Brand Blotters

by Raine, William MacLeod

  Brought up in an atmosphere of semi-barbaric traditions, silken-strong, with instincts unwarped by social pressure, she was what the sun and wind and freedom of Arizona had made her, a poetic creation far from commonplace. So he judged her, and in spite of the dastardly thing she had done he sensed an innate refinement strangely at variance with the circumstances.

  “All right. I won’t,” he answered, with a faint smile.

  “Now you’ve got to pay for your sandwiches by making yourself useful. I’m going to finish this job.” She said it with an edge of self-scorn. He guessed her furious with self-contempt.

  Under her directions he knelt on the calf so as to hold it steady while she plied the hot iron. The odor of burnt hair and flesh was already acrid in his nostrils. Upon the red flank F was written in raw, seared flesh. He judged that the brand she wanted was not yet complete. Probably the iron had got too cold to finish the work, and she had been forced to reheat it.

  The little hand that held the running iron was trembling. Looking up, the tenderfoot saw that she was white enough to faint.

  “I can’t do it. You’ll have to let me hold him while you blur the brand,” she told him.

  They changed places. She set her teeth to it and held the calf steady, but the brander noticed that she had to look away when the red-hot iron came near the flesh of the victim.

  “Blur the brand right out. Do it quick, please,” she urged.

  A sizzle of burning skin, a piteous wail from the tortured animal, an acrid pungent odor, and the thing was done. The girl got to her feet, quivering like an aspen.

  “Have you a knife?” she asked faintly.

  “Yes.”

  “Cut the rope.”

  The calf staggered to all fours, shook itself together, and went bawling to the dead mother.

  The girl drew a deep breath. “They say it does not hurt except while it is being done.”

  His bleak eyes met hers stonily. “And of course it will soon get used to doing without its mother. That is a mere detail.”

  A shudder went through her.

  The whole thing was incomprehensible to him. Why under heaven had she done it? How could one so sensitive have done a wanton cruel thing like this? Her reason he could not fathom. The facts that confronted him were that she had done it, and had meant to carry the crime through. Only detection had changed her purpose.

  She turned upon him, plainly sick of the whole business. “Let’s get away from here. Where’s your horse?”

  “I haven’t any. I started on foot and got lost.”

  “From where?”

  “From Mammoth.”

  Sharply her keen eyes fixed him. How could a man have got lost near Mammoth and wandered here? He would have had to cross the range, and even a child would have known enough to turn back into the valley where the town lay.

  “How long ago?”

  “Day before yesterday.” He added after a moment: “I was looking for a job.”

  She took in the soft hands and the unweathered skin of the dark face. “What sort of a job?”

  “Anything I can do.”

  “But what can you do?”

  “I can ride.”

  She must take him home with her, of course, and feed and rest him. That went without saying. But what after that? He knew too much to be turned adrift with the story of what he had seen. If she could get a hold on him—whether of fear or of gratitude—so as to insure his silence, the truth might yet be kept quiet. At least she could try.

  “Did you ever ride the range?”

  “No.”

  “What sort of work have you done?”

  After a scarcely noticeable pause, “Clerical work,” he answered.

  “You’re from the East?” she suggested, her eyes narrowing.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Melissy Lee,” she told him, watching him very steadily.

  Once more the least of pauses. “Mine is Diller—James Diller.”

  “That’s funny. I know another man of that name. At least, I know him by sight.”

  The man who had called himself Diller grew wary. “It’s a common enough name.”

  “Yes. If I find you work at my father’s ranch would you be too particular about what it is?”

  “Try me.”

  “And your memory—is it inconveniently good?” Her glance swept as by chance over the scene of her recent operations.

  “I’ve got a right good forgettery, too,” he assured her.

  “You’re not in the habit of talking much about the things you see.” She put it in the form of a statement, but the rising inflection indicated the interrogative.

