Hampton's captive, known to them only as Shorty, a heavy, surly man
whose small, close-set eyes burned evilly under his pale brows, rode
that night between Hampton and Judith down to the ranch-house. He
maintained a stubborn silence after the first outburst of rage. His
hands tied behind his back, a rope run round his waist and down on each
side through a cinch-ring, he sat idly humped forward, making no
protest.
Burkitt and Lee, despite Judith's objections because of Lee's wounded
leg, remained at the cabin with Bill Crowdy. Crowdy had lost a deal of
blood, and though he complained of little pain, was clearly in sore
need of medical attention. Judith, coming to the bunk-side just before
she left, assured him very gently that she would send Doc Tripp to him
immediately and, further, that she would telephone into Rocky Bend for
a physician. Crowdy, like Shorty, refused to talk.
"Aw, hell," he grunted as Lee demanded what influence had brought him
with Shorty and Quinnion into this mad project, "let me alone, can't
you?"
And Lee let him alone. He and Burkitt sat and smoked and so passed the
remaining hours of a long night. The folly of seeking Quinnion in this
thick darkness was so obvious that they gave no thought to it,
impatiently awaiting the dawn and the coming of the men whom Judith
would send.
The events of the rest of the night and of the morrow may be briefly
told: Shorty's modest request of a glass of whiskey was granted him.
Then, his hands still bound securely by Carson, he was put in the small
grain-house, a windowless, ten-by-ten house of logs. An admirable jail
this, with its heavy padlock snapped into a deeply embedded staple and
the great hasp in place. The key safely in Judith's possession, Shorty
was left to his own thoughts while Judith, and Hampton went to the
house.
In answer to Judith's call, Doc Tripp came without delay, left brief,
disconcerting word that without the shadow of a doubt the hogs were
stricken with cholera, and went on with his little bag to see what his
skill could do for Bill Crowdy.
"Ought to give him sulphur fumes," grunted Tripp. But his hands were
very gentle with the wounded man for all that.
Pollock Hampton had no thought of sleep that night; didn't so much as
go to bed. He lay on a couch in the living-room and Marcia Langworthy,
tremendously moved at the recital Judith gave of Hampton's heroism,
fluttered about him, playing nurse to her heart's delight. The major
suggested that Hampton have something and Hampton was glad to accept.
Mrs. Langworthy complacently looked into the future and to the maturity
of her own plans. In truth, good had come out of evil, and Marcia and
Hampton held hands quite unblushingly.
Before daylight Carson, with half a dozen men, had breakfasted, saddled
and was ready to ride to the Upper End to begin the search for
Quinnion. But before he rode, Carson made the discovery that during
the night the staple and hasp on the grain-house door had been wrenched
away and that Shorty was gone, leaving behind him no sign of the way of
his going. Carson's face was a dull, brick red. Not yet had he
brought himself to accept the full significance of events. A hold-up,
such as Charlie Miller had experienced, is one thing; a continued
series of incidents like these happening upon the confines of the Blue
Lake Ranch, was quite another. Hampton, knowing nothing of conditions
in the mountains, had been quick to imagine the predicament in which he
had found Judith and Bud Lee. To Carson that had been a thing not to
be thought of. Now, only too plainly he realized that Shorty had had
an accomplice at the ranch headquarters who had come to his assistance.
Carson blamed himself for the escape. And yet, he growled to himself,
in a mingling of shame and anger, it would have looked like plumb
foolishness to sit out in front of that heavy door all night, when he
himself had tied Shorty's hands.
"Quinnion might have let him loose," he mused as he went slowly to the
house to tell Judith what had happened. "An' then he mightn't. If he,
didn't, then who the devil did?"
Judith received the news sleepily and much more quietly than Carson had
expected.
"We'll have to keep our eyes open after this, Carson," was her
criticism. Remembering the night when she had been so certain that
there had been some one listening to her talk with Tripp she added
thoughtfully: "We've got to keep an eye on our own men, Carson. Some
one of our crowd, taking my pay, is double-crossing us. Now, get your
men on the jump and we won't bother about the milk-spilling. If we are
in luck we'll get Shorty yet. And Quinnion, Carson! Don't forget
Quinnion. And we've still got Bill Crowdy; we'll get everything out of
him that he knows."
The cattleman rode away in heavy silence, headed toward the cabin at
the Upper End, his men riding with him, an eager, watchful crowd. But
Carson had his doubts about getting Quinnion, his fears that it would
be a long time before he ever put a rope again to Shorty's thick wrists.
During the day Emmet Sawyer, the Rocky Bend sheriff, came, and with him
Doctor Brannan. Sawyer assured Judith that he would be followed
shortly by a posse led by a deputy and that they would hunt through the
mountains until they got the outlaws. He listened to all that she had
to tell him and then looked up Bud Lee.
"You didn't see Quinnion?" he asked. "Could you swear to him if we
ever bring him in? Just by his voice?"
"Yes," answered Lee. "I can. But see if you can't get Crowdy to
squeal. We're shy Shorty's real name, too, you know."
