by Unknown
Bob did not know all that, but he guessed some of it. He had not gone very far in experience himself, but he suspected that this wild creature of the hills was likely to have a turbulent and perhaps tragic time of it. She was very much a child of impulse. Thirstily she had drunk in all he could tell her of the world beyond the hills that hemmed them in. He had known her frank, grateful, dreamy, shy, defiant, and once, for no apparent reason, a flaming little fury who had rushed to eager repentance when she discovered no offense was meant. He had seen her face bubbling with mirth at the antics of a chipmunk, had looked into the dark eyes when they were like hill fires blazing through mist because of the sunset light in the crotch of the range.
"I reckon Mr. Tolliver won't let this Houck bully you none," the boy said.
"I ain't scared of him," she answered.
But June knew there would be small comfort for her in the thought of her father's protection. She divined intuitively that he would be a liability rather than an asset in any conflict that might arise between her and Jake Houck.
"If there was anything I could do--but o' course there ain't."
"No," she agreed. "Oh, well, I'm not worryin'. I'll show him when he comes back. I'm as big as he is behind a gun."
Bob looked at her, startled. He saw she was whistling to keep up her courage. "Are you sure enough afraid of him?"
Her eyes met his. She nodded. "He said he was coming back to marry me--good as said I could like it or lump it, he didn't care which."
"Sho! Tha's jus' talk. No girl has to marry a man if she don't want to. You don't need any gun-play. He can't make his brags good if you won't have him. It's a free country."
"If he told you to do something--this Jake Houck--you wouldn't think it was so free," the girl retorted without any life in her voice.
He jumped up, laughing. "Well, I don't expect he's liable to tell me to do anything. He ain't ever met up with me. I gotta go peel the spuds for supper. Don't you worry, June. He's bluffin'."
"I reckon," she said, and nodded a careless good-bye.
CHAPTER IV
CLIPPED WINGS
The Cinderella of Piceance Creek was scrupulously clean even though ragged and unkempt. Every Saturday night she shooed Pete Tolliver out of the house and took a bath in the tub which usually hung suspended from a wooden peg driven into the outer wall of the log cabin. Regularly as Monday came wash day.
On a windy autumn day, with the golden flames of fall burning the foliage of the hill woods, June built a fire of cottonwood branches near the brook and plunged with fierce energy into the week's washing. She was a strong, lithe young thing and worked rapidly. Her methods might not be the latest or the best, but they won results. Before the sun had climbed halfway to its zenith she had the clothes on the line.
Since she had good soapy suds and plenty of hot water left in the iron kettle, June decided to scrub the bed covers. Twenty minutes later, barefooted and barelegged, her skirts tucked up above the knees, the young washwoman was trampling blankets in the tub. She had no reason to suppose that anybody was within a mile of her. Wherefore, since the world was beautiful and mere life a joy, she improvised a child's song of thanksgiving.
It was a foolish little thing without rhyme or reason. It began nowhere and finished at the same place. But it lifted straight from the heart and perhaps it traveled as far heavenward as most prayers. She danced among the suds as she sang it, brown arms, bare to the elbows, stretched to the sunlit hills.
Wings--wings--wings! I can fly, 'way 'way 'way off, Over the creek, over the piñons. Goodness, yes! Like a meadow-lark. Over the hills, clear to Denver, Where the trains are. And it's lovely--lovely--lovely.
It was an unschooled, impulsive cry of the heart to the great soul of life and beauty that lies back of nature. No human eyes or ears were meant to see or hear the outburst. A shy girl's first day-dreams of her lover ought no more to be dragged out to the public gaze than this.
Through the quaking asps by the creek narrowed eyes gloated. Out of the thicket Jake Houck strode with a ribald laugh.
"Right pretty, my dear, but don't you spread them wings an' leave yore man alone."
The dancing spirit fled her flying feet. She was no longer a daughter of the skies, attuned to sunshine and laughter and the golden harmony of the hills. Joy and life were stricken out of her.
He had heard. He had seen. A poignant shame enveloped and scorched the girl's body. She was a wild thing who lived within herself. It was easy to put her in the wrong. She felt the mortification of one who has been caught in some indecent exhibition.
The humiliation was at first for the song and dance. Not till another moment did she think of the bare legs rising out of the soapsuds. His smouldering gaze brought them to mind.
Instantly she leaped from the tub, shook down the skirts, snatched up shoes and stockings, and fled barefooted to the house. A brogan dropped a few steps from the start. She stopped, as though to pick it up. But Houck was following. The girl turned and ran like a deer.
Houck retrieved the brogan and followed slowly. He smiled. His close-set eyes were gleaming. This was an adventure just to his taste.
The door of the cabin was bolted. He knocked.
"Here's yore shoe, sweetheart," he called.
No answer came. He tried the back door. It, too, had the bolt driven home.
"All right. If it ain't yore shoe I'll take it along with me. So long."
