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[Illustration: Cover]
THE QUIRT
=By B.M. Bower=
GOOD INDIAN
LONESOME LAND
THE UPHILL CLIMB
THE GRINGOS
THE RANCH AT THE WOLVERINE
THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND
JEAN OF THE LAZY A
THE PHANTOM HERD
THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX
STARR, OF THE DESERT
THE LOOKOUT MAN
CABIN FEVER
SKYRIDER
THE THUNDER BIRD
RIM O' THE WORLD
THE QUIRT
[Illustration: Al's gun spoke, and Warfield sagged at the knees and the
shoulders, and slumped to the ground.
FRONTISPIECE. _See page 294._]
THE QUIRT
BY
B.M. BOWER
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
ANTON OTTO FISCHER
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920
_Copyright, 1920,_
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
* * * *
_All rights reserved_
Published May, 1920
Reprinted, May, 1920
Reprinted, July, 1920
Reprinted, October, 1920
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LITTLE FISH 1
II. THE ENCHANTMENT OF LONG DISTANCE 12
III. REALITY IS WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING 22
IV. "SHE'S A GOOD GIRL WHEN SHE AIN'T CRAZY" 38
V. A DEATH "BY ACCIDENT" 54
VI. LONE ADVISES SILENCE 68
VII. THE MAN AT WHISPER 85
VIII. "IT TAKES NERVE JUST TO HANG ON" 100
IX. THE EVIL EYE OF THE SAWTOOTH 115
X. ANOTHER SAWTOOTH "ACCIDENT" 126
XI. SWAN TALKS WITH HIS THOUGHTS 144
XII. THE QUIRT PARRIES THE FIRST BLOW 158
XIII. LONE TAKES HIS STAND 168
XIV. "FRANK'S DEAD" 178
XV. SWAN TRAILS A COYOTE 192
XVI. THE SAWTOOTH SHOWS ITS HAND 200
XVII. YACK DON'T LIE 216
XVIII. "I THINK AL WOODRUFF'S GOT HER" 233
XIX. SWAN CALLS FOR HELP 245
XX. KIDNAPPED 255
XXI. "OH, I COULD KILL YOU!" 264
XXII. "YACK, I LICK YOU GOOD IF YOU BARK" 277
XXIII. "I COULDA LOVED THIS LITTLE GIRL" 284
XXIV. ANOTHER STORY BEGINS 296
THE QUIRT
CHAPTER ONE
LITTLE FISH
Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none too
gracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rocky
stretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrow channel
in the center where what water there was hurried along to the pools
below. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in a
platter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud that rimmed the
pools was scored deep with the tracks of the "TJ up-and-down" cattle, as
the double monogram of Hunter and Johnson was called.
A hard brand to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-down
herd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so,
though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordly neighbors, the Sawtooth
Cattle Company, who numbered their cattle by tens of thousands and
whose riders must have strings of fifteen horses apiece to keep them
going; older too than many a modest ranch that had flourished awhile and
had finished as line-camps of the Sawtooth when the Sawtooth bought
ranch and brand for a lump sum that looked big to the rancher, who
immediately departed to make himself a new home elsewhere: older than
others which had somehow gone to pieces when the rancher died or went to
the penitentiary under the stigma of a long sentence as a cattle thief.
There were many such, for the Sawtooth, powerful and stern against
outlawry, tolerated no pilfering from their thousands.
The less you have, the more careful you are of your possessions. Hunter
and Johnson owned exactly a section and a half of land, and for a mile
and a half Quirt Creek was fenced upon either side. They hired two men,
cut what hay they could from a field which they irrigated, fed their
cattle through the cold weather, watched them zealously through the
summer, and managed to ship enough beef each fall to pay their grocery
bill and their men's wages and have a balance sufficient to buy what
clothes they needed, and perhaps pay a doctor if one of them fell ill.
Which frequently happened, since Brit was becoming a prey to rheumatism
that sometimes kept him in bed, and Frank occasionally indulged himself
in a gallon or so of bad whisky and suffered afterwards from a badly
deranged digestion.
Their house was a two-room log cabin, built when logs were easier to get
than lumber. That the cabin contained two rooms was the result of
circumstances rather than design. Brit had hauled from the mountain-side
logs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame to cut the long ones
any shorter. Later, when the outside world had crept a little closer to
their wilderness--as, go where you will, the outside world has a way of
doing--he had built a lean-to shed against the cabin from what lumber
there was left after building a cowshed against the log barn.
In the early days, Brit had had a wife and two children, but the wife
could not endure the loneliness of the ranch nor the inconvenience of
living in a two-room log cabin. She was continually worrying over
rattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell out
and live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, and
because he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shanked
spurs ajingle on his heels and a snakeskin band around his hat, and
because a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like a story
in a book.
Adventure, picturesqueness, even romance, are recognized and appreciated
only at a distance. Mrs. Hunter lost the perspective of romance and
adventure, and shed tears because there was sufficient mineral in the
water to yellow her week's washing, and for various other causes which
she had never foreseen and to which she refused to resign herself.
Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatum
to Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would take the
children and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except the
post-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,--and a barber shop where a
fellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl.
Brit could not imagine himself actually _living_, day after day, in a
town. Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in a
restaurant that he had first met his wife. He had stayed three days when
he had meant to finish his business in one, because there was an
awfully nice girl waiting on table in the Palace, and because there was
going to be a dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintance
with her to develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him,
and be reasonably certain of a favorable answer.
Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friend
and neighbor, who had taken all the land the government would allow one
man to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him. They
had planned to run cattle together, had their brand already recorded,
and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen young cows.
Luckily, Brit had "proven up" on his homestead, so that when the irate
Mrs. Hunter deserted him she did not jeopardize his right to the land.
Brit was philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life would be
a cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and nagging
complaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank proved up
and came down to live with him, and the partnership began to wear into
permanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and wrangled
together like brothers.
For months Brit's wife was too angry and spiteful to write. Then she
wrote acrimoniously, reminding Brit of his duty to his children. Royal
was old enough for school and needed clothes. She was slaving for them
as she had never thought to slave when Brit promised to honor and
protect her, but the fact remained that he was their father even if he
did not act like one. She needed at least ten dollars.
Brit showed the letter to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnly
while they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing the
unearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel that
they could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out of the
question. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncher
fancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, matter-of-fact letter to Minnie
and enclosed a much-worn ten-dollar banknote. With the two dollars and a
half which remained of his share of the sale, Brit sent to a mail-order
house for a mackinaw coat, and felt cheated afterwards because the coat
was not "wind and water proof" as advertised in the catalogue.
More months passed, and Brit received, by registered mail, a notice that
he was being sued for divorce on the ground of non-support. He felt
hurt, because, as he pointed out to Frank, he was perfectly willing to
support Minnie and the kids if they came back where he could have a
chance. He wrote this painstakingly to the lawyer and received no reply.
Later he learned from Minnie that she had freed herself from him, and
that she was keeping boarders and asking no odds of him.
To come at once to the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard from
the children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough to
write. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have any
money to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed,
as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children were
growing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattling
youngsters whom Minnie was forever worrying over and who seemed to have
been always under the heels of his horse, or under the wheels of his
wagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off into the sage
while he and their distracted mother searched for them. For a long
while--how many years Brit could not remember--they had been living in
Los Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. The girl,
Lorraine--Minnie had wanted fancy names for the kids, and Brit
apologized whenever he spoke of them, which was seldom--Lorraine had
written that "Mamma has an apartment house." That had sounded
prosperous, even at the beginning. And as the years passed and their
address remained the same, Brit became fixed in the belief that the Casa
Grande was all that its name implied, and perhaps more. Minnie must be
getting rich. She had a picture of the place on the stationery which
Lorraine used when she wrote him. There were two palm trees in front,
with bay windows behind them, and pillars. Brit used to study these
magnificences and thank God that Minnie was doing so well. He never
could have given her a home like that. Brit sometimes added that he had
never been cut out for a married man, anyway.
Old-timers forgot that Brit had ever been married, and late comers never
heard of it. To all intents the owners of the Quirt outfit were old
bachelors who kept pretty much to themselves, went to town only when
they needed supplies, rode old, narrow-fork saddles and grinned
scornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all the
range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never talked
politics nor told which candidates received their two votes. They kept
the same two men season after season,--leathery old range hands with
eyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision, and with the
gift of silence, which is rare.
If you know anything at all about cattlemen, you will know that the
Quirt was a poor man's ranch, when I tell you that Hunter and Johnson
milked three cows and made butter, fed a few pigs on the skim milk and
the alfalfa stalks which the saddle horses and the cows disdained to
eat, kept a flock of chickens, and sold what butter, eggs and pork they
did not need for themselves. Cattlemen seldom do that. More often they
buy milk in small tin cans, butter in "squares," and do without eggs.
Four of a kind were the men of the TJ up-and-down, and even Bill
Warfield--president and general manager of the Sawtooth Cattle Company,
and of the Federal Reclamation Company and several other companies,
State senator and general benefactor of the Sawtooth country--even the
great Bill Warfield lifted his hat to the owners of the Quirt when he
met them, and spoke of them as "the finest specimens of our old,
fast-vanishing type of range men." Senator Warfield himself represented
the modern type of range man and was proud of his progressiveness. Never
a scheme for the country's development was hatched but you would find
Senator Warfield closely allied with it, his voice the deciding one when
policies and progress were being discussed.
As to the Sawtooth, forty thousand acres comprised their holdings under
patents, deeds and long-time leases from the government. Another twenty
thousand acres they had access to through the grace of the owners, and
there was forest-reserve grazing besides, which the Sawtooth could have
if it chose to pay the nominal rental sum. The Quirt ranch was almost
surrounded by Sawtooth land of one sort or another, though there was
scant grazing in the early spring on the sagebrush wilderness to the
south. This needed Quirt Creek for accessible water, and Quirt Creek,
save where it ran through cut-bank hills, was fenced within the section
and a half of the TJ up-and-down.
