by B. M. Bower
“Oh—why no, of course not!” The hoarseness broke slightly, here and there. A worried tone was faintly manifesting itself.
“And I was wondering when you are coming to take me for another ride!”
“Why—ah—just as soon as I can, Miss Venus. You know my time ain’t my own—but maybe Sunday I could git off.”
“How nice! What a bad cold you have! How did you catch, it?” Sweetly solicitous now, that voice.
“Why, I dunno—”
“Was it from going without your coat when we were riding last time?”
“I—yes, I guess it was; but that don’t matter. I’d be willing to ketch a dozen colds riding with you. It don’t matter at all.”
“Oh, but it does! It matters a great deal—Dearie! Did you really think I was that nasty Mary V Selmer calling you up?”
“Why, no, I—I was just talking to her father—but as soon as I—I was thinking maybe the old man had forgot something, and had her—uh course I knowed your voice right away—sweetheart.” That was very daring. The man’s forehead was all beaded with perspiration by this time, and it was not the heat that caused it. “You know I wouldn’t talk to her if I didn’t have to.” It is very difficult to speak in honeyed accents that would still carry a bullfrog hoarseness, but the man tried it, nevertheless.
“Dearie! Honest?”
“You know it!” He was bolder now that he knew endearing terms were accepted as a matter of course.
“Oo-oo! I believe you’re fibbing. You kept calling me Miss Venus just as if—you—liked somebody else better. Just for that, I’m not going to talk another minute. And you needn’t call up, either—for I shall not answer!”
She hung up the receiver, and the man, once he was sure of it, did likewise. He wiped his forehead, damned all women impartially as a thus-and-so nuisance that would queer a man’s game every time if he wasn’t sharp enough to meet their plays, and went outside. He still felt very well satisfied with himself, but his satisfaction was tempered with thankfulness that he was clever enough to fool that confounded girl. All the way back to his horse he was trying to “place” the voice and the name.
Some one within riding distance, it must be—some one visiting in the country. He sure didn’t know of any ranch girl named Venus. After awhile he felt he could afford to grin over the incident. “Never knowed the difference,” he boasted as he rode away. “Nine men outa ten woulda overplayed their hand, right there.”
Just how far he had overplayed his hand, that man never knew. Far enough to send Mary V to her room rather white and scared; shaking, too, with excitement. She stood by the window, looking out at the moon-lighted yard with its wind-beaten flowers. To save her life she could not help recalling the story of Little Red Riding Hood, nor could she rid herself of the odd sensation of having talked with the Wolf. Though she did not, of course, carry the simile so far as to liken Johnny Jewel to the Grandmother.
She did not know what to do—a strange sensation for Mary V, I assure you. Once she got as far as the door, meaning to go out on the porch and tell her dad that somebody was down at Sinkhole Camp pretending that he was Johnny Jewel when he was nothing of the sort, and that the boys had better go right straight down there and see what was the matter.
She did not get farther than the door, however, and for what would seem a very trifling reason; she did not want her dad to know that she had been trying to talk to Johnny over the ’phone.
She went back to the window. Who was down there pretending to be Johnny Jewel? And what, in heaven’s name, was he doing it for? She remembered the Mexican who had ridden up that day and pretended that he wanted matches, and how he had returned to the camp almost as soon as she had left. But the man who had talked with her was not a Mexican. No one but a white man—and a range man, she added to herself—would say, “Uh course I knowed yore voice.” And he had not really had a cold. Mary V’s ears were sharper than her dad’s, for she had caught the make-believe in the hoarseness. She knew perfectly well that Johnny Jewel might be hoarse as a crow and never talk that way. Johnny never said “Uh course I knowed,” and Johnny would choke before he’d ever call her sweetheart. He wouldn’t have let that man do it, either, had Johnny been present in the cabin, she suspected shrewdly.
Being an impulsive young person who acted first and did her thinking afterwards, Mary V did exactly what she should not have done. She decided forthwith that she would take a long moonlight ride.
