His composure irritated Kate: "You are very much mistaken," she declared with spirit in her words, for she saw--indeed knew--how persistent he was. "I was only trying to leave for home quietly and quickly."
His eyes were a study in silent laughter: "That"s all I"ve ever claimed to be doing, any time in my life."
"But I can just as well leave by the front door--which, perhaps,"
retorted Kate, "you haven"t always been able to do."
"Before you go"--he was standing directly in the archway, so she had to listen--"tell me about things at the Junction; I hear the lunch room was closed up a while ago."
"It was. But"--Kate thought the time for explanation had come--"I was not working at the eating-house when you came in there. I am Kate Doubleday and I wanted to save my father that day and I"m not a bit sorry for it."
"I suppose, then, I ought to speak out, too. I was sure you were Kate Doubleday soon after I got into the lunch-room that day and I"m not a bit sorry for it. And I knew pretty soon you were trying to save your father. And I helped you."
"Oh--" Kate suppressed an incredulous exclamation.
"Believe it or not as you like, I helped you. And I"m not a bit sorry for it. Though he is no friend of mine, you have been, from that day on; and if you ever give me a chance I"ll prove it. The worst thing you did was to go back on your word----"
"My word was not freely given," Kate was speaking furiously.
"It shouldn"t have been given at all, then. But it"s all right. Will you be friends with me?"
"No man that speaks of my father as you spoke of him a moment ago can be my friend."
"It was Lefever spoke of your father. I couldn"t shut him off. Of course he didn"t know you were here. I did know after I"d been here awhile. I heard you whisper. That"s why I asked for the ink--I had no letters to write. There"s a lot of hard feeling in this country right now. Every man in it has his friends and enemies. You mustn"t take it seriously when you hear hard words--I don"t; and I hear plenty. Hadn"t you and I better be friends to begin with, anyway?"
"No," she exclaimed angrily. "Please let me pa.s.s."
He stepped promptly aside: "I never dreamed of doing anything less."
Kate started rapidly for the front door. Whom should she run into just as she opened it but Belle coming back from her wretched telephoning and with a bottle of cream! Kate inwardly blamed her for all her trouble, and she was on edge, besides: "Where you going?" demanded Belle.
"Home," answered Kate, shortly.
"Home? You haven"t had your lunch."
"I don"t want any."
Belle caught Kate"s arm: "Now you just hold on. What"s the matter? Is it Laramie?" Belle must have read her face for she answered nothing, only tried to get away. "But, child!" she exclaimed. "Where"s your coat--wait till I bring it--and your gloves!" Kate paused at the door.
In a minute Belle came running back: "He"s gone, absolutely. There isn"t a soul anywhere about. Now you shan"t go till you take a cup of coffee. Here"s the cream--he left it at the wrong door, the stupid!"
Kate could not get away. And Belle had told the truth: Laramie was gone.
CHAPTER XII
THE BARBECUE
Whatever the shortcomings of the American frontier code there never was a time in its history when a man could violate the principles of fair play and keep public opinion on his side. In this instance, Stone"s conduct reacted unfavorably on the cattlemen. The townspeople that made money out of the trade of the big ranches always stood up for the cattlemen, but they were put most unpleasantly on the defensive by the incident. Even had Stone"s attempt on Laramie"s life succeeded it would have been easier, for the partisans, to handle than the failure it proved. As a _fait accompli_ it would have been regretted, but forgotten; as a failure it settled nothing.
Among the few townspeople that st.u.r.dily retained independence of opinion on all matters, none stood higher than the surgeon, Doctor Carpy. And encountering Doubleday in the street shortly after the Stone incident, he took it on himself to talk to him.
The doctor had his office at his home, but back of the prescription case in his little drug store--no bigger than a minute--he had a small room for emergency consultations. To this he invited Doubleday, and, having ushered him in, seated him and closed the door, Carpy sat down: "There"s few men, Barb, in this country," the doctor began, "that dare talk to you the way you ought to be talked to; of them few, I"m probably the only one that would take the trouble. Your enemies won"t talk and everybody friendly with you is afraid of you. You"ve got so much property and stuff here they"re plumb afraid of you. I"m a poor man, Barb--don"t never expect to be anything else, and I don"t give a hang for anybody," averred the erratic surgeon, "and n.o.body gives a hang for me."
