THE BILLY OF HER
Since she had closed up on the cattle and had read on their sides the
shameful story of theft, Billy Louise had known that she would
eventually come out at the lower end of the Cove; and that in spite of
the fact that the Cove was not supposed to have any egress save through
the gorge. What surprised her was the short distance; she had not
realized that the bluff and the upland formed a wide curve, and that
she had cut the distance almost in half by riding next the river.
She seemed in no doubt as to what she would do when she arrived. Billy
Louise was not much given to indecision at any time. She drove the
cattle into the corral farthest from the house, rode on to the stable,
and stopped Blue with his nose against the fence there and with his
reins dragging. Then, tight-lipped still, she walked determinedly
along the path to the gate that led through the berry-jungle to the
cabin.
She opened the gate and stepped through, closing it after her. She had
not gone twenty feet when there was a rush from the nearest thicket,
and Surbus, his hair ruffed out along his neck, growled and made a leap
at her with bared fangs.
Billy Louise had forgotten about Surbus. She jumped back, startled,
and the dog missed landing. When he sprang again he met a thirty-eight
calibre bullet from Billy Louise's gun and dropped back. It had been a
snap shot, without any particular aiming; Billy Louise retreated a few
steps farther, watching the dog suspiciously. He gathered himself
slowly and prepared to spring at her again. This time Billy Louise,
being on the watch for such a move, aimed carefully before she fired.
Surbus dropped again, limply--a good dog forever more.
Billy Louise heard a shrill whistle and the sound of feet running. She
waited, gun in hand, ready for whatever might come.
"Hey! Charlie! Somebody's come; the bell, she don't reeng." Peter
Howling Dog, a pistol in his hand, came running down the path from the
cabin. He saw Billy Louise and stopped abruptly, his mouth half open.
From a shed near the stable came Charlie, also running. Billy Louise
waited beside the gate. He did not see her until he was close, for a
tangled gooseberry bush stood between them.
"What was it, Peter? Somebody in the Cove? Or was it you--"
"No, it wasn't Peter; it was me." Billy Louise informed him calmly and
ungrammatically. "I shot Surbus, that's all."
"Oh! Why, Miss Louise, you nearly gave me heart failure! How are you?
I thought--"
"You thought somebody had gotten into the Cove without your knowing it.
Well, someone did. I rode up from below, along the river."
"Oh--er--did you? Pretty rough going, wasn't it? I didn't think it
could be done. Come in; Aunt Martha will be--"
"I don't think she'll be overjoyed to see me." Billy Louise stood
still beside the gooseberry bush, and she had forgotten to put away her
gun. "I drove up those cattle you had down below. You're awfully
careless, Charlie! I should think Peter or Marthy would have told you
better. When a man steals cattle by working over the brands, it's very
bad form to keep them right on his ranch in plain sight. It--isn't
done by the best people, you know." Her voice stung with the contempt
she managed to put into it. And though she smiled, it was such a smile
as one seldom saw upon the face of Billy Louise.
"What's all this? Worked brands! Why, Miss Louise, I--I wouldn't know
how to--"
"I know. You did an awful punk job. A person could tell in the dark
it was the work of a greenhorn. Why didn't you let Peter do it, or
Marthy? You could have done a better job than that, couldn't you,
Marthy?"
Poor old Marthy, with her rheumatic knees and a gray hardness in her
leathery face, had come down the path and stood squarely before Billy
Louise, her hands knuckling her flabby hips, her hair blowing in gray,
straggling wisps about her bullet head.
"Better than what? Come in, Billy Louise. I'm right glad to see ye
back and lookin' so well, even if yuh do 'pear to be in one of your
tantrums. How's yer maw?"
Billy Louise gasped and went white. "Mommie's dead," she said. "She
died the ninth." She drew another gasping breath, pulled herself
together, and went on before the others could begin the set speeches of
sympathy which the announcement seemed to demand.
"Never mind about that, now. I'm talking about those Seabeck cattle
you folks stole. I was telling Charlie how horribly careless he is,
Marthy. Did you know he let them drift down the river? And a blind
man could tell a mile off the brands have been worked!" Billy Louise's
tone was positively venomous in its contempt. "Why didn't you make
Charlie practise on a cowhide for awhile first?" she asked Marthy
cuttingly.
Marthy ignored the sarcasm. Perhaps it did not penetrate her stolid
mind at all. "Charlie never worked any brands, Billy Louise," she
stated with her glum directness.
"Oh, I beg his pardon, I'm sure! Did you?"
