“Here we comes, and there we goes,And where we’ll stop nobody knows.”
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 hewashandy 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.
Wasthatwhy 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?
Birds twittering in the poplars and willows by the river wakened Rock when the rose-pink dawn was turning to gold. He lay watching, listening. He could hear the ripple of running water. He could see the bleached hills rising abrupt from the gray-green valley floor. The cool air was like balm on his face. Beyond all doubt this was a pleasant country. If a man could settle on one of these river bottoms, with a couple of hundred cows, in ten years—— But Rock was a long way from peering anxious-eyed into the future.
He sat up and rolled a cigarette. The sun thrust searching yellow fingers into the valley of the Marias. The winter-bleached log walls of the house drew his gaze and set his mind to work in fruitless speculation. This must be quite an outfit, he reflected. The house was big, built to accommodate a score of men. He had marked a bunk room across that hall from the roomy kitchen. The stable argued plenty of riding stock in winter. There were machinery and wagons, even a spring buggy, under a lean-to shed. Yet apparently the place was held down by a young woman, a baby, and one man. Hadn’t the girl said there were no other men? Still, she had been more or less fussed at the time. The riders might be afar on round-up. But Rock had that sense of abandonment, just the same. It was rather puzzling. Whereupon he reached for his boots, dressed, fed and watered the horses, and sat down on the river bank to watch the clear water sparkle in the sun, while he waited some sign of life from the house.
He didn’t wait long. A voice at his elbow roused him to attention. The girl had come unseen and unheard. Her dark hair was coiled in a neat rope about her head. She had on a short gray skirt and a white blouse. Her skin, in the clear morning light, was like a piece of satin, dusky and transparent. Rock had seen enough of slatternly women on ranches to make him appreciate freshness. There was a peculiar interest-compelling quality about this girl, over and above her youth and charm. Rock had felt it last night. He felt it now, even when she said no more than a low-toned: “Good-morning, Mr. Holloway.
“I thought you had gone,” she continued, “until I saw you moving around here. I must have seemed rather inhospitable last night, not even thinking where you were to sleep.”
“A cowpuncher,” Rock drawled, “generally carries his bed with him when he’s on the move. And there’s all outdoors to spread it in.”
“Of course. But when you come to a ranch—— Well, breakfast’s ready.”
He walked with her to the house.
“I got up early,” she said when they had finished. “Betty generally sleeps till seven or eight o’clock. I thought——”
She stopped a moment, then continued with quiet decision:
“I want to bury him.”
“Here?” Rock didn’t mistake her meaning.
“Yes. I’m sure he’d as soon be buried here as anywhere. There is nothing else we can do for him. You know what this country is like. We’re practically out of the world.”
“Isn’t this part of the country organized at all?” Rock asked. “No local authorities?”
“Are you a complete stranger here?” she countered. “I didn’t think so by the way you spoke of the Seventy Seven last night.”
“I passed through this country last fall with a trail herd bound from Texas to Canada.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “Well, this Territory of Montana is a good deal of a no man’s land, outside of the western part, where there is a lot of mining. Fort Benton is the nearest thing to a town. It’s quite a place, but it isn’t a regularly organized community. There’s a United States marshal there, I think, and a judge comes down from the western part of the State, once a year, to hold court. There aren’t enough people to form a proper county organization yet, although it’s talked of. When my father came in here four years ago, we were the first outfit on the Marias. Betty is the first white child born north of the Missouri River in the Territory, I believe. So, you see,” she motioned abruptly with her hands, “there’s not much use running around in circles telling that Doc Martin has been shot. Last night I was in a terrible state. But I can think straight now. Doc is dead. We can’t do anything but bury him. I’d like to get it over with before Betty wakes up. She doesn’t know. She was awfully fond of Doc, and he of her.”
“All right,” Rock agreed. If there were no formalities to be complied with, no coroner to sit in inquiry, no sheriff to seek trace of the killers, the sooner the dead man was buried the better. Trail outfits buried their dead and went on. And, perhaps, the last rites men performed for their dead under such circumstances lost nothing of sincerity because they were informal.
So Rock, shovel in hand, followed her to a spot a hundred yards east of the house, near the river bank. Under a giant cottonwood stood a small picket inclosure. Within that inclosure lifted two grassy mounds, long and narrow, a painted board at the end of each. For a second Rock thought the girl would break down again.
“It’s ghastly,” she whispered. “It’s almost as if there were a curse on this place, if I believed in such a thing. Mamma died when Betty was born. A horse fell on dad. They’re both there. Now Doc.”
