At six o'clock on this afternoon in May the sun was still high above the
mountain tops. By the time Edward Livingston reached his ranch buildings
and saddled his horse to go to Carter's camp Hope had ridden the two
miles or more between his fence and the school-house. There she found,
idly waiting beside the isolated building, surrounded by several gaunt
staghounds, not one of the twins, but both.
The soft-voiced twin was all smiles, but Dave with his back against the
front of the building was scowling sullenly, giving vent to his ugliness
by kicking small stones with the toe of his boot and watching them as
they went sailing high into the air, then down the sloping stretch of
young green below. At one of those stones Hope's horse shied, but the
girl smiled, knowing full well the young savage's mood. She rode
rapidly, and stopped beside the boys, but did not dismount.
"Am I late?" she inquired of the scowling twin. "I see you are on time
with the gun like a good boy, Dave, and you've brought your own along,
too. We won't do a thing to those chickens if we get sight of them
to-night!" She smiled at the boy, who became a trifle more amiable; then
she turned to his soft-voiced twin. "How is it you're back so soon?"
He brushed a speck of dust from his overalls before replying, and his
voice was particularly sweet.
"Had to come to report. You see when I got there they was just quittin',
so I came along back with some o' the fellers. Didn't you meet Long Bill
and Shorty Smith up the road there a piece when you come along?" The
girl nodded. "Well, I come back with them's far as home; then I saw Dave
getting the guns, so I thought I'd get mine an' come along, too. Say,
what's a gating gun?" Hope looked perplexed for an instant, then laughed
outright.
"Oh, you mean a Gatling gun!" She laughed, then very soberly: "It's a
terrible weapon of war--a wicked thing. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I just wanted to know," replied the boy evasively. "I heard some o'
the men talkin' about one, so I thought I'd ask you. Must shoot pretty
fast, don't they? Long Bill was tellin' about one that fired two
thousand shots a second."
"That must have been a terror of one!" exclaimed the girl. "But they
don't shoot quite as many as that, not even in a minute, but they are
bad enough. A few of them would simply perforate an army of men. They're
a machine gun," she went on to explain. "Just a lot of barrels fastened
in a bunch together and turned by a crank which feeds in the cartridges
and fires them, too. They shoot over a thousand shots a minute."
"I wish we'd 'a' had one the other night," exclaimed Dave, waking at
last to a new interest in life. "And I'd 'a' had hold of the crank!"
"Wasn't it bad enough!" remonstrated the girl. "Didn't you do enough
damage to satisfy your savage soul for awhile?"
"Shorty Smith's got a game leg," returned the boy gleefully, "an' so's
old Peter. Long Bill, he's got his hand all done up in a sling, too, an'
couldn't go back on the round-up!"
"I wonder how Bill done that," mused the other twin with a sweet,
indrawn breath. Hope flushed scarlet, which faded instantly, leaving her
face its rich, dark olive.
"Come on," she cried severely, "if we are to get any birds to-day!"
"I know where there's a coyote's den," said the soft-voiced twin. Dave
was all attention immediately.
"Where?" he exclaimed eagerly. Hope, interested, too, leaned forward
resting her arm upon the pommel of the saddle.
"Well," said the boy, deliberately, sweetly--too sweetly, thought the
girl, who watched him keenly--"I was goin' to keep it to myself, an' get
'em all on the quiet, but it's in a kind of a bad place to get at, so
mebbe I can't do it alone. It's 'bout a half mile back there, between
here an' home, up on that ridge behind old Peter's shack. There's a hole
under the side of the rocks, but it's hard diggin', kind of sandstone, I
reckon. I left a pickax an' shovel up there."
"Let's go up there now," cried Dave, "an' get the whole bloomin' nest of
'em! We can get the chickens later."
"Now, look here," said the other quietly. "The find's mine. If you're in
on this here deal, you'll have to work for your share. If you'll do the
diggin' you can have half of the bounty on 'em. How's that?"
Dave grunted. "Supposin' there ain't any there," he demurred.
The soft-voiced twin shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
"What'd you suppose _I'd_ be diggin' there for if there wasn't none?
There's a whole litter o' pups."
"Come on, then!" exclaimed Dave, convinced of his good fortune, for the
bounty on coyotes was four dollars for each and every one.
