CHAPTER IXTHE WHITE FEATHER
At the appointed time Bob sneaked back to the hotel. He hung around the lobby for a minute or two, drifted into the saloon and gambling annex, and presently found himself hanging over the bar because he did not know what else to do with himself.
Was he to go to the room after June and bring her to supper? Or was he to wait until she came out? He wished he knew.
Mollie caught sight of him and put a flea in his ear. “What d’ you think you’re doing here, young fellow, me lad? Get outa this den of iniquity an’ hustle back to the room where the little lady is waitin’ for you. Hear me?” she snorted.
A minute later Bob was knocking timidly on the door of room 9. A small voice told him to come in. He opened the door.
June shyly met the eyes of her husband. “Mrs. Gillespie said maybe you’d want to wash up before supper.”
“I reckon that’d be a good idee,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other.
Did she expect him to wash here? Or what?
June poured water into the basin and found a towel.
Not for a five-dollar bill would Bob have removed his coat, though there had never been a time in his young life when he would have welcomed more a greenback.He did not intend to be indelicate while alone with a young woman in a bedroom. The very thought of it made him scarlet to the roots of his red hair.
After he had scrubbed himself till his face was like a shining apple, June lent him a comb. She stole a furtive look at him while he was standing before the small cracked mirror. For better or worse he was her man. She had to make the best of him. A sense of proprietorship that was almost pride glowed faintly in her. He was a nice boy, even if he was so thin and red and freckled. Bob would be good to her. She was sure of that.
“Mrs. Gillespie said she reckoned she could fix you up a job to help the cook,” the bride said.
“You mean—to-night or for good?”
“Right along, she said.”
Bob did not welcome the suggestion. There was an imperative urge within him to get away from Bear Cat before Jake Houck arrived. There was no use dodging it. He was afraid of the fellow’s vengeance. This was a country where men used firearms freely. The big man from Brown’s Park might shoot him down at sight.
“I don’t reckon we’d better stay here,” he answered uneasily. “In a bigger town I can get a better job likely.”
“But we haven’t money enough to go on the stage, have we?”
“If there was a bull team going out mebbe I could work my way.”
“W-e-ll.” She considered this dubiously. “If we stayed here Mrs. Gillespie would let me wash dishes an’ all. She said she’d give me two dollars a week an’ my board. Tha’s a lot of money, Bob.”
He looked out of the window. “I don’t want trouble with Jake Houck. It—it would worry you.”
“Yes, but—” June did not quite know how to say what was in her mind. She had an instinctive feeling that the way to meet trouble was to face it unafraid and not to run away from it. “I don’t reckon we’d better show Jake we’re scared of him—now. O’ course he’ll be mad at first, but he’s got no right to be. Jes’ ’cause he kep’ a-pesterin’ me don’t give him no claim on me.”
“No, but you know what he is an’ how he acts.”
“I’ll go where you want to go. I jes’ thought, seein’ how good to us Mrs. Gillespie has been, that maybe—”
“Well, we’ll talk it over after supper,” Bob said. “I’m for lighting out myself. To Laramie or Cheyenne, say.”
As they had not eaten since breakfast they were a pair of hungry young animals. They did full justice to the steak, French frys, mince pie, and coffee Mrs. Gillespie had promised.
They hung for a moment awkwardly outside the dining-room. Both of them were looking for an excuse to avoid returning to their room yet.
“Like to look the town over?” Bob asked.
June accepted eagerly.
They walked up the single business street and looked in the windows. The young husband bought his bride a paper sack of chocolates and they ate them as they strolled. Somehow they did not feel half as shy of each other in the open as when shut up together between the walls of a bedroom.
Dusk was beginning to fall. It veiled the crude andcallow aspects of the frontier town and filled the hollows of the surrounding hills with a soft violet haze.
Bob’s eyes met the dark orbs of June. Between them some communication flashed. For the first time a queer emotion clutched at the boy’s heart. An intoxicating thrill pulsed through his veins. She was his wife, this shy girl so flushed and tender.
His hand caught hers and gave it a little comforting pressure. It was his first love gesture and it warmed her like wine.
“You’re right good to me,” she murmured.
