Rimrock Trail
by J. Allan Dunn · English · Gutenberg #28638 · 585,052 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Rimrock Trail
Author: J. Allan Dunn
Release date: April 29, 2009 [eBook #28638]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28638
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIMROCK TRAIL ***
Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Barbara Kosker and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Rimrock
Trail
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The girl drooped, tired from the long climb]
RIMROCK TRAIL
By J. ALLAN DUNN
Author of
_"A Man to His Mate," etc._
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT 1921
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1922
J. ALLAN DUNN
_Printed in the United States of America_
ARTHUR SULLIVANT HOFFMAN
To his loyal friendship, his sincerity and the caustic
but kindly criticism which has made my stuff printable.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I GRIT 1
II CASEY 11
III MOLLY 32
IV SANDY CALLS THE TURN 46
V IN THE BED OF THE CREEK 67
VI PASO CABRAS 81
VII BOLSA GAP 97
VIII THE PASS OF THE GOATS 111
IX CAROCA 119
X SANDY RETURNS 129
XI PAY DIRT 135
XII WHITE GOLD 159
XIII A ROPE BREAKS 187
XIV A FREE-FOR-ALL 202
XV CASEY TOWN 232
XVI EAST AND WEST 266
XVII WESTLAKE BRINGS NEWS 291
XVIII DEHORNED 310
XIX THE HIDEOUT 345
XX MOLLY MINE 377
XXI THE END OF THE ROPE 389
XXII THE VERY END 396
Rimrock Trail
[Illustration]
Rimrock Trail
CHAPTER I
GRIT
"Mormon" Peters carefully shifted his weighty bulk in the chair that he
dared not tilt, gazing dreamily at the saw-toothed mountains shimmering
in the distance, sniffing luxuriously the scent of sage.
"They oughter spell Arizona with three 'C's,'" he said.
"Why?" asked Sandy Bourke, wiping the superfluous oil from the revolver
he was meticulously cleaning.
"'Count of Climate, Cactus, Cattle--an' Coyotes."
"Makin' four, 'stead of three," said the managing partner of the Three
Star Ranch.
Came a grunt from "Soda-Water" Sam as he put down his harmonica on which
he had been playing _The Cowboy's Lament_, with variations.
"Huh! You got no more eddication than a horn-toad, an' less common
sense. You don't spell Arizony with a 'C.' You can't. 'Cordin' to yore
argymint you should spell Africa with a 'Z' 'cause they raise zebras
there, 'stead of mustangs. Might make it two 'R's,' 'count of rim-rock
an'--an' revolvers."
Mormon snorted.
"That's a hell of a name for a man born in Maricopa County to call a
gun. _Revolver!_ You 'mind me of the Boston perfesser who come to
Arizona tryin' to prove the Cliff Dwellers was one of the Lost Tribes of
Israel. He blows in with an introduction to the Double U, where I was
workin'. Colonel Pawlin's wife has a cold snack ready, it bein' middlin'
warm. The perfesser makes a pretty speech, after he'd eaten two men's
share of victuals tryin', I reckon, to put some flesh on to his bones.
An' he calls the lunch a _col-lay-shun_! Later, he asks the waitress
down to the Rodeo Eatin' House, while he's waitin' for his train, for a
serve-yet. A _serve-yet_! That's what he calls a napkin. You must have
been eddicated in Boston, Sam, though it's the first time I ever
suspected you of book learnin'."
It was Sunday afternoon on the Three Star rancheria. The riders, all the
hands--with the exception of Pedro, the Mexican cocinero, indifferent to
most things, including his cooking; and Joe, his half-breed helper,--had
departed, clad in their best shirts, vests, trousers, Stetsons and
bandannas of silk, some seeking a poker game on a neighboring rancho,
some bent on courting. Pedro and Joe lay, faces down, under the shade of
the trees about the tenaya, the stone cistern into which water was
pumped by the windmills that worked in the fitful breezes.
The three partners, saddle-chums for years, ever seeking mutual employ,
known through Texas and Arizona as the "Three Musketeers of the Range,"
sat on the porch of the ranch-house, discussing business and lighter
matters. One year before they had pooled their savings and Sandy Bourke,
youngest of the three and the most aggressive, coolest and swiftest of
action, had gloriously bucked the faro tiger and won enough to buy the
Three Star Ranch and certain rights of free range. The purchase had not
included the brand of the late owner. Originally the holding had been
called the Two-Bar-P. As certain cattlemen were not wanting who had a
knack of appropriating calves and changing the brands of steers, Sandy
had been glad enough, in his capacity of business manager, to change the
name of the ranch and brand. Two-Bar-P was too easily altered to H-B,
U-P, U-B, O-P, or B; a score of combinations hard to prove as forgeries.
There had been lengthy argument concerning the new name. Three Star, so
Soda-Water Sam--whose nickname was satirical--opined, smacked of the
saloon rather than the ranch, but it was finally decided on and the
branding-irons duly made.
Sandy Bourke had dark brown hair, inclined to be curly, a tendency he
offset by frequent clipping of his thatch. The sobriquet of "Sandy"
referred to his grit. He was broad-shouldered, tall and lean, weighing a
hundred and seventy pounds of well-strung frame. His eyes were gray and
the lids sun-puckered; his deeply tanned skin showed the freckles on
face and hands as faint inlays; his long limber legs were slightly
bowed.
Not so the curve of Soda-Water Sam's legs. You could pass a small keg
between the latter's knees without interference. Otherwise, Sam, whose
last name was Manning, was mainly distinguished by his enormous drooping
mustache, suggesting the horns of a Texas steer, inverted.
As for Mormon, disillusioned hero of three matrimonial adventures,
woman-soft where Sandy was woman-shy, he was high-stomached, too stout
for saddle-ease to himself or mount, sun-rouged where his partners were
burned brown. His pate was bald save for a tonsure-fringe of
grizzle-red.
All three were first-rate cattlemen, their enterprise bade fair for
success, hampered only by the lack of capital, occasioned by Sandy's
preference for modern methods as evidenced by thoroughbred bulls,
high-grading of his steers, the steadily growing patches of alfalfa and
the spreading network of irrigation ditches.
Business exhausted, ending with an often expressed desire for a woman
cook who could also perform a few household chores, tagged with a last
attempt to persuade Mormon to marry some comfortable person who would
act in that capacity, they had reverted to the good-humored chaff that
always marked their talks together.
Mormon, with stubby fingers wonderfully deft, was plaiting horsehair
about a stick of hardwood to form the handle of a quirt, Sandy
overhauling his two Colts and Sam furnishing orchestra on his harmonica.
Now he put it to his lips, unable to find a sufficiently crushing retort
to Mormon's diatribe against words of more than one syllable, breathing
out the burden of "My Bonnie lies over the Ocean."
Mormon, in a husky, yet musical bass, supplied the cowboy's version of
the words.
"Last night, as I lay in the per-rair-ree.
And gazed at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy,
Could drift to that sweet by-an'-by.
"Roll on, roll on,
Roll on, li'l' dogies, roll----"
He broke off suddenly, staring at the fringe of the waving mesquite.
"Look at that ornery coyote!" he said. "Got his nerve with him, the
mangy calf-eater, comin' up to the ranch thataway."
Sam put down his harmonica.
"My Winchester's jest inside the door," he said. "But he'd scoot if I
moved. Slip in a shell, Sandy, mebbe you kin git him in a minute."
"Yo're sheddin' yore skin, Sam. Got horn over yore eyes. Mormon, you
need glasses fo' yore old age. That ain't a coyote, it's a dawg,"
pronounced Sandy.
The creature left the cover of the mesquite and came slowly but
determinedly toward the ranch-house, past the corral and cook shack; its
daring proclaiming it anything but a cowardly, foot-hill coyote. Its
coat was whitish gray. Its brush was down, almost trailing, its muzzle
drooped, it went lamely on all four legs and occasionally limped on
three.
"Collie!" proclaimed Sandy. "Pore devil's plumb tuckered out."
"Sheepdawg!" affirmed Sam, disgust in his voice. "Hell of a gall to come
round a cattle ranch."
The gray-white dog came on, dry tongue lolling, observant of the men,
glancing toward the tenaya where it smelled the slumbering Pedro and
Joe. It halted twenty feet from the porch, one paw up, as Sandy bent
forward and called to it.
"Come on, you dawg. Come in, ol' feller. Mormon, take that hair out of
that pan of water an' set it where he can see it."
Mormon shifted the pan in which he had been soaking the horsehair for
easier plaiting and the dog sniffed at it, watching Sandy closely with
eyes that were dim from thirst and weariness. Sandy patted his knee
encouragingly, and the tired animal seemed suddenly to make up its mind.
Ignoring the water, it came straight to Sandy, uttered a harsh whine,
catching at the leather tassel on the cowman's worn leather chaparejos,
tugging feebly. As Sandy stooped to pat its head, powdered with the
alkali dust that covered its coat, the collie released its hold and
collapsed on one side, panting, utterly exhausted, with glazing eyes
that held appeal.
Sandy reached for the pan, squatting down, and chucked some water from
the palm of his hand into the open jaws, upon the swollen tongue. The
dog licked his hand, whined again, tried to stand up, failed, succeeded
with the aid of friendly fingers in its ruff and eagerly lapped a few
mouthfuls.
Again it seized the tassel and pulled, looking up into Sandy's face
imploringly.
"Somethin' wrong," said the manager of the Three Star. "Tryin' to tell
us about it. All right, ol' feller, you drink some more wateh. Let me
look at that paw." He gently took the foot that clawed at his chaps and
examined it. The pad was worn to the quick, bleeding. "Come out of the
Bad Lands," he said, looking toward the range. "Through Pyramid Pass,
likely."
"Some derned sheepman gone crazy an' shot his-self," grumbled Sam.
"Somethin' bound to spile a quiet afternoon."
"Not many sheep over that way," said Mormon. "No range."
Sandy rolled the dog on his side and found the other pads in the same
condition. Running his fingers beneath the ruff, scratching gently in
sign of friendship, he discovered a leather collar with a brass tag,
rudely engraved, the lettering worn but legible.
GRIT. Prop. P. Casey.
"They sure named you right, son," he said. "We'll 'tend to P. Casey,
soon's we've 'tended to you. You need fixin' if you're goin' to take us
to him. You'll have to hoof it till we cut fair trail. Sam, fetch me
some adhesive, will you? An' then saddle up; Pronto fo' me, a hawss fo'
yoreself an' rope a spare mount."
"What for? The spare?"
"Don't know for sure. May have to bring him back."
"A sheepman to Three Star! I'd as soon have a sick rattler around.
Mormon, yo're elected to nurse him."
Sam went into the house for the medical tape, then to the corral. Sandy
bathed the raw pads softly, cut patches of the tape with his knife, put
them on the abrasions, held them there for the warmth of his palm to set
them. Grit licked at his hands whenever they were in reach, his
brightening eyes full of understanding, shifting to watch Sam striding
to the corral.
"One thing about a sheepman is allus good," said Mormon. "His dawg.
Reckon you aim on me tendin' the ranch, Sandy?"
"Come if you want to."
"Two's plenty, I reckon. I do more ridin' through the week than I care
for nowadays. I'll stick to the chair."
"Prod up Pedro to git some hot water ready. Keep a kittle b'ilin'. No
tellin' what time we'll git back," said Sandy. "I'll take along some
grub an' the medicine kit. Have to spare some of that whisky Sam's got
stowed away."
"Goin' to waste booze at fifteen bucks a quart on a sheepman?" grumbled
Mormon.
"Not if you an' Sam don't want I should," replied Sandy, with a smile.
He knew his partners. "Now then, Grit," he went on to the dog in a
confidential tone, "you-all have got to git grub an' wateh inside yore
ribs. Savvy? I'm goin' to rustle some hash fo' you. You stay as you are,
son."
He pressed the dog on its side once more, in the shade, and went into
the house. Mormon followed him. Grit watched them disappear, gave a
little whine of impatience, accepted the situation philosophically as he
listened to sounds from the corral that told him of horses being caught,
and drooped his head on the dirt, lying relaxed, eyes closed, gaining
strength against the return trip.
Sam rode to the porch on his roan, Sandy's pinto and a gray mare
leading, and "tied them to the ground" with trailing reins as Sandy came
out bearing a pan of food, a package and a leather case. Mormon showed
at the door.
"Where'd you hide yore bottle, Sam?" he asked.
"Where you can't find it, you holler-legged galoot. Why?"
"Fill up a flask to take along, Sam," said Sandy. "Here, Grit, climb
outside of this chuck."
He coaxed the collie to eat the food from his hand while Sam brought the
whisky.
"Load my guns, Mormon," he requested.
Mormon did it without comment. The two blued Colts were as much a part
of Sandy's working outfit as his belt, or the bridle of his horse. Sam
buckled on his own cartridge belt, holster and pistol, fixed his spurs,
tied the package of food to his saddle, filled two canteens and did the
same with them. Sandy-offered the pan of water to Grit who drank in
businesslike fashion, assured of the success of his mission. He stood up
squarely on his legs, eased by the plastering. They were only tired now.
He shook himself vigorously, sending out the dust with which he was
powdered in all directions, making Mormon sneeze. He stretched his
muzzle toward the mountains, threw it up and barked for the first time.
As Sandy and Sam mounted, the latter leading the gray mare, Grit ran
ahead of them and came back to make certain they were following. Then he
headed for the spot in the mesquite whence he had emerged, marking the
opening of a narrow trail. The horses broke into a lope, the two men,
the three mounts, and the dog, off on their errand of mercy.
Mormon watched them well into the mesquite before he put back the hair
in the water the dog had left and went on with his plaiting: As he
handled the pliant horsehairs he talked aloud, range fashion.
"On'y sheepman I ever knowed worth trubblin' about was a woman. Used ter
knit while she watched the woollies. Knit me a sweater--plumb useless
waste of time an' yarn. If I'd taken it I'd have had to take her along
with it. Wimmen is sure persistent. Seems like I must look like a dogie
to most of 'em. They're allus wantin' to marry me an' mother me. I sure
hope this one don't turn out to be a she-herder. 'P' might stand fer
Polly."
CHAPTER II
CASEY
The two men followed the dog across the flats, through mesquite, through
scattered sage and greasewood, mounting gradually through chaparral to
barren slopes set with strange twisted shapes of cactus. When it became
apparent that Sandy's hazard had hit the mark, as they entered the
defile that made entrance for Pyramid Pass, the only path across the
Cumbre Range to the Bad Lands beyond, Sandy reined in, coaxed up Grit,
resentful, almost suspicious of any halt, lifting the collie to the
saddle in front of him. Grit protested and the pinto plunged, but
Sandy's persistence, the soothe of his steady voice, persuaded the dog
at last to accommodate itself as best it could, helped by Sandy's one
arm, sometimes with two as Sandy, riding with knees welded to Pronto's
withers, dropping reins over the saddle horn, left the rest to the
horse.
"I figger we got some distance yet," he said to Sam. "Dawg was goin'
steady as a woodchuck ten mile' from water. Reckon my guess was
right,--he wore his pads out crossin' the lava beds, though what in time
any hombre who ain't plumb loco is trapesin' round there for, beats me.
There is some grazin' on top of the Cumbre mesa, enough for a small
herd, but the other side is jest plain hell with the lights out, one big
slice of desert thirty mile' wide."
"Minin' camp over that way, ain't there?"
"Was. There's a lava bed strip of six-seven miles at the end of the
pass, then comes a bu'sted mesa, all box cañon an' rim-rock, shot with
caves, nothin' greener than cactus an' not much of that. There's a
twenty per cent. grade wagon road, or there was, for it warn't
engineered none too careful, that run over to the mines. I was over
there once, nigh on to ten years ago. They called the camp Hopeful then.
Next year they changed the name to Dynamite. Jest natcherully blew up,
did that camp. Nothin' left but a lot of tumbledown shacks an' a couple
hundred shafts an' tunnels leadin' to nothin'. Reckon this P. Casey is a
prospector, Sam. One of them half crazy old-timers, nosin' round tryin'
to pick up lost leads. One of the 'riginal crowd that called the dump
Hopeful, like enough. Desert Rat. Them fellers is born with hope an'
it's the last thing to leave 'em."
"Hope's a good hawss," said Sam. "But it sure needs Luck fo' a runnin'
mate."
"You said it." Sandy relapsed into silence.
At the far end of the pass the dog struggled to get down. They looked
out upon a stretch of desolation. Sandy had called it six or seven
miles. It might have been two or twenty. The deceit of rarefied air was
intensified by the dazzle of the merciless sun beating down on powdered
alkali, on snaky flows of weathered lava, on mock lakes that sparkled
and dissolved in mirage. The broken mesa, across which ran the road to
the deserted mining camp, mysteriously changed form before their eyes;
unsubstantial masses in pastel lights and shades of saffron, mauve and
rose. Over all was the hard vault of the sky-like polished turquoise.
"I'll let him give us a lead," said Sandy, "soon as we hit the lava. We
can foller his trail that fur. Sit tight, son." Grit whined but subsided
under the restraining hands.
"How about a drink 'fore we tackle that?" asked Sam, nodding at the
shimmering view.
"Better hold off for a while." Sandy took the lead, bending from the
saddle, reading the trail that Grit's paws had left in the alkali and
sand. Cactus reared its spiny stems or sprawled over the ground more
like strange water-growths that had survived the emptying of an inland
sea than vegetation of the land. Once the dog's tracks led aside to a
scummy puddle, saucered by alkali, dotted with the spoor of desert
animals that drank the bitter water in extremity. Then it ran straight
to a wide reef of lava. Sandy set down the collie. Grit ran fast across
the pitted surface, ahead of the horses, waiting for them to cross the
lava. They had hard work to get him to come to hand again, but he gave
in at last to the knowledge that they would not go on otherwise.
"Sand's too hot fo' yore pads, dawg," said Sandy, "Raise the mischief
with that tape. Shack erlong, Pronto. Give you a slice of Pedro's
dried-apple pie when we git back, to make up for workin' you Sunday."
The pinto tossed a pink muzzle and his master reached to pat the dusty,
sweat-streaked neck. Alkali rose about them in clouds. Grit's trail,
though blurred in the soft soil, was plain enough. The two riders went
silently on at a steady walking gait. Talk in the saddle with men who
make range-riding a business comes only in spurts.
"Never see a prospector with a dawg afore," said Sam at last. "An' that
a sheep dawg."
"Dawg 'ud be apt to tucker out in desert travel," agreed Sandy. "Mean
one more mouth fo' water."
He, like Sam, speculated on the kind of man P. Casey--if it was Casey
they were after--might be. If not a sheepman or a prospector, a third
probability made him an outlaw, a man with a price on his head, hiding
in the wilds from punishment. It sufficed to them that he was a man whom
a dog loved enough to bear a call to help his master.
Slowly, the mesa ahead took on more definite shape. The shadows resolved
themselves into ravines and cañons. They entered a gorge filled with
boulders and rounded rocks, over which the sure-footed ponies made
clattering, slippery progress. Here and there the gaunt skeleton of a
tree, white as if lime-washed, showed that once cottonwoods had
flourished before the devouring desert had claimed the territory. The
cactus was all prickly pear, the gray-green flesh of the flat leaves
starred with brilliant blossom. Along one side of the cañon, mounting
zigzag, showed the remains of a road, broken down by landslip and the
furious rush of cloud-burst waters.
Making this, finding it free of wagon sign or horse tracks, Sandy picked
up Grit's trail once again. The collie wriggled, shot up its muzzle,
whined, licked Sandy's face.
"Nigh there," suggested Sam. Sandy nodded and let the dog get down. Grit
raced off, nose high, streaking around a curve. When they reached it he
was out of sight. The road had been built up in places on the outer edge
with stones, dry-piled. They had fallen away, the grade following, so
that sometimes all that was left for passage was a ledge along which the
horses sidled carefully in single file, stirrups brushing the inside
bank. The zigzags ended, the cañon narrowed, deepened. Sandy looked down
to the dry bed of it four hundred feet below. The road rose at a steep
pitch, cliff to the right, precipice to the left, stretching on and up
to the summit of the pass.
Suddenly Pronto shied violently, tried to bolt up the cliff, scrambling
goatwise for twenty feet to stand shivering and snorting. Sandy's
balance was automatic, the muscles of his knees clamped for grip, he
gave the pinto its head, trusting to it to establish footing. He saw
Sam's roan dancing in the trail, the led mare plunging, dust rising all
about them. Left-handed, a Colt flashed out of Sandy's holster, barked
twice, the echoes tossing between the cañon walls. In the road a
rattlesnake writhed, headless, its body, thicker than a man's wrist,
checkered in dirty gray and chocolate diamonds.
"Git down there, you hysteric son of a gun," he said to the horse. "It's
all over." The pinto hesitated, shifted unwilling hoofs, squatted on its
haunches and, tail sweeping the dirt, tobogganed down to the road,
jumping catwise the moment it was reached, away from the squirming
terror. Sandy forced him back, leaned far down, tucked the barrel of the
gun under the snake's body and hurled it looping into the gorge. Sam got
his roan and the mare under control as the dust subsided.
"More'n a dozen buttons," said Sandy. "Listen!"
Grit, unseen, ahead, was barking in staccato volleys. There was another
sound, a faint shout, unmistakably; human. The men looked at each other
with eyebrows raised.
"That ain't no man's voice," said Sam. "That's a gal." He looked
quizzically at Sandy, knowing his chum's inhibition.
Sandy was woman-shy. Men met his level glance, fairly, with swift
certainty that here stood a man, four-square; or shiftily, according to
their ease of conscience, knowing his breed. Sandy was a two-gun man but
he was not a killer. There were no notches on the handles of his Colts.
In earlier days he had shot with deadly aim and purpose, but never save
in self-defense and upon the side of law and right and order. Among men
his poise was secure but, in a woman's presence, Sandy Bourke's tongue
was tied save in emergency, his wits tangled. Whatever he privately felt
of the attraction of the opposite sex, the proximity of a girl produced
an embarrassment he hated but could not help. He had seen admiration,
desire for closer acquaintance, in many a fair face but such invitation
affected him as the sight of a circling loop affects a horse in a
remuda.
He gave Sam no chance for banter. Action was forward and it always
straightened out the short-circuitings of Sandy's mental reflexes toward
womankind. He touched Pronto's flanks with the dulled rowels he wore,
and the pinto broke into a lope. A big boulder was perched upon the nigh
side of the road. Grit came out from behind it, barked, whirled and
seemingly dived into the cañon. Coming up with the mare, Sam found Sandy
dismounted, waiting for him.
What had happened was plain to both of them. The rotten, hastily made
road collapsed under the lurch of a wagon jolting over outcrop uncovered
by the rains. Scored dirt where frantic hoofs had pawed in vain, tire
marks that ended in side scrapes and vanished.
