“Thanks,” said Ashton, rising. “The poor old brute must be rather stiff after the spurring I gave him yesterday.”
Gowan did not reply. He had gone out again. Somewhat nettled, Ashton hastened after him. Dawn had come. The gray light in the east was brightening to an exquisite pink. The clear twilight showed the puncher waiting at the front of the house beside a saddled horse. A glance showed Ashton that the saddle and bridle were his own, but that the horse was a big, rawboned beast.
“That’s not my pony,” he said.
“This here Rocket hawss ain’t any pony,” agreed Gowan. “He’s a man’s size hawss. Ain’t afraid you’ll drop too far when you fall off, are you?”
“You’re trying to get me on a bucking bronco!” said Ashton, suspiciously eying the bony, wild-eyed brute.
“He’s no outlaw,” reassured Gowan. “Most all our hawsses are liable to prance some when they’ve et too many rattlers. But Miss Chuckie said you can ride.”
“I can,” said Ashton, tightening the thong of his sombrero down across the back of his head and buttoning his coat.
“Roped this Rocket hawss for you because Mr. Knowles wants his mail by sundown,” remarked Gowan. “He shore can travel some when he feels like it. Don’t know as you’ll need your spurs. Here’s a five-spot Mr. Knowles said to hand you by way of advance. Thought you might want to refresh yourself over at Stockchute. Wouldn’t rather have another saddle and bridle, would you?”
“Kindly thank Mr. Knowles for me,” said Ashton, pocketing the five dollar bill. “No––the horse is hard-mouthed, but I prefer my own saddle and bridle.”
He drew his rifle from its sheath, wiped the dew from the butt, and tested the mechanism. The horse cocked his ears, but stood motionless while the rifle was taken out and replaced. Ashton picked up the reins from the ground and threw them over the horse’s head. The beast did not swing around, but his ewe neck straightened and his entire body stiffened to a peculiar rigidity.
Ashton tested the tightness of his saddle girth, and paused to gaze at the closed front door of the house. Aside from his saddle and burlesque sombrero, he looked every inch a puncher, both in dress and in bearing. But Miss Isobel missed the effect of his new ensemble. She missed also the interesting spectacle of his mounting.
If he had never ridden a cow pony he would have been thrown and dragged the instant he put his foot in the narrow metal stirrup. The horse was watching him alertly, every muscle tense. Ashton smiled confidently, spoke to the beast in a quiet tone, and pulled on the off rein. The horse bent his head to the pull, for the moment off his guard. In a twinkling Ashton had his foot in the stirrup and was up in the saddle. His toe slipped into the other stirrup as the horse jumped sideways.
The leap was tremendous, but it failed to unseat Ashton. It was instantly followed by other wild jumps––whirling forward and sidelong leaps, interspersed with frantic plunging and rearing. Gowan looked on, agape with amazement. The tenderfoot stuck fast on his flat little saddle and only once pulled leather. Rocket was not a star bucker, but he had thrown more than one half-baked cowboy.
Finding that he could not unseat his rider, the beast suddenly gave over his plunging, and bolted at furious speed down the smooth slope towards Plum Creek. Before they had gone half a furlong Ashton realized that he was on a blooded horse of unusual speed and a runaway. He could not hope to pull down so tough-mouthed a beast with his ordinary curb. The best he could do was to throw all his weight on the right rein. Unable altogether to resist the steady tug at his head, the racing horse gradually swerved until he was headed across the mesa towards the jagged, snow-streaked twin crests of Split Peak.
Horse and rider were still in the curve of their swift flight when Isobel Knowles came out into the porch, yawning behind her plump, sunbrowned hand. A glance at Gowan cut the yawn short. She looked alertly afield and at once caught sight of the runaway.
“Kid!––O-oh!” she cried. “Mr. Ashton!––on Rocket!”
Gowan spun about to her with a guilty start, but answered almost glibly: “You said he could ride, Miss Chuckie.”
“He’ll––he’ll be killed!––Daddy!”
