The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMeadowlark BasinThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Meadowlark BasinAuthor: B. M. BowerIllustrator: George W. GageRelease date: November 2, 2021 [eBook #66651]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEADOWLARK BASIN ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Meadowlark BasinAuthor: B. M. BowerIllustrator: George W. GageRelease date: November 2, 2021 [eBook #66651]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Meadowlark Basin
Author: B. M. BowerIllustrator: George W. Gage
Author: B. M. Bower
Illustrator: George W. Gage
Release date: November 2, 2021 [eBook #66651]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEADOWLARK BASIN ***
MEADOWLARK BASINBY B. M. BOWERAUTHOR OF CHIP OF THE FLYING U,THE EAGLE'S WING,DESERT BREW, Etc.WITH FRONTISPIECE BYGEORGE W. GAGEGROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS NEW YORKCopyright, 1925,BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.All rights reservedPublished August, 1925Reprinted November, 1925PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AUTHOR OF CHIP OF THE FLYING U,THE EAGLE'S WING,DESERT BREW, Etc.
WITH FRONTISPIECE BYGEORGE W. GAGE
GROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1925,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All rights reserved
Published August, 1925Reprinted November, 1925
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Smoky Ford had never seen anything like it.
Smoky Ford had never seen anything like it.
Smoky Ford had never seen anything like it.
On the brow of the hill the horse Lark was riding stepped aside from the trail, walked to the very edge of the rim and stood there, gravely looking down into the valley. Where he stood the young grass was cut and crushed into the loose soil with shod hoofprints closely intermingled, proof that the slight detour was a matter of habit born of many pausings there at gaze. Except on pitch-black nights or when he rode in haste, Lark never failed to stop and drink his fill of the wide valley below,—in his opinion the most beautiful spot on earth.
Straight down, a good four hundred feet below him, lay the bottomland known the country over as Meadowlark Basin, where old Bill Larkin had his stronghold in the old days. Across the wide meadows the Little Smoky River went whirling past like a millrace, the piled hills crowded close upon the farther bank. At the head of the Basin, nearly a mile away, other hills shouldered one another and the rumbling storm clouds just above; beyond all, the mountains with white peaks and purple canyons gashed the dark splotches of wooded slopes.
"Is down there—where we're goin'?" The small boy sitting within the circle of Lark's arms, his small legs spread across the saddle in front of Lark's long legs, pointed a soft, brown finger toward the valley below.
"You betchuh." One of Lark's arms snuggled the boy closer.
"Is all them horses—your horses?"
"Bet they are. Ain't they purty down there? Look at all them spraddly colts, son. Ain't they the purtiest sight you ever saw?"
"O-oh, one colt kicked its—its mamma!" The boy slapped his hands together and chuckled. "Can—can I have one colt—to ride?"
"Bet you can! Ain't it purty down there? Look at that green patch over next the river. That's lucerne. And up above there is the spuds, a different green yet. And that's timothy and clover on beyond. Listen, son. Hear 'em? Meddalarks and frogs singin' a contest. Frogs is ahead, got all the best of it so far, 'cause they sing all night and the meddalarks lays off till daybreak."
"Can—can I have a frog—"
"Have to ask missis frog about that, son. Better shack along and get home ahead of the storm. See that lightnin' scootin' along up there among the hills; ain't it purty? Be blowin' rain in our faces if we don't hurry." Lark twitched the reins and the horse swung back to the trail that dipped down into a green fold of the encircling hills, shutting off their view of everything save the ink-black clouds with greenish-brown lights here and there that were swiftly blotting out the blue above their heads.
"Tired?" Lark bent his head to look into the flushed face of the youngster.
The boy shook his head, not wanting to confess. He wriggled one arm loose and wiped the dusty beads of perspiration from cheeks and brow, glancing up anxiously into Lark's eyes.
"They—can't find me here, can they?" He looked at the rock walls on either side with a certain satisfaction in their solid gray, as if they were put there for his especial protection.
"No," said Lark grimly. "They'll never git yuh away from here, son."
The boy heaved a great sigh and looked at the storm and the narrow pass and down at the twitching ears of the horse. The hard muscles of Lark's left arm pressed him close. He sighed again and drooped a bit in the embrace. It had been a long, hard ride that lasted through the night and half of the day, and, deny it as he would, he was tired to the middle of his bones.
At the foot of the steep, narrow pass the horse broke into a shambling trot, and once he whinnied eagerly. They brought up in a grassless, hard-packed space between two corrals, and Lark loosened his hold and swung stiffly from the saddle. His face was drawn and his eyes sunken as if he too were very tired.
"Well, here we are, son." He grinned and pulled the boy out of the saddle, setting him on his feet at a safe distance from the horse.
The boy's feet were like wooden clubs. He sat down with unexpected abruptness in the dirt. Over by the corral a man laughed.
"Still dragging in slick-ears; where did you find this one, Lark?"
Lark eyed the speaker across the saddle he was uncinching.
"In the wrong corral, Bud. Havin' the heart kicked outa him—game little cuss. Fit to wear our brand. Better take him up to the house and feed him and put him to bed. Been in the saddle since nine o'clock last night, Bud."
Bud lounged over to them—a slim, handsome youth with the peculiar, stilted walk of the cowboy—and bent smiling over the child, gathering the little body up in his arms.
"Shall I bed him with that broken-legged cougar, or nest him with the young eagle, or down in the calf corral, or where?" he bantered. "The Meddalark's about full up with orphan babies right now. How do you grade this one?"
"Ask maw. Bet she'll know his stall quick enough." He pulled off the saddle and, with a glance up at the approaching storm, walked to a near-by shed with the heavy, stamped saddle skirts flapping against his legs.
A sudden, blinding glare and rending crash of thunder sent the young fellow scurrying up the path to the one-story ranch house that sprawled against the hill as if it had backed there for shelter and still huddled in fear. Great drops of rain like cold molten bullets spatted into the dust. The young man laughed as he ran, the boy clinging to his neck with two thin arms. They reached the sagging porch just as another flash ripped through the clouds and let loose the full torrent of rain.
Turning to look back, he saw Lark almost at his heels, his broad hat brim flooded with the down-pour. The two halted on the porch and stood gazing out at the slanted wall of water, the thunder of it on the porch roof like the deep pounding of surf beating against rocks. Lark stared up at the high plateau beyond the Basin's rim, and his whimsical mouth widened in a satisfied smile.
"This'll wash out every track in the country," he yelled above the uproar. "Needn't have circled through the foothills if I'd known it was comin'."
Bud looked at him, glanced down at the boy now lying in the slackness of deep sleep on his shoulder. He shook his head in vague disapproval.
"Stole him, hunh?"
Lark hunched his wet shoulders, glancing sidelong at the flushed face of the boy.
