Her Prairie Knight Part 12

Keith sighed, and went and baited the hook again. When he returned to Beatrice, his mood had changed.

"I want you to promise--"

"I never make promises of any sort, Mr. Cameron." Beatrice had fallen back upon her airy tone, which was her strongest weapon of defense--unless one except her liquid-air smile.

"I wasn't thinking of asking much," Keith went on coolly. "I only wanted to ask you not to worry about that leasing business."

"Are you worrying about it, Mr. Cameron?"

"That isn't the point. No, I can't say I expect to lose sleep over it. I hope you will dismiss anything I may have said from your mind."

"But I don't understand. I feel that you blame Sir Redmond, when I'm sure he--"

"I did not say I blamed anybody. I think we'll not discuss it."

"Yes, I think we shall. You'll tell me all about it, if I want to know."

Beatrice adopted her coaxing tone, which never had failed her.

"Oh, no!" Keith laughed a little. "A girl can't always have her own way just because she wants it, even if she--"

"I've got a fish, Mr. Cam'ron!" Dorman squealed, and Keith was obliged to devote another five minutes to diplomacy.

"I think you have fished long enough, honey," Beatrice told Dorman decidedly. "It's nearly dinner time, and Looey Sam won't have time to fry your fish if you don't hurry home. Shall I tell d.i.c.k you wished to see him, Mr. Cameron?"

"It's nothing important, so I won't trouble you," Keith replied, in a tone that matched hers for cool courtesy. "I'll see him to-morrow, probably." He helped Dorman reel in his line, cut a willow-wand and strung the three fish upon it by the gills, washed his hands leisurely in the creek, and dried them on his handkerchief, just as if nothing bothered him in the slightest degree. Then he went over and smoothed Redcloud's mane and pulled a wisp of forelock from under the brow-band, and commanded him to shake hands, which the horse did promptly.

"I want to shake hands wis your pony, too," Dorman cried, and dropped pole and fish heedlessly into the gra.s.s.

"All right, kid."

Dorman went up gravely and clasped Redcloud's raised fetlock solemnly, while the tall cow-puncher smiled down at him.

"Kiss him, Redcloud," he said softly; and then, when the horse's nose was thrust in his face: "No, not me--kiss the kid." He lifted the child up in his arms, and when Redcloud touched his soft nose to Dorman's cheek and lifted his lip for a dainty, toothless nibble, Dorman was speechless with fright and rapture thrillingly combined.

"Now run home with your fish; it lacks only two hours and forty minutes to dinner time, and it will take at least twenty minutes for the fish to fry--so you see you'll have to hike."

Beatrice flushed and looked at him sharply, but Keith was getting into the saddle and did not appear to remember she was there. The fingers that were tying her hat-ribbons under her chin fumbled awkwardly and trembled. Beatrice would have given a good deal at that moment to know just what Keith Cameron was thinking; and she was in a blind rage with herself to think that it mattered to her what he thought.

When he lifted his hat she only nodded curtly. She mimicked every beast and bird she could think of on the way home, to wipe him and his horse from the memory of Dorman, whose capacity for telling things best left untold was simply marvelous.

It is saying much for Beatrice's powers of entertainment that Dorman quite forgot to say anything about Mr. Cameron and his pony, and chattered to his auntie and grandmama about kitties up in a tree, and lost lambs and sleepy birds, until he was tucked into bed that night.

It was not until then that Beatrice felt justified in drawing a long breath. Not that she cared whether any one knew of her meeting Keith Cameron, only that her mother would instantly take alarm and preach to her about the wickedness of flirting; and Beatrice was not in the mood for sermons.

CHAPTER 9. What It Meant to Keith.

"d.i.c.k, I wish you'd tell me about this leasing business. There are points which I don't understand." Beatrice leaned over and smoothed Rex's sleek shoulder with her hand.

"What do you want to understand it for? The thing is done now. We've got the fence-posts strung, and a crew hired to set them."

"You needn't snap your words like that, d.i.c.k. It doesn't matter--only I was wondering why Mr. Cameron acted so queer yesterday when I told him about it."

"You told Keith? What did he say?"

"He didn't say anything. He just looked things."

