MOLLY
Molly came down next morning in the faded blue gingham. Sandy marked how
worn it was and marked an item in his mind--clothes. He smiled at her
with the sudden showing of his sound white teeth that made many friends.
She was much too young, too frank, too like a boy to affect him with any
of his woman-shyness. He did not realize how close she was to womanhood,
seeing only how much she must have missed of real girlhood.
Molly had a snubby nose, a wide mouth, Irish eyes of blue that were far
apart and crystal clear, freckles and a lot of brown hair that she wore
in a long braid wound twice about her well-shaped head. She was a
combination of curves and angles, of well-rounded neck and arms and legs
with collar-bones and hips over-apparent, immature but not awkward.
None of the three partners observed these things in detail. All of them
noted that her eyes were steady, friendly, trusting, and that when she
smiled at them it was like the flash of water in a tree-shady pond, when
a trout leaps. Grit, entering with her, divided his attentions among the
men, shoving a moist nose at last into Sandy's palm and lying down
obedient, his tail thumping amicably, as Sandy examined the tape
protectors.
"You lie round the ranch for a day or so," he told the collie, "an'
you'll be as good as new."
"Fo' a sheepdawg," said Mormon, "he sure shapes fine."
Molly's eyes flashed. "He don't _know_ he's a sheepdawg," she protested.
"He's never even seen one, 'less it was a mountain sheep, 'way up
against the skyline. Samson liked him. Don't you like him?"
"I like him fine," Mormon answered hurriedly. "Fine!"
"Ef you-all didn't, we c'ud shack on somewheres. I c'ud git work down to
the settlemints, I reckon. I don't aim to put you out any. I've been
thinkin' erbout that. 'Less you should happen to want a woman to run the
house. I don't know much about housekeepin' but I c'ud l'arn. It's a
woman's job, chasin' dirt. I can cook--some. Dad used to say my
camp-bread an' biscuits was fine. I c'ud earn what I eat, I reckon. An'
what Grit 'ud eat. We don't aim to stay unless we pay--someway."
There was a touch of fire to her independence, a chip on the shoulder of
her pride the three partners recognized and respected.
"See here, Molly Casey,"--Sandy used exactly the same tone and manner he
would have taken with a boy--"that's yore way of lookin' at it. Then
there's our side. You figger yore dad was a pritty good miner, I
reckon?"
"He sure knew rock. Every one 'lowed that. They was always more'n one
wantin' to grubstake him but he'd never take it. Figgered he didn't want
to split any strike he might make an' figgered he w'udn't take no man's
money 'less he was dead sure of payin' him back. Dad was a good miner."
"All right. Now, yore dad believes in them claims. The last two words he
says was 'Molly' and 'mines.' I give him my word then and there, like he
would have to me, to watch out for yore interests. My word is my
pardners' word. I'm willin' to gamble those claims of his'll pan out
some day. Until they do, ef you-all 'll stay on at the Three Star, stop
Mormon stompin' in from the corral with dirty boots, ride herd on Sam
an' me the same way, mebbe cook us up some of them biscuits once in a
while, why, it'll be fine! Then there's yore schoolin'. Yore dad 'ud
wish you to have that. I don't suppose you've had a heap. An' you sabe,
Molly, that you swear mo' often than a gel usually swears."
She opened her eyes wide. "But I don't cuss when I say 'em. An' I don't
use the worst ones. Dad w'udn't let me. I can read an' write, spell an'
cipher some. But Dad needed me more'n I needed learnin'."
"But you got to have it," said Mormon earnestly. "S'pose them claims pan
out way rich and you git all-fired wealthy? Bein' a gel, you sabe
clothes, di'monds, silks, satins an' feather fuss. You'll want to learn
the pianner. You'll want to know what to git an' how to wear it. Won't
want folks laffin' at you like they laffed at Sam, time he won fo'
hundred dollars shootin' craps an' went to Galveston where a smart Alec
of a clerk sells him a spiketail coat, wash vest an' black pants with
braid on the seams.
"Sam, he don't know how to wear 'em, or when. His laigs sure looked
prominent in them braided pants. Warn't any side pockets in 'em,
neither, fo' him to hide his hands. Sam's laigs got warped when he was
young, lyin' out nights in the rain 'thout a tarp'. That suit set back
Sam a heap of money an' it ain't no mo' use to him than an extry shell
to a terrapin."
He grinned at Molly with his face creased into good humor that could not
be resisted. She laughed as Sam joined in, but the determination of her
rounded chin returned after the merriment had passed.
