“You say Jack found out all about it, honey?” repeated Lee in surprise.
He was seated in a big chair on the porch, and she nestled on one arm of it, rumpled his gray hair as she had always done since she had been a little girl, kissed him, and plunged into her story.
He heard her to the end without a word, but she noticed that he gripped the chair hard. When she had finished he swept her into his arms and broke down over her, calling her the pet names of her childhood.
“Honey-bird ... Dad’s little honey-bird ... I’m that ashamed of myse’f. ’Twas the whisky did it, lambie. Long as I live I’ll nevah touch it again. I’ll sweah that befo’ God. All week you been packin’ the troubles I heaped on you, precious, and afteh you-all saved me from being a criminal....”
So he went on, spending his tempestuous love in endearments and caresses, and so together they afterward talked it out and agreed to send the letter she had written.
But Lee was not satisfied with her atonement. He could not rest to let it go at that, without expressing his own part in it to Bellamy. Next day he rode up to the mine, and found its owner in workman’s slops just stepping from the cage. If Bellamy were surprised to see him, no sign of it reached his face.
“If you’ll wait a minute till I get these things off, I’ll walk up to the cabin with you, Mr. Lee,” he said.
“I reckon you got my daughter’s letter,” said Lee abruptly as he strode up the mountainside with his host.
“Yes, I got it an hour ago.”
“I be’n and studied it out, Mr. Morse. I couldn’t let it go at that, and so I reckoned I’d jog along up hyer and tell you the whole story.”
“That’s as you please, Mr. Lee. I’m quite satisfied as it is.”
The rancher went on as if he had not heard. “’Course I be’n holding a grudge at you evah since you took up this hyer claim. I expect that rankles with me most of the time, and when I take to drinking seems to me that mine still belongs to me. Well, I heerd tell of that shipment you was making, and I sets out to git it, for it ce’tainly did seem to belong to me. Understand, I wasn’t drunk, but had be’n settin’ pretty steady to the bottle for several days. Melissy finds it out, no matter how, and undertakes to keep me out of trouble. She’s that full of sand, she nevah once thought of the danger or the consequences. Anyhow, she meant to git the bullion back to you afteh the thing had blown over.”
“I haven’t doubted that a moment since I knew she did it,” said Bellamy quietly.
“Glad to hear it. I be’n misjudgin’ you, seh, but you’re a white man afteh all. Well, you know the rest of the story: how she held up the stage, how Jack drapped in befo’ our tracks were covered, how smart he worked the whole thing out, and how my little gyurl confessed to him to save me.”
“Yes, I know all that.”
“What kind of a figure do I make in this? First off, I act like a durn fool, and she has to step in to save me. Then I let her tote the worry of it around while I ride off to Mesa. When Jack runs me down, she takes the blame again. To finish up with, she writes you a letter of thanks, jes’ as if the whole fault was hers.”
The old soldier selected a smooth rock and splashed it with tobacco juice before he continued with rising indignation against himself.
“I’m a fine father for a gyurl like that, ain’t I? Up to date I always had an idee I was some sort of a man, but dad gum it! I cayn’t see it hyer. To think of me lettin’ my little gyurl stand the consequences of my meanness. No, Mr. Morse, that’s one too much for Champ Lee. He’s nevah going to touch another drop of whisky long as he lives.”
“Glad to hear it. That’s a square amend to make, one she will appreciate.”
“So I took a pasear up hyer to explain this, and to thank you for yore kindness. Fac’ is, Mr. Morse, it would have jest about killed me if anything had happened to my little ’Lissie. I want to say that if you had a-be’n her brother you couldn’t ’a’ be’n more decent.”
“There was nothing else to do. It happens that I am in her debt. She saved my life once. Besides, I understood the motives for her action when she broke the law, and I honored them with all my heart. Flatray felt just as I did about it. So would any right-thinking man.”
“Well, you cayn’t keep me from sayin’ again that you’re a white man, seh,” the other said with a laugh behind which the emotion of tears lay near.
“That offer of a compromise is still open, Mr. Lee.”
The Southerner shook his grizzled head. “No, I reckon not, Mr. Morse. Understand, I got nothin’ against you. The feud is wiped out, and I’ll make you no mo’ trouble. But it’s yore mine, and I don’t feel like taking charity. I got enough anyhow.”
“It wouldn’t be charity. I’ve always felt as if you had a moral claim on an interest in the ‘Monte Cristo.’ If you won’t take this yourself, why not let me make out the papers to Miss Lee? You would feel then that she was comfortably fixed, no matter what happened to you.”
“Well, I’ll lay it befo’ her. Anyhow, we’re much obliged to you, Mr. Morse. I’ll tell you what, seh,” he added as an after-thought. “You come down and talk it over with ’Lissie. If you can make her see it that way, good enough.”
When Champ Lee turned his bronco’s head homeward he was more at peace with the world than he had been for a long time. He felt that he would be able to look his little girl in the face again. For the first time in a week he felt at one with creation. He rode into the ranch plaza humming “Dixie.”
