When she was finished, he picked up his hat. “I’m sorry I was the cause of a disturbance here,” he said, apologizing both to the girl and to her father. “I am at fault for inviting it.”
“You were not,” Enos Churchill assured him. “Any man is welcome in my house who will conduct himself like a man. You were attacked, and you were right in defending yourself.”
The old man scratched his chin wearily. “I know what all this means,” he said, “and it is not good. I have done my work, and all I want is peace. I am not going to take sides in the affair. You are welcome here, son, as you always were. But my other friends will be welcome, too, and some of them may be against you. However, nobody else will come into my house again with a gun on his hip. I suppose that just about covers what you wanted to see me about?”
Again Woodbine got to his feet and picked up his hat. “Yes it does,” he answered. “And thanks for the help. Those boys wanted to get real rough.”
“You had better watch out for that liver-lipped fellow,” the old man said. “I’ve seen the kind before. Fights for the pleasure of it. You’ll tangle with him again.”
“You’ll stay for supper?” Amy Churchill asked.
The girl had changed from riding clothes to a dress of some grey soft material which had its own way of proving that she was no longer a child but a well-developed young woman, and she had a look in her eyes which verified the revelations made by the dress.
“Thanks, not this time,” Woodbine answered. “I’m not through with my day’s riding yet.”
“You’re going to Virginia Sterling’s?”
Woodbine tried to catch the look in her face as she asked the question, but she had turned her head. “Yes,” he answered, “there’s to be a meeting there tonight.”
“So I heard,” she answered. “I hope you enjoy it.”
Woodbine laughed briefly. “I doubt that I will,” he said, and went to the door.
He was somewhat surprised when she followed him to the porch. “She’s a wonderful girl, isn’t she?” Amy asked, and there was a queer, deep kind of quality in her voice.
“She’s a good neighbor,” Woodbine admitted. “I’ve known her a long time.”
Amy was standing so near him that he could see the stars shining in her eyes, and catch a faint odor of the perfume she was wearing. The moonlight made her sleek black hair shine and gave a kind of luminescent quality to her ivory skin.
“Isn’t it beautiful here?” she asked. “I think that this is the most beautiful spot in the world when the moon shines on it. Don’t you?”
Her voice was as soft as a breeze, and it set his imagination spinning. She was very close to him now and he could see the flurry of emotion crossing her face and the tiny tip of her tongue touch her lips. And when she looked at him there was a direct boldness about it for a fraction of a minute before she dropped her gaze. He could hear her deep, uneven breathing. And then there was a long moment of silence while she waited for him to frame an answer.
He took a deep breath and said with a forced lightness, “You’d better get indoors. Moonlight is a dangerous weapon for a person to be handling carelessly.”
And then he was gone. She stood on the porch watching his form as it faded into the shadows towards his horse. And when she heard the sound of his animal’s hoofs on the trail she stood staring into the blackness, wondering. She had set a trap for him, and that trap had affected him, had almost drawn him into her arms, she believed. But he had recognized it and at the last moment had shied away from it. She wondered why, and she could not find the answer, except in the name of Virginia Sterling.
She turned impatiently and went into the house and to her room, and there she went to the mirror and searched the image she saw there, and she could not find any flaw in it, and she was puzzled. Finally she said to herself, he’ll still be around—if Fry doesn’t kill him. Then she went downstairs to supper.
* * * *
Woodbine started home, but as he neared the woods lining the creek, some instinct warned him against taking his regular trail. He pulled his animal up a moment, then turned right and headed upstream towards Hugh Ambler’s place. Later, he could cross the creek near Ambler’s and reach the Sterling place just as quickly as going by his usual route.
Although this precaution had not been necessary, it was only due to the fact of Noble Fry’s canny reasoning that there had not been a trap laid for him in the woods on his own land. For as Fry’s party had taken that same trail a little earlier, Shay had pulled up beside him and suggested something.
“See that patch of moonlight falling on the trail right there?” Shay said. “If there was a man hid in that brush he could pick off a rider on the trail just as he hit that light patch. The man would never know what hit him, and anybody he was botherin’, he wouldn’t bother no more.”
Noble Fry turned this over in his mind a moment, then said, “That would be about the dumbest thing a man could do. Maybe he wouldn’t be bothered no more by that party, but he’d sure be bothered by others.”
“I don’t get you.”
“We just had trouble at Churchill’s, didn’t we? We leave Churchill’s a few minutes ahead of Woodbine, and next day Woodbine turns up dead with a bullet in his back.”
“So does that prove who did it? Since when have bullets got their owner’s names wrote on ’em?”
“Your name would be wrote on that bullet, and Churchill would be the man to read the writing. Moody, the trouble with you is that there are things you can’t see too well. Like moral force.”
“One man’s word is as good as another to a jury.”
“There, my friend, you’re as wrong as a man can be. One man’s word is as good as another in the law books, but not in people’s minds. It’s just like the Declaration of Independence saying all men are born free and equal It says so in the book, but that don’t make it so. It says in the law books that one man’s word is as good as another, but that don’t make that so, either. No man in this neck of the woods, Moody, no man at all, has got a word that’s as good as Churchill’s in the eyes of his neighbors. They’d take his word and judgment against the word of fifty men like you, and they’d be right. That’s a thing the likes of you can’t understand, and never will be able to understand, Moody.”
