"Your horse don't look very tired," remarked the girl as they rode
easily up the gulch toward Carter's camp. "When did you start?"
"Left 'bout noon," replied McCullen. "No, he ain't tired; ain't even
warm, be you, old man? Just jogged along easy all the way an' took my
time. No great rush, anyhow. Cattle 're gittin' pretty well located up
here now--good feed, fresh water, an' everything to attract 'em to the
place. Never saw any stock look better'n that little bunch o' steers is
lookin'. Market's way up now, an' they ought to be shipped pretty soon."
"Why _don't_ you ship them, then?" asked Hope, leaning forward to brush
a hornet from her horse's head.
"Oh, you see," said the man lamely, "them cattle ain't in such all-fired
good fix but what they might be better, an' I reckon your cousin ain't
in any hurry to ship, nohow. Pretty good place to camp up here in
summer. Cool--my, but it was blasted hot down at the ranch this mornin',
an' the misquitoes like to eat me up! No misquitoes up here to bother,
good water, good fishin', good company,--an' who under the sun would
want to quit such a camp?"
"I'm willing," said the girl, looking at him with fathomless eyes, "I'm
perfectly willing for him to camp here all summer. It's quite convenient
to have you all so near. Of course I'm getting used to the grub down
there--some, by this time. Don't think I do not appreciate your being
here, dear old Jim! But you know I understand, just the same, why you
are here! And I think," she added softly, "I couldn't have stood it if
he hadn't showed that he cared for me just so."
"Cared!" exclaimed the old fellow. "Cared _for you_! Why, Hopie, your
father worships the ground you walk on! He's a great, good-hearted man,
the best in the world, and you mustn't have no hard feelin's agin' him
for any little weaknesses, because the good in him is more'n the good in
most men. There ain't no one that's perfect, but he's better'n most of
us, I reckon. An' he loves you, an' is so proud of you, Hopie!"
"Oh, I know it, I know it!" exclaimed the girl passionately.
"An' your mother's goin' East next month," concluded McCullen. "She's
very anxious to get away."
"My poor father!" said Hope softly. Then more brightly: "I suppose
Sydney's out with the cattle."
"Them cattle 're gettin' pretty well located," replied McCullen. "Don't
need much herdin'. No, I seen him there at Harris' as I come along. He
said he was goin' to take you an' that little flaxen-haired girl out
ridin', but concluded, as long as you was busy at the school-house, that
he'd just take the little one--providin' she'd go. He was arguin' the
question with her when I rode by, an' I reckon he's there talkin' to her
yet, er else givin' her a ridin' lesson. He'll make a good horsewoman
out o' her yet, if her heart ain't buried too deep up there under the
rocks."
"Oh, Jim!" rebuked the girl. "It's _dreadful_ to talk like that, and her
poor heart is just _crushed_! It's pitiful!"
"I reckon that's just what Sydney thinks about it," replied Jim, his
eyes twinkling. "You ain't goin' to blame him for bein' sympathetic, be
you, Hopie?"
She laughed, but nervously.
"Louisa's the sweetest thing I ever saw, Jim! She's promised to stay and
go back to the ranch with me in the fall when school is over. Isn't it
nice to have a sister like that? But goodness, she wouldn't look at
Syd--not in ten years!"
She was so positive in this assertion that it left Jim without an
argument. She slowed down her horse to a walk, and he watched her take
O'Hara's letter from her belt and read the lengthy epistle from
beginning to end. Not a change of expression crossed the usual calm of
her face. But for a strange force of beauty and power, by which she
impressed all with whom she came in contact, her lack of expression
would have been a defect. This peculiar characteristic was an added
charm to her strange personality. She was rarely understood by her best
friends, who generally occupied themselves by wondering what she was
going to do next.
It may be that old Jim McCullen, calmly contemplating her from his side
of the narrow trail, wondered too, but he had the advantage of most
people, for he knew that whatever she did do would be the nearest thing
to her hand. There was nothing variable or fitful about Hope.
She folded her letter and tucked it back in her belt, her only comment
being, as she spurred her horse into a faster gait: "Larry says he is
coming over here one of these days."
