Chapter XXI
Roy Rides his Paint Hoss
But he did.
For next day Pat Ryan rode up to the Lazy Double D with a piece of newsthat took Roy straight to his pinto. Beulah Rutherford haddisappeared. She had been out riding and Blacky had come home with anempty saddle. So far as was known, Brad Charlton had seen her last.He had met her just above the Laguna Sinks, had talked with her, andhad left the young woman headed toward the mountains.
The word had reached Battle Butte through Slim Sanders, who had beensent down from Huerfano Park for help. The Rutherfords and theirfriends were already combing the hills for the lost girl, but the ownerof the horse ranch wanted Sheriff Sweeney to send out posses as aborder patrol. Opinion was divided. Some thought Beulah might havemet a grizzly, been unhorsed, and fallen a victim to it. There was thepossibility that she might have stumbled while climbing and hurtherself. According to Sanders, her father held to another view. Hewas convinced that Meldrum was at the bottom of the thing.
This was Roy's instant thought, too. He could not escape the sinistersuggestion that through the girl the ruffian had punished them all.While he gave sharp, short orders to get together the riders of theranch, his mind was busy with the situation. Had he better joinSweeney's posse and patrol the desert? Or would he help more bypushing straight into the hills?
Dingwell rode up and looked around in surprise. "What's the stir, son?"
His partner told him what he had heard and what he suspected.
Before he answered, Dave chewed a meditative cud. "Maybeso you'reright--and maybe 'way off. Say you're wrong. Say Meldrum has nothingto do with this. In that case it is in the hills that we have got tofind Miss Beulah."
"But he has. I feel sure he has. Mr. Ryan says Rutherford thinks so,too."
"Both you and Hal have got that crook Meldrum in yore minds. You'vebeen thinking a lot about him, so you jump to the conclusion that whatyou're afraid of has happened. The chances are ten to one against it.But we'll say you're right. Put yourself in Meldrum's place. Whatwould he do?"
Beaudry turned a gray, agonized face on his friend. "I don't know.What--what would he do?"
"The way to get at it is to figure yourself in his boots. Rememberthat you're a bad, rotten lot, cur to the bone. You meet up with thisgirl and get her in yore power. You've got a grudge against herbecause she spoiled yore plans, and because through her you were handedthe whaling of yore life and are being hounded out of the country.You're sore clear through at all her people and at all her friends.Naturally, you're as sweet-tempered as a sore-headed bear, and you'veprobably been drinking like a sheepherder on a spree."
"I know what a devil he is. The question is how far would he dare go?"
"You've put yore finger right on the point, son. What might restrainhim wouldn't be any moral sense, but fear. He knows that once hetouched Miss Rutherford, this country would treat him like arattlesnake. He could not even be sure that the Rutherfords would nothunt him down in Mexico."
"You think he would let her alone, then?"
The old-timer shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. But I reckonhe'd try to postpone a decision as long as he could. Unless hedestroyed her in the first rush of rage, he wouldn't have the nerve todo it until he had made himself crazy drunk. It all depends oncircumstances, but my judgment is--if he had a chance and if he didn'tthink it too great a risk--that he would try to hold her a prisoner asa sort of hostage to gloat over."
"You mean keep her--unharmed?"
They were already in the saddle and on the road. Dave looked across athis white-faced friend.
"I'm only guessing, Roy, but that's the way I figure it," he saidgently.
"You don't think he would try to take her across the desert with him toMexico."
Ryan shook his head.
"No chance. He couldn't make it. When he leaves the hills, MissRutherford will stay there."
"Alive?" asked Beaudry from a dry throat.
"Don't know."
"God!"
"So that whether Miss Beulah did or did not meet Meldrum, we have tolook for her up among the mountains of the Big Creek watershed,"concluded Dingwell. "I believe we'll find her safe and sound. Chancesare Meldrum isn't within forty miles of her."
