CHAPTER XIIMOLLIE TAKES CHARGE
Bear Cat was a cow-town, still in its frankest, most exuberant youth. Big cattle outfits had settled on the river and ran stock almost to the Utah line. Every night the saloons and gambling-houses were filled with punchers from the Diamond K, the Cross Bar J, the Half Circle Dot, or any one of a dozen other brands up or down the Rio Blanco. They came from Williams’s Fork, Squaw, Salt, Beaver, or Piney Creeks. And usually they came the last mile or two on the dead run, eager to slake a thirst as urgent as their high spirits.
They were young fellows most of them, just out of their boyhood, keen to spend their money and have a good time when off duty. Always they made straight for Dolan’s or the Bear Cat House. First they downed a drink or two, then they washed off the dust of travel. This done, each followed his own inclination. He gambled, drank, or frolicked around, according to the desire of the moment.
Dud Hollister and Tom Reeves, with Blister Haines rolling between them, impartially sampled the goods at Dolan’s and at Mollie Gillespie’s. They had tried their hand at faro, with unfortunate results, and they had sat in for a short session at a poker game where Dud had put too much faith in a queen full.
“I sure let my foot slip that time,” Dud admitted. “I’d been playin’ plumb outa luck. Couldn’t fill ahand, an’ when I did, couldn’t get it to stand up. That last queen looked like money from home. I reckon I overplayed it,” he ruminated aloud, while he waited for Mike Moran to give him another of the same.
Tom hooked his heel on the rail in front of the bar. “I ain’t made up my mind yet that game was on the level. That tinhorn who claimed he was from Cheyenne ce’tainly had a mighty funny run o’ luck. D’ you notice how his hands jes’ topped ours? Kinda queer, I got to thinkin’. He didn’t hold any more’n he had to for to rake the chips in. I’d sorta like a look-see at the deck we was playin’ with.”
Blister laughed wheezily. “You w-won’t get it. N-never heard of a hold-up gettin’ up a petition for better street lights, did you? No, an’ you n-never will. An’ you never n-noticed a guy who was aimin’ to bushwhack another from the brush go to clearin’ off the sage first. He ain’t l-lookin’ for no open arguments on the m-merits of his shootin’. Not none. Same with that Cheyenne bird an’ his stocky pal acrost the table. They’re f-figurin’ that dead decks tell no tales. The one you played with is sure enough s-scattered every which way all over the floor along with seve-real others.” The fat justice of the peace murmured “How!” and tilted his glass.
If Blister did not say “I told you so,” it was not because he might not have done it fairly. He had made one comment when Dud had proposed sitting in to the game of draw.
“H-how much m-mazuma you got?”
“Twenty-five bucks left.”
“If you s-stay outa that game you’ll earn t-twenty-five bucks the quickest you ever did in yore life.”
Youth likes to buy its experience and not borrow it. Dud knew now that Blister had been a wise prophet in his generation.
The bar at Gillespie’s was at the front of the house. In the rear were the faro and poker tables, the roulette wheels, and the other conveniences for separating hurried patrons from their money. The Bear Cat House did its gambling strictly on the level, but there was the usual percentage in favor of the proprietor.
Mollie was sitting in an armchair on a small raised platform about halfway back. She kept a brisk and business-like eye on proceedings. No puncher who had gone broke, no tenderfoot out of luck, could go hungry in Bear Cat if she knew it. The restaurant and the bar were at their service just as though they had come off the range with a pay-check intact. They could pay when they had the money. No books were kept. Their memories were the only ledgers. Few of these debts of honor went unpaid in the end.
But Mollie, though tender-hearted, knew how to run the place. Her brusque, curt manner suited Bear Cat. She could be hail-fellow or hard as flint, depending on circumstances. The patrons at Gillespie’s remembered her sex and yet forgot it. They guarded their speech, but they drank with her at the bar or sat across a poker table from her on equal terms. She was a good sport and could lose or win large sums imperturbably.
Below her now there floated past a tide of hot-blooded youth eager to make the most of the few hours left beforethe dusty trails called. Most of these punchers would go back penniless to another month or two of hard and reckless riding. But they would go gayly, without regret, the sunshine of irrepressible boyhood in their hearts. The rattle of chips, the sound of laughter, the murmur of conversation, the even voice of the croupier at the roulette table, filled the hall.
Jim Larson, a cowman from down the river, sat on the edge of the platform.
“The Boot brand’s puttin’ a thousand head in the upper country this fall, Mollie. Looks to me like bad business, but there’s a chance I’m wrong at that. My bet is you can’t run cows there without winter feed. There won’t many of ’em rough through.”
“Some’ll drift down to the river,” Mollie said, her preoccupied eyes on the stud table where a slight altercation seemed to be under way. Her method of dealing with quarrels was simple. The first rule was based on one of Blister Haines’s paradoxes. “The best way to settle trouble is not to have it.” She tried to stop difficulties before they became acute. If this failed, she walked between the angry youths and read the riot act to them.