Sam got off the roan, the tired horses standing still, snuffing the
marks of trouble. Far down the slope Grit gave tongue. The cliff
shouldered out and they could see nothing from the broken road. How any
one could have hurtled over the precipice and be still able to call for
help without the aid of some miracle was an enigma. They listened for
another shout but, save for the barking of the dog, there was silence
in the grim gorge. In the sky, two buzzards wheeled.
Sandy poured a scant measure of water from his canteen into the
punched-in crown of his Stetson, after he had knocked out the dust. Sam
did the same, giving each horse a mouth-rinse and a swallow of tepid
water so they would stand more contentedly. Each took a swift swig from
the containers. Sandy untied the package of food and the leather
medicine kit, Sam slapped his hip to be sure of his whisky flask. Aided
by their high heels, digging them in the unstable dirt, they worked down
the cliff, rounding the shoulder.
A wide ledge of outcrop jutted out from the cañon wall jagged into
battlements. Piled there was a wagon, on its side, the canvas tilt
sagged in, its hoops broken. A white horse, emaciated, little more than
buzzard meat when alive, lay with its legs stiff in the air, neck
flattened and head limp. A broken pole, with splintered ends, crossed
the body of its mate, a bay, gaunt-hipped, high of ribs. It lay still,
but its flanks heaved, catching a flash of sun on its dull hide.
Between the wheels of the wagon knelt a girl in a gown of faded blue,
head hidden behind a sunbonnet. She leaned forward in the shadow of the
wagon. Sandy caught a glimpse of a huddled body beyond her. Grit sat on
his haunches, head toward the road, thrown back at each bark. Sandy
reached the ledge first. The girl did not turn her head, though his
descent was noisy. He touched her gently on the shoulder, telling
himself that she was "just a kid."
She looked up, her face lined where tears had laned down through the
mask of dust. Now she was past crying. Her eyes met Sandy's pitifully,
holding neither surprise nor hope.
"He's dead." She seemed to be stating a fact long accepted.
"He's dead. An' he made me jump. You come too late, mister."
The man lay stretched out, head and shoulders hidden, his gaunt body
dressed in jeans, once blue, long since washed and sun-faded to the
green of turquoise matrix. The boots were rusty, patched. The wagon-bed,
toppling sidewise, had crashed down on his chest. Rock partly supported
the weight of it. Sandy picked up a gnarled hand, scarred, calloused and
shrunken, the hand of an old prospector.
"Yore dad?" he asked, kneeling by the girl.
"Yes." She stood up, slight and straight, with limbs and body just
curving into womanhood. "The hawsses was tuckered out," she said, "or
Dad c'ud have made it. They didn't have no strength left, 'thout food or
water. The damned road jest slid out from under. Dad made me jump. I
figgered he was goin' to, but his bad leg must have caught in the brake.
We slid over like water slides over a rock. He didn't have a
hell-chance." As she spoke them the oaths were merely emphasis. She
talked as had her father.
Sandy nodded.
"Got an ax with the outfit?" he asked. Then turning to Sam as the girl
went round to the back of the fallen wagon and fumbled about through
the rear opening of the canvas tilt: "Man's alive, Sam. Caught a flirt
of the pulse. Have to pry up the wagon. Git that bu'sted end of the
tongue."
The girl handed an ax to Sandy mutely, watching them as Sandy pried
loose the part of the tongue still bolted to the wagon, getting it clear
of the horses.
"Think you can drag out yore dad by the laigs when we lift the body of
the wagon?" he asked her. "May not be able to hold it more'n a few
seconds. May slip on us, the levers is pritty short."
She stooped, taking hold of a wrinkled boot in each hand, back of the
heel. A tear splashed down on one of them and she shook the salt water
from her eyes impatiently as if she had faced tragedy before and knew it
must be looked at calmly.
The two men adjusted the boulders they had set for fulcrums and shoved
down on the stout pieces of ash, their muscles bunching, the veins
standing out corded on their arms. Grit ran from one to the other with
eager little whines, sensing what was being attempted, eager to help.
The wagon-bed creaked, lifted a little.
"Now," grunted Sandy, "snake him out."
The girl tugged, stepping backward, her pliant strength equal to the
dead drag of the body. Sandy, straining down, saw a white beard appear,
stained with blood, an aged seamed face, hollow at cheek and temple,
sparse of hair, the flesh putty-colored despite its tan. Grit leaped in
and licked the quiet features as Sam and Sandy eased down the wagon.
"Whisky, Sam."
The girl sat cross-legged, her father's head in her lap, one hand
smoothing his forehead while the other felt under his vest and shirt,
above his heart.
"He ain't gone yit," she announced.
The old miner's teeth were tight clenched, but there were gaps in them
through which the whisky Sandy administered trickled.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
It might have been the tender agony of the cry to which Patrick Casey's
dulling brain responded, sending the message of his will along the
nerves to transmit a final summons. His body twitched, he choked,
swallowed, opened gray eyes, filmy with death, brightening with
intelligence as he saw his daughter bending over him, the face of Sandy
above her shoulder. The gray eyes interrogated Sandy's long and
earnestly until the light began to fade out of them and the wrinkled
lids shuttered down.
Another swallow of the raw spirits and they opened flutteringly again.
The lips moved soundlessly. Then, while one hand groped waveringly
upward to rest upon his daughter's head, Sandy, bending low, caught
three syllables, repeated over and over, desperately, mere ghosts of
words, taxing cruelly the last breath of the wheezing lungs beneath the
battered ribs, the final spurt of the spirit.
"_Molly--mines!_"
"I'll look out for that, pardner," said Sandy.
The eyelids fluttered, the old hands fell away, the jaw relaxed,
serenity came to the lined face, and no little dignity. For the first
time the girl gave way, lying prone, sobbing out her grief while the two
cowmen looked aside. The bay horse began to groan and writhe.
"Got to kill that cavallo," said Sam in a whisper.
"Wait a minute." The girl had quieted, was kneeling with clasped hands,
lips moving silently. Prayer, such as it was, over, she rose, her fists
tight closed, striving to control her quivering chin--doing it. She
looked up as the shadow of a buzzard was flung against the cliff by the
slanting sun.
"We got to bury him, 'count of them damn buzzards."
"We'll tend to that," said Sandy. "Ef you-all 'll take the dawg on up to
the hawsses...."
"No! I helped to bury Jim Clancy, out in the desert, I'm goin' to help
bury Dad. It's goin' to be lonesome out here--" She twisted her mouth,
setting teeth into the lower lip sharply as she gazed at the desolate
cliffs, the birds swinging their tireless, expectant circles in the
throat of the gorge.
"Dad allus figgered he'd die somewheres in the desert. 'Lowed it 'ud be
his luck. He wanted to be put within the sound of runnin' water--he's
gone so often 'thout it. But--" She shrugged her thin shoulders
resignedly, the inheritance of the prospector's philosophy strong within
her.
"See here, miss," said Sandy, while Sam crawled into the wagon in search
of the dead miner's pick and shovel that now, instead of uncovering
riches, would dig his grave, "how old air you?"
"Fifteen. My name's Margaret--Molly for short--same as my Ma. She's been
dead for twelve years."
"Well, Miss Molly, suppose you-all come on to the Three Star fo' a spell
with my two pardners an' me? You do that an' mebbe we can fix yore
daddy's idee about runnin' water. We'd come back an' git him an' we'll
make a place fo' him under our big cottonwoods below the big spring. I
w'udn't wonder but what he c'ud hear the water gugglin' plain as it runs
down the overflow to the alfalfa patches."
Molly Casey gazed at him with such a sudden glow of gratitude in her
eyes that Sandy felt embarrassed. He had been comforting a girl, a
boyish girl, and here a woman looked at him, with understanding.
"Yo're sure a white man," she said. "I'll git even with you some time if
I work the bones of my fingers through the flesh fo' you. Thanks don't
amount to a damn 'thout somethin' back of 'em. I'll come through."
She put out her roughened little hand, man-fashion, and Sandy took it as
Sam emerged from the wagon with the tools. The bay mare groaned and gave
a shrill cry, horribly human. Sam drew his gun, putting down pick and
shovel.
"Got any water you c'ud spare?" asked the girl. Sandy handed her his
canteen.
"Use it all," he said. "Soon's it's dark, it'll cool off. We'll git
through all right."
He picked up the tools and moved toward Sam as the bay collapsed to the
merciful bullet. The girl washed away as best she could the stains of
blood and travel from the dead face while Sandy sounded with the pick
for soil deep enough for a temporary grave.
The body would have to lie on the ledge over night, nothing but burial
could save it from marauding coyotes, though the wagon might have
baffled the buzzards. The two set to work digging a shallow trench down
to bedrock, rolling up loose boulders for a cairn. The whirring chorus
of the cicadas drummed an elfin requiem. Now and then there came the
chink of bit, or hoof on rock, from the waiting horses in the broken
road. The sun was low, horizontal rays piercing the flood of violet haze
in the cañon. Across the gorge the cliff, above the wash of shadow,
glowed saffron; a light wind wailed down the bore. Lizards flirted in
and out of the crevices as the miner was laid in his temporary grave,
the girl dry-eyed again.
She had brought a little work box from the wagon, of mahogany studded
with disks of pearl in brass mountings. Out of this she produced a
handkerchief of soft China silk brocade, its white turned yellow with
age. This she spread over her father's features, showing strangely
distinct in the failing light.
"I don't want the dirt pressin' on his face," she said.
From the dead man's clothes Sandy and Sam had taken the few personal
belongings, from the inner pocket of the vest some papers that Sandy
knew for location claims.
"Want to take some duds erlong to the ranch?" he asked Molly. "We can
bring in the rest of the stuff later. Got to shack erlong, it's gittin'
dark. Brought an extry hawss with us. Can you ride?"
"Some. I ain't had much chance."
"Don't know how the mare'll stand yore skirt. If she won't Pinto'll pack
you."
"I'll fix that." She clambered into the wagon. Before she came out with
her bundle they piled the cairn, a mask of broken rim-rock heavy enough
to foil the scratching of coyotes.
It looked to Sandy as if the girl had changed into a boy. The slender
figure, silhouetted against the afterglow, softly pulsing masses of
fiery cloud above the top of the mesa, was dressed in jean overalls, a
wide-rimmed hat hiding length of hair.
"I reckon I can fool that hawss of yores now," she said. "I gen'ally
dress thisaway 'cept when we expect to go nigh the settlements or a
ranch where we aim to visit. We was makin' for the Two-Bar-P outfit,
where Grit came from when he was a bit of a pup. I expected that's where
he was headin' for when I sent him off after help, but you come
instead."
"I was wonderin' how he come to make the ranch," said Sandy. "You see
we-all bought the Two-Bar-P, though I never figgered old Samson 'ud ever
own a sheepdawg. He might give one away fast enough."
"Grit was sent him for a present by a man who summered at the ranch an'
heerd Samson say he wanted a dawg," said the girl. "He was a tenderfoot
when he come, an' when he left, 'count bein' sick. Samson didn't want
to kill the dawg an' didn't want to keep him, so he gave him to Dad an'
me when I was ten years old. Are you ready to start?"
She had avoided looking toward the grave, purposely Sandy thought,
talking to bridge over the last good-by, the chance of a breakdown.
Suddenly she pointed down the cliff.
"Wait a minute," she cried and disappeared, sliding and leaping down
like a goat, reappearing with her hat half filled with crimson
silk-petaled cactus blooms, scattering them at the head of the cairn.
"Seemed like there jest had to be flowers," she said as, with Grit
nosing close to his mistress, they mounted to the road. The gray mare
made no bother and soon they were riding down toward the strip of Bad
Lands. Sandy let the collie go afoot for the time.
The glory of the range departed, the cliffs turned slate color, then
black, while a host of stars marshaled and burned without flicker. The
wind moaned through the trough of the cañon as they rode out on the
plain. Up somewhere in the darkness the buzzards came circling down, to
settle on the ledge beside the carcasses of the two horses.
It was close to midnight when they reached the home ranch, riding past
the outbuildings, the bunk-house of the men where a light twinkled, the
cook shack, the corrals, up to the main house. There they alighted. All
about cottonwoods rustled in the dark, the air was sweet and cool, not
far from frost. Molly Casey shivered as she moved stiffly in her
saddle. Sandy lifted her from the saddle and carried her up the steps,
across the porch, kicking open the door of the living-room where the
embers of a fire glowed. There was no other light in the big room, but
there was sufficient to show the great form of Mormon, stowed at ease in
a chair, asleep and snoring.
Sam struck a match and lit a lamp. He struck Mormon mightily between his
shoulders.
"Gawd!" gasped the heavyweight partner. "I been asleep. But there's a
kittle of hot water, Sandy. Where's the--what in time are you totin'? A
gel or a boy?"
"This is Miss Molly Casey," said Sandy gravely, setting down the girl.
"Miss Casey, this is Mr. Peters. Mormon, Miss Molly is goin' to tie up
to the Three Star for a bit."
Mormon, a little sheepish at the suddenly developing age of the girl as
she shook hands with him, recovered himself and beamed at her. "Yo're
sure welcome," he said. "Boss hired you? Cowgirl or cook?"
Sandy noticed the girl's lips quiver and he slipped an arm about her
shoulders. He was not woman-shy with this girl who needed help, and who
seemed a boy.
"Don't you take no notice of him an' his kiddin'," he said. "We'll make
him rustle some grub fo' all of us an' then we-all 'll turn in. I'll
show you yore room. Up the stairs an' the last door on the right. Here's
some matches. There's a lamp on the bureau up there. Give you a call
when supper's ready."
He led her to the door and gave her a friendly little shove, guessing
that she wanted to be alone.
"The kid's lost her father, lost most everything 'cept her dawg," he
said to Mormon. "Thought we might adopt her, sort of, then I thought
mebbe we'd hire her--for mascot."
"Lost her daddy? An' me hornin' in an' tryin' to kid her! I ain't got
the sense of a drowned gopher, sometimes," said Mormon contritely.
"She's game, plumb through, ain't she, Sam? Stands right up to trouble?"
"You bet. Mormon, open up a can of greengages, will ye? I reckon she's
got a sweet tooth, same as me."
Molly Casey was not through standing up to trouble. They coaxed her to
eat and she managed to make a meal that satisfied them. Then she got up
to go to her room, with Grit nuzzling close to her, her fingers in his
ruff, twisting nervously at the strands of hair.
"Do you reckon," she asked the three partners, "that Dad knows he fooled
me when he told me to jump? If I'd known he c'udn't git clear I'd have
stuck--same as he would if I was caught. Do you reckon he knows
that--now?"
"I'd be surprised if he didn't," said Sandy gravely. "You did what he
wanted, anyway."
She shook her head.
"If I'd been on the outside, he w'udn't have jumped, no matter how much
I begged him. I didn't think of the brake. Don't seem quite square,
somehow, way I acted. Good night. What time do you-all git up?"
"With the sun, soon's the big bell rings," said Sandy. "Good night."
She looked at them gravely and went out.
"Botherin' about playin' square in jumpin'," said Sandy. "That gel is
square on all twelve eidges. Sam, slide out an' muzzle that bell. She'll
likely cry herself to sleep after a bit but she'll need all the sleep
she can git. No sense in wakin' her up at sun-up."
"How'd you come to know so much about gels?" asked Mormon.
"Me? I don't know the first thing about 'em," protested Sandy.
"No more'n any man," put in Sam. "'Cept it's Mormon. He's sure had the
experience."
"Experience," said Mormon, with a yawn, "may teach a man somethin' about
mules but not wimmen. Woman is like the climate of the state of Kansas,
where I was born. Thirty-four below at times and as high as one-sixteen
above. Blowin' hot an' cold, rangin' from a balmy breeze through a rain
shower or a thunder-storm, up to a snortin' tornado. Average number of
workin' days, about one hundred an' fifty. Them's statistics. It ain't
so hard to set down what a woman's done at the end of a year, if you got
a good mem'ry, but tryin' to guess what she is goin' to do has got the
weather man backed off inter a corner an' squealin' for help. They ain't
all like Kansas. My first resembled it, the second was sorter
tropic--she run off with a rainmaker an' I hear she's been divorced
three times since then. Mebbe that's an exaggeration. My third must
have been born someways nigh the no'th pole. W'en she got mad she'd
freeze the blood in yore veins.
"No, sir, that feller in the po'try who says, 'I learned about wimmen
from 'er,' was braggin'. Now, this gel of Casey's 'pears like what her
dad 'ud call a good prospect, but you can't tell. Fool's gold is bright
enough but you can't change it to the real stuff no matter how you
polish it."
"Ever see the sour-milk batter Pedro fixes fo' hot cakes?" asked Sam.
"Sure I have. What's that got to do with it?" demanded Mormon.
"That's what you've got sloppin' inside of yore haid 'stead of brains.
Yore disposition concernin' wimmen is gen'ally soured. You 'mind me of
the man from New Jersey who come out west to buy a ranch. A hawss
throwed him five times hand-runnin'. He ropes a steer that happens to
run into the bum loop he was swingin' an' it snakes him out'n the
saddle. A pesky cow chases him when he was afoot, a couple calves gits a
rope twisted round his stummick an' lastly a mule kicks him into a bunch
of cactus. Whereupon he remarks, 'I don't figger I was calculated for
runnin' a cattle ranch,' sells out an' goes back to herdin' muskeeters
in New Jersey.
"Mormon, you warn't calculated to handle wimmen. This li'l' gel is game
as they make 'em, an' I reckon she's right sweet if she on'y gits a
chance. Leastwise, I see several signs of pay dirt this afternoon an'
evenin' as I reckon Sandy done the same. She's been trailin' her dad all
over hell an' creation, talkin' like him, swearin' like him, actin' like
him. Never see nothin' different. All she needs is a chance."
"What's the idee in pickin' on me?" asked Mormon aggrievedly. "She's as
welcome as grass in spring. They ain't no one got a bigger heart than me
fo' kids."
"No one got a bigger heart, mebbe," said Sam caustically. "Nor none a
smaller brain. All engine an' no gasoline in the tank!"
"She's an orphan," went on Sandy. "She ain't got a cent that I know of.
The claims her old dad mentioned ain't no good because, in the first
place, they'd have been worked if they was; second place, they're over
to Dynamite an' the sharps say Dynamite's a flivver. All she has in
sight is the dawg. Some dawg! Comes in from the desert an' takes us out
to her an' Pat Casey--him dyin'. Ef it hadn't been fo' the dawg, she'd
have stayed there, to my notion. Got some sort of idee she'd deserted
ship ef she hadn't stuck till it was too late fo' her to crawl out of
that slit in the mesa. She's fifteen an' she's got sense. I figger we
better turn in right now an' hold a pow-wow with the gel ter-morrer."
"Second the motion," said Sam.
"Third it," said Mormon.
And the Three Musketeers of the Range went off to bed.
CHAPTER III
MOLLY
Molly came down next morning in the faded blue gingham. Sandy marked how
worn it was and marked an item in his mind--clothes. He smiled at her
with the sudden showing of his sound white teeth that made many friends.
She was much too young, too frank, too like a boy to affect him with any
of his woman-shyness. He did not realize how close she was to womanhood,
seeing only how much she must have missed of real girlhood.
Molly had a snubby nose, a wide mouth, Irish eyes of blue that were far
apart and crystal clear, freckles and a lot of brown hair that she wore
in a long braid wound twice about her well-shaped head. She was a
combination of curves and angles, of well-rounded neck and arms and legs
with collar-bones and hips over-apparent, immature but not awkward.
None of the three partners observed these things in detail. All of them
noted that her eyes were steady, friendly, trusting, and that when she
smiled at them it was like the flash of water in a tree-shady pond, when
a trout leaps. Grit, entering with her, divided his attentions among the
men, shoving a moist nose at last into Sandy's palm and lying down
obedient, his tail thumping amicably, as Sandy examined the tape
protectors.
"You lie round the ranch for a day or so," he told the collie, "an'
you'll be as good as new."
"Fo' a sheepdawg," said Mormon, "he sure shapes fine."
Molly's eyes flashed. "He don't _know_ he's a sheepdawg," she protested.
"He's never even seen one, 'less it was a mountain sheep, 'way up
against the skyline. Samson liked him. Don't you like him?"
"I like him fine," Mormon answered hurriedly. "Fine!"
"Ef you-all didn't, we c'ud shack on somewheres. I c'ud git work down to
the settlemints, I reckon. I don't aim to put you out any. I've been
thinkin' erbout that. 'Less you should happen to want a woman to run the
house. I don't know much about housekeepin' but I c'ud l'arn. It's a
woman's job, chasin' dirt. I can cook--some. Dad used to say my
camp-bread an' biscuits was fine. I c'ud earn what I eat, I reckon. An'
what Grit 'ud eat. We don't aim to stay unless we pay--someway."
There was a touch of fire to her independence, a chip on the shoulder of
her pride the three partners recognized and respected.
"See here, Molly Casey,"--Sandy used exactly the same tone and manner he
would have taken with a boy--"that's yore way of lookin' at it. Then
there's our side. You figger yore dad was a pritty good miner, I
reckon?"
"He sure knew rock. Every one 'lowed that. They was always more'n one
wantin' to grubstake him but he'd never take it. Figgered he didn't want
to split any strike he might make an' figgered he w'udn't take no man's
money 'less he was dead sure of payin' him back. Dad was a good miner."
"All right. Now, yore dad believes in them claims. The last two words he
says was 'Molly' and 'mines.' I give him my word then and there, like he
would have to me, to watch out for yore interests. My word is my
pardners' word. I'm willin' to gamble those claims of his'll pan out
some day. Until they do, ef you-all 'll stay on at the Three Star, stop
Mormon stompin' in from the corral with dirty boots, ride herd on Sam
an' me the same way, mebbe cook us up some of them biscuits once in a
while, why, it'll be fine! Then there's yore schoolin'. Yore dad 'ud
wish you to have that. I don't suppose you've had a heap. An' you sabe,
Molly, that you swear mo' often than a gel usually swears."
She opened her eyes wide. "But I don't cuss when I say 'em. An' I don't
use the worst ones. Dad w'udn't let me. I can read an' write, spell an'
cipher some. But Dad needed me more'n I needed learnin'."
"But you got to have it," said Mormon earnestly. "S'pose them claims pan
out way rich and you git all-fired wealthy? Bein' a gel, you sabe
clothes, di'monds, silks, satins an' feather fuss. You'll want to learn
the pianner. You'll want to know what to git an' how to wear it. Won't
want folks laffin' at you like they laffed at Sam, time he won fo'
hundred dollars shootin' craps an' went to Galveston where a smart Alec
of a clerk sells him a spiketail coat, wash vest an' black pants with
braid on the seams.
"Sam, he don't know how to wear 'em, or when. His laigs sure looked
prominent in them braided pants. Warn't any side pockets in 'em,
neither, fo' him to hide his hands. Sam's laigs got warped when he was
young, lyin' out nights in the rain 'thout a tarp'. That suit set back
Sam a heap of money an' it ain't no mo' use to him than an extry shell
to a terrapin."
