son-off-a-gun all right--only I don't never get mad at somebody."
Brit Hunter smiled at that, it was so like Swan Vjolmar. But when they
were halfway to Thurman's ranch--Brit on horseback and Swan striding
easily along beside him, leading the blaze-faced horse, he glanced down
at Swan's face and wondered if Swan had not lied a little.
"What's on your mind, Swan?" he asked abruptly.
Swan started and looked up at him, glanced at the empty hills on either
side, and stopped still in the trail.
"Mr. Hunter, you been longer in the country than I have been. You seen
some good riding, I bet. Maybe you see some men ride backwards on a
horse?"
Brit looked at him uncomprehendingly. "Backwards?"
Swan led up the blaze-faced horse and pointed to the right stirrup.
"Spurs would scratch like that if you jerk your foot, maybe. You're a
good rider, Mr. Hunter, you can tell. That's a right stirrup, ain't it?
Fred Thurman, he's got his left foot twist around, all broke from
jerking in his stirrup. Left foot in right stirrup----" He pushed back
his hat and rumpled his yellow hair, looking up into Brit's face
inquiringly. "Left foot in right stirrup is riding backwards. That's a
damn good rider to ride like that--what you think, Mr. Hunter?"
CHAPTER SIX
LONE ADVISES SILENCE
Twice in the next week Lone found an excuse for riding over to the
Sawtooth. During his first visit, the foreman's wife told him that the
young lady was still too sick to talk much. The second time he went, Pop
Bridgers spied him first and cackled over his coming to see the girl.
Lone grinned and dissembled as best he could, knowing that Pop Bridgers
fed his imagination upon denials and argument and remonstrance and was
likely to build gossip that might spread beyond the Sawtooth. Wherefore
he did not go near the foreman's house that day, but contented himself
with gathering from Pop's talk that the girl was still there.
After that he rode here and there, wherever he would be likely to meet a
Sawtooth rider, and so at last he came upon Al Woodruff loping along the
crest of Juniper Ridge. Al at first displayed no intention of stopping,
but pulled up when he saw John Doe slowing down significantly. Lone
would have preferred a chat with some one else, for this was a
sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued man; but Al Woodruff stayed at the ranch and
would know all the news, and even though he might give it an ill-natured
twist, Lone would at least know what was going on. Al hailed him with a
laughing epithet.
"Say, you sure enough played hell all around, bringin' Brit Hunter's
girl to the Sawtooth!" he began, chuckling as if he had some secret
joke. "Where'd you pick her up, Lone? She claims you found her at Rock
City. That right?"
"No, it ain't right," Lone denied promptly, his dark eyes meeting Al's
glance steadily. "I found her in that gulch away this side. She was in
amongst the rocks where she was trying to keep outa the rain. Brit
Hunter's girl, is she? She told me she was going to the Sawtooth. She'd
have made it, too, if it hadn't been for the storm. She got as far as
the gulch, and the lightning scared her from going any farther." He
offered Al his tobacco sack and fumbled for a match. "I never knew Brit
Hunter had a girl."
"Nor me," Al said and sifted tobacco into a cigarette paper. "Bob, he
drove her over there yesterday. Took him close to all day to make the
trip--and Bob, he claims to hate women!"
"So would I, if I'd got stung for fifty thousand. She ain't that kind.
She's a nice girl, far as I could tell. She got well, all right, did
she?"
"Yeah--only she was still coughing some when she left the ranch. She
like to of had pneumonia, I guess. Queer how she claimed she spent the
night in Rock City, ain't it?"
"No," Lone answered judicially, "I don't know as it's so queer. She
never realized how far she'd walked, I reckon. She was plumb crazy when
I found her. You couldn't take any stock in what she said. Say, you
didn't see that bay I was halter-breaking, did yuh, Al? He jumped the
fence and got away on me, day before yesterday. I'd like to catch him up
again. He'll make a good horse."
Al had not seen the bay, and the talk tapered off desultorily to a final
"So-long, see yuh later." Lone rode on, careful not to look back. So she
was Brit Hunter's girl! Lone whistled softly to himself while he studied
this new angle of the problem,--for a problem he was beginning to
consider it. She was Brit Hunter's girl, and she had told them at the
Sawtooth that she had spent the night at Rock City. He wondered how
much else she had told; how much she remembered of what she had told
him.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a round leather purse
with a chain handle. It was soiled and shrunken with its wetting, and
the clasp had flecks of rust upon it. What it contained Lone did not
know. Virginia had taught him that a man must not be curious about the
personal belongings of a woman. Now he turned the purse over, tried to
rub out the stiffness of the leather, and smiled a little as he dropped
it back into his pocket.
