Hollister looked at him searchingly. "I might, at that," agreed the puncher. "But I'm not doin' that kind of favor to-day. I'll give you a piece of advice. This ain't no country for you. Hop a train for Boston, Mass., or one o' them places where you can take yore troubles to a fellow with a blue coat. Tha's where you belong."

Up the street rolled Blister Haines, in time to hear the cowpuncher's suggestion. Already the news had reached the justice of what had taken place. He was one of those amiable busybodies who take care of other people's troubles for them. Sometimes his efforts came to grief and sometimes they did not.

"Hit the trail, you lads," he ordered. "I'll l-look out for this b-business. The exc-c-citement's all over anyhow. Drift."

The range-riders disappeared. At best the situation was an embarrassing one. It is not pleasant to be in the company of one who has just shown himself a poltroon and is acutely aware of it.

Blister took Dillon into his office. He lowered himself into the biggest chair carefully, rolled a cigarette, and lit up.

"Tell me about it," he ordered.

"Nothin' to tell." Bob leaned against the table and looked drearily at the floor. The world had come to an end for him. That was all. "He showed up an' took June from me—made me tell her to go along with him."

"How did he do that? Did he cover you with a gun?"

"No. I had the gun—till he took it from me." He gave the explanation he had used twice already within the hour. "I'm no good."

Blister heaved himself up from the chair and waddled closer to the boy. He shook a fat forefinger in his face. He glared at him fiercely.

"Say, where you from?"

"Austin, Texas, when I was a kid."

"Well, damn you, Texas man, I w-want to t-tell you right now that you're talkin' blasphemy when you say you're n-no good. The good Lord made you, didn't He? D-d' you reckon I'm goin' to let you stand up there an' claim He did a pore job? No, sir. Trouble with you is you go an' bury yore talent instead of w-whalin' the stuffin' outa that Jake Houck fellow."

"I wish I was dead," Bob groaned, drooping in every line of his figure. "I wish I'd never been born."

"Blasphemy number two. Didn't He make you in His image? What right you got wishin' He hadn't created you? Why, you pore w-worm, you're only a mite lower than the angels an' yore red haid's covered with glory." Blister's whisper of a voice took unexpectedly a sharp edge. "Snap it up! That red haid o' yours. Hear me?"

Bob's head came up as though a spring had been released.

"B-better. K-keep it up where it belongs. Now, then, w-what are you aimin' for to do?"

Bob shook his head. "Get outa this country, like Hollister said. Find a hole somewheres an' pull it in after me."

"No, sir. Not none. You're gonna stay right here—in the country round Bear Cat—where every last man, woman, an' k-kid will know how you ate d-dirt when Houck told you to."

"I couldn't do that," the boy pleaded. "Why, I wouldn't have a chance. I'd know what they were sayin' all the time."

"Sure you'd know it. Tha's the price you g-gotta pay for g-grovelin'. Don't you see yore only chance is to go out an' make good before the folks who know how you've acted? Sneak off an' keep still about what you did, amongst s-strangers, an' where do you get off? You know all yore life you're only a worm. The best you can be is a bluff. You'd be d-duckin' outa makin' the fight you've gotta make. That don't get you anywhere a-tall. No, sir. Go out an' reverse the verdict of the court. Make good, right amongst the people who're keepin' tabs on yore record. You can do it, if you c-clamp yore j-jaw an' remember that yore red haid is c-covered with g-glory an' you been given dominion."

"But—"

"S-snap it up!" squeaked Blister.

The red head came up again with a jerk.

"Keep it up."

"What'll I do? Where'll I find work?"

"Out on the range. At the K Bar T, or the Keystone, or the Slash Lazy D. It don't m-matter where."

"I can't ride."

"Hmp! Learn, can't you? Dud Hollister an' Tom Reeves wasn't neither one of them born on a bronc's back. They climbed up there. So can you. You'll take the dust forty times. You'll get yore bones busted an' yore red haid cut open. But if you got the guts to stick, you'll be ridin' 'em slick one o' these here days. An' you'll come out a m-man."

A faint glow began to stir in the boy's heart. Was there really a chance for him to reverse the verdict? Could he still turn over a leaf and make another start?

"You'll have one heluva time for a while," Blister prophesied. "Take 'em by an' large an' these lads chasin' cows' tails are the salt o' the earth. They'll go farther with you an' stick longer than anybody else you ever met up with. Once they know you an' like you. But they'll be right offish with you for a while. Kinda polite an' distant, I expect. S-some overbearin' g-guy will start runnin' on you, knowin' it'll be safe. It'll be up to you to m-make it mighty onsafe for him. Go through to a finish that once an' the boys will begin sizin' you up an' wonderin' about you. Those show-me lads will have to get evidence about 'steen times before they'll believe."

"I'll never be able to stick it. I'm such a—so timid," Dillon groaned.

The justice bristled. "H-hell's bells! What's ailin' you, Texas man? I tell you that you're made in His image. Bite on that thought hard whenever you're up against it an' want to hide yorese'f in a hole. Every time you get too s-scared to play yore hand out, you're playin' it low down on yore C-creator."

Bob came to another phase of the situation. "What about—June?"

"Well, what about her?"

"She's gone with Houck. He'll not take her home."

"What d' you m-mean not take her home? Where'll he take her?"

"I don't know. That's it. I'm responsible for her. I brought her here. He means to—to make her live with him."

"Keep her by force—that what you're drivin' at?"

"No-o. Not exactly. He's got a hold over her father somehow. She's worn out fightin' him. When she ran away with me she played her last card. She'll have to give up now. He's so big an' strong, such a bulldog for gettin' his way, that she can't hold him off. June ain't seventeen yet. She's gettin' a mighty rotten deal, looks like. First off, livin' alone the way she an' Tolliver do, then Houck, then me, an' finally Houck again."

"I'll notify Tolliver how things are," Blister said. "Get word to him right away. We'll have to take a lead from him about June."

"I was thinkin'—"

"Onload it."

"Mrs. Gillespie was so kind to her. Maybe she could talk to June an' take her at the hotel—if June an' Houck haven't gone yet."

"You said something then, boy. I'll see Mollie right away. She'll sure fix it."

They were too late. The wrangler at Kilburn's corral had already seen Houck hitch up and drive away with June, they presently learned.



CHAPTER XI

JUNE PRAYS

When June turned away from her husband of an hour she abandoned hope. She had been like a child lost in the forest. A gleam of light from a window had cheered her for a moment, but it had flickered out and left her in the darkness.

In one sense June was innocent as an infant. She knew nothing of feminine blandishments, of the coquetry which has become so effective a weapon in the hands of modern woman when she is not hampered by scruples. But she had lived too close to nature not to be aware of carnal appetite.

It is a characteristic of frontier life that one learns to face facts. June looked at them now, clear-eyed, despair in her heart. As she walked beside Jake to the corral, as she waited for him to hitch up the broncos, as she rode beside him silently through the gathering night, the girl's mind dwelt on that future which was closing in on her like prison walls.

Not for an instant did she deceive herself. Houck did not mean to take her to Tolliver. She knew that his conscience would acquit him of blame for what he meant to do. He had given her a chance to marry him, and she had made it impossible. That was not his fault. He would take her to Brown's Park with him when he returned. Probably they were on the way there now.

After the plunging broncos had steadied down, Jake spoke. "You're well shet of him. He's no good, like he said himself. A man's got to have guts. You'd 'a' had to wear the breeches, June." The long whip curved out inexorably. "Git over there, Buckskin."

Houck drove like a master. After one wild bolt the dancing ponies had sensed that a strong hand was at the reins. They accepted the fact placidly. June watched his handling of the lines sullenly, a dull resentment and horror in her heart. He would subdue her as easily as he had the half-broken colts, sometimes bullying, sometimes mocking, sometimes making love to her with barbaric ardor. There were times when his strength and ruthlessness had fascinated June, but just now she felt only horror weighted by a dull, dead despair.

No use to fight longer. In a world filled with Jake Houck there was no free will. She was helpless as a wolf in a trap.

They drove through a country of sagebrush hills. The moon came out and carpeted the slopes with silver lace. Deep within June was a born love of beauty as it found expression in this land of the Rockies. But to-night she did not taste the scent of the sage or see the veil of mist that had transformed the draws magically to fairy dells.

"Where you goin'?" she asked at last. "You said you'd take me to Dad."

He laughed, slipped a strong arm round her shoulders, and drew her closer. "Found yore tongue at last, June girl, eh? We're going home—to my place up in Brown's Park."

She made a perfunctory protest. It was, she knew, quite useless, and her heart was not in it. No words she used, no appeal she could make, would touch this man or change his intentions.

"You got no right to take me there. I'm not yore slave. I want to go to Dad."

"Tha's right," he mocked. "I'm yore slave, June. What's the use of fighting? I'm so set on you that one way or another I'm bound to have you."

She bit her lip, to keep from weeping. In the silvery night, alone with him, miles from any other human being, she felt woefully helpless and forlorn. The years slipped away. She was a little child, and her heart was wailing for the mother whose body lay on the hillside near the deserted cabin in Brown's Park. What could she do? How could she save herself from the evil shadow that would blot the sunshine from her life?

Somewhere, in that night of stars and scudding clouds, was God, she thought. He could save her if He would. But would He? Miracles did not happen nowadays. And why would He bother about her? She was such a trifle in the great scheme of things, only a poor ragged girl from the back country, the daughter of a convict, poor hill trash, as she had once heard a woman at Glenwood whisper. She was not of any account.

