Читать книгу The Fighting Shepherdess - Caroline Lockhart - Страница 5

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A heavily laden freight wagon, piled high with ranch supplies, stood in the dooryard before a long loghouse. The yard was fenced with crooked cottonwood poles so that it served also as a corral, around which the leaders of the freight team wandered, stripped of their harness, looking for a place to roll.

A woman stood on tip-toe gritting her teeth in exasperation as she tugged at the check-rein on the big wheelhorse, which stuck obstinately in the ring. When she loosened it finally, she stooped and looked under the horse’s neck at the girl of fourteen or thereabouts, who was unharnessing the horse on the other side. “Good God, Kate,” exclaimed the woman irritably; “how many times must I tell you to unhook the traces before you do up the lines? One of these days you’ll have the damnedest runaway in seven states.”

The girl, whose thoughts obviously were not on what she was doing, obeyed immediately, and without replying looped up the heavy traces, throwing and tying the lines over the hames with experienced hands.

The resemblance between mother and daughter was so slight that it might be said not to exist at all. It was clear that Kate’s wide, thoughtful eyes, generous mouth and softly curving but firm chin came from the other side, as did her height. Already she was half a head taller than the short, wiry, tough-fibered woman with the small hard features who was known throughout the southern half of Wyoming as “Jezebel of the Sand Coulee.”

A long flat braid of fair hair swung below the girl’s waist and on her cheeks a warm red showed through the golden tan. Her slim straight figure was eloquent of suppleness and strength and her movements, quick, purposeful, showed decision and activity of mind. They were as characteristic as her directness of speech.

The Sand Coulee Roadhouse was a notorious place. The woman who kept it called herself Isabel Bain—Bain having been the name of one of the numerous husbands from whom she had separated to remarry in another state, without the formality of a divorce. She was noted not only for her remarkable horsemanship, but for her exceptional handiness with a rope and branding iron, and her inability to distinguish her neighbors’ livestock from her own.

“Pete Mullendore’s gettin’ in.” There was a frown on Kate’s face as she spoke and uneasiness in the glance she sent toward the string of pack-horses filing along the fence.

The woman said warningly, “Don’t you pull off any of your tantrums—you treat him right.”

“I’ll treat him right,” hotly, “as long as he behaves himself. Mother,” with entreaty in her voice, “won’t you settle him if he gets fresh?”

Jezebel only laughed and as the gate of the corral scraped when Mullendore pulled it open to herd a saddle horse and pack ponies through, she called out in her harsh croak:

“Hello, Pete!”

“Hello yourself,” he answered, but he looked at her daughter.

As soon as they were through the gate the pack ponies stopped and stood with spreading legs and drooping heads while Mullendore sauntered over to Kate and laid a hand familiarly on her shoulder.

“Ain’t you got a howdy for me, kid?”

She moved aside and began stripping the harness from the horse for the quite evident purpose of avoiding his touch.

“You’d better get them packs off,” she replied, curtly. “Looks like you’d got on three hundred pounds.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. Them bear traps weigh twenty poun' each, and green hides don’t feel like feathers, come to pack ’em over the trail I’ve come.”

Kate looked at him for the first time.

“I wisht I was a man! I bet I’d work you over for the way you abuse your stock!”

Mullendore laughed.

“Glad you ain’t, Katie—but not because I’d be afraid of gettin’ beat up.”

He looked her up and down with mocking significance, “Say, but you’ll make a great squaw for some feller. Been thinkin’ I’d make a deal with your mother to take you back to the mountings with me when I go. I’ll learn you how to tan hides, and a lot of things you don’t know.”

The girl’s lip curled.

“Yes, I’d like to tan hides for you, Pete Mullendore! When I get frost bit in August I’ll go, but not before.”

He replied easily:

“You ain’t of age yet, Katie, and you have to mind your maw. I’ve got an idee that she’ll tell you to go if I say so.”

“A whole lot my mother would mind what you say!” Yet in spite of her defiance a look of fear crossed the girl’s face.

