could see had become a part of her life. Should he explain to her that
when she had crossed the mountains and left behind her the deserts which
constituted the only world she knew, and by which, with its people, she
judged the country she meant to penetrate, she would find herself a
bewildered little savage in a callous, complex civilization where she had
no place--wondered at, gibed at, defeated of her purpose?
"Are you sure you have no other clues--no old letters, no photographs?"
She was about to answer when a tapping like the pecking of a snowbird on
a window-sill was heard on the door.
Susie opened it.
In ludicrous contrast to the timid rap, a huge figure that all but filled
it was framed in the doorway.
It was "Babe" from the Bar C ranch; "Baby" Britt, curly-haired,
pink-cheeked, with one innocent blue eye dark from recent impact with a
fist, which gave its owner the appearance of a dissipated cherub.
"Evenin'," he said tremulously, his eyes roving as though in search of
some one.
"I lost a horse----" he began.
"Brown?" interrupted Susie, with suspicious interest. "With a star in the
forehead?"
"Yes."
"One white stockin'?"
"Uh-huh."
"Roached mane?"
"Ye-ah."
"Kind of a rat-tail?"
"Yep."
"Left hip knocked down?"
"Babe" nodded.
"Saddle-sore?"
"That's it. Where did you see him?"
"I didn't see him."
"Aw-w-w," rumbled "Babe" in disgust.
"Teacher!"
Dora Marshall's door opened in response to Susie's lusty call.
"Have you seen a brown horse with a star in its forehead, roached
mane----"
"Aw, g'wan, Susie!" In confusion, "Babe" began to remove his spurs,
thereby serving notice upon the Schoolmarm that he had "come to set a
spell."
So the Schoolmarm brought her needlework, and while she explained to Mr.
Britt the exact shadings which she intended to give to each leaf and
flower, that person sat with his entranced eyes upon her white hands, with
their slender, tapering fingers--the smallest, the most beautiful hands,
he firmly believed, in the whole world.
It was not easy to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At
best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he
was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with
the high heels of his cowboy boots--from which a faint odor of the stable
emanated--hung over the rung of his chair, and to watch the Schoolmarm's
hand plying the needle on that almost sacred sofa-pillow.
"Your work must be very interesting, Mr. Britt," suggested Dora.
"I dunno as 'tis," replied Mr. Britt.
"It's so--so picturesque."
Mr. Britt considered.
"I shouldn't say it was."
"But you like it?"
"Not by a high-kick!"
If there was one thing upon which Mr. Britt prided himself more than
another, it was upon knowing how to temper his language to his company.
"Why do you stick to it, then?"
"Don't know how to do anything else."
"You don't get much time to read, do you?"
"Oh, yes; _P'lice Gazette_ comes reg'lar."
"But you have no church or social privileges?"
"What's that?"
"I say, you have no entertainment, no time or opportunity for amusement,
have you?"
"Oh, my, yes," Mr. Britt declared heartily. "We has a game of stud poker
nearly every Sunday mornin', and races in the afternoon."
"Ain't he sparklin'?" whispered Susie across the room to Dora, who
pretended not to hear.
"You are fond of horses?" inquired the Schoolmarm, desperately.
"Oh, I has nothin' agin 'em." He qualified his statement by adding:
"Leastways, unless they come from the Buffalo Basin country. Then I shore
hates 'em." At last Mr. Britt was upon a subject upon which he could talk
fluently and for an indefinite length of time. "You take that there
Buffalo Basin stock," he went on earnestly, "and they're nothin' but
inbred cayuse outlaws. They're treach'rous. Oneriest horses that ever
wore hair. Can't gentle 'em--simply can't be done. They've piled me up
more times than any horses that run. Sunfishers--the hull of 'em; rare up
and fall over backwards. 'Tain't pleasant ridin' a horse like that. Wheel
on you quicker'n a weasel; shy clean acrost the road at nothin';
kick--stand up and strike at you in the corral. It's irritatin'. Hard
keepers, too. Maybe you've noticed that blue roan I'm ridin'. Well, sir,
the way I've throwed feed into that horse is a scandal, and the more he
eats the worse he looks. Besides, it spoils them Buffalo Basin
buzzard-heads to eat. Give 'em three square meals, and you can't hardly
ride 'em. They ain't stayers, neither; no bottom, seems-like. Forty miles,
and that horse of mine is played out. What for a horse is that? Is that a
horse? Not by a high-kick! Gimme a buckskin with a black line down his
back, and zebra stripes on his legs--high back, square chest--say, then
you got a _horse!_"
It was apparent enough that Mr. Britt had not commenced to exhaust the
subject of the Buffalo Basin stock. As a matter of fact, he had barely
started; but the sound of horses coming up the path, and a whoop outside,
caused a suspension of his conversation.
