The splashing and floundering of their horses as the two left her side, was gradually lost in the roar of the night and she was alone in the darkness. They were gone a good while but Kate had enough of confused and conflicting thought to occupy her reflections. After a long interval the report of a Colt's struck her anxious ear. She swallowed in sudden fear to listen more keenly. If there were a fight it would be followed by another report and more. With her heart beating fast she listened, but there was no successor to the single shot and, calming somewhat, she speculated on just what it might mean. Again she waited with such patience as she could until the measured splash of a horse's feet nearing her through the shallow water announced someone's approach. Laramie was back and alone.

Almost anybody in the world would have been welcome at such a juncture. He called and she answered quickly, but he brought unwelcome news—the little bridge that spanned the creek at this point was out.

"We can't get across, can we?" she exclaimed in disappointment.

"We can swim the creek if you're game for it."

"Could we possibly get across?"

"If I didn't expect to get across I'd sure never try it. It'll be a wet crossing."

"I couldn't be wetter."

"Hawk asked if you could swim."

"I can't."

"I told him I didn't suppose you could."

"Are we all to go together?"

"He's over now. He signaled a minute ago. I told him I'd get you across if he'd get you out. It's close to daybreak. Better take off your coat."

While he strapped her coat to the saddle, she lightened and freed herself as much as possible, disengaged, as he directed, her feet from the stirrups, and they started for the creek. At the point he had chosen for the plunge, he gave her a few admonitions, chiefly to the effect of doing nothing except to cling to her seat in getting into the flood and getting out. Just as her horse poised beside Laramie's a wave of dread swept over her. It was very literally a plunge into the dark. "Are you afraid?" he asked, divining her feeling.

Pride dictated her answer: "No," she said stoutly. "Though, of course," she added with an attempt at lightness, "I'd prefer to cross on a bridge."

"All in getting used to it, I suppose. I guess I've crossed here a hundred times before there was any bridge. Don't get scared if your head goes under water when your horse jumps in. The bank here is a little high, but it's clean jumping. Say when you're ready."

"I'm ready."

"Go!"

With his hand on her bridle, he spoke loudly and sharply, kicked her horse with one foot and punched his own horse with the other at the same time. The next instant, gripped by an overpowering fear, and breathless, Kate felt herself jerked into the air, then she plunged headlong forward and sank into the boiling flood. Down, down she went, her ears swooning with water, mouth and eyes tight shut, and moving she knew not where or how until her head rose out of the flood and a voice yelled above the tumult: "You're all right! Horse's doing fine. Hang on!"

Then she was conscious of a hand clutching her upper arm, a hand so strong her flesh winced within its grip. And she could feel the powerful strokes of her horse as he panted and swam under her.

Above the terrifying swirl of the waters, carrying in the hardly distinguishable light of the breaking day, a mass of debris that swept about the two riders, the only sound was the hard breathing of the horses and a shout repeated by Laramie, until at last it was answered by Hawk somewhere in the darkness ahead.

Urging the horses to their task, Laramie guided them to where Kate could make out portions of the creek bank. She could realize how fast they were being carried down stream by the wild sweep of the current. Trees flashed past her like phantoms, as if the bank were mad instead of the creek. It seemed impossible she could ever make the bank, now very near, and get up out of the water; only Laramie's hand locked firm now in her horse's mane, his strong voice as he urged the horses or called to Hawk, gave her the slightest hope of coming out alive.

Laramie cried to her to duck as a cottonwood leaning over the water almost tore her cap and hair from her head. The next instant the cottonwood was gone and, looking ahead, she saw a horseman on a slope in the bank, his own horse half submerged. They had reached one of several old fords. Here the two men had purposed to get Kate ashore. But she did not know that this was the last of the ford crossings for a mile—the only shelving bank—nor why Laramie made such superhuman efforts to head her horse toward Hawk, to get to where the horse could ground his feet. Hawk, in an effort to catch Kate's bridle, spurred down to them till his own horse was afloat. Kate's horse struggled desperately, lost headway and was swept below the ford opening. The two men with shouts, curses and entreaties, guiding their own horses, urged the hapless beast to greater effort; it was evident he could not reach the ford.

"The roan can't make it," shouted Hawk. "Crowd him up to the ledge where I can get hold of her."

Hawk, reining his horse hastily about, got him back up the shelving ford, spurred down the bank to where Kate, despite Laramie's efforts, was being driven by the sweep of the water and sprang from his horse. Where Kate's horse struggled at that moment the creek bank rose vertically above the peak of the flood. Deep water gave the horse no chance for a foothold and it swam helplessly. Hawk, running along the ledge, awaited his chance. It came at a moment that Laramie succeeded in crowding the roan to the bank. Hawk saw the opportunity and held his hand out to Kate:

"Reach up!" he shouted.

"Give him both hands!" cried Laramie, punching and pushing her horse against the bank. As Kate swept along, her hands upstretched, Hawk caught her wrists and, bracing himself in the slipping earth, dragged her up and out of the saddle. The roan, with Laramie's hand on his bridle, swept on downstream. The clay bank, under the strain of the double load, gave under Hawk's feet. But without releasing Kate's hands he threw himself flat and, matching his dead weight against the chance of being dragged in, caught her with one arm and flung the other backward into the dark. A clump of willow shoots clutched in his sinewy fingers gave him a stay and, putting forth all his strength, he drew Kate slowly up. She scrambled across his prostrate body to safety.

The force of the gnawing current had already undercut the soft clay. The next instant the whole bank began to sink. Hawk shouted to Kate to run. She saw him struggling in the crumbling earth. Crying out in her excitement she stretched her hands toward him. He waved her back. As he did so, a great section of the bank on which he was struggling broke, and in the big, soft splash, Hawk went into the creek.



CHAPTER XXVII

KATE DEFIES

The instant he saw Kate in Hawk's keeping, Laramie rode down with the flood, looking sharply for a chance to get out the two horses; when finally he did get them ashore he was spent. Leading Kate's horse, he made his way up-creek through the willows to where she should be with Hawk.

Hawk's horse he found browsing in the heavy wet grass at the old ford. Neither Kate nor Hawk were in sight. Laramie walked down to the water's edge where Hawk had pulled her out. Familiar with the meander of the bank below the ford, he saw what had happened. The bank, under-cut, had been swallowed by the flood. Laramie ran down stream and came suddenly on Kate standing alone on a rock jutting out above the torrent.

In the uncertain light of the gray morning he saw her anxious face. She explained what had happened. Laramie showed no alarm. "I guess Abe will handle himself," he said.

"Can't we do anything to help him?"

"I'll put you on your trail, then I'll ride down the creek and look for him. He'll make it if his strength doesn't give out."

Laramie took Kate up the creek and, riding through the hills, brought her, unexpectedly, out on a trail within sight of her father's ranch-house hardly three miles away. He pointed to a break heading from the creek. "You can follow that draw almost to the house," he explained. Then, reining about, he wheeled his horse to take the back trail. "Are you going to run away without giving me a chance to thank you?" she exclaimed, with a feminine touch of surprise.

"There's a gate near the head of the draw where you can get through the wire," he rejoined stubbornly.

"I can't see how I can ever repay you for what you've done tonight," she persisted.

He was coldly uncompromising. "You needn't bother about any pay, if that's what you call it."

Skilfully she drew her horse a step closer to him. "What shall I call it?" she asked innocently, "debt, obligation? I owe you a lot, ever so much to me—my life."

"I've done no more for you than I've done for less than a human being," he returned impatiently.

"I'm sure that's so. But human beings," she added, with a touch of gentle good-nature, "are supposed to have more feeling than cows or steers, you know."

"I never had a cow or a steer call me names," he retorted rudely.

"If you weren't a human being you wouldn't mind being called names; you wouldn't be so angry with me, either."

"I'm not angry," he said resentfully. His very helplessness in her hands pricked her conscience at the moment that it restored her supremacy. His strength might menace others—she at least had nothing to fear from it.

"Do you know," she exclaimed, shaking off for the moment all restraint, "what I'd like to do?"

He looked at her surprised.

"I'd like to ride back this minute with you and help find Abe Hawk. I know I mustn't," she went on as he listened. "But I'd like to," she persisted hurriedly. And then, afraid of herself more than of him, she repressed a quick "good-by" and, without giving him time to answer, galloped away.

She reached the ranch-house without further difficulty. No one was stirring. She stopped at the corral and turned in her horse and, walking awkwardly on her swollen ankle to the kitchen, built a fire, warmed herself as best she could and went to her room. By the time her father was stirring, Kate, under her coverlets, quite exhausted, was fast asleep.