“Some will,” admitted Larson. “More of ’em won’t.”
Mollie rose, to step down from the platform. She did not reach the stud table. A commotion at the front door drew her attention. Mrs. Gillespie was a solid, heavy-set woman, but she moved with an energy that carried her swiftly. She reached the bar before any of the men from the gambling-tables.
A girl was leaning weakly against the door-jamb.Hat and shoes were gone. The hair was a great black mop framing a small face white to the lips. The stocking soles were worn through. When one foot shifted to get a better purchase for support, a bloodstained track was left on the floor. The short dress was frozen stiff.
The dark, haunted eyes moved uncertainly round the circle of faces staring at her. The lips opened and made the motions of speech, but no sound came from them. Without any warning the girl collapsed.
Dud Hollister’s arm was under the ice-coated head in an instant. He looked up at Mollie Gillespie, who had been only a fraction of a second behind him.
“It’s the li’l’ bride,” he said.
She nodded. “Brandy an’ water, Mike. Quick! She’s only fainted. Head not so high, Dud. Tha’s right. We’ll get a few drops of this between her teeth.... She’s comin’ to.”
June opened her eyes and looked at Mollie. Presently she looked round and a slow wonder grew in them. “Where am I?” she murmured.
“You’re at the hotel—where you’ll be looked after right, dearie.” Mrs. Gillespie looked up. “Some one get Doc Tuckerman. An’ you, Tom, hustle Peggie and Chung Lung outa their beds if they’re not up. There’s a fire in my room. Tell her to take the blankets from the bed an’ warm ’em. Tell Chung to heat several kettles o’ water fast as he can. Dud, you come along an’ carry her to the stove in the lobby. The rest o’ you’ll stay right here.”
Mollie did not ask any questions or seek explanation.That could wait. The child had been through a terrible experience and must be looked after first.
From the lobby Dud presently carried June into the bedroom and departed. A roaring fire was in the stove. Blankets and a flannel nightgown were hanging over the backs of chairs to warm. With the help of the chambermaid Peggie, the landlady stripped from the girl the frozen dress and the wet underclothes. Over the thin, shivering body she slipped the nightgown, then tucked her up in the blankets. As soon as Chung brought the hot-water jugs she put one at June’s feet and another close to the stomach where the cold hands could rest upon it.
June was still shaking as though she never would get warm. A faint mist of tears obscured her sight. “Y-you’re awful good to me,” she whispered, teeth chattering.
The doctor approved of what had been done. He left medicine for the patient. “Be back in five minutes,” he told Mrs. Gillespie outside the room. “Want some stuff I’ve got at the office. Think I’ll stay for a few hours and see how the case develops. Afraid she’s in for a bad spell of pneumonia.”
He did not leave the sick-room after his return until morning. Mollie stayed there, too. It was nearly one o’clock when Blister Haines knocked gently at the door.
“How’s the li’l’ lady?” he asked in his high falsetto, after Mollie had walked down the passage with him.
“She’s a mighty sick girl. Pneumonia, likely.”
“Tell doc not to let her die. If he needs another doctor some of us’ll h-hustle over to Glenwood an’ g-getone. Say, Mrs. Gillespie, I reckon there’s gonna be trouble in town to-night.”
She said nothing, but her blue eyes questioned him.
Blister’s next sentence sent her moving toward the saloon.
CHAPTER XIIIBEAR CAT ASKS QUESTIONS
A man bow-legged into Gillespie’s and went straight to the bar. “Gimme a drink—something damned hot,” he growled.
He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, hook-nosed, with cold eyes set close. Hair and eyebrows were matted with ice and a coat of sleet covered his clothes. Judging from voice and manner, he was in a vile humor.
A young fellow standing near was leaning with his back against the bar, elbows resting on it. One heel was hooked casually over the rail.
“Anything been seen of a strange girl in town to-night?” the newcomer asked. “She ain’t right in her head an’ I was takin’ her to her dad’s place when she slipped away. I’m worried about her, out in this storm.”
The cowpuncher looked at him coldly, eye to eye. “I’d say you got a license to be. If she’s lost out to-night she’s liable to be frozen to death before mo’ning.”
“Yes,” agreed Houck, and his lids narrowed. What did this young fellow mean? There was something about his manner both strange and challenging. If he was looking for a fight, Houck knew just where he could be accommodated.
“In which case—”
The puncher stopped significantly.
“In which case—?” Houck prompted.
“—it might be unlucky for the guy that took her out an’ lost her.”
“What’s yore name, fellow?” Jake demanded.
“Fellow, my name’s Dud Hollister,” promptly answered the other. “D’you like it?”
“Not much. Neither it nor you.”
Houck turned insolently back to the bar for his drink.