Something heavy was thrown against the door, and when Susie opened it a
roll of roped canvas rolled inside, while the lamplight fell upon the
grinning faces of two Bar C cowpunchers.
"What's that?" The Schoolmarm looked wonderingly at the bundle.
"Aw-w-w!" Mr. Britt replied, in angry confusion. "It's my bed. I'll put a
crimp in them two for this." He shouldered his blankets sheepishly and
went out.
VII
CUPID "WINGS" A DEPUTY SHERIFF
Riding home next morning with his bed on a borrowed pack-horse, morose,
his mind occupied with divers plans for punishing the cowpunchers who had
spoiled his evening and made him ridiculous before the Schoolmarm, "Babe"
came upon something in a gulch which caused him to rein his horse sharply
and swing from the saddle.
With an ejaculation of surprise, he pulled a fresh hide from under a pile
of rock, it having been partially uncovered by coyotes. The brand had been
cut out, and with the sight of this significant find, the two cowpunchers,
their obnoxious joke, even the Schoolmarm, were forgotten; for there was a
new thief on the range, and a new thief meant excitement and adventure.
Colonel Tolman's deep-set eyes glittered when he heard the news. As
Running Rabbit had said, on the trail of a cattle-thief he was as
relentless as a bloodhound. He could not eat or sleep in peace until the
man who had robbed him was behind the bars. The Colonel was an old-time
Texas cattleman, and his herds had ranged from the Mexican border to the
Alberta line. He had made and lost fortunes. Disease, droughts, and
blizzards had cleaned him out at various times, and always he had taken
his medicine without a whimper; but the loss of so much as a yearling calf
by theft threw him into a rage that was like hysteria.
His hand shook as he sat down at his desk and wrote a note to the
Stockmen's Association, asking for the services of their best detective.
It meant four days of hard riding to deliver the note, but the Colonel put
it into "Babe's" hand as if he were asking him to drop it in the mail-box
around the corner.
"Go, and git back," were his laconic instructions, and he turned to pace
the floor.
When "Babe" returned some eight days later, with the deputy sheriff, he
found the Colonel striding to and fro, his wrath having in no wise abated.
The cowboy wondered if his employer had been walking the floor all that
time.
"My name is Ralston," said the tall young deputy, as he stood before the
old cattleman.
"Ralston?" The Colonel rose on his toes a trifle to peer into his face.
"Not Dick Ralston's boy?"
The six-foot deputy smiled.
"The same, sir."
The Colonel's hand shot out in greeting.
"Anybody of that name is pretty near like kin to me. Many's the time your
dad and I have eaten out of the same frying-pan."
"So I've heard him say."
"Does he know you're down here on this job?"
The young man shook his head soberly.
"No."
The Colonel looked at him keenly.
"Had a falling out?"
"No; scarcely that; but we couldn't agree exactly upon some things, so I
struck out for myself when I came home from college."
"No future for you in this sleuthing business," commented the old man
tersely. "Why didn't you go into cattle with your dad?"
"That's where we disagreed, sir. I wanted to buy sheep, and he goes
straight into the air at the very word."
The Colonel laughed.
"I can believe that."
"Over there the range is going fast, and it's fight and scrap and quarrel
all the time to keep the sheep off what little there is left; and then you
ship and bottom drops out of the market as soon as your cattle are loaded.
There's nothing in it; and while I don't like sheep any better than the
Governor, there's no use in hanging on and going broke in cattle because
of a prejudice."
"Dick's stubborn,"--the Colonel nodded knowingly--"and I don't believe
he'll ever give in."
"No; I don't think he will, and I'm sorry for his sake, because he's
getting too old to worry."
"Worry? Cattle's nothing but worry!--which reminds me of what you are here
for."
"Have you any suspicions?"
"No. I don't believe I can help you any. The Injuns been good as pie since
we sent Wolf Robe over the road. Don't hardly think it's Injuns. Don't
know what to think. Might be some of these Mormon outfits going north.
Might be some of these nesters off in the hills. Might be anybody!"
"Is he an old hand?"
