Читать книгу The Maverick Queen - Zane Grey - Страница 5

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Just then one of the ragged boys, a freckled-face imp, tugged at Linc’s coat, and shrilled: “Hey, ya big cowpoke! You spoiled our holdup!”

The Nebraskan, without taking his eyes from the girl’s face, reached into his pocket and gave the lad a silver dollar. With a whoop the three youthful bandits ran off.

“Lucy Bandon! Jimmy Weston’s girl!” stammered Lincoln, dismay mingled with his bewilderment. “You can’t be.... Excuse me, miss, but I’m sure loco, I reckon. Jim wrote me about you. I came as soon as I heard that he—that I—Honest, Lucy, but I’m not the dumbhead you must think I am.”

They stared at each other, oblivious of the gaping Vince. For Linc it was a profoundly moving moment. Jimmy Weston’s girl—the Lucy he had written about so eloquently! A slender girl, scarcely eighteen, a pretty tanned face, paled now, blue eyes set wide apart, dark with excitement, red lips, sweet and tragic, a small bare head covered with golden curls, a lithe form typically western and capable in boy’s garb, yet compellingly feminine—a girl who was clinging to him as though he were a brother. As Linc looked down at this sweet-faced girl, he suddenly found himself wishing that she would cling to him all his life. Mr. Lincoln Bradway of Nebraska was finding it very difficult to keep his wits.

“Lucy! ... You are the one person I wanted most to meet,” he cried.

“Linc! I can say that, too.... Jimmy told me all about you. He worshiped you. I’ve heard a thousand tales about you.”

“Poor Jim! ... Oh, it’s hard to hear that.... You were engaged to him?”

“No, it never went that far.”

“But, you were in love with him?”

“Hardly that. I liked him very much. I—I guess he was in love with me—until—Perhaps I’d have fallen in love with him some day. But, it—it happened, and—”

“You mean he was shot?”

“No, I don’t mean that.... But I can’t talk to you—not here in the street.”

Bradway came to his senses. “Forgive me. I could talk to you anywhere.... Lucy, I must see you. Please give me an opportunity.”

“I want to see you, too. But it won’t do here in town.... I’m driving out home at once. Alone. Aunt Kit is terribly upset. She is staying here. She sent me home. Please follow me on horseback. West on the trail. That’s the road up there. Catch up with me on the hill.”

Then she was gone, leaving Lincoln standing there as one in a trance. Vince nudged him. “Say, pard, you’d be easy meat for some gent with shootin’ on his mind jest about now. Come out of it.”

“Right, Vince. Thanks. I’m damned if I didn’t clear forget where I am. But, Lordy! What is it that has happened?”

“ ’Pears like a lot. So you are Jim Weston’s pard? By golly, this is jest like a story. I knowed Jim, not close, but the same as other cowpokes you meet in town.”

“You seem to know Lucy?”

“I should smile, we was always good friends.”

“That girl couldn’t be—what I almost thought,” muttered Linc, as if accusing himself. “What a low-down suspicious hombre I am! Why Jim never gave me half an idea what a wonderful person she is!”

“Pard, I’ve no idea what you almost thought, but I’ll tell you that Lucy Bandon is as clean and sweet as a desert flower—as different from her aunt Kit Bandon as day is from night,” declared Vince, fervently.

“So Kit Bandon is her aunt!”

“Yep ... say! Linc, you an’ Lucy jest about fell into each other’s arms.”

“Nonsense. But it got me. Jim’s girl—Kit Bandon’s niece!—she asked me to follow her. We’ll have to get a move on. We’ll go back to Bill’s and saddle the horses. Ride out of town up the brook, and hit the road over the hill. But not together. You trail me a couple of miles back.... Come, let’s rustle.”

Vince was out of breath and panting hard when they reached the livery stable. “Wal—if you—ain’t—a walkin’ cowboy!” he gasped. “I’ll never—keep up—with you—on my feet.”

“Fact is, I always could outwalk most any cowboy. But my wind isn’t so good—especially here in South Pass. Every time I get it back, something happens to knock it out of me again.”

In a few minutes Linc was mounted on the bay, with saddle and stirrups that fit him. It felt good to hear the creak of leather again. But it wasn’t only because he was in the saddle again that made him want to whoop and holler. “Watch me, Vince, and when I top the ridge ahead, you come on. And if you got eyes keep them peeled from this moment.”

