Rock’s horse splashed knee-deep through the sparkling Marias, where it
raced down a long, pebbled stretch to foam into a black pool. The draw
indicated by Nona opened a yawning mouth, coming in from the
illimitable spread of Lonesome Prairie, although Rock had yet to learn
the name and its aptness. A small creek trickled through this
depression. The draw narrowed and lifted, as he rode. He climbed at
last to the upper levels, where the eye could span fifty miles. Here
cattle lay in the midday heat, along the tiny stream that meandered in
a shallow trough, or they fed in bunches on the tops of low rises,
where vagrant airs stirred.
Rock counted and estimated, as he jogged from bunch to bunch, noting
brands and earmarks, admiring the glint of sun on slender curving
horns, the chubby roundness of fat calves and sleek yearlings, and the
massive bulk of challenging bulls.
Most of these cattle were branded TL. A few bore the Maltese Cross.
Rock smiled to himself. Here he was where Uncle Bill Sayre wanted him
to be. The odd part of it was that, if he had never ridden into Fort
Worth, he would still be here. It was as if some obscure force had been
heading him toward this spot for more than a year. He noted, too, as he
glanced over these cattle, an odd 77. He might still be a Seventy Seven
rider he reflected, if Mark Duffy had not been a wanton bully in a
region where there was no law save that enforced by Colonel Colt.
“Yes, I seemed bound to land here, anywhere,” Rock thought, “whether I
came with the Seventy Seven or on my own. I suppose that’s just
chance.”
Blind, blundering chance. Very likely. Yet chance might be a maker of
secret patterns, Rock reflected, when he had put ten miles between
himself and the Marias. The far-rolling land seemed to carry only
cattle with the Maltese Cross and few of those. For here he dropped
into a low hollow, and on top of the next small lift in the plains he
rode into three riders, one of whom was a woman.
Rock had keen eyes. Moreover, since that meeting with Elmer Duffy he
was acutely conscious of his newly acquired identity. Thus he marked
instantly the brands of the horses. Two were Maltese Cross stock, the
other, bestridden by a youth of twenty or less, carried Nona Parke’s
brand on his left shoulder. His rider was a blue-eyed slender boy, with
a smile that showed fine white teeth when he laid his eyes on Rock.
“Hello, Doc, old boy,” he said. “How’s the ranch an’ the family and
everythin’?”
“Same as usual,” Rock answered genially. “What you expect?”
They had reined up, facing each other. The second man nodded and
grunted a brief, “Howdy.” The girl stared at Rock with frank interest,
as he lifted his hat. Her expression wasn’t lost on him. He wondered if
he were expected to know her well, in his assumed identity. In the same
breath he wondered if a more complete contrast to Nona Parke could have
materialized out of those silent plains. She was a very beautiful
creature, indeed. It was hot, and she had taken off her hat to fan her
face. Her hair was a tawny yellow. A perfect mouth with a dimple at one
corner fitted in a face that would have been uncommon anywhere.
Curiously, with that yellow hair she had black eyebrows and eyelashes.
And her eyes were the deep blue, almost purple, of mountains far on the
horizon. To complete the picture more effectually her split riding
skirt was of green corduroy, and she sat atop of a saddle that was a
masterpiece of hand-carved leather, with hammered-silver trimmings. It
was not the first time Rock had seen the daughters of cattle kings
heralding their rank by the elaborate beauty of their gear. He made a
lightning guess at her identity and wondered why she was there, riding
on roundup. She seemed to know him, too. There was a curious sort of
expectancy about her that Rock wondered at.
However, he took all this in at a glance, in a breath. He said to the
boy on the Parke horse:
“Where’s the outfit?”
“Back on White Springs, a coupla miles. You might as well come along to
camp with us, Doc. It’s time to eat, an’ you’re a long way from home.”
“Guess I will.” Rock was indeed ready to approach any chuck wagon
thankfully. It was eleven, and he had breakfasted at five.
