The Fighting Shepherdess

by Lockhart, Caroline

  Lingle ran his hand along the horse’s neck, the hair of which was stiff with dried sweat, lifted the saddle blanket and looked at its legs, where streaks of lather had hardened. He regarded her keenly as he turned to her.

  “You been smokin’ up your horse, I notice.”

  “I ran a coyote for two miles this morning—emptied my magazine at him and then didn’t get him.” The truth shining in her clear eyes was unmistakable.

  Lingle broke off a handful of sagebrush and used it as a makeshift currycomb, while Kate, a little surprised at the action, picked up the bridle reins when he had finished the gratuitous grooming and started the sheep moving.

  “I’ll feed back to camp slowly. Don’t wait for me—you and the herder eat supper.”

  “Anything I can do, ma’am?”

  “Oh, no, thank you.”

  Bowers met the deputy at the door of the cook tent, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.

  “Did she beller?”

  Lingle sat down morosely and removed his spurs before answering.

  “I didn’t tell her.”

  “What!” Bowers fairly jumped at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “She might as well eat her supper, mightn’t she?” defiantly.

  “Do you know what I think?” Bowers pointed a spoon at him accusingly. “I think your nerve failed you. All I got to say is—you’re a devil of an officer.”

  “Maybe you’d like to tell her,” sneeringly.

  “I shore ain’t afraid to!” bristling. “I don’t like to listen to a female’s snifflin’, and I say so, but when it comes to bein’ afraid of one of ’em—” Bowers banged the pan of biscuits on the table to emphasize the small esteem in which he held women. “What fer a looker is she?” he demanded.

  “You’d better eat your supper before she gets here.”

  “Bad as that?”

  “Worse,” grimly. “I ain’t got educated words enough to describe her.”

  They had eaten by the light of the lantern, when they heard Kate coming.

  She lifted the flap of the tent and smiled her friendly smile upon them.

  “Goodness, but I’m glad I don’t have to cook supper! I haven’t had anything warm since morning.”

  Bowers stood with the broom in his hand, staring, while Kate removed her cap and jacket. Then he cast an evil look upon the deputy, a look which said, “You liar!”

  As she made to get the food from the stove he interposed hastily:

  “You set down, Ma'am.”

  Lingle gave him a look which was equally significant, a jeering look which said ironically, “Woman hater!”

  Bowers colored with pleasure when she lauded his “cowpuncher potatoes” and exclaimed over the biscuits.

  When Kate had finished she looked from one to the other and beamed upon them impartially.

  “It’s nice to see people. I haven’t seen any one for six weeks except Uncle Joe,” wistfully. “I wish he had come back with you—it’s so lonesome.”

  There was an immediate silence and then Bowers cleared his throat noisily.

  “Night 'fore last was tol'able chilly in your wagon, I reckon?”

  Her face sobered.

  “It was—terrible! I couldn’t sleep for the cold, and thinking about and pitying the stock on the range, and anybody that had to be out in it. I was glad Uncle Joe was safe in Prouty—there was no need for us both to be out here suffering.”

  Again there was silence, and once more Bowers came to the rescue with a feeble witticism, at which he himself laughed hollowly:

  “I hearn that a feller eatin’ supper with a steel knife got his tongue froze to it, and they had a time thawin’ him over the tea kettle.”

  Kate rose to clear away and wash the dishes, but Bowers motioned her to remain seated.

  “You rest yourself, Ma'am. I was a pearl diver in a restauraw fer three months onct so I am, you might say, a professional.”

  “Uncle Joe and I take turns,” Kate laughed, “for neither of us likes it.”

  “That’s the best way,” Bowers agreed, breaking the constrained silence which fell each time Mormon Joe’s name was mentioned. “More pardners has fell out over dish-washin’ and the throwin’ of diamond hitches than any other causes.”

