The Quirt

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER THREE

  REALITY IS WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING

  Still dreaming her dreams, still featuring herself as the star of manyadventures, Lorraine followed the brakeman out of the dusty day coachand down the car steps to the platform of the place called Echo, Idaho.I can only guess at what she expected to find there in the person of acattle-king father, but whatever it was she did not find it. No father,of any type whatever, came forward to claim her. In spite of her"Western" experience she looked about her for a taxi, or at least astreet car. Even in the wilds of Western melodrama one could hear theclang of street-car gongs warning careless autoists off the track.

  After the train had hooted and gone on around an absolutelyuninteresting low hill of yellow barrenness dotted with stunted sage, itwas the silence that first impressed Lorraine disagreeably. Echo, Idaho,was a very poor imitation of all the Western sets she had ever seen.True, it had the straggling row of square-fronted, one-story buildings,with hitch rails, but the signs painted across the fronts wereabsolutely common. Any director she had ever obeyed would have sent forhis assistant director and would have used language which a lady mustnot listen to. Behind the store and the post-office and the blacksmithshop, on the brow of the low hill around whose point the train haddisappeared, were houses with bay windows and porches absolutely out ofkeeping with the West. So far as Lorraine could see, there was not a logcabin in the whole place.

  The hitch rails were empty, and there was not a cowboy in sight. Beforethe post-office a terribly grimy touring car stood with itsrunning-boards loaded with canvas-covered suitcases. Three goggled,sunburned women in ugly khaki suits were disconsolately drinking sodawater from bottles without straws, and a goggled, red-faced,angry-looking man was jerking impatiently at the hood of the machine.Lorraine and her suitcase apparently excited no interest whatever inEcho, Idaho.

  The station agent was carrying two boxes of oranges and a crate ofCalifornia cabbages in out of the sun, and a limp individual in bluegingham shirt and dirty overalls had shouldered the mail sack and wasmaking his way across the dusty, rut-scored street to the post-office.

  Two questions and two brief answers convinced her that the station agentdid not know Britton Hunter,--which was strange, unless this happened tobe a very new agent. Lorraine left him to his cabbages and followed theman with the mail sack.

  At the post-office the anemic clerk came forward, eyeing her withadmiring curiosity. Lorraine had seen anemic young men all her life, andthe last three years had made her perfectly familiar with that look in ayoung man's eyes. She met it with impatient disfavor founded chieflyupon the young man's need of a decent hair-cut, a less flowery tie and atailored suit. When he confessed that he did not know Mr. Britton Hunterby sight he ceased to exist so far as Lorraine was concerned. Shedecided that he also was new to the place and therefore perfectlyuseless to her.

  The postmaster himself--Lorraine was cheered by his spectacles, hisshirt sleeves, and his chin whiskers, which made him look the part--wasbetter informed. He, too, eyed her curiously when she said "My father,Mr. Britton Hunter," but he made no comment on the relationship. He gaveher a telegram and a letter from the General Delivery. The telegram, shesuspected, was the one she had sent to her dad announcing the date ofher arrival. The postmaster advised her to get a "livery rig" and driveout to the ranch, since it might be a week or two before any one came infrom the Quirt. Lorraine thanked him graciously and departed for thelivery stable.

  The man in charge there chewed tobacco meditatively and told her thathis teams were all out. If she was a mind to wait over a day or two, hesaid, he might maybe be able to make the trip. Lorraine took a long lookat the structure which he indicated as the hotel.

  "I think I'll walk," she said calmly.

  "_Walk_?" The stableman stopped chewing and stared at her. "It's someconsider'ble of a walk. It's all of eighteen mile--I dunno but twenty,time y'get to the house."

  "I have frequently walked twenty-five or thirty miles. I am a member ofthe Sierra Club in Los Angeles. We seldom take hikes of less thantwenty miles. If you will kindly tell me which road I must take----"

  "There she is," the man stated flatly, and pointed across the railroadtrack to where a sandy road drew a yellowish line through the sage,evidently making for the hills showing hazily violet in the distance.Those hills formed the only break in the monotonous gray landscape, andLorraine was glad that her journey would take her close to them.

  "Thank you so much," she said coldly and returned to the station. In thesmall lavatory of the depot waiting room she exchanged her slippers fora pair of moderately low-heeled shoes which she had at the last minuteof packing tucked into her suitcase, put a few extra articles into herrather smart traveling bag, left the suitcase in the telegraph officeand started. Not another question would she ask of Echo, Idaho, whichwas flatter and more insipid than the drinking water in the tin "cooler"in the waiting room. The station agent stood with his hands on his hipsand watched her cross the track and start down the road, pardonablyastonished to see a young woman walk down a road that led only to thehills twenty miles away, carrying her luggage exactly as if her trip wasa matter of a block or two at most.

  The bag was rather heavy and as she went on it became heavier. She meantto carry it slung across her shoulder on a stick as soon as she was wellaway from the prying eyes of Echo's inhabitants. Later, if she felttired, she could easily hide it behind a bush along the road and sendone of her father's cowboys after it. The road was very dusty andcarried the wind-blown traces of automobile tires. Some one would surelyovertake her and give her a ride before she walked very far.

