Sincerely,
Jonathan Trotwood
“He was going to pull out at midnight tonight,” said Smith. “I heard him tell his men as he paid them off. He was going to leave you as he had no further use for you and he was joking about it to the bartender.”
Betsy looked up at the two tense faces, trying to understand what they were saying.
“I … I don’t believe it.”
Bat looked appealingly at Smith. “Tell her who you are, like you just told me.”
Smith looked at Betsy for a moment, wondering about the advisability of furthering the effect of this shock.
Finally he said, very gently, “Miss Trotwood, I am a United States deputy marshal. I came here at the request of Wells Fargo to arrest Sunset Maloney. But I had to use my own judgment. I have been watching Trotwood ever since I arrived. He did nothing flagrantly lawless and in a wild country such as this, it is impossible to police all crimes, even if they were in my jurisdiction, which they are not. I have checked on Trotwood. He is known as Double-Deck or as Boston Slim. He started years ago as a card sharp, went to gambling for higher stakes, was known as a bad man with a gun. He murdered a woman at Abilene last spring and came out here to force this railroad deal and get away from the local authorities.
“When I arrived I heard about Sunset from Mr. Connor and I decided to clear up some other business and let Sunset clear up Trotwood if he could. I had no orders to do anything about it but I have to use my judgment.”
“See?” crowed Bat. “Look. When Sunset laid eyes on you, out of respect for Trotwood bein’ your father, he quit cold, knowin’ he was stealin’ your money, not Trotwood’s. When he was healin’ up, he used to worry about it all the time. And then he decided to nail Trotwood and save you. But the only way he could do it was by killin’ Trotwood. See? If he’d thought less of you, he’d maybe have kidnapped you again or somethin’. See?”
They both stared expectantly at Betsy.
She looked very small in that big chair, very much alone.
Smith spoke again. “You are Trotwood’s heir and though the deeds are in his name, they’re now all yours. After what he has done to this country, the least you can do is carry on. Sunset tried and succeeded in a measure. But you hold the winning hand, miss. You better drive a bargain with the Great Western Railroad. I’ll help you. A half a million for this land would be about right. And then you could take out what you put into it and hand out the money that’s really coming to the original owners. They all ought to share in that profit and there’s families that have other reasons to get a bigger chunk. We’ll carry it out. All you have to do is sign the papers.”
Wearily, she nodded, staring into the graying ashes of the fireplace.
Sunset was washing on the bank of the stream near the trapper’s cabin, only partly warmed by the dying sunlight of the afternoon, listening to the brook running at his feet.
For ten days he had waited with waning hope, but now he knew that he had waited in vain. The taste of his late victory over Trotwood was a stale, even bitter thing. The price he had paid for that victory had been too great.
Ten-Sleep Thompson had been revenged, but revenge is at best an unsavory thing.
In the morning he would throw his saddle on his mount and tie his scant belongings there. Oregon was over the Divide and perhaps in Oregon he could forget.
She had never been meant for him. Who was he to aspire to such heights? He could never hope to interest her. He was rough, lacking the polish of the men to whom she had been accustomed in the East.
His reverie was interrupted by Bat’s shout on the rim. Bat dismounted and led his horse down through the pines on the slope, dropping the reins and crossing the narrow bridge.
Sunset tried to cover up his bleak thoughts with a grin but the attempt was worse than his soberness.
“I knew I’d find you here,” said Bat.
They shook hands and Sunset led the way into the cabin. He slid a pail of water into the ashes and began to kindle a fire about it to make Bat some welcoming tea. His tongue burned with questions but he knew that he could not bear the answers about Betsy.
Bat dropped his saddlebags to the floor, and then turned back to the door, saying, “I’ll get you some wood, Sunset.”
Sunset blew on the coals, adding shavings. A feeble flame flickered up. He put another stick on and followed it with a larger. The fire began to burn brightly as it picked up. Sunset added more fuel, exhausting his stock.
