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They of the High Trails

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Title: They of the High Trails

Author: Hamlin Garland


        
Release date: June 14, 2009 [eBook #29119]

Language: English

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THEY OF THE HIGH TRAILS

       *       *       *       *       *

  BOOKS BY HAMLIN GARLAND


  THEY OF THE HIGH TRAILS. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  THE FORESTER'S DAUGHTER. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  VICTOR OLLNEE'S DISCIPLINE. Post 8vo
  CAVANAGH--FOREST RANGER. Post 8vo
  MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS. Post 8vo
  OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS. Post 8vo
  ROSE OF DUTCHER'S COOLLY. Post 8vo
  THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY-HORSE TROOP. Post 8vo
  PRAIRIE FOLKS. Post 8vo
  THE TRAIL OF THE GOLD-SEEKERS. Post 8vo
  BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  HESPER. Post 8vo
  THE LIGHT OF THE STAR. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  MONEY MAGIC. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  THE LONG TRAIL. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  THE MOCCASIN RANCH. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  THE TYRANNY OF THE DARK. Illustrated. Post 8vo
  THE SHADOW WORLD. Post 8vo

  HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
  ESTABLISHED 1817

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: [See page 220]
"TAKE ME BACK--INSIDE," ALICE SAID. "I FEEL COLD HERE."]


THEY OF THE HIGH TRAILS

[Illustration]

by

HAMLIN GARLAND

Illustrated







[Illustration]


Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London

THEY OF THE HIGH TRAILS

Copyright, 1902, 1906, 1908, 1910, 1913, 1914, 1915, by Hamlin Garland
Copyright, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published April, 1916




CONTENTS

                                          PAGE

        FOREWORD                            ix

     I. THE GRUB-STAKER                      3

    II. THE COW-BOSS                        31

   III. THE REMITTANCE MAN                  57

    IV. THE LONESOME MAN                    81

     V. THE TRAIL TRAMP                     95

    VI. THE PROSPECTOR                     155

   VII. THE OUTLAW                         181

  VIII. THE LEASER                         237

    IX. THE FOREST RANGER                  253

        AFTERWORD                          381




ILLUSTRATIONS

  "TAKE ME BACK--INSIDE," ALICE SAID. "I FEEL COLD HERE"     _Frontispiece_

  "YOU'RE PRETTY SWIFT, AREN'T YOU?" SHE SAID, CUTTINGLY    _Facing p._  38

  THE WOMAN CARRIED HERSELF SO UNGRACEFULLY AND DRESSED
    SO PLAINLY THAT EVEN THE SALOON-DOOR LOAFERS CAST
    CONTEMPTUOUS GLANCES UPON HER                           _Facing p._ 254

  THE AUTHOR AND A FOREST RANGER                            _Facing p._ 278




_THE AUTHOR'S FOREWORD_


_Many changes have swept over the mountain West since twenty years ago,
but romance still clings to the high country. The Grub-Staker, hammer in
hand, still pecking at the float, wanders the hills with hopeful
patience, walking the perilous ledges of the cliffs in endless search of
gold._

_The Cow-Boss, reckless rear-guard of his kind, still urges his
watch-eyed bronco across the roaring streams, or holds his milling herd
in the high parks, but the Remittance Man, wayward son from across the
seas, is gone. Roused to manhood by his country's call, he has joined
the ranks of those who fight to save the shores of his ancestral isle._

_The Prospector still pushes his small pack-mule through the snow of
glacial passes, seeking the unexplored, and therefore more alluring,
mountain ranges._

_The Lonesome Man still seeks forgetfulness of crime in the solitude,
building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks._

_The Trail-Tramp, mounted wanderer, horseman of the restless heart,
still rides from place to place, contemptuous of gold, carrying in his
folded blanket all the vanishing traditions of the wild._

_The Fugitive still seeks sanctuary in the green timber--finding the
storms of the granite peaks less to be feared than the fury of the
law._

_The Leaser--the tenderfoot hay-roller from the prairies--still tries
his luck in some abandoned tunnel, sternly toiling for his faithful
sweetheart in the low country; and_

_The Forest Ranger, hardy son of the pioneers, representing the finer
social order of the future, rides his lonely woodland trail, guarding
with single-hearted devotion our splendid communal heritage of mine and
stream._

_On the High Trail_, SPRING, 1916.




THE GRUB-STAKER


      _--hammer in hand, still pecking at the float, wanders the
      Rockies with hopeful patience, walking the perilous ledges
      of the cliffs in endless search of gold._




THEY OF THE HIGH TRAILS




I

THE GRUB-STAKER


I

"There's gold in the Sierra Blanca country--everybody admits it,"
Sherman F. Bidwell was saying as the Widow Delaney, who kept the Palace
Home Cooking Restaurant in the town of Delaney (named after her husband,
old Dan Delaney), came into the dining-room. Mrs. Delaney paused with a
plate of steaming potatoes, and her face was a mask of scorn as she
addressed the group, but her words were aimed especially at Bidwell, who
had just come in from the lower country to resume his prospecting up the
gulch.

"It's aisy sayin' gould is in thim hills, but when ye find it rainbows
will be fishin'-rods." As she passed the potatoes over Bidwell's head
she went on: "Didn't Dan Delaney break his blessed neck a-climbin' the
high places up the creek--to no purpis includin' that same accident? You
min may talk and talk, but talk don't pay for petaties and bacon, mind
that. For eight years I've been here and I'm worse off to-day than iver
before--an' the town, phwat is it? Two saloons and a boardin'-house--and
not a ton of ore dug--much less shipped out. Y'r large words dig no
dirt, I'm thinkin', Sherm Bidwell."

Bidwell was a mild-spoken man who walked a little sidewise, with eyes
always on the ground as though ceaselessly searching for pieces of
float. He replied to his landlady with some spirit: "I've chashayed
around these mountains ever since I got back from Californey in
fifty-four and I know good rocks. I can't just lay my pick on the vein,
but I'm due to find it soon, for I'm a-gettin' old. Why, consider the
float, it's everywhere--and you know there's colors in every sand-bar?
There's got to be a ledge somewhere close by."

The widow snorted. "Hah! Yiss, flo-at! Me windysills is burthened with
dirty float--but where's the gould?"

"I'll find it, Mrs. Delaney--but you must be patient," he mildly
replied.

"Pashint! Me, pashint! Sure Job was a complainin' mill-wheel beside me,
Sherm Bidwell. Me boarders have shrunk to five and you're one o' the
five--and here you are after another grub-stake to go picnicking into
the mountains wid. I know your smooth tongue--sure I do--but ye're up
against me determination this toime, me prince. Ye don't get a pound o'
meat nor a measure o' flour from Maggie Delaney--"

Bidwell sat with an air of resigned Christian fortitude while the widow
delivered herself. To tell the truth, he had listened to these precise
words before--and resented them only because spoken publicly.

The other boarders finished their supper in silence and went out, but
Bidwell lingered to wheedle the mistress while she ate her own fill at
the splotched and littered table. The kerosene-lamp stood close to her
plate and brought out the glow of her cheek and deepened the blue of her
eyes into violet. She was still on the right side of forty and well
cared for.

Bidwell shot a shy glance at her. "I like to stir you up, Maggie
darlin'; it makes you purty as a girl."

She caught up a loaf of bread and heaved it at him. He caught it deftly
and inquired, guilelessly: "Is this the first of my grub-stake, lassie?"

"It is _not!_ 'Tis the last crumb ye'll have of me. Out wid ye!
Grub-stake indade! You go out this night, me bucko!"

Bidwell rose in pretended fright and shuffled to the door. "I don't need
much--a couple o' sacks o' flour--"

She lifted an arm. "You tramp!"

He slammed the door just in time to prevent a cup from flying straight
into his smiling eyes. After a moment of silent laughter, and with a
wink at the men in the "office," he reopened the door and said:

"Ye're a warm-hearted, handsome girl, Maggie. Two strips o' bacon--"

A muffled cry and a crash caused him to again slam the door and
withdraw.

Coming back to the middle of the room, he took out his pipe and began to
fill it. One of the younger men said:

"You'll get that grub-stake over the eye; the widdy is dangerous
to-night."

Sherm seemed not much concerned. Having fired his pipe, he took a piece
of rock from his pocket. "What do you think o' this?" he inquired,
casually.

The other examined it eagerly, and broke out: "Jee--cripes! Why, say!
that's jest _rotten_ with gold. Where'd you find it?"

"Out in the hills," was the placid reply; "a new vein--high up."

The third man took the rock and said: "That vein has got to be low
down--that can't come from high up. We're on the wrong trail. Think o'
Cripple Creek--mine's right under the grass on the hills. Yer can't fool
me."

"But we know the veins are high--we've seen 'em," argued the other men.

"Yes--but they're different veins. This rock comes from lower down."

"What do you say to that, Sherm?"

"One guess is as good as another," he replied, and moved away with his
piece of ore.

"The old man's mighty fly this evenin'. I wonder if he really has
trailed that float to a standstill. I'd sooner think he's stringin' us."

Bidwell went out on the edge of the ravine, and for a long time sat on a
rock, listening to the roar of the swift stream and looking up at the
peaks which were still covered with heavy yellow snow, stained with the
impalpable dust which the winter winds had rasped from the exposed
ledges of rock. It was chill in the cañon, and the old man shivered with
cold as well as with a sense of discouragement. For twenty years he had
regularly gone down into the valleys in winter to earn money with which
to prospect in summer--all to no purpose. For years Margaret Delaney had
been his very present help in time of trouble, and now she had broken
with him, and under his mask of smiling incredulity he carried a
profoundly disturbed conscience. His benefactress was in deadly
earnest--she meant every word she said--that he felt, and unless she
relented he was lost, for he had returned from the valley this time
without a dollar to call his own. He had a big, strong mule and some
blankets and a saddle--nothing further.

The wind grew stronger and keener, roaring down the cañon with the
breath of the upper snows, and the man's blood cried out for a fire
(June stands close to winter in the high ranges of the Crestones), and
at last he rose stiffly and returned to the little sitting-room, where
he found the widow in the midst of an argument with her boarders to
prove that they were all fools together for hangin' to the side of a
mountain that had no more gould in it than a flatiron or a loomp o'
coal--sure thing!

"What you goin' to do about our assays?" asked young Johnson.

"Assays, is it? Annybody can have assays--that will pay the price. Ye're
all lazy dogs in the manger, that's phwat ye air. Ye assay and want
somebody else to pay ye fer the privilege of workin'. Why don't ye work
yer-silves--ye loots? Sit around here expectin' some wan ilse to shovel
gould into yer hat. Ye'll pay me yer board--moind that," she ended,
making a personal application of her theories; "ivery wan o' ye."

If any lingering resolution remained in Bidwell's heart it melted away
as he listened to Mrs. Delaney's throaty voice and plain, blunt words.
Opening the door timidly, he walked in and without looking at the angry
woman seized upon his bundles, which lay behind the door.

The widow's voice rang out: "Where ye gawun wid thim bags?"

Bidwell straightened. "They're my bundles, I reckon. Can't a man do as
he likes with his own?"

"Not whin he's owin' fer board. Put thim boondles down!"

The culprit sighed and sat down on the bundles. Even young Johnson lost
his desire to laugh, for Bidwell looked pathetically old and discouraged
at the moment, as he mildly asked:

"You wouldn't send a man out in the night without his blankets, would
you?"

"I'd send a sneak to purgatory--if I c'u'd. Ye thought ye'd ooze out,
did ye? Nice speciment you are!"

Bidwell was roused. "If I had planned to sneak I wouldn't 'a' come into
the room with you a-standin' in the middle of the floor," he replied,
with some firmness. "You ordered me out, didn't you? Well, I'm goin'. I
can't pay you--you knew that when you told me to go--and I owe you a
good deal--I admit that--but I'm going to pay it. But I must have a
little time."

The other men, with a grateful sense of delicacy, got up and went out,
leaving Bidwell free space to justify himself in the eyes of the angry
woman.

As the door slammed behind the last man the widow walked over and gave
Bidwell a cuff. "Get _off_ thim boondles. Gaw set on a chair like a man,
an' not squat there like a baboon." She pitched his bundles through an
open door into a small bedroom. "Ye know where yer bed is, I hope! I do'
know phwat Dan Delaney w'u'd say to me, housin' and feedin' the likes o'
you, but I'll do it wan more summer--and then ye gaw flyin'. Ye hear
that now!"

And she threw the door back on its hinges so sharply that a knob was
broken.

Bidwell went in, closed the door gently, and took to his bed, dazed with
this sudden change in the climate. "She's come round before--and
surprised me," he thought, "but never so durn sudden as this. I hope she
ain't sick or anything."

Next morning at breakfast Maggie was all smiles. The storm of the
evening before had given place to brilliant sunshine. She ignored all
winks and nudgings among her boarders, and did not scruple to point out
to Bidwell the choicest biscuit on the plate, and to hand him the
fattest slice of bacon, all of which he accepted without elation.

"Old Sherm must be one o' these hypnotical chaps," said Johnson as they
were lighting their pipes in the sitting-room. "He's converted the widow
into another helping. He's goin' to get his flour and bacon all right!"

"You bet he is, and anything else he wants. Beats me what she finds in
that old side-winder, anyhow."

"Oh, Sherm isn't so worse if he had a decent outfit."

Bidwell was deeply touched by Maggie's clemency, and would have put his
feelings into the best terms he was familiar with, but the widow stopped
him.

"The best way to thank me is to hustle out and trail up that flo-at. If
it's there, find it. If it's not there, give o'er the search, for ye are
a gray man, Sherm Bidwell, and I'm not the woman I was eight years ago."

In the exaltation of the moment Bidwell rose, and his shoulders were
squared as he said: "I'm a-goin', Maggie. If I find it I'll come back
and marry you. If I don't--I'll lay my useless old bones in the hills."

"Ah--go 'long! Don't be a crazy fool!" she said, but her face flushed
with pleasure at the sincerity of his tone. "Ye've made such promises
ivery time before."

"I know I have, but I mean it now."

"Aho! so that's the way of it--ye didn't mean it before? Is that phwat
ye're sayin'?"

His proud pose collapsed. "You know what I mean--only you're such a
tormentin' little devil."

"Thank ye for the compliment, Mr. Bidwell."

Bidwell turned. "I'm going after old Nebuchadnezzar," he said, firmly.
"I can't waste time on a chicken-headed woman--"

"Out wid ye before I break the measly head of ye!" she retorted.

An hour later, with his mule packed with food and blankets and tools, he
moved off up the trail. The other men stood to watch him go, consumed
with curiosity, yet withholding all question.

The widow did not so much as look from the door as her grub-staker
disappeared.


II

Three days later Bidwell crept stealthily down the trail, leading his
mule as silently as possible. He timed his arrival so that Mrs. Delaney
would be in the kitchen alone with the Chinaman, getting the dishes
ready for breakfast.

"Who is ut?" called the widow as he softly knocked.

"Me--Sherm," he replied.

"Saints in hevin! What's the matter? Are ye sick?" she gasped as she
flung the door open.

"'Sh! Don't speak so loud," he commanded. "Sit down; I want to speak
solemn-like to you."

His tone impressed her deeply. "Have ye struck ut?" she asked,
tremulously.

"I hain't found it yet, but I want to tell ye--I believe I've had a
hunch. Send the 'chink' away."

Something in his tone stopped all scornful words upon her lips. Ordering
the Chinaman to bed, she turned and asked:

"Phwat do ye mean? Spake, man!"

"Well, sir, as I started up the trail something kept sayin' to me,
'Sherman, you're on the wrong track.' It was just as if you pulled my
sleeve and nudged me and said, '_This_ way!' I couldn't sleep that
night. I just lay on the ground and figured. Up there high--terrible
high--are seams of ore--I know that--but they're in granite and hard to
get at. That's one gold belt. There's money in a mine up there, but it
will take money to get it. Then there's another gold belt down about
here--or even lower--and I've just come to the conclusion that our mine,
Maggie, is down here in the foot-hills, not on old Blanca."

The air of mystery which enveloped and transformed the man had its
effect on the woman. Her eyes opened wide.

"Was it a voice like?"

"No, it was more like a pull. Seemed to be pulling me to cross the creek
where I found that chunk of porph'ritic limestone. I couldn't sleep the
second night--and I've been in camp up there in Burro Park tryin' to
figure it all out. I hated to give up and come back--I was afraid ye'd
think I was weakening--but I can't help it. Now I'll tell you what I'm
going to do--I'm going to make a camp over on the north side of the
creek. I don't want the boys to know where I've gone, but I wanted you
to know what I'm doing--I wanted you to know--it's plum ghostly--it
scared me."

She whispered, "_Mebbe it's Dan._"

"I thought o' that. Him and me were always good friends, and he was in
my mind all the while."

"But howld on, Sherm; it may be the divil leadin' ye on to break y'r
neck as did Dan. 'Twas over there he fell."

"Well, I thought o' that, too. It's either Dan or the devil, and I'm
going to find out which."

"The saints go wid ye!" said the widow, all her superstitious fears
aroused. "And if it _is_ Dan he'll sure be good to you fer my sake."


III

Sierra Blanca is the prodigious triple-turreted tower which stands at
the southern elbow of the Sangre de Cristo range. It is a massive but
symmetrical mountain, with three peaks so nearly of the same altitude
that the central dome seems the lowest of them all, though it is
actually fourteen thousand four hundred and eighty feet above the sea.
On the west and south this great mass rises from the flat, dry floor of
the San Luis Valley in sweeping, curving lines, and the piñons cover
these lower slopes like a robe of bronze green.

At eight thousand feet above the sea these suave lines become broken.
The piñons give place to pine and fir, and the somber cañons begin to
yawn. It was just here, where the grassy hills began to break into
savage walls, that Bidwell made his camp beside a small stream which
fell away into Bear Creek to the south. From this camp he could look far
out on the violet and gold of the valley, and see the railway trains
pass like swift and monstrous dragons. He could dimly see the lights of
Las Animas also, and this led him to conceal his own camp-fire.

Each day he rode forth, skirting the cliffs, examining every bit of rock
which showed the slightest mineral stain. Scarcely a moment of the
daylight was wasted in this search. His mysterious guide no longer
touched him, and this he took to be a favorable omen. "I'm near it," he
said.

One day he hitched his mule to a small dead pine at the foot of a steep
cliff, and was climbing to the summit when a stone, dislodged by his
feet, fell, bounced, thumped the mule in the ribs, and so scared the
animal that he pulled up the tree and ran away.

Angry and dispirited (for he was hungry and tired) Bidwell clambered
down and began to trail the mule toward camp. The tree soon clogged the
runaway and brought him to a stand in a thicket of willows.

As Bidwell knelt to untie the rope his keen eyes detected the glitter of
gold in the dirt which still clung to the moist root of the pine. With a
sudden conviction of having unearthed his fortune, the miner sprang to
his saddle and hurried back to the spot whence the tree had been rived.
It was dusk by the time he reached the spot, but he could detect gold in
the friable rock which lined the cavity left by the uprooted sapling.
With a mind too excited to sleep he determined to stay with his find
till morning. To leave it involved no real risk of losing it, and yet he
could not bring himself to even build a camp-fire, for fear some one
might be drawn from the darkness to dispute his claim.

It was a terribly long night, and when old Blanca's southern peak began
to gleam out of the purple receding waves of the night the man's brain
was numb with speculation and suspense. Hovering over the little heap of
broken rock which he had scooped out with his hands, he waited in almost
frenzied impatience for the sun.

He could tell by the feeling that the ore was what miners of his grade
call "rotten quartz," and he knew that it often held free gold in
enormous richness. It was so friable he could crumble it in his hands,
and so yellow with iron-stains that it looked like lumps of clay as the
dawn light came. A stranger happening upon him would have feared for
his reason, so pale was his face, so bloodshot his eyes.

At last he could again detect the gleam of gold. Each moment as the
light grew the value of the ore increased. It was literally meshed with
rusty free gold. The whole mound was made up of a disintegrated ledge of
porphyry and thousands of dollars were in sight. As his mind grasped
these facts the miner rose and danced--_but he did not shout_!

All that day he worked swiftly, silently, like an animal seeking to
escape an enemy, digging out this rock and carrying it to a place of
concealment in a deep thicket not far away. He did not stop to eat or
drink till mid-afternoon, and then only because he was staggering with
weakness and his hands were growing ineffective. After eating he fell
asleep and did not wake till deep in the night. For some minutes he
could not remember what had happened to him. At last his good fortune
grew real again. Saddling his mule, he rode up the creek and crossed
miles above his newly discovered mine, in order to conceal his trail,
and it was well toward dawn before he tapped on the widow's window.

"Is that you, Sherm?" she asked.

"Yes. Get up quick; I have news!"

When she opened the kitchen door for him she started back. "For love of
God, man, phwat have you been doin' wid yersilf?"

"Be quiet!" he commanded, sharply, and crept in, staggering under the
weight of a blanket full of ore. "You needn't work any more, Maggie;
I've got it. Here it is!"

"Man, ye're crazy! What have you there? Not gould!"

"You bet it is! Quartz jest _rotten_ with gold. Where can I hide it?"
His manner would not have been wilder had his bag of ore been the body
of a man he had murdered. "Quick! It's almost daylight."

"Let me see ut. I do _not_ believe ut."

He untied the blanket, and as the corners unrolled, disclosing the
red-brown mass, even her unskilled eyes could see the gleaming grains of
pure metal. She fell on her knees and crossed herself.