Yet prayers welled out in soundless sobs from a panic-stricken heart. "O God, I'm only a li'l' girl, an' I growed up without a mother. I'm right mean an' sulky, but if you'll save me this time from Jake Houck, I'll make out to say my prayers regular an' get religion first chance comes along," she explained and promised, her small white face lifted to the vault where the God she knew about lived.

Drifts floated across the sky blown by currents from the northwest. They came in billows, one on top of another, till they had obscured most of the stars. The moon went into eclipse, reappeared, vanished behind the storm scud, and showed again.

The climate of the Rockies, year in, year out, is the most stimulating on earth. Its summer breezes fill the lungs with wine. Its autumns are incomparable, a golden glow in which valley and hill bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. Its springs—they might be worse. Any Coloradoan will admit the climate is superlative. But there is one slight rift in the lute, hardly to be mentioned as a discord in the universal harmony. Sudden weather changes do occur. A shining summer sun vanishes and in a twinkling of an eye the wind is whistling snell.

Now one of these swept over the Rio Blanco Valley. The clouds thickened, the air grew chill. The thermometer was falling fast.

Houck swung the team up from the valley road to the mesa. Along this they traveled, close to the sage-covered foothills. At a point where a draw dipped down to the road, Houck pulled up and dismounted. A gate made of three strands of barbed wire and two poles barred the wagon trail. For already the nester was fencing the open range.

As Houck moved forward to the gate the moon disappeared back of the banked clouds. June's eye swept the landscape and brightened. The sage and the brush were very thick here. A grove of close-packed quaking asps filled the draw. She glanced at Jake. He was busy wrestling with the loop of wire that fastened the gate.

God helps those that help themselves, June remembered. She put down the lines Houck had handed her, stepped softly from the buckboard, and slipped into the quaking asps.

A moment later she heard Jake's startled oath. It was certain that he would plunge into the thicket of saplings in pursuit. She crept to one side of the draw and crouched low.

He did not at once dive in. From where she lay hidden, June could hear the sound of his footsteps as he moved to and fro.

"Don't you try to make a fool of Jake Houck, girl," he called to her angrily. "I ain't standin' for any nonsense now. We got to be movin' right along. Come outa there."

Her heart was thumping so that she was afraid he might hear it. She held herself tense, not daring to move a finger lest she make a rustling of leaves.

"Hear me, June! Git a move on you. If you don't—" He broke off, with another oath. "I'll mark yore back for you sure enough with my whip when I find you."

She heard him crashing into the thicket. He passed her not ten feet away, so close that she made out the vague lines of his big body. A few paces farther he stopped.

"I see you, girl. You ain't foolin' me any. Tell you what I'll do. You come right along back to the buckboard an' I'll let you off the lickin' this time."

She trembled, violently. It seemed that he did see her, for he moved a step or two in her direction. Then he stopped, to curse, and the rage that leaped into the heavy voice betrayed the bluff.

Evidently he made up his mind that she was higher up the draw. He went thrashing up the arroyo, ploughing through the young aspens with a great crackle of breaking branches.

June took advantage of this to creep up the side of the draw and out of the grove. The sage offered poorer cover in which to hide, but her knowledge of Houck told her that he would not readily give up the idea that she was in the asps. He was a one-idea man, obstinate even to pigheadedness. So long as there was a chance she might be in the grove he would not stop searching there. He would reason that the draw was so close to the buckboard she must have slipped into it. Once there, she would stay because in it she could lie concealed.

Her knowledge of the habits of wild animals served June well now. The first instinct was to get back to the road and run down it at full speed, taking to the brush only when she heard the pursuit. But this would not do. The sage here was much heavier and thicker than it was nearer Bear Cat. She would find a place to hide in it till he left to drive back and cut her off from town. There was one wild moment when she thought of slipping down to the buckboard and trying to escape in it. June gave this up because she would have to back it along the narrow road for fifteen or twenty yards before she could find a place to turn.

On hands and knees she wound deeper into the sage, always moving toward the rim-rock at the top of the hill. She was still perilously close to Houck. His muffled oaths, the thrashing of the bushes, the threats and promises he stopped occasionally to make; all of these came clear to her in spite of the whistling wind.

It had come on to rain mistily. June was glad of that. She would have welcomed a heavy downpour out of a black night. The rim-rock was close above. She edged along it till she came to a scar where the sandstone had broken off and scorched a path down the slope. Into the hollow formed by two boulders resting against each other she crawled.

For hours she heard Jake moving about, first among the aspens and later on the sage hill. The savage oaths that reached her now and again were evidence enough that the fellow was in a vile temper. If he should find her now, she felt sure he would carry out his vow as to the horsewhip.

The night was cold. June shivered where she lay close to the ground. The rain beat in uncomfortably. But she did not move till Houck drove away.

Even then she descended to the road cautiously. He might have laid a trap for her by returning on foot in the darkness. But she had to take a chance. What she meant to do was clear in her mind. It would require all her wits and strength to get safely back to town.

She plodded along the road for perhaps a mile, then swung down from the mesa to the river. The ford where Jake had driven across was farther down, but she could not risk the crossing. Very likely he was lying in wait there.

June took off her brogans and tied them round her neck. She would have undressed, but she was afraid of losing the clothes while in the stream.

It was dark. She did not know the river, how deep it was or how strong the current. As she waded slowly in, her courage began to fail. She might never reach the other shore. The black night and the rain made it seem very far away.

She stopped, thigh deep, to breathe another prayer to the far-away God of her imagination, who sat on a throne in the skies, an arbitrary emperor of the universe. He had helped her once to-night. Maybe He would again.

"O God, don't please lemme drown," she said aloud, in order to be quite sure her petition would be heard.

Deeper into the current she moved. The water reached her waist. Presently its sweep lifted her from the bottom. She threw herself forward and began to swim. It did not seem to her that she was making any headway. The heavy skirts dragged down her feet and obstructed free movement of them. Not an expert swimmer, she was soon weary. Weights pulled at the arms as they swept back the water in the breast-stroke. It flashed through her mind that she could not last much longer. Almost at the same instant she discovered the bank. Her feet touched bottom. She shuffled heavily through the shallows and sank down on the shore completely exhausted.

Later, it was in June's mind that she must have been unconscious. When she took note of her surroundings she was lying on a dry pebbly wash which the stream probably covered in high water. Snowflakes fell on her cheek and melted there. She rose, stiff and shivering. In crossing the river the brogans had washed from her neck. She moved forward in her stocking feet. For a time she followed the Rio Blanco, then struck abruptly to the right through the sagebrush and made a wide circuit.

It was definitely snowing now and the air was colder. June's feet were bleeding, though she picked a way in the grama-grass and the tumbleweed to save them as much as possible. Once she stepped into a badger hole covered with long buffalo grass and strained a tendon.

She had plenty of pluck. The hardships of the frontier had instilled into her endurance. Though she had pitied herself when she was riding beside Jake Houck to moral disaster, she did not waste any now because she was limping painfully through the snow with the clothes freezing on her body. She had learned to stand the gaff, in the phrase of the old bullwhacker who had brought her down from Rawlins. It was a part of her code that physical pain and discomfort must be trodden under foot and disregarded.

A long detour brought her back to the river. She plodded on through the storm, her leg paining at every step. She was chilled to the marrow and very tired. But she clamped her small strong teeth and kept going.

The temptation to give up and lie down assailed her. She fought against it, shuffling forward, stumbling as her dragging feet caught in the snow. She must be near Bear Cat now. Surely it could not be far away. If it was not very close, she knew she was beaten.

After what seemed an eternity of travel a light gleamed through the snow. She saw another—a third.

She zigzagged down the road like a drunkard.



CHAPTER XII

MOLLIE TAKES CHARGE

Bear Cat was a cow-town, still in its frankest, most exuberant youth. Big cattle outfits had settled on the river and ran stock almost to the Utah line. Every night the saloons and gambling-houses were filled with punchers from the Diamond K, the Cross Bar J, the Half Circle Dot, or any one of a dozen other brands up or down the Rio Blanco. They came from Williams's Fork, Squaw, Salt, Beaver, or Piney Creeks. And usually they came the last mile or two on the dead run, eager to slake a thirst as urgent as their high spirits.

They were young fellows most of them, just out of their boyhood, keen to spend their money and have a good time when off duty. Always they made straight for Dolan's or the Bear Cat House. First they downed a drink or two, then they washed off the dust of travel. This done, each followed his own inclination. He gambled, drank, or frolicked around, according to the desire of the moment.

Dud Hollister and Tom Reeves, with Blister Haines rolling between them, impartially sampled the goods at Dolan's and at Mollie Gillespie's. They had tried their hand at faro, with unfortunate results, and they had sat in for a short session at a poker game where Dud had put too much faith in a queen full.

"I sure let my foot slip that time," Dud admitted. "I'd been playin' plumb outa luck. Couldn't fill a hand, an' when I did, couldn't get it to stand up. That last queen looked like money from home. I reckon I overplayed it," he ruminated aloud, while he waited for Mike Moran to give him another of the same.

Tom hooked his heel on the rail in front of the bar. "I ain't made up my mind yet that game was on the level. That tinhorn who claimed he was from Cheyenne ce'tainly had a mighty funny run o' luck. D' you notice how his hands jes' topped ours? Kinda queer, I got to thinkin'. He didn't hold any more'n he had to for to rake the chips in. I'd sorta like a look-see at the deck we was playin' with."