The soft mold dug easily. When Rock had a hole deep enough, they returned to the house. Some time between dark and dawn the girl had changed the man’s clothing and wiped clean every trace of blood. She had put on him a clean, soft shirt, with a coat and trousers of blue serge. He looked calm and contented, as if he slept. And Rock, gazing at the still face, marveled again at the resemblance to himself. He would have liked to meet this man alive, he thought.
They wrapped the body in heavy canvas, swathed like a mummy. A coffin was out of the question. Sawed lumber there was none. Except furniture, freighted in from afar, everything about that place was hewn from raw timber with axes. And canvas, Rock thought, was as good as a steel casket. The dead are careless of their housing. Only the living fret over such things.
He piled on the last shovelful of earth and stood aside. The girl looked down at the raw soil. Her lips quivered. She dropped to her knees. She seemed to whisper something like a prayer. Rock stood with bared head in the morning sun that sent bright shafts of light through the crooked boughs above. Then he left her, still on her knees, her head bowed, her fingers locked tight together.
Some minutes later he heard her stirring in the house. The sun grows hot early on the plains in midsummer. Rock had planted himself on the porch steps, in the shade, debating his next move. Should he ride on about his business? Logically, yes. He had a definite task to perform. It was time he set about it. He was on the ground. This was only an incident, a happening by the way. Yet his mind was full of this woman and child, alone on a ranch in the wilderness. The girl had said there were no other men. But this ranch and equipment spelled men and stock. It was more than the cabin of a settler striving for a foothold and security in a virgin land. A woman with a three-year-old baby had no business alone on a ranch in this waste, without a man in the background.
That problem—which was more a state of feeling than a problem, Rock knew—was solved for him in unexpected fashion. He rose at last and entered the house, specifically to ask her if there was anything else he could do before he departed.
The girl had the child in a high chair and was giving the youngster her breakfast. Silently she poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Rock. When he drank it she said:
“Come outside. I want to talk to you.”
Rock followed her to the porch.
“You told me last night you were a stock hand in search of occupation. Do you want to go to work for me?”
Rock liked her directness. His mind was quick to grasp possibilities. Work to Rock meant activity on the range He was next door to the Maltese Cross. Two birds had been killed before with one stone. Still, he wasn’t fond of mysteries that involved sudden death. He liked to know where he was going when he took a new trail.
“I’d as soon ride range here as anywhere,” he said. “It’s immaterial to me who I work for, so long as it’s my kind of work.”
“Are you one of these stock hands that considers it beneath his dignity to work for any outfit with less than ten thousand head of cattle?” she asked, with a comical note of asperity.
“Well, no,” he laughed. “Hardly so finicky as that. If you’ve got a rider’s job for me, consider me on the pay roll. Only, I’d like to know, if I’m going to work for you, whether I’m likely to find myself being buried some morning at sunrise—and why?”
“Wait a minute,” she said. She turned back into the house. In a second she was back with a hat on and two shiny tin pails.
“Come down to the stable with me, and we’ll talk this over while I milk. I was in such a state last night that I forgot the cows. Will you saddle up and bring them in out of the pasture?”
Rock drove two amiable-looking red cows from the far end of a small pasture to the corral. The girl tied both to the fence and sat down beside one on a low stool.
“Can you milk?” she asked, with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“Never did,” he answered truthfully.
“It’s considered woman’s work, I suppose,” she replied. “But even the wild and woolly cowboy, I notice, likes real milk and cream and butter. I don’t want you to milk cows, though. I’m not running a dairy. I have about eight hundred cattle scattered around here.”
“Your ranch outfit looks like about eight thousand,” Rock remarked.
“We had more than eight thousand when we came here,” she said. “That is why the house is big and the stable. My father drove three trail herds in here from the Pecos. But we lost most of them.”
“Oh, I see,” Rock commented.
“So, as I said, I have about eight hundred cattle on the range. I have a rider with the Maltese Cross round-up. I need another rider on the ranch.”
“But if you keep a rep with the Cross,” Rock interpolated, “does it matter if your stock does scatter considerable? The outfit would brand the calves and ship your beef as long as you supply a man and a string of horses.”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I see you know range work. I suppose what you say is true. Only I have reasons for handling cattle in my own way. But that’s all beside the point. What you want to know is whether you’ll be expected to step into a dead man’s boots and take the risk of getting shot for some reason or other, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rock admitted. “I have no hankering to inherit a private war along with a forty-dollar job.”