He grinned at Molly with his face creased into good humor that could not
be resisted. She laughed as Sam joined in, but the determination of her
rounded chin returned after the merriment had passed.
"If you did that--took my Daddy's place," she said, "why, we'd be
pardners, same as him an' me was. When the claims pan out, half of it'll
have to be yores. I won't stay no other way."
The glances of the three partners exchanged a mutual conclusion, a
mutual approval.
"That goes," said Sandy, putting out his hand. "Fo' all three of us.
When the mines are payin' dividends, we split, half on 'count of the
Three Star, half to you. Providin' you fall in line with the eddication,
so's to do yore dad, yo'se'f an' us, yore pardners, due credit when the
money starts comin' in. Sabe?"
"I don't sabe the eddication part of it," she answered. "Jest what does
that mean? I don't want to go to school with a lot of kids who'll laf at
me."
"You don't have to. As pardners," Sandy went on earnestly, "I don't mind
tellin' you that the Three Bar has put all its chips into the kitty an',
while we figger sure to win, we can't cash in any till the increase of
the herds starts to make a showin'. Not till after the fall round-up,
anyway. So yore eddication'll have to be put off a bit. Meantime you'll
learn to ride an' rope an' mebbe break a colt or two, between meals an'
ridin' herd on the dirt. When you start in, it'll be at one of them
schools in the East where they make a speshulty of western heiresses.
How's that sound?"
"Sounds fine. On'y, you've picked up Dad's hand to gamble with. Mebbe it
ain't yore game, nor the one you'd choose to play if it wasn't forced on
you."
"Sister," said Sam, "yo're skinnin' yore hides too close. Sandy 'ud
gamble on which way a horn-toad'll spit. It's meat an' drink to him. We
won this ranch on a gamble--him playin'. He gambles as he breathes. An'
whatever hand he plays, me an' Mormon backs. Why, if we win on this
minin' deal, we're way ahead of the game, seein' we don't put up
anythin' in cold collateral. It's a sure-fire cinch."
"Sam says it," backed Sandy. "One good gamble!"
Molly's eyes had lightened for a moment, losing their gloom of grief
they had held since the shadow of the circling buzzards in the gorge had
darkened them. She fumbled at the waistband of her one-piece gown,
working at it with her fingers, producing a golden eagle which she
handed to Sandy.
"That's my luck-piece," she said. "Dad give it to me one time he
cleaned up good on a placer claim. Nex' time you gamble, will you play
that--for me? Half an' half on the winnin's. I sure need some clothes."
The glint of the born gambler's superstition showed in Sandy's eyes as
he took the ten dollars.
"I sure will do that," he said. "An' mighty soon. Now then, talk's over,
all agreed. Sam an' me has got some work to do outside. Won't be back
much before sun-down. Mormon, he's goin' to be middlin' busy, too.
Molly, you jest acquaint yorese'f with the Three Star. Riders won't be
back till dark. No one about but Mormon, Pedro the cook, an' Joe. Rest
up all you can. I'm goin' to bring yore dad in to runnin' water."
Tears welled in Molly's eyes as she thanked him. Again Sandy saw the
girlish frankness change to the gratefulness of a woman's spirit,
looking out at him between her lids. It made him a little uneasy. The
men went out together, walking toward the corral.
"Sam an' me's goin' to bring in what's left of Pat Casey, Mormon.
Wagon's kindlin', harness is plumb rotten. Ain't much to bring 'cept
him, I reckon. We'll take the buckboard, with a tarp' to stow him under.
Up to you to knock together a coffin an' dig a grave under the
cottonwoods an' below the spring. Right where that li'l' knoll makes the
overflow curve 'ud be a good spot. Use up them extry boards we got for
the bunk-house. Git Joe to help you. No sense in lettin' the gel see
you, of course."
"Nice occupation fo' a sunny day," grumbled Mormon, but, as the
buckboard drove off, he was busy planing boards in the blacksmith's
shop, with the door closed against intrusion.
Mid-afternoon found him with the coffin completed. He rounded up the
half-breed to help him dig the grave, first locating Molly in a hammock
he had slung for her in the shade of the trees by the cistern. He had
furnished her with his pet literature, an enormous mail-order catalogue
from a Chicago firm. It was on the ground, the breeze ruffling the
illustrated pages, lifting some stray wisps of hair on the girl's neck
as she lay, fast asleep, relaxed in the wide canvas hammock, her face
checkered by the shifting leaves between her and the sun.
Mormon could move as softly as a cat, for all his bulk. There was turf
about the cistern, he had made no sound arriving, but he tiptoed off,
his kindly mouth rounded into an O of silence, his weather crinkled eyes
half-closed.
"She's jest a baby," he said, half aloud, as he passed beyond the trees
to where Joe waited with pick and spade.
The soil was soft and clear from stone. An hour sufficed to sink a shaft
for Pat Casey's last bed. Mormon carefully adjusted the headboard he had
fashioned from a thick plank, to be carved later when the lettering was
decided upon. This done he buckled on the belt he had discarded, from
which his holster and revolver swung. Sandy carried two guns, his
partners one, habits of earlier, more stirring days, toting them as
inevitably as they wore spurs, though there was little occasion to use
them on the Three Star, save to put a hurt animal out of misery, or kill
a rattlesnake.
Moisture streamed from Mormon's face, patched his clothes as the heat
and his exertions temporarily melted some of his superfluous adiposity.
Joe, his mahogany face stolid as a wooden carving, rolled a cigarette.
"I sure hate to see a nameless grave," said Mormon.
"Si, Señor," Joe's amiability agreed.
"You go git a dipper. I'm drier'n Dry Crick. Fetch it full from the
spring." The half-breed ambled off. Mormon wiped his face with his
bandanna. Suddenly his big body stiffened. He heard Molly's voice from
the cistern, frightened, then storming in anger. Mormon ran at a
sprinter's gait from the cottonwoods, along a side of the corral,
through the trees bordering the cistern. The girl was out of the
hammock, facing a man in riding breeches and puttees, his face concealed
for the moment by his hands. A sleeve of the girl's frock was torn away,
the outworn fabric in streamers. The man's hands came down and Mormon
recognized him for Jim Plimsoll, owner of the Good Luck Pool Parlors, in
the little cattle town of Hereford, where faro, roulette, chuckaluck and
craps were played in the back room, owner also of a near-by horse ranch.
There was blood on his face, the marks of finger nails.
Plimsoll jumped for the girl, caught her by one arm roughly. She
struggled fiercely, silently, striking at him with her free fist.
Mormon's gun flashed from its sheath as he shouted at the man. Plimsoll
wheeled, releasing Molly. His dark face was livid with rage, a pistol
gleamed as he plucked it from beneath the waistband of his riding
breeches. The turf spatted between his feet as Mormon fired.
"Got the drop on ye, Jim! Nex' shot'll be higher. Shove that gun back.
Now then," as Plimsoll sullenly obeyed, "what in hell do you figger
yo're doin'?" Mormon's jovial face was tense, his voice stern and cold,
he stood crouched forward a little from the hips, legs apart, his gun a
thing of menace that seemed to be alive, snaky.
"Keep still," he ordered, walking toward the pair, his gun covering
Plimsoll, the cheery blue of his eyes changed to the color of ice in the
shade, the pupils mere pin-pricks. Molly glanced at him once, fingers
caressing her bruised arm.
"He kissed me while I was asleep, the damned skunk!" she flared. "I'd
sooner hev rattlesnake-pizen on my lips!" She stopped rubbing the arm to
scrub fiercely at her mouth with the back of her hand.
"It ain't the first time I've kissed you," said Plimsoll. "Yore dad
didn't stop me from doin' it. I didn't notice you scratching like a
wildcat either. Where's your dad? And where do you come in on this deal
between old friends?" he demanded of Mormon.
"Her dad's dead," said Mormon simply. "Molly is stayin' fo' a spell at
the Three Star. Sandy Bourke, Sam Manning an' me is lookin' out fo'
her, an' we aim to do a good job of it. Sabe?"
Plimsoll's thin-lipped mouth sneered with his eyes.
"Gone in for baby-farming, have you, or robbing the cradle? Who's
playing the king in this deal? I----" The leer suddenly vanished from
his face, the tip of his tongue licked his lips. Mormon's gun was slowly
coming up level with his heart, steady as Mormon's gaze, finger
compressing the trigger.
"The law reckons you a man--so fur," said Mormon. "Yore pals 'ud pack a
jury to hang me fo' shootin' the dirty heart out of you, but--ef you
ever let out a foul word or a look about that gel, I'll take my chance
of their bein' enough white men round here to 'quit me. There ought to
be a bounty on yore scalp an' ears. You hear me, Jim Plimsoll, I'm
talkin' straight. Now git, head yore hawss fo' the short trail to
Hereford an' keep travelin'. Pronto!"
Plimsoll's pony was standing under the trees and the gambler turned and,
with an attempted laugh, swaggered toward it.
The threat to his personal safety, his desire to fling a sneer at
Mormon, seemed to have halted any correlation of the statement
concerning the death of the girl's father until now.
"If that's true about your dad," he said, "I'm sorry. How did he die?"
Sensing the hypocrisy of the shift to sympathy, the girl took a step
forward. Mormon's pupils contracted again; his finger itched to press
the trigger it touched.
"It's none of yore business," said the girl. "You git."
Plimsoll's eyes shifted to Mormon's big body, stiffening to the crouch
that prefaced shooting. He faced toward the trees again, flinging his
last words over his shoulder.
"None of my business? I don't agree with you there, you little
hell-weasel. Your father and me had more than one deal together. You and
I may have to do business together yet, Molly mine!"
Molly's teeth showed between her parted lips, her fingers were hooked.
Mormon anticipated her indignant leap. His gun spurted fire, the
expensive Stetson broadrim seemed lifted from Plimsoll's hair by an
invisible hand. With the report it sailed forward, side-slipped, landed
on its rim, perforated by a steel-nosed thirty-eight caliber bullet.
"I give you last warnin'," roared Mormon.
Plimsoll sprang ahead like a racer at the starter's shot, snatched at
his hat, missed it, let it lie as he ran on to his horse, mounted and
went galloping off. Mormon holstered his gun and swung about to Molly,
standing with crimson cheeks, blazing eyes and a young bosom turbulent
with emotions.
"I wisht you'd killed him. I wisht you'd killed him!" she cried. "I
wisht I had a gun--or a knife! I hate him--hate him--_hate him_! When he
says he was ever in a deal with Dad, he lies. Dad stood for him and that
was all. He purtended to be awful strong for Dad, purtended to be fond
of me, jest to swarm 'round Dad, for some reason. Brought me a doll
once. I was thirteen. What in hell did I want with a doll?" she panted.
"I burned the damn thing that night in the fire. He kissed me an' Dad
seemed to think I owed it him for the doll. I nigh bit my lip off
afterward. I wisht yore first shot had been higher, or yore second
lower, Peters."
"Call me Uncle Mormon, Molly. I had all I c'ud do not to make it plumb
center, li'l' gel, but the jury'd ring in a cold deck on me if I had.
He's sure some snake. But we'll take care of Jim Plimsoll, yore Uncle
Mormon, with Sam an' Sandy."
Patting Molly's shoulder, Mormon smiled at her with his irresistible
grin, and she reflected it faintly as she tucked in the remnants of her
torn sleeve.
"That's the on'y dress I got till Sandy Bourke wins me some money," she
said. "You sure are quick, Uncle Mormon, when you git inter action. An'
you can shoot some."
"I reckon I coil up tight, between times, like a spring. Used to be
pritty light an' limber on my feet oncet. As for shootin', I wish Sandy
'ud been here. He'd have shot both the heels off that fo'-flusher, right
an' left, 'thout you ever see his hands move. I ain't so bad, Sam's
better, but we had to throw a lot of lead in practise. Sandy shoots like
he walks or breathes. It comes natcherul to him, like Sam's ear fo'
music. I've allus 'lowed Sandy must hev cut his teeth on a cartridge."
His arm around her shoulder, purposely chatting away, Mormon led Molly
toward the ranch-house, waving off the half-breed who came toward them,
his dipper of the spring water half emptied in the excitement.
Plimsoll's horse was stirring up a dust-cloud on the way to Hereford,
other puffs, far-away toward the range, proclaimed that the buckboard
was on its way with its funeral freight.
The body of the old prospector was lowered into the grave with the last
of the daylight. The raw scar of the grave was covered with turfs Mormon
ordered cut by the half-breed. Molly Casey walked away alone, her head
high, the corner of her lower lip caught under her teeth, eyes winking
back the tears. It was the headboard that had forced her struggle for
composure. Mormon had marked on it, with the heavy lead of a carpenter's
pencil.
PATRICK CASEY
lies here
where the grass grows
and the water runs. He
looked for gold in the desert
and found death.
Buried June 10,
1920
"Ef that suits you," he told Molly, "they's a chap over to Hereford
who's a wolf on carvin'. My letterin's punk. When yore mines pay you
c'ud have it in stone."
"You-all are awful good to me," was all she could trust herself to say.
Each of the Three Musketeers of the Range felt a tug to take her in his
arms and comfort her. Instead they looked at one another, as men of
their breed do. Sam pulled at his mustache. Mormon rubbed the top of his
bald head and Sandy rolled a cigarette and smoked it silently.
Molly ate no supper that night. Before dawn Sandy thought he heard the
door of her room open and soft footfalls stealing down the stairs. When
he went later to the spring he found the grave covered with the wild
blooms that the girl had picked in the dewy dawn.
CHAPTER IV
SANDY CALLS THE TURN
It was a week after Plimsoll's dismissal from the Three Star premises,
that one of the riders, coming back from Hereford with the mail, brought
rumors of a new strike at Dynamite. Neither of the partners paid much
attention to a report so often revived by rumor and as swiftly dying out
again. But the man said that Plimsoll had stated that he expected to go
over to the mining camp in the interests of claims located by Patrick
Casey in which he had a half-interest, by reason of having grubstaked
the prospector.
"There's the thorn under _that_ saddle," said Sandy to Mormon. "That's
what Jim Plimsoll meant by his 'deal.' I don't believe he'd stir up
things unless he was fairly sure there was something doin' oveh to
Dynamite. He may be wrong but he usually tries to bet safe."
"Molly's father located Dynamite, didn't he?"
"So she tells me. Hopeful, as he called it. Seems he picked up some rich
float. This float was where a dyke of porphyry comes up to the surface
an' got weathered away down to the pay ore. Leastwise, this was her
dad's theory. He told her everything he thought as they shacked erlong
together, I reckon, an' she remembers it. He figgers this sylvanite lies
under this porphyry reef, sabe? Porphyry snakes underground, sometimes
fifty feet thick, sometimes twice that, an' hard as steel. Matter of
luck where you hit it how fur you have to go. Cost too much time an'
labor an' money for the crowd that made up the rush to stay with it,
'less some one of them hits it at grass roots an' stahts a real boom
atop of the rush. They don't an' Hopeful becomes Hopeless. Me, I got
fo'-five chances to grubstake in that time, but I'm broke. I reckon
Casey's claims, which is now Molly's claims, is the pick of the camp.
Not much doubt, from what I pick up, that he was sure a good miner. One
of the ol' Desert Rats that does the locatin' fo' some one else to git
the money.
"Molly ses her dad never grubstaked. She don't lie an' she was close to
the old man. Mo' like pardners than dad an' daughter. Plimsoll smells
somethin'. Figgers there's somethin' in the rumor an' stahts this talk
of bein' pardners with Casey 'cause there's a strike. Me, I'm goin' to
take a pasear to town soon an' I'll have a li'l' conversation with Jim
the Gambolier."
"Count me in on that," said Sam.
"Me too," said Mormon.
"Can't all three leave the ranch to once," demurred Sandy.
The half-breed came sleepily round the corner of the ranch-house and
struck at the gong for the breakfast call. The vibrations flooded the
air with wave after wave of barbaric sound and Joe pounded, with
awakening delight in the savage noise and rhythm, until Sandy, after
yelling uselessly, threw a rock at him and hit him between the
shoulders, whereupon the light died out of his face and he shuffled
away.
With the boom of the gong, daylight leaped up from the rim of the world.
In the east the mountains seemed artificial, sharply profiled like a
theatrical setting, a slate-purple in color. To the west, the sharp
crests were luminous with a halo that stole down them, staining them
rose. With the jump of the sun everything took on color and lost form,
plain and hills swimming, seeming to be composed of vapor, the shapes of
the mountains shifting every second, tenuous, smoky. The air was crisp,
making the fingers tingle. The riders came from their bunk-houses,
yawning, sloshing a hasty toilet at a trough with good-natured banter,
hurrying on to the shack, where Joe tendered them the prodigious array
of viands provided by Pedro, who waited himself on the three partners
and the girl, at the ranch-house. The smell of bacon and hot coffee
spiced the air. Sam, twisting his mustache, led the way.
"Smells like somethin' in the line of new bread to me," he said. "Bread
or--it ain't _biscuits_, Molly?"
"Sure is." Molly came in with a plate piled high with biscuits that were
evidently the present pride of her heart. "Made a-plenty," she
announced. "Had to wrastle Pedro away from the stove an' I ain't quite
on to that oven yet, but they look good, don't they?"
"They sure do," said Sandy, taking one to break and butter it. The
eagerness with which his jaws clamped down upon it died into a
meditative chewing as of a cow uncertain about the quality of her cud.
He swallowed, took a deep swig of coffee and deliberately went on with
his biscuit. Mormon and Sam solemnly followed his example while Molly
beamed at them.
"You don't _say_ they're good?" she said.
"Too busy eating," said Sandy. And winked at Sam.
Molly caught the wink, took a biscuit, buttered it, bit into it.
Camp-bread and biscuits, eaten in the open, garnished with the
wilderness sauce that creates appetite, eaten piping hot, are mighty
palatable though the dough is mixed with water and shortening is
lacking. As a camp cook, Molly was a success. Confused with Pedro's
offer of lard and a stove that was complicated compared to her Dutch
kettle, the result was a bitter failure that she acknowledged as soon as
her teeth met through the deceptive crust.
Molly was slow to tears and quick to wrath. She picked up the plate of
biscuits and marched out with them, her back very straight. In the
kitchen the three partners heard first the smash of crockery, then the
bang of a pan, a staccato volley of words. She came in again,
empty-handed, eyes blazing.
"There's no bread. Pedro's makin' hot cakes." Then, as they looked at
her solemnly: "You think you're damned smart, don't you, tryin' to fool
me, purtendin' they was good when they'd pizen the chickens? I hate
folks who _act_ lies, same as them that speaks 'em."
"I've tasted worse," said Mormon. "Honest I have, Molly. My first wife
put too much saleratus an' salt in at first but, after a bit, she was a
wonder--as a cook."
Molly, as always, melted to his grin.
"I ain't got no mo' manners than a chuckawaller," she said penitently.
"Sandy, would you bring me a cook-book in from town?"
"Got one somewheres around."
"No we ain't. Mormon used the leaves for shavin'," said Sam. "Last
winter. W'udn't use his derned ol' catalogue."
"I'll git one," said Sandy. "Here's the hot cakes."
They devoured the savory stacks, spread with butter and sage-honey, in
comparative silence. There came the noise of the riders going off for
the day's duties laid out by Sam, acting foreman for the month. Sandy
got up and went to the window, turning in mock dismay.
"Here comes that Bailey female," he announced. "Young Ed Bailey drivin'
the flivver. Sure stahted bright an' early. Wonder what she's nosin'
afteh now? Mormon--an' you, Sam," he added sharply, "you'll stick around
till she goes. Sabe? I don't aim to be talked to death an' then pickled
by her vinegar, like I was las' time she come oveh."
A tinny machine, in need of paint, short of oil, braked squeakingly as
a horn squawked and the auto halted by the porch steps. Young Ed Bailey
slung one leg over another disproportionate limb, glanced at the
windows, rolled a cigarette and lit it. His aunt, tall, gaunt, clad in
starched dress and starched sunbonnet, with a rigidity of spine and
feature that helped the fancy that these also had been starched,
descended, strode across the porch and entered the living-room, her
bright eyes darting all about, needling Molly, taking in every detail.
"Out lookin' fo' a stray," she announced. "Red-an'-white heifer we had
up to the house for milkin'. Got rambuncterous an' loped off. Had one
horn crumpled. Rawhide halter, ef she ain't got rid of it. You ain't
seen her, hev you?"
"No m'm, we ain't. No strange heifer round the Three Star that answers
that description." Sam winked at Molly, who was flushing under the
inspection of Miranda Bailey, maiden sister of the neighbor owner of the
Double-Dumbbell Ranch. He fancied the missing milker an excuse if not an
actual invention to furnish opportunity for a visit to the Three Star,
an inspection of Molly Casey and subsequent gossip. "You-all air up to
date," he said, "ridin' herd in a flivver."
"I see a piece in the paper the other day," she said, "about men playin'
a game with autos 'stead of hawsses--polo it was called--an' another
piece about cowboys cuttin' out an' ropin' from autos. Hawsses is
passin'. Science is replacin' of 'em."
"Reckon they'll last my time," drawled Sandy. "I hear they aim to roll
food up in pills an' do us cattlemen out of a livin'. But I ain't
worryin'. Me, I prefers steaks--somethin' I can set my teeth in. I
reckon there's mo' like me. Let me make you 'quainted with Miss Bailey,
Molly. This is Molly Casey, whose dad is dead. Molly, if you-all want to
skip out an' tend to them chickens, hop to it."
Molly caught the suggestion that was more than a hint and started for
the door. The woman checked her with a question.
"How old air you, Molly Casey?"
The girl turned, her eyes blank, her manner charged with indifference
that unbent to be polite.
"Fifteen." And she went out.
"H'm," said Miranda Bailey, "fifteen. Worse'n I imagined."
Sandy's eyebrows went up. The breath that carried his words might have
come from a refrigerator.
"You goin' back in the flivver?" he asked, "or was you aimin' to keep
a-lookin' fo' that red-an'-white heifer?"
Miranda sniffed.
"I'm goin', soon's as I've said somethin' in the way of a word of advice
an' warnin', seein' as how I happened this way. It's a woman's matter or
I wouldn't meddle. But, what with talk goin' round Hereford in
settin'-rooms, in restyrongs, in kitchens, as well as in dance-halls an'
gamblin' hells where they sell moonshine, it's time it was carried to
you which is most concerned, I take it, for the good of the child, not
to mention yore own repitashuns."
"Where was it _you_ heard it, ma'am?" asked Sam politely.
"Where you never would, Mister Soda-Water Sam-u-el Manning," she
flashed. "In the parlor of the Baptis' Church. I ain't much time an' I
ain't goin' to waste it to mince matters. Here's a gel, a'most a woman,
livin' with you three bachelor men."
