by Zane Grey
“What has begun?” asked Lenta, innocently.
“I don’t know what to call it. Slaughter of the Westerners might do.”
“All right, old girl,” retorted Lenta, half offended, for in her excitement evidently she had been sincere. “But you look out for yourself. Everything will happen to you!”
That occasioned Harriet some uneasiness. It seemed to be in the nature of a prophecy. But she passed it by and went on with her work until called to lunch. Her father was waiting at the head of the stairs. All the shadow of worry and uncertainty had disappeared from his face. He was bright, smiling, more than his old self again. Somehow he had gained.
“Now, father?” queried Harriet, in wondering gladness.
“What do you think, Hallie? I’ve had a stroke of fortune. At least Buffalo Jones swore it was. He ran across one of his scouts of buffalo days—in fact that very young fellow who killed Nigger Horse’s son in the Indian fight, you remember. Nelson—Laramie Nelson. He it was who was responsible for Jones being called Buffalo Jones. Well, Nelson just happened to ride into Garden City with two other range-riders. Jones said he whooped when he saw them. No wonder! Talk about Westerners! Wait until you see these.”
“Three—range—riders,” returned Harriet, almost falteringly. Could two of them be the young men Florence and Lenta had encountered? Could they! There was absolutely no doubt of it, and Harriet could not account for her feelings. Suppose the third one happened to be this Laramie Nelson, already picturesquely limned against the difficult background of Harriet’s fancy!
“Well, after introducing me,” went on Lindsay, “Jones went off with Nelson. I met them later in the saloon where Nelson’s partners were playing pool. It seems the three had just returned from some hard expedition after horse-thieves, or something, and that accounted for their bedraggled appearance. Jones had made a proposition to Nelson about joining up with me. Evidently it wasn’t so promising to him. But Jones and I importuned him until he said he reckoned he’d go if I hired his friends. I agreed. So the two young men were called from their game and introduced to me. Their names were Lonesome Mulhall and Tracks Williams. Had been with Nelson for years. In fact, they were inseparable. Strange to me both these young Westerners demurred. They did not want to come. Mulhall said: ‘Laramie, I don’t mind work, as you well know, but I kick against a lot of tenderfoot girls in the outfit.’ And Williams backed him up. Whereupon Nelson swore at them. ‘Yu’re a couple of contrary jackasses. Heah’s yore chance to help a family that’ll shore need it. Lonesome, only awhile back yu were lamentin’ yore lack of feminine inspiration—I reckon yu called it. An’ Tracks, heah, he was sore at me ’cause ridin’ with me left him nothin’ to be chivalrous about.’
“‘Pard, mebbe we’d better reconsider,’ said Mulhall to Williams. ‘’Cause it’s a shore bet Laramie is goin’ to line up with this Peak Dot outfit.’
“‘Ump-umm,’ replied Williams.
“‘Wal, if yu haven’t got stuff in yu to want to help a fine family, maybe yu’ll go for my sake,’ snorted Nelson, with fire in his eye.
“‘How come, pard?’ asked Lonesome, curiously.
“‘Wal, the foreman Allen turned over to Mr. Lindsay happens to be Luke Arlidge. Now will yu stick to me?’
“‘Hell yes!’ yelled Mulhall.
“‘How about yu, Tracks?’ asked Nelson of his other partner.
“‘Laramie, I hate to give in, but I wouldn’t miss seeing you kill Arlidge for a million dollars!’”
Mr. Lindsay had recited all this in a thrilling whisper. He waited to see if it had made any impression on Harriet. Manifestly he was more than satisfied. Then he concluded:
“That ended the argument. And I engaged Nelson and his friends on the spot. I feel pretty good about it, as much for you girls’ sake as my own. Jones declared Colorado wasn’t big enough for both Nelson and Arlidge. And sooner or later Nelson would take charge of our ranch. The best of it is that the expectations Jones had roused in me, regarding this Laramie Nelson, were more than fulfilled. What a quaint soft-voiced fellow! You’d never believe he had killed men.”
“Mercy, father!” burst out Harriet, with a revulsion of feeling. “Don’t say he’s a—a murderer!”
“Hallie, these Western folk have got me up a tree,” declared Lindsay. “They talk of shooting and killing as we do of—of plowing corn. Jones said Nelson had killed men—he didn’t know how many—that he was a marked character in the West. I gathered in spite of a gun record, Jones regarded Nelson as the salt of the earth.”
