The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "There wasn't a chance in a million that anybody would hear, but I kept firin' off my forty-five on the off hope. And just before night a girl on a pinto came down the side of that uncurried hill round a bend and got me. She took me to a cabin hidden in the bottom of a cañon and looked after me four days. Her father, a prospector, had gone into Tucson for supplies and we were alone there. She fed me, nursed me, and waited on me. We divided a one-room twelve-by-sixteen cabin. Understand, we were four days alone together before her dad came back, and all the time the sky was lettin' down a terrible lot of water. When her father showed up he grinned and said, 'Lucky for you Myrtle heard that six-gun of yore's pop!' He never thought one evil thing about either of us. He just accepted the situation as necessary. Now the question is, what ought she to have done? Left me to die on that hillside?"

  "Of course not. That's different," protested Beatrice indignantly.

  "I don't see it. What she did was more embarrassing for her than what I did for Kitty. At least it would have been mightily so if she hadn't used her good hawss sense and forgot that she was a lone young female and I was a man. That's what I did the other night. Just because there are seven or eight million human beings here the obligation to look out for Kitty was no less."

  "New York isn't Arizona."

  "You bet it ain't. We don't sit roostin' on a fence when folks need our help out there. We go to it."

  "You can't do that sort of thing here. People talk."

  "Sure, and hens cackle. Let 'em!"

  "There are some things men don't understand," she told him with an acid little smile of superiority. "When a girl cries a little they think she's heartbroken. Very likely she's laughing at them up her sleeve. This girl's making a fool of you, if you want the straight truth."

  "I don't think so."

  His voice was so quietly confident it nettled her.

  "I suppose, then, you think I'm ungenerous," she charged.

  The deep-set gray-blue eyes looked at her steadily. There was a wise little smile in them.

  "Is that what you think?" she charged.

  "I think you'll be sorry when you think it over."

  She was annoyed at her inability to shake him, at the steadfastness with which he held to his point of view.

  "You're trying to put me in the wrong," she flamed. "Well, I won't have it. That's all. You may take your choice, Mr. Lindsay. Either send that girl away--give her up--have nothing to do with her, or--"

  "Or--?"

  "Or please don't come here to see me any more."

  He waited, his eyes steadily on her. "Do you sure enough mean that, Miss Beatrice?"

  Her heart sank. She knew she had gone too far, but she was too imperious to draw back now.

  "Yes, that's just what I mean."

  "I'm sorry. You're leavin' me no option. I'm not a yellow dog. Sometimes I'm 'most a man. I'm goin' to do what I think is right."

  "Of course," she responded lightly. "If our ideas of what that is differ--"

  "They do."

  "It's because we've been brought up differently, I suppose." She achieved a stifled little yawn behind her hand.

  "You've said it." He gave it to her straight from the shoulder. "All yore life you've been pampered. When you wanted a thing all you had to do was to reach out a hand for it. Folks were born to wait on you, by yore way of it. You're a spoiled kid. You keep these manicured lah-de-dah New York lads steppin'. Good enough. Be as high-heeled as you're a mind to. I'll step some too for you--when you smile at me right. But it's time to serve notice that in my country folks grow man-size. You ask me to climb up the side of a house to pick you a bit of ivy from under the eaves, and I reckon I'll take a whirl at it. But you ask me to turn my back on a friend, and I've got to say, 'Nothin' doin'.' And if you was just a few years younger I'd advise yore pa to put you in yore room and feed you bread and water for askin' it."

  The angry color poured into her cheeks. She clenched her hands till the nails bit her palms. "I think you're the most hateful man I ever met," she cried passionately.

  His easy smile taunted her. "Oh, no, you don't. You just think you think it. Now, I'm goin' to light a shuck. I'll be sayin' good-bye, Miss Beatrice, until you send for me."

  "And that will be never," she flung at him.

  He rose, bowed, and walked out of the room.

  The street door closed behind him. Beatrice bit her lip to keep from breaking down before she reached her room.

  CHAPTER XIX

  A LADY WEARS A RING

  Clarendon Bromfield got the shock of his life that evening. Beatrice proposed to him. It was at the Roberson dinner-dance, in the Palm Room, within sight but not within hearing of a dozen other guests.

  She camouflaged what she was doing with occasional smiles and ripples of laughter intended to deceive the others present, but her heart was pounding sixty miles an hour.

  Bromfield was not easily disconcerted. He prided himself on his aplomb. It was hard to get behind his cynical, decorous smile, the mask of a suave and worldly-wise Pharisee of the twentieth century. But for once he was amazed. The orchestra was playing a lively fox trot and he thought that perhaps he had not caught her meaning.

  "I beg your pardon."

