The Night Riders

by Cullum, Ridgwell

  “And as for you, Tresler,” he said coldly, “keep that tongue of yours easy. I am master here.”

  There was a brief silence, then the rancher returned to the subject that had caused the struggle.

  “Well, what about the men for Willow Bluff, Jake?”

  It was Tresler who answered the question, and without a moment’s hesitation.

  “I should like to go out there, Mr. Marbolt. Especially if there’s likely to be trouble.”

  It was the only position possible for him after what had gone before, and he knew it. He glanced at Jake and saw that, for the moment at least, his hatred for his employer had been set aside. He was smiling a sort of tigerish smile.

  “Very well, Tresler,” responded the rancher. “And you can choose your own companion. You can go and get ready. Jake,” turning to the other, “I want to talk to you.”

  Tresler went out, feeling that he had made a mess of things. He gave Jake credit for his cleverness, quite appreciating the undying hate that prompted it. But the thing that was most prominent in his thoughts was the display the blind man had given him. He smiled when he thought of Jake’s boasted threats to Diane; how impotent they seemed now. But the smile died out when he remembered he, himself, had yet to face the rancher on the delicate subject of his daughter. He remembered only too well Jake’s reference to a cyclone, and he made his way to the bunkhouse with no very enlivening thoughts.

  In the meantime the two men he had just left remained silent until the sound of his footsteps had quite died out. Then Marbolt spoke.

  “Jake, you are a damned idiot!” he said abruptly.

  The foreman made no answer and the other went on.

  “Why can’t you leave the boy alone? He’s harmless; besides he’s useful to me—to us.”

  “Harmless—useful?” Jake laughed bitterly. “Pshaw, I guess your blindness is gettin’ round your brains!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it ’ud have been better if you’d let me—wipe him out. Better for us—for you.”

  “I don’t see; you forget his money.” The blind man’s tone was very low. “You forget he intends to buy a ranch and stock. You forget that he has twenty-five thousand dollars to expend. Bah! I’ll never make a business man of you.”

  “And what about your girl?” Jake asked, quite unmoved by the other’s explanation.

  “My girl?” Marbolt laughed softly. “You are always harping on that. He will leave my girl alone. She knows my wishes, and will—shall obey me. I don’t care a curse about him or his affairs. But I want his money, and if you will only see to your diabolical temper, I’ll—we’ll have it. Your share stands good in this as in all other deals.”

  It was the foreman’s turn to laugh. But there was no mirth in it. It stopped as suddenly as it began, cut off short.

  “He will leave your girl alone, will he?” he said, with a sneer. “Say, d’you know what he was doin’ around this house last night when he saw those hoss-thief guys, or shall I tell you?”

  “You’d better tell me,” replied the rancher, coldly.

  “He was after your girl. Say, an’ what’s more, he saw her. An’ what’s still more, she’s promised to be his wife. He told me.”

  “What’s that? Say it again.” There was an ominous calmness in the blind man’s manner.

  “I said he was after your girl, saw her, and she’s—promised—to—be—his—wife.”

  “Ah!”

  Then there was a silence for some minutes. The red eyes were frowning in the direction of the window. At last the man drew a deep breath, and Jake, watching him, wondered what was coming.

  “I’ll see her,” he said slowly, “and I’ll see him—after he comes back from Willow Bluff.”

  That was all, but Jake, accustomed to Julian Marbolt’s every mood, read a deal more than the words expressed. He waited for what else might be coming, but only received a curt dismissal in tones so sharp that he hurried out of the room precipitately.

  Once clear of the verandah he walked more slowly, and his eyes turned in the direction of the bunkhouse. All the old hatred was stirred within him as he saw Tresler turn the angle of the building and disappear within its doorway.

  “Guess no one’s goin’ to see you—after Willow Bluff,” he muttered. “No one.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XV

  AT WILLOW BLUFF

  Tresler would have liked to see Diane before going out to Willow Bluff, but reflection showed him how impossible that would be; at least, how much unnecessary risk it would involve for her. After what he had just witnessed of her father, it behooved him to do nothing rashly as far as she was concerned, so he turned his whole attention to his preparations for departure.

  He had made up his mind as to his comrade without a second thought. Arizona was his man, and he sent the diplomatic Joe out to bring him in from Pine Creek sloughs, where he was cutting late hay for winter stores.

  In about half an hour the American came in, all curiosity and eagerness; nor would he be satisfied until he had been told the whole details of the matter that had led up to the appointment. Tresler kept back nothing but his private affairs relating to Diane. At the conclusion of the recital, Arizona’s rising temper culminated in an explosion.

