by Bower, B M
When she rode around the bold, out-thrust shoulder of the hill which formed the western rim of the coulee, and went loping up the trail to where the barbed-wire gate stopped her, you would have said that Jean had not a trouble to call her own. She wore her old gray Stetson pretty well over one eye because of the sun-glare, and she was riding on one stirrup and letting the other foot swing free, and she was whirling her quirt round and round, cartwheel fashion, and whistling an air that every one knows,—and putting in certain complicated variations of her own.
At the gate she dismounted without ever missing a note, gave the warped stake a certain twist and jerk which loosened the wire loop so that she could slip it easily over the post, passed through and dragged the gate with her, dropping it flat upon the ground beside the trail. There was no stock anywhere in the coulee, and she would save a little trouble by leaving the gate open until she came out on her way home. She stepped aside to inspect the meadow lark's nest cunningly hidden under a wild rosebush, and then mounted and went on to the stable, still whistling carelessly.
She turned Pard into the shed where she invariably left him when she came to the Lazy A, and went on up the grass-grown path to the house. She had the preoccupied air of one who meditates deeply upon things apart; as a matter of fact, she had glanced down the coulee to its wide-open mouth, and had thrilled briefly at the wordless beauty of the green spread of the plain and the hazy blue sweep of the mountains, and had come suddenly into the poetic mood. She had even caught a phrase,—"The lazy line of the watchful hills," it was,—and she was trying to fit it into a verse, and to find something beside "rills" that would rhyme with "hills."
She followed the path absent-mindedly to where she would have to turn at the corner of the kitchen and go around to the door of her own room; and until she came to the turn she did not realize what was jarring vaguely and yet insistently upon her mood. Then she knew; and she stopped full and stared down at the loose sand just before the warped kitchen steps. There were footprints in the path,—alien footprints; and they pointed toward that forbidden door into the kitchen of gruesome memory. Jean looked up frowning, and saw that the door had been opened and closed again carelessly. And upon the top step, strange feet had pressed a little caked earth carried from the trail where she stood. There were the small-heeled, pointed prints of a woman's foot, and there were the larger tracks of a man,—a man of the town.
Jean stood with her quirt dangling loosely from her wrist and glanced back toward the stables and down the coulee. She completely forgot that she wanted a rhyme for "hills." What were towns people doing here? And how did they get here? They had not ridden up the coulee; there were no tracks through the gate; and besides, these were not the prints of riding-boots.
She twitched her shoulders and went around to the door leading into her own room. The door stood wide open when it should have been closed. Inside there were evidences of curious inspection. She went hot with an unreasoning anger when she saw the wide-open door into the kitchen; first of all she went over and closed that door, her lips pressed tightly together. To her it was as though some wanton hand had forced up the lid of a coffin where slept her dead. She stood with her back against the door and looked around the room, breathing quickly. She felt the woman's foolish amusement at the old cradle with the rag doll tucked under the patchwork quilt, and at her pitiful attempts at adorning the tawdry walls. Without having seen more than the prints of her shoes in the path, Jean hated the woman who had blundered in here and had looked and laughed. She hated the man who had come with the woman.
She went over to her desk and stood staring at the litter. A couple of sheets of cheap tablet paper, whereon Jean had scribbled some verses of the range, lay across the quirt she had forgotten on her last trip. They had prowled among the papers, even! They had respected nothing of hers, had considered nothing sacred from their inquisitiveness. Jean picked up the paper and read the verses through, and her cheeks reddened slowly.
Then she discovered something else that turned them white with fresh anger. Jean had an old ledger wherein she kept a sporadic kind of a diary which she had entitled "More or Less the Record of my Sins." She did not write anything in it unless she felt like doing so; when she did, she wrote just exactly what she happened to think and feel at the time, and she had never gone back and read what was written there. Some one else had read, however; at least the book had been pulled out of its place and inspected, along with her other personal belongings. Jean had pressed the first wind-flowers of the season between the pages where she had done her last scribbling, and these were crumpled and two petals broken, so she knew that the book had been opened carelessly and perhaps read with that same brainless laughter.
