The Heart of the Range

  CHAPTER IV

  THE OLD LADY

  "Hope Old Man Dale is home," said Racey to himself when he saw ahead ofhim the grove of cottonwoods marking the location of Moccasin Spring."But he won't be," he added, lugubriously. "I never did have anyluck."

  He passed the grove of trees and opened up the prospect of house andstable and corral with cottonwood and willow-bordered Soogan Creek inthe background.

  "Changed some since I was here last," he muttered in wonder. Fornesters as a rule do not go in for flowers and shrubs. And here,besides a small truck garden, were both--all giving evidence of muchcare and attention.

  Racey dismounted at the corral and approached the kitchen door. Afresh young voice in the kitchen was singing a song to the braveaccompaniment of a twanging banjo:

  "_When I was a-goin' down the road With a tired team an' a heavy load, I cracked my whip an' the leader sprung, An' he almost busted the wagon tongue. Turkey in the straw, ha! ha! ha! Turkey in_--"

  The singing stopped in the middle of a line. The banjo went silentin the middle of a bar. Racey looked in at the kitchen door and saw,sitting on a corner of the kitchen table, a very pretty girl. One kneewas crossed over the other, in her lap was the mute banjo, and she waslooking straight at him.

  Racey, heartily and internally cursing himself for having neglected toshave, pulled off his hat and achieved a head-hob.

  "Good morning," said the pretty girl, putting up a slim tanned handand tucking in behind a well-set ear a strayed lock of black hair.

  "Mornin'," said Racey, and decided then and there that he had neverbefore seen eyes of such a deep, dark blue, or a mouth so alluringlyred.

  "What," said the pretty girl, laying the banjo on the table andsliding down till her feet touched the floor, "what can I do for you?"

  "Nun-nothin'," stuttered the rattled Racey, clasping his hat to hisbosom, so that he could button unseen the top button of his shirt,"except cuc-can you find Miss Dale for me. Is she home?"

  "Mother's out. So's Father, I'm the only one home."

  "It's yore sister I want, _Miss_ Dale--yore oldest sister."

  "You must mean Mrs. Morgan. She lives--"

  "No, I don't mean her. Yore _oldest_ sister, Miss. Her whose hoss wastaken by mistake in Farewell yesterday."

  "That was my horse."

  "Yores! But they said it was an _old_ lady's hoss! Are you shore it--"

  "Of course I'm sure. Did you bring him back?... Where?... The corral?"

  The girl walked swiftly to the window, took one glance at the bayhorse tied to the corral gate, and returned to the table.

  "Certainly that's _my_ horse," she reiterated with the slightest ofsmiles.

  Racey Dawson stared at her in horror. Her horse! He had actually runoff with the horse of this beautiful being. He had thereby causedinconvenience to this angel. If he could only crawl off somewhere andpass away quietly. At the moment, by his own valuation, any one buyinghim for a nickel would have been liberally overcharged. Her horse!"I--I took yore hoss," he spoke up, desperately. "I'm Racey Dawson."

  "So you're the man--" she began, and stopped.

  He nodded miserably, his contrite eyes on the toes of her shoes. Smallshoes they were. Cheerfully would he have lain down right there on thefloor and let her wipe those selfsame shoes upon him. It would havebeen a positive pleasure. He felt so worm-like he almost wriggled.Slowly, oh, very slowly, he lifted his eyes to her face.

  "I--I was drunk," he confessed, hoping that an honest confession wouldrestrain her from casting him into outer darkness.

  "I heard you were," she admitted.

  "I thought it was yore oldest sister's pony," he bumbled on, feelingit incumbent upon him to say something. "They told me something aboutan old lady."

  "Jane Morgan's the only other sister I have. Who told you this wildtale?"

  "Them," was his vague reply. He was not the man to give away thejokers of Farewell. Old lady, indeed! Miss Blythe to the contrarynotwithstanding this girl was not within sight of middle-age. "Yeah,"he went on, "they shore fooled me. Told me I'd taken an old maid'shoss, and--"

  "Oh, as far as that goes," said the girl, her long eyelashes demurelydrooping, "they told you the truth. I'm an old maid."

  "You? Shucks!" Hugely contemptuous.

  "Oh, but I am," she insisted, raising her eyes and tilting sidewiseher charming head. "I'm not married."

  "Thank--" he began, impulsively, but choked on the second word andgulped hard. "I mean," he resumed, hastily, "I don't understand why Inever saw you before. I was here once, but you weren't around."

  "When were you here?... Why, that was two years ago. I was only a kidthen--all legs like a calf. No wonder you didn't notice me."

  She laughed at him frankly, with a bewildering flash of white teeth.