  When, to Kate’s horror, Bowers had wiped off the top of the stove with the dishcloth and removed some lingering moisture from the inside of a frying pan with his elbow, she said, rising:

  “I’m up at four, so I go to bed early. You can sleep in Uncle Joe’s tepee,” to Lingle, “and you needn’t get up for breakfast when we do. I suppose,” to Bowers, “you’ll want to start in to-morrow, so I’ll go with you and show you the range we’re feeding over.” With a friendly good night she turned towards the entrance.

  Lingle rose with a look of desperation on his countenance.

  “Just a minute.” There was that in his voice which made her turn quickly and look from one to the other in wonder.

  Lingle had a feeling that his vocal cords had turned to wire, they moved so stiffly, when he heard himself saying:

  “Guess I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me to-morrow.”

  “Me?” Her eyes widened. “What for?”

  The yellow flame flickered in the smudged chimney of the lantern on the table, a bit of burning wood fell out from the front of the stove and lay smoking on the dirt floor in front of it. Bowers stood rigid by the basin where he had been washing his hands, with the water dripping from his fingers.

  In a frenzy to have it over the deputy blurted out harshly:

  “Mormon Joe’s been murdered!”

  The girl gave a cry—sharp, anguished, as one might scream out with a crushed finger.

  Bowers advanced a step and demanded fiercely of Lingle:

  “Don’t you know nothin’—not no damned nothin’?”

  Kate’s face was marble.

  “You mean—he’s dead—he won’t come back here—ever?”

  “You’ve said it,” the deputy replied, huskily.

  Kate walked back unsteadily to the seat she had just vacated and her head sank upon her folded arms on the table. She did not cry like a woman, but with deep tearless sobs that lifted her shoulders.

  The two men stood with their hands hanging awkwardly, looking at each other. Then Bowers made a grimace and jerked his head towards the tent entrance. The deputy obeyed the signal and went out on tip-toe with the sheepherder following.

  “She’s got guts,” said Bowers briefly.

  “She’ll need ’em,” was the laconic answer.

  * * *

  CHAPTER X

  THE BANK PUTS ON THE SCREWS

  In the initial excitement it had seemed a simple matter to apprehend the murderer of Mormon Joe with such clues as were furnished by the axe, the rope, the shotgun and the button, which were found in the snow beneath the window. But investigation showed that the axe and rope were no different from scores of other axes and ropes in Prouty, and it was soon recognized that the solution of the case hinged upon the ownership of the gun and the finding of a motive for this peculiarly cowardly and ingenious murder.

  But no one could be found to identify the gun, nor could any amount of inquiry unearth an enemy with a grudge sufficiently deep to inspire murder.

  Although the room was packed to the doors, nothing startling was anticipated from the coroner’s inquest; and while Kate had been summoned as a witness it was not expected that much would be learned from her testimony. The crowd was concerned chiefly in seeing “how she was taking it.”

  But curiosity became suspicion and suspicion conviction, when Kate, as white as the alabastine wall behind her, admitted that she and Mormon Joe had quarreled the night before the murder, and over money; that she knew how to set a trap-gun and had set them frequently for mountain lions; that she could ride forty miles in a few hours if necessary. The sensation came, however, when the coroner revealed the fact that under the dead man’s will she was the sole beneficiary. Her denial o
f any knowledge of this was received incredulously, and her emphatic declaration that she had never before seen the shotgun carried no conviction.

  The coroner and jury, after deliberation, decided that there was not sufficient evidence to hold her, but the real argument which freed her was the cost to the taxpayers of convening a Grand Jury, and the subsequent proceedings, if the jury decided to try her.

  Kate would as well have been proven guilty and convicted, for all the difference the verdict of the coroner’s jury made in the staring crowd that parted to let her pass as she came from the inquest. She had untied her horse with the unseeing eyes of a sleep-walker and was about to put her foot in the stirrup when Lingle came up to her.

  “I’m goin’ to do all I can to clear you,” he said, earnestly, “and I got the mayor behind me. He said he’d use every resource of his office to get this murderer. I believe in you—and don’t you forget it!”

