Hidden Water Part 22

saddles out in the wagon?"

Miss Lucy's eyes lighted up with pleasure as, antic.i.p.ating his drift, she nodded her head.

"Well then," said Hardy, with finality, "if you'll get up early in the morning, I'll catch you a little pony that I gentled myself, and we can ride up the river together. How does that strike you?"

"Fine!" exclaimed Lucy, with sudden enthusiasm.

"Oh, Rufus," she cried impulsively, "if you only knew how weak and helpless a thing it is to be a woman--and how glad we are to be noticed! Why, I was just thinking before you came in that about the only really helpful thing a woman could do in this world was just to stay around home and cook the meals."

"Well, you just let me cook those meals for a while," said Rufus, with brotherly authority, "and come out and be a man for a change. Can you ride pretty well?"

Lucy glanced at him questioningly, and thought she read what was in his mind.

"Yes," she said, "I can ride, but--but I just couldn't bring myself to dress like Kitty!" she burst out. "I know it's foolish, but I can't bear to have people notice me so. But I'll be a man in everything else, if you'll only give me a chance." She stood before him, radiant, eager, her eyes sparkling like a child's, and suddenly Hardy realized how much she lost by being always with Kitty. Seen by herself she was as lithe and graceful as a fairy, with a steady gaze very rare in women, and eyes which changed like the shadows in a pool, answering every mood in wind and sky, yet always with their own true light. Her cheeks glowed with the fresh color which her father's still retained, and she had inherited his generous nature, too; but in mind and stature she took after her dainty mother, whose exquisite grace and beauty had made her one of the elect. Perhaps it was this quality of the pet.i.te in her which appealed to him--for a little man cannot endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret--or perhaps it was only the intuitive response to a something which in his prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the caressing fulness which she most loved to hear.

"Ah, Lucy," he said, "you need never try to be a man in order to ride with me. It would be hard luck if a woman like you had to ask twice for anything. Will you go out with me every day? No? Then I shall ask you every day, and you shall go whenever you please! But you know how it is. The sheepmen are hiding along the river waiting for a chance to sneak across, and if I should stay in camp for a single day they might make a break--and then we would have a war. Your father doesn't understand that, but I do; and I know that Jeff will never submit to being sheeped out without a fight. Can't you see how it is? I should like to stay here and entertain you, and yet I must protect your father's cattle, and I must protect Jeff. But if you will ride out with me when it is not too hot, I--it--well, you'll go to-morrow, won't you?"

He rose and took her hand impulsively, and then as quickly dropped it and turned away. The m.u.f.fled _chuck, chuck,_ of a horse's feet stepping past the door smote upon his ear, and a moment later a clear voice hailed them.

"What _are_ you children chattering about in there?" cried Kitty Bonnair, and Hardy, after a guilty silence, replied:

"The ways of the weary world. Won't you come in and have the last word?"

He stepped out and held Pinto by the head, and Kitty dropped off and sank wearily into a rawhide chair.

"Oh, I'm too tired to talk, riding around trying to find those cattle--and just as I was tired out we saw them coming, away out on The Rolls. Lucy, do put on your riding habit and go back on Pinto--you haven't been out of the house to-day!"

As half an hour later Lucy Ware trotted obediently away, riding up the canon toward the distant bawling of cattle, Kitty turned suddenly upon Hardy with half-closed, accusing eyes.

"You seem to be very happy with Lucy," she said, with an aggrieved smile. "But why," she continued, with quickening animus, "why should you seek to avoid me? Isn't it enough that I should come clear down here to see you? But when I want to have a word with you after our long silence I have to scheme and manage like a gypsy!"

She paused, and flicked her booted leg with the lash of a horsehair quirt, glancing at him furtively with eyes that drooped with an appealing sadness.

"If I had known how hard-hearted you could be," she said, after a silence, "I should never have spoken as I did, if the words choked me.