She was grateful for so little. All her life she had been starved for love and friendship just as he had. Bob resolved to give them to her in a flood. A great tide of sympathy flowed out from him to her. He would be good to her. He wished she knew now how well he meant to look after her. But he could not tell her. A queer shame tied his tongue.
From a blacksmith shop a man stepped.
“Say, fellow, can I see you a minute?” he asked.
It was Dud Hollister. He drew Bob back into the smithy.
“Big guy in town lookin’ for you. He’s tankin’ up. You heeled?”
Bob felt as though his heart had been drenched with ice water. Houck was here then. Already.
“No, I—I don’t carry a gun,” he replied, weakly.
“Here’s mine. Shoots just a mite high, but she’s a good old friend.” Dud pressed a six-shooter on Dillon.
The boy took it reluctantly. The blood in his veins ran cold. “I dunno. I reckon mebbe I better not. If I talked to him, don’t you think—?”
“Talk, hell! He’s out for blood, that guy is. He’s made his brags right over the bar at Dolan’s what all he’s gonna do to you. I’m no gunman, understand. But a fellow’s got to look out for number one. I’d let him have it soon as I seen him. Right off the reel.”
“Would you?”
“Surest thing you know. He’s a bad actor, that fellow is.”
“If I went to the marshal—”
Dud’s eye held derision. “What good’d that do? Simp ain’t gonna draw cardstill after some one’s been gunned. He don’t claim to be no mind-reader, Simp don’t.”
“I’m not lookin’ for trouble,” Bob began to explain.
“Fellow, it’s lookin’ for you,” cut in Dud. “You hold that gun right under yore coat, an’ when you meet up with Mr. Hook or whoever he is, don’t you wait to ask ‘What for?’ Go to fannin’.”
Bob rejoined June. His lips were bloodless. He felt a queer weakness in the knees.
“What did he want?” asked June.
“Houck’s here—lookin’ for me,” the wretched boy explained.
“What’s that you’ve got under yore coat?” she demanded quickly.
“It’s a—a gun. He made me take it. Said Houck was tellin’ how he’d—do for me.”
The fear-filled eyes of the boy met the stricken ones of his bride. She knew now what she had before suspected and would not let herself believe.
If it was possible she must help him to avoid a meetingwith Houck. She could not have him shamed. Her savage young pride would not permit the girl to mate with one who proved himself a coward at a crisis of his life. It was necessary to her self-respect that she save his.
“We’d better go back to the hotel,” she said. “You can stay in our room, and I’ll send for Jake an’ talk with him downstairs.”
“I don’t reckon I’d better do that,” Bob protested feebly. “He might—hurt you. No tellin’.”
June ignored this. “Did you hear whether Dad’s with him?” she asked.
“No.”
“Where is Jake?”
“He was at Dolan’s drinking when that Dud Hollister seen him.”
“I’ll have him come right away—before he’s had too much. Dad says he used to be mean when he was drinkin’.”
The hotel was in the same block as Dolan’s, a hundred feet beyond it. They were passing the saloon when the door was pushed open and a man came out. At sight of them he gave a triumphant whoop.
“Got ya!” he cried.
The look on his face daunted Bob. The boy felt the courage dry up within him. Mouth and throat parched. He tried to speak and found he could not.
June took up the gage, instantly, defiantly. “You’ve got nothing to do with us, Jake Houck. We’re married.”
The news had reached him. He looked at her blackly.“Married or single, you’re mine, girl, an’ you’re going with me.”
“My husband will have a word to say about that,” June boasted bravely.
Houck looked at his rival, and a sinister, mocking smile creased the hard face. “I’m plumb scared of him,” he jeered.
“We g-got a right to get married, Mr. Houck,” Bob said, teeth chattering. “You hadn’t ought to make us trouble.”
“Speaks up right brave, don’t he?”
“He’s as brave as you are, Jake Houck, even if he ain’t a bully,” the bride flamed.
“So?” Houck moved a step or two toward Dillon.
The hand under the coat shook as though the boy had a chill.
“What you got there—in yore hand?” demanded Houck.
The revolver came to light.
Houck stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, straddled out his feet, and laughed derisively. “Allowin’ for to kill me, eh?”