It was broad day when she woke. Through an open window, she saw sullen gray clouds still rolling down from the northwest, but between them the sun shot out at ragged intervals—the storm had broken. Walking gingerly from her room, on her lame foot, she found the house empty. Her father, Kelly told her, had gone out early, and she sat down to a late breakfast glad to be undisturbed in her thoughts. Her mind was still in a confusion of opinions; some, long-cherished being crowded, so to say, to the wall; others, more than once rejected, growing bolder. It was in this mental condition that her seclusion was invaded by Van Horn.

He swept off his hat with a show of spirits. "Just heard you'd got home." He sat down with her at the table. "Everybody thought you stayed in town last night. Got lost, eh?"

Kate raised her coffee cup non-committally. "For awhile," she murmured between sips.

"What time did you get here?"

"I was so glad to get to bed I never looked at my watch." Again she regarded him, quite innocently, over the rim of her cup. "Did anybody lose any stock?"

He did not abandon his inquisition willingly, but each time he asked a question, Kate parried and asked one in turn. He gave up without having gained any information she meant to withhold.

It was not hard to keep him in good humor; indeed, it was rather too easy. He pushed back his chair, crossed his legs, talked of a strong cattle market for the fall and spoke of Hawk and the hunt he was keeping up for him. "They had a story around—or some of the boys had the idea—that his friends would pick a wet night like last night to take him into town."

"Is he still in the country?"

"Sure he is. Say, Kate," he changed his attitude as lightly as he did his subject—uncrossed his legs, squared himself in his chair and threw his elbows on the table.

She met the new disposition with a tone of prudent reserve: "What is it?"

"When are you going to do something for a lonesome old scout?" he asked bluntly.

With as little concern as possible, she put down her knife and fork, and, with her hands seeking her napkin, looked at him. "What do you mean?" she returned collectedly, "by 'doing something'?"

"Marry me."

"Never."

The passage was disconcertingly quick. Van Horn, thrown quite aback, remonstrated. His discomfiture was so undisguised that Kate was embarrassed. The next moment he was very angry. "If that's the case," he blurted out, "what's the use o' my sticking around here fighting your battles?"

"You're not fighting my battles."

"Maybe you don't call 'em your father's, either," he exclaimed scornfully.

"They're your own battles," declared Kate. "You know that as well as I do."

"All the same, your father gets the benefit of them," he continued hotly.

"I wish to heaven he had kept out of them."

Van Horn eyed her sharply. His face reflected his sarcasm. "Of course, you needn't worry," he grinned, with implication. "They wouldn't steal your horse even if you do always leave it in Kitchen's barn; the Falling Wall bunch think too much of you for that."

Surprised as she was at this outbreak, Kate kept her head. "There are some of the rustlers I'd trust as far as I would some of the raiders," she rejoined coolly.

"Why don't you say Jim Laramie," he exclaimed harshly.

"Jim Laramie," she returned defiantly, "is not the only one."

"He'll be the 'only one' after our next clean-up in the Falling Wall. And he won't be 'one' if he doesn't change his tune."

Kate's eyes were snapping fire. "Take care that next time the Falling Wall doesn't clean you up," she said bitingly.

He snorted. "I mean it," she exclaimed. "Next time you'll need to look out for yourself."

He bolted from his chair. "That's the first time I ever heard anybody on this ranch take sides with the men that's robbing it—or carry a threat to this ranchhouse for rustlers."

"Call it whatever you please, you won't change my opinion of you. But, of course, I'm only a woman and don't know anything."

"I'm thinking you know a whole lot more than you let on," he declared.

"Anyway, I wish you'd leave this ranch out of the rest of it. If you keep on 'cleaning up,' as you call it, you'll go farther and fare worse."

He brought down his fist. "Not until I've cleaned out two more pups, anyway! Now, look here, Kate," he went on, "you may be fooling about this marrying, but you can bet I'm not."

"Well, you can bet I'm not," she returned, echoing his pert slang sharply.

"Who's the man?" He flung the question at her point-blank.

If she flushed the least bit it was with anger at his rudeness. "There isn't any man, and there isn't going to be any—so please never talk again about my marrying you or anybody else."

She rose and left the table. He jumped to intercept her and tried to catch her hands. She let him see she was not in the least afraid and as he confronted her, she faced him without a tremor. "Let me pass!" She fairly snapped out the words.

Van Horn, without moving, broke into a boisterous laugh. Kelly walked in just then from the kitchen and Van Horn, losing none of his malevolence, did stand aside.

"All right," he said, "—this time."



CHAPTER XXVIII

A DIFFICULT RESOLVE

For two days Kate burned in feverish reaction from her exposure, wretched in mind and body. Her only effort in that time was to get down to the corral and see that Bradley, acting as barn boy, should do something for her cut and bruised pony.

Her father was still in Medicine Bend, and Van Horn, much to her relief, had disappeared. When she left her bed she spent the morning trying to rehabilitate her riding suit. The task called for all her ingenuity and she was still in the kitchen working on it late in the afternoon when Bradley came in.

He had no sooner sat down by the door to report to Kate at his ease, than Kelly interrupted him with a call for wood. Even after he had filled the box, Kelly warned him he would have to split more next morning to get a supply ahead.

"Easy, Kelly," remonstrated Bradley, in his deeply tremulous voice. "Easy. I can't split no wood t'morrow mornin', not for nobody."

"Why not?"

"Got to go to town."

"What for?"

Bradley declined to answer, but Kelly, persistent, bored into his evasiveness until Kate tired at the discussion: "Tell him what you're going for and be done with it," she said tartly. The reaction of three days had not left her own nerves unaffected; she admitted to herself she was cross.

Bradley, taken aback by this unexpected assault, still tried to temporize. Kate refused to countenance it. When he saw he was in for it, he appealed to her generosity: "It'd be most 's much 's my job's worth if they knew here what I'm goin' to town tomorrow f'r."

"If that's all," said Kate, to reassure the old man, "I'll stand between you and losing your job."

Bradley drew his stubby chin and shabby beard in and threw his voice down into his throat: "D' y' mean that? Then don't say nothin', you and Kelly. Least said, soonest mended. I'm goin' t' town t'morrow t' see the biggest funeral ever pulled off in Sleepy Cat," he announced with bleary dignity.

"What do you mean—whose funeral?" demanded Kate, looking at him suddenly.

"Abe Hawk's. It's goin' t' be t'morrow er next day."

If the old man had meant to stupefy his questioner, he could not better have succeeded. Kate turned deathly white. She bent over the table and busied herself with her ironing. Bradley, pleased with his confidence safely made, talked on. He found a pride in talking to Kate, with Kelly in and out of the room, and launched into unrestrained eulogies of the famed rustler, always the friend of the poor man, once king of the great north range itself.

"It's a pity," murmured Kate, when she felt she must say something, "that he ever went wrong."

Bradley had a point to offer even on that. "It's a pity they ever blacklisted him; that was Stone's get-up. And Stone, when I was sheriff, was the biggest thief in the county an' the county was four times as big then as it is now—that's 'tween you 'n' me."

"Were you ever sheriff, Bill?"

"You won't believe it, but it's so—dash me 'n' dash drunkards one and all."

"I hear, though," returned Kate, only because in her distress of mind she could think of nothing else to say, "that Tom Stone has stopped drinking."

"That man," was Bradley's retort, and he kept his tremulous voice still far down in his throat, "is mean enough to do any d—d thing."

"You used to be sheriff?"

"Yes. And when I was sheriff, Kate, I found out it was better to trust an honest man turned thief than a thief turned honest man."

Kate, listening to his halting maunderings, hardly heeded them. She heard in her troubled ears the rush of mad waters; phantom voices cracked again in pistoled oaths at the horses, the fear of sudden death clutched at her heart, and in the dreadful dark a powerful arm caught her again and drew her, helpless, out of an engulfing flood.

She got out of doors. The sunshine, clear and calm, belied the possibility of a night such as Bradley's words had summoned. "Dead," she kept saying to herself. Laramie had been sure he would get out of the creek. What could it mean?

She went back to the kitchen where Bradley, eating supper, had switched from his long-winded topic. Kate had to question him: "What was the matter with Abe? When did he die?" she asked, as unconcernedly as she could.

There was little satisfaction in Bradley's slow, formal answer: "Some's got it one way and some's got it another, Kate. I can't rightly say what ailded him or when he died 'n' I guess nobody else can, f'r sure. Some says he got shot; some says he was drownded 'a' las' Tuesday night in the Crazy Woman; some says they's been a fight nobody's heard of yit, 't' all. The only man that knows for sure—if he does know—is the man that brought him into Sleepy Cat 'n' if he knows he won't tell." He held out his big enameled cup. "Kelly, gi' me jus' a squirt o' coffee, will y'?"

