“Thar’s only one way to git them, sonny,” continued Wildcat Bob, “an’ thet is to put a man on the stage with the bullion, ‘stid o’ a kid.”
Mack flushed. “You was there when they got me,” he fired back. “You was there with two big six-guns an’ what did you do — eh? What did you do?”
“I wasn’t hired to guard no bullion, an’ I wasn’t sittin’ on the box with no sawed-off shotgun ‘crost my knees, neither. I was a-ridin’ inside with a lady. What could I a-done?” He looked around at the others at the table for vindication.
“Ye couldn’t done nothin’ ye,” said Mary Donovan, “widout a quart o’ barbed-wire inside ye an’ some poor innocent tenderfoot to shoot the heels offen him.”
Wildcat Bob fidgeted uneasily and applied himself to his supper, pouring his tea into his saucer, blowing noisily upon it to cool it, and then sucking it through his whiskers with an accompanying sound not unlike snoring; but later he was both mollified and surprised by a second, generous helping of dessert.
When word of the latest holdup reached the Bar Y ranch it caused the usual flurry of profanity and speculation. It was brought by a belated puncher who had ridden in from the West ranch by way of Hendersville. The men were gathered at the evening meal and of a sudden a silence fell upon them as they realized, apparently simultaneously and for the first time, that there was a single absentee. The meal progressed in almost utter silence then until they had reached the pudding, when Bull walked in, dark and taciturn, and with the brief nod that was his usual greeting to his fellows. The meal continued in silence for a few minutes until the men who had finished began pushing back their plates preparatory to rising.
“I reckon you know the stage was held up again, Bull, an’ the bullion stolen,” remarked Hal Colby, selecting a toothpick from the glassful on the table.
“How should I know it?” asked Bull. “Ain’t I ben up Sinkhole Canyon all day? I ain’t seen no one since I left the ranch this morning.”
“Well, it was,” said Colby. “The same two slick gents done it, too.”
“Did they git much?” asked Bull.
“It was a big shipment,” said Colby. “It always is. They don’t never touch nothin’ else an’ they seem to know when we’re shippin’ more’n ordinary. Looks suspicious.”
“Did you just discover that?” inquired Bull.
“No, I discovered it a long time ago, an’ it may help me to find out who’s doin’ it.”
“Well, I wish you luck,” and Bull resumed his meal.
Colby, having finished, rose from the table and made his way to the house. In the cozy sitting room he found Diana at the piano, her fingers moving dreamily over the ivory keys.
“Some more bad news, Di,” he announced.
She turned wearily toward him. “What now?”
“The Black Coyote again — he got the bullion shipment.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No,” he assured her.
“I am glad of that. The gold is nothing — I would rather lose it all than have one of the boys killed. I have told them all, just as Dad did, to take no chances. If they could get him without danger to themselves I should be glad, but I could not bear to have one of our boys hurt for all the gold in the mine.”
“I think The Black Coyote knows that,” he said, “and that’s what makes him so all-fired nervy. He’s one of our own men, Di — can’t you see it? He knows when the shipments are big an’ don’t never touch a little one, an’ he knows your Dad’s orders about not takin’ no chances.
“I’ve hated to think it, but there ain’t no other two ways about it — it’s one o’ our men — an’ I wouldn’t have to walk around the world to put my finger on him, neither.”
“I don’t believe it!” she cried. “I don’t believe that one of my men would do it.”
“You don’t want to believe it, that’s all. You know just as well as I do who’s doin’ it, down in the bottom of your heart. I don’t like to believe it no more’n you do, Di; but I ain’t blind an’ I hate to see you bein’ made a fool of an’ robbed into the bargain. I don’t believe you’d believe it, though, if I caught him in the act.”
“I think I know whom you suspect, Hal,” she replied, “but I am sure you are wrong.”
“Will you give me a chance to prove it?”
“How?”
