Dorn Of The Mountains (20 page)

Roy paused as if to gain force or to choose his words. His tale now appeared all directed to Bo, who gazed at him, spellbound, a fascinated listener.

“Before I got to Turner’s door…an’ that was only a little ways…I heard Las Vegas yell. Did you ever hear him? Wal, he’s got the wildest yell of any cowpuncher I ever heard. Quick-like I opened the door an’ slipped in. There was Riggs an’ Las Vegas alone in the center of the big saloon, with the crowd edgin’ to the walls an’ slidin’ back of the bar. Riggs was whiter’n a dead man. I didn’t hear an’ I don’t know what Las Vegas yelled at him. But Riggs knew an’ so did the gang. All of a sudden every man there shore seen in Las Vegas what Riggs had always bragged
he
was. Thet time comes to every man like Riggs.

“ ‘What’d you call me?’ he asked, his jaw shakin’.

“ ‘I ain’t called you yet,’ answered Las Vegas. ‘I just whooped.’

“ ‘What d’ye want?’

“ ‘You scared my girl.’

“ ‘The hell ye say. Who’s she?’ blustered Riggs, an’ he began to take quick looks around. But he never moved a hand. There was somethin’ tight about the way he stood. Las Vegas had both arms half out, stretched as if he meant to leap. But he didn’t. I never seen Las Vegas do that, an’, when I seen him then, I understood it.

“ ‘You know. An’ you threatened her an’ her sister. Go for your gun,’ called Las Vegas, low and sharp.

“That put the crowd right an’ nobody moved. Riggs turned green then. I almost felt sorry for him. He began to shake so he’d’ve dropped a gun if he had pulled one.

“ ‘Hyar, you’re off…some mistake…. I ain’t seen no girls…I….’

“ ‘Shut up an’ draw!’ yelled Las Vegas. His voice just pierced holes in the roof an’ it might have been a bullet from the way Riggs collapsed. Every man seen in a second more thet Riggs wouldn’t an’ couldn’t draw. He was afraid for his life. He was not what he had claimed to be. I don’t know if he had any friends there. But, in the West, good men an’ bad men, all alike, have no use for Riggs’s kind. An’ thet stony quiet broke with haw-haw. It shore was as pitiful to see Riggs as it was fine to see Las Vegas.

“When he dropped his arms then I knowed there would be no gun play. An’ then Las Vegas got red in the face. He slapped Riggs with one hand, then with the other. An’ he began to cuss Riggs. I shore never knowed thet nice spoken Las Vegas Carmichael could use such language. It was a stream of the baddest names known out here, an’ I caught somethin’ like low-down an’ sneak an’ four-flush an’ long-haired skunk, but for the most part they was just the cussedest kind of names. An’ Las Vegas spouted them till he was black in the face, an’ foamin’ at the mouth, an’ hoarser’n a bawlin’ cow.

“When he got out of breath from cussin’, he punched Riggs all about the saloon, threw him outdoors, knocked him down, an’ kicked him till he got up, an’ then kept kickin’ him down the road with the whole haw-hawin’ gang behind. An’ he drove him out of town!”

For two days Bo was confined to her bed, suffering considerable pain, and subject to fever during which she talked irrationally. Some of this talk afforded Helen as vast an amusement as she was certain it would have lifted Tom Carmichael to a seventh heaven.

The third day, however, Bo was better, and, refusing to remain in bed, she hobbled to the sitting room, where she divided her time between staring out of the window toward the corrals and pestering Helen with questions she tried to make appear casual. But Helen saw through her case and was in a state of glee. What she hoped most for was that Carmichael would suddenly develop a little less inclination for Bo. It was that kind of treatment the young lady needed. And now was the great opportunity. Helen almost felt tempted to give the cowboy a hint.

Neither this day, nor the next, however, did he put in an appearance at the house, although Helen saw him twice on her rounds. He was busy, as usual, and greeted her as if nothing particular had happened.

