The Will-o'-the-Wisp
For the hour, if for no longer, the tables plainly were turned upon
Sanchia. The high content which so abruptly had enveloped Helen and
Howard was comparable to the old magic armour of the fairy tales which
the fortunate prince found always at his time of need. Through it
venomed glance and bitter tongue might not pass; as Sanchia's anger
rose the two lovers looked into each other's eyes and laughed. Again
Sanchia bit her lips and sat back.
'Dear old pops,' said Helen, going to her father's side and slipping
both arms about his neck, ruffling his scant hair and otherwise making
free with his passive person, thereby achieving the dual result of
coming between him and Sanchia and giving a joyous outlet to a new
emotion. 'I am not going to leave you, after all. And the West is the
nicest country in the world, too. And Alan and I were wrong to run off
and leave you as we did. We'll stay right with you now, and it will be
so much jollier that way; won't it, Mrs. Murray?'
Longstreet patted her hand; Sanchia Murray measured her anew.
'And I too,' ran on Helen, 'must take more interest in your work, your
books. Now that we live right on the spot where the things are, the
strata and eroded cañons and--and relics of monster upheavals and
fossils of the Pliocene age and all that--it will be so much fun to
study about them, all together. Alan thinks so, I'm sure. Don't you
agree, Mrs. Murray?'
Helen's eyes were dancing, Longstreet imagined with newly inspired
interest, Alan knew with the light of battle; Sanchia's eyes were
angry. The girl had stated her plan of campaign as though in so many
words. If time came when Longstreet had a second golden secret to
tell, she meant to hear it and to have Alan hear it at least not an
instant later than Mrs. Murray; thereafter, with odds two to one
against the widow, they should see what they would see.
Sanchia did much thinking and little talking. She remained an hour.
During the last half-hour she developed a slight but growingly
insistent cough. Before she left she had drawn the desired query from
Longstreet. Oh, hadn't he noticed before? It had been coming on her
for a month. The doctors were alarmed for her--but she smiled bravely.
They had even commanded that she move away from the dust and noise of a
town; that she pitch a tent somewhere on the higher lands and live
out-doors all of the time. Helen saw what was coming before the actual
words were spoken. It was Longstreet who was finally led to extend the
invitation! Why didn't she move into a tent near them? And with a
look in which gratitude seemed blurred in a mist of tears, Sanchia
accepted. She would move to-morrow and pitch her tent right up there
near the spring.
'If you don't mind, Helen dear?' she said. 'Your little summer house
by the spring may be sacred ground?'
Promptly Helen made her a present of it. All that she wanted were some
things she had left there, a pair of spurs and a bridle; Sanchia was
perfectly welcome to the rest.
They all went out together for Sanchia's horse. And Sanchia, accepting
the altered battle-ground to which Helen's tactics had driven her,
seeing that she was to have little opportunity of getting Longstreet
off to herself, began a straight drive at her main objective. She laid
an affectionate hand on his arm as though thrown upon that necessity by
the irregularities of the trail in which she had stumbled, and turned
the battery of her really very pretty eyes upon him. With her eyes she
said, boldly yet timidly: 'You splendid man, you have touched my heart!
You noble creature, you have made Sanchia Murray love you! Generous
man, you have come to mean everything to a poor little woman who is
lonely!'
It is much to be said in a glance, but Sanchia had never travelled so
far on her chosen road of life if she had not learned, long ago, how to
put into a look all that she did not feel. And she did not stop with
the one look; again she appeared to stumble, again her eyelids
fluttered upward, her glance melted into his; again she flashed
sufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyes
burn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforward
the combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikely
opportunity of some distant tête-à-tête to emphasize her intention.
Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed man
to hold her two hands; and she told him whisperingly:
'I would to God that you had come a few years earlier into the life of
Sanchia Murray!' She sighed and squeezed his hands. Then she smiled a
wan little smile. 'You have come to mean so much, oh, so much, in my
poor little lonely existence.'