"Damn' right," he growled. "So would you, Bud—or any man with a heart in him. Why—damn it, they had 'im out in the field,workin'. Followin' a big, heavy drag around. Made me so darn sore I just swiped him up into the saddle and rode for the hills." He took off his hat, tilting it so that the water ran out of the curled brim to the steps.
"You sure as hell annexed a bunch of trouble, Lark. Where was it you kidnaped him?"
"Got him off the Palmer ranch. Think he's a grandson of the old man. They'll hunt him, chances are. This rain's a godsend—they'll never track me home."
Bud grinned to himself and turned, carrying his burden inside and laying him on a roomy, cowhide-covered couch where the child sprawled slackly, without a movement of limbs to show he had been disturbed in his sleep. The two men stood looking down at him.
His light brown hair was curly, with damp rings clinging to his forehead. His lashes were long and curled up at the ends, his round face had the deep sun-tan of the prairies. Palmer was called a rich man, but the boy's overalls were faded and old, each knee a gaping, ragged-edged hole. His thin elbows stuck out through the ragged sleeves of a dirty, blue gingham shirt. Lark bent and twitched aside the loose collar, open for want of a button.
"Look at that," he gritted, exposing a long, greenish-blue mark on the shoulder. "Old man Palmer ain't paid for that yet, but he's goin' to some day. The kid won't forget it—I won'tlet'im forget. You wait till he's full-growed."
"They'll come after him, Lark."
"Let 'em." Lark straightened and hitched up his belt. "Just let 'em try, that's all." His head swung toward a closed door. "Oh, Maw-w!"
Stodgy, flat-footed steps sounded in the next room. The door was pulled open from the farther side and a queer, goblin creature of the female sex looked in, smiling and showing just three lonely teeth in the full expanse of her mouth. Her head would reach to the Bull-Durham tag that dangled from Lark's breast pocket; a large head, much too large for so short a woman. The swelling goiter was not pretty to behold, and her graying hair was combed straight up and twisted into a hard little biscuit on top of her round head. But Lark's eyes softened wonderfully at sight of her, and Bud's lips twitched into a quick smile and his hand reached up automatically to take off his hat.
"What is it, boys? Lark, your coffee'll be ready in a jiffy. I've been keepin' the kettle on ever since breakfast. My, my, what a rain! If it don't wash the garden truck all into the river I'll be thankful. My peas are swimmin' for their lives already."
"Maw, come here." Lark crooked one finger, and the queer little old woman pattered forward, her face alive with curiosity.
"For the love of Moses!" Maw clasped her hands with a gesture of amazement. "Bill Larkin, what have you been a doingnow? I'll bet you stole that little feller. I can tell by the gloat in your eyes. Who belongs to him? You never took him away from his mother, did you, Lark? If you did you must carry him right straight back."
Lark laid his hand on the biscuit of hair and gave it a gentle twist.
"Maw, you shut up and go get into your teeth. Want to scare 'im to death when he wakes up? What d'you suppose I went and got you fitted out with teeth for? Does helooklike he had a mother? By Jonah, if he's got a mother she don't deserve him. Looks like an orphant to me, Maw."
"They'll be hunting him, Lark. You can't drag in boys like you would a calf;didyou steal this child? You look me in the eye, young feller, and tell the truth."
Lark did not look her in the eye, but he told the truth without speaking one word. He bent, pulled aside the gingham shirt and pointed. Maw looked and turned away her head, sucking in her breath audibly as one does in pain.
"Shall I carry him back where I got him, Maw?"
"No!" Maw shuddered. "The dirty brutes! You fetch him right back into my room. Buddy, you go get that spring cot out of the lean-to, and bring in the top mattress off the spare bed in the wing. I'll rustle bedding myself." She bent and stared hard at the boy's face.
"This looks to me like the boy old Palmer brought home and said he was Dick's boy. If he is, there'll be a ruckus raised that'll make your old father's fingers itch in the grave to be up and shooting. Palmer hangs onto whatever he gets in his clutches, you want to remember that. And he's got a bad bunch around him."
"Well," Lark's lips tightened, "so've I got a bad bunch around me, Maw. I can't look back at a time when folks didn't hesitate some before they tackled the Meddalark outfit."
"The Meddalark never locked horns with old man Palmer yet. Lark, if you take my advice, you'll send a man up to the old lookout your dad fixed on the rim. That's the weak point of the whole Basin, Lark, and you know it. A man could stand up there with a rifle and pick off the whole bunch down here. There'll be trouble over this boy, sure as you live. If you got him away from Palmer there'll be shooting, and you better oil up your six-gun and get ready for it."
"Why, Maw, you danged old outlaw, you!" Lark laughed. "There wasn't any shootin' when I kidnapedyou."
"Nobody cared about me, Lark. This is different."
"Yeah," Lark admitted thoughtfully, "mebbe it is."
Down through the pass came two riders, drenched with the storm that had lasted through the day, with intermittent gusts of booming wind and vicious lightning, then long, steady down-pours as if the whole heavens were awash and there would be no end to the falling water. From the window overlooking the Basin Bud saw them lope heavily into the meadow trail, small geysers of clean rain water thrown up into the sunset glow whenever the horses galloped into a hollow. Bud lounged across the room and put his head into the kitchen.
"Two riders coming, Maw. Better keep that kid out of sight."
Maw nodded, clicking the china white teeth she wore to please Lark. Bud closed the door, glanced toward another behind which Lark was sleeping heavily, and opened it.
"Oh, Lark! Riders coming. What time did you get in last night—if anybody wants to know?"
Lark landed in the middle of the floor, wide-awake as a startled mountain lion. One slim hand went up to pat his hair down into place, the other reached for his gun.
"Left Smoky Ford about three o'clock in the afternoon. Got here along about midnight, didn't I? Maw ought to know." Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and yawned widely. "You go on out, Bud. If it's the boy they're after, you holler to Maw and ask if supper's ready, soon as you hit the porch. Maw and I will look after the kid."
"Craziest thing a man could do," young Bud muttered, as he left the house and walked down the path to meet the riders. His hat was tilted a bit to one side, a cigarette was in his mouth and tilted to the same angle, his thumbs were hooked negligently inside his belt and his three-inch boot heels pegged little holes in the sodden path as he went. Mildly hospitable he looked, with no more interest in their coming than custom demanded of him. But he saw their eyes go slanting this way and that as they approached, and he saw the ganted flanks of their wet horses and the flare of nostrils that told of long, hard riding.
"Howdy, cowboys," he greeted, lounging closer. "Been out in the dew, haven't you?" He grinned as youth will always grin at the mischance of his fellows.
One lean, unshaven fellow slid out of the saddle and walked stiffly up to Bud, leaving the reins dragging in the wet, steamy muck of the yard. He did not answer the smile.
