six minutes in meditating upon her immediate surroundings, and fell to
wondering why it was that the real West was so terribly commonplace.
Why, yesterday she had been brought to such a pass of sheer loneliness
that she had actually been driven to reading an old horse-doctor book!
She had learned the symptoms of epizooetic--whatever that was--and
poll-evil and stringhalt, and had gone from that to making a shopping
tour through a Montgomery Ward catalogue. There was nothing else in the
house to read, except a half dozen old copies of the _Boise News_.
There was nothing to do, nothing to see, no one to talk to. Her dad and
the big, heavy-set man whom he called Frank, seemed uncomfortably aware
of their deficiencies and were pitiably anxious to make her feel
welcome,--and failed. They called her "Raine." The other two men did not
call her anything at all. They were both sandy-complexioned and they
both chewed tobacco quite noticeably, and when they sat down in their
shirt sleeves to eat, Lorraine had seen irregular humps in their hip
pockets which must be six-guns; though why they should carry them in
their pockets instead of in holster belts buckled properly around their
bodies and sagging savagely down at one side and swinging ferociously
when they walked, Lorraine could not imagine. They did not wear chaps,
either, and their spurs were just spurs, without so much as a silver
concho anywhere. Cowboys in overalls and blue gingham shirts and faded
old coats whose lapels lay in wrinkles and whose pockets were torn down
at the corners! If Lorraine had not been positive that this was actually
a cattle ranch in Idaho, she never would have believed that they were
anything but day laborers.
"It's a comedy part for the cattle-queen's daughter," she admitted,
putting out a hand to stroke the lean, gray cat that jumped upon her bed
from the open window. "Ket, it's a _scream_! I'll take my West before
the camera, thank you; or I would, if I hadn't jumped right into the
middle of this trick West before I knew what I was doing. Ket, what do
you do to pass away the time? I don't see how you can have the nerve to
live in an empty space like this and purr!"
She got up then, looked into the kitchen and saw the paper on the table.
This was new and vaguely promised some sort of break in the deadly
monotony which she saw stretching endlessly before her. Carrying the
nameless cat in her arms, Lorraine went in her bare feet across the
grimy, bare floor to the table and picked up the note. It read simply:
"Your brekfast is in the oven we wont be back till dark maby. Don't
leave the ranch today. Yr loveing father."
Lorraine hugged the cat so violently that she choked off a purr in the
middle. "'Don't leave the ranch to-day!' Ket, I believe it's going to be
dangerous or something, after all."
She dressed quickly and went outside into the sunlight, the cat at her
heels, the thrill of that one command filling the gray monotone of the
hills with wonderful possibilities of adventure. Her father had made no
objection before when she went for a ride. He had merely instructed her
to keep to the trails, and if she didn't know the way home, to let the
reins lie loose on Yellowjacket's neck and he would bring her to the
gate.
Yellowjacket's instinct for direction had not been working that day,
however. Lorraine had no sooner left the ranch out of sight behind her
than she pretended that she was lost. Yellowjacket had thereupon walked
a few rods farther and stopped, patiently indifferent to the location of
his oats box. Lorraine had waited until his head began to droop lower
and lower, and his switching at flies had become purely automatic.
Yellowjacket was going to sleep without making any effort to find the
way home. But since Lorraine had not told her father anything about it,
his injunction could not have anything to do with the unreliability of
the horse.
"Now," she said to the cat, "if three or four bandits would appear on
the ridge, over there, and come tearing down into the immediate
foreground, jump the gate and surround the house, I'd know this was the
real thing. They'd want to make me tell where dad kept his gold or
whatever it was they wanted, and they'd have me tied to a chair--and
then, cut to Lone Morgan (that's a perfectly _wonderful_ name for the
lead!) hearing shots and coming on a dead run to the rescue." She
picked up the cat and walked slowly down the hard-trodden path to the
stable. "But there aren't any bandits, and dad hasn't any gold or
anything else worth stealing--Ket, if dad isn't a miser, he's _poor_!
And Lone Morgan is merely ashamed of the way I talked to him, and afraid
I'll queer myself with the neighbors. No Western lead that _I_ ever saw
would act like that. Why, he didn't even want to ride home with me, that
day.
"And Bob Warfield and his Ford are incidents of the past, and not one
soul at the Sawtooth seems to give a darn whether I'm in the country or
out of it. Soon as they found out where I belonged, they brought me over
here and dropped me and forgot all about me. And that, I suppose, is
what they call in fiction the Western spirit!