Hope looked dubiously at the soft-voiced twin, she thought of the supper
at Sydney's camp, then fired with the fun of the thing rode gayly away
with the boys.
The hounds leaped after them, clearing the ground with long, easy
bounds. The girl watched them glide along, yelping, barking, filling the
air with their voices. Her horse loped neck to neck with the soft-voiced
twin's. She pointed at the dogs, drawing the boy's attention to them.
"Why did you bring them?" she asked. "They'll warn your old ones and
they'll be far away by the time we get there. You're usually so
quick-witted, Dan, I wonder you did not think of it!"
The boy made no reply, but gave her a look filled with cunning, cool
intent.
So this was his revenge--his twin was to dig into a rocky ledge for an
empty coyote's den! She marveled at the boy's deliberate scheming, and
rode gayly along to see the outcome. To this sort of revenge she had no
actual objection.
They rode up over the top of a high divide, then followed down a narrow
draw until it widened into a tiny basin, and there, in the center of
vivid green, like a smooth, well-kept lawn, nestled old Peter's cabin.
Surrounding this pretty basin were steep, high ridges and hills,
smooth-carpeted, too, except the ever narrow terraced "buffalo trails,"
and here and there a broken line where sharp crags of sandstone jutted
out. To the base of one of these ridges of rock, back of the old
hermit's one-roomed log shack, the soft-voiced twin led the way,
followed closely by his eager brother.
The twins left their horses at the foot of the hill and climbed up about
thirty feet to a narrow ledge, where a shovel and pickax marked the
small entrance of a coyote's den.
Dave set immediately at work plying the pickax with vigor, and shoveling
out the stones and the hardened sand about the opening, while his twin
superintended the job and occasionally offered words of encouragement.
Hope watched them from below. Evidently the soft-voiced boy was
enjoying himself immensely. He sat on one end of the ledge, his
blue-overalled legs dangling over the side, while Dave worked
industriously, hopefully on.
The hounds evidently had found a trail of some kind, for after sniffing
about busily for a moment they made a straight line along the hill,
disappearing over the high ridge. Hope watched them out of sight,
feeling an impulse to follow, but changed her mind and rode over to old
Peter's cabin instead. The old man limped to the door and peered out
cautiously.
He was a squat-figured, broad-shouldered, grizzled little man, with
unkempt beard and a shaggy sheaf of iron-gray hair, beneath which peered
bright, shifting blue eyes. He added to his natural stoop-shouldered
posture by a rude crutch of hasty manufacture much too short for him,
which he leaned heavily upon. He opened the door only wide enough to put
out his head, which he did cautiously, holding his hand upon the wooden
latch.
"How d'!" he said in a deep, gruff voice that seemed to come from
somewhere between his shoulders.
She nodded brightly, remembering to have seen the old fellow around
Harris'.
"You have no objection to our digging out a den of coyotes back here,
have you?" she asked.
"Umph! There ain't no den 'round here that I know about," he replied,
still retaining his position in the door.
"But see here," pointing toward the side hill, "the boys have found one
and are at work up there right now."
"More fools they, then," declared old Peter, limping cautiously outside
the door. "I cleaned out that den three year ago, an' I never knowed a
coyote to come an' live in a place that'd been monkeyed with. Too much
sense fer that. I always said a coyote had more sense 'n them boys!
Better go tell 'em they'd as well dig fer water on the top o' that peak,
Miss!" He shook his tousled head dubiously, watched the boys on the hill
for a moment, then limped back again, taking up his first position,
half in, half out the door. His attitude invited her to be gone, but she
held in her uneasy horse and proceeded in a friendly manner to encourage
some more deep-seated, guttural tones from the old man.
"Do you live here all alone?"
"Humph! I reckon I do."
"Have you lived here long?"
"Reckon I have."
"Are those your cattle up on the divide?"
"I reckon they be."
"It must be awful lonesome for you here all by yourself. Do coyotes or
wolves trouble you much? Whoa, Rowdy!"
"They're a plumb nuisance, Miss. Better kill off a few of 'em while
you're here. I reckon you kin use yer gun."
"I _reckon_ I can, a little," she replied.
"When I was in the war," he continued, "they had some sharpshooters
along, but they wan't no wimmen among 'em. I reckon you're right handy
with a gun."
"Who told you?" she asked suddenly.
"I reckon I know from the way you hold that 'ere gun."
