Chapter XXIII
The Will-o'-the-Wisp
For the hour, if for no longer, the tables plainly were turned uponSanchia. The high content which so abruptly had enveloped Helen andHoward was comparable to the old magic armour of the fairy tales whichthe fortunate prince found always at his time of need. Through itvenomed glance and bitter tongue might not pass; as Sanchia's angerrose the two lovers looked into each other's eyes and laughed. AgainSanchia bit her lips and sat back.
'Dear old pops,' said Helen, going to her father's side and slippingboth arms about his neck, ruffling his scant hair and otherwise makingfree with his passive person, thereby achieving the dual result ofcoming between him and Sanchia and giving a joyous outlet to a newemotion. 'I am not going to leave you, after all. And the West is thenicest country in the world, too. And Alan and I were wrong to run offand leave you as we did. We'll stay right with you now, and it will beso much jollier that way; won't it, Mrs. Murray?'
Longstreet patted her hand; Sanchia Murray measured her anew.
'And I too,' ran on Helen, 'must take more interest in your work, yourbooks. Now that we live right on the spot where the things are, thestrata and eroded canons and--and relics of monster upheavals andfossils of the Pliocene age and all that--it will be so much fun tostudy about them, all together. Alan thinks so, I'm sure. Don't youagree, Mrs. Murray?'
Helen's eyes were dancing, Longstreet imagined with newly inspiredinterest, Alan knew with the light of battle; Sanchia's eyes wereangry. The girl had stated her plan of campaign as though in so manywords. If time came when Longstreet had a second golden secret totell, she meant to hear it and to have Alan hear it at least not aninstant later than Mrs. Murray; thereafter, with odds two to oneagainst the widow, they should see what they would see.
Sanchia did much thinking and little talking. She remained an hour.During the last half-hour she developed a slight but growinglyinsistent cough. Before she left she had drawn the desired query fromLongstreet. Oh, hadn't he noticed before? It had been coming on herfor a month. The doctors were alarmed for her--but she smiled bravely.They had even commanded that she move away from the dust and noise of atown; that she pitch a tent somewhere on the higher lands and liveout-doors all of the time. Helen saw what was coming before the actualwords were spoken. It was Longstreet who was finally led to extend theinvitation! Why didn't she move into a tent near them? And with alook in which gratitude seemed blurred in a mist of tears, Sanchiaaccepted. She would move to-morrow and pitch her tent right up therenear the spring.
'If you don't mind, Helen dear?' she said. 'Your little summer houseby the spring may be sacred ground?'
Promptly Helen made her a present of it. All that she wanted were somethings she had left there, a pair of spurs and a bridle; Sanchia wasperfectly welcome to the rest.
They all went out together for Sanchia's horse. And Sanchia, acceptingthe altered battle-ground to which Helen's tactics had driven her,seeing that she was to have little opportunity of getting Longstreetoff to herself, began a straight drive at her main objective. She laidan affectionate hand on his arm as though thrown upon that necessity bythe irregularities of the trail in which she had stumbled, and turnedthe battery of her really very pretty eyes upon him. With her eyes shesaid, boldly yet timidly: 'You splendid man, you have touched my heart!You noble creature, you have made Sanchia Murray love you! Generousman, you have come to mean everything to a poor little woman who islonely!'
It is much to be said in a glance, but Sanchia had never travelled sofar on her chosen road of life if she had not learned, long ago, how toput into a look all that she did not feel. And she did not stop withthe one look; again she appeared to stumble, again her eyelidsfluttered upward, her glance melted into his; again she flashedsufficient message to redden Longstreet's cheeks and make his own eyesburn with embarrassment. And since it was obvious that henceforwardthe combat must be waged in the open, she did not await the unlikelyopportunity of some distant tete-a-tete to emphasize her intention.Before she mounted she managed to allow the glowingly embarrassed manto hold her two hands; and she told him whisperingly:
'I would to God that you had come a few years earlier into the life ofSanchia Murray!' She sighed and squeezed his hands. Then she smiled awan little smile. 'You have come to mean so much, oh, so much, in mypoor little lonely existence.'