They rode past the camp and on to the flat beyond, where grazed Sydney's
two hundred head of steers. These they rode around, while Jim reviewed
the news of the ranch and round-up, in which the girl found some
interest, asking numerous questions about the recent shipment of cattle,
the tone of the market, the prospect for hay, the number of cattle
turned on the range, and many things pertaining to the work of the
ranch, but never a question concerning the idle New Yorkers who made up
her mother's annual house-party. In them she took, as usual, no
interest.
She finally left her old friend and turned her horse's head back toward
Harris' still as much perturbed in heart as when McCullen knocked at her
school-house door. She tormented herself with unanswerable questions,
arriving always at the same conclusion--that after all it only seemed
reasonable to suppose Livingston should be married. It explained his
conduct toward her perfectly. She wondered what the woman, Helene, had
done to deserve such unforgiveness from one who, above all men, was the
most tender and thoughtful. She concluded that it must have been
something dreadful, and, oddly for her, began to feel sorry for him. She
saw him when she reached the top of the divide, riding half a mile away
toward his ranch buildings. Then a certain feeling of ownership, of
pride, took possession of her, crowding everything before it. How well
he sat his horse, in his English fashion, she thought. What a physique,
what grace of strength! Then he disappeared from her sight as his horse
plunged into the brush of the creek-bottom, and Hope, drawing a long
breath, spurred up her own horse until she was safely out of sight of
ranch and ranch-buildings. A bend in the road brought her face to face
with Long Bill and Shorty Smith.
"Hello," said Shorty Smith, drawing rein beside her. "I was a lookin'
for you."
"Really," said the girl, stopping beside him and calmly contemplating
both men.
"Yep," nodded Long Bill politely, "we was huntin' fer you, Miss
Hathaway."
"You see it's like this," explained Shorty Smith; "the old man, he ain't
a-doin' very well. I reckon it's his age. That there wound of his'n
won't heal, so we thought mebby you had some arnica salve er something
sort o' soothin' to dope him with."
"I haven't the salve, but I might go over there myself if you want an
anodyne," replied Hope, unsmiling at the men's blank faces.
"I'm goin' to ride to town to-morrow and I reckoned if you didn't have
no salve you could send in for it."
"Oh, I see!" Hope's exclamation came involuntarily. "What do you want to
get for him and how much money do you want for it?"
"Well, you see, he needs considerable. Ain't got nothin' comfortable
over there; nothin' to eat, wear--nothin' at all."
"All right," replied the girl in her cool, even tone. "I'll see that he
is supplied with everything, but will attend to the matter myself.
Good-evening!" She rode past them rapidly, and they, outwitted in their
little scheme for whisky-money, rode on their way toward old Peter's
basin.
Sydney's horse stood outside of Harris'. He left a group of men who were
waiting the call for supper, and came out in the road to meet the girl
when she rode up.
"I have been waiting for you," he said.
"And I have been over to camp and around the cattle with Jim," she
replied.
"Then come on and ride back up the road with me a ways, I want to see
you," said Carter, picking up the bridle reins from the ground.
"But Louisa----" she demurred.
"Louisa's all right," he answered. "I've had her out for a ride, and now
she's gone in the house with that breed girl--Mary, I think she called
her. So you see she's in excellent hands."
Hope turned her horse about and rode away with him silently.
"I want to talk with you, anyway," he said, when they had gone a short
distance. "I haven't had a chance in a dog's age, you're always so
hemmed in lately."
"Well, what is it?" she questioned.
"There's some rumors going around that I don't exactly understand, Hope.
Have you been doing anything since you've been up here to raise a
commotion among these breeds?"
She turned to him with a shrug of contempt.
"You'll have to tell me what you're driving at before I can enlighten
you," she replied.
"Wait a minute," he said, "I want to light a cigarette." This
accomplished, he continued: "I saw one of the boys from Bill Henry's
outfit yesterday and he told me that he was afraid you were getting
mixed up in some row up here."
"_Who_ said so?" she demanded.
"Well, it was Peterson. You know he'll say what he's got to say, if he
dies for it." He waited a moment.
"If it was Peterson, go on. He's a friend, if he is a fool. What did he
have to say about me?" She flecked some dust from her skirt with the end
of her reins.
Sydney watched her carefully.
"He didn't say anything, exactly, about you," he replied. "That's what
I'm going to try to find out. He said there had been some kind of a
rumpus up here when you first came--that shooting at Livingston's
corral, you remember, and that it was rumored there had been some
sharp-shooting done, and you had been mixed up in it."
