Bob backed away warily. This Colossus straddling toward him would thrash him within an inch of his life. The boy was white to the lips.
“Stop! Right now!” June faced Houck resolutely, standing between him and his victim.
The big fellow looked at the girl, a slim, fearless little figure with undaunted eyes flinging out a challenge. He laughed, delightedly, then brushed her aside with a sweep of his arm.
Her eyes blazed. The smouldering passion that had been accumulating for weeks boiled up. She dragged out the six-shooter from its holster.
“I won’t have you touch him! I won’t! If you do I’ll—I’ll—”
Houck stopped in his stride, held fast by sheer amazement. The revolver pointed straight at him. It did not waver a hair’s breadth. He knew how well she could shoot. Only the day before she had killed a circling hawk with a rifle. The bird had dropped like a plummet, dead before it struck the ground. Now, as his gaze took in the pantherish ferocity of her tense pose, he knew that she was keyed up for tragedy. She meant to defend the boy from him if it resulted in homicide.
It did not occur to him to be afraid. He laughed aloud, half in admiration, half in derision.
“I b’lieve you would, you spunky li’l wild cat,” he told her in great good humor.
“Run, Bob,” called June to the boy.
He stood, hesitating. His impulse was to turn and fly, but he could not quite make up his mind to leave her alone with Houck.
The cowman swung toward the girl.
“Keep back!” she ordered.
Her spurt of defiance tickled him immensely. He went directly to her, his stride unfaltering.
“Want to shoot up poor Jake, do you? An’ you an’ him all set for a honeymoon. Well, go to it, June. You can’t miss now.”
He stood a yard or so from her, easy and undisturbed, laughing in genuine enjoyment. He liked the child’s pluck. The situation, with its salty tang of danger, was wholly to his taste.
But he had disarmed the edge of June’s anger and apprehension. His amusement was too real. It carried the scene from tragedy to farce.
June’s outburst had not been entirely for the sake of Bob. Back of the immediate cause was the desire to break away from this man’s dominance. She had rebelled in the hope of establishing her individual freedom. Now she knew this was vain. What was the use of opposing one who laughed at her heroics and ignored the peril of his position? There was not any way to beat him.
She pushed the six-shooter back into its holster and cried out at him bitterly. “I think you’re the devil or one of his fiends.”
“An’ I think you’re an angel—sometimes,” he mocked.
“I hate you!” she said, and two rows of strong little white teeth snapped tight.
“Sho! Tha’s just a notion you got. You like me fine, if you only knew it, girl.”
She was still shaken with the emotion through which she had passed. “You never were nearer death, Jake Houck, than right now a minute ago.”
His back to Dillon, the cowman gave a curt command. “Hit the trail, boy—sudden.”
Bob looked at June, whose sullen eyes were fighting those of her father’s guest. She had forgotten he was there. Without a word Bob vanished.
“So you love me well enough to shoot me, do you?” Houck jeered.
“I wish I could!” she cried furiously.
“But you can’t. You had yore chance, an’ you couldn’t. What you need is a master, some one you’ll have to honor an’ obey, some one who’ll look after you an’ take the devil outa you. Meanin’ me—Jake Houck. Understand?”
“I won’t! I won’t!” she cried. “You come here an’ bully me because—because of what you know about Father. If you were half a man—if you were white, you wouldn’t try to use that against me like you do.”
“I’m using it for you. Why, you li’l’ spitfire, can’t you see as Jake Houck’s wife you get a chance to live? You’ll have clothes an’ shoes an’ pretties like other folks instead o’ them rags you wear now. I aim to be good to you, June.”
“You say that. Don’t I know you? I’d ’most rather be dead than married to you. But you keep pesterin’ me. I—I—” Her voice broke.
“If you don’ know what’s best for you, I do. To-morrow I got to go to Meeker. I’ll be back Thursday. We’ll ride over to Bear Cat Friday an’ be married. Tha’s how we’ll fix it.”
