his partner's fan, which he was gently waving to and fro before her face.
She stood panting with affected exhaustion, glancing archly at her new
"young man" from under studiously fluttering eyelids. The gaunt father,
having stopped waltzing, had discovered that the woollen-clad baby was
fast asleep on his shoulder. Over in another corner, under a window, was
a red-faced cowboy, slumbering as tranquilly as the baby, his head sunk
on his breast, a genial forelock waving lightly in the breeze. The
fiddlers resumed their function. "Swing your pards!" cried the
curly-headed boy; and once more all was commotion.
The room seemed hot and crowded. Lem had shifted his position, and was
standing opposite the windows. He looked toward them, and his glance was
arrested. In the square of light cast outside by the lamps within was a
sinister, malignant face. It was the face of a man whom the Keith boys
had seen to-night for the first time. He had paid his seventy-five cents,
and had received his numbered ticket like the others, by which simple
ceremony all the requirements of ranch etiquette were fulfilled. Bub
Quinn they called him--Bub Quinn from the Divide. Rather a nice-looking
fellow, the brothers had agreed, attracted by his brilliant smile and
hearty hand-shake. It was Bub Quinn who had brought the girl that Joe
was dancing with, and now that Lem came to think of it, he could not
remember having seen her dance with any one else, besides Quinn himself.
Lem's heart gave a heavy thump almost before his brain had grasped the
situation. Yet the situation was very plain. It was Joe and his little
fool of a partner that those malignant eyes were following.
They were light eyes, looking out from under level light eyebrows, and
Lem frankly quaked at sight of them. The man's face was clean-shaven,
showing high cheekbones and a firm, handsome mouth. He stood in an
indolent attitude, with his hands in his pockets; but all the reckless
passion of the desperado was concentrated in the level glance of those
menacing eyes.
"Meet your partner with a double _sashay_," cried the curly-headed boy.
Diddle-diddle-dee squeaked the fiddles. Lem looked again at his brother.
He was flirting outrageously.
A door opened behind Lem, and a woman called him by name. He stepped
into the kitchen, where two of his prairie neighbors were busy with the
supper. It was Mrs. Luella Jenkins who had summoned him, kind, queer,
warm-hearted Mrs. Luella. The "Keith boys" were giving their first
dance, and she had undertaken to engineer the supper.
"We've got the coffee on," she remarked, pointing over her shoulder at a
couple of gallon-cans on the stove, from which an agreeable aroma was
rising.
"That's first-rate," said Lem, who had a much more distinct vision of
Bub Quinn's eyes than of the mammoth tin cans. "Is there anything I can
do to help?"
"Well, I dunno," Mrs. Luella ruminated. Her speech was as slow as her
movements were quick. "I was thinkin' 't was 'most a pity you hadn't had
bun sandwiches." She looked regretfully at the rapidly growing pile of
the ordinary kind with which the table was being loaded. "The buns taste
kind o' sweet and pleasant, mixed up with the ham."
Through the closed door came the scraping of the indefatigable fiddles.
"Hold her tight, and run her down the middle!" shouted the voice of the
caller-out.
"Over to Watts's last fall," Mrs. Luella rambled on, slicing ham the
while at a great rate, "they had bun sandwiches, and in the top of ary
bun there was a toothpick stickin' up. If you've got toothpicks enough
about the place, we might try it. It looks real tasty."
"Mrs. Jenkins," Lem broke in, "do you know Bub Quinn?"
"No; nor I don't want to," Luella answered curtly.
"Why not?"
"He's too handy with his shooting-irons to suit my taste."
Then, resuming the thread of her discourse: "You don't think, now,
you've got toothpicks enough? They'd set things off real nice." But Lem
had departed.
"I s'pose he's kind o' flustered with givin' their first dance," she
said apologetically to her coadjutor among the sandwiches.
Lem was a great favorite with Mrs. Luella. She liked him better than she
did Joe. She was one of the few people who could, at a glance, tell the
two brothers apart. She always spoke of Lem as the "little chap," though
he was in fact precisely of a height with his brother; and she gave as
the reason for the preference, that "the little chap wasn't a ramper."
Unfortunately for Lem, perhaps, she was right. He was not a ramper.
As Lem stepped out into the other room, the caller-out was shouting,
"Promen-_ade_ all--you know where!" The sets were breaking up, and Joe
with his best manner was leading his partner to a seat. The face had
vanished from the window. Bub Quinn was striding across the room, and
now planted himself in front of the recreant pair.
