Mintie stood upon the porch of the old adobe, shading her brown eyes
from the sun, now declining out of stainless skies into the brush-
hills to the west of the ranch. The hand shading the eyes trembled;
the red lips were pressed together; faint lines upon the brow and
about the mouth indicated anxiety, and possibly fear. A trapper would
have recognised in the expression of the face a watchful intensity or
apprehension common to all animals who have reason to know themselves
to be the prey of others.
Suddenly a shot rang out, repeating itself in echoes from the cañon
behind the house. Mintie turned pale, and then laughed derisively.
"Gee!" she exclaimed. "How easy scairt I am!"
She sank, gaspingly, upon a chair, and began to fan herself with the
skirt of her gown. Then, as if angry on account of a weakness,
physical rather than mental, she stood up and smiled defiantly,
showing her small white teeth. She was still trembling; and remarking
this, she stamped upon the floor of the porch, and became rigid. Her
face charmed because of its irregularity. Her skin was a clear brown,
matching the eyes and hair. She had the grace and vigour of an
unbroken filly at large upon the range. And, indeed, she had been born
in the wilderness, and left it but seldom. Her father's ranch lay
forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills--a sterile
tract of scrub--oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here
and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a
hundred acres of arable land. Behind the house bubbled a big spring
which irrigated the orchard and garden.
Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo
landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile
themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure
to offer, and the first big drink from the cold spring.
Mintie was about to enter the house, when she saw down the road a tiny
reek of white dust. "Gee!" she exclaimed for the second time.
"Who's this?"
Being summer, the hauling had not yet begun. Mintie, who had the
vision of a turkey-buzzard, stared at the reek of dust.
"Smoky Jack, I reckon," she said disdainfully. Nevertheless, she went
into the house, and when she reappeared a minute later her hair
displayed a slightly more ordered disorder, and she had donned a clean
apron.
She expressed surprise rather than pleasure when a young man rode up,
shifted in his saddle, and said:--
"How air you folks makin' it?"
"Pretty fair. Goin' to town?"
"I thought, mebbe, of goin' to town nex' week. I come over jest to
pass the time o' day with the old man."
"Rode ten miles to pass the time o' day with--Pap?"
"Yas."
"Curiously fond men air of each other!"
"That's so," said Smoky admiringly. "An' livin' alone puts notions o'
love and tenderness into my head that never comed thar when Maw was
alive an' kickin'. I tell yer, its awful lonesome on my place."
He sat up in his saddle, a handsome young fellow, the vaquero rather
than the cowboy, a distinction well understood in California. John
Short had been nicknamed Smoky Jack because of his indefatigable
efforts to clear his own brush-hills by fire. Across his saddle was a
long-barrelled, old-fashioned rifle. Mintie glanced at it.
"Was that you who fired jest now?"
"Nit," said Smoky. "I heard a shot," he added. "'Twas the old man. I'd
know the crack of his Sharp anywheres. 'Tis the dead spit o' mine.
There'll be buck's liver for supper sure."
"Why are you carryin' a gun?"
"I thought I might run acrost a deer."
"No other reason?"
Beneath her steady glance his blue eyes fell. He replied with
restraint--
"I wouldn't trust some o' these squatters any further than I could
sling a bull by the tail. Your Pap had any more trouble with 'em?"