by Unknown
Curiosity touched with apprehension began to stir in her. For those early years she had only memory to rely upon. Tolliver never referred to them. On that subject the barriers were up between the two. Fugitive flashes of that first home came back to June. She remembered a sweet, dark-eyed woman nuzzling her little body with kisses after the bath, an hour when that mother wept as though her heart would break and she had put little baby arms in tight embrace round her neck by way of comfort. That dear woman was not in any of the later pictures. A pile of stones on a hillside in Brown's Park marked the grave.
Between the day of 'Lindy Tolliver's outburst of grief and the child's next recollection was a gap. The setting of the succeeding memories was a frame house on a dusty road at the edge of a frontier town. In front of it jolted big freight wagons, three of them fastened together and drawn by a double row of oxen so long she could not count them. The place was Rawlins, Wyoming, and it was an outfitting point for a back country in Colorado hundreds of miles from the railroad. The chief figure in June's horizon was a stern-eyed, angular aunt who took the place of both father and mother and did her duty implacably. The two lived together forever, it seemed to the child.
June wakened one night from the light of a lamp in her aunt's hand. A man was standing beside her. He was gaunt and pallid, in his eyes a look of hunger that reminded her of a hunted coyote. When he took her tightly in his arms she began to cry. He had murmured, "My li'l' baby, don't you be scared of yore paw." As mysteriously as he had come to life, so Pete Tolliver disappeared again.
Afterward there was a journey with a freight outfit which lasted days and days. June was in charge of a bullwhacker. All she remembered about him was that he had been kind to her and had expended a crackling vocabulary on his oxen. The end of the trek brought her to Piceance Creek and a father now heavily bearded and with long, unkempt hair. They had lived here ever since.
Did this big man by the window belong to her father's covered past? Was there menace in his coming? Vaguely June felt that there was.
The door opened and Tolliver stepped in. He was rather under middle-size, dressed in down-at-the-heel boots, butternut jeans, cotton shirt, and dusty, ragged slouch hat. The grizzled beard hid the weak mouth, but the skim-milk eyes, the expression of the small-featured face, betrayed the man's lack of force. You may meet ten thousand like him west of the Mississippi. He lives in every village, up every creek, in every valley, and always he is the cat's-paw of stronger men who use him for good or ill to serve their ends.
The nester stopped in his tracks. It was impossible for June to miss the dismay that found outlet in the fallen jaw and startled eyes.
In the stranger's grin was triumphant malice. "You sure look glad to see me, Pete, and us such old friends too. Le's see, I ain't seen you since--since--" He stopped, as though his memory were at fault, but June sensed the hint of a threat in the uncompleted sentence.
Reluctantly Tolliver took the offered hand. His consternation seemed to have stricken him dumb.
"Ain't you going to introduce yore old pal to the girl?" the big man asked.
Not willingly, the rancher found the necessary words. "June, meet Mr. Houck."
June was putting the biscuits in the oven. She nodded an acknowledgment of the introduction. Back of the resentful eyes the girl's brain was busy.
"Old side pardners, ain't we, Pete?" Houck was jeering at him almost openly.
The older man mumbled what might be taken for an assent.
"Branded a heap of cattle, you 'n' me. Eh, Pete?" The stranger settled deeper in the chair. "Jake Houck an' you could talk over old times all night. We was frolicsome colts."
Tolliver felt his hand forced. "Put off yore hat and wash up, Jake. You'll stay to-night, o' course."
"Don't mind if I do. I'm headed for Glenwood. Reckon I'd better put the horse up first."
The two men left the cabin. When they returned half an hour later, the supper was on the table. June sat on the side nearest the stove and supplied the needs of the men. Coffee, hot biscuits, more venison, a second dish of gravy: no trained waiter could have anticipated their wants any better. If she was a bit sulky, she had reason for it. Houck's gaze followed her like a searchlight. It noted the dark good looks of her tousled head, the slimness of the figure which moved so awkwardly, a certain flash of spirit in the undisciplined young face.
"How old's yore girl?" the man asked his host.
Tolliver hesitated, trying to remember. "How old are you, June?"
"Going on sixteen," she answered, eyes smouldering angrily.
This man's cool, impudent appraisal of her was hateful, she felt.
He laughed at her manner, easily, insolently, for he was of the type that finds pleasure in the umbrage of women annoyed by his effrontery. Of the three the guest was the only one quite at his ease. Tolliver's ingratiating jokes and the heartiness of his voice rang false. He was troubled, uncertain how to face the situation that had arisen.
His daughter reflected this constraint. Why did her father fear this big dominating fellow? What was the relation between them? Why did his very presence bring with it a message of alarm?
She left them before the stove as soon as the dishes were washed, retiring to the bedroom at the other end of the log cabin. Far into the night she heard them talking, in low voices that made an indistinct murmur. To the sound of them she fell asleep.