Blister laughed wheezily. "You w-won't get it. N-never heard of a hold-up gettin' up a petition for better street lights, did you? No, an' you n-never will. An' you never n-noticed a guy who was aimin' to bushwhack another from the brush go to clearin' off the sage first. He ain't l-lookin' for no open arguments on the m-merits of his shootin'. Not none. Same with that Cheyenne bird an' his stocky pal acrost the table. They're f-figurin' that dead decks tell no tales. The one you played with is sure enough s-scattered every which way all over the floor along with seve-real others." The fat justice of the peace murmured "How!" and tilted his glass.

If Blister did not say "I told you so," it was not because he might not have done it fairly. He had made one comment when Dud had proposed sitting in to the game of draw.

"H-how much m-mazuma you got?"

"Twenty-five bucks left."

"If you s-stay outa that game you'll earn t-twenty-five bucks the quickest you ever did in yore life."

Youth likes to buy its experience and not borrow it. Dud knew now that Blister had been a wise prophet in his generation.

The bar at Gillespie's was at the front of the house. In the rear were the faro and poker tables, the roulette wheels, and the other conveniences for separating hurried patrons from their money. The Bear Cat House did its gambling strictly on the level, but there was the usual percentage in favor of the proprietor.

Mollie was sitting in an armchair on a small raised platform about halfway back. She kept a brisk and business-like eye on proceedings. No puncher who had gone broke, no tenderfoot out of luck, could go hungry in Bear Cat if she knew it. The restaurant and the bar were at their service just as though they had come off the range with a pay-check intact. They could pay when they had the money. No books were kept. Their memories were the only ledgers. Few of these debts of honor went unpaid in the end.

But Mollie, though tender-hearted, knew how to run the place. Her brusque, curt manner suited Bear Cat. She could be hail-fellow or hard as flint, depending on circumstances. The patrons at Gillespie's remembered her sex and yet forgot it. They guarded their speech, but they drank with her at the bar or sat across a poker table from her on equal terms. She was a good sport and could lose or win large sums imperturbably.

Below her now there floated past a tide of hot-blooded youth eager to make the most of the few hours left before the dusty trails called. Most of these punchers would go back penniless to another month or two of hard and reckless riding. But they would go gayly, without regret, the sunshine of irrepressible boyhood in their hearts. The rattle of chips, the sound of laughter, the murmur of conversation, the even voice of the croupier at the roulette table, filled the hall.

Jim Larson, a cowman from down the river, sat on the edge of the platform.

"The Boot brand's puttin' a thousand head in the upper country this fall, Mollie. Looks to me like bad business, but there's a chance I'm wrong at that. My bet is you can't run cows there without winter feed. There won't many of 'em rough through."

"Some'll drift down to the river," Mollie said, her preoccupied eyes on the stud table where a slight altercation seemed to be under way. Her method of dealing with quarrels was simple. The first rule was based on one of Blister Haines's paradoxes. "The best way to settle trouble is not to have it." She tried to stop difficulties before they became acute. If this failed, she walked between the angry youths and read the riot act to them.

"Some will," admitted Larson. "More of 'em won't."

Mollie rose, to step down from the platform. She did not reach the stud table. A commotion at the front door drew her attention. Mrs. Gillespie was a solid, heavy-set woman, but she moved with an energy that carried her swiftly. She reached the bar before any of the men from the gambling-tables.

A girl was leaning weakly against the door-jamb. Hat and shoes were gone. The hair was a great black mop framing a small face white to the lips. The stocking soles were worn through. When one foot shifted to get a better purchase for support, a bloodstained track was left on the floor. The short dress was frozen stiff.

The dark, haunted eyes moved uncertainly round the circle of faces staring at her. The lips opened and made the motions of speech, but no sound came from them. Without any warning the girl collapsed.

Dud Hollister's arm was under the ice-coated head in an instant. He looked up at Mollie Gillespie, who had been only a fraction of a second behind him.

"It's the li'l' bride," he said.

She nodded. "Brandy an' water, Mike. Quick! She's only fainted. Head not so high, Dud. Tha's right. We'll get a few drops of this between her teeth.... She's comin' to."

June opened her eyes and looked at Mollie. Presently she looked round and a slow wonder grew in them. "Where am I?" she murmured.

"You're at the hotel—where you'll be looked after right, dearie." Mrs. Gillespie looked up. "Some one get Doc Tuckerman. An' you, Tom, hustle Peggie and Chung Lung outa their beds if they're not up. There's a fire in my room. Tell her to take the blankets from the bed an' warm 'em. Tell Chung to heat several kettles o' water fast as he can. Dud, you come along an' carry her to the stove in the lobby. The rest o' you'll stay right here."

Mollie did not ask any questions or seek explanation. That could wait. The child had been through a terrible experience and must be looked after first.

From the lobby Dud presently carried June into the bedroom and departed. A roaring fire was in the stove. Blankets and a flannel nightgown were hanging over the backs of chairs to warm. With the help of the chambermaid Peggie, the landlady stripped from the girl the frozen dress and the wet underclothes. Over the thin, shivering body she slipped the nightgown, then tucked her up in the blankets. As soon as Chung brought the hot-water jugs she put one at June's feet and another close to the stomach where the cold hands could rest upon it.

June was still shaking as though she never would get warm. A faint mist of tears obscured her sight. "Y-you're awful good to me," she whispered, teeth chattering.

The doctor approved of what had been done. He left medicine for the patient. "Be back in five minutes," he told Mrs. Gillespie outside the room. "Want some stuff I've got at the office. Think I'll stay for a few hours and see how the case develops. Afraid she's in for a bad spell of pneumonia."

He did not leave the sick-room after his return until morning. Mollie stayed there, too. It was nearly one o'clock when Blister Haines knocked gently at the door.

"How's the li'l' lady?" he asked in his high falsetto, after Mollie had walked down the passage with him.

"She's a mighty sick girl. Pneumonia, likely."

"Tell doc not to let her die. If he needs another doctor some of us'll h-hustle over to Glenwood an' g-get one. Say, Mrs. Gillespie, I reckon there's gonna be trouble in town to-night."

She said nothing, but her blue eyes questioned him.

Blister's next sentence sent her moving toward the saloon.



CHAPTER XIII

BEAR CAT ASKS QUESTIONS

A man bow-legged into Gillespie's and went straight to the bar. "Gimme a drink—something damned hot," he growled.

He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, hook-nosed, with cold eyes set close. Hair and eyebrows were matted with ice and a coat of sleet covered his clothes. Judging from voice and manner, he was in a vile humor.

A young fellow standing near was leaning with his back against the bar, elbows resting on it. One heel was hooked casually over the rail.

"Anything been seen of a strange girl in town to-night?" the newcomer asked. "She ain't right in her head an' I was takin' her to her dad's place when she slipped away. I'm worried about her, out in this storm."

The cowpuncher looked at him coldly, eye to eye. "I'd say you got a license to be. If she's lost out to-night she's liable to be frozen to death before mo'ning."

"Yes," agreed Houck, and his lids narrowed. What did this young fellow mean? There was something about his manner both strange and challenging. If he was looking for a fight, Houck knew just where he could be accommodated.

"In which case—"

The puncher stopped significantly.

"In which case—?" Houck prompted.

"—it might be unlucky for the guy that took her out an' lost her."

"What's yore name, fellow?" Jake demanded.

"Fellow, my name's Dud Hollister," promptly answered the other. "D'you like it?"

"Not much. Neither it nor you."

Houck turned insolently back to the bar for his drink.

Mike was stirring into the glass of liquor cayenne pepper which he was shaking from a paper. He was using as a mixer the barrel of a forty-five.

The salient jaw of Houck jutted out. "What monkey trick are you tryin' to play on me?" he asked angrily.

"You wanted it hot," Mike replied, and the bartender's gaze too was cold and level.

It seemed to the former rustler that here was a second man ready to fasten a quarrel on him. What was the matter with these fellows anyhow?

Another puncher ranged himself beside Hollister. "Who did this bird claim he was, Dud?" he asked out loud, offensively.

"Didn't say. Took that li'l' bride out in this storm an' left her there. Expect he'll be right popular in Bear Cat."

Houck smothered his rage. This was too serious to be settled by an explosion of anger and an appeal to arms.

"I tell you she hid whilst I was openin' a gate. I been lookin' for her six hours. Thought maybe she'd come to town. My idee is to organize a search party an' go out after her. Quick as we can slap saddles on broncs an' hit the trail."

Fragments of the facts had drifted out to the boys from the sick-room.

Dud tried an experiment. "Where'll we hunt for her—up toward Piceance?"

Houck deliberated before answering. If he were to tell the truth—that she had escaped from him in the hills nine miles down the river—these men would know he had been lying when he said he was taking June to her father. If he let the search party head toward Piceance, there would be no chance for it to save the girl. The man was no coward. To his credit, he told the truth.

A half-circle of hostile faces hemmed him in, for the word had spread that this was the man who had carried off June Tolliver. He was the focus of a dozen pairs of eyes. Among the cattlemen of the Old West you will still look into many such eyes, but never among city dwellers will you find them. Blue they are for the most part or gray-blue, level, direct, unfearing; quiet and steady as steel, flinging no flags of flurry, tremendously sure of themselves. They can be very likable eyes, frank and kind, with innumerable little lines of humor radiating from the corners; or they can be stern and chill as the Day of Judgment.

