The Man of the Forest

by Grey, Zane

  CHAPTER XVIII

  For two days Bo was confined to her bed, suffering considerable pain, and subject to fever, during which she talked irrationally. Some of this talk afforded Helen as vast an amusement as she was certain it would have lifted Tom Carmichael to a seventh heaven.

  The third day, however, Bo was better, and, refusing to remain in bed, she hobbled to the sitting-room, where she divided her time between staring out of the window toward the corrals and pestering Helen with questions she tried to make appear casual. But Helen saw through her case and was in a state of glee. What she hoped most for was that Carmichael would suddenly develop a little less inclination for Bo. It was that kind of treatment the young lady needed. And now was the great opportunity. Helen almost felt tempted to give the cowboy a hint.

  Neither this day, nor the next, however, did he put in an appearance at the house, though Helen saw him twice on her rounds. He was busy, as usual, and greeted her as if nothing particular had happened.

  Roy called twice, once in the afternoon, and again during the evening. He grew more likable upon longer acquaintance. This last visit he rendered Bo speechless by teasing her about another girl Carmichael was going to take to a dance. Bo's face showed that her vanity could not believe this statement, but that her intelligence of young men credited it with being possible. Roy evidently was as penetrating as he was kind. He made a dry, casual little remark about the snow never melting on the mountains during the latter part of March; and the look with which he accompanied this remark brought a blush to Helen's cheek.

  After Roy had departed Bo said to Helen: "Confound that fellow! He sees right through me."

  "My dear, you're rather transparent these days," murmured Helen.

  "You needn't talk. He gave you a dig," retorted Bo. "He just knows you're dying to see the snow melt."

  "Gracious! I hope I'm not so bad as that. Of course I want the snow melted and spring to come, and flowers—"

  "Hal Ha! Ha!" taunted Bo. "Nell Rayner, do you see any green in my eyes? Spring to come! Yes, the poet said in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. But that poet meant a young woman."

  Helen gazed out of the window at the white stars.

  "Nell, have you seen him—since I was hurt?" continued Bo, with an effort.

  "Him? Who?"

  "Oh, whom do you suppose? I mean Tom!" she responded, and the last word came with a burst.

  "Tom? Who's he? Ah, you mean Las Vegas. Yes, I've seen him."

  "Well, did he ask a-about me?"

  "I believe he did ask how you were—something like that."

  "Humph! Nell, I don't always trust you." After that she relapsed into silence, read awhile, and dreamed awhile, looking into the fire, and then she limped over to kiss Helen good night and left the room.

  Next day she was rather quiet, seeming upon the verge of one of the dispirited spells she got infrequently. Early in the evening, just after the lights had been lit and she had joined Helen in the sitting-room, a familiar step sounded on the loose boards of the porch.

  Helen went to the door to admit Carmichael. He was clean-shaven, dressed in his dark suit, which presented such marked contrast from his riding-garb, and he wore a flower in his buttonhole. Nevertheless, despite all this style, he seemed more than usually the cool, easy, careless cowboy.

  "Evenin', Miss Helen," he said, as he stalked in. "Evenin', Miss Bo. How are you-all?"

  Helen returned his greeting with a welcoming smile.

  "Good evening—TOM," said Bo, demurely.

  That assuredly was the first time she had ever called him Tom. As she spoke she looked distractingly pretty and tantalizing. But if she had calculated to floor Carmichael with the initial, half-promising, wholly mocking use of his name she had reckoned without cause. The cowboy received that greeting as if he had heard her use it a thousand times or had not heard it at all. Helen decided if he was acting a part he was certainly a clever actor. He puzzled her somewhat, but she liked his look, and his easy manner, and the something about him that must have been his unconscious sense of pride. He had gone far enough, perhaps too far, in his overtures to Bo.

  "How are you feelin'?" he asked.

  "I'm better to-day," she replied, with downcast eyes. "But I'm lame yet."

  "Reckon that bronc piled you up. Miss Helen said there shore wasn't any joke about the cut on your knee. Now, a fellar's knee is a bad place to hurt, if he has to keep on ridin'."

  "Oh, I'll be well soon. How's Sam? I hope he wasn't crippled."

  "Thet Sam—why, he's so tough he never knowed he had a fall."

  "Tom—I—I want to thank you for giving Riggs what he deserved."

