Robber's Roost (1989)

by Grey, Zane

  "Yes, sir," returned Jim, gazing across at the statuelike Hays.

  The couple moved off toward the open yard where mounted cowboys were leading out saddled horses. Presently Jim heard them ride away with the barking dogs. He looked up, however, when Hays accosted him, at his elbow.

  "I seen her, Jim," he said, as if the event were epic. "She walked right by me. I smelled her."

  "Oh, hello! You startled me," replied Jim, essaying a laugh.

  "What if you did, Hank?"

  "Nothin'. Only you gave me a wrong idee. Pink-an'-white washed- out thing, you said. My Gawd!"

  "Hank, I've no use for blond women," replied Jim, testily, tired of the deception.

  "Hell! you needn't bite my head off," said Hays. "I'll bet you haven't any use fer any color women. . . . What was she sayin' to you?"

  "It seems Herrick told her about my shooting jacks from my horse, and she wants to see it done."

  "Wal, I'll be jiggered! You're goin' ridin' with her? . . . The luck of some men!"

  "Hank, I'd a darn sight rather they'd asked you," declared Jim, and then a keen idea struck him, which would, if Hays was not wary, clear up a knotty question. "Shall I tell Herrick you'll go in my stead?"

  "Nix, much as I'd like to. I can't hit jumpin' rabbits. An' I wouldn't want to be showed up bad."

  "Like as not I'll be rattled and miss a lot," returned Jim, lowering his eyes lest the thought in them might be read. Then he went back to work. Hays hung around the barn, mostly idle, watching the valley, until the Herricks returned to ride up the hill toward the house. The cowboys brought the horses down.

  Whereupon Hays abruptly left. And he did not come back. From that hour he became an elusive man. Jim, preoccupied with his own troubles, barely noticed this circumstance until that night.

  That day ended Jim Wall's carpentry. On the next he was summoned, early after breakfast, to ride with the Herricks. He went. And it would have been idle for him to deny that the event was enthralling. These English people were thoroughbred. Not improbably, in their minds unconsciously, the abyss between them and him was so wide and deep, that it was not thought of at all.

  That accounted for things. He divined vaguely, however, that for him the abyss did not exist.

  Under the stimulation of this girl's inspiring presence Jim gave an exhibition of swift and accurate shooting that surpassed any he had ever accomplished.

  "Marvelous!" she exclaimed, with dark-flashing, admiring eyes on Jim. "It would be suicide for men to oppose you. . . . But poor little jack rabbits! What a pity they are destructive around the ranch!"

  "Helen, he's a bally good shot," declared Herrick.

  That night Hank Hays evinced slight but unmistakable symptoms of jealousy, occasioned, perhaps, by Jim's report of killing thirteen out of fifteen bounding jack rabbits. Happy Jack, wide-eyed and loud-voiced, acclaimed Jim's feat as one in a thousand.

  "Air you thet good frontin' a man who you know is swift?" drawled the robber chief.

  Jim stared, coming out of his natural gratification. "Hank, I'm not so good then," he replied, slowly.

  "Wal, somebody'll try you out one of these days," added Hays, without significance.

  "I dare say," he rejoined, coolly, and sought his seclusion. He refused to let that linger in his mind. Something else haunted him. His slumber was troubled.

  Next day Herrick did not accompany his sister on the daily ride, a circumstance which, if anything, gave freer rein to her spirit.

  Jim had concern for her safety. He could not judge well of her horsewomanship, because of the side-saddle she rode. Bluntly he disapproved of the atrocious thing and said it was worse than the "pancake" her brother rode. But she rode after the hounds just the same, and held her own until she was thrown.

  If she had alighted upon rocks or even hard ground she would have been seriously injured, if not killed outright. But when the horse stumbled she hurtled over his head and hit in the sand. Jim was off almost the instant she struck, and he yelled for the cowboys.

  Kneeling, he lifted her around and held her head up. She appeared to have been stunned. Her face was gray with sand.

  "Water, Barnes!" he called, as the cowboy dashed up.

  "There ain't none close," replied Barnes.

  "I'm all--right," spoke up Miss Herrick, weakly. "I came--a cropper--didn't I?"

  She sat up, evidently not hurt, though she clung to Jim's arm.

