When the hired rig from Smoky Ford swung through the gate and on up to
the very porch of the house, with Bud grinning impudently at his world
from the driver's seat and a strange young woman wedged in between him
and a young man who bore all the earmarks of a pilgrim, and three huge
trunks lashed to the back of the vehicle to say that the visitors had
come to stay, Lark stood in the doorway and stared dazedly, with never
a word of welcome for the strangers.
But Maw did not hesitate or question. Instead, she hurried out--walking
erect under Lark's braced arm in the doorway with plenty of room to
spare--and waddled to the edge of the porch, smiling unabashed. Marge
almost screamed at sight of her.
"Get right down and come on in," Maw cried. "Supper's about ready. As
luck would have it, I killed that speckled hen that wanted to set and
cooked her with dumplings. We're almost ready to sit down, and I'll bet
you're hungry!"
Bud had swung his long legs out over the wheel and landed beside her,
and Marge was shocked to see him lift the misshapen creature clear of
the ground and kiss her on each leathery cheek before he set her down
again and turned to help Marge out.
"Maw, this is Miss Brunelle. She's going to teach school here. And this
is her brother, Lightfoot. He's going to be a cowboy. Hello, Lark. Say,
I promised Lightfoot that you'd give him a job so he can be with his
sister while she teaches school. Where's Skookum?"
"Oh, he went down to feed the cougar. I'm so glad we're going to have
a school," cried Maw, without batting an eye or waiting for Lark to
struggle through a sentence. "Larkie's real glad too. Of course he'll
put Mr. Lightfoot right to work. Now, come right in, folks, and take
off your things while I put on a couple more plates. Buddy, I'm afraid
we haven't a room ready for Mr. Lightfoot--"
"He can bunk with me to-night," Bud interrupted, glancing up from
unroping the trunks. "Say, Lark, the bank was robbed yesterday and
the cashier killed. That's why I didn't get in quicker. I had to stay
for the inquest this morning. No sign of the bunch that did it." The
trunks thudded one by one to the porch. "It happened just before I went
to cash that check. Say, Maw, Lightfoot's name is Brunelle, same as his
sister, if you want to Mister him."
He stepped on the hub of the front wheel and went up, unwrapping the
lines from around the whipstock as he did so. Lark came to life then
and climbed in and stood behind the seat while Bud drove back to the
stable.
Sprawled before the bunk house, the Meadowlark riders were taking in
the smallest details of the amazing arrival and trying not to appear
curious, or even interested. But Jake, permanently crippled in one leg
from lying out all one night under his dead horse, got up and limped
leisurely down to the stable to help take care of the team. Lark saw
him coming and hastened his speech.
"Bud, where in the name of Jonah did you pick up them pilgrims? And
what's this here joke about a school teacher fer the Meddalark? Where'd
you git 'em--and their _trunks_?" The last three words sounded very
much like a groan.
"Say, I didn't _steal_ 'em," Bud flashed back meaningly.
"No--I'll bet you didn't git the chancet. I bet they grabbed you--"
Bud whirled on him, straight brows pulled together. If he began to see
the foolishness of his impulsive hospitality, he never would admit it.
"Look here, Lark, these are nice folks, and they were up against it
when the bank was robbed and they couldn't get a two-bit piece of their
money out. Strangers, fresh from the East somewhere; came out here with
the wild idea they can write and illustrate stories of the West and
sell them to magazines. Maybe they can do it, but they sound too darned
amateurish to me. And they were _broke_, I tell you!
"So she wanted to teach school or something--and you know darned well,
Lark, that Skookum ought to be learning to read before he's sent off
to school. All the kids would guy the life out of him if he landed
without having some kind of a start in schooling at his age. And as for
Lightfoot, he won't be the first tenderfoot that had to learn which
end of a horse is the front." He stopped and glanced toward the house,
where Maw was calling through the dusk that supper was all on the
table. "And my thunder, Lark," he added as a clincher, "you never leave
the Basin without bringing back something to take care of and feed;
even if you have to steal him. You'd have done this yourself."
Lark lifted his hat, pawed absently at his hair and set the hat at a
different angle as they started back to the house, waving their hands
before their faces to keep off the mosquitoes whose droning hum was
audible throughout the Basin after sundown when the dew began falling.
"Shore you'd 'a' done it, Bud, if the girl had been cross-eyed?" he
thrust slyly at Bud's well-known liking for pretty faces.
