Vesta sat up, pushed her hair back from her forehead, her white hand lingering there. He touched it, pressed it comfortingly.
"But I'll have to go," she said, calm in voice, "to end this trouble and strife."
"I've been wondering, since I'm kind of pledged to clean things up here, whether you'd consider a business proposal from me in regard to taking charge of the ranch for you while you're gone, Vesta."
She looked up with a quick start of eagerness.
"You mean I oughtn't sell the cattle, Duke?"
"Yes, I think you ought to clean them out. The bulk of them are in as high condition as they'll ever be, and the market's better right now that it's been in years."
"Well, what sort of a proposal were you going to make, Duke?"
"Sheep."
"Father used to consider turning around to sheep. The country would come to it, he said."
"Coming to it more and more every day. The sheep business is the big future thing in here. Inside of five years everybody will be in the sheep business, and that will mean the end of these rustler camps that go under the name of cattle ranches."
"I'm willing to consider sheep, Duke. Go ahead with the plan."
"There's twice the money in them, and not half the expense. One man can take care of two or three thousand, and you can get sheepherders any day. There can't be any possible objection to them inside your own fence, and you've got range for ten or fifteen thousand. I'd suggest about a thousand to begin with, though."
"I'd do it in a minute, Duke—I'll do it whenever you say the word. Then I could leave Ananias and Myrtle here, and I could come back in the summer for a little while, maybe."
She spoke with such eagerness, such appeal of loneliness, that he knew it would break her heart ever to go at all. So there on the hilltop they planned and agreed on the change from cattle to sheep, Lambert to have half the increase, according to the custom, with herder's wages for two years. She would have been more generous in the matter of pay, but that was the basis upon which he had made his plans, and he would admit no change.
Vesta was as enthusiastic over it as a child, all eagerness to begin, seeing in the change a promise of the peace for which she had so ardently longed. She appeared to have come suddenly from under a cloud of oppression and to sparkle in the sun of this new hope. It was only when they came to parting at the porch that the ghost of her old trouble came to take its place at her side again.
"Has she cut the fence lately over there, Duke?" she asked.
"Not since I caught her at it. I don't think she'll do it again."
"Did she promise you she wouldn't cut it, Duke?"
She did not look at him as she spoke, but stood with her face averted, as if she would avoid prying into his secret too directly. Her voice was low, a note of weary sadness in it that seemed a confession of the uselessness of turning her back upon the strife that she would forget.
"No, she didn't promise."
"If she doesn't cut the fence she'll plan to hurt me in some other way. It isn't in her to be honest; she couldn't be honest if she tried."
"I don't like to condemn anybody without a trial, Vesta. Maybe she's changed."
"You can't change a rattlesnake. You seem to forget that she's a Kerr."
"Even at that, she might be different from the rest."
"She never has been. You've had a taste of the Kerr methods, but you're not satisfied yet that they're absolutely base and dishonorable in every thought and deed. You'll find it out to your cost, Duke, if you let that girl lead you. She's a will-o'-the-wisp sent to lure you from the trail."
Lambert laughed a bit foolishly, as a man does when the intuition of a woman uncovers the thing that he prided himself was so skilfully concealed that mortal eyes could not find it. Vesta was reading through him like a piece of greased parchment before a lamp.
"I guess it will all come out right," he said weakly.
"You'll meet Kerr one of these days with your old score between you, and he'll kill you or you'll kill him. She knows it as well as I do. Do you suppose she can be sincere with you and keep this thing covered up in her heart? You seem to have forgotten what she remembers and plots on every minute of her life."
"I don't think she knows anything about what happened to me that night, Vesta."
"She knows all about it," said Vesta coldly.
"I don't know her very well, of course; I've only passed a few words with her," he excused.
"And a few notes hung on the fence!" she said, not able to hide her scorn. "She's gone away laughing at you every time."
"I thought maybe peace and quiet could be established through her if she could be made to see things in a civilized way."
Vesta made no rejoinder at once. She put her foot on the step as if to leave him, withdrew it, faced him gravely.
"It's nothing to me, Duke, only I don't want to see her lead you into another fire. Keep your eyes open and your hand close to your gun when you're visiting with her."
She left him with that advice, given so gravely and honestly that it amounted to more than a warning. He felt that there was something more for him to say to make his position clear, but could not marshal his words. Vesta entered the house without looking back to where he stood, hat in hand, the moonlight in his fair hair.
* * *
CHAPTER XXI
A TEST OF LOYALTY
Lambert rode to his rendezvous with Grace Kerr on the appointed day, believing that she would keep it, although her promise had been inconclusive. She had only "expected" she would be there, but he more than expected she would come.
He was in a pleasant mood that morning, sentimentally softened to such extent that he believed he might even call accounts off with Sim Hargus and the rest of them if Grace could arrange a peace. Vesta was a little rough on her, he believed. Grace was showing a spirit that seemed to prove she wanted only gentle guiding to abandon the practices of violence to which she had been bred.