He heard a footstep inside the door and turned to direct Bat in the task of laying down the wood.
He opened his mouth to say a word but the word was never uttered.
Betsy was standing just inside, smiling at him.
Sunset rocked back on his heels, eyes popping with amazement. And then a big grin swept down across his face and he leaped up.
She advanced toward him, laughing, and he caught her up in his arms, smothering her in the fringe of his shirt. He put her back away from him to look at her. But try as they might they could not trust themselves to speak.
Behind them the fire caught. The gay flames crackled as they danced a bright cotillion.…
When Gilhooly Was in Flower
Chapter One
JIGSAW GILHOOLY was a thousand miles deep in thought, which fact was not particularly endearing him to Mary Ann Marlow. He sat on her front porch, looked off into the purple expanses and gnawed upon a wheat straw. He looked idiotic when he sat like that, thought Mary Ann. His eyes got out of focus, and he was limp enough normally, but now …
Apparently he was a sober-faced, gangling walking stick of a puncher without any sense of humor. But Gilhooly had ideas. He had big ideas. And right now he was wondering just how to get around to fixing life so that he could ask Mary Ann to be his forevermore.
It all required considerable logic and when it came to mathematical reasoning, Jigsaw Gilhooly was aces up, though sometimes the least bit slow.
Disgustedly, Mary Ann, who taught school to the three kids in Gunpowder Gulch, picked up her copy of Ivanhoe and tried to read to get her mind off the way Gilhooly looked when he was jigsawing. Most of the men in the Painted Buttes country had told her she was beautiful. She believed them, a little, and therefore it grieved her that Gilhooly paid such scant attention. Most of the men in the Painted Buttes country had told her that she was a fool for seeing anything in Jigsaw Gilhooly as he had neither looks nor fortune nor reputation, and blonde little Mary Ann was beginning to believe them, a little.
Gilhooly sat and chewed his straw and focused his eyes on the back of his head, thus circumnavigating the globe with a blink.
His problem was somewhat complex. He had three hundred acres of his own and a square mile of range rented. He had forty head of cattle. He had a house which could stand both straightening and improvement. Several gentlemen had lately offered him a fancy price and he thought maybe he ought to sell and get another place before he asked Mary Ann.
And that was not all. These gentlemen were sheepmen. If sheep got a foothold on the Painted Buttes range, there wouldn’t be any stopping them.
Now it was either asking Mary Ann to marry on two dollars and staying loyal to his kind or it was asking Mary Ann to marry on fifteen hundred dollars and going in debt for a place good enough for her.
So the problem shifted back and forth and so did the straw and Gilhooly kept his eyes on the back of his head via China.
“Stop it!”
Gilhooly looked at her in astonishment.
“Stop looking like a shorthorn!” said Mary Ann. “Jigs Gilhooly, sometimes I think you are a fool and at other times I am certain of it.”
“Ma’am?” said the startled Gilhooly.
“Why don’t you be a man?” demanded Mary Ann, blue eyes flashing. “Why do you have to sit and moon about some crazy problem when you rode fifteen miles to see me?”
“That’s right,” said Gilhooly.
“What’s right?” said Mary Ann.
“I did ride fifteen miles to see you,” said Gilhooly.
She subsided, beaten. Ivanhoe was clutched in her small desperate hand and she felt like throwing it at him.
“Now you’re mad,” said Gilhooly. “I didn’t mean to do anything. What’s wrong?”
“Oh,” said Mary Ann in a small voice. And then, sitting up like a cottontail and looking earnestly at him, “The trouble with you, Jigs Gilhooly, is that you aren’t romantic!”
“Me?”
“You.”
“But …” He stopped, baffled. “What do you mean, romantic?”
“Like Brian du Bois-Guilbert or Ivanhoe or—”
“Like who? Nobody by them names has a spread around here.”
“Of course they haven’t!” said Mary Ann. “Their outfits were over in England and France and places.”