“Send him up to the mine to guard the bullion until Mack gits well an’ then keep Mack off the job fer a month,” he explained. “I’ll bet my shirt thet either there ain’t no holdups fer a month or else they’s only one man pulls ’em off instead o’ two. Will you do it?”
“It isn’t fair. I don’t even suspect him.”
“Everybody else does an’ thet makes it fair fer it gives him a chance to prove it if he ain’t guilty.”
“It wouldn’t prove anything, except that there were no holdups while he was on duty.”
“It would prove something to my mind if they started up again pretty soon after he was taken off the job,” he retorted.
“Well — it might, but I don’t think I’d ever believe it of him unless I saw him with my own eyes.”
“Pshaw! the trouble with you is you’re soft on him — you don’t care if your gold is stole if he gits it.”
She drew herself to her full height. “I do not care to discuss the matter further,” she said. “Good night!”
He grabbed his hat viciously from the piano and stamped toward the doorway. There he turned about and confronted her again for a parting shot before he strode out into the night.
“You don’t dare try it!” he flung at her. “You don’t dare!”
After he had gone she sat biting her lip half in anger and half in mortification, but after the brief tempest of emotion had subsided she commenced to question her own motives impartially. Was she afraid? Was it true that she did not dare? And long after she had gone to bed, and sleep would not come, she continued thus to catechize herself.
As Hal Colby burst into the bunk-house and slammed the door behind him the sudden draft thus created nearly extinguished the single lamp that burned upon an improvised table at which four men sat at poker. Bull and Shorty, Texas Pete and one called Idaho sat in the game.
“I raise you ten dollars,” remarked Idaho, softly, as the lamp resumed functioning after emitting a thin, protesting spiral of black soot.
“I see that an’ raise you my pile,” said Bull, shoving several small stacks of silver toward the center of the table.
“How much you got there?” inquired Idaho, the others having dropped out.
Bull counted. “There’s your ten,” he said, “an’ here’s ten, fifteen, twenty-five—” He continued counting in a monotone. “Ninety-six,” he announced. “I raise you ninety-six dollars, Idaho.
“I ain’t got ninety-six dollars,” said Idaho. “I only got eight.”
“You got a saddle, ain’t you?” inquired Bull, sweetly.
“An’ a shirt,” suggested Texas Pete.
“My saddle’s worth three hundred an’ fifty dollars if it’s worth a cent,” proclaimed Idaho.
“No one ain’t never said it was worth a cent,” Shorty reminded him.
“I’ll cover it an’ call you,” announced Bull. “I don’t want your shirt, Idaho, it’s full o’ holes.”
“What are you coverin’ it with?” asked Idaho. “I don’t see nothin’.”
Bull rose from the table. “Wait a second,” he said, and stepped to his blankets where he rummaged for a moment in his war- bag. When he returned to the table he tossed a small buckskin bag among his silver.
“They’s five hundred dollars’ worth of dust in that,” he said. “If you win we kin weigh out what’s comin’ to you over at the office tomorrow mornin’ .”
Hal Colby looked on — an interested spectator. The others fell silent. Texas Pete knit his brows in perplexity.
“Let’s see it,” demanded Idaho.
Bull picked up the bag, opened it and poured a str
eam of yellow particles into his palm. “Satisfied?” he inquired.
Idaho nodded.
“What you got?” demanded Bull.
Idaho laid four kings on the table, smiling broadly.
“Four aces,” said Bull, and raked in the pot.
“Why didn’t you raise him?” demanded Shorty.
“I just told you I didn’t want his shirt,” said Bull, “an’ I don’t want your saddle, neither, kid. I’ll keep the money — it ain’t good fer kids like you to have too much money — but you keep the saddle.”
“I’m goin’ to turn in,” said Shorty, pushing back and rising.
“You’d all better turn in an’ give someone else a chance to sleep,” said the foreman. “What with your damn game an’ Pete’s singin’ a feller ain’t got no more chance to sleep around here than a jackrabbit. Why don’t you fellers crawl in?”
