He stood near the doorway and grinned with embarrassed guilt at the assembled company.
"I reckon I got too much Fourth of July at Gimlet Butte, boys. That's how come I to be onpunctual getting back."
There was a long silence, during which those at the table looked at him with an expressionless gravity that did not seem to veil an unduly warm welcome.
"Hello, Mac! Hello, boys! I just got back," he further contributed.
Without comment the Lazy D resumed supper. Apparently it had not missed Reddy or noticed his return. Casual conversation was picked up cheerfully. The return of the prodigal was quite ignored.
"Then that blamed cow gits its back up and makes a bee-line for Rogers. The old man hikes for his pony and—"
"Seems good to git my legs under the old table again," interrupted Reddy with cheerful unease.
"—loses by about half a second," continued Missou. "If Doc hadn't roped its hind laig—"
"Have some cigars, boys. I brought a box back with me." Reddy tossed a handful on the table, where they continued to lie unnoticed.
"—there's no telling what would have happened. As 'twas the old man got off with a—"
"Y'u bet, they're good cigars all right," broke in the propitiatory Reddy.
The interrupted anecdote went on to a finish and the men trooped out and left the prodigal alone with his hash. When that young man reached the bunkhouse Frisco was indulging in a reminiscence. Reddy got only the last of it, but that did not contribute to his serenity.
"Yep! When I was working on the Silver Dollar. Must a-been three years ago, I reckon, when Jerry Miller got that chapping."
"Threw down the outfit in a row they had with the Lafferty crowd, didn't he?" asked Denver.
Frisco nodded.
Mac got up, glanced round, and reached for his hat. "I reckon I'll have to be going," he said, and forthright departed.
Reddy reached for HIS hat and rose. "I got to go and have a talk with Mac," he explained.
Denver got to the door first and his big frame filled it.
"Don't hurry, Reddy. It ain't polite to rush away right after dinner. Besides, Mac will be here all day. He ain't starting for New York."
"Y'u're gittin' blamed particular. Mac he went right out."
"But Mac didn't have a most particular engagement with the boys. There's a difference."
"Why, I ain't got—" Reddy paused and looked around helplessly.
"Gents, I move y'u that it be the horse sense of the Lazy D that our friend Mr. Reddy Reeves be given gratis one chapping immediately if not sooner. The reason for which same being that he played a lowdown trick on the outfit whose bread he was eating."
"Oh, quit your foolin', boys," besought the victim anxiously.
"And that Denver, being some able-bodied and having a good reach, be requested to deliver same to the gent needing it," concluded Missou.
Reddy backed in alarm to the wall. "Y'u boys don't want to get gay with me. Y'u can't monkey with—"
Motion carried unanimously.
Just as Reddy whipped out his revolver Denver's long leg shot out and his foot caught the wrist behind the weapon. When Reddy next took cognizance of his surroundings he was serving as a mattress for the anatomy of three stalwart riders. He was gently deposited face down on his bunk with a one-hundred-eighty-pound live peg at the end of each arm and leg.
"All ready, Denver," announced Frisco from the end of the left foot.
Denver selected a pair of plain leather chaps with care and proceeded to business. What he had to do he did with energy. It is safe to say that at least one of those present can still vividly remember this and testify to his thoroughness.
Mac drifted in after the disciplining. As foreman it was fitting that he should be discreetly ignorant of what had occurred, but he could not help saying:
"That y'u I heard singing, Reddy? Seems to me y'u had ought to take that voice into grand opera. The way y'u straddle them high notes is a caution for fair. What was it y'u was singing? Sounded like 'Would I were far from here, love.'"
"Y'u go to hell," choked Reddy, rushing past him from the bunkhouse.
McWilliams looked round innocently. "I judge some of y'u boys must a-been teasing Reddy from his manner. Seemed like he didn't want to sit down and talk."
"I shouldn't wonder but he'll hold his conversations standing for a day or two," returned Missou gravely.