He did not take her in his arms or try to kiss her. The man was wise in his generation. Cheerfully, as a matter of course, he continued:
“We’ll go up to the house an’ tell Tolliver it’s all settled.”
She lagged back, sulkily, still protesting. “It’s not settled, either. You don’t run everything.”
But in her heart she was afraid he had stormed the last trench of her resistance.
* * *
CHAPTER VII
AN ELOPEMENT
Bob Dillon was peeling potatoes outside the chuck tent when he heard a whistle he recognized instantly. It was a very good imitation of a meadow-lark’s joyous lilt. He answered it, put down the pan and knife, and rose.
“Where you going?” demanded the cook.
“Back in a minute, Lon,” the flunkey told him, and followed a cow trail that took him up the hill through the sage.
“I never did see a fellow like him,” the cook communed aloud to himself. “A bird calls, an’ he’s got to quit work to find out what it wants. Kinda nice kid, too, if he is queer.”
Among the piñons at the rock rim above Bob found June. He had not seen her since the day when she had saved him from a thrashing. The boy was not very proud of the way he had behaved. If he had not shown the white feather, he had come dangerously close to it.
“How are cases, June?”
His eyes, which had been rather dodging hers, came to rest on the girl at last. One glance told him that she was in trouble.
“I don’ know what to do, Bob,” she broke out. “Jake will be back to-day—by dinner-time, I reckon. He says I’ve got to go with him to Bear Cat an’ be married to-morrow.”
Dillon opened his lips to speak, but he said nothing. He remembered how he had counseled her to boldness before and failed at the pinch. What advice could he give? What could he say to comfort his friend?
“Haven’t you got any folks you could go to—some one who would tell Houck where to head in at?”
She shook her head. “My father’s all I’ve got.”
“Won’t he help you?”
“He would, but—I can’t ask him. I got to pretend to him I’d just as lief marry Jake.”
“Why have you?”
“I can’t tell you why, Bob. But that’s how it is.”
“And you still hate Houck?”
“Ump-ha. Except—sometimes.” She did not explain that elusive answer. “But it don’t matter about how I feel. When he comes back I’ve got to do like he says.”
June broke down and began to weep. The boy’s tender heart melted within him.
“Don’t you. Don’t you,” he begged. “We’ll find a way, li’l’ pardner. We sure will.”
“How?” she asked, between sobs. “There ain’t—any way—except to—to marry Jake.”
“You could run away—and work,” he suggested.
“Who’d give me work? And where could I go that he wouldn’t find me?”
Practical details stumped him. Her objections were valid enough. With her inexperience she could never face the world alone.
“Well, le’s see. You’ve got friends. Somewhere that you could kinda hide for a while.”
“Not a friend. We—we don’t make friends,” she said in a small, forlorn voice with a catch in it.
“You got one,” he said stoutly. “Maybe he don’t amount to much, but—” He broke off, struck by an idea. “Say, June, why couldn’t you run off with me? We’d go clear away, where he wouldn’t find us.”
“How could I run off with you?” A pink flood poured into her face. “You’re not
my brother. You’re no kin.”
“No, but—” He frowned at the ground, kicking at a piece of moss with his toe to help him concentrate. Again he found an idea. “We could get married.”
This left her staring at him, speechless.
He began to dress his proposal with arguments. He was a humble enough youth who had played a trifling part in life. But his imagination soared at seeing himself a rescuer of distressed maidens. He was a dreamer of dreams. In them he bulked large and filled heroic rôles amply.
June was a practical young person. “What d’ you want to marry me for?” she demanded.
He came to earth. He did not want to marry her. At least he had not wanted to until the moment before. If he had been able to give the reason for his suggestion, it would probably have been that her complete isolation and helplessness appealed to the same conditions in himself and to a certain youthful chivalry.
“We’re good pals, ain’t we?” was the best he could do by way of answer.