"We want you folks to get out and help hunt a lost kid," he stated flatly. "Palmer's grandson, it is. Or mebbe your Lark seen him yesterday. Some said he left town yesterday, comin' this way, and he musta passed by the Palmer place 'long about the time the kid disappeared. He might of saw him. He here?"
Bud jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the house.
"Put up your horses, boys. Jake, over there forking hay, will feed them after you've pulled your saddles. Supper must be about ready. Oh, Jake!" he called, "take care of these horses, will you?" He turned back to the two who were jerking impatiently at wet latigo straps. "Lark didn't say anything about any lost kid, but you can talk to him about it. How about the town folks turning out? They're closer than we are. We'll go, of course."
"The town is out," the short man told him, grunting a little as he heaved his saddle to a dry spot under the shed. "Been out all night. Old man sent us over here because he seen Lark ride past right where the kid was workin' in the field. Looked like he stopped an' talked to the kid, he said, but it was so fur off he couldn't tell."
Bud turned and walked ahead of them up the path, and now he glanced over his shoulder at the speaker, a curious light in his eyes.
"A kid old enough to work in the field wouldn't get lost, would he?"
The thin man shook his head.
"That's what looked damn queer to me," he assented. "But it's about the only thing that could of happened—unless he was made away with," he added as an afterthought.
"How old a kid is he?" Bud's interest grew a bit keener.
"Eight—mebby nine. Too little to get anywhere on foot."
Bud considered this, shook his head as if the question was beyond him, and stepped upon the porch. "Oh, Maw! Supper ready? Two extra," he shouted, and turned squarely about to scrape his bootsoles across the edge of the porch.
"I'd run away," he said soberly, "if I wasn't more than eight or nine and had to do a man's work. Doesn't sound right to me." Having scraped all the mud from one boot, he began meticulously to scrape the other. The two from Palmer's followed his example and scraped and scraped, in evident fear of offending a careful housewife.
"Come right in, boys." Maw herself pulled open the door and stood there, smiling and showing the three yellow teeth like stripes dividing the glaring white ones. "Supper's about ready. What's these gentlemen's names, Buddy?"
"You'll have to ask them," Bud replied evenly. "They're in a hurry and upset, and didn't introduce themselves. Bat and Ed, the boys call them. Come on in, boys. They're out hunting a lost child, Maw. They think maybe Lark might have seen him last evening as he was riding out from town."
"Johnson's my name," the thin man introduced himself perfunctorily to maw. "This other man is named White. Is Mr. Larkin in?"
"Come right into the kitchen. Yes, Lark's here, going over his guns after the rain; leaky roof to the closet—Bud, you'd ought to patch that roof right away to-morrow. It was just an accident Lark went into the closet for something and found all the guns soaking wet. A child lost, did you say?"
"Don't seem to worry folks over this way very much," Johnson observed suspiciously. "How d' do, Lark; seen you in Smoky Ford, you remember."
"Hel-lo!" Lark, entrenched behind a table littered with guns, greasy rags, cleaning rods and odorous bottles, looked up and grinned a welcome. "Excuse me for not shakin' hands—coal-oil and bear's grease all over me. What was that, Maw, about a lost child?"
"They want to know if you saw anything of a boy back at Palmer's ranch. Old Palmer saw you ride past there about the time they missed the kid." Bud, pulling chairs to the supper table, spoke more rapidly than was his habit.
"I'll tell it," Johnson interrupted. "It's Palmer's grandson—Dick Palmer's boy. He was out in the field, and the horses come in without 'im. Palmer claims he seen you ride past, and he says you stopped an' talked to the boy. He wasn't seen after that, and the hull country's out lookin' through the hills for 'im. It seemed like you'd oughta know somethin' about 'im." Johnson's eyes clung tenaciously to the ivory-handled, silver-mounted six-shooter that lay close to Lark's hand on the table. The gun which Lark was working on at the moment was a shotgun, double-barreled and ominous.
"Yeah, I remember that kid." Lark spoke without haste, his eyes on the gunstock he was polishing. "Pore little devil, I rode along and found him hung up at the edge of the field, with the drag caught on a rock when he tried to turn around. He couldn't lift it off, and the team wouldn't pull it off, an' there he was, cryin' because he'd get a lickin' if he broke any teeth outa the harrer, an' if he didn't finish the draggin' along that end of the field, he'd get a lickin'—way he figured it, he was due for a whalin' any way the cat jumped." Lark inspected his work, broke open the gun and shoved in two pinkish cartridges.
"Too small a boy to be away out there, half a mile from the house, tryin' to do a man's work. I got off my horse and heaved the drag off the rock for him, and gave him a bag of gumdrops I was bringin' home to maw." He glanced at the old lady and smiled. "That's why you never got any candy this trip, Maw," he explained apologetically. "I gave the whole bag to the boy. It was worth it, too—way he began to put 'em away, two at a time. Mebbe he run off and hid from that lickin'," he added hopefully, picking up a rifle.
"The team come home," Johnson pointed out impatiently, "and the hull country for ten mile around has been combed. He never got off afoot." But he said it mildly and stared uneasily at the way Lark was handling the rifle; not pointing it at any one, but holding it so that any man there could look down its muzzle if he but turned his wrist a bit.
"Set up to the table, folks," Maw invited briskly. "Larkie, can't you leave them smelly old guns long enough to eat?" Then she sighed, almost as an afterthought. "My, my, it's terrible to think of a child like that."
"Might as well finish this job, Maw. Hands all stunk up, now. You folks go ahead. Well, a kid like that can only be crowded just so far," he returned to the subject. "I know he was scared of somebody that would give him a lickin', and I know what a horse will do when it gets the notion it ain't being treated right. It'll quit the range, give it a chance. That boy was a mile from his lickin', just about, and he wasn't more than twenty rods from the hills. I expect a pound of gumdrops would look to him like supplies enough to carry him a hundred miles. Betcha a broke horse the kid beat it. And if he did I hope he makes it outa the country."
White and Johnson ate uncomfortably, more than half their attention given to the nonchalant handling of the guns across the room. Just behind Lark's chair was a closed door, and from behind that closed door came the sound of footsteps; rather, the creaking of boards beneath the weight of some person.
"Old man Palmer," Lark stated emphatically, "is the kinda man that would skin a louse for its hide and tallow. He'd likely keep every man in the country riding the hills and neglecting his work, huntin' down a little shaver of a boy that he can drive to a man's work and save, mebby, two dollars a day. Betcha a beef critter he won't say thank-yuh or go-ta-hell for the ridin'. No, sir, I don't feel called upon to put any Meddalark horses under the saddle for that kinda slave-chasin'. If the kid had the spunk to drift outa there, he's got my good wishes. And you can go tell him I said so."