She did not say anything. She straightened the wind-flowers as best she could, put the book back where it belonged, and went outside, and down to a lop-sided shack which might pass anywhere as a junk-shop. She found some nails and a hammer, and after a good deal of rummaging and some sneezing because of the dust she raised whenever she moved a pile of rubbish, she found a padlock with a key in it. More dusty search produced a hasp and some staples, and then she went back and nailed two planks across the door which opened into the kitchen. After that she fastened the windows shut with nails driven into the casing just above the lower sashes, and cracked the outer door with twelve-penny nails which she clinched on the inside with vicious blows of the hammer, so that the hasp could not be taken off without a good deal of trouble. She had pulled a great staple off the door of a useless box-stall, and when she had driven it in so deep that she could scarcely force the padlock into place over the hasp, and had put the key in her pocket, she felt in a measure protected from future prowlers. As a final hint, however, she went back to the shop and mixed some paint with lampblack and oil, and lettered a thin board which she afterwards carried up and nailed firmly across the outside kitchen door. Hammer in hand she backed away and read the words judicially, her head tilted sidewise:
ONLY SNEAKS GO WHERE THEY ARE NOT WANTED.
ARE YOU A SNEAK?
The hint was plain enough. She took the hammer back to the shop and led Pard out of the stable and down to the gate, her eyes watching suspiciously the trail for tracks of trespassers. She closed the gate so thoroughly with baling wire twisted about a stake that the next comer would have troubles of his own in getting it open again. She mounted and went away down the trail, sitting straight in the saddle, both feet in the stirrups, head up, and hat pulled firmly down to her very eyebrows, glances going here and there, alert, antagonistic. No whistling this time of rag-time tunes with queer little variations of her own; no twirling of the quirt; instead Pard got the feel of it in a tender part of the flank, and went clean over a narrow washout that could have been avoided quite easily. No groping for rhythmic phrasings to fit the beauty of the land she lived in; Jean was in the mood to combat anything that came in her way.
CHAPTER V
JEAN RIDES INTO A SMALL ADVENTURE
At the mouth of the coulee, she turned to the left instead of to the right, and so galloped directly away from the Bar Nothing ranch, down the narrow valley known locally as the Flat, and on to the hills that invited her with their untroubled lights and shadows and the deep scars she knew for canyons.
There were no ranches out this way. The land was too broken and too barren for anything but grazing, so that she felt fairly sure of having her solitude unspoiled by anything human. Solitude was what she wanted. Solitude was what she had counted upon having in that little room at the Lazy A; robbed of it there, she rode straight to the hills, where she was most certain of finding it.
And then she came up out of a hollow upon a little ridge and saw three horsemen down in the next coulee. They were not close enough so that she could distinguish their features, but by the horses they rode, by the swing of their bodies in the saddles, by all those little, indefinable marks by which we recognize acquaintances at a distance, Jean knew them for strangers. She pulled up and watched them, p
uzzled for a minute at their presence and behavior.
When first she discovered them, they were driving a small bunch of cattle, mostly cows and calves, down out of a little "draw" to the level bottom of the narrow coulee. While she watched, herself screened effectually by a clump of bushes, she saw one rider leave the cattle and gallop out into the open, stand there looking toward the mouth of the coulee, and wave his hand in a signal for the others to advance. This looked queer to Jean, accustomed all her life to seeing men go calmly about their business upon the range, careless of observation because they had nothing to conceal. She urged Pard a little nearer, keeping well behind the bushes still, and leaned forward over the saddle horn, watching the men closely.
Their next performance was enlightening, but incredibly bold for the business they were engaged in. One of the three got off his horse and started a little fire of dry sticks under a convenient ledge. Another untied the rope from his saddle, widened the loop, swung it twice over his head and flipped it neatly over the head of a calf.