"No, I don't know as I would," Bud admitted with shameless candor. "She
isn't any prettier than Bonnie Prosser, though--and she hasn't the
brains that Bonnie has, and no sense of humor whatever. I'll bet, if
you pinned her right down to it, she'd admit that she thinks cowboys
eat grass when they're on the range. You ought to hear the questions
she asked about us, coming out.
"Lightfoot's all right, though. He'll break in and be human long before
she will. You'll like Lightfoot, even if he is green; one good thing,
he knows it. And Marge is a darn pretty girl, all right, even if she
did get all her brains out of books. She can teach Skookum and get him
ready for school--"
"Oh, all right, all right!" Lark yielded wearily to end the argument.
"But if this habit of hauling in the helpless is going to run in the
family, son, we'll have to start in ridin' with a long rope and a
runnin' iron, to feed 'em all. And what'll Bonnie say, Bud, when she
hears about it? And a dozen other girls that have kept their dads broke
buyin' hair ribbons for you to decorate yore bridle with?"
"Say, there aren't a dozen girls in the country; not white ones, and I
don't take to color," Bud retorted equably. "And as for Bonnie--I'm not
halter-broke yet, if you want to know, Lark."
At the porch Marge stood looking out over the dusky Basin to where the
moon was beginning to gild the clouds on the hilltops beyond the Little
Smoky.
"You know, I never dreamed that you had frogs away out West in
Montana!" she cried in her pretty, eager way when the two approached.
"They sound exactly like the frogs back in Iowa, too."
"Well, they're Iowa frogs, that's why," Bud explained matter-of-factly.
"Way it happened was this: When the first white woman came with
her husband and settled in this country, she had to teach the
kids herself and she was a real conscientious mother. Whenever
she sung them that song about 'There was a frog lived in a well,
humble-jumble-jerry-jum,' they kept asking her what frogs were. So the
next time a trainload of beef went to Chicago she had the cowboys stop
off in Iowa and catch a few jars of pollywogglers and bring back with
them. There were twice as many as she needed, so she sent a jar over to
the Meddalark. They've done real well," he added, stopping to listen to
the steady singsong chorus down in the meadow. "One trouble is, they
brought in mosquitoes same time. Said the farmers back in Iowa told
them frogs wouldn't live where they couldn't get mosquitoes in season.
The boys sure brought a plenty--or else our breed of frogs are light
eaters. We've got more mosquitoes than we need right now."
"Well," said Marge, all unsuspecting, "of course I knew the frogs must
have come from _somewhere_, and I noticed that they sounded exactly
like our frogs back home."
That is why Lark kept eyeing the girl curiously all through supper.
But the unexpected addition to the Meadowlark family could not crowd
from Lark's mind the startling news of the tragedy in Smoky Ford; nor
from the uneasy thoughts of Bud, who felt keenly that he had failed
Lark in a certain important matter.
The two gravitated together without a word or look that signified
intention and strolled silently out away from the house to a bowlder
fallen from the crown of the bluff and lying solitary and conveniently
out of earshot yet within sight of everything. Even in Lark's
tempestuous youth the bowlder had been called the Council Rock because
of its frequent occupation when confidences were to be exchanged. A
faint trail led toward it through the sparse grass at the base of the
bluff, proof that it was still popular. Bud climbed up to the broad,
flat top and sat down, dangling his legs over the edge of the gray rock
while he produced tobacco and papers.
"That check--Lark, I feel that I owe you fifteen hundred dollars,"
he began abruptly. "I was so darned thirsty and hot when I came down
off the reservation that I didn't go straight to the bank as I should
have done. I stopped at the Elkhorn for a glass of beer. Lightfoot was
in there and let himself be bullied into dancing for Steve Godfrey's
bunch of souses, and I played the mouth-harp for him. I guess I wasted
nearly half an hour altogether before I started to the bank. At that,"
he added, pausing to run the tip of his tongue along the edge of the
filled paper, "I was in time--or I would have been if the bank had
been left alone. But if I had gone there at first I'd have been in time
to prevent a murder and cash your check."
"Damn' expensive beer the Elkhorn's sellin'," Lark commented dryly.
"What about the Fryin' Pan?"
