Читать книгу Justin Wingate, Ranchman - Whitson John Harvey - Страница 7

The feeling which hallowed the mere local surroundings of love held its place tenaciously in Justin’s heart and seemed not likely to pass away. It was no sickly sentimentality, but had the power to strengthen his inner life and add to his growing manliness.

Justin was employed on the ranch now, and though there were many distasteful things connected with the work, he desired to remain, because it gave him so many opportunities to be near Lucy Davison. The necessary cruelties connected with the rearing and handling of cattle on a great range sickened him at times; for a love that was almost a worship of all life, the lower forms equally with the higher, had been instilled by Clayton into every fibre of his being. To Justin now even the elements seemed to stir with consciousness. Did not certain chemicals exhibited by Clayton rush together into precipitates and crystals, as if they loved and longed to be united, and did not so common a thing as fire throw out tentacles of flame, and grapple with the wood as if hungry? And who was to say that the precipitates and crystals and the fire did not know? Certainly not ignorant man.

With this love of every form of life there grew a manly gentleness, broken strangely at times by outbursts of temper, so that often it seemed whimsical.

Riding forth one day, in cowboy attire, along the line fence that held in the cattle from the cultivated valley lands, he came upon Philip Davison engaged in angry controversy with a young man of somewhat shabby appearance. The shrewd little eyes of this man observed Justin closely. Beside the fence was a dirty prairie schooner, from which the man had descended, and to it two big raw-boned farm horses were hitched. Eyeing Justin the man pushed back his hat, then awkwardly extended his hand.

“So you’re Justin, air ye—the little boy I met one’t? I reckon you don’t know me? I wouldn’t knowed you, but fer hearin’ the name.”

Justin acknowledged that the man’s face was unfamiliar.

“Well, I’m William Sanders!” He plucked a spear of grass and began to splinter it with his teeth. “I landed hyer some seasons ago with Mr. Fogg, and stayed all night with the doctor over there. Mebbe you’ll remember me now. I’ve thought of you a good many times sense then. You’ve growed a lot. I was thinkin’ about you t’other day while on my way hyer; and a fortune teller I went to in Pueblo picked you out straight off, from the cards she told with. She showed me the jack of hearts, and said that was the young feller I had in mind. Sing’lar, wasn’t it?”

Justin recalled this young man now, and shook his hand heartily.

“It was singular,” he admitted.

“We’ll have to talk over old times by and by,” said Sanders, amiably.

But Davison was not pleased to see Sanders, whom he had never met before. Sanders, it appeared, had bought a quarter-section of land not far from the stream, and had now come to occupy it. Trouble had arisen over the fact that it was included in a large area of mortgaged and government land which Davison had fenced for his cattle. Sanders was demanding that he should cut the fence.

“Cut it and let me git my land,” he insisted, “er I’ll cut it fer ye. I know my rights under the law.”

“You can’t farm there, and you know you can’t,” said Davison, in a tone of expostulation. “This is simply a piece of blackmail. You want me to pay you not to trouble me about the fence. But I won’t do it. If I did I’d have dozens of men landed on me demanding the same thing. You know that nothing but bunch grass will grow on that land.”

Though he chewed placidly on the grass spear, Sanders’ little eyes glittered.

“Cut the fence and let me git to my land, er I’ll cut it fer ye!”

His love for Lucy, which extended now to Philip Davison as a warm regard and intense boyish admiration, would have inclined Justin to the ranchman’s side; but it was clear that Sanders was in the right and Davison in the wrong.

“I’ll see you again, Mr. Sanders,” he said; and rode on while the two men were still wrangling. It was remarkable, he thought, that Sanders should have remembered him so long, and more remarkable that a fortune teller who had never seen him should be able to describe him even in a dim and uncertain way.

Farther along he encountered Ben, ranging the mesa with dog and gun, training his young English setter. It was Ben’s duty to ride the line on this particular day; but Ben had shirked, and Justin had been assigned to his place. The current opinion of the cowboys was that Ben was shiftless and unreliable.

“What’s that hayseed mouthing about?” Ben asked.

“He has bought some land in there, and wants your father to cut the fence so that he can get to it.”

“These farmers are always making trouble,” Ben growled.

Then his face flushed.

“Why didn’t you stand up with me against that granger the other day, when I told him that his horses, and not ours, had damaged his crops?”

Justin desired to think well of Ben and remain on terms of friendship with him because of Lucy.

“I couldn’t very well,” he urged, “for I saw our horses in his millet, myself.”

“Well, he didn’t; he was in town that day. He would have believed you, if you had said they were his horses. You might have backed me up, instead of flinching; I’d have done as much for you.”

“You’ve got a handsome dog there!” said Justin.