  For the first half hour she believed that she was walking on levelground, but when she looked back there was no sign of any town behindher. Echo had disappeared as completely as if it had been swallowed.Even the unseemly bay-windowed houses on the hill had gone under. Shewalked for another half hour and saw only the gray sage stretching allaround her. The hills looked farther away than when she started. Still,that beaten road must lead somewhere. Two hours later she began towonder why this particular road should be so unending and so empty.Never in her life before had she walked for two hours without seeming toget anywhere, or without seeing any living human.

  Both shoulders were sore from the weight of the bag on the stick, butthe sagebushes looked so exactly alike that she feared she could notdescribe the particular spot where the cowboys would find her bag,wherefore she carried it still. She was beginning to change hands veryoften when the wind came.

  Just where or how that wind sprang up she did not know. Suddenly it waswhooping across the sage and flinging up clouds of dust from the road.To Lorraine, softened by years of southern California weather, it seemedto blow straight off an ice field, it was so cold.

  After an interminable time which measured three hours on her watch, shecame to an abrupt descent into a creek bed, down the middle of which thecreek itself was flowing swiftly. Here the road forked, a rough,little-used trail keeping on up the creek, the better traveled roadcrossing and climbing the farther bank. Lorraine scarcely hesitatedbefore she chose the main trail which crossed the creek.

  From the creek the trail she followed kept climbing until Lorrainewondered if there would ever be a top. The wind whipped her narrowskirts and impeded her, tugged at her hat, tingled her nose and wateredher eyes. But she kept on doggedly, disgustedly, the West, which she hadseen through the glamour of swift-blooded Romance, sinking lower andlower in her estimation. Nothing but jack rabbits and little, twitterybirds moved through the sage, though she watched hungrily for horsemen.

  Quite suddenly the gray landscape glowed with a palpitating radiance,unreal, beautiful beyond expression. She stopped, turned to face thewest and stared awestruck at one of those flaming sunsets which makesthe desert land seem but a gateway into the ineffable glory beyond theearth. That the high-piled, gorgeous cloud-bank presaged a thunderstormshe never guessed; and that a thunderstorm may be a deadly, terrifyingperil she never had quite belie
ved. Her mother had told of people beingstruck by lightning, but Lorraine could not associate lightning withdeath, especially in the West, where men usually died by shooting,lynching, or by pitching over a cliff.

  The wind hushed as suddenly as it had whooped. Warned by the twinklinglights far behind her--lights which must be the small part at lastvisible of Echo, Idaho--Lorraine went on. She had been walking steadilyfor four hours, and she must surely have come nearly twenty miles. Ifshe ever reached the top of the hill, she believed that she would seeher father's ranch just beyond.

  The afterglow had deepened to dusk when she came at last to the highestpoint of that long grade. Far ahead loomed a cluster of square, blackobjects which must be the ranch buildings of the Quirt, and Lorraine'sspirits lightened a little. What a surprise her father and all hiscowboys would have when she walked in upon them! It was almost worth thewalk, she told herself hearteningly. She hoped that dad had a good cook.He would wear a flour-sack apron, naturally, and would be tall and lean,or else very fat. He would be a comedy character, but she hoped he wouldnot be the grouchy kind, which, though very funny when he rampagesaround on the screen, might be rather uncomfortable to meet when one istired and hungry and out of sorts. But of course the crankiest of comedycooks would be decently civil to _her_. Men always were, exceptdirectors who are paid for their incivility.

  A hollow into which she walked in complete darkness and in silence, savethe gurgling of another stream, hid from sight the shadowy semblance ofhouses and barns and sheds. Their disappearance slumped her spiritsagain, for without them she was no more than a solitary speck in thevast loneliness. Their actual nearness could not comfort her. She wasseized with a reasonless, panicky fear that by the time she crossed thestream and climbed the hill beyond they would no longer be there whereshe had seen them. She was lifting her skirts to wade the creek when theclick of hoofs striking against rocks sent her scurrying to cover in asenseless fear.

  "I learned this act from the jack rabbits," she rallied herself shakily,when she was safely hidden behind a sagebush whose pungency made herhorribly afraid that she might sneeze, which would be too ridiculous.

  "Some of dad's cowboys, probably, but still they _may_ be bandits."

  If they were bandits they could scarcely be out banditting, for the twohorsemen were talking in ordinary, conversational tones as they rodeleisurely down to the ford. When they passed Lorraine, the horse nearesther shied against the other and was sworn at parenthetically for a fool.Against the skyline Lorraine saw the rider's form bulk squatty andungraceful, reminding her of an actor whom she knew and did not like. Itwas that resemblance perhaps which held her quiet instead of followingher first impulse to speak to them and ask them to carry her grip to thehouse.

  The horses stopped with their forefeet in the water and drooped heads todrink thirstily. The riders continued their conversation.

