IN HARTE'S CABIN
There was a rough board table, oilcloth-covered, in front of the
fireplace. There were coffee, bread and butter, crisp slices of bacon, a
dish of steaming tinned corn. There were two plates with knife and fork
at the side, two cups, two chairs drawn up to the table.
"You see," she said, gaily and lightly enough, "you _have_ kept me
waiting."
He glanced swiftly at her as she stood by the fireplace, and away. For
though twilight in the wooded country had crept out upon them he could
see the look in her eyes, the set of the red lipped mouth. And he knew
downright fear when he saw it, though it be fear bravely masked.
"Let's eat," he answered, having many things in his mind, but no other
single thing to say to her just yet.
She flashed him a quick look and sat down. Thornton dragged back the
other chair, flung his hat to the bunk in the corner of the room, and
disposed his long legs uncomfortably under the small table. Inwardly he
was devoutly cursing Dave Wendell for allowing anybody at his place to
choose this particular time to get sick and the Hartes for going to the
assistance of a ten-mile distant neighbour.
He watched the girl's quick fingers busy with the blackened coffee pot,
realized at one and the same time that she had no ring upon a particular
finger and that it was idiotic for him to so much as look for it, never
allowed his glance to wander higher than her hands and attacked his
bread and butter as though its immediate consumption were the most
important thing in all the world. And she, when she felt that he was not
watching her, when his silence was almost a tangible thing, looked at
him with quick furtiveness. The something in her expression which had
spoken of terror began to give place to the look of amusement which
twitched at her lips and flickered up in the soft grey of her eyes. And
since still he gave no sign of breaking the silence which had fallen
over them, she said at last:
"Didn't you know all the time who I was?"
Then he looked up at her inquiringly. And when he saw that she was
smiling, a little of his sudden restraint fled from him and his eyes
smiled back gently a little and reassuringly into hers.
"All the time?" he asked. "Meaning when?"
"Back there. On the trail," she told him.
"Well," he admitted slowly, "I guess I was pretty sure. Of course I
couldn't be dead certain. It might have been anybody's tracks ... that
is," he corrected with a quick broadening of the smile, "anybody with a
foot the right size to fit into a boot like that."
"Like what?" she asked in turn.
"Like the one that made the tracks by the creek where you came into the
main trail, where you stopped to drink."
"You saw that?"
"If I hadn't seen it how was I to guess that it was you ahead of me?" he
demanded. And when she frowned a little and did not answer for a moment
he gave his attention to the black coffee which she had poured for him.
"You sure know how to make coffee _right_," he complimented her with a
vast show of sincerity. "This is the best I ever tasted."
"I'm glad you like it," she retorted as the frown fled before a hint of
laughter. "I found it already made in the pot and just warmed it over!"
"Oh," said Thornton. And then with much gravity of tone but with
twinkling eyes, "Come to think of it it isn't the _taste_ of it that a
man notices; it's the being just hot enough. I never had any coffee
better warmed-up than this."
"Thank you." She stirred the sugar in her own cup of muddy looking
beverage and without glancing up at him this time, went on, "You mean
that you didn't know who I was when you saw me?"
"At the bank in Dry Town?"
"Of course not. Back there on the trail."
"I didn't see you," he told her.
Now she flashed another quick upward glance at him as though seeking for
a reason lying back of his words.
"I saw you" she said steadily. "Twice. First from the top of a hill
half a dozen miles back when you got down to look at your horse's foot.
Did he pick up a stone?"
His eyes opened in surprise.
"I didn't get off to look at my horse's foot. And he didn't pick up
anything."
"The second time," she continued, "was just when you had come to the
last stream. I thought that you were going to turn off into the cañon. I
saw that your horse was limping."
He shook his head. She must have seen that other fellow whose tracks
Thornton had for so long seen following the tracks of her pony.
"What made you think you recognized me?" he asked.
"I didn't think. I knew."
"Then ... how did you know?"
The surprise showing in her frankly lifted brows was very plain now.
"You were hardly five hundred yards away," she retorted. "And," with a
quick, sweeping survey of him, "you are not a man to be readily mistaken
even at that distance, you know."
"Meaning the inches of me? The up-and-down six feet four of me?" He
shook his head. "I'm the only man in this neck of the woods built on the
bean pole style."
"Meaning," she returned steadily, "your size and form; meaning the
unusually wide hat you wear; meaning your blue shirt and grey
neck-handkerchief ... grey handkerchiefs aren't so common, are they?...
meaning your tall sorrel horse that limped, and your bridle with the red
tassel swinging from the headstall! Now," a little sharply, a little
anxiously, he thought, "you are not going to tell me that I was
mistaken, are you?"
She saw that his surprise, growing into sheer amazement as she ran on,
was a wonderfully simulated thing if it were not real.
"You made a mistake," he said coolly. "I saw in the trail that there was
another man following you. If I had known his get-up was so close to
mine, I'd have done a little fast riding to take a peep at him. He
turned off at the last creek, as you thought."
"You saw him?" she asked quickly.
