TOM DIXON
With whoops and a waving of caps boys burst out of one door, while girls
came out of the opposite one more demurely, but with the piping of gay
soprano voices. For school was out, and young America free of restraint
for eighteen hours at least. Resilient youth, like a coiled spring that
has been loosed, was off with a bound. Horses were saddled or put to
harness. The teacher came to the door, hand in hand with six-year-olds,
who clung to her with fond good-bys before they climbed into the waiting
buggies. The last straggler disappeared behind the dip in the road.
The girl teacher turned from waving her fare-wells--to meet the eyes of
a young man fastened upon her. Light-blue eyes they were, set in a
good-looking, boyish face, that had somehow an effect of petulancy. It
was not a strong face, yet it was no weaker than nine out of ten that
one meets daily.
"Got rid of your kiddies, Phyl?" the young man asked, with an air of
cheerful confidence that seemed to be assumed to cover a doubt.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "They have just gone--all but little Jimmie
Tryon. He rides home with me."
"Hang it! We never seem to be alone any more since you came back,"
complained the man.
"Why should we?" asked the young woman, her gaze apparently as frank and
direct as that of a boy.
But he understood it for a challenge. "You didn't use to talk that way.
You used to be glad enough to see me alone," he flung out.
"Did I? One outgrows childish follies, I suppose," she answered quietly.
"What's the matter with you?" he cried angrily. "It's been this way ever
since----"
He broke off.
A faint, scornful smile touched her lips. "Ever since when, Tom?"
"You know when well enough. Ever since I shot Buck Weaver."
"And left me to pay forfeit," she suggested quickly, and as quickly
broke off. "Hadn't we better talk of something else? I've tried to avoid
this. Must we thrash it out?"
"You can't throw me over like that, after what's been between us. I
reckon you pretend to have forgotten that I used to keep company with
you."
A flush of annoyance glowed through the tan of her cheeks, but her eyes
refused to yield to his. "Nonsense! Don't talk foolishness, Tom. We were
just children."
"Do you mean that everything's all off between us?"
"We made a mistake. Let us be good friends and forget it, Tom," she
pleaded.
"What's the use of talking that way, Phyl?" He swung from the saddle,
and came toward her eagerly. "I love you--always have since I was
knee-high to a grasshopper. We're going to be married one of these
days."
She held up a hand to keep him back. "No--we're not. I know now that
you're not the right man for me, and I'm not the right girl for you."
"I'm the best judge of that," he retorted.
She shook her head with certainty. It seemed a lifetime since this boy
had kissed her at the dance and she had run, tingling, from his embrace.
She felt now old enough in experience to be his mother.
"No, Tom--let us both forget it. Go back to your other girls, and let me
be just a friend."
"I haven't any other girls," he answered sullenly. "And I won't be put
off like that. You've got to tell me what has come between us. I've got
a right to know, and I'm going to know."
"Yes, you have a right--but don't press it. Just let it go at this: I
didn't know my own mind then, and I do now."
"It's something about the shooting of Buck Weaver," he growled uneasily.
She was silent.
"Well?" he demanded. "Out with it!"
"I couldn't marry a man I don't respect from the bottom of my heart,"
she told him gently.
"That's a dig at me, I reckon. Why don't you respect me? Is it because I
shot Weaver?"
"You shot him from ambush."
"I didn't!" he protested angrily. "You know that ain't so, Phyl. I saw
him riding down there, as big as coffee, and I let him have it. I wasn't
lying in wait for him at all. It just came over me all of a heap to
shoot, and I shot before----"
"I understand that. But you shouldn't have shot without giving warning,
even if it was right to shoot at all--which, of course, it wasn't."
"Well, say I did wrong. Can't you forgive a fellow for making a
mistake?"
"It isn't a question of forgiveness, Tom. Somehow it goes deeper than
that. I can't tell you just what I mean."
"Haven't I told you I'm sorry?" he demanded, with boyish impatience.
"Being sorry isn't enough. If you can't see it then I can't explain."
"You're sore at me because I left you," he muttered, and for very shame
his eyes could not meet hers.
"No--I'm not sore at you, as you call it. I haven't the least
resentment. But there's no use in trying to hide the truth. Since you
ask for it, you shall have it. I don't want to be unkind, but I couldn't
possibly marry you after that."
The young man looked sulkily across the valley, his lips trembling with
vexation and the shame of knowing that this girl had been a witness of
that scene when he had fled like a scared rabbit and left her to bear
the brunt of what he had done.
"You told me to go, and now you blame me for doing what you said," he
complained bitterly.
