The Hill Girl
The Irish cowpuncher guided young Royal Beaudry through Wagon Wheel Gap
himself. They traveled in the night, since it would not do for the two
to be seen together. In the early morning Ryan left the young man and
turned back toward Battle Butte. The way to Huerfano Park, even from
here, was difficult to find, but Roy had a map drawn from memory by Pat.
"I'll not guarantee it," the little rider had cautioned. "It's been
many a year since I was in to the park and maybe my memory is playing
tricks. But it's the best I can do for you."
Beaudry spent the first half of the day in a pine grove far up in the
hills. It would stir suspicion if he were seen on the road at dawn,
for that would mean that he must have come through the Gap in the
night. So he unsaddled and stretched himself on the sun-dappled ground
for an hour or two's rest. He did not expect to sleep, even though he
had been up all night. He was too uneasy in mind and his nerves were
too taut.
But it was a perfect day of warm spring sunshine. He looked up into a
blue unflecked sky. The tireless hum of insects made murmurous music
all about him. The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds. His
eyes closed drowsily.
When he opened them again, the sun was high in the heavens. He saddled
and took the trail. Within the hour he knew that he was lost. Either
he had mistaken some of the landmarks of Ryan's sketchy map or else the
cowpuncher had forgotten the lay of the country.
Still, Roy knew roughly the general direction of Huerfano Park. If he
kept going he was bound to get nearer. Perhaps he might run into a
road or meet some sheepherder who would put him on the right way.
He was in the heart of the watershed where Big Creek heads.
Occasionally from a hilltop he could see the peaks rising gaunt in
front of him. Between him and them were many miles of tangled
mesquite, wooded canons, and hills innumerable. Somewhere among the
recesses of these land waves Huerfano Park was hidden.
It was three o'clock by Royal's watch when he had worked to the top of
a bluff which looked down upon a wooded valley. His eyes swept the
landscape and came to rest upon an object moving slowly in the
mesquite. He watched it incuriously, but his interest quickened when
it came out of the bushes into a dry water-course and he discovered
that the figure was that of a human being. The person walked with an
odd, dragging limp. Presently he discerned that the traveler below was
a woman and that she was pulling something after her. For perhaps
fifty yards she would keep going and then would stop. Once she
crouched down over her load.
Roy cupped his hands at his mouth and shouted. The figure straightened
alertly and looked around. He called to her again. His voice must
have reached her very faintly. She did not try to answer in words, but
fired twice with a revolver. Evidently she had not yet seen him.
That there was something wrong Beaudry felt sure. He did not know
what, nor did he waste any time speculating about it. The easiest
descent to the valley was around the rear of the bluff, but Roy
clambered down a heavily wooded gulch a little to the right. He saved
time by going directly.
When Roy saw the woman again he was close upon her. She was stooped
over something and her back and arms showed tension. At sound of his
approach she flung up quickly the mass of inky black hair that had
hidden her bent face. As she rose it became apparent that she was tall
and slender, and that the clear complexion, just now at least, was
quite without color.
Moving forward through the underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky
nymph with surprise. In her attitude was something wild and free and
proud. It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had
summoned him. Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman
primeval before the conventions of civilization had tamed her to its
uses.
Her intent eyes watched him steadily as he came into the open.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
"I was on the bluff and saw you. I thought you were in trouble. You
limped as if--"
He stopped, amazed. For the first time he saw that her foot was caught
in a wolf trap. This explained the peculiarity of gait he had noticed
from above. She had been dragging the heavy Newhouse trap and the clog
with her as she walked. One glance at her face was enough to show how
greatly she was suffering.
Fortunately she was wearing a small pair of high-heeled boots such as
cowpunchers use, and the stiff leather had broken the shock of the blow
from the steel jaws. Otherwise the force of the released spring must
have shattered her ankle.
"I can't quite open the trap," she explained. "If you will help me--"
Roy put his weight on the springs and removed the pressure of the jaws.
The girl drew out her numb leg. She straightened herself, swayed, and
clutched blindly at him. Next moment her body relaxed and she was
unconscious in his arms.
He laid her on the moss and looked about for water. There was some in
his canteen, but that was attached to the saddle on the top of the
bluff. For present purposes it might as well have been at the North
Pole. He could not leave her while she was like this. But since he
had to be giving some first aid, he drew from her foot the boot that
had been in the steel trap, so as to relieve the ankle.
Her eyelids fluttered, she gave a deep sigh, and looked with a
perplexed doubt upon the world to which she had just returned.
"You fainted," Roy told her by way of explanation.
The young woman winced and looked at her foot. The angry color flushed
into her cheeks. Her annoyance was at herself, but she visited it upon
him.
"Who told you to take off my boot?"
"I thought it might help the pain."
She snatched up the boot and started to pull it on, but gave this up
with a long breath that was almost a groan.
"I'm a nice kind of a baby," she jeered.
