells me you
won’t have to stay in very long, and I’m going to look out for Missie
and Boy.”
Tears filmed his eyes. The muscles of the leathery face worked with
emotion.
“I cain’t thank you, Miss Ruth, but I reckon you know what I’m
thinking.”
“Missie is going to teach Boy what a good man his father is, and when
you come out you and he will be great friends.”
He nodded. Speech at that moment was beyond him.
“All the boys are going to look after your stock just as if it belonged
to them. They’ll take care of your brand at the round-up and make the
beef cut for you just the same.”
“That’s right kind of them. I sure do feel grateful.” He looked shyly at
his visitor. Sam knew that all was not well between her and Rowan. “What
about you, Miss Ruth? You-all are losing a better man than Missie ever
had. He’s a pure, Mac is.”
Her live eyes fixed themselves on him. “There’s something I want to
know, Mr. Yerby—something I have a right to know. It’s—it’s about the
sheep raid.”
“Why don’t you-all go to Mac and ask him?”
“I’ve been to him. He wouldn’t tell me; said he couldn’t.”
A puzzled expression of doubt lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t reckon I can
tell you then.”
“You’ve got to tell me. I’ve a right to know. I’m going to know.” She
said it with an imperious little accent of feminine ferocity.
“O’ course in regards to what took place——”
“Did you start that night intending to kill Joe Tait?”
“No, ma’am, we didn’t. Rowan told the boys time and again there wasn’t
to be any killing. He planned it so it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Then how was it?”
“I’ll tell you this much: Someone went out of his haid and began
shooting. Inside of three minutes it was all over.”
“Did—did Rowan kill either of them?” she whispered.
“I don’t know who killed Tait. Several of the boys were firing. Mac
didn’t kill Gilroy. I’m ’most sure of that.”
“You’re not dead sure,” she insisted.
“I’m what you might call morally certain. But there’s one man can set
yore mind at rest, if you can get him to talk.”
“Who?”
“Hal Falkner. He knows who started the shooting and who killed Dan
Gilroy.”
“I’ve hardly met him. Do you think he would tell me?”
“Maybe he would.” He smiled a little. “I notice you mostly get yore way.
Hal’s rough-and-ready. Don’t you mind it if he acts gruff. That’s just
his way.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“I reckon it won’t do any harm. But I can tell you one thing, anyhow. If
you give Mac the benefit of all the doubts, it will be about what’s
right. He saved the herders from Falkner. Silcott testified to that.
Before Gilroy was shot I heard yore husband holler to stop firing. Now
wouldn’t it be onreasonable to figure that he gunned Dan himself right
away? If Mac wouldn’t tell you-all what happened it was because we had
all made a solemn agreement not to talk.”
“Do you think that is it?”
“I shorely do.”
“I’m so glad.”
“An’, Miss Ruth?”
“Yes, Mr. Yerby?”
He hesitated before he made the plunge. “I won’t see you-all again for a
long time, maybe never. You’re young and proud and high-heeled, like
you-all got a perfect right to be. But I want to say this: If you live
to be a hundred, yo’ll never meet any one that’s more of a man than
Rowan McCoy. He’s white clear through. I’ve seen a right smart of men in
my time. Most o’ them had a streak of lean and a streak of fat, as the
old saying goes. But yore husband, he assays ’way up all the time. Good
luck or bad makes no difference with him. He’s the real stuff.”
A wistful little smile touched her face. “He has one good friend,
anyhow.”
“He has hundreds. He deserves them, too.”
“I’ve got to say good-bye now, Mr. Yerby.” She gave him both hands.
Tears blurred her eyes so that she could scarcely see him. “Good-bye.
Heaps of luck—oh, lots of it! And don’t worry about Missie and Boy.”
“I’ll not worry half so much now, little friend. And I’m hoping all that
luck will come to you, too.”
From Sheriff Matson Ruth secured a permit to see Falkner.
The cow-puncher was brought, hand-cuffed, into the office of the jailer.
It was an effect of his sudden, furious temper that his guards never
took any chances with him. None of the friendly little privileges that
fell to the other prisoners came his way.
“Mrs. McCoy wants to talk with you, Hal,” explained Ackerman, the
jailer. “Don’t make any mistake about this. I’ll be in the outer room
there with a gat. I’ve got a guard under the window. This is no time to
try for a get-away.”
Falkner looked at him with an ugly sneer. “Glad you mentioned it, Steve.
I’ll postpone any notions I may have in that line, but, take it from me,
they are merely postponed. When the time comes I’m going.”
Ackerman shrugged his shoulders and left the room. He thought it
altogether likely that some day Falkner would have the top of his head
blown off, but he did not want to have to do the job.
“I’ve come to ask a favour of you, Mr. Falkner,” Ruth blurted out.
Her courage was beginning to ebb. The man looked so formidable now that
she was alone with him. His reputation, she knew, was bad. More than
once, when she had met him on horseback in the hills, the look in his
burning black eyes had sent little shivers through her.
“A favour of me, Mrs. McCoy! Ain’t that a come-down? Didn’t know you
knew I was on the map. You’re sure honouring me,” he jeered.
It was his habit to take note in his sullen fashion of all good-looking
women. When he had seen her about the ranch or riding with her husband
or Larry Silcott he had resented it that this slender, vivid girl who
moved with such quick animal grace, whose parted lips and shining eyes
were so charmingly eager, had taken him in apparently only as a detail
of the scenery.
Now his dark eyes, set deep in the sockets, narrowed suspiciously. What
did she want of him? What possible favour was there that he could give
her?
“I want to know about the Bald Knob raid,” she hurried on. “Maybe I
oughtn’t to come to you. I don’t know. But I’ve got to know the truth of
what happened that night.”
“Why don’t you go to your husband, then?” he demanded. “Mac knows as
much about it as I do.”
“I went to him. He wouldn’t tell me; said it wouldn’t be right to tell
anything he knew.”
“That so?” From his slitted eyelids he watched her closely, not at all
certain of what was her game. “Then if it wouldn’t be right for Mac to
tell you, it wouldn’t be right for me, would it?” The strong white teeth
in his coffee-brown face flashed in a mocking grin.
“That was before the trial. Mr. Yerby said he wouldn’t talk then because
you had agreed not to.”
“Oh! So you’ve been to Yerby?”
“Yes. He couldn’t tell me what I want to know.”
“And what is it you want to know particularly?”
“You know what Mr. Silcott testified about—about where the shooting
started from and about where the shot came from that killed Mr. Gilroy.
I want you to tell me that it wasn’t Rowan fired those shots.”
He considered her a moment warily, his mind loaded with suspicions. Was
this a frame-up of some sort? Was she trying to trap him into admissions
that would work against him later?
“Well, the trial is past now. Mac can talk if he wants to. Why don’t you
go to him?” he asked.
“I’d rather you would tell me.”
He grinned. “Nothing doing to-day, my dear.”
Then Falkner met one of the surprises of his life. Fire flashed from
this slim slip of a girl. Her eyes attacked him fearlessly.
“You wouldn’t dare say that if you and Rowan were free,” she blazed.
He let slip a startled oath. “That’s right. I wouldn’t.” The cow-puncher
laughed hardily. He could afford to make this admission. Nobody had ever
questioned his courage. “All right, ma’am. Objection sustained, as the
judge said when Haight kicked on any answer to one of his fool
questions. I’ll take back that ‘my dear.’”
“And will you tell me what I want to know?”
“That’s another proposition. You got to give me better reasons than you
have yet why I should. Do you reckon I’m going to put my cards down on
the table while you pinch yours up close? What’s the game? What are you
aiming to do with what I tell you?”
“Nothing. I just want to know.”
“What for?”
A little wave of pink beat into her cheeks. “I don’t want—if I can help
it—to think of my husband as—as a——”
“A murderer. Is that it?” he flung at her brutally.
She nodded her head twice. The word hit her, in his savage voice, like a
blow in the face.
“Then why don’t you ask Mac? Are you afraid he’d lie to you?”
“I know he wouldn’t,” she answered with spirit.
“Well, then?” He watched her with hard eyes, still doubtful of her.
“I’m his wife. Isn’t it natural I should want to know the truth?”
“What are you trying to put over on me? Why don’t you go to Mac and ask
him?”
She threw herself on his mercy. “We—we’ve quarrelled. I can’t go to
him. There’s nobody else to tell me but you.”
There were dark shadows under the big eyes in the colourless face. She
had suffered, he guessed, during these last weeks as she never had
before. Life had taken toll of her pride and her gaiety. She looked
frail and spent.
Something in the dreariness of her stricken youth touched him. He spoke
more gently:
“According to Silcott’s story it lies between me and Mac. If he didn’t
fire those shots, I did. Do you reckon I’m going to tell you that he
didn’t fire them? Why should I?”
Her eyes fell full in his. “Because I’m entitled to know the truth. I’m
in trouble and you can help me. You’re no Larry Silcott. You’re a man.
You stood firm at the risk of your life. Even if it is at your own
expense, you’ll tell me. Rowan would do as much for your wife if you had
one.”
Ruth had said the right word at last, had in two sentences touched both
his pride and his gratitude.
“I reckon that beats me, ma’am,” he said. “I owe Mac a lot, and I’ll pay
an installment of it right now. Yore husband never fired his gun from
start to finish of the Bald Knob raid.”
The light in her eyes thanked him more than words could have done.
“While I’m at it I’ll tell you more,” he went on. “Mac laid the law down
straight that we weren’t gunning for Tait. He didn’t want to take me
along because he knew I was sore at the fellow, but when I insisted on
going the others overruled him. After the killing Mac never once said ‘I
told you so’ to the others for letting me go along. What’s more, when
they asked questions about who killed Gilroy and who started the
shooting, he gave them no satisfaction. He let the boys guess who did
it. If Mac had said the word, the rest would have rounded on me. I would
have been hanged, and they would have got short sentences. Your husband
is a prince, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“I got him and the other boys into all this trouble. He hasn’t flung it
up to me once. What do you know about that?”
“I’m so glad I came to see you. It’s going to make a great difference to
me.” There was a tremor in her voice that told of suppressed tears.
Ackerman came to the door: “About through?”
The prisoner lifted his upper lip in a sneer. “Better throw your gat on
me, Steve. I might make trouble, you know.”
CHAPTER XXIII
RUTH WHISPERS A SECRET
ACKERMAN followed Rowan into the sheriff’s office. Matson looked up from
the desk where he was working.
“All right, Steve. You needn’t wait.”
When he had signed his name to the letter he was writing, Matson turned
to his prisoner.
“We’re going to start on the eleven-thirty, Mac. Your wife is down at
the house with Mrs. Matson. She wants to say good-bye there instead of
at the depot. I’ve got considerable business to clean up before train
time, so I’ll stay on the job. Be back here in an hour.”
“You mean that I’m to go there alone?”
“Why not? I’ll ask you to go through the alleys if you don’t mind. I
don’t want the other boys to feel that I’m playing favourites.”
“I’ll not forget this, Aleck.”
“Sho! You never threw a man down in your life, Mac. I don’t reckon
you’re going to begin now. Hit the dust. I’m busy.”
Rowan crossed the square to a street darkened by shade trees, and
followed it to the alley. Down this he passed between board fences. He
took his hat off and lifted his face to the star-strewn sky. It would be
many years before he walked again a free man beneath the Milky Way.
Society was putting him behind bars because he had broken its laws. He
did not dispute the justice of its decision. His punishment was fair
enough. When he and his friends decided to be a law to themselves, to
right one wrong by doing another, they had laid themselves open to
blame. A man must be held responsible for his actions, even when the
result is different from what he anticipates.
Behind his self-containment McCoy was suffering poignantly. He was on
his way to say good-bye to the girl wife he loved. It was his conviction
that when he emerged from the shadow now closing in upon him Ruth would
have passed out of his life. Already she had wearied of what he had to
offer. There was no likelihood that she would waste her young years
waiting for a man shut up in prison for his misdeeds. Far better for her
to cut loose from him as soon as possible. He intended to advise her to
sell the ranch, realize what she could in cash from it, and then file an
action for divorce. The law would operate to release her almost
automatically from a convict husband.
Mrs. Matson met him at the back door. She led the way to a living room
and stood aside to let him pass in. Then she closed the door behind him,
shutting herself out.
The parlour was lit only by shafts of moonlight pouring through the
windows. Ruth stood beside the mantel. She wore a white dress that had
always been a favourite of Rowan’s.
Neither of them spoke. He noticed that she was trembling. From out of
the darkness where she stood came a strangled little sob.
Rowan took the distance between them in two strides. He gathered her
into his arms, and she hid her face against his woollen shirt. She wept,
clinging to him, one arm tight about his neck.
He caressed her hair softly, murmuring the sweetheart words his thoughts
had given her through all the days of their separation. Not for many
years had he been so near tears himself.
Presently the sob convulsions that shook her slight body grew less
frequent. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.
“I’ve not been a good wife to you, Rowan,” she whispered at last. “You
don’t know how sometimes I’ve—hated you—and distrusted you. I’ve
thought all sorts of bad things about you, and some of them aren’t
true.”
His arms tightened. The wild desire was in him to hold her against the
world.
“I flirted with Larry Silcott,” she confessed. “I did it to—to punish
you. I’ve been horrid. But I loved you all the time. Even while I hated
you I loved you.”
The blood sang through his veins. “Why did you hate me?”
“I—I can’t tell you that. Not yet; some day maybe.”
“Was it something I did?”
“Y-yes. But I don’t want to talk about that now. They’re going to take
you away from me. We’ve only got a few minutes. Oh, Rowan, I don’t see
how I’m going to let you go!”
His heart overflowed with tenderness and pride. Every one of her broken
little endearments filled him with joy. Her dear sweetness was balm to
his wounded soul.
“Let me tell you this, Ruth. I’m happier to-night than I’ve been for a
long time. They can’t separate us if we keep each other in our hearts. I
thought I’d lost you. I’ve been through hell because of it, my dear.”
“You do—love me,” she murmured.
He did not try to tell her in words how much. His reassurance was in the
lovers’ language of eyes and lips and the soft touch of hands.
They came again to the less perfect medium of words, and she told him of
her visits to Yerby and Falkner.
