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.
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.
The Fighting Edge Page 2