So there they were, small fish making shift to live precariously with
other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish
now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small
fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would leave
the pool for the safe shallows beyond.
This is a tale of the little fishes.
CHAPTER TWO
THE ENCHANTMENT OF LONG DISTANCE
Lorraine Hunter always maintained that she was a Western girl. If she
reached the point of furnishing details she would tell you that she had
ridden horses from the time that she could walk, and that her father was
a cattle-king of Idaho, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills. When she
was twelve she told her playmates exciting tales about rattlesnakes.
When she was fifteen she sat breathless in the movies and watched
picturesque horsemen careering up and down and around the thousand
hills, and believed in her heart that half the Western pictures were
taken on or near her father's ranch. She seemed to remember certain
landmarks, and would point them out to her companions and whisper a
desultory lecture on the cattle industry as illustrated by the picture.
She was much inclined to criticism of the costuming and the acting.
At eighteen she knew definitely that she hated the very name Casa
Grande. She hated the narrow, half-lighted hallway with its "tree"
where no one ever hung a hat, and the seat beneath where no one ever sat
down. She hated the row of key-and-mail boxes on the wall, with the bell
buttons above each apartment number. She hated the jangling of the hall
telephone, the scurrying to answer, the prodding of whichever bell
button would summon the tenant asked for by the caller. She hated the
meek little Filipino boy who swept that ugly hall every morning. She
hated the scrubby palms in front. She hated the pillars where the paint
was peeling badly. She hated the conflicting odors that seeped into the
atmosphere at certain hours of the day. She hated the three old maids on
the third floor and the frowsy woman on the first, who sat on the front
steps in her soiled breakfast cap and bungalow apron. She hated the
nervous tenant who occupied the apartment just over her mother's
three-room-and-bath, and pounded with a broom handle on the floor when
Lorraine practised overtime on chromatic scales.
At eighteen Lorraine managed somehow to obtain work in a Western
picture, and being unusually pretty she so far distinguished herself
that she was given a small part in the next production. Her glorious
duty it was to ride madly through the little cow-town "set" to the
post-office where the sheriff's posse lounged conspicuously, and there
pull her horse to an abrupt stand and point excitedly to the distant
hills. Also she danced quite close to the camera in the "Typical Cowboy
Dance" which was a feature of this particular production.
Lorraine thereby earned enough money to buy her fall suit and coat and
cheap furs, and learned to ride a horse at a gallop and to dance what
passed in pictures as a "square dance."
At nineteen years of age Lorraine Hunter, daughter of old Brit Hunter of
the TJ up-and-down, became a real "range-bred girl" with a real Stetson
hat of her own, a green corduroy riding skirt, gray flannel shirt,
brilliant neckerchief, boots and spurs. A third picture gave her further
practice in riding a real horse,--albeit an extremely docile animal
called Mouse with good reason. She became known on the lot as a real
cattle-king's daughter, though she did not know the name of her father's
brand and in all her life had seen no herd larger than the thirty head
of tame cattle which were chased past the camera again and again to make
them look like ten thousand, and which were so thoroughly "camera
broke" that they stopped when they were out of the scene, turned and
were ready to repeat the performance _ad lib_.
Had she lived her life on the Quirt ranch she would have known a great
deal more about horseback riding and cattle and range dances. She would
have known a great deal less about the romance of the West, however, and
she would probably never have seen a sheriff's posse riding twenty
strong and bunched like bird-shot when it leaves the muzzle of the gun.
Indeed, I am very sure she would not. Killings such as her father heard
of with his lips drawn tight and the cords standing out on the sides of
his skinny neck she would have considered the grim tragedies they were,
without once thinking of the "picture value" of the crime.
As it was, her West was filled with men who died suddenly in gobs of red
paint and girls who rode loose-haired and panting with hand held over
the heart, hurrying for doctors, and cowboys and parsons and such. She
had seen many a man whip pistol from holster and dare a mob with lips
drawn back in a wolfish grin over his white, even teeth, and kidnappings
were the inevitable accompaniment of youth and beauty.
Lorraine learned rapidly. In three years she thrilled to more
blood-curdling adventure than all the Bad Men in all the West could have
furnished had they lived to be old and worked hard at being bad all
their lives. For in that third year she worked her way enthusiastically
through a sixteen-episode movie serial called "The Terror of the Range."
She was past mistress of romance by that time. She knew her West.
It was just after the "Terror of the Range" was finished that a great
revulsion in the management of this particular company stopped
production with a stunning completeness that left actors and actresses
feeling very much as if the studio roof had fallen upon them. Lorraine's
West vanished. The little cow-town "set" was being torn down to make
room for something else quite different. The cowboys appeared in
tailored suits and drifted away. Lorraine went home to the Casa Grande,
hating it more than ever she had hated it in her life.
Some one up-stairs was frying liver and onions, which was in flagrant
defiance of Rule Four which mentioned cabbage, onions and fried fish as
undesirable foodstuffs. Outside, the palm leaves were dripping in the
night fog that had swept soggily in from the ocean. Her mother was
trying to collect a gas bill from the dressmaker down the hall, who
protested shrilly that she distinctly remembered having paid that gas
bill once and had no intention of paying it twice.