"Dad looked exactly as if he'd opened the door to a book agent when I
came. He--he _tolerates_ my presence, Ket! And Frank Johnson's pipe
smells to high heaven, and I hate him in the house and 'the boys'--hmhm!
The _boys_--Ket, it would be terribly funny, if I didn't have to stay
here."
She had reached the corral and stood balancing the cat on a warped top
rail, staring disconsolately at Yellowjacket, who stood in a far corner
switching at flies and shamelessly displaying all the angularity of his
bones under a yellowish hide with roughened hair that was shedding
dreadfully, as Lorraine had discovered to her dismay when she removed
her green corduroy skirt after riding him. Yellowjacket's lower lip
sagged with senility or lack of spirit, Lorraine could not tell which.
"You look like the frontispiece in that horse-doctor book," she
remarked, eyeing him with disfavor. "I can't say that comedy hide you've
got improves your appearance. You'd be better peeled, I believe."
She heard a chuckle behind her and turned quickly, palm up to shield her
eyes from the straight, bright rays of the sun. Now here was a live man,
after all, with his hat tilted down over his forehead, a cigarette in
one hand and his reins in the other, looking at her and smiling.
"Why don't you peel him, just on a chance?" His smile broadened to a
grin, but when Lorraine continued to look at him with a neutral
expression in her eyes, he threw away his cigarette and abandoned with
it his free-and-easy manner.
"You're Miss Hunter, aren't you? I rode over to see your father. Thought
I'd find him somewhere around the corral, maybe."
"You won't, because he's gone for the day. No, I don't know where."
"I--see. Is Mr. Johnson anywhere about?"
"No, I don't believe any one is anywhere about. They were all gone when
I got up, a little while ago." Then, remembering that she did not know
this man, and that she was a long way from neighbors, she added, "If
you'll leave a message I can tell dad when he comes home."
"No-o--I'll ride over to-morrow or next day. I'm the man at Whisper. You
can tell him I called, and that I'll call again."
Still he did not go, and Lorraine waited. Some instinct warned her that
the man had not yet stated his real reason for coming, and she wondered
a little what it could be. He seemed to be watching her covertly, yet
she failed to catch any telltale admiration for her in his scrutiny. She
decided that his forehead was too narrow to please her, and that his
eyes were too close together, and that the lines around his mouth were
cruel lines and gave the lie to his smile, which was pleasant enough if
you just looked at the smile and paid no attention to anything else in
his face.
"You had quite an experience getting out here, they tell me," he
observed carelessly; too carelessly, thought Lorraine, who was well
schooled in the circumlocutions of delinquent tenants, agents of various
sorts and those who crave small gossip of their neighbors. "Heard you
were lost up in Rock City all night."
Lorraine looked up at him, startled. "I caught a terrible cold," she
said, laughing nervously. "I'm not used to the climate," she added
guardedly.
The man fumbled in his pocket and produced smoking material. "Do you
mind if I smoke?" he asked perfunctorily.
"Why, no. It doesn't concern me in the slightest degree." Why, she
thought confusedly, must she _always_ be reminded of that horrible place
of rocks? What was it to this man where she had been lost?
"You must of got there about the time the storm broke," the man hazarded
after a silence. "It's sure a bad place in a thunderstorm. Them rocks
draw lightning. Pretty bad, wasn't it?"
"Lightning is always bad, isn't it?" Lorraine tried to hold her voice
steady. "I don't know much about it. We don't have thunderstorms to
amount to anything, in Los Angeles. It sometimes does thunder there in
the winter, but it is very mild."
With hands that trembled she picked the cat off the rail and started
toward the house. "I'll tell dad what you said," she told him, glancing
back over her shoulder. When she saw that he had turned his horse and
was frankly following her to the house, her heart jumped wildly into her
throat,--judging by the feel of it.
"I'm plumb out of matches. I wonder if you can let me have some," he
said, still speaking too carelessly to reassure her. "So you stuck it
out in Rock City all through that storm! That's more than what I'd want
to do."
She did not answer that, but once on the doorstep Lorraine turned and
faced him. Quite suddenly it came to her--the knowledge of why she did
not like this man. She stared at him, her eyes wide and bright.