Kate, on nettles, waited to hear who had brought Hawk in. Bradley would not volunteer the name. Some deference was due him as the purveyor of the big news, and he meant that anyone curious of detail should do the asking. Kate, realizing this, framed with reluctance the question he was waiting for: "Who brought Abe in?"

Even so, she knew there would be but one answer. Bradley gulped another mouthful of scalding coffee and set down his cup. "Jim Laramie," he answered laconically.

She said to herself that Hawk had never got out of the creek; that he had drowned miserably in the flood. She tortured herself with conjecture as to exactly what had happened. And night brought no relief. Sleepless, she tossed, marveling at how close his death had come home to her. Every scrap of the meager news added to what she already knew—pointed to what she most feared.

She lay propped up on her pillows and looked through the open window out on the glittering stars. Strange constellations passed in brilliant procession before her eyes. And while she lay thus reflecting and revolving in her mind the loneliness and unhappiness of her surroundings, a startling suggestion far removed from these doubts offered itself to her mind. Repelled at first, it came back as if demanding acceptance. And not until after she had promised herself she would consider it, did her thoughts give her any peace. She fell into an uneasy slumber and woke with day barely breaking; but without an instant's delay she dressed and slipped from her room out to the barn.

Forehanded as she had been in getting an early start, Bradley was already stirring. Pail in hand, the old man, standing in front of the feed bin, stared at Kate speechless as she walked in on him.

"Who's sick?" he demanded after a moment.

"Nobody, Bill. I'm going to town with you, that's all."

"With me?"

She half laughed at herself and at his surprise. "I mean, I'm for town early. Get up a pony for me—Spider Legs will do."

Born of long-forgotten experience in waiting for women, Bill Bradley, as Kate walked away, put in a caveat: "I'm headin' out jus' soon's I c'n get breakfast."

"I, too, Bill. I'll be across the divide before you are."

Curiosity would not down: "What y' goin' t' town f'r?" he called.

Turning half around, Kate, with a little shrug, paused. She would not be ungracious: "To pick up a few things," she answered unconcernedly.

Bill, not satisfied, felt obliged to desist. "Startin' airly," was his only grumble. Had he known what possibilities for that day had lodged themselves in Kate's mind, he would not have been able to slip Spider Legs' bridle over his ears. But his business being only to get up the horse, he discharged it with shaky fidelity and for himself started with high expectations for town. Had he been given to speculating on the variableness of woman, he might have found a text in Spider Legs' standing for hours after he was made ready. And in the end his mistress unsaddled him and turned him back into the corral.

The truth was, Kate had been seized with cruel fits of doubt and for a long time could not decide whether she ought to go to town or not. But as often as she gave up the idea of going, a heart-strong impulse pleaded against her uneasy restraint. She felt she must go.



CHAPTER XXIX

HORSEHEAD PASS

Bradley had not been able to tell her just when the funeral was set for. But it surged in Kate's heart that after what Abe Hawk had done for her, to let the poor, bullet-torn, neglected body be put into the ground without some effort to pay a tribute of gratitude to the man that had once animated it, would be on her part fearfully cold.

The difficulties of the situation were many. She feared the anger of her father, and owed his feelings something as well. But every time she decided she ought to stay at home, the pricking at her heart grew keener. In the end, her feelings overrode her restraint. She resolved at least to go to town. The funeral might have already taken place—it would be a relief even to learn more about his death.

Late in the afternoon, she got Spider Legs up again, saddled him and, telling Kelly she might not be back that night, rode away.

It was dark by the time she reached town and leaving her horse with McAlpin she crossed the street from the barn and walked hurriedly around the corner to Belle's. The front door stood open and the red-shaded lamp burned low on the dining-room table.

Tapping on the screen door, Kate, without waiting for Belle to answer, opened it and went in. There was no light in the living-room and the portieres were drawn. She walked down the hall to the dining-room, where she laid down her gloves and took off her coat and hat. Smoothing her hair, she knocked on the door of Belle's room, but got no answer. Conjecturing that she had gone out on an errand, Kate sat down in a rocking chair and, taking a newspaper from the table, tried to read.

Her thoughts soon blurred the print. She read on only to think of what had brought her so irresistibly to town and to wonder what she should hear now that she had come.

After some struggle to concentrate, she tossed the paper aside to ask herself why Belle did not return, and, being tense, began without realizing it, to rock softly. Her eyes naturally turned to the familiar lamp. Its somber paper shade threw the light in a circle on the table, leaving the room in the heavy shadows of its figured pattern. Kate became all at once conscious of the utter silence, and impatient for Belle's return, got up and walked through the dark hall toward the front door.

Passing the living-room portieres, she pushed open the screen door and stepped out on the porch. There she stood for a moment at the top of the steps looking at the stars. Lights here and there burned in neighboring cottage windows. No wind stirred. The street and the town were as still as the night. After some minutes, Kate descended the steps, opened the gate, leaving it to close with a click behind her, and walked to the corner of Main Street. It looked dark. The stores were closed. From the saloon windows spotty lights shot at intervals across the upper street, but these only made the darkened store fronts blacker and revealed the nakedness and desertion of the street itself. Not a man, much less a woman, could she see anywhere moving.

Either the silence, or the night, or her long wait changed her impatience into a feeling of loneliness. She turned back toward the cottage gate. She had not noticed before how very dark the side street was. Reaching the gate she hesitated, pushed it open and then stopped, conscious of a curious repugnance to entering the house.

Her feeling refused to explain itself. Through the screen she could see the lamp still burning on the dining-room table. Things appeared just as she had left them, yet she did not want to go in. But, dismissing the qualm, she walked up the steps, crossed the narrow porch, opened the screen door and, stepping inside, closed it after her.

This time that she passed the living-room she noticed the portieres were partly open. Both times she had passed before, she felt sure, they had been closed.

Kate sat down in the dining-room and looked suspiciously back at the portieres. She was already sorry she had come into the house, for the silence and her aloneness added to the conviction fast stealing over her that someone must be in the dark living-room.

Once entertained, the suspicion became insupportable. Her ears were pitched to a painful intensity of listening and her eyes were fastened immovably on the motionless curtains.

She carried a ranchwoman's revolver and, putting her hand on it, she rose, stepped close to the door of Belle's room—into which she could retreat—and, with one hand on the knob, called sharply toward the living-room: "Who's there?"

Not a sound answered her.

"Who is in the living-room?" she demanded again. This time, after a moment's delay, she heard something move in the darkness, then a man's step and Laramie stood out between the portieres.

Except for a fatigued look as he rested one hand on the portiere and the other on his hip, he appeared quite as she had last seen him. "Are you calling me?" he asked.

"Yes," she responded tartly. "Why didn't you answer?"

"I didn't know who you were speaking to at first. I've been here all the evening. I didn't know you were in town till I saw your hat on the table a few minutes ago."

"Where is Belle?" asked Kate, still on edge.

"She went over to Mrs. Kitchen's."

"When will she be back?"

He seemed to take no offense at her peremptory tone. "She said she wouldn't be gone a great while. But," he added, with his customary deliberation, "all the same, I wouldn't be surprised if she stayed over pretty late—or even all night."

This was not just what Kate wanted to hear. "Why didn't you say something when I first came in?" she asked, her suspicion reflected in her voice.

He did not seem nonplused but he answered slowly: "I heard someone come in. I didn't pay much attention, that's about the truth."

"What are you doing in there in the dark?"

He was provokingly deliberate in answering. "You probably haven't heard about Abe Hawk?"

Her manner changed instantly and her voice sank. "Is it true that he is dead?"

"Yes."

"He didn't drown that morning, did he?" she asked eagerly anxious. "You thought he could get out—what happened?"

"He got out of the creek. But he strained his wounds—they opened. I wasn't much of a surgeon. I got him to the hospital—he died there. I had no place to take him then. I wouldn't leave him there alone. Belle said I might bring him here. I'm spending my last night with him."

"You're not trying to spare me, are you?" she asked, unsteadily. "He really did get out of the creek?"

"He did get out."

She spoke again brokenly: "He saved my life."

"Well," remarked Laramie, meditating, "he wouldn't ask anything much for that. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Not a bit."

"I'm kind of nervous tonight," he confessed simply. Then he crossed the room, rested his elbow on the mantelpiece and made ready a cigarette. "I wonder," he said, "if I could ask you a question?"

"What is it?"

"You always act kind of queer with me. Why is it? You've never been the way you were the first day we met. Haven't I always been square with you?"

She hesitated but she answered honestly: "You always have."

"Then why are you so different?"

"I've made that confession once. I was acting a part that day."

"No, I can't figure it in that way. That day you were acting natural. Why can't you be like that again."

"But, Mr. Laramie——"

"No—Jim."

"But——"

"Every time you call me Mr. Laramie I'm looking around for a gentleman. Why can't you be the way you were the first time?"