Lorraine opened the door marked LANDLADY, and closed it with a slam
intended to remind her mother that bickerings in the hall were less
desirable than the odor of fried onions. She had often spoken to her
mother about the vulgarity of arguing in public with the tenants, but
her mother never seemed to see things as Lorraine saw them.
In the apartment sat a man who had been too frequent a visitor, as
Lorraine judged him. He was an oldish man with the lines of failure in
his face and on his lean form the sprightly clothing of youth. He had
been a reporter,--was still, he maintained. But Lorraine suspected
shrewdly that he scarcely made a living for himself, and that he was
home-hunting in more ways than one when he came to visit her mother.
The affair had progressed appreciably in her absence, it would appear.
He greeted her with, a fatherly "Hello, kiddie," and would have kissed
her had Lorraine not evaded him skilfully.
Her mother came in then and complained intimately to the man, and
declared that the dressmaker would have to pay that bill or have her gas
turned off. He offered sympathy, assistance in the turning off of the
gas, and a kiss which was perfectly audible to Lorraine in the next
room. The affair had indeed progressed!
"L'raine, d'you know you've got a new papa?" her mother called out in
the peculiar, chirpy tone she used when she was exuberantly happy. "I
knew you'd be surprised!"
"I am," Lorraine agreed, pulling aside the cheap green portieres and
looked in upon the two. Her tone was unenthusiastic. "A superfluous gift
of doubtful value. I do not feel the need of a papa, thank you. If you
want him for a husband, mother, that is entirely your own affair. I hope
you'll be very happy."
"The kid don't want a papa; husbands are what means the most in her
young life," chuckled the groom, restraining his bride when she would
have risen from his knee.
"I hope you'll both be very happy indeed," said Lorraine gravely. "Now
you won't mind, mother, when I tell you that I am going to dad's ranch
in Idaho. I really meant it for a vacation, but since you won't be
alone, I may stay with dad permanently. I'm leaving to-morrow or the
next day--just as soon as I can pack my trunk and get a Pullman berth."
She did not wait to see the relief in her mother's face contradicting
the expostulations on her lips. She went out to the telephone in the
hall, remembered suddenly that her business would be overheard by half
the tenants, and decided to use the public telephone in a hotel farther
down the street. Her decision to go to her dad had been born with the
words on her lips. But it was a lusty, full-voiced young decision, and
it was growing at an amazing rate.
Of course she would go to her dad in Idaho! She was astonished that the
idea had never before crystallized into action. Why should she feed her
imagination upon a mimic West, when the great, glorious real West was
there? What if her dad had not written a word for more than a year? He
must be alive; they would surely have heard of his death, for she and
Royal were his sole heirs, and his partner would have their address.
She walked fast and arrived at the telephone booth so breathless that
she was compelled to wait a few minutes before she could call her
number. She inquired about trains and rates to Echo, Idaho.
Echo, Idaho! While she waited for the information clerk to look it up
the very words conjured visions of wide horizons and clean winds and
high adventure. If she pictured Echo, Idaho, as being a replica of the
"set" used in the movie serial, can you wonder? If she saw herself, the
beloved queen of her father's cowboys, dashing into Echo, Idaho, on a
crimply-maned broncho that pirouetted gaily before the post-office while
handsome young men in chaps and spurs and "big four" Stetsons watched
her yearningly, she was merely living mentally the only West that she
knew.
From that beatific vision Lorraine floated into others more entrancing.
All the hairbreadth escapes of the heroine of the movie serial were
hers, adapted by her native logic to fit within the bounds of
possibility,--though I must admit they bulged here and there and
threatened to overlap and to encroach upon the impossible. Over the
hills where her father's vast herds grazed, sleek and wild and
long-horned and prone to stampede, galloped the Lorraine of Lorraine's
dreams, on horses sure-footed and swift. With her galloped strong men
whose faces limned the features of her favorite Western "lead."
That for all her three years of intermittent intimacy with a
disillusioning world of mimicry, her dreams were pure romance, proved
that Lorraine had still the unclouded innocence of her girlhood
unspoiled.
CHAPTER THREE
REALITY IS WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING
Still dreaming her dreams, still featuring herself as the star of many
adventures, Lorraine followed the brakeman out of the dusty day coach
and down the car steps to the platform of the place called Echo, Idaho.
I can only guess at what she expected to find there in the person of a
cattle-king father, but whatever it was she did not find it. No father,
of any type whatever, came forward to claim her. In spite of her
"Western" experience she looked about her for a taxi, or at least a
street car. Even in the wilds of Western melodrama one could hear the
clang of street-car gongs warning careless autoists off the track.
After the train had hooted and gone on around an absolutely
uninteresting low hill of yellow barrenness dotted with stunted sage, it
was the silence that first impressed Lorraine disagreeably. Echo, Idaho,
was a very poor imitation of all the Western sets she had ever seen.