She realized the weakness of his defense--that he had saved himself at
the expense of the girl he claimed to love, simply because she had
offered herself as a sacrifice in his place. She thought of another man,
who, at the risk of his life, had held back the half dozen pursuers just
to give a better chance to a girl he had not known a week. She thought
of the cattleman who had ridden gayly into this valley of enemies,
because he loved her, and was willing to face any punishment for the
wrong he had done her. Her brother, too, pointed the same moral. He had
defied the enemy, though he had been in his power. Not one of them would
have done what Tom Dixon, in his panic terror, had allowed himself to
do. But they were men, all of them--men of that stark courage that
clings to self-respect rather than to life. This youth had met the acid
test, and had failed in the assay. She had no anger toward him--only a
kindly pity, and a touch of contempt which she could not help.
"No--I don't blame you, Tom," she told him, very kindly. "But I can't
marry you. I couldn't if you explained till Christmas. That is final.
Now let us be friends."
She held out her hand. He looked at it through the tears of
mortification that were in his eyes, dashed it aside with an oath, swung
to the saddle, and galloped down the road.
Phyllis gave a wistful sigh. Tears filmed her eyes. He was her first
lover, had given her apples and candy hearts when he was in the third
grade and she learning her A, B, C. So she felt a heartache to see him
go like this. Their friendship was shattered, too. Nor had she
experience enough to know that this could not have endured, save as a
form, after the wrench he had given it. Yet she knew him well enough now
to be sure that it was his vanity and self-esteem that were hurt, and
not his love. He would soon find consolation among the other ranch
girls, upon whom he had been used to lavish his attentions at intervals
when she was not handy to receive them.
"Was Tom Dixon mean to you, teacher?"
Little five-year-old Jimmie Tryon was standing before her, feet apart,
fists knotted, and brow furrowed. She swooped upon her champion and
snatched him up for a kiss.
"Nobody has been mean to teacher, Jimmie, you dear little kiddikins,"
she cried. "It's all right, honey. Tom thinks it isn't, but before long
he'll know it is."
"Who'll tell him?" Jimmie wanted to know anxiously.
"Some nice girl, little curiosity box. I don't know who yet, but it will
be one of two or three I could name," she laughed.
She harnessed the horse and hitched it to the trap in which Jimmie and
she came to school. But before she had gathered up the reins to start,
another young man strolled upon the scene.
This one was walking and carried a rifle.
At sight of him a glow began to burn through her dark cheeks. They had
not been alone together before since that moment when the stress of
their emotion had swept them to a meeting of warm lips and warm bodies
that had startled her by the electric pulsing of her blood.
Her eyes could not hold to his. Shame dragged the lashes down.
With him it was not shame. The male in him rode triumphant because he
had moved a girl to the deeps of her nature. But something in him, some
saving sense of embarrassment, of reverence for the purity and innocence
he sensed in her, made him shrink from pressing the victory. His mind
cast about for a commonplace with which to meet her.
He held up as a trophy of his prowess two cottontails. "Who says I can't
shoot?" he wanted to know boisterously.
"Where did you buy them?" she scoffed, faintly trying for sauciness.
"That's a fine reward for honest virtue, after I tramped five miles to
get them for your supper," protested Keller.
She recovered her composure quickly, as women will.
"If they are for my supper, we'll have to ask him to ride home with
us--won't we, Jimmie? It would never do to have them reach the ranch too
late," she said, making room for Keller in the seat beside her.
It was after she had driven several hundred yards that he said, with a
smile: "I met a young man on horseback as I was coming up. He went by me
like a streak of light. Looked like he found this a right mournful
world. You had ought to scatter sunshine and not gloom, Miss Phyllis."
"Am I scattering gloom?" she asked demurely.
"Not right now," he laughed. "But looks like you have been."
She flicked a fly from the flank of her horse before she answered: "Some
people are so noticing."
"It was hanging right heavy on him. Had the look of a man who had lost
his last friend," the young man observed meditatively.
"Dear me! How pathetic!"
"Yes--he sure looked like he'd rejoice to plug another cattleman. I
'most arranged to send for Buck Weaver again," said Keller calmly.
Phyllis turned on him eyes brilliant with amazement. "What's that you
say?"
"I said he looked some like he'd admire to go gunning again."
"Yes, but you said too----"
"Sho! I've been using my eyes and ears. I never did find that story of
yours easy to swallow. When I discovered from your brother that you was
riding with Tom Dixon the day Buck was shot, and when I found out from
'Rastus that the gun that did the shooting was Dixon's, I surely smelt a
mouse. Come to mill the thing out, I knew you led Buck's boys off on a
blind trail, while the real coyote hunted cover."
"He isn't a coyote," she objected.
Larrabie thought of the youth with a faint smile of scorn. He knew how
to respect an out-and-out villain; but there was no bottom to a man who
would shoot from cover without warning, and then leave a girl to bear
the blame of his wrongdoing. "No--I reckon coyote is too big a name for
him," he admitted.