"Your hat's brown!" she exclaimed unguardedly. "I--I saw a man with a
brown hat----"
He laughed suddenly. "If you stay around here long you'll see a good
many," he said, taking off his hat and turning it on his hand before
her. "This here hat I traded for yesterday. I had a gray one, but it
didn't suit me. Too narrow in the brim. Brown hats are getting to be the
style. If I can borrow half a dozen matches, Miss Hunter, I'll be
going."
Lorraine looked at him again doubtfully and went after the matches. He
thanked her, smiling down at her quizzically. "A man can get along
without lots of things, but he's plumb lost without matches. You've
maybe saved my life, Miss Hunter, if you only knew it."
She watched him as he rode away, opening the gate and letting himself
through without dismounting. He disappeared finally around a small spur
of the hill, and Lorraine found her knees trembling under her.
"Ket, you're an awful fool," she exclaimed fiercely. "Why did you let me
give myself away to that man? I--I believe he _was_ the man. And if I
really did see him, it wasn't my imagination at all. He saw me there,
perhaps. Ket, I'm scared! I'm not going to stay on this ranch all alone.
I'm going to saddle the family skeleton, and I'm going to ride till
dark. There's something queer about that man from Whisper. I'm afraid
of him."
After awhile, when she had finished her breakfast and was putting up a
lunch, Lorraine picked up the nameless gray cat and holding its head
between her slim fingers, looked at it steadily. "Ket, you're the
humanest thing I've seen since I left home," she said wistfully. "I
_hate_ a country where horrible things happen under the surface and the
top is just gray and quiet and so dull it makes you want to scream. Lone
Morgan lied to me. He lied--he lied!" She hugged the cat impulsively and
rubbed her cheek absently against it, so that it began purring
immediately.
"Ket--I'm afraid of that man at Whisper!" she breathed miserably against
its fur.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"IT TAKES NERVE JUST TO HANG ON"
Brit was smoking his pipe after supper and staring at nothing, though
his face was turned toward the closed door. Lorraine had washed the
dishes and was tidying the room and looking at her father now and then
in a troubled, questioning way of which Brit was quite oblivious.
"Dad," she said abruptly, "who is the man at Whisper?"
Brit turned his eyes slowly to her face as if he had not grasped her
meaning and was waiting for her to repeat the question. It was evident
that his thoughts had pulled away from something that meant a good deal
to him.
"Why?"
"A man came this morning, and said he was the man at Whisper, and that
he would come again to see you."
Brit took his pipe from his mouth, looked at it and crowded down the
tobacco with a forefinger. "He seen me ride away from the ranch, this
morning," he said. "He was coming down the Whisper trail as I was taking
the fork over to Sugar Spring, Frank and me. What did he say he wanted
to see me about?"
"He didn't say. He asked for you and Frank." Lorraine sat down and
folded her arms on the oilcloth-covered table. "Dad, what _is_ Whisper?"
"Whisper's a camp up against a cliff, over west of here. It belongs to
the Sawtooth. Is that all he said? Just that he wanted to see me?"
"He--talked a little," Lorraine admitted, her eyebrows pulled down. "If
he saw you leave, I shouldn't think he'd come here and ask for you."
"He knowed I was gone," Brit stated briefly.
With a finger nail Lorraine traced the ugly, brown pattern on the
oilcloth. It was not easy to talk to this silent man who was her father,
but she had done a great deal of thinking during that long, empty day,
and she had reached the point where she was afraid not to speak.
"Dad!"
"What do you want, Raine?"
"Dad, was--has any one around here died, lately?"
"Died? Nobody but Fred Thurman, over here on Granite. He was drug with a
horse and killed."
Lorraine caught her breath, saw Brit looking at her curiously and moved
closer to him. She wanted to be near somebody just then, and after all,
Brit was her father, and his silence was not the inertia of a dull mind,
she knew. He seemed bottled-up, somehow, and bitter. She caught his hand
and held it, feeling its roughness between her two soft palms.
"Dad, I've got to tell you. I feel trapped, somehow. Did his horse have
a white face, dad?"
"Yes, he's a blaze-faced roan. Why?" Brit moved uncomfortably, but he
did not take his hand away from her. "What do you know about it, Raine?"
"I saw a man shoot Fred Thurman and push his foot through the stirrup.
And, dad, I believe it was that man at Whisper. The one I saw had on a
brown hat, and this man wears a brown hat--and I was advised not to tell
any one I had been at that place they call Rock City, when the storm
came. Dad, would an innocent man--one that didn't have anything to do
with a crime--would he try to cover it up afterwards?"