“All right, boss, I shore have eyes. But what’m I supposed to look for?”

“How do I know, you dumbhead. Look for everything.”

With that none-too-explicit command Linc rode out and on across the flat between the slope of the hill and the edge of the town. Long before he got to the brook beyond the last house he espied Lucy, seated in a buckboard driving two black horses, climbing the winding road that led to the west. He watched her until she drove out of sight. The Nebraskan was deep in thought. Riding along between the brook and the high placer-mined bank Linc looked for a ford. When he found one he crossed the stream and rode along the other bank among the willows until he gained the open. The slope was gradual, here and there, indented by gullies choked with brush and dwarf pine trees. Lincoln took a zigzag route up to the road, and from there soon reached the summit of the Pass. The Pass was a fairly level saddle, probably four miles wide, stretched from north to south. Beyond this, outcroppings of rock ledges, strips and thickets of pine, and increasing areas of gray sage led to the low-spreading foothills, which gradually reached higher and higher to black-belted mountains that in turn rose to form the base of the snow-clad peaks, glittering in the sun, towering into the blue sky. Southward Lincoln could not see where the Pass ended in that direction. But far beyond the undulating gray prairie, dark foothills heaved up in the distance, and tips of white appeared remote and unsubstantial.

“Big country beyond this Pass,” he soliloquized, and realized that he was eager to get his first glimpse of the famed Sweetwater Valley. “Well, here I am, forking a horse on the old Oregon Trail. And if I can believe my eyes, there roll some prairie schooners westward bound! But what’s become of Lucy’s buckboard?”

He already was half through the Pass without having caught sight of Lucy Bandon’s team of blacks. He lost interest in the landscape as he wondered how he could have missed her. He put Bay from trot to pace to lope, finding each gait easy, yet ground-gaining, and he spared a moment to delight in his new horse.

Suddenly he swung round a rocky outcropping and he saw Lucy. She had slowed down. Even at a distance he saw her looking back. He raised his hand. Again he felt the mounting wave of excitement and emotion that had held him tongue-tied an hour ago. As he gained on the buckboard he realized that he was not going to be able to remain calm and self-contained. His object had been to meet this girl simply to learn from her all he could about what had happened to Jim Weston. But that motive had taken second place now to his interest in the girl herself. A few moments later when he reined Bay in abreast of the girl, he still was far from being calm and collected.

“Oh, I thought something might have stopped you,” cried the smiling girl on the seat of the buckboard. “And when I did see you at last, I thought you’d never catch me.”

“Lucy, I can’t tell you what I thought. But, all this seems too—too good to be true,” he said as he dismounted and came over, hat in hand, and stood by the front wheel of the rig.

“Isn’t it? But it is happening.... Oh, Linc, I’m so embarrassed over the way I treated you—down in the village—in front of Vince—”

“I deserve it, Lucy. But I want to see you again—often—there’s so much I want to say. How far to your home?”

“Twelve miles from the hill. Halfway across the valley.”

“Only that far? I can never say all I want to say in twelve miles. And I hope you’ll want to say something, too! Won’t you stop a while?”

“I have all day to get home. Perhaps it’ll take that long for me to—to ...”

Linc interrupted her gently. “Lucy, I reckon you know why I came out here. I had to come when I heard about him—what they were saying about him. It was a job I have to do. I was going to find out what I could and pay a few visits.... I was going to pay a debt and maybe get killed in paying it. I was going to hunt you up and ask some questions....” He paused. “But, Lucy, I never was prepared for anything like, like—”

“Like what?”

“Like you. Of course I knew from Jimmy’s letters that there was a Lucy—a sweet kid. But I hardly took him seriously. I’m afraid my impressions were not flattering to you.”

“Jim made you his hero—and I’m afraid you became mine, too,” she said simply, gazing straight ahead.

“I’m afraid that I did not appear very heroic in your eyes this morning,” he replied.

“I’m terribly ashamed of the way I acted toward you, Linc,” said Lucy looking down at the reins she was holding in her hands.

Bradway longed to place his hands over those little hands. He felt himself caught up by an almost irresistible tide. It did not seem to matter any longer that this girl there before him had been Jim’s girl, that she was the niece of the Maverick Queen, that she might be connected in some way with his partner’s mysterious death, that he knew almost nothing about her except the few references to a girl named Lucy that Jim had made in his letters. Nothing mattered except that, as he watched Lucy’s hands twisting and untwisting the reins, he felt a great tenderness for her and a sureness that somehow, someway, their fates were bound together. After a long silence that was broken by the shrill nicker of one of the blacks, Linc spoke.

“Suppose I tell you some things about myself that Jimmy never knew?” said the cowboy softly. And at her smiling eagerness he proceeded. He was twenty-three, but much older than his years. He had been born in Missouri somewhere, and his father, whom he had never seen, had been a brother or cousin to the notorious Cole Younger, the elder, a guerrilla after the war, and later a notorious desperado. In fact, Linc had never known either of his parents. A kindly neighbor named Bradway had raised him, and sent him to school. He had taken Bradway for his name. At fourteen he had been thrown upon the world, which for him meant the cattle range. By the time he was sixteen he had landed in Nebraska. There he had become Jim Weston’s partner and there he had ridden the ranges until the news filtered back of Jim’s death and he had pulled up stakes and headed for Wyoming.

“It’s been a hard life, Lucy. And I have had my share of hard knocks. I’ve stopped lead a few times, and there are not many bones in my body that haven’t been broken by horses. I never was much on drinking, though I would get drunk with the cowpokes on occasions. It was my tough luck when I was eighteen to meet a bad hombre—a gun-slinging half-breed—and kill him on the main street of Abiline, in an even break. That wasn’t good for me. It established my status as a killer. Well, I was pretty slick with guns....” He sighed. “Did Jim ever tell you I—I had shot a lot of men?”

“Ten or a dozen, if I remember correctly,” she returned, solemnly. “But don’t look so blue, Linc. Your fights never bothered me, but your love affairs ...”

“Lucy! ... Jimmy must have exaggerated,” expostulated Linc. “It wasn’t ten or a dozen men I stopped. Not half that many, and I should remember.... Lucy, every time I ever drew on a man it was to save my own life. That I swear.”

“I’m happy to get that straight. But your hundreds of love affairs!” she rejoined teasingly. “That’s a little hard for me to overlook.”

“That’s even worse. I never had any—Oh, maybe one or two which might or might not have become serious. But there was so little time—so few of the right kind of girls. And I was never keen about the dance-hall women.”

“You’re very modest. Jimmy said that was one of your charms.”

“Lucy, please take me seriously,” he begged. “I give you my word. Jim had a fancy for telling tales. And he liked to hear ’em, too. I used to make up affairs just to feed his love of romance.”

“Very well, I will take you seriously,” she returned, but there was still a gleam of humor in her eyes. “We’ll cut off the road here—over to that point where you see the rocks and trees. There’s the finest view of Sweetwater Valley that I know of.”

As they followed an unused road through the sage to some tall gray rocks and a clump of pines, Linc looked back over the road he had come. Even before they reached the spot Bradway could see that the land fell away sharply. Presently, however, the view was obstructed by the trees. Lucy drew up behind a thicket, where the horses and buckboard were not visible from the road. Lincoln dismounted to tie Bay to a sapling.

“Were you expecting someone?” the girl inquired. “I saw you looking back.”

“I told Vince to follow me,” he said.

“We’ll watch for him.... Come. It makes me excited and happy to think of showing you my Wyoming.”

“Wait a moment, please,” said Linc, taking her hand and holding her back. She stared up at him, but did not withdraw her hand. “Now it’s your turn to tell me about yourself. That’s more important than all the scenery in the world.”

“Is it? ... My story is almost as filled with loneliness as yours. ... I don’t remember any mother, only my aunt. She took me when her sister died. That was in Kentucky. I went to school in Louisville for five years. I was twelve when we came west. In a prairie schooner. Oh, I loved it.... First we lived on a ranch near Cheyenne.... Then some man followed Kit.... She shot him! She’s ’most as bad with a gun as you are! She’s killed two other men since we came to South Pass several years ago. A gambler and a cattleman.”

“Kit Bandon!” exclaimed Lincoln. “That handsome-looking girl a killer?”