“I knew all the time you couldn’t have done what Mr. Haight said you
did; ’way down deep in my heart I knew it. But I wanted to hold a grudge
against you because you didn’t confide in me. I wanted to think bad
things about you, and yet they made me so dreadfully unhappy, Rowan. And
all the time you were sacrificing yourself for the man who brought you
into the trouble. I might have known it.”
He shook his head. “No, honey. I wasn’t doing any more than I had to do.
We were all partners in the raid. What one did all did. I’ve had plenty
of time to think it out, and I know that I’m just as guilty as Falkner.
We ought never to have ridden on the raid. If I had set myself against
it, the others would have given it up. But I led them. I’m responsible
for what happened. So I couldn’t throw Falkner down just because he was
the instrument. That wouldn’t have been square.”
“I don’t agree with you at all. If he had done as you said there
wouldn’t have been any lives lost. They’ve no right to hold you for it,
and I’m going to begin working right away to get you out. I went to
school with the governor’s wife, you know. They have just been
married—oh, scarcely a year. He’s a lot older than she is and very much
in love with her, Louise says. So she’ll make him give you a pardon.”
Rowan smiled. “I’m afraid it isn’t going to be so easy as that, dear.
The governor couldn’t pardon me on account of public opinion even if he
wanted to do it. I know him. He’s a good fellow. But the Bald Knob raid
has made too big a stir for him to interfere now.”
“He’s got to. I’ll show you. I want you home.” She broke down and sought
again the sanctuary of his shoulder.
While she cried he petted her.
After a time she began to talk in whispered fragments.
“I’m going to need you so much. I can’t stand it, Rowan, to have you
away from me now. I want my man. I want you—oh, I want you so badly! It
isn’t fair. It isn’t right—now.”
Something in her voice startled him. He took her by the shoulders and
held her gently from him while he looked into her eyes.
“You mean——”
She broke from his hands and clung to him. He knew her secret now. His
heart beat fast as he held her in his strong arms. Joy, exultation,
humility, fear, infinite tenderness—he tasted them all. But the emotion
that remained was despair.
He had forfeited his right to protect and cherish her in her hour of
need. She must go through the dark valley of the shadow alone, while he
was shut up away from her. What kind of a husband had he been ever to
let himself be put in such a position? All his strength and capacity
would go for nothing. Because of his folly, her inexperience, her
fragile youth would have to face the world unprotected, and even these
were to be handicapped by the new life on the way. With what generous
faith had she given herself into his keeping, and how poorly had he
requited her! That very night he must take the journey at the end of
which he was to be buried alive, must turn his back on her and leave her
to make the fight alone.
He groaned. Ruth heard him murmur, “My love! My precious lamb!” She read
the burning misery in his eyes. Womanlike, she flew to comfort him.
“I’m glad—oh, you don’t know how glad I am—now that we are _tillicums_
again! I wouldn’t have it any other way, Rowan. If it weren’t for what’s
going to happen—I couldn’t stand it to wait for you. Don’t you see?
I’ll have a pledge of you with me all the time. When I’m loving it, I’ll
be loving you.”
What she said was true. There had been forged a bond irrevocable between
them. He recognized it with a lifted heart. The cross-current of fate
that was snatching him from her must at last yield to the sweep of the
tide that would bring them together.
“I’ve made my plans,” she went on. “I know just what I’m going to do—if
you’ll let me. I want to go back to the ranch and run it.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. This trial has cost me a lot of money.
I’m mortgaged and in debt. Besides, ranching takes expert knowledge.
It’s doubtful whether I could have held the ranch, anyhow. The
government is creating forest reserves up in the hills. That will cut
off the free range. Sheep are pushing in, and they’ll get what is left.
We’d better sell out and save for you what little we can. It won’t be
much, but if the stock brings a good price it will be something.”
“Please, Rowan. I want so much to try it,” she pleaded. “I haven’t ever
been any help to you—thought of nothing but having a good time. You
were too good to me—let me spend far more money than I ought. You see,
I didn’t realize how hard up you were. But now I’m going to be such a
tiptop manager, if you’ll only let me.”
“I would, dear—if it were any use,” he told her gently. “But you would
have all your worry for nothing. The new conditions make the old ways
impossible. I’m sorry.”
Her coaxing smile refused to accept his decision. “My aunt left me her
money, you know. I don’t know how much it is yet. Most of it is property
that must be sold. But I can use it when it comes to save the ranch. I’d
love to. I want to be helping you.”
“Ask Tim Flanders if I’m not right, sweetheart. He has a level head.
He’ll tell you just what I’m telling you.”
“All right. I’ll ask him. We don’t need to decide my future now. There
will be lots of time after you have gone.”
Rowan drew her to a chair, and sat down with her in his arms. For once
his tongue was not tied. The ten minutes that were left he packed full
of all the love that had so long been waiting in his heart for
expression.
When she said good-bye to him it was with a wan, twitchy little smile on
her face. But as soon as he was out of the room she flung herself down,
weeping, beside the lounge.
She was still lying crouched there when McCoy climbed to the vestibule
of the through train. He moved awkwardly because his left wrist was
shackled to the right one of Cole.
CHAPTER XXIV
AT THE CIRCLE DIAMOND
ROWAN’S decision to sell the ranch was on the face of it a wise one.
Ruth recognized this. She knew nothing of cattle, nothing of farming.
But she told herself she could learn. Her interest was very greatly
engaged in saving the Circle Diamond for Rowan. Other women had done
well homesteading. She knew one widow who raised cattle, another who
made money on sheep. Why should she not do the same? It was all very
well to say that she had no business experience, but she had as much as
other people had when they began. If she did not succeed, the failure
would hurt her rather than Rowan.
She talked it all over with Flanders, a long-headed business man who
knew cattle from hoof to horn.
“The cattleman sure has his troubles aplenty,” he told her. “Short
summers, long winters, deep snows, blizzards, bad roads, heavy railroad
rates, a packers’ trust to buck, drought, and now sheep. A cowman has
got to bet before the draw; he can’t ever tell whether he’s going to
finish with a hand all blue or a busted flush.”
“Yes, but I’ve heard you say yourself that cattle-raising used to be a
gamble and that from now on it’s going to be a business instead,” she
reminded him.
He took off his big white hat and rubbed a polka-dot handkerchief over
his bald head.
“Tha’s right, too. Government reports show there’s several million fewer
cattle in the country than there was five years ago. That spells good
prices. There’s a good side to this forest-reserve business, too. It
keeps the range from being overcrowded, and it settles the sheep and
cattle war. I’ve got a hunch there would be money in leasing the range
and putting cattle to run on it.”
“Well, then?” she demanded triumphantly.
“That ain’t saying _you_ could make money. Jennings is a good foreman,
but it takes a boss to run any shebang right.”
“When the boss is in doubt she could telephone to you.”
Ruth always had been a favourite of Flanders’s. It pleased him that he
could help her in her affairs, and it flattered him to think that he
could help her make a success of the Circle Diamond. The conspiracy she
proposed intrigued his interest. She had some money. Why not use it to
save the ranch for Rowan? Why not let her have the pleasure of showing
her husband later how well she had done in his absence? It would give a
zest to her life that would otherwise be lacking. Moreover, it would be
another tie to bind her to McCoy.
He yielded to the temptation, fell into her plans, grew eager over them.
There was a good deal of sympathy for her in the country, so that she
had little difficulty in securing a permit for her cattle to range on
the reserve at the usual price.
In a letter, Ruth wrote her husband that Flanders thought it better not
to sell out just yet, but she gave no details of what she was doing in a
business way. She left him to gather that they were watching their
chance to get a good figure for the place. There was, she felt, no use
worrying him about the venture she was making.
Her interest in the ranch developed amazingly. Jennings was an
experienced cattleman and devoted to Rowan. It had been his curt opinion
that McCoy was a fool for marrying this feather-footed girl from the
East. Her gaiety and extravagance had annoyed him. The flirtation with
Silcott had set him flatly against her. But now he began to revise his
estimate. He liked the eagerness with which she flung herself into this
exciting game of saving the Circle Diamond. He liked the deference she
paid his judgment, and he admired the courage with which once or twice
she decided flatly against him.
“Dinged if she ain’t got more sense than half the men you meet!”
chuckled the foreman on one occasion when her verdict had proved more
discriminating than his advice. “The little boss done right not to take
that Cheyenne bid for the dogies.” He did not know that it was really
Flanders who was responsible for vetoing the sale.
There were hours, of course, when the loneliness of her life swept over
Ruth in waves, when she fought desperately for a footing against
despair. It was her inheritance to tread the hilltops or the valleys
rather than the dusty road. But in general she was almost happy. A warm
glow flushed her being when she thought of Rowan. Some sure voice
whispered to her that however long he might be kept from her the flame
of love would burn bright in his heart.
He had sinned against her pride and self-esteem, and she had forgiven
him. He had brought to her trouble and distress by breaking the law of
the land. All her Eastern friends pitied her. They pelted her with
letters beginning, “Poor dear Ruth.” But she refused to feel humiliated.
Rowan was Rowan, the man she loved, no matter what wrong he had done.
There burned bright in him a dynamic spark of self-respect that would
never be quenched. She clung to this. She never let herself doubt it
now, even though one memory of him still stung her to shame.
Ruth was coming through storm to her own. A shock, a sorrow, a sin that
by reason of its consequence cuts to the quick—any of these may lead to
spiritual crises resulting in a convulsively sudden soul birth. But
growth is slow, imperceptible. The young wife had lived for her own
pleasure. Now the self was being burned out of her. She came to her new
life with humility, with a steadfast purpose, with self-abnegation no
less real because it brought to her a great and quiet joy. For the first
time in her life she lived with another in view rather than herself. It
would be long before she could move in a universe of peace and serenity,
but at least she was on the road to self-mastery.
CHAPTER XXV
SILCOTT DISCOVERS HE IS NOT WELCOME
RUTH lay snuggled up on the lounge in her sewing room, one foot tucked
comfortably under her, half a dozen soft pillows piled at her back. She
was looking rather indolently over the two days’ old Wagon Wheel _Spoke_
to see if it gave any beef quotations. The day had been a busy one. In
the morning she had ridden across to Pine Hollow to inspect a drift
fence. Later she had come home covered with dust after watching the men
fan oats. Getting out of her serviceable khaki, she had revelled in a
hot bath and put on a loose morning gown and slippers. To-night she was
content to be lazy and self-indulgent.
A leaded advertisement caught and held her eye. It was on the back page
and boxed to draw more attention:
The Open A N C Ranch, together with all cattle and personal
property pertaining thereto, is offered for sale by me at a
figure much below its value to an immediate purchaser.
I shall be at the ranch, ENTIRELY UNARMED, for a week beginning
next Monday. Prospective buyers may see me there.
LAWRENCE SILCOTT
The young woman read the announcement with contemptuous interest. She
had expected Silcott to leave the country. It was not to be looked for
that a man weak enough to betray his friends would run the risk of
living in the neighbourhood of those who had suffered from his
treachery. At the two capitalized words she smiled bitterly. They were
both a confession and a shield of defense. They admitted fear, and at
the same time disarmed the righteous anger of his former neighbours.
Ruth conceded the shrewdness of his policy, even while her pluck
despised the spirit that had dictated it.
Inevitably she compared him with Rowan. Her imagination pictured McCoy
as he had sat through the strain of the trial—cool, easy, undisturbed,
master of whatever fate might be in store for him. She saw in contrast
Silcott, no longer graceful and debonair, smiles and gaiety all wiped
out, a harried, irritable wretch close to collapse. It was the first
time she had ever seen two men’s souls under the acid test. One had
assayed pure gold; the other a base alloy.
Why? What was the difference between them? Both had lived clean, hard
lives in the open. Neither of them had spurred their nerves with alcohol
or unduly depressed them with overmuch tobacco. Externally both of them
were fine specimens of the genus man. But in crisis one had crumpled up,
his manhood vanished; the other had quietly stood his punishment. The
distinction between them was that one had character and the other lacked
it.
Yet all these years Silcott had been accepted in the community as a good
fellow. His showy accomplishments, his shallow good looks, and his
veneer of friendliness had won a place for him. Ruth was deeply ashamed
that she had let him go as far with her as he had.
Her thoughts went back to Rowan. They never wandered very long from him
these days. He was the centre of her universe, though he was shut up
behind bars in a dingy prison. She knew she was not responsible for the
thing he had done, but she reproached herself that she had not been a
greater comfort to him in the dark days and nights of trial. She had
thought of herself, of her grievances, too much; not enough of him and
his needs.
No, that was not true. He had been in her mind enough, but she had not
been able to forget the treason to love in which he had involved
himself. It had risen like a barrier between them every time she had
wanted to let him know how much she suffered with him. There was
something about it almost unforgiveable, something that struck at the
very roots of faith and confidence and hope. It negatived everything she
had believed him to be, since it proved that he could not be the man she
had so tremendously admired.
Even now she would not let herself think of it if she could help. She
thrust the memory back into the unused chambers of her mind and tried to
forget.
What she wanted to see in Rowan, what she always did see except for this
one incongruous aspect, was what others saw, too, the fineness and the
strength of him.
Some sound on the porch outside attracted her attention. A loose plank
creaked. It seemed to her she heard the shuffling of furtive feet. Then
there was silence.
Ruth sat up. The curtains were drawn, so that she could not see out
without rising.
Fingers fumbled at the latch of the French window she had had made. She
was not afraid, but she felt a curious expectant thrill of excitement.
Who could be there?
Slowly the casement opened. A man’s head craned forward. Eyes searched
the room warily and found the young woman.
Ruth rose. “You—here!”
Larry Silcott put his finger to his lips, came in, and closed the window
carefully.
“What do you want?” demanded the girl, eyes flashing.
The man looked haggard and miserable. All his gay effrontery had been
wiped out.
“I want to see you—to talk with you,” he pleaded.
“What about?” Her manner was curt and uncompromising.
“I want to explain. I want to tell you how it was.”
“Is that necessary?” asked Ruth, her scornful eyes full on him.
“Yes. I don’t want you to blame me. You know how—how fond I am of you.”
She threw out a contemptuous little gesture. “Please spare me that.”
“Don’t be hard on me, Ruth. Listen. They had the goods on us. We were
going to hang—every one of us. They kept at me day and night. They
pestered me—woke me out of my sleep to argue and explain. If it hadn’t
been me it would have been one of the others that gave evidence for the
State.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. Both Haight and Matson told me so. The only question was who
would come through first.”