"No, I never done such a thing, neither. I don't know what you're
talkin' about."
"Well, who did, then?" Billy Louise faced the old woman pitilessly.
"I d'no." Marthy lifted her hand and made a futile effort to tuck in a
few of the longest wisps of hair.
"Well, of all the--" The stern gray eyes of Billy Louise flew wide
open at the effrontery of the words. If they expected her to believe
that!
"That's it, Miss Louise. That's the point we'd like to settle,
ourselves. I know it sounds outrageous, but it's a fact. Peter and I
found those cattle up in the hills, with our brand worked over the V.
On my word of honor, not one of us knows who did it."
"But you've got them down here--"
"Well--" Charlie threw out a hand helplessly. His eyes met hers with
appealing frankness. "We couldn't rub out the brands; what else could
we do? I figured that somebody else would see them if we left them out
in the hills, and it might be rather hard to convince a man; you see,
we can't even convince you! But, so help me, not one of us branded
those cattle, Miss Louise. I believe that whoever has been rustling
stock around here deliberately tried to fix evidence against us. I'm a
stranger in the country, and I don't know the game very well; I'm an
easy mark!"
"Yes, you're that, all right enough!" Billy Louise spoke with blunt
disfavor, but her contemptuous certainty of his guilt was plainly
wavering. "To go and bring stolen cattle right down here--"
"It seemed to me they'd be safer here than anywhere else," Charlie
observed naïvely. "Nobody ever comes down here, unknown to us. I had
it sized up that the fellow who worked those brands would never dream
we'd bring the stock right into the Cove. Why, Miss Louise, even I
would know better than to put our brand on top of Seabeck's and expect
it to pass inspection. If I wanted to steal cattle, I wouldn't go at
it that way!"
Billy Louise glanced uncertainly at him and then at Marthy, facing her
grimly. She did not know what to think, and she showed it.
"How do you mean--the real rustlers?" She began hesitatingly; and
hesitation was not by any means a mental habit with Billy Louise.
"I mean just what I said." Charlie's manner was becoming more natural,
more confident. "I've been riding through the hills a good deal, and
I've seen a few things. And I've an idea the fellow got a little
uneasy." He saw her wince a little at the word "fellow," and he went
on, with an impulsive burst of confidence. "Miss Louise, have you
ever, in your riding around up above Jones Canyon, in all those deep
little gulches, have you ever seen anything of a--corral, up there?"
Billy Louise held herself rigidly from starting at this. She bit her
lips so that it hurt. "Whereabouts is it?" she asked, without looking
at him. And then: "I thought you would go to any length before you
would accuse anybody."
"I would. But when, they deliberately try to hand me the blame--and
I'm not accusing anybody--anybody in particular, am I? The corral is
at the head of a steep little canyon or gulch, back in the hills where
all these bigger canyons head. Some time when you're riding up that
way, you keep an eye out for it. That," he added grimly, "is where
Peter and I ran across these cattle; right near that corral."
The heart of Billy Louise went heavy in her chest. Was it possible?
Doubts are harder to kill than cats or snakes. You think they're done
for, and here they come again, crowding close so that one can see
nothing else.
"Have you any idea at all, who--it is?" She forced the words out of
her dry throat. She lifted her head defiantly and looked at him full,
trying to read the truth from his eyes and his mouth.
Charlie Fox met her look, and in his eyes she read pity--yes, pity for
her. "If I have," he said, with an air of gently deliberate evasion,
"I'll wait till I am dead sure before I name the man. I'm not at all
sure I'd do it even then, Miss Louise; not unless I was forced to do it
in self-defense. That's one reason why I brought the cattle down here.
I didn't want to be placed in a position where I should be compelled to
fight back."
Billy Louise ran her gloved fingers down the barrel of her gun, and
stuck the weapon back in its holster. "I killed Surbus, Marthy," she
said dully. "I had to. He came at me."
Marthy turned heavily toward the spot which Billy Louise indicated with
her downward glance. She had not seen the dog lying there half hidden
by a berry bush. Marthy gave a grunt of dismay and went over to where
Surbus lay huddled. Her hard old face worked with emotion.
"You shot him, did yuh?" Marthy's voice was harsh with reproach.
"What did he do to yuh, that you had to go t' work and shoot him? He
warn't your dog, he was mine! I must say you're gittin'
high-an'-mighty, Billy Louise, comin' here shootin' my dog and accusin'
Charlie and me to our faces uh bein' thieves. And your maw not cold in
'er grave yit! I must say you're gitting too high-an'-mighty fer old
Marthy. And me payin' fer your schoolin' and never gitting so much as
a thankye fer it, and scrimpin' and savin' to make a lady out of yuh.