"Ain't it struck yuh that might look kinda bad?" Johnson was stirring his coffee with his left hand, his right hand under the edge of the table.
"Think it does?" Lark very casually laid down the rifle—with his left hand—and picked up the six-shooter with his right. He seemed to be studying the W L filed on the metal behind the trigger, and while he was looking at that the muzzle pointed at the wall two feet behind Johnson.
"My Jonah, this gun of dad's is all specked with tarnish!" Lark exclaimed, interrupting himself. "Four of the notches is plumb rusty, which they wouldn't be if my old dad was alive to-day. My Lord, how he could shoot! I've seen him wing a horsefly at forty yards and never ruffle the hair on the horse. Fact. Makes me think of what he used to say about how thingslook. He always told me to let my conscience and cartridges guide me, and tahell with thelooks. Dad would likely ride over and beef the man that made that little kid stand and cry because he couldn't lift a heavy drag off a rock for fear a tooth might be broke and he'd get a beatin'. What I'd ought to of done is ride on up to the house and call old man Palmer out and shoot him. What do you think, Johnson?"
Johnson's hand came up and rested ostentatiously on the table. He shuffled his feet and nodded, his eyes on his plate. White cleared his throat and glanced sidewise toward the door that would let him out of the house by the shortest route.
"Have some goozeberry pie," Maw urged, and sucked her new teeth into place with a click of her tongue. "I hope they never catch that poor little feller. If they do, and I ever hear of old Palmer whippin' him again, I'll walk right over there with a black-snake and give him a good horsewhipping. I'll teach him!"
"I'll hold him for you, Maw." Bud Larkin reached out and patted her approvingly on the shoulder.
"Buddy, you go in and ask Mr. Smith if he could drink a cup of tea. You was vaccinated whilst you were off to school—"
"Somebody sick?" Johnson looked up, poising a knife loaded with mashed potatoes. "You ain't got smallpox here, have you?"
"No!" Lark spoke sharply. "Been a long time since I've saw a case, and I don't hardly believe this is smallpox. Sores break out on the forehead first, as I've heard it. These are on the back—back and shoulders, mostly. You take a close look, Bud, when you go in, and see if there's anything showin' on his face. And, my Jonah, be careful you don't pull down that sheet!"
Bud took the cup of tea that Maw had ready and walked to the door behind Lark. He opened it, letting out a whiff of carbolic acid from the soaked sheet hung straight across the doorway.
"Feller rode in here to-day in pretty bad shape," Lark observed soberly. "Couldn't turn him out, couldn't put him in the bunk house with the boys, couldn't do a darn thing but fix him up comfortable where we could watch him. But I don't hardly think it's smallpox. All the cases I ever seen, the sores—"
Johnson pushed back his chair with a loud scraping sound on the white boards of the floor. White duplicated the sound and the haste.
"I guess we better be goin'," said Mr. Johnson, stooping to retrieve his hat from the floor. "I—you folks better not ride over with us, seein' as you've got sickness. Might spread somethin'—with everybody millin' around."
"That's good sense," chirped Maw. "Lark don't think it's anything ketchin', but that poor feller caught it, didn't he? He don't make no bones of it. No use exposin' the whole country—and you may be mighty sure, Mr. Johnson, that we ain't going to take any chances."
"You let Bud Larkin set right at the table with us, and you been passin' us dishes—that's chances enough forme." Mr. Johnson, herding Mr. White before him, went out and slammed the door.
Maw stood with her head tilted grotesquely to one side, listening. A closed door, in her experience, did not always mean departure.
"Lark," she cried shrewishly, "what made you go and belittle that poor man's sickness to them fellers? They mighta stayed around here an' got exposed, an' you know as well as I do what ails that poor feller we took in. If they catch something, they needn't blameme, for I washed my hands good before I set the table. You'd oughta told them when they first come in—"
A board squeaked on the porch. Maw smiled, turned back to the stove and picked up the coffee-pot; hesitated, put up a furtive hand and pulled out the new teeth which she slid into her apron pocket.
"Come on and eat your supper, Lark, before it's stone cold," she said in a relaxed tone. "I guess the gun cleanin' can wait; they're gone."
Lark slid some more cartridges into the cylinder of the notched gun, slipped it inside his waistband and rose.
"You got a case of smallpox on the ranch now; what you goin' to do with it, Maw?" he demanded querulously. "A gun fight I can handle; I was raised on 'em. But how do you expect me to live up to smallpox? Answer me that!" Then he observed a certain vacancy in Maw's smile and frowned. "Where's your teeth? Swaller 'em?"
"No, I didn't!" Maw's leathery face showed a tinge of red. "You know as well as I do that I can't eat with them fillin' up my mouth. And as fer smallpox, how else you expect to keep folks from snoopin' around, lookin' fer that boy? Them men suspicioned you, Larkie, you know it as well as I do. It's a mercy I wrung out that sheet and hung it up—they heared the boy movin' around in there. Mebby you didn't see 'em wallin' their eyes that way, but I did. Lucky I could give 'em something for their pains of stretching their ears—you'd likely have two dead men on your hands to explain."
"Feller knows where he's at when it's straight shootin'," Lark contended in a tone of complaining. "This thing of lyin' out of a scrape—"
"I didn't lie, and neither did you. But I expect we'll all of us do some tall old falsifying before we're through. They ain't goin' to let the matter rest where it's at, Lark. You'd ought of thought about these things—Lark, do you s'pose them fellers will stop and quiz Jake about our Mr. Smith?"
"My Jonah!" Lark ejaculated under his breath, and went out bareheaded to see for himself.
He found Jake leaning against the shed wall with his hands in his pants pockets and his mouth wide open, laughing with a silent quaking of his whole body. He stopped when Lark walked up to him and pointed to where two horsemen were making one blurred shadow on the trail down past the meadow.
"Smoky Ford's goin' t' have a hell of a time supplyin' the demand fer carbolic acid and such," Jake declared maliciously. "And there goes two men that'll bile their shirts, I betcha." He gave Lark a facetious poke in the ribs. "Dunno what the idee is, but I rode right in your dust. They come down past the bunk house and wanted to know what we done with the outfit of the feller that rode in here with smallpox, and was he broke out bad. I played 'er strong, y' betcha. Told 'em I'd burnt saddle, bridle, blanket an' all the clothes the feller was wearin' at the time, an' shot an' cremated the hoss—by his consent durin' a loocid minute. An' as fer bein' broke out, I tells 'em you couldn't put a burnt match down anywhere on his face without bustin' a sore. Told 'em it was the worst case I ever seen. I kinda had t' play 'er with m' eyes shet, Lark, but if you'd saw fit t' have a man here that was down with smallpox, I knowed damn' well he'd oughta have it mighty bad an' be right down sick with it. Hunh?"
