Rock knew where he was going and why. But it was not on the cards that
his course was to be direct. Halfway between Milk River and the Marias
he rode down a coulee in search of water for a noon camp. He found
water eventually and beside it a troop of United States cavalry, in the
throes of getting under way. “Throes” is correct. They had a
considerable amount of equipment to be packed upon mules. They were
cantankerous mules. A dozen men were fighting them with pack lashings
and profanity.
Rock drew rein to watch the circus. A man, a civilian, approached him,
mopping the sweat from his brow.
“Stranger,” said he, “you look like a cowpuncher.”
“Looks don’t deceive you this time,” Rock admitted.
“Can you pack a mule?”
“I have lashed packs on a variety of animals,” Rock said. “But I have
no ambition to be a government muleteer.”
“Be a good sport an’ help me out,” the man appealed. “It won’t be but
for four or five days, till we get to the post. I’m short-handed, and
these mules is bad medicine. I shore need a man that’s handy with a
rope. I’ll give you five dollars a day.”
Rock grinned and accepted. The mules were certainly bad medicine, and
he _was_ handy with a rope, and a few days more or less didn’t matter.
Fort Assiniboine lay eighty miles eastward. Fort Benton hugged the
north bank of the Missouri, some sixty miles southwest. But here was a
job just begging to be taken in hand. So for five days thereafter he
was a mule packer, learning something of the way of men and mules in
Uncle Sam’s service. He even had an officer suggest that he would make
a likely cavalryman. But Rock had different ideas. He took his
twenty-five dollars in the shadow of this military post and set his
face westward again.
He left in the gray of dawn. The second evening he dropped from the
level of the plains, full three hundred feet into the valley of the
Marias, where a little stream sang and whispered over a pebbly bed,
through flats of rich, loamy soil. Sagebrush grew here, and natural
meadows spread there. Willows lined the banks. Groves of poplar studded
the flats, thickets of service berry. Great cottonwoods, solitary
giants and family groups, cast a pleasant shade from gnarly boughs in
full leaf.
“Gosh, places like this,” Rock murmured, “fairly shout out loud for a
fellow to settle down and make himself a home. No wonder Texas is
flocking North.”
In the first bottom Rock crossed, he stirred up a few cattle, then a
band of horses, several of which bore trimmed manes and tails and marks
of the saddle--fine-looking beasts, bigger than the Texas mustang. He
couldn’t see the brand.
“I wonder if we’re anywhere near the Maltese Cross, Sangre, old boy?”
he asked the sorrel horse. “Funny, if we’d stumble in there for the
night.”
* * * * *
He rounded a point masked by thickets of young, green poplar and saw a
house with smoke curling blue from the chimney. There was a stable
beyond, corrals, a stack of last year’s hay, and the lines of a pole
fence running away along the river. It was a typical cow outfit’s
headquarters. The house was roomy, of pine logs, L-shaped, with a low
porch in front. Rock stopped at the front of the house. He saw no one
anywhere. The only sign of life about the place was that wisp of blue,
a wavering pennant in the still air.
He hesitated, sitting in his saddle. There was life here. Why didn’t it
show itself? Range hospitality was more than a courtesy to friends and
neighbors. Even outlaws in a hidden camp would share food and blankets
with a passing stranger. The logical accepted thing for any man faring
across the plains was to make himself free wherever nightfall or
mealtime overtook him. He was expected to put his horses in the stable
and make himself at home. It wasn’t altogether good form to wait for an
invitation. The open-handed hospitality of the old West did have its
forms, and Rock knew them.
He was a little surprised at himself, at his hesitation, this
unaccountable feeling of delicacy, as if he were intruding. Why should
he expect some one to rush out of that house to bid him welcome? Why
did he hesitate? He asked himself that question in so many words, as he
rode on to the stable.
It was a large stable, well kept, with room in it for twenty horses.
Harness hung on pegs against the wall. The mangers were full of hay.
The doorway was wide and high, so that Rock rode in before he
dismounted. And from his seat he looked down at two horses, standing on
bridle reins in their stalls, saddled, still rough with sweat. He
stared at them.