“Yes, but you don’t—you don’t—”
Beneath the tan of her dark cheeks the blood poured in again. It was as hard for her to talk about love as for him. She felt the same shy, uneasy embarrassment, as though it were some subject taboo, not to be discussed by sane-minded people.
His freckled face matched hers in color. “You don’t have to be thataway. If we like each other, an’ if it looks like the best thing to do—why—”
“I couldn’t leave Dad,” she said.
“You’ll have to leave him if you marry Jake Houck.”
That brought her to another aspect of the situation. If she ran away with Bob and married him, what would Houck do in regard to her father? Some deep instinct told her that he would not punish Tolliver for it if she went without his knowledge. The man was ruthless, but he was not needlessly cruel.
“What would we do? Where would we go—afterward?” she asked.
He waved a hand largely into space. “Anywhere. Denver, maybe. Or Cheyenne. Or Salt Lake.”
“How’d we live?”
“I’d get work. No trouble about that.”
She considered the matter, at first unsentimentally, as a workable proposition. In spite of herself she could not hold quite to that aspect of the case. Her blood began to beat faster. She would escape Houck. That was the fundamental advantage of the plan. But she would see the world. She would meet people. Perhaps for the first time she would ride on a train. Wonderful stories had been told her by Dillon, of how colored men cooked and served meals on a train rushing along forty miles an hour, of how they pulled beds down from the roof and folks went to sleep in little rooms just as though they were at home. She would see all the lovely things he had described to her. There was a court-house in Denver where you got into a small room and it traveled up with you till you got out and looked down four stories from a window.
“If we go it’ll have to be right away,” she said. “Without tellin’ anybody.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“I could go back to the house an’ get my things.”
“While I’m gettin’ mine. There’s nobody at the camp but Lon, an’ he always sleeps after he gets through work. But how’ll we get to Bear Cat?”
“I’ll bring the buckboard. Dad’s away. I’ll leave him a note. Meet you in half an hour on Twelve-Mile Hill,” she added.
It was so arranged.
June ran back to the house, hitched the horses to the buckboard, and changed to her best dress. She made a little bundle of her other clothes and tied them in a bandanna handkerchief.
On a scrap of coarse brown wrapping-paper she wrote a short note:
Dear Dad,
I’m going away with Bob Dillon. We’re going to be married. Don’t blame me too much. Jake Houck drove me to it. I’ll write you soon. Don’t forget to take the cough medicine when you need it.
June
She added a postscript.
I’ll leave the team at Kilburn’s Corral.
Unexpectedly, she found herself crying. Tears splashed on the writing. She folded the note, put it in the empty coffee pot, and left this on the table.
June had no time just now for doubts. The horses were half-broken broncos. They traveled the first hundred yards tied in a knot, the buckboard sometimes on four wheels, but more often on two.
At the top of the hill she managed to slacken them enough for Bob to jump in. They were off again as though shot from a bow. June wound the reins round her hands and leaned back, arms and strong thin wrists taut. The colts flew over the ground at a gallop.
There was no chance for conversation. Bob watched the girl drive. He offered no advice. She was, he knew, a better teamster than himself. Her eyes and mind were wholly on the business in hand.
A flush of excitement burned in June’s cheeks. Tolliver never would let her drive the colts because of the danger. She loved the stimulation of rapid travel, the rush of the wind past her ears, the sense of responsibility at holding the lines.
Bob clung to the seat and braced himself. He knew that all June could do was to steady the team enough to keep the horses in the road. Every moment he expected a smash, but it did not come. The colts reached the foot of Twelve-Mile safely and swept up the slope beyond. The driver took a new grip on the lines and put her weight on them. It was a long hill. By the time they reached the top the colts were under control and ready to behave for the rest of the day.
The sparkling eyes of June met those of Bob. “Great, ain’t it?”
He nodded, but it had not been fun for him. He had been distinctly frightened. He felt for June the reluctant admiration gameness compels from those who are constitutionally timid. What manner of girl was this who could shave disaster in such a reckless fashion and actually enjoy it?
