Roy Rides his Paint Hoss
But he did.
For next day Pat Ryan rode up to the Lazy Double D with a piece of news
that took Roy straight to his pinto. Beulah Rutherford had
disappeared. She had been out riding and Blacky had come home with an
empty saddle. So far as was known, Brad Charlton had seen her last.
He had met her just above the Laguna Sinks, had talked with her, and
had left the young woman headed toward the mountains.
The word had reached Battle Butte through Slim Sanders, who had been
sent down from Huerfano Park for help. The Rutherfords and their
friends were already combing the hills for the lost girl, but the owner
of the horse ranch wanted Sheriff Sweeney to send out posses as a
border patrol. Opinion was divided. Some thought Beulah might have
met a grizzly, been unhorsed, and fallen a victim to it. There was the
possibility that she might have stumbled while climbing and hurt
herself. According to Sanders, her father held to another view. He
was convinced that Meldrum was at the bottom of the thing.
This was Roy's instant thought, too. He could not escape the sinister
suggestion that through the girl the ruffian had punished them all.
While he gave sharp, short orders to get together the riders of the
ranch, his mind was busy with the situation. Had he better join
Sweeney's posse and patrol the desert? Or would he help more by
pushing straight into the hills?
Dingwell rode up and looked around in surprise. "What's the stir, son?"
His partner told him what he had heard and what he suspected.
Before he answered, Dave chewed a meditative cud. "Maybeso you're
right--and maybe 'way off. Say you're wrong. Say Meldrum has nothing
to do with this. In that case it is in the hills that we have got to
find Miss Beulah."
"But he has. I feel sure he has. Mr. Ryan says Rutherford thinks so,
too."
"Both you and Hal have got that crook Meldrum in yore minds. You've
been thinking a lot about him, so you jump to the conclusion that what
you're afraid of has happened. The chances are ten to one against it.
But we'll say you're right. Put yourself in Meldrum's place. What
would he do?"
Beaudry turned a gray, agonized face on his friend. "I don't know.
What--what would he do?"
"The way to get at it is to figure yourself in his boots. Remember
that you're a bad, rotten lot, cur to the bone. You meet up with this
girl and get her in yore power. You've got a grudge against her
because she spoiled yore plans, and because through her you were handed
the whaling of yore life and are being hounded out of the country.
You're sore clear through at all her people and at all her friends.
Naturally, you're as sweet-tempered as a sore-headed bear, and you've
probably been drinking like a sheepherder on a spree."
"I know what a devil he is. The question is how far would he dare go?"
"You've put yore finger right on the point, son. What might restrain
him wouldn't be any moral sense, but fear. He knows that once he
touched Miss Rutherford, this country would treat him like a
rattlesnake. He could not even be sure that the Rutherfords would not
hunt him down in Mexico."
"You think he would let her alone, then?"
The old-timer shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. But I reckon
he'd try to postpone a decision as long as he could. Unless he
destroyed her in the first rush of rage, he wouldn't have the nerve to
do it until he had made himself crazy drunk. It all depends on
circumstances, but my judgment is--if he had a chance and if he didn't
think it too great a risk--that he would try to hold her a prisoner as
a sort of hostage to gloat over."
"You mean keep her--unharmed?"
They were already in the saddle and on the road. Dave looked across at
his white-faced friend.
"I'm only guessing, Roy, but that's the way I figure it," he said
gently.
"You don't think he would try to take her across the desert with him to
Mexico."
Ryan shook his head.
"No chance. He couldn't make it. When he leaves the hills, Miss
Rutherford will stay there."
"Alive?" asked Beaudry from a dry throat.
"Don't know."
"God!"
"So that whether Miss Beulah did or did not meet Meldrum, we have to
look for her up among the mountains of the Big Creek watershed,"
concluded Dingwell. "I believe we'll find her safe and sound. Chances
are Meldrum isn't within forty miles of her."
