Читать книгу Black Mesa - Zane Grey - Страница 7

Paul sat upon the porch of the trading post awaiting the arrival of Kintell and Belmont, who were expected that morning.

The noonday hour in the sun was pleasantly warm. Paul had discovered a penchant for getting out of the bleak desert wind into the lee of a wall. A new direction of thought made all his hours increasingly acceptable. Everything pertaining to this trading post and to the cattle project he had entered was now a matter of interest. He tried in vain to dismiss the disquieting suspicion as to why he had changed his mind about building a little cabin up on the ridge. The lame reasons he gave himself would not down. And the dismaying moment came when he confessed that the girl Louise presented the most tragic, baffling and fascinating study he had ever known.

A farmer up from one of the scattered homesteads to the south came out of the post loaded with purchases. “Makin’ hay cause the sun’s goin’ to shine,” he remarked. “We’re in for the spring thaw an’ then damn few wheels will turn on these ’dobe roads until she dries up.”

“How will we get around?” inquired Paul.

“Shanks’ mare and ’dobe pancakes,” the old fellow replied enigmatically, and left Paul to ponder that cryptic remark.

Paul enjoyed watching the Indians ride in on their ragged mustangs, hang around the porch and inside the post for hours before trading, and then ride away. He had at last seen some picturesque braves and squaws. But Natasha, despite her unkempt garb, was, so far, the one nearest approaching beauty. She lived back in one of the hogans behind the knoll and spent a good part of her time idling at the post.

It was surprising how many Indians came and went during the hours of midday. Paul seldom failed to see one or two dark riders on the horizon line. And there were a dozen or more ponies haltered at the rail or standing bridles down. Sheep and goat pelts, coyote hides, bags of wool and blankets were the principal articles of barter. The fact that very often a squaw brought in something to trade and went away without leaving it had strengthened Paul’s conviction that the trader drove close bargains. Paul did not like the woman Belmont called Sister and had not been able to define her status there to his complete satisfaction. She appeared to be cook, housekeeper, saleswoman, and was never idle. She was a large woman, under forty, dark-eyed and hard-featured, and seemed to be a silent, watchful, repressed person of strong passions.

Paul had watched the woman wait upon half a dozen Indians, and though he could not understand a word of the language spoken, he deduced much from her look, her tone, her deliberation and care in weighing sugar or cutting goods, and from the sloe-black, sullen eyes of her customers. These Indians had become dependent upon the whites and they were a driven race. Right at the outset, Paul divined that which stirred his pity and augmented his antagonism.

While Paul sat there, thinking of these things, and using his eyes, the girl Natasha came out, sucking a red-and-white stick of candy.

How wonderfully dark was her hair—a soft dead black! Her eyes matched it. Her skin was dark too, the color of bronze. It had a suggestion of red. She wore a band of colored beads round her head and her hair was tied up behind in a short braid wound with white cord. Paul made a guess at her age—about sixteen. These Indian girls matured early and Natasha appeared to be developing voluptuously out of the girlhood stage.

It increased Paul’s interest in her to become aware that, shy and wild as she was, she was covertly observing him. And when he was sure that her dusky, fleeting glances returned again and again to him he felt bound to admit that Natasha possessed at least one of the same rather disconcerting tendencies of the young female of the white race.

Kintell’s arrival with Belmont in a much overloaded wagon put an end to Paul’s mild flirtation. It also, he was quick to notice, put an end to Natasha’s mood. As Belmont leaped out she flounced away with a whirl of skirts that showed her bare, shapely brown legs above her moccasins. Paul wondered why her expression had changed so suddenly, and why she had vanished at the mere sight of the trader.

“Hyar you are, Manning,” called Belmont boisterously, handing Paul some documents. “All fixed up, money got an’ receipted. When you sign on the dotted line we’re set to make a million.”

“Thanks. If they need only my signature we’ll be on our way in a jiffy,” replied Paul with a laugh.

“Babbit’s runnin’ eighty thousand head of cattle, Miller brothers most as many, Cartwright cattle outfit fifty thousand—all on range no better’n ours. Kintell had it wrong about the price of cattle. Thirty-eight dollars a head for two-year-olds! Manning, there’s millions in it!”

“Wal, boss, heah’s mail from Kansas City,” drawled Kintell, with his lazy smile. “Letters, papers, magazines—shore a lot of truck thet I opine will make you ferget you’re a cowboy on the lone prairee.”

