by Unknown
"Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He might have been anything--and it has come to this, that he is hunted like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give anything to save him."
He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. "Can't be done. Good qualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count for anything. 'Unstable as water.' That's what's the matter with him. He is the slave of his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, full of all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try to work them. They don't raise men gamer, but that only makes him a more dangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy. He's got a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart's did. He would run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked his men out of them. That's Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary criminal he would have been rounded up years ago. It's his audacity, his iron nerve, his ,good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But he's ce'tainly up against it at last."
"You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?"
He laughed. "I think it more likely he'll capture Forbes. But we know now where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery till now. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora, Leroy is as good as a dead man."
"A dead man?"
"Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see a dramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters."
"Yes, that would be like him," she confessed with shudder. "I think he was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the best in him."
"I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, and I'll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of 'Thou shalt nots.' I read a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. He showed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in him a light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting I'd hate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck against so much in themselves that even failure is a kind of success for them."
"Yet you will go out to hunt him down?" she' said, marveling at the broad sympathy of the man.
"Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If something in the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, the engineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that's causing the trouble."
The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowed across through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road, Collins resumed conversation at a new point.
"It's a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie," he said, apparently apropos of nothing.
She felt her blood begin to choke. "Indeed!"
"I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train."
"A letter!" she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.
"Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma'am, it was a letter. You were to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you read it."
"Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred miles away?" she smiled with sweet patronage.
"Not if you left it at Tucson," he assented, with an answering smile.
"Maybe I DID lose it." She frowned, trying to remember.
"Then I'll have to tell you what was in it."
"Any time will do. I dare say it wasn't important."
"Then we'll say THIS time."
"Don't be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon."
"I said in that letter--"
She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silence for half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continued placidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:
"I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I was expecting to marry."
"Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?"
"No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman."
"I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, I couldn't know the young lady you were interested in was riding there."
"She wasn't."
"But you've just told me "
"That I said in the letter you took so much trouble to lose that I expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of Miss Wainwright."
"Sir!"
"That I expected--"
"Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins."
"--expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing."
"Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?"
"Ce'tainly, ma'am."
"And when?"
"Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time."
"It can't be too soon for me," she flashed back, sweeping him with proud, indignant eyes.
"But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait."
"No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all."
He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.
"Aren't you going to speak?" she flamed.
"I've decided to wait."
"Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you."
"Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you--"
"No, sir, I won't--not if you were the last man on earth," she interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. "I never was so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so--so outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated certainty you can't get away from."
He had her fairly. "Then you DID read the letter."
"Yes, sir, I read it--and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never seen its like."
"Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think," he drawled.
Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her bronco the spur.
When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the alley.
"It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of business." Miss Mackenzie's covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.
"All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too--the best in the territory," he continued patriotically. "She ain't so great as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn till dine."
He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.
"Some folks don't like it--call it adobe-town, and say it's full of greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good enough for me."
She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount, he said:
"I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I won't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again in Tucson one of these days. Good-by."
She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even when it was against herself.
"I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of the subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out," she told herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.
Next moment she was in the arms of her father.
CHAPTER 20.
BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY
To minimize the risk, Megales and Carlo left the prison by the secret passage, following the fork to the river bank and digging at the piled-up sand till they had forced an exi
t. O'Halloran met them here with horses, and the three men followed the riverwash beyond the limits of the town and cut across by a trail to a siding on the Central Mexican Pacific tracks. The Irishman was careful to take no chances, and kept his party in the mesquit till the headlight of an approaching train was visible.
It drew up at the siding, and the three men boarded one of the two cars which composed it. The coach next the engine was occupied by a dozen trusted soldiers, who had formerly belonged to the bodyguard of Megales. The last car was a private one, and in it the three found Henderson, Bucky O'Connor, and his little friend, the latter still garbed as a boy.
Frances was exceedingly eager to don again the clothes proper to her sex, and she had promised herself that, once habited as she desired, nothing could induce her ever to masquerade again. Until she met and fell in love with the ranger she had thought nothing of it, since it had been merely a matter of professional business to which she had been forced. Indeed, she had sometimes enjoyed the humor of the deception. It had lent a spice o enjoyment to a life not crowded with it. But after she met Bucky there had grown up in her a new sensitiveness. She wanted to be womanly, to forget her turbid past and the shifts to which she had sometimes been put. She had been a child; she was now a woman. She wanted to be one of whom he need be in no way ashamed.
When their train began to pull out of the depot at Chihuahua she drew a deep sigh of relief.
"It's good to get away from here back to the States. I'm tired of plots and counterplots. For the rest of my life I want to be just a woman," she said to Bucky.
The young man smiled. "I reckon I must quit trying to make you a gentleman. Fact is, I don't want you to be one any more."
She slanted a look at him to see what that might mean and another up the car to make sure that Henderson was out of hearing.
"It was rather hopeless, wasn't it?" she smiled. "We'll do pretty well if we succeed in making me a lady in course of time. I've a lot to learn, you know."
"Well, you got lots of time to learn it," he replied cheerfully. "And I've got a notion tucked away in the back of my haid that you haven't got such a heap to study up. Mrs. Mackenzie will put you next to the etiquette wrinkles where you are shy."
