The Duke Of Chimney Butte Part 24

She sat in meditation, her face to the window, presenting the soft turn of her cheek and chin to Lambert's view. She was too fine and good for that country, he thought, too good for the best that it ever could offer or give, no matter how generously the future might atone for the hards.h.i.+ps of the past. It would be better for her to leave it, he wanted her to leave it, but not with her handsome head bowed in defeat.

"I think if you were to sift the earth and screen out its meanest, they wouldn't be a match for the people around here," she said. "There wouldn't be a bit of use taking this outrage up with the authorities; Kerr and his gang would say it was a joke, and get away with it, too."

"I wouldn't go squealing to the county authorities, Vesta, even if I knew I'd get results. This is something a man has to square for himself.

Maybe they intended it for a joke, too, but it was a little rougher than I'm used to."

"There's no doubt what their intention was. You can understand my feelings toward them now, Duke; maybe I'll not seem such a savage."

"I've got a case with you against them all, Vesta."

He made no mental reservation as he spoke; there was no pleading for exception in Grace Kerr's dark eyes that he could grant. Long as he had nestled the romance between them in his breast, long as he had looked into the West and sent his dream out after her, he could not, in this sore hour, forgive her the taint of her blood.

He felt that all tenderness in him toward any of her name was dead. It had been a pretty fancy to hold, that thought of finding her, but she was only swamp-fire that had lured him to the door of h.e.l.l. Still the marvel of his meeting her, the violet scent of his old dream, lingered sweetly with him like the perfume that remains after a beautiful woman whose presence has illuminated a room. So hard does romance die.

"I think I'll have to break my word to you and buckle on my gun again for a little while," she said. "Mr. Wilson can't ride the fence alone, capable and willing as he is, and ready to go day and night."

"Leave it to him till I'm out again, Vesta; that will only be a day or two----"

"A day or two! Three or four weeks, if you do well."

"No, not that long, not anything like that long," he denied with certainty. "They didn't hurt me very much."

"Well, if they didn't hurt you much they damaged you considerably."

He grinned over the serious distinction that she made between the words.

Then he thought, pleasantly, that Vesta's voice seemed fitted to her lips like the tone of some beautiful instrument. It was even and soft, slow and soothing, as her manner was deliberate and well calculated, her presence a comfort to the eye and the mind alike.

An exceptional combination of a girl, he reflected, speculating on what sort of man would marry her. Whoever he was, whatever he might be, he would be only secondary to her all through the compact. That chap would come walking a little way behind her all the time, with a contented eye and a certain pride in his situation. It was a diverting fancy as he lay there in the darkening room, Vesta coming down the years a strong, handsome, proud figure in the foreground, that man just far enough behind her to give the impression as he pa.s.sed that he belonged to her _entourage_, but never quite overtaking her.

Even so, the world might well envy the man his position. Still, if a man should happen along who could take the lead--but Vesta wouldn't have him; she wouldn't surrender. It might cost her pain to go her way with her pretty head up, her eyes on the road far beyond, but she would go alone and hide her pain rather than surrender. That would be Vesta Philbrook's way.

Myrtle, the negro woman, came in with chicken broth. Vesta made a light for him to sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself, the spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen and purple from the long constriction of his bonds.

Next morning Vesta came in arrayed in her riding habit, her sombrero on, as she had appeared the first time he saw her. Only she was so much lovelier now, with the light of friends.h.i.+p and tender concern in her face, that he was gladdened by her presence in the door. It was as of a sudden burst of music, or the voice of someone for whom the heart is sick.

He was perfectly fine, he told her, although he was as sore as a burn.

In about two days he would be in the saddle again; she didn't need to bother about riding fence, it would be all right, he knew. His declaration didn't carry a.s.surance. He could see that by the changing cast of her face, as sensitive as still water to a breathing wind.

She was wearing her pistol, and appeared very competent with it on her hip, and very high-bred and above that station of contention and strife.

He was troubled not a little at sight of her thus prepared to take up the battles which she had renounced and surrendered into his hands only yesterday. She must have read it in his eyes.

"I'm only going to watch the fence and repair it to keep the cattle in if they cut it," she said. "I'll not take the offensive, even if I see her--them cutting it; I'll only act on the defensive, in any case. I promise you that, Duke."

She left him with that promise, before he could commend her on the wisdom of her resolution, or set her right on the matter of Grace Kerr.

From the way Vesta spoke, a man would think she believed he had some tender feeling for that wild girl, and the idea of it was so preposterous that he felt his face grow hot.

He was uneasy for Vesta that day, in spite of her promise to avoid trouble, and fretted a good deal over his incapacitated state. His shoulder burned where Tom Hargus' knife had sc.r.a.ped the bone, his wounded back was stiff.

Without this bodily suffering he would have been miserable, for he had the sweat of his humiliation to wallow in, the black cloud of his contemplated vengeance across his mind in ever-deepening shadow. On his day of reckoning he cogitated long, planning how he was to bring it about. The law would not justify him in going out to seek these men and shooting them down where overtaken. Time and circ.u.mstance must be ready to his hand before he could strike and wipe out that disgraceful score.

It was not to be believed that they would allow the matter to stand where it was; that was a comforting thought. They would seek occasion to renew the trouble, and push it to their desired conclusion. That was the day to which he looked forward in hot eagerness. Never again would he be taken like a rabbit in a trap. He felt that, to stand clear before the law, he would have to wait for them to push their fight on him, but he vowed they never would find him unprepared, asleep or awake, under roof or under sky.