True, it had the straggling row of square-fronted, one-story buildings,
with hitch rails, but the signs painted across the fronts were
absolutely common. Any director she had ever obeyed would have sent for
his assistant director and would have used language which a lady must
not listen to. Behind the store and the post-office and the blacksmith
shop, on the brow of the low hill around whose point the train had
disappeared, were houses with bay windows and porches absolutely out of
keeping with the West. So far as Lorraine could see, there was not a log
cabin in the whole place.
The hitch rails were empty, and there was not a cowboy in sight. Before
the post-office a terribly grimy touring car stood with its
running-boards loaded with canvas-covered suitcases. Three goggled,
sunburned women in ugly khaki suits were disconsolately drinking soda
water from bottles without straws, and a goggled, red-faced,
angry-looking man was jerking impatiently at the hood of the machine.
Lorraine and her suitcase apparently excited no interest whatever in
Echo, Idaho.
The station agent was carrying two boxes of oranges and a crate of
California cabbages in out of the sun, and a limp individual in blue
gingham shirt and dirty overalls had shouldered the mail sack and was
making his way across the dusty, rut-scored street to the post-office.
Two questions and two brief answers convinced her that the station agent
did not know Britton Hunter,--which was strange, unless this happened to
be a very new agent. Lorraine left him to his cabbages and followed the
man with the mail sack.
At the post-office the anemic clerk came forward, eyeing her with
admiring curiosity. Lorraine had seen anemic young men all her life, and
the last three years had made her perfectly familiar with that look in a
young man's eyes. She met it with impatient disfavor founded chiefly
upon the young man's need of a decent hair-cut, a less flowery tie and a
tailored suit. When he confessed that he did not know Mr. Britton Hunter
by sight he ceased to exist so far as Lorraine was concerned. She
decided that he also was new to the place and therefore perfectly
useless to her.
The postmaster himself--Lorraine was cheered by his spectacles, his
shirt sleeves, and his chin whiskers, which made him look the part--was
better informed. He, too, eyed her curiously when she said "My father,
Mr. Britton Hunter," but he made no comment on the relationship. He gave
her a telegram and a letter from the General Delivery. The telegram, she
suspected, was the one she had sent to her dad announcing the date of
her arrival. The postmaster advised her to get a "livery rig" and drive
out to the ranch, since it might be a week or two before any one came in
from the Quirt. Lorraine thanked him graciously and departed for the
livery stable.
The man in charge there chewed tobacco meditatively and told her that
his teams were all out. If she was a mind to wait over a day or two, he
said, he might maybe be able to make the trip. Lorraine took a long look
at the structure which he indicated as the hotel.
"I think I'll walk," she said calmly.
"_Walk_?" The stableman stopped chewing and stared at her. "It's some
consider'ble of a walk. It's all of eighteen mile--I dunno but twenty,
time y'get to the house."
"I have frequently walked twenty-five or thirty miles. I am a member of
the Sierra Club in Los Angeles. We seldom take hikes of less than
twenty miles. If you will kindly tell me which road I must take----"
"There she is," the man stated flatly, and pointed across the railroad
track to where a sandy road drew a yellowish line through the sage,
evidently making for the hills showing hazily violet in the distance.
Those hills formed the only break in the monotonous gray landscape, and
Lorraine was glad that her journey would take her close to them.
"Thank you so much," she said coldly and returned to the station. In the
small lavatory of the depot waiting room she exchanged her slippers for
a pair of moderately low-heeled shoes which she had at the last minute
of packing tucked into her suitcase, put a few extra articles into her
rather smart traveling bag, left the suitcase in the telegraph office
and started. Not another question would she ask of Echo, Idaho, which
was flatter and more insipid than the drinking water in the tin "cooler"
in the waiting room. The station agent stood with his hands on his hips
and watched her cross the track and start down the road, pardonably
astonished to see a young woman walk down a road that led only to the
hills twenty miles away, carrying her luggage exactly as if her trip was
a matter of a block or two at most.
The bag was rather heavy and as she went on it became heavier. She meant
to carry it slung across her shoulder on a stick as soon as she was well
away from the prying eyes of Echo's inhabitants. Later, if she felt
tired, she could easily hide it behind a bush along the road and send
one of her father's cowboys after it. The road was very dusty and
carried the wind-blown traces of automobile tires. Some one would surely
overtake her and give her a ride before she walked very far.
For the first half hour she believed that she was walking on level
ground, but when she looked back there was no sign of any town behind
her. Echo had disappeared as completely as if it had been swallowed.
Even the unseemly bay-windowed houses on the hill had gone under. She
walked for another half hour and saw only the gray sage stretching all
around her. The hills looked farther away than when she started. Still,
that beaten road must lead somewhere. Two hours later she began to
wonder why this particular road should be so unending and so empty.
Never in her life before had she walked for two hours without seeming to
get anywhere, or without seeing any living human.
Both shoulders were sore from the weight of the bag on the stick, but
the sagebushes looked so exactly alike that she feared she could not
describe the particular spot where the cowboys would find her bag,
wherefore she carried it still. She was beginning to change hands very
often when the wind came.
