by Zane Grey
“Surface, I want thet bag of gold.”
“What — bag — of gold?”
“Yu know. Syvertsen held Neece up an’ robbed him of it.”
At the point of Brazos’s gun the rancher led the way into the ranch-house and into his roam, where, from under the floor of a closet, he dragged up an extremely heavy satchel.
“Open it,” ordered Brazos eagerly.
Surface complied to expose packs of greenbacks and bags that gave forth a musical clink of precious metal.
“Drive to the station, Surface. Its aboot time for the afternoon train.”
With gun in hand Brazos saw that the deposed rancher bought a ticket to Abilene — saw him stand on the platform, a target for all eyes — saw him mount the platform of the passenger coach of the train. Then he delivered himself of a final word.
“Surface, yu’re gettin’ off turrible lucky. It’s due to yore daughter. Get oot of Colorado, an’ stay oot. If I ever run into yu again I’ll kill yu.”
There were two windows in Bess’s room, letting the sunlight flood in, to show her white, strained face on the pillow. But the fire, the hate, the passion were gone.
Brazos advanced to the bed as he spoke to the woman in attendance. “Leave us alone a little, nurse.”
“Howdy, Brazos Keene,” said the girl, looking up.
“Howdy yoreself, girl,” he replied, and carefully sat down on the bed. “Air yu in Pain?”
“Not so bad now. It did hurt like hell, though.”
“Close shave, Bess. Gosh, I was scared.”
He bent over and kissed her as he might have if she were indeed what she had tried to deceive him into believing.
“Oh, Brazos! What have you done to me!” she cried brokenly, clinging to him.
“Wal, wearin’ yu oot, for one thing,” he replied, gently disengaging himself. “I’ll go now, sweetheart. Yu look most as turrible as when yu lay on the floor at Hall’s an’ I reckoned yu was dyin’ — I’ve excited yu too much.”
“You’ve broken — my heart — and made me bless you — for it — and want to — to live — and be — something again.”
“Wal, think of breakin’ a girl’s heart an’ makin’ her the better for it!” drawled Brazos, and he bent to kiss her again. “Thet’s somethin’ for a hombre like me to remember. I’ll come down to the train an’ see yu off.”
CHAPTER 9
SITTING HIS HORSE, Brazos gazed down into Coglan’s valley. This valley was forty miles up in the foothills from Las Animas, a secluded spot once inhabited by Ute Indians. The tribe had moved on into a more inaccessible spot, driven farther by the advance of their unscrupulous foe — the white man. They were friendly to Coglan, Brazos remembered.
Brazos rode on down into the valley and up to the log cabin among the firs. Two little girls were playing about the door. Presently a buxom, rosy-cheeked young woman looked out.
“Evenin’, lady,” said Brazos, taking off his sombrero. “Is Coglan anywhere aboot?”
“He was. Get down an’ come in, stranger.”
Brazos had scarcely dismounted when Coglan appeared. He was a strapping man, still young, half hunter and half trapper, brown as an Indian.
“Brazos Keene, by Gawd!” ejaculated the mountaineer with a whoop. “You pestiferous, long-legged cowpuncher! Put her thar!” And he nearly crushed Brazos’s hand.
Later, Brazos and Coglan walked down to the corrals.
“Coglan, I want to hang aboot heah for a month or so,” Brazos was saying. “Chop wood an’ hunt an’ loaf. An’ be alone. Yu know!”
“I savvy. Tell me when you feel like it or not at all.”
“Wal, I’ll get it off my chest,” replied Brazos, and briefly related the Las Animas tragedy.
Coglan’s trips to town kept Brazos abreast of the latest developments. He learned that Neece was happily busy with his regained Twin Sombreros Ranch, and had gone into partnership with young Sisk. But he was alarmed to hear that Bodkin had been elected sheriff by popular vote, and that Raine Surface had been killed on the street in Dodge City.
Still Brazos stayed in the valley, until one October night he returned to the cabin to find Coglan back early from a trip.
“Bilyen says you’re stayin’ away too long. Bodkin is braggin’ he will arrest you, if you ever come back.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated, Brazos.
“There’s a stranger lately dropped into town. Calls himself Knight an’ say’s he’s a cattle buyer for a big Kansas City firm. He an’ Bodkin got thick pronto. Bilyen remembers seein’ this man with Bodkin once last August.”
