FRIENDS IN NEED
Because of the moonlight she did not heed the graying of the east. But
the whinnying of the picketed horses roused her from the apathy of
misery into which she had sunk. She stood up and looked along the
ridge. A small roundish object appeared above the crest--then others.
They rose quickly--the heads of riders spurring their horses up the
far side of the ridge.
Singly, in pairs, in groups, the rescuers burst up into view and came
loping down to her, shouting and waving. In the lead rode her father
and the sheriff; in the midst Genevieve, between two attendant young
punchers. In all, there were nearly two dozen eager, resolute men,
everyone an admiring friend of Miss Chuckie, everyone zealous to serve
her and hers.
The girl stood waiting beside the fire. She had tried to run to meet
them and found that she could not move. The suddenness of their coming
after all that fearful night of waiting seemed to numb her limbs.
They rushed down upon her, waving, shouting questions. Her father, on
Rocket, was the first to reach her. He sprang off and ran to put his
arm about her quivering shoulders.
"Honey! it's all right now!" he assured her. "We're here with
everything that's needed. We'll soon yank him up out of that hole!"
The baby, frightened by the rush and tumult of the off-leaping riders,
began to scream. Someone took him from the girl's arms and handed him
to his mother as she was lifted down out of her saddle. Isobel pressed
her face against her father's sweaty breast.
"Hold on, Miss Chuckie!" sang out one of the men. "Don't let go yet.
Where's Gowan--Kid Gowan?"
She shuddered convulsively, yet managed to reply: "He--was trying
to--to roll the rock down. Tom, my brother, is right below it. I heard
and came to see. His back was to me. I could not shoot--I could not
raise my pistol. When I spoke, he whirled and shot at me. He--"
"Kid--shot at you?" cried Knowles. "At you? 'Tain't possible!"
"He didn't mean to. He fired before he saw who I was. Then he saw. He
forgot everything--everything except that he had shot at me. He backed
off--there--over the edge!"
A sudden hush fell on the excited crowd. One man went to peer down
from the place to which the girl had pointed. He came back softly.
"Same place where the last bunch of sheep went over," he said. "Rest
of us were pretty sick--ready to quit. He kept after them until the
last ewe jumped. Said they'd gone to hell, where they belonged."
"He's the one that's gone there!" said the sheriff. "Look at the way
this bowlder is pried loose, ready to roll over! Once heard tell that
his real dad was Billie the Kid. Some of you mayn't have heard tell of
Billie. He was the coldest blooded, promiscuous murderer of them days
when we used to drive from Texas to Montana and the boys used to
shoot-up towns and each other just for fun. Well, this Kid Gowan has
got Billie's eyes and slit mouth. Can't say I ever took to him, but
seeing as how he was a crack-up puncher and Wes Knowles' foreman--"
"That's it! I can't understand it--Kid has been almost like a son to
me all these years!" complained Knowles perplexedly. He explained to
his daughter. "You're wondering why I didn't come sooner, honey. Those
Utes had been let go. We had to follow them up a long ways. When we
got them back and put them on that trail from the waterhole, they
found it led straight across the flats to where the horses and wagon
had stood. There the tracks of the Indian shoes ended, and the tracks
of shod hoofs led off into the brush. We followed them all the way
'round to the lower waterhole and up the lower creek to the ranch, and
there they took us right to Rocket's heels. The Jap said Kid had his
saddle in the wagon when he came back from town, and he had a new hat.
Mr. Blake did some hot shooting at that assassin on the hill. So,
putting two and two together--"
"Oh, Daddy, I know--I knew when I saw him look at Lafe!"
"The--" Knowles choked back the epithet. "Yes, Mrs. Blake told us
about that--and about her husband! Jumping Jehosaphat! Think of his
being your brother! You must have been plumb locoed, to keep still
about that! Why didn't you tell us, honey?--leastways me, your
Daddy!"
"I--I--But about Genevieve? Tell me. You could have come sooner if
she--Was she lost? I was sure that pony--"
"Better have given her a fast one. It came on so dark before he was
half down the mountain that she was knocked out of the saddle by a
branch. He went on down to the waterhole. She tried to catch
him--couldn't. Got lost and wandered all around before she got down to
the waterhole and caught him. We had got to the ranch at dusk, and all
the posse had turned in for the night. She came loping down the divide
just after moonrise. We started as soon as we could rake up all the
picket-pins and rope. Wanted Mrs. Blake to wait and come on later; but
talk about grit! We simply couldn't make her stay behind."
Isobel thrust herself free from her father's arms and darted out
through the circle of rugged, earnest-faced punchers and cowmen to
where Genevieve lay resting with the baby clasped to her bosom.
"Dear! you poor dear!" she murmured, kneeling to stroke the head of
the weary young mother.
"I shall soon be rested," replied Genevieve. "How about Tom? Have you
kept watch of him? Has he moved?"
The girl shrank back, unable to face her sister-in-law's eager look.
"No--I--The fire--it--it disappeared, and I could not see."
Genevieve smiled, and the reddening dawn lent a trace of color to her
pale face. "It was a good sign. He could not have been suffering so
much. He must have slept, and the fire died down."
