* * *
CHAPTER VIII
THE BOONE-BELLAMY FEUD IS RENEWED
“Here’s six bits on the counter under a seed catalogue. Did you leave it here, daddy?”
Champ Lee, seated on the porch just outside the store door, took the pipe from his mouth and answered:
“Why no, honey, I don’t reckon I did, not to my ricollection.”
“That’s queer. I know I didn’t——”
Melissy broke her sentence sharply. There had come into her eyes a spark of excitement, simultaneous with the brain-flash which told her who had left the money. No doubt the quarter and the half dollar had been lying there ever since the day last week when Morse had eaten at the Bar Double G. She addressed an envelope, dropped the money in, sealed the flap, and put the package beside a letter addressed to T. L. Morse.
Lee, full of an unhappy restlessness which he could not control, presently got up and moved away to the stables. He was blaming himself bitterly for the events of the past few days.
It was perhaps half an hour later that Melissy looked up to see the sturdy figure of Morse in the doorway. During the past year he had filled out, grown stronger and more rugged. His deep tan and heavy stride pronounced him an outdoor man no less surely than the corduroy suit and the high laced miners’ boots.
He came forward to the postoffice window without any sign of recognition.
“Is Mr. Flatray still here?”
“No!” Without further explanation Melissy took from the box the two letters addressed to Morse and handed them to him.
The girl observed the puzzled look that stole over his face at sight of the silver in one envelope. A glance at the business address printed on the upper left hand corner enlightened him. He laid the money down in the stamp window.
“This isn’t mine.”
“You heard what my father said?”
“That applies to next time, not to this.”
“I think it does apply to this time.”
“I can’t see how you’re going to make me take it back. I’m an obstinate man.”
“Just as you like.”
A sudden flush of anger swept her. She caught up the silver and flung it through the open window into the dusty road.
His dark eyes met hers steadily and a dull color burned in his tanned cheeks. Without a word he turned away, and instantly she regretted what she had done. She had insulted him deliberately and put herself in the wrong. At bottom she was a tender-hearted child, even though her father and his friends had always spoiled her, and she could not but reproach herself for the hurt look she had brought into his strong, sad face. He was their enemy, of course, but even enemies have rights.
Morse walked out of the office looking straight before him, his strong back teeth gripped so that the muscles stood out on his salient jaw. Impulsively the girl ran around the counter after him.
He looked up from untying his horse to see her straight and supple figure running toward him. Her eager face was full of contrition and the color of pink rose petals came and went in it.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Morse. I oughtn’t to have done that. I hurt your feelings,” she cried.
At best he was never a handsome man, but now his deep, dark eyes lit with a glow that surprised her.
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” he said in a low voice.
“I’m so tempery,” she explained in apology, and added: “I suppose a nice girl wouldn’t have done it.”
“A nice girl did do it,” was all he could think to say.
“You needn’t take the trouble to say that. I know I’ve just scrambled up and am not ladylike and proper. Sometimes I don’t care. I like to be able to do things like boys. But I suppose it’s dreadful.”
“I don’t think it is at all. None of your friends could think so. Not that I include myself among them,” he hastened to disclaim. “I can’t be both your friend and your enemy, can I?”
The trace of a sardonic smile was in his eyes. For the moment as she looked at him she thought he might. But she answered:
“I don’t quite see how.”
“You hate me, I suppose,” he blurted out bluntly.
“I suppose so.” And more briskly she added, with dimples playing near the corners of her mouth: “Of course I do.”
“That’s frank. It’s worth something to have so decent an enemy. I don’t believe you would shoot me in the back.”
“Some of the others would. You should be more careful,” she cried before she could stop herself.
He shrugged. “I take my fighting chance.”
“It isn’t much of a one. You’ll be shot at from ambush some day.”
“It wouldn’t be a new experience. I went through it last week.”
“Where?” she breathed.
“Down by Willow Wash.”
“Who did it?”
He laughed, without amusement. “I didn’t have my rifle with me, so I didn’t stay to inquire.”
“It must have been some of those wild vaqueros.”
“That was my guess.”
“But you have other enemies, too.”
“Miss Lee,” he smiled.
“I mean others that are dangerous.”
“Your father?” he asked.
“Father would never do that except in a fair fight. I wasn’t thinking of him.”
“I don’t know whom you mean, but a few extras don’t make much difference when one is so liberally supplied already,” he said cynically.
“I shouldn’t make light of them if I were you,” she cautioned.
“Who do you mean?”
“I’ve said all I’m going to, and more than I ought,” she told him decisively. “Except this, that it’s your own fault. You shouldn’t be so stiff. Why don’t you compromise? With the cattlemen, for instance. They have a good deal of right on their side. They did have the range first.”
“You should tell that to your father, too.”
“Dad runs sheep on the range to protect himself. He doesn’t drive out other people’s cattle and take away their living.”
“Well, I might compromise, but not at the end of a gun.”
“No, of course not. Here comes dad now,” she added hurriedly, aware for the first time that she had been holding an extended conversation with her father’s foe.