She mounted and rode away, waving her farewell, looking only at
Longstreet. They all saw how, before she reached the bend in the
trail, her handkerchief went to her eyes. Longstreet appeared
genuinely worried.
'I am sorry for that little woman,' he said thoughtfully.
'She's making love at you, papa,' laughed Helen, as though the matter
were of no moment but delightfully ridiculous. 'Fancy Sanchia Murray
falling in love with dear old pops!'
He looked at her severely.
'You should not speak lightly of such matters, my dear,' he chided her.
'Mind you, I am not admitting that there is any ground for such a
suspicion as you express.'
'But if there were ground for it?'
'Is there any reason why a pretty woman should not fall in love?' he
asked her stiffly. 'Further, is your father such a man that no woman
could care for him?' He stalked away.
Helen gasped after him and was speechless.
In due course of time Howard recalled that there was a man named
Roberts, a teamster in Sanchia's Town; and that on the Desert Valley
ranch there were mules which should be sold; and that, though there was
a golden paradise here in Bear Valley, there remained a workaday world
outside the charmed confines where time was of the essence. He made
Helen understand that if he were to make good in his acquisition of the
cattle range he must be down there among his men and his herds during
every working hour of the day, but that the nights were his own. He
was to come up every night that it was possible. She was to guard her
father from Sanchia during the days; he was to seek to be on hand if
ever the golden news broke again; they two were to check the
adventuress' move. And Helen was to keep the spurs and bridle; she was
to take Danny not as a loan but as a gift, of which only they were to
know; she was to induce her father to ride down to the lower valley to
watch the round-up. Then, lingeringly and with many a backward look,
Alan Howard went on his way.
He found his man and, while Howard sat sideways in the saddle and
Roberts whittled at a stick, they drove their bargain. The mules were
sold for two thousand dollars, if they were as Roberts remembered them
and as Howard represented them; Roberts would ride down the next day
for them and would pay six hundred dollars as the first payment and
thereafter not less than two hundred a month. Howard was satisfied.
He would have a little more cash for running expenses or for the
purchase of more stock if he could find another chance like that when
he had bought the calves from Tony Vaca in French Valley.
The week rolled by, bursting with details requiring quick attention.
Danny was found, roped, saddled and bridled. Longstreet rode him,
delighting in the pony's high spirits, more delighted to see how he
'came around.' Gentled sufficiently and reminded that he was no longer
a free agent to fling up his heels at the wind and race recklessly
where he would, but that he was man's friend and servant, Danny was
presented to Helen. He ate sugar that she gave him; he returned bit by
bit the impulsive love which she granted him outright. In his new
trappings, to which Howard had added a saddle from his own stables,
Danny accepted his new honours like a thoroughbred.
Helen rode him the day she and her father came down from the hills for
the round-up. Longstreet out-Romaned the Romans: his spurs were the
biggest, his yell when he circled a herd was the most piercing, his
borrowed chaps struck the eye from afar; his hat was a Stetson and
amazingly tall. Now and then, when his horse swerved sharply to head
off a racing steer, he came near falling. Once he did fall and rolled
wildly through the dust of a corral; but he only continued his
occupation with the more vim and was heard to shout over and over:
'It's the life, boys! It's the life!'
Helen, often riding at Howard's side, saw how the herds were brought
down from the hills; how they were counted and graded; how the select
were driven into the fattest pasture lands. She watched the branding
of those few head that had escaped other round-ups. At first she
cringed back as she saw the hot iron and the smoke rising from the
hides and smelled the scorching hair and flesh. But she came to
understand the necessity and further she saw that little pain was
inflicted, that the victims though they struggled and bellowed were
soon grazing quietly with their fellows. And at last the time had come
when she had learned to ride. That was the supreme joy of the moment.
To Howard, no less, was it a joy. He watched her race, with whip
whirling over her head, to cut off the lunging attempt at escape made
over and over by the wilder cattle; he saw that with every hour her
seat in the saddle became more secure; he read that she was not afraid.
He looked forward to long rides, just the two of them, across the
billowing sweep of Desert Valley, in the golden time when the title
rested secure with them, in the time when at last all dreams came true.