"Who told Peterson?" demanded the girl.
"Well, it seems that McCullen laid Long Bill out one evening over at
Bill Henry's wagon, for something or other, and this old squaw back
here, old Mother White Blanket, happened along in time to view the
fallen hero, who, it seems, is her son-in-law. She immediately fell into
a rage and denounced a certain school-ma'am as a deep-dyed villain."
"Villainess," corrected Hope serenely.
"Yes, I believe that was it," continued Sydney. "Anyway, she rated you
roundly and said you had been at the bottom of all the trouble, that you
had shot Long Bill through the hand, wounded several others, and
mentioned the herder who was killed."
"She lied!" said the girl with sudden whiteness of face. "That was a
cold-blooded lie about the herder!"
"I know that!" assured her cousin. "You don't suppose I ever thought
for a minute you were mixed up in it, Hopie, do you? I only wanted to
know how it happened that all these people are set against you."
"Because they know I'm on to their deviltry," she replied savagely. "I'd
like to have that old squaw right here between my hands, _so_, and hear
her bones crackle. How dare they say _I_ shot Louisa's poor, poor
sweetheart! Oh, I could exterminate the whole tribe!"
"But that wouldn't be lawful, Hopie," remarked Carter.
She turned to him with a half smile, resting one hand confidingly upon
his arm.
"Syd, dear, I don't care a bit about the whole concern, really, but
please don't mention it to anyone, will you?"
"You mean not to tell Livingston," he smiled.
"I mean not _anyone_. I shouldn't want my father to hear such talk.
Neither would you. What wouldn't he do!"
"Of course not," he agreed. "You'd get special summons, immediately, if
not sooner. But there's something more I wanted to ask you about. How
was it you happened to shoot old Peter?"
"How did you know?" she asked quickly.
"Now I promised I wouldn't mention the matter," he replied.
She studied for a moment.
"There's only one way you could have heard it," she finally decided in
some anger. "That person had no right to tell you."
"It was told with the best intentions, and for your own good, Hope, so
that I could look after you more carefully in the future."
"Look after me!" she retorted. "Well, I guess he found out there was one
time I could look out for myself, didn't he?"
"He seemed to think that more a miracle or an accident than anything
else, until I told him something about how quick you were with a gun. He
told me the old man was crazy, and had pulled his gun on you, but that
you had in some remarkable manner shot it out of his hand, shattering
the old fellow's arm. I assured him that I would see that the proper
authorities took care of old Peter, as soon as he had recovered
sufficiently. Now what'll we do with him, Hope?" She did not reply. Then
he continued: "I knew in a minute that you'd kept the real facts of the
case from Livingston. But you're not going to keep them from me."
"Now that you know as much as you do, I suppose I've got to tell you or
you'll be getting yourself into trouble, too," she replied. Then
impulsively, "Sydney, they're a lot of cattle thieves!"
"Why, of course! What did you expect?" he laughed.
"And I actually _caught_ them in the very act of branding calves that
didn't belong to them!"
The young man's face paled perceptibly.
"You didn't do anything as reckless as that, Hope!" he cried in
consternation. "It's a wonder they didn't kill you outright in
self-protection! Didn't you know that you have to be blind to those
things unless you're backed up by some good men!"
"You talk like a coward!" she exclaimed.
"Not much! You know I'm not that," he replied. "But I talk sense. Now,
if they know that you have positive proof of this, you'd better watch
them!"
"They all need watching up here. I believe they're all just the same.
And, Syd, I wanted to know the truth for myself, I wanted to _see_."
Then she reviewed to him just what had happened at old Peter's.
"I'll have them locked up at once," said Carter decisively. "That's just
where they belong."
"You won't do anything of the kind, Syd--not at present, anyway, for I
refuse to be witness against them."
"You're foolish, then," he replied, "for they're liable to do
something."
"If they're quicker than I am, all right," she replied fearlessly. "But
they are afraid of me now, and I've got them _just where I want them_."
He tried to reason with her, but in vain. She was obstinate in her
refusal to have the men arrested, and though Sydney studied the matter
carefully, he could find no plausible excuse for this foolish decision.
As Hope rode back once more toward Harris' the face of Shorty Smith,
insinuatingly leering, as she had seen it at the trout stream, came
again to torment her. She leaned forward in her saddle, covering her
face with her hands, and felt in her whole being the reason of her
decision.