She slipped her arm through the harness and started towards the shed, Mullendore following with his slouching walk, an unprepossessing figure in his faded overalls, black and white mackinaw coat and woolen cap.

The trapper was tall and lank, with a pair of curious, unforgettable eyes looking out from a swarthy face that told of Indian blood. They were round rather than the oblong shape to be expected in his type, and the iris a muddy blue-gray. The effect was indescribably queer, and was accentuated by the coal-black lashes and straight black brows which met above a rather thick nose. He had a low forehead, and when he grinned his teeth gleamed like ivory in his dark face. He boasted of Apache-Mexican blood “with a streak of white.”

While Kate hung the harness on its peg, Mullendore, waited for her outside. “My! My! Katie,” he leered at her as she came back, “but you’re gettin’ to be a big girl! Them legs looked like a couple of pitchfork handles when I went away, and now the shape they’ve got!”

He laughed in malicious enjoyment as he saw the color rise to the roots of her hair; and when she would have passed, reached out and grasped her arm.

“Let me be, Pete Mullendore!” She tried to pull loose.

“When you’ve give me a kiss.” There was a flame in the muddy eyes.

With a twist she freed herself and cried with fury vibrating in her voice, “I hate you—I hate you! You—” she sought for a sufficiently opprobrious word—“nigger!”

Mullendore’s face took on a peculiar ashiness. Then with an oath and a choking snarl of rage he jumped for her. Kate’s long braid just escaped his finger tips.

“Mother! Mother! Make him quit!” There was terror in the shrill cry as the girl ran towards the freight wagon. The response to the appeal came in a hard voice:

“You needn’t expect me to take up your fights. You finish what you start.”

Kate gave her mother a despairing look and ran towards the pack ponies, with Mullendore now close at her heels. Spurred by fear, she dodged in and out, doubling and redoubling, endeavoring to keep a pony between herself and her pursuer. Once or twice a fold of her skirt slipped through his grasp, but she was young and fleet of foot, and after the game of hare and hounds had kept up for a few minutes her pursuer’s breath was coming short and labored. Finally, he stopped:

“You little——!” He panted the epithet. “I’ll get you yet!”

She glared at him across a pony’s neck and ran out her tongue. Then, defiantly:

“I ain’t scart of you!”

A drawling voice made them both turn quickly. “As an entirely impartial and unbiased spectator, friend, I should say that you are outclassed.” The man addressed himself to Mullendore. The stranger unobserved had entered by the corral gate. He was a typical sheepherder in looks if not in speech, even to the collie that stood by his side. He wore a dusty, high-crowned black hat, overalls, mackinaw coat, with a small woolen scarf twisted about his neck, and in his hand he carried a gnarled staff. His eyes had a humorously cynical light lurking in their brown depths.

Mullendore did not reply, but with another oath began to untie the lash rope from the nearest pack.

“Wonder if I could get a drink of water?” The stranger turned to Kate as he spoke, lifting his hat to disclose a high white forehead—a forehead as fine as it was unexpected in a man trailing a bunch of sheep. The men who raised their hats to the women of the Sand Coulee were not numerous, and Kate’s eyes widened perceptibly before she replied heartily, “Sure you can.”

Jezebel, who had come up leading the big wheel horse, said significantly, “Somethin’ stronger, if you like.”

The fierce eagerness which leaped into the stranger’s eyes screamed his weakness, yet he did not jump at the offer she held out. The struggle in his mind was obvious as he stood looking uncertainly into the face that was stamped with the impress of wide and sordid experiences. Kate’s voice broke the short silence, “He said ‘water,’ Mother.” She spoke sharply, and with a curt inclination of her head to the sheepherder added, “The water barrel’s at the back door, Mister. Come with me.” Apparently this made his decision for him, for he followed the girl at once, while Jezebel with a shrug walked on with the horse.

Kate handed the stranger the long-handled tin dipper and watched him gravely while he drank the water in gulps, draining it to the last drop.