Of any world outside their own happy valley they knew little. Sanchia
had pitched her tent near the Longstreet camp, but these days she was
left very much to herself. They did not pass through Sanchia's Town on
their way back and forth and knew and cared nothing of its activities.
The Longstreets, keenly interested in all that went forward on the
ranch, were persuaded to accept Howard's hospitality for three days and
nights. They rode early and late; there were the brief before-bedtime
talks together; Helen saw the bluebird feather and laughed about it;
she claimed it, but was in the end, after a deal of bantering argument,
content to leave it where it was. She allowed Howard to talk what she
branded as foolishness about certain alterations in the old house which
he prophesied would be necessary before long; she grew into the custom
of speaking of the room which she had occupied on her first visit to
the ranch as 'my room.' She was very happy and forgot that her father
was a troublesome childlike parent who fancied that he knew how to
discover gold mines. What did mere gold amount to, anyway?
Then came the drive. The pick of the herd were to be moved slowly down
to San Juan. Howard had communicated with his former buyers, and they
were eager for more of his stock and at the former price. He wanted
Helen and her father to come with them. But Longstreet shook his head
smilingly.
'I'm two-thirds cowboy now,' he chuckled. 'A few more days of this and
I'll be coming to you and asking for a job! It won't do, my boy. It
won't do. Especially at a time like this. You make your drive and
I'll make mine. And I'll bet you a new twenty-dollar hat that when you
get back I'll have found gold again.'
So the Longstreets went back to Bear Valley and the drive began.
Howard started his cattle moving at three o'clock the next morning.
And almost from the beginning, although everything started
auspiciously, he encountered hardship. At ten o'clock that morning he
came upon a dead calf, its throat torn out as though by a ravening
monster wolf; a section of the flesh seemed to have been removed by a
sharp knife. That was nothing; to him it merely spelled Kish Taka, and
Kish Taka was his friend and welcome. But as he rode on, reflecting,
he read more in the omen. If Kish Taka were here, in the hills, then
somewhere near by Jim Courtot had passed. Then shortly after noon he
came upon what he knew must be the work of Jim Courtot. And he
surmised with rising anger that recently Courtot had seen Sanchia and
that again Courtot was Sanchia's right hand. Here was a little hollow;
on two sides were steep banks. Along these banks lay four big steers,
dead, a rifle bullet through each one. Already the buzzards were
gathering.
Dave Terril came upon him and found him bending over one of the big
stiffening bodies. Howard's face was white, the deadly hue of rage.
'Who done that for you, Al?' muttered Dave wonderingly.
'Jim Courtot!'
'Why don't you go get him, Al?'
'Why don't I?' said Howard dully.
Why did he not lay a fierce hand upon the wind that danced over the
hills? It was no more elusive than Jim Courtot. Why did not Kish
Taka, the eternally vigilant, come up with his prey? Nowhere in the
world is there so baffling a quarry as a hunted man. Jim Courtot
struck and vanished; he played the waiting game; he would give his
right hand for Howard's death, his left hand for the Indian's. But in
his heart, his visions his own, he was afraid.
Before they came to Sunderberg's Meadows, where it had been arranged
that the herd was to pasture that night, they saw the wide-flung grey
films of smoke. Accident or hatred had fired the dry grass; flames
danced and sang their thin songs of burning destruction; the wide
fields were already black. Howard had bought and paid for the pasture
land; the loss was his, not Sunderberg's; Courtot, if Courtot it was,
or perhaps Monte Devine or Ed True, had been before him. Sanchia's
venom--for, be the hand of the agent whose it may, he recalled always
the look in Sanchia's eyes and the threat from Sanchia's lips--seemed
to travel with him and in front of him. His cattle browsed that night
on a rocky, almost grassless ground, making the best of what poor shrub
growths they could lay their dry tongues to. There was no water; the
pools lay in the heart of a smouldering tract too hot to drive across.