Just where or how that wind sprang up she did not know. Suddenly it was
whooping across the sage and flinging up clouds of dust from the road.
To Lorraine, softened by years of southern California weather, it seemed
to blow straight off an ice field, it was so cold.
After an interminable time which measured three hours on her watch, she
came to an abrupt descent into a creek bed, down the middle of which the
creek itself was flowing swiftly. Here the road forked, a rough,
little-used trail keeping on up the creek, the better traveled road
crossing and climbing the farther bank. Lorraine scarcely hesitated
before she chose the main trail which crossed the creek.
From the creek the trail she followed kept climbing until Lorraine
wondered if there would ever be a top. The wind whipped her narrow
skirts and impeded her, tugged at her hat, tingled her nose and watered
her eyes. But she kept on doggedly, disgustedly, the West, which she had
seen through the glamour of swift-blooded Romance, sinking lower and
lower in her estimation. Nothing but jack rabbits and little, twittery
birds moved through the sage, though she watched hungrily for horsemen.
Quite suddenly the gray landscape glowed with a palpitating radiance,
unreal, beautiful beyond expression. She stopped, turned to face the
west and stared awestruck at one of those flaming sunsets which makes
the desert land seem but a gateway into the ineffable glory beyond the
earth. That the high-piled, gorgeous cloud-bank presaged a thunderstorm
she never guessed; and that a thunderstorm may be a deadly, terrifying
peril she never had quite believed. Her mother had told of people being
struck by lightning, but Lorraine could not associate lightning with
death, especially in the West, where men usually died by shooting,
lynching, or by pitching over a cliff.
The wind hushed as suddenly as it had whooped. Warned by the twinkling
lights far behind her--lights which must be the small part at last
visible of Echo, Idaho--Lorraine went on. She had been walking steadily
for four hours, and she must surely have come nearly twenty miles. If
she ever reached the top of the hill, she believed that she would see
her father's ranch just beyond.
The afterglow had deepened to dusk when she came at last to the highest
point of that long grade. Far ahead loomed a cluster of square, black
objects which must be the ranch buildings of the Quirt, and Lorraine's
spirits lightened a little. What a surprise her father and all his
cowboys would have when she walked in upon them! It was almost worth the
walk, she told herself hearteningly. She hoped that dad had a good cook.
He would wear a flour-sack apron, naturally, and would be tall and lean,
or else very fat. He would be a comedy character, but she hoped he would
not be the grouchy kind, which, though very funny when he rampages
around on the screen, might be rather uncomfortable to meet when one is
tired and hungry and out of sorts. But of course the crankiest of comedy
cooks would be decently civil to _her_. Men always were, except
directors who are paid for their incivility.
A hollow into which she walked in complete darkness and in silence, save
the gurgling of another stream, hid from sight the shadowy semblance of
houses and barns and sheds. Their disappearance slumped her spirits
again, for without them she was no more than a solitary speck in the
vast loneliness. Their actual nearness could not comfort her. She was
seized with a reasonless, panicky fear that by the time she crossed the
stream and climbed the hill beyond they would no longer be there where
she had seen them. She was lifting her skirts to wade the creek when the
click of hoofs striking against rocks sent her scurrying to cover in a
senseless fear.
"I learned this act from the jack rabbits," she rallied herself shakily,
when she was safely hidden behind a sagebush whose pungency made her
horribly afraid that she might sneeze, which would be too ridiculous.
"Some of dad's cowboys, probably, but still they _may_ be bandits."
If they were bandits they could scarcely be out banditting, for the two
horsemen were talking in ordinary, conversational tones as they rode
leisurely down to the ford. When they passed Lorraine, the horse nearest
her shied against the other and was sworn at parenthetically for a fool.
Against the skyline Lorraine saw the rider's form bulk squatty and
ungraceful, reminding her of an actor whom she knew and did not like. It
was that resemblance perhaps which held her quiet instead of following
her first impulse to speak to them and ask them to carry her grip to the
house.
The horses stopped with their forefeet in the water and drooped heads to
drink thirstily. The riders continued their conversation.
"--and as I says time and again, they ain't big enough to fight the
outfit, and the quicker they git out the less lead they'll carry under
their hides when they do go. What they want to try an' hang on for,
beats me. Why, it's like setting into a poker game with a five-cent
piece! They ain't got my sympathy. I ain't got any use for a damn fool,
no way yuh look at it."
"Well, there's the TJ--they been here a long while, and they ain't
packin' any lead, and they ain't getting out."
"Well, say, lemme tell yuh something. The TJ'll git theirs and git it
right. Drink all night, would yuh?" He swore long and fluently at his
horse, spurred him through the shallows, and the two rode on up the
hill, their voices still mingled in desultory argument, with now and
then an oath rising clearly above the jumble of words.
They may have been law-abiding citizens riding home to families that
were waiting supper for them, but Lorraine crept out from behind her
sagebush, sneezing and thanking her imitation of the jack rabbits.