"I've got my calling card," he said softly to John Doe. "I reckon I had
the right hunch when I didn't turn it over to Mrs. Hawkins. I'll ask her
again about that grip she said she hid under a bush. I never heard about
any of the boys finding it."
His thoughts returned to Al Woodruff and stopped there. Determined still
to attend strictly to his own affairs, his thoughts persisted in playing
truant and in straying to a subject he much preferred not to think of at
all. Why should Al Woodruff be interested in the exact spot where Brit
Hunter's daughter had spent the night of the storm? Why should Lone
instinctively discount her statement and lie whole-heartedly about it?
"Now if Al catches me up in that, he'll think I know a lot I don't know,
or else----" He halted his thoughts there, for that, too, was a
forbidden subject.
Forbidden subjects are like other forbidden things: they have a way of
making themselves very conspicuous. Lone was heading for the Quirt ranch
by the most direct route, fearing, perhaps, that if he waited he would
lose his nerve and would not go at all. Yet it was important that he
should go; he must return the girl's purse!
The most direct route to the Quirt took him down Juniper Ridge and
across Granite Creek near the Thurman ranch. Indeed, if he followed the
trail up Granite Creek and across the hilly country to Quirt Creek, he
must pass within fifty yards of the Thurman cabin. Lone's time was
limited, yet he took the direct route rather reluctantly. He did not
want to be reminded too sharply of Fred Thurman as a man who had lived
his life in his own way and had died so horribly.
"Well, he didn't have it coming to him--but it's done and over with,
now, so it's no use thinking about it," he reflected, when the roofs of
the Thurman ranch buildings began to show now and then through the thin
ranks of the cottonwoods along the creek.
But his face sobered as he rode along. It seemed to him that the sleepy
little meadows, the quiet murmuring of the creek, even the soft rustling
of the cottonwood leaves breathed a new loneliness, an emptiness where
the man who had called this place home, who had clung to it in the face
of opposition that was growing into open warfare, had lived and had left
life suddenly--unwarrantably, Lone knew in his heart. It might be of no
use to think about it, but the vivid memory of Fred Thurman was with him
when he rode up the trail to the stable and the small corrals. He had to
think, whether he would or no.
At the corral he came unexpectedly in sight of the Swede, who grinned a
guileless welcome and came toward him, so that Lone could not ride on
unless he would advertise his dislike of the place. John Doe, plainly
glad to find an excuse to stop, slowed and came to where Swan waited by
the gate.
"By golly, this is lonesome here," Swan complained, heaving a great
sigh. "That judge don't get busy pretty quick, I'm maybe jumping my job.
Lone, what you think? You believe in ghosts?"
"Naw. What's on your chest, Swan?" Lone slipped sidewise in the saddle,
resting his muscles. "You been seeing things?"
"No--I don't be seeing things, Lone. But sometimes I been--like I _feel_
something." He stared at Lone questioningly. "What you think, Lone, if
you be sitting down eating your supper, maybe, and you feel something
say words in your brain? Like you know something talks to you and then
quits."
Lone gave Swan a long, measuring look, and Swan laughed uneasily.
"That sounds crazy. But it's true, what something tells me in my brain.
I go and look, and by golly, it's there just like the words tell me."
Lone straightened in the saddle. "You better come clean, Swan, and tell
the whole thing. What was it? Don't talk in circles. What words did you
feel--in your brain?" In spite of himself, Lone felt as he had when the
girl had talked to him and called him Charlie.
Swan closed the gate behind him with steady hands. His lips were pressed
firmly together, as if he had definitely made up his mind to something.
Lone was impressed somehow with Swan's perfect control of his speech,
his thoughts, his actions. But he was puzzled rather than anything else,
and when Swan turned, facing him, Lone's bewilderment did not lessen.
"I'll tell you. It's when I'm sitting down to eat my supper. I'm just
reaching out my hand like this, to get my coffee. And something says in
my head, 'It's a lie. I don't ride backwards. Go look at my saddle.