"You're to come with me, Aggy," he growled.
"Pray don't mention it!" cried Joe, relinquishing the girl to Quinn with
a mocking reverence.
Shrugging her shoulders, and pouting, Aggy moved away with her captor;
not, however, without a parting glance over her shoulder at Joe. The two
brothers met at the kitchen-door.
"I say, Joe," Lem begged, "don't dance with that girl again."
"And why not!"
"You wouldn't ask why not if you had seen that ruffian's face at the
window."
"Didn't I see it, though?" scoffed Joe, in high spirits, and Lem knew
that he had blundered.
A new caller-out had taken the floor, and was shouting, "Seventeen to
twenty-four, get on the floor and dance!"
The pauses are short at a ranch dance, for each man, having a right in
only one dance out of three or four, is eager for his turn. The women on
this particular occasion might have been glad of a rest, for there were
only ten of them to satisfy the demands of all the men, and steady
dancing from eight o'clock to three is no light task. Nevertheless, each
one rose with sufficient alacrity in response to the polite inquiry,
"Will you assist me with this dance?" and in a few minutes the same
many-colored woollen gowns, and much befrizzled heads, which had
diversified the last sets, were lending lustre to the present dance.
Neither Bub Quinn nor Joe Keith was included this time among those
admonished to "get on the floor and dance," and Lem, thankful for the
respite, stepped out on the piazza, where a group of men were lounging
and smoking. The air outside was sharp and invigorating; the moon was
full, and in its cold, clear light the Peak glimmered white and ghostly.
Lem strolled off the piazza, and over to the group of sorry-looking
broncos, in saddle or harness, standing hitched to the fence. He pushed
in among them, patting their heads, or righting the blankets of the few
that were fortunate enough to have such luxuries. He felt as though he
should like to enter into confidential relations with them. They seemed,
somehow, more of his own kind than the rough, jostling, pugnacious
beings passing themselves off as men and brothers within there. He poked
about from one to the other of the sturdy, plush-coated little beasts,
till he came to a great white plow-horse harnessed to a sulky, and
looking like a giant in contrast with the scrubby broncos. The
amiability which is supposed to wait upon generous proportions proved to
be a characteristic of this equine Goliath, for at Lem's approach he
cocked his ears and turned his head with marked friendliness. Lem looked
across the creature's rough neck to the firm, strong outlines of "the
range," showing clearly in the moonlight; he drew his lungs full of the
keen, thin air. But neither "the strength of the hills," nor the elixir
of the air, could restore his equanimity. He could not throw off the
weight that oppressed him. There was no shirking the truth. He was
deadly afraid of Bub Quinn; the sight of that lowering face at the
window had caused in him a horrible physical shrinking; the dread of an
undefined mischief brewing weighed upon his spirit like a nightmare.
"Great heavens! What a coward I am!" he groaned aloud.
The white horse rubbed his velvet nose in mute sympathy against the
young man's shoulder; but there was no solace that the white horse could
give. Lem leaned against the friendly neck, and shut his teeth hard
together. A lifelong chagrin welled up in him, flooding his soul with
bitterness.
If Lemuel Keith had not adored his brother, he would have hated
him--hated him for possessing that one quality of rash courage beside
which every other virtue seemed mean and worthless.
Presently he found himself looking in at the window again. Joe had
disappeared from the scene. Bub Quinn and his Aggy were sitting side by
side in stony silence. The fiddles had fallen into a more sentimental
strain; hints of "The Mocking Bird" might be heard struggling for
utterance in the strings. In this ambitious attempt the pitch would get
lower and lower, and then recover itself with a queer falsetto effect.
Charley Leroy, the crack "bronco-buster" of the region, was caller-out
this time. He was less inventive than the curly-headed boy, but he gave
out his commands in the same chanting measure, and the tramp, tramp of
the feet was as rhythmic as ever. The curly-headed boy was having his
turn at the dance, "assisted" by a sallow, middle-aged woman in a brown
woollen dress, who made frequent dashes into the adjoining room to quiet
her baby. Lem noticed that the hands of the curly-headed boy were so
tanned that the finger-nails showed white by contrast. He also observed
that Aggy's neck was as pink as her cheeks, which had not been the case
half an hour before. In his effort not to look at Bub Quinn, Lem's
attention had become vague and scattered. He fixed his eyes upon an
elderly man of an anxious countenance, with a shock of tow-colored hair
sticking straight out in all directions. The man was having some
difficulty in steering his partner through an intricate figure; he was
the only person on the floor who did not keep step, and his movements
became at every moment more vague and undecided. When, at last, the
wiry, determined-looking "bronco-buster" sprang upon the company the
somewhat abstruse direction:
"Lady round the gent, and the gent don't go;
Lady round the lady, and the gent so-_lo_!"
