"Mommie would say you ought to have a good sweat," she decided. "Got any ginger?"

"I dunno. I guess not," Ward muttered confusedly.

"Well, I'll go out and find some sage, then, and give you sage tea. That's another cure-all. Say, Ward, I saw Rattler down the creek. He's looking fine and dandy. He came whinnying down out of that draw, to meet us; just tickled to death to see somebody."

"Don't blame him," croaked Ward. "It's enough to tickle anybody." Her voice seemed to steady his straying fancies. "How're—the cattle—looking?"

"Just fine," lied Billy Louise. "You're the skinniest thing I've seen on the ranch. Now do you think you can keep your senses, while I go and pick some nice, good meddy off a sage bush?"

"I guess so." Ward spoke drowsily. "Give me some more coffee and I can."

"Oh, you're the pesteringest patient! I told you coffee isn't good for what ails you, but I suppose—" She poured him another cup of coffee, weakened it with hot water, and let him drink it straight. After all, perhaps the hot drink would induce the perspiration that would break the fever. She pulled up the wolf-skins and the extra blankets he had tossed aside in his feverish restlessness and covered him to his chin.

"If you don't move till I come back," she promised, "I'll maybe give you another cup—after you've filled up on sage tea." With that qualified hope to cheer him, she left him.

She did not spend all her time picking sage twigs. A bush grew at the corner of the cabin within easy reach. She went first down to the stable and led Blue inside and unsaddled him. Rattler was standing near, and she tried to lead him in also, but he fled from her approach. She found the pitchfork and managed to scratch a few forkfuls of hay down from a corner of the stack; enough to fill a manger for Blue and to leave a little heap beside the stable for Rattler.

When she was leaving the stable to return to the house, however, she changed her plan a little. She went back, carried the small pile of hay into the stable, and filled another manger. Then she took down the wire gate of the hay corral and laid it flat alongside the fence. Rattler would go in to the stack, and she would shut him in. That would simplify the catching of him when he was needed. She would find something in which to carry water to him, if he was too frisky to lead to the creek. Billy Louise was no coward with horses, but she recognized certain fixed limitations in the management of a snuffy brute like Rattler. He was not like Blue, whom she could bully and tease and coax. Rattler was distinctly a man's saddle-horse. Billy Louise had never done more than pat his shoulder after he was caught and saddled and, therefore, prepared for handling. She foresaw some perturbation of spirit in regard to Rattler.

Ward was lying quiet when she went in, except that he was waving her handkerchief to and fro by the corners to cool it. Billy Louise took it from him, wet it again with cold water, and scolded him for getting his arms from under the covers. That, she said, was no nice way for a hookin'-cough man to do.

Ward meekly submitted to being covered to his eyes. Then he wriggled his chin free and demanded that she kiss him. Ward was fairly drunk with happiness because she was there, in the cabin. The dreary weeks behind him were a nightmare to be forgotten. His Wilhemina-mine was there, and she liked him to pieces. Though she had not affirmed it with words, her eyes when she looked at him told him so; and she had kissed him when he asked her to. He wanted her to repeat the ecstasy.

"Ward Warren, you're a perfectly awful hookin'-cough man! There. Now that's going to be the very last one— Oh, Ward, it isn't!" She knelt and curved an arm around his face and kissed him again and yet again. "I do love you, Ward. I've been a weak-kneed, horrid thing, and I'm ashamed to the middle of my bones. You're my own brave buckaroo always—always! You've done what no other man would do, and you don't whine about it; and I've been weak and—horrid; and I'll have to love you about a million years before I can quit feeling ashamed." She kissed him again with a passion of remorse for her doubts of him.

"Are you through being pals, Wilhemina?" Ward broke rules and freed an arm, so that he could hold her closer.

"No, I'm just beginning. Just beginning right. I'm your pal for keeps. But—"

"I love you for keeps, lady mine." Ward stifled another cough. "When are you going to—marry me?"

"Oh, when you get over the hookin'-cough, I s'pose." Once more Billy Louise, for the good of her patient, forced herself into safe flippancy—that was not flippant at all, but merely a tender pretense.

"Now it's up to you to show me whether you are in any hurry at all to get well," she said. "Keep your hands under the covers while I make some tea. That fever of yours has got to be stopped immediately—to once."

She went over and busied herself about the stove, never once looking toward the bed, though she must have felt Ward's eyes worshiping her. She was terribly worried about Ward; so worried that she put everything else into the background of her mind and set herself sternly to the need of breaking the fever and lessening the evident congestion in his lungs.

She hunted through the cupboards and found a bottle of turpentine; syrupy and yellowed with age, but pungent with strength. She found some lard in a small bucket and melted half a teacupful. Then she tore up a woolen undershirt she found hanging on a nail and bore relentlessly down upon him.

"You gotta be greased all over your lungs," she announced with a matter-of-factness that cost her something; for Billy Louise's innate modesty was only just topped by her good sense.

Ward submitted without protest while she bared his chest—as white as her own—and applied the warm mixture with a smoothly vigorous palm. "That'll fix the hookin'-cough," she said, as she spread the warm layers of woolen cloth smoothly from shoulder to shoulder. "How does it feel?"

"Great," he assured her succinctly, and wisely omitted any love-making.

"Will your game leg let you turn over? Because there's some dope left, and it ought to go between your shoulders."

"The game leg ought to stand more than that," he told her, turning slowly. "If I hadn't got this cold tacked onto me, I'd have been trying to walk on it by now."

"Better give it time—since you've been game enough to lie here all this while and take care of it. I don't believe I'd have had nerve enough for that, Ward." She poured turpentine and lard into her palm, reached inside his collar and rubbed it on his shoulders. "Good thing you had plenty of grub handy. But it must have been awful!"

"It was pretty damned lonesome," he admitted laconically, and that was as far as his complainings went.

Billy Louise then poured the water off the sage leaves she had been brewing in a tin basin, carefully fished out a stem or two, and made Ward drink every bitter drop. Then she covered him to the eyes and hardened her heart against his discomfort, while she kept the handkerchief cool on his head and between times swept the floor with a carefully dampened broom and wiped the dust off things and restored the room to its most cheerful atmosphere of livableness.

"Wan' a drink," mumbled Ward, with a blanket over his mouth and a raveled thread tickling his nose so that he squirmed.

Billy Louise went over and laid her fingers on his neck. "I can't tell whether it's grease or perspiration," she said, laughing a little. "What are you squinting up your nose for? Surely to goodness you don't mind that little, harmless raveling? If you wouldn't go on breathing, it wouldn't wiggle around so much!" Nevertheless, she plucked the tormenting thread and threw it on the floor.

"Gimme—drink," Ward mumbled again.

"There's more sage tea—"

"Waugh!"

"I suppose that means you aren't crazy about sage tea! Well, I might give you a teenty-weenty speck more of coffee. You can't have water yet, you know. You've—you've got to sweat like a nigger in a cotton patch first." (Billy Louise could talk very nicely when she wanted to do so. The Billy of her could also be humanly inelegant when she felt like it, as you see.)

Ward grunted something and afterwards signified that he would take the coffee and call it square.

The next time she went near him, he was wrinkling his lean nose because beads of perspiration were standing there and slipping occasionally down to his cheeks.

"Fine! You're two niggers in a cotton patch now," she announced cheeringly. "And Mr. Hookin'-cough will have to hunt another home, I reckon. You weren't half as hoarse when you swore that last time."

It was physically impossible for Ward to blush, since he was already the color of a boiled beet; but he looked guilty when she uncovered the rest of his face and wiped off the gathered moisture. "I didn't think you'd hear," he grinned embarrassedly.

"I was listening for it, buckaroo. I'd have been scared to pieces if you hadn't cussed a little. I'd have thought sure you were going to die. A man," she added sententiously, "always has a chance as long as he's able to swear. It's like a horse wiggling his ears."

The comparison reminded her that she intended to shut Rattler in the hay corral; she dried Ward's hands hastily, pulled the wolf-skins off the bed, and commanded him to keep covered until she came back. She ran down bareheaded to the stable, saw Rattler industriously boring his nose into the stack, and put up the gate.

When she went into the cabin again, Ward gave a start and opened his eyes like one who has been dozing. Billy Louise smiled with gratification. He was better. She knew he was better. She did not speak, but went over to the stove and pretended to be busy there, though she was careful to make no noise. When she turned finally and glanced toward the bed, Ward was asleep.

Billy Louise took a deep breath, tiptoed over to the bench beside the table, sat down, and pillowed her head on her folded arms. She wanted to cry, and she needed to think, and she was deadly, deadly tired.



CHAPTER XXV

THE WOLF JOKE

Billy Louise stayed all night. She was afraid to leave Ward until his cold was safely better, and there was no one living near enough to summon; no one whom she wanted to summon, in fact, however close they might have been. She spent most of the night curled comfortably on the wolf-skins beside the stove, with a sack of flour for a pillow and Ward's fur coat for covering. Ward slept more unbrokenly than he had done for a long time, while Billy Louise lay cuddled under the smelly fur and thought and thought.