Brit's hand shook when he removed the pipe from his mouth and laid it on
the table. His face had turned gray while Lorraine watched him
fearfully. He laid his hand on her shoulder, pressing down hard--and at
last his eyes met her big, searching ones.
"If he wanted to _live_--in this country--he'd have to. Leastways, he'd
have to keep his mouth shut," he said grimly.
"And he'd try to shut the mouths of others----"
"If he cared anything about them, he would. You ain't told anybody what
you saw, have yuh?"
Lorraine hid her face against his arm. "Just Lone Morgan, and he thought
I was crazy and imagined it. That was in the morning, when he found me.
And he--he wanted me to go on thinking it was just a nightmare--that I'd
imagined the whole thing. And I did, for awhile. But this man at Whisper
tried to find out where I was that night----"
Brit pulled abruptly away from her, got up and opened the door. He
stood there for a time, looking out into the gloom of early nightfall.
He seemed to be listening, Lorraine thought. When he came back to her
his voice was lower, his manner intangibly furtive.
"You didn't tell him anything, did you?" he asked, as if there had been
no pause in their talk.
"No--I made him believe I wasn't there. Or I tried to. And dad! As I was
going to cross that creek just before you come to Rock City, two men
came along on horseback, and I hid before they saw me. They stopped to
water their horses, and they were talking. They said something about the
TJ had been here a long time, but they would get theirs, and it was like
sitting into a poker game with a nickel. They said the little ones
aren't big enough to fight the Sawtooth, and they'd carry lead under
their hides if they didn't leave. Dad, isn't your brand the TJ? That's
what it looks like on Yellowjacket."
Brit did not answer, and when Lorraine was sure that he did not mean to
do so, she asked another question. "Dad, why didn't you want me to leave
the ranch to-day? I was nervous after that man was here, and I did go."
"I didn't want you riding around the country unless I knew where you
went," Brit said. "My brand is the TJ up-and-down. We never call it just
the TJ."
"Oh," said Lorraine, relieved. "They weren't talking about you, then.
But dad--it's horrible! We simply _can't_ let that murder go and not do
anything. Because I know that man was shot. I heard the shot fired, and
I saw him start to fall off his horse. And the next flash of lightning I
saw----"
"Look here, Raine. I don't want you talking about what you saw. I don't
want you _thinkin'_ about it. What's the use? Thurman's dead and buried.
The cor'ner come and held an inquest, and the jury agreed it was an
accident. I was on the jury. The sheriff's took charge of his property.
You couldn't prove what you saw, even if you was to try." He looked at
her very much as Lone Morgan had looked at her. His next words were very
nearly what Lone Morgan had said, Lorraine remembered. "You don't know
this country like I know it. Folks live in it mainly because they don't
go around blatting everything they see and hear and think."
"You have laws, don't you, dad? You spoke about the sheriff----"
"The sheriff!" Brit laughed harshly. "Yes, we got a sheriff, and we got
a jail, and a judge--all the makin's of law. But we ain't got one thing
that goes with it, and that's justice. You'd best make up your mind like
the cor'ner's jury done, that Fred Thurman was drug to death by his
horse. That's all that'll ever be proved, and if you can't prove nothing
else you better keep your mouth shut."
Lorraine sprang up and stood facing her father, every nerve taut with
protest. "You don't mean to tell me, dad, that you and Frank Johnson and
Lone Morgan and--everybody in the country are _cowards_, do you?"
Brit looked at her patiently. "No," he said in the tone of acknowledged
defeat, "we ain't cowards, Raine. A man ain't a coward when he stands
with his hands over his head. Most generally it's because some one's got
the drop on 'im."
Lorraine would not accept that. "You think so, because you don't fight,"
she cried hotly. "No one is holding a gun at your head. Dad! I thought
Westerners never quit. It's fight to the finish, always. Why, I've seen
one man fight a whole outfit and win. He couldn't be beaten because he
wouldn't give up. Why----"
Brit gave her a tolerant glance. "Where'd you see all that, Raine?" He
moved to the table picked up his pipe and knocked out the ashes on the
stove hearth. His movements were those of an aging man,--yet Brit Hunter
was not old, as age is reckoned.
