“HAVE YUH-ALL GOT A GUN?”
He was still hot on the trail and expecting every moment to have his
horse shot from under him, when Monty pulled open the door and
walked in upon him, swearing affectionately. Gary sat up, turned
down a corner of the page to mark his place, and reached for his
smoking material.
“Golly grandma, I meant to have supper ready!” he exclaimed. “But I
got to reading and forgot all about eating.”
“How yuh-all been making out?” Monty wanted to know. “Going to catch
a ride back to town?”
Gary licked the cigarette paper and shook his head while he pressed
it into place. “No, the action is just beginning to get snappy now,”
he said.
“Meanin’ what?” Monty paused in the act of lifting a stove lid.
“Meaning that I just put on a fight scene, and ran the heavy clean
out of the cañon as per usual.”
“Yeah?” Monty’s tone betrayed a complete lack of understanding.
“You bet. Never saw a leading man get licked, did you? I’m starring
in this piece--so naturally I just _had_ to put the heavy on the
run.”
“What’s a heavy?”
“The villain. Pat Connolly went and had another impulse. She let the
place on shares to a gink that I’ll bet has done time. He had every
mark of a crook, and he had the darndest holdup game you ever saw.
Pat Connolly doesn’t know anything at all about ranches. She went
and----”
“Pat Connolly--_she_?” Monty was dipping cold water into the
coffeepot, and he spilled a cupful.
“Er--yes.” Gary reddened a bit. “She’s a girl all right. Finest in
the world. Patricia Connolly’s her name, and if I can pull her clear
on this damned Johnnywater investment and remain on speaking terms
with Pat, I expect she’ll become Mrs. Marshall. She’s not at all
like other girls, Monty. Pat’s got brains. A crackerjack
stenographer and bookkeeper. Got a man-sized job with the
Consolidated Grain and Milling Company in the city. You may have
heard of them.”
“Sure,” said Monty. “Sent there once for some oil cakes to winter my
she stock on. Costs too much, though. A cow ain’t worth what it
costs to feed one through the winter. What about this feller yuh run
off?”
Gary got up and began helping with the supper while he told all
about James Blaine Hawkins and his AGREEMENT OF CONTRACT.
Monty was in the position of a man who dips into the middle of a
story and finds it something of a jumble because he does not know
what went before. He asked a good many questions, so that the
telling lasted through supper and the dishwashing afterwards. By the
time they were ready to sit down and smoke with the comfortable
assurance that further exertion would not be necessary that night,
Monty was pretty well up-to-date on the affairs of Gary Marshall and
Patricia Connolly, up to and including the arrival of James Blaine
Hawkins at Johnnywater and his hurried departure that morning.
“And yuh-all say the feller seen something,” Monty drawled
meditatively after a minute or two of silence. “Did he tell yuh what
it was he saw?”
“No, except that he thought it was a man who had slipped into the
cabin when he wasn’t looking. But it was the cat that really put him
on the run. Seems he hated to see a cat unless I saw it too.”
Monty looked up quickly. In Gary’s tone he had caught a certain
reluctance to speak of the man which James Blaine Hawkins declared
he saw. He was willing enough to explain all about James Blaine
Hawkins and the cat, and he had laughed when he told how he had
pretended not to hear the Voice. But of the possible apparition of a
man Gary did not like to talk.
“Tell the truth, now--ain’t yuh scared to stay there alone?” Monty’s
question was anxious.
Gary shrugged his shoulders and blew a smoke ring, watching it drift
up toward the ceiling. “Being scared or not being scared makes no
difference whatever. I’m going to stay. For a while, anyway.”
“I wisht you’d tell me what for,” Monty urged uneasily. “A man that
can hold down the position and earn the money yuh did in pictures
kain’t afford to set around in Johnnywater Cañon lookin’ after two
shoats and a dozen or fifteen hens. I don’t agree with Miss Connolly
at all. I’d be mighty proud if I could do what I’ve seen yuh-all do
in pictures. Your actin’ was real--and I reckon that’s what puts a
man at the top. I know the top-notchers all act so good you kain’t
ketch ’em at it. Yuh just seem to be lookin’ in on ’em whilst
they’re livin’.”