She realized his eyes were on her, demanding the truth—and his eyes were uncomfortably steady as she had reason to know. "If I spoke I should hurt your feelings," she urged, summoning all her courage. "You know as well as I do that the first time I met you I didn't know who you were."

He did not seem much disconcerted, except that he tossed away the unlighted cigarette. "You don't know now," was his only comment.

"I can't help knowing what is said about you—you and your friends."

He made an impatient gesture. "That gives you no clue to me."

"What are people to believe when such stories are public property?"

"Only what they know to be true."

"How are they to find out what is true?"

"By going straight to the person most concerned in the stories."

"Would you honestly expect a young woman to go to work and investigate all the charges against men she hears in Sleepy Cat?"

"We are talking now about the charges against one man—against me. I want to give you an instance:

"I suppose there's been a good many hard words over your way about my keeping Abe Hawk out of the hands of your people. Because I did shelter him—you know how—they've blackened my name here at Sleepy Cat and down at Medicine Bend. A man doesn't have to approve all another man does, to befriend him when he's down and a bunch of men—not as good as he—set out to finish him. I haven't got any apologies to make to anybody for protecting Abe when he was wounded—and if he wasn't wounded, no man would talk any kind of protection to him. But you've been fed up with stories about it—I know that—so," he added grimly, "I'm going to tell you one story more.

"I grew up in this country when the mining fever was on—everybody plumb crazy in the rush for the Horsehead Camp in the Falling Wall country. One winter five hundred men in tents were hanging around Sleepy Cat waiting for the first thaw, to get up to the camp. That's when I got acquainted with Abe Hawk. Abe was carrying the mails to the mines. He hadn't a red cent in the world. My father had just died; I was a green kid with a pocketful of money. Abe didn't teach me any bad habits—I didn't need any teacher. One night we were sitting next to each other, with Harry Tenison dealing faro.

"I heard Abe was going up over the pass to Horsehead with the Christmas bag. The few miners that got in the fall before had hung up a fat purse for their Christmas mail and Abe needed the money. He was the only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along: to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any tenderfoot in Sleepy Cat.

"Abe wouldn't hear a word of it, not from anybody—and he could talk back awful rough. He was sure he could make the trip alone. He was the strongest man in the mountains. I never saw the day I could handle Abe Hawk. But the pass in December was not a job for any ordinary mountain man—let alone a bunch of greenhorns. Just the same, I made my play to go with him. He cursed me as hard as he did anybody and turned me down.

"One night, after that, I was at Tenison's again. I was losing money. Hawk was near me. He saw it. I waited for him to come out. I knew he'd be starting soon and I was desperate. I tackled him pretty strong. He swore if I talked again about going with him he'd kill me. Old Bill Bradley ran the livery. My horse was in the same barn with Abe's and Bill promised to tip me off when Abe was ready to start. He waited for a blizzard. When it passed he was ready. But I got ahead of him, out of town, and trailed him—I knew how. Only it snowed again, as if all hell was against me; I had to close up on Abe or lose him, but he never saw me till we got so far I couldn't get back; though he could have dropped me out of the saddle with a bullet, and had the right to do it.

"When I rode up he only looked at me. If I had been as small as I felt, he'd never seen me. He ought to have abused me; but he didn't. He ought to have shot me; but he didn't; or turned me back and that would have been worse than shooting. But if he'd been my own father he couldn't have acted different. He just told me to come along."

Laramie paused. He was speaking under a strain: "I didn't understand it then; but he knew it was too late to quarrel. He knew there was about one chance in a hundred for him to get through; for me, there was about one in a hundred thousand—in fact, he knew I couldn't get through, so he didn't abuse me.

"You don't know what the winter snow on the pass is. When it got too bad for us, he put his horse ahead to break the trail, but he let me ride mine as far as I could—he knew what was coming. When my horse quit, he told me to tramp along behind him.

"I guess you know about how long a boy's wind would last ten thousand feet up in the air. I wasn't used to it. I quit."

Laramie drew from his pocket a handkerchief and knotted it nervously in his fingers: "He told me to get up," he went on. "I did my level best a way farther. It was no use. I quit again. He was easy with me. But I couldn't get up and I told him to go on.

"Abe wouldn't go. I couldn't walk another step in that wind and snow to save my soul from perdition. I just couldn't. And when I tell you next what I asked of him, then you'll understand how mean a common tramp like me can be. But I've got past pretty much caring what you think of me—only I want you to know what I think, and thought, of Abe Hawk. I did the meanest thing then I ever did in my life—I asked him to let me ride his horse. It was useless. I offered him all the money I had. He refused. He didn't just look at me and move on, the way most men would to save their own skins and leave me to what I deserved. He stopped and explained that if his horse gave out we were done—we could never break a trail to the top without the horse.

"It was blowing. He stripped his horse. The mail went into the snow. I tried again to walk. I didn't get a hundred feet. When I fell down that time he saw it was my finish.

"He stood a minute in front of me, looking all around before he spoke. His horse was breathing pretty heavy; the snow blowing pretty bad. After a while he loosened the quirt from his saddle and looked at me: 'Damn you,' he said, 'you were bound to come. All hell couldn't keep you back, could it? Now it's come in earnest for you. You're goin' over the pass with me. Get up out of that snow.'

"I could hear him, but I couldn't move hand or foot. And I never dreamed what was going to happen till he laid the quirt across my face like a knife.

"All I ever hoped for was to get up so I could live long enough to kill him. He gave me that quirt till I was insane with rage; long afterward he told me my eyes turned green. I cursed him. He asked me whether I'd get up. I knew, if I didn't, I'd have to take more. I dragged myself out of the snow again and pitched and struggled after him—to the top of the pass.

"Then he put me on his pony—we got the wind worse up there. Abe had a little shack a way down the pass, rigged up for storm trouble. But the pony quit before we got to the shack, and when the pony fell down, my hands and feet were no use. Abe carried and dragged and rolled me down into the shack. I was asleep. There was always a fire left laid in the stove. Abe had a hard time to light it. But he got it lighted and when he fell down he laid both hands on the stove—so when they began to burn it would wake him up; if the fire didn't burn he didn't want to wake up. The marks of that fire are on his hands right in that room there now, tonight. He saved my hands and feet. He stayed with me while I was crazy and got me safe to Horsehead.

"Do you suppose I could ever live long enough to turn that man, wounded, over to an enemy? He didn't ask me for any shelter after Van Horn's raid. All he ever asked me for was cartridges—and he got 'em. He'd get anything I had, and all I had, as long as there was a breath left in my body, and he asked within reason. And Abe Hawk wouldn't ask anything more."

Kate rose from her chair: "I've a great deal to learn about people and things in this country," she said slowly. "Not all pleasant things," she added. "I suppose some unpleasant things have to be. Anyway, I'll ride home tonight better satisfied for coming in."

"You going home?" he asked.

She was moving toward the door: "I only hope," she exclaimed, "this fighting is over."

"That doesn't rest in my hands. It's no fun for me. You say you're going to ride home?"

"There's a moon. I shan't get lost again."

He was loath to let her get away. At the door he asked if he couldn't ride a way with her. "I'll get Lefever or Sawdy to stay here while I'm gone," he urged.

"No, no."

"It isn't that they don't want to," he explained. "But the boys felt kind of bad and went down to the Mountain House. Why not?"

She regarded him gravely: "One reason is, I'd never get rid of you till I got home."

"I'll cross my heart."

"We might meet somebody. I don't want any more explosions. Let's talk about something else."

He asked to go with her to the barn to get her horse. The simplicity of his urging was hard to resist. "I must tell you something," she said at last. "If you go with me to the barn we should be seen together."

"And you're ashamed of me?"

"I said I must tell you something," she repeated with emphasis. "Will you give me a chance?"

"Go to it."

She looked at him frankly: "I don't always have the easiest time in the world at home. And there is always somebody around a big ranch to bring stories to father about whom I'm seen with. Everybody in town talks—except Belle. I must just do the best I can till things get better."

"Here's hoping that'll be soon."

"Good-by!"

"Safe journey."



CHAPTER XXX

THE FUNERAL—AND AFTER

The funeral had been set for the following afternoon, but preparations were going forward all morning. In spite of the brief notice that had got abroad of Hawk's death, men from many directions were riding into town that morning to help bury him. A reaction of sentiment concerning the Falling Wall raid was making itself felt; its brutal ferocity was being more openly criticized and less covertly denounced. Hawk's personal popularity had never suffered among the cowboys and the cowboy following. He had been known far and wide for open-handed generosity and blunt truthfulness—and these were traits to silence or to soften reprobation of his fitful and reckless disregard for the property rights of the big companies. He was a freebooter with most of the virtues and vices of his kind. But the crowd that morning in Sleepy Cat was assembling to pay tribute to the man—however far gone wrong. His virtues they were, no doubt, willing to bury with him; the memory of his vices would serve some of them when they might need a lawless precedent.