Jean did not wait to see any more than that; she did not need to see any more to know them for "rustlers." Brazen rustlers, indeed, to go about their work in broad daylight like that. She was not sure as to the ownership of the calf, but down here was where the Bar Nothing cattle, and what few were left of the Lazy A, ranged while the feed was good in the spring, so that the probabilities were that this theft would strike rather close home. Whether it did or not, Jean was not one to ride away and leave range thieves calmly at work.
She turned back behind the bushy screen, rode hastily along the ridge to the head of the little coulee and dismounted, leading Pard down a steep bank that was treacherous with loose shale. The coulee was more or less open, but it had convenient twists and windings; and if you think that Jean failed to go down it quietly and unseen, that merely proves how little you know Jean.
She hurried as much as she dared. She knew that the rustlers would be in something of a hurry themselves, and she very much desired to ride on them unawares and catch them at that branding, so that there would be no shadow of a doubt of their guilt. What she would do after she had ridden upon them, she did not quite know.
So she came presently around the turn that revealed them to her. They were still fussing with the calf,—or it may have been another one,—and did not see her until she was close upon them. When they did see her, she had them covered with her 38-caliber six-shooter, that she usually carried with her on the chance of getting a shot at a coyote or a fox or something like that.
The three stood up and stared at her, their jaws sagging a little at the suddenness of her appearance, and their eyes upon the gun. Jean held it steady, and she had all the look of a person who knew exactly what she meant, and who meant business. She eyed them curiously, noting the fact that they were strangers, and cowboys,—though of a type that she had never seen on the range. She glanced sharply at the beaded, buckskin jacket of one of them, and the high, wide-brimmed sombrero of another.
"Well," she said at length, "turn your backs, you've had a good look at me. Turn—your—backs, I said. Now, drop those guns on the ground. Walk straight ahead of you till you come to that bank. You needn't look around; I'm still here."
She leaned a little, sending Pard slowly forward until he was close to the six-shooters lying on the ground. She glanced down at them quickly, and again at the men who stood, an uneasy trio, with their faces toward the wall, except when they ventured a glance sidewise or back at her over one shoulder. She glanced at the cattle huddled in the narrow mouth of the "draw" behind them, and saw that they were indeed Bar Nothing and Lazy A stock. The horses the three had been riding she did not remember to have seen before.
Jean hesitated, not quite knowing what she ought to do next. So far she had acted merely upon instincts born of her range life and training; the rest would not be so easy. She knew she ought to have those guns, at any rate, so she dismounted, still keeping the three in line with her own weapon, and went to where the revolvers lay on the ground. With her boot toe she kicked them close together, and stooped and picked one up. The last man in the line turned toward her protestingly, and Jean fired so close to his head that he ducked.
"Believe me, I could kill the three of you if I wanted to, before you could turn around," she informed them calmly, "so you had better stand still till I tell you to move." She frowned down at the rustler's gun in her hand. There was something queer about that gun.
"Hey, Burns," called the man in the middle, without venturing to turn his head, "come out of there and explain to the lady. This ain't in the scene!"
"Oh, yes, it is!" a voice retorted chucklingly. "You bet your life this is in the scene! Lowry's been pamming it all in; don't you worry about that!" Jean was startled, but she did not lower her gun from its steady aiming at the three of them. It was just some trick, very likely, meant to throw her off her guard. There were more than the three, and the fourth man probably had her covered with a gun. But she would not turn her head toward his voice, for all that.
"The gentleman called Burns may walk out into the open and explain, if he can," she announced sharply, her eyes upon the three whom she had captured so easily.
