Prairie Flowers Part 30

"Do you know why?"

The girl shook her head.

"Because he promised me he wouldn't take a drink until after he had talked with my husband. Win wants to see him on business. Wants to persuade him to keep the place he's held for a year, as foreman of the Y Bar. Win is going to buy the Y Bar."

"The Y Bar!"

"Yes, do you know the Y Bar?"

The girl nodded slowly: "I was born there, and lived there the most of my life. Dad moved over here onto Red Sand while I was away at school.

The Y Bar is--is like home to me."

"Mr. Colston says he's the best foreman he ever had. You should hear him speak of him--of his taming a great wild stallion they call the Red King----"

"The Red King!" cried Janet, her eyes wide with excitement, "I know the Red King--I've seen him often on the range. He's the most wonderful horse in the world. They said n.o.body could ride him. Once or twice men tried it--and the Red King killed them. And, did Tex ride him?"

Alice nodded: "Yes, he rode him--tamed him so the great wild horse would come when he whistled. But he wouldn't brand him. And then, one night, he leaped onto his back without saddle or bridle and rode him straight out onto the open range--and turned him loose!"

The girl's eyes were s.h.i.+ning: "Oh, I'm glad--glad! Wait till you see the Red King, and you will be glad, too. He's the embodiment of everything that's wild, and free, and strong. I should hate to think of him--branded--labouring under the saddle like a common cow-horse."

"That's just what the Texan thought--so he turned him out onto the range again. It was a great big thing to do--and it was done in a great big way--by a man with a great big poetic soul." There was a long silence during which the little clock ticked incessantly, Alice spoke again, more to herself than to the girl: "What Tex needs is some strong incentive, something worth while, something to work for, to direct his marvellous energy toward--he needs someone to love, and who will love him. What he needs is not a sister--it's a wife."

"Why didn't you marry him, then?" flashed the girl.

Alice smiled: "He never asked me," she answered, "and I couldn't have married him, if he had. Because, really, I've always loved Win--for years and years."

"Maybe he won't ask--anyone else, either. If he asks me, I won't marry him. I won't marry anybody!" She concluded with a defiant toss of the head.

"I certainly shouldn't either, if I felt that way. And if he should ask you, you stick to it, or you will spoil my plans----"

"Your--plans?" questioned the girl.

"Yes, I've got the grandest scheme. I haven't told a soul. When we get settled on the Y Bar I'm going to send for a friend of mine--she's a perfectly beautiful girl, and she's just as adorable as she is beautiful. And I'm going to make her come and pay us a long visit. I'm a great believer in propinquity, and especially out here----"

Janet sniffed audibly: "She'd probably get lost the first thing----"

"That's it, exactly!" cried Alice enthusiastically. "That's just what I'm counting on--and who would find her? Why Tex, of course! There you have it--all the ingredients of a first-cla.s.s romance. Beautiful maiden lost on the range--forlorn, homesick, wretched, scared. Enter hero--rescues maiden--if I could only work in a villain of some kind--but maybe one will turn up. Anyway, even without a villain it's almost sure to work--don't you think?"

Alice repressed a desire to smile as she noted the girl's flushed face, "I--I think it's perfectly horrid! It's a--what do they call it? A regular frame-up! Suppose he don't love the girl? Suppose he don't want to marry her?"

Alice laughed: "Well, then you may rest a.s.sured he won't marry her! He won't marry anyone he don't want to, and as the Irish say, 'by the same token,' when he finds the girl he wants to marry, he'll marry her. If I were a girl and he wanted to marry me, and I didn't want to marry him, I'd jump onto a horse and I'd ride and ride and ride till I got clear out of the cattle country."

Janet stood up and drew on her gloves. "Well, I must be going. It's nearly noon. Good-bye. Glad to have met you, I'm sure."

"Good-bye," called Alice, as the girl stepped from the door, "and when we get settled at the Y Bar, do come over and see us--make us a nice long visit. Please!"

"Thank you, so much! I certainly shall--come to see you at the Y Bar."

Alice Endicott smiled as she watched the girl stamp away toward the corral.

Declining the pressing invitation of both Jennie and Cinnabar Joe to stay for dinner, Janet mounted and rode across the creek.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Jennie, as she watched her out of sight, "she acted like she's mad! An' here I thought them two would hit it off fine.

Ain't that jest like women? I'm one myself, but--Gee, they're funny!"

