"Old man" Carson--so-called through lack of courtesy and because of the
sprinkling of gray through his black hair, a man of perhaps
forty-five--filled an unthinkably disreputable pipe with his own
conception of "real tobacca" and chuckled so that the second match was
required; before he was ready to say his say.
"You just listen to me, you boys!" he said. "I worked with the Down
River outfit a year before Trevors sent me word he had a job open here
at better pay. That's only seventy-five miles, and news does
percolate, give it time. None of you fellers ever saw old Luke
Sanford?"
"I'd been working here close to two weeks when he got killed," Bud said
as Carson's twinkling eyes went from face to face. "I got my job
straight from him, not Trevors."
"That's so," said Carson. "Well, Bud knows the sort Luke Sanford was.
He was dead and buried when I come to the Blue Lake, but I'd saw him
twice and I'd heard of him more times than that. Quiet man that
'tended to his own business and didn't say so all-fired much 'less he
was stirred up. And then--!" He whistled his meaning. "A fighter.
All he ever got he fought for. All he ever held on to he fought for.
He bucked Western Lumber for a dozen years, first and last. And, by
cripes, he nailed their durned hides on his stable-door, too!
"Well, I heard tell about this same Luke Sanford ten years ago and
more--about him and his little girl. From what folks said I guess
there never was a man wanted a boy-baby worse'n Luke Sanford before
Judith come. And I guess there never was a man put more stock in his
own flesh and blood than Luke did in her as soon as he got used to her
being a she. I don't know just exactly how old she was ten years ago,
women folks being so damn' tricky in the looks of their ages, but I'd
say she was eight or nine or ten or eleven years old. Anyhow, Luke had
took her in hand already."
"Taught her to ride, huh?" asked one of the men.
"You're shouting, Poker Face," nodded Carson with vehemence. "He sure
did! Why, that girl's rid real horses since she was the size of a pair
of boots. Luke took her everywhere he went, up in the mountains, over
the Big Ridge, down valley-ways, into town when he went off on his
yearly. And they say Luke wasn't no poky rider, either. You've rode
his string, Bud? What are those for horses, huh?"
"I'm a little particular when it comes to a saddle-horse," Bud
admitted. "But I never asked any better than old Sanford's string."
"You hear him!" said Carson. "Well, that Judy girl has rid horses like
them for a dozen years. And her dad--anyway, folks say so down on the
river--showed her his way to ride and his way to shoot and his way to
play cards! I guess," and he spoke with slow thoughtfulness, "that
she's a real chip off'n the old block. It's my guess number two that
she ain't just shooting off her face promiscuous when she says there's
something crooked in the deal Trevors has been handing her. And, third
bet, there's most likely going to be seven kinds of hell popping around
this end of the woods for a spell."
"What are you doing about it, Carson?" asked the man whose unusually
vacuous expression gave him his name of Poker Face. "Stick on the job
or quit?"
"Me?" Carson sought a match, and when he had found it, held it long in
his grimy fingers, staring at it thoughtfully. "Me stay an' let a
she-girl boss me? Well, it ain't the play a man might look to me to
make, an' I ain't saying it's the trick I'd do every day in the week.
But here there's some things to set a man scratching his head: she's a
winner, all right, an' I'm the first man to up an' say so. She's got
the sand an' she's got the savvy. Take 'em together an' they make what
you call gumption. Sure it ain't no woman's job to step in an' run an
outfit like this one; a woman ain't nacherally cut out for that sort of
thing any more'n a man is to darn socks an' drink tea with lemon in it.
Again, tipping it over so's you can look at the other side, like a fair
man ought to, what's she going to do? She lands here sudden, striking
all four feet in a mess of trouble. She grabs holt of things, seeing
they belong to her in a way, an' seeing she's fed Trevors his time. I
might go trailing my luck some other-where, if I did the first fool
thing that plopped into my nut. But playing fair, I'm going to stick
an' do my damnedest to see Luke Sanford's girl put up her scrap. Yes,
sir."
"What did she want to fire Trevors for?" asked Benny, the cook.
Carson, looking at him contemptuously, spoke in contemptuous answer
about the stem of his pipe. "Any man on the job can answer you that,
Cookie. It's been open an' shut the last month Trevors is either crazy
or crooked. I said, didn't I, Western Lumber's itching to get its
devil-fish legs wropped aroun' Blue Lake timber? They've busted more
than one rancher up in the mountains. Trevors is in with 'em. Any man
on the ranch that don't know that, don't want to know it!" He removed
his pipe at last, and his look upon Benny was full of meaning. "Roll
that in your dough, Cookie, an' make biscuits out'n it."
"Go easy there, grandfather," growled Benny.