  “Say, that feller Jake’s a meaner pirate an’ cus as ’ud thieve the supper from a blind dawg an’ then lick hell out o’ him ’cos he can’t see.” Which outburst of feeling having satisfied the necessity of the moment, he became practical. “An’ you’re goin’, you an’ me?” he asked incredulously.

  “That’s the idea, Arizona; but of course you’re quite free to please yourself. I chose you; Marbolt gave me the privilege of selection.”

  “Wal, guess we’d best git goin’. Willow Bluff station’s fair to decent, so we’ll only need our blankets an’ grub—an’ a tidy bunch of ammunition. Guess I’ll go an’ see Teddy fer the rations.”

  He went off in a hurry. Tresler looked after him. It was good to be dealing with such a man after those others, Jake and the rancher. Arizona’s manner of accepting his selection pleased him. There was no “yes” or “no” about it: no argument. A silent acceptance and ready thought for their needs. A thorough old campaigner. A man to be relied on in emergency—a man to be appreciated.

  In two hours everything was in readiness, Tresler contenting himself with a reassuring message to Diane through the medium of Joe.

  They rode off. Jezebel was on her good behavior, and Arizona’s mount kept up with her fast walk by means of his cowhorse amble. As they came to the ford, Tresler drew up and dismounted, and the other watched him while he produced a wicker-covered glass flask from his pocket.

  “What’s that?” he asked. “Rye?”

  Tresler shook his head, and tried the metal screw cap.

  “No,” he replied shortly.

  Then he leant over the water and carefully set the bottle floating, pushing it out as far as possible with his foot while he supported himself by the overhanging bough of a tree. Then he stood watching it carried slowly amid-stream. Presently the improvised craft darted out with a rush into the current, and swept onward with the main flow of the water. Then he returned and remounted his impatient mare.

  “That,” he said, as they rode on, “is a message. Fyles’s men are down the river spying out the land, and, incidentally, waiting to hear from me. The message I’ve sent them is a request for assistance at Willow Bluff. I have given them sound reason, which Fyles will understand.”

  Arizona displayed considerable astonishment, which found expression in a deprecating avowal.

  “Say, I guess I’m too much o’ the old hand. I didn’t jest think o’ that.”

  It was all he vouchsafed, but it said a great deal. And the thin face and wild eyes said more.

  Now they rode on in silence, while they followed the wood-lined trail along the river. The shade was delightful, and the trail sufficiently sandy to muffle the sound of the horses’ hoofs and so lea
ve the silence unbroken. There was a faint hum from the insects that haunted the river, but it was drowsy, soft, and only emphasized the perfect sylvan solitude. After a while the trail left the river and gently inclined up to the prairie level. Then the bush broke and became scattered into small bluffs, and a sniff of the bracing air of the plains brushed away the last odor of the redolent glades they were leaving.

  It was here that Arizona roused himself. He was of the prairie, belonging to the prairie. The woodlands depressed him, but the prairie made him expansive.

  “Seems to me, Tresler, you’re kind o’ takin’ a heap o’ chances—mostly onnes’ary. Meanin’ ther’ ain’t no more reason to it than whistlin’ Methody hymns to a deaf mule. Can’t see why you’re mussin’ y’self up wi’ these all-fired hoss thieves. You’re askin’ fer a sight more’n you ken eat.”

  “And, like all men of such condition, I shall probably eat to repletion, I suppose you mean.”

  Arizona turned a doubtful eye on the speaker, and quietly spat over his horse’s shoulder.

  “Guess your langwidge ain’t mine,” he said thoughtfully; “but if you’re meanin’ you’re goin’ to git your belly full, I calc’late you’re li’ble to git like a crop-bound rooster wi’ the moult ’fore you’re through. An’ I sez, why?”

  Tresler shrugged. “Why does a man do anything?” he asked indifferently.

  “Gener’ly fer one of two reasons. Guess it’s drink or wimmin.” Again he shot a speculating glance at his friend, and, as Tresler displayed more interest in the distant view than in his remarks, he went on. “I ain’t heerd tell as you wus death on the bottle.”

  The object of his solicitude smiled round on him.

  “Perhaps you think me a fool. But I just can’t stand by seeing things going wrong in a way that threatens to swamp one poor, lonely girl, whose only protection is her blind father.”

  “Then it is wimmin?”

  “If you like.”

  “But I don’t jest see wher’ them hoss thieves figger.”