"Well--in stories--but it was reasonable and logical and possible, just
the same. If you use your brains you can outwit them, and if you have
any nerve----"
Brit made a sound somewhat like a snort. "These days, when politics is
played by the big fellows, and the law is used to make money for 'em, it
takes nerve just to hang on," he said. "Nobody but a dang fool would
fight." Slow anger grew within him. He turned upon Lorraine almost
fiercely. "D'yuh think me and Frank could fight the Sawtooth and get
anything out of it but a coffin apiece, maybe?" he demanded harshly.
"Don't the Sawtooth _own_ this country? Warfield's got the sheriff in
his pocket, and the cor'ner, and the judge, and the stock
inspector--he's _Senator_ Warfield, and what he wants he gets. He gets
it through the law that you was talking about a little while ago. What
you goin' to do about it? If I had the money and the land and the
political pull he's got, mebby I'd have me a sheriff and a judge, too.
"Fred Thurman tried to fight the Sawtooth over a water right he owned
and they wanted. They had the case runnin' in court till they like to of
took the last dollar he had. He got bull-headed. That water right meant
the hull ranch--everything he owned. You can't run a ranch without
water. And when he'd took the case up and up till it got to the Supreme
Court, and he stood some show of winnin' out--he had an accident. He was
drug to death by his horse."
Brit stooped and opened the stove door, seeking a live coal; found none
and turned again to Lorraine, shaking his pipe at her for emphasis.
"We try to prove Fred was murdered, and what's the result? Something
happens: to me, mebby, or Frank, or both of us. And you can't say,
'Here, I know the Sawtooth had a hand in that.' You got to _prove_ it!
And when you've proved it," he added bitterly, "you got to have officers
that'll carry out the law instead of using it to hog-tie yuh."
His futile, dull anger surged up again. "You call us cowards because we
don't git up on our hind legs and fight the Sawtooth. A lot _you_ know
about courage! You've read stories, and you've saw moving pictures, and
you think that's the West--that's the way they do it. One man hold off a
hunderd with his gun--and on the other hand, a hunderd men, mebby,
ridin' hell-whoopin' after one. You think that's it--that's the way they
do it. Hunh!" He lifted the lid of the stove, spat into it as if he were
spitting in the face of an enemy, and turned again to Lorraine.
"What you seen--what you say you seen--that was done at night when there
wasn't no audience. All the fighting the Sawtooth does is done under
cover. _You_ won't see none of it--they ain't such fools. And what us
small fellers do, we do it quiet, too. We ain't ridin' up and down the
trail, flourishin' our six-shooters and yellin' to the Sawtooth to come
on and we'll clean 'em up!"
"But you're fighting just the same, aren't you, dad? You're not letting
them----"
"We're makin' out to live here--and we've been doin' it for twenty-five
year," Brit told her, with a certain grim dignity. "We've still got a
few head uh stock left--enough to live on. Playin' poker with a nickel,
mebby--but we manage to ante, every hand so fur." His mind returned to
the grisly thing Lorraine had seen.
"We can't run down the man that got Fred Thurman, supposin' he was
killed, as you say. That's what the law is paid to do. If Lone Morgan
told you not to talk about it, he told you right. He was talking for
your own good. What about Al--the man from Whisper? You didn't tell
_him_, did you?"
His tone, the suppressed violence of his manner, frightened Lorraine.
She moved farther away from him.
"I didn't tell him anything. He was curious but--I only said I knew him
because he was wearing a brown hat, and the man that shot Mr. Thurman
had a brown hat. I didn't say all that. I just mentioned the hat. And he
said there were lots of brown hats in the country. He said he had traded
for that one, just yesterday. He said his own hat was gray."
Brit stared at her, his jaw sagging a little, his eyes growing vacant
with the thoughts he hid deep in his mind. He slumped down into his
chair and leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, his fingers
clasped loosely. After a little he tilted his head and looked up at
her.
"You better go to bed," he told her stolidly. "And if you're going to
live at the Quirt, Raine, you'll have to learn to keep your mouth shut.
I ain't blaming you--but you told too much to Al Woodruff. Don't talk to
him no more, if he comes here when I'm gone." He put out a hand,
beckoning her to him, sorry for his harshness. Lorraine went to him and
knelt beside him, slipping an arm around his neck while she hid her face
on his shoulder.
"I won't be a nuisance, dad--really, I won't," she said. "I--I can shoot
a gun. I never shot one with bullets in, but I could. And I learned to
do lots of things when I was working in that play West I thought was
real. It isn't like I thought. There's no picture stuff in the real
West, I guess; they don't do things that way. But--what I want you to
know is that if they're fighting you they'll have to fight me, too.