the Drift Fence (1992)

by Grey, Zane

  "I cain't let you go on thet, Molly," he said, cheerfully. The idiot actually felt sure of her. And he began to roll a cigarette, a shadow of a smile on his dark smooth face.

  Molly averted her eyes, lest he read in hers the thought that she was forming. Once out of reach of his long arm she could get away. The cowboy did not live who could catch her on foot. Molly calculated distance and moment, while concentrating all her energy. Suddenly like a flash she ducked and bounded at once, under the brush into the trail. Joceyn shouted and crashed through. But Molly darted away. She could run like a deer. Her moccasined feet pattered on the hard trail. He thudded heavily after her, soon losing ground. Molly looked over her shoulder to see that he might as well have been roped, for all the hope he had of catching her.

  She screeched a laugh back at him and sped on out of his sight, never slacking her swift pace until she reached the place she had cut across to avoid the riders. Once in the clearing, she went slowly so as to regain her breath.

  The fool! The hard-lipped cowpuncher--to think he could bully her into knuckling to him! But otherwise she welcomed the encounter. Hack Jocelyn had quit the Diamond. It was a stunning fact against all precedent. He was making up to the Cibeque, and especially to Arch Dunn. Some deviltry afoot! Molly divined that she was not the whole contention. She recalled Jocelyn's looks and words--his actions. How grimly satisfied with himself! He had built some big cowboy trick. What a clever ruse to win Slinger Dunn's friendship! If anything could have placated the lone timber wolf of the Cibeque, that crafty lie might.

  Molly sat down on a log to rest. And the gist of this complex situation burst upon her in realization of menace to Jim Traft. That agitated Molly even more than if attack on her. Hackmore Jocelyn would kill Jim, and f he did not Slinger Dunn or the Haverlys would. Molly divined it, shocked that it had not dawned upon her before, and her warm pulsing blood turned to ice. Jocelyn had proved traitor to the Diamond. For that he would be welcomed by the Cibeque, though she doubted Arch's complaisance. An infernal scheme had been hatched and Hack Jocelyn was the prime mover in it. And what did he mean by a stake? Molly understood the word to imply what riders called food or money that they hoped to get by some lucky or clever break. Jocelyn had certainly meant the latter and no small amount.

  Molly racked her brains for a solution, which was not forthcoming. Then her mother, espying her on the log, called, loudly. Molly hurried to the cabin.

  "I declare, but you take long to do anythin'," said Mrs. Dunn, harshly.

  "Well, so would anyone if she got waylaid by a bully of a cowpuncher," retorted Molly.

  "Who?" demanded the mother, with a keen look at Molly's heated face.

  Instead of answering Molly ran like a squirrel up the ladder to the loft that opened over the porch. It had two compartments, one over each cabin.

  That over the kitchen was a storeroom, and the other, over the living-room, was Molly's. It had a window at the far end, a rude contraption that had been put in by Arch. The V-shaped roof was high enough only in the middle for Molly to stand erect. Since Molly had been a child this had been the only room she had ever had, but she preferred it to the living-room, where her parents slept and quarrelled. Arch Dunn used to sleep on the porch below, and then Molly had felt safe, but for years now, most of the nights, only the pines and spruces had sheltered him. What furniture there was in Molly's boudoir was home-made, and some of it by her own hands. Yet until Mrs. See had taken her to Flagerstown she had been contented in this loft. But then she had been a good many things before that lamentable visit.

  At any rate, Molly kept her cubbyhole, as she called it, clean and neat, and fragrant with the scent of pine and spruce boughs, upon which she spread her blankets. She lay down there now and tried to puzzle a way through the maze of circumstances which seemed to have involved her.

  Following her mother's call to supper, Molly heard Arch's slow, clinking footfall. When he wore moccasins he could not be heard at all.

  "Where's Molly?" he asked.

  "I don't know. She got huffy because I asked her a question an' flounced out somewhere," replied the mother.

  "Some of your questions are shore irritatin'," said Arch. "What was thet particular one?"

  "She came home red in the face and panting, and when I told her it had taken her a long time to go to the store, she said she'd been waylaid by a bully of a cowpuncher. Then I asked her 'who?'"

  "Ahuh. I reckon the gurl's gettin' too big an' pretty to be alone on the trails," returned the son, ponderingly.

  "Big! She's only a mite, an' not so awful pretty."