They swung their horses away in a lope, four abreast. What the deuce
was this Parke rider’s name, Rock wondered? He should have been primed
for this. Nona might have told him he would possibly come across the
Maltese Cross round-up. This must be her “rep.”
And he was likewise unprepared for the girl’s direct attack. Rock rode
on the outside, the girl next. She looked at him sidewise and said
without a smile, with even a trace of resentment:
“You must be awful busy these days. You haven’t wandered around our way
for over two weeks.”
“I’m working for a boss that don’t believe in holidays,” he parried.
“I’d pick an easier boss,” she said. “Nona never lets the grass grow
under anybody’s feet, that I’ve noticed. Sometimes I wish I had some of
her energetic style.”
“If you’re suffering from lack of ambish,” Rock said, merely to make
conversation, “how’d you get so far from home on a hot day?”
“Oh, Buck was in at the home ranch yesterday, and I rode back with him.
Took a notion to see the round-up. I think I’ll go home this
afternoon.”
“Say, where’d you get that ridin’ rig, Doc?” the young man asked. He
craned his neck, staring with real admiration, and again Rock felt
himself involved in a mesh of pretense which almost tempted him to
proclaim himself. But that, too, he evaded slightly. He _did_ have a
good riding rig. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might occasion
comment. But this youth, of course, knew Doc Martin’s accustomed gear
probably as well as he knew his own. Naturally he would be curious.
“Made a trade with a fellow the other day.”
* * * * *
Rock registered a mental note to cache Martin’s saddle, bridle, and
spurs as soon as he got home.
“I bet you gave him plenty to boot,” the boy said anxiously. “You
always were lucky. He musta been broke an’ needed the mazuma.”
“I expect he was,” Rock agreed.
Again the girl’s lips parted to speak, and again the boy interrupted.
Rock out of one corner of his eye detected a shade of annoyance cross
her alluring face. He wondered.
“How’s Nona an’ the kid?”
“Fine,” Rock informed him. “I left her riding down to Vieux’s after
that dark-complected nurse girl.”
“Are you going back home to-night?” the girl asked abruptly.
“I’d tell a man,” Rock said. “As soon as I do business with the chuck
pile, I’m riding. I’m supposed to be back by three, and I’ll certainly
have to burn the earth to make it.”
“You won’t lose your job if you don’t.”
“Well, if I do, I know where I can get another one,” Rock said lightly.
“But I aim to be on time.”
“Him lose his job!” the TL rider scoffed. “You couldn’t pry him lose
from that job with a crowbar. Now don’t shoot,” he begged in mock fear.
“You know you got a snap, compared to ridin’ round-up with the Maltese
Cross--or any other gosh-danged cow outfit. I’m goin’ to put up a
powerful strong talk to Nona to send you on beef round-up this fall an’
let me be ranch boss for a rest.”
“You got my permission,” Rock said a little tartly. These personalities
irked him. “I’ll be tickled to death if you do.”
He didn’t know what there was in his words, or tone, perhaps, to make
the boy stare at him doubtfully, and the yellow-haired girl to smile
with a knowing twinkle in her eyes, as if she shared some secret
understanding with him.
By then they were loping swiftly into a saucerlike depression in the
plains, in the midst of which a large day herd grazed under the eye of
four riders, and the saddle bunch was a compact mass by the round-up
tents.
Rock left his horse standing on the reins. The others turned their
mounts loose. The Cross riders were squatted about the chuck wagon in
tailor-fashion attitudes, loaded plates in their laps. Rock followed
the other three to the pile of dishes beside the row of Dutch ovens in
the cook’s domain. Some of the men looked up, nodded and called him by
name. And, as Rock turned the end of the wagon, he came face to face
with a man holding a cup of coffee in one hand--a man who stared at him
with a queer, bright glint in a pair of agate-gray eyes, a look on his
face which Rock interpreted as sheer incredulity.