In the morning, if Ward were well enough, she meant to ask him about those cattle he had mentioned when he thought her Buck Olney. They were the same ones which she had seen in the Cove, she knew. Ward had told enough to prove that. He had, in fact, told nearly all she needed to know—except the mystery of his prosperity. He had not mentioned that, and Billy Louise was more curious than ever about his "wolf hunting."

At sunrise she rebuilt the fire and made fresh coffee and a stew from the pieces of jerky she had soaked overnight for the purpose. She wanted eggs, and bread for toast, and fresh cream; but she did not have them, and so she managed a very creditable breakfast for her patient without these desirables.

"Say, that's great. A fellow doesn't appreciate coffee and warm food until he's eaten out of cans and boxes for a month or so. You're a great little lady, Wilhemina. I wish you'd happened along sooner—about six weeks sooner. I'd have got some pleasure out of my broken leg then, maybe."

"Was it—did Buck Olney break it?" Billy Louise knew he had not, but she had been waiting for a chance to open the subject.

"No. I broke it myself, pulling Rattler off a bank into some rocks. I believe I could walk on it, doctor, if you could rustle me something to use for crutches. That's what held me in bed so long. Beckon you could manufacture a pair for me?" His eyes made love. "You've done everything else." He caught her hand and kissed the palm of it. "Can't the Billy part turn carpenter?"

"I'll see. Say, Ward, do you think you could shave off those whiskers if I got everything ready for you? I don't like you to look like old Sourdough. Or maybe I could do it. I—I used to shave daddy's neck, sometimes."

Ward ran his fingers thoughtfully over his hairy cheeks. "I expect I do look like a prehistoric ancestor. I'll see what I can do about it. I set my own leg; I guess I can shave myself. You're a great doctor, Wilhemina. You knocked that cold up to a peak, all right. But—I don't believe you'd better tackle barbering, my dear girl."

Billy Louise pouted her lips at him. She could afford to pout now: Ward was so like himself that she did not worry over him at all. She also felt that she could afford to badger him into telling her some of the things she wanted to know.

"Where did you hang Buck?" she asked naively.

"Huh?" Ward's eyes bored into hers with his intent look, trying to read her thoughts.

"Where was it you hanged Buck Olney?"

"Nowhere. I put the fear of the Lord into him, that's all. How did you hear about it?"

"From you." Billy Louise was maddeningly calm. "You told me all about it yesterday. And about those cattle in the corral up here. I found them yesterday myself, Ward—only it seems a month ago!—down in the Cove."

"Did you?"

"Yes, and I drove them up to the corral and read the riot act to Marthy and Charlie Fox—"

"Huh! What did they say?"

"Oh, they denied it, of course! What are we going to do about it, Ward?"

"Nothing, I guess. What did you want to do?"

"I don't know. I don't want to hurt them, and I don't want them to hurt anyone else. Do you know Seabeck? He's an awfully square old fellow. I believe—" An idea formed vaguely in the back of Billy Louise's mind. "I believe I could persuade him—"

"I believe you could persuade the devil himself, if you took a notion to try," Ward affirmed sincerely, when she hesitated. "What do you want to persuade him into?"

"Oh, nothing, I guess! How do you feel, Ward? We've got to stick to the job of getting you fit to leave here and go on down to the ranch with me. When do you think you could manage to ride?"

Ward looked longingly out of the window, just as he had been looking for six weeks. "I think I could manage it now," he said doggedly, because of his great longing. "I set my own leg—"

"Yes, and I'm willing to admit you're a wonder, and have gotten the stoics beaten at their own game. Still, there's a limit to what the human body will stand. I'm going down to tend the horses, and if you think you can walk without hurting your leg, I'll hunt some forked sticks for crutches. We'll see how you make out with them, first, before we talk about riding twenty miles on horseback. Besides, you'd catch more cold if you went out to-day."

While she talked, her plans took definite shape in the back of her mind. She took Buck Olney's knife that was lying on the window-sill and went in search of crutches among the willows along the creek. Forked sticks were plentiful enough, but it was not so easy to find two that would support even so skinny a man as Ward. She compromised by cutting four that seemed suitable and binding them together in couples.

When she went in with her makeshifts, Ward was sitting upon the side of the bunk, clothed and in his right mind—but pitifully wobbly and ashamed of his weakness.

"You shouldn't have tried to get up yet," she scolded. "Do you want to be worse, so I'll have to cure you all over again?" Then, woman-like, she proceeded to annul the effect by petting and sympathy.

It was while she was sitting in the one chair, padding the sticks crudely enough but effectively, that Ward, gazing at her with the light of love in his eyes, thought of something he had meant to tell her.

"Oh, by the way, I've got something for you, Wilhemina," he said. "Put down that thing and come over here. I want to shave before I take a try at walking, anyway. See here, lady-mine. How would you like these strung on a gold chain?"

From under his pillow he drew out a tobacco sack and emptied the contents into her palm. "Those are your Christmas present, Bill-Loo. Like 'em?"

"Do I!" Billy Louise held up the biggest one and stared at it round-eyed. "Gold nuggets! Where in the world—"

"That's what I'm going to tell you—now you're through being just pals. Oh, I'd have told you, anyway, I reckon, only the play never came right, after that first little squabble we had over it." He put an arm around her, pulled her down beside him, and rubbed his bristly chin over her hair. "That's the wolf joke, William. I did make a lot of money wolfing—on the square. I dug out a den of pups and struck a little pocket of pretty rich gravel. I've been busy panning it out all the time I could spare, till the creek froze up."

"You found a gold mine?" Billy Louise gasped. "Why, whoever would have thought—"

"Oh, I wouldn't call it a gold mine, exactly," he hastened to assure her, before her imagination dazzled her. "There isn't enough of it. It's just a pocket. I've cleaned up about eighteen hundred dollars, this summer, besides these nuggets. Maybe more. And there's some left yet. I found both ends of the streak; it lies along a ledge on the side of a gully. I couldn't find anything except in that one streak of gravel; and when that's gone she's done, as near as I can figure. But it isn't all gone yet, lady mine. There's enough left to pay the preacher, anyway. That big fellow I found along toward the last, just before I quit working." He kissed her gravely. "Poor old girl! She's dead game, all right, and she's kind of had the cards stacked against her from the start. But things are going to come easier from now on, if I'm any prophet. It's too bad—"

Billy Louise read his thought.

"Mommie looked so peaceful, Ward. At the last, I mean. If I could have waked her up, I don't believe I'd have had the heart to do it. She never was very happy; you know that. She couldn't seem to see the happiness in little things. So many are like that. And she looked happier—at the last—than I ever saw her look before. So—I'm happier, too—since yesterday."

"Are you?" Ward dropped his face against her hair and held it there for a minute. It was not his cold altogether that had made his voice break hoarsely over those two words.

"Do you know—" Billy Louise was lifting the nuggets one after the other and letting them drop to her lap—"happiness is like gold, Ward. We've got to pan it out of life ourselves. If we try to steal it from someone else, we pay the penalty, don't you think? And so many go looking and looking for great big chunks of it all—all—whatever they do to it." She laughed a little at her ignorance of the technical process. "You see what I mean, don't you? We get a streak of gravel; that's life. And we can pan out happiness if we try—little nuggets and sometimes just colors—but it keeps us hoping and working."

"Doctor of philosophy!" Ward kissed her hair. "You're a great little girl, all right. And I'm the buckaroo that has struck a mighty rich streak of pay dirt in life, Wilhemina. I'm panning out happiness millions to the pan right now."

Billy Louise, attacked with a spasm of shyness, went abruptly back to padding the makeshift crutches and changed the subject.

"I'm going home, soon as I fix you comfy," she said.

Whereupon Ward protested most strenuously and did not look in the least like a man who has just announced himself a millionaire in happiness.

"What for?" he demanded, after he had exhausted himself to no purpose in telling her that she should not leave the cabin until he could go along.

"I want eggs—for you, you ungrateful beast. And some bread for toast. And I want to tell Phoebe and John where I am."

"You think those Injuns are going to hurt themselves worrying? I don't want any eggs and toast. I've managed all right on crackers and jerky for six weeks, so I guess I can stand it a few hours longer. Still, if you're crazy to go—" He dropped back on the pillow and turned his face away.

Billy Louise worked silently until she had made the crutches as soft on top as she could. Then she hunted for Ward's razor and shaving-cup and after one or two failures—through using too much water—she managed to make a cup of very nice lather.

"Now, buckaroo, don't be a sulky kid," she said, firmly as she could. "You know it's hard enough for me to go off and leave you here like this. But, as you say, you've managed to get along for six weeks without me, so—"

"Sure. I could do it again, I reckon." Ward turned a gloomy pair of eyes upon her. "What's the rush? Do you think it isn't proper—"

"It's always proper to do what is right and helpful and kind," said Billy Louise with dignity, because she had made up her mind and was trying not to weaken. "I've lived in this country all my life, and I guess my reputation will stand this little strain," she went on lightly, "even if anyone finds it out. I've got to go, that's all. Those people in the Cove—" It was eloquent of her stern justice that she could not bring herself to speak them by name.