“Oh, these bloody frontiersmen!” exclaimed Harriet, aghast. “How can we have a man like that around?”
“Well, I’m getting—what do they call it?—a hunch that before long we may be damned good and glad to have him,” declared Lindsay, bluntly. And when her father swore he was most genuinely in earnest. They went to lunch, at which time Lindsay casually announced that it was possible they might start for their ranch in a very few days. This upset his hearers in one way or another. Lenta was in raptures; Florence had some secret reason for wanting to linger in Garden City.
“Say, Dad, are you going to give me a job?” demanded Neale.
“Yes. You drive one of the wagons,” returned the father, concisely. To which the remainder of the family took instant exception.
After lunch the Lindsays scattered on their various errands. Harriet, coming in alone, encountered her father in the lobby in company with the most striking man she had ever seen.
“Harriet, come here,” called Lindsay, dragging his tall companion forward. “This is my new man, Laramie Nelson…. Meet my eldest girl, Nelson. You must get acquainted. She will be my mainstay out on the ranch.”
Harriet bowed and greeted Mr. Nelson with all outward pleasantry. Inwardly she was shrinking, and wondering why that was so.
“Wal, Lady, I shore am glad to meet yu,” drawled Nelson, removing his old sombrero. His low voice and quaint manner were markedly Southern.
Before more could be said Lenta and Florence bounced and floated in, to be presented to Nelson. This gave Harriet opportunity to look at him. He was tall, slim, sandy-haired, slightly freckled, and his eyes, gray and intent, shone with something which reminded her of those of Buffalo Jones and Luke Arlidge. His lean face wore a sad cast. He did not smile, even at the irrepressible Lenta, who was nothing if not fascinated with him. His garb was travel-stained and rent. His shiny leather overalls, full of holes, flounced down over muddy boots. Great long spurs bright as silver dragged their rowels on the floor. His right side stood toward Harriet, and low down, hanging from a worn belt and sheath, shone the dark deadly handle of a gun. All about him suggested long use, hard service. So this was the killer Laramie Nelson—this strange soft-spoken, singularly fascinating Westerner? Harriet was as amazed as she was repelled. He did not look it.
Suddenly attention was directed upon Harriet again and she almost betrayed herself in confusion. The girls made demands for money.
“She’s our treasurer, Mr. Nelson,” declared Lenta, gaily. “Dad never handles money…. Look out for your wages!”
“Oh, Lenta, that’s unkind!” exclaimed Harriet, flushing. “Indeed, Mr. Nelson, I am not that bad.”
And it was an indication of Harriet’s unusual preoccupation that she handed her purse to Lenta, who whooped and ran out, to be pursued by Florence.
“There, do you wonder I need to be careful of father’s money?” queried Harriet, with a laugh.
“Wal, miss, I’m wonderin’ a lot,” replied Nelson, with his first smile, a slow dawning change that made him younger. “Most of all I’m wonderin’ how yore paw will ever run cattle an’ range-riders with three such lovely daughters around. It cain’t be done.”
Chapter Five
LARAMIE surveyed his two arch conspirators in mingled disgust and apprehension. Wonderful to realize the three of them occupied a real room in a real hotel. Not only did they have a roof over their heads, but also each possessed a complete new outfi
t of wearing-apparel. Their fortunes had changed. Laramie felt a sick emptiness at the thought that the perverseness of these beloved comrades might prevent him from grasping straws.
“You borrowed money to buy all this?” Lonesome was saying, with a sweep of his hand to indicate the beds littered with shirts, scarfs, suits, sombreros, chaps, boots.
“Do yu reckon I robbed a store?” countered Laramie, testily.
“From Lindsay?”
“No. From Buffalo Jones. An’ I can pay it back any time. These Eastern folks won’t know. But at thet I shore ought to tell … or—at least—Miss Lindsay.”
“Which one?” asked Lonesome, sarcastically.
Tracks turned from the mirror, where he had been shaving a week’s growth of beard from his dark face.
“Lonesome, you’ve coppered the trick,” he said. “You didn’t need to ask which one. Laramie has gone down before the oldest—Hallie, I think they called her. I don’t blame him. A sweet, serious, level-headed girl!”