“Wal, I’ll ride down soon. What else did yu heah, Coglan?”
“Not much. But I met Neece in town. No one would think he’d ever been down an’ out. The Neece-Sisk-Henderson cattle deal went through. They’re runnin’ eighty thousand head.”
“Thet’s a solid combine. Reckon they’re gonna buck the Miller ootfit. I reckon Bilyen is behind thet deal.”
“They’re buildin’ a big barn at the ranch. Hauled in a saw-mill. Hank says it’ll be the biggest in Colorado. They got the roof up an’ the floor down when the twins stopped work with an idea. To give a grand dance.”
“Aw, June wouldn’t give a dance without me!” exclaimed Brazos.
“Girls are queer critters. You’d better rustle, Brazos.”
Next morning Brazos paid vastly more attention to his appearance than was usual with him. “Doggone it! I could look better,” he soliloquized, dissatisfied. “But at thet I’m not so pore.”
When he buttoned up his new grey coat he found that only the tip of his gun sheath, belted high, showed beneath it. That afforded him great satisfaction, but when he went out to ride to Twin Sombreros he left that coat open and hitched the gun sheath to its old place. Brazos rode up to the corrals and barns at the back of the ranch house.
Cowboys watched Brazos’s slow approach. He reined in before them.
“Howdy, cowboys. Is this heah Twin Sombreros Ranch?” he drawled.
“It sure is, cowboy. Get off an’ be at home,” answered one young fellow.
“Where’s them twins? I want to hit them for a job ridin’ heah.”
“Say, cowboy, you can’t fool us. You’re Brazos Keene.”
“Who’n hell said I wasn’t?”
“Hey, Jack, come here,” called Brazos’s first interrogator, sticking his head into the door of the bunkhouse. “You’re wanted.”
Whereupon Jack Sam emerged to look, to stare, to give a whoop and thump clinking off the porch.
“Brazos! What you doin’ on that horse? Git down!” he yelled, leaping to meet Brazos’s outstretched hand.
Then Hank Bilyen appeared on the scene.
“Come on to the house,” said Hank eagerly. “My Gawd! Yu look like Brazos Keene ten years ago — a pink-cheeked, curly haided cowboy of sixteen, which you was when I met yu first at Doan’s Post.”
“Only ten years? I feel turrible old, Hank.” Then a resonant voice, dry and crisp, gave Brazos a thrill.
“By the Lord Harry! It’s Brazos Keene.”
Brazos turned to meet Neece, a transformed man he scarcely recognised.
“Howdy, old-timer,” drawled Brazos.
Sombrero off, Brazos crossed the threshold. One of the twins stood in the centre of the room; the other closed the door behind him. Then they both met in front of him, pale, tremendously excited. Brazos could not tell one from the other.
“Howdy — girls,” he said huskily. “It’s shore good to see yu — heah.”
“Brazos!” The twins were upon him, murmuringly, and soft, cool lips touched his cheek at the same instant that sweeter lips, on fire, met his own.
At that juncture the girls’ aunt entered to welcome Brazos.
June and Janis talked of their dance.
“Now you’re here we can have it! When?” exclaimed June delightedly.
“Everybody is waiting,” Janis exclaimed. “Let’s say Friday night. That’ll give us two day
s to decorate the barn. And get the supper ready. Dad has a surprise for us. This will be the welcome home he had planned for us.”
“Friday night — two days?” queried June dreamily, her eyes on Brazos. “It will be full moon.”
They marched Brazos back to the house to announce with gay acclaim the date for the dance.
“Son, when will you take charge?” asked Neece.
“Yu mean of yore ootfits? Gosh!”
“I mean of mine. Henderson has his own foreman. An’ Sisk his. But I depend a lot on Bilyen.”
“What’s Hank’s job gonna me?”
“Hank will buy an’ sell cattle.”
“Fine.’ Coglan told me yu was’ runnin’ eighty thousand haid. Is thet so?”
“More by a few thousand.”
“Ahuh. I don’t know as thet is so good,” rejoined Brazos thoughtfully. “Neece, yu’re an old-timer. It’ll mean drawin’ rustlers like molasses draws flies.”
“There won’t be any more wholesale rustlin’. Brazos, I’ll lose loess throwin’ in with my pardners, an’ runnin’ a hundred thousand head, than if I stay out an’ run one-tenth of that number.”