  She had not been able to speak, but the look in her eyes had thanked him.

  Two days later, Kate was disinfecting the wound of a sheep that an untrained dog had injured when a note from the Security State Bank was handed her by one of Neifkins’ herders. It was signed by its President, Mr. Vernon Wentz, late of the White Hand Laundry, and there was something which filled her with forebodings in the curt request for an immediate interview.

  It was too late to start for Prouty that day, but she would leave early in the morning, so she went on applying a solution of permanganate of potassium to the wound and sprinkling it with a healing powder while she conjectured as to what Wentz might want of her.

  In her usual work Kate found an outlet for the nervous tension under which she was still laboring. It helped a little, though it seemed impossible to believe that she ever again would be serene of mind and able to think clearly. Her thoughts were a jumble; as yet she could only feel and suffer terribly. Remorse took precedence over all other emotions, over the sense of loneliness and loss, over the appalling accusation. Her writhing conscience was never quiet. She would gladly have exchanged every hope of the future she dared harbor for five minutes of the dead man’s life in which to beg forgiveness.

  In the short interval since the coroner’s inquest public opinion had crystallized in Prouty, and Kate’s guilt was now a certainty in the minds of its citizens.

  “She done it, all right, only they can’t prove it on her.” Hiram Butefish merely echoed the opinion of the community when he made the assertion, upon seeing Kate turn the corner by the Prouty House and ride down the main street the day following the delivery of Mr. Wentz’s summons.

  Suffering had made Kate acutely sensitive and she was quick to feel the atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the passersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the windows, in the bank president’s uncompromising attitude, even in the cashier’s supercilious inventory as he looked her over.

  Kate had entered the wide swinging doors of the bank simultaneously with Mr. Abram Pantin, at whom Mr. Wentz had waved a long white hand and requested him languidly to be seated. Since he already had motioned Kate to the only chair beside the one he himself occupied in his enclosure, it was clear there was no way for Mr. Pantin to accept the invitation unless he sat on the floor. It chafed Pantin exceedingly to be patronized by one who so recently had done his laundry, but since his business at the bank was of an imperative nature he concealed his annoyance with the best grace possible and waited.

  Temporarily, at least, Mr. Wentz had lost his equilibrium. From washing the town’s soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his undershirt and “joshed” the passersby.

  Mr. Wentz had a notion, fostered by his wife, that he was rather a handsome fellow. True, years of steaming had given to his complexion a look not unlike that of an evaporated apple, but this small defect was more than offset by a luxuriant brown mustache which he had trained carefully. His hair was sleek and neatly trimmed, and he used his brown eyes effectively upon occasions. His long hands with their supple fingers were markedly white, also from the steaming process. Being tall and of approximately correct proportions, his ready-made clothes fitted him excellently—as a matter of fact, Vernon Wentz would have passed for a “gent” anywhere.

  Not unmindful of the presence of Mr. Pantin, of whom he secretly stood in awe, although he knew of his own knowledge that Pantin sheared his collars, Wentz swung about in his office chair and said abruptly:

  “Didn’t expect I’d have to send for you.”

  Kate’s troubled eyes were fixed upon him.

  “I had nothing to come for.”

  It pleased Mr. Wentz to regard her with a smile of tolerant amusement.

  “Don’t know anything about finance, do you?”

  “I’ve never had any business to attend to. I will learn, though.”

  Wentz smiled enigmatically. Then, brusquely:

  “We might as well come to the point and have it over—do you know them sheep’s mortgaged?”

  “I knew,” hesitatingly, “that Uncle Joe had borrowed for our expenses, but I didn’t know how he did it.”

  “That’s how he did it,” curtly. “And the mortgage includes the leases and the whole bloomin’ outfit.”

  “But he only borrowed a few hundred,” she ventured.

  “We require ample security,” importantly.