At the end of the laugh that greeted this Mac replied:
"Well, y'u boys want to be gentle with him." "He's so plumb tender now that I reckon he'll get along without any more treatment in that line from us," drawled Frisco.
Mac departed laughing. He had an engagement that recurred daily in the dusk of the evening, and he was always careful to be on time. The other party to the engagement met him at the kitchen door and fell with him into the trail that led to Lee Ming's laundry.
"What made you late?" she asked.
"I'm not late, honey. I seem late because you're so anxious," he explained.
"I'm not," protested Nora indignantly. "If you think you're the only man on the place, Jim McWilliams."
"Sho! Hold your hawsses a minute, Nora, darling. A spinster like y'u—"
"You think you're awful funny—writing in my autograph album that a spinster's best friend is her powder box. I like Mr. Halliday's ways better. He's a perfect gentleman."
"I ain't got a word to say against Denver, even if he did write in your
book,
"'Sugar is sweet,
The sky is blue,
Grass is green
And so are you.'
I reckon, being a perfect gentleman, he meant—"
"You know very well you wrote that in yourself and pretended it was Mr. Halliday, signing his name and everything. It wasn't a bit nice of you."
"Now do I look like a forger?" he wanted to know with innocence on his cherubic face.
"Anyway you know it was mean. Mr. Halliday wouldn't do such a thing. You take your arm down and keep it where it belongs, Mr. McWilliams."
"That ain't my name, Nora, darling, and I'd like to know where my arm belongs if it isn't round the prettiest girl in Wyoming. What's the use of being engaged if—"
"I'm not sure I'm going to stay engaged to you," announced the young woman coolly, walking at the opposite edge of the path from him.
"Now that ain't any way to talk."
"You needn't lecture me. I'm not your wife and I don't think I'm going to be," cut in Nora, whose temper was ruffled on account of having had to wait for him as well as for other reasons.
"Y'u surely wouldn't make me sue y'u for breach of promise, would y'u?" he demanded, with a burlesque of anxiety that was the final straw.
Nora turned on her heel and headed for the house.
"Now don't y'u get mad at me, honey. I was only joking," he explained as he pursued her.
"You think you can laugh at me all you please. I'll show you that you can't," she informed him icily.
"Sho! I wasn't laughing at y'u. What tickled me—"
"I'm not interested in your amusement, Mr. McWilliams."
"What's the use of flying out about a little thing like that? Honest, I don't even know what you're mad at me for," the perplexed foreman averred.
"I'm not mad at you, as you call it. I'm simply disgusted."
And with a final "Good night" flung haughtily over her shoulder Miss Nora Darling disappeared into the house.
Mac took off his hat and gazed at the door that had been closed in his face. He scratched his puzzled poll in vain.
"I ce'tainly got mine good and straight just like Reddy got his. But what in time was it all about? And me thinkin' I was a graduate in the study of the ladies. I reckon I never did get jarred up so. It's plumb discouraging."
If he could have caught a glimpse of Nora at that moment, lying on her bed and crying as if her heart would break, Mac might have found the situation less hopeless.
CHAPTER 21. THE SIGNAL LIGHTS
In
a little hill-rift about a mile back of the Lazy D Ranch was a deserted miner's cabin.
The hut sat on the edge of a bluff that commanded a view of the buildings below, while at the same time the pines that surrounded it screened the shack from any casual observation. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the mud chimney, and inside the cabin two men lounged before the open fire.
"It's his move, and he is going to make it soon. Every night I look for him to drop down on the ranch. His hate's kind of volcanic, Mr. Ned Bannister's is, and it's bound to bubble over mighty sudden one of these days," said the younger of the two, rising and stretching himself.
"It did bubble over some when he drove two thousand of my sheep over the bluff and killed the whole outfit," suggested the namesake of the man mentioned.
"Yes, I reckon that's some irritating," agreed McWilliams. "But if I know him, he isn't going to be content with sheep so long as he can take it out of a real live man."
"Or woman," suggested the sheepman.