Doubleday, chewing the stub of a cigar, eyed his medical adviser with an unsympathetic stare, but this in no way disturbed the self-appointed critic. "For a long time now, Barb," he continued, "you"ve been in the nastiest kind of a fight on Jim Laramie. You"ve tried to run him off the range and you tried to beat him out of his land and you"ve tried to break him. He"s got the best land in the Falling Wall and he"s in your way. One time his wire is all pulled off his fence. Another time your foreman pokes a gun into his stomach."
Doubleday flared up: "Am I the only man that Laramie"s got differences with? When his fence is tore down, am I to blame? Am I to blame for every drink Tom Stone takes? What are you talking about?" demanded Doubleday with violence.
The doctor could not have been calmer had he been reaching at the critical moment of an operation for Doubleday"s appendix. "Be patient a minute; be ca"m, Barb; I"ll tell you what I"m talking about. I don"t know who cut his wire. I don"t know who done it and I won"t undertake to say, but what I do say to you, Barb, and I say it hard, you"re making a big mistake on this man, and if you don"t slow up it"ll cost you your life yet."
Doubleday was grimly silent. "I"ve known Jim Laramie," Carpy went on, "since he was a boy. He"s stubborn as a broncho if you try to ride him. He"s the easiest man in the world to get along with if you make a friend of him. No matter what"s said of Jim Laramie there ain"t a crooked hair in his head; but he"s no angel and when his patience quits--look out. What I"m going to tell you now, Barb, is on the square. It can"t go no further. I tell you because you ought to know.
A while back, just after this wire pulling, Jim Laramie walked into this room, shut the door and locked it and sat down right where you"re sittin" now. He told me the wire story; he told me he was through.
He"d tracked the men to your ranch and was going to square accounts with you and Stone and Van Horn. He was on his way to the Junction and he told me he might not come back and wanted to tell me how to dispose of his property. He was after you and he meant, before he fell down, to get some or all of you. He asked me where you were, because he heard I knew. I did know but I didn"t tell him. I lied, Barb. I told him the mines, but I knew you were at the Junction. He started for the mines. What happened to turn him off your trail I never yet learned.
I never asked.
"Now you saw, or you heard anyway, what happened when Stone tried to kill him the other night. That man never can get Laramie. And don"t depend on Stone and Van Horn to play you fair, for if they had to save their hides, Barb, they"d sell you. My advice is this: Put back Laramie"s wire. Let the cattlemen, you and Pettigrew to lead "em, do it to clear their own names. Say you know nothing about it, but it was a dirty trick, and tell this town that cattlemen fight but they fight fair. It"ll do more to set you right and to set everything else right on the range than anything else you could possibly do. And don"t make a mistake. Laramie"ll follow that wire pulling for years but what he"ll get the man that did it. I know him. He"s got a memory like an Indian."
Like all well-meaning and candid friends, the doctor found himself at once in for a deal of angry abuse, but, as he explained, he had taken so much abuse from patients at various periods of his career--and abuse fully justified--that nothing Barb could add, deserved or undeserved, to the volume would move him: "As our old governor back in Wisconsin said, Barb, "I seen my duty and I done it,"" was the doctor"s only retort to Doubleday"s wrath. "Now if you"re in a hurry, Barb, don"t let me keep you, not a minute. I had my say and if there"s anything pressing you down street go to it."
But angry as Doubleday appeared, Carpy had given him something to think about. Consultations were held--by precisely whom, no one could say, but in them there was dissension. Van Horn vehemently opposed any further overtures to Laramie and he was vastly put out at being overruled. While the discussions were going on, he talked in a veiled but emphatic way to Kate about the queer way her father was acting.
Van Horn would shake his head with violent emphasis at the way things were going. But when Kate poured oil on the waters of his discontent, Van Horn was always responsive and stayed to supper or for the evening, if he were asked--and Kate was alone. On the gentler side, however, he could make no headway. When he tried headaches for sympathy, Kate was stony hearted. When he asked her one day at the spring to take down her hair, she told him she wore a wig. He looked at her amazed.
