THE CATAMOUNT
Three weeks after her arrival Jane made her first trip to town and Beck
drove the pair of strong bays which swirled their buckboard over the
road at a spanking trot.
Events had arisen to prevent their being together in the days
immediately following the frank discussion of their attitudes toward
one another and Jane thought that she detected a feeling of curiosity
in him, as though he wondered just how she would go about forcing him
to like her. Shrewdly, she avoided personalities and talked much of the
ranch.
When they broke over the divide and began the long drop into town, he
said:
"Since you asked advice from me, I keep thinkin' up more, ma'am."
"That's nice. I need it. What now?"
"I s'pose Dad mentioned that water in Devil's Hole?"
"Why, I don't recall it. We've talked so much and about so many things
that perhaps it's slipped my mind."
"Maybe. He said he had."
She questioned him further but he said it might be well for her to
mention it to Hepburn. "He's foreman, you know."
They swung into the one street of Ute Crossing and stopped before the
bank. As Beck stepped down to tie the team a girl came out of a store
across the way and vaulted into the saddle on a big brown horse with
graceful ease. It was the nester's daughter.
Two men came from the saloon just as she reined her horse about. They
eyed her insolently with that stare of a type of loafer which is
eloquent of all that is despicable and one of them, a short, stodgy
man, smiled brazenly.
The girl gave them one stare, hostility in her brown eyes, and then
looked away, her lips moving in an unheard word, surely of contempt.
Then the man spoke. It is not well to repeat. His words were few, but
they were ugly. The girl had touched her horse with a spur and he
leaped forward. Just that one bound. As he made it the man spoke and
with a wrench she set the brown back on his haunches and whirled him
about. Her face was suddenly white, her lips in a tight, red line, and
her eyes blazed.
She rode back to the men, who had continued on their way, holding her
horse to a mincing trot, for he seemed to have caught the tensity of
her mood.
"Did I hear you right?" she said to the man who had spoken.
He stood still and looked up with the rude leer.
"That depends on your ears, likely. All I said was that you--"
She did not give him time to repeat. Her right arm flashed up and the
quirt, slung to its wrist, hissed angrily as it cut back and with a
stinging crack wound its thong about the man's face.
"Take that!" she cried. "And that ... and that!"
At the first blow the man ducked and turned, throwing up his hands to
guard, and as other slashes, relentless, rapid, of scourging vigor,
fell upon his head and face and neck, he doubled over and ran for the
shelter of a store. But the girl's wrath was not satisfied. She sent
the big horse from street to sidewalk where his hoofs thundered on the
planks, crowded in between her quarry and the building fronts, cutting
off his flight, striking faster, harder, teeth showing now between her
drawn lips.
The man fled into the street again, but she followed, guiding her horse
without conscious thought, surely, for no woman roused as her face
showed she was roused could have had thought for other than the
thrashing she administered. Endangered by the excited hoofs which were
all about him as he ducked and dodged in vain to escape, the man ran
with hands and arms close about his head, moving them with each blow
that fell in futile attempts to save other parts from the cut and smart
of that rawhide.
The girl uttered no word. All the rancor, all the rage he had roused by
his insult, found vent in the whipping. Her whole lithe torso moved
with each stroke as she put into the downward swing all the strength
she could command, and across the man's cheek rose broad red welts,
contrasting with his pallor of fright, until his face looked like a
fancy berry pie.
Scuttling, dodging, doubling, the man worked across the street, turned
back time and again but persisting until, with a cry of pain and
desperation, he threw out one hand, caught the bridle and in the
instant's respite the move gave him stumbled to the other sidewalk,
across it and sprawled through the swinging doors of the saloon he had
left moments before.
The horse came to a halt with a slam against the flimsy front of the
building. The girl drew back her quirt as for a final blow, but the
man, regaining his feet, fled through the bar room and disappeared. She
dropped her hand to the top of the door, pushed it open and held it so,
peering darkly into the room.
People had come into the street to watch. There had been excited shouts
and a scream or two, but as the girl sat looking into the place a quick
silence shut down and when she spoke her voice, trembling with emotion
but scarcely raised above its normal pitch, was easily heard.
"I've took a lot from men," she said, "ever since I was a kid. When I
come into this country I thought maybe I'd get a little respect ... for
bein' just a girl. I didn't get it ... I've got to take it.
"If that man's a sample of the kind you've got here, you're a nest of
skunks. And you talk easy hereafter, every one of you, because so long
as I've got a quirt and an arm, I'll hide you till you're raw if you
make any breaks like he did. Keep that in mind!"
She released her hold on the door; it swung outward smartly and as it
struck the horse he sprang sideways, wheeled, and clearing the shallow
gutter with a lunge, swung down the street at a gallop.
When she passed Jane Hunter, who stood amazed in her buckboard, tears
showed in the girl's eyes, but her back was as erect, her shoulders as
trimly set as though no great emotion was surging in her heart.
"She's quite a catamount, I'll guess," said Tom Beck as he gave the
knot in the tie rope a securing tug and turned to face Jane.
His eyes were fired with admiration.
"But a girl--"
"She was magnificent!"
It was Dick Hilton who had interrupted with the words. Beck looked at
him and the enthusiasm which had been in his face faded. He eyed the
Easterner briefly and turned to adjust a buckle on the harness.
"And only a girl!" exclaimed Jane under her breath. "Dick, did you see
it all?"
"A typical Western girl, I should say," he replied. "Your.... Your
neighbor and associate? Your companion, Jane?" he asked. "The sort you
want to cast your lot with?"