They were riding toward Lonesome Park, from which they intended to work
up into the hills. Just before reaching the rim of the park, they
circled around a young pine lying across the trail. Roy remembered the
tree. It had stood on a little knoll, strong and graceful, reaching
straight toward heaven with a kind of gallant uprightness. Now its
trunk was snapped, its boughs crushed, its foliage turning sere. An
envious wind had brought it low. Somehow that pine reminded Beaudry
poignantly of the girl they were seeking. She, too, had always stood
aloof, a fine and vital personality, before the eyes of men sufficient
to herself. But as the evergreen had stretched its hundred arms toward
light and sunshine, so Beulah Rutherford had cried dumbly to life for
some vague good she could not formulate.
Were her pride and courage abased, too? Roy would not let himself
believe it. The way of youth is to deny the truth of all signposts
which point to the futility of beauty and strength. It would be a kind
of apostasy to admit that her sweet, lissom grace might be forever
crushed and bruised.
They rode hard and steadily. Before dusk they were well up toward the
divide among the wooded pockets of the hills. From one of these a man
came to meet them.
"It's Hal Rutherford," announced Ryan, who was riding in front with
Dingwell.
The owner of the horse ranch nodded a greeting as he drew up in front
of them. He was unshaven and gaunt. Furrows of anxiety lined his face.
"Anything new, Hal?" asked Dave.
"Not a thing. We're combing the hills thorough."
"You don't reckon that maybe a cougar--?" Ryan stopped. It occurred
to him that his suggestion was not a very cheerful one.
Rutherford looked at the little Irishman from bleak eyes. The misery
in them was for the moment submerged in a swift tide of hate. "A
two-legged cougar, Pat. If I meet up with him, I'll take his hide off
inch by inch."
"Meaning Meldrum?" asked Roy.
"Meaning Meldrum." A spasm of pain shot across the face of the man.
"If he's done my little girl any meanness, he'd better blow his head
off before I get to him."
"Don't believe he'd dare hurt Miss Beulah, Rutherford. Meldrum belongs
to the coyote branch of the wolf family. I've noticed it's his night
to howl only when hunters are liable to be abed. If he's in this thing
at all, I'll bet he's trying to play both ends against the middle.
We'll sure give him a run for his white alley," Dingwell concluded.
"Hope you're right, Dave," Rutherford added in a voice rough with the
feeling he could not suppress: "I appreciate it that you boys from the
Lazy Double D came after what has taken place."
Dave grinned cheerfully. "Sho, Hal! Maybe Beaudry and I aren't
sending any loving-cups up to you and yours, but we don't pull any of
that sulk-in-the-tent stuff when our good friend Beulah Rutherford is
lost in the hills. She went through for us proper, and we ain't going
to quit till we bring her back to you as peart and sassy as that calf
there."
"What part of the country do you want us to work?" asked Ryan.
"You can take Del Oro and Lame Cow Creeks from the divide down to the
foothills," Rutherford answered. "I'll send one of the boys over to
boss the round-up. He'll know the ground better than you lads. Make
camp here to-night and he'll join you before you start. To-morrow
evening I'll have a messenger meet you on the flats. We're trying to
keep in touch with each other, you understand."
Rutherford left them making camp. They were so far up in the mountains
that the night was cool, even though the season was midsummer. Unused
to sleeping outdoors as yet, Roy lay awake far into the night. His
nerves were jumpy. The noises of the grazing horses and of the
four-footed inhabitants of the night startled him more than once from a
cat-nap. His thoughts were full of Beulah Rutherford. Was she alive
or dead to-night, in peril or in safety?
At last, in the fag end of the night, he fell into sound sleep that was
untroubled. From this he was wakened in the first dim dawn by the
sound of his companions stirring. A fire was already blazing and
breakfast in process of making. He rose and stretched his stiff limbs.
Every bone seemed to ache from contact with the hard ground.
While they were eating breakfast, a man rode up and dismounted. A
long, fresh zigzag scar stretched across his forehead. It was as plain
to be seen as the scowl which drew his heavy eyebrows together.
"'Lo, Charlton. Come to boss this round-up for us?" asked Dingwell
cheerily.
