by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XXIII
BILLY LOUISE GETS A SURPRISE
Frightened, worried, sick at heart because her crowding doubts andsuspicions had suddenly developed into black certainty just when shehad thought them dead forever, Billy Louise rode up the narrow, rockygorge. She had come to have a vague comprehension of the temptationWard must have felt. She had come to accept pityingly the possibilitythat the canker of old influences had eaten more deeply than appearedon the surface. She had set herself stanchly beside him as his friend,who would help him win back his self-respect. She felt sure that hemust suffer terribly with that keen, analytical mind of his, when hestopped to think at all. He had no warped ethics wherewith to ease hisconscience. She knew his ideas of right and wrong were asuncompromising as her own, and if he stole cattle, he did it with hiseyes wide open to the wrong he was doing. And yet--
"That's bad enough, but to try and fasten evidence on someone else!"Billy Louise gritted her teeth over the treachery of it. She believedhe had done that very thing. How could she help it? She had seen thecorral and had seen Ward ride away from it in the dusk of evening; orshe believed she had seen him, which was the same thing. She knew thatWard's prosperity was out of proportion with his visible resources.And she knew what lay behind him. Was his version of the past afterall the correct one? Might not the paragraph she had burned beennothing more than the truth?
Billy Louise fought for him; fought with her stern, youthful judgmentwhich was so uncompromising. It takes years of close contact with lifeto give one a sure understanding of human weakness and human endeavor.
At the ford, when Blue would have crossed and taken the trail home,Billy Louise reined him impulsively the other way. Until that instantshe had not intended to seek Ward, but once her fingers had twitchedthe reins against Blue's neck, she did not hesitate; she did not evenargue with herself. She just glanced up at the sun, saw that it wasnot yet noon--so much may happen in two or three hours!--and sent Blueup the hill at a lope.
She did not know what she would do or what she would say when she sawWard. She knew that she was full of bitterness and disappointment andchagrin. She had accused innocent persons of a crime. Ward had placedher in that position and compelled her to recant and apologize. Shehad offended Marthy beyond forgiveness--and Charlie Fox. Her faceburned with shame when she remembered the things she had said to them.Ward was the cause of that humiliation; and Ward was going to knowexactly what she thought of him; beyond that she did not go.
The two mares fed dispiritedly at the lowest corner of the field, theirhair rough with exposure to the winter winds and the storms, their ribsshowing. With all the hay he had put up, Ward might at least keep hishorses in better shape, Billy Louise censured, as she passed them by.A few head of cows and calves wandered aimlessly among the thinnestfringe of willows along the creek; they showed more ribs than did themares. Billy Louise pulled her lips tight. They did not look asthough they had been fed a forkful of hay all winter; your true rangeman or woman gets to know these things instinctively.
Farther along, Billy Louise heard a welcoming nicker and turned herhead. Here came Rattler, thin-flanked and rough-coated, trotting downa shallow gulley to meet Blue. The two horses chummed togetherwhenever Ward was at the Wolverine. Billy Louise pulled up and waitedtill Rattler reached her. He and Blue rubbed noses, and Blue laid backhis ears and shook his head with teeth bared, in playful pretense ofanger. Rattler kicked up his heels in disdain at the threat andtrotted alongside them.
Billy Louise rode with puckered eyebrows. Ward might neglect hisstock, but he would never neglect Rattler like this. And he must be athome, since here was his horse. Or else...
She struck Blue suddenly with her rein-ends and went clattering up thetrail where the snow lay in shaded, crusty patches rimmed with dirt.The trail was untracked save by the loose stock. Where was Ward? Whathad happened to him? She looked again at Rattler. There was no signof recent saddle-marks along his side, no telltale imprint of the cinchunder his belly. Where was Ward?
Blind, unreasoning terror filled Billy Louise. She struck Blue againand plunged into the icy creek-crossing near the stable. She stoppedthere just long enough to see how empty and desolate it was, and howthe horses and cattle had huddled against its sheltering wall out ofthe biting winds; and how the door was shut and fastened so that theycould not get in. She opened it and looked in, and shut it again.Then she turned and ran, white-faced, to the cabin. Where was Ward?What had happened to Ward? Thief or honest man, treacherous ortrue--what had happened to him?
Billy Louise saw the doorstep banked over with old, crusted snow. Herheart gave a jump and stopped still. She felt her knees shake underher. Her face seemed to pinch together, the flesh clinging close tothe bones. Her whole being seemed to contract with the deadly fearthat gripped her. It was like that chill morning when she had creptout of her cot and gone over to mommie's bed and had lifted mommie'shand that was hanging down....
She came to herself; she was running up the creek, away from the cabin.Running and stumbling over rocks, and getting tripped with herriding-skirt. She stopped, as soon as she realized what she was doing;she stopped and stood with her hands pressed hard against each side ofher face, forcing herself to calmness again--or at least to sanity.She had to go back. She told herself so, many times. "You've got togo back!" she repeated, as if to a second person. "You can't be such afool; you've got to go back. And you've got to go inside. You've gotto do it."
So Billy Louise went back to the cabin, slowly, with shaking legs and aheart that fluttered and stopped, fluttered and jumped and stopped, andmade her stagger as she walked. She reached the doorstep and stoodthere with her palms pressing hard against her cheeks again. "You'vegot to do it. You've got to!" she whispered to herself commandingly.