“Maybe it will,” declared Paul, eying with interest two fat envelopes addressed in his sister Anne’s neat handwriting. Besides there was a formidable array of letters, from his parents, lawyers, bankers, and employees. Paul had quite forgotten that he owned a thousand-acre farm, huge wheat elevators, a store, an apartment house and other property.

“Wess, can you compose business letters, pound a typewriter, add columns of figures, and perform other secretarial duties?” queried Paul calmly.

“My Gawd, boss, I swear I cain’t hardly write my name. An’ as for figgers, say, I could add up a column one hundred times an’ come out with one hundred different answers.”

“How on earth will you be my right-hand man, then?” protested Paul, for the fun of seeing Wess’s confusion.

“Wal, I can fork a hawse, sling a diamond—hitch, rope an’ hawg-tie a steer—an’ throw a gun,” declared the cowboy somberly. “Reckon thet’s aboot all you’ll need round heah.”

“I was kidding you, Wess. . . . Did you buy the books?”

“Say, thet bookman near dropped daid. Said he had only a few on yore list, but would send for the others.”

“Okay. Let’s rustle my bags and see if I can turn around in my room afterward.”

It required four trips for each of them to unload the wagon, and on the last one, when Paul staggered into the long corridor behind the overburdened cowboy, he saw Louise Belmont standing in the doorway at the other end. She smiled at Wess. And after he had stumbled into Paul’s room she smiled at Paul too, and said: “Looks as if you were going to stay awhile.”

“This load does—indeed,” panted Paul, halting at his door to set down three heavy bags.

“I am—glad,” she added hesitantly.

“Thanks. The same goes for me—too,” replied Paul constrainedly. It was impossible not to meet her eyes. And this time he met them fully and penetratingly, with a freedom he had not before permitted himself. He was to see the gladness she had confessed—a shining lovely light—dispel that dark and haunting shadow which had seemed so apparent a moment ago. Paul sustained a distinct shock, not so much at the loveliness of the eyes, but at the subtle intimation that his presence there for an indefinite period could cause such a transformation.

“It’s so terrible here. . . . I hate . . .” She checked her speech. Instantly Paul realized that she was not a child, that she was not afraid or shy but passionately candid. But his surprise, his pause, his piercing gaze, which no doubt forced her to think of him as a young man, a stranger, different, sympathetically and impellingly drawn to her, brought a flush to her pale face.

Paul wanted to say that perhaps he could make it a little less lonely and hateful for her there—that he had books, magazines, music. But something inhibited him. This moment did not seem one for kindly courtesy. He did not know what it called for, but he knew it was not the time.

Her lips parted, her gaze drooped, and she turned away with the red receding from her cheeks.

Paul must have worn a strange expression on his face when he entered his room, for Wess, after one gray glance at it, threw up his hands.

“Say, cowboy, I didn’t tell you to stick ’em up,” declared Paul testily.

“Not in so many words, pard,” drawled Kintell, and sat down amidst the baggage.

“All right. How’d I strike you?”

“Wal, pard, can I talk oot straight?”

“Kintell, you need never be afraid to tell me what you think. You can bet your life that if I don’t like it, I’ll say so,” said Paul, shutting the door.

“Don’t get sore, then, Paul,” returned the cowboy earnestly. “We’re bucked into somethin’ oot heah an’ it’ll take us both to beat it. . . . I seen the little lady look at you with them strange eyes an’ I seen their effect on you when you come in jest now.”

“Okay. They are strange, and they sure nailed me. . . . But I don’t know how,” returned Paul with a laugh.

Kintell made a significant gesture with his brown hand toward the cabin outside the window.

“Peach?” he drawled.

“Who? The little lady that looked at me. . . ? Yes, come to think of it, she is.”

“Pard, I reckon you an’ me are a couple of doomed hombres,” went on Kintell, lowering his voice, and wagging his hawklike head.

“Doomed!” echoed Paul. “I don’t get you, Wess.” But he did understand only too well.

“I shore was stumped when I seen thet girl,” rejoined the cowboy, ignoring the meaning of his employer’s statement. “She come up to me the other day with a list of things she wanted me to fetch from Wagontongue. An’ while she was aboot it she hinted thet I should block the cattle deal, but not to give her away to Belmont. I was plumb stumped.”

“Well!” exclaimed Paul, astounded. “But just now she said she was glad it looked as if I meant to stay awhile.”

