A LATE ARRIVAL
After visiting the corral, Larkin paid his respects to the pump and
refreshed himself for supper. Then he strolled around the long, rambling
ranch house. Across the front, which faced southwest, had been built a low
apology for a veranda on which a couple of uninviting chairs stood. He
appropriated one of these and settled back to think.
The late sun, a red-bronze color, hung just above the horizon and softened
the unlovely stretches of prairie into something brooding and beautiful.
Thirty miles away the Rockies had become a mass of gray-blue fleeced
across the top with lines of late snow--for it was early June.
The Bar T ranch house itself stood on a rise of ground back from a cold,
greenish-blue river that made a bend at this point, and that rose and had
its being in the melting whiteness of those distant peaks. Between the
willows of the river bottoms, Larkin could see the red reflection of the
sun on the water, and could follow the stream's course across the prairie
by the snake-like procession of cottonwoods that lined its banks.
On the plains themselves there was still a fading hue of green. The
buffalo grass had already begun to wither under the increasing heat, and
in a month would have become the same gray, cured fodder that supported
millions of buffalo centuries before a steer was on the range.
For Bud Larkin, only a year in the West, this evening scene had not lost
its charm. He loved this hour when the men washed up at the pump. There
were enticing sounds from the cook house and enticing odors in the air.
Sometimes it seemed as though it almost made up for a day's failure and
discouragement.
His quick eye suddenly noted a dark speck moving rapidly across the
prairie toward the ranch house. It seemed to skim the ground and in five
minutes had developed into a cow pony and its rider. A quarter of an hour
later and the pony proved himself of "calico" variety, while the rider
developed into a girl who bestrode her mount as though she were a part of
the animal itself.
The front rim of her broad felt hat was fastened upward with a thong and
exposed her face. Bud watched her idly until she dashed up to the front of
the house, fetched her horse back on its haunches with a jerk on the
cruel Spanish bridle, and leaped to the ground before he had fairly lost
headway. Then with a slap on the rump she sent him trotting to Stelton,
who had appeared around the end of the veranda as though expecting her.
Occupied with pulling off her soft white buckskin gauntlets, she did not
notice the young man on the low porch until, with an exclamation, he had
sprung to his feet and hurried toward her.
"Juliet Bissell!" gasped Larkin, holding out a hand to her. "What are you
doing here?"
"Of all people, Bud Larkin!" cried the girl, flushing with pleasure. "Why,
I can't believe it! Did you drop out of the sky somewhere?"
"If the sky is heaven, I've just dropped into it," he returned, trying to
confine his joy to intelligible speech, and barely succeeding.
"That sounds like the same old Bud," she laughed, "and it's a pleasure to
hear it. For if there is one thing a cowboy can't do, and it's the only
one, it is to pay a woman a compliment. That speech brands you a
tenderfoot."
"Never! I've been out a year and can nearly ride a cow pony, providing it
is lame and blind."
So, bantering each other unmercifully, they reached the front door.
"Wait a few minutes, Bud, and I will be out again. I must dress for
dinner."
When she had gone Larkin understood at once the presence of the carpet,
the patent rocker, and the piano.
"What a double-barreled idiot I am," he swore, "to talk turkey to old
Bissell and never connect him with Juliet. All the sheep in the world
couldn't get me away from here to-night." And he ejaculated the time-worn
but true old phrase that the world is a mighty small place.
Juliet Bissell had been a very definite personage in Bud Larkin's other
life--the life that he tried to forget. The eldest son of a rich Chicago
banker, his first twenty-five years had been such years as a man always
looks back upon with a vast regret.
From the mansion on Sheridan Drive he had varied his time among his clubs,
his sports, and his social duties, and generally made himself one of many
in this world that humanity can do without. In other words, he added
nothing to himself, others, or life in general, and was, therefore,
without a real excuse for existing.
Of one thing he was ever zealous, now that he had left it behind, and this
was that his past should not pursue him into the new life he had chosen.
He wished to start his career without stigma, and end it without blame.
