He leaned back against the post comfortably and absorbed the beauty of the western horizon. The sun had just set behind a saddle of the Galiuros in a splash of splendor. All the colors of the rainbow fought for supremacy in a brilliant-tinted sky that blazed above the fire-girt peaks. Soon dusk would slip down over the land and tone the hues to a softer harmony. A purple sea would flow over the hills, to be in turn displaced by a deep, soft violet. Then night, that night of mystery and romance which transforms the desert to a thing of incredible wonder!
“Did your father buy this sunset with the ranch? And has he got a guarantee that it will perform every night?” he asked.
“Did you ever see anything like it?” she cried. “I have looked at them all my life and I never get tired.”
He laughed softly, his indolent, sleepy look on her. “Some things I would never get tired of looking at either.”
Without speaking she nodded, still absorbing the sunset.
“But it wouldn’t be that kind of scenery,” he added. “How tall are you, muchacha?”
Her glance came around in surprise. “I don’t know. About five foot five, I think. Why?”
“I’m working on that ad. How would this do? ‘Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen wants to meet up with gentleman between eighteen and forty-eight. Object, matrimony. Description of lady: Slim, medium height, brunette, mop of blue-black hair, the prettiest dimple you ever saw——’”
“Now I know you’re making fun of me. I’m mad.” And the dimple flashed into being.
“‘—mostly says the opposite of what she means, has a——’”
“I don’t. I don’t”
“‘—has a spice of the devil in her, which——’”
“Now, I am mad,” she interrupted, laughing.
“‘—which is excusable, since she has the reddest lips for kissing in Arizona.’”
He had gone too far. Her innocence was in arms. Norris knew it by the swiftness with which the smile vanished from her face, by the flash of anger in the eyes.
“I prefer to talk about something else, Mr. Norris,” she said with all the prim stiffness of a schoolgirl.
Her father relieved the tension by striding across from the stable. With him came a bowlegged young fellow in plain leathers. The youngster was Charley Hymer, one of the riders for the Bar Double G.
“You’re here at the right time, Norris,” Lee said grimly. “Charley has just come down from Antelope Pass. He found one of my cows dead, with a bullet hole through the forehead. The ashes of a fire were there, and in the brush not far away a running iron.”
The eyes of Norris narrowed to slits. He was the cattle detective of the association and for a year now the rustlers had outgeneraled him. “I’ll have you take me to the spot, Charley. Get a move on you and we’ll get there soon as the moon is up.”
Melissy gripped the arms of her chair tightly with both hands. She was looking at Norris with a new expression, a kind of breathless fear. She knew him for a man who could not be swerved from the thing he wanted. For all his easy cynicism, he had the reputation of being a bloodhound on the trail. Moreover, she knew that he was no friend to Jack Flatray. Why had she left that running iron as evidence to convict its owner? What folly not to have removed it from the immediate scene of the crime!
The cattle detective and her father had moved a few steps away and were talking in low tones. Melissy became aware of a footfall. The man who called himself Morse came around the corner of the house and stopped at the porch steps.
“May I speak to you a moment, Miss Lee?” he said in a low voice.
“Of course.”
The voice of Norris rose to an irritated snarl. “Tell you I’ve got evidence, Lee. Mebbe it’s not enough to convict, but it satisfies me a-plenty that Jack Flatray’s the man.”
Melissy was frozen to a tense attention. Her whole mind was on what passed between the detective and her father. Otherwise she would have noticed the swift change that transformed the tenderfoot.
The rancher answered with impatient annoyance. “You’re ’way off, Norris. I don’t care anything about your evidence. The idea is plumb ridiculous. Twenty odd years I’ve known him. He’s the best they make, a pure through and through. Not a crooked hair in his head. I’ve eat out of the same frying pan too often with that boy not to know what he is. You go bury those suspicions of yours immediate. There’s nothing to them.”