CHAPTER NINE
A MIDNIGHT RIDE
“Mary V, what are you doing in the kitchen? Remember, I told you you shouldn’t make any more fudge for a week. I don’t want any more sessions with Bedelia like I had last time you left the kitchen all messed up with your candy. What are you doing?”
Mary V licked a dab of loganberry jelly from her left thumb and answered with her face turned toward the open window nearest the porch where her mother sat rocking peacefully.
“Oh, for gracious sake, mom! I’m only putting up a little lunch before I go to bed. I’m going to take my rides earlier, after this, and it wouldn’t be kind for me to wake the whole house up at daybreak, getting my lunch ready—”
“If you’re going at daybreak, why do you need a lunch? If you think I’ll permit you to stay out in the heat all day without any breakfast—”
“Well, mom! I can’t take pictures at daybreak, can I? I’ve got to stay out till the light is strong enough. And there’s a special place I want, and if I go early, I can get back early; before lunch, at the very latest. Do you want me to go without anything to eat?”
“Seems to me you’re running them ‘Desert Glimpses’ into the ground,” her mother grumbled comfortably. “You’ve got a stack higher than your head, now. And some of these days you’ll get bit with a snake or a centipede or—”
“Centipedes don’t bite. They grab with their toes. My goodness, mom! A person’s got to do something! I don’t see what harm there is in my riding horseback in the early morning. It’s a healthful form of exercise—”
“It’s a darn fad, and you’ll go back to school looking like a squaw—and serve you right. It’s getting along towards the time when snakes go blind. You want to be careful, Mary V—”
“Oh, piffle! I’ve lived here all my life, just about, and I never saw a person bitten with a snake. And neither did you, mom, and you know it. But, of course, if you insist on making me sit in the house day in and day out—” Mary V cut two more slices of bread and began spreading them liberally with butter. She looked very grieved, and very determined.
“Oh, nobody ever made you sit in the house yet. They’d have to tie you hand and foot to do it,” came the placid retort. “Don’t you go helping yourself to that new jelly, Mary V. The old has got to be used up first. And you wipe off the sink when you’re through messing around. Bedelia’s hinting that she’s going to quit when her month is up. It don’t help me a mite to keep her calmed down when you leave a mess for her every time you go near the kitchen. She says she’s sick and tired of cleaning up after you. You know what’ll happen if she does quit, Mary V. You’ll be getting your ‘Desert Glimpses’ out the kitchen window for a month or so, washing dishes while we scurrup around after another cook. Bedelia—”
“Oh, plague take Bedelia!” snapped Mary V. But she nevertheless spent precious minutes wiping the butcher knife on Bedelia’s clean dish towel, and putting away the butter and the bread, and mopping up the splatters of loganberry jam. Getting her “Desert Glimpses” through the kitchen window formed no part of Mary V’s plans or desires.
They seemed to Mary V to be precious minutes, although they would otherwise have been spent in the wearisome task of waiting until the ranch was asleep. She took her jam sandwiches and pickles and cake to her room, chirping a blithe good-night to her unsuspecting parents. Then, instead of going to bed as she very plainly indicated to those guileless parents that she meant to do, she clothed herself in her riding breeches, shirt, and coat, and was getting her riding shoes and
puttees out of the closet when she heard her mother coming.
A girl can do a good deal in a minute, if she really bestirs herself. Her mother found Mary V sitting before her dressing table with her hair hanging down her back. She was enfolded in a very pretty pink silk kimono, and she was leisurely dabbing cold cream on her chin and cheeks with her finger tips.
“Be sure you take your goggles with you, Mary V. I notice your eyelids are all red and inflamed lately when you come in from your rides. And do put them on and wear them if the wind comes up. It’s easier to take a little trouble preventing sore eyes and sunburn than it is to cure them. And don’t stay out late in the heat.”
“All right, mommie.” Drawing her kimono closer about her, Mary V put her face up to be kissed. Her mother hesitated, looking dubiously at the cream dabs, compromised with a peck on Mary V’s forehead, and went away. Mary V braided her hair, put on a pair of beaded moccasins, buckled on her six-shooter and gathered together her other paraphernalia. She waited an hour by her wrist watch, but even that sixty minutes of inaction did not bring her better judgment to the rescue.