Whoever they were, she was not sorry she had let them ride on. They
might be her father's men, and they might have been very polite and
chivalrous to her. But their voices and their manner of speaking had
been rough; and it is one thing, Lorraine reflected, to mingle with
made-up villains--even to be waylaid and kidnapped and tied to trees and
threatened with death--but it is quite different to accost
rough-speaking men in the dark when you know that they are not being
rough to suit the director of the scene.
She was so absorbed in trying to construct a range war or something
equally thrilling from the scrap of conversation she had heard that she
reached the hilltop in what seemed a very few minutes of climbing. The
sky was becoming overcast. Already the stars to the west were blotted
out, and the absolute stillness of the atmosphere frightened her more
than the big, dark wilderness itself. It seemed to her exactly as though
the earth was holding its breath and waiting for something terrible to
happen. The vague bulk of buildings was still some distance ahead, and
when a rumble like the deepest notes of a pipe organ began to fill all
the air, Lorraine thrust her grip under a bush and began to run, her
soggy shoes squashing unpleasantly on the rough places in the road.
Lorraine had seen many stage storms and had thrilled ecstatically to the
mimic lightning, knowing just how it was made. But when that huge
blackness behind and to the left of her began to open and show a
terrible brilliance within, and to close abruptly, leaving the world ink
black, she was terrified. She wanted to hide as she had hidden from
those two men; but from that stupendous monster, a real thunderstorm,
sagebrush formed no protection whatever. She must reach the substantial
shelter of buildings, the comforting presence of men and women.
She ran, and as she ran she wept aloud like a child and called for her
father. The deep rumble grew louder, nearer. The revealed brilliance
became swift sword-thrusts of blinding light that seemed to stab deep
the earth. Lorraine ran awkwardly, her hands over her ears, crying out
at each lightning flash, her voice drowned in the thunder that followed
it close. Then, as she neared the somber group of buildings, the clouds
above them split with a terrific, rending crash, and the whole place
stood pitilessly revealed to her, as if a spotlight had been turned on.
Lorraine stood aghast. The buildings were not buildings at all. They
were rocks, great, black, forbidding boulders standing there on a narrow
ridge, having a diabolic likeness to houses.
The human mind is wonderfully resilient, but readjustment comes slowly
after a shock. Dumbly, refusing to admit the significance of what she
had seen, Lorraine went forward. Not until she had reached and had
touched the first grotesque caricature of habitation did she wholly
grasp the fact that she was lost, and that shelter might be miles away.
She stood and looked at the orderly group of boulders as the lightning
intermittently revealed them. She saw where the road ran on, between
two square-faced rocks. She would have to follow the road, for after all
it must lead _somewhere_,--to her father's ranch, probably. She wondered
irrelevantly why her mother had never mentioned these queer rocks, and
she wondered vaguely if any of them had caves or ledges where she could
be safe from the lightning.
She was on the point of stepping out into the road again when a horseman
rode into sight between the two rocks. In the same instant of his
appearance she heard the unmistakable crack of a gun, saw the rider jerk
backward in the saddle, throw up one hand,--and then the darkness
dropped between them.
Lorraine crouched behind a juniper bush close against the rock and
waited. The next flash, came within a half-minute. It showed a man at
the horse's head, holding it by the bridle. The horse was rearing.
Lorraine tried to scream that the man on the ground would be trampled,
but something went wrong with her voice, so that she could only whisper.
When the light came again the man who had been shot was not altogether
on the ground. The other, working swiftly, had thrust the injured man's
foot through the stirrup. Lorraine saw him stand back and lift his quirt
to slash the horse across the rump. Even through the crash of thunder
Lorraine heard the horse go past her down the hill, galloping furiously.
When she could see again she glimpsed him running, while something
bounced along on the ground beside him.
She saw the other man, with a dry branch in his hand, dragging it across
the road where it ran between the two rocks. Then Lorraine Hunter,
hardened to the sight of crimes committed for picture values only,
realized sickeningly that she had just looked upon a real murder,--the
cold-blooded killing of a man. She felt very sick. Queer little red
sparks squirmed and danced before her eyes. She crumpled down quietly
behind the juniper bush and did not know when the rain came, though it
drenched her in the first two or three minutes of downpour.
CHAPTER FOUR
"SHE'S A GOOD GIRL WHEN SHE AIN'T CRAZY"
When the sun has been up just long enough to take the before-dawn chill
from the air without having swallowed all the diamonds that spangle bush
and twig and grass-blade after a night's soaking rain, it is good to
ride over the hills of Idaho and feel oneself a king,--and never mind
the crown and the scepter. Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to
see the foreman about getting a man for a few days to help replace a
bridge carried fifty yards downstream by a local cloudburst, would not
have changed places with a millionaire. The horse he rode was the horse
he loved, the horse he talked to like a pal when they were by
themselves. The ridge gave him a wide outlook to the four corners of the
earth. Far to the north the Sawtooth range showed blue, the nearer
mountains pansy purple where the pine trees stood, the foothills shaded
delicately where canyons swept down to the gray plain. To the south was
the sagebrush, a soft, gray-green carpet under the sun. The sky was
blue, the clouds were handfuls of clean cotton floating lazily. Of the
night's storm remained no trace save slippery mud when his horse struck
a patch of clay, which was not often, and the packed sand still wet and
soggy from the beating rain.