-----
[1] Pronounced Pee-ance.
CHAPTER II
"A SPUNKY LI'L' DEVIL"
Houck rode away next morning after breakfast, but not before he had made a promise June construed as a threat.
"Be back soon, girl."
Her eyes were on the corral, from which her father was driving the dogies. "What's it to me?" she said with sullen resentment.
"More'n you think. I've took a fancy to you. When I come back I'll talk business."
The girl's eyes did not turn toward him, but the color flooded the dark cheeks. "With Father maybe. Not with me. You've got no business to talk over with me."
"Think so? Different here. Take a good look at me, June Tolliver."
"What for?" Her glance traveled over him disdainfully to the hound puppy chasing its tail. She felt a strange excitement drumming in her veins. "I've seen folks a heap better worth lookin' at."
"Because I'm tellin' you to." His big hand caught her chin and swung it back. "Because I'm figurin' on marryin' you right soon."
Her dark eyes blazed. They looked at him straight enough now. "Take yore hand off'n me. D'you hear?"
He laughed, slowly, delightedly. "You're a spunky li'l' devil. Suits me fine. Jake Houck never did like jog-trotters in harness."
"Lemme go," she ordered, and a small brown fist clenched.
"Not now, nor ever. You're due to wear the Houck brand, girl."
She struck, hard, with all the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp knuckles had crushed the flesh.
A second time he laughed, harshly. Her chin was still clamped in a vice-like grip that hurt. "I get a kiss for that, you vixen." With a sweeping gesture he imprisoned both of the girl's arms and drew the slim body to him. He kissed her, full on the lips, not once but half a dozen times, while she fought like a fury without the least avail.
Presently the man released her hands and chin.
"Hit me again if you like, and I'll c'lect my pay prompt," he jeered.
She was in a passionate flame of impotent anger. He had insulted her, trampled down the pride of her untamed youth, brushed away the bloom of her maiden modesty. And there was nothing she could do to make him pay. He was too insensitive to be reached by words, no matter how she pelted them at him.
A sob welled up from her heart. She turned and ran into the house.
Houck grinned, swung to the saddle, and rode up the valley. June would hate him good and plenty, he thought. That was all right. He had her in the hollow of his hand. All her thoughts would be full of him.
After she quit struggling to escape she would come snuggling up to him with a girl's shy blandishments. It was his boast that he knew all about women and their ways.
June was not given to tears. There was in her the stark pioneer blood that wrested the West in two generations from unfriendly nature. But the young virgin soul had been outraged. She lay on the bed of her room, face down, the nails of her fingers biting into the palms of the hands, a lump in the full brown throat choking her.
She was a wild, free thing of the hills, undisciplined by life. Back of June's anger and offended pride lurked dread, as yet indefinite and formless. Who was this stranger who had swaggered into her life and announced himself its lord and master? She would show him his place, would teach him how ridiculous his pretensions were. But even as she clenched her teeth on that promise there rose before her a picture of the fellow's straddling stride, of the fleering face with its intrepid eyes and jutting, square-cut jaw. He was stronger than she. No scruples would hold him back from the possession of his desires. She knew she would fight savagely, but a chill premonition of failure drenched the girl's heart.
Later, she went out to the stable where Tolliver was riveting a broken tug. It was characteristic of the man that all his tools, harness, and machinery were worn out or fractured. He never brought a plough in out of the winter storms or mended a leak in the roof until the need was insistent. Yet he was not lazy. He merely did not know how to order affairs with any system.
"Who is that man?" June demanded.
He looked up, mildly surprised and disturbed at the imperative in the girl's voice. "Why, didn't I tell you, honey--Jake Houck?"
"I don't want to know his name. I want to know who he is--all about him."
Tolliver drove home a rivet before he answered. "Jake's a cowman." His voice was apologetic. "I seen you didn't like him. He's biggity, Jake is."
"He's the most hateful man I ever saw," she burst out.
Pete lifted thin, straw-colored eyebrows in questioning, but June had no intention of telling what had taken place. She would fight her own battles.
"Well, he's a sure enough toughfoot," admitted the rancher.
"When did you know him?"
"We was ridin' together, a right long time ago."
"Where?"
"Up around Rawlins--thataway."
"He said he knew you in Brown's Park."
The man flashed a quick, uncertain look at his daughter. It appeared to ask how much Houck had told. "I might 'a' knowed him there too. Come to think of it, I did. Punchers drift around a heap. Say, how about dinner? You got it started? I'm gettin' powerful hungry."
June knew the subject was closed. She might have pushed deeper into her father's reticence, but some instinct shrank from what she might uncover. There could be only pain in learning the secret he so carefully hid.