"I've been married," ventured Mormon.
"So I understand. Where's yore wife?"
"One of 'em's dead, one of 'em's divorced an' I don't rightly sabe where
the third is, nor I ain't losin' weight concernin' that neither."
"More shame to you. You're one of these women-haters, I s'pose?"
"No m'm, I ain't. That's been my trouble. I admire the sex but I've been
a bad picker. I'm jest a woman-dodger."
Miranda's sniff turned into a snort.
"I ain't heard nothin' much ag'in' you men, I'll say that," she
conceded. "I reckon you-all think I've jest come hornin' in on what
ain't my affair. Mebbe that's so. If you've figgered this out same way I
have, tell me an' I'll admit I'm jest an extry an' beg yore pardons."
"Miss Bailey," said Sandy, his manner changed to courtesy, "I believe
you've come here to do us a service--an' Molly likewise. So fur's I sabe
there's been some remahks passed concernin' her stayin' here 'thout a
chaperon, so to speak. Any one that 'ud staht that sort of talk is a
blood relation to a centipede an' mebbe I can give a guess as to who it
is. I reckon I can persuade him to quit."
"Mebbe, but you can't stop what's started any more'n a horn-toad can
stop a landslide, Sandy Bourke. You can't kill scandal with gunplay. The
gel's too young, in one way, an' not young enough in another, to be
stayin' on at the Three Star. You oughter have sense enough to know
that. Ef one of you was married, or had a wife that 'ud stay with you,
it 'ud be different. Or if there was a woman housekeeper to the outfit."
"That ain't possible," put in Mormon. "I told you I'm a woman-dodger.
Sandy here is woman-shy. Sam is wedded to his mouth-organ."
The flivver horn squawked outside. Miranda pointed her finger at Sandy.
"There's chores waitin' fo' me. I didn't come off at daylight jest to be
spyin', whatever you men may think. You either got to git a grown woman
here or send the gel away, fo' her own good, 'fore the talk gits so
it'll shadder her life. I ain't married. I don't expect to be, but I
aimed to be, once, 'cept for a dirty bit of gossip that started in my
home town 'thout a word of truth in it. Now, I've said my say, you-all
talk it over."
Sandy went to the door with her, helped her into the machine. It
shudderingly gathered itself together and wheezed off; he came back with
his face serious.
"She's right," he said.
"Mormon," said Sam, "it's up to you. Advertise fo' Number Three to come
back--all is forgiven--or git you a divo'ce, it's plumb easy oveh in the
nex' state--an' pick a good one this time."
"We got to send her away," said Sandy. "Me, I'm goin' into Herefo'd
to-night. I aim to git a cook-book, interview Jim Plimsoll an' then
bu'st his bank. One of you come erlong. Match fo' it."
"Bu'st the bank what with?" asked Sam.
Sandy produced the ten-dollar luck-piece and held it up.
"This. Mormon, choose yore side."
"Heads."
Sandy flipped the coin. It fell with a golden ring on the floor.
"Tails," said Sandy inspecting it. "You come, Sam. Staht afteh noon. Oil
up yore gun."
"I knowed I'd lose," said Mormon dolefully. "Dang my luck anyway."
It was a little after seven o'clock when Sandy and Sam walked out of the
Cactus Restaurant, leaving their ponies hitched to the rail in front.
They strolled down the main street of Hereford across the railroad
tracks to where the "Brisket," as the cowboys styled the little town's
tenderloin, huddled its collection of shacks, with their false fronts
faced to the dusty street and their rear entrances, still cumbered with
cases of empty bottles and idle kegs, turned to the almost dry bed of
the creek. The signs of ante-prohibition days, blistered and faded, were
still in place. Light showed in windows where fly-specked useless
licenses were displayed. Back of the bars a melancholy array of
soda-water advertised lack of interest in soft drinks. The front rooms
held no loungers, but the click of chips and murmurs of talk came from
behind closed doors.
Sandy stopped outside the place labeled "Good Luck Pool Parlors. J.
Plimsoll, Prop." The line "Best Liquor and Cigars" was half smeared out.
He patted gently the butts of the two Colts in the holsters, whose ends
were tied down to the fringe ornaments of his chaps. Sam stroked his
ropey mustache and eased the gun at his hip. Sandy pushed open the door
and went in. A man was playing Canfield at a table in the deserted bar.
As the pair entered he looked up with a "Howdy, gents?" shoving back a
rickety table and chair noisily on the uneven floor. The inner door
swung silently as at a signal and Jim Plimsoll came out. He stiffened a
little at the sight of the Three Star men and then grinned at Sam.
"How was the last bottle, Soda-Water?" he asked. "You didn't have to
change your name with Prohibition, did you? Nor your habits."
"Main thing that's changed is the quality of yore booze--an' the price,
neither fo' the better," said Sam carelessly.
"We ain't drinkin' ter-night, Jim," said Sandy. "Dropped in to hev a
li'l' talk with you an' then take a buck at the tiger."
Plimsoll's eyes glittered.
"Said talk bein' private," continued Sandy.
Plimsoll threw a glance at the man who had been posted for lookout and
he left with a curious gaze that took in Sandy's guns.
"Sorry I was away from the ranch, time you called," said Sandy, sitting
with one leg thrown over the corner of the table. "Hope to be there nex'
time. I hear you-all claim to have an interest in Pat Casey's minin'
locations, his interest now bein' his daughter's?"
"That any of your business?"
"I aim to make it my business," replied Sandy.
For a moment the two men fought a pitched battle with their eyes. It was
a warfare that Sandy Bourke was an expert in. The steel of his glance
often saved him the lead in his cartridges. Jim Plimsoll was no fool to
wage uneven contest. He fancied he would have the advantage over Sandy
later, if the pair really meant to play faro--in his place.
"I grubstaked him for the Hopeful-Dynamite discovery," he said.
"Got any papeh showin' that? Witnessed."
"You know as well as I do that papers ain't often drawn on grubstaking
contracts. A man's word is considered good."
"Pat Casey's would have been, I reckon," said Sandy.
"I've got witnesses."
"Well, we'll let that matteh slide till the mines make a showin'.
Meantime, there's talk goin' on in this town concernin' the gel an' her
livin' at Three Star. I look to you to contradict that so't of gossip,
Plimsoll, from now on."
Plimsoll flushed angrily.
"Who in hell do you think you are?" he demanded. "Who appointed you
censor to any man's speech?"
"A _man's_ speech don't have to be censored, Plimsoll. An' I reckon you
know who I am."
"You come here looking for trouble, with me?"
"I never hunt trouble, Jim. If I can't help buttin' into it, like a man
might ride into a rattlesnake in the mesquite, I aim to handle it. Ef I
ever got into real trouble, an' it resembled you, I'd make you climb so
fast, Plimsoll, you'd wish you had horns on yore knees an' eyebrows."
Plimsoll forced a laugh. "Fair warning, Sandy. I never raise a fuss with
a two-gun man. It ain't healthy. You've got me wrong in this matter."
"Glad to hear it. Then there won't be no argyment. Game open?"
"Wide. An' a little hundred-proof stuff to take the alkali out of your
throats. How about it?"
"I don't drink when I'm playin'. I aim to break the bank ter-night. I'm
feelin' lucky. Brought my mascot erlong."
"Meaning Sam here?"
All three laughed for a mutual clearance of the situation. Sandy had
said what he wanted and knew that Plimsoll interpreted it correctly.
They went into the back room amicably after Plimsoll had recalled his
lookout.
There was little to indicate the passing of the Volstead Act in the Good
Luck Pool Room, where the tables had long ago been taken out, though the
cue racks still stood in place. The place was foul with smoke and reeked
with the fumes of expensive but indifferently distilled liquor.
Hereford--the "brisket" end of it--had never been fussy about mixed
drinks. Redeye was, and continued to be, the favorite. A faro and a
roulette game, with a craps table, made up the equipment, outside of
half a dozen small tables given over to stud and draw poker.
Some fifty men were present, most of them playing. Many of them nodded
at Sandy and Sam as they walked over to the faro layout and stood
looking on. Plimsoll left them and went back to a table near the door,
where his chair was turned down at a game of draw. He started talking in
a low tone to the man seated next to him. The first interest of their
entrance soon died out. The dealer at faro went on imperturbably sliding
card after card out of the case, the case-keeper fingered the buttons on
the wires of his abacus and the players shifted their chips about the
layout or nervously shuffled them between the fingers of one hand.
Sandy knew the dealer for Sim Hahn, a man whose livelihood lay in the
dexterity of his slim well-kept fingers and his ability to reckon the
bets; swiftly to drag in or pay out losings and winnings without an
error. His face was without a wrinkle, clean-shaven, every slick black
hair in place, the flesh wax-like. He held a record--whispered, not
attested--of having more than once beaten a protesting gambler to the
draw and then subscribing to the funeral. As he came to the last turn,
with three cards left in the box, he paused, waiting for bets to be
made. His eyes met Sandy's and he nodded. Three men named the order of
the last three cards. None of them guessed the right one of the six ways
in which they might have appeared. Hahn took in, paid out, shuffled the
cards for a new deal. Sam nudged Sandy, speaking out of the corner of
his mouth words that no one else could catch.
"The hombre Plimsoll's talkin' to is 'Butch' Parsons. He's the killer
Brady hired over to the M-Bar-M to chase off the nesters."
Sandy said nothing, did not move. As the play began he turned and looked
at the "killer" who had been named "Butch," after he had shot two heads
of families that had preempted land on the range that Brady claimed as
part of his holding. Whatever the justice of that claim, it was
generally understood that Butch had killed in cold blood, Brady's
political pull smothering prosecution and inquiry. Butch had a hawkish
nose and an outcurving chin. He was practically bald. Reddish eyebrows
straggled sparsely above pale blue eyes, the color of cheap graniteware.
His lips were thin and pallid, making a hard line of his mouth. He
packed a gun, well back of him, as he sat at the game. Meeting Sandy's
lightly passing gaze, Butch sent out a puff of smoke from his
half-finished cigar. The pale eyes pointed the action, it might have
been a challenge, even a covert insult. Sandy ignored it, devoting his
attention to the case-keeper.
The jacks came out early, three of them losing, showing second on the
turn. A dozen bets went down on the fourth jack to win. Sandy placed the
luck-piece on the card, reached for a "copper" marker, and played it to
lose.
"That's a luck-piece, Hahn," he said. "If it loses, I'll take it up."
Hahn gave him an eye-flick of acknowledgment. He was used to mascots.
Sandy watched the play until at last the jack slid off to rest by the
side of the case, leaving the winning card, a nine, exposed. Sandy alone
had won. The luck-piece had proved its merit.
In twenty minutes Sam borrowed a stack from Sandy's steadily
accumulating winnings and departed for the craps table. He wanted
quicker action than faro gave him. Luck flirted with him, never entirely
deserting him. And Sandy won until the news of his luck spread through
the room. The gamblers began to get the hunch that the Three Star man
was going to break the bank. Not all at the faro layout attempted to
follow his bets. Plimsoll's roll had never yet been very badly crimped.
With the peculiar paradox of their kind, while they told each other that
Plimsoll's game was square, they held the secret conviction that Hahn's
fingers would manipulate the case in an emergency so that the house
would win. And they waited feverishly for the time to come when such a
show-down would arrive.
Sandy did not have many chips in front of him, but there were five small
oblongs of blue, markers representing five hundred dollars apiece. Hahn
laid the fingers of his right hand lightly across the top of the case,
the fingers of his left hand curled about it. It had come down to the
last turn of the deal again. Every player and onlooker knew what the
three cards were--a queen, a five and a deuce. The checking-board showed
that the queen had lost twice and won once, the five had won three times
and the deuce had won twice and lost once. Most of the players shifted
their bets accordingly, the queen to win, the five and deuce to lose.
Hahn still waited.
"Goin' to call th' turn?"
All eyes shifted to Sandy. No one else was going to try to name that
combination. If the order of the three cards were named correctly the
bank would pay four to one. If Sandy staked all on his call he would win
over ten thousand dollars. Plimsoll would have to open his safe. Hahn
did not have that amount in his cash drawer.
The rest--save Sam, now close behind Sandy, with ninety dollars winnings
cashed-in--watched Sandy enviously and curiously. Hahn was a wonder. The
case might be crooked, the spring eccentric. Plimsoll himself was
looking on. Butch Parsons stood beside him for a second and then
strolled into the front room. Another man followed him.
Sandy shoved the markers across the board, followed by his chips.
Apparently aimlessly, he hitched at his belt and the two Colts with
their tied-down holsters swung a little to the front, their handles just
touching his hips.
"Deuce--queen--five, I'm bettin'," he said. "_An' deal 'em slow._" His
voice drawled and his eyes lifted to Hahn's and rested there.
Hahn had been mechanically chewing gum most of the evening. Now his
cheek muscles bulged more plainly and the end of his tongue showed for a
second between his lips. His right hand dropped and he drew out a deuce.
Eyes shifted from Sandy to Plimsoll, to Hahn. Little beads of moisture
oozed out on the dealer's forehead. Plimsoll's black brows met. Sandy's
face was placid. Breaths were indrawn as Hahn paid out and raked in on
the card, his left hand covering the top of the case.
The atmosphere was charged with intensity. Plimsoll's dark eyes were
boring through the dealer's lowered lids.
"Move yo' fingehs, dealer, an' reveal royalty," drawled Sandy. "The
queen wins!" His hands were on his hips, fingers touching the butts of
his guns, his eyes burned. For all its drag there was a ring to his
voice.
Hahn shot one swift look at him and removed his hand. The queen showed.
The room gasped. Plimsoll clapped Sandy on the shoulder.
"You did it," he said. "Broke the bank when you called that turn.
Game's closed and the drinks on the house. How'll you have it?"
The crowd made way as Plimsoll walked across to his safe, twirled the
combination, opened the doors and took out a stack of bills.
"Bills from a century up," said Sandy. "The odds and ends in gold--for
the drinks."
The excitement was dying down. The man from the Three Star had won and
had been paid. Plimsoll's game was square. A few, reading the slight
signs of Hahn's nervousness, still held some doubts, but the games were
closing. The drinks were brought. Two men lounged out into the front
room after they had tossed theirs down. Sandy slipped the folded bills
into the breast pocket of his shirt in a compact package.
"See who went out?" asked Sam in his side whisper.
"Yep. Saw it in the glass of that picture. We'll go out the back way.
Not yet." He shouldered his way through the congratulating crowd, Sam
close behind him, into the front room. It was empty. The short end of
Sandy's winnings still provided liquor. For a moment they were alone.
Plimsoll had not followed them. Sandy swiftly socketed the bolt on the
inside of the front door, turned the key and slid that into his pocket.
"Now we'll go out the back way," he said. "I ain't strong fo' playin'
crawfish, Sam, but I ain't keen on bein' potted in the dark. I'll bet
what I got in my pocket Butch is huggin' the boards to one side of this
shack. I got too much money on me to be a good insurance risk."
Sam chuckled. Plimsoll met them just inside the door.
"Makin' a short cut," said Sandy. "Good night."
As the pair went out at the rear, Plimsoll jumped into the front room.
Sam, closing the back door behind them noiselessly, heard the gambler
cursing at the bolted door. Silently as a cat, he covered the short
distance between the house and the arroyo of the creek and disappeared,
merged in its shadow. Sandy joined him and they made their way swiftly
along the bottom, climbing the bank where the railroad bridge crossed
it, striking off for the main street, lit by sputtery arc-lamps, making
for their ponies, still standing patiently outside the all-night
restaurant.
"No sense in runnin' our heads into a flyin' noose," said Sandy.
"Plimsoll owns the sheriff. Married his sister. We'd be wrong whatever
stahted. They'd frisk me of my roll an' we'd never see it ag'in, less we
made a runnin' fight of it. Wondeh how much eddication costs nowadays,
Sam? What you laffin' at?"
"Butch an' the rest of Plimsoll's gunmen holdin' up the shack, waitin'
fo' us to come out, while Plim is huntin' that key."
"Don't laff too hard till we git home," said Sandy. "It's eleven miles
to the Three Star."
They mounted, swung their horses and loped off toward the bridge across
the creek. There were two spans, one built since the advent of
automobiles, the other ancient, little used. They headed for the
latter. Passing the end of the street they saw nothing out of the
ordinary. The door of the "Good Luck" was open, shown by a square of
light. A group stood outside. Sandy and Sam rode off, the ponies' hoofs
silent in the soft thick dust; moving shadows in the twilight, merging
with the dark.
CHAPTER V
IN THE BED OF THE CREEK
The old bridge, utilized only by wheels with metal tires these days, and
by riders, opened a short-cut to the road leading to the Three Star, a
way hardly to be distinguished from the plain. Sandy was minded to get
back to the ranch as soon as possible with his winnings. Five thousand
for Molly, five thousand for the Three Star, that was the agreement, the
custom, and he knew the girl's breed well enough to have no hesitation
in making the split as he would with a man. The next thing to do was to
pick out a school for her. There Sandy was at a loss. He mulled it over
as he rode, his outer senses playing sentinels to his consciousness.
He had deliberately avoided trouble for reasons he considered quite
sufficient, but annoyance pricked him that he had been forced to slide
out the back way from Plimsoll's, for all the odds against him. If it
had been his own money--a sudden flash of future responsibilities as
Molly Casey's guardian illumined his thought--if the luck-piece had not
been hers, the play for her future welfare, he would have set his own
marvelous coordination against Butch and the others in a shooting match,
as he had done other times, in other places. Sam, he knew, was
wondering a little at their strategic retreat.
But the old days were going, law and order were beginning to supersede
the old methods of every man to his own judgment and action. Hereford
had a sheriff who was not above suspicion, but the majority of the
people had little use for him and this term of office would be his last.
Sandy could not quite gauge Plimsoll's actions in tamely paying over the
winnings and he looked and listened, noting every movement of Pronto
moving free-muscled beneath him, for some sign of alarm--perhaps a
rifle-shot out of the mesquite. They were not the best of targets, Sam
and he, riding fast in the thick dusk under the stars. The road was
almost invisible, the plain unsubstantial, though the far-off mountain
ranges showed plainly cut, with a curious trick of seeming always to
shift back as the observer advanced. Little winds blew in their faces,
cool and sweet from the desert, charged with spice of sage.
The ponies struck the loosened planks of the bridge clop-clop, springing
forward into a gallop as their riders touched heels to flanks. The pinto
was the quicker to get into his stride. Just past the center of the
bridge Sam saw Sandy's mount jump like a startled cat into the air. He
saw Sandy pliant in his seat; marked against the starry sky. Then came a
spurt of red flame from the far bank--to the right--another--and
another--from the left. A bullet hummed by him and his own horse slid
stiff-legged, plowing the planks, hind feet flat from hoof-points to
fetlocks as the pony whirled away from the yawning gap in the bridge,
where boards had been pried away in the preparation, of the ambush.
Helpless for the moment until he got his bearings and his pony gained
solid footing, Sam automatically whipped out his gun, cursing as he saw
Sandy slide from the saddle, clutch at the rim of the gap, drop down to
the bed of the creek, while Pronto, frantic at the loss of his master,
leaped the opening and fled with clatter of hoof and swinging stirrup
into the desert.
Sam, wild with rage at the thought of Sandy shot, scrambling in bloody
sand below him, flung himself from the roan as more bullets whined,
whupping into the planks. One seared his upper arm, another struck the
saddle tree as he vaulted off, slapping the roan on the flanks, yelling
at it as it gathered, leaped the gap and followed Pronto.
"You damned, cowardly, murderin' pack of lousy coyotes!" swore Sam
mechanically, as he knelt on the edge of the gap and tried to pierce the
blackness, listening fearfully for a groan. He had not fired back. There
was nothing to fire at but clumps of blurred growth. The shots had been
too sudden, the shying of the horses too confusing for location.
He kneeled over the rim of the last plank, turned, caught with his
hands, revolver thrust back into its holster, swung, dropped. A hand
closed about his ankle, pulled him down sprawling on the soft sand.
"I'm O. K.," whispered Sandy, and Sam's heart leaped. "Only plugged the
rim of my hat. I faked a fall to fool 'em. Snake erlong down the crick
bed. Here's where we git even." Sam knew that ring in his partner's
voice, low though it was, and his blood tingled. The high crumbly banks
of the creek, gouged out by winter rains and cloud-bursts, were set with
brush. Immediately above the bridge were the stripped trunks of
cottonwoods, stranded in a flood. Peering through the boughs, they saw
stooping figures running along the bank. A man called from the lower
side of the bridge, a shot was fired harmlessly. The hunters in view
raced back.
"Think they saw us," whispered Sandy. "They'll hear from us, right
soon." He led the way back, crossing to the town side beneath the
bridge, keeping half-way up the bank, close under the stringers of the
bridge, crawling between bushes on his belly, Sam with him. Now they
could see no gunmen but occasionally they caught a whisper, the slight
sound of moving brush.
There was only a trickle of water in the bed of the creek. Here and
there were small bars of bleached shingle and larger boulders. Sandy
found a stone imbedded in the bank, loosened it, squatted on his
haunches and passed it to Sam, taking a gun in each hand.
"Chuck it into that sunflower patch," he said with his mouth close to
Sam's ear. "Then fire at the flashes." Sam pitched the stone through the
darkness. It fell with a rustle, chinked against a rock. Instantly
there came a fusillade from the opposite bank, four streaks of fire, the
bullets cutting through the dried stalks, the marksmen evidently hunting
in couples.
Sandy, crouching, pulled triggers and the shots rattled out as if fired
from an automatic. Beside him, Sam's gun barked. Each fired three times,
Sandy shooting two-handed, flinging six bullets with instinctive aim
while the bed of the creek echoed to the roar of the guns and the air
hung heavy with the reek of exploded gases. Then they rushed for the top
of the bank, wriggling behind the cover of bushes, lying prone for the
next chance.
One yell and a stream of curses came from across the arroyo. Two
indistinct figures bent above a third, lifted it, hurrying back toward a
clump of willows. The fourth man trailed the others, his oaths
smothered, running beside the two bearers, his hand held curiously in
front of him, dimly seen.
"They're through. That's enough," said Sandy. "We ain't killers."
"Got two of 'em," said Sam. "Good shootin', Sandy! I reckon I missed
clean. I fired to the left."
"The man who's down is Butch," said Sandy. "I'd know his figger in a
coal shaft. I've a hunch the other was Hahn. Hit him somewheres in the
hand; spile his dealin' fo' a while. Let's git out of this. They've
quit."
"Wonder if Plimsoll was with 'em. How about the hawsses? Can you whistle
Pronto back?"
"Reckon so."
They walked toward the bridge and crossed it, passing the gap on the
side timbers. Plimsoll's men had departed with their casualties. Sandy
whistled shrilly through his teeth. After a minute he repeated the call.
