A Man Four-Square Part 18

"I haven't changed my mind about you. Folks that come to town and start killing deserve all they get. But I'd look after a yellow dog if it was sick," she said contemptuously, little devils of defiance in her eyes.

"I'm not questionin' your motives, ma'am, so long as your actions are friendly,"

"I haven't any use for any of Homer Webb's outfit. He's got no business here. If he runs into trouble he has only himself to blame."

"I'll mention to him that you said so."

Picking up the rifle, she turned and walked to the horse. There was a little devil-may-care touch to her walk, just as in her manner, that suggested a girl spoiled by over-much indulgence. She was imperious, high-spirited, full of courage and insolence, because her environment had moulded her to independence. It was impossible for the young cow puncher to help admiring the girl.

"I'll be back," she called over her shoulder.

The pony jumped to a canter at the touch of her Jaeel. She disappeared in a gallop around the bend.

Already the fever of the boy was beginning to pa.s.s. He shivered with the chill of night. Billie wrapped around him his own coat, a linsey-woolen one lined with yellow flannel. He packed him up in the two blankets and heated stones for his feet and hands. Presently the boy fell into sound sleep for the first time since he was wounded. He had slept before, but always uneasily and restlessly. Now he did not mutter between clenched teeth nor toss to and fro.

His friend accepted it as a good omen. Since he had not slept a wink himself for forty hours, he lay down before the fire and made himself comfortable His eyes closed almost immediately.

Chapter XIII

A Friendly Enemy

"Law sakes, Miss Bertie Lee, yo' suppah done been ready an hour. Hit sure am discommodin' the way you go gallumphin' around. Don't you-all nevah git tired?"

Aunt Becky was large and black and bulgy. To say that she was fat fails entirely of doing her justice. She overflowed from her clothes in waves at all possible points. When she moved she waddled.

Just now she was trying to be cross, but the smile of welcome on the broad face would have its way.

"Set down an' rest yo' weary bones, honey. I'll have yo' suppah dished up in no time a-tall. Yore paw was axin' where is you awhile ago."

"Where's dad?" asked Miss Bertie Lee Snaith carelessly as she flung her gloves on a chair.

"He done gone down to the store to see if anything been heerd o' them vilyainous killers of Mr. Webb."

When Bertie Lee returned from washing her hands and face and giving a touch or two to her hair, she sat down and did justice to the fried chicken and biscuits of Aunt Becky. She had had a long day of it and she ate with the keen appet.i.te of youth.

Her father returned while she was still at the table. He was a big sandy man dressed in a corduroy suit. He was broad of shoulder and his legs were bowed.

"Any news, dad?" she asked.

"Not a thing, Lee. I reckon they've made their get-away. They must have slipped off the road somewhere. The wounded one never could have traveled all night. Maybe we'll git 'em yet."

"What will you do with them, if you do?"

"Hang 'em to a sour apple tree," answered Wallace Snaith promptly.

His daughter made no comment. She knew that her father's resentment was based on no abstract love of law and order. It had back of it no feeling that crime had been committed or justice outraged. The frontier was in its roistering youth, full of such effervescing spirits that life was the cheapest thing it knew. Every few days some unfortunate was buried on Boot Hill, a victim of his own inexpertness with the six-shooter. The longhorned cattle of Texas were wearing broad trails to the north and the northwest and such towns as Los Portales were on the boom. Chap-clad punchers galloped through the streets at all hours of the day and night letting out their joyous "Eee-yip-eee." The keys of Tolleson's and half a dozen other gambling places had long since been lost, for the doors were never closed to patrons. At games of chance the roof was the limit, in the expressive phrase of the country. Guns cracked at the slightest difference of opinion. It was bad form to use the word "murder." The correct way to speak of the result of a disagreement was to refer to it as "a killing."

Law lay for every man in a holster on his own hip. Snaith recognized this and accepted it. He was ready to "bend a gun" himself if occasion called for it. What he objected to in this particular killing was the personal affront to him. One of Webb's men had deliberately and defiantly killed two of his riders when the town was full of his employees. The man had walked into Tolleson's--a place which he, Snaith, practically owned himself--and flung down the gauntlet to the whole Lazy S M outfit. It was a flagrant insult and Wallace Snaith proposed to see that it was avenged.

"I'm going duck-hunting to-morrow, dad," Lee told him. "I'll likely be up before daylight, but I'll try not to disturb you. If you hear me rummaging around in the pantry, you'll know what for."

He grunted a.s.sent, full of the grievance that was rankling in his mind.

Lee came and went as she pleased. She was her own mistress and he made no attempt to chaperon her activities.

The light had not yet begun to sift into the sky next morning when Lee dressed and tiptoed to the kitchen. She carried saddlebags with her and into the capacious pockets went tea, coffee, flour, corn meal, a flask of brandy, a plate of cookies, and a slab of bacon. An old frying-pan and a small stew kettle joined the supplies; also a little package of "yerb"

medicine prepared by Aunt Becky as a specific for fevers.

Lee walked through the silent, pre-dawn darkness to the stable and saddled her pony, blanketing and cinching as deftly as her father could have done it. With her she carried an extra blanket for the wounded man.

The gray light of dawn was beginning to sift into the sky when she reached the camp of the fugitives. Prince came forward to meet her. She saw that the fire was now only a bed of coals from which no smoke would rise to betray them.

The girl swung from the saddle and gave a little jerk of her head toward Clanton.

"How is he?"

"Slept like a log all night. Feels a heap better this mo'nin'. Wants to know if he can't have somethin' to eat."

"I killed a couple of prairie plover on the way. We'll make some soup for him."

The girl walked straight to her patient and looked down at him with direct and searching eyes. She found no glaze of fever in the ones that gazed back into hers.

"Hungry, are you?"

"I could eat a mail sack, ma'am."

She stripped the gauntlets from her hands and set about making breakfast.

Jim watched her with alert interest. He was still weak, but life this morning began to renew itself in him. The pain and the fever had gone and left him at peace with a world just emerging from darkness into a rosily flushed dawn. Not the least attractive feature of it was this stunning, dark-eyed girl who was proving such a friendly enemy.

Her manner to Billie was crisp and curt. She ordered him to fetch and carry. Something in his slow drawl--some hint of hidden amus.e.m.e.nt in his manner--struck a spark of resentment from her quick eye. But toward Jim she was all kindness. No trouble was too much to take for his comfort. If he had a whim it must be gratified. Prince was merely a servant to wait upon him.

The education of Jim Clanton was progressing. As he ate his plover broth he could not keep his eyes from her. She was so full of vital life. The color beat through her dark skin warm and rich. The abundant blue-black hair, the flashing eyes, the fine poise of the head, the little jaunty swagger of her, so wholly a matter of unconscious faith in her place in the sun: all of these charmed and delighted him. He had never dreamed of a girl of such spirit and fire.

It was inevitable that both he and Billie should recall by contrast another girl who had given them generously of her service not long since.

There were in the country then very few women of any kind. Certainly within a radius of two hundred miles there was no other girl so popular and so attractive as these two. Many a puncher would have been willing to break an arm for the sake of such kindness as had been lavished upon these boys.

By sunup the three of them had finished breakfast. Billie put out the fire and scattered the ashes in the river. He went into a committee of ways and means with Lee Snaith just before she returned to town.

"You can't stay here long. Some one is sure to stumble on you just as I did. What plan have you to get away?"

"If I could get our horses in three or four days mebbe Jim could make out to ride a little at a time."

"He couldn't--and you can't get your horses," she vetoed.

"Then I'll have to leave him, steal another horse, and ride through to Webb for help."