the "gent" in question became hopelessly bewildered, and stood stock
still in the middle of the floor. By the time the set was disentangled,
the dance seemed to be over, and the "bronco-buster" dismissed the
dancers with the cynical prophecy, "You'll all get married on a _stor-my
day_!"
At this juncture, midnight being well passed, supper was announced. The
kitchen door swung open, and the fragrant smell of the coffee took
possession of the room, and floated out through the open window. As some
one closed the window in his face, Lem followed the other loungers into
the house. The men had all made a stampede for the kitchen; the women
sat on chairs and benches against the wall, some of them leaning their
heads back wearily, while others fanned themselves and their neighbors
with vigor, not relaxing for a moment the somewhat strained vivacity
which they felt that the occasion demanded. Bub Quinn's Aggy--no one
knew her last name--sat a little apart from the others. She was
apparently absorbed in the contemplation of her pocket-handkerchief, a
piece of coarse finery, which she held by the exact middle, flirting it
across her face in lieu of the fan, which had slid to the floor.
Lem paused on his way to the kitchen, and observed her closely. He saw
the pink of her neck take on a deeper tinge, and at the same moment Bub
Quinn and Joe brushed past him and stood before the girl, each offering
her a plate on which reposed two sandwiches and a section of cucumber
pickle.
This was Aggy's opportunity. She shrugged her shoulders, which were
encased in red velveteen; she lifted and then dropped her eyes, poising
her head first on one side and then on the other; she clasped her hands
and wrinkled her forehead. Lem felt as though he were watching the
capricious sparks which mark the progress of a slow match toward a
powder-train. Bub Quinn, meanwhile, stood rooted before the girl, while
Joe, having possessed himself of the fallen fan, met her coquetry with
blandishments of the most undisguised nature. At length, hesitatingly,
deprecatingly, she took Quinn's plate, but at the same time she moved
along on the bench and offered Joe a seat. He promptly took it, and
Quinn went away with the calmness of a silently gathering thunder-cloud.
Quinn did not dance again that night; he withdrew to the piazza, where
he kept guard at the window hour after hour. Joe danced with no one but
Aggy, and sat beside her between whiles. Lem wandered about, trying not
to watch Quinn. He knew his brother too well to remonstrate with him
again by so much as a look.
As the night wore on, the hilarity of the company increased, nothing
daunted by the sight of a man lying here and there under a bench with a
telltale black bottle protruding from his pocket. When the favorite
figure of the "Bird in the Cage" was danced, and the caller-out shouted,
"Bird flies out, and the crow flies in," everybody in the room, cried
"Caw! caw!" in excellent imitation of the sable-hued fowl thereby
typified, and the dancers, conscious of an admiring public, "swung" and
"sashayed" with increased vehemence. Toward three o'clock Joe was again
dancing with Quinn's Aggy, and as the caller-out chanted:
"Swing that girl, that _pretty_ little girl,
That _girl_ you left _behind you_!"
he advanced toward her with an air of mock gallantry. At the same moment
Bub Quinn stalked into the middle of the set, a sombrero planted firmly
on his head, a long cowhide whip in his hand. He seized Aggy by the arm
with a grip that must have hurt her, and said, "I'm going home now; you
can do as you d---- please." A pistol-shot could not have made half the
sensation caused by this breach of etiquette; indeed, it would not have
been half so unprecedented. Aggy turned with a startled defiance, but at
sight of Quinn's face she recoiled.
"I'm all ready to go," she said sullenly; and too thoroughly cowed to
cast even a parting glance at Joe, she hurried away to get ready for her
twenty-mile drive. Joe, meanwhile, with perfect composure, provided
himself with another partner, and the dance went on. And so the
thunder-cloud had withdrawn, and the bolt had not fallen.
It was not until the gray dawn was in the sky that the last of the
revellers drove through the cow-yard, and out across the prairie to meet
the rising sun.
