TWO SCOUNDRELS
“Who? Them?” asked Lance, in apparent surprise at the question. “Why,
the names of those two rogues is mighty unpopular words round this
section. Reckoned you knew who they was. They was the two I been tellin’
you about—pals of Larrimer’s.”
“Not——” began Dorothy.
Lance nodded, jerking the little car to the middle of the road as they
bounced over a particularly uneven spot in the trail that threatened to
send them into a ditch by the roadside.
“Stiffbold and Lightly. You got them right the first time, ma’am.”
“Oh, isn’t this perfectly thrilling?” cried Tavia delightedly. “At every
turn in the road the plot thickens!”
“But they told us their names were Blake and Gibbons!” cried Dorothy,
leaning forward in her seat while Lance, crouched behind the wheel,
turned half-way around the better to hear her.
This position undoubtedly imperiled the safety of the car and its
passengers. It also greatly alarmed the plump and rosy Mrs. Petterby,
who had not yet outgrown her fear of the car nor developed the absolute
faith in her husband’s ability to “drive with one hand and the other
tied behind him” that Lance declared he deserved.
However, she kept silent, merely gripping the edge of the seat with two
plump hands and praying for the best.
“Very likely they did, Miss Dorothy,” returned Lance, in response to
Dorothy’s declaration that, aboard the train, the names of her traveling
companions had been given as Blake and Gibbons. “Reckon they have a
different set of names for every town they stay in. I imagine their
moves are many and devious and they are not always keen on havin’ them
followed up.”
“I wonder what they were doing in Chicago,” said Dorothy, speaking her
thought aloud. At her words Lance immediately, as Tavia described it,
“pricked up his ears.”
“Oh, then they was in Chicago?” he said, whistling softly. “Kind of glad
to know that, all things considered. Ain’t no other information you’d
like to give me, is there, ma’am?”
Whereupon Dorothy immediately launched into a detailed account of their
meeting with the two men and of the startling, though unsatisfactory,
conversation which she and Tavia had accidentally overheard in the
dining room of the Chicago hotel.
Lance evinced great interest, especially in the fact that Garry’s name
had been mentioned.
“Why should these scoundrels especially pick on Garry?” asked Tavia
suddenly. “Isn’t there anybody besides Garry around here that has
something they want?”
“There ain’t nobody around here that has something that they don’t want
to get it away from them, Miss Tavia,” rejoined Lance, with his grim
chuckle.
“Then why must they pick on Garry? More than the rest, I mean?”
persisted Tavia.
Lance shrugged his shoulders eloquently.
“Because Garry Knapp happens to have the largest and most succulent
wheat land anywhere around here,” he said. “Lightly and Stiffbold and
those fellers believe in hookin’ the big fish first. Then they can come
after us little ones.”
“Do you think Garry is in any real danger?” asked Dorothy slowly. “Any
personal danger, I mean?”
Lance shook his head emphatically.
“Now don’t you go worryin’ about that, at all, Miss Dorothy,” he said.
“These fellers are sneakin’ and mean. But that’s just it—they ain’t
out-an’-outers. They always tries to play just within the law, or as
near to the edge of it as they can. That’s why they haven’t been caught
long ago and sent to jail like they deserve. There ain’t never been
anything that you could really hang on them—any proof, if you get what I
mean.
“No, they wouldn’t dare do nothin’ to Garry except pester the life out
of the lad in hopes he’ll be glad to sell. If they try any dirty
work—well, Garry Knapp has plenty of friends to punish the offenders!”
“I know that,” said Dorothy softly. Then she added, in a sudden rush of
feeling for this crude and ingenuous young ranchman with the big heart
and devoted attachment to Garry: “And Garry—and I—Lance, appreciate your
friendship.”
“Oh, I ain’t the only friend he’s got, not by a long shot,” protested
the young fellow, embarrassed, as always in the presence of any genuine
emotion. “We’re watching those sharpers, you can bet.”
“With the eyes of a hawk,” murmured Tavia, and Lance Petterby grinned.
“You always was great at expressin’ things, Miss Tavia,” he said.
“But what I can’t understand,” said Dorothy, as though thinking her
thoughts aloud, “is why Garry did not come to the station.”
She caught the quick glance that Lance flung at her over his shoulder
and could have bitten her tongue out for the admission. Only then did
she realize the extent of the hurt Garry had inflicted by his neglect.
“I was wonderin’ that same thing myself, ma’am,” Lance remarked in his
gentle drawl. “Reckoned you might have forgot to let Garry know which
train you was comin’ on.”
“Maybe he didn’t get your telegram, Doro,” Tavia suggested, shifting the
burden of Miss Octavia Susan Petterby to the other arm. “They do
sometimes do that, you know, in spite of all beliefs to the contrary.
