Chapter IV
Pauline Roubideau Says "Thank You."
Jimmie Clanton slid back from unconsciousness to a world the center ofwhich was a girl sitting on a rock with his rifle across her knees. Thepicture did not at first associate itself with any previous experience.She was a brown, slim young thing in a calico print that fitted snuglythe soft lines of her immature figure. The boy watched her shyly andwondered at the quiet self-reliance of her. She was keeping guard overhim, and there was about her a cool vigilance that went oddly with thesmall, piquant face and the tumbled mass of curly chestnut hair that hadfallen in a cascade across her shoulders.
"Where are yore folks?" he asked presently.
She turned her head slowly and looked at him. Southern suns had sprinkledbeneath her eyes a myriad of powdered freckles. She met his gazefairly, with a boyish directness and candor.
"Jean has ridden out to tell your friends about you and Mr. Prince.Father has gone back to the house to fix up a travois to carry you."
"Sho! I can ride."
"There's no need of it. You must have lost a great deal of blood."
He looked down at his foot and saw that the boot had been cut away. Abandage of calico had been tied around the wound. He guessed that thegirl had sacrificed part of a skirt.
"And you stayed here to see the 'Paches didn't play with me whilst yorefather was gone," he told her.
"There wasn't any danger, of course. The only one that escaped is milesaway from here. But we didn't like to leave you alone."
"That's right good of you."
Her soft, brown eyes met his again. They poured upon him the gift ofpassionate gratitude she could not put into words. It was from somethingmuch more horrible than death that he had snatched her. One moment shehad been a creature crushed, leaden despair in her heart. Then themiracle had flashed down from the sky. She was free, astride the pinto,galloping for home.
"Yes, you owe us much." There was a note of light sarcasm in her clear,young voice, but the feeling in her heart swept it away in an emotionalrush of words from the tongue of her father. "Vous avez pris le fait etcause pour moi. Sans vous j'etais perdu."
"You're French," he said.
"My father is, not my mother. She was from Tennessee."
"I'm from the South, too."
"You didn't need to tell me that," she answered with a little smile.
"Oh, I'm a Westerner now, but you ought to have heerd me talk when Ifirst came out." He broached a grievance. "Say, will you tell yore dadnot to do that again? I'm no kid."
"Do what?"
"You know." The red flamed into his face. "If it got out among the boyswhat he'd done, I'd never hear the last of it."
"You mean kissed you?"
"Sure I do. That ain't no way to treat a fellow. I'm past eighteen if Iam small for my age. Nobody can pull the pat-you-on-the-head-sonny stuffon me."
"But you don't understand. That isn't it at all. My father is French.That makes all the difference. When he kissed you it meant--oh, that hehonored and esteemed you because you fought for me."
"I been tellin' you right along that Billie Prince is to blame. Let himgo an' kiss Billie an' see if he'll stand for it."
A flash of roguishness brought out an unexpected dimple near the cornerof her insubordinate mouth. "We'll be good, all of us, and never do itagain. Cross our hearts."
Young Clanton reddened beneath the tan. Without looking at her he feltthe look she tilted sideways at him from under the long, curved lashes.Of course she was laughing at him. He knew that much, even though helacked the experience to meet her in kind. Oddly enough, there prickedthrough his embarrassment a delicious little tingle of delight. So longas she took him in as a partner of her gayety she might make as much funof him as she pleased.
But the owlish dignity of his age would not let him drop the subjectwithout further explanation. "It's all right for yore dad to much you. Ireckon a girl kinder runs to kisses an' such doggoned foolishness. But aman's different. He don't go in for it."
"Oh, doesn't he?" asked Polly demurely. She did not think it necessary tomention that every unmarried man who came to the ranch wanted to makelove to her before he left. "I'm glad you told me, because I'm only agirl and I don't know much about it. And since you're a man, of courseyou know."
"That's the way it is," he assured her, solemn as a pouter.
She bit her lip to keep from laughing out, but on the heels of her mirthcame a swift reproach. In his knowledge of life he might be a boy, but inone way at least he had proved himself a man. He had taken his life inhis hands and ridden to save her without a second thought. He had foughta good fight, one that would be a story worth telling when she had becomean old woman with grandchildren at her knee.
"Does your foot hurt you much?" she asked gently.
"It sort o' keeps my memory jogged up. It's a kind of forget-me-notsouvenir, for a good boy, compliments of a Mescalero buck, name unknown,probably now permanently retired from his business of raisin' Cain. Butit might be a heap worse. They would've been glad to collect our scalpsif it hadn't been onconvenient, I expect."
"Yes," she agreed gravely.
He sat up abruptly. "Say, what about Billie? I left him wounded outside.Did yore folks find him?"
"Yes. It seems the Apaches trapped them in the stable. They roped horsesand came straight for the canon. They found Mr. Prince, but they hadno time to stop then. Father is looking after him now. He said he wasgoing to take him to the house in the buckboard."