But now that I have come part way and offered my poor friendship again, you might--oh Rufus, how could you be so inconsiderate! No one can ever know what I suffered when you left that way. Every one knew we were the best of friends, and several people even knew that you had been to see me. And then, without a word, without a sign, with no explanation, to leave and be gone for years--think what they must have thought! Oh, it was too humiliating!"

She paused again, and to Hardy's apprehensive eyes she seemed on the verge of tears. So he spoke, blindly and without consideration, filled with a man's anxiety to stave off this final catastrophe.

"I'm sorry," he began, though he had never meant to say it, "but--but there was nothing else to do! You--you told me to go. You said you never wanted to see me again, and--you were not very kind to me, then." He paused, and at the memory of those last words of hers, uttered long ago, the flush of shame mantled his cheeks.

"Every man has his limit," he said bluntly, "and I am no dog, to be scolded and punished and sent away. I have been ashamed many times for what I did, but I had to keep my own respect--and so I left. Is it too much for a man to go away when he is told?"

Kitty Bonnair fixed him with her dark eyes and shook her head sadly.

"Ah, Rufus," she sighed, "when will you ever learn that a woman does not always mean all she says? When you had made me so happy by your tender consideration--for you could be considerate when you chose--I said that I loved you; and I did, but not in the way you thought. I did mean it at the moment, from my heart, but not for life--it was no surrender, no promise--I just loved you for being so good and kind.

But when, taking advantage of what I said in a moment of weakness, you tried to claim that which I had never given, I--I said more than I meant again. Don't you understand? I was hurt, and disappointed, and I spoke without thinking, but you must not hold that against me forever!

And after I have come clear down here--to avoid me--to always go out with Lucy and leave me alone--to force me to arrange a meeting--"

She stopped, and Hardy shifted uneasily in his seat. In his heart of hearts he had realized from the first his inequality in this losing battle. He was like a man who goes into a contest conquered already by his inept.i.tude at arms--and Kitty would have her way! Never but once had he defied her power, and that had been more a flight than a victory. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it turned to water before her. He despised himself for it; but all the while, in a shifting, browbeaten way, he was seeking for an excuse to capitulate.

"But, Kitty," he pleaded, "be reasonable. I have my duties down here--the sheep are trying to come in on us--I have to patrol the river. This morning before you were awake I was in the saddle, and now I have just returned. To-morrow I shall be off again, so how can I arrange a meeting?"

He held out his hands to her appealingly, carried away by the force of his own logic.

"You might at least invite me to go with you," she said. "Unless you expect me to spend all my time getting lost with Judge Ware," she added, with a plaintive break in her voice.

"Why, yes--yes," began Hardy haltingly. "I--I have asked Lucy to go with me to-morrow, but--"

"Oh, thank you--thank you!" burst out Kitty mockingly. "But what?"

"Why, I thought you might like to come along too," suggested Hardy awkwardly.

"What? And rob her of all her pleasure?" Kitty smiled bitterly as she turned upon him. "Why, Rufus Hardy," she exclaimed, indignantly, "and she just dotes on every word you say! Yes, she does--any one can see that she simply adores you. I declare, Rufus, your lack of perception would make an angel weep--especially if it was a lady angel. But you may as well understand once and for all that I will never deprive dear, patient, long-suffering Lucy of anything she sets her heart on. No, I will _not_ go with you the next day. If you haven't consideration enough to invite me first, I have sense enough to stay away. It was only yesterday that you took Lucy up to Hidden Water, and to-day I find you with her again; and to-morrow--well, I perceive that I must amuse myself down here. But--oh, look, look!

There's a cowboy--up on that high cliff!"

She started up, pointing at a horseman who was spurring furiously along the side of the canon after a runaway steer.

"Oh, look!" she cried again, as Hardy surveyed him indifferently. "He is whirling his la.s.so. Oh! He has thrown it over that big cow's horns!

Goodness me, where is my horse? No, I am going on foot, then! Oh, Lucy--Lucy dear," she screamed, waving her hand wildly, "do let me have Pinto, just for a moment! All right--and Lucy--wasn't that Mr.

