The King of Arcadia
Page 13
XIII
THE LAW AND THE LADY
It touched a little spring of wonderment in the Forestry man whenBallard made the waiting halt merely an excuse for a word ofleave-taking with Sheriff Beckwith; a brittle exchange of formalities inwhich no mention was made of the incident of the brush barrier and thetype-written note.
"You have your warrants, and you know your way around in the valley; youwon't need me," was the manner in which the young engineer drew out ofthe impending unpleasantness. "When you have taken your prisoners to thecounty seat, the company's attorneys will do the rest."
Beckwith, being an ex-cattleman, was grimly sarcastic.
"This is my job, and I'll do it up man-size and b'ligerent, Mr. Ballard.But between us three and the gate-post, you ain't goin' to make anythingby it--barrin' a lot o' bad blood. The old colonel 'll give a bond andbail his men, and there you are again, right where you started from."
"That's all right; I believe in the law, and I'm giving it a chance,"snapped Ballard; and the two parties separated, the sheriff's possetaking the river road, and Ballard leading the way across country in thedirection of Fitzpatrick's field headquarters.
Rather more than half of the distance from the canyon head to the camphad been covered before the boy, Carson, had lagged far enough behind togive Bigelow a chance for free speech with Ballard, but the Forestry manimproved the opportunity as soon as it was given him.
"You still believe there is no hope of a compromise?" he began. "Whatthe sheriff said a few minutes ago is quite true, you know. The cow-boyswill be back in a day or two, and it will make bad blood."
"Excuse me," said Ballard, irritably; "you are an onlooker, Mr. Bigelow,and you can afford to pose as a peacemaker. But I've had all I canstand. If Colonel Craigmiles can't control his flap-hatted bullies,we'll try to help him. There is a week's work for half a hundred men andteams lying in that ditch over yonder," pointing with his quirt towardthe dynamited cutting. "Do you think I'm going to lie down and let thesecattle-punchers ride rough-shod over me and the company I represent? Notto-day, or any other day, I assure you."
"Then you entirely disregard the little type-written note?"
"In justice to my employers, I am bound to call Colonel Craigmiles'sbluff, whatever form it takes."
Bigelow rode in silence for the next hundred yards. Then he began again.
"It doesn't seem like the colonel: to go at you indirectly that way."
"He was in that automobile: I saw him. The notice could scarcely havebeen posted without his knowledge."
"No," Bigelow agreed, slowly. But immediately afterward he added: "Therewere others in the car."
"I know it--four or five of them. But that doesn't let the colonel out."
Again Bigelow relapsed into silence, and the camp-fires of Fitzpatrick'sheadquarters were in sight when he said:
"You confessed to me a few hours ago that one of your weaknesses was theinability to stay angry. Will you pardon me if I say that it seems tohave its compensation in the law of recurrences?"
Ballard's laugh was frankly apologetic. "You may go farther and say thatI am ill-mannered enough to quarrel with a good friend who cheerfullygets himself shot up in my behalf. Overlook it, Mr. Bigelow; and I'lltry to remember that I am a partisan, while you are only a good-naturednon-combatant. This little affair is a fact accomplished, so far as weare concerned. The colonel's cow-men dynamited our ditch; SheriffBeckwith will do his duty; and the company's attorney will see to itthat somebody pays the penalty. Let's drop it--as between us two."
Being thus estopped, Bigelow held his peace; and a little later theywere dismounting before the door of Fitzpatrick's commissary. When thecontractor had welcomed and fed them, Ballard rolled into the nearestbunk and went to sleep to make up the arrearages, leaving his guest tosmoke alone. Bigelow took his desertion good-naturedly, and sat for anhour or more on a bench in front of the storeroom, puffing quietly athis pipe, and taking an onlooker's part in the ditch-diggers' games ofdice-throwing and card-playing going on around the great fire in theplaza.