And in spite of his objections to placating Laramie a decision very unpalatable to him was reached. Pettigrew, as spokesman, approached Laramie and insisted, in order to allay bad feeling, on replacing the barb wire. When Laramie declared the wire must be put back by the men that had cut it, there was naturally an _impa.s.se_, but Tenison and Carpy aided jointly by the representations of Lefever and Sawdy, induced Laramie to forego his punitive att.i.tude and accept the amende as offered. This, as the doctor had predicted, put a pleasanter face on the tangled affairs of the range. And to strike while their iron was hot, and to keep it hot, the cattlemen announced a big Fourth of July celebration, at which old scores should be forgotten and friends and enemies meet in good-fellowship. The place for it, after much talk, was fixed at Doubleday"s ranch. The saloon-keepers of Sleepy Cat, except Tenison, fought this, but they lost out.
Since her own home was to be the scene of the celebration, Kate took a particular interest in the undertaking. She made herself, in a way, hostess and her father gave her free rein. The eager crowd that responded to the public invitation found awaiting them, as they picturesquely rode in twos and threes and groups up the creek to the ranch house, all the "fixin"s" for a rousing celebration. Men came for as much as fifty miles and some of them by trails and over pa.s.ses Kate had never even heard of. There were cattlemen, cowboys, sheepmen, little ranchers--all the conflicting elements of the country, besides a crowd from Sleepy Cat with the band, and all the town loafers that could possibly secure conveyance.
There was for these latter worthies the attraction of a free feed--for they knew the prodigality of cattlemen; but there was also the underlying hope that where so discordant elements were a.s.sembled a fight _might_ occur; and n.o.body wanted to miss a fight. The princ.i.p.als necessary for a serious affair were present. The fact that all were armed was not significant, merely prudent. Men careless on this point were no longer attending celebrations of any sort around Sleepy Cat.
From the Falling Wall came the rustlers, every one of them except Doubleday"s old foreman, Abe Hawk, who scorned all pretense of compromise. He advised Laramie not to go near the celebration. When Laramie intimated he might go, Abe was greatly incensed. A master of bitter sarcasm, he trained his batteries on his sandy-haired friend and these failing he warned him he would be in serious danger. He intimated that the scheme was to get the rustlers all together and finish them in a bunch. In which event, one as hated as Laramie could hardly hope to escape unmolested. But Laramie persisted in his resolve to go, and he went.
Doctor Carpy made it a point to go. He was usually needed professionally at Fourth of July celebrations. But on this occasion he was, in matter of fact, a sort of sponsor for the whole affair and he brought Sawdy, Lefever and Tenison along. The four drove out in the smartest wagon and behind the best team in the Kitchen barn, Kitchen with them and McAlpin driving.
By noon the big end of the crowd had arrived. The barbecue tables were set out under the trees along the creek. The roasting itself was in the skilled hand of John Frying Pan and before one o"clock he was ready to serve.
Doubleday had told Kate, when arranging for the tables, that his particular friends would sit at his table, and she was on her way down to the creek to ask him how many there would be in the party when whom should she find him talking with, of all men, but Laramie, who had just ridden over from the Falling Wall.
Before Kate could retreat, her father had seen her. He called her over. To her astonishment he insisted on introducing her to his friend, Jim Laramie, of whom he was making as much as it was possible to make of a wholly undemonstrative man.
The band not far away was playing full tilt. Kate wished they could have made even more noise to hide her confusion, but there was nothing except to face the situation, much as it surprised her. Laramie, fortunately, seemed indisposed to say anything. He spent most of his time listening. Kate, being far from animated, her father was left to do the honors. And on such rare occasions as Barb was communicative, he was quite capable of good-fellowship.
Laramie, however, seemingly under some restraint, soon made excuses and left to join the crowd.
Some of the little ranchmen had brought their wives along. A few of these women had their babies with them, and Kate returned to the house, where she made the mothers comfortable. There, her father afterwards ran across her. He stopped as he came up: "You remember that man I introduced you to--Laramie?"
"Very well," a.s.sented Kate, wondering.
"Treat him well at dinner."
"But I"m going to eat here at the house."