by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE MAN AT WHISPER
Brit Hunter finished washing the breakfast dishes and put a stick ofwood into the broken old cook-stove that had served him and Frank forfifteen years and was feeling its age. Lorraine's breakfast was in theoven, keeping warm. Brit looked in, tested the heat with his gnarledhand to make sure that the sour-dough biscuits would not be dried tocrusts, and closed the door upon them and the bacon and fried potatoes.Frank Johnson had the horses saddled and it was time to go, yet Britlingered, uneasily conscious that his habitation was lacking in manythings which a beautiful young woman might consider absolutenecessities. He had seen in Lorraine's eyes, as they glanced here andthere about the grimy walls, a certain disparagement of hersurroundings. The look had made him wince, though he could not quitedecide what it was that displeased her. Maybe she wanted lace curtains,or something.
He set the four chairs in a row against the wall, swept up the bits ofbark and ashes beside the stove, made sure that the water bucket wasstanding full on its bench beside the door, sent another critical glancearound the room, and tiptoed over to the dish cupboard and let down theflowered calico curtain that had been looped up over a nail forconvenience. The sun sent a bright, wide bar of yellow light across theroom to rest on the shelf behind the stove where stood the salt can, thesoda, the teapot, a box of matches and two pepper cans, one empty andthe other full. Brit always meant to throw out that empty pepper can andalways neglected to do so. Just now he remembered picking up the emptyone and shaking it over the potatoes futilely and then changing it forthe full one. But he did not take it away; in the wilderness one learnsto save useless things in the faint hope that some day they may becomeuseful. The shelves were cluttered with fit companions to that emptypepper can. Brit thought that he would have "cleaned out" had he knownthat Lorraine was coming. Since she was here, it scarcely seemed worthwhile.
He walked on his boot-toes to the door of the second room of the cabin,listened there for a minute, heard no sound and took a tablet and penciloff another shelf littered with useless things. The note which he wrotepainstakingly, lest she might think him lacking in education, he laidupon the table beside Lorraine's plate; then went out, closing the doorbehind him as quietly as a squeaking door can be made to close.
Lorraine, in the other room, heard the squeak and sat up. Her wristwatch, on the chair beside her bed, said that it was fifteen minutespast six, which she considered an unearthly hour for rising. She pulledup the covers and tried to sleep again. The day would be long enough, atbest. There was nothing to do, unless she took that queer old horse withwithers like the breastbone of a lean Christmas turkey and hips thatreminded her of the little roofs over dormer windows, and went for aride. And if she did that, there was nowhere to go and nothing to dowhen she arrived there.
In a very few days Lorraine had exhausted the sights of Quirt Creek andvicinity. If she rode south she would eventually come to the top of ahill whence she could look down upon further stretches of barrenness. Ifshe rode east she would come eventually to the road along which she hadwalked from Echo, Idaho. Lorraine had had enough of that road. If shewent north she would--well, she would not meet Mr. Lone Morgan again,for she had tried it twice, and had turned back because there seemed noend to the trail twisting through the sage and rocks. West she had notgone, but she had no doubt that it would be the same dreary monotony ofdull gray landscape.
Monotony of landscape was one thing which Lorraine could not endure,unless it had a foreground of riders hurtling here and there, and ofperspiring men around a camera tripod. At the Sawtooth ranch, after shewas able to be up, she had seen cowboys, but they had lacked the dashand the picturesque costuming of the West she knew. They were mostlycommonplace young men, jogging past the house on horseback, or loiteringdown by the corrals. They had offered absolutely no interest or "color"to the place, and the owner's son, Bob Warfield, had driven her over tothe Quirt in a Ford and had seemed exactly like any other big,good-looking young man who thought well of himself. Lorraine was notsusceptible to mere good looks, three years with the "movies" havingdisillusioned her quite thoroughly. Too many young men of Bob Warfield'sgeneral type had attempted to make love to her--lightly and not toowell--for Lorraine to be greatly impressed.
She yawned, looked at her watch again, found that she had spent exactlysix minutes in meditating upon her immediate surroundings, and fell towondering why it was that the real West was so terribly commonplace.Why, yesterday she had been brought to such a pass of sheer lonelinessthat she had actually been driven to reading an old horse-doctor book!She had learned the symptoms of epizooetic--whatever that was--andpoll-evil and stringhalt, and had gone from that to making a shoppingtour through a Montgomery Ward catalogue. There was nothing else in thehouse to read, except a half dozen old copies of the _Boise News_.