When the pipe went out after its second filling, he got up and strolleda little way beyond the camp limits. The night was fine and mild for thealtitudes, and he had walked a circling mile before he found himselfagain at the camp confines. It was here, at the back of the mule drove,that he became once more an onlooker; this time a thoroughly mystifiedone.
The little drama, at which the Forestry expert was the single spectator,was chiefly pantomimic, but it lacked nothing in eloquent action. Flatupon the ground, and almost among the legs of the grazing mules, lay adiminutive figure, face down, digging fingers and toes into the hoof-cutearth, and sobbing out a strange jargon of oaths and childish ragings.Before Bigelow could speak, the figure rose to its knees, its facedisfigured with passion, and its small fists clenching themselves at theinvisible. It was Dick Carson; and the words which Bigelow heard seemedto be shaken by some unseen force out of the thin, stoop-shoulderedlittle body: "Oh, my Lordy! ef it could on'y be somebody else! But ther'ain't nobody else; an' I'll go to hell if I don't do it!"
Now, at all events, Bigelow would have cut in, but the action of thedrama was too quick for him. Like a flash the water-boy disappearedamong the legs of the grazing animals; and a few minutes afterward thenight gave back the sound of galloping hoofs racing away to theeastward.
Bigelow marked the direction of the water-boy's flight. Since it wastoward the valley head and Castle 'Cadia, he guessed that young Carson'serrand concerned itself in some way with the sheriff's raid upon theCraigmiles ranch outfit. Here, however, conjecture tripped itself andfell down. Both parties in whatever conflict the sheriff's visit mightprovoke were the boy's natural enemies.
Bigelow was wrestling with this fresh bit of mystery when he went tofind his bunk in the commissary; it got into his dreams and was stillpresent when the early morning call of the camp was sounded. But neitherat the candle-lighted breakfast, nor later, when Ballard asked him if hewere fit for a leisurely ride to the southern watershed for the day'soutwearing, did he speak of young Carson's desertion.
Fitzpatrick spoke of it, though, when the chief and his companion weremounting for the watershed ride.
"You brought my water-boy back with you last night, didn't you, Mr.Ballard?" he asked.
"Certainly; he came in with us. Why? Have you lost him?"
"Him and one of the saddle broncos. And I don't much like the look ofit."
"Oh, I guess he'll turn up all right," said Ballard easily.
It was Bigelow's time to speak, but something restrained him, and thecontractor's inquiry died a natural death when Ballard gathered thereins and pointed the way to the southward hills.
By nine o'clock the two riders were among the foothills of the southernElks, and the chief engineer of the Arcadia Company was making a verypractical use of his guest. Bigelow was an authority on watersheds,stream-basins, the conservation of moisture by forested slopes, andkindred subjects of vital importance to the construction chief of anirrigation scheme; and the talk held steadily to the technical problems,with the Forestry expert as the lecturer.
Only once was there a break and a lapse into the humanities. It was whenthe horses had climbed one of the bald hills from the summit of whichthe great valley, with its dottings of camps and its streaking of canalgradings, was spread out map-like beneath them. On the distant riverroad, progressing by perspective inches toward the lower end of thevalley, trotted a mixed mob of horsemen, something more than doubling innumbers the sheriff's posse that had ridden over the same road in theopposite direction the previous evening.
"Beckwith with his game-bag?" queried Bigelow, gravely; and Ballardsaid: "I guess so," and immediately switched the talk back to thewatershed technicalities.
It was within an hour of the grading-camp supper-time when the twoinvestigators of moisture-beds and auxiliary reservoirs rode intoFitzpatrick's headquarters and found a surprise awaiting them. TheCastle 'Cadia runabout was drawn up before the commi
ssary; and youngBlacklock, in cap and gloves and dust-coat, was tinkering with themotor.
"The same to you, gentlemen," he said, jocosely, when he took his headout of the bonnet. "I was just getting ready to go and chase you somemore. We've been waiting a solid hour, I should say."
