Into the Lion's Mouth.
Perry Potter, when he had read the foreman's note, asked how long since
I left camp; when I told him that I was there at daylight, he looked at me
queerly and walked off without a word. I didn't say anything, either.
I stayed at the ranch overnight, intending to start back the next morning.
The round-up would be west of where I had left them, according to the
foreman--or wagon-boss, as he is called. Logically, then, I should take
the trail that led through Kenmore, the mining-camp owned by King, and
which lay in the heart of White Divide ten miles west of King's Highway.
That, I say, was the logical route--but I wasn't going to take it.
I wasn't a bit stuck on that huddle of corrals and sheds, with the trail
winding blindly between, and I wasn't in love with the girl or with old
King; but, all the same, I meant to go back the way I came, just for my
own private satisfaction.
While I was saddling Shylock, in the opal-tinted sunrise, Potter came down
and gave me the letter to the wagon-boss, an answer to the one I had
brought.
"Here's some chuck the cook put up for yuh," he remarked, handing me a
bundle tied up in a flour-sack. "You'll need it 'fore yuh get through to
camp; you'll likely be longer going than yuh was comin'."
"Think so?" I smiled knowingly to myself and left him staring
disapprovingly after me. I could easily give a straight guess at what he
was thinking.
I jogged along as leisurely as I could without fretting Shylock, and, once
clear of the home field, headed straight for King's Highway. It wasn't the
wisest course I could take, perhaps, but it was like to prove the most
exciting, and I never was remarkable for my wisdom. It seemed to me that
it was necessary to my self-respect to return the way I came--and I may as
well confess that I hoped Miss King was an early riser. As it was,
I killed what time I could, and so spent a couple of hours where one would
have sufficed.
Half a mile out from the mouth of the pass, I observed a human form
crowning the peak of a sharp-pointed little butte that rose up out of the
prairie; since the form seemed to be in skirts, I made for the spot.
Shylock puffed up the steep slope, and at last stopped still and looked
back at me in utter disgust; so I took the hint and got off, and led him
up the rest of the way.
"Good morning. We meet on neutral ground," I greeted when I was close
behind her. "I propose a truce."
She jumped a bit, and looked very much astonished to see me there so
close. If it had been some other girl--say Ethel Mapleton--I'd have
suspected the genuineness of that surprise; as it was, I could only think
she had been very much absorbed not to hear me scrambling up there.
"You're an early bird," she said dryly, "to be so far from home." She
glanced toward the pass, as though she would like to cut and run, but
hated to give me the satisfaction.
"Well," I told her with inane complacency, "you will remember that 'it's
the early bird that catches the worm.'"
"What a pretty speech!" she commented, and I saw what I'd done, and felt
myself turn a beautiful purple. Compare her to a worm!
But she laughed when she saw how uncomfortable I was, and after that I was
almost glad I'd said it; she _did_ have dimples--two of them--and--
The laugh, however, was no sign of incipient amiability, as I very soon
discovered. She turned her back on me and went imperturbably on with her
sketching; she was trying to put on paper the lights and shades of White
Divide--and even a desire to be chivalrous will not permit me to lie and
say that she was making any great success of it. I don't believe the Lord
ever intended her for an artist.
"Aren't you giving King's Highway a much wider mouth than it's entitled
to?" I asked mildly, after watching her for a minute.
"I should not be surprised," she told me haughtily, "if you some day
wished it still wider."
"There wouldn't be the chance for fighting, if it was; and I take great
pleasure in keeping the feud going."
"I thought you were anxious for a truce," she said recklessly, shading a
slope so that it looked like the peak of a roof.
"I am," I retorted shamelessly. "I'm anxious for anything under the sun
that will keep you talking to me. People might call that a flirtatious
remark, but I plead not guilty; I wouldn't know how to flirt, even if
I wanted to do so."
She turned her head and looked at me in a way that I could not
misunderstand; it was plain, unvarnished scorn, and a ladylike anger, and
a few other unpleasant things.
It made me think of a certain star in "The Taming of the Shrew."
"Fie, fie! unknit that threatening, unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy neighbor and thine enemy,"
I declaimed, with rather a free adaptation to my own need.
