More than this, Belle knew what was going on—she had the news. Little, in the daily round of the town and its wide territory, got by the modest scrim curtains of Belle's place; she became Kate's reporter. Men would say this was the principal attraction for Kate, and that the cooking came second—not so. The real reason Belle got the gossip of the country was because her customers were men. Kate was probably the only woman, certainly almost the only one, among her patrons. Belle explained this by saying that none of the rest of the ranchwomen would spend their money for lunch. The truth really was that Belle did not like women, anyway—Kate she tolerated because she did like her.
It was the day after Tenison's big celebration that Kate rode into town for the mail, and after some shopping walked down to Belle's for lunch. Belle was at the butcher shop across the street, telephoning. She came in after a moment.
"It seems to me you spend a good deal of time with that butcher," said Kate, significantly.
"Oh, no, he's got a club foot. Has Harry Van Horn been shining up to you?"
Kate was taken aback, but she had been to blame for giving Belle an opening and could only enter a confused denial.
"The first serious symptom," said Belle, garrulously, "will be, he'll have a headache; he'll ask for cold cloths on his forehead. When that works pretty well he'll tell you your hair is like his sister's and some evening he'll ask you to take it down. He asked me one night to take mine down. I handed him my wig. Say! he was the most surprised man in Sleepy Cat. I've been trying for an hour to get that rascally milkman on the telephone—there's not a drop of cream in the house. Well, how are you? Was Tom Stone home when you left?"
One question followed another. Kate had not only not seen the ranch foreman—she had not heard of the excitement of the night before. From Belle she got the details of Stone's attempt to kill Laramie. The story lost nothing in Belle's hands. She had heard all versions and was pretty good at story telling herself.
"After McAlpin picked up Stone's gun Laramie told him to turn it over to Luke; and he told Luke not to give it back to Stone till this morning—I guess they hid Stone last night." She wound up with an abusive fling at Doubleday's foreman. "What do you keep such a beastly critter around for?" she asked, looking at Kate hard for an answer.
Humiliated at the recital, Kate thought it time to say something herself: "Why do you ask me a question like that?"'
Belle arched her eyebrows belligerently. "Why shouldn't I?" she demanded. And bridling with further criticism of Stone and by implication of those that employed him, she let fly again.
Kate tried to ignore her outburst: "You know perfectly well," she said firmly, "I have nothing to say about the ranch or how it is run, or who runs it. And I don't care to listen to any comments on that subject."
"If you don't like my comments you needn't come here to listen to them," retorted Belle, flaming.
The two were standing at the cook stove.
"While I am here," returned Kate with tart dignity, "please don't abuse me."
"I say what I please to anybody if it's right," exclaimed Belle rudely.
"You'll be ashamed of yourself when you cool off," Kate returned, pointing to the broiler: "You don't expect me to eat all that meat, do you?"
Belle answered with an offended dignity of her own: "I expect Jim Laramie to eat the biggest part of it. And there he comes now!"
The front door opened, in fact, while she was speaking; Kate stood with her back to it and though by turning she could have peeped through the curtained archway, she would not have looked for a million dollars. If Belle wanted her revenge she had it at that moment. Kate could not sink through the floor to escape, but how she wanted to! She did step quickly aside hoping she had not been seen, and retired to the farthest corner of the kitchen. Belle's mouth, before the stove, set grimly and with her left hand she gave her wig the vicious punch she used when wrought up. Kate motioned to her frantically. Belle regarded her coldly but did come closer and Kate caught at her sleeve: "For heaven's sake," she begged in a whisper, "don't let him know I'm here."
Kate eyed her anxiously. Belle's face was hard, and quick, firm steps were coming from the front door.
"Hello, Belle!" was the greeting. Had they been Kate's death message the words could not have frightened her more. She knew, too well, the voice.
"You didn't get my message," were the next words flung through the archway.
"I got it," answered Belle, going forward and providentially stopping Laramie before he reached the curtains.