“She looks twenty-five, but Aunt Kit is older. You’d better not mention her age to her face.”

“Well! ... I guess there are times when you just have to use a gun,” he said. “But enough of Miss Bandon; I want to know more about you.”

“There isn’t much more.... Aunt Kit’s a strange woman. But she was always good and loving to me until we came to South Pass. She suddenly got interested in gambling. She really owns the Leave It, you know. Then she bought a ranch out on the Sweetwater, and took to cattle raising. Naturally that brought cowboys. I was the only girl around. They seemed to like me. She would have none of that.... Then Jimmy came. I met him by accident, same as you, only he wasn’t so rude! ...” Lucy smiled mischievously. “After that we met often enough to get to like each other before Aunt Kit found out. She was terribly angry. She forbade me seeing Jimmy. But I couldn’t keep him from waylaying me out on the ranch or there in town. In spite of his feeling for me, though, Jim became as infatuated with Aunt Kit as all the other cowboys were. We quarreled. He took to gambling and drinking. He grew strange and morose, no more the happy-go-lucky cowboy I had grown to like. We made up. I forgave him because he swore not ... he swore to keep a promise to me. And he broke it. I never saw him again. Soon after that he—he was shot.... Sort of a pitiful little story, isn’t it?”

“Pitiful and tragic,” replied Lincoln, with constricted throat. “Poor Lucy! And poor Jim! If I had only come out here with him! But that’s spilled milk now.... Thanks for confiding in me, Lucy. Now come. Show me your valley.”

She led him between two rocks to the rim of a bluff that sloped precipitously down into a gray gulf.

Bradway, still thinking of Lucy’s unhappy story, was not at all prepared for what he saw. The colorful valley seemed to leap up at him, confounding his senses. The girl was watching him, anxious that he share her enthusiasm for her Wyoming.

The scaly slope on which they stood fell away a thousand feet or more to a gray sage floor that spread for miles to the west. A winding green line of trees traced the course of the river which snaked the length of the valley. The stream which here and there glinted in the sunlight must be the Sweetwater. Lincoln followed its meandering course down the valley as far as eyes could see until it became lost in gray-purple obscurity. South of this dim line he knew spread a limitless red desert.

The cowboy brought his gaze back to the rim of the precipice. Beyond the rim stretched leagues and leagues of sage that rolled to the far side of the valley. The western rampart of the vast Sweetwater Valley rose blue-gray and mauve against the distant sky. As far as he could see to north and south the near wall of the valley was broken by rocky capes and bold palisades which cast their deep shadows on the valley floor. There were no trees to soften the stern majesty of the valley wall that stretched before his eyes for perhaps a hundred miles.

At first sight Lincoln had failed to notice several ranches dotting the valley along the Sweetwater directly in his line of vision. A white house stood out distinctly in the midst of a vast green patch; and beyond that, at long intervals, other dark spots and dots indicated other ranches down the valley. On this side of the river thousands of cattle speckled the sage.

The whole effect was magnificent in the extreme. Lincoln was at a loss for words as he stood there in the presence of the girl, who was quietly waiting for him to speak. Almost any locality in the West might have been as vivid and striking. But this valley appealed to him strongly beyond any point inspired by sentiment. Lincoln would have to live in this country for a good while before he could fully appreciate why it silenced and inspired him. But the great open range, bare under the blue sky and bright sun, the winding ribbon of green and silver, the endless carpet of sage, the mosaic of colors, the somber grandeur of the carved escarpments, and the snow-white peaks far beyond, rising like sky specters—all these combined to fill the man who was seeing them for the first time with a deep feeling of loneliness. Long and silently he gazed into that enchanting valley sculptured out of the rugged range. Almost reluctantly he turned away from it to face Lucy’s wistful gaze.

“Do you like it?” she asked hesitatingly.

“I feel bewitched,” he replied. “As I was looking across that valley I thought what a pity such a beautiful place with such a pretty name must harbor hate, greed, bloodshed!”

“I have thought that often. But it is men, not nature,” said Lucy, bitterly.

“Don’t blame it all on the men. Women are usually around too, where there’s trouble.”

“Linc, I should have said women and men. God knows, I’ve no reason to be proud of my sex.”