“That kind of talk is Greek to me,” Moody grumbled. “I don’t understand it, and I don’t believe things I can’t understand.”
“You can understand that I’m not letting you dry-gulch Woodbine now. When you’re fighting for your position on a range you’ve got to keep your nose clean, and you can’t afford to go off half-cocked and do something that will make your neighbors suspicious of you. Just keep your galluses on and we’ll get Mister Woodbine where the hair is short, in our own good time, and without any criticism from the boys with touchy morals. Now I’m going on to Sterling’s. I want you to ride on into town and hang out in the saloons. Those gun-hands of Woodbine’s are not the kind that are going to lie around a bunkhouse like fat cats. See if they’re milling around. Get to talking to them and find out if you know any of them, or anybody they know. Find out how much Woodbine’s paying them. Feel them out and see if we can wean them away from him with higher wages. Anyway, make friends with any of ’em you see, and see how things stand. And come up to the house when you get back and let me know what you learn.”
Moody Shay and the other hand had ridden on to town, and Noble Fry had ridden on to Virginia Sterling’s, and Woodbine’s trail had not been trapped.
Woodbine himself had ridden past his trail and on to Hugh Ambler’s, trying to recall, as he rode, any information he had about the man. It wasn’t much. Ambler had come in and taken up a section across Pecan Creek back of the Sterling place about three years ago. He had driven in a few head of grade cattle and two fair-looking bulls, and had turned them loose and set about putting up his buildings. He didn’t get a
round much, and few people knew anything about him.
Ambler had dropped in to round-up each Spring and Fall, had done his share, and had taken his cut, branding the calves, and driving his stuff back to his own land to turn loose again near his quarters. He was a big sized man, easy to get along with on roundup, and could do more than his share of work. But he still didn’t have very much land or very many cows running on the open land. He was just a small-timer who people saw around but didn’t know very well.
Woodbine stopped his horse in a clearing when he saw the light in Ambler’s small cabin, and called out the man’s name. Ambler blew out his light, came to the door and shouted, “Who is it?”
Woodbine noted the man’s caution. “Woodbine. Wanted to have a talk with you.”
The man stepped out into the moonlight, and Woodbine saw he had had his gun belted on.
“Light,” the man said, and Woodbine dismounted and went to meet him. He had never visited the man before, and had rarely seen him except twice a year on round-up, and had an occasional glimpse of him from time to time along the creek bottom.
The man did not try to pave the way for an easy conversation by the usual casual remark, but waited for Woodbine to state his business.
“There’s going to be a meeting over at Sterling’s to-night. I was headed that way, and stopped off to see if you were going.”
“Hadn’t figured on it,” the man answered. He was not acting cold, but he was letting Woodbine do all the talking.
“Heard about it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know it’s about fencing. Noble Fry and some of the fellows that are not on the creek are against it. Those of us on the creek will keep on feeding their stock unless we fence. They claim fencing will ruin them. I claim that leaving our land open will ruin me and everybody on the creek. You’re on the creek. I was hoping you’d see things my way, since it affects you the same as me.”
“Yeah,” Ambler said. “I’ve heard the other side, too. I haven’t made up my mind yet. Fry’s made me an offer. What’s yours?”
Ambler was as big a man as Woodbine, and perhaps ten years older. He was broad of shoulder and not too big through the middle, and his face was smooth and healthy, with a pair of alert and bold grey eyes. He carried himself with an air of confidence in his ability, and his attitude now as he asked the question was one of trying to take the initiative in a sudden move.
Woodbine studied the man after this revealing question. He had never figured Ambler to be a man with his gun to sell, but here he was dickering his gun to a neighbor in the face of brewing trouble that he should have considered as much his as Woodbine’s.
Woodbine turned the question over in his mind, and then asked another, “What’s your terms?”
“I’m hemmed in here,” Ambler said, “with Churchill in front of me, the mountains back of me, and you folks across the creek between me and the road. You run two sections deep between the creek and the road. I want two sections from you and two sections from Sterling. That’ll give me a four section block between you and Sterling, and put me on the road.”
Woodbine let the rein slip off his tongue for a moment. “You wouldn’t also want my ranch-house and Sterling’s, would you? My friend, this is your fight as much as it is ours.”
The man shrugged. “It could be. But I might not have to fight it. I know the set-up, and you just haven’t got enough men backing you to make a showing. Fry has got all the strength, and if I make a deal with him, I can keep my own place open, and I can get something more after the smoke has cleared away.”
“If Fry wins.”
“He’ll win, and when he does, I’ll get mine. I didn’t come here to keep on being a little man.”
“You won’t grow working for Fry.”