The saddle of the nearest, the mane and foreshoulder, was stained with
blood, not yet dried to the blackening point. It stood like the brand
of Cain on the gray beast--on the yellow leather.
Was _that_ why he had hesitated at the house? Could a man sense the
unknown? Could fear or awe or the presence of tragedy impregnate the
atmosphere like a sinister mist? These were uncommon questions for a
cowpuncher to stand asking himself, but Rock Holloway had an uncommon
sort of mind.
Still he was not merely mind. He had a body and appetites and all the
natural passions man is heir to. If he had the mentality to analyze a
situation, he had also a capacity for instantaneous, purposeful action.
He had proved that long before he waited by the Odeon bar to halt Mark
Duffy’s high-handed career. He proved it once more. He left his two
horses standing where he dismounted and walked quickly toward the
house. He was conscious that he merely obeyed instinct--a hunch, if you
will, except that Rock distrusted hunches which had no basis in
reason--because he had felt an intuition of something wrong before he
laid eyes on that bloodstained saddle. He strode toward that house with
the certainty that he was needed there, yet in one portion of his mind
he wondered how he came by that conclusion.
A door opened out of the north wall, which was guiltless of porch. One
stepped from the threshold to the earth. The door stood wide. Rock
looked in. He had seen many ranch rooms like this--a stove against one
wall, a set of shelves for dishes and utensils, a long table in the
middle of the room.
Beside this table, her back to him, a woman sat with her face buried in
her hands. A few feet beyond a little girl in green calico, no more
than three or four years of age, sat looking at Rock, out of blue baby
eyes, her little, round, red mouth opened in a friendly smile.
“’Lo ‘Doc,’” she piped.
The woman lifted her head, looked, sprang to her feet, and shrank back.
For one instant, unbelieving terror stood in her wide gray eyes, in the
part of her lips, as plain as Rock had ever seen it on any human face.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said quickly. “I’m merely a passing
stranger.”
“Ah!” Her pent breath came with an explosive release. She put her hands
to her breast for a second. Her features relaxed into a somber
intentness.
Wordless, she stared at Rock, her eyes sweeping him from head to foot,
coming back to rest searchingly, with a look of incredulity, on his
face. And Rock stared back, wondering, yet alive to the strange
compelling quality that seemed to radiate from this woman like an aura,
to command interest and admiration and profound respect.
She hadn’t been afraid of him. No; timidity was no attribute of that
dark, imperious face. She had been shocked, startled, by something
about him. Rock wondered what it could be.
* * * * *
Two spots of color crept slowly into her cheeks. A very
striking-looking creature, Rock thought. Not beautiful; not even
pretty. Proud, passionate, dominant--yes. Slender as a willow, with a
cloud of dark hair. Deep-gray eyes, like pools; scarlet lips.
“’Lo, Doc,” the little girl repeated, in a childish treble. She
clambered to her feet and toddled forward a step or two, waving a rag
doll by one arm. “W’y don’t oo tum in?”
“Hello, baby!” Rock answered and doffed his hat. “You don’t seem to
find me a fearsome object, anyway.”
“Nor do I.” The woman suddenly had found her voice--a deep, throaty
sound, like water rippling gently over pebbles. “But I thought I was
seeing a ghost.”
“A ghost?” Rock grinned. His interest quickened at the tone, the
clean-clipped words. No semiliterate range beauty this. Education had
done one thing for Rock Holloway. It had made his ear sensitive to
enunciation. “I’m a pretty substantial spook, I wish to remark. Rock
Holloway is my name. I hail from Texas, via the Canadian Northwest and
way points. I’m poor, but honest, and my intentions are reasonably
honorable, even if my performances aren’t always up to par. No, lady,
I’m no ghost. I’m a stock hand in search of occupation. I stopped in
here because this was the first ranch I’ve seen to-day, and it’s near
sundown. But, if I make you uncomfortable, I’ll ride on.”
