Hope Hathaway Part 3

She brought with her to the mountains a long-distance rifle and a brace of six-shooters. A shotgun she seldom used, for the reason that to her quick, accurate eye a rifle did better, more varied work, and answered every purpose of a shotgun. It was said that each bird she marked on the wing dropped at her feet in two pieces, its head severed smoothly. This may not have been true always, but the fact remains that the birds dropped when she touched the trigger.

She was an odd character for a girl, reserved and quiet even with her most intimate friends, rough and impulsive as a boy sometimes, in speech and actions, again as dignified as the proudest queen. Her friends never knew how to take her, because they never understood her. She left, so far along her trail in life, nothing but shattered ideals and delusions, but she had not become cynical or embittered, only wiser. After her first week's stay at Harris' she began to realize that perhaps she had always expected too much of people. Here were people of whom she had expected nothing opening up new side lights on life that she had never thought to explore. Life seemed full of possibilities to her now, at least, immediate possibilities.

She had not met again the courteous, smooth-faced young man who had mistaken her for an Indian girl, though he had come the next morning for the horses, and had ridden past the ranch more than once. Yet she had not forgotten the incident, or what the Harris girls had told her, for daily as she pa.s.sed the group of loungers on her return from school she heard his name gruffly spoken, intermixed with oaths. They certainly meant mischief, and she was curious to know what it was.

The first school week had ended. On Friday night she wondered how she could manage to exist through Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, but Sat.u.r.day morning found her in the saddle, accompanied by the three largest Harris boys, en route for the highest peaks of the mountains.

"This is something like living," she exclaimed, pulling in her horse after the first few miles. "How pretty all of this is! What people call scenery, I suppose. But give me the prairie, smooth and level as far as the eye can reach! There's nothing like it in all the world! The open prairie, a cool, spring day like this, and a horse that will go till it's ready to fall dead--that is life! Who is it that lives over there?"

she asked, pointing toward some ranch buildings, nestled in a low, green valley.

"That's the Englishman's place," answered the soft-voiced twin.

"Sheep-man," explained Dave disgustedly. "See them sheds?"

"Oh, the new man by the name of Livingston. Do you boys know him?" asked the girl curiously.

"Nope! Don't want to, neither. Seen him lots of times, though," answered Dave.

"He's come in here without bein' asked, an' thinks he can run the whole country," explained the soft-voiced twin.

"Is he trying to run the whole country?" asked Hope.

"Well, he's runnin' his sheep over everybody's range, an' they ain't goin' to stand for it," replied the boy.

"But what can they do about it? Have they asked him to move his sheep?"

"No. What's the use after they've been over the range--spoiled it, anyhow. No, you bet they ain't goin' to ask him nothing!"

The girl thought for a moment, absently pulling the "witches' knots"

from her horse's mane, while it climbed a hill at a swinging gait, then continued as though talking to herself:

"Once upon a time a young man took what money he had in the world, and going into a far-away, wild country started in business for himself. He had heard, probably, that there was more money in sheep than in cattle.

A great many people do hear that, so he bought sheep, thinking, perhaps, to make a pile of money in a few years, and then go back to his home and marry some nice, good girl of his choice. It takes money to get married and make a home, and to do mostly anything, they say, and so this young man bought sheep, for no one goes into the sheep business or any other kind of business unless they want to make money. They don't generally do it for fun. And, of course, he thought, as they all do, to get rich immediately. He made a great mistake in the beginning, being extremely ignorant. He brought his sheep to a cattle country, where there were no other sheep near his own. All the men around him hated sheep, as men who own cattle always do, and hating the sheep, they thought they hated the sheep-man also, who really was a very harmless young man, and wouldn't have offended them for anything. But these men's dislike for the sheep grew daily, and so their fancied dislike for the young man grew in proportion.

"The men in the country would meet together in little groups, and every day some man would have some new grievance to tell the others. It finally got on their brains, until all they could think or talk about was this new man and his sheep. The more they thought and talked, the more angry they became, until finally they forgot that he was another man like themselves--in all likelihood a good, honest man, who would not have done them wrong knowingly. They forgot a great many things, and all they could think about night or day was how they could do something to injure his business or himself. They got so after awhile that they talked only in low whispers about him, taking great pains that their families, children, and even their big _boys_, should not know their plans. They made a great mistake in not taking their boys into their confidence, because _boys_ are very often more reliable than men, and can always keep a secret a whole lot better. But perhaps the fathers knew that the boys had very good sense and would not go into anything like that without a better reason than they had, which was no reason at all.

"I never heard just what they planned to do to this newcomer to get rid of him and his sheep, but I know how it had to end." She looked up, searching each boy's intent, astonished face.

