CHAPTER 4. AT THE LAZY D RANCH
Helen Messiter was a young woman very much alive, which implies that shewas given to emotions; and as her machine skimmed over the ground tothe Lazy D she had them to spare. For from the first this young man hadtaken her eye, and it had come upon her with a distinct shock that hewas the notorious scoundrel who was terrorizing the countryside. Shetold herself almost passionately that she would never have believed itif he had not said so himself. She knew quite well that the coldnessthat had clutched her heart when he gave his name had had nothing to dowith fear. There had been chagrin, disappointment, but nothing in theleast like the terror she might have expected. The simple truth was thathe had seemed so much a man that it had hurt her to find him also a wildbeast.
Deep in her heart she resented the conviction forced upon her. Recklesshe undoubtedly was, at odds with the law surely, but it was hard toadmit that attractive personality to be the mask of fiendish crueltyand sinister malice. And yet--the facts spoke for themselves. He had noteven attempted a denial. Still there was a mystery about him, else howwas it possible for two so distinct personalities to dwell together inthe same body.
She hated him with all her lusty young will; not only for what he was,but also for what she had been disappointed in not finding him after herfirst instinctive liking. Yet it was with an odd little thrill thatshe ran down again into the coulee where her prosaic life had found itsfirst real adventure. He might be all they said, but nothing could wipeout the facts that she had offered her life to save his, and that hehad lent her his body as a living shield for one exhilarating moment ofdanger.
As she reached the hill summit beyond the coulee, Helen Messiterwas aware that a rider in ungainly chaps of white wool was rapidlyapproaching. He dipped down into the next depression without seeing her;and when they came face to face at the top of the rise the result wasinstantaneous. His pony did an animated two-step not on the programme.It took one glance at the diabolical machine, and went up on its hindlegs, preliminary to giving an elaborate exhibition of pitching. Therider indulged in vivid profanity and plied his quirt vigorously. Butthe bronco, with the fear of this unknown evil on its soul, varied itsbucking so effectively that the puncher astride its hurricane deck wasforced, in the language of his kind, to "take the dust."
His red head sailed through the air and landed in the white sand atthe girl's feet. For a moment he sat in the road and gazed with chagrinafter the vanishing heels of his mount. Then his wrathful eyes cameround to the owner of the machine that had caused the eruption. Hismouth had opened to give adequate expression to his feelings, when hediscovered anew the forgotten fact that he was dealing with a woman.His jaw hung open for an instant in amaze; and when he remembered theunedited vocabulary he had turned loose on the world a flood of purpleswept his tanned face.
She wanted to laugh, but wisely refrained. "I'm very sorry," was whatshe said.
He stared in silence as he slowly picked himself from the ground. Hisred hair rose like the quills of a porcupine above a face that had theappearance of being unfinished. Neither nose nor mouth nor chin seemedto be quite definite enough.
She choked down her gayety and offered renewed apologies.
"I was going for a doc," he explained, by way of opening his share ofthe conversation.
"Then perhaps you had better jump in with me and ride back to the LazyD. I suppose that's where you came from?"
He scratched his vivid head helplessly. "Yes, ma'am."
"Then jump in."
"I was going to Bear Creek, ma'am," he added dubiously.
"How far is it?"
"'Bout twenty-five miles, and then some."
"You don't expect to walk, do you?"
"No; I allowed--"
"I'll take you back to the ranch, where you can get another horse."
"I reckon, ma'am, I'd ruther walk."
"Nonsense! Why?"
"I ain't used to them gas wagons."
"It's quite safe. There is nothing to be afraid of."
Reluctantly he got in beside her, as happy as a calf in a branding pen.
"Are you the lady that sashaid off with Ned Bannister?" he askedpresently, after he had had time to smother successively some of hisfear, wonder and delight at their smooth, swift progress.
"Yes. Why?"
"The boys allow you hadn't oughter have done it." Then, to place theresponsibility properly on shoulders broader than his own, he added:"That's what Judd says."