“If that was the only question for you, then it shows just what you are.
Did you never hear of such things as honour and decency and fair play?
If anybody was entitled to the benefit of State’s evidence it should
have been the married men, poor Sam Yerby or Mr. Rogers. They have
children dependent on them. Anybody with the least generosity could see
that. But you’re selfish to the core. You never think of anybody but
yourself.”
“How can you say that when you know that I love you, Ruth?”
Her eyes blazed. “Don’t say that. Don’t dare say it,” she cried.
“It’s true.”
“Nothing of what you say is true. You don’t know the truth when you see
it. They picked you, Haight and Matson did, because they knew you had no
strength or courage. Do you suppose that the others didn’t get a chance
to betray their friends, too? All of them did. Every one of them. But
they were _men_. That was the difference. So the prosecution focused on
you. And you weakened.”
“Why not? I didn’t kill Tait or Gilroy. Why should I be hanged for it? I
wasn’t guilty.”
“You are as guilty as Rowan was.”
“I dunno about that. He shot Gilroy, if Falkner didn’t,” Silcott said
sulkily.
“Never! Never in the world!” she cried. “Don’t tell me so, you cowardly
Judas!”
“You can talk. That’s easy. But you’ve never had a rope round your neck.
You’ve never awakened in the night from a dream where they were taking
you out to hang you. You’ve never been hounded till your nerves were
ragged and you wanted to scream out.”
“I don’t care to discuss all that. You had no business to come here. You
made your choice to save yourself. That was your privilege, just as it
is mine to prefer never to see you again.”
His voice rose. “Why do you say that? I’m not a leper. I’m still Larry
Silcott, your friend. Say I did wrong. Don’t you suppose I’ve paid?
Don’t you suppose I’ve lived in hell ever since? Have I got to spend all
the rest of my life an outcast?”
She would not let herself sympathize with his wretchedness. He had
betrayed the man she loved, had struck at his life. The harsh judgment
of youth condemned him.
“You should have thought of that before you sold out the men who trusted
you,” she told him coldly.
“I didn’t sell them out. I didn’t get a penny for it. I told the truth.
That’s all,” he cried wildly.
“You had forfeited the right to tell the truth. And you did sell them
out. You wouldn’t be here to-night if you hadn’t.”
Silcott shifted his defense. “I’m sick and tired of things to-night,
Ruth. Let’s not quarrel,” he begged.
“I’m not quarrelling. I don’t quarrel with any one except my friends,
and I’m trying to make it clear that Mr. Lawrence Silcott is not one of
them. You are not welcome here, sir. I ask you to leave.”
“Do you chuck your friends overboard when they make one mistake? Don’t
you ever give them a second chance?” he appealed. “Can’t you make any
allowance for circumstances? I was sick all the time I was in jail. They
took advantage of me. I never would have done it if I’d been _well_.
You’ve got to believe me, Ruth.”
“Maybe it’s true. I hope so.” In spite of herself she was touched by his
misery.
“You’ve got to forgive me, Ruth. I—oh, you don’t know what I’ve been
through!” He broke down and brushed his hand across his eyes. “I haven’t
slept for a week. It’s been hell every hour.”
“You’d better go away somewhere,” she suggested. “Leave your affairs
with an agent. You ought not to stay here.”
“No. My nerves are all jumpy. I’ve got to get away.” He took a long
breath and plunged on: “I’m going to begin all over again in Los Angeles
or San Francisco. I’ve had my lesson. I’ll run straight from now on. I’m
going to work hard and get ahead. If you’d only stand by me, Ruth. If
you’d——”
“I can’t be a friend of the man who betrayed my husband, if that’s what
you mean.”
“You’d have to choose between him and me. That’s true. Well, Rowan is in
the penitentiary for life. You’re young. You can’t wait for ever. It
wouldn’t be right you should. Besides, you and Rowan never did get along
well. I’m not saying a word against him, but——”
“You’d better not!” she flamed, the lace on her bosom rising and falling
fast with her passionate anger. “You say he is in the penitentiary. Who
put him there?”
“That isn’t the point, Ruth. Hear me out. You can get free from him
without any trouble. The law says that a convict’s wife can get a
divorce any time——”
“I don’t want a divorce. I’d rather be his wife, if he stays in prison
for ever, than be married to any other man on earth. I—I never heard
such insolence in my life. I’ve a good mind to call the men to throw you
off the place. Every moment you stay here is an insult to me.”
He moistened his parched lips with the tip of his tongue. “There is no
use getting excited, Ruth. I came here because I love you. If you’d only
be reasonable. Listen. I’m going to California. If you change your mind
and want to come out there——”
Ruth marched past him and flung the door open. She turned on him eyes
that blazed. “If you’re not gone in five seconds, I’ll turn the men
loose on you. They’ve been aching for a chance.”
His vanity withered before her wrath. For the moment he saw himself as
she saw him, a snake in the grass, hateful to all decent human beings.
It was a moral certainty that she would keep her word and call the
Circle Diamond riders. What they would do to him he could guess.
He went without another word.
Presently she heard him galloping down the road and out of her life.
The anger died out of Ruth almost instantly. She was filled with a sense
of desolating degradation. There had been a time in her life when she
had put this weakling before Rowan, when her laughter and her
friendliness had been for him instead of for the man to whom she was
married. He had never of course been anything vital to her life, never
one hundredth part as important to her as Rowan. Indeed, she had used
him as an instrument with which to punish her husband. But the fact
remained that she had offered him her friendship, had in resentment
flirted with him and skirted the edge of sex emotion.
The feeling that flooded her now was almost a physical nausea.
CHAPTER XXVI
AN EXPLANATION
AS Tim Flanders had predicted, the establishment of government forest
reserves changed the equation that faced the cattleman. The open range
was doomed, but federal supervision brought with it compensations. One
of these was that the man who ran cattle on the reserve need not fear
overstocking nor the competition of “Mary’s Little Lamb.” The market was
in a better condition than it had been for years. The price of beef was
high, and was still on the rise. Nor was there any prospect of a slump,
since the supply in the country was not equal to the demand.
Ruth had every reason to feel satisfied. Her shipment of beef steers had
brought a top price at the Denver stockyards. The opportune sale of a
house from her aunt’s estate made it possible for her to pay the debts
that had accumulated from Rowan’s trial and to reduce a little the
mortgage on the Circle Diamond. The hay-cutting in the meadow had run to
a fair average, and already she had in one hundred acres of winter
wheat.
She had worked hard and steadily, so that when one afternoon Jennings
brought back from the post office a letter from Rowan his young mistress
decided to ride up into the hills and read it where she could be alone
among the pines. An earned holiday is a double delight. As the
pinto—one that Rowan himself had gentled for his bride—picked his way
into the cañon mouth through blue-spiked larkspur and rabbit bush in
golden splashes the girl in the saddle was nearer happy than she had
been for many a day. Her lover’s letter lay warm against her breast, all
the joy of reading it still before her. The sky was blue as babies’ eyes
except where a shoal of mackerel clouds floated lazily westward. A
meadow-lark throbbed out its full-throated bliss. Robins and bluebirds
exulted in the sunshine. Already the quivering leaves of a grove of
young, quaking asps that marched up from the trail to the rock wall were
golden with the touch of autumn.
In a pine grove on a sunny slope Ruth read his letter, the tessellated
light all about her in warm, irregular patterns. To read what he had
written was to see the face of love. It filled her with deep joy,
brought with it a peace that was infinitely comforting. She wept a
little over it thankfully, though every word carried good cheer.
He was allowed to write only once a week, and everything he sent out was
censored. But each letter told her a little more than she had known
before of the man she had married. When she had vowed to cleave to him
through good and ill fortune he had been a stranger to her. In some ways
he still was, just as no doubt she was to him. For underneath the tricks
of manner that had charmed him and captured his imagination, what had he
discerned of the real woman sleeping in her? As for Ruth, she had
married Rowan because of her keenness for the great adventure, Life, of
which she supposed love to be a large part.
It had been a little cross to her that he was uneducated in the schools,
that he could not parrot the literary patter to which she was
accustomed. He spoke and he wrote fairly correctly. Once he had
surprised her by a reference which showed her he knew his Scott
intimately. But the moderns were closed books to him.
In the last paragraphs of his letter was a reference that showed her his
mind went straight to the relation that lies between literature and
life. His letter concluded:
You must not worry about me, dear. Whatever happens, it is all
right. From the night that we rode on the raid until I said
good-bye to you, I was tied hand and foot in a web of lies. That
is all past. I can’t explain it, but somehow all the kinks have
straightened out. I would give anything to be back home, so as
to look after you. But except for that, I am at peace.
From the prison library I got some poems by a man called
Browning. It’s queer, mixed-up stuff. I couldn’t make head or
tail of some of it, but every once in a while he whangs out a
verse that grades ’way up. Take this:
“The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made;
Our times are in His hand
Who said: ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid.’”
Ever since I came here I had been thinking that myself, but I
didn’t know how to say it like he does. Most poets spill a heap
of language, looks like to me, but this fellow throws a straight
rope. Our times are in His Hands! I’m banking a heap on that,
honey. No need to fear—just trust and wait. Some day our
waiting will be over.
Dusk had fallen before Ruth rode down the trail to the ranch, her spirit
still with Rowan up in the pines.
Mrs. Stovall was on the porch speeding a parting guest, a dark-eyed,
trim young woman of unobtrusive manners.
“Mrs. McCoy, I want you should meet an old friend of mine—Mrs. Tait,”
said the housekeeper by way of introduction.
It was like a blow in the face to Ruth. She drew herself up straight and
stiff. A flush of indignation swept into her face. With the slightest of
bows she acknowledged the presentation, then marched into the house and
to her bedroom.
All the sweet gladness of the day was blotted out for her. Just as she
and Rowan were coming together again the woman who had separated them
must intrude herself as a hateful reminder of the past. She had forgiven
her husband—yes; but her forgiveness did not extend to the woman who
had led him into temptation. And even if she had pardoned him, she had
not forgotten. It would be impossible ever quite to forget the sting of
that memory with its sense of outrage at a wrong so flagrant.
She did not deny that she was jealous. All of Rowan she could hold fast
would not be too much to carry her through their years of separation.
Except for this one deadening memory, she had nothing to recall but good
of him. Why must this come up now to torment her?
A knock sounded on the door. “Supper’s ready,” announced Mrs. Stovall
tartly.
“I don’t want any to-night.”
After a moment’s silence Ruth heard retreating footsteps. A few minutes
later there came a second knock.
“I’ve brought you supper.”
The housekeeper did not wait for an invitation, but opened the door and
walked in. Never before had she done this.
Ruth jumped to her feet from the chair where she was sitting in the
dusk. “I told you I didn’t want any supper,” she said, annoyed.
Mrs. Stovall had promised Rowan to look after Ruth while he was away. In
her tight-lipped, sardonic fashion she had come to be very fond of this
girl who was the victim of the frontier tragedy that had so stirred
Shoshone County. Silently she had watched the flirtation with Larry
Silcott and the division between husband and wife. It was her firm
opinion that Ruth needed a lesson to save her from her own foolishness.
But what had occurred on the porch a half hour since had given her a new
slant on the situation. Martha Stovall prided herself on her plain
speaking. She had a reputation for it far and wide. She proposed to do
some of it now.
“Why don’t you want any supper?”
The housekeeper set the tray down on a little table and faced her
mistress. Every angular inch of her declared that she intended to settle
this matter on the spot.
Ruth was too astonished for words. Mrs. Stovall did not miss the
opportunity.
“What ails you at the supper? Are you sick?” The thin lips of the woman
were pressed together in a straight line of determination.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Fiddlededee! It’s Norma Tait that’s spoiled your appetite. What call
have you to be so highty-tighty? Isn’t she good enough for you?”
“I would rather not discuss Mrs. Tait,” answered Ruth stiffly. “I don’t
quite see why you should come into my room and talk to me like this,
Mrs. Stovall.”
“Don’t you? Well, maybe I’m not very polite, but what I’ve got to say is
for your good—and I’m going to say it, even if you order me off the
place when I get through.”
The answer of Ruth was rather disconcerting. She said nothing.
“When I introduced you to Norma Tait you ’most insulted her. I’d like to
know why,” demanded the housekeeper.
“I think I won’t talk about that,” replied the young woman with icy
gentleness.
“Then I’ll do the talking. You’ve heard that fool story about Norma and
Mac. I’ll bet a cooky that’s what is the matter with you.” The shrewd
little eyes of Martha Stovall gimleted the girl. “It’s all a pack of
lies. I ought to know, for it was me that asked Mac to drive Norma down
to Wagon Wheel in his car.”
“You!” The astonishment of the girl leaped from her in the word.
The housekeeper nodded. “Want I should tell you all about it?” The
acidity in her voice was less pronounced.
“Please.”
“You know that Mac used to be engaged to her and that after a quarrel
Norma ran away with Tait and married him?”
“Yes.”
“Joe Tait was a brute. He bullied Norma and abused her. When she
couldn’t stand it any longer she ran away and ’phoned me to get a rig to
have her taken to Wagon Wheel, so’s she could go to Laramie, where her
sister lives.”
It was as though a weight were lifting from Ruth’s heart. She waited,
her big eyes fixed on those of Mrs. Stovall.
“But folks didn’t want to mad Joe Tait,” went on the housekeeper. “He
was always raising a rookus with someone. Folks knew he’d beat the head
off’n any man that helped Norma get away from him. So they all had
excuses. When I was at my wit’s end Mac came along in his car, headed
for Wagon Wheel. I asked him to take Norma along with him. Well, you
know Mac. He said, ‘Where is she?’ And I told him. And he took her.”
Ruth nodded urgently, impatiently. She could not hear the rest too soon.
“Mac stands up on his own hind legs. He didn’t need to ask Joe Tait’s
permission to help a woman when she was in trouble,” explained Mrs.
Stovall. “So he took Norma down and fixed it with Moody so’s he lent her
the money for her ticket. Mac had ’phoned down to the depot agent and
got the last vacant berth to Cheyenne. He gave it up to Norma and went
into the day coach. That’s exactly what he did. There’s been a lot of
stuff told by them that ought to ’a’ known Mac and Norma better, and o’
course Tait spread a heap of scandal, but Bart Mason, the Pullman
conductor, told me this his own self. Mac never even sat down beside
Norma. He talked with her a minute, and then walked right through to the
chair car.”