  With his scarf he wiped the sand from her face, aware that his hand was not steady. If he had had to rely upon a gun then! The stiff hat she wore with this riding-habit had rolled yards away. Barnes got it. Her hair had come partly loose, to fall in a golden mass on her shoulder. She rearranged it and put on her hat, deftly despite gloved fingers.

  "Help me up, please," she said.

  Jim placed a strong arm under hers and lifted her to her feet. She appeared able to stand alone, so he released her. However, she still clung to him.

  "Deuced clumsy of me," she said, flexing her right knee.

  "Miss Herrick, are you sure you're not hurt?" asked Jim, solicitously. "It was a nasty spill."

  "I'm not really hurt," and letting go of Jim she essayed a few steps to prove it.

  Then something cold and tight within Jim let go, and his reaction was to take refuge in anger. "Miss Herrick, I told you that saddle was no good. It's a wonder you were not killed."

  "Oh, don't exaggerate. I've come many croppers cross-country riding at home."

  "Barnes, back me up in this," appealed Jim to the cowboy.

  "Miss, he's tellin' you true," said Barnes, earnestly. "You was ridin' fast. If this hyar had been stony ground, like it is lots of places, you'd never knowed what hit you."

  "I believe I did strike pretty hard," she admitted, ruefully.

  "You want a cow-saddle with a double cinch, and overalls," concluded Jim.

  "Overalls!" she exclaimed, and she blushed rosy red. "You mean like these blue--trousers Barnes has on?"

  "Yes. Then you can ride. This is the West, Miss Herrick. You like to run a horse. It's dangerous. I shall have to speak to your brother."

  "Don't. I've never ridden astride, but I'll do it, since you are so very fearful about me. . . . Please help me up."

  That experience left Jim shaky, probably a good deal shakier than it had left Miss Herrick. But it was not fear for her. Jim reveled in the torturing sensations engendered by contact with this beautiful girl. He shook like a leaf at the staggering realization that when she lay on the ground with her arms spread wide, her hair gold against the sand, he longed to snatch her to his breast. A natural impulse, under the circumstances, but for him--idiotic!

  Hays was not present that night at supper. This omission in no wise concerned Jim. He was too preoccupied to care or think about the chief. Days passed by, heady or blank, according to whether or not he rode with Miss Herrick.

  She took to the Western saddle like a duck to water. She could ride. Moreover, that spirit of which she had hinted certainly overtook her. More than once she ran off alone, riding like the wind, and upon one of these occasions it took the cowboys till dark to find her. That with Hank Hays and Heeseman there to see her gallop away unescorted! Herrick did not seem to mind.

  As far as Jim Wall was concerned, however, these rides with her centered him upon the love which had come to consume him; and the several she took alone were more torturing because they roused fear of Hank Hays. It could not be ascertained whether or not Hays followed her, but when the day came that Jim discovered Hays had been riding the trails frequented by Miss Herrick, then it seemed time to act.

  This placed Jim in a worse quandary. To act, for a man of his training, at such a time and place, was to do only one thing. But how could he kill his leader upon mere suspicion of sinister intent to kidnap the girl? It was a damnable predicament for a man who had always played fair, alike to honest friend and crooked ally.

  Jim paced under his dark sheltering trees, in the dead of night, when he should have
been sleeping. Days had passed without his once seeking to avoid disaster; and he had not sought because he knew it was of no use. To wish to be with this blond girl seemed irresistible. More than once he had caught himself in the spell of a daring impulse--to tell Miss Herrick that he loved her. The idea was sheer madness. Yet the thought persisted, and when he tried to shake it the result was it grew stronger in a haunting, maddening way.

  His manhood cast this aside. The love of the male, especially a lonely one of the wilds, expressed itself in many thoughts that Jim realized were the heritage of barbarism. They occurred in strange, vague, distorted dreams. They were strong in a man in whom the primitive instincts prevailed. But seldom did they gain ascendancy. Jim remembered his mother and sister; and then he thrust away from him any possibility of distress coming to this Herrick girl from him.

  That was how he met temptation. Then he was to be confronted by the fact that making love to her was insignificant to what Hank Hays might do. Whereupon the battle was fought all over again. He won as before, though with dark doubts in his mind. What could come of this tangled circumstance but disaster?

