The Last Straw Part 15

OUTCASTS

At sunset a girl rider descended from the uplands into the shadows of Devil's Hole. The big brown which carried her picked his way slowly down the treacherous trail, nose low, ears forward, selecting his footing with care.

The girl sat braced back in her saddle. Her face was dark, eyes filled with a brooding, but the mouth though sternly set showed a rueful droop at the corners.

Her mind was not on her progress. She was lost in a very definite consideration, something which stirred resentment, it was evident from her face. Finally she drew a sharp deep breath of impatience.

"Oh, get along, you dromedary!" she muttered and rowelled her horse sharply.

The big beast sprang forward with a grunt and went down the trail in long, shaking bounds, even more intent on his footing than before and when they reached the level he crashed through the brush at a high lope, leaping little washes with great lunges and bearing his light rider swiftly toward the cabin from which a whisp of smoke curled.

The discouraged looking man stood before the doorway watching her come and as the girl swung down, before the horse was well halted, she flashed a quick smile at him.

"I heerd you comin', daughter, away back thar. I sh.o.r.e thought the devil himself might 've been after you!"

He smiled wanly.

"I seen her again," the girl said as she dragged her saddle off.

The man pulled languidly at his mustache.

"She see you?"

"No. I set under a juniper and watched 'em ... her an' that Beck man."

"Mebby if you was to talk to her an' get friendly--"

"I don't want to be no friends with her! I hate her already!"

She spat out the words and her face was a storm of dislike.

"What I meant ... mebby 't would be easier for us if you played like you was friends. Then she mightn't suspect."

She rolled her saddle to its side and spread the blanket over it.

"No. I can't do things that-a way, Alf,"--with a slow shake of her head. "Mebby 't would get us more ... but there's somethin' in me, in here,"--a palm to her breast--"that won't let me. I can steal her blind an' only be glad about it, but I couldn't make up like I was her friend while I done it."

"Mebby ... mebby you would sure enough like her," he persisted. "You ain't never had no friends--"

"I'd never like her, not while we're this way,"--with a gesture to include the litter about the cabin. "She's got all that I want. She's had all the things I've never had. She's got clothes, lots of pretty clothes; she's lived in towns an's always had things easy. She's got friends and folks to respect her. You can tell that by lookin' at her....

"What makes me that way, Alf? What makes me hate folks that have got the things I want?"

He pulled on his mustache again and scanned the scarlet sky which rose above the purple heights to the westward. He shook his head rather helplessly and then looked at the girl who stood before him, the eagerness of her query showing in her eyes with an intensity that was almost desperate.

"Mebby you get it from me. I've had it ... always. That's all I have had ... that an' hard luck."

"But I don't like it!" she said and in the tone was something of the spirit of a bewildered little girl. "I'd like to be like other girls.

I'd like to have friends ... girl friends, but the more I want 'em, the more I hate those that have 'em!

"What's the matter with me, Alf?"

"The same thing that's the matter with me, daughter: hard luck. I've wanted things so bad that not hevin' 'em has soured me. I've watched other outfits grow big an' rich an' nothin' like that has ever come my way. The bigger the rest got, the harder 't was for me to get along ...

an' the worse I hated 'em!"

There was no iron in his voice; just the whine of a weakling, dispirited to a point where his resentment at ill fortune, even, was a pa.s.sive thing.

"Why, she's got a fine house to live in, an' I'll bet she always had.

She's never knowed what it was to set out a norther in a wagon. She's never lived on buckskin an' frozen spuds all winter. She's never been chased from one place to another....

"Folks respect her for what she's got. Why don't folks get respected for just what they are?"

There was pathos in that query.

The man answered:

"It ain't what you are that matters, daughter. It's what you own."

"You've always said that, ever since I can remember. Mebby if you hadn't said it so much, Alf, I wouldn't feel like I do."

He s.h.i.+fted his footing uneasily and looked again at the flaring sky.

"Well, it's so," he whined. "You'd have found it out yourself. I've brung you up the best I knowed how."

"Oh, Alf! I didn't mean I was finding fault! d.a.m.ned if you _ain't_ brought me up good! Why, you're the only friend I got Alf! What'd I do without you? You're the only one I've ever knowed ... real well. You're the only one who's ever been good to me!" She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his face with a smile of genuine affection.

"Good old Alf! We've been pals, ain't we?"

He nodded, and said:

"An' if you stick to me a little mite longer, you'll have enough.

"You're brighter'n I be, daughter. You got a longer head. Now's your chanct to use it!" He looked about, somewhat nervously, as if they might be overheard. "Sometimes I get afeerd. Lately, since we've come here, I've been afeerd. It's the only time I ever let anybody else know what my plans was an' it makes me feel creepy to think somebody else _knows!_"

"'Fraid of what, Alf?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Gettin' caught again, an'--"

"Oh, but you won't! You can't. Alf, you can't get caught an' sent to jail an' leave me alone again!"

She spoke in a whisper and gripped her fist for emphasis.

"I sh.o.r.e don't want to leave you, daughter. I sh.o.r.e don't want to get catched. That's where you come in ... helpin' me scheme! I ain't afeerd of havin' 'em come up on me an' git me red-handed so much as I am of havin' somebody else know what's goin' on."

"But he sent for us. He told us the outfit was goin' to be owned by a tenderfoot. He's as much in danger as we, ain't he?"

Her father nodded slowly.