Sober judgment had no place in her thoughts. Instead, she spent the time in wondering if Tango would let her catch him in the corral; in fretting because she must wait at all, when there was no telling what might have happened at Sinkhole; and in giving audience to a temptation that came with the lagging minutes and began persuading her that Tango was too slow for the trip she had before her; and in climbing into bed, turning over three times and climbing out again, leaving the light covering in its usual heap in the middle.
It was half-past nine when she climbed out of her window with her riding shoes and puttees, her lunch and her camera and her field glasses, in a bundle under one arm. She went in her moccasins until she had passed the bunk house and reached the shed where she kept her saddle.
A dozen horses were dozing over by the feed rack in the corral, and Mary V’s eyes strayed often that way while she was clothing her feet for the ride. Tango was a good little horse, but he was not the horse for a heroine to ride when she went out across the desert at midnight to rescue—er—a good-for-nothing, conceited, quarrelsome, altogether unbearable young man whom she thoroughly hated, but who was, after all, a human being and therefore to be rescued when necessary.
Would she dare—? Mary V hurried the last puttee buckle, picked up her bridle and a battered feed pan, and went quietly across the corral. Wondering if she would dare made her daring.
Most of the horses sidled off from her approach and began to circle slowly to the far side of the corral. Tango lifted his head and looked at her reproachfully, moved his feet as though tempted to retreat, and thought better of it. What was the use? Mary V always did what she wanted to do; if not in one way, then in another. Knowing her so well, Tango stood still.
Mary V smiled. Just beyond him another horse also stood still. A tall, big-chested, brilliant-eyed brown, with a crinkly mane, forelock, and tail, and with a reputation that made his name familiar to men in other counties. His official name was Messenger, but the boys called him Jake for short. They also asserted pridefully that he had “good blood in him.” He belonged to Bill Hayden, really, but the whole Rolling R outfit felt a proprietary interest in him because he had “cleaned up” every horse in southern Arizona outside the professional class.
Ordinarily Mary V would never have thought of such a thing as riding Jake. She would have considered it as much as her life was worth to put her saddle on him without first asking Bill. Once she had asked Bill, and Bill had looked as if she had asked for his toothbrush; shocked, incredulous, as though he could not believe his ears. “Well, I should sa-ay not!” Bill had replied when she had made it plain that she expected an answer.
Ordinarily that would be accepted as final, even by Mary V. But ordinarily Mary V did not climb out of her bedroom window to ride all night, even though there was a perfectly intoxicating moon. Certainly not to a far line-camp where a young man lived alone, just to ask him why some one else answered his telephone for him.
Tonight was her night for extraordinary behavior, evidently. She certainly showed that she had designs on Jake. She held out the feed pan, and gritted her teeth when Tango gratefully ducked his nose into it. She let him have one quivery-lipped nibble, and pushed the pan ingratiatingly toward the black muzzle beyond.
Jake was not a bronk. Having “good blood” he was tame to a degree. He knew Mary V very well by sight, and, if horses can talk, he had no doubt learned a good deal about her from his friend Tango, who usually came home with a grievance. Jake accepted the feed pan graciously, and he did not shy off when Mary V pushed Tango out of her way and began to smooth Jake’s crinkly mane and coax him with endearing words. After a little he permitted her to slip the bridle reins over his head, and to press the bit gently into his mouth. She set the pan on the ground and so managed to tuck his stiff, brown ears under the headstall, and to pull out his forelock comfortably while he nosed the pan. The bridge was too small for Jake, but Mary V thought it would do, since she was in a great hurry and the buckles would be stiff and hard to open. The throat latch would not fasten where Tango always wore it, but went down three holes farther. Jake was bigger than she had thought.