“No, no!” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean that. Come in. I’ll show you
what I mean. I think you’ll understand. It may startle you, too.”
Rock stepped into the room. The baby generously offered her doll in
token of amity.
“I’s hung’y,” she announced, with juvenile directness. “I wan’ my
suppah. Nona just sits an’ cwies. Make her ’top, Doc.”
The girl--Rock decided she could be no more than twenty-one or
two--gathered the child up and set her on a chair.
“Sit right there till I come back, honey,” she murmured. “Then you
shall have your supper.”
The fair-haired, blue-eyed mite obeyed without question. The girl
beckoned Rock. She walked to the other end of the room, through a
doorway. Rock followed her. He found himself in a narrow hallway that
bisected the house. She opened a door off that and motioned him to
enter.
He found himself in a woman’s room. No man ever surrounded himself with
such dainty knickknacks. It was an amazing contrast to the bare utility
of the kitchen.
A man lay stretched at full length on the white counterpane that
covered the bed--a dead man. One glance told Rock that. Crimson marked
the pillow that held his head, and crimson speckled the yellow and blue
of a hooked rug on the floor. A hand basin, with crimson-stained cloths
in it, stood on a chair.
“Look at him!” the girl whispered. “Look closely at his face!”
But Rock was already looking. He needed no prompting. He stared. The
amazed certainty came to him that, except for very minor differences,
he might well have been looking at his own corpse.
* * * * *
Yet he was alive, never more so. And he had no brothers, nor indeed any
kin that so resembled him. Coincidence, he reflected. Such things were.
No great mystery that, of the millions of men cast in the image of
their Maker, the mold for two should be strangely alike. He did not now
wonder at the shock he must have given this girl, when he stood in the
doorway, the image of the man dead in her room.
But Rock passed at once to a more practical consideration. The man had
been shot. His bared chest showed a blue-rimmed puncture.
“Do you wonder?” the girl’s voice said in his ear. “You see the
resemblance. It is uncanny. You could pass for him anywhere. My heart
stood still when I saw you in the doorway.”
Rock nodded. He put his hand on the body. The flesh was still soft, not
yet cold.
“He hasn’t been dead long,” he remarked.
The girl looked down at the dead man and reached one slim-fingered hand
to smooth the brown hair back from his forehead with a caressing
gesture. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“About half an hour,” she whispered. “It was like lightning out of the
blue. We were up the river a couple of miles. He had separated from me
to look at some cattle around the bend. I heard a shot--just one. I
didn’t think anything of that until he came back to me, holding himself
on his horse by main strength, dying in his saddle. He couldn’t talk.
He never did speak again. I got him home. He died in a little while.”
“Where are the other men?” Rock asked.
“There are no other men.”
“Any neighbors?”
“Not near. There is the Maltese Cross on the river, seven miles below,
and the Seventy Seven about the same distance above.”
“The Seventy Seven? Texas outfit? Pull in here last fall? Fellow name
of Duffy run it?”
She nodded.
A curious conviction, based on less than nothing, arose in Rock’s mind.
It couldn’t be--and still---- Absurd--of course.
“And you don’t know who shot him nor why? Well, I suppose it isn’t my
business. Only he might be my twin. He isn’t, but----” Rock stopped. He
had very nearly spoken what was in his mind.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I only suspect.”
Rock did not press for particulars.
“It hurts you,” he said kindly. “I expect you thought a lot of him. But
it’s done. Now, is there anything I can do?”
“What can you do?” she cried, the first despairing note that had
entered her voice. “Can you give back life? Can you----”
She checked herself in the middle of the sentence.
“Oh, I mustn’t be silly,” she said, after a moment. “It’s so useless.
Only, it seems---- Ah, well.”
She turned away. Rock closed the door behind them. The baby sat on the
chair by the table, waiting patiently.
“If you’ll put up your horse,” she said, “I’ll get some supper.”
“Look here,” Rock said bluntly, “I’m foot-loose for the time being. Is
there anything you want done? Anybody you want notified about this? My
horses are fairly fresh.”