He was a tall man, a well-built, good-looking individual, somewhat past
thirty, Rock guessed. His clothing was rather better than the average
range man wore. Neither his size nor his looks nor his dress escaped
Rock’s scrutiny, but he was chiefly struck by that momentary
expression.
And the fellow knew Rock. He grunted: “Hello, Martin.”
“Hello,” Rock said indifferently. Then, as much on impulse as with a
definite purpose, he continued with a slight grin: “You seem kinda
surprised to see me.”
Again that bright glint in the eyes, and a flash of color surged up
under the tan, as if the words stirred him. Rock didn’t stop to pry
into that peculiar manifestation of a disturbed ego. He was hungry.
Also, he was sensible and reasonably cautious. He felt some
undercurrent of feeling that had to do with Doc Martin. Between the
vivacious blonde and this brow-wrinkling stockman, Rock surmised that
posing as Doc could easily involve him in far more than he had
bargained for.
* * * * *
So he filled his plate and busied himself with his food. No one tarried
to converse. As each rider finished eating, he arose, roped a fresh
horse out of the _remuda_, and saddled. The girl and the other two
riders ate in silence. From the corner of one eye Rock could see the
girl occasionally glance at him, as if she were curious or tentatively
expectant. He couldn’t tell what was in her mind. He was going it
blind. He didn’t know a soul whom he was supposed to know. That amused
him a little--troubled him a little. The quicker he got on his way the
better. He had got a little information out of this visit, though. He
heard one of the riders address the big, well-dressed man as “Buck.” He
heard him issue crisp orders about relieving the day herders. Old Uncle
Bill Sayre’s words floated through his mind: “Buck Walters is young,
ambitious and high-handed with men an’ fond of women. He dresses flash.
A smart cowman.”
That was Buck Walters, the range-functioning executor of the Maltese
Cross estate. And there was some distaste in Buck Walters for Doc
Martin. More wheels within wheels. Rock wondered if this tawny-haired
girl could be the daughter of the deceased Snell. Probably. That didn’t
matter. But it might matter a good deal to him if there was any
occasion for bad blood between Walters and the dead man into whose
boots he, Rock, had stepped.
He finished and rose.
“Well, people,” said Rock, “I’ll be like the beggar, eat and run. I
have a long way to go.”
“Tell Nona to ride over to see me,” the girl said politely, but with no
particular warmth. “I’ll be at the ranch most of the summer.”
“Sure,” Rock said laconically. “So long.”
He was a trifle relieved when he got clear of that camp. He had plenty
of food for thought, as he covered the miles between White Springs and
the Marias. Stepping out of his own boots into those of a dead man
seemed to have potential complications. When Rock pulled up on the
brink of the valley, he had just about made up his mind that he would
be himself. Or, he reflected, he could turn his back on Nona Parke and
the TL, and the curious atmosphere of mystery that seemed to envelope
that ranch on the Marias. He was a capable stock hand. He could
probably work for the Maltese Cross and learn all he wanted to know
under his own name. Why burden himself with a dead man’s feud, even if
the dead man might have been his brother?
As far as Nona Parke went, one rider was as good as another to her. And
Rock had no intention of remaining always merely a good stock hand.
Other men had started at the bottom and gained independence. No reason
why he should not do the same. Land and cattle were substantial
possessions. Cattle could be bought. From a small nucleus they grew and
multiplied. Land could be had here in the Northwest for the taking. Why
should _he_ commit himself to a dead man’s feuds and a haughty young
woman’s personal interests? For a monthly wage? He could get that
anywhere. He could probably go to work for the Maltese Cross, without
question and in his own identity.
Rock, looking from the high rim down on the silver band of the Marias,
on the weather-bleached log buildings, asked himself why he should not
ride this range and fulfill his promise to an uneasy man in Texas in
his own fashion? Why shouldn’t he work for some outfit where there were
neither women to complicate life, nor enemies save such as he might
make for himself?
