CHAPTER IX
A KNIGHT-ERRANT
The Duke took off his hat, standing before her foolishly dumb betweenhis disappointment and embarrassment. He had counted so fully on findingthe girl of his romance that he was reluctant to accept the testimony ofhis eyes. Here was one charming enough to compensate a man for a hundredfasts and fevers, but she was not the lodestone that had drawn upon hisheart with that impelling force which could not be denied.
What a stupid blunder his impetuous conclusion had led him into; what anawkward situation! Pretty as she was, he didn't want to serve thiswoman, no matter for her embarrassments and distress. He could notremain there a week in the ferment of his longing to be on his way,searching the world for her whom his soul desired. This ran over himlike an electric shock as he stood before her, hat in hand, head bent alittle, like a culprit, looking rather stupid in his confusion.
"Were you looking for somebody?" she asked, her handsome face sunningover with a smile that invited his confidence and dismissed his qualms.
"I was looking for the boss, ma'am."
"I'm the boss." She spoke encouragingly, as to some timid creature,bending to brush off the milk that the stubborn calf had shaken from itsmuzzle over her skirt.
"My partner and I are strangers here--he's over there at thegate--passing through the country, and wanted your permission to lookaround the place a little. They told us about it down at Glendora."
The animation of her face was clouded instantly as by a shadow ofdisappointment. She turned her head as if to hide this from his eyes,answering carelessly, a little pettishly:
"Go ahead; look around till you're tired."
Lambert hesitated, knowing very well that he had raised expectationswhich he was in no present mind to fill. She must be sorely in need ofhelp when she would brighten up that way at the mere sight of a commoncreature like a cow-puncher. He hated to take away what he had seemed tocome there offering, what he had, in all earnestness, come to offer.
But she was not the girl. He had followed a false lure that his ownunbridled imagination had lit. The only thing to do was back out of itas gracefully as he could, and the poor excuse of "looking around" wasthe best one he could lay his hand to in a hurry.
"Thank you," said he, rather emptily.
She did not reply, but bent again to her task of teaching the littleblack calf to take its breakfast out of the pail instead of the fashionin which nature intended it to refresh itself. Lambert backed off alittle, for the way of the range had indeed become his way in that yearof his apprenticeship, and its crudities were over him painfully. Whenoff what he considered a respectful distance he put on his hat, turninga look at her as if to further assure her that his invasion of herpremises was not a trespass.
She gave him no further notice, engrossed as she appeared to be with thecalf, but when he reached the gate and looked back, he saw her standingstraight, the bucket at her feet, looking after him as if she resentedthe fact that two free-footed men should come there and flaunt theirleisure before her in the hour of her need.
Taterleg was looking over the gate, trying to bring himself into therange of her eyes. He swept off his hat when she looked that way, to berewarded by an immediate presentation of her back. Such cow-punchers asthese were altogether too fine and grand in their independent airs, herattitude seemed to say.
"Did you take the job?" Taterleg inquired.
"I didn't ask her about it."
"You didn't ask her? Well, what in the name of snakes did you come uphere for?"
The Duke led his horse away from the gate, back where she could not seehim, and stood fiddling with his cinch a bit, although it required noattention at all.
"I got to thinkin' maybe I'd better go on west a piece. If you want tostay, don't let me lead you off. Go on over and strike her for a job;she needs men, I know, by the way she looked."
"No, I guess I'll go on with you till our roads fork. But I was kind ofthinkin' I'd like to stay around Glendora a while." Taterleg sighed ashe seemed to relinquish the thought of it, tried the gate to see that itwas latched, turned his horse about. "Well, where're we headin' fornow?"
"I want to ride up there on that bench in front of the house and lookaround a little at the view; then I guess we'll go back to town."
They rode to the top of the bench the Duke indicated, where the viewbroadened in every direction, that being the last barrier between theriver and the distant hills. The ranchhouse appeared big even in thatsetting of immensities, and perilously near the edge of the crumblingbluff which presented a face almost sheer on the river more than threehundred feet below.
"It must 'a' been a job to haul the lumber for that house up here."
That was Taterleg's only comment. The rugged grandeur of naturepresented to him only its obstacles; its beauties did not move him anymore than they would have affected a cow.
The Duke did not seem to hear him. He was stretching his gaze into thedim south up the river, where leaden hills rolled billow upon billow,engarnitured with their sad gray sage. Whatever his thoughts were, theybound him in a spell which the creaking of Taterleg's saddle, as heshifted in it impatiently, did not disturb.
"Couple of fellers just rode up to the gate in the cross-fence back ofthe bunkhouse," Taterleg reported.