  "I shore must 'a' been blind," he said, truthfully. "They ain't anytwo ways about _that_."

  Under his admiring gaze a slow blush overspread her smooth cheeks. Shelaughed again--uncertainly, and burst into swift speech. "My manners!What have I been thinking of? Mr. Dawson, please sit down, do. I knowyou must be tired after your long ride. Take that chair under themirror. It's the strongest. You can tip it back against the wall ifyou like. I'll get you a cup of coffee. I know you're thirsty. I'msorry Mother and Father aren't home, but Mother drove over to the BarS on business and I don't know where Father went!"

  "I ain't fit to stay," hesitated Racey, rasping the back of his handacross his stubbly chin.

  "Nonsense. You sit right down while I grind the coffee. I'll have youa potful in no time. I make pretty good coffee if I do say it myself."

  "I'll bet you do."

  "But my sister Jane makes better. You'll get some of hers at dinner."

  "Dinner?" He stared blankly.

  "Of course, dinner. When Mother and Father are away I always go downthere for my meals. It's only a quarter-mile down stream. Shorter ifyou climb that ridge. But it's so stony I generally go along the creekbank where I can gallop.... What? Why, of course you're going withme. Jane would never forgive me if I didn't bring you. And what wouldChuck say if you came this far and then didn't go on down to hishouse? Don't you suppose he enjoys seeing his old friends? It was onlylast week I heard him wonder to Father if you were ever coming back tothis country. How did you like it up at the Bend?"

  "Right fine," he told her, settling himself comfortably in the chairshe had indicated. "But a feller gets tired of one place after awhile. I thought maybe I'd come back to the Lazy River and get a jobridin' the range again."

  "Aren't there any ranches round the Bend?" she asked, poking up thefire and setting on the coffee-pot.

  "Plenty, but I--I like the Lazy River country," he told her. "FortCreek country for yores truly, now and hereafter."

  In this fashion did the proposed journey to Arizona go glimmering. Hiseye lingered on the banjo where it lay on the table.

  "Can you play it?" she asked, her eye following his.

  "Some," said he. "Want to hear a camp-meeting song?"

  She nodded. He rose and picked up the banjo. He placed a foot on thechair seat, slid the banjo to rest on his thigh, swept the strings,and broke into "Inchin' Along". Which ditty made her laugh. For it isa funny song, and he sang it well.

  "That was fine," she told him when he had sung it through. "Your voicesounds a lot like that of a man I heard singing in Farewell yesterday.He was in the Happy Heart when I was going by, and he sang _Jog on,jog on the footpath way_. If it hadn't been a saloon I'd have gone in.I just _love_ the old songs."

  "You do?" said he, delightedly, with shining eyes. "Well, Miss Dale,that feller in the saloon was me, and old songs is where I live. Icut my teeth on 'The Barley Mow' and grew up with 'Barbara Allen'. Mymother she used to sing 'em all. She was a great hand to sing and shetaught me. Know 'The Keel Row?'"

  She didn't, so he sang it for her. And others he sang, too--"The MerryCuckoo" and "The Bailiff's Daughter". The last she liked so well thathe sang it three tim
es over, and they quite forgot the coffee.

  Racey Dawson was starting the second verse of "Sourwood Mountain" whensomeone without coughed apologetically. Racey stopped singing andlooked toward the doorway. Standing in the sunken half-round log thatserved as a doorstep was the stranger he had seen with Lanpher.

  There was more than a hint of amusement in the black eyes with whichthe stranger was regarding Racey. The latter felt that the strangerwas enjoying a hearty internal laugh at his expense. As probably hewas. Racey looked at him from beneath level brows. The lid of thestranger's right eye dropped ever so little. It was the merest ofwinks. Yet it was unmistakable. It recalled their morning's meeting.More, it was the tolerant wink of a superior to an inferior. A winkthat merited a kick? Quite so.

  The keen black eyes veered from Racey to the girl. The man removed hishat and bowed with, it must be said, not a little grace. Miss Dalenodded coldly. The stranger smiled. It was marvellous how the magic ofthat smile augmented the attractive good looks of the stranger's fullface. It was equally singular how that self-same smile rendered morehawk-like than ever the hard and Roman profile of the fellow. It wasprecisely as though he were two different men at one and the sametime.

  "Does Mr. Dale live here?" inquired the stranger.

  "He does." A breath from the Boreal Pole was in the two words utteredby Miss Dale.

  The stranger's smile widened. The keen black eyes began to twinkle. Hemade as if to enter, but went no farther than the placing of one footon the doorsill.

  "Is he home?"