Roy called twice, once in the afternoon, and again during the evening. He grew more likeable upon longer acquaintance. This last visit he rendered Bo speechless by teasing her about another girl Carmichael was going to take to a dance. Bo’s face showed that her vanity could not believe this statement, but that her intelligence of young men credited it with being possible. Roy evidently was as penetrating as he was kind. He made a dry, casual little remark about the snow never melting on the mountains during the latter part of March, and the look with which he accompanied this remark brought a blush to Helen’s cheek.

After Roy had departed, Bo said to Helen: “Confound that fellow! He sees right through me.”

“My dear, you’re rather transparent these days,” murmured Helen.

“You needn’t talk. He gave you a dig,” retorted Bo. “He just knows you’re dying to see the snow melt.”

“Gracious! I hope I’m not as bad as that. Of course, I want the snow melted and spring to come and flowers….”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” taunted Bo. “Nell Rayner, do you see any green in my eyes? Spring to come! Yes, the poet said in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thought of love. But that poet meant a young woman.”

Helen gazed out of the window at the white stars.

“Nell, have you seen him…since I was hurt?” continued Bo with an effort.

“Him? Who?”

“Oh, who do you suppose? I mean
Tom!
” she responded, and the last word came with a burst.

“Tom! Who’s he?
Ah,
you mean Las Vegas. Yes, I’ve seen him.”

“Well, did he ask a-…about me?”

“I believe he did ask how you were…something like that.”

“
Humph!
Nell, I don’t always trust you” After that she relapsed into silence, read a while, and dreamed a while, looking into the fire, and then she limped over to kiss Helen good night and left the room.

Next day she was rather quiet, seeming upon the verge of one of the dispirited spells she got infrequently. Early in the evening just after the lights had been lit, and she had joined Helen in the sitting room, a familiar step sounded on the loose boards of the porch.

Helen went to the door to admit Carmichael. He was clean-shaven, dressed in his dark suit, which presented such marked contrast from his riding garb, and he wore a flower in his buttonhole. Nevertheless, despite all this style, he seemed more than usually the cool, easy, careless cowboy.

“ ‘Evenin’, Miss Helen,” he said as he stalked in. “ ‘Evenin’, Miss Bo. How are you-all?”

Helen returned his greeting with a welcoming smile.

“Good evening…
Tom,
” said Bo demurely.

That assuredly was the first time she had ever called him Tom. As she spoke, she looked distractingly pretty and tantalizing. But if she had calculated to floor Carmichael with that initial, half-promising, wholly mocking use of his name, she had reckoned without cause. The cowboy received that greeting as if he had heard her use it a thousand times or had not heard it at all. Helen decided if he was acting a part, he was certainly a clever actor. He puzzled her somewhat, but she liked his look, and his easy manner, and the something about him that must have been his unconscious sense of pride. He had gone far enough, perhaps too far in his overtures to Bo.

“How are you feelin’?” he asked.

“I’m better today,” she replied with downcast eyes. “But I’m lame yet.”

“Reckon that bronc’ piled you up. Miss Helen said that shore wasn’t any joke about the cut on your knee. Now a fellar’s knee is a bad place to hurt, if he has to keep on ridin’.”

“Oh, I’ll be well soon. How’s Sam? I hope he wasn’t crippled.”

“Thet Sam…why he’s so tough he never knowed he had a fall.”

“Tom…I…I want to thank you for giving Riggs what he deserved.” She spoke it earnestly, eloquently, and for once she had no sly little intonation or pert allurement, such as was her wont to use on this infatuated young man.

“
Aw
, you heard about that,” replied Carmichael with a wave of his hand to make light of it. “Nothin’ much. It had to be done. An’ shore I was afraid of Roy. He’d’ve been mad. An’ so would any of the other boys. I’m sorta lookin’ out for all of them, you know, actin’ as Miss Helen’s foreman now.”

Helen was unutterably tickled. The effect of his speech upon Bo was stupendous. He had disarmed her. He had, with the firmness and tact and suavity of a diplomat, removed himself from obligation, and the detachment of self, the casual thing he apparently made out of his magnificent championship was bewildering and humiliating to Bo. She sat silently for a moment or two while Helen tried to fit easily into the conversation. It was not likely that Bo would long be at a loss for words, and also it was immensely probable that with a flash of her wonderful spirit she would turn the tables on her perverse lover in a twinkling. Anyway, plain it was that a lesson had sunk deep. She looked startled, hurt, wistful, and finally sweetly defiant.