  Miss Whitford laced her fingers round her knee and repeated. It was as though rose leaves had brushed the ivory of her cheeks and left a lovely stain there. Her eyes were hard and brilliant as diamonds.

  "I was wondering when you are going to ask me again to marry you."

  Since she had given a good deal of feminine diplomacy to the task of keeping him at a reasonable distance, Bromfield was naturally surprised.

  "That's certainly a leading question," he parried, "What are you up to, Bee? Are you spoofing me?"

  "I'm proposing to you," she explained, with a flirt of her hand and an engaging smile toward a man and a girl who had just come into the Palm Room. "I don't suppose I do it very well because I haven't had your experience. But I'm doing the best I can."

  The New Yorker was a supple diplomatist. If Beatrice had chosen this place and hour to become engaged to him, he had no objection in the world. The endearments that usually marked such an event could wait. But he was not quite sure of his ground.

  His lids narrowed a trifle. "Do you mean that you've changed your mind?"

  "Have you?" she asked quickly with a sidelong slant of eyes at him.

  "Do I act as though I had?"

  "You don't help a fellow out much, Clary," she complained with a laugh not born of mirth. "I'll never propose to you again."

  "I'm still very much at your service, Bee."

  "Does that mean you still think you want me?"

  "I don't think. I know it."

  "Quite sure?"

  "Quite sure."

  "Then you're on," she told him with a little nod. "Thank you, kind sir."

  Bromfield drew a deep breath. "By Jove, you're a good little sport, Bee. I think I'll get up and give three ringing cheers."

  "I'd like to see you do that," she mocked.

  "Of course you know I'm the happiest man in the world," he said with well-ordered composure.

  "You're not exactly what I'd call a rapturous lover, Clary. But I'm not either for that matter, so I dare say we'll hit it off very well."

  "I'm a good deal harder hit than I've ever let on, dear girl. And I'm going to make you very happy. That's a promise."

  Nevertheless he watched her warily behind a manner of graceful eagerness. There had been a suggestion almost of bitterness in her voice. A suspicious little thought was filtering through the back of his mind. "What the deuce has got into the girl? Has she been quarreling with that bounder from Arizona?"

  "I'm glad of that. I'll try to make you a good wife, even if--" She let the sentence die out unfinished.

  Beneath her fan their hands met for a moment.

  "May I tell everybody how happy I am?"

  "If you like," she agreed.

  "A short engagement," he ventured.

/>   "Yes," she nodded. "And take me away for a while. I'm tired of New York, I think."

  "I'll take you to a place where the paths are primrose-strewn and where nightingales sing," he promised rashly.

  She smiled incredulously, a wise old little smile that had no right on her young face.

  The report of the engagement spread at once. Bromfield took care of that. It ran like wildfire upstairs and down in the Whitford establishment. Naturally Johnnie, who was neither one of the servants nor a member of the family, was the last to hear of it. One day the word was carried to him, and a few hours later he read the confirmation of it on the hand of his young mistress.

  The Runt had the clairvoyance of love. He knew that Clay was not now happy, though the cattleman gave no visible sign of it except a certain quiet withdrawal into himself. He ate as well as usual. His talk was cheerful. He joked the puncher and made Kitty feel at home by teasing her. In the evenings he shooed out the pair of them to a moving-picture show and once or twice went along. But he had a habit of falling into reflection, his deep-set eyes fixed on some object he could not see. Johnnie worried about him.

  The evening of the day the Runt heard of the engagement he told his friend about it while Kitty was in the kitchen.

  "Miss Beatrice she's wearing a new ring," he said by way of breaking the news gently.

  Clay turned his head slowly and looked at Johnnie. He waited without speaking.

  "I heerd it to-day from one of the help. Then I seen it on her finger," the little man went on reluctantly.

  "Bromfield?" asked Clay.

  "Yep. That's the story."

  "The ring was on the left hand?"

  "Yep."

  Clay made no comment. His friend knew enough to say no more to him. Presently the cattleman went out. It was in the small hours of the morning when he returned. He had been tramping the streets to get the fever out of his blood.

  But Johnnie discussed with Kitty at length this new development, just as he had discussed with her the fact that Clay no longer went to see the Whitfords. Kitty made a shrewd guess at the cause of division. She had already long since drawn from the cowpuncher the story of how Miss Beatrice had rejected his proposal that she take an interest in her.

  "They must 'a' quarreled--likely about me being here. I'm sorry you told her."

  "I don't reckon that's it." Johnnie scratched his head to facilitate the process of thinking. He wanted to remain loyal to all of his three friends. "Miss Beatrice she's got too good judgment for that."

  "I ought to go away. I'm only bringing Mr. Lindsay trouble. If he just could hear from his friends in Arizona about that place he's trying to get me, I'd go right off."