The Duke grunted, to let it be known that he heard, but was notinterested. He was a thousand miles away from the Bad Lands in hisfast-running dreams.
"That old nigger seems to be havin' some trouble with them fellers,"came Taterleg's further report. "There goes that girl on her horse up tothe gate--say, look at 'em, Duke! Them fellers is tryin' to make her let'em through."
Lambert turned, indifferently, to see. There appeared to be acontroversy under way at the gate, to be sure. But rows betweenemployees and employer were common; that wasn't his fuss. Perhaps itwasn't an argument, as it seemed to be from that distance, anyhow.
"Did you see that?" Taterleg started his horse forward in a jump as hespoke, reining up stiffly at Lambert's side. "One of them fellers pulledhis gun on that old nigger--did you see him, Duke?"
"Ye-es, I saw him," said the Duke speculatively, watching the squabbleat the distant gate keenly, turning his horse to head that way by apressure of his knee.
"Knocked him flat!" Taterleg set off in a gallop as he spoke, the Dukeright after him, soon ahead of him, old Whetstone a yellow streak acrossthe mesa.
It wasn't his quarrel, but nobody could come flashing a gun in the faceof a lady when he was around. That was the argument that rose in theDuke's thoughts as he rode down the slope and up the fenced passagebetween the barns.
The gate at which the two horsemen were disputing the way with the girland her old black helper was a hundred yards or more beyond the one atwhich Taterleg and the Duke had stopped a little while before. It was ina cross-fence which appeared to cut the house and other buildings fromthe range beyond.
As the Duke bent to open this first gate he saw that the girl haddismounted and was bending over the old negro, who was lying stretchedon the ground. He had fallen against the gate, on which one of theruffians was now pushing, trying to open it against the weight of hisbody. The girl spoke sharply to the fellow, bracing her shoulder againstthe gate. Lambert heard the scoundrel laugh as he swung to the groundand set his shoulder against the other side.
The man who remained mounted leaned over and added his strength to thestruggle, together forcing the gate open, pushing the resisting girlwith it, dragging the old negro, who clutched the bottom plank and washauled brutally along. All concerned in the struggle were so deeplyengrossed in their own affair that none noted the approach of the Dukeand Taterleg. The fellow on the ground was leading his horse through asLambert galloped up.
At the sound of Lambert's approach the dismounted man leaped into hissaddle. The two trespassers sat scowling inside the gate, watching himclosely for the first hostile sign. Vesta Philbrook was trying to helpthe old negro to his feet. Blood was streaming down his face from a cuton his fo
rehead; he sank down again when she let go of him to welcomethis unexpected help.
"These men cut my fence; they're trespassing on me, trying to defy andhumiliate me because they know I'm alone!" she said. She stretched outher hand toward Lambert as if in appeal to a judge, her face flushedfrom the struggle and sense of outrage, her hat pushed back on her amberhair, the fire of righteous anger in her eyes. The realization of herbeauty seemed to sweep Lambert like a flood of sudden music, lifting hisheart in a great surge, making him recklessly glad.
"Where do you fellers think you're goin'?" he asked, following thespeech of the range.
"We're goin' where we started to go," the man who had just remountedreplied, glaring at Lambert with insulting sneer.
This was a stocky man with bushy red-gray eyebrows, a stubble of roanbeard over his blunt, common face. One foot was short in his boot, as ifhe had lost his toes in a blizzard, a mark not uncommonly set byunfriendly nature on the men who defied its force in that country. Hewore a duck shooting-jacket, the pockets of it bulging as if with game.
His companion was a much younger man, slender, graceful in the saddle,rather handsome in a swarthy, defiant way. He ranged up beside thespokesman as if to take full share in whatever was to come. Both of themwere armed with revolvers, the elder of the two with a rifle inaddition, which he carried in a leather scabbard black and slick withage, slung on his saddle under his thigh.
"You'll have to get permission from this lady before you go throughhere," Lambert told him calmly.
Vesta Philbrook had stepped back, as if she had presented her case andwaited adjudication. She stood by the old negro where he sat in thedust, her hand on his head, not a word more to add to her case, seemingto have passed it on to this slim, confident, soft-spoken stranger withhis clear eyes and steady hand, who took hold of it so competently.
"I've been cuttin' this purty little fence for ten years, and I'll keepon cuttin' it and goin' through whenever I feel like it. I don't have togit no woman's permission, and no man's, neither, to go where I want togo, kid."
The man dropped his hand to his revolver as he spoke the last word witha twisting of the lip, a showing of his scorbutic teeth, a sneer thatwas at once an insult and a goad. The next moment he was straining hisarms above his head as if trying to pull them out of their sockets, andhis companion was displaying himself in like manner, Lambert's gun downon them, Taterleg coming in deliberately a second or two behind.