Out on the bench Janet spurred the bay mare into a run and headed straight for the bad lands. A jack-rabbit jumped from his bed almost under her horse's hoofs, and a half-dozen antelope raised their heads and gazed at her for a moment before scampering off, their white tails looking for all the world like great bunches of down bobbing over the prairie--but Janet saw none of these. In her mind's eye was the picture of a slenderly built cowboy who sat his horse close beside hers, whose gloved hand slipped from her sleeve and gripped her fingers in a strong firm clasp. His hat rested upon the edge of a bandage that was bound tightly about his head--a bandage bordered with tatting. His lips moved and he was speaking to her, "For G.o.d's sake, don't hinder--help!" His fine eyes, drawn with worry and pain, looked straight into hers--and in their depths she read--"Oh, I'm coming--Tex!" she cried aloud, "I must find him--I must! If he knows she's safe--maybe he will--will stop hunting for Purdy! Oh, if anything should--happen to him--now!"

"Little fool of an Eastern girl!" she exploded, a few miles farther on.

"If she did come out here and get lost and if he did find her, and if--she'd never make him happy, even if he did marry her! But that Mrs.

Endicott--I like her." She pulled up abruptly upon the very edge of the bad lands and gazed out over the pink and black and purple waste. Her brow drew into a puzzled frown. "I wonder," she whispered, "I wonder if she _did_ know I was just crazy about her Texan?" And, with the question unanswered, she touched the bay mare with her spurs and headed her down a long black ridge that extended far into the bad lands.

CHAPTER XXVII

SOME SHOOTING

When the Texan left Ca.s.s Grimshaw he headed due north. He rode leisurely--light-heartedly. The knowledge that Alice was safe at Cinnabar Joe's left his mind free to follow its own bent, and its bent carried it back to the little cabin on Red Sand, and the girl with the blue-black eyes. Most men would have concentrated upon the grim work in hand--but not so the Texan. He was going to kill Purdy because Purdy needed killing. By his repeated acts Purdy had forfeited his right to live among men. He was a menace--a power for harm whose liberty endangered the lives and happiness of others. His course in hunting down and killing this enemy of society needed no elaboration nor justification. It was a thing to be done in the course of the day's work. The fact that Purdy knew the ground, and he did not, and that the numerical odds were four to one against him, bothered him not at all. If others of the same ilk had seen fit to throw in with Purdy they must abide the consequences.

So his thoughts were of the girl, and his lips broke into a smile--not the twisted smile that had become almost habitual with him, but a boyish smile that caused a fanlike arrangement of little wrinkles to radiate from the corners of his eyes, and the eyes themselves to twinkle with mirth. As men of the open are p.r.o.ne to do, he voiced his thoughts as they came: "She sure give me to onderstand last night that runnin'

off with other men's wives is an amus.e.m.e.nt that wouldn't never meet her popular approval. It's, what do the French call it--a _faux pas_ that's not only frowned on, but actually scowled at, an' made the excuse for numerous an' sundry barbed shafts of sarcasm an' caustic observations of a more or less personal application, all of which is supposed to make a man feel like he'd not only et the canary, but a whole d.a.m.n buzzard--an'

wish he hadn't lived to survive doin' it." The man glanced up at the sun. "Time I was gettin' outside of this lunch she packed up for me--chances are I won't want to stop an' eat it after awhile."

Dismounting, he seated himself with his back against a rock and unrolled the sandwiches. "She made 'em," he observed to Blue, "regular light bread, an' good thick ham between." He devoured the sandwich slowly, and reached for another. "Ca.s.s said to _make_ her have me," he smiled; "h.e.l.l of a lot he knows about women, but--the dope's right, at that. Boy, those eyes! An' that hair, an'--an', oh, the whole _woman_ of her! If a man had a girl like that to go home to--an' she loved him--an' he knew she was thinkin' about him--an' pullin' for him to--to make good! There wouldn't be nothin' to it--he'd just naturally have to make good. Janet McWhorter--Janet Benton--Mrs. Tex Benton--Mrs. Horatio Benton--h.e.l.l! I hope she don't go in for the Horatio part. It's almost as bad as Winthrop Adams Endicott! Tex is better--if she ever thinks to inquire about my other name I'll tell her it's Mike, or else I'll go plumb to the other extreme an' call it Percy or Reginald. I ain't got her yet--but believe me! She's goin' to have a war on her hands till I do get her!