She stood a second. “Oh, I’ve got to think,” she said. “No, not
to-night. And there is no one, anyway. In the morning we may----”
She turned to the kitchen stove and lifted a lid. It had gone down to a
few charred sticks. Rock took that matter off her hands. He rebuilt the
fire and noted empty water pails on a bench.
“Get your water out of the river?” he asked.
“No. There’s a spring by those willows to the right.”
Rock found the spring, a small pool bubbling out of white sand, clear
as crystal and cold as ice. He filled the pails and brought them back.
The girl was peeling potatoes when he came in. Sliced bacon sizzled in
a pan.
Rock went to the stable by the river bank, unsaddled the three horses,
took off his pack, fed and watered all four. When he reached the house
again supper was on the table. They ate in silence. The sun filled the
valley with the fire of its last beams. Bright shafts shot dazzling
through the windows, a yellow blaze that grew red and then rose pink
and faded into a pearly gray. Yellow-haired Betty laid down her spoon,
slid off her chair, climbed on Rock’s knee, and snuggled her round face
against his shirt. In two minutes she was fast asleep.
* * * * *
The girl, who had been sitting with her eyes absently on her plate,
smiled briefly--a phantom smile that strangely transformed her face.
She was young to have a kid like that, Rock thought. And it was tough
losing a man by the gun route. Was it going to be his lot to step into
the breach? If--if---- Well, he had to get to the bottom of this,
somehow. Here was a fellow who looked exactly like him, same build,
same age, same features, shot down in a river bottom. It smelled of
ambush. The Seventy Seven was less than an hour’s ride to the west. And
Elmer Duffy was running the Seventy Seven. For the moment the Maltese
Cross and Buck Walters and the mission he had undertaken for Uncle Bill
Sayre had no place in Rock’s mind.
The girl took the baby out of his arms and carried her off into a
bedroom. Rock put away these reflections and gathered the dishes off
the table and began to wash them.
“I might as well earn my night’s lodging,” he murmured whimsically,
probably to hide the fact that he was moved by a desire to make his
sympathy take some practical form.
The girl reappeared, put the food away in a pantry, took a cloth, and
wiped the dishes as Rock washed. She made no comment. She moved
quickly, and efficiently. Her hands were deft. But her mind was
elsewhere. She was scarcely conscious of him, Rock perceived. And when
the supper things were finished, he went outside and sat down on a
chopping block to smoke a cigarette in the twilight.
Dusk gathered. The pearl-gray mist of the evening sky merged into the
lucent shroud of a plains night. Crickets chirped in the grass. The
Marias whispered its sibilant song in a stony bed. A lamp glowed
through a window in the house. Rock saw the girl sitting by the table
again, as when he first saw her, elbows on the wood, face buried in her
palms.
“She aches inside,” he thought. “Poor devil! She needs folks or friends
or something, right now.”
But he couldn’t be one or the other, he knew. He was too sensible to
blunder with well-meant, useless words. She had forgotten he was there.
So he walked softly down to the stable, drew his blankets in the canvas
tarpaulin off to one side, under the stars, and turned in.
So the Seventy Seven did locate on the Marias instead of the Judith?
Uncle Bill was right. This might be no healthier a neighborhood for him
than it had proved for his double.
“Well, you got to be in this neighborhood for a spell, whether it’s
dangerous or not, you darned fool,” Rock apostrophized himself. “This
is the Maltese range, and you’ve promised to look over the Cross.”
Thus Rock, with the blankets drawn up to his chin and his gaze
meditatively on the three stars that make Orion’s belt.
His last drowsily conscious act was to smile at the obliquity of his
thought. In the morning he would do whatever that dark-haired,
gray-eyed young woman requested. He had ridden slap into this thing.
Whatever it was, he would see it through. Yet he couldn’t imagine her
requiring anything of him except that he would perhaps ride into Fort
Benton and notify whatever authorities functioned there that a man had
been shot on the Marias. And that didn’t call for any great resolution
on his part.
Just the same, he desired greatly to know who this man was who looked
so much like him, who shot him, and why?