It was a beautiful morning and life sang in the blood of Ramona. It seemed to her companion that the warm sun caressed the little curls at her temples as she moved down the street light as a deer. Little jets of laughter bubbled from her round, birdlike throat. In her freshly starched white dress, with its broad waistband of red and purple ribbon, the girl was sweet and lovely and full of mystery to Ridley.
A little man with a goatee, hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed, came down the street with jingling spurs to meet them. At sight of Ramona his eyes lighted. From his well-shaped gray head he swept in a bow a jaunty, broad-brimmed white hat.
The young girl smiled, because there were still a million unspent smiles in her warm and friendly heart.
"Good-morning, Captain Ellison," she called.
"Don"t know you a-tall, ma"am." He shook his head with decision. "Never met up with you before."
"Good gracious, Captain, and you"ve fed me candy ever since I was a sticky little kid."
He burlesqued a business of recognizing her with much astonishment. "You ain"t little "Mona Wadley. No! Why, you are a young lady all dressed up in go-to-meet-him clothes. I reckon my little side-partner has gone forever."
"No, she hasn"t, Uncle Jim," the girl cried. "And I want you to know I still like candy."
He laughed with delight and slapped his thigh with his broad-brimmed ranger hat. "By dog, you get it, "Mona, sure as I"m a foot high."
Chuckling, he pa.s.sed down the street.
"Captain Jim Ellison of the Rangers," explained Ramona to her companion.
"He isn"t really my uncle, but I"ve known him always. He"s a good old thing and we"re great friends."
Her soft, smiling eyes met those of Arthur. He thought that it was no merit in Ellison to be fond of her. How could he help it?
"He"s in luck," was all the boy said.
A little flag of color fluttered in her cheek. She liked his compliments, but they embarra.s.sed her a little.
"Did you fix it all up with Dad?" she asked, by way of changing the subject.
"Yes. I"m to go to Fort Winston to get the money for the beeves, and if I fall down on the job I"ll never get another from him."
"I believe you"re afraid of Dad," she teased.
"Don"t you believe it--know it. I sure enough am," he admitted promptly.
"Why? I can twist him round my little finger," she boasted.
"Yes, but I"m not his only daughter and the prettiest thing in West Texas."
She laughed shyly. "Are you sure you"re taking in enough territory?"
"I"ll say south of Mason and Dixon"s line, if you like."
"Really, he likes you. I can tell when Dad is for any one."
A sound had for some minutes been disturbing the calm peace of the morning. It was the bawling of thirsty cattle. The young people turned a corner into the main street of the town. Down it was moving toward them a cloud of yellow dust stirred up by a bunch of Texas longhorns. The call of the cattle for drink was insistent. Above it rose an occasional sharp "Yip yip!" of a cowboy.
Ramona stopped, aghast. The cattle blocked the road, their moving backs like the waves of a sea. The dust would irreparably soil the clean frock fresh from the hands of her black mammy. She made as if to turn, and knew with a flash of horror that it was too late.
Perhaps it was the gleam of scarlet in her sash that caught the eye of the bull leading the van. It gave a bellow of rage, lowered its head, and dashed at her.
Ramona gave a horror-stricken little cry of fear and stood motionless.
She could not run. The fascination of terror held her paralyzed. Her heart died away in her while the great brute thundered toward her.
Out of the dust-cloud came a horse and rider in the wake of the bull.
Frozen in her tracks, Ramona saw with dilated eyes all that followed.
The galloping horse gained, was at the heels of the maddened animal, drew up side by side. It seemed to the girl that in another moment she must be trampled underfoot. Nothing but a miracle from G.o.d"s blue could save her.
For what registered as time without end to the girl"s fear-numbed brain, horse and bull raced knee to knee. Then the miracle came. The rider leaned far out from the saddle, loosened his feet from the stirrups, and launched himself at the crazed half-ton of charging fury.
His hands gripped the horns of the bull. He was dragged from the saddle into the dust, but his weight deflected the course of the animal. With every ounce of strength given by his rough life in the open the cowboy hung on, dragging the head of the bull down with him toward the ground.
Man and beast came to a slithering halt together in a great cloud of dust not ten feet from Ramona.
Even now terror held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed, then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its horns. The man hung on for life. All his power and weight were centered in an effort to twist the head of the bull sideways and back. Slowly, inch by inch, by the steady, insistent pressure of muscles as well packed as any in Texas, the man began to gain. The bull no longer tossed and flung him at will. The big roan head went down, turned backward, yielded to the pressure on the neck-muscles that never relaxed.
The man put at the decisive moment his last ounce of strength into one last twist. The bull collapsed, went down heavily to its side.
A second cowboy rode up, roped the bull, and deftly hogtied it.
The bulldogger rose and limped forward to the girl leaning whitely against a wall.
"Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn"t ought to have brought the herd through town. We was drivin" to water."
"Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.
"Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma"am."
He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father"s new foreman, the man she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.
"It threw you around so," she murmured.
"Sho! I reckon I can curry a li"l ol" longhorn when I have it to do, ma"am," he answered, a bit embarra.s.sed.
"Are--are you hurt?" another voice quavered.
With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been when she so desperately needed help?
"No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.
"I--went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.
"Thank you," she said.
The girl was miserably unhappy. For the boy to whom she had given the largesse of her friendship had fled in panic; the one she hated for bullying and mistreating her brother had flung himself in the path of the furious bull to save her.
Captain Ellison came running up. He bristled at the trail foreman like a bantam. "What do you mean by drivin" these wild critters through town?
Ain"t you got a lick o" sense a-tall? If anything had happened to this little girl--"