“Crawl in! Crawl in!” exclaimed Texas Pete. “Crawl in! Crawl out! By gollies, I got another verse!
“The boss he crawls out then, all shaky an’ white,
From under the bar where he’s ben sittin’ tight.
‘Now set out the pizen right pronto, you coot,’
The stranger remarks, ‘Or I shore starts to shoot,
I only ben practicin’ so far,’ says he;
‘A bar-keep er two don’t mean nothin’ to me.
Most allus I has one fer breakfast each day —
I don’t mean no harm — it’s jest only my way.’”
9. LILLIAN MANILL
“You sent fer me, Miss?” asked Bull, as he stepped into the office the following morning, his hat in his hand, his chaps loose-buckled about his trim hips, his two big six-guns a trifle forward against the need for quick action, the black silk handkerchief falling over the blue shirt that stretched to his deep chest, and his thick, black hair pushed back in an unconscious, half pompadour.
From silver-mounted spurs to heavy hat band he was typical of the West of his day. There was no item of his clothing or equipment the possession of which was not prompted by utilitarian considerations. There was ornamentation, but it was obviously secondary to the strict needs of his calling. Nothing that he wore was shabby, yet it all showed use to an extent that made each article seem a part of the man, as though he had been molded into them. Nothing protruded with stiff awkwardness — even the heavy guns appeared to fit into accustomed hollows and became a part of the man.
The girl, swinging about in her chair to face him, felt a suggestion of stricture in her throat, and she felt mean and small and contemptible as she looked into the eyes of the man she knew loved her and contemplated the thing she was about to do; yet she did not hesitate now that she had, after a night of sleepless deliberation, committed herself to it.
“Yes, I sent for you, Bull,” she replied. “The stage was held up again yesterday as you know. Mack won’t be fit for work again for a long time and I’ve got to have someone to guard the bullion shipments — the fellow who came down with it yesterday has quit. He said he was too young to commit suicide.”
“Yes’m.” said Bull.
“I don’t want you to take any chances, Bull — I would rather lose the gold than have you hurt.”
“I won’t get hurt, Miss.”
“You don’t mind doing it?” she asked.
“O’ course I’m a puncher,” he said; “but I don’t mind doin’ it — not fer you. I told you once thet I’d do anything fer you, Miss, an’ I wasn’t jest talkin’ through my hat.”
“You don’t do everything I ask you to, Bull,” she said, smiling.
“What don’t I do?” he demanded.
“You still call me Miss, and I hate it. You’re more like a brother, Bull, and Miss sounds so formal.” It must have been a woman who first discovered the art of making fire.
A shadow of pain crossed his dark countenance. “Don’t ask too much of me, Miss,” he said quietly as he turned on his heel and started for the doorway. “I go up to the mine today, I suppose?” he threw back over his shoulder.
“Yes, today,” she said, and he was gone.
For a long time Diana Henders was troubled. The assignment she had given Bull troubled her, for it was a tacit admission that she gave credence to Colby’s suspicions. The pain that she had seen reflected in Bull’s face troubled her, as did his parting words and the quiet refusal to call her Diana. She wondered if these had been prompted by a feeling of pique that his love was not returned, or compunction because of a guilty knowledge that he had betrayed her and her father.
Hal Colby had told her that morning of the bag of gold dust Bull had displayed in the poker game the night before, and that troubled her too, for it seemed to bear out more than anything else the suspicions that were forming around him — suspicions that she could see, in the light of bits of circumstantial evidence, were far from groundless.
“I won’t believe it!” she said half aloud. “I won’t believe it!” and then she went for a ride.
All the men had left but Hal Colby and Texas Pete when she reached the corrals; but she did not feel like riding with Hal Colby that morning and so she rode with Texas Pete, much to that young man’s surprise and rapture.
