"Y'u better go tell the boys Miss Nora don't want her kitchen littered up with so many of them," suggested his rival.
"Y'u're foreman here. I don't aim to butt into your business, Mac," grinned back the other, polishing a tea plate with the towel.
"I want to get some table linen over to Lee Ming to-night," said Nora, presently.
"Denver, he'll be glad to take it for y'u, Miss Nora. He's real obliging," offered Mac, generously.
"I've been in the house all day, so I need a walk. I thought perhaps one of you gentlemen—" Miss Nora looked from one to the other of them with deep innocence.
"Sure, I'll go along and carry it. Just as Mac says, I'll be real pleased to go," said Denver, hastily.
Mac felt he had been a trifle precipitate in his assumption that Nora did not intend to go herself. Lee Ming had established a laundry some half mile from the ranch, and the way thereto lay through most picturesque shadow and moonlight. The foreman had conscientious scruples against letting Denver escort her down such a veritable lovers' lane of romantic scenery.
"I don't know as y'u ought to go out in the night air with that cold, Denver. I'd hate a heap to have y'u catch pneumony. It don't seem to me I'd be justified in allowin' y'u to," said the foreman, anxiously.
"You're THAT thoughtful, Mac. But I expect mebbe a little saunter with Miss Nora will do my throat good. We'll walk real slow, so's not to wear out my strength."
"Big, husky fellows like y'u are awful likely to drop off with pneumony. I been thinkin' I got some awful good medicine that would be the right stuff for y'u. It's in the drawer of my wash-stand. Help yourself liberal and it will surely do y'u good. Y'u'll find it in a bottle."
"I'll bet it's good medicine, Mac. After we get home I'll drop around. In the washstand, y'u said?"
"I hate to have y'u take such a risk," Mac tried again. "There ain't a bit of use in y'u exposing yourself so careless. Y'u take a hot footbath and some of that medicine, Denver, then go right straight to bed, and in the mo'ning y'u'll be good as new. Honest, y'u won't know yourself."
"Y'u got the best heart, Mac." Nora giggled.
"Since I'm foreman I got to be a mother to y'u boys, ain't I?"
"Y'u're liable to be a grandmother to us if y'u keep on," came back the young giant.
"Y'u plumb discourage me, Denver," sighed the foreman.
"No, sir! The way I look at it, a fellow's got to take some risk. Now, y'u cayn't tell some things. I figure I ain't half so likely to catch pneumony as y'u would be to get heart trouble if y'u went walking with Miss Nora," returned Denver.
A perfect gravity sat on both their faces during the progress of most of their repartee.
"If your throat's so bad, Mr. Halliday, I'll put a kerosene rag round it for you when we get back," Nora said, with a sweet little glance of sympathy that the foreman did not enjoy.
Denver, otherwise "Mr. Halliday," beamed. "Y'u're real kind, ma'am. I'll bet that will help it on the outside much as Mac's medicine will inside."
"What'll y'u do for my heart, ma'am, if it gits bad the way Denver figures it will?"
"Y'u might try a mustard plaster," she gurgled, with laughter.
For once the debonair foreman's ready tongue had brought him to defeat. He was about to retire from the field temporarily when Nora herself offered first aid to the wounded.
"We would like to have you come along with us, Mr. McWilliams. I want you to come if you can spare the time."
The soft eyes telegraphed an invitation with such a subtle suggestion of a private understanding that Mac was instantly encouraged to accept.
He knew, of course, that she was playing them against each other and sitting back to enjoy the result, but he was possessed of the hope common to youths in his case that he really was on a better footing with her than the other boys. This opinion, it may be added, was shared by Denver, Frisco and even Reddy as regards themselves. Which is merely another way of putting the regrettable fact that this very charming young woman was given to coquetting with the hearts of her admirers.
"Any time y'u get oneasy about that cough y'u go right on home, Denver. Don't stay jest out of politeness. We'll never miss y'u, anyhow," the foreman assured him.
"Thank y'u, Mac. But y'u see I got to stay to keep Miss Nora from getting bored."
"Was it a phrenologist strung y'u with the notion y'u was a cure for lonesomeness?"
