Laramie Holds the Range

  CHAPTER XIV

  LEFEVER ASKS QUESTIONS

  Those closest to headquarters sometimes know least of what is going on.That the big celebration at the ranch could have been anything more orless than what it professed to be, did not occur to Kate; nor couldanyone actually say that it was more or less. Hawk couldcontemptuously refuse its overtures; Laramie could for reasons of hisown accept them; the Falling Wall rustlers were out for a good time orthey would not have been rustling and they would celebrate any time atanybody's expense--except their own; Carpy could believe it was tousher in a better feeling--everyone to his taste.

  But the suspicious, because they did not quite understand such a move,harbored their suspicions, and among the doubting was BelleShockley--shrewd and very much alive to the drift of things since herstruggle with a cyclone. Had Belle, instead of Kate, been out at theranch, things now coming along that Kate failed to see, would have toldvolumes to her.

  But Kate did not feel at liberty to make of Belle a confidant ineverything--certainly not in what happened at home; so she neither saidanything to Belle nor asked of her any explanation of things that sheherself did not understand--such as guarded and more frequentconsultations between her father and Van Horn, Pettigrew and Stone; andsuch as men riding up with a clatter to the ranch-house at night andcalling Doubleday out and calling for Van Horn who often now spent thenight at the ranch and left before daybreak.

  Some of this, Kate saw. She could see how absent-minded her fatherwas. He grew so taciturn she hardly knew him but the reason for it wasbeyond her. More than she saw, she picked up from Bradley, workingthen at the ranch. Bradley had taken a liking to Kate and oftenreminded her of the night he brought her into the Falling Wall country.

  Whenever she was in Sleepy Cat, Belle was inquisitive. She alwayswanted to know what Van Horn was doing, what her father was doing, andthen fell back on vaguely general questions about ranches and the rangeand rustlers. More than once she spoke of strangers in town, Texasmen--cowboys and gunmen she called them--who bothered her for meals,and whom she scornfully sent packing.

  And Henry Sawdy, too, one of her frequent visitors, was trying to courther, she complained; all this made her suspicious. Of whom? Of what?Kate asked. Belle could not tell exactly of whom, of what--she wasjust suspicious: "Why should that big fat man come courting me?" shedemanded one day when Kate had come in for lunch.

  "You don't think it possible he likes you?" suggested Kate, barelyglancing Belle's way, and taking care to make her tone very skeptical.Belle only snorted contemptuously and turned to her cooking; but as shedid so, she gave her wig a punch.

  By the merest chance, John Lefever came in a few minutes later. Belleand Kate were at the table. John asked for something to eat. WhenBelle wanted to be rid of him he refused "no" for an answer:

  "You wouldn't send me away without a cup of coffee, would you? Nopotatoes? Well, I never eat potatoes"--John coughed. "They arefattening." Then he looked up cheerfully as if a new idea had struckhim: "What's the matter with a little soft-boiled ice cream?"

  The upshot was that he had to be asked to share the lunch which he didwith relish, paying his way with his usual foolery. When the plateswere emptied and John had officiously asked leave to light a cigarette,he glanced toward the folding bed and asked Belle to play something.

  "That's no piano," exclaimed Belle, with contempt. "That's a bed."

  John seemed undisturbed: "Curious," he mused, "we used to have anupright piano at home with that same kind of wood, same patternexactly; you could have that bed made over into a piano, Belle.Straighten out the springs and you wouldn't have to buy hardly any wireat all."

  Belle stared at him: "Where would I sleep if I did?" she demanded.

  John threw back his head, blew a delicate puff of smoke toward theceiling and looked across at his unsympathetic hostess. Then hebrought his fist down on the table; "Marry me, Belle, and sleep in aregular bed! What?"

  Belle was justly indignant. Kate's laughing made her more indignant.For John had fairly bubbled his proposal through a laugh of his own.