There had been no discussion of it between them, nor had it been necessary to have any. It was tacitly understood that they would have little traffic with their neighbors, that only at rare intervals would Pete drive to Meeker, Glenwood Springs, or Bear Cat to dispose of furs he had trapped and to buy supplies. The girl's thoughts and emotions were the product largely of this isolation. She brooded over the mystery of her father's past till it became an obsession in her life. To be brought into close contact with dishonor makes one either unduly sensitive or callously indifferent. Upon June it had the former effect.
The sense of inferiority was branded upon her. She had seen girls giggling at the shapeless sacks she had stitched together for clothes with which to dress herself. She was uncouth, awkward, a thin black thing ugly as sin. It had never dawned on her that she possessed rare potentialities of beauty, that there was coming a time when she would bloom gloriously as a cactus in a sand waste.
After dinner June went down to the creek and followed a path along its edge. She started up a buck lying in the grass and watched it go crashing through the brush. It was a big-game country. The settlers lived largely on venison during the fall and winter. She had killed dozens of blacktail, an elk or two, and more than once a bear. With a rifle she was a crack shot.
But to-day she was not hunting. She moved steadily along the winding creek till she came to a bend in its course. Beyond this a fishing-rod lay in the path. On a flat rock near it a boy was stretched, face up, looking into the blue, unflecked sky.
CHAPTER III
PALS
He was a red-headed, stringy boy between eighteen and nineteen years old. His hands were laced back of the head, but he waggled a foot by way of greeting.
"'Lo, June," he called.
"What you doin'?" she demanded.
"Oh, jes' watchin' the grass grow."
She sat down beside him, drawing up her feet beneath the skirt and gathering the knees between laced fingers. Moodily, she looked down at the water swirling round the rocks.
Bob Dillon said nothing. He had a capacity for silence that was not uncompanionable. They could sit by the hour, these two, quite content, without exchanging a dozen sentences. The odd thing about it was that they were not old friends. Three weeks ago they had met for the first time. He was flunkeying for a telephone outfit building a line to Bear Cat.
"A man stayed up to the house last night," she said at last.
He leaned his head on a hand, turning toward her. The light blue eyes in the freckled face rested on those of the girl.
Presently she added, with a flare of surging anger, "I hate him."
"Why?"
The blood burned beneath the tan of the brown cheeks. "'Cause."
"Shucks! That don't do any good. It don't buy you anything."
She swung upon him abruptly. "Don't you hate the men at the camp when they knock you around?"
"What'd be the use? I duck outa the way next time."
Two savage little demons glared at him out of her dark eyes. "Ain't you got any sand in yore craw, Bob Dillon? Do you aim to let folks run on you all yore life? I'd fight 'em if 't was the last thing I ever did."
"Different here. I'd get my block knocked off about twice a week. You don't see me in any scraps where I ain't got a look-in. I'd rather let 'em boot me a few," he said philosophically.
She frowned at him, in a kind of puzzled wonderment. "You're right queer. If I was a man--"
The sentence died out. She was not a man. The limitations of sex encompassed her. In Jake Houck's arms she had been no more than an infant. He would crush her resistance--no matter whether it was physical or mental--and fling out at her the cruel jeering laughter of one who could win without even exerting his strength. She would never marry him--never, never in the world. But--
A chill dread drenched her heart.
Young Dillon was sensitive to impressions. His eyes, fixed on the girl's face, read something of her fears.
"This man--who is he?" he asked.
"Jake Houck. I never saw him till last night. My father knew him when--when he was young."
"What's the matter with this Houck? Why don't you like him?"
"If you'd see him--how he looks at me." She flashed to anger. "As if I was something he owned and meant to tame."
"Oh, well, you know the old sayin', a cat may look at a king. He can't harm you."
"Can't he? How do you know he can't?" she challenged.
"How can he, come to that?"
"I don't say he can." Looked at in cold blood, through the eyes of another, the near-panic that had seized her a few hours earlier appeared ridiculous. "But I don't have to like him, do I? He acted--hateful--if you want to know."
"How d'you mean--hateful?"
A wave of color swept through her cheeks to the brown throat. How could she tell him that there was something in the man's look that had disrobed her, something in his ribald laugh that had made her feel unclean? Or that the fellow had brushed aside the pride and dignity that fenced her and ravished kisses from her lips while he mocked? She could not have put her feeling into words if she had tried, and she had no intention of trying.
"Mean," she said. "A low-down, mean bully."
The freckled boy watched her with a curious interest. She made no more sex appeal to him than he did to her, and that was none at all. The first thing that had moved him in the child was the friendlessness back of her spitfire offense. She knew no women, no other girls. The conditions of life kept her aloof from the ones she met casually once or twice a year. She suspected their laughter, their whispers about the wild girl on Piceance Creek. The pride with which she ignored them was stimulated by her sense of inferiority. June had read books. She felt the clothes she made were hideous, the conditions of her existence squalid; and back of these externals was the shame she knew because they must hide themselves from the world on account of the secret.