“Correct. I heahed her. Wal, so long as I didn’t block the deal she could be glad you’d come, couldn’t she?”

Paul nodded thoughtfully. No doubt Kintell’s reaction to this place and situation was much like his own.

“Paul, I never looked into such strange eyes in all my life. Beautiful, shore! But it wasn’t thet so much. They hurt me like hell.”

“They hurt me too,” returned Paul.

“Thet girl is sufferin’ wuss than heartbreak. Jest a kid, for all her full-breastedness. But thet’s the baby. I feel so damn sorry for her thet I’m sore at myself. What am I so sorry aboot? Becawse she’s a kid, married to thet big-haided ham. . . ? Nope, it’s becawse of them eyes. . . ! Queer situation, this, an’ don’t you overlook it, Manning. This Belmont is deep, slick, hard as nails, crooked as a rail fence. I saw him chuck the Indian girl—the pretty one—under the chin. She hissed like a viper. I cain’t figger oot who this ‘Sister’ dame is. Not his real sister, believe me. An’ she hates the girl like pizen. I got thet pronto.”

“Wess, what I got is that the girl hates Belmont worse than poison,” whispered Paul.

“Why wouldn’t she? Natural. She’s shore not his class, nor the ‘Sister’ dame’s either. . . . An’ this is yore deal, boss! What have we rode into?”

“I don’t know. But I’m glad,” returned Paul with strong feeling. “If that poor kid is glad—then so am I.”

“Yeah?” drawled Wess, with an eloquent glance. “Pard, you shore had a sweet time with the last female you got mixed up with—an’ she wasn’t even married.”

“That’s not what I mean—and you know it!” flashed Paul angrily. “Do you want to lie down on me and run out of Bitter Seeps?”

“Say, bozo, you don’t savvy yore man,” declared the cowboy scornfully.

“All right. Let’s lay off the heavy stuff awhile. . . . Where are you going to hang that six-gallon bonnet?”

“I’ve a tent ootside in the cedars. It has a board floor. Okay till fall.”

“Get busy here, then. . . . Let me see. It’ll take some job to make this room habitable. Wess, your boss is going to be a luxurious cuss.”

“Like hell he is! Did you happen to observe, pard, thet yore room is sometimes under water?”

“Belmont said a little water ran in during summer floods. But he’d remedy that.”

“Ah-huh. We won’t risk it. I’ll make some low stands to keep yore bags off the floor. . . . You’ll want a long box to store firewood in. These nights will be cold clear into July. An’ what else?”

“Shelves to go here. A table to set here under the window.”

“So you can see oot, huh?” drawled Wess dryly.

“No. So I can see to write, you blockhead,” retorted Paul. “I must get a lamp with a good shade—probably we’ll have to send in for that. Borrow or buy some new blankets for the floor. I want a mirror I can see myself in. Look at yourself once in this glass.”

“Holy mavericks! Once is plenty. No girl would leave home for a mug like thet.”

“Haven’t you got girls on the brain?”

“Shore. It’s a swell way to be. . . . A few looks in this glass, though, would rid me of all my vanity. Reminds me of them funny mirrors at Coney Island. I was East onct, traveling with the Hundred an’ One Ranch ootfit. Some trip.”

Paul scarcely heard the loquacious cowboy. At the moment he was fingering the red tags on two new, heavy suitcases. He had forgotten these. They had been packed in Kansas City nearly five months before and had never been opened. Paul lifted them carefully onto his bed.

“Shore I wondered what was in them two bags,” observed Wess. “You handle them kinda funny. Eggs, china or dynamite?”

“Dynamite, pard,” replied Paul fiercely.

“Quit yore kiddin’.”

“Wess, I’ve forgotten all I put in those bags. But believe me, there’s the damndest lot of truck to dazzle a woman’s eyes! Cost far into four figures! Now what on earth will I do with it all?”

“Why, hell, pard,” drawled Wess in his soft voice, “thet’s easy. Keep ’em for another girl.”

“Wess, you have the most wonderful philosophy. I’ve noticed it before in such regard. . . . Your theory, then, is that in case of death or loss—or say, treachery—the thing to do is to get another?”

“Cer-tin-lee an’ pronto!” declared Wess vociferously.