The young man nodded sulkily. "Hal sent me. The boys weren't with
him." He looked across the fire at Beaudry, and there was smouldering
rage in his narrowed eyes.
Roy murmured "Good-morning" in a rather stifled voice. This was the
first time he had met Charlton since they had clashed in the arcade of
the Silver Dollar. That long deep scar fascinated him. He felt an
impulse to apologize humbly for having hit him so hard. To put such a
mark on a man for life was a liberty that might well be taken as a
personal affront. No wonder Charlton hated him--and as their eyes met
now, Roy had no doubt about that. The man was his enemy. Some day he
would even the score. Again Beaudry's heart felt the familiar drench
of an icy wave.
Charlton did not answer his greeting. He flushed to his throat, turned
abruptly on his heel, and began to talk with Ryan. The hillman wanted
it clearly understood that the feud he cherished was only temporarily
abandoned. But even Roy noticed that the young Admirable Crichton had
lost some of his debonair aplomb.
The little Irishman explained this with a grin to Dave as they were
riding together half an hour later. "It's not so easy to get away with
that slow insolence of his while he's wearing that forgit-me-not young
Beaudry handed him in the mix-up."
"Sort of spoils the toutensemble, as that young Melrose tenderfoot used
to say--kinder as if a bald-haided guy was playing Romeo and had lost
his wig in the shuffle," agreed Dave.
By the middle of the forenoon they were well up in the headwaters of
the two creeks they were to work. Charlton divided the party so as to
cover both watersheds as they swept slowly down. Roy was on the
extreme right of those working Del Oro.
It was a rough country, with wooded draws cached in unexpected pockets
of the hills. Here a man might lie safely on one of a hundred ledges
while the pursuit drove past within fifty feet of him. As Roy's pinto
clambered up and down the steep hills, he recalled the advice of Dave
to ride a buckskin "that melts into the atmosphere like a patch of
bunch grass." He wished he had taken that advice. A man looking for
revenge could crouch in the chaparral and with a crook of his finger
send winged death at his enemy. A twig crackling under the hoof of his
horse more than once sent an electric shock through his pulses. The
crash of a bear through the brush seemed to stop the beating of his
heart.
Charlton had made a mistake in putting Beaudry on the extreme right of
the drive. The number of men combing the two creeks was not enough to
permit close contact. Sometimes a rider was within hail of his
neighbor. More often he was not. Roy, unused to following the rodeo,
was deflected by the topography of the ridge so far to the right that
he lost touch with the rest.
By the middle of the afternoon he had to confess to himself with
chagrin that he did not even know how to reach Del Oro. While he had
been riding the rough wooded ridge above, the creek had probably made a
sharp turn to the left. Must he go back the way he had come? Or could
he cut across country to it? It was humiliating that he could not even
follow a small river without losing the stream and himself. He could
vision the cold sneer of Charlton when he failed to appear at the night
rendezvous. Even his friends would be annoyed at such helplessness.
After an hour's vain search he was more deeply tangled in the web of
hills. He was no longer even sure how to get down from them into the
lower reaches of country toward which he was aiming.
While he hesitated on a ridge there came to him a faint, far cry. He
gave a shout of relief, then listened for his answer. It did not come.
He called again, a third time, and a fourth. The wind brought back no
reply. Roy rode in the direction of the sound that had first
registered itself on his ears, stopping every minute or two to shout.
Once he fancied he heard again the voice.
Then, unexpectedly, the cry came perfectly clear, over to the right
scarcely a hundred yards. A little arroyo of quaking aspens lay
between him and the one who called. He dismounted, tied his horse to a
sapling, and pushed through the growth of young trees. Emerging from
these, he climbed the brow of the hill and looked around. Nobody was
in sight.
"Where are you?" he shouted.
"Here--in the prospect hole."
His pulses crashed. That voice--he would have known it out of a
million.
A small dirt dump on the hillside caught his eye. He ran forward to
the edge of a pit and looked down.
The haggard eyes of Beulah Rutherford were lifted to meet his.