Knowles stepped out through the doorway, cocking his big blue-barreled Colt’s. Gowan hastily pointed towards the runaway. Knowles looked, and dropped the revolver to his side. “What’s up?” he growled.
“Kid––he––he put Mr. Ashton on Rocket!” breathlessly answered his daughter.
“Sorry to contradict you, Miss Chuckie,” said Gowan. “He put himself on.”
“He’s on yet,” dryly commented the cowman. “May be something to that boy, after all.”
“But, Daddy!––”
“Now, just stop fussing yourself, honey. He and Rocket are going smooth as axlegrease and bee-lining for Stockchute. How did the hawss start off?––skittish?”
“Enough to make the tenderfoot pull leather,” said Gowan.
“If he stuck at all, with that fool saddle––!” rejoined Knowles. “Don’t you worry, honey. He sure can fork a hawss––that tenderfoot.”
“Oh, yes,” the girl sighed with relief. “If Rocket started off bucking, and he kept his seat, of course it’s all right. See him take that gully!”
“You sure gave me a start, honey, calling out that way.––Well, Kid, it’s about time we were off. I’ll get my hat.”
Gowan stepped nearer the girl as her father went inside. “I’ll leave it to the tenderfoot to tell you, Miss Chuckie. He’ll have to own up I gave him fair warning. Told him he wouldn’t need his spurs, and asked if he’d have another bit and saddle; but it wasn’t any use. He’s the kind that won’t take advice.”
“I know you meant it as a joke, Kid. You did not realize the danger of his narrow stirrups. Had he been caught in mounting or had he been thrown, he would almost certainly have been dragged. And for you to give him our one ugly hawss!”
“You said he could ride,” the puncher defended himself.
“I’ll forgive you for your joke––if he comes back safe,” she qualified, without turning her gaze from the now distant horse and rider.
Gowan started for the corral, the slight waddle of his bowlegged gait rather more pronounced than usual. When Knowles came out with his hat, the runaway was well up on the divide towards Dry Fork. Rocket was justifying his name.
In a few seconds the flying horse and rider had disappeared down the far slope. The girl followed her father and Gowan to the corral, and after they had ridden off, she roped and saddled one of the three horses in the corral. She mounted and was off on the jump, riding straight for the nearest point on the summit of the divide.
As, presently, she came up towards the top of the rise, she gazed anxiously ahead towards Dry Fork. Before she could see over the bend down to the creek channel, she caught sight of a cloud of dust far out on the mesa beyond the stream. She smiled with relief and wheeled about to return. The tenderfoot had safely crossed the stream bed. He would have Rocket well in hand before they came to rough country.
* * *
CHAPTER IX
THE SNAKE
Early in the afternoon, having nothing else to do, Isobel again saddled up and started off towards Dry Fork. Her intention was to ride out on the road to Stockchute and meet Ashton, if he was not too late.
As she rode up one side of the divide, a hat appeared over the bend of the other side. She could not mistake the high peak of that comic opera sombrero. Ashton was almost back to the ranch. Her first thought was that he had gone part way, and given up the trip. The big sombrero bobbed up and down in an odd manner. She guessed the cause even before Ashton’s head and body appeared, rising and falling rhythmically. She stared as Rocket swept up into view, covering the ground with a long-strided trot.
Ashton waved to her. She waved back. A few moments later they were close together. As she spun her pony around, he pulled in his horse to a walk, patting the beast’s neck and speaking to him caressingly.
“Back already?�
� she asked. “Surely, you’ve not been to Stockchute––Yes, you have!” Her experienced eye was taking in every indication of his horse’s condition. “He’s been traveling; but you’ve handled him well.”
“He’s grand!” said Ashton. “Been putting him through his paces. I suppose he is your father’s best mount.”
“Daddy and Kid ride him when they’re in a hurry or there’s no other horse handy.”
“You can’t mean––? Then perhaps I can have him again occasionally.”
“You like him, really?”
“All he needs is a little management,” replied Ashton, again patting the horse’s lean neck.
“If you wish to take him in hand, I’ll assign him to you. No one else wants him.”