"I'll just admit that she'll marry me--what then? It's time I was kind of takin' inventory. Here's what she gets: One cow-hand an'

outfit--includin' one extra saddle horse, a bed-roll, an' a war-bag full of odds an' ends of raiment; some dirty, an' some clean; some tore, an'

some in a fair state of preservation. Eight hundred an' forty dollars in cash--minus what it'll take to square me in Timber City.

An'--an'--that's all! She ain't goin' to derive no h.e.l.l of a material advantage from the union, that's sure. But, if I've still got my job it ain't so bad to start off with. Other a.s.sets, what we used to call incorporeal hereditaments back in law school--fair workin' knowledge of the cattle an' horse business. Health--good. Disposition--um-m-m, kind, to murderous. Habits--bad, to worse. Let's see: smokin'--that's all right: chewin'--prob'ly be allowable if indulged in out doors only.

Swearin'--prob'ly won't be an issue till the kids get old enough to listen. Gamblin'--prob'ly be limited to poker--friendly games an'

pifflin' limit. Drinkin'--let's see, the only year since I can remember I don't drink nothin' I quit better than eight hundred dollars to the good--first time I ever had eight hundred dollars all at once in my life. What happens? Get to drinkin' for a half a day, an' Bing! Off comes a hundred, maybe two hundred to pay up for the h.e.l.l I raised! Does it pay? Not for a married man! Not for me! An' besides, what was it she said when I turned down the drink she offered me? She said, 'I'm glad--I hate the stuff.'" He paused, smiling reminiscently, "drinkin's lots of fun--but, a man's got to pay for his fun--more ways than one, he's got to pay. If it'll make her happy to not drink, an' onhappy to drink--the way I look at it, it's a d.a.m.ned mean man that would pay for his own belly-wash with his wife's happiness! That about concludes the takin'

stock, then: Drinkin'--once! Drinkin'--twice! Drinkin'--three times--an'

_out_! I'm a non-drinker, a teetotaller, a pop-lapper, an' a grape-juice swizzler! At that, if I'd known that last drink I had back there in Timber City was goin' to be the very last doggone drink I was ever goin'

to get, I'd kind of strung it along a little--sort of sipped it slow an'

solemn as become an obsequy. Instead of which, I tossed it off light-hearted, casual, even what you might call flippant--an' it's the last drink I was ever goin' to have!"

He rose, brushed a stray crumb or two from his s.h.i.+rt, and mounted: "Come on, Blue, let's get this stuff over with, an' wash our hands, an' hit for Red Sand. Ca.s.s says Cinnabar Joe's place ain't only about four miles above McWhorter's."

Thirty minutes later the Texan slowed his horse to a walk.

Rock-fragments appeared, dotting the surface of ridges and coulees.

Small at first, these fragments increased in size and number as the man pushed northward. He knew from Ca.s.s Grimshaw's description that he was approaching the rendezvous of Purdy and his gang. Far ahead he could see the upstanding walls of rock that marked the entrance to the gorge or crater which marked the spot where some t.i.tanic explosion of nature had shattered a mountain--shattered it, and scattered its fragments over the surrounding plain. But the Texan was not thinking of the shattered mountain, nor of the girl on Red Sand. He hitched his belt, glanced at the revolver in its holster, and slipping his hand beneath his s.h.i.+rt, made sure that Long Bill's six-gun lay ready to his hand. He proceeded slowly, pausing at frequent intervals to scan the rock-dotted plain. The mouth of the gorge showed distinctly, now. He pulled up his horse and studied the ground. He decided to dismount and proceed on foot--to work his way from rock-fragment to rock-fragment. A slight sound caused him to glance swiftly to the left. Not fifty feet away the malevolent face of Purdy stared at him above the barrels of two six-guns. Directly before him he saw another man, and to the right two more. And every man had him covered. His eyes returned to Purdy, and his lips twisted into their cynical grin. "Well--why in h.e.l.l don't you shoot?"

"Want to git it over with in a hurry, do you?" sneered the outlaw. "Well I don't! I'm goin' to git you all right, but I'm goin' to take my time to it. When you skipped out a year back fer fear of what I'd do to you, you'd ought to stayed away."

The Texan laughed: "Just as big a d.a.m.ned fool as ever, Purdy. Just as big a four-flusher, too. You better shoot while you've got the chance.

'Cause if you don't I'll kill you, sure as h.e.l.l."

Purdy sneered: "Gittin' in yer bluff right up to the last, eh? Thought you could sneak up an' git me when I wasn't lookin', eh? Thought--" The sentence was never finished. The Texan's expression suddenly changed.