  “What is it you want of me?” Kate’s voice trembled slightly. The import of the interview was beginning to dawn upon her.

  Wentz cleared his throat and announced impressively:

  “There was a meeting of the directors called yesterday and it was decided that the bank must have its money.”

  She cried aghast:

  “I haven’t it, Mr. Wentz!”

  “Then there’s only one alternative.”

  “You mean ship the sheep?”

  Wentz stroked his mustache.

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “But sheep are way down,” she protested. “It would take almost the two bands at present to pay off the debt and shipping expenses.”

  “That’s not our funeral.”

  “And the leases are of no value without stock for them.”

  Mr. Wentz lowered his silken lashes and suggested smoothly as he continued to caress the treasured growth gently:

  “Neifkins might be induced to take the leases off your hands at a nominal figure.”

  Mr. Pantin cooling his heels at the outer portals smiled. He knew what Kate did not—that Neifkins was one of the directors.

  “But the notes are not due until early next summer—after shearing. Uncle Joe told me so.”

  “True,” he assented. Then with a large air of erudition: “The law, however, provides for such cases as this. When the security of the mortgager is in jeopardy through incompetence or other causes he can foreclose immediately.”

  Kate paled as she listened.

  “But there’s no danger, Mr. Wentz,” she protested breathlessly. “Your money’s as safe as when Uncle Joe was living. I understand sheep—he said I was a better sheepman than he was because I had more patience and like them. I’ll watch them closer than ever—day or night I’ll never leave them. I’ll promise you! I’ve got a good herder now and between us we can handle them.”

  Mr. Wentz shrugged a skeptical shoulder.

  “You couldn’t convince the directors of that. There’s none of ’em wants to risk the bank’s money with a woman in that kind of business.”

  “But can’t you see,” she pleaded, “that it’s ruin to ship now? It will wipe me out completely. Put some one out there of your own choosing, if you can’t trust me, but don’t make me sell with the bottom out of the market!”

  “You’ve got the bank’s decisi
on,” he responded, coldly.

  “Please—please reconsider! Just give me a chance—you won’t be sorry! I only know sheep—I’ve never had the opportunity to learn anything else, and I’ve no place to go but that little homestead back in the hills. I’ve no one in the world to turn to. Won’t you give me a trial, and then if you see I can’t handle it—”

  “It’s no use arguin’.” Wentz brought both hands down on the arms of the chair in impatient finality. “We’re goin’ to ship as soon as we can get cars and drive to the railroad, so you might as well turn them sheep over and stop hollerin’.”

  Kate rose and took a step forward, her hands outstretched in entreaty:

  “Once more I ask you—give me a little time—I’ll try and raise the money somewhere—ten days—give me ten days—I beg of you!”

  “Ten years or ten days or ten minutes—’twould be all the same,” his voice was raucous as he, too, stood up. He looked at her contemptuously. “No; it’s settled. The bank’s goin’ to take over them sheep, and if there’s anything left after the mortgage is satisfied you’ll get it.” He indicated that the interview was over. “Step in, Pantin.”

  For the second time within the week Kate went out in the street stunned by the blow which had been dealt her: She stood uncertainly for a moment on the edge of the sidewalk and then began slowly to untie the bridle reins.

  “Here’s a message that came for you yesterday; we had no way of getting it to you.” The girl from the telephone office was regarding her curiously.

  Kate turned at the sound of a voice beside her, and took the message which had been telephoned from the nearest telegraph office.

  Have just learned of your trouble. Is there anything I can do for you? All sympathy.

  Hugh

  She read it twice, carefully, while her eyes filled with tears of longing, then she accompanied the girl to the telephone office where she wrote her answer.

  I need nothing. Thank you.

  Kate Prentice

  In the meantime Mrs. Toomey was becoming acquainted with a new phase of her husband’s character. She had thought she was familiar with all sides of it, those for which she loved him and those which taxed her patience and loyalty; but this moroseness, this brooding ugliness, was different.