“Lucy, I was just poking fun,” protested the cowboy. He already had noted how swift were her changes of mood. She looked happy only when she smiled. And she had not laughed once. “Which ranch is yours?”

“Follow the road straight down. The white ranch house. It’s pretty from here, but nothing to brag of down there. Logs and mud and whitewash.”

“Have you comfortable quarters?”

“Oh, yes, except in winter, when I almost sit in my open fireplace. It’s cold on this range. Fifty below zero sometimes. And colder up here on the Pass. Men have been found frozen to death.”

“I’ll bet a blizzard here would be hell.... Lucy, this sight does me good. It must be wonderful up where that river starts in the mountains.”

“Glorious. I’ve been there twice, the last time in June, just about this time of the month. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to build a cabin and live there always.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it had everything I love. Far away, lonesome, only a few Shoshone Indians—elk and deer, moose and antelope tame as cows. Birds and flowers. Meadows of sage and grass—little patches of forest—then the foothills, the belts of black timber, beyond them the great country of rocks and cliffs and canyons. And last, the wonderful peaks, always snow-white.”

“Sounds just about ideal. But you didn’t mention fish.”

“Oh, you are a fisherman, too! I’ll bet I can beat you. The Sweetwater is full of trout up there. Long as your arm, some of them. And fight! ...”

“Listen, child. The girl doesn’t live in all this West who can beat me fishing.”

“It’s a challenge. Only I haven’t much to bet.”

“You have all that any man would want to ride a chariot race for.”

“You are a new kind of cowboy to me. Pretty speeches. But I like them——But—Oh! I forgot! I forgot!”

“What?” he asked, alarmed by her tone of distress.

“We won’t be able to ride together—or go fishing—or anything.”

“And why not?”

She was silent a moment, then turned to him, suddenly older, more constrained, with the sweet lips set sternly and her eyes veiled. Suddenly her tone was serious.

“Lincoln, you said this morning that you had come on a rather grim errand. How did you know where to come?”

“Jimmy’s letters. I’ll let you read them. News of his death. And the stigma left on his name.... Jimmy was weak, but he was honest. He couldn’t cheat. Drunk or sober he never had a crooked thought. He might have been shot in a brawl at a card table. But never for cheating. I’m as sure as I stand here that he was murdered. And I’ve come out here to find out—to clear his name, at least.”

“Jim said if anything happened to him you would come out here and kill everyone who ...”

“Lucy, what would you think if I allowed Jim’s murderer to go scot free?” he demanded.

“Revenge can’t bring Jim back.”

“No!—But I’d have no self-respect left if I didn’t avenge my partner. I grew up in a hard school. I loved Jim. I’ll always regret that I didn’t come with him. He might be alive today if I had. All I can do now is get even.”

“They will kill you,” she cried, with a catch in her voice.

“Who are they?”

“Emery and his outfit. They’ll do it while you sleep.”

“Lucy, I don’t sleep when someone’s gunning for me,” he said, quietly.

“But, you have to sleep,” she protested. “I’m from the West. I understand. You might be another Wild Bill, as no doubt you really are another Cole Younger. I heard what you did last night. But these men will not meet you openly. They’ll assassinate you, Lincoln. There are I don’t know how many low-down dogs at Emery’s beck and call. They would knife or shoot you for two bits.”

Lincoln was amazed by her eloquence, by the dark fire in her eyes and the pallor of her cheeks. “Why do you feel so deeply?” he asked.

“You were Jim’s friend and therefore you are mine. I—I don’t want you to be killed.”

“Well, that makes my life doubly precious,” said Bradway. “And it was fairly precious before.... But why do you think Emery’s outfit is on my trail? Because I cleaned him at cards?”