“We started enemies and we quit enemies. Will you shake hands on that, Miss Lee?” he asked.
She held out her hand, then drew it swiftly back. “No, I can’t. I forgot. There’s another reason.”
“Another reason! You mean the Arkansas charge against me?” he asked quietly.
“No. I can’t tell you what it is.” She felt herself suffused in a crimson glow. How could she explain that she could not touch hands with him because she had robbed him of twenty thousand dollars?
Lee stopped at the steps, astonished to see his daughter and this man in talk together. Yesterday he would have resented it bitterly, but now the situation was changed. Something of so much greater magnitude had occurred that he was too perturbed to cherish his feud for the present. All night he had carried with him the dreadful secret he suspected. He could not look Melissy in the face, nor could he discuss the robbery with anybody. The one fact that overshadowed all others was that his little girl had gone out and held up a stage, that if she were discovered she would be liable to a term in the penitentiary. Laboriously his slow brain had worked it all out. A talk with Jim Budd had confirmed his conclusions. He knew that she had taken this risk in order to save him. He was bowed down with his unworthiness, with shame that he had dragged her into this horrible tangle. He was convinced that Jack Flatray would get at the truth, and already he was resolved to come forward and claim the whole affair as his work.
“I’ve been apologizing to Mr. Morse for insulting him, dad,” the girl said immediately.
Her father passed a bony hand slowly across his unshaven chin. “That’s right, honey. If you done him a meanness, you had ought to say so.”
“She
has said so very handsomely, Mr. Lee,” spoke up Morse.
“I’ve been warning him, dad, that he ought to be more careful how he rides around alone, with the cattlemen feeling the way they do.”
“It’s a fact they feel right hot under the collar. You’re ce’tainly a temptation to them, Mr. Morse,” the girl’s father agreed.
The mine owner shifted the subject of conversation. He was not a man of many impulses, but he yielded to one now.
“Can’t we straighten out this trouble between us, Mr. Lee? You think I’ve done you an injury. Perhaps I have. If we both mean what’s right, we can get together and fix it up in a few minutes.”
The old Southerner stiffened and met him with an eye of jade. “I ain’t asking any favors of you, Mr. Morse. We’ll settle this matter some day, and settle it right. But you can’t buy me off. I’ll not take a bean from you.”
The miner’s eyes hardened. “I’m not trying to buy you off. I made a fair offer of peace. Since you have rejected it, there is nothing more to be said.” With that he bowed stiffly and walked away, leading his horse.
Lee’s gaze followed him and slowly the eyes under the beetled brows softened.
“Mebbe I done wrong, honey. Mebbe I’d ought to have given in. I’m too proud to compromise when he’s got me beat. That’s what’s ailin’ with me. But I reckon I’d better have knuckled under.”
The girl slipped her arm through his. “Sometimes I’m just like that too, daddy. I’ve just got to win before I make up. I don’t blame you a mite, but, all the same, we should have let him fix it up.”
It was characteristic of them both that neither thought of reversing the decision he had made. It was done now, and they would abide by the results. But already both of them half regretted, though for very different reasons. Lee was thinking that for Melissy’s sake he should have made a friend of the man he hated, since it was on the cards that within a few days she might be in his power. The girl’s feeling, too, was unselfish. She could not forget the deep hunger for friendship that had shone in the man’s eyes. He was alone in the world, a strong man surrounded by enemies who would probably destroy him in the end. There was stirring in her heart a sweet womanly pity and sympathy for the enemy whose proffer of friendship had been so cavalierly rejected.
The sight of a horseman riding down the trail from the Flagstaff mine shook Melissy into alertness.
“Look, dad. It’s Mr. Norris,” she cried.
Morse, who had not yet recognized him, swung to the saddle, his heart full of bitterness. Every man’s hand was against his, and every woman’s. What was there in his nature that turned people against him so inevitably? There seemed to be some taint in him that corroded all natural human kindness.
A startled oath brought him from his somber reflections. He looked up, to see the face of a man with whom in the dead years of the past he had been in bitter feud.
Neither of them spoke. Morse looked at him with a face cold as chiselled marble and as hard. The devil’s own passion burned in the storm-tossed one of the other.
Norris was the first to break the silence.
“So it was all a lie about your being killed, Dick Bellamy.”
The mine owner did not speak, but the rigor of his eyes did not relax.
“Gave it out to throw me off your trail, did you? Knew mighty well I’d cut the heart out of the man who shot poor Shep.” The voice of the cattle detective rang out in malignant triumph. “You guessed it c’rect, seh. Right here’s where the Boone-Bellamy feud claims another victim.”
The men were sitting face to face, so close that their knees almost touched. As Norris jerked out his gun Bellamy caught his wrist. They struggled for an instant, the one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner’s heart. His enemy’s finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. The weapon jumped out of line, went clattering down into the dust from the palsied fingers.
Lee ran forward and pushed between the men.
