by Unknown
"Do you figure maybe he's working up to the headwaters of Dry Sandy?" one suggested.
A squat, bandy-legged man with a face of tanned leather presently answered. "No, Tim, I expect not. The way I size him up Mr. Richard Bellamy wouldn't know Dry Sandy from an irrigation ditch. Mr. R. B. hopes he's hittin' the high spots for Sonora, but he ain't anyways sure. Right about now he's ridin' the grub line, unless he's made a strike somewhere."
The third member of the party, a lean, wide-shouldered, sinewy youth, blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, broke in with a gesture that swept the sky. "Funny about all them buzzards. What are they doing here, sheriff?"
The squat man opened his mouth to answer, but Tim took the word out of his mouth.
"Look!" His arm had shot straight out toward the cañon. A coyote was disappearing on the lope. "Something lying there in the wash at the bend, Burke."
Sheriff Burke slid his rifle from its scabbard. "We'll not take any chances, boys. Spread out far as you can. Tim, ride close to the left wall. You keep along the right one, Flatray. Me, I'll take the center. That's right."
They rode forward cautiously. Once Flatray spoke.
"By the tracks there has been a lot of cattle down here on the jump recently."
"That's what," Tim agreed.
Flatray swung from his saddle and stooped over the body lying at the bend of the wash.
"Crushed to death in a cattle stampede, looks like," he called to the sheriff.
"Search him, Jack," the sheriff ordered.
The young man gave an exclamation of surprise. He was standing with a cigarcase in one hand and a billbook in the other. "It's the man we're after--it's Bellamy."
Burke left his horse and came forward. "How do you know?"
"Initials on the cigarcase, R. B. Same monogram on the billbook."
The sheriff had stooped to pick up a battered hat as he moved toward the deputy. Now he showed the initials stamped on the sweat band. "R. B. here, too."
"Suit of gray clothes, derby hat, size and weight about medium. We'll never know about the scar on the eyebrow, but I guess Mr. Bellamy is identified without that."
"Must have camped here last night and while he was asleep the cattle stampeded down the cañon," Tim hazarded.
"That guess is as good as any. They ce'tainly stomped the life out of him thorough. Anyhow, Bellamy has met up with his punishment. We'll have to pack the body back to town, boys," the sheriff told them.
Half an hour later the party filed out to the creosote flats and struck across country toward Mesa. Flatray was riding pillion behind Tim. His own horse was being used as a pack saddle.
CHAPTER II
BRAND BLOTTING
The tenderfoot, slithering down a hillside of shale, caught at a greasewood bush and waited. The sound of a rifle shot had drifted across the ridge to him. Friend or foe, it made no difference to him now. He had reached the end of his tether, must get to water soon or give up the fight.
No second shot broke the stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by æons of drought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against a dun background.
Arrow straight the man made for the hill crest. Weak as a starved puppy, his knees bent under him as he climbed. Down and up again a dozen times, he pushed feverishly forward. All day he had been seeing things. Cool lakes had danced on the horizon line before his tortured vision. Strange fancies had passed in and out of his mind. He wondered if this, too, were a delusion. How long that stiff ascent took him he never knew, but at last he reached the summit and crept over its cactus-covered shoulder.
He looked into a valley dressed in its young spring garb. Of all deserts this is the loveliest when the early rains have given rebirth to the hope that stirs within its bosom once a year. But the tenderfoot saw nothing of its pathetic promise, of its fragile beauty so soon to be blasted. His sunken eyes swept the scene and found at first only a desert waste in which lay death.
"I lose," he said to himself out loud.
With the words he gave up the long struggle and sank to the ground. For hours he had been exhausted to the limit of endurance, but the will to live had kept him going. Now the driving force within had run down. He would die where he lay.
Another instant, and he was on his feet again eager, palpitant, tremulous. For plainly there had come to him the bleating of a calf.
Moving to the left, he saw rising above the hill brow a thin curl of smoke. A dozen staggering steps brought him to the edge of a draw. There in the hollow below, almost within a stone's throw, was a young woman bending over a fire. He tried to call, but his swollen tongue and dry throat refused the service. Instead, he began to run toward her.
Beyond the wash was a dead cow. Not far from it lay a calf on its side, all four feet tied together. From the fire the young woman took a red-hot running iron and moved toward the little bleater.
The crackling of a twig brought her around as a sudden tight rein does a high-strung horse. The man had emerged from the prickly pears and was close upon her. His steps dragged. The sag of his shoulders indicated extreme fatigue. The dark hollows beneath the eyes told of days of torment.
The girl stood before him slender and straight. She was pale to the lips. Her breath came fast and ragged as if she had been running.
Abruptly she shot her challenge at him. "Who are you?"
"Water," he gasped.
One swift, searching look the girl gave him, then "Wait!" she ordered, and was off into the mesquit on the run. Three minutes later the tenderfoot heard her galloping through the brush. With a quick, tight rein she drew up, swung from the saddle expertly as a vaquero, and began to untie a canteen held by buckskin thongs to the side of the saddle.
He drank long, draining the vessel to the last drop.
From her saddle bags she brought two sandwiches wrapped in oiled paper.
"You're hungry, too, I expect," she said, her eyes shining with tender pity.
She observed that he did not wolf his food, voracious though he was. While he ate she returned to the fire with the running iron and heaped live coals around the end of it.
"You've had a pretty tough time of it," she called across to him gently.
"It hasn't been exactly a picnic, but I'm all right now."
The girl liked the way he said it. Whatever else he was--and already faint doubts were beginning to stir in her--he was not a quitter.
"You were about all in," she said, watching him.
"Just about one little kick left in me," he smiled.
"That's what I thought."
She busied herself over the fire inspecting the iron. The man watched her curiously. What could it mean? A cow killed wantonly, a calf bawling with pain and fear, and this girl responsible for it. The tenderfoot could not down the suspicion stirring in his mind. He knew little of the cattle country. But he had read books and had spent a week in Mesa not entirely in vain. The dead cow with the little stain of red down its nose pointed surely to one thing. He was near enough to see a hole in the forehead just above the eyes. Instinctively his gaze passed to the rifle lying in the sand close to his hand. Her back was still turned to him. He leaned over, drew the gun to him, and threw out an empty shell from the barrel.
At the click of the lever the girl swung around upon him.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
He put the rifle down hurriedly. "Just seeing what make it is."
"And what make is it?" she flashed.
He was trapped. "I hadn't found out yet," he stammered.
"No, but you found out there was an empty shell in it," she retorted quickly.
Their eyes fastened. She was gray as ashes, but she did not flinch. By chance he had stumbled upon the crime of crimes in Cattleland, had caught a rustler redhanded at work. Looking into the fine face, nostrils delicately fashioned, eyes clear and deep, the thing was scarce credible of her
. Why, she could not be a day more than twenty, and in every line of her was the look of pride, of good blood.
"Yes, I happened to throw it out," he apologized.
But she would have no evasion, would not let his doubts sleep. There was superb courage in the scornful ferocity with which she retorted.
"Happened! And I suppose you happened to notice that the brand on the cow is a Bar Double G, while that on the calf is different."
"No, I haven't noticed that."
"Plenty of time to see it yet." Then, with a swift blaze of feeling, "What's the use of pretending? I know what you think."
"Then you know more than I do. My thoughts don't go any farther than this, that you have saved my life and I'm grateful for it."
"I know better. You think I'm a rustler. But don't say it. Don't you dare say it."
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."