"Praise be to Mary! Where did ye find ut--and how?"

"Not a word about that. I'm scared. If any one should find it while I am
away they could steal thousands of dollars. Why, it's like a pocket in a
placer! Get me every sack you can. Give me grub--and hide this. There
are tons of it! This is the best of it. We are rich--rich as Jews,
Maggie!"

They worked swiftly. The widow emptied a cracker-barrel and put the ore
at the bottom, and then tumbled the crackers in on top of the ore. She
set out some cold meat and bread and butter, and while Bidwell ate she
brought out every rag that could serve as a sack.

"I'll have more for ye to-morrow. I wish I c'u'd go wid ye, Sherm. I'd
like to set me claws at work at that dirt."

"I need help, but I am afraid to have a man. Well, I must be off.
Good-by. I'll be back to-night with another load. I guess old Sherm is
worth a kiss yet--eh--Maggie!"

"Be off wid ye. Can't ye see the dawn is comin'?" A moment later she ran
up to him and gave him a great hug. "There--now haste ye!"

"Be silent!"

"As the grave itself!" she replied, and turned to brush up the
cracker-crumbs. "That Chinese divil has sharp eyes," she muttered.


IV

It was inevitable that the golden secret should escape. Others besides
the Chinese cook had sharp eyes, and the Widow Delaney grew paler and
more irritable as the days wore on. She had a hunted look. She hardly
ever left her kitchen, it was observed, and her bedroom door had a new
lock. Every second night Bidwell, gaunt and ragged, and furtive as a
burglar, brought a staggering mule-load of the richest ore and stowed it
away under the shanty floor and in the widow's bedroom. Luckily miners
are sound sleepers, or the two midnight marauders would have been
discovered on the second night.

One day John, the cook, seized the cracker-barrel, intending to put it
into a different corner. He gave it a slight wrench, looked a little
surprised, and lifted a little stronger. It did not budge. He remarked:

"Klackels belly hebby. No sabbe klackels allee same deese."

"_Let that alone!_" screamed Mrs. Delaney. "Phwat will ye be doin' nixt,
ye squint-eyed monkey? I'll tell ye whin to stir things about."

The startled Chinaman gave way in profound dismay. "Me goin' s'eep lound
klackel-ballell, you sabbe?"

"Well, I'll do the sweepin' there. I nailed that barrel to the flure
apurpis. L'ave it alone, will ye?"

This incident decided her. That night, when Bidwell came, she broke out:

"Sherm, I cannot stand this anny longer. I'm that nairvous I can't hear
a fly buzz widout hot streaks chasin' up and down me spine like little
red snakes. And man, luk at yersilf. Why, ye're hairy as a go-at and yer
eyes are loike two white onions. I say stop, Sherm dear!"

"What'll we do?" asked Bidwell in alarm.

"Do? I'll tell ye phwat we'll do. We'll put our feets down and say,
'Yis, 'tis true, we've shtruck ut, and it's ours.' Then I'll get a team
from Las Animas and load the stuff in before the face and eyes of the
world, and go wid it to sell it, whilst you load y'r gun an' stand guard
over the hole in the ground. I'm fair crazy wid this burglar's business.
We're both as thin as quakin' asps and full as shaky. You go down the
trail this minute and bring a team and a strong wagon--no wan will know
till ye drive in. Now go!"

Bidwell was ruled by her clear and sensible words, and rode away into
the clear dark of the summer's night with a feeling that it was all a
dream--a vision such as he had often had while prospecting in the
mountains; but, as day came on and he looked back upon the red hole he
had made in the green hillside, the reality of it all came to pinch his
heart and make him gasp. His storehouse, his well of golden waters, was
unguarded, and open to the view of any one who should chance to look
that way. He beat his old mule to a gallop in the frenzy of the moment.

The widow meanwhile got breakfast for the men, and as soon as they were
off up the trail she set the awed and wondering Chinaman to hauling the
sacks of ore out from beneath the shanty and piling them conveniently
near the roadway. She watched every movement and checked off each sack
like a shipping-clerk. "Merciful powers! the work that man did!" she
exclaimed, alluding to Bidwell, who had dug all that mass of ore and
packed it in the night from the mine to its safe concealment.

Of course, Mrs. Clark, the storekeeper's wife, saw them at work and came
over to see what was going on.

"Good morning, Mrs. Delaney. You're not going to move?"

"I am."

"I'm sorry. What's the reason of it? Why, that looks like ore!" she said
as she peered at a sack.

"It _is_ ore! and I'm goin' to ship it to the mill. Have ye anny
objection?" asked Mrs. Delaney, defiantly.

"Where did it come from?"

"That's _my_ business. There's wan more under there," she said to the
Chinaman, and as he came creeping out like a monstrous bug tugging a
pair of Bidwell's overalls (ore-filled), as if they formed the trunk of
a man whom he had murdered and hidden, Mrs. Clark turned and fled toward
the store to tell her husband.

"There ye go, now! Ye screech-owl," sneered the Widow Delaney. "It's all
up wid us; soon the whole world will know of ut. Well--we're here
first," she defiantly added.

Clark came over, pale with excitement. "Let me see that ore!" he called
out as he ran up and laid his hand on a sack.

"Get off--and stay off!" said Maggie, whipping a revolver out of her
pocket. "That's my ore, and you let it alone!"

Clark recoiled in surprise, but the widow's anxiety to protect her
property added enormously to his excitement. "The ore must be very
rich," he argued. "How do I know but that comes from one of my claims?"
he asked.

The widow thrust the muzzle of the revolver under his nose. "Would ye
call me a thafe? 'Tis well Bidwell is not here; he'd do more than make
ye smell of a gun. Go back to yer own business--if ye value a whole
skin--an' stay away from phwat does not concern ye."

All this was characteristically intemperate of Maggie, and by the time
Bidwell came clattering up the trail with a big freight-wagon the whole
gulch was aroused, and a dozen men encircled the heap of motley bags on
which Mrs. Delaney sat, keeping them at bay.

When she heard the wagon her nerves steadied a little and she said, more
soberly: "Boys, there comes Bidwell with a wagon to haul this stuff
away, and, Johnson, you help him load it while I go see about dinner."

As Bidwell drove up a mutter of amazement ran round the group and each
man had his say.

"Why, Bid, what's the matter? You look like a man found dead."

"I'm just beginning to live!" said Bidwell, and the reply was long
remembered in Bear Gulch.

"Well, now ye know all about it, ye gawks, take hold and help the man
load up. I'll have dinner ready fer ye in a snort," repeated the widow.

Clark drew his partners aside. "He packed that ore here; he must have
left a trail. You take a turn up the cañon and see if you can't find it.
It's close by somewhere."

Bidwell saw them conferring and called out: "You needn't take any
trouble, Clark; I'll lead you to the place after dinner. My claim is
staked and application filed--so don't try any tricks on me."

The widow's eyes were equally keen, and the growing cupidity of the men
did not escape her. Coming out with a big meat sandwich, she said:
"'Twill not do to sit down, Sherm; take this in yer fist and go. They'll
all be slippin' away like snakes if ye don't. I'll take John and the
ore--we'll make it somehow--and I'll stay wid it till it's paid for."

She was right. The miners were struggling with the demons of desire and
ready to stampede at any moment. Hastily packing his mule, Bidwell
started up the trail, saying:

"Fall in behind me, boys, and don't scrouge. The man who tries to crowd
me off the trail will regret it."

They were quiet enough till he left the trail and started down toward
the Bear. Then Johnson cried, "I know where it is!" and plunged with a
whoop into the thicket of willows that bordered the creek.

"Mebbe he does and mebbe he don't," said Clark. "I'm going to stick by
Bid till we get the lay o' the land."

They maintained fairly good order until Bidwell's trail became a plain
line leading up the hillside; then the stampede began. With wild halloos
and resounding thwacking of mules they scattered out, raced over the
hilltop, and disappeared, leaving Bidwell to plod on with his laden
burro.

When he came in sight of his mine men were hammering stakes into the
ground on all sides of the discovery claim, and Clark and Johnson were
in a loud wrangle as to who reached the spot first. Leading his mule up
to the cliff wall where he had built a shelter, Bidwell unpacked his
outfit, and as he stood his rifle against a rock he said:

"I'm planted right here, neighbors. My roots run deep underground, and
the man who tries to jump this claim will land in the middle of hell
fire--now, that's right."

Their claims once staked and their loud differences stilled, the men had
leisure to come and examine the discovery claim.

"You've the best of it," said Cantor, an old miner. "There may not be an
ounce of gold outside your vein. It's a curious formation; I can't tell
how it runs."

Toward night the other miners left and went back to camp, leaving
Bidwell alone. As darkness came on he grew nervous again. "They'd kill
me if they dared," he muttered, as he crouched in his shelter, his gun
on his knee. He was very sleepy, but resolved not to close his eyes. "If
I only had a dog--some one I could trust; but I haven't a soul," he
added, bitterly, as his weakness grew. The curse of gold sat heavily
upon him and his hands were lax with weariness.

"I was a fool to let Maggie go off with that ore," he muttered, his mind
following the widow in her perilous journey down the gulch. He did not
distrust her; he only feared her ability to override the difficulties of
her mission. For the best part of his life he had sought the metal
beneath his feet, and, now that he had found it, his blood ran cold with
suspicion and fear.

Daylight brought a comparative sense of safety, and, building a fire, he
cooked his breakfast in peace--though his eyes were restless. "Oh,
they'll come," he said, aloud. "They'll boil in here on me in another
hour or two."

And they did. The men from Delaney came first, followed a little later
by their partners from the high gulches, and after them the genuine
stampeders. The merchants, clerks, hired hands, barbers, hostlers, and
half-starved lawyers from the valley towns came pouring up the trail
and, pausing just long enough to see the shine of gold in Bidwell's
dump, flung themselves upon the land, seizing the first unclaimed
contiguous claim without regard to its character or formation. Their
stakes once set, they began to roam, pawing at the earth like
prairie-dogs and quite as ineffectually. Swarms of the most curious
surrounded Bidwell's hole in the ground, picking at the ore and flooding
the air with shouts and questions till the old man in desperation
ordered them off his premises and set up a notice:

"Keep off this ground or meet trouble!"

To his friends he explained, "Every piece of rock they carry off is
worth so much money."

"Ye've enough here to buy the warrld, mon," protested Angus Craig, an
old miner from the north.

"I don't know whether I have or not," said Bidwell. "It may be just a
little spatter of gold."

That night the whole range of foot-hills was noisy with voices and
sparkling with camp-fires. From the treeless valleys below these lights
could be seen, and the heavily laden trains of the San Luis
Accommodation trailed a loud hallelujah as the incoming prospectors
lifted their voices in joyous greeting to those on the mountainside.

"It's another Cripple Creek!" one man shouted, and the cry struck home.
"We're in on it," they all exulted.

Bidwell did not underestimate his importance in this rush of
gold-frenzied men. He was appalled by the depth and power of the streams
centering upon him. For weeks he had toiled to the full stretch of his
powers without sufficient sleep, and he was deathly weary, emaciated to
the bone, and trembling with nervous weakness, but he was indomitable. A
long life of camping, prospecting, and trenching had fitted him to
withstand even this strain, and to "stay with it" was an instinct with
him. Therefore he built a big fire not far from the mine and spread his
blankets there; but he did not lie down till after midnight, and only
then because he could not keep awake, even while in sitting posture. "I
must sleep, anyhow," he muttered. "I can't stand this any longer. I must
sleep"--And so his eyes closed.

He was awakened by a voice he knew calling out: "Is this the way ye
watch y'r mine, Sherm Bidwell?" And, looking up, he saw the Widow
Delaney sitting astride a mule and looking down at him with tender
amusement. "Ye are a pitcher; sure! Ye look like wan o' the holy saints
of ould--or a tramp. Help me off this baste and I'll turn to and scorch
a breakfast for ye."

He staggered stiffly to his feet and awkwardly approached her. "I had
only just dropped off," he apologized.

"Ye poor lad!" she said, compassionately. "Ye're stiff as a poker wid
cold."

"How did ye come out with the ore?" he asked.

"Thrust y'r Maggie! I saw it loaded into a car and sent away. Bedad, I
had a moind to go wid it to the mill, but I says, Sherm nor mesilf can
be in two places to wanst. So I gave o'er the notion and came home.
They'll thieve the half of it, av coorse, but so goes the world, divil
catch it!"

The widow was a powerful reinforcement. She got breakfast while Bidwell
dozed again, and with the influence of hot coffee and the genial sun the
firm grew confident of holding at least the major part of their
monstrous good luck.

"Thrust no wan but me," said the widow in decisive warning. "The world
is full of rogues. From this toime ivery man's hand is agin' y'r
gold--schamin' to reach y'r pockets. Rest yersilf and I'll look after
the gould. From this toime on we work only wid our brains."

She did indeed become the captain. On her advice he sent a man for
ore-sacks and tools, while other willing hands set to work to build a
cabin to shelter them.

"We're takin' no chances," she said; "we camp right here."

That day Las Animas, Crestone, Powder Gulch, and Los Gatos emptied
themselves upon the hills, and among them were representatives of big
firms in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. The path past the Maggie
Mine was worn deep by the feet of the gold-seekers, and Bidwell's rude
pole barrier was polished by the nervous touch of greedy palms.

About ten o'clock a quiet man in a gray suit of clothes asked Bidwell if
he wanted to sell. Bidwell said, "No," short and curt, but Maggie asked,
with a smile, "How much?"

"Enough to make you comfortable for life. If it runs as well as this
sample I'll chance fifty thousand dollars on it."

Maggie snorted. "Fifty thousand! Why, I tuk twoice that to the mill last
night."

"Let me get in and examine the mine a little closer. I may be able to
raise my bid."

"Not till ye make it wan hundred thousand may you even have a luk at
it," she replied.

Other agents came--some confidential, others coldly critical, but all
equally unsuccessful. The two "idiots" could not see why they should
turn over the gold which lay there in sight to a syndicate. It was
theirs by every right, and though the offers went far beyond their
conception they refused to consider them.

All day axes resounded in the firs, and picks were busy in the gullies.
Camp goods, provisions, and bedding streamed by on trains of mules, and
by nightfall a city was in its initial stages--tent stores, open-air
saloons, eating-booths, and canvas hotels. A few of the swarming
incomers were skeptical of the find, but the larger number were
hilariously boastful of their locations, and around their evening
camp-fires groups gathered to exult over their potentialities.

The sun had set, but the western slope of the hill was still brilliant
with light as Bidwell's messenger with his sumpter horse piled high
with bales of ore-sacks came round the clump of firs at the corner of
Bidwell's claim. He was followed by a tall man who rode with a tired
droop and nervous clutching at the rein.

Bidwell stared and exclaimed, "May I be shot if the preachers aren't
takin' a hand in the rush!"

The widow looked unwontedly rosy as she conclusively said, "I sent for
him, man dear!"

"You did? What for?"

The widow was close enough now to put her hand in the crook of his
elbow. "To make us wan, Sherm darlin'. There's no time like the
prisent."

Bidwell tugged at his ragged beard. "I wish I had time to slick up a
bit."

"There'll be plinty of time for that afterward," she said. "Go welcome
the minister."

In the presence of old Angus Craig and young Johnson they were married,
and when the minister gave Mrs. Bidwell a rousing smack she wiped her
lips with the back of her hand and said to Bidwell:

"Now we're ayqul partners, Sherm, and all old scores wiped out."

And old Angus wagged his head and said, "Canny lass, the widdy!"

When the news of this marriage reached the camp demons of laughter and
disorder were let loose. Starting from somewhere afar off, a loud
procession formed. With camp-kettles for drums and aspen-bark whistles
for pipes, with caterwaul and halloo, the whole loosely cohering army of
prospectors surrounded the little log cabin of the Maggie Mine and
shouted in wild discord:

"Bidwell! Come forth!"

"A speech! A speech!"

Bidwell was for poking his revolver out through the unchinked walls and
ordering the mob to disperse, but his wife was diplomatic.

"'Tis but an excuse to get drink," she said. "Go give them treat."

So Bidwell went forth, and, while a couple of stalwart friends lifted
him high, he shouted, sharp and to the point, "It's on me, Clark!"

The mob, howling with delight, rushed upon him and bore him away,
struggling and sputtering, to Clark's saloon, where kegs of beer were
broached and the crowd took a first deep draught. Bidwell, in alarm for
Maggie, began to fight to get back to the cabin. But cries arose for the
bride.

"The bride--let's see the bride!"

Bidwell expostulated. "Oh no! Leave her alone. Are you gentlemen? If you
are, you won't insist on seeing her."

In the midst of the crowd a clear voice rang out:

"The bride, is it? Well, here she is. Get out o' me way."

"Clear the road there for the bride!" yelled a hundred voices as Maggie
walked calmly up an aisle densely walled with strange men. She had been
accustomed to such characters all her life, and knew them too well to be
afraid. Mounting a beer-keg, she turned a benign face on the crowd. The
light of the torches lighted her hair till it shone like spun gold in a
halo round her head. She looked very handsome in the warm, sympathetic
light of the burning pitch-pine.

"Oh yiss, Oi'll make a speech; I'm not afraid of a handful of
two-by-fours like you tenderfeet from the valley, and when me speech is
ended ye'll go home and go to bed. Eleven days ago Sherm, me man,
discovered this lode. Since then we've both worked night and day to git
out the ore--we're dog-tired--sure we are--but we're raisonable folk and
here we stand. Now gaze y'r fill and go home and l'ave us to rest--like
y'r dacent mothers would have ye do."

"Good for you, Maggie!" called old Angus Craig, who stood near her.
"Mak' way, lads!"

The men opened a path for the bride and groom and raised a thundering
cheer as they passed.

Old Angus Craig shook his head again and said to Johnson: "Sik a luck
canna last. To strike a lode and win a braw lass a' in the day, ye may
say. Hoo-iver, he waited lang for baith."




THE COW-BOSS


      _--the reckless cowboy on his watch-eyed bronco still lopes
      across the grassy foot-hills--or holds his milling herd in
      the high parks._




II

THE COW-BOSS


I

The post-office at Eagle River was so small that McCoy and his herders
always spoke of the official within as "the Badger," saying that he must
surely back into his den for lack of room to turn round. His presentment
at the arched loophole in his stockade was formidable. His head was
large, his brow high and seamed, his beard long and tangled, and the
look of his hazel-gray eyes remote with cold abstraction.

"He's not a man to monkey with," said McCoy when the boys complained
that the old seed had put up a sign, "NO SPITTING IN THIS OFFICE." "I'd
advise you to act accordingly. I reckon he's boss of that thing while
he's in there. He's a Populist, but he's regularly appointed by the
President, and I don't see that we're in any position to presume to spit
if he objects. No, there ain't a thing to do but get up a petition and
have him removed--and I won't agree to sign it when you do."

Eagle River was only a cattle-yard station, a shipping-point for the
mighty spread of rolling hills which make up the Bear Valley range to
the north and the Grampa to the south. Aside from the post-office, it
possessed two saloons, a store, a boarding-house or two, and a low,
brown station-house. That was all, except during the autumn, when there
was nearly always an outfit of cowboys camped about the corrals, loading
cattle or waiting for cars.

On the day when this story opens, McCoy had packed away his last steer,
and, being about to take the train for Kansas City, called his foreman
aside.

"See here, Roy, seems to me the boys are extra boozed already. It's up
to you to pull right out for the ranch."

"That's what I'm going to try to do," answered Roy. "We'll camp at the
head of Jack Rabbit to-night."

"Good idea. Get 'em out of town before dark--every mother's son of 'em.
I'll be back on Saturday."

Roy Pierce was a dependable young fellow, and honestly meant to carry
out the orders of his boss; but there was so little by way of diversion
in Eagle, the boys had to get drunk in order to punctuate a paragraph in
their life. There was not a disengaged woman in the burg, and bad whisky
was merely a sad substitute for romance. Therefore the settlers who
chanced to meet this bunch of herders in the outskirts of Eagle River
that night walked wide of them, for they gave out the sounds of battle.

They could all ride like Cossacks, notwithstanding their dizzy heads,
and though they waved about in their saddles like men of rubber, their
faithful feet clung to their stirrups like those of a bat to its perch.
In camp they scuffled, argued, ran foot-races, and howled derisive
epithets at the cook, who was getting supper with drunken gravity, using
pepper and salt with lavish hand.

Into the midst of this hullabaloo Roy, the cow-boss, rode, white with
rage and quite sober.

"I'll kill that old son of a gun one of these days," said he to Henry
Ring.

"Kill who?"

"That postmaster. If he wasn't a United States officer, I'd do it now."

"What's the matter? Wouldn't he shuffle the mail fer you?"

"Never lifted a finger. '_Nothing_,' he barked out at me. Didn't even
look up till I let loose on him."

"What did he do then?"

"Poked an old Civil War pistol out of the window and told me to hike."

"Which you did?"

"Which I did, after passing him a few compliments. 'Lay down your
badge,' I says, 'come out o' your den, and I'll pepper you so full of
holes that your hide won't hold blue-joint hay.' And I'll do it, too,
the old hound!"

"But you got out," persisted Ring, maliciously.

"I got out, but I tell you right now he's got something coming to him.
No mail-sifter of a little two-for-a-cent town like Eagle is goin' to
put it all over me that way and not repent of it. I've figured out a
scheme to get even with him, and you have got to help."

