Lanty Foster was crouching on a low stool before the dying kitchen
fire, the better to get its fading radiance on the book she was reading.
Beyond, through the open window and door, the fire was also slowly
fading from the sky and the mountain ridge whence the sun had dropped
half an hour before. The view was uphill, and the sky-line of the
hill was marked by two or three gibbet-like poles from which, on a
now invisible line between them, depended certain objects--mere black
silhouettes against the sky--which bore weird likeness to human figures.
Absorbed as she was in her book, she nevertheless occasionally cast an
impatient glance in that direction, as the sunlight faded more quickly
than her fire. For the fluttering objects were the “week's wash” which
had to be brought in before night fell and the mountain wind arose. It
was strong at that altitude, and before this had ravished the clothes
from the line, and scattered them along the highroad leading over the
ridge, once even lashing the shy schoolmaster with a pair of Lanty's own
stockings, and blinding the parson with a really tempestuous petticoat.
A whiff of wind down the big-throated chimney stirred the log embers on
the hearth, and the girl jumped to her feet, closing the book with an
impatient snap. She knew her mother's voice would follow. It was hard to
leave her heroine at the crucial moment of receiving an explanation from
a presumed faithless lover, just to climb a hill and take in a lot
of soulless washing, but such are the infelicities of stolen romance
reading. She threw the clothes-basket over her head like a hood, the
handle resting across her bosom and shoulders, and with both her hands
free started out of the cabin. But the darkness had come up from the
valley in one stride after its mountain fashion, had outstripped her,
and she was instantly plunged in it. Still the outline of the ridge
above her was visible, with the white, steadfast stars that were not
there a moment ago, and by that sign she knew she was late. She had to
battle against the rushing wind now, which sung through the inverted
basket over her head and held her back, but with bent shoulders she at
last reached the top of the ridge and the level. Yet here, owing to
the shifting of the lighter background above her, she now found herself
again encompassed with the darkness. The outlines of the poles had
disappeared, the white fluttering garments were distinct apparitions
waving in the wind, like dancing ghosts. But there certainly was a queer
misshapen bulk moving beyond, which she did not recognize, and as she at
last reached one of the poles, a shock was communicated to it, through
the clothes-line and the bulk beyond. Then she heard a voice say
impatiently,--
“What in h-ll am I running into now?”
It was a man's voice, and, from its elevation, the voice of a man on
horseback. She answered without fear and with slow deliberation,--
“Inter our clothes-line, I reckon.”
“Oh!” said the man in a half-apologetic tone. Then in brisker accents,
“The very thing I want! I say, can you give me a bit of it? The ring of
my saddle girth has fetched loose. I can fasten it with that.”
“I reckon,” replied Lanty, with the same unconcern, moving nearer the
bulk, which now separated into two parts as the man dismounted. “How
much do you want?”
“A foot or two will do.”
They were now in front of each other, although their faces were not
distinguishable to either. Lanty, who had been following the lines with
her hand, here came upon the end knotted around the last pole. This she
began to untie.
“What a place to hang clothes,” he said curiously.
“Mighty dryin', tho',” returned Lanty laconically.
“And your house? Is it near by?” he continued.
“Just down the ridge--ye kin see from the edge. Got a knife?” She had
untied the knot.
“No--yes--wait.” He had hesitated a moment and then produced something
from his breast pocket, which he however kept in his hand. As he did not
offer it to her she simply held out a section of the rope between
her hands, which he divided with a single cut. She saw only that the
instrument was long and keen. Then she lifted the flap of the saddle
for him as he attempted to fasten the loose ring with the rope, but
the darkness made it impossible. With an ejaculation, he fumbled in his
pockets. “My last match!” he said, striking it, as he crouched over
it to protect it from the wind. Lanty leaned over also, with her apron
raised between it and the blast. The flame for an instant lit up the
ring, the man's dark face, mustache, and white teeth set together as
he tugged at the girth, and Lanty's brown, velvet eyes and soft, round
cheek framed in the basket. Then it went out, but the ring was secured.
“Thank you,” said the man, with a short laugh, “but I thought you were a
humpbacked witch in the dark there.”
“And I couldn't make out whether you was a cow or a b'ar,” returned the
young girl simply.
Here, however, he quickly mounted his horse, but in the action something
slipped from his clothes, struck a stone, and bounded away into the
darkness.