"Oh! you think that was it?" sighed Isobel. "I feared--"
She did not say what it was she had feared. As she paused Genevieve
looked up into her agitated face and asked quickly: "But Lafayette? Is
he still sleeping?"
"Yes, where's Lafe, honey?" inquired Knowles. "We'll have to roust him
out to tell us just what way he came up."
"Haven't I told you?" cried Isobel, her head still in a whirl of
conflicting emotions. Then, as tersely and quietly as her father would
have related it, she told the bald facts of how Ashton had been
wakened by the snarl of the wolf, how he had insisted upon going back
to help her brother, and how he had gone down into the darkness, the
pack and lantern slung over his shoulder.
"By--James!" vowed Knowles, when she had finished. "Any man on the
Western Slope say that boy's not acclimated, he'd better look for
another climate himself."
"Gentleman," the sheriff addressed the exclaiming crowd, "you heard
tell what the little lady had to say about her husband and this Lafe
Ashton going down into Deep Canyon, where no man ever went before. Now
Miss Chuckie has told us again how Ashton climbed up here, where no
man in this section had a notion anything short of a mountain sheep
could climb. Well, what does the gritty kid do but turn round and
climb down again--in the dark, mind you! They're down there now, both
of them--down in the bottom of Deep Canyon. We called them tenderfeet,
that day when Mr. Blake honored our county seat by sidetracking his
palatial car. Boys, down there in that hole are the two nerviest men I
ever heard tell about. One of 'em has a broken leg. The other has
broke the trail for us. I ask for volunteers to go down with me and
yank 'em up out of there. Gentlemen, who offers?"
Instantly the crowd surged forward. Every man shouted, whooped,
struggled to thrust himself ahead of the others and force the
acceptance of his services on the sheriff.
"Hold on, boys!" he remonstrated. "Just hold your hawsses. I didn't
ask for a stampede. You can't all go down. Last man over might get in
a hurry to catch the first, and start a manslide."
"I vote we set a thirty-year limit," put in one of the younger
punchers.
This raised a clamor of dissent from the older men.
"Tell you what," shouted another. "Let Miss Chuckie cut out the lucky
ones."
"That's the ticket--Now you're talking!" Every man shouted approval,
and fell silent as Isobel sprang up from beside Genevieve.
"Friends!" she exclaimed, her eyes radiant, "it's such times as these
that makes life grand! I believe six of you would be enough, but I'll
make it ten. First, I'm going to bar everyone who has a wife or
children."
"That doesn't include me, honey," hastily protested her father.
"Then you come in the next--none over thirty-five nor under twenty."
A groan arose from some of the youngsters, but the older men took
their disappointment in stolid silence. She went on with calm
decisiveness: "Now those of you that have done any considerable
mountain climbing afoot this summer, please step this way."
Two members of a recently disbanded surveying party, four punchers who
had tried their luck at prospecting on the snowy range, and three wild
horse hunters sprang forward in response to the request.
"That's enough," said the sheriff. "I've got to own up to being forty.
But I'm leading this here posse, and I'll eat my hat if I can't
outclimb anything on two legs in this county. String out your ropes,
boys, and pass over all them picket-pins. We'll need a purchase now
and again, I figure, hauling up Mr. Blake. Hustle! Here's the sun
clean up."
Under the brusquely jovial directions of their leader, the lucky nine
divested themselves of spurs and cartridge belts, tied themselves to
the line at intervals of several feet, and promptly started down the
dizzy ledges. The others helped them during the first fifty yards of
descent with the line that Isobel had drawn up after it had been cast
loose by Ashton. They then gathered along the brink, enviously
watching the descent of their companions into the shadowy abyss.
Genevieve came to where Isobel and her father crouched beside the
others. "Thomas will not let me put him down, Belle," she said. "I see
you left the glasses beside the rock. If Lafayette has reached the
bottom safely--"
"If--safely!" echoed Isobel. "Daddy, you look--quick, please!"
Knowles hastened to skirt along the brink to where the little field
glasses lay at the near side of the split rock. The two followed him,
Genevieve smiling with pleasant anticipation, Isobel trembling with
doubt and dread. The cowman stretched out on the rim shelf and peered
over.
"Um-m-m," he muttered. "Can't see anything down there. Too dark yet."
"Look straight below you," said Genevieve.
"Hey?--Uh! By--James! Well, if that ain't a picture now! These sure
are mighty fine little glasses, ma'am. I can see 'em plain as day."
"Them?--you say 'them,' Daddy?" cried Isobel.
"Sure. Come and look for yourself. Guess Lafe is fixing Mr. Blake's
leg.--Which reminds me, honey, that before we left the ranch, Mrs.
Blake had me send for that lunger sawbones that's come to live at
Stockchute. He'll be here, I figure, before or soon after the boys get
Mr. Blake up into God's sunshine."
"Brother Tom, Daddy--you mean my Brother Tom!" joyfully corrected the
girl as she took the glasses.