"You shore made 'im sick, all right," Lark grunted, and went off to the house without another word.
Lark stacked his cup and saucer in his breakfast plate, added knife, fork and spoon as range custom had taught him to do, and reached absently for his tobacco sack and papers. Maw was going to spoil the kid, he thought. Already she was mystifying him with a fascinating game of "Two-little-birds-set-on-a-hill," with bits of the inner lining of an eggshell pasted on her fore-fingers to represent the two little birds, and sending the kid into hilarious squeals when Jack and Jill flew away and returned again with incomprehensible facility.
"Maw," said Lark, as he drew a match sharply along the underside of his chair, "looks like that smallpox is about cured, right now. I'm goin' to Smoky Ford, and I might be late gettin' back. Anybody you don't like the looks of rides into the Basin, why, there's the shotgun loaded with buckshot. She kicks, so hold her tight to your shoulder and pull one trigger at a time. You'll find extra shells in my room, in the cupboard behind the door. Don't stand fer no monkey work, Maw. The boys ain't likely to get in with that bunch of cattle before to-morra, so it'll be you and Jake to hold the fort; and Bud—" His eyes went to the glum face of his handsome young nephew.
"I'll ride with you, if you're damn' fool enough to go hunting trouble," Bud stated calmly, pushing back his chair.
"If Bat Johnson comes here again, I'll shoot him," said the boy abruptly, ignoring Maw's little white birds while he stared across at Lark. "He's a mean devil. Meaner 'n gran'pa. He—he goes an' tells gran'pa everything. He's a mean old tattle-tale."
"Now, Lark," Maw began worriedly, "there ain't a mite of use in you going to town. Them men was scared off last night. You couldn't hire 'em to come here and run the risk—"
"That's where you're fooled, Maw. They'll be back, don't you fret—leave 'em alone. My old dad brought me up to meet trouble halfway down the trail and shootin' as I ride. It's a good way—only way I know anything about. The Meddalark's never learnt how to lie and dodge, Maw, and now's a pore time to begin, looks like to me. Last night don't set well with me; when you come to think it over, I'm the feller that's got to live with me the closest and the longest, Maw. I'd hate to have to live with a feller all my life that I was ashamed of." He smiled suddenly with a boyish grin. "You see, Maw, I kinda put a spoke in the wheel of destiny, and she's liable to bust something if she ain't watched till she hits her stride again.
"Son, yore fightin' days are yet to come. How about some more gumdrops? You be a good boy to-day, and mind what Maw tells you, and mebbe there'll be a bag of candy in my pocket when I git back. You betcha."
Maw rose and stood goblinlike behind the boy's chair, her face turned grayish under the tan.
"Larkie, I know that town better than you do. There's a mean, low-lived bunch hanging around that I wouldn't put nothing past. If you must go, wait till the boys come with the cattle so you can have help. Six of you won't be any too many to face Palmer's bunch, and what saloon loafers he can drum up in town. Lark, Iknow. I was there when that trouble with the Willis boys come up, and I know just what that mob is capable of when they've got somebody to stir 'em up. You wait, Larkie. Don't go and do anything foolish, like riding to Smoky Ford to-day, right when—" Her voice broke and she turned her back on them, wiping her eyes surreptitiously on her apron.
"I like the way you count me," Bud cried with thin cheerfulness. "Never mind, Maw. I can rope and throw Lark any time he gets to horning in where he shouldn't, and I promise you that he isn't going to pull open any hornet's nest just to see how it's made. And Lark's right about one thing, anyway. The best thing to do, now it's pretty well known where we stand, is to ride in and show we aren't ashamed of ourselves. The Willis boys were afraid, Maw. They tried to run, and then when they were caught, they begged like whipped pups. And moreover, they were guilty as hell. Buck up, Maw." He went over and patted her on the shoulder. "Lark isn't going to do anything you'd be ashamed of."
"If you see gran'pa," said the boy fiercely, "you tell—tell him I'm goin' t' stay with—with you. Tell him I—I'm goin' t' kill him when I get big."
Lark looked down at him thoughtfully, smiled a bit at Maw's shocked expostulations, and turned to the door.
"I'll sure tell him that, son," he promised gravely. "And don't you worry a minute about me, Maw."
Maw did worry, however. She would have worried more if she could have seen and heard what was going on in Smoky Ford that morning. Old Palmer—who must have been old in sin, since he was not more than forty-five—had ridden in early with Johnson, White and two others of similar type. He did not go to the sheriff, as a man would have done whose cause was unassailable, but had talked in the saloons, his listeners for the most part those men who had joined in the search for the lost boy.
"Smallpox, my eye!" Palmer cried thickly. "There ain't a case in the country. It was my son's boy that they had hid away in that room—and us all huntin' the hills for him! It's like the Meddalark—an outlaw bunch if ever there was one. Look at old man Larkin! If ever a man deserved stringin' up, he did. And Lark and that kid nephew ain't any better. Stealin' calves from me right along—and now they take the boy and hide him away in a room—" There was a great deal of the same kind of talk, for Palmer was not the man to let anything slip away from him.
Smoky Ford men should have stopped to wonder why Palmer the tight-fisted was buying whisky for every man that joined the listening group around him. It never had happened before that any one could remember, nor was it likely to happen again. But men do not as a rule stop to ask why, when the bartender is busy and makes no sign that he expects pay for every filled glass. Palmer's money was good that morning; he had a grievance and the men who had turned out to search for a lost child discovered that Palmer was a human kinda cuss, after all, and that it looked as if a crime had been committed boldly, in broad daylight. Then Bat Johnson artfully crystallized the growing sentiment born of whisky and Palmer's loud-mouthed denunciations.
"Hell, if it was a horse that was stole, that p'ticular Meddalark bunch would be busted up in short order. Being a kid that's made 'way with—" he stopped there to empty his glass "—why, mebby we oughta let 'em get away with it. Some places, though, folks count humans worth as much as horses, anyway."
"Damn' right," a Palmer man muttered. "I'm goin' t' ride up river, t'night, and ask how about it. Bat an' me figures we c'n clean out that nest by our lonely, an' git the kid back. Rest of you folks better pull the blankets over your heads t'night er you might hear shootin'."
"Rope beats that," suggested another, his tongue thickened by what had been poured over it.
Two or three grunted approval—a bit uncertainly, because in normal times they liked the Meadowlark outfit, Lark himself in particular, and they didnotlike Palmer.
"Better send the sheriff after the kid," one level-headed cowpuncher advised. "Lark just done it fer a josh, most likely."
"Yeah, better send the sheriff up there," some one agreed.
"Sheriff ain't here," said Palmer shortly. The crowd was colder on the scent than he liked. Had he known it, there had been hints among the searchers that the boy was better off in the hills than with his grandfather, and that he had probably run away. Which proves that they were human enough in their mental reactions if left alone.
