The foreman drove her to Fraser's in a surrey with Ida Henderson and one of the Lazy D punchers on the back seat. The drive was over twenty-five miles, but in that silent starry night every mile was a delight. Part of the way led through a beautiful canon, along the rocky mountain road of which the young man guided the rig with unerring skill. Beyond the gorge the country debouched into a grassy park that fell away from their feet for miles. It was in this basin that the Fraser ranch lay.
The strains of the fiddle and the thumping of feet could be heard as they drove up. Already the rooms seemed to be pretty well filled, as Helen noticed when they entered. Three sets were on the floor for a quadrille and the house shook with the energy of the dancers. On benches against the walls were seated the spectators, and on one of them stood Texas calling the dance.
"Alemane left. Right hand t'yer pardner and grand right and left. Ev-v-rybody swing," chanted the caller.
A dozen rough young fellows were clustered near the front door, apparently afraid to venture farther lest their escape be cut off. Through these McWilliams pushed a way for his charges, the cowboys falling back respectfully at once when they discovered the presence of Miss Messiter.
In the bedroom where she left her wraps the mistress of the Lazy D found a dozen or more infants and several of their mothers. In the kitchen were still other women and babies, some of the former very old and of the latter very young. A few of the babies were asleep, but most of them were still very much alive to this scene of unwonted hilarity in their young lives.
As soon as she emerged into the general publicity of the dancing room her foreman pounced upon Helen and led her to a place in the head set that was making up. The floor was rough, the music jerky and uncertain, the quadrilling an exhibition of joyous and awkward abandon; but its picturesque lack of convention appealed to the girl from Michigan. It rather startled her to be swung so vigorously, but a glance about the room showed that these humorous-eyed Westerners were merely living up to the duty of the hour as they understood it.
At the close of the quadrille Helen found herself being introduced to "Mr. Robins," alias Slim, who drew one of his feet back in an embarrassed bow.
"I enjoy to meet y'u, ma'am," he assured her, and supplemented this with a request for the next dance, after which he fell into silence that was painful in its intensity.
Nearly all the dances were squares, as few of those present understood the intricacies of the waltz and two-step. Hence it happened that the proficient McWilliams secured three round dances with his mistress.
It was during the lunch of sandwiches, cake and coffee that Helen perceived an addition to the company. The affair had been advertised a costume ball, but most of those present had construed this very liberally. She herself, to be sure, had come as Mary Queen of Scots, Mac was arrayed in the scarlet tunic and tight-fitting breeches of the Northwest Mounted Police, and perhaps eight or ten others had made some attempt at representing some one other than they were. She now saw another, apparently a new arrival, standing in the doorway negligently. A glance told her that he was made up for a road agent and that his revolvers and mask were a part of the necessary costuming.
Slowly his gaze circled the room and came round to her. His eyes were hard as diamonds and as flashing, so that the impact of their meeting looks seemed to shock her physically. He was a tall man, swarthy of hue, and he carried himself with a light ease that looked silken strong. Something in the bearing was familiar yet not quite familiar either. It seemed to suggest a resemblance to somebody she knew. And in the next thought she knew that the somebody was Ned Bannister.
The man spoke to Fraser, just then passing with a cup of coffee, and Helen saw the two men approach. The stranger was coming to be formally introduced.
"Shake hands with Mr. Holloway, Miss Messiter. He's from up in the hill country and he rode to our frolic. Y'u've got three guesses to figure out what he's made up as."
"One will be quite enough, I think," she answered coldly.
Fraser departed on his destination with the coffee and the newcomer sat down on the bench beside her.
"One's enough, is it?" he drawled smilingly.
"Quite, but I'm surprised so few came in costume. Why didn't you? But I suppose you had your reasons."
"Didn't I? I'm supposed to be a bad man from the hills."
She swept him casually with an indifferent glance. "And isn't that what you are in real life?"
His sharp scrutiny chiseled into her. "What's that?"
"You won't mind if I forget and call you Mr. Bannister instead of Mr. Holloway?"
She thought his counterfeit astonishment perfect.