Creede?" She lingered on the ground long enough to give her an ecstatic kiss and then swung up into the saddle. "Yes, I knew it--and isn't he just perfectly grand on that big horse? Oh, I've been wanting to see this all my life--and I owe it all to you!"

With a smile and a gay salutation, she leaned forward and galloped out into the riot and confusion of the _rodeo_, skirting the edge of the bellowing herd until she disappeared in the dust. And somehow, even by the childlike obliviousness with which she scampered away, she managed to convey a pang to her errant lover which clutched at his heart for days.

And what days those were for Jefferson Creede! Deep and devious as was his knowledge of men in the rough, the ways of a woman in love were as cryptic to him as the poems of Browning. The first day that Miss Kitty rode forth to be a cowboy it was the _rodeo_ boss, indulgent, but aware of the tenderfoot's ability to make trouble, who soberly a.s.signed his fair disciple to guard a pa.s.s over which no cow could possibly come. And Kitty, sensing the deceit, had as soberly amused herself by gathering flowers among the rocks. But the next day, having learned her first lesson, she struck for a job to ride, and it was the giddy-headed lover who permitted her to accompany him--although not from any obvious or selfish motives.

Miss Bonnair was the guest of the ranch, her life and welfare being placed for the time in the keeping of the boss. What kind of a foreman would it be who would turn her over to a hireling or intrust her innocent mind to a depraved individual like Bill Lightfoot? And all the decent cowmen were scared of her, so who was naturally indicated and elected but Jefferson D. Creede?

There wasn't any branding at the round corral that night. The gather was a fizzle, for some reason, though Miss Kitty rode Pinto to a finish and killed a rattlesnake with Creede's own gun. Well, they never did catch many cattle the first few days,--after they had picked up the tame bunch that hung around the water,--and the dry weather seemed to have driven the cows in from The Rolls. But when they came in the second afternoon, with only a half of their gather, Creede rode out from the hold-up herd to meet them, looking pretty black.

It is the duty of a _rodeo_ boss to know what is going on, if he has to ride a horse to death to find out; and the next day, after sending every man down his ridge, Jeff left Kitty Bonnair talking lion hunt with old Bill Johnson who had ridden clear over from h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket to gaze upon this horse-riding Diana, and disappeared. As a result, Bat Wings was lathered to a fine dirt-color and there was one man in particular that the boss wanted to see.

"Jim," he said, riding up to where one of the Clark boys was sullenly lashing the drag with his _reata_, "what in the h.e.l.l do you mean by lettin' all them cattle get away? Yes, you did too. I saw you tryin'

to turn 'em back, so don't try to hand me anything like that. I used to think you was a good puncher, Jim, but a man that can't keep a herd of cows from goin' through a box pa.s.s ought to be smokin' cigarettes on the day herd. You bet ye! All you had to do was be there--and that's jest exactly where you wasn't! I was up on top of that rocky b.u.t.te, and I know. You was half a mile up the canon mousin' around in them cliffs, that's where you was, and the only question I want to ask is, Did you find the Lost Dutchman? No? Then what in h.e.l.l was you doin'?"

The _rodeo_ boss crowded his horse in close and thrust his face forward until he could look him squarely in the eye, and Clark jerked back his head resentfully.

"What is it to you?" he demanded belligerently.

"Oh, nawthin'," returned the boss lightly, "jest wanted to know."

"Uhr!" grunted the cowboy contemptuously. "Well, I was killin' snakes, then! What ye goin' to do about it?"

"Snakes!" cried Creede incredulously. "Killin' snakes! Since when did you call a feud on them?"

"Since thet young lady come," replied Clark, glancing around to see if any one had the nerve to laugh. "I heerd her say she was collectin'

rattles; an' I thought, while I was waitin', I might as well rustle up a few. Oh, you don't need to look pop-eyed--they's others!"

He rolled his eyes significantly at the group of a.s.sembled cowboys, and Creede took it all in at a flash. There _were_ others--he himself had a set of rattles in his shap pocket that were not two hours from the stump. The situation called for diplomacy.