He presently left that saloon and wandered into another, and there were plenty of half-drunken men by that time who would follow him for the free drinks that were in it. By noon the crowd was convinced that stealing a child is as serious a crime as stealing a horse and that the punishment should be as swift and sure. And it is a fact that when men dealt with the crime of horse-stealing they did not stop to inquire whether the owner had been kind to the beast. A horse was a horse, and stealing was stealing. So the Meadowlark outfit was declared outlaw, and at least fifty men prepared to stage a lynching that night in Meadowlark Basin.
They were making the last sinister plans and electing a captain of the mob—Palmer, of course—when Lark rode into town and down the road that was called a street, Bud's right stirrup swinging close to his left one. A man crossing the street to a saloon gave them a startled glance and dived inside bearing all the earmarks of one who is about to spill a mouthful of amazing news.
"Right there's the bee tree," Lark observed under his breath, and rode after him. The half door was still swinging when Lark's horse pushed in with a snort of distaste for the job, and Lark himself ducked his tall hat crown under the casing.
"Howdy, folks," he cried cheerful greeting. "Come on down to the Chester House, will you? I've got something to tell you—and I want Palmer there, particular. Fetch him along—I see he's here. Missed him at the ranch." He began backing out again. "If you please," he added carefully, as a polite afterthought.
Outside, he headed for the next saloon, looked in and found no one there but the bartender. Him he beckoned with a crooked finger, and rode on to the next, with Bud beside him and the mob hurrying curiously at his heels. Lark's restless eyes darted to Bud's right hand that fumbled the butt of his six-shooter thrust within his belt, and he grinned and shook his head.
"Don't think you'll need it, m' son," he said softly, as they reached the little hotel with the high platform in front, and he swung his horse to meet the crowd. There was no smile now on his lips, and his eyes were steady except for the light that flickered deep within.
"All right, folks. Just put Palmer up in front here, will you? I've got a message for him that I promised to deliver."
"Ransom, eh?" Palmer's teeth showed under his lifted lip. "You're crazy to come here and stick your neck in the noose—"
"You shut up, will you?" Lark's voice was so quiet that men in the rear crowded forward to hear what he was saying. "I'll do the talking for a minute. No, the boy you been hunting sent you a message. He said to tell you that he was going to stay with me, and that when he's big enough, he's going to kill you." Lark paused. "I think he'll do it, Palmer. There's good stuff in that kid and he won't forget." He lifted his eyes to the crowd behind Palmer.
"Folks, that little kid has got welts all over him, just about, where Palmer quirted him. He's between eight and nine years old, just the age when a boy plays the hardest and grows the fastest—and when I seen him he was out in the field following a heavy drag around (or trying to) and the team he had to handle was the kind you need a pitchfork to go in the stall with 'em. The black lammed out with his heels while I was there talkin' to the kid, and the gray was wallin' his eyes and watchin' for a chance. Palmer loves that boy, don't you think? He ought to have him back. Must save him a dollar a day, and don't cost as much to feed a kid as it does a man; not that kid, anyway. You can count his ribs as far as you can see him, when his shirt's off. Starved him, Palmer did. And beat him till—" Lark stopped and swallowed and blinked, and the crowd moved uneasily and sent sidelong glances at one another.
"So the kid will carry some of them marks till he grows up, and he ain't likely to forget. He'll kill Palmer as sure as God made little apples, if Palmer ain't killed already by the time the kid's growed up t' be a man. Palmer's got that to look forward to. But that's the kid's game, and I wouldn't for the world get in and spoil it for him. I hope Palmer lives with that in mind—that the kid he beat raw is growin' fast as he can and lookin' forward to the time when he can kill the devil that used him so.
"But, as I say, that's the kid's game. What I come after Palmer for is to put the Meddalark brand on him with my quirt. I never did try to draw that bird on a man's hide, but I'll never start younger, and I feel like I'm artist enough to mark this damn' long-ear, till the kid can get around to beef him. I been lookin' at the marks on the kid's back, so I've got them to go by. Palmer, don't make me kill you! I'd hate to cheat the kid like that."
Lark, easing himself to one side in the saddle, ready to dismount swiftly, halted Palmer's incipient flight as if he had caught him by the collar.
"All right, Lark. I've got him covered," snapped Bud, just behind him, "Go to it." He spurred forward. "Give me your bridle reins," he added matter-of-factly.
On the ground, quirt in hand, Lark advanced upon Palmer, who tried to shrink into the crowd and was shoved back into the open space as unhesitatingly as if these men had not been drinking his whisky and absorbing his viewpoint since morning. Palmer staggered under the impetus of the shove, and Lark caught him expertly by the collar, yanked his coat off, grabbed again and went to work, punctuating the swish and thud of the quirt by words that bit into the soul of the man like acid.
"Drop that gun!" This was Bud, cutting short Bat Johnson's half-formed determination to do murder. "This is no shooting match—unless some fool like you makes it so." Upon the close-packed, staring crowd Bud was calmly riding herd, Lark's horse dancing at the end of his reins and lashing out at any man who pressed forward. Strange as it might have seemed to those who had watched the slow forming of the mob idea, the strongest sentiment in that crowd was irritation against Bud, who blocked their view of the show. Men darted to the hotel platform and scrambled up to a vantage point, eager to miss no vicious cut of that flailing quirt.
Palmer, on his knees, begged for mercy. It was pitiable, nauseating, to hear how he wept and pleaded under the blows.
"Did you quit beating the kid when he cried?" Lark's voice was merciless, his eyes aglare with rage.
"He'll kill you for that," a man told Lark soberly when it was all over, and Palmer had slunk away with his shoulders bent and bloody, mouthing curses and threats. "You'll need a bullet-proof back from now on. Come have a drink."
"No—thank you just the same." Lark lifted a hand, stared dully at the way it was trembling, and wiped the beads of perspiration off his face. "I—the kid is waiting for some candy I promised him." He reached out a groping hand for the reins Bud was offering, and mounted like a man who is very, very tired. "I—guess we'd better be goin'. Maw'll be worried."
"And so," Bud remarked thoughtfully, when they had ridden a mile down the trail toward the Meadowlark, thirty-five miles away, "you've stopped a lynching party, marked the back of the richest and meanest man in the country for life, staked yourself to a feud that will keep you guessing from now on, and annexed another responsibility in the form of a boy you'll feel you've got to educate same as you did me. Lark, you damned fool, you're the kind of man King Arthur would have been proud of."
"Hunh?" Larked glanced up from tightening the scanty string on the lumpy bag of candy that was too big to go in his pocket and so must be carried for thirty-five miles in his hand. "Talk United States, darn you; I ain't ridin' the range fer no king!"