"And who is Judd?"
"Judd, he's the foreman of the Lazy D."
Below them appeared the corrals and houses of a ranch nestling in alittle valley flanked by hills.
"This yere's the Lazy D," announced the youth, with pride, and in thespirit of friendliness suggested a caution. "Judd, he's some peppery.You wanter smooth him down some, seeing as he's riled up to-day."
A flicker of steel came into the blue eyes. "Indeed! Well, here we are."
"If it ain't Reddy, AND the lady with the flying machine," murmured afreckled youth named McWilliams, emerging from the bunkhouse with a panof water which had been used to bathe the wound of one of the puncturedcombatants.
"What's that?" snapped a voice from within; and immediately its ownerappeared in the doorway and bored with narrowed black eyes the youngwoman in the machine.
"Who are you?" he demanded, brusquely.
"Your target," she answered, quietly. "Would you like to take anothershot at me?"
The freckled lad broke out into a gurgle of laughter, at which theblack, swarthy man beside him wheeled round in a rage. "What youcacklin' at, Mac?" he demanded, in a low voice.
"Oh, the things I notice," returned that youth jauntily, meeting theother's anger without the flicker of an eyelid.
"It ain't healthy to be so noticin'," insinuated the other.
"Y'u don't say," came the prompt, sarcastic retort. "If you're such adarned good judge of health, y'u better be attending to some of yourpatients." He jerked a casual thumb over his shoulder toward the bunkson which lay the wounded men.
"I shouldn't wonder but what there might be another patient for me toattend to," snarled the foreman.
"That so? Well, turn your wolf loose when y'u get to feelin' realdevilish," jeered the undismayed one, strolling forward to assist MissMessiter to alight.
The mistress of the Lazy D had been aware of the byplay, but she hadcaught neither the words nor their import. She took the offered brownhand smilingly, for here again she looked into the frank eyes of theWest, unafraid and steady. She judged him not more than twenty-two,but the school where he had learned of life had held open and strenuoussession every day since he could remember.
"Glad to meet y'u, ma'am," he assured her, in the current phrase of thesemi-arid lands.
"I'm sure I am glad to meet YOU," she answered, heartily. "Can you tellme where is the foreman of the Lazy D?"
He introduced with a smile the swarthy man in the doorway. "This is himma'am--Mr. Judd Morgan."
Now it happened that Mr. Judd Morgan was simmering with suppressedspleen.
"All I've got to say is that you had no business mixing up in thatshootin' affair back there. Perhaps you don't know that the man yousaved is Ned Bannister, the outlaw," was his surly greeting.
"Oh, yes, I know that."
"Then what d'ye mean--Who are you, anyway?" His insolent eyes coastedmalevolently over her.
"Helen Messiter is my name."
It was ludicrous to see the change that came over the man. He had beenprepared to bully her; and with a word she had pricked the bubble of hisarrogance. He swallowed his anger and got a mechanical smile in workingorder.
"Glad to see you here, Miss Messiter," he said, his sinister gazeattempting to meet hers frankly "I been looking for you every day."
"But y'u managed to surprise him, after all ma'am," chuckled Mac.
"Where's yo' hawss, Reddy?" inquired a tall young man, who had appearedsilently in the doorway of the bunkhouse.
Reddy pinked
violently. "I had an accident, Denver," he explained. "Thislady yere she--"
"Scooped y'u right off yore hawss. Y'u don't say," sympathized Mac sobreathlessly that even Reddy joined in the chorus of laughter that wentup at his expense.
The young woman thought to make it easy for him, and suggested anexplanation.
"His horse isn't used to automobiles, and so when it met this one--"
"I got off," interposed Reddy hastily, displaying a complexion like aboiled beet.
"He got off," Mac explained gravely to the increasing audience.
Denver nodded with an imperturbable face. "He got off."