“But…you told Riggs I was your girl!” Thus Bo unmasked her battery. And Helen could not imagine how Carmichael would ever resist that and the soft arch glance that accompanied it.

Helen did not yet know the cowboy, any more than did Bo.

“Shore. I had to say that. I had to make it strong before that gang. I reckon it was presumin’ of me, an’ I shore apologize.”

Bo stared at him, and then, giving a little gasp, she drooped.

“Wal, I just run in to say howdy an’ to inquire after you-all,” said Carmichael. “I’m goin’ to the dance, an’ as Flo lives out of town a ways, I’d shore better rustle.…Good night, Miss Bo, I hope you’ll be ridin’ Sam soon. An’ good night, Miss Helen.”

Bo roused to a very friendly and laconic little speech, much overdone. Carmichael strode out, and Helen, bidding him good bye, closed the door after him.

The instant he had departed Bo’s transformation was tragic.

“Flo! He meant Flo Stubbs…that ugly crossed-eyed bold little frump!”

“Bo!” expostulated Helen. “The young lady is not beautiful, I grant, but she’s very nice and pleasant. I like her.”

“Nell Rayner, men are no good! And cowboys are the worst!” declared Bo terribly.

“Why didn’t you appreciate Tom when you had him?” asked Helen.

Bo had been growing furious, but now the allusion, in the past tense, to the conquest she had suddenly and amazingly found dear, quite broke her spirit. It was a very pale, unsteady, and miserable girl who avoided Helen’s gaze and left the room.

Next day Bo was not approachable from any direction. Helen, running often in upon Bo, found her victim to a multiplicity of moods, ranging from woe to dire dark broodings, from them to wistfulness, and at last to a pride that sustained her.

Late in the afternoon, at Helen’s leisure hour, when she and Bo were in the sitting room, horses tramped into the court, and footsteps mounted the porch. Opening to a loud knock, Helen was surprised to see Beasley. And out in the court were several mounted horse men. Helen’s heart sank. This visit indeed had been foreshadowed.

“ ‘Afternoon, Miss Rayner,” said Beasley, doffing his sombrero. “I’ve called on a little business deal. Will you see me?”

Helen acknowledged his greeting while she thought rapidly. She might just as well see him, and have that inevitable interview done with.

“Come in,” she said, and, when he had entered, she closed the door. “My sister, Mister Beasley.”

“How d’you do, miss,” said the rancher in bluff loud voice.

Bo acknowledged the introduction with a frigid little bow.

At close range Beasley seemed a forceful personality as well as a rather handsome man of perhaps thirty-five, heavy of build, swarthy of skin, and sloe-black of eye, like that of a Mexican whose blood was reported to be in him. He looked crafty, confident, and self-centered. If Helen had never heard of him before that visit, she would have distrusted him.

“I’d’ve called sooner, but I was waitin’ for old Jos? the Mexican who herded for me when I was pardner to your uncle,” said Beasley, and he sat down to put his huge gloved hands on his knees.

“Yes?” queried Helen interrogatively.

“Jos?rustled over from Magdalena, an’ now I can back up my claim…. Miss Rayner, this hyar ranch ought to be mine an’ is mine. It wasn’t so big or so well stocked when Al Auchincloss beat me out of it. I reckon I’ll allow for that. I’ve paper, and old Jos?for witness. An’ I calculate you’ll pay me eighty thousand dollars, or else I’ll take over the ranch.”

Beasley spoke in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone that certainly seemed sincere, and his manner was blunt, but perfectly natural.

“Mister Beasley, your claim is no news to me,” responded Helen quietly. “I’ve heard about it. And I questioned my uncle. He swore on his deathbed that he did not owe you a dollar. Indeed, he claimed the indebtedness was yours to him. I could find nothing in his papers. So I must repudiate your claim. I will not take it seriously.”