  At breakfast next morning Hays raved about the fact that Smoky had not been there for over two weeks.

  "Things air comin' to a head," he concluded, gloomily.

  "Reckon they ought to have made two drives by now," rejoined Happy Jack. "I rid down the valley yestiddy eight or ten miles. Cattle thinned out, boss. Any cowboy with eyes in the back of his head would be on to us by now."

  "Shore. Haven't I kept them workin' up here? But I've no control over this ---- hossback-ridin' after hounds. Pretty soon Herrick will be chasin' down Limestone way. Then the fire'll be out."

  "Hank, he wouldn't know the difference," interposed Jim.

  "Aw, I don't give a damn," replied Hays, harshly, and that finality intimated much. "Wait till Smoky's outfit shows up!"

  Every morning when Jim rode down to the corrals he fell back under the spell of something sweeter than wine. The sunny hours with the sage flat ahead, the fragrant pines, the baying hounds, and always out in front this bright-haired girl, were vastly different from the dark hours when the day was done. Nothing could be truer than that this utterly incongruous and bitterly sweet situation could not last. In moments of humility, engendered by the higher emotions this girl aroused, Jim clasped to his breast the fact that he was protecting her from worse men.

  Barnes and another of the cowboys had taken the horses for the Herricks up to the house. To Jim's honest dismay he espied Helen riding ahead, with the cowboys behind, leading her brother's mount.

  Herrick was not coming. The hounds bounded and cavorted about her, keen for the chase.

  Miss Herrick looked far less proud and unattainable in the boy's riding-garb she had adopted. Moreover, it had transformed her, yet her femininity appeared more provokingly manifest than ever.

  Barnes turned Herrick's horse over to a stable-boy, and with his companion fell in behind Miss Herrick, who rode out upon the valley. Jim joined them, and they trotted their horses together.

  "Why didn't Herrick come?" asked Jim.

  "He was rowin' with Heeseman," replied Barnes, soberly.

  "You don't say! What about?"

  "Reckon I don't know. They shet up as I come along," returned the cowboy. "But I seen enough to calkilate somethin's wrong. They was on the porch. Herrick looked sort of peevish. He didn't want his sister to go huntin' today, I heard thet. An' she said right pert she was goin'."

  "How did Heeseman look?" went on Jim, ponderingly. Something was up. For two days Heeseman's outfit had been through hauling timber.

  "Dead serious, like he was tryin' to persuade the boss to somethin'."

  Jim lapsed into silence. What turn would affairs take next? It was getting warm around Star Ranch.

  Each day the hunters had to ride farther afield to find game. Jack- rabbit chasing had grown too tame for Miss Herrick; besides, the rabbits had run off down the valley.

  Three or four miles out the hounds jumped a coyote from a clump of sagebrush, and the chase was on. At first the hounds gained, but after a mile or so the coyote kept the distance even between them.

  At what was only fifty feet the chase was noisy, fast, and exciting. The coyote led toward the low, wooded slope to the west and gained it, where the chase slowed up as far as the riders were concerned.

  The cowboys took the lead, then came Miss Herrick, while Jim brought up the rear. It was a long, gradual ascent up to an open ridge, where pine trees alternated with clumps of chaparral; very fragrant and picturesque country.

  Here the hounds jumped a herd of deer. Despite the yelling of the cowboys, they dashed up the ridge with a chorus of wild yelps and barks. Barnes and his companion rider gave pursuit, trying to call them off. They all passed out of hearing.

  Jim caught up with Miss Herrick, who waited in an open spot among the pines. Flushed and disheveled, with her sombrero on the pommel, panting from the arduous ride, she made a distracting picture.

  "Hunt's off for us, Miss Herrick," said Jim. "The cowboys will be hours catching that pack."

  "Too bad! But wasn't--it fun--while it--lasted," she replied, gaily. "I'm glad the coyote--got away. I had designs on--his brushy tail."

  "Shall we ride down?" went on Jim, uneasily. He had been alone with this girl on a couple of brief occasions, just long enough to realize the danger of such a fateful accident as this.

  "Let us rest the horses. I'm out of breath myself. . . . Listen.