Up to the funeral hour the numerous bars of Sleepy Cat were points of interest for the drinking men. In front of these, reminiscences of the dead man held heated sway. Some stories pulled themselves together through the stimulus of deep drinking, others gradually went to pieces under its bewildering effects, but as long as a man could remember that he was talking about Abe Hawk or the Falling Wall, his anecdotes were tolerated.

Nor were all the men that had come to town to say good-by to Abe, lined up at the bars. Because Tenison had insisted that it should, Hawk's body lay during the morning at the Mountain House in the first big sample room opening off the hotel office. All that the red-faced undertaker could do to make it presentable in its surroundings had been done at Harry Tenison's charge. Laramie's protests were ignored: "You're a poor man, Jim," declared Tenison, "and you can't pay any bills now for Abe. He thought more of you than he did of any man in the world. But most of his money he left here with me, upstairs and down. Abe was stiff-necked as hell, whether it was cards or cattle, you know that. And it's only some of his money—not mine—I'm turning back to him. That Dutchman," he added, referring with a contemptuous oath to the unpopular undertaker of Sleepy Cat, "is a robber, anyhow. The only way I'll ever get even with him is that he'll drink most of it up again. I played pinochle with that bar-sinister chap," continued Tenison, referring to the enemy by the short and ugly word, "all one night, and couldn't get ten cents out of him—and he half-drunk at that. What do you know about that?

"Jim," Tenison changed his tone and his rambling talk suddenly ceased, "you've not told me rightly yet about Abe."

Laramie looked up: "Why, Harry," he said quietly, "I told you where I found him that night—he got out of the creek at Pride's Crossing."

Tenison shook his head: "But what I want to know is what went on before he got to Pride's Crossing."

"Well, I started with him that night for town."

"That's what you said before," objected Tenison with an impatient gesture. "What you didn't say is what I want to hear."

"Harry, I won't try to give you a long line of talk. I can't tell it all—and I don't want to try to fool you. There's another name in the story that I don't feel I've got a right to bring in—that's all. Some day you'll hear it."

Neither Lefever nor Sawdy could get any more out of Laramie. He showed the strain of sleeplessness and anxiety. Sawdy kept the crowd away by answering all questions himself—mostly with an air of reserve, backed by intimations calculated to lead a man to believe he was really hearing something, and counter-questions skilfully dropped into the gravity of the occasion. Those who could not be put off by Sawdy were turned over to Lefever, who could hypnotize a man by asking questions, and send him away satisfied, but vacantly speculative as to whether he was crazy or Lefever was.

To Lefever also were referred the men arranging the details of the funeral. Not till two o'clock was the word given for the procession to move from the Mountain House, but for two hours before that, horsemen—peers of any in the world—dashed up and down Main Street before keen-eyed spectators, on business if possible, but always on display.

Stage drivers and barnmen from Calabasas and Thief River mingled with cowboys from the Deep Creek country—for Hawk himself had, years before, driven on the Spanish Sinks line. From the barn at Sleepy Cat these men brought out and drafted the old Wells-Fargo stage coach that Abe had driven on the first trip to the Thief River mines. Six of the best horses in the barn were to pull it in the procession. These horses were driven by the oldest man in service on the Calabasas run, mounted on the near wheel horse with the driver's seat on the box empty and covered with wreaths of flowers. Old-time Indians from the Reservation who had known Hawk when he first went into the Falling Wall country, were down to see him buried; they rode behind the cowboys.

At two o'clock the roundhouse whistle blew a long blast. It was taken up by the engines in the yard and those of an overland train pulling out; and the procession, long and picturesque, moved from the hotel. Laramie, Tenison, Lefever and Sawdy rode abreast, behind the hearse, and as the procession moved down Main Street, the cowboys chanted the songs of the bunkhouse and the campfire, the range and the round-up.

"My God!" exclaimed Carpy when it was all over, "if Sleepy Cat could do that much for a thief, what would it do for an honest man?" With Sawdy and Lefever, the doctor sat at a table in the billiard room of the Mountain House. Tenison and Laramie sat near them.

"Not what they did for Abe," averred John Lefever promptly, "and don't you forget it. But I don't call Abe Hawk a thief—never. Abe was a freebooter born out of time and place. He called himself a thief—he wasn't one. He hadn't the first instincts of one—no secrecy, no dark night stuff, no lying. He never denied a raid if he made one. And never did worse when the big cattlemen protested, than to tell them to go to hell. He had a bunch of old Barb's calves branded along with his own one year: 'Well, you're the coolest rustler in the Falling Wall,' I says to him. 'They're my share of Barb's spring drop,' was all he said. You know he lent Barb all his savings one year—that was when he used to save money, before his wife died. He never got a red cent of it back, never even asked for it. But when he wanted money he'd drive off some of Barb's steers. Yes, Abe stole cattle, I admit; yet I don't call him a thief—not today, anyway," said John, raising his glass. "Why, if Abe Hawk owed a man a hundred dollars he'd pay him if he had to steal every cow in the Falling Wall to do it. But take a hoof from a poor man!" he went on, freshened, "The poor men all used to run to Abe when Dutch Henry or Stormy Gorman branded their calves. They'd yell fire and murder. And Abe would make the blamed thieves drive their calves back! You know that, Jim." Lefever between breaths threw the appeal for confirmation across at Laramie who sat moodily listening and trying without success to interest himself in a drink that stood untouched before him.

Laramie made no response. "Have it your own way, John," nodded Carpy tolerantly, "have it your own way. But whatever they say against old Barb, the man ain't livin' that can say a word against his girl—not while I'm in hearing. And I'll tell you, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I seen her this afternoon and she bound to ride in that procession behind Abe Hawk."

"What do you mean?" asked Lefever.

"I mean riding to the graveyard," insisted Carpy.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Lefever, to bring out the story. "You never saw it."

"I'll tell you what I saw." Only those who knew Laramie well could have told how keenly he was listening. "I drove down Hill Street," said the doctor, "just after the funeral started, and sat there, quiet, to one side, waiting for it to pass; a doctor's got no business around funerals. Right then, Kate Doubleday pulled up close to me on horseback. She was just from the trail, that was sure; her horse showed the pace and the girl was excited—I seen that when she spoke to me. 'Doctor'—then she hesitated. 'Is that Abe Hawk's funeral?' 'It is,' I says. She looked at it and kept looking at it. The tail-end of the procession was passing Hill Street. I noticed the girl bite her lip; she was as restless as her horse. 'Doctor,' she says, hesitating just the same way the second time, 'do you think people would think it awfully strange if I—rode to the cemetery with them?'

"I never was more dashed in my life. 'Well,' I says, 'I expect they would, Kate.' 'I feel as if I ought to do it,' she says. 'Don't do it for the fun of the thing, Kate. The boys wouldn't like that.' 'Oh,' she says, looking at me mighty hard. 'I've got the best of reasons for doing it.' 'Then,' says I, 'do it, no matter what they think or don't think. That's what Abe Hawk would 'a' done!' 'I'm such a coward,' she says, but I want to tell you there was fire in her words. 'Go ahead,' says I. 'Doctor, will you ride with me?' 'Hell!' says I, 'I never went to a funeral in my life.' 'Will you ride to this one with me? I can't ride alone; all the rest are men.' 'Dog gone it! Come over to the barn,' says I, 'till I get a horse.'

"That's the way it happened.

"When we got to the graveyard we kept back to one side. All the same, she saw the whole thing. But just the minute the boys turned from the grave, away we went down the hill lickety-cut. We took the back streets till we struck the divide road, and she turned for home. When we stopped there, she says: 'Doctor, tell me the truth: Did Abe Hawk drown?' 'No,' I says, 'he didn't drown. I reckon he strained himself. Anyway, one of his wounds opened up. The old man bled to death."

Laramie felt no inclination that night to go home. In his depression, he could think only of Kate Doubleday and reflect that the years were passing while he faced the future without an aim, and life without an outlook.

It was not the first time this conviction had forced itself on him. And it was getting harder and harder, he realized, to shake it off. But tonight, talk served in some degree as an anodyne, and he sat with the idlers late. The one bit of news that did stir him in his torpor was that Kate Doubleday had had at least the feeling to appear at the funeral of the man who, though rightly regarded as her father's enemy, had, Laramie knew, let go his own life, without a thought, to save hers.

This was the last reflection on his mind before he went to sleep that night. It was the first when he woke. Late in the morning he was sitting in Belle Shockley's at breakfast when McAlpin walked in.

"Jim," exclaimed the excitable barn boss, "I got a word this morning from the Falling Wall."