But she led him over to the shed door and adjusted the saddle blanket and, standing on her tip-toes, managed to heave her saddle into place. The cinch had to be let out too. Mary V was trembling with impatience to be gone, now that she had two heinous sins loaded upon her conscience instead of one, but she knew better than to start off before her saddle was right. And, impressed now with the size of Jake, she stood on a box and let out the headstall two holes.
Jake did not seem to approve of her camera and canteen and field glasses and rifle, and stepped restlessly away from her when she went to tie them on. So she compromised on the canteen and field glasses, and hid camera and rifle under some sacks in the shed. It seemed to her that she would never get started; as though daylight—and Bill Hayden—would come and find her still in a nightmare struggle with the details of departure. Back of all that the thought of that strange, disguised voice talking for Johnny Jewel nagged at her nerves as something sinister and mysterious.
She led Jake by a somewhat roundabout way to the gate, opened it and closed it behind them before she attempted to mount. Jake was very tall—much taller than he had ever before seemed to be. She had to hunt a high spot and coax him to stand on the lower ground beside it before she could feel confidence enough to lift her toe to the stirrup. Bill Hayden always danced around a good deal on one foot, she remembered, before he essayed to swing up. Standing on an ant hill did not permit much of the preliminary dancing around to which Jake was accustomed, so Mary V caught reins and saddle horn and made a desperate, flying leap.
She landed in the saddle, found the stirrups and cried, “You, Jake!” in a not altogether convincing tone. Jake was walking on his hind feet by way of intimating that he objected to so tight a rein. After that he danced sidewise, fought for his head, munched the strange bit angrily, snorted and made what the boys called Jake’s chain-lightnin’ gitaway.
Mary V knew that Jake was running away with her, but since he was running along the trail to Sinkhole camp she did not mind so much as you might think. At the worst he would fall down and she would get a “spill.” She knew the sensation, having been spilled several times. So she gripped him tightly with her strong young knees and let him run. And after the first shock of dismay, she thrilled to the swift flight, with a guilty exultation in what she had done.
Jake ran a couple of miles before he showed any symptom of slowing. After that he straightened out in a long, easy lope that was a sheer delight to Mary V, though she knew it must not be permitted for very long, because Jake had a good many miles to cover before daylight. She brought him down gradually to a swinging, “running walk” that would have kept any ordinary saddle horse trotting to match for speed, and although he still mouthed the strange bit pettishly, he carried Mary V over
the trail with a kingly graciousness that instilled a deep respect into that arrogant young lady.
Tango, I think, would have been amazed to see how Mary V refrained from bullying her mount that night. There was no mane-pulling, no little, nipping pinches of the neck to imitate the bite of a fly, no scolding—nothing that Tango had come to take for granted when Mary V bestrode him.
It was only a little after one o’clock when Mary V, holding Jake down to a walk, nervously passed the empty corral at Sinkhole Camp. She paused awhile in the shadows, wondering what she had better do next. After all, it would be awkward to investigate the interior of the little cabin that squatted there so silently under the moon. She hesitated to dismount. Frankly, Mary V felt much safer with a fleet horse under her, and she was afraid that she might not be so lucky next time in mounting. So she began to reconnoiter warily on horseback.
She rode up to the window of the little shed, and saw that it was empty. She rode inside the corral and made a complete circuit of the fence, and saw nothing whatever of Johnny’s saddle and bridle. They would be somewhere around, surely, if he were here. She avoided the cabin, but rode down to the pasture in the creek bottom where Johnny’s extra horse would be feeding. The horse was there, and came trotting lonesomely up to the fence when he saw Jake. But there was only the one horse, which seemed to prove that the other horse was with the saddle and bridle—wherever they were.
Mary V returned to the corral, still keeping far enough away from the cabin to hide the sound of Jake’s hoof beats from any one within. She tied the horse to a corral post and went on foot to the cabin. She carried her six-shooter in her hand, and she carried in her throat a nervous fluttering.
First she sidled up to a window and listened, then peered in. She could see nothing, for the moon had slid over toward the west, and the room was a blur of shade. But it was also silent, depressingly silent. She crept around to the door, and found that it was fastened on the outside.