This staggered Henry, who began to side-step and limp. "Count me out on
that," said he. "The old skunk treated me just about the same way. I
don't blame you; a feller sure has a right to have his postmaster make a
bluff at shuffling the deck. But, after all--"

However, in the end the boss won his most trusted fellows to his plan,
for he was a youth of power, and besides they had all been roiled by the
grizzled, crusty old official, and were quite ready to take a hand in
his punishment.

Roy developed his plot. "We'll pull out of camp about midnight, and ride
round to the east, sneak in, and surround the old man's shack, shouting
and yelling and raising Cain. He'll come out of his hole to order us
off, and I'll rope him before he knows where he's at; then we'll toy
with him for a few minutes--long enough to learn him a lesson in
politeness--and let him go."

No one in the gang seemed to see anything specially humorous in this
method of inculcating urbanity of manner, and at last five of them
agreed to stand their share of the riot, although Henry Ring muttered
something about the man's being old and not looking very strong.

"He's strong enough to wave a two-foot gun," retorted Roy, and so
silenced all objection.

One night as soon as the camp was quiet Pierce rose and, touching his
marauders into activity, saddled and rode away as stealthily as the
leader of a band of Indian scouts. He made straightway over the divide
to the east, then turned, and, crossing the river, entered the town from
the south, in order to deceive any chance observer.

Just below the station, in a little gully, he halted his war-party and
issued final orders. "Now I'll ride ahead and locate myself right near
the back door; then when I strike a light you fellows come in and swirl
round the shack like a gust o' hell. The old devil will come out the
back door to see what's doin', and I'll jerk him end-wise before he can
touch trigger. I won't hurt him any more than he needs. Now don't stir
till I'm in position."

Silently, swiftly, his pony shuffled along the sandy road and over the
railway-crossing. The town was soundless and unlighted, save for a dim
glow in the telegraph office, and the air was keen and crisp with
frost. As he approached the Badger's shack Pierce detected a gleam of
light beneath the curtain of the side windows. "If he's awake, so much
the better," he thought, but his nerves thrilled as he softly entered
the shadow.

Suddenly the pony trod upon something which made a prodigious crash. The
door opened, a tall young girl appeared in a wide flare of yellow light
which ran out upon the grass like a golden carpet. With eager, anxious
voice she called out:

"Is that you, Doctor?"

The raider stiffened in his saddle with surprise. His first impulse was
to set spurs to his horse and vanish. His next was to tear off his
disguise and wait, for the voice was sweeter than any he had ever heard,
and the girl's form a vision of beauty.

Alarmed at his silence, she again called out: "Who are you? What do you
want?"

"A neighbor, miss," he answered, dismounting and stepping into the
light. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

At this moment hell seemed to have let loose the wildest of its
warriors. With shrill whoopings, with flare of popping guns, Roy's
faithful herders came swirling round the cabin, intent to do their duty,
frenzied with delight of it.

Horrified, furious at this breach of discipline, Pierce ran to meet
them, waving his hat and raising the wild yell, "Whoo-ee!" with which he
was wont to head off and turn a bunch of steers. "Stop it! Get out!" he
shouted as he succeeded in reaching the ears of one or two of the
raiders. "It's all off--there's a girl here. Somebody sick! Skeedoo!"

The shooting and the tumult died away. The horsemen vanished as swiftly,
as abruptly, as they came, leaving their leader in panting, breathless
possession of the field. He was sober enough now, and repentant, too.

Slowly he returned to the door of the shack with vague intent to
apologize. Something very sudden and very terrible must have fallen upon
the postmaster.

After some hesitation he knocked timidly on the door.

"Have they gone?" the girl asked.

"Yes; I've scared 'em away. They didn't mean no harm, I reckon. I want
to know can't I be of some kind of use?"

The door opened cautiously and the girl again appeared. She was very
pale and held a pistol in her hand, but her voice was calm. "You're very
good," she said, "and I'm much obliged. Who are you?"

"I am Roy Pierce, foreman for McCoy, a cattleman north of here."

"Was it really a band of Indians?"

"Naw. Only a bunch of cow-punchers on a bat."

"You mean cowboys?"

"That's what. It's their little way of havin' fun. I reckon they didn't
know you was here. I didn't. Who's sick?"

"My uncle."

"You mean the postmaster?"

"Yes."

"When was he took?"

"Last night. They telegraphed me about six o'clock. I didn't get here
till this morning--I mean yesterday morning."

"What's the ail of him?"

"A stroke, I'm afraid. He can't talk, and he's stiff as a stake. Oh, I
wish the doctor would come!"

Her anxiety was moving. "I'll try to find him for you."

"I wish you would."

"You aren't all alone?"

"Yes; Mrs. Gilfoyle had to go home to her baby. She said she'd come
back, but she hasn't."

Roy's heart swept a wide arc as he stood looking into the pale, awed,
lovely face of the girl.

"I'll bring help," he said, and vanished into the darkness, shivering
with a sense of guilt. "The poor old cuss! Probably he was sick the very
minute I was bullyragging him."

The local doctor had gone down the valley on a serious case, and would
not be back till morning, his wife said, thereupon Roy wired to
Claywall, the county-seat, for another physician. He also secured the
aid of Mrs. James, the landlady of the Palace Hotel, and hastened back
to the relief of the girl, whom he found walking the floor of the little
kitchen, tremulous with dread.

"I'm afraid he's dying," she said. "His teeth are set and he's
unconscious."

Without knowing what to say in way of comfort, the herder passed on into
the little office, where the postmaster lay on a low couch with face
upturned, in rigid, inflexible pose, his hands clenched, his mouth
foam-lined. Roy, unused to sickness and death, experienced both pity and
awe as he looked down upon the prostrate form of the man he had expected
to punish. And yet these emotions were rendered vague and slight by the
burning admiration which the niece had excited in his susceptible and
chivalrous heart.

She was tall and very fair, with a face that seemed plain in repose, but
which bewitched him when she smiled. Her erect and powerful body was
glowing with health, and her lips and eyes were deliciously young and
sweet. Her anxious expression passed away as Roy confidently assured her
that these seizures were seldom fatal. He didn't know a thing about it,
but his tone was convincing.

"I knew a man once who had these fits four or five times a year. Didn't
seem to hurt him a bit. One funny thing--he never had 'em while in the
saddle. They 'most always come on just after a heavy meal. I reckon the
old man must of over-et."

Mrs. James came in soon--all too soon to please him--but he reported to
her his message to Claywall. "A doctor will be down on 'the Cannonball'
about five o'clock," he added.

"That's very kind and thoughtful of you," said the girl. Then she
explained to Mrs. James that Mr. Pierce had just driven off a horrid
band of cowboys who were attacking the town.

The landlady snorted with contempt. "I'm so used to boozy cowboys
howlin' round, I don't bat an eye when they shoot up the street. They're
all a lot of cheap skates, anyway. You want to swat 'em with the mop if
they come round; that's the way I do."

Roy was nettled by her tone, for he was now very anxious to pose as a
valorous defender of the innocent; but agreed with her that "the boys
were just having a little 'whiz' as they started home; they didn't mean
no harm."

"Ought I to sit in there?" the girl asked the woman, with a glance
toward the inner room.

"No; I don't think you can do any good. I'll just keep an eye on him and
let you know if they's any change."

The girl apologized for the looks of the kitchen. "Poor uncle has been
so feeble lately he couldn't keep things in order, and I haven't had
any chance since I came. If you don't mind, I'll rid things up now;
it'll keep my mind occupied."

[Illustration: "YOU'RE PRETTY SWIFT, AREN'T YOU?" SHE SAID, CUTTINGLY]

"Good idea!" exclaimed Roy. "I'll help."

He had been in a good many exciting mix-ups with steers, bears, cayuses,
sheriffs' posses, and Indians, but this was easily the most stirring and
amazing hour of his life. While his pony slowly slid away up the hill to
feed, he, with flapping gun and rattling spurs, swept, polished, and
lifted things for Lida--that was her name--Lida Converse.

"My folks live in Colorado Springs," she explained in answer to his
questions. "My mother is not very well, and father is East, so I had to
come. Uncle Dan was pretty bad when I got here, only not like he is now.
This fit came on after the doctor went away at nine."

"I'm glad your father was East," declared the raider, who was unable to
hold to a serious view of the matter, now that he was in the midst of a
charming and intimate conversation. "Just think--if he had 'a' come, I'd
never have seen _you_!"

She faced him in surprise and disapproval of his boldness. "You're
pretty swift, aren't you?" she said, cuttingly.

"A feller's got to be in this country," he replied, jauntily.

She was prepared to be angry with him, but his candid, humorous,
admiring gaze disarmed her. "You've been very nice," she said, "and I
feel very grateful; but I guess you better not say any more such things
to me--to-night."

"You mustn't forget I chased off them redskins."

"You said they were cowboys."

"Of course I did; I wanted to calm your mind."

She was a little puzzled by his bluffing. "I don't believe there are any
Indians over here."

"Well, if they were cowboys, they were a fierce lot."

She considered. "I've told you I feel grateful. What more can I do?"

"A good deal; but, as you say, that can go over till to-morrow. Did I
tell you that I had a bunch of cattle of my own?"

"I don't remember of it."

"Well, I have. I'm not one of these crazy cowboys who blows in all his
wad on faro and drink--not on your life! I've got some ready chink
stacked away in a Claywall bank. Want to see my bank-book?"

She answered, curtly: "Please take that kettle of slop out and empty it.
And what time did you say the express was due?"

Roy was absorbed, ecstatic. He virtually forgot all the rest of the
world. His herders could ride to the north pole, his pony might starve,
the Cannonball Express go over the cliff, the postmaster die, so long as
he was left in service to this princess.

"Lord A'mighty! wasn't I in luck?" he repeated to himself. "Suppose I'd
'a' roped _her_ instead of the old man!"

When he returned from listening for the train he found her washing her
hands at the end of her task, and the room in such order as it had never
known before. The sight of her standing there, flushed and very womanly,
rolling down her sleeves, was more than the young fellow could silently
observe.

"I hope the old man'll be a long time getting well," he said, abruptly.

"That's a nice thing to say! What do you mean by such a cruel wish?"

"I see my finish when you go away. No more lonely ranch-life for me."

"If you start in on that talk again I will not speak to you," she
declared, and she meant it.

"All right, I'll shut up; but I want to tell you I'm a trailer for
keeps, and you can't lose me, no matter where you go. From this time on
I forget everything in the world but you."

With a look of resolute reproof she rose and joined Mrs. James in the
inner room, leaving Roy cowed and a good deal alarmed.

"I reckon I'm a little _too_ swift," he admitted; "but, oh, my soul!
she's a peach!"

When the train whistled, Lida came out again. "Will you please go to
meet the doctor?" she asked, with no trace of resentment in her manner.

"Sure thing; I was just about starting," he replied, instantly.

While he was gone she asked Mrs. James if she knew the young man, and
was much pleased to find that the sharp-tongued landlady had only good
words to say of Roy Pierce.

"He's no ordinary cowboy," she explained. "If he makes up to you you
needn't shy."

"Who said he was making up to me? I never saw him before."

"I want to know! Well, anybody could see with half an eye that he was
naturally rustlin' round you. _I_ thought you'd known each other for
years."

This brought tears of mortification to the girl's eyes. "I didn't mean
to be taken that way. Of course I couldn't help being grateful, after
all he'd done; but I think it's a shame to be so misunderstood. It's
mean and low down of him--and poor uncle so sick."

"Now don't make a hill out of an ant-heap," said the old woman,
vigorously. "No harm's done. You're a mighty slick girl, and these boys
don't see many like you out here in the sage-brush and piñons. Facts
are, you're kind o' upsettin' to a feller like Roy. You make him kind o'
drunk-like. He don't mean to be sassy."

"Well, I wish you'd tell him not to do anything more for me. I don't
want to get any deeper in debt to him."

The Claywall physician came into the little room as silently as a Piute.
He was a plump, dark little man of impassive mien, but seemed to know
his business. He drove the girl out of the room, but drafted Mrs. James
and Roy into service.

"It's merely a case of indigestion," said he; "but it's plenty serious
enough. You see, the distended stomach pressing against the heart--"

The girl, sitting in the kitchen and hearing the swift and vigorous
movement within, experienced a revulsion to the awe and terror of the
midnight. For the second time in her life death had come very close to
her, but in this case her terror was shot through with the ruddy
sympathy of a handsome, picturesque young cavalier. She could not be
really angry with him, though she was genuinely shocked by his reckless
disregard of the proprieties; for he came at such a dark and lonely and
helpless hour, and his prompt and fearless action in silencing those
dreadful cowboys was heroic. Therefore, when the doctor sent Roy out to
say that her uncle would live, a part of her relief and joy shone upon
the young rancher, who was correspondingly exalted.

"Now you must let me hang round till he gets well," he said, forgetful
of all other duties.

"That reminds me. You'll need some breakfast," she said, hurriedly; "for
here comes the sun." And as she spoke the light of the morning streamed
like a golden river into the little room.

"It's me to the wood-pile, then," cried Roy, and his smile was of a
piece with the sunshine on the wall.


II

Beside the fallen monarch of the wood the lifting saplings bud and
intertwine. So over the stern old postmaster these young people
re-enacted the most primitive drama in the world. Indifferent to the
jeers of his fellows, Roy devoted himself to the service of "The
Badger's Niece," and was still in town when McCoy returned from "the
East"; that is to say, from Kansas City.

Lida had ceased to protest against the cowboy's attendance and his
love-making, for the good reason that her protests were unavailing. He
declined to take offense, and he would not remain silent. A part of his
devotion was due, of course, to his sense of guilt, and yet this was
only a small part. True, he had sent warnings and dire threats to
silence his band of marauders; but he did not feel keenly enough about
their possible tale-bearing to carry his warnings in person. "I can't
spare the time," he argued, knowing that Lida would be going home in a
few days and that his world would then be blank.

"I lose too much of you," he said to her once; "I can't afford to have
you out of my sight a minute."

She had grown accustomed to such speeches as these, and seldom replied
to them, except to order the speaker about with ever-increasing tyranny.
"You're so anxious to work," she remarked, "I'll let you do a-plenty.
You'll get sick o' me soon."

"Sick of you! Lord heavens! what'll I do when you leave?"

"You'll go back to your ranch. A fine foreman you must be, fooling round
here like a tramp. What does your boss think?"

"Don't know and don't care. Don't care what anybody thinks--but you.
You're my only landmark these days. You're my sun, moon, and stars,
that's what you are. I set my watch by you."

"You're crazy!" she answered, with laughter.

"Sure thing! Locoed, we call it out here. You've got me locoed--you're
my pink poison blossom. There ain't any feed that interests me but you.
I'm lonesome as a snake-bit cow when I can't see you."

"Say, do you know Uncle Dan begins to notice you. He asked me to-day
what you were hanging round here for, and who you were."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him you were McCoy's hired man just helping me take care of
him."

"That's a lie. I'm _your_ hired man. I'm takin' care of you--willing to
work for a kiss a day."

"You'll not get even that."

"I'm _not_ getting it--yet."

"You'll never get it."

"Don't be too sure of that. My life-work is _collecting_ my dues. I've
got 'em all set down. You owe me a dozen for extra jobs, and a good hug
for overtime."

She smiled derisively, and turned the current. "The meals you eat are
all of a dollar a day."

"They're worth a bushel of diamonds--when you cook 'em. But let me ask
you something--is your old dad as fierce as Uncle Dan?"

She nodded. "You bet he is! He's crusty as old crust. Don't you go up
against my daddy with any little bank-book. It's got to be a fat wad,
and, mind you, no cloves on your breath, either. He's crabbed on the
drink question; that's why he settled in Colorado Springs. No saloons
there, you know."

He considered a moment. "Much obliged. Now here's something for you.
You're not obliged to hand out soft words and a sweet smile to every
doggone Injun that happens to call for mail. Stop it. Why, you'll have
all the cow-punchers for fifty miles around calling for letters. That
bunch that was in here just now was from Steamboat Springs. Their mail
don't come here; it comes by way of Wyoming. They were runnin' a bluff.
It makes me hot to have such barefaced swindling going on. I won't stand
for it."

"Well, you see, I'm not really deputized to handle the mail, so I must
be careful not to make anybody mad--"

"Anybody but me. I don't count."

"Oh, _you_ wouldn't complain, I know that."

"I wouldn't, hey? Sure of that? Well, I'm going to start a petition to
have myself made postmaster--"

"Better get Uncle Dan out first," she answered, with a sly smile. "The
office won't hold you both."

       *       *       *       *       *

At the end of a week the old postmaster was able to hobble to the window
and sort the mail, but the doctor would not consent to his cooking his
own meals.

"If you _can_ stay another week," he said to Lida, "I think you'd better
do it. He isn't really fit to live alone."

Thereupon she meekly submitted, and continued to keep house in the
little kitchen for herself, her uncle, and for Roy, who still came
regularly to her table, bringing more than his share of provisions,
however. She was a good deal puzzled by the change which had come over
him of late. He was less gay, less confident of manner, and he often
fell into fits of abstraction.

He was, in fact, under conviction of sin, and felt the need of
confessing to Lida his share in the zealous assault of the cowboys that
night. "It's sure to leak out," he decided, "and I'd better be the first
to break the news." But each day found it harder to begin, and only the
announcement of her intended departure one morning brought him to the
hazard. He was beginning to feel less secure of her, and less
indifferent to the gibes of the town jokers, who found in his
enslavement much material for caustic remark. They called him the "tired
cowboy" and the "trusty."

They were all sitting at supper in the kitchen one night when the old
postmaster suddenly said to Roy: "Seems to me I remember you. Did I know
you before I was sick?" His memory had been affected by his "stroke,"
and he took up the threads of his immediate past with uncertain fingers.

"I reckon so; leastwise I used to get my mail here," answered Roy, a bit
startled.

The old man looked puzzled. "Yes; but it seems a little more special
than that. Someway your face is associated with trouble in my mind. Did
we have any disagreement?"

After the postmaster returned to his chair in the office, Roy said to
Lida, "They're going to throw your uncle out in a few weeks."

"You don't mean it!"

"Sure thing. He really ain't fit to be here any more. Don't you see how
kind o' dazed he is? They're going to get him out on a doctor's
certificate--loss of memory. Now, why don't you get deputized, and act
in his place?"

"Goodness sakes! I don't want to live here."

"Where do you want to live--on a ranch?"

"Not on your life! Colorado Springs is good enough for me."

"That's hard on Roy. What could I do to earn a living there?"

"You don't have to live there, do you?"

"Home is where you are." She had come to the point where she received
such remarks in glassy silence. He looked at her in growing uneasiness,
and finally said: "See here, Lida, I've got something to tell you. You
heard the old man kind o' feelin' around in his old hay-mow of a mind
about me? Well, him and me did have a cussin'-out match one day, and he
drawed a gun on me, and ordered me out of the office."

"What for?"

"Well, it was this way--I think. He was probably sick, and didn't feel a
little bit like sorting mail when I asked for it. He sure was
aggravatin', and I cussed him good and plenty. I reckon I had a clove on
my tongue that day, and was irritable, and when he lit onto me, I was
hot as a hornet, and went away swearing to get square." He braced
himself for the plunge. "That was _my_ gang of cowboys that came
hell-roaring around the night I met you. They were under my orders to
scare your uncle out of his hole, and I was going to rope him."

"Oh!" she gasped, and drew away from him; "that poor, sick old man!"

He hastened to soften the charge. "Of course I didn't know he was sick,
or I wouldn't 'ave done it. He didn't look sick the day before; besides,
I didn't intend to hurt him--much. I was only fixin' for to scare him up
for pullin' a gun on me, that was all."

"That's the meanest thing I ever heard of--to think of that old man,
helpless, and you and a dozen cowboys attacking him!"

"I tell you I didn't know he was ailin', and there was only six of us."

Her tone hurt as she pointed at him. "And _you_ pretend to be so brave."

"No, I don't."

"You _did_!"

"No, I didn't. _You_ said I was brave and kind, but I denied it. I never
soberly claimed any credit for driving off that band of outlaws. That's
one reason why I've been sticking so close to business here--I felt kind
o' conscience-struck."

Her eyes were ablaze now. "Oh, it is! You've said a dozen times it was
on _my_ account."

"That's right--about eighty per cent, on yours and twenty per cent, on
my own account--I mean the old man's."

"The idea!" She rose, her face dark with indignation. "Don't you dare
come here another time. I never heard of anything more--more awful. You
a rowdy! I'll never speak to you again. Go away! I despise you."

Her anger and chagrin were genuine, that he felt. There was nothing
playful or mocking in her tone at the moment. She saw him as he was, a
reckless, vengeful young ruffian, and as such she hated him.

He got upon his feet slowly, and went out without further word of
defense.


III

The sun did not rise for Roy Pierce on the day which followed her
departure. His interest in Eagle River died and his good resolutions
weakened. He went on one long, wild, wilful carouse, and when McCoy
rescued him and began to exhort toward a better life, he resigned his
job and went back to the home ranch, where his brothers, Claude and
Harry, welcomed him with sarcastic comment as "the returning goat."

He tried to make his peace with them by saying, "I'm done with whisky
forever."

"Good notion," retorted Claude, who was something of a cynic; "just cut
out women _and_ drink, and you'll be happy."

Roy found it easier to give up drink than to forget Lida. To put away
thought of her was like trying to fend the sunlight from his cabin
window with his palm. He was entirely and hopelessly enslaved to the
memory of her glowing face and smiling eyes. What was there in all his
world to console him for the loss of her?