"Looks like it. Cuts the brand out and buries the hide." The Colonel began
pacing the floor. "Cattle-thieves are people that's got to be nipped in
the bud _muy pronto_. There ought to be a lynching on every cattle-range
once in seven years. It's the only way to hold 'em level. Down there on
the Rio Grande we rode away and left fourteen of 'em swinging over the
bluff. It's got to be done in all cattle countries, and since they've
started in here--well, a hanging is overdue by two years." The Colonel
ejected his words with the decisive click of a riot-gun.
So Dick Ralston, Jr., rode the range for the purpose of getting the lay of
the country, and, on one pretext or another, visited the squalid homes of
the nesters, but nowhere found anybody or anything in the least
suspicious. He learned of the murder of White Antelope, and of the
"queer-actin'" bug-hunter and his pal, who had been accused of it. It was
rather generally believed that McArthur was a desperado of a new and
original kind. While it was conceded that he seemed to have no way of
disposing of the meat, and certainly could not kill a cow and eat it
himself, it was nevertheless declared that he was "worth watching."
While the hangers-on at the MacDonald ranch were all known to have
records, no particular suspicion had attached to them in this instance,
because the squaw was known to kill her own beef, and no shadow of doubt
had ever fallen upon the good name of the ranch.
The trapping of cattle-thieves is not the work of a day or a week, but
sometimes of months; and when evidence of another stolen beef was found
upon the range, Ralston realized that his efforts lay in that vicinity for
some time to come. He decided to ride over to the MacDonald ranch that
evening and have a look at the bad _hombre_ who masqueraded as a
bug-hunter--bug-hunter, it should be explained, being a Western term for
any stranger engaged in scientific pursuits.
While Ralston was riding over the lonely road in the moonlight, Dora was
arranging the dining-room table for her night-school, which had been in
session several evenings. Smith was studying grammar, of which branch of
learning Dora had decided he stood most in need, while Susie groaned over
compound fractions.
Tubbs, with his chair tilted against the wall, looked on with a tolerant
smile. In the kitchen, paring a huge pan of potatoes for breakfast, Ling
listened with such an intensity of interest to what was being said that
his ears seemed fairly to quiver. From her bench in the living-room, the
Indian woman braided rags and darted jealous glances at teacher and pupil.
Smith, his hair looking like a bunch of tumble-weed in a high wind, hung
over a book with a look of genuine misery upon his face.
"I didn't have any notion there was so much in the world I didn't know,"
he burst out. "I thought when I'd learnt that if you sprinkle your
saddle-blanket you can hold the biggest steer that runs, without your
saddle slippin', I'd learnt about all they was worth knowin'."
"It's tedious," Dora admitted.
"Tedious?" echoed Smith in loud pathos. "It's hell! Say, I can tie a fancy
knot in a bridle-rein that can't be beat by any puncher in the country,
but _darn_ me if I can see the difference between a adjective and one of
these here adverbs! Once I thought I knowed something--me, Smith--but say,
I don't know enough to make a mark in the road!"
Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he repeated:
"'I have had, you have had, he has had.'"
"If you would have had about six drinks, I think you could git that,"
observed Tubbs judicially, watching Smith's mental suffering with keen
interest.
"Don't be discouraged," said Dora cheerfully, seating herself beside him.
"Let's take a little review. Do you remember what I told you about this?"
She pointed to the letter _a_ marked with the long sound.
Smith ran both hands through his hair, while a wild, panic-stricken look
came upon his face.
"Dog-gone me! I know it's a _a_, but I plumb forget how you called it."
Tubbs unhooked his toes from the chair-legs and walked around to look over
Smith's shoulder.
"Smith, you got a great forgitter," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you
use your head a little? That there is a Bar A. You ought to have knowed
that. The Bar A stock run all over the Judith Basin."
"Don't you remember I told you that whenever you saw that mark over a
letter you should give it the long sound?" explained Dora patiently.
"Like the _a_ in 'aig,'" elucidated Tubbs.
"Like the _a_ in 'snake,'" corrected the Schoolmarm.
"Or 'wake,' or 'skate,' or 'break,'" said Smith hopefully.
"Fine!" declared the Schoolmarm.
"I knowed that much myself," said Tubbs enviously.
"If you'll pardon me, Mr. Tubbs," said Dora, in some irritation, "there
is no such word as 'knowed.'"
"Why don't you talk grammatical, Tubbs?" Smith demanded, with alacrity.