Dust lay deep in the trail and spurted up in little clouds from under the tired feet of Bud Larkin's sweat-streaked sorrel. Smoky Ford squatted as always with her board shacks huddled about her one street and the rear windows staring stupidly at the hills beyond the swift-flowing river hidden behind the willows and the steep bank. The afternoon was half gone and the mid-July wind was hot and dry, and Bud had been in the saddle since early morning. He rode up to the hitch-rail in front of the Elkhorn saloon and dismounted, wondering a little at the crowd uproariously filling the place. Moving a bit stiffly, he went inside, the big rowels of his spurs making a pleasantbr-br-brron the boards, the chains clinking faintly under the arch of his high-heeled boots as he walked.
The whole of his high gray hat, the brim turned back and skewered to the crown with a cameo pin filched from the neck of a pretty girl whom he had kissed on the mouth for her laughing resistance, looked as if it were afloat on a troubled sea of felt as he pushed through the noisy crowd and up to the bar, his thoughts all of beer cold and foaming in the glass. The cameo pin and the pretty girl were forgotten, the smoldering eyes under his straight brown brows held no vision of gentle dalliance, though Bud was a good-looking young devil of twenty-two who gave blithe greeting to Romance when he met her on the lonely trails. His mouth, given easily to smiles that troubled the dreams of many a range girl, was grim now and dusty in the corners as he waited thirstily for the tall glass mug ribbed on the outside and spilling foam over the top; took one long swallow when the busy bartender pushed the glass toward him, and turned, elbowing his way to an empty table against the wall where he could sit down and rest himself and take his time over the refreshment.
Negligent greeting he gave to one or two whose eyes he met, but for the most of them he had no thought. It was not his kind of a crowd, being composed largely of the town drifters and a few from the neighboring ranches. The cause of their foregathering was not far to seek. Steve Godfrey was present and deeply engaged in letting his world know that he was having one of his sprees—during which he was wont to proclaim loudly that he was prying off the lid, taking the town apart, painting her red; whatever trite phrase came first to his loose lips. On such occasions he lacked neither friends nor an audience.
"Ev-rybody dance!" Steve was shouting drunkenly, his face turned toward the doorway where a man was entering whose back bore certain scars, they said, which Lark could best explain; Palmer, whose silent enmity was felt by the Meadowlark even though he had as yet made no open move against them, "Lock the door! 'S my saloon—bought 'er for the next two hours! Drink 'er dry, boys, andev-rybody dance!"
Palmer laughed sourly and shut the inner door with a bang, pushing the bolt across. There was a general stampede for the bar, behind which Steve Godfrey was pulling down bottles with both hands and laughing wide-mouthed as they were snatched from him. Bud's lip curled.
A young fellow at the next table was sketching rapidly in a notebook, glancing up after each pencil stroke to catch fresh glimpses of some face in the crowd. Bud lifted his beer, took a sip and set down the mug, watching sidelong the careless, swift work of his neighbor. A stranger in the town, Bud tagged him. A tenderfoot, judging by the newness of his riding clothes, the softness of his hands, the town pallor of his face. He looked up and smiled faintly with that wistfulness of the lonely soul begging silently for friendship, and Bud's scornful young mouth relaxed into a grin.
"Great stuff—all new to me, though," the young man confided, nodding toward the massed backs before him.
"Crazy bunch of booze-fighters," Bud condemned the crowd tersely.
"Say, whyn't you up here drinkin' with the rest?" Steve Godfrey, standing on a keg behind the bar, bawled angrily at the artist. "You, I mean, over there by the wall. What's the matter with you? Sick at the stummick?"
"Why, no. Thank you just the same, but I don't drink liquor."
"Don't, ay?" Steve scowled and spat into a corner. "Well, if you don't drink, dammit, you'll dance!"
Bud moved his slim body sidewise so that his gun hung handily within reach of his fingers. The young man shrugged his shoulders, closed his notebook and put it away with the pencil. The crowd had swung round and was staring and waiting to see what would happen next.
"I don't mind dancing for you," smiled the artist, "but I can't dance without music, you know."
"Can't, ay?" Steve was happy now, bullying some one who would not fight back. "Say! you git up and dance tothis!"
The stranger looked at the gun in Steve's hand, glanced into Steve's eyes and stifled a yawn.
"You know very well that's impossible," he said patiently. "I've always said that this dancing to the music of a six-shooter is a fake, invented by some Eastern author for melodramatic effect. I still believe you got the idea out of some book. I wouldn't mind dancing for you, but you couldn't possibly beat time with that gun. Six shots, and I'd have to stop and wait while you reloaded. The thing isn't practical. If any one here could furnish some real music—"
"I have a mouth-harp, though you may not call that real music," Bud announced unexpectedly, and finished his beer with one long swallow. It amused young Bud to see the stupid indecision on the face of Steve Godfrey, who lacked the wit to handle an old range joke when it chanced to take a new turn.
"Good!" The young man smiled frankly. "Clear a space over there by the door, will you?" He looked inquiringly at Bud. "What can you play?"
"I can play anything you can dance," Bud grinned reply, well pleased with the small diversion. "How about a good old buck-and-wing?"
"All right, buck-and-wing it is." The stranger nodded, cast another glance toward that non-plused bully, Steve Godfrey, who stood on the keg with the gun sagging in his hand and his mouth half open, and took his place in the center of the makeshift stage.
Bud shot him a puzzled glance not unmixed with a certain tolerant contempt. The young fellow's manner gave no hint of fear, so why should he dance at the bidding of a drunken bully? Bud did not like to think that the tenderfoot had seized the first excuse for showing off before so sorry an audience.
However, the motive was no business of Bud's. He polished the harmonica on his sleeve, moistened his boyish lips that turned so easily to smiles, cupped his hands around the little instrument so dear to the heart of a cowboy and swung into a jig tune. Sitting on the edge of the table with his head tilted to one side, eyes half closed and watching the dancer while a well-made riding boot tapped the beat of the measures on the rough board floor, Bud never knew the picture he made.
The dancer's eyes studied the lines of his clean young face and throat, the tilt of his hat with the cameo brooch pinning back the broad brim, the slim, muscular body and straight legs; studied and recorded each curve and line in a photographic memory. And he could dance the while! Smoky Ford had never seen anything like it. Hornpipe and highland fling he did, never taking his eyes off Bud, but mechanically fitting the steps to each tune as it was played. Even the free whisky was forgotten as the crowd pressed close to watch him.
Then Bud awoke to the fact that his lips were getting sore from rubbing across the reeds, that time was passing and that he had urgent business in another part of town. Fifteen minutes or more had been spent when he had thought to drink a glass of beer and go on. He put away his mouth-harp and started for the door.
"Hey! Come back here with that music!" Steve Godfrey shouted arrogantly. "Where the hell you goin'?"