Mrs. Pierce wonderingly persisted in asking what had come over him, that
he should be so sad and silent, and Claude finally enlightened her.

"He's all bent up over a girl--the postmaster's niece--of Eagle River,
who had to quit the country to get shut of him."

The mother's heart was full of sympathy, and her desire to comfort her
stricken son led to shy references to his "trouble" which made him
savage. He went about the ranch so grimly, so spiritlessly, that Claude
despairingly remarked:

"I wish the Lord that girl _had_ got you. You're as cheerful to have
around as a poisoned hound. Why don't you go down to the Springs and sit
on her porch? That's about all you're good for now."

This was a bull's-eye shot, for Roy's desire by day and his dream by
night was to trail her to her home; but the fear of her scornful
greeting, the thought of a cutting query as to the meaning of his call,
checked him at the very threshold of departure a dozen times.

He had read of love-lorn people in the _Saturday Storyteller_, which
found its way into the homes of the ranchers, but he had always sworn or
laughed at their sufferings as a part of the play. He felt quite
differently about these cases. Love was no longer a theme for jest, an
abstraction, a far-off trouble; it had become a hunger more intolerable
than any he had ever known, a pain that made all others he had
experienced transitory and of no account.

Even Claude admitted the reality of the disease by repeating: "Well, you
_have_ got it bad. Your symptoms are about the worst ever. You're locoed
for fair. You'll be stepping high and wide if you don't watch out."

In some mysterious way the whole valley now shared in a knowledge of the
raid on the post-office, as well as in an understanding of Roy's
"throw-down" by the postmaster's niece, and the expression of this
interest in his affairs at last drove the young rancher to desperation.
He decided to leave the state. "I'm going to Nome," he said to his
brothers one day.

"Pious thought," declared Claude. "The climate may freeze this poison
out of you. Why, sure--go! You're no good on earth here."

Roy did not tell him or his mother that he intended to go by way of the
Springs, in the wish to catch one last glimpse of his loved one before
setting out for the far northland. To speak with her was beyond his
hope. No, all he expected was a chance glimpse of her in the street, the
gleam of her face in the garden. "Perhaps I may pass her gate at night,
and see her at the window."


IV

The town to him was a maze of bewildering complexity and magnificence,
and he wandered about for a day in awkward silence, hesitating to
inquire the way to the Converse home. He found it at last, a pretty
cottage standing on a broad terrace, amid trees and vines vivid with the
autumn hues; and if any thought of asking Lida to exchange it for a
shack on a ranch still lingered in his mind, it was instantly wiped out
by his first glance at the place.

He walked by on the opposite side of the street, and climbed the mesa
back of the house to spy upon it from the rear, hoping to detect his
loved one walking about under the pear-trees. But she did not appear.
After an hour or so he came down and paced back and forth with eyes on
the gate, unable to leave the street till his soul was fed by one look
at her.

As the sun sank, and the dusk began to come on, he grew a little more
reckless of being recognized, and, crossing the way, continued to
sentinel the gate. He was passing it for the fourth time when Lida came
out upon the porch with an older woman. She looked at the stranger
curiously, but did not recognize him. She wore a hat, and was plainly
about to go for a walk.

Roy knew he ought to hurry away, but he did not. On the contrary, he
shamelessly met her with a solemn, husky-voiced greeting. "Hello, girl!
How's Uncle Dan?"

She started back in alarm, then flushed as she recognized him. "How dare
you speak to me--like that!"

In this moment, as he looked into her face, his courage began to come
back to him. "Why didn't you answer my letters?" he asked, putting her
on defense.

"What business had you to write to me? I told you I would not answer."

"No, you didn't; you only said you wouldn't _speak_ to me again."

"Well, you knew what I meant," she replied, with less asperity.

Someway these slight concessions brought back his audacity, his power of
defense. "You bet I did; but what difference does that make to a sick
man? Oh, I've had a time! I'm no use to the world since you left. I told
you the truth--you're my sun, moon, and stars, and I've come down to say
it just once more before I pull out for Alaska. I'm going to quit the
state. The whole valley is on to my case of loco, and I'm due at the
north pole. I've come to say good-by. Here's where I take my congee."

She read something desperate in the tone of his voice. "What do you
mean? You aren't really leaving?"

"That's what. Here's where I break camp. I can't go on this way. I've
got the worst fever anybody ever had, I reckon. I can't eat or sleep or
work, just on account of studying about you. You've got me goin' in a
circle, and if you don't say you forgive me--it's me to the bone-yard,
and that's no joke, you'll find."

She tried to laugh, but something in his worn face, intense eyes, and
twitching lips made her breathing very difficult. "You mustn't talk like
that. It's just as foolish as can be."

"Well, that don't help me a little bit. You no business to come into my
life and tear things up the way you did. I was all right till you came.
I liked myself and my neighbors bully; now nothing interests me--but
just you--and your opinion of me. You think I was a cowardly coyote
putting up that job on your uncle the way I did. Well, I admit it; but
I've been aching to tell you I've turned into another kind of farmer
since then. You've educated me. Seems like I was a kid; but I've grown
up into a man all of a sudden, and I'm startin' on a new line of action.
I'm not asking much to-day, just a nice, easy word. It would be a heap
of comfort to have you shake hands and say you're willing to let the
past go. Now, that ain't much to you, but it's a whole lot to me. Girl,
you've got to be good to me this time."

She was staring straight ahead of her with breath quickened by the
sincere passion in his quivering voice. The manly repentance which
burdened his soul reached her heart. After all, it was true: he had been
only a reckless, thoughtless boy as he planned that raid on her uncle,
and he had been so kind and helpful afterward--and so merry! It was
pitiful to see how changed he was, how repentant and sorrowful.

She turned quickly, and with a shy, teary smile thrust her hand toward
him. "All right. Let's forget it." Then as he hungrily, impulsively
sought to draw her nearer, she laughingly pushed him away. "I don't
mean--so much as you think." But the light of forgiveness and something
sweeter was in her face as she added: "Won't you come in a minute and
see mother and father--and Uncle Dan?"

"I'm _wild_ to see Uncle Dan," he replied with comical inflection, as he
followed her slowly up the path.




THE REMITTANCE MAN


      _--wayward son from across the seas--is gone. Roused to
      manhood by his country's call, he has joined the ranks of
      those who fight to save the shores of his ancestral isle._




III

THE REMITTANCE MAN


I

The Kettle Hole Ranch house faces a wide, treeless valley and is backed
by an equally bare hill. To the west the purple peaks of the Rampart
range are visible. It is a group of ramshackle and dispersed cabins--not
Western enough to be picturesque, and so far from being Eastern as to
lack cleanliness or even comfort, and the young Englishman who rode over
the hill one sunset was bitterly disappointed in the "whole plant."

"I shall stay here but one night," said he, as he entered the untidy
house.

He stayed five years, and the cause of this change of mind lay in the
person of Fan Blondell, the daughter of the old man who owned the ranch
and to whom young Lester had been sent to "learn the business" of
cattle-raising.

Fan was only seventeen at this time, but in the full flower of her
physical perfection. Lithe, full-bosomed, and ruddy, she radiated a
powerful and subtle charm. She had the face of a child--happy-tempered
and pure--but every movement of her body appealed with dangerous
directness to the sickly young Englishman who had never known an hour of
the abounding joy of life which had been hers from the cradle. Enslaved
to her at the first glance, he resolved to win her love.

His desire knew no law in affairs of this kind, but his first encounter
with Blondell put a check to the dark plans he had formed--for the
rancher had the bearing of an aged, moth-eaten, but dangerous old bear.
His voice was a rumble, his teeth were broken fangs, and his hands
resembled the paws of a gorilla. Like so many of those Colorado ranchers
of the early days, he was a Missourian, and his wife, big, fat, worried
and complaining, was a Kentuckian. Neither of them had any fear of dirt,
and Fan had grown up not merely unkempt, but smudgy. Her gown was
greasy, her shoes untied, and yet, strange to say, this carelessness
exercised a subduing charm over Lester, who was fastidious to the point
of wasting precious hours in filling his boots with "trees" and folding
his neckties. The girl's slovenly habits of dress indicated, to his
mind, a similar recklessness as to her moral habits, and it sometimes
happens that men of his stamp come to find a fascination in the
elemental in human life which the orderly no longer possess.

Lester, we may explain, was a "remittance man"--a youth sent to America
by his family on the pretense of learning to raise cattle, but in
reality to get him out of the way. He was not a bad man; on the
contrary, he was in most ways a gentleman and a man of some reading--but
he lacked initiative, even in his villainy. Blondell at once called him
"a lazy hound"--provoked thereto by Lester's slowness of toilet of a
morning, and had it not been for Fan--backed by the fifty dollars a
month which Lester was paying for "instruction"--he would have been
"booted off the place."

Fan laughed at her father. "You better go slow; George Adelbert is
heeled."

Blondell snorted. "Heeled! He couldn't unlimber his gun inside of
fifteen minutes."

"Well, he can ride."

The old man softened a little. "Yes, he can ride, and he don't complain,
once he gets mounted, but he carries 'pajammys' in his saddle-bags and a
tooth-brush on his slicker; hanged if he don't use it, too!"

"That's what I like about him," she answered, defiantly. "We're all so
blamed careless about the way we live. I wish he'd jack us all up a
bit."

Truly Fan was under conviction, brought to a realization of her
slouchiness by Lester's care of his own room as well as by his lofty
manners. She no longer wore her dress open at the throat, and she kept
her yellow hair brushed, trying hard to make each meal a little less
like a pig's swilling. She knew how things ought to be done, a little,
for at "The Gold Fish Ranch" and at Starr Baker's everything was spick
and span (Mrs. Baker especially was a careful and energetic
housekeeper), but to keep to this higher level every day was too great
an effort even for a girl in love. She dropped back, now and again,
weary and disheartened.

It was her mating-time. She leaned to Lester from the first glance. The
strangeness of his accent, his reference to things afar off, to London
and Paris, appealed to her in the same way in which poetry moved
her--dimly, vaguely--but his hands, his eyes, his tender, low-toned
voice won her heart. She hovered about him when he was at home, careless
of the comments of the other men, ignoring the caustic "slatting" of her
mother. She had determined to win him, no matter what the father might
say--for to her all men were of the same social level and she as good as
the best. Indeed, she knew no other world than the plains of Colorado,
for she was born in the little dugout which still remained a part of
the kitchen. The conventions of cities did not count with her.

She was already aware of her power, too, and walked among the rough men
of her acquaintance with the step of an Amazonian queen, unafraid,
unabashed. She was not in awe of Lester; on the contrary, her love for
him was curiously mingled with a certain sisterly, almost maternal pity;
he was so easily "flustered." He was, in a certain sense, on her hands
like an invalid.

She soon learned that he was wax beneath her palm--that the touch of a
finger on his arm made him uneasy of eye and trembling of limb. It
amused her to experiment with him--to command him, to demand speech of
him when he was most angry and disgusted with the life he was living.
That he despised her father and mother she did not know, but that he was
sick of the cowboys and their "clack" she did know, and she understood
quite as well as if he had already told her that she alone kept him from
returning at once to Denver to try some other manner of earning a
living. This realization gave her pride and joy.

She had but one jealousy--he admired and trusted Mrs. Baker and
occasionally rode over there to talk with her, and Fan could not
understand that he sought intellectual refuge from the mental squalor of
the Blondells, but she perceived a difference in his glance on his
return. Mrs. Baker, being a keen-sighted, practical little woman, soon
fell upon the plainest kind of speech with the young Englishman.

"This is no place for you," she defiantly said. "The rest of us are all
more or less born to the plains and farm-life, but you're not; you're
just 'sagging,' that's all. You're getting deeper into the slough all
the time."

"Quite right," he answered, "but I don't know what else I can do. I have
no trade--I know nothing of any art or profession, and my brother is
quite content to pay my way so long as he thinks I'm on a ranch, and in
the way of learning the business."

She, with her clear eyes searching his soul, replied: "The longer you
stay the more difficult it will be to break away. Don't you see that?
You're in danger of being fastened here forever."

He knew what she meant, and his thin face flushed. "I know it and I am
going to ask Starr to give me a place here with you, and I'm about to
write my brother stating full reasons for the change. He might advance
me enough to buy into Starr's herd."

She considered this. "I'll take the matter up with Starr," she replied,
after a pause. "Meanwhile, you can come over and stay as a visitor as
long as you please--but don't bring Fan," she added, sharply. "I can't
stand slatterns, and you must cut loose from her once for all."

Again he flushed. "I understand--but it isn't easy. Fan has been mighty
good to me; life would have been intolerable over there but for her."

"I should think life would have been intolerable _with_ her," Mrs. Baker
answered, with darkening brow, and then they talked of other things till
he rose to ride away.

He headed his horse homeward, fully resolved to give notice of removal,
but he did not. On the contrary, he lost himself to Fan. The girl,
glowing with love and anger and at the very climax of her animal beauty,
developed that night a subtlety of approach, a method of attack, which
baffled and in the end overpowered him. She was adroit enough to make no
mention of her rivals; she merely set herself to cause his committal, to
bend him to her side. As the romping girl she played round him,
indifferent to the warning glances of her mother, her eyes shining, her
cheeks glowing, till the man he was, the life he had lived, the wishes
of his brother, were fused and lost in the blind passion of the present.
"This glorious, glowing creature can be mine. What does all the rest
matter?" was his final word of renunciation.

In this mood he took her to his arms, in this madness he told her of his
love (committing himself into her hands, declining into her life), and
in the end requested of her parents the honor of their daughter's hand.

Mrs. Blondell wept a tear or two and weakly gave her consent, but the
old ranchman thundered and lightened. "What can you do for my girl?" he
demanded. "As I understand it, you haven't a cent--the very clothes
you've got on your back are paid for by somebody else! What right have
you to come to me with such a proposal?"

To all this Lester, surprised and disconcerted, could but meekly answer
that he hoped soon to buy a ranch of his own--that his brother had
promised to "set him up" as soon as he had mastered the business.

Blondell opened his jaws to roar again when Fan interposed and, taking a
clutch in his shaggy beard, said, calmly: "Now, dad, you hush! George
Adelbert and I have made it all up and you better fall in gracefully. It
won't do you any good to paw the dirt and beller."

Lester grew sick for a moment as he realized the temper of the family
into which he was about to marry, but when Fan, turning with a gay
laugh, put her round, smooth arm about his neck, the rosy cloud closed
over his head again.


II

Blondell was silenced, but not convinced. A penniless son-in-law was not
to his liking. Fan was his only child, and the big ranch over which he
presided was worth sixty thousand dollars. What right had this lazy
Englishman to come in and marry its heiress? The more he thought about
it the angrier he grew, and when he came in the following night he broke
forth.

"See here, mister, I reckon you better get ready and pull out. I'm not
going to have you for a son-in-law, not this season. The man that
marries my Fan has got to have sabe enough to round up a flock of
goats--and wit enough to get up in the morning. So you better vamoose
to-morrow."

Lester received his sentence in silence. At the moment he was glad of
it. He turned on his heel and went to packing with more haste, with
greater skill, than he had ever displayed in any enterprise hitherto.
His hurry arose from a species of desperation. "If I can only get out of
the house!" was his inward cry.

"Why pack up?" he suddenly asked himself. "What do they matter--these
boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and
stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk
when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous
intentness.

She was no longer the laughing, romping girl, but the woman with alert
eye and tightly closed lips. "What are you doing, Dell?"

"Your father has ordered me to leave the ranch," he answered, "and so
I'm going."

"No, you're not! I don't care what he has ordered! You're not
going"--she came up and put her arms about his neck--"not without me."
And, feeling her claim to pity, he took her in his arms and tenderly
pressed her cheek upon his bosom. Then she began to weep. "I can't live
without you, Dell," she moaned.

He drew her closer, a wave of tenderness rising in his heart. "I'll be
lonely without you, Fan--but your father is right. I am too poor--we
have no home--"

"What does that matter?" she asked. "I wouldn't marry you for any amount
of _money_! And I know you don't care for this old ranch! _I'll_ be glad
to get shut of it. I'll go with you, and we'll make a home somewhere
else." Then her mood changed. Her face and voice hardened. She pushed
herself away from him. "No, I won't! I'll stay here, and so shall you!
Dad can't boss me, and I won't let him run you out. Come and face him up
with me."

So, leading him, she returned to the kitchen, where Blondell, alone with
his wife, was eating supper, his elbows on the table, his hair unkempt,
his face glowering, a glooming contrast to his radiant and splendid
daughter, who faced him fearlessly. "Dad, what do you mean by talking
this way to George Adelbert? He's going to stay and I'm going to stay,
and you're going to be decent about it, for I'm going to marry him."

"No, you're not!" he blurted out.

"Well, I am!" She drew nearer and with her hands on the table looked
down into his wind-worn face and dim eyes. "I say you've got to be
decent. Do you understand?" Her body was as lithe, as beautiful, as that
of a tigress as she leaned thus, and an unalterable resolution blazed in
her eyes as she went on, a deeper significance coming into her voice:
"Furthermore, I'm as good as married to him right now, and I don't care
who knows it."

The old man's head lifted with a jerk, and he looked at her with mingled
fear and fury. "What do you mean?"

"Anything you want to have it mean," she replied. "You drive him out and
you drive me out--that's what I mean."

Blondell saw in her face the look of the woman who is willing to assume
any guilt, any shame for her lover, and, dropping his eyes before her
gaze, growled a curse and left the room.

Fan turned to her lover with a ringing, boyish laugh, "It's all right,
Dell; he's surrendered!"


III

Lester passed the month before his marriage in alternating uplifts and
depressions, and the worst of it lay in the fact that his moments of
exaltation were sensual--of the flesh, and born of the girl's
presence--while his depression came from his sane contemplation of the
fate to which he was hastening. He went one day to talk it all over with
Mrs. Baker, who now held a dark opinion of Fan Blondell. She frankly
advised him to break the engagement and to go back to England.

"I can't do that, my dear Mrs. Baker. I am too far committed to Fan to
do that. Besides, I know she would make a terrible scene. She would
follow me. And besides, I am fond of her, you know. She's very
beautiful, now--and she does love me, poor beggar! I wonder at it, but
she does." Then he brightened up. "You know she has the carriage of a
duchess. Really, if she were trained a little she would be quite
presentable anywhere."

Mrs. Baker shook her head. "She's at her best this minute. Look at the
mother; that's what she'll be like in a few years."

"Oh no--not really! She's an improvement--a vast improvement--on the old
people, don't you think?"

"You can't make a purse out of a sow's ear. Fan will sag right down
after marriage. Mark my words. She's a slattern in her blood, and before
the honeymoon is over she'll be slouching around in old slippers and her
nightgown. That is plain talk, Mr. Lester, but I can't let you go into
this trap with your eyes shut."

Lester went away with renewed determination to pack his belongings and
bolt, but the manly streak in his blood made it impossible for him to go
without some sort of explanation to her.

The other hands, who called him "George Adelbert" in mockery, were more
and more contemptuous of him, and one or two were sullen, for they loved
Fan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds
"after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboring
rancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frank
courtship with Fan, and enjoyed a brief, half-expressed engagement. He
was a fine young fellow, not naturally vindictive, and he would not have
uttered a word of protest had his successful rival been a man of "the
States," but to give way to an English adventurer whose way was paid by
his brother was a different case altogether.

Of George Adelbert's real feeling the boys, of course, knew nothing. Had
they known of his hidden contempt for them they would probably have
taken him out of the country at the end of a rope, but of his position
with Fan they were in no doubt, for she was very frank with them. If
they accused her of being "sweet on the bloody Englishman" she laughed.
If they threatened his life in a jocular way she laughed again, but in a
different way, and said: "Don't make a mistake; George Adelbert is a
fighter from way back East." And once, in a burst of rage, she said: "I
won't have you saying such things, Lincoln Compton. I won't have it, I
tell you!" No one could accuse her of disloyalty or cowardice.

In his letters home Lester had put his fiancée's best foot forward.
"She's quite too good for me," he wrote to his brother. "She's young and
beautiful and sole heiress of an estate twice as big as our whole family
can muster. She's uncultivated, the diamond in the rough, and all that
sort of thing, you understand, but she'll polish easily." He put all
this down in the sardonic wish to procure some sort of settlement from
his brother. He got it by return mail.

Edward was suavely congratulatory, and in closing said: "I'm deucedly
glad you're off my hands just now, my boy, for I'm confoundedly hard up.
You're doing the sensible thing--only don't try to bring your family
home--not at present."

Lester was thrown into despairing fury by this letter, which not only
cut him off from his remittances, but politely shut the paternal door in
his own face as well as in the face of his bride. For the moment he had
some really heroic idea of setting to work to show them what he could
do. "The beggar! He squats down on the inheritance, shoves me out, and
then takes on a lot of 'side' as to his superiority over me! He always
was a self-sufficient ass. I'd like to punch his jaw!"

Then his rage faded out and a kind of sullen resignation came to him.
What was the use? Why not submit to fate? "Everything has been against
me from the start," he bitterly complained, and in this spirit he
approached his wedding-day.

The old man, acknowledging him as a son-in-law prospective, addressed
him now with gruff kindness, and had Lester shown the slightest gain in
managerial ability he would have been content--glad to share a little of
his responsibility with a younger man. In his uncouth, hairy, grimy
fashion Blondell was growing old, and feeling it. As he said to his
wife: "It's a pity that our only child couldn't have brought a real man,
like Compton, into the family. There ain't a hand on the place that
wouldn't 'a' been more welcome to me. What do you suppose would become
of this place if it was put into this dandy's hands?"