Laramie regarded him evenly, but did not speak till McAlpin looked inquiringly toward Belle: "No secrets here, Mac," he said briefly.

"Probably couldn't keep 'em from a woman if you tried," returned McAlpin, grinning. He pointed calmly toward the kitchen: "If we're all alone here——"

"Go ahead," intervened Belle impatiently, "we are."

"Punk Budd brought the stage from the Reservation this morning. Coming down the Turkey he met Van Horn. They had a bunch of Barb's boys with them driving in some cattle."

"Whose cattle?"

"Punk says when he run into 'em they was roundin' up yours."

"Was Punk sober?" asked Laramie.

"He sure was," replied McAlpin.

Belle, with folded arms, stood in the archway immovable as a statue; McAlpin sat in silence; Laramie, continuing his breakfast, looked only at his plate. The silence grew heavy, but two of the three had no reason to break it and the third did not choose to.

Laramie, at length, took up his coffee, and, drinking slowly, finished the cup. Setting this down, he wiped his lips and looked at McAlpin.

"Much obliged, Mac," he said, laying down his napkin.

McAlpin regarded him inquiringly: "What you going to do about it, Jim?" he demanded, when he saw Laramie would say no word.

Laramie pushed back his chair: "What would you do?"

McAlpin spoke seriously: "I'm askin' you."

"I can tell better after I know more about it, Mac."

The barn boss evidently thought Laramie was taking the news too quietly. He was for violent measures but Laramie calmed him. "If they've got any of my cattle, they won't run away," said he, "and they won't blow up. They'll keep, and I'll get them back—every hoof. I'm riding home this morning, anyway, so I'll be over after my horse in a minute."

McAlpin went away somewhat disappointed. Laramie only laughed when he talked it over with Belle: "So long as they don't burn my place, I can stand it," he said, philosophically.

Nevertheless, he felt disturbed at McAlpin's news—not for its substance so much as for what it might note in renewed warfare. Getting his horse, he followed the railroad right of way out of town and struck out upon open country toward the north. He had no intention of taking the direct road home; that had long become dangerous, and he rode along abandoned cattle trails. At times he struck, swiftly and straight, across open country, at times disappeared completely in favoring canyons, and emerging again, headed winding draws up to the divide—any ground that carried him in his general direction was good ground.

He tried always to be thinking just what the other fellow must be thinking as to favorable points to pick a man off—the fellow patiently waiting with a rifle day after day in ambush for him. And not having gone home of late twice by the same route, he meant to keep the other fellow continually guessing. Today, he was somewhat handicapped, in that he was riding in broad daylight instead of in the dawn or in the twilight when the uncertain light made it more difficult with the fine sights of a Winchester or Savage to cover a distant man.

This hazard, however, called only for a little more precaution, which Laramie did not begrudge to the pride of disappointing an enemy. At points in his route where the main road could not well be avoided, he rode faster and with quickened circumspection. The Double-draw bridge he could not avoid without a long and difficult detour. Moreover, there, or beyond, he might expect to intercept the raiding party, and this was his business.

He did, however, approach the Double-draw bridge with an uncertainty and a caution not reflected in the pace which he rode toward it; but his horse was under close control and his rifle carefully in hand.

Despite his misgivings, no enemy was sighted. Only a flight of bank swallows, disturbed by the footfalls of his horse, darted noisily from their nests under the south bridge abutment and scattered twenty ways in the sunshine. Spurring freely, as they flew away, Laramie galloped briskly across the bottoms and up the hill. Skirting the long trail toward home, he rode on without meeting a living soul or hearing the unwelcome singing of a bullet.

In fact, things were too quiet; the silence and the absence of any sort of life as he approached his ranch were a surprise. The few head of cattle and horses he usually met, when riding home along the creek, were nowhere to be seen. Evidently the raid had been made. To survey the whole scene without exposing himself, Laramie rode out of the tangle along the creek bottom and took the first draw that would bring him out among the southern hills. As he emerged from the narrow gorge, his eyes turned in the direction of the house. But where the house should be he saw above the green field, only a black spot with little patches of white smoke drifting lazily up from it into the still sunshine.



CHAPTER XXXI

AN ENCOUNTER

Kate awoke the morning after Hawk's funeral with a confused sense of having consorted with her father's enemies; and of trying to justify herself for having done what she had felt compelled to do to answer her sense of self-respect.

And all this before anyone had accused her. But being extremely dubious as to how her father would take her conduct, she was not only ill at ease until she should meet him, but glad he had been away. And it was something of a shock to her that morning to find his bedroom door closed; it meant that during the night he had unexpectedly come home.

After her breakfast she walked down to the corral to talk to Bradley about the saddle horses. Not that she had anything to suggest, but because she was nervous. Laramie was intruding more and more into her mind; every time she banished him he returned, frequently bringing someone else with him. Between the perplexities and the men that beset her, Kate was not happy. And when, after a ramble along the creek, she returned to the house, she was not surprised to find that her father, coming from the breakfast table, hardly responded to her greeting. He was much engrossed in cutting off the end of a cigar as he passed her and in walking to the fireplace to find a match.

But the matches were not on the mantelpiece, where they belonged, and this annoyed him. If he said nothing, it did not deceive Kate as to his feelings. She hastened to hand him the matchbox from the table. He took it without saying a word, but he slammed it back to its accustomed place with a silent and ominous emphasis.

She knew it was coming. What surprised her was that she felt no further inclination to shrink from the moment of reckoning she dreaded. Doubleday, his cigar lighted, seated himself in his heavy chair beside the fireplace.

"What kind of a trip had you, father?" Kate, as she asked, made a pretense of arranging the papers and magazines on the table.

There was little promise of amiability in her father's answer; "What d'y' mean," he asked.

"Did you get your notes extended?"

"Yes." His heavy jaw and teeth, after the word, snapped like a steel trap. "Did you go to Abe Hawk's funeral?" He flung the question at her like a hammer.

"Were you told I did?" Kate asked.

"Rode to the graveyard with him, didn't you?"

Kate saw there was no use softening her words: "Father," she said instantly and firmly, "the night I came out from town in the storm I got lost. I got on the wrong side of the creek. My horse gave out; I was dead with the cold."

Her father flung his cigar into the fire: "What's that got to do with it?" he broke in harshly.

"Just wait a moment."

"I don't want any long-winded story."

"I won't tell any."

"I won't listen to you," he shouted. "Answer my question."

Her eyes kindled: "You may call it whatever you like, but you will listen to my answer in the way I make it. When I'd given up hope of saving my life, and my horse was drifting, he fell into a dugout. And in the dugout were two men—Abe Hawk and Jim Laramie. They thought there was a party of men with me. They seized me. They got ready to fight. I was at their mercy."

"What dugout?" demanded Doubleday. His husky tone seemed to indicate he was cooling a little; the question took her off her guard.

"At the old mine bridge."

A flash of cunning lighted her father's eyes. The curtain fell instantly, but not before Kate had seen. "When they questioned me," she hurried on, "I told them what had happened. They believed me. They rode with me back to the creek. We swam our horses across. Mine couldn't make the bank. Abe Hawk pulled me out and Laramie saved my horse. But the bank caved in with Hawk when he pulled me out of the creek and the next thing I heard, he was dead. I didn't go to his funeral except to ride to the cemetery in the procession. Father, could I do any less?" she demanded, wrought up.

Barb's harsh, red features never looked less uncompromising: "D' you expect me to believe that stuff?" he asked, regarding her coldly. She only eyed him as he eyed her: "D' you expect anybody to believe it?" he continued, to drive in his contempt.

Kate turned white. When she spoke, her words were measured: "Oh, no," she said quietly. "I don't expect you any more to believe anything I say. Those other men would believe me when they had me at their mercy—when they might have choked or shot me or thrown me into the Falling Wall canyon—they only believed me. But my own father—he couldn't believe me——"

Neither appeal nor reproach moved her father; his mind was fixed. Van Horn had been sarcastic over Kate's escapade; Barb's own men were laughing at him. He interrupted Kate: "Pack up your things," he said ruthlessly.

She faced her father without flinching: "What do you mean?" she asked.

He tossed his head with as little concern as if he were discharging a cowboy: "Don't want you around here any longer," he snapped. "Pack up. Get out."

She looked at him in silence. Perhaps, as she turned defiantly away and walked to her room, she thought of the man that had deserted her mother when she herself was a baby in her mother's arms. At any rate, anger fortified her against the shock. Her preparations were soon made. A trunk held all she wished to take. She asked Bradley to get up her pony. Bradley was hitched up for a trip to Sleepy Cat and, putting her trunk in the wagon, was on the road ahead of Kate. She spent a little time in straightening up her room and shortly afterwards rode down the trail for town.