  "Molly is no kid any more. You can bet I'm findin' thet out. An' as fer bein' pretty--where's your eyes, ma? I heah she beat them Flag gurls all hollow at the fair dance. I heah a lot."

  "I never hear anything," complained Mrs. Dunn. "I'm stuck in this cabin from sunup till dark. I want to get away before I die on my feet."

  Molly had heard such ranting of her mother's for years, but she was stunned to hear Arch reply that maybe soon they would be able to move away from the Cibeque.

  "Arch! What've you done now?" queried the mother. "Nothin' jest yet. But I reckon to make a stake soon."

  "Humph!--Call the girl to supper."

  Arch stepped to the end of the porch and called "Hey, Mol." Molly thought best to answer sleepily: "Yes, Arch. Heah I am. What you want?"

  "Supper, you wood-mouse," he replied, and he waited by the ladder to give her a slap and then lift her down.

  "No kid no more! Mol, you're as heavy as a sack of beans."

  "Shore, an' worth aboot as much," retorted Molly. "You're plumb interested in me lately, Arch."

  "Yep, I am, more'n you'd guess," he replied. "You an' me are goin' to have a little confab after supper."

  Molly looked straight into his piercing eyes, though she felt her face burn and her nerves quiver. However she did not reply. She carried her father's meal to him and placed the board across the arms of his chair.

  "Lass, what's Arch jawin' you aboot?" he asked.

  "I haven't any idea, dad. He's got one of his spells."

  "There's too much goin' on heah," declared Dunn. "They all think I'm blind, settin' on this porch. But my eyes are good yet for cattle-rustlers."

  Molly saw Arch lift his lean head with the action of an eagle, and give his father a dark look. She felt perturbed herself at her father's pointed remark, though now and then he would make some caustic allusion to the movements of cattlemen.

  He hated them, and made little distinction between ranchers and rustlers.

  His day had been one when sheep held the range. Molly ate her supper in silence, which, in fact, was what they all did.

  "Wal, sister, you can have a walk with me," said Arch, dryly, as lie got up from the table.

  Molly did not need to look at him again. She knew there was something in the wind, but she felt only halffrightened. Arch was a puzzle lately. She walked beside him as he led her along the edge of the field toward the creek. The heat of the day was gone; the sun had sunk, yet the top of the Diamond blazed gold and red; there were deer in the pasture with the cows; somewhere a burro brayed shrilly. When Arch got to the head of the trail where it led down into the glen toward the spring he halted and said: "Reckon this is far enough. No one can heah you if you do squawk."

  "Arch, you're not a bit funny," replied Molly. "An' you cain't make me squawk."

  "Who was the bully of a cowboy thet waylaid you?"

  "Hackamore Jocelyn."

  "I reckoned so. On your way home from the store, I seen you go out the back trail."

  "Yes. He must have seen me, too, for he waited along the trail."

  "Wal, what'd he do, Mol?" went on Arch.

  He was hard to penetrate, yet so far Molly had no great misgivings.

  "Arch, I don't have to tell you everythin' or anythin'," she said, steadily.

  "Reckon you don't, to be fair aboot it. But you ought to. Poor ole dad is done, an', wal, I reckon ma's no good.
I'm no good, either, fer thet matter. But I'm your brother, Molly."

  She had never heard him speak like that before.

  "Arch, you--you don't trust me," she faltered.

  "Hell! It's only the last few days thet I seen you was old enough to mistrust."

  "Then--how can I confide in you?" she asked, simply.

  "Molly, are you goin' to make me choke thin's out of you?"

  "I'm not anxious aboot it."

  "Wal, then, are you sweet on this Diamond cowboy?"

  "Which one?" rejoined Molly, with a titter.

  He laughed, too. "Thet's one on me. But fer the moment I mean this heah Jocelyn."

  Molly told him bluntly just what she thought of Jocelyn. "Wal, I'll' be dog-goned. I been given to believe you was sweet on him."

  "Who told you, Arch?"

  "It come round aboot."

  "Somebody lied. I haven't any use for Jocelyn. If you want to know, I'll give you the straight goods aboot him--so far as I am concerned--but, Arch, I'd a good deal rather not tell you."

  "Why--if you're willin'?"

  "Well, it'll make you mad, an' probably run you into another fight."

  "Molly; it's no shore bet thet Jocelyn an' I won't fight, anyhow. Seth has been talkin' too much for Jocelyn. He's too anxious. There's somethin' up. It looks to me like Jocelyn wants to double-cross the Diamond an' somehow throw in with the Cibeque. I'm not shore. But I don't take to the puncher. Mebbe I'm cross-grained. Mebbe it's because he's throwed a gun heah an' there. All the same, if he'd double cross Traft he'd shore do the same by us."