"That's something I ain't learned," was old Carson's ready answer,
lightly given. "I've told you before, if you don't want your name
printed plain don't come around asking me to spell it."
Benny growled an answer but did not take up the quarrel. He knew
Carson well enough to know that there was no man living readier for a
fight or abler to conduct his own part of it. Carson, smaller than
Benny, was wiry, quick-footed, hard-eyed. There was something about
him that caused a man of Benny's sort to stop and think.
"_Qué hay_, Bud?" called a voice, and old José, his face shining with
his joy--Bud was certain that Judith had actually kissed the leathery
cheek and wondered how she could do it!--came down the knoll. "_La
señorita_ wants you!"
"Haw!" gurgled Bandy O'Neil facetiously. "It's your manly beauty, Bud!
You ol' son-of-a-gun of a lady-killer!"
Bud Lee swung about upon his heel to glare at Bandy. But suddenly
conscious of a flush creeping up hotly under his tan, he turned his
back and strode away to the house. Bandy's "haw, haw!" followed him.
Lee's face was flaming when he entered the office.
"What do you want with me?" he said shortly, angered at Bandy, Judith
Sanford and himself.
"Bow, wow!" retorted Judith, looking up from Trevors's table. "Whose
dog art thou? Do you want me to think you are as fierce as you look?"
"You sent for me?" he said coolly.
She looked up at him critically. "What's come over you, Lee? I took
you for a cool head--Heaven knows I need a few cool heads around me
right now!--and here you show up with red in your eye, barking at me."
"Let's pass up what I look like," said Lee stiffly. "What can I do for
you. Miss Sanford?"
"Hm," said Judith. "On your high horse, are you? All right, stay
there. What I want is some information. How long have you been on the
Blue Lake pay-roll?"
"A little over six months," he answered colorlessly.
"_Over_ six months?" A quick look of interest came into her eyes.
"Trevors hired you? Or dad?"
"Your father."
"Then"--and a sudden, swift smile came for the first time that morning
into the girl's eyes--"you're square! Thank God for one man to be sure
of."
She had risen with a quick impetuosity and put out her hand. Lee took
it into his own, and felt it shut hard, like a man's.
"Just how do you know I'm square?" he asked slowly.
"Dad was human," she replied softly. "He made some mistakes. But he
never made a mistake in a horse foreman yet. He has said to me a dozen
times: 'Judy, watch the way a man treats his horse if you want to size
him up! And never put your horses into the care of a man who isn't
white, clean through.' Dad knew, Bud Lee!"
Lee made no answer. For a little Judith, back at the long table and
looking strangely small in the big, bare room before this massive piece
of furniture, stared into vacancy with reminiscent eyes. Then, with a
little shrug of her shoulders, she turned again to the tall foreman.
"Why did you tell Trevors this morning that you were going to quit
work?" she asked with abrupt directness.
"Because," he answered, and by now his flush had subsided and his grave
good-humor had come back to him with his customary serenity, "I felt
like moving on."
"Because," she insisted, "you know that there was some dirty work afoot
and did not care to be messed up in it?"
Now here, most positively, Bud Lee said within himself, was a person to
reckon with. How did she know all that? She was just a girl,
somewhere, as old Carson put it, between eighteen and twenty-two. What
business did a kid like this have knowing so blamed much?
"You've got your rope on the right pair of horns," he said after his
brief pause.
"How did you know that Trevors was working the double-cross on this
deal?" she demanded.
"I didn't know," he said stiffly. "I just guessed. The same as you.
He was spending too much money; he was getting too little to show for
it; he was selling too much stock too cheap."
"What's the matter with you?" cried the girl, surprising him with the
heat of her words and the sudden darkening of her eyes. "Why do you
insist on being so downright stand-offish and stiff and aloof? What
have I done to you that you can't be decent? Here I am only putting
foot on my own land and you make me feel like an intruder."
"I am answering your questions."
"Like a half-animated trained iceberg, yes. Can't you act like a human
being? Oh, I've got your number, Bud Lee, and you are just as narrow
between the horns as the rest of the outfit. You are narrow and
prejudiced and blindly unreasonable! I know as much about ranching as
any man of you; I know more about this outfit because the best man that
ever set foot on it, and that's Luke Sanford, taught me every crook,
and bend of it; and now, just because I'm a girl and not a boy, you
stand off like I had the smallpox; just when I need loyalty and
understanding and when, the Lord knows, I've already got a double
handful of trouble, I can't count for a minute on men that have been
taking my pay for months! Get some of the mildew and cobwebs out of
your head and tell me this: What reason in the world is there why you
choose to think I haven't any business wearing my own shoes?"
"That's sure putting it straight," said Lee slowly.
"You just bet it's putting it straight!" she announced vigorously.
