The Forfeit Part 49

Exerting all her strength the girl helped him to the ground. The position he had chosen was close to the still form of his dead wife.

Once he was safely resting again, Nan breathed her relief.

He looked up at her, and something like a smile was in his blue eyes.

"Thanks, Nan. Say--I'll need that coat of yours--later. Will you go along--and get it?"

Nan moved away. She needed no second bidding. Nor did she return until the man's voice summoned her.

"Nan!" he called.

She came to him at once bearing her coat in her hands. For a second, surprise widened her eyes. He was no longer where she had left him.

He had moved a few yards away. And she wondered how he had been capable of the una.s.sisted effort. Then she glanced swiftly at the dead woman. The covering over the body had been moved. She was certain.

It had been replaced differently from the way she had arranged it. She offered no comment, but busied herself spreading her coat over the man's bared chest, where the rough bandages had been fastened with her father's aid.

Again she seated herself on the ground beside him, but now his face was turned from her. It was toward the still figure a few yards away.

"Tell me the rest now, Nan," he said. "She did her--best--to--save me."

"More than her best. Say, Jeff, she loved you better than life.

That's why she's--there."

"Tell me."

A new note had crept into his demand. There was a hush in his voice which gave his words a curious tenderness, reverence even for the woman they were speaking of.

"Guess it must have been over in a minute. Oh, say, it was just the biggest, blindest, most tremendous thing. It was too awful. She was so beautiful, too. And then the love in it. I kind of s.h.i.+ver when I think of it. We heard your shout, Jeff. Evie came right along with us. She insisted. You see, I'd made her mad. I'd blamed her to her face. I--I'm sorry now. But, my, she was brave, and how she loved you! Well, when Bud heard your shout I guess it didn't take him more than a minute to beat in the door they'd fastened. Him an' the boys.

The rest took seconds. We stood clear, as you said, guessing you meant a run for it. The place was ablaze. When the door fell we saw it all.

You were near it. Beyond you were two men. Sikkem was one. They were against the far wall, sideways from the door. They had guns in their hands. They meant finis.h.i.+ng you anyway, whatever happened after. But there was a bundle of blazing stuff in front of them, an' it seemed to worry them quite a deal. You started for the door. They got busy to use their guns right away. Then something happened. We'd forgot Evie.

Guess we were plumb staggered. Something rushed past us, into that blazing hut. It was Evie, an' she managed to get between you and them just as you dropped. She fell where she stood. It was the shots they'd meant for you. Then Bud opened on 'em, the boys did too, and after that we dragged you and Evie out. Oh, Jeff, she just didn't want to live without you."

A great sob broke from the girl, and it found an echo deep down in the man's heart. Nan buried her face in her hands, and the sound of her sobs alone broke the stillness.

The man offered no comment. He made no movement. He lay there with his clear eyes gazing at the silhouette of that still dark figure against the mysterious sheen of night. His look gave no key to his thoughts or emotions. His own physical sufferings even found no expression in them. But thoughts were stirring, deep thoughts and emotions which were his alone, and would remain his alone until the end.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE ROUND-UP

Bud's great bulk blocked the window opening on to the veranda. It was his favorite vantage point in leisure. The after breakfast pipe usually found him there. His evening pipe, when the sun was dipping toward the glistening, fretted peaks of the hills, rarely found him elsewhere. It was the point from which, in a way, he was able to view the whole setting of the life that was his.

The winter had come and gone, vanis.h.i.+ng amidst the howling gales of snow and sleet which never fail to herald the approach of the open season. It is almost like the last furious onslaught of a despairing and defeated foe. Now the world was abeat with swift pulsations in fibre and nerve. The wide valley of Rainbow Hill was stirring with the vigor of renewed life. Man, beast, fowl, foliage. It was the same.

Spring was in the blood. Spring was in the sap. And all the world was fresh and ready for the call of the coming year.

The spring round-up was in full swing with all its ceaseless toil for the ranching world. Already the pastures were crowded with stock brought in from distant valleys and grazings. Numberless calves answered their mothers' calls, and hung to their sides in panic at the commotion in the midst of which they found themselves. Already hundreds of them had endured the terrors of the searing irons which left them indelibly marked as the property of the great Obar Ranch, while hundreds more were awaiting the same process.

