Beulah Asks Questions
A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came out of the house with Brad
Charlton just as the buggy stopped at the porch of the horse ranch. He
nodded to Beulah.
"'Lo, sis."
"My brother Ned--Mr. Street." The girl introduced them a little
sulkily.
Ned Rutherford offered Roy a coffee-brown hand and looked at him with
frank curiosity. He had just been hearing a lot about this
good-looking stranger who had dropped into the park.
"See Jess Tighe? What did he say about the windmill?" asked Charlton.
"Wanted to think it over," answered Beaudry.
Beulah had drawn her brother to one side, but as Roy talked with
Charlton he heard what the other two said, though each spoke in a low
voice.
"Where you going, Ned?" the sister asked.
"Oh, huntin' strays."
"Home to-night?"
"Reckon not."
"What deviltry are you and Brad up to now? This will be the third
night you've been away--and before that it was Jeff."
"S-sh!" Ned flashed a warning look in the direction of her guest.
But Beulah was angry. Tighe had warned her to be careful what she told
Street. She distrusted the cripple profoundly. Half the evil that
went on in the park was plotted by him. There had been a lot of
furtive whispering about the house for a week or more. Her instinct
told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret. More
than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express
company robbers for whom a reward was out. She tried to dismiss the
suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at
her heart. But many little things contributed to the dread.
Rutherford had sent her just at that time to spend the week at Battle
Butte. Had it been to get her out of the way? She remembered that her
father had made to her no explanation of that scene in which she and
Dave Dingwell had played the leading parts. There had been many
journeyings back and forth on the part of the boys and Charlton and her
uncle, Buck Rutherford. They had a way of getting off into a corner of
the corral and talking low for hours at a time. And now Street had
come into the tangle. Were they watching him for fear he might be a
detective?
Her resentment against him and them boiled over into swift wrath.
"You're a fine lot--all of you. I'd like to wash my hands clean of the
whole outfit." She turned on her heel and strode limping to the house.
Ned laughed as he swung to the back of one of the two broncos waiting
with drooped heads before the porch. He admired this frank, forthright
sister who blazed so handsomely into rage. He would have fought for
her, even though he pretended to make a joke of her.
"Boots sure goes some. You see what you may be letting yourself in
for, Brad," he scoffed good-naturedly.
Charlton answered with cool aplomb. "Don't you worry about me, Ned. I
travel at a good lick myself. She'll break to double harness fine."
Without touching the stirrup this knight of the _chaparreras_ flung
himself into the saddle, the rowels of his spurs whirring as he
vaulted. It was a spectacular but perfect mount. The horse was off
instantly at a canter.
Roy could not deny the fellow admiration, even though he despised him
for what he had just said. It was impossible for him to be
contemptuous of Charlton. The man was too virile, too game for that.
In the telling Western phrase, he would go through. Whatever he did
was done competently.
Yet there was something detestable in the way he had referred to Beulah
Rutherford. In the first place, Roy believed it to be a pure
assumption that he was going to marry her. Then, too, he had spoken of
this high-spirited girl as if she were a colt to be broken and he the
man to wield the whip. Her rebellion against fate meant nothing more
to him than a tantrum to be curbed. He did not in the least divine the
spiritual unrest back of her explosion.
Beaudry shrugged his shoulders. He was lucky for once. It had been
the place of Ned Rutherford to rebuke Charlton for his slighting
remark. A stranger had not the least right to interfere while the
brother of the girl was present. Roy did not pursue the point any
further. He did not want to debate with himself whether he had the
pluck to throw down the gauntlet to this fighting _vaquero_ if the call
had come to him.
As he walked into the house and up to his room, his mind was busy with
another problem. Where had Ned Rutherford been for three nights and
his brother Jeff before that? Why had Beulah flared into unexpected
anger? He, too, had glimpsed furtive whisperings. Even a fool would
have understood that he was not a welcome guest at the horse ranch, and
that his presence was tolerated only because here the boys could keep
an eye on him. He was under surveillance. That was plain. He had
started out for a little walk before breakfast and Jeff joined him from
nowhere in particular to stroll along. What was it the Huerfano Park
settlers were trying to hide from him? His mind jumped promptly to the
answer. Dave Dingwell, of course.
Meanwhile Miss Rutherford lay weeping in the next room face down upon
the bed. She rarely indulged in tears. It had not happened before
since she was seventeen. But now she sobbed into a pillow, softly, so
that nobody might hear. Why must she spend her life in such
surroundings? If the books she read told the truth, the world was full
of gentle, kindly people who lived within the law and respected each
other's rights. Why was it in her horoscope to be an outcast? Why
must she look at everybody with bitterness and push friendship from her
lest it turn to poison at her touch? For one hour she had found joy in
comradeship with this stranger. Then Tighe had whispered it that he
was probably a spy. She had returned home only to have her doubts
about her own family stirred to life again. Were there no good, honest
folk in the world at all?
She washed her telltale eyes and ventured downstairs to look after
supper. The Mexican cook was already peeling the potatoes. She gave
him directions about the meal and went out to the garden to get some
radishes and lettuce. On the way she had to pass the corral. Her
brother Hal, Slim Sanders, and Cherokee Street were roping and branding
some calves. The guest of the house had hung his coat and hat on a
fence-post to keep them from getting soiled, but the hat had fallen
into the dust.