“Miss Rayner, I can’t blame you for takin’ Al’s word against mine,” said Beasley. “An’ your stand is natural. But you’re a stranger here an’ you know nothin’ of struck deals in these ranges. It ain’t fair to speak bad of the dead, but the truth is that Al Auchincloss got his start by stealin’ sheep an’ unbranded cattle. Thet was the start of every rancher I know. It was mine. An’ we none of us ever thought of it as rustlin’.”

Helen could only stare her surprise and doubt at this statement.

“Talk’s cheap anywhere, an’ in the West talk ain’t much at all,” continued Beasley. “I’m no talker. I jest want to tell my case an’ make a deal if you’ll have it. I can prove more in black an’ white, an’ with witness, than you can. Thet’s my case. The deal I’d make is this…. Let’s marry an’ settle a bad deal that way.”

The man’s direct assumption, absolutely without a qualifying consideration for her woman’s attitude, was amazing, ignorant, and base, but Helen was so well prepared for it that she hid her disgust.

“Thank you, Mister Beasley. But I can’t accept your offer,” she replied.

“Would you take time an’ consider?” he asked, spreading wide his huge gloved hands.

“Absolutely no.”

Beasley rose to his feet. He showed no disappointment or chagrin, but the bold pleasantness left his face. And slight as that change was, it stripped him of the only redeeming quality he showed.

“That means I’ll force you to pay me the eighty thousand, or put you off,” he said.

“Mister Beasley, even if I owed you that, how could I raise so enormous a sum? I don’t owe it. And I certainly won’t be put off my property. You can’t put me off.”

“An’ why can’t I?” he demanded, with lowering dark gaze.

“Because your claim is dishonest. And I can prove it,” declared Helen forcibly.

“Who’re you goin’ to prove it to…that I’m dishonest?”

“To my men…to your men…to the people of Pine…to everybody. There’s not a person who won’t believe me.”

He seemed curious, discomfited, surlily annoyed, and yet fascinated by her statement or else by the quality and appearance of her as she spiritedly defended her cause.

“An’ how’re you goin’ to prove all that?” he growled.

“Mister Beasley, do you remember last fall when you met Snake Anson with his gang up in the woods…and hired him to make off with me?” asked Helen in swift ringing words.

The dark olive of Beasley’s bold face shaded to a dirty white. “Wha-at?” he jerked out hoarsely.

“I see you remember. Well, Milt Dorn was hidden in the loft of that cabin where you met Anson. He heard every word of your deal with the outlaw.”

Beasley swung his arm in sudden violence, so hard that he flung his glove to the floor. As he stooped to snatch it up, he uttered a sibilant hiss. Then, stalking to the door, he jerked it open, and slammed it behind him. His loud voice, hoarse with passion, preceded the scrape and crack of hoofs.

Shortly after supper that day, when Helen was just recovering her composure, Carmichael presented himself at the open door. Bo was not there. In the dimming twilight Helen saw that the cowboy was pale, somber, grim.

“Oh, what’s happened?” cried Helen.

“Roy’s been shot. It come off in Turner’s saloon. But he ain’t dead. We packed him over to Widow Cass’s. An’ he said for me to tell you he’d pull through.”

“Shot! Pull through!” repeated Helen in slow unrealizing exclamation. She was conscious of a deep internal tumult and a cold checking of blood in all her external body.

“Yes, shot,” replied Carmichael fiercely. “An’, what ever he says, I reckon he won’t pull through.”

“Oh, heaven, how terrible!” burst out Helen. “He was so good…such a man! What a pity! Oh, he must have met that in my behalf. Tell me, what happened? Who shot him?”

“Wal, I don’t know. An’ that’s what’s made me hoppin’ mad. I wasn’t there when it came off. An’ he won’t tell me.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know that, either. I reckoned first it was because he wanted to get even. But after thinkin’ it over, I guess he doesn’t want me lookin’ up anyone right now for fear I might get hurt. An’ you’re goin’ to need your friends. That’s all I can make of Roy.”

Then Helen hurriedly related the event of Beasley’s call on her that afternoon and all that had occurred.