"I don't know, pa. Fan, for all her slack ways, is a purty fair manager.
She wouldn't waste it. She might let it run down, but she'd hang on to
it."

"But she's a fool about that jackass."

"She is now," answered the mother, with cynical emphasis, which she
softened by adding, "Dell ain't the kind that would try to work her."

He sighed with troubled gaze and grumbled an oath. "I don't know what to
think of him! He gits me." And in that rather mournful spirit he went
about his work, leaving the whole matter of the marriage festival in the
hands of the women. In a dim way he still felt that haste was necessary,
although Fan's face was as joyous, as careless, and as innocent as a
child's. As she galloped about the country with her George Adelbert she
sowed her "bids" broadcast, as if wishing all the world to share her
happiness. There was nothing exclusive, or shrinking, or parsimonious
in Frances Blondell.


IV

The marriage feast was indeed an epoch-making event in the county. It
resembled a barbecue and was quite as inclusive. Distinctions of the
social sort were few in Arapahoe County. Cattle-rustlers and sheepmen
were debarred, of course, but aside from these unfortunates practically
the whole population of men, women, children, and babies assembled in
the Kettle Hole Ranch grove. The marriage was to be "_al fresco_," as
the Limone _Limerick_ repeated several times.

Blondell found it a hard day, for what with looking after the roasting
ox and the ice and the beer, he was almost too busy to say hello to his
guests. Fan had contrived to get a clean shirt on him by the trick of
whisking away his old one and substituting a white one in its place. He
put this on without realizing how splendid it was, but rebelled flatly
at the collar, and by the time the ox was well basted his shirt was
subdued to a condition which left him almost at ease with himself.

Fan received the people at the door of the shack--her mother being too
busy in the preparation for dinner to do more than say "Howdy?" to those
who deliberately sought her out; but Fan was not embarrassed or wearied.
It was her great day--she was only a little disturbed when George
Adelbert fled to his room for a little relief from the strain of his
position, for he lacked both her serenity of spirit and her physical
health.

Once Lester would have enjoyed the action and comment of these people as
characters in a play, but now the knowledge that he was about to sink to
their level and be nailed there filled him with a fear and disgust which
not even the radiant face and alluring body of his bride could conceal
or drive out. These lumbering ranchers, these tobacco-chewing, drawling
lumpkins, were they to be his companions for the rest of his life? These
women with their toothless, shapeless mouths, these worn and weary
mothers in home-made calico and cheap millinery, were they to be the
visitors at his fireside? What kind of woman would they make of Fan?

By one o'clock the corrals were full of ponies and the sheds and yards
crowded with carriages all faded by the pitiless sun and sucked dry by
the never-resting wind of the plain.

Meanwhile the young women had set long tables in the back yard and
covered them with food--contributed chicken, home-made biscuit, cake,
and pie, while the young fellows had been noisily working at
constructing a "bowery" for the dance which was to follow the ceremony
at three. And at last Fan raised a bugle-call for "_dinner!_" and they
all came with a rush.

The feast did not last long, for every one was hungry and ate without
permitting delay or distraction. Nearly all remarked on having had a
very early breakfast, and they certainly showed capacity for not merely
beef and beer, but pie and ice-cream, and when they shoved back, and
lighted the cigars which Lester had provided with prodigal hand, they
all agreed that the barbecue was "up to the bills."

The ceremony at three was short, almost hurried, so great was the bustle
about the house and yard. Fan wore no veil and George Adelbert made no
change from the neat sack-suit which he had put on at rising. At the
close of the clergyman's blessing he was called upon for a second time
to pump the hard hands and stringy arms of his neighbors as they filed
by to bid them both a hearty God-speed.

After this painful procession was ended Fan dragged him away to the
bower where the young folks were already dancing with prodigious
clatter. "How young she is!" he exclaimed, as he saw her mix with the
crowd of tireless, stamping, prancing cowboys.

As the dance went on he grew furious with her lack of reserve, her
indelicacy. Her good-natured laughter with the men who crowded about her
familiarly was a kind of disloyalty. She seemed at times to be
exchanging doubtful jests with them; and at last, to protect her from
the results of her own fatuity, he danced with her himself--danced
almost incessantly, notwithstanding the heat and the noise.

At sunset they all returned to the tables and ate up what remained of
the ox and the pies.

Lester was well enough acquainted with these rough youths to know that
some deviltry was preparing, and, already furious with his bride and
distrustful of the future, his self-command at last gave way. Drawing
Fan away from the crowd he said, tenderly:

"I've had enough of this! I'm having Aglar harness the buckskins into
the red cart, and I want you to go to the house and pack a few
things--we're going to Limone and catch the early train for Denver."

"We can't do that, Dell; we got to stay here and feed this gang once
more."

"Oh, hang the gang! I'm sick of them. Get ready, I tell you! Who cares
what these beggars think?"

She laughed. "You're jealous of them." Then, rising to his passion, she
answered, "All right; I'll sneak some clothes into a bag and we'll slide
out and leave the gang."

A half-hour later they stole away toward the back of the garden and out
upon the prairie, where a Mexican was holding a spirited team. Fan was
giggling so hard that she was barely able to lift the valise which she
carried in her hand.

"Don't you tell," she said to the Mexican. "If they ask, say we went to
Holcombe."

"All right. I _sabe_," the Mexican replied. Even as he spoke the music
in the bower ceased and voices were heard in question.

Fan sobered. "They've missed us already."

Lester took the reins. "Send 'em south, Aglar," and at his chirp the
team sprang forward out upon the road into the coolness and silence of
the midnight plain.

Fan, clutching Lester's arm, shook with laughter. "It's like
eloping--ain't it?"

The tone of her voice irritated him. "Good Heaven! how vulgar she is!
And she is my wife," was his thought; and he took no pleasure in her
nearness.

Wild whoops reached them from the ranch-house now hid in the valley
behind them, and a few moments later the yells broke out again
perceptibly nearer.

"They're after us!" cried Fan, vastly excited and pleased. "It's a race
now," and, catching the whip from his hand, she lashed the horses into a
gallop.

He said: "I'll turn into the Sun-Fish Trail; we'll throw 'em off the
track."

"No use," she laughed. "No use, Dell; they can read a trail like Injuns;
besides, they're overtaking us. We might as well turn and go back."

His only answer was a shout to the horses. He was burning with fury now.
All his hidden contempt, his concealed hatred of the vulgarians behind
him, filled his heart. It was like them, the savages, to give chase.

With shrill whoops in imitation of Comanches the cowboys came on, riding
their swift and tireless ponies; like skimming hawks they swept down the
swells, and the bride, clinging to her husband's arm, called each of
them by his name.

"Link Compton is in the lead. Pull up!" She reached a firm hand and laid
it on the lines. "Pull up, Dell; it's no use."

He tried to shake off her grasp, but could not. Her voice changed to
command. "Don't be a fool!" she called, sharply, and, laying both hands
upon the reins, she brought the horses into a trot in spite of his
furious objection, just as the first of the pursuing cowboys rode
alongside and, seizing one of the horses by the bit, cried out:

"Come back. We need you!"

Even as he spoke a whistling rope settled round the fleeing couple and
the team came to a stand, surrounded by a hooting mob of mounted men.
The noose, tight-drawn, was like a steel embrace, and Compton called:

"Thought you'd give us the slip, did ye? Well, I don't think!"

"Leave us alone, you ruffians," shouted Lester, "or it'll be the worse
for you!"

They all laughed at this, and Compton drew the rope tighter, pinning
Lester's arms to his side.

"Boys--" began Fan in appeal, but she got no further.

Lester, wrenching his right arm loose, began to shoot. What happened
after that no one ever clearly knew, but the team sprang wildly forward,
and Compton's pony reared and fell backward, and the bride and groom
were thrown violently to the ground.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Fan opened her eyes she saw the big stars above her and felt a
sinewy arm beneath her head. Compton was fanning her with his hat and
calling upon her to speak, his voice agonized with fear and remorse.

Slowly it all came back to her, and, struggling to a sitting position,
she called piteously: "Dell, where are you? Dell!" Her voice rose in
fear, a tone no man had ever heard in it before. She staggered to her
feet and dazedly looked about her. A group of awed, silenced, dismounted
men stood not far away, and on the ground, lying in a crumpled,
distorted heap, was her husband. With a shriek of agony she fell on her
knees beside him, calling upon him to open his eyes, to speak to her.

Then at last, as the conviction of his death came to her, she lifted her
head and with a voice of level, hoarse-throated hate, she imprecated her
murderers. "I'll kill you, every one of you! I'll kill you for this--you
cowardly wolves--I'll kill--"


V

They lifted them both up for dead, and Compton, taking Fan in his strong
arms, held her like a child as they drove slowly back to the ranch. All
believed Lester dead; but Compton, who held his ear to Fan's lips,
insisted that she was breathing, and indeed she recovered from her swoon
before they reached the house.

Blondell, more powerfully moved than ever before in his life, after a
swift curse upon the culprits took his girl to his bosom and carried her
to her bed.

As her brain cleared, Fan rose and, staggering across the room, took her
husband's head in her arms. "Bring some water. Dell is hurt. Don't you
see he is hurt? Be quick!"

"Has somebody gone for the doctor?" asked the mother, to whom this was
the raving of dementia. "Somebody go."

No one had, for all believed the man to be dead; but Compton exclaimed,
"I'll go!" turning to vault his horse, glad of something to do, eager to
escape the sight of Fan's agonized face.

The dash of cold water on his bruised face brought a flutter of life to
Lester's eyelids, and in triumph the bride cried out:

"I told you so! He is alive! Oh, Dell, can't you speak to me?"

He could not so much as lift his eyelids, but his breathing deepened,
and with that sign of returning vitality Fan was forced to be content.
She was perfectly composed now, and helped to bathe his crushed and
bleeding head and his broken shoulder with a calmness very impressive to
all those who were permitted to glance within the room.

Slowly the guests departed. The cowboys, low-voiced and funereal of
mien, rode away in groups of three or four.

The doctor came hurrying down the slope about ten of the morning, his
small roan mustang galloping, his case of instruments between his feet.
He was very young, and, luckily, very self-confident, and took charge of
"the case" with thrilling authority.

"The coma was induced," he explained, "by the concussion of the brain.
The shoulder is also badly contused and the collar-bone broken, but if
brain fever does not set in the man will live. The treatment so far as
it has gone is admirable."

Compton returned with him, or a little before him, and seemed to be
waiting for arrest. He was a lean, brown young fellow with good, gray
eyes and a shapely nose. "Yes, I threw the rope," he confessed to every
one. "It was all in fun, but he shot my horse, and as he reared up he
jerked the people out of the buggy. I guess the broncos jumped ahead at
the same time. But it was my fault. I had no business to rope 'em. In
fact, we had no business chasing 'em up at all."

At last Blondell gruffly told him to go home. "If the man dies we'll
come after you," he added, with blunt ferocity.

"All right," responded the young fellow, with lofty spirit. "I'll be
there--but I want to see Fan a moment before I leave. I want to know if
there is anything I can do for her or him."

Blondell was for refusing this utterly, but his wife said: "You didn't
mean nothing, Link--I'm sure of that--and I've always liked you, and so
has Fan. She won't lay it up against you, I know. I'll tell her you're
here."

Fan, sitting beside Lester's bed, turned at her mother's word and saw
the young fellow standing in the doorway in mute appeal. Her glance was
without anger, but it was cold and distant. She shook her head, and the
young rancher turned away, shaken with sobs. That look was worse than
her curse had been.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the dim, grim region of his delirium and his deathlike
unconsciousness George Lester struggled slowly back to life. His
reawakening was like a new birth. He seemed born again, this time an
American--a Western American. In the measure of a good old homely
phrase, some sense (a sense of the fundamental oneness of humanity) had
been beaten into his head.

As he lay there, helpless and suffering, he was first of all aware of
Fan, whose face shone above him like the moon, and was soon able to
understand her unwearying devotion and to remember that she was his
wife. She was always present when he woke, and he accepted her presence
as he accepted sunshine, knowing nothing of the sleeplessness and toil
which her attendance involved--a knowledge of this came later.

At times gruff old Blondell himself bent his shaggy head above his bed
to ask how he felt, and no mother could have been more considerate than
Mrs. Blondell.

"What right have I to despise these people?" he asked himself one day.
"What have I done to lift myself above them?" (And this question
extended to the neighbors, to the awkward ranchers who came stiffly and
with a sort of awe into his room to "pass a good word," as they said.)
"They are a good sort, after all"--his heart prompted him to admit.

But his deepest penitence, his tenderest gratitude, rose to Fan, whom
care and love had marvelously refined. He was able to forget her
careless speech and to look quite through her untidy ways to the golden,
good heart which beat beneath her unlovely gowns. Nothing was too hard,
too menial, for her hands, and her smile warmed his midnight sick-room
like sunshine.

He was curiously silent even after his strength was sufficient for
speech. Content to lie on his bed and watch her as she moved about him,
he answered only in monosyllables, while the deep current of his love
gathered below his reticence. As he came to a full understanding of what
he had been and to a sense of his unworthy estimate of her and her
people, his passion broke bounds.

"Fan!" he called out one morning, "I'm not fit to receive all your care
and devotion--but I'm going to try to be; I'm going to set to work in
earnest when I get up. Your people shall be my people, your cares my
cares." He could not go on, and Fan, who was looking down at him in
wonder, stooped and laid a kiss on his quivering lips.

"You get well, boy; that's all you need to worry about," she said, and
her face was very sweet--for she smiled upon him as if he were a child.




THE LONESOME MAN


      _--the murderer still seeks forgetfulness in the solitude,
      building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks._




IV

THE LONESOME MAN


The road that leads to the historic north shoulder of Solidor is lonely
now. The stages that once crawled painfully upward through its flowery
meadows are playhouses for the children of Silver Plume, and the brakes
that once howled so resoundingly on the downward way are rusting to
ashes in the weeds that spring from the soil of the Silverado Queen's
unused corral. The railway, half a hundred miles to the north, has left
the famous pass to solitude and to grass.

Once a week, or possibly oftener, a cattleman or prospector rides
across, or a little band of tourists plod up or down,--thinking they are
penetrating to the heart of the Rockies,--but for the most part the
trail is passing swiftly to the unremembered twilight of the tragic
past. There are, it is true, one or two stamp-mills above Pemberton, but
they draw their supplies from the valley to the west and not from the
plain's cities, and the upper camps have long since been deserted by the
restless seeker of sudden gold.

It is a desolate, unshaded country, made so by the reckless hand of the
tenderfoot prospector, who, in the days of the silver rush, cut and
burned the timber sinfully, and the great peaks are meticulated with the
rotting boles of noble pines and spotted with the decaying stumps of
the firs which once made the whole land as beautiful as a park. Here and
there, however, a segment of this splendid ancient forest remains to
give some hint of what the ranges were before the destroying horde of
silver-seekers struck and scarred it.

Along this trail and above the last vestige of its standing trees a man
could be seen, walking eastward and upward, one bright afternoon in
August, a couple of years ago. He moved slowly, for he was heavily built
and obviously not much used to climbing, for he paused often to breathe.
The air at that altitude is thin and, to the one not accustomed to it,
most unsatisfying. In the intervals of his pauses the traveler's eyes
swept the heights and explored each cañon wall as if in search of a
resting-place. Around him the conies cried and small birds skimmed from
ledge to ledge, but his dark face did not lighten with joy of the beauty
which shone over his head nor to that which flamed under his feet. It
was plain that he was too preoccupied with some inner problem, too
intent on his quest, to give eye or ear to the significance of bird or
flower.

Huge Solidor, bare and bleak, rose grandly to the north, propping the
high-piled shining clouds, and the somber, dust-covered fields of snow
showed to what far height his proud summit soared above his fellows.
Little streams of icy water trickled through close-knit, velvety sward
whereon small flowers, white and gold and lilac, showed like fairy
footprints. Down from the pass a chill wind, delicious and invigorating,
rushed as palpably as if it were a liquid wave. In all this upper region
no shelter offered to the tired man.

A few minutes later, as he rounded the sloping green bastion which
flanks the peak to the south, the man's keen eyes lighted upon a small
cabin which squatted almost unnoticeably against a gray ledge some five
hundred feet higher than the rock whereon he stood. The door of this hut
was open and the figure of a man, dwarfed by distance, could be detected
intently watching the pedestrian on the trail. Unlike most
cabin-dwellers, he made no sign of greeting, uttered no shout of cheer;
on the contrary, as the stranger approached he disappeared within his
den like a marmot.

There was something appealing in the slow mounting of the man on foot.
He was both tired and breathless, and as he neared the cabin (which was
built on ground quite twelve thousand feet above sea-level) his limbs
dragged, and every step he made required his utmost will. Twice he
stopped to recover his strength and to ease the beating of his heart,
and as he waited thus the last time the lone cabin-dweller appeared in
his door and silently gazed, confronting his visitor with a strangely
inhospitable and prolonged scrutiny. It was as if he were a lonely
animal, jealous of his ground and resentful even of the most casual
human inspection.

The stranger, advancing near, spoke. "Is this the trail to Silver
Plume?" he asked, his heaving breast making his speech broken.

"It is," replied the miner, whose thin face and hawk-like eyes betrayed
the hermit and the man on guard.

"How far is it across the pass?"

"About thirty miles."

"A good night's walk. Are there any camps above here?"

"None."

"How far is it to the next cabin?"

"Some twelve miles."

The miner, still studying the stranger with piercing intensity,
expressed a desire to be reassured. "What are you doing up here on this
trail? Are you a mining expert? A spy?" he seemed to ask.

The traveler, divining his curiosity, explained. "I stayed last night at
the mill below. I'm a millwright. I have some property to inspect in
Silver Plume, hence I'm walking across. I didn't know it was so far; I
was misinformed. I'm not accustomed to this high air and I'm used up.
Can you take care of me?"

The miner glanced round at the heap of ore which betrayed his craft, and
then back at the dark, bearded, impassive face.

"Come in," he said at last, "I'll feed you." But his manner was at once
surly and suspicious.

The walls of the hovel were built partly of logs and partly of boulders,
and its roof was compacted of dirt and gravel; but it was decently
habitable. The furniture (hand-rived out of slabs) was scanty, and the
floor was laid with planks, yet everything indicated many days of wear.

"You've been here some time," the stranger remarked rather than asked.

"Ten years."

Thereafter the two men engaged in a silent duel. The millwright, leaning
back in his rude chair, stretched his tired limbs and gazed down the
valley with no further word of inquiry, while his grudging host prepared
a primitive meal and set it upon a box which served as a table.

"You may eat," he curtly said.

In complete silence and with calm abstraction the stranger turned to the
food and ate and drank, accepting it all as if this were a roadhouse and
he a paying guest. The sullen watchfulness of his host seemed not to
disturb him, not even to interest him.

At length the miner spoke as if in answer to a question--the question he
feared.

"No, my mine has not panned out well--not yet. The ore is low-grade and
the mill is too far away."

To this informing statement the other man did not so much as lift an
eyebrow. His face was like a closed door, his eyes were curtained
windows. He mused darkly as one who broods on some bitter defeat.

Nevertheless, he was a human presence and the lonely dweller on the
heights could not resist the charm of his guest's personality, remote as
he seemed.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

There was a moment's hesitation.

"In St. Paul."

"Ever been here before?"

The dark man shook his shaggy head slowly, and dropped his eyes as if
this were the end of the communication. "No, and I never expect to come
again."

The miner perceived power in his guest's resolute taciturnity, and the
very weight of the silence eventually opened his own lips. From moment
to moment the impulse to talk grew stronger within him. There was
something as compelling as heat in this reticent visitor whose soul was
so intent on inward problems that it perceived nothing of interest in an
epaulet of gold on the shoulder of Mount Solidor.

"Few come this trail now," the miner volunteered, as he cleared the
table. "I am alone and seldom see a human being drifting my way. I do
not invite them."

The stranger refilled his pipe and again leaned back against the wall in
ponderous repose. If he heard his host's remark he gave no sign of it,
and yet, despite the persistence of his guest's silence--perhaps because
of it--the lonely gold-seeker babbled on with increasing candor,
contradicting himself, revealing, hiding, edging round his story,
confessing to his hopes of riches, betraying in the end the secrets of
his lonely life. It was as if the gates of his unnatural reserve had
broken down and the desire to be heard, to be companioned, had
over-borne all his early caution.

"It's horribly lonesome up here," he confessed. "Sometimes I think I'll
give it all up and go back to civilization. When I came here the pass
had its traffic; now no one rides it, which is lucky for me," he added.
"I have no prying visitors--I mean no one to contest my claim--and yet a
man can't do much alone. Even if my ore richens I must transport it or
build a mill. Sometimes I wonder what I'm living for, stuck away in this
hole in the hills. I was born to better things--"

He checked himself at this moment, as if he were on the edge of
self-betrayal, but his listener seemed not vitally interested in these
personal details. However, he made some low-voiced remark, and, as if
hypnotized, the miner resumed his monologue.

"The nights are the worst. They are endless--and sometimes when I cannot
sleep I feel like surrendering to my fate--" Here again he broke off
sharply. "That's nonsense, of course. I mean, it seems as if a life were
too much to pay for a crazy act--I mean a mine. You'll ask why I don't
sell it, but it's all I have and, besides, no one has any faith in it
but myself. I cannot sell, and I can't live down there among men."