“It’ll be fifty if you work for me,” she said. “There may be a risk. Not if you can be around here and work for me, without getting sentimental and jealous. That was what got Doc killed, I believe. I’m sure it was.”
Perhaps Rock looked his curiosity and surprise. The girl stood up. She had worked, as she talked, and finished milking the first cow.
“I had better explain a little,” she said calmly. “As I said, four years ago we came in here with nearly nine thousand cattle and a dozen riders in our outfit. I was eighteen then. I had just finished school. Our first winter here was a bad one—a terrible winter of hard frost and deep snow and storms. In the spring a round-up out two months gathered less than five hundred cattle in our brand. Betty was born that winter, and mamma died. The next summer a horse fell on my father, injured his back, so that he was a helpless cripple for nearly a year. Then he died. He left all there was to me and Betty. I have full control of everything until she comes of age. So I have managed here ever since. Mostly with one man, sometimes with two.”
So that was that. The dead man was a range rider, not a husband, and the baby was a sister. She was a level-headed, plucky girl to run a shoe-string outfit by herself. Yet he suspected that in this man’s country, men would make it easy for this capable and determined young person. Rock’s interest quickened.
“Wonder you didn’t sell out and go back to your folk,” he suggested.
“I have none—at least none that I care much about,” she replied. “And how much would I get for five or six hundred cattle? A few thousand dollars. The ranch isn’t salable. Who would pay money for a ranch, when land and water can be had anywhere for taking? Why should I sell out? I know cattle. This is a new country, a good range. We may not have another hard winter in a lifetime. It just happened. The old trappers and the Indians never saw a winter like that. Every four years my cattle will double. After a while it will make Betty and me independent. Why should I sell out? What would I do? Go to some town and be a clerk in a store?”
The vehemence in her voice made Rock smile.
“Oh, you got the right idea,” he admitted. “You’re working on the same principle that has built up every big outfit in the country. Only, it’s sort of unexpected in a woman no bigger than a minute.”
“Please understand me clearly,” she said, with a peremptory note in her curiously musical voice. “I don’t need any sympathy from anybody. I know what I’m doing, and I’m doing very well here. I want any one who works for me to work on exactly the same basis as he would work for any cow outfit. I don’t want any of this ‘That’s all right, little girl, we’ll see you through,’ business. That’s mostly what got Doc Martin killed, I suspect. Every man who works for me gets the idea that he’s in love with me.”
“Why blame ’em for that?” Rock interrupted.
“It embarrasses me. I’ve fired two or three for getting mushy. I don’t want that sort of thing. Do you think you can ride for me without getting sentimental—without presently getting the attitude that it’s your duty and privilege to protect me from every man in the country except yourself?”
Rock’s amused smile faded.
“Miss—— I don’t think I got your name.” He stopped.
“Nona Parke. The baby’s name is Betty,” she supplied promptly.
“Well, then, Miss Parke,” Rock said a little stiffly, “I can assure you that if I do draw wages from you I’ll try to earn them without making a bid either for your gratitude or your affection.”
Nona Parke’s gray eyes rested on his for a second with cool appraisement.
“You talk like a man with some sense. If you can handle horses and cattle the way you handle the English language, you ought to be useful.”
“You’re getting too personal,” Rock said rudely. “Tell me about this shooting. That’s what I want to know before I decide whether I want to make myself the same kind of a target. I have ambitions to live and do well in the world, myself.”
“Now you’re getting offended,” she reproached. “And I’m only trying to be frank and have things understood. You can’t imagine what a nuisance men can be sometimes. Doc worked for me ever since dad died. He was a good man. But he persisted in wanting to love me. I let him go once and then took him on again. He promised to behave himself. But he wouldn’t. He was jealous. He couldn’t bear other men coming here to see me. He stirred up trouble for himself with Elmer Duffy, the boss of the Seventy Seven outfit. I am fairly sure that Elmer shot Doc yesterday afternoon.”
She said this reluctantly, but with an earnestness that convinced Rock she really believed it. To him it seemed rather simple. He had seen men quarrel over women before.
“Elmer, I suppose, is a victim, too,” Rock commented. “Was he inclined to be jealous of a good-looking fellow like Doc Martin being in your company all the time?”
“Yes; that’s about it.” She sighed. “It sounds horrid, but it’s true. I’m quite sure Duffy was a little afraid of Doc. Doc had a quick temper, and he was supposed to be rather deadly. I don’t know how he got that reputation, because I never knew of him having trouble with anybody in this country.”