To all questions put him, Bill Crowdy answered with stubborn denial of
knowledge or not at all. He had been alone; he didn't know any man
named Quinnion; he didn't know anything about Shorty. And he hadn't
robbed Miller. That canvas bag, then, with the thousand dollars in it?
He had found it; picked it up in a gully.
"I won't do any talking," he grunted in final word, "until I get a
lawyer to talk to. I know that much, Sawyer, if I don't know a hell of
a lot. An' you can get it out'n your head that I'm the kind to snitch
on a pal--even if I had one, which I didn't."
Crowdy, at Doctor Brannan's orders, was taken to Rocky Bend where
Sawyer promised him a speedy trial, conviction and heavy sentence
unless he changed his mind and turned state's evidence. And--to be
done with Bill Crowdy for good and all--he never came to stand trial.
A mad attempt at escape a week later, another bullet-hole given him in
his struggle with his jailer, and with lips still stubbornly locked, he
died without "snitching on a pal."
Under fire in the dark cabin with life grown suddenly tense for them,
Bud Lee and Judith Sanford had touched hands lingeringly. No one who
knew them guessed it; certainly one of them, perhaps both, sought to
forget it. There had been that strange thrill which comes sometimes
when a man's hand and a woman's meet. Bud Lee grunted at the memory of
it; Judith, remembering, blushed scarlet. For, at that moment of deep,
sympathetic understanding touched with the romance which young life
will draw even from a dark night fraught with danger, there had been in
Bud Lee's heart but an acceptance, eager as it was, of a "pardner."
For the time being he thought of her--or, rather, he thought that he
thought of her, as a man would think of a companion of his own sex. He
approved of her. But he did not approve of her as a girl, as a woman.
He had said: "There are two kinds of women." And Judith, knowing that
his ideal was an impossible but poetic She, rich in subtle feminine
graces, steeped in that vague charm of her sex like a rose in its own
perfume, had accepted his friendship during a dark hour, allowing
herself to forget that upon the morrow, if morrow came to them at all,
he would hold her in that gentle scorn of his.
"A narrow-minded, bigoted fool!" she cried in the seclusion of her
bedroom. "I'll show you where you get off, Mr. Bud Lee! Just you
wait."
When she and Lee met, she looked him straight in the eye with marked
coolness, oddly aloof, and Lee, lifting his hat, was stiff and
short-worded.
In the long, quiet hours which came during the few days following the
end of a fruitless search for Quinnion and Shorty, he had ample time to
analyze his own emotion. He liked her; from the bottom of his heart he
liked her. But she was not the lady of his dreams. She rode like a
man, she shot like a man, she gave her orders like a man. She was
efficient. She was as square as a die; under fire she was a pardner
for any man. But she was not a little lady to be thought of
sentimentally. He wondered what she would look like if she shed boots
and broad hat and riding-habit and appeared before a man in an evening
gown--"all lacy and ribbony, you know." He couldn't picture her that
way; he couldn't imagine her dallying, as the lady of his dreams
dallied, in an atmosphere of rose-leaves, perhaps a volume of Tennyson
on her knee.
"Shucks!" he grinned to himself, a trifle shame-facedly. "It's just
the springtime in the air."
In such a mood there appeared to Bud Lee a vision. Nothing less. He
was in the little meadow hidden from the ranch-house by gentle hills
still green with young June. He had been working Lovelady, a newly
broken saddle-mare. Standing with his back to a tree, a cigarette in
the making in his hands, his black hat far back upon his head, he
smilingly watched Lovelady as with regained freedom she galloped back
across the meadow to her herd. Then a shadow on the grass drew Lee's
eyes swiftly away from the mare and to the vision.
Over the verdant flooring of the meadow, stepping daintily in and out
among the big golden buttercups, came one who might well have been that
lady of his dreams. A milk-white hand held up a pale-pink skirt,
disclosing the lacy flounce of a fine underskirt, pale-pink stockings
and mincing little slippers; a pink parasol cast the most delicate of
tints upon a pretty face from which big blue eyes looked out a little
timorously upon the tall horse foreman.
He knew that this was Marcia Langworthy. He had never known until now
just how pretty she was, how like a flower.
Marcia paused, seemed to hesitate, dodged suddenly as a noisy bumblebee
sailed down the air. Then the bee buzzed on and Marcia smiled. Still
stepping daintily she came on until, with her parasol twirling over her
shoulder, she stood in the shade with Lee.
"You're Mr. Lee, aren't you?" asked Marcia. She was still smiling and
looked cool and fresh and very alluring.
Lee dropped the makings of his cigarette, ground the paper into the sod
with his heel and removed his hat with a gallantry little short of
reverence.
"Yes," he answered, his gravity touched with the hint of a responsive
smile. "Is there something I can do for you, Miss Langworthy?"
"Oh!" cried Marcia. "So you know who I am? Yet I have never seen you,
I think."
"The star doesn't always see the moth, you know," offered Lee, a little
intoxicated by the first "vision" of this kind he had seen in many
years.
"Oh!" cried Marcia again, and then stopped, looking at him, frankly
puzzled. She knew little first-hand of horse foremen. But she had
seen Carson, even talked with him. And she had seen other workmen.