“Ugh-huh. The volluptuss one,” agreed Lonesome. “I can’t say I blame him, either. Didn’t I go bloomin’ loony over thet sassy baby-faced, red-lipped kid? It ain’t that. What I want to know is this? Why in hell didn’t Laramie tell us these girls belonged to the Lindsay rancher we was goin’ to ride for?”
“Are goin’ to ride for, pard,” corrected Laramie.
“How in hell did Laramie know?” queried Tracks, in defense of their leader. “I should think you’d be loonier than ever. I am. Go! Well, I guess I’ll go. Range-riding for the Peak Dot outfit looks like heaven for me. Even if it didn’t I’d never desert Laramie when he’s bound to buck into that Arlidge galoot. Lonesome, I want to be around when they meet.”
“Me too. I’m not so thick-skinned as that,” rejoined Lonesome, gloomily. “But you’ve gotta bid me good-by, pards. I ain’t goin’.”
“Cheese and skippers!” ejaculated Tracks, ironically. “If you want to cut off your nose to spite your face, that’s not our lookout. God knows you’re ugly enough now.”
“Every fellar can’t be handsome like you an’ fascinatin’ like Laramie,” replied Lonesome, sadly. Then his spirit roused. “Just the same, I never noticed you two corrallin’ all the girls.”
“Lonesome, yu’re forgettin’ how I broke up thet little necktie party some years back,” said Laramie, reproachfully. “Why won’t yu go?”
Lonesome appeared driven into a corner. He sat down weakly upon the bed and his homely face took on a woebegone expression.
“’Cause I called that kid ‘Sweetheart,’ an’ snitched this from her when I handed back the pack she dropped,” admitted Lonesome, producing a small leather case, quite suggestively plump.
Laramie was dumbfounded. Lonesome at his old bad habit again—his besetting sin—his one weakness!
“What’s in it?” demanded Tracks, curiously.
“Darn if I know. Didn’t dare open it. Reckon I just wanted somethin’ of hers, a keepsake to remind me of her when I got out on the lone prairee again.”
Tracks snatched it out of Lonesome’s caressing hands.
“It’s a pocket-book … full of greenbacks!” exclaimed Tracks as he opened the case. “Tens and twenties…. There’s a fifty…. Oh, a century plant! First one of them I’ve seen since I hit the range.”
“My Gawd!” groaned Lonesome. “I didn’t know there was money in it. S’pose she felt me take it!—Pards, I gotta vamoose out of this Garden City, an’ pronto!”
Laramie strode across the room, and taking the pocket-book from Tracks he shook it in Lonesome’s face.
“Yu —— —— bow-legged little ——!” he drawled. “Yu’re shore goin’ to ruin us yet. Yu set there till I get back.”
“Where you goin’?” asked the rider, in impotent alarm.
“I’ll return this money. Let on it was accident ——”
“Laramie, it was an accident. I swear to Gawd! … An’ good-by, old pard ——”
“Go on, Laramie. I’ll keep him here,” interposed Tracks, “if I have to bust him a couple on his red snoot.”
“I can lick you any day,” Lonesome was retorting, belligerently, as Laramie went out into the hall.
He felt that this lapse of Lonesome’s had roused an inspiration. By frightening him it had made distinct the clear soft voice of conscience. He would make haste to profit by the opportunity, and meet the situation coolly, no matter how he might be affected inwardly. When Laramie approached Miss Lindsay’s door some way down the hall he heard the delightful laughter of her younger sister.
Laramie knocked. A contralto voice called, “Come in.”
He hesitated long enough for the door to be opened by the oldest sister, the one called Hallie.
“Oh—it’s Mister Laramie!” she cried, and surprised deep-gray eyes met his. Laramie had looked over his gun at many pairs of challenging eyes, but never at two which so made chaos of his faculties. But as he had prepared himself, it was possible to overcome all that was outwardly betrayed, and to inquire with his usual slow drawl:
“Anybody about heah lose a pocket-book?”
Before Miss Lindsay had time to reply there came a shriek of joy and a rush of steps. The youngest sister confronted him.
“I should smile somebody did,” she cried, joyously, expectantly, her pretty face distracting in its youth and freshness.
Laramie kept the pocket-book behind his back.
“Wal, what was the one somebody lost like?” he asked, smiling down on her.
“It was yellow leather, with a gold clasp…. Please let me see.”
“An’ what was inside?”
