Читать книгу The Dry Ridge Gang - Bertha Muzzy Sinclair - Страница 7

Table of Contents

I was going over my fly book when Ellie passed my open door, glanced in, then turned back and leaned against the casing. When I describe her particular expression on a girl’s face in my novel, I shall call it a look of gentle raillery. Sounds better than to say she had a patronizing smile and was just trying to get a rise out of me. I was just putting a fly back into place in my Coachman section, after touching it up with a snip of feather and glue, and merely looked up and grinned without saying anything.

“Fishy, fishy in the brook?” she recited, with a rising inflection.

“Unh-hunh; Walter catch ’em with a hook,” I assented, trying to match her tone and manner.

Her eyes mocked me. “Mamma won’t have any to fry in a pan if you go after perch with a Royal Coachman, Kind Sir.”

She’s been calling me Kind Sir for a couple of days now. Evidently she finds Mr. Tenney too formal for everyday use and hasn’t reached the point yet of calling me Walter. I wish she would. Still, I sort of like Kind Sir. I match that with Pretty Maid, and it does seem to give a special significance to our conversations. Think I shall have my hero and heroine do it.

“I wasn’t thinking of perch, Pretty Maid. And I’m simply amazed that a mere woman should know a Royal Coachman at a glance. Would your father approve of that? Nothing to do with cooking—hm-mm! I must look into this. Such wisdom is not for woman.”

“As if it took any particular wisdom to read that book at a glance!” She pointed a very nice finger at the fly book in my hands. “Really, though, there aren’t any trout to be caught from the river, you know. If you’d like to fish for perch, I’ll have old Jimmie dig you some bait.” She looked at me speculatively. “There isn’t a trout stream within fifteen miles of here, you know.”

“Well,” I said, “I have discovered that. But your neighbor, Steve Johnson, promised to take me to a good stream. I just thought I’d go over my flies and get them in shape.”

“In other words, gloat over them the way all fishermen do.” She laughed, then gave me a sudden look of understanding. “If you’re waiting for Steve Johnson, I happen to know he went with Dad this morning over to the Little Belts, on that wild-goose chase after the Dry Ridge gang. Steve is a sort of deputy, you know. He goes out with Dad sometimes. So does Fred, when Dad wants a posse for anything.”

“Oh, well, there are other days,” I said, trying not to show how disappointed I was. I had been hoping Steve would show up.

Ellie looked at a tiny gold watch which she wore on a chain like a locket. “If you like, I’ll take you to a dandy stream.”

If I liked! I jumped up from the table so eagerly that my chair went over and two leaders flew half across the room.

“Sorry you hate the idea so much,” Ellie drawled, and then giggled adorably, while the blood went hot all over me, settling principally, I believe, in my ears.

I covered my confusion as well as I could by getting my creel and rod from the closet and putting away my repair kit and recovering my leaders from the floor. I can’t say she helped a lot by standing there watching me, but I tried not to notice.

“I’m afraid it will have to be on horseback,” she warned me, as she turned to go and get ready. “Do you think, Kind Sir, that you can make a fifteen-mile ride without—ah—disastrous consequences?”

That got under my skin, sort of. “I think possibly I can,” I told her stiffly. “Some boys I know in Kentucky used to have me down at their place quite a lot.” I should have let it go at that, but I didn’t. I added something about steeplechasing which I hoped would give her some respect for my horsemanship. What it did was to very nearly get me into trouble.

“Oh, then you’ll want a horse with plenty of pep,” she remarked innocently. “I’ll ask Chub to saddle Sky-high for you.”

As it happened, I had just witnessed one of Sky-high’s performances a day or so ago and caught on to her intentions. “Fine,” I lied, “except for carrying my outfit. I’d rather take some gentle old nag on a fishing trip, if you don’t mind. That horse I’ve been riding around the ranch is all right for the purpose.”

“Oh, all right,” she said carelessly, just as if she had not meant to play a trick on me and give me a bucking broncho that would certainly throw me off. It’s the favorite joke to play on Easterners, but she didn’t have any excuse now.

She must have leaned from her window to call to Chub, the fellow who attended to the stables. I heard her faintly and a man’s voice answering her. I was downstairs and out on the side porch in just eight minutes, but she was there ahead of me and was telling the cook just what to put in the lunch. Yesterday she wore a blue skirt, but to-day she had on a brown denim divided skirt, cut shorter than the other one, and a regular man’s shirt and tie, a cowboy hat and boots. A white silk neckerchief was knotted around her throat in the loose style which helps to make cowboys so picturesque. I liked her better than in the other tailored outfit.