She would, until now, have summed them all up as illiterate, awkward,
and impossibly backward and shy. A second long, curious glance at Lee
failed to show that he was embarrassed, though in truth he had had time
to be a bit ashamed of that moth-and-star observation of his. Instead,
he appeared quite self-possessed. And he was good-looking, remarkably
good-looking. And he didn't seem illiterate; quite the contrary,
Marcia thought. In an instant she catalogued this tall, dark,
calm-eyed man as interesting.
She twirled her parasol at him and laughed softly. A strand of blond
hair that was very becoming where it was, against her delicate cheek,
she tucked back where it evidently belonged, since there it looked even
more becoming.
"Mr. Hampton isn't here, is he?" she asked.
"No. Come to think of it, he did say this morning that he would be out
right after lunch to help me break Lovelady. But I haven't seen him."
"He wanted me to stroll out here with him," Marcia explained. "And I
wouldn't. It was too hot. Didn't you find it terribly hot about an
hour ago, Mr. Lee?"
As a matter of fact Bud Lee had been altogether too busy an hour ago
with the capers of Lovelady to note whether it was hot or cold. But he
courteously agreed with Miss Langworthy.
"Then," she ran on brightly, "it got cool all of a sudden. Or at least
I did. And I thought that Polly had come out here, so I walked out to
surprise him. And now, he isn't here!"
Marcia looked up at Lee helplessly, smilingly, fascinatingly. It was
quite as though she had added: "Oh, dear! What _shall_ I do?"
Pollock Hampton had fully meant to come. But by now he had forgotten
all about Bud Lee and horses to ride and to be bucked off by. A
telegram had come from a nasty little tailor in San Francisco who had
discovered Hampton's retreat and who was devilishly insistent upon a
small matter--oh, some suits and things, you know. The whole thing
totalled scarcely seven hundred dollars. He went to find Judith, to
beg an advance against his wages or allowance or dividends or whatever
you call it. Judith was out somewhere at the Lower End, Mrs. Simpson
thought. Hampton saddled his own horse and went to find her. All this
Marcia was to learn that evening.
After the swift passing of a few bright minutes, Marcia and Bud Lee
strolled together across the meadow to the spring. Marcia, it seemed,
was interested in everything. Lee told her much of the ways of horses,
of breaking them, of a score of little ranch matters, not without their
color. Marcia noted that he spoke rather slowly, and guessed that he
was choosing his words with particular care.
She was delighted when they came to the bank under the willows where a
pipe sent forth a clear, cold stream of water from a shady recess in
the hillside. Here, at Lee's solicitous suggestion, she rested after
her long walk--it was nearly a half-mile to the ranch-house--disposing
her skirts fluffily about her, taking her seat upon a convenient log
from which, with his hat, Lee had swept the loose dust.
"I'm dreadfully improper, am I not?" said Marcia. "But I am tired, and
it is hot, isn't it? Out there in the fields, I mean. Here it's just
lovely. And I do so love to hear about all the things you know which
are so wonderful to me. Isn't life narrow in the cities? Don't you
think so, Mr. Lee?"
The breeze playing gently with the ribbons of her sunshade brought to
him the faintest of violet perfumes. He lay at her feet, obeying her
tardy command to have the smoke which she had interrupted. His eyes
were full of her.
"I'd so love," went on Marcia dreamily, "to live always out-of-doors.
Out here I feel so sorry for the people I know in town. Here women
must grow up so sweet and pure and innocent; men must be so fine and
manly and strong!"
And she meant it. It was perfectly clear that she spoke in utter
sincerity. For this long, summer day, no matter how she would feel
to-morrow, Marcia was in tune with the open, yearned for the life blown
clean with the air of the mountains. In the morning her mood had been
one of rebellion, for her mother had said things which both hurt and
shocked the girl. Her mother was so mercenary, so unromantic. Now, as
a bit of reaction, the rebellious spirit had grown tender; opposition
had been followed by listlessness; and into the mood of tender
listlessness there had come a man. A man whom Marcia had never noted
until now and who was an anomaly, almost a mystery.
Fate, in the form of old Carson, turned a herd of bellowing steers out
into the fields lying between the meadow and the ranch-house that
afternoon just as Marcia, making a late concession to propriety, was
shaking her skirts and lifting her parasol. It was scarcely to be
wondered at that the steers seemed to Marcia a great herd of
bloodthirsty beasts. Then there were her pink gown and sunshade. . . .
"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" cried Marcia.
So it was under Lee's protection that she went back through the meadows
and to the house. At first she was frightened by the strange noises
his led horse made, little snorts which made her jump. But in the end
she put out a timid hand and stroked the velvet nose. When finally Bud
Lee lifted his hat to her at the base of the knoll upon which the house
stood Marcia thanked him for his kindness.
"I've been terribly unconventional, haven't I?" she smiled at him.
"But I mustn't again. Next time we meet, Mr. Lee, I am not even going
to speak to you. Unless," relenting brightly, "you come up to the
house and are properly introduced!"
As she went through the lilacs Lee saw her wave her parasol to him.