Not for an instant did Ruth doubt that this was the true version of the
story she had heard. It was like Rowan to do just that, quietly and
without any fuss. How lacking in faith she had been ever to doubt him!
Her heart sang. She caught Mrs. Stovall in her arms and kissed the
wrinkled face.
“I’ve been such a little fool,” she confided. “And I’ve been so
dreadfully unhappy—and it’s all been my own fault. I got to hating
Rowan, and I was awfully mean to him. Before he went away we made it all
up, but I wasn’t any help to him at all during the trial. I’m so glad
you told me this.” She laughed a little hysterically. “I’m the happiest
girl that ever had a lover shut up in prison for life. And it’s all
because of you. Oh, I’ve acted hatefully, but I’ll never do it again.”
Mrs. Stovall, comforting the young wife after the fashion of her sex,
forgot that she was the cynic of the settlement, and mingled her glad
tears with those of Ruth.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE SYMBOL
THE long white fingers of winter reached down through the mountain
gulches to the Circle Diamond. Ruth looked out of her windows upon a
land grown chill and drear. She saw her line riders returning to the
bunk house crusted with snow and sleet. The cattle huddled in the
shelter of haystacks, and those on the range grew rough and thin and
shaggy.
The short days were too long for the mistress of the ranch. She began to
mope, and her loneliness was accented by the bitter wind and the deep
drifts that shut her from the great world outside. A dozen times she was
on the point of going to Denver for the winter, but her pride—and
something finer than pride, a loyalty that held her back from pleasures
Rowan could not share and tied her to interests which knit her life to
his—would not let her give up the task she had set herself.
Through Louise McDowell, the wife of the governor, she ordered a package
of new books sent in from Cheyenne. With an energy almost fierce she
attacked her music again, and spent hours practising at the piano. When
the winds died down she made Jennings show her how to travel on
snowshoes, and after that there was seldom a day during which she could
not be outdoors about the place for at least a little while.
Her fragility had always been more apparent than real. Back of her
slenderness was a good deal of wiry strength. As the months passed she
took on flesh, and by spring was almost plump. The open life she
cultivated did not help her pink-and-white complexion, but brought
solidity to her frame and power to her muscles.
The boy was born in early April. Norma Tait and Mrs. Stovall nursed her
back to health, and in a few weeks she was driving over the ranch in
consultation with Jennings.
She had a new venture in her mind, one of which he did not approve at
all. She intended to raise head lettuce for the market.
Her foreman did his best to dissuade her from such a radical
undertaking.
“This here is a cattle country, ma’am. Tha’s what the Lord made it for.
O’ course it’s proper to put in some wheat an’ some alfalfa where we can
irrigate from the creek. I got nothing to say against that, because with
the price of stock good an’ the quality improved we can’t hardly afford
to have ’em rough through the way they used to do. We got to feed. Tha’s
reasonable. But why lettuce? Why not cabbages or persimmons or sweet
peas, ma’am, if you come to that.”
Jennings softened his derision with a friendly smile.
“Because there is money in this head lettuce. I’ve been reading about it
and corresponding with a farmer in Colorado who raises it. He has made a
lot of money.”
“Prob’ly he ships to Denver. But Denver ain’t such a big city that it
can’t be overstocked with a commodity. It ain’t any New York.”
“But he ships to New York and all over the country. It’s like this. By
midsummer the lettuce crop of most of the country is exhausted. The
weather is too hot for it. But up in the mountains it can be raised. It
develops into a fine solid head, the crispest in the world. Mr.
Galloway, the ranchman I told you about, writes that there is no limit
to the market and that this is going to be a permanent and a stable crop
for the Rocky Mountain country. He is very enthusiastic about it.”
“Tha’s all right too. I don’t claim he ain’t right. But we’re cattlemen.
The Circle Diamond is a cattle ranch. It ain’t any Dago truck farm. Me,
I’d never make a vegetable-garden farmer, not onless my farmin’ could be
done from the saddle. We know cattle; we don’ know lettuce.”
“If there’s money in it we can learn to know it.”
“How do we know there’s money in it here? This ain’t Colorado, come to
that. Maybe it takes a particular kind of soil and temperature. Maybe
this guy Galloway just happens to be in a lucky spot.”
“Not from what I read. Anyhow, we can put out a few acres and see how it
does.”
“Why, yes, we could,” admitted Jennings. “If we knew how to fix the land
for it an’ how to look after it. But we don’t. Why, we don’t even know
what kind of seed to buy or what kind of ground to put it in. Honest,
ma’am, it looks plumb ridiculous to me.”
“Not to me,” she dissented. “What’s the use of saying that this is a
cattle country and not good for anything else when we haven’t tried
other things? People have to be progressive to make money. As for your
objection about us not knowing the kind of seed to get or the sort of
land to use or how to prepare the land, why you’re wrong in all three of
your guesses. You buy seed called New York or else the Wonderful, and
you plant it in nice rich soil prepared the way you do a garden. I
thought we’d use that twenty back of the pasture.”
“H’mp!” he grunted. “You got yore mind made up, I see.”
“Yes,” she admitted, and added diplomatically, “if you approve.”
“Whether I approve or not,” he grinned. “A lot you care about me
approvin’. You’re some bull-haided when you get started, if you ask me.”
“If you can show me that I am wrong, of course——”
He threw up his hands. “I can’t. I wouldn’t ever try to show a lady she
was wrong. All I can do is get ready to say, ‘I done told you so’ when
you waken from yore dream about makin’ two haids of lettuce grow where
there ain’t any growin’ now.”
“You think I won’t make it grow, and I’ll lose money?” she asked.
“Why, yes, ma’am. I hate to say so, but that’s sure how it looks to me.”
She gave him her vivid smile. “You’re going to live to take off your hat
and apologize humbly, Mr. Jennings,” she prophesied.
“I sure hope so.”
Ruth made her preparations to go ahead and assumed that the foreman was
as enthusiastic as she was. She did not have to assume that he was loyal
and would support her project with a whole heart when it once got under
way.
Though she had a healthy interest in making the most of the ranch,
Ruth’s real absorption was in the baby. He was a continuous joy and
delight.
Rowan, junior, was king of the Circle Diamond from his birth. He ruled
imperiously over the hearts of the three women. It was natural that Ruth
should love him from the moment that they put him in her arms and his
little heel kicked her in the side. He was the symbol of the love of
Rowan that glowed so steadfastly in her soul. So she worshipped him for
his own sake and for the sake of the man she had married. The small body
that breathed so close to her, so helpless and so soft, filled her with
everlasting wonder and delight.
His daily bath was a function. Ruth presided over it herself, but Norma,
and often Mrs. Stovall, too, made excuses to be present. His plump legs
wrinkled into such kissable creases as he lay on his back and waved them
in the air, his smiling little mouth was such an adorable Cupid’s bow
that the young mother vowed in her heart there never had been such a boy
since time began.
But she did not coddle him. His mother had read the latest books on the
care of babies, and she intended to bring him up scientifically. He
spent a large part of his time sleeping on a screened porch, and, as he
grew older, Ruth took him with her when she drove over the place on
business.
In every letter she wrote Rowan the baby held first place, but she was
careful to show him that the boy was _his_ son as well as hers, a bond
between them from the past and a promise for the future. In one letter
she wrote:
I took Boy up into the pine copse back of the house this
afternoon. We were there, you and I and he, and we had such a
lovely time.
Isn’t it strange, dear, that the things we care about become so
infinitely a part of all life that touches us? There is no
beautiful thing of sound or vision or colour—no poignancy of
thought or feeling—that does not become a sign, somehow, for
the special gladness—as though, at bottom, all beauty and
dearness rested on the same foundation. To-day the wind has
blown swift and gray and strong, so that the hills are purple
with it, and the marching pines are touched to a low, tremendous
murmur. It is magnificent, as though something too vast and
solemn for sight passed by and one could hear only the sweeping
of its wings. And the thrill of it is one and the same with the
gladness of your letter of yesterday. There is in the heart of
them both something finer and bigger than I once could have
conceived.
While I was putting Rowan, junior, to bed I showed him your
picture—the one the Denver _Times_ photographer took just after
you won the championship last year—and he reached out his
dimpled fingers for it and spluttered, “Da-da-da-da-da.” I
believe he knows you belong to him. Before I put his nightie on
I kissed his dear little pink body for you.
Do you know that we are about to entertain distinguished
visitors at the Circle Diamond? Louise McDowell and the governor
are going to stay with us a day on their way to Yellowstone
Park. I can’t help feeling that it is a good omen. Last year
when I went to Cheyenne he would not give me any hope—said he
could not possibly do anything for me. But there has been a
great change of sentiment here. Tim Flanders talked with the
governor not long since, and urged a parole for you. I feel sure
the governor would not visit me unless he was at least in doubt.
So I’m eager to try again, with Rowan, junior, to plead for me.
He’s going to make love to the governor, innocently and
shamelessly, in a hundred darling little ways he has. Oh, you
don’t know how hard I’m going to try to win the governor this
time, dear.
CHAPTER XXVIII
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
GOVERNOR McDOWELL was a cattleman himself. His sympathies were much
engaged in behalf of the Bald Knob raiders. All the evidence at the
trial tended to show that Tait had forced the trouble and had refused
all compromise. From his talk with the prisoners the governor had
learned that the tragedy had flared out unexpectedly. Personally he
liked Rowan McCoy very much. But he could not get away from the fact
that murder had been done. As a private citizen, McDowell would have
worked hard to get his friend a parole; as governor of the State of
Wyoming he could not move in the matter without a legitimate excuse.
It was his hope of finding such an excuse that led him to diverge from
the direct road to Yellowstone for a stop at the Circle Diamond Ranch.
On the way he called at the ranches of several old-timers whom he had
long known.
“It’s like this, Phil,” one of them told the governor. “The Government
has stepped in and settled this whole sheep and cattle war. We don’t aim
to go night raiding any more—none of us. Sheep are here, and they’re
going to stay whether we like it or not. So we got to make the best of
it—and we do. What’s the use of keeping Mac and Brad and the other boys
locked up for an example when we don’t need one any more? Everybody
would be satisfied to see ’em paroled; even the sheepmen would. You
couldn’t do a more popular thing than to free the whole passell of ’em.”
The governor made no promises, but he kept his ears open to learn the
drift of public opinion. Even before he reached Circle Diamond he knew
that there would be no strong protest against a parole from the western
part of the State.
Ruth did not make the mistake of letting the governor see her in the
rough-and-ready ranch costume to which she was accustomed. She dressed
her hair with care and wore a simple gown that set off the slender
fullness of her figure. When she came lightly and swiftly to meet them
as the car drew up at the Circle Diamond, her guests were impressed anew
with the note of fineness, of personal distinction. There was, too,
something gallant and spirited in the poise of the small head set so
fastidiously upon the rounded throat.
Mrs. McDowell always admired tremendously her school companion. She was
more proud of her than ever now, and as she dressed for dinner she
attacked her husband.
“You’ve got to do something for her, Phil. That’s all there’s to it. I
can’t look that brave girl in the face if you don’t let her husband out
of prison.”
He was wrestling with a collar and a reluctant button. “H’mp!” he
grunted.
“And that baby—did you ever see such a darling? It’s a crime to keep
his father away from him.”
“It’s a crime to keep a lot of men in prison, but we do it.”
“I’m not worrying about the rest of them. But Ruth’s husband—you’ve
just got to let him out.” She came in and perched herself down on a
couch beside him and cuddled him in a cajoling fashion she had.
“You can’t bribe me, young lady,” he blustered. “Don’t you see that I
can’t let McCoy out unless I parole his accomplices, too? This isn’t a
matter to be decided by personal friendship. I’ve got to do what’s
right—what seems right to the average sense of the community.”
“Do you think it’s right to keep Ruth’s husband shut up from her and the
baby?” she demanded indignantly.
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
“You told me yourself that he’s a fine man,” Louise reminded him
triumphantly.
“I talk too much,” he groaned humorously. “But say he is. The
penitentiaries are full of fine men. I can’t free them all. He and his
friends killed two men. That’s the point. I can’t turn them all loose in
a year. Folks would say it was because I’m a cattleman and that Rowan
and Brad Rogers are my friends. What’s more, they would have a right to
say it.”
Ruth and Tim Flanders showed the guests over the ranch, and afterward in
the absence of the mistress, who was in the kitchen consulting with Mrs.
Stovall about the dinner, the owner of the Dude Ranch sang her praises
with enthusiasm:
“I never saw her beat, Phil. That slim little girl you could break in
two over your knee has got more git-up-and-dust than any man I know. Mac
wanted her to sell the ranch and live off the proceeds. Did she do it?
Not so you could notice it. She grabbed hold with both hands, cleared
off the debts of the trial, wiped off the mortgage, got a permit to run
a big bunch of cattle on the reserve, and has made money hand over fist.
Now she’s in lettuce an’ I’m blamed if I don’t think she’s liable to
make some money out of it. Two or three others are aimin’ to put some
out next year.”
McDowell smiled dryly. “She’s doing so well it would be a pity to let
Mac come home and gum the works up.”
But in his heart the governor was full of admiration for this vital
young woman who had thrown herself with such pluck and intelligence into
the task of saving the ranch for her imprisoned husband. The situation
troubled him. He wanted to do for her the most that he legitimately
could, but he came up always against the same barrier. Rowan McCoy had
been convicted of first-degree murder. He had no right to pardon him
within fifteen months without any new, extenuating evidence.
The governor was a warm-souled Scotch Irishman. Until the past year he
had been a bachelor. He was very fond of children. Rowan, junior, walked
right into his heart. Children have an infallible instinct that tells
them when they are liked. The young boss of the Circle Diamond opened up
his mouth in a toothless grin and stretched his dimpled fingers to the
governor. He rubbed noses with him, goo-gooed at him, clung mightily
with his little doubled fist to his excellency’s forefinger. Whenever
Rowan was in the room he claimed the big man immediately and definitely.
As for the governor, he surrendered without capitulation. He was a
willing slave.
