Out of the Depths Page 5

  “How could I help coming?” he gallantly exclaimed.

  “I see. The coyotes stole your cutlets, and you were hungry,” she bantered, as she came alongside and whirled her horse around to ride with him down the creek.

  “How did you guess?” he asked.

  “I know coyotes,” she replied. “They’re the worst––” She stopped short, gazing at the bleeding flanks of his pony. “Oh, Mr. Ashton! how could you? I did not think you so cruel!”

  “Cruel?” he repeated, twisting about to see what she meant. “Ah, you refer to the spurring. But I simply couldn’t help it, you know. There was a bandit taking pot shots at me as I passed the ridge back there.”

  “A bandit––on Dry Mesa?” she incredulously exclaimed.

  “Yes; he pegged at me eight or nine times.”

  The girl smiled. “You probably heard one of the punchers shooting at a coyote.”

  “No,” he insisted, flushing under her look. “The ruffian was shooting at me. See here.”

  He put his hand to his left hip pocket, one side of which had been torn out. From it he drew his brandy flask.

  “That was done by the third or fourth shot,” he explained. “Do you wonder I was flat on my pony’s neck and spurring as hard as I could?”

  The girl took the flask from his outstretched hand and looked it over with keen interest. In one side of the silver case was a small, neat hole. Opposite it half of the other side had been burst out as if by an explosion within. She took off the silver cap, shook out the shattered glass of the inner flask, and looked again at the small hole.

  “A thirty-eight,” she observed.

  “Pardon me,” he replied. “I fail to––Ah, yes; thirty-eight caliber, you mean.”

  “It is I who must ask pardon,” she said in frank apology. “Your rifle is a thirty-two. I heard a number of shots, ending with the rattle of an automatic. Thought you were after another deer.”

  He could afford to smile at the merry thrust and the flash of dimples that accompanied it.

  “At least it wasn’t a calf this time,” he replied. “Nor was it a doe. But it may have been a buck.”

  “Indian?” she queried, with instant perception of his play on the word.

  “I didn’t see any war plumes,” he admitted.

  “War plumes? Oh, that is a joke!” she exclaimed. She chanced to look down at the shattered flask, and her merriment vanished. “But this isn’t any joke. Didn’t you see the man who was shooting at you?”

  “Yes, after I jumped my pony down into the creek. Perhaps the bandit thought he had tumbled us both. He stood up on top the ridge, until I cut loose and made him run.”

  “He ran?”

  Ashton’s eyes sparkled at the remembrance, and his chest began to expand. Then he met the girl’s clear, direct gaze, and answered modestly: “Well, you see, when I had got down behind the bank our positions were reversed. He was the one in full view. It’s curious, though, Miss Knowles––shooting at that poor calf, under the impression it was a deer, I simply couldn’t hold my rifle steady, while––”

  “No wonder, if it was your first deer,” put in the girl. “We call it buck fever.”

  “Yes, but wouldn’t you have thought my first bandit––Why, I couldn’t have aimed at him more steadily if I had been made of cast iron.”

  “Guess he had made you fighting mad,” she bantered; but under her seeming levity he perceived a change in her manner towards him immensely gratifying to his humbled self-esteem.

  “At first I was just a trifle apprehensive––” He hesitated, and suddenly burst out with a candid confession––“No, not a trifle! Really, I was horribly frightened!”

  This was more than the girl had hoped from him. She nodded and smiled in open approval. “You had a good right to be frightened. I don’t blame you for spurring that way. Look. It wasn’t only one shot that came close. There’s a neat hair brand on your hawss’s hip that wasn’t there yesterday.”

  “Must have been the shot just before we took the bank,” said Ashton, twisting about to look at the streak cut by the bullet. “The first was the only other one that didn’t go higher.”

  “But what did the man look like?” questioned Miss Isobel. “I can’t imagine who––Can it be that your guide has a grudge against you on account of his pay?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought it possible before yesterday, though he was a surly fellow and inclined to be insolent.”