"Or woman," agreed the other. "Especially when he thinks he can cut y'u deeper by striking at her. If he doesn't raid the Lazy D one of these nights, I'm a blamed poor prophet."
Bannister nodded agreement. "He's near the end of his rope. He could see that if he were blind. When we captured Bostwick and they got a confession out of him, that started the landslide against him. It began to be noised abroad that the government was going to wipe him out. Folks began to lose their terror of him, and after that his whole outfit began to want to turn State's evidence. He isn't sure of one of them now; can't tell when he will be shot in the back by one of his own scoundrels for that two thousand dollars reward."
The foreman strolled negligently to the door. His eyes drifted indolently down into the valley, and immediately sparkled with excitement.
"The signal's out, Bann," he exclaimed. "It's in your window."
The sheepman leaped to his feet and strode to the door. Down in the valley a light was gleaming in a window. Even while he looked another light appeared in a second window.
"She wants us both," cried the foreman, running to the little corral back of the house.
He presently reappeared with two horses, both saddled, and they took the downward trail at once.
"If Miss Helen can keep him in play till we arrive," murmured Mac anxiously.
"She can if he gives her a chance, and I think he will. There's a kind of cat instinct in him to play with his prey."
"Yes, but he missed his kill last time by letting her fool him. That's what I'm afraid of' that he won't wait."
They had reached lower ground now, and could put their ponies at a pounding gallop that ate up the trail fast. As they approached the houses, both men drew rein and looked carefully to their weapons. Then they slid from the saddles and slipped noiselessly forward.
What the foreman had said was exactly true. Helen Messiter did want them both, and she wanted them very much indeed.
After supper she had been dreamily playing over to herself one of Chopin's waltzes, when she became aware, by some instinct, that she was not alone in the room. There had been no least sound, no slightest stir to betray an alien presence. Yet that some one was in the room she knew, and by some subtle sixth sense could even put a name to the intruder.
Without turning she called over her shoulder: "Shall I finish the waltz?" No faintest tremor in the clear, sweet voice betrayed the racing heart.
"Y'u're a cool hand, my friend," came his ready answer. "But I think we'll dispense with the music. I had enough last time to serve me for twice."
She laughed as she swung on the stool, with that musical scorn which both allured and maddened. "I did rather do you that time," she allowed.
"This is the return match. You won then. I win now," he told her, with a look that chilled.
"Indeed! But isn't that rather discounting the future?"
"Only the immediate future. Y'u're mine, my beauty, and I mean to take y'u with me."
Just a disdainful sweep of her eyes she gave him as she rose from the piano-stool and rearranged the lamps. "You mean so much that never comes to pass, Mr. Bannister. The road to the nether regions is paved with good intentions, we are given to understand. Not that yours can by any stretch of imagination be called 'good intentions.'"
"Contrariwise, then, perhaps the road to heaven may be paved with evil intentions. Since y'u travel the road with me, wherever it may lead, it were but gallant to hope so."
He took three sharp steps toward her and stood looking down in her face, her sweet slenderness so close to him that the perfume mounted to his brain. Surely no maiden had ever been more desirable than this one, who held him in such contemptuous estimation that only her steady eyes moved at his approach. These held to his and defied him, while she stood leaning motionless against the table with such strong and supple grace. She knew what he meant to do, hated him for it, and would not give him the satisfaction of flying an inch from him or struggling with him.
"Your eyes are pools of splendor. That's right. Make them flash fire. I love to see such spirit, since it offers a more enticing pleasure in breaking," he told her, with an admiration half ironic but wholly genuine. "Pools of splendor, my beauty! Therefore I salute them."
At the touch of his lips upon her eyelids a shiver ran through her, but still she made no movement, was cold to him as marble. "You coward!" she said softly, with an infinite contempt.
"Your lips," he continued to catalogue, "are ripe as fresh flesh of Southern fruit. No cupid ever possessed so adorable a mouth. A worshiper of Eros I, as now I prove."