Jake Houck found in them no gentleness. They judged him, inexorably, while he explained.

"Where was you takin' her?" asked Larson, of the Wagon Rod outfit.

In spite of his boldness, of the dominating imperiousness by means of which he had been used to ride roughshod over lesser men, Houck felt a chill sensation at his heart. They were too quiet—too quiet by half.

"We was to have been married to-day," he said surlily. "This Dillon boy got her to run off with him. He was no good. I rode hell-for-leather into town to head 'em off."

Blister brought him back to the question of the moment. "An' you were t-takin' her—?"

"To Brown's Park."

"Forcin' her to go. Was that it?" Hollister broke in.

"No, sir. She went of her own accord."

"Asked you to take her there, mebbe?"

"None o' yore damn business."

"How old is she, Mr. Houck?" Larson questioned.

"I dunno."

"I do. Sixteen coming Christmas," said Dud. "Dillon told me."

"An' how old are you, Mr. Houck?" the quiet, even voice of the owner of the Wagon Rod pursued.

"I d'no as that's got anything to do with it, but I'm forty-three," Jake retorted defiantly.

"You meant to live with her?"

"I meant to treat her right," was the sullen reply.

"But livin' with her, an' her another man's wife."

"No, sir. That fake marriage with Dillon don't go. She was promised to me." He broke out suddenly in anger: "What's eatin' you all? Why don't you go out an' help me find the girl? These whatfors an' whyfors can wait, I reckon."

Blister dropped a bomb. "She's found."

"Found!" Houck stared at the fat man. "Who found her? Where? When?"

"Coupla hours ago. Here in this r-room. Kinda funny how she'd swim the river a night like this an' walk eight-ten miles barefoot in the snow, all to get away from you, an' her goin' with you of her own accord."

"It wasn't eight miles—more like six."

"Call it six, then. Fact is, Mr. Houck, she was mighty scared of you—in a panic of terror, I'd say."

"She had no call to be," the Brown's Park settler replied, his voice heavy with repressed rage. "I'm tellin' you she wasn't right in her head."

"An' you was takin' advantage of that to make this li'l' girl yore—to ruin her life for her," Hollister flung back.

In all his wild and turbulent lifetime Jake Houck had never before been brought to task like this. He resented the words, the manner, the quiet insistence of these range men. An unease that was not quite fear, but was very close to it, had made him hold his temper in leash. Now the savage in him broke through.

"You're a bunch of fool meddlers, an' I'm through explainin'. You can go to hell 'n' back for me," he cried, and followed with a string of crackling oaths.

The eyes of the punchers and cattlemen met one another. No word was spoken, but the same message passed back and forth a score of times.

"I expect you don't quite understand where you're at, Mr. Houck," Larson said evenly. "This is mighty serious business for you. We aim to give you a chance to tell yore story complete before we take action."

"Action?" repeated Houck, startled.

"You're up against it for fair," Reeves told him. "If you figure on gettin' away with a thing like that in a white man's country you've sure got another guess comin'. I don't know where you're from or who you are, but I know where you're going."

"D-don't push on the reins, Tom," the justice said. "We aim to be reasonable about this, I reckon."

"Sure we do." Dud countered with one of Blister's own homely apothegms. "What's the use of chewin' tobacco if you spit out the juice? Go through, I say. There's a cottonwood back of the kitchen."

"You're fixin' for to hang me?" Houck asked, his throat and palate gone suddenly dry.

"You done guessed it first crack," Tom nodded.

"Not yet, boys," protested Haines in his whispering falsetto. "I reckon we'd ought to wait an' see how the girl comes out."

"Why had we?" demanded a squat puncher from the Keystone. "What difference does it make? If ever any one needed stringin' up, it's the guy here. He's worse than Douglas or any other Injun ever was. Is it yore notion we'd oughta sit around with our hands in our pockets, Blister, while reptiles like this Houck make our girls swim the river at night an' plough barefoot through snowstorms? I ain't that easy-dispositioned myself."

"Shorty's sure whistlin'. Same here," another chap-clad rider chipped in.

"An' here."

Blister dropped into the background inconspicuously and vanished. He appeared to be in a minority of one, not counting Houck, and he needed reenforcements.

"We'll hear what Mr. Houck has to say before we pass judgment," Larson said.

But Houck, looking into the circle of grim faces that surrounded him, knew that he was condemned. Nothing that he could say would make any difference. He shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"What's the use? You've done made up yore minds."

He noticed that the younger fellows were pressing closer to him. Pretty soon they would disarm him. If he was going to make a fight for his life, it had to be now. His arm dropped to his side, close to the butt of the revolver he carried.

He was too late. Hollister jumped for his wrist and at the same time Mike flung himself across the bar and garroted him. He struggled fiercely to free himself, but was dragged down to the floor and pinioned. Before he was lifted up his hands were tied behind him.

Unobserved, the front door of the barroom had opened. An ice-coated figure was standing on the threshold.

Houck laughed harshly. "Come right in, Tolliver. You'll be in time to take a hand in the show."

The little trapper's haggard eyes went round in perplexity. "What's the trouble?" he asked mildly.

"No trouble a-tall," answered the big prisoner hardily. "The boys are hangin' me. That's all."



CHAPTER XIV

HOUCK TAKES A RIDE

Tolliver rubbed a hand uncertainly over a bristly chin. "Why, what are they doin' that for, Jake?"

"Are you the Tolliver girl's father?" asked Larson.

"Yes, sir."

"Then we got bad news for you. She's sick."

"Sick?" the trapper's lips trembled.

"A mighty sick girl. This man here—this Houck, if that's what he calls himself—took her away from the young fellow she'd married and started up to Brown's Park with her. Somehow she gave him the slip, swam the river, an' came back to town barefoot through the snow. Seems she lost her shoes while she was crossin' the Blanco."

The color washed away beneath the tan of the father's face. "Where's she at?"

"Here—at the hotel. Mrs. Gillespie an' Doc Tuckerman are lookin' after her."

"I'd like to go to her right away."

"Sure. Dud, you know where the room is. Take Mr. Tolliver there."

"Pete." Houck's voice was hoarse, but no longer defiant. In this little man, whom he had always bullied and dominated, whose evil genius he had been, lay his hope of life. "Pete, you ain't a-going to leave yore old pardner to be hanged."

Tolliver looked bleakly at him. The spell this man had woven over him twenty-odd years ago was broken forever. "I'm through with you, Jake," he said.

"You ain't intendin' to lift a hand for me?"

"Not a finger."

"Won't you tell these men howcome it I rode down to Bear Cat after June?"

The Piceance Creek man's jaw tightened. His small eyes flashed hate. "Sure, I'll tell 'em that. About two-three weeks ago Houck showed up at my place an' stayed overnight. I knew him when we was both younger, but I hadn't seen him for a long time. He took a notion to my June. She didn't want to have a thing to do with him, but he bullied her, same as he did me. June she found out he knew something about me, an' she was afraid to make him mad. I reckon finally he got some kinda promise outa her. He had some business at Meeker, an' he was comin' back to the ranch yestiddy. Then he aimed to bring her here to get married."

He was looking steadily at Houck. Pete had found at last the courage to defy him. He could tell anything he liked about the escape from Canyon City.

"I was away all day lookin' over my traps an' fixin' them up. When I reached home I found two notes. I got 'em here somewheres." Tolliver fumbled in his coat pockets, but did not find them. "One was from June. She said she was runnin' away to marry the Dillon boy. The other was from Jake Houck. He'd got to the house before I did, found her note to me, an' lit out after her. Soon's I could run up a horse I hit the trail too."

"Threw me down, eh, Pete?" Houck said bitterly. "Well, there's two can play at that."

Tolliver did not flinch. "Go to it, soon as you've a mind to. I don't owe you a thing except misery. You wrecked my life. I suffered for you an' kept my mouth padlocked. I was coyote enough to sit back an' let you torment my li'l' girl because I was afraid for to have the truth come out an' hurt her. I'd ought to have gone after you with a forty-five. I'm through. They can't hang you any too soon to suit me. If they don't—an' if my June don't get well—I'll gun you sure as God made li'l' apples."

He turned and walked out of the room with Dud Hollister.

In the passage they met Mollie Gillespie and Blister Haines. The first words the landlady heard were from Houck.

"No, sir, I've got nothing to say. What'd be the use? You've made up yore minds to go through with this thing. A fool could see that. Far as Tolliver goes, I reckon I'll go it alone an' not do any beefin' about him. He threw me down hard, but he was considerable strung up about June. Wouldn't do any good for me to tell what I know."

"Not a bit," assented Reeves. "Might as well game it out."

Houck's hard, cold eye looked at him steadily. "Who said anything about not gaming it out? If you're expectin' me to beg an' crawl you've got hold of the wrong man. I'm a damned tough nut an' don't you forget it. Whenever you're ready, gents."

From the door Mrs. Gillespie spoke. "What's all this?"

She became at once the center of attention. The punchers grouped around Houck were taken by surprise. They were disconcerted by this unexpected addition to the party. For though Mrs. Gillespie led an irregular life, no woman on the river was so widely loved as she. The mother of Bear Cat, the boys called her. They could instance a hundred examples of the goodness of her heart. She never tired of waiting on the sick, of giving to those who were needy. It was more than possible she would not approve the summary vengeance about to be executed upon the Brown's Park man.