"Where did you see him?" d.i.c.k wanted to know.

"Well, dear me! I don't see that it matters where I saw him. You're getting as inquisitive as mama. If you think it concerns you, why, I met him accidentally when I was fishing with Dorman. He was coming to see you, but you were gone, so he stopped and talked for a few minutes. Was there anything so strange about that? And I told him you were leasing the Pine Ridge country, and he looked--well, peculiar. But he wouldn't say anything."

"Well, he had good reason for looking peculiar. But you needn't have told him I did it, Trix. Lay that at milord's door, where it belongs. I don't want Keith to blame me."

"But why should he blame anybody? It isn't his land, is it?"

"No, it isn't. But--you see, Trix, it's this way: A man goes somewhere and buys a ranch--or locates on a claim--and starts into the cattle business. He may not own more than a few hundred acres of land, but if he has much stock he needs miles of prairie country, with water, for them to range on. It's an absolute necessity, you see. He takes care to locate where there is plenty of public land that is free to anybody's cattle.

"Take the Pool outfit, for instance. We don't own land enough to feed one-third of our cattle. We depend on government land for range for them. The Cross outfit is the same, only Keith's is on a smaller scale.

He's got to have range outside his own land, which is mostly hay land.

This part of the State is getting pretty well settled up with small ranchers, and then the sheep men keep crowding in wherever they can get a show--and sheep will starve cattle to death; they leave a range as bare as a prairie-dog town. So there's only one good bit of range left around here, and that's the Pine Ridge country, as it's called. That's our main dependence for winter range; and now when this drought has struck us, and everything is drying up, we've had to turn all our cattle down there on account of water.

"Ever since I took charge of the Pool, Keith and I threw in together and used the same range, worked our crews together, and fought the sheepmen together. There was a time when they tried to gobble the Pine Ridge range, but it didn't go. Keith and I made up our minds that we needed it worse than they did--and we got it. Our punchers had every sheep herder bluffed out till there wasn't a mutton-chewer could keep a bunch of sheep on that range over-night.

"Now, this lease law was made by stockmen, for stockmen. They can lease land from the government, fence it--and they've got a cinch on it as long as the lease lasts. A cow outfit can corral a heap of range that way. There's the trick of leasing every other section or so, and then running a fence around the whole chunk; and that's what the Pool has done to the Pine Ridge. But you mustn't repeat that, Trix.

"Milord wasn't long getting on to the leasing graft; in fact, it turns out the company got wind of it over in England, and sent him over here to see what could be done in that line. He's done it, all right enough!

"And there's the Cross outfit, frozen out completely. The Lord only knows what Keith will do with his cattle now, for we'll have every drop of water under fence inside of a month. He's in a hole, for sure. I expect he feels pretty sore with me, too, but I couldn't help it. I explained how it was to milord, but--you can't persuade an Englishman, any more than you can a--"

"I think," put in Beatrice firmly, "Sir Redmond did quite right. It isn't his fault that Mr. Cameron owns more cattle than he can feed.

If he was sent over here to lease the land, it was his duty to do so.

Still, I really am sorry for Mr. Cameron."

"Keith won't sit down and take his medicine if he can help it," d.i.c.k said moodily. "He could sell out, but I don't believe he will. He's more apt to fight."

"I can't see how fighting will help him," Beatrice returned spiritedly.

"Well, there's one thing," retorted d.i.c.k. "If milord wants that fence to stand he'd better stay and watch it. I'll bet money he won't more than strike Liverpool till about forty miles, more or less, of Pool fence will need repairs mighty bad--which it won't get, so far as I'm concerned."

"Do you mean that Keith Cameron would destroy our fencing?"

d.i.c.k grinned. "He'll be a fool if he don't, Trix. You can tell milord he'd better send for all his traps, and camp right here till that lease runs out. My punchers will have something to do beside ride fence."

"I shall certainly tell Sir Redmond," Beatrice threatened. "You and Mr. Cameron hate him just because he's English. You won't see what a splendid fellow he is. It's your duty to stand by him in this business, instead of taking sides with Keith Cameron. Why didn't he lease that land himself, if he wanted to?"

"Because he plays fair."