  “Perhaps you don’t, but believe me they do—indirectly.” Tresler paused. Then he went on briskly. “There’s no need to go into details about it, but—but I want to run into this gang. Do you know why? Because I want to find out who this Red Mask is. It is on his personality depends the possibility of my helping the one soul on this ranch who deserves nothing but tender kindness at the hands of those about her.”

  “A-men,” Arizona added in the manner he had acquired in his “religion” days.

  “I must set her free of Jake—somehow.”

  Arizona’s eyes flashed round on him quickly. “Jest so,” he observed complainingly. “That’s how I wanted to do last night.”

  “And you’d have upset everything.”

  “Wrong—plumb wrong.”

  “Perhaps so,” Tresler smiled confidently. “We are all liable to mistakes.”

  Arizona’s dissatisfied grunt was unmistakable. “Thet’s jest how that sassafras-colored, bull-beef Joe Nelson got argyfyin’ when Jake come around an’ located him sleepin’ off the night before in the hog-pen. But it don’t go no more’n his did, I guess. Howsum, it’s wimmin. Say, Tresler,” the lean figure leant over toward him, and the wild eyes looked earnestly into his—“it’s right, then—dead right?”

  “When I’ve settled with her father—and Jake.”

  Arizona held out his horny, claw-like hand. “Shake,” he said. “I’m glad, real glad.”

  They gripped for a moment, then the cowpuncher turned away, and sat staring out over the prairie. Tresler, watching him, wondered at that long abstraction. The man’s face had a softened look.

  “We all fall victims to it sooner or later, Arizona,” he ventured presently. “It comes once in a man’s lifetime, and it comes for good or ill.”

  “Twice—me.”

  The hard fact nipped Tresler’s sentimental mood in the bud.

  “Ah!”

  The other continued his study of the sky-line. “Yup,” he said at last. “One died, an’ t’other didn’t hatch out.”

  “I see.”

  It was no use attempting sympathy. When Arizona spoke of himself, when he chose to confide his life’s troubles to any one, he had a way of stating simple facts merely as facts; he spoke of them because it suited his pessimistic mood.

  “Yup. The first was kind o’ fady, anyways—sort o’ limp in the backbone. Guess I’d got fixed wi’ her ’fore I knew a heap. Must ’a’ bin. Yup, she wus fancy in her notions. Hated sharin’ a pannikin o’ tea wi’ a friend; guess I see her scrape out a fry-pan oncet. I ’lows she had cranks. Guess she hadn’t a pile o’ brain, neither. She never could locate a hog from a sow, an’ as fer stridin’ a hoss, hell itself couldn’t ’a’ per-suaded her. She’d a notion fer settin’ sideways, an’ allus got muleish when you guessed she wus wrong. Yup, she wus red-hot on the mission sociables an’ eatin’ off’n chiny, an’ wa’n’t satisfied wi’ noospaper on the table; an’ took the notion she’d got pimples, an’ worried hell out o’ her old man till he bo’t a razor an’ turned his features into a patch o’ fall ploughin’, an’ kind o’ bulldozed her mother into lashin’ her stummick wi’ some noofangled fixin’ as wouldn’t meet round her nowheres noways. An’ she wus kind o’ finnicky wi’ her own feedin’, too. Guess some wall-eyed cuss had took her into Sacramento an’ give her a feed at one of them Dago joints, wher’ they disguise most everythin’ wi’ langwidge, an’ ile, an’ garlic, till you hate yourself. Wal, she died. Mebbe she’s got all them things handy now. But I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ mean about her; she jest had her notions. Guess it come from her mother. I ’lows she wus kind o’ struck on fool things an’ fixin’s. Can’t blame her noways. Guess I wus mostly sudden them days. Luv ut fust sight is a real good thing when it comes to savin’ labor, but like all labor-savin’ fixin’s, it’s liable to git rattled some, an’ then ther’ ain’t no calc’latin’ what’s goin’ to bust.”

  Arizona’s manner was very hopeless, but presently he cheered up visibly and renewed his wad of chewing.

  “T’other wus kind o’ slower in comin’ along,” he went on, in his reflective drawl. “But when it got around it wus good an’ strong, sure. Y’ see, ther’ wus a deal ’tween us like to make us friendly. She made hash fer the round-up, which I ’lows, when the lady’s young, she’s most gener’ly an objec’ of ’fection fer the boys. Guess she wus most every kind of a gal, wi’ her ha’r the color of a field of wheat ready fer the binder, an’ her figger as del’cate as one o’ them crazy egg-bilers, an’ her pretty face all sparklin’ wi’ smiles an’ hoss-soap, an’ her eye! Gee! but she had an eye. Guess she would ’a’ made a prairie-rose hate itself. But that wus ’fore we hooked up in a team. I ’lows marryin’s a mighty bad finish to courtin’.”