Paul swore at the cowboy and drove him out to fetch lumber and tools. Kintell had touched rudely upon tender spots. Yet Paul found that he could laugh. The Texan was droll, unique, and altogether a remarkable character. Paul had just begun to appreciate him, and to realize that he was singularly helpful. Paul sat down on the bed and with a hesitating hand touched the red tag on the nearest of the two grips. A melancholy and detached pathos attended the memory of the passionate, boyish zeal and rapture that had been wasted in the loving selection and purchase of the gifts in that bag. He could think of them now, almost without bitterness. Yes, something had happened. The time might even come when he could look back at a searingly bitter experience of life with eyes of thoughtful tolerance.

Kintell turned out to be a first-rate carpenter and handy man. By midafternoon the racks were finished, the shelves were up, the long heavy woodbox with its lid was in place, and the room had been thoroughly swept and dusted. Paul had to buy new blankets. Belmont showed no eagerness to lend. But he furnished a table, a suitable lamp, a better mirror, and towels. Paul had decided not to whitewash the ceiling and walls, but made instead an onslaught upon Belmont’s small stock of Indian baskets, scarfs, beaded ornaments, and other small articles that would lend color and attractiveness to a room.

Arguments, however, anent the most becoming positions for the last batch of things Paul had bought increased with every objection he raised.

“Lemme do this, pard. You haven’t no taste atall,” complained Kintell.

“Say, you big lummox, I’ve forgotten more taste than you ever had,” retorted Paul. “But I suppose if I don’t bar you from this room you will fuss about it. So go ahead, interior decorator. Spread yourself.”

“Interior decorator? Haw! Haw! Thet’s a good one, by gosh. I shore have painted my insides seventeen shades of red. . . . No more, though, pard. Thet last an’ only drunk of yores queered me. I’m on the water wagon now, an’ what’s more, henceforth you air on the wagon, too. Savvy?”

“Water wagon, eh? That means Bitter Seeps.”

“Wal, Bitter Seeps, then,” declared Kintell, as if he had been dealt a body blow. “Hell! We cain’t stay heah always. We’ll live cheap, save our dough, an’ when we got ten thousand haid, we’ll sell an’ pull fer a decent ranch. Find ourselves a couple of swell girls an’ settle down fer life. How aboot thet, pard?”

“Sounded great, up to the last,” rejoined Paid with a dubious laugh. “I wish I could think so. . . . But look here, Wess.” And Paul lifted from the bed a large photograph of a lovely face that had been responsible for their isolation at Bitter Seeps.

“My Gawd, pard! You ain’t gonna leave thet oot?” entreated Kintell.

“Yes. Safest way, Wess. I’ll put it on my bureau.”

“Lemme see.” The cowboy took the photograph and glared at it. He shook his lean head, and it was certain that resentment slowly was giving way to reluctant admiration. “Pard, if a man could hawg-tie a woman like her, an’ keep her where he could always have her, why, I reckon he might be fairly happy.”

“Wess, try and spring that idea on some of these females today.”

“I’m not joshin’. I mean thet. . . . Lordy, but she’s pretty to look at! An’ men air such pore fish. . . . Paul, I reckon the good Lord never had nothin’ to do with creatin’ lovely women.”

“Whatever are you doing?” called a soft voice from the corridor. “Such pounding and shouting . . . ! Oh, how nice and cozy!”

Louise stood framed in the doorway, graceful, big-eyed, strangely disturbing, at least to Paul.

“Come in,” he said constrainedly, wondering if she had heard Wess’s doubtful approbation concerning her sex.

“Howdy, lady,” drawled Wess, as he tossed the photograph back on the bed, where it flopped to expose the face that had inspired the cowboy to his Homeric language.

“Oh, what a lovely girl!” she exclaimed as she entered. “Please may I see?”

Paul handed her the picture with conflicting emotions. There followed another moment of silence.

“Your sister?” she asked.

“No. I have one of Anne here somewhere.”

“How beautiful! I never saw anyone so lovely. . . . Who then?” she asked directly, her strange eyes seeking Paul’s face.

It was not often that Paul was at a loss for words. He felt a rush of blood to his cheeks. Kintell relieved the situation with a laugh, not altogether mirthful.

“Aw, thet’s only an old flame of the boss’s,” he drawled. But his gray gaze held a singularly bold expression. Wess did not intend to allow any doubts to accumulate in her mind.

“Old flame is right,” spoke up Paul suddenly, no longer tongue-tied. “I was engaged to this girl once, Mrs. Belmont.”

“Please don’t call me that,” she begged. “I told your cowboy I didn’t want to be called Mrs.”

“Boss, she did at thet, but I forgot,” admitted Wess.