She mounted and rode away, waving her farewell, looking only atLongstreet. They all saw how, before she reached the bend in thetrail, her handkerchief went to her eyes. Longstreet appearedgenuinely worried.
'I am sorry for that little woman,' he said thoughtfully.
'She's making love at you, papa,' laughed Helen, as though the matterwere of no moment but delightfully ridiculous. 'Fancy Sanchia Murrayfalling in love with dear old pops!'
He looked at her severely.
'You should not speak lightly of such matters, my dear,' he chided her.'Mind you, I am not admitting that there is any ground for such asuspicion as you express.'
'But if there were ground for it?'
'Is there any reason why a pretty woman should not fall in love?' heasked her stiffly. 'Further, is your father such a man that no womancould care for him?' He stalked away.
Helen gasped after him and was speechless.
In due course of time Howard recalled that there was a man namedRoberts, a teamster in Sanchia's Town; and that on the Desert Valleyranch there were mules which should be sold; and that, though there wasa golden paradise here in Bear Valley, there remained a workaday worldoutside the charmed confines where time was of the essence. He madeHelen understand that if he were to make good in his acquisition of thecattle range he must be down there among his men and his herds duringevery working hour of the day, but that the nights were his own. Hewas to come up every night that it was possible. She was to guard herfather from Sanchia during the days; he was to seek to be on hand ifever the golden news broke again; they two were to check theadventuress' move. And Helen was to keep the spurs and bridle; she wasto take Danny not as a loan but as a gift, of which only they were toknow; she was to induce her father to ride down to the lower valley towatch the round-up. Then, lingeringly and with many a backward look,Alan Howard went on his way.
He found his man and, while Howard sat sideways in the saddle andRoberts whittled at a stick, they drove their bargain. The mules weresold for two thousand dollars, if they were as Roberts remembered themand as Howard represented them; Roberts would ride down the next dayfor them and would pay six hundred dollars as the first payment andthereafter not less than two hundred a month. Howard was satisfied.He would have a little more cash for running expenses or for thepurchase of more stock if he could find another chance like that whenhe had bought the calves from Tony Vaca in French Valley.
The week rolled by, bursting with details requiring quick attention.Danny was found, roped, saddled and bridled. Longstreet rode him,delighting in the pony's high spirits, more delighted to see how he'came around.' Gentled sufficiently and reminded that he was no longera free agent to fling up his heels at the wind and race recklesslywhere he would, but that he was man's friend and servant, Danny waspresented to Helen. He ate sugar that she gave him; he returned bit bybit the impulsive love which she granted him outright. In his newtrappings, to which Howard had added a saddle from his own stables,Danny accepted his new honours like a thoroughbred.
Helen rode him the day she and her father came down from the hills forthe round-up. Longstreet out-Romaned the Romans: his spurs were thebiggest, his yell when he circled a herd was the most piercing, hisborrowed chaps struck the eye from afar; his hat was a Stetson andamazingly tall. Now and then, when his horse swerved sharply to headoff a racing steer, he came near falling. Once he did fall and rolledwildly through the dust of a corral; but he only continued hisoccupation with the more vim and was heard to shout over and over:'It's the life, boys! It's the life!'
Helen, often riding at Howard's side, saw how the herd
s were broughtdown from the hills; how they were counted and graded; how the selectwere driven into the fattest pasture lands. She watched the brandingof those few head that had escaped other round-ups. At first shecringed back as she saw the hot iron and the smoke rising from thehides and smelled the scorching hair and flesh. But she came tounderstand the necessity and further she saw that little pain wasinflicted, that the victims though they struggled and bellowed weresoon grazing quietly with their fellows. And at last the time had comewhen she had learned to ride. That was the supreme joy of the moment.
To Howard, no less, was it a joy. He watched her race, with whipwhirling over her head, to cut off the lunging attempt at escape madeover and over by the wilder cattle; he saw that with every hour herseat in the saddle became more secure; he read that she was not afraid.He looked forward to long rides, just the two of them, across thebillowing sweep of Desert Valley, in the golden time when the titlerested secure with them, in the time when at last all dreams came true.