“Oh, that setter’s going to be fine when I get him broke,” Ben asserted, with enthusiasm. “I only wish we had some Eastern quails here. Harkness put you on this line today, did he? I wanted to train my setter; so I told him I wasn’t well, and slipped out of it.”

As the dog was now far ahead, Ben hastened to overtake him, and Justin rode on, thinking of Ben, of Lucy, and of William Sanders. Ben’s easy disregard of certain things he had been taught to consider essentials troubled him. He wanted to think well of Ben.

When Justin learned the outcome of the controversy between Davison and Sanders he was somewhat astonished. Sanders’ truculence had made him think the man would persist in his demands; but Sanders had agreed to fence his own land, if Davison would but give him a right of way to it.

Within a week Justin understood why. Sanders, visiting the ranch-house to see Davison, had also seen Lucy. He became a familiar visitor, where his presence was not desired. If Lucy rode out, William Sanders invariably chanced to be in the trail going in the same direction. If she remained at home he came to the house to get Davison’s advice as to the best manner of constructing a fence, and Lucy’s advice concerning the proper furnishing of a dug-out for a single man who expected to live alone and do his own cooking.

Lucy came to Justin with the burden of her woes.

“He follows me round all the time, just as if he were my dog!”

“You ought to feel flattered,” said Justin, though he was himself highly indignant. “I don’t suppose you want me to say anything to him about it?”

“Oh, no—no!” she gasped, terrified by the threat concealed behind the words.

“I’ve noticed he hasn’t come near me since our meeting down by the line fence. He told me then that he wanted to have a talk about old times, but he hasn’t seemed in any hurry to begin it.”

As Justin rode away in an angry mood Lucy Davison looked at his receding figure with some degree of uneasiness. Justin had on a few occasions showed a decidedly inflammable temper. Ordinarily mild in word and manner, borrowing much of that mildness doubtless from Clayton, when he gave way to a sudden spasm of rage it was likely to carry him beyond the bounds of reason.

The provocation came in a most unexpected, and at the time inexplicable, way. Justin, riding along the trail by the stream, saw Lucy come out from the shadows of the young cottonwoods near Sloan Jasper’s and walk in his direction, as if to join him. The sight of her there filled his sky with brightness and the music of singing birds. He pricked up his broncho and turned it from the trail.

As he did so he beheld William Sanders appear round the end of the cottonwood grove, mounted on one of his big, raw-boned horses. Riding up to Lucy, Sanders slipped from his saddle and walked along by her side. Justin’s anger burned. It was apparent to him, great as was the separating distance, that Sanders’ presence and words were distasteful to her. She stopped and seemed about to turn back to the grove. Justin saw Sanders put out his hand as if to detain her. As he did so she stooped; then she screamed, and fell forward, apparently to avoid him.

Justin drove his broncho from a trot into a wild gallop. His anger increased to smoking rage. It passed to ungovernable fury, when he beheld Sanders catch the screaming girl in his arms, lift her to the back of his horse, and scramble up behind her in the saddle. Justin yelled at him.

“Stop—stop, you villain!”

In utter disregard of him and his shouted command Sanders plunged his spurs into the flanks of his big horse, and began to ride away from the cottonwoods at top speed. Lucy lay limp in his arms.

“I’ll have his life!” Justin cried, longing now for one of the cowboy revolvers he had made it a practice, on the advice of Clayton, never to carry; and he drove the broncho into furious pursuit of the big horse that was bearing Lucy and Sanders away.

The light, clean-limbed broncho, unimpeded by a cumbersome double weight, began to gain in the mad race. Justin ploughed its sides mercilessly with the spurs, struck it with his hands, and yelled at it, to increase its speed.

“Go, go!” he cried; “we must catch that scoundrel quick!”

His line of action when that was accomplished was not formulated, further than that he knew he would hurl himself on Sanders, tear him from the saddle, and punish him as it seemed he deserved.

Steadily the separating distance was decreased. Sanders still sent the big horse on, almost without a backward glance. He held Lucy tightly in his arms. Apparently she had fainted, for Justin could not observe that she struggled to release herself.

Again Justin bellowed a command to Sanders to halt. He was close upon the big horse now. Sanders turned in his saddle heavily, for the weight of the girl impeded his movements. Justin fancied he could see the man’s little eyes glitter, as they did that day when he delivered his ultimatum to Davison.

“You go to hell!” he bellowed back.

The momentary slacking of his rein caused his horse to stumble, and it fell to the ground.

Justin galloped up in an insanity of blazing wrath. Lucy, hurled from the back of the horse with Sanders, sprang up with a cry, and ran toward Justin. Sanders, having picked himself up uninjured, stared at her. His flushed face whitened and his little eyes showed a singular and ominous gleam.

“Take her,” he said, hoarsely; “damn you, take her—I was doin’ the best I could!”