"Buck Weaver ruined his father and drove him from his homestead. It was
natural he should feel a grudge."
"That's all right, too. We're talking about the way he settled it. How
come you to let him do it?"
"I was riding about twenty yards behind him. Suddenly I saw his gun go
up, and stopped. I thought it might be an antelope. As soon as he had
fired, he turned and told me he had shot Weaver. The poor boy was crazy
with fear, now that he had done it. I took his gun and made him hide in
the big rocks, while I cut across toward the cañon. The men saw me, and
gave chase."
"They fired at you. Thank God, none of them hit you," said Keller, with
emphasis.
Her swift gaze appreciated the deep feeling that welled from him. "Of
course they did not know I was a woman. All they could see was that
somebody was riding through the chaparral."
"Jimmie, what do you think of a girl game enough to take so big a chance
to save a friend? Deserves a Carnegie medal, don't you reckon?" Keller
put the question to the third passenger, using him humorously as a vent
to his feelings.
Phyllis did not look at him, nor he at her. "And what do you think of a
man game enough to take the same chance to save a girl who was not even
a friend?" the girl asked of little Jimmie, as lightly as she could.
"Wasn't she? Well, if my friends will save my life every time I need
them to, like this enemy did, I'll be satisfied with them a-plenty."
"He stood by her, too," she answered, trying to keep the matter
impersonal.
"Perhaps he wanted to make her his friend," Larrabie suggested.
"There is no perhaps about his success," she said quietly, her gaze just
beyond the ears of her horse. The young man dared now to look at her--a
child of the sun despite her duskiness. Eagerly he awaited the deep,
lustrous eyes that would presently sweep round upon him, big and dark
and sparkling. When she turned her head, they were full of that new
womanly dignity that yet did not obscure the shy innocence.
"Look!" Jimmie Tryon pointed suddenly to the figure of a man
disappearing from the road into the mesquite two hundred yards in front
of them.
"That's odd. I reckon you'd better wait here, and let me investigate a
few," suggested Keller.
"Be careful," she said anxiously.
"It's all right. Don't worry," the young man assured her.
He got down from the trap and dived into the underbrush, rifle in hand.
The two in the buggy waited a long time. No sound came to them from the
cactus-covered waste to indicate what was happening. When Phyllis' watch
told her that he had been gone ten minutes, a cheerful hail came from
the road in front.
"All right. Come on."
But it was far from all right. Keller had with him an old Mexican
herder, called Manuel Quito--a man in the employ of her father. A
bandanna was tied round his shoulder, and it was soaked with
bloodstains. He told his story with many shrugs and much excited
gesticulation. He and Jesus Menendez had been herding on Lone Pine when
riders of the Twin Star outfit had descended upon them and attacked the
sheep. He and Menendez had elected to fight, and Jesus had been shot
down; he himself had barely escaped with his life--and that not without
a wound. The cow-punchers had followed him, and continued to fire at
him, but he had succeeded in escaping. Yes--he felt sure that Menendez
was dead. Even if he had not been dead at first, they would have killed
him.
Keller consulted Miss Sanderson silently. He knew that she was thinking
the thought that was in his own mind. It would never do to let this
story reach her father and her brother, while Buck Weaver was still in
their power. Inflamed as they already were against him, they would
surely do in hot blood that which they would repent later. Somehow,
Keller and she must hold back the news until they could contrive a way
to free the cattleman.
"Best leave Manuel at the Tryon place till morning. They will look out
for him as well as you can. That will give us twelve hours to work
before they hear what has happened."
"But what about poor Jesus, lying out there alone?"
"We'll get Bob Tryon to drive out. But you needn't worry about Jesus. If
they found him still living, the Twin Star boys will attend to him just
as kindly as we could. Cowboys have tender hearts, even though they go
off at half cock."
They did as Keller had suggested, and left the old Mexican under the
care of Mrs. Tryon, having pledged the family to a reluctant silence
until morning. Manuel's wound was not a bad one, and there seemed to be
no reason why he should not do well.
It was difficult to decide upon a plan for the release of Weaver. He was
confined in an old log cabin and watched continually by some one of the
riders; but a tentative plan was accepted, subject to revision if a
better chance of escape should occur. The success of this depended upon
the possibility of Keller drawing off the guard by a diversion, while
Phyllis slipped in and freed the prisoner.
The outlook was not roseate, but nothing better occurred to them. One
thing was sure--if Buck Weaver was not out of the hands of his enemies
before the news of this last outrage of his cowboys reached them, his
chance of life was not worth even an odds-on bet. For the hot blood of
the South raced through the veins of the sheepmen. They would strike
first and think about it afterward. And without doubt that first swift
blow would be a deadly one.