"Say, what're you drivin' at, anyway? You can't fool me--it's _him_!"

exclaimed Dave, pointing toward the sheep-ranch. "You're makin' up a story about him!"

"How'd you know all that?" asked the quicker, soft-voiced twin.

"Know all that. Why, how did you boys know all that? I suppose that I have ears, too--and I've heard of such things before," she replied.

"But you don't know how the end'll be. That's one thing you don't know,"

declared the soft-voiced twin. "You can't know that."

"She might be a fortune-teller like grandmother White Blanket," laughed the other.

"Is that old squaw in the farthest tepee from the house your own grandmother?" asked the girl.

"Yep, an' she ain't no squaw, either! She's a French half-breed," he said, with an unconscious proud uplifting of the shoulders.

Hope laughed slightly. "What's the other half?" she asked. The boy gave her a look of deep commiseration.

"I thought you had more learnin' than that! Why, the other half's white, of course."

"I beg your pardon!" gasped the girl. "My education along those lines must have been somewhat neglected. I had an idea that those were Indians camped down at your place. But French half-breeds,--a mixture of _white_ and _French_,--that's a different matter!" She stopped her horse and laughed with the immoderation of a boy. "That is rich," she cried. "If ever I go to New York again I shall spring that on the Prince. '_Mon Dieu!_' he will exclaim. 'What then are we, Mademoiselle, _we_, the _aristocracy_--the great nation of the _French_?'" Her face sobered.

"But this is not the question. _I_ do know how this will end, and I am not a fortune-teller, either. I know that the ones who are in the wrong about this matter will get the worst of it. Sometimes it means states prison, sometimes death--at all events, something not expected. I tell you, boys, I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of this for anything!

And do you know, I am real glad that your father doesn't need your help.

We will take a little side of our own and watch things--what do you say?

It will be lots of fun, and we'll know all the time that we are in the right, and maybe we can prevent them from doing any real wrong to themselves." She watched them closely to see how they accepted the suggestion. Her inspiration might be considered a reckless one, but their young minds lent themselves readily to her influence.

"The old man licked me this mornin'," growled Dave. "An' he can go straight to the hot place now, for all o' me! I'm goin' off on the round-up, anyway, next year."

"You boys know, don't you, that if your father ever found out that _I_ knew anything about this thing, he would probably give me a licking, too--and send me out of the country?" This for effect.

"I'd like to see him lay hands on you," roared Dave. "I'd fill him so full of lead that--that----"

Words failed him.

"I'd kill him if he did, Miss Hathaway," exclaimed the small boy, Ned, with quiet a.s.surance that brought a hint of laughter to the girl's face.

The soft-voiced twin rode up very close to her.

"He ain't goin' to find it out, an' don't you worry; we'll all stand by you while there's one of us left!"

"All right, boys, we're comrades now. I'll tell you what we'll do; we'll form a band--brigade--all by ourselves. I am commanding officer and you are my faithful scouts. How's that?" Hope's fancy was leading her away.

"Come on," she cried, "let's race this flat!"

The self-appointed commanding officer reached the smooth valley far in advance of her faithful scouts, who yelled in true Indian fas.h.i.+on as they rode up with her.

"I'll run you a mile an' beat you all hollow," declared Dave. "But on a two hundred yard stretch like this here place my horse don't have no chance to get started."

"I'll bet my quirt against yourn that you lose," said the soft-voiced twin.

"Keep your quirt! I don't want it, nohow. One's enough fur me. But I _can_ beat her just the same!" Dave was stubbornly positive.

"You'll have to ride my horse if you do beat her," continued the soft-voiced twin. Dave grew furious.

"Now, see here, that raw-boned, loose-jointed, watch-eyed cayuse o'

yourn couldn't run a good half mile without fallin' dead in his tracks!

What'er you a-givin' me, anyhow?" At that instant his attention was fortunately taken. "Where'd all them cattle come from?" he exclaimed.

They had turned up a narrow gulch, the youngest boy and Hope taking the lead, and had traveled it for perhaps fifty yards when they found themselves at a stand-still before a drove of cattle that were making their way slowly down the narrow trail.

"We won't go back," called the girl. "Come on up here and wait till they pa.s.s." And followed by the boys she guided her horse up the steep, rocky side of a high bank, and waited while the cattle came slowly on. They counted them as they pa.s.sed in twos and threes down the narrow valley.

When nearly two hundred had gone by a rider came in sight around the bend of the hill. Hope's horse whinnied, and the man's answered back, then the girl gave a scream of delight, and, unmindful of the rocky bank, or of the appearance of two other riders, rushed down, nearly unseating the old cow-puncher in her demonstrations of welcome.