“My knife,” he said hurriedly. “Please hand it to me.” But although the
girl dropped on her knees and searched the ground diligently, it could
not be found. The man with a restrained ejaculation again dismounted,
and joined in the search.
“Haven't you got another match?” suggested Lanty.
“No--it was my last!” he said impatiently.
“Just you hol' on here,” she said suddenly, “and I'll run down to the
kitchen and fetch you a light. I won't be long.”
“No! no!” said the man quickly; “don't! I couldn't wait. I've been here
too long now. Look here. You come in daylight and find it, and--just
keep it for me, will you?” He laughed. “I'll come for it. And now, if
you'll only help to set me on that road again, for it's so infernal
black I can't see the mare's ears ahead of me, I won't bother you any
more. Thank you.”
Lanty had quietly moved to his horse's head and taken the bridle in her
hand, and at once seemed to be lost in the gloom. But in a few moments
he felt the muffled thud of his horse's hoof on the thick dust of the
highway, and its still hot, impalpable powder rising to his nostrils.
“Thank you,” he said again, “I'm all right now,” and in the pause that
followed it seemed to Lanty that he had extended a parting hand to her
in the darkness. She put up her own to meet it, but missed his, which
had blundered onto her shoulder. Before she could grasp it, she felt him
stooping over her, the light brush of his soft mustache on her cheek,
and then the starting forward of his horse. But the retaliating box on
the ear she had promptly aimed at him spent itself in the black space
which seemed suddenly to have swallowed up the man, and even his light
laugh.
For an instant she stood still, and then, swinging the basket
indignantly from her shoulder, took up her suspended task. It was no
light one in the increasing wind, and the unfastened clothes-line had
precipitated a part of its burden to the ground through the loosening
of the rope. But on picking up the trailing garments her hand struck an
unfamiliar object. The stranger's lost knife! She thrust it hastily into
the bottom of the basket and completed her work. As she began to descend
with her burden she saw that the light of the kitchen fire, seen
through the windows, was augmented by a candle. Her mother was evidently
awaiting her.
“Pretty time to be fetchin' in the wash,” said Mrs. Foster querulously.
“But what can you expect when folks stand gossipin' and philanderin' on
the ridge instead o' tendin' to their work?”
Now Lanty knew that she had NOT been “gossipin'” nor “philanderin',” yet
as the parting salute might have been open to that imputation, and as
she surmised that her mother might have overheard their voices, she
briefly said, to prevent further questioning, that she had shown a
stranger the road. But for her mother's unjust accusation she would have
been more communicative. As Mrs. Foster went back grumblingly into the
sitting-room Lanty resolved to keep the knife at present a secret from
her mother, and to that purpose removed it from the basket. But in the
light of the candle she saw it for the first time plainly--and started.
For it was really a dagger! jeweled-handled and richly wrought--such as
Lanty had never looked upon before. The hilt was studded with gems, and
the blade, which had a cutting edge, was damascened in blue and
gold. Her soft eyes reflected the brilliant setting, her lips parted
breathlessly; then, as her mother's voice arose in the other room, she
thrust it back into its velvet sheath and clapped it into her pocket.
Its rare beauty had confirmed her resolution of absolute secrecy. To
have shown it now would have made “no end of talk.” And she was not sure
but that her parents would have demanded its custody! And it was given
to HER by HIM to keep. This settled the question of moral ethics. She
took the first opportunity to run up to her bedroom and hide it under
the mattress.
Yet the thought of it filled the rest of her evening. When her household
duties were done she took up her novel again, partly from force of habit
and partly as an attitude in which she could think of IT undisturbed.
For what was fiction to her now? True, it possessed a certain
reminiscent value. A “dagger” had appeared in several romances she
had devoured, but she never had a clear idea of one before. “The Count
sprang back, and, drawing from his belt a richly jeweled dagger, hissed
between his teeth,” or, more to the purpose: “'Take this,' said Orlando,
handing her the ruby-hilted poignard which had gleamed upon his thigh,
'and should the caitiff attempt thy unguarded innocence--'”
“Did ye hear what your father was sayin'?” Lanty started. It was her
mother's voice in the doorway, and she had been vaguely conscious of
another voice pitched in the same querulous key, which, indeed, was the
dominant expression of the small ranchers of that fertile neighborhood.
