Mystery Ranch Part 13

"There's a view over here I had appropriated for myself, but I'm willing to share it with you, seeing that this is your own particular reservation and you ought to know about everything it contains," said Helen.

The ridge dipped and then rose again, higher than before. The plains fell away on both sides--infinite miles of undulations. Straight ahead loomed the high blue wall of the mountains. They walked their horses, and finally stopped them altogether. The chattering of a few prairie dogs only served to intensify the great, mysterious silence.

"Sometimes the stillness seems to roll in on you here like a tide," said Helen. "I can positively feel it coming up these great slopes and blanketing everything. It seems to me that this ridge must have been used by Indian watchers in years gone by. I can imagine a scout standing here sending up smoke signals. And those little white puffs of clouds up there are the signals he sent into the sky."

"I think you belong in this country," Lowell answered smilingly.

"I'm sure I do. You remember when I first saw these plains and hills I told you the bigness frightened me a little when the sun brought it all out in detail. Well, it doesn't any more. Just to be unfettered in mind, and to live and breathe as part of all this vastness, would be ideal."

"That's where you're in danger of going to the other extreme," the agent replied. "You'll remember that I told you human companionship is as necessary as bacon and flour and salt in this country. You're more dependent on the people about you here, even if your nearest neighbor is five or ten miles away, than you would be in any apartment building in a big city. You might live and die there, and no one would be the wiser.

Also you might get along tolerably well, while living alone. But you can't do it out here and keep a normal mental grip on life."

"My, what a lecture!" laughed the girl, though there was no merriment in her voice. "But it hardly applies to me, for the reason that I always depend upon my neighbors in the ordinary affairs of life. I'm sure I love to be sociable to my Indian neighbors, and even to their agent.

Haven't I ridden away out here just to be sociable to you?"

"No dodging! I promised I wouldn't say anything more about the matters that have been disturbing you so, but that promise was contingent on your playing fair with me. I understand Bill Talpers has been causing you some annoyance, and you haven't said a word to me about it."

Helen flashed a startled glance at Lowell. He was impa.s.sive as her questioning eyes searched his face. Amazement and concern alternated in her features. Then she took refuge in a blaze of anger.

"I don't know how you found out about Talpers!" she cried. "It is true that he did cause a--a little annoyance, but that is all gone and forgotten. But I am not going to forget your impertinence quite so easily."

"My what?"

"Your impertinence?"

The girl was trembling with anger, or apprehension, and tapped her boot nervously with her quirt as she spoke.

"You've been lecturing me about various things," she went on, "and now you bring up Talpers as a sort of bugaboo to frighten me."

"You don't know Bill Talpers. If he has any sort of hold on you or on Willis Morgan, he'll try to break you both. He is as innocent of scruples as a lobo wolf."

"What hold could he possibly have on me--on us?"

She looked at Lowell defiantly as she asked the question, but he thought he detected a note of concern in her voice.

"I didn't say he had any hold. I merely pointed out that if he were given any opportunity he'd make life miserable for both of you."

Lowell did not add that Talpers, in a fit of rage and suspicion, augmented by strong drink, had hinted that Helen knew something of the murder. He had been inclined to believe that Talpers had merely been "fighting wild" when he made the veiled accusation--that the trader, being very evidently only partly recovered from a bout with his pet bottles, had made the first counter-a.s.sertion that had come into his head in the hope of provoking Lowell into a quarrel. But there was a quality of terror in the girl's voice which struck Lowell with chilling force. Something in his look must have caught Helen's attention, for her nervousness increased.

"You have no right to pillory me so," she said rapidly. "You have been perfectly impossible right along--that is, ever since this crime happened. You've been spying here and there--"

"Spying!"

"Yes, downright spying! You've been putting suspicion where it doesn't belong. Why, everybody believes the Indians did it--everybody but you.

Probably some Indians did it who never have been suspected and never will be--not the Indians who are under suspicion now."

"That's just about what another party was telling me not long ago--that I was coddling the Indians and trying to fasten suspicion where it didn't rightfully belong."

"Who else told you that?"

"No less a person than Bill Talpers."

"There you go again, bringing in that cave man. Why do you keep talking to me about Talpers? I'm not afraid of him."

Most girls would have been on the verge of hysteria, Lowell thought, but, while Helen was plainly under a nervous strain, her self-command returned. The agent was in possession of some information--how much she did not know. Perhaps she could goad him into betraying the source of his knowledge.

"I know you're not afraid of Talpers," remarked Lowell, after a pause, "but at least give me the privilege of being afraid for you. I know Bill Talpers better than you do."

"What right have you to be afraid for me? I'm of age, and besides, I have a protector--a guardian--at the ranch."

Lowell was on the point of making some bitter reply about the undesirability of any guardianship a.s.sumed by Willis Morgan, squaw man, recluse, and recipient of common hatred and contempt. But he kept his counsel, and remarked, pleasantly:

"My rights are merely those of a neighbor--the right of one neighbor to help another."

"There are no rights of that sort where the other neighbor isn't asking any help and doesn't desire it."

"I'm not sure about your not needing it. Anyway, if you don't now, you may later."

The girl did not answer. The horses were standing close together, heads drooping lazily. Warm breezes came fitfully from the winds' playground below. The handkerchief at the girl's neck fluttered, and a strand of her hair danced and glistened in the sunshine. The graceful lines of her figure were brought out by her riding-suit. Lowell put his palm over the gloved hand on her saddle pommel. Even so slight a touch thrilled him.

"If a neighbor has no right to give advice," said Lowell, "let us a.s.sume that my unwelcome offerings have come from a man who is deeply in love with you. It's no great secret, anyway, as it seems to me that even the meadow-larks have been singing about it ever since we started on this ride."

The girl buried her face in her hands. Lowell put his arm about her waist, and she drooped toward him, but recovered herself with an effort.

Putting his arm away, she said:

"You make matters harder and harder for me. Please forget what I have said and what you have said, and don't come to see me any more."

She spoke with a quiet intensity that amazed Lowell.

"Not come to see you any more! Why such an extreme sentence?"

"Because there is an evil spell on the Greek Letter Ranch. Everybody who comes there is certain to be followed by trouble--deep trouble."

The girl's agitation increased. There was terror in her face.

"Look here!" began Lowell. "This thing is beyond all promises of silence. I--"

"Don't ask what I mean!" said the girl. "You might find it awkward. You say you are in love with me?"

"I repeat it a thousand times."

"Well, you are the kind of man who will choose honor every time. I realize that much. Suppose you found that your love for me was bringing you in direct conflict with your duty?"

"I know that such a thing is impossible," broke in Lowell.

Helen smiled, bitterly.

"It is so far from being impossible that I am asking you to forget what you have said, and to forget me as well. There is so much of evil on the Greek Letter Ranch that the very soil there is steeped in it. I am going away, but I know its spell will follow me."