"I saw his tracks. And," he added with deep thoughtfulness as he stared
past her into the smouldering fire in the fireplace, "I'd sure like to
know who he is."
Again, as she watched him, an expression of uneasiness crept into her
eyes; then as he turned back to her she looked down quickly.
"Is it far to the Wendell place?" she asked abruptly. "Where the sick
woman is?"
"Ten miles. Off to the north."
"Not on our trail?" anxiously.
"You're going on, further?"
"Yes. To ..." she hesitated, and then concluded hurriedly, "To Hill's
Corners."
He sat silent for a moment, his strong brown fingers playing with his
knife and fork. And his eyes were merely stern when he spoke quietly.
"So you're going to Dead Man's Alley, are you?"
"I said that I was going to Hill's Corners!"
"And folks who know that quiet little city," he informed her, "have got
into the habit of calling it by the name of its principal street.... I
wonder if you've ever been there?"
"No. Why?"
"I wonder if you know anything about the place?"
"What I've heard. What Mr. Templeton tried to tell me."
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I don't know that I blame him for trying
to turn you into another trail. He must have told you," and he was
watching her very keenly, "that the stage runs there from Dry Town?"
"Yes. But I chose to ride on horseback. Is there anything strange in
that?"
"Oh, no!" he said briefly. "Just a nice little ride!"
"I have ridden long trails before."
Again for a little while she watched him with intent, eager eyes; he was
silent, frowning into his own cup of coffee.
"Dead Man's Alley," he volunteered abruptly, "is the worst little bad
town I ever saw. And I've camped in two or three that a man wouldn't
call just exactly healthy on the dark of the moon. I guess Mr.
Templeton must have told you, but unless it's happened in the last
month, there isn't a man in that town who has his wife or daughters
there. If I were you," and he lifted his cup to his lips as a sign that
he had said his say, "I'd rope my cow pony and hit the home trail for
Dry Town!"
"Thank you," she said as quietly as he had spoken. "But really Mr.
Templeton gave me enough advice to last me a year, I think. I have made
up my mind to go on to ... to Dead Man's Alley, as you call it."
"Well," he grinned back at her as though the discussion had been of no
moment and now was quite satisfactorily ended, "I ought to be glad,
oughtn't I? Since my trail runs that way, and since the Poison Hole
ranch is only twenty miles out from the Corners. Maybe you'll let me
ride over and see you?"
"Of course. I'll be glad to have you. That is," and her smile came back,
a very teasing smile, too, "if you'll care to call at the house where
I'm going to stop? I'm going to stay with my uncle."
"The chances are that I don't know him. I don't know half a dozen folks
in the town. What's his name?"
"His name," she told him demurely, "is Henry Pollard. I think you know
him."
He flushed a little as she had hoped that he would. He remembered. He
knew that he had spoken this morning at the bank of Henry Pollard from
whom he was buying his outfit, knew that he must have called him, as he
always did when he spoke of him, "Rattlesnake" Pollard. And Henry
Pollard was her uncle!
"I didn't know," he said slowly and a little lamely, "that he was your
uncle. But," he added cheerfully, his assurance coming back to him, "you
can't help that, you know. I don't blame you for it. Yes, I'll ride over
from the ranch. It's good of you to let me."
They finished the meal in a rather thoughtful silence. Thornton made a
cigarette and went to the door to look for the upclimbing moon; the girl
carried her chair to the fireplace and sat down, her hands in her lap,
her eyes staring into the coals.
The man was asking himself stubbornly why this girl, this type of girl,
dainty, frank-eyed, clean-hearted as he felt instinctively that she was,
was making this trip to that dirty town which straddled the state border
line like an evil, venomous toad and sneered in its ugly defiant fashion
at the peace officers of two states. He was trying to see what the
reason could be that carried her through this little-travelled country
to the house of such a man as not only Buck Thornton but every one in
this end of the cattle country knew Henry Pollard to be; trying above
all to seek the reason for her making the trip on horse back, alone,
over a wild trail, when the stage for Hill's Corners had left Dry Town
so little after her and must reach its journey's end well ahead of her.
And she, over and over, was asking herself why this man whom she was so
certain she had seen twice that day upon the trail behind her, denied
that he had been the man who got down to look at his horse's foot, who
later had ridden a limping mount aside into the cañon. For she felt very
sure that she had not been mistaken and, therefore, that he was lying to
her. She frowned and glanced over her shoulder. She was a little afraid
of a man who could look at her out of clear eyes as he had looked, and
lie to her as she was so confident he had lied. She knew nothing of him
save that this morning he had come to her assistance at a moment of
great peril and that he was suspected by some of a certain robbery and
assault....
"Are you very tired?"
She started. He had turned at last and came back to where she sat.
"No, I am not tired. Why do you ask?"
"There'll be a moon soon. We can let the horses rest a bit.... I have
ridden mine pretty hard the last few days ... and then after moon-up we
can ride on. There's another shack where a man and his wife live just a
little off the trail and about seven miles further on. It'll be better
than trying to make Wendell's place."