Mac introduced Miss Messiter to such of her employees as were on hand."Shake hands with Miss Messiter, Missou," was the formula, the namealone varying to suit the embarrassed gentlemen in leathers. Each ofthem in turn presented a huge hand, in which her little one disappearedfor the time, and was sawed up and down in the air like a pump-handle.Yet if she was amused she did not show it; and her pleasure at meetingthe simple, elemental products of the plains outweighed a great deal hersense of the ludicrous.
"How are your patients getting along?" she presently asked of herforeman.
"I reckon all right. I sent Reddy for a doc, but--"
"He got off," murmured Mac pensively.
"I'll go rope another hawss," put in the man who had got off.
"Get a jump on you, then. Miss Messiter, would you like to look over theplace?"
"Not now. I want to see the men that were hurt. Perhaps I can help them.Once I took a few weeks in nursing."
"Bully for you, ma'am," whooped Mac. "I've a notion those boys aresufferin' for a woman to put the diamond-hitch on them bandages."
"Bring that suit-case in," she commanded Denver, in the gentlest voicehe had ever heard, after she had made a hasty inspection of the firstwounded man.
From the suit-case she took a little leather medicine-case, the kindthat can be bought already prepared for use. It held among other thingsa roll of medicated cotton, some antiseptic tablets, and a little steelinstrument for probing.
"Some warm water, please; and have some boiling on the range," were hernext commands.
Mac flew to execute them.
It was a pleasure to see her work, so deftly the skillful handsaccomplished what her brain told them. In admiring awe the punchersstood awkwardly around while she washed and dressed the hurts. Two ofthe bullets had gone through the fleshy part of the arm and left cleanwounds. In the case of the third man she had to probe for the lead, butfortunately found it with little difficulty. Meanwhile she soothed thevictim with gentle womanly sympathy.
"I know it hurts a good deal. Just a minute and I'll be through."
His hands clutched tightly the edges of his bunk. "That's all right,doc. You attend to roping that pill and I'll endure the grief."
A long sigh of relief went up from the assembled cowboys when she drewthe bullet out.
The sinewy hands fastened on the wooden bunk relaxed suddenly.
"'Frisco's daid," gasped the cook, who bore the title of Wun Hop forno reason except that he was an Irishman in a place formerly held by aChinese.
"He has only fainted," she said quietly, and continued with theantiseptic dressing.
When it was all over, the big, tanned men gathered at the entrance tothe calf corral and expanded in admiration of their new boss.
"She's a pure for fair. She grades up any old way yuh take her tothe best corn-fed article on the market," pronounced Denver, withenthusiasm.
"I got to ride the boundary," sighed Missou. "I kinder hate to go rightnow."
"Here, too," acquiesced another. "I got a round-up on Wind Creek to cutout them two-year-olds. If 'twas my say-so, I'd order Mac on that job."
"Right kind of y'u. Seems to me"--Mac's sarcastic eye trailed around toinclude all those who had been singing her praises--"the new queen ofthis hacienda won't have no trouble at all picking a prince consort whenshe gets round to it. Here's Wun Hop, not what y'u might call anxious,but ce'tainly willing. Then Denver's some in the turtle-dove business,according to that hash-slinger in Cheyenne. Missou might be induced toaccept if it was offered him proper; and I allow Jim ain't turned thecolor of Redtop's hair jest for instance. I don't want to leave out'Frisco and the other boys carrying Bannister's pills--"
"Nor McWilliams. I'd admire to include him," murmured Denver.
That sunburned, nonchalant youth laughed musically. "Sure thing. I'dhate to be left out. The only difference is--"
"Well?"
His roving eye circled blandly round. "I stand about one show in amillion. Y'u roughnecks are dead ones already."
With which cold comfort he sauntered away to join Miss Messiter andthe foreman, who now appeared together at the door of the ranchhouse,prepared to make a tour of the buildings and the immediate corrals.
"Isn't there a woman on the place?" she was asking Morgan.
"No'm, there ain't. Henderson's daughter would come and stay with y'u awhile I reckon."