“And you think they met and shot it out around the bend?” Rock queried.
“No.” She replied soberly. “I think Doc was ambushed. There was only one shot. He had been mean and arbitrary with Elmer Duffy the last time they met. In fact, he threatened him and told him never to set foot on this ranch when I was here alone.”
“Listen, Miss Parke,” Rock said positively. “I know something about Elmer Duffy, myself. I’ll confess that I don’t like his style with men very much. I don’t know what it would be like with women. Elmer belongs to a family that walks roughshod over people when they feel like it. But I don’t think he would lay for your man and bushwhack him.”
“I tell you simply what I believe,” she said gravely. “I don’t know. There is no proof. I wouldn’t breathe this to any one. I only say it to you because I’m asking you to work for me. I don’t know that I would even tell you, if you didn’t look so much like Doc that you could easily be taken for him. If you ride for me, youmayfall heir to whatever bad blood did exist between him and Elmer Duffy. If Doc hadn’t made an issue of me with this man he would still be alive. I don’t want to be a bone of contention. I won’t be. I like men well enough until they get too friendly. If a man works for me, he’s working for me, and that’s all there is to it. So now you know all about it. And I do need a rider to take Doc’s place.”
“It was very inconsiderate of him to get himself killed off when you needed him.” Rock couldn’t forbear the ironic note. “Riders can’t always be picked up in this country just when you want ’em.”
“You’re brutal.” Nona drew herself up, and her eyes filled. “I liked Doc. Hewasnice. He was loyal. It made me sick to see him die like that. It made me feel guilty, because I was partly the cause. But I can’t help it that I’m a woman. Can’t you understand? I’m not a callous beast.”
And Rock knew she was not. He knew he had hurt her with that thrust.
“Well, I’ll guarantee not to afflict you with my admiration if I feel any,” he smiled. “And it’s a cowpuncher’s nature to be loyal to the people he works for. If I ever lock horns with Elmer Duffy, it won’t be for the reason you say your man, Doc, did. No. And I like the looks of this country. I’d sort of like to linger on this range for a while. So there doesn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t work for you.”
“All right,” she answered composedly. “If you’ll bunch those horses that are in the pasture, I’ll show you what ones to saddle. I want you to go down the river with me after I’ve milked this other cow.”
While Rock gathered a few horses out of the pasture, he saw a rider cross the flat. The milch cows were in a small corral. Rock bunched the horses in a larger one and walked through the stable to where Nona finished her dairymaid’s task. From the door he saw that the man was Elmer Duffy. Rock’s mind worked fast. He was bound to encounter Duffy some time, and it might as well be now. Duffy’s business was with Nona Parke, not with him. But Rock cared nothing for that. He remembered that he had killed this man’s brother. He was going to live for a time in Duffy’s immediate neighborhood. If Duffy had taken Mark’s death to heart and brooded over it, Rock wanted to know and be ready for what might follow.
But he was hardly prepared for what did happen. He walked straight toward Duffy. The man’s back was toward him. He was talking to Nona. She was just rising from her stool. Duffy was in no way excited. His tone was the habitual slow drawl of the native Texan.
Then Rock spoke.
“Hello, Duffy,” said he.
Duffy wheeled. His arms hung by his sides. There wasn’t the faintest twitch of the fingers hanging a little below his gun belt, nor any quick lighting of his slaty eyes, nor the frowning recognition Rock half expected. True, recognition impended in the man’s attitude. And he was wary—wary without being hostile.
“Hellow, Doc,” he answered evenly.
“Doc!” A ripple of sardonic amusement stirred in Rock. Duffy thought he faced Nona Parke’s dead rider. Rock stood perfectly still for a second or two. The man’s eyes never left his.
“You didn’t expect to see me, did you?” Rock asked.
Surely his voice would establish his identity. Duffy had been in daily contact with Rock Holloway for two months on trail and had known him casually the season earlier. But he didn’t know him now. His words proved that.
“Why, I reckoned I might,” he answered, “seein’ I rode in here. You didn’t expect me to take what you said serious, did you?”
Rock had a retentive memory.
“About you keeping off this ranch?”
Duffy nodded. Rock could understand his watchfulness.
“Shucks! I’ve changed my mind about caring a whoop whether you come here, there, or the other place,” Rock said slowly, “so long as you act white. But there’s something I do want to tell you, Duffy. Up the river yesterday somebody took a pot shot at me. Nona heard it.”
