The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  “Why, sure, ma’am.” He started again for Patches, but halted and looked back at her. “You won’t be scared again?”

  “No,” she said. And then: “But you’ll hurry, won’t you?”

  “I reckon.” He was in the saddle quickly, loping Patches to the crest of a hill near by in hopes of getting a view of the recreant pony. He got a glimpse of it, far back on the plains near some timber, and he was about to shout the news to Ruth, who was watching him intently, when he thought better of the notion and shut his lips.

  Urging Patches forward, he rode toward Ruth’s pony at a moderate pace. Three times during the ride he looked back. Twice he was able to see Ruth, but the third time he had swerved so that some bushes concealed him from her. He was forced to swerve still further to come up with the pony, and he noted that Ruth would never have been able to see her pony from her position.

  It was more than a mile to where the animal stood, and curiously, as though to make amends for his previous bad behavior to Ruth, he came trotting forward to Randerson, whinnying gently.

  Randerson seized the bridle, and grinned at the animal.

  “I reckon I ought to lam you a-plenty, you miserable deserter,” he said severely, “runnin’ away from your mistress that-a-way. Is that the way for a respectable horse to do? You’ve got her all nervous an’ upset—an’ she sure roasted me. Do you reckon there’s any punishment that’d fit what you done? Well, I reckon! You come along with me!”

  Leading the animal, he rode Patches to the edge of the timber. There, unbuckling one end of the reins from the bit ring, he doubled them, passed them through a gnarled root, made a firm knot and left the pony tied securely. Then he rode off and looked back, grinning.

  “You’re lost, you sufferin’ runaway. Only you don’t know it.”

  He loped Patches away and made a wide detour of the mesa, making sure that he appeared often on the sky line, so that he would be seen by Ruth. At the end of half an hour he rode back to where the girl was standing, watching him. He dismounted and approached her, standing before her, his expression one of grave worry.

  “That outlaw of yours ain’t anywhere in sight, ma’am,” he said. “I reckon he’s stampeded back to the ranchhouse. You sure you ain’t seen him go past here?”

  “No,” she said, “unless he went way around, just after it got dark.”

  “I reckon that’s what he must have done. Some horses is plumb mean. But you can’t walk, you know,” he added after a silence; “I reckon you’ll have to ride Patches.”

  “You would have to walk, then,” she objected. “And that wouldn’t be fair!”

  “Walkin’ wouldn’t bother me, ma’am.” He got Patches and led him closer. She looked at the animal, speculatively.

  “Don’t you think he could carry both of us?” she asked.

  He scrutinized Patches judicially. A light, which she did not see, leaped into his eyes.

  “Why, I didn’t think of that. I reckon he could, ma’am. Anyway, we can try it, if you want to.”

  He led Patches still closer. Then, with much care, he lifted Ruth and placed her in the saddle, mounting behind her. Patches moved off.

  After a silence which might have lasted while they rode a mile, Ruth spoke.

  “My ankle feels very much easier.”

  “I’m glad of that, ma’am.”

  “Randerson,” she said, after they had gone on a little ways further; “I beg your pardon for speaking to you the way I did, back there. But my foot did hurt terribly.”

  “Why, sure. I expect I deserved to get roasted.”

  Again there was a silence. Ruth seemed to be thinking deeply. At a distance that he tried to keep respectful, Randerson watched her, with worshipful admiration, noting the graceful disorder of her hair, the wisps at the nape of her neck. The delicate charm of her made him thrill with the instinct of protection. So strong was this feeling that when he thought of her pony, back at the timber, guilt ceased to bother him.

  Ruth related to him the conversation she had overheard between Chavis and Kester, and he smiled understandingly at her.

  “Do you reckon you feel as tender toward them now as you did before you found that out?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “It made me angry to hear them talk like that. But as for hanging them—” She shivered. “There were times, tonight, though, when I thought hanging would be too good for them,” she confessed.

  “You’ll shape up real western—give you time,” he assured. “You’ll be ready to take your own part, without dependin’ on laws to do it for you—laws that don’t reach far enough.”