Certainly, compared to Vesta, she seemed of coarser ware, even though she was as handsome as heart could desire. This he admitted without prejudice, not being yet wholly blind. But there was no bond of romance between Vesta and him. There was no place for romance between a man and his boss. Romance bound him to Grace Kerr; sentiment enchained him. It was a sweet enslavement, and one to be prolonged in his desire.
Grace was not in sight when he reached their meeting-place. He let down the wire and rode to meet her, troubled as before by that feeling of disloyalty to the Philbrook interests which caused him to stop more than once and debate whether he should turn back and wait inside the fence.
The desire to hasten the meeting with Grace was stronger than this question of his loyalty. He went on, over the hill from which she used to spy on his passing, into the valley where he had interfered between the two girls on the day that he found Grace hidden away in this unexpected place. There he met her coming down the farther slope.
Grace was quite a different figure that day from any she had presented before, wearing a perky little highland bonnet with an eagle feather in it, and a skirt and blouse of the same plaid. His eyes announced his approval as they met, leaning to shake hands from the saddle.
Immediately he brought himself to task for his late admission that she was inferior in the eyes to Vesta. That misappraisement was due to the disadvantage under which he had seen Grace heretofore. This morning she was as dainty as a fresh-blown pink, and as delicately sweet. He swung from the saddle and stood off admiring her with so much speaking from his eyes that she grew rosy in their fire.
"Will you get down, Grace? I've never had a chance to see how tall you are—I couldn't tell that day on the train."
The eagle feather came even with his ear when she stood beside him, slender and strong, health in her eyes, her womanhood ripening in her lips. Not as tall as Vesta, not as full of figure, he began in mental measurement, burning with self-reproof when he caught himself at it. Why should he always be drawing comparisons between her and Vesta, to her
disadvantage in all things? It was unwarranted, it was absurd!
They sat on the hillside, their horses nipping each other in introductory preliminaries, then settling down to immediate friendship. They were far beyond sight of the fence. Lambert hoped, with an uneasy return of that feeling of disloyalty and guilt, that Vesta would not come riding up that way and find the open strands of wire.
This thought passed away and troubled him no more as they sat talking of the strange way of their "meeting on the run," as she said.
"There isn't a horse in a thousand that could have caught up with me that day."
"Not one in thousands," he amended, with due gratitude to Whetstone.
"I expected you'd be riding him today, Duke."
"He backed into a fire," said he uneasily, "and burned off most of his tail. He's no sight for a lady in his present shape."
She laughed, looking at him shrewdly, as if she believed it to be a joke to cover something that he didn't want her to know.
"But you promised to give him to me, Duke, when he rested up a little."
"I will," he declared earnestly, getting hold of her hand where it lay in the grass between them. "I'll give you anything I've got, Grace, from the breath in my body to the blood in my heart!"
She bent her head, her face rosy with her mounting blood.
"Would you, Duke?" said she, so softly that it was not much more than the flutter of the wings of words.
He leaned a little nearer, his heart climbing, as if it meant to smother him and cut him short in that crowning moment of his dream.
"I'd have gone to the end of the world to find you, Grace," he said, his voice shaking as if he had a chill, his hands cold, his face hot, a tingling in his body, a sound in his ears like bells. "I want to tell you how——"
"Wait, Duke—I want to hear it all—but wait a minute. There's something I want to ask you to do for me. Will you do me a favor, Duke, a simple favor, but one that means the world and all to me?"
"Try me," said he, with boundless confidence.
"It's more than giving me your horse, Duke; a whole lot more than that, but it'll not hurt you—you can do it, if you will."
"I know you wouldn't ask me to do anything that would reflect on my honesty or honor," he said, beginning to do a little thinking as his nervous chill passed.
"A man doesn't—when a man cares—" She stopped, looking away, a little constriction in her throat.
"What is it, Grace?" pressing her hand encouragingly, master of the situation now, as he believed.
"Duke"—she turned to him suddenly, her eyes wide and luminous, her heart going so he could see the tremor of its vibrations in the lace at her throat—"I want you to lend me tomorrow morning, for one day, just one day, Duke—five hundred head of Vesta Philbrook's cattle."
"That's a funny thing to ask, Grace," said he uneasily.
"I want you to meet me over there where I cut the fence before sunup in the morning, and have everybody out of the way, so we can cut them out and drive them over here. You can manage it, if you want to, Duke. You will, if you—if you care."
"If they were my cattle, Grace, I wouldn't hesitate a second."
"You'll do it, anyhow, won't you, Duke, for me?"
"What in the world do you want them for, just for one day?"
"I can't explain that to you now, Duke, but I pledge you my honor, I pledge you everything, that they'll be returned to you before night, not a head missing, nothing wrong."
"Does your father know—does he——"
"It's for myself that I'm asking this of you, Duke; nobody else. It means—it means—everything to me."
"If they were my cattle, Grace, if they were my cattle," said he aimlessly, amazed by the request, groping for the answer that lay behind it. What could a girl want to borrow five hundred head of cattle for? What in the world would she get out of holding them in her possession one day and then turning them back into the pasture? There was something back of it; she was the innocent emissary of a crafty hand that had a trick to play.