  "--and as I says time and again, they ain't big enough to fight theoutfit, and the quicker they git out the less lead they'll carry undertheir hides when they do go. What they want to try an' hang on for,beats me. Why, it's like setting into a poker game with a five-centpiece! They ain't got my sympathy. I ain't got any use for a damn fool,no way yuh look at it."

  "Well, there's the TJ--they been here a long while, and they ain'tpackin' any lead, and they ain't getting out."

  "Well, say, lemme tell yuh something. The TJ'll git theirs and git itright. Drink all night, would yuh?" He swore long and fluently at hishorse, spurred him through the shallows, and the two rode on up thehill, their voices still mingled in desultory argument, with now andthen an oath rising clearly above the jumble of words.

  They may have been law-abiding citizens riding home to families thatwere waiting supper for them, but Lorraine crept out from behind hersagebush, sneezing and thanking her imitation of the jack rabbits.Whoever they were, she was not sorry she had let them ride on. Theymight be her father's men, and they might have been very polite andchivalrous to her. But their voices and their manner of speaking hadbeen rough; and it is one thing, Lorraine reflected, to mingle withmade-up villains--even to be waylaid and kidnapped and tied to trees andthreatened with death--but it is quite different to accostrough-speaking men in the dark when you know that they are not beingrough to suit the director of the scene.

  She was so absorbed in trying to construct a range war or somethingequally thrilling from the scrap of conversation she had heard that shereached the hilltop in what seemed a very few minutes of climbing. Thesky was becoming overcast. Already the stars to the west were blottedout, and the absolute stillness of the atmosphere frightened her morethan the big, dark wilderness itself. It seemed to her exactly as thoughthe earth was holding its breath and waiting for something terrible tohappen. The vague bulk of buildings was still some distance ahead, andwhen a rumble like the deepest notes of a pipe organ began to fill allthe air, Lorraine thrust her grip under a bush and began to run, hersoggy shoes squashing unpleasantly on the rough places in the road.

  Lorraine had seen many stage storms and had thrilled ecstatically to themimic lightning, knowing just how it was made. But when that hugeblackness behind and to the left of her began to open and show aterrible brilliance within, and to close abruptly, leaving the world inkblack, she was terrified. She wanted to hide as she had hidden fromthose two men; but from that stupendous monster, a real thunderstorm,sagebrush formed no protection whatever. She must reach the substantialshelter of buildings, the comforting presence of men and women.

  She ran, and as she ran she wept aloud like a child and called for herfather. The deep rumble grew louder, nearer. The revealed brilliancebecame swift sword-thrusts of blinding light that seemed to stab deepthe earth. Lorraine ran awkwardly, her hands over her ears, crying outat each lightning flash, her voice drowned in the thunder that followedit close. Then, as she neared the somber group of buildings, the cloudsabove them split with a terrific, rending crash, and the whole placestood pitilessly revealed to her, as if a spotlight had been turned on.Lorraine stood aghast. The buildings were not buildings at all. Theywere rocks, great, black, forbidding boulders standing there on a narrowridge, having a diabolic likeness to houses.

  The human mind is wonderfully resilient, but readjustment comes slowlyafter a shock. Dumbly, refusing to admit the significance of what shehad seen, Lorraine went forward. Not until she had reached and hadtouched the first grotesque caricature of habitation did she whollygrasp the fact that she was lost, and that shelter might be miles away.She stood and looked at the orderly group of boulders as the lightningintermittently revealed them. She saw where the road ran on, betweentwo square-faced rocks. She would have to follow the road, for after allit must lead _somewhere_,--to her father's ranch, probably. She wonderedirrelevantly why her mother had never mentioned these queer rocks, andshe wondered vaguely if any of them had caves or ledges where she couldbe safe from the lightning.

  She was on the point of stepping out into the road again when a horsemanrode into sight between the two rocks. In the same instant of hisappearance she heard the unmistakable crack of a gun, saw the rider jerkbackward in the saddle, throw up one hand,--and then the darknessdropped between them.

  Lorraine crouched behind a juniper bush close against the rock andwaited. The next flash, came within a half-minute. It showed a man atthe horse's head, holding it by the bridle. The horse was rearing.Lorraine tried to scream that the man on the ground would be trampled,but something went wrong with her voice, so that she could only whisper.

  When the light came again the man who had been shot was not altogetheron the ground. The other, working swiftly, had thrust the injured man'sfoot through the stirrup. Lorraine saw him stand back and lift his quirtto slash the horse across the rump. Even through the crash of thunderLorraine heard the horse go past her down the hill, galloping furiously.When she could see again she glimpsed him running, while somethingbounced along on the ground beside him.

  She saw the other man, with a dry branch in his hand, dragging it acrossthe road w
here it ran between the two rocks. Then Lorraine Hunter,hardened to the sight of crimes committed for picture values only,realized sickeningly that she had just looked upon a real murder,--thecold-blooded killing of a man. She felt very sick. Queer little redsparks squirmed and danced before her eyes. She crumpled down quietlybehind the juniper bush and did not know when the rain came, though itdrenched her in the first two or three minutes of downpour.