"Is he badly hurt?"
"Jean thinks he will be all right. Mr. Prince told him it was only aflesh wound, but the muscles were so paralysed he couldn't get around."
"The bullet did not strike an artery, then?"
"My brother seemed to think not."
"I reckon there's no doctor near."
Her eyes twinkled. "Not very near. Our nearest neighbor lives on thePecos one hundred land seventeen miles away. But my father is as good asa doctor any day of the week."
"Likely you don't borrow coffee next door when you run out of itonexpected. But don't you get lonesome?"
"Haven't time," she told him cheerfully. "Besides, somebody going throughstops off every three or four months. Then we learn all the news."
Jimmie glanced at her shyly and looked quickly away. This girl was notlike any woman he had known. Most of them were drab creatures with thespirit washed out of them. His sister had been an exception. She had hadplenty of vitality, good looks and pride, but the somber shadow of herenvironment had not made for gayety. It was different with PaulineRoubideau. Though she had just escaped from terrible danger, laughterbubbled up in her soft throat, mirth rippled over her mobile little face.She expressed herself with swift, impulsive gestures at times. Then againshe suggested an inheritance of slow grace from the Southland of hermother.
He did not understand the contradictions of her and they worried him alittle. Billie had told him that she could rope and shoot as well as anyman. He had seen for himself that she was an expert rider. Her nerveswere good enough to sit beside him at quiet ease within a stone's throwof three sprawling bodies from which she had seen the lusty life drivenscarce a half-hour since. Already he divined the boyish _camaraderie_that was so simple and direct an expression of good-will. And yet therewas something about her queer little smile he could not make out. Ithinted that she was really old enough to be his mother, that she washeiress of wisdom handed down by her sex through all the generations.As yet he had not found out that he was only a boy and she was a woman.
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Chapter V
No Four-Flusher
Pauline Roubideau knew the frontier code. She evinced no curiosity aboutthe past of this boy-man who had come into her life at the nick of time.None the less she was eager to know what connection lay between him andthe renegade her brother had killed. She had heard Jim Clanton say thathe had waited four years for his revenge and had followed the man allover the West. Why? What motive could be powerful enough with a
boy offourteen to sway so completely his whole life toward vengeance?
She set herself to find out without asking. Inside of ten minutes thesecret which had been locked so long in his warped soul had been confidedto her. The boy broke down when he told her the story of his sister'sdeath. He was greatly ashamed of himself for his emotion, but the touchof her warm sympathy melted the ice in his heart and set him sobbing.
Quickly she came across to him and knelt down by his side.
"You poor boy! You poor, poor boy!" she murmured.
Her arm crept round his shoulders with the infinitely tender caress ofthe mother that lies, dormant or awake, in all good women.
"I--I--I'm nothing but a baby," he gulped, trying desperately to masterhis sobs.
"Don't talk foolishness," she scolded to comfort him. "I wouldn't thinkmuch of you if you didn't love your sister enough to cry for her."
There were tears in her own eyes. Her lively young imagination picturedvividly the desolation of the young hill girl betrayed so cruelly, theswift decline of her stern, broken-hearted father. The thought of thehalf-grown boy following the betrayers of his sister across thecontinent, his life dedicated for years to vengeance, was a dreadfulthing to contemplate. It shocked her sense of all that was fitting. Nodoubt his mission had become a religion with him. He had lain down atnight with that single purpose before him. He had risen with it in themorning. It had been his companion throughout the day. From one season toanother he had cherished it when he should have been filled with thehappy, healthy play impulses natural to his age.
The boy told the story of that man-hunt without a suspicion that therewas anything in it to outrage the feelings of the girl.
"If it hadn't been for old Nance Cunningham, I reckon Devil Dave an' hisbrothers would have fixed up some cock an' bull story about how 'Lindywas drowned by accident. But folks heard Nance an' then wouldn't believea word they said. Dad swore us Clantons to wipe out the whole clan of'em. Every last man in the hills that was decent got to cussin' the Roushoutfit. Their own friends turned their backs on all three. Then thesheriff come up from the settlemint an' they jest naturally lit out.
"I heerd tell they were in Arizona an' after dad died I took after 'em.But seemed like I had no luck. When I struck their trail they had alwaysjust gone. To-day I got Ranse--leastways I would'a' got him if yorebrother hadn't interfered. I'll meet up with the others one o' thesetimes. I'll git 'em too."
He spoke with quiet conviction, as if it were a business matter that hadto be looked after.
"Did you ever hear this: 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith theLord'?"
He nodded. "Dad used to read that to me. There's a heap in the Bibleabout killin' yore enemies. Dad said that vengeance verse meant thatwe-all was the Lord's deputies, like a sheriff has folks to help him, an'we was certainly to repay the Roushes an' not to forgit interestneither."