"You aren't going to turn them over to the sheriff, are you, William? Good Lord, girl! If I can—"

"Your lather is getting cold," Billy Louise said evenly. "I ought to have known better than mention the subject at all. I'm going to do what's right. I believe I have some faint idea of right and wrong, Ward Warren. And I'm not going to do anything that I don't feel is right, or anything that I'll be sorry for. You might trust me, I think. It's early yet—"

"You'll come back before night, won't you?" From his tone, Ward had yielded the point—and was minded to yield with what graciousness he could command. It had occurred to him that he was behaving like a selfish booby. Billy Louise should not call him weak-kneed; whatever happened.

"No, I don't think I can, Ward. I might send John."

"You needn't bother. I don't want John."

"Well, I don't suppose he would be much comfort. I'll make a pot of coffee, Ward, and I'll fill the lantern and fix it so you can heat a cup when you want to; how will that be?" She brightened a little at the idea. "And I'll fix your lungs up again before I go and bake some nice, hot biscuits and put here, and butter, and fix you just as comfy as possible. Or, if you can manage to get around with the crutches, all the better. I'll leave things so you won't have to go outside for a thing.

"And, Ward"—she bent over him anxiously—"I'm going because I must. For all our sakes I must go right away. And I'll come back to-morrow just as early as I can get here. So if you are real good, and take care of your cold, and get a little strong about walking, you can go back with me. And to-morrow night you can sit in daddy's chair before the fireplace, and we'll have chicken and—"

"All right—all right!" Ward laughed suddenly. "Will you give me a lump of sugar and let me look at all the pitty pittys in the album? Oh, you William the Conqueror!" He caught her close, when he saw that he had hurt her feelings a little, and held her a minute. "When I get two good legs under me, Wilhemina," he promised softly, "I'm going to stake myself to the job of taking care of you. Your cheeks are pretty thin, little lady-girl. Damn the luck, anyway!"

"Here's the lather. I'm going down and saddle up," said Billy Louise. "When I come back, we'll see how the crutches work."

"Oh, say!" Ward called after her. "My saddle's behind a buck bush up along the trail where the bank is cut straight. I forgot about that. And would you mind bringing the looking-glass, William? How the deuce do you think a man's going to shave without a glass? And that old paper to wipe the lather on, while you're at it. I see the Billy of you hasn't got to the shaving-point yet, at any rate!"

Billy Louise took down the glass and flung it on the bed, threw the newspaper after it, and departed with her chin in the air to find his saddle and bridle and carry them to the stable.

Ward, sitting up in bed, stared at the closed door remorsefully. When he was convinced that she did not intend to return even for the last word which is so tempting to a woman, he reached for the glass, held it up, and looked within.

"Sufferin' saddle blankets!" he grunted and dropped the glass. "And she could kiss a mug like that!"



CHAPTER XXVI

"HM-MM!"

Floyd Carson was a somewhat phlegmatic young man, but he swore an astonished oath when he saw Billy Louise galloping along the lane that led nowhere except to the womanless abode of Samuel Seabeck. He walked very fast to the stable, which was the first logical stopping-place, and so he met Billy Louise before she had time to dismount, even supposing she intended to do so.

"Hello, Floyd! Is Mr. Seabeck at home?" Billy Louise was not one to waste time in the superfluities of speech when she had anything on her mind.

"Sure. Get off, and I'll put up your horse. We're just through eatin', but our grub carpenter will rustle something for yuh, all right."

"No, I can't stop this time. I'm not hungry, anyway. Just give a yell for Mr. Seabeck, will you? I want to see him a minute."

Floyd eyed her uncertainly, decided that Billy Louise was not in the mood to yield to persuasion, and tactfully hurried off to find Seabeck without shouting for him—lest he bring others also, who were evidently not wanted at all. He took it that Billy Louise felt some diffidence about visiting a strictly bachelor outfit, and he set himself to relieve her of any embarrassment.

Presently Seabeck himself came from the dirt-roofed, rambling cabin which was his home and strode down the path, buttoning his coat as he came. Floyd's face showed for a minute in the doorway before he effaced himself completely, and not another man was in sight anywhere. Billy Louise was grateful to circumstance; she had dreaded this visit, though not for the reason Floyd Carson believed.

"How de do, Miss MacDonald? Pretty nice day, but I'm afraid it's a weather-breeder. The wind's trying to change, I notice."

"Yes, and so I mustn't stop. Could you ride part way home with me, Mr. Seabeck? I—want to talk with you about something. And I can't stop a minute. I must get home."

"Why, certainly, I'll go. If you'll wait just a minute while I saddle up—or if you'd rather ride on, I'll overtake you."

"I'll ride on, I think. Blue hates standing around, and he's a little warm, too. You're awfully good, Mr. Seabeck—"

"Oh, not at all!" Seabeck stubbed his toe on the stable doorsill in his confusion at the praise. "I'll be right along, soon as I can slap a saddle on." He disappeared, and Billy Louise turned and loped slowly down the lane.

So far, so good. Billy Louise tried to believe that it was all going to be as plain sailing as this fortuitous beginning, but she was aware of a nervous fluttering in her throat while she waited, and she knew that she positively dreaded hearing Seabeck gallop up behind her on the frozen trail. "Why will people do things that make a lot of trouble for others?" she cried out petulantly. And then she heard the steady pluck, pluckety-pluck of Seabeck's horse, and twisted her lips with a whimsical acceptance of the part she had set herself to play. She might smash things, she told herself, but at the worst it would be only a premature smash. "Come, Bill," she adjured herself, pretending it was what Ward would have said, had he looked into her mind. "Be a Bill-the-Conk—and a good one! Shove in your chips and play for all there is in it."

"You must have some lightning method of saddling, Mr. Seabeck," she smiled over her shoulder at him when he came up.

"We learn to do things quick when we've handled cattle a few years," he admitted. He had a diffident manner of receiving compliments which pleased Billy Louise and gave her confidence a needed brace. She was not a skilled coquette; she was too honest and too straightforward for that. Still, nature places certain weapons in the hands of a woman, and instinct shows her how to use them. Seabeck, from his very unaccustomedness to women, seemed to her particularly pliable. Billy Louise took her courage in both hands and went straight to the point.

"Mr. Seabeck, I've always heard that you're an awfully square man," she said. "Daddy seemed to think that you could be depended on in any kind of a pinch. I hope it's true. I'm banking a lot on your squareness to-day."

"Why, I don't know about my being any better than my neighbors," he said, with a twinkle of humor in his eyes, which were a bright, unvarying blue. "But you can bank on my doing anything I can for you, Miss MacDonald. I think I could be even better than square—to help a plucky little girl who—"

"I don't mean just the ordinary squareness," Billy Louise put in quietly. "I mean bigness, too; a bigness that will make a man be more than square; a bigness that will let him see all around a thing and judge it from a bigger viewpoint than mere justice—"

"Hm-mm—if you could trust me enough to—"

"I'm going to, Mr. Seabeck. I'm going to take it for granted you're bigger than your own squareness. And if you're not—if you're just a selfish, weak, letter-perfect, honest man, I'll—feel like—thrashing you." Without a doubt that was the Billy of her which spoke.

"I'll take the thrashing if you think I need it," he promised, looking at her with something more than admiration. "What have you done, Miss MacDonald? If I can help you hide the body—"

"There!" Billy Louise dared to wrinkle her nose at him—and I don't know which of her did it. "I knew you'd play up like a good sport. But what if it isn't a body? What if—what if you found some of your cattle with—with a big D—run over your brand?" She had a perfectly white line around her mouth and nostrils then, but she faced him squarely.

"Hm-mm!" Seabeck gave her a quick, sidewise glance and pulled thoughtfully at the graying whiskers that pointed his chin. "I would have been glad to lend you money, or help you in any way."

"Yes, I know." Billy Louise snapped her reins impatiently. "But what would you do about the—cattle?"

"What could I do? What would you want me to do? I should do whatever would help you. I would—"

"Would you—be as ready to help somebody else? Somebody I—thought a—lot—of?"

Seabeck, evidently, saw light. He cleared his throat and spat gravely into a bush. "I see you don't trust me, after all," he said.

"I do. I've got to; I mean, I'd have to whether I did or not. It's like this, Mr. Seabeck. It isn't the big D brand; of course you knew it couldn't be. But it isn't yours, either. Someone was tempted and was weak. They're sorry now. They want to do the right thing, and it rests with you whether they can do it. You can shut them up in jail if you like; you have a perfect right to do it. Some men would do that and be able to sleep after it, I suppose. But I believe you're bigger than that. I believe you're big enough to see that if a person goes wrong and then sees the mistake and wants to pull back into the straight trail, a man—even the one who has been wronged—would be committing a moral crime to prevent it. To take a person who wants to make a fresh, honest start, and shut that person up amongst criminals and brand him as a criminal, seems to me a worse wrong than to steal a few head of cattle; don't you think so, Mr. Seabeck?"