Of any world outside their own happy valley they knew little. Sanchiahad pitched her tent near the Longstreet camp, but these days she wasleft very much to herself. They did not pass through Sanchia's Town ontheir way back and forth and knew and cared nothing of its activities.The Longstreets, keenly interested in all that went forward on theranch, were persuaded to accept Howard's hospitality for three days andnights. They rode early and late; there were the brief before-bedtimetalks together; Helen saw the bluebird feather and laughed about it;she claimed it, but was in the end, after a deal of bantering argument,content to leave it where it was. She allowed Howard to talk what shebranded as foolishness about certain alterations in the old house whichhe prophesied would be necessary before long; she grew into the customof speaking of the room which she had occupied on her first visit tothe ranch as 'my room.' She was very happy and forgot that her fatherwas a troublesome childlike parent who fancied that he knew how todiscover gold mines. What did mere gold amount to, anyway?
Then came the drive. The pick of the herd were to be moved slowly downto San Juan. Howard had communicated with his former buyers, and theywere eager for more of his stock and at the former price. He wantedHelen and her father to come with them. But Longstreet shook his headsmilingly.
'I'm two-thirds cowboy now,' he chuckled. 'A few more days of this andI'll be coming to you and asking for a job! It won't do, my boy. Itwon't do. Especially at a time like this. You make your drive andI'll make mine. And I'll bet you a new twenty-dollar hat that when youget back I'll have found gold again.'
So the Longstreets went back to Bear Valley and the drive began.Howard started his cattle moving at three o'clock the next morning.And almost from the beginning, although everything startedauspiciously, he encountered hardship. At ten o'clock that morning hecame upon a dead calf, its throat torn out as though by a raveningmonster wolf; a section of the flesh seemed to have been removed by asharp knife. That was nothing; to him it merely spelled Kish Taka, andKish Taka was his friend and welcome. But as he rode on, reflecting,he read more in the omen. If Kish Taka were here, in the hills, thensomewhere near by Jim Courtot had passed. Then shortly after noon hecame upon what he knew must be the work of Jim Courtot. And hesurmised with rising anger that recently Courtot had seen Sanchia andthat again Courtot was Sanchia's right hand. Here was a little hollow;on two sides were steep banks. Along these banks lay four big steers,dead, a rifle bullet through each one. Already the buzzards weregathering.
Dave Terril came upon him and found him bending over one of the bigstiffening bodies. Howard's face was white, the deadly hue of rage.
'Who done that for you, Al?' muttered Dave wonderingly.
'Jim Courtot!'
'Why don't you go get him, Al?'
'Why don't I?' said Howard dully.
Why did he not lay a fierce hand upon the wind that danced over thehills? It was no more elusive than Jim Courtot. Why did not KishTaka, the eternally vigilant, come up with his prey? Nowhere in theworld is there so baffling a quarry as a hunted man. Jim Courtotstruck and vanished; he played the waiting game; he would give hisright hand for Howard's death, his left hand for the Indian's. But inhis heart, his visions his own, he was afraid.
Before they came to Sunderberg's Meadows, where it had been arrangedthat the herd was to pasture that night, they saw the wide-flung greyfilms of smoke. Accident or hatred had fired the dry grass; flamesdanced and sang their thin songs of burning destruction; the widefields were already black. Howard had bought and paid for the pastureland; the loss was his, not Sunderberg's; Courtot, if Courtot it was,or perhaps Monte Devine or Ed True, had been before him. Sanchia'svenom--for, be the hand of the agent whose it may, he recalled alwaysthe look in Sanchia's eyes and the threat from Sanchia's lips--seemedto travel with him and in front of him. His cattle browsed that nighton a rocky, almost grassless ground, making the best of what poor shrubgrowths they could lay their dry tongues to. There was no water; thepools lay in the heart of a smouldering tract too hot to drive across.
