DICKSIE'S RIDE
When Lance Dunning entered the room ten minutes later, Dicksie stood
at the telephone; but the ten minutes of that interval had made quite
another creature of his cousin. The wires were down and no one from
any quarter gave a response to her frantic ringing. Through the
receiver she could hear only the sweep of the rain and the harsh
crackle of the wind. Sometimes praying, sometimes fainting, and
sometimes despairing, she stood clinging to the instrument, ringing
and pounding upon it like one frenzied. Lance looked at her in
amazement. "Why, God a'mighty, Dicksie, what's the matter?"
He called twice to her before she turned, and her words almost stunned
him: "Why did you not detain Sinclair here to-night? Why did you not
arrest him?"
Lance's sombrero raked heavily to one side of his face, and one end of
his mustache running up much higher on the other did not begin to
express his astonishment. "Arrest him? Arrest Sinclair? Dicksie, are
you crazy? Why the devil should I arrest Sinclair? Do you suppose I am
going to mix up in a fight like this? Do you think _I_ want to get
killed? The level-headed man in this country, just at present, is the
man who can keep out of trouble, and the man who succeeds, let me tell
you, has got more than plenty to do."
Lance, getting no answer but a fierce, searching gaze from Dicksie's
wild eyes, laid his hand on a chair, lighted a cigar, and sat down
before the fire. Dicksie dropped the telephone receiver, put her hand
to her girdle, and looked at him. When she spoke her tone was
stinging. "You know that man is going to Medicine Bend to kill his
wife!"
Lance took the cigar from his mouth and returned her look. "I know no
such thing," he growled curtly.
"And to kill George McCloud, if he can."
He stared without reply.
"You heard him say so," persisted Dicksie vehemently.
Lance crossed his legs and threw back the brim of his hat. "McCloud is
nobody's fool. He will look out for himself."
"These fiendish wires to Medicine Bend are down. Why hasn't this line
been repaired?" she cried, wringing her hands. "There is no way to
give warning to any one that he is coming, and you have let him go!"
Lance whirled in his chair. "Damnation! Could I keep him from going?"
"You did not want to; you are keeping out of trouble. What do you care
whom he kills to-night!"
"You've gone crazy, Dicksie. Your imagination has upset your reason.
Whether he kills anybody to-night or not, it's too late now to make a
row about it," exclaimed Lance, throwing his cigar angrily away. "He
won't kill us."
"And you expect me to sit by and fold my hands while that wretch sheds
more blood, do you?"
"It can't be helped."
"I say it can be helped! I can help it--I will help it--as you could
have done if you had wanted to. I will ride to Medicine Bend to-night
and help it."
Lance jumped to his feet, with a string of oaths. "Well this is the
limit!" He pointed his finger at her. "Dicksie Dunning, you won't stir
out of this house to-night."
Her face hardened. "How dare you speak in that way to me? Who are you,
that you order me what to do, where to stay? Am I your cowboy, to be
defiled with your curses?"
He looked at her in amazement. She was only eighteen; he would still
face her down. "I'll tell you who I am. I am master here, and you will
do as I tell you. You will ride to Medicine Bend to-night, will you?"
He struck the table with his clinched fist. "Do you hear me? I say, by
God, not a horse shall leave this ranch in this storm to-night to go
anywhere for anybody or with anybody!"
"Then I say to you this ranch is my ranch, and these horses are my
horses! From this hour forth I will order them to go and come when and
where I please!" She stepped toward him. "Henceforward I am mistress
here. Do you hear me? Henceforward _I_ give orders in Crawling Stone
House, and every one under this roof takes orders from me!"
"Dicksie, what do you mean? For God's sake, you're not going to try to
ride----"
She swept from the room. What happened afterward she could never
recall. Who got Jim for her or whether she got the horse up herself,
what was said to her in low, kindly words of warning by the man at
Jim's neck when she sprang into the saddle, who the man was, she could
not have told. All she felt at last was that she was free and out
under the black sky, with the rain beating her burning face and her
horse leaping fearfully into the wind.
No man could have kept the trail to the pass that night. The horse
took it as if the path flashed in sunshine, and swung into the
familiar stride that had carried her so many times over the twenty
miles ahead of them. The storm driving into Dicksie's face cooled her.
Every moment she recollected herself better, and before her mind all
the aspects of her venture ranged themselves. She had set herself to a
race, and against her rode the hardest rider in the mountains. She had
set herself to what few men on the range would have dared and what no
other woman on the range could do. "Why have I learned to ride," went
the question through her mind, "if not for this--for those I love and
for those who love me?" Sinclair had a start, she well knew, but not
so much for a night like this night. He would ride to kill those he
hated; she would ride to save those she loved. Her horse already was
on the Elbow grade; she knew it from his shorter spring--a lithe,
creeping spring that had carried her out of deep canyons and up long
draws where other horses walked. The wind lessened and the rain drove
less angrily in her face. She patted Jim's neck with her wet glove,
and checked him as tenderly as a lover, to give him courage and
breath. She wanted to be part of him as he strove, for the horror of
the night began to steal on the edge of her thoughts. A gust drove
into her face. They were already at the head of the pass, and the
horse, with level ground underfoot, was falling into the long reach;
but the wind was colder.