They were riding toward Lonesome Park, from which they intended to workup into the hills. Just before reaching the rim of the park, theycircled around a young pine lying across the trail. Roy remembered thetree. It had stood on a little knoll, strong and graceful, reachingstraight toward heaven with a kind of gallant uprightness. Now itstrunk was snapped, its boughs crushed, its foliage turning sere. Anenvious wind had brought it low. Somehow that pine reminded Beaudrypoignantly of the girl they were seeking. She, too, had always stoodaloof, a fine and vital personality, before the eyes of men sufficientto herself. But as the evergreen had stretched its hundred arms towardlight and sunshine, so Beulah Rutherford had cried dumbly to life forsome vague good she could not formulate.
Were her pride and courage abased, too? Roy would not let himselfbelieve it. The way of youth is to deny the truth of all signpostswhich point to the futility of beauty and strength. It would be a kindof apostasy to admit that her sweet, lissom grace might be forevercrushed and bruised.
They rode hard and steadily. Before dusk they were well up toward thedivide among the wooded pockets of the hills. From one of these a mancame to meet them.
"It's Hal Rutherford," announced Ryan, who was riding in front withDingwell.
The owner of the horse ranch nodded a greeting as he drew up in frontof them. He was unshaven and gaunt. Furrows of anxiety lined his face.
"Anything new, Hal?" asked Dave.
"Not a thing. We're combing the hills thorough."
"You don't reckon that maybe a cougar--?" Ryan stopped. It occurredto him that his suggestion was not a very cheerful one.
Rutherford looked at the little Irishman from bleak eyes. The miseryin them was for the moment submerged in a swift tide of hate. "Atwo-legged cougar, Pat. If I meet up with him, I'll take his hide offinch by inch."
"Meaning Meldrum?" asked Roy.
"Meaning Meldrum." A spasm of pain shot across the face of the man."If he's done my little girl any meanness, he'd better blow his headoff before I get to him."
"Don't believe he'd dare hurt Miss Beulah, Rutherford. Meldrum belongsto the coyote branch of the wolf family. I've noticed it's his nightto howl only when hunters are liable to be abed. If he's in this thingat all, I'll bet he's trying to play both ends against the middle.We'll sure give him a run for his white alley," Dingwell concluded.
"Hope you're right, Dave," Rutherford added in a voice rough with thefeeling he could not suppress: "I appreciate it that you boys from theLazy Double D came after what has taken place."
Dave grinned cheerfully. "Sho, Hal! Maybe Beaudry and I aren'tsending any loving-cups up to you and yours, but we don't pull any ofthat sulk-in-the-tent stuff when our good friend Beulah Rutherford islost in the hills. She went through for us proper, and we ain't goingto quit till we bring her back to you as peart and sassy as that calfthere."
"What part of the country do you want us to work?" asked Ryan.
"You can take Del Oro and Lame Cow Creeks from the divide down to thefoothills," Rutherford answered. "I'll send one of the boys over toboss the round-up. He'll know the ground better than you lads. Makecamp here to-night and he'll join you before you start. To-morrowevening I'll have a messenger meet you on the flats. We're trying tokeep in touch with each other, you understand."
Rutherford left them making camp. They were so far up in the mountainsthat the night was cool, even though the season was midsummer. Unusedto sleeping outdoors as yet, Roy lay awake far into the night. Hisnerves were jumpy. The noises of the grazing horses and of thefour-footed inhabitants of the night startled him more than once from acat-nap. His thoughts were full of Beulah Rutherford. Was she aliveor dead to-night, in peril or in s
afety?
At last, in the fag end of the night, he fell into sound sleep that wasuntroubled. From this he was wakened in the first dim dawn by thesound of his companions stirring. A fire was already blazing andbreakfast in process of making. He rose and stretched his stiff limbs.Every bone seemed to ache from contact with the hard ground.
While they were eating breakfast, a man rode up and dismounted. Along, fresh zigzag scar stretched across his forehead. It was as plainto be seen as the scowl which drew his heavy eyebrows together.
"'Lo, Charlton. Come to boss this round-up for us?" asked Dingwellcheerily.