He would get Taterleg to oil up a pair of pistols from among the number around the bunkhouse and leave them with him that night. There was satisfaction in the antic.i.p.ation of these preparations. Dwelling on them he fell asleep. He woke late in the afternoon, when the sun was yellow on the wall, the shadow of the cottonwood leaves quivering like dragonflies' wings.

On the little table beside his bed, near his gla.s.s, a bit of white paper lay. He looked at it curiously. It bore writing in ink and marks as of a pin.

_Just to say h.e.l.lo, Duke._

That was the message, unsigned, folded as it had been pinned to the wire. Vesta had brought it and left it there while he slept.

He drew himself up with stiff carefulness and read it again, holding it in his fingers then and gazing in abstraction out of the window, through which he could pick up the landscape across the river, missing the brink of the mesa entirely.

A softness, as of the rebirth of his old romance, swept him, submerging the bitter thoughts and vengeful plans which had been his but a few hours before, the lees of which were still heavy in him. This little piece of writing proved that Grace was innocent of anything that had befallen him. In the friendly good-will of her heart she thought him, as she doubtless wished him, unharmed and well.

There was something in that girl better than her connections would seem to guarantee; she was not intractable, she was not beyond the influence of generosity, nor deaf to the argument of honor. It would be unfair to hold her birth and relations.h.i.+p against her. n.o.bility had sprung out of baseness many times in the painful history of human progress. If she was vengeful and vindictive, it was what the country had made her. She should not be judged for this in measure harsher than Vesta Philbrook should be judged. The acts of both were controlled by what they believed to be the right.

Perhaps, and who knows, and why not? So, a train of dreams starting and blowing from him, like smoke from a censer, perfumed smoke, purging the place of demons which confuse the lines of men's and women's lives and set them counter where they should go in amity, warm hand in warm hand, side by side.

CHAPTER XVII

HOW THICK IS BLOOD?

No sterner figure ever rode the Bad Lands than Jeremiah Lambert appeared eight days after his escape out of his enemies' hands. The last five days of his internment he had spent in his own quarters, protesting to Vesta that he was no longer an invalid, and that further receipt of her tender ministrations would amount to obtaining a valuable consideration by false pretense.

This morning as he rode about his duty the scar left by Jim Wilder's knife in his cheek never had appeared so prominent. It cast over all his face a shadow of grimness, and imparted to it an aged and seasoned appearance not warranted by either his experience or his years. Although he had not carried any superfluous flesh before his night of torture, he was lighter now by many pounds.

Not a handsome man that day, not much about him to recall the red-faced, full-blooded agent of the All-in-One who had pushed his bicycle into the Syndicate camp that night, guided by Taterleg's song.

But there was a look of confidence in his eyes that had not been his in those days, which he considered now as far distant and embryonic; there was a certainty in his hand that made him a man in a man's place anywhere in the extreme exactions of that land.

Vesta was firm in her intention of giving up the ranch and leaving the Bad Lands as soon as she could sell the cattle. With that program ahead of him, Lambert was going this morning to look over the herd and estimate the number of cattle ready for market, that he might place his order for cars.

He didn't question the wisdom of reducing the herd, for that was good business; but it hurt him to have Vesta leave there with drooping feathers, acknowledging to the brutal forces which had opposed the ranch so long that she was beaten. He would have her go after victory over them, for it was no place for Vesta. But he would like for her to stay until he had broken their opposition, and compelled them to take off their hats to her fence.

He swore as he rode this morning that he would do it. Vesta should not clean out the cattle, lock the lonesome ranchhouse, abandon the barns and that vast investment of money to the skulking wolves who waited only such a retreat to sneak in and despoil the place. He had fixed in his mind the intention, firm as a rock in the desert that defied storm and disintegration, to bring every man of that gang up to the wire fence in his turn and bend him before it, or break him if he would not bend.

This accomplished, the right of the fence established on such terms that it would be respected evermore, Vesta might go, if she desired. Surely it would be better for her, a pearl in those dark waters where her beauty would corrode and her soul would suffer in the isolation too hard for one of her fine harmony to bear. Perhaps she would turn the ranch over to him to run, with a band of sheep which he could handle and increase on shares, after the custom of that business, to the profit of both.

He had speculated on this eventuality not a little during the days of his enforced idleness. This morning the thought was so strong in him that it amounted almost to a plan. Maybe there was a face in these calculations, a face illumined by clear, dark eyes, which seemed to strain over the brink of the future and beckon him on. Blood might stand between them, and differences almost irreconcilable, but the face withdrew never.

It was evening before he worked through the herd and made it round to the place where Grace Kerr had cut the fence. There was no message for him. Without foundation for his disappointment, he was disappointed. He wondered if she had been there, and bent in his saddle to examine the ground across the fence.

There were tracks of a horse, but whether old or new he was not educated enough yet in range-craft to tell. He looked toward the hill from which he had watched her ride to cut the fence, hoping she might appear. He knew that this hope was traitorous to his employer, he felt that his desire toward this girl was unworthy, but he wanted to see her and hear her speak.

Foolish, also, to yield to that desire to let down the fence where he had hooked the wire and ride out to see if he could find her. Still, there was so little probability of seeing her that he was not ashamed, only for the twinge of a disloyal act, as he rode toward the hill, his long shadow ambling beside him, a giant horseman on a mammoth steed.