“Guess you’re a booze-fighter, Mister,” she observed, casually, much as she might have commented that his unkempt beard was brown. Amusement twinkled in his eyes at the personal remark and her utter unconsciousness of having said anything at which by any chance he could take offense, but he replied noncommittally:

“I’ve put away my share, Miss.”

“I can always pick ’em out. Nearly all the freighters and cow punchers that stop here get drunk.”

He looked at her quizzically.

“The trapper you were playing tag with when I came looks as if he might be ugly when he’d had too much.”

He was startled by the intensity of the expression which came over her face as she said, between her clenched teeth:

“I hate that ‘breed’!”

“He isn’t just the pardner,” dryly, “that I’d select for a long camping trip.”

Her pupils dilated and she lowered her voice:

“He’s ornery—Pete Mullendore.”

As though in response to his name, that person came around the corner with his bent-kneed slouch, giving to the girl as he passed a look so malignant, and holding so unmistakable a threat, that it chilled and sobered the stranger who stood leaning against the water barrel. The girl returned it with a stare of brave defiance, but her hand trembled as she returned the dipper to its nail. She looked at him wistfully, and with a note of entreaty in her voice asked:

“Why don’t you camp here to-night, Mister?”

The sheepherder shook his head.

“I’ve got to get on to the next water hole. I have five hundred head of ewes in the road and they haven’t had a drink for two days. They’re getting hard to hold.”

Kate volunteered:

“You’ve about a mile and a half to go.”

“Yes, I know. Well—s'long, and good luck!” He reached for his sheepherder’s staff and once more raised his hat with a manner which spoke of another environment. Before he turned the corner of the house an impulse prompted him to look back. Involuntarily he all but stopped. Her eyes had in them a despairing look that seemed a direct appeal for help. But he smiled at her, touched his hat brim and went on. The girl’s look haunted him as he trudged along the road in the thick white dust kicked up by the tiny hoofs of the moving sheep.

“She’s afraid of that ‘breed,’ ” he thought, and tried to find comfort in telling himself that there was no occasion for alarm, with her mother, hard-visaged as she was, within call. Yet as unconsciously he kept glancing back at the lonely roadhouse, sprawling squat and ugly on the desolate sweep of sand and sagebrush, the only sign of human habitation within the circle of the wide horizon, he had the same sinking feeling at the heart which came to him when he had to stand helpless watching a coyote pull down a lamb. It was in vain he argued that there was nothing to do but what he had done—go on and mind his own business—for the child’s despairing, reproachful eyes followed him and his uneasiness remained with him after he had reached the water hole. While the sheep grazed after drinking he pulled the pack from the burro that carried his belongings. From among the folds of a little tepee tent he took out a marred violin case and laid it carefully on the ground, apart. A couple of cowhide paniers contained his meager food supply and blackened cooking utensils. These, with two army blankets, some extra clothing and a bell for the burro, completed his outfit.

The sheep dog lay with his head on his paws, following every movement with loving eyes.

The sheepherder scraped a smooth place with the side of his foot, set up his tepee and spread the blankets inside. Then he built a tiny sagebrush fire, filled his battered coffee pot at the spring in the “draw,” threw in a small handful of coffee, and, when the sagebrush was burned to coals, set it to boil. He warmed over a few cooked beans in a lard can, sliced bacon and laid it with great exactness in a long-handled frying pan and placed it on the coals. Then unwrapping a half dozen cold baking-powder biscuits from a dish towel he put them on a tin cover on the ground near a tin cup and plate and a knife and fork.

The man moved lightly, with the deftness of experience, stopping every now and then to cast a look at the sheep that were slowly feeding back preparatory to bedding down. And each time he did so, his eyes unconsciously sought the road in the direction from which he had come, and as often his face clouded with a troubled frown.

When the bacon was brown and the coffee bubbled in the pot, he sat down crosslegged with his plate in his lap and the tin cup beside him on the ground. He ate hungrily, yet with an abstracted expression, which showed that his thoughts were not on his food.