None the less, he was glad when the time came for him to go. It made the
big, simple cattleman uncomfortable not to be able to relieve the sorrow
of this girl whom his wife loved.
Ruth made her chance to see him alone and let him know at once what was
in her heart. She stood before him white and tremulous.
“What about Rowan, Governor?”
He shook his head. “I wish I could do what you want. In a couple of
years I can, but not yet.”
She bit her lip. The big tears came into her eyes and splashed over.
“Now don’t you—don’t you,” he pleaded, stroking her hand in his big
ones. “I’d do it if I could—if I were free to follow my own wishes. But
I’m not.”
Softly she wept.
“Get me some new evidence—something to prove that Mac didn’t shoot
Gilroy himself—and I’ll see what I can do. You see how it is, Ruth.
Someone shot him while he was unarmed. All five of them pleaded guilty.
If Mac’s lawyers can find the man that did the killing I’ll parole the
others. That’s the best I can do for you.”
With that promise Ruth had to be content.
CHAPTER XXIX
A DISAPPOINTMENT
DURING the second winter Ruth left the ranch only twice, except for runs
down to Wagon Wheel. Late in January she went to Cheyenne with her boy
to make another appeal to the governor. He was full of genuine homely
kindness to her, and renewed at once his allegiance to Rowan, junior.
With the large hospitality of the West, he urged her to spend the next
few months as their guest, to postpone her return at least until the
snow was out of the hills. But in the matter of a parole he stood firm
against the entreaties of his wife, the touching wistfulness of her
friend, and the tug of desire at his own big heart.
Her other visit was in April to the penitentiary. McCoy was away as a
trusty in charge of a road-building gang near Casper. But it was not her
husband that Ruth had come to see. She wanted to make a plea to the one
man who could help her. She carried an order from Governor McDowell
permitting her to see him.
The hour she had chosen was inauspicious. Falkner, sullen and dogged,
was brought in irons to the office of the warden. His face was badly
swollen and cut. He pretended not to recognize Ruth, but stood, heavy
and lowering, his sunken eyes set defiantly straight before him.
“He’s been in solitary for a week,” explained the warden. “Makes us more
trouble than any two men here. This time he hit a guard over the head
with a shovel.”
The prisoner had the baited look of a hunted wild animal.
“I’m so sorry,” breathed Ruth.
It was plain to her at a glance that he was much more of a wild beast
than he had been when she last saw him.
“You needn’t be sorry for him. He brings it all on himself.” The warden
turned curtly to Falkner. “This lady wants to talk to you. See you
behave yourself.”
But when she was alone with this battered hulk her carefully prepared
arguments all fell away from her. She felt instinctively that they would
have no weight with him. She hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. The
best she could do was to repeat herself.
“I’m sorry they don’t treat you well, Mr. Falkner. Is there anything I
can do for you—tobacco or anything like that?”
He gave her a sulky sidewise look, but did not answer.
“We’re all hoping you’ll get out soon,” she went on bravely. “They are
talking of getting up a petition for all of you.”
She stuck again. His whole attitude was unfriendly and hostile.
“I—I’ve come to ask another favour of you. Perhaps you don’t know that
I have a little baby now. I’m trying to get Rowan out on parole, but the
governor won’t do anything unless we bring evidence to show that he did
not kill Mr. Gilroy.”
He clung still to his obstinate silence. His eyes were watching her now
steadily. It came to her that her suffering pleased him.
“So I’ve come to you, Mr. Falkner. You are the only man that can help
me. If you’ll make a statement that you shot Mr. Gilroy the governor
will give me back my husband. I’m asking it for the sake of my little
baby.”
A pulse beat fast in her throat. A tremor passed through her body. The
eyes begged him to be merciful.
He laughed, and the sound of his laughter was harsh and cruel.
“I’d see the whole outfit of you rot first.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said gently. “You haven’t been
treated well here, and naturally you feel hard about it. Anybody would.
But I’m sure you want to be fair to your friends.”
“My friends!” he jeered bitterly. “Tha’s a good one. My friends!”
“Isn’t Rowan your friend? You told me yourself that he had stood by you
to the finish, though it almost cost him his own life. If he had lifted
a finger and pointed it at you he and the others would have been given
short terms and you would have been hanged. You said as much to me that
day down at Wagon Wheel. Won’t you say as much to the governor now? It
can’t hurt you, and it would bring happiness to so many people.”
“You want me to be the goat, eh?”
“I want you to tell the truth. Rowan would in your place. He’d never let
women and children suffer for his wrongdoing. I don’t think you would if
you thought of it.”
“You’re wastin’ yore breath,” he told her sulkily.
“I wish you could see Missie Yerby and her little boy. They get along
somehow because the neighbours help with the cattle. She doesn’t
complain. She’s brave. But she does miss Sam dreadfully. So does the
little boy. He’s a nice manly little chap, but he needs a father. It
isn’t right that he shouldn’t have one. He often asks when his dad is
coming home.”
“I ain’t keepin’ him here,” he growled.
“And Mrs. Rogers will be an old woman soon if Brad doesn’t get out. I
can see her fading away. It seems to me that if I could help them by
saying a few words, by just telling the truth, that it would give me
pleasure to make them happy.”
“Different here,” he snarled. “It’s every one for himself.”
“That isn’t what you told me that day at Wagon Wheel,” she said quietly.
“All right. I’ve changed my mind. Let it go at that.”
“Kate is still waiting for Jack Cole. She won’t look at any other man.”
“Makes no difference to me if she waits till Kingdom Come.”
“That’s three women who are unhappy, and Jack’s mother is another, and
I’m the fifth. Five women and two children you could make glad by
confessing that you started the shooting and killed Mr. Gilroy. Not many
men have an opportunity like that. We would bless you in our prayers,
Mr. Falkner.”
“Keep right on soft-soapin’ me. See where it gets you,” he taunted.
She ignored his retort.
“We’d do more for you than that. We’d all work for your pardon, too.
We’d show how Joe Tait had beaten you up when you hadn’t a chance and
how quarrelsome he was. Pretty soon we’d get you out, too.”
“The hell you would! Don’t I know? I’d stand the gaff for all of ’em.
Ain’t I doing it now? Rowan’s out somewheres bossin’ a road gang. Rogers
is in the warden’s office. Sam Yerby putters around the garden. An’
me—I live in that damned dark hole alone. They’re warden’s little pets.
I’m the one that gets the whip. By God, if I ever get a chance at one of
these slave-drivers——”
He broke off, to grind his teeth in a fury of impotent rage.
“Don’t! Don’t feel that way,” she begged. “You get all the worst of it.
Don’t you see you do? And it makes you unhappy. Let me tell the warden
that you’ll try not to break the prison rules. It would be so much
better for you.”
“Tell him I’ll cut his black heart out if I ever get a chance.”
She was appalled at his venomous hatred. Vaguely she knew that prison
discipline was often harsh. Occasionally some echo of it crept into
newspapers. Falkner was refractory and undisciplined. No doubt he had
broken rules and been insubordinate. It came to her that there had been
some contest of stubborn will between this lawless convict and the
guards who had charge of him. His face was scarred with wounds not yet
healed. She did not know that ridges crossed and recrossed his back
where the lash had cut away the skin with cruel strokes which had burned
like fire. But she did know that he was untamed and unbroken, that
nothing short of death could make that wild spirit quail before his
tormentors.
“I wish I could help you,” she said. “But I can’t. All I can do is ask
you to help me. Won’t you think about it, please? I know you’re a man.
You’re not afraid to take the blame that belongs to you. If you could
only see this straight, the way you would see it if you were outdoors in
the hills, I know you would help me.”
“I don’t need to think about it. I’m playin’ my own hand.”
“The governor says that if I can get any evidence, any proof that Rowan
did not start the shooting or kill Gilroy, he will give him a pardon. It
lies with you, Mr. Falkner.”
“Well, I’ve done given you my answer. I’m for myself, an’ for nobody
else. Tha’s the bed rock of it.”
For Rowan’s freedom Ruth would have gone a long way. She had humbled
herself to plead with the convict. But she had known it would be
useless. His environment had so deadened his moral sense, so numbed his
sympathy, that she could strike no response from him. When she left the
prison it was with the knowledge that she had not advanced her husband’s
cause one whit.
In front of the warden’s house a convict was wheeling manure and
scattering it on the lawn. Some trick of gesture caught the attention of
Ruth. Her arrested eyes fixed themselves on the man. His shoulders
drooped, and his whole attitude expressed dejected listlessness, but she
was sure she knew him. Deserting the warden’s wife, she ran forward with
both hands outstretched.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”
For an instant a puzzled expression lifted the white eyebrows and
slackened the lank jaw of Sam Yerby. Then his shoulders straightened. He
had been caught with his guard down, detected in the mood of
hopelessness into which he often fell now.
He came gamely to time. “Well—well, Miss Ruth. I’m sure proud to see
you, ma’am.”
“They told me you were at a road camp. One of the guards said so.”
“I was, but I’m back. You’re looking fine, ma’am. Missie writes me
you-all done got a little baby of yore own now.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ll tell you all about it. But how are you? Missie
will ask me a hundred questions.”
“I’m tol’able, thank you.” Yerby, looking across her shoulder, saw a
guard moving toward them. He did not mention to her that he was liable
to ten days’ solitary confinement for talking to a visitor without
permission. “How’s Missie—and Son?”
“Missie is prettier than ever. She’s always talking about you. And the
boy—he’s the dandiest little chap—smart as a whip and good as gold.
You’ll be awfully pleased with him when you come home.”
“Yes’m—when I come home.”
His voice fell flat. Its lifelessness went to the heart of his friend.
She saw that hope was dead within him. He was getting into the fifties,
and the years were slipping away.
“That won’t be long. We’re getting up a petition to——”
The guard pushed between Ruth and the convict. “You know the rule,
Yerby,” he said curtly.
“Yes, sir, and I most generally aim to keep it. But when a lady speaks
to me—an old friend——”
“Come along with me.”
The old cowman dropped his shovel and shambled off beside the guard.
Ruth turned in consternation to the wife of the warden. “What have I
done?”
“He oughtn’t to have talked with you. That’s the rule. He knew it.”
“You won’t let him be punished because I made a mistake, will you? He’s
a Texan, you know. He thinks it wouldn’t be courteous not to answer a
lady. It would make me very unhappy if I had got him into trouble.”
The warden’s wife smiled. “I think it can be arranged this time. We all
like him. We’re all sorry for him. He takes it to heart a good deal that
he has to stay in prison. I talk with him when he pots my plants, and he
tells me he wants to hear the whining of a rope and to taste the dust of
the drag driver, whatever that is. I wish the governor would pardon him.
If he stays much longer he’ll become an old man with no hope in his
heart.”
“I’ll tell his wife that you are good to him. It will be a great comfort
to her. She’s a good deal younger than he is, but she’s very fond of
him.”
The meeting with Yerby depressed Ruth more even than her encounter with
Falkner. She took home with her a memory of a brave man slowly having
the zest of life pressed out of him.
But of this she said little when next she wrote to Rowan. Always her
letters had running through them the red thread of hope. She told him
that Flanders was getting up a petition for a parole which had been
signed by half the county, including the judge who had tried him, every
member of the jury, the prosecuting attorney, and the sheriff. Nor did
she mention that Ruth McCoy was the motive power behind the petition,
that she in person had won the signatures of Haight, Matson, and the
judge, as well as hundreds of others.
The clock struck midnight before she finished her letter:
It is very late, sweetheart—almost utterly quiet, save for a
small wind among the leaves, and the night is black and soft,
and abloom with stars. Stillness and stars and whispering
wind—they are all astir with dreams and questions—yes, and
answers, too. I feel sure of that, love—as sure as I do of you.
Will you take “good-night” born of the night’s voices, dear?
She signed her name, turned out the lights, and sat long at the low
window, her fingers laced around her knee. The thoughts back of her
hungry, shadowy eyes were gropings for the answers of which she had
written so confidently.
CHAPTER XXX
THE BLIZZARD
AGAIN spring bloomed into summer and summer yellowed into autumn. A
mellow, golden glow lay over the valleys, and in the foothills purple
asters and pink thistles lent patches of colour to a brown land.
During the daytime Ruth was busy with business details of the round-up,
of the fall beef shipment, of planting and of harvesting. The lettuce
crop had been very successful and Jennings had long ago made the _amende
honorable_ for his doubts. She had experimented with pinto beans, and
these were no sooner cut and stacked than the men were hard at it
putting in winter wheat. As soon as dusk fell she devoted herself to the
baby until he went to sleep for the night. In the evening she took up
the accounts of the ranch, wrote to Rowan, held a conference with
Jennings, or did a little desultory reading. The housekeeping she left
almost entirely in the competent hands of Mrs. Stovall.
In addition to the business of the Circle Diamond and superintending the
care of a year-old baby, Ruth had other claims upon her time that she
could not ignore. One of these was her promise to Sam Yerby to look
after Missie and the boy. It was her custom to have them down for a day
every other month and to visit the Yerby place between times.
On a day in mid-November, with Rowan, junior, beside her, Ruth set out
in the car for the little mountain ranch. It was a cool crisp morning.
The sting of frost was in the air, and the indigo mountains were ribbed
with white in the snow-filled gulches. To the nostrils came the tang of
sage and later of pine.
After she had driven from the foothills into the cañon, Ruth stopped to
wrap an extra blanket around the baby, for the sun was painting only the
upper walls as yet, and down by the creek there was an inch-thick ice at
the edges. The early fall snows were melting on the sunny slopes above,
and Hill Creek was pouring down in a flood. The road crossed the creek
twice, but after she was on it Ruth discovered that the second bridge
was very shaky. The car got over safely, but she decided to take the
high-line road home, even though it was a few miles longer.
Robert E. Lee Yerby came running down to the gate to meet them.
“Oh, Auntie Rufe!” he shouted. “Mumma’s peelin’ a chicken for dinner.”
Ruth caught the youngster up and hugged him. He was an attractive little
chap, with the bluest of eyes and the most ingenuous of smiles.
“I like you, Auntie Rufe. You always smell like pink woses,” he confided
with the frankness of extreme youth.
His r’s were all w’s, but the young woman understood him. She gave him
another hug in payment for the compliment.