What Mr. Seabeck thought did not immediately appear in speech. He was pulling a little harder at his whiskers and staring at the ears of his horse.

"That would depend on the person," he said at last. "Some men are born criminals."

"Oh, we aren't talking about that kind of a man. Surely to goodness you don't call Charlie Fox a born criminal, or Marthy Meilke?"

"Charlie Fox! Is that the person you mean, who has been—"

"Yes, it is! And he is horribly sorry, and so is Marthy, and they'll pay you for the cattle. And if you do anything mean about it, it will simply kill poor old Marthy. You couldn't send her to the pen, Mr. Seabeck. Think how she's worked there in the Cove; and Charlie has worked like a perfect slave; and he was trying to get a start so he—could—get married—"

"Hm-mm!" Rumors had reached Seabeck, thanks to Billy Louise's dropped lashes upon a certain occasion, which caused him to believe he saw further light.

"And if you're going to be horrid—"

"Will the—lady he wants to marry give him another chance?"

"Don't you think she ought to—if she l-loves him?" Billy Louise studied the skyline upon the side farthest from Seabeck.

"You say he wants to pay for the cattle and—"

"He'll do anything he can to make amends," said Billy Louise, with conviction. "He'll take his medicine and go to jail if you insist," she added sorrowfully. "It will ruin his whole life, of course, and break a couple of women's hearts, but—"

"It's a bad thing, a mighty bad thing, when a man tries to get ahead too fast."

"It's a good thing when he learns the lesson without having to pay for it with his whole future," Billy Louise amended the statement.

Seabeck smiled a little behind his fingers that kept tugging at his whiskers.

"Did Charlie Fox send Miss Portia—"

"He doesn't know I had any intention of coming," Billy Louise assured him quickly and with perfect truth. "They'll both be awfully surprised when they find it out"—which was also perfectly true—"and when they see you ride up, they'll think you've got the sheriff at your back. I haven't a doubt they—"

"There are a few points I'd like to clear up, if you can help me," Seabeck interrupted. "All this rustling that has been going on for the past year and a half: are Fox and the Meilke woman mixed up in that? I want," he said, "to help the young man—and her. But if they have been operating on a large scale, I'm afraid—"

"I believe Charlie must have been influenced in some ways by bad acquaintances," Billy Louise answered more steadily than she felt. "But his—rustling—has been of a petty kind. I won't apologize for him, Mr. Seabeck. I think it's perfectly awful, what he has done. But I think it would be more awful still not to give him a chance. The other rustling is some outside gang, I'm sure. If Charlie was mixed up with them, it's very slightly—just enough to damn him utterly if he were arrested and tried. He isn't a natural criminal. He's just weak. And he's learned his lesson. It's up to you, Mr. Seabeck, to say whether he shall have a chance to profit by the lesson. And there's poor old Marthy in it, too. She just worships Charlie and would do anything—even steal for him."

Seabeck meditated for a mile, and Billy Louise watched him uneasily from the tail of her eye. To tell the plain truth, she was in a panic of fear at what she had done. It had looked so simple and so practicable when she had planned it; and now when the words were out and the knowledge had reached Seabeck and was beyond her control, she could not think of any good reason for telling him.

Last night, when she lay curled up by the stove under Ward's wolf-skin coat, this seemed the only possible way out: To tell Seabeck and trust to his kindness and generosity to refrain from pushing the case. To have Charlie Fox give back what he had stolen or pay for it—anything that would satisfy Seabeck's sense of justice—and let him start honestly. She had thought that Seabeck would be merciful, if she told him in the right way; but now, when she stole a glance at his bent, brooding face, she was frightened. He did not look merciful, but stern and angry. She remembered then that stealing cattle is the one crime a cattleman finds it hard to forgive.

Billy Louise might have spared herself some mental anguish if she could have known that Seabeck was brooding over the wonder of a woman's love that pardons and condones a man's sins. He was wishing that such a love as Billy Louise's had come to him, and he was wondering how a man could be tempted to go wrong when such a girl loved him. He was laboring under a misapprehension, of course. Billy Louise had permitted him to misunderstand her interest in the matter. If he had known that she was pleading solely for Marthy—poor, avaricious, gray, old Marthy—perhaps his mercy would have been less tinged with that smoldering resentment which was directed not so much at the wrongdoer, as at fate which had cheated him.

"I'm glad you came and told me this," he said at last. "Very glad, indeed, Miss MacDonald. Certain steps have been taken lately to push this—wipe out this rustling and general lawlessness, and if you had not told me, I'm afraid the mills of justice would have ground your—friends. Of course the law would be merciful to Mrs. Meilke. No jury would send an old woman like that— By the way, that breed they have had working for them—he is in the deal, too, I take it."

"Yes, of course. They had to have someone to help. Marthy can't do any riding." Billy Louise spoke with a dreary apathy that betrayed how the reaction had set in. "She stayed in the Cove, in case anyone came prowling down there. It seems there's a wire fastened to the gate, and it rings a bell down at the house somewhere when the gate is opened. And besides that she had a dog that would tackle strangers. I don't believe," she went on, after a little silence, "that Marthy would have turned dishonest for herself. She was grasping, and all she cared for was getting ahead. It—sort of grew on her, after the years of trying to dig a bare living out of the ground. I—can understand that; and I can see how she would go to any length almost for—Charlie. But—"

"Well, let's not think any more about them until we have to." There was a certain crude attempt at soothing her anxieties. "You've trusted me, Miss MacDonald. I'll try and not disappoint you in the matter, though, unless they are quite separate from the gang which is being run down, it may be hard to protect them. Do you know—whether—any other cowman has suffered from their—mm-mm—haste to get rich?"

"I don't think there's anyone but you," Billy Louise replied lifelessly.

"Hm-mm—do you know, Miss MacDonald, whether there was any intimacy between—your friends—and the man we had for stock inspector, Mr. Olney?"

"I—can't say, as to that." Billy Louise, you see, did not know much about details, but the little she did know made her hedge.

"There's a queer story about Olney. You know he has left the country, don't you? It seems he rode very hurriedly up to the depot at Wilmer to take the train. Just as he stepped on, a fellow who knew him by sight noticed a piece of paper pinned on the back of his coat. He jerked it loose. It was a—m-m—very peculiar document for a man to be wearing on his back." Seabeck pulled at his whiskers, but it was not the pulling which quirked the corners of his lips. "The man said Olney seemed greatly upset over something and had evidently forgotten the paper until he felt it being pulled loose. He said Olney looked back then, and he was the color of a pork-rind. The train was pulling out. The man took the paper over to a saloon and let several others read it. They—mm-mm—decided that it should be placed in the hands of the authorities. Have—m-m—your—friends ever mentioned the matter to you?"

"No," said Billy Louise, and her eyes were wide.

"Hm-mm! We must discover, if we can, Miss MacDonald, whether they are in any way implicated with this man Olney. I believe that this is at present more important than the recovery of any—m-m—cattle of mine which they may have appropriated."

Billy Louise looked at him for a minute. "Mr. Seabeck, you're awfully dear about this!" she told him. "I haven't been as square as you; and I've been— Listen here, Mr. Seabeck! I don't love Charlie Fox a bit. I love somebody else, and I'm going to marry him. He's so square, I'd hate to have him think I even let you believe something that wasn't true. It's Marthy I'm thinking of, Mr. Seabeck. I was afraid you wouldn't let Charlie off just for her sake, but I thought maybe if you just thought I—wanted you to do it for mine, why, maybe—with two women to be sorry for, you'd kind of—"

"Hm-mm!" Seabeck sent her a keen, blue, twinkling glance that made Billy Louise turn hot all over with shame and penitence. "Hm-mm!" he said again—if one can call that a saying—and pulled at his graying whiskers. "Hm-mmm!"



CHAPTER XXVII

MARTHY

Billy Louise led the way down the gorge, through the meadow, and along the orchard to the little gate. The Cove seemed empty and rather forlorn, with the wind creeping up the river and rattling the dry branches of the naked fruit trees. Not much more than twenty-four hours had slid into the past since Billy Louise had galloped away from the place, yet she felt vaguely that life had taken a big stride here since she last saw it. Nothing was changed, though, as far as she could see. A few cattle fed in the meadow next the river, a fattening hog lifted himself from his bed of straw and grunted at them as they passed. A few chickens were hunting fishworms in the thawed places of the garden, and a yellow cat ran creepingly along the top rail of the nearest corral, crouched there with digging claws and pounced down into a flock of snowbirds. A drift of dead apple leaves stirred uneasily beside the footpath through the berry bushes. Billy Louise started nervously and glanced over her shoulder at Seabeck. For some reason she wanted the comfort of his presence. She waited until he came up to her—tall, straight like a soldier, and silent as the Cove itself.

"I'm—scared," said Billy Louise. She did not smile either when she said it. "I—hate empty-feeling places. I'm—afraid of emptiness."

"Yet you are always riding alone in the hills." Seabeck looked down at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes.

