Читать книгу Fool's Goal - B.M. Bower - Страница 7

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"HERE'S where we take to horses," Burnett announced, as the car he was driving topped the summit of a six-mile grade and with steaming radiator began the descent into a thinly wooded valley. "That ranch you see down there is the post office and stage station, and beyond that there ain't a road a car could travel. Ain't a better range country layin' outdoors, though." From under the wide brim of his gray hat Burnett darted a glance away from the steep and winding road and across to the rugged country beyond. If a shadow crossed his face while he turned it that way, it was gone again almost before Dale was certain he had seen it.

"Do we pack in?" It was a perfectly natural question, in Dale's opinion, but the girl behind him giggled. Dale swung his head around and looked at her.

"Think of Mother going in with a pack outfit!" she explained her laughter.

"How do you s'pose I traveled before the dug road was made?" Mrs. Burnett inquired tartly. "It ain't been but twelve years since we packed in, and I dunno but what I made the trip back and forth about as often as I do now. And I weighed just as much, or more," she added significantly. "I'd just as soon ride horseback as to have the daylights jolted out of me in that rocky creek bottom. Quin, are you going to try and go on to-day?"

"Well, we might. What d' you think? Might get started right after dinner if you ain't too tired. We'd make it by dark." With the strained attention of one not much used to the wheel, Burnett was devoting himself to the driving.

"Oh, what's the grand rush?" Donna Burnett protested, after the manner of youth. "There's going to be a dance to-night, Hugh told me. He came out this morning."

"Yeah, I know he did." Her father, having reached an easier stretch of road, cast a meaning glance back in her general direction. "Got the road marked up like twin snakes had wiggled along in the ruts. Break his neck some day, the way he slews around corners. I could tell his tire marks in Egypt!"

Donna laughed with that irrepressible giggle of hers which Dale had been in danger of misunderstanding.

"You wait till flying gets a little more practical and he'll quit the earth entirely," she prophesied glibly. "He's beginning to talk airplanes. Can't we stay for the dance, Dad? Please!"

"I oughta be gettin' back," Burnett temporized weakly. "I don't—"

"Well, you don't what?" his daughter impatiently prompted him, when he seemed unlikely to finish the sentence.

"I don't like leavin' Neal too much in charge," Burnett finished. "He's pretty faithful, but—"

"Well, half a day longer won't ruin the ranch, Dad. Dalton's will be peeved if we don't stay. And you want to, don't you, Mother?"

"I don't know as it makes any difference much to me," Mrs. Burnett replied with lukewarm interest. "I haven't got any string of fellows tagging after me for dances; and there won't be much sleep in the house with all the racket them Mowerby fellows can kick up. But you and your father settle it between you; it don't make much difference to me. I'm willin' to do what the rest of you do."

"All right, then we'll stay for the dance. Mr. Emery wants to view us roughnecks on our native heath, anyway. But if you still have as much as six bits in your pocket, Mr. Emery, you'd better dig a hole and bury it, because we stop at nothing when we get started."

"Shame on you!" her mother reproved her, with superficial sharpness. "You never called yourself a roughneck till you'd been off to Denver to school. I don't know what girls are coming to."

"This one is coming to dinner, I hope. Aren't you starved, Mr. Emery?"

Dale nodded, smiled faintly, his thoughts upon the country spread roughly before him. No better range to be found anywhere, Burnett had said. He was an old cattleman, and it seemed good enough for him, even though he must know the West pretty thoroughly. Good range, mountains, plenty of water—

"Any trout streams up in these hills?" he asked abruptly, oblivious of the fact that he was swinging away from the subject Donna had chosen. "There ought to be good fishing, I should think."

"Fishing? I should say there is! Every blamed gulch has got a creek running through it, and every creek is full of trout. Hunting too; lots of game." Burnett slowed the car for a steep pitch, and the look of care which had been settling on his face lightened. The keen eyes he turned upon Dale were clear and untroubled. "County won't stand the expense of putting a road through—they've got a good one west of here that runs up to Douglas—and that keeps the country about as it was thirty years ago. Dalton's, up ahead here, is as far as you can get with a car, and I'm kinda glad of it. Makes it kinda mean gettin' back and forth when you're in a hurry, but it saves the fishin' and huntin' and there ain't any real-estate sharks edgin' in with some scheme for sellin' off land in acre lots. No, sir, you don't catch me agitatin' for a highway cut through our country. It's easy enough to trail our cattle out, and we're used to it."

"You didn't live here when you were sheriff, though?"

"No, I wasn't here much of the time then; too unhandy gettin' back an' forth. I moved the folks in to town while I was in office and sent the girls to school."

The shadow had fallen again upon his fine old face. Did he regret having resigned? Dale wondered, but it was not a question he cared to ask.

"Sounds like a cowman's paradise," he observed instead. "It must be pretty nearly perfect if you're satisfied with it."

"Ain't a better cow country on God's earth," Burnett once more asserted and turned his attention again to driving.

Dale was content to gaze at the valley whose northern rim they were descending. The silvery trunks of the quaking aspens fascinated him; the swift-moving ribbon of shining river showing here and there among the trees made his fingers itch for his rod and flies. The vivid green of the meadows, the wandering groups of grazing horses and cattle in the higher pastures, the roofs of the ranch buildings beyond such pole corrals as he had read about, gave him the odd sensation of stepping into a Western movie and seeing it come suddenly to life, himself a part of it. It was what he had always longed for, what he had secretly dreamed about, while his father plodded on with his cold calculations in the office, thinking of cattle only as so much beef on the hoof with a market value of so many cents a pound live weight. That viewpoint had always roused a dull resentment in Dale. To him, cattle were not just so many pounds of beef. He had never gone near the stockyards if he could help it because he could not endure the sight of those penned animals waiting for the slaughter, or listen to their never-ending chant of misery, by day and by night lowing for the wind-swept ranges they had left. As far back as he could remember Dale had hated the yards and the tragedy pent within them; the staring eyes, the ceaseless bellowing of the herds.