  “You were married?”

  “Am.”

  A silence fell. The horses ambled on in the fresh noonday air. Arizona’s look was forbidding. Suddenly he turned and gazed fiercely into his friend’s face.

  “Yes, sirree. An’ it’s my ’pinion, in spite of wot some folks sez, gettin’ married’s most like makin’ butter. Courtin’s the cream, good an’ thick an’ juicy, an’ you ken lay it on thick, an’ you kind o’ wonder how them buzzocky old cows got the savee to perduce sech a daisy liquid. But after the turnin’-point, which is marryin’, it’s diff’rent some. ’Tain’t cream no longer. It’s butter, an’ you need to use it sort o’ mean. That’s how I found, I guess.”

  “I suppose you settled down, and things went all right, though?” suggested Tresler.

  “Wal, maybe that’s so. Guess if anythin’ wus wrong it wus me. Yer see, ther’ ain’t a heap o’ fellers rightly understands females. I’m most gener’ly patient. Knowin’ their weakness, I sez, ‘Arizona, you’re mud when wimmin gits around. You bein’ married, it’s your dooty to boost the gal along.’ So I jest let her set around an’ shovel orders as though I wus the hired man. Say, guess you never had a gal shovelin’ orders. It’s real sweet to
hear ’em, an’ I figger they knows their bizness mostly. It makes you feel as though you’d ha’f a dozen hands an’ they wus all gropin’ to git to work. That’s how I felt, anyways. Every mornin’ she’d per-suade me gentle out o’ bed ’fore daylight, an’ I’d feel like a hog fer sleepin’ late. Then she’d shovel the orders hansum, in a voice that ’ud shame molasses. It wus allus ‘dear’ or ‘darlin’.’ Fust haul water, then buck wood, light the stove, feed the hogs an’ chick’ns, dung out the ol’ cow, fill the lamp, rub down the mare, pick up the kitchen, set the clothes bilin’, cook the vittles, an’ do a bit o’ washin’ while she turned over fer five minits. Then she’d git around, mostly ’bout noon, wi’ her shower o’ ha’r trailin’ like a rain o’ gold-dust, an’ a natty sort o’ silk fixin’ which she called a ‘dressin’-gown,’ an’ she’d sot right down an’ eat the vittles, tellin’ me o’ things she wanted done as she’d fergot. Ther’ wus the hen-roost wanted limin’, she was sure the chick’ns had the bugs, an’ the ol’ mare’s harness wanted fixin’, so she could drive into town; an’ the buckboard wanted washin’, an’ the wheels greasin’. An’ the seat wus kind o’ hard an’ wanted packin’ wi’ a pillar. Then ther’ wus the p’tater patch wanted hoein’, an’ the cabb’ges. An’ the hay-mower wus to be got ready fer hayin’. She mostly drove that herself, an’ I ’lows I wus glad.”

  Arizona paused and took a fresh chew. Then he went on.

  “Guess you ain’t never got hitched?”

  Tresler denied the impeachment. “Not yet,” he said.

  “Hah! Guess it makes a heap o’ diff’rence.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Sobers a fellow. Makes him feel like settling down.”

  “Wal, maybe.”

  “And where’s your wife living now?” Tresler asked, after another pause.

  “Can’t rightly say.” There was a nasty sharpness in the manner Arizona jerked his answer out. “Y’ see, it’s this a-ways. I guess I didn’t amount to a deal as a married man. Leastways, that’s how she got figgerin’ after a whiles. Guess I’d sp’iled her life some. I ’lows I wus allus a mean cuss. An’ she wus real happy bakin’ hash. Guess I druv her to drinkin’ at the s’loon, too, which made me hate myself wuss. Wal, I jest did wot I could to smooth things an’ kep goin’. I got punchin’ cows agin, an’ give her every cent o’ my wages; but it wa’n’t to be.” The man’s voice was husky, and he paused to recover himself. And then hurried on as though to get the story over as soon as possible. “Guess I wus out on the ‘round-up’ some weeks, an’ then I come back to find her gone—plumb gone. Mebbe she’d got lonesome; I can’t say. Yup, the shack wus empty, an’ the buckboard gone, an’ the blankets, an’ most o’ the cookin’ fixin’s. It wus the neighbors put me wise. Neighbors mostly puts you wise. They acted friendly. Ther’d bin a feller come ’long from Alberta, a pretty tough Breed feller. He went by the name o’ ‘Tough’ McCulloch.”