“No, sir.” The voice was a dry whisper. “I’d like to talk this over reasonable, Mr. Houck, an’ fix it up so’s bygones would be bygones. I ain’t lookin’ for trouble.”
“I sure believe that.” Houck turned to June. “It wouldn’t be safe for me to leave you with this desperate character who goes around with a six-shooter not lookin’ for trouble. I’m aimin’ to take you with me, like I said.”
Her eyes clashed with his and gave way at last. “Youalways act like you’re God Almighty,” she cried passionately. “Are you hard o’ hearing? I’m married to Bob Dillon here.”
“I ain’t heard him raise any objections to yore goin’,” Houck taunted. “Tolliver said for me to bring you, an’ I’ll do it.”
June spoke to Bob, her voice trembling. “Tell him where to get off at,” she begged.
“Mr. Houck, June’s my wife. She’s made her choice. That ends it,” Bob said unsteadily.
The cold, cruel eyes of the ex-rustler gripped those of Dillon and held them. “End it, does it? Listen. If you’re any kind of a man a-tall you’d better shoot me right now. I’m gonna take her from you, an’ you’re goin’ to tell her to go with me. Understand?”
“He’ll not tell me any such a thing,” June protested. But her heart sank. She was not sure whether her husband would grovel. If he did—if he did—
The jeering voice went on taunting its victim. “If I was you I’d use that gun or I’d crawl into a hole. Ain’t you got any spunk a-tall? I’m tellin’ you that June’s goin’ with me instead o’ you, an’ that you’re goin’ to tell her to go. Tha’s the kind of a man she married.”
“No, Mr. Houck, I don’t reckon—”
Houck moved forward, evenly, without haste, eyes cold as chilled steel and as unyielding. “Gimme that gun, if you ain’t goin’ to use it.” He held out a hand.
“Don’t, Bob,” begged June, in a panic of dismay.
While his heart fluttered with apprehension Bob told himself, over and over, that he would not hand the revolver to Houck. He was still saying it when his rightarm began to move slowly forward. The weapon passed from one to the other.
June gave a sobbing sound of shame and despair. She felt like a swimmer in a swift current when the deep waters are closing over his head.
“Now tell her you ain’t good enough for her, that you’ve got no sand in yore craw, and she’s to go with me,” ordered Houck.
“No.” Young Dillon’s voice came dry from a throat like cotton.
The big man caught Bob’s wrist and slowly twisted. The boy gave an agonized howl of pain. June was white to the lips, but she made no attempt to interfere. It was too late. Bob must show the stuff that was in him. He must go through to a fighting finish or he must prove himself a weakling.
“If you give her up now, you’re a yellow dog, Dillon,” his tormentor sneered. “Stick it out. Tell me to go to red-hot blazes.”
He took an extra turn on the wrist. Bob writhed and shrieked. Tiny beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. “You’re killin’ me!” he screamed.
“Wish you’d gunned me when you had a chance, don’t you?” Houck spat at him. “Too late now. Well, what’s it to be?” Again he applied the torture.
The boy begged, pleaded, then surrendered. “I can’t stand it! I’ll do anything you say.”
“Well, you know yore li’l’ piece. Speak it right up,” ordered the cattleman.
Bob said it, with his eyes on the ground, feeling and looking like a whipped cur. “You better go with him,June. I—I’m no good.” A sob choked him. He buried his face in his hands.
Houck laughed harshly. “You hear him, June.”
In a small dead voice June asked a question. “Do you mean that, Bob—that I’m to go with him—that you give me up?”
Her husband nodded, without looking up.
No man can sacrifice his mate to save his own hide and still hold her respect. June looked at him in a nausea of sick scorn. She turned from him, wasting no more words.
She and Houck vanished into the gathering darkness.
CHAPTER XIN THE IMAGE OF GOD
Houck’s jeering laugh of triumph came back to the humiliated boy. He noticed for the first time that two or three men were watching him from the door of the saloon. Ashamed to the depths of his being, he hung his head dejectedly. All his life he would be a marked figure because Jake had stamped the manhood out of him, had walked off with his bride of an hour.
In the country of the open spaces a man must have sand. Courage is the basis upon which the other virtues are built, the fundamental upon which he is most searchingly judged. Let a man tell the truth, stick to his pal, and fight when trouble is forced on him, and he will do to ride the river with, in the phrase of the plains.