  "He isn't." Clear and colder.

  "I'm shore sorry," grieved the stranger, the smile waning a trifle. "Iwanted to see him."

  "I supposed as much," sniffed Miss Dale, uncordially.

  "Yes, Miss," said the stranger, undisturbed. "When will he be back, ifI might ask?"

  "To-night--to-morrow. I'm not sure."

  "So I see," nodded the stranger. "Would it be worth while my waitin'?"

  "That depends on what you call worth while."

  "You're right. It does. Standards ain't always alike, are they."He laughed silently, and pulled on his hat. "And it's a good thingstandards ain't all alike," he resumed, chattily. "Wouldn't it be afunny old world if they were?"

  The smile of him recognized Racey briefly, but it rested upon andcaressed the girl. She shook her shoulders as if she were riddingherself of the touch of hands.

  The stranger continued to smile--and to look as if he expected areply. But he did not get it. Miss Dale stared calmly at him, throughhim.

  Slowly the stranger slid his foot from the doorsill to the doorstep;slowly, very slowly, his keenly twinkling black gaze travelled overthe girl from her face to her feet and up again to finally fasten uponand hold as with a tangible grip her angry blue eyes.

  "I'm sorry yore pa ain't here," he resumed in a drawl. "I had somebusiness. It can wait. I'll be back. So long."

  The stranger turned and left them.

  From the kitchen window they watched him mount his horse and ford thecreek and ride away westward.

  "I don't like that man," declared Miss Dale, and caught her lower lipbetween her white teeth. "I wonder what he wanted?"

  "You'll find out when he comes back." Dryly.

  "I hope he never comes back. I never want to see him again. Do youknow him?"

  "Not me. First time I ever saw him was this morning in Farewell. Hewas with Lanpher. When I was coming out here he and Lanpher caught upwith me and passed me."

  "He didn't bring Lanpher here with him anyhow."

  "He didn't for a fact," assented Racey Dawson, his eyes following thedwindling figures of the rider and his horse. "I wonder why?"

  "I wonder, too." Thus Miss Dale with a gurgling chuckle.

  Both laughed. For Racey's sole visit to the Dale place had been madein company with Lanpher. The cause of said visit had been the rustlingand butchering of an 88 cow, which Lanpher had ill-advisedly essayedto fasten upon Mr. Dale. But, due to the interference of Chuck Morgan,a Bar S rider, who later married Jane Dale, Lanpher's attempt had beenunavailing. It may be said in passing that Lanpher had suffered bothphysically and mentally because of that visit. Of course he hadneither forgiven Chuck Morgan nor the Bar S for backing up itspuncher, which it had done to the limit.

  "I quit the 88 that day," Racey Dawson told the girl.

  "I know you did. Chuck told me. Look at the time, will you? Get yourhat. We mustn't keep Jane waiting."

  "No," he said, thoughtfully, his brows puckered, "we mustn't keep Janewaitin'. Lookit, Miss Dale, as I remember yore pa he had a moustache.Has he still got it?"

  Miss Dale puzzled, paused in the doorway. "Why, no," she told him. "Hewears a horrid chin whisker now."

  "He does, huh? A chin whisker. Let's be movin' right along. I thinkI've got something interesting to tell you and yore sister and Chuck."

  But they did not move along. They halted in the doorway. Or, rather,the girl halted in the doorway, and Racey looked over her shoulder.What stopped them short in their tracks was a spectacle--the spectacleof an elderly chin-whiskered man, very drunk and disorderly, riding inon a paint pony.

  "Father!" breathed Miss Dale in a horror-stricken whisper.

  And as she spoke Father uttered a string of cheerful whoops and toppedoff with a long pull at a bottle he had been brandishing in his righthand.

  "Please go," said Miss Dale to Racey Dawson.

  He hesitated. He was in a quandary. He did not relish leaving herwith--At that instant Mr. Dale decided Racey's course for him. Mr.Dale pulled a gun and, still whooping cheerily, shook five shots intothe atmosphere. Then Mr. Dale fumblingly threw out his cylinder andbegan to reload.

  "I'd better get his gun away from him," Racey said, apologetically,over his shoulder, as he ran forward.

  But the old man would have none of him. He cunningly discerned anenemy in Racey and tried to shoot him. It was lucky for Racey that theold fellow was as drunk as a fiddler, or certainly Racey would havebeen buried the next day. As it was, the first bullet went wide by ayard. The second went straight up into the blue, for by then Racey hadthe old man's wrist.

  "There, there," soothed Racey, "you don't want that gun, Nawsir. Notyou. Le's have it, that's a good feller now."