"Shucks! I don't make no such claims. The only thing is it's a comfort when you're bored to have company. Miss Nora, she's so polite. But, y'u see, if I'm along I can take y'u for a walk when y'u get too bad."
They reached the little trail that ran up to Lee Ming's place, and Denver suggested that Mac run in with the bundle so as to save Nora the climb.
"I'd like to, honest I would. But since y'u thought of it first I won't steal the credit of doing Miss Nora a good turn. We'll wait right here for y'u till y'u come back."
"We'll all go up together," decided Nora, and honors were easy.
In the pleasant moonlight they sauntered back, two of them still engaged in lively badinage, while the third played chorus with appreciative little giggles and murmurs of "Oh, Mr. Halliday!" and "You know you're just flattering me, Mr. McWilliams."
If they had not been so absorbed in their gay foolishness the two men might not have walked so innocently into the trap waiting for them at their journey's end. As it was, the first intimation they had of anything unusual was a stern command to surrender.
"Throw up your hands. Quick, you blank fools!"
A masked man covered them, in each hand a six-shooter, and at his summons the arms of the cow-punchers went instantly into the air.
Nora gave an involuntary little scream of dismay.
"Y'u don't need to be afraid, lady. Ain't nobody going to hurt you, I reckon," the masked man growled.
"Sure they won't," Mac reassured her, adding ironically: "This gun-play business is just neighborly frolic. Liable to happen any day in Wyoming."
A second masked man stepped up. He, too was garnished with an arsenal.
"What's all this talking about?" he demanded sharply.
"We just been having a little conversation seh?" returned McWilliams, gently, his vigilant eyes searching through the disguise of the other "Just been telling the lady that your call is in friendly spirit. No objections, I suppose?"
The swarthy newcomer, who seemed to be in command, swore sourly.
"Y'u put a knot in your tongue, Mr. Foreman."
"Ce'tainly, if y'u prefer," returned the indomitable McWilliams.
"Shut up or I'll pump lead into you!"
"I'm padlocked, seh."
Nora Darling interrupted the dialogue by quietly fainting. The foreman caught her as she fell.
"See what y'u done, y'u blamed chump!" he snapped.
CHAPTER 13. THE TWO COUSINS
The sheepman lay at his ease, the strong supple lines of him stretched lazily on the lounge. Helen was sitting beside him in an easy chair, and he watched the play of her face in the lamplight as she read from "The Little White Bird." She was very good to see, so vitally alive and full of a sweet charm that half revealed and half concealed her personality. The imagination with which she threw herself into a discussion of the child fancies portrayed by the Scotch writer captured his fancy. It delighted him to tempt her into discussions that told him by suggestion something of what she thought and was.
They were in animated debate when the door opened to admit somebody else. He had stepped in so quietly that he stood there a little while without being observed, smiling down at them with triumphant malice behind the mask he wore. Perhaps it was the black visor that was responsible for the Mephisto effect, since it hid all the face but the leering eyes. These, narrowed to slits, swept the room and came back to its occupants. He was a tall man and well-knit, dressed incongruously in up-to-date riding breeches and boots, in combination with the usual gray shirt, knotted kerchief and wide-brimmed felt hat of the horseman of the plains. The dus
t of the desert lay thick on him, without in the least obscuring a certain ribald elegance, a distinction of wickedness that rested upon him as his due. To this result his debonair manner contributed, though it carried with it no suggestion of weakness. To the girl who looked up and found him there he looked indescribably sinister.
She half rose to her feet, dilated eyes fixed on him.
"Good evenin'. I came to make sure y'u got safe home, Miss Messiter," he said.
The eyes of the two men clashed, the sheepman's stern and unyielding, his cousin's lit with the devil of triumph. But out of the faces of both men looked the inevitable conflict, the declaration of war that never ends till death.
"I've been a heap anxious about y'u—couldn't sleep for worrying. So I saddled up and rode in to find out if y'u were all right and to inquire how Cousin Ned was getting along."
The sheepman, not deigning to move an inch from his position, looked in silence his steady contempt.