"So I'm Ned Bannister, am I?"
Their eyes clashed.
"Aren't you?"
She felt sure of it, and yet there was a lurking doubt. For there was in his manner something indescribably more sinister than she had felt in him on that occasion when she had saved his life. Then a debonair recklessness had been the outstanding note, but now there was something ribald and wicked in him.
"Since y'u put it as a question, common politeness demands an answer. Ned Bannister is my name."
"You are the terror of this country?"
"I shan't be a terror to y'u, ma'am, if I can help it," he smiled.
"But you are the man they call the king?"
"I have that honor."
"HONOR?"
At the sharp scorn of her accent he laughed.
"Do you mean that you are proud of your villainy?" she demanded.
"Y'u've ce'tainly got the teacher habit of asking questions," he replied with a laugh that was a sneer.
A shadow fell across them and a voice said quietly, "She didn't wait to ask any when she saved your life down in the coulee back of the Lazy D."
The shadow was Jim McWilliams's, and its owner looked down at the man beside the girl with steady, hostile eyes.
"Is this your put in, sir?" the other flashed back.
"Yes, seh, it is. The boys don't quite like seeing your hardware so prominent at a social gathering. In this community guns don't come into the house at a ranch dance. I'm a committee to mention the subject and to collect your thirty-eights if y'u agree with us."
"And if I don't agree with you?"
"There's all outdoors ready to receive y'u, seh. It would be a pity to stay in the one spot where your welcome's wore thin."
"Still I may choose to stay."
"Ce'tainly, but if y'u decide that way y'u better step out on the porch and talk it over with us where there ain't ladies present."
"Isn't this a costume dance? What's the matter with my guns? I'm an outlaw, ain't I?"
"I don't know whether y'u are or not, seh. If y'u say y'u are we're ready to take your word. The guns have to be shucked if y'u stay here. They might go off accidental and scare the ladies."
The man rose blackly. "I'll remember this. If y'u knew who y'u were getting so gay with—"
"I can guess, Mr. Holloway, the kind of an outfit y'u freight with, and I expect I could put a handle to another name for you."
"By God, if y'u dare to say—"
"I don't dare, especially among so many ladies," came McWilliams's jaunty answer.
The eyes of the two men gripped, after which Holloway swung on his heel and swaggered defiantly out of the house.
Presently there came the sound of a pony's feet galloping down the road. It had not yet died away when Texas announced that the supper intermission was over.
"Pardners for a quadrille. Ladies' choice."
The dance was on again full swing. The fiddlers were tuning up and couples gathering for a quadrille. Denver came to claim Miss Messiter for a partner. Apparently even the existence of the vanished Holloway was forgotten. But Helen remembered it, and pondered over the affair long after daylight had come and brought with it an end to the festivities.
CHAPTER 6. A PARTY CALL
The mistress of the Lazy D, just through with her morning visit to the hospital in
the bunkhouse, stopped to read the gaudy poster tacked to the wall. It was embellished with the drawing of a placid rider astride the embodiment of fury incarnate, under which was the legend: "Stick to Your Saddle."
BIG FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION AT GIMLET BUTTE. ROPING AND BRONCO BUSTING CONTESTS FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD AND BIG PRIZES, Including $1,000 for the Best Rider and the Same for Best Roper. Cow Pony Races, Ladies' Races and Ladies' Riding Contest, Fireworks, AND FREE BARBECUE!!!! EVERYBODY COME AND TURN YOUR WOLF LOOSE.
A sudden thud of pounding hoofs, a snatch of ragtime, and her foreman swept up in a cloud of white dust. His pony came from a gallop to an instant halt, and simultaneously Mac landed beside her, one hand holding the wide-brimmed hat he had snatched off in his descent, the other hitched by a casual thumb to the belt of his chaps.
She laughed. "You really did it very well."
Mac blushed. He was still young enough to take pride in his picturesque regalia, to prefer the dramatic way of doing a commonplace thing. But, though he liked this girl's trick of laughing at him with a perfectly grave face out of those dark, long-lashed eyes, he would have liked it better if sometimes they had given back the applause he thought his little tricks merited.
