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LARAMIE HOLDS THE RANGE
by
FRANK H. SPEARMAN
Illustrated by James Reynolds
[Frontispiece: "Hold on, Doubleday," Laramie said bluntly, . . .
"You'll hear what I've got to say"]
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published August, 1921
Reprinted September, 1921
Copyright, 1921, by Frank H. Spearman
TO MY SON
FRANK HAMILTON SPEARMAN, JR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I SLEEPY CAT
II THE CRAZY WOMAN
III DOUBLEDAY'S
IV AT THE EATING HOUSE
V CROSS PURPOSES
VI WHICH WINS?
VII THE CLOSE OF THE DAY
VIII THE HOME OF LARAMIE
IX AT THE BAR
X LARAMIE COUNTS FIVE
XI A DUEL WITH KATE
XII THE BARBECUE
XIII AGAINST HIS RECORD
XIV LEFEVER ASKS QUESTIONS
XV THE RAID OF THE FALLING WALL
XVI THE GO-DEVIL
XVII VAN HORN TRAILS HAWK
XVIII HAWK QUARRELS WITH LARAMIE
XIX LEFEVER RECEIVES THE RAIDERS
XX THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE
XXI THE HIDING PLACE
XXII STONE TRIES HIS HAND
XXIII KATE RIDES
XXIV NIGHT AND A HEADER
XXV A GUEST FOR AN HOUR
XXVI THE CRAZY WOMAN WINS
XXVII KATE DEFIES
XXVIII A DIFFICULT RESOLVE
XXIX HORSEHEAD PASS
XXX THE FUNERAL AND AFTER
XXXI AN ENCOUNTER
XXXII A MESSAGE FROM TENISON
XXXIII THE CANYON OF THE FALLING WALL
XXXIV KATE GETS A SHOCK
XXXV AT KITCHEN'S BARN
XXXVI MCALPIN AT BAY
XXXVII KATE BURNS THE STEAK
XXXVIII THE UNEXPECTED CALL
XXXIX BARB MAKES A SURPRISING ALLIANCE
XL BRADLEY RIDES HARD
XLI THE FLIGHT OF THE SWALLOWS
XLII WARNING
XLIII THE LAST CALL
XLIV TENISON SERVES BREAKFAST
ILLUSTRATIONS
"Hold on, Doubleday," Laramie said bluntly, . . . "You'll
hear what I've got to say" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
"And I thought I knew every drop of water in this country"
Knocked forward the next instant in his saddle, Laramie
drooped over his pommel
"No," said a man . . . as he pushed forward . . . "He's not
going to drink!"
LARAMIE HOLDS THE RANGE
CHAPTER I
SLEEPY CAT
All day the heavy train of sleepers had been climbing the long rise
from the river--a monotonous stretch of treeless, short-grass plains
reaching from the Missouri to the mountains. And now the train stopped
again, almost noiselessly.
Kate, with the impatience of girlish spirits tried by a long and
tedious car journey, left her Pullman window and its continuous,
one-tone picture, and walking forward was glad to find the vestibule
open. The porter, meditating alone, stood below, at the car step,
looking ahead; Kate joined him.
The stop had been made at a lonely tank, for water. No human
habitation was anywhere in sight. The sun had set. For miles in every
direction the seemingly level and open country spread around her. She
looked back to the darkening east that she was leaving behind. It
suggested nothing of interest beyond the vanishing perspective of a
long track tangent. Then to the north, whence blew a cool and gentle
wind, but the landscape offered nothing attractive to her eyes; its
receding horizon told no new story. Then she looked into the west.
They had told her she should not see the Rockies until morning. But
the dying light in the west brought a moving surprise. In the dreamy
afterglow of the evening sky there rose, far beyond the dusky plain,
the faint but certain outline of distant mountain peaks.
Bathed in a soft unearthly light, like the purple of another world;
touched here and there by a fairy gold; silent as dreams, majestic as
visions, overwhelming as reality itself, Kate gazed on them with
beating heart.
Something clutched at her breath: "Are those the Rocky Mountains?" she
suddenly asked, appealing to the stolid porter. She told Belle long
afterward, she knew her voice must have quivered.
"Ah'm sure, Ah c'dn't say, Miss. Ah s'pecs dey ah. Dis my first trip
out here."
"So it is mine!"
"Mah reg'lar run," continued the porter, insensible to the glories of
the distant sky, "is f'm Chicago to Council Bluffs."
A flagman hurried past. Kate courageously pointed: "Are those the
Rocky Mountains, please?" He halted only to look at her in
astonishment. "Yes'm." But she was bound he should not escape: "How
far are they?" she shot after him. He looked back startled: "'Bout a
hundred miles," he snapped. Plainly there was no enthusiasm among the
train crew over mountains.
When she was forced, reluctant, back into the sleeper, she announced
joyfully to her berth neighbors that the Rocky Mountains were in sight.