Absorbed in thoughts tinged with bitterness and anger, she rode toward the creek as if casting things up again and again in her mind, but reaching no conclusion. When her horse struck the Sleepy Cat road he turned into it because he was used to doing so, not because she guided him. In this haphazard way she was jogging on, her eyes fixed on nothing more encouraging than the storm-worn ruts along her way when a shout startled her. Looking up, she saw she was nearing the lower gate of the alfalfa patch and across the road a party of horsemen had stopped Bradley with the wagon. She recognized Harry Van Horn—his smart hat, erect figure and scarlet neckcloth would have identified him before she could distinguish his features; and he always rode the best horse. Stone and three of the Texas men were with him. With the exception of Van Horn, they had dismounted, and with their drooping horses close at hand were stacking their rifles against the gate and yelling at Bradley.

Swinging his hat, Van Horn dashed toward Kate just as she looked up and, whipping out his revolver, pulled his horse to its haunches directly in front of her: "You're held up!" he cried.

The shock on her reverie was sudden and Kate was too confused and frightened to speak.

"You can't get by without giving up your tobacco, girlie," Van Horn ran on in sing-song raillery. "Shell out!" He held out his left hand for the spoil and poised his gun high—a picture of life and dash. "You see what's happening to Bradley." The cowboys, in great feather, were dragging the old man with mock violence from the wagon.

Kate recovered her breath: "What's it all about?" she asked.

Van Horn put away his gun. He was in very good humor as he glanced over at the boys crowding around Bradley: "They want tobacco," he laughed.

"Oh."

"You know what I want."

Kate regarded his expectancy unmoved: "How should I know?" she asked, chilling her question with indifference.

"Because," he exclaimed, sweeping back with a flourish the brim of his hat, "I want you."

She eyed him without a tremor and responded without hesitation: "Well, I can say you will never get me if that's all you want."

He laughed again: "Talk it over with me, Kate; talk it over."

His eyes, always bright and liquid, were a little inflamed. Still laughing, he glanced toward the wagon. The boys were boisterous. Kate could hear Bradley's voice in shrill protest: "What'd I be goin' to town f'r, if I had a bottle?" he was demanding angrily. But, while she looked and listened, Van Horn slipped quickly from his saddle and caught her bridle rein: "Come on," he said, at her horse's head, "let's walk down to the creek, girlie, and talk it all over."

Kate was indignant: "I won't walk anywhere——"

"I'll carry you."

She suppressed an angry word: "I'm on my way to town," she exclaimed. "Let go my bridle!" She struck her horse. The beast jumped ahead. Van Horn, laughing, held on. But the shock jerked him almost from his feet. As he staggered forward, clinging to the rearing animal, the half-muffled report of a revolver was heard. Almost like a thunderbolt, it changed the situation. One of the Texas men had fired in the air, but no one had seen him fire and the other Texans jumped like longhorns. Stone, clapping his hand to his holster, whirled from the wagon wheel. Kate, frightened more than ever, struck her horse again; the bridle was jerked from Van Horn's hand and he turned sharply. Quickest to grasp what he saw as his eye swept the road, he yelled: "Look out, boys! There's Laramie!"

The words were not out of his mouth when Kate caught sight of a man down the road leaping from a horse. As the rider touched the ground he slapped his pony's shoulder and the beast dropped flat. The man, rifle in hand, threw himself behind the prostrate animal and Kate heard his brusque yell to Van Horn and the Texans: "Pitch up!"

It would have been hard to say who was most astonished. Laramie evidently was not expecting an encounter. To dash on horseback into any five men on foot, of the enemy's camp, was the last thing he would be likely to attempt. If he did attempt it, he would never choose Van Horn or Stone to be of the party. The ground about the scene was flat, or only slightly rolling, with the branch road and its old ruts running across it. Caught squarely in the open and without a sagebrush for cover, he had been forced to drop behind his horse for shelter. Lying flat and covering Van Horn and the men with his rifle, he awaited the unpleasant odds against him.

The situation of the five men in front was even worse. Their rifles were stacked against the gate hardly a dozen feet away. But to run a gauntlet of a dozen feet against Laramie's rifle fire was a feat none had stomach for, nor were they ready at a hundred yards to pit revolvers against it. One of them might get him but they knew it would be after some of the others had practically ceased to be interested in the result.

The minds of the Texas men were perfectly clear; their hands shot up like rockets. Stone had taken one big step toward the gate post—he changed his mind, halted and his hands went up at the very instant Laramie changed his mind, and did not press the trigger against the burly outline darkening the field of his sights. Van Horn, caught, stood helpless and enraged—humiliated in circumstances he least relished for humiliation. Everybody's hands were up. His one chance, Van Horn realized, was to use his Colt's against the Winchester behind the prostrate horse—it was not a living chance and no one knew it better than he; his hands moved grudgingly up to his shoulders and he sang out savagely: "What the blazes do you want?"

There was no answer from Laramie. To add to a difficult situation, Kate's horse, nervous from the shouting and catching its mistress's own fright, jumped and bucked till she was halfway down the road toward Laramie before she could check him. To add to her confusion, words came from ahead just loud enough for her to hear: "Pull the blamed brute to one side, will you?" It was Laramie speaking, she knew. "If he gets between me and that bunch," she heard him say, "I'm a goner." She jerked her horse violently out of the road; Laramie had raised his voice and kept right on talking: "Turn your back, Van Horn—you, too, Stone. Shoot up your hands, you Texas—higher!" he called to one of the Texans. And with the words not out of his mouth, he leaped as if on springs to his feet. It seemed as if his rifle covered his enemies all the time, even while he was doing it.

With his head forward, his elbows high and the Winchester laid against his cheek; stepping like a cat, and swiftly and with his eyes fixed on the men ahead, Laramie walked toward the wagon. In doing so he approached Kate, whose horse had subsided. Laramie took no note of her. She only heard his words as he passed: "You'd better get out of this." Approaching his prisoners in such a way they could not reach either the gate or the wagon without crossing his fire, Laramie compelled Bradley, really nothing loath, to disarm the three cowboys in turn and drop their guns into the wagonbox. Stone, sullen, was gingerly approached by Bradley, under strict orders to keep out of reach of his arms. But the old man knew all the tricks of the play being staged, even though he was not able to turn them. And when Stone, cursing, was ordered to lower his right arm and hand his revolver to Bradley at arm's length, the old man's feet were planted at least six feet from the foreman for a jump-away in case Stone tried to clinch him and shoot at Laramie from behind Bradley's cover.

But after he was disarmed, Laramie was not through with Stone. Sullen and obdurate, he was ordered to face away, while Bradley from behind searched his pockets. And the crown of his abasement was reached when Bradley drew from a hip pocket a full flask of whisky. The material advantage of the find was not great, but the tactical advantage was enormous. Behind Stone, Bradley silently but jeeringly held it up as an exhibit for the thirsty Texas men; and to show it was full, uncorked and with gusto sampled it. Stone was ordered back to his horse.

"How long is this joke, Laramie?" sang out Van Horn, his humor oozing. "Can't you frisk a few cowboys in less than all day?"

"When I frisk a pair of cut-throats with them, it's different."

"Well, don't waste your valuable time on me. This is your innings—I'll wait for mine."

"Drop your gun to the ground," returned Laramie. "Pick that up, Bill," he added to Bradley as Van Horn threw his revolver contemptuously from its holster. He was searched with the same scrupulous care by old Bradley, his morale greatly strengthened by Stone's flask: "I don't give a d—n whether you get me or not," he retorted at Van Horn, in answer to a low threat from his victim.

Laramie having told Van Horn to mount, turned to the Texas men: "Which one of you boys wants to carry the rifles over to that big cottonwood for me?" he asked, pointing toward the creek.

"I do," responded the nearest man, promptly.

"Don't you do it, Tex," called out Stone.

The Texan eyed his foreman: "Why not?" he demanded. "Ain't I been ridin' this country all day with a man squealin' for a drink as loud as I was, an' had his pocket full of it all the time? I'm through with my job."

Laramie broke in without losing the precious moment: "Who set my house on fire, Tex?" he demanded.

The Texan nodded in Stone's direction: "Ask him."

"He'd lie, Tex; I'm askin' you."

The rawboned horseman hesitated: "I'll talk that over with you when I'm rested," he drawled.

"Go get your Colt's out of the wagon, Tex." Laramie pointed the way. "Pick out the guns of the other two boys and tote them over to that tree with you. The boys'll ride over there after you. Tell Barb I'll give him twenty-four hours to get every hoof, round or split, that belongs to me back to the Falling Wall—failing which I'll be over to talk to him privately. Will you do that, Tex?"

"I sure will."

"These rustlers here," he looked toward Stone and Van Horn, "won't be able to carry messages for awhile. They're ridin' to town with me. Bill," he added, turning to Bradley, "dump their rifles into the wagon and follow on along."