"This conversation sounds a whole lot like a monologue up to date," he continued. "Now, maybe y'u don't know y'u have the honor of entertaining the King of the Bighorn." The man's brown hand brushed the mask from his eyes and he bowed with mocking deference. "Miss Messiter, allow me to introduce myself again—Ned Bannister, train robber, rustler, kidnapper and general bad man. But I ain't told y'u the worst yet. I'm cousin to a sheepherder' and that's the lowest thing that walks."
He limped forward a few steps and sat down. "Thank you, I believe I will stay a while since y'u both ask me so urgent. It isn't often I meet with a welcome so hearty and straight from the heart."
It was not hard to see how the likeness between them contributed to the mistake that had been current concerning them. Side by side, no man could have mistaken one for the other. The color of their eyes, the shade of hair, even the cut of their features, were different. But beneath all distinctions in detail ran a family resemblance not to be denied. This man looked like his cousin, the sheepman, as the latter might have done if all his life he had given a free rein to evil passions.
The height, the build, the elastic tread of each, made further contributions to this effect of similarity.
"What are you doing here?" They were the first words spoken by the man on the lounge and they rang with a curt challenge.
"Come to inquire after the health of my dear cousin," came the prompt silken answer.
"You villain!"
"My dear cousin, y'u speak with such conviction that y'u almost persuade me. But of course if I'm a villain I've got to live up to my reputation. Haven't I, Miss Messiter?"
"Wouldn't it be better to live it down?" she asked with a quietness that belied her terror. For there had been in his manner a threat, not against her but against the man whom her heart acknowledged as her lover.
He laughed. "Y'u're still hoping to make a Sunday school superintendent out of me, I see. Y'u haven't forgot all your schoolmarm ways yet, but I'll teach y'u to forget them."
The other cousin watched him with a cool, quiet glance that never wavered. The outlaw was heavily armed, but his weapons were sheathed, and, though there was a wary glitter behind the vindictive exultation in his eyes, his capable hands betrayed no knowledge of the existence of his revolvers. It was, he knew, to be a moral victory, if one at all.
"Hope I'm not disturbing any happy family circle," he remarked, and, taking two limping steps forward, he lifted the book from the girl's unresisting hands. "H'm! Barrie. I don't go much on him. He's too sissy for me. But I could have guessed the other Ned Bannister would be reading something like that," he concluded, a flicker of sneering contempt crossing his face.
"Perhaps y'u'll learn some time to attend to your own business," said the man on the couch quietly.
Hatred gleamed in the narrowed slits from which the soul of the other cousin looked down at him. "I'm a philanthropist, and my business is attending to other people's. They raise sheep, for instance, and I market them."
The girl hastily interrupted. She had not feared for herself, but she knew fear for the indomitable man she had nursed back to life. "Won't you sit down, Mr. Bannister? Since you don't approve our literature, perhaps we can find some other diversion more to your taste." She smiled faintly.
The man turned in smiling divination of her purpose, and sat down to play with her as a cat does with a mouse.
"Thank y'u, Miss Messiter, I believe I will. I called to thank y'u for your kindness to my cousin as well as to inquire about you. The word goes that y'u pulled my dear cousin back when death was reaching mighty strong for him. Of course I feel grateful to y'u. How is he getting along now?"
"He's doing very well, I think."
"That's ce'tainly good hearing," was his ironical response. "How come he to get hurt, did y'u say?"
His sleek smile was a thing hateful to see.
"A hound bit me," explained the sheepman.
"Y'u don't say! I reckon y'u oughtn't to have got in its way. Did y'u kill it?"
"Not yet."
"That was surely a mistake, for it's liable to bite again."
The girl felt a sudden sickness at his honeyed cruelty, but immediately pulled herself together. For whatever fiendish intention might be in his mind she meant to frustrate it.
"I hear you are of a musical turn, Mr. Bannister. Won't you play for us?"
She had by chance found his weak spot. Instantly his eyes lit up. He stepped across to the piano and began to look over the music, though not so intently that he forgot to keep under his eye the man on the lounge.
"H'm! Mozart, Grieg, Chopin, Raff, Beethoven. Y'u ce'tainly have the music here; I wonder if y'u have the musician." He looked her over with a bold, unscrupulous gaze. "It's an old trick to have classical music on the rack and ragtime in your soul. Can y'u play these?"