Strangely enough, the person who had implanted this ambition and
determination in him was Juliet Bissell. Three winters before, he had met
her at the charity ball, and at the time she was something of a social
sensation, being described as "that cowgirl from Wyoming." However, that
"cowgirl" left her mark on many a gilded youth, and Bud Larkin was one.
He had fallen in love with her, as much as one in his position is capable
of falling in love, had proposed to her, and been rejected with a grace
and gentleness that had robbed the blow of all hurt--with one exception.
Bud's pride, since his wealth and position had meant nothing in the girl's
eyes, had been sorely wounded, and it had taken six months of the vast
mystery of the plains to reduce this pettiness to the status of a secret
shame.
When Juliet refused him she had told him with infinite tact that her
husband would be a man more after the pattern of her father, whom she
adored, and who, in turn, worshiped the very air that surrounded her; and
it was this fact that had turned Bud's attention to the West and its
opportunities.
When she returned to the porch Juliet had on a plain white dress with pink
ribbons at elbows, neck, and waist. Larkin, who had always thrilled at her
splendid physical vigor, found himself more than ever under the spell of
her luxuriant vitality.
Her great dark eyes were remarkably lustrous and expressive, her black
hair waved back from her brown face into a great braided coil, her
features were not pretty so much as noble. Her figure, with its limber
curves, was pliant and graceful in any position or emergency--the result
of years in the saddle. Her feet and hands were small, the latter being
firm but infinitely gentle in their touch.
"Well, have you forgotten all your Eastern education?" Larkin asked,
smiling, as she sat down. "Have you reverted to your original untamed
condition?"
"No, indeed, Bud. I have a reputation to keep up in that respect. The fact
that I have had an Eastern education has made our punchers so proud that
they can't be lived with when they go to town, and lord it over
everybody."
"I suppose they all want to marry you?"
"Yes, singly or in lots, and sometimes I'm sorry it can't be done, I love
them all so much. But tell me, Bud, what brings you out West in general
and here in particular?"
"Probably you don't know that a year and a half ago my father died," and
Larkin's face shadowed for a moment with retrospection. "Well, he did, and
left me most of his estate. I was sick of it there, and I vowed I would
pull up stakes and start somewhere by myself. So I went up to Montana in
the vicinity of the Musselshell Forks and bought a ranch and some stock."
"Cattle?"
"No, sheep. The best merino I ever saw--"
"Bud Larkin! You're not a sheepman?"
"Yes, ma'am, and a menace to a large number of cowmen, your father among
them."
The girl sank back and allowed him to relate the story of his adventures
up to the present time, including the interview with Beef. At the
description of that she smiled grimly; and he, noting the fact, told
himself that it would take a masterly character to subdue that free, wild
pride.
"Now, Julie," he concluded, "do me the favor of instilling reason into
your father. I've done my best and we have parted without murder, but
that's all. I've got to have a friend at court or I will be ruined before
I commence."
The girl was silent for a few minutes and sat looking down at her
slippered feet.
"Bud," she said at last, "you've never known me to tell anything but the
truth, and I'm going to tell it to you now. I will be your friend in
everything except where you ask me to yield my loyalty to my father and
his interests. He is the most wonderful father a girl ever had, and if he
were to say that black was white, I should probably swear to it if he
asked me to."
"I admire you for that," said Bud genuinely, although all his hopes in
this powerful ally went glimmering. "Let's not talk shop any longer. It's
too good just to see you to think about anything but that."
So, for a while, they reminisced of the days of their former friendship,
by tacit agreement avoiding any reference to intimate things. And Larkin
felt spring up in him the old love that he had convinced himself was dead;
so that he added to his first resolution to succeed on the range, a
second, that he would, in the end, conquer Juliet Bissell.
The thought was pleasing, for it meant another struggle, another outlet
for the energies and activities that had so long lain dormant in him. And
with the undaunted courage of youth he looked eagerly toward the battle
that should win this radiant girl.
But for the present he knew he must not betray himself by word, look or
action; other things of greater moment must be settled.
At last, as they talked, the cook, a long-suffering Chinaman, seized a
huge brass bell and rang it with all his might, standing in the door of
the cook house.