Norris grumbled objections as they moved toward the stable. Melissy drew a long breath and brought herself back to the tenderfoot.
He stood like a coiled spring, head thrust far forward from the shoulders. The look in his black eyes was something new to her experience. For hate, passion, caution were all mirrored there.
“You know Mr. Norris,” she said quickly.
He started. “What did you say his name was?” he asked with an assumption of carelessness.
“Norris—Philip Norris. He is a cattle detective.”
“Never heard of Mr. Norris before in my life,” he answered, but it was observable that he still breathed deep.
She did not believe him. Some tie in their buried past bound these two men together. They must have known each other in the South years ago, and one of them at least was an enemy of the other. There might come a day when she could use this knowledge to save Jack Flatray from the punishment dogging his heels. Melissy filed it away in her memory for future reference.
“You wanted to speak to me,” she suggested.
“I’m going away.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m not a hound. I can’t blackmail a woman.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that you’ve found work here for me because I saw what you did over by Antelope Pass. We made a bargain. Oh, not in words, but a bargain just the same! You were to keep my secret because I knew yours. I release you from your part of it. Give me up if you think it is your duty. I’ll not tell what I know.”
“That wasn’t how you talked the other day.”
“No. It’s how I talk now. I’m a hunted man, wanted for murder. I make you a present of the information.”
“You make me a present of what I already know, Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy.”
“You guessed it the first day?”
“Yes.”
“And meant to keep quiet about it?”
“Yes, I meant to shelter you from the punishment you deserve.” She added with a touch of bitter self-scorn: “I was doing what I had to do.”
“You don’t have to do it any longer.” He looked straight at her with his head up. “And how do you know what I deserve? Who made you a judge about these facts? Grant for the sake of argument I killed him. Do you know I wasn’t justified?”
His fierce boldness put her on the defense. “A man sure of his cause does not run away. The paper said this Shep Boone was shot from ambush. Nothing could justify such a thing. When you did that——”
“I didn’t. Don’t believe it, Miss Lee.”
“He was shot from behind, the paper said.”
“Do I look like a man who would kill from ambush?”
She admitted to herself that this clear-eyed Southerner did not look like an assassin. Life in the open had made her a judge of such men as she had been accustomed to meet, but for days she had been telling herself she could no longer trust her judgment. Her best friend was a rustler. By a woman’s logic it followed that since Jack Flatray was a thief this man might have committed all the crimes in the calendar.
“I don’t know.” Then, impulsively, “No, you don’t, but you may be for all that.”
“I’m not asking anything for myself. You may do as you please after I’ve gone. Send for Mr. Flatray and tell him if you like.”
A horse cantered across the plaza toward the store. Bellamy turned quickly to go.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” the girl called after him in a low voice.
Norris swung from the saddle. “Who’s our hurried friend?” he asked
carelessly.
“Oh, a new rider of ours. Name of Morse.” She changed the subject. “Are you—do you think you know who the rustler is?”
His cold, black eyes rested in hers. She read in them something cruel and sinister. It was as if he were walking over the grave of an enemy.
“I’m gathering evidence, a little at a time.”
“Do I know him?”
“Maybe you do.”
“Tell me.”
He shook his head. “Wait till I’ve got him cinched.”
“You told father,” she accused.
He laughed in a hard, mirthless fashion. “That cured me. The Lee family is from Missouri. When I talk next time I’ll have the goods to show.”
“I know who you mean. You’re making a mistake.” Her voice seemed to plead with him.
“Not on your life, I ain’t. But we’ll talk about that when the subject is riper. There will be a showdown some day, and don’t you forget it. Well, Charley is calling me. So long, Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen.” He went jingling down the steps and swung to the saddle. “I’ll not forget the ad, and when I find the right man I’ll ce’tainly rope and bring him to you.”
“The rustler?” she asked innocently.
“No, not the rustler, the gent between eighteen and forty-eight, object matrimony.”