Bob had lost June. She would, of course, never look at him again. To have failed her so miserably cut deep into his pride and self-respect. With her he had lost, too, the esteem of all those who lived within a radius of fifty miles. For the story would go out to every ranch and cow-camp. Worst of all he had blown out the dynamic spark within himself that is the source of life and hope.
He did not deceive himself. Houck had said he was going to take June to her father. But he had said it with a cynical sneer on his lips. For the girl to be Jake’s wife would have been bad enough, but to be his victim without the protection of legality would be infinitely worse.And that was the lot to which June was destined. She had fought, but she could fight no longer.
Fate had played her a scurvy trick in the man she had chosen. Another husband—Dud Hollister, for instance—would have battled it out for her to a finish, till he had been beaten so badly he could no longer crawl to his feet. If Bob had done that, even though he had been hopelessly overmatched, he would have broken Houck’s power over June. All the wild, brave spirit of her would have gone out to her husband in a rush of feeling. The battle would have been won for them both. The thing that had stung her pride and crushed her spirit was that he had not struck a blow for her. His cowardice had driven her to Jake Houck’s arms because there was no other place for her to go.
Their adventure had ended in tragedy both for her and for him. Bob sank down on a dry-goods box and put his twitching face in his hands. He had flung away both his own chance for happiness and hers. So far as he was concerned he was done for. He could never live down the horrible thing he had done.
He had been rather a frail youth, with very little confidence in himself. Above all else he had always admired strength and courage, the qualities in which he was most lacking. He had lived on the defensive, oppressed by a subconscious sense of inferiority. His actions had been conditioned by fear. Life at the charitable institution where he had been sent as a small child fostered this depression of the ego and its subjection to external circumstances. The manager of the home ruled by the rod. Bob had always lived in a sick dread of it.Only within the past few months had he begun to come into his own, a heritage of health and happiness.
Dud Hollister came to him out of Dolan’s saloon. “Say, fellow, where’s my gun?” he asked.
Bob looked up. “He—took it.”
“Do I lose my six-shooter?”
“I’ll fix it with you when I get the money to buy one.”
The boy looked so haggard, his face so filled with despair, that Dud was touched in spite of himself.
“Why in Mexico didn’t you give that bird a pill outa the gun?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m—no good,” Bob wailed.
“You said it right that time. I’ll be doggoned if I ever saw such a thing as a fellow lettin’ another guy walk off with his wife—when he ain’t been married hardly two hours yet. Say, what’s the matter with you anyhow? Why didn’t you take a fall outa him? All he could ’a’ done was beat you to death.”
“He hurt me,” Bob confessed miserably. “I—was afraid.”
“Hurt you? Great jumpin’ Jupiter. Say, fellows, listen to Miss—Miss Roberta here. He hurt him, so he quit on the job—this guy here did. I never heard the beat o’ that.”
“If you’ll borrow one of yore friends’ guns an’ blow my brains out you’ll do me a favor,” the harried youth told Hollister in a low voice.
Hollister looked at him searchingly. “I might, at that,” agreed the puncher. “But I’m not doin’ that kind of favor to-day. I’ll give you a piece of advice.This ain’t no country for you. Hop a train for Boston, Mass., or one o’ them places where you can take yore troubles to a fellow with a blue coat. Tha’s where you belong.”
Up the street rolled Blister Haines, in time to hear the cowpuncher’s suggestion. Already the news had reached the justice of what had taken place. He was one of those amiable busybodies who take care of other people’s troubles for them. Sometimes his efforts came to grief and sometimes they did not.
“Hit the trail, you lads,” he ordered. “I’ll l-look out for this b-business. The exc-c-citement’s all over anyhow. Drift.”
The range-riders disappeared. At best the situation was an embarrassing one. It is not pleasant to be in the company of one who has just shown himself a poltroon and is acutely aware of it.
Blister took Dillon into his office. He lowered himself into the biggest chair carefully, rolled a cigarette, and lit up.
“Tell me about it,” he ordered.
“Nothin’ to tell.” Bob leaned against the table and looked drearily at the floor. The world had come to an end for him. That was all. “He showed up an’ took June from me—made me tell her to go along with him.”