“I’ve brought budda to play with you, Bobbie.” “Budda” was the nearest
Robert could come to the word brother at the time Rowan was born, and
the word had stuck with him, as is the way with children. “Now let me
go. I must get out and shut the gate.”
“No, it don’t hurt if it’s open. Mumma said so, tos everyfing’s in the
pasture.”
As she went into the house with Missie, stripping the driving gauntlets
from her hands, Ruth noticed that clouds were banking in the sky over
the summit of the range. It looked like snow.
The days she spent with Ruth were red-letter ones for Mrs. Yerby. Missie
was a simple mountain girl, born and bred in the Wyoming hills. What
little schooling she had had was of the country-district kind. It did
not go far, and was rather sketchy even to the point she had gone. But
this radiant, vital girl from the cities, so fine and beautiful, and yet
so generous of her friendship, so competent and strong and self-reliant,
but so essentially feminine—Missie accepted what she offered with a
devotion that came near worship. She did not understand how anybody
could help loving Ruth McCoy. To be elected one of her friends was a
rare privilege. Perhaps this unquestioning approval of all she was and
did, together with Mrs. Yerby’s need of her, did more to win Ruth than
any effort the other woman could have made. She was plentifully endowed
with human failings, and flattery of this sort was no doubt incense to
her self-esteem.
The women chatted and worked while the youngsters played on the floor.
Just before dinner a cow-puncher from the Triangle Dot rode up and
trailed into the house with spurs a-jingle. He had come to tell Mrs.
Yerby about one of her yearlings he had rescued from a swamp and was
keeping in the corral for a day or two. His nostrils sniffed the dinner
in the kitchen, and it was not hard to persuade him to stay and eat.
“Wha’ a’ is?” demanded Robert E. Lee Yerby, pointing to the rowel on the
high heel of the rider.
“It’s a spur, son, for to jog a bronc’s memory when it gits to
dreamin’,” explained the young man. “I reckon I’ll step out and wash up
for dinner, Mrs. Yerby.”
When he came in, his red face glowing from soap and water, it was with a
piece of news he had till that moment forgotten.
“Have you ladies heard about Hal Falkner?”
Ruth, putting a platter of fried chicken on the table, turned abruptly
to him. “What about him?”
“He escaped from the pen four days ago—beat up a guard ’most to death
and made his get-away. Four prisoners were in the jailbreak, but they’ve
got ’em all but Hal. He reached the hills somehow.”
The eyes of Ruth McCoy asked a question she dared not put into words.
“No, ma’am. None of the rest of our boys mixed up in it a-tall,” he told
her quickly.
The young woman drew a deep breath of relief. The hope was always with
her of a day near at hand when the Bald Knob raiders would be paroled,
but she knew if they joined such an undertaking as this it would be
fatal to their chances.
“Do you think Mr. Falkner will get away?” Ruth asked.
“I reckon not, ma’am. You see, he’s got the telephone against him.
Whenever he shows up at a ranch the news will go out that he was there.
But he got holt of a gun from a farmer. It’s a cinch they won’t take him
without a fight.”
Snow was already falling when the cow-puncher took his departure. He
cast a weather eye toward the hills. “Heap much snow in them clouds. If
I was you, Mrs. McCoy, I’d start my gasoline bronc on the home trail
so’s not to run any chances of getting stalled.”
Ruth thought this good advice. It took a few minutes to wrap Rowan for
the journey and to say good-bye. By the time she was on the way the air
was full of large flakes.
The storm increased steadily as she drove toward home. There was a
rising wind that brought the sleet about her in sharp gusts. So fierce
became the swirl that when she turned into the high-line drive she was
surrounded by a white, stinging wall that narrowed the scope of her
vision to a few feet.
The temperature was falling rapidly, and the wind swept the hilltops
with a roar. The soft flakes had turned to powdered ice. It beat upon
Ruth with a deadly chill that searched to the bones.
The young mother became alarmed. The boy was well wrapped up, but no
clothing was sufficient protection against a blizzard. Moreover, there
were dangerous places to pass, cuts where the path ran along the sloping
edge of the mountain with a sheer fall of a hundred feet below. It would
never do to try to take these with snow heavy on the ledge and the way
blurred so that she could not see clearly.
Ruth stopped and tried to adjust the curtains. But her fingers were like
ice, and the knobs so sleet-incrusted that she could not fasten the
buttons. It was her intention to drive back to the Yerby ranch, and she
backed the car into a drift while trying to turn. The snow was so
slippery that the wheel failed to get a grip. She tried again and again
without success, and at last killed the engine. Her attempts to crank it
were complete failures.
It was a moment for swift decision. Ruth made hers instantly. She took
the baby from the front seat, wrapped him close to her in all the
blankets she had, and started forward toward a deserted miner’s cabin
built in a draw close to the trail.
Half a mile is no distance when the sun is shining and the path is
clear. But near and far take on different meanings in a blizzard. Drifts
underfoot made the going slow. The pelting wind, heavy with the sting of
sleet, beat upon her, sifted through her clothes, and sapped her
vitality. More than once her numbed legs doubled under her like the
blades of a jackknife.
Ruth knew she was in deadly peril. She recalled stories of how men had
wandered for hours in the white whirl, and had lain down to die at last
within a stone’s throw of their own houses. A young schoolteacher from
Denver had perished three years before with one of her hands clutching
the barbwire strand that led to safety.
But the will to live was strong in the young mother. For the sake of
that precious young life in her arms she dared not give up. Indomitably
she fought against the ice-laden wind which flung sleet waves at her to
paralyse her energy, benumb her muscles, and chill the blood in her
arteries. More than once she went down, her frozen legs buckling under
her as she moved. But always she struggled to her feet again and plowed
forward.
At last she staggered down an incline to a dip in the road. This might
or might not be the draw that led to the cabin. There was no way of
telling. But she had to make a choice, and life for both her and the
baby hung upon it.
Her instinct told her she could go no farther. Ruth left the road,
plunged into the drifts, and fought her way up the gulch. It was her
last effort, and she knew it. When she went down it was all she could do
to drag herself to her feet again. But somehow she crawled forward.
Out of the whirling snow loomed a log wall within reach of her hand. She
staggered along it to the door, felt for the latch, found it, and
stumbled into the hut.
CHAPTER XXXI
“COMPANY FOR EACH OTHER”
RUTH, weak and shaken from her struggle with the storm, stood in
bewildered amazement near the door. A man was facing her, in his hands a
rifle. He stood crouched and wary, like a wolf at bay.
The man was Falkner.
“Any more of you?” he demanded. Not for an instant had his eyes relaxed.
“No.”
“Sure of that?”
She nodded, too much exhausted for speech.
“Fine!” he went on, lowering his gun slowly. “We’ll be company for each
other. Better shut the door.”
Instead, she staggered forward to the table and put down the bundle of
shawls. Her arms were as heavy as though they were weighted. She sank
down on the long bench in front of the table.
Like many deserted mining cabins, this one still held the home-made
furniture the prospector had built with a hammer and a saw. In one
corner was a rusty old stove, just now red-hot from a crackling wood
fire.
“Storm-bound, I reckon,” suggested the man, watching her with narrowed
lids.
“Yes,” she panted. “Going home from Yerbys’.”
From outside came the shriek of the rising storm.
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, my dear,” he grinned, with a
flash of his broken teeth.
Ruth looked round at him, her steady eyes fixed in his. There came to
her a fugitive memory of meeting him on a hill trail with that look in
his eyes that was a sacrilege to her womanhood. She remembered once
before when he had used those words, “my dear.” Since then the wolf in
him had become full grown, fed by the horrors of his prison life. He was
a hunted creature. His hand was against society and its against him. The
bars that had restrained him in the old days were down. He was a
throwback to the cave man, and, what was worse, that primitive animal
with enemies hot on his trail.
If this adventure had befallen her two years earlier the terror-stricken
eyes of the girl would have betrayed her, the blood in her veins would
have chilled with horror. But she had learned to be captain of her soul.
Whatever fear she may have felt, none of it reached the surface.
A little wail rose from the bundle of shawls. Falkner, his nerves jumpy
from sleepless nights and the continuous strain of keeping his senses
alert, flashed a quick, suspicious look around the room.
Ruth turned and unloosened the wraps. The convict, taken by sheer
astonishment, moved forward a step or two.
“Well, I’ll be dog-goned! You got a kid in there,” he said slowly.
At sight of his mother the face of the youngster cleared. Through all
the fight with the storm, snug and warm in his nest, he had slept
peacefully. But now he had wakened, and objected to being half
smothered.
“Don’t you remember?” Ruth asked the man. “I told you I had a baby. Do
you think he is like me or Rowan?”
She walked straight to him, and held the baby up for his inspection.
Falkner murmured something that sounded like an oath. But it happened
that Rowan, junior, took to men. He smiled and stretched out his arms.
Before the outlaw could speak, before he could voice the sullen
rejection of friendliness that was in his mind, Ruth had pushed the boy
into his arms.
The soft little hands of the baby explored the rough face of the man.
Rowan, junior, beamed with delight.
“You da-da,” he announced confidently.
Ruth managed a little laugh. “He’s claiming you already, Mr. Falkner,
even though he doesn’t know that meeting you has probably saved our
lives.”
For years Falkner had fought his snarling way against those who held the
upper hand. Hatred and bitterness had filled his soul. But the contact
with this soft, helpless bit of gurgling humanity sent a queer thrill
through him. It was as if pink velvet of exquisite texture, breathing
delicious life, were rubbing itself against his cheek. But it was not
alone the physical sensation that reached him. Somehow the little
beggar, so absolutely sure of his welcome, twined those dimpled fingers
around the heartstrings of the callous man. Not since his mother’s death
had any human being come to him with such implicit trust. The Adam’s
apple in the convict’s throat shot up and registered emotion.
“The blamed little cuss! See him grab a-holt of my ear.”
Ruth left the baby in his arms, took off her coat, and walked to the
stove. She held out her hands and began to warm them.
“We were in the car,” she explained. “I took the high-line back because
I was afraid of the upper bridge. The machine stalled in a drift.”
“You don’t ask me how-come I’m here,” he growled.
“I know,” she said simply. “Art Philips dropped in to Yerbys’ and stayed
for dinner. He told us you escaped four days ago.”
“Did he tell you I killed a guard?”
“No. He said you wounded one.”
“First I knew he wasn’t dead. Wish I’d been more thorough. If ever a man
needed killing, he did.”
“They abused you a good deal, didn’t they?” she ventured.
He ripped out a sudden furious oath. “If ever I get a chance at two or
three of them——”
“Better not think of that now. The question is how you are going to get
away.”
“What’s that to you?” he demanded, his suspicions all alert.
“I thought if you’d come down to the Circle Diamond you could get a
horse. That would give you a much better chance.”
“And how do I know you wouldn’t ’phone to Matson?” he sneered.
She looked at him. “Don’t you know me better than that, Mr. Falkner?”
she said gently.
He mumbled what might be taken either for an apology or for an oath.
“That’s all right. I dare say I wouldn’t be very trustful myself if I
had been through what you have.” Ruth tossed him a smiling nod and
dismissed the subject. “But we’re not down at the ranch yet. How long is
this storm likely to last, Mr. Falkner?”
“It will blow itself out before morning. Too early in the season for it
to last. I reckon it’s only a one-day blizzard.”
“You don’t think there will be any trouble about getting down to-morrow,
do you?” she asked anxiously. “I’m not worried about myself, but I’ve
got to get food for Baby.”
“Depends on the snow,” he said sulkily. “If it keeps on, you can’t break
trail and carry the kid.”
“Perhaps you could go with me; then you could cut out a horse and ride
away after dark.”
“I don’t have to go down there. I can pick up a horse at Yerbys’.” He
added grudgingly in explanation: “Me for the hills. I don’t want to get
down into the valleys, where too many people are.”
At midnight the storm outside was still howling and the sleety snow was
beating against the window. The wind, coming straight from the divide
above, buffeted the snow clouds in front of it. Drifts sifted and
shifted as the snow whirled with the changing gusts.
The young mother, crouched behind the stove with her baby asleep across
her knees, drowsed at times and wakened again with a start to see
half-shuttered eyes shining across at her from the other side of the
fire. In the darkness of the night she was afraid. Those gleaming points
of light, always focused on her, were too suggestive of a beast of prey.
With that blizzard raging outside she was a thousand miles from help,
beyond the chance of human aid in case of need.
Again her instinct served Ruth well. She rose stiffly and carried the
baby across to the man.
“Would you mind holding him for a while? I’ve been still so long my
muscles are stiff and numb.”
Grudgingly Falkner took the baby, but as the warm body of the sleeping
child nestled close to him he felt once more that queer tug at his
heart. A couple of inches of the fat, pink little legs were exposed
where the dress had fallen back. The man’s rough forefinger touched the
soft flesh gently. To the appeal of this amazing miracle—a helpless
babe asleep in his arms—everything that was good and fine in him
responded. He had lived a harsh and bitter life, he had cherished hatred
and dwelt with his own evil imagination; but as he looked down and felt
the clutch of those small fingers on his wrist the devil that had been
in his eyes slowly vanished.
Ruth tramped the floor till the pin pricks and the numbness were gone
from her limbs. Then she returned to her place against the wall back of
the stove. Her eyes closed drowsily, opened again. She told herself that
she must not fall asleep—dare not. Falkner was sitting motionless with
Rowan in his arms, his whole attention on the child. The woman’s head
nodded. She struggled to shake off the sleep that was stealing over her.
When she wakened it was broad day. A slant of sunshine made a ribbon of
gold across the floor. Rowan was crying a little fretfully, and the
convict was dancing him up and down as a diversion from his hunger.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE CLOUDS BREAK
“CAN’T you do something for this kid?” the man asked gruffly.
Ruth took the baby. “He’s hungry,” she said.
“Then we’d better be hitting the trail.”
Falkner walked to the door and flung it open. He looked out upon a world
of white-blanketed hills. The sun was throwing from them a million
sparkles of light.
“Gimme that kid,” the outlaw said roughly. “We gotta get him down to
breakfast. Here! You take my gun.”
Ruth wrapped up the baby warmly and handed him to Falkner. The man broke
trail to the point where the draw struck the road. He looked to the
right, then to the left. Safety lay for him in the mountains; for her
and Rowan, junior, at the Circle Diamond, which was three miles nearer
than Yerby’s ranch. The way up the cañon would be harder to travel than
the way down. There was a chance that they could not make it through the
snow, even a probability.