He looked at her. For a second her face was a study. Would she play up to his lead? Rock didn’t know himself precisely why he did this, except that instinctively he took the opening Duffy gave him.
But her words came with sharp emphasis. Her wits were nimble.
“I heard the shot. I didn’t see who fired.”
“I don’t like to be shot at from ambush,” Rock said pointedly.
“You say I’d do that? Did do that?”
A rising inflection put an edge in Duffy’s tone. The tan of his long, homely face went a brick red.
“I didn’t say so. I said I don’t like to be shot at from ambush.”
Duffy stared at him for a second or two.
“Lissen, Doc Martin.” His tone was flat—squeezed dry of all feeling. “You don’t like me. You’ve been kinda high-handed with me more’n once. I don’t suffer with admiration for you, myself. But I’ll tell you this: if I want you, I’ll take you with an even break. I’m no bushwhacker. If somebody shot at you, an’ you think it was me, you got another think comin’. When I shoot atyou, I’ll be lookin’ you in the eye.”
“I’m inclined to take your word for that, Duffy,” Rock said coolly. “If you say you didn’t, we’ll let it go at that.”
“The way you’ve acted with me the last few months,” said Duffy, growing querulous, “I’d as soon shoot it out with you as not. I’m tellin’ you straight, Martin, but it’s up to you to make the break. I don’thunttrouble.”
“Nor do I,” Rock assured him truthfully.
“You musta changed your ways mighty sudden, then,” Duffy retorted.
Rock grinned amiably.
“I have,” said he. “I’ve sort of convinced myself I’ve been barking up the wrong tree, Elmer. I aim to change my ways. Don’t know whether for better or worse. But if you don’t go gunnin’ for me, I certainly don’t hanker to pick a fuss with you.”
Duffy eyed him doubtfully. He turned to the girl.
“Do you reckon he means what he says?”
“He always does, so far as I know,” she told him shortly.
“Well, we might as well let it go at that,” Duffy finally said. “Sounds reasonable.”
“All right. Let her go as she lays.” Rock closed the conversation abruptly by turning on his heel. He walked back through the stable, into the larger corral, where he perched himself on the top rail. He looked down on the sleek backs of Nona Parke’s saddle stock, but his mind was wholly on the amazing fact that he had practically committed himself to a dead man’s identity.
He watched Duffy walk up to the house with Nona, carrying the two pails of milk, saw him stand at the door and talk for a minute. Then he came back, swung into his saddle, and rode around the stable end. Rock tightened up a little. The girl had been a restraining influence. Now, perhaps Duffy would have more to say or do. Long ago Rock had privately estimated Elmer Duffy as the most dangerous of the Duffy quartet, chiefly because he was tenacious of an idea or a grievance and inclined to be moody. But he only looked up at Rock and said:
“You kinda got me goin’. Martin. You’ve changed your tune a heap. You recollect what you told me last time we talked?”
Rock nodded, with only a hazy idea of what he was supposed to have said.
“Let’s get down to cases,” Duffy persisted. “Do I understand that you’ve changed your idea that you got a license to close-herd this girl of Parke’s, any time another man acts like he wanted to speak to her?”
Rock sifted tobacco into a paper.
“I don’t know as I like your way of putting it,” he said, with a pretense at being sullen. “But she’s convinced me she aims to be a free agent. It’s nothing to me who she talks to, from now on. I don’t claim no special privileges no more. She’s made it clear that she’s able to look out for herself, as far as men are concerned.”
Duffy ironed out the smile that started to overspread his face.
“It don’t look to me,” he said thoughtfully, “like any man’s got the inside track with that girl. She sure don’t favor nobody that I know of. So you were just naturally buildin’ up trouble for yourself, takin’ the stand you did.”
“I guess so,” Rock admitted indifferently. “Anyway, I got something else besides her on my mind, now. I’d sure like to find out who tried to pot me yesterday, Duffy. I’d make him hard to catch.”
“Don’t know as I blame you,” Duffy remarked. “But don’t you never think it was me, Doc. I’ve done told you where I stand. So long.”
Yes, Duffy had made it clear enough where he stood. Still, somebody had shot Doc Martin. Rock was still pondering on that problem when Nona came back from the house. She had changed into a pair of overalls and leather chaps. She wore a beautifully made pair of tan riding boots. She looked like a slim, capable boy, with her dark hair tucked out of sight under a felt hat.
“What on earth did you do that for?” she demanded irritably.
“Do what for?” Rock affected ignorance.
“Let him think you were Doc Martin?”