“How did he do that? Did he cover you with a gun?”
“No. I had the gun—till he took it from me.” He gave the explanation he had used twice already within the hour. “I’m no good.”
Blister heaved himself up from the chair and waddledcloser to the boy. He shook a fat forefinger in his face. He glared at him fiercely.
“Say, where you from?”
“Austin, Texas, when I was a kid.”
“Well, damn you, Texas man, I w-want to t-tell you right now that you’re talkin’ blasphemy when you say you’re n-no good. The good Lord made you, didn’t He? D-d’ you reckon I’m goin’ to let you stand up there an’ claim He did a pore job? No, sir. Trouble with you is you go an’ bury yore talent instead of w-whalin’ the stuffin’ outa that Jake Houck fellow.”
“I wish I was dead,” Bob groaned, drooping in every line of his figure. “I wish I’d never been born.”
“Blasphemy number two. Didn’t He make you in His image? What right you got wishin’ He hadn’t created you? Why, you pore w-worm, you’re only a mite lower than the angels an’ yore red haid’s covered with glory.” Blister’s whisper of a voice took unexpectedly a sharp edge. “Snap it up! That red haid o’ yours. Hear me?”
Bob’s head came up as though a spring had been released.
“B-better. K-keep it up where it belongs. Now, then, w-what are you aimin’ for to do?”
Bob shook his head. “Get outa this country, like Hollister said. Find a hole somewheres an’ pull it in after me.”
“No, sir. Not none. You’re gonna stay right here—in the country round Bear Cat—where every last man, woman, an’ k-kid will know how you ate d-dirt when Houck told you to.”
“I couldn’t do that,” the boy pleaded. “Why, I wouldn’t have a chance. I’d know what they were sayin’ all the time.”
“Sure you’d know it. Tha’s the price you g-gotta pay for g-grovelin’. Don’t you see yore only chance is to go out an’ make good before the folks who know how you’ve acted? Sneak off an’ keep still about what you did, amongst s-strangers, an’ where do you get off? You know all yore life you’re only a worm. The best you can be is a bluff. You’d be d-duckin’ outa makin’ the fight you’ve gotta make. That don’t get you anywhere a-tall. No, sir. Go out an’ reverse the verdict of the court. Make good, right amongst the people who’re keepin’ tabs on yore record. You can do it, if you c-clamp yore j-jaw an’ remember that yore red haid is c-covered with g-glory an’ you been given dominion.”
“But—”
“S-snap it up!” squeaked Blister.
The red head came up again with a jerk.
“Keep it up.”
“What’ll I do? Where’ll I find work?”
“Out on the range. At the K Bar T, or the Keystone, or the Slash Lazy D. It don’t m-matter where.”
“I can’t ride.”
“Hmp! Learn, can’t you? Dud Hollister an’ Tom Reeves wasn’t neither one of them born on a bronc’s back. They climbed up there. So can you. You’ll take the dust forty times. You’ll get yore bones busted an’ yore red haid cut open. But if you got the guts to stick, you’ll be ridin’ ’em slick one o’ these here days. An’ you’ll come out a m-man.”
A faint glow began to stir in the boy’s heart. Was there really a chance for him to reverse the verdict? Could he still turn over a leaf and make another start?
“You’ll have one heluva time for a while,” Blister prophesied. “Take ’em by an’ large an’ these lads chasin’ cows’ tails are the salt o’ the earth. They’ll go farther with you an’ stick longer than anybody else you ever met up with. Once they know you an’ like you. But they’ll be right offish with you for a while. Kinda polite an’ distant, I expect. S-some overbearin’ g-guy will start runnin’ on you, knowin’ it’ll be safe. It’ll be up to you to m-make it mighty onsafe for him. Go through to a finish that once an’ the boys will begin sizin’ you up an’ wonderin’ about you. Those show-me lads will have to get evidence about ’steen times before they’ll believe.”
“I’ll never be able to stick it. I’m such a—so timid,” Dillon groaned.
The justice bristled. “H-hell’s bells! What’s ailin’ you, Texas man? I tell you that you’re made in His image. Bite on that thought hard whenever you’re up against it an’ want to hide yorese’f in a hole. Every time you get too s-scared to play yore hand out, you’re playin’ it low down on yore C-creator.”
