Marble Range

by Robert J. Horton

  Manley came with the first glimmer of dawn to find everyone in the house still up. He listened keenly as Howard told what had happened.

  “I’ll take a dozen men an’ go in there,” he said grimly. “We may be able to track back from the cabin. Howard, get me a fresh horse an’ a fast one while I’m taking on some breakfast.”

  Howard wanted to go with Manley when he departed, but Florence wouldn’t permit it.

  Bannister’s condition remained the same all that day. He was delirious by spells, but his talk was all inarticulate and broken. Florence and Martha both got a little rest. Dr. Holmes never closed his eyes. He drank huge cups of strong, black coffee and remained at his post. Late in the afternoon he discovered he was out of a certain strong sedative that he needed. He wrote a prescription and Howard was sent to Prairie City to have it filled.

  When he rode into town on his lathered horse almost the first person he saw on the street was the former Half Diamond foreman, Big Bill Hayes. He passed him without a second glance.

  Leaving the prescription at the drugstore, he rode on to the livery, where he found that the horse he had ridden so hard the day before was all right. He changed mounts and thus had a fresh horse for the ride back to the ranch. When he returned to the drugstore, the medicine was ready. He stuffed the package into a coat pocket and started back.

  The night was an hour advanced when he reached the river crossing west of the ranch. He thought he saw a shadow sweep across the road where it entered the trees. His heart leaped and he drew his gun. Then he drove in his spurs and dashed ahead. Leaning forward in the saddle, his eyes straining into the darkness, it was as if he deliberately rode into a noose. He was jerked from the saddle and landed in the road, stunned.

  Vaguely, as though through a mist, he was conscious of hands fumbling at his pockets. Then the sky seemed to clear overhead and he saw the stars. He sat up. All was still. He could see the darker shadow of his horse standing to one side of the road. He put out a hand to rise and it touched the cold metal of his gun. In a flash he remembered. He felt in his pocket and cried out. The needed medicine was gone. Howard wasted no time in conjectures. It was plainly another move against Bannister by Cromer or the rustlers. Someone knew he had gone for that medicine, and …

  As he caught his horse and mounted, he trembled with outraged excitement. Hayes had seen him go into town and into the drugstore. Could he have had his horse handy and gotten the start on him while he was at the livery? Hayes hated Bannister. He had quit the Half Diamond, and must now hate the Marbles, too. Howard turned back in another dash for Prairie City.

  This time, when he reached town, he ordered the prescription refilled, and then made a hurried circuit of the various resorts where Hayes would be liable to hang out. He did not see him, nor had any of those he asked seen him that evening. He went to the livery and engaged a fresh horse, after which he hurried to the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Campbell listened attentively, scowling the while in thought.

  “I’ll send Van Note back with you,” he said when the youth had finished. “And I’ll have the town searched for Hayes. As for sending a posse into the river breaks, as I first contemplated, I think it would be useless. Your men know more about the badlands than I do. We’ll have to wait until Bannister can tell what took place and where. Get your horse and medicine and I’ll send for Van Note.”

  In a few minutes Howard and the deputy were on their way. When they reached the trees at the river, they drew their guns and each kept a keen watch on either side of the road. But this time there was no attack. They rode on into the ranch and Howard hurried into the house with the parcel for the doctor, while Van Note tarried in the kitchen for a cup of coffee. It was well past midnight and the deputy decided to get some sleep in the bunkhouse before going back to town in the morning.

  Florence was asleep at breakfast time, and, as she hadn’t seen Van Note, Howard decided he would tell her nothing of what had happened the night before. It would only add to her worries. The deputy started back shortly after breakfast. Next came a messenger from Manley with the information that they had made no progress in the search of the day before, but were going out again.

  Dr. Holmes took an occasional brief nap on the couch that had been placed in the sick room and at such times Martha or Florence kept watch at the bedside. These were trying periods for Florence, beset by doubts as to Bannister’s identity, anxious for his recovery, conscious of the impression his personality had made upon her. She realized now that it was this extraordinary personality that had caused her to give way to the impulse to engage him. Yet she did not look upon him as any ordinary employee of the Half Diamond. In fact, to her surprise, as she looked upon the tanned features and the tousled hair above the bandage on the pillow, she realized that she hardly looked upon him as an employee at all. It was almost as though he were a member of the family.

  When Dr. Holmes learned of the visit of the company physician, he was disappointed because he had not seen him. Regardless of the feeling between the Marbles and Cromer, he would have liked to have had the other doctor in consultation.

  Another day and night wore through with Bannister tossing and turning and muttering, and the doctor fighting the fever. The others tiptoed about the house and looked at each other fearfully. For sickness is an unnatural thing on a ranch, rendered the more so because of the isolation.

  On the third day, Dr. Holmes announced the crisis. Florence went out into the yard. There were her flowers, bright splashes of color against the green of sward and shrubbery. The tall, graceful cottonwoods nodded and whispered in a scented breeze, over all the glorious, golden sunshine of a perfect June. But the girl saw none of this. She walked aimlessly here and there, unseeing, her mind in a turmoil of hope, doubt, perplexity. Old Jeb came to her for news.