Her brow positively refused to unknit. "Have you nothing to do but spout
bad quotations from Shakespeare on a hilltop?" she wanted to know, in a
particularly disagreeable tone.
"Plenty; I have yet to win that narrow pass," I said.
"Hardly to-day," she told me, with more than a shade of triumph. "Father
is at home, and he heard of your trip yesterday."
If she expected to scare me by that! "Must our feud include your father?
When I met him a month ago, he gave me a cordial invitation to stop, if
I ever happened this way."
She lifted those heavy lashes, and her eyes plainly spoke unbelief.
"It's a fact," I assured her calmly. "I met him one day in Laurel, and was
fortunate enough to perform a service which earned his gratitude. As
I say, he invited me to come and see him; I told him I should be glad to
have him visit me at the Bay State Ranch, and we embraced each other with
much fervor."
"Indeed!" I could see that she persisted in doubting my veracity.
"Ask your father if we didn't," I said, much injured. I knew she wouldn't,
though.
A scrambling behind us made me turn, and there was Perry Potter climbing
up to us, his eyes sharper than ever, and his face so absolutely devoid of
expression that it told me a good deal. I'll lay all I own he was a good
bit astonished at what he saw! As for me, I could have kicked him back to
the bottom of the hill--and I probably looked it.
"There was something I forgot to put in that note," he said evenly, just
touching the brim of his hat in acknowledgment of the girl's presence. "I
wrote another one. I'd like Ballard to get it as soon as you can make
camp--conveniently." His eyes looked through me almost as if I weren't
there.
My desire to kick him grew almost into mania. I took the note, saw at a
glance that it was addressed to me, and said: "All right," in a tone quite
different from the one I had been using to tease Miss King.
He gave me another sharp look, and went back the way he had come, leaving
me standing there glaring after him. Miss King, I noticed, was sketching
for dear life, and her cheeks were crimson.
When Potter had got to the bottom and was riding away, I unfolded the note
and read:
Don't be a fool. For God's sake, have some sense and keep away
from King's Highway.
I laughed, and Miss King looked up inquiringly. Following an impulse I've
never yet been able to classify, I showed her the note.
She read it calmly--I might say indifferently. "He is quite right," she
said coldly. "I, too--if I cared enough--would advise you to keep away
from King's Highway."
"But you don't care enough to advise me, and so I shall go," I said--and
I had the satisfaction of seeing her teeth come down sharply on her lower
lip. I waited a minute, watching her.
"You're very foolish," she said icily, and went at her sketching again.
I waited another minute; during that time she succeeded in making the pass
look weird indeed, and a fearsome place to enter. I got reckless.
"You've spoiled that sketch," I said, stooping and taking it gently from
her. "Give it to me, and it shall be a flag of truce with which I shall
win my way through unscathed."
She started to her feet then, and her anger was worth facing for the glow
it brought to eyes and cheeks, and the tremble that came to her lips.
"Mr. Carleton, you are perfectly detestable!" she cried.
"Miss King, you are perfectly adorable!" I returned, folding the sketch
very carefully, so that it would slip easily into my pocket. "With so
authentic a map of the enemy's stronghold, what need I fear? I go--but,
on my honor, I shall shortly return."
She stood with her fingers clasped tightly in front of her, and watched me
lead Shylock down that butte--on the side toward the pass, if you are
still in doubt of my intentions. When I say she watched me, I am making a
guess; but I felt that she was, and it would be hard to disabuse my mind
of that belief. And when I started, her fingers had been clinging tightly
together. At the bottom I turned and waved my hat--and I know she saw
that, for she immediately whirled and took to studying the southern
sky-line. So I left her and galloped straight into the lion's den--to use
an old simile.
I passed through the gate and up to the house, Shylock pacing easily along
as though we both felt assured of a welcome. Old King met me at his door
as I was going by; I pulled up and gave him my very cheeriest good
morning. He looked at me from under shaggy, gray eyebrows.
"You've got your gall, young man, to come this way twice in twenty-four
hours," he said grimly.
"You can turn around and go back the way you came in."
"You asked me to call," I reminded him mildly. "You were not at home
yesterday, so I came again."
