I Conquered

by Harold Titus

  CHAPTER VIII

  A Head of Yellow Hair

  The next day Jed declared for a trip to Ranger after grub. The trip wasnecessary, and it would be an education for VB, he said with a chuckle,to see the town. But when they were ready to start a rider approachedthe ranch.

  "If it ain't Kelly!" Jed cried. Then, in explanation: "He's a horsebuyer, an' must be comin' to see me."

  And the man's desire to look over the VB stuff was so strong that Jeddeclared it would be business for him to stay at home.

  In a way, Danny was glad of the opportunity to go alone. It fed theglowing pride in his ability to do things, to be of use, and after ashort interchange of drolleries with the man Kelly, whom heinstinctively liked, the boy mounted to the high wagon seat and droveoff down the gulch.

  It was a long drive, and hours alone are conducive to thought. Danny'smind went back over the days that had passed, wandering along thosepaths he had followed since that July morning in the luxuriously dimhouse on Riverside Drive. And the reason for his departing from the oldway came back to him now, because he was alone, with nothing to diverthis attention. The old turbulence arose; it wore and wore with themiles, eating down to his will, teasing, coaxing, threatening,pleading, fuming.

  "Will it always be so?" he asked the distances. "When it comes tochallenge me, to take away all that I hold dear, shall I always beafraid? Shan't I be able to stand and fight and triumph, merely ragingbecause it dares tempt me instead of fearing this thing itself?"

  And he spoke as he thought in terms of his ideal, as materialized inthe Captain.

  "But will it always be so with him?" he asked again. "Won't some horsecome to challenge him some day and batter him down and make defeat allthe more bitter because of the supremacy he has enjoyed? Would it thenbe--worth the candle?"

  And as he bowed his head he thought once more of the beacon in thebottle, corking it up, driving back the shadows, making a livable placein the darkness.

  Nothing is ever intrinsically curious. Curiousness comes solely fromrelationships. Time and place are the great factors in creatingoddities. Five miles farther on VB saw a curious thing. This was at theforks of the road. To his right it went off behind the long, rockypoint toward Sand Creek; to the left it wandered through the sage brushover toward the S Bar S Ranch, and ahead it ran straight on to Ranger.

  Along the prong that twisted to the left went an automobile. Nothingcurious about that to VB, for many times he had seen Bob Thorpe drivinghis car through the country.

  But at the wheel was a lone figure crowned by a mass of yellow hair.That was the curious thing he saw!

  All VB could distinguish at that distance with his hot eyes was yellowhair. The machine picked its way carefully along the primitive road,checking down here, shooting ahead there, going on toward the horizon,bearing the yellow hair away from him, until it was only a crawlingthing with a long, floating tail of dust. But it seemed to him he couldstill make out that bright fleck even after the automobile had becomeindistinguishable.

  "She's alone," muttered VB. "She's driving that car alone--and outhere!"

  Then he wondered with a laugh why he should think it so strange. Manytimes he had ridden down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon trafficcongestion beside a woman who piloted her own car. Surely the fewhazards of this thoroughfare were not to be compared with that!

  But it was the incongruity which his association of ideas brought upthat made him tingle a little. That hair! It did not belong out here.He had not been near enough to see the girl's face--he was sure it wasa girl, not a grown woman--but the color of her crowning adornmentsuggested many and definite things. And those things were not of thesewaste places; were not rough and primal. They were finer, higher.

  Once before he had experienced this nameless, pleasurable sensation ofbeing familiar with the unknown. That had been when Jed had sketchedwith a dozen unrelated words a picture of the daughter of the house ofThorpe.

  The motor car with its fair-haired pilot had been gone an hour whenDanny, watching a coyote skulk among distant rocks, said aloud:"East--college--I'll bet--I--I wonder--"

  Dusk had come when Young VB entered Ranger and put up at the ranch,which made as much pretense of buildings as did the town itself.Morning found him weak and drawn, as it always did after a night of theconflict, yet he was up with the sun, eager to be through with his taskand back with Jed.

  Purchasing supplies is something of a rite in Ranger, and under otherconditions, on another day perhaps, it might have amused VB; but withthe unrest within him he found little about the procedure that did notirritate.