* * * * *
By the time a second dawn had come the daily routine at the Keith ranch
was running in its accustomed grooves. The cows had already been milked,
yesterday's butter already packed for shipment, and Joe, surrounded by
bustling men and barking dogs, was attending to the departure of the
milk-carts for the town. The Keith brothers had a young but thriving
dairy-trade, and Joe was a great success in his character of "boss."
In a field bordering upon the highway, a mile away from the ranch-house,
Lem Keith was plowing. There was something about this pastoral labor
which was peculiarly congenial to Lem; perhaps because he did it well.
Not one of the ranch "hands" could guide the plow with such precision
through the loose prairie soil. Certainly, very few of them would have
taken the trouble to set up a stake at the end of the furrow with a
flying bit of red flannel to steer by. Lem had the habit of plowing with
his eyes fixed upon the stake, his shoulders slightly stooping. Yet the
sense of what was going on in the sky and on the prairie was never lost.
To-day the sun rose as clear as a bell, flooding the fields with gold.
Lem was plowing from east to west, a quarter-mile furrow. Whether he
faced the mountains, answering the sunrise with a crimson glow, or the
yellow prairie sea, with bold buttes standing out upon it like
rock-bound islands, he could not go amiss. His eye met nothing, his
thoughts touched upon nothing, which could jar upon his peaceful mood.
The horses plodded steadily on with hanging heads; the plow responded
like a live thing to his guidance; he knew that the long narrow furrow
he was leaving behind him was as straight as the wake of a boat in
still water. After all, ranch life was a fine thing. A man must be the
better for breathing such air; a man must be the wiser for living so
close to good old Mother Earth; a man must be--hark! Was that Joe's pony
galloping across the field? Lem turned. No; the pony was a strange one.
And the rider?
Bub Quinn had leaped to the ground not ten feet from him. He had flung
the rein over the neck of his steaming bronco; but he himself was as
calm and as cool as though he had not ridden twenty miles before sunrise
at a break-neck gallop.
"I've come to settle accounts with you, mister," Quinn remarked in a
drawling voice.
If the fellow had raged and cursed, if he had seemed to be in a passion,
if his fists had been clenched, or the muscles of his face set, it would
not have been so appalling. But this deadly composure, the careless
indifference with which he held his pistol in his right hand, while his
left hung loosely at his side, was more than terrifying; it was fairly
blood-curdling.
Lem's hands had let the reins drop, and the horses had gone plodding on,
the plow lurching and swaying at their heels.
For an instant Lem's brain whirled.
Swing that girl, that _pretty_ little girl,
That _girl_ you left _behind you_!
His brain seemed to be whirling to the tune of that jingle.
"If you've got anything to say," drawled Quinn, fingering the trigger,
the pistol pointed at Lem's forehead--"if you've got anything to say,
now's your chance. Sorry I can't allow you time to make a will," he
added facetiously, "but I've got to get back to my work."
Lem's brain was clear now. There were no more jingles in it. Nothing was
there but an overwhelming conviction that, if the man did not shoot
quickly, Joe might arrive, and show Quinn his mistake. That must not be.
Joe was too fine a fellow to end like this--like this!
Lem Keith was shuddering from head to foot, and his lips were stiff and
blue, yet there was an odd, masterful ring in his voice as he cried,
"Make haste, will you, and shoot!"
A shot rang out, and Lem fell, pierced, not by Bub Quinn's bullet, but
by the living horror of death. On the furrows beside him Bub Quinn lay
stretched, with blood oozing from his right shoulder.
That shot of Joe Keith's, as his pony tore across the plowed field, was
long talked of on the prairie. The echo was still ringing in his ears
when he sprang to the ground, and knelt beside his brother, searching
for a wound. He could find none. He pressed his hand to Lem's heart; his
own pulse was pounding so that he could feel no other motion. He lifted
his brother's head and laid it against his own breast; he loosened his
shirt and chafed his hands. The sun shone straight into the white face,
and the eyelids moved.
"Lem! Dear old pal! Speak! Do speak!"
Lem's consciousness returned slowly, reluctantly; but he knew his
brother's voice.
"Joe!" he muttered; "Joe!"
He made an effort to look about him; and first his eyes followed vaguely
the wanderings of Quinn's bronco, which had strayed far afield, and he
strove feebly to account for the pang that the sight gave him. Suddenly
his consciousness adjusted itself, as a lock falls into place. He turned
his eyes on Quinn, lying where he had fallen, the blood still flowing
from his wound; and then he knew that he himself had only swooned.
