Hidden Water Part 24

"Cattle and sheep--cattle and sheep," she repeated slowly. "Is there nothing else that counts, Rufus, in all this broad land? Must friendship, love, companionship, all go down before cattle and sheep?

I never knew before what a poor creature a woman was until I came to Arizona."

She glanced at him from beneath her drooping lashes, and saw his jaws set tense.

"And yet only yesterday," he said, with a sombre smile, "you had twenty men risking their lives to give you some snake-tails for playthings."

"But my old friend Rufus was not among them," rejoined Kitty quietly; and once more she watched the venom working in his blood.

"No," he replied, "he refuses to compete with Bill Lightfoot at any price."

"Oh, Rufus," cried Kitty, turning upon him angrily, "aren't you ashamed? I want you to stop being jealous of all my friends. It is the meanest and most contemptible thing a man can do. I--I won't stand it!"

He glanced at her again with the same set look of disapproval still upon his face.

"Kitty," he said, "if you knew what lives some of those men lead--the thoughts they think, the language they speak--you--you would not--" He stopped, for the sudden tears were in her eyes. Kitty was crying.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "No!" said Kitty, "you do not love me"]

"Oh, Rufus," she sobbed, "if--if you only knew! Who else could I go with--how--how else--Oh, I cannot bear to be scolded and--I only did it to make you jealous!" She bowed her head against her knees and Hardy gazed at her in awe, shame and compa.s.sion sweeping over him as he realized what she had done.

"Kitty--dear," he stammered, striving to unlock the twisted fingers, "I--I didn't understand. Look, here are your flowers and--I love you, Kitty, if I am a brute." He took one hand and held it, stroking the little fingers which he had so often longed to caress. But with a sudden wilfulness she turned her face away.

"Don't you love me, Kitty?" he pleaded. "Couldn't you, if I should try to be good and kind? I--I don't understand women--I know I have hurt you--but I loved you all the time. Can't you forgive me, Kitty?"

But Kitty only shook her head. "The man I love must be my master," she said, in a far-away voice, not looking at him. "He must value me above all the world."

"But, Kitty," protested Hardy, "I do--"

"No," said Kitty, "you do _not_ love me."

There was a lash to the words that cut him--a scorn half-spoken, half-expressed by the slant of her eye. As he hesitated he felt the hot blood burn at his brow.

"Rufus," she cried, turning upon him quickly, "_do_ you love me? Then take me in your arms and kiss me!" She spoke the words fiercely, almost as a command, and Hardy started back as if he had been shot.

"Take me in your arms and kiss me!" she repeated evenly, a flash of scorn in her eyes. But the man who had said he loved her faltered and looked away.

"Kitty," he said gently, "you know I love you. But--"

"But what?" she demanded sharply.

"I--I have never--"

"Well," said Kitty briefly, "it's all over--you don't have to! I just wanted to show you--" She paused, and her lip curled as she gazed at him from a distance. "Look at my horse," she exclaimed suddenly, pointing to where Pinto was pawing and jerking at his bridle rein.

When Hardy leapt up to free his foot she frowned again, for that is not the way of lovers.

He came back slowly, leading the horse, his face very pale, his eyes set.

"You were right," he said. "Shall we go?"

There was no apology in his voice, no appeal. It had grown suddenly firm and resonant, and he fixed her with his great honest eyes steadfastly. Something in the man seemed to rise up suddenly and rebuke her--nay, to declare her unworthy of him. The thought of those two years--two years without a word--came upon Kitty and left her sober, filled with misgivings for the future. She cast about for some excuse, some reason for delay, and still those masterful eyes were fixed upon her--sad, wistful, yet steadfast; and like a child she obeyed them.

It was a long ride to camp, long for both of them. When he had turned her horse into the corral Hardy wheeled and rode off up the canon, where the hold-up herd was bellowing and there was a man's work to do.

There was wild riding that day, such as Judge Ware and Lucy had never seen before, and more than one outlaw, loping for the hills, was roped and thrown, and then lashed back to his place in the herd. The sensitive spirit of Chapuli responded like a twin being to the sudden madness of his master, and the lagging _rodeo_ hands were galvanized into action by his impetuous ardor. And at the end, when the roping and branding were over, Hardy rode down to the pasture for a fresh mount, his eyes still burning with a feverish light and his lips close-drawn and silent.

The outfit was huddled about the fire eating greedily after the long day, when Creede, furtively watching his partner, saw his eyes fixed curiously upon some object in the outer darkness. He followed the glance and beheld a hound--gaunt, lame, beseeching--limping about among the mesquite trees which lined the edge of the flat.

"There's one of Bill's dogs," he remarked sociably, speaking to the crowd in general. "Must've got sore-footed and come back. Here, Rock!

Here, Rye! Here, Ring!" he called, trying the most likely names.