One regarded her stupidly, another coldly. Across the aisle the old
lady playing solitaire did not even look up. Kate subsided; but dull
apathy could not rob her of that first wonderful vision of the strange,
far-off region, perhaps to be her home.
Next day, from the car window it was all mountains--at least,
everywhere on the horizon. But the train seemed to thread an
illimitable desert--a poor exchange for the boundless plains, Kate
thought. But she grew to love the very dust of the desert.
The train was due at Sleepy Cat in the late afternoon. It met with
delays and night had fallen when Kate, after giving the porter too much
money, left her car, and suitcase in hand struggled, American fashion,
up the long, dark platform toward the dimly lighted station. Men and
women hastened here and there about her. The changing crews moved
briskly to and from the train. There was abundance of activity, but
none of it concerned Kate and her comfort. And there was no one, she
feared, to meet her.
Reaching the station, she set down her suitcase without a tremor, and
though she had never been more alone, she never felt less lonely. The
eating-house gong beat violently for supper. A woman dragging a little
boy almost fell over Kate's suitcase but did not pause to receive or
tender apology. Men looking almost solemn under broad,
straight-brimmed hats moved in and out of the station, but none of
these saw Kate. Only one man striding past looked at her. He glared.
And as he had but one eye, Kate deemed him, from his expression, a
woman-hater.
Then a fat man under an immense hat, and wearing a very large ring on
one hand, walked with a dapper step out of the telegraph office. He
did see Kate. He checked his pace, coughed slightly and changed his
course, as if to hold himself open to inquiry. Kate without hesitation
turned to him and explained she was for Doubleday's ranch. She asked
whether he knew the men from there and whether anyone was down.
John Lefever, for it was he whom she addressed, knew the men but he had
seen no one; could he do anything?
"I want very much to get out there tonight," said Kate.
"Jingo," exclaimed Lefever, "not tonight!"
"Tonight," returned Kate, looking out of dark eyes in pink and white
appeal, "if I can possibly make it."
Lefever caught up her suitcase and set it down beside the waiting-room
door: "Stay right here a minute," he said.
He walked toward the baggage-room and before he reached it, stopped a
second large, heavy man, Henry Sawdy. Him he held in confab; Sawdy
looking meantime quite unabashed toward the distant Kate. In the light
streaming from the station windows her slender and slightly shrinking
figure suggested young womanhood and her delicately fashioned features,
half-hidden under her hat, pleasingly confirmed his impression of it.
Kate, conscious of inspection, could only pretend not to see him. And
the sole impression she could snatch in the light and shadow of the
redoubtable Sawdy, was narrowed to a pair of sweeping mustaches and a
stern-looking hat. Lefever returned, his companion sauntering along
after. Kate explained that she had telegraphed.
At that moment an odd-looking man, with a rapid, rolling, right and
left gait, ambled by and caught Kate's eye. Instead of the formidable
Stetson hat mostly in evidence, this man wore a baseball cap--of the
sort usually given away with popular brands of flour--its peak cocked
to its own apparent surprise over one ear. The man had sharp eyes and
a long nose for news and proved it by halting within earshot of the
conversation carried on between Kate and the two men. He looked so
queer, Kate wanted to laugh, but she was too far from home to dare. He
presently put his head conveniently in between Sawdy and Lefever and
offered some news of his own: "There's been a big electric storm in the
up country, Sawdy; the telephones are on the bum."
"How's she going to get to Doubleday's tonight, McAlpin?" asked Sawdy
abruptly of the newcomer. McAlpin never, under any pressure, answered
a question directly. Hence everything had to be explained to him all
over again, he looking meantime more or less furtively at Kate. But he
found out, despite his seeming stupidity, a lot that it would have
taken the big men hours to learn.
"If you don't want to take a rig and driver," announced McAlpin, after
all had been canvassed, "there's the stage for the fort; they had to
wait for the mail. Bill Bradley is on tonight. I'm thinkin' he'll set
y' over from the ford--it's only a matter o' two or three miles."
"Are there any other passengers?" asked Kate doubtfully.
"Belle Shockley for the Reservation," answered McAlpin, promptly,
"if--she ain't changed her mind, it bein' so late."
Sawdy put a brusque end to this uncertainty: "She's down there at the
Mountain House waitin'--seen her myself not ten minutes ago."
Scurrying away, McAlpin came back in a jiffy with the driver, Bradley.
Thin, bent and grizzled though he was, Kate thought she saw under the
broad but shabby hat and behind the curtain of scraggly beard and deep
wrinkles dependable eyes and felt reassured.
"How far is it to the ranch?" she asked of the queer-looking Bradley.
"Long ways, the way you go, ain't it, Bill?" McAlpin turned to the old
driver for confirmation.
"'Bout fourteen mile," answered Bradley, "to the ford."
"What time should I get there?" asked Kate again.
Bradley stood pat.
"What time'll she get there, Bill?" demanded Lefever.
"Twelve o'clock," hazarded Bradley tersely. "Or," he added, "I'll stop
when I pass the ranch 'n' tell 'em to send a rig down in the mornin'."