"The hills aren't empty," she told him impatiently. "They're just big and quiet. This is—" She flung out a hand and did not try to find a word for what she felt.

"Shall I go first? I thought you would rather—"

"I would." Billy Louise pulled herself together, angry at her sudden impulse to run, as she had run from Ward's quiet cabin. She remembered that unreasoning panic—was it really only yesterday?—and went steadily up the path and across the little ditch which Marthy had dug. Why must sordid trouble and dull misery hang over a beauty-spot like this? she thought resentfully.

She stopped for a minute on the doorstep, hesitating before she opened the door. Behind her, Seabeck drew close as if he would shield her from something; perhaps he, too, felt the deadly quiet and emptiness of the place.

Billy Louise opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. She stopped and stood still, so that her slim figure would have hidden the interior from the eyes of Seabeck had he not been so tall. As it was, she barred his way so that he must stand on the step outside.

By the kitchen table, with her elbows on the soiled oilcloth, sat Marthy. Her uncombed hair hung in wisps about her head; her hard old face was lined and gray, her hard eyes dull with brooding. Billy Louise, staring at her from the doorway, knew that Marthy had been sitting like that for a long, long time.

She went over to her diffidently. Hesitatingly she laid her gauntleted hand on Marthy's stooped shoulder. She did not say anything. Marthy did not move under her touch, except to turn her dull glance upon Seabeck, standing there on the doorstep.

"C'm in," she said stolidly. "What'd yuh come fer?"

"Miss MacDonald will perhaps explain—"

"She ain't got nothin' to explain," said hard old Marthy with grim finality. "I'll do what explainin's to be done. C'm in. Don't stand there like a stump. And shut the door. It's cold as a barn here, anyway."

"Oh, Marthy!" cried Billy Louise, with the sound of tears in her voice.

"Don't oh Marthy me," said the harsh voice flatly. "I don't want no Marthyin' nor no sympathy. Well, old man, you're here to colleck, I s'pose. Take what's in sight; 'tain't none of it yourn, far's I know, but anything you claim you kin have, fer all me. I've lived honest all my days an' worked fer what I got. I've harbored thieves in my old age and trusted them that wa'n't fit to be trusted. I've allus paid my debts, Seabeck. I'm willin' to pay now fer bein' a fool."

"W-where's Charlie?" Billy Louise leaned and whispered the question.

"I d'no, and I don't care. He's pulled out—him an' that breed. I'll have t' pay yuh for seven growed cattle I never seen till yist'day, Seabeck. You can set yer own price on 'em. I ain't sure, but I've got an idee they was shot las' night an' dumped in the river. You c'n set yer price. I've got rheumatiz so bad I couldn't go 'n' put a stop to nothin'—but—"

"Oh, Marthy!" Billy Louise was shivering and crying now. "Marthy! Don't be so—so hard. It was all Charlie—"

"Yes," said Marthy harshly, "it was all Charlie. He was a thief, an' I was sech a simple-minded old fool I never knowed what he was. I let him go ahead, an' I set in the house with a white apurn tied on me an' thought I was havin' an easy time. I set here and let him rob my neighbors that I ain't never harmed er cheated out of a cent, and soon's he thought he was found out, he—left ole Marthy to look after herself. Never so much as fed the hogs or done the milkin' first! Looky here, Seabeck! You'll git paid back, an' I'll take your figgers fer what I owe, but if you git after Charlie, I'll—kill yuh. You let 'im go, I'm the one he hurt most—and I ain't goin'—" She laid her frowsy old head on her arms, like one who is utterly crushed and dumb.

"Oh, Marthy!" Billy Louise knelt and threw her arms around Marthy's shoulders.

"You've got to come and lie down, Marthy," said Billy Louise, after a long, unbroken silence.

"Mr. Seabeck, if you'll start a fire, I'll make some tea for her. Come, Marthy—just to please me. Do it for Billy Louise, Marthy."

The old woman rose stiffly, and with a feebleness that seemed utterly foreign to her usual energy, permitted Billy Louise to lead her from the kitchen. In the sitting-room that Charlie had built and furnished for her, Marthy lay and stared around her with that same dull apathy she had shown from the first. Only once did she manifest any real emotion, and that was when Billy Louise came in with some tea and toast.

"You take all them books outa them shelves an' burn 'em up," she commanded. "An' you take them two pictures off'n that shelf, of him an' her, an' bring 'em t' me."

Billy Louise set the toast and tea down on a chair and brought the pictures. She did not say a word, but she looked a little scared and her eyes were very big, just as they had been when Ward mistook her for Buck Olney and so let her see into another one of the dark places of life. It seemed to Billy Louise that she was being compelled to look into a good many dark places, lately.

Marthy took the two photographs and looked at the first with hatred. "The Jezebel! She won't git to run it over ole Marthy," she muttered with sullen triumph and twisted the cardboard spitefully in her gnarled old fingers. "She can't come here an' take all I've got an' never give me a thankye for it. I'm shet uh her, anyway." She twisted again and yet again, till the picture was a handful of ragged scraps of cardboard. Then she raised herself to an elbow and flung the fragments far from her and lay down again with glum satisfaction.

Her fingers touched the other picture, which had slid to the couch. Mechanically she picked it up and held it so that the light from the window struck it full. This was Charlie's face—Charlie with the falsely frank smile in his eyes, and with his lips curved as they did when he was just going to say, "Now, Aunt Martha!" in tender protest against her too eager industry.

Marthy's chin began to quiver while she looked. Her lips sagged with the pull of her aching heart. For the third time in her life Billy Louise saw big, slow tears gather in Marthy's hard blue eyes and slide down the leathery seams in her cheeks. Billy Louise looked, found her vision blurring with her own tears, and turned and tiptoed from the room.

Seabeck was gone somewhere on his horse. Billy Louise guessed shrewdly that he was down in the meadows, looking over the cattle and trying to estimate the extent of the thievery. She put Blue in the stable and fed him, with that half-mechanical habit of attending to the needs of one's mount which becomes second nature to the range-bred. She would not go on to the Wolverine; that needed no decision; she accepted it at once as a fact. Marthy needed her now more than anyone. More even than Ward, though Billy Louise hated to think of him up there alone and practically helpless. But Marthy must have her to-night. Marthy was facing her bitterest sorrow since Minervy died, and Marthy was old. Ward, Billy Louise reminded herself sternly, was not old, and he was facing happiness—so far as he or anyone knew. She wanted very much to be with Ward, but she could not delude her conscience into believing that he needed her more than did Marthy.

Seabeck returned after awhile, and Billy Louise, who was watching from the doorway, met him at the little gate as he was coming up to the house.

"Well, how bad is it, Mr. Seabeck?" she asked sharply, just because she felt the imperative need of facts—she who had struggled so long in the quicksands of suspicion and doubts and fears and suspense.

"Hmm-mm—how bad is it—in the house?" he countered. "The real crime has been committed there, it seems to me. A few head of cattle, more or less, don't count for much against the broken heart of an old woman."

"Oh!" Billy Louise, her hands clenched upon the gate, stared up wide-eyed into his face. And this was the real Seabeck, whom she had known impersonally all her life! This was the real man of him, whom she had never known; a flawless diamond of a soul behind those bright blue eyes and that pointed, graying beard; poet, philosopher, gentleman to the bone. "Oh! You saw that, too! And they're your cattle that were stolen! You saw it—oh, you're—you're—"

"Hmm-mm—a human being, I hope, Miss MacDonald, as well as a mere cattleman. How is the old lady?"

"Crying," said Billy Louise, with brief directness. "Crying over the picture of that—swine. Think of his running off and leaving her here all alone—and not even doing the chores first!" (Here, you must know, was broken an unwritten law of the ranch.) "And Marthy's got rheumatism, too, so she can hardly walk—"

"I'll attend to the chores, Miss MacDonald." Seabeck's lips quirked under the fingers that pulled at his whiskers. "You say—over his picture?"

"Yes, over his picture!" Billy Louise spoke with a suppressed fury. "With that honest look in his eyes—oh, I could kill him!"

"Hmm-mm—it does seem a pity that one can't. But if she can cry—"

"I see. You believe too that tears are a necessary kind of weakness for a woman, like smoking tobacco is for a man—or swearing. Well, I can just tell you, Mr. Seabeck, that some tears pull the very soul out of a person; they're the red-hot pinchers of the torture-chamber of life, Mr. Seabeck. Every single, slow tear that Marthy sheds right now is taking that much away from her life. Why, she—she idolized that—that devil. She hadn't much that was lovable in poor old Jase; he was just her husband; he wasn't even a real man. And she never had any children to love, except a little girl that died. And she's worked here and scrimped and saved till she got just fairly comfortable, and then Charlie Fox came and patted her on the back and called her a game little lady, and poor old Marthy just poured out all the love and all the trust she had in her, on him! And she's old, and she had starved all her life for a little love—a little affection and a few kind words. I don't suppose Jase kissed her once in twenty years; I couldn't imagine him getting up steam enough to kiss anybody! And Charlie petted her and did little things for her that nobody had ever done in her life. It meant a whole lot to Marthy to have a man take the water bucket away from her and give her a little hug and tell her she mustn't think of carrying water; oh, you're a man, and I don't suppose you can realize; I didn't myself, till lately—" Billy Louise blushed and then twisted her lips, wondering if love had taught her all this.