  She spoke it earnestly, eloquently, and for once she had no sly little intonation or pert allurement, such as was her wont to use on this infatuated young man.

  "Aw, you heard about that," replied Carmichael, with a wave of his hand to make light of it. "Nothin' much. It had to be done. An' shore I was afraid of Roy. He'd been bad. An' so would any of the other boys. I'm sorta lookin' out for all of them, you know, actin' as Miss Helen's foreman now."

  Helen was unutterably tickled. The effect of his speech upon Bo was stupendous. He had disarmed her. He had, with the finesse and tact and suavity of a diplomat, removed himself from obligation, and the detachment of self, the casual thing be apparently made out of his magnificent championship, was bewildering and humiliating to Bo. She sat silent for a moment or two while Helen tried to fit easily into the conversation. It was not likely that Bo would long be at a loss for words, and also it was immensely probable that with a flash of her wonderful spirit she would turn the tables on her perverse lover in a twinkling. Anyway, plain it was that a lesson had sunk deep. She looked startled, hurt, wistful, and finally sweetly defiant.

  "But—you told Riggs I was your girl!" Thus Bo unmasked her battery. And Helen could not imagine how Carmichael would ever resist that and the soft, arch glance which accompanied it.

  Helen did not yet know the cowboy, any more than did Bo.

  "Shore. I had to say thet. I had to make it strong before thet gang. I reckon it was presumin' of me, an' I shore apologize."

  Bo stared at him, and then, giving a little gasp, she drooped.

  "Wal, I just run in to say howdy an' to inquire after you-all," said Carmichael. "I'm goin' to the dance, an' as Flo lives out of town a ways I'd shore better rustle.... Good night, Miss Bo; I hope you'll be ridin' Sam soon. An' good night, Miss Helen."

  Bo roused to a very friendly and laconic little speech, much overdone. Carmichael strode out, and Helen, bidding him good-by, closed the door after him.

  The instant he had departed Bo's transformation was tragic.

  "Flo! He meant Flo Stubbs—that ugly, cross-eyed, bold, little frump!"

  "Bo!" expostulated Helen. "The young lady is not beautiful, I grant, but she's very nice and pleasant. I liked her."

  "Nell Rayner, men are no good! And cowboys are the worst!" declared Bo, terribly.

  "Why didn't you appreciate Tom when you had him?" asked Helen.

  Bo had been growing furious, but now the allusion, in past tense, to the conquest she had suddenly and amazingly found dear quite broke her spirit. It was a very pale, unsteady, and miserable girl who avoided Helen's gaze and left the room.

  Next day Bo was not approachable from any direction. Helen found her a victim to a multiplicity of moods, ranging from woe to dire, dark broodings, from them to' wistfulness, and at last to a pride that sustained her.

  Late in the afternoon, at Helen's leisure hour, when she and Bo were in the sitting-room, horses tramped into the court and footsteps mounted the porch. Opening to a loud knock, Helen was surprised to see Beasley. And out in the court were several mounted horsemen. Helen's heart sank. This visit, indeed, had been foreshadowed.

  "Afternoon, Miss Rayner," said Beasley, doffing his sombrero. "I've called on a little business deal. Will you see me?"

  Helen acknowledged his greeting
while she thought rapidly. She might just as well see him and have that inevitable interview done with.

  "Come in," she said, and when he had entered she closed the door. "My sister, Mr. Beasley."

  "How d' you do, Miss?" said the rancher, in bluff, loud voice.

  Bo acknowledged the introduction with a frigid little bow.

  At close range Beasley seemed a forceful personality as well as a rather handsome man of perhaps thirty-five, heavy of build, swarthy of skin, and sloe-black of eye, like that of the Mexicans whose blood was reported to be in him. He looked crafty, confident, and self-centered. If Helen had never heard of him before that visit she would have distrusted him.

  "I'd called sooner, but I was waitin' for old Jose, the Mexican who herded for me when I was pardner to your uncle," said Beasley, and he sat down to put his huge gloved hands on his knees.

  "Yes?" queried Helen, interrogatively.

  "Jose rustled over from Magdalena, an' now I can back up my claim.... Miss Rayner, this hyar ranch ought to be mine an' is mine. It wasn't so big or so well stocked when Al Auchincloss beat me out of it. I reckon I'll allow for thet. I've papers, an' old Jose for witness. An' I calculate you'll pay me eighty thousand dollars, or else I'll take over the ranch."