  “All such men are apt to be with tenderfeet,” she remarked, permitting herself a half twinkle of her sweet eyes. “But I should have thought yours would have kept on going. Whatever you may have owed him, he had no right to steal your outfit. He must be a real badman, if it’s true he is the party who did this shooting.”

  “I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” agreed Ashton. In her concern over him she looked so charming that he would have agreed if she had told him the moon was made of green cheese.

  She shook her head thoughtfully, and went on: “I can’t imagine even one of our badmen trying to murder you that way. Their usual course would be to come up to you, face to face, pick a quarrel, and beat you to it on the draw. But whoever the cowardly scoundrel is, we’ll turn out the boys, and either run him down or out of the country.”

  “If it’s my guide, he probably is running already.”

  “I hope so,” replied the girl.

  “You do! Don’t you want him punished?” exclaimed Ashton.

  “Of course, but you see I don’t want Kid to––to cut another notch on his Colt’s.”

  “I must say, I cannot see how that––”

  “You could if you realized how kind and good he has been to me all these years. Do you know, when I first came West, I couldn’t tell a jackrabbit from a burro. Daddy had told me that each had big ears, and I got them mixed. And actually I didn’t know the off from the nigh side of a hawss!”

  “But we––er––have horses and riding-schools in the East,” put in Ashton.

  She parried the indirect question without seeming to notice it. “You proved that yesterday, coming down from High Mesa. I felt sure I would have you pulling leather.”

  “Pulling leather?” he asked. “You see, I own to my tenderfootness.”

  “Grabbing your saddle to hold yourself on,” she explained. Before he could reply, she rose in her stirrups and pointed ahead with her quirt. “Look, that’s the top of the biggest haystack, up by the feed-sheds. You’ll see the buildings in half a minute.”

  Unheeded by Ashton, she had guided him off to the left, away from Dry Fork, across the angle above its junction with Plum Creek. They were now coming up over the divide between the two streams. Ashton failed to locate the haystack until its two mates and the long, half-open shelter-sheds came into view.

  A moment later he was looking at the horse corral and the group of log ranch houses. Below and beyond them the scattered groves of Plum Creek stretched away up across the mesa––green bouquets on the slender silver ribbon of the creek’s midsummer rill.

  “Well?” she asked. “What do you think of my home?”

  “Your summer home,” he suggested.

  “No, my real home,” she insisted. “Auntie couldn’t be nicer or fonder than she is; but her house is a residence, not a home, even to her. Anyway, here, where I have Daddy and Kid––I do so hope you and Kid will become friends.”

  “Since you wish it, I shall try to do my part. But it is a matter that might take time, and––” he smiled ruefully and concluded with seeming irrelevance––“I have no home.”

  She gazed at him with the look of tender motherly sympathy that he had been too distraught to really feel the previous day. “Do not say that, Mr. Ashton! Though a ranch house is hardly the kind of home to which you are accustomed, you will find that we range folks retain the old-fashioned Western ideas of hospitality.”

  “My dear Miss Knowles!” he exclaimed with ardent gallantry, “the mere thought of being under the same sky with you�
�–”

  “Don’t, please,” she begged. “This is the blue sky we are under, not a stuccoed ceiling.”

  “Well, I really meant it,” he protested, greatly dashed.

  “Kid often says nice things to me. But he speaks with his hands,” she remarked.

  “Deaf and dumb alphabet?” he queried wonderingly.

  “Hardly,” she answered, dimpling under his puzzled gaze. “Actions speak louder than words, you know.”

  “Ah!” he murmured, and his look indicated that she had given him food for thought.

  They were now cantering down the long easy slope towards the ranch buildings. The girl’s quick eye perceived a horseman riding towards the ranch from one of the groves up Plum Creek.

  “There’s Kid coming in,” she remarked. “He went out early this morning after a big wolf that had killed a calf. He reported last evening that he found the carcass over near the head of Plum Creek. A wolf that gets to killing calves this time of year is a pretty costly neighbor. Daddy told Kid to go out and try to get him.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t let him get this calf-killer,” observed Ashton.

  “Oh, as soon as we saw your tenderfoot riding togs––!” she rejoined. “Seriously, though, you must not mind if the men poke a little fun at you. Most of them are more farmhands than cowboys, but Kid will be apt to lead off. I do so want you to be agreeable to Kid. He is almost a member of the family, not a hired man.”