Beulah picked up the hat and brushed it. As she dusted with her
handkerchief the under side of the rim her eyes fell upon two initials
stamped into the sweat pad. The letters were "R.B." The owner of the
hat called himself Cherokee Street. Why, then, should he have these
other initials printed on the pad? There could be only one answer to
that question. He was passing under a name that was not his own.
If so, why? Because he was a spy come to get evidence against her
people for the express company.
The eyes of the girl blazed. The man had come to ruin her father, to
send her brothers to prison, and he was accepting their hospitality
while he moled for facts to convict them. To hear the shout of his gay
laughter as a calf upset him in the dust was added fuel to the fire of
her anger. If he had looked as villainous as Dave Meldrum, she could
have stood it better, but any one would have sworn that he was a clean,
decent young fellow just out of college.
She called to him. Roy glanced up and came across the corral. His
sleeves were rolled to the elbows and the shirt open at the throat.
Flowing muscles rippled under the white skin of his forearms as he
vaulted the fence to stand beside her. He had the graceful poise of an
athlete and the beautiful, trim figure of youth.
Yet he was a spy. Beulah hardened her heart.
"I found your hat in the dust, Mr. Street." She held it out to him
upside down, the leather pad lifted by her finger so that the letters
stood out.
The rigor of her eyes was a challenge. For a moment, before he caught
sight of the initials, he was puzzled at her stiffness. Then his heart
lost a beat and hammered wildly. His brain was in a fog and he could
find no words of explanation.
"It is your hat, isn't it, Mr.--Street?"
"Yes." He took it from her, put it on, and gulped "Thanks."
She waited to give him a chance to justify himself, but he could find
no answer to the charge that she had fixed upon him. Scornfully she
turned from him and went to the house.
Miss Rutherford found her father reading a week-old newspaper.
"I've got fresher news than that for you, dad," she said. "I can tell
you who this man that calls himself Cherokee Street isn't."
Rutherford looked up quickly. "You mean who he is, Boots."
"No, I mean who he isn't. His name isn't Cherokee Street at all."
"How do you know?"
"Because he is wearing a hat with the initials 'R.B.' stamped in it. I
gave him a chance to explain and he only stammered and got white. He
hadn't time to think up a lie that would fit."
"Dad burn it, Jess Tighe is right, then. The man is a spy." The
ranchman lit a cigar and narrowed his eyes in thought.
"What is he spying here for?"
"I reckon he's a detective of the express company nosing around about
that robbery. Some folks think it was pulled off by a bunch up in the
hills somewhere."
"By the Rutherford gang?" she quoted.
He looked at her uneasily. The bitterness in her voice put him on the
defensive. "Sho, Boots! That's just a way folks have of talking.
We've got our enemies. Lots of people hate us because we won't let any
one run over us."
She stood straight and slender before him, her eyes fixed in his. "Do
they say we robbed the express company?"
"They don't say it out loud if they do--not where I can hear them," he
answered grimly.
"Did we?" she flung at him.
His smile was forced. The question disturbed him. That had always
been her way, even when she was a small child, to fling herself
headlong at difficulties. She had never been the kind to be put off
with anything less than the truth.
"I didn't. Did you?" he retorted.
"How about the boys--and Uncle Buck--and Brad Charlton?" she demanded.
"Better ask them if you want to know." With a flare of temper he
contradicted himself. "No, you'd better mind your own business, girl.
Forget your foolishness and 'tend to your knitting."
"I suppose it isn't my business if my kin go to the penitentiary for
train robbery."
"They're not going any such place. If you want to know, I give you my
word that none of us Rutherfords have got the gold stolen from the
Western Express Company."
"And don't know where it is?"
"Haven't the least idea--not one of us."
She drew a deep breath of relief. More than once her father had kept
from her secrets of the family activities, but he had never lied to her.
"Then it doesn't matter about this detective. He can find out nothing
against us," she reflected aloud.
"I'm not so sure about that. We've had our troubles and we don't want
them aired. There was that shooting scrape Hal got into down at Battle
Butte, for instance. Get a little more evidence and the wrong kind of
a jury would send him up for it. No, we'll keep an eye on Mr. Cherokee
Street, or whatever his name is. Reckon I'll ride over and have a talk
with Jess about it."
"Why not tell this man Street that he is not wanted and so be done with
it?"
"Because we wouldn't be done with it. Another man would come in his
place. We'll keep him here where we can do a little detective work on
him, too."
"I don't like it. The thing is underhanded. I hate the fellow. It's
not decent to sit at table with a man who is betraying our
hospitality," she cried hotly.
"It won't be for long, honey. Just leave him to us. We'll hang up his
pelt to dry before we're through with him."
"You don't mean--?"
"No, nothing like that. But he'll crawl out of the park like a whipped
cur with its tail between its legs."
The cook stood in the doorway. "Miss Beulah, do you want that meat
done in a pot roast?" he asked.
"Yes. I'll show you." She turned at the door. "By the way, dad, I
took a snapshot of Mr. Tighe on his porch. I'll develop it to-night
and you can take it to him in the morning."
"All right. Don't mention to anybody that matter we were discussing.
Act like you've forgotten all about what you found out, Boots."
The girl nodded. "Yes."