The answer to that, he decided at last, must be that one job was as
good as another, and that somehow, for all her passionate independence,
Nona Parke needed him. There was a peculiar persuasiveness about that
imperious young woman. Rock could easily understand why men fell in
love with her, desired her greatly, and were moved to serve her if they
could. She seemed to generate that sort of impulse in a man’s breast.
Rock felt it; knew he felt it, without any trace of sentimentalism
involved. He could smile at the idea of being in love with her. Yet
some time he might be. He was no different from other men. She had made
a profound impression on him. He knew that and did not attempt to shut
his eyes to the truth. All these things, sinister and puzzling, of
which her dead rider seemed the focus, might be of little consequence,
after all. As far as he was concerned, every one simply insisted on
taking him for a man who was dead. That had a comical aspect to Rock.
* * * * *
He stared with a speculative interest at the Parke ranch lying in the
sunlight beside that shining river. Nona Parke had the right idea. She
had the pick of a beautiful valley, eight hundred cattle, and the
brains and equipment to handle them. That outfit would make a fortune
for her and Betty. Yet it was a man’s job.
“She’s an up-and-coming little devil,” Rock said to himself. “Mind like
a steel trap. Hard as nails. A man would never be anything more than an
incident to her.”
Thus Rock unconsciously safeguarded his emotions against disaster. He
was neither a fool nor a fish. He liked Nona Parke. He had liked her
the moment he looked into the gray pools of her troubled eyes. But he
wouldn’t like her too well. No; that would be unwise. She had warned
him. But he could work for her. Her wages were as good as any--better,
indeed, by ten dollars a month. And if there should be trouble in the
offing---- Rock shrugged his shoulders. Bridge crossing in due time.
A moon-faced, dark-haired girl of sixteen was puttering around in the
kitchen when Rock walked up to the house. Betty came flying to meet
him, and Rock swung her to the ceiling two or three times, while she
shrieked exultantly.
“Where’s Miss Parke?” he asked the half-breed girl.
“Workin’ in the garden.”
“Where the dickens is the garden?” Rock thought, but he didn’t ask. He
went forth to see.
Ultimately he found it, by skirting the brushy bank of the river to the
westward beyond the spring. Its overflow watered a plot of half an
acre, fenced and cultivated. Rich black loam bore patches of
vegetables, all the staple varieties, a few watermelon vines, and
cornstalks as tall as a man. In the middle of this, Nona was on her
knees, stripping green peas off a tangle of vines.
“Did Mary give you your dinner?” she asked.
“I struck the Maltese Cross round-up about eleven and ate with them,”
he told her.
“Oh! Did you see Charlie Shaw?” she asked. “Did he say whether they
picked up much of my stuff on Milk River?”
“Charlie Shaw is the name of that kid riding for you, eh? Well, I saw
him, but he didn’t say much about cattle. And I didn’t ask. I had to
step soft around that outfit. I don’t know any of these fellows, you
see, and they all persist in taking me for Doc Martin. I suppose I’d
have a deuce of a time persuading anybody around here that I wasn’t.”
“It’s funny. I keep thinking of you as Doc, myself. You’re really quite
different, I think,” she replied thoughtfully. “Somehow, I can’t think
of Doc as being dead. Yet he is.”
“Very much so,” Rock answered dryly. “And I’m myself, alive, and I wish
to stay so. I’ve been wondering if posing as your man, Doc, is, after
all, a wise thing for me to do. What do you think?”
“You don’t have to,” she said quickly. “I’m sure Elmer Duffy would be
relieved to know you aren’t Doc Martin.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rock mused. “Elmer might have just as much
to brood over if he knew who I really am.”
“Why so?” she asked point-blank.
Rock didn’t question the impulse to tell her. His instinct to be
himself was strong. The pose he had taken with Duffy that morning had
arisen from mixed motives. He wasn’t sure he wanted to carry on along
those lines. And he most assuredly didn’t want Nona Parke to think him
actuated by any quixotic idea of functioning as her protector after her
declarations on that subject.