  Beasley spoke in an ordinary, matter-of-fact tone that certainly seemed sincere, and his manner was blunt, but perfectly natural.

  "Mr. Beasley, your claim is no news to me," responded Helen, quietly. "I've heard about it. And I questioned my uncle. He swore on his death-bed that he did not owe you a dollar. Indeed, he claimed the indebtedness was yours to him. I could find nothing in his papers, so I must repudiate your claim. I will not take it seriously."

  "Miss Rayner, I can't blame you for takin' Al's word against mine," said Beasley. "An' your stand is natural. But you're a stranger here an' you know nothin' of stock deals in these ranges. It ain't fair to speak bad of the dead, but the truth is thet Al Auchincloss got his start by stealin' sheep an' unbranded cattle. Thet was the start of every rancher I know. It was mine. An' we none of us ever thought of it as rustlin'."

  Helen could only stare her surprise and doubt at this statement.

  "Talk's cheap anywhere, an' in the West talk ain't much at all," continued Beasley. "I'm no talker. I jest want to tell my case an' make a deal if you'll have it. I can prove more in black an' white, an' with witness, than you can. Thet's my case. The deal I'd make is this.... Let's marry an' settle a bad deal thet way."

  The man's direct assumption, absolutely without a qualifying consideration for her woman's attitude, was amazing, ignorant, and base; but Helen was so well prepared for it that she hid her disgust.

  "Thank you, Mr. Beasley, but I can't accept your offer," she replied.

  "Would you take time an' consider?" he asked, spreading wide his huge gloved hands.

  "Absolutely no."

  Beasley rose to his feet. He showed no disappointment or chagrin, but the bold pleasantness left his face, and, slight as that change was, it stripped him of the only redeeming quality he showed.

  "Thet means I'll force you to pay me the eighty thousand or put you off," he said.

  "Mr. Beasley, even if I owed you that, how could I raise so enormous a sum? I don't owe it. And I certainly won't be put off my property. You can't put me off."

  "An' why can't I?" he demanded, with lowering, dark gaze.

  "Because your claim is dishonest. And I can prove it," declared Helen, forcibly.

  "Who 're you goin' to prove it to—thet I'm dishonest?"

  "To my men—to your men—to the people of Pine—to everybody. There's not a person who won't believe me."

  He seemed curious, discomfited, surlily annoyed, and yet fascinated by her statement or else by the quality and appearance of her as she spiritedly defended her cause.

  "An' how 're you goin' to prove all thet?" he growled.

  "Mr. Beasley, do you remember last fall when you met Snake Anson with his gang up in the woods—and hired him to make off with me?" asked Helen, in swift, ringing words.

  The dark olive of Beasley's bold face shaded to a dirty white.

  "Wha-at?" he jerked out, hoarsely.

  "I see you remember. Well, Milt Dale was hidden in the loft of that cabin where you met Anson. He heard every word of your deal with the outlaw."

  Beasley swung his arm in sudden violence, so hard that he flung his glove to the floor. As he stooped to snatch it up he uttered a sibilant hiss. Then, stalking to the door, he jerked it open, and slammed it behind him. His loud voice, hoarse with passion, preceded the scrape and crack of hoofs.

  Shortly after supper that day, when Helen was just recovering her composure, Carmichael presented himself at the open door. Bo was not there. In the dimming twilight Helen saw that the cowboy was pale, somber, grim.

  "Oh, what's happened?" cried Helen.

  "Roy's been shot. It come off in Turner's saloon But he ain't dead. We packed him over to Widow Cass's. An' he said for me to tell you he'd pull through."

  "Shot! Pull through!" repeated Helen, in slow, unrealizing exclamation. She was conscious of a deep internal tumult and a cold checking of blood in all her external body.

  "Yes, shot," replied Carmichael, fiercely.

  "An', whatever he says, I reckon he won't pull through."

  "O Heaven, how terrible!" burst out Helen. "He was so good—such a man! What a pity! Oh, he must have met that in my behalf. Tell me, what happened? Who shot him?"

  "Wal, I don't know. An' thet's what's made me hoppin' mad. I wasn't there when it come off. An' he won't tell me."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know thet, either. I reckoned first it was because he wanted to get even. But, after thinkin' it over, I guess he doesn't want me lookin' up any one right now for fear I might get hurt. An' you're goin' to need your friends. Thet's all I can make of Roy."