Gabbling, keeping time to his nervous feet and hands, endlessly
repeating himself, denying, confessing, the miner raged on, and through
it all the dark-browed guest smoked tranquilly, too indifferent to ask a
question or make comment; but when, once or twice, he lifted his eyes,
the garrulous one shuddered and turned away, a scared look on his
haggard face. He seemed unable to endure that steady glance.

At last, for a little space, he remained silent; then, as if compelled
by some increasing magic in his hearer, he burst forth:

"I'm not here entirely by my own fault--I mean my own choice. A man is a
product of his environment, you know that, and mine made me idle,
wasteful. Drink got me--drink made me mad--and so--and so--here I am
struggling to win back a fortune. Once I gambled--on the wheel; now I am
gambling with nature on the green of these mountain slopes; but I'll
win--I have already won--and soon I shall sell and go back to the great
cities."

Again his will curbed his treacherous tongue, and, walking to the
doorway, he stood for a moment, looking out; then he fiercely snarled:

"Oh, God, how I hate it all--how I hate myself! I am going mad with this
life! The squeak of these shadowy conies, the twitter of these unseen
little birds, go on day by day. They'll drive me mad! If you had not
come to-night I could not have slept--I would have gone to the mill, and
that means drink to me--drink and oblivion. You came and saved me. I
feared you--hated you then; now I bless you."

Once more he seemed to answer an unspoken query:

"I have no people. My mother is dead, my father has disowned me--he does
not even know I am alive. I'm the black devil of the family--but I shall
go back--"

His face was working with passion, and though he took a seat opposite
his guest, his hands continued to flutter aimlessly and his head moved
restlessly from side to side.

"I don't know why I am telling all this to you," he went on after a
pause. "I reckon it's because of the weakness of the thirst that is
coming over me. Some time I'll go down to those hell-holes at the mills
and never come back--the stuff they sell to me is destructive as
fire--it is poison! You're a man of substance, I can see that--you're no
hobo like most of the fellows out here--that's why I'm talking to you.
You remind me of some one I know. There's something familiar in your
eyes."

The man with the beard struck the ashes from his pipe and began scraping
it. "There is always a woman in these cases," he critically remarked.

The miner took this simple statement as a challenging question. His
excitement visibly increased, but he did not at once reply. He talked on
aimlessly, incoherently, struggling like a small animal in a torrent. He
rose at last, and as he stood in the doorway, breathing deeply, his face
livid in the sunset light, the muscles of his jaw trembled.

The stranger observed his host's agitation, but put away his pipe with
slow and steady hand. He said nothing, and yet an observer would have
declared he held the other and weaker man in the grasp of an inexorable
hypnotic silence. Finally he fixed a calm, cold glance upon his host, as
if summoning him to answer.

"Yes," the miner confessed, "there is always a woman in the
case--another and more fortunate man. The woman is false, the man is
treacherous. You trust and they betray. Such beings ruin and
madden--they make outlaws such as I am--"

"Love is above will," asserted the millwright, with decision.

The other man fiercely turned. "I know what you mean--you mean the woman
is not to be condemned--that love goes where it is drawn. That is true,
but deceit is not involuntary--it is deliberate--"

"Sometimes we deceive ourselves."

"In her case it was deceit," retorted the miner, who was now so deeply
engaged with his own story that each general observation on the part of
his guest was taken to be specific and personal.

The room was growing dusky, and the stranger's glance appeared keener,
more insistent, as his body melted into the shadow. His shaggy head and
black beard all but disappeared; only the faint outlines of his forehead
remained, and yet, as his physical self faded into the gloom, his
personality, his psychic self, loomed larger. His will enveloped the
hermit, drawing upon him with irresistible power. It was as if he were
wringing him dry of a confession as the priest closes in upon the
culprit.

"I had my happy days--my days of care-free youth," the unquiet man was
saying. "But my time of innocence was short. Evil companions came early
and reckless deeds followed.... I knew I was losing something, I knew I
was being drawn downward, but I could not escape. Day and night I called
for help, and then--_she_ came--"

"Who came?"

"The one who made me forget all the others, the one who made me
ashamed."

"And then?"

"And then for a time I was happy in the hope that I might win her and so
redeem my life."

"And she?"

"She pitied me--at first--and loved me--at least I thought so."

As his excitement increased his words came slower, burdened with
passion. He spoke like a prisoner addressing a judge, his voice but a
husky whisper.

"I told her I was unworthy of her--that was when I believed her to be an
angel. I promised to begin a new life for her sake. Then she promised
me--helped me--and all the while she was false to me--false as a
hell-cat!"

"How?" queried the almost invisible man, and his voice was charged with
stern demand.

"All the time she was promised to another man--and that man my enemy."

Here his frenzy flared forth in a torrent of words.

"Then--then I went mad. My brain was scarred and numb. I lost all sense
of pity--all fear of law--all respect for woman. I only knew my
wrongs--my despair--my hate. I watched, I waited, I found them
together--"

"And then? What did you do then?" demanded the stranger, rising from his
seat with sudden energy, his voice deep, insistent, masterful. "Tell me
what you did?"

The miner's wild voice died to a hesitant whisper. "I--I fled."

"But before that--before you fled?"

"What is it to you?" asked the hermit, gazing with scared eyes at the
man who towered above him like the demon of retribution. "Who are you?"

"I am the avenger!" answered the other. "The man you hated was my
brother. The woman you killed was his wife."

The fugitive fell upon his knees with a cry like that of one being
strangled.

Out of the darkness a red flame darted, and the crouching man fell to
the floor, a crumpled, bloody heap.

For a long time the executioner stood above the body, waiting, listening
from the shadow to the faint receding breath-strokes of his victim. When
all was still he restored his weapon to its sheath and stepped over the
threshold into the keen and pleasant night.

As he closed the door behind him the stranger raised his eyes to
Solidor, whose sovereign, cloud-like crest swayed among the stars.

"Now I shall rest," he said, with solemn satisfaction.




THE TRAIL TRAMP


      _--mounted wanderer, horseman of the restless heart, still
      rides from place to place, contemptuous of gold, carrying in
      his parfleche all the vanishing traditions of the West._




V

THE TRAIL TRAMP


KELLEY AFOOT

I

Kelley was in off the range and in profound disgust with himself, for
after serving honorably as line-rider and later as cow-boss for ten
years or more, he had ridden over to Keno to meet an old comrade. Just
how it happened he couldn't tell, but he woke one morning without a
dollar and, what was worse, incredibly worse, without horse or saddle!
Even his revolver was gone.

In brief, Tall Ed, for the first time in his life, was set afoot, and
this, you must understand, is a most direful disaster in cowboy life. It
means that you must begin again from the ground up, as if you were a
perfectly new tenderfoot from Nebraska.

Fort Keno was, of course, not a real fort; but it was a real barracks.
The town was an imitation town. The fort, spick, span, in rows, with
nicely planted trees and green grass-plats (kept in condition at vast
expense to the War Department), stood on the bank of the sluggish river,
while just below it and across the stream sprawled the town, drab,
flea-bitten, unkempt, littered with tin cans and old bottles, a
collection of saloons, gambling-houses and nameless dives, with a few
people--a very few--making an honest living by selling groceries,
saddles, and coal-oil.

Among the industries of Keno City was a livery-and-sales stable, and
Kelley, with intent to punish himself, at once applied for the position
of hostler. "You durned fool," he said, addressing himself, "as you've
played the drunken Injun, suppose you play valet to a lot of mustangs
for a while."

As a disciplinary design he felicitated himself as having hit upon the
most humiliating and distasteful position in Keno. It was understood
that Harford of the Cottonwood Corral never hired a real man as hostler.
He seemed to prefer bums and tramps, either because he could get them
cheaper or else because no decent man would work for him. He was an
"arbitrary cuss" and ready with gun or boot. He came down a long trail
of weather-worn experiences in the Southwest, and showed it in both face
and voice. He was a big man who had once been fatter, but his wrinkled
and sour visage seldom crinkled into a smile. He had never been jolly,
and he was now morose.

Kelley hated him. That, too, was another part of his elaborate scheme of
self-punishment--hated, but did not fear him, for Tall Ed Kelley feared
nothing that walked the earth or sailed the air. "You bum," he continued
to say in bitter derision as he caught glimpses of himself of a morning
in the little fragment of broken glass which, being tacked on the wall,
served as mirror in the office. "You durned mangy coyote, you need a
shave, but you won't get it. You need a clean shirt and a new bandanna,
but you won't get them, neither--not yet awhile. You'll earn 'em by
going without a drop of whisky and by forking manure fer the next six
months. You hear me?"

He slept in the barn on a soiled, ill-smelling bunk, and his hours of
repose were broken by calls on the telephone or by some one beating at
the door late at night or early in the morning; but he always responded
without a word of complaint. It was all lovely discipline. It was like
batting a measly bronco over the head in correction of some grievous
fault (like nipping your calf, for example), and he took a grim
satisfaction in going about degraded and forgotten of his fellows, for
no one in Keno knew that this grimy hostler was cow-boss on the Perco.
This, in a certain degree, softened his disgrace and lessened his
punishment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to the task of
explaining just how he had come to leave the range and go into service
with Harford.

The officers of the fort, when tired of the ambulance, occasionally took
out a team and covered rig, and so Kelley came in contact with the
commanding officer, Major Dugan, a fine figure of a man with carefully
barbered head and immaculate uniform. In Kelley's estimation he was
almost too well kept for a man nearing fifty. He was, indeed, a gallant
to whom comely women were still the fairest kind of game.

In truth, Tall Ed as hostler often furnished the major with a carriage,
in which to make some of his private expeditions, and this was another
and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To
assist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys
was the nethermost deep of "self-discipline," but when the pretty young
wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley
was thrown into doubt.

Anita Harford, part Spanish and part German, as sometimes happens in New
Mexico, was a curious and interesting mixture with lovely golden-brown
hair and big, dark-brown eyes. She had the ingratiating smile of the
señora, her mother, and the moods of gravity, almost melancholy, of her
father.

She had been away in Albuquerque during the first week of Kelley's
hostlership, and though he had heard something of her from the men about
the corral, he had no great interest in her till she came one afternoon
to the door of the stable, where she paused like a snow-white, timid
antelope and softly said:

"Are you the new hostler?"

"I am, miss."

She smiled at his mistake. "I am Mrs. Harford. Please let me have the
single buggy and bay Nellie."

Kelley concealed his surprise. "Sure thing, mom. Want her right now?"

"If you please."

As she moved away so lightly and so daintily Kelley stared in
stupefaction. "Guess I've miscalculated somewhere. Old Harf must have
more drag into him than I made out. How did the old seed get a woman
like that? 'Pears like he's the champion hypnotic spieler when it comes
to 'skirts.'"

He hitched-up the horse in profound meditation. For the first time since
his downfall his humiliation seemed just a trifle deeper than was
necessary. He regretted his filthy shirt and his unshorn cheeks, and as
he brought the horse around to the door of the boss's house he slipped
out of the buggy on the off side, hurriedly tethered the mare to the
pole, and retreated to his alley like a rat to its burrow. The few
moments when Anita's clear eyes had rested upon him had been moments of
self-revelation.

"Kelley, you're all kinds of a blankety fool," said he. "You're causing
yourself a whole lot of extra misery and you're a disgustin' object,
besides. It isn't necessary fer you to be a skunk in order to give
yourself a welting. Go now and get a shave and a clean shirt, and start
again."

This he did, and out of his next week's pay he bought a clean pair of
overalls and a new sombrero, so that when he came back to the barn
Harford was disturbed.

"Hope you aren't going to pull out, Kelley? You suit me, and if it's a
question of pay, I'll raise you a couple of dollars on a week."

"Oh no, I'm not leaving. Only I jest felt like I was a little too
measly. 'Pears like I ought to afford a clean shirt. It does make a heap
of difference in the looks of a feller. No, I'm booked to stay with you
fer a while yet."

Naturally thereafter little Mrs. Harford filled a large place in
Kelley's gloomy world. He was not a romantic person, but he was often
lonesome in the midst of his self-imposed penance. He forbade himself
the solace of the saloon. He denied himself a day or even an hour off
duty, and Harford, secretly amazed and inwardly delighted, went so far
one day as to offer him a cigar.

Kelley waved it away. "No, I've cut out the tobacco, too."

This astounded his boss. "Say, it's a wonder you escaped the ministry."

"It's more of a wonder than you know," replied Kelley. "I was headed
right plumb that way till I was seventeen. My mother had it all picked
out fer me. Then I broke away."

Harford, with the instinctive caution of the plainsman, pursued the
subject no further. He was content to know that for a very moderate
wage he had secured the best man with horses that the stable had ever
known. His only anxiety related to the question of keeping his find.

"Kelley's too good to be permanent," he said to his wife that night.
"He'll skip out with one of the best saddle-horses some night, or else
he'll go on a tearing drunk and send the whole outfit up in smoke. I
don't understand the cuss. He looks like the usual hobo out of a job,
but he's as abstemious as a New England deacon. 'Pears like he has no
faults at all."

Anita had been attracted to Kelley, lowly as he looked, and, upon
hearing his singular virtues recounted by her husband, opened her eyes
in augmented interest. All the men in her world were rough. Her father
drank, her brothers fought and swore and cheated, and her husband was as
free of speech in her presence as if she were another kind of man,
softening his words a little, but not much. Therefore, the next time she
met Kelley she lingered to make conversation with him, rejoicing in his
candid eyes and handsome face. She observed also that his shirt was
clean and his tie new. "He looks almost like a soldier," she thought,
and this was her highest compliment.

Surrounded as she was by gamblers, horse-jockeys, cattle-buyers, and
miners, all (generally speaking) of the same slouchy, unkempt type, she
recognized in the officers of the fort gentlemen of highest breeding and
radiant charm. Erect, neat, brisk of step, the lieutenants on parade
gave off something so alien, yet so sweet, that her heart went out to
them collectively, and when they lifted their caps to her individually,
she smiled upon them all with childish unconsciousness of their
dangerous qualities.

Most of the younger unmarried men took these smiles to be as they were,
entirely without guile. Others spoke jestingly (in private) of her
attitude, but were inclined to respect Harford's reputation as a gunman.
Only the major himself was reckless enough to take advantage of the
young wife's admiration for a uniform.

Kelley soon understood the situation. His keen eyes and sensitive ears
informed him of the light estimation in which his employer's wife was
held by the major; but at first he merely said, "This is none of your
funeral, Kelley. Stick to your currycomb. Harford is able to take care
of his own."

This good resolution weakened the very next time Anita met him and
prettily praised him. "Mr. Harford says you are the best man he ever
had, and I think that must be so, for my pony never looked so clean and
shiny."

Kelley almost blushed, for (as a matter of faithful history) he had
spent a great deal of time brushing bay Nellie. She did indeed shine
like a bottle, and her harness, newly oiled and carefully burnished,
glittered as if composed of jet and gold.

"Oh, that's all right; it's a part of my job," he replied, as carelessly
as he could contrive. "I like a good horse"--"and a pretty woman," he
might have added, but he didn't.

Although Anita lingered as if desiring a word or two more, the tall
hostler turned resolutely away and disappeared into the stable.

Bay Nellie, as the one dependable carriage-horse in the outfit of
broncos, had been set aside for the use of Anita and her friends, but
Kelley had orders from Harford to let the mare out whenever the women
did not need her, provided a kindly driver was assured, and so it
happened that the wives of the officers occasionally used her, although
none of them could be called friends or even acquaintances of little
Mrs. Harford.

Kelley observed their distant, if not contemptuous, nods to his
employer's wife as they chanced to meet her on the street, but he said
no word, even when some of the town loafers frankly commented on it. He
owed nothing to Harford. "It's not my job to defend his wife's
reputation." Nevertheless, it made him hot when he heard one of these
loafers remark: "I met the old major the other evening driving along the
river road with Harf's wife. Somebody better warn the major, or there'll
be merry hell and a military funeral one of these days."

"I reckon you're mistaken," said Kelley.

"Not by a whole mile! It was dark, but not so dark but that I could see
who they were. They were in a top buggy, drivin' that slick nag the old
man is so choice about."

"When was it?" asked Kelley.

"Night before last. I met 'em up there just at the bend of the river."

Kelley said no more, for he remembered that Anita had called for the
horse on that date just about sundown, and had driven away alone. She
returned alone about ten--at least, she drove up to the stable door
alone, but he recalled hearing the low tones of a man's voice just
before she called.

It made him sad and angry. He muttered an imprecation against the whole
world of men, himself included. "If I hadn't seen her--if I didn't know
how sweet and kind and pretty she was--I wouldn't mind," he said to
himself. "But to think of a little babe like her--" He checked himself.
"That old cockalorum needs killing. I wonder if I've got to do it?" he
asked in conclusion.


II

Harford came home the next day, and for several weeks there was no
further occasion for gossip, although Kelley had his eyes on the major
so closely that he could neither come nor go without having his action
analyzed. He kept close record of Anita's coming and going also,
although it made him feel like a scoundrel whenever she glanced at him.
He was sure she was only the thoughtless child in all her indiscretions,
with a child's romantic admiration of a handsome uniform.

"I'll speak to her," he resolved. "I'll hand her out a word of warning
just to clear my conscience. She needs a big brother or an uncle--some
one to give her a jolt, and I'll do it!"

The opportunity came one day soon after Harford's return, but his
courage almost failed at the moment of meeting, so dainty, so small, so
charming, and so bird-like did the young wife seem.

She complimented him again on the condition of the mare and asked,
timidly, "How much does my husband pay you?"

"More than I'm worth," he replied, with gloomy self-depreciation.

She caught the note of bitterness in his voice and looked at him a
moment in surprised silence, her big eyes full of question. "What made
you say that?"

Kelley, repenting of his lack of restraint, smiled and said: "Oh, I felt
that way--for a minute. You see, I used to lead a high life of ease. I
was a nobleman--an Irish lord."

She smiled and uttered an incredulous word, but he went on:

"Yes, although my name is Kelley, I belong to a long line of kings. I'm
working as hostler just to square myself fer having killed a man. You
see, my queen was kind o' foolish and reckless and let a certain English
duke hang round her till I got locoed, and, being naturally quick on the
trigger, I slew him."

She was not stupid. She understood, and with quick, resentful glance she
took the reins from his hands and stepped into the carriage.

Kelley, silenced, and with a feeling that he had bungled his job, fell
back a pace, while she drove away without so much as a backward glance.

"I reckon she got it," he said, grimly, as he went back to his work. "I
didn't put it out just the way I had it in my head, but she 'peared to
sense enough of it to call me a Piute for butting in. If that don't work
on her I'll tack a warning on the major which nobody will misread fer a
joke."

As the hours of the afternoon went by he became more and more uneasy. "I
hope she'll turn up before dark, fer Harf is liable to get back any
minute," he said a dozen times, and when at last he saw her coming up
the street with a woman in the seat beside her he breathed deeply and
swore heartily in his relief. "I guess my parable kind o' worked," he
said, exultantly. "She's kept clear of the old goat this trip."

The little lady stopped her horse at the door of the stable and with a
cool and distant nod alighted and walked away.

"I'm the hostler now--sure thing," grinned Kelley. "No raise of pay fer
Tall Ed this week."

He was in reality quite depressed by the change in her attitude toward
him. "Reckon I didn't get just the right slaunch on that warning of
mine--and yet at the same time she ought to have seen I meant it
kindly.--Oh well, hell! it's none o' my funeral, anyway. Harford is no
green squash, he's a seasoned old warrior who ought to know when men are
stealing his wife." And he went back to his dusty duties in full
determination to see nothing and do nothing outside the barn.

Nevertheless, when, thereafter, anybody from the fort asked for bay
Nellie, he gave out that she was engaged, and the very first time the
major asked for the mare Kelley not only brusquely said, "She's in use,"
but hung up the receiver in the midst of the major's explanation.

The town gossips were all busy with the delightful report that Mrs.
Harford had again been seen driving with the major, whose reputation for
gallantry, monstrously exaggerated by the reek of the saloons, made even
a single hour of his company a dash of pitch to the best of women.
Kelley speculated on just how long it would take Harford to learn of
these hints against his wife. Some of his blunt followers were quite
capable of telling him in so many words that the major was doing him
wrong, and when they did an explosion would certainly take place.

One day a couple of Harford's horses, standing before the stable, became
frightened and ran away up the street. Kelley, leaping upon one of the
fleetest broncos in the stalls, went careering in pursuit just as Anita
came down the walk. He was a fine figure of a man even when slouching
about the barn, but mounted he was magnificent. It was the first time he
had ridden since the loss of his own outfit, and the feel of a vigorous
steed beneath his thighs, the noise of pounding feet, the rush of air,
filled his heart with mingled exultation and regret. He was the centaur
again.

Anita watched him pass and disappear with a feeling of surprise as well
as of admiration. She was skilled in reading the character of men on
horseback, and peculiarly sensitive to such an exhibition of grace and
power. Her hostler was transformed into something new and wholly
admirable, and she gladly took the trouble to watch for his return, as
she could not witness the roping and the skilful subduing of the
outlaws.

The picture he made as he tore along, swinging his rope, had displaced
that of the dirty, indifferent hostler, and Anita thereafter looked upon
him with respect, notwithstanding his presumptuous warning, which still
lay heavy in her ears.