  “I don’t think I shall ever get your viewpoint,” she declared.

  “Well,” he said, “Pickett was bound to try to get me. Do you think that if I’d gone to the sheriff at Las Vegas, an’ told him about Pickett, he’d have done anything but poke fun at me? An’ that word would have gone all over the country—that I was scared of Pickett—an’ I’d have had to pull my freight. I had to stand my ground, ma’am. Mebbe I’d have been a hero if I’d have let him shoot me, but I wouldn’t have been here any more to know about it. An’ I’m plumb satisfied to be here, ma’am.”

  “How did you come to hear about me not getting home?” she asked.

  “I’d rode in to see Catherson. I couldn’t see him—because he wasn’t there. Then I come on over to the ranchhouse, an’ Uncle Jepson told me about you not comin’ in.”

  “Was Mr. Masten at the ranchhouse?”

  He hesitated. Then he spoke slowly. “I didn’t see him there, ma’am.”

  She evidently wondered why it had not been Masten that had come for her.

  They were near the house when she spoke again:

  “Did you have an accident today, Randerson?”

  “Why, ma’am?” he asked to gain time, for he knew that the moonlight had been strong enough, and that he had been close enough to her, to permit her to see.

  “Your face has big, ugly, red marks on it, and the skin on your knuckles is all torn,” she said.

  “Patches throwed me twice, comin’ after you, ma’am,” he lied. “I plowed up the ground considerable. I’ve never knowed Patches to be so unreliable.”

  She turned in the saddle and looked full at him. “That is strange,” she said, looking ahead again. “The men have told me that you are a wonderful horseman.”

  “The men was stretchin’ the truth, I reckon,” he said lightly.

  “Anyway,” she returned earnestly; “I thank you very much for coming for me.”

  She said nothing more to him until he helped her down at the edge of the porch at the ranchhouse. And then, while Uncle Jepson and Aunt Martha were talking and laughing with pleasure at her return, she found time to say, softly to him:

  “I really don’t blame you so much—about Pickett. I suppose it was necessary.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said gratefully.

  He helped her inside, where the glare of the kerosene lamps fell upon him. He saw Uncle Jepson looking at him searchingly; and he caught Ruth’s quick, low question to Aunt Martha, as he was letting her gently down in a chair:

  “Where is Willard?”

  “He came in shortly after dark,” Aunt Martha told her. “Jep was talking to him, outside. He left a note for you. He told Jep that he was going over to Lazette for a couple of weeks, my dear.”

  Randerson saw Ruth’s frown. He also saw Aunt Martha looking intently through her glasses at the bruises on his face.

  “Why, boy,” she exclaimed, “what has happened to you?”

  Randerson reddened. It was going to be harder for him to lie to Aunt Martha than to Ruth. But Ruth saved him the trouble.

  “Randerson was thrown twice, riding out to get me,” she explained.

  “Throwed twice, eh?” said Uncle Jepson to Randerson, when a few minutes later he followed the range boss out on the porch. He grinned at Randerson suspiciously. “Throwed twice, eh?” he repeated. “Masten’s face looks like som
e one had danced a jig on it. Huh! I cal’late that if you was throwed twice, Masten’s horse must have drug him!”

  “You ain’t tellin’ her!” suggested Randerson.

  “You tell her anything you want to tell her, my boy,” whispered Uncle Jepson. “An’ if I don’t miss my reckonin’, she’ll listen to you, some day.”

  CHAPTER XV

  THE RUNAWAY COMES HOME

  Masten’s note to Ruth contained merely the information that he was going to Lazette, and that possibly he might not return for two weeks. He hinted that he would probably be called upon to go to Santa Fe on business, but if so he would apprise her of that by messenger. He gave no reason for his sudden leave-taking, or no explanation of his breach of courtesy in not waiting to see her personally. The tone of the note did not please Ruth. It had evidently been written hurriedly, on a sheet of paper torn from a pocket notebook. That night she studied it long, by the light from the kerosene lamp in her room, and finally crumpled it up and threw it from her. Then she sat for another long interval, her elbows on the top of the little stand that she used as a dressing table, her chin in her hands, staring with unseeing eyes into a mirror in front of her—or rather, at two faces that seemed to be reflected in the glass: Masten’s and Randerson’s.