There's blood----' And that's all. It's like the words go far away so I
can't hear any more. So I eat my supper, and then I get the lantern and
I go look. You come with me, Lone. I'll show you."
Without a word Lone dismounted and followed Swan into a small shed
beside the stable, where a worn stock saddle hung suspended from a
crosspiece, a rawhide string looped over the horn. Lone did not ask
whose saddle it was, nor did Swan name the owner. There was no need.
Swan took the saddle and swung it around so that the right side was
toward them. It was what is called a full-stamped saddle, with the
popular wild-rose design on skirts and cantle. Much hard use and
occasional oilings had darkened the leather to a rich, red brown, marred
with old scars and scratches and the stains of many storms.
"Blood is hard to find when it's raining all night," Swan observed,
speaking low as one does in the presence of death. "But if somebody is
bleeding and falls off a horse slow, and catches hold of things and
tries like hell to hang on----" He lifted the small flap that covered
the cinch ring and revealed a reddish, flaked stain. Phlegmatically he
wetted his finger tip on his tongue, rubbed the stain and held up his
finger for Lone to see. "That's a damn funny place for blood, when a man
is dragging on the ground," he commented drily. "And something else is
damn funny, Lone."
He lifted the wooden stirrup and touched with his finger the rowel
marks. "That is on the front part," he said. "I could swear in court
that Fred's left foot was twisted--that's damn funny, Lone. I don't see
men ride backwards, much."
Lone turned on him and struck the stirrup from his hand. "I think you
better forget it," he said fiercely. "He's dead--it can't help him any
to----" He stopped and pulled himself together. "Swan, you take a fool's
advice and don't tell anybody else about feeling words talk in your
head. They'll have you in the bug-house at Blackfoot, sure as you live."
He looked at the saddle, hesitated, looked again at Swan, who was
watching him. "That blood most likely got there when Fred was packing a
deer in from the hills. And marks on them old oxbow stirrups don't mean
a damn thing but the need of a new pair, maybe." He forced a laugh and
stepped outside the shed. "Just shows you, Swan, that imagination and
being alone all the time can raise Cain with a fellow. You want to watch
yourself."
Swan followed him out, closing the door carefully behind him. "By golly,
I'm watching out now," he assented thoughtfully. "You don't tell
anybody, Lone."
"No, I won't tell anybody--and I'd advise you not to," Lone repeated
grimly. "Just keep those thoughts outa your head, Swan. They're bad
medicine."
He mounted John Doe and rode away, his eyes downcast, his quirt slapping
absently the weeds along the trail. It was not his business, and
yet---- Lone shook himself together and put John Doe into a lope. He had
warned Swan, and he could do no more.
Halfway to the Quirt he met Lorraine riding along the trail. She would
have passed him with no sign of recognition, but Lone lifted his hat and
stopped. Lorraine looked at him, rode on a few steps and turned. "Did
you wish to speak about something?" she asked impersonally.
Lone felt the flush in his cheeks, which angered him to the point of
speaking curtly. "Yes. I found your purse where you dropped it that
night you were lost. I was bringing it over to you. My name's Morgan.
I'm the man that found you and took you in to the ranch."
"Oh." Lorraine looked at him steadily. "You're the one they call Loney?"
"When they're feeling good toward me. I'm Lone Morgan. I went back to
find your grip--you said you left it under a bush, but the world's plumb
full of bushes. I found your purse, though."
"Thank you so much. I must have been an awful nuisance, but I was so
scared--and things were terribly mixed in my mind. I didn't even have
sense enough to tell you what ranch I was trying to find, did I? So you
took me to the wrong one, and I was a week there before I found it out.
And then they were perfectly lovely about it and brought me--home." She
turned the purse over and over in her hands, looking at it without much
interest. She seemed in no hurry to ride on, which gave Lone courage.
"There's something I'd like to say," he began, groping for words that
would make his meaning plain without telling too much. "I hope you won't
mind my telling you. You were kinda out of your head when I found you,
and you said something about seeing a man shot and----"
"Oh!" Lorraine looked up at him, looked through him, he thought, with
those brilliant eyes of hers. "Then I did tell----"
"I just wanted to say," Lone interrupted her, "that I knew all the time
it was just a nightmare. I never mentioned it to anybody, and you'll
forget all about it, I hope. You didn't tell any one else, did you?"