He glanced uneasily over his shoulder, and drew the door shut between
himself and whoever was within. "You damn' cur," he growled, "yuh know yuh
ain't no friend uh the Kings."
"I know you're all mighty unneighborly," I said, making me a cigarette in
the way that cowboys do. "I asked a young lady--your daughter,
I suppose--for a drink of water. She told me to go to the creek."
He laughed at that; evidently he approved of his daughter's attitude.
"Beryl knows how to deal with the likes uh you," he muttered relishfully.
"And she hates the Carletons bad as I do. Get off my place, young man, and
do it quick!"
"Sure!" I assented cheerfully, and jabbed the spurs into Shylock--taking
good care that he was beaded north instead of south. And it's a fact that,
ticklish as was the situation, my first thought was: "So her name's
Beryl, is it? Mighty pretty name, and fits her, too."
King wasn't thinking anything so sentimental, I'll wager. He yelled to two
or three fellows, as I shot by them near the first corral: "Round up that
thus-and-how"--I hate to say the words right out--"and bring him back
here!" Then he sent a bullet zipping past my ear, and from the house came
a high, nasal squawk which, I gathered, came from the old party I had seen
the day before.
I went clippety-clip around those sheds and corrals, till I like to have
snapped my head off; I knew Shylock could take first money over any
ordinary cayuse, and I let him out; but, for all that, I heard them
coming, and it sounded as if they were about to ride all over me, they
were so close.
Past the last shed I went streaking it, and my heart remembered what it
was made for, and went to work. I don't feel that, under the
circumstances, it's any disgrace to own that I was scared. I didn't hear
any more little singing birds fly past, so I straightened up enough to
look around and see what was doing in the way of pursuit.
One glance convinced me that my pursuers weren't going to sleep in their
saddles. One of them, on a little buckskin that was running with his ears
laid so flat it looked as if he hadn't any, was widening the loop in his
rope, and yelling unfriendly things as he spurred after me; the others
were a length behind, and I mentally put them out of the race. The
gentleman with the businesslike air was all I wanted to see, and I laid
low as I could and slapped Shylock along the neck, and told him to bestir
himself.
He did. We skimmed up that trail like a winner on the home--stretch, and
before I had time to think of what lay ahead, I saw that fence with the
high, board gate that was padlocked. Right there I swore abominably--but
it didn't loosen the gate. I looked back and decided that this was no
occasion for pulling wires loose and leading my horse over them. It was no
occasion for anything that required more than a second; my friend of the
rope was not more than five long jumps behind, and he was swinging that
loop suggestively over his head.
I reined Shylock sharply out of the trail, saw a place where the fence
looked a bit lower than the average, and put him straight at it with quirt
and spurs. He would have swung off, but I've ridden to hounds, and I had
seen hunters go over worse places; I held him to it without mercy. He laid
back his ears, then, and went over--and his hind feet caught the top wire
and snapped it like thread. I heard it hum through the air, and I heard
those behind me shout as though something unlooked-for had happened.
I turned, saw them gathered on the other side looking after me blankly, and
I waved my hat airily in farewell and went on about my business.
[Illustration: "His hind feet caught the top wire and snapped it like
thread."]
I felt that they would scarcely chase me the whole twelve or fifteen miles
of the pass, and I was right; after I turned the first bend I saw them no
more.
At camp I was received with much astonishment, particularly when Ballard
saw that I had brought an answer to his note.
"Yuh must 'a' rode King's Highway," he said, looking at me much as Perry
Potter had done the night before.
I told him I did, and the boys gathered round and wanted to know how I did
it. I told them about jumping the fence, and my conceit got a hard blow
there; with one accord they made it plain that I had done a very foolish
thing. Range horses, they assured me, are not much at jumping, as a rule;
and wire-fences are their special abhorrence. Frosty Miller told me, in
confidence, that he didn't know which was the bigger fool, Shylock or me,
and he hoped I'd never be guilty of another trick like that.
That rather took the bloom off my adventure, and I decided, after much
thought, that I agreed with Frosty: King's Highway was bad medicine.
I amended that a bit, and excepted Beryl King; I did not think she was "bad
medicine," however acid might be her flavor.