"And a moment ago you thought her magnificent!" she taunted as she
stepped down and offered him her hand.
"I'll meet you in, say, two hours, ma'am," Beck said.
"Very well; right here," she replied, and he left her as she turned to
meet Hilton's unpleasant smile.
* * * * *
They began the return trip shortly after noon. Hilton had been with
Jane when Tom returned and he stood beside the buckboard talking some
minutes after Beck had picked up the reins and was ready to commence
the drive. Occasionally Dick's eyes wandered from Jane to the other
man's face but Tom sat, knees crossed, idly toying with the whip, as
indifferent to what was being said as if the others were out of sight
and hearing. Hilton made an obvious effort to exclude the Westerner but
Beck's disregard of him was as genuine as it was evident. He sat
patiently, with an easy sense of superiority and the contrast was not
lost on Jane Hunter.
The town was far behind and below them, a mere cluster of miniature
buildings, before either spoke. Then it was Jane.
"That girl.... There was something splendid about her, wasn't there?"
"There was," he agreed. "She sure expressed her opinion of men in
general!"
"A newcomer, evidently."
Beck nodded. "Came in soon after you did, with her father, it looked
like."
"And she wins the respect of strange men by blows!" she said.
"He deserved all he got, didn't he?" Beck asked, smiling. "I like to
see a bad _hombre_ like that get set down by a woman. There's
something humiliating about it that counts a lot more than the whippin'
she gave him."
"But wouldn't it have spoken more for the chivalry of the country if
some man had done it for her?"
"That's likely. But there ain't much chivalry here, ma'am."
"And am I so fortunate as to have enjoyed the protection of what little
there is?"
He looked at her blankly.
"I had to come clear to Ute Crossing to learn how one man defended me
from the insult of another."
He stirred uneasily on the seat.
"That was nothin'," he growled. "I'd been waiting for a chance to land
on Webb for a long time."
He did not look at her and his manner had none of its usual bluntness;
clearly he was evasive and, more, uncomfortable.
"First, I want to thank you," Jane said after she had looked at him a
moment. "You don't know how a woman such as I am can feel about a thing
like that. I think it was the finest thing a man has ever done for me
... and many men have been trying to do fine things for me for a long
time."
She was deeply touched and her voice was not just steady but when Beck
did not answer, just looked straight ahead with his tell-tale flush
deepening, a delight crept into her eyes and the corners of her pretty
mouth quirked.
"Besides, it was a great deal to expect of a man who has made up his
mind not to like me!"
They had topped the divide and the sorrels had been fighting the bits.
As she spoke Tom gave them their heads and the team swept the buckboard
forward with a banging and clatter that would have drowned words
anyhow, but the fact that he did not reply gave Jane a feeling of
jubilation. Her thrust had pricked his reserve, showing it to be not
wholly genuine!
Dick Hilton had told her of the encounter Beck had had with Webb, told
it jeeringly as he attempted to impress her with the distasteful phases
of her environment. He had failed in that. He had impressed her only
with the fact that Tom Beck had gone out of his way, had taken a
chance, to protect her standing. Others of her men had heard her
insulted, men from other ranches had been there, but of them all Beck
had been her champion.
And it was Beck who had bullied her, had doubted her in the face of her
best efforts to convince him of fitness! He had even challenged her to
make herself his friend!
She had believed before she came into those hills that she knew men of
all sorts but now she had found something new. Here was a man who, in
her presence, would plot to humiliate her and yet when she could not
see or hear his loyalty and his belief in her were outstanding.
And what was it, she asked herself, that made her pulse leap and her
throat tighten? It was not wholly gratitude. It was not merely because
he resisted her efforts to win his open regard. Those things were
potent influences, surely, but there was something more fundamental
about him, a basic quality which she had not before encountered in men;
she could not analyze it but daily she had sensed its growing strength.
Now she felt it ... felt, but could not identify.
Two-Bits opened the gate for them and Tom carried her bundles into the
house.
At the corral, as Beck unharnessed, the homely cow puncher said:
"Gosh, Tommy, how'd it seem, ridin' all the way to town an' back with
her settin' up beside you?"
"Just about like you was there, Two-Bits, only we didn't swear quite so
much."
"I got lots of respect for you, Tommy, but I think you're a damned
liar."
And Beck chuckled to himself as though, perhaps, the other had been
right.
"Two weeks now since he wrote," Two-Bits sighed. "He shore ought to be
comin'. Gosh, Tom, but he's a bright man!"
Again that night Jane Hunter looked from a window after the lights in
the bunk house had gone out and the place was quiet, to see a tall,
silent figure move slowly beneath the cottonwoods, watching the house,
pausing at times as if listening. Then it went back through the shadows
more rapidly, as though satisfied that all was well.
Many times she had watched this but tonight it seemed of greater
significance than ever before. He denied her his friendship; he had
made Webb his sworn enemy by defending her (she had not told him that
part of the tale she heard in Ute Crossing) and yet disclaimed any
great interest in her as a motive. Still, he patrolled her dooryard at
night!
A sudden impulse to do something that would _make_ him give her
that consideration in her presence which he gave before others came to
life. His attitude suddenly angered her beyond reason and she felt her
body shaking as tears sprang into her eyes. The great thing which she
desired was just there, just out of reach and the fact exasperated her,
grew, became a fever until, on her knees at the window, hammering the
sill with her fists, she cried:
"Tom Beck you're going to love me!"