The days dragged along and became weeks, the stage made its two trips a week, the bullion shipments came through regularly and safely and there were no holdups, and then one day Maurice B. Corson and Lillian Manill arrived. The stage took the Bar Y road that day and pulled up before the gate of the ranch house just as Diana Henders and Hal Colby were returning from a trip to the West Ranch. Diana saw Lillian Manill for the first time in her life. The eastern girl was seated between Bill Gatlin, the driver, and Bull. All three were laughing. Evidently they had been enjoying one another’s company.
Diana could not but notice it because it was rarely that Bull laughed. It was Bull who stepped to the wheel and helped her to alight.
Maurice B. Corson emerged from the inside of the coach, through the windows of which Diana could see three other passengers, two of whom she recognized as the Wainrights, and then she dismounted and ran forward to greet her cousin, a handsome, dark-haired girl of about her own age.
Bull, still smiling, raised his hat to Diana. She nodded to him, briefly. For some reason she was vexed with him, but why she did not know. Bull and Colby ran to the boot and dragged off the Corson-Manill baggage, while Lillian presented Corson to Diana. Corson was a young man — a typical New Yorker — in his early thirties.
“Git a move on there, Bull,” shouted Gatlin, “or they’ll think I ben held up agin.”
“I reckon The Black Coyote’s gone out o’ business, fer a while,” said Colby, shooting a quick look at Diana.
Instantly the girl’s loyalty was in arms. “He’s afraid to try it while Bull’s guarding the gold,” she said.
“How much longer you goin’ to keep me on the job?” asked Bull, as he clambered to the seat of the already moving coach. “Mack looks pretty all-fired healthy to me.”
“Just another week or two, Bull,” Diana shouted after him as the stage careened away at full gallop.
“Isn’t he wonderful!” exclaimed Miss Manill. “A real cowboy and the first one I ever talked to!”
“Oh, there are lots of them here,” said Diana, “just as nice as Bull.”
“So I see,” replied Lillian Manill, smiling frankly at Hal Colby, “but Bull, as you call him, is the only one I’ve met.”
“Pardon me!” exclaimed Diana. “This is Mr. Colby, Miss Manill.”
“Oh, you’re the foreman — Mr. Bull told me — how exciting!”
“I’ll bet he didn’t tell you nothin’ good about me,” said Colby.
“He told me about your heroic defense of Diana and my poor uncle,” explained Lillian.
Colby flushed. “If it hadn’t ben fer Bull we’d all ‘a’ ben killed,” he said, ashamed.
“Why, he didn’t tell me that,” exclaimed the girl. “He never said he was in the battle, at all.”
“That is just
like Bull,” said Diana.
They were walking toward the house, Diana and Colby leading their ponies, and the two Easterners looking interestedly at the various buildings and corrals over which hung the glamour of that irresistible romance which the West and a cattle-ranch always hold for the uninitiated — and for the initiated too, if the truth were but known.
“It is just too wonderful, Mr. Colby, “ Lillian confided to the big foreman walking at her side; “but doesn’t it get awful lonesome?”
“We don’t notice it,” he replied. “You know we keep pretty busy all day with a big outfit like this and when night comes around we’re ready to turn in — we don’t have no time to git lonesome.”
“Is this a very big outfit, as you call it?” she asked.
“I reckon they ain’t none much bigger in the territory,” he replied.
“And to think that you are foreman of it! What a wonderful man you must be!”
“Oh, it ain’t nothin’,” he assured her, but he was vastly pleased Here, indeed, was a young lady of discernment.
“You big men of the great out-doors are always so modest,” she told him, a statement for which he could find no reply. As a matter of fact, though he had never thought of it before, he realized the justice of her assertion, and fully agreed with her.
She was looking now at the trim figure of her cousin, walking ahead of them with Corson. “How becoming that costume is to Diana,” she remarked; “and I suppose she rides wonderfully.”
“She shore does — an’ then some,” he assured her.
“Oh, how I wish I could ride! Do you suppose I could learn?”
“Easy, Miss. It ain’t nothin’, oncet you know how.”
“Do you suppose someone would teach me?” She looked up at him, archly.
“I’d be mighty proud to larn you, Miss.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 558