Mike was stirring into the glass of liquor cayenne pepper which he was shaking from a paper. He was using as a mixer the barrel of a forty-five.
The salient jaw of Houck jutted out. “What monkey trick are you tryin’ to play on me?” he asked angrily.
“You wanted it hot,” Mike replied, and the bartender’s gaze too was cold and level.
It seemed to the former rustler that here was a second man ready to fasten a quarrel on him. What was the matter with these fellows anyhow?
Another puncher ranged himself beside Hollister. “Who did this bird claim he was, Dud?” he asked out loud, offensively.
“Didn’t say. Took that li’l’ bride out in this storm an’ left her there. Expect he’ll be right popular in Bear Cat.”
Houck smothered his rage. This was too serious to be settled by an explosion of anger and an appeal to arms.
“I tell you she hid whilst I was openin’ a gate. I been lookin’ for her six hours. Thought maybe she’d come to town. My idee is to organize a search party an’ go out after her. Quick as we can slap saddles on broncs an’ hit the trail.”
Fragments of the facts had drifted out to the boys from the sick-room.
Dud tried an experiment. “Where’ll we hunt for her—up toward Piceance?”
Houck deliberated before answering. If he were to tell the truth—that she had escaped from him in the hills nine miles down the river—these men would know he had been lying when he said he was taking June to her father. If he let the search party head toward Piceance, there would be no chance for it to save the girl. The man was no coward. To his credit, he told the truth.
A half-circle of hostile faces hemmed him in, for the word had spread that this was the man who had carried off June Tolliver. He was the focus of a dozen pairs of eyes. Among the cattlemen of the Old West you will still look into many such eyes, but never among city dwellers will you find them. Blue they are for the most part or gray-blue, level, direct, unfearing; quiet and steady as steel, flinging no flags of flurry, tremendously sure of themselves. They can be very likable eyes, frank and kind, with innumerable little lines of humor radiating from the corners; or they can be stern and chill as the Day of Judgment.
Jake Houck found in them no gentleness. They judged him, inexorably, while he explained.
“Where was you takin’ her?” asked Larson, of the Wagon Rod outfit.
In spite of his boldness, of the dominating imperiousness by means of which he had been used to ride roughshod over lesser men, Houck felt a chill sensation at his heart. They were too quiet—too quiet by half.
“We was to have been married to-day,” he said surlily. “This Dillon boy got her to run off with him. Hewas no good. I rode hell-for-leather into town to head ’em off.”
Blister brought him back to the question of the moment. “An’ you were t-takin’ her—?”
“To Brown’s Park.”
“Forcin’ her to go. Was that it?” Hollister broke in.
“No, sir. She went of her own accord.”
“Asked you to take her there, mebbe?”
“None o’ yore damn business.”
“How old is she, Mr. Houck?” Larson questioned.
“I dunno.”
“I do. Sixteen coming Christmas,” said Dud. “Dillon told me.”
“An’ how old are you, Mr. Houck?” the quiet, even voice of the owner of the Wagon Rod pursued.
“I d’no as that’s got anything to do with it, but I’m forty-three,” Jake retorted defiantly.
“You meant to live with her?”
“I meant to treat her right,” was the sullen reply.
“But livin’ with her, an’ her another man’s wife.”
“No, sir. That fake marriage with Dillon don’t go. She was promised to me.” He broke out suddenly in anger: “What’s eatin’ you all? Why don’t you go out an’ help me find the girl? These whatfors an’ whyfors can wait, I reckon.”
Blister dropped a bomb. “She’s found.”
“Found!” Houck stared at the fat man. “Who found her? Where? When?”
“Coupla hours ago. Here in this r-room. Kinda funny how she’d swim the river a night like this an’ walk eight-ten miles barefoot in the snow, all to getaway from you, an’ her goin’ with you of her own accord.”
“It wasn’t eight miles—more like six.”
“Call it six, then. Fact is, Mr. Houck, she was mighty scared of you—in a panic of terror, I’d say.”
“She had no call to be,” the Brown’s Park settler replied, his voice heavy with repressed rage. “I’m tellin’ you she wasn’t right in her head.”
“An’ you was takin’ advantage of that to make this li’l’ girl yore—to ruin her life for her,” Hollister flung back.
In all his wild and turbulent lifetime Jake Houck had never before been brought to task like this. He resented the words, the manner, the quiet insistence of these range men. An unease that was not quite fear, but was very close to it, had made him hold his temper in leash. Now the savage in him broke through.
“You’re a bunch of fool meddlers, an’ I’m through explainin’. You can go to hell ’n’ back for me,” he cried, and followed with a string of crackling oaths.
The eyes of the punchers and cattlemen met one another. No word was spoken, but the same message passed back and forth a score of times.
“I expect you don’t quite understand where you’re at, Mr. Houck,” Larson said evenly. “This is mighty serious business for you. We aim to give you a chance to tell yore story complete before we take action.”
“Action?” repeated Houck, startled.
“You’re up against it for fair,” Reeves told him. “If you figure on gettin’ away with a thing like that in a white man’s country you’ve sure got another guesscomin’. I don’t know where you’re from or who you are, but I know where you’re going.”
“D-don’t push on the reins, Tom,” the justice said. “We aim to be reasonable about this, I reckon.”
“Sure we do.” Dud countered with one of Blister’s own homely apothegms. “What’s the use of chewin’ tobacco if you spit out the juice? Go through, I say. There’s a cottonwood back of the kitchen.”
“You’re fixin’ for to hang me?” Houck asked, his throat and palate gone suddenly dry.
“You done guessed it first crack,” Tom nodded.
“Not yet, boys,” protested Haines in his whispering falsetto. “I reckon we’d ought to wait an’ see how the girl comes out.”
“Why had we?” demanded a squat puncher from the Keystone. “What difference does it make? If ever any one needed stringin’ up, it’s the guy here. He’s worse than Douglas or any other Injun ever was. Is it yore notion we’d oughta sit around with our hands in our pockets, Blister, while reptiles like this Houck make our girls swim the river at night an’ plough barefoot through snowstorms? I ain’t that easy-dispositioned myself.”
“Shorty’s sure whistlin’. Same here,” another chap-clad rider chipped in.
“An’ here.”
Blister dropped into the background inconspicuously and vanished. He appeared to be in a minority of one, not counting Houck, and he needed reënforcements.
“We’ll hear what Mr. Houck has to say before we pass judgment,” Larson said.
But Houck, looking into the circle of grim faces thatsurrounded him, knew that he was condemned. Nothing that he could say would make any difference. He shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“What’s the use? You’ve done made up yore minds.”
He noticed that the younger fellows were pressing closer to him. Pretty soon they would disarm him. If he was going to make a fight for his life, it had to be now. His arm dropped to his side, close to the butt of the revolver he carried.
He was too late. Hollister jumped for his wrist and at the same time Mike flung himself across the bar and garroted him. He struggled fiercely to free himself, but was dragged down to the floor and pinioned. Before he was lifted up his hands were tied behind him.
Unobserved, the front door of the barroom had opened. An ice-coated figure was standing on the threshold.
Houck laughed harshly. “Come right in, Tolliver. You’ll be in time to take a hand in the show.”
The little trapper’s haggard eyes went round in perplexity. “What’s the trouble?” he asked mildly.
“No trouble a-tall,” answered the big prisoner hardily. “The boys are hangin’ me. That’s all.”
CHAPTER XIVHOUCK TAKES A RIDE
Tolliver rubbed a hand uncertainly over a bristly chin. “Why, what are they doin’ that for, Jake?”
“Are you the Tolliver girl’s father?” asked Larson.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we got bad news for you. She’s sick.”
“Sick?” the trapper’s lips trembled.
“A mighty sick girl. This man here—this Houck, if that’s what he calls himself—took her away from the young fellow she’d married and started up to Brown’s Park with her. Somehow she gave him the slip, swam the river, an’ came back to town barefoot through the snow. Seems she lost her shoes while she was crossin’ the Blanco.”
The color washed away beneath the tan of the father’s face. “Where’s she at?”
“Here—at the hotel. Mrs. Gillespie an’ Doc Tuckerman are lookin’ after her.”
“I’d like to go to her right away.”
“Sure. Dud, you know where the room is. Take Mr. Tolliver there.”
“Pete.” Houck’s voice was hoarse, but no longer defiant. In this little man, whom he had always bullied and dominated, whose evil genius he had been, lay his hope of life. “Pete, you ain’t a-going to leave yore old pardner to be hanged.”
Tolliver looked bleakly at him. The spell this manhad woven over him twenty-odd years ago was broken forever. “I’m through with you, Jake,” he said.
“You ain’t intendin’ to lift a hand for me?”
“Not a finger.”
“Won’t you tell these men howcome it I rode down to Bear Cat after June?”
The Piceance Creek man’s jaw tightened. His small eyes flashed hate. “Sure, I’ll tell ’em that. About two-three weeks ago Houck showed up at my place an’ stayed overnight. I knew him when we was both younger, but I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He took a notion to my June. She didn’t want to have a thing to do with him, but he bullied her, same as he did me. June she found out he knew something about me, an’ she was afraid to make him mad. I reckon finally he got some kinda promise outa her. He had some business at Meeker, an’ he was comin’ back to the ranch yestiddy. Then he aimed to bring her here to get married.”
He was looking steadily at Houck. Pete had found at last the courage to defy him. He could tell anything he liked about the escape from Cañon City.
“I was away all day lookin’ over my traps an’ fixin’ them up. When I reached home I found two notes. I got ’em here somewheres.” Tolliver fumbled in his coat pockets, but did not find them. “One was from June. She said she was runnin’ away to marry the Dillon boy. The other was from Jake Houck. He’d got to the house before I did, found her note to me, an’ lit out after her. Soon’s I could run up a horse I hit the trail too.”
“Threw me down, eh, Pete?” Houck said bitterly. “Well, there’s two can play at that.”
Tolliver did not flinch. “Go to it, soon as you’ve a mind to. I don’t owe you a thing except misery. You wrecked my life. I suffered for you an’ kept my mouth padlocked. I was coyote enough to sit back an’ let you torment my li’l’ girl because I was afraid for to have the truth come out an’ hurt her. I’d ought to have gone after you with a forty-five. I’m through. They can’t hang you any too soon to suit me. If they don’t—an’ if my June don’t get well—I’ll gun you sure as God made li’l’ apples.”
He turned and walked out of the room with Dud Hollister.
In the passage they met Mollie Gillespie and Blister Haines. The first words the landlady heard were from Houck.
“No, sir, I’ve got nothing to say. What’d be the use? You’ve made up yore minds to go through with this thing. A fool could see that. Far as Tolliver goes, I reckon I’ll go it alone an’ not do any beefin’ about him. He threw me down hard, but he was considerable strung up about June. Wouldn’t do any good for me to tell what I know.”
“Not a bit,” assented Reeves. “Might as well game it out.”
Houck’s hard, cold eye looked at him steadily. “Who said anything about not gaming it out? If you’re expectin’ me to beg an’ crawl you’ve got hold of the wrong man. I’m a damned tough nut an’ don’t you forget it. Whenever you’re ready, gents.”
From the door Mrs. Gillespie spoke. “What’s all this?”
She became at once the center of attention. The punchers grouped around Houck were taken by surprise. They were disconcerted by this unexpected addition to the party. For though Mrs. Gillespie led an irregular life, no woman on the river was so widely loved as she. The mother of Bear Cat, the boys called her. They could instance a hundred examples of the goodness of her heart. She never tired of waiting on the sick, of giving to those who were needy. It was more than possible she would not approve the summary vengeance about to be executed upon the Brown’s Park man.
The prisoner was the first to answer. “Just in time, ma’am. The boys are stagin’ an entertainment. They’re fixin’ to hang me. If you’ll accept an invite from the hangee I’ll be glad to have you stay an’—”
“Hanging him? What for? What’s he done?”
Tom Reeves found his voice. “He’s the fellow done dirt to the li’l’ Tolliver girl, ma’am. We’ve had a kinda trial an’—”
“Fiddlesticks!” interrupted the woman. She swept the group with an appraising eye. “I’m surprised to see you in this, Larson. Thought you had more sense. Nobody would expect anything better of these flyaway boys.”
The owner of the Wagon Rod brand attempted defense, a little sheepishly. “What would you want us to do, Mollie? This fellow treated the girl outrageous. She’s liable to die because—”
“Die! Nonsense! She’s not going to die any more than this Houck is.” She looked the Brown’s Park man over contemptuously with chill, steady eyes. “He’s abad egg. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings any if you rode him outa town on a rail, but I’m not going to have you-all mixed up in a lynching when there’s no need for it.”
Larson stole a look around the circle of faces. On the whole he was glad Mrs. Gillespie had come. It took only a few minutes to choke the life out of a man, but there were many years left in which one might regret it.
“O’ course, if you say Miss Tolliver ain’t dangerous sick, that makes a difference,” he said.
“Don’t see it,” Tom Reeves differed. “We know what this fellow aimed to do, an’ how he drove her to the river to escape him. If you ask me, I’ll say—”
“But nobody’s askin’ you, Tom,” Mollie cut into his sentence sharply. “You’re just a fool boy chasin’ cows’ tails for thirty dollars a month. I’m not going to have any of this nonsense. Bear Cat’s a law-abidin’ place. We’re all proud of it. We don’t let bad-men strut around an’ shoot up our citizens, an’ we don’t let half-grown punchers go crazy an’ start hangin’ folks without reason. Now do we?” A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had met that smile and warmed to it.
Reeves gave up, grinning. “I ain’t such a kid either, Mrs. Gillespie, but o’ course you got to have yore way. We all know that. What d’ you want us to do with this bird?”
“Turn him over to Simp an’ let him put the fellow in the jail. There’s just as good law right here as there is anywhere. I’d hate to have it go out from here thatBear Cat can’t trust the officers it elects to see justice done. Don’t you boys feel that way too?”
“Can’t we even ride him outa town on a rail? You done said we might.”
Mrs. Gillespie hesitated. Why not? It was a crude and primitive punishment, but it would take drastic treatment to get under the hide of this sneering bully who had come within an ace of ruining the life of June Tolliver. The law could not touch him. He had not abducted her. She had gone of her own volition. Unfulfilled intentions are not criminal without an overt act. Was he to escape scot free? She had scoffed at the idea that June might die. But in her heart she was not so sure. The fever was growing on her. It would be days before the crisis was reached.
“Will you promise, honest injun, not to kill or maim him, not to do anything that will injure him permanent?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll jes’ jounce him up some.”
“All agree to that?”
They did.
“Will you go along with the boys, Jim?” She smiled. “Just to see they’re not too—enthusiastic.”
The owner of the Wagon Rod said he would.
Mollie nodded. “All right, boys. The quicker the sooner.”
Fifteen minutes later Jake Houck went out of town on a rail.
CHAPTER XVA SCANDAL SCOTCHED
Before the door of the room opened Tolliver heard the high-pitched voice of his daughter.
“If you’d only stood up to him, Bob—if you’d shot him or fought him ... lemme go, Jake. You got no right to take me with you. Tell you I’m married.... Yes, sir, I’ll love, honor, an’ obey. I sure will—in sickness an’ health—yes, sir, I do....”
The father’s heart sank. He knew nothing about illness. A fear racked him that she might be dying. Piteously he turned to the doctor, after one look at June’s flushed face.
“Is she—is she—?”
“Out of her head, Mr. Tolliver.”
“I mean—will she—?”
“Can’t promise you a thing yet. All we can do is look after her and hope for the best. She’s young and strong. It’s pretty hard to kill anybody born an’ bred in these hills. They’ve got tough constitutions. Better take a chair.”
Tolliver sat down on the edge of a chair, nursing his hat. His leathery face worked. If he could only take her place, go through this fight instead of her. It was characteristic of his nature that he feared and expected the worst. He was going to lose her. Of that he had no doubt. It would be his fault. He was being punished for the crimes of his youth and for the poltroonery that had kept him from turning Jake out of the house.
June sat up excitedly in bed and pointed to a corner of the room. “There he is, in the quaking asps, grinnin’ at me! Don’t you come nearer, Jake Houck! Don’t you! If you do I’ll—I’ll—”
Dr. Tuckerman put his hand gently on her shoulder. “It’s all right, June. Here’s your father. We won’t let Houck near you. Better lie down now and rest.”
“Why must I lie down?” she asked belligerently. “Who are you anyhow, mister?”
“I’m the doctor. You’re not quite well. We’re looking after you.”
Tolliver came forward timorously. “Tha’s right, June. You do like the doctor says, honey.”
“I’d just as lief, Dad,” she answered, and lay down obediently.
When she was out of her head, at the height of the fever, Mrs. Gillespie could always get her to take the medicine and could soothe her fears and alarms. Mollie was chief nurse. If she was not in the room, after June had begun to mend, she was usually in the kitchen cooking broths or custards for the sick girl.
June’s starved heart had gone out to her in passionate loyalty and affection. No woman had ever been good to her before, not since the death of her aunt, at least. And Mollie’s goodness had the quality of sympathy. It held no room for criticism or the sense of superiority. She was a sinner herself, and it was in her to be tender to others who had fallen from grace.
To Mollie this child’s innocent trust in her was exquisitely touching. June was probably the only person in the world except small children who believed in her injust this way. It was not possible that this faith could continue after June became strong enough to move around and talk with the women of Bear Cat. Though she had outraged public opinion all her life, Mollie Gillespie found herself tugged at by recurring impulses to align herself as far as possible with respectability.
For a week she fought against the new point of view. Grimly she scoffed at what she chose to consider a weakness.
“This is a nice time o’ day for you to try to turn proper, Mollie Gillespie,” she told herself plainly. “Just because a chit of a girl goes daffy over you, is that any reason to change yore ways? You’d ought to have a lick o’ sense or two at yore age.”
But her derision was a fraud. She was tired of being whispered about. The independent isolation of which she had been proud had become of a sudden a thing hateful to her.
She went to Larson as he was leaving the hotel dining-room on his next visit to town.
“Want to talk with you. Come outside a minute.”
The owner of the Wagon Rod followed.
“Jim,” she said, turning on him abruptly, “you’ve always claimed you wanted to marry me.” Her blue eyes searched deep into his. “Do you mean that? Or is it just talk?”
“You know I mean it, Mollie,” he answered quietly.
“Well, I’m tired of being a scandal to Bear Cat. I’ve always said I’d never get married again since my bad luck with Hank Gillespie. But I don’t know. If you really want to get married, Jim.”
“I’ve always thought it would be better.”
“I’m not going to quit runnin’ this hotel, you understand. You’re in town two-three days a week anyhow. If you like you can build a house here an’ we’ll move into it.”
“I’ll get busypronto. I expect you want a quiet wedding, don’t you?”
“Sure. We can go over to Blister’s office this afternoon. You see him an’ make arrangements. Tell him I don’t want the boys to know anything about it till afterward.”
An hour later they stood before Justice Haines. Mollie thought she detected a faint glimmer of mirth in his eye after the ceremony. She quelled it promptly.
“If you get gay with me, Blister—”
The fat man’s impulse to smile fled. “Honest to goodness, Mrs. Gillespie—”
“Larson,” she corrected.
“Larson,” he accepted. “I w-wish you m-many happy returns.”
She looked at him suspiciously and grunted “Hmp!”
CHAPTER XVIBLISTER AS DEUS EX MACHINA
Blister Haines found an old pair of chaps for Bob Dillon and lent him a buckskin bronco. Also, he wrote a note addressed to Harshaw, of the Slash Lazy D, and gave it to the boy.
“He’ll put you to ridin’, Ed will. The rest’s up to you. D-don’t you forget you’re made in the l-likeness of God. When you feel like crawlin’ into a hole s-snap that red haid up an’ keep it up.”
Bob grew very busy extricating a cockle burr from the mane of the buckskin. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me, Mr. Haines,” he murmured, beet red.
“Sho! Nothin’ a-tall. I’m always lookin’ for to get a chance to onload advice on some one. Prob’ly I was meant to be a grandma an’ got mixed in the shuffle. Well, boy, don’t weaken. When in doubt, hop to it.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll try.”
“Don’t w-worry about things beforehand. Nothin’s ever as bad as you figure it’s goin’ to be. A lickin’ don’t last but a few minutes, an’ if you get b-busy enough it’s the other fellow that’s liable to absorb it. Watch that r-rampageous scalawag Dud Hollister an’ do like he does.”
“Yes, sir.”
“An’ don’t forget that every m-mornin’ begins a new day. Tha’s all, son.”
Bob jogged down the road on this hazard of new fortune.
It chanced that Dud was still in town. Blister found him and half a dozen other punchers in front of the hotel.
“Betcha! Drinks for the crowd,” the justice heard him say.
“Go you,” Reeves answered, eyes dancing. “But no monkey business. It’s to be a straight-away race from the front of the hotel clear to the blacksmith shop.”
“To-day. Inside of ten minutes, you said,” Shorty of the Keystone reminded Hollister. “An’ this Sunday, you recollect.”
Dud’s gaze rested on a figure of a horseman moving slowly up the road toward them. The approaching rider was the Reverend Melanchthon T. Browning, late of Providence, Rhode Island. He had come to the frontier to teach it the error of its ways and bring a message of sweetness and light to the unwashed barbarians of the Rockies. He was not popular. This was due, perhaps, to an unfortunate manner. The pompous little man strutted and oozed condescension.
“W-what’s up?” asked Blister.
“Dud’s bettin’ he’ll get the sky pilot to race him from here to Monty’s place,” explained Reeves. “Stick around. He’ll want to borrow a coupla dollars from you to buy the drinks.”
It was Sunday afternoon. The missionary was returning from South Park, where he had been conducting a morning service. He was riding Tex Lindsay’s Blue Streak, borrowed for the occasion.
“What deviltry you up to now, Dud?” Blister inquired.
“Me?” The young puncher looked at him with a bland face of innocence. “Why, Blister, you sure do me wrong.”
Dud sauntered to the hitching-rack, easy, careless, graceful. He selected a horse and threw the rein over its head. The preacher was just abreast of the hotel.
The puncher swung to the saddle and brought the pony round. A wild whoop came from his throat. The roan, touched by a spur, leaped to a canter. For an instant it was side by side with Blue Streak. Then it shot down the road.
Blue Streak was off in an eyeflash. It jumped to a gallop and pounded after the roan. The Reverend Melancthon T. Browning was no rider. His feet lost the stirrups. A hymn-book went off at a wild tangent. Coat-tails flew into the air. The exponent of sweetness and light leaned forward and clung desperately to the mane, crying, “Whoa! Stop! Desist!”
But Blue Streak had no intention of desisting as long as the roan was in front. Tex Lindsay’s horse was a racer. No other animal was going to pass it. The legs of the dark horse stretched for the road. It flew past the cowpony as though the latter had been trotting. The Reverend Melancthon stuck to the saddle for dear life.
At the blacksmith shop Dud pulled up. He rode back at a road gait to the hotel. His companions greeted him with shouts of gayety.
“Where’s the parson?” some one asked.
“Between here an’ ’Frisco somewheres. He was travelin’like he was in a hurry when I saw him last. Who pays for the drinks?”
“I do, you darned ol’ Piute,” shouted Reeves joyously. “I never will forget how the sky pilot’s coat-tails spread. You could ’a’ played checkers on ’em. D’you reckon we’d ought to send a wreckin’ crew after Melancthon T. Browning?”
“Why, no. The way he was clamped to that Blue Streak’s back you couldn’t pry him loose with a crowbar.”
“Here he c-comes now,” Blister announced.
When the home missionary reached the hotel he found a grave and decorous group of sympathizers.
“I was surely right careless, sir, to start thataway so onexpected,” Dud apologized. “I hope you didn’t get jounced up much.”