Lucy’s face was white—piteously white; her dry hot eyes gushed with tears, and a sob choked in her throat.

“Justin—Justin, it was not—his fault—nothing he did; it was the snake; see, it bit me, here!” She thrust forward her hand. “Near the wrist, there; and—and it is swelling fast, fast! We—we must—get to Doctor Clayton’s quick—quick!”

Justin staggered under the revulsion of feeling. He caught the shaking and terrified girl in his arms.

“Help me—get her into the saddle, Sanders,” he begged, stammering the words. “And—and I ask your pardon! Later I will tell you what I—but now I need you to—”

Sanders sprang to his assistance.

“Better take my horse; he’s bigger!”

“The broncho is faster,” said Justin. “That’s right. Now—that’s right!”

He climbed shakily into the saddle. He felt his very brain reeling. Then the broncho leaped forward. Sanders struck it a smart blow to hurry it on; and stood looking at them, as they galloped wildly on toward Clayton’s, which had been his own destination.

“Damn him!” he cried hoarsely. His little eyes glittered and his lips foamed. “I was doin’ the best I could, and I would have made it all right.” He clenched his fists. “I would 'a’ been his friend—and helped him; but now—”

The sentence, the threat, died, gurgling, in his throat.

As for Justin, he had no thought now but to reach Doctor Clayton’s in the quickest time possible. He did not spare the broncho. Yet, even in these minutes of whirling excitement, when anxiety, fright, love, chagrin, and regret, fought within him for the mastery, he did not forget some of the things learned of Clayton. He took out his handkerchief, rolled it into a cord with hands and teeth, and with hands and teeth knotted it round the bitten arm just above the two small punctures made by the teeth of the rattlesnake.

The arm was already swollen, and he thought it was becoming discolored. At times burning tears gushed from his eyes in a way to blind him and keep him from seeing anything clearly. Lucy lay in his arms as if dead. For aught he knew she might even then be dying. The poison of the rattlesnake had been injected near the great artery of the wrist, as she stooped in her embarrassment to pluck a flower, and it would be speedy in its malignant effects. With that terrible fear upon him, Justin blamed himself ceaselessly for the delay he had wrought in the mistaken notion that Sanders was acting with sinister intent. If that brief delay should aid to a fatal result he knew he should go mad or kill himself.

When Lucy stirred, or moaned, he bent over her with wild words of inquiry. Her eyes were closed, and she was very white.

“We are almost there—almost there!” he cried.

Yet how long the distance seemed!

Clayton came to the door, when he heard the clatter of hoofs. He wore a faded smoking jacket and had a black skull cap perched on the top of his head. His half lounging manner changed when he saw the trembling broncho, dripping sweat and panting with labored breath from the strain of its terrible run, and saw Justin climbing heavily out of the saddle with Lucy. When her feet touched the ground she stood erect, but tottered, clinging weakly to Justin’s arm. She made a brave effort to walk, as Clayton hurried to her side. He saw the knotted handkerchief and the swollen arm, and knew what had happened.

“Into the house,” he said, tenderly supporting her. “Don’t be frightened, Lucy—don’t be frightened! Justin, help me on the other side—ah, that’s right! A little girl was here only the other day, from the Purgatoire, who had been bitten hours before, and I had her all right in a little while. So, there’s really nothing to be alarmed about.”

Clayton’s cheering words were a stimulant. Yet the battle was not fought out. Before victory was announced, word had gone to the ranch-house and to Jasper’s. Philip Davison came, with Harkness and Pearl Newcome, and Mary Jasper rode in on her pony, wild-eyed and tremulous. Among others who arrived was William Sanders.

Justin found him in the yard, out by the grass-grown cellar, where he stood in a subdued manner, holding the reins of his raw-boned horse. His manner changed and his little eyes burned when he saw Justin.

“I don’t keer to have you speak to me,” he said, abruptly. “I reckon from this on our ways lays in different directions. I don’t know what you thought I was up to, but I was doin’ the best I could to git that girl to this place in a hurry. You chipped in. I s’pose you think it was all right, and that you helped matters?”

“I have already asked your pardon, and I ask it again. I see now that I was a fool. We’ll forget the whole thing, if you’re willing.”

Justin held out his hand in an amicable manner.

Sanders disdained to take it.

“I’m not willin’ to fergit it, myself. I wanted to think well of you, rememberin’ when I first come to this house, and some other things, but that’s past. You made me look and feel cheaper than thirty cents Mexican, and I ain’t expectin’ to fergit it.”

He turned away, and walked along the edge of the old cellar, leading his horse. That William Sanders had in him all the elements of a vicious hater was shown then, and many times afterward. He did not speak to Justin again that day; and when the announcement came that Clayton had won his hard fight and Lucy was on the high road to recovery, he mounted and rode away.