The prisoner was the first to answer. "Just in time, ma'am. The boys are stagin' an entertainment. They're fixin' to hang me. If you'll accept an invite from the hangee I'll be glad to have you stay an'—"

"Hanging him? What for? What's he done?"

Tom Reeves found his voice. "He's the fellow done dirt to the li'l' Tolliver girl, ma'am. We've had a kinda trial an'—"

"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted the woman. She swept the group with an appraising eye. "I'm surprised to see you in this, Larson. Thought you had more sense. Nobody would expect anything better of these flyaway boys."

The owner of the Wagon Rod brand attempted defense, a little sheepishly. "What would you want us to do, Mollie? This fellow treated the girl outrageous. She's liable to die because—"

"Die! Nonsense! She's not going to die any more than this Houck is." She looked the Brown's Park man over contemptuously with chill, steady eyes. "He's a bad egg. It wouldn't hurt my feelings any if you rode him outa town on a rail, but I'm not going to have you-all mixed up in a lynching when there's no need for it."

Larson stole a look around the circle of faces. On the whole he was glad Mrs. Gillespie had come. It took only a few minutes to choke the life out of a man, but there were many years left in which one might regret it.

"O' course, if you say Miss Tolliver ain't dangerous sick, that makes a difference," he said.

"Don't see it," Tom Reeves differed. "We know what this fellow aimed to do, an' how he drove her to the river to escape him. If you ask me, I'll say—"

"But nobody's askin' you, Tom," Mollie cut into his sentence sharply. "You're just a fool boy chasin' cows' tails for thirty dollars a month. I'm not going to have any of this nonsense. Bear Cat's a law-abidin' place. We're all proud of it. We don't let bad-men strut around an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, every sick woman and child within fifty miles had met that smile and warmed to it.

Reeves gave up, grinning. "I ain't such a kid either, Mrs. Gillespie, but o' course you got to have yore way. We all know that. What d' you want us to do with this bird?"

"Turn him over to Simp an' let him put the fellow in the jail. There's just as good law right here as there is anywhere. I'd hate to have it go out from here that Bear Cat can't trust the officers it elects to see justice done. Don't you boys feel that way too?"

"Can't we even ride him outa town on a rail? You done said we might."

Mrs. Gillespie hesitated. Why not? It was a crude and primitive punishment, but it would take drastic treatment to get under the hide of this sneering bully who had come within an ace of ruining the life of June Tolliver. The law could not touch him. He had not abducted her. She had gone of her own volition. Unfulfilled intentions are not criminal without an overt act. Was he to escape scot free? She had scoffed at the idea that June might die. But in her heart she was not so sure. The fever was growing on her. It would be days before the crisis was reached.

"Will you promise, honest injun, not to kill or maim him, not to do anything that will injure him permanent?"

"Yes, ma'am. We'll jes' jounce him up some."

"All agree to that?"

They did.

"Will you go along with the boys, Jim?" She smiled. "Just to see they're not too—enthusiastic."

The owner of the Wagon Rod said he would.

Mollie nodded. "All right, boys. The quicker the sooner."

Fifteen minutes later Jake Houck went out of town on a rail.



CHAPTER XV

A SCANDAL SCOTCHED

Before the door of the room opened Tolliver heard the high-pitched voice of his daughter.

"If you'd only stood up to him, Bob—if you'd shot him or fought him ... lemme go, Jake. You got no right to take me with you. Tell you I'm married.... Yes, sir, I'll love, honor, an' obey. I sure will—in sickness an' health—yes, sir, I do...."

The father's heart sank. He knew nothing about illness. A fear racked him that she might be dying. Piteously he turned to the doctor, after one look at June's flushed face.

"Is she—is she—?"

"Out of her head, Mr. Tolliver."

"I mean—will she—?"

"Can't promise you a thing yet. All we can do is look after her and hope for the best. She's young and strong. It's pretty hard to kill anybody born an' bred in these hills. They've got tough constitutions. Better take a chair."

Tolliver sat down on the edge of a chair, nursing his hat. His leathery face worked. If he could only take her place, go through this fight instead of her. It was characteristic of his nature that he feared and expected the worst. He was going to lose her. Of that he had no doubt. It would be his fault. He was being punished for the crimes of his youth and for the poltroonery that had kept him from turning Jake out of the house.

June sat up excitedly in bed and pointed to a corner of the room. "There he is, in the quaking asps, grinnin' at me! Don't you come nearer, Jake Houck! Don't you! If you do I'll—I'll—"

Dr. Tuckerman put his hand gently on her shoulder. "It's all right, June. Here's your father. We won't let Houck near you. Better lie down now and rest."

"Why must I lie down?" she asked belligerently. "Who are you anyhow, mister?"

"I'm the doctor. You're not quite well. We're looking after you."

Tolliver came forward timorously. "Tha's right, June. You do like the doctor says, honey."

"I'd just as lief, Dad," she answered, and lay down obediently.

When she was out of her head, at the height of the fever, Mrs. Gillespie could always get her to take the medicine and could soothe her fears and alarms. Mollie was chief nurse. If she was not in the room, after June had begun to mend, she was usually in the kitchen cooking broths or custards for the sick girl.

June's starved heart had gone out to her in passionate loyalty and affection. No woman had ever been good to her before, not since the death of her aunt, at least. And Mollie's goodness had the quality of sympathy. It held no room for criticism or the sense of superiority. She was a sinner herself, and it was in her to be tender to others who had fallen from grace.

To Mollie this child's innocent trust in her was exquisitely touching. June was probably the only person in the world except small children who believed in her in just this way. It was not possible that this faith could continue after June became strong enough to move around and talk with the women of Bear Cat. Though she had outraged public opinion all her life, Mollie Gillespie found herself tugged at by recurring impulses to align herself as far as possible with respectability.

For a week she fought against the new point of view. Grimly she scoffed at what she chose to consider a weakness.

"This is a nice time o' day for you to try to turn proper, Mollie Gillespie," she told herself plainly. "Just because a chit of a girl goes daffy over you, is that any reason to change yore ways? You'd ought to have a lick o' sense or two at yore age."

But her derision was a fraud. She was tired of being whispered about. The independent isolation of which she had been proud had become of a sudden a thing hateful to her.

She went to Larson as he was leaving the hotel dining-room on his next visit to town.

"Want to talk with you. Come outside a minute."

The owner of the Wagon Rod followed.

"Jim," she said, turning on him abruptly, "you've always claimed you wanted to marry me." Her blue eyes searched deep into his. "Do you mean that? Or is it just talk?"

"You know I mean it, Mollie," he answered quietly.

"Well, I'm tired of being a scandal to Bear Cat. I've always said I'd never get married again since my bad luck with Hank Gillespie. But I don't know. If you really want to get married, Jim."

"I've always thought it would be better."

"I'm not going to quit runnin' this hotel, you understand. You're in town two-three days a week anyhow. If you like you can build a house here an' we'll move into it."

"I'll get busy pronto. I expect you want a quiet wedding, don't you?"

"Sure. We can go over to Blister's office this afternoon. You see him an' make arrangements. Tell him I don't want the boys to know anything about it till afterward."

An hour later they stood before Justice Haines. Mollie thought she detected a faint glimmer of mirth in his eye after the ceremony. She quelled it promptly.

"If you get gay with me, Blister—"

The fat man's impulse to smile fled. "Honest to goodness, Mrs. Gillespie—"

"Larson," she corrected.

"Larson," he accepted. "I w-wish you m-many happy returns."

She looked at him suspiciously and grunted "Hmp!"



CHAPTER XVI

BLISTER AS DEUS EX MACHINA

Blister Haines found an old pair of chaps for Bob Dillon and lent him a buckskin bronco. Also, he wrote a note addressed to Harshaw, of the Slash Lazy D, and gave it to the boy.

"He'll put you to ridin', Ed will. The rest's up to you. D-don't you forget you're made in the l-likeness of God. When you feel like crawlin' into a hole s-snap that red haid up an' keep it up."

Bob grew very busy extricating a cockle burr from the mane of the buckskin. "I'll never forget what you've done for me, Mr. Haines," he murmured, beet red.

"Sho! Nothin' a-tall. I'm always lookin' for to get a chance to onload advice on some one. Prob'ly I was meant to be a grandma an' got mixed in the shuffle. Well, boy, don't weaken. When in doubt, hop to it."

"Yes, sir. I'll try."

"Don't w-worry about things beforehand. Nothin's ever as bad as you figure it's goin' to be. A lickin' don't last but a few minutes, an' if you get b-busy enough it's the other fellow that's liable to absorb it. Watch that r-rampageous scalawag Dud Hollister an' do like he does."

"Yes, sir."

"An' don't forget that every m-mornin' begins a new day. Tha's all, son."

Bob jogged down the road on this hazard of new fortune.

It chanced that Dud was still in town. Blister found him and half a dozen other punchers in front of the hotel.

"Betcha! Drinks for the crowd," the justice heard him say.

"Go you," Reeves answered, eyes dancing. "But no monkey business. It's to be a straight-away race from the front of the hotel clear to the blacksmith shop."

"To-day. Inside of ten minutes, you said," Shorty of the Keystone reminded Hollister. "An' this Sunday, you recollect."