“As your rural deliveryman’s mount––” began Ashton. He stopped to show the bulging bag slung under his arm. “Here’s the mail. Do you wish your letters now?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Here is this, however,” he said, handing her a folded slip of paper.
She opened it and looked at the writing inside. It was a receipt from the postmaster at Stockchute to Lafayette Ashton for certain letters delivered for mailing. The address of the letter to Thomas Blake was given in full. The girl colored, bit her lip, and murmured contritely: “You have turned the tables on me. I deserved it!”
“Please don’t take it that way!” he begged. “My purpose was merely to assure you the letter was mailed. After all, I am a stranger, Miss Knowles.”
“No, not now,” she differed.
“It’s very kind of you to say it! Yet it’s just as well for me to start off with no doubts in your mind, in view of the fact that in two or three weeks––”
“Yes?” she asked, as he hesitated.
“I––Your father will hardly keep me more than two weeks, unless––unless I make good,” he answered.
“I guess you needn’t worry about that,” she replied, somewhat ambiguously.
He shrugged. “It is very good of you to say it, Miss Knowles. I know I shall fail. Can you expect anyone who has always lived within touch of millions, one who has spent more in four years at college than all this range is worth––He cut my allowance repeatedly, until it was only a beggarly twenty-five thousand.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars!” exclaimed Isobel. “You had all that to––to throw away in a single year?”
“He cut me down to it the last year––a mere bagatelle to what I had all the time I was at college and Tech.,” replied Ashton, his eyes sparkling at the recollection. “He wished me to get in thick with the New Yorkers, the sons of the Wall Street leaders. He gave me leave to draw on him without limit. I did what he wished me to do,––I got in with the most exclusive set. Ah-h!––the way I made the dollars fly! Before I graduated I was the acknowledged leader. What’s more, I led my class, too––when I chose.”
“When you chose!” she echoed. “And now what are you going to do?”
The question punctured his reminiscent elation. He sagged down in his saddle. “I don’t know,” he answered despondently. “Mon Dieu! To come down to this––a common laborer for wages––after that! When I think of it––when I think of it!”
“You are not to think of it again!” she commanded with kindly severity. “What you are to remember all the time is that you are now a man and honestly earning your own living, and no longer a––a leech battening on the sustenance produced by others.”
He winced. “Was that my fault?”
“No, it was your father’s. I marvel that he did not utterly ruin you.”
“He has! In his last will he cuts me off with only a dollar.”
“So that was it?––And you think that ruined you? I say it saved you!” she went on with the same kindly severity. “You were a parasite. Now the chance is yours to prove that you have the makings of a man. You have started to prove it. You shall not stop proving it. You are not going to be a quitter.”
“No!” he declared, straightening under her bright gaze. “I will not quit. I will try my best to make good as long as the chance is given me.”
“Now you’re talking!” she commended him breezily.
“How could I do otherwise when you asked me?” he replied with a grave sincerity far more complimentary than mere gallantry.
She colored with pleasure and began to tell him of the cattle and their ways.
When they reached the corral she complimented him in turn by allowing him to offsaddle her horse. They walked on down to the house and seated themselves in the porch. As he opened the bag of mail for her she noticed that her hand was empty and turned to look back towards the corral.
“Your receipt from the postmaster,” she remarked; “I must have dropped it.”
He sprang up. “If you wish to keep it, I shall go back and find it for you.”
“No, oh, no; unless you want it yourself,” she replied.
“Not I. The matter is closed, thanks to your kindness,” he declared, again seating himself.
He was right, in so far as they were concerned. Yet the matter was not closed. That evening, when Knowles and Gowan returned from their day of range riding, the younger man noticed a crumpled slip of paper lying against the foot of the corral post below the place where he tossed up his saddle. He picked it up and looked to see if it was of any value. An oath burst from his thin-drawn lips.
“Shut up, Kid!” remonstrated Knowles. “I’m no more squeamish than most, but you know I don’t like any cussing so near Chuckie.”