"Sure hate to hoof it to the ranch," said Sam. "Mebbe the shots
stampeded 'em. Better not try to borrow hawsses in town, I figger."
"No. Pronto ain't fur. Yore roan'll stick with him. That pinto of mine
is half human. I've sent him ahead before. Ef I'd yelled 'Home' he'd
have gone. Shots w'udn't have scared him. Made him stand by--like
Molly."
"Got yore money safe?"
"Yep."
There came a sound of pounding hoofs. Then that of others, coming from
the town.
"Better load up, Sam," said Sandy grimly, "we ain't out of this yet.
That'll be Jim Plimsoll's brother-in-law, likely."
"Here come our ponies."
As yet they could see nothing advancing, but a horse whinnied from the
plain lying between them and the Three Star road.
"Pronto," said Sandy, shoving cartridges into his guns.
A body of mounted men had come out from town and ridden fast upon the
bridge. The foremost stopped with an exclamation at the missing boards.
All wheeled in some confusion and slid their horses down into the
arroyo to scramble up the bank again and spur for Sam and Sandy just as
the pinto and the roan, curveted up to their masters. The two cowmen
leaped for their seats, Sandy temporarily sheathing one gun. They faced
the townsmen who formed a half-circle about them.
"You, Sandy Bourke an' Sam Manning, stick up yore hands!"
"You got good eyesight," returned Sandy. "What's the idee? Ef you shoot,
don't miss, I'm holdin' tol'able close ter-night."
His tone was almost good-humored, tolerant, full of confidence.
"You was shootin' in town limits. May have killed some one. Ag'in' the
law to shoot inside the Herefo'd line. I'm goin' to take you in."
"You air?" Sandy's drawl was charged with mockery. "How about the
Herefo'd men who stahted the fireworks? Ef you want our guns, Sheriff,
come an' take 'em. First come, first served."
There was no forward movement. A man swore as his horse began to dance.
"You go back an' tell Jim Plimsoll to do his own dirty wo'k, if he's got
any guts left fo' tryin'. Me, I'm goin' home."
The sheriff and his hastily gathered band of irregular deputies, working
in the interests of Plimsoll, knew, with sufficient intimacy to endow
them with caution, the general record of Sandy Bourke and Soda-Water
Sam. None of them wanted to risk a shot--and miss. Sandy would not. Even
a fatal wound might not prevent him taking toll. Sam was almost as
dangerous. They were politicians rather than fighting men, every one of
them. And they were tolerably certain that Plimsoll had ambushed the two
from the Three Star. His methods were akin to their own. The sheriff
blustered.
"I ain't through with you yit, Sandy Bourke. I know where to find you."
"You-all are goin' to have a mighty hard time findin' yo'se'f afteh
election, Sheriff, as it is. The cowmen ain't crazy about you. They
might take a notion to escort you out of the county limits."
"You're inside the town line. I----"
"I won't be in two minutes. Git out of our road," said Sandy, his voice
freezing in sudden contempt. He roweled Pronto and, with Sam even in the
jump, they galloped through the half-ring without opposition. Horses
were neck-reined aside to let them pass. The wind sang by them as they
tangented off from the road. A shot or two announced the attempt of some
to save their own faces, but no bullets came near the pair. The
fusillade was sheer bravado.
Pronto and the roan went at full speed, bellies low to the plain that
streamed past, the manes whipping the hands of their riders, springing
on sinews of whalebone through soapweed and mesquite, spurning the soil
with drumming hoofs, night-seeing, danger-dodging, jumping the little
gullies, reveling in the rush. Sandy and Sam sat slightly forward,
loose-seated, thigh-muscles and knees feeling the withers rather than
pressing them, balancing their own limber bodies to every movement of
the flying ponies.
A late moon climbed out of the east and scudded up the sky, silvering
the distant peaks. For almost a mile they rode at top speed, then they
settled down to a lope that ate up the miles--a walk at the end of
three--then lope and walk again, until the giant cottonwoods of the
Three Star rose from the plain, leaves shimmering in the moonlight, the
ranch buildings blocked in purple pin-pointed with orange--the
pin-points enlarging, resolving into two lighted windows as they passed
shack and barn and rode into the home corral at last, to unsaddle, wipe
down the horses and dismiss them for the time with a smack on their
lathery flanks, knowing they would be too wise to overdrink at the
trough, promising them grain later.
Mormon tiptoed heavily out on the creaking porch with a husky, "Hush!"
"What fo'?"
"Molly's asleep. 'Sisted on waitin' up for you."
"Well, we're here, ain't we?" demanded Sam. "Me, I got a scrape in my
arm an' some son of a wolf spiled my saddle. Sandy, he sorter evened up
fo' it."
"Bleedin'?" asked Mormon.
"Nope. Tied my bandanner round it. Cold air fixed it. Shucks, it ain't
nuthin'! Sandy's got a green kale plaster fo' it. Come to think of it, I
got ninety bucks myse'f."
"You won?"
"Did we win? Wait till we show you."
Molly met them as they went in, her eyes wide open, all sleep banished.
"Was it a luck-piece?" she demanded.
Sandy produced the package of bills, divided it, shoved over part.
"Your half," he said. "Five thousand bucks. Bu'sted the bank. An' here's
the 'riginal bet." He showed the gold eagle, put it into her palm.
"Served me, now you take it," he said. "I'll git you a chain fo' it.
It's sure a mascot--same as you are--the Mascot of the Three Star."
She looked up, her eyes, cloudy with wonder at the sight of the money,
shining at her new title. They rested on Sam's arm, bandaged with the
bandanna.
"There's been shootin'," she said. "You're hit. Oh!"
"More of a miss than a hit," replied Sam.
Molly turned to Sandy. Anxiety, affection, something stronger that
stirred him deeply, showed now in her gaze.
"_You_ hurt?"
"Didn't hardly muss a ha'r of my head. Jest a li'l' excitement."
"Tell me all about it."
Sandy gave her a condensed and somewhat expurgated account to which she
listened with her face aglow.
"I wisht I'd been there to see it," she said as he finished.
"It warn't jest the time nor place fo' a young lady," said Sandy. "Main
p'int is we got the money for yo' eddication, like we planned."
The light faded from her face.
"Air you so dead set for me to go away?" she asked.
"See here, Molly." Sandy leaned forward in his chair, talking earnestly.
"You've got the makin' of a mighty fine woman in you. An' paht of you is
yore dad an' paht yore maw. Sabe? They handed you on down an', if you
make the most of yo'se'f, you make the most of them. Me, I've allus been
trubbled with the saddle-itch an' I've wanted the out-of-doors. A chap
writ a poem that hits me once. It stahts in,
"I want free life an' I want free air,
An' I sigh fo' the canter afteh the cattle,
The crack of whips like shots in battle;
The melly of horns an' hoofs an' heads
That wars an' wrangles an' scatters an' spreads,
The green beneath an' the blue above,
An' dash an' danger an' life....
"Somethin' like that. I mayn't have got it jest right, but that's _me_.
The chap that wrote that might have writ pahts of it jest fo' me. He
sure knew what he was writin' erbout. It's called _In Texas, Down by the
Rio Grande_. I've been there. Arizony ain't much differunt."
"It's called _Lasca_," put in Sam. "I seen it in the movies. Had the
po'try strung all through it. It was a love story. This Lasca, she----"
Mormon put a heavy foot over Sam's and he subsided.
"So you see I lost out on a heap," said Sandy. "An' I'm a man. I can git
erlong with less. But fo' a gel, learnin's a grand thing. An' there's
the big cities, an' theaters, fine clothes an' fine manners. Like livin'
in another world."
"Where they wear suits like Sam's spiketail," said Mormon. "I mind me
when I was to Chicago with a train of steers one time, the tall
buildin's was higher than cañon cliffs. On'y full breath I drawed was
down on the lake front where they was a free picter show in a museum.
Reg'lar storm there was out on the lake; big waves. Wind like to curl my
tongue back down my throat an' choke me."
"Who's hornin' in now?" asked Sam. "Go on, Sandy."
"But," said Molly, wide-eyed, "that's the life _I_ like. I mean out
here. I don't want to be different."
"Shucks," said Sandy. "You won't be. Jest polished up. Skin slicked up,
hair fixed to the style, nails trimmed an' shined. Culchured. Inside
you'll be yore real self. You can't take the gold out of a bit of ore
any more than you can change iron pyrites inter the reel stuff. But, if
the gold's goin' to be put into proper circulation, it's got to be
refined. Sabe?"
"I ain't refined, I reckon," said Molly with a sigh. "I don't know as I
want to be. I can allus come back, can't I?"
"You sure can."
"An' there's Dad. He's where he wanted to be. I w'udn't want to go away
from him."
"He'd want you to make this trip, sure," said Sandy. "An' that settles
it. You go off to bed an' dream on it. We got to figger out where you go
an' that'll take some time an' thinkin'. I'm some tired myse'f. I've
been out of trainin' lately fo' excitement. Sam, I'm goin' to soak that
place on yore arm with iodine. Good night, Molly."
She got up immediately, went to Mormon and to Sam and gravely shook
hands, thanking them.
"You-all are damned good to me," she said. Opposite Sandy she hesitated,
then threw her arms round his neck and kissed him before she ran from
the room, with Grit leaping after her. Sandy's bronzed face glowed like
reflecting copper.
"Some folks git all the luck," said Mormon.
"There you go," bantered Sam, stripping his arm for the iodine. "You
been married three times, reg'lar magnet fo' the wimmin, an' you grudge
Sandy pay fo' what he done. Me, I helped, but I ain't grudgin' him.
Though I sure envy him."
"Yes, you helped an' left me to home to count fingers."
"Shucks! You matched for it, didn't you? An' didn't you have yore li'l'
session with Plimsoll all to yorese'f. What's eatin' you? You want to be
a five-ringed circus all to yorese'f an' have all the fun. Ef that stuff
heals like it smahts, Sandy, I'll say I'm cured now."
"It don't amount to much, Sam," said Sandy. "Yore flesh allus closed up
quick. What you goin' to do with yore ninety dollars?"
"I thought of buyin' me a new saddle. Mine's spiled. Couldn't trust that
tree fo' ropin' now. But I figger I'll buy me a fine travelin' bag fo'
Molly. Loan me yore catalogue, Mormon, so's I can choose one."
So, bantering one another, they bunked in.
CHAPTER VI
PASO CABRAS
They did not make butter on the Three Star.
Since the arrival of Molly an unwilling and refractory cow had been
brought in from the range and half forced, half coaxed to give the fresh
milk that Mormon insisted the girl needed. Until then evaporated milk
had suited all hands. But butter--to go with hot cakes and
sage-honey--was an imperative need for the riders. Riders demanded the
best quality in the "found" part of their wages and the three partners
supplied it. The butter came over weekly from the Bailey ranch to be
kept under the spring cover for cooling. Usually the gangling young Ed
Bailey brought it over in the crotchety flivver. When Sandy saw the
sparsely fleshed figure of Miranda Bailey seated by the driver he winced
in spirit. This second visitation looked like mere curiosity and gossip
and offset the opinion he had begun to form of the spinster--that she
was sound underneath her angularities and mannerisms.
It was twilight. The three partners and Molly were on the ranch-house
porch after supper, and there was no escape. Sam slid his harmonica into
his pocket silently and Mormon groaned aloud as the rattlebang car
chugged up and was braked, shaking all over until the engine was shut
off. Ed Bailey crossed his legs and rolled his cigarette. No one at the
Three Star had ever seen him alight from the car, Mormon insisted he ate
and slept in it. Miranda nodded at the three partners, who rose as she
came up the steps.
"You sure need some new clothes, child," she said to Molly. "You got to
have 'em. I heard you was shot," she went on to Sam. "That sling ain't
right. You should have it fixed so yore wrist is higher'n yore elbow.
Who's tendin' it?"
"It's healin' fine," said Sam. "I'm pure-blooded an' my flesh allus
heals quick."
Miranda sniffed.
"I reckon prohibition helps some," she retorted. "Now then, I come on
business. Sandy Bourke, you ain't any of you the legal guardian of that
child, air you?"
"Nothin' illegal in what we're doin', I reckon."
"I didn't ask you that. You-all ain't got papers?"
With the question she wriggled her eyebrows, shifted her glance and
generally twisted her features in what Sandy interpreted plainly enough
as a suggestion that Molly should be eliminated from the talk. He did
not agree with the spinster. It was Molly's prime affair and he knew
that she would resent being treated too childishly in regard to her own
concerns. Sandy had gentled too many high-spirited fillies and colts not
to have found out that methods that apply to well-bred quadrupeds are
generally coefficient with humans. He shook his head slightly at Miss
Bailey's signaling.
"Jest what's the idea?" he asked. "Some one figgerin' on makin' her stay
at the Three Star unpleasant? Fur as jest gossip is concerned, it don't
have any weight with none of us an' there ain't no sense in mentionin'
it."
"'Pears you ain't givin' me over an' above credit for sense," said
Miranda, a bit grimly. "This ain't gossip. Ef you're bound the gel is to
sit in with her elders I'll go right ahead. I got a lot of chores to do
yet, deliverin' butter, an' the car's actin' up uncertain. Here 'tis. I
got it direct from my brother who's heard the talk that's goin' round.
You've run foul of Jim Plimsoll--or he foul of you, which is more
likely. Plimsoll an' Eke Jordan, the sheriff, are like two peas in a
pod. The sheriff's got the inside of local politicks, so fur. When we
wimmen git to votin' this fall things is goin' to be different. Right
now, he's in. He an' the courts of this county are all striped the same
way. Reg'lar zebras. Penitentiary pattern 'ud match their skins. Mebbe
some of 'em ought to be wearin' it.
"Now for the meat of the nut. They're figgerin' on gettin' control of
the gel away from you-all. They'll use argymints for the general public
that she's too young to be keepin' house for three unmarried men,
leastwise three men who ain't livin' with their wives." She looked
pointedly at Mormon. "They'll rouse up opinion enough for a change.
They'd like to app'int a guardian of their own kidney. Mebbe we can
block that if one of us comes out an' offers to take her. I'd be glad
to, for one, an' do the right thing by her."
Molly walked over to Sandy's chair and stood behind it, her eyes
widening, her breath beginning to come quickly.
"There's some talk about her father's claims over to Dynamite lookin'
up. Party of easterners over that way lately, nosin' around to find out
owners, lookin' up assessment work an' so on. Talk of a boom. I reckon
Plimsoll's twigged that. Lawyer Feeder, who run for state senator an'
whose record's none too dainty, is in cahoots with Jordan an' Plimsoll.
Ed heard they figger on goin' before Judge Vanniman, one of their crowd,
to get an order of court. She's a minor. They can git her away from you.
If we crowd them too hard for them to app'int one of their own ring--an'
they're figgerin' on Plimsoll, he claimin' to be her father's
partner--they'll likely have her put in some institution. An' it's goin'
to be done right sudden. I w'udn't wonder, from all I hear, but what
they're over here ter-morrer with a court order. An' you can't fight the
courts 's long as they're in authority, the way you fought Jim
Plimsoll."
Molly stepped out, eyes flashing, fists clenched, talking passionately.
"I won't go with 'em. I'll run away. They can't take me. Jim Plimsoll is
a damned liar. You won't let 'em take me?" She turned to Sandy, her arms
stretched in appeal.
"No, Molly, I won't. Will we, boys?"
"You can bet everything you got an' ever hope to own we won't," said
Sam.
"That goes for me," echoed Mormon, but he scratched his fringe of hair
in some perplexity.
"Talk don't beat an order of the court," said Miranda Bailey. "Mebbe I
seem sort of vinegary to you, child, but I'm not a bad sort. My brother
Ed has got somethin' to say in this community an' I'm likely to control
a few votes this fall myself. I figger if you came home with me to-day
we c'ud manage to git you placed with us. There's been tattle about you
stoppin' here. You're fifteen--an'...."
"Some folks is jest plumb rotten," flared Molly. "I'm no kid. I ... _oh,
if_ Dad was alive!"
Sandy stood up and slid an arm about her shaking shoulders. She wheeled
and buried her head on his shoulder, sobbing.
"We're powerful obliged to you, Miss Bailey, for what you told us," said
Sandy. "I'm right sure you'd give Molly a fine home, but we got other
plans an' we aim to carry 'em out. Plimsoll's a skunk an' I'll block his
game about the mines ef they amount to anything. Molly's goin' east for
her eddication. She's got plenty money to git the best that's goin' an'
she's goin' to have it."
"Then you better git her 'cross the county line before many hours are
over." Miranda Bailey recognized something better than mere decision in
Sandy's voice, she was not the leading suffragist of the county for
lack of brains. But there was true regret in her voice as she went on.
"I'm sorry she don't cotton to the idee of comin' over to our place. A
woman needs a woman's company." At the diplomatic concession to her
maturity Molly gave the spinster a mollified glance. Miss Bailey climbed
into the machine.
"You aim on takin' her out of the county to the railroad ter-morrer?"
she asked. "What school is she goin' to?"
"We ain't settled all the details," said Sandy. "But we'll do that all
right. We'll git ready soon's we can. Meantime, we'll keep our eyes
peeled ter-morrer against any order from Hereford."
"Want to use this car? I'll bring it over early. Ed can drive it."
The gangling youth for the first time showed an intelligent interest in
anything outside of his cigarette.
"Fo' time's sake, aunt," he said, "'twouldn't be no manner of good if it
come down to a runnin' chase. Nearest depot's fifty mile' across the
county line. Racin' this car ag'in' the sheriff's 'ud be like matchin' a
flea ag'in' a grasshopper. Dern it, she's balked ag'in." He wrestled
with the crank, conquered it and the machine shivered like a hunting dog
while his aunt adjusted spark and gas. She nodded to him to start and
they moved off, Miranda waving a farewell as she called out, "Good
luck!"
"Some sport!" announced Sam. "That's the kind of woman you sh'ud have
married, Mormon."
Molly, excited now, demanded audience.
"When do we start?" she asked eagerly. "Will you wait till they come out
from Hereford?"
"I got to think out things a bit, Molly," said Sandy. "I figger we'll
git a start on 'em, ef you can git ready. In the mornin'."
"I haven't got much to take."
"We'll buy you an outfit."
"Horseback?"
Sandy looked at her with puckered eyes.
"Can't tell you what I ain't sure of myse'f," he drawled. "One thing is
sure, you got to tuhn in an' git a good rest. Ef we slide out it won't
be all a pleasure trip. I reckon Plimsoll means business. An' he's sure
got the county machinery behind him right now."
"I can take Grit?"
"W'udn't want to leave us somethin' to remember you by?" asked Sandy.
"Somethin' to help make sure you'll come back?"
"I'd allus come back, to visit Dad," she said. "But Grit...? I don't
want to leave Grit."
"It 'ud be a hard trip fo' him this way, Molly. I ain't sure about the
regulations at them schools. I reckon the best way w'ud be fo' you to
make arrangements fo' him to come on afteh you git there."
Molly regarded Sandy soberly, her fingers twining through the dog's
mane.
"You'd be good to him--same as you air to me? Oh, I'm jest plumb mean to
ask you that. I know you w'ud. He's goin' to be jest as lonesome as me
for a bit, ain't you, Grit? He allus slep' with me, cuddlin' up,
an'----" She gulped, straightened.
"Good night," she said. "Come, Grit."
The three men sat silent for a moment or two after she left.
"She's sure a stem-winder," said Mormon presently. "How you goin' to fix
to git her away, Sandy? Plimsoll'll be hotter'n a bug on a hot griddle."
"I got a plan warmin' up," said Sandy. "Nearest to the county line is
west through the Cabezas Range. Only two gaps, Paso Cabras, an' the
Bolsa."
"But the Bolsa...." started Sam.
Sandy checked him.
"I know. Listen! I aim to git to the railroad an' then me an' Molly'll
make for New Mexico."
"Huh!"
"You guessed it, Mormon. For the Pecos River an' Boville an' the Redding
Ranch. I reckon Barbara Redding'll handle the thing. She'll git Molly
her outfit an' she'll know all about the right schools."
Mormon brought his hand down on Sam's thigh with a sounding whack.
"Dern me, ef he ain't the wise ol' son of a gun," he cried delightedly.
"Sure!"
"It's the thing," assented Sam, rubbing himself, "but you don't have to
break my laig over it. Sandy, you sure use yo' brains."
Barbara Redding, once Barbara Barton of the celebrated Curly O, was a
bright star in the mutual firmament of the Three Star partners. They had
all worked together on the Curly O in the old days. Sandy had been
foreman there. Once he had rescued Barbara Barton from horse rustlers
with a grudge against her father and once again he had rendered her even
greater service when members of the same crowd kidnapped her
two-year-old son whom Barbara Redding had brought on a visit to his
grandfather. Sandy had trailed alone and brought in the "li'l' son of a
gun," as he styled the youngster. There was little that Barbara Redding
and her husband, wealthy rancher, would not do for Sandy.
"I've got an itch to give Plimsoll an' his pals a run fo' their money,"
went on Sandy. "An' here's the way I figger to do it, in the rough. See
what you all think of it."
Subdued guffaws rose from the porch in through the open window of the
room where Molly Casey lay wide awake, the dog beside her. Presently she
heard the martial strains of Sam's harmonica, cuddled under his big
mustache, played one-handed. He was playing an air that he had dedicated
to Sandy. Vaguely it comforted her.
"They're _good_," she said to Grit. "An' they've figgered out something
or they w'udn't be actin' thataway. You an' me got to be game."
Sandy smoked his cigarette and Mormon lolled in his chair, while Sam
breathed out his melody into the night that was very still and very
quiet, with the great white stars burning rayless. The tune swelled
triumphantly.
Behold El Capitan,
Notice his misanthropic stare,
Look at his independent air;
And match him if you can,
He is the champion beyond compare.
It was a tribute to the strategy of Sandy Bourke, the D'Artagnan of the
Three Musketeers of the Range, whereof Mormon was surely Porthos, if Sam
was hard to recognize as Aramis. "One for all and all for one" was their
motto, and neither Mormon nor Sam doubted for an instant that Sandy
would win. Sandy, smoking cigarette after cigarette, was not so sure but
equally complacent.
Next morning, breakfast over before the sun was well above the peaks,
while desert birds were still rising, twittering shrill welcome to the
dawn, Sandy went about humming snatches of cowboy songs just above his
breath as he oversaw the arrangements for the exodus that was to be; not
so much a flight, as a deliberately calculated laying of a trail for the
pursuit. So might an old dog fox, sure of his speed and wisdom, trot
leisurely across a field in full sight of the pack. Sandy had no
intention of waiting until the lawhounds arrived, he needed a start
against the handicap of high-powered cars. He was in high humor as the
buckboard was greased, a team of buckskins given a special feed and a
rub-down, and various articles gathered for transportation. Among these
were a spool of barbed wire and a dozen fence posts.