And the irons and forges were kept going all day. Just as was the largely augmented band of cattlemen. In ones and twos these hardy ruffians, many of them "toughs" who worked at no other time of the year, scoured every hill, and valley, and plain, however remote in the vast region. Theirs it was to locate the strays to whatever ranch they belonged, and bring them in to home pastures. The sorting would be made after and the distribution. For the whole of the round-up was a commonwealth amongst the growers, and each and everybody was called upon to do his adequate share in the work.

Bud was glad. Nor was it without good reason. The busy life was the life he lived for. And the busy life had been made possible and complete by the events of the previous summer.

He was physically weary and yearning for the supper which was still awaiting Nan's return. But if he were physically tired the feeling did not extend beyond his muscles. His thoughts were busy as his eyes gazed out upon the scenes of life and movement which were going on.

Just now he was thinking of the girl, impatient at the delay of her return from the pastures, where she was superintending the sorting for the morrow's branding. Thinking of her quickly carried him to thoughts of his partner and friend, and thus, by degrees, his mind went back to the events of the last summer which had left the present operations free from the threat which had then overshadowed all their efforts.

It had been a bad time, a bad time for them all. But for Jeff--ah, it had been touch and go. How near, perhaps, it was only now, after long months had pa.s.sed, and a proper perspective had been obtained, that the full extent of his narrow escape could be estimated.

It had been Christmas before Jeff was completely out of the hands of the surgeon they had had to obtain from Calthorpe. For three months of that time he had hovered between life and death. Nor had his trouble been confined solely to his physical hurts. No, these had been sore: they had been grievous in the extreme. Three times wounded, and his face, and hands, and arms badly burned. But half of his trouble had been the mental sufferings he had endured as a result of his marriage, and the final tragedy of Evie's death.

Now, as Bud looked back on that time, two things stood out beyond all the rest. It was the desperate courage--even madness he called it--of Jeff, and the superlative devotion of Nan.

He had by no means understood all that Jeff had achieved at the moment of his rescue. It was not till long after, by a process of close questioning, that the magnitude of it became plain. Then the marvel of it dawned on him. The courage, the madness of it. Jeff had rid the district of the whole gang of rustlers single-handed. He had shot five of them to death, and the last two had fallen victims to his own, Bud's, gun after they had been wounded by Jeff.

Then had followed that period when Nan had stepped into the picture.

With pride, and a great satisfaction, he remembered her weeks and months of devotion to the injured man. Her sleepless, tireless watch.

Her skill and patient tenderness. These things had been colossal. To him it had been a vision of a mother's tender care for an ailing child.

And the thought of it now stirred him to a touch of bitterness in his feelings toward his partner and friend.

To Bud there could only be one possible end to such a wealth of devotion as his little Nan had displayed, but it seemed that all his ideas on the subject must be wrong. To his uncomprehending mind they seemed no nearer to each other than in the days before a mad pa.s.sion had seized upon Jeff for the woman he had married.

Bud was very human. His patience had its limits, and just now they seemed to have been reached. He admitted this to himself frankly. He told himself he had "no durned patience with the bunch." And the bunch included both Nan and Jeff. He felt that Nan, too, must be to blame in some way.

He had "no durned patience with the bunch." Therein lay the key-note of his mixed feelings. Here everything was prospering but the one thing above all others upon which he had set his heart. He felt as though he must "b.u.t.t in" and put matters right himself. How, he did not attempt to suggest. But he felt that if he did not do so, or something or other did not occur to precipitate matters, the "whole durned shootin' match was li'ble to peter."

This was how he saw things. This was how he felt, as he awaited Nan's return from the pastures.

She came at last. She rode up and pa.s.sed her weary horse to a barn-hand who promptly waited upon her. She was covered with dust to her waist. Her top-boots were white with it. But her cheeks were as fresh as peach bloom, and her soft eyes shone with all a ranchman's enthusiasm at the most exhilarating period of the year.

"One hundred an' forty-two young Obars to-day, my Daddy," she cried out exuberantly. "Ther' don't seem any end to last year's crop. Say, Jeff's just crazy to death about things."

"He surely is."

The old man's reply was tinged by a reflection of his thoughts. But his eyes lit nevertheless.

Nan regarded him seriously.

"Most men get a grouch when they're kept waiting food," she observed slily. "Say, come right in an' you'll soon feel the world's a mighty good place to live in."

Instantly Bud's humor improved.

"Guess you do your best to make it that way."

The girl laughed as she led the way in.

"That surely is a pretty nice talk, my Daddy. Guess I'll take advantage of it, an' keep you waiting another three minutes while I get rid of the dust."

Her father nodded.