“Look at this!” cried Gowan––“Enough to make anybody cuss!”
He thrust out the slip of paper close before his employer’s eyes. Knowles took it and read it through with deliberate care.
“Well?” he said. “It’s a receipt from the postmaster to Ashton for those letters I sent over by him. What of it?”
“Your letters?” asked Gowan, taken aback. “Did you write that one what is most particularly mentioned, the one to that big engineer Blake?”
“No. What would I be doing, writing to him or any engineer? They’re just the people I don’t want to have any doings with.”
“Then if you didn’t write him, who did?” questioned Gowan, his mouth again tightening.
“Why, I reckon you’ll have to do your own guessing, Kid––unless it might be Ashton did it.”
“That’s one leg roped,” said Gowan. “Can you guess why he’d be writing to that engineer?”
“Lord, no. He may have the luck to know him. Mr. Blake is a mighty big man, judging from all accounts; but money stands for a lot in the cities and back East, and Ashton’s father is one of the richest men in Chicago. I looked it up in the magazine that told about his helping to back the Zariba Dam project.”
“That’s another leg noosed––on the second throw,” said Gowan. “Another try or two, and we’ll have the skunk ready for hog-tying.”
“How’s that?” exclaimed the cowman. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“No, it’s that striped skunk that’s doing the crooked playing,” snapped Gowan. “Can’t you savvy his game? It’s all a frame-up––his sending off his guide and outfit, so’s to let on to you he’d been busted up and kicked out by his dad. You take him in to keep his pretty carcass from the coyotes––which has saved them from being poisoned.”
“Now, look here, Kid, only trouble about you you’re too apt to go off at half-cock. This young fellow may not be––”
“He shore is a snake, Mr. Knowles, and this receipt proves it on him,” broke in the puncher. “Ain’t you taken him into your employ?––ain’t you treated him like he was a man?”
“Well, ’tisn’t every busted millionaire would have asked for work, and he seems to mean it.”
“Just a bluff! You don’t savvy the game yet. Busted millionaire––bah! He’s the coyote of that bunch of reclamation wolves. He comes out here to sneak around and get the lay of things. We happen to catch him rustling. To save his cussed
carcass, he lets out about who his dad is. Course he couldn’t know we’d got all the reports on that Zariba Dam and who backed the engineer, nor that we’d know all about Blake.”
“Well?” asked Knowles, frowning.
“So he works us for suckers,––worms in here with us where he can learn all about you and your holdings; ropes a job with you, and gets off his report to that engineer Blake, first time he rides over to town.”
“Is that all your argument?” asked Knowles.
“Ain’t it enough?” rejoined Gowan. “Ain’t he and that bunch all in cahoots together? Ain’t this sneaking cuss’s dad either the partner or the boss of Blake? Ain’t Blake engaged in reclamation projects? You shore see all that. What follows?––It’s all a frame-up, I tell you. Young Ashton comes out here as a sort of forerider for his concern; finds out what his people want to know, and now he’s sent in his report to Blake. Next thing happens, Blake’ll be turning up with a surveying outfit.”
Knowles scratched his head. “Hum-m-m––You sure put up a mighty stiff argument, Kid. I’m not so sure, though.... Um-m-m––Strikes me some of your knots might be tighter. First place, there wasn’t any play-acting about the way the boy went plumb to pieces there at the waterhole. Next place, a man like his father, that’s piled up a mint of money, isn’t going to send out his son as forerider in a hostile country. Lastly, I’ve read a lot more about that engineer Blake than you have, and I’ve sized him up as a man who won’t do anything that isn’t square and open.”
“Maybe he ain’t in on the dirty side of the deal,” admitted Gowan. “How about this letter, though?”
“Just a friendly writing, like as not,” answered the cowman. “No, Kid––only trouble with you is you’re too anxious over the interests of Dry Mesa range. I appreciate it, boy, and so does Chuckie. But that’s no reason for you to take every newcomer for a wolf ’til he proves he’s only a dog.”
“You won’t do anything?” asked the puncher.
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