This time it was the mouth he kissed, the while her unconquered spirit looked out of the brave eyes, and fain would have murdered him. In turn he kissed her cold cheeks, the tip of one of her little ears, the small, clenched fist with which she longed to strike him.
"Are you quite through?"
"For the present, and now, having put the seal of my ownership on her more obvious charms, I'll take my bride home."
"I would die first."
"Nay, you'll die later, Madam Bannister, but not for many years, I hope," he told her, with a theatrical bow.
"Do you think me so weak a thing as your words imply?"
"Rather so strong that the glory of overcoming y'u fills me with joy. Believe me, madam, though your master I am not less your slave," he mocked.
"You are neither my master nor my slave, but a thing I detest," she said, in a low voice that carried extraordinary intensity.
"And obey," he added, suavely. "Come, madam, to horse, for our honeymoon."
"I tell you I shall not go."
"Then, in faith, we'll re-enact a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, and quoted glibly:
"And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him, speak; 'tis charity to show."
"Would you take me against my will?"
"Y'u have said it. What's your will to me? What I want I take. And I sure want my beautiful shrew." His half-shuttered eyes gloated on her as he rattled off a couple more lines from the play he had mentioned.
"Kate, like the hazel-twig, Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels."
She let a swift glance travel anxiously to the door. "You are in a very poetical mood to-day."
"As befits a bridegroom, my own." He stepped lightly to the window and tapped twice on the pane. "A signal to bring the horses round. If y'u have any preparations to make, any trousseau to prepare, y'u better set that girl of yours to work."
"I have no preparations to make."
"Coming to me simply as y'u are? Good! We'll lead the simple life."
Nora, as it chanced, knocked and entered at his moment. The sight of her vivid good looks truck him for the first time. At sight of him she stopped, gazing with parted lips, a double row of pearls shining through.
; He turned swiftly to the mistress. "Y'u ought not to be alone there among so many men. It wouldn't be proper. We'll take the girl along with us."
"Where?" Nora's parted lips emitted.
"To Arden, my dear." He interrupted himself to look at his watch. "I wonder why that fellow doesn't come with the horses. They should pass this window."
Bannister, standing jauntily with his feet astride as he looked out of the window, heard someone enter the room. "Did y'u bring round the horses?" he snapped, without looking round.
"NO, WE ALLOWED THEY WOULDN'T BE NEEDED."
At sound of the slow drawl the outlaw wheeled like a flash, his hand traveling to the hilt of the revolver that hung on his hip. But he was too late. Already two revolvers covered him, and he knew that both his cousin and McWilliams were dead shots. He flashed one venomous look at the mistress of the ranch.
"Y'u fooled me again. That lamp business was a signal, and I was too thick-haided to see it. My compliments to y'u, Miss Messiter."
"Y'u are under arrest," announced his cousin.
"Y'u don't say." His voice was full of sarcastic admiration. "And you done it with your little gun! My, what a wonder y'u are!"
"Take your hand from the butt of that gun. Y'u better relieve him of it, Mac. He's got such a restless disposition he might commit suicide by reaching for it."
"What do y'u think you're going to do with me now y'u have got me, Cousin Ned?"
"We're going to turn y'u over to the United States Government."
"Guess again. I have a thing, or two to say to that."
"You're going to Gimlet Butte with us, alive or dead."
The outlaw intentionally misunderstood. "If I've got to take y'u, then we'll say y'u go dead rather than alive."
"He was going to take Nora and me with him," Helen explained to her friends.
Instantly the man swung round on her. "But now I've changed my mind, ma'am. I'm going to take my cousin with me instead of y'u ladies."
Helen caught his meaning first, and flashed it whitely to her lover. It dawned on him more slowly.
"I see y'u remember, Miss Messiter," he continued, with a cruel, silken laugh. "He gave me his parole to go with me whenever I said the word. I'm saying it now." He sat down astride a chair, put his chin on the back cross-bar, and grinned malevolently from one to another.
Wyoming-a Story of the Outdoor West Page 17