“Oh, it has happened before, with far less reason.... Lincoln, I must tell you all I da—all I can.... Last night at the hotel, I heard Aunt Kit cursing Emery. They were in her room, which was next to mine. McKeever is being cared for there. He has a broken shoulder.... Well, my aunt and Emery had been talking too low for me to tell what they said, until they began to quarrel. Kit said: ‘I won’t let you shoot Bradway!’ and Emery swore: ‘You can go to hell, Kit. This cowboy is dangerous. He’s got to be put out of the way. The letters he bragged about—from Weston. We can’t afford to have him on this range with those letters in his possession. You ought to have sense enough to see that!’ and my aunt swore back at him. ‘... I have. And I’ll get those letters. You leave Bradway to me....’ ‘By God!’ burst out Emery, in a fury. ‘You’ve cocked your eye at another cowboy. What the hell do you care for Weston or letters or anything when there’s a handsome new cowboy to tickle your miserable vanity? I tell you we’ve got to kill Bradway!’ ”

Lincoln was more concerned with the girl’s sweet voice, her earnestness, her beauty, the anxiety which her face betrayed, than with the foreboding conversation which she had overheard and just now repeated.

“So, that’s why? ... Lucy, it might barely have been possible for you to persuade me to run away. But not now.”

“And why not now?” she wanted to know.

Linc looked out into the gray-blue void, without seeing any of the features that before had enthralled him. Suddenly he realized what it had cost this western girl to tell him what she had. She had cast her lot with him, a stranger, just as surely as he had already involved his life with hers.

“Lucy, suppose I fell in love with you at first sight?” he asked, simply.

She gave a little cry, and suddenly sat down, as if her limbs had grown weak. Linc expected protestation, even ridicule, anything but silence.

Probably this revelation of his was nothing new to her—a pretty girl in this world of men must be able to read a man’s mind.

“Same old story, eh?” he asked.

“Yes, always the same—with cowboys. It seems so easy for a man to say—and do,” she replied sadly. “With a girl—it’s different.”

“I’ll admit that it couldn’t be as easy for you to fall in love with me as it was for me to fall in love with you. Is it a crime to fall in love, Lucy?”

“I thought you were different,” said the girl, looking down at her hands.

“I am a man.”

“But you are—you came to kill a man. You—”

“After all, I am only human, Lucy. I have known you only a few hours except for Jim’s letters. But is there any reason why I shouldn’t fall in love with you?”

“Forgive me, Lincoln. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Only it hurts me to think—to think you take love so—so lightly—as lightly as you take a human life.... Even if it were true—that—that you care—it will not keep you from—”

“From what?” he interrupted, turning to lift her erect. His hands gripped her arms; his sudden intensity startled her.

“Why, from what a girl hates,” she burst out, her lovely face becoming suffused with red from neck to temple.

“You don’t mean gambling, drinking, or even throwing a gun in self-defense or in a good cause? You have something else in mind. Tell me! What have I done or what am I doing that a girl like you hates, Lucy?” He released her arms and caught the lapels of her jacket, to draw her closer.

“It wouldn’t keep you from her. It didn’t keep Jim,” she returned, with bitterness.

“From whom?” he demanded mercilessly.

“Oh, you know! From her!”

“Do you really hate her, Lucy, your aunt?” he asked gently. “There must be a good reason for a sweet girl like you to hate another woman.”

“Oh, I do—I do! ... I used to love her. She was good and kind to me until we came to this wild country. She can be so lovely. She is so fascinating. No one can help loving her.... But when she took Jimmy—ruined him—I—I just had to hate her.”

“All right. Granted Kit Bandon is an irresistible woman. You can keep me from her. Do you want to?”

She swayed for a moment into his arms then and her head found his shoulder. But she resisted her weakness and stood back to gaze up at him, tears giving her eyes a soft and tender light. “Yes, I want to, Linc, more than anything ever in my life, before. Even more than I wanted to save Jimmy! ... But a girl can’t give her trust or her love the way she’d give her glove—Oh, I feel how it’d be with me. And if you failed me, too, as he did—that would kill me.... Lincoln, I’m so weak, and she’s so strong. She just has to crook her finger. And the men—she’ll want to use you the same way.” She had her hands up to her face, crying bitterly.

“You’ve had a rotten deal, Lucy. But I’m going to try to make up for it. Here you are, my dear. Wipe your tears on this handkerchief, the only white handkerchief I could find in the store this morning. I’m pretty disgusted with myself for upsetting you the way I have. I’m not very clever with girls.” To marshal his confused senses he said quickly, “Here, wait, while I go look for Vince.”

Lincoln strode away, his thoughts in a whirl. Jimmy must indeed have made this girl believe in him, and her disappointment over the cowboy’s dereliction had left her at once defenseless and disillusioned in regard to men. He must not take advantage of her willingness to trust him, at least until he was sure of himself, sure he could do something worthy of her admiration, even—of her love.