Possibly a too complaisant and unaggressive Nature had spoiled them.
“Yes!--no!” said Lanty abstractedly, “what did he say?”
“If you wasn't taken up with that fool book,” said Mrs. Foster, glancing
at her daughter's slightly conscious color, “ye'd know! He allowed
ye'd better not leave yer filly in the far pasture nights. That gang
o' Mexican horse-thieves is out again, and raided McKinnon's stock last
night.”
This touched Lanty closely. The filly was her own property, and she
was breaking it for her own riding. But her distrust of her parents'
interference was greater than any fear of horse-stealers. “She's mighty
uneasy in the barn; and,” she added, with a proud consciousness of that
beautiful yet carnal weapon upstairs, “I reckon I ken protect her and
myself agin any Mexican horse-thieves.”
“My! but we're gettin' high and mighty,” responded Mrs. Foster, with
deep irony. “Did you git all that outer your fool book?”
“Mebbe,” said Lanty curtly.
Nevertheless, her thoughts that night were not entirely based on written
romance. She wondered if the stranger knew that she had really tried to
box his ears in the darkness, also if he had been able to see her face.
HIS she remembered, at least the flash of his white teeth against his
dark face and darker mustache, which was quite as soft as her own hair.
But if he thought “for a minnit” that she was “goin' to allow an entire
stranger to kiss her--he was mighty mistaken.” She should let him know
it “pretty quick”! She should hand him back the dagger “quite careless
like,” and never let on that she'd thought anything of it. Perhaps that
was the reason why, before she went to bed, she took a good look at it,
and after taking off her straight, beltless, calico gown she even tried
the effect of it, thrust in the stiff waistband of her petticoat, with
the jeweled hilt displayed, and thought it looked charming--as indeed it
did. And then, having said her prayers like a good girl, and supplicated
that she should be less “tetchy” with her parents, she went to sleep and
dreamed that she had gone out to take in the wash again, but that the
clothes had all changed to the queerest lot of folks, who were all
fighting and struggling with each other until she, Lanty, drawing her
dagger, rushed up single-handed among them, crying, “Disperse, ye craven
curs,--disperse, I say.” And they dispersed.
Yet even Lanty was obliged to admit the next morning that all this was
somewhat incongruous with the baking of “corn dodgers,” the frying of
fish, the making of beds, and her other household duties, and dismissed
the stranger from her mind until he should “happen along.” In her freer
and more acceptable outdoor duties she even tolerated the advances of
neighboring swains who made a point of passing by “Foster's Ranch,” and
who were quite aware that Atalanta Foster, alias “Lanty,” was one of the
prettiest girls in the country. But Lanty's toleration consisted in that
singular performance known to herself as “giving them as good as they
sent,” being a lazy traversing, qualified with scorn, of all that they
advanced. How long they would have put up with this from a plain girl I
do not know, but Lanty's short upper lip seemed framed for indolent
and fascinating scorn, and her dreamy eyes usually looked beyond the
questioner, or blunted his bolder glances in their velvety surfaces. The
libretto of these scenes was not exhaustive, e.g.:--
The Swain (with bold, bad gayety). “Saw that shy schoolmaster hangin'
round your ridge yesterday! Orter know by this time that shyness with a
gal don't pay.”
Lanty (decisively). “Mebbe he allows it don't get left as often as
impudence.”
The Swain (ignoring the reply and his previous attitude and becoming
more direct). “I was calkilatin' to say that with these yer hoss-thieves
about, yer filly ain't safe in the pasture. I took a turn round there
two or three times last evening to see if she was all right.”
Lanty (with a flattering show of interest). “No! DID ye, now? I was jest
wonderin”'--
The Swain (eagerly). “I did--quite late, too! Why, that's nothin', Miss
Atalanty, to what I'd do for you.”
Lanty (musing, with far off-eyes). “Then that's why she was so awful
skeerd and frightened! Just jumpin' outer her skin with horror. I
reckoned it was a b'ar or panther or a spook! You ought to have waited
till she got accustomed to your looks.”