"That would take you out of your way," Kate objected.
"Not a great ways."
A man that would go to this trouble in the middle of the night for
someone he had never seen before, Kate deemed safe to trust. "No," she
said, "I'll go with you, if I may."
The way in which she spoke, the sweetness and simplicity of her words,
moved Sawdy and Lefever, the first a widower and the second a bachelor,
and even stirred McAlpin, a married man. But they had no particular
effect on Bradley. The blandishments of young womanhood were past his
time of day.
With Lefever carrying the suitcase and nearly everybody talking at
once, the party walked around to the rear door of the baggage-room.
The stage had been backed up, a hostler in the driver's seat, and the
mail and express were being loaded. Sawdy volunteered to save time by
fetching Belle Shockley from the hotel, and while McAlpin and Lefever
inspected and discussed the horses--for the condition of which McAlpin,
as foreman of Kitchen's barn, was responsible--Kate stood, listener and
onlooker. Everything was new and interesting. Four horses champed
impatiently under the arc-light swinging in the street, and looked
quite fit. But the stage itself was a shock to her idea of a Western
stage. Instead of the old-fashioned swinging coach body, such as she
had wondered at in circus spectacles, she saw a very substantial,
shabby-looking democrat wagon with a top, and with side curtains. The
curtains were rolled up. But the oddest thing to Kate was that
wherever a particle could lodge, the whole stage was covered with a
ghostly, grayish-white dust. While the loading went on, Sawdy arrived
with the second passenger, Belle Shockley. She had, fortunately for
Kate's apprehensions, _not_ changed her mind.
Belle herself was something of an added shock. She wore a long rubber
coat, in which the rubber was not in the least disguised. Her hair was
frizzed about her face, and a small, brimless hat perched high, almost
startled, on her head. She was tall and angular, her features were
large and her eyes questioning. Had she had Bradley's beard, she would
have passed with Kate for the stage driver. She was formidable, but
yet a woman; and she scrutinized the slender whip of a girl before her
with feminine suspicion. Nor did she give Kate a chance to break the
ice of acquaintance before starting.
Under Lefever's chaperonage and with his gallant help, Kate took her
seat where directed, just behind the driver, and her new companion
presently got up beside her.
The mail bags disposed of, Bradley climbed into place, gathered his
lines, the hostler let go the leads and the stage was off. The horses,
restive after their long wait, dashed down the main street of the town,
whirling Kate, all eyes and ears, past the glaring saloons and darkened
stores to the extreme west end of Sleepy Cat. There, striking
northward, the stage headed smartly for the divide.
The night was clear, with the stars burning in the sky. From the rigid
silence of the driver and his two passengers, it might have been
thought that no one of them ever spoke. To Kate, who as an Eastern
girl had never, it might be said, breathed pure air, the clear, high
atmosphere of the mountain night was like sparkling wine. Her senses
tingled with the strange stimulant.
To Belle, there was no novelty in any of this, and the strain of
silence was correspondingly greater. It was she who gave in first:
"You from Medicine Bend?" she asked, as the four horses walked up a
long hill.
"Pittsburgh," answered Kate.
"Pittsburgh!" echoed Belle, startled. "Gee! some trip you've had."
Belle, encouraged, then confessed that a cyclone had given her her own
first start West. She had been blown two blocks in one and had all of
her hair pulled out of her head.
"They said I'd have no chance to get married without any hair," she
continued, "so I got a wig--never _could_ find my own hair--and come
West for a chance. And they're here; if you're looking for a husband
you've come to the right place."
"I haven't the least idea of getting married," protested Kate.
"They'll be after you," declared Belle sententiously.
"Are you married?" ventured Kate.
"Not yet. But they're coming. I'm in no hurry."
She talked freely about her own affairs. She had worked for Doubleday,
for whose ranch Kate was bound. Doubleday had had a chain of eating
houses on the line, as Belle termed the transcontinental railroad.
They had all been taken over except the one where she worked--at Sleepy
Cat Junction--and this would be taken soon, Belle thought.
"That's the trouble with Barb Doubleday," she went on. "He's got too
many irons in the fire--head over heels in debt. There's no money
now-a-days in cattle, anyway. What are you going up to Doubleday's
for?"
"He's my father."
"Your father? Well! I never open my mouth without I put my foot in
it, anyway."
"I've never seen him," continued Kate.
Belle was all interest. She confided to Kate that she was now on her
way, for a visit, to the Reservation where her cousin was teaching in
an Indian school, and divided her time for the next hour between
getting all she could of Kate's story and telling all of her own.
On Kate's part there was no end of questions to ask, about country and
customs and people. When Belle could not answer, she appealed to
Bradley, who, if taciturn, was at least patient. Every time the
conversation lulled and Kate looked out into the night, it seemed as if
they were drawing closer and closer to the stars, the dark desert still
spreading in every direction and the black mountain ridges continually
receding.