Just then the soft-voiced twin rode up to the cabin. Hope accosted him.
"Did you get the coyotes _already_?"
"Nope, Dave's still diggin'. I'm goin' home er the old man'll be huntin'
me with the end of his rope."
"Oh, you'd better stay," she coaxed. "Think of the fun you'll miss when
Dave gets into the den. It's your find; you ought to stay for the
finish."
"I'll stake you to my share," said the boy. "He'll soon find all there
is. But I guess I'd better be a-goin'."
"Perhaps you had," Hope replied, thoughtfully; then she rode over to the
industrious Dave, while the soft-voiced twin wisely took a straight
bee-line across the hills to his father's ranch.
This time Hope herself climbed the hill to the spot where the boy was
digging.
"Dave, I'm afraid there are no coyotes in there, aren't you?"
He stopped work, wiped his brow with something that had once been a red
bandanna handkerchief, then gravely eyed the girl, who leaned against
the rocks beside him.
"But he said," pondering in perplexity. "But he said----" He looked into
the ragged entrance of the hole, then at his shovel, then up again at
the girl. "What makes you think there ain't no coyotes there?"
She was filled with sympathy for the boy, which perhaps he did not
deserve, and she had recollected the supper at Sydney's camp, and
concluded that this foolishness had gone far enough. She coaxed the boy
to leave it until morning, but he was obdurate.
"No, I'm goin' to _know_ if there's anything in here er not, an' if
there _ain't_----" His silence was ominous; then he set to work again
with renewed energy and grim determination.
She watched him for awhile, then walked out to the end of the bulging
sand-rocks and climbed the grassy hill. When at length she reached the
summit, the jagged rocks below which labored the breed boy seemed but a
line in the smooth green of the mountain, while old Peter's cabin and
the setting of green carpeted basin looked very small. On the opposite
side a fine view presented itself, showing, in all of Nature's
magnificent display, soft lines of green ridges, broken chains of
gigantic rocks, narrow valleys traced with winding, silvery threads of
rushing water. Such a picture would hold the attention of anyone, but
this girl of the West, of freedom and wildness, was one with it--a part
of it, and not the least beautiful and wonderful in this lavish display
of God's handiwork.
She stood with bared head upon a high green ridge. A soft, gentle
chinook smoothed back from her forehead the waving masses of dark hair.
Myriads of wild flowers surrounded her, and from the millions below and
about drifted and mingled their combined fragrance. The great orb of
setting sun cast its parting rays full on her face, and lingered, while
the valleys below darkened into shadow. As the last rays lighted up her
hair and departed, the yep! yep! of the hounds attracted her attention,
and turning about with quick, alert step she moved out of this
picture--forever.
Standing upon a rocky ledge a hundred feet below the summit of the ridge
she watched another scene, not the quiet picture of Nature's benevolent
hand, but a discord in keeping, yet out of all harmony with it, in which
she blended as naturally and completely as she had in the first. It was
a race between a little fleet-footed coyote and half a dozen mongrel
staghounds; they came toward her, a twisting, turning streak, led by a
desperate gray animal, making, to all appearance, for the very rocks
upon which she stood. Not ten yards behind the coyote a lank,
slate-colored hound, more gray than stag, was closing in inch by inch.
The coyote was doing nobly, so was the mongrel hound, thought Hope, who
watched the race with breathless interest. The yellow dogs were falling
behind, losing ground at every step, but the blue mongrel was spurting.
On they came--on--on, and the girl in a tremor of excitement lay flat
down upon the rocks and watched them. Her heart went out to the dog.
She had seen it kicked around the yard at Harris', noticed it as it
slunk about for its scanty food, and now how nobly it was doing! She
wondered if any of her thoroughbreds at home could do as well, and
thought not. The others were straggling far behind, but now the blue
hound was but two lengths from the coyote, and its chances seemed small,
but on a sudden it turned and made direct for the rocks from which the
girl watched. That instant the dog saw failure, and the light of
determination, of victory, died from its eyes. That same instant the
coyote saw salvation from a quick end in the narrow crevices of rock so
near, and the next it lay stone dead with a bullet through its brain.
The gaunt hound bounded over its body, then stopped short, bewildered,
and eyed its fallen foe. Then with a savage snarl he seized it by the
throat as if to utterly demolish it, but the girl called him off, and
somehow, in his dog's heart, he understood that the game was not his.