“Sounds sensible. What does Hank think aboot it?”
“Bilyen’s not crazy about it. Says such big herds invite all kinds of range trouble from stealin’ by rival combines and out-an’-out rustlers to corruptin’ cowboys.”
“Wal, Hank is shore right. Heah he comes now, in a buck-board. Gosh, them blacks look kinda familiar!”
“Where you goin’, Hank?” queried the rancher, as Bilyen drove to a halt.
“Town. Got a list longer ‘n yore laig — all for thet darn dance.”
“Hank, I’ve been talkin’ with Neece heah. He says yu’re not keen on his combine an’ the big herd.”
“Wal, air yu, Brazos?”
“Shore I am The more the merrier.” Brazos deliterately contradicted his opinion to Neece for reasons of his own.
“To be honest, I feel all right about it now, ‘cause yu’re heah, Brazos.”
“Ahuh. Wal, what was on on your chest, before I got heah?”
“I got a grudge against Bodkin. An’ I ain’t so damn friendly toward this new cattleman Knight. The talk has it thet Knight is the hombre who shot Surface. Brazos, do yu reckon Bodkin’s bein’ elected sheriff will make him go straight?”
“Not in a million years!”
“Thet will simplify the problem for Neece,” declared Bilyen, And he drove off without another word.
Happily Brazos spent the afternoon balancing precariously on a ladder, putting up the leafy decorations. There came a time when he was alone with June, hidden from the others by a great bower of leaves. Brazos daringly made love to her, crushed her to him despite her murmured objections that the others might see them.
“June!” came the clamouring cry from outside the leafy bower.
She slipped away from Brazos. Dusk was falling. Then the supper bell rang.
A slender form in white stood framed in the darkening doorway of foliage.
“Aw, heah yu air!” whispered Brazos with feeling.
“Oh, I couldn’t see you — they sent me back—”
He gathered her up in his arms and as he kissed her she cried out:
“Oh! — please don’t — Mercy! Ah!” And with that Brazos’s thirsty lips closed hers and he spent his ardour in long, lingering kisses.
“There. Thet shore was comin’ to yu — lady,” panted Brazos, as her head dropped back, her eyes closed under mystic lids.
They opened. “Cowboy devil!” she whispered. “No — more,” she cried frantically, and, surprising Brazos with sudden strength, she freed herself and fled.
Brazos followed, still in a transport. But as he got out of the gloom of the barn into the light he sustained a return of rationality.
“What’d you go back for?” Henry Sisk asked in a low voice.
“What’d you — drag June — away for?” panted the girl, as she reached him.
“I took her for you!” returned Sisk, in anguish.
“Ha! Ha!”
Janis’s sweet laugh not only silenced Sisk but also made a stone image of Brazos. The couple hurried on to catch up with the others down the lane. Brazos stood there in the summer twilight as suddenly stiff and cold as if he had been turned to stone, his consciousness capable of only one thought:
My Gawd, if it wasn’t Jan.
CHAPTER 10
DURING THE REST of that evening Brazos sought the safety of numbers. But just the same, he was conscious of June’s observance of him. And as the evening wore on Brazos began to grow suspicious of the others.
“Wal, folks,” he said at an opportune moment, “I’m gonna say good-night an’ ride back to town.”
“What’s the sense in thet?” spoke up Neece quickly. “This is your home.”
“Why must you go?” pouted June.
“Wal, since yu call my hand,” drawled Brazos, “the fact is there’s a couple of hombres in town thet I forgot aboot shootin’.”
Blank surprise and silence ensued upon Brazos’s reply. They could not tell whether he was in jest or earnest.
“So long. See yu all in the mawnin’,” he concluded, and left the room. Hank Bilyen followed him out on the porch, and one of the twins caught up with them.
“Cowboy, I’ll have yore hawss here in a jiffy,” said Hank.
Brazos had taken a step down, but turned to look at the girl.
“You are — angry?” she asked.
“Not at all — an’ which one of these heah Neece girls are yu?”
“Brazos! I’m June. Don’t look at me like that. We were, only in fun — and they coaxed — nagged me into it.”
“Wal, I shore took Jan for yu, all right,” declared Brazos.