  Don't I hear the hounds? They might fetch those deer back. Oh, I love to see deer bound on their springy legs."

  Jim turned his ear to the wind. First he heard the beating of his blood, like a muffled drum, and then the swish of the tree-tops.

  "No. It's not the hounds you hear. Only the wind in the pines."

  "How mournful and sweet!" she murmured.

  Jim dismounted to tighten his saddle-cinches. He felt queerly helpless, and impatient to be on the move.

  "Wall, take a look at my cinches," she said.

  "May I ask you not to call me Wall?" he queried, with unreasonable resentment. He hated the way she addressed him occasionally. "I must remind you I'm no butler."

  "Pray pardon me," she rejoined, in surprise. "I presume I should address you as Mister Wall?"

  "Yes, if you're too stuck up to call me Jim," he said, rudely.

  She lifted her chin and deigned no reply. And that infuriated him.

  "While I'm at it I'll tell you this, too," he went on, doggedly.

  "You must not ride around alone again. I've had no chance to speak with you. But I told your brother. He laughed in my face. He is a damned fool."

  "Mr. Wall, I will not listen to such talk," she spoke up, spiritedly.

  "Oh, yes, you will!" he flashed, striding over to her horse.

  "You're not in an English drawing-room now, confronted by a disrespectful butler. You're in Utah, girl. And I am Jim Wall."

  "That last is obvious, to my regret," she returned, coldly. "Will you please be so kind as to tighten my cinches? It will be the last service I shall require of you."

  "Thank the Lord!" ejaculated Jim, in grim heartiness. "All the same, I'll tell you. If you were an American tenderfoot, it wouldn't be hard to make you understand. If you were Western, you would not need to be told. But as an English lady of quality, who thinks class, HER class will protect her anywhere, you need to be jarred. . . . It's wrong for you to ride around alone on this range like any wild tomboy."

  "Why? You intimated this on our way from Grand Junction. But you do not give me any concrete reasons why it is wrong."

  "Some of these men might kidnap you for ransom."

  "Nonsense!" she retorted, contemptuously.

  "Or one of them might waylay you with worse intention."

  "Mr. Wall, I still believe YOUR intention is good, but you grossly exaggerate the dangers out here, if there are any. Bernie asked Heeseman about this and was assured that you, being from Wyoming, m
aligned Utah."

  "Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Jim, at himself as much as at that information. "What do you say, Miss Herrick, when I tell you that Hank Hays has been watching you from the ridges, riding the lonely trails, biding his chance to waylay you?"

  She paled at that, or at his piercing look and change of tone.

  "I don't believe it," she said, presently. "For some reason you are over-zealous on my behalf. It is becoming absurd."

  "You think I lie?"

  "Mr. Wall, I didn't call you a liar," she returned, in annoyance.

  "I did say--"

  "And you'll go on riding alone when it suits your royal fancy?" he queried, witheringly.

  "That is no longer any concern of yours," she replied, at last stung. "But I certainly shall ride when and how I please."

  "Then you're as big a damn fool as your nincompoop brother," declared Jim, hotly. "Here I am, the only man in this Star outfit with honesty enough and guts enough to tell you the truth. And I get insulted and fired for my pains."

  She sat her horse, mute. Jim laid a strong hand on her pommel and shook it.

  "Your saddle's loose. Will you oblige me by getting off?"

  "I can ride it back," she rejoined, icily.

  "But your blanket will slip out. The saddle might turn with you. . . . At that it might be a good thing for you to fall off and hit your head on a rock."

  She removed her boot from the stirrup. "Tighten the cinches then-- and hurry."

  Jim complied expeditiously enough, but in doing so he accidentally touched her. Something like fire shot through him at the contact.

  Under its stimulus he looked up to say a few more words to her, words to mitigate his offense and protest his sincerity. But they were never uttered. She had bent over to fasten a lace of her boot, and when Jim raised his head it was to find his face scarcely a foot from her red lips. Without a thought, in a flash, he kissed them, and then drew back stricken.

  With startled movement she jerked erect, her face flushing scarlet.

  "HOW DARE YOU!" she cried, in incredulous amaze and anger.

  "My God! I didn't mean that!" ejaculated Jim. "It just happened.

  I--I don't know--"