"Well, you've got to give me time to chew on it, honey. It's come too
sudden for me to take it all in." He stood up and gazed gravely at the
smiling mother and her comforted baby. "Hum-m-m. Then that yearling is
my Chuckie's own blood nephew. Well, ma'am, what do _you_ think of it,
if I may ask?"
"Can't you make it 'Jenny,' Uncle Wes?" asked Genevieve.
He stared at her blankly. "But I didn't adopt him, ma'am--only her."
"He is the brother of your dear daughter, and I am his wife. Come
now," she coaxed, "you must admit that brings me near enough to call
you 'Uncle Wes.'"
"You've got me, ma'am--Jenny. I give in, I throw up the fight. That
irrigation project now--Chuckie's brother can have anything of mine he
asks for. Only there's one thing--you've got to make that yearling say
'Granddad' when he talks to me."
"O-oh!" cooed Genevieve. "To think you feel that way towards him! Of
course he shall say it. And I--Will you not allow me to make it
'Daddy'?"
He could not resist her enticingly upturned lips. He brushed down his
bristly mustache, and bent over awkwardly, to kiss his new daughter.
"Thought you were one of those super-high-toned ladies, m'm--Jenny,"
he remarked.
The cultured child of millions smiled up at him reproachfully. "What!
after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it's true there was a
time--before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish
and veneer, or the lack of polish and veneer."
Isobel, all her doubts and fears allayed, had risen from the
precipice's edge in time to hear Genevieve's reply. She added eagerly:
"Nor should men be judged by what they have been if they have become
something else--if they have climbed up--up out of the depths!"
"Belle! dear Sister Belle! Then he has proved it to you? Oh, I am so
glad for you! He has proved to you that he has climbed--to the
heights."
"To the very heights! I must tell Daddy. Give me Thomas. See, he is
fast asleep, the poor abused little darling! Go and watch them, and
our climbers. They are going down like a string of mountain sheep."
Genevieve placed the baby in his aunt's outstretched arms and went to
look into the abyss through the field glasses. Isobel drew her father
away, out of earshot of the down-peering group of men. She stopped
behind the tent, which Gowan had pitched part way up the slope of the
ridge.
"You want to talk with me about Lafe, honey?" surmised Knowles, as the
girl started to speak and hesitated.
Her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she raised her shyly lowered eyes and
looked up at him with a clear, direct gaze. "Yes, Daddy. He--he loves
me, and I--love him."
"That so?" said Knowles. His eyes contracted. It was his only betrayal
of the wrench she had given the tender heart within his tough
exterior. "Well, I figured it was bound to come some day. I've been
lucky not to lose you any time the last four years."
"You--you do not say anything about him, Daddy."
"Haven't you cut him out of the herd?" he dryly replied. "That's
enough for me, long as I know he's your choice and is square."
"He has nothing; he is very poor."
"He's got the will to work. He'll get there, with you pushing on the
reins. That's how I size him up."
"But, Daddy, he told me he had been bad, very bad."
Knowles searched the girl's face, with a sudden up-leaping of
concern--that vanished as quickly before what he saw in her clear
eyes.
"Might have expected it of you, honey. You stand by him. You've got
sense enough to know what it means when a man thinks enough of a girl
to tell her the wrong things he has done. I was wild, too, when I was
a youngster. There was a girl I thought enough of to tell. She wasn't
your kind, honey. It came near sending me to the devil for good. You
know better. No girl ought to be fool enough to hitch up with a man to
reform him. But if he has already taken a brace and straightened the
kinks out of himself, that's different."
"He has come up, Daddy--out of the depths."
Knowles only half caught her meaning. "Sure he climbed up. That proves
he has the grit and the nerve. He had proved that even better, going
down at the other place. Put any man down there, and he'd make a try
to get out. No, the real test was his going back down again. He might
have come up just for himself. But going down again--that's the proof
of what's in him; that's what proves he's white!"
"Dear Daddy!... But I'm afraid. He thinks he has been too bad ever
to--to marry me. I'm so afraid he'll go away and leave me!"
The cowman straightened up, his eyes glinting with righteous
indignation.
"What! Go 'way and leave you?--when you want him to stay? By--James!
He's going to stay! Don't you worry, honey. He's going to stay, if I
have to rope and hogtie him for you!"
The girl stared into the frowning face of her father. There was no
twinkle in the corner of his eyes. He was absolutely serious. For the
first time in over two days her dimples flashed. Her eyes sparkled
with merriment. Her lips parted. But she checked the gay laugh before
it could burst out.
"Oh!" she reproached herself. "How could I? And they still down
there--and Tom suffering!"
"Tom?" repeated Knowles. "Thomas Blake--your brother! That's why you
got me started reading all those reports and engineering journals.
You guessed it."
"It did not seem possible. Yet I could not help hoping."
"Things do happen our way--sometimes," qualified Knowles. "Mrs.
Blake--Jenny--says Lafe brought up word that the project can be put
through. I meant to fight. But now--he is your brother, and he has
done something no man ever before thought could be done--he has
surveyed Deep Canyon. He has me beat. I've told Mrs.--Jenny straight
out."
"I know he will do what is right by you, dear, dear Daddy."
"He's your brother, honey. That settles it."