On the day following that of Lee’s call, the mine-owner saddled his mare and took the trail to the half-way house. It was not until after the stage had come and gone that he found the chance for a word with Melissy alone.
“Your father submitted my proposition, did he?” Bellamy said by way of introducing the subject.
“Let’s take a walk on it. I haven’t been out of the house to-day,” she answered with the boyish downrightness sometimes uppermost in her.
Calling Jim, she left him in charge of the store, caught up a Mexican sombrero, and led the way up the trail to a grove of live-oaks perched on a bluff above. Below them stretched the plain, fold on fold to the blue horizon edge. Close at hand clumps of cactus, thickets of mesquit, together with the huddled adobe buildings of the ranch, made up the details of a scene possible only in the sunburnt territory. The palpitating heat quivered above the hot brown sand. No life stirred in the valley except a circling buzzard high in the sky, and the tiny moving speck with its wake of dust each knew to be the stage that had left the station an hour before.
Melissy, unconscious of the charming picture she made, stood upon a rock and looked down on it all.
“I suppose,” she said at last slowly, “that most people would think this pretty desolate. But it’s a part of me. It’s all I know.” She broke off and smiled at him. “I had a chance to be civilized. Dad wanted to send me East to school, but I couldn’t leave him.”
“Where were you thinking of going?”
“To Denver.”
Her conception of the East amused him. It was about as accurate as a New Yorker’s of the West.
“I’m glad you didn’t. It would have spoiled you and sent you back just like every other young lady the schools grind out.”
She turned curiously toward him. “Am I not like other girls?”
It was on his tongue tip to tell her that she was gloriously different from most girls he had known, but discretion sealed his lips. Instead, he told her of life in the city and what it means to society women, its emptiness and unsatisfaction.
His condemnation was not proof positive to her. “I’d like to go there for myself some time and see. And anyhow it must be nice to have all the money you want with which to travel,” she said.
This gave him his opening. “It makes one independent. I think that’s the best thing wealth can give—a sort of spaciousness.” He waited perceptibly before he added: “I hope you have decided to be my partner in the mine.”
“
I’ve decided not to.”
“I’m sorry. But why?”
“It’s your mine. It isn’t ours.”
“That’s nonsense. I always in my heart, recognized a moral claim you have. Besides, the case isn’t finished yet. Perhaps your father may win his contest. I’m all for settling out of court.”
“You know we won’t win.”
“I don’t.”
She gave him applause from her dark eyes. “That’s very fair of you, but Dad and I can’t do it.”
“Then you still have a grudge at me,” he smiled.
“Not the least little bit of a one.”
“I shan’t take no for an answer, then. I’ll order the papers made out whether you want me to or not.” Without giving her a chance to speak, he passed to another topic: “I’ve decided to go out of the sheep business.”
“I’m so glad!” she cried.
“Those aren’t my feelings,” he answered ruefully. “I hate to quit under fire.”
“Of course you do, but your friends will know why you do it.”
“Why do I do it?”
“Because you know it’s right. The cattlemen had the range first. Their living is tied up in cattle, and your sheep are ruining the feed for them. Yesterday when I was out riding I counted the bones of eight dead cows.”
He nodded gravely. “Yes, in this country sheep are death to cows. I hate to be a quitter, but I hate worse to take the bread out of the mouths of a dozen families. Two days ago I had an offer for my whole bunch, and to-morrow I’m going to take the first instalment over the pass and drive them down to the railroad.”
“But you’ll have to cross the dead line to get over the pass,” she said quickly; for all Cattleland knew that a guard had been watching his herds to see they did not cross the pass.
“Yes. I’m going to send Alan with a letter to Farnum. I don’t think there will be any opposition to my crossing it when my object is understood,” he smiled.
Melissy watched him ride away, strong and rugged and ungraceful, from the head to the heel of him a man. Life had gone hard with him. She wondered whether that were the reason her heart went out to him so warmly.
As she moved about her work that day and the next little snatches of song broke from her, bubbling forth like laughter, born of the quiet happiness within, for which she could give no reason.
After the stage had gone she saddled her pony and rode toward the head of the pass. In an hour or two now the sheep would be pouring across the divide, and she wanted to get a photograph of them as they emerged from the pass. She was following an old cattle trail which ran into the main path just this side of the pass, and she was close to the junction when the sound of voices stopped her. Some instinct made her wait and listen.
The speakers were in a dip of the trail just ahead of her, and the voice of the first she recognized as belonging to the man Boone. The tone of it was jubilantly cruel.
“No, sir. You don’t move a step of the way, not a step, Mr. Alan McKinstra. I’ve got him right where I want him, and I don’t care if you talk till the cows come home.”
Alan’s voice rang out indignantly, “It’s murder then—just plain, low-down murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without warning him, you’re as responsible as if you shot him yourself.”
“All right. Suits me down to the ground. We’ll let it go at that. I’m responsible. If you want the truth flat and plain, I don’t mind telling you that I wouldn’t be satisfied if I wasn’t responsible. I’m evening up some little things with Mr. Morse to-day.”