“How shall I address you?” queried Paul.

“Louise—or Louie. I like Louie better,” she announced simply.

“Oh, I see,” replied Paul.

“So you were engaged to this beautiful girl once?” went on Louise, studying the photo. “I should think—for a man—once would be for good.”

“She gave me the gate,” said Paul frankly. He was glad that he could confess it.

“Jilted you!” exclaimed Louise incredulously.

“Rather hard to believe, isn’t it?” went on Paul lightly. “Young, handsome fellow, college graduate, good family—and rich.”

“Wal, Louise, she didn’t know he was rich,” interposed Wess.

“I don’t savvy you men,” returned the girl in confusion.

“Mrs. . . . Louise, I’m simple enough,” said Paul hastily. “Wess there is a perfect devil. Especially with women, I fancy. But as far as I’m concerned, perhaps I didn’t have the qualities to hold a woman, and so—” he broke off with a rather forced laugh.

“Oh, how could she?” cried Louise softly, and dropped the picture as if it burned her fingers. “So that was it.”

“That was what?” asked Paul curiously, conscious that her reaction was somehow sweet to him.

“I felt it—saw it in your eyes.”

“What?”

“That you had been hurt.”

“Yes, I was pretty badly hurt,” admitted Paul. “It was a bad case, I guess. But thanks to my cowboy pard here, I weathered it, a sadder, a wiser, and surely a better man. I must have been pretty much of a young fool, a conceited ass, and certainly no catch for a beautiful woman who loved society, travel, clothes, jewels.”

“Probably you’re very lucky to have escaped her,” declared Louise solemnly. Then with a tinge of melancholy, “You and I should be good friends.”

“Thank you. I’d be pleased, I’m sure. But just why—”

“Life has gone wrong for me too,” she interrupted bitterly.

“Indeed. I’m sorry, Louise. I guess I had a suspicion of it. . . . You mean the same way as I?”

Her voice was low. “No, I’ve never really loved anyone except, of course, my baby—but that’s different. . . . But when I . . .” Abruptly she paused, as if her thoughts were somehow beyond words.

“You mean—Belmont,” Paul blurted out almost fiercely. “But why did you. . . ?”

They were suddenly interrupted by Kintell who stepped down from the box to confront them, cool with eyes of gray fire. “Don’t talk so loud, you kids. . . . Louise, me an’ Paul want to stay on heah. Want to turrible bad now we’re acquainted with you an’ see how—how lonely you air. . . . Do you want us as real friends?”

“Oh, I do. I do,” she whispered, with a catch in her voice. “It’s been different since you came. I don’t know how. But—”

“Okay,” interrupted the cowboy brightly. “You can trust us. An’ I reckon there’s no sense in yore waitin’ to unburden yoreself, if you’re ever gonna do thet.”

“Louise, he is right,” interrupted Paul, suddenly ashamed that he had blurted out his question to her.

“Oh, I can’t tell you anything,” whispered the girl nervously. Somehow she seemed to be a sensitive, young creature caught in a trap.

Paul took her hand. The instant he yielded to this kindly act he regretted it, yet was keenly affected as she responded with a glad pressure, with quick tears and warm soft flush, all vividly betraying what a stranger she had been to another’s sympathy.

“I daren’t tell you much,” she replied fearfully. “I don’t remember my parents. I lived with an aunt in Peoria, where I went to school. My aunt died. Then I had to work. Belmont came to visit the people I boarded with. They had a farm near town. They were queer people. Belmont had some hold on them. He took me to Utah with him—promised me work—a home—everything. I was only a child. That was two—nearly three years ago. We lived on a ranch outside of Lund, at a place way off across the big river lost in the canyon country. He kept me closely confined there with this woman he calls Sister to watch me—and married me just before he moved out here to Bitter Seeps.”

“How could Belmont marry you without your consent?” asked Paul sternly.

“I was scared to death of him.”

Kintell turned toward her with a tense face. “Did he make—force any religion on you?”

“No.”

“What kind of people did you know?”

“We didn’t meet many, but of course we saw people, and heard them. But we never got acquainted.”

“Ah-huh. Has this dame Sister always been with him, since you came?”

“Yes.”

“Is she his real sister?”

“He says so.”

“How did Sister take yore comin’ to the ranch, first off?”

“She hated me on sight. She was mean, cruel to me. . . . Beat me until Belmont caught her at it. They quarreled often. She has changed since we came here. Lets me alone.”