"I'm a rollickin', rovin' son of a gun
Of a roamin' gambolier;"
sang Sandy, lights dancing in his gray eyes. Sandy was not old--a little
short of thirty--but he was generally mature, suggesting deliberation of
mind if not of action. This morning youth was his, rollicking,
devil-may-care youth that showed in his walk, the set of his shoulders,
his smile.
His spirit was infectious. Four riders, jumping to his orders, tossed
badinage among one another like a ball. Mormon and Sam, seated on the
top rail of the corral fence, openly admired their partner.
"Like old times, Mormon?" suggested Sam.
"Sure is. I reckon we'll have some fun 'fore the day's out. Sandy can
cert'nly scheme out the scenarios."
"The what?"
"The scenarios," repeated Mormon loftily. "I got that out of a moving
pitcher magazine down to Hereford. It's the word fo' the plot of the
story. Sabe?"
"Huh! I reckon them movin' pitcher shooters 'ud have to move some to git
all that's movin' this trip. Got yore gun oiled up, Mormon? Here's
Molly."
Molly came out on the porch carrying a small grip packed with her few
belongings, Grit beside her. Sandy nodded to her, busy giving
instructions to two riders. Mormon and Sam waved and she went over to
them, swinging up to the rail beside them.
"Jim," said Sandy, "I want you should ride out to'ards Hereford an' hide
out atop of Bald Butte. You don't need to stay there any later than
noon. Take a flash-glass with you. If any of the sheriff's crowd comes
erlong, any one who looks like he might be servin' papers, sabe, you
flash in a message. Make it a five-flash fo' anything suspicious, a
three-flash fo' any one shackin' this way, even if you figger they're
plumb harmless."
"Seguro, Miguel." With the slang phrase, Jim, an upstanding young chap,
despite his horse-bowed legs, walked over to the bunk-house for
flash-mirror and gun, came back to his already caught-up and saddled
horse, turned stirrup and set foot in it, caught hold of mane and horn,
beat the quick swirl of his pony sidewise with the fling of leg over
cantle and went streaming off for the Bald Butte in a cloud of dust.
Sandy called to Buck Perches, oldest of his riders, whose exposed skin
matched the leather of his saddle.
"Buck, ef any visitors arrives while we're gone, you entertain 'em same
as I w'ud. I w'udn't be surprised but what Jim Plimsoll 'ud be moseyin'
erlong, with Sheriff Jordan an' mebbe one or two mo'. Mo' the merrier.
They'll be lookin' fo' me an' Miss Molly with some readin' matter that's
got a seal to the bottom of it. We won't be to home. You'll be the only
one to home 'cept Pedro an' Joe. They've got their instructions to know
nothin'. They ain't supposed to know nothin'. You--you've stayed to the
ranch to do some fixin' of yore saddle. Started, but come back when yore
cinch bu'sted. Sabe? All the rest of the riders is on the range 'tendin'
business. When they left, an' when you left with 'em, me an' Mormon an'
Sam, with Miss Molly, was all here. So you supposed. Don't let 'em think
yo're planted to feed 'em info'mation."
Buck nodded, solemn as an image, his dark eyes twinkling a little.
"I'm real pleasant to the sheriff an' sort of indifferent to this here
Plimsoll person?" he suggested.
"Let 'em size up the thing fo' themselves. They'll find Pronto in the
corral, also Sam's roan, which they know is our usual mounts. If they
don't sabe the buckboard's gone, which they probably will, knowin' this
outfit fairly well, an' the sheriff not bein' a dumbhead; lead up to it.
Then you might horn it out of Pedro that he thinks we started erbout ten
o'clock an' leave it to them to foller trail. It'll be plain enough.
We'll take care of the rest. Up to you, Buck, to act natcherul."
"I'll sure do that. I sabe the play."
"Then we'll light out soon's we're packed. Mormon, git the grub an'
water aboard. Sam, help me with the rest of the truck. Got yore war-bag,
Molly?"
"I haven't said good-by to Dad, or Grit," she said.
Sandy nodded. "Reckon you'd like to do that alone. Suppose you take Grit
with you to the spring an' then leave him up in yore room."
"He knows I'm goin'. I told him last night, but he knew it 'thout that."
Molly spoke in a monotone. She was pale and her eyes showed lack of
sleep but she had fought the thing out with herself and she was going
to be game. She gave Sandy her grip and walked off toward the
cottonwoods. Grit nosed along in her shadow, his muzzle touching her
skirt.
It was a big load for the buckboard with Mormon and Sam in the back seat
crowded by the piled-up baggage, with Sandy driving and Molly beside
him, flushed a little with growing excitement. But the buckskins were
sinewed with whalebone and used to desert work. They surged forward at
the word, tightening the tugs in an eager leap and settled down to a
fast trot, out across the prairie. The riders, with the exception of
Buck, and Jim, who was already close to the butte, which was midway
between the ranch and Hereford, loped off, two and two, to their work,
not to return until sun-down.
It was still cool, the dust rose about them in eddies as they crossed
the slowly descending slope of the sink that presently mounted again
toward the far-off range. There was no apparent road, but Sandy chose a
compass course between the sage for the first few miles, then skirted
the mesquite. Sam leaned forward once when the buckskins had been pulled
down to a walk and spoke to Molly.
"See that notch in the range?" he asked, "oveh to the no'th, where the
shadder's blue. That's Paso Cabras, the Pass of the Goats. Some says
it's named 'cause the cliffs is fair lousy with goats, some 'cause on'y
a goat can make the climb. County line's five mile' out on the plain
beyond the pass. Railroad two mo', at Caroca."
"Are we goin' through the pass?" she asked Sandy.
"Well, I'll tell you this much, Molly. If we sh'ud decide to go that way
an' strike the pass afore the sheriff catches up with us, he'll have to
foller afoot or go clean round the mesa. The Goat's Pass ain't no place
fo' an automobeel, nor an airyplane neither. Don't believe there's a
level spot wider'n five foot or bigger than that much square."
Either Mormon or Sam sat always with neck twisted, watching for a
flash-signal from the butte that stood up clearly in the crystal
atmosphere, sometimes distorted, changing hue from chocolate to indigo,
never seeming to get any farther away, just as the mesa range never
seemed to get any closer. Sometimes Molly relieved them as lookout, but
hour after hour passed without sign.
Close to noon they reached a watering hole, with water none too cool or
sweet, but still welcome. There the buckskins were unhitched, rubbed
down and, after they had cooled off, given water and grain. Save for
sweat marks, they showed little sign of the grueling trip through the
soft dirt. A strip of lava, half a mile of ancient flow, lay between
them and the long up-slope of the desert to the mesa. As they ate lunch
in the shadow of some barrel cactus, Sandy suddenly gave a grunt of
satisfaction, pointing with outstretched forefinger to the butte. Five
flashes had flickered up. They were repeated. Jim had signaled a
suspicious party on their way to Three Star. The sheriff was out with
his papers.
"We got five hours' staht," said Sandy. "Made close to thirty mile'.
They've got thirty-five to make. Take 'em mo'n two hours, countin'
questions with Buck. Good enough. See anything of the boys, Sam? They
ought to be showin' up. I told 'em noon."
"On time," announced Sam. The two riders who had last talked with Sandy
rode out of a straggling thicket of cactus and skirted the lava flow.
Each led a spare horse, unsaddled.
CHAPTER VII
BOLSA GAP
Sheriff Jordan had a high-powered car purchased, not so much from the
fees of his office as with his perquisites, a word covering a wide range
of possibilities, all of which the sheriff made the most of. He was
proud of his car and proud of his ability to run it anywhere at
record-breaking speed. It carried an extra water container that could be
mounted on the running board for desert work, an extra gasoline and oil
supply, there were always extra tires strapped on, extra spark plugs
handy and his batteries were always well charged.
"I aim to make her efficient," said Jordan, "bein' she represents my
office. That's me. If I needed me an airyplane, I'd get me one to hunt
the outlaws out of cover, an' I'd run it myself, an' run it right.
That's me, Bill Jordan!"
Boaster though he was, there was little doubt as to Jordan's efficiency
or his courage. He brought in the criminals he went out to get, some
alive, some dead; prosecuted the first with zeal and collected the
rewards with alacrity. The trouble was that he did _not_ always go out
after certain individuals, who were outside the law, as interpreted by
the people, but inside it, as protected by the political ring to which
Jordan, with other prominent officials, belonged.
Jordan had taken up his brother-in-law's grievance with the greater zest
since he had a half-interest in Plimsoll's Good Luck Pool Parlors, a
share that had cost him good money. On top of that had come Sandy's
flouting of him on the bridge in front of the sheriff's own followers.
He had to save his face, politically as well as personally.
To secure papers bringing Molly Casey within the jurisdiction of the
court was not a difficult matter, but it was not so easy to get them at
an early hour, since court was not in session and the judge none too
eager to arise of a morning. But Jordan knew nothing of the visit of
Miranda Bailey to the Three Star and he pressed matters with no special
expedition, though he characteristically wasted no time.
Armed with the necessary warrant, backed by an assurance that, unless
some extraordinary howl went up, the girl would be given into the
custody of Jim Plimsoll as guardian, by virtue of his claim to
partnership with her father, the sheriff, Plimsoll and two others, all
three deputized for the occasion, started the car from Hereford at a
quarter of twelve, after an early lunch. They passed the butte where Jim
lay prone atop without noticing the flashes he shot into the sky. At a
few minutes after twelve they reached Three Star where Buck, seated on
the porch, his saddle astride a sawhorse, stitched away at a cinch.
Buck played his part well, allowing Jordan to ferret out information to
his own satisfaction. It appeared plain that all three partners had
taken flight with the girl in the buckboard. Sandy's pinto and Sam's
roan were in the corral. Jordan overlooked one thing, the counting of
saddles, though that would not have been an easy determination.
"Some one tipped this thing off," he said sternly to Buck. "Who was it?"
"Meanin' this visit's offishul?" asked Buck. "What's it fo', Sheriff?
Moonshine or hawss stealin'?" He spoke in a jesting note, his weathered
face impassive as the shell of a walnut, but Plimsoll scowled, noting
the turn of Buck's bland countenance in his direction for the first
time. It was whispered that the brands on Plimsoll's horse ranch were
not those usually known in the county, nor even in the counties
adjoining. There were rumors, smothered by Plimsoll's stand with the
authorities, of bands of horses, driven by strangers, arriving
wearied--and always by night--at his corrals.
"It don't matter--to you--what it's for," answered Jordan. "I'll
overhaul 'em an' bring 'em back. Crossin' the county line won't do 'em
any good with this warrant. Ef they try hide-out tactics or put up a
scrap, it'll be kidnappin' an' that's a penal offense."
Buck whistled.
"Thought you wasn't goin' to let me know," he said. "It's the gel."
"Who's been here to tip it off?" asked Jordan.
Buck looked at him serenely, took a plug of chewing from his hip pocket,
took his knife, opened it deliberately and slowly cut off a corner of
the tobacco.
"Search me," he drawled. "Me, I don't stay up to the house."
Jordan, temporarily discomfited but still confident of bringing back his
quarry, marked the trail of the buckboard in the alkali soil, noted the
hoof-prints of the diverging riders and nodded with the semi-smile and
half closed-eyes of conscious superiority. He had already elicited
apparently reluctant information from Pedro as to the four passengers in
the buckboard. Buck had been more reticent. To the sheriff Buck's
reticence betokened desire to cover the fugitives. He fancied that
Pedro's testimony was the result of Jordan's own cleverness in
cross-questioning. Joe resorted to "no sabes."
"You 'tendin' ranch?" Jordan asked Buck, at last.
"Yep. Till I git fresh orders."
"I'll bring you back those orders, also yore bosses, before sun-down."
Buck permitted himself his first grin.
"You'll have to go some," he said. "Goin' to bring 'em back in irons?
Figgerin' on abduction?"
Jordan gave no hint of how Buck's shaft might have targeted his
intentions, but climbed into the car and started it. The powerful
machine went lunging through the soft dirt, following the blurry trail
of the buckboard's iron tires, throwing up dust as a fast launch churns
spray.
After leaving the Three Star all semblance of road vanished. The
alkaline soil was almost as fine as flour, and deep. This and the fear
of losing the trail kept the machine down to a limit that would have
been ridiculous on a real road but represented fast work on the desert.
The water boiled in the radiator from the heat of the toiling engine and
Jordan stopped, replenished, reoiled. Reaching the lava strip where the
buckboard had halted for water and the noon meal, they found the trail
skirting the flow toward the south. The main mass of the mesa, broken up
into gorges, gaps, stairway cliffs, marked by purple shadows, scanty in
the early afternoon but gradually widening, was about fifteen miles
away. Jordan braked his car. He ignored the water in the spring. His
spare supply was still ample and was distilled, not alkaline.
He turned to one of his deputies.
"Which way do you figger they're headin', Phil?" he asked. "Is there a
cut or a pass through the mesa?"
"Dam'fino. Mesa's all cut up, but it's sure a Godforsaken country.
Nothin' but rock an' clay an' cactus. No one ever goes there. I reckon I
know as much of this country as most an' I sure never explored the dump.
One thing's sure an' certain. Them fellers from the Three Star usually
know where they are headin'. Trail's plain."
"Sure is." But Jordan scratched his head a trifle doubtfully. If Sandy
Bourke and his chums had been tipped off, this trail was a little too
plain to be true. Presently, as the machine plowed on south, they
struck a patch of desert where the rock surfaced out and showed no trace
of hoof or tire. Jordan stopped the car and the four got out, casting
around, expecting that this outcropping had been used as a device to
throw off the pursuit. Fairly fresh horse droppings showed that the
buckboard had held to its course and, the rock passed, the trail showed
plain again, curving in toward the broken wall of the mesa, leading
toward a cleft that was plainly distinguishable.
"That's Bolsa Boquete," announced the deputy named Phil. "I never went
through it."
"What's it mean--the name?"
"Boquete's gap. Bolsa's money--not jest the same as dinero. It's the
word they have on the bank winders down in Mexico. Exchange."
"Money Gap? That don't tell us a thing," said Jordan. "But I'll bet my
star they've gone through it all right. We ought to be not much more'n
an hour behind them."
"They're on about us getting the papers," said Plimsoll. He had not said
much on the trip so far. "Too much talk nowadays. You can't whisper in a
dugout but what the news is all over the county inside of twenty
minutes. Bourke sabes that getting the girl out of the county won't do
any good; he aims to get her out of the state and any Arizona court or
sheriff jurisdiction. He's the brains of the outfit. We've got to get
her, Jordan."
"You ain't tellin' me a thing I don't know, Jim. But there's one thing
you _can_ tell me. Is that tip you got about Dynamite a sure one?"
Plimsoll, sitting beside Jordan, flashed him a look of contempt.
"Do you think I'm chasing this girl because I'm stuck on her? One of the
party with this eastern crowd dropped into my place and talked. Showed
some samples and I had a good look at them. He happened to leave a bit
or two behind and I had them assayed. Here is where I get back the money
I put up to grubstake Casey."
Jordan gave him a grin of derision.
"You an' yore grubstake," he jeered.
Plimsoll said nothing more.
As they neared the gap, translated by Phil in the unconsciousness that
Bolsa had two meanings in Spanish, Jordan slowed up.
"No shootin' in this deal," he warned. "Come to a show-down, Bourke
won't buck the law soon's we show papers. So long's he ain't been
notified the court is makin' a ward of the girl they ain't done nothin'
wrong. But--if he resists, that's different."
"I ain't goin' to be awful anxious to start shootin'," said Phil. "They
done some pretty shootin' at the bridge that time. Sandy Bourke's a
two-handed lead flinger an' Soda-Water Sam's no slouch. Neither's
Mormon. Me, I'll be peaceable 'less it's forced on me otherwise."
They entered the split in the mesa. The cliffs shimmered in the heat,
their outlines fuzzy. Branched and pillared cactus showed in gray-green
reptilian growths. The soft earth, through which here and there the
volcanic cores of the range were thrust, seemed as if it could supply
the paint shops of a nation with almost any hue desired, ready for
mixing with oil or water. Waves of heat beat between the walls of the
cleft. The floor was fairly smooth, swept clean by occasional
cloud-bursts, save for the skeleton of a tree and another of a too-far
wandering steer, both blanched white as the alkali-crusted boulders. It
was nearly level going and the car pounded along, all the occupants
looking for trail sign. The mesa corridor, nowhere more than thirty feet
wide, twisted and snaked, three hundred feet of sheer wall on either
side topped by sloping cliffs mounting far higher toward the actual top
of the mesa.
"Keep an eye peeled for rain, Phil," said Jordan, "I'd sure hate to get
caught in here with a cloud-burst."
"Right," answered Phil. "I c'ud see better if I had a drink. Plimsoll,
you got somethin' on the hip, ain't you?"
Plimsoll produced a bottle and the four of them drank the fiery
unrectified, unstamped liquor. Ahead was an abrupt turn. Jordan slowed.
Making the curve, a fence stretched across the gorge, reaching from wall
to wall, a four-strand barrier of barbed-wire, strung on patent steel
posts. Jordan braked with emergency. The sight of such a fence in such a
place was as unexpected as the sun-dried carcass of a steer would be on
Broadway. Plimsoll and Jordan cursed, the former in pure anger, the
latter with some appreciation of the stratagem for delay.
"We can tear it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pair
of nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in those posts deep.
Come on."
A voice floated down to them.
"You leave that fence alone, gents. _If_ you please. I went to a heap of
trouble puttin' up that fence. It's _my_ fence."
They looked up, to see Mormon seated on the top of a great boulder that
had land-slipped from the cliff into the gorge. From thirty feet above
them he looked down, amiably enough, though there was a glint of blued
metal in his right hand.
"Hello, Jim Plimsoll," he went on. "I ain't seen you-all fo' quite a
while. You fellers out fo' a picnic?"
Jordan advanced to the foot of the rock, producing his papers.
"I have a bench warrant here to bring into court for the appointment of
a proper guardian, the child Molly Casey, she being a minor and without
natural or legal protectors. I've got yore name on these papers, Mormon
Peters, as one of the three parties with whom the girl is now domiciled.
I warn you that you are obstructing the process of the law by yore
actions. You put up that gun an' come down here an' help to pull down
this fence, illegally erected on property not yore own. Otherwise you're
subject to arrest."
"That is sure an awful long speech fo' a hot day," said Mormon equably.
"But I don't sabe that talk at all. Molly Casey ain't here, to begin
with. Nor she ain't been here. An' I don't sabe no obstruction of the
law by settin' up a fence in a mesa cañon to round up broom-tails."
One of the deputies snickered.
"Broom-tails?" cried Jordan. "That's too thin. There's no mustangs
hangin' round a mesa like this, 'thout feed or water." He flushed
angrily. He was short-tempered and he was certain the fence was a ruse
to gain time, with Mormon left behind to parley. It all seemed to point
to Sandy Bourke making for the railroad.
"You never kin tell about wild hawsses, or even branded ones," said
Mormon pleasantly. "Ask Plimsoll. He picks 'em up in all sorts of
places."
Plimsoll cursed. Mormon still held his gun conspicuously, and he
restrained his own impulse to draw. Jordan wheeled on the gambler.
"You keep out o' this, Jim Plimsoll," he said. "I'm runnin' this end of
it. He's talkin' against time. You come down an' help remove this
fence," he shouted up at the smiling Mormon, "or I'll start something.
It ain't on yore property and it's hindering the carrying out of my
warrant."
"It ain't on a public highway neither," retorted Mormon. "But I'll come
down. Don't you go to clippin' those wires an' destroyin' what _is_ my
property." He slid down the rock and commenced to unbend the metal
straps that held the wire in place. Jordan and one of his men followed
suit with pliers from the motor kit. The job took several minutes.
"You'll come along with us," said Jordan. "You lied about the girl
comin' this way. I've a notion to take you in for that. But I reckon you
can go back in the buckboard with yore partners."
"Reckon I'll travel in the buckboard, when you catch up with it," said
Mormon. "But I'll come erlong with you fo' a spell--of my own free will.
I don't see no harm in takin' the gel visitin' anyway," he concluded as
he took an extra seat in the tonneau.
Jordan made no answer but started the engine. The gorge began to narrow
perceptibly, its floor slanted upward and the machine labored with a
mixture that constantly needed more air. The way zigzagged for half a
mile and then they came to a second fence. No buckboard was in sight.
Beyond the wire the pitch of the ravine showed steeper yet, as it
mounted to a sharp turn. Leaning against a post stood Soda-Water Sam,
smoking a cigarette, his gun holster hitched forward, the butt of the
weapon close to one hand. Jordan and his men leaped out as the car
stopped, Mormon following more slowly.
"Afternoon, hombres all," said Sam. "Joy-ridin'?"
Jordan wasted no more explanations.
"You take down this fence," he fairly shouted.
"What fo'?"
"Ask yore partner."
"Sheriff claims we're cumberin' the landscape with our li'l' corral,
Sam," said Mormon. "He's got a paper that gives him right of way, he
says. Seen anything of Molly Casey?"
"Not for quite a spell. Go easy with them wires, Sheriff. Price of
wire's riz considerable."
The second barrier down and the car through, Jordan ordered Sam to get
in the car.
"Jump, or I'll put the cuffs on you," he said.
"Not this trip," replied Sam coolly. "No sense in my climbin' in there.
Me an' Mormon's through with our li'l' job. We'll go back in the
buckboard. It's round the bend. I was jest goin' to hitch up."
Jordan glared unbelievingly, yet Sam's words carried conviction.
"Yo're sure goin' to have trouble turnin' yore car right here," Sam went
on imperturbably. "Kind of mean to back down, too. It's worse higher up.
Matter of fac' the gap peters out jest round the turn. This is Bolsa
Boquete. Bolsa means purse, Sheriff, one of them knitted purse nets.
Good name for it. Look for yo'self, if you don't believe me."
Jordan and Plimsoll strode on up the pitch. Mormon followed, Sam stayed
with the two deputies. Around the bend stood the buckboard with the
buckskins in a patch of shadow under a scoop in the ending wall that
turned the so-called pass to a box cañon.
"I told you the gel warn't erlong," said Mormon. "She and Sandy was with
us fo' a spell. But they're goin' visitin' an' they shifted to saddle
way back, out there by the spring beside the lava strip."
Mormon's bland smile masked a sterner intent than showed in his eyes.
Jordan, furious at being outwitted, dared not provoke open combat. He
had nothing on which to make arrest of the two Three Star partners and
he was far from sure of his ability to do so under any circumstances.
Mormon hitched up the buckskins, but followed the sheriff and the
scowling, silent Plimsoll back to the car.
"See that notch, way over to the no'th?" said Mormon, bent on exploiting
the situation to the full. "I reckon Sandy and the gel's shackin'
through there about now. Hawss trail only. 'Fraid you won't catch him,
Sheriff. They aim to ketch the seven o'clock train at Caroca. It's the
on'y pass over the mesa. If Sandy had knowed you wanted him he might
have waited. Why didn't you phone? Ninety mile' around the mesa, nearest
way, an' it must be all of five o'clock now, by the sun."