  Long before Arch had concluded that speech, Molly had made her decision to be honest--to hold back nothing, though at the suspicion he might presently ask pertinently about Jim Traft her heart came into her throat.

  "Arch, you're on the track," she replied, swiftly. "Jocelyn has quit the Diamond. Had a fight with--Jim Traft, he said, an' jumped at a chance to quit. He had a black eve, a cut lip, an' some other fist marks. An' an'--" Here Molly paused to relieve the oppression in her breast, and failed to do it. "Jocelyn tried to bully me into lyin' to you. Wanted me to tell you he'd quit the Diamond because--because Jim Traft had insulted me. Then he could throw a gun on Traft!"

  Slinger Dunn whistled long and low, and afterward muttered a deep curse.

  His brown hand shot out like the strike of a snake and snapped a dead twig of cedar.

  "Molly, you've shore cleared up part of this heah deal," he said, gratefully. "I'll bet a hundred Jocelyn aimed to throw in with the Cibeque."

  "That's what he said, Arch," rejoined Molly, and impelled by released emotion, she began at the point when Jocelyn waylaid her on the trail and recalled every word and action of that encounter.

  "So much fer Hackamore Jocelyn," muttered Dunn. "I wonder now--I just wonder what cairds Seth holds--or if it is his deal."

  "I wouldn't trust Seth Haverly with his grandma's spectacles," said Molly.

  "Wal, Molly, mebbe I'd better take your hunch. But I cain't believe Seth would double-cross me, leastways with a puncher from the Diamond. An' thet brings us to real talk."

  Molly had only to look up to realize that herself. Dunn fastened a hand in her blouse, so close and tight as to pinch her neck, and with a slow pull he drew her up so that her eyes were scarcely a foot from his.

  "What's this I heah aboot Jim Traft insultin' you?"

  "I--I don't know what you heahed, Arch--but it's a lie."

  "Did you meet him?"

  "Yes, at the fair."

  "An' went to thet dance with him?"

  "Oh, no. I went with Mrs. See... But Jim Traft came--an' I--I danced with him once."

  "An' thet's all? You wasn't out in the moonlight with him, on the porch?"

  "Yes--we walked out a--a little."

  "An' he grabbed you an' hugged you?" demanded Dunn, leaning down.

  "Y-yes, Arch--he did," whispered Molly.

  "You let him?"

  "He's big an' strong... What could I--I do? But at that I slapped him."

  "Which was proof you felt insulted. So how's it come you say you wasn't?"

  "Listen--Arch--an' don't choke me," she gasped. "I--I wasn't honest with him. The truth is--I took to him--somethin' outrageous. An' he must have guessed it... But when he--he had me in his arms--I hit him. I--I wanted him to believe I was insulted. He'd taken me for a girl far above one from the Cibeque... But I really wasn't insulted--an' when I hit him I wasn't honest. An' an'--"

  Molly reached the subtlety of a woman in her instinct to protect Jim Traft. And she seemed to divine that her brother might not know more.

  "Took to him somethin' outrageous!" ejaculated Arch, incredulously.

  "Molly Dunn!"

  "Yes, Molly Dunn," retorted Molly, gaining courage with resentment. "Even if I do belong to the Dunns of the Cibeque I've got a heart."

  "I ain't blamin' you, Mol," he returned, as if real zing the inevitableness of the fact, and he let go of her. "You're only a kid. An' he's shore a good-lookin' fellar. An' he can talk. But, Molly, the thing is he's old Jim Traft's kin. He's worth a million. An' he couldn't have no honest intent toward you."

  "I'm no fool, Arch, if I am a kid," she rejoined. "I know when a man means bad by me. Lord knows I've had reason to. I shore knew today when Jocelyn grabbed me... But Jim Traft didn't mean bad. I swear it."

  "Molly, he must have talked you out of your haid," said Dunn, amazed.

  "No. He didn't waste any time talkin'. I'd hardly got out in the moonlight. It was that white dress, Arch."

  "What white dress?"

  "The one Mrs. See bought for me. It's lovely. He--they--everybody there said I looked--"

  "You poor kid! Mebbe they was all to blame. Damn thet See woman, anyway."

  "Arch, let me put on the dress for you."