  His black eyes met hers steadily. “I can padlock my mouth when it is necessary,” he answered, the suggestion of a Southern drawl in his intonation.

  She wanted an assurance more direct. “When you think it necessary, I suppose.”

  “That is what I meant to say.”

  “Come. One good turn deserves another. What about this?” She nodded toward the dead cow.

  “I have not seen a thing I ought not to have seen.”

  “Didn’t you see me blot a brand on that calf?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t recall it at all, Miss Lee.”

  Swiftly her keen glance raked him again. Judged by his clothes, he was one of the world’s ineffectives, flotsam tossed into the desert by the wash of fate; but there was that in the steadiness of his eye, in the set of his shoulders, in the carriage of his lean-loined, slim body that spoke of breeding. He was no booze-fighting grubliner. Disguised though he was in cheap slops, she judged him a man of parts. He would do to trust, especially since she could not help herself.

  “We’ll be going. You take my horse,” she ordered.

  “And let you walk?”

  “How long since you have eaten?” she asked brusquely.

  “About seven minutes,” he smiled.

  “But before that?”

  “Two days.”

  “Well, then. Anybody can see you’re as weak as a kitten. Do as I say.”

  “Why can’t we both ride?”

  “We can as soon as we get across the pass. Until then I’ll walk.”

  Erect as a willow sapling, she took the hills with an elastic ease that showed her deep-bosomed in spite of her slenderness. The short corduroy riding skirt and high-laced boots were made for use, not grace, but the man in the saddle found even in her manner of walking the charm of her direct, young courage. Free of limb, as yet unconscious of sex, she had the look of a splendid boy. The descending sun was in her sparkling hair, on the lank, undulating grace of her changing lines.

  Active as a cat though it was, the cowpony found the steep pass with its loose rubble hard going. Melissy took the climb much easier. In the way she sped through the mesquit, evading the clutch of the cholla by supple dips to right and left, there was a kind of pantherine litheness.

  At the summit she waited for the horse to clamber up the shale after her.

  “Get down in your collar, you Buckskin,” she urged, and when the pony was again beside her petted the animal with little love pats on the nose.

  Carelessly she flung at Diller a question. “From what part of the East did you say?”

  He was on the spot promptly this time. “From Keokuk.”

  “Keokuk, Indiana?”

  “Iowa,” he smiled.

  “Oh, is it Iowa?” He had sidestepped her little trap, but she did not give up. “Just arrived?”

  “I’ve been herding sheep for a month.”

  “Oh, sheep-herding!” Her disdain implied that if he were fit for nothing better than sheep-herding, the West could find precious little use for him.

  “It was all I could get to do.”

  “Where did you say you wrangled Mary’s little lamb?”

  “In the Catalinas.”

  “Whose outfit?”

  Question and answer were tossed back and forth lightly, but both were watching warily.

 
“Outfit?” he repeated, puzzled.

  “Yes. Who were you working for?”

  “Don’t remember his name. He was a Mexican.”

  “Must have been one of the camps of Antonio Valdez.”

  “Yes, that’s it. That’s the name.”

  “Only he runs his sheep in the Galiuros,” she demurred.

  “Is it the Galiuros? Those Spanish names! I can’t keep them apart in my mind.”

  She laughed with hard, young cruelty. “It is hard to remember what you never heard, isn’t it?”

  The man was on the rack. Tiny beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. But he got a lip smile into working order.

  “Just what do you mean, Miss Lee?”

  “You had better get your story more pat. I’ve punched a dozen holes in it already. First you tell me you are from the East, and even while you were telling me I knew you were a Southerner from the drawl. No man ever got lost from Mammoth. You gave a false name. You said you had been herding sheep, but you didn’t know what an outfit is. You wobbled between the Galiuros and the Catalinas.”

  “I’m not a native. I told you I couldn’t remember Spanish names.”

  “It wasn’t necessary to tell me,” she countered quickly. “A man that can’t recall even the name of his boss!”