He stopped, puzzled by the change in the sheriff's face. Chagrin had
given place to exultation.
"Catch the seven o'clock train at Caroca?" said Jordan. "Thanks for the
information, Mormon. That schedule was changed last week when they
pulled off two trains on the main line. The train leaves at nine-thirty
an', if I can't make ninety miles in four hours an' a half, I'll make
you a present of my car. Stand back, both of you. No monkey business
with my tires. Cover 'em, boys. The law's on my side, you two gabbing
word-shooters."
He handled the car wonderfully, backing and turning her, and, while
Mormon and Sam stood powerless, the former crestfallen, the latter
sardonically gazing at his partner, the machine went tilting, snorting
down the gorge.
"You sure spilled the beans, Mormon," said Sam finally. "I'd have
thought them three wives of yores 'ud have taught you the vally of
silence."
"I ain't got a damned word to say, Sam. But I'd be obliged if you'd kick
me--good. Use yore heels, I see you got yore spurs on."
CHAPTER VIII
THE PASS OF THE GOATS
In the throat of the gorge the sun shone red on the tawny cliffs. The
trail, a scant four feet wide at its best, with crumbled, weathered
margin, crept along the face of the cliff above a deep cañon where the
night shadows had already gathered in a purple flood, slowly rising as
the rays of the setting sun shifted upward, not yet staining the summit.
It was close to seven o'clock. Sandy's lean face was anxious. The girl
drooped in her seat tired from the long climb, not yet inured to the
saddle. The horses traveled gamely, sure-footed but obviously losing
endurance. Every little while they stopped of their own accord, their
flanks heaving painfully in the altitude.
Sandy had only once crossed the Pass of the Goats and that was years
before. There had been washouts since then. Several times they were
forced to dismount and lead the nervous beasts, Sandy doing the coaxing,
helping Molly over the difficult places. He rode a mare named Goldie and
the girl a bay with a white blaze that Sandy had chosen for the mountain
work and which had been brought to them at the lava strip.
The mare halted, neck stretched out, turning it to look inquiringly at
her master. A sharp incline lay ahead, the path little better than one
made by the goats for which the pass was named. Behind, Molly's mount
followed suit, blowing at the dust. Sandy patted the mare's neck and
dismounted.
"It's late, ain't it?" asked Molly. "Will we miss that train?"
"There's others," answered Sandy. "Or, if there ain't any mo' ter-night,
we'll hire us a car an' keep movin'. Yo're sure game, Molly;" he added
admiringly, "you must be clean tuckered out."
She shook her head with an attempt at a smile.
"I'll be glad when we start goin' down, fer a change," she admitted,
looking into the gloomy trough of the cañon through which the night wind
soughed.
"I'll tighten up yore cinches," said Sandy. "Worst of the climb's jest
ahead. Then we start to drop down t'other side. You don't have to git
off. Trail's bound to be better once we git atop the mesa and start
down. Mesa's right narrer, as I remember. T'other side's away from the
weather. There's a cañon with oak trees an' a stream of water." He
tugged at the leathers, his knee against the bay's ribs as she grunted.
"You ain't much furtheh to go, li'l' hawss," he chatted on. "Downhill
all the way soon an' then a drink to wash out yore mouth an' the best
feed in Caroca fo' the pair of you."
"Gits dark mighty quick up here," said the girl.
A great cloud was ballooning above them, like a dirigible that had lost
buoyancy and was bumping along the mesa ridge. Its belly was black, its
western side ruddy in the sunset. Sandy viewed it apprehensively. In
superficial survey the mesa seemed much like the stranded carcass of a
mastodonic creature left behind when the waters departed from these
inland seas. A hard skeleton of igneous rock, with clayey soil for
flesh, riven and seamed and pitted, crumbling and dusty in the sun, ever
disintegrating with wind and water and frost. Under a rain the trail was
slimy as a whale's back. The cloud was soggy with moisture. Bursting, it
would send torrents roaring down every ravine, wash out weathered masses
of earth, sweep all before it as it gathered forces and rushed out on
the desert, leaving the main cañons carved a little richer, the surface
of the soil on the sink a little deeper, against the time when men
should control these storm waters or bring the precious fluid up from
underground reservoirs and make the desert blossom like the rose.
Where Molly and Sandy rode they were exposed to the first drench of a
cloud-burst. Deeper in the pass, where the flood would be confined,
their chance for escape would be infinitesimal. Even on the heights it
would be precarious unless they could cross the remainder of the
up-trail before the inevitable downpour.
Sandy examined his own cinch and tightened it before he mounted. And he
whispered something in the mare's ear that caused her to lip his
sleeve.
"Let yore hawss have his own way, Molly," he said. "I'm lettin' Goldie
do the pickin' fo' the lead. Ready?"
It was growing cold in the deepening twilight, the belt of sunshine was
rapidly climbing toward the topmost palisades with the purple shadows in
the gorge mounting, twisting and eddying in skeins of mist, twining up
toward them. One spire ahead glowed golden. The cloud drifted down upon
it, glooming and glowing on its sunset side. The crag pierced it, ripped
it as it glided along, like the knife of a diver in the belly of a
shark. A cold wind blew from the riven mass. Then came the hiss of
descending waters. There was neither thunder nor lightning, only the
steady rush of the rain that glazed the slippery trail, hid the opposing
cliff from sight, sheeting it with dull silver, pounding, pitting,
beating at them as they plodded doggedly on, almost blinded, trusting to
the instinct of their horses.
Through the steady patter began to sound the savage voice of torrents
falling over cliffs, rapids rising and surging in deep gorges. The
wetness and the cold sapped Molly's vitality. She shivered, her flesh
seemed sodden, her hands and wrists began to puff and she saw their
flesh was purple in the fading light. She rode with hands on the saddle
horn, her head bowed, water streaming from the rim of her Stetson, the
thud of the rain on her tired shoulders heavy as shot. The bay slipped,
lurched, scrambled frantically for footing, hind feet skidding in the
clay, haunches gathering desperately, heaving beneath her to the effort
that brought him back to the trail. She saw Sandy ahead, dimly, like a
sheeted ghost, twisted in his saddle, watching her. From the hips down
he was a part of the mare he rode, from waist up he was in such
exquisite balance while keeping his individuality apart from the horse
that, despite her present misery and a presentiment of coming evil that
was beginning to encompass her, Molly realized what a magnificent rider
he was, and clung to his strength and skill, sensing the comforting
power of his manhood.
To her right was the cliff, slimy with water, the trail so narrow that
now and then her elbow dug into the soft stuff. To the left was
blackness out of which mists ascended, writhing, like steamy vapors, the
rain pelting into the gulf, far, far below; the thunder of augmenting
waters. Masses of broken cloud swept on above their heads, purple and
crimson and orange as they streamed across the summit like the tattered
banners of a routed army. The light rayed upward at an acute angle. In a
few moments it would be dark. But they were close to the top. The mare
already stood on a level ledge of side-jutting rock, a horizontal
protuberance that marked the extreme height of the Pass of the Goats,
from which one could look down into the cañon of the oaks and the
unfailing stream.
Sandy heard a cry from Molly and saw, through the curtain of the falling
rain, the wide-flared nostrils of her horse, its eyes protruding as the
brute, with the ground slopping away beneath him, slid slowly down
toward the gulf, the girl, her weight flung forward on the withers, her
face white as paper, turning to him mutely for help. It was a bad
moment. Sandy and his mount stood upon an island in a shifting sea. The
whole cliff seemed working and crawling, slithering down.
He had no space to turn in, no chance to whirl his lariat, even for a
side throw. There was no time to spin a loop. But his hand detached the
rope, flying fingers found the free end as he pivoted in the saddle,
thighs welded to the mare.
"Take a turn about the horn!" he shouted. "Hang to the end yo'se'f!" He
sent the line jerking back, whistling as it streaked across the girl's
shoulders. She clutched for it, with plenty of slack, snubbed it about
the saddle horn, clung to the end, made a bight of it about her body.
Sandy spoke to the mare.
"Steady, li'l' lady, steady!" The rope was about his own horn; he
thanked God that he had examined the cinches of Molly's saddle. The bay
was cat-footed; with the help of the mare Sandy believed he could dig
and scrape and climb to safety. It was the decision of a split-second
and he did not dare risk dragging the girl from the saddle past the
struggling horse.
He felt Goldie stiffen beneath him, braced against the strain she knew
was coming. The taut lariat hummed, it bruised into Sandy's thigh.
Behind, the bay snorted, struggling gallantly. They were poised on the
brink of death for a moment, two--three--and then the mare began to move
slowly forward, neck curved, ears cocked to her master's urging, while
the bay sloshed through the treacherous muck, found foothold, lost it,
made a frantic leap, another, and landed trembling on the ledge. Sandy
leaped from his saddle and caught Molly, sliding from her seat in sheer
exhaustion and the revulsion of terror, clinging closely to him.
"It's all right, Molly darlin'," he said soothingly. "All set an' safe.
Rain's oveh an' stars comin' out. We're top of the pass. We'll git down
inter the cañon a ways an' then we'll light a fire an' warm up a bit,
'fore we go on."
She found her feet and cleared from his hold, gasping for recovery of
herself.
"I'm all right," she said. "I was scared an' yet I knew you'd pull me
out. I'm plumb shamed of myself. Jest like a damned gel to act that
way."
"Shucks! You wasn't half as scared as the bay. Wonder did he strain
himself?" He passed clever hands over the bay's legs, talking to it.
"Yo're all right, ol' surelegs. Right as rain." Goldie, the mare, stood
stock-still with trailing lariat, watching them intelligently in the
dusk that was growing quickly luminous as star after star shone through
the flying wrack. A clean, strong wind blew through the throat of the
pass. Sandy recoiled his lariat, gave Molly a hand to her foot to lift
her to her saddle, mounted himself and they rode slowly down. The trail
was in better shape this side, though half an inch of water still topped
it. The turmoil of running waters far below burdened the night, but the
danger from the storm was over.
Train time was long past. Sandy knew nothing of the change of schedule,
but he was confident of winning clear. He knew a man in the little town
they were aiming for whose livery stable was, in the march of the times,
divided between horses and machines. There he expected to put up the
horses until they could be returned to Three Star, and there he figured
on hiring a car and a driver if, as he anticipated, there were no more
trains that night. He believed that Mormon and Sam had delayed the
sheriff. Probably the latter had given up the chase, but there was no
telling. Jordan's best attribute was his pertinacity. They should lose
no time in getting out of the state.
CHAPTER IX
CAROCA
As Sandy had promised, there was a wide-bottomed cañon where great oaks
grew on the flats beside the unfailing stream. The trees were only vast
shapes in the starlight, the long grass was wet and clinging, the creek
spouted and tore along as Sandy led the way on the mare to a shelving
bench, a place where he had camped once long before and, with his
out-of-doors-man's craft, never forgotten. Molly was tired almost to
insensibility as to what might be going on, soaked and chilled to
limpness. Sandy got her out of the saddle and into a shallow cave in a
sandy bank. The next thing she knew a fire was leaping and sending light
and warmth into her nook.
She heard Sandy talking to his mare. Between the range rider and his
mount there is always an understanding born of loneliness, close
companionship and mutual appreciation. Sandy was certain that his ponies
understood most of what he said, and they were very sure that Sandy
understood them thoroughly.
"Used yore brains, you did, li'l' old lady," said Sandy. "Sure did.
Can't do much fo' you now. There's a li'l' grain left fo' you an' the
bay, an' we'll dry out these blankets a bit. Can't let you stay long or
we'll git all stiffened up, but Chuck Goodwin, down to Caroca, he knows
hawses an' he's a pal of mine. He'll fix you with a hot mash an', after
that, anything on the menu from alfalfy to sugar. The pair of you. You
bay, you, dern me if you ain't a reg'lar goat! A couple o' pie-eatin',
grain-chewin', antelope-eyed, steel-legged cayuses, that's what you
are!"
Molly listened drowsily to the affection in his voice. It was nice to be
spoken to that way, she thought. Nice to be looked after. Her dad had
been fond of her, but his words had lacked the silk, the caress that
savored the strength, as it did with Sandy. She snuggled into the warm
heat-reflecting sand like a rabbit in its burrow.
"Eat this, Molly, an' we got to be on our way." Sandy was handing her a
cupful of hot savory stew, made for the trip, warmed up hastily, the
best kind of a meal after their strenuous experience, though Sandy
bemoaned its quality.
"Figgered you an' me 'ud eat on the Pullman ter-night," he said. "But
this snack'll do us no harm. We'll git a cup of coffee in Caroca if
there's a chance."
She gulped the reviving food gratefully, strength coming back with the
fuel that gave both warmth and motive power. Soon they were jogging on
down the wide trough of the cañon beneath the white, steady stars,
through scrub oak and chaparral, the air sweet scented with wild spice,
through slopes set with sleeping folded poppies and Mariposa lilies,
past cactus groves, columnar, stately, mystic; the mesa slopes
receding, its great bulk dim mass, the twin notches that marked the
Pass of the Goats hardly discernible against the sky. They crossed a
white road, unfenced but evidently a main source of travel though now
deserted.
"County line runs plumb down the middle of the road," announced Sandy.
"There's the lights of Caroca blinkin' away to the left. Too bad we
missed the train. Sleepy?"
"Some," she admitted.
"Me too," lied Sandy companionably.
Coming down from the mesa he had talked with her about Barbara Redding,
how welcome she would make Molly and what she would do for her. Molly
had listened silently. Only once she had spoken.
"Why didn't you marry her 'stead of that Redding?" she asked.
Sandy laughed, whole-heartedly.
"Don't believe she'd have had me. Never figgered on marryin' anybody.
I'm a privateerin' sort of a person, Molly, sailin' under my own colors,
that means. I've allus had the saddle itch till Mormon an' Sam an' me
settled down to the ranch. Never had time enough in one place to fool
round the gels."
"Sam says yo're woman-shy?" queried Molly.
"Mebbe I am. But it ain't the way a dawg is gun-shy. Must be the
horrible example Mormon's set up."
"Don't you like wimmen?"
"Sure do. Admire 'em pow'ful. Never met the one I'd want to tie to,
that's all, Molly."
"None of 'em pritty enough?"
"Pritty? Shucks! Looks don't count so all-fired much. The woman I most
admired was the wife of ol' Pete Holden, a desert prospector an'
drifter, like yore dad, Molly. She was old an' tough an' wiry, like he
was. I don't figger she'd ever have taken a blue ribbon in a beauty
contest, but she was like first-grade linoleum, the pattern wore clean
through an' the stuff was top quality. She'd drifted with Pete over most
of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizony, Nevada and paht of New
Mexico an' Texas, an' she warn't jest his wife, she was his pal an'
fifty-fifty partner. Pete said the on'y time he ever knew her to hold
out on him was once in the Cañon Pintada when he woke up in the night
and saw her pourin' water out of her canteen into his. Nothin' pritty
about Kate Holden, but she was full woman-size from foot callus to gray
ha'r, back to back with Pete all the time she wasn't standin' side of
him."
"She warn't eddicated?" asked Molly.
"She was. Some thought it funny, for Pete was no scholar. I've listened
with him, more'n once when she'd tell us things about plants and
insects, or about the stars, things we'd never dreamed of. They say she
c'ud play the pianny an' she sure c'ud sing. Ask Sam about that. But
Pete was her man an' she was his woman, so they trailed fine together."
"I see," said Molly. "She loved him."
There was a peculiar quality to the tone of the girl's voice. It was not
the first time that Sandy had noticed it, lately wondering a little, not
realizing that his own observation was a recognition based upon
response. Now he figured that the low softness of her speech was due to
her tired condition and a little wave of tenderness swept him, blent
with admiration of her pluck. Saddle-racked, nerve-tried, she had never
murmured, never mentioned the trials of the trail.
They entered the little town, once a cattle station, now renamed in
musical Spanish, Caroca,--A Caress--a spot where fruits were grown and
shipped and flowers bloomed the year round wherever the water caressed
the earth. Sandy rode the mare into the livery where the last skirmish
between hoof and rim, iron and rubber tire was being fought, and called
for "Chuck" Goodwin.
A stout man came out, not so heavy, not so big as Mormon, but sheathed
in flesh with the armor of ease and good living. He peered up at Sandy,
then let out a shout.
"You long-legged, ornery, freckle-faced, gun-packin' galoot, Sandy
Bourke! Light off'n that cayuse, you an' yore lady friend. Where in time
did you-all drop from?"
"Come across the mesa. Like to git washed across through Paso Cabras,"
said Sandy. "Miss Casey, let me make you 'quainted with Chuck Goodwin,
one time the best hawss-shoer in the seven Cactus States, now sellin'
oil an' gasoline at fancy prices, not to mention machines fo' which he
is agent."
"Got a few oats left fo' yore hawsses, Sandy. Miss, won't you come
inside the office? Where you bound, Sandy?"
"We was aimin' to catch the seven o'clock train east, makin' fo' New
Mexico an' the Redding Ranch, where Miss Casey is to visit fo' a spell,
but we found the trail bad an' a cloud-bu'st finally set us back so we
quit hurryin' an' loafed in. Chuck, have you got a machine you c'ud rent
us, with a driver?"
"You can have anything I got in the place with laigs or wheels, an'
welcome. Goin' to the old Redding Ranch? Give my howdedo to Miss
Barbara, or Mrs. Barbara as she is now. But--" He looked at the wall
clock. "It's a quarter of ten. Yore train's been altered to suit main
line schedules. She don't come through till nine-thirty an' she's
gen'ally late makin' the grade. I ain't heard her whistle yet. I
wouldn't wonder but what you can make it. Not that I'm aimin' none to
hurry you."
The ex-blacksmith reached for the telephone and got his connection.
"Runnin' twenty minutes late," he announced. "Hop in my car an' we'll
jest about make her. She don't do much more'n hesitate at Caroca when
she's behind time."
He hurried them out on the street to where a car stood by the curb.
Molly and her few belongings got in behind, Sandy mounted with Goodwin.
"You'll take good care of the hawsses, Chuck?" he said. "I'll probably
be back for 'em myse'f in three-fo' days."
"Seguro." Goodwin stepped on his starter and the flywheel whirred to
sputtering explosions. Another car came limping down the street, flat
on both rims of one side, its paint plastered with mud, one light out,
the other dimmed with mire. The driver called to Goodwin.
"Which way to the depot?"
Goodwin, his hand on the lever, foot on the clutch, was astounded to
hear Sandy hissing out.
"Don't tell 'em. Scoot ahead full speed." Then, over his shoulder to the
girl, "Crouch down there, Molly." Goodwin was still a man of action and
he knew Sandy Bourke of old. Out came the pedal, the gears engaged and
the car shot ahead, beneath a swinging arc light. Sandy's hat-rim did
not sufficiently shade his face or Molly's action had not been swift
enough. There came a yell and a string of curses from the crippled car
which backed and turned and followed, its torn treads flapping.
Goodwin asked no questions of Sandy. If the latter wanted ever to tell
him why he required a quick exit out of Caroca, or why he was followed,
he could. If not, never mind. He slid his gears into high and dodged
around corners recklessly. A red lantern showed ahead in the middle of
the road. They crashed through a light obstruction of boards and
trestles, overturning the lantern and plowed on over rough stones.
"I'm mayor," said Goodwin with a grin. "Breakin' my own rules but I
figger that broken stone'll bother 'em some. We'll chance it."
They lunged through, regardless of tires and, behind them, the pursuing
car rattled, lurched, skidded. A third tire blew out and as Goodwin
swung a corner with two wheels in the air the sheriff's machine smashed
viciously across the sidewalk, poking its crumpling radiator into a
cottonwood.
"Brazen bulls!" shouted Goodwin. "There she blows! You got to run."
The depot was ahead, to one side of the road-crossing. The train, its
clanging bell slowing for the stop, ground to a halt, the conductor
swinging from a platform to glance at the "clear" board. He waved
"ahead" as Sandy and Molly raced up and clambered to the platform from
which the trainman had dropped off. Now the latter remounted while the
train restarted, gathered speed.
"Where to?" he asked Sandy, surveying the pair of them curiously.
Sandy did not answer. He was watching four running figures coming down
the street. A star flashed on the breast of one of them, a star dulled
with mud. Goodwin had disappeared. Jordan pulled up, Plimsoll close
behind him, and the depot building shut off Sandy's view.
"Where to?" asked the conductor again. "Got reservations?"
"Bound for Boville, New Mexico. On the El Paso and Southwestern. What's
the charges? No reservations, but we rode fifty mile' across the mesa to
make the train."
Sandy produced his roll and at the same time he grinned in the light of
the conductor's lantern. And Sandy's smile was worth much more than
ordinary currency. It stamped him bona-fide, certified his character.
The conductor's profession made him apt at such endorsements.
"We take you to Phoenix," he said. "Change there for El Paso. I can give
you a spare upper for the lady."
Molly, all eyes, tired though they were, was staring at the Pullman
Afro-American, flashing eyes and teeth and buttons at her and even more
at Sandy.
"Fine!" said Sandy. "Smoker's good enough fo' me. He's got a bed for
you, Molly. See you in the morning."
He waited, countenancing her while she climbed the short ladder to the
already curtained berth. Molly's system might be aquiver with wonder but
she never showed loss of wits or poise. She might have traveled so a
hundred times. Back of the curtain she curled up half-undressed but,
even as Sandy registered to himself with a low chuckle: "She never
turned a hair or shied."
He found the smoking-room empty and rolled cigarettes. Presently the
conductor came in to go over his batch of tickets and accounts.
"Cattle?" he asked Sandy.
"Yes, sir. Three Star Ranch, nigh to Hereford."
"Business good these days? Beef's high enough in the city."
"It's fair in the main," answered Sandy. "Sometimes we seem right happy
an' prosperous an' then ag'in," he added with a twinkle in his eyes,
"we're jest a jump ahead of the sheriff."
"Boss," said the porter to the conductor, later, "Ah reckon that's a bad
man fo' suah. Carryin' two of them six-guns. You figgah he's elopin' wiv
that gal?"
The conductor surveyed his aide disdainfully.
"You've been seeing too many cheap picture-shows lately, Clem," he said.
"Eloping with that young girl? I wouldn't hint it to him if I were you.
Don't you know a he-man when you see one?"
CHAPTER X
SANDY RETURNS
Eight days passed before Sandy came riding back on Goldie, leading the
bay, reaching the Three Star at the end of sunset. Mormon was in his
chair with the one letter that Sandy had written on his lap. It was
almost too dark to read it. Mormon's eyes were beginning to fail him at
anything short of long distance but he knew the contents by heart, yet
he liked to keep the letter near him as a dog loves a favorite bone long
after all the nourishment from it has been absorbed. Mormon was still
penitent. He knew that the sheriff had just failed to make the train,
but he did not cease to blame himself for submitting Sandy and Molly to
so close a chance, neither did Sam forget occasionally to remind him of
his lapse of tongue.