The young man nodded sulkily. "Hal sent me. The boys weren't withhim." He looked across the fire at Beaudry, and there was smoulderingrage in his narrowed eyes.
Roy murmured "Good-morning" in a rather stifled voice. This was thefirst time he had met Charlton since they had clashed in the arcade ofthe Silver Dollar. That long deep scar fascinated him. He felt animpulse to apologize humbly for having hit him so hard. To put such amark on a man for life was a liberty that might well be taken as apersonal affront. No wonder Charlton hated him--and as their eyes metnow, Roy had no doubt about that. The man was his enemy. Some day hewould even the score. Again Beaudry's heart felt the familiar drenchof an icy wave.
Charlton did not answer his greeting. He flushed to his throat, turnedabruptly on his heel, and began to talk with Ryan. The hillman wantedit clearly understood that the feud he cherished was only temporarilyabandoned. But even Roy noticed that the young Admirable Crichton hadlost some of his debonair aplomb.
The little Irishman explained this with a grin to Dave as they wereriding together half an hour later. "It's not so easy to get away withthat slow insolence of his while he's wearing that forgit-me-not youngBeaudry handed him in the mix-up."
"Sort of spoils the toutensemble, as that young Melrose tenderfoot usedto say--kinder as if a bald-haided guy was playing Romeo and had losthis wig in the shuffle," agreed Dave.
By the middle of the forenoon they were well up in the headwaters ofthe two creeks they were to work. Charlton divided the party so as tocover both watersheds as they swept slowly down. Roy was on theextreme right of those working Del Oro.
It was a rough country, with wooded draws cached in unexpected pocketsof the hills. Here a man might lie safely on one of a hundred ledgeswhile the pursuit drove past within fifty feet of him. As Roy's pintoclambered up and down the steep hills, he recalled the advice of Daveto ride a buckskin "that melts into the atmosphere like a patch ofbunch grass." He wished he had taken that advice. A man looking forrevenge could crouch in the chaparral and with a crook of his fingersend winged death at his enemy. A twig crackling under the hoof of hishorse more than once sent an electric shock through his pulses. Thecrash of a bear through the brush seemed to stop the beating of hisheart.
Charlton had made a mistake in putting Beaudry on the extreme right ofthe drive. The number of men combing the two creeks was not enough topermit close contact. Sometimes a rider was within hail of hisneighbor. More often he was not. Roy, unused to following the rodeo,was deflected by the topography of the ridge so far to the right thathe lost touch with the rest.
By the middle of the afternoon he had to confess to himself withchagrin that he did not even know how to reach Del Oro. While he hadbeen riding the rough wooded ridge above, the creek had probably made asharp turn to the left. Must he go back the way he had come? Or couldhe cut across country to it? It was humiliating that he could not evenfollow a small river without losing the stream and himself. He couldvision the cold sneer of Charlton when he failed to appear at the nightrendezvous. Even his friends would be annoyed at such helplessness.
After an hour's vain search he was more deeply tangled in the web ofhills. He was no longer even sure how to get down from them into thelower reaches of country toward which he was aiming.
While he hesitated on a ridge there came to him a faint, far cry. Hegave a shout of relief, then listened for his answer. It did not come.He called again, a third time, and a fourth. The wind brought back noreply. Roy rode in the direction of the sound that had firstregistered itself on his ears, stopping every minute or two to shout.Once he fancied he heard again the voice.
Then, unexpectedly, the cry came perfectly clear, over to the rightscarcely a hundred yards. A little arroyo of quaking aspens laybetween him and the one who called. He dismounted, tied his horse to asapling, and pushed through the growth of young trees. Emerging fromthese, he climbed the brow of the hill and looked around. Nobody wasin sight.
"Where are you?" he shouted.
"Here--in the prospect hole."
His pulses crashed. That voice--he would have known it out of amillion.
A small dirt dump on the hillside caught his eye. He ran forward tothe edge of a pit and looked down.
The haggard eyes of Beulah Rutherford were lifted to meet his.