“Oh, Brazos — you — you didn’t—”
“Let yore imagination ‘run high, wide, an’ handsome June, an’ maybe yu’ll get somewhere.”
“Brazos! I’ll bet you were too smart for them. You knew Jan!” exclaimed June hopefully. “You played up to ‘them. Oh, Brazos, I’m horribly jealous, but if you guessed the trick I — I can stand it. Only Jan worries me — Do you forgive me, Brazos?”
“Shore, sweetheart, I’d forgive yu anythin’. But I’m not so shore aboot Jan an’ Jack an’ yore dad.”
“Now you’re my old Brazos again,” murmured June. “I’ll be a match for them next time. Brazos, let’s play a terrible joke on them.”
“I should smile. How aboot elopin’?”
“Oh! Brazos, you’re not serious?” cried June, aghast yet intrigued.
“Shore am. We could slope off in the mawnin’ — get to Dodge City long enough to slip thet bridle on yu — then come back to the dance.”’
“Glorious! But — but—”
“Then it wouldn’t make so much difference whether or not I took yu for Jan,” drawled Brazos dryly.
“Wouldn’t it, though?” flashed June. “Brazos Keene, I agree with Jan. Nobody can be quite sure of you.”
“If yu were my wife, wouldn’t yu feel tolerable safe?”
“Don’t tempt me, Brazos. If we eloped it’d hurt Dad. I — I’d like it! But I mustn’t. Another thing — Jan would never forgive me.”
“For marryin’ me!”
“No. For not telling her. We’ll wait, Brazos dear — if you can be true to me.”
Next day he slept late, and after he awakened he was wonderfully happy, until, booted, spurred, and gun-belted, he walked out up the street of Las Animas.
He had not taken a dozen steps from Mexican Joe’s when a cowboy sauntered out of a doorway..
“Howdy, Keene,” he said. “I been walkin’ the street for an hour watchin’ for you.”
“Howdy, cowboy,” returned Brazos.
“Gimme a match. Make this look natural,” returned the other.
“Ahuh. Heah yu air. Talk fast, stranger.”
“Last night, at Hall’s — heerd two men talkin’ — Brazos Keene in
town — Knight swears we’re to git him at any cost — Bodkin rarin’.”
The cowboy raised his young hard visage and turned away.
When Brazos arrived at Twin Sombreros he found a merry, bustling crowd of cowboys.
“Heah, one of yu rollickin’ gazabos,” he called. “Tell Neece an’ Bilyen I want them pronto.”
The rancher was the first to reach Brazos.
“Mornin’, son. You look pretty serious. Scared of bracin’ Dad after last night, eh?”
Brazos had to grin. “Scared as hell, Dad. But thet wasn’t on my mind atall.”
Hank Bilyen joined them at this juncture. “Mawnin’, Brazos,” he said.
“Come heah,” returned Brazos, and drew the two aside. “I’ve got a tip. Cattle gone to forty-three dollars. It’ll be forty-five in less ‘n a week, an’ goin’ up.”
“You don’t say!” ejaculated the rancher. “Hank, my hunch was correct.”
“Wal, I was holdin’ at forty for this fall. But forty-five! Say, Neece, we’re settin’ with a powerful good hand.”
“How many haid can yu drive in an’ ship pronto, inside the week?” queried Brazos, thoughtfully.
“Close to twenty thousand if the railroad can handle them,” replied Neece.
“I saw hundreds of empty stock cars as I rode oot. Neece, yu can beat the other cattlemen to it.”
“I’ll go write telegrams to my buyers an’ order all the stock cars available. Hank, you can ride in with these at once,” said Neece, and hurried away.
“Come oot with it, darn yore pictoors,” demanded Hank gruffly.
“Wal, it’s nothin’ new, but kinda worrisome, considerin’ the mix-up I’m in heah,” answered Brazos, and he gave Hank the information he had received from the cowboy in town.
The Texan swore mightily. “What’n the hell air yu gonna do?”
“Me? Aw, I better lay low.”
“They’d reckon yu was scared an’ rustle the hair off this range.”
“Shore. But they’d hang themselves sooner or later. Las Animas won’t stand it forever.”
“No, I reckon not. All the same, they’re daid slow.”
“Slow? They’re not alive. Hank, I just oughta ride away,” said Brazos tragically. “Only I cain’t.”