He sat upright, clasping his knees with his two hands, and Joe stood
over him, tenderly brushing the earth from his shoulder. At last Lem
spoke, while a dark flush mounted slowly up into his temples.
"Joe!" he said, "I'm not hurt. You may as well despise me. I _am_ a
coward."
A look went across Joe's face, half-assenting, half-indulgent.
"Never mind, old boy," he said, with patronizing good-will; "we can't
all be cut after the same pattern."
He extended his hand to help his brother to his feet. A movement caused
him to turn. Quinn had gathered strength to speak. He was leaning on his
left elbow, staring at the two brothers. His face was ghastly, but his
voice had lost none of its drawling scorn as he said to Joe, slowly and
distinctly, "You in-fernal idiot!"
Then a great light broke in upon Joe Keith's mind, and he knew the
truth.
V.
THE RUMPETY CASE.
When Sandoria is snowbound it is not so very much quieter, even in its
outer aspect, than at any other time; for the monotony of snow is no
more complete than the monotony of yellow-gray prairie. Even when, at
rare intervals, the snow covers the fences, it is no characteristic
landmark which is thus obliterated; no picturesque rustic bars are thus
lost to the landscape, no irregular and venerable stone walls. At the
best a prairie fence offers nothing more distinctive to the view than a
succession of scrawny upright stakes connected by wires invisible at a
few rods' distance.
One feature Sandoria boasts, to be sure, which lends a certain
distinction to the landscape at every season: namely, a long line of
cottonwood-trees following the course of a halfhearted stream known as
"the creek." The water-supply is but a grudging one, yet it has proved
sufficient not only to induce the growth of cottonwoods, but to raise
the tiny collection of houses known as Sandoria to the rank and dignity
of a county-seat. For who could doubt the future growth and prosperity
of a prairie town rejoicing in the unique advantage of a watercourse?
There is, however, in the modern scheme of things, one agent more potent
than running water, and that is the arbitrary, omnipotent, indispensable
railroad; and the railroad in its erratic course saw fit to give the
cold shoulder to the ambitious little county-seat, left it ten miles to
the eastward, and then went zigzagging up to Denver with a conscience as
dead as that of the corporation whose creature it was.
[Illustration: "A HALF-HEARTED STREAM KNOWN AS 'THE CREEK.'"]
Sandoria, unable to retaliate, took its reverses philosophically, and
straightway fell into a profound slumber, from which it is thoroughly
aroused but once a year. Once a year, in the depth of winter, the
much-injured county-seat asserts its rightful dignity; for once a year
the court convenes within its borders, and then the whole county becomes
a meek tributary to its proper head. With indisputable authority the
citizens of the two upstart railroad towns are summoned as jurors;
ranchman and cowboy from all the countryside make daily trips in the
service of the law to the neglected little county-seat, leaving, as is
but just, many a ponderous silver dollar in "sample-room" or "store." At
such times the visitors admit that Sandoria is a snug little place, and
the new frame court-house a credit to the county, only why did they
build a town where you can't see the mountains? Then the Sandorians
reply that from the slight elevation west of the town there is a view of
the Peak itself,--neither critic nor apologist taking into consideration
how rarely men and women ascend their little hills to contemplate the
wider glories of life.
To-day the court was sitting, and the town rejoiced. Every man, woman,
and child felt the pleasing exhilaration of knowing that something was
going forward. The square two-story false fronts of the peak-roofed
buildings looked with one-eyed approval upon the thronging men and
women, horses and dogs, enlivening the single street of the town. A
fervent sun shone gratefully upon the loungers in front of the
court-house, where the snow was trodden to the solid consistency of a
pavement. The noon recess was nearly over, and all were waiting for the
judge and his galaxy of legal lights.
Ed Rankin, a young ranchman from over beyond Emmaville, finding himself
among strangers, and being as shy as a coyote, turned in at the
court-house door, and was making his way toward the big air-tight stove,
when he observed that the room was not empty, as he supposed it would
be. In a remote corner sat a sorry-looking group, a woman and three
children, their shrinking figures thinly clad, their eyes, red with
crying or exposure, glancing apprehensively from side to side. The
youngest of the group was a boy of ten; he, like all the others, had the
look of a hunted creature.