And here you come in a tantrum, callin' me a thief right in my face!
You knowed all along who worked them brands. If yuh don't, I kin
mighty quick tell ye--"
"Now, Aunt Martha, never mind scolding Billy Louise; you know you think
as much of her as you do of me, and that's throwing a big bouquet at
myself!" Charlie went up and laid his arm caressingly over the old
woman's shoulder. "You don't want to let this upset you, Aunt Martha.
Surbus was a mean-tempered brute with strangers. You know that. I
don't blame Miss Louise in the least. She was frightened when he came
at her, and she hadn't presence of mind enough to see he was only
bluffing and wouldn't hurt--"
"Bluffing, was he?" Billy Louise roused herself to meet this covert
attack upon her courage. "So are you bluffing. And so is Marthy, when
she says she paid for my--" She stopped, confronting an accusing
memory of mommie's mysterious silence about the school money, and her
own passing curiosity which had never been satisfied. "Even if she
did, I don't know why she need throw it up to me now. I never asked
her for money. Nobody ever did. And that has nothing to do with
Surbus, anyway. He's a nasty, mean brute that ought to have been
killed long ago. I'm not a bit sorry. I'm glad I did kill him."
"Yes, I know yuh be. You're hard as--"
"I wouldn't talk about hardness, if I were you, Marthy! What are you,
right now--and always? Was I to blame for thinking those cattle had
been stolen? They're in the Cove, with your brand on. And unless you
pay Seabeck for them, you're stealing them if you keep them. It
doesn't matter who put the brand on; you're keeping the cattle. What
do you call that, I'd like to know? They're down here in the big
corral now. If you mean to do what's square, you'll take them up to
Seabeck's and explain--"
"Explain who it was ran our brand on?" Charlie's voice was silk over
iron. "I'm afraid if I were forced into explanations, I'd have to tell
all I know, Miss Louise. Do you advise that--really?"
"I don't advise anything." Baffled and angry and hurt to the very soul
of her, Billy Louise opened the gate and went out. "It strikes me you
Cove folks are not wanting advice these days, or needing it. If you
know anything to tell, for heaven's sake don't hold back on my account!
It's nothing to me, one way or the other. I'm no rustler, and no
friend of rustlers, if that's what you're hinting at." She left them
with a proud lift to her chin and a very straight back, went to Blue,
and mounted him mechanically. Billy Louise was "seeing red" just then.
She rode back past the gate, the three were still standing there close
together, talking. Billy Louise swung round in the saddle so that she
faced them.
"You needn't worry, Marthy, about that school-money," she called out
angrily. "I'll take your word for it and pay you back every cent, with
legal rate of interest. And I'm darned glad I did shoot Surbus!"
"Oh, say, Miss Louise!" Charlie called placatingly. "Please don't go
away feeling--"
"You go to the devil!" Billy Louise flung back at him and touched Blue
with her heel. "I hope that shocked some of the politeness out of him,
anyway," she added grimly to herself. "Oh, I hate everything--Ward and
God and all! I hate life--I hate it!"
She pulled Blue down to a walk and rode slowly for a couple of rods,
fighting against the reaction that crept inexorably over her anger,
chilling it and making it seem weak and unworthy. With a sudden
impulse born of her stern instincts of justice, she jerked Blue around
and galloped back. Charlie had disappeared, and Peter Howling Dog was
walking sullenly toward the corraled cattle. Marthy was going slowly
up the path to the cabin, looking old and bent and broken-spirited
because of her bowed shoulders and stiff, rheumatic gait, but harsh and
unyielding as to her face. Billy Louise stopped by the fence and
called to her. Marthy turned, stared at her sourly, and stood where
she was.
"Wall, what d'yuh want now?" she asked uncompromisingly.
Billy Louise fought back an answering antagonism. She must be just;
she could not blame Marthy for feeling hard toward her. She had
insulted them horribly and killed Marthy's dog.
"I want to tell you I'm sorry I was so mean, Marthy," she said bravely.
"I haven't any excuse to make for it; only you must see yourself what a
shock it would be to a person to find those cattle down here. But I
know you're honest, and so is Charlie. And I know you'll do what's
right. I'm sorry I told Charlie to go to the devil, and I'm sorry I
shot your dog, Marthy."
Apologies did not come easily to Billy Louise. She wheeled then and
rode away at a furious gallop, before Marthy could do more than open
her grim lips for reply.