"Where did you get the crazy notion you could give orders tome?" Bud flung contemptuously over his shoulder as he slid back the bolt.
"You stay where you're at! That door stays shut till I give the word to open it!" Steve was off the keg and plowing toward him through the crowd.
"You'll stay shut a heap longer," flared Bud, and gave Steve an uppercut that sent his teeth into his tongue and jarred him cruelly. Behind Steve a lean face leered at Bud; the face of Palmer, who was edging forward as if he meant to take a hand. The key had been turned in the lock and removed—by Palmer, Bud would have sworn. The knowing look in his eyes betrayed that much.
Steve was coming at him again, gun in hand and mouthing threats; but the stranger who had danced managed to hook an agile foot between his legs and throw Steve so hard that he bounced. Then he swung a chair, and the crowd backed.
Bud opened the door by the simple expedient of shooting the lock off it, and went out with belled nostrils like a bull buffalo on the rampage. The strange youth followed close behind, the chair still held aloft and ready for a charge.
"Come on, Lightfoot," Bud snorted. "That bunch fights mostly with their mouths." A little farther down the street his temper cooled to the point where further speech came easily. "Darned chumps! I guess I quit rather suddenly, but it wasn't because I was tired of watching you dance. You're a dandy. But I have to get into the bank, and it's about closing-up time. I just happened to think of it."
"I'd danced quite long enough. I wanted to leave and meant to the first chance," the stranger dubbed Lightfoot confessed. "I guess they're a pretty tough lot in there; but I want to get acquainted, and I knew they'd probably enjoy my dancing and feel more friendly toward me. I'm anxious to shake down into the community and be considered just one of you."
"Are you classing me with that bunch back there?" Bud gave him a studying look.
"No-o—I meant the whole country, when I spoke. I'm a stranger here, and it seems pretty hard to get acquainted." He shook his head ruefully. "Now, I'm afraid I've only made matters worse, fighting like that."
"That wasn't a fight. They've gone back to lapping up free booze by now, and don't remember anything about it. Dirty sneaks, most of them are, and the less you shake down and be considered just one of them the better."
He went up the steps of the little, private bank at the end of the street, rattled the door knob, frowned at the green-shaded windows and looked at his watch.
"Three minutes to three, and I'm two minutes fast," he commented. "They've no business locking up ahead of time. I've just got to get in, that's all there is about it."
"There's a side door," the stranger suggested, and Bud gave a nod of assent and led the way around the corner of the building. A man with a packhorse was riding out from the open lot behind the bank, going toward the river at a shacking trot. Bud gave him a casual glance, turned to the bank door and discovered that it was locked also, an unusual circumstance at that hour. He gave the door a kick or two by way of protest.
"This is one hell of a town!" he snorted. "Let's take a look at the back windows. The cashier surely must be inside, and I'll raise him—if I have to take the darn bank apart."
"I'm afraid I'm partly to blame," apologized the stranger. "I didn't know you were in a hurry."
"I quit in time. The bank doesn't close until three, and a fellow can always get in the side door any time within an hour after that. It's got no business to be locked up like a jail this time of day." They were inspecting the windows in the rear and saw that they were all closed in spite of the July heat. "Lightfoot, don't ever tell me you're living here because you like the place, or I'm liable to think you're crazy."
"Lightfoot" grinned.
"I'm here because my sister and I liked the name on the map. It seemed to be located right in the heart of the cattle country, where dramatic incident and local color should be at their best. Our name isn't Lightfoot, though. I don't understand how you got the idea it was. My name is Brunelle. I'm Lawrence Brunelle and my sister's name is Margaret; Marge and Lawrie we're always called. We've been here only a week."
"That's a week longer than I'd want to stay," Bud declared. "You picked about the meanest place in Montana when you chose Smoky Ford. I wish to thunder I knew where that cashier went. He doesn't drink, so it's of no use looking in the saloons. Say, if I stand on the door knob and get a squint over the curtain, could you hold my legs and steady me? The darn knob might bust." He stooped to unbuckle his spurs. "I tell you, Lightfoot, there's something wrong about this bank being closed up tight as a drum a good hour sooner than it should be."
With the ease of any other young broncho fighter he mounted the door knob, balanced there on the ball of one foot and bent to peer in through the three-inch space above the green shade that had been pulled down over the glass panel in the door. An awkward position, but he did not keep it long. When he dropped and faced Brunelle his eyes were wide and black with excitement.
"He's dead in there, Lightfoot! The whole top of his head is caved in, and the vault door's wide open!"
Spurs and crumpled gloves in one hand, Bud led the way across the street and down several doors to where James Delkin, the bank's president, ran a livery stable—he being a banker in name only, as is the way of village banks that cater to the local trade and find few customers, though these may carry rather large accounts. Delkin was swearing at his hostler when the two arrived, but he gave over that pastime long enough to hear the news. His face went tallow white.
"I told you first, Mr. Delkin. The rest of the town is boozing in the Elkhorn, and no one knows what has happened. I hate to push my private business into this, but it's a long ride to the Meadowlark, and Lark sent in a check to be cashed. Fifteen hundred dollars, it is. Will this murder make any difference?"
"Difference?" Delkin slowed his tottering run to stare at Bud. "If the vault's cleaned out, you can't get fifteen cents! My God, man, the bank will be broke!"
"Oh, say!" Brunelle's voice held panic. "My sister and I brought all our money with us and banked it here, just last week!"
Delkin was nervously trying to fit a key into the lock of the side door, and he did not seem to hear. They pushed in together, Bud thoughtfully closing the door behind them with the idea of staving off the excitement that would follow hard on the heels of the town's enlightenment.
Delkin lunged through the partition door, rushed to the open vault, gave one look and turned to the grewsome figure lying asprawl on the floor. He looked at the shelf behind the cashier's window, at the pulled-out, empty drawer beneath and slumped into a chair, his whole form seeming to have shrunk and aged perceptibly.
"Charlie dead," he wailed, "and the bank cleaned out—ruined! My God, what can I do?"
"Do?" Bud's eyes snapped. "Get after the gang that did it! You can get the money back if you pull yourself together. They can't eat it, and—the way Charlie looks, I'd say this happened not more than half an hour ago." He turned to Brunelle, the cameo brooch looking oddly out of place above his hard eyes and grim mouth. "You raise the town, Lightfoot, and I'll fork my horse and get after that pack outfit we saw leaving here as we came around the corner."
"You think he did this?" Brunelle looked startled. "One man couldn't, could he?"
"One man could have seen the gang leave here," Bud retorted impatiently. "Delkin, you stay here. Lightfoot will send some one." He whirled and was gone, running lightly down to where his horse was tied in front of the Elkhorn saloon, from which still rolled the uproar of boisterous celebration of nothing.