There was an instant response in the wild whoop of the cowboys who had
been suffering the pangs of starvation for the past half-hour.
"Of course you must come to our private table, Bud," said Juliet. "I want
you to see father's other side." So they rose and went in the front way.
The ranch house had been planned so that to the right of the entrance was
the living-room, and back of that the dining-room. To the left three
smaller rooms had been made into sleeping apartments. At the back of the
structure and extending across the width of it was a large room that, in
the early days of the Bar T, had served as the bunk-house for the cow
punchers.
This had now been changed to the mess-room for them, while the family,
with the addition of Stelton, the foreman, used the smaller private room.
Owing to the large increase in the number of Bar T punchers a special
bunk-house had been built in the rear of the main structure.
At table Larkin for the first time met Mrs. Bissell, who proved to be a
typical early cowman's wife, thin, overworked, and slightly vinegary of
disposition, despite the fact that she had at one time in her life been
the belle of a cowtown, and had been won from beneath the ready .45's of a
number of rivals.
At Bud's entrance Stelton grunted and scowled, and generally showed
himself ill-pleased that Juliet should have known the visitor. On the
other hand, as the girl had promised, Beef Bissell, for years the terror
of the range, displayed a side that the sheepman would never have
suspected. His voice became gentle, his laugh softened, his language
purified, and he showed, by many little attentions, the unconscious
chivalry that worship of a good woman brings to the surface.
For her part, the girl appraised this devotion at its true value and never
failed in the little feminine thoughtfulnesses that appeal so strongly to
a worried and busy man.
That Stelton should be at the table at all surprised Bud, for it was not
the habit of foremen to eat away from the punchers. But here the fact was
the result of a former necessity when Bissell, hard-pressed, had called
his foreman into consultation at meal times.
Old Bissell proved himself a more genial host than business rival, and
when he had learned of Larkin and his daughter's former friendship, he
forgot sheep for the moment and took an interest in the man. Mrs. Bissell
sat open-mouthed while Bud told of the glories of Chicago in the early
eighties, and never once mentioned her famous visit to St. Paul, so
overcome was she with the tales this young man related.
Everyone was at his or her ease when the rapid tattoo of hoofs was heard,
and a horse and rider drew up abruptly at the corral. One of the punchers
from the rear dining-room went out to meet him and presently appeared
sheepishly in the doorway where Bissell could see him.
"Is there a Mr. Larkin here?" asked the puncher.
"Yes," said Bud, pushing back his chair.
"There's a stranger out here that 'lows he wants to see you."
"Send him in here and give him something to eat, Shorty," sang out
Bissell. "If he's a friend of Larkin's, he'd better have dinner with him.
And, Shorty, tell that Chinaman to rustle another place here _pronto!_"
As for Bud Larkin, he was at a total loss to know who his visitor might
be. With a sudden twinge of fear he thought that perhaps Hard-winter Sims,
his chief herder, had pursued him with disastrous information from the
flocks. Wondering, he awaited the visitor's appearance.
The stranger presently made a bold and noisy entrance, and, when his face
came into view, Bud sank back in his chair weakly, his own paling a trifle
beneath the tan. For the man was Smithy Caldwell, a shifty-eyed crook from
Chicago, one who had dogged him before, and whom he had never expected to
see again. How the villain had tracked him to the Bar T outfit Bud could
not imagine.
Seeing the eyes of the others upon him, Larkin recovered himself with an
effort and introduced Caldwell; but to the eyes of even the most
unobservant it was plain that a foreign element of disturbing nature had
suddenly been projected into the genial atmosphere. The man was coarse in
manner and speech and often addressed leering remarks to Juliet, who
disregarded them utterly and confined her attention to Bud.
"Who is this creature?" she asked _sotto voce_. "What does he want with
you?"
Bud hesitated, made two or three false starts, and finally said:
"I am sure his business with me would not interest you."
"I beg your pardon," said the girl, rebuffed. "I seem to have forgotten
myself."
"I wish I could," ejaculated Bud bitterly, and refused to explain further.