  “I shall try to be agreeable to him,” replied Ashton, a trifle stiffly.

  The puncher had seen them probably before they saw him. He was riding at a pace that brought him to the horse corral a few moments ahead of them. When they came up he nodded carelessly in response to Ashton’s studiously polite greeting, “Good day, Mr. Gowan,” and turned to loosen the cinch of his saddle.

  “You’ve been riding some,” remarked the girl, looking at the puncher’s heaving, lathered horse.

  “Jumped that wolf––ran him,” replied Gowan, as he lifted off his saddle and deftly tossed it up on the top rail of the corral.

  “You’re in luck,” congratulated Miss Isobel. She explained to Ashton: “The cattlemen in this county pay fifteen dollars for wolf scalps. That’s in addition to the state bounty.”

  Ashton sprang off to offer her his hand. But she was on the ground as soon as he. Gowan stared at him between narrowed lids, and replied to the girl somewhat shortly: “I didn’t get him this time, Miss Chuckie.”

  “You didn’t? That’s too bad! You don’t often miss. I wish you had been with me, to run down the scoundrel who tried to murder Mr. Ashton.”

  Gowan burst into the harsh, strained laughter of one who seldom gives way to mirth. He checked himself abruptly and cast a hostile look at Ashton. “By––James, Miss Chuckie, you don’t mean to say you let a tenderfoot string you?”

  “How about this?” asked the girl. She held out the silver flask, which she had not returned to Ashton.

  Gowan gave it a casual glance, and answered almost jeeringly: “Easy enough for him to set it up and plug it––if he didn’t get too far away.”

  “His rifle is a thirty-two. This was done by a thirty-eight,” she replied.

  “Thirty-eight?” he repeated. “Let’s see.” He took the flask from her, drew a rifle cartridge from his belt, and fitted the steel-jacketed bullet into the clean, small hole. “You’re right, Miss Chuckie. It shore was a thirty-eight.” He turned sharply on Ashton. “Where’d it happen? Who was it?”

  “Over on that dry stream,” answered Ashton. “Unfortunately the fellow was too far away for me to be able to describe him.”

  “But we think it may have been his guide,” explained the girl.

  “Guide?” muttered Gowan, staring intently at Ashton.

  “Yes. You see, if he was mean enough to help steal Mr. Ashton’s outfit, he––”

  “Shore, I savvy!” exclaimed the puncher. “I’ll rope a couple of fresh hawsses, and go out with Mr. Ashton after the two-legged wolf.”

  “That’s like you, Kid! But you must wait at least until you’ve both had dinner. Mr. Ashton, I’m sure, is half starved.”

  “Me, too, Miss Chuckie. But you know I’d rather eat a wolf or a rustler or even a daring desperado than sinkers and beans, any day.”

  “You’ll come in with us and see what Daddy has to say about it,” the girl insisted.

  She started to loosen her saddle-cinch. Gowan handed back the silver flask, and stripping off saddle and bridle from her horse, placed them on the rail beside his own. Ashton waited, as if expecting a like service. The puncher started off beside Miss Isobel without looking at him. Ashton flushed hotly, and hastened to do his own unsaddling.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VII

  THE CHANCE OF RECLAMATION

  Beyond the bunkhouse, which was the nearest building to the corral, stood the low but roomy log structure of the main ranch house. As Ashton came around the front corner, close behind Gowan and the girl, Knowles rose from his comfortable chair in the rustic porch, knocked out the half burned contents of his pipe and extended a freckled, corded hand to the stranger.

  “Howdy, Mr. Ashton! Glad to see you!” he said with hearty hospitality. “Hope you’ve come to ease up our lonesomeness by a month or two’s visit.”

  “Why, I––You’re too kind, really!” replied Ashton, his voice quavering and breaking at the unexpected cordiality of the welcome. “If you––I shall take advantage of your generous offer. You see, I’m rather in a box, owing to my––” He caught himself up, and tightened his slackening lip. “But you’ll pardon me if I ask you to let me do something in return for your hospitality.”