Nevertheless, despite this elegant raillery, Lanty was enough concerned
in the safety of her horse to visit it the next day with a view of
bringing it nearer home. She had just stepped into the alder fringe of
a dry “run” when she came suddenly upon the figure of a horseman in the
“run,” who had been hidden by the alders from the plain beyond and who
seemed to be engaged in examining the hoof marks in the dust of the
old ford. Something about his figure struck her recollection, and as
he looked up quickly she saw it was the owner of the dagger. But
he appeared to be lighter of hair and complexion, and was dressed
differently, and more like a vaquero. Yet there was the same flash of
his teeth as he recognized her, and she knew it was the same man.
Alas for her preparation! Without the knife she could not make that
haughty return of it which she had contemplated. And more than that, she
was conscious she was blushing! Nevertheless she managed to level her
pretty brown eyebrows at him, and said sharply that if he followed her
to her home she would return his property at once.
“But I'm in no hurry for it,” he said with a laugh,--the same light
laugh and pleasant voice she remembered,--“and I'd rather not come to
the house just now. The knife is in good hands, I know, and I'll call
for it when I want it! And until then--if it's all the same to you--keep
it to yourself,--keep it dark, as dark as the night I lost it!”
“I don't go about blabbing my affairs,” said Lanty indignantly, “and if
it hadn't BEEN dark that night you'd have had your ears boxed--you know
why!”
The stranger laughed again, waved his hand to Lanty, and galloped away.
Lanty was a little disappointed. The daylight had taken away some of
her illusions. He was certainly very good-looking, but not quite as
picturesque, mysterious, and thrilling as in the dark! And it was very
queer--he certainly did look darker that night! Who was he? And why
was he lingering near her? He was different from her neighbors--her
admirers. He might be one of those locaters, from the big towns, who
prospect the lands, with a view of settling government warrants on
them,--they were always so secret until they had found what they wanted.
She did not dare to seek information of her friends, for the same reason
that she had concealed his existence from her mother,--it would provoke
awkward questions; and it was evident that he was trusting to her
secrecy, too. The thought thrilled her with a new pride, and was some
compensation for the loss of her more intangible romance. It would
be mighty fine, when he did call openly for his beautiful knife and
declared himself, to have them all know that SHE knew about it all
along.
When she reached home, to guard against another such surprise she
determined to keep the weapon with her, and, distrusting her pocket,
confided it to the cheap little country-made corset which only for
the last year had confined her budding figure, and which now, perhaps,
heaved with an additional pride. She was quite abstracted during the
rest of the day, and paid but little attention to the gossip of the farm
lads, who were full of a daring raid, two nights before, by the Mexican
gang on the large stock farm of a neighbor. The Vigilant Committee had
been baffled; it was even alleged that some of the smaller ranchmen
and herders were in league with the gang. It was also believed to be a
widespread conspiracy; to have a political complexion in its combination
of an alien race with Southwestern filibusters. The legal authorities
had been reinforced by special detectives from San Francisco. Lanty
seldom troubled herself with these matters; she knew the exaggeration,
she suspected the ignorance of her rural neighbors. She roughly referred
it, in her own vocabulary, to “jaw,” a peculiarly masculine quality. But
later in the evening, when the domestic circle in the sitting-room had
been augmented by a neighbor, and Lanty had taken refuge behind her
novel as an excuse for silence, Zob Hopper, the enamored swain of the
previous evening, burst in with more astounding news. A posse of the
sheriff had just passed along the ridge; they had “corraled” part of the
gang, and rescued some of the stock. The leader of the gang had escaped,
but his capture was inevitable, as the roads were stopped. “All the
same, I'm glad to see ye took my advice, Miss Atalanty, and brought in
your filly,” he concluded, with an insinuating glance at the young girl.
But “Miss Atalanty,” curling a quarter of an inch of scarlet lip above
the edge of her novel, here “allowed” that if his advice or the filly
had to be “took,” she didn't know which was worse.
“I wonder ye kin talk to sech peartness, Mr. Hopper,” said Mrs. Foster
severely; “she ain't got eyes nor senses for anythin' but that book.”
“Talkin' o' what's to be 'took,'” put in the diplomatic neighbor, “you
bet it ain't that Mexican leader! No, sir! he's been 'stopped' before
this--and then got clean away all the same! One o' them detectives got
him once and disarmed him--but he managed to give them the slip, after
all. Why, he's that full o' shifts and disguises thar ain't no spottin'
him. He walked right under the constable's nose oncet, and took a drink
with the sheriff that was arter him--and the blamed fool never knew it.