"What's this?" snapped Van Horn with an oath. "Going to town with you! Not on your life."

"You're headed for jail tonight, Harry; that's all. You boys," he spoke to the Texans and gave no heed to the oaths and abuse from Van Horn, "ride down to the cottonwood and get your guns from Tex. There's two good trails from here to town and plenty of room on both. Today I'm riding the Double-draw bridge. If any of you are going to town, take the other trail. Lead off now, you two."

He spoke to Van Horn and Stone, both mounted, and with the two headed for town, and the Texans started up the road, Laramie climbed into his own saddle. Not until then did he look around for Kate. She had disappeared.



CHAPTER XXXII

A MESSAGE FROM TENISON

Speeding in a panic from what she feared might happen behind her at any moment; soon out of sight of the scene, but with ears pitched for the sound of a shot, and a volley of shots; her head swimming with excitement and her heart beating a roll in her breast, Kate urged her horse down the road.

And Belle's silence, her enigmatic face as she listened later to the story only convinced Kate that her own apprehensions of trouble were well founded. "It's coming," was all she could get Belle to mutter, as Belle hobbled on a lame foot at meal time between the table and the stove, "but nobody can say when or where." Both the women could tell even earlier than this, from McAlpin's intimations, from watching groups of men in the street and from the way in which those who could have no direct interest in the affairs of the Falling Wall country were hurrying to and fro, that Laramie had reached town with his prisoners and was busy getting them jailed.

Kate, stunned by her father's utter coldness in casting her out, did not want to talk about it. She had left home resolved to tell Belle everything, despite the humiliating shame of the recital. But the excitement of the ride and the stir in the town were excuses enough to put off explaining. It was possible that her father might become as ashamed of himself as she was of him—in which event, nothing said would be best.

But when Bradley stopped the ranch wagon before Belle's cottage door with Kate's suitcase and trunk, something was needed to satisfy Belle. Kate's intimation that she should spend a few days in town, and might be called East was somewhat disjointed, but at the moment, enough. Bradley, however, after unloading the trunk and while Belle stood wondering, reappeared at the door with two rifles.

"Lord A'mighty, man!" cried Belle, already stirred, "what're you doing with them rifles?"

Bradley tried to placate his nervous questioner: "I'm just leavin' 'em here, Belle, while I go down 'n' get a load o' feed," he explained with dignity.

"Don't you believe you're leavin' any rifles here, Bill Bradley. This is nobody's arsenal, I want you to know."

"Why, Belle, they belong t' the ranch," remonstrated Bradley.

"What's that got to do with it?" she exclaimed, turning from the door and shutting it vigorously in Bradley's face as he stood discomfited. "I wonder if everybody's going crazy in this country."

On this point Kate entertained convictions that she did not express. She was only glad that Belle's curiosity, usually robust enough concerning ranch happenings, was now under more engrossing pressure.

Concerning what was setting the town ablaze that day, only confused echoes reached the secluded women; and chiefly through the butcher, between whom and Belle a tacit armistice was soon in effect. Chops were slashed ruthlessly as he revealed details of what was going on, and the patent block shook under the savage blows of the cleaver while the butcher hinted at things more momentous to come. From him, Belle learned that Van Horn and Stone had been held somewhere up at Tenison's incommunicado, by Lefever and Sawdy, while Laramie, opposed by the cattlemen's lawyer, was demanding from Justice Druel warrants for his prisoners; and that after they had reluctantly been issued, Sheriff Druel had pigeon-holed them until Tenison, backing Laramie, had told Druel after a big row, he would run him out of town if he didn't take his prisoners to jail.

It was five o'clock when the butcher, instead of sending over the boy, brought the meat for supper himself: "They're locked up," he said in a terse undertone, as he handed his package to Belle. "There was a big bunch up there when they was put in. Some of 'em talked pretty loud about a jail delivery. Laramie stood right there to see they went into their cells and they went."

"Were you there?" demanded Belle.

"I was."

"What did Laramie say?"

"All he said to Druel was: 'If you don't keep 'em locked up, Druel, I take no responsibility for what happens.' I come all the way from the jail with Laramie myself," recited the butcher; "walked right alongside him and Harry Tenison down t' the hotel."

"Well, if you walked so far with him, is he coming here for supper?"

The butcher was taken aback: "How in thunder should I know?" he blurted out.

"There you go, slamming away with your blasphemy again. Couldn't you ask him?"

"Why, yes, Belle, I reckon I could. Maybe I can. Say!" he returned after starting down the steps, to point to the package in her hand, "there's a mess o' sweetbreads in there for you."

"Shucks! I can't use sweetbreads tonight, Heinie."

"Throw 'em away then. A present, ain't they? Nobody in town eats 'em but you."

Kate unfortunately suggested braizing the sweetbreads for Sawdy and Lefever.

"What?" exclaimed Belle. "Men don't eat sweetbreads, don't you know that? You've got to give 'em steak—round steak and the tougher the better—tough as cowhide and fried to tears. They'd be insulted. Lefever and Sawdy won't be here tonight, anyway. They're in Medicine Bend on an Indian case. All I'm wondering is, whether Jim's coming."

But Laramie did not come—greatly to Kate's relief. He spent the night at the hotel and left town early. Next morning when Belle heard the news of the street she was thankful he had gone, for it was said that Van Horn and Stone were out of jail. Barb had been summoned in the night by the lawyers, and next day the prisoners were out on bail.

Laramie had made no secret of his riding north, except that, in the circumstances, he preferred to ride the night trail rather than the day trail. He wanted to look up his cattle and see Simeral and he thought he knew Barb well enough to be sure the stock would be sent back very promptly in as bad condition as possible.

He got to his ranch in good time. There were no signs of life anywhere. Riding about noon over to Simeral's he found his shack empty. But he hunted up food and cooked himself a breakfast.

While he was eating peacefully at Simeral's, Van Horn was with Stone and Doubleday, the three breakfasting in the back room of a Main Street saloon. Just what took place at that breakfast was not figured out for a long time afterward, if it really ever was. But the street heard that Van Horn and Doubleday had had a quarrel at breakfast and that Doubleday in a rage had turned the prisoners over to the sheriff and asked to be released from his bail bond.

No news more exciting could have reached Belle Shockley. She heard the story up street and ran halfway home to tell Kate, who remained in seclusion. Kate herself was not less excited; the news meant so much if it were true, and the butcher confirmed it beyond a doubt. By nightfall everybody knew that Van Horn and Stone were locked up again.

One man in town was not altogether at ease over the day's developments. Tenison spent much time that afternoon in the hotel billiard room, it being the best clearing house for the street gossip.

He tried more than once during the afternoon to get hold of Kitchen or Carpy—neither was in town—and with the day drawing to a close, Tenison's restlessness increased. He was standing late in the evening near a favorite corner at the upper end of the bar and above the billiard tables, when among the crowd drifting in and out of the room he caught sight of Ben Simeral. Tenison lost no time. Without moving, he asked the nearest bartender to take a message to the old rancher. And when Simeral passed through the door leading into the hotel, Tenison was behind him. He followed Simeral into the office and back past the wash room, through the hallway leading to the sample rooms. Opening the door of the first of these, Tenison pressed a light button, and motioning Simeral to enter, followed him into the room, closed the door, locked it, and sat down facing the rancher: "I want to get a message to Jim Laramie, Ben," he began at once. "You know what's been going on here today?"

The old rancher nodded silently.

"Can you ride to the Falling Wall for me right away with a word for Laramie?"

Simeral said nothing, but his heavy eyes closed as he nodded again.

"Laramie's gone home. He thinks Van Horn is in jail. The story is," continued Tenison, "that Van Horn and old Barb quarreled, that they came to blows and that Barb turned Stone and him over to Druel again to lock up." Tenison spoke slowly and impressively: "Tell Laramie," he said, "I copper all that stuff—every bit of it. Tell him to look out. I don't know what them fellows have got in their heads; but it's something. Van Horn won't be in jail long."

"He's out again now."

Tenison eyed his messenger steadily: "What do you mean?"

"I just come from Hinchcliffe's saloon. They've been out an hour."

Hard as the blow struck home, Tenison did not bat a lash: "We may be too late," he said. "It's worth trying. Warn Jim if you can."

"I can."

"There'll be a good horse for you at Kitchen's. Ask McAlpin for it. Tell him I couldn't get hold of a man any quicker. Will Jim sleep at your place tonight?"

Simeral shook his head: "No tellin'."

Tenison rose. Drawing from a trousers pocket a roll of bills, he slipped off several and passed them to Simeral.

"What's this f'r?" asked Simeral, looking at the money as it lay across his hand and then at Tenison.