"Here, puppy--come on, boy!" And he sc.r.a.ped a plate in that inviting way which is supposed to suggest feed to a dog. But Hardy rose up quietly from his place and went out to the dog. A moment later he called to Jeff and, after a hurried conference, the two of them brought the wanderer up to the fire.

"Hey!" called Bill Lightfoot, "that ain't one of Bill's pack--that's old Turco, his home dog."

"Don't you think I know Bill's dogs yet?" inquired Creede scathingly.

"Now if you'll jest kindly keep your face shet a minute, I'll see what's the matter with this leg."

He clamped Turco between his knees and picked up his fore leg, while the old dog whined and licked his hands anxiously. There was a stain of blood from the shoulder down, and above it, cut neatly through the muscles, a gaping wound.

"That was a thirty-thirty," said Creede grimly, and every man looked up. Thirty-thirty was a sinister number on the range--it was the calibre of a sheep-herder's carbine.

"Aw, go on," scoffed Bill Lightfoot, rushing over to examine the wound. "Who could have shot him--away over in h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket?"

"Um--that's it," observed Creede significantly. "What you goin' to do, Rufe?"

"I'm going over there," answered Hardy, throwing the saddle on his horse. He looked over his shoulder as he heaved on the cinch. "That's where that dust was," he said, and as the outfit stood gaping he swung up and was off into the darkness.

"Hey, take my gun!" yelled Jeff, but the clatter of hoofs never faltered--he was going it blind and unarmed. Late that night another horseman on a flea-bitten gray dashed madly after him over the Pocket trail. It was Old Bill Johnson, crazed with apprehension; and behind him straggled his hounds, worn from their long chase after the lion, but following dutifully on their master's scent. The rest of the outfit rode over in the morning--the punchers with their pistols thrust into the legs of their shaps; Creede black and staring with anger; the judge asking a thousand unanswered questions and protesting against any resort to violence; the women tagging along helplessly, simply because they could not be left alone. And there, pouring forth from the mouth of h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket, came the sheep, a solid phalanx, urged on by plunging herders and spreading out over the broad mesa like an invading army. Upon the peaks and ridges round about stood groups of men, like skirmishers--camp rustlers with their packs and burros; herders, whose sheep had already pa.s.sed through--every man with his gun in his hand. The solid earth of the trail was worn down and stamped to dust beneath the myriad feet, rising in a cloud above them as they scrambled through the pa.s.s; and above all other sounds there rose the high, sustained tremolo of the sheep:

"_Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay!_"

To the ears of the herders it was music, like the thunder of stamps to a miner or the rumble of a waterfall to a lonely fisher; the old, unlistened music of their calling, above which the clamor of the world must fight its way. But to the cowmen it was like all h.e.l.l broken loose, a confusion, a madness, a babel which roused every pa.s.sion in their being and filled them with a l.u.s.t to kill.

Without looking to the right or to the left, Jefferson Creede fixed his eyes upon one man in that riot of workers and rode for him as a corral hand marks down a steer. It was Jasper Swope, hustling the last of a herd through the narrow defile, and as his Chihuahuanos caught sight of the burly figure bearing down upon the _padron_ they abandoned their work to help him. From the hill above, Jim Swope, his face set like iron for the conflict, rode in to back up his brother; and from far down the canon Rufus Hardy came spurring like the wind to take his place by Creede.

In the elemental clangor of the sheep they faced each other, Creede towering on his horse, his face furious with rage; Swope gray with the dust of his driving but undaunted by the a.s.sault.

"Stop where you are!" shouted Swope, holding out a warning hand as the cowman showed no sign of halting. But Creede came straight on, never flinching, until he had almost ridden him down.

"You low-lived, sheep-eatin' hound," he hissed, piling in the wickedest of his range epithets, "you and me have had it comin' fer quite a while, and now I've got you. I've never yet seen a sheepman that would fight in the open, but you've got to or take _that_!" He leaned over suddenly and slapped him with his open hand, laughing recklessly at the Mexicans as they brandished their guns and shouted.

"_Quite se, cabrones_," he jeered, sorting out the worst of his fighting Spanish for their benefit, "you are all gutter pups--you are afraid to shoot!"

"Here," rasped out Jim Swope, spurring his horse in between them, "what are you fellers tryin' to do? Git out of here, _umbre_--go on now! Never mind, Jasp, I'll do the talkin'. You go on away, will ye!

Now what's the matter with you, Mr. Creede, and what can I do for you?"

Jasper Swope had whirled back from the blow as a rattler throws his coils. His gray eyes gleamed and he showed all his broken teeth as he spat back hate and defiance at Creede; but Jim was his elder brother and had bested him more than once since the days of their boyish quarrels. Slowly and grudgingly he made way, backing sullenly off with his Mexicans; and Jim stood alone, opposing his cold resolution to the white-hot wrath of Creede.

"You can turn back them sheep and git off my range!" yelled Creede.

"Turn 'em back, I say, or I'll leave my mark on some of you!"