* * * * *
So he told her concisely why Elmer Duffy might think a feud with Rock
Holloway a sacred duty to a dead brother. Nona looked at him with
wondering eyes and an expression on her face that troubled Rock, and
finally moved him to protest.
“Hang it,” he said irritably. “You needn’t look as if I’d confessed to
some diabolical murder. Mark Duffy was as hard as they make ’em. He was
running it rough on an inoffensive little man who happens to be my
friend. I _had_ to interfere. And Mark knew I’d interfere. He brought
it on himself. If I hadn’t killed him he would have killed me. That’s
what he was looking for.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking that at all,” she said earnestly. “Of course,
you were quite justified. I was just thinking that this explains why
Elmer always hated Doc. Doc told me so. He felt it. I suppose it was
the resemblance. I don’t see, now, so far as trouble with Elmer is
concerned, that it matters much whether you pass as yourself or Doc
Martin. You’d have to watch out for Elmer Duffy in either case. I
couldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw a bull by the tail.”
“Nice estimate of a man that’s in love with you,” Rock chuckled.
“You’re a little bit afraid of Elmer, aren’t you?”
“No,” she declared. “But he’s brutal at heart. He’s the kind that
broods on little things till they get big in his own mind. He would do
anything he wanted if he was sure he could get away with it. And he
would like to run both me and my ranch.”
“Powerful description,” Rock commented. “Still it sort of fits
Elmer--all the Duffys, more or less. They’re inclined to be more
aggressive than they ought. Well, I guess it doesn’t make much
difference if I do pass as Doc. I’m not trying to put anything over on
anybody doing that. Now----”
He went on to tell her about meeting the girl at the Maltese Cross. He
described the man who had glared at him and puzzled him by his
attitude, but he didn’t tell Nona this latter detail. He merely wanted
to know who was who.
“That was Buck Walters, range foreman of the Maltese Cross,” she
confirmed Rock’s guess.
“Did Doc Martin ever have any sort of run-in with him?” he asked.
“Heavens, no! I would certainly have heard of it if he had. Why?”
“Oh, he seemed rather stand-offish, that’s all,” Rock answered
indifferently.
“Buck thinks rather highly of himself,” Nona told him. “He’s in charge
of a big outfit. The Maltese Cross is an estate, and he is one of the
administrators. He’s pretty high-handed. There are men in this country
who don’t like him much. But I don’t think Doc cared two whoops, one
way or the other. Probably Buck was thinking about something.”
“Very likely. And who is the yellow-haired _dulce_?”
“Alice Snell. She and a brother inherit the whole Maltese Cross outfit
when the boy comes of age.”
“She told me to tell you to ride down to see her--that she’d be at the
ranch all summer.” Thus Rock delivered the message. “I didn’t hardly
know what she was talking about.”
“Alice never does talk about anything much, although she talks a lot,”
Nona said coolly. “Her long suit is getting lots of attention.”
“Well, I expect she gets it,” Rock ventured. “She’s good looking.
Heiress to a fortune in cows. She ought to be popular.”
“She is,” Nona said--“especially with Buck Walters.”
“Oh! And is Buck popular with her?” Rock asked with more than mere
curiosity. This was an item that might be useful in the task of sizing
up Buck Walters and his way with the Maltese Cross.
“She detests him, so she says,” Nona murmured.
“Then why does she stick around up here in this forsaken country, when
she doesn’t have to?”
“You might ask her,” Nona replied.
Rock had squatted on his heels, picking pods off the vines and chucking
them by handfuls into the pan.
“I might, at that,” he agreed, “when I have a chance.”
“Alice is very ornamental,” Nona Parke continued thoughtfully. “But
quite useless, except to look at. She gives me a pain sometimes,
although I like her well enough.”
“You’re not very hard to look at yourself, it happens,” Rock told her
deliberately. “And I don’t suppose you object to being ornamental as
well as very useful and practical.”
Nona looked at him critically.
“Don’t be silly,” she warned.