"And you'll find that it's a way I have, putting things straight. I
was trained to the business by a better man than you'll ever be, Bud
Lee."
"Maybe so," he admitted without heat. "I'll take off my hat to Luke
Sanford for a man. And I'll take off my hat to you, if you want to
know. But, training or no training, this is no job for a lady, and
shooting up Trevors and riding the Prince isn't going to make it so.
Sure enough it's none of my butt-in what sort of thing you do. But at
the same time there's no call for me to say you're doing fine when I
don't see it that way."
"What you're looking for," sniffed Judith contemptuously, "is a female
being extinct this one hundred years! You'd have every girl wear tails
to her gowns, and duck and dodge behind fans and faint every time she
jabbed her thumb with a pin!"
"I can't see that a woman's place is riding bucking broncos and
rampsing around. . . ."
"A woman's place!" she scoffed. "Her place where a blunder-headed man
puts her! How do you know what her place is? Do you suppose the blood
in a healthy-bodied, healthy-minded woman is any different from your
blood? How would you like to be told just what your place is? To be
jammed, for instance, into a little bungalow in a city; to be squeezed
into a dress-suit and told 'Stay there and look sweet'; to be commanded
not to get up a natural sweat, nor to kick over the traces with which
some woman had hitched you to the cart of convention. How'd _you_ like
it, Bud Lee?"
Bud Lee grinned and a new look crept into his eyes. "Being Bud Lee,"
he answered frankly, "I wouldn't stand it for one little tick of the
clock! If you want me to swap talk with you; all day at ninety bucks a
month, all right. I'd say there's two kinds of men, too. There's my
kind; there's the Dave Burril Lee kind. You see, he's a sort of
relation of mine, is Dave Burril Lee, and I'm not exactly proud of him.
He's the kind that wears dress-suits and sticks in a bungalow. He's
proud of his name Burril and Lee, both, because big men down South wore
'em before he did, and they were relations. He's swelled up over the
way he can dance and ride after a fox, and over the coin he's got in
the bank. Then there's Bud Lee who ducks out of that sort of a
scrap-heap and beats it for the open."
"I get you!" broke in Judith, her eyes very bright. "And you men here,
my men, want me to be the sort of woman that your precious cousin, Dave
Burril, is a man? Is that it? Where's your logic this morning?"
"Meaning horse sense?" he smiled. "It's in these few little words:
'What's right for a man may be dead wrong for a woman.'"
"Oh, scat!" she cried impatiently. "What am I wasting time with you
for? You're right when you say that if I am paying you ninety dollars
a month and grub and blankets I'd better get something out of you
besides talk." She swung back to her table. "What was Trevors's
latest excuse for selling at a sacrifice?" she asked, her tone dry and
businesslike. "Why was he selling those horses at fifty dollars a
head?"
"Told me he just had a wire last night from Young Hampton, asking for
three thousand," he explained in a similar tone, though his eyes were
twinkling at her.
"Pollock Hampton has his nerve!" she snapped. She took up the
telephone instrument at her elbow and demanded the Western Union at
Rocky Bend. "Judith Sanford speaking," she said crisply. "Repeat the
message of last night for the general manager, Blue Lake Ranch."
In a moment she had it. "So Trevors wasn't lying about that part of
it," she said reluctantly. And to the Western Union agent, "Take this
message:
POLLOCK HAMPTON, Hotel Glennlyn, San Francisco:
Impossible send money now or for some time. Have fired Trevors.
Running outfit myself. Need every cent we can raise to pay interest on
loans, men's salaries and keep going. This is final.
JUDITH SANFORD, _General Manager_.
"That may start his gray matter working," she ended as she clicked up
the receiver. "Now, Lee, will you stick with me ten days or so and
give me time to get a man in your place?"
"Yes, I'll do that, Miss Sanford."
"You will help me in every way you can while you are with me?"
"When I work for a man--or a woman," he added gravely, "I don't hold
back anything."
"All right. Then start in right now and tell me about the gang Trevors
has taken on. Are they all crooks?"
"I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't put it that strong."
"That little gray, quick-spoken man with the smelly pipe--he's
straight, isn't he?"
"That would be old Carson? Yes; he's a good man. You won't find a
better."
"Is he going to quit, too? Just because I've come?"
Lee shook his head. "If you work him right Carson will stick right
along. Being white clean through, being broader-minded than I am"--and
the twinkle came again into his eyes--"Carson'll show you a square
deal."
"Has he any love for Bayne Trevors?"
"Maybe you'd better ask Carson."
In a flash she was on her feet and had gone to the door. "Carson!" she
called loudly. "Come here, will you?"
There was a little silence, a low sound of laughter, then Carson's
sharp voice answering: "I'm coming!"
