The Last Straw Part 16

"You're right ... in a way, but if it ever come to a show-down, I'd be the one to hold th' bag, wouldn't I? That's what we got to watch out for. 'Course, it's easy pickin', with this gal tryin' to run things herself, an' what with her brand workin' over into ourn so easy, there ain't many chances.... Except havin' somebody else to know."

"If anybody ever was to double cross you, Alf, I'd get 'em if it was the last thing I done!"

That threat carried conviction and her father looked at her with a rare brand of admiration in his eyes.

"Lord, daughter, sometimes I think you was meant to be a man ... an' a hard man! Sometimes you almost scare me, th' way you say things!"

She made no reply and he said:

"All we got to do is go slow. A brandin' iron has built many a fortune, an' n.o.body ever had it any easier 'n us."

"Do you think we'll ever get rich enough, Alf, to have a regular house?

An' be respected by folks?"

"Luck's bound to change sometime," he muttered. "Ours has been bad a long time ... a long, long time."

He gathered an arm load of wood and entered the cabin. The girl stood alone a long time, watching the brilliant flowering of the sky sink slowly into the west, drawing steely night to cover its garden. A sharp star bored its way through the failing light and stood half way between earth and heaven. A vagrant breeze slid down the creek, bringing with it the breath of sage, and afar off somewhere a cow bawled plaintively.

"She has 'em," she muttered to herself. "Friends ... an' respect ...

an' everything I want....

"I wonder what makes me hate folks so...."

CHAPTER VII

THE CATAMOUNT

Three weeks after her arrival Jane made her first trip to town and Beck drove the pair of strong bays which swirled their buckboard over the road at a spanking trot.

Events had arisen to prevent their being together in the days immediately following the frank discussion of their att.i.tudes toward one another and Jane thought that she detected a feeling of curiosity in him, as though he wondered just how she would go about forcing him to like her. Shrewdly, she avoided personalities and talked much of the ranch.

When they broke over the divide and began the long drop into town, he said:

"Since you asked advice from me, I keep thinkin' up more, ma'am."

"That's nice. I need it. What now?"

"I s'pose Dad mentioned that water in Devil's Hole?"

"Why, I don't recall it. We've talked so much and about so many things that perhaps it's slipped my mind."

"Maybe. He said he had."

She questioned him further but he said it might be well for her to mention it to Hepburn. "He's foreman, you know."

They swung into the one street of Ute Crossing and stopped before the bank. As Beck stepped down to tie the team a girl came out of a store across the way and vaulted into the saddle on a big brown horse with graceful ease. It was the nester's daughter.

Two men came from the saloon just as she reined her horse about. They eyed her insolently with that stare of a type of loafer which is eloquent of all that is despicable and one of them, a short, stodgy man, smiled brazenly.

The girl gave them one stare, hostility in her brown eyes, and then looked away, her lips moving in an unheard word, surely of contempt.

Then the man spoke. It is not well to repeat. His words were few, but they were ugly. The girl had touched her horse with a spur and he leaped forward. Just that one bound. As he made it the man spoke and with a wrench she set the brown back on his haunches and whirled him about. Her face was suddenly white, her lips in a tight, red line, and her eyes blazed.

She rode back to the men, who had continued on their way, holding her horse to a mincing trot, for he seemed to have caught the tensity of her mood.

"Did I hear you right?" she said to the man who had spoken.

He stood still and looked up with the rude leer.

"That depends on your ears, likely. All I said was that you--"

She did not give him time to repeat. Her right arm flashed up and the quirt, slung to its wrist, hissed angrily as it cut back and with a stinging crack wound its thong about the man's face.

"Take that!" she cried. "And that ... and that!"

At the first blow the man ducked and turned, throwing up his hands to guard, and as other slashes, relentless, rapid, of scourging vigor, fell upon his head and face and neck, he doubled over and ran for the shelter of a store. But the girl's wrath was not satisfied. She sent the big horse from street to sidewalk where his hoofs thundered on the planks, crowded in between her quarry and the building fronts, cutting off his flight, striking faster, harder, teeth showing now between her drawn lips.

The man fled into the street again, but she followed, guiding her horse without conscious thought, surely, for no woman roused as her face showed she was roused could have had thought for other than the thrashing she administered. Endangered by the excited hoofs which were all about him as he ducked and dodged in vain to escape, the man ran with hands and arms close about his head, moving them with each blow that fell in futile attempts to save other parts from the cut and smart of that rawhide.

The girl uttered no word. All the rancor, all the rage he had roused by his insult, found vent in the whipping. Her whole lithe torso moved with each stroke as she put into the downward swing all the strength she could command, and across the man's cheek rose broad red welts, contrasting with his pallor of fright, until his face looked like a fancy berry pie.

Scuttling, dodging, doubling, the man worked across the street, turned back time and again but persisting until, with a cry of pain and desperation, he threw out one hand, caught the bridle and in the instant's respite the move gave him stumbled to the other sidewalk, across it and sprawled through the swinging doors of the saloon he had left moments before.

The horse came to a halt with a slam against the flimsy front of the building. The girl drew back her quirt as for a final blow, but the man, regaining his feet, fled through the bar room and disappeared. She dropped her hand to the top of the door, pushed it open and held it so, peering darkly into the room.

People had come into the street to watch. There had been excited shouts and a scream or two, but as the girl sat looking into the place a quick silence shut down and when she spoke her voice, trembling with emotion but scarcely raised above its normal pitch, was easily heard.

"I've took a lot from men," she said, "ever since I was a kid. When I come into this country I thought maybe I'd get a little respect ... for bein' just a girl. I didn't get it ... I've got to take it.

"If that man's a sample of the kind you've got here, you're a nest of skunks. And you talk easy hereafter, every one of you, because so long as I've got a quirt and an arm, I'll hide you till you're raw if you make any breaks like he did. Keep that in mind!"

She released her hold on the door; it swung outward smartly and as it struck the horse he sprang sideways, wheeled, and clearing the shallow gutter with a lunge, swung down the street at a gallop.

When she pa.s.sed Jane Hunter, who stood amazed in her buckboard, tears showed in the girl's eyes, but her back was as erect, her shoulders as trimly set as though no great emotion was surging in her heart.

"She's quite a catamount, I'll guess," said Tom Beck as he gave the knot in the tie rope a securing tug and turned to face Jane.

His eyes were fired with admiration.

"But a girl--"

"She was magnificent!"

It was d.i.c.k Hilton who had interrupted with the words. Beck looked at him and the enthusiasm which had been in his face faded. He eyed the Easterner briefly and turned to adjust a buckle on the harness.