"I talks what I knows," said Tubbs, going back to his chair.
"Have you forgotten all I told you about adjectives?"
"Adjectives is words describin' things. They's two kinds, comparative and
superlative," Smith replied promptly. He added. "Adjectives kind of stuck
in my craw."
"Can you give me examples?" Dora felt encouraged.
"You got a horrible pretty hand," Smith replied, without hesitation.
"'Horrible pretty' is a adjective describin' your hand."
Dora burst out laughing, and Tubbs, without knowing why, joined in
heartily.
"Tubbs," continued Smith, glaring at that person, "has got the horriblest
mug I ever seen, and if he opens it and laffs like that at me again, I
aims to break his head. 'Horriblest' is a superlative adjective describin'
Tubbs's mug."
To Smith's chagrin and Tubbs's delight, Dora explained that "horrible" was
a word which could not be used in conjunction with "pretty," and that its
superlative was not "horriblest."
Smith buried his head in his hands despondently.
"If I was where I could, I'd get drunk!"
"It's nothing to feel so badly about," said Dora comfortingly. "Let's go
back to prepositions. Can you define a preposition?"
Smith screwed up his face and groped for words, but before he found them
Tubbs broke in:
"A preposition is what a feller has to sell that nobody wants," he
explained glibly. "They's copper prepositions, silver-lead prepositions,
and onct I had a oil preposition up in the Swift Current country."
Smith reached inside his coat and pulled out the carved, ivory-handled
six-shooter which he wore in a holster under his arm. He laid it on the
table beside his grammar, and looked at Tubbs.
"Feller," he said, "I hates to make a gun-play before the Schoolmarm, but
if you jump into this here game again, I aims to try a chunk of lead on
you."
"If book-learnin' ud ever make me as peevish as it does you," declared
Tubbs, rising hastily, "I hopes I never knows nothin'."
Tubbs slammed the door behind him as he went to seek more amiable company
in the bunk-house.
Save for the Indian woman, Smith and Dora were now practically alone; for
Ling had gone to bed, and Susie was oblivious to everything except
fractions. Smith continued to struggle with prepositions, adjectives, and
adverbs, but he found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on them
with Dora so close beside him. He knew that his slightest glance, every
expression which crossed his face, was observed by the Indian woman; and
although he did his utmost not to betray his feelings, he saw the sullen,
jealous resentment rising within her.
She read aright the light in his eyes; besides, her intuitions were
greater than his powers of concealment. When she could no longer endure
the sight of Smith and the Schoolmarm sitting side by side, she laid down
her work and slipped out into the star-lit night, closing the door softly
behind her.
Smith's judgment told him that he should end the lesson and go after her,
but the spell of love was upon him, overwhelming him, holding him fast in
delicious thraldom. He had not the strength of will just then to break
it.
Dora had been reading "Hiawatha" aloud each evening to Susie, Tubbs, and
Smith, so when she finally closed the grammar, she asked if he would like
to hear more of the Indian story, as he called it, to which he nodded
assent.
Dora read well, with intelligence and sympathy; her trained voice was
flexible. Then, too, she loved this greatest of American legends. It
appealed to her audience as perhaps no other poem would have done. It was
real to them, it was "life," their life in a little different environment
and told in a musical rhythm which held them breathless, enchanted.
Dora had reached the story of "The Famine." She knew the refrain by heart,
and the wail of old Nokomis was in her voice as she repeated from memory:
"Wahonowin! Wahonowin!
Would that I had perished for you!
Would that I were dead as you are!
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!
"Then they buried Minnehaha;
In the snow a grave they made her,
In the forest deep and darksome,
Underneath the moaning hemlocks;
Clothed her in her richest garments,
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine,
Covered her with snow, like ermine;
So they buried Minnehaha."
The pathos of the lines never failed to touch Dora anew. Her voice broke,
and, pausing to recover herself, she glanced at Smith. There were tears in
his eyes. The brutal chin was quivering like that of a tender-hearted
child.
"The man that wrote that was a _chief_," he said huskily. "It hurts me
here--in my neck." He rubbed the contracted muscles of his throat. "I'd
feel like that, girl, if you should die."
He repeated softly, and choked:
"All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!"
The impression which the poem made upon Smith was deep. It was a constant
surprise to him also. The thoughts it expressed, the sensations it
described, he had believed were entirely original with himself. He had not
conceived it possible that any one else could feel toward a woman as he
felt toward Dora. Therefore, when the poet put many of his heart-throbs
into words, they startled him, as though, somehow, his own heart were
photographed and held up to view.