  Then Helen hurriedly related the event of Beasley's call on her that afternoon and all that had occurred.

  "Wal, the half-breed son-of-a-greaser!" ejaculated Carmichael, in utter confoundment. "He wanted you to marry him!"

  "He certainly did. I must say it was a—a rather abrupt proposal."

  Carmichael appeared to be laboring with speech that had to be smothered behind his teeth. At last he let out an explosive breath.

  "Miss Nell, I've shore felt in my bones thet I'm the boy slated to brand thet big bull."

  "Oh, he must have shot Roy. He left here in a rage."

  "I reckon you can coax it out of Roy. Fact is, all I could learn was thet Roy come in the saloon alone. Beasley was there, an' Riggs—"

  "Riggs!" interrupted Helen.

  "Shore, Riggs. He come back again. But he'd better keep out of my way.... An' Jeff Mulvey with his outfit. Turner told me he heard an argument an' then a shot. The gang cleared out, leavin' Roy on the floor. I come in a little later. Roy was still layin' there. Nobody was doin' anythin' for him. An' nobody had. I hold that against Turner. Wal, I got help an' packed Roy over to Widow Cass's. Roy seemed all right. But he was too bright an' talky to suit me. The bullet hit his lung, thet's shore. An' he lost a sight of blood before we stopped it. Thet skunk Turner might have lent a hand. An' if Roy croaks I reckon I'll—"

  "Tom, why must you always be reckoning to kill somebody?" demanded Helen, angrily.

  "'Cause somebody's got to be killed 'round here. Thet's why!" he snapped back.

  "Even so—should you risk leaving Bo and me without a friend?" asked Helen, reproachfully.

  At that Carmichael wavered and lost something of his sullen deadliness.

  "Aw, Miss Nell, I'm only mad. If you'll just be patient with me—an' mebbe coax me.... But I can't see no other way out."

  "Let's hope and pray," said Helen, earnestly. "You spoke of my coaxing Roy to tell who shot him. When can I see him?"

  "To-morrow, I reckon. I'll come for you. Fetch Bo along with you. We've got to play safe from now on. An' what do you say to me an' Hal sleepin' here at the ranch-house?"

>   "Indeed I'd feel safer," she replied. "There are rooms. Please come."

  "Allright. An' now I'll be goin' to fetch Hal. Shore wish I hadn't made you pale an' scared like this."

  About ten o'clock next morning Carmichael drove Helen and Bo into Pine, and tied up the team before Widow Cass's cottage.

  The peach and apple-trees were mingling blossoms of pink and white; a drowsy hum of bees filled the fragrant air; rich, dark-green alfalfa covered the small orchard flat; a wood fire sent up a lazy column of blue smoke; and birds were singing sweetly.

  Helen could scarcely believe that amid all this tranquillity a man lay perhaps fatally injured. Assuredly Carmichael had been somber and reticent enough to rouse the gravest fears.

  Widow Cass appeared on the little porch, a gray, bent, worn, but cheerful old woman whom Helen had come to know as her friend.

  "My land! I'm thet glad to see you, Miss Helen," she said. "An' you've fetched the little lass as I've not got acquainted with yet."

  "Good morning, Mrs. Cass. How—how is Roy?" replied Helen, anxiously scanning the wrinkled face.

  "Roy? Now don't you look so scared. Roy's 'most ready to git on his hoss an' ride home, if I let him. He knowed you was a-comin'. An' he made me hold a lookin'-glass for him to shave. How's thet fer a man with a bullet-hole through him! You can't kill them Mormons, nohow."

  She led them into a little sitting-room, where on a couch underneath a window Roy Beeman lay. He was wide awake and smiling, but haggard. He lay partly covered with a blanket. His gray shirt was open at the neck, disclosing bandages.

  "Mornin'—girls," he drawled. "Shore is good of you, now, comin' down."

  Helen stood beside him, bent over him, in her earnestness, as she greeted him. She saw a shade of pain in his eyes and his immobility struck her, but he did not seem badly off. Bo was pale, round-eyed, and apparently too agitated to speak. Carmichael placed chairs beside the couch for the girls.

  "Wal, what's ailin' you this nice mornin'?" asked Roy, eyes on the cowboy.