"Sho! That's foolishness," he deprecated.
"I suppose they got you to sit for this picture;" and she indicated the poster with a wave of her hand.
"That ain't a real picture," he explained, and when she smiled added, "as of course y'u know. No hawss ever pitched that way—and the saddle ain't right. Fact is, it's all wrong."
"How did it come here? It wasn't here last night."
"I reckon Denver brought it from Slauson's. He was ridin' that country yesterday, and as the boys was out of smokin' he come home that way."
"I suppose you'll all go?"
"I reckon."
"And you'll ride?"
"I aim to sit in."
"At the roping, too?"
"No, m'm. I ain't so much with the rope. It takes a Mexican to snake a rope."
"Then I'll be able to borrow only a thousand dollars from you to help buy that bunch of young cows we were speaking about," she mocked.
"Only a thousand," he grinned. "And it ain't a cinch I'll win. There are three or four straightup riders on this range. A fellow come from the Hole-in-the-Wall and won out last year."
"And where were you?"
"Oh, I took second prize," he explained, with obvious indifference.
"Well, you had better get first this year. We'll have to show them the Lazy D hasn't gone to sleep."
"Sure thing," he agreed.
"Has that buyer from Cheyenne turned up yet?" she asked, reverting to business.
"Not yet. Do y'u want I should make the cut soon as he comes?"
"Don't you think his price is a little low—twenty dollars from brand up?"
"It's a scrub bunch. We want to get rid of them, anyway. But you're the doctor," he concluded slangily.
She thought a moment. "We'll let him have them, but don't make the cut till I come back. I'm going to ride over to the Twin Buttes."
His admiring eyes followed her as she went toward the pony that was waiting saddled with the rein thrown to the ground. She carried her slim, lithe figure with a grace, a lightness, that few women could have rivaled. When she had swung to the saddle, she half-turned in her seat to call an order to the foreman.
"I think, Mac, you had better run up those horses from Eagle Creek. Have Denver and Missou look after them."
"Sure, ma'am," he said aloud; and to himself: "She's ce'tainly a thoroughbred. Does everything well she tackles. I never saw anything like it. I'm a Chink if she doesn't run this ranch like she had been at it forty years. Same thing with her gasoline bronc. That pinto, too. He's got a bad eye for fair, but she makes him eat out of her hand. I reckon the pinto is like the rest of us—clean mashed." He put his arms on the corral fence and grew introspective. "Blamed if I know what it is about her. 'Course she's a winner on looks, but that ain't it alone. I guess it's on account of her being such a game little gentleman. When she turns that smile loose on a fellow—well, there's sure sunshine in the air. And game—why, Ned Bannister ain't gamer himself."
McWilliams had climbed lazily to the top board of the fence. He was an energetic youth, but he liked to do his thinking at his ease. Now, as his gaze still followed its lodestar, he suddenly slipped from his seat and ran forward, pulling the revolver from its scabbard as he ran. Into his eyes had crept a tense alertness, the shining watchfulness of the tiger ready for its spring.
The cause of the change in the foreman of the Lazy D was a simple one, and on its face innocent enough. It was merely that a stranger had swung in casually at the gate of the short stable lane, and was due to meet Miss Messiter in about ten seconds. So far good enough. A dozen travelers dropped in every day, but this particular one happened to be Ned Bannister.
From the stable door a shot rang out. Bannister ducked and shouted genially: "Try again."
But Helen Messiter whirled her pony as on a half-dollar, and charged down on the stable.
"Who fired that shot?" she demanded, her eyes blazing.
The horse-wrangler showed embarrassment. He had found time only to lean the rifle against the wall.
"I reckon I did, ma'am. Y'u see—"
"Did you get my orders about this feud?" she interrupted crisply.
"Yes, ma'am, but—"
"Then you may call for your time. When I give my men orders I expect them to obey."
"I wouldn't 'a' shot if I'd knowed y'u was so near him. Y'u was behind that summer kitchen," he explained lamely.