"And so Marthy just leaned more and more on him and let him take care of her and pet her; and she never once dreamed he was doing anything crooked. I thought she did, I know, Mr. Seabeck. I thought she was in it, too; but I see now that Marthy has been living the woman in her, these last two years; she'd never had a chance before. And now to have him—to know he's just a common thief and to have him go off and leave her—Mr. Seabeck, I'd be willing to bet all I've got that Marthy would have forgiven his stealing cattle, if he had just stayed. She'd have done anything on earth for him; and the bigger the sacrifice she made for him, the more she would have loved him; women are like that. But to have him go off—and—leave her—and not bother his head about what happened to her, just so he got out of it—Mr. Seabeck, that's going to kill Marthy. It's going to kill her by inches."

"I—see," he assented, looking thoughtfully at the flushed face and big, shining eyes of Billy Louise. (I wonder if Seabeck was not thinking how he had known Billy Louise impersonally all her life and yet had never met the real Billy Louise until to-day!)

"And yet," she added bitterly, "she's going to protect him if it takes every cent she's managed to rake together these last thirty years. You heard what she told you. She said she'd kill you if you hurt Charlie. She'd try it, too."

"Hmm-mm, yes! My life has been threatened several times to-day." Seabeck looked at her with eyes a-twinkle, and Billy Louise blushed to the crown of her Stetson hat. "Do you think, Miss MacDonald, she would feel like talking business for a few minutes?"

"Oh, yes; if she's like me, she'll want to get the agony over with." Billy Louise turned with a twitch of the shoulders. She felt chilled, somehow. She had not quite expected that Seabeck would want to talk about his stolen stock at all. She had rather taken it for granted that he would let that subject lie quiet for awhile. Oh, well, he was a cattleman, after all.

Marthy did not attempt to rise when Seabeck followed Billy Louise into the sitting-room. She caught up her apron and wiped her eyes and her nose, however, and she also slid Charlie's picture under the cheap cushion. After that she faced Seabeck with harsh composure and waited for the settlement.

"Hm-mm! I have been looking over the cattle," he began, sitting on the edge of a chair and turning his black hat absently round and round by the brim. "You—mm-mm—you tell me there were seven head of grown stock—"

"That they shot and throwed in the river, with the brands cut out," interpolated Marthy stolidly. "I heard 'em say that's how they would git rid of 'em, an' I heard 'em shootin' down there."

"Hmm-mm, yes! Do you know just what—"

"Five dry cows 'n' two steers—long two-year-oles, I jedged 'em to be." Marthy was certainly prompt enough and explicit enough. And her lips were grim, and her faded blue eyes hard and steady upon the face of Seabeck.

"Hmm-mm—yes! I find also," he went on in his somewhat precise voice that had earned him the nickname of "Deacon" among his punchers, "that there are more young stock vented and rebranded than I—er—sold your nephew. Fourteen head, to be exact. With the cattle you tell me which were—mm-m—disposed of last night, that would make twenty-one head of stock for which—mm-mm—I take it you are willing to pay."

"I ain't got the money now," Marthy stated, too apathetic to be either defiant or placating. "You c'n fix up the papers t' suit yerself. I'll sign anything yuh want."

"Hmm-mm—yes! A note covering the amount, with legal rate of interest, will be—quite satisfactory, Mrs. Meilke. I shall make a lump sum at the going price for mixed stock. If you have a blank note, I—"

"You kin look in that desk over there," permitted Marthy. "If yuh don't find any there, there ain't none nowhere."

Seabeck did not find any blank notes. He found an eloquent confusion of jumbled letters and accounts and papers, and guessed that the owner had done some hasty sorting and straightening of his affairs. He sighed, and his blue eyes hardened for a minute. Then Billy Louise moved from the door and went over to kneel comfortingly beside Marthy, and Seabeck looked at the two and sighed again, though his eyes were no longer stern. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and wrote steadily in a prim, upright chirography that had never a flourish anywhere, but carefully crossed t's and carefully dotted i's and punctuation marks of beautiful exactness.

"You will please sign here, Mrs. Meilke," he said calmly, coming over to them with the sheet of paper laid smoothly upon a last-year's best-seller and with Charlie's fountain pen in his other hand. "And if Miss MacDonald will also sign, as an endorser, I think I can safely do away with any mortgage or other legal security."

Billy Louise stood up and gave him one look—which Seabeck did not appreciate, because he did not see it.

"I'd ruther give a mortgage," Marthy said uneasily, sitting up suddenly and looking from one to the other. "I don't want Billy Louise to git tangled up in my troubles. She's got plenty of her own. Her maw's just died, Mr. Seabeck. And I'll bet there was a hospital 'n' doctor's bill bigger 'n this cattle note, to be paid. I don't want to pile on—"

"Now, Marthy, you be still. I'm perfectly willing to sign this note with you. If it will satisfy Mr. Seabeck, I'm sure it's the very least we can do—or—expect." Billy Louise, bless her heart, was trying very hard to be grateful to Seabeck in spite of the slump he had suffered in her estimation.

"Well, I'll want your written word that yuh won't prosycute Charlie nor help nobody else prosycute him," stipulated Marthy, with sudden shrewdness. "If me 'n Billy Louise signs this note, we'll pay it; and we want some pertection from you, fer Charlie."

"Hmm-mm—I see!" He turned and went back to the littered desk and wrote carefully again upon another sheet of paper. "I think this will be quite satisfactory," he said, and handed the paper to Marthy.

"Git my specs, Billy Louise—off 'n the shelf over there," she said, and read the paper laboriously, her lips forming the letters of every word which contained more than one syllable. Marthy, remember, was a plainswoman born and bred.

"I guess that'll do," she pronounced at last, pushing the spectacles up on her lined forehead. "You read it, Billy Louise, 'n' see what yuh think."

"I think it's all right, Marthy," said Billy Louise, after she had read the document twice. "It's a bill of sale; and it also wipes the slate clean of any possible—I think Mr. Seabeck is very c-clever."

Whereupon Marthy signed the note, with a spluttering of the abused pen in her stiffened old fingers and a great twisting of her grim mouth as she formed the capitals. Then Billy Louise wrote her name with a fine, schoolgirl ease and a little curl on the end of the last d. Seabeck took the paper from the tips of Billy Louise's supercilious fingers, returned with it to the desk for a blotter, hunted an envelope, folded the note carefully, and laid it away inside.

"I believe that is all, Mrs. Meilke. I hope you will suffer no further uneasiness on account of your—nephew."

"I'm liable t' suffer some gittin' that five hundred dollars paid up," Marthy returned with some acerbity. "I'm much obleeged to yuh, Mr. Seabeck, fer bein' so easy on us. If yuh hadn't drug Billy Louise into it, I'd say yer too good to be human."

"Hmm-mm—not at all," Seabeck stammered deprecatingly and left the room with what haste his natural dignity would permit.

That ended the Seabeck part of the whole sordid affair, except that he remained for another hour, doing chores and making everything snug for the night. Also he filled the kitchen woodbox as high as he could pile the sticks and brought water to last overnight—since Charlie's plan to pipe water into the cabin had remained a beautiful plan and nothing more. Billy Louise thanked Seabeck, when he was ready to go.

"I knew you were square, and you're really big-souled, too. I'll remember it always, Mr. Seabeck."

"Will you?" Seabeck looked down at her, with his hand upon the latch. "Even if you are put in a position where you must pay that note—you will still— Hm-mm! I see. Before I go, Miss MacDonald, I should like your permission to send a man down here to look after things."

"No, you mustn't." Billy Louise spoke with prompt decision. "Marthy might think you were—you see, it wouldn't do. I'll see about getting a man. If you will take this note up and leave it in the mail-box for me, John Pringle will come up to-morrow. We'll manage all right."

"You're quite right. But, Miss MacDonald, there is something else. I—er—should like to give you a little—wedding gift, since you honored me with the news of your approaching—mm-m—marriage. As an old neighbor, and one of your most sincere admirers, who would feel greatly honored by your friendship, I—should like to have you accept this—" He held something out to Billy Louise and pulled open the door for instant escape. "Good night, Miss MacDonald. I think it will storm." Then he was gone, hurrying down the narrow path with long strides, his tall figure bent to the wind, his coat napping around his lean legs.

Billy Louise closed the door and her half-open mouth and let down her lifted eyelids. Standing with her back against the wall, she turned that something—an envelope—over twice, then tore off the end and pulled out the contents. It was the note she and Marthy had signed no longer than an hour ago, and written large across the face of it were the words: "Paid, Samuel Seabeck."

"The—old—darling!" said Billy Louise under her breath and went straight in to show it to Marthy.