Look at this darling child, Doro,” drawing the white knitted coverlet
down from the dimpled chin of Octavia Susan. “Did you ever see anything
so adorable in your life? She loves her Aunt Tavia, so she do!” she
crooned in baby talk improvised to suit the occasion. “Went to sleep
just like a kitty cat, all curled up in a cunnin’ little ball. Oh, look,
Doro, she’s smiling in her sleep!”
“That means she has the stomach ache,” said the baby’s mother
prosaically. “I’ll have to give her some hot water when I get her home.”
Tavia giggled.
“And I thought she was talking to the angels!” she mourned.
“She won’t talk to no one, let alone angels, for some time to come,”
retorted the severely practical Sue. “And I’d just as lief she wouldn’t,
anyways. Because Ma Petterby says as soon as they begin talkin’ they
begin getting into mischief, too.”
“Oh, how is your mother, Lance?” asked Dorothy, suddenly remembering. “I
have meant to ask you all along but there has been so much to talk
about.”
“She’s fine, thank you, ma’am,” responded Lance, his eyes lighting up as
he spoke of his little old mother. “Ma thinks there ain’t no place like
Colorado now, and she thinks they ain’t no gal like Sue here. Ma just
dotes on Sue.”
“Go long with you,” protested Sue, blushing beneath the fond regard of
her young husband. “You don’t have to tell all the family secrets, do
you?”
“As long as they’s happy ones I don’t see where we got any call to hide
’em,” replied Lance mildly. “Anyways, my two women folks sure do get
along fine.”
“Two women folks,” echoed Tavia, adding, with a wicked glance at
Dorothy: “But how about the third, Lance? I am surprised you haven’t
mentioned her.”
The simple Lance looked mystified.
“Third?” he repeated. “I don’t seem to catch your drift, Miss Tavia.”
“Why, Ophelia. You don’t mean to say you have forgotten Ophelia?” cried
Tavia, and her voice was quite properly shocked.
“Sure enough, I nearly did forget to mention Ophelia,” he drawled. “She
is well and lively, thank you, ma’am, and I know she will be downright
pleased when I tell her you asked about her.”
“I am sure she will,” returned Tavia, her face still grave. “I suppose
she has a place of honor in the Petterby household, and a high chair at
the table?”
“Oh, Tavia, hush,” cried Dorothy in an undertone, thinking that the
flyaway had gone far enough. But both Lance and Sue took the joking in
good part, Sue even objecting energetically that Ma had that little hen
clear spoilt to death; that it would be allowed to sit on the parlor
sofa if it didn’t like best to stay in the barnyard with the other
chickens.
For Ophelia, despite her high-sounding name, was merely a humble fowl
which Ma Petterby had brought up from a motherless chick and had carried
with her from New York to Colorado in a basket made particularly for the
purpose when she had come seeking her “baby,” Lance Petterby.
“Ma would be plumb tickled out of her wits to see you,” said Lance as
the little car bounced into the last stretch of road that separated them
from the Hardin ranch. “Couldn’t we go on a little ways further now
we’re about it and give the little old lady the surprise of her life?”
Although Susan Petterby added her hospitable invitation to his, Dorothy
reluctantly refused, urging as a reason that she dared not delay her
search for her brother.
“Now, don’t you worry, ma’am,” Lance urged as, a few minutes later, the
light car came to a sputtering standstill before the rambling old
structure that had once belonged to Colonel Hardin. “You will find the
lad all right,” he added diffidently, opening the car door for them. “I
could take a canter over to Garry Knapp’s ranch and see if everything’s
all right.”
Dorothy assented gratefully and Tavia reluctantly handed the little warm
bundle that was Octavia Susan over to her mother.
“I’m crazy about her and I am going to see her often,” said Tavia to the
parents of her namesake. “That is,” she added, with the bright smile
that seldom failed to get her what she wanted, “if you won’t mind having
me hanging around a lot.”
The answer of Lance Petterby was prompt and flattering and that of Sue
was hardly less so. For the heart of a mother is very tender where her
offspring are concerned and Tavia had shown a gratifying interest in
Octavia Susan.
“Ma will be tickled to see you,” Lance repeated as he drove off in the
rattly car. “Come over as soon as you can.”
Lance Petterby’s car had hardly disappeared around a turn in the road
when a large, handsome woman appeared at the kitchen door of the house
and, after one hasty glance at the newcomers, wiped her hands on a
kitchen apron and bore down upon them.
“Land sakes!” she cried. “Miss Dorothy Dale and Miss Tavia! You did give
me the surprise of my life, but I’m that glad to see you. Where is Major
Dale, Miss Dorothy?”