OUTCASTS
At sunset a girl rider descended from the uplands into the shadows of
Devil's Hole. The big brown which carried her picked his way slowly
down the treacherous trail, nose low, ears forward, selecting his
footing with care.
The girl sat braced back in her saddle. Her face was dark, eyes filled
with a brooding, but the mouth though sternly set showed a rueful droop
at the corners.
Her mind was not on her progress. She was lost in a very definite
consideration, something which stirred resentment, it was evident from
her face. Finally she drew a sharp deep breath of impatience.
"Oh, get along, you dromedary!" she muttered and rowelled her horse
sharply.
The big beast sprang forward with a grunt and went down the trail in
long, shaking bounds, even more intent on his footing than before and
when they reached the level he crashed through the brush at a high
lope, leaping little washes with great lunges and bearing his light
rider swiftly toward the cabin from which a whisp of smoke curled.
The discouraged looking man stood before the doorway watching her come
and as the girl swung down, before the horse was well halted, she
flashed a quick smile at him.
"I heerd you comin', daughter, away back thar. I shore thought the
devil himself might 've been after you!"
He smiled wanly.
"I seen her again," the girl said as she dragged her saddle off.
The man pulled languidly at his mustache.
"She see you?"
"No. I set under a juniper and watched 'em ... her an' that Beck man."
"Mebby if you was to talk to her an' get friendly--"
"I don't want to be no friends with her! I hate her already!"
She spat out the words and her face was a storm of dislike.
"What I meant ... mebby 't would be easier for us if you played like
you was friends. Then she mightn't suspect."
She rolled her saddle to its side and spread the blanket over it.
"No. I can't do things that-a way, Alf,"--with a slow shake of her
head. "Mebby 't would get us more ... but there's somethin' in me, in
here,"--a palm to her breast--"that won't let me. I can steal her blind
an' only be glad about it, but I couldn't make up like I was her friend
while I done it."
"Mebby ... mebby you would sure enough like her," he persisted. "You
ain't never had no friends--"
"I'd never like her, not while we're this way,"--with a gesture to
include the litter about the cabin. "She's got all that I want. She's
had all the things I've never had. She's got clothes, lots of pretty
clothes; she's lived in towns an's always had things easy. She's got
friends and folks to respect her. You can tell that by lookin' at
her....
"What makes me that way, Alf? What makes me hate folks that have got
the things I want?"
He pulled on his mustache again and scanned the scarlet sky which rose
above the purple heights to the westward. He shook his head rather
helplessly and then looked at the girl who stood before him, the
eagerness of her query showing in her eyes with an intensity that was
almost desperate.
"Mebby you get it from me. I've had it ... always. That's all I have
had ... that an' hard luck."
"But I don't like it!" she said and in the tone was something of the
spirit of a bewildered little girl. "I'd like to be like other girls.
I'd like to have friends ... girl friends, but the more I want 'em, the
more I hate those that have 'em!
"What's the matter with me, Alf?"
"The same thing that's the matter with me, daughter: hard luck. I've
wanted things so bad that not hevin' 'em has soured me. I've watched
other outfits grow big an' rich an' nothin' like that has ever come my
way. The bigger the rest got, the harder 't was for me to get along ...
an' the worse I hated 'em!"
There was no iron in his voice; just the whine of a weakling,
dispirited to a point where his resentment at ill fortune, even, was a
passive thing.
"Why, she's got a fine house to live in, an' I'll bet she always had.
She's never knowed what it was to set out a norther in a wagon. She's
never lived on buckskin an' frozen spuds all winter. She's never been
chased from one place to another....
"Folks respect her for what she's got. Why don't folks get respected
for just what they are?"
There was pathos in that query.
The man answered:
"It ain't what you are that matters, daughter. It's what you own."
"You've always said that, ever since I can remember. Mebby if you
hadn't said it so much, Alf, I wouldn't feel like I do."
He shifted his footing uneasily and looked again at the flaring sky.
"Well, it's so," he whined. "You'd have found it out yourself. I've
brung you up the best I knowed how."
"Oh, Alf! I didn't mean I was finding fault! Damned if you _ain't_
brought me up good! Why, you're the only friend I got Alf! What'd I do
without you? You're the only one I've ever knowed ... real well. You're
the only one who's ever been good to me!" She put her hands on his
shoulders and looked into his face with a smile of genuine affection.
"Good old Alf! We've been pals, ain't we?"
He nodded, and said:
"An' if you stick to me a little mite longer, you'll have enough.
"You're brighter'n I be, daughter. You got a longer head. Now's your
chanct to use it!" He looked about, somewhat nervously, as if they
might be overheard. "Sometimes I get afeerd. Lately, since we've come
here, I've been afeerd. It's the only time I ever let anybody else know
what my plans was an' it makes me feel creepy to think somebody else
_knows!_"
"'Fraid of what, Alf?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Gettin' caught again, an'--"
"Oh, but you won't! You can't. Alf, you can't get caught an' sent to
jail an' leave me alone again!"
She spoke in a whisper and gripped her fist for emphasis.
"I shore don't want to leave you, daughter. I shore don't want to get
catched. That's where you come in ... helpin' me scheme! I ain't afeerd
of havin' 'em come up on me an' git me red-handed so much as I am of
havin' somebody else know what's goin' on."
"But he sent for us. He told us the outfit was goin' to be owned by a
tenderfoot. He's as much in danger as we, ain't he?"
Her father nodded slowly.
"You're right ... in a way, but if it ever come to a show-down, I'd be
the one to hold th' bag, wouldn't I? That's what we got to watch out
for. 'Course, it's easy pickin', with this gal tryin' to run things
herself, an' what with her brand workin' over into ourn so easy, there
ain't many chances.... Except havin' somebody else to know."
"If anybody ever was to double cross you, Alf, I'd get 'em if it was
the last thing I done!"
That threat carried conviction and her father looked at her with a rare
brand of admiration in his eyes.
"Lord, daughter, sometimes I think you was meant to be a man ... an' a
hard man! Sometimes you almost scare me, th' way you say things!"
She made no reply and he said:
"All we got to do is go slow. A brandin' iron has built many a fortune,
an' nobody ever had it any easier 'n us."
"Do you think we'll ever get rich enough, Alf, to have a regular house?
An' be respected by folks?"
"Luck's bound to change sometime," he muttered. "Ours has been bad a
long time ... a long, long time."
He gathered an arm load of wood and entered the cabin. The girl stood
alone a long time, watching the brilliant flowering of the sky sink
slowly into the west, drawing steely night to cover its garden. A sharp
star bored its way through the failing light and stood half way between
earth and heaven. A vagrant breeze slid down the creek, bringing with
it the breath of sage, and afar off somewhere a cow bawled plaintively.
"She has 'em," she muttered to herself. "Friends ... an' respect ...
an' everything I want....
"I wonder what makes me hate folks so...."