“I don’t want to trouble you,” she flung at him with her gay smile.
“No trouble at all. Fact is, I’ve got him in mind already,” he assured her promptly.
“Oh!” A pulse of excitement was beating in her throat.
“You don’t ask me who he is,” suggested Norris boldly, crouched in the saddle with his weight on the far stirrup.
She had brought it upon herself, but now she dodged the issue. “’Most anyone will do, and me going on eighteen.”
“You’re wrong, girl. Only one out of a thousand will do for your master.”
“Master, indeed! If he comes to the Bar Double G he’ll find he is at the wrong address. None wanted, thank you.”
“Most folks don’t want what’s best for them, I allow. But if they have luck it sometimes comes to them.”
“Luck!” she echoed, her chin in the air.
“You heard me right. What you need is a man that ain’t afraid of you, one to ride close herd on you so as to head off them stampede notions of yours. Now this lad is the very one. He is a black-haired guy, and when he says a thing——”
Involuntarily she glanced at his sleek black head. Melissy felt a sudden clamor of the blood, a pounding of the pulses.
“—he most generally means it. I’ve wrangled around a heap with him and there’s no manner of doubt he’s up to specifications. In appearance he looks like me. Point of fact, he’s a dead ringer for me.”
She saw her chance and flashed out. “Now you’re flattering him. There can’t be two as—as fascinating as Señor Norris,” she mocked.
His smoldering eyes had the possessive insolence she resented and yet found so stimulating.
“Did I say there were two?” he drawled.
It was his parting shot. With a touch of the spur he was off, leaving her no time for an adequate answer.
There were no elusions and inferences about Philip Norris when he wanted to be direct. He had fairly taken her breath away. Melissy’s instinct told her there was something humiliating about such a wooing. But picturesque and unconventional conduct excuse themselves in a picturesque personality. And this man had that if nothing else.
She told herself she was angry at him, that he took liberties far beyond those of any of the other young men. Yet, somehow, she went into the house smiling. A color born of excitement burned beneath her sparkling eyes. She had entered into her heritage of womanhood and the call of sex was summoning her to the adventure that is old as the garden where Eve met Adam.
* * *
CHAPTER V
THE TENDERFOOT TAKES UP A CLAIM
Mr. Diller, alias Morse, alias Bellamy, did not long remain at the Bar Double G as a rider. It developed that he had money, and, tenderfoot though he was, the man showed a shrewd judgment in his investments. He bought sheep and put them on the government forest reserve, much to the annoyance of the cattlemen of the district.
Morse, as he now called himself, was not the first man who had brought sheep into the border country. Far up in the hills were several camps of them. But hitherto these had been there on sufferance, and it had been understood that they were to be kept far from the cattle range. The extension of the government reserves changed the equation. A good slice of the range was cut off and thrown open to sheep. When Morse leased this and put five thousand bleaters upon the feeding ground the sentiment against him grew very bitter.
Lee had been spokesman of a committee appointed to remonstrate with him. Morse had met them pleasantly but firmly. This part of the reserve had been set aside for sheep. If it were not leased by him it would be by somebody else. Therefore, he declined to withdraw his flocks. Champ lost his temper and swore that he for one would never submit to yield the range. Sharp bitter words were passed. Next week masked men drove a small flock belonging to Morse over a precipice.
The tenderfoot retaliated by jumping a mining claim staked out by Lee upon which the assessment work had not been kept up. The cattleman contested this in the courts, lost the decision, and promptly appealed. Meanwhile, he countered by leasing from the forest supervisor part of the run previously held by his opponent and putting sheep of his own upon it.
“I reckon I’ll play Mr. Morse’s own game and see how he likes it,” the angry cattleman told his friends.
But the luck was all with Morse. Before he had been working his new claim a month the Monte Cristo (he had changed the name from its original one of Melissy) proved a bonanza. His men ran into a rich streak of dirt that started a stampede for the vicinity.