  “He’ll make it,” said the old man when he had heard. “He’s too well made to go off with a scratch of the head. Damn! Miss Flo, Big Bill Hayes had something to do with this. I’d bet my last chaw of terbaccer on it. But he’ll make it . . . you see.”

  Florence was startled. “What makes you think Hayes had anything to do with it?” she asked quickly.

  Jeb taped his head mysteriously. “A hunch,” he answered shortly. “I’ve had hundreds of ’em an’ they always come up to scratch. Hayes don’t like Bannister, an’ he don’t like us, an’ he ain’t the kind that’ll light out without tryin’ to get even. That’s all I got to say, an’ I won’t say no more.”

  Florence looked after him thoughtfully. The doctor came out on the porch. His eyes were sunken, his face drawn with weariness as he ran his fingers through his shock of gray hair. Florence hurried to him.

  “He’s sleeping at last,” said the doctor in a tired voice. “The fever has gone down. When he wakes, we shall know. His mind will be in darkness or in the light.”

  All afternoon Bannister slept and far into the night. At midnight Martha called Florence and Howard, who were in the living room. They went upstairs. Two lamps were burning in the sick room. Dr. Holmes was bending over the bed, his arm under Bannister’s head, giving him a drink of water.

  Florence’s heart seemed to come into her throat. Bannister’s eyes were open. They were clear. He finished the water and murmured his thanks to the doctor, from whose face all trace of weariness had fled before the victory. Then he saw her and smiled faintly.

  Dr. Holmes pushed them firmly out of the room. “He’ll be back to sleep in a minute, and now you folks go to bed,” he commanded sternly. “I’m going to catch a few winks myself. Do as I say. I’m boss here. Now hurry along.”

  In her room Florence knelt by her bed, her arms crossed on the counterpane. The moonlight streamed through the window upon her head. The wind played an anthem in the waving branches of the trees. A great peace came over her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dr. Holmes stayed another day, making sure that Bannister was out of danger, and then, after giving strict and implicit directions as to the care of the
injured man, he left for town, promising to come out to the ranch regularly to change the dressings on the wound.

  And then Bannister’s magnificent physique and splendid constitution began to assert themselves. He mended rapidly. He was not permitted to talk for two days to any extent, and, when the doctor lifted the ban, Florence sent for Manley so he could be present when Bannister told in detail what had happened. Quite unexpectedly, Sheriff Campbell came out from Prairie City the same morning. But Bannister could tell them very little. He explained how he had seen the fresh tracks on the river trail, told them as nearly as possible the location of the ridge upon which he had taken up his vigil, and of the rope, the firing, and the burst of flame in his face when he had been shot. That was all he knew until he regained consciousness in the cabin.

  It wasn’t much to go on, but Sheriff Campbell left at once with Manley to get a number of Half Diamond men and explore the eastern terminus of the river trail. Bannister didn’t expect them to find anything, and he proved to be right. He was much put out by the accident, complaining that it was his own fault, and that as a consequence the rustlers had been scared out and might not operate again all summer, thus lessening the possibility of their capture. He said nothing about his vague suspicions of Hayes, nor did Florence tell him what old Jeb had said about his hunch.

  Both of them would have been interested in Howard’s experience the night he went for the medicine, but Howard decided to keep the details to himself until sometime in the future. The sheriff had told him that Hayes was not in town that night and Howard was convinced Hayes had ridden out ahead of him, roped him, and stolen the medicine, thinking it would retard Bannister’s recovery. The sheriff was noncommittal in the matter, but he had done considerable thinking.

  Meanwhile Cromer had postponed the grand drawing of plots in the project until July 10, and had put off the meeting of the company’s board of directors until July 15. Howard Marble was responsible for this, as the blow that Cromer had received across the bridge of his nose from the gun barrel had caused both his eyes to turn black. Looking as he did, it was impossible for him to go to the city in the south and other places as would be necessary to complete his arrangements. He did not once think of reporting the matter to the constable stationed in Marble, as he would have to tell the whole story, and it would put him in a bad light or make him appear ridiculous. Therefore Howard heard nothing more from that quarter.

  But Cromer still had a card up his sleeve that promised ill for Bannister. When he heard that Bannister was recovering rapidly, he thought more and more of this next move. It would be taking a chance, but Cromer was used to taking chances. Wasn’t he taking the biggest chance of his life with the irrigation project? But this new move had to be put off until after the drawing and the directors’ meeting, because it meant a long ride for Cromer far to southward. But the idea was ever in his mind and he nursed it until it grew to such proportions that the plan seemed incapable of failure. During these days Cromer became more cheerful than in months. His vindictive nature also whispered to him of the water in the river. If he were to open his intake full . . . It was another weapon, but one that would have to be used with studied care. And what effect would it have on the Half Diamond? He would have to figure that out. He could make it count, and count big in some way. Florence Marble should be made to see that Bannister constituted a menace to her investments, her property, and her peace of mind. With these thoughts, and the prospects of big cash payments at the time of the drawing, Cromer became more cheerful than ever.