At the edge of the town they exchanged seats at June’s suggestion and Bob drove in. It was mid-afternoon by the sun as he tied the horses to the rack in front of the larger of the two general stores.
“You stay here,” the boy advised. “I’ll get things fixed, then come back an’ let you know.”
He had only a hazy idea of the business details of getting married, but he knew a justice of the peace could tell him. He wandered down the street in search of one.
Half a dozen cowpunchers bent on sport drifted in his direction. One of them was riding down the dusty road. To the horn of his saddle a rope was tied. The other end of it was attached to a green hide of a steer dragging after him.
The punchers made a half-circle round Bob.
One grinned and made comment. “Here’s one looks ripe, fellows. Jes’ a-honin’ for a ride, looks like.”
“Betcha he don’t last ten jumps,” another said.
Before Bob could offer any resistance or make any protest he had been jubilantly seized and dumped down on the hide.
“Let ’er go,” some one shouted.
The horse, at the touch of the spur, jumped to a gallop. Bob felt a sudden sick sense of helplessness. The earth was cut out from under him. He crouched low and tried to cling to the slippery hide as it bounced forward. Each leap of the bronco upset him. Within three seconds he had ridden on his head, his back, and his stomach. Wildly he clawed at the rope as he rolled over.
With a yell the rider swung a corner. Bob went off the hide at a tangent, rolling over and over in the yellow four-inch-deep dust.
He got up, dizzy and perplexed. His best suit looked as though it had been through a long and severe war.
A boyish puncher came up and grinned at him in the friendliest way. “Hello, fellow! Have a good ride?”
Bob smiled through the dust he had accumulated. “It didn’t last long.”
“Most generally it don’t. Come in to Dolan’s an’ have a drink.” He mentioned his name. It was Dud Hollister.
“Can’t.” Bob followed an impulse. “Say, how do you get married?” he asked, lowering his voice.
“I don’t,” Dud answered promptly. “Not so long as I’m in my right mind.”
&nbs
p; “I mean, how do I?” He added sheepishly, “She’s in the buckboard.”
“Oh!” Dud fell to sudden sobriety. This was serious business. “I’d get a license at the cou’t-house. Then go see Blister Haines. He’s the J. P.”
Bob equipped himself with a license, returned to June, and reported progress.
The bride-to-be was simmering with indignation. In those days she had not yet cultivated a sense of humor.
“I saw what they did to you—the brutes,” she snapped.
“Sho! That wasn’t nothin’, June. The boys was only funnin’. Well, I got things fixed. We gotta go to the J. P.”
The justice was having forty winks when they entered his office. He was enormously fat, a fact notable in a country of lean men. Moreover, he had neither eyebrows nor hair, though his face announced him not more than thirty in spite of its triple chin. Mr. Haines was slumped far down in a big armchair out of which he overflowed prodigally. His feet were on a second chair.
Bob wakened him ruthlessly. He sat up blinking. Bob started to speak. He stopped him with a fat uplifted hand.
“I r-reckon I know what you want, y-young man,” he said.
* * *
CHAPTER VIII
BLISTER GIVES ADVICE
Blister Haines, J. P., was by way of being a character. His waggish viewpoint was emphasized by a slight stutter.
“S-so you want to h-hitch up to double trouble, do you?” he asked.
“We want to get married,” Bob said.
“S-same thing,” the fat man wheezed, grinning. “C-come right in an’ I’ll tie you tighter ’n a d-drum.”
“I’ve only got six dollars,” the bridegroom explained.
“No matter a-tall. My f-fee is jus’ six d-dollars,” the justice announced promptly.
Bob hesitated. June nudged him and whispered. The husband-elect listened, nodded, and spoke up.
“I’ll pay you two dollars.”
Blister looked at the bride reproachfully. “L-lady, if you ain’t worth s-six dollars to him you ain’t worth a c-cent. But I’ll show you how good a sport I am. I’ll m-make you a wedding present of the j-job. Got any witnesses?”
The Fighting Edge Page 4