There was nothing to do, nothing to see, no one to talk to. Her dad andthe big, heavy-set man whom he called Frank, seemed uncomfortably awareof their deficiencies and were pitiably anxious to make her feelwelcome,--and failed. They called her "Raine." The other two men did notcall her anything at all. They were both sandy-complexioned and theyboth chewed tobacco quite noticeably, and when they sat down in theirshirt sleeves to eat, Lorraine had seen irregular humps in their hippockets which must be six-guns; though why they should carry them intheir pockets instead of in holster belts buckled properly around theirbodies and sagging savagely down at one side and swinging ferociouslywhen they walked, Lorraine could not imagine. They did not wear chaps,either, and their spurs were just spurs, without so much as a silverconcho anywhere. Cowboys in overalls and blue gingham shirts and fadedold coats whose lapels lay in wrinkles and whose pockets were torn downat the corners! If Lorraine had not been positive that this was actuallya cattle ranch in Idaho, she never would have believed that they wereanything but day laborers.
"It's a comedy part for the cattle-queen's daughter," she admitted,putting out a hand to stroke the lean, gray cat that jumped upon her bedfrom the open window. "Ket, it's a _scream_! I'll take my West beforethe camera, thank you; or I would, if I hadn't jumped right into themiddle of this trick West before I knew what I was doing. Ket, what doyou do to pass away the time? I don't see how you can have the nerve tolive in an empty space like this and purr!"
She got up then, looked into the kitchen and saw the paper on the table.This was new and vaguely promised some sort of break in the deadlymonotony which she saw stretching endlessly before her. Carrying thenameless cat in her arms, Lorraine went in her bare feet across thegrimy, bare floor to the table and picked up the note. It read simply:
"Your brekfast is in the oven we wont be back till dark maby. Don't leave the ranch today. Yr loveing father."
Lorraine hugged the cat so violently that she choked off a purr in themiddle. "'Don't leave the ranch to-day!' Ket, I believe it's going to bedangerous or something, after all."
She dressed quickly and went outside into the sunlight, the cat at herheels, the thrill of that one command filling the gray monotone of thehills with wonderful possibilities of adventure. Her father had made noobjection before when she went for a ride. He had merely instructed herto keep to the trails, and if she didn't know the way home, to let thereins lie loose on Yellowjacket's neck and he would bring her to thegate.
Yellowjacket's instinct for direction had not been working that day,however. Lorraine had no sooner left the ranch out of sight behind herthan she pretended that she was lost. Yellowjacket had thereupon walkeda few rods farther and stopped, patiently indifferent to the location ofhis oats box. Lorraine had waited until his head began to droop lowerand lower, and his switching at flies had become purely automatic.Yellowjacket was going to sleep without making any effort to find theway home. But since Lorraine had not told her father anything about it,his injunction could not have anything to do with the unreliability ofthe horse.
"Now," she said to the cat, "if three or four bandits would appear onthe ridge, over there, and come tearing down
into the immediateforeground, jump the gate and surround the house, I'd know this was thereal thing. They'd want to make me tell where dad kept his gold orwhatever it was they wanted, and they'd have me tied to a chair--andthen, cut to Lone Morgan (that's a perfectly _wonderful_ name for thelead!) hearing shots and coming on a dead run to the rescue." Shepicked up the cat and walked slowly down the hard-trodden path to thestable. "But there aren't any bandits, and dad hasn't any gold oranything else worth stealing--Ket, if dad isn't a miser, he's _poor_!And Lone Morgan is merely ashamed of the way I talked to him, and afraidI'll queer myself with the neighbors. No Western lead that _I_ ever sawwould act like that. Why, he didn't even want to ride home with me, thatday.
"And Bob Warfield and his Ford are incidents of the past, and not onesoul at the Sawtooth seems to give a darn whether I'm in the country orout of it. Soon as they found out where I belonged, they brought me overhere and dropped me and forgot all about me. And that, I suppose, iswhat they call in fiction the Western spirit!
"Dad looked exactly as if he'd opened the door to a book agent when Icame. He--he _tolerates_ my presence, Ket! And Frank Johnson's pipesmells to high heaven, and I hate him in the house and 'the boys'--hmhm!The _boys_--Ket, it would be terribly funny, if I didn't have to stayhere."
She had reached the corral and stood balancing the cat on a warped toprail, staring disconsolately at Yellowjacket, who stood in a far cornerswitching at flies and shamelessly displaying all the angularity of hisbones under a yellowish hide with roughened hair that was sheddingdreadfully, as Lorraine had discovered to her dismay when she removedher green corduroy skirt after riding him. Yellowjacket's lower lipsagged with senility or lack of spirit, Lorraine could not tell which.
"You look like the frontispiece in that horse-doctor book," sheremarked, eyeing him with disfavor. "I can't say that comedy hide you'vegot improves your appearance. You'd be better peeled, I believe."
She heard a chuckle behind her and turned quickly, palm up to shield hereyes from the straight, bright rays of the sun. Now here was a live man,after all, with his hat tilted down over his forehead, a cigarette inone hand and his reins in the other, looking at her and smiling.