She was quite the fisherman, too, with her cased rod and her creel. A pair of silver-trimmed spurs jingled from one hand, and when Chub started from the stables leading our horses, she leaned against a porch pillar just as a cowboy would have done and buckled on her spurs. That made her costume complete.

“Do you suppose Ray would want to go along?” I asked her half-heartedly, when the cook came and handed her the lunch.

“He would not. Ray isn’t home, anyway. He’s fishing for smiles and heart throbs. He wouldn’t be interested, if he were here.” She tied the lunch to her saddle, tied the creel on the other side—disdaining Chub’s assistance and motioning him to help me with my stuff. When she was ready, she caught up the reins in one hand, turned the stirrup forward, thrust in her boot toe and swung up as easily as any cowboy on the ranch.

I had stood there watching her and now she reined her horse in and watched me mount. I don’t know why that girl has the power to make my ears feel like boiled beets, but she has. Whenever she has her eye on me and I have anything in particular to do, I feel as clumsy as an ox. Though I am quite accustomed to horseback riding, I know I got into the saddle like a turtle crawling out of a pond. Grabbed the cantle, though I knew that’s the mark of a greenhorn. I could fairly hear her thoughts jeering, “Steeplechaser? Oh, rats!” though she didn’t actually open her lips, so far as I know, until I had plunked down in the saddle like a sack of bran.

Mother Whitcome chirruped from the doorway that we had better take our slickers along, but Ellie merely looked up at the sky for a moment and shook her head. It wouldn’t rain, she declared, though I couldn’t see how she knew. We waved good-by and started off, Ellie setting the pace at a brisk gallop. What surprised me was that she traveled toward Porcupine.

“Steve Johnson was going to take me in the other direction, Pretty Maid,” I ventured, when we were entering the outskirts of town between the two bridges.

“I’m sorry, Kind Sir, but you are not following Steve Johnson’s trail just now.” After half a block she added, “Do you want to turn back?”

“Not on your life,” I retorted. And for some reason she laughed at that, as if I had somehow got the phrase twisted. Which I knew I hadn’t. She certainly is a strange girl. Sort of keeps a fellow guessing. I’m not sure I like that much.

Straight into the main business section that girl led me, and stopped before an ice-cream parlor where the passers-by stared at us and went on up the street, smiling. She never gave them a glance.

“If you like beer, Kind Sir, you had better go in that hotel bar and buy yourself a couple of pints or so,” she advised me in a matter-of-fact tone. “You can carry them in your pockets very easily, and we’ve a long hot ride before us.” And she answered the question in my eyes, “I’ll take root beer along.”

It was a long, hot ride, all right enough. No use writing a description of it; I can fill that in any time I like. Our horses sweated until even their ears were wet, but I couldn’t see that it did them any harm. The last few miles were rough ones. Ellie rode in front up narrow twisting gorges that hadn’t a sign of water in them, and how she could tell where to go was a mystery to me. It was wild enough up in there for the hide-out of that gang, though I could see that the Belt Mountains were away off in the opposite direction. But if I were an outlaw, those hills north of town is where I certainly would head for when I wanted to hide out.

The end justified the ride, I must admit. We edged around a high sharp ledge, and there was the stream I’d been dreaming about; noisy, without much brush, and just wide enough for good casting; just deep enough also to justify the wading boots I’d brought along. We ate our luncheon in the shade of a willow clump, drank what was left of our beer and saved the bottles so we could fill them with water for the trip back, and fitted up our rods at once.

I’m afraid I forgot the girl and everything else for awhile. Almost the first cast I got a strike, and a half-pounder made my reel hum as he flashed off into a deep shady pool. He fought like a tiger and it must have taken me all of ten minutes to land that one. It wasn’t until I had him in my creel, flopping around in a handful of that long grass which grows alongside streams so fishermen will have something to bed their trout in, that I remembered I had a lady along.

I looked around for her and saw her some distance upstream, standing poised on a big rock, casting out over a promising pool. I shouted and dug my fish out of the creel, holding it up for her to see; and she just nodded, reeled in, tapped her basket and held up two fingers, measuring off about twelve inches in the air with her hands. Then she calmly stepped down off the rock on the other side and I didn’t see her again for three hours and more.

After the first hour I found it slow sport. The sun was hot and the trout were lazy. When they rose it was in a half-hearted fashion that just nipped at the fly and let it go again. We were fishing upstream and there were places hard to negotiate. By the middle of the afternoon I admit that I was feeling fagged, what with that fifteen-mile ride, and the heat and all. When I rounded a sharp bend and came upon Ellie lying curled up comfortably in the shade of a rock, with her creel and rod near by, I hurried over and sat down beside her.