She still resented his interference, but she resented it less now that
she knew him better. She began to wonder about him. Who was he? Why was
he the hostler? Naturally, being wise in certain ways of men, she
inferred that strong drink had "set him afoot"; but when she hesitantly
approached her husband on this point, his reply was brusque: "I don't
know anything about Kelley, and don't want to know. So long as he does
his work his family vault is safe."

Still desiring to be informed, she turned to her servants, with no
better results; they knew very little about Tall Ed, "but we like him,"
they were free to say.

This newly discovered mystery in the life of her hostler accomplished
what his warning had failed to do; it caused her to neglect her
correspondence with the major. His letter lay in a hollow willow-tree on
the river road unread for nearly a week. And when, one afternoon, she
finally rode by to claim it, her interest was strangely dulled. The
spice of the adventure was gone.

As she was about to deliver her pony to Kelley that night he handed her
an envelope, and, with penetrating glance, said: "I found this on the
river road to-day. I wouldn't write any more such--if I was you; it
ain't nice and it ain't safe."

It was her own letter, the one she had but just written and deposited in
the tree. She chilled and stiffened under the keen edge of Kelley's
contemptuous pity, then burned hot with illogical rage.

"What right--? You spied on me. It's a shame!"

"So it is!" he agreed, quietly; "but I don't want any killing
done--unless I do it myself."

"You are a thief," she accused.

"All right," he answered, dispassionately. "Spy--keeper--big
brother--dog--anything goes--only I don't intend to let you slide to
hell without a protest. You're nothing but a kid--a baby. You don't know
what you're going into. I'm an old stager; I know a whole lot that I
wish I didn't know. I've known women who _said_ they didn't care--lots
of 'em--but they did; they all cared. They all knew they'd lost out.
There's only one end to the trail you're starting in on, and it ain't a
pretty one. Harf married you in good faith, and even if he _is_ gettin'
old and slow-footed and skinny, he's your husband and entitled to a
square deal."

Blinded by her tears, and weak with passionate resentment of his tone,
she could scarcely clamber down from the carriage. As soon as her feet
touched the ground she started away. Kelley retained her by the force of
his hand upon her wrist.

"Wait a moment," he said, huskily. "You're mad now and you want to
murder me, but think it all over and you'll see I'm your friend."

There was something in his voice which caused her to look squarely up
into his face, and the tenderness she saw there remained long in her
memory.

"You're too sweet and lovely to be the sport of a cheap skate like that.
Don't throw yourself away on any man. Good-by and God bless ye."

She walked away with bent head and tear-blinded eyes, her heart filled
with weakness and pain. She was like a child justly punished, yet
resenting it, and mingled with her resentment was a growing love and
admiration for the man whose blunt words had bruised her soul in the
hope of her redemption.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kelley went back to his little office, gathered his small belongings
together, and called up Harford on the 'phone. "I'll take that blue
cayuse and that Denver-brand saddle, and call it square to date.... Yes,
I'm leaving. I've got a call to a ranch over on the Perco. Sorry, but I
reckon I've worked out my sentence.... All right. So long."

Ten minutes later he was mounted and riding out of town. The air was
crisp with autumn frost and the stars were blazing innumerably in the
sky. A coyote had begun his evening song, and to the north rose the
high, dark mass of the Book cliffs. Toward this wall he directed his
way. He hurried like one fleeing from temptation, and so indeed he was.


KELLY AS MARSHAL

I

Along about '96 Sulphur Springs had become several kinds of a bad town.
From being a small liquoring-up place for cattlemen it had taken on
successively the character of a land-office, a lumber-camp, and a
coal-mine.

As a cow town it had been hardly more than a hamlet. As a mining center
it rose to the dignity of possessing (as Judge Pulfoot was accustomed to
boast) nearly two thousand souls, not counting Mexicans and Navajos. It
lay in the hot hollows between piñon-spotted hills, but within sight
spread the grassy slopes of the secondary mountains over whose tops the
snow-lined peaks of the Continental Divide loomed in stern majesty.

The herders still carried Winchesters on their saddles and revolvers
strung to their belts, and each of them strove to keep up cowboy
traditions by unloading his weapon on the slightest provocation. The
gamblers also sustained the conventions of their profession by killing
one another now and again, and the average citizen regarded these
activities with a certain approval, for they all denoted a "live town."

"The boys need diversion," said the mayor, "and so long as they confine
their celebrations to such hours as will not disturb the children and
women--at least, the domestic kind of women--I won't complain."

And really, it is gratifying to record that very few desirable citizens
were shot. Sulphur continued to thrive, to glow in the annals of
mountain chivalry, until by some chance old Tom Hornaby of Wire Grass
was elected Senator. That victory marked the beginning of the decline of
Sulphur.

Hornaby was Pulfoot's candidate, and the judge took a paternal pride in
him. He even went up to the capital to see him sworn in, and was there,
unfortunately, when the humorous member from Lode alluded to Hornaby as
"my esteemed colleague from 'Brimstone' Center, where even the judges
tote guns and the children chew dynamite"--and what was still more
disturbing, he was again in the capital when the news came of the
shooting and robbing of a couple of coal-miners, the details of which
filled the city papers with sarcastic allusions to "Tom Hornaby's live
town on The Stinking Water."

Hornaby, being a heavy owner of land in and about Sulphur, was very
properly furious, and Judge Pulfoot--deeply grieved--was, indeed, on the
instant, converted. A great light fell about him. He perceived his home
town as it was--or at least he got a glimpse of it as it appeared to the
timid souls of civilized men. He cowered before Hornaby.

"Tom, you're right," he sadly agreed. "The old town needs cleaning up.
It sure is disgraceful."

Hornaby buttered no parsnips. "You go right back," said he, "and kick
out that bonehead marshal of yours and put a full-sized man into his
place, a man that will cut that gun-play out and distribute a few of
those plug-uglies over the landscape. What chance have I got in this
Legislature as the 'Senator from Brimstone Center'? I'll never get shet
of that fool tag whilst I'm up here."

"You certainly have a right to be sore," the judge admitted. "But it
ain't no boy's job, cleaning up our little burg. It's going to be good,
stiff work. I don't know who to put into it."

"I do."

"Who?"

"My foreman, Ed Kelley."

"I don't know him."

"Well, I do. He's only been with me a few months, but I've tried him and
he's all right. He's been all over the West, knows the greasers and
Injuns, and can take care of himself anywhere. The man don't live that
can scare him. You notice his eyes! He's got a glare like the muzzle of
a silver-plated double-barrel shotgun. He don't know what fear is. I've
seen him in action, and I know."

The judge was impressed. "Will the board accept him?"

"They've _got_ to accept him or go plumb to the devil down there. These
articles and speeches have put us in wrong with the whole state. This
wild West business has got to be cut out. It scares away capital. Now
you get busy!"

The judge went back resolved upon a change of administration. The
constituent who held the office of marshal was brave enough, but he had
grown elderly and inert. He was, in truth, a joke. The gamblers laughed
at him and the cowboys "played horse" with him. The spirit of deviltry
was stronger than it had ever been in the history of the county.

"Something religious has got to be done," the judge argued to the city
fathers, and, having presented Hornaby's message, demanded the
installation of Kelley.

The board listened attentively, but were unconvinced. "Who is this
Kelley? He's nothing but a tramp, a mounted hobo. Who knows him?"

"Hornaby knows him and wants him, and his order goes. Let's have him in
and talk with him, anyhow."

Kelley was called in. He showed up a tall, composed young fellow of
thirty, with weather-worn face and steady gray eyes in which the pupils
were unusually small and very dark blue. His expression was calm and his
voice pleasant. He listened in amused silence while the judge told him
what the program was. Then he said:

"That's a whale of a job you've laid out for me; but Hornaby's boss. All
is, if I start in on this, you fellows have got to see me through. It's
a right stiff program and I need some insurance. 'Pears to me like there
should be a little pot for Tall Ed at the end of this game--say, three
dollars a day and a couple of hundred bones when everything is quiet."

To this the judge agreed. "You go in and clean up. Run these gunmen down
the valley. Cut out this amatoor wild West business--it's hurting us.
Property is depreciating right along. We certainly can't stand any more
of this brimstone business. Go to it! We'll see that you're properly
reimbursed."

"All right, Judge. But you understand if I go into this peacemaking war
I draw no political lines. I am chief for the time being, and treat
everybody alike--greasers, 'Paches, your friends, my friends,
everybody."

"That's all right. It's your deal," said the judge and the aldermen.


II

Tall Ed had drifted into Sulphur from the Southwest some six months
before, and although fairly well known among the ranchers on the Wire
Grass, was not a familiar figure in town. The news of his appointment
was received with laughter by the loafers and with wonder by the quiet
citizens, who coldly said:

"He appears like a full-sized man, but size don't count. There's Clayt
Mink, for instance, the worst little moth-eaten scrap in the state, and
yet he'll kill at the drop of a hat. Sooner or later he's going to try
out this new marshal same as he did the others."

This seemed likely, for Mink owned and operated the biggest
gambling-house in Sulphur, and was considered to be (as he was) a
dangerous man. He already hated Kelley, who had once protected a drunken
cattleman from being almost openly robbed in his saloon. Furthermore, he
was a relentless political foe to Hornaby.

He was indeed a mere scrap of a man, with nothing about him full-sized
except his mustache. And yet, despite his unheroic physique, he was
quick and remorseless in action. In Italy he would have carried a
dagger. In England he would have been a light-weight rough-and-tumble
fighter. In the violent West he was a gunman, menacing every citizen who
crossed his inclination, and he took Kelley's appointment as a direct
affront on the part of Hornaby and Pulfoot.

"He'd better keep out of my way," he remarked to his friends, with a
malignant sneer.

Kelley was not deceived in his adversary. "He's a coward at heart, like
all these hair-hung triggers," he said to Pulfoot. "I'm not hunting any
trouble with him, but--" It was not necessary to finish his sentence;
his voice and smile indicated his meaning.

The town was comparatively quiet for the first month or two after Kelley
took office. It seemed that the rough element was reflectively taking
his measure, and Hornaby's herders, as they rode in and out of town,
told stories of Tall Ed's rough and ready experiences, which helped to
establish official confidence in him.

"I reckon we've done the right thing this time," wrote Pulfoot to
Hornaby. "The boys all seem to realize we've got a _man_ in office."

This calm, this unnatural calm, was broken one night by Mink himself,
who shot and all but killed the livery-stable keeper in a dispute over
roulette. Knowing that his deed would bring the new marshal down upon
him at once, the gambler immediately declared determined war.

"The man who comes after me will need a wooden overcoat," he
promulgated. "I won't stand being hounded. That hostler was pulling his
gun on me. I got him first, that's all. It was a fair fight, and
everybody knows it."

The liveryman was, in fact, armed at the time, and the disposition of
many citizens was to "let him learn his lesson." But Judge Pulfoot,
fearing Hornaby's temper, ordered Kelley to get his man.

"Tom wants that weasel disciplined," he said. "He's a damage to the
community."

Kelley received his orders with calmness. "Well, Judge," he said, after
a little pause, "I'll get him, but I'd like to do it in my own way. To
go after him just now gives him the inside position. He'll hear of me
the minute I start and will be backed up into the corner somewhere with
his gun all poised."

"Are you afraid?"

"You can call it that," the young marshal languidly replied. "I don't
believe in taking fool chances. Mink is a dead shot, and probably
wire-edged with whisky and expecting me. My plan is to wait until he's a
little off his guard--then go in quick and pull him down."

To this the judge gave reluctant consent. But when, a few hours later,
he heard that Mink had disappeared he was indignant. "You get that devil
or we'll let you out," he said, and showed a telegram from Hornaby
protesting against this new outbreak of violence. "The old man's
red-headed over it."

"I know it," said Kelley. "I heard from him to that effect. If the
hostler dies we won't see Mink no more. If he's in town I'll get him.
Good _night_."


III

A few days later, as he was walking up the street, half a dozen men
successively spoke to him, saying, "Mink's at home, loaded--and looking
for you!" And each of them grinned as he said it, joyously anticipating
trouble.

Without a word, other than a careless, "That so?" Kelley passed on, and
a thrill of excitement ran through the hearts of the loafers.

It was about sunset of a dusty autumn afternoon, and the cowboys and
miners (gathered in knots along the street), having eaten their suppers,
were ready to be entertained. Upon seeing Kelley approach with easy
stride they passed the joyous word along. Each spectator was afraid he
might miss some part of the play.

Kelley was fully aware that his official career and perhaps his life
hung in the balance. To fail of arresting the desperado was to brand
himself a bungler and to expose himself to the contempt of other
sure-shot ruffians. However, having faced death many times in the
desert and on the range, he advanced steadily, apparently undisturbed by
the warnings he had received.

Just before reaching Mink's saloon he stepped into Lemont's drug-store,
a cheap little shop where candy and cigars and other miscellaneous goods
were sold. The only person in the place was Rosa Lemont, a slim, little
maid of about fifteen years of age.

"Hello, Rosie," he said, quietly. "I want to slip out your back door."
He smiled meaningly. "The street is a trifle crowded just now."

With instant comprehension of his meaning she led the way. "Don't let
them kill you," she whispered, with scared lips.

"I'll try not to," he answered, lightly.

Once in the alley, he swung his revolver to a handy spot on his thigh
and entered the saloon abruptly from the rear.

The back room, a rude dance-hall, was empty, but the door into the
barroom was open, and he slipped through it like a shadow. Mink was not
in sight, but the barkeeper stood rigidly on duty.

"Hello, Jack!" called Kelley, as he casually approached the bar.
"Where's the boss?"

Before he had finished his question he detected his man reflected in the
mirror behind the bar. The gambler imagined himself to be hidden behind
the screen which separated the women's drinking-place from the main
room, and did not know that Kelley had seen him in the glass. His
revolver was in his hand and malignant purpose blazed in his eyes--and
yet he hesitated. Lawless as he was, it appeared that he could not
instantly bring himself to the point of shooting an officer in the
back.

Kelley, realizing his disadvantage, and knowing that any attempt to
forestall the action of his enemy would be fatal, cheerily called out to
an acquaintance who stood in a stupor of fear, farther up the bar:
"Howdy, Sam! Come and have a drink." His jovial tone and apparent
ignorance of danger prolonged Mink's moment of indecision. The third man
thought Kelley unaware of his danger, but did not have the courage to
utter a sound.

The marshal, perceiving certain death in the assassin's eyes, was about
to whirl in a desperate effort to get at least one shot at him, when
something happened! Some one caromed against the screen. It toppled and
fell upon the gambler, disconcerting his aim. His bullet went wide, and
Kelley was upon him like a tiger before he could recover control of his
weapon, and they both went to the sawdust together.

Now came a singular revelation of the essential cowardice of the
desperado. Deprived of his revolver and helpless in Kelley's great
hands, he broke down. White, trembling, drooling with terror, he pleaded
for his life. "Don't shoot--don't kill me!" he repeated over and over.

"I ought to kill you," argued Kelley, with a reflective hesitation which
wrought his captive to a still greater frenzy of appeal.

"I beg--I beg," he whined. "Don't shoot!"

Amazed and disgusted with the man's weakness, Kelley kicked him in the
ribs. "Get up!" he said, shortly.

Mink arose, but no sooner was he on his feet than his courage returned.
"I'll have your heart for this," he said, venomously. Then his mind took
a sudden turn. "Who pushed that screen onto me?" he asked. "I'll kill
the man who did that."

"You'll have time to figure out that problem in the quiet of 'the jug,'"
said Kelley. "Come along."

At the door of the calaboose the gambler braced himself. "I won't go in
there!" he declared. "I won't be jugged--I'll die right here--"

Kelley's answer was a jerk, a twist, and a sudden thrust, which landed
the redoubtable boaster in the middle of his cell. "You can die inside
if you want to," he said, and turned the key on him. "My responsibility
ends right here."


IV

The street was crowded with excited men and women as Kelley came back up
the walk. One or two congratulated him on his escape from sudden death,
but the majority resented him as "the hired bouncer" of the land-boomers
in the town.

"Who pushed that screen?" was the question which everybody asked of
Kelley.

"I didn't see," he responded. "I was _busy_ just about that time."

In truth he had only glimpsed a darting figure, but one he knew! Who
else but Rosa Lemont could have been so opportune and so effective in
her action? She alone knew of his presence in the alley.

She was only a plain little hobbledehoy, half Mexican and half French,
and not yet out of short dresses, and Kelley had never paid her any
attention beyond passing the time of day, with a kindly smile; and yet
with the fervid imagination of her race she had already conceived a
passionate admiration for Kelley. Knowing that he was entering Mink's
death-trap, she had followed him like a faithful squire, eager to
defend, and, understanding his danger to the full, had taken the
simplest and most effective means of aiding him. From the doorway she
had witnessed his victory; then flying through the rear door, had been
in position at the store window as he passed with his prisoner on his
way to the calaboose.

When Kelley came back to her door, with intent to thank her for what she
had done, he found the room full of excited men, and with instinctive
delicacy passed on his way, not wishing to involve her in the story of
the arrest.

It appeared that all the men of the town who thrived by lawlessness and
vice now decided to take up Mink's case and make his discharge an issue.
A sudden demonstration of their political power brought the judge to
terms. He weakened. The gambler was released with a fine of one hundred
dollars and a warning to keep the peace, and by noon of the following
day was back in his den, more truculent than ever.

Kelley was properly indignant. "But the man tried to kill me!" he
protested to the court.

"He swears not," replied the justice. "We have punished him for
resisting an officer. That is the best we can do."

"What about Jake?"

"Oh, well! That was 'war.' Jake had a gun, and Mink is able to prove
that he shot in self-defense. Furthermore, he has settled with Jake."

Kelley argued no more. He could have called Rosa in as a witness to the
attempt upon his life, but to do so would expose her to public comment,
and her big, solemn, worshipful eyes had already produced in him a vague
pity. Without understanding fully her feeling, he knew that she looked
up to him, and he perceived that she was born to sorrow in larger
measure than she deserved. Sallow, thin, boyish, she gave promise of a
kind of beauty which would sometime make her desired of both white men
and brown.

"Poor little mongrel!" he said to himself. "She's in for misery enough
without worrying over me."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, I'm up against it now," Kelley remarked to Dad Miller, Hornaby's
foreman, the next time he met him. "Mink's friends have thrown a scare
into the judge and he has turned that coyote loose against me. Looks
like I had one of two things to do--kill the cuss or jump the town."

"Shoot him on sight," advised Miller.

"If I do that I'm 'in bad' with the court," Kelley argued. "You see,
when I took him before, I had the law on my side. Now it's just man to
man--until he commits another crime. Killing me wouldn't be a crime."

"That's so," mused his friend. "You're cinched any way you look at it."

Kelley went on: "Moreover, some of my greaser friends have started a
line of fool talk about making me sheriff, and that has just naturally
set the whole _political_ ring against me. They'd just as soon I got
killed as not--a little sooner. I've a right to resign, haven't I?
Nobody has a license to call me a coward after what I've done, have
they?"

"No license; but I reckon they will, all the same," responded his
friend.

Kelley's face hardened. "Well, I'll disappoint 'em. I'm going to stay
with it." However, he went to the mayor and voiced his resentment of the
court's action.

His Honor pretended to be greatly concerned. "Now, don't quit on us, Ed.
Hornaby expects you to stay put. You're the only man who can clean up
the town. You've done great work already, and we appreciate it. In fact,
we're going to raise your pay."

"Pay to a corpse don't count," retorted Kelley. "It's a question of
backing. You fellows have got to stand behind me."

"We'll do it, Ed. Only, Hornaby thinks you'd better put a card in the
paper saying that you have no intention of going into politics."

"Oh, hell!" said Kelley, disgustedly. "Is Hornaby suspicious of me, too?
Well, for that I've a mind to run," and he went out in deep disgust.

As the days went by and no open movement against him took place, his
vigilance somewhat relaxed. Mink kept to his lair like some treacherous,
bloodthirsty animal, which was a bad sign.

At heart Tall Ed was restless and discontented. Each day he walked the
streets of the fly-bit town; dreaming of the glorious desert spaces he
had crossed and of the high trails he had explored. He became more and
more homesick for the hills. Far away to the north gleamed the snowy
crest of the Continental Divide, and the desire to ride on, over that
majestic barrier into valleys whose purple shadows allured him like
banners, grew stronger. Each night he lifted his face to the stars and
thought of his glorious moonlit camps on the Rio Perco sands, and the
sound of waterfalls was in his dreams.

"What am I here for?" he asked himself. "Why should I be watch-dog--me,
a wolf, a free ranger! Why should I be upholding the law? What's the law
to a tramp?"

Had it not been for a curious sense of loyalty to Hornaby, added to a
natural dislike of being called a quitter, he would have surrendered
his star and resumed his saddle. He owned a good horse once more and had
earned nearly two hundred dollars. "With my present outfit I can amble
clear across to Oregon," he assured himself, wistfully.

As he stood with uplifted face, dreaming of the mountains, Rosa Lemont
came down the street, and as she passed him said in a low voice: "Mink's
on the plaza--crazy drunk. Watch out!"

Kelley straightened and cast an unhurried glance around him. No one was
in sight but a group of cow-punchers tying their horses in front of a
saloon, and a few miners seated on the edge of the walk. Nevertheless,
he knew the girl had good reason for her warning, and so, after walking
a block or two in the opposite direction, he turned and came slowly back
up the main street till he reached Lemont's doorway, where he paused,
apparently interested in something across the street.

Rosa came from within and with equally well-simulated carelessness
leaned against the door-frame. "Mink's bug-house," she explained, "and
got a Winchester. He's just around the corner, waiting for you. He says
he's going to shoot you on sight." She stammered a little with
excitement, but her voice was low.