"They've sure got a lot of dandy horses, Lark," Bud told him, relieved
at the change of subject. "I had to do a lot of jewing on the price,
but I got the promise of a hundred head for fifteen hundred dollars;
forty young mares, and the rest geldings two and three years old. Just
right to break, most of them are. You might be able to stand Kid off
for the money, seeing the bank was robbed, but I don't know. I told
him it would be cash down. Kid said he never bothered with checks at
all--you had the right hunch there. He hinted strongly for gold too.
Said he'd burned a thousand dollars of paper money by accident once,
and he's nervous about having it around."
"Yeah, I wouldn't be su'prised if he is!" Lark laughed to himself. "My
Jonah, I shore do want that bunch of horses! You say the bank's put out
of business?"
"That's what Delkin said. They may get organized again after a
while--or they may get the money back, of course. I'd have wondered if
the Frying Pan didn't know something about that affair--" He stopped
and emptied his lungs of smoke. "But I saw the whole outfit at the
ranch. Butch Cassidy's working for them this summer. I wish we could
get those horses some way. They promised to hold the bunch close in,
because I told them you'd be right over. I expect they're watching the
trail for us right now."
"Too bad." Lark absently reached for his own "makin's." "Forty young
mares, you say. Bud, I expect my old man would just about peel the hide
off me if he was alive, but I'll be darned if I can set still and let
that bunch of horses git out from under the old Meddalark iron. I'm
goin' to hit the trail fer Glasgow and borry a couple or three thousand
dollars. That'll run us till shippin' time if Delkin don't open up
agin. First time the Meddalark ever borried, but I plumb got to have
them horses!"
"I'll give you a bill of sale of a thousand head of my cattle, Lark.
I'll feel better about the whole business if you'll use my stock for
security on a loan, and it will save the Meadowlark from having a
mortgage plastered on it."
"You keep what cattle you got, son. I'll make out all right. Can't tell
how soon you might wanta set up fer yourself. The marryin' notion hits
kinda sudden when she strikes--"
"Say, I'll sell out the whole bunch if you don't shut up. I want you to
borrow on my cattle if you must get a loan, and I suppose that's the
only way out. Those Frying Pan horses are sure dandies. There's one
favor I want to ask if you do get them, Lark. I'd like to have a couple
of the geldings to break for my own string. There are two blacks,
dead ringers for each other, that are beauts. I want them both. Half
brothers, I'd say; going on four; clean-limbed and short-coupled, with
forequarters like a lion, and their eyes are plumb human. They'd make a
peach of a matched driving team, but I want them to ride. Butch says he
got a saddle on one and started to ride him, and it bucked, high, wide
and handsome, until it was a relief to get thrown clean over the fence.
But I'll bet I can gentle the two of them so they'll be like pet dogs.
Lark, I want them!"
"Yeah, I kinda thought mebbe you did," Lark chuckled. "All right, son.
I'll take the bill of sale and use it for security on a loan (I know
where I can get money in Glasgow without the hull darn country knowin'
the Meddalark's borryin' money), and you can have your two black
bronchs fer keeps. I'll give you the papers for 'em, and you can put
the one-legged Meddalark on 'em to show they're yourn. That'll be for
int'rust on the use of your stock for a few months. How's that strike
yuh?"
"Fine and dandy, Lark. Maybe you'll want to back down on your bargain
when you've seen them, but I'll hold you to it. Kind of low-down, but
darn it, I fell in love with those blacks, and I'd have to fight the
boys away from them if they got a sight of them before any promise
passed. And I had a long, hot ride in the wind, going to the Frying
Pan, and talked myself black in the face getting the hundred head at
that price. Kid was asking two thousand even for the bunch, but I made
him see where the cash in his hand was worth something, and I told him
fifteen hundred was your limit. Any other outfit would probably stand
him off for part of it, and that's what turned the trick. And by the
way, Lark, you'd better go prepared to bring back the gold, because
Kid might be persuaded to throw in a few yearlings extra. They've got
some good-looking colts over there. Most of the mares have got sucking
colts, by the way."
"I'll borry three thousand, and get it all in gold," Lark planned.
"I'll take a valise along, and carry the weight easy enough without it
being noticed. I'll likely stay over a day in Glasgow, anyway."
"Make it as quick a trip as you can, Lark. You must bear in mind that
Kid expects us to-night, and I wouldn't want the deal to fall through
because he got tired of waiting. He's touchy as the devil--and if I
don't get those two black bronchs, I'll die!"