Outside the zone of rocks and trees Lincoln scanned the gray expanse back toward South Pass. There was no horseman in sight. Vince probably was loitering along below the crest of the ridge. Hurrying back to Lucy he found her sitting on a low rock ledge staring down into the valley.

“Lucy, have I upset you? Please tell me.” Linc was on tenterhooks.

“I’m afraid you have,” she said. “You disturb me so I can’t think.”

“So I’m a disturbing person?”

“You are, indeed.”

“Gosh, I didn’t know I was as disagreeable as that,” he replied ruefully.

“Did I say—disagreeable?” She averted her face and stood up, drawing on her worn gauntlets.

“Lucy, you’ve been seeing only the dark, hard side of everything,” he said, earnestly. “Really there is a brighter one. This is a tough time for you—and for me. Probably things’ll grow worse before they can get better. But you’re a spunky girl—as you very plainly showed me down in South Pass this morning. You don’t have to stay with your aunt if it’s hard for you—”

“Oh, Lincoln, somehow you give me hope ... even if I haven’t told you everything—”

“Sure. I savvied that. You have a sense of duty and honor if some other people haven’t. Vince is in the same fix. He couldn’t tell me much either. Well, you needn’t tell me anything you think oughtn’t be told. I’ll find out what I can for myself.... You’re no tenderfoot. You’re a real game western girl. If I had come out here before Jim—before it was too late, I’d have fought his battle and yours. Now I have only yours.”

“I—I think I’ll go now, Linc—before I make a baby of myself.”

“You’ll see me again?” he asked, almost pleadingly.

“Yes. Any time and any place. She can’t stop me this time.”

“Of course you ride often?”

“Half the time. We have no cowboys right now. I ride around a good deal, trying to keep track of stock. But it drifts all over the valley.”

“Well! A cowgirl! I’ll bet you’re the real thing.... You can meet me without trouble, then. Could you see smoke signals from this point?”

“Yes, easily on clear days.”

“Say on the third morning from this. That will be Wednesday. Look for smoke after breakfast. But don’t take any risks.... I might not be able to come. There’s much for me to do.”

“I drive Aunt Kit to town every Saturday morning. Usually she sends me back home, like today. Then she comes back on the stage, or with someone, on Monday. So really I lead a free and lonesome life.”

“No cowboys waylaying you?” he demanded.

“Oh, that happens. But I have sharp eyes. And the only horse in the valley that can catch me is Vince’s Brick.”

“Golly, I should have kept him instead of Bay.... Well, I’ll see you on Wednesday, or if not, then in town next Saturday. It’s a long time for me to wait. I hope you’ll know by then whether you—like me or not. But don’t worry, I can wait and I can take care of myself. And I’ve a thousand times more to live for now than ever.”

Lucy played with the fringe on one of her gauntlets. The color slowly mounted, leaving her face pink under her tan. “I’ll be looking for smoke on Wednesday,” she said.

They returned to the buckboard. Lincoln untied the horses while Lucy climbed over the high wheel to take up the reins. Then the Nebraskan’s roving eye caught sight of Vince loping his horse along the road. Linc let out a shrill yip, and as he strode from behind a clump of mesquite the cowboy espied him, and turned off the road.

“Wait up a minute, Lucy,” called Lincoln, as he watched the cowboy ride swiftly toward them across the sage. “That sorrel is a real horse.”

“Brick is a beauty. I’ve ridden him, Linc,” said Lucy. “You know what I’ll bet? Vince borrowed money on his horses and you bought them back.”

At that moment Vince reined the sorrel before him. Linc greeted him, “Howdy, Vince. Anything on your mind?”

“Wagon just turned off the main road on to this one,” replied Vince. Then he doffed his sombrero to Lucy. “Wal, who’s got rosy cheeks an’ shy eyes? Lucy, I never seen you look so pretty.”

“You look sort of pert yourself,” she retorted. “Must be the company we keep.”

“Lucy, hadn’t you better rustle ahead and get out of sight over the hill before someone comes along the road.... Good-by. Don’t forget!”