"We could run them over here, just you and I, and nobody would know anything about it," she tempted, the color back in her cheeks, her eyes bright as in the pleasure of a request already granted.
"I don't like to refuse you even that, Grace."
"You'll do it, you'll do it, Duke?" Her hand was on his arm in beguiling caress, her eyes were pleading into his.
"I'm afraid not, Grace."
Perhaps she felt a shading of coldness in his denial, for distrust and suspicion were rising in his cautious mind. It did not seem to him a thing that could be asked with any honest purpose, but for what dishonest one he had no conjecture to fit.
"Are you going to turn me down on the first request I ever made of you, Duke?" She watched him keenly as she spoke, making her eyes small, an inflection of sorrowful injury in her tone.
"If there's anything of my own you want, if there's anything you can name for me to do, personally, all you've got to do is hint at it once."
"It's easy to say that when there's nothing else I want!" she said, snapping it at him as sharp as the crack of a little whip.
"If there was anything——"
"There'll never be anything!"
She got up, flashing him an indignant look. He stood beside her, despising the poverty of his condition which would not allow him to deliver over to her, out of hand, the small matter of five hundred beeves.
She went to her horse, mightily put out and impatient with him, as he could see, threw the reins over her pommel, as if she intended to leave him at once. She delayed mounting, suddenly putting out her hands in supplication, tears springing in her eyes.
"Oh, Duke! If you knew how much it means to me," she said.
"Why don't you tell me, Grace?"
"Even if you stayed back there on the hills somewhere and watched them you wouldn't do it, Duke?" she appealed, evading his request.
He shook his head slowly, while the thoughts within it ran like wildfire, seeking the thing that she covered.
"It can't be done."
"I give you my word, Duke, that if you'll do it nobody will ever lift a hand against this ranch again."
"It's almost worth it," said he.
She quickened at this, enlarging her guarantee.
"We'll drop all of the old feud and let Vesta alone. I give you my word for all of them, and I'll see that they carry it out. You can do Vesta as big a favor as you'll be doing me, Duke."
"It couldn't be done without her consent, Grace. If you want to go to her with this same proposal, putting it plainly like you have to me, I think she'll let you have the cattle, if you can show her any good reason for it."
"Just as if I'd be fool enough to ask her!"
"That's the only way."
"Duke," said she coaxingly, "wouldn't it be worth something to you, personally, to have your troubles settled without a fight? I'll promise you nobody will ever lift a hand against you again if you'll do this for me."
He started, looked at her sternly, approaching her a step.
"What do you know about anything that's happened to me?" he demanded.
"I don't know anything about what's happened, but I know what's due to happen if it isn't headed off."
Lambert did some hard thinking for a little while, so hard that it wrenched him to the marrow. If he had had suspicion of her entire innocence in the solicitation of this unusual favor before, it had sprung in a moment into distrust. Such a quick reversion cannot take place in the sentiment without a shock. It seemed to Lambert that something valuable had been snatched away from him, and that he stood in bewilderment, unable to reach out and retrieve his loss.
"Then there's no use in discussing it any more," he said, groping back, trying to answer her.
"You'd do it for her!"
"Not for her any quicker than for you."
"I know it looks crooked to you, Duke—I don't blame you for your suspicions," she said with a frankness that seemed more like her
self, he thought. She even seemed to be coming back to him in that approach. It made him glad.
"Tell me all about it, Grace," he urged.
She came close to him, put her arm about his neck, drew his head down as if to whisper her confidence in his ear. Her breath was on his cheek, his heart was afire in one foolish leap. She put up her lips as if to kiss him, and he, reeling in the ecstasy of his proximity to her radiant body, bent nearer to take what she seemed to offer.
She drew back, her hand interposed before his eager lips, shaking her head, denying him prettily.
"In the morning, I'll tell you all in the morning when I meet you to drive the cattle over," she said. "Don't say a word—I'll not take no for my answer." She turned quickly to her horse and swung lightly into the saddle. From this perch she leaned toward him, her hand on his shoulder, her lips drawing him in their fiery lure again. "In the morning—in the morning—you can kiss me, Duke!"
With that word, that promise, she turned and galloped away.
It was late afternoon, and Lambert had faced back toward the ranchhouse, troubled by all that he could not understand in that morning's meeting, thrilled and fired by all that was sweet to remember, when he met a man who came riding in the haste of one who had business ahead of him that could not wait. He was riding one of Vesta Philbrook's horses, a circumstance that sharpened Lambert's interest in him at once.
As they closed the distance between them, Lambert keeping his hand in the easy neighborhood of his gun, the man raised his hand, palm forward, in the Indian sign of peace. Lambert saw that he wore a shoulder holster which supported two heavy revolvers. He was a solemn-looking man with a narrow face, a mustache that crowded Taterleg's for the championship, a buckskin vest with pearl buttons. His coat was tied on the saddle at his back.
"I didn't steal this horse," he explained with a sorrowful grin as he drew up within arm's length of Lambert, "I requisitioned it. I'm the sheriff."
"Yes, sir?" said Lambert, not quite taking him for granted, no intention of letting him pass on with that explanation.
"Miss Philbrook said I'd run across you up this way."
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