"Please send for her at once, then, and ask her to come to-day."
"All right. I'll send one of the boys right away."
"How did y'u leave 'Frisco, ma'am?" asked Mac, by way of includinghimself easily.
"He's resting quietly. Unless blood-poisoning sets in they ought all todo well."
"It's right lucky for them y'u happened along. This is the hawss corral,ma'am," explained the young man just as Morgan opened his thin lips totell her.
Judd contrived to get rid of him promptly. "Slap on a saddle, Mac, andrun up the remuda so Miss Messiter can see the hawsses for herself," heordered.
"Mebbe she'd rather ride down and look at the bunch," suggested thecapable McWilliams.
As it chanced, she did prefer to ride down the pasture and look overthe place from on horseback. She was in love with her ranch already.Its spacious distances, the thousands of cattle and the horses, thesepicturesque retainers who served her even to the shedding of an enemy'sblood; they all struck an answering echo in her gallant young heartthat nothing in Kalamazoo had been able to stir. She bubbled over withenthusiasm, the while Morgan covertly sneered and McWilliams warmed tothe untamed youth in her.
"What about this man Bannister?" she flung out suddenly, after they hadcantered back to the house when the remuda had been inspected.
Her abrupt question brought again the short, tense silence she hadbecome used to expect.
"He runs sheep about twenty or thirty miles southwest of here,"explained McWilliams, in a carefully casual tone.
"So everybody tells me, but it seems to me he spills a good deal of leadon my men," she answered impatiently. "What's the trouble?"
"Last week he crossed the dead-line with a bunch of five thousandsheep."
"Who draws this dead-line?"
"The cattlemen got together and drew it. Your uncle was one of thosethat marked it off, ma'am."
"And Bannister crossed it?"
"Yes, ma'am. Yesterday 'Frisco come on him and one of his herders witha big bunch of them less than fifteen miles from here. He didn't know itwas Bannister, and took a pot-shot at him. 'Course Bannister came backat him, and he got Frisco in the laig."
"Didn't know it was Bannister? What difference WOULD that make?" shesaid impatiently.
Mac laughed. "What difference would it make, Judd?"
Morgan scowled, and the young man answered his own question. "We don'tany of us go out of our way more'n a mile to cross Bannister's trail,"he drawled.
"Do you wear this for an ornament? Are you upholstered with hardware tocatch the eyes of some girl?" she asked, touching with the end of herwhip the revolver in the holster strapped to his chaps.
His serene, gay smile flashed at her. "Are y'u ordering me to go out andget Ned Bannister's scalp?"
"No, I am not," she explained promptly. "What I am trying to discover iswhy you all seem to be afraid of one man. He is only a man, isn't he?"
A veil of ice seemed to fall over the boyish face and leave it ch
iseledmarble. His unspeaking eyes rested on the swarthy foreman as heanswered:
"I don't know what he is, ma'am. He may be one man, or he may be ahundred. What's more, I ain't particularly suffering to find out. Factis, I haven't lost any Bannisters."
The girl became aware that her foreman was looking at her with a warysilent vigilance sinister in its intensity.
"In short, you're like the rest of the people in this section. You'reafraid."
"Now y'u're shoutin', Miss Messiter. I sure am when it comes to shootin'off my mouth about Bannister."
"And you, Mr. Morgan?"
It struck her that the young puncher waited with a curious interest forthe answer of the foreman.
"Did it look like I was afraid this mawnin', ma'am?" he asked, withnarrowed eyes.
"No, you all seemed brave enough then, when you had him eight to one."
"I wasn't there," hastily put in McWilliams. "I don't go gunning for myman without giving him a show."
"I do," retorted Morgan cruelly. "I'd go if we was fifty to one. We'd'a' got him, too, if it hadn't been for Miss Messiter. 'Twas a chance weain't likely to get again for a year."
"It wasn't your fault you didn't kill him, Mr. Morgan," she said,looking hard at him. "You may be interested to know that your last shotmissed him only about six inches, and me about four."