“Don’t you forget!” she returned, and with a flash of her blue eyes and a wave of her arm, she drove the team into the sage. In a few moments she had reached the road and turned to the left waving a gauntleted hand as the buckboard dipped below the crest of the hill.

The moment Lucy disappeared, Lincoln sat down on a rock and wiped the sweat from his face.

“Vince, my breastbone feels like it had taken a beating, especially on the left side,” he said. “I put up a strong front before Lucy, but it was all nerve.”

“Pard, down there in South Pass this mawnin’ I reckoned you was in one hell of a mess, and I was about to advise you to pass up this range while you had the mazuma an’ a whole skin. But not now! Not after the way Lucy Bandon looked at you!”

“How’d she look at me?”

“Wal, you must be blind.... Linc, if Lucy had looked at me thet way, a year ago, I wouldn’t be a done-for cowboy now.”

“The way a girl looks don’t mean anything,” the Nebraskan protested.

“The hell it don’t!”

“Lucy has seen a lot of men thet was no damn good at all. She’s had to fight off the whole kit an’ caboodle of them. But it sorta looks as though in you she sees one of another breed. An’ if she falls tumble in love with you, for the Lord’s sake, pard, don’t let her down!”

“I won’t ... but you exaggerate—and how about you—you bow-legged little cowpoke! Are you going to help her by not failing me? I haven’t the deal figured out yet. It’s too big, there are too many things I don’t know—and which no one seems to want to tell. Lucy knows a lot that she wouldn’t tell me, too, but I’ll have to find out in my own way. That gambling outfit is as crooked as hell. Kit Bandon seems to be mixed up in it. Lucy suspects it, of course, but that is not the big secret—the terrible deal I’ve got to tackle alone.”

“Pard, it’s shore turrible,” replied Vince, hoarsely, swallowing hard. “But I can’t tell you no more. There’s somethin’ a man owes to himself, though after all you done for me, I feel like a coyote for holdin’ back what I know.”

“I savvy, pard. Sorry I distressed you,” said Bradway, contritely. He would have been blind indeed not to have noticed Vince’s deep struggle with himself. “I’m a good judge of cowboys, and despite all you seem to be hinting about, I say you’re a man to tie to.”

“Much obliged, Linc. Thet’ll be about all I need,” returned Vince, in great relief. “I’ll say you’re on the right trail to find out about yore pard. But I wouldn’t be surprised if his part in this mystery was little enough. As little as mine—Yet follerin’ Jim Weston’s trail may lead to somethin’ big enough to expose the boss of some operations thet’ll stun all Wyomin’.”

“Operations? Can those gamblers be the head of a big rustler business?”

“I don’t know, pard. Only there’s nothin’ but two-bit cattle stealin’ in this country yet. Thet’s all to come. I’ve a hunch the cattlemen reckon it’s comin’ an’ want to stave it off. Anyway, Linc, I’m with you, an’ when the deal busts wide open I’ll be in there blastin’ away.”

“What more could a man ask of his pardner? ... Let’s ride back to town.”

It developed that Vince was the kind of comrade who had an instinctive sense of when was the right time to keep silent. They walked their horses across the road, over the hill so as to avoid any oncoming wagons, over ridge and down draw for three miles without conversation. Vince smoked cigarettes and appeared to be doing some pondering himself. As they rode along Linc set his mind to work in earnest, trying to anticipate every possible event which he might be called upon to face. Soon they reached the placer diggings above town, and there Lincoln halted his horse and addressed his companion.

“Vince, listen,” he began. “First we’ll shut Bill Headly’s mouth. Then maybe it’ll be better for us not to be seen together too openly. Your job is to loaf around town, or ride out to the valley, just as a good-natured cowboy would do who’s on the loose. But be as sharp as a whip—to see, to listen, to spy, to find out everything, especially what angle Emery’s outfit will take toward me. Of course we have an idea. You’re no fool, Vince, and I know that with none of the local gentry suspecting you, there will be plenty of information you can get for me. I’m counting on you, boy.”

“Pard, I’ll eat thet job up,” replied Vince, grimly. “It’s just my kind of a deal. Reckon I’d better not spruce up yet a while, so I’ll hold off on buyin’ new clothes. Meet you tonight jest after dark at Bill’s. So long.”