Dicksie lowered her head and gave Jim the rein. She realized how wet
she was; her feet and her knees were wet. She had no protection but
her skirt, though the meanest rider on all her countless acres would
not have braved a mile on such a night without leather and fur. The
great lapels of her riding-jacket, reversed, were buttoned tight
across her shoulders, and the double fold of fur lay warm and dry
against her heart and lungs; but her hands were cold, and her skirt
dragged leaden and cold from her waist, and water soaked in upon her
chilled feet. She knew she ought to have thought of these things. She
planned, as thought swept in a moving picture across her brain, how
she would prepare again for such a ride--with her cowboy costume that
she had once masqueraded in for Marion, with leggings of buckskin and
"chaps" of long white silken wool. It was no masquerade now--she was
riding in deadly earnest; and her lips closed to shut away a creepy
feeling that started from her heart and left her shivering.
She became conscious of how fast she was going. Instinct, made keen by
thousands of saddle miles, told Dicksie of her terrific pace. She was
riding faster than she would have dared go at noonday and without
thought or fear of accident. In spite of the sliding and the plunging
down the long hill, the storm and the darkness brought no thought of
fear for herself; her only fear was for those ahead. In supreme
moments a horse, like a man when human efforts become superhuman, puts
the lesser dangers out of reckoning, and the faculties, set on a
single purpose, though strained to the breaking-point, never break.
Low in her saddle, Dicksie tried to reckon how far they had come and
how much lay ahead. She could feel her skirt stiffening about her
knees, and the rain beating at her face was sharper; she knew the
sleet as it stung her cheeks, and knew what next was coming--the
snow.
There was no need to urge Jim. He had the rein and Dicksie bent down
to speak to him, as she often spoke when they were alone on the road,
when Jim, bolting, almost threw her. Recovering instantly, she knew
they were no longer alone. She rose alert in her seat. Her straining
eyes could see nothing. Was there a sound in the wind? She held her
breath to listen, but before she could apprehend Jim leaped violently
ahead. Dicksie screamed in an agony of terror. She knew then that she
had passed another rider, and so close she might have touched him.
Fear froze her to the saddle; it lent wings to her horse. The speed
became wild. Dicksie knit herself to her dumb companion and a prayer
choked in her throat. She crouched lest a bullet tear her from her
horse; but through the darkness no bullet came, only the sleet,
stinging her face, stiffening her gloves, freezing her hair, chilling
her limbs, and weighting her like lead on her struggling horse. She
knew not even Sinclair could overtake her now--that no living man
could lay a hand on her bridle-rein--and she pulled Jim in down the
winding hills to save him for the long flat. When they struck it they
had but four miles to go.
Across the flat the wind drove in fury. Reflection, thought, and
reason were beginning to leave her. She was crying to herself quietly
as she used to cry when she lost herself, a mere child, riding among
the hills. She was praying meaningless words. Snow purred softly on
her cheeks. The cold was soothing her senses. Unable at last to keep
her seat on the horse, she stopped him, slipped stiffly to the ground,
and, struggling through the wind as she held fast to the bridle and
the horn, half walked and half ran to start the blood through her
benumbed veins. She struggled until she could drag her mired feet no
farther, and tried to draw herself back into the saddle. It was almost
beyond her. She sobbed and screamed at her helplessness. At last she
managed to climb flounderingly back into her seat, and, bending her
stiffened arms to Jim's neck, she moaned and cried to him. When again
she could hold her seat no longer, she fell to the horse's side,
dragged herself along in the frozen slush, and, screaming with the
pain of her freezing hands, drew herself up into the saddle.
She knew that she dare not venture this again--that if she did so she
could never remount. She felt now that she should never live to reach
Medicine Bend. She rode on and on and on--would it never end? She
begged God to send a painless death to those she rode to save, and
when the prayer passed her failing senses a new terror awakened her,
for she found herself falling out of the saddle. With excruciating
torment she recovered her poise. Reeling from side to side, she fought
the torpor away. Her mind grew clearer and her tears had ceased. She
prayed for a light. The word caught between her stiffened lips and she
mumbled it till she could open them wide and scream it out. Then came
a sound like the beating of great drums in her ears. It was the crash
of Jim's hoofs on the river bridge, and she was in Medicine Bend.
A horse, galloping low and heavily, slued through the snow from Fort
Street into Boney, and, where it had so often stopped before, dashed
up on the sidewalk in front of the little shop. The shock was too much
for its unconscious rider, and, shot headlong from her saddle, Dicksie
was flung bruised and senseless against Marion's door.