“Money. Stacks of bills! Mostly mother’s, and she has been wild since I lost it.”
“I’m shore glad. Yu must have dropped it in the hall,” replied Laramie. “Heah yu air.”
The girl received it gratefully. “Oh, I thank you, Mr. Nelson. Mother will be so—so relieved. She hadn’t told dad. Now he needn’t know…. I could just hug you…. Maybe I will some day!”
With a gay and mischievous laugh she ran down the corridor, evidently to acquaint her mother with the good news.
“How lucky you found it, Mr. Laramie!” said Miss Lindsay. “Buffalo Jones insisted that your association with us would be fortunate. And here you live up to his extravagant praise at once!”
“So Jones spoke high of me, Miss Lindsay?” asked Laramie.
“Indeed he did.”
“Wal, I reckon it’s more’n I’m wuth. An’ I’d shore like to straighten it out in yore mind. An’ I’m askin’ yu to tell yore father.”
“Certainly. Any message you care to give. He pleases to call me his right-hand man.”
“Wal, he’ll shore need yu,” went on Laramie, bluntly. “Miss Lindsay, what I cain’t stand about this deal is Jones givin’ yu-all false idees about me an’ my two pards. Don’t misunderstand. I’m downright shore yore father couldn’t get nowhere three better men for this queer range deal. But all thet talk about us—thet was pure taffy. The fact is we are only three tramp grub-line range-riders. We cain’t hold a job nowheres. I’m the wust, I reckon. I cain’t keep out of trouble. My gunman record follows me. I swear it’s not my fault. The way of the West is hard on my breed. Now, for my pards, Williams is a strange rider, a true pard, but I know next to nothin’ about him. He shore comes of a good family, as I do myself. But what’s thet in this wild country? Tracks is just another fine boy gone to the devil—run off from home, I expect, a rollin’ stone. An’ Lonesome, thet little son-of-a-gun, is wuss. He has a heart of gold, but thet’s about all, ’cept he cain’t be beat at ridin’ an’ ropin’. But he drinks, fights, gambles, swears, an’ long ago would shore have been daid—but—for me.”
Laramie gulped over the last. What relief to his breast! He could look straight into the clear, earnest, grave eyes without a qualm.
“Why—Mr. Laramie—you—you surprise me!” she ejaculated, in embarrassment. A rich color mantled her cheeks. “Are you deliberately rep
udiating Buffalo Jones’ tribute?”
“I reckon, ’cept about us bein’ as good range-riders as yu could get for this heah tough job.”
“You want me to tell father all that you said?”
“I shore do. I’d feel a heap better. I do already, tellin’ yu. It shore went against the grain to pretend I wasn’t out of a job—thet I had to be bargained with an’ coaxed. But Jones is to blame. He lent me money, so we could look decent again. I never rode under false colors. He swore yore father needed us plumb bad, an’ thet it’d be better to make up a little story about us. Eastern tenderfoot family—some romancin’ girls, yu know, an’ we oughtn’t disappoint yu. But I got to thinkin’ better about it an’ so I’ve told yu.”
“I see, Mr. Laramie. I must say I—I respect you for this admission. But you—you almost distress me. I am afraid I had already begun to rely on you—somehow.”
“Wal, what I’ve told yu is shore no reason why yu cain’t,” drawled Laramie.
“This West flabbergasts me!” She flushed, averted her darkening eyes, and then, turning quite pale, she looked at him searchingly.
“Is there any reason why you could not come to us honestly?”
“Not now. There was. I’ve told yu. Easterners air bound to see the West strange an’ hard an’ wild. It is. An’ we men air thet way. But I can face my mother an’ sister just as I am facin’ yu now.”
“Thank you. I think that—relieves me. And can you vouch for Williams?”
“Yes, so far as I know him.”
“And Mulhall?”
“All I can promise, Lady, is thet I’ll answer for Lonesome. I’ll be responsible for him.”
“What will father say?” she mused, soberly.
“Wal, I hope he doesn’t take it to heart. Thet foreman Arlidge is a man who wants a Westerner to figure him.”
“Buffalo Jones said Westerners never speak ill of other Westerners.”
“They don’t, if they air afraid for their health. What I’m hintin’ about Arlidge yu’ll heah me say to his face—thet is, if yore father takes me. Yu must put it up to him, Miss Lindsay.”
