The Sheriff's Son Part 10

Abruptly she rose. "We'll be going. You ride down. My foot is all right now."

"I wouldn't think of it," he answered promptly. "You might injure yourself for life."

"I tell you I'm all right," she said, impatience in her voice.

To prove her claim she limped a few yards slowly. In spite of a stubborn will the girl's breath came raggedly. Beaudry caught the bridle of the horse and followed her.

"Don't, please. You might hurt yourself," he urged.

She nodded. "All right. Bring the horse close to that big rock."

From the boulder she mounted without his help. Presently she asked a careless question.

"Why do you call him Cornell? Is it for the college?"

"Yes. I went to school there a year." He roused himself to answer with the proper degree of lightness. "At the ball games we barked in chorus a rhyme: 'Cornell I yell--yell--yell--Cornell.' That's how it is with this old plug. If I want to get anywhere before the day after to-morrow, I have to yell--yell--yell."

The young woman showed in a smile a row of white strong teeth. "I see.

His real name is Day-After-To-Morrow, but you call him Cornell for short. Why not just Corn? He would appreciate that, perhaps."

"You've christened him, Miss Rutherford. Corn he shall be, henceforth and forevermore."

They picked their way carefully down through the canon and emerged from it into the open meadow. The road led plain, and straight to the horse ranch. Just before they reached the house, a young man cantered up from the opposite direction.

He was a black-haired, dark young giant of about twenty-four. Before he turned to the girl, he looked her companion over casually and contemptuously.

"h.e.l.lo, Boots! Where's your horse?" he asked.

"Bolted. Hasn't Blacky got home yet?"

"Don't know. Haven't been home. Get thrown?"

"No. Stepped into one of your wolf traps." She turned to include Beaudry. "This gentleman--Mr.--?"

Caught at advantage, Roy groped wildly for the name he had chosen. His mind was a blank. At random he s.n.a.t.c.hed for the first that came. It happened to be his old Denver address.

"Cherokee Street," he gasped.

Instantly he knew he had made a mistake.

"That's odd," Beulah said. "There's a street called Cherokee in Denver. Were you named for it?"

He lied, not very valiantly. "Yes, I--I think so. You see, I was born on it, and my parents--since their name was Street, anyhow,--thought it a sort of distinction to give me that name. I've never much liked it."

The girl spoke to the young man beside her. "Mr. Street helped me out of the trap and lent me his horse to get home. I hurt my leg." She proceeded to introductions. "Mr. Street, this is my brother, Jeff Rutherford."

Jeff nodded curtly. He happened to be dismounting, so he did not offer to shake hands. Over the back of the horse he looked at his sister's guest without comment. Again he seemed to dismiss him from his mind as of no importance. When he spoke, it was to Beulah.

"That's a fool business--stepping into wolf traps. How did you come to do it?"

"It doesn't matter how. I did it."

"Hurt any?"

She swung from the saddle and limped a few steps. "Nothing to make any fuss about. Dad home?"

"Yep. Set the trap again after you sprung it, Boots?"

"No. Set your own traps," she flung over her shoulder. "This way, Mr.

Street."

Roy followed her to the house and was ushered into a room where a young man sat cleaning a revolver with one leg thrown across a second chair.

Tilted on the back of his head was a cowpuncher's pinched-in hat. He too had black hair and a black mustache. Like all the Rutherfords he was handsome after a fashion, though the debonair recklessness of his good looks offered a warning of temper.

"'Lo, Boots," he greeted his sister, and fastened his black eyes on her guest.

Beaudry noticed that he did not take off his hat or lift his leg from the chair.

"Mr. Street, this is my brother Hal. I don't need to tell you that he hasn't been very well brought up."

Young Rutherford did not accept the hint. "My friends take me as they find me, sis. Others can go to Guinea."

Beulah flushed with annoyance. She drew one of the gauntlets from her hand and with the fingers of it flipped the hat from the head of her brother. Simultaneously her foot pushed away the chair upon which his leg rested.

He jumped up, half inclined to be angry. After a moment he thought better of it, and grinned.

"I'm not the only member of the family shy on manners, Boots," he said.

"What's the matter with you? Showing off before company?"

"I'd have a fine chance with you three young rowdies in the house," she retorted derisively. "Where's dad?"

As if in answer to her question the door opened to let in a big, middle-aged rancher with a fine shock of grizzled hair and heavy black eyebrows. Beulah went through the formula of introduction again, but without it Beaudry would have known this hawk-nosed man whose gaze bored into his. The hand he offered to Hal Rutherford was cold and clammy. A chill shiver pa.s.sed through him.

The young woman went on swiftly to tell how her guest had rescued her from the wolf trap and walked home beside her while she rode his horse.

"I'll send for Doc Spindler and have him look at your ankle, honey,"

the father announced at once.

"Oh, it's all right--bruised up a bit--that's all," Beulah objected.

"We'll make sure, Boots. Slap a saddle on and ride for the Doc, Hal."

When the young man had left the room, his father turned again to Roy.

His arm gathered in the girl beside him. "We're sure a heap obliged to you, Mr. Street. It was right lucky you happened along."

To see the father and daughter together was evidence enough of the strong affection that bound them. The tone in which he had spoken to his son had been brusque and crisp, but when he addressed her, his voice took on a softer inflection, his eyes betrayed the place she held in his heart.

The man looked what he was--the chief of a clan, the almost feudal leader of a tribe which lived outside the law. To deny him a certain n.o.bility of appearance was impossible. Young Beaudry guessed that he was arrogant, but this lay hidden under a manner of bluff frankness.

One did not need a second glance to see from whom the younger Rutherfords had inherited their dark, good looks. The family likeness was strong in all of them, but nature had taken her revenge for the anti-social life of the father. The boys had reverted toward savagery.