Melissy needed to hear no more to understand the situation, but if she had, the next words of Boone would have cleared it up.
“When I met up with you and happened on the news that you was taking a message to Farnum, and when I got onto the fact that Morse, as you call him, was moving his sheep across the dead line, relying on you having got his letter to the cattlemen to make it safe, it seemed luck too good to be true. All I had to do was to persuade you to stay right here with me, and Mr. Morse would walk into the pass and be wiped out. You get the beauty of it, my friend, don’t you? I’m responsible, but it will be Farnum and his friends that will bear the blame. There ain’t but one flaw in the whole thing: Morse will never know that it’s me that killed him.”
“You devil!” cried the boy, with impotent passion.
“I’ve waited ten years for this day, and it’s come at last. Don’t you think for a moment I’m going to weaken. No, sir! You’ll sit there with my gun poked in your face just as you’ve sat for six hours. It’s my say-so to-day, sir,” Boone retorted, malevolence riding triumph in his voice.
Melissy’s first impulse was to confront the man, her next to slip away without being discovered and then give the alarm.
“Yes, sir,” continued the cowpuncher; “I scored on Mr. Morse two or three nights ago, when I played hell with one of his sheep camps, and to-day I finish up with him. His sheep have been watched for weeks, and at the first move it’s all up with him and them. Farnum’s vaqueros will pay my debt in full. Just as soon as I’m right sure of it I’ll be jogging along to Dead Man’s Cache, and you can go order the coffin for your boss.”
The venom of the man was something to wonder at. It filled the listening girl with sick apprehension. She had not known that such hatred could live in the world.
Quietly she led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above hailed her with a startled shout as she flew past. Again, a shot rang out, the bullet whistling close to her ear. But nothing could stop her till she reached the man she meant to save.
And so it happened that Richard Bellamy, walking at the head of his herd, saw a horse gallop wildly round a bend almost into his bleating flock. The rider dragged the bronco to a halt and slipped to the ground. She stood there ashen-hued, clinging to the saddle-horn and swaying slightly.
“I’m in time.... Thank God!... Thank God!” her parched lips murmured.
“Miss Lee! You here?” he cried.
They looked at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots, his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad, flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The still force of him somehow carried reassurance to her. Such virility of manhood could not be marked for extinction.
She panted out her story, and his eyes never left her.
“You have risked your life to save mine and my herders,” he said very quietly.
“You must go back,” she replied irrelevantly.
“I can’t. The entrance is guarded.”
This startled her. “Then—what shall we do?”
“You must ride forward at once. Tell the vaqueros that I am moving my sheep only to take them to the railroad. Explain to them how Alan is detained with the message I sent Farnum. In a few minutes we shall follow with the sheep.”
“And if they don’t believe that you are going out of the sheep business—what then?”
“I shall have to take my chance of that.”
She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind, nodded, swung to the saddle, and rode forward. After a few minutes Bellamy followed slowly. He was unarmed, not having doubted that his letter to the cattleman would make his journey safe. That he should have waited for an answer was now plain, but the contract called for an immediate delivery of the sheep, as he had carefully explained in his note to Farnum.
Presently he heard again the clatter of a horse’s hoofs in the loose shale and saw Melissy returning.
“Well?” he asked as she drew up.
“I’ve told them. I think they believe me, but I’m going through the gorge with you.”
He looked up quickly to protest, but did not. He knew that her thought was that her presence beside him would protect him from attack. The rough chivalry of Arizona takes its hat off to a woman, and Melissy Lee was a favorite of the whole countryside.
So together they passed into the gulch, Bellamy walking by the side of her horse. Neither of them spoke. At their heels was the soft rustle of many thousands of padding feet.
Once there came to them the sound of cheering, and they looked up to see a group of vaqueros waving their hats and shouting down. Melissy shook her handkerchief and laughed happily at them. It was a day to be remembered by these riders.
They emerged into a roll of hill-tops upon which the setting sun had cast a weird afterglow of radiance in which the whole world burned. The cactus, the stunted shrubbery, the painted rocks, seemed all afire with some magic light that had touched their commonness to a new wonder.
A sound came to them from below. A man, rifle in hand and leading a horse, was stealthily crossing the trail to disappear among the large boulders beyond.
Melissy did not speak, scarce dared to draw breath, for the man beneath them was Boone. There was something furtive and lupine about him that suggested the wild beast stalking its kill. No doubt he had become impatient to see the end of his foe and had ridden forward. He had almost crossed the path before he looked up and caught sight of them standing together in the fireglow of the sunset.
Abruptly he came to a standstill.
“By God! you slipped through, did you?” he said in a low voice of concentrated bitterness.
Bellamy did not answer, but he separated himself from the girl by a step or two. He knew quite well what was coming, and he looked down quietly with steady eyes upon his foe.
From far below there came the faint sound of a horse breaking its way through brush. Boone paused to listen, but his eye never wandered from the bareheaded, motionless figure silhouetted against the skyline in the ruddy evening glow. He had shifted his rifle so that it lay in both hands, ready for immediate action.
Brand Blotters Page 12