He kin change even the color of his hair quick as winkin'.”
“Is he a real Mexican,--a regular Greaser?” asked the paternal Foster.
“Cos I never heard that they wuz smart.”
“No! They say he comes o' old Spanish stock, a bad egg they threw outer
the nest, I reckon,” put in Hopper eagerly, seeing a strange animated
interest dilating Lanty's eyes, and hoping to share in it; “but he's
reg'lar high-toned, you bet! Why, I knew a man who seed him in his own
camp--prinked out in a velvet jacket and silk sash, with gold chains
and buttons down his wide pants and a dagger stuck in his sash, with a
handle just blazin' with jew'ls. Yes! Miss Atalanty, they say that one
stone at the top--a green stone, what they call an 'em'ral'--was worth
the price o' a 'Frisco house-lot. True ez you live! Eh--what's up now?”
Lanty's book had fallen on the floor as she was rising to her feet
with a white face, still more strange and distorted in an affected yawn
behind her little hand. “Yer makin' me that sick and nervous with yer
fool yarns,” she said hysterically, “that I'm goin' to get a little
fresh air. It's just stifling here with lies and terbacker!” With
another high laugh, she brushed past him into the kitchen, opened the
door, and then paused, and, turning, ran rapidly up to her bedroom. Here
she locked herself in, tore open the bosom of her dress, plucked out
the dagger, threw it on the bed, where the green stone gleamed for an
instant in the candlelight, and then dropped on her knees beside the bed
with her whirling head buried in her cold red hands.
It had all come to her in a flash, like a blaze of lightning,--the
black, haunting figure on the ridge, the broken saddle girth, the
abandonment of the dagger in the exigencies of flight and concealment;
the second meeting, the skulking in the dry, alder-hidden “run,” the
changed dress, the lighter-colored hair, but always the same voice and
laugh--the leader, the fugitive, the Mexican horse-thief! And she, the
Godforsaken fool, the chuckle-headed nigger baby, with not half the
sense of her own filly or that sop-headed Hopper--had never seen it!
She--SHE who would be the laughing-stock of them all--she had thought
him a “locater,” a “towny” from 'Frisco! And she had consented to keep
his knife until he would call for it,--yes, call for it, with fire and
flame perhaps, the trampling of hoofs, pistol shots--and--yet--
Yet!--he had TRUSTED her. Yes! trusted her when he knew a word from her
lips would have brought the whole district down on him! when the mere
exposure of that dagger would have identified and damned him! Trusted
her a second time, when she was within cry of her house! When he might
have taken her filly without her knowing it? And now she remembered
vaguely that the neighbors had said how strange it was that her father's
stock had not suffered as theirs had. HE had protected them--he who was
now a fugitive--and their men pursuing him! She rose suddenly with a
single stamp of her narrow foot, and as suddenly became cool and sane.
And then, quite her old self again, she lazily picked up the dagger and
restored it to its place in her bosom. That done, with her color back
and her eyes a little brighter, she deliberately went downstairs again,
stuck her little brown head into the sitting-room, said cheerfully,
“Still yawpin', you folks,” and quietly passed out into the darkness.
She ran swiftly up to the ridge, impelled by the blind memory of having
met him there at night and the one vague thought to give him warning.
But it was dark and empty, with no sound but the rushing wind. And then
an idea seized her. If he were haunting the vicinity still, he might see
the fluttering of the clothes upon the line and believe she was there.
She stooped quickly, and in the merciful and exonerating darkness
stripped off her only white petticoat and pinned it on the line. It
flapped, fluttered, and streamed in the mountain wind. She lingered and
listened. But there came a sound she had not counted on,--the clattering
hoofs of not ONE, but many, horses on the lower road! She ran back to
the house to find its inmates already hastening towards the road for
news. She took that chance to slip in quietly, go to her room, whose
window commanded a view of the ridge, and crouching low behind it she
listened. She could hear the sound of voices, and the dull trampling of
heavy boots on the dusty path towards the barnyard on the other side of
the house--a pause, and then the return of the trampling boots, and the
final clattering of hoofs on the road again. Then there was a tap on her
door and her mother's querulous voice.