“Which way?” asked Ruth.
He turned to the left toward the Circle Diamond. The heart of the girl
leaped. The convict had put the good of the child before his own.
The day had turned warm, so that before they had travelled half an hour
the snow was beginning to get soft and slushy. The going was heavy. Ruth
was not wearing her heavy, high-laced boots, but the shoes she was
accustomed to use indoors. Soon her stockings were wringing wet and the
bottoms of her skirts were soaked. It was mostly a downhill grade, but
within the hour she was fagged. It cost an effort to drag her foot up
for each step. She did not want to be a quitter, but at last she had to
speak:
“I can’t go any farther. Leave me here and send the boys to get me. Mrs.
Stovall will look after the baby.”
The outlaw stopped. There was grudging admiration in the glance he gave
her.
“You can make it. We’re through the worst part. Soon we’ll be in the
foothills, and there the snow is real light.” After a moment he added:
“We ain’t runnin’ for a train. Take your time.”
He brushed the snow from a rock and told her with a wave of his hand to
sit down. After a few minutes’ rest she rose and told him she was ready
to try again.
Falkner’s prediction of a lighter snowfall down in the foothills proved
correct. They rounded a rocky point, which brought them within sight of
the Circle Diamond. The smoke from the house rose straight up in the
brilliant sunshine. It looked very near and close, but the deceptive air
of the Rockies could no longer fool Ruth. They still had two miles to
go. The descent to the valley was very rapid from here, and she could
see that a scant two inches would measure the depth of the snow into
which they were moving.
The young woman sloshed along behind. She was very tired, and her
shoulders sagged from exhaustion. But she set her teeth in a game
resolve to buck up and get through somehow. One after another she tried
the old devices for marking progress. She would pick a mark fifty yards
ahead and vow to reach it, and then would select another goal, and after
it was passed choose a third. One—two—three—four—five, she counted
her steps to a hundred, began again and checked off a second century,
and so kept on until she had added lap after lap.
They came to the Circle Diamond line fence, crawled between the strands,
and tramped across the back pasture toward the house.
Ruth must by this time have been half asleep. Her feet moved almost of
their own volition, as if by clockwork. She went forward like an
automaton wound up by a set will that had become comatose.
A startled shout brought her back to life abruptly. A man with a raised
rifle was standing near the bunk house. He was covering Falkner.
Swift as a panther, Falkner rid himself gently of the baby and turned to
Ruth. He ripped out a sudden furious oath. She was empty-handed.
Somewhere between the spot where she stood and the line fence the rifle
had slipped unnoticed from her cramped fingers.
The outlaw was trapped.
“Throw up your hands!” came the curt order.
Instantly the convict swerved and began running to the right. Ruth stood
directly in the line of fire. The man with the gun took a dozen quick
steps to one side.
“Stop or I’ll fire!” he shouted.
Falkner paid no attention. He was making for a cottonwood arroyo back of
the house.
The rifleman took a long aim and fired. The hunted man stumbled, fell,
scrambled to his feet again, ran almost to the edge of the gulch, and
sank down once more.
The man who had fired ran past Ruth toward the fallen man. She noticed
that he was Sheriff Matson. It is doubtful if he saw her at all. Men
emerged from the bunk house, the stable, the corral, and the house. Some
were armed, the rest apparently were not. One had been shaving. He had
finished one cheek, and the lather was still moist on the other.
The half-shaved man was her foreman, Jennings. At sight of the mistress
of the ranch he stopped. She had knelt to pick up the crying baby.
“What’s the row?” he asked.
“Sheriff Matson has just shot Mr. Falkner.” She could hardly speak the
words from her dry throat.
“Falkner! How did he come here?”
“Baby and I were snowbound in the old Potier cabin. He broke trail down
for us and carried Baby.”
“Gad! And ran right into Matson.”
“What is the sheriff doing here?”
“Came in late last night with a posse. Word had been ’phoned him that
Falkner had been seen in the hills heading for the Montana line. He
aimed to close the passes, I reckon.”
Mrs. Stovall bore down upon them from the back door of the house. Ruth
cut her off without allowing the housekeeper a word.
“No time to talk now, Mrs. Stovall. Feed Baby. He’s about starved. I’ll
look after this business.”
With Jennings striding beside her, Ruth went across to the group
surrounding the wounded man.
“Is he badly hurt?” she demanded.
One of her own punchers looked up and answered gravely: “Looks like,
ma’am. In the leg. He’s bleeding a lot.”
The sight of the blood trickling down to the white snow for an instant
sickened Ruth. But she repressed at once any weakness. Matson she ousted
from command.
“Stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, Jennings; then have him carried to
the house—to Rowan’s room. Sheriff, ’phone Doctor Irwin to come at
once. Better send one of your men to meet him.”
Ruth herself flew to the house. She forgot that she was exhausted,
forgot that she had had neither supper nor breakfast. The call for
action carried her out of her own needs. Before the men had arrived with
the wounded outlaw she was ready with sponges, cold water, and bandages.
After Falkner had been made as comfortable as possible, Ruth left him in
charge of Norma Tait and retired to the pantry in search of food. When
she had eaten she left word with Mrs. Stovall that she was going to
sleep, but wanted to be called when Doctor Irwin arrived at the ranch.
At the housekeeper’s knock she awoke three hours later, refreshed and
fit for anything. Ruth had not lived the past two years in outdoor
Wyoming for nothing. She had grown tough of muscle and strong of body,
so that she had gained the power of recuperation with very little rest.
Having examined the patient, Doctor Irwin retired with Ruth and Sheriff
Matson to the front porch.
“What do you think?” asked the young woman anxiously.
“H’mp! Think—just missed a funeral,” he snorted. “Bullet struck half
inch from artery.”
“But he’ll get well?”
“I reckon. Know better later.”
“When can I move him?” asked Matson.
“Don’t know. Not for a week or two, anyhow. You in a hurry to get him
back to that hell where he came from, Sheriff?” bristled the old doctor.
“I’m not responsible for the pen, Doc,” answered Matson evenly. “And by
all accounts I reckon Hal Falkner makes his own hell there. But I’m
responsible for turning him over to the warden. If I could get him down
to Wagon Wheel——”
“Well, you can’t!” snapped Irwin. “He’ll stay right here till I think it
safe to move him. It’s my say-so, Aleck.”
“Sure. And while he’s at the Circle Diamond I’ll leave a couple of men
to help nurse him. He might hurt himself trying to move before he’s
really fit to travel,” the sheriff announced with a grim little smile.
Ruth was head nurse herself. For years she had held a bitter resentment
against Falkner, but it could not stand against the thing that had
happened. Put to the acid test, the man had sacrificed his chances of
escape to save her and the baby. Alone, he could have reached the Yerby
ranch and gone through one of the passes before Matson had closed it.
With her and the baby as encumbrances he had not dared try the deeper
snow of the upper hills. Because of his choice he lay in Rowan’s room,
wounded, condemned to a return to Rawlins.
Never in his rough and turbulent life had the man been treated with such
gentle consideration. The clean linen and dainty food were external
effects of an atmosphere wholly alien to his experience. Here were
kindness and friendly smiles and an unimaginable tenderness. All three
of the women were good to him in their own way, but it was for Ruth that
his hungry eyes watched the door. She brought the baby with her one day,
after the fever had left him, and set the youngster on the bed, where
the invalid could watch him play.
Falkner did not talk much. He lay quiet for hours, scarce moving, unless
little Rowan was in the room. Ruth, coming in silently one afternoon,
caught the brooding despair in his eyes.
He turned to her gently. “What makes you so good to me? You know you
hate me.”
Her frank, friendly smile denied the charge. “No, I don’t hate you at
all. I did, but I don’t now.”
“I’m keeping Rowan away from you. It was my fault he went there in the
first place.”
“Yes, but you saved Baby’s life—and mine, too. If you had looked out
only for yourself, you wouldn’t be lying here wounded, and perhaps you
would have got away.” She flashed deep, tender eyes on him. “I’ll tell
you a secret, Mr. Falkner. You’re not half so bad as you think you are.
Can’t I see how you love Baby and how fond he is of you? You’re just
like the rest of us, but you haven’t had a fair chance. So we’re going
to be good to you while we can, and after you come back from prison
we’re going to be friends.”
The ice that had gathered at his heart for years was melting fast. He
turned his face to the wall and lay still there till dusk. Perhaps it
was then that he fought out the final battle of his fight with himself.
When Mrs. Stovall came in with his supper he told her hoarsely that he
wanted to see Matson at once on important business.
The sheriff drove his car in the moonlight out from Wagon Wheel. Ruth
took him in to see Falkner.
“Send for Jennings and Mrs. Stovall. She’s a notary, ain’t she?” said
the convalescent.
Ruth’s heart beat fast. “Yes. She was one when she was postmistress. Her
term hasn’t run out yet.”
“All right. Get her. I want to make a sworn statement before witnesses.”
Matson took down the statement as Falkner dictated:
I want to tell some facts about the Bald Knob sheep raid that
did not come out at the trial of Rowan McCoy. When the party was
made up to ride on that raid I wasn’t included. They left me out
because I had a grudge at Tait. But I horned in. I followed the
boys for miles, and insisted on going along. McCoy objected. He
said the party was going to drive off the sheep and not to do
any killing. I promised to take orders from him. He laid out a
plan by which we could surprise the camp without bloodshed, and
made it plain there was to be no shooting. Afterward he went
over it all very carefully again, and we agreed not to shoot.
I lost my head when we was crawling up on the camp and shot at
the wagon. That was the first shot fired. Tait came out and
began shooting at us. Two or three of us were shooting. I don’t
know who killed him. Gilroy ran out of the wagon to escape.
McCoy hollered to stop shooting, and ran forward. I must have
been crazy. I shot and killed Gilroy.
Then McCoy ran to protect the herders. He wrestled with me for
the gun to keep me from shooting. None of the other boys had
anything to do with the killing of Gilroy except me.
It was so dark that nobody knew whether McCoy or I shot Gilroy.
McCoy protected me, and said we were all to blame, since we had
come together. He never did tell who did the shooting. I looked
at his gun a little later, and saw that he had not fired a shot
from first to last.
I am making this statement of my own free will, and under no
compulsion whatever. I am of sound mind and body, except for a
bullet wound in my leg that is getting better. My only reason
for making it is that I want to see justice done. The others
have suffered too much already for what I did.
Falkner signed the statement. It was witnessed by Jennings and the two
deputies. Mrs. Stovall added the notarial seal of her office to it.
Ruth put her head down on the little table where the medicines were and
cried like a child. At last—at last Rowan would be free to come home to
her. Her long, long waiting was at an end. She could begin to count the
days now till her lover would be with her again.
CHAPTER XXXIII
GOOD NEWS
RUTH telephoned a message down to Wagon Wheel to be wired to Governor
McDowell that night. It was impossible for her to sleep, and after she
had packed she lay awake for hours planning the fight for Rowan’s
freedom. She found herself framing a passionate plea to the governor and
the board of pardons for justice to her husband. She visualized the
scene until it became so real that she had to rise from bed, get into a
loose gown, and take notes of what she must tell them. Not till nearly
two o’clock did she fall into a broken sleep.
The sheriff drove her and the baby to town next morning. From here she
sent Louise a telegram to tell her they were on the way to Cheyenne.
Matson, with strong letters in his pocket from Haight and the district
judge recommending clemency, took the noon train also to add the weight
of his influence.
When the train rolled into the station at Cheyenne, Louise was waiting
for them in her car. She and Ruth, after the manner of their sex, shed a
few happy tears together in each other’s arms, while Matson, rawboned
and awkward, stood near holding Rowan, junior.
“The board of pardons is to meet this afternoon in Phil’s office, and
you and Mr. Matson are to have a hearing before it,” her friend told
Ruth. “It’s going to be all right this time, I do believe. I can see
Phil means to be reasonable. He’d better. I told him I was going over to
the ranch to live with you if he didn’t pardon Rowan.”
“What does he say?”
“He says that if Falkner’s statement is as strong as your wire claimed
the board will have to free all four. Phil wants to push the whole thing
through as quick as he can for you.”
“That’s fine,” commented Matson. “Will it be a parole or a pardon?”
“Depends on the confession, Phil says,” Louise declared. “He has wired
the warden at Rawlins to call in any of the four men if they are out on
road work. I expect that by this time Rowan and his friends must guess
there is something in the air.”
This was not the first time that Ruth and her attorney had appeared
before the board of pardons. From the very day of his conviction she had
missed no possible chance that might help her husband. The members of
the board had been very kind to her. She had read admiration in their
glances. But the majority of them had voted against her request. To-day
somehow it was different. As soon as she entered the inner office of the
governor with Sheriff Matson and Rowan, she knew that victory was in
sight. The cordial handshake of the chairman, a fatherly old gentleman
with Horace Greeley whiskers, was more reassuring than promises. She
felt that his grip was congratulating her on the success he anticipated.
Little Rowan prevented the meeting from being a formal one. He wriggled
free from his mother and ran forward with arms outstretched to his
friend the governor. He insisted clamorously on having his “tick-tock”
to play with, and he experimented with the pockets of his Excellency to
find which one of them had supplied the candy with which he had been
furnished earlier in the day.
Ruth forgot all about the arguments she had meant to present. Instead
she told, between tears and smiles, the story of the blizzard and its
consequences. The adroit questions of the governor drew the tale of the
adventure from her in a simple, dramatic way. No doubt its effect was
greater coming from this slender, girlish mother with the dark, wistful
eyes and the touch of shyness in her manner. Rowan’s lawyer, an expert
with juries, knew when to avoid an anticlimax by getting her out of the
room.
Just before leaving his office for the night Governor McDowell called
Louise on the telephone. That young woman beamed at what he said, and
beckoned Ruth.
“Phil wants to talk with you.”
Ruth took the receiver, her hand trembling. “Hello!” she said. “Yes,
it’s Ruth.”
“I have good news for you, my dear,” the voice at the other end of the
wire said. “Rowan and his three friends are to be paroled at once. I am
going to make it a full pardon for Rowan and perhaps for the others,
too.”