“He thinks the same way, but he doesn’t know me any more than you do. Get this, Woodbine, I’m little now but I’m not going to stay that way. I know Fry’s weakness, and I know how to cash on it. I’m a lone wolf, and I throw in with the men that will do me the most good. If Fry thinks he’s playing me for a sucker, he’s got something to learn. You offer me nothing; Fry offers me part of your land when he drives you off of it, but he don’t intend to keep his promise. That don’t worry me, Woodbine, it only makes me laugh. I’ll get mine out of this shindig. I’m telling you now, mister, don’t count me out of the party. You might have made Fry stick his tail between his legs, but I’m not Fry. I know what gunpowder smells like from both ends of the barrel.”
“Thanks for warning me, Ambler. Want to smell some now?”
“I sniff powder when it suits me to smell powder. And that’s only when there are blue chips lying on the barrel head.”
Woodbine got on his horse. “All right, mister. We know where we stand. Just one more thing occurs to me; keep away from Amy Churchill.”
The man bridled at this; Woodbine could tell it by his voice. “What’s she to you?”
“Nothing, man. But her father is something to me, and to every decent man within a day’s ride of here, if that means anything to you.”
He turned his horse and rode with his back to Ambler until he had disappeared into the woods. As he travelled through the woods and across the creek at the ford back of Sterling’s, he gave his thoughts to the surprising things Ambler had revealed about himself.
Ambler had suddenly become a force to be watched and reckoned with. Here was a man of too much personal egotism and ambition galling under his jealousy of bigger people who had ignored him, a man whose bitterness was so strong a force within him that at the first opportunity it had exploded to reveal him to the very ones from whom he should have hidden it. Here was a vulture revealing his intention of growing fat on the bodies of his fallen neighbors. He would bear close watching.
CHAPTER 5
The Little Wildcat
Woodbine rode up to the rambling Sterling ranch-house and circled it in the moonlight, coming to the hitchrail at the front. He was surprised to note that there were no saddle horses tied there as there would have been if the meeting had been in progress. As he dismounted, he looked at the ground and noted that there was much fresh trampled earth, a sign that riders had been here and gone. He tied his horse and went to the door and knocked.
Virginia Sterling came to the door in a new green dress she had apparently brought back on her return from her visit, and the green somehow made her rich auburn hair seem all the redder. She was small, but not wraithlike. Instead there was a simple clean-cut, healthy look about her. Her slightly freckled face looked well-scrubbed rather than made up, giving her beauty a touch of reality rather than mystery. There never was any mystery about Virginia Sterling, except perhaps the mystery of how one small girl could have so much spunk and energy and fire, and yet, in most cases, so much common sense.
She held the door open as Woodbine came in, and her eyes were flashing sparks. She slammed the door behind him and followed him into the big living-room where old Bob Burnham sat smoking his pipe. Bob had always lived in the house with the family. Bob blew out smoke and winked at Woodbine.
The girl folded her arms across her chest and said sharply, “Well, it’s about time you showed up. You’ve lit a fuse to a box of dynamite that will blow up the whole range, and then you ride off to look at the moon with Amy Churchill, not caring who gets killed. Jim Woodbine, you ought to be ridden out of here on a rail—”
Woodbine had been playing and arguing and dancing and fighting with Virginia since they had been neighboring children, and he did not take her angry spells too seriously. He smiled at her.
“Hold it, honey. Where’s the meeting?”
“The meeting’s all over, and don’t you honey me, you trouble-maker!”
Woodbine saw that this anger was deeper than her usual quick spells which came and went with the wind, and he looked seriously at Bob, who shrugged and thumbed the tobacco down i
n his pipe, leaving Jim to face the music alone.
“And what did they decide?”
“Just what Noble predicted they would decide; that it would be unfair to everybody to fence our neighbors away from the creek. So, we’re not fencing.”
“You’re not!”
She looked at him, startled. “Do you mean that you’re going to fence anyway, despite what all the neighbors say?”
“Despite what the people who want my grass say. I’m going to fence mine, and you ought to do the same, unless you intend to give up ranching.”
“Jim, you’re crazy. You’re begging for trouble. I can’t understand how a head as thick as yours can contain so little sense as to make you start a war.”
“I’m not starting it. Fry intends to start it if I fence my land. That’s different.”
“It’s not. It’s all the same. It means killing.”
Woodbine gave up trying to convince her. He shrugged. “Do what you want to,” he said. “I’ll take your wire off your hands if you feel that I’ve double-crossed you. I can use it.”
“I don’t want the money for the wire. I just don’t want you to keep on being a fool.”
Old Bob laid his pipe down on the side table. “I’ve been listening to you two quarrelling and fighting for nearly twenty years,” he complained. “I wish you’d settle it once for all. Kiss and make up, why don’t you?”
Virginia looked at Woodbine with biting scorn. “Kiss that idiot? I’d just as soon kiss a cactus. Good night!”
She started to turn and leave the room, but suddenly Jim Woodbine caught her wrists and held her facing him, watching the darting fire in her eyes.
An impulse swept through him which was new to him. He watched her face, saw a fleeting expression of surprise sweep through her, and then of wonder. She stood still, her face lifted to his, her lips motionless, as though she were facing something new and startling. He heard a catch in her breath, saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom.
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