"Sit down right there," she added, pointing to a table at the rear of the lunch room. "I hurried all I could but that rascally milkman hasn't been here yet and there's no cream for your coffee. Your dinner's most ready though."
She started back to the kitchen.
"Not enough for two, is there?" asked Laramie.
"Who's coming?" demanded Belle, stopping in her tracks.
"Belle, you're suspicious as a cattleman. Nobody's coming, but I'm hungry."
While he continued his banter she served him and attempted to serve Kate behind the curtains. By persistent, almost despairing pantomime, Kate dissuaded her from this. But at that moment the front door opened again, a brisk greeting was called out and a heavy tread crossed the uneven floor of the outer room.
"John Lefever!" Laramie got up to welcome the big deputy marshal. "Just in time. Take off your manners and sit down."
A bubbling laugh greeted the sally: "Jim, I just can't do it."
"Oh, yes, you'll eat with me. Where you from?"
"Bear Dance; and Medicine Bend on the next train. Heard you were in town and dropped off for just one hour. Say, this is more like life's fitful fever to set eyes on you. Heard you were threatened last night with appendicitis. How about it?" and John bubbled over again. In the next breath he greeted Belle as gaily. Laramie asked for another plate and Lefever promptly resumed: "You look kind of down in the mouth, Jim. What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing's the matter with me."
Lefever shrugged his shoulders: "You're a kind of low-spirited Indian, anyway. What you doing up in the Falling Wall?"
"Nothing."
"Always nothing," repeated Lefever.
"Better come up," suggested Laramie. "What are you doing?"
Lefever's eyes expanded with cheer, but his voice choked with emotion: "Doing? Rusting!"
"That doesn't sound much like 'life's fitful fever.'"
John glared at his companion: "Life's fitful fever! Why, this is only a passing flash! How about it when you can't raise even a normal temperature? Fever? I haven't felt so much as a gentle perspiration for months! The rust is eating into my finger tips," he declared with violence. "I'm a fat man. A fat man must have action,"—his voice fell—"else he gets fatter. I've got to do something. Once or twice I've come pretty near having to go to work."
Laramie's expression may have been skeptical; at all events John pointed a corroborating finger at him: "You don't believe it! Just the same," he added, moodily, "it's straight."
"What's de Spain doing, John?"
The tone of the answer bordered on the morose: "Running a nursery at Medicine Bend."
"Trees?"
"Trees!" John snortingly invoked the hottest place he could think of. "Trees? Babies! Jim," he exclaimed, "I'm no family man—are you?"
"You like Medicine Bend, don't you?"
"Too many people there." John settled gloomily back. Then with wide-open eyes he started suddenly forward: "Give me a gun, Jim," he said wildly, "a gun and a horse."
"And a north wind!" exclaimed Laramie.
"And a high country," cried Lefever with flashing eyes, "a country where you can't see a damned thing in any direction for a hundred and fifty miles!"
Though talking vigorously he was eating, without protest from Laramie, everything in sight. Kate could not help listening; Lefever's high spirits were contagious.
"Jim," came next between mouthfuls. "What was that story about you being up
at the Junction the day I wanted you to serve those papers on old Barb Doubleday?"
"I went up there that day because I had business of a different kind with Barb."
"About the wire ripping, yes. But I heard you got sewed up by a skirt and didn't talk wire to Barb at all."
"No more of that, John."
"What was there to it?"
"I guess there was."
"A ride or something—what?"
"Something, John."
"Thunder! It must have been the ride. I had a deputy marshalship all lined up for you if that hadn't happened. And believe me, boy, a deputy marshalship isn't lying around loose every day!"
Kate listened keenly for Laramie's comment:
"The ride was worth the price, John," was all he said.
"Some skirt, eh?"
Laramie squirmed and with an expletive protested:
"Hang it, John——"
"No matter, no matter. I'll get it all from Belle some day. And after you get through with your wire thieves we'll tell the story of your brief romance——"
"Over my grave."