"'We'?" questioned Ballard.
"Yes; Miss Elsa and I. We've been hunting you in every place a set ofrubber tires wouldn't balk at, all afternoon. Say; you don't happen tohave an extra spark-plug about your clothes, either of you, do you? Oneof these is cracked in the porcelain, and she skips like a dog on threelegs."
Ballard ignored the motor disability completely.
"You brought Miss Craigmiles here? Where is she now?" he demanded.
The collegian laughed.
"She's in the grand _salon_, and Fitzpatrick the gallant is making her acup of commissary tea. Wouldn't that jar you?"
Ballard swung out of his saddle and vanished through the open door ofthe commissary, leaving Bigelow and the motor-maniac to their owndevices. In the littered storeroom he found Miss Craigmiles, sittingupon a coil of rope and calmly drinking her tea from a new tin can.
"At last!" she sighed, smiling up at him; and then: "Mercy me! howsavage you look! We are trespassers; I admit it. But you'll be lenientwith us, won't you? Jerry says there is a broken spark-plug, orsomething; but I am sure we can move on if we're told to. You have cometo tell us to move on, Mr. Ballard?"
His frown was only the outward and visible sign of the inward attempt tograpple with the possibilities; but it made his words sound somethingless than solicitous.
"This is no place for you," he began; but she would not let him go on.
"I have been finding it quite a pleasant place, I assure you. Mr.Fitzpatrick is an Irish gentleman. No one could have been kinder. You'veno idea of the horrible things he promised to do to the cook if this teawasn't just right."
If she were trying to make him smile, she succeeded. Fitzpatrick'spicturesque language to his men was the one spectacular feature of theheadquarters camp.
"That proves what I said--that this is no place for you," he rejoined,still deprecating the camp crudities. "And you've been here an hour,Blacklock says."
"An hour and twelve minutes, to be exact," she admitted, tilting thetiny watch pinned upon the lapel of her driving-coat. "But you left usno alternative. We have driven uncounted miles this afternoon, lookingfor you and Mr. Bigelow."
Ballard flushed uncomfortably under the tan and sunburn. Miss Craigmilescould have but one object in seeking him, he decided; and he would havegiven worlds to be able to set the business affair and the sentimentalon opposite sides of an impassable chasm. Since it was not to be, hesaid what he was constrained to say with characteristic abruptness.
"It is too late. The matter is out of my hands, now. The provocation wasvery great; and in common loyalty to my employers I was obliged tostrike back. Your father----"
She stopped him with a gesture that brought the blood to his face again.
"I know there has been provocation," she qualified. "But it has not beenall on one side. Your men have told you how our range-riders haveannoyed them: probably they have not told you how they have given blowfor blow, killing cattle on the railroad, supplying themselves withfresh meat from our herd, filling up or draining the water-holes. Andtwo days ago, at this very camp.... I don't know the merits of the case;but I do know that one of our men was shot through the shoulder, and islying critically near to death."
He nodded gloomily. "That was bad," he admitted, adding: "And itpromptly brought on more violence. On the night of the same day yourcow-men returned and dynamited the canal."
Again she stopped him with the imperative little gesture.
"Did you see them do it?"
"Naturally, no one saw them do it. But it was done, nevertheless."
She rose and faced him fairly.
"You found my note last evening--when you were returning with SheriffBeckwith?"
"I found an unsigned note on a little barrier of tree-branches on thetrail; yes."
"I wrote it and put it there," she declared. "I told you you were aboutto commit an act of injustice, and you have committed it--a very greatone, indeed, Mr. Ballard."
"I am open to conviction," he conceded, almost morosely. She wasconfronting him like an angry goddess, and mixed up with the thoughtthat he had never seen her so beautiful and so altogether desirable wasanother thought that he should like to run away and hide.