Dud's gaze rested on a figure of a horseman moving slowly up the road toward them. The approaching rider was the Reverend Melanchthon T. Browning, late of Providence, Rhode Island. He had come to the frontier to teach it the error of its ways and bring a message of sweetness and light to the unwashed barbarians of the Rockies. He was not popular. This was due, perhaps, to an unfortunate manner. The pompous little man strutted and oozed condescension.

"W-what's up?" asked Blister.

"Dud's bettin' he'll get the sky pilot to race him from here to Monty's place," explained Reeves. "Stick around. He'll want to borrow a coupla dollars from you to buy the drinks."

It was Sunday afternoon. The missionary was returning from South Park, where he had been conducting a morning service. He was riding Tex Lindsay's Blue Streak, borrowed for the occasion.

"What deviltry you up to now, Dud?" Blister inquired.

"Me?" The young puncher looked at him with a bland face of innocence. "Why, Blister, you sure do me wrong."

Dud sauntered to the hitching-rack, easy, careless, graceful. He selected a horse and threw the rein over its head. The preacher was just abreast of the hotel.

The puncher swung to the saddle and brought the pony round. A wild whoop came from his throat. The roan, touched by a spur, leaped to a canter. For an instant it was side by side with Blue Streak. Then it shot down the road.

Blue Streak was off in an eyeflash. It jumped to a gallop and pounded after the roan. The Reverend Melancthon T. Browning was no rider. His feet lost the stirrups. A hymn-book went off at a wild tangent. Coat-tails flew into the air. The exponent of sweetness and light leaned forward and clung desperately to the mane, crying, "Whoa! Stop! Desist!"

But Blue Streak had no intention of desisting as long as the roan was in front. Tex Lindsay's horse was a racer. No other animal was going to pass it. The legs of the dark horse stretched for the road. It flew past the cowpony as though the latter had been trotting. The Reverend Melancthon stuck to the saddle for dear life.

At the blacksmith shop Dud pulled up. He rode back at a road gait to the hotel. His companions greeted him with shouts of gayety.

"Where's the parson?" some one asked.

"Between here an' 'Frisco somewheres. He was travelin' like he was in a hurry when I saw him last. Who pays for the drinks?"

"I do, you darned ol' Piute," shouted Reeves joyously. "I never will forget how the sky pilot's coat-tails spread. You could 'a' played checkers on 'em. D'you reckon we'd ought to send a wreckin' crew after Melancthon T. Browning?"

"Why, no. The way he was clamped to that Blue Streak's back you couldn't pry him loose with a crowbar."

"Here he c-comes now," Blister announced.

When the home missionary reached the hotel he found a grave and decorous group of sympathizers.

"I was surely right careless, sir, to start thataway so onexpected," Dud apologized. "I hope you didn't get jounced up much."

"Some one had ought to work you over for bein' so plumb wooden-haided, Dud," the puncher from the Keystone reproved him. "Here was Mr. Browning ridin' along quiet an' peaceable, figurin' out how he could improve us Rio Blanco savages, an' you come rip-rarin' along an' jar up all his geography by startin' that fool horse of his'n."

Dud hung his head. "Tha's right. It was sure enough thoughtless of me," he murmured.

The preacher looked at the offender severely. He did not yet feel quite equal to a fitting reprimand. "You see the evil effects of letting that vile stuff pass your lips. I hope this will be a lesson to you, young man. If I had not kept my presence of mind I might have been thrown and severely injured."

"Yes, sir," agreed Dud in a small, contrite voice.

"Makin' the preacher race on Sunday, too," chided Reeves. "Why, I shouldn't wonder but what it might get out an' spread scandalous. We'll all have to tell folks about it so's they'll get the right of it."

Melancthon squirmed. He could guess how the story would be told. "We'll say no more about it, if you please. The young man is sorry. I forgive him. His offense was inadvertent even though vexatious. If he will profit by this experience I will gladly suffer the incommodious ride."

After the missionary had gone and the bet been liquidated, Blister drew Hollister to one side. "I'm guessin' that when you get back to the ranch you'll find a new rider in the bunkhouse, Dud."

The puncher waited. He knew this was preliminary matter.

"That young fellow Bob Dillon," explained the fat man.

"If you're expectin' me to throw up my hat an' shout, Blister, I got to disappoint you," Dud replied. "I like 'em man-size."

"I'm p-puttin' him in yore charge."

"You ain't either," the range-rider repudiated indignantly.

"To m-make a man of him."

"Hell's bells! I'm no dry nurse to fellows shy of sand. He can travel a lone trail for all of me."

"Keep him kinda encouraged."

"Why pick on me, Blister? I don't want the job. He ain't there, I tell you. Any fellow that would let another guy take his wife away from him an' not hang his hide up to dry—No, sir, I got no manner o' use for him. You can't onload him on me."

"I've been thinkin' that when you are alone with him some t-time you'd better devil him into a fight, then let him whale the stuffin' outa you. That'll do him a l-lot of good—give him confidence."

Hollister stared. His face broke slowly to a grin. "I got to give it to you, Blister. I'll bet there ain't any more like you at home. Let him lick me, eh? So's to give him confidence. Wallop me good an' plenty, you said, didn't you? By gum, you sure enough take the cake."

"Won't hurt you any. You've give an' took plenty of 'em. Think of him."

"Think of me, come to that."

"L-listen, Dud. That boy's what they call c-c-constitutionally timid. There's folks that way, born so a shadow scares 'em. But he's s-s-sensitive as a g-girl. Don't you make any mistake, son. He's been eatin' his h-heart out ever since he crawled before Houck. I like that boy. There's good s-stuff in him. At least I'm makin' a bet there is. Question is, will it ever get a chance to show? Inside of three months he'll either win out or he'll be headed for hell, an' he won't be travelin' at no drift-herd gait neither."

"Every man's got to stand on his own hind laigs, ain't he?" Hollister grunted. He was weakening, and he knew it.

"He needs a friend, worst way," Blister wheezed. "'Course, if you'd rather not—"

"Doggone yore hide, you're always stickin' me somehow," stormed the cowboy. "Trouble with me is I'm so soft I'm always gettin' imposed on. I done told you I didn't like this guy a-tall. That don't make no more impression on you than a cold runnin'-iron would on a cow."

"M-much obliged, Dud. I knew you'd do it."

"I ain't said I'd do it."

"S-some of the boys are liable to get on the prod with him. He'll have to play his own hand. Tha's reasonable. But kinda back him up when you get a chance. That notion of lettin' him lick you is a humdinger. Glad you thought of it."

"I didn't think of it, an' I ain't thinkin' of it now," Dud retorted. "You blamed old fat skeezicks, you lay around figurin' out ways to make me trouble. You're worse than Mrs. Gillespie for gettin' yore own way. Hmp! Devil him into a fight an' then let him hand me a lacin'. I reckon not."

"He'll figure that since he can lick you, he can make out to look after himself with the other boys."

"He ain't licked me yet, an' that's only half of it. He ain't a-goin' to."

Fuming at this outrageous proposition put up to him, the puncher jingled away and left his triple-chinned friend.

Blister grinned. The seed he had scattered might have fallen among the rocks and the thorns, but he was willing to make a small bet with himself that some of it had lit on good ground and would bear fruit.



CHAPTER XVII

THE BACK OF A BRONC

The bunkhouse of the Slash Lazy D received Bob Dillon gravely and with chill civility. He sat on his bunk that first evening, close enough to touch a neighbor on either hand, and was left as completely out of the conversation as though he were a thousand miles away. With each other the riders were jocular and familiar. They "rode" one another with familiar jokes. The new puncher they let alone.

Bob had brought some cigars with him. He offered them eagerly to the chap-clad youth on his right. "Take one, won't you? An' pass the others round."

The name of the cowboy was Hawks. He looked at the cigars with disfavor. "I reckon I'll not be carin' for a cigar to-night, thank you," he said slowly.

"Perhaps the others—if you'll pass them."

Hawks handed the cigars to a brick-red Hercules patching his overalls. From him they went to his neighbor. Presently the cheroots came back to their owner. They had been offered to every man in the room and not one had been taken.

Bob's cheeks burned. Notice was being served on him that the pleasant give-and-take of comradeship was not for him. The lights went out early, but long into the night the boy lay awake in torment. If he had been a leper the line could scarcely have been drawn more plainly. These men would eat with him because they must. They would sleep in the same room. They would answer a question if he put it directly. But they would neither give nor accept favors. He was not to be one of them.

Many times in the months that were to follow he was to know the sting of shame that burned him now at memory of the scene between him and Jake Houck at Bear Cat. He tossed on the bunk, burying his face in the blankets in a vain effort to blot out the picture. Why had he not shot the fellow? Why, at least, had he not fought? If he had done anything, but what he did do? If he had even stuck it out and endured the pain without yielding.

In the darkness he lived over every little incident of the evening. When Hawks had met him he had grinned and hoped he would like the Slash Lazy D. There had been friendliness in the crinkled, leathery face. But when he passed Bob ten minutes later the blue eyes had frozen. He had heard who the new rider was.

He would not stand it. He could not. In the morning he would pack up his roll and ride back to Bear Cat. It was all very well for Blister Haines to talk about standing the gaff, but he did not have to put up with such treatment.

But when morning came Bob set his teeth and resolved to go through with it for a while anyhow. He could quit at any time. He wanted to be able to tell the justice that he had given his plan a fair trial.