For years Ruth had been waiting for this news. Now that it had come she
did not weep or cry out or do anything the least dramatic. She just
said: “Oh, I’m so glad! Thank you.”
“I’ve been instructed by the board to tell you how much it appreciates
the game fight you made and to add that it gives this parole with more
pleasure than any it has ever granted.”
“When can I see Rowan? And when will he be out?”
“He’ll be out just as soon as the papers can be prepared, my dear. I’m
coming right home to tell you all about it.”
Two more telegrams were flashed westward from Ruth that night. One was
to McCoy, the second to Tim Flanders. The message to Flanders laid upon
him the duty of notifying the families of the paroled men. Early next
morning Ruth sent still another telegram. It was addressed to Jennings,
and gave him instructions that made him get busy at once looking after
horses, saddles, pack saddles, a tent, and other camping outfit.
Later in the day Rowan, junior, and his mother entrained for Rawlins.
The adventure before her tremendously intrigued the interest of the
young wife. It was immensely more significant than her marriage had
been. All the threads of her life for years had been converging toward
it.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A HONEYMOON IN THE HILLS
SAM YERBY strolled up and down the station platform. His wife clung to
him on one side and on the other trotted Boy, hand in hand with his
new-found father. Outwardly Rogers and Cole took their good fortune
philosophically, but the Texan could not hide his delight at Missie,
Boy, and freedom. The habits of his former life began to reassert
themselves. His cheek bulged with a chew of tobacco. As the old cowman
grinned jauntily at Ruth, who had come down to see the party off, he
chirruped out a stanza of a range song:
“Goin’ back to town to draw my money,
Goin’ back home for to see my honey.
“Only I don’t have to go home to see her. She done come to see the old
man. I tell you it’s great, Miss Ruth. This air now; Lordee, I jus’ gulp
it down! But I’ll bet it ain’t a circumstance to that on the Fryingpan.
I’m sure honin’ to hit the old trails again.”
Ruth smiled through her tears. “Good days ahead, Mr. Yerby, for all of
us. We know just how you feel, don’t we, Missie?”
“When do you-all expect Mac to get in?”
“Some time this afternoon. Here comes your train. We’ll see you soon.”
After the train had gone Ruth walked back to the hotel where she was
staying. Governor McDowell had given a complete pardon to all four of
the cattlemen, but Rowan had not yet reached town from the distant road
camp where he was working. The clerk handed the young woman a letter. It
was from Jennings and was postmarked at a small town seventy miles
farther up the line.
Ruth reclaimed the baby from the nursemaid with whom she had left him
and went up to her room. A man came swinging with crisp step along the
dark corridor. She would have known that stride anywhere. A wave of
emotion crashed through her. In another moment she was in his arms.
“Oh, Rowan—at last!” she cried.
Presently they moved into the room and he held her from him while he
searched her face. Since last he had seen her she had endured the sting
of rain, the bluster of wind, and the beat of sun. They had played havoc
with her wild-rose complexion and the satin of her skin. She was no
longer the hothouse exotic he had married, a slip of a girl
experimenting with life, but a woman strong as tested steel. Here was a
mate worthy of any man, one with a vigorous, brave spirit clad in a body
of exquisite grace, young and lissom and vital.
An incomparable mate for some man! But was he the man that could hold
her? His old doubts asserted themselves in spite of the white dream of
her his heart had held through the years of their separation. She had
been loyal—never a woman more so. But he wanted more than loyalty.
Perhaps it was from him she got it. At any rate, an unexpected touch of
shyness lowered her lashes. She caught up the baby and handed him to the
father.
“Here is your son,” she said, the colour glowing in her cheeks.
Rowan looked at the little being that was flesh of his flesh and blood
of his blood, and his heart went out to the child in complete surrender.
Something primeval, old as the race, set him in an inner tumult. The
flame of life had passed through him to this dimpled babe. The child was
his—and Ruth’s. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never again know
quite the ecstasy of that moment.
To escape the tension of her feeling Ruth hurried into explanations.
“I’ve made all our arrangements for the next three days. You’re not to
ask me anything about them. You’re going to be personally conducted by
me and Baby, and you’ll have to do whatever we tell you to do. Do you
understand, sir?”
He smiled and nodded. This particular Ruth—the one that gave gay,
imperious orders—was an old friend of his. His heart welcomed her.
Apparently her plans included an automobile journey. Within an hour they
were driving through a desert of sand and sagebrush toward the
mountains. They glimpsed in the distance a couple of antelope shining in
the sunlight. Once a sage hen whirred from almost beneath the wheels of
the car. Great bare buttes rose in front of them and marched slowly to
the rear.
Rowan asked no questions. He wondered where she was taking him, but he
was content to await developments so long as he could sit beside Ruth
with the youngster on his lap.
As for Ruth her blood began to beat faster with excitement. She was
trying an experiment. If it proved a failure she knew she would be very
greatly disappointed. Just now it seemed to her that she had set the
whole happiness of her life at stake. For if Rowan did not look at it as
she did, if his joy in it did not equal her hopes, they would fail by
just so much of that unity of mind for which she prayed.
They had left Rawlins before noon. It was well into the middle of the
afternoon before the driver of the car stopped at a little two-store
village deep in the hills.
“We get out here,” Ruth told her husband.
She settled with the owner of the car, and the man started back to
Rawlins. Opposite the store where they had stopped was a corral. Ruth
led the way to it. Three horses were eating hay from a rack.
Rowan looked at them, then at Ruth. He had recognized two of the
animals, and the third one showed on the flank the Circle Diamond brand.
“Am I to ask questions yet?” McCoy wanted to know.
“If you like,” she smiled.
“Are we to ride home on the pinto and old Duke?”
“Yes.”
“And the sorrel?”
“For a pack horse.”
“You have supplies and a tent?”
“Jennings brought them.”
He took a deep breath of delight. For three days and nights they would
be alone, buried together in the eternal hills. Such a home-coming as
this had been beyond his dreams.
“Are you—glad?” she asked, and her voice was tremulous.
“Glad!” He spoke a little roughly to hide his deep feeling. “If I could
only let you know how I feel! If I could!”
Her heart jumped with a sudden gladness. Rowan did not want to meet his
friends yet. He wanted to be alone with her and the baby. This was to
be, then, their true honeymoon, the seal of their love for each other.
Rowan saddled the horses and packed the third animal, throwing the
diamond hitch expertly. His wife watched him work. It was a joy to see
how the vigour of his spirit found expression in the economy of his
movements, in the certainty of his fingers, in the easy power of the
shoulders muscled so beautifully where the bronzed neck sloped into
them.
Presently they were moving into the bigger hills. They saw no more sage
chickens or antelope, but as they wound deeper into the mountains his
keen eye detected signs of life that escaped her observation. He made
her get down once to look at the trail of an elk.
“We’ve been following his trail from that pine back there,” McCoy told
her. “He’s a big fellow, and he was on his way down to water. But he got
scared right here, I expect. Maybe he heard us coming, or maybe he
smelled a bear. Anyhow, he plunged right into the aspens without waiting
to say good-bye.”
“How do you know all that? I believe you’re spoofing, as one of our
riders, an Englishman, sometimes tells me when I joke him.”
“He’s left signposts all along the way. There’s one track. See? And
there’s another. They’re big tracks and they are far apart. The spread
of his forefeet shows that he’s a bull. Now notice where he broke the
brush here and how trampled down the young aspens are. His horn ripped
the bark clear off this tree. See how far from the ground it is. That
shows his height.”
“Yes, but how do you know he was frightened?”
“He dived into the brush mighty reckless. Why didn’t he wait and turn
off there by the big rock where the going would be easy? I reckon he
thought he hadn’t time.”
They camped far up beside a mountain lake. He pitched tent in a
beautiful grove of wide-spaced pines through which a brook sang its way
down to the lake. While he unpacked and made preparations for supper
Ruth took the rod to try her luck. When she returned half an hour later
the tent was pegged down, young pine boughs cut and spread for a bed,
and the fire going for their meal. Rowan had the water on to boil for
coffee, and slices of bacon in the frying pan ready to set upon the
rocks that hedged in his coals.
“I got the big fellow on a royal coachman. He took it with a rush,” she
explained.
McCoy cleaned the fish in the brook and cooked them in the pan when the
bacon grease was ready. They ate with the healthy appetite of outdoor
animals in the hills.
Ruth told him the gossip of the ranch and of the neighbourhood. She
retailed to him what she knew of the politics of the county. It pleased
her that his interest in these far-away topics was as yet perfunctory.
His world just now consisted of three persons, and of the three she was
the most important.
“You’re going to lose Jennings,” she told him.
“Isn’t he satisfied?”
Little imps of mischief danced in her eyes. “Not quite, but I think he’s
going to be. He has notions of marrying a handsome widow with a sheep
ranch.”
Rowan looked at her quickly. “You don’t mean Norma Tait?”
“Don’t I? Why not?” She added a corollary. “Norma is growing younger
every day. She has learned to laugh again.”
“I’m glad. Life plays some queer tricks, doesn’t it? But maybe in the
end things even up.”
From where she was cuddling the romping boy Ruth looked up and made
confession. “At first I thought I wouldn’t bring him with us. I wanted
these first days to be ours—just yours and mine. But that was selfish.
He has as much right to you as I have. Now I’m glad he is here. You
won’t think him in the way, will you?”
It did not seem to him necessary to answer that in words. He took little
Rowan into his arms and held him there till the child fell asleep.
When the baby was safely tucked up in the tent Ruth and Rowan walked to
the brow of the hill and watched the murk mist settle down into the
mountain cañons and drive the purple glow into the lake. They saw the
stars come out one by one until the heavens were full of them.
“The day is dead,” he said at last in a low voice which held the throb
of pain.
She knew that in his thoughts he was breasting again the troubled waters
that had swept them so far apart. Her warm, strong little hand slipped
into his. Cheerfully she took up his words:
“Yes, the day is dead—the long day so full of sorrow for us both. But
now the night has blotted out our grief. We are at peace—alone—beneath
the everlasting stars.”
He could not yet quite escape the net. “I’ve been a poor makeshift of a
husband, Ruth. I’ve brought you much worry and sorrow. And I’ve put a
stain on you and the boy that never can be wiped out.”
“You’ve brought me all that makes life brave and beautiful.” She turned
her buoyant head, and in the white moonlight her smile flashed radiant
upon him. “A new day is on the way to us, Rowan. The sun will reach down
into the valley there where you and I have been lost in the fog, and all
the mist will vanish as if it had never been.”
The man caught his breath sharply. She was so fine! With superb courage
and patience she had fought for him. All good things that life had to
offer should be hers. Instead, he brought her the poison of the
penitentiary record to taint her future.
Something of this he tried to tell her. “I’m a pardoned convict. Your
friends will never let you forget that—never.”
“Your friends are my friends. I have no others,” she told him, eyes
aglow. Then added, in a murmur: “Oh, my dear, as if what anybody says
matters now between you and me.”
Her faith was enough to save them both. He threw away his prudent doubts
and snatched her to him. In his kisses the lover spoke.
Presently they walked back to the camp through the gathering darkness. A
great peace lay over their world.
THE END
There’s More to Follow!
More stories of the sort you like; more, probably, by the author
of this one; more than 500 titles all told by writers of
world-wide reputation, in the Authors’ Alphabetical List which
you will find on the _reverse side_ of the wrapper of this book.
Look it over before you lay it aside. There are books here you
are sure to want—some, possibly, that you have _always_ wanted.
It is a _selected_ list; every book in it has achieved a certain
measure of _success_.
The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only the greatest Index of Good
Fiction available, it represents in addition a generally
accepted Standard of Value. It will pay you to
Look on the Other Side of the Wrapper!
_In case the wrapper is lost write to the publishers for a
complete catalog_
NOVELS OF FRONTIER LIFE
W I L L I A M M A C L E O D R A I N E
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list
=BIG-TOWN ROUND-UP, THE=
=BRAND BLOTTERS=
=BUCKY O’CONNOR=
=CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT=
=DAUGHTER OF THE DONS, A=
=DESERT’S PRICE, THE=
=FIGHTING EDGE, THE=
=GUNSIGHT PASS=
=HIGHGRADER, THE=
=IRONHEART=
=MAN FOUR-SQUARE, A=
=MAN-SIZE=
=MAVERICKS=
=OH, YOU TEX!=
=PIRATE OF PANAMA, THE=
=RIDGWAY OF MONTANA=
=ROADS OF DOUBT=
=SHERIFF’S SON, THE=
=STEVE YEAGER=
=TANGLED TRAILS=
=TEXAS RANGER, A=
=TROUBLED WATERS=
=VISION SPLENDID, THE=
=WYOMING=
=YUKON TRAIL, THE=
GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
R A F A E L S A B A T I N I ’ S N O V E L S
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap’s list.
Jesi, a diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birthplace of
Rafael Sabatini, and here he spent his early youth. The city is
glamorous with those centuries the author makes live again in his novels
with all their violence and beauty.
Mr. Sabatini first went to school in Switzerland and from there to Lycee
of Oporto, Portugal, and like Joseph Conrad, he has never attended an
English school. But English is hardly an adopted language for him, as he
learned it from his mother, an English woman who married the
Maestro-Cavaliere Vincenzo Sabatini.
Today Rafael Sabatini is regarded as “The Alexandre Dumas of Modern
Fiction.”
=MISTRESS WILDING=
A romance of the days of Monmouth’s rebellion. The action is rapid, its
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=FORTUNE’S FOOL=
All who enjoyed the lurid lights of the French Revolution with
Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the
adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a
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=BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT=
An absorbing story of love and adventure in France of the early
seventeenth century.
=THE SNARE=
It is a story in which fact and fiction are delightfully blended and one
that is entertaining in high degree from first to last.
=CAPTAIN BLOOD=
The story has glamor and beauty, and it is told with an easy confidence.
As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of a sardonic humor,
cold nerves, and hot temper. Both the story and the man are
masterpieces. A great figure, a great epoch, a great story.
=THE SEA-HAWK=
“The Sea-Hawk” is a book of fierce bright color and amazing adventure
through which stalks one of the truly great and masterful figures of
romance.
=SCARAMOUCHE=
Never will the reader forget the sardonic Scaramouche, who fights
equally well with tongue and rapier, who was “born with the gift of
laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.
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