“Well, he was so darned sure of it, for one thing,” Rock answered thoughtfully. “It struck me as a good chance to feel around and find out if he did take that crack at Doc. I don’t believe he did. Also, I think I’ve convinced him that I’m going—as Doc Martin—to mind my own business so far as you’re concerned.”
“I noticed how you managed to create that impression,” Nona admitted. “You were very—very——”
“Adroit,” Rock suggested dryly.
“That’s the word.” She smiled.
“You certainly have——”
“I meant to be,” Rock interrupted, frowning. “I value my scalp, and I never like to scrap over nothing.”
He looked intently at her.
“See here: If people around here persist in taking me for Doc Martin, why not let it go at that?” he suggested.
“Why do you want to pass for him?” she demanded. “Are you on the dodge for something?”
Rock shook his head. He didn’t want to explain to her the possibility of Elmer Duffy starting a blood feud with him over Mark’s death. He had disarmed Duffy, he thought, in his rôle of Doc Martin, no longer jealously hostile toward any ambitious male who came wooing Nona Parke. And Rock was quite willing to chance some unknown enemy of the dead rider. Pity and wonder had stirred in his breast when he looked at his double stretched on the bed, and when he helped to bury him. He had a sense of outrage in a man being murdered from ambush. He was puzzled about that shooting—curious about the how and why.
“No,” he said. “I have told you my name, and where I came from. I have nothing to hide. Just the same, I have a notion to play Doc Martin for a while. I might find out who killed him. Duffy didn’t.”
“Perhaps not. I’d hate to believe it. And, still, I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. If Elmer Duffy didn’t shoot Doc, I can’t imagine who would. Doc never quarreled with any one else around here that I know about, and I think that I would know if he had.”
“Sometimes,” Rock said, and he was thinking of himself when he spoke, “things that are a long way behind a man crop up. Queer things happen in the cow country. Well, what about it? Do you want to keep it dark about Doc being shot and let me play his hand for a while? Or shall I announce myself to Elmer Duffy and everybody else who takes me for Doc Martin?”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “You will be taking your own chances.”
“On what?”
“On whatever happens.”
“Oh, well, I don’t mind taking a sporting chance now and then.” Rock swung lightly off the fence. “What’s the program now, Miss Parke?”
“Rope that sorrel for me and that chunky bay for yourself,” she said crisply. “And catch me that black pony.”
Nona saddled her horse as soon as Rock, and she had him saddle the small black horse with an extra rig in the stable. They rode to the house. The girl swung down, darted in, and came out with a cushion, which she fastened across the fork of her saddle. Then she called Betty, and that chubby person toddled forth.
Nona put her on the cushion and swung up to her seat. The child, all smiles for Rock, rode easily within the protection of her sister’s arm. The extra horse trotted at the end of Rock’s lead rope, as they set off down the valley.
“Didn’t she see him?” Rock muttered. “How come she takes me for him?”
Nona shook her head. “I left her shut in the house when we made that ride yesterday. You can see she takes you for granted.”
Betty undoubtedly did. She prattled away, calling him “Doc.”
“I don’t like to leave her alone much,” Nona explained. “That’s why we’ve got this extra cayuse. There’s a half-breed family lives down river a few miles. One of the girls has been nurse for Betty most all the last year. She’s been away for a while, and I’ve got to get her back. I’ve carried this child hundreds of miles like this, but it’s too hard on her and on me. I’ve got to be free to ride when I need to.”
Rock nodded comprehension. He had been wondering how she managed with the baby.
They traversed long river flats, gray with sage, heavily grassed here and there, spotted with natural meadows of blue-joint hay. Meadow larks caroled. In the still pools, where foaming riffles ended, wild ducks mothered flapping broods. Gray and brown buffalo birds haunted the berry thickets and fluttered out at their approach. Except for this wild life, the bottoms were deserted. Few cattle grazed in those valleys, so hotly scrutinized by a brassy sun. They kept to high ground and cooler airs. And, just as Rock was beginning to wonder if his day’s ride should consist of acting solely as Nona’s escort, she pulled up and pointed to a wide-mouthed draw, opening into the Marias from the north.
“Ride up that about six or eight miles, then swing west, and circle back to the ranch,” she said. “My brand is a TL, same as on your horse. Left rib on cattle. Make a sort of rough estimate of how many you see. You ought to get in about two or three o’clock. I’ll have some dinner cooked.”
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. Hedidhave 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 theremuda, 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 shouldhecommit 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.