After he had finished he broke open the biscuits which remained, soaked them in the bacon grease and tossed them to the dog, which caught them in the air and swallowed them at a gulp. Then he got to his feet and filled his pipe. He looked contemplatively at a few sheep feeding away from the main band and said as he waved his arm in an encircling gesture:

“Way ’round ’em, Shep! Better bring ’em in.”

The dog responded instantly, his handsome tail waving like a plume as he bounded over the sagebrush and gathered in the stragglers.

By the time the herder had washed his dishes and finished his pipe the sun was well below the horizon and the sky in the west a riot of pink and amber and red. The well-trained sheep fed back and dropped down in twos and threes on a spot not far from the tepee where it pleased their fancy to bed. Save for the distant tinkle of the bell on the burro, and the stirring of the sheep, the herder might have been alone in the universe. When he had set his dishes and food back in the paniers and covered them with a piece of “tarp,” in housewifely orderliness, he opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he played like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, intent. Strains from the world’s best music rose and fell in throbbing sweetness on the desert stillness, music which told beyond peradventure that some cataclysm in the player’s life had shaken him from his rightful niche. It proclaimed this travel-stained sheepherder in his faded overalls and peak-crowned limp-brimmed hat another of the incongruities of the far west. The sagebrush plains and mountains have held the secrets of many Mysteries locked in their silent breasts, for, since the coming of the White Man, they have been a haven for civilization’s Mistakes, Failures and Misfits.

While he poured out his soul with only the sheep and the tired collie sleeping on its paws for audience, the gorgeous sunset died and a chill wind came up, scattering the gray ashes of the camp fire and swaying the tepee tent. Suddenly he stopped and shivered a little in spite of his woolen shirt. “Dog-gone!” he said abruptly, aloud, as he put the violin away, “I can’t get that kid out of my thoughts!” Though he could not have told why he did so, or what he might, even remotely, expect to hear, he stood and listened intently before he stooped and disappeared for the night between the flaps of the tent.

He turned often between the blankets of his hard bed, disturbed by uneasy dreams quite unlike the deep oblivion of his usual sleep.

“Oh, Mister, where are you?”

The sheepherder stirred uneasily.

“Please—please, Mister, won’t you speak?”

The plaintive pleading cry was tremulous and faint like the voice of a disembodied spirit floating somewhere in the air. This time he sat up with a start.

“It’s only me—Katie Prentice, from the Roadhouse. Don’t be scart.”

The wail was closer. There was no mistake. Then the dog barked. The man threw back the blanket and sprang to his feet. It took only a moment to get into his clothes and step out into a night that had turned pitch dark.

“Where are you?” he called.

“Oh, Mister!?” The shrill cry held gladness and relief.

Then she came out of the blackness, the ends of a white nubia and a little shoulder cape snapping in the wind, her breath coming short in a sound that was a mixture of exhaustion and sobs.

“I was afraid I couldn’t find you till daylight. I heard a bell, but I didn’t know where to go, it’s such a dark night. I ran all the way, nearly, till I played out.”

“What’s the row?” he asked gently.

She slipped both arms through one of his and hugged it convulsively, while in a kind of hysteria she begged:

“Don’t send me back, Mister! I won’t go! I’ll kill myself first. Take me with you—please, please let me go with you!”

“Tell me what it’s all about.”

She did not answer, and he urged:

“Go on. Don’t be afraid. You can tell me anything.”

She replied in a strained voice:

“Pete Mullendore, he—”

A gust of wind blew the shoulder cape back and he saw her bare arm with the sleeve of her dress hanging by a shred.

“—he did this?”

“Yes. He—insulted—me—I—can’t—tell—you—what—he—said.”

“And then?”

“I scratched him and bit him. I fought him all over the place. He was chokin’ me. I got to a quirt and struck him on the head—with the handle. It was loaded. He dropped like he was dead. I ran to my room and clum out the window—”

“Your mother—”

“She—laughed.”

“God!” He stooped and picked up the little bundle she had dropped at her feet. “Come along, Partner. You are going into the sheep business with 'Mormon Joe.'”