  Next morning she got downstairs late, to find breakfast over and Randerson gone. Later in the morning she saw Uncle Jepson waving a hand to her from the corral, and she ran down there, to find her pony standing outside the fence, meek and docile. The bridle rein, knotted and broken, dangled in the dust at his head.

  She took up the end with the knot in it.

  “He’s been tied!” she exclaimed. She showed Uncle Jepson the slip knot. And then she became aware of Aunt Martha standing beside her, and she showed it to her also. And then she saw a soiled blue neckerchief twisted and curled in the knot, and she examined it with wide eyes.

  “Why, it’s Randerson’s!” she declared, in astonishment. “How on earth did it get here?”

  And now her face crimsoned, for illumination had come to her. She placed the neckerchief behind her, with a quick hope that her relatives had not seen it, nor had paid any attention to her exclamation. But she saw Uncle Jepson grin broadly, and her face grew redder with his words:

  “I cal’late the man who lost that blue bandanna wasn’t a tol’able piece away when that knot was tied.”

  “Jep Coakley, you mind your own business!” rebuked Aunt Martha sharply, looking severely at Uncle Jepson over the rims of her spectacles.

  “Don’t you mind him, honey,” she consoled, putting an arm around the girl as Uncle Jepson went away, chuckling. “Why, girl,” she went on, smiling at Ruth’s crimson face, “you don’t blame him, do you? If you don’t know he likes you, you’ve been blind to what I’ve been seeing for many days. Never mention to him that you know he tied the pony, dear. For he’s a gentleman, in spite of that.”

  And obediently, though with cheeks that reddened many times during the process, and laughter that rippled through her lips occasionally, Ruth washed the neckerchief, folded it, to make creases like those which would have been in it had its owner been wearing it, then crumpled it, and stole to Randerson’s room when she was sure that he was not there, and placed the neckerchief where its owner would be sure to find it.

  She was filled with a delightful dread against the day when he would discover it, for she felt that he might remember where he had lost it, and thus become convinced that she knew of his duplicity. But many days passed and he did not come in. She did not know that on his way out to join the outfit the next morning he had noticed that he had lost the neckerchief, and that he remembered it flapping loose around his neck when he had gone toward the timber edge for her pony. He had searched long for it, without success, of course, and had finally ridden away, shaking his head, deeply puzzled over its disappearance.

  Nor did Ruth know that on the day she had discovered the neckerchief dangling from the knot, Aunt Martha had spoken again to Uncle Jep concerning it.

  “Jep Coakley,” she said earnestly; “you like your joke, as well as any man. But if I ever hear of you mentioning anything to Randerson about that bandanna, I’ll tweak your nose as sure as you’re alive!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  TWO ARE TAUGHT LESSONS

  There was one other thing that Ruth did not know—the rage that dwelt in Randerson’s heart against Chavis and Kester. He had shown no indication of it when she had related to him the story of her adventure with the men, nor did he mention it to any of his associates. There had been a time in his life when he would have brought the men to a quick and final accounting, for their offense was one that the laws governing human conduct in this country would not condone; but he was not the man he had been before the coming of Ruth; her views on the taking of human life—no matter what the provocation—were barriers that effectively restrained his desires.

  Yet he could not permit Kester and Chavis to think they could repeat the offense with impunity. That would be an indication of impotence, of servile yielding to the feminine edict that had already gone forth, and behind which Chavis and his men were even now hiding—the decree of the Flying W owner that there should be no taking of human life. His lips twisted crookedly as on the morning of the day following his adventure with Ruth and the recreant pony he mounted his own animal and rode away from the outfit without telling any of them where he was going. Two or three hours later, in a little basin near the plateau where Ruth had overheard the men talking, Chavis and Kester were watching the crooked smile; their own faces as pale as Randerson’s, their breath swelling their lungs as the threat of impending violence assailed them; their muscles rippling and cringing in momentary expectation of the rapid movement they expected—and dreaded; their hearts laboring and pounding. For they saw in the face of this man who had brought his pony to a halt within ten feet of them a decision to adhere to the principles that had governed him all his days, and they knew that a woman’s order would not stay the retributive impulse that was gleaming in his eyes.