She heard the throaty chuckle again, from somewhere to the left of her. She saw the three men in front of her look at each other with sickly grins. She felt that the whole situation was swinging against her,—that she had somehow blundered and made herself ridiculous. It never occurred to her that she was in any particular danger; men did not shoot down women in that country, unless they were drunk or crazy, and the man called Burns had sounded extremely sane, humorous even. She heard a rattle of bushes and the soft crunching of footsteps coming toward her. Still she would not turn her head, nor would she lower the gun; if it was a trick, they should not say that it had been successful.
"It's all right, sister," said the chuckling voice presently, almost at her elbow. "This isn't any real, honest-to-John bandit party. We're just movie people, and we're making pictures. That's all." He stopped, but Jean did not move or make any reply whatever, so he went on. "I must say I appreciate the compliment you paid us in taking it for the real dope, sister—"
"Don't call me sister again." Jean flashed him a sidelong glance of resentment. "You've already done it twice too often. Come around in front where I can see you, if you're what you claim to be."
"Well, don't shoot, and I will," soothed the chuckling voice. "My, my, it certainly is a treat to see a real, live Prairie Queen once. Beats making them to order—"
"We'll omit the superfluous chatter, please." Jean looked him over and tagged him mentally with one glance. He did not look like a rustler,—with his fat good-nature and his town-bred personality, and his gray tweed suit and pigskin puttees, and the big cameo ring on his manicured little finger, and his fresh-shaven face as round as the sun above his head and almost as cheerful. Perfectly harmless, but Jean would not yield to the extent of softening her glance or her manner one hundredth of a degree. The more harmless these people, the more ridiculous she had made herself appear.
The chuckly one grinned and removed his soft gray hat, held it against his generous equator, and bowed so low as to set him puffing a little afterward. His eyes, however, appraised her shrewdly.
"Omitting all superfluous chatter, as you suggest, I am Robert Grant Burns, of the Great Western Film Company. These men are also members of that company. We are here for the purpose of making Western pictures, and this little bit of unlawful branding of stock which you were flattering enough to mistake for the real thing, is merely a scene which we were making." He was about to indulge in what he would have termed a little "kidding" of the girl, but wisely refrained after another shrewd reading of her face.
Jean looked at the three men, who had taken it for granted that they might leave their intimate study of the clay bank and were coming toward her. She looked at the gun she had picked up from the ground,—being loaded with blank cartridges was what had made it look so queer!—and
at Robert Grant Burns of the Great Western Film Company, who had put on his hat again and was studying her the way he was wont to study applicants for a position in his company.
"Did you get permission to haze our cattle around like this?" she asked abruptly, to hide how humiliated she really felt.
"Why—no. Just for a few scenes, I did not consider it necessary." Plainly, the chuckly Mr. Burns was taken at a disadvantage.
"But it is necessary. Don't make the mistake, Mr. Burns, of thinking this country and all it contains is at the disposal of any chance stranger, just because we do not keep it under lock and key. You are making rather free with another man's personal property, when you use my uncle's cattle for your rustling scenes."
"Your uncle? Well, I shall be very glad to make some arrangement with your uncle, if that is customary."
"Why the doubt? Are you in the habit of walking into a man's house, for instance, and using his kitchen to make pictures without permission? Has it been your custom to lead a man's horses out of his stable whenever you chose, and use them for race pictures?"
"No, no—nothing like that. Sorry to have infringed upon your property-rights, I am sure." Mr. Burns did not sound so chuckly now; but that may have been because the three picture-rustlers were quite openly pleased at the predicament of their director. "It never occurred to me that—"
"That the cattle were not as free as the hills?" The quiet voice of Jean searched out the tenderest places in the self-esteem of Robert Grant Burns. She tossed the blank-loaded gun back upon the ground and turned to her horse. "It does seem hard to impress it upon city people that we savages do have a few rights in this country. We should have policemen stationed on every hilltop, I suppose, and 'No Trespassing' signs planted along every cow-trail. Even then I doubt whether we could convince some people that we are perfectly human and that we actually do own property here."