He looked up at her again and found her studying him curiously. "You're
not the man I saw," she said, as if she were satisfying herself on that
point. "I've wondered since--but I was sure, too, that I had seen it.
Why mustn't I tell any one?"
Lone did not reply at once. The girl's eyes were disconcertingly direct,
her voice and her manner disturbed him with their judicial calmness, so
at variance with the wildness he remembered.
"Well, it's hard to explain," he said at last. "You're strange to this
country, and you don't know all the ins and outs of--things. It wouldn't
do any good to you or anybody else, and it might do a lot of harm." His
eyes nicked her face with a wistful glance. "You don't know me--I really
haven't got any right to ask or expect you to trust me. But I wish you
would, to the extent of forgetting that you saw--or thought you
saw--anything that night in Rock City."
Lorraine shivered and covered her eyes swiftly with one hand. His words
had brought back too sharply that scene. But she shook off the emotion
and faced him again.
"I saw a man murdered," she cried. "I wasn't sure afterwards; sometimes
I thought I had dreamed it. But I was sure I saw it. I saw the horse go
by, running--and you want me to keep still about that? What harm could
it do to tell? Perhaps it's true--perhaps I did see it all. I might
think you were trying to cover up something--only, you're not the man I
saw--or thought I saw."
"No, of course I'm not. You dreamed the whole thing, and the way you
talked to me was so wild, folks would say you're crazy if they heard you
tell it. You're a stranger here, Miss Hunter, and--your father is not as
popular in this country as he might be. He's got enemies that would be
glad of the chance to stir up trouble for him. You--just dreamed all
that. I'm asking you to forget a bad dream, that's all, and not go
telling it to other folks."
For some time Lorraine did not answer. The horses conversed with sundry
nose-rubbings, nibbled idly at convenient brush tips, and wondered no
doubt why their riders were so silent. Lone tried to think of some
stronger argument, some appeal that would reach the girl without
frightening her or causing her to distrust him. But he did not know what
more he could say without telling her what must not be told.
"Just how would it make trouble for my father?" Lorraine asked at last.
"I can't believe you'd ask me to help cover up a crime, but it seems
hard to believe that a nightmare would cause any great commotion. And
why is my father unpopular?"
"Well, you don't know this country," Lone parried inexpertly. "It's all
right in some ways, and in some ways it could be a lot improved. Folks
haven't got much to talk about. They go around gabbling their heads off
about every little thing, and adding onto it until you can't recognize
your own remarks after they've been peddled for a week. You've maybe
seen places like that."
"Oh, yes." Lorraine's eyes lighted with a smile. "Take a movie studio,
for instance."
"Yes. Well, you being a stranger, you would get all the worst of it. I
just thought I'd tell you; I'd hate to see you misunderstood by folks
around here. I--I feel kinda responsible for you; I'm the one that found
you."
Lorraine's eyes twinkled. "Well, I'm glad to know one person in the
country who doesn't gabble his head off. You haven't answered any of my
questions, and you've made me feel as if you'd found a dangerous, wild
woman that morning. It isn't very flattering, but I think you're honest,
anyway."
Lone smiled for the first time, and she found his smile pleasant. "I'm
no angel," he disclaimed modestly, "and most folks think I could be
improved on a whole lot. But I'm honest in one way. I'm thinking about
what's best for you, this time."
"I'm terribly grateful," Lorraine laughed. "I shall take great care not
to go all around the country telling people my dreams. I can see that it
wouldn't make me awfully popular." Then she sobered. "Mr. Morgan, that
was a _horrible_ kind of--nightmare. Why, even last night I woke up
shivering, just imagining it all over again."
"It was sure horrible the way you talked about it," Lone assured her.
"It's because you were sick, I reckon. I wish you'd tell me as close as
you can where you left that grip of yours. You said it was under a bush
where a rabbit was sitting. I'd like to find the grip--but I'm afraid
that rabbit has done moved!"
"Oh, Mr. Warfield and I found it, thank you. The rabbit had moved, but I
sort of remembered how the road had looked along there, and we hunted
until we discovered the place. Dad has driven in after my other luggage
to-day--and I believe I must be getting home. I was only out for a
little ride."