  Summer came in a day, riding in on a hot wind with the sun a burning ball of fire in a sky of slate. The beef herd at the Dome was slowly moved northward along the creek on the east side. The herd on the north range moved over nearer the creek and grazed both north and south. All the cattle now were on summer range.

  Bannister was soon sitting up, and it wasn’t long before he could be taken out on the shaded porch. He chafed at the inactivity, but then there really wasn’t much to do. But he did not for a minute assume that the trouble was over. The very quietness of things was to him alarming—the lull before the storm.

  Then one afternoon, when the heat waves were shimmering on the prairie, and Marble Dome was buried in a blue haze under a broiling sun, Howard told him about the night he had gone for the medicine, about Hayes’s sudden disappearance from town, and what he suspected.

  Bannister was silent for some time, his eyes gleaming from between narrowed lids. “You mustn’t say anything of this to Miss Florence,” he said finally. “You mustn’t say anything about Hayes to anyone. I think I have his number. Somehow I can’t shake off the feeling that everything is going to break at once. But we’ve got to keep what we know to ourselves.”

  Howard pondered this remark, for he did not altogether understand it. But he went on to tell Bannister about Cromer’s refusal to send the company doctor down the day Bannister was brought back to the house, and how he had had to ride on to Prairie City.

  Bannister merely smiled and reached over to lay a hand on his arm. “I reckon you saved my life twice that day,” was his only comment.

  Bannister spent most of his time on the porch now, although he could walk around the yard. He stood by and watched as Florence worked with her flowers. Her chief pride was a long, wide bed of pansies. She would work among them for hours and Bannister would sit on the grass and watch. They didn’t talk much. Since his illness a peculiar situation had arisen between these two. They seemed to understand one another better, to have something in common, although Bannister never could determine what it was. Florence felt that she had needed more companionship on the ranch, and had found it in Bannister. She liked to have him around. She liked to look up from her work and see him sitting there, looking off into the distance dreamily, liked to have him smile at her and say something—anything. And Bannister liked to see her look up, her face flushed, the hand trowel tilted awkwardly, her eyes sparkling.

  They would sit on the porch of an evening and at times their conversation would take on an intimacy by subtle instinct that left her breathless and wondering and a bit afraid. She never told him what he had said in his delirium. It gradually grew dim in her mind as she made the astounding discovery that she didn’t care.

  Then there came a night. Howard had been with them all evening, sitting on a lower step while they had sat on the upper. Howard had been telling of a girl he knew in Prairie City who had gone away to school and come back so high-toned there was no living with her. They had laughed, and, when he left, Florence confessed that she had gone away to school herself.

  “But it hasn’t spoiled you,” said Bannister quickly.

  “It did the first year.” She laughed. “But Dad soon took it all out of me by saying that I had changed so he believed he’d sell the ranch and go East where I liked it better.”

  “I reckon you didn’t take to that,” said Bannister.

  “Take to it? Well, I should say not. I was born here. I’m just as much of the West as those cottonwoods. Dad had to argue some powerful to get me to go back that fall.”

  Bannister laughed softly. “Florence, you’re a right good sort,” he said, using her first name as if he had never called her anything else.

  “That’s rather a dry compliment,” she observed, looking at the moon that was edging up above the cottonwoods with its following of stars.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” he said in a low voice, putting an arm about her shoulders. “You see, Florence, after this sickness and your . . . your kindness, and yourself, I’m traveling a dangerous trail.”

  She didn’t understand him, but she thrilled at the contact with his strong, young body, at the manly, vibrant notes of his voice. It was as if she had suddenly found protection from something. From what? Loneliness? Danger? Then in a flash she remembered what he had said when the fever was afire in his brain.

  “Why is it a dangerous trail, Bannister?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Because it has
no end,” he answered slowly, with a hint of despair. “It can take me nowhere.”

  Instinctively she leaned toward him. He drew her head to his shoulder and patted her hair.

  “What is this trail?” she asked softly, her eyes on the drifting slice of silver moon. “Tell me about it.”

  “I reckon it’s the trail to heaven,” he said in that same slow, hopeless voice. “It’s you, Florence. You’re sweet and dear . . . pure gold. You’re the only girl I ever wanted, and I want you with my heart and soul and all that is me. I can have you maybe for a minute, but that is all.”

  She looked up at him out of eyes that were swimming wells of light. His arms were about her. He kissed her—and once again.

  She drew away and rested a hand on the floor of the porch. Now she knew. She knew why she liked to look up and find him sitting there by the flower bed with that far-away look. She knew why she liked to see him come down in the morning with his hair ruffled up and a sleepy frown on his face as he went to the wash bench just off the kitchen. She knew why his flashing smile thrilled her. She knew why she wanted to call him by his first name.

  “A minute, Bob, isn’t a very long time,” she said almost in a whisper.

  “In my case it is an eternity,” he said, looking straight ahead. Should he tell her? Should he tell her all—all? And have her draw away from him as if he were some odious thing? There are limits to a brave man’s courage. And would it be altogether fair to her after . . . ?

  “Bob,” she said, putting a hand on his knee, “do you want me to . . . to tell you something?”