Читать книгу The Fighting Edge - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 17

Table of Contents

Bob Dillon was peeling potatoes outside the chuck tent when he heard a whistle he recognized instantly. It was a very good imitation of a meadow-lark’s joyous lilt. He answered it, put down the pan and knife, and rose.

“Where you going?” demanded the cook.

“Back in a minute, Lon,” the flunkey told him, and followed a cow trail that took him up the hill through the sage.

“I never did see a fellow like him,” the cook communed aloud to himself. “A bird calls, an’ he’s got to quit work to find out what it wants. Kinda nice kid, too, if he is queer.”

Among the piñons at the rock rim above Bob found June. He had not seen her since the day when she had saved him from a thrashing. The boy was not very proud of the way he had behaved. If he had not shown the white feather, he had come dangerously close to it.

“How are cases, June?”

His eyes, which had been rather dodging hers, came to rest on the girl at last. One glance told him that she was in trouble.

“I don’ know what to do, Bob,” she broke out. “Jake will be back to-day—by dinner-time, I reckon. He says I’ve got to go with him to Bear Cat an’ be married to-morrow.”

Dillon opened his lips to speak, but he said nothing. He remembered how he had counseled her to boldness before and failed at the pinch. What advice could he give? What could he say to comfort his friend?

“Haven’t you got any folks you could go to—some one who would tell Houck where to head in at?”

She shook her head. “My father’s all I’ve got.”

“Won’t he help you?”

“He would, but—I can’t ask him. I got to pretend to him I’d just as lief marry Jake.”

“Why have you?”

“I can’t tell you why, Bob. But that’s how it is.”

“And you still hate Houck?”

“Ump-ha. Except—sometimes.” She did not explain that elusive answer. “But it don’t matter about how I feel. When he comes back I’ve got to do like he says.”

June broke down and began to weep. The boy’s tender heart melted within him.

“Don’t you. Don’t you,” he begged. “We’ll find a way, li’l’ pardner. We sure will.”

“How?” she asked, between sobs. “There ain’t—any way—except to—to marry Jake.”

“You could run away—and work,” he suggested.

“Who’d give me work? And where could I go that he wouldn’t find me?”

Practical details stumped him. Her objections were valid enough. With her inexperience she could never face the world alone.

“Well, le’s see. You’ve got friends. Somewhere that you could kinda hide for a while.”

“Not a friend. We—we don’t make friends,” she said in a small, forlorn voice with a catch in it.

“You got one,” he said stoutly. “Maybe he don’t amount to much, but—” He broke off, struck by an idea. “Say, June, why couldn’t you run off with me? We’d go clear away, where he wouldn’t find us.”

“How could I run off with you?” A pink flood poured into her face. “You’re not my brother. You’re no kin.”

“No, but—” He frowned at the ground, kicking at a piece of moss with his toe to help him concentrate. Again he found an idea. “We could get married.”

This left her staring at him, speechless.

He began to dress his proposal with arguments. He was a humble enough youth who had played a trifling part in life. But his imagination soared at seeing himself a rescuer of distressed maidens. He was a dreamer of dreams. In them he bulked large and filled heroic rôles amply.

June was a practical young person. “What d’ you want to marry me for?” she demanded.

He came to earth. He did not want to marry her. At least he had not wanted to until the moment before. If he had been able to give the reason for his suggestion, it would probably have been that her complete isolation and helplessness appealed to the same conditions in himself and to a certain youthful chivalry.

“We’re good pals, ain’t we?” was the best he could do by way of answer.

“Yes, but you don’t—you don’t—”

Beneath the tan of her dark cheeks the blood poured in again. It was as hard for her to talk about love as for him. She felt the same shy, uneasy embarrassment, as though it were some subject taboo, not to be discussed by sane-minded people.

His freckled face matched hers in color. “You don’t have to be thataway. If we like each other, an’ if it looks like the best thing to do—why—”

“I couldn’t leave Dad,” she said.

“You’ll have to leave him if you marry Jake Houck.”

That brought her to another aspect of the situation. If she ran away with Bob and married him, what would Houck do in regard to her father? Some deep instinct told her that he would not punish Tolliver for it if she went without his knowledge. The man was ruthless, but he was not needlessly cruel.

“What would we do? Where would we go—afterward?” she asked.

He waved a hand largely into space. “Anywhere. Denver, maybe. Or Cheyenne. Or Salt Lake.”

“How’d we live?”

“I’d get work. No trouble about that.”

She considered the matter, at first unsentimentally, as a workable proposition. In spite of herself she could not hold quite to that aspect of the case. Her blood began to beat faster. She would escape Houck. That was the fundamental advantage of the plan. But she would see the world. She would meet people. Perhaps for the first time she would ride on a train. Wonderful stories had been told her by Dillon, of how colored men cooked and served meals on a train rushing along forty miles an hour, of how they pulled beds down from the roof and folks went to sleep in little rooms just as though they were at home. She would see all the lovely things he had described to her. There was a court-house in Denver where you got into a small room and it traveled up with you till you got out and looked down four stories from a window.

“If we go it’ll have to be right away,” she said. “Without tellin’ anybody.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“I could go back to the house an’ get my things.”

“While I’m gettin’ mine. There’s nobody at the camp but Lon, an’ he always sleeps after he gets through work. But how’ll we get to Bear Cat?”

“I’ll bring the buckboard. Dad’s away. I’ll leave him a note. Meet you in half an hour on Twelve-Mile Hill,” she added.

It was so arranged.

June ran back to the house, hitched the horses to the buckboard, and changed to her best dress. She made a little bundle of her other clothes and tied them in a bandanna handkerchief.

On a scrap of coarse brown wrapping-paper she wrote a short note: