Lorraine blushed, and was thankful that her dad had not watched her work in that serial. For that matter, she hoped that Lone Morgan would never stray into a movie where any of her pictures were being shown.
"I'm serious, dad. I don't want to make a show of myself. But if you'll feel that I can be a help instead of a handicap, that's what I want. And if it comes to fighting——"
Brit pushed her from him impatiently. "There yuh go—fight—fight—and I told yuh there ain't any fighting going on. Nothingmore'n a fight to hang on and make a living. That means straight, hard work and mindin' your own business. If you want to help at that——"
"I do," said Raine quietly, getting to her feet. Her legacy of stubbornness set her lips firmly together. "That's exactly what I mean. Good night, dad."
Brit answered her noncommittally, apparently sunk already in his own musings. But his lips drew in to suppress a smile when he saw, from the corner of his eyes, that Lorraine was winding the alarm on the cheap kitchen clock, and that she set the hand carefully and took the clock with her to bed.
Oppression is a growth that flourishes best in the soil of opportunity. It seldom springs into full power at once. The Sawtooth Cattle Company had begun much as its neighbors had begun: with a tract of land, cattle, and the ambition for prospering. Senator Warfield had then been plain Bill Warfield, manager of the outfit, who rode with his men and saw how his herds increased,—saw too how they might increase faster under certain conditions. At the outset he was not, perhaps, more unscrupulous than some of his neighbors. True, if a homesteader left his claim for a longer time than the law allowed him, Bill Warfield would choose one of his own men to file a contest on that claim. The man's wages would be paid. Witnesses were never lacking to swear to the improvements he had made, and after the patent had been granted the homesteader (for the contestant always won,in that country) the Sawtooth, would pay him for the land. Frequently a Sawtooth man would file upon land before any other man had claimed it. Sometimes a Sawtooth man would purchase a relinquishment from some poor devil of a claim-holder who seemed always to have bad luck, and so became discouraged and ready to sell. An intelligent man like Bill Warfield could acquire much land in this manner, give him time enough.
In much the same manner his herds increased. He bought out small ranchers who were crowded to the selling point in one way or another. They would find themselves fenced off from water, the Sawtooth having acquired the water rights to creek or spring. Or they would be hemmed in with fenced fields and would find it next to impossible to make use of the law which gave them the right to "condemn" a road through. They would not be openly assailed,—Bill Warfield was an intelligent man. A dozen brands were recorded in the name of the Sawtooth Cattle Company, and if a small rancher found his calf crop shorter than it should be, he might think as he pleased, but he would have no tangible proof that his calves wore a Sawtooth brand.
Inevitably it became necessary now and thento stop a mouth that was ready to speak unwelcome truths. But if a Sawtooth man were known to have committed violence, the Sawtooth itself was the first to put the sheriff on his trail. If the man successfully dodged the sheriff and made his way to parts unknown, the Sawtooth could shrug its shoulders and wash its hands of him.
Then whispers were heard that the Sawtooth had on its pay roll men who were paid to kill and to leave no trace. So many heedless ones crossed the Sawtooth's path to riches! Fred Thurman had been one; a "bull-headed cuss" who had the temerity to fight back when the Sawtooth calmly laid claim to the first water rights to Granite Creek, having bought it, they said, with the placer claim of an old miner who had prospected along the headwaters of Granite at the base of Bear Top.
By that time the Sawtooth had grown to a power no poor man could hope to defeat. Bill Warfield was Senator Warfield, and Senator Warfield was a power in the political world that immediately surrounded him. Since his neighboring ranchmen had not been able to prevent his steady climbing to the position he now held, they had small hope of pulling him down. Brit wasright. They did well to hang on and continue living in that country.
An open killing, one that would attract the attention of the outside world, might be avenged. The man who committed the crime might be punished,—if public opinion were sufficiently massed against him. In that case Senator Warfield would cry loudest for justice. But it would take a stronger man than the country held to raise the question of Fred Thurman's death and take even the first steps toward proving it a murder.
"It ain't that they candoanything, Mr. Warfield," the man from Whisper said guardedly, urging his horse close to the machine that stood in the trail from Echo. It was broad day—a sun-scorched day to boot—and Senator Warfield perspired behind the wheel of his car. "It's the talk they may get started."
"What have they said? The girl was at the ranch for several days. She didn't talk there, or Hawkins would have told me."
"She was sick. I saw her the other day at the Quirt, and she more'n half recognized me. Hell! How'dIknow she was in there among them rocks? Everybody that was apt to be riding through was accounted for, and I knew therewasn't any one coming horseback or with a rig. My hearing's pretty good."
Warfield moved the spark lever up and down on the wheel while he thought. "Well," he said carefully at last, "if you're falling down in your work, what are you whining about it to me for? What do you want?"
Al moistened his lips with his tongue. "I want to know how far I can go. It's been hands off the Quirt, up to now. And the Quirt's beginning to think it can get away with most anything. They've throwed a fence across the pass through from Sugar Spring to Whisper. That sends us away around by Three Creek. You can't trail stock across Granite Ridge, nor them lava ledges. If it's going to be hands off, I want to know it. There's other places I'd rather live in, if the Quirt's going to raise talk about Fred Thurman."
Senator Warfield pulled at his collar and tie as if they choked him. "The Quirt has made no trouble," he said. "Of course, if they begin throwing fences across our stock trails and peddling gossip, that is another story. I expect you to protect our interests, of course. And I have never made a practice of dictating to you. In this case"—he sent a sharp glance at Al—"itseems to me your interests are involved more than ours. As to Fred Thurman, I don't know anything about it. I was not here when he died, and I have never seen this girl of Brit's who seems to worry you. She doesn't interest me, one way or the other."
"She seems to interest Bob a whole lot," Al said maliciously. "He rode over to see her yesterday. She wasn't home, though."
Senator Warfield seemed unmoved by this bit of news, wherefore Al returned to the main issue.
"Do I get a free hand, or don't I?" he insisted. "They can't be let peddle talk—not if I stay around here."
Senator Warfield considered the matter.
"The girl's got the only line on me," Al went on. "The inquest was as clean as I ever saw. Everything all straight—and then, here she comes up——"
"If you know how to stop a woman's mouth, Al, you can make a million a month telling other men." Senator Warfield smiled at him. Then he leaned across the front seat and added impressively, "Bear one thing in mind, Al. The Sawtooth cannot permit itself to become involved in any scandal, nor in any killing cases. We'rejust at the most crucial point with our reclamation project, over here on the flat. The legislature is willing to make an appropriation for the building of the canal, and in two or three months at the latest we should begin selling agricultural tracts to the public. The State will also throw open the land it had withdrawn from settlement, pending the floating of this canal project. More than ever the integrity of the Sawtooth Cattle Company must be preserved, since it has come out openly as a backer of the irrigation company. Nothing—nothingmust be permitted to stand in the way."
He removed his thin driving cap and wiped his perspiring forehead. "I'm sorry this all happened—as it has turned out," he said, with real regret in his tone. "But since it did happen, I must rely upon you to—to—er——"
"I guess I understand," Al grinned sardonically. "I just wanted you to know how things is building up. The Quirt's kinda overreached itself. I didn't want you comin' back on me for trying to keep their feet outa the trough. I want you to know things is pretty damn ticklish right now, and it's going to take careful steppin'."
"Well, don't let your foot slip, Al," SenatorWarfield warned him. "The Sawtooth would hate to lose you; you're a good man."
"Oh, I get yuh," Al retorted. "My foot ain't going to slip—— If it did, the Sawtooth would be the first to pile onto my back!" The last sentence was not meant for the senator's ears. Al had backed his horse, and Senator Warfield was stepping on the starter. But it would not have mattered greatly if he had heard, for this was a point quite thoroughly understood by them both.
The Warfield car went on, lurching over the inequalities of the narrow road. Al shook his horse into a shambling trot, picking his way carelessly through the scattered sage.
His horse traveled easily, now and then lifting a foot high to avoid rock or exposed root, or swerving sharply around obstacles too high to step over. Al very seldom traveled along the beaten trails, though there was nothing to deter him now save an inherent tendency toward secretiveness of his motives, destinations and whereabouts. If the country was open, you would see Al Woodruff riding at some distance from the trail—or you would not see him at all, if there were gullies in which he could conceal himself. He was always "line-riding," or hunting stray stock—horses, usually—or striking across to some line-camp of the Sawtooth, on business which he was perfectly willing to state.
But you will long ago have guessed that he was the evil eye of the Sawtooth Company. He took no orders save such general ones as Senator Warfield had just given him. He gave none. Whatever he did he did alone, and he took no man into his confidence. It is more than probable that Senator Warfield would never have known to a certainty that Al was responsible for Thurman's death, if Al had not been worried over the Quirt's possible knowledge of the crime and anxious to know just how far his power might go.
Ostensibly he was in charge of the camp at Whisper, a place far enough off the beaten trails to free him from chance visitors. The Sawtooth kept many such camps occupied by men whose duty it was to look after the Sawtooth cattle that grazed near; to see that stock did not "bog down" in the tricky sand of the adjacent water holes and die before help came, and to fend off any encroachments of the smaller cattle owners,—though these were growing fewer year by year, thanks to the weeding-out policy of the Sawtoothand the cunning activities of such as Al Woodruff.
It may sound strange to say that the Sawtooth country had not had a real "killing" for years, though accidental deaths had been rather frequent. One man, for instance, had fallen over a ledge and broken his neck, presumably while drunk. Another had bought a few sticks of dynamite to open up a spring on his ranch, and at the inquest which followed the jury had returned a verdict of "death caused by being blown up by the accidental discharge of dynamite." A sheepman was struck by lightning, according to the coroner, and his widow had been glad to sell ranch and sheep very cheaply to the Sawtooth and return to her relatives in Montana. The Sawtooth had shipped the sheep within a month and turned the ranch into another line-camp.
You will see that Senator Warfield had every reason to be sincere when he called Al Woodruff a good man; good for the Sawtooth interests, that means. You will also see that Brit Hunter had reasons for believing that the business of ranching in the Sawtooth country might be classed as extra hazardous, and for saying that it took nerve just to hang on.
That is why Al rode oblivious to his surroundings, meditating no doubt upon the best means of preserving the "integrity" of the Sawtooth and at the same time soothing effectively the ticklishness of the situation of which he had complained. It was his business to find the best means. It was for just such work that the Sawtooth paid him—secretly, to be sure—better wages than the foreman, Hawkins, received. Al was conscientious and did his best to earn his wages; not because he particularly loved killing and spying as a sport, but because the Sawtooth had bought his loyalty for a price, and so long as he felt that he was getting a square deal from them, he would turn his hand against any man that stood in their way. He was a Sawtooth man, and he fought the enemies of the Sawtooth as matter-of-factly as a soldier will fight for his country. To his unimaginative mind there was sufficient justification in that attitude. As for the ease with which he planned to kill and cover his killing under the semblance of accident, he would have said, if you could make him speak of it, that he was not squeamish. They'd all have to die some day, anyway.
Frank Johnson rose from the breakfast table, shaved a splinter off the edge of the water bench for a toothpick and sharpened it carefully while he looked at Brit.
"You goin' after them posts, or shall I?" he inquired glumly, which, by the way, was his normal tone. "Jim and Sorry oughta git the post holes all dug to-day. One of us better take a look through that young stock in the lower field, too, and see if there's any more sign uh blackleg. Which you ruther do?"
Brit tilted his chair backward so that he could reach the coffeepot on the stove hearth. "I'll haul down the posts," he decided carelessly. "They're easy loaded, and I guess my back's as good as yourn."
"All you got to do is skid 'em down off'n the bank onto the wagon," Frank said. "I wishtyou'd go on up where we cut them last ones and git my sweater, Brit. I musta left it hanging on a bush right close to where I was workin'."
Brit's grunt signified assent, and Frank went out. Jim and Sorry, the two unpicturesque cowboys of whom Lorraine had complained to the cat had already departed with pick and shovel to their unromantic task of digging post holes. Each carried a most unattractive lunch tied in a flour sack behind the cantle of his saddle. Lorraine had done her conscientious best, but with lumpy, sour-dough bread, cold bacon and currant jelly of that kind which is packed in wooden kegs, one can't do much with a cold lunch. Lorraine wondered how much worse it would look after it had been tied on the saddle for half a day; wondered too what those two silent ones got out of life,—what they looked forward to, what was their final goal. For that matter she frequently wondered what there was in life for any of them, shut into that deadly monotony of sagebrush and rocks interspersed with little, grassy meadows where the cattle fed listlessly.
Even the sinister undercurrent of antagonism against the Quirt could not whip her emotions feeling that she was doing anything morethan live the restricted, sordid little life of a poorly equipped ranch. She had ridden once with Frank Johnson to look through a bunch of cattle, but it had been nothing more than a hot, thirsty, dull ride, with a wind that blew her hat off in spite of pins and tied veil, and with a companion who spoke only when he was spoken to and then as briefly as possible.
Her father would not talk again as he had talked that night. She had tried to make him tell her more about the Sawtooth and had gotten nothing out of him. The man from Whisper, whom Brit had spoken of as Al, had not returned. Nor had the promised saddle horse materialized. The boys were too busy to run in any horses, her father had told her shortly when she reminded him of his promise. When the fence was done, maybe he could rustle her another horse,—and then he had added that he didn't see what ailed Yellowjacket, for all the riding she was likely to do.
"Straight hard work and minding your own business," her father had said, and it seemed to Lorraine after three or four days of it that he had summed up the life of a cattleman's daughter in a masterly manner which ought to berecorded among Famous Sayings like "War is hell" and "Don't give up the ship."
On this particular morning Lorraine's spirits were at their lowest ebb. If it were not for the new stepfather, she would return to the Casa Grande, she told herself disgustedly. And if it were not for the belief among all her acquaintances that she was queening it over the cattle-king's vast domain, she would return and find work again in motion pictures. But she could not bring herself to the point of facing the curiosity and the petty gossip of the studios. She would be expected to explain satisfactorily why she had left the real West for the mimic West of Hollywood. She did not acknowledge to herself that she also could not face the admission of failure to carry out what she had begun.
She had told her dad that she wanted to fight with him, even though "fighting" in this case meant washing the coarse clothing of her father and Frank, scrubbing the rough, warped boards of the cabin floor, and frying ranch-cured bacon for every meal, and in making butter to sell, and counting the eggs every night and being careful to use only the cracked ones for cooking.
She hated every detail of this crude housekeeping, from the chipped enamel dishpan to the broom that was all one-sided, and the pillow slips which were nothing more nor less than sugar sacks. She hated it even more than she had hated the Casa Grande and her mother's frowsy mentality. But because she could see that she made life a little more comfortable for her dad, because she felt that he needed her, she would stay and assure herself over and over that she was staying merely because she was too proud to go back to the old life and own the West a failure.
She was sweeping the doorstep with the one-sided broom when Brit drove out through the gate and up the trail which she knew led eventually to Sugar Spring. The horses, sleek in their new hair and skittish with the change from hay to new grass, danced over the rough ground so that the running gear of the wagon, with its looped log-chain, which would later do duty as a brake on the long grade down from timber line on the side of Spirit Canyon, rattled and banged over the rocks with a clatter that could be heard for half a mile. Lorraine looked after her father enviously. If she were a boy she would be riding on that sack of hay tied to the "hounds" for a seat. But, being a girl, it had never occurredto Brit that she might like to go,—might even be useful to him on the trip.
"I suppose if I told dad I could drive that team as well as he can, he'd just look at me and think I was crazy," she thought resentfully and gave the broom a spiteful fling toward a presumptuous hen that had approached too closely. "If I'd asked him to let me go along he'd have made some excuse—oh, I'm beginning to know dad! He thinks a woman's place is in the house—preferably the kitchen. And here I've thought all my life that cowgirls did nothing but ride around and warn people about stage holdups and everything! I'd just like to know how a girl would ever have a chance to know what was going on in the country, unless she heard the men talking while she poured their coffee. Only this bunch don't talk at all. They just gobble and go."
She went in then and shut the door with a slam. Up on the ridge Al Woodruff lowered his small binocular and eased away from the spot where he had been crouching behind a bush. Every one on the Quirt ranch was accounted for. As well as if he had sat at their breakfast table Al knew where each man's work would take himthat day. As for the girl, she was safe at the ranch for the day, probably. If she did take a ride later on, it would probably be up the ridge between the Quirt and Thurman's ranch, and sit for an hour or so just looking. That ride was beginning to be a habit of hers, Al had observed, so that he considered her accounted for also.
He made his way along the side hill to where his horse was tied to a bush, mounted and rode away with his mind pretty much at ease. Much more at ease than it would have been had he read what was in Lorraine's mind when, she slammed that door.
Up above Sugar Spring was timber. By applying to the nearest Forest Supervisor a certain amount could be had for ranch improvements upon paying a small sum for the "stumpage." The Quirt had permission to cut posts for their new fence which Al Woodruff had reported to his boss.
As he drove up the trail, which was in places barely passable for a wagon, Brit was thinking of that fence. The Sawtooth would object to it, he knew, since it cut off one of their stock trails and sent them around through rougher country. Just what form their objection would take, Britdid not know. Deep in his intrepid soul he hoped that the Sawtooth would at last show its hand openly. He had liked Fred Thurman, and what Lorraine had told him went much deeper than she knew. He wanted to bring them into the open where he could fight with some show of winning.
"I'll git Bill Warfield yet—and git him right," was the gist of his musings. "He's bound to show his head, give him time enough. Him and his killers can't always keep under cover. Let 'em come at me about that fence! It's on my land—the Quirt's got a right to fence every foot of land that belongs to 'em."
All the way over the ridge and across the flat and up the steep, narrow road along the edge of Spirit Canyon, Brit dwelt upon the probable moves of the Sawtooth. They would wait, he thought, until the fence was completed and they had made a trail around through the lava rocks. They would not risk any move at present; they would wait and tacitly accept the fence, or pretend to accept it, as a natural inconvenience. But Brit did not deceive himself that they would remain passive. That it had been "hands off the Quirt" he did not know, but attributed theQuirt's immunity to careful habits and the fact that they had never come to the point where their interests actually clashed with the Sawtooth.
It never occurred to him therefore that he was slated for an accident that day if the details could be conveniently arranged.
It was a long trail to Sugar Spring, and from there up Spirit Canyon the climb was so tedious and steep that Brit took a full hour for the trip, resting the team often because they were soft from the new grass diet and sweated easily. They lost none of their spirit, however, and when the road was steepest nagged at each other with head-shakings and bared teeth, and ducked against each other in pretended fright at every unusual rock or bush.
At the top he was forced to drive a full half mile beyond the piled posts to a flat large enough to turn around. All this took time, especially since Caroline, the brown mare, would rather travel ten miles straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to "take it out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of opprobrious epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head them down the trail again.
At the post pile he unhitched the team forsafety's sake and tied them to trees, where he fed them a little grain in nose bags. He was absorbed now in his work and thought no more about the Sawtooth. He fastened the log chain to the rear wheels to brake the wagon on the long grade down the canyon, loaded the wagon with posts, bound them fast with a lighter chain he had brought for the purpose, ate his own lunch and decided that, since he had made fair time and would arrive home too early to do the chores and too late to start any other job, he would cruise farther up the mountain side and see what was the prospect of getting out logs enough for an addition to the cabin.
Now that Raine was going to live with him, two rooms were not enough. Brit wanted to make her as happy as he could, in his limited fashion. He had for some days been planning a "settin' room and bedroom" for her. She would be having beaux after awhile when she got acquainted, he supposed. He could not deny her the privilege; she was young and she was, in Brit's opinion, the best looking girl he had ever seen, not even excepting Minnie, her mother. But he hoped she wouldn't go off and get married the first thing she did,—and one good wayto prevent that, he reasoned, was to make her comfortable with him. He had noticed how pleased she was that their cabin was of logs. She had even remarked that she could not understand how a rancher would ever want to build a board shack if there was any timber to be had. Well, timber was to be had, and she should have her log house, though the hauling was not going to be any sunshine, in Brit's opinion. With his axe he walked through the timber, craning upward for straight tree trunks and lightly blazing the ones he would want, the occasional axe strokes sounding distinctly in the quiet air.
Lorraine heard them as she rode old Yellowjacket puffing up the grade, following the wagon marks, and knew that she was nearing the end of her journey,—for which Yellowjacket, she supposed, would be thankful. She had started not more than an hour later than her father, but the team had trotted along more briskly than her poor old nag would travel, so that she did not overtake her dad as she had hoped.
She was topping the last climb when she saw the team tied to the trees, and at the same moment she caught a glimpse of a man who crawled out from under the load of posts and climbed theslope farther on. She was on the point of calling out to him, thinking that he was her dad, when he disappeared into the brush. At the same moment she heard the stroke of an axe over to the right of where the man was climbing.
She was riding past the team when Caroline humped her back and kicked viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into a juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very permanently placed there. Lorraine stepped off on the uphill side of him, thanked her lucky stars she had not broken a leg, and tried to reassure Yellowjacket and to persuade him that no real harm had been done him. Straightway she discovered that Yellowjacket had a mind of his own and that a pessimistic mind. He refused to scramble back into the trail, preferring to sit where he was, or since Lorraine made that too uncomfortable, to stand where he had been sitting. Yellowjacket, I may explain, owned a Roman nose, a pendulous lower lip and drooping eyelids. Those who know horses will understand.
By the time Lorraine had bullied and cajoledhim into making a somewhat circuitous route to the road, where he finally appeared some distance above the point of his descent, Brit was there, hitching the team to the wagon.
"What yuh doing up there?" he wanted to know, looking up with some astonishment.
Lorraine furnished him with details and her opinion of both Caroline and Yellow jacket. "I simply refuse to ride this comedy animal another mile," she declared with some heat. "I'll drive the team and you can ride him home, or he can be tied on behind the wagon."
"He won't lead," Brit objected. "Yeller's all right if you make up your mind to a few failin's. You go ahead and ride him home. You sure can't drive this team."
"I can!" Lorraine contended. "I've driven four horses—I guess I can drive two, all right."
"Well, you ain't going to," Brit stated with a flat finality that abruptly ended the argument.
Lorraine had never before been really angry with her father. She struck Yellowjacket with her quirt and sent him sidling past the wagon and the tricky Caroline, too stubborn to answer her dad when he called after her that she had better ride behind the load. She went on, making Yellowjacket trot when he did not want to trot down hill.
Behind her she heard the chuck-chuck of the loaded wagon. Far ahead she heard some one whistling a high, sweet melody which had the queer, minor strains of some old folk song. For just a few bars she heard it, and then it was stilled, and the road dipping steeply before her seemed very lonely, its emptiness cooling her brief anger to a depression that had held her too often in its grip since that terrible night of the storm. For the first time she looked back at her father lurching along on the load and at the team looking so funny with the collars pushed up on their necks with the weight of the load behind.
With a quick impulse of penitence she waved her hand to Brit, who waved back at her. Then she went on, feeling a bit less alone in the world. After all, he was her dad, and his life had been hard. If he failed to understand her and her mental hunger for real companionship, perhaps she also failed to understand him.
They had left the timber line now and had come to the lip of the canyon itself. Lorraine looked down its steep, rock-roughened sides andthought how her old director would have raved over its possibilities in the way of "stunts." Yellow jacket, she noticed, kept circumspectly to the center of the trail and eyed the canyon with frank disfavor.
She did not know at just what moment she became aware of trouble behind her. It may have been Yellowjacket, turning his head sidewise and abruptly quickening his pace that warned her. It may have been the difference in the sound of the wagon and the impact of the horses' hoofs on the rocky trail. She turned and saw that something had gone wrong. They were coming down upon her at a sharp trot, stepping high, the wagon tongue thrust up between their heads as they tried to hold back the load.
Brit yelled to her then to get out of the way, and his voice was harsh and insistent. Lorraine looked at the steep bank to the right, knew instinctively that Yellowjacket would never have time to climb it before the team was upon them, and urged him to a lope. She glanced back again, saw that the team was not running away, that they were trying to hold the wagon, and that it was gaining momentum in spite of them.
"Jump, dad!" she called and got no answer. Brit was sitting braced with his feet far apart, holding and guiding the team. "He won't jump—he wouldn't jump—any more than I would," she chattered to herself, sick with fear for him, while she lashed her own horse to keep out of their way.
The next she knew, the team was running, their eyeballs staring, their front feet flung high as they lunged panic-stricken down the trail. The load was rocking along behind them. Brit was still braced and clinging to the reins.
Panic seized Yellowjacket. He, too, went lunging down that trail, his head thrown from side to side that he might watch the thing that menaced him, heedless of the fact that danger might lie ahead of him also. Lorraine knew that he was running senselessly, that he might leave the trail at any bend and go rolling into the canyon.
A sense of unreality seized her. It could not be deadly earnest, she thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and countingthe number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had "put it over."
She looked over her shoulder and saw them still coming. It was real. It was terribly real, the way that team was fleeing down the grade. She had never seen anything like that before, never seen horses so frantically trying to run from the swaying load behind them. Always, she had been accustomed to moderation in the pace and a slowed camera to speed up the action on the screen. Yellowjacket, too—she had never ridden at that terrific speed down hill. Twice she lost a stirrup and grabbed the saddle horn to save herself from going over his head.
They neared a sharp turn, and it took all her strength to pull her horse to the inside and save him from plunging off down the canyon's side. The nose of the hill hid for a moment her dad, and in that moment she heard a crash and knew what had happened. But she could not stop; Yellowjacket had his ears laid back flat on his senseless head, and the bit clamped tight in his teeth.
She heard the crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon. There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the sharp staccato of pounding hoofs.
Lorraine, following instinct rather than thought, pulled Yellowjacket into the first opening that presented itself. This was a narrow, rather precipitous gully that seamed the slope just beyond the bend. The bushes there whipped her head and shoulders cruelly as the horse forged in among them, but they trapped him effectually where the gully narrowed to a point. He stopped perforce, and Lorraine was out of the saddle and running down to the trail before she quite realized what she was doing.
At the bend she looked down, saw the marks where the wagon had gone over, scraping rocks and bushes from its path. Fence posts were strewn at all angles down the incline, and far down a horse was standing with part of the harness on him and with his head drooping dispiritedly. Her father she could not see, nor the other horse, nor the wagon. A clump ofyoung trees hid the lower declivity. Lorraine did not stop to think of what she would find down there. Sliding, running, she followed the traces of the wreck to where the horse was standing. It was Caroline, looking very dejected but apparently unhurt, save for skinned patches here and there where she had rolled over rocks.
A little farther, just beyond the point of the grove which they seemed to have missed altogether, lay the other horse and what was left of the wagon. Brit she did not see at all. She searched the bushes, looked under the wagon, and called and called.
A full-voiced shout answered her from farther up the canyon, and she ran stumbling toward the sound, too agonized to shed tears or to think very clearly. It was not her father's voice; she knew that beyond all doubt. It was no voice that she had ever heard before. It had a clear resonance that once heard would not have been easily forgotten. When she saw them finally, her father was being propped up in a half-sitting position, and the strange man was holding something to his lips.
"Just a little water. I carry me a bottle of water always in my pocket," said Swan, glancingup at her when she had reached them. "It sometimes makes a man's head think better when he has been hurt, if he can drink a little water or something."
Brit swallowed and turned his face away from the tilted bottle. "I jumped—but I didn't jump quick enough," he muttered thickly. "The chain pulled loose. Where's the horses, Raine?"
"They're all right. Caroline's standing over there. Are you hurt much, dad?" It was a futile question, because Brit was already going off into unconsciousness.
"He's hurt pretty bad," Swan declared honestly, looking up at her with his eyes grown serious. "I was across the walley and I saw him coming down the road like rolling rocks down a hill. I came quick. Now we make stretcher, I think, and carry him home. I could take him on my back, but that is hurting him too much." He looked at her—through her, it seemed to Lorraine. In spite of her fear, in spite of her grief, she felt that Swan was reading her very soul, and she backed away from him.
"I could help your father very much," he said soberly, "but I should tell you a secret if I dothat. I should maybe ask that you tell a lie if somebody asks questions. Could you do that, Miss?"
"Lie?" Lorraine laughed uncertainly. "I'dkill!—if that would help dad."
Swan was folding his coat very carefully and placing it under Brit's head. "My mother I love like that," he said, without looking up. "My mother I love so well that I talk with my thoughts to her sometimes. You believe people can talk with their thoughts?"
"I don't know—what's that got to do with helping dad?" Lorraine knelt beside Brit and began stroking his forehead softly, as is the soothing way of women with their sick.
"I could send my thought to my mother. I could say to her that a man is hurt and that a doctor must come very quickly to the Quirt ranch. I could do that, Miss, but I should not like it if people knew that I did it. They would maybe say that I am crazy. They would laugh at me, and it is not right to laugh at those things."
"I'm not laughing. If you can do it, for heaven's sake go ahead! I don't believe it, but I won't tell any one, if that's what you want."
"If some neighbors should ask, 'How did that doctor come so quick?'——"
"I'd rather lie and say I sent for him, than say that you or any one else sent a telepathic message. That would sound more like a lie than a lie would. How are we going to make a stretcher? We've got to get him home, somehow——"
"At my cabin is blankets," Swan told her briskly. "I can climb the hill—it is up there. In a little while I will come back."
He started off without waiting to see what Lorraine would have to say about it, and with some misgivings she watched him run down to the canyon's bottom and go forging up the opposite side with a most amazing speed and certainty. In travel pictures she had seen mountain sheep climb like that, and she likened him now to one of them. It seemed a shame that he was a bit crazy, she thought; and immediately she recalled his perfect assurance when he told her of sending thought messages to his mother. She had heard of such things, she had even read a little on the subject, but it had never seemed to her a practical means of communicating. Calling a doctor, for instance, seemed to Lorrainerather far-fetched an application of what was at best but a debatable theory.
Considering the distance, he was back in a surprisingly short time with two blankets, a couple of light poles and a flask of brandy. He seemed as fresh and unwinded as if he had gone no farther than the grove, and he wore, more than ever, his air of cheerful assurance.
"The doctor will be there," he remarked, just as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "We can carry him to Fred Thurman's. There I can get horses and a wagon, and you will not have to carry so far. And when we get to your ranch the doctor will be there, I think. He is starting now. We will hurry. I will fix it so you need not carry much. It is just to make it steady for me."
While he talked he was working on the stretcher. He had a rope, and he was knotting it in a long loop to the poles. Lorraine wondered why, until he had lifted her father and placed him on the stretcher and placed the loop over his own head and under one arm, as a ploughman holds the reins, so that his hands may be free.
"If you will carry the front," said Swanpolitely, "it will not be heavy for you like this. But you will help me keep it steady."
Lorraine was past discussing anything. She obeyed him silently, lifting the end of the stretcher and leading the way down to the canyon's bottom, where Swan assured her they could walk quite easily and would save many détours which the road above must take. At the bottom Swan stopped her so that he might shorten the rope and take more of the weight on his shoulders. She protested half-heartedly, but Swan only laughed.
"I am strong like a mule," he said. "You should see me wrestle with somebody. Clear over my head—I can carry a man in my hands. This is so you can walk fast. Three miles straight down we come to Thurman's ranch, where I get the horses. It's funny how hills make a road far around. Just three miles—that's all. I have walked many times."
Lorraine did not answer him. She felt that he was talking merely to keep her from worrying, and she was fairly sick with anxiety and did not hear half of what he was saying. She was nervously careful about choosing her steps so that she would not stumble and jolt her father.She did not believe that he was wholly unconscious, for she had seen his eyelids tighten and his lips twitch several times, when she was waiting for Swan. He had seemed to be in pain and to be trying to hide the fact from her. She felt that Swan knew it, else he would have talked of her dad, would at least have tried to reassure her. But it is difficult to speak of a person who hears what you are saying, and Swan was talking of everything, it seemed to her, except the man they were carrying.
She wondered if it were really true that Swan had sent a call through space for a doctor; straightway she would call herself crazy for even considering for a moment its possibility. If he could do that—but of course he couldn't. He must just imagine it.
Many times Swan had her lower the stretcher to the ground, and would make a great show of rubbing his arms and easing his shoulder muscles. Whenever Lorraine looked full into his face he would grin at her as though nothing was wrong, and when they came to a clear-running stream he emptied the water bottle, dipped up a little fresh water, added brandy, and lifted Brit's head very gently and gave hima drink. Brit opened his eyes and looked at Swan, and from him to Lorraine, but he did not say anything. He still had that tightened look around his mouth which spelled pain.
"Pretty quick now we get you fixed up good," Swan told him cheerfully. "One mile more is all, and we get the horses and I make a good bed for you." He looked a signal, and Lorraine once more took up the stretcher.
Another mile seemed a long way, light though Swan had made the load for her. She thought once that he must have some clairvoyant power, because whenever she felt as if her arms were breaking, Swan would tell her to stop a minute.
"How do you know a doctor will come?" she asked Swan suddenly, when they were resting with the Thurman ranch in view half a mile below them.
Swan did not look at her directly, as had been his custom. She saw a darker shade of red creep up into his cheeks. "My mother says she would send a doctor quick," he replied hesitatingly. "You will see. It is because—your father he is not like other men in this country. Your father is a good man. That is why a doctor comes."
Lorraine looked at him strangely and stooped again to her burden. She did not speak again until they were passing the Thurman fence where it ran up into the mouth of the canyon. A few horses were grazing there, the sun striking their sides with the sheen of satin. They stared curiously at the little procession, snorted and started to run, heads and tails held high. But one wheeled suddenly and came galloping toward them, stopped when he was quite close, ducked and went thundering past to the head of the field. Lorraine gave a sharp little scream and set down the stretcher with a lurch, staring after the horse wide-eyed, her face white.
"They do it for play," Swan said reassuringly. "They don't hurt you. The fence is between, and they don't hurt you anyway."
"That horse with the white face—I saw it—and when the man struck it with his quirt it went past me, running like that and dragging—oh-h!" She leaned against the bluff side, her face covered with her two palms.
Swan glanced down at Brit, saw that his eyes were closed, ducked his head from under the looped rope and went to Lorraine.
"The man that struck that horse—do youknow that man?" he asked, all the good nature gone from his voice.
"No—I don't know—I saw him twice, by the lightning flashes. He shot—and then I saw him——" She stopped abruptly, stood for a minute longer with her eyes covered, then dropped her hands limply to her sides. But when the horse came circling back with a great flourish, she shivered and her hands closed into the fists of a fighter.
"Are you a Sawtooth man?" she demanded suddenly, looking up at Swan defiantly. "It was a nightmare. I—I dreamed once about a horse—like that."
Swan's wide-open eyes softened a little. "The Sawtooth calls me that damn Swede on Bear Top," he explained. "I took a homestead up there and some day they will want to buy my place or they will want to make a fight with me to get the water. Could you know that man again?"
"Raine!" Brit's voice held a warning, and Lorraine shivered again as she turned toward him. "Raine, you——"
He closed his eyes again, and she could get no further speech from him. But she thought sheunderstood. He did not want her to talk about Fred Thurman. She went to her end of the stretcher and waited there while Swan put the rope over his head. They went on, Lorraine walking with her head averted, trying not to see the blaze-faced roan, trying to shut out the memory of him dashing past her with his terrible burden, that night.
Swan did not speak of the matter again. With Lorraine's assistance he carried Brit into Thurman's cabin, laid him, stretcher and all, on the bed and hurried out to catch and harness the team of work horses. Lorraine waited beside her father, helpless and miserable. There was nothing to do but wait, yet waiting seemed to her the one thing she could not do.
"Raine!" Brit's voice was very weak, but Lorraine jumped as though a trumpet had bellowed suddenly in her ear. "Swan—he's all right. But don't go telling—all yuh know and some besides. He ain't—Sawtooth, but—he might let out——"
"I know. I won't, dad. It was that horse——"
Brit turned his face to the wall as if no more was to be said on the subject. Lorraine wandered around the cabin, which was no larger thanher father's place. The rooms were scrupulously clean—neater than the Quirt, she observed guiltily. Not one article, however small and unimportant, seemed to be out of its place, and the floors of both rooms were scrubbed whiter than any floors she had ever seen. Swan's housekeeping qualities made her ashamed of her own imperfections; and when, thinking that Swan must be hungry and that the least she could do was to set out food for him, she opened the cupboard, she had a swift, embarrassed vision of her own culinary imperfections. She could cook better food than her dad had been content to eat and to set before others, but Swan's bread was a triumph in sour dough. Biscuits tall and light as bread can be she found, covered neatly with a cloth. Prunes stewed so that there was not one single wrinkle in them—Lorraine could scarcely believe they were prunes until she tasted them. She was investigating a pot of beans when Swan came in.
"Food I am thinking of, Miss," he grinned at her. "We shall hurry, but it is not good to go hungry. Milk is outside in a cupboard. It is quicker than to make coffee."
"It will be dark before we can get him home,"said Lorraine uneasily. "And by the time a doctor can get out there——"
"A doctor will be there, I think. You don't believe, but that is no difference to his coming just the same."
He brought the milk, poured off the creamy top into a pitcher, stirred it, and quietly insisted that she drink two glasses. Lorraine observed that Swan himself ate very little, bolting down a biscuit in great mouthfuls while he carried a mattress and blankets out to spread in the wagon. It was like his pretense of weariness on the long carry down the canyon, she thought. It was for her more than for himself that he was thinking.
A car with dimmed lights stood in front of the Quirt cabin when Swan drove around the last low ridge and down to the gate. The rattle of the wagon must have been heard, for the door opened suddenly and Frank stood revealed in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp on the table within. Behind Frank, Lorraine saw Jim and Sorry standing in their shirt sleeves looking out into the dark. Another, shorter figure she glimpsed as Frank and the two men stepped out and came striding hastily toward them. Lorraine jumped out and ran to meet them, hoping and fearing that her hope was foolish. That car might easily be only Bob Warfield on some errand of no importance. Still, she hoped.
"That you, Raine? Where's Brit? What's all this about Brit being hurt? A doctor from Shoshone——"
"Adoctor? Oh, did a doctor come, then?Oh, help Swan carry dad in! I'm—oh, I'm afraid he's awfully injured!"
"Yes-s—but how'n hell did a doctor know about it?" Sorry, the silent, blurted unexpectedly.
"Oh,—never mind—but get dad in. I'll——" She ran past them without finishing her sentence and burst incoherently into the presence of an extremely calm little man with gray whiskers and dust on the shoulders of his coat. These details, I may add, formed the sum of Lorraine's first impression of him.
"Well! Well!" he remonstrated with a professional briskness, when she nearly bowled him over. "We seem to be in something of a hurry! Is this the patient I was sent to examine?"
"No!" Lorraine flashed impatiently over her shoulder as she rushed into her own room and began turning down the covers. "It's dad, of course—and you'd better get your coat off and get ready to go to work, because I expect he's just one mass of broken bones!"
The doctor smiled behind his whiskers and returned to the doorway to direct the carrying in of his patient. His sharp eyes went immediately to Brit's face, pallid under the leathery tan, hisfingers went to Brit's hairy, corded wrist. The doctor smiled no more that evening.
"No, he is not a mass of broken bones, I am happy to say," he reported gravely to Lorraine afterwards. "He has a sufficient number, however. The left scapula is fractured, likewise the clavicle, and there is a compound fracture of the femur. There is some injury to the head, the exact extent of which I cannot as yet determine. He should be removed to a hospital, unless you are prepared to have a nurse here for some time, or to assume the burden of a long and tedious illness." He looked at her thoughtfully. "The journey to Shoshone would be a considerable strain on the patient in his present condition. He has a splendid amount of constitutional vitality, or he would scarcely have survived his injuries so long without medical attendance. Can you tell me just how the accident occurred?"
"Excuse me, doctor—and Miss," Swan diffidently interrupted. "I could ask you to take a look on my shoulder, if you please. If you are done setting bones in Mr. Hunter. I have a great pain on my shoulder from carrying so long."
"You never mentioned it!" Lorraine reproached him quickly. "Of course it must be looked after right away. And then, Doctor, I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind." She watched them retreat to the bunk-house together, Swan's big form towering above the doctor's slighter figure. Swan was talking earnestly, the mumble of his voice reaching Lorraine without the enunciation of any particular word to give a clue to what he was saying. But it struck her that his voice did not sound quite natural; not so Swedish, not so careful.
Frank came tiptoeing out of the room where Brit lay bandaged and unconscious and stood close to Lorraine, looking down at her solemnly.
"How 'n 'ell did he git here—the doctor?" he demanded, making a great effort to hold his voice down to a whisper, and forgetting now and then. "How'dheknow Brit rolled off'n the grade? Us here,wenever knowed it, and I was tryin' to send him back when you came. He said somebody telephoned there was a man hurt in a runaway. There ain't a telephone closer'n the Sawtooth, and that there's a good twenty mile and more from where Brit was hurt. It's damn funny."
"Yes, it is," Lorraine admitted uncomfortably."I don't know any more than you do about it."
"Well, how'n 'ell did it happen? Brit, he oughta know enough to rough-lock down that hill. An' that team ain't a runaway team.Inever had no trouble with 'em—they're good at holdin' a load. They'll set down an' slide but what they'll hold 'er. What become of the horses?"
"Why—they're over there yet. We forgot all about the horses, I think. Caroline was standing up, all right. The other horse may be killed. I don't know—it was lying down. And Yellowjacket was up that little gully just this side of the wreck, when I left him. They did try to hold the load, Frank. Something must have happened to the brake. I saw dad crawling out from under the wagon just before I got to where the load was standing. Or some one did. I think it was dad. But Caroline kicked my horse down off the road, and I only saw him a minute—but itmusthave been dad. And then, a little way down the hill, something went wrong."
Frank seemed trying to reconstruct the accident from Lorraine's description. "He'd nobusiness to start down if his rough-lock wasn't all right," he said. "It ain't like him. Brit's careful about them things—little men most always are. I don't see how 'n 'ell it worked loose. It's a damn queer layout all around; and this here doctor gitting here ahead of you folks, that there is the queerest. What's he say about Brit? Think he'll pull through?"
The doctor himself, coming up just then, answered the question. Of course the patient would pull through! What were doctors for? As to his reason for coming, he referred them to Mr. Vjolmar, whom he thought could better explain the matter.
The three of them waited,—five of them, since Jim and Sorry had come up, anxious to hear the doctor's opinion and anything else pertaining to the affair. Swan was coming slowly from the bunk-house, buttoning his coat. He seemed to feel that they were waiting for him and to know why. His manner was diffident, deprecating even.
"We may as well go in out of the mosquitoes," the doctor suggested. "And I wish you would tell these people what you told me, young man. Don't be afraid to speak frankly; it is ratheramazing but not at all impossible, as I can testify. In fact," he added dryly, "my presence here ought to settle any doubt of that. Just tell them, young man, about your mother."
Swan was the last to enter the kitchen, and he stood leaning against the closed door, turning his old hat round and round, his eyes going swiftly from face to face. They were watching him, and Swan blushed a deep red while he told them about his mother in Boise, and how he could talk to her with his thoughts. He explained laboriously how the thoughts from her came like his mother speaking in his head, and that his thoughts reached her in the same way. He said that since he was a little boy they could talk together with their thoughts, but people laughed and some called them crazy, so that now he did not like to have somebody know that he could do it.
"But Brit Hunter's hurt bad, so a doctor must come quick, or I think he maybe will die. It takes too long to ride a horse to Echo from this ranch, so I call on my mother, and I tell my mother a doctor must come quick to this ranch. So my mother sends a telephone to this doctor in Shoshone, and he comes. That is all. But Iwould not like it if everybody maybe finds it out that I do that, and makes talk about it."
He looked straight at Jim and Sorry, and those two unprepossessing ones looked at each other and at Swan and at the doctor and at each other again, and headed for the door. But Swan was leaning against it, and his eyes were on them. "I would like it if you say somebody rides to get the doctor," he hinted quietly.
Sorry looked at Jim. "I rode like hell," he stated heavily. "I leave it to Jim."
"You shore'n hell did!" Jim agreed, and Swan removed his big form from the door.
"You boys goin' over t' Spirit Canyon?" Frank wanted to know.
"Yeah," said Sorry, answering for them both, and they went out, giving Swan a sidelong look of utter bafflement as they passed him. Talking by the thought route from Spirit Canyon to Boise City was evidently a bit too much for even their phlegmatic souls to contemplate with perfect calm.
"They'll keep it to theirselves, whether they believe it or not," Frank assured Swan in his labored whisper. "It don't go down with me. I ain't supe'stitious enough fer that."
"The doctor he comes, don't he?" Swan retorted. "I shall go back now and milk the cows and do chores."
"But if your shoulder is lame, Swan, how can you?" Lorraine asked in her unexpected fashion.
Swan swallowed and looked helplessly at the doctor, who stood smoothing his chin. "The muscle strain is not serious," he said calmly. "A little gentle exercise will prevent further trouble, I think." Whereupon he turned abruptly to the door of the other room, glanced in at Brit and beckoned Lorraine with an upraised finger.
"You have had a hard time of it yourself, young lady," he told her. "You needn't worry about Swan. He is not suffering appreciably. I shall mix you a very unpleasant dose of medicine, and then I want you to go to bed and sleep. I shall stay with your father to-night; not that it is necessary, but because I prefer daylight for the trip back to town. So there is no reason why you should sit up and wear yourself out. You will have plenty of time to do that while your father's bones mend."
He proceeded to mix the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight was shining into the room.