  “I’m not in the witness box, Miss Lee,” he told her stiffly.

  “Not yet, but you’re liable to be soon, I reckon.”

  “In a cattle rustling case, I suppose you mean.”

  “No, I don’t.” She went on with her indictment of his story, though his thrust had brought the color to her cheek. “When I offered you Antonio Valdez for an employer you jumped at him. If you want to know, he happens to be our herder. He doesn’t own a sheep and never will.”

  “You know all about it,” he said with obvious sarcasm.

  “I know you’re not who you say you are.”

  “Perhaps you know who I am then.”

  “I don’t know or care. It’s none of my business. But others may think it is theirs. You can’t be so reckless with the truth without folks having notions. If I were you I’d get a story that will hang together.”

  “You’re such a good detective. Maybe I could get you to invent one for me,” he suggested maliciously.

  Her indignation flashed. “I’m no such thing. But I’m not quite a fool. A babe in arms wouldn’t swallow that fairy tale.”

  Awkward as her knowledge might prove, he could not help admiring the resource and shrewdness of the girl. She had virtually served notice that if she had a secret that needed keeping so had he.

  They looked down over a desert green with bajadas, prickly pears, and mesquit. To the right, close to a spur of the hills, were the dwarfed houses of a ranch. The fans of a windmill caught the sun and flashed it back to the travelers.

  “The Bar Double G. My father owns it,” Miss Lee explained.

  “Oh! Your father owns it.” He reflected a moment while he studied her. “Let’s understand each other, Miss Lee. I’m not what I claim to be, you say. We’ll put it that you have guessed right. What do you intend to do about it? I’m willing to be made welcome at the Bar Double G, but I don’t want to be too welcome.”

  “I’m not going to do anything.”

  “So long as I remember not to remember what I’ve seen.”

  The blood burned in her cheeks beneath their Arizona tan. She did not look at him. “If you like to put it that way.”

  He counted it to her credit that she was ashamed of the bargain in every honest fiber of her.

  “No matter what they say I’ve done. You’ll keep faith?”

  “I don’t care what you’ve done,” she flung back bitterly. “It’s none of my affair. I told you that before. Men come out here for all sorts of reasons. We don’t ask for a bill of particulars.”

  “Then I’ll be right glad to go down to the Bar Double G with you, and say thanks for the chance.”

  He had dismounted when they first reached the pass. Now she swung to the saddle and he climbed behind her. They reached presently one of the nomadic trails of the cattle country which wander leisurely around hills and over gulches along the line of least resistance. This brought them to a main traveled road leading to the ranch.

  They rode in silence until the pasture fence was passed.

  “What am I to tell them your name is?” she asked stiffly.

  He took his time to answer. “Tom Morse is a good name, don’t you think? How would T. L. Morse do?”

  She offered no comment, but sat in front of him, unresponsive as the sphinx. The rigor of her flat back told him that, though she might have to keep his shameful secret for the sake of her own, he could not presume upon it the least in the world.

  Melissy turned the horse over to a little Mexican boy and they were just mounting the steps of the porch when a young man cantered up to the house. Lean and muscular and sunbaked, he looked out of cool, gray eyes upon a man’s world that had often put him through the acid test. The plain, cactus-torn chaps, flannel shirt open at the sinewy throat, dusty, wide-brimmed hat, revolver peeping from its leather pocket on the thigh: every detail contributed to the impression of efficiency he created. Even the one touch of swagger about him, the blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, lent color to his virile competency.

  He dragged his horse to a standstill and leaped off at the same instant. “Evenin’, ’Lissie.”

  She was busy lacing her shoe and did not look up. He guessed that he was being snubbed and into his eyes came a gleam of fun. A day later than he had promised, Jack Flatray was of opinion that he was being punished for tardiness.