“Huh,” said Gilhooly. “Foreigners.”
“Foreigners or not, Jigs Gilhooly, if you ever expect me to pay any attention to any offer you might have to make, you’ll have to mend your ways. And that’s final.”
“You mean be romantic?” said Gilhooly. “But … but gee, Mary Ann, I don’t know anything about it.”
An inspiration hit her. She closed the book with a thump and handed it to him. “When you’ve read this, you can come and see me again—and not until!”
Gilhooly was routed. He took the book as though it had a rattler between the covers and held it away from him, looking at it. But when he looked back at Mary Ann, he could see with but half an eye that she meant what she said.
This was a new angle to the problem. He hadn’t thought about her not wanting to marry him.
But the solution was offered. He would have to read this book and be romantic.
He tipped his hat. “Yes, ma’am.” And backed off the porch.
He climbed his mustang, Calico, tipped his hat again to Mary Ann and neck-reined away to proceed down the wagon tracks through the sagebrush.
When he was a mile or so from the house, still in view behind him, he told Calico, “Pick your own gopher holes to fall into. I got some studyin’ to do.”
And so it was that Jigsaw Gilhooly began to read of the days when “Knighthood Was in Flower.”
Chapter Two
TWO bits’ worth of midnight oil later, Jigs Gilhooly guided Calico onto the field of honor. Pennons fluttered and queens waved and armor flashed all about him. Mary Ann threw a glove toward him for an amulet and then, drawing up and lowering the shade of his visor, he glared through the slits at Brian du Bois-Guilbert who stood snorting evilly on the other side of the tilt course.
It happened, at this time, that a gentleman by the name of Fallon, who was known for determination, and his friend Billings Dwight topped the bluff above the Gilhooly ranch.
“What the devil?” said Fallon thickly, pulling in and staring.
Billings Dwight stared, too. “He must be plumb loco, Fallon. Maybe I better potshot him with this Sharps, huh?”
“Put it away,” said Fallon.
Below them in a flat field, Gilhooly sat upon a much-altered Calico. A fly net decked the horse, but that was not the most astonishing thing about the ensemble. Gilhooly had a long pine pole in his hand with something which looked like a boxing glove on the far end. He had twisted his holster around so that he could couch this crude lance. On his head he had a water pail with holes in front and something which appeared to be a hearse plume bobbing above it.
Thirty yards away a longhorn bull pawed earth and blew and was not particularly aware that he was no one but Brian du Bois-Guilbert.
Sir Gilhooly tensed in his saddle and lowered the lance. He jabbed spur to a nervous Calico and they lunged ahead, straight at the longhorn.
Calico’s hoofs thundered, Sir Gilhooly yelled. The bull started a rolling charge of his own.
Two irresistible forces met in midflight. The lance hit the bull’s shoulder just as the longhorn swerved.
The impact picked Sir Gilhooly out of the saddle like a pebble from a slingshot. And then, like a pole-vaulter’s pole, it arced Sir Gilhooly through the air. He swooped to a loud landing thirty feet beyond the longhorn.
The bull turned; he saw his man dismounted. He started to charge, horns lowered.
But Calico was a trained cow pony and like all such, riderless or no, he would ride down a bull. He streaked in from the right, shoulder to shoulder with the racing longhorn.
The bull was not bright. He thought this was another rider. He swerved away and Calico dived in toward Sir Gilhooly who grabbed the horn and swung aboard. He reached down and scooped up the lance and bucket, then scowled at the bull.
“That’s only ten times,” said Gilhooly. “But, Sir Brian, we shalt meet in mortal combat yet again.”
Up on the ridge Fallon and Billings Dwight were agape with wonder.
“I tell you,” said Billings, “that I better pick him off before he—”
“Naw,” said Fallon, scrubbing his bluish jaw. “No murder in this deal—yet.”
They spurred forward and trotted down into the pasture.