  “We don’t sell our hospitality on the range,” brusquely replied the cowman.

  “Oh, no, no, I did not mean––I could not pay a penny. I’m utterly destitute––a––a pauper!” A spasm of bitter despair contorted his handsome face.

  Knowles and the girl hastily looked away from him, that they might not see him in his weakness. But he rallied and forced a rather unsteady laugh at himself. “You see, I haven’t quite got used to it yet. I’ve always had money. I never really had to work. Now I must learn to earn a living. It’s very good of you, Mr. Knowles, but––there’s that veal. If only you’ll let me work out what I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me a cent for the yearling,” gruffly replied the cowman. “Don’t know what I could put you at, anyway.”

  “Might use him to shoo off the rattlers and jackrabbits from in front the mowing machine,” suggested Gowan.

  “Mr. Ashton can ride,” interposed the girl, with a friendliness of tone that brought Gowan to a thin-lipped silence.

  “That’s something,” said Knowles, gazing speculatively at the slim aristocratic figure of the tenderfoot. “You’re not built for pitching hay, but like as not you have the makings of a puncher. Ever throw a rope?”

  “Never. I shall start practicing the art––at once.”

  “No, not until you and Kid have had dinner,” gayly contradicted the girl. “We’ve had ours. But Yuki always has something ready. Kid, if you’ll show Mr. Ashton where to wash, I’ll tell Yuki.”

  She darted through the open doorway into the house. At a curt nod from Gowan, Ashton followed him around to the far side of the house, leaving Knowles in the act of hastily reloading his pipe. Under a lean-to that covered a door in the side of the house was a barrel of water and a bench with two basins. On a row of pegs above hung a number of towels, all rumpled but none dirty.

  Gowan pointed to a box of unused towels, and proceeded to lather and wash himself. Ashton took a towel, and after rinsing out the second washbasin, made as fastidious a toilet as the scant conveniences of the place would permit. There were combs and a fairly good mirror above the soap shelf. Gowan went in by the side door, without waiting for his companion. Ashton presently followed him, having looked in vain for a razor to rid himself of his two days’ growth of beard.

  The long table told him t
hat he had entered the ranch mess-hall, or rather, dining-room. Though the table was covered with oilcloth and the rough-hewn logs of the outer walls were lime-plastered only in the chinks, the seats were chairs instead of benches, and between the gay Mexican serape drapes of the clean windows hung several well-done water color landscapes, appropriately framed in unbarked pine. On the oiled deal floor were scattered half a dozen Navajo rugs.

  Gowan had taken a seat at one end of the table. As Ashton sat down at the neatly laid place opposite him, a silent, smiling, deft-handed Jap came in from the kitchen with a heaping trayful of dishes. For the most part, the food was ordinary ranch fare, but cooked with the skill of a chef. The exceptions were the fresh milk and delicious unsalted butter. On most cattle ranches, the milk comes from “tin cows” and the butter from oleomargarine tubs.

  The two diners were well along in their meal, eating as earnestly and as taciturnly as the Jap served, when Miss Isobel came in with her father. The girl had dressed for the afternoon in a gown of the latest style, whose quiet color and simple lines harmonized perfectly with her surroundings. She smiled impartially at puncher, tenderfoot, and Jap.

  “Thank you, Yuki. I see you did not keep our hungry hunters waiting.––Mr. Ashton, I have told Daddy about that shooting.”

  “It’s a mighty strange happening. You might tell us the full particulars,” said Knowles.

  Ashton at once gave a fairly accurate account of the affair. He could hardly exaggerate the peril he had incurred, and the touch of exultance with which he described his defeat of the murderer was quite pardonable in a tenderfoot.

  “Strange––mighty strange. Can’t understand it,” commented the cowman when Ashton had finished his account.

  “It shore is, Mr. Knowles,” added Gowan. “The only thirty-eight on the ranch is mine. That seems to clear our people.”

  “Of course! It could not possibly be any of our people!” exclaimed the girl.

  “Mr. Ashton thinks it might have been his guide,” went on Gowan.