She thanked him again for the trouble he had taken and rode away. Lone
turned off the trail and, picking his way around rough outcroppings of
rock, and across unexpected little gullies, headed straight for the ford
across Granite Creek and home. Brit Hunter's girl, he was thinking, was
even nicer than he had pictured her. And that she could believe in the
nightmare was a vast relief.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MAN AT WHISPER
Brit Hunter finished washing the breakfast dishes and put a stick of
wood into the broken old cook-stove that had served him and Frank for
fifteen years and was feeling its age. Lorraine's breakfast was in the
oven, keeping warm. Brit looked in, tested the heat with his gnarled
hand to make sure that the sour-dough biscuits would not be dried to
crusts, and closed the door upon them and the bacon and fried potatoes.
Frank Johnson had the horses saddled and it was time to go, yet Brit
lingered, uneasily conscious that his habitation was lacking in many
things which a beautiful young woman might consider absolute
necessities. He had seen in Lorraine's eyes, as they glanced here and
there about the grimy walls, a certain disparagement of her
surroundings. The look had made him wince, though he could not quite
decide what it was that displeased her. Maybe she wanted lace curtains,
or something.
He set the four chairs in a row against the wall, swept up the bits of
bark and ashes beside the stove, made sure that the water bucket was
standing full on its bench beside the door, sent another critical glance
around the room, and tiptoed over to the dish cupboard and let down the
flowered calico curtain that had been looped up over a nail for
convenience. The sun sent a bright, wide bar of yellow light across the
room to rest on the shelf behind the stove where stood the salt can, the
soda, the teapot, a box of matches and two pepper cans, one empty and
the other full. Brit always meant to throw out that empty pepper can and
always neglected to do so. Just now he remembered picking up the empty
one and shaking it over the potatoes futilely and then changing it for
the full one. But he did not take it away; in the wilderness one learns
to save useless things in the faint hope that some day they may become
useful. The shelves were cluttered with fit companions to that empty
pepper can. Brit thought that he would have "cleaned out" had he known
that Lorraine was coming. Since she was here, it scarcely seemed worth
while.
He walked on his boot-toes to the door of the second room of the cabin,
listened there for a minute, heard no sound and took a tablet and pencil
off another shelf littered with useless things. The note which he wrote
painstakingly, lest she might think him lacking in education, he laid
upon the table beside Lorraine's plate; then went out, closing the door
behind him as quietly as a squeaking door can be made to close.
Lorraine, in the other room, heard the squeak and sat up. Her wrist
watch, on the chair beside her bed, said that it was fifteen minutes
past six, which she considered an unearthly hour for rising. She pulled
up the covers and tried to sleep again. The day would be long enough, at
best. There was nothing to do, unless she took that queer old horse with
withers like the breastbone of a lean Christmas turkey and hips that
reminded her of the little roofs over dormer windows, and went for a
ride. And if she did that, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do
when she arrived there.
In a very few days Lorraine had exhausted the sights of Quirt Creek and
vicinity. If she rode south she would eventually come to the top of a
hill whence she could look down upon further stretches of barrenness. If
she rode east she would come eventually to the road along which she had
walked from Echo, Idaho. Lorraine had had enough of that road. If she
went north she would--well, she would not meet Mr. Lone Morgan again,
for she had tried it twice, and had turned back because there seemed no
end to the trail twisting through the sage and rocks. West she had not
gone, but she had no doubt that it would be the same dreary monotony of
dull gray landscape.
Monotony of landscape was one thing which Lorraine could not endure,
unless it had a foreground of riders hurtling here and there, and of
perspiring men around a camera tripod. At the Sawtooth ranch, after she
was able to be up, she had seen cowboys, but they had lacked the dash
and the picturesque costuming of the West she knew. They were mostly
commonplace young men, jogging past the house on horseback, or loitering
down by the corrals. They had offered absolutely no interest or "color"
to the place, and the owner's son, Bob Warfield, had driven her over to
the Quirt in a Ford and had seemed exactly like any other big,
good-looking young man who thought well of himself. Lorraine was not
susceptible to mere good looks, three years with the "movies" having
disillusioned her quite thoroughly. Too many young men of Bob Warfield's
general type had attempted to make love to her--lightly and not too
well--for Lorraine to be greatly impressed.