"Yes; you are open to conviction--after the fact!" she retorted,bitterly. "Do you know what you have done? You have fallen like ahot-headed boy into a trap set for you by my father's enemies. You havecarefully stripped Arcadia of every man who could defend ourcattle--just as it was planned for you to do."
"But, good heavens!" he began, "I----"
"Hear me out," she commanded, looking more than ever the princess of herfather's kingdom. "Down in the canyon of the Boiling Water there is aband of outlaws that has harried this valley for years. Assuming thatyou would do precisely what you have done, some of these men came up anddynamited your canal, timing the raid to fit your inspection tour. Am Imaking it sufficiently plain?"
"O my sainted ancestors!" he groaned. And then: "Please go on; you can'tmake it any worse."
"They confidently expected that you would procure a wholesale arrest ofthe Arcadia ranch force; but they did not expect you to act as promptlyas you did. That is why they turned and fired upon you in Dry ValleyGulch: they thought they were suspected and pursued, not by you or anyof your men, but by our cow-boys. Your appearance at the cabin at themouth of Deer Creek yesterday morning explained things, and they let yougo on without taking vengeance for the man Mr. Bigelow had shot in theDry Valley affray. They were willing to let the greater matter outweighthe smaller."
Ballard said "Good heavens!" again, and leaned weakly against thecommissary counter. Then, suddenly, it came over him like a cool blastof wind on a hot day that this clear-eyed, sweet-faced young woman'sintimate knowledge of the labyrinthine tangle was almost superhumanenough to be uncanny. Would the nerve-shattering mysteries never becleared away?
"You know all this--as only an eye-witness could know," he stammered."How, in the name of all that is wonderful----"
"We are not without friends--even in your camps," she admitted. "Wordcame to Castle 'Cadia of your night ride and its purpose. For the laterdetails there was little Dick. My father once had his father sent to thepenitentiary for cattle-stealing. In pity for the boy, I persuaded someof our Denver friends to start a petition for a pardon. Dick has notforgotten it; and last night he rode to Castle 'Cadia to tell me what Ihave told you--the poor little lad being more loyal to me than he is tohis irreclaimable wretch of a father. Also, he told me another thing:to-night, while the range cattle are entirely unguarded, there will beanother raid from Deer Creek. I thought you might like to know how harda blow you have struck us, this time. That is why I have made Jerrydrive me a hundred miles or so up and down the valley this afternoon."
The situation was well beyond speech, any exculpatory speech ofBallard's, but there was still an opportunity for deeds. Going to thedoor he called to Bigelow, and when the Forestry man came in, his partin what was to be done was assigned abruptly.
"Mr. Bigelow, you can handle the runabout with one good arm, I'm sure:drive Miss Craigmiles home, if you please, and let me have Blacklock."
"Certainly, if Miss Elsa is willing to exchange a good chauffeur for apoor one," was the good-natured reply. And then to his hostess: "Are youwilling, Miss Craigmiles?"
"Mr. Ballard is the present tyrant of Arcadia. If he shows us thedoor----"
Bigelow was already at the car step, waiting to help her in. There wastime only for a single sentence of caution, and Ballard got it in aswift aside.
"Don't be rash again," she warned him. "You have plenty of men here. IfCarson can be made to understand that you will not let him takeadvantage of the plot in which he has made you his innocentaccessory----"
"Thank you," she said simply; and a minute later Ballard and youngBlacklock stood aside to let Bigelow remove himself, his companion, andthe smart little car swiftly from the scene.
"Say, Mr. Ballard, this is no end good of you--to let me in for a littlebreather of sport," said the collegian, when the fast runabout wasfading to a dusty blur in the sunset purplings. "Bigelow gave me a hint;said there was a scrap of some sort on. Make me your side partner, andI'll do you proud."
"You are all right," laughed Ballard, with a sudden access oflight-heartedness. "But the first thing to do is to get a little hay outof the rack. Come in and let us see what you can make of a camp supper.Fitzpatrick bets high on his cook--which is more than I'd do if he weremine."