Rock City showed black and inhospitable even in the sunlight. The rock
walls rose sheer, the roofs slanted rakishly, the signs scratched on the
rock by facetious riders were pointless and inane. Lone picked his way
through the crooked defile that was marked MAIN STREET on the corner of
the first huge boulder and came abruptly into the road. Here he turned
north and shook his horse into a trot.
A hundred yards or so down the slope beyond Rock City he pulled up short
with a "What the hell!" that did not sound profane, but merely amazed.
In the sodden road were the unmistakable footprints of a woman. Lone did
not hesitate in naming the sex, for the wet sand held the imprint
cleanly, daintily. Too shapely for a boy, too small for any one but a
child or a woman with little feet, and with the point at the toes
proclaiming the fashion of the towns, Lone guessed at once that she was
a town girl, a stranger, probably,--and that she had passed since the
rain; which meant since daylight.
He swung his horse and rode back, wondering where she could have spent
the night. Halfway through Rock City the footprints ended abruptly, and
Lone turned back, riding down the trail at a lope. She couldn't have
gone far, he reasoned, and if she had been out all night in the rain,
with no better shelter than Rock City afforded, she would need
help,--"and lots of it, and pretty darn quick," he added to John Doe,
which was the ambiguous name of his horse.
Half a mile farther on he overtook her. Rather, he sighted her in the
trail, saw her duck in amongst the rocks and scattered brush of a small
ravine, and spurred after her. It was precarious footing for his horse
when he left the road, but John Doe was accustomed to that. He jumped
boulders, shied around buckthorn, crashed through sagebrush and so
brought the girl to bay against a wet bank, where she stood shivering.
The terror in her face and her wide eyes would have made her famous in
the movies. It made Lone afraid she was crazy.
Lone swung off and went up to her guardedly, not knowing just what an
insane woman might do when cornered. "There, now, I'm not going to hurt
yuh at all," he soothed. "I guess maybe you're lost. What made you run
away from me when you saw me coming?"
Lorraine continued to stare at him.
"I'm going to the ranch, and if you'd like a ride, I'll lend you my
horse. He'll be gentle if I lead him. It's a right smart walk from
here." Lone smiled, meaning to reassure her.
"Are you the man I saw shoot that man and then fasten him to the stirrup
of the saddle so the horse dragged him down the road? If you are,
I--I----"
"No--oh, no, I'm not the man," Lone said gently. "I just now came from
home. Better let me take you in to the ranch."
"I was going to the ranch--did you see him shoot that man and make the
horse drag him--_make_ the horse--he _slashed_ that horse with the
quirt--and he went tearing down the road dragging--it--it
was--_horrible_!"
"Yes--yes, don't worry about it. We'll fix him. You come and get on John
Doe and let me take you to the ranch. Come on--you're wet as a ducked
pup."
"That man was just riding along--I saw him when it lightened. And he
shot him--oh, can't you _do_ something?"
"Yes, yes, they're after him right now. Here. Just put your foot in the
stirrup--I'll help you up. Why, you're soaked!" Perseveringly Lone urged
her to the horse. "You're soaking wet!" he exclaimed again.
"It rained," she muttered confusedly. "I thought it was the ranch--but
they were rocks. Just rocks. Did you _see_ him shoot that man? Why--why
it shouldn't be allowed! He ought to be arrested right away--I'd have
called a policeman but--isn't thunder and lightning just perfectly
_awful_? And that horse--going down the road dragging----
"You'd better get some one to double for me in this scene," she said
irrelevantly. "I--I don't know this horse, and if he starts running the
boys might not catch him in time. It isn't safe, is it?"
"It's safe," said Lone pityingly. "You won't be dragged. You just get on
and ride. I'll lead him. John Doe's gentle as a dog."
"Just straight riding?" Lorraine considered the matter gravely.
"Wel-ll--but I saw a man dragged, once. He'd been shot first. It--it
was awful!"
"I'll bet it was. How'd you come to be walking so far?"
Lorraine looked at him suspiciously. Lone thought her eyes were the most
wonderful eyes--and the most terrible--that he had ever seen.
Almond-shaped they were, the irises a clear, dark gray, the eyeballs
blue-white like a healthy baby's. That was the wonder of them. But their
glassy shine made them terrible. Her lids lifted in a sudden stare.
"You're not the man, are you? I--I think he was taller than you. And his
hat was brown. He's a brute--a _beast_! To shoot a man just riding
along---- It rained," she added plaintively. "My bag is back there
somewhere under a bush. I think I could find the bush--it was where a
rabbit was sitting--but he's probably gone by this time. A rabbit," she
told him impressively, "wouldn't sit out in the rain all night, would
he? He'd get wet. And a rabbit would feel horrid when he was wet--such
thick fur he never _would_ get dried out. Where do they go when it
rains? They have holes in the ground, don't they?"
"Yes. Sure, they do. I'll _show_ you one, down the road here a little
piece. Come on--it ain't far."