In silence Bob ate his breakfast. This finished, the riders moved across to the corral.

"Better rope and saddle you a mount," Harshaw told his new man curtly. "Buck, you show him the ones he can choose from."

Hawks led the way to a smaller corral. "Any one o' these except the roan with the white stockings an' the pinto," he said.

Dillon walked through the gate of the enclosure and closed it. He adjusted the rope, selected the bronco that looked to him the meekest, and moved toward it. The ponies began to circle close to the fence. The one he wanted was racing behind the white-stockinged roan. For a moment it appeared in front. The rope snaked out and slid down its side. Bob gathered in the lariat, wound it, waited for a chance, and tried again. The meek bronco shook its head as the rope fell and caught on one ear. A second time the loop went down into the dust.

Some one laughed, an unpleasant, sarcastic cackle. Bob turned. Four or five of the punchers, mounted and ready for the day's work, were sitting at ease in their saddles enjoying the performance.

Bob gave himself to the job in hand, though his ears burned. As a youngster he had practiced roping. It was a pastime of the boys among whom he grew up. But he had never been an expert, and now such skill as he had acquired deserted him. The loop sailed out half a dozen times before it dropped over the head of the sorrel.

The new rider for the Slash Lazy D saddled and cinched a bronco which no longer took an interest in the proceedings. Out of the corner of his eye, without once looking their way, Bob was aware of subdued hilarity among the bronzed wearers of chaps. He attended strictly to business.

Just before he pulled himself to the saddle Bob felt a momentary qualm at the solar plexus. He did not give this time to let it deter him. His feet settled into the stirrups. An instant violent earthquake disturbed his equilibrium. A shock jarred him from the base of the spine to the neck. Urgently he flew through space.

Details of the landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out against them.

Out of the mists of memory he heard a wheezy voice issuing from a great bulk of a man—"... yore red haid's covered with glory. Snap it up!" The words came so clear that for an instant he was startled. He looked round half expecting to see Blister.

Stiffly he gathered himself out of the snow slush. A pain jumped in the left shoulder. He limped to the rope and coiled it. The first cast captured the sorrel.

His limbs were trembling when he dropped into the saddle. With both hands he clung to the horn. Up went the bronco on its hind legs. It pitched, bucked, sun-fished. In sheer terror Bob clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider shot from the saddle.

When the scenery had steadied itself for Dillon he noticed languidly a change in one aspect of it. The faces turned toward him were no longer grinning. They were watching him expectantly. What would he do now?

They need not look at him like that. He was through. If he got on the back of that brute again it would kill him. Already he was bleeding at the nose and ears. Sometimes men died just from the shock of being tossed about so furiously.

The sorrel was standing by itself at the other end of the corral. Its head was drooping languidly. The bronco was a picture of injured innocence.

Bob discovered that he hated it with an impotent lust to destroy. If he had a gun with him—Out of the air a squeaky voice came to him: "C-clamp yore jaw, you worm! You been given dominion." And after that, a moment later, "... made in the image of God."

Unsteadily he rose. The eyes of the Slash Lazy D riders watched him relentlessly and yet curiously. Would he quit? Or would he go through?

He had an odd feeling that his body was a thing detached from himself. It was full of aches and pains. Its legs wobbled as he moved. Its head seemed swollen to twice the normal size. He had strangely small control over it. When he walked, it was jerkily, as a drunk man sometimes does. His hand caught at the fence to steady himself. He swayed dizzily. A surge of sickness swept through his organs. After this he felt better. He had not consciously made up his mind to try again, but he found himself moving toward the sorrel. This time he could hardly drag his weight into the saddle.

The mind of a bronco is unfathomable. This one now pitched weakly once or twice, then gave up in unconditional surrender. Bob's surprise was complete. He had expected, after being shaken violently, to be flung into the mire again. The reaction was instantaneous and exhilarating. He forgot that he was covered with mud and bruises, that every inch of him cried aloud with aches. He had won, had mastered a wild outlaw horse as he had seen busters do. For the moment he saw the world at his feet. A little lower than the angels, he had been given dominion.

He rode to the gate and opened it. Hawks was looking at him, a puzzled look in his eyes. He had evidently seen something he had not expected to see.

Harshaw had ridden up during the bronco-busting. He spoke now to Bob. "You'll cover Beaver Creek to-day—you and Buck."

Something in the cattleman's eye, in the curtness of his speech, brought Dillon back to earth. He had divined that his boss did not like him, had employed him only because Blister Haines had made a personal point of it. Harshaw was a big weather-beaten man of forty, hard, keen-eyed, square as a die. Game himself, he had little patience with those who did not stand the acid test.

Bob felt himself shrinking up. He had not done anything after all, nothing that any one of these men could not do without half trying. There was no way to wipe out his failure when a real ordeal had confronted him. What was written in the book of life was written.

He turned his pony and followed Hawks across the mesa.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE FIRST DAY

In the wake of Hawks Bob rode through the buckbrush. There was small chance for conversation, and in any case neither of them was in the mood for talk. Bob's sensitive soul did not want to risk the likelihood of a rebuff. He was susceptible to atmospheres, and he knew that Buck was sulky at being saddled with him.

He was right. Buck did not see why Harshaw had put this outcast tenderfoot on him. He did not see why he had hired him at all. One thing was sure. He was not going to let the fellow get round him. No, sir. Not on his tintype he wasn't.

Since it was the only practical way at present to show his disgust and make the new puncher feel like a fool, Hawks led him through the roughest country he could find at the fastest feasible gait. Buck was a notably wild rider in a country of reckless horsemen. Like all punchers, he had been hurt time and again. He had taken dozens of falls. Two broncos had gone down under him with broken necks. A third had twisted its leg in a beaver burrow and later had to be shot. This day he outdid himself.

As young Dillon raced behind him along side hills after dogies fleet as blacktails, the heart fluttered in his bosom like a frightened bird in a cage. He did not pretend to keep up with Hawks. The best he could do was to come loping up after the excitement was over. The range-rider made no spoken comment whatever, but his scornful blue eyes said all that was necessary.

The day's work did not differ except in details from that of yesterday and to-morrow. They headed back two three-year-olds drifting too far north. They came on a Slash Lazy D cow with a young calf and moved it slowly down to better feed near the creek. In the afternoon they found a yearling sunk in a bog. After trying to pull it out by the ears, they roped its body and tugged together. Their efforts did not budge the animal. Hawks tied one end of the rope to the saddle-horn, swung up, and put the pony to the pull. The muscles of the bronco's legs stood out as it leaned forward and scratched for a foothold. The calf blatted with pain, but presently it was snaked out from the quagmire to the firm earth.

They crossed the creek and returned on the other side. Late in the afternoon they met half a dozen Utes riding their inferior ponies. They had evidently been hunting, for most of them carried deer. Old Colorow was at their head.

He grunted "How!" sulkily. The other braves passed without speaking. Something in their manner sent a shiver up Dillon's spine. He and Hawks were armed only with revolvers. It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Indians to kill them if they wished.

Hawks called a cheerful greeting. It suggested the friendliest of feeling. The instructions given to the punchers were to do nothing to irritate the Utes just now.

The mental attitude of the Indians toward the cattlemen and cowboys was a curious one. They were suspicious of them. They resented their presence in the country. But they felt a very wholesome respect for them. These leather-chapped youths could outride and outshoot them. With or without reason, the Utes felt only contempt for soldiers. They were so easily led into traps. They bunched together when under fire instead of scattering for cover. They did not know how to read sign on the warmest trail. These range-riders were different. If they were not as wary as the Utes, they made up for it by the dash and aplomb with which they broke through difficulties.

In Bear Cat the day before Bob had heard settlers discuss the unrest of the Indians. The rumor was that soon they meant to go on the warpath again. Colorow himself, with a specious air of good will, had warned a cattleman to leave the country while there was time.

"You mebbe go—mebbe not come back," he had suggested meaningly. "Mebbe better so. Colorow friend. He speak wise words."

Until the Utes were out of gunshot Bob felt very uneasy. It was not many years since the Meeker massacre and the ambushing of Major Thornburg's troops on Milk Creek.

Reeves and Hollister were in the bunkhouse when Bob entered it just before supper. He heard Dud's voice.

"... don't like a hair of his red haid, but that's how it'll be far as I'm concerned."

There was a moment's awkward silence. Dillon knew they had been talking about him. Beneath the deep gold of his blond skin Hollister flushed. Boy though he was, Dud usually had the self-possession of the Sphinx. But momentarily he was embarrassed.

"Hello, fellow!" he shouted across the room. "How'd she go?"

"All right, I reckon," Bob answered. "I wasn't much use."

He wanted to ask Dud a question, but he dared not ask it before anybody else. It hung in his mind all through supper. Afterward he found his chance. He did not look at Hollister while he spoke.

"Did—did you hear how—Miss Tolliver is?" he asked.

"Doc says he can't tell a thing yet. She's still mighty sick. But Blister he sent word to you that he'd let you know soon as there is a change."

"Much obliged."

Bob moved away. He did not want to annoy anybody by pressing his undesirable society upon him.

That night he slept like a hibernating bear. The dread of the morrow was no longer so heavy upon him. Drowsily, while his eyes were closing, he recalled the prediction of the fat justice that no experience is as bad as one's fears imagine it will be. That had been true to-day at least. Even his fight with the sorrel, the name of which he had later discovered to be Powder River, was now only a memory which warmed and cheered.