  He looked at her wistfully. The bow-legged range-rider was in no hurry to have her go. She was the first girl who had ever looked twice at him, the first one he had ever taken out or talked nonsense with or been ordered about by in the possessive fashion used by the modern young woman. Hence he was head over heels in love.

  Kitty had begun to bloom again. Her cheeks were taking on their old rounded contour and occasionally dimples of delight flashed into them. She was a young person who lived in the present. Already the marks of her six-weeks misery among the submerged derelicts of the city was beginning to be wiped from her mind like the memory of a bad dream from which she had awakened. Love was a craving of her happy, sensuous nature.

  She wanted to live in the sun, among smiles and laughter. She was like a kitten in her desire to be petted, made much of, and admired. Almost anybody who liked her could win a place in her affection.

  Johnnie's case was not so hopeless as he imagined it.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE CAUTIOUS GUY SLIPS UP

  Over their good-night smoke Clay gave a warning. "Keep yore eyes open, Johnnie. I was trailed to the house to-day by one of the fellows with Durand the night I called on him. It spells trouble. I reckon the 'Paches are going to leave the reservation again."

  "Do you allow that skunk is aimin' to bushwhack you?"

  "He's got some such notion. It's a cinch he ain't through with me yet."

  "Say, Clay, ain't you gettin' homesick for the whinin' of a rawhide? Wha's the matter with us hittin' the dust for good old Tucson? I'd sure like to chase cowtails again."

  "You can go, Johnnie. I'm not ready yet--quite. And when I go it won't be because of any rattlesnake in the grass."

  "Whadyou mean I can go?" demanded his friend indignantly. "I don't aim to go and leave you here alone."

  "Perhaps I'll be along, too, after a little. I'm about fed up on New York."

  "Well, I'll stick around till you come. If this Jerry Durand's trying to get you I'll be right there followin' yore dust, old scout."

  "There's more than one way to skin a cat. Mebbe the fellow means to strike at me through you or Kitty. I've a mind to put you both on a train for the B-in-a-Box Ranch."

  "You can put the li'l' girl on a train. You can't put me on none less'n you go too," answered his shadow stoutly.

  "Then see you don't get drawn into any quarrels while you and Kitty are away from the house. Stick to the lighted streets. I think I'll speak to her about not lettin' any strange man talk to her."

  "She wouldn't talk to no strange man. She ain't that kind," snorted Johnnie.

  "Keep yore shirt on," advised Clay, smiling. "What I mean is that she mustn't let herself believe the first story some one pulls on her. I think she had better not go out unless one of us is with her."

  "Suits me."

  "I thought that might suit you. Well, stick to main-traveled roads and don't take any chances. If you get into trouble, yell bloody murder poco pronto."

  "And don't you take any, old-timer. That goes double. I'm the cautious guy in this outfit, not you."

  Within twenty-four hours Clay heard some one pounding wildly on the outer door of the apartment and the voice of the cautious guy imploring haste.

  "Lemme in, Clay. Hurry! Hurry!" he shouted.

  Lindsay was at the door in four strides, but he did not need to see the stricken woe of his friend's face to guess what had occurred. For Johnnie and Kitty had started together to see a picture play two hours earlier.

  "They done took Kitty--in an auto," he gasped. "Right before my eyes. Claimed a lady had fainted."

  "Who took her?"

  "I dunno. Some men. Turned the trick slick, me never liftin' a hand. Ain't I a heluva man?"

  "Hold yore hawsses, son. Don't get excited. Begin at the beginnin' and tell me all about it," Clay told him quietly.

  Already he was kicking off his house slippers and was reaching for his shoes.

  "We was comin' home an' I took Kitty into that Red Star drug-store for to get her some ice cream. Well, right after that I heerd a man say how the lady had fainted--"

  "What lady?"

  "The lady in the machine."

  "Were you in the drug-store?"

  "No. We'd jes' come out when this here automobile drew up an' a man jumped out hollerin' the lady had fainted and would I bring a glass o' water from the drugstore. 'Course I got a jump on me and Kitty she moved up closeter to the car to he'p if she could. When I got back to the walk with the water the man was hoppin' into the car. It was already movin'. He' slammed the door shut and it went up the street like greased lightnin'."

  "Was it a closed car?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Can you describe it?"

  "Why, I dunno--"

  "Was it black, brown, white?"

  "Kinda roan-colored, looked like."

  "Get the number?"

  "No, I--I plumb forgot to look."

  Clay realized that Johnnie's powers of observation were not to be trusted.

  "Sure the car wasn't tan-colored?" he asked to test him.

  "It might 'a' been tan, come to think of it."

  "You're right certain Kitty was in it?"