She never doubted that Ward was inside. She thought she would find himdead--dead and horrible, perhaps. No other solution seemed to fit thecircumstances. He was in there, dead. He had been dead for some time,because there were no saddle-marks on Rattler, and because the snow wascrusted over the doorstep with never a mark to break its smoothroundness. She had to go in. She was the person who must find him anddo what she could. She must do it, because he was Ward--her Ward.
It took courage to open that door, but Billy Louise had courage enoughto open it, and to step inside and close the door after her. She didnot look at anything in the cabin while she did it, though. She kepther eyelids down so that she only saw the floor directly in front ofthe door. She had a sense of relief that it looked perfectly natural,though dusty.
"Throw up your hands!" came hoarsely from the bunk. Billy Louisegasped and pulled her gun, and dropped crouching to the floor. Alsoshe looked up. She had not recognized that voice, and while she hadnever except in imagination faced an emergency like this, she hadplayed robbers and rescues too often not to have formed a mental habitto fit the situation. What she did she had done many, many times inher "pretend" world, sitting somewhere dreaming.
From her crouching position she looked into Ward's fever-wild eyes. Hewas sitting up in the bunk, and he was pointing his big forty-five ather relentlessly. "Get up from there!" he ordered sternly. "Don't tryany game like that on me, Buck Olney! Get up and go over and sit inthat chair. I've got a few things to say to you."
Billy Louise somehow grasped the truth, up to a certain point. Wardwas sick; so sick he didn't know her. She thought she would betterhumor him. She got up and went and sat in the chair as he directed.
Ward, keeping the gun pointing her way, sneered at her in a way thatmade the soul of Billy Louise crimple. She faced him big-eyed, tooamazed at the change in him to feel any fear that he would harm her.He had whiskers two inches long. She wouldn't have known him exceptfor his hair--and that was terribly tousled; and his eyes, though theywere wild and angry. His voice was hoarse, and while he glared at her,he coughed with a hard, croupy resonance.
"So you came back, did yuh?" he as
ked grimly at last. "Well, youdidn't get a chance to plug me in the back. How long did you lay upthere on the bluff this time, waiting to catch me when I wasn'tlooking? I've been wishing I'd loft that rope so it would have hungyou, you damned ------!" (Billy Louise listened round-eyed to certainman-sized epithets strange to her ears.)
"I suppose you and Foxy and that halfbreed have been fixing up somemore evidence, huh? You figure that I can't catch 'em this time andwork the brands over, so they'll stand Y6es, and I'll get railroaded tothe pen. Well, you've overplayed your hand, old-timer. I let youfellows down easy, last time. I don't reckon Foxy objected much tothose few I turned back to him, and I don't reckon you did any kickingwhen you found I'd cut the rope so it wouldn't hold your rottencarcass. You can't let well enough alone, though. You thought you'draise me, did you? You thought you'd come back and try another whackat me behind my back. You knew damned well I wasn't the kind of manthat would jump the country. You knew you'd find me right here,attending to my business like I've always done.
"But you've overplayed your hand. This time I'm going to get you--andFoxy and the breed along with you. It was a damned, rotten trick,running Y6es over Seabeck's brand. If I hadn't caught you in the act,you'd have planted them cattle where all hell couldn't have saved mewhen they were found. If I hadn't caught you at it and run MKmonograms over the whole cheese, I'd have been up against it for fair.So now you're going to get what's coming to yuh. I won't take anychances on your not trying it again. I'm going to protect myself right.
"You throw that gun on the bed." (Billy Louise did so, her eyes stillupon Ward's flushed face.) "Now, get down that tablet from the shelf.Here's a pencil." He drew one from under his pillow and tossed ittoward her. "Now you write the truth about all this rustling. It's abigger thing than shows right in this neighborhood. I know that. AndI know too that Foxy has been pulling down some on the side. He neverpaid for all the stock that's running around vented and rebranded MK.I've got that sized up. Pretty smooth trick, too; a heap better thanworking brands. He ought to have been satisfied with that--but a crooknever is satisfied. I knew he wasn't the tenderfoot he tried to makeout, and when I saw some of his stock and that gate fixed to ring abell when it was opened, I knew he was a crook. But he made a bigmistake when he threw in with you, you--
"I want you to write down the truth about that Hardup deal; who was inwith you. I know, all right, but I want it down on paper. And I wantto know how long Foxy's been in with you, and who's working the game onthe outside. Get busy; write it all down. I'll give you all the timeyou need; don't leave out anything. Dates and all, I want the wholegraft. Don't try to get away. I've got this gun loaded to the guards,and you know I'm aching for an excuse--" He stopped and coughed again,hoarsely, rackingly. Then he lay quiet, except for his rasping breathand watched.
Billy Louise, with the tablet on her trembling knees, pretended towrite. From under her lashes she watched Ward curiously. She saw hisattention waver, saw his eyes wander aimlessly about the room. She satvery still and waited, making scrawly marks that had no meaning at all.She saw Ward's fingers loosen on the revolver, saw his head turnwearily on the pillow. He was staring out through the window at thebrilliant blue of the sky with the dazzling white clouds drifting likebits of cotton to the northward. He had forgotten her.