Champ indulged in choice profanity. From his point of view he had been robbed, and he announced the fact freely to such acquaintances as dropped into the Bar Double G store.
“Dad gum it, I was aimin’ to do that assessment work and couldn’t jest lay my hands on the time. I’d been a millionaire three years and didn’t know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me’ll have a settlement. If the law don’t right me, I reckon I’m most man enough to ’tend to Mr. Morse.”
It was his daughter who had hitherto succeeded in keeping the peace. When the news of the relocation had reached Lee he had at once started to settle the matter with a Winchester, but Melissy, getting news of his intention, had caught up a horse and ridden bareback after him in time to avert by her entreaties a tragedy. For six months after this the men had not chanced to meet.
Why the tenderfoot had first come West—to hide what wounds in the great baked desert—no man knew or asked. Melissy had guessed, but she did not breathe to a soul her knowledge. It was a first article of Arizona’s creed that a man’s past belonged to him alone, was a blotted book if he chose to have it so. No doubt many had private reasons for their untrumpeted migration to that kindly Southwest which buries identity, but no wise citizen busied himself with questions about antecedents. The present served to sift one, and by the way a man met it his neighbors judged him.
And T. L. Morse met it competently. In every emergency with which he had to cope the man “stood the acid.” Arizona approved him a man, without according him any popularity. He was too dogmatic to win liking, but he had a genius for success. Everything he touched turned to gold.
The Bar Double G lies half way between Mammoth and Mesa. Its position makes it a central point for ranchers within a radius of fifteen miles. Out of the logical need for it was born the store which Beauchamp Lee ran to supply his neighbors with canned goods, coffee, tobacco, and other indispensables; also the eating house for stage passengers passing to and from the towns. Young as she was, Melissy was the competent manager of both of these.
It was one afternoon during the hour the stage s
topped to let the passengers dine that Melissy’s wandering eye fell upon Morse seated at one of the tables. Anger mounted within her at the cool impudence of the man. She had half a mind to order him out, but saw he was nearly through dinner and did not want to make a scene. Unfortunately Beauchamp Lee happened to come into the store just as his enemy strolled out from the dining-room.
The ranchman stiffened. “What you been doing in there, seh?” he demanded sharply.
“I’ve been eating a very good dinner in a public café. Any objections?”
“Plenty of ’em, seh. I don’t aim to keep open house for Mr. Morse.”
“I understand this is a business proposition. I expect to pay seventy-five cents for my meal.”
The eyes of the older man gleamed wrathfully. “As for yo’ six bits, if you offer it to me I’ll take it as an insult. At the Bar Double G we’re not doing friendly business with claim jumpers. Don’t you evah set yo’ legs under my table again, seh.”
Morse shrugged, turned away to the public desk, and addressed an envelope, the while Lee glared at him from under his heavy beetling brows. Melissy saw that her father was still of half a mind to throw out the intruder and she called him to her.
“Dad, José wants you to look at the hoof of one of his wheelers. He asked if you would come as soon as you could.”
Beauchamp still frowned at Morse, rasping his unshaven chin with his hand. “Ce’tainly, honey. Glad to look at it.”
“Dad! Please.”
The ranchman went out, grumbling. Five minutes later Morse took his seat on the stage beside the driver, having first left seventy-five cents on the counter.
The stage had scarce gone when the girl looked up from her bookkeeping to see the man with the Chihuahua hat.
“Buenos tardes, señorita,” he gave her with a flash of white teeth.
“Buenos,” she nodded coolly.
But the dancing eyes of her could not deny their pleasure at sight of him. They had rested upon men as handsome, but upon none who stirred her blood so much.
He was in the leather chaps of a cowpuncher, gray-shirted, and a polka dot kerchief circled the brown throat. Life rippled gloriously from every motion of him. Hermes himself might have envied the perfect grace of the man.
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