"You will have to be the judge of that," she said.
He selected two of Grieg's songs and invited her to the piano. He knew instantly that the Norwegian's delicate fancy and lyrical feeling had found in her no inadequate medium of expression. The peculiar emotional quality of the song "I Love Thee" seemed to fill the room as she played. When she swung round on the stool at its conclusion it was to meet a shining-eyed, musical enthusiast instead of the villain she had left five minutes earlier.
"Y'u CAN play," was all he said, but the manner of it spoke volumes.
For nearly an hour he kept her at the piano, and when at last he let her stop playing he seemed a man transformed.
"You have given me a great pleasure, a very great pleasure, Miss Messiter," he thanked her warmly, his Western idiom sloughed with his villainy for the moment. "It has been a good many months since I have heard any decent music. With your permission I shall come again."
Her hesitation was imperceptible. "Surely, if you wish." She felt it would be worse than idle to deny the permission she might not be able to refuse.
With perfect grace he bowed, and as he wheeled away met with a little shock of remembrance the gaze of his cousin. For a long moment their eyes bored into each other. Neither yielded the beat of an eyelid, but it was the outlaw that spoke.
"I had forgotten y'u. That's strange, too because it was for y'u I came. I'm going to take y'u home with me.
"Alive or dead?" asked the other serenely.
"Alive, dear Ned."
"Same old traits cropping out again. There was always something feline about y'u. I remember when y'u were a boy y'u liked to torment wild animals y'u had trapped."
"I play with larger game now—and find it more interesting."
"Just so. Miss Messiter, I shall have to borrow a pony from y'u, unless—" He broke off and turned indifferently to the bandit.
"Yes, I brought a hawss along with me for y'u," replied the other to the unvoiced question. "I thought maybe y'u might want to ride with us."
"But he can't ride. He couldn't possibly. It would kill him," the girl broke out.
"I reckon not." The man from the Shoshones glanced at his victim as he drew on his gauntlets. "He's
a heap tougher than y'u think."
"But it will. If he should ride now, why—It would be the same as murder," she gasped. "You wouldn't make him ride now?"
"Didn't y'u hear him order his hawss, ma'am? He's keen on this ride. Of course he don't have to go unless he wants to." The man turned his villainous smile on his cousin, and the latter interpreted it to mean that if he preferred, the point of attack might be shifted to the girl. He might go or he might stay. But if he stayed the mistress of the Lazy D would have to pay for his decision.
"No, I'll ride," he said at once.
Helen Messiter had missed the meaning of that Marconied message that flashed between them. She set her jaw with decision. "Well, you'll not. It's perfectly ridiculous. I won't hear of such a thing."
"Y'u seem right welcome. Hadn't y'u better stay, Ned?" murmured the outlaw, with smiling eyes that mocked.
"Of course he had. He couldn't ride a mile—not half a mile. The idea is utterly preposterous."
The sheepman got to his feet unsteadily. "I'll do famously."
"I won't have it. Why are you so foolish about going? He said you didn't need to go. You can't ride any more than a baby could chop down that pine in the yard."
"I'm a heap stronger than y'u think."
"Yes, you are!" she derided. "It's nothing but obstinacy. Make him stay," she appealed to the outlaw.
"Am I my cousin's keeper?" he drawled. "I can advise him to stay, but I can't make him."
"Well, I can. I'm his nurse, and I say he sha'n't stir a foot out of this house—not a foot."
The wounded man smiled quietly, admiring the splendid energy of her. "I'm right sorry to leave y'u so unceremoniously."
"You're not going." She wheeled on the outlaw "I don't understand this at all. But if you want him you can find him here when you come again. Put him on parole and leave him here. I'll not be a party to murder by letting him go."
"Y'u think I'm going to murder him?" he smiled.
"I think he cannot stand the riding. It would kill him."
"A haidstrong man is bound to have his way. He seems hell-bent on riding. All the docs say the outside of a hawss is good for the inside of a man. Mebbe it'll be the making of him."
Wyoming-a Story of the Outdoor West Page 11