"You only expect to obey orders when I'm in sight. Is that it?" she asked hotly, and without waiting for an answer delivered her ultimatum. "Well, I won't have it. I run this ranch as long as I am its owner. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am. I hadn't ought to have did it, but when I seen Bannister it come over me I owed him a pill for the one he sent me last week down in the coulee. So I up and grabbed the rifle and let him have it."
"Then you may up and grab your trunk for Medicine Hill. Shorty will drive you tomorrow."
When she returned to her unexpected guest, Helen found him in conversation with McWilliams. The latter's gun had found again its holster, but his brown, graceful hand hovered close to its butt.
"Seems like a long time since the Lazy D has been honored by a visit from Mr. Bannister," he was saying, with gentle irony.
"That's right. So I have come to make up for lost time," came Bannister's quiet retort.
Miss Messiter did not know much about Wyoming human nature in the raw, but she had learned enough to be sure that the soft courtesy of these two youths covered a stark courage that might leap to life any moment. Wherefore she interposed.
"We'll be pleased to show you over the place, Mr. Bannister. As it happens, we are close to the hospital. Shall we begin there?"
Her cool, silken defiance earned a smile from the visitor. "All your cases doing well, ma'am?"
"It's very kind of you to ask. I suppose you take an interest because they are YOUR cases, too, in a way of speaking?"
"Mine? Indeed!"
"Yes. If it were not for you I'm afraid our hospital would be empty."
"It must be right pleasant to be nursed by Miss Messiter. I reckon the boys are grateful to me for scattering my lead so promiscuous."
"I heard one say he would like to lam your haid tenderly," murmured McWilliams.
"With a two-by-four, I suppose," laughed Bannister.
"Shouldn't wonder. But, looking y'u over casual, it occurs to me he might get sick of his job befo' he turned y'u loose," McWilliams admitted, with a glance of admiration at the clean power showing in the other's supple lines.
Nor could either the foreman or his mistress deny the tribute of their respect to the bravado of this scamp who sat so jauntily his seat regardless of what the next moment might bring forth. Three wounded men were about the place, all presumably quite
willing to get a clean shot at him in the open. One of them had taken his chance already, and missed. Their visitor had no warrant for knowing that a second might not any instant try his luck with better success. Yet he looked every inch the man on horseback, no whit disturbed, not the least conscious of any danger. Tall, spare, broad shouldered, this berry-brown young man, crowned with close-cropped curls, sat at the gates of the enemy very much at his insolent case.
"I came over to pay my party call," he explained.
"It really wasn't necessary. A run in the machine is not a formal function."
"Maybe not in Kalamazoo."
"I thought perhaps you had come to get my purse and the sixty-three dollars," she derided.
"No, ma'am; nor yet to get that bunch of cows I was going to rustle from you to buy an auto. I came to ask you to go riding with me."
The audacity of it took her breath. Of all the outrageous things she had ever heard, this was the cream. An acknowledged outlaw, engaged in feud with her retainers over that deadly question of the run of the range, he had sauntered over to the ranch where lived a dozen of his enemies, three of them still scarred with his bullets, merely to ask her to go riding with him. The magnificence of his bravado almost obliterated its impudence. Of course she would not think of going. The idea! But her eyes glowed with appreciation of his courage, not the less because the consciousness of it was so conspicuously absent from his manner.
"I think not, Mr. Bannister" and her face almost imperceptibly stiffened. "I don't go riding with strangers, nor with men who shoot my boys. And I'll give you a piece of advice, sir. That is, to burn the wind back to your home. Otherwise I won't answer for your life. My punchers don't love you, and I don't know how long I can keep them from you. You're not wanted here any more than you were at the dance the other evening."
McWilliams nodded. "That's right. Y'u better roll your trail, seh; and if y'u take my advice, you'll throw gravel lively. I seen two of the boys cutting acrost that pasture five minutes ago. They looked as if they might be haided to cut y'u off, and I allow it may be their night to howl. Miss Messiter don't want to be responsible for y'u getting lead poisoning."
Wyoming-a Story of the Outdoor West Page 5