"Keep them right there," was the Duke's caution, jerking his head toTaterleg in the manner of a signal understood.
Taterleg rode up to the fence-cutters and disarmed them, holding his guncomfortably in their ribs as he worked with swift hand. The rifle hehanded down to the old negro, who was now on his feet, and who took itwith a bow and a grave face across which a gleam of satisfactionflashed. The holsters with the revolvers in them he passed to the Duke,who hung them on his saddle-horn.
"Pile off," Taterleg ordered.
They obeyed, wrathful but impotent. Taterleg sat by, chewing gum, calmand steady as if the thing had been rehearsed a hundred times. The Dukepointed to the old negro's hat.
"Pick it up," he ordered the younger man; "dust it off and give it tohim."
The fellow did as directed, with evil face, for it hurt his high pride,just as the Duke intended that it should hurt. Lambert nodded to the manwho had knocked the old fellow down with a blow of his heavy revolver.
"Dust off his clothes," he said.
Vesta Philbrook smiled as she witnessed this swift humbling of herancient enemy. The old negro turned himself arrogantly, presenting therear of his broad and dusty pantaloons; but the bristling, red-facedrancher balked. He looked up at Lambert, half choked on the bone of hisrage.
"I'll die before I'll do it!" he declared with a curse.
Lambert beat down the defiant, red-balled glowering eyes with one brief,straight look. The fence-cutter broke a tip of sage and set to work, theold man lifting his arms like a strutting gobbler, his head held high,the pain of his hurt forgotten in the triumphant moment of his revenge.
"Have you got some wire and tools around here handy, Miss Philbrook?"Lambert inquired. "These men are going to do a little fence fixin' thismorning for a change."
The old negro pranced off to get the required tools, throwing a lookback at the two prisoners now and then, covering his mouth with his handto keep back the explosion of his mirth. Badly as he was hurt, hisenjoyment of this unprecedented situation seemed to cure him completely.His mistress went after him, doubtful of his strength, with nothing buta quick look into Lambert's eyes as she passed to tell him how deeplyshe felt.
It was a remarkable procession for the Bad Lands that set out from thecross-line fence a few minutes later, the two free rangers startingunder escort to repair the damage done to a despised fence-man'sbarrier. One of them carried a wire-stretcher, the chain of it woundround his saddle-horn, the other a coil of barbed wire and such tools aswere required. After they had proceeded a little way, Taterleg thoughtof something.
"Don't you reckon we might need a couple of posts, Duke?" he asked.
The Duke thought perhaps they might come in handy. They turned back,accordingly, and each of the trespassers was compelled to shoulder anoak post, with much blasphemy and threatening of future adjustment. Inthat manner of marching, each free ranger carrying his cross as none ofhis kind ever had carried it before, they rode to the scene of theirlate depredations.
Vesta Philbrook stood at the gate and watched them go, reproachingherself for her silence in the presence of this man who had come to herassistance with such sure and determined hand. She never had found itdifficult before to thank anybody who had done her a generous turn; buthere her tongue had lain as still as a hare in its covert, and her hearthad gone trembling in the gratitude which it could not voice.
A strong man he was, and full of commanding courage, but neither sostrong nor so mighty that she had need to keep as quiet in his presenceas a kitchen maid before a king. But he would have to pass that waycoming back, and she could make amends. The old negro stood by,chuckling his pleasure at the sight drawing away into the distance ofthe pasture where his mistress' cattle fed.
"Ananias, do you know who that man is," she asked.
"Laws, Miss Vesta, co'se I do. Didn't you hear his hoss-wrangler callhim Duke?"
"I heard him call him Duke."
"He's that man they call Duke of Chimley Butte--I know that hoss he'sa-ridin'; that hoss used to be Jim Wilder's ole outlaw. That Duke mankilled Jim and took that hoss away from him; that's what he done. Thatwas while you was gone; you didn't hear 'bout it."
"Killed him and took his horse? Surely, he must have had some goodreason, Ananias."
"I don' know, and I ain't a-carin'. That's him, and that's what hedone."
"Did you ever hear of him killing anybody else?"
"Oh, plenty, plenty," said the old man with easy generosity. "I bethe's killed a hun'ed men--maybe mo'n a hun'ed."
"But you don't know," she said, smiling at the old man's extravagantrecommendation of his hero.
"I don' know, but I bet he is," said he. "Look at 'em!" he chuckled;"look at old Nick Ha'gus and his onery, low-down Injun-blood boy!"