"I didn't know who you were," he sullenly defended.
"I see. You only shoot at women when you don't know who they are." Sheturned her back on him pointedly and addressed herself to McWilliams."You can tell the men working on this ranch that I won't have any moresuch attacks on this man Bannister. I don't care what or who he is. Idon't propose to have him murdered by my employees. Let the law take himand hang him. Do you hear?"
"I ce'tainly do, and the boys will get the word straight," he replied.
"I take it since yuh are giving your orders through Mac, yuh don't needme any longer for your foreman," bullied Morgan.
"You take it right, sir," came her crisp reply. "McWilliams will be myforeman from to-day."
The man's face, malignant and wolfish, suddenly lost its mask. That shewould so promptly call his bluff was the last thing he had expected."That's all right. I reckon yuh think yuh know your own business, butI'll put it to yuh straight. Long as yuh live you'll be sorry for this."
And with that he wheeled away.
She turned to her new foreman and found him less radiant than she couldhave desired. "I'm right sorry y'u did that. I'm afraid y'u'll maketrouble for yourself," he said quietly.
"Why?"
"I don't know myself just why." He hesitated before adding: "They sayhim and Bannister is thicker than they'd ought to be. It's a cinch thathe's in cahoots somehow with that Shoshone bunch of bad men."
"But--why, that's ridiculous. Only this morning he was trying to killBannister himself."
"That's what I don't just savvy. There's a whole lot about that businessI don't get next to. I guess Bannister is at the head of them.Everybody seems agreed about that. But the whole thing is a tangle ofcontradiction to me. I've milled it over a heap in my mind, too."
"What are some of the contradictions?"
"Well, here's one right off the bat, as we used to say back in theStates. Bannister is a great musician, they claim; fine singer, andall that. Now I happen to know he can't sing any more than a bellowingyearling."
"How do you know?" she asked, her eyes shining with interest.
"Because I heard him try it. 'Twas one day last summer when I was outcutting trail of a bunch of strays down by Dead Cow Creek. The day washot, and I lay down behind a cottonwood and dropped off to sleep. WhenI awakened it didn't take me longer'n an hour to discover what had wokeme. Somebody on the other side of the creek was trying to sing. It wasce'tainly the limit. Pretty soon he come out of the brush and I seen itwas Bannister."
"You're sure it was Bannister?"
"If seeing is believing, I'm sure."
"And was his singing really so bad?"
"I'd hate ever to hear worse."
"Was he singing when you saw him?"
"No, he'd just quit. He caught sight of my pony grazing, and huntedcover real prompt."
"Then it might have been another man singing in the thicket."
"It might, but it wasn't. Y'u see, I'd followed him through the bush byhis song, and he showed up the moment I expected him."
"Still there might have been another man there singing."
"One chance in a million," he conceded.
A sudden hope flamed up like tow in her heart. Perhaps, after all, NedBannister was not the leader of the outlaws. Perhaps somebody else wasmasquerading in his name, using Bannister's unpopularity as a shield tocover his iniquities. Still, this was an unlikely hypothesis, she had toadmit. For why should he allow his good name to be dragged in the dustwithout any effort to save it? On a sudden impulse the girl confided herdoubt to McWilliams.
"You don't suppose there can be any mistake, do you? Somehow I can'tthink him as bad as they say. He looks awfully reckless, but one feelsone could trust his face."
"Same here," agreed the new foreman. "First off when I saw him my thinkwas, 'I'd like to have that man backing my play when I'm sitting in thegame with Old Man Hard Luck reaching out for my blue chips.'"
"You don't think faces lie, do you?"
"I've seen them that did, but, gen'rally speaking, tongues are a heaplikelier to get tangled with the truth. But I reckon there ain't anydoubt about Bannister. He's known over all this Western country."
The young woman sighed. "I'm afraid you're right."
Wyoming: A Story of the Outdoor West Page 4