When the cattle had rested, without waiting for full day Howard was
forced to start them on and to make a wide swerve out of his intended
direction to come soon to feed and water. Otherwise the drive would
become a tremendous misfortune and loss. His cattle would lose weight
rapidly under privation; they would when delivered in San Juan only
vaguely resemble the choice herd he had promised; scrawny and jaded,
under weight and wretched, their price would drop from the top to the
bottom of the scale. He would make for the San Doran place; Doran,
though no friend, would at least sell him hay; the figure would be
high, since Doran, no man better, knew when the other man was down and
in a ditch. But water and food must be had.
Howard, toward noon, rode ahead to Doran's house. Doran was out in
front of his barn, breaking a team of colts, working one at the time
with a steady old mare, and in a hot and unpleasant mood. He saw
Howard and behind him the dust-clouds of an advancing herd.
'Got any hay?' demanded Howard.
'Two barns full,' said Doran.
'Sell me enough to take care of my cows? Sunderberg's pastures were
burned out; I'm up against it for feed.'
'Can't,' said Doran. 'Guess I'm sold out already for all I can let go.'
Howard wondered who was buying up hay at this time and by the big
barnful.
'A fellow came by here yesterday,' explained Doran, and took an option
on my whole lot.' His shrewd eyes gleamed. 'And at my own figure,
too! Which was four dollars the ton higher'n the market! That's going
a few, ain't it?'
'Who was the man?' asked Howard.
'Fellow named Devine. Know him?'
Howard pondered swiftly. Then he demanded: 'Just an option? Mind
saying how much cash you got, Doran?'
'Why, no. He said he was short of cash, but he slipped me twenty bucks
to tie the option. I'm expecting him back to-morrow or next day to
close the deal.'
Howard sought swiftly to explain what Devine's play was; it was his
suspicion that the twenty dollars would be forfeited and that Doran's
hay would remain in his barns a thousand years if he waited for Devine
to come back for it. But Doran, though he seemed to reflect, was
stubborn. He hadn't a bale to sell, and that was all there was of it.
He even grinned behind Howard's departing back.
The drive continued. Slowly the panting brutes were urged on; at every
water-hole and every trail-side pasture they were rested. In the
afternoon Howard found a rancher who could spare half a dozen bales of
hay; they were promptly purchased, opened and thrown to the herd; to
disappear instantly. That night camp was made on the upper courses of
the Morales Creek. It was less than satisfactory; it was better than
nothing.
Thus the journey into San Juan required twice the time Howard had
counted upon. And when at last he and his men urged his lagging cattle
to the fringes of the village, he knew that the herd was in no
condition for an immediate delivery. He rode ahead and saw Engle at
the bank; from Engle he rented the best pasture to be had at hand and
bought hay; then, impatient at the enforced delay, he pitched camp and
strove in a week to bring back his stock to something of its former
condition.
Alone, he rode that night into San Juan, his eyes showing the rage
which day after day had grown in his heart. His revolver loose in its
holster he visited first the Casa Blanca, Crook Galloway's old place of
sinister reputation. Some day he must meet Jim Courtot; might not that
time have arrived? God knew he had waited long enough. But Jim
Courtot was not to be found here; nor anywhere in San Juan, though
Howard sought him out everywhere. No, men told him; they had not laid
eyes upon Courtot since Howard had last sought him here.
Finally the delivery was made at the local stock pens; the cattle
crowded through the narrow defile, were counted and weighed and paid
for. The purchasing agent looked at Howard curiously.
'You had higher grade stuff last time,' he said. 'This bunch isn't in
the same class with the other shipment.'
'Don't I know it?' Howard flared out at him, grown irritable here of
late.
He took his cheque, banked it and left town, advancing his men a little
money and telling them to cut their holiday short. Then he saddled his
best horse and headed back for Desert Valley the shortest way. His
expenses had been far heavier than they should have been; his receipts
lower. He knew that look he would see in Sanchia's eyes when again
they met; he prayed that the time might come when he could come close
enough to Jim Courtot to read and answer his look. He thought of Kish
Taka, and for the first time with anger; Kish Taka should keep his
hands off.