Somewhat confused, Gilhooly turned to meet them. He didn’t know what to do with the lance and made a useless attempt to hide the twenty-foot pine stick behind his back.
“Hello,” said Fallon, cautiously.
Gilhooly nodded. He did not like sheepmen and he especially did not like Billings Dwight and Fallon. But just now he was red of face.
“Yeah?” said the late Sir Gilhooly.
“Gilhooly,” said Fallon, “we come over to see if you was going to sell this place and give us that lease.”
“I ain’t decided,” said Gilhooly.
“You mean you won’t?” said Fallon.
“Well … I been thinking it over. It would be a damned shame to let sheep on this range. I got the only water for twenty-five miles around that’s worth anything. All the cattlemen have to use my wells and if they was sheep on this place, the cows wouldn’t come within a mile of the troughs if they was dyin’ of thirst. Fallon, I think maybe it would be a mistake to let you have this place for any money.”
Fallon stayed the black rage which began to rise within him. “You know what might happen to you, Gilhooly.”
“Maybe,” said Gilhooly, “but it’d take more’n a pair of buzzards to do it.”
Fallon turned to his friend. “Come on, Billings. He’s crazier than we thought.”
As they rode away they were conscious of Gilhooly’s eyes upon their backs.
“Think he’s nutty?” said Billings.
“Naw,” said Fallon, black eyes narrow. “It’s that Mary Ann Marlow. That’s my guess—and I think it’s right.”
“Say,” said Billings, pushing his shabby hat over his brow, “you don’t want no murder because we got to keep our noses clean or we won’t get jack advanced.”
“Yeah. No murder,” said Fallon.
“And if we can get Gilhooly’s wells, we can buy out the rest of this range for a song because the jack will be coming fast and we can hire a young army to keep the punchers off’n us.”
“Yeah,” said Fallon. “What you drivin’ at?”
“Well, we got to force Gilhooly and we can’t kill him. But there ain’t no statute about kidnapin’ around here that I ever heard of—only murder.”
“Hmm,” said Fallon.
“And as Gilhooly is crazy about this Mary Ann Marlow—”
“You don’t have to draw pictures,” snapped Fallon. “If we do that we can force Gilhooly to sell—and shut his mouth afterwards by telling him the cattlemen are out to hang him for makin’ the sale. That’s a good idea, don’t you think so, Billings?”
Billings Dwight was enough of a diplomat to let Fal
lon keep the change: He only nodded.
“Now let’s see. Next Sunday she’ll be home from that school and nobody will be around. We walk in there— Say, we better get Stogie and Carson to come along and help. Gilhooly might walk in. He goes and sees her Sundays sometimes.”
“Yeah,” said the diplomat Billings, “that’s a good idea, Fallon.”
Chapter Three
IT was Sunday morning and the trees were singing and the birds were shining and the sun was in bloom and Sir Gilhooly trotted along on Ye Calico toward Ye Toweres of Marlowe.
As he went, he couched his lance and picked a sleeping rattler off a rock and threw the startled reptile about ninety feet away.
A horned toad also got an aerial trip and Gilhooly was pretty proud of his prowess. True, he was black and blue all over from his encounters with Brian du Bois-Guilbert and the tin pail was dented badly—and was frying hot in the desert sun—but that made no difference.
The red-bound copy of Ivanhoe was in his saddle-bag and Lady Mary Ann was due for a big and wondrous surprise.
If this was being romantic, it was all right with Jigsaw Gilhooly.
In the far distance he could see the house and he trotted along for three miles or so, observing it closely to make certain that Mary Ann had neither family at home nor callers. Usually the Marlows went to church over in Gunpowder Gulch, but Mary Ann did so much platform work during the week herself that she always took off Sunday as her own day of rest.
In jubilance at the final discovery that the place was deserted, Gilhooly spurred Calico to a trot and picked up a Gila monster with his lance. When the spiny gentleman hit, he sat up and stuck out his tongue and tromped around in a circle, showing indignation.
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