“Here. Ain’t you boys got ary bettah sense than to clinch like wildcats?” he demanded, jerking one of the horses away by the bridle. “No, you don’t, Phil. I’ll take keer of this gun for the present.” It was noticeable that Beauchamp Lee’s speech grew more after the manner of the plantations when he became excited.
The cowpuncher, white with anger, glared at his enemy and poured curses at him, the while he nursed his strained wrist. For the moment he was impotent, but he promised himself vengeance in full when they should meet again.
“That’ll be enough from you now, Phil,” said the old ex-Confederate good-naturedly, leading him toward the house and trying to soothe his malevolent chagrin.
Bellamy turned and rode away. At the corner of the corral he met Jack Flatray riding up.
“Been having a little difference of opinion with our friend, haven’t you, seh?” the deputy asked pleasantly.
“Yes.” Bellamy gave him only the crisp monosyllable and changed the subject immediately. “What about this stage robbery? Have you been able to make anything of it, Mr. Flatray?”
“Why, yes. I reckon we’ll be able to land the miscreant mebbe, if things come our way,” drawled the deputy. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to offer a reward, though, to keep things warm?”
“I thought of that. I made it a thousand dollars. The posters ought to be out to-day on the stage.”
“Good enough!”
“Whom do you suspect?”
Jack looked at him with amiable imperturbability. “I reckon I better certify my suspicions, seh, before I go to shouting them out.”
“All right, sir. Since I’m paying the shot, it ought to entitle me to some confidence. But it’s up to you. Get back the twenty thousand dollars, that’s all I ask, except that you put the fellow behind the bars of the penitentiary for a few years.”
Flatray gave him an odd smile which he did not understand.
“I hope to be able to accommodate you, seh, about this time to-morrow, so far as getting the gold goes. You’ll have to wait a week or two before the rest of your expectations get gratified.”
“Any reasonable time. I want to see him there eventually. That’s all.”
Jack laughed again, without giving any reason for his mirth. That ironic smile continued to decorate his face for some time. He seemed to have some inner source of mirth he did not care to disclose.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
THE DANGER LINE
Though Champ Lee had business in Mesa next day that would not be denied, he was singularly loath to leave the ranch. He wanted to stay close to Melissy until the dénouement of the hunt for the stage robber. On the other hand, it was well known that his contest with Morse for the Monte Cristo was up for a hearing. To stay at home would have been a confession of his anxiety that he did not want to make. But it was only after repeated charges to his daughter to call him up by telephone immediately if anything happened that he could bring himself to ride away.
He was scarcely out of sight when a Mexican vaquero rode in with the information that old Antonio, on his way to the post at Three Pines with a second drove of sheep, had twisted his ankle badly about fifteen miles from the ranch. After trying in vain to pick up a herder at Mesa by telephone, Melissy was driven to the only feasible course left her, to make the drive herself in place of Antonio. There were fifteen hundred sheep in the bunch, and they must be taken care of at once by somebody competent for the task. She knew she could handle them, for it had amused her to take charge of a herd often for an hour or two at a time. The long stretch over the desert would be wearisome and monotonous, but she had the slim, muscular tenacity of a half-grown boy. It did not matter what she wanted to do. The thing to which she came back always was that
the sheep must be taken care of.
She left directions with Jim for taking care of the place, changed to a khaki skirt and jacket, slapped a saddle on her bronco, and disappeared across country among the undulations of the sandhills. A tenderfoot would have been hopelessly lost in the sameness of these hills and washes, but Melissy knew them as a city dweller does his streets. Straight as an arrow she went to her mark. The tinkle of distant sheep-bells greeted her after some hours’ travel, and soon the low, ceaseless bleating of the herd.
The girl found Antonio propped against a piñon tree, solacing himself philosophically with cigarettes. He was surprised to see her, but made only a slight objection to her taking his place. His ankle was paining him a good deal, and he was very glad to get the chance to pull himself to her saddle and ride back to the ranch.
A few quick words sent the dog Colin out among the sheep, by now scattered far and wide over the hill. They presently came pouring toward her, diverged westward, and massed at the base of a butte rising from a dry arroyo. The journey had begun, and hour after hour it continued through the hot day, always in a cloud of dust flung up by the sheep, sometimes through the heavy sand of a wash, often over slopes of shale, not seldom through thick cactus beds that shredded her skirt and tore like fierce, sharp fingers at her legging-protected ankles. The great gray desert still stretched before her to the horizon’s edge, and still she flung the miles behind her with the long, rhythmic stride that was her birthright from the hills. A strong man, unused to it, would have been staggering with stiff fatigue, but this slender girl held the trail with light grace, her weight still carried springily on her small ankles.
Once she rested for a few minutes, flinging herself down into the sand at length, her head thrown back from the full brown throat so that she could gaze into the unstained sky of blue. Presently the claims of this planet made themselves heard, for she, too, was elemental and a creature of instinct. The earth was awake and palpitating with life, the low, indefatigable life of creeping things and vegetation persisting even in this waste of rock and sand.
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