“Some one had ought to work you over for bein’ so plumb wooden-haided, Dud,” the puncher from the Keystone reproved him. “Here was Mr. Browning ridin’ along quiet an’ peaceable, figurin’ out how he could improve us Rio Blanco savages, an’ you come rip-rarin’ along an’ jar up all his geography by startin’ that fool horse of his’n.”
Dud hung his head. “Tha’s right. It was sure enough thoughtless of me,” he murmured.
The preacher looked at the offender severely. He did not yet feel quite equal to a fitting reprimand. “You see the evil effects of letting that vile stuff pass your lips. I hope this will be a lesson to you, young man. If I had not kept my presence of mind I might have been thrown and severely injured.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Dud in a small, contrite voice.
“Makin’ the preacher race on Sunday, too,” chided Reeves. “Why, I shouldn’t wonder but what it might get out an’ spread scandalous. We’ll all have to tell folks about it so’s they’ll get the right of it.”
Melancthon squirmed. He could guess how the story would be told. “We’ll say no more about it, if you please. The young man is sorry. I forgive him. His offense was inadvertent even though vexatious. If he will profit by this experience I will gladly suffer the incommodious ride.”
After the missionary had gone and the bet been liquidated, Blister drew Hollister to one side. “I’m guessin’ that when you get back to the ranch you’ll find a new rider in the bunkhouse, Dud.”
The puncher waited. He knew this was preliminary matter.
“That young fellow Bob Dillon,” explained the fat man.
“If you’re expectin’ me to throw up my hat an’ shout, Blister, I got to disappoint you,” Dud replied. “I like ’em man-size.”
“I’m p-puttin’ him in yore charge.”
“You ain’t either,” the range-rider repudiated indignantly.
“To m-make a man of him.”
“Hell’s bells! I’m no dry nurse to fellows shy of sand. He can travel a lone trail for all of me.”
“Keep him kinda encouraged.”
“Why pick on me, Blister? I don’t want the job. He ain’t there, I tell you. Any fellow that would let anotherguy take his wife away from him an’ not hang his hide up to dry—No, sir, I got no manner o’ use for him. You can’t onload him on me.”
“I’ve been thinkin’ that when you are alone with him some t-time you’d better devil him into a fight, then let him whale the stuffin’ outa you. That’ll do him a l-lot of good—give him confidence.”
Hollister stared. His face broke slowly to a grin. “I got to give it to you, Blister. I’ll bet there ain’t any more like you at home. Let him lick me, eh? So’s to give him confidence. Wallop me good an’ plenty, you said, didn’t you? By gum, you sure enough take the cake.”
“Won’t hurt you any. You’ve give an’ took plenty of ’em. Think of him.”
“Think of me, come to that.”
“L-listen, Dud. That boy’s what they call c-c-constitutionally timid. There’s folks that way, born so a shadow scares ’em. But he’s s-s-sensitive as a g-girl. Don’t you make any mistake, son. He’s been eatin’ his h-heart out ever since he crawled before Houck. I like that boy. There’s good s-stuff in him. At least I’m makin’ a bet there is. Question is, will it ever get a chance to show? Inside of three months he’ll either win out or he’ll be headed for hell, an’ he won’t be travelin’ at no drift-herd gait neither.”
“Every man’s got to stand on his own hind laigs, ain’t he?” Hollister grunted. He was weakening, and he knew it.
“He needs a friend, worst way,” Blister wheezed. “’Course, if you’d rather not—”
“Doggone yore hide, you’re always stickin’ me somehow,” stormed the cowboy. “Trouble with me is I’m so soft I’m always gettin’ imposed on. I done told you I didn’t like this guy a-tall. That don’t make no more impression on you than a cold runnin’-iron would on a cow.”
“M-much obliged, Dud. I knew you’d do it.”
“I ain’t said I’d do it.”
“S-some of the boys are liable to get on the prod with him. He’ll have to play his own hand. Tha’s reasonable. But kinda back him up when you get a chance. That notion of lettin’ him lick you is a humdinger. Glad you thought of it.”
“I didn’t think of it, an’ I ain’t thinkin’ of it now,” Dud retorted. “You blamed old fat skeezicks, you lay around figurin’ out ways to make me trouble. You’re worse than Mrs. Gillespie for gettin’ yore own way. Hmp! Devil him into a fight an’ then let him hand me a lacin’. I reckon not.”
“He’ll figure that since he can lick you, he can make out to look after himself with the other boys.”
“He ain’t licked me yet, an’ that’s only half of it. He ain’t a-goin’ to.”
Fuming at this outrageous proposition put up to him, the puncher jingled away and left his triple-chinned friend.
Blister grinned. The seed he had scattered might have fallen among the rocks and the thorns, but he was willing to make a small bet with himself that some of it had lit on good ground and would bear fruit.