CHAPTER XXVIII

ALL RIGHT AND COMFY

Seabeck was a fine weather prophet, for that time at least. It did storm that night and the next day and the next; a howling, tearing blizzard that carried the snow so far and so fast that it almost wore it out; so that when the spasm was over, the land lay bleaker and raggeder than ever, with hard-packed drifts in all the hollows and bare ground between. Of course it was out of the question for Billy Louise to leave the Cove while the storm lasted, so she took care of Marthy and the pigs and chickens and cows, and between whiles she tormented herself with direful pictures of Ward up there alone on Mill Creek. Sometimes she saw him raving in fever and wanting a drink which he could not get, so that thirst tortured him; then calling for her, when she could not come. Sometimes she saw him trying to hobble somewhere on those crutches, and falling exhausted—breaking more bones, perhaps; or catching more cold, or something. She was a most distressed Billy Louise, believe me, and she wished a hundred times a day that she had stayed with Ward; she wished that, in spite of Marthy's need of her. She was terribly sorry for Marthy; but Marthy had not broken any leg, and besides, she was not in love with Marthy.

On the second day John Pringle battled through the storm to see what Billy Louise would have him do. And Billy Louise gave him instructions about finding a man and sending him up to the Cove at once, and looking after the Wolverine ranch until she came, and having Phoebe send up some clothes for her. She felt better when she had set the wheels in motion again, and as she stood in the door and watched John's broad, stolid back out of sight on his homeward journey, she made up her mind that she would start at daylight for Mill Creek, and she didn't care whether it stormed or not. She simply would not leave Ward there alone any longer. She almost wished that she had told Seabeck about Ward; he would have sent a man over to look after him. But she was selfish, and she wanted Ward to herself; so she had not so much as mentioned his name to Seabeck.

She milked the two cows by lantern light, next morning; and the pigs did not seem to want to leave their nests when she poured their breakfast into the trough by the wavering light she carried. She made coffee for Marthy and took it to her in bed, and told her that she would leave plenty of wood and kindling, and that Marthy must sleep as long as she could and not worry about a single, living thing. She said she must get an early start, because it might be "bad going" and she meant to bring Ward back with her if he were able to travel at all.

"I can't be in two places at once, Marthy, so if you don't mind, I'll bring him down here where I can look after the two of you at the same time. You'll let me, won't you? Or else," she added hopefully, "I'll take you both down home. Would you rather—"

"I'd ruther stay here where I b'long," said Marthy dully. "But I don't want you should go t' any trouble about me, Billy Louise. I've rustled fer m'self all my life, and I guess I kin yit. If it wa'n't fer my rheumatiz, I'd ask no odds of anybody. I ain't goin' t' leave, anyway. Charlie might come back, er—"

"Well, you needn't leave." Billy Louise told herself that she was not disappointed, because she had not hoped to persuade Marthy to leave the Cove. "You don't mind if I bring Ward down here, do you, Marthy?"

"No, I don't mind nothin' you kin do," said Marthy in the same dull tone, pouring her saucer full of coffee and spilling some on her pillow, because her hands were not as steady as they used to be. "He kin sleep in Charlie's room, if yuh want he should." She took two big swallows that emptied the saucer, handed the dish to Billy Louise, and lay down again. "I don't seem to care about nothin'," she remarked tonelessly. "I'd jest as soon die as live. I wisht you'd send word to Seabeck I want t' see him, Billy Louise. Oh, it ain't about Charlie," she added harshly. "He's shet uh me, and I'm shet uh him. I—got some other business with Seabeck. Tell him to bring a couple uh men along with him."

"Is there any hurry, Marthy?" Billy Louise stood holding the cup and saucer in her two hands, and stared down anxiously at the lined old face on the pillow. A faint, red glow was in the sky, and the lamp-light dimmed with the coming of day. "You don't feel—badly, do you, Marthy?"

"Me? No, Why should I feel bad? But I want t' see Seabeck and a couple of his men, jest as quick as you kin git word to 'em."

"Which ones?" Billy Louise was plainly puzzled. Was Marthy going to make him take those cattle back? It was like her. Billy Louise did not blame her for feeling that way, either. If she had had the money, she would have paid him herself for the cattle.

"It don't matter which ones. You send 'im word, Billy Louise, like the good girl yuh always have been. You've always kinda took the place of my Minervy to me, Billy Louise; and I won't bother yuh much longer."

"Oh, of course I will! The stage will go up this forenoon. I'll send a note to Seabeck. It won't be any bother at all. What shall I say? Just that you want to see him?"

"I kin write it m'self, I guess, if you'll bring me a pencil and paper. I can't seem t' git used to a pen. I kin write all I want t' say."

Billy Louise let it go at that. She brought the paper and pencil and went after Blue, while Marthy, sitting up in bed, wrote her note. Billy Louise was eager to start; and I don't think anyone should blame her if she hurried Marthy a little, and if her parting words were few, and her manner slightly abstracted. She knew just how Marthy was feeling—or thought she did; and she was simply wild with anxiety over Ward.

Blue discovered before she was out of the gorge that his lady was wild over something. Never had she come so near to being a merciless rider as on that nippy morning. There were drifts: Blue went through them in great lunges. There were steep hills: but there was no stopping at the top to breathe awhile and admire the view. Billy Louise rode with an eye upon the climbing sun, and with her mind busy adding up miles and minutes.

She rode up the creek trail at a long lope, and she pulled up at the stable and slid off Blue, who was wet to his ears and moving every rib when he breathed. (Blue was a good horse, with plenty of speed and stamina, but Billy Louise had given him all he wanted, that morning.) She went straight to a corner of the hay corral and stopped with her hands clutching the top wire.

"Ward Warren, for heaven's sake, what are you doing?" You couldn't have told from her tone that she had been crying, a mile back, from sheer anxiety, or that she "loved him to pieces." She sounded as if she did not love him at all and was merely disgusted with his actions.

"I'm trying to sink my loop on this damned buzzard-head of a horse," Ward retorted glumly. "I've been trying for about an hour," he added, grinning a little at his own plight.

"Well, it's a lucky thing for you he won't let you," Billy Louise informed him sternly, stooping to crawl under the bottom wire. "You've got about as much sense as—" She did not say what. "Give me that rope, and you take yourself and your crutches out of the corral, Mr. Smarty. I just had a hunch you couldn't be trusted to behave yourself."

"Brave Buckaroo got lonesome," Ward said, looking at her with eyes alight, as he hobbled slowly toward her. "You'll have to open the gate for me, William. Rattler'll make a break for the open if he sees a crack as wide as your little finger."

By then he was near enough to reach out an arm and pull her close to him. "Oh, William girl, I'm sure glad to see you once more. I got scared. I thought maybe I just dreamed you were here; so I tackled—"

"You tackled more than you could handle," Billy Louise finished with her lips close to his. "You haven't got any sense at all. You might have known I'd come the very first minute I could."

"I know—I know."

"And you ought to know you mustn't try to ride Rattler, Ward. What if he'd pitch with you?"

"In that case, I'd pile up, I reckon. Say, William, a broken leg does take a hell of a time to get well. But all the same, I'll top old Rattler, all right. I'd top anything rather than spend another night in that jail."

"You'll ride Blue," Billy Louise told him calmly "I'm going to ride Rattler myself."

"Yes, you are—not!"

"Do you mean to say I can't? Do you think—"

"Oh, I guess you can, all right, but—"

"Well, if I can, I'm going to. If you think I can't handle a measly old skate like that—"

"He's been running out for nearly two months, Wilhemina—"

"And look at his ribs! If you'll just kindly go in the house while I saddle—"

"I'll kindly stay right here, lady-girl. You don't know Rattler—"

"And you don't know Billy Louise MacDonald." She wrinkled her nose at him and turned back to unsaddle Blue. "I really didn't intend to go back right now," she said, "but seeing you've got your heart set on it, I suppose we might as well." Then she added: "We're only going as far as the Cove, anyway; and I really ought to hurry back to look after Marthy. Charlie Fox and Peter pulled out and left her there all solitary alone. I've been staying with her since I left here. I told her we'd be down there, and stay till—further notice."

Billy Louise did not give Ward much opportunity for argument. He was too awkward with his crutches to keep up with her, and she managed to be on the move most of the time.

I may as well admit that she was horribly afraid of Rattler, and horribly afraid that he and Ward would find it out. She did not hurry much. She took plenty of time to put Ward's saddle on Blue, and when she finally took her rope and went in after Rattler, who was regarding her from the corner of the stack where he might run either way, she wished that Ward was elsewhere—and she did not much care where.

But Ward was anxious, and he stayed where he was by the corner of the stable and swore in violent undertones because he was condemned to look on while his Wilhemina took long chances on getting hurt. Not a move of hers escaped his fear-sharpened eyes, while she went carelessly close to Rattler, and then, with a quick flip, landed the loop neatly over his head. Ward would have felt less pleased if he had known how her heart was thumping. He saw only the whimsical twist of her lips and thought that she was enjoying a distinctly feminine sense of triumph at her success.