"If you did that--took my Daddy's place," she said, "why, we'd be
pardners, same as him an' me was. When the claims pan out, half of it'll
have to be yores. I won't stay no other way."
The glances of the three partners exchanged a mutual conclusion, a
mutual approval.
"That goes," said Sandy, putting out his hand. "Fo' all three of us.
When the mines are payin' dividends, we split, half on 'count of the
Three Star, half to you. Providin' you fall in line with the eddication,
so's to do yore dad, yo'se'f an' us, yore pardners, due credit when the
money starts comin' in. Sabe?"
"I don't sabe the eddication part of it," she answered. "Jest what does
that mean? I don't want to go to school with a lot of kids who'll laf at
me."
"You don't have to. As pardners," Sandy went on earnestly, "I don't mind
tellin' you that the Three Bar has put all its chips into the kitty an',
while we figger sure to win, we can't cash in any till the increase of
the herds starts to make a showin'. Not till after the fall round-up,
anyway. So yore eddication'll have to be put off a bit. Meantime you'll
learn to ride an' rope an' mebbe break a colt or two, between meals an'
ridin' herd on the dirt. When you start in, it'll be at one of them
schools in the East where they make a speshulty of western heiresses.
How's that sound?"
"Sounds fine. On'y, you've picked up Dad's hand to gamble with. Mebbe it
ain't yore game, nor the one you'd choose to play if it wasn't forced on
you."
"Sister," said Sam, "yo're skinnin' yore hides too close. Sandy 'ud
gamble on which way a horn-toad'll spit. It's meat an' drink to him. We
won this ranch on a gamble--him playin'. He gambles as he breathes. An'
whatever hand he plays, me an' Mormon backs. Why, if we win on this
minin' deal, we're way ahead of the game, seein' we don't put up
anythin' in cold collateral. It's a sure-fire cinch."
"Sam says it," backed Sandy. "One good gamble!"
Molly's eyes had lightened for a moment, losing their gloom of grief
they had held since the shadow of the circling buzzards in the gorge had
darkened them. She fumbled at the waistband of her one-piece gown,
working at it with her fingers, producing a golden eagle which she
handed to Sandy.
"That's my luck-piece," she said. "Dad give it to me one time he
cleaned up good on a placer claim. Nex' time you gamble, will you play
that--for me? Half an' half on the winnin's. I sure need some clothes."
The glint of the born gambler's superstition showed in Sandy's eyes as
he took the ten dollars.
"I sure will do that," he said. "An' mighty soon. Now then, talk's over,
all agreed. Sam an' me has got some work to do outside. Won't be back
much before sun-down. Mormon, he's goin' to be middlin' busy, too.
Molly, you jest acquaint yorese'f with the Three Star. Riders won't be
back till dark. No one about but Mormon, Pedro the cook, an' Joe. Rest
up all you can. I'm goin' to bring yore dad in to runnin' water."
Tears welled in Molly's eyes as she thanked him. Again Sandy saw the
girlish frankness change to the gratefulness of a woman's spirit,
looking out at him between her lids. It made him a little uneasy. The
men went out together, walking toward the corral.
"Sam an' me's goin' to bring in what's left of Pat Casey, Mormon.
Wagon's kindlin', harness is plumb rotten. Ain't much to bring 'cept
him, I reckon. We'll take the buckboard, with a tarp' to stow him under.
Up to you to knock together a coffin an' dig a grave under the
cottonwoods an' below the spring. Right where that li'l' knoll makes the
overflow curve 'ud be a good spot. Use up them extry boards we got for
the bunk-house. Git Joe to help you. No sense in lettin' the gel see
you, of course."
"Nice occupation fo' a sunny day," grumbled Mormon, but, as the
buckboard drove off, he was busy planing boards in the blacksmith's
shop, with the door closed against intrusion.
Mid-afternoon found him with the coffin completed. He rounded up the
half-breed to help him dig the grave, first locating Molly in a hammock
he had slung for her in the shade of the trees by the cistern. He had
furnished her with his pet literature, an enormous mail-order catalogue
from a Chicago firm. It was on the ground, the breeze ruffling the
illustrated pages, lifting some stray wisps of hair on the girl's neck
as she lay, fast asleep, relaxed in the wide canvas hammock, her face
checkered by the shifting leaves between her and the sun.
Mormon could move as softly as a cat, for all his bulk. There was turf
about the cistern, he had made no sound arriving, but he tiptoed off,
his kindly mouth rounded into an O of silence, his weather crinkled eyes
half-closed.
"She's jest a baby," he said, half aloud, as he passed beyond the trees
to where Joe waited with pick and spade.