“The best acting I’ve done,” chuckled Gary, “was last night and this
morning. I was scared to death that the pinto cat would come and hop
up on my lap like she usually does. I’d have had a merry heck of a
time acting like she wasn’t there. But I put it over--enough to send
him breezing down the cañon, anyway.”
“You’re liable to have trouble with that feller yet,” warned Monty.
“If he got an agreement out of Miss Connolly, he ain’t liable to
give up the idea of holding her to it. Have yuh-all got a gun?”
“An automatic, yes.” Gary pulled the gun from his hip pocket. “I
carry this just in case. I was born and raised where men pack
guns--but they didn’t ride with ’em cocked and in their hands ready
to shoot, like we do in the movies. There’s a lot of hokum I do
before the camera that gives me a pain. So if I should happen to
need a gun, I’ve got one. But don’t you worry about James Blaine
Hawkins. _He_ won’t show up again.”
“I wouldn’t be none too sure of that,” Monty reiterated
admonishingly. “He’s liable to get to thinkin’ it over in town and
git his courage back. Things like Johnnywater has got don’t look so
important when you’re away off somewhere just thinkin’ about it.”
“I guess you’re right, at that,” Gary admitted. “He’ll probably get
over the cat and the Voice, all right, and--that other spell of
imagination. But without meaning to brag on myself, I think he’ll
study it over a while before he comes around trying to bully me
again. You see, Monty, the man’s an awful coward. I slapped him
twice and even then he wouldn’t fight. He just backed up away from
me and cooled right down.”
“Them’s the kind uh skunks yuh want to look out for,” Monty declared
sententiously.
But Gary only laughed at him and called him the original gloom, and
insisted upon talking of something altogether different.
Monty, it transpired, had promised to help a man through haying over
in Pahranagat Valley and meant to start the next day. He was frankly
relieved to know that Gary was still all right. He had wanted to
ride over to Johnnywater again before going to Pahranagat, but had
had too much riding of his own to do.
“But if you’re bent on hangin’ out there,” he said, after some
futile argument, “I’ll ride on over when I get through with this
job. What yuh-all trying to do over there, anyway? Hate yourself to
death?”
“Well, I hope I’m pleasing Pat,” Gary laughed evasively.
“Well, I hate to be butting in,” Monty said diffidently, “but if she
wanted yuh to stay over here and run Johnnywater, it don’t seem to
me like she’d ’a’ sent this Hawkins feller over with a five years’
contract to run the place on shares. Didn’t she send yuh no word
about why she done it?”
“She did not! I have a hunch Pat’s pretty sore at me. You see, she
sprung this deal on me kinda sudden, right on top of a strawberry
shortcake when I didn’t want to think. I told her what I thought
about it--and I told it straight. So we had a little--er--argument. She
up and threw my profile in my face, and called me flabby souled. So
I up and left. And I didn’t go back to tell her good-by when I
started over here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if little Pat Connolly
is pretty well peeved.”
Monty smoked and studied the matter. “Does she know you’re over
here?” he asked abruptly. “Seems kinda funny to me, that she’d go
and send Hawkins over here without sayin’ a word to yuh about it.
She could ’a’ wrote, couldn’t she? If yuh-all didn’t tell her yuh
was coming, how would she know yuh was here?”
“Why, she could call up the studio and get the dope from Mills, my
director,” Gary explained uncomfortably.
“But would she? Seems like as if _I_ was a girl and had any spunk, I
wouldn’t want to let on that the feller I was engaged to had gone
off somewheres without letting me know about it.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Gary admitted. “But Pat’s nobody’s
fool. She could find out all right, without letting on.”
“Well, it’s none of my put-in--but I don’t reckon yuh-all are
pleasing Pat Connolly much by sticking over here.”
Gary got up and stretched his arms above his head. “She wanted me to
sit in my cabin and listen to a saddle horse champing hay,” he
contended lightly. “I think I’ll go down and give Jazz a feed of
barley to champ.”
Monty understood quite well that Gary meant to end the discussion
right there. He said no more about it, therefore. But he promised
himself--and mentally he promised Patricia as well--that he would
manage somehow to bring about a complete understanding between these
two obstinate young people.
They slept shoulder to shoulder that night in Monty’s bunk, and the
next morning they saddled early and each rode his way, feeling the
better for the meeting.