Billy Louise led Rattler boldly up to where lay her saddle and Ward's bridle. She hoped she did not look scared, but she was wondering all the time what Rattler would do when she "piled on"; pile her off, probably, her pessimism told her, for Billy Louise was no lady broncho-fighter, for all she rode so well on horses that she knew. There is a difference.

"Sure you want to tackle him, lady-girl?" Ward asked her, after he had himself attended to the bridling—since Rattler was touchy about the head. "Of course, he isn't bad, when you know him; but he's liable to be pretty snuffy after running out so long. And he never had a woman on him. You better let me ride him."

"Don't be silly. You couldn't even mount him, with that game leg. And besides, don't you see I've been wanting an excuse to ride Rattler ever since I knew you? You must have a very poor opinion of my riding."

"Oh, if you put it that way—" Ward yielded, just as she knew he would. "I haven't a doubt but what you can handle him if you take a notion. Only—if you got hurt—"

"But I won't." Billy Louise braced her courage with a smile and picked up the saddle blanket. But Ward took it from her and hobbled close enough to adjust it.

"He knows me," he explained meaningly. "Better let me saddle up. He don't know but what I can cave a rib or two in, if he don't behave. Just hand me the saddle, William, please."

"You're only trying to scare me out," Billy Louise accused him, with a vast relief well hidden. "I'm not a bit afraid of him."

"All right; that'll help some." He steadied himself by the horse's twitching shoulder while he reached carefully for the cinch. "I guess I'm more scared than you are."

"I know you are. I've taken too many tumbles to let the prospect of another one worry me, anyway. Why, Blue ditched me himself, three different times when I first began to ride him. And even yet the old devil would like to, once in a while." Billy Louise was actually talking herself rapidly into a feeling of confidence.

She needed it. When she had helped Ward upon Blue—and that was not easy, either, considering that he only had one leg fit to stand on—and had gone to the cabin for her bag of nuggets and Ward's roll of money which he had forgotten, and had exhausted every other excuse for delay, she picked up Rattler's reins and wound her fingers in his mane, and took hold of the stirrup as nonchalantly as if she were mounting Blue.

She went up at the instant when Rattler jumped sidewise from her. She got partly into the saddle, clung there for a few harrowing seconds, and then went over his head and plump into a snowdrift beside the stable.

"Good God!" groaned Ward and went white and weak as he watched.

"Good gracious!" grumbled Billy Louise, righting herself and digging snow out of her collar and sleeves. "Stop your laughing, Ward Warren!" (Ward was not laughing, and she knew it.) "I'll ride that ornery cayuse, just to show him I can. You Rattler, I'll fix you for that!" She turned to Ward and twisted her lips at him. "I see now why you named him that," she said. "Because he rattles your teeth loose."

"You keep off him!" Ward shouted sternly.

"You keep still!" Billy Louise shouted back at him. "We're going to find out right now who's boss."

Whether she referred to Rattler or to his master she did not stipulate; perhaps she meant both of them. At any rate, she caught the horse again and mounted, a great deal more cautiously than she had at first, in spite of Ward's threats and entreaties. She got fairly into the saddle and stayed there—with the help of the horn and the luck that had thus far carried her through almost anything she undertook. She was not a bit ashamed of "pulling leather."

"Now we're all right and comfy," she announced breathlessly, when the first fight was over and Rattler, like his master, had yielded to the inevitable. "And we know who's boss, and we're all of us squindiciously happy, because we're headed for home. Aren't we, buckaroo?"

"I suppose so," Ward mumbled doubtingly, for a moment eyeing her sidelong. He was not quite over his scare yet.

"And say, buckaroo!" Billy Louise reined close, so that she could reach out and pinch his arm a little bit. "Soon as your leg is all well, and you're every speck over the hookin'-cough, why—you can be the boss!"

"Can I?"

"Honest, you can. I've"—Billy Louise had the grace to blush a little—"I've always thought I'd love to have somebody bully me and boss me and 'buse me. And I—" Her lips twitched a little. "I think you can qualify. What was that you said just as I was getting on the second time? I was too busy to listen, but—"

"But what? I don't remember that I said anything." Ward got hold of her free hand and held it tight.

"Oh, yes, you did! It was sweary, too."

"Was it?"

"Yes, it was. You sweared at Flower of the Ranch-oh."

Billy Louise stopped at that, since Ward refused to be baited. She sensed that there were bigger things than a "sweary" sentence in the forefront of her buckaroo's mind. She waited.

They came to the gate, and Billy Louise freed her hand from his clasp and dismounted, since it was a wire gate and could not be opened on horseback. She closed it after him, looked to her cinch, tightened it a little, patted Rattler forgivingly on the neck, caught the horn with one hand and the stirrup with the other, and went up quite like a man, while Ward watched her intently.

"'In sooth, I know not why you are so sa-ad,'" murmured Billy Louise, when she swung alongside in the trail.

Ward caught her hand again and did not let go; so they rode hand in hand down the narrow valley.

"I was wondering—" he hesitated, drawing in a corner of his lip, biting it, and letting it go. "Wilhemina, if old Lady Fortune takes a notion to give me another kick or two, just when life looks so good to me—"

"Why, we'll kick back just as hard as she does," threatened Billy Louise courageously. "Don't let happiness get on your nerves, Ward."

"If I wasn't crippled, it wouldn't. But when a man's down and out, he—thinks a lot. The last three days, I've lived a whole lifetime, lady-girl. Everything seems to be coming my way, all at once. And I'm afraid; what if I can't make good? If I can't make you happy"—he squeezed her fingers so that Billy Louise had to grit her teeth to keep from interrupting him—"or if anything should happen to you—Lord! I—I never knew what it was to be crazy scared till I saw you fall off Rattler. I—"

"You've got nerves, buckaroo. You've been shut up there alone so long you see things all distorted. We're going to be happy, because we'll be together, and we've so much to do and so much to think of. You must realize, Ward, that we've got three places to take care of, and you and me and poor old Marthy. She hasn't anybody, Ward, but us. And she's changed so—got so old—just in the last few days. I never knew a person could change so much in such a little while. She's just let go all holds and kind of sagged down, mentally and physically. We'll have to take care of her, Ward, as long as she lives. That's why I'm taking you there—so we can look after her. She won't leave the Cove. I—I was hoping," she added shyly, "that we could sit in front of our own fireplace, Ward, and have nice cozy evenings; but—-well, there always seems to be something for me to do for somebody, Ward."

"Oh, you Wilhemina!" Ward slipped his arm around her, to the disgust of Rattler and Blue, and made shift to kiss her twice. "Long as you live, you'll always be doing something for somebody; that's the way you're made. And nobody's been doing things for you; but if the Lord lets me live, that's going to be my job from now on."

He said a great deal more, of course. They had nearly fifteen miles to go, and they rode at a walk; and a man and a maid can say a good deal at such a time. But I don't think they would like to have it all repeated. Their thoughts ranged far: back over the past and far into the future, and clung close to the miracle of love that had brought them together. There is one thing which Billy Louise, even in her most self-revealing mood, did not tell Ward, and that is her doubts of him. Never once did he dream that she had suspected him and wrung her heart because of her suspicions—and in that I think she was wise and kind.

They found Seabeck and Floyd Carson and another cowboy at the Cove, just preparing to leave. Marthy, it transpired, had wanted to make her will, so that Billy Louise would have the Cove when Marthy was done with it. Billy Louise cried a little and argued a good deal, but Marthy had not lost all her stubbornness, and the will stood unchanged.

When Ward understood all of the circumstances, he hobbled into the kitchen and signaled Seabeck to follow him; and there he counted out five hundred dollars from his last gold-harvest and with a few crisp sentences compelled Seabeck to accept the money. (At that, Seabeck stood a loser by Charlie's thievery, but no one knew it save himself, since he never mentioned the matter.)

Billy Louise and Ward were married just as soon as Ward was able to make the trip to the county-seat, which was just as soon as he could walk comfortably with a cane.

They stayed the winter in the Cove, and a part of the spring. Then they buried grim, gray old Marthy up on the side hill near Jase, where she had asked them to lay her work-worn body when she was gone.

They were very busy and very happy and pretty prosperous with their three ranches and what gold Ward washed out of the gravel-bank while they were living up on Mill Creek, so that he could prove up on his claim. They never heard of Charlie Fox again, or of Buck Olney—and they never wanted to.

If you should some time ride through a certain portion of Idaho, you may find the tiny valley of the Wolverine and the decaying cabins which prove how impossible it is for a couple to live in three places at once. If you should be so fortunate as to meet Billy Louise, she might take you through the canyon and point out to you her cave and Minervy's. It is possible that she might also show you the washout which always made her and Ward laugh when they passed it. And if you ride up over the hill and along the upland and down another hill, you cannot fail to find the entrance to the Cove; and perhaps you will like to ride down the gorge and see the little Eden hidden away there. You may even ride as far as Mill Creek; but you will be told, very likely, that no one ever found any gold there. And if you should meet them, give my regards to Billy Louise and Ward—who never calls himself a football these days.



THE END



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