The soil was soft and clear from stone. An hour sufficed to sink a shaft
for Pat Casey's last bed. Mormon carefully adjusted the headboard he had
fashioned from a thick plank, to be carved later when the lettering was
decided upon. This done he buckled on the belt he had discarded, from
which his holster and revolver swung. Sandy carried two guns, his
partners one, habits of earlier, more stirring days, toting them as
inevitably as they wore spurs, though there was little occasion to use
them on the Three Star, save to put a hurt animal out of misery, or kill
a rattlesnake.
Moisture streamed from Mormon's face, patched his clothes as the heat
and his exertions temporarily melted some of his superfluous adiposity.
Joe, his mahogany face stolid as a wooden carving, rolled a cigarette.
"I sure hate to see a nameless grave," said Mormon.
"Si, Senor," Joe's amiability agreed.
"You go git a dipper. I'm drier'n Dry Crick. Fetch it full from the
spring." The half-breed ambled off. Mormon wiped his face with his
bandanna. Suddenly his big body stiffened. He heard Molly's voice from
the cistern, frightened, then storming in anger. Mormon ran at a
sprinter's gait from the cottonwoods, along a side of the corral,
through the trees bordering the cistern. The girl was out of the
hammock, facing a man in riding breeches and puttees, his face concealed
for the moment by his hands. A sleeve of the girl's frock was torn away,
the outworn fabric in streamers. The man's hands came down and Mormon
recognized him for Jim Plimsoll, owner of the Good Luck Pool Parlors, in
the little cattle town of Hereford, where faro, roulette, chuckaluck and
craps were played in the back room, owner also of a near-by horse ranch.
There was blood on his face, the marks of finger nails.
Plimsoll jumped for the girl, caught her by one arm roughly. She
struggled fiercely, silently, striking at him with her free fist.
Mormon's gun flashed from its sheath as he shouted at the man. Plimsoll
wheeled, releasing Molly. His dark face was livid with rage, a pistol
gleamed as he plucked it from beneath the waistband of his riding
breeches. The turf spatted between his feet as Mormon fired.
"Got the drop on ye, Jim! Nex' shot'll be higher. Shove that gun back.
Now then," as Plimsoll sullenly obeyed, "what in hell do you figger
yo're doin'?" Mormon's jovial face was tense, his voice stern and cold,
he stood crouched forward a little from the hips, legs apart, his gun a
thing of menace that seemed to be alive, snaky.
"Keep still," he ordered, walking toward the pair, his gun covering
Plimsoll, the cheery blue of his eyes changed to the color of ice in the
shade, the pupils mere pin-pricks. Molly glanced at him once, fingers
caressing her bruised arm.
"He kissed me while I was asleep, the damned skunk!" she flared. "I'd
sooner hev rattlesnake-pizen on my lips!" She stopped rubbing the arm to
scrub fiercely at her mouth with the back of her hand.
"It ain't the first time I've kissed you," said Plimsoll. "Yore dad
didn't stop me from doin' it. I didn't notice you scratching like a
wildcat either. Where's your dad? And where do you come in on this deal
between old friends?" he demanded of Mormon.
"Her dad's dead," said Mormon simply. "Molly is stayin' fo' a spell at
the Three Star. Sandy Bourke, Sam Manning an' me is lookin' out fo'
her, an' we aim to do a good job of it. Sabe?"
Plimsoll's thin-lipped mouth sneered with his eyes.
"Gone in for baby-farming, have you, or robbing the cradle? Who's
playing the king in this deal? I----" The leer suddenly vanished from
his face, the tip of his tongue licked his lips. Mormon's gun was slowly
coming up level with his heart, steady as Mormon's gaze, finger
compressing the trigger.
"The law reckons you a man--so fur," said Mormon. "Yore pals 'ud pack a
jury to hang me fo' shootin' the dirty heart out of you, but--ef you
ever let out a foul word or a look about that gel, I'll take my chance
of their bein' enough white men round here to 'quit me. There ought to
be a bounty on yore scalp an' ears. You hear me, Jim Plimsoll, I'm
talkin' straight. Now git, head yore hawss fo' the short trail to
Hereford an' keep travelin'. Pronto!"
Plimsoll's pony was standing under the trees and the gambler turned and,
with an attempted laugh, swaggered toward it.
The threat to his personal safety, his desire to fling a sneer at
Mormon, seemed to have halted any correlation of the statement
concerning the death of the girl's father until now.
"If that's true about your dad," he said, "I'm sorry. How did he die?"