“Oh! yer there, are ye? Well--it's the best place fer a girl--with all
these man's doin's goin' on! They've got that Mexican horse-thief and
have tied him up in your filly's stall in the barn--till the 'Frisco
deputy gets back from rounding up the others. So ye jest stay where ye
are till they've come and gone, and we're shut o' all that cattle. Are
ye mindin'?”
“All right, maw; 'taint no call o' mine, anyhow,” returned Lanty,
through the half-open door.
At another time her mother might have been startled at her passive
obedience. Still more would she have been startled had she seen her
daughter's face now, behind the closed door--with her little mouth set
over her clenched teeth. And yet it was her own child, and Lanty was her
mother's real daughter; the same pioneer blood filled their veins, the
blood that had never nourished cravens or degenerates, but had given
itself to sprinkle and fertilize desert solitudes where man might
follow. Small wonder, then, that this frontier-born Lanty, whose first
infant cry had been answered by the yelp of wolf and scream of panther;
whose father's rifle had been leveled across her cradle to cover the
stealthy Indian who prowled outside, small wonder that she should feel
herself equal to these “man's doin's,” and prompt to take a part. For
even in the first shock of the news of the capture she recalled the
fact that the barn was old and rotten, that only that day the filly
had kicked a board loose from behind her stall, which she, Lanty,
had lightly returned to avoid “making a fuss.” If his captors had not
noticed it, or trusted only to their guards, she might make the opening
wide enough to free him!
Two hours later the guard nearest the now sleeping house, a farm hand
of the Fosters', saw his employer's daughter slip out and cautiously
approach him. A devoted slave of Lanty's, and familiar with her
impulses, he guessed her curiosity, and was not averse to satisfy it
and the sense of his own importance. To her whispers of affected,
half-terrified interest, he responded in whispers that the captive was
really in the filly's stall, securely bound by his wrists behind his
back, and his feet “hobbled” to a post. That Lanty couldn't see him, for
it was dark inside, and he was sitting with his back to the wall, as he
couldn't sleep comf'ble lyin' down. Lanty's eyes glowed, but her face
was turned aside.
“And ye ain't reckonin' his friends will come and rescue him?” said
Lanty, gazing with affected fearfulness in the darkness.
“Not much! There's two other guards down in the corral, and I'd fire my
gun and bring 'em up.”
But Lanty was gazing open-mouthed towards the ridge. “What's that wavin'
on the ridge?” she said in awe-stricken tones.
She was pointing to the petticoat,--a vague, distant, moving object
against the horizon.
“Why, that's some o' the wash on the line, ain't it?”
“Wash--TWO DAYS IN THE WEEK!” said Lanty sharply. “Wot's gone of you?”
“Thet's so,” muttered the man, “and it wan't there at sundown, I'll
swear! P'r'aps I'd better call the guard,” and he raised his rifle.
“Don't,” said Lanty, catching his arm. “Suppose it's nothin', they'll
laugh at ye. Creep up softly and see; ye ain't afraid, are ye? If ye
are, give me yer gun, and I'LL go.”
This settled the question, as Lanty expected. The man cocked his piece,
and bending low began cautiously to mount the acclivity. Lanty waited
until his figure began to fade, and then ran like fire to the barn.
She had arranged every detail of her plan beforehand. Crouching beside
the wall of the stall she hissed through a crack in thrilling whispers,
“Don't move. Don't speak for your life's sake. Wait till I hand you back
your knife, then do the best you can.” Then slipping aside the loosened
board she saw dimly the black outline of curling hair, back, shoulders,
and tied wrists of the captive. Drawing the knife from her pocket, with
two strokes of its keen cutting edge she severed the cords, threw the
knife into the opening, and darted away. Yet in that moment she knew
that the man was instinctively turning towards her. But it was one thing
to free a horse-thief, and another to stop and “philander” with him.
She ran halfway up the ridge, and met the farm hand returning. It was
only a bit of washing after all, and he was glad he hadn't fired his
gun. On the other hand, Lanty confessed she had got “so skeert” being
alone, that she came to seek him. She had the shivers; wasn't her
hand cold? It was, but thrilling even in its coldness to the bashfully
admiring man. And she was that weak and dizzy, he must let her lean on
his arm going down; and they must go SLOW. She was sure he was cold,
too, and if he would wait at the back door she would give him a drink of
whiskey. Thus Lanty, with her brain afire, her eyes and ears straining
into the darkness, and the vague outline of the barn beyond. Another
moment was protracted over the drink of whiskey, and then Lanty, with a
faint archness, made him promise not to tell her mother of her escapade,
and she promised on her part not to say anything about his “stalking
a petticoat on the clothesline,” and then shyly closed the door and
regained her room. HE must have got away by this time, or have been
discovered; she believed they would not open the barn door until the
return of the posse.