Cowpunchers usually rode in couples. Bob learned next morning that he was paired with Dud. They were to comb the Crooked Wash country.



CHAPTER XIX

DUD QUALIFIES AS COURT JESTER

It was still dark when Dud Hollister and Bob Dillon waded through the snow to the corral and saddled their horses.

They jogged across the mesa through the white drifts.

Bob's pony stumbled into a burrow, but pulled out again without damage.

In the years when cattle first came to the Rio Blanco the danger from falls was greater than it is now, even if the riding had not been harder. A long thick grass often covered the badger holes.

"How does a fellow look out for badger and prairie-dog holes?" Bob asked his companion as they jogged along at a road gait. "I mean when he's chasin' dogies across a hill on the jump."

"He don't," Dud answered ungrammatically but promptly. "His bronc 'tends to that. If you try to guide you're sure enough liable to take a fall."

"But when the hole's covered with grass?"

"You gotta take a chance," Dud said. "They're sure-footed, these cowponies are. A fellow gets to thinkin' they can't fall. Then down he goes. He jumps clear if he can an' lights loose."

"And if he can't?"

"He's liable to get stove up. I seen five waddies yesterday in Bear Cat with busted legs or arms. Doc's fixin' 'em up good as new. In a week or two they'll be ridin' again."

Bob had seen those same crippled cowboys and he could not quite get them out of his mind. He knew of two punchers killed within the year from falls.

"Ridin' for a dogie outfit ain't no sin-cure, as Blister told you while he was splicin' you 'n' Miss Tolliver," Dud went on. "It's a man-size job. There's ol' Charley Mason now. He's had his ribs stove in, busted an arm, shot hisself by accident, got rheumatism, had his nose bit off by a railroad guy while he was b'iled, an' finally married a female battle-axe, all inside o' two years. He's the hard luck champeen, though, Charley is."

It had snowed heavily during the night. The day was "soft," in the phrase of the pioneer. In places the ground was almost clear. In others the drifts were deep. From a hillside they looked down into a grove of cottonwoods that filled a small draw. Here the snow had blown in and was heavy. Three elk were floundering in the white banks.

Dud waded in and shot two with his revolver. The third was a doe. The cowponies snaked them out to the open.

"We'll take 'em with us to 'Leven Mile camp," Dud said. "Then we'll carry 'em back to the ranch to-morrow. The Slash Lazy D is needin' meat."

Harshaw had given orders that they were to spend the night at Eleven Mile camp. The place was a deserted log cabin built by a trapper. Supplies were kept there for the use of Slash Lazy D riders. Usually some of them were there at least two or three nights a week. Often punchers from other outfits put up at the shack. Range favors of this sort were taken as a matter of course. If the cabin was empty the visiting cowboy helped himself to food, fire, and shelter. It was expected of him that he would cut a fresh supply of fuel to take the place of that he had used.

It was getting on toward dusk when they reached Eleven Mile. Bob made a fire in the tin stove while Dud took care of the horses. He found flour and lard[2] hanging in pails from the rafters. Coffee was in a tin under the bunk.

Soon Dud joined him. They made their supper of venison, biscuits, and coffee. Hollister had just lit a pipe and stretched himself on the bed when the door opened and sixteen Ute bucks filed gravely in.

Colorow was the spokesman. "Hungry! Heap hungry!" he announced.

Hollister rolled out of the bunk promptly. "Here's where we go into the barbecue business an' the Slash ranch loses them elk," he told Bob under cover of replenishing the fire in the stove. "An' I can name two lads who'll be lucky if they don't lose their scalps. These birds have been drinkin'."

It took no wiseacre to divine the condition of the Indians. Their whiskey breaths polluted the air of the cabin. Some of them swayed as they stood or clutched at one another for support. Fortunately they were for the moment in a cheerful rather than a murderous frame of mind. They chanted what was gibberish to the two whites while the latter made their preparations swiftly. Dud took charge of affairs. He noticed that his companion was white to the lips.

"I'll knock together a batch of biscuits while you fry the steaks. Brace up, kid. Throw out yore chest. We better play we're drunk too," he said in a murmur that reached only Bob.

While Bob sliced the steaks from the elk hanging from pegs fastened in the mud mortar between the logs of the wall, Dud was busy whipping up a batch of biscuits. The Indians, packed tight as sardines in the room, crowded close to see how it was done. Hollister had two big frying-pans on the stove with lard heating in them. He slapped the dough in, spattering boiling grease right and left. One pockmarked brave gave an anguished howl of pain. A stream of sizzling lard had spurted into his face.

The other Utes roared with glee. The aboriginal sense of humor may not be highly developed, but it is easily aroused. The friends of the outraged brave stamped up and down the dirt floor in spasms of mirth. They clapped him on the back and jabbered ironic inquiries as to his well-being. For the moment, at least, Dud was as popular as a funny clown in a sawdust ring.

Colorow and his companions were fed. The stove roared. The frying-pans were kept full of meat and biscuits. The two white men discarded coats, vests, and almost their shirts. Sweat poured down their faces. They stood over the red-hot cook stove, hour after hour, while the Utes gorged. The steaks of the elk, the hind quarters, the fore quarters, all vanished into the sixteen distended stomachs. Still the Indians ate, voraciously, wolfishly, as though they could never get enough. It was not a meal but an endurance contest.

Occasionally some wag would push forward the pockmarked brave and demand of Dud that he baptize him again, and always the puncher made motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased to be a scream.

Dud grinned at Dillon. "These wooden heads are so fond of chestnuts I'm figurin' on springin' on them the old one about why a hen crosses the road. Bet it would go big. If they got the point. But I don't reckon they would unless I had a hen here to show 'em."

The feast ended only when the supplies gave out. Two and a half sacks of flour disappeared. About fifteen pounds of potatoes went into the pot and from it into the openings of copper-colored faces. Nothing was left of the elk but the bones.

"The party's mighty nigh over," Dud murmured. "Wonder what our guests aim to do now."

"Can't we feed 'em anything more?" asked Bob anxiously.

"Not unless we finish cookin' the pockmarked gent for 'em. I'm kinda hopin' old Colorow will have sabe enough not to wear his welcome out. It'd make a ten-strike with me if he'd say 'Much obliged' an' hit the trail."

Bob had not the heart to jest about the subject, and his attempt to back up his companion's drunken playacting was a sad travesty. He did not know much about Indians anyhow, and he was sick through and through with apprehension. Would they finish by scalping their hosts, as Dud had suggested early in the evening?

It was close to midnight when the clown of Colorow's party invented a new and rib-tickling joke. Bob was stooping over the stove dishing up the last remnants of the potatoes when this buck slipped up behind with the carving-knife and gathered into his fist the boy's flaming topknot. He let out a horrifying yell and brandished the knife.

In a panic of terror Bob collapsed to the floor. There was a moment when the slapstick comedy grazed red tragedy. The pitiable condition of the boy startled the Ute, who still clutched his hair. An embryonic idea was finding birth in the drunken brain. In another moment it would have developed into a well-defined lust to kill.

With one sweeping gesture Dud lifted a frying-pan from the red-hot stove and clapped it against the rump of the jester. The redskin's head hit the roof. His shriek of agony could have been heard half a mile. He clapped hands to the afflicted part and did a humped-up dance of woe. The carving-knife lay forgotten on the floor. It was quite certain that he would take no pleasure in sitting down for some few days.

Again a series of spasms of turbulent mirth seized upon his friends. They doubled up with glee. They wept tears of joy. They howled down his anguish with approving acclaim while they did a double hop around him as a vent to their enthusiasm. The biter had been bit. The joke had been turned against the joker, and in the most primitive and direct way. This was the most humorous event in the history of the Rio Blanco Utes. It was destined to become the stock tribal joke.

Dud, now tremendously popular, joined in the dance. As he shuffled past Bob he growled an order at him.

"Get up on yore hind laigs an' dance. I got these guys going my way. Hop to it!"

Bob danced, at first feebly and with a heart of water. He need not have worried. If Dud had asked to be made a blood member of the tribe he would have been elected by fourteen out of the sixteen votes present.

The first faint streaks of day were in the sky when the Utes mounted their ponies and vanished over the hill. From the door Dud watched them go. It had been a strenuous night, and he was glad it was over. But he wouldn't have missed it for a thousand dollars. He would not have admitted it. Nevertheless he was immensely proud of himself in the role of court jester.

Bob sat down on the bunk. He was a limp rag of humanity. In the reaction from fear he was inclined to be hysterical.

"You saved my life—when—when that fellow—" He stopped, gulping down a lump in the throat.

The man leaning against the door-jamb stretched his arms and his mouth in a relaxing yawn. "Say, fellow, I wasn't worryin' none about yore life. I was plumb anxious for a moment about Dud Hollister's. If old Colorow's gang had begun on you they certainly wouldn't 'a' quit without takin' my topknot for a souvenir of an evenin' when a pleasant time was had by all." He yawned a second time. "What say? Let's hit the hay. I don't aim for to do no ridin' this mornin'."

A faint sniffling sound came from the bunk.

Dud turned. "What's ailin' you now?" he wanted to know.

Bob's face was buried in his hands. The slender body of the boy was shaken with sobs.

"I—I—"

"Cut out the weeps, Miss Roberta," snapped Hollister. "What in Mexico 's eatin' you anyhow?"