Bob came to another phase of the situation. “What about—June?”
“Well, what about her?”
“She’s gone with Houck. He’ll not take her home.”
“What d’ you m-mean not take her home? Where’ll he take her?”
“I don’t know. That’s it. I’m responsible for her. Ibrought her here. He means to—to make her live with him.”
“Keep her by force—that what you’re drivin’ at?”
“No-o. Not exactly. He’s got a hold over her father somehow. She’s worn out fightin’ him. When she ran away with me she played her last card. She’ll have to give up now. He’s so big an’ strong, such a bulldog for gettin’ his way, that she can’t hold him off. June ain’t seventeen yet. She’s gettin’ a mighty rotten deal, looks like. First off, livin’ alone the way she an’ Tolliver do, then Houck, then me, an’ finally Houck again.”
“I’ll notify Tolliver how things are,” Blister said. “Get word to him right away. We’ll have to take a lead from him about June.”
“I was thinkin’—”
“Onload it.”
“Mrs. Gillespie was so kind to her. Maybe she could talk to June an’ take her at the hotel—if June an’ Houck haven’t gone yet.”
“You said something then, boy. I’ll see Mollie right away. She’ll sure fix it.”
They were too late. The wrangler at Kilburn’s corral had already seen Houck hitch up and drive away with June, they presently learned.
CHAPTER XIJUNE PRAYS
When June turned away from her husband of an hour she abandoned hope. She had been like a child lost in the forest. A gleam of light from a window had cheered her for a moment, but it had flickered out and left her in the darkness.
In one sense June was innocent as an infant. She knew nothing of feminine blandishments, of the coquetry which has become so effective a weapon in the hands of modern woman when she is not hampered by scruples. But she had lived too close to nature not to be aware of carnal appetite.
It is a characteristic of frontier life that one learns to face facts. June looked at them now, clear-eyed, despair in her heart. As she walked beside Jake to the corral, as she waited for him to hitch up the broncos, as she rode beside him silently through the gathering night, the girl’s mind dwelt on that future which was closing in on her like prison walls.
Not for an instant did she deceive herself. Houck did not mean to take her to Tolliver. She knew that his conscience would acquit him of blame for what he meant to do. He had given her a chance to marry him, and she had made it impossible. That was not his fault. He would take her to Brown’s Park with him when he returned. Probably they were on the way there now.
After the plunging broncos had steadied down, Jakespoke. “You’re well shet of him. He’s no good, like he said himself. A man’s got to have guts. You’d ’a’ had to wear the breeches, June.” The long whip curved out inexorably. “Git over there, Buckskin.”
Houck drove like a master. After one wild bolt the dancing ponies had sensed that a strong hand was at the reins. They accepted the fact placidly. June watched his handling of the lines sullenly, a dull resentment and horror in her heart. He would subdue her as easily as he had the half-broken colts, sometimes bullying, sometimes mocking, sometimes making love to her with barbaric ardor. There were times when his strength and ruthlessness had fascinated June, but just now she felt only horror weighted by a dull, dead despair.
No use to fight longer. In a world filled with Jake Houck there was no free will. She was helpless as a wolf in a trap.
They drove through a country of sagebrush hills. The moon came out and carpeted the slopes with silver lace. Deep within June was a born love of beauty as it found expression in this land of the Rockies. But to-night she did not taste the scent of the sage or see the veil of mist that had transformed the draws magically to fairy dells.
“Where you goin’?” she asked at last. “You said you’d take me to Dad.”
He laughed, slipped a strong arm round her shoulders, and drew her closer. “Found yore tongue at last, June girl, eh? We’re going home—to my place up in Brown’s Park.”
She made a perfunctory protest. It was, she knew,quite useless, and her heart was not in it. No words she used, no appeal she could make, would touch this man or change his intentions.
“You got no right to take me there. I’m not yore slave. I want to go to Dad.”
“Tha’s right,” he mocked. “I’myoreslave, June. What’s the use of fighting? I’m so set on you that one way or another I’m bound to have you.”
