Laramie Holds the Range Part 39

Once entertained, the suspicion became insupportable. Her ears were pitched to a painful intensity of listening and her eyes were fastened immovably on the motionless curtains.

She carried a ranchwoman's revolver and, putting her hand on it, she rose, stepped close to the door of Belle's room--into which she could retreat--and, with one hand on the k.n.o.b, called sharply toward the living-room: "Who's there?"

Not a sound answered her.

"Who is in the living-room?" she demanded again. This time, after a moment's delay, she heard something move in the darkness, then a man's step and Laramie stood out between the portieres.

Except for a fatigued look as he rested one hand on the portiere and the other on his hip, he appeared quite as she had last seen him. "Are you calling me?" he asked.

"Yes," she responded tartly. "Why didn't you answer?"

"I didn't know who you were speaking to at first. I've been here all the evening. I didn't know you were in town till I saw your hat on the table a few minutes ago."

"Where is Belle?" asked Kate, still on edge.

"She went over to Mrs. Kitchen's."

"When will she be back?"

He seemed to take no offense at her peremptory tone. "She said she wouldn't be gone a great while. But," he added, with his customary deliberation, "all the same, I wouldn't be surprised if she stayed over pretty late--or even all night."

This was not just what Kate wanted to hear. "Why didn't you say something when I first came in?" she asked, her suspicion reflected in her voice.

He did not seem nonplused but he answered slowly: "I heard someone come in. I didn't pay much attention, that's about the truth."

"What are you doing in there in the dark?"

He was provokingly deliberate in answering. "You probably haven't heard about Abe Hawk?"

Her manner changed instantly and her voice sank. "Is it true that he is dead?"

"Yes."

"He didn't drown that morning, did he?" she asked eagerly anxious.

"You thought he could get out--what happened?"

"He got out of the creek. But he strained his wounds--they opened. I wasn't much of a surgeon. I got him to the hospital--he died there. I had no place to take him then. I wouldn't leave him there alone.

Belle said I might bring him here. I'm spending my last night with him."

"You're not trying to spare me, are you?" she asked, unsteadily. "He really did get out of the creek?"

"He did get out."

She spoke again brokenly: "He saved my life."

"Well," remarked Laramie, meditating, "he wouldn't ask anything much for that. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Not a bit."

"I'm kind of nervous tonight," he confessed simply. Then he crossed the room, rested his elbow on the mantelpiece and made ready a cigarette. "I wonder," he said, "if I could ask you a question?"

"What is it?"

"You always act kind of queer with me. Why is it? You've never been the way you were the first day we met. Haven't I always been square with you?"

She hesitated but she answered honestly: "You always have."

"Then why are you so different?"

"I've made that confession once. I was acting a part that day."

"No, I can't figure it in that way. That day you were acting natural.

Why can't you be like that again."

"But, Mr. Laramie----"

"No--Jim."

"But----"

"Every time you call me Mr. Laramie I'm looking around for a gentleman.

Why can't you be the way you were the first time?"

She realized his eyes were on her, demanding the truth--and his eyes were uncomfortably steady as she had reason to know. "If I spoke I should hurt your feelings," she urged, summoning all her courage. "You know as well as I do that the first time I met you I didn't know who you were."

He did not seem much disconcerted, except that he tossed away the unlighted cigarette. "You don't know now," was his only comment.

"I can't help knowing what is said about you--you and your friends."

He made an impatient gesture. "That gives you no clue to me."

"What are people to believe when such stories are public property?"

"Only what they know to be true."

"How are they to find out what is true?"

"By going straight to the person most concerned in the stories."

"Would you honestly expect a young woman to go to work and investigate all the charges against men she hears in Sleepy Cat?"

"We are talking now about the charges against one man--against me. I want to give you an instance:

"I suppose there's been a good many hard words over your way about my keeping Abe Hawk out of the hands of your people. Because I did shelter him--you know how--they've blackened my name here at Sleepy Cat and down at Medicine Bend. A man doesn't have to approve all another man does, to befriend him when he's down and a bunch of men--not as good as he--set out to finish him. I haven't got any apologies to make to anybody for protecting Abe when he was wounded--and if he wasn't wounded, no man would talk any kind of protection to him. But you've been fed up with stories about it--I know that--so," he added grimly, "I'm going to tell you one story more.

"I grew up in this country when the mining fever was on--everybody plumb crazy in the rush for the Horsehead Camp in the Falling Wall country. One winter five hundred men in tents were hanging around Sleepy Cat waiting for the first thaw, to get up to the camp. That's when I got acquainted with Abe Hawk. Abe was carrying the mails to the mines. He hadn't a red cent in the world. My father had just died; I was a green kid with a pocketful of money. Abe didn't teach me any bad habits--I didn't need any teacher. One night we were sitting next to each other, with Harry Tenison dealing faro.

"I heard Abe was going up over the pa.s.s to Horsehead with the Christmas bag. The few miners that got in the fall before had hung up a fat purse for their Christmas mail and Abe needed the money. He was the only man with the crazy nerve to try such a thing. And there were twenty men, with all kinds of money, crowding him to take them along: to beat the bunch in might mean a million dollar strike to any tenderfoot in Sleepy Cat.