Susie had finished her lesson, and, cramped from sitting, was walking
about the living-room to rest herself, while this conversation was taking
place. Her glance fell upon a gaudy vase on a shelf, and some thought came
to her which made her laugh mischievously. She emptied the contents of the
vase into the palm of her hand and, closing the other over it, tiptoed
into the dining-room and stood behind Smith.
Dora and he, engrossed in conversation, paid no attention to her. She put
her cupped palms close to Smith's ear and, shaking them vigorously,
shouted:
"Snakes!"
The result was such as Susie had not anticipated.
With a shriek which was womanish in its shrillness, Smith sprang to his
feet, all but upsetting the lamp in his violence. Unmixed horror was
written upon his face.
The girl herself shrank back at what she had done; then, holding out
several rattles for inspection, she said:
"Looks like you don't care for snakes."
"You--you little----"
Only Susie guessed the unspeakable epithet he meant to use. Her eyes
warned him, and, too, he remembered Dora in time. He said instead, with a
slight laugh of confusion:
"Snakes scares me, and rat-traps goin' off."
The color had not yet returned to his face when a knock came upon the
door.
In response to Susie's call, a tall stranger stepped inside--a stranger
wide of shoulder, and with a kind of grim strength in his young face.
From the unnatural brightness of the eyes of Susie and of Smith, and their
still tense attitudes, Ralston sensed the fact that something had
happened. He returned Smith's unpleasant look with a gaze as steady as his
own. Then his eyes fell upon Dora and lingered there.
She had sprung to her feet and was still standing. Her cheeks were
flushed, her eyes luminous, and the soft lamplight burnishing her brown
hair made the moment one of her best. Smith saw the frank admiration in
the stranger's look.
"May I stop here to-night?" He addressed Dora.
He had the characteristic Western gravity of manner and expression, the
distinguishing definiteness of purpose. Though the quality of his voice,
its modulation, bespoke the man of poise and education, the accent was
unmistakably of the West.
"There's a bunk-house." It was Smith who answered.
His unuttered epithet still rankled; Susie turned upon him with insulting
emphasis:
"And you'd better get out to it!"
"Are you the boss here?" The stranger put the question to Smith with cool
politeness.
"What I say _goes!_"
Smith looked marvellously ugly.
Susie leaned toward him, and her childish face was distorted with anger as
she shrieked:
"_Not yet, Mister Smith!_"
Involuntarily, Dora and the stranger exchanged glances in the awkward
silence which followed. Then, more to relieve her embarrassment than for
any other reason, Ralston said quietly, "Very well, I will do as
this--gentleman suggests," and withdrew.
"Good-night," said Dora, gathering up her books; but neither Smith nor
Susie answered.
With both hands deep in his trousers' pockets, Smith was smiling at Susie,
with a smile which was little short of devilish; and the girl, throwing a
last look of defiance at him, also left the room, violently slamming
behind her the door of the bed-chamber occupied by her mother and
herself.
For a full minute Smith stood as they had left him--motionless, his
eyelids drooping. Rousing himself, he went to the window and looked into
the moonlight-flooded world outside. Huddled in a blanket, a squat figure
sat on a fallen cottonwood tree.
Smith eyed it, then asked himself contemptuously:
"Ain't that pure Injun?"
Taking his hat, he too stepped into the moonlight.
The woman did not look up at his approach, so he stooped until his cheek
touched hers.
"What's the matter, Prairie Flower?"
"My heart is under my feet." Her voice was harsh.
In the tone one uses to a sulky child, he said:
"Come into the house."
"You no like me, white man. You like de white woman."
Smith reached under the blanket and took her hand.
"Why don't you marry de white woman?"
He pressed her hand tightly against his heart.
"Come into the house, Prairie Flower."
Her face relaxed like that of a child when it smiles through its tears.
And Smith, in the hour when the first real love of his life was at its
zenith, when his heart was so full of it that it seemed well nigh
bursting, walked back to the house with the squaw clinging tightly to his
fingers.
VIII
THE BUG-HUNTER ELUCIDATES
The same instinct which made Ralston recognize Susie as his friend told
him that Smith was his enemy; though, verily, that person who would have
construed as evidences of esteem and budding friendship Smith's black
looks when Ralston presumed to talk with Dora, even upon the most ordinary
topics, would have been dull of comprehension indeed.