The girl shook her head vigorously. "I don't think that's what it meansat all. If you'll read the verses above and below, you'll see it doesn't.We're to feed our enemies when they are hungry. We're to do them good forevil."
"That's all right for common, every-day enemies, but the Roush clan ain'tthat kind," explained the boy stubbornly. "It shore is laid on me todestroy 'em root an' branch, like the Bible says."
By the way he wagged his head he might have been a wise little old man.The savage philosophy of the boy had been drawn in with his mother'smilk. It had been talked by his elders while as a child he drowsed beforethe big fireplace on winter nights. After his sister's tragic death ithad been driven home by Bible texts and by a solemn oath of vengeance.Was it likely that anything she could say would have weight with him? Forthe present the girl gave up her resolve to convert him to a moreChristian point of view.
The sun had sunk behind the canon wall when Pierre Roubideau arrived witha travois which he had hastily built. There was no wagon-road up thegulch and it would have been difficult to get the buckboard in as far asthe fork over the broken terrain. As a voyageur of the North he had oftenseen wounded men carried by the Indians in travois across the plains. Heknew, too, that the tribes of the Southwest use them. This one wasconstructed of two sixteen-foot poles with a canvas lashed from one barto the other. The horse was harnessed between the ends of the shafts, theother ends dragging on the ground.
Clanton looked at this device distastefully. "I'm no squaw. Whyfor can'tI climb on its back an' ride?"
"Because you are seeck. It iss of the importance that you do not exertyourself. Voyons! You will be comfortable here. N'est-ce pas, Polly?"Pierre gesticulated as he explained volubly. He even illustrated thecomfort by lying down in the travois himself and giving a dramaticrepresentation of sleep.
The young man grumbled, but gave way reluctantly.
"How's Billie Prince?" he asked presently from the cot where he lay.
"He will hafe a fever, but soon he will be well again. I, Pierre, promiseit. For he iss of a good strength and sound as a dollar."
Pauline, rifle in hand, scouted ahead of the travois and picked thesmoothest way down the rough ravine. The horse that Roubideau drove wasan old and patient one. Its master held it to a slow, even pace, so thatthe wounded boy was jolted as little as possible. When they had reachedthe entrance to the gorge, travel across the valley became less bumpy.
The young girl walked as if she loved it. The fine, free swing of thehill woman was in her step. She breasted the slope with the light graceof a forest faun. Presently she dropped back to a place beside theconveyance and smiled encouragement at him.
"Pretty bad, is it?"
He grinned back. "It's up to me to play the hand I've been dealt."
That he was in a good deal of pain was easy to guess.
"We're past the worst of it," Pauline told him, "Up this hill--down theother side--and then we're home."
The bawling of thirsty cattle and the blatting of calves could be heardnow.
"It iss that Monsieur Webb has taken my advice to drive the herd up thecanon and into the park for the night," explained Roubideau. "There issone way in, one way out. Guard the entrances and the 'Paches cannotstampede the cattle. Voila!"
From the hill-top the leaders of the herd could be seen drinking at thecreek. Cattle behind were pushing forward to get at the water, while theriders on the point and at the swing were directing the movement of thebeeves, now checking the steady pressure from the rear and now hasteningthe pace of those dawdling in the stream. To add to the confusion cowswere mooing loudly for their off-spring not yet unloaded from the calfwagon.
Near the summit Jean with the buckboard met the party from the canon. Hehelped Clanton to the seat and drove to the house.
Webb cantered up. "What's this I hear about you, Jimmie-Go-Get-'Em? Theytell me you've made four good Injuns to-day, shot up a renegade, rescuedthis young lady here, 'most rode one of my horses to death, an' got stoveup in the foot yore own self. It certainly must have been yore busyafternoon."
The drover looked at him with a new respect. He had found the answer tothe question he had put himself a few hours earlier. This boy was nofour-flusher. He not only knew how and when to shoot, was game as abulldog, and keen as a weasel; he possessed, too, that sixth sense sonecessary to a gun-fighter, the instinct which shows him how to takeadvantage of every factor in the situation so as to come through safely.
"I didn't do it all," answered Clanton, flushing. "Billie helped, and theRoubideaus got two of 'em."
"That's not the way Billie tells it. Anyhow, you-all made a great gatherbetween you. Six 'Paches that will never smile again ought to give theraiders a pain."
"Don't you think we'd better get him to bed?" said Pauline gently.
"You're shoutin', ma'am," agreed Webb. "Roubideau, the little boss saysJimmie-Go-Get-'Em is to be put to bed. I'll tote him in if you'llgive my boys directions about throwin' the herd into yore park andloose-herdin' 'em there."
The Missourian picked up the wounded boy and followed Pauline into thehouse. She led the way to
her own little bedroom. It was the mostcomfortable in the house and that was the one she wanted Jim Clanton tohave.