He walked away and waited in the bushes. His expectation was that this might draw her from cover. It did not.
Half an hour later Tolliver rode across the mesa. He found Houck waiting for him at the entrance to the corral. Pete nodded a rather surly greeting. He could not afford to quarrel with the man, but he was one of the last persons in the world he wanted to see.
"'Lo, Jake," he said. "Back again, eh?"
"Yep. Finished my business. I got to have a talk with you, Pete."
Tolliver slid a troubled gaze at him. What did Jake want? Was it money--hush money? The trapper did not have fifty dollars to his name, nor for that matter twenty.
"'S all right, Jake. If there's anything I can do for you--why, all you got to do's to let me know," he said uneasily.
Houck laughed, derisively. "Sure. I know how fond you are of me, Pete. You're plumb glad to see me again, ain't you? Jes' a-honin' to talk over old times, I'll bet."
"I'd as lief forget them days, Jake," Tolliver confessed. "I done turned over another chapter, as you might say. No need rakin' them up, looks like."
The big man's grin mocked him. "Tha's up to you, Pete. Me, I aim to be reasonable. I ain't throwin' off on my friends. All I want's to make sure they are my friends. Pete, I've took a fancy to yore June. I reckon I'll fix it up an' marry her."
His cold eyes bored into Tolliver. They held the man's startled, wavering gaze fixed.
"Why, Jake, you're old enough to be her father," he presently faltered.
"Maybe I am. But if there's a better man anywheres about I'd like to meet up with him an' have him show me. I ain't but forty-two, Pete, an' I can whip my weight in wild cats."
The father's heart sank. He knew Houck. The man would get by hook or crook what he wanted. He could even foretell what his next move would be.
"She's only a kid, Jake, not thinkin' none about gettin' married. In a year or two, maybe--"
"I'm talkin' about now, Pete--this week."
Tolliver wriggled, like a trout on the hook. "What does she say? You spoke of it to her?"
"Sure. She'll like it fine when she gets her mind used to it. I know how to handle women, Pete. I'm mentionin' this to you because I want you to use yore influence. See?"
Pete saw, too well. He moistened his lips with the tip of the tongue. "Why, I don't reckon I could very well do that. A girl's got to make up her own mind. She's too young to be figurin' on marryin'. Better give her time."
"No." Houck flung the word out like an oath. "Now. Right away."
The trapper's voice took on a
plaintive note, almost a whine. "You was sayin' yoreself, Jake, that she'd have to get used to it. Looks like it wouldn't be good to rush--"
"She can get used to it after we're married."
"O' course I want to do what's right by my li'l' June. You do too for that matter. We wouldn't either one of us do her a meanness."
"I'm going to marry her," Houck insisted harshly.
"When a girl loses her mother she's sure lost her best friend. It's up to her paw to see she gets a square deal." There was a quaver of emotion in Tolliver's voice. "I don't reckon he can make up to her--"
A sound came from Houck's throat like a snarl. "Are you tryin' to tell me that Pete Tolliver's girl is too good for me? Is that where you're driftin'?"
"Now don't you get mad, Jake," the older man pleaded. "These here are different times. I don't want my June mixed up with--with them Brown's Park days an' all."
"Meanin' me?"
"You're twistin' my words, Jake," the father went on, an anxious desire to propitiate frowning out of the wrinkled face. "I ain't sayin' a word against you. I'm explainin' howcome I to feel like I do. Since I--bumped into that accident in the Park--"
Houck's ill-natured laugh cut the sentence. It was a jangled dissonance without mirth. "What accident?" he jeered.
"Why--when I got into the trouble--"
"You mean when Jas Stuart caught you rustlin' an' you murdered him an' went to the pen. That what you mean?" he demanded loudly.
Tolliver caught his sleeve. "S-sh! She don't know a thing about it. You recollect I told you that."
The other nodded, hard eyes gloating over the rancher's distress. "An' o' course she don't know you broke jail at Cañon City an' are liable to be dragged back if any one should happen to whisper to the sheriff."
"Not a thing about all that. I wouldn't holler it out thataway if I was you, Jake," Tolliver suggested, glancing nervously toward the house. "Maybe I ought to 'a' told her, but I never did. Her maw died of it, an' I jes' couldn't make out to tell June. You see yoreself how it would be, Pete. Her a li'l' trick with nobody but me. I ain't no great shakes, but at that I'm all she's got. I figured that 'way off here, under another name, they prob'ly never would find me."
"Pretty good guess, Pete Purdy."
"Don' call me that," begged Tolliver.
Houck showed his teeth in an evil grin. "I forgot. What I was sayin' was that nobody knows you're here but me. Most folks have forgot all about you. You can fix things so 's to be safe enough."
"You wouldn't give me away, Jake. You was in on the rustlin' too. We was pals. It was jes' my bad luck I met up with Jas that day. I didn't begin the shooting. You know that."
"I ain't likely to give away my own father-in-law, am I?"