  So speaking he twisted the sixshooter from the old man's grasp andjammed it into the waistband of his own trousers. The old man burstinto frank tears. Incontinently he slid sidewise from the saddle andclasped Racey round the neck.

  "_I'm wild an' woolly an' full o' fleas I'm hard to curry below the knees_--"

  Thus he carolled loudly two lines of the justly popular song.

  "Luke," he bawled, switching from verse to prose, "why didja leave me,Luke?"

  Strangely enough, he did not stutter. Without the slightest difficultyhe leaped that pitfall of the drunken, the letter L.

  "Luke," repeated Racey Dawson, struck by a sudden thought. "What'sthis about Luke? You mean Luke Tweezy?"

  The old man rubbed his shaving-brush adown Racey's neck-muscles. "Imean Luke Tweezy," he said. "Lots o' folks don't like Luke. They sayhe's mean. But they ain't nothin' mean about Luke. He's frien' o'mine, Luke is."

  "Mr. Dawson," said Molly Dale at Racey's elbow, "please go, I can gethim into the house. You can do no good here."

  "I can do lots o' good here," declared Racey, who felt sure that hewas on the verge of a discovery. "Somebody is a-trying to jump yoreranch, and if you'll lemme talk to him I can find out who it is."

  "Who--how?" said Miss Dale, stupidly, for, what with the frightand embarrassment engendered by her father's condition the truesignificance of Racey's remark was not immediately apparent.

  "Yore ranch," repeated Racey, sharply. "They're a-tryin' to steal itfrom you. You lemme talk to him, ma'am. Look out! Grab his bridle!"

  Miss Dale seized the bridle of her father's horse in time to preventa runaway. She was not aware that the horse's attempt to run away hadbeen inspired by Racey surreptitiously and severely kicking it onthe fetlock. Th
is he had done that Miss Dale's thoughts might betemporarily diverted from her father. Anything to keep her fromshooing him away as she so plainly wished to do.

  Racey began to assist the now-crumpling Mr. Dale toward the house."What's this about Luke Tweezy?" prodded Racey. "Did you see himto-day?"

  "Shore I seen him to-day," burbled the drunken one. "He left me atMcFluke's after buyin' me the bottle and asked me to stay there tillhe got back. But I got tired waitin'. So I come along. I--hic--comealong."

  Limply the man's whole weight sagged down against Racey's supportingarm, and he began to snore.

  "Shucks," muttered Racey, then stooping he picked up the limp body inhis arms and carried it to the house.

  "He's asleep," he called to Miss Dale. "Where'll I put him?"

  "I'll show you," she said, with a break in her voice.

  She hastily tied the now-quiet pony to a young cottonwood growing atthe corner of the house and preceded Racey into the kitchen.

  "Here," she said, her eyes meeting his a fleeting instant as she threwopen a door giving into an inner room. "On the bed."

  She turned back the counterpane and Racey laid her snoring parent onthe blanket. Expertly he pulled off the man's boots and stood themside by side against the wall.

  "Had to take 'em off now, or his feet would swell so after you'd neverget 'em off," he said in justification of his conduct.

  She held the door open for him to leave the room. She did not look athim. Nor did she speak.

  "I'm going now," he said, standing in the middle of the kitchen. "ButI wish you wouldn't shut that door just yet."

  "I--Oh, can't you see you're not wanted here?" Her voice was shaking.The door was open but a crack. He could not see her.

  "I know," he said, gently. "But you don't understand how serious thisbusiness is. I had good reason for believing that somebody is tryingto steal yore ranch. From several things yore dad said I'm shorer thanever. If I could only talk to you a li'l while."

  At this she came forth. Her eyes were downcast. Her cheeks were redwith shamed blood. She leaned against the table. One closed fistrested on the top of the table. The knuckles showed white. She wastrembling a little.

  "Where and what is McFluke's?" he asked.

  "Oh, that's where he got it!" she exclaimed, bitterly.

  "I guess. If you wouldn't mind telling me where McFluke's is, ma'am--"

  "It's a little saloon and store on the Marysville road at the LazyRiver ford."

  "It's new since my time then."

  "It's been in operation maybe a year and a half. What makes you thinksomeone is trying to steal our ranch?"

  "Lots o' things," he told her, briskly. "But they ain't gonna do it ifI can help it. Don't you fret. It will all come out right. Shore itwill. Can't help it."

  "But tell me how--what you know," she demanded.

  "I haven't time now, unless you're coming with me to see Chuck."

  "I can't--now."

  "Then you ask Chuck later. I'll tell him all about it. You ask him. Solong."

  Racey hurried out and caught up his own horse. He swung into thesaddle and spurred away down stream.