  "I used to sleep in a box like that myself," he went on. "But the yearit was so dry the grasshoppers got into it." John coughed againunobtrusively. "I raffled that bed off," he continued, low andreminiscently. "A conductor won it. But it didn't fool him. He knewthe bed as well as I did; he'd slept in it. So I bought it in again,cheap, and traded it to an old Indian buck--a one-eyed man--for a pony.Many a time I've laughed, thinking of that bed up on the Reservation.Those bucks, you know, are desperate gamblers. I understand they'vebeen playing hearts with that blamed bed ever since and putting it onthe high man."

  At this, John laughed harder than ever, Belle sputtering as she watchedhim.

  Then he turned his amiable face on Kate: "How are you all at the home?"

  "Very well."

  "What's the news up your way?"

  "Not a thing since the Fourth of July."

  "Father pretty well?"

  "Quite."

  "When did you see him last?"

  It was an odd question: "Last night--why?" asked Kate in turn.

  "He didn't come in town with you today?" countered John.

  "He rarely does," said Kate.

  John nodded soothing assent to her explanation: "How's Van Horn?" heasked casually. "And Stone?" he added, with undiminished interest."All well," was his echo to her perfunctory answers. "Say, Belle, wasJim Laramie in town yesterday?"

  Belle shook her head. "How about the day before?" he asked. Again shesaid, "no"; and went on with an impatient comment of her own: "You'realways asking questions. What for? That's what I want to know."

  John laid his cigarette on the rim of his plate and appealed to Kate:"Did you ever in your life see a more unreasonable woman than Belle?How am I to find things out without asking questions of my friends?And among them I number you both," he added.

  Leaning forward, he spoke on: "Now I'll tell you why I asked thoseharmless little questions--for I wouldn't ask either of you any otherkind. This news will get to each of you, about evening. By morning itwill be all over Sleepy Cat and by tomorrow noon across the SpanishSinks. This morning, early, Van Horn, Tom Stone, Pettigrew withBradley, and a bunch of Texas men and cowboys rode over into theFalling Wall country and there's been hell to pay there every minutesince daylight--that's the word I got about half an hour ago, bytelephone, from a little ranch away up on the head-waters of the CrazyWoman."

  He drew his handkerchief and wiped his brow. "The only man upthere--Belle knows that--that I'm any ways interested in, is JimLaramie. According to what I can hear, Jim is home. That's worryingme just a little.

  "What will Jim do? That's what I'm thinking of. How will he stack upif that bunch goes to his ranch on the Turkey? He hates 'em likepoison. They've gone up there, you understand," he added, speaking toKate, as if some further explanation were due a comparative stranger,"to clean out the rustlers. You can imagine it'll be done--or at leastattempted--without much talk. There won't be very much talk. I'veknown for some little time what's been going forward. They tried toget Jim to join them; offered him about anything he wanted; offered tosee that the contests on his preemption and homestead be withdrawn;offered him quite a bunch of cattle, I heard; and some money."

  Belle's face, her staring eyes and strained expression as she listened,showed how well she knew what the news meant. "What answer did Jimgive?" she asked anxiously.

  "From what I can pick up," declared John, dropping calmly into theinelegant expression, "he told 'em to go to hell.

  "That's what I'm worrying about now. Not about their going, but aboutwhat Jim will do. What do you think, Belle?"

  Belle shook her head; she offered no comment.

  "And," John added, looking at Kate, "that was hatched mostly, right atyour place. And they rode away from there about two o'clock thismorning. That's why I was pumping you a little, till I see you didn'tknow a thing about it."

&n
bsp; Why Kate had not asked before, she could not tell; but the possibilitynever crossed her mind--until Lefever told her of their starting fromthe ranch that morning--that her father might have gone. Sherecollected now she had not seen him, as she usually saw him, the firstthing when she came from her room. Her heart leaped into her throat:"Was my father with them?" she asked.

  She must have shown her excitement and fear in her manner, as well asin her words, for Lefever looked at her considerately: "According to myreports," he answered carefully, "your father was with them."

  "Godfrey!" muttered Belle. Kate could say nothing.