“What luck?” she asked, not moving except to tilt up her hatbrim for a sleepy glance at me.

“I’ll see.” And I laid out my trout in a row on the rock for her inspection. “Thirteen and some little fellows I hooked and threw back.”

“Thirteen’s unlucky, Kind Sir. Go away and fish and let me take a nap.”

“Well, but how many did you catch?” Naturally, I did not want to go—and at that moment I was not at all sure she wanted me to, really.

“Oh,” she yawned, with one arm flung across her mouth, “I don’t know. Count ’em yourself, if you’ve got to know. And then do go away somewhere. I’m sleepy.”

That time I was convinced she meant it. No romance in the girl, apparently. I looked in her basket, counted nineteen fish—some of them much bigger than any I had caught—and I dumped them back, gathered up my basket and rod and left her without saying another word. These strong-minded efficient young women sometimes give me a pain.

That shady spot where she lay was made to order for us two, if she had only been human enough to see it. We could have sat there and talked and got quite confidential. I could have been half in love with her in a couple of hours, I believe, if she had let me stay and look at her and talk awhile. I just don’t understand how any sister of Ray’s can be like that. Ray must have all the sentiment in the Whitcome family. Of course, she may be in love with that dark-browed young McArthur; probably is. But that’s no reason why she should drive off a guest like that. I wouldn’t bite her. I wouldn’t even make love to her.

Then I broke my leader on a snag and swore like a trooper and felt better. I went on fishing without much luck for another couple of hours, though I didn’t cover much of the creek. I was too tired to do much more tramping in those heavy boots, and a hundred yards of good riffle with a pool just below furnished some pretty fair sport. Then here came Ellie, fishing downstream to me, and I went on. I wasn’t going to have her accuse me of loitering along, waiting for her to catch up.

She seemed to be in a wonderful mood. She called out, so I had to stop or let her think I was sulking; and she came picking her way over the rough stones and looking darned graceful and pretty after her nap.

“We’ll go back to the horses and scrape up some sort of supper,” she informed me, as she came up. “I’m simply ravenous and I’ll bet you are too. Kind Sir, did you ever broil trout over a campfire?”

I don’t know what kind of a sissy she thinks I am. I came darned near telling her how I’ve been in the habit of spending most of my summers, but I didn’t. Instead, I hurried on ahead and had a fire going and was already cleaning my fish beside the creek when she got there. I didn’t get any thanks for it, though. For all the notice she took of what I had done, I might have been Chub, choring around for my board and wages. I never saw such a girl.

By the time we had eaten all the trout we could swallow and had fished awhile longer it was well after sundown, so we started home. Then, just as we were coming out of the hills and could see the town lights away off in the distance, a thunder shower struck us and we had to take shelter under a rock ledge caved back quite a way underneath.

It was dry in there and not at all uncomfortable. The girl didn’t seem in the mood for talking, and I was pretty tired myself, so once more we sinfully wasted a chance to be romantic. But it was a good thing, in one way. It really gave me my first chance to get the feel of the wilderness, which I am going to need later when I start my book.

I tried to imagine myself an outlaw, one of the Dry Ridge gang perhaps, driven to take shelter from the storm and knowing all the while that I was being hunted down like a wolf. Quite a thrill in that sort of thing. Watching the lightning rip through the dark and listening to the roll and echo of the thunder, I really did begin to feel my pulse hammering in my throat, when I made myself think the sheriff and his posse were just down the canyon, maybe around the next turn.

I learned something, too, which I must set down. Horses don’t like thunder and lightning any better than we do. My horse would flinch and crowd toward the wall, when the worst claps of thunder came, and I could feel him trembling. He held his head high and kept staring out at the storm, and now and then he’d snort when something startled him especially.

Finally the storm passed on and the rain stopped, and we plodded up and down a few more hills, slippery as soap after the rain, except now and then when we struck patches of gravel. It was all dandy local color. When I have time I shall describe it in detail. We crossed what Ellie called a “doby” flat, an abominable stretch of mud that stuck to our horses’ feet like pancakes made of glue, and stretched our fifteen miles to seem like thirty. But finally, when I was beginning to have uncomfortable visions of searching parties scouring the country for us, we rode down the long bare hill to the river once more, crossed on a clanking steel bridge and went on into the darkened streets of the sleeping town.