  “We’ll get to an understandin’ before we quit here,” he said, his cold, alert eyes roving over them. “You’ve made one break, an’ you’re gettin’ out of it because my boss ain’t dead stuck on attendin’ funerals. I reckon you know I ain’t got no such nice scruples, an’ a funeral more or less won’t set so awful heavy on my conscience. There’s goin’ to be more mourners requisitioned in this country damned sudden if women ain’t goin’ to be allowed range rights. I ain’t passin’ around no more warnin’s, an’ you two is talkin’ mighty sudden or the mourners will be yowlin’. What’s the verdict?”

  Chavis sighed. “We wasn’t meanin’ no harm,” he apologized, some color coming into his face again.

  “An’ you?” Randerson’s level look confused Kester.

  “I ain’t travelin’ that trail no more,” he promised, his eyes shifting. He knew as well as Chavis that it was the only way. A word, spoken with a hint of belligerence, a single hostile movement, would have precipitated the clash they knew Randerson had come to force—a clash which they knew would end badly for them. For Randerson had chosen his position when halting Patches—it was strategic, and they knew his fingers were itching for the feel of his guns.

  They saw the crooked smile fade from his lips; they curved with cold, amused contempt.

  “Not runnin’ no risks to speak of, eh?” he drawled. “Well, get goin’!” He lounged in the saddle, watching them as they rode away, not looking back. When they reached the far slope of the basin he turned Patches and sniffed disgustedly. Five minutes later he was at the crest of the back slope, riding toward the outfit, miles away.

  It was an hour later that he observed a moving spot on the sky line. The distance was great, but something familiar in the lines of the figure—when he presently got near enough to see that the blot was a pony and rider—made his blood leap with eager anticipation; and he spoke sharply to Patches, sending him forward at a brisk lope.

  He ha
d seen some cattle near the rider; he had passed them earlier in the morning—lean, gaunt range steers that would bother a fast pony in a run if thoroughly aroused.

  He saw that the rider had halted very close to one of the steers, and a look of concern flashed into his eyes.

  “She oughtn’t to do that!” he muttered. Unconsciously, his spurs touched Patches’ flanks, and the little animal quickened his pace.

  Randerson did not remove his gaze from the distant horse and rider. He rode for a quarter of a mile in silence, his muscles slowly tensing as he watched.

  “What’s she doin’ now?” he demanded of the engulfing space, as he saw the rider swing around in the saddle.

  “Hell!” he snapped an instant later; “she’s gettin’ off her horse!” He raised his voice in a shout, that fell flat and futile on the dead desert air, and he leaned forward in the saddle and drove the spurs deep as he saw the range steer nearest the rider raise its head inquiringly and look toward the rider—for she had dismounted and was walking away from her horse at an angle that would take her very close to the steer.

  Patches was running now, with the cat-like leaps peculiar to him, and his rider was urging him on with voice and spur and hand, his teeth set, his eyes burning with anxiety.

  But the girl had not seen him. She was still moving away from her horse; too far away from it to return if the steer decided to charge her, and Randerson was still fully half a mile distant.

  He groaned audibly as he saw the steer take a few tentative steps toward her, his head raised, tail erect, his long horns glinting in the white sunlight. Randerson knew the signs.

  “Good God!” he whispered; “can’t she see what that steer is up to?”

  It seemed she did, for she had halted and was facing the animal. For an instant there was no movement in the vast realm of space except the terrific thunder of Patches’ hoofs as they spurned the hard alkali level over which he was running; the squeaking protests of the saddle leather, and Randerson’s low voice as he coaxed the pony to greater speed. But Patches had reached the limit of effort, was giving his rider his last ounce of strength, and he closed the gap between himself and the girl with whirlwind rapidity.