"Why don't you peel him, just on a chance?" His smile broadened to agrin, but when Lorraine continued to look at him with a neutralexpression in her eyes, he threw away his cigarette and abandoned withit his free-and-easy manner.
"You're Miss Hunter, aren't you? I rode over to see your father. ThoughtI'd find him somewhere around the corral, maybe."
"You won't, because he's gone for the day. No, I don't know where."
"I--see. Is Mr. Johnson anywhere about?"
"No, I don't believe any one is anywhere about. They were all gone whenI got up, a little while ago." Then, remembering that she did not knowthis man, and that she was a long way from neighbors, she added, "Ifyou'll leave a message I can tell dad when he comes home."
"No-o--I'll ride over to-morrow or next day. I'm the man at Whisper. Youcan tell him I called, and that I'll call again."
Still he did not go, and Lorraine waited. Some instinct warned her thatthe man had not yet stated his real reason for coming, and she wondereda little what it could be. He seemed to be watching her covertly, yetshe failed to catch any telltale admiration for her in his scrutiny. Shedecided that his forehead was too narrow to please her, and that hiseyes were too close together, and that the lines around his mouth werecruel lines and gave the lie to his smile, which was pleasant enough ifyou just looked at the smile and paid no attention to anything else inhis face.
"You had quite an experience getting out here, they tell me," heobserved carelessly; too carelessly, thought Lorraine, who was wellschooled in the circumlocutions of delinquent tenants, agents of varioussorts and those who crave small gossip of their neighbors. "Heard youwere lost up in Rock City all night."
Lorraine looked up at him, startled. "I caught a terrible cold," shesaid, laughing nervously. "I'm not used to the climate," she addedguardedly.
The man fumbled in his pocket and produced smoking material. "Do youmind if I smoke?" he asked perfunctorily.
"Why, no. It doesn't concern me in the slightest degree." Why, shethought confusedly, must she _always_ be reminded of that horrible placeof rocks? What was it to this man where she had been lost?
"You must of got there about the time the storm broke," the man hazardedafter a silence. "It's sure a bad place in a thunderstorm. Them rocksdraw lightning. Pretty bad, wasn't it?"
"Lightning is always bad, isn't it?" Lorraine tried to hold her voicesteady. "I don't know much about it. We don't have thunderstorms toamount to anything, in Los Angeles. It sometimes does thunder there inthe winter, but it is very mild."
With hands that trembled she picked the cat off the rail and startedtoward the house. "I'll tell dad what you said," she told him, glancingback over her shoulder. When she saw that he had turned his horse andwas frankly following her to the house, her heart jumped wildly into herthroat,--judging by the feel of it.
"I'm plumb out of matches. I wonder if you can let me have some," hesaid, still speaking too carelessly to reassure her. "So you stuck itout in Rock City all through that storm! That's more than what I'd wantto do."
She did not answer that, but once on the doorstep Lorraine turned andfaced him. Quite suddenly it came to her--the knowledge of why she didnot like this man. She stared at him, her eyes wide and bright.
"Your hat's brown!" she exclaimed unguardedly. "I--I saw a man with abrown hat----"
He laughed suddenly. "If you stay around here long you'll see a goodmany," he said, taking off his hat and turning it on his hand beforeher. "This here hat I traded for yesterday. I had a gray one, but itdidn't suit me. Too narrow in the brim. Brown hats are getting to be thestyle. If I can borrow half a dozen matches, Miss Hunter, I'll begoing."
Lorraine looked at him again doubtfully and went after the matches. Hethanked her, smiling down at her quizzically. "A man can get alongwithout lots of things, but he's plumb lost without matches. You'vemaybe saved my life, Miss Hunter, if you only knew it."
She watched him as he rode away, opening the gate and letting himselfthrough without dismounting. He disappeared finally around a small spurof the hill, and Lorraine found her knees trembling under her.
"Ket, you're an awful fool," she exclaimed fiercely. "Why did you let megive myself away to that man? I--I believe he _was_ the man. And if Ireally did see him, it wasn't my imagination at all. He saw me there,perhaps. Ket, I'm scared! I'm not going to stay on this ranch all alone.I'm going to saddle the family skeleton, and I'm going to ride tilldark. There's something queer about that man from Whisper. I'm afraidof him."
After awhile, when she had finished her breakfast and was putting up alunch, Lorraine picked up the nameless gray cat and holding its headbetween her slim fingers, looked at it steadily. "Ket, you're thehumanest thing I've seen since I left home," she said wistfully. "I_hate_ a country where horrible things happen under the surface and thetop is just gray and quiet and so dull it makes you want to scream. LoneMorgan lied to me. He lied--he lied!" She hugged the cat impulsively andrubbed her cheek absently against it, so that it began purringimmediately.
"Ket--I'm afraid of that man at Whisper!" she breathed miserably againstits fur.