The Night Riders Part 11

"Cut her liver out wi' that quirt!" cried Lew.

"Ay, run her till she can't see," added Raw.

And Tresler obeyed mechanically. He was too exhausted to do much; but he managed to bring the quirt down over her shoulders, until, maddened with pain, she rose up on her hind legs, gave a mighty bound forward, and raced away down the trail like a creature possessed.

It was dinner-time when Tresler saw the ranch again. He returned with the mare jaded and docile. He had recovered from the battle, while she had scarcely energy enough to put one foot before the other. She was conquered. To use Arizona's expression, when, from the doorway of the bunkhouse, he saw the mare crawling up the trail toward the ranch--

"Guess she's loaded down till her springs is nigh busted."

And Tresler laughed outright in Jake's face when that individual came into the barn, while he was rubbing her down, and generally returning good for evil, and found fault with his work.

"Where, I'd like to know, have you been all this time?" he asked angrily. Then, as his eyes took in the pitiful sight of the exhausted mare, "Say, you've ruined that mare, and you'll have to make it good.

We don't keep horses for the hands to founder. D'you see what you've done? You've broke her heart."

"And if I'd had the chance I'd have broken her neck too," Tresler retorted, with so much heat, that, in self-defense, the foreman was forced to leave him alone.

That afternoon the real business of ranching began. Lew Cawley was sent out with Tresler to instruct him in mending barbed-wire fences.

A distant pasture had been broken into by the roving cattle outside.

Lew remained with him long enough to show him how to strain the wires up and splice them, then he rode off to other work.

Tresler was glad to find himself out on the prairie away from the unbearable influence of the ranch foreman. The afternoon was hot, but it was bright with the sunshine, which, in the shadow of the mountains, is so bracing. The pastures he was working in were different from the lank weedy-grown prairie, although of the same origin. They were irrigated, and had been sown and re-sown with timothy gra.s.s and clover. The gra.s.s rose high up to the horse's knees as he rode, and the quiet, hard-working animal, his own property, reveled in the sweet-scented fodder which he could nip at as he moved leisurely along.

And Tresler worked very easily that afternoon. Not out of indolence, not out of any ill-feeling toward his foreman. He was weary after his morning's exertions, and, besides, the joy of being out in the pure, bright air, on that wondrous sea of rolling green gra.s.s with its illimitable suggestion of freedom and its gracious odors, seduced him to an indolence quite foreign to him. He was beyond the view of the ranch, with two miles of prairie rollers intervening, so he did his work without concern for time.

It was well after four o'clock when the last strand of wire was strung tight. Then, for want of a shady tree to lean his back against, he sat down by a fence post and smoked, while his horse, with girths loosened, and bit removed from its mouth, grazed joyfully near by.

And then he slept. The peace of the prairie world got hold of him; the profound silence lulled his f.a.gged nerves, his pipe went out, and he slept.

He awoke with a start. Nor, for the moment, did he know where he was.

His pipe had fallen from his mouth, and he found himself stretched full length upon the ground. But something unusual had awakened him, and when he had gathered his scattered senses he looked about him to ascertain what the nature of the disturbance had been. The next moment a laughing voice hailed him.

"Is this the way you learn ranching, Mr. Tresler? Oh, shame! Sleeping the glorious hours of sunshine away."

It was the rich, gentle voice of Diane Marbolt, and its tone was one of quiet raillery. She was gazing down at him from the back of her st.u.r.dy broncho mare, Bessie, with eyes from which, for the moment at least, all sadness had vanished.

Just now her lips were wreathed in a bright smile, and her soft brown eyes were dancing with a joyous light, which, when Tresler had first seen her, had seemed impossible to them. She was out on the prairie, on the back of her favorite, Bessie; she was away from the ranch, from the home that possessed so many cares for her. She was out in her world, the world she loved, the world that was the only world for her, breathing the pure, delicious air which, even in moments of profound unhappiness, had still power to carry her back to the days of happy, careless childhood; had still power to banish all but pleasant thoughts, and to bestow upon her that wild sense of freedom such as is only given to those who have made their home on its virgin bosom.

Tresler beheld this girl now in her native mood. He saw before him the true child of the prairie such as she really was. She was clad in a blue dungaree habit and straw sun-hat, and he marveled at the ravishing picture she made. He raised himself upon his elbow and stared at her, and a sensation of delight swept over him as he devoured each detail of face and figure. Then, suddenly, he was recalled to his senses by the abrupt fading of the smile from the face before him; and he flushed with a rueful sense of guiltiness.

"Fairly caught napping, Miss Marbolt," he said, in confusion. "I acknowledge the sloth, but not the implied laxness anent ranching.

Believe me, I have learned an ample lesson to-day. I now have a fuller appreciation of our worthy foreman; a fair knowledge of the horse, most accurately termed 'outlaw', as the bruised condition of my body can testify; and, as for barbed-wire fencing, I really believe I have discovered every point in its construction worthy of consideration."