She bit her lip, to keep from weeping. In the silvery night, alone with him, miles from any other human being, she felt woefully helpless and forlorn. The years slipped away. She was a little child, and her heart was wailing for the mother whose body lay on the hillside near the deserted cabin in Brown’s Park. What could she do? How could she save herself from the evil shadow that would blot the sunshine from her life?
Somewhere, in that night of stars and scudding clouds, was God, she thought. He could save her if He would. But would He? Miracles did not happen nowadays. And why would He bother about her? She was such a trifle in the great scheme of things, only a poor ragged girl from the back country, the daughter of a convict, poor hill trash, as she had once heard a woman at Glenwood whisper. She was not of any account.
Yet prayers welled out in soundless sobs from a panic-stricken heart. “O God, I’m only a li’l’ girl, an’ I growed up without a mother. I’m right mean an’ sulky, but if you’ll save me this time from Jake Houck, I’ll make out to say my prayers regular an’ get religion first chance comes along,” she explained and promised, her small white face lifted to the vault where the God she knew about lived.
Drifts floated across the sky blown by currents from the northwest. They came in billows, one on top of another, till they had obscured most of the stars. The moon went into eclipse, reappeared, vanished behind the storm scud, and showed again.
The climate of the Rockies, year in, year out, is the most stimulating on earth. Its summer breezes fill the lungs with wine. Its autumns are incomparable, a golden glow in which valley and hill bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. Its springs—they might be worse. Any Coloradoan will admit the climate is superlative. But there is one slight rift in the lute, hardly to be mentioned as a discord in the universal harmony. Sudden weather changes do occur. A shining summer sun vanishes and in a twinkling of an eye the wind is whistling snell.
Now one of these swept over the Rio Blanco Valley. The clouds thickened, the air grew chill. The thermometer was falling fast.
Houck swung the team up from the valley road to the mesa. Along this they traveled, close to the sage-covered foothills. At a point where a draw dipped down to the road, Houck pulled up and dismounted. A gate made of three strands of barbed wire and two poles barred the wagon trail. For already the nester was fencing the open range.
As Houck moved forward to the gate the moon disappeared back of the banked clouds. June’s eye swept the landscape and brightened. The sage and the brush were very thick here. A grove of close-packed quakingasps filled the draw. She glanced at Jake. He was busy wrestling with the loop of wire that fastened the gate.
God helps those that help themselves, June remembered. She put down the lines Houck had handed her, stepped softly from the buckboard, and slipped into the quaking asps.
A moment later she heard Jake’s startled oath. It was certain that he would plunge into the thicket of saplings in pursuit. She crept to one side of the draw and crouched low.
He did not at once dive in. From where she lay hidden, June could hear the sound of his footsteps as he moved to and fro.
“Don’t you try to make a fool of Jake Houck, girl,” he called to her angrily. “I ain’t standin’ for any nonsense now. We got to be movin’ right along. Come outa there.”
Her heart was thumping so that she was afraid he might hear it. She held herself tense, not daring to move a finger lest she make a rustling of leaves.
“Hear me, June! Git a move on you. If you don’t—” He broke off, with another oath. “I’ll mark yore back for you sure enough with my whip when I find you.”
She heard him crashing into the thicket. He passed her not ten feet away, so close that she made out the vague lines of his big body. A few paces farther he stopped.
“I see you, girl. You ain’t foolin’ me any. Tell you what I’ll do. You come right along back to the buckboard an’ I’ll let you off the lickin’ this time.”
She trembled, violently. It seemed that he did see her, for he moved a step or two in her direction. Then he stopped, to curse, and the rage that leaped into the heavy voice betrayed the bluff.
Evidently he made up his mind that she was higher up the draw. He went thrashing up the arroyo, ploughing through the young aspens with a great crackle of breaking branches.
June took advantage of this to creep up the side of the draw and out of the grove. The sage offered poorer cover in which to hide, but her knowledge of Houck told her that he would not readily give up the idea that she was in the asps. He was a one-idea man, obstinate even to pigheadedness. So long as there was a chance she might be in the grove he would not stop searching there. He would reason that the draw was so close to the buckboard she must have slipped into it. Once there, she would stay because in it she could lie concealed.