Judith went back to her chair. She did not speak until Carson's wiry
form slipped through the doorway. Then with the old cattleman's
shrewd, hard eyes upon her she turned from a clip full of papers she
had been looking through and spoke to him quietly:
"You used to work for the Granite Canyon crowd, didn't you, Carson?"
"Yes'm," he answered.
"Cattle foreman there for several years?"
"Yes'm."
"Helped clean out the Roaring Creek gang didn't you, Carson?"
Carson shifted a bit, colored under her fixed eyes, and finally
admitted:
"Yes'm."
"Haven't had a real first-class fight for quite a bit, have you,
Carson? Not since that gash on your jaw healed? Not since you and
Scotty Webb mixed with the Roaring Creekers?"
Carson rubbed his jaw, flashed a quick look at Bud Lee as though for
moral support, looked still further embarrassed, and finally choked
over his brief:
"No'm."
Judith sat smiling brightly up at his hard features. "I've heard dad
talk about that," she said thoughtfully. "I guess I've got at least
one real man on the ranch, Carson. Oh, don't dodge like that! I'm not
going to put my arms around you and kiss you on the top of your head.
But I do love a man that loves a fair fight. . . . Lee, here, has
given me his promise to stick on the job for ten days or so, to give me
time to get some one else to look after my horses."
"Yes'm," said Carson, fingering his pipe and looking down.
For a few moments the girl sat still, now and then flashing a quick,
keen look from one to the other of her two foremen. Then, abruptly,
her eyes on Carson, she snapped: "You've found out, more or less
recently, haven't you, that Bayne Trevors is a crook? You've perhaps
even guessed that he's been taking money from me with one hand and from
the Western Lumber with the other?"
"Yes'm," said Carson. "I doped it up like that."
"Why," cried the girl, "he's fired all of the old men and Heaven knows
how many of his sort he's put in their places! Help me clean 'em out,
Carson! Where will we begin? I've chucked Trevors and Ward Hannon.
Who goes next, Carson?"
"Benny the cook," said Carson gently. "An' I'd be obliged, ma'am, if
you'd let me go boot him off'n the ranch."
"That's talking," she said enthusiastically. "You can attend to him.
Any one else?"
Carson shook his head. "I got my suspicions," he said. "But that's
all I'm dead sure on."
"The others can wait then. Now, I'm taking a gamble on you and Lee.
You have all kinds of chances to double-cross me. But I've got to take
a chance now and then. I'm going to tell you something: Trevors is
trying to sell me out to the Western Lumber people. He is one of their
crowd and has been since they bought him up six months ago. They want
our timber tract over the north ridge but they don't think they will
have to pay the price. They want the lake; they want the water-power
of Blue Lake River! They want pretty well all we've got. The ranch
outside the stock we've got running on it, is worth a clean million
dollars if it is worth a nickel. Well, the Western Lumber Company has
offered us exactly two hundred and fifty thousand! Only quarter of
what it's worth! They know we're mortgaged; they know the interest we
have to pay is heavy; they know Pollock Hampton, for one, is a spender
who knows nothing about big business; they think that I, because I'm a
girl, am a fool. It looks to them like a melon easy to cut and ripe
for the slicing."
She paused a moment, frowning thoughtfully at the floor. Then suddenly
she lifted her eyes to Carson's, saying crisply: "Trevors took time at
the end to tell me something. That something was that he was going to
make me sell. He was excited a bit, I'll admit, or he wouldn't have
spoken quite so plainly. And he counted upon the fact of my sex, of
course, to feel confident that he could throw a scare into me. He even
threatened, if I hadn't come to my senses before the ranch was dry in
the summer, to burn me out!"
Carson blinked at her. "How's that?" he asked.
She told him again, coolly indifferent, it seemed to Carson.
"The durned polecat!" whispered the cattle foreman.
"Now then," cried Judith, "you've got your first job cut out for you.
Let Bayne Trevors or one of his gang set foot on Blue Lake land, and
I'll tell you what I think of you, Carson! Or is the job going to be
too big for you?"
Carson smiled deprecatingly. "I'd like to see 'em try it," he said in
that soft, whispering voice which upon occasions was characteristic of
him. "I sure would, Miss Judy!"
"That's all this morning, Carson," she said quietly. "On your way
don't forget to look in on your friend Benny."
Carson went hastily down the knoll, his eyes bright. Judith laughed
softly.
"I've got his number, Bud Lee! All that's needed to keep that old
mountain-lion on the job is to show him a real fight ahead! And by
golly, Mr. Man, there's going to be scrap enough from the very jump to
make Carson forget whether he's working for a woman or John W. Satan,
Esquire!"
V