When the cattle had rested, without waiting for full day Howard wasforced to start them on and to make a wide swerve out of his intendeddirection to come soon to feed and water. Otherwise the drive wouldbecome a tremendous misfortune and loss. His cattle would lose weightrapidly under privation; they would when delivered in San Juan onlyvaguely resemble the choice herd he had promised; scrawny and jaded,under weight and wretched, their price would drop from the top to thebottom of the scale. He would make for the San Doran place; Doran,though no friend, would at least sell him hay; the figure would behigh, since Doran, no man better, knew when the other man was down andin a ditch. But water and food must be had.
Howard, toward noon, rode ahead to Doran's house. Doran was out infront of his barn, breaking a team of colts, working one at the timewith a steady old mare, and in a hot and unpleasant mood. He sawHoward and behind him the dust-clouds of an advancing herd.
'Got any hay?' demanded Howard.
'Two barns full,' said Doran.
'Sell me enough to take care of my cows? Sunderberg's pastures wereburned out; I'm up against it for feed.'
'Can't,' said Doran. 'Guess I'm sold out already for all I can let go.'
Howard wondered who was buying up hay at this time and by the bigbarnful.
'A fellow came by here yesterday,' explained Doran, and took an optionon my whole lot.' His shrewd eyes gleamed. 'And at my own figure,too! Which was four dollars the ton higher'n the market! That's goinga few, ain't it?'
'Who was the man?' asked Howard.
'Fellow named Devine. Know him?'
Howard pondered swiftly. Then he demanded: 'Just an option? Mindsaying how much cash you got, Doran?'
'Why, no. He said he was short of cash, but he slipped me twenty bucksto tie the option. I'm expecting him back to-morrow or next day toclose the deal.'
Howard sought swiftly to explain what Devine's play was; it was hissuspicion that the twenty dollars would be forfeited and that Doran'shay would remain in his barns a thousand years if he waited for Devineto come back for it. But Doran, though he seemed to reflect, wasstubborn. He hadn't a bale to sell, and that was all there was of it.He even grinned behind Howard's departing back.
The drive continued. Slowly the panting brutes were urged on; at everywater-hole and every trail-side pasture they were rested. In theafternoon Howard found a rancher who could spare half a dozen bales ofhay; they were promptly purchased, opened and thrown to the herd; todisappear instantly. That night camp was made on the upper courses ofthe Morales Creek. It was less than satisfactory; it was better thannothing.
Thus the journey into San Juan required twice the time Howard hadcounted upon. And when at last he and his men urged his lagging cattleto the fringes of the village, he knew that the herd was in nocondition for an immediate delivery. He rode ahead and saw Engle atthe bank; from Engle he rented the best pasture to be had at hand andbought hay; then, impatient at the enforced
delay, he pitched camp andstrove in a week to bring back his stock to something of its formercondition.
Alone, he rode that night into San Juan, his eyes showing the ragewhich day after day had grown in his heart. His revolver loose in itsholster he visited first the Casa Blanca, Crook Galloway's old place ofsinister reputation. Some day he must meet Jim Courtot; might not thattime have arrived? God knew he had waited long enough. But JimCourtot was not to be found here; nor anywhere in San Juan, thoughHoward sought him out everywhere. No, men told him; they had not laideyes upon Courtot since Howard had last sought him here.
Finally the delivery was made at the local stock pens; the cattlecrowded through the narrow defile, were counted and weighed and paidfor. The purchasing agent looked at Howard curiously.
'You had higher grade stuff last time,' he said. 'This bunch isn't inthe same class with the other shipment.'
'Don't I know it?' Howard flared out at him, grown irritable here oflate.
He took his cheque, banked it and left town, advancing his men a littlemoney and telling them to cut their holiday short. Then he saddled hisbest horse and headed back for Desert Valley the shortest way. Hisexpenses had been far heavier than they should have been; his receiptslower. He knew that look he would see in Sanchia's eyes when againthey met; he prayed that the time might come when he could come closeenough to Jim Courtot to read and answer his look. He thought of KishTaka, and for the first time with anger; Kish Taka should keep hishands off.