Again the close-set, hard eyes clamped fast to the wavering ones of the tortured outlaw. In them Tolliver read an ultimatum. Notice was being served on him that there was only one way to seal Houck's lips.
That way he did not want to follow. Pete was a weak father, an ineffective one, wholly unable to give expression to the feeling that at times welled up in him. But June was all his life now held. He suffered because of the loneliness their circumstances forced upon her. The best was what he craved for her.
And Jake Houck was a long way from the best. He had followed rough and evil trails all his life. As a boy, in his cowpuncher days, he had been hard and callous. Time had not improved him.
June came to the door of the cabin and called.
"What is it, honey?" Tolliver asked.
"He's got my shoe. I want it."
Pete looked at the brogan sticking out of Jake's pocket. The big fellow forestalled a question.
"I'll take it to her," he said.
Houck strode to the house.
"So it's yore shoe after all," he grinned.
"Give it here," June demanded.
"Say pretty please."
She flashed to anger. "You're the meanest man I ever did meet."
"An' you're the prettiest barelegged dancer on the Creek," he countered.
June stamped the one shoe she was wearing. "Are you going to give me that brogan or not?"
"If you'll let me put it on for you."
Furious, she flung round and went back into the house.
He laughed delightedly, then tossed the heavy shoe into the room after her. "Here's yore shoe, girl. I was only foolin'," he explained.
June snatched up the brogan, stooped, and fastened it.
CHAPTER V
JUNE ASKS QUESTIONS
Houck, an unwelcome guest, stayed at the cabin on Piceance nearly two weeks. His wooing was surely one of the strangest known. He fleered at June, taunted her, rode over the girl's pride and sense of decorum, beat down the defenses she set up, and filled her bosom with apprehension. It was impossible to score an advantage over his stolid strength and pachydermous insensibility.
The trapper sweated blood. He neither liked nor trusted his guest, but he was bound hand and foot. He must sit and watch the fellow moving to his end, see the gains he made day by day, and offer no effective protest. For Houck at a word could send him back to the penitentiary and leave June alone in a world to which her life had been alien.
Pete knew that the cowman was winning the campaign. His assumption that he was an accepted suitor of June began to find its basis of fact. The truth could be read in the child's hunted eyes. She was still fighting, but the battle was a losing one.
Perhaps this was the best way out of a bad situation, Tolliver found himself thinking. In his rough way Houck was fond of June. A blind man could see that. Even though he was a wolf, there were moments when his eyes were tender for her. He would provide well for a wife. If his little Cinderella could bring herself to like the man, there was always a chance that love would follow. Jake always had the knack of fascinating women. He could be very attractive when he wished.
On a happy morning not long since June had sung of her wings. She was a meadow-lark swooping over the hills to freedom, her throat throbbing with songs of joy. Sometimes Pete, too, thought of her as a bird, but through many hours of anguished brooding he had come to know she was a fledgling with broken wings. The penalty for the father's sins had fallen upon the child. All her life she must be hampered by the environment his wrongdoing had built up around them.
Since the beginning of the world masterful men have drawn to them the eyes and thoughts of women. June was no exception. Among the hours when she hated Houck were increasing moments during which a naïve wonder and admiration filled her mind. She was primitive, elemental. A little tingle of delight thrilled her to know that this strong man wanted her and would fight to win what his heart craved. After all he was her first lover. A queer shame distressed the girl at the memory of his kisses, for through all the anger, chagrin, and wounded pride had come to her the first direct realization of what sex meant. Her alarmed innocence pushed this from her.
Without scruple Houck used all the weapons at hand. There came a day when he skirted the edges of the secret.
"What do you mean?" she demanded. "What is it you claim to know about Dad all so big?"
He could see that June's eyes were not so bold as the words. They winced from his even as she put the question.
"Ask him."
"What'll I ask? I wouldn't believe anything you told me about him. He's not like you. He's good."
"You don't have to believe me. Ask him if he ever knew any one called Pete Purdy. Ask him who Jasper Stuart was. An' where he lived whilst you was stayin' with yore aunt at Rawlins."
"I ain't afraid to," she retorted. "I'll do it right now."
Houck was sprawled on a bench in front of the cabin. He grinned impudently. His manner was an exasperating challenge. Evidently he did not believe she would.
June turned and walked to the stable. The heavy brogans weighted down the lightness of her step. The shapeless clothes concealed the grace of the slim figure. But even so there was a vital energy in the way she moved.
Tol
liver was mending the broken teeth of a hay-rake and making a poor job of it.
June made a direct frontal attack. "Dad, did you ever know a man named Pete Purdy?"
The rancher's lank, unshaven jaw fell. The blow had fallen at last. In a way he had expected it. Yet his mind was too stunned to find any road of escape.
"Why, yes--yes, I--yes, honey," he faltered.
"Who was he?"
"Well, he was a--a cowpuncher, I reckon."
"Who was Jasper Stuart, then?"