  In the store there one may buy everything in hardware from safety pinsto trace chains; groceries range from canned soup to wormy nuts; indrugs anything, bounded on one end by horse liniment and on the otherextreme by eye-drops guaranteed to prevent cataracts, is for sale; andoveralls and sewing silk are alike popular commodities. All is in fineorder, and the manager is a walking catalogue of household necessities.

  VB was relieved when the buying had been accomplished. He crowded a canof ten-cent tobacco into the pocket of his new overalls and started forthe team. A dozen strides away from the store building he paused tolook about. It was his first inspection of Ranger in daylight, and nowas he surveyed its extent his sense of humor rose above the stormwithin him, and he grinned.

  The store, with its conventional false front, stood beside the postoffice, which was built as a lean-to. Next to it was a building of redcorrugated iron, and sounds of blacksmithing issued from it. Behind VBwas a tiny house, with a path running from it to the store, the home ofthe manager. Next it a log cabin. Down at the left, near the river, wasanother house, deserted, the ranch where he had stayed, and beyond it atrio of small shacks on the river bank.

  "Ranger," he muttered, and chuckled.

  The road, brown and soft with fine dust, stretched on and on towardUtah, off to the west where silence was supreme.

  The buildings were all on the north side of the road.

  "A south front was the idea, I suppose," VB murmured. "Mere matter of--"

  His gaze had traveled across the road to a lone building erected there,far back against a sharp rise of ground. It stood apart, as thoughconsciously aloof from the rest, a one-story structure, and across itsfront a huge white sign, on which in black characters was painted theword:

  SALOON]

  Unconsciously his tongue came out to wet the parched lips and hisfingers plucked at the seams of the new overalls.

  Why not? the insidious self argued, why not? All changes must comegradually. Nothing can be accomplished in a moment. Just one drink tocool his throat, to steady his nerves, and brace him for the fight hewould make--later.

  As he stood there listening to that inner voice, yet holding it off, hedid not hear the fall of hoofs behind him or the jingle of spurs as arider dismounted and approached.

  But he did hear the voice--drawling, nasty, jeering:

  "Was you considerin' havin' a bit o' refreshment, stranger?"

  VB wheeled quickly and looked straight into the green glitter ofRhues's red-lidded eyes. The cruel mouth was stretched in an angulargrin, and the whole countenance expressed the incarnate spirit of thebully.

  Into Danny's mind leaped the idea that this thing before him, thisevil-eyed, jeering, leering, daring being, typified all that was foulin his heart--just as the Captain typified all that was virtuous.

  The intuitive repulsion surged to militant hate. He wanted to smotherthe breath which kept alive such a spirit, wanted to stamp into thedust the body that housed it--because it mocked him and tempted him!But Young VB only turned and brushed past the man without a word.

  He heard Rhues's laughter behind him, and heard him call: "Ranger ain'tno eastern Sunday school. Better have one an' be a man, like th' resto' th' boys!"

  However, when Rhues turned back to his pony the laugh was gone and hewas puzzling over something. After he had mounted, he looked after theboy again maliciously.

  VB was on t
he road in half an hour, driving the horses as fast as hedared. He wanted to be back in Jed's cabin, away from Ranger. Thisthing had followed him across the country to Colt; from Colt to theAnchor; and now It lurked for him in Ranger. The ranch was his haven.

  The settlement by the river reached its claws after him as he drove,fastening them in his throat and shaking his will until it seemed asthough it had reached the limit of its endurance.

  It was dark when he reached home. A mile away he had seen the light andsmiled weakly at thought of it, and the horses, more than willing,carried the wagon over the remaining distance with a bouncing thatthreatened its contents.

  When VB pulled up before the outer gate Jed hurried from the cabin.

  "VB," he called, "are you all right?"

  "All right, Jed," he answered, dropping from the seat.

  And the boy thought he heard the older man thank his God.

  Without words, they unharnessed and went to the cabin. Kelly wassleeping loudly in the adjoining room. The table had been moved fromits usual place nearer to the window, and the bottle with its burningcandle was close against the pane. Jed looked at the candle, then at VB.

  "I'm sorry," he said, seeing the strain about the boy's mouth. "I neverthought about it until come night, Young VB. I never thought about it.I--I guess I'm an old fool, gettin' scared th' way I do. So I shovedthis candle up against th' window--because I'm an old fool andthought--it might help a little."

  And VB answered: "It does help, Jed! Every little thing helps. And oh,God, how I need it!"

  He turned away.