Her knowledge of the habits of wild animals served June well now. The first instinct was to get back to the road and run down it at full speed, taking to the brush only when she heard the pursuit. But this would not do. The sage here was much heavier and thicker than it was nearer Bear Cat. She would find a place to hide in it till he left to drive back and cut her off from town. There was one wild moment when she thought of slipping down to the buckboard and trying to escape in it. June gave this up because she would have to back it along the narrow road for fifteen or twenty yards before she could find a place to turn.
On hands and knees she wound deeper into the sage, always moving toward the rim-rock at the top of the hill. She was still perilously close to Houck. His muffled oaths, the thrashing of the bushes, the threats and promises he stopped occasionally to make; all of these came clear to her in spite of the whistling wind.
It had come on to rain mistily. June was glad of that. She would have welcomed a heavy downpour out of a black night. The rim-rock was close above. She edged along it till she came to a scar where the sandstone had broken off and scorched a path down the slope. Into the hollow formed by two boulders resting against each other she crawled.
For hours she heard Jake moving about, first among the aspens and later on the sage hill. The savage oaths that reached her now and again were evidence enough that the fellow was in a vile temper. If he should find her now, she felt sure he would carry out his vow as to the horsewhip.
The night was cold. June shivered where she lay close to the ground. The rain beat in uncomfortably. But she did not move till Houck drove away.
Even then she descended to the road cautiously. He might have laid a trap for her by returning on foot in the darkness. But she had to take a chance. What she meant to do was clear in her mind. It would require all her wits and strength to get safely back to town.
She plodded along the road for perhaps a mile, then swung down from the mesa to the river. The ford where Jake had driven across was farther down, but she could not risk the crossing. Very likely he was lying in wait there.
June took off her brogans and tied them round her neck. She would have undressed, but she was afraid of losing the clothes while in the stream.
It was dark. She did not know the river, how deep it was or how strong the current. As she waded slowly in, her courage began to fail. She might never reach the other shore. The black night and the rain made it seem very far away.
She stopped, thigh deep, to breathe another prayer to the far-away God of her imagination, who sat on a throne in the skies, an arbitrary emperor of the universe. He had helped her once to-night. Maybe He would again.
“O God, don’t please lemme drown,” she said aloud, in order to be quite sure her petition would be heard.
Deeper into the current she moved. The water reached her waist. Presently its sweep lifted her from the bottom. She threw herself forward and began to swim. It did not seem to her that she was making any headway. The heavy skirts dragged down her feet and obstructed free movement of them. Not an expert swimmer, she was soon weary. Weights pulled at the arms as they swept back the water in the breast-stroke. It flashed through her mind that she could not last much longer. Almost at the same instant she discovered the bank. Her feet touched bottom. She shuffled heavily through the shallows and sank down on the shore completely exhausted.
Later, it was in June’s mind that she must have been unconscious. When she took note of her surroundings she was lying on a dry pebbly wash which the streamprobably covered in high water. Snowflakes fell on her cheek and melted there. She rose, stiff and shivering. In crossing the river the brogans had washed from her neck. She moved forward in her stocking feet. For a time she followed the Rio Blanco, then struck abruptly to the right through the sagebrush and made a wide circuit.
It was definitely snowing now and the air was colder. June’s feet were bleeding, though she picked a way in the grama-grass and the tumbleweed to save them as much as possible. Once she stepped into a badger hole covered with long buffalo grass and strained a tendon.
She had plenty of pluck. The hardships of the frontier had instilled into her endurance. Though she had pitied herself when she was riding beside Jake Houck to moral disaster, she did not waste any now because she was limping painfully through the snow with the clothes freezing on her body. She had learned to stand the gaff, in the phrase of the old bullwhacker who had brought her down from Rawlins. It was a part of her code that physical pain and discomfort must be trodden under foot and disregarded.
A long détour brought her back to the river. She plodded on through the storm, her leg paining at every step. She was chilled to the marrow and very tired. But she clamped her small strong teeth and kept going.
The temptation to give up and lie down assailed her. She fought against it, shuffling forward, stumbling as her dragging feet caught in the snow. She must be near Bear Cat now. Surely it could not be far away. If it was not very close, she knew she was beaten.
After what seemed an eternity of travel a light gleamed through the snow. She saw another—a third.
She zigzagged down the road like a drunkard.