She was right. It was near daybreak when they returned, and, again
crouching low beside her window, she heard, with a fierce joy, the
sudden outcry, the oaths, the wrangling voices, the summoning of her
father to the front door, and then the tumultuous sweeping away again of
the whole posse, and a blessed silence falling over the rancho. And then
Lanty went quietly to bed, and slept like a three-year child!
Perhaps that was the reason why she was able at breakfast to listen with
lazy and even rosy indifference to the startling events of the night; to
the sneers of the farm hands at the posse who had overlooked the knife
when they searched their prisoner, as well as the stupidity of the
corral guard who had never heard him make a hole “the size of a house”
in the barn side! Once she glanced demurely at Silas Briggs--the farm
hand and the poor fellow felt consoled in his shame at the remembrance
of their confidences.
But Lanty's tranquillity was not destined to last long. There was again
the irruption of exciting news from the highroad; the Mexican leader had
been recaptured, and was now safely lodged in Brownsville jail! Those
who were previously loud in their praises of the successful horse-thief
who had baffled the vigilance of his pursuers were now equally keen
in their admiration of the new San Francisco deputy who, in turn, had
outwitted the whole gang. It was HE who was fertile in expedients; HE
who had studied the whole country, and even risked his life among the
gang, and HE who had again closed the meshes of the net around the
escaped outlaw. He was already returning by way of the rancho, and might
stop there a moment,--so that they could all see the hero. Such was the
power of success on the country-side! Outwardly indifferent, inwardly
bitter, Lanty turned away. She should not grace his triumph, if she kept
in her room all day! And when there was a clatter of hoofs on the road
again, Lanty slipped upstairs.
But in a few moments she was summoned. Captain Lance Wetherby, Assistant
Chief of Police of San Francisco, Deputy Sheriff and ex-U. S. scout,
had requested to see Miss Foster a few moments alone. Lanty knew what
it meant,--her secret had been discovered; but she was not the girl to
shirk the responsibility! She lifted her little brown head proudly, and
with the same resolute step with which she had left the house the night
before, descended the stairs and entered the sitting-room. At first she
saw nothing. Then a remembered voice struck her ear; she started, looked
up, and gasping, fell back against the door. It was the stranger who
had given her the dagger, the stranger she had met in the run!--the
horse-thief himself! No! no! she saw it all now--she had cut loose the
wrong man!
He looked at her with a smile of sadness--as he drew from his
breast-pocket that dreadful dagger, the very sight of which Lanty now
loathed! “This is the SECOND time, Miss Foster,” he said gently, “that
I have taken this knife from Murietta, the Mexican bandit: once when I
disarmed him three weeks ago, and he escaped, and last night, when he
had again escaped and I recaptured him. After I lost it that night I
understood from you that you had found it and were keeping it for me.”
He paused a moment and went on: “I don't ask you what happened last
night. I don't condemn you for it; I can believe what a girl of your
courage and sympathy might rightly do if her pity were excited; I only
ask--why did you give HIM back that knife I trusted you with?”
“Why? Why did I?” burst out Lanty in a daring gush of truth, scorn, and
temper. “BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU WERE THAT HORSE-THIEF. There!”
He drew back astonished, and then suddenly came that laugh that Lanty
remembered and now hailed with joy. “I believe you, by Jove!” he gasped.
“That first night I wore the disguise in which I have tracked him and
mingled with his gang. Yes! I see it all now--and more. I see that to
YOU I owe his recapture!”
“To me!” echoed the bewildered girl; “how?”
“Why, instead of making for his cave he lingered here in the confines of
the ranch! He thought you were in love with him, because you freed him
and gave him his knife, and stayed to see you!”
But Lanty had her apron to her eyes, whose first tears were filling
their velvet depths. And her voice was broken as she said,--
“Then he--cared--a--good deal more for me--than some people!”
But there is every reason to believe that Lanty was wrong! At least
later events that are part of the history of Foster's Rancho and the
Foster family pointed distinctly to the contrary.