  "Molly, I don't need any white dress to know how pretty you are... An' I reckon I hold ag'in' Traft your defendin' him."

  "But that's not fair, Arch."

  He shook his shaggy head doggedly.

  "You cain't tell me honest thet Jim Traft didn't make you feel you was Molly Dunn of the Cibeque."

  "No, Arch, I--I can't. He did. He was shore surprised. An' he let out what he thought. Afterwards he tried to--to soften it. But--but then my heart was broke."

  Dunn made a swifter and more expressive movement of his hand, passionate and vindictive.

  "Hurtin' your feelin's thet way is a wuss insult than huggin' you," he declared, with a note of pathos in his anger.

  "It hurt like sixty, Arch. But he didn't mean it. There is a difference between Molly Dunn of the Cibeque an' Jim Traft from the East--rich, educated, with family name."

  "Ahuh. You said it, Molly. Family name. You're daughter of old John Dunn.

  An' sister to Slinger Dunn!"

  "I told him that."

  "Before or after?"

  "It was after, of course."

  "Shore it was. No, Mol, there ain't no overlookin' thet. He was only playin' with you. Shore, in some safer place he'd gone farther. Made a hussy of you!"

  "No!" cried Molly, poignantly, as if at the thrust of a blade. "An' you're givin' it away thet you'd let him go as far as he liked."

  "Oh, Arch! How can you--talk so!" sobbed Molly. "That's a lie. You're insultin' me."

  He shook his head gloomily, and averted his blazing eyes to hide their thought from her. Then he strode away, leaving, her there trembling and stricken.

  Chapter TWELVE

  For days Molly lived in a perpetual state of nervous dread of events that had cast their shadows.

  Arch remained in one of his brooding moods. He worked in the fields as if to make up for lost time. And he did not go to the village in the evenings. The Haverlys rode over every day or so and engaged him in long talks, which left Arch more taciturn than ever.

  Then one morning when Molly came down she saw Arch's horse saddled and carrying a small pack.

  "Where are you goin', Arch?" she asked, at breakfast.

 
"Up on the Diamond, an' I reckon you better stick around home," he replied, gruffly.

  "What're you--goin' for?" she dared ask.

  "Wal, fer one thing, to see if this outfit is lyin' to me. I didn't tell you thet Seth an' his new pard swear they posted a notice up north of the Diamond. They laid down the law fer thet drift fence. The Cibeque wouldn't stand fer the fence goin' farther than the haid of East Fork.

  Thet's in the saddle just under the Diamond. And if it was built farther it'd be laid down pronto."

  "What else you goin' for?" added Molly, anxiously.

  "Wal, I reckon you ought to know," he replied, with a dark glance on her.

  Molly in trepidation followed him out to his horse, where her mother would not hear. She laid a trembling hand on him, as he was about to mount. She did not know what to say. But terror of something possessed her. "Arch, if you really love me you--you won't--"

  He stared down at her, arrested by her agitation if not her words.

  "Who ever said anythin' aboot me lovin' you?" he asked.

  "No one. But you do, don't you?" she implored. "Somebody must love me or--or I cain't live."

  "You seem to've been tolerable healthy all along," he drawled.

  Nevertheless, he evaded the question.

  "I've only you to help me, Arch," she went on swiftly. "I'm tryin' hard not to run true to what they expect of Molly Dunn. An' I can be drove too far. 111 hate you if--if you--"

  But he was flint. Molly gathered that her emotion somehow augmented his suspicion of her.

  "You have run true to the Dunns, I reckon," he replied, bitterly and rode away.

  Molly hid up in the loft, tormented beyond endurance. When she could stand it up there no longer she climbed down and went out to look for her horse. She had not done her errands by horseback for a year or more, for the very good reason that she had no saddle and would not be seen in the village without one. The dignity of sixteen years had been embarrassing in many ways. Molly had ridden bareback since she was big enough to get on a horse.

  She found the pony in the unfenced north end of the clearing. He was wild and she did not easily corner him. But finally, when she had him and was patting his neck, she wondered what she had wanted him for. And she seemed struck with the fact that it was not beyond her to ride up on the Diamond to warn Jim Traft his life might be in danger. But worried as Molly was, she did not think that so dire a thing would threaten until the drift fence actually crossed the Diamond. Down in the valley the opinion was general that the barbed wire would never go so far. Moreover, Molly remembered more than once when Slinger Dunn had ridden off with intent to fight, and this morning he had not been like that.