Sandy pulled in the mare beyond the corral. He could hear the sound of
Sam's harmonica and pictured him with the instrument cuddled up under
his great mustache. Sam was playing _The Girl I Left Behind Me_ and he
managed to breathe a good deal of pathos into the primitive mouth organ.
"It's sure good to be home, Goldie," said Sandy. The mare whinnied. The
bay nickered. Answers came back from the corral. Pronto, Sandy's first
string horse, came trotting cross the corral, head up.
"Hello, you ol' pie-eater!" said Sandy. "You sure look good to me.
C'udn't take you erlong this trip, son, but we'll be out ter-morrer
together." Then he let out a mighty, "Hello, the house!"
Sam's lilt ceased abruptly. The riders came hurrying. Sam appeared, with
Mormon waddling after, too swiftly for his best ease or grace of motion,
both grabbing at Sandy, swatting him on the back as he off-saddled.
"Lemme go," said Sandy. "I'm hungry as a spring b'ar. Where's Pedro?
Pedro, I'm hungry--_muy hambriento_. _Despachese Vd. Pronto!
Huevos--seis huevos--fritos! Frijoles! Jamon! Cafe! Panecilos! Todo el
rancho! Pronto!_"
"_Si, señor, inmediatamente._" And, with a yell for Joe the half-breed,
Pedro hurried away, grinning, to prepare the six fried eggs, the ham,
the coffee, the muffins, everything in the larder!
His two partners watched him eat, plying him with food and then with
question after question about the trip, about Barbara Redding and about
Molly's going to school. Mormon made abject apology for talking too much
and Sandy told how close a shave it had been.
"I don't cotton to playin' jack-rabbit to Plimsoll and Jordan's
coyotes," said Sandy. "Speshully Plimsoll, who's at the bottom of the
whole thing. Nex' time he may not have the law backin' him, an' I won't
have to run. How's the sheriff?"
"Sort of tamed. They've been kiddin' him a mite. Seems he done some
boastin' 'fore he started. His car's laid up fo' repairs. Jordan's
layin' low. Miss Bailey, she's at the head of the Wimmen's League to
gen'ally clean up politics an' the town, one to the same time. I figger
the first thing their broom's goin' to locate'll be either Jordan or
Plimsoll. They're sure goin' into all the dark corners an' under the
furniture. She's a hustler an' she's thorough, is Mirandy Bailey."
"Where'd you learn all this, Mormon? Over to Herefo'd?"
"'Pears Miss Bailey's took a great interest--in Molly," said Sam, with a
grin. "She's been over here twice to see if there was news. Mormon
entertained her. He seems to be the fav'rite. Beats all how one man'll
charm the fair sect, like honey'll bring flies, while another ain't ever
bothered."
Mormon changed the trend of the conversation by demanding to know about
the school.
"Molly's got an outfit Barbara Redding bought her," said Sandy. "Trunk
an' leather grip, all kinds of do-dads. School costs fifteen hundred
bucks a year. The rest of Molly's money is banked. Barbara picked out a
school in Pennsylvania she said was the best. Here's an advertisement of
it."
He handed the magazine leaf to Sam who read over the items with Mormon
looking over his shoulder, forming the words with his lips. Sam read:
CORONA COLLEGE
"_Developing School for Girls. Development of well poised
personality through intellectual, moral, social and physical
trainin'._
"_Extensive Campus_--(whatever that is)--_Elective
Academic_--(Sufferin' Cows!)--_Domestic Science, Household
Economics, Expression, Supervised Athletics._
"_Horseback Riding_--(Huh, I never see an eastener yet who
c'ud ride)--_Swimming, basketball, country tramping, dancing,
military drill._"
Sam made heavy going of many of the words that left him in the dark as
to their meaning. Sandy tried to elucidate, repeating the explanations
Barbara Redding had given him.
"Campus is the College Field, Sam," he said.
"Then why in time don't they say so? Ain't they goin' to teach her to
talk United States? I s'pose them things is all fine an' necessary fo'
the female eddication but, dern me, if I can see where she's goin' to
find time to eat an' sleep."
"It's been all-fired lonely with both you an' her gone," said Mormon.
"An' the dawg ain't eat a mouthful, I don't believe. Mebbe you can coax
him, Sandy. Set around an' howled like a sick coyote fo' fo'-five
days--mostly nights. If the gel balks at all that line of stuff I'll
stand back of her to quit an' come back to Three Star."
"An' have Jordan git her away an' put her under Plimsoll's
guardeenship?"
"He c'udn't do that. Mirandy Bailey 'ud block him."
"He c'udn't do anything," said Sandy. "I got myse'f app'inted legal
guardeen to Molly while we was in Santa Rosa, one day Barbara an' Molly
was shoppin'. John Redding's lawyer fixed it up."
The months passed without especial incident at the Three Star. Sandy
purchased a Champion Hereford bull for the herd out of the ranch share
of the faro winnings. Other improvements were added, and the three
partners seemed on the fair way to prosperity. Sandy's theory that
better bred and better fed beef, bringing better prices, would pay,
began to demonstrate itself slowly, though it would take three years
before the get of the thoroughbred stock was ready for marketing.
Occasional letters came from Molly. Homesickness and unhappiness showed
between the lines of the first epistles, despite her evident efforts to
conceal them. Her ways were not the ways of the other girls who were
_developing a well poised personality through intellectual, moral,
social and physical training_. She apparently formed no friendships and
it seemed that none were invited from her.
"But I'm going to stick with it till I get same as the
rest--on the outside, anyway," she wrote. "I don't know how
some of them work inside. It ain't like me. But I've started
this and you-all want me to go through so I will, though I
get lonesome as a sick cat for the ranch. I don't swear any
more--I got into awful trouble for spilling my language one
time--and I can spell pretty good without hunting up every
word in the dictionary. I reckon I'm a hard filly to break
but then I was haltered late. I don't think it would be
allowed for me to have Grit, so you'll have to look out for
him and not let him forget me. I hope you won't do that
yourselves. Some of the other girls are nice enough. It will
be all right soon as we get to understand each other. Don't
think I'm starting out to buck or that I'm unhappy, because
I'm not."
"If she's happy, I'm a Gila lizard," said Mormon. "What's the sense of
havin' her miserable fo' the sake of a li'l' book learnin'. She's
gettin' to spell so I can't make out what she's writin' about."
At last Molly wrote that she had made the basketball team and won honors
and favors. She gained laurels for Corona in swimming and tennis, and
life went more merrily. Mormon looked up tennis outfits in his mail
catalogue and sent for a book on the game, which he soon abandoned.
"You have to learn a foreign langwidge before you start to play," he
said. "Leastwise a code. The langwidge ain't what you'd expect them to
be handin' out in a young lady's college. All erbout deuce an' love. I'd
a notion we'd fix up the game fo' her so she'd c'ud keep it up but I
dunno. It sure ain't a fat man's game. It's a human grasshopper's."
CHAPTER XI
PAY DIRT
In September there was a killing in the Good Luck Pool Room, the murder
of a stranger whose friends made such an investigation, backed by the
real law-and-order element of Hereford, that the exposure brought about
forfeiture of all licenses and a strict shutting down on gambling and
illicit liquor. Plimsoll left Hereford for his horse ranch, deprived of
the sheriff's official countenance, and Jordan began to worry about
election.
One evening in early October a little body of riders came to the Three
Star, all strangers to the county, men whose faces were grim, who
cracked no jokes, whose greetings were barely more than civil. They were
well armed and they acted like men of a single purpose.
"This is the Three Star, ain't it?" asked the leader of a cowboy, who
nodded silently, taking in the appearance of the visitors.
"Bourke, Peters and Manning?"
"One and all," answered the Three Star rider. "Find 'em at chuck, I
reckon. You-all are jest in time. If you aim to stay overnight I'll tend
yore hawsses an' put 'em in the corral."
"You seem hospitable here."
The tone was half sarcastic.
"Rule of the ranch," replied Buck. "Folks arrivin' after sun-down, the
same bein' strangers, is expected to pass the night, if they're in no
hurry."
Sandy personally backed the invitation a moment later and steaks were
being pan-fried as the men dismounted and lounged on the porch, awaiting
their meal. The leader introduced himself by the name of Bill Brandon,
claiming previous knowledge, without actual acquaintance, of Sandy,
Mormon and Sam in Texas. Sizing each other up, man-fashion, eye to eye,
appraising a score of tiny things that aggregated sufficiently to tip
the mental scale, the crowd grew more familiar and welded with supper,
exchanged anecdotes with digestion, to get confidential over the
tobacco.
"We're out after a man who's been collectin' hawsses too primiscuous,"
said Brandon finally. "We know you gents by past reputation an' by what
they say of you in Herefo'd. Also, by that last reckonin', I ain't
figgerin' you as any speshul pal of the man we're tryin' to round up. I
reckon you know who we mean. Jim Plimsoll, who owns what he calls the
Waterline Hawss Ranch, sixteen miles east of you, more or less; an' who
gits more fancy breeds out of the mangy cayuses he shows his breedin'
mares an' stallions, than there is different fish in the sea. From all I
can figger most of his mares must have fo' foals a year.
"Some of us are from this state--Mojave County--two of us from Nevada.
Me, I'm from California. We've all been losin' hawsses off an' on an'
we've final' got together an' compared notes. Seems most of the missin'
stock sorter drifted across the Arizony line somewheres between Mojave
City an' Topock. Most of 'em have been sold or passed on. All of 'em
have been faked an' doctored more or less. Talk points to Plimsoll, so
do some facts, but not enough. An' this Plimsoll has got some mighty
close friends where they do the most good. You'd have to prove a damn
sight more than we got to even sight a blank warrant."
"You been over to his ranch?" asked Sandy.
"Jest come from there. He's slick an' cool, is Plimsoll. We was supposed
to be lookin' over hawsses for buyin', but he's careful who he sells to.
We saw some. An' we recognized some. But you know how it is, Bourke, it
ain't hard to change a hawss. Dock its foretop, do a little doctorin',
an' how you goin' to prove it? I'll say this for the man, he's the
finest brand-faker I've met up with. He suspicioned what we was after
an' we didn't see all he had. But we're goin' to git him yet an', when
we do, there won't be any more hawss-stealin' an' fakin' in Coconino
County, Arizona. Hawss-stealin' was a hangin' matter when I first come
west an' I reckon there's some feels the same way now. Speshully when
the courts back up a man like Plimsoll. Lead's cheaper than rope, but
somehow it ain't so convincin'."
Brandon changed the subject after he had spoken, but it was plain that
he and his companions had not given up the matter; clear also that they
were sure of Plimsoll's guilt and laying plans to trap him. They stayed
until the next morning and departed.
"That man Brandon's got some trick up his sleeve to trap Plimsoll," said
Sam, watching them ride off. "He ain't quite got it fixed up yet to suit
himself but it's a good un."
"He's got brains," commented Sandy, rubbing Grit's ears. The collie had
picked up since Sandy's return, sensing some connection with his
mistress closer than that of Mormon and Sam. He would feed only from
Sandy's hand and attached himself to the latter almost as permanently as
his shadow. "So has Jim Plimsoll. I ain't hankerin' fo' another man to
clean him up befo' I get my own chance. But that bunch sure mean
business."
The incident was forgotten as the round-up days grew near, with frosty
mornings when the mountains looked as flat as if they had been profiled
from cardboard and stuck up along the horizon--until the lifting sun
modeled them with shadows--with sweltering noons tapering slowly off to
cool nights while horses raced after the flying cattle, driving and
cutting out, and so to the corral brandings, where the three partners
found their increase better than they had anticipated.
Molly was not to come home at Christmas after all. She formed a
friendship, the first close one she had made, and Barbara Redding
advised that the invitation extended by this new acquaintance to spend
the holidays be accepted. There had been plans of a Christmas tree and
a celebration, but the gifts were boxed and sent off. Others arrived
from the East in exchange, a collar for Grit, a cigarette case for
Sandy, a necktie for Mormon and a three-decked harmonica for Sam. There
was a picture too, not so much of a girl but a young woman, a somewhat
wistful look in her eyes, but a firm-lipped, resolute-chinned young
woman for all that, who smiled out at them frankly and confidently. It
was signed
A Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year
from the Mascotte of the * * *
MOLLY.
"I dunno about the merry Christmas," said Mormon. "We're prosperous
enough, short of bein' profiteers. Molly's gettin' to be a good-looker,
ain't she? Goin' to git it framed, Sandy?"
Snows fell, the temperature ranged down far below zero at times, winter
gave reluctant place to spring until the last moment when it turned and
fled and, far into the desert, myriads of flower-blooms sprang up
overnight while everywhere the cactus gleamed in silken blooms in yellow
and crimson.
One April night the Bailey flivver came charging up to Three Star,
smothering itself in a cloud of dust that had not settled before there
sprang out of it Miranda Bailey and the lanky Ed, temporarily charged
with a tremendous activity. The cause of young Ed's galvanism was so
strong that he actually won from his aunt as bearer of the news.
"Gold!" he cried. "They've struck pay dirt at Dynamite! Chunks of
sylvanite that sweat gold in the fire. Assay thirty thousand dollars a
ton. Whole streaks of it. Vein's twelve foot wide. The whole town's
stampedin' by way of White Cliff Cañon. I'm goin'. Got a pick an' shovel
in the car. Aunt Mirandy, she was bound we'd come this way. Mebbe we can
pack you all in. But you got to hurry or they'll swarm over Dynamite
like flies on a chunk o' liver!"
"It's true," backed Miss Bailey. "Folks over to Hereford have gone
crazy. I caught a word or two that Plimsoll's to the bottom of the rush.
Ed heard he got hold of some samples them easterners took an' had 'em
sent away an' assayed. They turned out to be the big stuff. 'Course you
can't depend on gossip, when folks are talkin' mines but, if it's so,
Plimsoll's burned the wind to git first pick. An' he'll grab those
claims of Molly's first thing. That's one reason I made Ed come this
way. Thought you might like to come erlong, on'y he took the words out
of my mouth."
"You goin'?" asked Mormon. There were two red splotches in Miranda's
cheeks, a glitter in her eyes that suggested she had not escaped the
gold fever.
"Sure am," she answered. "Ed Bailey Senior, he 'lows there's no sense in
chasin' gold underground. Says he likes to see his prospects growin' up
under his own eyes an' gazin' on his own land. I'm the adventurous one
of the Bailey fam'ly, though you mightn't guess it to look at me," she
said with a twitch of her lips. "Me an' young Ed here. He takes after
me. Got the gamblin' germ in our systems. Want to git somethin' fo'
nothin'," she went on with grim humor. "I reckon Ed's right but,
land-sake, doin' the same thing, day in an' out--gits mighty monotonous.
Bein' a woman, you're more tied than a man. I tried to work my extry
energy out in politics but it all come my way too easy.
"Plimsoll ain't got much love for me. He figgers I lost him his license
an' his brother-in-law sheriff his badge. He's right. I did. I figgered
you'd not be anxious to let him have his own way about Molly's claims
an' I 'lowed I'd like to be along an' see the excitement. Me an' Ed
here'll stake off suthin' for ourselves. I'd jest as soon git some easy
money as the rest of 'em. If I do I'll buy another car. This thing"--she
surveyed the panting flivver contemptuously--"is nigh worn out and it's
jest a tin kittle on wheels. Biles if you leave it out in the sun."
Sandy, after a swift word of apology, turned away toward the bunk-house.
Mormon, with a sweeping salute from his bald head to his knees, voiced
his opinion.
"Marm," he said, "you're a dyed-in-the-wool sport an' I'd admire to
trail with you. But that kittle, as you call it, 'll sure bu'st its
cinches with we-all ridin' it. I'm no jockeyweight, fo' one."
"It'll stand up. We've got to make time. I was wonderin' if we c'ud
make it by the old road, where you found Molly? It's shorter than White
Cliff Cañon an' we've lost time comin' out here."
Sam shook his head.
"No'm, c'udn't be done. There ain't no road. Las' winter 'ud finish what
was left of it an' there was spots this side of where we found Casey
where a wagon c'udn't have passed. We just made it with the buckbo'd.
Ask Sandy."
Sandy, coming up, endorsed Sam.
"We'll have to go the long way," he said. "How are you off fo' grub?
It'll be sca'ce an' high in Dynamite. Some of us may have to stay an'
hang on to claims until they're recorded an' the new camp settles down.
An' one of us sh'ud stay an' run the ranch," he added. At which his
partners balked resolutely.
"We've got some food," said Miranda. "You might fetch along some canned
stuff if you've any handy. Ed, you sure you got plenty ile, gas an'
water? Better look her all over."
With orders to Buck, with some provisions, ammunition and a few tools,
the hurried start was made. Mormon clambered to the front seat beside
young Ed, Miranda Bailey sat between Sandy and Sam. Whatever lack of
energy the lank Ed Junior displayed on his feet, he eliminated as a
driver. The springs creaked, chirpings arose from various parts of the
car as it ran, but he coaxed the engine, performed miracles at bad
places in the road, nursed the insufficient radiator surface and kept
the "kittle" at a simmer.
He judged grades, rushed them, conquered them, sometimes at a crawl,
slid and skipped and jumped down slopes, negotiated curves on two wheels
and brought them triumphantly through White Cliff Cañon, over the
malpais belt, up and across a mesa and so to the far brink of it an hour
before dawn without puncture, without a broken leaf in the springs, with
shock absorbers still on duty and the cylinders performing full service.
Cold and raw as it was, the engine was hot and they halted to cool it.
They could see a light or two glimmering at the foot of the mesa,
something that had not shown in the deserted mining camp for many years.
Miranda Bailey shivered as she got stiffly from the car.
"I've got some powdered coffee an' some solid alcohol," she announced.
"We can all have somethin' hot to drink anyway. It won't take but a
minute. Here's some cold biscuits we can warm up on that radiator. It's
nigh as good as a stove."
The trio watched interestedly the capable way in which she got together
the meal, adding sugar and evaporated milk to her coffee. Sam picked up
the tin of solid alcohol after it had cooled off.
"It's too bad they can't fix up the real stuff that way," he said. "It
'ud sure make a hit. Canned Tom-and-Jerry, all ready for heatin'."
"And you called Soda-Water Sam," said Miranda Bailey.
"That title was give me in derision," replied Sam. "Me, I don't
hesitate to say I like my licker. Likewise I can do 'thout it. They
claim that I used to leave nothin' but the sody-water inter a saloon
once I'd entered it. Which same is a calummy. Gittin' light in the east,
ain't it, folks?"
Coffee-comforted, they made the down-road as the sun rose above the rim
of the eastern range, so jagged it seemed trying to claw back the
mounting sun. Ever in view below them lay the intermountain valley in
which the camp had been located. Its floor was jumbled with hard-cored
hills. There was little greenery. A few cottonwoods, fewer willows along
the deep bed of a scanty stream. Under the sunrise the whole scene was
theatrical with vivid light and shade. The crumpled ground, the
deep-ridged hills, all seemed unreal, made up of papier-mâché, crudely
modeled and painted, garish, unfinished. The effect was enhanced by the
appearance of the one main street of the camp and the few scattering
cabins on the hills, the ancient dumps in front of the lateral shafts
where the weathered timbers sagged.
There were a few tents, some wagons and picketed horses, and there were
a great many machines parked at will. But, from the height, it all
looked like the miniature scene of a panoramic model, the houses
cardboard, the horses and wagons toys of tin. The horses were the only
moving objects, no smoke curled yet from the chimneys.
Here and there unbroken glass in the windows flung back the sun. A door
opened and a midget in shirtsleeves came out, stretching arms, palpably
yawning. Suddenly smoke jetted from a tumbled chimney, other puffs
followed and steady vapors mounted. Ant-like men emerged from every
house, gathered in little knots, busied themselves with the horses,
hurried back to breakfasts. Faint sounds came up to the travelers.
"W'udn't think that place had been dead as a cemetery fo' years?"
commented Sandy. "Stahted up overnight like an old engine. That's the
hotel, with the high front. Furniture all in it an' in the cabins. Most
of the fixtures left in the saloons, an' there was a plenty of them. Two
hotels, five restyronts, seven gamblin' houses, twenty-two saloons an'
the rest sleepin' cabins. That was Dynamite. When they git it dusted off
and started up it'll run ortermatic."
"Cuttin' out the saloons," said Miranda.
"I'm not so sure of that," said Mormon, turning in his seat. "You-all
want to remember, ma'am, that this is an unco'porated town an' that's
there's allus a shortage of law an' order for a whiles wherever there's
a strike, gold, oil or whatever 'tis. Eighty per cent. of the rush is a
hard-shelled lot an' erlong with 'em is a smaller bunch that thrives
best when things is run haphazard. There'll be licker down there, an'
it'll sure be quickfire licker at that. If you warn't the kind you are,"
added Mormon, "I'd tell you that down there ain't no place fo' a woman?"
"Meanin'?" snapped Miranda Bailey. But there was a gleam in her eye that
showed of a compliment accepted.
"Meanin'," said Mormon "that, ef you'll take it 'thout offense, you-all
air plumb up-to-date. When wimmen took up the ballot I figger they
wasn't on'y ready fo' equal rights, they knew how to git 'em. 'Side from
the shootin' end of it, I'd say you was as well equipped as any man to
look out fo' yore own interests."
"Thanks," replied Miranda. "I suppose you mean that as a compliment.
Also I know one end of a gun from another an' I can hit a barn if it
ain't flyin'. Ed, what you stoppin' fer?"
"Blamed if they ain't a puncture," said Ed as he put on the brakes. "We
got a spare tire but 'twon't do to spile this 'un. We got to git back
some time. Might not be able to buy a spare round here. I got to fix
this."
"Fix it when you git down," said his aunt. "Put on the spare. I'm kinder
nervous to git my claim staked. There's a sight of folks here. Look at
'em runnin' around like so many crazy chickens. Put on the spare, Ed,
while we pile out. An' hurry."
The spare was soon adjusted and they rolled down to the valley and over
the dusty road to the camp. Before they reached the main street a car
passed them from behind with a rush, driver and passengers reckless,
whooping as they rode, one man waving a bottle, another firing his gun
into the air.
"That's the kind that'll figger to run Dynamite fo' a while," said
Sandy. "I'll bet there ain't twenty old-timers in the camp--real miners,
I mean."
The street was alive with changing groups, merging, breaking up to
listen to some fresh report of a strike, or opinion as to the prospects.
There were no women in sight. The men were of all sorts, from cowboys in
their chaps, who had left the range for the chance of sudden wealth, to
storekeepers from Hereford and other towns. Excitement reigned, no one
was normal. Bottles passed freely. Among the crowd moved sh
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