This was different, though if he thought far enough he must see the stockyards of Chicago as the ultimate goal, the end of the road those frisky calves over there were inexorably traveling. But the road itself was a pleasant one, Dale thought; especially this particular stretch of it. Even cattle couldn't hope to live forever, and out here one could forget the other side of the picture.

They passed a small, frame schoolhouse set in a grove of aspens, and presently the place called Dalton's came into view. A ranch in the beginning, it had too evidently outgrown that simple state and was now difficult to define in a word. Dalton's was not a village, for it still retained the semblance of a ranch; but it had a good-sized garage for the accommodation of visitors and what ranchers lived farther back in the hills; its stables would have served the needs of the average range town thirty years ago. Its corrals were more numerous than any ordinary ranch would ever need, and all the sidehills were fenced pasture land. The house itself had been added to so often that its original structure was quite lost in ells and wings and that simplest form of addition which is quaintly called a lean-to. Two dust-grimed cars with wind-whipped tops and dented fenders stood before the gateway as they drove up, and several saddle horses stood wild-eyed at the hitch rail, their nostrils belled as they backed snorting to the end of their tie ropes when the Burnett car went by. Dale craned that way, grinning happily. It was seldom indeed that he had seen horses that were afraid of automobiles and the sight of their quivering bodies thrilled him pleasurably with a reassuring sense of having actually reached the land of high adventure.

Hugh Mowerby came sauntering out to meet them and to help with the varied assortment of packages and bundles that had been crowded into the roomy car. Standing back from the dusty fender, he attacked the knotted rope which lashed the suit cases and Dale's small leather trunk to the running board. As he lifted them off, his eyes definitely abandoned their quick sidelong glances toward Donna and fastened themselves upon the trunk, with its one handle made like a suit case for easy carrying.

"Ho-lee smoke!" he ejaculated, staring down at the knife cuts in the leather. "This the trade-mark your burglars left, Mr. Emery? They sure went right after it, by the looks." His gaze turned suddenly and searchingly upon Dale, who was waiting to carry the trunk in. "Say, you must have had that money hid like a guilty conscience!" he observed. "Or did they do it just to be ornery?"

"I forgot to ask them what the big idea was," Dale evaded, wishing now that he had left the telltale trunk in town.

"You didn't have all that dough tucked under this leather cover, did you?" Hugh pursued curiously. "It sure would've been a dandy place to hide it—"

"They probably thought that and tried the trunk first." Then with an unaccountable impulse he grinned at Hugh, his eyes closed to narrow slits. "The safest place in the world to hide a thing is in plain sight of every one," he said dryly, and lifted the trunk, its weight sagging his shoulder considerably.

"Say!" Hugh leaned to whisper the thought that seemed to have struck him at the moment. "Does that mean they didn't get it?"

Careful as he was, Burnett overheard him and wheeled, boring Hugh's face with his keen blue eyes. Dale glanced from one to the other and laughed a little as he turned away.

"Would I be hiring out to pitch hay if they hadn't cleaned me?" he parried lightly, his glance again going to Hugh.

"Well, you might, at that," Hugh retorted equably, following Dale with the two suit cases, Donna beside him with her arms full of packages. "He says he hid it in plain sight, Donna. Where d'you suppose that would be?"

"Oh, how do you expect me to know? I didn't take his money—I'm sure of that. Who all are here, Hugh? Do you suppose the boys will be down from Dugout?"

"If they knew you'd be here they'd come, all right. Say," he added, lowering his voice as his pace slackened, "what d' you think of this Emery guy? You fall for him yet?"

"I don't know where you get the idea of that 'yet'," she snubbed him, then relented. "I don't think he counts for much. Think of any one being such a fool as to carry all that money around in his pocket! Did you ever hear of such an idiotic thing in your life? If he had it," she amended, with true sophomoric cynicism. "I don't believe it, myself. I think he was just trying to show off, and somebody took him seriously. Served him right, too."

"There might be something in that," Hugh agreed, looking at Dale's receding back.

"He acts as if he owned the earth and was thinking about having it remodelled," Donna made spiteful comment. "Oh, there's Bird and Dick! I wonder if Cynthy's coming down?"

"Ned wanted to bring her," Hugh said. "He asked me for the buggy team, but Cynthy seemed to be kinda on the fence when I left. Your dad didn't want her to come with Ned, so Neal told me. He seems to have it in for our outfit lately. But Cynthy claimed she wanted to have things all slicked up for you when you got there. I don't know how it'll pan out."

"Cynthy's a darling," Donna attested warmly. "I wish she'd come—who cares how the old house looks? Oh, you don't know how good it seems to be back home again, Hugh!"

Though Dale, walking rather fast, had been keeping well in advance of the two, their talk had reached his ears and set his pride tingling with resentment. It seemed to him that Donna Burnett thought altogether too well of herself and her opinions, and he was glad that he had overheard what she said of him. Insincerity was one fault which Dale would not easily forgive, and though Donna was a very pretty girl, when they stood together on the porch his eyes no longer dwelt upon her face with pleasure. So far as he was concerned, Donna Burnett had suddenly receded into the background of the picture, and in his anger he promised himself that she would remain there.