"It must hurt like sixty," he ventured. Then, after momentary
hesitation: "You'd better let me bind up your ankle. I have water in
my canteen. I'll run up and get some as soon as I'm through."
There was something of sullen suspicion in the glance her dark eyes
flashed at him.
"You can get me water if you want to," she told him, a little
ungraciously.
He understood that his offer to tie up the ankle had been refused.
When he returned with his horse twenty minutes later, he knew why she
had let him go for the water. It had been the easiest way to get rid
of him for the time. The fat bulge beneath her stocking showed that
she had taken advantage of his absence to bind the bruised leg herself.
"Is it better now--less painful?" he asked.
She dismissed his sympathy with a curt little nod. "I'm the biggest
fool in Washington County. We've been setting traps for wolves.
They've been getting our lambs. I jumped off my horse right into this
one. Blacky is a skittish colt and when the trap went off, he bolted."
He smiled a little at the disgust she heaped upon herself.
"You'll have to ride my horse to your home. How far is it?"
"Five miles, maybe." The girl looked at her ankle resentfully. It was
plain that she did not relish the idea of being under obligations to
him. But to attempt to walk so far was out of the question. Even now
when she was not using the foot she suffered a good deal of pain.
"Cornell isn't a bit skittish. He's an old plug. You'll find his gait
easy," Beaudry told her.
If she had not wanted to keep her weight from the wounded ankle, she
would have rejected scornfully his offer to help her mount, for she was
used to flinging her lithe body into the saddle as easily as her
brothers did. The girl had read in books of men aiding women to reach
their seat on the back of a horse, but she had not the least idea how
the thing was done. Because of her ignorance she was embarrassed. The
result was that they boggled the business, and it was only at the third
attempt that he got her on as gracefully as if she had been a sack of
meal.
"Sorry. I'm awfully awkward," he apologized.
Again an angry flush stained her cheeks. The stupidity had been hers,
not his. She resented it that he was ready to take the blame,--read
into his manner a condescension he did not at all feel.
"I know whose fault it was. I'm not a fool," she snapped brusquely.
It added to her irritation at making such an exhibition of clumsiness
that she was one of the best horsewomen in the Territory. Her life had
been an outdoor one, and she had stuck to the saddle on the back of
many an outlaw bronco without pulling leather. There were many things
of which she knew nothing. The ways of sophisticated women, the
conventions of society, were alien to her life. She was mountain-bred,
brought up among men, an outcast even from the better class of Battle
Butte. But the life of the ranch she knew. That this soft-cheeked boy
from town should think she did not know how to get on a horse was a
little too humiliating. Some day, if she ever got a chance, she would
let him see her vault into the saddle without touching the stirrups.
The young man walking beside the horse might still be smooth-cheeked,
but he had the muscles of an athlete. He took the hills with a light,
springy step and breathed easily after stiff climbing. His mind was
busy making out what manner of girl this was. She was new to his
experience. He had met none like her. That she was a proud, sulky
creature he could easily guess from her quickness at taking offense.
She resented even the appearance of being ridiculous. Her acceptance
of his favors carried always the implication that she hated him for
offering them. It was a safe guess that back of those flashing eyes
were a passionate temper and an imperious will.
It was evident that she knew the country as a teacher knows the primer
through which she leads her children. In daylight or in darkness, with
or without a trail, she could have followed almost an air-line to the
ranch. The paths she took wound in and out through unsuspected gorges
and over divides that only goats or cow-ponies could have safely
scrambled up and down. Hidden pockets had been cached here so
profusely by nature that the country was a maze. A man might have
found safety from pursuit in one of these for a lifetime if he had been
provisioned.
"Where were you going when you found me?" the young woman asked.
"Up to the mountain ranches of Big Creek. I was lost, so we ought to
put it that you found me," Beaudry answered with the flash of a
pleasant smile.
"What are you going to do up there?" Her keen suspicious eyes watched
him warily.
"Sell windmills if I can. I've got the best proposition on the market."
"Why do you come away up here? Don't you know that the Big Creek
headwaters are off the map?"
"That's it exactly," he replied. "I expect no agents get up here.
It's too hard to get in. I ought to be able to sell a whole lot easier
than if I took the valleys." He laughed a little, by way of taking her
into his confidence. "I'll tell the ranchers that if they buy my
windmills it will put Big Creek on the map."
"They won't buy them," she added with a sudden flare of temper. "This
country up here is fifty years behind the times. It doesn't want to be
modern."
Over a boulder bed, by rock fissures, they came at last to a sword gash
in the top of the world. It cleft a passage through the range to
another gorge, at the foot of which lay a mountain park dotted with
ranch buildings. On every side the valley was hemmed in by giant peaks.
"Huerfano Park?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You live here?"
"Yes." She pointed to a group of buildings to the left. "That is my
father's place. They call it the 'Horse Ranch.'"
He turned startled eyes upon her. "Then you are--?"
"Beulah Rutherford, the daughter of Hal Rutherford."