“Lets you alone? Humph! I shore see her watchin’ you. What you mean?” went on Kintell sharply.

“You ask so many questions. . . . I talk too much. For one thing, she used to make it impossible for any boys or men to get near me, in Belmont’s absence. Now I have perfect freedom. I know she wants men to see me.”

“But how aboot Belmont?”

“He pays little attention to me—in the daytime,” went on the girl, somber-eyed. “He works early and late, as you have seen. He leaves me to myself, except . . .”

“But doesn’t thet—thet hombre love you?” queried the cowboy.

“Love me!” she echoed scornfully. “He loves only money and drink.”

Kintell turned to Paul with his characteristic sweeping spread of hands. “Pard, you heahed her. It’s wuss than we feared. . . . An’ if you’re askin’ me what pulled you to Bitter Seeps, I’m shore tellin’ you.”

Paul did not answer. Somehow he accepted the cowboy’s implication. He felt a sense of shame too that Kintell must seem to Louise more deeply concerned over her than he. The cowboy, however, had been swayed wholly by primal emotions. The delicacy, the danger of the situation had not occurred to him. He did not think. Paul felt deeply for the girl, he had no idea how deeply, but his intelligence prompted him to proceed more slowly. Belmont was a dominating man who would hold on to whatever he possessed. Moreover, Paul sensed a peril in the Texan himself. He was an unknown quantity, a wild product of the ranges, whom no age or law could restrain.

“Your coming was an answer to my prayers,” murmured Louise, looking up at Paul with eloquent, appealing eyes no man could have resisted. All at once he noticed that the shadow of havoc seemed to be gone. “I prayed for someone to come. . . . If it hadn’t been for Tommy, I—don’t know what I’d have done, even . . .”

“Hush!” cried Paul, clasping her hand. “What are you saying? We have come, if it means anything to you. We shall stay. . . . Promise me you will not think of such a thing again.”

She shook her bronze head sadly. “I can’t promise, but perhaps you can give me some hope. . . . Oh, you can!” She released her hand to offer it to the cowboy. “Thank you, Wess. You are wonderful to understand. And I don’t feel forlorn and lost any more.”

Then she slipped out, looking back, pale, but somehow radiant, and leaving Wess and Paul to stare impotently at each other.

“Holy mackali!” exploded the cowboy, and sat down limply on the box. “Did it happen to you, pard?”

“What?” asked Paul shortly.

“Did you fall fer her?”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“Which is to say don’t be a man. See heah, boss, your gray matter may be workin’, but it’s not aboot her, unless you fell like a ton of lead. This ain’t no little deal. It’s as big as this damned range. It’s as Gawd-forsaken an’ turrible as this heah hellhole. . . . Paul, think aboot this little woman an’ her baby if you want me to stay pard of yores. I knowed there was somethin’ deep an’ crooked aboot this heah Belmont.”

“I am, Wess. God knows, Belmont may be everything you say he is,” rejoined Paul earnestly. “But we can’t go off half cocked. Whether she hates him or not, she is his wife. We have no moral or legal right to interfere. . . . Besides, how do you know she’s telling the truth?”

“Paul, don’t you know truth when you see it in a woman’s eyes?”

“Yes, I do. But . . .”

“An’ didn’t you see some of the hell fade oot of them eyes?”

“I—I really don’t know . . .” said Paul helplessly.

“An’ did you see what come? Somethin’ like the first burst of sunrise? Light, hope, life? Did you see all thet, pard?”

Kintell was hopeless. The situation was hopeless. But yet there seemed to be a great and heaving lift to the unknown forces deep within Paul’s breast.

“Wal, I reckon we can now put this heah frost of a woman in plain sight,” drawled the cowboy, and taking the photograph of Paul’s lost sweetheart he placed it conspicuously on the bureau. Then, as that position did not appear to suit him, he tacked it on the wall, close to the mirror.

“There! Every time you look at it you’ll shore compare her to this real girl heah—who’s gonna grow into a woman pronto—an’ love you as turrible as she hates Belmont. . . .”

“Wess, you’re a romantic damn fool, that’s all,” Paul burst out. “This whole idea would be wrong—even if it wasn’t so crazy. . . . I’m sure nothing such as that will ever come to pass. . . .”

Kintell hesitated by the door. “Paul, you’re a smart hombre aboot some things, but aboot some others you shore are dumb.” With that blunt statement he went out.