"Right, Jim—over your grave."
"John," Laramie ran on, "do you remember that song Tommie Meggeson used to sing on the round-up—a pretty little thing. It had one good line in it: 'Death comes but once, and then, sometimes—too late.'"
Belle appeared with a vegetable: "It won't keep you waiting an awful while if things go on the way they're going now," she put in grimly.
"That was a good song," mused Laramie, "a good old song." But he heard a slight sound in the kitchen and his eyes were turned toward the archway.
"Just the same that song won't keep you from getting killed," persisted Belle.
"Even that would beat appendicitis clean to death, Belle," maintained Laramie, still listening.
"You've got lots of time," he added, as Lefever looked at his watch.
"I haven't," exclaimed his companion. "I've got to send a message. Come over to the train."
"I've got to write a couple of letters."
"Come over to the station and write your letters."
Laramie shook his head: "I couldn't even get to the station by one o'clock. Every man in Main Street wants to talk about Tom Stone. You'd think I had a million friends among the cattlemen this morning."
"I heard old Barb Doubleday is grinning like a hangman today."
"If Belle's got some ink I'll write my letters right here."
Kate's spirits, which had risen at the hope of being so luckily rid of one who might prove troublesome, fell at his refusal to leave. John urged, but Laramie only asked Belle again for the ink. Lefever tried to coax Belle to go to the train with him. Belle would do almost any fool thing—as John bluntly averred—but this time she must have had pity on Kate and would not leave her unprotected. Lefever went his way. From a shelf near where Kate, with clasped hands, sat in silence Belle took paper and ink in to Laramie and began to clear the table.
At this unlucky moment the front door was opened swiftly and a boy from the butcher shop stuck his head inside.
"Miss Shockley," he called, "the milkman is on the 'phone now, if you want him." Closing the door he ran back across the street. With a sense of her wrongs keen upon her, Belle, forgetting her charge in the kitchen, hurried after him.
Even then, Kate hoped that by keeping deathly still she might escape an unpleasant meeting. She never breathed more carefully in her life, yet she was doomed. She heard Laramie's chair pushed back and heard his footsteps. She could not be sure which way he was walking, but she thought only of flight. As stealthily and rapidly as possible, she started for the back door. Without looking around she felt as if he had come to the archway and was looking at her. With courage and resolve, she grasped the knob to open the door. It was locked. She fumbled with the key. Behind her, silence. She locked and unlocked the door more than once, and with a fast-dying hope, for the wretched door would not open. Flushed with annoyance, she turned around only to see Laramie standing precisely where she had imagined him.
They faced each other. Kate could not have found a word to say had her life depended on it. Laramie held in his left hand an ink bottle, in his right a pen. He, too, seemed surprised but he recovered himself: "You are certainly unlucky with doors," he said. "If you'll tell me where Belle keeps her ink, I'll tell you how to open that," he added calmly.
Kate stiffened and shrugged her shoulders the least bit: "I haven't any idea where Belle keeps the ink," she replied, clearing her throat of its huskiness.
He pointed to beyond where she stood: "I think the ink supply is on that shelf; she gave me an empty bottle. Should you mind handing me one with ink in it?"
Kate turned to the shelf: "There seem to be two kinds here," she said as coldly as possible.
"Any bottle with a hole in the top will do," he suggested. "This one," he held the bottle up in his hand and looked at it, "seems to have a hole top and bottom. Give me the blue ink, will you?"
"I am sure I don't know which is which. Perhaps you had better help yourself," Kate said icily.
"Thank you. But I'll show you how to open the door first."
"Don't trouble yourself."
"No trouble at all." He walked to the door, explaining as he took hold of the knob: "The door wasn't locked, but the catch held the latch. I could tell that from the way you handled it. You locked it, yourself——"
Kate could not hide her resentment: "It wouldn't open when I first took hold of it," she declared hastily. "I tried it before I touched the key."
"That's what I'm explaining. When you did take hold of the key you locked the door with the dead bolt and then you couldn't open it; so you unlocked it and tried it again. After that you worked so fast I lost track." He pointed to the back of the rim lock: "The catch was on." And pushing down the catch, he turned the knob and opened the door.
Kate was thoroughly incensed: "You are doubtless better acquainted here than I am."
"To tell the truth, I have to be acquainted with rooms I go into. If I ever tried to get through a door and failed, it might not be pleasant for me. And there's a board fence, six feet high, all around this yard, so unless you're a good climber you couldn't have got out anyway."
Kate felt she looked very silly, standing staring at him, and perhaps looking frightened—as she really was—-for he went on as if he were explaining to a child: "I'm not permitted to tell you, but I'm going to——"
"Don't bother, please——"
"Yes, I'd rather: There is a way to get out without climbing the fence; a loose board I'll show you sometime—but you must handle yourself fast to make your get-away."
"I never expect," she said contemptuously, "to have to make a get-away."
"Then I was wrong," he returned frankly, "for I kind of thought you were trying to make one a minute ago."
His composure irritated Kate: "You are very much mistaken," she declared with spirit in her words, for she saw—indeed knew—how persistent he was. "I was only trying to leave for home quietly and quickly."
His eyes were a study in silent laughter: "That's all I've ever claimed to be doing, any time in my life."
"But I can just as well leave by the front door—which, perhaps," retorted Kate, "you haven't always been able to do."
"Before you go"—he was standing directly in the archway, so she had to listen—"tell me about things at the Junction; I hear the lunch room was closed up a while ago."
"It was. But"—Kate thought the time for explanation had come—"I was not working at the eating-house when you came in there. I am Kate Doubleday and I wanted to save my father that day and I'm not a bit sorry for it."
"I suppose, then, I ought to speak out, too. I was sure you were Kate Doubleday soon after I got into the lunch-room that day and I'm not a bit sorry for it. And I knew pretty soon you were trying to save your father. And I helped you."
"Oh—" Kate suppressed an incredulous exclamation.
"Believe it or not as you like, I helped
you. And I'm not a bit sorry for it. Though he is no friend of mine, you have been, from that day on; and if you ever give me a chance I'll prove it. The worst thing you did was to go back on your word——"
"My word was not freely given," Kate was speaking furiously.
"It shouldn't have been given at all, then. But it's all right. Will you be friends with me?"
"No man that speaks of my father as you spoke of him a moment ago can be my friend."
"It was Lefever spoke of your father. I couldn't shut him off. Of course he didn't know you were here. I did know after I'd been here awhile. I heard you whisper. That's why I asked for the ink—I had no letters to write. There's a lot of hard feeling in this country right now. Every man in it has his friends and enemies. You mustn't take it seriously when you hear hard words—I don't; and I hear plenty. Hadn't you and I better be friends to begin with, anyway?"
"No," she exclaimed angrily. "Please let me pass."
He stepped promptly aside: "I never dreamed of doing anything less."
Kate started rapidly for the front door. Whom should she run into just as she opened it but Belle coming back from her wretched telephoning and with a bottle of cream! Kate inwardly blamed her for all her trouble, and she was on edge, besides: "Where you going?" demanded Belle.
"Home," answered Kate, shortly.
"Home? You haven't had your lunch."
"I don't want any."
Belle caught Kate's arm: "Now you just hold on. What's the matter? Is it Laramie?" Belle must have read her face for she answered nothing, only tried to get away. "But, child!" she exclaimed. "Where's your coat—wait till I bring it—and your gloves!" Kate paused at the door. In a minute Belle came running back: "He's gone, absolutely. There isn't a soul anywhere about. Now you shan't go till you take a cup of coffee. Here's the cream—he left it at the wrong door, the stupid!"
Laramie Holds the Range Page 9