Sensing the hypocrisy of the shift to sympathy, the girl took a step
forward. Mormon's pupils contracted again; his finger itched to press
the trigger it touched.
"It's none of yore business," said the girl. "You git."
Plimsoll's eyes shifted to Mormon's big body, stiffening to the crouch
that prefaced shooting. He faced toward the trees again, flinging his
last words over his shoulder.
"None of my business? I don't agree with you there, you little
hell-weasel. Your father and me had more than one deal together. You and
I may have to do business together yet, Molly mine!"
Molly's teeth showed between her parted lips, her fingers were hooked.
Mormon anticipated her indignant leap. His gun spurted fire, the
expensive Stetson broadrim seemed lifted from Plimsoll's hair by an
invisible hand. With the report it sailed forward, side-slipped, landed
on its rim, perforated by a steel-nosed thirty-eight caliber bullet.
"I give you last warnin'," roared Mormon.
Plimsoll sprang ahead like a racer at the starter's shot, snatched at
his hat, missed it, let it lie as he ran on to his horse, mounted and
went galloping off. Mormon holstered his gun and swung about to Molly,
standing with crimson cheeks, blazing eyes and a young bosom turbulent
with emotions.
"I wisht you'd killed him. I wisht you'd killed him!" she cried. "I
wisht I had a gun--or a knife! I hate him--hate him--_hate him_! When he
says he was ever in a deal with Dad, he lies. Dad stood for him and that
was all. He purtended to be awful strong for Dad, purtended to be fond
of me, jest to swarm 'round Dad, for some reason. Brought me a doll
once. I was thirteen. What in hell did I want with a doll?" she panted.
"I burned the damn thing that night in the fire. He kissed me an' Dad
seemed to think I owed it him for the doll. I nigh bit my lip off
afterward. I wisht yore first shot had been higher, or yore second
lower, Peters."
"Call me Uncle Mormon, Molly. I had all I c'ud do not to make it plumb
center, li'l' gel, but the jury'd ring in a cold deck on me if I had.
He's sure some snake. But we'll take care of Jim Plimsoll, yore Uncle
Mormon, with Sam an' Sandy."
Patting Molly's shoulder, Mormon smiled at her with his irresistible
grin, and she reflected it faintly as she tucked in the remnants of her
torn sleeve.
"That's the on'y dress I got till Sandy Bourke wins me some money," she
said. "You sure are quick, Uncle Mormon, when you git inter action. An'
you can shoot some."
"I reckon I coil up tight, between times, like a spring. Used to be
pritty light an' limber on my feet oncet. As for shootin', I wish Sandy
'ud been here. He'd have shot both the heels off that fo'-flusher, right
an' left, 'thout you ever see his hands move. I ain't so bad, Sam's
better, but we had to throw a lot of lead in practise. Sandy shoots like
he walks or breathes. It comes natcherul to him, like Sam's ear fo'
music. I've allus 'lowed Sandy must hev cut his teeth on a cartridge."
His arm around her shoulder, purposely chatting away, Mormon led Molly
toward the ranch-house, waving off the half-breed who came toward them,
his dipper of the spring water half emptied in the excitement.
Plimsoll's horse was stirring up a dust-cloud on the way to Hereford,
other puffs, far-away toward the range, proclaimed that the buckboard
was on its way with its funeral freight.
The body of the old prospector was lowered into the grave with the last
of the daylight. The raw scar of the grave was covered with turfs Mormon
ordered cut by the half-breed. Molly Casey walked away alone, her head
high, the corner of her lower lip caught under her teeth, eyes winking
back the tears. It was the headboard that had forced her struggle for
composure. Mormon had marked on it, with the heavy lead of a carpenter's
pencil.
PATRICK CASEY
lies here
where the grass grows
and the water runs. He
looked for gold in the desert
and found death.
Buried June 10,
1920
"Ef that suits you," he told Molly, "they's a chap over to Hereford
who's a wolf on carvin'. My letterin's punk. When yore mines pay you
c'ud have it in stone."
"You-all are awful good to me," was all she could trust herself to say.
Each of the Three Musketeers of the Range felt a tug to take her in his
arms and comfort her. Instead they looked at one another, as men of
their breed do. Sam pulled at his mustache. Mormon rubbed the top of his
bald head and Sandy rolled a cigarette and smoked it silently.
Molly ate no supper that night. Before dawn Sandy thought he heard the
door of her room open and soft footfalls stealing down the stairs. When
he went later to the spring he found the grave covered with the wild
blooms that the girl had picked in the dewy dawn.