“Don’t intend to be.” Rock grinned. “I never did take life very
seriously. I sure don’t aspire to begin the minute I find myself
working for you. I’m a poor but honest youth, with my way to make in
the world. Is it silly for a man to admire a woman--any woman?”
“I wish you’d pull those weeds out of that lettuce patch,” she said,
changing the subject abruptly. “They grow so quickly. I’m always at
these infernal weeds. After you get that done, roll up your bed and
bring it to the house. There’s lots of room.”
* * * * *
Rock performed the weeding in half an hour. If another had asked him to
do that, he would probably have told him to go hire a gardener, he
reflected.
“She’ll have me baking bread and working the churn next,” he chuckled
to himself. “Trust Miss Nona Parke to get her money’s worth out of the
hired man.”
That was an exaggeration. Nona wasn’t a driver. Within a week Rock
found himself doing various jobs about the ranch because he saw that
they needed doing, not because she told him to do them. He rode more or
less every day, and most of the time Nona rode with him. It was easier,
if less exciting and glamorous, than round-up. He had a comfortable bed
in a big room, with a huge stone fireplace, which had been the bunk
room when the TL had a dozen riders and cattle by the thousand. Between
Nona and the half-breed girl, the vegetable garden and the two milch
cows, Rock ate better food than had fallen to his lot since he was at
school on the Atlantic seaboard.
It was pleasant to live there, pleasant to ride range with this
dark-haired, competent young person, who could be brusque and curt when
she chose, and self-sufficient at all times. They went clattering away
from the ranch in the cool of morning. They combed far coulee heads,
hidden springs, river bottoms above and below the ranch. Rock was never
quite sure what the girl looked for in these long rides. The only
actual stock work they did was to throw back straggling bunches that
grazed beyond certain limits. That, as Rock understood the range
business, was not important. He concluded that Nona simply had a
passion for looking over her possessions. He had seen men like
that--men who owned longhorns by the tens of thousands.
But she seemed to be looking for something. Rock merely surmised that.
For a week after he happened on the Maltese Cross, they covered the
surrounding country, day by day. Nona talked very little. She rode like
a man, easily, carelessly, a component part of her mount. She could
handle a rope with fair skill. There was strength in her slender arms,
an amazing endurance in her slim body. She knew her stock, bunch by
bunch-- leader cows and oddly marked bulls. She knew where to find
certain little herds. It was as if she watched over them jealously, as
a miser gloats over his hoard. There was something in that Rock
couldn’t fathom. Branded cattle on a recognized range were safer than
bonds in a steel safe, as a rule. Sometimes there were exceptions to
that rule. If there was such an exception here, Nona never breathed it,
and the riders of a cow outfit were usually the first to be warned if
there was any suspicion of rustling in the air. And Rock would not ask.
But he wondered. He began to grow a little uneasy, too. He had accepted
pay from Uncle Bill Sayre to secure certain information. He was on the
ground, but he was not learning much about the Maltese Cross and Buck
Walters. He had grown personally curious about Buck Walters, too, since
meeting him. He didn’t like the man. Rock wasn’t given to sudden likes
and dislikes. Nevertheless, on that one eye-to-eye clash he disliked
Buck Walters--a much more active feeling than he could muster up either
for or against Elmer Duffy, for instance.
Rock had plenty of time for these mental conjectures. They were like
mariners stranded on an island in midocean--himself, Nona Parke, the
half-breed girl, and Baby Betty. No riders passed. Elmer Duffy did not
come again. The sun rose, swung in a hot arc across a sapphire sky, and
sank behind the far-off Rockies. They rode, rested, and slept, while
the stars twinkled in a cool canopy, and the frogs along the Marias
croaked antiphony to the soprano of a myriad of unseen crickets in the
grass.
Then one day Rock rode alone on the benches to the North. When he
splashed through the shallows and came to the corrals late in the
afternoon, there was a bay horse in the stable, and Charlie Shaw sat
talking to Nona in the shade of the porch.