A shadow fell on the piquant, eager face beside him. "Do you think she will love me?"
"I don't think. I know. She can't help it."
"Because she is my mother? Oh, I hope that is true."
"No, not only because she is your mother."
She decided to ask for no more reasons. Henderson, pleased at the wide stretch of plain as only one who had missed the open air for many years could be, was on the observation platform in the rear of the car, one glance at his empty seat showed her. There was no safety for her shyness in the presence of that proverbial three which makes a crowd, and she began to feel her heart again in panic as once before. She took at once the opening she had given.
"I do need a mother so much, after growing up like Topsy all these years. And mine is the dearest woman in the world. I fell in love with her before, and I did not know who she was when I was at he ranch."
"I'll agree to the second dearest in the world, but I reckon you shoot too high when you say the plumb dearest."
"She is. We'll quarrel if you don't agree," trying desperately to divert him from the topic she knew he meant to pursue. For in the past two days he had been so busy helping O'Halloran that he had not even had a glimpse of her. As a consequence of which each felt half-dubious of the other's love, and Frances felt wholly shy about expressing her own or even listening to his.
"Well, we're due for a quarrel, I reckon. But we'll postpone it till we got more time to give it. He drew a watch from his pocket and glanced at it "In less than fifteen minutes Mike and our two friends who are making their getaway will come in that door Henderson just went out of. That means we won't get a chance to be alone together, for about two days. I've got something to say to you, Curly Haid, that won't keep that long with out running my temperature clear up. So I'm allowing to say it right now immediate. No, you don't need to turn them brown appealers on me. It won't do a mite of good. It's Bucky to the bat and he's bound to make a hit or strike out."
"I think I hear Mr. Henderson coming," murmured Frances, for lack of something more effective to say.
"Not him. He's hogtied to the scenery long enough to do my business. Now, it won't take me long if I get off right foot first. You read my letter, you said?"
"Which letter?" She was examining attentively the fringe of the sash she wore.
"Why, honey, that love-letter I wrote you. If there was more than one it must have been wrote in my sleep, for I ce'tainly disremember it."
He could just hear her confused answer: "Oh, yes, I read that. I told you that before."
"What did you think? Tell me again."
"I thought you misspelled feelings."
"You don't say. Now, ain't that too bad? But, girl o' mine, I expect you were able to make it out, even if I did get the letters to milling around wrong. I meant them feelings all right. Outside of the spelling, did you have any objections to them,
"How can I remember what you wrote in that letter several days ago?"
"I'll bet you know it by heart, honey, and, if you don't, you'll find it in your inside vest pocket, tucked away right close to your heart."
"It isn't," she denied, with a blush.
"Sho! Pinned to your shirt then, little pardner. I ain't particular which. Point is, if you need to refresh that ailin' memory of yours, the document is--right handy. But you don't need to. It just says one little sentence over and over again. All you have got to do is to say one little word, and you don't have to say it but once."
"I don't understand you," her lips voiced.
"You understand me all right. What my letter said was 'I love you,' and what you have got to say is: 'Yes'"
"But that doesn't mean anything."
"I'll make out the meaning when you say it."
"Do I have to say it?"
"You have to if you feel it."
Slowly the big brown eyes came up to meet his bravely. "Yes, Bucky."
He caught her hands and looked down into her pure, sweet soul.
"I'm in luck," he breathed deeply. "In golden luck to have you look at me twice. Are you sure?"
"Sure. I loved you that first day I met you. I've loved you every day since," she confessed simply.
Full on the lips he kissed her.
"Then we'll be married as soon as we reach the Rocking Chair."
"But you once said you didn't want to be my husband," she taunted sweetly. "Don't you remember? In the days when we were gipsies."
"I've changed my mind. I want to, and I'm in a hurry."
She shook her head. "No, dear. We shall have to wait. It wouldn't be fair to my mother to lose me just as soon as she finds me. It is her right to get acquainted with me just as if I belonged to her alone. You understand what I mean, Bucky. She must not feel as if she never had found me, as if she never had been first with me. We can love each other more simply if she doesn't know about you. We'll have it for a secret for a month or two."
She put her little hand on his arm appealingly to win his consent. His eyes rested on it curiously, Then he took it in his big brown one and turned it palm up. Its delicacy and perfect finish moved him, for it seemed to him that in the contrast between the two hands he saw in miniature the difference of sex. His showed strength and competency and the roughness that comes of the struggle of life. But hers was strangely tender and confiding, compact of the qualities that go to make up the strength of the weak. Surely he deserved the worst if he was not good to her, a shield and buckler against the storms that must beat against them in the great adventure they were soon to begin together.
Reverently he raised the little hand and kissed its palm.
"Sure, sweetheart I had forgotten about your mother's claim. We can wait, I reckon," he added with a smile. "You must always set me straight when I lose the
trail of what's right, Curly Haid. You are to be a guiding-star to me."
"And you to me. Oh, Bucky, isn't it good?"
He kissed her again hurriedly, for the train was jarring to a halt. Before he could answer in words, O'Halloran burst into the coach, at the head of his little company.