He raised a pair of lacerated hands for the girl's inspection, and rose, smiling, to his feet.

"I apologize." Diane was smiling again now as she noted the network of scratches upon his outstretched palms. "You certainly have not been idle," she added, significantly.

Then she became serious with a suddenness that showed how very near the surface, how strongly marked was that quiet, thoughtful nature her companion had first realized in her.

"But I saw you on that mare, and I thought you would surely be killed.

Do you know they've tried to break her for two seasons, and failed hopelessly. What happened after she bolted?"

"Oh, nothing much. I rode her to Forks and back twice."

"Forty miles! Good gracious! What is she like now?"

"Done up, of course. Jake a.s.sures me I've broken her heart; but I haven't. My Lady Jezebel has a heart of stone that would take something in the nature of a sledge-hammer to break. She'll buck like the mischief again to-morrow."

"Yes."

The girl nodded. She had witnessed the battle between the "tenderfoot"

and the mare; and, now that it was all over, she felt pleased that he had won. And there was no mistaking the approval in the glance she gave him. She understood the spirit that had moved him to drive the mare that forty miles; nor, in spite of a certain sympathy for the jaded creature, did she condemn him for it. She was too much a child of the prairie to morbidly sentimentalize over the matter. The mare was a savage of the worst type, and she knew that prairie horses in their breaking often require drastic treatment. It was the stubborn, purposeful character of the man that she admired, and thought most of. He had carried out a task that the best horse-breaker in the country might reasonably have shrunk from, and all to please the brutal nature of Jake Harnach.

"And you've christened her 'Lady Jezebel'?" she asked.

Tresler laughed. "Why, yes, it seems to suit her," he said indifferently.

Then a slight pause followed which amounted almost to awkwardness. The girl had come to find him. Her visit was not a matter of chance. She wanted to talk to this man from the East. And, somehow, Tresler understood that this was so. For some moments she sat stroking Bessie's shoulder with her rawhide riding-switch. The mare grew restive. She, too, seemed to understand something of the awkwardness, and did her best to break it up by one or two of her frivolous gambols. When she had been pacified, the girl leaned forward in her saddle and looked straight into her companion's eyes.

"Tell me," she said, abruptly; "why did you ride that animal?"

The man laughed a little harshly. "Because--well, because I hadn't sense enough to refuse, I suppose."

"Ah, I understand. Jake Harnach."

Tresler shrugged.

"I came out purposely to speak to you," the girl went on, in a quiet, direct manner. There was not the least embarra.s.sment now. She had made up her mind to avoid all chance of misunderstanding. "I want to put matters quite plainly before you. This morning's business was only a sequel to your meeting with Jake, or rather a beginning of the sequel."

Tresler shook his head and smiled. "Not the beginning of the sequel.

That occurred last evening, after I left you."

Diane looked a swift inquiry.

"Yes, Jake is not an easy man. But believe me, Miss Marbolt, you need have no fear. I see what it is; you, in the kindness of your heart, dread that I, a stranger here in your land, in your home, may be maltreated, or even worse by that unconscionable ruffian. Knowing your father's affliction, you fear that I have no protection from Jake's murderous savagery, and you are endeavoring bravely to thrust your frail self between us, and so stave off a catastrophe. Have no fear. I do not antic.i.p.ate a collision. He is only an atrocious bully."

"He is more than that. You underestimate him."

The girl's face had darkened. Her lips were firmly compressed, and an angry fire burned in her usually soft eyes.

Tresler, watching, read the hatred for Jake; read the hatred, and saw that which seemed so out of place in the reliant little face. A p.r.o.nounced fear was also expressed, and the two were so marked that it was hard to say which feeling predominated. Hatred had stirred depths of fire in her beautiful eyes, but fear had paled her features, had set drawn lines about her mouth and brows. He wondered.

"You are right, Mr. Tresler, in that you think I dread for your safety," she went on presently. "It was certainly that dread that brought me out here to-day. You do not antic.i.p.ate a collision because you are a brave man. You have no fear, therefore you give no thought to possibilities. I am weak and a woman, and I see with eyes of understanding and knowledge of Jake, and I know that the collision will be forced upon you; and, further, when the trouble comes, Jake will take no chances. But you must not think too well of me. Believe me, there is selfishness at the root of my anxiety. Do you not see what trouble it will cause to us; my father, me?"

Tresler looked away. The girl had a strange insistence. It seemed to him folly to consider the matter so seriously. He was convinced that she was holding something back; that she was concealing her real reason--perhaps the reason of her own fear of Jake--for thus importuning him. It did not take him long to make up his mind with those lovely, appealing eyes upon him. He turned back to her with a frank smile, and held out his hand. Diane responded, and they shook hands like two friends making a bargain.

"You are right, Miss Marbolt," he said. "I promise you to do all in my power to keep the peace with Jake. But," and here he held up a finger in mock warning, "anything in the nature of a physical attack will be resented--to the last."

Diane nodded. She had obtained all the a.s.surance he would give, she knew, and wisely refrained from further pressure.