  Casually he explained. “Couldn’t make it any sooner. Burke had a hurry-up job that took us into the hills. Fellow by the name of Bellamy, wanted for murder at Nemo, Arkansas, had been tracked to Mesa. A message came over the wires to arrest him. When Burke sent me to his room he had lit out, taken a swift hike into the hills. Must a-had some warning, for he didn’t even wait for a horse.”

  The dilated eyes of the girl went past the deputy to the man she had rescued. He was leaning against one of the porch posts, tense and rigid, on his face the look of the hunted brought to bay.

  “And did you find him?” she asked mechanically of the deputy.

  “We found him. He had been trampled to death by a cattle stampede.”

  Her mind groped blindly for an explanation. Her woman’s instinct told her that the man panting on the porch within six feet of the officer was the criminal wanted. There must be a mistake somewhere.

  “Did you identify him?”

  “I guess there is no doubt about it. His papers and belongings all showed he was our man.”

  “Oh!” The excitement of his news had for a moment thawed her, but a dignified aloofness showed again in her manner. “If you want to see father you’ll find him in the corral, Mr. Flatray.”

  “Well, I don’t know as I’m looking for him awful hard,” the blue kerchiefed youth smiled genially. “Anyway, I can wait a few minutes if I have to.”

  “Yes.” She turned away indifferently. “I’ll show you your room, Mr. Morse.”

  The deputy watched them disappear into the house with astonishment printed on his face. He had ridden twenty-seven miles to see Melissy Lee and he had not quite expected this sort of a greeting.

  “If that don’t beat the Dutch. Looks like I’ll do my callin’ on the old man after all, maybe,” he murmured with a grin.

  * * *

  CHAPTER III

  AN ACCUSATION

  The rescued man ate, drank, and from sheer fatigue fell asleep within five minutes of the time he was shown his bedroom.

  Since he was not of the easily discouraged kind, the deputy stayed to supper on invitation of Lee. He sat opposite the daughter of his host, and that young woman treated him with the most frigid politeness. The owner of the Bar Double G was quite unaware of any change of temperature. Jack and his little girl had always been the best of friend
s. So now he discoursed on the price of cows, the good rains, the outrages of the rustlers, and kindred topics without suspecting that the attention of the young man was on more personal matters.

  Though born in Arizona, Melissy was of the South. Due westward rolls the tide of settlement, and Beauchamp Lee had migrated from Tennessee after the war, following the line of least resistance to the sunburned territory. Later he had married a woman a good deal younger than himself. She had borne him two children, the elder of whom was now a young man. Melissy was the younger, and while she was still a babe in arms the mother had died of typhoid and left her baby girl to grow up as best she might in a land where women were few and far. This tiny pledge of her mother’s love Champ Lee had treasured as a gift from Heaven. He had tended her and nursed her through the ailments of childhood with a devotion the most pure of his reckless life. Given to heady gusts of passion, there had never been a moment when his voice had been other than gentle and tender to her.

  Inevitably Melissy had become the product of her inheritance and her environment. If she was the heiress of Beauchamp Lee’s courage and generosity, his quick indignation against wrong and injustice, so, too, she was of his passionate lawlessness.

  After supper Melissy disappeared. She wanted very much to be alone and have a good cry. Wherefore she slipped out of the back door and ran up the Lone Tree trail in the darkness. Jack thought he saw a white skirt fly a traitorous signal, and at leisure he pursued.

  But Melissy was not aware of that. She reached Lone Tree rock and slipped down from boulder to boulder until she came to the pine which gave the place its name. For hours she had been forced to repress her emotions, to make necessary small talk, to arrange for breakfast and other household details. Now she was alone, and the floods of her bitterness were unloosed. She broke down and wept passionately, for she was facing her first great disillusionment. She had lost a friend, one in whom she had put great faith.

  The first gust of the storm was past when Melissy heard a step on the rocks above. She knew intuitively that Jack Flatray had come in search of her, and he was the last man on earth she wanted to meet just now.