"Much obliged, Rosie," he replied, feelingly. "Don't worry. I may see
him first. And listen; while I have a chance I want to thank you for
pushing that screen onto him. It was a good job."

"That's all right," she answered, hastily. "But please be careful."

"Don't worry," he gravely replied. "I've beat him once and I can do it
again." And after a pause he added: "I reckon you're the only one that
cares what happens to me--but don't mix in this game, little one. Don't
do it."

A crowd had gathered in the street, with attention concentrated as if
for a dog-fight, and Kelley, pushing his way through the circle,
suddenly confronted Mink, who, as the object of interest, was busied in
rolling a cigarette, while his Winchester leaned against a post. To this
fact Kelley probably owed his life, for in the instant between the
gambler's recognition and the snatching up of his rifle Kelley was able
to catch and depress the muzzle of the gun before it was discharged. The
bullet passed low, entering the wooden sidewalk close to his foot. "I'll
take that gun," he said, and would have immediately overpowered his
adversary had not several of the by-standers furiously closed in upon
him. Single-handed he was forced to defend himself against these, his
fellow-citizens, as well as against Mink, who struggled like a wildcat
for the possession of his gun. One man seized the marshal from behind,
pinioning his arms. Another hung upon his neck. A third dogged at his
knees, a fourth disarmed him.

Battered, bruised, covered with blood and dirt, the marshal fought like
a panther weighed down with hounds. Twice he went to earth smothered,
blinded, gasping, but rose again almost miraculously, still unconquered,
until at last, through the sudden weakening of the men on his right arm
he gained possession of the rifle, and with one furious sweep brought it
down on the gambler's head. Another circling stroke and his assailants
fell away. With blazing eyes he called out: "_Get back there now! Every
man of you!_"

Breathing hard, he looked them over one by one. "You're a pretty bunch
of citizens," he said, with cutting contempt. "You ought to be
shot--every man jack of you!" Then glancing down at the wounded gambler
at his feet, he added: "Some of you better take this whelp to a doctor.
He needs help."

Lemont and another of Mink's friends took up the unconscious man and
carried him into the drug-store, and Kelley followed, with a feeling
that all the town was against him, and that he must re-arm himself for a
night of warfare. His revolver was gone, and to replace it and to gain a
breathing-space he retreated to his room, his endurance all but
exhausted.

He had no regret for what he had done. On the contrary, he took a savage
satisfaction in having at last ended Mink, but as he hurriedly buckled
on his cartridge-belt, he foresaw the danger ahead of him in Mink's
friends, who, he knew, would get him if they could.

The patter of feet in the hall and a knock at the door startled him.
"Who's there?" he demanded, catching up his rifle.

"It's Rosa," called a girlish voice. "Let me in."

"Are you alone?"

"Yes. Open! Quick!"

He opened the door, gun in hand. "What is it, Rosie?" he gently asked.

"They're coming!" she answered, breathlessly.

"Who're coming?"

"That saloon crowd. They're almost here!"

Other footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Run away, girl," said Kelley,
softly. "There's going to be trouble--"

Rosie pushed him back into the room. "No, no! Let me stay! Let me help
you fight!" she pleaded.

While still he hesitated, Mrs. Mink, a short, squat woman with eyes
aflame with hate, rushed through the doorway and thrust a rifle against
Kelley's breast. Quick as a boxer Rosa pushed the weapon from the
woman's hands and with desperate energy shoved her backward through the
door and closed it.

"Run--run!" she called to the marshal.

But Kelley did not move, and something in his face turned the girl's
face white. He was standing like a man hypnotized, every muscle rigid.
With fallen jaw and staring eyes he looked at the weapon in his hand. At
last he spoke huskily:

"Girl, you've saved my soul from hell. You surely have!" He shivered as
if with cold, rubbing his hands stiffly. "Yes," he muttered, "a second
more and I'd 'a' killed her--killed a woman!"

The sound of a fierce altercation came up the hall. Cautious footsteps
were heard approaching, and at last a voice called out, "Hello, Kelley!
You there?"

"I am. What's wanted of me?"

"It's the mayor. Let me speak with you a minute."

Kelley considered for a breath or two; his brain was sluggish. "Open the
door, Rosie," he finally said and backed against the wall.

The girl obeyed, and the mayor entered, but his hands were open and
raised. "Don't shoot, Ed. We're friends." He was followed by the judge
and a couple of aldermen.

"It's all right, Ed," said the judge. "Mink's coming to life. Put up
your gun. We don't blame you. He had no call to attack an officer like
that--"

At the word "officer" Kelley let his rifle slip with a slam to the floor
and began to fumble at the badge on his coat. "That reminds me, your
Honor," he said, at last. "Here's a little piece of tin that belongs to
you--or the city."

He tossed the loosened badge to the mayor, who caught it deftly,
protesting: "Oh, don't quit, Ed. You've just about won the fight. Stay
with it."

A wry smile wrinkled one side of the trailer's set face. "I'm no fool,
your Honor. I know when I've got enough. I don't mind being shot in the
back and mobbed and wallered in the dirt--that's all in the day's work;
but when it comes to having women pop in on me with Winchesters I must
be excused. I'm leaving for the range. I'll enjoy being neighbor to the
conies for a while. This civilized life is a little too busy for me."

Rosa, who had been listening, understood his mood much better than the
men, and with her small hands upon his arm she pleaded: "Take me with
you! I hate these people--I want to go with you."

He turned a tender, pitying, almost paternal glance upon her. "No, girl,
no. I can't do that. You're too young. It wouldn't be right to snarl a
grown woman's life up with mine--much less a child like you." Then, as
if to soften the effect of his irrevocable decision, he added: "Perhaps
some time we'll meet again. But it's good-by now." He put his arm about
her and drew her to his side and patted her shoulder as if she were a
lad. Then he turned. "Lend me a dollar, Judge! I'm anxious to ride."

The judge looked troubled. "We're sorry, Ed--but if you feel that way,
why--"

"That's the way I feel," answered the trailer, and his tone was
conclusive.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dusk was falling when, mounted on his horse, with his "stake" in his
pocket, Kelley rode out of the stable into the street swarming with
excited men. The opposition had regained its courage. Yells of vengeance
rose: "Lynch him! Lynch the dog!" was the cry.

Reining his bronco into the middle of the road, with rifle across the
pommel of his saddle, Kelley advanced upon the crowd, in the shadowy
fringes of which he could see ropes swinging in the hands of Mink's
drunken partisans.

"Come on, you devils!" he called. "Throw a rope if you dare."

Awed by the sheer bravery of the challenge, the crowd slowly gave way
before him.

The block seemed a mile long to Kelley, but he rode it at a walk, his
horse finding his own way, until at last he reached the bridge which led
to the high-line Red Mountain road. Here he paused, faced about, and
sheathed his Winchester, then with a wave of his hand toward Rosa
Lemont, who had followed him thus far, he called out:

"Good-by, girl! You're the only thing worth saving in the whole dern
town. _Adios!_"

And, defeated for the first time in his life, Tall Ed turned his
cayuse's head to the San McGill range, with only the memory of a
worshipful child-woman's face to soften the effect of his hard
experience as the Marshal of Brimstone Basin.


PARTNERS FOR A DAY

I

Cinnebar was filled with those who took chances. The tenderfoot staked
his claim on the chance of selling it again. The prospector toiled in
his overland tunnel on the chance of cracking the apex of a vein. The
small companies sank shafts on the chance of touching pay ore, the big
companies tunneled deep and drifted wide in the hope of cutting several
veins. The merchants built in the belief that the camp was a permanent
town, and the gamblers took chances of losing money if their game was
honest, and put their lives at hazard if they cheated.

Only the saloon-keepers took no chances whatever. They played the safe
game. They rejoiced in a certainty, for if the miners had good luck they
drank to celebrate it, and if they had bad luck they drank to forget
it--and so the liquor-dealers prospered.

Tall Ed Kelley, on his long trip across "the big flat," as he called the
valley between the Continental Divide and the Cascade Range, stopped at
Cinnebar to see what was going on. In less than three days he sold his
horse and saddle and took a chance on a leased mine. At the end of a
year he was half owner in a tunnel that was yielding a fair grade of ore
and promised to pay, but he was not content. A year in one place was a
long time for him, and he was already meditating a sale of his interest
in order that he might take up the line of his march toward the
Northwest, when a curious experience came to him.

One night as he drifted into the Palace saloon he felt impelled to take
a chance with "the white marble." That is to say, he sat in at the
roulette-table and began to play small stakes.

The man who rolled the marble was young and good-looking. Kelley had
seen him before and liked him. Perhaps this was the reason he played
roulette instead of faro. At any rate, he played, losing steadily at
first--then, suddenly, the ball began to fall his way, and before the
clock pointed to ten he had several hundred dollars in winnings.

"This is my night," he said, on meeting the eyes of the young dealer.

"Don't crowd a winning horse," retorted the man at the wheel; and Kelley
caught something in his look which checked his play and led him to quit
the game. In that glance the gambler had conveyed a friendly warning,
although he said, as Kelley was going away: "Be a sport. Give the wheel
another show. See me to-morrow."

Kelley went away with a distinct feeling of friendliness toward the
youngster, whose appearance was quite unlike the ordinary gambler. He
seemed not merely bored, but disgusted with his trade, and Kelley said
to himself: "That lad has a story to tell. He's no ordinary robber."

The next afternoon he met the youth on the street. "Much obliged for
your tip last night. The game looked all right to me."

"It _was_ all right," replied the gambler. "I didn't mean that it was
crooked. But I hate to see a good man lose his money as you were sure to
do."

"I thought you meant the wheel was 'fixed.'"

"Oh no. It's straight. I call a fair game. But I knew your run of luck
couldn't last and"--he hesitated a little--"I'd kinda taken a fancy to
you."

"Well, that's funny, too," replied Kelley. "I went over to play your
machine because I kind of cottoned to you. I reckon we're due to be
friends. My name's Kelley--Tall Ed the boys call me."

"Mine is Morse--Fred Morse. I came out here with a grub-stake, lost it,
and, being out of a job, fell into rolling the marble for a living. What
are you--a miner?"

"I make a bluff at mining a leased claim up here, but I'll admit I'm
nothing but a wandering cow-puncher--a kind of mounted hobo. I have an
itch to keep moving. I've been here a year and I'm crazy to straddle a
horse and ride off into the West. I know the South and East pretty
well--so the open country for me is off there where the sun goes down."
His voice had a touch of poetry in it, and the other man, though he felt
the bigness of the view, said:

"I never was on a horse in my life, and I don't like roughing it. But I
like you and I wish you'd let me see something of you. Where are you
living?"

"Mostly up at my mine--but I have a room down here at the Boston House.
I pick up my meals anywhere."

The young man's voice grew hesitant. "Would you consider taking me in as
a side partner? I'm lonesome where I am."

Kelley was touched by the gambler's tone. "No harm trying," he said,
with a smile. "We couldn't do more than kill each other. But I warn you
I'm likely any day to buy an old cayuse and pull out. I'm subject to
fits like that."

"All right--I'll take the chance. I'm used to taking chances."

Kelley laughed. "So am I."

In this informal way they formed a social partnership, and the liking
they mutually acknowledged deepened soon into a friendship that was
close akin to fraternal love.

Within a week each knew pretty accurately the origin and history of the
other, and although they had but an hour or two of an afternoon for
talk, they grew to depend upon each other, strangely, and when one day
Morse came into the room in unwonted excitement and said, "Ed, I want
you to do something for me," Kelley instantly replied: "All right, boy.
Spit it out. What's wanted?"

"I'm in a devil of a hole. My mother and my little sister are coming
through here on their way to the Coast. They're going to stop off to see
me. I want you to let me in on a partnership in your mine just for a
day. They'll only stay a few hours, but I want to have them think I'm
making my living in a mine. You get me?"

"Sure thing, Fred. When are they due?"

"To-morrow."

"All right. You get a lay-off from your boss and we'll pull the deal
through. I'll tell my old partner I've taken you in on my share and
he'll carry out his part of it. He's a good deal of a bonehead, but no
talker. But you'll have to put on some miner's duds and spend to-day
riding around the hills to get a little sunburn. You don't look like a
miner."

"I know it. That worries me, too."

Having given his promise, Kelley seemed eager to carry the plan through
successfully. He was sorry for the youth, but he was sorrier for the
mother who was coming with such fond pride in the success of her
son--for Morse confessed that he had been writing of his "mine" for a
year.

He outfitted his new partner with a pair of well-worn miner's boots and
some trousers that were stained with clay, and laughed when Fred found
them several inches too long.

"You've got to wear 'em. No! New ones won't work. How would it do for
you to be so durn busy at the mine that I had to come down and bring
your people up?"

"Good idea!" Then his face became blank. "What would I be busy about?"

"That's so!" grinned Kelley. "Well, let's call it your day off and
_I'll_ be busy."

"No, I want you to come with me to the train. I need you. You must do
most of the talking--about the mine, I mean. I'll say you're the
practical miner and I'll refer all questions about the business to you.
And we must keep out of the main street. I don't want mother to even
_pass_ the place I've been operating in."

"What if they decide to stay all night?"

"They won't. They're going right on. They won't be here more than five
or six hours."

"All right. We'll find 'em dinner up at Mrs. Finnegan's. If they're like
most tourists they'll think the rough-scuff ways of the Boston House
great fun. By the way, how old is this little sister?"

"Oh, she must be about twenty-two."

"Good Lord!" Kelley was dashed. He thought a minute. "Well, you attend
to her and I'll keep the old lady interested."

"No, you've got to keep close to Flo. I'm more afraid of her than I am
of mother. She's sharp as tacks, and the least little 'break' on my part
will let her in on my 'stall.' No, you've got to be on guard all the
time."

"Well, I'll do my best, but I'm no 'Billie dear,' with girls. I've grew
up on the trail, and my talk is mostly red-neck. But I mean well, as the
fellow says, even if I don't always do well."

"Oh, you're all right, Kelley. You look the real thing. You'll be part
of the scenery for them."

"Spin the marble! It's only for half a day, anyway. They can call me a
hole in the ground if they want to. But you must get some tan. I tell
you what you do. You go up on the hill and lay down in the sun and burn
that saloon bleach off your face and neck and hands. That's _got_ to be
done. You've got the complexion of a barber."

Morse looked at his white, supple hands and felt of his smooth chin.
"You're right. It's a dead give-away. I'll look like a jailbird to them
if I don't color up. If I'd only known it a few days sooner I'd have
started a beard."

"You'll be surprised at what the sun will do in two hours," Kelley said,
encouragingly. "You'll peel afterward, but you'll get rid of the
bleach."


II

In truth Morse looked very well the next morning as he stood beside
Kelley and watched the High Line train come in over the shoulder of
Mogallon and loop its cautious way down the mine-pitted slopes. His main
uneasiness was caused by the thought that his mother might ask some man
on the train if he knew her son, and he was disturbed also by a number
of citizens lounging on the platform. Some of them were curious about
the change in him: "Hello, Fred! Going fishing, or been?"

The boy was trembling as he laid his hand on Kelley's arm. "Ed, I feel
like a coyote. It's a dang shame to fool your old mother like this."

"Better to fool her than to disappoint her," answered Tall Ed. "Stiffen
up, boy! Carry it through."

The little train drew up to the station and disgorged a crowd of Italian
workmen from the smoker and a throng of tourists from the
observation-car, and among these gay "trippers" Kelley saw a small,
plain little woman in black and a keen-eyed, laughing girl who waved her
hand to Fred. "Why, she's a queen!" thought Kelley.

Mrs. Morse embraced her son with a few murmured words of endearment, but
the girl held her brother off and looked at him. "Well, you _do_ look
the part," she said. "What a glorious sunburn--and the boots--and the
hat, and all! Why, Fred, you resemble a man."

"I may resemble one," he said, "but here's the real thing. Here's my
partner, Tall Ed Kelley." He pulled Kelley by the arm. "Ed, this is my
mother--"

"Howdy, ma'am," said Kelley, extending a timid hand.

"And this is my sister Florence."

"Howdy, miss," repeated Kelley.

Florence laughed as she shook hands. "He says 'Howdy' just like the
books."

Kelley stiffened a bit. "What should a feller say? Howdy's the word."

"I told you she'd consider you part of the scenery," put in Fred. "Well,
now, mother, we're going to take you right up to our mine. It's away on
top of that hill--"

"Oh, glorious!" exclaimed Florence. "And is it a real mine?"

"It is. But Kelley is boss, so I'm going to let him tell you all about
it. He's the man that found it."

Mrs. Morse looked up at the towering hill. "How do we get there?"

"A trolley-car runs part way, and then--we'll take a cab. Come on," he
added, anxiously, for he could see some of his saloon friends edging
near.

The trolley came down almost to the station, and in a few moments they
were aboard with Kelley seated beside Florence and Mrs. Morse fondly
clinging to her son, who seemed more boyish than ever to Kelley. The old
trailer was mightily embarrassed by his close contact with a sprightly
girl. He had never known any one like her. She looked like the pictures
in the magazines--same kind of hat, same kind of jacket and skirt--and
she talked like a magazine story, too. Her face was small, her lips
sweet, and her eyes big and bright.

She was chatty as a camp bird, and saw everything, and wanted to know
about it. Why were there so many empty cabins? What was the meaning of
all those rusty, ruined mills? Weren't there any gardens or grass?

"Why, you see, miss, the camp is an old busted camp. I'm working a
lease--I mean, we are--"

"What do you mean by a lease?"

"Well, you see, a lot of men have got discouraged and quit, and went
back East and offered their claims for lease on royalty, and I and
another feller--and Fred--we took one of these and it happened to have
ore in it."

"How long has Fred been with you?--he never mentioned you in his
letters."

"Why, it's about a year since we took the lease." Kelley began to grow
hot under her keen eyes.

"Strange he never wrote of you. He seems very proud of you, too."

Kelley looked out of the window. "We get along first rate."

The girl studied his fine profile attentively. "I'm glad he fell in with
a strong man like you--an experienced miner. He might have made a
mistake and lost all his small fortune. My! but it's fine up here!
What's that wonderful snowy range off there?"

"That's the Sangre de Cristo Range."

"Sangre de Cristo--Blood of Christ! Those old Spaniards had a lot of
poetry in them, didn't they?"

"I reckon so--and a whole lot of stiffening, too. You go through the
Southwest and see the country they trailed over--the hot, dry places and
the quicksands and cañons and all that. They sure made them Injuns
remember when they passed by."

"You know that country?"

"I may say I do. It was my parade-ground for about fifteen years. I
roamed over most of it. It's a fine country."

"Why did you leave it? Do you like this better?"

"I like any new country. I like to explore."

"But you're settled for a while?"

"Well, I don't know--if my partner will take my interest, I think I'll
shift along. I want to get into Alaska finally. I'd like to climb one of
them high peaks."

Fred, who was seated in front, turned. "Mother wants to know what the
mine paid last year--you tell her."

"It didn't pay much," replied Kelley, cautiously. "You see, we had some
new machinery to put in and some roads to grade and one thing or
another--I reckon it paid about"--he hesitated--"about three hundred a
month. But it's going to do better this year."

Florence, who was studying the men sharply, then said, "You wrote you
were getting about five dollars a day."

Fred's face showed distress. "I meant _net_," he said. "I didn't want to
worry you about details of machinery and all that."

Kelley began to feel that the girl's ears and eyes were alert to all
discrepancies, and he became cautious--so cautious that his pauses
revealed more than his words. But the mother saw nothing, heard nothing,
but the face and voice of her son, who pointed out the big mines that
were still running and the famous ones that were "dead," and so kept her
from looking too closely at the steep grades up which the car climbed.

At length, on the very crest of the high, smooth hill, they alighted and
Fred led the way toward a rusty old hack that looked as much out of
place on that wind-swept point as a Chinese pagoda.

Florence spoke of it. "Looks like Huckleberry Springs. Whom does its
owner find to carry up here?"

"Mostly it carries the minister and undertaker at funerals," replied
Kelley.

"Cheerful lot!" exclaimed the girl. "It smells morbific."

"You can't be particular up here," responded Fred. "You'll find our
boarding-place somewhat crude."

"Oh, I don't mind crudeness--but I hate decayed pretensions. If this
were only a mountain cart now!"

"It was the only kerridge with springs," explained Kelley.

The little mother now began to take notice of her son's partner. "My son
tells me you have been very good to him--a kind of big brother. I am
very grateful."

"Oh, I've done no more for him than he has for me. We both felt kind of
lonesome and so rode alongside."

"It's wonderful to me how you could keep Mr. Kelley out of your
letters," said Florence. "He looks exactly like a Remington character,
only his eyes are honester and his profile handsomer."

Kelley flushed and Fred laughed. "I never did understand why Remington
made all his men cross-eyed."

Mrs. Morse put her small, cold hand on Kelley's wrist. "Don't mind my
daughter. She's got this new fad of speaking her mind. She's a good
daughter--even if she does say rude things."

"Oh, I don't mind being called 'a good-looker,'" said Kelley, "only I
want to be sure I'm not being made game of."

"You needn't worry," retorted Fred. "A man of your inches is safe from
ridicule."

"Ridicule!" exclaimed Florence, with a glance of admiration. "You can't
ridicule a tall pine."

"I told you she'd have you a part of the landscape," exulted Fred.
"She'll have you a mountain peak 

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